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Learn English with a Short Story that I would like you to send me your stories, send me your descriptions of strange creepy, unexplained or frightening experiences.
Have you ever had a weird experience that you can't quite explain, or a frightening experience that you can remember clearly?
Write it down for me, describe it and send me your description.
And I'll be collecting descriptions.
And the one that I like the best, you will win and you will win a copy of Anna Brooke's latest book.
You heard her talking about it on the podcast recently.
It's called Death by Chocolate.
And so the best story will win a copy of the book, but also stories that I like.
I will read them out on the podcast in a forthcoming episode.
So strange, creepy, unexplained or frightening.
Right, so to give you a bit of inspiration...
On the theme of creepy, unexplained stories.
In this episode of Learn English with a Short Story, I'm going to tell you a very odd story which I first heard from Dave Allen on his TV show.
I don't know if you know about Dave Allen, but he was an Irish comedian and storyteller who had a great program on British television in the 1970s and 1980s.
And a lot of people watched Dave Allen on his television show.
I remember seeing him on TV.
My parents were fans of his.
What was so great about Dave Allen's show is that he simply sat on a stool in front of an audience and told stories to everyone.
He was a fantastic storyteller.
He was very, very funny, but also his stories were extremely compelling.
He was a brilliant storyteller.
And so this is one of his stories, okay, that I'm going to tell you right now.
It's called The Bad Room.
I'd like you to listen very, very carefully.
A little test for your English.
What is the meaning of the last line of the story?
What's the significance of the last line of the story?
So listen carefully.
I will explain everything afterwards.
I'll go through the story line by line, explaining bits of vocabulary, so you can genuinely learn a lot of English from this.
But now let's begin.
Let's read the bad room.
And here we go.
So this is the bad room.
If I may, I'd like to tell you a true story.
A story about a house.
A house that had what people in Ireland call a bad room.
This room had an atmosphere, an unwelcoming, heavy presence.
People were reluctant to go into it.
They avoided it, spoke about it in lowered voices, and refused to have anything to do with it.
If visitors heard about the room and asked to see it, the people who lived there would always warn them please do not go near the room.
And if you must go near it, go with someone else, never alone.
Because that room had an attraction, a strange, fatal attraction, something that drew people inward like a magnet.
Those brave or foolish enough to open the door would be allowed to look inside but never to step across the threshold.
And always, Their companion would stand behind them, ready to hold them back.
Because once the door opened, the pull deepened.
People wanted to go in.
They had to be stopped.
One foolish young man, stubborn and determined to prove everyone wrong, ignored all the warnings.
People pleaded with him, scolded him, shouted at him, fought with him.
And he said, no, I will spend the night in that room and rid us all of this superstitious nonsense.
He stepped inside that room.
And the door, without a single human touch, closed slowly behind him.
And they all waited.
They waited until about six o'clock in the morning.
And from that room came a scream.
A horrendous, soul-destroying, blood-freezing scream.
SCREAMING
They all rushed up to the room and burst through the door, and there was nothing there at all.
No young man, no sign of him, except a pungent smell of animal and brimstone. mixed together.
And lying on the floor was a single shoe.
Nothing more.
The story reached the newspapers and from there it travelled far and wide until it reached the ears of a renowned Jesuit priest, an experienced exorcist.
He decided he would go to this room and attempt to expel whatever evil lurked there.
Again, the people pleaded.
Again the warnings were ignored.
Before entering, the priest gave only one instruction.
If, by chance, something happens to me in this room, if the pattern is the same, one of my shoes will remain.
And whatever happens...
Whatever is the secret of the evil of that room, I will write that on my shoe.
If I'm gone, look at the shoe, because the answer to this puzzle will be there.
He stepped inside.
The door closed behind him.
Downstairs, the family sat by the fire, listening to the steady tick of the grandfather clock.
Tick, tick, tick.
From above, They heard the priest praying.
They smelled the faint waft of incense drifting down the stairs.
At around half-past four.
They looked at the dog who was sleeping by the fire and in his sleep he had begun to growl, and as they watched him, the hair on the dog's back slowly rose, bristling.
And finally he let out a long, mournful, blood-curdling howl.
Howl!
And then from the room upstairs they heard the scream.
They ran upstairs clutching lanterns, crosses, crucifixes, holy water.
They threw open the door and the same pungent smell hit them.
And on the floor lay one single shoe.
Trembling, they picked it up and they turned it over.
And burned into the sole of that shoe were two words.
Size nine.
OK, that's the end of the story.
Did you get it, everyone?
Did you get it?
Yes, that's right.
It was a long joke.
It was just a long joke.
That's what we call in English a shaggy dog story, a story that goes on and on and on.
And finally has a very ridiculous punchline at the end.
So yes, it was a joke.
The last line, size nine.
This is what was written on the sole of the shoe.
That's just what is sometimes written on the sole of a shoe, isn't it?
The size of the shoe.
So this is not.
Of course, everyone was expecting the secret of the mystery to be written on the sole of the shoe.
But in fact, all that was written there was just the size of the shoe, size nine in this case.
