CreepCast - I Explored An Abandoned White Supremacist Camp | CreepCast

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

Christian Wallis brings a harrowing story to r/TalesFromTheCreeps as the guys find what awaits in Eden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Whether you're headed to a music festival or a cottage getaway, you can access hundreds of apps on Google Play right from your center display. Explore OnStar Tech today at OnStar.ca and discover how to take your summer to the next level. OnStar. Better never stops. We're reading some racist shit today. We're reading A story called I Explored an Abandoned White Supremicist Camp It's not a lie

Is it? It's not a lie You said that was such Oh We're reading something that we shouldn't be reading The way you went into that was like All these years Waiting for this moment.

And ladies and gentlemen We are reading some truly heinous shit. So you may be asking while we're reading the story with this title. Well, dear viewer, the reason we're reading a story with this title is because it's a story by a very special author, Christian Wallace. Christian Wallace, we've covered four times on the

show this far. He did the, my wife has taken our roleplay too far. He did the, I found the bunker of a prepper family who disappeared. He did the only other astronaut on this mission died six weeks ago and there's one more Harry. Oh, my

dad ate deer meat. What about the deer meat? on two legs. The deer that walked on two legs. But I ate me from deer that walked on two legs. All four of those were creepy stories. They were fantastic. At this point, I would want to read this guy's grocery list.

Like, everything he writes is fantastic. So this story was posted to Tales from the Creeps. And I believe, looking at the comments, that it was removed from no sleep. Was it removed because of the white supremacist's saying? Or because there was no indestructible pedophiles in the story. We don't know. But either way,

if no sleep won't take it. Hey, I know a couple of creeps who will. Isn't that right? What does a white supposes camp look like? I imagine there's a lot of like... If I drove by, would I be able to notice it? Well, I mean, I imagine there's a lot of like a Nazi flag. Black Nazi memorabilia.

Maybe some, uh, maybe some like clan hats and burning crosses. Yeah, stuff like that. So people hanging. I mean, I guess we'll find out soon. Well, I think if we're talking about like, like, like, body. my god. My, my fucking lord. God. Well, I think if we, I think if we see that, it's, it's gone beyond just a white supremacist camp.

It is now an active crime scene. But who might have to say. Christian Wallace won a hell of an author. And we feel honored that they would post a story to R slash Tales from the Creep. As always, as always. And to clarify, before we go into this, the story, sure is not racist. Racism just seems to be a theme in it.

I'm not making any assertions like Hunter is about Christian Wallace's character. What we need next, we have Christian Wallace. Now we need Stephen King. We need Stephen King to write a little something for our slash Tales in the Creaves. And that's really going to fucking legitimize us, huh? Thank you so much to our audio listeners. Thank you for the support you continue to show on audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, a very huge thing.

Be sure to give us a good rating on there too, though. A very huge thank you to our patrons. You allow us to continue to do this and to do cool things with this platform. And it means the world. Thank you so much for your support. Extra content for them over there. We'll link to the description if you're interested.

And also, we have merch right now, I believe. You want to sell at the time? You want to get up and show it again? Yeah, I'll show it again. This is the creepcast, 2026, spring to summer line. Give him a little smile. Pop the hip. Pop the hip.

Now give a quiet. No, no, no. Just pop it once. Pop it once. Give him a little Kauaii P sign. And then say, Sumi-Mas-in. Somim-sin.

Almost. Almost. Well, are you ready to dive? And there's other shirts. There will be other shirts for sale as well that you can check out if you're interested. Thank you to support, if you support us in that way.

Yeah, we have to do graphics up. If you want to get a shirt, feel free. I see people sometimes wearing Creepcast merch out in public. I was at a restaurant the other day and a guy walked in one of our first drops and he didn't see me. You say slug bug.

No, I paid for his food and he was real, he was like, oh, it was real appreciative, so it was cool. He did what? He saw me and went, oh. Oh, all right, well, let's dive into this racist story. Sorry about races. Oh, okay. Important distinction.

I probably should. Stop saying that. editor bleep all that, please. All right, I explored an abandoned white supremacist camp. Kid I shot was called Abner. All right, well. Kind of jumping into a little of American History X beginning, though, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Or he gets shot at the end. When does he get shot? Is he shot at the beginning? The protagonist? The kid, yeah. What's the fuck? Edward Furlong. His brother died?

No, his brother's like a Nazi and he's in prison. And he's like, now he's also a skinhead. Yeah. Yeah. But what makes him not racist? What makes him not? Who? Is that what?

What's his name? Edward Norton. Edward Norton gets in prison by their Nazis and then he be friends a guy that he works with who's like a black guy in the prison. And then now. He went to jail for curb stomping that guy. Yeah. Curb stonting dude. Yeah.

But he was also, I think he was also doing like borderline terrorist acts around his town or something. And then the guy who directed or made the movie like protested it. He's like, they changed it. They changed the whole thing. Because he was supposed to turn back the skinhead at the end. Really? Yeah. So how did they change it?

They just like... Edward Norton just took the editing reins and then just cut that part and I changed the dialogue at the end. Really? Interesting. Yeah, he gets, his brother gets killed, then he was supposed to go back to being a skinhead.

Yeah. Huh. But they just ended on the note of like... That's an interesting piece of lore. I didn't know that. What was Edward... What did Edward Furlong? He was in a, what was that movie we watched with him?

No, no, no. Remember, though, like the cheesy horror film we watched that was like supposed to be a classic? Oh. What the fuck was that called? Master. Yeah. It's like, it's weird. It has like, on his computer at his house, it's all about a guy who's like, oh, I'm playing this video game and like, it makes this entity come out of the computer and like kill people, whatever.

This is like early, early, what was it? Brain scan. Brain scan. It has like a cult following out. I've heard of it. a good movie, but it has a cult following. But anyways, he has this A on his computer that's like, uh, Igor.

Igor load this up. He does, right away, monster. Yes, monster. And Igor dies. He fucking kills him at the end of the movie. Spoiler. The computer? Igor, yeah, because he's like, fuck machines. Which is actually kind of funny because

then he ended up being in Terminator 2, which was kind of the same message. The kid I shot was called Abner. It's been all summer looking at me when he thought no one was looking. Didn't recognize it straight away. If anything, did my best to avoid catching anyone's attention. Abner was an older camper and a nasty piece of shit who spent his time cat-calling girls way too young for him

and smoking cigarettes with some of the counselors. But when he wasn't strutting around the place, like a chimp pacing its enclosure, I would often catch him looking at me in furtive glances. I guess he thought he was being subtle about it, but he wasn't. And one day his friends noticed. He looked at me, Then they looked at him, subtle tolls with the head.

That was all it took for them to convey their suspicion, and in a desperate bid to save face, Abner stood up from the railing, he was perched on and cried out. What the fuck do you think you're looking at, pretty boy? And I just had to be clever, didn't I? Aw, you think I'm pretty, Abner? He grabbed me. The others joined in.

I knee to the chest, pushed me into sodden mud as Abner's reinslick hands gripped my jaw. Won't be so fucking pretty now, huh? Abner slid a pocket knife into the fat of my cheek and went to work. God damn. What? Straight to the just... Holy shit. Abner slid a pocket knife into the fat of my cheek and went to work.

But it was wet and his hands were shaking. The blade skipped across my cheekbone like a stone across water. The tip of the blade nicked the eye and carved up my brow and forehead, leaving a gouge that had forever remind me of tectonic drift. By the time my cries attracted any attention from the counselors, I was sobbing and running in circles. Blooded hands groping desperately at open air. I remember screaming for my mother.

I got twisting itself in knots. I wanted someone to enforce some logic back onto the world, some semblance of sanity. The authorities at Eden Reformation and Reclamation Project were not saying, okay, for one, you go to a camp called the Eden Reformation and Reclamation Project. Eden Reformation and Reclamation Project. Yeah, I feel like that should have been a red flag right there. Well, no wonder, the motherfers is getting stabbed in the cheat.

I mean like that was so quick. Yeah. This has this. I feel like I've brought this up 70 times on this podcast, but anytime that there's immediate child death or violence, it just makes you think of that fucking spirit bear book. Whatever. Oh, the book? Yeah, remember the spirit bear?

Like the, it's the one where like, it's a, it's that. I feel like you've never brought this up on the podcast. Have I never? I have that book. I've never read it though. It's like, it's this insane book. I could totally be misremembering this. But the book is supposed to be this.

this cripple kid gets the shit beat out of them like really early in the beginning and then as punishment they put both of them on an island the guy who kicked his ass and the cripple guy so he's like dragging this fucking wheelchair around on this random island out of nowhere and then the whole thing is that the guy gets attacked by a bear and he becomes basically

shred it up whatever and then the kid helps him it's like a really it's like a reformation program kind of thing but were they put children on islands Yeah, I don't know Is it like a dystopian future thing? It was like a, it's like a juvenile, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's, uh,

Is it like a young fantasy kind of thing where it's like you don't really ask questions about it? Like Hunger Games? I mean, I guess, yeah. But it's not, it's not futuristic like that. Okay. Because Hunger Games is like, like this is such an insane concept. But to the, you know, 13 year olds reading it's like, you know, it's fine. You know, it's enough to buy it.

