Creepy - Day 1 - Town History & Failed Veins

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

And here...we...go...***Town History (starts at 4:55)***Failed Veins (starts at 18:25)***Written by: J. Boyd and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Content warning: kidnapping, forced experimentation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm John Grills from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror, Day One. No. This is Creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures 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. Well, well, well, there he is. Glad you could finally make it.

I know, I know. I'm sorry they lost my bags. Didn't you fly? on a private plane? Yeah, why? Never mind. Are we going to talk about that? John paying for all of us to fly here on private flights, car service, the works? It doesn't really sound like John, does it? I mean, where did he get that kind of money?

We've all seen how he dresses. This is it right. This is where John finally kills us. Now, why would he spend all that money just to kill us in the middle of Okay, this is a little awkward to ask, but where are we anyway? You know, I'm really glad you said something. I've got no idea. The airfield didn't have a sign, and the driver just took us straight here.

Yeah, he's totally going to kill us. Isn't that a little played out? How many times have we thought he was going to kill us? I can't speak for anyone else, but I never really stopped. thinking he's going to kill us. Why would I kill you? Damn it! How do you always sneak up on us?

Are you Batman? Yeah, Owen. I'm Batman. I just decided to drop the billionaire Playboy alter ego and go with the introvert podcaster from Minnesota. I knew it. I told you I'd seen him in a Batman comic. Shout out to Mitch Gerard.

Anyway, glad to see you all could finally get here. Yeah, about that? Where exactly is... Here, what's with all the secrecy? And I'm not complaining or anything, but what was with the private flights? Are you sure you aren't Batman? I think Robert Pattinson was emo enough for all of us. You would rather we all came here on a bus, maybe to the middle of the woods?

Come on. We got one life to live. Why not max all my credit cards and enjoy it what we can? and no that's not a setup for me to kill you I love you all but not enough to spend that kind of money to kill you and all I'd really have to do is

never mind as far as the wear this place is special it looks like some town out of a 1960s TV show you aren't entirely wrong you know how we've been talking about doing another team building getaway some place that isn't a literal swamp.

Well, yeah. This is not a swamp. I agree with that. And this time of year, Salem would be a really cool place. Yes. Well, this place is better. Believe it or not, this is the most haunted town in America. Sorry, uh, I was waiting for the punchline.

Are you serious? This place looks like the craziest thing that ever happens is a pie-eating contest. Oh, yeah, I'm not allowed to do pie-eating contests anymore. I'm serious. This town is, without a doubt, the most legitimately haunted town that you are ever going to step foot in. Come on. Let's take a walk. The drivers will drop off your stuff at your rooms.

I'll tell you about the town. Good walk. Good story. That was my friend, Gwyn. Do you know where the Halloween capital of the U.S. is? Anoka, Minnesota, of all places. About 20 miles outside of Minneapolis? Maybe you already knew that.

I've seen it start popping up more and more on social media. You might even seen it show up in the beginning of the House of October Bill Part 2, right before the zombie pub crawl downtown. Funny thing is, I grew up not all that far away from there. We played in Oka in sports up through high school. And honestly, I'd never heard the Halloween capital. title until, I think it was college. It's not like that town in Michigan where it's always Christmas.

Most of the year, Anoka is just another town. Not much standing out. Sure, the wings at Syrams are good and the donuts at Hans Bakery are tasty, but there really isn't anything that would make you think that, yep, this is the E place for Halloween. Turns out Anoka got the title back in 1937, because 17 years prior, it was the first place in the U.S. to have a citywide Halloween celebration intended to reduce the number of damaging pranks that took place on the day every year.

So, before you get on your high horse about what kids are like these days, remember the kids used to literally destroy towns because they were bored. Yeah, Anoka might be the Halloween capital, but it's not. I think that people think Halloween and they think darkness and evil and all that, which Anoka isn't, at least not until around 1 a.m. that is. Oh, Jabbit Jackson Street for the two people who get that reference. Anoka is just a town that celebrates Halloween and has for a long time. But darkness?

