Director's Notes – Episode 26 (January Hiatus)

[There are no new episodes in January, so we're replaying a couple of old favorites. This one originally posted July 1, 2013.]

A couple months into Welcome to Night Vale, we started hearing from fans. We heard really nice things. We also heard descriptions of our podcast that we'd never considered. Such is the nature of an audience, of course, that the art you make must be received by other people, and those other people will react in ways you never considered. (As Gertrude Stein said: "Podcasting! Whaddaya gonna do about it?")

One of those fan descriptors of our show we hadn't considered was "creepy." Sure Night Vale is strange. Twin Peaks is a generous comparison we've gotten before, and I suppose I wouldn't flinch if someone called David Lynch's short-lived TV show "creepy." 

But we have always approached Night Vale as a town with physical and moral laws different than our own, but a town nonetheless, filled with people who must take it seriously, must take it for granted, must love it and despise it. Night Vale is no more creepy to its residents (and by extension, its writers) than, say, Brooklyn or Ventura County or a Dallas suburb. 

Our approach is generally to make the surreal mundane, and make the mundane surreal. Sometimes that involves a restaurant menu on a first date, or a five-headed dragon in a pickup truck who is wanted for insurance fraud, or pteranodons at a PTA Meeting.

"Creepy" is not incorrect. I just didn't expect it. I've actually adopted it for shorthand descriptions these days. (Heck, we even printed the word on the butt side of some shorts and sold them.) But in that first year, I thought, well if people are going to call our show "creepy," let's intentionally write something creepy.

One of our recurring jokes on twitter (follow us @NightValeRadio!) was that there was a faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home. And basically she's always watching you and messing with your stuff. 

She seemed the perfect vehicle for creepiness. An unseen permanent resident in your house. You can only run across remnants of her handiwork (scorchmarks on your fridge, or damp leaves inside your shoes, or notations in your books). Sometimes she brings her noncountenance close to yours while you sleep, somehow whispering into your dreams with her nonmouth. 

Upon reading my initial draft of this episode, Joseph said "this was the first episode that legitimately creeped me out," or something like that. I don't remember his exact words. Listen, I don't record every single conversation I have with my friends. That would be... what's the word?

- Jeffrey Cranor
January 1, 2016