Touching spirit bear. That's what it is. Touching spirit bear. Touching spirit bear is what it's called. I just remember because when I was younger, I was like, holy, the cover of the book. The cover of the book is like intense. Like I was like, oh my God, this is fucking sick. It's a young adult novel about a violent angry teenager named Cole Matthews who

sent to a remote Alaskan Island as an alternative to jail time for assaulting a classmate. But I'm pretty sure what they don't put there is that the motherfucker, the classmate goes there too. Okay. Or whatever. Because he like, he beats the shit out of him, like, smashes his teeth into the pavement, whatever.

But anyways. Yeah. It just reminds me of that. If anyone, so far, hopefully this is registered. with someone, but it reminds me of that. Gotcha. It has that similar vibe. And also I didn't know if this is also one of those programs where it's like,

is he had troubled with or not or what? So more so it tipped me off is it's the Reformation and Reclamation. So it's like, okay, what are you reforming and what are you reclaiming? And also, it's named after Eden, which obviously, you know, Christian, nothing wrong with. But typically a lot of groups will hijack Christian terminology and stuff like that for their groups. Oh, so you're saying that like the Eden Reformation Reformation,

you're like, oh, this is a white supremacist. Yeah, yeah. Or do they say Eden because it's like Adam and Eve are like... Well, yeah, well, normally when you attach Eden things means like perfection, paradise following after something. Obviously, I'm not saying everything named Eden is... Right, right, right, right, right. But just bad people will co-opt. Yeah, reclaiming.

Yeah, what are we reclaiming? What are we reforming? Yeah, that's what I mean. Reclaim paradise. Bring it back. What do you mean by that? Yeah. They bundled me into a private cabin and wouldn't let me speak to anyone or make a call.

I was kept prisoner for two. two days before they finally bribed some drunken vet to try and patch me up. When I told one of the counselors who stood guard outside my door that they'd be sorry once my dad found out what had happened on their watch, he snorted and replied, Who do you think recommended the vet? Should have figured. Dad was the reason I was sent there. He didn't like me wearing an eyeliner.

So when it was his turn to have me for the weekend after my 14th birthday, he decided to take me on a trip. If you can believe it, I was actually excited because even though he'd always been a dick to me, he was my dad and I wanted him to like me but as soon as we passed eight lines he pulled up on the side of this road and we waited for a full three hours would answer any of my questions

just smoked one cigarette after another eventually this van drove up three guys with masks got out I asked dad what was going on but he said nothing as they dragged me from my seat cable tied me threw me in the back of their van a lot of intense things happening in this store

what kind of camp is this It's like one of those scared straight camps where they'll have people come in the middle of the night and take the kids and it's like a boot camp kind of thing. This is real? That's a real thing people do. They wear masks and zip type people? There's a lot more restrictions around them in the day

but back in the day like there'd be scared straight programs where... I've heard of it in the prison system thing but I didn't know that was... Well, the idea is like if you have a kid who keeps getting in trouble with like school, juvie beating people up, the parents will talk to this group who it's like, yeah, we'll scare the crap out of them. So they'll take them.

they would like show up in the middle of the night or show up at school and be like, you're coming with me or whatever. And the parents would be there so it doesn't look like an abduction, you know. So the parents consent to having the kid taken somewhere where they'll do hard work and they'll be like, top the value of a dollar

and stuff like that, whatever. Just a very like, you know. That's surprising. Heavy hand thing. It was like, there was a TV show. There's a TV show, I feel like, that followed one of them, like an old reality TV show.

I think it's just scared straight. It's the fucking... Well, scared straight's the prison one. That's where they take them to prison and let them see other prisoners. This was like a camp they would take him to. But anyway, yeah, it was the thing. As you can imagine, now they're like super regulated. There's still programs you can go to.

Like, you can take your kid to, but I would be surprised if there's any still openly doing like kidnap simulations. Right, right, right. They do that with fat camp too? They kidnapped the fat kids? Did they? Oh, it's been brought off. I don't think anyone's No, he's just making fun of me for being fat

Why were you looking at me the entire time then He's just looking at the entire time and he just kept doing this I was next way to ask you if I sign up today Yeah exactly come in hogtie hunter tomorrow This also sounds like with the eyeliner thing It sounds like his dad tried to send him to like a Scared straight A conversion, well, scared straight.

I meant yes, a conversion, but yes, literally scared straight then. A gay conversion camp, yeah. I guess you could call that scared straight. Depending on when actually Chris Wallace wrote this, he could just be like a little, like a little scene kid or something, you know? Yeah, yeah, he could be, but his dad. He's gay, he's wears eyeliner, he's gay. Yeah. It's like nowadays, too, it's like guys wearing like fingernail polish and it's just like, all right.

Sons of fairy, send him off. You're like, it's just fingernail polished, dad. It's not a big deal. No. Not the big of a deal. After that came the absolute nightmare that was Eden. They didn't explicitly label themselves a white supremacist camp, nor did they particularly tout their gay conversion therapies.

The kind of person who sent their kids to Eden didn't want any official connection to that sort of thing. By the camp's motto was setting America's youth straight. And their flag was a red flag with a white circle that encompassed a Germanic-looking crucifix. Not really hiding. It was pretty. Kind of hiding in plain sight right now, aren't you? But that is like the thing about putting a cross in the center of it. They co-opted Christian stuff all the time.

Like, what's that? I can't remember if they were explicitly white supremacist or if there was just a tie-in, not the Aryan nations, the one that had the big standoff with the FBI. They're called the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, I think was the name of the group. That's another white supremacistist group. Yeah, it was either white supremacist or like they had members that were tying to Aryan nations. and stuff like that. It was like an early American militia group,

but all their stuff was like, you know, like the name, the arm, the covenant, sort of the Lord or whatever. And then like their symbolized Bible. Also people are like the light, lighting crosses on fire and all that kind of shit.

The cross is on fire. Yeah. That's from the, they put the swords on fire? No, in the covenant sword, the arm of the Lord, the sword is on fire.

Oh. Yeah. There's a rainbow over. Well, that's another. Yeah. I hate everyone. My son's gay,

but I like him. You're like, All right. Yeah, a lot of them, like, the rainbow imagery will show up because they consider, like, LGBT and, like, gay pride taking the rainbow to be in a front to God because the rainbow in the Bible was the covenant that the earth would not be flooded again, given to Noah. So a lot of them will... Should you put the rainbow on the flag then? They'll do it to reclaim it and stuff. Oh, I see.

We're taking it back. Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Now, actually, when did... Well, I guess the rainbow thing's been a part of gay pride movements for a while. I mean, right? Has to be. I mean, forever. Because this was,

the covenant was like back in the late 80s, early 90s. It was founded in 1975. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. So yeah, it's been around long. It's all in 1985. Come to Creepcast for your white supremacist's history lesson.

Fun fact. But yeah, a lot of them will do that. Like, Aryan nations has a bunch of like Christian symbolism. They used a cross a lot and stuff. Right. Yeah. I'm real stoked about, as you could imagine, definitely. Yeah.

That thing I was talking about in the, when you were talking about the Christian thing with like, Some go so heretical, I would say that it negates the Christianity part, things like this. Right. Where they operated in the Appalachian woods, far from prying eyes, Eden and its organizers were able to adorn our cabin's walls with swat stickers and force us to watch hours and hours of revisionist documentaries that taught us the wrong people won World War II.

Our practice targets at the firing range were racially charged mugshots. Our team names were slurs. Our morning prayers were in German, and we shaved SS symbols into each other's heads for a mixture of fun and punishment. Officially, Eden was just one of many camps for troubled teens, but the camp wasn't there to convert or fix any of us despite its promises. It was a meat grinder meant to spit out psychopaths, to sift through each year's attendees until they found the most promising candidates

for recruitment into the movement. Blur the line between guard and prisoner and watched with thin-lipped excitement at the resulting carnage. The counselors said, out to torture and the most important tool in their arsenal was us. It wasn't the counselors who force-fed one-girl roadkill because she dared to try sticking to a vegetarian diet. It wasn't counselors who tore the stud right out of one boy's tongue after he'd successfully hit it for the first few days. It was the kids, the ones who wanted to be fixed, who wanted their

wide-necked fathers to finally look at them like they weren't dog shit on the bottom of a The worst tradition was called the wild hunt, and counselors would pick the weakest kid to be that weak steer and send them running naked into the woods while everyone else went after them, armed with air rifles, could break skin. There were no points in that game, no incentive, only a certain kind of kid would pull the trigger just for fun. Finding those kids, singling them out for recruitment,

that was the point. I pulled the trigger. I never bought into Eden's racist bullshit, But the genius of a lot of cults is that they don't always ask you to care that much about belief. Until I attended, I wouldn't have even thought of myself as a cruel or angry person. But the machine worked, and it didn't work just once. It worked again and again and again. Psychopaths even spat out, they didn't always start out as bullies. Many probably started out more like me because it was about teaching kids that you hurt others before they hurt you.

And its lessons were written in blood and bruises. Abner gave me a chance to hurt him when he wrote me a strange and confused apology letter and slid it beneath my door. I still don't know why he wrote it, though I figure he must have been as dumb and confused as any other kid, I suppose. But in that letter, Abner tried to explain himself.

