Creepy - Creepaway Camp 2022 - Day 1: The Burned Church & Huntsville Camping Trip

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

The Burned Church***Written by: Ryan Peacock***Huntsville Camping Trip***Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Find our reward tiers and how to get your bonus magnet at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Megan McDuffee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Bloody Disgusting Network. Please join me in welcoming and thanking new patrons. James Sanders, Daniel Fell, Sirius Watts, Brittany Bennett, Chanibar Rockman, Susan Gawrera, Tiffany Eunice, John David, and Michael S. Wilworth. And, okay, you know the rest of the spiel. I'm in a little bit of a hurry if you can't tell. So how to see how you can support the podcast and for your donations have an impact on others, please check out our donation to the patreon.com slash creepypod or a merch store creepypod.com slash shop. Okay.

No, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get this thing started. The narrators are starting to look a little restless. I would like to welcome everyone to the first official creepaway camp team building event. Um, what's wrong? We don't want to be here. Why not? Which answer would you like? How about the part where he forced us to come out here against our will?

It's in your contract. What? What? What? Contract. What are you talking about contract? Now one of you read your narrator contract. Page 81, paragraph three. Narrators agree to the very specific scenario of spending one month per year at a destination of John's choosing. John will provide room and board including transportation and a windowless panel van in exchange for minimal complaining and narration of stories in said month.

There's no way that's really in there. Oh, I see. Everyone wants to be a narrator and no one wants to help John deal with his childhood issues by taking a month out of their lives away from their jobs and families at an undisclosed location. Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm excited. Thank you, Megan. I've been waiting for a while to do some new intro music. What now?

Read the addendum to my contract. You keep a copy of all our contracts with you? Why is that weird? Because you printed them out. What is that? Dot Matrix paper, grandpa? Crabb, she's right. In the event of John taking one or more narrator's hostage, it actually says hostage, underlying and bold. In an ill-conceived attempt to make himself feel better, Megan McDuffie is allowed to provide new intro music to fit the mood.

Aw, but I like our intro music. I do too, but if we're going to do this whole, are you afraid of the... Ah, ha, ha. This is a wholly original idea and in no way infringing upon existing properties beyond what could be considered parody under copyright law. Whatever, I'm not saying replace the music just for this month. It's not like you have a choice in the matter. John, it's the least you can do for all of this. Oh, we haven't even begun to explore the least I can do during all of this.

Can we just get this going? Fine. When should I start playing the music? No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing. the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy fosters 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. Okay, so what are we supposed to do? Tell Campfire Stories. Like what? Are you serious? We do a horror podcast. That.

Do that. Fine. I'll start. Creepy Presents. Wait. We have to do that when we tell Campfire stories, too? Read your contract. Boy, some of you are going to feel real surprise when you see the Wedding Vows Clause.

Anyway. Creepy presents. The burned church. Hey, is that Ryan over there? No, it's just a peacock. As I was saying, The burned church. This is a story about a guy new named Jack.

Now, Jack and I weren't exactly close, but we had a lot of mutual friends growing up, and we hung around in the same circles for most of our high school years. when those friend groups inevitably started drifting apart as we all went off to college, Jack wasn't one of the guys I stayed in touch with. Wasn't anything personal or something like that. Wasn't even intentional.

There were just guys I knew better and hung out with more. Nevertheless, when we happened to run into each other a few years ago, I was still pretty happy to see him. He looked like you've been doing pretty good for himself. He got in a cushy job and was making some good. good money. He wasn't married yet, but that didn't really seem to bother him. He seemed like he was doing all right on his own. I invited him out to grab a drink and catch up, and he took me up on it. We hit a bar not too far from where I lived, drank a few beers, and talked about our lives. It was

honestly good to just sit and shoot the shit for a while. Jack was a little different than I remembered, a little less boisterous, a little more suave, but I'm sure I wasn't a kid he remembered either. The night went well for the most part. Admittedly, I was a little annoyed by the fact that Jack kept hitting on the bartender, but he was a single guy, and as far as I could tell, she was into it. So I kept my mouth shut and let it slide. After a couple hours and a few too many beers, I told Jack I was going to call it a night.

