Lore Alive 2: In Dreams

Welcome to Lore Alive, a special Halloween bonus series that brings dark tales from history to life with immersive sound design and voice actors. Today's tale puts us in the middle of the first known New England vampire exhumation, and the terrifying dream that plagued a heartbroken father. Lore Alive was created by Aaron Mahnke, with writing and direction by Nicolas Tecosky, audio production and sound design by Brandon Grugle. This week's episode starred J. Garrett Mitchell as Stukeley, Sarah Palm as Sarah, and Amanda Cucher as Elizabeth. ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Series Sponsor: Warby Parker: Right now, buy one pair and get additional pairs for 20%. Go to WarbyParker.com/LORE https://www.warbyparker.com/lore to try on any pair virtually! ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Todos los viernes de octubre, traemos una historia de la historia a la vida con un diseño de sonido inmersivo y actores talentosos para crear una atmósfera que se ajuste a la historia. Es el estilo que conoces de otros programas que he hecho, como 13 días de Halloween, aplicado a verdaderas historias de los cimientos más oscuros de la historia. Esto es Lore Alive. Por cierto, toda esta serie de bonus de Halloween fue posible por el generoso apoyo de Warby Parker, mi favorito de prescripción, fabricante de láseres. He sido un cliente leal de ellos por más de una década y significa mucho tener su apoyo. Más sobre eso después del programa. Ahora, la historia de hoy necesita un poco de introducción y un poco de contexto.

• 0:46Aaron Mahnke?

  Como la mayoría de ustedes saben, recientemente publicé un libro que trata de un evento en particular de la historia de Nueva England. Si nunca has oído hablar de Mercy Brown, una gran introducción a su historia sería escuchar el primer episodio de Lore. Y luego, si quieres ir más profundo, obtener una copia de mi libro exhumado y realmente revelar en la extrañez de ese momento. Y resulta que Mercy fue el último de más de 80 casos documentados que duró un siglo completo, todo sumado por historiadores como algo que llamamos la Pánica del Vampiro de Nueva England. Mercy Brown, por cierto, era de Exeter, Rhode Island, y resulta que la primera instancia de estas extrañez de vampiros también tuvo lugar en Exeter, sólo hace un siglo. Y ahí es donde la familia Tillingest experimentó un desastre muy similar y tomó medidas

• 1:30Aaron Mahnke?

  igualmente drásticas. En nuestra retención de la historia de Sara Tillingest hoy, tomamos algunas libertades con algunos de los momentos más dramáticos, pero solo recuerden que estas eran personas reales que vivían vidas difíciles en un mundo muy real, lo que hace que lo que hicieron sea aún más aterrador. Así que si están listos, empecemos.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  comenzó con el sueño. El sueño. La pesadilla de Stuckley. Eso es lo que comenzó todo, incluso si no fue su culpa.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Estaba en el jardín, pero de alguna manera fue diferente.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Como si este lado solo fuera mío, mío para cuidar y parecía...

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Parecía de la importancia más importante que estos árboles en particular permanezcan saludables.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Poniéndose allí, sentí un amor inmenso por estos árboles, como si estuviéramos vinculados espiritualmente.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Eran míos y yo era suyo.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Y luego...

