Night Vale

"Close your eyes. Let my words wash over you. You are safe now. Welcome to Night Vale."

"A friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead, while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."

"We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."

"You have always been important. You have always been something. Age just reveals the facts that always were. Experience uncovers the you that always was. I am glad to know that you will be safe. That you will come home."


"Return to your homes, if you can. But do not lock your doors tonight. Do not hide yourselves away from danger. Be brave. Be truly brave.
I mean, don’t get carried away. Stay out of the Dog Park. And don’t run with knives. And, for crying out loud, don’t cry out loud. You’ll upset the bears, which are emotionally fragile animals that are already very uncomfortable with themselves."

"Some mysteries aren't questions to be answered, but just a kind of opaque fact. A thing which exists to be not known."

"If wishes were horses,those wishes would all run away, shrieking and bucking, terrified of a great unseen evil. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Beware the unravelling of all things... and support your local farmers."

"The glow cloud, meanwhile, has moved on. It is now just a glowing spot in the distance, humming east to destinations unknown. We may never fully understand or understand at all what it was and why it dumped a lot of dead animals on our community. But, and I'm going to get a little personal here, that's the essence of life, isn't it? Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious glowing could devouring your entire community. While they're happening, they feel like the only thing that matters and you can hardly imagine that there's a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the glow cloud moves on. And you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find, as time passes, that you remember it less and less. Or absolutely not at all, in my case."

"But listen: it's probably nothing. If we had to shut down for every mysterious event that at least one death could be attributed to, we'd never have time to do anything right?"

"Listeners, listeners out there, listeners out in the vacant night clinging to my voice as a simulacrum of companionship, remember: fear is just consciousness, plus life. Regret is an attempt to avoid what has already happened. Toast is bread, held under direct heat until crisp. The present tense of regret is indecision. The future tense of fear is either comedy or tragedy. And the past tense of toast is toasted."

"We report only the real, the semi-real, and the verifiably unreal."

"Meatless mondays will be the days we all set aside to try not to be made of meat. We will sit quietly and attempt to will ourselves into a state of inorganic bliss, seeking to turn our feeble bodies into metal or silicon or stone."

"Weird at last! Weird at last! God Almighty, weird at last! Welcome to Night Vale."

"It's election season again—and you know what that means. Sheriff's Secret Police will be coming by to collect family members so that everyone votes for the correct Council seats and there is no confusion. Remember, This is America. Vote correctly, or you'll never see your loved ones again."

"Hello, radio audience. I come to you live, from under my desk… where I have dragged my microphone and am currently in the fetal position."

"More on this... eventually. I guess? Whatever."

"We may be controlled by the City Council, and the Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency, and chemtrails, and the Secret Order of Reptile Kings, and the mysterious lights that hover above us, but we will not be controlled by a Smiling God! We are Night Vale! And we are, in our own way, free!

We must continue to fight, and resist. We must be the heroes we look for in others. We must no longer speak in code, but in action."

"Lights, seen in the sky above the Arby's. Not the glowing sign of Arby's. Something higher and beyond that. We know the difference. We've caught onto their game. We understand the 'Lights above the Arby's' game. Invaders from another world. Ladies and Gentlemen, the future is here. And it's about a hundred feet above the Arby's." 

"Guns don't kill people. It is impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle."

"Today's lucky number is imaginary! But, coincidentally, so are you, and your entire experience of the world."


"Old Woman Josie and a gentleman that may or may not be an angel friend of her - depending on whether or not angels are real, or if they are real, but aren’t really friends with Josie, or not real but suddenly became real because Josie willed them into existence."

"Night Vale is an ancient place. Full of history and secrets, as we were reminded today. But it is also a place of the present moment, full of life, and of us. If you can hear my voice, speaking live, then you know. We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"

"Now that I think about it, I have also never bothered to check whether this mic is actually attached to any sort of recording or broadcasting device. And it is possible that I am alone in an empty universe, speaking to no one, unaware that the world is held aloft merely by my delusions and my smooth sonorous voice."

"The Night Vale Tourism Board asks that whoever is telepathically assaulting the tourists to please stop."

"Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous god that Desert Bluffs has."