Right, so that's, it was just a silly story, but a creepy story nonetheless with a funny ending.
I wonder if you got it the first time round.
So obviously this is just the story of a room, a house with a room.
That is called a bad room, apparently in Ireland, which is a very superstitious place.
According to Dave Allen, I mean, I don't know if it's true or not.
But some houses will have a bad room.
And this room was very strange and creepy because it had a mysterious attraction.
It attracted people in.
If you opened the door and looked inside the room, you would feel this urge to to go inside.
It was, it's like it was pulling you in, or like a magnet being pulled into the room.
But if you go in there, well what?
Basically it was a.
I guess there was some sort of evil presence in that room and um, Anyone who visited the house was warned never to go in the room.
And if they did need to go and visit it, that they should go with someone else so that that other person could stand behind them and hold on to them, so that they don't get pulled into the room or that they don't voluntarily enter the room.
But then one young man a foolish young man who wanted to prove that it was a load of nonsense decided he would spend the night in the room.
And he went in and in the middle of the night there was a scream from the room and everyone rushed upstairs to look inside.
And there was nothing there.
This young man had disappeared except for his shoe.
Just his shoe was left on the floor.
So a priest learned about this, a Jesuit priest, a Catholic priest, an exorcist, someone who is specialized in getting rid of evil spirits.
Right, he decided he would go there, he would spend the night in the room and, since he was an experienced exorcist, he would have the kind of, the knowledge, the skills to be able to get rid of the evil spirit that lurked in the room and just before you.
And everyone said no, you mustn't do it.
Everyone you know tried to persuade him not to, but he refused to listen and did it anyway.
And just before he went in the room he said listen, if the same pattern happens, then one of my shoes will be left on the floor of this room.
And if that happens, I will write the secret on the shoe.
If I'm gone, look for the shoe and look at what's written there.
And of course, he screams in the middle of the night.
It's very frightening.
He screams.
They enter the room.
He's gone.
His shoe is on the floor.
They pick it up.
What is the secret?
But what's written on the sole of the shoe?
Size 9. just the size of the shoe, which is written on most shoes.
Most shoes have the size written on the sole.
So just a silly joke, but a fun one.
Let me go through the story line by line and I'm going to just teach you bits of vocab from it.
Okay,
You could also practice by repeating the lines of the story after me, which is always a good idea, a good way to just exercise your English.
So, the bad room.
If I may, I'd like to tell you a true story.
A story about a house.
So, by the way listeners, you could always pause the podcast.
If you want to repeat these lines after me, okay.
That would make it easier for you.
A story about a house.
A house that had what people in Ireland call a bad room.
This room had an atmosphere, an unwelcoming heavy presence.
I haven't really picked out any vocab yet in the story to teach you.
I mean, a presence, that means that something is there.
There is a presence.
I suppose it's interesting to notice that presence P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E a presence when someone or something is there, when it is present.
Sounds exactly like the plural of present meaning gift.
So one present, two presents.
And there was a strange presence, a heavy, unwelcoming presence in the room.
Those two words do sound the same.
People were reluctant to go into it.
Now, if you are reluctant to do something, it means you're kind of unwilling to do it.
You're hesitant to do it.
You don't really want to do it.
OK, for example, you know, I heard a strange noise in the middle of the night.
I heard a strange noise coming from the spare bedroom and I wanted to investigate, but I was reluctant to open the door.
I mean, I don't really want to.
So if you're reluctant to do something, it means you don't really want to do it.
I don't know.
In a classroom situation or you go to a party and everyone's speaking English really fluently and you don't feel very confident, you might be reluctant to speak, meaning you don't really feel like speaking.
You don't feel confident enough to speak.
You're reluctant to speak.
I was reluctant to go to the party because I knew that I would have to speak English the whole time, and so I felt a bit reluctant at first.
But then I did it anyway and it turned out to be a really good idea because I made some friends and practiced my English a lot.
So if you're reluctant to do something, you might say reluctant to admit.
I was reluctant to admit that I was wrong.
I was having an argument with my wife and, you know, we were arguing and.
She argued better than me and she proved that perhaps I was wrong about something, but I was reluctant to admit it.
I didn't really want to admit it.
I was reluctant to speak.
You might say deeply reluctant to do something.
That's a nice word.
Let's move on.
So people were reluctant to go into this room.
Don't really want to go in.
They avoided it.
So to avoid something is to try not to do it.
Right.
Try to go away from it.
Like, for example, if you are in a creepy old house in the middle of the night on your own, you would be reluctant to look in the mirror or you would avoid looking in the mirror.
Right.
We often say things like avoid eye contact, avoid trouble, avoid doing something.
It's often followed by a gerund.
They avoided it.
They avoided going in there, right?
They spoke about it in lowered voices.
Lowered voices.
To lower your voice means to speak more quietly.
Speak quietly.
Lower your voice.
So it's like to whisper or just to speak less loudly.
Lower your voice.
They spoke about it in lowered voices.
So they kind of spoke about it a bit like this or spoke about it quietly.
They lowered their voice.
They spoke about it in lowered voices.
