BUNKER: Siren

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice. Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode was produced with immersive audio. For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. You're listening to God only knows at this point. The Poclips PR, the doomsday dial. Me. Now, before I say anything, I want to apologize. I've been, well, I haven't been on my triple A game as of late. No doubt you've noticed the, let's say, irregular production quality. I've spoken to our producers and we all agree. That's on me. But I'm better now, or at least I will be, I think. Look, I'm going to come right out and say it. This is my last broadcast, our final show. I know I promised two more years, but in showbiz, time is subjective. And also, something's come up. I've been sleeping on this decision for a few days now. Waiting for the funny fog to clear my mind. Because down here, I've only recycled thoughts to breathe, and each one stinks like a world that's left you on red. I've been running this radio for God knows how long, and even before that, putting out an SOS and why? What have I got to show for it? My bed is still springy. My sky is still dirt, and I'm still stuck in this damn hole. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know what I'm still doing here. Stalling for time, I guess. If you're new to this show, my name's not Mike. I mean, of course not. Who has a name like Mike Madness? Someone who's smoking the silence, that's who. Someone with a game to play. Someone who's trying to break out of their old life while stuck in the same skin. The same closet, day and night, 24-7, 365, one life sentence. Forever. My real name is Saul. Saul, short for Solomon. Solomon Grover, which rolls off the tongue like peanut butter. But hey, that sin falls on my parents. Mike Madness was only a stage name. A play, you could say. A day-to-day way to stay sane. Which I know is ironic at best. But now, it's time to hang up the mic. But not before one final story. My story. I've been working up to this the past few years, but just never knew how it ends. Well, I think I do now. So, here we go. Hold your headphones, watch your wires. Tune in clear and light your fires. This creepy story's blazing hot. Turn on the lights, you better not. To all my fans, it's Adios, so gather round and listen. Say it with me. Close. I always knew the end was coming. I just never knew when. See, I grew up in Christian land. And before I even knew how to spell climate change, I was taught revelations. And I don't just mean the Holy Comeback Tour. I mean OG revelations. Pure and biblical in all its ungodly world-ending horror. Point is, I lived in the trenches. Hope was sunshine, none of which reached our dinner table. Bombs roared over silverware, pounding with suspicion against every other force that walked the earth. The government couldn't be trusted, schools couldn't be trusted, and don't even get us started on the mailman. Stepping out of that bunker, out of the trusty range of your family Bible, you were dead. Blown away. The real world was no man's land. Planted with tripwire and fake news, the enemy patrolled the streets, brainwashed by Hollywood and armed with nukes. The barrel of every traffic cam in every lens aimed at your head. With but in order, the deep state could have your identity shot. Such was the world of preteen me, where conspiracies flowed like spit in a middle school gym's drinking fountain. Of course, my parents thought that they had me pinned. An evangelical butterfly stapled to their happy album. Yet just before they nailed my feet, I took up the cross and ran. I moved out when I was 17. Half of my life was getting out of Calvary. The other half was getting into reality. But old habits stick like a field of burrs. I escaped the holy bubble just as Dotcom started a pop. And with the birth of W3, there arose my new ministry. I came into adulthood as a doom-scrolling scribe, an apostle of the apocalypse. Though caveat, I never went over the deep end. Never trusted anything more than I could fact check and recheck. But a sailor hasn't to go far to find the end of the world. No doubt you already know, the road sign to oblivion had many names. Nuclear Holocaust. World War III. Global warming. Pandemic. And these were just the flash bombs. Not to mention overpopulation, artificial intelligence, the slow heat death of the universe. The Earth is but a rolling ski ball to any number of black holes. Hope you enjoyed the blinking lights, because we're all out of quarters. This was reality. The world I traded my humble home for. It