Creepy - Day 12 - Halloween Punishment & Life Sentence

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Halloween Punishment***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: JV Hampton-VanSant***Bonus Episode: "Life Sentence"***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***Patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. which listener discretion is advised. school. I'm told this is supposed to be my last year for trick-or-treating. Once I become a freshman, I'm supposed to go out and be one of the things that goes bump in the night. I've also

been informed there's more to it than scaring trick-or-treaters. As a young teenager, you can get away with being bad and only receive minimal punishment. As long as you're not malicious in your pranks and don't cause real damage, you typically get a slap on the wrist. This also only happens if you get caught. Word is that toilet papering someone's front yard is the socially acceptable form of vandalism, and typically reserved for those you have issues with. Me and my friends decided to start early. However, three days before Halloween,

we were armed with a few dozen rolls and realized we didn't have a target. The only thing we collectively had an issue with was being dragged to church every Sunday morning. So, the Saturday before Halloween, we set out under the cover of darkness and tee-ped the trees at the church entrance under a full moon. It had been a blast, and as far as far as we were, As far as I could tell, no one saw us. The following morning, I'm rudely awakened with orders to get my lazy butt out of bed and ready for church. Thanks to my late-night activities, I was more tired than usual. When we rolled up to the church, my parents were shocked.

My handiwork looks a lot different in the daylight, and I start to regret the whole thing. People were standing around looking at the mess. I found my friends and none of us felt proud about what we'd done, Timmy especially. He might as well have had a guilty sign hanging from him. We sit through the Mass and listen to Father Massey go on. I nod off a few times and his words fall on deaf ears. I'm so bored and tired that the only times I'm aware of what's going on are when we have to interact. This is the opening prayer where we're instructed to greet our neighbors and those occasions

where we have to kneel and stand. Father Massey read off a bunch of announcements from the church bulletin, signaling that Mass is coming to a close. This is my favorite part because it means we can leave soon. As a final comment before closing prayer, he asked that anyone with information about who vandalized the church entrance, please come forward. I feel a pang of guilt in my stomach and look to one of my friends. Ashley looks as guilty as I do, but I know she won't say anything. Like me, she fears punishment. The guilt weighing me down is replaced by rage as I watch Timmy walk to the front.

He kneels at the steps leading to the altar, and in front of the entire church begs for forgiveness. He confesses that he came here last night with Ashley, Gordon and myself, and that we are the vandals. My parents have never looked at me with such disappointment before, and I swear I'm going to make Timmy pay for this. If he'd kept his trap shut, no one would ever have known. As punishment, not only do we have to clean up all the toilet paper, but we have to police the entire church grounds.

The church sits on about 20 acres of land, and at least half of that is dense woods. It'll take the entire day to do. Last night, I'd been fascinated by how the roll unwinds itself in flight. Now I curse my good throwing arm for getting it that far. Our parents watch us from the shady front steps, no doubt discussing further punishment. They all know each other and are friends from volunteering with the church youth organization. They'd had us playing CYO sports since we were six, and their friendship is what led to the four of us being friends.

Well, three now. Timmy is no longer our friend, getting only cold silence in stony stony stuany. stairs. As it is, I'm thinking of ways to get back at him for his betrayal. Once the toilet paper is stuffed in garbage bags and thrown away, our parents each give us a new trash bag, and we wander off in search of litter. We cover the parking lots, playground, and sports field. The bleachers have a lot of trash underneath, and we make Timmy crawl under that front section. Tying off

the trash bags and throwing them in the dumpster, we determine that the job is done. When we get back to the scowling faces of our parents, they give us each a new bag. I'd hoped they hadn't noticed we bypass the tree line. From the first time I was dragged to my first practice, I was

told to never go near the woods. Pretty much any time we were allowed to go and play on the grounds, they repeated the warning like a mantra. Now they want us to go out there? I guess their desire to punish us outweighs whatever they were afraid would happen to us if we went in the woods. Kids like to scare each other with stories about monsters, ghosts wandering the woods at night

and so on. One of the creepiest things I'd heard was about an old house that was hidden in the densest part of the woods. It's said to be made of stone and wood from a long time before electricity. They say that evil spirits dwell inside and will possess anyone foolish enough to go inside. No one I knew had ever laid eyes on it, and I wanted to wondered if such a structure exists. As we skirt the tree line, I noticed that there are candy wrappers, soda cans, empty water bottles, and church flyers hidden amongst the trees. I'd never seen anyone out here, so it's understandable that there'd be trash that blew this far. Ducking into the trees, I began

picking up the old trash, finding well-known brands of soda, but the designs are old and obsolete. Some of this stuff has been here longer than I've been alive. There are tons of old flyers and church bulletins, most so damage I can barely make out what was on them. The most complete thing I come across is a missing person's flyer. The faded picture shows a boy around my age. His name had been Daniel Peterson, and he went missing back in 1978, last scene, entering the woods behind Prince of Peace Catholic Church. I call Ashley and Gordon over. We'd heard stories about a kid named Danny going missing from these parts some,

