CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "I Was an Urban Explorer. I Should Have Turned Back at the Basement Door" Creepypasta

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by Saint ZanderCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"-    • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep ...  ►"Personal Favourites"-    • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher...  ►"Written by me"-    • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creep...  ►"Long Stories"-    • Long Stories  FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter:   / creeps_mcpasta  ►Instagram:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Twitch:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Facebook:   / creepsmcpasta  CREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

I don't remember the first time I watched an urban exploration video. I don't think it started as a lightning bolt moment. It just sort of crept in, little by little, until it was the only thing I watched. Most kids around me were obsessed with gaming videos and things like prank channels. But me? I ended up on channels where people walked through empty malls and long-forgotten tunnels with water dripping down the walls and silence stretching for miles. It fascinated me.

These were places people had once depended on, places that held stories without ever telling them directly. I wondered what had happened to them. Why they had left, why no one had come back. Even at ten, I found comfort in those silences. Something about those forgotten corners of the world felt honest to me, raw, untouched by the polished garbage the rest of the internet churned out. While my classmates were trading memes and game clips, I was mapping out places I wanted to visit one day.

I dream about it at night, wondering endless concrete hallways, no sound but my own breath and the scuff of my shoes, flashlight beam jittering across crack tile. I wanted to be there more than anywhere else. I didn't wait long to try it for myself. There was a gas station just off the interstate, a place that had shut down five or six years earlier after a truck slammed through its front windows. My friend Josh dared me to go there after school one day. I told him I'd already planned to.

That was a lie, but it worked. We brought our bikes and ditched them behind the dumpsters. The building looked small behind the road. road, but up close it stretched deep. The windows were covered in faded boards and someone had spray painted something unreadable in green across the siding. We stepped behind the counter and found the freezer still half open. Inside were candy bars that had sagged into themselves. The labels were faded, their insides bloated. Being in one of these places felt amazing, more so than I'd ever imagined.

It felt like I was stepping into a memory I was never supposed to be a part of. It was one thing to walk through a place and wonder who used to be there. It was another to be a piece of them. I remember Josh making a joke, something stupid about ghosts, but I wasn't really listening to what he had to say.

And that was the moment it clicked. I wasn't just breaking into place. I was doing the closest thing to time travelling as possible, stepping sideways into someone else's story. We left after that, but I came back alone a few times. Never told Josh, I didn't need his or anyone's company. A couple years later, I'd find Grace and Vance. His videos were really simple. He'd start with a quiet drone shot over a deserted property.

then ease into narration. It felt more like a documentary than a vlog. I'd never seen him try to do that whole ghost story cliche that most content creators seem to try nowadays. His camera did the talking. I found his channel late one night while watching a video about an abandoned power station in the Balkans. YouTube autoplay kicked in

and landed me on Grayson's tour of a sunken hotel off the coast of Italy. The whole thing was underwater at High Tide, and he'd gone at dusk, wading through flooded hallways with his camera above the waterline, narrating it like it was a love letter. I binged watch his entire catalogue that week. He explored old prisons in Iceland, war bunkers in Belgium, collapsed schools in the deserts of Chile. He never acted like he was braver than anyone else.

He moved through every place. with respect. I wanted to do that too, wanted to be that. I started practicing with a phone camera in empty parking garages, trying to mimic his pacing. I studied his videos,

replayed them over and over, tried to figure out what he looked for. I followed every platform he posted on, commented on everything, hoping one day he'd notice. I didn't even feel like a fan of his if I'm being honest. He felt more of a teacher to me,

guiding me to a future I was destined to reach. It was a Tuesday night, if I remember correctly. I should have been working on a lab right-up for chemistry, but I'd already convinced myself it could wait. I had my phone propped against a glass of water on my desk, headphones in, my lamp, the only thing keeping the room from going black. I was scrolling through video suggestions,

in that half-focused trance I always seemed to fall into. That was when I saw it. Grayson Vance abandoned hospital. As for usual, a simple title and thumbnail. Grayson's voice came on almost immediately. Here we started the same way, with a brief intro, a few quiet cuts of him walking the perimeter, showing the outside, before slipping.

inside. I felt my chest tighten with excitement as I realized I recognized that place. I knew those gates, the vines climbing the outer brick wall, the sign half swallowed by overgrowth. I paused the video, dragged the time bar back and looked again. Then I opened a tab and searched for images of old Florence Hill Hospital. It matched? My mom would always drive past it when I was younger. The place had been locked up for decades, boarded tight and fenced off, though rumours always floated around about kids getting in through a loose fence. Mo said it was used as a psych ward.

