Tales by Firelight: The Last Recording of Uncle Joe

Welcome to Tales by Firelight!

There’s something timeless about a ghost story. Long before television, motion pictures, or the internet, people gathered around fires to share tales of the unexplained. Strange footsteps in empty houses, voices in darkened woods, visitors who appeared long after they were buried. Some stories were told as truth. Others were invented to entertain, frighten, and remind us how the world changes after sunset.

Beginning today, Veil of Shadows introduces a new monthly tradition. On the third Friday of each month, we’ll gather together for "Tales by Firelight". An original work of supernatural fiction created exclusively for our readers. Unlike our regular investigations into documented mysteries, historical hauntings, missing persons, and true crime, these stories are entirely fictional. My imagination creates the characters, events, and supernatural occurrences in these special stories. Think of it as an invitation to pull up a chair next to the campfire, while I regale you with a creepy story for all our friends. These tales may take us into abandoned houses, forgotten towns, lonely highways, or perfectly ordinary living rooms where something has gone terribly wrong. And while the stories aren’t real, I’ll do my best to make you wonder if something is hiding behind the couch!

Tonight, in our very first installment, we begin with an old videotape. The fire is lit, so pull up a seat and prepare to be chilled...

The Last Recording of Uncle Joe

October 1988

The videotape had sat in the cabinet beneath the television for twenty-three days. Nobody wanted to watch it. Not because the recording itself was unusual, but because it captured the last family gathering before they buried Uncle Joe. An occasion nobody wanted to revisit, I can assure you.

Joseph Dale Mercer died on September 18, 1988, at age forty-five… a sudden heart attack, according to the doctor. One moment he was sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee; the next, he was gone. There’d been no chance for goodbyes. The family held the memorial at Frank’s house. It was attended by relatives, neighbors, and a handful of Joe’s coworkers from the lumberyard. Frank’s wife, Ellen, arranged flowers; their daughter, Susan, made coffee; and Frank, proud of his new video camera, set it up in the living room to record the gathering. “Someday we’ll want to remember what everybody said about him,” he explained. Nobody argued. He mounted the camera on a tripod, pressed RECORD, and let it run.

For nearly two hours, the camera watched the family remember Joseph Mercer, his terrible jokes, his generosity, his habit of keeping every broken appliance because he was sure he could fix it. There were tears. There was laughter. When the last guests departed, Frank turned off the camera and put the tape away. That should have been the end.

On October 11, Frank decided to watch the recording. Ellen was out, Susan was at a friend’s house, and the house was quiet. Frank poured a whiskey, inserted the cassette, and settled in. The television flickered to life: the living room, the flowers, the folding chairs, the little table with Joe’s photo. Frank watched cousin Richard’s rambling fishing story and smiled. Then Ellen spoke. Frank remembered her nerves; she’d almost refused. On screen, she stood by the fireplace, clutching a paper. “I think Joe would have hated all this fuss,” she began. Laughter followed.

Then, the picture moved. Not a jerk or vibration; the camera slowly panned left. Frank frowned. He’d tightened the tripod himself, positioned it to capture the guests. No one had touched it. Yet the camera was turning, smoothly, deliberately. The fireplace slid out of view, the flowers disappeared, and the lens settled on the old green armchair by the window. Frank’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. Someone was sitting there. Brown cardigan, pale blue shirt, legs crossed, hands on the armrests. Frank recognized Joe’s clothes immediately. But it wasn’t the cardigan that made his stomach twist… it was the face. The man in the chair looked exactly like his dead brother. Except for the eyes: completely white, no pupils or irises, and a grin stretched painfully wide.

Frank stared at the screen; the figure stared back. For seventeen seconds, neither moved. Then the man’s lips parted. The camera’s microphone picked up a faint, dry clicking. Frank turned up the volume. The clicking continued. Beneath Ellen’s distant voice, a whisper: “Frank.” The whiskey glass slipped from his hand and hit the carpet. On screen, the figure’s grin widened. “Frank.” Frank lunged for the VCR and pressed STOP. The screen went blue.

He crouched in front of the television, listening to his own breathing. Eventually, he pressed EJECT, carried the tape to the basement, and locked it in a metal toolbox beneath his workbench. When Ellen returned, he told her the recording was ruined. A camera problem, nothing worth keeping. She accepted the explanation. For a while.

