CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "Maybe the National Parks Aren't Just There to Preserve Nature" Creepypasta

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Who knows what's out there in the vast expanse of nature preservations. CREEPYPASTA STORY►by CountOfCristoMonte: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm... Creepypastas 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...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Felix Riaño: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1vL1qSUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA 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-

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Start today your gratis-proof-periodo on Shopify. That is Shopify. combe. National Park. The sign announced my arrival in the familiar font of all National Park Service communication. The ranger's booth beyond it grew large as I approached.

I slowed to halt alongside the squat yellow hut and paused my podcast. Afternoon, friend. The attending ranger greeted me with a bored smile that reached barely to the corners of a mouth. I nodded my head in response. Entrance fee increased a $30 this year She intoned We can take cash or card I fished my wallet from the backpack

On the seat next to me And handed her two-twenties She returned a ten But kept a hold of the bill As she handed it through the window Be safe out there We locked eyes And she fixed me with a meaningful glare

But seemed to say that she was more concerned With my behaviour than my safety And don't talk to the animals She relinquished the change. I shook my head, marvelling at the strange warning and drove on, hitting play on my phone. Indeed, listener, it's best if you don't acknowledge these creatures at all. The podcaster pronounced this final sentence of the program in a tone that he no doubt imagined to convey solemn gravitors. cheesy music and a cheap, howling wind sound effect signalled the end of the episode.

I fiddled with my phone, tapping it into a playlist I labelled Old News. The eagles crooned back at me. The sound cut out. I wrestled with the auxiliary cord that connected my phone to the car speakers and glanced at the home screen. No service. I stared at the now useless brick for a moment before turning my attention back to the road in front of me. Without my primary source of entertainment, I scanned through the radio stations. hoping to find something other than the breathless preaching that dominated the airwaves outside the state's major population centres.

I found only static. Admitting defeat, I turn my focus from the dashboard to get a proper look of my surroundings. Tall yellow grass grew mysteriously from rocky soil that did not appear capable of supporting life. Crooked trees, all limbs, bent and impossible angles from the tree. terrain. The scrubland, dotted with cacti, gave way to jagged mountains that stretched far into the horizon, and foliage seemed to grow thicker with elevation. Across the alien landscape, tiny roadrunners bolted back and forth, chasing some elusive prey on their impossibly fast little legs. Or, I chuckle to myself, perhaps they were eluding a dim-witted coyote.

My car jolted as if I'd hit a pothole. The explosion of feathers across my windshield, however, indicated that the bump had not been the result of a shortfall in the park's maintenance budget. I cursed aloud. The view had distracted me. I resolved to focus on the road rather than the environment, figuring there'd be time to appreciate the majesty of nature during my hike. A nearby sign indicated the Lost Mind's Trail, my destination, to be several miles further. After another eerily silent half an hour on the road, I reached the trailhead. A smiling older couple, each wielding two walking sticks lumbered off the path as I pulled into a nearby parking space.

I collected my phone from the dashboard and my backpack from the seat next to me, along with my boots from the floor. Stepping out of the car, I stretched my legs and pop the trunk. The older gentleman, presumably husband to his hiking partner, walked around behind my car and greeted me with a friendly wave as I sat to change my boots. Looks like you'll have the trail to yourself this afternoon, pal. He flourished his hand magnanimously at the empty parking spaces around us. You didn't see anyone else up there? I pulled down my dusty brown boots as he shook his head.

"'Nope, just that old boot over there.' He gestured toward his wife. I laughed as if his joke had been funny and double-knotted my laces. "'You have the most beautiful eyes,' croaked the old woman, queued by his gesture. "'You just don't see that colour blue every day.' I chuckled and thanked her.

"'You folks have a good evening now,' I said, shouldering on my backpack. I pulled my hat low over my eyes to keep what I now realized to be a blazing afternoon sun off of my face. The blue of the hat's brim now occupied nearly half of my visual field and it obscured the old folks as I waved.

You too, young fella. I looked up to see the old man return the wave and stumped back to his wife beside their Prius. Watching the hunched gentleman labour to cross the mere feet of the parking lot, I marveled that he'd been able to complete the trail's steep climb. Maybe the couple had kept their walk short. In any event, I set out toward the path.

