As The Raven Dreams Podcast - Summer Of '97 By CertainShadows | #CreepyPasta Narration

Starting point is 00:00:09 Today's story is summer of 97 by certain shadows from the creepypasta wiki. In May of 1997, I arrived home from my last day of school to unwelcome news. I would be spending my summer break on Uncle Jacob's farm. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I wanted to lays the breezy days away at the beach, breathing in the salty scent of the ocean, while the golden sand warmed my back. I wanted to sleep until noon, free from the shrill ring of my alarm clock, before waking up to devour a bowl of sugary cereal in front of the TV.

Starting point is 00:00:57 I wanted to ride my bike, and leisurely sip lemonade and reread all my favorite books. But, for me, summertime now meant hard work. and an insufferable rural boredom that made sitting at a school desk seemed downright thrilling in comparison. Begging mom to let me stay home, it was futile. She insisted that Uncle Jacob

Starting point is 00:01:25 had fallen on difficult times and needed assistance tending to the farm. Even if he was too proud to ever admit it, we had no other living family, and dad had left us years ago, before eventually choosing to drop out of our lives entirely. Mom couldn't take the time off from her job, leaving the responsibility of helping Uncle Jacob

Starting point is 00:01:49 to ultimately be heaped onto me. Now, I should clarify that I did not inherently dislike my uncle. I actually felt quite bad for him. Over the past year, Uncle Jacob's life had become a painful cycle of hardship and grief. Aunt Dars had died suddenly the previous summer, and while he'd never been a particularly genial man, her death had made him grow stony and distant.

Starting point is 00:02:24 His health was declining, and the farmer who had once taken great pride in his crops now owned several acres of neglect. I didn't blame him. for robbing me of my summer. I knew it wasn't his idea. And I suspected he felt as cheerless about the arrangement as I did. And so I begrudgingly conceded that...

Starting point is 00:02:52 Mom was right. Uncle Jacob was in dire need of assistance. And to deprive him of it would be unconscionable. Still, it was impossible not to feel bitter when June arrived. and I found myself in my uncle's field at the crack of dawn. While my friends were soaking in the poolside sun and enjoying family vacations, I was toiling my summer away under the blazing sky. Every day my shirt would become so soaked with sweat

Starting point is 00:03:27 that it clung to my aching back like a layer of wet skin. My bare arms in the back of my neck soon burned to a furious shone. shade of red, before later peeling away in strips that resembled fleshy parchment. Painful blisters erupted along my palms. At night, I tossed and turned from the sweltering heat, cursing the farmhouse's lack of air conditioning. My misery was as incessant as the soreness coursing through my limbs. I wasn't merely unhappy. I loathed every... thing about the farm. From the chipped paint on the barn boards down to the mill-doing paper in Uncle Jacob's dingy

Starting point is 00:04:16 house. I impatiently counted down the days until my mother would come to rescue me from my uncle's bleak existence and his endless list of chores. One rainy afternoon, Uncle Jacob granted me a reprieve from my work and retired to his bedroom, claiming that the weather strummed at his arthritis. I knew he simply wanted to be alone. Tomorrow would be Aunt Dars's birthday, and the box of yellow cake mix and pink candles sitting on the counter of his small kitchen indicated that he had not yet broken the routine

Starting point is 00:04:55 decades of marriage had built. I was grateful for the respite, yet uncertain of what to do with my newly gifted free time. Uncle Jacob did not own a television, and I hadn't brought any books to the farm, thanks to my mom's insistence that I would have no time to read. I listened for the sound of my uncle's footsteps creaking along the floorboards and his heavy sigh as he climbed into bed. When I was certain that he was asleep, I silently crossed the room to where his damp coat hanged from a rack. I stuck my hand into the pocket, carefully fished out a set of keys, and made my way towards the locked room at the end of the hall. Uncle Jacob, he'd only mentioned the room once, back when I first arrived at the farm, and he simply stated that it was an old study I needn't concern myself with. I'd been taught that snooping was wrong, and I felt slightly ashamed, even as I slipped the key into the lock.