No. That title belongs here. This is the scary place to be in October. and its history predates anything we understand is Halloween. Way back when, and I'm talking pre-revolutionary war, the town founders came upon the realization that not only did they like being in charge, but that it was their moral duty to stay in charge, that no one else had the vision and strength and indomitable will to protect what they held to be the right way to live.

And like any group that decides that their way is the only way, A way they view is being paved in specific kinds of morality that they would dictate, but not exactly have to hold themselves to. Now, outwardly, they were very pious and evidently religious. I have no idea what religion. Back then, it was probably Protestant, but maybe Lutheran or Catholic. Maybe holding extreme beliefs even for the time, like double predestination, literalism, or millinarianism.

It doesn't really matter, because whatever they were trying to make people think they were, was only there to hide what they really were. Maybe it really did start with the best of intentions. Maybe they really did believe that they were following the word of a higher power as they knew it. The issue was time. See, the thing about most Christian-based denominations is that it kind of all rests on faith. That's not a knock on anyone's religion. and it's just how it is.

There was no real proof in the sense that an atheist would insist on needing. It was belief. It was feeling. It was trust. And when you're young, trust is an easy thing. Doubt comes with age. And the way the story goes as I know it, some of those original elders,

not all, but some saw their end coming up quickly, that faith changed. See, they'd done things. They'd behaved in ways that they would have shunned anyone else for. They had sinned and sinned and sinned in the privacy of their own self-made kingdoms. Now, some of them started to fear God's judgment. What if it really wasn't enough to repent? What if they suddenly had to be held accountable to their actions from their maker? surely he would see that their apologies were out of fear, not actual contrition. Desperation leads even the most stalwart to do things they never would have considered.

But that's life, right? The best laid plans of mice and men and all that? What they actually turned to for salvation is lost to time as far as I know. Some think it was their own creation, a bastardization of religious texts, inverted crosses, open blasphemies meant to call forth the sort of evil that wouldn't just forgive such acts as they had done to their own people, but would appreciate them. There's a theory out there that it was here, in this town, that the first true black mass on American soil took place in October, the time of Sal Wayne, the recognition of the start of the

darker half of the year, in more ways than one. And if that's true, maybe they base it. the rituals off the accounts gleaned over a century earlier during the Basque witch hunts of 1609 to 1614. Remaining copies of the supposed documentation read as follows. And excuse my recitation of this, but it's like periods weren't allowed in the 1600s. Take that as you will. And on such nights the devils say mass, to which end his servants set up an altar with black and ugly altar cloths under a docile of old, black and torn cloth and an altarpiece with

images and figures of the devil. And the devil hears the confessions of all the witches, who admit as sins the times they have been to church, the masses they have heard, the good deeds they have done, and the evil deeds they have failed to do. And once they have confessed to the devil, he dresses in certain ing, black and ugly vestments, and he begins his mass, the servants singing in hoarse low and out of tune voices, and in a certain part of it he preaches a sermon to them in which he tells them not to be vanglorious in searching for a god other than the one they have, for his is a good God.

And that though in this life they must endure hardship, work, and poverty, and the next they will enjoy much rest. If you can get anyone around to actually talk about it, there seems to be a divide as to who actually led the ceremony. If you were to take the text literally, then you'd believe that the devil himself showed up. Others believe it was the city elder Samuel Johnson. That's a statue over there. The one without a face?