The first mile or so of lost minds proceeds mostly uphill. Bristley flora framed the entire trail, and the low bushes makes it easy to forget that the path winds through the middle of the desert and not somewhere more hospitable. As the trail switchbacks carve the road, way up the mountain, every few hundred yards, a clearing in the foliage reveals a sweeping view of the surrounding landscape.

I covered this first stretch in a little less than half an hour, hoping to capture the scenery for a new computer background, I paused in one of these gaps in the foliage and pulled out my phone. The vista proved hard to photograph though, and my efforts resulted in only a single passable shot. I dropped my phone back into my pocket and unscrewed my water bottle from the strap of my backpack. I dug in the scenery as I drank. A snuffling sound interrupted my commune with nature.

My stomach dropped and I spun my head in search of the noise. I'm a big guy, but I'm hardly a match for the bears that frequent this part of the park. I spotted it to the left. A coyote. I froze and walked. watched the creature emerge from the bushes. It heard his back to me, and its head in one of the prickly bushes off the trail. It continued snuffling around the foliage, but its rummaging was bringing it closer to me.

I slowly screwed the top back onto my water bottle. Coyotes didn't usually attack people, but in an emergency, I could use the mostly full bottle to bludgeon the beast. The coyote raised its head. and froze. It sniffed the air. Slowly it turned to face me. I liked ties with it. The creature looked wrong.

It seemed almost to have two snouts, one on top of the other. The deformity looked like a video game rendering error, the sort that makes a virtual plant disappear into a wall and come out the other side, like one snout had incorrectly rendered inside the other, and a tiny bit of the duplicate, just a nose, was poking through the coyote's face. I stared into the creature's wide, dark eyes for what felt like ours.

Its nose twitched, both of them, as it sniffed the air. Easy boy. I muttered the words to the creature in what I hoped to be a slow, calming whisper. Take it easy. The beast stared. I didn't move a muscle. Then the coyote cocked its odd head to the side and quickly,

so quickly that I can still question whether it happened at all. The coyote winked. Finding nothing, I turned quickly back to the creature, but it was gone. Scared away, no doubt by the noise. I was breathing heavily, far more heavily than my brief hike of the trail merited. It took a moment to collect myself.

I'd seen deformed animals before. Goats with extra legs, deer with stubby little antlers. This coyote was just an accident of birth, the product of a twisted genome that had made it to adulthood. Surely it hadn't actually winked at me, and, even if it had, it was an animal, so it couldn't have been communicating anything with a minor twitch. I carried on up the trail, but the image of the coyote and this bizarre double snout stayed with me.

Around mile 1.5, I reached another clearing. On the left-hand side of the path, this rest stop featured a bench carved from one of the sharp little trees. I paused briefly to tighten the laces of my boots and take a sit from my naljean. As I screwed the cap back on, movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. I spun, half expecting to find the coyote staring back at me. Instead, I found another hiker passing me on the trail. He was descending, heading the opposite direction from me. The man wore brown hiking boots that rose to mid-calf.

Grey socks extended from underneath, just a bit further up his calves, ending below olive green work shorts the same colour as my own. Unlike mine, however, his hair. shorts lacked the little loop from which someone using them for manual labour might hang a hammer. They also liked the little yellow sea that marked the brand on the back right pocket. His blue baseball cap was pulled low enough that I didn't get a good look at his face, but I noticed that his grey T-shirt seemed entirely free of sweat. The man raised a hand as I turned, though didn't say anything.

How's that last stretch? I asked as he passed to my right. Easy. He rumbled the word in a deep baritone, not much louder than a whisper, drawing it out into a languid assurance. He continued down the trail. How's the view?