Starting point is 00:06:03 lock. But, keeping the terrible beast of boredom at bay overruled any sense of guilt. And so, after a few seconds of fleeting hesitation, I quietly eased the door open and stepped inside. My initial reaction was to be underwhelmed. The room was coated with dust and boasted little. A riding desk, moth-eaten curtains paired with a shabby rug. a chair with cracked leather upholstery, and a nearly empty bookshelf that held a few hard-bound volumes. After the initial wave of disappointment had passed, I decided to peruse through the meager selection of books. I plucked one from the shelf, sank into the ruined chair, and gasped when I opened the book and saw dozens of wedding rings spill from its hollowed core to a little. scatter loudly across the floor. I froze, my heart pounding thunderously in my chest,

Starting point is 00:07:11 and I waited for Uncle Jacob to burst through the doorway to see what I had done. I was so frightened by the prospect of getting into trouble that it wasn't until several tense minutes had passed without an appearance from my uncle, that confusion finally struck me. Why did Uncle Jacob have all these wedding rings? I began gathering the rings up by the handful to cram them back into the gouged book. Bands of gold and silver, smooth or adorned with diamonds, aged from years of matrimony, or sparkling as of stripped from the fingers of newlyweds. Each one felt like a bizarre piece of a puzzle.

Starting point is 00:07:53 When I returned the hollow novel to its shelf, yet another inquisitive thought entered my mind. What about the other books? I paused. Uncertain of whether or not I truly wanted to know what they may contain. The collection of rings had disturbed me, not least of all, because of the sheer amount. I even considered that perhaps Aunt Dars had collected them before she died, but that theory failed to make complete sense. Many of the rings appeared to have belonged to men,

Starting point is 00:08:27 and were far too large for her own frail fingers. And the only ring I ever saw Uncle Dr. Jacob where was the same one he'd worn for their entire marriage. And then, why hide them away in a book? When I glimpsed a jewelry box sitting on a dresser in Uncle Jacob's room. After a moment of internal debate, curiosity prevailed. I selected another volume. Then I immediately regretted my decision.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Inside the books gouged out core rested far too many human teeth. teeth to have come from a single mouth. Some were cracked open to reveal an exposed pulp. Some were little more than jagged shards, and most were caked with blood. My stomach lurched at the sight of decayed flesh clinging to a tooth's root. I imagined the agony the traumatized mouth had suffered. Exposed nerves as teeth were broken and viciously extracted? the coppery taste of their own blood,

Starting point is 00:09:34 sharp remnants of their shattered molars piercing through their tongues like nails. My head swam and I fought the urge to be sick on the frayed rug. Now, I know I should have called the police right then. I know I should have fled from the house and ran until I reached the next farm over. I know I should have been calmer and wiser

Starting point is 00:09:58 and done just about anything besides what I. did next, but I couldn't think clearly in that horrible room, with its hellish secrets, and the smothering dust drifting through its stale air. And so I grabbed another book from the shelf. This time, it slid from my trembling hands and fell to the floor. I watched as the book landed open and yawned a stream of photographs on to the floorboards. When I knelt down to examine them, I nearly fell over in shock. Staring up at me were faces twisted into grimaces of unspeakable pain. Each snapshot captured an act of brutality.

Starting point is 00:10:52 Open mouths screamed in anguish while others were sealed shut with strips of tape. Lims were bound with rope and contorted into unnatural positions. Eyes wept tears or blood, sometimes both. Hair and clothing were soaked with so much blood that it was unlikely any of the photograph survived for long after the camera finally ran out of film. One photo depicted a mirror placed before a chair with deep scratch marks along the arms. Presumably, it was arranged so that the captive could witness their own torture as it unfolded. In its reflection, I caught sight of a familiar face. A hand clamped down on my shoulder.

Starting point is 00:11:43 I didn't know what she was doing. Uncle Jacob mumbled, his voice like gravel, until she was already gone. Uncle Jacob called the police himself. They found more trophies in the study, locks of hair tied with ribbon, watches, and women's jewelry, bloodied scraps of fabric, and a small tin full of fingernails that rattled when an officer picked it up. The entire farm was excavated, but they never found so much as a single bone. Even after all these years, no one knows what Aunt Dars did with the bodies, or why she committed the murders.

