Don’t panic! (Well, panic a little…) Tales From the Gas Station: Volume Three is available for eBook download from Amazon! Get ready (or don’t, we’re not your boss!) for the return of Jack, Jerry, Rosa, O’Brien and the rest of the cast of customers, and other eldritch, mutant and creepy characters from “that sh*tty gas station on the edge of town”!

 What is Tales from the Gas Station? 

Tales from the Gas Station are the autobiographical stories of Jack Townsend, an essential (before all this pandemic stuff happened) employee at “That sh*tty gas station on the edge of town.” A compilation of his blog posts and previously unreleased stories, his “Volumes” have achieved wide popularity on the internet. Fans often quote his first recorded phone call (in the blogs, at least) to the police in the series: “It’s half a pig. It won’t stop screaming, and I can’t catch it.”

Tales from the Gas Station exploded onto the Creepypasta scene in 2018 via Reddit’s NoSleep forum. The initial post from u/GasStationJack was just 1,050 words. It garnered 2.2k upvotes and 90 comments. No one knew where this poster came from, only that his stories were enjoyable and relatively quick reads. The forum also knew that he was not one to leave his readers hanging. He diligently continued posting and created the website GasStationJack.com in November 2019. Since then, he has cross-posted on both platforms several times a month, with very few hiatuses in between.  

Who is Jack Townsend? 

Jack Townsend, gas station employee and the man behind u/GasStationJack and GasStationJack.com’s relatively small blog, attracted the attention of big names in the Creepypasta game, like Mr. Creepypasta (from the podcast Mr. CreepyPasta’s Storytime and his Youtube channel). Mr. Creepypasta became the voice of Jack for hundreds of thousands of listeners online, in a series of podcasts and free videos. 

Mr. Townsend, a man (or “totally not a demon in a human suit” as his Twitter says) of the people, never stops posting his outrageous stories, both on his blog and on the NoSleep forum. His fans leave hundreds of comments, thousands of upvotes and countless words of encouragement for the gas station employee.

After publishing Volume Two on August 19, 2019 (less than a year after Volume One released to the public), rabid fans (and mutant raccoons alike) asked just one question:

“When are we getting more, Jack?” 

Mr. Townsend dropped Volume Three on April 13, 2020, just eight months after his second volume graced the internet. The author is also known to sign a select few paperback books, distributing them on eBay for his fans. 

He revealed in a series of Facebook comments: “When it’s safe for the printing presses to open back up” he will release his physical copies, but they will only be signed by him and/or his coworker, Jeremy Pascal (known to fans as “Jerry”), and not signed by fan-favorite Rosa Diaz (another employee at the gas station). 

Mr. Townsend also said that he is expecting an Audible audiobook (just like Volumes One and Two) narrated by Mr. Creepypasta in the future. He graciously offers: “The audiobook takes a lot more work and perfection than his usual narrations,” and was reticent to give an exact timeframe, owing to Mr. Creepypasta’s workload (producing several podcast episodes and Youtube videos a week). 

Who should read Tales from the Gas Station? 

Tales from the Gas Station has been suggested on Reddit forums, podcast forums, Creepypasta forums, and every kind of internet forum out there. The books are best for people who are already fans of genre favorites like Welcome to NightVale, the books of Grady Hendrix, What We Do in the Shadows and people who like a little comedy in their horror. The audiobooks are incredible to listen to at night. When they take a turn towards getting too creepy, the author has a way of throwing in just enough humor to be both hilarious and terrifying. 

Volume 3 and Beyond! 

When asked how his life has changed since publishing Volume One, Mr. Townsend sincerely states “For one thing, the sudden attention has done wonders for my social anxiety.”

Regardless of who Jack Townsend is, where he is, or what he does, fans around the world are scrambling for more of his stories, and delighted to have Volume Three of Tales from the Gas Station on their E-readers! 

 

 

This article was originally published 4/18/20

 

 

Carolyn Ducker
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