40 plus years ago, but like all stories we'd heard, we never believed it. Granted, there were some seriously outlandish claims as to what happened to him, but most had to do with that house deep in the woods. This is the first piece of hard evidence that there's any truth to those stories. Dropping the trash bags, we trudged. further into the woods. Timmy is still at the tree line, so hopefully our parents won't get suspicious. The last thing we need is to get caught running into the back of the woods.

We're already in enough trouble as it is. Youthful energy kicks us into high gear, and we dodge around trees. I take the lead since this was my idea, and I try to keep us on a straight pace. This way all we had to do is turn around and go back the way we came. There isn't a lot of grass and foliage back here, so we don't leave an obvious path. If we start changing direction, we'll likely get turned around when we try to leave, and any hopes we still had for trick-or-treating would be obliterated. I don't know how long we've run, but I don't know how long we've run, but I'm going to have.

but I'm sure if we shout for help, no one will hear us. The trees are getting denser, making visibility tricky. I look back to make sure Ashley and Gordon are still with me. My foot catches on something and I go tumbling to the ground. Ashley nearly trips over me, but manages to dodge and stop against a tree. Gordon hadn't seen me go down and I catch his foot in the stomach, as he tumbles over me. It takes a minute to get my breath back.

Gordon knocked the wind out of me. As I slowly get to my feet, I brush dirt and leaves off my Sunday clothes. There's going to be no way to hide the fact we both ate dirt, but we'll just omit the part about going deep into the woods. I'm just about to the point of calling the adventure and turning back, but Ashley's staring hard at something. There's a break in the trees in front of us,

and something dark is hiding behind a cluster. It looks solid and impassable, but after a minute, my eyes make it out. There are spots of off-white among the gray-green moss covering the stone. The roof is covered in, dead leaves, and trees are pressed into the walls, as if they'd grown so close to the house in order to keep it standing.

The structure is shrouded in darkness, and I don't think all of it has to do with the woods. I can barely make out an old wooden door between two trees. If there are any windows, they're either covered by trees or, or, or they're either covered by trees, or hidden by shadows. Staring at this long-forgotten dwelling, an icy grip touches my spine. It's probably just my imagination, but I get a seriously bad vibe from this place.

In the light of day, the three of us are frightened, and we can't explain why. This is what we came for, but now we're unsure of, What to do. Part of me wants to turn around and run. Once my breathing is back to normal, I take a step forward toward the door, but Ashley grips my arm. She doesn't think I should get any closer, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I leave the two of them there and approach the door slowly. Something scurries out from behind a tree when I'm within a foot of the door, and it makes me jump. Summoning what bravery I can, I take those final steps and reach out a hand. The door doesn't move at my touch, and I work up the nerve to push on it with both hands. The force was more than necessary, and it swings open on rusty hidden.

Very little light goes inside. The sun is at the wrong angle to show much. I can make out general shapes of a table and chairs, what might be a cabinet against one wall. I swear the shadows in this place are moving. Before I can do anything, I feel something behind me, and I whirl around. Ashley is standing there and gasps at my sudden movement. I hadn't expected her to come closer, and I stare at her in relief. I feel something touch my back. It makes me jump again, and I turn quickly. It's only the door.

The angle of the hinges must be what keeps it closed. Gordon breaks the silence, saying we should get back before someone knows. notices were missing. If Timmy finds our abandoned trash bags, he's likely to tattle on us again. This gives me an idea. We managed to make it back without getting noticed. With the bags now full of trash, Gordon and I make a big show of accidentally tripping and tumbling in the dirt. After we tossed the bags in the dumpster, our parents give us something other than than new trash bags, but I would have preferred it over the bad news. Instead of trick-or-treating, we're going to be volunteer greeters for the church's Halloween party.