Yeah. and refuse to have anything to do with it.
So to refuse to do something, that's another good one.
So we've had to be reluctant to do something, to avoid doing something, and refuse to do something.
If you refuse to do something, you just basically say no.
You don't agree to do it.
No, I will not do that.
I'm not going in that room.
No way.
Not me.
Not a chance.
I absolutely refuse to go in there.
In this case, they had they refused to have anything to do with it.
So if you have something to do with something, this is quite a nice expression.
It means you are connected to something.
Right.
So, you know, you might say, oh, it's nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with me.
So who broke this?
Who broke this glass?
There's a broken glass on the table.
It has nothing to do with me.
That has nothing to do with me, meaning there's no connection to me at all.
So it has nothing to do with me.
It doesn't have anything to do with me.
Does this have something to do with you?
Well, it doesn't have anything to do with me.
So a connection.
In this case, they refused to have anything to do with it, meaning that they did not want to have any dealings with it, no connection with it at all.
They didn't want to be involved.
Okay.
So they refused to have anything to do with it, didn't go anywhere near it, nothing at all, avoided it completely.
If visitors heard about the room and asked to see it, the people who lived there would always warn them.
Please do not go near the room.
And if you must go near it, go with someone else.
Never alone.
Because that room had an attraction.
A strange, fatal attraction.
Fatal attraction.
Fatal attraction.
It's a nice adjective.
It means if something is fatal, it can cause death or cause some kind of disaster, probably death.
A fatal mistake, a fatal accident, a mistake that led to someone's death, an accident that caused death.
A fatal accident, fatal error, fatal injury, a fatal consequence.
In this case, a fatal attraction.
There's a movie called Fatal Attraction, isn't there?
Something that drew people inward like a magnet.
So to draw is the verb here.
In this case, draw people into the room.
Draw, drew, drawn.
To draw in means to pull or attract something in.
Okay, like I was walking down the road and I saw a lovely looking pub and it drew me in, meaning I felt like oh, I think I want to go into that pub.
It drew me in.
In this case drew people inward means.
Inward basically means towards the middle or towards the inside.
OK, for example, the door, the door opened inward.
The door opened inward and outwards.
Inwards or inward.
So sometimes it has an S on it.
It's the same thing.
Inward or inwards, outward or outwards.
Yes.
So the door opened inward or the door opened outward.
You see, like a magnet.
We know what a magnet is, right?
It's a thing that attracts metal.
You can use a magnet to attach something to your fridge.
You know the fridge that has a sort of metal door.
You can stick things to the fridge with magnets.
So like a magnet, it means it's magnetic.
It sort of pulls or attracts something to it.
A magnetic thing.
You can also have a magnetic personality.
If you have a magnetic personality, it means that you attract people to you, right?
So it's not just used for metal, but anything that attracts other things towards it could be magnetic or like a magnet.
Those brave or foolish enough to open the door would be allowed to look inside but never to step across the threshold.
A threshold, this is a word that's come up several times on the podcast in recent episodes, I feel.
The threshold is basically the entrance line.
The entrance line.
So in terms of a room, so we have thresholds in rooms and buildings, and then we have thresholds in other situations.
But in a building, a threshold would just be the line that separates that room to not in the room.
So you step across the threshold means you enter the room or enter the building.
OK.
To stand on the threshold means stand on the line just in the entrance to something, between two things.
To cross the threshold.
So you can stand on the threshold of a new era.
That means you're right on the edge of. entering a new era.
So not just a room, but a new phase in your life.
You're on the threshold of a new discovery.
Also, in terms of tax, taxation, often taxation systems, they have different thresholds.
For example, if you earn less than Less than £30,000 a year, you will be in this tax band.
But when you start to earn more than £30,000 a year, you cross a threshold.
The threshold is set at £30,000.
You cross that threshold into another tax band. where you pay more tax.
So these lines are thresholds that divide different tax bands.
Where you pay more tax, the more you earn.
So a threshold, a line dividing one room from another, or a line dividing the outside of a building to the inside of a building.
You cross the threshold into a building.
But also lines that divide other things like the starting point of a new era, a new phase, etc.
Or, in this case, tax bands which are divided by thresholds.
So it's used in things like financial English and stuff like that, not just describing buildings and rooms.
And always their companion would stand behind them ready to hold them back.
So to hold someone back, in this case, it's literal.
It means prevent someone from moving forwards, literally hold with the hands to stop them going into the room, like hold them back.
But it's also a useful phrase to know because it's used in a figurative sense as well.
If something holds you back, it prevents you from making progress.
For example, you could say, you know, my lack of confidence is really holding me back in my English.
You know, what is it that's...
I don't feel like I'm making progress with my English.
Well, what is it that's holding you back?
Well, it's like my...
I haven't got a good routine.
I haven't established a good study routine.
I think that's really holding me back, or the fact that I don't have someone to speak to on a daily basis.
That's really holding me back or my confidence issues.
I just don't feel very confident.
And as a result, I don't open my mouth.
I'm sort of reluctant to speak.
And this is really holding me back.
You see.