• 2:56Speaker 02

  las manzanas en el árbol más grande comenzaron a hundirse de repente con una velocidad asombrosa, volviendo a negro y desgastándose de las ramas.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Una roca líquida que se extendió a través del suelo mientras el árbol enorme se esparcía sus hojas y murió.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Esa roca, ese putre verde negro, continuó a se extender, alcanzando las raíces de los otros árboles que uno por uno comenzó a muriirse de sangre.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Me tiré a las raíces, traté de sacar la infección que se estaba propagando con mis dedos. sangre, sudor y polvo derramó por mi cara, pero no podía hacerlo.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  No podía salvarlos.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  La barra se deshizo en granas y debajo no había madera, sino hueso.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Y todo lo que podía hacer era rendirme y llorar.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Nunca he sentido tan desesperado.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Está bien, fue un sueño.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Pero todavía puedo ver las líneas del árbol. El hueso alcanzando el cielo por la misericordia que no vendrá.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Cállate, se desvanecerá. Respira profundo y mira en mis ojos.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Por supuesto, sí, fue un sueño.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Todo estará bien. Los árboles no eran reales.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Quizás trabajaste demasiado duro.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Quizás.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Lo siento por haber arrugado tu sueño.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Y sin otra palabra, se volvió de nuevo a una profunda cumbre. No lo haría, tirando y volteando el resto de la noche, asombrado por sueños que no eran míos.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Sara era nuestra más anciana y la más parecida a mí. Nunca elegiría un favorito. ¿Cómo podría una madre? Pero desde el nacimiento, Sara y yo estábamos vinculados como nunca hemos estado vinculados con nadie, incluso su padre. Podíamos charlar durante horas o pasar tiempo perfectamente cómodo en silencio completo. Yo trabajando en la mantenimiento de la vida diaria, ella en sus libros.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Ella era académica, como yo era como una chica. Su hambre por el conocimiento mantuvo sus ojos intentos en la página, ya sea un libro sobre la ciencia o el arte, o las fantasías de aventuras y amor encontradas en nuestros novelos contemporáneos.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Le molestaba a Stuckley a la distracción tener una de sus hijas cabeza plantada tan firmemente en las nubes. Aprovechó el trabajo físico que se llevaba con trabajar con los árboles de manzanas, un hombre cuyas manos hacían mayor parte de su pensamiento.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Pero creo que estaba en asombro que tal niño pudiera haber venido de él. En cualquier caso, ella se divirtió en sus estudios igual. ¿Quién sabe?, dijo, "Quizás será más que una simple esposa de casa", dijo. Y me golpeé la lengua. No quería ser her撃, después de todo, él era simplemente un jardín.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Sara haría frecuentemente caminar largas con cualquiera que estaba llamando su atención en ese momento y morbidamente comenzó a sentarse entre los pequeños esparcimientos de piedras en el suelo de la cumbre de nuestra comunidad.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Visité allí una tarde con ella y inmediatamente vi la apelación.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Una vista de la selva cerca, la solitud de mantener compañía con los muertos.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  ¿Qué te trae aquí cada día, Sara? ¿El silencio?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Eso es parte de ello, sí. Aquí puedo ser el mí que veo en mis sueños.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  ¿Qué sueñas?

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Sueño con ver el mundo.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Bueno, si te casas correctamente.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  No, no veo un esposo en mi sueño. Viajo sola.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Lo veo.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Oh mamá, ven ahora.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  No, no, solo deseo entender.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Espero poder escribir historias y ver el mundo por mi cuenta.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  No deseo tener más familia que ya tengo. Tú eres suficiente para mí.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  ¿Qué es esa cara?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Nunca tuve un sueño como ese. Espero que obtengas todo lo que quieres.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Te llevaré conmigo, ¿qué tal eso?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Te uniría felizmente.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Algo.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Esa misma noche, Sara se enfermó. Una febría moderada, un rencor o dos. Una fiebre de verano, pensé.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Se quedó, se empeoró y luego...

• 8:42Speaker 01

  se fue.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  We buried her in her favorite spot, where she had spent so much time reading and dreaming. It was a bitter pill, knowing that she would never travel further than her own headstone.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Knowing that I would never travel with her, to see the avid adventurer I knew that she would one day have been.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Within a week, her younger brother, Richard, began to show symptoms of the same disease. I couldn't help but think with dread of Stuckley's dream of the withering orchard. And I was not alone in that.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  I cannot sleep.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  I'm haunted by the dream.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  The orchard?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  It haunts me too.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I was beside Richard's bed this afternoon. He was grunting in his sleep, as if he were trying to speak through whatever he was dreaming. And so I shushed him, as I would when he was a baby.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And then, still asleep, he spoke to me.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  What did he say?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  He said, "I see her. She is waiting on the end of the bed right now. She's come back for me."

