Creepy - Berries

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Maybe not so much like candy...***Content warnings: bodily functions (most of them), maggots***Story link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Berries***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/***Bonus episode: "Man's Best Friend" Written by: Paul Avery Tindol and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Join our discord at: bit.ly/creepypodcastunit***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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To see how you can support the show and be rewarded for it, please check out the donation tiers of patreon.com slash creepy pod. All right, I'll admit. I was just going to use my father's day get out of jail free card and skip right to the story this week, but there are a couple of announcements I have to make. Quickly, my family decided to surprise me with breakfast and bed, which amounted to a cup of coffee, taste it a little off, which led to my second surprise, a scavenger hunt for the antidote. I'm only about nine clues in out of 57, so I'll make this quick while I can still see,

and talk and feel and... First, creepy's going to be making our first ever convention table appearance at Cryptocon, Kansas City from Friday, January 28th to Sunday, June 30th. That's the Cryptocon in Kansas City. Rissa Montanez and Michelle Kane will be there for meet and greet along with some swag. And if you're an existing patron, or sign up to be a page, patron at the event, there might just be a little something extra in it for you. Just saying, stop by and say hi if you're there.

And second, the official creepy podcast Discord channel is finally live. Finally. You might have heard the announcement on last Wednesday's episode. If not, I'll add the link in the show notes. Just remember, this is a place for people to enjoy and have fun. There's enough toxicity and anger in the real world. Let's leave it out there. The admins have free reign to ban anyone posting negativity unnecessarily.

So, if you wake up in the morning and you're the sort of person who doomscrolls on social media and leaves negative comments because you're trying to make other people feel the pain that you feel or are so desperate for human connection that creating pain in another person's life is your way to feel a connection, please get help. Seriously, that's not me being condescending. If it hasn't become abundantly clear by now, I love horror. It has meant more to me than I ever could have imagined, and I want other people to get that same feeling from it.

So, before you post something, ask yourself, did I really just wake up wanting to make another adult feel bad about their lives? And if so, there are resources out there for you. And we'll still be here when you're ready. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling, chilling, and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world.

Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Berries When I was younger, my family and I lived in a rural part of the same. state that didn't seem much a civilization. We lived in a small hamlet of about 93 people across nearly 40 square miles. It was set back in the woods, and at times was a mythical place during my childhood.

And at other times it was downright terrifying. Our community, if you want to call it that, was strung together with a network of unkempt dirt roads that the county had long forgotten. Pot holes in boulders lined the sides of the roads, and it wasn't uncommon for overgrowth to make passage impossible until someone chopped it away. It was on one of these roads, on a late June afternoon, that the story begins. My brother and I had just finished a triathlon of basketball, catch, and playing in the pool. After we dried off, our parents told us to get dressed. We were going to go blackberry picking. One of the perks of the overgrowth on the roads was that a large portion of it.

it was blackberry bushes. And being on the roadside and not anyone's property, we were free to legally pick as many as we wanted. My brother and I lit up at the news because the Blackberry Hall each year was turned into jams and cobblers and also just eaten after only being washed. Blackberries were our candy. We dressed down in our thorn-resistant wear, cotton-long sleeves and denim jeans. It was late enough in the afternoon that the heat of the heat of the,

the day had dissipated to a comfortable 72 degrees, so the full-body clothing wasn't too much of a hassle. My brother and I each grabbed a bucket, one of those cheap Walmart Easter buckets, and we all loaded into the van. My dad drove us down the road to our normal blackberry spot, and we all got out of the car. Don't wander off too far, Mom told us as my brother and I searched for the optimum patch of berries. We expected big, juicy berries that would inevitably stain our hands and probably be thrown at each other in jest. But what we found was disappointment. What berries there were were dried and shriveled black husks that had been subject to the heat of the past few days. What hadn't been claimed by the sun had been carried off by birds.