Right.
Moving on.
Once the door opened, the pull deepened.
Now, I just wanted to point out here that the use of the word like once here...
And this is just a way to sequence things, isn't it?
We've got once the door opened, the pull deepened.
So once and then past simple and then another past simple form.
And it's just used to sequence things.
So it just shows that one action follows another.
Now, what else could you use there instead of once?
You could use several other words or phrases instead of once.
You could say, when the door opened, the pool deepened.
Or as soon as the door opened, the pool deepened.
I think once and as soon as are really very similar because they mean sort of immediately, right?
Immediately when.
When the door opened...
The pull deepened.
It was at that moment that the pull deepened.
Using once or as soon as emphasises that it's straight away.
And deepened, the pull deepened.
In this case, deepen means to become stronger, more intense or more serious.
OK.
For example, the silence deepened, the story deepened, my fear deepened.
You can deepen a relationship, you can deepen a mystery.
It becomes deeper, stronger, more intense, more serious, right?
In this case, the pull, the attraction of this creepy room deepened.
It became stronger, became more intense.
People wanted to go in.
They had to be stopped.
Just nice use of the passive form in an infinitive.
Had to be stopped, meaning other people had to stop them.
One foolish young man.
Foolish stupid, not clever, not wise, stubborn and determined to prove everyone wrong, ignored all the warnings.
So stubborn, if you are stubborn...
It means you are sort of not willing to change your mind.
So this young man has decided I'm going to go in that room and I'm going to spend the night there, because I don't believe all this superstitious nonsense.
And he's so stubborn that, even if everyone is trying to convince him no no no no, please don't do it.
Trust us.
You really shouldn't do that.
Well, I'm going to do it anyway.
I've decided I'm going to do it.
So I'm going to do it.
No one's going to persuade me otherwise.
So very stubborn, someone who's unwilling to change their mind.
He was determined to prove everyone wrong.
If you prove everyone wrong, it means you show them that they are wrong, right?
Wrong, right.
Yes, you show people that they're wrong.
You prove that they're wrong, right?
Yeah.
OK.
People pleaded with him, scolded him, shouted at him, fought with him.
So I think, you know, shouted at him and fought with him.
But what about pleaded with him?
So they pleaded.
They were like, please, please, please don't go in that room, please.
So please, you know, the word, but the verb form for this is to plead with.
P-L-E-A-D.
Past simple, pleaded.
They pleaded with him.
They begged him.
It's similar to beg.
Don't go in that room.
Please don't go.
Trust us.
You really mustn't go in that room.
Oh, it's a load of old nonsense.
They scolded him.
If you scold someone, it means you speak very angrily with someone.
You kind of tell them off, someone has done something wrong and you kind of speak very angrily with them.
For example, if my little son, who is two years old, if he does something like he throws water all over the floor, He might get scolded by me or by his mum, you know, not too much.
But we'd say, you mustn't do that.
Don't throw water on the floor.
So we scolded him.
To tell someone off is a synonym.
Tell off, that's a phrasal verb synonym.
Scold is a bit more formal sounding than tell off.
But in this story you can imagine yes, that people just sort of spoke angrily with him in strong words, kind of shouted at him right.
Yeah, they scolded him, they pleaded with him, they shouted at him, they fought with him.
Notice the prepositions.
Plead with someone, scold someone or tell someone off, shout at someone, fight with someone.
And he said, no, I will spend the night in that room.
Interesting use of will just to... show your intention, which can't be changed.
It's very strong intention.
I will spend the night in that room and rid us all of this superstitious nonsense.
To rid someone of something meaning to get rid of something.
So to rid us of this nonsense, to rid someone of something, it's slightly old fashioned language.
It has a slightly formal tone.
And it means if you rid, I don't know, what's a good example of this?
Let's say the house has got mice in it.
There are mice, right?
One mouse, two mice.
There are mice in the house.
And so you might call a professional to come in and rid the house of mice, meaning remove all the mice.
In this case, this young man wants to rid us all of this superstitious nonsense.
He wants to remove this superstitious nonsense from everyone so that everyone stops thinking in this ridiculous, superstitious way.
To rid us of something means remove it all and throw it away.
A more everyday common expression is to get rid of something.
And that means, yeah, throw it away, remove it.
Look at all this rubbish in the corner of the room.
Could you get rid of it, please?
That's a much more everyday expression, meaning to remove something and throw it away.
Get rid of it.
No, this shouldn't be here.
I'd like you to get rid of it, please.
Let's get rid of all this rubbish.
Rubbish.
Rid us all of this rubbish.
Sounds very old-fashioned, quite formal.
In the context of the story it works because it sounds quite sort of serious and it's the right kind of tone for this creepy story.
I will spend the night in that room and rid us all of this superstitious nonsense.
It's the kind of...
Yeah, a formal sort of tone that sounds very serious in the context of the story.
In more everyday English, you might just say, get rid of it.
Can you get rid of all this stuff, please?
This shouldn't be here.
He stepped inside that room and the door, without a single human touch, closed slowly behind him.
And this is where I get the chance to show off my sound effects.