Some claimed it was a treatment centre for violent offenders. But regardless, Grayson was inside. He moved through it slowly, panning across door. hallways and peeling walls. The audio picked up the creak of his boots on the tile, the quiet drip of water hitting metal somewhere in the distance. I couldn't believe it. He was only 30 minutes from where I lived.

Grayson reached the hallway. One of the walls had collapsed inward, but he edged around it, ducking under rebar and drywall to step into a room that looked like an old kitchen or freezer storage. A row of broken industrial shelves leaned against the wall. Behind them, half hidden by a stack of topple boxes, with something metallic embedded in the floor. He adjusted the focus, stepped closer and knelt beside it. A hatch bolted down on one side, though the rust made it impossible to tell if it was still

sealed properly. The camera angle dipped as he brushed dirt away. with his sleeve. Then his voice came through again. What do we have here? He said. Huh. Could be some runoff tunnel or a different section of the hospital.

He tapped it once with a knuckle. Tell you what, guys. If this video hits a thousand likes within 24 hours, I'll come back and go down there. He stood up. The video cut a few seconds later, replaced by his usual. usual closing title card. I paused the screen, open the comment section, then scroll back to the

light counter. 1.2k. I refreshed the page. No new video. I checked his Twitter. No new announcements. Where was the video? I kept thinking about how close it was. How many years I'd spent watching videos of buildings in countries I'd never afford to visit. And now the biggest one of all might be sitting right outside my town, waiting for someone to explore it. I was almost mad at myself for not thinking to go there. But if Grayson was taking his sweet time, maybe I could go first,

maybe even catch him there in the middle of filming. The thoughts started as a fantasy, but it didn't stay one for long. Just a few minutes later. I had dug out my dad's old camcorder from the top of the closet. The battery was swollen, but it had a backup pack from a second-hand store I used once for a film project. I charged them both and tested the mic in my room. The flashlight needed fresh batteries too, so I biked to the gas station near the highway and picked up a six-pack.

I wrote a note and left it on the fridge so my mom wouldn't be worried. something about group study. Every few minutes, I would imagine running into Grayson down there. What I would say, how I'd play it cool, maybe help him film, maybe even scare him a little

and record his reaction. He'd laugh, we'd talk gear, he'd realize I was serious about this stuff that I wasn't just another fan trying to leach off of his name. I packed everything into my school bag and zipped it tight.

Before I left the house, I stood in front of my mirror, held the camera up to my eye, and practiced an intro. The words felt weird in my mouth, but I got through it. This could be the start of everything I'd ever dreamed of. The sun was starting to set when I got there. It hung behind a screen of clouds, turning the sky into the color of copper tarnish. I left my bike stashed beneath a cluster of dogwoods across the road and crossed the gravel shoulder on foot. The outer gate had collapsed inward,

its posts bent and the chain slack enough to duck beneath. The hospital loomed ahead. The windows had been busted out, while the remain of the glass clung to the frames in jagged patterns, catching the last light and reflecting it. I pulled out the camcorder and switched it on. The battery held steady. The light on the side blinked to life, casting a small circle ahead of me.

I hit record and held it at chest level. All right, I said. I'm standing just outside Florence Hill Hospital. I'm here to see if I can find the spot Grace and Vance filmed in his latest video. There's supposed to be a hatch in the basement or storage wing. He said he'd go down next time but I figured, Why wait? The intro came out stiff, but it felt good.

