Episode 3, titled Nothing to See, starts off with the protagonist driving through Kansas reminiscing to Alice when she is suddenly interrupted by sounds coming from her the inside of her truck’s trailer, sounding as if there was someone moving around. She exits the cabin and makes her way to the back of the truck, opening the trailer and searching through her cargo with a torch light, finding that it is void of any one or any thing, thinking that she may have just hit a bump on the road instead. She continues her commute and returns to talking “to” Alice through the radio when she hears the noises again, this time being certain that they are the sounds of someone’s footsteps, as though they were pacing around inside the trailer, pulling over once again while noting her fear of what she might come across. Once again, she goes to the back of the truck and looks into the trailer to find nothing out of the ordinary, noting that she was not going to stop again and opted to just keep driving. The noises continue as she drives, getting more and more aggressive over time; by nightfall, she decided that she had enough and would check one last time, pulling into the safety of a parking lot where there were lights and people in the event that this time, she would find something in her trailer. Upon opening the trailer once again, torch light in hand, the worst of her suspicions becomes reality, but even worse than she was expecting. At first glance, all of her cargo has been shredded, claw marks decorating the interior of the trailer, and standing in the center of the trailer in clear sight was the culprit, the Thistled Man.
For a little bit of context, the Thistled Man is a character from the first episode of Alice Isn’t Dead, where she first encounters him in a diner as he makes implicit (though borderline explicit) threats towards her, frightening her as he takes a bite out of a man’s neck while making direct eye contact with her as she rushes out of the diner and into her truck to take off from the scene. Since her fateful encounter, the Thistled Man would appear in the background through her commute across the country, just out of sight but apparent enough for her to be aware of his unsettling presence. Though this time, he makes a direct approach to her, rhetorically asking her if she “missed him”, grabbing her arm and pushing her against the truck by her neck with his arm. The protagonist kicks and screams hoping to push him back but despite all her efforts, he exhibits no reactions, merely giving her a sinister smile as he pushes down harder on her neck.
Eventually, a police car pulls up to her calls for help, though the policeman comes across as uninterested in the situation, assessing and concluding that there’s nothing wrong, wishing the Thistled a safe night and leaving, the Thistled Man after him, receding into the dark. The protagonist returns to the road shaken but insistent to keep driving through the night, a cop car following her for miles with its lights and sirens turned off, the noises in her trailer more aggressive than before as though there were a rampant animal inside.
I read this blog post with no previous context to what ‘Alice isn’t Dead’ is about, but your description was enough to tell me that this podcast would definitely freak me out. The second paragraph about the Thistled Man gave me chills. I am assuming that the podcast is a continuous story about how the Thistled Man goes after the protagonist. The fact that he somehow rustles about in her truck without her finding him the first two times shows that he is an experienced criminal. Your summary of this episode also tells me that he is persistent in hunting the protagonist. I think this particular podcast is very impactful because it sounds like it could happen in real life. The podcast that I did my blogposts about is very fictional, and I mention in my third post that none of the Happenings in ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ could ever happen in real life. ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ does have some scary topics, but I am so used to not taking the topics seriously that I never really got scared. However, ‘Alice isn’t Dead’ seems like a crime or an event that could truly happen to someone. The details seem realistic and recreatable. The ending also lets me know that something bad will happen in the next episode, and my guess is that the police car following her is the Thistled Man. I think I can confidently say that I will never have the guts to listen to this podcast.