Creepy - Day 14 - The Children of Woodharrow Park

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

It's raining...***The Children of Woodharrow Park written by CertainShadows***I Used To Run A Dead Internet Message Board written by Companion Prose***See your donation rewards podcast at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3SrH_3fsROXFAjomKcUtw***Music by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko 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.

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You've heard me talk about them before. It's an improvised comedy podcast about all the horror movies you love the most and the people involved who don't get all the attention. While all this month, my neighbors or Dad are doing two episodes each week tackling the Friday of the 13th series. And if you go check them out today, you might just hear a familiar voice. It's me. I'm not sure if that was clear. I'm in the new episode. It's some of the most fun I've ever had on a podcast,

and it's my first foray and improv. I hope you like listening to it as much as I like being a part of it. That's my neighbors are dead, wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, this is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or not simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language.

Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror. Day 14 The Children of Woodharo Park written by certain shadows. My life had recently been plagued by a persistent bow to rotten luck. I've been terminated for my last job. The weeks spent unemployed were slipping in a month

despite the stacks of applications I'd filled out. And every credit card I possessed had been maxed to its limit. Bitterness and self-loathing and poisoned every fiber of my being and left me with an inescapable melancholy that I was starting to believe was incurable. My latest humiliation had been to dig through my wallet for spare change as the cashier fixed me with a plastered-on smile and an impatient lying grew behind me, only to find I still didn't have enough money to purchase a meager amount of groceries. I'd headed to Woodharo Park after that, a local, secluded, sleepy stretch and land

to clear my head. The park was empty when I arrived, leaving me free to wander the paths alone and aimlessly. hunger nod to weigh at me like a familiar enemy I could never quite shake. In a final indignity, the previously sunny sky suddenly began to pour rain. I, of course, was not carrying an umbrella. I was so absorbed in my own misery that I barely felt a gentle tug on my jacket sleeve. Looking back, I wish I'd kept walking along the path felt so much as glancing downwards. I wish that I'd ignored the soft, silent plea for my face.

attention. I wish that I hadn't made the horrible mistake of believing that a hand with a touch so timid and helpless was incapable of holding the power to be terrifying. But instead, I foolishly stopped in my tracks, and ever since that fateful decision, I have not had a single moment of peace. I looked down to see two children standing at my side and immediately felt a jolt of unpleasant surprise. Both stood no higher than my waist, one slightly taller than the other, and both were clad in black raincoats that looked more suited for a sepia-toned photograph than a modern-day child. They each wore matching wide-brim hats that droops topped their small heads and obscured most of their faces. Although I could vaguely discern that the taller of the pair was a boy and the shortest

a girl, I was unable to see any features above the pallid flesh at their swollen cheeks. Their lips were so colorless that it appeared they had a little more than a thin white sliver from a mouth. The children's bodies were round without any of their cherubic softness associated with youth. Rather, they looked unnaturally bulbous, bloated to the point in your grotesqueness. Unbrushed tufts as stringy blonde hair jetted from beneath their hats like tangled straw, dry as brittle bone and seemingly untouched by so much as a single drop of rain. "'Hello!' I said, forcing myself to sound upbeat. They stared up at me in silence.

The girl continued to cling to my sleeve. "'Are you okay?' I asked. By now I was drenched and eager to head back to my car. Do you need some help?' But the pair remained mute. I stood there awkwardly unsure what to do. when the girl suddenly began to grip my arm with a startling strength that made me worry she'd pull me to the ground. Alarms rang loudly throughout my brain.

I felt an immediate urge to extract myself from her unsettling grasp and leave them both behind in the rain. Well, I rarely pulled my arm away, somewhat embarrassed for being afraid of how the pair would react. If you don't need anything, I guess I'll be on my way. She released her hold on me without protest. Neither said a word as I walked away. When I turned around for a final look of parting, I saw that they were still staring at me, though I could not see their eyes.

I felt their gaze following me with an intensity that disturbed me no matter how much distance I put between us. I didn't look back again. I picked up my pace and took my keys out of my pocket. The rain fell as cold as ever. I unlocked my car and was thinking about the can of chicken noodle soup I had left in my sparse pantry when I noticed that the girl had left behind a stain on my sleeve, as dark as ink, and shaped like her tiny fingers. I wiped at it with my thumb, but the mark didn't budge.

I sighed and looked up, only to nearly stumble backward in shock when I saw the backseat door open and the girl sitting inside. She'd removed her hat and was holding in her hands. both of which were clean despite the mark on my jacket, with her head bowed and her knotted hair concealing her face like a curtain. Hey! I tried to keep my tone from betraying how unnerved I was and failed spectacularly. What are you doing in here? She sat as wordless as before,

tightly squeezing and twisting the brim of her hat with such violence that I was certain she'd rip it apart. I swallowed my unease. look I said as calmly as I could manage if there's something wrong I can't help you if you don't tell me what it is I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone maybe it's better if I call the police and you can tell them my voice trailed off as I watched my phone screen flicker on and off before collapsing into a scramble of pixels and shutting down entirely I stared agape in my reflection in the black screen as a terrible feeling a dread began to be able to be able to beckon a little bit of a to wash over me. When I looked back up, the girl was gone. In her place rested her hat. The hat appeared soaked, every bit as saturated with rain as my own clothes were.