You can kind of see it though, right? The idea that it used to be there? Like looking at the sphinx, where the eyes should be, almost like the head is always turning just slightly to look at you. Kind of like how everyone around here, looks at you. Notice that yet? Not staring, but noticing you. That you aren't from around here, wondering why you're here. See, the people who live here feel a sense of place and belonging that most people don't understand. Take history and loyalty and pride and fear and penance

and roll it all up into one emotion, and you have the citizens of this town. People don't leave much. I mean, they leave. Of course they leave. There's some kind of invisible wall keeping them here. But they almost always come back. You know how when you go on a trip there's a certain familiarity wherever you go, but not total comfort? Things are just different enough that it doesn't feel like home. That feeling you have right now? That's the feeling that people here carry in their blood. And to hear them say it, it never really goes away. They never really feel at ease anywhere else. Even people who move away for jobs or to start families or whatever,

they always feel drawn to come back here. Like they just don't belong anywhere else. Like they don't deserve to belong anywhere else. And it's not through some blind faith or allegiance. There's no sugar-coating the history of this place. No one pretends there was some better time. They know. whether it's from neighbors or families, exactly what has happened and still happens here.

There is no better. It's just now. That weighs a lot on people. It weigh a lot on me. Imagine every day of your life having some reminder of the weight and sacrifice and told that the place you were born has had on you. But instead of pretending it isn't there, whitewashing history, you accepted it. We remembered it. You just did your best.

But make no mistake. The foundation that was built in this town, both literally and figuratively, was paved in blood. This isn't a good place. Lots of stories here. Lots of darkness. Oh man, I can't wait to share some of their stories with you. Because whatever it was that happened way back in Old Sammy's Day, That was just the beginning of things.

Seeds or maybe salt buried deep in the ground. And whatever is down there has been growing over the years. Festering. Popping up from time to time to remind the people here of where exactly they live. And that the sins of the past don't stay in the past. They reverberate. They show up in new, dark ways. I've been waiting for this all year.

This is going to be fun. Fun? Are you serious? Yeah. When I think of haunted towns, I think tours and sugary cocktails. Not the sight of some kind of actual demonic practices. Good luck find in any place it is at the site of some horrible catastrophe. What? You think you've never walked on someone's remains without knowing it? Ain't just oil and dinosaur bones under our feet. There are dinosaur bones here? I knew it.

Uh, life, uh, finds away. You know, normally I worry about, Owen, but I really think we're going to need him to break the tension here a bit. Thank you. I feel seen. Oh, it's not that bad. I mean, yeah, it kind of is. But not really. Okay, what's the catch? I mean, beyond being on unholy ground, evidently.

What do you mean? The catch. Why are we actually here? Why did you fly us all out on private jets, then drive us and rented cars to this town that none of us have ever heard of? Why do October here? Better than a sleep clinic. Call back.

John. Seriously? Oh, settle down. I was just getting to that. Because the people here are on high alert for, well, horrible things to happen, they've adopted a tradition of storytelling. Not just town or family history, but telling scary stories, especially in October. They treat it like gargoyles on a church.

Use something scary to keep a place safe. I thought that being here would be an awesome opportunity for us to really tell stories to people and take part in a local tradition. That's actually kind of a cool idea. I agree. So my main question is, who are you? And what have you done with John? Yeah, I second that. You've been so strange this year with the radio station and camp and all of that.

I expected something way darker and weirder than this. This actually sounds kind of fun. That's what I'm hoping for. That's why I had you all wear your lapel mics, just in case. Speaking of which, who's first? What do you mean? Tell a story? Here? Why not?

And next up to our story open mic is Michelle Cain. Are you serious? Oops. Well, spilt milk and all that. Go ahead. It would be great. You don't want to start off the month on the wrong foot with the locals, do you? Hi, Michelle. I'm not from around here, so I hope I'm doing this right.

My story is called failed veins. I hate the way it feels when my veins roll under my skin. I don't mean the way a vein rolls and pulls itself away when you're getting blood work or an IV. Though I'm not arguing, that's awful too. I mean how my veins move, how they pulse and move inside me. They're trying to get out. Let me explain. I was a runner before all this.

I'm not telling you because it's my identity or some self-important grasp at self-worth. Though I won't deny that 51 gets to a person, especially when your body won't obey you anymore. The more you can't do, the more you think about all you used to do. But that's not the point. The point is being a runner, a committed runner makes a person a slightly insane, hard-boiled masochist.