We looked for a few more minutes, going deeper into the brambles. Perhaps because it was so thorny the birds hadn't come in here, nor the sun reached through the thicker canopy. But still, the only berries we found were the shriveled and dried sort. He gazed, disheartened into the thick of the woods past the brambles. I imagine that there was something out there, waiting for us to cross the thorny threshold into its territory. The berries may have dried up, but we were, two plump, juicy kids ready to be eaten by a beast with innumerable teeth. I shook the thought from my head, telling myself that it was nonsense and that I was already

13 and needed to remove such childish thoughts from my head. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling. The woods held wonder and magic, but they also concealed the things that lurked in the shadows beyond the reach of human sight. Having successfully spooked myself, I nudged my brother and told him we should go back and tell our parents of our findings. He agreed, slightly irked, that our endeavor had yielded such poor results.

We dozed our way through the brambles, stomping down dead vines and pushing aside the thorny branches that tried to catch us. I emerged back on the roadside with numerous scratches on my hands, but it wasn't any different things. in any other year, so I held a little worry.

We tried wearing gardening gloves one year, but we either ended up crushing the berries or the gloves snagged on the thorns. Either way, we decided that bare hands was the way to go, so we suffered the scratches in exchange for the berries. Mom and Dad were leaning against the van, buckets at their feet talking. They saw us and asked if we found anything.

Our harvest was mirrored by theirs. We all climbed back into the van and decided to drive up and down the road until we found another patch of berries. I gazed out the window the whole time, imagining the beast I'd thought up sprinting through the woods, catching the scent of my thoughts and following us. It was insatiable and wouldn't stop chasing us until our meat was in its belly. I shook my head again to clear my mind. Too much Stephen King, I thought. After circling back and taking a different road.

We found a patch of berries that boasted full, almost bursting fruit. My spirit soared as I saw the berries. My mind washing away all the thoughts of the nameless horror with visions of cobbler and jam. Childish excitement flooded my veins as I practically leapt from the van. My mother sent out the same warning as before, and we absent-mindedly agreed as we rushed over the ditch and into the brambles. The berries were huge. at least the size of a quarter. Some of them were almost past ripe,

and the juices were starting to spill from the splits in the flesh. These didn't go into the bucket, but rather were eaten right there. We were young and lived in the middle of nowhere. Eating unwashed fruit wasn't a concern we had. The amount of berries we gathered were huge. In only five minutes, we completely covered the bottom of my bucket by about an inch. I moved to another berry bush when a scent stopped me in my track.

It was bitter, sweet, and smelled salty. I called to my brother and asked him if you could smell that. He sniffed the air and made a face. We had trouble placing it at first. But then we remembered one day at school when a classroom's air conditioner or broke. The same smell filled the room. Sour water. As we moved further into the berry patch, the stench strengthened.

Despite the fact that the berries were a lot bigger here, we decided to turn back and go find another area. We retraced our steps and found ourselves back at the roadside. We heard our parents romping through the berry bushes and decided to try and catch up with them. They'd almost filled a bucket between them and jokingly asked why we were so far behind. I told him about the sour smell and they advised us to stay away. from it. Wanting to fill our buckets, we joined them in their harvest. The berries in this area were large as well, but the stench wasn't present. We trudged nearly a hundred feet from the road

into the brambles before we came upon a property marker. We decided to go no further, and instead my parents suggested that we look where my brother and I had stopped, despite their previous advice. I brought this up to him, but they waved it off as the whole, we're adults, we know what we're doing, then. So, like dutiful soldiers, my brother and I followed our parents into the fray of brambles and thorn. After five minutes of picking, our parents led us to the spot where we'd stop picking. The smell lingered in the still summer air.