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And then nothing more.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  I am afraid, Elizabeth.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I know.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  I am too.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  By the dawn,

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Richard had joined his older sister. We buried him there, next to Sarah. The dirt of her grave was still freshly turned.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Stuckley was driven half-mad by his death. Sarah had been the apple of my eye. Richard had always been his secret favorite. The eldest. The tallest tree in the orchard dream, I thought.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Stuckley quit coming to bed, and instead began to spend the night in the chair in the room with Caleb. I think he believed that he was guarding his youngest from disease? From death itself?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Or was it from Sarah?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  He could not, or would not, say. But in this way nights passed, Stuckley keeping vigil and I alone in the dark.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  But he was mistaken. Caleb would not be taken next.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  It seemed as though I myself would be the next apple tree to wither. It came on fast, as it had with the children. The fever. The cough. Within a week of its first symptoms, the sickness had taken firm root in my body. There was a strange otherworldliness about it. Once a woman who did not dream at all, I was suddenly awash in them. Dreams of my mother, my father, who had toiled away in the tannery until he died of his own cough, barely forty years of age. In these, he was hale, hearty, alive. In one such dream,

• 12:34Speaker 01

  he carried a picnic basket up a slope, my mother and I walking behind.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Ahead, I saw the burial ground, and in the middle of the headstones, right where I knew Sarah and Richard to be, grew two apple trees laden with fruit. Even within the dream, I connected these trees to Stuckley's, though these could hardly be described as withering. They stood tall and confident, their branches waving in the wind, beckoning us forward.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  One morning, awakening from these dreams, I was momentarily confused.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Here I was, once again in my room, the bright daylight streaming in through the window. In there, in the chair next to the bed, was Stuckley. And at the foot of the bed,

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Sarah. For a moment, solid and bright. I was so excited that I bolted up from my pillow and was about to cry out in my joy. But she disappeared. Evaporated into the dust motes in the morning light.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  What is it, my love?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  It was... I saw her. Sarah.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  A dream, Elizabeth.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  No. She was here, at the end of the bed, as real as you.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Without another word, Stuckley stood. The look on his face in that moment was inscrutable. A man grappling with something large, something beyond his own comprehension. And then, an emotion familiar to his face. Resolve. Where are you going?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  I'll return by nightfall. I promise.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  He marched out the door, only pausing to collect Caleb.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I was alone.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I would not remain so for long. It could have been hours or minutes. I dozed, and in that half-sleep, images flashed before my eyes, familiar and strange. Again, my father, his strong arms embracing me after a near drowning, his hot tears on the crown of my head.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  A boy I had known in youth astride the horse that would one day throw him, ending his brief life too soon. My first glimpse of Stuckley. My poor, sweet husband at a country dance. How our eyes met across the dimly lit room. How he marched right up to me and, without any fear or hesitation, asked for a dance.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  A simple man, my Stuckley. An orchard keeper even then. But how he could dance.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And then, an older Stuckley, the Stuckley who had just departed, Caleb trailing through a dense wood, coming upon a clearing and looking upward toward...

• 16:05Speaker 01

  I was suddenly awake again. Sarah was sitting at the foot of the bed. I was afraid to speak, lest she dissipate once more into the ether.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  But she did not. She remained. We regarded each other for a long moment before I could speak.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Sarah? Am I dreaming still?

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Does it matter?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  I don't suppose it does.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Are you here for me?

• 16:42Speaker 03

  If you like.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Your father would be heartbroken.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Father has always been a stubborn man.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  He's a good man as well.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  He is.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  He's doing something horrible, though, as we speak. It is purely out of love, though it is deeply misguided.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  What is it? Tell me.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  I believe that you saw him just now, in the forest.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Coming to a clearing and...