And they all waited.
They waited until about six o'clock in the morning.
And from that room came a scream, a horrendous, soul-destroying, blood-freezing scream.
Nice language.
Horrendous.
Horrendous means extremely bad, shocking, horrible, awful, terrible.
Yes, a horrendous scream.
You can imagine...
Oh, God, what was that?
That was horrendous.
Just very, very bad.
Stronger than horrible.
That was horrible.
That was horrendous.
That was horrific.
Horrible, horrendous, horrific, awful.
These are all very similar. horrendous is a bit stronger.
We also have the word terrific, but watch out because terrific is not part of that group.
Terrific is a positive word.
That was a terrific episode, Luke.
That was absolutely terrific.
Not terrifying.
So, terrifying...
Horrible, horrendous, shocking, awful.
All of those things are really bad, right?
Terrifying especially means very frightening.
Horrendous means awful, extremely bad.
Terrible.
But terrific is positive.
Oh, this tastes terrific.
This is terrific.
That was a terrific film.
That was a terrific story, Luke.
Well done.
OK, so that's terrific and horrendous.
So a horrendous soul-destroying scream, a scream that destroys your soul.
Blood-freezing scream.
It freezes your blood.
OK.
They all rushed up to the room and burst through the door.
So to burst, burst in, burst through the door, it means enter the room suddenly and violently.
Quickly open the door and they burst in the room.
Like, I don't know, the police would burst in the room and arrest the bank robbers.
Her boyfriend burst through the door and caught them sleeping with each other in the same bed, for example.
Right.
So to burst through the door, burst in the room.
And there was nothing there at all.
No young man, no sign of him.
If there's no sign of something, it means there's no trace, no evidence.
Right.
So they say things like no sign of life.
No sign of improvement.
I've checked his work.
I've checked his work over the last three months.
And honestly, I'm not seeing any sign of improvement at all.
I'm not sure what's going wrong.
What's holding him back?
Why isn't he making any progress?
No sign of improvement.
Well, to be honest, he hasn't been attending classes these last two weeks.
There's been no sign of him at all in my classroom.
So no indication or evidence that something is there.
Except a pungent smell.
So a pungent smell is a very strong, sharp smell, right?
Very powerful smell, a pungent smell.
It's interesting that we use the word pungent only with smell, a pungent smell, pungent odour.
Odour is another word for smell.
It's negative as well.
It's usually negative.
So a strong, powerful and probably unpleasant smell.
So all there was in the room was a pungent smell of animal, a kind of creepy, musky kind of animal smell.
And brimstone, animal and brimstone mixed together.
What is brimstone?
It's the sort of word that you might read in the Bible.
And it is essentially a smell that comes out of the ground.
And it's in the Bible.
It is associated with hell.
Right.
But in fact brimstone is probably the smell of sulfur, which is a chemical that comes out of the ground.
You know where there are hot springs?
Hot springs where water runs close to, I suppose, volcanic rock under the ground that's hot and hot.
Sulfur is a chemical that often bubbles up through that kind of hot spring water and it smells a certain way.
That is brimstone, in fact.
But it's a word that's used typically in the Bible, and it refers to the smell of hell.
So brimstone is like air, gas that comes from hell, okay?
We talk about fire and brimstone in the Bible.
It has a literary religious connotation.
The air smelled of brimstone.
It's not a word that people use very much.
But in this story it's quite appropriate because it evokes religious imagery and the kind of evil magic of hell.
A pungent smell of animal and brimstone mixed together.
And lying on the floor was a single shoe, nothing more.
The story reached the newspapers and from there it travelled far and wide.
To travel far and wide is just a nice fixed expression.
It means to travel over long distances to many different places.
He travelled far and wide in search of answers.
Right.
In this case, the news travelled far and wide until it reached the ears of a renowned Jesuit priest.
A Jesuit priest is a form of Catholic priest.
A renowned priest, that is, a priest who is famous famous for doing good work, someone who's got a great reputation.
Right. a renowned priest, famous for having a great reputation, world-renowned, the world-renowned Luke's English podcast, a renowned expert in linguistics.
David Crystal is a renowned expert in linguistics.
It's a sort of formal synonym of the word famous.
OK.
By the way, what I'm going to do at the end of this is I'll do a little vocab quiz at the end of this episode, just to give you a chance to review what you've picked up from this.
OK, so you'll have a chance to recall the words that I'm going through near the end of the episode, when I finish the story.
An experienced exorcist.
So an exorcist, yes, is experienced.
Someone who removes evil spirits, right?
Have you seen the film The Exorcist?
It's an excellent horror film about a girl who gets possessed by the devil.
Yeah, it's terrifying stuff.
He decided he would go to this room and attempt to expel whatever evil lurked there.
To expel something is to force something to leave, right?
It's actually probably most commonly used to talk about children who are badly behaved at school and they are told by the school that they have to leave.
The child is expelled from the school.
Right.
In this case, it's this exorcist who is going to expel the evil from the room.
Yeah.
So make them leave.
In this case, it's to expel whatever evil lurked in the room.