My dad sniffed and said it was nothing to worry about. It was just the smell of standing water. My mom's eyes grew wide at the size of the berries, exclaiming how good they would taste in a cobbler. The thought of a dessert wiped away the doubt that lingered in the back of my head and we began to pick. We picked until each of us had a full bucket and still more taunted us as they hung from the vines that had grown unchecked. Mom picked a berry off and plopped in her mouth, smiling at the sweetness of it. Dad followed suit, as did my brother and I. A regular blackberry has a pleasant sweetness with a small tinge of bitter. But these were the same.

like globs of honey. A single berry seems sweeter than the entire hall that we gathered so far. Its nectar flooded my mouth and threw a smile upon my face as my eyes widened at the taste. The aroma of the chewed fruit filled my nose as I reached for another berry. Another and another. Ten minutes must have passed as we mindlessly gorged ourselves on the fruit, mindless of anything else. Popping one final berry into his mouth, my brother looked up at the darkening sky. The sun was setting.

We'd come out to the patch at around 4 o'clock. Had we really been picking berries that long? My dad made note of this and we all packed into the van. Her belly's full and our spirits happy. We didn't eat supper that night. Instead, we just put all of our haul into colanders and washed them in the sink, leaving them to drain overnight. I fell into a deep sleep that night.

I remember because it was the last restful sleep I would get for a while. The next morning I made my way into the kitchen where our parents were begging, smashing, and cooking berries. The bagged berries would be frozen and be eaten the snacks. The smashed would go on to become cobblers and jams, the latter of which would be sold to our neighbors. And the cooked berries would be reduced down to a syrup for later during breakfast. I asked them if they needed help and they said they had it. So I woke up my brother and convinced him to go on a walk through the woods with me. When we sat out among the trees, the sun had just started to crest the clouds of the morning.

Through the green of the sparse canopy, the sun burned a magnificent pink as the morning stars faded from view and the moon stood solitary in the earth shine. The air was fresh, as it usually was in the woods, and was still cool. Birds tweeted as we made our way through the woods. no real goal in mind for the hike. We each found a wizard staff, a gnarled tree branch to use as a walking stick, and we moved deeper into the forest. The canopy was thicker here and the sky began to take on a pale blue of morning as the pink melted away into the scattered clouds.

We came across a creek that bubbled through a trench in the earth and started throwing pebbles in it. I heard the crumple of leaves and was immediately snapped out of my serene mindset as visions of the nameless beast from the berry patch flooded my thoughts. I saw it in my head to be lurking behind us. Its claws extended from marred hands and its shoulders hunched in anticipation, waiting for the right moment to attack. It was angry.

I knew that we took its berries. It was what we'd smelled yesterday when we were picking. We took its food. And now we were the food. I tensed up as I imagined. It was slowly creeping up behind us, yellow drool dripping from its rotten teeth, its eyes filled with sick and hatred, and an insatiable hunger in its belly. I couldn't take it anymore and whipped around, ready to face the beast.

Nothing. A sigh of relief removed the most apprehension, but not all. It was then that my brother groaned. He was on the ground, sitting in a fetal state, clutching the stomach. I dropped the pebbles in my hand and skittered over to him alarmed. What's wrong? Are you okay? He batted me away and bent over to his hands and knees. He yelled in pain as he clutched his stomach with one hand and a sudden spout of vomit

erupted from his mouth. I reeled back in horror as it splashed into the creek. His whole body heaved as he collapsed onto his face, puk ejecting from his mouth and nose and mixing with dirt. I tried to lift him up, but he feebly batted me away, grumbling something incoherent before another vocal explosion of vomit oozed out of him. He tried to sit up, but the way he clutched his stomach told me that he was in too much pain to do so. Instead, as I stood there watching like a helpless fool,

He smothered his face into the vomit mud as more and more flowed from him with each violent wretch like pus from an infection. Tears streamed down his and my own face as I watched my brother wriggle in his own vomit, unable to move due to the pain. I stood in fear, unsure what to do. And then it hit me. At first, I thought the urge to puke was just an effect of witnessing him puke. but then I felt the pain. At first it was like gas discomfort. But then it moved.