Starting point is 00:12:27 Law enforcement had her gruesome trinkets sent to a forensics laboratory, but for the most part identifying the victims boiled down to the hideous task of pouring over the photo collection. A job made all the more nightmarish when families of missing persons were shown the least grizzly of the pictures for tearful confirmations. Aunt Dars continued to inflict pain even as she laid in her grave. Several of the photographs remain unidentified. If there exists anyone out there who misses them, they'll likely spend the rest of their days not knowing that their disappeared loved one met a cruel, brutal end at the hands of a monster for reasons that we will never understand. Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps it's better that way, if the haunting questions and lack of

Starting point is 00:13:24 closure are still less painful than knowing the undeniable heart-shattering, blood-stained truth that those photos so gruesomely displayed. Uncle Jacob was interrogated. His story never changed. After Aunt Dars died, he was preparing to sell the farm and move away to somewhere with less memory, only for those plans to come to a horrifying halt. when he found what she had been keeping in her study. The discovery left him tethered to the farm,

Starting point is 00:14:01 for he had no way of knowing if more ghoulish trophies remained hidden elsewhere among his acres, and he couldn't risk anyone uncovering them before he did. To this day, I still don't understand why he allowed me to visit, given his fear of my aunt's atrocities becoming unveiled, except that, perhaps, he had grown tired of carrying the crushing burden of her crimes. He claimed to have no knowledge of the murders prior to his wife's death, and for what it's worth, I believe him. The voice that spoke to me that rainy afternoon, it belonged to a weary, broken soul,

Starting point is 00:14:43 who had finally been relieved of a secret that was eating away at him like a parasite. I know it was wrong of Uncle Jacob to keep evidence concealed rather than alert the police to what he had found. And I know it was wrong of him to prioritize Aunt Dars's memory as an amicable, pleasant woman over seeking justice for her many victims. But I understand his reasoning, even if I don't agree with it. He lost Aunt Dars twice. Once when she died, and again when he realized that he never really knew her at all. Within weeks of his arrest, Uncle Jacob suffered a heart attack in his jail cell.

Starting point is 00:15:29 No funeral was held, and less than a year later we had to have the tombstone he and Aunt Dars shared removed, after it was repeatedly defaced by vandals and admirers alike. Pieces were chipped away by those who sought to take a little bit of Aunt Dars, by then a celebrated figure in certain macabre circles, home with them. Mom put me into intensive therapy, and I spent the rest of my summer in my room, reading book after book, in an attempt to keep my mind from lingering on the farm. It didn't work, of course. At night, I would lie awake in bed and think of the photographs until my ears rang with the sound of tortured

Starting point is 00:16:15 screams. But things... They got better in time. I continued therapy, and today I'm a happy adult with the family of my own. But while the vivid, sleepless nights have been fewer and fewer in numbers over the year, I still think of Uncle Jacob's farm way too often. Every thought circles back to the picture with the mirror. The last one I saw before Uncle Jacob's farm.

Starting point is 00:16:45 Jacob gently plucked it from my grasp and guided me out of the room. I can recall every detail as if I'd viewed it only seconds ago. Aunt Dars, looking into her reflection, wearing that cruel grin and a fine mist of blood, her gloves glistening with a wet crimson. In the chair beside her, his limbs bound by knotted rope, and his face almost, entirely obscured by blood, sat my father. So that was, once again, summer of 97 by certain shadows from the creepypasta wiki, and damn, what a story! I remember the summer of 97 like it was yesterday.

Starting point is 00:17:42 I was six years old, and that's about all I can tell you, because I don't remember a damn thing. Anyways. Hopefully you all enjoyed this story, and if you did, consider hitting that thumbs up button. It helps the channel a lot, and if you're new, hit that subscribe button. That also helps the channel a lot. Numbers are good. YouTube likes numbers, so let's get them numbers.

Starting point is 00:18:01 Number, number, number, number, number, number. It doesn't sound like a word anymore. Anyways, if you really want to support the channel further, you can also hit the join button down below. Go to patreon.com slash As the Raven Dreams and join for $1 a month. For just $1 a month, you can get early accessed all my content. Pretty good stuff.

Starting point is 00:18:22 I'm trying to get super far ahead, and guess what? It's working. So my patrons and members will hear this way before YouTube does. Just saying, you know. Anyways, friends, I hope you all have a beautiful day, and I hope I will see you on the next video. But until then, sleep well.

As The Raven Dreams Podcast - Summer Of '97 By CertainShadows | #CreepyPasta Narration

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