The NoSleep Podcast – S23E25: Christmas 2025

Release Date: December 25, 2025
Host: David Cummings
Podcast by: Creative Reason Media Inc.

Episode Overview

The NoSleep Podcast’s 2025 Christmas special delivers an anthology of twisted, original horror tales set against the backdrop of the festive season. Host David Cummings leads listeners through a “holiday extravaganza” that skillfully upends the comforting traditions of Christmas, with each story mining the darkness that lurks beneath the season’s cheerful façade. Across five chilling tales, listeners encounter murderous family secrets, a sinister caroler, a werewolf Santa, a hellish holiday train, and the horrifying consequences of hitting Santa with a car.

The mood is equal parts gruesome and irreverent, with the narrative weaving between the traditional and the grotesque: coal is doled out to the truly naughty, Christmas miracles go awry, and redemption seems vanishingly rare.

Key Segments & Stories

1. Introduction & Setting the Tone

[00:12]

• David Cummings opens the episode with a Christmas parody in signature NoSleep style, promising "a full length episode of holiday horror."
• He reflects on the year past, playfully dismissing “all the bad things... the many, many, many bad things” to focus on nightmares and horror for the holidays.
• Quote:

  “We’re here to focus on the nightmares and death and torment of good old fashioned horror stories. Things to really brighten our Christmas season.”
  — David Cummings [01:04]

2. Story 1: "If You’re on the Naughty List..." (by Charlie Davenport)

[04:01 – 13:47]

• Summary:
  James, home for the holidays, methodically murders his relatives, masking each death behind family festivities. As he checks off victims with chilling calm, James is interrupted by none other than Santa Claus, who brings him an appropriate “stocking full of coal.”
• Key Moments:
  • James recounts the disposal of several family members, each death handled with darkly comedic nonchalance.
  • The horror of the acts is enhanced by monotony—routine tasks twisted into murder.
  • Santa’s supernatural arrival upends James’s plans, catching him in his spree.
  • Santa is depicted as weary and disappointed, summing up James’s fate:

    “Well, certainly explains all the coal.” — Santa Claus [12:40]

  • James realizes too late that he's miscalculated the true consequences of his actions.
• Notable Quote:

  “I’d murdered so many close relatives over the course of the last 24 hours. Twelve, to be precise. What was a baker’s dozen?”
  — James [12:45]

3. Story 2: "The Caroler" (by Mason McDonald)

[14:56 – 33:37]

• Summary:
  Lucas Miller documents his descent into paranoia (via message board posts) as a mysterious, relentless caroler sings outside his apartment—then locks him in a chilling, supernatural siege that no one else can see or hear.
• Key Moments:
  • Lucas’s irritation turns to mounting fear as he discovers he can’t contact anyone: phones are dead, the world is eerily silent.
  • The caroler, described with unflattering specificity (“old man, early 70s, yellow parka, big gray beard...”), seems immune to weather, fatigue, or Lucas’s pleas.
  • Lucas is trapped, physically unable to escape as invisible hands restrain him.
  • The horror peaks when the caroler makes his way inside Lucas’s apartment.
  • Lucas’s final posting from the bathtub as his laptop battery dies is desperate and chilling.
• Notable Quotes:

  “This shit is spooky, right? Like, what if he was unhinged or having some sort of psychotic break or something? Why isn’t anyone else bothered by this shit?”
  — Lucas Miller [22:30]
  “He was leaned over me, singing to me, and I knew it without looking.”
  — Lucas Miller [32:00]

• Police Aftermath:
  • Lucas Miller disappears; the police suspect foul play.
  • Haunting echo that sometimes the most innocuous horrors—like a carol—can consume you.

4. Story 3: "Wernta Claud" (by Luke Pudney)

[35:44 – 58:37]

• Summary:
  A child’s Christmas Eve wonder turns to nightmare when a wounded, shape-shifting Santa takes shelter in his family’s bathroom. As the child attempts to help, “Santa” transforms into a bloodthirsty werewolf, attacking the family.
• Key Moments:
  • The child’s hopeful innocence is slowly crushed by the increasingly sinister details of Santa’s injury and behavior.
  • Santa confirms he was attacked by a beast, but the truth becomes clear as his transformation begins:

    “His eyes... were now completely red where it should have been white. They were also bigger and rounder than usual, bulging outwards like two red baubles behind his glasses.”
    — Child / Rodney [45:24]

  • The narrative turns action-horror as the child uses a silver nutcracker (unwrapped from Santa’s sack) to fend off the monster.
  • The story evokes classic werewolf and home-invasion tropes, ending with tragedy: the father dies protecting his child, the mother’s screams echo, and Santa-wolf escapes into the night.
• Memorable Moment:

  “It was the night before Christmas and all through the house a creature was beginning to stir.”
  — Narrator / Child [49:31]

5. Story 4: "The Christmas Train" (by Jules Rowland)

[58:37 – 105:48]

