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In this Ashwood Archives supplimental content, we are introduced to an unidentified agency surveilling the residents of Ashwood Ohio. To what end, we may never know. A recorded conversation in 1978 at the family lake house between Pastor Bob and Thomas Lathrop, former Ashwood Safety Service Director seeds more questions than answers.

Ashwood Archives are supplimental content and can be listened to in any order, between main episoeds.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

Episode 3 - “The Cuckoo’s Nest”

Amy’s instructions lead them to the Cuckoo’s Nest, a place none of them expected to return to and one that no longer resembles what it once was. In the 1970s it was the center of everything. Music, light, movement, a place where people went to be seen. Now it has settled into something smaller and worn down, a dive that feels like it stayed open out of habit rather than purpose.

Still, a table is waiting for them. No one questions how. Inside, the air feels thick with time that never fully passed. The walls are covered in layered collages of Ashwood’s past, photographs stacked and overlapping in no clear order. Generations of faces stare out from dim corners and warped frames. Some are familiar. Many are not.

And some should not exist. Among the images are moments that never happened. Versions of events that feel close enough to be real, but wrong in ways that are hard to explain. The five of them recognize themselves in a few of the photographs, but not the way they remember. Not where they remember. It is subtle, but unmistakable.

The Nest is not just displaying history. It is editing it.

Matt Russell owns the place now. He is quieter than they remember, more contained. The kind of presence that blends into the room while still knowing exactly what is happening inside it. He does not seem surprised to see them, and he does not offer more than he has to. When they begin asking questions about Amy, about the town, about anything that might explain why they have been brought back, his answers stay just out of reach. Enough to keep them engaged. Never enough to give them ground. The conversation circles without landing. Others arrive.

Chuck drifts in like he never left town, carrying the same unpredictable energy that used to make him easy to dismiss. He talks too much, laughs at the wrong moments, and drops fragments of insight that feel uncomfortably close to something real. It is hard to tell if he knows more than he should or if he has simply been here long enough to stop questioning what the town does.

Tina appears with a different kind of weight. Confident, practiced, and deliberate. She watches more than she speaks, inserting herself only when it matters. There is a familiarity to her that feels curated, as if she is choosing which version of herself they are allowed to see. Neither of them seems surprised that the five of them are together. As the night settles in, the group begins to feel the limits of what they can get from this place. Every question leads somewhere incomplete. Every answer suggests something larger without revealing it.

The Nest holds pieces of the past, but not in a way that clarifies anything. If anything, it deepens the uncertainty.Amy reserved this table for a reason.

But whatever she wanted them to find here is not obvious. Not yet. When they finally step back out into Ashwood, the feeling from earlier has changed again. It is no longer distant or observational. It feels engaged. As if something has taken notice of their movement through the town and is beginning to respond.

The Cuckoo’s Nest does not give them answers. It gives them contradictions.

And for the first time since they arrived, the possibility begins to form that Amy did not bring them back to uncover the truth.

She brought them back because they are already part of it.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

In between main episodes we try to sprinkle in a little Ashwood "flavor." These bonus files are not required listening to follow the main story but we think you will find them interesting. The particularly astutue may find some helpful info buried in these. Maybe our cast should listen to these, too......

This BONUS clip comes from an undisclosed archive in Ashwood. A 2 a.m. call on Old Fen Road leads Ashwood PD to a silent teenage girl wearing a St. Sebastian’s uniform, despite the school having closed in 1979. When the officer attempts to take her home, the road begins to distort, looping and folding in on itself as local geography changes and reality slips. What starts as a routine welfare check becomes something far stranger...where time, memory, and place refuse to stay in line.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

BONUS Content

Investigative journalist Evie Ross has spent years studying disappearances and the strange patterns they leave behind. In Ashwood, those patterns don’t just appear in people, they also appear in the town itself.

A Catholic academy that closed suddenly in 1979, its campus still standing behind locked gates. A bank that has outlived every regional merger and financial collapse. A factory founded in the 1960s that employs half the town, even though few people can clearly explain what it produces.

Individually, each of these institutions has a history that raises questions.

Taken together, they suggest something else — a town where certain structures seem to operate quietly in the background, long after the reasons for their existence should have disappeared.

This is Absentia.

Where Silence Becomes Evidence.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

BONUS Content

Investigative journalist Evie Ross continues her investigation into Ashwood, and one place keeps appearing in the town’s stories.

Old Fen Road.

For generations, locals have warned their kids not to go there after dark. Not because it’s dangerous in any ordinary sense, but because of the stories people tell about what happens along that stretch of road.

People who seem to appear out of nowhere.

Cars that look decades out of date.

Strange animals moving in the treeline.

And sightings no one can quite explain.

Most residents treat Old Fen Road like a piece of local folklore; the kind of story every town invents to scare teenagers.

But when Evie begins tracing the reports more closely, she discovers something unsettling.

The stories about Old Fen Road have been told in Ashwood for a very long time.