The first strange thing happened four nights later. Susan, doing homework in the kitchen, heard movement in the living room. She assumed it was her father. Then, a man’s laugh, three short bursts, soft and familiar. She called out. No answer. The living room was dark, the green armchair empty, but its cushion was depressed, as if someone had just stood up. Susan told her father. Frank said old furniture settled. That night, he moved the chair into the garage. Two days later, Ellen found it back by the window. She assumed Frank had moved it; Frank assumed Ellen had. Neither had.

By the end of October, Frank slept poorly, left the television unplugged, and avoided the basement. Once, while shaving, he heard someone humming in the hallway. A tune Joe used to whistle. The hallway was empty. That night at dinner, Susan asked, “Dad, why did Uncle Joe always sit in that green chair?” Frank hesitated. “People have favorite chairs, honey...” Susan nodded. “I know. But Mom said he used to joke he’d keep sitting there even after he died.” Ellen looked uncomfortable. “He was only joking, sweetheart.” Frank stood abruptly. “Nobody is to sit in that chair again.”

On November 3, Susan found the videotape in the basement toolbox. She recognized it by a scratch on the corner. With her parents out, curiosity got the better of her. She watched the memorial, saw Uncle Richard’s story, her mother speaking, then the camera panned to the green chair. It was empty. But in the window's reflection, she saw the room, and a man in a brown cardigan behind her mother. White eyes. A terrible grin. Susan screamed. The figure in the reflection turned its head, looking directly at her, and raised a finger to its lips.

Frank came home to static on the television, and Susan huddled on the floor. “Did you watch it?” he asked. She nodded, crying. “Uncle Joe.”... “Where?” “In the window.” “In the reflection?” She nodded again. Frank whispered, “That’s not where he was before.”

That night, Frank told Ellen everything: the camera, the eyes, the voice. Ellen listened, then asked, “Where’s the tape?” “In the basement,” Frank replied. “I thought Susan found it.” “She did. I put it back.” Ellen looked toward the living room. “Then what’s in the VCR?”

From the other room: a mechanical click. The sound of a cassette being drawn into a machine. The television switched on. The living room appeared, Ellen by the fireplace: “I think Joe would have hated all this fuss.” The camera began to turn. Frank seized Ellen’s hand. “Don’t look.” But she already had. The green chair appeared, empty. Then, suddenly, it was occupied… a man in a brown cardigan, white eyes, grinning impossibly wide. He lifted one hand and pointed, not at the camera, but at the hallway behind Frank and Ellen. From somewhere in the house came three soft chuckles, then a voice: “Frank.” The television went black.

The Mercer family moved out before Thanksgiving. Frank told the neighbors there had been problems with the electrical wiring. They left the green chair at the curb. Nobody took it.

The house was sold the following spring. Frank never spoke about the videotape again. Susan eventually married, moved away, and spent most of her adult life avoiding home movies. She could never explain why. She only knew she disliked seeing people on a screen who couldn't see her.

Frank and Ellen stayed together, growing older in the quiet house they bought after leaving the old neighborhood. They never discussed what had happened in 1988. Not at Christmas. Not at family gatherings. Not even when Susan occasionally asked about the old house. Her father would simply change the subject. And her mother would look away.

Frank died in February 2006. Ellen followed him six weeks later. Both deaths were attributed to natural causes, and although Susan found the timing difficult to accept, there was nothing in either medical report to suggest otherwise. Susan thought her mom may have passed from a broken heart. Who's to say...

By April, she was alone in the house her parents had purchased after leaving the old neighborhood. She spent three days sorting through their belongings. On the fourth afternoon, she opened the bottom drawer of her father's desk. Inside was a sealed envelope. Her name was written across the front.

Susan recognized the handwriting immediately, sat down, and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper.

'I should have told you this years ago. I watched the tape one more time before we moved. This time the camera never turned toward the chair. The chair turned toward the camera.'

Susan stared at the words. She remembered the old green armchair. The videotape. The terrible face in the window. She turned the page over. There, in her father's increasingly unsteady handwriting, was another message:

'Joe wasn't alone anymore... There were three.'

Susan read the sentence again. She stared into the ether for a moment in horror. Then she looked back at the note. At the very bottom, squeezed into the remaining space, her father had written one final line; so heavily the pen had nearly torn through the paper:

'Joe was sitting in the chair... between two standing figures... your mother and me.'

The fire has burned low. The chairs around it are now empty. Join us on the third Friday of next month for another original Tales by Firelight story, exclusively from Veil of Shadows.

Sleep well!