Original subtitles

- I mean, obviously it's nonsense,

but there's a lot of lore surrounding it.

Especially the Greyfriars Churchyard.

I'd say it's an auspicious start.

Lends the right ambiance, more or less.

Mm.

It's so beautiful.

You can see the castle from anywhere you are.

And you know how I adore graveyards.

So, yeah.

It was a good day.

Mm-hm.

Yeah, yeah.

No, yeah. Timeline is looking good.

Okay, Richard.

Okay. Check in soon.

Bye.

The breeze lifted her hair,

as she watched the grave digger at his work.

She hardly felt anything anymore,

since her departure from the world of the living.

She must have imagined the breeze.

Katie was lucky, she told herself,

to have someone to dig for her.

The remains of the accused were usually burned.

Perhaps her condition had granted

at least that much clemency.

Her condition, though she tried to alter it,

never did change,

and the child in her belly was drowned with her,

and her last lover had betrayed his vow.

I guess I've always felt that horror is

designed to increase your odds of survival.

That's how I've always felt, anyway.

So, like maybe it prepares you

for when real fear enters in, you know?

How will you deal with it?

I...

I'm not just trying to make hearts race.

Not that I'm opposed to the occasional cheap thrill.

- I don't think that's

an unreasonable position to take.

- But no, seriously, I...

I truly am interested in exploring that space

between the fear and the response.

You know? There is endless fodder in that small space.

What will my character do? What will we do?

You can close the book, you can run, but you don't.

You stay put for the fear response. You are not going-

- Yes, but you don't believe

there's anything to fear, do you, Leona?

- Sorry, Nicholas?

- You've said yourself on numerous occasions

that you don't believe a word that you write.

- I'm sorry but I think you've misquoted me, friend.

I believe every word I write.

I just don't believe I know anything about the unknowable.

There's a difference.

- How can any fiction writer worth herself

not believe things go bump in the night?

You're just feeding people lies.

You don't care about your audience.

What? You just think they're sheep?

- Now, Nicky, boy. Hold on, buddy.

Let's keep this friendly.

- No, no, it's all right. It's all right.

Nicholas, we are writers of fiction.

You do know that, right?

I won't pretend to be some sort of ghost hunter,

so it seems like I'm honoring the genre or something.

I research the dead and I use my imagination for the rest.

There's no such thing as waking the dead,

and I don't think I'll lose fans, or sleep, over saying so.

- I just don't care for hypocrites

on bestseller lists, that's all.

- Well, it's time...

- Look, I know I shouldn't let it bother me. I really do.

It's just...

Yeah, but that podcast actually has a really large audience,

considering how niche it is.

I mean, I just don't like being accused of dishonesty

when my refusal to confess some false belief

in the paranormal is like the most honest thing I can do.

Hello?

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I know.

Yes.

Thanks.

I love you too, sis.

And speaking of love, how is Simone?

Three months is like a record for you.

Is she moving in yet?

Huh?

Hello?

Yeah.

I wanted to know whether anyone else but me

currently has a key to the place.

Perhaps the cleaning...

Well...

I woke up to some items in the kitchen and

they were misplaced.

Well, the lock seems fine. No one's broken in.

It's just that I...

Right.

All right. I will.

Okay.

Yeah.

I know it's normal for kids to sleepwalk in adolescent years

but would you say it stopped at like, what, 13?

Mm-hm.

Yeah, but the last time it happened

was when you found me on the lawn?

Mm-hm.

Oh, I didn't hurt anybody this time, either.

Mom.

It's the Royal Mile, not...

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Mm-hm.

Yeah, I think the stress of the deadline is maybe just

causing me to do it again or something.

You know, like active sleeping brain and all that.

Mother, I am not leaving because I rearranged

some kitchen utensils in my sleep.

And I'm not calling the cops over something

that's just gonna make people think I've lost it.

I don't really want a spot in history

in the halls of unstable writers.

Good company, though I know it to be.

There are enough.

Okay.

Okay, Mom. Enough.

Yeah, my publisher's calling, actually. I have to go.

Okay.

Love you. Bye.

Nothing ever changes.

"Katie Wallace drowned

in the attempt to confirm her innocence.

Her subsequent death was presumed

to be consequence of her guilt.

She did not pitch and rage as she lowered,

bound, into the Nor Loch's chilly waters,

refusing to either confirm, nor deny her use of witchcraft.

Perhaps knowing that her protestations

would grant no forbearance and that her survival

would only result in a second death and hanging her in fire.

Well, perhaps this led to her graceful capitulation.

"And though King James VI..."

Mm.

"James,

the First of Scotland,

was most certainly a mad witch hunter,

hell bent on punishing the weaker sex.