• Summary:
  Rodney, a down-on-his-luck father estranged from his daughter, is swept from his squalid reality onto a hellish, supernatural train reminiscent of The Polar Express, where holiday nostalgia morphs into psychological torment and body horror.
• Key Moments:
  • Rodney’s train ride is filled with grotesque perversions of the holiday and personal hauntings:
    • Garlands made of bloody intestines and eyeballs
    • "Hot chocolate" that is, in fact, a boiling, putrid sludge
    • Undead waiters and confrontations with the specter of his abusive father
  • Each passenger's ticket is carved from their own flesh, spelling out messages reflecting their guilt and damnation.
  • Rodney relives his greatest failings—drinking, a tragic accident, the loss of his family—in graphic, surrealistic vignettes.
  • The story crescendos with Rodney’s despairing escape:

    “Here we only have one rule. Drink the piss or be the fool.”
    — Conductor [78:55]

  • When he wakes in his living room, the wound on his arm remains—a physical mark of his ordeal.
• Notable Quotes:

  “I try to focus on something not terrible and immediately Lottie comes to mind. My daughter who turned 14 this year, who cried when I asked her if she’d spend the Holiday with me.”
  — Rodney [62:34]
  “The P wasn’t carved like the other letters. It was burned in the tiny perfect circles of the tip of a cigarette. It…”
  — Narrator / Rodney [104:28]

• Themes:
  • Cycles of familial abuse, addiction, the persistent ache of lost love—interwoven with the supernatural and existential horror of a “Christmas train to hell.”

6. Story 5: "White and Red" (by Josh Gauthier)

[105:48 – 145:50]

• Summary:
  A botched getaway following a theft turns worse when two friends, Sam and Bryce, hit a man in a Santa suit on an icy road. When “Santa” gets back up—very much undead—the night descends into a rapid, nightmarish home invasion.
• Key Moments:
  • The characters’ panic is cut with bleak humor as they debate what to do, quickly realizing their victim won’t stay dead.
  • The zombie-Santa attacks, forcing the friends to break into a farmhouse for refuge.
  • Santa is drawn to the stolen Christmas gifts in their car; the boys realize this may not be “just a guy.”
  • Sam is killed in a brutal attack; Bryce fights back by setting the monster ablaze with moonshine and a lighter.
  • Bryce escapes into the cold, clutching both a dog and a child’s toy, watching as the farmhouse burns—and calls his mother, knowing he can’t explain what happened.
• Notable Quotes:

  “Technically only you committed vehicular Santa slaughter. I wasn’t driving.”
  — Sam [113:09]
  “Escape undead Santa, only to bleed out under a Christmas tree.”
  — Narrator / Bryce [124:06]

• Themes:
  • The collision of petty crime, supernatural consequences, and the enduring pull of family—no matter how dire the circumstances.
  • Santa as a force of judgment (or revenge), acting on the "naughty" in a most visceral way.
• Memorable Closing Image:
  • Bryce, broken and traumatized, calling home as the farmhouse burns and the storm snows him in.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the true spirit of NoSleep Christmas:

  “We’re here to focus on the nightmares and death and torment of good old fashioned horror stories. Things to really brighten our Christmas season.”
  — David Cummings [01:04]

• On consequences and guilt:

  “So face the truth. If you’re on the naughty list, you’re in for a stocking full of coal.”
  — David Cummings, introducing the first tale [03:50]

• On inescapable fates, supernatural or personal:

  “Once my laptop dies, I’ll be alone in the pitch black, unable to see anything or hear anything except his awful carols.”
  — Lucas Miller [32:12]

• On the horrors of family and memory:

  “This was nothing like the caboose in the movie. Instead of walls lined with comfortable seating, it’s stuffed floor to ceiling with junk. I’m squinting at something... when I understand what this is. I’m in the car of unwanted toys.”
  — Rodney [82:53]

Timestamps: Important Segments

• [00:12] – Festive Introduction (David Cummings)
• [04:01 – 13:47] – Story 1: "If You’re on the Naughty List..." (James’s grisly holiday clean-up)
• [14:56 – 33:37] – Story 2: "The Caroler" (Lucas’s siege)
• [35:44 – 58:37] – Story 3: "Wernta Claud" (Werewolf Santa incident)
• [58:37 – 105:48] – Story 4: "The Christmas Train" (Rodney’s hellish ride)
• [105:48 – 145:50] – Story 5: "White and Red" (Stolen gifts, undead Santa, and disaster)
• [147:11] – Closing remarks and season sign-off (David Cummings)

Tone & Style

The episode’s tone is characteristically NoSleep: sardonic, darkly humorous, and relentlessly grim. Christmas iconography—Santa, carols, snow, family dinners—is gleefully perverted, blending psychologically rich horror with moments of absurdity and dark comedy. The voice acting and production design (atmospheric sound, music, and effects) enhance the immersive dread.

For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This 2025 holiday edition of The NoSleep Podcast delivers a potent blend of horror and humor, subverting Christmas cheer with stories that find terror in the ordinary and the fantastical alike. Its tales explore everything from supernatural judgment to personal guilt and loss, all wrapped in a blood-stained bow. Whether you fear the ghosts of Christmases past, the monsters at your door, or the darkness in your own heart, this episode ensures that no Christmas miracle goes unpunished—and no merry memory remains uncorrupted.

Pull up a chair by the fire, pour yourself some eggnog, and prepare to be unsettled.

End of Summary