We said our goodbyes, told each other to keep in touch, and I headed out to call a cab. The last time I saw Jack, he was sitting at the bar, sipping a beer and flirting with a bartender. Now about a couple months later I ran into another old friend of mine, a guy named Brad. Me, Brad, and Jack had hung out every now and them back in the day, so naturally I asked him if you wanted to grab a drink and obviously he said yes.

We headed down to a bar he knew, got a couple of beers, and started catching up. We hadn't been talking for that long when I mentioned that I'd run into Jack lately and asked him if he'd stayed in touch. Well, Brad got this sort of food. funny look on his face. He was looking at me as if I just told him that I'd seen a fish climb out of the water and walk. I asked him what was wrong, and he just asked me if I was sure to have been Jack had seen. I told him that I was absolutely positive. He and I had talked for the better part of a few

hours, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man I talked to that night was the man I'd had gone to school with all those years ago. Maybe it was just a light, but I could have sworn that Brad had gone a whole shade paler. It looked like all the blood had drained right out of his face. I asked him what was wrong, and he asked me if Jack had mentioned anything about a place called Point Hope,

a campground up north around the Bruce Peninsula. I didn't remember Jack ever mentioning it while we've been talking. Although, to be fair, I don't remember a lot of our conversation things as beer. I said as much to Brad and asked why he wanted to know.

He took another sip of his beer and was quiet for a moment. Then he told me the following story. Now, let's take a minute to first talk about Point Hope. Most people who camp out that way don't really know about the history of the place. And to be fair, there's not many traces of it left. Back around the turn of the century, though. Used to be a small town of maybe about 50 people, give or take. They mostly thrived off the logging business and traded with some of the towns further down the river.

outside of that there wasn't a lot to see or do out there to people in town minded their own business they went to work they raised their families and on Sunday they went to church like any God-fearing folks for most of its history there was absolutely nothing special about the place that all changed one fateful night in the 1930s when the local church caught fire

the way I heard it the fire was more than a little bit suspicious folks had woken up in the night to see the smoke rising from the building and come to investigate. There wasn't exactly much of a fire brigade out that way, and the fire had gone far enough that there wasn't much of a chance of saving the place, but a few locals with more balls and brains that still tried to put it out. But when they tried, the pastor himself stepped in to stop them, holding his hands up and demanding that they stay back and let the church burn. So that's exactly what they did.

Now, nobody knows exactly why the church caught fire that night. Obviously, a lot of people think that the pastor himself torched the place. But nobody knows why. There's a lot of rumors floating around about it. See, some folks in town said they saw a strange man going into the chapel earlier that day, carrying a large box of some kind with him. The box could have been anything. But people have pretty vivid imaginations.

Some say that it was just supplies. say it was something to start the fire. But a few people out there will tell you that it contains something else entirely. If you believe such people, they'll say that the man who came to the church had managed to trap something inside that box. Something so evil that he decided he needed to bring it to holy ground in order to properly destroy it. According to that legend, he begged the pastor to help him, and being a man of the cloth,

he'd done just that. They'd taken the box down into the basement of the church to do the deed. but things hadn't gone as planned. Whatever unholy thing was in that box was a being of such unfathomable evil that God himself could not tolerate its presence in his house. And so, when the pastor had been unable to destroy it, God had sent forth his divine fire to burn the church to ashes, as he'd rather destroy his own home than allow such a thing to walk the earth.

Whatever you believe, the burning of the church spelled the end of Point Hope. They never rebuilt it, and in time the town's folks started to drift away, backing up their lives and leaving their homes behind until Point Hope is nothing but an abandoned ruin. And for a few decades, that's the way it stayed. Now eventually, someone else had purchased the land. Since it was relatively untouched besides some of the old houses, they decided to make for a good campground. They refurbished some of the sturdier houses

to serve as administration buildings or cottages cleared up some of the nice camping areas and opened for business but while they tore down most of the buildings they couldn't save they left the charred ruins of the old church alone and nobody's entirely sure why maybe since the old church was still relatively intact despite having been mostly gutted by the fire they thought they could refurbish it too

and simply never gotten around to it Maybe the process of demolishing it would have been more trouble than it was worth. Maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the reason, they ended up just letting the woods reclaim it. Over the next several years, the old church was swallowed up by the forest and more or less forgotten. Most of the campsites were nowhere near it. None of the local trails passed by. It was just an abandoned ruin sitting in the middle of the forest,

and most of the people who camp at Point Hope didn't even realize that it was there. but those few who did would whisper about it amongst themselves. At some point the old legend about the thing that the pastor had taken to the basement resurfaced, and people began wondering if maybe, whatever he'd supposedly brought down there, was still there after all these years. A few people had tried to go and take a look for themselves, but just about all of them hadn't gotten far before they'd run out screaming. Nobody ever actually made it down into the basement to see him.