It moved. The pain wriggled in my guts and I felt a hot column of vomit surged through my esophagus. I wasn't ready and exploded through my closed lips and out my nose in a blinding pain. The wriggling went deeper into my flesh and soon I joined my brother. on the ground. The sound of my own wretching vomit drowning him out as I shut my eyes and let the dark of my vision turn white with a blinding pain that surged through me. I wasn't even aware of the hot refuse throttling out of my throat after a while, and time seemed to stop as whatever it was in my guts gnawed away at my being and squirm deeper into me than I thought possible.

The scent eventually hit me and caused even more vomit to erupt. up from me and the muddy ground in which I rised. It smelled sweet, like blackberries. As another acidic wave pulsed up through my throat, the blinding white turned gray, and finally to black. I don't know how much time passed before I was nudged awake. I resisted opening my eyes, but a sudden flash of pain blasted my eyelids open as I rolled over into the mud and heaved.

Nothing came of it except mucus and spit, and it was the same for the next three heaves. Finally, I got control of my breathing and focused on the pain. It wasn't like earlier moving and squirming, but was instead localized to the middle of my guts. It felt like a throbbing mass, but it was manageable. My brother stood above me. His face inside caked with mud. He leaned on his wall. walking stick and prodded me once again with his foot.

We have to go home, he croaked weakly, still holding his stomach. I asked him if he had throbbing pain too and he nodded. I stood up and it felt like every single one of my joints had sandpaper between them. Dried mud clung to my skin and shirt, smelling of blackberries and earth. But the throbbing pain, the want to go home, overpillar. powered any will I had to brush off the dried dirt. I painfully retrieved my own walking stick as we slowly made our way home. The forest seemed like an endless plain of infinite trees

and songs of despair whistling through their leaves and branches on the light summer breeze. No birds chirped and no animals scurried as we shuffled through the leaf-covered floor of the forest. even though my brother walked next to me, a sense of singularity and doom descended upon me as I felt that at any moment, death would claim me for its own, an immense sadness pulsed through my veins as the throbbing mass reminded me of my own mortality.

There was no future to this life in that moment, and my only purpose was to suffer. As we made our way back to our house, Two more surges of puke Fallen their way through my mouth And onto the earth My brother collapsed once But he just

His mom, dad Will help us I slurred as I painfully leaned over To help him up After what seemed like an eternity We saw our house in the distance Through the damnable trees in thicket Our arms were scratched to hell

From the branches and thorns of our crawl back to salvation. And the throbbing it moved once more through my guts. But the sight of home sparked a hope in me that I cannot describe. We stumbled drunkenly up the stairs to our front door

and weakly turned the doorknob. The smell that greeted us extinguished the hope that our parents would help us. The scent of sweet blackberries and earth filled my nose as I collapsed under the vomit-soaked carpet. my brother stumbled over to me as hot tears of frustration and pain flowed down my cheeks.

I was laying face to face with my mother. Her own cheeks flushed red. I remember looking into her bloodshot eyes and thinking that this is how I must look. The whites of her eyes were red, and her skin, apart from the scarlet flush of her cheeks, was pale and clammy. A line of vomit and muca stripped from her nose as her mouth lay open. Her labored breath blew the stench of the berry puke into my face, forcing a flow of my own refuse to flow out of my slack jaw. Her eyes widened as she erupted, splashing my face and mixing with my own.

It was a vicious cycle until both of us heaved air. My brother, having hurt our wretches at convulsions of his own, I felt his wetness creep over the carpet and soaked my back. The bitter taste of it all lingered in my mouth, counteracting its sickly sweet smell. I watched as mom's radiant blue eyes rolled back into her head and her jaw opened more. Her breath became more labored, and the fear of my own death was washed away as the fear of my mother dying flooded my being. I summoned as much strength as the pain would allow and stood up, using the slippery wall as a support. My brother was curled into a fetal position as I stepped over him.