"My eyes hurt. So through my subjectivity, the entire world hurt. And then, a bright blackness, from somewhere beyond the spiral. That was when I realized I had forgotten that there was anything outside of the spiral. It had become the entirety, the totality, all of that. But I followed the bright blackness, a near-blinding beam of pure darkness, and it led me back out again. The orange triangles grew smaller and smaller, until they were little dots of freckled rock face. There is something coming, Cecil. I feel it in the air. It– it’s like a hot wind blowing? But not hot, deathly cold. And not a wind, a vast creature. And not blowing, rushing at us out of the gaps in

time and memory with which we hold together our lives. When I look to the horizon, I see light. Like the light in the spiral. I feel it push against the back of my eyes. It is the unraveling of all things, the great, glowing coils of the universe unwinding. I wish I could tell you more. Communication is difficult. It is impossible, some say, communicating the idea of its impossibility to others. I feel myself slipping. I’m getting fainter now. Or…no. No. You are!"

"Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic. Welcome to Night Vale."

"That searing, blinding, hum. That Smiling God."

"If you love something, set it free. If it returns, burrows into your ribs, devours your heart and becomes your new heart, it was meant to be."

"A Life of pain is the pain of life, and you can never escape it."

"Regret nothing, until it is too late. Then, regret everything. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now a word from our sponsor: We all want to live forever, right? Wrong. Immortality is stupid. Think before you wish. This message brought to you by DirectTV."

"Now, it is dark. It is quiet. Just you and me, dear listeners. Just my voice traveling from this microphone, traveling silent and immediate across sleepy homes and lost souls to your ears. You curl under a blanket, protecting your body from the world, excepting a few clever spiders. And you are listening. Hearing me."

"I have received several urgent Facebook messages and Twitter DMs from a Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency, asking me to deliver the following message: BRINY DEPTHS. They said that there was nothing secret or important about the message, and it was certainly not related to any ongoing deep undercover operations, that they can only communicate with using code words subtly buried in local radio broadcasts.

“It wasn't anything crazy like that,” they just think it would be “cool” to hear me say: BRINY DEPTHS

“Do your deepest, smoothest voice,” they said. “Really sell it. Really give it your all. It would make us so happy!"

"Wednesday has been canceled due to a scheduling error." 

"The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, and Hiram McDaniels, who is literally a five-headed dragon — both former candidates for the mayoral role now filled by Dana Cardinal — were seen muttering together in a booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner.

Or, Hiram was seen. No one has ever actually seen the Faceless Old Woman, but we all know that she is there."

"Ignorance may not actually be bliss, but it certainly is less work."

"One day you will discover your purpose. And then you will tell no one. And then you will die."

"Remember. UFO's are just weather balloons. Weather balloons are just dreams.  And dreams are just a fleeting aspect of life." 

"There is, listeners, a Blinking Light up on the Mountain. It is red. Blinking Lights are always red.
It is nestled among the crags and nooks of the precipitous slope. We can all see it — no use denying it! The City Council tried. “Nope,” they said. “Blinking Light? Let me think. Blinking Light, no, sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells!” But then a bell started ringing — a signal from the watchman who lives in Night Vale’s Invisible Clock Tower, letting us know that he had seen something. And we all saw it, too. It was a Blinking Light, up on the Mountain. "Oh well," said the Council, crawling backwards through a window into Town Hall, one by one. "Ahh, well, it was worth a shot."
What does this light mean? Who will dare investigate it? Will it spell our doom? Dear listeners, who knows? No one. And probably, more later. For now, just this. Just a Blinking Light — red — up on the Mountain."

"When life seems dangerous and unimaginable. Just remember that is it, and you can't survive forever. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now... the weather." 

"A new man came into town today. Who is he? What does he want from us? Why his perfect and beautiful haircut? Why his perfect and beautiful coat?"

"We report only the real, the semi-real, and the verifiably unreal. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Remember. If you seem something. Say nothing. And drink to forget."

"He looks up at a night sky that is absolutely clear of anything but void, and stars, and the occasional meteor, and mysterious lights moving at impossible speeds, and the faint glimmer of spy satellites looking back down from the nothing to the something.
“I’m sorry,” he says, although not to anyone that still exists and can hear him. He just says it, leaves some undirected words in the hot night air, and then returns to the car.

He may be crying. I know if he is or not, but I am choosing not to tell you, because this is private information and you have no real need to know it."

"I think the best way to die would be to be swallowed by a giant snake. Going feet first and whole into a slimy maw would give your life perfect symmetry." 

"Her press conference about tropical fish care resulted in a deadly flash flood that swept through old town Night Vale, washing away everyone's piles of cool stones they had found. Her demonstration of coin collecting crashed several world economies...in the process, breaking a ten year peace treaty that had ended the previous Blood Space War. And her demonstration of mass poisoning, unfortunately, went without a hitch. Even as her press conferences have become much more fatal than usual, she has increased their frequency considerably, sometimes having two press conferences so close together that they actually occur simultaneously, Pamela speaking in a rapid back and forth to two different groups of reporters, as she shows two different cataclysmic methods of retirement she has recently been taught by her mysterious team of advisers. More on this story as Pamela continues to create it."