I don't remember the words in detail on account of the anger it's had oftened me. Even a sincere apology tastes like piss. You've got an eyeball weaving pus. But what really set me on fire was the implication that somehow I was to blame for his actions. I just ain't used to seeing cute boys. I remember reading those words Clear's Day.

I don't know how to describe how angry they made me. A fat boy exploding in my chest in my head. Oh, I thought it was just calling after fat. He met the bomb. A fat boy. A fat boy exploding in my chest in my head. A piece of the sun lay gently in my skull and left to burn for all eternity. I still feel it now, that anger.

Something I'll never forget. So I guess the implication is Abner's family probably sent him there because he was. Yay, yeah, yeah. I showed Abner's letter, complete with all its description of his confused feelings, to the counselors. And when I finally got off bed rest a few days later, I found that there had been an important change in the camp's dynamics. Where Abner had once lurched around the camp, threatening any poor kid who made the mistake of rubbing him the wrong way, he now skulked in the shadows and stayed out of sight. When his friends walked by, he flinched.

When they made hateful jokes with slurs for Punchline, he tried to awkwardly laugh it off, but that only made it worse. I didn't want his camaraderie. Not anymore. Not after the counselors had made him stand in front of the whole camp as they read out the confessional he'd left me. His friends kicked him out of the older boy's cabin. Counselors wouldn't let him into the others,

so he had to sleep in a tent. I remember getting up one night and looking outside to see one of the guys taking a piss on him. I could tell by the light that Abner was inside, but he was just hiding in the corner like a beaten dog. There were moments when a better person than me might have felt sorry for him, but I was seeing the world through one eye,

and his suffering made me happy. And when it came time for the wild hunt, and Abner was selected to be that weak steer, I spent an extra couple hours each day on the range practicing with the air rifle. I had to work real hard to learn how to shoot well with one eye patched up. Even then, I was never as good as I was back when I had two.

But I figured Abner made for a bigger target than the pesky can say it up. So, I mean, obviously, like, it's tragic. Aipner's sent here, stuff like that. But he straight up stabbed the protagonist, right? Yeah, in the cheek. Yeah, he pulled a knife and stabbed him. I think he's stabbing in the head.

And then also, he keeps referencing, I think that he, like, fucking him in the eye. I thought he was talking about his eye swelling up. It sounds like he stabbed him in the eye or something. No, I think he stabbed him through the cheek. He stabbed him through the cheek for sure. Oh, did it go, like, up through there. Well, somehow he still can't see. Maybe it's just swollen.

I just thought that he, yeah, they're like, he's got, He got the shit beat out of him. Yeah. And then he, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. So I understand our protagonists like still want to, even though it's like, yeah, situation's tragic. I understand our protagonist still being mad, you know.

Yeah, well, now you're also in an environment too where you're rewarded for. To kill or be killed kind of thing. Also, are they talking about air rifles or air rifles like pelagons? I think the same pelagons. That is insane. I mean, the whole thing's insane. But like, you use pelagons. This is breaking skin and it's definitely like you're going to.

It's digging in there. You're going to pluck them out later. Yeah, use pellets guns to hunt squirrel. Like, it's... And now apparently little children, so there you go. It's time to talk about something scary. Your health. I know I don't go in the doctor as much as I should.

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Plus, with a risk-free trial, there's no reason not to give them a shot. And after you order, if you could let them know that we sent you, we'd really appreciate you. Thank you to Brunt for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description, and we are now back to the episode. On the day, I set off alone and hiked for three straight hours before I finally spotted him moving between the trees. Pale skin, shaved head, covered in bruises. Abner was a gaunt figure, panning and running desperately through the undergrowth. Sounds dumb to say, but he looked like a deer. I swear it. Not in shape, but in spirit. The way he moved around, looking so scared and alert, Dead and I had a few shared interests,

but deer hunting was one of them, and I knew the look plainest day made it easy to pull the trigger. The pneumatic wumpf of the air rifle was satisfying. Not as satisfying as the sound of the pellet striking him in the temple. Certainly, not as satisfying as watching him practically tumble, head over heels, go rolling down the side of the mount. I was grinning when I crested the top and looked down, panning and laughing, all half mad, filled with the kind of righteous anger that I'm loath to admit must have inherited from my father. God, when I finally saw him,

when I saw the broken tangle of legs and arms, made me think of a spider that's been stepped on. It was all bundled up, his violent descent down the hill stopped by the gnarled roots of a fallen tree. His face was streaked with blood and reminded me strangely of Jesus and his crown of thorns. In his eyes, his open eyes, Abner was looking at the sky too

just like Jesus with those chipped and painted irises after that came to panic and I don't remember much else got shot in the temple he fell down the hill probably broke his neck and his arms and shit if you're shot with the pellet gun if it pierces the skull

it could kill you my god I mean yeah that was a rough paragraph like kid falling down the hill the arms twisted up and that thing looking to the sky like Jesus the crown of thorns with blood like man brutal they found me half collapsed a mile out from the camp

feverish with an infection that was racing from my eye to my brain I'd soiled myself in my hysterical state I told them about Abner terrible confession checked up on my story and found it to be true three weeks later I woke up in hospital recovering from surgery to remove the infected eye dad was beside me and spoke in a tone that resembled pride

when he saw me looking nervously towards the door he smiled and patted my shoulder. Don't worry. We look after our own. What a good dad. I didn't really think much of you when you was my boy, but now that you killed a kid... Now that your head shaved and you're a white supremacist, I think I can look at you without throwing up.

Yeah, now that you got an SS tattoo on your arm and you killed a child, come home, boy. Meat grinder is effective. I'll give them that. It took me a long time to realize that the people who ran that camp had plenty to lose. two of my story got out. But the way they treated me, it acted like they were doing me a favor, saving me from an unfair and unjust world that would have persecuted me just for protecting myself.

I never bought into it. Not really. I don't know. I'd like to think I didn't do a great deal to actually help them. But whether I want to admit it or not, I became part of the machine. I was in videos. I was in brochures. I had tattoos that remain even to this day as blotchy scars across my chest and back. There are photos of me as a teenager that make me feel physically sick when I look at them. Gangly 19-year-old with an SS tattoo poking out from beneath the collar. These marks cost me educational and job opportunities, and that pushed me further into the machine. I went to rallies when they told me to. Gave speeches when they told me to.

Through bottles when they told me to. Eventually, they didn't have to keep telling me what to do. I was angry. So angry. all the time. Like the cancer of the mind. Do you know what ended it? What finally pulled me out?

I was sent to jail for drunken disorderly behavior when I was 21. And a young trans woman who was sharing the cell with me and six others looked my way. You're a pretty man. And instinctively touched the scar on my face. The hollow socket that I never covered because I thought it made me look intimidating. She only smiled. It was so gentle. Like, she knew the fear I'd felt when at the fear I'd felt when

Abner had held me down. She made a kind gesture to a man with a swatstick a tattooed on his neck. She didn't have to. Didn't have to show kindness to a man who wanted her dead. And then the thought came to me clear as day. I don't think she deserves to die. After that, everything unraveled. For the last 20 years, my life had been dedicated to deprogramming people who got sucked up into the same machine I had.

I've been on the news, interviewed for documentaries, lectured at every Ivy League university and the country. The charity I run has become my life's work. And every step of the way, I've received letters from people calling me a traitor. They'll say anything if they think it'll keep me quiet, but I just ignore them all. I think this is an interesting person.

For the story, it's very rough, very brutal in a lot of parts. But that note of a piece of kindness changing their mind, the guy who was, gosh, I can't remember, there was a movie made about it. about him. He's played by Sam Rockwell. What about the big KKK leader who became like a civil rights leader?

He had a, I forget his specifics, but it was a similar story where someone showed him kindness and he changed. I think with a lot of people like this, some people get mad at stories like this at the implication that people who are that hateful, people are that dangerous and angry, can be turned by just kindness.

In most cases, it's like, no, they need to be dealt with a much more extreme ways. but there are, you know, random cases of people just like a switch flips one day recognizing their place. So no, it's an interesting thing to frame like this brutal horror story around, you know? Yeah, well, I mean, the horror is,

I don't think that we've gotten to the crux, crux of what has happened yet, but I mean, everything is, it's just so extremely, everything that's happening, you said it's brutal so far, it's all very just true. I mean, like the amount of people, so you should grow up I mean you probably relate to this in a way of growing up in like a more predominantly white southern area what do you mean by that no i'm a more a more predominantly white area you have i have tons of people who all of this racism shit is based completely in fear all of these people are afraid they're afraid for the future they're faith for themselves and they're afraid of anything that's like different and i think it causes all this hatred and evilness to fucking build up and rile up but all these people it's pretty much just generations of people telling them that and it's uh it's a cold like mentality And then, I mean, I've met a lot of people that have never interacted with, or not that I've met a lot of people, but I've known a lot of people that have like never made that connection to actually talk with anybody else that's outside of this comfort zone.