I used the wall for support as I searched for my dad in the stench-ridden house. I found him unconscious next to the phone, which lay on the floor. The same sickly sweet purge lay around him, and I knew that it had to have been the berries that made us sick. It was the only thing we all had in common. A sudden surge of pain throbbed through my guts and forced me to the floor, where I fell into the vomit-logged carpet. I rolled to my side, the floor moistly squelching beneath me, and I grabbed the phone. The simple act of walking to this point and reaching for the phone had taken all my energy. As my labored breath roughly ran through my burning throat,

I dialed 911 and put the handset on speaker. After slurring an explanation to the 911 operator and giving her our home address, the darkness of unconsciousness dared to take me once again. That is, until the throbbing in my guts suddenly shot into my bowels. Oh no, no. I cried pathetically as I felt hot mush run down my side and pooled in my pants like. The throbbing pain was now a stream of burning heat that threatened to pull my insides out of me. It kept coming with splotches and eruptions of hot shit.

Helpless sobs, racking my bodies, I heard the same sounds erupt from my dad and the stench of death arose from our bowels. I felt it flew out of the foot of my pants and into my shoes as I lay there paralyzed. I knew fear struck a chord within me as I felt something. wriggle against my leg. No, not something. Many things. I felt the tiny stick of insect legs prick against my skin as whatever I released from my body crawled over my soiled form.

It was alive, and it had been inside of me. Darkness finally took me as another spurt erupted from my bowels. I was white when I woke up. At first I thought that death had taken me, and that I was in the afterlife. But the beeping of my pulse told me otherwise. I became acutely aware of a needle in my hand in the uncomfortable angle of my bed. Hospital. I tried to sit up, but I was too weak.

I turned my head and saw a nurse dressed in mini-mouse scrubs. I remember those damn scrubs. Scrups so vividly. They're burned into my mind. I remember the look of shock, joy, and relief on the nurse's face as I asked for water. And I remember the sadness that moved across her smile like day turning to night. I got my water and fell back asleep, wondering why she'd been sad. I came to what seemed like seconds later, but after I cleared my brain fog, the same nurse and the same scrubs told me that it is.

it had been more than a week since I'd asked for water. More IVs were stuck into my arms and I felt, for the most part, okay. I could tell she was hiding something from me in the way her sadness seemed to keep itself below her surface. I asked her why she was sad, and she said I would have to wait for the doctor. Over the next two days, I slowly regained my strength by eating soft and liquid foods and walking slowly to the bathroom. The throbbing pain was no longer present, though my guts were very tender. On the third day, the doctor came in. He checked my vitals for himself, asked me how I was feeling,

then told me to ready myself because he had some bad news. I kind of already knew what he was going to say. And hot tears started to run down my face before he broke the news. Mom had succumbed to the berries. Her body had lost too many fluids. I cried and told him that none of this should have happened. They were only blueberries! I sobbed snodly into the doctor's lab coat.

I cried until my tears had been spent. Then I wailed until my lungs burned with acid and my throat turned to dust. The doctor held me the whole time. Staying silent and squeezing me gently, I cried myself to sleep on his shoulder. I dreamed that my brother and I were back in the brambles, being stared at by the beast of the woods. No longer were its shoulders hunched. No longer were its eyes full of hate.

Its matted hair swayed in the breeze as it approached us. Neither of us felt danger from the beast. It stopped a few feet in front of us, just behind the wall of brambles. It opened its maw, revealing hundreds of shiny, needle-sharp teeth. It spoke. Its voice both deep and high-pitched, like the rumble of thunder intertwined with the shrill of summer cicadas.

This ground is poisoned. All that grows here is sour, ill, dead. Do not eat again from the bitter earth. The price has been paid for your trespasses. It faded into the dark backdrop of the woods, and my dreams slowly merged into something beyond recall. Over the next week, I regained my strength through an hour of supplemental therapy a day and started to eat solid foods. I was told that my brother and father regained a good amount of their strength and that they were on their way back to good health. At the end of the week, my dad and brother walked into my room along with a man I'd never seen before.