if anything was there. So the stories and the rumors persisted. This is where Brad and Jack come back in. Now Brad, Jack, and a couple other friends there has gone up to Point Hope during their first year of college. They'd run out a camping spot, set up their tents, and done some of the trails in the area, and according to Brad, it was all going pretty well.

One night they'd been having some beers by the campfire when a couple other guys who've been camping in the area came to join them. Naturally, they said yes, and invited them to sit down around the fire. They talked, had some drinks, and eventually the topic of conversation shifted to local legends. One of the guys who come to join them got into the history of Point Hope, and he told them about the old burned-out church in the woods nearby.

Now, the boys called bullshit on the whole thing. They didn't actually believe this story was real, let alone that the church was actually still in the campground. But these guys swore up and down they were telling the truth. So Brad, probably motivated. and no small part by the booze, pulled out $100 from his wallet and told him that he gave them that money

right then and there if they could show him to the supposed burned-out old church. The two guys didn't need to think it over very long before they took the deal. They left one of their buddies by the fire to keep an eye on it, while Brad, Jack, and the two new guys

took some flashlights, got up, and walked across the campground, past the offices, and towards the edge of the woods. There they found a small path beaten through the trees. The two guys led them down it through the thick underbrush and towards the ruins of the church. And after a few minutes, they found it. Waiting in the woods, its black and sewn walls were claimed by vines and undergrowth, just as promised. The guys let him take a look at it, just to assure him that they weren't liars,

and Brad was begrudgingly good to his word and paid the guys what he owed. With their little drunken bet settled, the two guys started asking, to head back. But Brad and Jack weren't ready to leave just yet. They both had a little bit too much to drink and were feeling brave. Jack especially so. He looked the old church up and down for a while before telling them that he was going in to take a look around. The guys who brought them there told him no, but Jack didn't want to hear it. He had his mind good and set on it and asked Brad if he was going to go in too. The way Brad tells that he seriously considered it, before deciding that he was good just staying outside.

He tried to talk Jack into heading back with him, and even suggested that they come back in the morning when there was more light out, and it might be a little less dangerous. But Jack wouldn't hear it. Nope. He was ready to go right then and there. So that's exactly what he did.

Brad watched him take one of the flashlights and go right up to the front door of the old church. He watched him step through the empty archway where the doors used to be and then. Then he didn't see anything. The darkness just swallowed him up completely. No sign of light, no sounds. Nothing.

Brad and the other two guys waited for him to come out. They waited and waited and waited, but he never did. There was only silence in the air around them. After about ten minutes, they started calling out the Jack, but they got no reply. Not too long after they started talking about going in after him but nobody actually had the guts to do it. After about 20 minutes, they decided to send someone for help.

One of the new guys went off to fetch the park rangers while Brad and the other guy waited by the church, calling out to Jack and hoping to God they'd hear a reply. By the time the park rangers showed up it had been almost two hours since Jack had gone into the ruins of the church. They sent just about six or seven people in that. after him, and after searching for the better part of another hour, they eventually found him down in the basement, screaming so loudly that by rights, they should have easily heard him outside. But Brad and everyone else present swore up and down that they didn't hear so much as a whisper from that old church. Not a single sound. Obviously, Jack was taken to the hospital and

spent a few days recovering before Brad managed to get him to talk about what he'd seen in that old church. At first Jack refused to speak at all, let alone say anything about the church. When Brad finally got the story out of him, this is what he had to say. Shortly after Jack had gone into that old church, his flashlight had died, so he had to scavenge one of the old candles he found for light instead. From the front door he'd made his way into the chapel, which is mostly still intact. He'd seen a door at the far end of the chapel near the altar that he figured would eventually lead to to the basement, so he headed in that direction.