So to lurk, this is a nice verb, and this is the sort of thing that an evil spirit would do.
It means to wait and hide something.
And wait secretly, right?
Like this is what you are terrified of in your house when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're on your own and you listen to a scary story just before you went to bed.
And you wake up in the middle of the night and you are convinced that there's something lurking inside in the corner of the room, or you become convinced that there's something lurking in your bathroom, or there's something lurking behind the door waiting, hiding secretly something evil.
Waiting and hiding, lurking.
Yeah.
I mean, we also use this on the internet, right?
That someone who's lurking is someone who is in a chat room or someone who's in a community, maybe in a comment section, but they're not taking part.
They're just sitting there observing.
That's lurking on the internet.
Not actually commenting, not taking part, but they're there, but they're just not showing themselves.
That's also lurking.
In this case, he decided he'd go into this room and attempt to expel whatever evil lurked there.
Again, the people pleaded.
Again, the warnings were ignored.
Before entering, the priest gave only one instruction.
If, by chance, something happens to me in this room, if the pattern is the same, one of my shoes will remain.
And whatever happens, whatever is the secret of the evil of that room, I will write that on my shoe.
If I'm gone, look at the shoe, because the answer to this puzzle will be there.
I mean, it's a bit ridiculous already, right?
Because how is he going to quickly write something on the shoe?
I don't know.
But anyway, he stepped inside.
The door closed behind him.
Downstairs, the family sat by the fire, listening to the steady tick of the grandfather clock.
A grandfather clock is like a big upright clock, an old-fashioned type of clock that is like a large thing that sits on the floor and it's so tall it's about the size of a person and it's a long upright clock that often goes tick tock, tick tock.
That's a grandfather clock.
Rather wonderful things.
Tick, tick, tick.
From above they heard the priest praying.
They smelled the faint waft of incense drifting down the stairs.
So the faint waft of incense.
Incense is stuff that is burned and it gives off a certain smell.
And priests use incense when they're doing their religious ceremonies, right?
If you go to church, you smell the smell of frankincense or something like that.
It's a lovely smell.
Incense is used in religious ceremonies across all cultures burning incense, but they smell the faint waft of incense.
A waft is like a word to describe and it's a noun to describe a, a light, movement of air or a smell.
So a smell wafts through the air.
Maybe smoke could waft through the air as well.
If your neighbour is baking a delicious cake, the smell of the cake might waft through the window.
You see, so it's a verb and it's a noun.
So the smell wafts through the window.
You can smell the waft of this delicious cake being baked inside.
In this case they smelled the faint waft of incense, like a little smell that just kind of lightly carried through the air.
Faint, the faint waft.
This is a weak, slight or not very easily noticed thing.
It's an adjective, right?
Faint.
The faint smell, like a light, weak kind of smell.
So they're getting just a slight smell of the incense that he's burning in the room up there.
So he's doing some sort of little religious ceremony and they can smell the faint waft of incense drifting down the stairs.
At around half past four, they looked at the dog who was sleeping by the fire.
And in his sleep, he had begun to growl.
So this is what dogs do.
They go.
So that's creepy.
Definitely creepy if the dog is growling in its sleep.
It's as if the dog is somehow able to sense the evil, the presence of evil.
And even in its sleep, it's growling.
So that's growl, right?
To make a low, threatening sound.
Yes.
As they watched him, the hair on the dog's back slowly rose bristling.
So the hair goes up on the back of the dog.
Bristle to bristle means, in the case of the fur, the dog's fur or hair.
If hair or fur bristles, it means it stands up on end right.
And this is usually because of anger or fear or excitement.
The dog's fur bristled when it saw the stranger, right?
So hair bristles, fur bristles.
And for humans, you could say, I felt the hair on the back of my neck bristling.
Right.
So that's in reference to hair.
But this is also common in a more figurative sense. meaning to react in an angry or defensive way.
So this can refer to human behaviour.
That's not the way it's used here, but it can refer to human behaviour, meaning to react defensively or to react angrily.
For example, he bristled at the accusation that he was cheating.
What?
Me?
Cheating?
I don't think so.
So to bristle with anger, to bristle at criticism.
OK.
So react defensively.
What?
Me?
I don't think so.
But in this case, the dog's hair bristled.
It stood up on end because it was, I guess, angry or frightened.
Finally, he let out, meaning he made a sound.
He let out a long, mournful, blood-curdling howl.
So a howl is what dogs do, wolves do this.
That is a howl.
A blood-curdling howl is... So blood-curdling, to curdle... is when liquid turns into like lumpy, a sort of, yeah, when liquid turns into lumps, often because it's gone bad.
And this is typically what happens to milk.
So if you've left a bottle of milk, if you leave it out for a week, The milk will start to go all terrible and it will go lumpy.
The milk curdles, right?
Now, blood curdling is just an expression.
That means basically you get really scared and it's enough to curdle your blood.
It's enough to transform your blood into something else.
It's just an image that's commonly used.
So blood curdling, a blood curdling scream is a very common collocation.
So it just means a scream that like freezes your blood or curdles your blood.