• 17:21Speaker 01

  I saw the hill beyond the trees. The burial ground.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  What is he doing at the burial ground?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  He and Caleb have come to my grave. In father's hands, a shovel. Tied to his waist, his grandpa's old hunting knife.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  What will he do?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  He will dig. It will take time, and Caleb is not strong enough to be of much assistance. And then, he will open my coffin.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  He will bend low, until he is right above my prone form. He will whisper a prayer that only I can hear. With tears nearly blinding him, he will slowly bring the knife up, clasping the handle between both hands. He will turn his reddened eyes to the bright blue autumn sky, searching for God's grace, though deep within him, he doubts that heaven will ever receive him.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Stuckley, you fool!

• 18:35Speaker 03

  He will take a deep breath and plunge the knife into my heart.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Why?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  He believes it will save you. But it will only haunt him as I haunt you now.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Why do you haunt me now?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  In this great dream beyond the veil, we can be whomever we wanted to be, but could not when we lived. We can travel far, see what we could only have dreamed of. And, Mother, we've dreamed for so, so long.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Father and Caleb will be devastated.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  But one day, sooner than you could believe, they will join us on our great adventure.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  She reached out her hand to me. How I'd longed to hold it just once more.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Join me, Mother. Come and find life in the great pig world of the dead.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  There is no more need to suffer, to toil, to stitch and mend and cook and clean.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  What else could I do then? My body was wasted, my mind feverish. This world was wearing so thin.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  With an open heart,

• 20:21Speaker 01

  I reached for her hand.

• 20:38Aaron Mahnke?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Lore Alive. This episode and series was made possible by Warby Parker. Before Warby Parker, I had to do that thing that we all hate to do, which is stand in front of a wall of frames and find the needle in the haystack. Just trying to buy glasses shouldn't require a spreadsheet, and that's why I am obsessed with Warby Parker. Nothing else comes close on quality, price selection, and customer service. Once you buy from Warby Parker, you'll realize how much easier they've made the entire process. Their virtual try-on has made it possible for me to skip those eye doctor showrooms entirely, since I can literally try on glasses from my phone before I buy them. And I mean that. I've tried other virtual try-ons that feel pretty janky, but with Warby Parker,

• 21:22Aaron Mahnke?

  you can genuinely tell how the frames are going to look and fit. Warby Parker glasses start at $95 and include prescription lenses with anti-reflective, scratch-resistant coatings. They use premium materials in each frame, design every frame in-house, and have a collection of silhouettes, colors, and fits for every face. Me, I wear progressive lenses, which are more complicated to get just right, but Warby Parker nailed it, and these glasses are absolutely amazing. They look and fit so great. Right now, buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at warbyparker.com/lor. That's 20% off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at W A R B Y P A R K E R dot com slash lore.

• 22:05Aaron Mahnke?

  To answer the questions that I'll inevitably get after this episode, the story of Stukely Tillingest's dream of his orchard dying and the subsequent deaths of many of his children are all part of the historical record. In fact, I've stood inside their graveyard, which is located in Exeter, Rhode Island. The Tillingest family, as far as we know, were the first family in New England to endure the bizarre ritual referred to by some as a therapeutic eczema, although they wouldn't be the last. Desperate people, after all, are easily swayed by fear, and they'll do unthinkable things as a result. The Tillingest family remains a powerful example of that. An audio project like this is obviously a team effort, and there are a lot of humans to give credit to.

• 22:49Aaron Mahnke?

  For starters, Lore Alive was created by me, Aaron Mahnke, and it was written and directed by Nicholas Tokowski of 13 Days of Halloween and Havok Town fame. This week's episode starred Jay Garrett Mitchell as Stukely, Amanda Kutcher as Elizabeth, and Sarah Palm as Sarah. This episode was recorded by Blake Long, with post-production and sound design by Brandon Grugle from Atypical Artists. Our show was produced by Nicholas Tokowski and me, Aaron Mahnke, with special thanks to Lauren Shippen from Atypical Artists. I hope you've enjoyed this Halloween treat, and I promise, no tricks, that you'll get another one next Friday. And until then, stay spooky.