This means that we're going to be standing on the front steps and hand out flyers to everyone that shows up. On top of that, our parents have decided what our costumes are going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be, a priest, Ashley, a nun, Gordon, and Timmy will be altar boys. As we make our way to our respective cars, Ashley and Gordon give me a subtle head nod. Back in the woods, they thought my idea was too harsh. This new development has changed their minds. I knew it would the moment I heard trick-or-treating was cancelled. Tuesday comes quicker than I'd like, and I was warned against trying to fake sick.

I had no intention of doing so, and I'm a little offended by the accusation. I'm starting to think my parents won't ever trust me again. I'd been having second thoughts about my plan, but this realization cinched it. I even put fresh batteries in my flashlight. I'm the first to arrive, but Ashley isn't far behind. Father Massey has a giant stack of flyers for us and asks us to try to be pleasant.

He's fully aware of how displeased we are for missing trick-or-treating and says something about paying for our sins. I just smile and nod. As greeters, we don't even get to go into the party. As lame as it would probably be, they at least have candy, but we won't be getting any of that. I manage not to comment on Ashley's unfortunate costume, but I can't help but laughing when Gordon shows up. The altar boy get-up has always looked so stupid to me, but seeing him in it is just ridiculous. He's not heavy set so much as he's bulky. I'd say that collar is about two inches too short.

I honestly can't tell if the red in his face is from embarrassment, anger, or being choked. Timmy eventually shows up, but by then people have started showing up. I hand him part of a stack, and we give everyone a flyer as they enter the church. We greet them, as Father Massey instructed, sounding a little more like legitimate members of the clergy. After a few hours of that, they pretty much reach maximum capacity, and people stop showing up. We've been chatting the whole time, even involving Timmy, assuring him, we're sureing him, we're aren't mad anymore. We start joking around. It's sounding like old times, and just when Timmy seems to be at complete ease, we start telling him about the house in the woods. Like us,

he'd heard all those stories and couldn't believe we actually found the place. When I tell him that we didn't have a chance to explore inside, the look on his face tells me he's he knows where this is going, and that he's in. With no one around to see us, we make a bee line for the tree line. There aren't many clouds in the sky, and even though the full moon was three days ago, it's still full enough for us to see by. When we're deep into the woods, we turn on our flashlights. Wouldn't do for anyone that happens to be a

outside to notice one of our lights, that would put a serious damper on the plan. We go slower than last time and manage to find the house in quick time. Our flashlights don't do much to chase back the darkness that surrounds the house, and I swear I see dark figures moving around, just like the ones I glimpsed inside the house. It's like they dance in the morning. moonlight, moving in a wavy shimmer at the corner of my eye. Every time I look over and shine my light on one of them, the beam shows nothing there. I knew this place was going to be twice as spooky at night, but this is more like ten times.

I am about to lose my nerve, and before I can suggest we get back, one of those dark figures comes at me from the side. I didn't see it until it was on me, and a scream freezes in my throat before a sound escapes. Ice grips my spine, but instead of releasing me like it did before, it spreads up until it reaches the back of my head. It envelops my entire skull before sinking into my brain,

and yellow light explodes behind my eyes. I can easily, see through the darkness with my new eyes better than I could with the flashlight. Glancing to my right, I see Ashley twitching as another dark figure latches onto her. In seconds, her once-baby blues are replaced with golden irises, just like my once-choclet eyes. Timmy and Gordon are unaware of what happened because they're in front of us. The plan had been to throw Timmy into the house and barricade the door, leaving him alone in the dark to scream and plead for us to let him out. The three of us were going to leave him there and go back to the church, claiming we'd picked

on him for ratting us out so badly that he ran off. Ashley and I smile at each other, amused by the evilness of stupid children. There's a new plan now. We walk to the door and open it with ease. Using our flashlights to help the other two see, we pretend to look through the spooky house. There's a thick layer of dust over everything, showing that nothing has been inside this place in ages. Well, nothing alive anyway. The dark figures that had been here before are nowhere to be seen, and for good reason.

We go from room to room, and the boys touch everything they find. Old jars full of unknown substances, scraps of brittle paper, and even some old books. To me, there's nothing interesting. But I'm not seeing any of this for the first time. When we finally make it into what passed for a kitchen all those years ago, we come across an altar. There are three candle holders encrusted in melted wax and an old tome. Before they can touch the yellow book, Ashley stumbles upon a door that leads to a cellar.

She urges the boys to follow her down. The stairs are old and creak under our lightweight. Nothing alive has been down these steps in decades. Gordon is confused by this turn of events, but I play along as to not alarm him. Ashley leads the way as I bring up the rear. There are cobwebs hanging heavy from the ceiling, but Ashley misses them easily. The boys aren't so lucky and get caught up in them.

