The Gray Rider by Charles Hilan Craig

What's the whole actual deal with haunted dolls?

To answer that question, we have to start all the way back in ancient Egypt, with little

figurines called Ushaptis, and then onto Victorian morning dolls made to look like idealized

versions of dead children.

Enter Robert the Doll, who might be the first truly haunted doll on American record, from

a place none other than Key West Florida, and who, for more than a hundred years, has

been independently witnessed, moving, mocking children, locking people in rooms, and cursing

anyone who doesn't ask permission before taking a picture.

But why stop there?

We're also talking about West African Houdu Poppets, Japanese Sukumogami, and the Niperade,

where countless household objects marched through the empty streets of Kyoto, which of course

brings us back to Mexico City and those damned mannequins.

But maybe none of these things are monsters.

Maybe they're part of an alternative conscious ecosystem.

Or maybe it's just phantoms and projections all the way down.

Anyway, you can come decide for yourself this week on Gods, Ghosts, and UFOs, the podcast

where we talk about all the things they said weren't real.

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Welcome to The Horror of Apple Podcast.

The Grey Rider by Charles Hillen Craig

His name was Lear, he was the world's greatest racing driver, and it was said of him that

he was utterly devoid of nerves.

For three years he had been the leader among the speed demons of the surface tracks, and

during those three years he had won every race in which his car had finished.

Several times accidents had sent him to the pits to stay, again he had been rammed by

a driver who lost control, but whenever he finished the race it was in the lead.

Throughout the land he was known to the sporting public as King Lear, to his more intimate

friend simply as the King.

He no longer needed the money which came to him through racing, but rather drove for

the sheer zest of driving.

There was a thrill for him in every turn on any speedway, a double thrill every time he

came thundering into the straightaway.

As he raced he laughed, and he was a man who could still laugh when he had finished the

last lap on the great brick oval at the capital of the racing world, laugh while ready hands

unbent the fingers that clutched the wheel in a death-like grip.

Without nerves was King Lear they said, and there was little reason to deny that board

statement, but he was a man who went out in front and stayed there till the race was

over, or something had broken.

No tremendous spurts, no sneaking, no jockeying.

Lear clamped down the accelerator and held it there.

Little wonder he got a thrill from those terrible turns, but he went into them faster than

any other living man, and lived, less strange the double thrill from the straightaway, for

his car was a weaving phantom when he came from the turns, a grey mist when he went into

the next.

Lear was perhaps thirty-five years old at the time of which I write, and had been racing

for about ten years.

It was nearing the end of the racing season, and he was in the next to the last race of

the year when he first saw the man whom he intuitively dubbed the grey rider.

He had paid little attention to the other entries, it made no difference to him who they

were or in what numbers he would beat them all, barring accident.

He was on the sixtieth lap of the 250-mile grind when first his attention was attracted

by this grey rider who was to be his chief competitor in the next race.

Lear was grey, not the grey which bright enamel usually gives, but a drab grey, a sordid grey.

Lear was low slung and apparently awkwardly built, kinglier found himself criticising,

as he swung past that car on the sixtieth lap.

The man was deep down in the seat, barely showing his head, but he also was grey, and he

seemed to be laughing as Lear swept past him.

An uncomfortable thought world up in the mind of the king, that there was a sardonic something

about this man and his car that he could not fathom, but he swept the thought away and

settled down to finish a head.

They were on the Nineteenth lap when the grey car almost rammed him, and he swung into

the fence, splintering it and ripping off a wheel, with anger in his heart he made ready

to protest, but the grey rider had swept from the track and was waiting for him, having left

the race.

"'I'm sorry,' he said.

Lear's anger dissipated like a mist.

He laughed.

"'Maybe it wasn't your fault,' he said, and took mental stock of the other driver.

Grey dastard settled finally over the driver's face, the hair, just visible under the turned

up helmet, was grey, and under the grey of that face there were many tiny wrinkles.

The face was set as though it had come from a mould, granite, hours of grim intensity at

the taped wheel had seen to that.

"'What's your name?' asked Lear.

He was surprised that he never had seen this man before, perhaps some new chap breaking

into the game.

"'Grey,' answered the grey rider.

