Bedford Falls

Good evening and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod through Ling's Night Gallery, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White. What can happen to human beings when trust is wiped out by suspicion and culture casts? Chris Stashue, small boy incased in the Crystal Ball, and I'm father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares, joined us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at weird Ingwaymedia dot Com doesn't remotely belong to me.

I have no proprietary interest in that at all. Weird Welcome to Dark Destinations, an ongoing investigation into the shadowy corners of the globe, where our haunted past meets our startling future. A dream is a wish your heart makes, so, sang Eileen Woods as Cinderella in the eponymous nineteen fifty film. That's not the only wishing we want. Disney Company encouraged in Pinocchio.

We were told it when you wish upon a star, those dreams come true. Have you ever made a wish? Silly question? Of course we all have, whether it be what the old Twilight Zone called a big, tall wish destined to change your entire world, or as casually as responding to a proposal with I wish. A wish can set gears in motion, but propel a simple need into a welcome reality.

Back in the nineteen twenties, a fellow named Otto Roewetter, no doubt, wished for a loaf of bread that was already sliced. Thanks to that spark and his determination to see it through, an unsliced loaf is now the exception and not the rule. You can ritualize them tossing a coin and a fountain, whispering it into a well. We'll just shut your eyes and want with all your might. Wishes for a long life, wishes for a different life, for true love, for a shotted glory.

If you were to stop and ponder how often you make a wish, you'd be startled. There have been cautionary tales about them. Malevolent genies and cursed monkey's paws come to mind, but we all know deep down we'd succeed where others fail, or would we. Greetings and welcome to you all. My name's Joseph Hooks Faughther them alone at Dark Destinations has tasked me with investigating a town that knows full well the measure of wishing both good and ill, and have done so during a season that seems as if it were designed for wishes.

Christmas. So join me if you wish, on our journey to a sleepy hamlet nestled near the finger Lakes of upstate New York, Bedford Falls. Here on Genesee Street, downtown Bedford Falls, the light poles are already forestooned with glittering, sparkling Christmas decorations. The trees that bisank Genesee, running in a row single file where a double yellow line would be in most main streets, have been each wrapped in hundreds of multi colored bulbs. They're lit up now, even though by my watch it's only two in the anon.

The sprawl and urban decay that have set in in most small town America is absent here. Sure, there's a Starbucks on the corner of Washington Street, where an old department store used to reside, and the stoplights burned with LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs. But not much has changed here in the past century. Snap a picture anywhere in town and you could sell it as a postcard demonstrating how Americana and Christmas are meant to appear, and they do. Postcards of this winter wonderland can be purchased at amadas price inside Goowner's Pharmacy, an institution that's been in operation since the turn of the last century.

My granddad used to work here. He swept up and ran errands. He even made phosphaiths of the soda fountain, which you can see is still an operation. You should try the limericky. It's so good.

That's Louise Bailey, though everyone calls her Lulu, discussing her grandfather George. We met inside Gower's Pharmacy, where I can safely concur that the lime rickey is delicious, to discuss her grandfather's curious interaction some eighty years ago. Now, it was your grandfather that really brought the concept of wishing to reality. It started with him. Correct, let's say he popularized it.

What were the circumstances? I understand it happened on Christmas Eve, that's right, Christmas Eve nineteen forty seven. My granddad was going through a rough patch. His family was getting bigger, there were some bad business deals, financial woe, and on that Christmas Eve there was from what I understand, a real possibility of arrest, if not imprisonment. He ended up on the old toll bridge intending to well, you know, there are conflicting accounts about what happened next, but the consensus is that he pulled a man who was drowning out of the canal.

His name was Clarence the Drowning Man, and he was with my granddad when he made his wish. He wished had never been worn, and his wish was granted. He got a vision of what the world would be like without him, and he said that it was so horrible that he begged to have his life back, which was also granted to him. A lot of people didn't believe him, of course, my grandmother in particular, thought he had just one too many bourbons over at Martini's and dreamt the whole thing. But my mother never had any doubt that he was telling the truth.