I asked to his back. Easy. I heard again, in the same slow whisper, before the hike had disappeared around the next switch back. I shook my head, not sure I'd heard the guy correctly, as I gathered my belongings and finished lacing my boots. The sun was beginning to sink. I reached the trail's peak, a little less than a mile later, and was greeted by a sweeping view of the surrounding desert. By then, a brilliant sunset painted the desert, and I marvelled at the view

for nearly 20 minutes. As I made my way back down the trail, The temperature dropped with the sun. A cloudy evening obscure the views I'd enjoyed on the way up, and by the time I'd reached halfway down the trail, I had to use the flashlight on my phone to light up the path in front of me. Hiking at night is always unnerving. This wasn't the first time I'd been caught out on a trail after sundown, and the desert path was much less intimidating

than some of the more heavily wooded trails in the other parks I've visited. Still, the normal sounds of wildlife become much more sinister at night. As I descended, my thoughts turned back to the events of the day. I had woken up at the crack of dawn to make the long drive. I didn't mind road trips, but the space between Austin and Big Bend was just empty. Not like one little town every couple of miles empty. Completely empty. bring a spare can of gas and make sure you fill it up every time you see a station empty.

I'd really plumb the depths of the podcast universe and even my favourite programmes had run stale by the time I reached the welcome sign. What was it the ranger had said to me? Don't talk to the animals? I suppose a person has to be a bit odd to become a park ranger anyway, especially one out here in the middle of nowhere. Still, strange thing to say The memory of the odd warning

Brought to mind the coyote With its warped system error snout I shuddered at the image A branch snapped to my left Wind whistled to the bushes I sped up A rock had found its way into one of my boots And I bent to fish it out

The wind was whistling again I held my phone in my mouth as I pulled one of my socks higher to make the boot a bit more accessible. The laces had loosened over the course of the day and I could fit a finger down to the sole. I found the pebble and worked it out of the shoe with my index finger. I rolled it just past the top lace near the middle of my calf. It was difficult to see the little grey stone. It matched the colour of my socks nearly exactly and, the low light didn't help.

I managed to grab it before I could fall back into my boots though and tossed it into the brush along the side of the path. It made a small click as it landed. I stood and continued. I didn't get more than a few steps before I felt a tiny impact on the side of my leg. Assuming I'd kicked up a stick as I'd been walking, I carried on.

After another few steps though, I felt another pebble in my boot This one hadn't gotten deep And I didn't need my light to fish it out I held it between my index finger and thumb This one too matched my socks I tossed it as I had the other And carried on

A few steps later I felt another impact This time at my ear A bug surely I paused briefly before speeding up. Crickets buzzed loudly and their nighttime wine seemed to come from every direction at once. A branch snapped.

I was nearly jogging by the time I heard it. Easy. Slow, deep, quiet. So quiet I couldn't be sure I'd heard it at all. I broke into a run. All around me, the trail seemed to come alive. Branches snapped and the wind whistled, and cricket's whined so loudly, it was nearly deafening. My phone's light bounced as I ran, and my backpack jostled uncomfortably on my back.

A root caught my foot. I threw my hands out to break my fall. The trail's tiny, sharp rocks, took painfully into my knees and my palms as I hit the ground. I scrambled to stand, but as I looked up, I found my same. eye level with a pair of brown hiking boots. Easy. On my hands and knees in the dust of the trail bleeding into the grit. I froze. Strong hands hoisted me from the ground and I could do nothing but allow myself to be lifted. After an eternity I raised my eyes and found myself, face to face, with the park ranger.

Easy. She spoke in the same careful tone she'd used when selling my admission ticket, not the hikers' creepy whisper. I caught my breath for a moment before I responded. Thanks. I dusted off my shorts and stepped back. Once I collected myself, I realized that I'd reached the end of the path. and the ranger stood at the trailhead.

My car was just a few feet away and a light over the parking lot illuminated us. The ranger was holding a shotgun. She wasn't pointing it at me precisely, but she certainly wasn't pointing it anywhere else either. If she fired it, she'd probably blow off a few of my toes. Behind her stood the old couple I'd seen on the way up the path. The old man stood straighter now than he had earlier in the afternoon,

and he traded his walking stick for a shotgun of his own. His wife too was armed, and the three of them stood, unmoving between me and my ageing forerunner. None of them looked directly at me. In fact, each seemed to be looking pointedly at a spot where I wasn't. What did I tell you when you first came into the park this afternoon, friend? The ranger asked the question carefully and without much inflection. She still didn't meet my eyes, staring instead at the path behind me.