"Perhaps he got this one right?"

"Perhaps Katie's Jesuitical passivity,

as she looked upon death and responded gently,

was because she was returning home,

"to the bosom of he to whom she was sworn."

"Lucifer himself."

Perhaps the waters enfolded her like a lover,

"and she returned to her own."

"She returned"

"to her own."

"The location of the witch burnings

has now been covered over by the Edinburgh Castle esplanade,

where tourists walk like ghosts,

floating over bones in a graveyard.

The witches' well there commemorates those innocent women.

Innocent, save one.

This is the story of Katie Wallace, whom made a deal

with the devil to save herself from an adulteress's fate.

She had been promised relief, in exchange for her vow.

She was to wake,

after making good on her promise to be Satan's mistress,

"free of the destiny growing in her womb."

"A dark mortal destiny of shame and abandonment."

"One paid for in the coin of perdition."

"One paid for in the coin of perdition.

An exchange of damnation..."

Mm.

No, I'm telling you.

It was the most bizarre thing I've ever done

in my long-dormant secret.

Yeah, I'm afraid to sleep in the room now,

which I know is silly.

Yeah, you are right. That's the thing.

I could never have actually get out the house, back then.

Somnambulists don't usually have the dexterity

to open things that are locked.

So, if I lock it before I go to bed, it won't even matter

if I try some weird shit like that again.

I did kinda wish you there, though.

Like when we were little,

and I'd make you stand outside the bathroom door

whenever I had to pee, because I would book it.

Yeah, at least I've moved past the fear of drains.

My adult self has held paranormal fears well in hand.

Much better than my childhood itself did, anyway.

Anyone who writes about this stuff

had better not believe it.

A recipe for disaster.

I am fucking exhausted, by the way.

It's day two with no sleep.

I feel like I could fuckin' drop.

Well as I say, fears are often extinguished by the daylight.

I feel better after talking to you.

I love you, too.

Bye.

Hello, again, my fellow bibliophiles, fans,

critics and otherwise.

I'm gonna share today, some interesting bits of research

that I've been doing for my upcoming book,

and then maybe we'll see in the comments section

if you can guess the subject matter of it.

In Scotland during this time,

accused witches were often kept awake for three days,

at which point, they often began hallucinating

and confessing.

They were usually hanged or strangled and then burned,

and sometimes drowned.

If they died in the water, they died innocent.

If they didn't die in the water,

they were said to have proven themselves guilty

and were hanged or strangled, and then burned.

Scottish witchcraft trials

were notable for their use of pricking.

That is where the subject's skin was pierced with needles,

pins and bodkins, as they would've said back then,

and it was believed that these women

would possess a devil's mark.

Stop!

Feel the pain.

Okay.

Katie?

I'm sorry.

I won't write it.

I won't tell lies

about you.

And I'm sorry for what happened to you.

I'm so sorry.

I won't write it.

And you're real.

And I'm sorry.

Nicholas?

- You're lovely when you're quiet.

Time to keep it that way.

- What the hell are you doing?

Oh, my God!

It occurs to me that

the events

of the past year

necessitate some response.

You deserve to hear from me.

My former colleague, Nicholas Jeffries, was an unstable man.

He was a talented writer

and he had one of the most expansive imaginations

I've ever come across.

But he was deeply disturbed

and his own belief in the supernatural,

coupled with what he perceived to be my undeserved success,

in light of my own affirmations that I do not

believe in such things,

led him to a deep and obsessive resentment of me.

He often expressed a disdain for my work,

claiming that a non-believer had no business

in the business.

It appears he sought to convince me of the supernatural

by perpetrating this colossal hoax.

He did not have a healthy understanding of the line

that separates fantasy from fact.

And his attempt at revenge by gaslighting me was betrayed,

in the end, by his own insanity.

He jumped from my building,

readers.

He was not pushed by my guardian ghost.

As comforting as that can seem, in some ways.

I believe he never attained

the level of acclaim his work deserved.

But hell.

This is the modern age.

Who reads books anymore, anyway?

I have been asked if I have watched the footage

that Nicholas recorded.

Now, all of it, legal evidence,

though some of it, I am aware has been leaked to the public.

The answer, of course, is a categorical no.

I was there.

Of course.

And I do not require a return visit.

We create our own hauntings, when we dwell in past anguish.

After all,

aren't ghosts just memory substantiated?

Now,

my readers.

I can return

to my firm belief

that the thing going bump in the night

is nothing more

than human fear.

The monster under the bed

was no monster, after all.

As always.

Just a man.

And I am a writer of fiction.

I have claimed to be naught else.