George Bailey was too good a man to lie. Whatever anyone believes about the wish doesn't really matter now we know that wishes are real. It's the part about Clarence that people debate. Granddad said that Clarence was an angel sent from God, and I believe him seriously. Who would make up a story about being visited by an angel and then name him Clarence?

You must understand that human belief in angels is as ancient as his first concept of a world beyond his own. There simply isn't a type of religion that has flourished over the centuries that does not include them in one form or another. That's doctor Fritz Hagstrom. He spoke to me via telephone. He's Professor Emeritus of Divinity at Whittier College, a southern California secular institution of higher learning that can be found, amusingly enough, in a county literally named the Angels.

The modern conception of an angel, both physically and motivationally, is stitched together from all these religions. Islam provided them wings, Neo Aristotelian thought showed the breadth of their power. Hebraic tradition gave us the notion of their being emissaries and warriors in God's service, with Michael as the leader of his army Gabriel as his embodiment of justice. Those are the only two I'd like to point out given names in the Old Testament, since an innumerable amount have been named, But in all my reading, I've yet to encounter an angel named Clarence. That's a new one.

As to the business of granting wishes, seems more the domain of the gin from the pre Islamic Arabian tradition, but it isn't without the realm of possibility. If you believe angels to be the personification of the will of the divine, then they'd be imbued, barring certain limitations, of course, with any power imaginable. If God can create the world, a wish must be, if you'll pardon the colloquialism, small potatoes. And what might those limitations be? Too many to name in one sitting, though certainly the most inviolate would be angels cannot usurp the throne of God.

Such a coup as attempted, and as you know, they didn't farewell afterward. It's easy to forget that the devil the brimstone coated yang to God's yen, not to mix and match Eastern and Western philosophies too terribly. Was once an angel himself. Some believe he was the first and most beloved by God. When he, in a veritable legion of angels, fought to overthrow the Kingdom of Heaven, they were cast out of Paradise and into the depths of hell.

They've been labeled as beasts or brutes, the depraved, or demons ever since. But are they still not angels? Do they not still have the power they once wielded in celestial spaces. It's a question that loomed a large in my mind while choosing to stop in at Martini's Bedford Fall's oldest tavern. It's the watering hole where Lulu Bailey's grandfather imbibed more than a few spirits on that night back in nineteen forty seven.

The site of the original bar was over on Bridge Road, not far from that fabled canal bridge, but a fire in nineteen sixty four proved devastating, and they've relocated to a more centralized spot on Washington in Genesee. It's there I met Elliott Parnell He's retired now, but spent the better part of his life as the floor supervisor at the Wainwright Plastics factory. He's a Bedford falls Man through and through, only ever having ventured as far as New York City, and as it turns out, the perfect man to shed light on what happened next. There were four was poor that night. Poor Doc Reynolds had his hands full.

He was the most born on any Christmas night open to that point. And what year was this? The year? This was nineteen forty seven. I suppose every parent thinks their kid is a miracle, But for the four of us, we were told straight out, and no doubt about it.

See that very night, when most of the town was home and warm and cozy, our parents were still at the hospital. In those days, it was a little bitty place, and the maternity ward was pretty well shared by everyone who was with child. Now, this is the way Mama tells it. She said, it was a little before midnight, and out of nowhere there was this sound like a train hurtling by filled the entire room, just getting louder and louder, so loud that it hurt to see not here, see, So she shut her eyes tight, and when the sound went away, she opened them and saw an angel standing in the ward, white robes, wings, the whole bit. Now, I know that sounds lone, but if you knew my mother at all, you know she wasn't a woman given to flights of fancy.

And she swore up and down that I was the easiest birth she had ever been through. I'm the youngest of five, so there wasn't any possibility of her memories clouded by morphine or the like. And besides, even if she was, there were seven other witnesses, and this angel tells them that tonight is special, that the Lord has made Christmas Eve a divine occasion here in bedfoot Falls, and that night anyone born in town on the twenty fourth from now on were worthy of one wish, and whatever was given couldn't be given back. They took him pretty serious. I'd say, as far back as I can remember, the yell and holler.