was still the same sanitarium, but now I had glasses. Now I knew with clarity, the end was coming. I just didn't know which end. Which brings us to here. That's right, I'm talking our base of operations. Radiation radio. The end of the wire. This cozy little cubby where I've kicked up my feet. This was my answer. My revelations. You can't know how the world wanded. That's just a fact. But you can be prepared. A little more backstory, and I'll keep it short. Many years ago, mom and dad died and left me the house. The obvious pitch was to ditch the switch with a for sale sign, or scrape and scrub in service the place as an Airbnb. But listen to me. I'm no landlord. I'm a prepper with a mic. And given a lot in Timbuktu, any doomer worth their radiation pills has but one goal in mind. Shelter. So I moved back home. Back to the holy land and into the lion's den. Just to carve my own cave somewhere further out. Mom and dad weren't farmers, but their land was fit with empty fields. Perfect for growing wheat. Or a doom-proof mausoleum. And I had a uranium-green thumb. Prepper projects turned passion project. My home away from Holocaust was the ultimate hobby horse. And skipping over the boring stuff, permits and plowing, I outfitted my station to a capital city. Sustainable survival, as I like to call it. Built to accommodate necessity plus needs. And the need to want to do more than just your day-to-day malaise. All the basic stuff went in without a hitch. Electricity, plumbing, ventilation, stimulation. I had music and books, a garden and weights, crafting tools, sewing tools, tools to kill the time, at least to be admired. A full functioning studio. All of that in what? 396 square feet? One step a day and within a year, you'd nearly walk the new world. So yeah, it was, well, it was great. Like a pimped out garage bar. My little side project, my societal fail-safe, quickly became more cool than sleeping in mom and dad's old room. When I wasn't working on my next installment, I was kicking back in the new digs. Some nights I even slept out there, trading the musty memories of my childhood home for sub-elegant sanctuary. Such was life. And all in all, all was good. Other than our march towards Armageddon, nothing in the world gave me worry. But now, key change. Have you ever seen a tornado? Up close, I mean. The earth and air in a whirlwind dance. It's awe-inspiring, wonder-requiring. Up until it goes and rips out of house, then it's just terrifying. Well, home is home to tornado valley. And I have more than one memory crammed in the cellar, waiting as a kid for the storm to pass. I'd say you get used to them, but more in the sense that you get used to flying. I've only ever seen a tornado land once, and I've only ever seen my plane land safe. But it doesn't take much to imagine a scene where routine runs aground. That's why I won't go bungee jumping. And it's why whenever I hear a weather alert, I'm hunkering, bunkering, locked up and down. If the seatbelt sign is on, it's time to buckle up. Skip and jump to Friday night, May 31st, going on June. That's when it all started. Tornado week. I woke up in a tomb. Bleach blue lines formed floating hieroglyphs. It felt like my eyes were spinning. And it took two, three seconds to set it all down. The clock read 3 AM. Pulling my head above the pillows, a muffled wave ran clear. A siren. I sprang out of bed, out of brain, fog and fog, to crystal clear atmosphere. My body was running long before my mind could narrate. I had my phone. I was checking the weather. And I was stepping outside. Brighter minds might have stayed indoors, but when push comes to shove, I'm ducking inside the tin can. I was half across the lawn, nearly towards shelter. When I paused, my brain caught up. My phone showed no alerts. The weather app proclaimed clear skies and the late night air was gentle and cool. The only suggestion of some sort of danger was a long, blaring horn many miles away. What in the Wizard of Oz was going on? There was nothing on the news. No emergency broadcast, no ominous thunder. Whatever had the town on high alert was too translucent in its tracks. Playing on the safe side, I traded feather pillows for a steel door hatch. Down in my ditch, I passed the night. Or tried to. The cot I had installed was no rougher than my bed. But I was kept awake by that shrill, perdicious pitch. An hour later, it finally bled out. I learned the next morning that there was some sort of glitch. The short circuit circus had everyone wired. Beauty sleep betrayed about two dozen domiciles called the cops. From 3 to 4 am, phone lines were