And to Lear it appeared that for a moment a sardonic smile touched the thin lips.

He didn't like that smile.

There was something he'd intended to look the man up, to ask Angus about him, but somehow

he didn't do it.

A reason why he should now want to find out who and what a fellow racer was didn't

occur to him, he who had never given a hang what was put against him in a race.

Angus, his team manager, had come a running.

What happened, he had said, and Lear had replied, I almost got rammed.

What?

And there had been on the face of Angus a strange expression of wonder, and doubt.

Lear had looked about for grey, but the man had gone.

Speed, more speed.

That was what was killing Lear.

Cars were not built fast enough for him.

Time after time in races he had ruined cars, driving them to the ultimate limit of their

endurance till they were burned out beneath him.

He worked many times, but he seemed to have the lives of a cat.

He always came through.

His god was speed.

It'll get you yet, said Angus again and again.

You can't keep up those stunts and live.

Take it from me boy, if you don't quiet down on the curves you'll go through the big

gate someday.

This from Angus, who was continuously exhorting his other drivers to show a little pep.

Lear laughed, but then that was Lear.

That was why he was the best love driver in America.

The crowd came to see speed, and he was there to show it to them.

But deep down in his heart he knew that Angus was right, too near, many times, was death.

For now that the great American classic race had been run at an average rate of more

than one hundred miles per hour, the ultimate speed on wheels was fast being attained.

Little more could be expected of a machine which clung to earth.

Yet Lear still asked for speed.

To see him drive in a race was to see something never to be forgotten.

He always smiled as he rode.

Of course the crowd couldn't see that, but they knew, for the press agent said long

been busy.

All the crowd could see was a blur as the red car swept past the stands.

But they knew he was smiling at death as he rode.

And from east and west men came to watch him ride like a red whirlwind to victory.

And then the last five hundred mile race of the season.

From the new board track in California.

The team managed by Angus was entered, and of course Lear was expected to win.

As the day for the race neared, they came into the mind of Lear a question.

Would the grey rider be in the race?

While he wondered about this he did not know.

He never had questioned before.

He did not ask Angus about it, for he knew that a queer in hour about the other entries

would serve to make the fiery little Scotchman wonder if he were losing his iron nerve.

He didn't read the newspapers, he didn't read the bulletins, he never read anything.

All he cared to do was race.

All he ever desired was to sit under the wheel of his little red cannon and thunder to victory.

He never had cared who it was he was racing.

Speed, more speed, he would shatter that five hundred mile record to fragments.

He would show them that his red cannon could show its heels to any car ever built.

As he thought of it in his last trial spin before the big race he involuntarily increased

his pace to the other cars, the fence, the empty stands became grey-blows.

Faster, faster, faster, round the curve, into the long straightaway past the stands again.

Faster, faster, and then he knew instinctively as Angus flagged him in that he had ridden

at a pace never before equal by man.

The day came, the hour was at hand, the time for the big race.

Car after car drew up to the pits for final adjustments.

Car after car was trundled to the starting line, drivers making a last cigarette,

mechanicians pottering about, the drone of a car ready to go.

The officials lined them up, learened his red wagon in the first tier, the other stretched

to the side and behind, the grey rider, lear looked about.

Yes, there he was at the outside of the first tier, and lear was puzzled.

That made an extra car in the first row, not safe, an official was beside him.

What's the idea of the extra car there, he asked?

Which car?

Asked the official.

Grey-1, number 31, outside.

The official looked where he pointed and laughed, said something which leared at not catch.

But lear laughed too.

He had never been accused of lack of sportsmanship.

What did he care, if the first tier was jammed from pole to stand?

He was going to burn them all up, win!

But as he sat there looking at the grey rider that came over him a sensation he never

had known before, a scarcely felt impression of impending disaster.

Somehow, deep down within him, he felt that this would be his last race, but he shook

off the feeling with a laugh of disdain, lighted a cigarette and waited.

There sounded the last preliminary signal.

The track was cleared, a sputtering roar and they were off.

Round the track, a droning string of angry motors following the pacer, a vast thunder of

sound.

They passed the starting line, and the flag dropped down and up again.