Anytime I started to say the words I wish hell on my birthdays, I'd be told to close my eyes and be thankful for what I had been given, blowing out the candles. It wasn't until I was seven that we will found out the truth of things, that the wishes were real. If the other three born that night had made a wish before me, they hadn't told anyone, So I suppose I was the first. What happened when you were seven? My dad was a minor.

Most of those men used their head lamp strapped out front of their tin cap, but my father hated those things with a passion. He'd take us watch a cloth and tie that lamp to his forehead. Used to tie it so tight, my mother a joke. You tie that any tight and your head's liable to burst. My dad was a strong man, decent, mostly child of the Depression, and for what my mama told me, he had a hard go of it growing up, harder than most nowadays.

They'd put him in therapy and it would help, I'm sure, because as strong as he was and good deep down, he could be mean. And I'm not excusing him by telling you he had it hard. There's no excuse for a violent act against anyone, but especially not family. And one time he was beating on my older brother Kasper, and I got so mad, hollering for him to stop. He didn't stop.

He paused and turned to me and told me I was next. Well, that's when I finally made my wish. I wished that his head wood burst, and before the wood burst was fully out my mouth. That's exactly what happened, just like a soap bubble. Never did get the stain off our bedroom wall.

That was my one wish. Used it up. So now when my birthday comes, I can wish on my birthday candles, just like everyone else tried at once too. I never puked so hard in my life, which was too bad. That was a good looking cake.

Officially, Silas Parnell Elliott's dis cause of death is listed as decampetation on the coroner's report. It's neatly typed, followed by the date. In the notes sanction beneath a fountain pen has scrawled two words spontaneous combustion, followed by two question marks. I would have liked to talk to the other three children born on the same night as mister Parnell back in nineteen forty seven, but they've all passed away. Luckily, there have been plenty of children born on Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls in the years following, and while many flat out refused any in all contact, I exchanged emails with several and was able to talk by phone to many more, though both groups agreed I could share their stories under the condition I not record their voices or divulge their names.

And most of their stories are actually quite sweet, happening when they were young enough that the most they could ever wish for was a new puppy, or a video game, or a better home for their family. Selfless wishes as light as gossamer, seemingly without repercussion, no ec comic style twist, like the new home becomes reality thanks to a relative dying at the same moment the wish was spoken, which is not to say there were no stories without menace. One respondent, who spent summers with his family on Van Cleve Lake, told me he was racing his brother to a floating platform found thirty yards from shore. He thoughtlessly wished to be able to swim like a frog. His email ends, thank God for voice to text software.

You've no idea how hard it is to type with tightly webbed fingers. Another told me of her experience near the end of her junior year in high school. It was early June and she felt overwhelmed with the coursework and impending final exams, and wished to be anywhere but here, only to suddenly find herself at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, where an early winter had just set in, stranding her there till September. My parents were not pleased, she wrote, Only one agreed to speak on air, and enthusiastically at that we arranged to meet at Martini's, where I should note they make a terrible martini the following day. That night was a restless one in Bedford.

Falls as troubling as the note of people given the power to shape reality to their will might be, it's dwarfed by the far more sinister possibilities of its source. It seems entirely likely that George Bailey was visited by an angel of God. There have always been stories of angels bringing visions, but what about the one that appeared across town. Isn't it possible that, in the face of a divine emissary granting a wish here and on such a holy evening, that those fallen angels might not seize on that ability and use it for their own horrible, unholy purpose. Could saving one man's soul have damned everyone else in town?

I'm back at Martini's and speaking to Raphael de Soto. Great name for radio coming up next, Raphael de Soto on waaf AF. You grew up in Boston, Seattle, but I went to school there me too, U mass Hamhurst. It's funny how you mentioned radio. I took a communications course my sophomore year.

No. Yeah, went in for on your talent, did maybe three shows in the school station before my professor quite readily urged me towards the technical side of things. I had to drive, but not the talent. Oh, I'm sure you were fine. Now, Raphael, you were born on Christmas Eve nineteen ninety's correct.

I was hoping you could share your experience with the wishing phenomenon here in Bedford Falls. Has anyone else spoken to you about this aside from the Bailey family, I mean, the great Christmas miracle from God? What a joke? Bells and wings? Bells and wings.