And it's created this extremely toxic mentality that if you've never breached out and actually talk to these people, you just assume that they're all the things that your parents or the people have around you, your friends, all the people that are around you say they are. And I think you get into that trap. So sometimes I do believe that an act of kindness can open your eyes. of like, oh shit, I think that you, I don't think that that's as ridiculous as, you know, I think as some people think. But I do think that like at the end of the day, it's complete mental delusion and it's like a complete poison of the mind. And a lot of times, too, people, you're just so far gone, you know?

But yeah, so far, I mean, it's just been a thing where it's, it makes, it makes total sense, especially people being like repressed, you made to feel like you're basically a fucking animal and that the only way to actually be a human being is to follow this exact way, line of thinking and everything else is stupid. Of course you're going to have people that are put into those positions and everything. It's a horrible,

horrible, real thing that happens all the fucking time. I think, so growing up, I never really saw that much, like prejudice and stuff like that. I think mostly just because all my friends, like people we knew growing up were all church-related. That's like where everyone came from.

And, you know, racism, all that's pretty far removed from Christian teachings and things like that, at least legitimate ones. We'd always have missionaries from around the world come in and talk all the time. So I didn't see a lot of it, but until I got to, like, high school and met people kind of outside my immediate purview, or I remember, like, we would have, like, bus ministries where we'd go to areas and we would help people out and, you know, meet more of the community then. Yeah, which I, well, I just interject, I do feel like that's a rare thing. I think especially in a religious aspect, I think a lot of people are even more judgmental in things, especially when it comes down to a thing that's so strictly like my worldview has to be this way. Because I would say, I would argue that a lot of the churches that I went to and things that even pushed me away from the church and stuff like that was the limited minds that came from it. And the things of just being like, well, if you don't agree with me, you're fucking wrong. I hate you.

So I think that like, not to say once again, that's not everybody. I'm not saying that's you. but I do think that like people have probably had. And I think that's another reason why a lot of people get pushed away from those things too is because it's not always welcoming. It's just where you are. Yeah. And I think it's just around who you're surrounding yourself with.

And I do think naturally, I think human beings are just extremely fucking nasty, I think, you know. It would, um, I think because I, I certainly know what you mean. You know, I talk to people all the time. And there were like,

I say that like I never interacted with it. I would see it. I would hear stories. stories about it and stuff like that. I'm just saying like my friends and people I was around just wasn't something we were grown and we were raised in the opposite of that to reject that and things like that. But sure, it was around. It was in other communities and stuff like that. You know, all Christianity is at the end of the day is Jesus loves us all so much. He died for us and some people will take that to a sense of betterment, sense of entitlement with

things and let it run rampant. But when I do, did see it because you're going back talking about, you know, predominantly, but like way more wide areas and stuff like that. The only time you would, I would normally see it was in people who felt they were slided by something. Right. Either like, you know, their life, like, you know, low, you know, they weren't making the money they wanted to or there was something they they couldn't get or like they lost their job or something like that. For me, my, for my family, people of my family was people being like, oh, ex-person took work from me. Yes.

Like that kind of thing. It would be just legitimately that. And then that would be forever. Yes. Yeah, it would be this, that I was slighted by this reason or I can't get a job because of this person or I'm not making money because these people are taking our jobs and stuff like that. And it was always like, it was always stuff like that.

And it would be because that was the thing you could blame it on that you didn't have to confront, right? it was a thing out there, this nebulous target that is the reason for the things that are wrong in my life. Not something I can change. Not a complex series of things that happened or someone doing me wrong. That's the problem.

So that's what the issue is. It always just be from a point of fear to a sense, but also like determination to find a thing that's wrong other than, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, just lost sick in the head people. Well, that too. Yeah, there's also a lot of that.

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when you head to the link in the description at Warbyparker.com slash creepcast. That's right, 20% off any additional prescription pairs. Again, when you get a pair at Warbyparker.com slash creepcast. That's W-A-R-B-Y-Parker.com slash creepcast at the link in the description. Thank you to Warby Parker for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description, and we are now back to the episode. Only one set of letters came close to rattling me. I always threw them away with the rest, but they had a habit of getting stuck in my thoughts for days afterwards.

There were mean-spirited things that turned up in the strange. places. Found them in my fridge, in my shoes, in gym lockers. I saw them as nothing more than attempts to scare, bully me into silence. Most of them were simple. A few lines here and there. It hurt when you shot me. I confided in you. Something else found me in those woods. That's kind of interesting. Interesting. I thought he was also dead. Yeah. Well, that's the, I think that was the implication. Oh, so you're saying that, so these are like letters, quote, unquote, from the grave pretty much. Yes.

This is either someone pretending to be the kid he shot to mess with him because he is like an anti... Yeah. Yeah, like a reformed... Like white supremacist or he did live and the members of his group wanted him to think he was dead. They quote, like hit...

Swipped under the rug, but what is they even mean? Yeah. Yeah. So he could be alive. But I think someone's probably trying to... pretending to be him. Or there's a supernatural element. I don't know. But I figured they were set attempts at intimidation. But if whoever was making them had any real guts,

they would have reported the crime for what it was. But that was as likely to incriminate them as it would me. Then, a few months ago, one of the letters turned up in my car and it shook me to my core. Reading the words within, felt like I was out in those woods again. My heart racing and my stomach churning as I looked down at Abner's corpse. I was hard as a rock when I cut you.

Oh, gosh. That's all there was on the page, but that's all I needed to see because I never told anyone what I felt pressing down on my torso when Abner cut me. Oh, geez, oh my gosh. He never mentioned it in his letter either.

The only people on this entire planet who knew that he had an erection was him and me. Three days later, I got another letter. This one was inside the pillow on my bed. God knows how it gets. gotten there. But by this point, I felt as if my grip on reality was weakening. I hadn't been into work for weeks. I hadn't seen any friends or family. When I read the final letter, I think I already knew what it wanted long before I read the words. Eden waits. Interesting.

That's like a really fun catalyst of getting the character back to go back and see what's up. Yeah. It's like almost like a person that knows your deepest secret and somebody who's like torturing you with it is giving you physical letters that now it's, it's, it's impossible to away from? It has to be this person. So now it's like, now it makes you think that almost our main character is going to go back and finish the job. Kill him, yeah. I would assume so. Or whoever's doing that, go back and

snuff them out too, potentially. It could be. It could also be like because he talks about he still has that anger, that rage, even though it's not directed at them, like he still feels that hatred and maybe carries it out on whoever this person is and stuff. So, who knows? The side of Eden's Gates,

downtrodden and collapsing beneath the weight of heavy woodland air, made the breath catching my throat. In the 30 years since I'd last seen it, the forest had encroached on the abandoned grounds. Now the rotting cabins and algae-slic decks were hidden in shadows. In places, the buildings seemed to grow out of the woodland. Their floors collapsing into the undergrowth the sonarled roots explored and reclaimed the foundations. Doors left a jar offered glimpses of rooms crowded with ferns as tall as me. Their dripping fauns hiding faded posters with words like, great replacement and skull shapes explained, barely visible in the dark.

My feet navigated a lone floor that had half buried the long-forgotten remnants of camp life, including old VHS tapes of revisionist documentaries and rucksacks full of moldering clothes. In one cabin, there was even a flag still pinned by one corner to the wall. It looked like it had been used to put out of fire. Pressing deeper, I found a cabin with a half-chard timber frame. dozens of jagged logs, planks, and even a few rusted iron beams have been jammed between the door and the wooden deck. Try as I might, I couldn't budge them, and the windows were thick with mud and filth. I never saw what lay inside, but I did note the gaping hole in the roof along with splintered planks and jutted outwards.

Stranger still, when I went down by the lake, I found two pickup trucks parked up beneath the canopy. Both had festered in the dank forest air. rubber on the tires flaking and frail and one the airbag had deployed but there was no sign of damage to the exterior and the other the door had been left open and abetted in the passenger seat dash as a single human tooth so so far how long has it been between when he was last there and now

because this this almost makes you think that the fucking spirit of that kid came back and rete havoc on the fucking camp it could be could also be like the camp was found out at some point and everyone had to like well see i was like okay well maybe is that someone came up and they like fucking firebom the place but i don't know the tooth in the dashboard makes it seem like oh someone was like bash the fucking head well the combination of the airbag makes me think that it was a wreck oh i guess they didn't say i just thought they were both parked uh found stranger parked up beneath the canopy both had festered i thought it was he hit him so fucking hard there oh

the airbag went off i see what you're saying that's right someone someone got like i see what you're saying yeah probably probably since it's right i thought he was he's not so i'm I don't know. So maybe it was the kid. Maybe it was the ghost of the kid or something like that going through there. I didn't linger long in the camp. Which I have to say, by the way, this has got to be one of the most unique setups, like premises we've seen to a horror story like this.

I think I would say unique, definitely. I think that, like, the, it's very hard. It's very hard making a character where it's like, by the way, I'm a disgruntled youth who got turned into a white supremacist. and that's your man, that's your protagonist. I think it's hard to dance that line while making them somebody we're like, oh, I'm kind of curious to hear what they're about.

Yeah. I want to hear what they have to say. I mean, obviously, there's the note of like they are reformed now, but even the description earlier on, there was, I think, a successful, sympathetic may not be the right word, an attempt to make you understand why someone so desperate became violent in this situation.