He introduced himself as a grief-com. counselor. It was the normal, what do you do now stuff, and he gave us a variety of resources and hotlines to aid in the grieving and recovery. We hired a cleanup team to redo the house and stayed in a motel about 30 minutes from home for the next two weeks. One night I was getting ready for bed. My brother noticed a large zip on the back of my leg. I looked down and saw half dollar-sized red mound with a sickly white head. I looked at my brother and noticed that he had one just under his sleeve on his upper arm. We brought them up to our dad and he said that he'd noticed one on him as well.

He told us not to pop them. It might lead to an infection. Figuring that it would go away on its own, I snuggled into bed. The next morning I was awoken into dim light by a burning sensation in my leg. No, not just my leg everywhere. I whipped back the covers and cried out in horror as I saw that my lower legs were covered in large zits, as were my arms. And I felt tender spots beneath my shirt. Horrified, I started bawling as I shook my brother awake to tell him, but he cried out in pain.

And I felt something hot to ooze out onto my hand. My dad was woken by the commotion and groaned in discomfort as he said. rolled in his bed and turned down the light to see what was happening. As the lights flooded the room, I saw that my brother was also covered in these mounds. And what's more, they were pulsing. I looked at my hand where I felt the ooze and reeled and disgust as I saw a maggot inch its way up my thumb. I fell under the floor in my stupor and felt my own zits burst like skin bubble wrap. I cried in pain as I got my knees and felt.

without worms, maggots, whatever they were, crawl from the zits all over me. One after another, they emerged from the popped infections and tumbled down me, covered in blood and pus. I heard them plop against the carpeted floor of the room. Oh my God! My dad shouted as he stumbled out of bed, his own infections popping audibly as he slammed into the wall. My brother was a bit more careful and painfully eased himself out of bed.

Dad picked me up. The pressure from his grip allowing more maggots to crawl out of each of us and bolted out the door with my brother behind me. We went back to the hospital and the emergency room balked at the sight of three people dripping maggots from their skin. The people in the waiting room either ran out and discussed or stared in horror. We were swept in immediately And the same doctor

That had let me unleash on his shoulder Saw us once again He stared medically intrigued at the amount of maggots Oozing out of our collective flesh We were put in isolation And administered a number of drugs After another stint in the hospital

lasting another two weeks The megad pools dried up We had to have minor surgery down to remove each and every megapod. Luckily for all of us, each pod was only in the skin and surface muscle. They had avoided our more vital organs. The doctors were baffled. They drilled us with questions, and we all referred to the berries that had made us

incredibly sick to begin with. A frozen sample of berries was taken from our home and after just a few days of analyzing the berries. We received word on what it made us sick. Ossipus Licinatus lays its eggs in the ripening fruit of blackberry bushes. The larvae of this beetle are incredibly small and eat the flesh and nectar of the fruit. The beetle only chooses the sweetest berries to lay its eggs in, and it does so by splitting open the berry and putting them inside.

That day, when we gorged, ourselves on the berries. We introduced hundreds of these larvae into our bodies. We had been being eaten from the inside. Out for your bonus episode. Creepy Presents, Man's Best Friend, written by Paul Avery Tyndall and narrated by Cole Burkart. Our neighborhood used to be a really nice place.

before the dogs started turning up missing. The first one was Mrs. Watson's cordy, Max. He was in the backyard one minute, then gone the next. Mrs. Watson was devastated, of course, as any pet owner would be. She went door to door asking if anyone had seen him, and no one had any answers. Just a lot of hopeless, we'll be on the lookouts. Mrs. Watson made about ten posters with Max's

picture and her contact information on them. She was driving down Main Street, planning to put them up at the intersection that met Garland, when she saw a different picture of what looked like Max already taped to a telephone pole. At first, she was overwhelmed with joy. She just kept thinking, someone found him and is waiting for me to come pick him up. Mrs. Watson turned on her hazard lights, pulled over to the side of the street, got out of her Prius, and sprinted across to the other side. Her heart sank in her chest when she saw the poster up close. It was Match's all right. He was even wearing the same blue bandana he had on when he went missing. Although this should have brought relief to Mrs. Watson, it instead filled her with an overwhelming sense of dread. Other than the

photo of Matches, there was no other information on the poster. Nothing that said found. No address, no number. Just a close-up picture of a nervous cordy with no distinguishable background. A passing white Dodge caravan crept by and haunted its horn as it passed Mrs. Watson, causing her to jump and immediately burst into tears. She spun around and glared at the driver, except there wasn't one that she could see. The windows weren't tinted a bit. She could see clearly, right through them to the gray-fabriced seats. There wasn't anyone behind the wheel. She stood there in shock, watching the van drive away,

when she also noticed the sound it was making. It didn't sound like a normal rev of a motor. It sounded more like low, grinding buzz. Matt and Jonathan's Black Lab Pebbles was next. There are a young newlywed couple, two houses over, for Mrs. Watson. Matt was hysterically sobbing as he ran door to door. Pebbles was his baby. Jonathan helped and supported his husband in the search the best he could, but the truth is he was probably enthusiastic about the tragedy in a sick, selfish sort of way. Everyone in the

neighborhood knew Jonathan hated that damn dog. He hated how much Matt loved and cared for it. He hated the clits and clacks of his nails on their hardwood floor. He hated the scratches they left. He hated that they had to spend $60 on every bag of dog food because Matt insisted it was the best for Pebble's health. He hated how the dog woke them up to be let out every morning right at six, even on the weekends, especially on the weekends. When the neighbors often heard Jonathan,

Cussing out the dog. Jonathan just downright didn't care for the dog. Matt sure did, though. The next day came, and another poster went up. This one was at the park that Matt and Jonathan visited frequently. Matt, who spent the entire day prior sobbing his eyes out, snapped in anger when he saw the photo of his black lab. What hell is this?

Not a single piece of contact info? Matt ripped the poster from the pole and screamed again in frustration when he turned the page over and saw no further information there either. Jonathan tried to comfort his husband with a hug, but was shoved off. Then the horn haunted out behind them, but never stopped moving.

Matt screamed something at the van and proceeded to chase after it. He thought he'd get the, the license plate number and report the driver. He wasn't sure what for, but the longer he strained to read the numbers, the more they appeared to bend and warp before his eyes into gibberish lines and shapes. The van emitted a sweet aroma and buzzed down the street. Before it reached the stop sign, the van began to vibrate with a hum. They kept disappearing like that. Almost every week, at least two or three went missing, and the owners always reported seen that strange white caravan creep by.

Even with the countless police reports and even 911 calls, no one was ever able to stop or even locate the van. When Colton Walker's Pitbull went missing, he and his buddy Kyle hopped in his Mustang and tried to chase the driver down. They were right on their bumper laying on the when the van started to shake. Not like a car having mechanical problems, but like an image vibrating out of focus. The radio in Colton's car turned up full volume to a station play nothing but white noise, and as much as either of them tried to turn it down, it only got louder and louder to the point that they thought it would blow out the speakers. Instead, the buzzing sound the van was making started rising underneath the static until it just became too much to bear.

While Colton was slapping at the knobs on his radio, desperately trying to mute the noise, he lost control, and the Mustang collided head on with a hundred-year-old oak tree. When the first responders pried Colton and Kyle's mangled bodies from underneath the engine of the car, the stereo was still blaring that droning buzz for all to hear. There was something high-pitched rising under the hum that grew higher and higher in frequency until every remaining dog in the neighborhood whined and howled. Before too long, every telephone pole,

every stop sign, every bus stop, and every bulletin board at the grocery store were all littered with posters of lost faces and no contact information. No one had a clue what they were doing with the dogs, other than maybe the white van. No one had an idea of where they were, nothing. And although I've never cared to own a dog myself, I can see how important they were to everyone here. Everyone around here has been moping and dragging through their day to days, like they've all lost their best friends, because I guess they have. I really should have thought twice before I started chasing the white caravan as it cruised down my street yesterday afternoon.