Reners deal with pain and just keep going. Bandaging your bloody self on a trail after a slip-up, done it. Ripping off a seeping dislodged toenail after a wet long-distance course, done it. Severe intestinal issues mid-race. Yep. What I'm trying to say is I can handle pain. I'm not trying to be cocky. I just have a ridiculously high pain tolerance.

So when I tell you what happened, I need you to know I'm not overreacting. I inherited the worst veins a runner can have, thanks to my dad. The older I got, the more my legs throbbed after a good run. Then, even after just sitting for too long, Even with compression socks, the pressure was becoming unbearable. I don't have a family. I don't have a job that I love.

I have, I had running. It was the one thing in life that I actually cared about. And my own veins were trying to take that from me. I just, I couldn't take it anymore. I had tried everything else, exhausted every non-invasive option and there was no relief. I broke down and went to my primary doctor. According to her, the pressure and pain is caused by varicose veins, basically veins that are failing.

You've probably heard of them. And while poor circulation and bad valves in your veins are not pleasant, they're very common. She said it's something that modern medicine could handle and recommended surgical removal, and I was more than willing. All of my other attempts to stop the pain had struck out. If this would solve the problem, I was on board. Initially, it was hard to get a surgery date less than six months out. Too long for my throbbing legs to wait, I thought.

So, of course, I made a stink about it. it, and my doctor's office called me a few days later. The woman on the phone said she found an opening in a new clinic across town. It was last October 31st, Halloween. It isn't like I have any kids, so I didn't mind being out of commission for trick-or-treating. I said yes immediately, and was scheduled for surgery. They were going to cut my failing veins out of my legs. I was practically giddy, so excited to feel like a new person, pain-free. I had no idea how wrong I was. The pre-up preparation was when I first felt nervous. The doctor came in, lifted up my papery gown, and started drawing what looked like complicated football play from my upper thighs,

through my calves and down to my ankles. As he scribbled his plans, he reviewed the veins that would be removed and affirmed that it was perfectly safe. I wouldn't remember a thing and I would be back to normal in just a few days. His reassurances made me optimistic. Soon, my failed veins would not be a problem.

Twilight sedation was the plan. I would not be completely put under, but would be sedated enough to feel nothing and remember nothing. Technically, I would be awake. This was something I had never done before, not even for wisdom teeth, and the lack of control terrified me. I was a huge fan of local anesthetic. I preferred to be aware of what's happening to my body.

I remember the nurses talking to me in soft tones while they strapped my arms down and placed a big Velcro girl. hurdle over my waist. I couldn't move. The operating room was ice cold. They laid warm blankets on my stomach and chest, reassuring me as they did that it would be like taking a nice nap. I tried to relax, taking deep breaths. Like taking a nap, they said. Who doesn't like a nice nap? Even though I was positioned like a tightly swaddled crucifix, I wanted that promise to be true. I wish it had been, but it wasn't. I woke with a silent gas, muffled behind parched lips.

My eyes were dark, but my legs were on fire. The white, hot pulsing in my leg veins throbbed like nothing I had ever experienced before. They felt nodded and gorged, ready to burst. There was a sudden pressure than a pop of a scalpel through skin. Beneath my heavy lids, my eyes shot back and forth in panic. Something was very, very wrong. One thought pummled my reeling brain on repeat. The anesthesia wasn't working.

The anesthesia wasn't working. It wasn't working. It wasn't working. The dose was wrong. My body didn't process it right. I needed to see. I needed to get the attention of the doctor or the nurses. Someone, anyone to fix this. But I couldn't move. I remembered then that I was strapped down and my stomach lurched down in a sickening drop. Whoever was slicing into my legs had complete control. strained, willing my eyelids to crack open. They felt pinned together. I tore them apart, enough that I could see the blurred expanse of the sterile white operating room.