They were indoctrinated into it and stuff like that. I was to say since they are reformed, as it said, it must have been some amount of time between. Yeah, well, it says that he's on news stations and he's doing interviews and stuff like that charity, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so it's had to be years and years. It had to be years. Yeah. So now after 20 years, he's getting these notes that's from Abner?

Yes. That's, yeah. I mean, that's pretty fucking crazy. Well, so he said he was 14 when he went. Yeah, he was 14 when he went. So now he's like 34. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's been a while. Oh, so earlier when I saw, sorry, I missed her earlier. Earlier, I was like, oh, maybe he's going there to snuff him out. He's probably going there to be like, well, one, what is going on. What a crazy mystery. But then also, if this guy did survive, I should probably fucking talk to him. Or if someone knows. True.

Yeah. If Abner lived then and told someone and they know, I need to figure this out. Before it comes out that he, who is a famous public figure now for being a reformed white supremacist, it's like, hey, do you know this guy killed a kid? Well, that's what I'm wondering is, uh, that's what I'm wondering is you're all take so far on is it a selfish reason he's going back there to like clear his name or is it something where it's selfless that's what i guess that's what i'm curious with so far what you've heard i think more than anything gets searching curiosity yeah because so far if it's if it is

this route where it's like well i'm a big figure now i've been reformed but people don't know my dark secret that to me that's like immediately selfish like that's not like that it's not like a thing if I should go back and I need to like explain myself or I need to like let people know or help that's kind of what I was inferring to when I pointed out how the story keeps saying like I have my dad's anger I still got a means it's like making excuses and kind of way yeah yeah yeah okay all right I didn't linger long in the camp cursory examination my old cabin revealed nothing that caught my attention once I realized there were no real answers for me there set out for the woods I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid as I took my first steps into the trees but

I couldn't have told you why, only the feeling of eyes on my back. I also want to point out not to keep derailing, but Christian Wallace is such an expert at giving you just enough detail in moments to make the scene grisly and, like, work, like the kid falling down the hill and then Abner and all that, and also knowing when to skirt on detail to keep the pace moving. Yeah, I was going to say, I found that even with like, even just some of the explicit, like, boner talk, all that stuff.

I feel like that could have gone, like, extremely, gratuitous, but it kept it right where it needed to be to still be shocking, but not like delve into it too much. Yeah, yeah. Revealing in the best way. Yeah, yeah. He, uh, he paces his stories very well. Yeah, I think I kept at it because I wanted something bad to happen. I'd skirted justice for quite a long time. Sure, most nights I told myself I'd probably just imagine the whole thing, but so what? If I hadn't shot him, I would have, could have. Does it make that big a difference? I had it in me to kill. And my were so great that I don't think the distinction between what had or had not

happened in those woods even mattered anymore. Sure, what he did to me was wrong, but I excused a lifetime of screw-ups by saying I was just a kid. Difference was, I'd had time to grow and learn, while Abner had been robbed of that chance.

I tried so hard to atone, but hurting him was the one thing I'd yet to face up to. Okay, so that points to a bit more of his selfless. He's coming here for penance almost, most in this description. I don't see even according to him. I was actually going to say that that was such a muddy description of

because it was it was it felt like it felt like it was like leaning selfless and it was kind of selfish and it was leaning. So you're thinking maybe that he's just telling himself this. I think that he doesn't know what to expect yet. I think that at the same time it's a thing of like, you know, I was just a kid. I've told myself this, but I've had to, I think that he is ridden with guilt, but I think that he does not know what his plan is yet going there. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. I was scared of what I might find, but at least I didn't have to worry about getting lost. The ground sloped upwards for a few miles before the hill broke and went down at a sharp incline. All I had to do was find the crest and fall at one direction or the other. 50-50, I'd get it right the first time, and I had an instinct that there's anything I needed to see. Stand out to me. I don't know how familiar you might be with the woods, by the way.

If you are, you already know just how quickly the horizon fades to darkness as it's lost to the ever-growing ranks of standing, leaning, and fallen trees. It's important you understand that, though, the darkness of it. It's like daytime's a bubble that only follows you. Everything farther than 20 or so feet away is in a perpetual dusk. A little farther than that, and it's as dark as any night. When I finally reached the top of the hill and looked down, I saw a mountainside disappearing into a wooded trench where the sun made little progress.

It was like finding the border between day and night. I had this strange realization that there must be places down amongst those trees where the sun might not have reached for thousands of years, but did not have to walk far along the hilltop before I found the shoe. The red of its fabric laces was too bright for those woods. It lay just a dozen or so feet down the embankment like bait in a trap. God, did I hurry to take it? Why wouldn't I? In my memories of Abner lying dead, his left leg bent backwards and reached all the way around at the top of his head like a scorpion. until dangling off the toe was a single shoe with red laces. Decades later, I was convinced I was

looking at that very shoe. I rushed down the steep hill with great speed. My feet sinking into the soft and lobeing woodland floor like I was descending to snowy bank. Each step covered three or so feet as I took these great loping strides aided by gravity. When I slowed to grab the shoe, something beneath the leaves caught my foot and I was sent careening towards the ground. I built up speed so quickly that my descent was closer to freefall than a roll. The world became a dizzy swirl of canopy and dirt that only stopped when something hit me in the gut like a car hitting a wall. The world continued to spin around me. That was just my inner ear failing to catch up in reality.

I've been stopped by a tree, and I lay half-wrapped around it like a t-shirt on a clothesline. When I tried to breathe, something inside my chest grated and hurt so bad I was. worried I might die. Cranning my neck and looking back up the hill, I saw an incline as steep as a cliff. Climbing back up would be no more possible than flying. For some reason, during my fall, I grabbed a hold of the shoe and it was still clutched in one fist. I stuffed it in my bag and tried to take another deep breath to steady myself, but it was like someone had slid a knitting needle between my ribs. Pain was agonizing, and I could just about manage short, shallow breaths to keep my head from going light and dizzy.

But it wasn't like I could stay there. All those thoughts of sins and punishment gave way to the fear that I might die in those woods. The way down would be difficult, but I could just about manage a slow crawl if I was careful. I rolled onto my stomach, got to grips with the soft earth, and then began my descent.

But I was moving for only 10 minutes, and I felt something strange beneath the leaves. It was another shoe. At first, I thought it must be the other one to Abner's, but the size was all wrong. It was barely as big as my hand. Better fitted one of the younger campers than a teen like Abner, angry and hurt,

and tossed it to the side and kept going. But I soon found myself pulling up a pair of moldy boxers and a t-shirt, jacket, a sock, a scarf. I realized that the woodland floor was littered with scattered belongings of what must have been dozens of people. That was just the beginning. Before long the leaves gave way and I was crawling over a carpet of old and discarded belongings. At times there were so many that I imagined myself emerging out of the sea and mounting a coastline made of backpacks and clothes.

There were tents, nets, gun bags, sleeping bags, coolers that had been smashed open. They couldn't all have come from Eden. They'd been tossed over the top of the hill. I was hours away from the nearest road. It wasn't like someone could have driven a dump truck up to the hill in the hill. emptied it. The more I tried to think of some rational explanation, the more the scale of the discarded old camping gear frightened me. I had no choice but to carry on downwards, but it was hard to swallow the growing sense that I was stumbling headfirst into a terrible forgotten place, and then I found it,

the uprooted tree. I felt like I just locked eyes with something terrible, like I'd gone to the fridge in the middle of the night and seen a face staring at me from the darkness beyond an open window. I couldn't even bring myself to breathe. Its gnarled and savage roots resembled a hand that clutched the darkness at the center of its naughty hollow. In all my wildest imaginings, I could not have fathom that I would find the tree exactly as I'd remembered it.

A specter plucked right from the nightmares that had plagued me every single day since I pulled the trigger. Once, when I was younger. I found an abandoned bears did, hunting with my father. It was just a hole in the side of an embankment. Its entrance littered with a scattering of small bones. The air around it stank of blood and meat after it had been shit out by an apex predator.

Dad told me it was abandoned, but he still hurried me away with whispered gestures that let me know we weren't completely safe. The tree felt like that bears did. They were both little things, but to the old instincts that lurk inside all living things, they were as big as the Grand Canyon. enormous craters in reality condensed into tiny spaces like a black hole.

I cannot escape its gravity, and without thinking, I moved towards it, filled with the desperate urge to prove my nightmares wrong, to grip the smooth roots and find nothing but wooden dirt. When I reached it, I knelt on an old plastic tent like they were pews, and reached towards the hollow. I expected my fingers to sink into old mud gripped tight by long dead roots. Instead, I felt skin. It was cold and soft.

Snatched my hand away and disgust and tear, stumbling backwards and crying out. And Abner came into light. Shaved head, pale eyes. The gaunt and angry frame of a teenage boy. One leg still bent agonizingly over the back of his head, an elbow where a neck should be. A mangled mess of joints and limbs that bent in ways they should not bend.

the more of him that emerged the less his body made sense. Instead of a torso, there was only bruised flesh the color of a sunset. A canvas of skin stretched thin by fractured bones that moved for the sound like creaking floorboards. His face was expressionless and tilted to the side as he gazed at me with pale and cloudy eyes. Nothing within those glassy orbs seemed to register my existence. Instead, when he finally recognized me, I think it was with a little. some deeper, stranger instinct. Andrew?