But as he'd neared the end of the chapel, he'd heard a man speak to him. Jack had looked over, thinking that it was one of the guys who'd led him there. But instead he saw an old man waiting by the altar for him, dressed in the black attire of a pastor. The pastor stood at the altar, gripping him with white knuckles and screaming at him. Turn back, turn back, for the sake of your life, turn back. His voice had been panicked, as if he were watching some horrible thing about to happen. Jack had tried to speak to the pastor, but he kept yelling, begging him to leave and not go any further.

Turn back, turn back, for the sake of your soul, turn back! The pastor paced her on the altar like a wild animal, watching Jack intently and fidgeting with his hands. But despite the panic and his movements, he never made any effort to take so much as a step closer to him. Jack hadn't responded, and after a moment's thought, reluctantly made his way closer to the door when the pastor screamed out one last time. Turn back! For the sake of God, turn back! Again, Jack didn't respond. He just backed away, stumbling through the door, leading out of the chapel. As he did, the pastor's friend had pleased stopped, and when he looked back, he saw that the man was gone and the altar was completely abandoned. Shaken, Jack had almost heated the man's advice and

turn back, but his drunken bravado and curiosity had gotten the better of him. He needed to see what was ahead of him, and so he kept going. The doorway off the altar led into a hallway, and eventually led into what looked like it had once been the pastor's home. Most of it was charred and dilapidated beyond repair, but Jack could notice an old stove, the ruins of a bed, and the remains of some wooden furniture. He'd explored the house for a bit before hearing another voice, and this time it was when he recognized. He looked up to see Brad standing in the pastor's old house with him,

near what used to be the bedroom. He said that Brad had laughed at the state of the house in the church before telling him that they were wasting their time and that they should really just leave. He said that he'd even seen Brad go and walk towards the door that led back to the chapel. beckoning him to follow all the way. But Jack didn't follow.

He hadn't heard Brad come in, and as far as he knew, he was still outside the chapel waiting for him. Whoever this was, they couldn't be Brad. Jack tried to talk to him and ask him what he really was. But the other guy hadn't really replied. He'd just keep repeating over and over again

that the church was a dump. It was unsafe. They needed to go. Jack didn't buy any of it. He kept his distance from Brad and went back towards a bedroom. It was then that he noticed the stairs leading down into the basement. As soon as he did, Brad became more insistent that they leave. He started speaking in a more forceful tone,

demanding that they get out as soon as possible and telling Jack that if they didn't leave, you'd get hurt, and he'd leave him there to suffer. Jack wasn't going to have any of that. Once he was sure that Brad wasn't going to do anything more than talk, he went downstairs. As he did, he heard Brad go silent. When he looked back, he was gone, just like the pastor before him had been. Slowly Jack made his way down the old rotten stairs and into the stone basement. The walls were blackened with soot and the dirt floors were covered with ashes.

He'd kept walking, until eventually he found an iron door in among the stone. He stopped in front of it before reaching out to open it, and when he did, he heard a final voice. It wasn't the pastor or Brad. No. This voice belonged to his own mother. Jack looked and saw her there, standing behind him. She was in tears and she was shaking with grief so intense

that she could barely stand as she told him how much she loved him and begged him not to open the door. Jack paused, obviously pretty shaken, and just stared at her as she spoke. She crawled towards him, tears streaming down her cheeks, as with a trembling voice, she pleaded with him to just leave, to go back the way he came, and to just forget about that door. She hugged onto his legs, clutching him tight as she begged him to stop. He kept staring at her, and as he did, he remembered. remembered the pastor and Brad from upstairs.

If they weren't real, then this probably wasn't real either. But it didn't change the fact that it made him pause. He could feel her hands on his leg. She felt real. She sounded real. But he still didn't move. His mother looked up at him, her eyes narrowing in rage. With tears still streaming down her cheeks, she'd scream.

at him in the same authoritative tone he remembered from his childhood. She demanded him step away from that door, and for a moment. Jack almost did just that. But he knew that just as the pastor and Brad hadn't been real. She couldn't have been real either. His curiosity got the better of him, just as it always had, and he turned back towards the iron door,

ignoring the desperate screams and sobs of his own mother before he reached for the handle and pulled it open. Just like with the others, his mother's voice went silent as he stepped through the door. On the other side, Jack only found an empty room. Its walls still blackened from the fire so many decades ago, but that was it.