hot with angry parents, confused neighbors, and at least one high fly who thought his fridge was too loud. Holding the phone close so they could still hear the police told everyone, just stay calm. No one knew what triggered it. There was no warning, no scheduled test. My hunch at the time was cyber war, a foreign attack on our infrastructure. This assumes our town was targeted, which further assumes it was on a map. And that was just plain crazy. Regardless, as soon as the siren switched on, the boys in brown and fire marshals made a three-legged race towards shutting it off. And I guess they did. Because around 404, the siren was dead. Apologies were short, not like anyone cared. Sleep was sweeter than sorry. So as long as the metal rooster was back in its coop, our town was satisfied. The next night, we heard it again. The distant wind woke me up. I checked my phone 3 am. Just like before, there was no warning, no torrent of fire, no earthquake. I didn't even have to take a piss. But still, that shrieking siren demanded I get up. During the horn cry wolf, I made a call to the local PD. The clerk who picked up asked if it was an emergency. I asked them the same thing. Behind the call, I could hear the cue of concerned citizens, a constant ringing from people like me. In a tone that said they missed their morning coffee, the officer told me they were working on it and please hold. Well, glitch or not, I wasn't going to roll the dice. I grabbed a few extra pillows and bunkered down, leaving those above to sort out the mess. Thankfully, the siren was killed somewhere within the hour. But that still left many folks with an hour less of sleep. Obviously, there were complaints. After shooting the bed two nights in a row, the local authorities came clean. They confessed. They had no idea what was causing the sound. Or specifically, they couldn't find the source. I'll pause for anyone who may be confused. See, most everyone was so annoyed with the noise that we never noticed where the noise was coming from. Our town's civil defense system was operated by the fire department. But their siren never went off. Even as the sound was still swelling, police and local authorities stood below the speakers with clear enough ears to hear that the wailing was coming from somewhere else. They tried to trace it. Got as far as an empty playground when the siren suddenly stopped. All on its own. The department was still, quote, following a few theories, meaning they knew bupkis. But they promised to confer any new information as their investigation continued. In the meantime, they asked that we be respectful of our neighbors and their sleep. If we should see or hear anything unusual, we were to notify the police immediately. Then playing it off like the coolest joke, they added this. Until the situation is resolved, we recommend earplugs. As if predicted, that night, the siren rang again. Even with earplugs, the sound rubber band snapped my eyelids wide. I grumbled out of bed and into gear. A fortunate feature of my studio was that it was semi-soundproof. Still that drone dug deep. Another hour gone by, and the siren was dead. If we're counting the calendar, this marked June the 3rd, Monday, a school day. Finals were still in session. However, most of the kids certainly weren't. Tired students plus tired teachers plus tired parents equals everyone's tired of this effing false alarm. The police hit another dead end. As soon as the siren rang, they made like the kids at recess and sped to the playground. Only when they got there, the noise was still far off. A few more phone calls drew them towards the church. But that's where the sermon ended. Playback stops. Switched to track 2, Tuesday. Just to repeat, this album is called Tornado Week, which means our little ditty was far from over. 3 AM on the dot. Alarms go off. And every day was just the same. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. By then I was already stuffed below ground. As soon as the noise started, I sighed, turning over just to stare at the ceiling and wait. Above ground, the game of cat and screaming mouse was running around town. It was almost as if the siren was moving. Like an invisible ice cream truck was speeding from neighborhood to neighborhood, the fire marshals, the police, none of the kids could catch it. Hopeless, exhausted, it seemed like we were doomed, spinning our clocks upside down in forfeit to the new daylight savings. But on the seventh morning, we heard the trumpets blow. The walls of Jericho had fallen. The siren was stopped. The siren, the perpetrator of our post-sleep