I rolled backwards and fled, but a broken rib can't be magiced away with adrenaline. I ran as far as I could before the magic... I ran as far as I could before the pain lanced through me and I hunched over into a three-limbed crawl that quickly failed and sent me sprawling to the ground. When I turned back, the uprooted tree was a good fifty feet away. Andrew. He was looking up at me from within an old hiking shoe. A single cataract riddled eye that searched blindly for my face.

I screamed at the impossibility and launched myself into a loping crawl, but I couldn't see where I was going and stumbled headfirst into a tree. Crack of my skull was not loud, but it shot through me as a sudden overwhelming nausea. My limbs turned to jelly and I collapsed to the floor. I tried vomiting, but only a mouthful of thin acid came up, swimming briefly over my tongue before trickling down my cheek. Something in the woods found me. I opened my eyes and rolled over.

Abner was there. An ameble mass of knotted limbs with a shaved head for a nucleus. A nightmare bereft of all color. He must have been 30 feet across. The dozens of hands and feet that emerged and disappeared into his body defied easy categorization.

Thumbs on thumbs and toes on toes, heels with palms and hands with long canine arches. It felt like I was trying to make sense of something you'd find fermenting in an old specimen jar, squinting through thick glass at strange and veining protrusions. Only Abner was not contained safely behind glass, but instead floated freely above me. His knuckled limbs waving gently like a girl's hair in the pool. A hand reached out towards me, but I cannot contain my tear and shrieked as it came closer.

In a mad scrabble, I began to drag myself backwards in a desperate attempt to escape the reach of a hand with a fractal's worth of digits. but Abner was in no hurry and as I pulled myself the 20 or so feet to the foot of the hill his arm kept moving forward like wool pulled from a ball of yarn it kept pace even as I reached the start of the slope and tried to kick my way up it but I could get no purchase

and managed only to climb a few feet before falling to the ground when this brought me closer to Abner's probing fingers I sobbed and thrashed even harder at the loosely packed dirt and trash of the woodland floor but that only made things worse, and I only made it another foot up the hill before I fell once more back towards the ground. This time, Abner's hand was so close I could smell him.

Fungal growths and rotting meat, the dusty odor you ignore after opening an urn. The smell sent lightning, coursing through my spine and limbs, and I was overcome by the kind of terror that blots out conscious thought. I would have crawled beneath the treads of a moving tank or slid headfirst into a wood shipper if it meant escaping this nightmare. It is so old, Andrew. Abner's voice paralyzed me.

Have you ever seen educational videos on drowning? It's not splashing you're taught to look out for. People who are drowning are so close to death, their nervous system nearly shuts down and they freeze in terror. Limbs locked. Head held up high. Legs strayed and toes probing for the ground. Anything to avoid the rising water that's close to pouring down their open lips. Felt it flow over my toes, my feet, my ankle.

my legs, a blanket of heavy black that flowed out of the spaces between leaves and dirt below me, summoned by the Dredon Abner's voice. It was born on the Great Lakes of America filled with blood, and its tribe worship which swam in those waters. If anything of its humanity remains, it is the humanity that we could never recognize. Its idea of mercy is a flint axe to the base of an infant skull. The only love it knows was forced and screaming in the dirt of a Neolithic breeding, The only humor recognizes the shrubbery of a crowd that watches flayed victims twitch in

open air. I swear, I did not just hear his words, but I felt them. Their impact made it hard to breathe, and I felt like a man plunged into ice water. My gas were short and shallow and tinged with the terrifying knowledge that I would soon die. Yours was the only soul I could find while swimming, lost in the dark. A beacon of guilt. A thread that connects us. Whatever found me won't let me go.

It binds us to our old things. The detritus that makes out this woodland floor is a sea of fetishes used to keep its victims in the dark. And mine. And you have mine. I can sense it. The shoe. Take it out of these woods. Put it in the sun and free me.

The darkness filled my throat. And the last thing I remember is my consciousness. faded was a realization that Abner did not look angry, but instead heartbroken, frightened. I need your help. Interesting. It seems like almost like he has to like bring it out just so people can see

to actually be freed or something. Yeah, so it's a creature that he says goes back to when the tribes worship the thing in the water, but it's a creature that only knows hate. Only knows like even, which is fitting given the, you know, setting beforehand.

But, like, its idea of mercy is killing a child. Its idea of laughter is people, you know, screaming and stuff. It's the worst parts of humanity, right? And it's keeping him alive. It's part of the system refuses to let it go. But if you can take this piece of him, this like... It's like a god to that. The White's supposed to camp with all the things they were doing,

the hunt and, you know, everything else. Well, it's kind of like, you know, almost makes me think of blood meridian a little bit where the concept with the judge is like he could be... There's a line where the kid says, I could imagine him amongst the crusades Like wherever the bluest place on the earth was That's where this thing is right And it's kind of like this is a creature

That thrives on hate in this area It's gonna go to the place where hate was stewed upon So and now it has a hold of this person And the only way that you can release it Is to remove the totem of that person that lets it keep Because you know Abner's body's long gone Like the long decayed carried off by animals But that shoe's still there

So if a piece of him leaves the woods and he's released basically, which is also fitting because our protagonist has had guilt over Abner all these years, and it's like here he can save him. Like obviously he can't make everything better. He can free him. He can free him, yeah.

When I came to, I was lying in an old bed too small for me. My feet dangling over the bottom. Overhead lay the ceiling of a once familiar cabin. The place I'd once slept as a teenage camper, now turned to rot and ruin. Fallen beams in a patchwork roof that led the rain strike my face in a gentle drizzle. Beer propped me up quickly,

then pain nearly put me on my back again. Wincing, I lifted my damp clothing and saw a rainbow of bruises sprawling across the left side of my abdomen. Taking it slowly, I pushed myself to my feet and glanced at the crumbling ruins of what was once the Othala cabin where the boys aged 13 to 16 bunked.

It was raining, great rivulets of water poured down the walls and cascaded through the open air. Outside, the sun was setting, and what little light made it into the camp's clearing was tinted pink and yellow. I limped to the nearest window and looked through an empty pane. In the fading light, the camp was a crowd of squat buildings lurking amongst the young growth of a healing forest, its pathways throttled by saplings and ferns. It's in my hidden porches and walls furry with moss. My head was a mess, but I distinctly remember falling and decided I must have hit my head.

in the woods. Abner and the rest was just a dream, surely. But then who had rescued me after the fall? It's going in hard. I thought I could see someone moving around out there. Is that them? I cried out. Sat groan.

Some part of me cringed at the suddenness of the sound. My instincts told me to lay low, crouch, hide. But I ignored them and cried out again. It's time louder. Clear. Hello? hand grabbed my ankle. A desperate figure pulled themselves out from beneath the nearby bed and gazed upwards at me. They had no eyes or jaw, but the wounds that had been covered with smooth

pink skin. Lips led to teeth led to palate and esophagus. Every breath seemed to leave them gagging on spittle and blood. This was not Abner, but like him they were pale with a shaved head. Coiling, I moved from the window and let some of the fading sunlight enter the cabin. and where the light had hit the poor wretched skin, their flesh simply ceased to exist like a shadow. It must have hurt because they cried out in pain and snatched their hand away. And I realized that with fingers so small,

they couldn't have been older than 13. That must be the boxers they found out there. Yeah. I think it's going to be, we're going to see a collection of like all the kids that had been murdered. A bunch have died there. Yeah. They were treated,

but I soon discovered escape wouldn't be so easy. In the mere moments that had passed, the camp had already fallen further into dark. darkness, and there were more figures moving in the shadows, limping, drooling, crying, sobbing, naked, mutilated boys with scraggly matted hair and star figures, dozens of them, hauling themselves out of the dark and stumbling blindly. A few had arms outstretched, looking for something in particular, but most shuffled, heads down turned, none of them were whole, missing arms, fingers, God, one even had a hole

going right through his chest. All of them were in pain. With every second of the past, the camp came alive and surrounded me with a waking nightmare. When two of the figures bumped into each other, their nature immediately changed. The sad whimpering of two lost souls was replaced with guttural rage

as both erupted into violence. I've been in my fair share of fights, and I've never seen anything like that. Fist fights are rarely mortal affairs. You want to kill someone, you stab or shoot them. You don't try to close. Flavber them to death with the ball of your palm.

You don't use bitten nails to fish hook a hole right through their cheek. You don't tear their jugular with your few remaining teeth. It didn't happen just once either. Each time two or more of those figures bumped into each other, the violence appeared like a switch getting flaked. But the worst part was that once the fight was over and the loser had stopped thrashing violently on the ground, they would both just get back up. Injuries dripping black fluid, but quickly sealing with new skin.

I saw one boy smash another's head in with a rock, and when his victim sat upright, he had nothing left of his skull above the nose. His teeth chattered briefly, and then he stood up, kept walking. My only hope was the light. Each time one of those things stood in the sun, they disappeared. It was as if they were made of shadow, only able to exist as long as they were not exposed to direct light. It was a risk, but I had to hope.

hope it wasn't just the sun they feared. I had a flashlight in my pocket, and I grabbed it, but as soon as my handmaid contact, something outside squealed like a stuck pig. The instant I heard it, it was like being plunged into cold water. The atmosphere in the bunk and camp outside immediately changed, and I turned to see that the army of dark figures now stared at me. Panicked and afraid, I fumbled briefly before turning on the light and pivoted just in time to catch something leaping at me from beneath the dark.

