SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: October 25, 2025] “The Three Infernal Jokes”
It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….
After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.
As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.
This is one of the few stories in this collection that isn’t relatively contemporary. It also needs a bit of an explanation as to the author. His name is Lord Dunsany, but his proper name is Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, which is outstanding.
This story is told second hand. The main character of the story told his tale to the narrator who is passing it along to us. The man said to the narrator that he had a joke that could make the listener die of laughter. But before he told t he joke, he wanted to explain how he got it.
He belonged to a club for men. And one evening they were boasting of their specific virtues. One man said he detested the taste of wine and boasted of his temperance. So the main character told the room of his virtue–he found every woman equally ugly.
When a fellow in the room said that that virtue was amazing, the man demurred. But the new fellow was persistent–would he sell this virtue? The man was puzzled by this but agree noncommittally. But the fellow immediately dragged him outside and placed a direct call to Hell.
Hell would buy this virtue for three jokes. Three jokes that will make all who hear them die of laughter. He took the deal and looked at the jokes–they didn’t seem very funny.
After a time, the man found himself at another gathering. People were telling jokes and so he pulled out one of the scraps of paper with a joke on it. He told the joke and didn’t find it funny. But the crowd slowly began to laugh. Everyone in the room was tittering, tittering far too much for the quality of the joke. He was convinced that they were humoring him, or possibly even mocking him. After a few moments of this, he left, full of embarrassment.
The next morning, in the paper her read that 22 men had died at a club. He was quickly rounded up and brought before a judge. Things were looking bad for him. Then someone asked him to tell the joke. He looked at the paper–it was now blank–but he told it from memory. No one laughed. He was certain he was going to be hanged for murder so he told the room that he had a different joke….
This type of story isn’t really scary, but it does make you wonder what you would do if you were given this “gift.”