Timmy screams at the sensation of something on his face, and I can't help but laugh maniacally at him. Ashley joins in, but then so does Gordon. The really funny part is that Gordon's not in on the joke like he thinks he is. At the bottom of the stairs, Ashley steps to the right, out of eyesight, and turns off her flashlight. I take her cue, turning off my light as well. The only one still on is Gordon's, and I push hard on his back, sending him crashing into Timmy. The two go down like a sack of potatoes, tumbling down the rest of the stairs.

Gordon lands with a hard thud on the floor. Timmy screams, his shrill voice going an impossibly long way, as if the boy is traveling a great distance. The sound trails off into oblivion. Gordon gets to his feet, scrambling in the dark, unaware of where his flashlight spun off to. He calls out for us, complaining that this hadn't been the plan.

In the pitch black, I can see he's mere feet away from the edge, and it would be so easy to push him. Instead, Ashley and I bring the turned-off flashlights to our chins and stretch the smiles on these young faces impossibly wide, giving our most demonic grin possible. Flicking on the lights, Gordon is startled by the sudden light nearly as much as what he sees and jumps backward. His feet don't touch the ground again,

and he screams just like Timmy did when he fell down the bottomless pit. There's a new plan, Gordon. It just doesn't involve you. I put a possessive arm around Ashton, and we finally walk away from this damned house. We're going to have a lot of fun with these bodies, and no one is going to see it coming. And to think, none of this would have happened had the weak one

not buckled under the guilt of vandalizing the church. Teaping some trees is child's play compared to to what we have in store. We're going to bring new meaning to the term things that go bump in the night. For your bonus episode, creepy presents, life sentence,

no matter what, remember to breathe. If I'd been born in another time, I think I would have been one of those tunnel rats in the Vietnam War. The guys who would go underground and crawl through the time, dark via Kong tunnels trying to find the enemy and not get killed or buried alive in the process. If I'd been born in another place, I think I would have worked in coal mines,

riding down into the depths of the earth, trying to make a living for myself and my family and not getting buried alive in the process. Instead, I spend all the time I can in caves. The tighter, the better. Call it caving or spolunking or whatever help. you to envision what I do, what I think about all the time, what I love. About 12% of all people are claustrophobic. I bet that number goes up depending on exactly how enclosed you are. That squeeze on my shoulders, my body, as I try to crawl through a space no rational person would attempt. It's not like a hug. A hug has some kind of give to it. This is rock. Tons and Tons and tons of rock that won't move or let go no matter how much you beg or plead with it.

Breathe. Just breathe. I get why people are scared. When you're down there, it's a black like you'll never know anywhere else. There's nothing. And if your light runs out of batteries, if you lose your way, if you run out of food or water, if you get hurt, you're dead. It's that simple. You don't get second chances.

You go prepared for the caves, and if you have any sense, you come to grips with the reality that you might die, slowly. A parachute doesn't open, you have less than a minute. Run out of air diving, and you get a few more. Personally, that's the worst to me. The idea that I could be dying, and all of the world, while see the light, literally. See life and air and not be able to reach it. It's like insult to injury. I'd always thought if I was going to die. I'd rather it be in darkness. Not anymore. Take a deep breath. Hold it in. Savor the feeling in your lungs. No, you're alive. You aren't

trapped in the darkness, screaming for help that will never come, knowing that not even your words will carry up into the light. Just breathe. Don't think about the squeeze, the unforgiving embrace of the earth around you, the darkness that feels like your soul has been swallowed by God, that you may get stuck in what will become your coffin. There are worse ways to go. I found one. I found the proverbial fountain of youth hundreds of feet underground. I found where people take problems they want to go away, but not die. I remember the idea of the fountain of youth from when I was really young, watching old cartoons. I think it was a Bugs Bunny episode, but I can't remember.

Something about the characters jumping into a fountain, running around a few laps, then jumping out all shrunken, looking like kid versions of themselves. I can't say it had much impact on me, but I feel like that was one of those subjects that got used over and over again when I was a kid. That and quicksand. Neither seemed to be very important by the time I got to high school. I guess the shine wore off it after a couple thousand years of searching for it. First time the fountain youth appeared in writing was in the fifth century BC, and stories about