They faded to nothing in the light. But then something else in the periphery moved, and when I turned towards them, the previous attacker returned to existence. I was forced to flick the light desperately from one to the other just to keep the two at bay. Terrified, I tried to calm myself and think of some way to escape,

but there was no time. From behind, there came the sound of tinking glass and hands so cold they left freezer burn on my skin, dragged me through the open window. I screamed, but did not let the flashlight go. As I was thrown to the floor, I saw a nightmarish mob surround me. They laughed and sneered as a knee pushed me into the sod and mud. I felt it then.

Same fear I had decades before. The eyes staring down at me. This was a familiar violence. Then there came another nails on chalkboard shriek. The kind of gut-wrenching whale that had to belong to a monster. My attackers reacted like sullen, schoolboys. Clinched teeth and flared nostrils suddenly replaced with downturned eyes and sniffling noses. Parted reluctantly and I saw it.

He crawled towards me, a small figure, lithe, no more than five feet tall, dense muscle in a pot belly, a mane of hair that nearly touched the ground. He was the color of oil, no detail except a silhouette, figure made of shadow. He grunted and sniffed the air like a dog. He smelled of copper and violence. His presence was as heavy as dark matter. I swear, the only other things like him are swirling around super colliders in Switzerland. When he touched me, I saw the world. The real world, under which ours is only a painted image.

An ocean with no bottom. An ecosystem with no ceiling. Only ever-growing predators. Some large enough to engulf stars. I learned some of his memories. He learned some of mine. I felt the vague imprint of wisdom earned over a hundred thousand years, foul sorcery that might make a kind of twisted sense to a modern scientist.

But for me to try and grasp any of it, even some of it, and we feel like I was at risk of dislocating something in my mind. Some join or hinge that, once loose, can never be popped back into place. I shied away from it. When I opened my eyes, that monster's hand was touching the place where my eye used to be. I was smiling, a vile sight, rich with cruelty and malice, the grin of a murderer dying peacefully in old age. Smile spoke to me. It told me that the modern world had been of no interest to this forgotten creature, or so it had thought. But as it scraped Abner's mind of every memory he had,

it learned of Eden, and found echoes of the world it had once been fond of. It had been so long since it had so many people to play with. Then I noticed something I had him before. The thing only had one eye. I knew what Abner had done to me, and it knew what I had done to Abner. Wren widened and a hand made out of darkness between atoms, clamped around my head.

What do you think this is the, like... I think this is the entity. Yeah, yeah. The visual representation, though, like, what do you think this is like the manifestation of? Well, it talks about being five foot tall With the big Like has a pop belly and stuff like that

Imagine being like the embodiment of like wrath Perhaps or greed or something like that Pop belly isn't like it's always full of these things Yeah, full of Because it says that right Stuff's belly or something like that I imagine it being Like

Have you ever seen like old demonic depictions Like really old ones where Like the medieval ones Yeah where it's it's I mean there's some of them will look animalistic. Yeah, some of them would look animalistic, but other times it would just look like a guy,

almost like how we would describe a dwarf or something like that, running around, cause mischief. It almost sounds like one of those. Like I can imagine this is the embodiment of wrath. Interesting. Because it shows him like the true world, and that is a world of nothing but predators. Things so big you couldn't possibly imagine.

It's kill or be killed, so you better kill. Once again, the same kind of mentality that the camp was instilling. Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's like this is that ancient base, like primordial emotion that over millennia has transferred into a white supremacist camp that teaches kids to fight. Like this was the apple in the Garden of Eden, which, ha ha, Eden. The apple in the Garden of Eden that led to all the sin we know today. This is the apple for anger, effectively.

When I awoke, it was in my car. Morning had broken. My chest was painted with the apple. light. I wasted no time in trying to remember what was or wasn't real. I had somehow traveled halfway down the trail, a good two days hike, and was back near the road. Escape was in sight, and I took it. I drove so fast I nearly came off the dirt road on more than one occasion. Kept going, barreling down the mountain until some part of me remembered the broken rib. At some point, the pneumonia got the better of me. I must have passed out and the car rolled to a stop. The park

who found me said I had a hell of a fever and it put me in the hospital for the next few weeks. Spent my time rambling at doctors about a darkness so heavy, could drown the sun like an ocean drowns a candle. It's been about a year since then. Not a day's gone by I haven't thought about Abner or the thing that holds him captive, that smile. Sometimes I still see it, leering at me from the dark spaces, beneath the tablecloth at a busy restaurant, dumpster in an alley.

One time a homeless man asked for change and a single eye stared out at me from his open mouth. It's taunting me. Took Abner's shoe and it intends to keep him. It thinks it knows me well enough that I won't go back to help him and the others. That mountain of trash at the foot of the hill, how long has it been up there collecting hikers and campers? Anyone unlucky enough to stumble into the dark places of Appalachia where the sun is not shown for millennia? I know why it let me go. For Abner to have come so close to escape.

For him to know that he nearly got out and spent eternity wondering if I might one day return. That would amuse it. That's why it let me go. Thought that I might risk my own neck to help the boy cut out my eye. Couldn't fathom such a thing. Thinks it all scurry away like a rabbit freed from a trap. It's wrong. I suspect I won't have it so easy next time.

That thing is smart. Smart enough to have been born mortal, but still live half a million years later. Smart like evolution, like nature. Kind of thing that to be hard for a human to reckon with. I think there's a good chance I'll lose the next confrontation. Lose it badly. But I'm no slouch either. I've fought my share of hatred, and I've got my own plans for how to help the people stuck in Eden.

truck with a generator floodlights glow sticks quad bikes so expensive a can damn near drive up Everest homemade napalm enough to burn a mountain to the ground and I go back and bringing the light with me end of the story I like that into it's fun it feels like a story that's all and it feels like a person that is uh trying to come to terms with like uh I guess bringing into light to their evil past or like basically like literally burning out what was there yeah yeah I think that it comes down to the fact of like is he going to be able to convince himself to actually

reveal to people the truth of what happened? Yeah. Is what I'm wondering if it feels. What do you think? I think it's like he was in this like the darkness, the hatred and stuff like that metaphorically and then he rose out of it because of this evil action and then he went to shine a light

on it right? And now that location is physically grown up and dark and covered and now at the end of the story he will once again shine a light on it and by light he means fire and you know LEDs. I like the idea that these like all the campers

effectively become souls. It feels very Alan Wake to me. Like people who get possessed by these things mumbling around in the darkness just becoming these violent like echoes of what they were. And there's this thing just feeding on it that uses it for energy. And at the end of the story, he's resolved that he's going to go back and whatever happens to him.

He has to at least try. Right. I don't know. I like it. I like it a lot. It's a very hopeful story. I'm surprised though. There's still a part of it at the end where I'm like, he's talking about going, you know what, and I will go back there and do whatever. It's just a lot of open prom or empty promises at the moment. I don't know. Like what you haven't told anyone yet, the thing that you did, you know? It just about killing him. Yeah.

Maybe, maybe that's part of the implication that he has to own up to it. Mm. Out here before he can own up to it in there. Is this ending? an empty promise is what I'm asking. As then you think he won't do it? I don't even think that like the whole thing about like a five- A five-foot fucking pot-billied goblin or whatever being up there.

I don't know if I believe any of that's actually there as much as it being a thing that's like these manifestations of revisiting the demons of your past and stuff like that. Well, I think I think it's certainly representative of that. Yeah. I just think it's a thing of it feels odd that he's woken up. He's in this spot and now instead of like I guess unloading and unbearing that thing and getting help to reveal those things. It's a thing of, you know what, I will go there by myself and I will conquer it.

But it's just a thing. It's like the same thing when you hear a guy being like, you know what, no more drinking from here on out. Yeah. Or whatever. Versus addressing, which I could be misreading it. But it was just one thing that I was like, yeah. There's a bunch of stuff where it's like he talks about the hatred he inherited from his father

and still being angry and stuff like that. 100%. And then it's like, if I'm at this. point, um, like, well, now I'm atoning for it.

So maybe you are right at that he needs to confront something more base, something deeper that like he's not acknowledging. I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I hear all this stuff about there's napalm and all that shit. I'm like, do you think that's just gonna fuck?

I mean, if that's the case of napalm and all that stuff can do anything, I mean, I would just fucking punt that five foot tall. Well, it sounds like, like he talks about one of them, like they would come near him and he would shine a light and they

disappeared. I mean, it's, it's the, so hypothetically, if you made a truck look like a spaceship. With the lights coming off of it, you'd be relatively safe. Oh, I don't think he would kill it.

That's why I mean, like, he could try and fail. He could get killed when he goes up there, sure. But to him, that may be preferable than going the rest of his life, seeing Abner's face everywhere he goes. Yeah, I mean, the whole idea, too, of like literally bringing things to light. Take my shoe and bring it. To me, it just bring the evidence and show people where I'm at. Well, that's what I think he would go back to do.