I stepped inside through a doorway where both doors had been torn off. The floor inside had walked from years of neglect. Dust and leaves had gathered into piles along the edges and most of the tiles had cracked. The air hit me at once, wet, stagnant and full of mildew. It clung to the inside of my nose and sat heavy in the back of my throat. Graffiti covered the walls in bursts of neon and black marker. A lot of it was nonsense, tags, cartoonish faces, crude jokes,

but a few names repeated across different wings. I use those to orient myself, checking Grayson's video gain, following where the camera panned across doorways or the way light had come in through broken window panes. I stopped every few minutes to get my bearings and film another few seconds of commentary, though my voice kept slipping into whispers without meaning to. The deeper I moved, the darker it got.

Most of the corridors were blocked by fallen ceiling, panels or crushed furniture, but the route from the video matched just enough for me to follow it. After 15 minutes, I started to recognize the pattern of damage from his footage, the watermarks on the ceiling. I was close. The hallway at the end of the service wing curved slightly to the left and kept going until I hit a dead end. I had to double back and re-watch part of the video. again. Grayson had veered off behind a broken freezer unit next to a side door labeled, Storage 3C. I retraced my steps and found it this time. The freezer door had rusted off its hinges and now leaned sideways into the wall. Behind it passed the tangle of old shelving

and a disassembled mop sink. Sat the hatch. It already stood open. which fueled me with excitement. The hatch itself was round, heavy-looking, with a series of bolts punched into one side and scorch marks fanned out across the floor. I angled the camera toward it and whispered, This is it, this is the hatch from the video. Grayson is probably down there as we speak.

The hatch is even still open. I reached forward and brushed my fingers across the handle. It was warm from the heat. heat trapped in the room. Let's do this. I pointed my flashlight down. The beams struggled to touch the floor. Only part of it was visible through the narrow gap in the concrete,

just enough to show a ladder mounted to the far wall, stretching into shadows. The rungs were metal and bolted into place, though half of them looked eaten by rust. Several bolts had sheared away from the surrounding concrete. One side of the ladder swayed freely when I tapped it with my foot. I stared at it for a while. The camcorder was still recording. I brought it up and whispered to the mic.

This thing is barely holding on. If it snaps, I'm screwed. I turned the flashlight between my teeth and lowered myself down. The metal flex beneath my hands Each rung felt slick and uncertain The bolts moaned with even the slightest shift of weight A few crumbled around the edges when I grabbed them My fingers burned from holding on so tightly

Halfway down I paused to adjust the camera angle But I nearly slipped doing it So I just let it dangle on its strap in I could hear my breath echoing off the walls. When I reached the floor, my boots hit uneven concrete. The walls on either side stretched into opposite directions. The flashlight beam bounced off metal shelving and fragments of painted wall. I took a slow breath and turned slowly.

I was in. The room was enormous. Concrete stretched beneath me in long, uneven slabs. Some sections had sunken, leaving shallow dips filled with stagnant water. Rusted shelving units leaned against the brick walls. Their contents either collapsed or covered in sheets of decomposing plastic. A gurney rested upside down near the centre, one of its wheels spinning slowly, before locking in place with a soft metallic click.

I whispered into the camera. Bigger than I expected, definitely not a storage closet. Let's see where Grayson is. My light followed a long pipe overhead, thick with corrosion and patched with what looked like duct tape and rubber fittings. Below it, the moisture had pooled into a discoloured stain, slick and pulsing with slow drops. Each one landed with a plip. At the far wall, something caught my attention. I walked toward it slowly.

My boots sent wet crunches into the dark, echoing back against the walls. The beam of my light lit up the last stretch of space, where the concrete gave way to older brick. The transition was uneven, almost as though the building had been expanded downward after the original structure had already been built. The wallpaper here peeled away in thick, soft curls. Behind it, water-stained plaster gave way to a painted mural.

Blue clouds, yellow suns, animals drawn in pastel shapes. A lion with cartoon eyes stood next to a duck wearing a nurse's cap. A giraffe was curled into a bed with a thermometer in its mouth. I scanned across the floor in front of it. The dust of the floor was scattered around, revealing footprints and what looked to be drag marks. Grayson was definitely here. I moved through the corridor as quietly as I could. The walls here narrowed.