pandemonium, was a 19-year-old kid. Alex Gable didn't fit the profile for public menace. He was weedy, short, with a nose that went honk and a constant gopher's look a surprise. Behind his mugshot was a premature sense of pastel dread. He had been caught past curfew, and he looked like he needed a new change of pants. Story goes, someone found him in a field. He was just standing there, in an open pasture, standing and staring straight up at the stars and some sort of buzzing black brick. The guy who found him said it sort of looked like a large hummingbird. But then it got low, low enough where he could see, and there, hanging from its chest like the devil's mark, was a bell-shaped loudspeaker. Before he even registered the remote in Alex's hand, this guy, our modern-day Samson, picked up a stick and made like a kid given sugar on a metal pinata. Bam! The sparks flew as the terror of tornado week came crashing down. Police took it from there, and the case unfolded like a cheap taco. The speaker was affixed to a handheld drone and programmed to project the most BP-raising racket on the spectrum. Then going on a one-man drag race, Alex played bumper cars with a town full of dreams. Why? It's the 21st century. Why does anyone do anything? Social media. His internet footsteps tracked a straight trail of TP police tape. On a public forum, Alex posted his plans, promising a dozen disciples with updates on the quote, social experiment. He even posted videos. A pantomime parade of police cars and fire trucks with a crowd of sleepy citizens still sporting their PJs. He filmed the town from hidden cameras. In some of those same clips, Alex even shot himself flying the drone. In effect, he supplied the evidence, police supplied the cuffs. Once we cracked the egg, the oak was on the table. With the facts laid out, it all made sense. The way the sirens swelled, how it swung from place to place while never ever seen. In search of that noise, we turned over every stone but never looked up. Soaring over the night sky, the drone could go anywhere while seeming to be nowhere. Clever. Despicable and arranged, but still, clever. So this marked the end of tornado week. On the morning of June 7th, the dragon was slain. The curse uplifted. Our kingdom was blessed to rest. All questions were answered and the mystery finally remedied. Right? Well, I'm still here. Sorry to steal the sappy ending, but this was just part one. So grab your popcorn and turn down the lights because now we're switching songs. June 8th was truly a postcard. You could take a photo of the sky next to your trash bin and dress it as your background. The air was like being swathed in sunlight, trimmed by a breeze that packed the honey-spiced scent of pollen. After the flood of tornado warnings, it felt like God had given us a rainbow. I only had a blank space on my to-do list, so I set up on the porch, greasing my rocking chair with an ice-cold glass of Palmer. I had one of my books with me, but the new bloom of clouds on watercolor grain made for an odyssey I couldn't give up. Sideways of my doomsday plans. This is how I lived. That's partly why I moved back. Mom and Dad's old home was a keep outside the Kingdom of Concrete. With memory as my spyglass, I traced the golden waves. Floating on the water was a cowboy hat. A mini-me was head-deep in the heart of Africa. On a quest to find who knows what, the Holy Lance or the Ark of the Covenant? There were dangers, no doubt. Tigers, cannibals, the Devil himself. Yet I kept a brave face. I kept it even now, rocking slowly while daring to even think of the real dangers. Active war across the globe. Playing tit for tat with nuclear neighbors. Zeal mixed racial rage. Injustice. Inaction in keeping status quo. A greenlit genocide. Public servants serving themselves. The bipartisan binopoly. The economic aristocracy. The world with fever. Desert droughts, forest fires. The hurry of hurricanes. The inflation of information. Censorship, sponsorship. The death of free speech. The self-seclusion of social technology. Addiction, application, algorithmic instigation. Illness on the rise. Mental fitness on the fall. The endemics of pandemics. The irreversible, unnegotiable, unrelenting stalk. Of time. And the Devil himself. The silence broke with glass. Arnold was on the floor. And so was I. Leaning over, clutching my chest. Shaking so terrible I couldn't stand up. My thoughts shuffled in a 52-card pickup. I thought I was cleaning the glass or getting down for push-ups. I told myself the panic wasn't real. Only a fabric playdoll with a squeeze-me button