The masked face of the doctor was bent downward over my lower legs. I could feel his tools and his fingers digging, working inside of me. I felt another searing tear. Heard a small squelch. There was the sickening feeling of tugging, then slick unraveling from my left calf. I could hear the faint patter of liquid hitting the floor. I tried to scream, but my dry throat only allowed a wheeze to escape. My eyes were the only part of my body with any autonomy.

They strained frantically from left to right. Where were the nurses? Weren't there supposed to be nurses? helping with the operation? From either side in my periphery, the blurred forms of bodies came into view. They were like my own body. Strapped down, arms held out and fastened.

Their warmed white blankets covered most of them, but splashes of red covered their exposed legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the doctor's face lowering toward my own, studying me. He said nothing. What are you doing? My words were torn paper.

In spite of my dehydrated state, I felt the sting of panicked tears trying to form. Don't worry. You won't remember any of this. His voice was soft, even. In another situation, it could even be called kind. But you, he said, you are part of something very, very special. I tried to shake my head against the strap that held it firm.

I don't want to be, please. His eyes squinted as smile. But you are. He turned, leaving me crucified with burning veins that leaked blood onto the tile. My horse pleading meant nothing. I fought against the. Letted gravity pull on my head, strained through the fog of my drugged eyes to see what was being done to me. Every day. I wish I hadn't. I wish I didn't see, didn't know. He began his work on my

right leg next, slicing first through my inner thigh. I cried out, straining to pull away from this intense pain burning through my nerve endings. He extracted my saffinous vein, overfilled and pulsing, and injected something directly into it. Then he lay it on my thigh, uncut. Next, he cut a small hole into the back of my calf, using his fingers to spread my skin while reaching in with pinchers. He probed, then hooked onto the next swollen vein, as it unraveled, slick with blood. I was horrified to realize my veins were expanding more, burning inside as they filled themselves. Not even on my worst days had they swollen that much. Beneath my top skin, thick blue tubes moved like slugs. and as the doctor continued to prod and pull them out.

What the hell had he done to me? Even after the doctor had excavated the segments of vein he wanted, he didn't cut them off, but let them hang loose outside my body. I felt the dull burn of open wounds and the pulsing of flooded veins. They were free from under my skin but still connected to my system entirely. Through them, I felt the painful rhythm of my heartbeat. He turned from me, continuing to ignore my pleading whispers to let me go. I watched him turn toward the next patient, a blurry figure toward my right. Horrified, I saw him approach the body with a bloody scalpel,

the same scalpel he had just sliced into me. I made a noise of protest, but it didn't matter. I knew it wouldn't. My blood mixed with the fresh red that streamed from the patient's new incisions. They blurred together, pooling silently under the body. I felt my stomach heave, wanting to retch. Was that the same tool he had used on the body to my left? And before that, how many of us were there?

I heard cracked whimpers from the patient as the doctor continued to work. It sounded like a woman older than me. Maybe someone's grandmother. Her pleas were faint. The slippery sound of tissue threading through skin began again. I didn't want to look. I didn't. But I couldn't help it.

Her body was much thinner, and her torso was angled away from me, so that her legs came closer to mine. Like an arrow or the point of a star. The doctor pulled carefully on the large, dark mass of venous material. It seemed to move on its own. His eyes smiled again. He lay the uncut veins on the gurney, pulsing beside the extraction sites. Her lakes were modelled with bruises and opened incisions that traveled up her thighs. Blood leaked from each cut, and from each one a slick, pulsing mass protruded.

Though she was slender, her veins looked just as engorged and heavy as mine as they lay in the puddles of red. She had stopped making any sound. To this day, I believe that, just like me, she had. had realized it wouldn't help. Nothing would. I swallowed dry, my throat thick. The shuffle of the doctor's feet moved further away and paused. When the sick squelching of digging into flesh began again,

I grated my teeth to drown it out. I don't know how long he took, or how many more of us were part of his... His experiment? Ritual? has seemed like hours, hours of listening to popping skin, wet, unraveling, and dripping blood. A couple bodies in the room made pained noises, but most were silent. I found myself mirroring them. The pain dulled to a numbing electric throb as the minutes passed and more of my blood seeped onto the gurney.