Right.
Like the way that milk curdles when it goes old.
So a blood-curdling howl, a mournful blood-curdling howl.
Mournful is very sad.
Mourn, if you mourn someone, it means someone has died and you feel sad because someone has died.
So that's mourn. a very sad feeling, and mournful relates to that.
So a mournful howl, a very sad howl.
A blood-curdling howl is one that's very scary and mournful.
So this is pretty terrifying.
He let out this howl, meaning he made that noise.
And then from the room upstairs, they heard the scream.
Ah!
They ran upstairs, clutching lanterns, crosses, crucifixes, holy water.
Clutching, meaning holding tightly, right?
They were holding it very tightly.
For example, she clutched his arm.
She was so frightened, she clutched his arm.
I clutched my bag, you know.
It's often when you're feeling desperate or emotional, you clutch something, you hold it tight.
In this case, they were clutching lanterns for light, clutching crosses and crucifixes.
These are obviously sort of religious symbols, you know, the cross.
And clutching holy water, okay.
They threw open the door before we had burst into the room.
But this time they threw open the door and the same pungent smell hit them.
There's that word pungent again.
And on the floor lay one single shoe, trembling, so that means shaking slightly.
Usually if you're scared or if you're cold, you would tremble.
They picked it up and turned it over and burned into the sole of that shoe were two words.
Size nine.
Yeah, it's just a joke.
It is just a joke.
And that is the end of that story.
Now, what I'm going to do at this point is just quickly go through.
I've got a list of those words.
See if you can remember them.
OK, so what what what word do we use to describe when you don't really want to do something?
You're hesitant.
You don't really want to do it.
I don't really want to go to that party.
I don't really want to speak.
Not very confident.
I am to do it.
I am reluctant to do it.
What word do we use to mean that you go away from a place?
You don't go near it.
You go around it.
What is it?
Avoid it.
Avoid it.
Right.
What's another way of saying speak quietly?
Another way of saying speak quietly.
This is a library.
You have to lower your voice.
You speak in a lowered voice or hushed tones, or you whisper uh.
What's another way of saying no to?
To just uh, say that you are not going to do something right.
For example, i think you should go in that room.
No, i'm not going to go in that room.
No way, not me.
Uh-uh, never.
He refused to do it.
If you have a connection to something I don't know, or if you don't have a connection to something who broke this glass?
Was it you?
Did you break this?
Oh, you'd say, well, it has...
Nothing to do with me.
It is nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with me.
Does this have anything to do with you?
What happened here?
What word means it could cause death, like an accident that could lead to death or lead to disaster?
What kind of accident?
A fatal accident.
What's another?
A phrasal verb, which means to attract. to attract inside like this room.
What did it do to people?
It drew them in.
It drew them in.
Yes.
Um, what, um, Is this word a preposition or is it an adverb?
I think it's an adverb, meaning towards the middle or towards the inside.
It's inward.
The door opened inward.
The door opened outward.
What do we call a metal, a piece of metal that attracts other metal?
You put it on your fridge and it sticks there.
That is a magnet, right?
What's the adjective for that?
Magnetic, right, okay.
What do we call the line that divides two rooms?
So you've got the doorway...
And at the bottom of that doorway there's a line and you put your foot on it or you step over it and you cross from one room to another.
Or equally, you would move from one one band or one section to another section and you cross that line.
That is the threshold.
Right um, if you're not very confident, this might prevent you from making progress.
In english right, if you're not speaking enough, this will prevent you from making progress.
So what's the phrasal verb which means to prevent you from making progress?
It is to hold you back.
Hold you back um okay, um.
What verb means to become more serious, to become stronger, to become more intense?
In this case, it was the attraction to the room which became more and more intense.
The pull became deeper.
It deepened.
So interesting that deep is the adjective.
And the verb is created by adding the suffix en, deep, deepen.
We have other ones like that, short, shorten, length, lengthen, width, widen and deep, deepen.
Yeah.
So what adjective describes the young man who?
Wanted to spend the night in the room despite the fact everyone told him he shouldn't do it.
But he just would not change his mind because he was very stubborn.
Why did he want to spend that night in the room?
He wanted to show that everyone was wrong.
He wanted to them wrong.
He wanted to prove them wrong.
But they all said, no, no, no, no, you mustn't do it.
They begged and what?
Pleaded.
They pleaded with him.
And in fact, they spoke in very strong words.
They got angry with him.
And a bit like I might do with my son if he did something very naughty.
They said.
They scolded him, scolded him.
I mean, I would tell my son off if he did something very naughty.
Scold is a slightly old-fashioned word, but anyway.
What did he want to do?
He wanted to make sure that the evil spirit went away.
He wanted to remove the evil spirit.
He wanted to remove all the superstitious nonsense.
He wanted to rid everyone of the superstitious nonsense.
In more normal English terms, you would say to get rid of it, right, to get rid of the evil spirit.
What was the scream?
How do you describe the screams that you heard?
It was something horrible, terrible, horrific or horrendous.
They heard this horrendous scream.
They ran up the stairs and they quickly entered the room.