They didn't tell you that part? Shocking. Yeah, she always said a bell ringing is a sign that an angel has received their wings, not even joking. Well, I did speak to the Bailey family, but I also spoke with quite a few others. They wanted anonymity, but they did share their stories.

Let me guess bet she talked to you. Oh she did, And like I said, they don't want their names released. Damn it. Sorry. See that's why you're the big time radio guy and I'm the third shift forklift operator at Wainwright.

But if she talked to you, I think I can guess which others did too. Well. They've been very forthcoming, I'm sure why wouldn't they be. Most of their stories a talor made for the Hallmark Channel, and your experience was less than wonderful. Experience experiences plural.

Let me tell you, just being around the event when it happens can be traumatizing. Seeing something so bizarre happened right in front of your eyes can really do number on you. It's like they say, an apocalypse now. It puts the whammy on your head, makes you question reality. Whether the outcome is awful or adorable makes no difference.

And there's another part of it. This is a little harder to describe. Every time it happens, and ask anyone in town, and if they don't agree, they're lying. Whenever it happens, everyone seems to feel a little dimmer inside, a little wearier, not just physically but mentally, emotionally, maybe spiritually if that's your thing. See, there really aren't many of us.

I know that even one of us having this power is a major deal, But think about it. The odds of being born at all are crazily against you. Not to mention born here in Bedford falls, not to mention being born on Christmas Eve, those have to be astronomical odds. So there aren't many of us. We all tend to gravitate toward one another.

And I'm not saying we're wearing matching jackets or anything. There's just a familiality that we feel with each other, especially given the way the rest of the town tends to treat us. And how's that gently but a merciless kind of gentle smiling too much and treating you maybe a little too nicely, But it becomes obvious that it's an act pretty quickly, which is worse than the ones that are straight up avoid you. You know they're scared, but the others faking that they're not. After a while, it just grates on you.

Anyway, Since we tend to be around each other, we also tend to be the witnesses to the events when they happen, I remember, Oh god, it's hard not to say their names, but I'll do my best. Okay. There were these two boys a couple years older than me. Twins. How's that for astronomical odds.

As if twins aren't just naturally weird enough, these ones have an unnatural power. I was ten, so they were twelve. And you know how twelve is. You want to stand out from the crowd, assert your individuality, and these boys are trying to do it with a literal mirror image doing exactly the same. Well, one day they finally had it out.

There was a group of us behind the high school football fields and these two are rolling around on the ground, punching, kicking, screaming at each other. How they were sick of each other, sick of sharing everything. Then they were back on their feet, and it happened. They wished, yeah not at the same time. One wanted the other to be older, old enough so they wouldn't be mistaken for each other.

And once that happened, the now older one wanted the other to be younger. Next thing you know, they're back on the ground, both of them drooling. An infant laying next to a withered old man, and both with identical DNA. Their family moved away a couple months later, I don't know where, probably to a town where they wouldn't be questioned about a brand new baby and an elderly man that they introduced to people as Grandpa. Another time, there was a girl in my biology class just obsessed with unicorns, stickers on her locker, a thousand scribbled drawings on her notebooks.

We were studying fauna, different classes of animals. She insisted on the existence of unicorns. Our teacher disagreed, and not very nicely, which is how Bedford Falls ended up with the world's only unicorn, racing down the halls of BF High School and onto New England Street and out in the forest. You see him every once in a while. People who didn't know the story would freak out when they saw him.

Oh my god, it's a unicorn, an actual unicorn. I never had the heart to tell them that his name was Carl and his favorite band was run DMC. And those are just the ones I witnessed firsthand the event, I mean heard the words, saw it happen. We all saw the after effects on half a dozen others. A kid over at Potter Elementary School who wanted to fly.

He must have floated over the town for three days before spring storm blew him to who knows where. I don't know if you noticed the new police station down the street. They built it about five years ago after the first one disappeared. One day it was there, and the next it and everyone who was in it was just gone. The way you talked about the Baileys, I suppose it's safe to assume that you don't subscribe to their belief in an angelic intervention, that a divine hand set these events in motion, maybe to start and maybe for them.