Then I cried out, jolted by sudden pressure and searing pain. The doctor was back, scraping newly formed clots from my tender exposed tissues. I cracked a scream. Blackened blood spilled out of the vein he held in his hand, a vein that wasn't mine. I watched, helpless, as he placed it into the freshly opened gash in my skin. I tried and failed to pull away. My gourd legs were heavy. Skin adhered to the gurney with dried blood.

And where could I go? Even if I could shift my legs, my body was bound. I was his. I watched him stitch. I watched as my own dark, swollen vein was opened, pouring out its thickened blood over his hands. Then into the opened leg of the woman's. next to me. His fingers were a blur, fusing the thickened veins together into one. We were being sewn together. All of us. A pulsing intertwined abomination. Our blood mixed. I could feel the

others entering my captive bloodstream and felt myself pouring into them in turn. I heard the doctor's feet shuffle to my other side. I strained my neck hard, pushing against the strap that held me down. Behind the doctor's body, the blurry shapes of the other patients. Other victims came into view. We were arranged like a star, with legs pointed inward. Our captor stood in the center. His white coat saturated in glistening crimson. His forehead beaded with sweat as he labored over his his creation, what he was forcing us to become. Maticulous sutures tied me to the body of the man on my left, and the doctor stepped away, surveying his sadistic handiwork.

I felt the man's blood flood into me, and has shuddered. I felt different. There was a oneness, a sense of belonging in damnation. It had been the last connection, and now the circle was complete. Any hope I had was eclipsed by a grim finale. Live or dead, my body was not mine. Not anymore. I forced my sandpaper eyes closed.

I didn't want to see anymore. I didn't want to know. I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. I heard the doctor begin to speak a language I didn't know. I felt my heart pulse with the hearts of the others in the circle. They quickened together, timed to a cadence of the strange chanting, coming from the doctor's throat. His voice grew louder, insistent, commanding.

My mind went black. I did wake up. I didn't wake in the recovery room like a normal surgery patient. But I did wake up, alone, on my couch, in my house, legs tightly wrapped in elastic bandages. Somehow they had broken into my home and dropped my body off like a damaged Amazon package. There was no explanation, no post-surgery care info. Although, why do I keep calling it a surgery? stupid, wishful thinking. I know it wasn't. I remember enough to know that it was something much,

much darker. And even though I try, my body won't let me forget. Oh, I did try to file a complaint and look for a way to report malpractice. The office I went to doesn't exist. My primary doctor's office swears they never ordered a surgery. It's not on record. And when I look up the address, the building it shows is a vacant, condemned office complex. All I know is that doctor, that man, did something. He used me for something. And now, now I am filled with other people's blood. and my body isn't mine. It barely wants to move when I want it to, let alone run. The doctor had promised that the veins would be removed.

And they were. What he didn't say was that they would be tethered to and fed by the blood of others, and then put back into my body. When I sit still, I still feel my swore. and veins pulsing, moving on their own, pushing against my skin like thick slugs. And I know, I know it sounds crazy, but I know they are searching. This ritual, it isn't over. It was just the beginning.

My veins are trying to reconnect, to feed and be fed, to finish. what was started. It hurts so, so damn much. And the worst part? My legs take me out of bed sometimes. I wake up other places, other houses, some of them miles away. Last night, I woke up in the bedroom of the man I was stitched to, just staring at him. And I'm scared of where I will find myself next October 31st. Okay. I think that's bedtime for me. I'm wiped out, and it's just the start of the month.

I'll see you all tomorrow. Don't stay up too late. Travel days can take a toll. Bye. Bye, John. Bye, John. I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm feeling kind of good about this. Hey, John.

Did you forget something? What the fuck are you all doing here? Damn it, Nicole. 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 share-a-like licensing. or with written consent from the authors.

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