And they’re remarkably consistent.

This is Absentia.

Where Silence Becomes Evidence.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

BONUS Content

Investigative journalist Evie Ross arrives in Ashwood, a fading Midwestern town with a long history of disappearances, unexplained events, and stories locals still hesitate to tell.

Factories have closed. Storefronts sit empty. But beneath the quiet surface, Ashwood carries a reputation that stretches back decades, like missing children, institutions that shut down overnight, and traditions that continue long after the reasons for them have disappeared.

Most people outside the county have never heard of Ashwood.

But the deeper Evie looks into the town’s past, the clearer it becomes that something about this place has never been fully explained.

This is Absentia.

Where Silence Becomes Evidence.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

Episode 2 begins with the five arriving separately at the Tri-County Bank for the reading of Amy Caldwell’s last will and testament, each expecting a routine obligation and none aware that the others have been called as well. The reunion is unplanned and deeply uncomfortable. Thirty years of distance sit between them, and whatever they once were to each other does not easily return. Conversation is strained, polite at best, with long pauses filled by recognition that feels more like intrusion than familiarity.

Amy has arranged everything with precision.

Each of them is given a sealed envelope addressed in her hand, along with a set of unfamiliar keys and a single personal item. The objects are distinct, clearly chosen for each individual, and carry a weight that makes them feel less like keepsakes and more like instruments. There is no explanation provided for any of it, only the quiet expectation that they will understand in time.

When they begin to handle the items, the tone shifts. Each of them experiences a brief but undeniable waking disturbance. A visual inconsistency. A sound that should not exist in the room. A memory that feels imposed rather than recalled. The moments are fleeting, disorienting, and impossible to verify with one another in any meaningful way. Each is left to question whether it happened at all, or whether the strain of returning has begun to affect them. The pattern is clear even if they do not say it out loud.

The items are doing something. The will itself offers direction without clarity. The keys suggest locations yet to be discovered. The items suggest purpose without revealing intent. And the fact that all five were brought together without their knowledge begins to feel deliberate in a way that is difficult to ignore.

Outside, Ashwood remains unchanged in appearance, but the feeling from their arrival has intensified. The town no longer feels distant or passive. It feels closer, as if their presence has shifted something. As the meeting concludes and they linger in the shared discomfort of being together again, there is a growing sense that this was never about closure.

Amy did not gather them to settle her affairs.

She gathered them because something is beginning.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latchkey Lair : come hang out on Discord and chat up all of our weiros

Patreon: Help support the show and get access to exclusive drops

Role For Sanity: The OG homepage for Echoes and anything else we feel like making

Echoes under Ashwood Facebook: We're Gen-X, we still use Facebook

Episode - 1

On this premiere episode of Echoes under Ashwood, five former best friends return separately to Ashwood, Ohio, drawn back by the will of their long-lost friend, Amy Caldwell. What should be a simple obligation, a reading, a signature, a quick departure, begins to feel unsettled the moment they arrive. The terms are clear. All five must be present. Together. No explanation is given. Gaathered after 30 years of little contact, things will be interesting.

Ashwood does not feel like a place they have returned to. It feels like something they have stepped back inside of. The town has been rotting from teh inside out for decades. The streets are quiet. The town looks...intact. But something in it resists being familiar. Distances feel slightly off. Buildings seem to linger in ways they should not. People look at them just a moment too long, as if trying to place something they cannot quite name. Every interaction carries the sense that their presence is not unexpected. It seems no one can run from Ashwood forever.

Each of them experiences this alone. They do not reunite, and there is no shared moment to validate what they are feeling. Left to themselves, they explain it away as nostalgia, stress, or the discomfort of returning to a place tied to a past they thought they had outgrown. Still, the feeling remains that Ashwood has not simply endured. It has been waiting.

Amy’s death is the reason they give themselves for coming back. The will is the structure that holds it together. Beneath that, something less certain begins to surface. A sense that their return was not chance, and not entirely their choice. That whatever connects them to Ashwood was never fully broken. As each of them settles into the town again, uneasy and alone, one realization begins to take hold.

They did not just come back to Ashwood.

They submitted to it.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Role for Sanity is a collaborative storytelling group exploring slow-burn horror through a distinctly Gen-X lens. Childhood independence. Unsupervised nights. The quiet understanding that something always felt… off. Our stories live in that space between nostalgia and unease, where memory shifts and the past refuses to stay buried.

Our first series, Echoes Under Ashwood, follows a group of Gen-X friends returning to their hometown to settle a will, and discovering they were part of something older than nostalgia, older than Ashwood itself.

This is slow-burn, character-driven horror built on shared adolescence, unreliable memory, and the uncomfortable realization that the things you remember may have happened… differently.

Episodes begin April 27. Follow now so you don’t miss the return to Ashwood.

Opening Song "Home-grown" written and performed by Sadie Baimel

Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies

Cast:

Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris

Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards

Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner

Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel

Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards

Keeper / James Altwies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.