A dull roar from the crowd, screaming of exhausts, whining throb of motors, grey film of

smoke, grey cloud of dust, speed, more speed.

Mile after mile, lap after lap, and the grey rider had nosed up and was running close to

lear, a grey shadow stalking him, urging him on, and he responded.

His car changed from a red streak to a misty blur as he thundered around the track.

A hundred and ten, twenty, thirty-fourty, speed, and the grey shadow still stalked him, lacking

the necessary spurt to go around.

A car went through the fence on the death-curve, another went over and over when a tire blew

out, but by superb skill, lear, and the grey rider missed the wreckage, went on and on,

speed, speed to the utmost.

Into the pit for new tires and gas, then back to the grind, back to the race with the grey

shadow which was challenging his superior skill.

He passed the hundred and eighty-th lap, the hundred and ninety-th, ten laps to go,

and on the straight away the grey rider passed lear.

The smile left lear's face, his teeth set hard.

His dark face was a mass of tiny wrinkles, he leaned forward, but his car did not respond.

He held grimly at the rear wheel of the grey car, but could do no better, wildly reckless

on the curves, a raging demon in the stretch it availed nothing.

The grey rider was just as reckless, just as superb in his handling of the grey car.

Five laps to go, three laps, two laps, one lap, and the spring on his foot-feed broke.

He could feel it go, wide open his car thundered on.

He reached over to shut off the power, but at that moment the grey rider's eyes looked

into his.

He could feel rather than see the sardonic challenge in those eyes.

He gripped again the wheel, careened wildly into the curve.

How he made it, he did not know, but he came out, for me a touch would send him tumbling

into the fence, at the rear wheel of the grey car.

He wanted speed and couldn't get it, speed, down the stretch he roared like the wind, and

then he began to gain, gain, gain.

His radiator was even with the driver's seat of the leading car, a little more, a little

more.

He did not hear the roar of the race, had no ears for the thunder of the hundred thousand

people mad with the thrill of speed, he could think of nothing but the sardonic smile which

he felt must be on the face of the grey rider.

Slowly he gained, but, too late, too late, the checkered flag went down, but the grey rider

had drawn it.

A low snarle escaped Lear's lips as he realised that he had lost, then the snarle changed

to an exclamation of horror, as the grey rider shot in front of him.

He started to slow up, forgetting that his footfeed was no longer working.

Sharply he twisted the wheel, went broadside into the grey rider.

He heard a tremendous roaring, the clang of steel on steel.

Smelt the odor of blazing gasoline, felt its wrath see his lungs, saw stars shoot across

his vision, saw to no felt the sardonic smile of the man who had beaten him.

Lear regained consciousness for only a few minutes at the hospital.

Angus was there with him, firmly solicitous.

Lost gasp Lear, lost hell, said Angus.

You won, but the grey car, thirty-one beat me out just before I crashed into him.

Angus looked puzzled.

There wasn't any thirty-one in the race, he said, and you didn't crash anybody.

You hit the fence, but the grey rider.

There wasn't any grey rider, but there must have been.

Lear knew that Angus was lying.

No grey rider, the fool.

While look there was the grey rider beside Angus now, his hand on Angus's shoulder.

The grey rider, grey with dust, grey with stoneless.

The sardonic smile was upon his face, but the grey eyes which shone through the goggles

held no more.

They were cold as death.

He's beside you, cried Lear, hoarsely.

Look, Angus.

Angus turned all around in utter amazement.

There was no one there.

While Lear, Lear was dead.

Thank you for listening.

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Now, receiving frequency transmission.

So if you take tarot the way that pop culture portrays it, which is that the cards themselves

have some kind of hidden power to predict your future, the jury is very much out.

However, if I were to do my own tarot and have such a connection with my own subconscious,

that when I see these symbols, I could apply any meaning to it, and I basically use it

as a way to explore my unconscious and subconscious mind.

There's a lot of things that you don't know that you know that are buried deep inside

of you through things like meditation and therapy and all of that.

You get these epiphanies that bring it out, and I think that symbols are another method

to do that, these kinds of internal excavations.

And so it actually doesn't require a belief in the supernatural, although it totally helps.

Transmission complete.

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