Given her monotone, I couldn't tell whether she was scolding me or testing me. Don't talk to the... I paused. The coyote. Don't talk to the animals, I finished. The Ranger and her companions all visibly deflated As if they've been holding their breath Each of the three of them finally turned their eyes to me

And the Ranger shouldered a firearm Friend, you get back in that car And you head straight out of this park The old man commanded me with gravity That could not possibly have come from the doddling old fella I had met earlier in the day Don't stop Not for anything, the old woman added.

Or nobody. She fixed me with a steely gaze that matched the gravity of her husbands. Not until you're out of the park. I wouldn't worry too much about the speed limit either, friend. The Ranger added. I opened my mouth to ask what in God's name the three of them were talking about. But the Ranger fixed the jaw in such a way as to indicate that the conversation was over. The whole couple wore similar expressions, and the three of them turned their full attention to the path, guns aimed to the ground.

I followed their instructions. I didn't change my boots, didn't take off my shirt, even though a day's worth of sweat had turned its grey material nearly the same colour black as my car's upholstery. The forerunner came to life with its deep rumble, and I stomped on the gas, peeling out of the parking lot with a squeal. my hands didn't stop shaking until I was nearly three miles from the trailhead the road in and out of the big bend is straight and covers several miles between the park entrance and the trails I'd begun to relax and I could see the ranger's booth in the distance when I heard it again

easy the same slow whisper so quiet that my rumbling engine nearly drowned it out. I spun my head in every direction. The sun was all the way down by this point, and I couldn't see much outside the too dim glow of my headlights. I heard it again.

Easy boy. The same tone, the same whisper. Take it easy, boy. Faster this time, but not like a person who talked fast, like a video. played at double speed. I continued to look frantically around me,

doing my best to keep some attention on the road. Motion at the corner of my eye caught my attention. At the very edge of the half circle of road illuminated my headlights, ran an animal, an animal that looked like it had two snouts, one on top of the other. I stumped on the gas.

Easy. Loud, deafening, but still soft somehow, like a recording of a whisper played at full volume through an expensive sound system. The Rangers' hut grew larger in the distance. I kept my attention on the road in front of me, but from the corner of my eye I could see that the coyote, the whatever it was, was still right on the edge of my headlights. I chanced to look at it, only for a moment.

The sight still haunts me. On the edge of the road, just outside the light of my headlights, ran the coyote. On its hind legs, his twin snouts phoned and its mouth yawned open. As it panted, the creature's jaw opened wider than any natural beings ought to, and row upon row of human-looking teeth hung nearly to its chest, a chest that seemed to be wearing a grey t-shirt, but not wearing it precisely, Rather, the shirt seemed to almost grow from the creature's body, giving way seamlessly to the patchy fur of its arms and stomach.

It turned its head and looked directly at me, its eyes no longer the white-brown eyes of an animal, but rather piercing blue eyes like a human's, like mine. The coyote winked. I tore my gaze from the abomination to spare a glance at my spinometer. I was going 87 miles per hour. I willed the aging SUV to go faster, faster than it had any right to go, faster than whatever was keeping pace with me out my window.

I stole another glance of the creature. As I turned my head, I saw the beast stop, not slow down, stop, completely, as if it had run into a wall. I whizzed past the ranger's hut, and then the welcome sign, and didn't ease up on the gas until both were firmly in my rear view.

But I heard it again. Take it easy. I slammed on the brakes, and I could smell the rubber burning under my tyres. The eagles crooned from my car speakers. I had service again. The song had carried on right where it left off, as my phone picked up signal. I put the old SUV in park.

Right there, in the middle of the road, tears ran freely down my cheeks, and my hand shook so violently I couldn't have driven the car if I'd tried. I don't know how long I sat there, parked in the middle of the West Texas Highway, minutes, half an hour, hours. Once I pulled myself together,

I called the Marfa Hotel, where I had intended to spend the night and cancelled my reservation. I drove straight home, through the night and into the morning. I stopped only for gas and hardly took a breath until I reached my Austin apartment.

I double-locked the door, pulled the blinds closed and collapsed, exhausted into my bed. I'm still not sure just what the hell I saw out there in the desert. But the next morning I had the thought for the first time

but certainly not for the last that maybe the national parks aren't just there to preserve natural beauty See?