"There is a thin semantic line separating weird and beautiful. And that line is covered in jellyfish. Welcome to Night Vale."

"It's great having a pet at the radio station. I wish it wasn't trapped in a hovering prison in the men's bathroom. But listen, no pets perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to except it for what it is." 

"All hail the glow cloud." 

"Look to the obelisk. We don't know where it came from, but it's attracting a lot of cats. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Stay tuned next for Part 3 and Part 4 and many more parts, each succeeding moment after the one before, and some you will hear and some you will not. And none of them will be true, exactly, but all of them will be an honest attempt at the most accurate fiction possible."

"How can we place any importance on something so insignificant as math or spelling or history, when the void has already swallowed are tiny existence."

"Flying is actually the safest mode of transportation. The second safest is dreaming. The third safest is decomposing into rich earth and drifting away with the wind and rain. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Poke about in the black recesses of the past until it devours our fragile present." 

"Citizens are not even supposed to be consciously aware of the dog park, so they could not possibly be receiving a menacing and unearthly voice instructing listeners to bring precious metals and toddlers to the dog park! DOG PARK, that could NEVER, EVER BE REAL."

"Here's a look at the community calendar: Saturday has been merged with Sunday to create Super-day! Monday will not harm you, but you should stack up on latex gloves nonetheless. And Tuesday is hornet-free dining at the Olive Garden."

"Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."

"Breathe deep. Deeper than that. Get far below sea level and breathe. Breathe in a cave. Breathe in a deeper cave. Breathe deeper and deeper until you can't find your way back. Welcome to Night Vale."

"90% of your body is water. 6% is delusions. 4% is lies."

"I found a door out in the desert, but it was chained shut on the other side. From behind it, I thought I smelled that particular Night Vale smell – the smell of home, like sour peaches and linen. Like freshly-cut wood and burnt almonds. I knocked and knocked, hoping someone from back there would hear it and let me through, but it never opened. I wasn’t even sure which side was supposed to open. I knocked on both sides, but… nothing. I kept walking and found myself back at the mountain. There is a Blinking Light Up On the Mountain. And so there is nothing else for it. It is time for me to climb. The face of the mountain is steep, and lined with sharp ridges and crumbling ledges. This will not be easy. I wonder if anything ever will be?"

“If you have any wheat or wheat by-products in your home, you are almost certainly already dead.
Sorry about that.”

"Harrison Kip, adjunct professor of archaeology at the Community College, announced once again that he is super sorry about accidentally raising the sand golem by whispering sweet nothings to that talisman he found out in the desert."

"Ladies, gentlemen, you. Today is Street Cleaning Day.
Please remain calm!
Street Cleaners will be upon us quite soon. We have little time to prepare.
Please remain calm!
The City Council has issued a statement in 20-point all-caps type saying:
RUN! RUN! FORGET YOUR CHILDREN AND LEAVE BEHIND THE WEAK! RUN!
We have contacted those experts who have not already gone underground or changed their identity, and have been told that Street Cleaners focus on heat and movement, and so the best strategy is to be dead already.
Then the experts all swallowed pills and fell, mouths frothing, at my feet.
If you have doors, lock them.
If you have windows, board them up.
If you still have ears, cover them, and crouch wherever you are.
It is Street Cleaning Day.
Please remain calm!"

“Today’s proverb: Language will evolve, irregardless of your attempt to literally lock it away in a secluded tower. Obvs.”

"Don’t judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the harmful messages it contains. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now, a word from our sponsors. An empty food bowl. An untouched water bowl. A silence in the house. A cage containing nothing. A feeling of unease that was once soothed by a joyous instinctual companionship. We listen out our window, and hear not a passing jangle. Not a “No,” or a “Wait for me!” Nothing meows. Nothing does. Absolutely nothing meows. The night is so quiet that our thoughts are a clatter, keeping us awake. In the distance, a dog doesn't bark. PetCo. Where did the pets go?"