I think he would go back to get the shoe. I think that's what I'm not necessarily. to kill this creature. No, no, no, I mean, I understand that's what it's insinuating. I'm just saying that, like, the key thing, though, that has never brought it, he's never brought his own story to light besides the, besides the story that fabricates it to where now he has, like, a charity and, you know, I'll look at me, I'm a reform person, look at me, but he still hasn't revealed the darkest part of his past, whatever.

It's just the, is the interesting part to me in that manifestation of going back and having those things actually manifest into, like, actual creatures that are like, you know, he's all curled up, and he's like has toes upon toes and fingers and all that kind of stuff. I just wonder how much of this ending is actually a positive versus it being a thing where it's like living in denial still.

I mean, I can see it especially with it's like you know he he feels good about himself for everything he did outside. I mean, as you should, you know, exposing, you know, coming from what you were. But then that little tick of the letters showing up being like,

hey, remember this. Hey, remember. this. Like, it's like everything's great, but in the back of his mind, there's this one thing that you can't recover from. I was read the, I read the letters after, after digesting it a bit, I feel like I read the letters as like the thoughts that pop up into your head or something. Yeah. It becomes things when you can be going your whole life and all of a sudden you think about

something that you're like, fuck. You know, like a thing that you kind of, you maybe regret you have or something that it just kind of simultaneously pops up and it's manifesting as like a letter in that regard. I will say too. I mean, first off, I like the story. I do think that I preferred the element when it was grounded. I like when stories take this element of making like literal manifestations of monsters from trauma and all that. I mean, like visually, very, very fun.

But I will say, I thought this was going to go more of like a pen pal or like a barrasca. I almost wanted it to be like a more of a real world kind of thing as well. That's a, I mean, that's just a subjective thought. But I'm just saying, like, I was curious to see how the white supremacist camp came back to be, you know, where they're still going there? Because immediately my mind went to like green room and stuff and the kind of horrors that like

that whole adventure was as well. If you haven't seen that movie, it's awesome. It's about like a skinhead bar that these punks play at. But it just, literally subjective. There's no critique to that thought. I'm just saying that like it would have been, I was curious to see if it would take that more

realistic approach versus leaning into a thing where you go back and now there's like manifestations of, you know, your past manifested. Well, it's kind of what it is with the ghost walking around everywhere. Oh, I mean, no, it is. I'm saying that I wish it wasn't. Oh, I see what you're saying. But once again, subjective.

That's just... I don't know. I thought the monster was kind of cool. They're cool. I'm just saying that it was... I was really drawn in at the beginning with the development of the character and all that. Yeah, the supernatural note does kind of come... It's not comparable to the beginning where it's just like all the white supremacist's stuff. and you could have kept it more grounded but I also kind of like the idea that there's a creature

that thrives on hate that's in the mountains and it's ancient and it gathers up people. I guess it could have been, you know what would have been a way to introduce it earlier, I think, is if that camp counselors or something like that had like, he just mentions a weird religion or something like that. I don't know. I'm always weirded.

I never know about that because I can never tell if it takes away from the white supremacy angle. Right. It almost, not that it gives an excuse to the white supremacy, but in a way, like, it feels like it's like, well, that's why. Well, it kind of makes it, if you were to do that, then it's kind of like, okay, are we still on earth? Are we in some, like, other weird supernatural timeline where wanky stuff's going on in?

I know what you mean by it. It can lessen the shot of the white supremacist's stuff. I think it's just you set up a white supremacist camp or in a fucking camp. Yeah. The idea of, like, people coming back and like, I mean, like the visuals of it being like dead campers, people that have been like torn away other dead, uh, uh, people that, like we're just the deers and those hunts and stuff like that manifesting and now they're like having to live forever in this thing is an interesting uh visual for the memory of something or like how

these things linger after the fact but i do think as a setup for like a white supremacist camp something more grounded like i said like a green room thing i was just curious is there something you could have stacked on top of that that you like you take the white supremacy angle and then you how do you keep elevating it to the point where it's like you don't shy away from it you fucking go hog wild with it, you know, which however that is, once again, these are open statements that don't mean anything, but I'm just mean like, you have an amazing set piece that's like, I'm bought in. I'm bought in that. I always say the opening was the strongest part of the story in my yeah. I mean, a guy being like, hey, I'm sending myself on the scary straight program. By the way,

I'm a fucking like Nazi. Yeah. And I'm sending my kid to do it with you. And I'm bought in on that idea. I want to be like, how do you keep elevating that? There's this other movie. Did we watch this Nick? There was this movie I watched called Marshmallow with the Kemp? With the Camp. Spoiler for anyone hasn't seen it, but it's basically a camp where it's like, oh, we're talking about the super, the superstition thing that had, or like a campfire story at a camp, right? And this camp is haunted. But it turns out they like, they elevate the, uh, the camp fire story being like, oh, it's actually the camp like doing test on kids. Oh. Or whatever. It's just kind of an interesting thing where it's like you expected to go into the supernatural realm of like a ghost story or like a Jason Voorhe's thing. But it ends up being something a little more grounded. Even, even. Even. though it is still fantastical. In my opinion, I was like really, when I was bought in, I was like, holy fuck, I'm really curious to see where they go. And when it went, when it went this direction where it was like, hey, I went and I visited the literal manifestations of my past. I was like, eh.

I understand that. But at the same time, had a great time with it. Yeah, great time. Incredibly well written as always. My reaction to is just from a standpoint of had a great time, just was excited for it to maybe veer a different way. But once again, Christian Wallace really, interesting creating characters in an environment that is so kind of dicey and tricky. Yeah. So a lot of problems. Yeah, he does a lot of those that are going to sound like these tumultuous situations and stuff like that. Also, Christian, your first story you post two Tales from the Crip being the, or Tales from the Creeps being, uh, the wise of purposes, uh, one is, it's definitely his most,

I would say, hot title. Like that would say like his like the one we're like, holy shit, what? Yeah. Uh, well, it's pretty fun. This was also his first story back in a while because he hadn't written in like nearly a year. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that was real. I thought this was one that was just like, oh, they just didn't want it. So I just been on the back burner. That's two months ago. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, that's cool. Yeah, because he's, I mean, obviously, he has a ton of stories.

And then there's one from a year ago called I inherited an old creationist museum. To my whore, some of the displays were genuine. That's a funny title. To my horse, some of them were genuine. He posted nine months ago. And then he was like, hey, I'm, uh, writing update and then he posted that story to no sleep got taken down and he posted details from the creeps. I see him. Um, and a bunch of people seem into it. Yeah, it was, uh, that was him coming

back from a hiatus. What's cool though. I mean, I think if anything, I'm glad that hopefully whatever inspired him to get back on the horse and keep riding. It's awesome. And once again, I mean, I love the premise. I think it's sick. And I think that, uh, it's awesome that's up tails in the creeps. I appreciate it. In all of his stories, like I saw some people with the dear one who would say stuff like, yeah, I wasn't that crazy about the concept, but man, he writes well. He's a phenomenal writer.

He's a fantastic writer. So I think we can certify this. Even if the topic, like, people aren't crazy about our direction, as far as writing goes, another Christian Wallace banger. I mean, I think it's,

it's just a funny headline. Like whenever we, whenever I was told it, whatever I was told about the story today, I was like, what? You know, like, I explored an abandoned white supremacist camp. My first thing was,

why? I thought it was going to be a guy walking through like, an empty KKK dinner or something. I'm like, what's the story to that? That's the power of like something. It's such a captivating title.

I was just like, why would you want to do that? You know? So, uh, I don't know. I had a lot of fun with it. And it was a lot of,

I, I could tell to you because I feel like, uh, just really engaged. A lot of fun. Just kind of. Just, just a fun story to talk about our reading,

you know, not we don't always get that. So it's fun that we kind of could go and actually discuss some shit during it. So that was a lot of fun. So, well, That's our story, and we're sticking to it. Thanks, Christian Wallace.

We appreciate you. If you listen to this show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any of the audio platforms or whatever you're fucking listening, I don't know. Give us a good rating there, please. That'd be great. Also, patrons, thank you so much for supporting this channel and all the stuff that we do.

And if you're interested in some more content or just even, you know, just to help the channel out, consider signing up. It does help us out a lot. You have to say, stay creeped. Oh, and until next time, guys, uh, don't be racist. Don't go to racist camps.

Racism bad. Hey, round of applause for racism being bad. Oh, you're tapping. Okay, I was like, he's not, you, my co-host, not applauding there was. See, I don't, I don't need to applaud because that's just understood and I don't need to put that out by anything. Well, I still, you know what's also understood. That's just, hey, it's what, hey, medium, rare steak taste tasty and fucking racism sucks giant cox and balls.

See, both of those things are once again understood to me, so I don't need to point that out. I think it is interesting how my co-host needs to keep pointing out how not racist he is. And let me say for the record that I do not think Christian Wallace wrote a racist story, unlike how my co-host addressed it at the beginning of this story. And multiple times throughout.

Not throughout, but at the beginning, I will say at the beginning, I did say, I had a little goof, a little gaffe, a little gaffe. The first Thursday, I didn't know what was going on.