There were fewer open rooms. The hall turned left and then again to the right, forming a horseshoe path around a closed-off surgery wing. At least, that's what the faded lettering said on the signs overhead. I kept imagining I would turn a corner and see him crouched over a tripod. Eventually, I'd find his camera in a break room. It sat on a metal cart near a vending machine. The camera's glass had been cracked, but it still functioned. The logo blinked once, then faded.

I could still navigate the video. video menu. I leaned closer and whispered into my own camcorder, barely containing myself. It's his. Let's see what I can find on it. He probably got spooked by some rat and dropped it. Poor guy. I smiled at the lens. My fingers hovered over the playback button. Before I was able to hit play, an alert popped up, letting me know the battery was low. Navigating the menu was slow. The button stuck. A couple video files sat in the memory. I selected the most recent one and hit play.

The footage opened with Grayson already exploring the basement, but the screen was entirely black. I thought maybe the file had corrupted, but the audio continued. A wet, slithering sound dragged across the speakers. Something heavy scraping against concrete. Then something else. Shallow breathing.

Metal clattered in the background, followed by a wet cough. Then gurgling. It sounded close to the mic. I leaned in. I moved to rewind. I was curious as to what had happened, but the display blinked once. Then shut off.

The battery died in my hands. I could have left then and there, maybe even should have. But I didn't. Grayson was down here somewhere. Maybe something has spooked him into hiding. But I just imagined myself doing something that scared even the most popular urban explorers. I saw an opportunity. This was my one and one.

only chance to be a part of it, so I walked. Dust turned to grime. Drawings on the wall transitioned to a pale green beneath layers of peeling white. I passed a rusted wheelchair with two broken footrest and a dried smear along the cushion. Beyond that, a row of cracked observation windows stared out into padded cells. The padding had been torn open, foam exposed. Some of it was darkened with rot. I stepped carefully, trying to keep my breathing even. The camera picked up everything. I made sure of it.

The hallway ahead sloped slightly to the left. Its walls warped from years of water damage. I moved slow, careful where I stepped. My boots sank into patches of soggy paper that had melted into the tile. The beam of my flashlight shook across chipped paint and empty door frames. I turned the corner. That was when I saw him. A figure stood at the far end of the corridor, motionless, back to me, feet spread apart, shoulders squared.

He didn't move. I froze. The light from my flashlight sat on his back. He was too far away to make out detail, but his silhouette was visible enough. My first thought, without hesitation, was that it was Grayson. I whispered into my camera, I think I just found him. The figure remained completely still.

I switched off the flashlight, swallowed the tightness in my throat, and crouched behind an overturned gurney. The glow from my camera screen cast a dull blue over my hands. I angled it toward my face. All right, I whispered. I'm getting the scaring camera. He probably has no clue I'm even down here. I stood, slowly, careful not to let my shoes drag.

I inched forward, heart hammering in my ribs. The silence stretched. My mouth had gone dry. I kept one hand steady on the camcorder, the other clenched in my chest. I crept behind him, close enough now, to make out the seams on his jacket. Then, I jumped. Yo! The figure whipped around, faster than anything I had ever seen.

I caught a glimpse of the bandages, thick strips, yellowed with age and grime, wrapped tightly across his head. Only his eyes were visible, red, and bursting from blood vessels that had ruptured beneath the lids. Before I could step back, he slammed into me. His forehead cracked against my cheekbone

with a thud. I hit the floor. My camera had tumbled across the tile, bouncing into a pile of torn insulation. My flashlight clattered near my hand. I gasped and rolled. grabbing for the light. When I found it, I twisted the switch until it clicked back on.

He stood, only a few feet away, swaying slightly, the folds of his straight jacket heavy with sweat and filth. The straps wound tight across his chest, soaked through. His face was covered in bandages that had melted away around the mouth, exposing jagged teeth and gums coated in black rot. Dark puss clung to his lips and dripped into the colour of his jacket. His breath wheezed through clenched teeth. The sound reminded me of water caught in a clogged drain.