"Nothing much to say about this day in Night Vale. Today is just a lazy day in our beautiful little town.
The heat is unusually strong for this time of year, assuming you believe in concepts like time, and year, and unusual. Flies are buzzing around and around a trash can somewhere. Frances Donaldson – manager of the Antiques Mall – is waving listlessly at a wall of old items ready to be bought anew, her hand a slow signal of submission to inactivity. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is finding herself clicking the same apology website she has read a million times. I, myself, am slumped against this desk, murmuring into this microphone, too tired by the heat to give more than a token effort to the work of my life. Ours is a quiet now. No one is speaking but me. If speaking took me any energy, if it were not merely a reflex of my living form, then I, myself, would not be speaking either. Carlos – perfectly imperfect Carlos – is the only one feeling industrious today. He's mowing the lawn, and whistling. And the lawn is whistling back."

"Anyway, they’ll have preemptively assassinated all future enemy leaders by Friday morning."

“I guess death isn’t the end,” John added. “We all have to live on in some way. Maybe it’s in the legacy we leave, or the memories other people keep of us, or the feeling they have when they hear our names or a stolen identity taken by someone still alive. Or just actual physical immortality. It’s all a shame. Whatever it is. Such a damn shame, everything is, I tell you.”

"Rabbits are not what they seem to be. Welcome to Night Vale."

"At night, you can see the red light blinking on and off on top of the radio tower. A tiny flurry of human activity against the impeccable backdrop of stars and void. You'll sit out on the steps of your trailer, with your back to the brightness of the Car Lot, watching the radio tower for hours. But only sometimes. Mostly, you do other things."

"I replaced your books with other books. The covers are the same, but the content has been altered. I don't think you read enough, but that is not why I did it. I changed every single word of some of the books. In others, only a single comma on a single page. This is a metaphor, but I'm not sure what it represents. That is also a metaphor. We all are."

"Hello listeners. To start things off I've been asked to read this brief notice: the city council announces the opening of a new dog park at the corner of Earl and Summerset near the Ralph's. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park. People are not allowed in the dog park. It is possible you will see hooded figures in the dog park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the dog park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the dog park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the hooded figures. The dog park will not harm you."

"A cluster of Hooded Figures lurk along the corner of the park, pointing at various people, seeming to leer and laugh at the oblivious citizens. I am terrified of the Hooded Figures. But also, comforted by their menace. I think they are even pointing now at me, whispering, and I've never felt more at home."

"If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...you should not be so quick to jump to conclusions. Welcome to Night Vale."

"All that glitters is not gold. Particularly that thing over there. That's maybe a giant insect of some sort. It's really too dark to tell."

"Angels are definitely real. They are powerful, and recently very wealthy, and they are tough to kill, unlike humans who die easily and unexpectedly all the time from all sorts of little causes. Just wait and let them save us."

"Believe in yourself. Build a religion around yourself. Canonize your quotidian tasks. Build idols of yourself in your best outfit."

"Shame on you for your negative stereotypes and your multi headed beings."
"Make like a tree and slowly, imperceptibly stalk humans before striking one day when no one else is looking."

"One day you will discover your purpose, then you will tell no one, and then you will die." \

"It's not darkest before the dawn. It's actually darkest after all the stars have gone out. It's very dark then. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Occasionally, I see huge, masked figures, warlike, towering, but also distant and listless. They haven’t seen me. Or, if they’ve seen me, they haven’t cared. Or, if they’ve cared, they haven’t done anything with that feeling. I’m not scared of them. There are so many things in this world to be scared of. Why add to that number when the only cause is you know nothing about them and they are huge? It would make no sense."

"You have nice skin. It really holds in all your blood and organs - no leaking or nothing. You look great."

"Stand outside your front door and shout 'NRA' to order one."

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare try talking about books! … I love books. Take that book you’re holding! It looks ill-written, ill-conceived, full of bad ideas expressed badly…I bet it lacks narrative arcs and an appreciation for the flow of language. It looks like the worst book in the history of books! But here’s the thing…it’s still a book. And I love books. So, you do not deserve to even hold it.”

"How are you able to acknowledge that you are even a thing, separate from the rest of the universe?

Do you find yourself casting about in the white noise of the living world, your eardrums clogged with the filth of existence? We here at Night Vale Community Radio recommend silent self reflection. Give it a try. Here's some silence. During this silence, reflect on yourself. Reflect on your life, your being. Close your eyes, and just reflect. Let in no sights, no sounds – and reflect. Ready? Here goes."

"Come to the hole in the vacant lot out back of the Ralph's and huddle with us."

"This is Cecil, generally, speaking to you, metaphorically, for Night Vale Community Radio. And I would like to say in the most nebulous terms possible, and with no real-world implications or insinuations of objective meaning:
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight."