Creepy - Crack of the Crow

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Crack of the Crow***Written by: Z.S. Orchid***Content warning: animal death***The Closing Argument***Written by: Natalee Licciardoni and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Pixie Gifts***Written by: Deirdre Coles and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous 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. Hey, everyone.

Please join me in welcoming and thanking new patrons. Ernie the Heartless Reaper, Karen Christie, Fenr Thorson, Smopey Ann, Charlotteth, and Steven Sorsena. And our ongoing special thanks to our five-year-or-more patron club members, Minnesota Kevin, Duck Fats, Weirwolf.com, Monster Magnet, Sam Marguerette, Stephen Frenchie, Louis Hebert,

Sierra Rico, Merci Graves, and Natalia N. All patrons get early commercial-free access to all episodes. From there, reward tiers also include up a four weekly bonus episodes, immediate access to our entire back catalog of Patreon exclusive episodes and logo merch. To see how you can support the show and get rewarded for it, please check out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypod. and a quick thank you to everyone who bought tickets for the August 18th Texas Chainsaw Day screenings of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I know it was just a video that appeared before the screening, but it was such an amazing thing to be a part of.

I am so grateful for all the support that you've given us over the years. So, let's continue to return the favor. First up, a troubled young woman discovers that the violence she's felt her entire life is more complicated than having some issues with impulse control. For Miter Z.S. Orchid, Crippy Presents, Crack of the Crow. Michaela was 13 years old when she killed that crow. She'd been waiting so patiently for the bus, watching the ebony birds dance in traffic, all looking for the slightest meal.

Michaela regarded them as stupid creatures. Why risk your life for something so readily available? It was not a woe that Michaela could understand. She'd been eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with her eyes locked with one of the crows. She put a middle finger in the air, her sandy blonde hair covering half her face and makes a friendship bracelet making itself known. Its gold and green yarn intertwined horrendously since Michaela was a terrible craftsman. She also had no friends, so its existence was a ruse. It speculated that the crow understood the vulgar message being displayed towards it.

Or perhaps it was just a starving bird. Either way, the obsidian thing attacked Michaela. It pecked at her hand with its own violent attempt to acquire food. Michaela screamed and batted at the thing in desperation. Unfortunately for Michaela, Goldstreet was vacant, except for her and the school bus this early. She would have no assistance for six more minutes. She screeched and cried, but the crow did not run.

relent. It pierced her youthful skin like a pin through a cushion. It left bloody lacerations all up and down her arm. As a crow continued its assault, something strange occurred. A very slight buzzing began to grow in her mind. A low static that clouded her reality as she felt the sharp misery of the crow's beak. It would still not give up on its attempted theft of her sandwich. enough. Mikaela lashed out one more time to the crow, and to her own surprise, she gripped the foot of the bird. With a motion akin to the crack of a whip,

the middle schooler smashed the crow's head into the sidewalk. The bird was swiftly altered from a beautiful black to a contorted red, nearly a splattered mass of feather and gore. It shocked Michaela how much force she had wrecked upon, upon the much smaller beast. With a single swing she had turned it into paste, its beat completely obliterated and body flattened as if it had been hit by a cement truck. After she'd annihilated the poor thing, the buzzing in her head changed. The vile, chaotic sound was now a high, pleasant drone, an angelic hum that caused peace and slight euphoria throughout her mind.

Soon enough, all her fear and concerns shifted to happiness. The act had relieved her of her anger and desire to antagonize. And? She still had her P.B. and J. A lone crow in the tree above her locked eyes with her intently. Michaela blew it a kiss. The crow's gaze then shifted past, Michaela. Not far past.

Just behind her. as if there was something standing above, Michaela. Two years later, Michaela would attend high school. She would have gone through all four years of it without thinking much about the incident. No one then had even ever known it occurred. Not even the bus driver that day cared enough to barely turn his head to the right and see the ominous bird splattered across the pavement. He would have figured it had been run over anyway.

That strange buzzing in her head did fall. follower, however. If she got older, it had gotten louder. It was demanding in its volume sometimes. At first it was difficult for Michaela to comprehend, but as time passed, it became clear to her. The noise seemed to respond well to destruction. So, Michaela destroyed. Her antics would not go unnoticed this time around.

Michaela would be caught by several peers in various suspicious acts. Friends she had made abandoned her once they caught her throwing rocks at random ducks in the pond. Her boyfriend would leave after she fired a flare gun into his car. To her, it was but a way to quiet this storm in her mind. But to all around her, she was sick. The word psychopath often followed her name. Authorities would have several conversations with Michaela in the short four years that she did these things. She would have a record of violent misconduct at age 16.

This meant that Michaela had to get secretive about her atrocities. She could not let anyone see the things that she saw as banal. She even tried to stop doing anything of the sort for a long while. To be normal and try to live the life of a normal. normal teenager. This seemed to have horrible repercussions. The static did not only get louder as the years went on, but with her willful choice to evade the problem.

Whenever she tried to ignore the sound, it also increased in volume, except it was different from the previous uptick in the sound. This was quicker and shorter, as if something was shooting more static into her woeful mind. Michaela was at a loss. She had to destroy, to kill for the sound to dissipate. It was the only way she was allowed a life of normalcy. If you could call her life normal to begin with. Her parents were quite wealthy. Their wealth was something they considered much more important than their only daughter. To keep up appearances and maintain their statuses within the circles they've cultivated, Michaela was disallowed from being a part of this.

Really, Michaela didn't mind. At some point, her and her parents reached an agreement of apathy. They did not look at the things she did, so long as she did the same for them. It was cordial and wildly unhealthy. Michaela did all she could to evade her problems through means of chaos, and none the wiser. She did not have parents or any friends, but she got used to it. That is, at least, what she told herself. It was a life that could be lived. Michaela was 17 years old when she killed that deer. She'd taken up smoking since all the folks in those local metal shows did it.

aggressive music would occasionally deafen the static, but never for great lengths at a time. The mosh pit helped more than anything. Flail a limb or two into someone, and it would silence itself for a decent amount of time. It was a controlled chaos she had come to a door. She drove her mother's car home from one of these shows. Well, one of her cars. There were a few that Michaela wasn't allowed to. a touch after the sedan she torched.

She had plenty of patting for the noise, saw Michaela only planned on returning to a room to rest her very sore arms and legs. She held a cigarette out the window as she smoked. She'd been scolded by her mother more times than she could count about it. But it was always for the safety of the car. Her mom didn't care what Michaela did to herself. The wind was stronger than anticipated that night, and her charied American spirit flew from her hands and into the nature surrounding her.

God damn it! Michaela blared while looking behind at the lost twig of nicotine. Her eyes left the road for just long enough to miss the dough popping out onto the road directly in her path. Being a smaller deer, it pretty easily rolled over the top of her car. Michaela still found herself buried in an airbag that had emerged when she was a little bit of her car. the windshield shattered. Her head had been mostly protected since it launched before the glass had a chance to pop the airbag. The buzzing in her head returned with a vengeance. A mixture of a dreadful tune and a throbbing headache was driving Michaela to those violent tendencies

once more. Her splintered windshield covered her in deadly glitter, broken glass falling from her hair as she exited the vehicle. Being on a back road, Michaela was lucky to have so many hefty rocks laying around. She hoisted one of them up with her trembling hand. One would expect her to have been shaken by the car crash. The truth was that not much shook Michaela anymore. All that followed these types of incidents was a seething, blinding rage. These were not the trembles of a scared little girl, but of someone intending to kill.

How dare this animal bring back that horrid noise after such a wonderful evening? Macaela didn't have many friends, and she could count the good days she remembered on one hand. She did not take this affront lightly. The creature was broken, begging for relief from the agony had experienced, braying loudly was clearly without function of its legs. Michaela obliged its pleas and brought the rock down hard on its skull. Over and over again, the echo of a crushed skull would be heard by all the trees and whatever made its home in them. She made no noise herself beyond that, focusing solely on the devastation she created.

Michaela didn't even hear the sounds of death. Peace rushed through her mind once more. the bliss that always followed close behind her malicious actions. She had no answers. She only knew that this was how she found her solace. Michaela was now old enough to consider her position as a human being. From all she'd experienced so far, she was known to be somewhat of a freak. Many peers had told her that to her face.

As far as she knew, Kids her age were going to parties or prepping for college. Yet, here she was, drenched in the gore of a deer after having Bennett's executioner. People told her that being mean to animals led to being a serial killer. They just didn't understand. If they'd had that awful static in their heads, they would understand. A flapping of wings broke her from the thought. She looked up to see a crow on a nearby branch.

It looked familiar to her. It peered at her through the splattered guts of the dough that she was now wearing as a coat. It seemed to be either beckoning her or challenging her with its proximity. Little did Michaela know that crows are capable of remembering faces for a great while. It was indeed the same crow. The one she blew a mocking kiss towards. Michaela had no way of knowing this, of course. She was blind to the familial inner workings of any animal kingdom.

It made moments like this much easier. The feeling of void being filled by remorseless slaughter. She didn't have to consider the Doe's family or their dreams or their ideas. Deer did not even think of these things. Did they? Besides, the poor thing had been hit by her car. It was suffering. So, Michaela spun it in her head as a mercy.

And if you ignore its painful braying and terrified eyes, then you may make the same mental leaps. Wouldn't you? When it came to the crow she killed when she was 13, however, it was just a hungry beast. Michaela could never spin its slaughter as a mercy. The crow caught at Michaela, more of a war cry than any normal noise an animal was capable of. A declaration of vengeance shouted forth from the throat of a bird scorn.

It frightened, Michaela. She was so used to being the apex that any form of rebellion from her prey was a mortifying surprise. All tyrants fear their subjects recognizing their combined power. This crow even hopped to a lower branch, closing the distance between it and the gore drenched Michaela. The teenage girl hadn't a clue how to react. Never before had she seen such defiance in the eyes of a creature she considered to be of a lower intelligence. It looked determined to defy her, perhaps even combat her. Michaela backed away from the creature.

The buzzing was beginning to take her. place once more. This time it felt different. It was targeted, manipulated. She could make out words in the static, kill, crow. It was no request. The static demanded that Michaela obliterate the being that stood steadfast in her wake. She couldn't make sense of this. That's when she realized it, that the crow was not looking at her. It hadn't been back then either. It was looking at something behind, Michaela. Suddenly she wasn't afraid of the crow.

She was terrified of the knowledge she'd just unraveled. Had she been driven to these actions by someone else? Had her decisions never been her own? An existential supernova burst in Michaela's head. The static was never a mental illness or some oddity she was born with. It was a living thing, an entity stalking her every move to ensure her downfall. Michaela couldn't bring herself to look behind her, even as the presence of the creature dropped its facade.

She didn't want to know what it looked like. The physical vision of the thing that had demanded destruction from her would make it too real. Through her it had tormented and brutalized, all while having her believe it was her purpose towards peace. The sound was all she'd ever reached for. It had driven her to madness with the static and rewarded her with a piece of chimes. A gnarled gray hand landed in her periphery as it settled up. upon her shoulder. Nails tinted with yellow and drenched in black. The length of knives tapped listlessly down her arm. All of the sudden, Michaela had visions of alternate futures.

Visions in which she saw more time with her boyfriend. She had made friends, real friends who shared her interests and desires, a family that paid attention and offered her. emotional and loving support. These visions showed her what could have been, could even be, if she was never like this. Now knowing that she had been manipulated into these actions that it was all for nothing,

none of this had to happen. She had done monstrous things to keep this being sated. And for the first time in ages, Michaela felt like a child. She was but a young girl having been turned into an avatar of death from a single reaction. Tears welled in her eyes as she finally accepted that she was wrong. She, as a person, was wrong to exist. The stench in sight of the battered, eviscerated dough now hit her in a wave of vileness.

She let spill the contents of her lunch, her tears in bile conjoining with innoxious amalgamation. She cursed herself for having devoted her formative life to acts of chaos. She wanted to reverse her fate. The crow cawed once more, this time much softer, a pitiful noise. She looked to her feathered assailant. who looked greatly more altruistic than aggressive now. Its black hole eyes looked warmer now and fixated on her, a solemn understanding in its gaze.

Though devoid of light, Michaela saw hope in those eyes. She breathed heavy, sobbed heavy, and begged, Help me! But Michaela did not fully understand the whole of her. what was happening. The buzzing grew roaring, impossibly loud for being inside her head. This entity did not appreciate the intervention of the crow. It knew what had attempted in its obnoxious squawking. What had evaded Michaela was that the crow meant not to accost her, but the thing that hazed her mind. The crow knew. It had seen it that day. The gray,

fanged monstrosity that attached itself to a dejected child. The disproportionate limbs that felt more akin to oars than appendages. The ratty matted hair that fell from its head in patches, giving the appearance of disjointed seaweed. Fangs like that of a saber tooth and eyes like the buttons of a jacket. The crow never hated Michaela, as she was much a victim as its partner had been that fateful that. It's just that it knows a puppeteer can do nothing if its puppet is dead. The ringing in Michaela's head had reached a breaking point. There were no thoughts left in the poor girl's head. All she could hear was the call of this abomination. Macaela was 21 years old

when she was killed by those crows. Her mind had been dominated. Eight years. Eight years, years in the making, she became an infamous criminal. McAla never returned home from the excursion in the woods. She was declared missing three days post the attack on the doe. In three days post the attack on the dough, other people started going missing. Families stripped from their homes, their shredded carcasses found in pieces. The nameless gray thing upped its level of violence, using Michaela as its vessel for calamity. It forfeited rewarding her with the blessing song. Now that the veil was down, it needn't convince her of the worse.

The static had done its job. Michaela was driven to madness from the sound. It was no great task to decimate other human beings. They were guardless when they saw the disheveled young woman. It was so easy for Michaela. In fact, by the time she was 21, she had a body count around 20. Her eyes had sunken into her skull. Her sandy hair faded to an earthy yellow.

She looked like her own phantom, wandering from place to place in hopes to find her next victims. The tragedy of it all was that these egregious killings had become an instinct. She killed more people than ounces of water she drank. Michaela was a walking slaughterhouse, a vessel for a demon to inflict its will on the unsuspecting. All the while the creature had gone to great lengths to avoid the attention of the crow that had meant to take its tool from it. Michaela, in her mind, prayed that the crow would return again. Without the knowledge of why it hadn't killed her that fateful day when she was a teenager, all she could do within her power was to hope it would.

Her only respite from this ordeal were the visions she clung to, nearly driving herself to schizophrenia in order to try and thwart the monstrosity that had blackened her nails and bloodied her soul. There was little hope in that matter, as she continued to prey upon the unaware by the will of the gray thing, and so more and more died by her hand. She hoped that the cops would find them and gun her down. She hoped a lot of things would change.

The day would come where Michaela found herself within a ranch-style home on the outskirts of the city. She'd be thinking about how her mother and father had barely even noticed her vanishing and wondered if her dejection due to their relationship was part of why the thing had chosen her. And these were answers she would never receive, of course. But the pondering helped her cover up the fact that she had gagged and bound a family of three in their living room. The three were crying loudly, the child being the loudest, but she barely heard it. The father of this family had gone to exceptional lengths to defend his child, though he was simply no match for Michaela.

She'd wanted him to succeed. But the might of the entity was far too great for a simple day-to-day man to handle. As she raised the axe she'd plundered from their shed, preparing to strike the child first. A noise came from the sliding glass door. It sounded like the tapping of a finger. Her eyes wandered to the closed door and widened when she saw what lay beyond it. A crow was tapping its beak against the door. The noise even drew the attention of three hostages who looked at it in confusion through their tear-stained eyes.

Michaela was paused by the intrusion. For a second, there was recognition in her eyes. This must be the same crow that had been following her, one she'd seen when she was 17. But how is that possible? Was it even possible? Did crows live that long? But then, what other crow could it be to appear in a moment like this?

Her grip on the axe handle loosened slightly. Her focus now pulled from the task at hand. The entity noticed and took swift action. A horrible buzz shot back into Michaela's mind. The brainwashing forcing its way through the distraction. The tapping of the crow was not enough to drown out the sound the monster emanated. Michaela was recalibrated to what she had been doing. Hearing only the static, she turned to swing.

the axe on the child's head once more. Another sound, this time powerful enough to pierce into the wall of noise in her head, caused her to snap her gaze back to the sliding glass door. The crow was still tapping away relentlessly and had not shifted whatsoever. Michaela did not understand. How did it make such a ferocious sound before? That's when a crow slammed itself hard into the door. crack. She watched, horrified as the crow's body fell limp against the door and beside another, beside the first crow that brought its own death upon itself. The first crow that threw itself into the door at full speed.

Still, the original one was tapping rhythmically. Not two seconds later there was another who crashed into the door, snapping its neck and offering the loud crack the other two had. McHale was astonished and stunned at what she was witnessing despite the haze of the monstrosity. She could hear the buzzing growing heavy and angry as the entity grew frustrated with her lack of obedience. More crows continued to come as their one kin tapped its repetitive song. Now they were coming in groups of two or more. Before she could start counting them, dozens had arrived and given themselves willingly to the end with this as their final task.

Murders upon murders of the thing slammed into the glass, which was finally starting to give way. The glass began to splinter much to the amazement of the manipulated Michaela. Once it had splintered, the original crow simply stopped tapping. The waves of crows died down, and all she could hear was the entity at its most irate. So irate, in fact, that it made itself visible for the first time in four years. The mangled, pigmentless creature bellowed loudly at the rows and rows of dead crows in triumph. It could not be thwarted with some obnoxious posturing. It owned this girl, and it fed off her slaughter.

They could do nothing about it, except. The original crow began to squawk back and reposed. A mocking sound, not dissimilar to laughter, at the creature's formidable hubris. Then it tapped again. Not in rhythm and not with grace. Now it tapped with anger and fervor. Anger at the decimation its ancestor had suffered at the hand of the monster by way of Michaela so long ago. Anger at the creature encroaching into its world and thinking itself so much higher than those who live upon it.

The tapping was ceaseless and ferocious. A rapid sound more befitting a woodpecker, yet it borrowed the evolutionary trait to silence this thing once and for all. The sky blotted black in the backyard of this ranch-style home as a tidal wave of crows appeared. An innumerable and impossible amount of its brethren swallowing the sun. The family began to scream in terror at the sight. The entity standing with its hand upon Michaela had no words. She, however, watched in fascination and intrepidacious welcome as they appeared. The static was now relegated to background noise as it was overwhelmed by the sound of a thousand

crows bellowing their hatred for the monster. Michaela found her voice again, the same way she had four years ago, and called upon them with all her might. Help me! She cried, tears now flowing from her face. in a waterfall of anguish. This time, they heated her call. This monster would know the crack of the crow.

The glass shredded like paper as they engulfed the house, windows and wooden doors fracturing at their descent. The crows swarmed the house like locusts and began their calamitous vengeance upon the creature. It cried and screeched, but ultimately, was pecked and torn to little more than rags of its own skin, the gray flesh being devoured by the corvids. The family was spared this woeful death.

Michaela was not. They plucked her eyes from her head and swallowed them like grapes. They drilled holes into her flesh until she looked like a tripophobic's nightmare. The whole way, as she was gouged and torched and twillowled. portrait, she smiled. She smiled, knowing full well that the thing had lost. Michaela was free. And next, during a brutal winter storm, a stranded Montana lawyer discovers that the

wilderness surrounding him is home to something enormous, intelligent, and very interested in him. From writer Natalie Lechiridoni, and narrated by Owen McCune. Creepy presents the closing argument. The North Fork Road had shifted from a scenic corridor where the winding dirt road followed the flowing river into a death trap in the blink of an eye. This wasn't uncommon for March 2nd, 1996, one of the worst winters on record. The weather was chaotic and beautiful all at the same time. Here, the wilderness didn't just sit and wait.

It swallowed any signs of civil. civilization, where self-service was a future myth and human contact was miles and miles away. It was just the way the people liked it. At 10.17 p.m., John eased off the accelerator, feeling the old Lincoln groan in the pull of the slush. It was rear-wheel drive, basically a large city car that belonged nowhere in the mountains, especially on a winter road. Every time the tires hit a patch of black ice, the steering went light, the car drifting toward the river's edge, daring to plunge into total darkness down the icy embankment. Help would be hours away. But John's confidence was impenetrable.

He drove this road more times than he could count. A little snowfall wasn't going to scare a man like him. One hand on the wheel, the other holding a cigarette, a plume of smoke obstructing his mouth. much-needed vision at the moment. He let the smell of nicotine swell in his nose before crushing the cigarette out and tossing it away. But as the drive ticked along, the snowfall became much more than a soft spring storm. It had turned into a whiteout of large flakes impossible to see-through. If one thing stood, it was that the North Fork had no room for forgiveness for those less prepared. and John finally conceded that he needed to find a pullout,

and he needed it before the car and the road decided his destination for him. He scanned the tree line, his halogen headlights struggling to cut through the blinding snow, gleaming at him through the beam in horrific reflection. A plow might make it up this far by morning, but out here, morning felt like a lifetime. He was alone, stuck in the middle of the woods, and he had seen no call. cars for the last hour. Inching along where the gravel ended and the ditch began, blurred into a single white backdrop. The trees seemingly vanished behind a white dust.

John finally eased into a small opening between the road and the trees. He was dressed for a courtroom, not a snow rescue. His leather-tasseled loafers were a pathetic defense against the Montana snow, but the pull-out was safer than the road, safer than driving with no visibility. John took a moment to look at his surroundings, nothing to see, and felt acceptance in his decision to stop. He placed the vehicle in park and pushed his seat back, ready to wait out the storm, the heater's dry breath still rattling through the vents. He crossed his arms, closing his eyes to the peaceful, muffled tick of heavy flakes striking the roof and windshield. The snow acted as a silencer, muffling a world that was usually too loud and far too demanding of.

of him. Here, with no service and no one calling his name, he felt a rare sense of peace. A smile crept upon his face as he slowed his breathing and accepted this as the world saying, John, take a break. You deserve it. Before he could get too comfortable, a blinding light pierced his eyelids, lighting up the entire cabin of the Lincoln. John felt a flicker of resentment. The plow was here to drag him back to civilization, back to the golf course and the people who never stopped wanting something. He didn't need to leave, though. He had all the right to stay exactly where he was. But when he opened his eyes, the road was still buried under a foot of snow that was rapidly

increasing towards two feet. The headlights weren't there in either direction, and the light had all but vanished, leaving behind a stillness so dense, John felt a shiver run down his spine. What the hell? John looked around, back behind him, in front, nothing. His instincts became primal and sudden, screaming at him to go dark. He reached out and snapped the light switch to off. The sudden change in atmosphere took him by surprise. John eased the seat back until it clicked at its limit, just past a 45-degree angle,

his eye line dropping until it was nearly level with the windowsill. He stilled his breath, letting a cold thread of unease weave through his chest. He was a man of instinct, intelligent, calculated, and not easily disturbed. His gut was what made him a feared but highly respected presence in the courtroom. And right now, his gut was shouting that something was wrong. Thump, thump. The sound was heavy enough to drown out the snow, an intentional weight that caused the frame of the Lincoln to creak and squeeze.

way with each step, like the ground was a viscous thing instead of a solid frozen piece of earth. John stared into the pitch black glass, his pupils blown wide. Suddenly the driver's side window blurred. A hot, wet bloom of condensation spread across the glass, breath hitting the cool air. The opaque gray patch grew, then faded, then grew again and faded. Something was inches of. away, watching him. He didn't move. He didn't even dare to reach for the locks, terrified that the mechanical click would be an invitation for whatever was outside to try to make its way inside.

The footsteps circled a car with a heavy, bone-deep thud he couldn't even understand, the mass of them shuddering through the chassis as if the thing outside were analyzing the vehicle's structural limits, or meticulously identifying a weak point in the glass. Then, with a sudden vacuum-like silence that was more jarring than the noise, the presence simply evaporated into the nighttime. John nearly soiled himself. He waited, the harsh silence inside the cabin stretching for several agonizing minutes, solid enough to feel like an elephant was sitting on its chest, before he finally dared to move.

He was a man born for high-stakes litigation, a veteran of courtroom battles where nerves were a liability. Yet this wasn't a tactical threat he could not argue against or out-maneuver. This was something primal, like a harsh injustice that bypassed his intellect and spoke directly to his soul. He had met his match. He reached into the glove box, his fingers fumbling for a flashlight,

waiting with his hand on the last, He finally stepped out into the biting air. Brave or stupid, he did not know, and shivered as he flooded the ground with a pathetic yellow beam. There, carved deep into the dirt beneath the fresh snow, were several pairs of tracks. They were hooves, large and impossible, circling the Lincoln in a perfect predatory ring.

Bipedal. More than one. That was the worst-case scenario for John, and he knew it. John bent down and traced one track with his hand. The ground around the tracks had somehow charred the earth. Still feeling the heat in the dirt, he shook his head in disagreement with the findings. Nope, absolutely not. He hushed himself after the outburst. Scrambling back into the Lincoln, the heavy door slamming with a thud that felt dangerously loud in the dead air.

He had spent his career dismantling monsters in the courtroom, men with sinister motives and hidden intents, but he could read those monsters. He understood their greed, their rage, and their humanity, and he knew how to beat them at their own game. Whatever had just circled his car was not something in his understanding. For the first time in his life, his intelligence was not going to help him out of this situation. He felt the heater's breath on his face. It was dry and stagnant and increasingly suffocating. logic was gone. If those things came back to finish whatever job they had started,

he was a sitting duck in a tin can. He jammed the shifter into gear and gently hit the gas. The back tires whined, spinning ineffectively against the ice. He tried to reverse, desperate for momentum, but the Lincoln only settled deeper into the frozen muck off the gravel road. Shit, shit, shit. John hammered the steering wheel with his palms, then let his forehead rest against the plastic. Breathe, he told himself. Maybe you're overreacting. Maybe they're gone. The silence outside was deep as the snowfall began to settle like the world had reset.

He tried to build a case for his own safety. They had come, they had studied him, and they had moved on. As simple as that. they were not interested. The best outcome he could have hoped for finally. He would just wait for the sun, find a toe, and never speak of this. No one wanted a lawyer who believed in monsters. Reputation in the courtroom was a fragile thing and once broken. You couldn't simply glue it back together. But what John didn't know was that his luck had been spent.

The moment he'd pointed the Lincoln's nose back to him, towards town, he had been marked. On this stretch of road where the silence was honest and the isolation greater than most ever experience, he wasn't a traveler anymore. He was prey. John tried to settle back into the seat, his eyes darting to the fuel gauge.

A standard 18-gallon tank, and a third of it was already gone. With the heater fighting the 17-degree mountain air, he was gambling with his life, something he did not like to do. If the engine sputtered out before dawn, the cold would finish what the wilderness started. He wasn't one to travel with emergency gear

or even a spare jacket, water, or blanket. If he survived this, he was going to change. He clicked the headlights off, plunging the cabin back into that intense, suffocating blackness. They knew where he was. Maybe light was his savior instead. but John kept the darkness around like an old friend. He tried to force his mind towards sleep to let the hours dissolve,

and for a moment he actually felt himself slipping. The oversized seat was soft, and the rattling heater sang a lullaby that helped calm his nerves. What he really needed was a shot of whiskey. The warmth would cause his eyes to heavy his mind to relax. Then the world tilted. The back end of the Lincoln surged upward, lifted two feet off the frozen ground by a force that made the frame cry. For a second, John was weightless, suspended in the night, his arms stretched out in full panic.

Then came the crash. The car slammed back into the muck, the suspension bottoming out with a bone-shaking jar that the snow did nothing to soften. John let out an uneven scream, a sound so thin and unlike him it didn't even feel like his own voice. His hands flew to the locks, the mechanical, clack, clack, echoing in the cabin, though he knew it was a worthless gesture. If they wanted in, they were coming in. The locks were nothing more than a placebo for a dying man grasping, pleading to be spared. A cold dread filled his chest. This was likely the final page of his story.

He had the brains to dismantle a federal case, outmaneuver the sharpest legal minds in the country. But he had no closing argument for this. Logic was a useless tool against a predator that didn't play by human rules. And John was smart enough to realize that. Aliens? The thought was no longer a conspiracy. It was a coherent, hard fact. To believe the vastness of the universe was empty was an ignorance John had never possessed.

But he never dreamed in a million years that he would be the target of their experiments. He scrambled into the back seat, wedging his frame into the cramped footwell, trying to disappear into the floorboards. John began to wonder if maybe this was payback for some of the cases he knew he should never have taken. Being a defense attorney meant standing beside people he knew damn well were guilty, and it fractured his morals in ways that kept him up at night. John needed to breathe. Even though he believed in karma, it wasn't really out to get him.

Then came the screech. It was a sound that set his teeth on edge, made them physically hurt. It was the shriek of metal on metal, like a massive meat hook being dragged across the roof with a grounding force. They were toying with him. If they wanted him, they could have peeled the doors back like foil, or carried the entire Lincoln into the sky. This wasn't an abduction for otherworldly experiments. It acted more like a study in fear. How to break even the smartest of men and drive them crazy. For a brief moment, John felt honored.

Then he came back down to reality. As the cab's interior stilled, the silence grew so heavy that the sound of the snowflakes, fat against the windshield, became audible again, a soft ticking against against the glass. John didn't like that sound anymore. He pulled himself upward, scrambling into the cramped back seat while his head flung back against the headrest in a momentary burst of relief.

His breathing was loud in the small space. Fumbling with the switch, he clicked the heavy flashlight back on, aiming the beam out the rear window in a dire bid to understand what had just lifted a 4,000-pound vehicle without so much as a grunt. The light cut through the falling snow, illuminating a stand of massive lodgepole pines

50 feet away. And there, frozen in the periphery of the beam, stood four of them. They stood bipedal, shoulder to shoulder, their massive, muscled statures casting large shadows across the snowpack. They weren't charging, nor were they retreating. They simply observed. their chests rising and falling with slow, synchronized breaths that sent faint plumes of steam into the frozen air. There was a terrifying patience to their stillness.

They knew the terrain. They knew the vehicle was hopelessly high-centered, and they knew he had absolutely nowhere to run. A man in a four-walled chamber. John stared back, his knuckles turning white against the flashlight. Every desperate attempt to rock the car free had only caused the tires to whine, digging the chassis deeper into the unforgiving mountain earth. He wasn't just stranded anymore. He was cornered in a metal cage, and the beasts were waiting for the light to die. In a surge of pure adrenaline, John caught the unmistakable yellow glow of approaching headlights and lunged for the door,

his fingers clawing at the handle before he'd remember he'd locked himself in. He slapped the release, the mechanical click sounding like a gun, and threw himself out of the passenger side, barely making it to his feet. The headlights were crawling toward him, twin beacons of his only true safety were piercing the gloom,

a plow truck making its first grueling northbound pass of the night. The spinning green strobes cut through the oppressive shadows like a strobe light in a nightmare, and John prayed, with a sudden, desperate fervor that the artificial glare was enough to scatter whatever primeval thing was haunting the woods of the North Fork. He kept his gaze fixed rigidly forward, his neck muscles stiff with the effort. He refused to look back at the dark silhouette of the Lincoln or into the shifting shadows

of the tree line. Those were dead to him now. He didn't want the images burned into his memory. He couldn't afford the lifelong nightmares that seeing them would inevitably be bring. He just needed to reach the road. Help, please, please help. John's voice was raspy, and not a single chance they were heard by anything other than the woods themselves. He waved his arms in frantic arcs, now screaming until his throat was raw. But the deep roar of the engine and the deafening metallic screech grind of the plow blade against the frozen gravel

swallowed his voice this time around. A driver at the driver at the end of the engine. A driver at the at this hour, battling a historic storm, wasn't looking for survivors. He was squinting through the large snowflakes, looking only for the edge of the road and the end of his shift, ensuring his own safety first. John scrambled into the center of the lane. His expensive leather loafers now packed and soddened with icy slush. The truck was barely 150 feet away, a wall of steel and light that he prayed would stop in time. The glare was blinding, a beautiful,

searing white. He had made it. He allowed himself a single, triumphant smile, a momentary lapse in his terror, as he finally glanced back at his abandoned Lincoln, looking at the car with a sense of defiant rearing pride. Then the grip took him. The force was terrifyingly sudden. The whole absolute, as thick, impossibly long digits wrapped around the entire circumference of his bicep, overlapping in structure, making John feel so insignificant. The skin of the hand shimmered under the orange glow of the approaching headlights, slick and alien-like, radiating a deep cold that instantly numbed his arm to the bone. His feet left the asphalt before he could even understand the situation, gravity releasing

its grip in a single heartbeat. He was jerked violently upward, his legs dangling uselessly as he was hauled toward a different cluster of lights just above the tree line. An array so blindingly beautiful and serene, it shook his panic so completely. The ground fell away beneath him and North Fork Road disappearing into a distant grid as he was sucked into the overhead blackness, gone from the world in a breath. At 7.30 a.m., the Montana sky began to lighten. The Lincoln sat alone just off the edge of the road, its engine sputtering and, and it was

as it sucked to the last vapor of fuel from the tank, one final breath for an empty car, before the cold claimed it for good. The world indifferent, unchanged. And finally, a group of campers learns about the mysterious people living deep in the woods and the unsettling tradition of leaving food for them, along with the grim consequences of disturbing their territory. From writer Deirdre Coles and narrated by Danielle Hewitt, creepy presents, pixie gifts. I hope you kids liked your turkey-tail mushroom soup. Great work, junior foragers.

The wild ramps and fiddled heads are pretty good, right? Like green beans and garlic bread. Bummer, you couldn't find any berries. Turns out they go pretty quick out here. I know we told you that all we were having for dinner was what we were able to forage from the forest. Surprise. We brought cans of beef stew and lasagna and tamales. But before we choose,

our food and heat it up, I need three of you to go put some cans in the fairy circle. What is it? Oh, I thought everybody already knew about them. It's the circle of stones just outside the campground. Of course it's not for real fairies. I guess you could call them pixie gifts. The food is for the people of the woods. We all know somebody who said they can't handle modern life anymore, and they were going to live in the forest. I don't mind telling you about my family. The hospital sued my nephew Johnny over medical debt, just like they did to so many other people in our town. Johnny actually showed up in court

to try to defend himself. Most people don't even bother. Anyway, it didn't work. Johnny had to catch a bus to the courthouse because the car he'd been living in had broken down. But when he lost his case, he walked out. and just kept walking into the woods here. I know we all know somebody like Johnny. People who are looking at debts that they'll never be able to pay off. People who can't use their devices or live at peace in their own house because, thanks to the newish law, debt collectors are allowed to call them and email them at all hours. And to show up at their homes and workplace.

If they even have a workplace. There are people like Johnny who applied to hundreds of jobs without getting any response at all. People who've been evicted and have run out of couches to crash on. There are also all the old-fashioned bail jumpers and runaways who had to retreat back here. Ever since doorbell cameras and facial recognition software made it so easy for the bounty hunters to scoop them up if they stick around town. Hey, I don't want to sound like I'm anti-technology. It's not all bad. Maria Diaz, the woman who invented the Peapod, for example,

I think she's great. When I was your age, nobody would have dreamed of making a waterproof, weatherproof sleeping back, let alone one with a head chamber that keeps you warm in the winter and safe from bugs in the summer. Not to mention that the cushioning is so comfortable that some people, namely me, who have a spouse that snores, namely Mr. Dillon, will sometimes leave their perfectly good beds and spend the night in a peepod on the living room floor. It's interesting, isn't it?

That Maria Diaz made a product that let you sleep comfortably in the winter in the mountains and comes in camouflage patterns, and that makes people outside the peepod invisible to thermal imaging. It was a real inflection point when the peepods came out. It made it much easier to survive outdoors. Still, it's hard out here. One thing I hope you've learned from today's foraging trip, it's really difficult to find food.

Why do you think you couldn't find any wild berries? So, the fairy circles came to be. A newish tradition, where people who come out here camping leave food for people of the woods. We won't see them, but they'll come tonight after we're asleep and collect our offerings. What? What happens?

if you don't leave anything. Yeah, I can answer that one. Because I was young and stupid once. Very funny, Gen C. That was a while ago. Before I was married to Mr. Dillon, back when the fairy circles were relatively new. I had a bad, bad breakup with my boyfriend at the time,

and I decided to go camping all alone. And I decided I wasn't going to leave any stupid food in a circle of stupid rocks for probably imaginary people. Despite my bravado, deep down, I was pretty nervous, so nervous that I couldn't sleep. At least, that's what I thought. After a miserable night, I headed home,

and I decided to go through the photos on my phone and delete pictures of my ex-boyfriend. My phone didn't, and still doesn't, have any signal out here, but the camera app still worked. And I saw pictures of myself sleeping, taken from inside my tent at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., then 3, then 4. Very close to my face. Not because of Zoom, but because of where the phone was, and the person holding it.

It must have been right around 5 a.m. that I finally gave up on camping and started packing up to go. I was back here again, with some friends this time, just a couple of months later. I figured I'd gotten off with a warning, and I certainly wasn't going to mess up again. I dumped a huge armload of cans into the fairy circle that time, and my shoulders ached for days from the extra weight on the way up. Good question. I'll tell you why we keep coming. Because look around you. It's beautiful up here. And I don't know about you guys, but this is one of the few places. I feel completely free.

You're absolutely right, Jen R. It is dangerous. A person could slip and fall while climbing. And the peepods will protect you from raining cold, but not from a tree branch falling on you. But I think you're probably talking about the wolf. Like I said, there are plenty of normal people living in the woods. people just a little down on their luck. And there are also plenty of criminals, some of them violent. One of the most violent, or at least the most attention-seeking,

was a serial killer who called himself the wolf. That guy gets absolutely zero points for creativity. The story goes that he started by murdering a trio of other woods people and putting their bodies on display, hoisting their corpses up into the branches of a tree. But then he descended on two families of civilians out camping, slicing their tents to ribbons and slaughtering every one of them, before kicking apart the stones of the fairy circle, and pissing all over the food offerings.

Well, obviously, having a murderer at large meant the whole forest was in trouble. It wasn't just the risk presented by the man himself. Nobody was going to come up here, and nobody was going to leave any food while there was a killer on the loose. And if the murders were reported to the authorities, they might actually bestere themselves to come into the woods for once. And everybody thought that would end very, very badly. So, a group of forest dwellers went after him,

and they decided his end had to be as graphic and as public as his crimes had been. They had to make an example out of him. Since he called himself the wolf, they took a page from the fairy tale. Now, I don't know if he was conscious for all of it or part of it, or if he just woke up like that. But they sliced him open and put stones inside.

And then they sewed him back up. He survived the procedure, long enough to get to his feet and stagger along, begging and crying and bleeding, trying to support his distended belly with his hands. But it wasn't long before the weight was too much for him, and he tipped over and fell face forward and died. And that was the last time anybody laid a finger on campers like us. So, yeah, I'm sure we're safe out here.

Sure enough to bring all you kids out here. Now I have another surprise. Who's ready for some smores? Before we get started, you two take these boxes of smores-flavored pop-tarts and put them in the fairy circle, too. They don't get a lot of treats out here, so I always like to bring them. them something sweet. Oh, honey, no, we don't have to worry about bears coming across our stash. The bears? They've all been eaten. 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 Commons Sherrillite 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 story's author.