But what kind of divine being allows children to turn their parents inside out, or cause a blizzard in the middle of July, or saddles a human being with that kind of power. I'm not saying there hasn't been kindness because of it, but the bad is just so, and it keeps on rolling. You know, every year there's at least one or two new Christmas Eve recruits to this freak show. Why don't you leave and go be the same boring drone doing the same boring thing, just in a new locale where I'm a stranger and I don't have dies to anything. Yeah, no, thanks?

Is that it? Or is there something else keeping you? You haven't told us about your wish? No, I haven't, But I also haven't done anything that would make me feel responsible enough to stay here. The fact is I never used mine.

You're kidding, but that's incredible. What an opportunity, Raphael. If this whole thing was set in motion by demonic forces, if it's perpetuated endlessly just as a mockery to the divine and causes havoc on a regular basis, don't you see that you have the ability to end it. Wish the power away for good. That's possible.

I've considered it. What are you waiting for? I said it's possible, not probable. If this is an evil power that we've been given, then it might make everything worse. Give everyone in town the ability, regardless of birthday or where they'd been born.

Give it to everyone on earth. Can you imagine that? How long before all of existence disappeared? No? I can't risk that, but I do think you brought up another avenue.

That's starting to sound very tempting. Leaving Bedford Falls. You don't need to wish for that, and you said you would rather not me. Me leaving town doesn't appeal. I'd just be the same loser I was here, but somewhere else, but given the opportunity to be someone else, preferably already established in a career I've always wanted.

You must travel a lot, get to meet lots of interesting people. Oh please, don't not to mention renown. I looked you up after you contact me. You've got quite a career, lots of awards, lots of respect. No, no, no, no, no, no, very tempting.

I wish I was you interesting. Well, So ends our investigation here in Bedford Falls. Thank you for tuning in. This has been Raphael Wait, Joseph, Joseph Hooks, you're intrepid reporter. Wishing all of you a very merry Christmas.

God bless us everyone. This episode of Dark Destinations was written and produced by Father Malone and featured performances by Antonio Yapor from Swampmediagroup dot com and Space Detective dot com and Justin Billard. The music was adapted and performed by HP Music from Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. Opening theme by Darren Curtis from Darren Curtis music dot Com. We hope you'll join us next time.

Until then, may all your travels lead to dark destinations. Your kids did call you a camera? Some smells like it's gonna rain. Nah, it's walkable. Thanks for putting up with me past last call you a ride?

Not necessary? Bar keep yes, see yourself. Just bark fast okay. If anyone says anything, you ignore him and keep walking. Gotcha, No chit chat, just pitter pat good man, I don't know about that.

Oh, come on, don't brain bad enough. Everything east of the boardwalk is uphill. Now let's make it all slick. Hello, anyone there? We need to get jump in just a few more blocks.

Hello, glad, you're having fun? Punk Joe, I'm a priest. Just see you know I wouldn't hurt a man of the clock, now, would you? Was your color pre back at the hotel. I'm just gonna run along and grab it or not, I don't need it needs.

Everyone's so obsessed with their needs. Take hard and knowledge that soon you'll never want for anything ever again. Your eyes? The hell are you? Oh?

Lily, Lily, she must be one of you, you know her? Lily and h Callian they're they're friends of mine, No, friends of mine. You don't have to do this. You're right, I need you night, greatar He's no priest, but Diah, you don't want to use that. Look at the cross, see your holy Mistrasha back, Johnny, get behind the o man a little cross.

Well it's a close now, Priest, but I can hear you, and I'll find you, you and your useless cross. I get my hands on you. You slow, Yes, follow my voice, Santa Maria Marta Dominostrin bron Nobi's BacT torribus bone and it almost vampires. Yes, what did you do to him? He was covered in rainwater?

I bless me? Are we safe? Roman? Jeremy good, I'm I'm gonna pass out. This episode of Dark Destinations was written and produced by Father Malone and featured performances by Antonio Lapour, Harris Porter, Dakota Sky, Matt Shaffrey Rudden, Chris Stashie, Andrew Redao.

Music by HP Music. Until next time, may all your journeys lead to dark destinations.