bleeding. Run. Run. Run. Running through the fields. Wheat lashed against my skin. Dry and coarse as sand. It was in my throat. Pollen plastered perfume, driving out all the air. My heart was kicked. Stuck between my ribs. A water balloon through a chain-link fence. Heartbeat whack-a-mole. A bum, a bum, a bam, a pop. My teeth hit the ground. Dirt and blood licked a busted lip. My tongue was rolling dimes. I looked around, spinning thoughts on a stick and rebalancing my neck. The drop kick to the teeth hit the match with a snowball. But the palpitations kept squeezing. And they only got tighter once I looked down. Under my foot, the de facto tripwire was the metal hatch of my bunker. I spoke to my doctor about getting new meds. She understood, said the whole siren fiasco might have been traumatizing to certain individuals. What she meant was, I looked like a mess. A panic attack. It wasn't my first, but it wasn't my best. I chalked it up to a lack of sleep. That, mixed with the drinking, mixed with, well, literally everything wrong with the world, means I had one hell of a cardiac cocktail. Now, I'm no psychologist, but I could trace my bunker be aligned to some sort of an adapted coping mechanism, like a bad habit or biting your nails. Thing is, when I ran into that field, I hadn't any thought. I was following instinct, a homing pigeon on fire. But once I found myself in the dirt, once I knew where I was and where I was going, that instinct shut off. Suddenly, the idea of shelter felt very far away. Fear is what led me to that place. But fear is what kept me out. It's hard to square those two things, even now. Over the next few days, I wrapped my rough wires with a new prescription label and caught up on counting cows. By standard marks, I was sailing straight. But the fog was just rolling in. Sometimes I'd be on my phone, scrolling through news or listening to podcasts. Other times, I'd be reading a book. And I'd get caught up on some phrase or word even, a line from The Time Machine. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little, twinkle, twinkle, little star. And then, with little less than a children's rhyme, I was up and outside, standing on deck and gliding towards the lighthouse. I snapped out of it. Instincts. Sure, that's what I kept telling myself. Even on days where I mowed the lawn, cutting a clear runway through to the tin terminal, I never went inside. I never had to. I never wanted to. Nothing could have urged me down there. And yet, there I was, drawn to it. I fought back with sticky note sentiments, stuff like, you're safe where you are. And stay inside. Posted them on the window and nailed them to the porch. Any place I'd find myself leering over the wheat. Didn't matter. I went on a run, just to cool off, and found the finish not far from the hatch. I went to get groceries, brought them inside, missed the fridge by a whole damn field. I went to bed, closed my eyes. I opened them again. It was 3 a.m. No noise this time. It was dead as dirt. But that siren's song so sweet. But that siren's song swam between my ears. My heart was doing a drum roll, pushing me off the diving board to make me jump, to go inside. And it continued like that. I was waking up every night, shaken and startled, dreaded, drilling into my skull. The panic attacks were getting worse. No thanks to the new meds. So I flushed that poison down the drain. Still, I couldn't sleep. Couldn't bear my bed, even if it was stuffed with cash. But instead, I paced the back porch, feeling my sails pull towards the shore. The island was calling me. We were heading towards the rocks. A storm was rolling in. Tuesday, June 25th, 3 a.m. The night broke like any other, pulled up from a cold sweat. I had extra trouble sitting up, like I couldn't tell which room I was in. The night seemed heavier somehow. The shadows darker. For a split second, I thought I was in the bunker. Then I found my phone. The idle light lifted me out of the abyss, and I rediscovered my room one wavy outline at a time. From left to right, the rattling window, the black-faced clock, the power was out. I checked my phone. S-O-S. The ticking in my chest turned up in tempo. I tried for Wi-Fi or data, but couldn't crack either. Sudden, serrated thunder disemboweled the silence. It pitched against the house, tearing both long and hard. A second shock upraised it, and in its reply, my phone began buzzing, warning. This is an emergency broadcast, was all I could read before another sound cut in. The siren. Moaning at first, it grew with a gust of wind, fighting against the gale, then carried by it. I stumbled to my