Just the ashes and the silence. Nothing more. Disappointed, but, with his curiosity finally satisfied, Jack turned to leave. But when he did, he saw one last figure at the door, a smiling man, who looked exactly like him. Jack stared at him in shock for a moment before his candles suddenly flickered and died. He heard the other man laugh before watching the iron door slam, trapping him in the room. He ran to it and tried to force it open.

But it wouldn't budge. He punched it, kicked at it, and screamed for help, but nothing happened. For hours, he pounded on the door. He clawed at it and screamed so loudly that his voice had started to go hoarse. But nothing happened. The door didn't open until the park rangers came for him a few hours later. According to Brad, Jack was never really the same after they got him out of the church basement. He didn't talk as much, and he didn't eat or drink unless they made him.

He spent a few months in the psychiatric ward back home until eventually Brad found out from a friend that Jack was dead. Brad told me about the aftermath of Jack's death. He remembered it all so clearly. He told me about how the police had spoken with him afterwards, but how they'd initially started looking into it as if there was a murder before actually deciding that he'd taken his own life. He said that had never sat right with him or some of their other friends.

but they'd never gotten the chance to question it much. He told me about how he'd been at the funeral and how he'd even been a pallbearer. Looking into his eyes, I knew without a doubt that Brad wasn't making a single word of this up. Earlier I had wondered if it was just his idea of a sick joke, but I knew that no one would go this far for a joke like that. That sad, I still found it hard to believe.

Like I said before, I'd seen Jack with my own two eyes a few months, months prior and sure as hell hadn't been dead. When I said as much to Brad, he just shook his head. I'm unsure what to tell me. After Brad and I parted ways that night, I started looking for Jack again, although I never found anything on him aside from an obituary from a few years ago. There was no trace of the man I'd met a few months back. No evidence that it even existed.

Well, save for one thing. I heard that a few months back they found a girl buried in a shallow grave out behind a motel, not too far from where I live. I only saw her picture in the newspaper, but I still would have recognized her anywhere. She was one of the bartenders at the bar I used to hit up every now and again. I hadn't seen her in a while. In fact, the last time I'd seen her was the night I'd met up with Jack.

She'd been the one he'd spent the night flirting with. They managed to get some footage of the guy they thought might have done it from the motel security camera, and they posted it in the newspaper too. The guy they posted looked almost exactly like the man I met for drinks that night. The man that I thought was Jack. Okay. Who's next? Jimmy?

You've been sort of quiet. Pass. Why? I'm just not in the mood. Why? Just because I left a note to your wife. and kid saying I have your husband written in blood? You what?

I mean, why'd you write it in blood? Couldn't find a pen. Did you at least sign it? Ran out of blood, passed out, woke up here. Ugh, this is even worse than my last camping trip. Ooh, that sounds like a segue to me. Where'd it happen?

It was my Huntsville camping trip. I went camping about three weeks ago in the Huntsville National Forest in Texas. Me and three friends that came home for that weekend. They're all in college and usually we get together at least once a year. Old friends from high school. For the camping trip, we plan to go backpacking deep in the forest. Live off fish that we catch in animals that we can trap.

We've been doing this for a while in Texas and in numerous places. Arizona, Colorado. if anyone's familiar with the Spanish peaks there, New Mexico. So we're pretty much used to anything you'd encounter out there. It was my turn to pick where we went camping, so I chose Huntsville. More accurately, it's Huntsville slash New Waverly. So we'd drive up there, park our car in a camping park spot, and start walking off into the forest.

We'd add some laughs along the way, everyone catching up with each other's lives. We walked until it started to get dark and set up camp where we stopped. Everyone gathered wood to make a fire and we set our tent up. That's what we always do. Try to scare each other with weird stories. Around this time we started to smell something very faint. It was noticeable but not overbearing.

We couldn't put our finger on what it was, so we just didn't. just carried on. Mike had to go piss and he walked off into the forest. A second later, he'd come running back. Piss all down his jeans like he'd missed really bad. Immediately we all crack up and throw some jokes at him. Then we noticed that he was white as snow and trying to catch his breath. He starts screaming for us to follow him and runs off.