I launched myself upright and ran. My boot slipped on the slick floor. I nearly lost my footing at the first corner. Behind me I heard him or it scream. wet, shrill, cracked in the middle, and then the crash of his body slamming into metal. He was chasing me. Guernice shattered as he ran through them. I heard wheels spinning, furniture scraping across the floor, something heavy hitting the wall.

He made no effort to move around anything, just slammed through them, tearing it and himself apart in the process. Every corner turned, I expected him to cut me off. I heard him gag, then cough, then drag in another breath through mucus and bile. His body slammed against the corner I'd just cleared, and he recovered fast. Another screech, this one higher, almost animal. I barreled through a doorway and nearly tripped over a table flipped on its side. I vaulted it.

Behind me, I heard his body hit the edge and roll across it. The screech of nails or teeth or something sharp dragging over the surface, followed by a thump, then more footsteps. I glanced over my shoulder just once. Bent forward, face slack, drool mixed with black fluid, trailing behind him in globs. His shoulders rocked with each step, but his legs kept moving. foam lined his jaw now. I ran harder. Up ahead, light spilled in from the shaft above.

The hatch? The ladder. I was almost there. It still dangled from its rusted bolts, swaying slightly. The top half clung to the concrete wall. The bottom half hung loose. The screws along the right side bent, nearly to the point of snapping. I jumped. My hands caught a rung near my chest and I hauled myself upward,

my boots slamming against the wall as I found a foot hold. The metal rattled on my weight, the rung shifted beneath my palms, slipping half an inch before catching again. Below me, I heard him. His feet slapped the tile, then something heavier. his full body probably thrown itself forward. A choking gargle echoed upward, long and strained. When I glanced down, I saw him burst through the corridor, hair tangled across his face,

the bandages flaring outward as his jaws widened. His arms still bound in the jacket thrashed at his sides. He shouldn't have been able to climb. I thought I was safe. but he jumped. His head snapped upward, mouth opening wide. He sank his teeth into the rung just below my foot. His jaw clenched.

Then his legs kicked off the floor and he began to swing. He glanced untight, using his molars and cracked incisors to hold himself steady. His feet scraped against the wall, searching for traction. Somehow, impossibly, he started to pull himself higher. By his mouth, the ladder shook hard. I screamed and climbed faster. My knees struck the rungs, my shoulders scraped the edge of the hatch. I could hear the metal wrenching below,

one of the supports snapping with a sharp twang. I looked down once more. He was inches from my boots. Lips peeled back, blood leaking from his gums where metal had cut into his jaw. His eyes rolled upward, wide and straining. I swung my foot out and kicked hard. The ladder gave. The top bolt snapped free, the structure lurched to the side.

He fell. I pulled myself through the hatch as the ladder tore away, crashing down into the dark. The impact echoed. echo to the shaft, shaking the walls. Beneath it, I heard a wet, snapping sound, and something low and guitaral. A moan, maybe, or a final breath. I didn't stay to find out. I ran until I couldn't feel my legs.

The hospital doors passed in a blur. The light outside had shifted to blue, just before dawn. The air stung my lungs as I pushed past the crumbling fence, falling to my knees in the weeds, before crawling through the gap and stumbling onto the road. I made it halfway down the road before my legs finally gave out completely. I collapsed onto a patch of gravel beside a rusted mile marker and lay there until my heart stopped hammering. At some point I reached the bus stop near the edge of town. I sat on the bench, hands shaking, shirt soaked through with sweat.

I thought about calling someone. I thought about telling the police, leading them to the hatch. I even pulled out my phone and started the dial. Then I stopped. They'd ask why I was there, why I didn't call earlier, why I didn't stop when I first heard something. They'd search the hospital. It would all come back to me,

whether that thing in the straight jacket was human or not. I killed it, and so I just went back home. Grayson never posted again. His channel remained untouched, comments slowed over time, then stopped completely. People moved on, new explorers took his place. And I never went urban exploring again. again