feet just as the world began to shake. I almost tripped, but my body went forward, tackled a lamp. It was still dark, but I managed to ride the railing until I found a sturdier wall. More tremors, more alerts. My phone was a restaurant buzzer, shouting, your table is ready, see the front desk, run now. I shot out in full pajamas, fumbled with my shoes, even as the floor played surfboard. My boots were on wrong, but I kept going. Outside, the view was nothing but a closed lens photo. I looked around, hoping for a drone, a false alarm, but all the stars were gone. A tempest, thicker than stone, shut out the sky, leaving me on a tailspin. The wind picked up, and something like a street sign struck the earth. It plowed through the ground, leaving and crashing before sweeping away like a paper bag. I was swimming through shrapnel. Another meteor, a trash bin or tire, struck lightning a few feet away. I ran even faster. Logic was out the window, fear was in control. I was only following instincts. Sure enough, they led me there. The Devil's shriek reached its peak as I bent down and unscrewed the hatch. Heave ho and hoist the handle. The bunker door pops. Floodlights flicked on, a blinding white well welcoming me down. I froze, risking one last glance behind. Even through the shadows, I could see the ancient shape of my family home lifting up. Foundational roots snapped and screamed, blasting like a marching band hit by a school bus. I ducked and covered, latched the hatch, and waited for fate to punch my card. An hour later, all hell went quiet. Sometime during, the siren must have shut down, where its neck was ripped off. The storm still echoed its former strength, but most of the Blitz had settled to a standstill. Cell service was dead. The reception hit a landmine once you went below ground, but this was six feet deader than that. I couldn't get any news. Even those emergency broadcasts were gone. They just disappeared. I figured it was the storm. No doubt, power lines scattered the ground like a toddler's plate of spaghetti. So, I tried my studio. My bunkers set up with a relay radio. All I had to do was dial between a few channels and I'd see what's what. However, I must have had my wires crossed. Every frequency was off. I couldn't get any signal. Or there was no signal. I ascended the ladder, thought, hey, I'll just pop my head out and assess the damage. Easiest thing, you know? I went to turn the handle, but it was stuck. Did I turn it the wrong way? But wrong way or right way? No way would it budge. It wasn't just tight. It was shut tight. Locked. No matter how much elbow grease I applied, the wheel wouldn't move one degree past factory sealed. It must have been debris. Something must have fallen on top of the hatch and was keeping it closed. I was trapped. Yeah, I was trapped. But I kept my pants on. Cool to crazy, okay? Someone would come for me. Someone would see the hole that was my house and wonder where I was. I could flag them on my radio. Truth be told, I hit the windfall of all disasters. Of any place to be buried, I was buried inside an underground penthouse. So what was there to worry about? All I had to do was wait. I waited. And I waited. I waited so long, you could hear the plants grow. But at least that was something, because no matter what I tried, I still couldn't get a signal. No news from the outside world. No way of knowing if they know that I'm here. I sat by the radio 24-7. I kept it on, even as I slept. I hung around the hatch listening for help, banging, shouting for anyone to hear. It's shit on all sense. There should have been a rescue team. There was nothing wrong with my radio. My phone should still have signal. So why couldn't I hear them? Time grew by my ptosis, splitting from two days to four and four to eight. Already, I was tired of waking up and seeing nothing but the same four unpainted walls. I was tired of my books, tired of my music, tired of my plants, and tired of waiting around for someone to help. But I held on. Over and over, I told myself, don't sweat it. This'll pass. It's not like it's the end of the world. After a few weeks, well, the mind is forced to wander. Time heals all wounds, as they say, but really, it just numbs the pain. The longer it's been, the easier it is to forget. I look back on the day the storm hit my house, and I wonder, was it really a storm? What were those emergency broadcasts for? Why was there no cell service? Nationwide hacks were on the rise. What if something had gone down? What if, when I went down, I survived more than just a tornado? Who's to say? No one on the upside