We all get serious and go follow him, not knowing what the problem was. We start to hear a faint scream and crying in the distance. In the direction we were running. It was pitch black away from the camp and Mike had the only flashlight. We left ours at the camp. He had his from the trip taking a piss. So at this stage, we didn't have much of a choice but to follow the light, which was frantically pointing here and there in front of him.

The scream gets closer and Mike starts to slow down. We then notice a ratty old cabin that looked like it was abandoned, except for a faint light that we could see from one of the old mildew covered windows. The crying was intense. Whoever it was couldn't breathe enough to let out a full yell. We all followed Mike up to the front door, and we could all hear the crying from inside. As soon as he knocked on the door, it stopped.

We all waited and heard really heavy footsteps walking fast to the door. There was a giant slam against the door and the sound of a bolt unlocking. Then nothing. We waited for a bit, knocked a few more times, but still nothing happened. We walked around the house. There was no fucking way any of us were leaving each other's side. and noticed a window, which was a good way up. Alex took a deep breath and asked us to give him a boost so he can see inside.

Me and Mike lifted him up to the window. We watched him brush away dirt and webs from the window and place his face close to the window to try and see something. There was a quick beat. Then suddenly he breathed in fast and let out a loud scream. Then he fell back. from the window, screaming bloody murder the whole way. We all tried to calm him down, but he was hysterical.

We went to him, but he started to shake, punch, kick, cuss, you name it, and then took off towards the camp. None of us wanted to be separated, so we all ran close behind him. We caught up to him and grabbed him and set him down. The fire was dying out, so I grabbed some nearby wood that we'd close. and added it to the fire. My hands were shaking, and I had to do something. I went back to Alex, and we all tried to calm him down. He wouldn't.

He kept screaming, and was breathing so hard that he eventually fainted. All of us are terrified now. We all kept the fire high until sunrise. Periodically, Alex kept waking up, screaming just like before. By sunrise he was up and looked catatonic, just mumbling to himself and whimpering. Me and Mike decided to go look at the cabin now that it was daylight. We searched where we thought it was, except there was nothing there, nothing at all. The indistinct smell from last night had now grown into a very strong smell, something dead, something stale.

We headed back to the camping site. When we got there, we had found Alex had chewed into the sides of his face and swallowed so much blood that he was throwing up. John was at his back. He looked like he was about to die from exhaustion. I guess we all looked that way. I just didn't notice until I saw his face. Alex said quietly that we need to leave. Now.

We all started to pack up the tent. It started to rain really heavily. It was about noon. And the sky started to grow really dark. Alex started to go into a panic. He went and grabbed a large stick and yelled at us to leave it and leave now. Or he'd knock us out and drag us out of there himself. Mike started to yell at him.

They started to fight. We broke it up and finished packing. and then started to make our way back. After a little while, we arrived at a creek, the one we had crossed the previous day, only it was flooded over, and the water was moving too fast for us to cross it. Alex started to scream again,

yelling at Mike for taking his time, packing up the tent when we could have gotten out of here. This went on for a while, until we finally convinced Alex to calm down and tell us what had happened. He said as soon as he put his face to the glass, a face on the other side did the same thing and started to smile really big. It had dark eyes in a dark mouth which was much bigger than Alex's, and the smile got as large as it could. A giant shadow behind it swung something down and sliced its face off.

The face was stuck to the window and he said it started to laugh. quietly as it slid down. Mike, still pissed off, and though he wouldn't admit it, beginning to get freaked out, started to argue with him again. We eventually started to follow the creek furrow way across. We then started to see toys floating in the creek. Really old toys. Old Barbie dolls and baby dolls.

This wasn't like any old trash floating in the creek, though. This was a lot of Barbies. A lot of baby dolls. One washed towards the side and Mike picked it up. It had some kind of voice chip that was dying and started to say some gurgling words we couldn't understand, followed by its sad excuse for laughter. Then it sounded like it was whispering.