it kept appearing throughout history, especially in the so-called age of exploration during the early 16th century around the Caribbean. They called the place Bimini, and people devoted their lives to trying to find the source of restorative waters. Of course, no one knew what they were looking for. It could have been a river, spring, or any other body of water. Most famous among them was Juan Ponce de Leon, or just Ponsolione, as I heard him referred to in school. He was looking for the fountain of youth when he became the first European to land in Florida in 1513. Supposedly, the natives he found there told him that the fountain was in Bimini, which in my head always sounded like dude rolled up and was going to enslave or steal from the natives, or worse,

and when they heard his crew talking about the fountain, just ran with it. Oh, yeah, the fountain of youth totally exists, but wouldn't you know it? It's not here. you all should probably leave and go to Bimini. Yeah. Bimini totally has the phone in youth. When he returned to Florida in 1521, he ended up being killed by the indigenous people

while he was trying to colonize the place. Guess he never did find Bimony. Bummer. You ever hear the saying that if you want to find something, you have to stop looking for it? Well, I was never looking for what I found. and it definitely wasn't what pawns had in mind. I was exploring a cave in a part of the world that I'm not going to tell you about.

I'm not the sort of guy to go in searching new routes or anything like that. Most of the time I follow the maps from people before me. But every once in a while I'll get adventurous and go off the beaten path just enough to take a look around, but not enough that I'm committed to finding a way out or dying. I was working my way through a pipe. nothing too crazy. I had a couple of inches on either side of my shoulders. It was off the map of the area I'd been able to find,

but not too far, just an offshoot of the main path. You ever seen those videos where someone pours liquid aluminum down an anthill, then digs out a massive web of tunnels? It was like that. There were so many branching tunnels in the cave that a speleologist could have made an entire career just in those caves. but that's nothing new. In the United States alone,

and I'm not saying that's where I was. It's just an example. There are over 45,000 discovered caves, 10,000 of which are in Tennessee alone, with thousands that have never been charted or even discovered. We basically all just live on top of a giant ant hill. I don't mean to get off topic. I'm just trying to help you understand that what I found,

it was purely by chance, but I wasn't the first. I was moving at a modest pace, just happy to be there when I came across something we call a pit cave. The sort of thing to be avoided is the bottoms far deeper than light can penetrate, even with a good headlamp. It's a thing often forgotten, except by the few who have fallen in it. In the silence of caves, there are many types of visual and auditory hallucinations. So one could just as easily dismiss the sounds I hear from the hole as wind, rushing water,

or just imagination. Those sounds I heard were not my imagination. They were weak calls of the damned, trapped within the pitch-black walls of eternity. You see, time is not something you can take with you, but it's something that can be taken away. I heard the screams of people, the actual echoing screams, like looking up into the night sky. At first there was just one, but soon others, more and more, different languages and accents,

all calling up to me, or maybe just calling out in general. All of the ones I could understand hollered the same cries for help to get them out of there. Now, I didn't have any sort of rescue gear. I didn't come equipped for vertical caving on that trip. I did what I could to calm the voices down, but they kept yelling over each other to the point where I could barely make out any one of them. One kept asking me what the date was,

and when I told him, I didn't hear the voice anymore. There were men and women, and I swear I even heard the cry of a baby far off. It was impossible, unless some giant tour group not only decided to go spulunking but also all fell down the same pit cave, it just didn't make any sense. I stayed there for a while, caught in some weird sort of fugue state, just listening to them all talk.

And I started to form a mental picture, the voices. I saw pinstripe suits, bell-bottom jeans, chaps and spurs, kounskin caps, dozens, hundreds of people all trapped in this same place, alone in the blinding darkness. And as I started to understand, I felt myself backing away from the horrible truth. Breathe. Just breathe.

I can't possibly know what I actually heard or saw there, but the longer I sat there, the more I started to understand, like puzzle pieces falling into place with each new voice. I don't think anyone was down there by accident. I think it's a place that's been used for centuries to get rid of problems. Once in the hole, you don't really know what's happened to you. But if you listen, you'll hear the sounds of languages long since dead, vernacular that hasn't been used in over a century.

The torment that calls for help that will forever go unanswered. If you find this cave, congratulations. as near as I can tell you found the proverbial fountain of youth, or as close as there is to it. And if you find yourself inside, you will never grow old, and you will never die. You'll hang in a liminal space between life and death where you have neither. It's a life sentence in every definition of the word.

Maybe some people get scared by that sort of thing, living forever with no senses around you, forced to hear the voices of your fellow damned. But look at it from my point of view. Take a second. Breathe. I don't know if I could save anyone down there even if I came back with search and rescue.

So really, what's a person supposed to do with that knowledge? If they don't intend to ever use it. For more information on this podcast, including how to do. admit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube.

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