has given me an answer, so here I am, scribbling theories, spending my wheels for weeks and months, smelling the burning rubber, head filling with smoke. Why can't I hear anyone? Is everyone dead? After a while, say, 124 days, you start to forget how to live. It's harder to read. The words on a can turn to alphabet soup. A book becomes pages of smudgy black lines. Music, especially the same music, lures in the background noise, like the static hum of a radio. One sound. And time. Time doesn't feel real anymore. It slows down. Freezes. I had to keep journals just to wind the clock. I wrote nonsense. Eventually, my thoughts ran out of fuels, so I wrote what I could. My dreams, old memories, an inventory of all my supplies, a made-up grocery list. But even the journals slowed down. So I stopped writing, and I started speaking. Again, at first, it wasn't for any reason except to fight the clock. But I recorded myself. I pretended like someone was there. I asked them questions and made up replies. I carried on a conversation. A solo duet. I don't know when I started the radio show. Sort of just came into its own one day. It was silly, sure, but therapeutic. More so than the journals, because this way I wasn't just leaving a note next to my skeleton. I was talking to someone. Even if just pretend, I could believe that maybe someone was listening. Alive. I made it a horror show. As a kid, I was inspired by Orson Welles and the infamous 1938 radio broadcast War of the Worlds. The day before Halloween, the adaptation was premiered and performed to such style as to stir a local tizzy. The show was so convincing that some of the listeners believed they were witness to an actual, factual Martian invasion. The wild wind blew over in a day. But the point is, that kind of public pull, that inspiration, well, it was like the good word of Christ. Powerful. Meaningful. So, before I was permanently packed inside my studio, I was collecting stories. Stories that made you believe, if but for a moment, in something unbelievable. It pitches your worldview, takes you out of yourself and throws you back in. But not without something new. A new perspective, maybe? A new fear? A new sense of hope? I checked in every day, multiple times a day. I kept my station going, partly to keep me going, and partly just in case. Maybe someone was out there, someone like me, in need of a little distraction. Maybe that someone would hear my voice and come looking. Maybe they could help. Well, let's just skip over the next two to three years. As you may or may not know, I fixed my door, recently. I've been hitting the wheel after work. I can thank these new supplements. Tonight's sponsor is MREs, your ultimate source of... Nah, I... think it just came loose. The Guinness World Record for most stubborn pickle jar. But, uh... I haven't actually opened the door. I'm holding off on the big reveal. Gotta milk the moment for all the views, you know? Where would I be without my ad partners? Really though, I'm... scared. I... I've spent so long down here that I... I don't even know what to expect. I sometimes wonder if what I have here is better. If what's up there is... sustainable. Liveable. What if half of these stories I've been telling are true or worse? What if the reason I can't reach anyone isn't because the world blew up? What if the reason I couldn't leave until now is because... what if I'm dead? Maybe I didn't wake up that night. The night that tornado or whatever hit my house. Maybe that signpost flew a little too close. Maybe I didn't actually make it into the bunker. But maybe... I died. And now I'm here. Hey, it could be like Jacob's ladder. And the moment I climb out of that ladder, boom! Operating table. Or maybe that's too cinematic. Maybe I open the hatch and I don't find anything. I just... stop. And then there's nothing. Or maybe everything's fine. Maybe the world just forgot about me. I could go on, but I'm not sure I'd get anywhere. The one thing I know for certain is that if I climb out of that door... I'm not coming back. I don't know if I'm going to die up there, but... it's better than dying in here. Fear is what led me to this place. And fear is what kept me inside. Maybe the rapture passed me by. But no matter what... no matter what's left of the world... I want to live in it. I'm Anthony Coons. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing... they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers. They're lovers, friends, and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes. They feel personal. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.