They burst in.
They burst through the door.
Did they see the young man?
No, they didn't.
There was no evidence of him there at all.
There was no sign of him.
But there was a smell, a kind of very strong smell, a strong, not very nice smell, a a what a pungent smell.
What's that stuff that comes from hell, the kind of smelly sulfur, sulfuric smell that is written in the bible, that's brimstone.
Um, the news uh, made it.
The news went a long way, It travelled what.
It travelled far and wide until it reached the ears of this priest.
Okay, he was this priest.
What kind of priest was he?
He had a good reputation.
He was a renowned priest.
In fact, he was the sort of priest who gets rid of evil spirits.
What kind of priest is that?
That would be an exorcist, of course.
What's another word that means to force someone to leave?
Like, for example, a child who's been very bad at school and the school says you have to leave the school to.
Expel the child or expel the evil spirit.
What verb means to wait secretly, to hide and wait secretly, which is what this evil spirit was doing in this room.
It's to lurk, to lurk.
In the middle of the night, they could smell a slight smell.
What's another word for slight?
Like a little trace of a smell, a faint smell.
A little smell that they could smell from upstairs.
That is a what?
A waft.
Right, what did the dog do?
It went.
The dog growled and its hair stood up on end it, but it did what.
This is, by the way, the same word that you would use to describe the hairs on your toothbrush or any brush.
They are bristles, so the hair bristled, the hair on the back of the dog bristled and it It let out this very sad howl.
What's another word for sad?
It's mournful, a mournful howl.
And then they heard the scream again.
It was a horrendous scream.
It's the scream that did something to your blood.
What kind of a scream?
A blood curdling scream.
And they ran upstairs clutching.
Oh, I gave you the answer.
They were clutching holy water and stuff.
And then when they picked up the shoe, their hands were shaking.
What's another word to shake?
Begins with a T. Trembling.
Their hands were trembling.
OK, that's just a little vocab review.
You'll find a list of the vocab on the episode PDF for this episode, where you'll find the story text, a vocab list as well.
And why not?
You can also have a vocab quiz just to help test yourself with that language.
Now you should watch the original video of Dave Allen telling this story on his TV show, because he does a much better job of telling the story.
You've got to see Dave Allen telling this story in front of an audience.
It is a wonderful thing.
He's very good at performing it They dim the lights of the studio.
There's some reverb on his voice.
It gives a really good atmosphere.
And he's just an excellent, he was an excellent storyteller.
One of the best, I think, just one of the best storytellers and comedians ever.
So you really must watch that.
I'll leave a link to the video on the episode page for this episode on my website so you can check it out in the comment section of that.
I had a little look through the comment section.
I found one.
I found one, which, to be honest, is the kind of thing.
Just a reminder.
Now you've only got three days left, by the way, because the end date for the competition for the creepy story the creepy story competition the end date is the 30th of April at midnight, your time 2026.
So you've only got like three days from the date of this episode being published.
I mean, I might be a bit relaxed about that.
And if I get one a couple of days late, then maybe that's OK, too.
But in the comments section, I saw exactly the kind of thing that I'm looking for.
This is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.
So this is a comment. under the Dave Allen version of this story.
And this is the sort of thing I'm looking for in terms of a story of a creepy experience.
So it goes like this.
My sister-in-law decided to take a road trip from Wales to Scotland.
She was near to the peak district when a huge storm hit.
So she decided to find a BB.
That's a bed and breakfast, a place where you can stay the night and have breakfast in the morning.
So she was driving from Wales to Scotland and she was near the Peak District, which is a part of England with a lot of hills.
When a huge storm hit, so she decided to find a B&B to stay for the night.
The one she found used to be an old Sexton house, Victorian built.
So this is an old traditional house.
In the early hours of the night...
The storm was getting worse and the windows were rattling like in an old horror film.
So the windows were rattling and she noticed the handle to the bedroom door was moving ever so slightly.
So she woke up in the middle of the night because the windows were rattling, because there was a big storm in this very old house, and she noticed that the door handle to her bedroom was moving slightly.
So she hid under the duvet.
She hid under the thick blanket listening out while the door handle jiggled up and down.
So she was hiding under the duvet.
Meanwhile the handle of the door was going up and down.
Eventually, dawn came.
That's not a girl called Dawn.
Hello, good morning.
No, that's... Dawn means, obviously, the morning, the sunrise came.
The storm had blown over, meaning the storm went away, and she went down to breakfast.
And the landlady, that's the woman who owned the B&B, started to talk about the storm. hoping it hadn't disturbed her too much.
So she was saying, oh, I hope the storm didn't bother you too much.
My sister-in-law was just about to mention the incident with the door handle when the landlady cut in that's interrupted and said oh, I forgot to mention.
My stupid cat has learnt how to open doors and yours is his favourite room, where he likes to sleep.
I hope he didn't disturb your sleep.
So the door handle going, was the cat trying to get in because the cat had learnt how to open doors?
So this creepy experience with the door handle was in fact just the cat trying to open the door.
There you go.
All right, look, that's the end of the episode.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you for listening.
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