We thought the batteries must be dying. He threw it down. We kept going, and the sun was starting to set. Alex was freaking out more now. It was whimpering and breathing heavily. We all started to see shadows move behind trees. Something we all called bullshit on until we were all seeing it. It was barely light out, and we stopped as we see the cabin right in front of us.

None of us knew what to think. Mike said, this is bullshit. I'm going in there. Alex tries to stop him. We all do. All of us just wanted to go home. Mike says to all of us to fuck off. Do our own thing.

He doesn't care anymore. This is all bull. We start to hear hundreds of the same sort of baby dolls as before. more, laughing, whispering, and trying to sing. We start to move forward past the cabin. All of us, and kept pushing forward. We smelled something dead in the air, something stale, same something as before.

We started to hear something crying and something screaming. We kept on going. We eventually crossed the creek and left the woods. We get back to our vehicle and got in. It's pitch black and we drive. We're about to get on the 45 to Houston, but the road is under construction and can't be accessed. And points to a detour.

As we head towards the detour, it seems to be a small, bumpy dirt road going back into the woods. We then see a young girl come up. to us. She looks like she was in trouble, young and pretty. She approaches the passenger side of the door and she looks like she's really drugged up or beaten up. Alex doesn't roll down the windows, nor does he open the door. She reaches for the handle and he immediately locks it. She puts her face on the window and starts to smile really big and we floor it. Alex starts to cry and scream, and we're all breathing heavy.

We finally cut on a street that takes us to the 45, and we take it the whole way. When we get back to my apartment, everyone doesn't know what to say. We all break apart and go our separate ways. Mike messages me later and says he's going to go back. I try to convince him not to. And all he says is it was our own mind. that were screwing with us. I think he just went to prove to himself that he wasn't scared.

I can smell that stench everywhere now. I don't go out anymore. I just stay in and don't answer the door. Last week, everyone I met was acting really strange. People that I knew for a long time and total strangers. My own dad, when I went to his place to eat supper with him, He just watched me, strangely, when I was sitting down. He didn't say a word the whole time.

I kept asking him what's wrong. He just slowly shook his head. When I was leaving to go home, I turned to wave. He had black eyes and open mouth like he was in pain. When I started to walk back, He shut the door and bolted it. I stayed there knocking and knocking. Nothing.

I called him. His phone was disconnected. I even called the police. Halfway through the questions they were asking me, the connection started to fade into static. I could hear a faint mumbling, singing, and laughing. Mike has completely vanished. There's not even a record of him being alive. When I call Alex's house, they just talk to me like I'm some salesman.

They say they don't know any Alex and to please stop calling. The person who tells me that is Alex's mother. I can't get a hold of John. Someone knocked on my door. And when I went to look, I saw a face completely covering the peephole and a giant smile starting to form. I called the cops again and instead of turning the cops again, and instead of turning the peephole, I called the cops again, into static, they got really strange. Sir, are you affected by any drugs at the moment?

No. Are you coming home anytime soon? Excuse me? Come home. And the phone called disconnected. My mail slot swings every now and then. Someone is sliding pieces of baby dolls through it. I try to call the police now,

and all I can hear is static and bad baby doll noises. in this crying and screaming. My TV's busted, but when I go to piss, I can hear it on. I might be going insane. Whoever lives above me started to scream in pain and cry deeply recently. I hear giant footsteps from their apartment. I hear bangs and something falling onto the ground. From the neighbors to the right of my apartment,

I hear what sounds like a baby that never gets tended to, and then it sounds like a baby doll whose batteries are dying. My phone has been ringing now, and it's Alex telling me things in a language that I've never heard before. Nor could I even manage to repeat. I keep getting emails of pictures of black and small colorations. Now I can't even access my email. Someone knocks on the door.

Then they slam against it. I can hear the bolts unlocking one by one, and I run to make sure I lock all of them back. Then I sit down and begin to cry. See, was that so much to ask for? Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Don't we all? I think I need some time to my heart.

Hold on Jimmy. I'll walk you back to the shanties. Those are cabins. No, they aren't. Ah, fine. You all stay here. I'll walk Jimmy back. Here, take my flashlight. It's fine. I know exactly where I'm going. So, uh, what do we do now? Oh, I know. With that I declare this first night at Creepaway Cam!

Oh, no! That's not water! That's gas up! For more information, I'm... 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 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.