Like, I really had something personal against them. Hell, me and my cat Diana have been absolutely fine throughout all of this. I really shouldn't have involved myself, but I thought of poor Mrs. Watson, Jonathan and Matt, and all my other neighbors who have been affected by this in one way or another. I thought about the pain I saw them enduring day after day, and how much I hated seeing them like that. I sprinted as fast as I could down the street, and damn near threw my back out, desperately trying to catch up with the white van. I was yelling for the driver to pull over when the vehicle suddenly came to a halt,

and I almost didn't stop myself from plowing directly into the back of it. I started to make my way around the side of the van towards the driver's door, but I froze when I saw no one sitting behind the wheel. The back door slid open so quietly, and I couldn't believe my eyes. The interior of the van was indeed not the interior of a van, instead, inside was just a vast opening to a black hallway filled with tiny yellow lights that seemed to light up the hall for miles. It smelled incredibly sweet.

Something from inside was buzzing, and I could feel it vibrating through my bones as something pulled me inside and drugged me down that hallway. The buzzing sensation was so overwhelming that I couldn't focus. on the unseen, cold, metallic tendrils digging into my ankles and dragging me through the cold, dark place. I tried to scream, but I'm not sure that I did it. I couldn't even hear my cries over the buzzing, grinding hum of the shifting of time and space

as everything around me went white. I awoke to a wet nose sniffing my cheek, warm wet tons lapping at the salt of my neck. Creatures standing seven feet tall on two legs. Before I could process their faces, I tried to jump up and get away, but I was restrained by hundreds of needles and tubes jabbed into various veins and all four of my limbs. In the webs between my fingers, several buried into the bottom of my bare feet,

under my toenails. I could feel every single one of them plunged deep under my skin. My eyes began to adjust to the radiant yet cold white lights. The grotesque features of the towering figures started coming into focus. The first thing I noticed were the sunken skeletal frames of their torsos under a paper-thin-thin sheet of gray. skin. Their ribs looked like they were going to tear right through. Then I looked up. Their heads

were elongated versions of ours, but rounder. Solid, oily black eyes with the ears, teeth, noses, and fur of canines. Not just any canines either.

The creature's heads were attempting to replicate the face structure of a cordy, a black lab and a pit bull, the same dogs that went missing on my street, the ones I knew and interacted with the most. I cried over and over again. I want to wake up. I want to wake up. They leaned down to laugh their hot breath in my face. I closed my eyes tight. I couldn't look at them any longer. I really, really did not want to process what I was seeing, what was happening. I kept telling myself, this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real.

The things kept laughing. I felt a change of direction in the pull of the tubes. Ice-cold liquid pumped into my veins, causing everything to go numb. Before I blacked out, I saw one of the dog things. The lab, crouched down on all fours like a kid pretending to be a dog, would. The other two laughed in amusement. One attempted to bark, but it was a bad imitation. Then the one on all fours really started to look more and more like a dog as everything faded out around me. Then, this morning, I woke up with my head at the wrong end of my bed, like someone had

left me there after a wild night but didn't bother to lay me down in the right direction or even move my pillow to where I could use it. I could still feel where the needles had been, except I looked and looked but couldn't find a single track mark anywhere on my body, despite feeling like I was covered in hundreds of tiny bruises. I then heard an enthusiastic scream coming from outside, not just one either. Someone was yelling something over and over. It sounded like cheering, most definitely not sounds of horror. I peaked outside to see my neighbor Matt,

standing in the street with his jaw wide open, staring at something in disbelief. Other people from the houses across the street started coming out onto their porch as well. I decided to walk outside and see what the promotion was myself. Once I was, I took a couple of steps out my front door. I saw what Matt was looking at, and I sure as hell didn't take another step closer. Matt's husband, Jonathan, was kneeling down in a yard, a couple of houses down. I could hear what he was yelling now. He's back. My baby's really back! The Black Lab's tail was wagging violently side to side. It's open, panting.

mouth, looked like an ear-to-ear smile, almost like it was about to laugh. And then it started licking Jonathan's face. But Dodds don't really smile, do they? For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.