But unlike the jacket and jeans that clung to my skin and chilled me to the bone, the hat didn't feel wet when I picked it up with a trembling hand. It was dried at the touch, even as I watched beads of rain drip from its brim and under the car's upholstery. I realized with something between fascination and horror that the rain drops left behind no traces where they landed. And when I cut my hand beneath the hat to catch the drops of my palm, I felt nothing but air. Furthermore, the back seat was completely dry. There were no damp footprints, no water spots, nothing at all to indicate that a girl wearing a coat glistening with rain had been sitting there mere seconds ago. I turned to fling the foul thing into the parking lot and gasped out loud when I saw the boy standing only a few feet away.

She forgot her hat. I said dimly, my heart thundering madly in my chest. My mind screamed at me to jump into the car, to drive off as fast as I could and never come back to Woodhara Park again. But it was that same fear that left me ridded to the spot, paralyzed and helpless. even as the boy stepped ever closer towards me. Stop it! I wanted to scream, but my tongue felt too thick to form the words. The boy lifted his hat.

A burst of darkness erupted in my eyes, blinding me as a hellish symphony assailed my other senses. I can neither see nor move as I felt insects scuttling behind my eyes and scales slithering inside of my skull. The vile taste of putrid water filled my mouth as the deathly scent of rot flooded my nostrils. Final breaths rattling and dying throats, drowning bodies thrashing in water as they sank, screaming of agony so shrill that they sounded inhuman. I heard them all and many hideous more. I stood frozen in the terrifying darkness as the rain furiously slashed at my flesh like cold blaze.

Bates, unable to weep or let out a watery cry for help. Suddenly, I felt someone grab hold of my hand and pull me free from the loathsome trance just as abruptly as I've been consumed by it. My vision returned, and I saw that I was now alone. Even the girls had to disappear. I dove into my car and sped away from Woodhara Park. The sky grew clearer with every mile. When I got home, I peeled off my wet clothes and climbed.

climbed into the shower. I sat there beneath the hot spray, immersing myself in the steam and the warmth, and jumped out the instant it turned cold. I dried off and crawled into my bed, burying myself beneath the blankets as my mind raced with the nightmares I had endured. I wondered if the children, whoever they were, had somehow been drawn to the despair I had felt as I walked through the park. Perhaps my hopelessness and sorrow had served as a miserable beacon, guiding them towards me and leaving me vulnerable to their presence. There was one thing that I knew for certain. It was the girl who had rescued me.

I'd known it the second I felt her small hand-touch mine. I realized now that she hadn't climbed into the car to frighten me. She had only wanted me to stay with her in the park. Tears slid down my cheeks as I thought. thought of her being forced to forever wander wood harrow with no one but a boy who carried hell beneath his hat to keep her company. Maybe she too had once visited the park while bearing a sadness as heavy as my own, only to wind up imprisoned by it.

I slept fitfully. When I awoke the following morning, I discovered that the stain of my coat sleeve had somehow bled onto my arm. I spent hours trying to wash it off, scouring my flesh until it grew angeles. and raw, but the mark refused to be cleansed away. I sat on the floor in my bathroom, gazed down into the imprint of the girl's fingers on my redden skin, and felt the horrid chill of Wood Harrow's rain creeped down my spine. That was last week.

The mark still remains on my arm, and at night I toss and turn and vividly dream of the park. I've told myself repeatedly that I can't go back there, that I was a little bit more. lucky to have made it out alive and might not be so fortunate again. But I can't stop thinking about the girl. I pity and fear her in equal measure. When it rains, I look out the window and wonder if I'll see her outside waiting for me, clutching her hat and bowing her tangled hat. The thought both saddens and terrifies me. So I've made a decision, and perhaps I'll live long enough to regret this one too. As soon as I've finished posting this, I'm grabbing my car keys and driving

to Woodharrel park. I know that I might be walking towards my own doom. I know that the marks in my arm are likely a bad omen. I know that the girl may be every bit as malevolent as a boy, and that she may be trying to lure me into a trap of her own. I know that there's a strong chance I'll never be able to come back and tell you what happened. But I can't keep reliving the same nightmare over and over again. In a way, I never truly left Woodharo. My mind wanders its path even as I hide away in my home. I've got to go now.

Wish me luck. I have a feeling it's going to rain from the Patreon Vault. Creepy Presents I used to run a dead internet message board credited to companion pros Remember those purely social internet forums If you don't then this might seem weird to you But back in the day before Facebook, MySpace, Instagram,

or the word social network existed outside of lecture halls If you wanted a place to hang out online That wasn't open to the public Then private message boards were pretty much your only decent option So the story goes that in the early 90s, me and my old college buddies, we split the cost of the server, got together, and I made us a private forum. You can guess what happened next. The years go on and the forum gets a fair amount of use. Memories were made.

Users come and go, but eventually better social tools take over and the forum gets mothballed. The last conversation I had on the old forum was about 10 years ago. I kept the site up and running all these years for a few reasons. One was to have a place to test stuff. And I ended up using the server as a tool to teach my kids how to use computers properly. You guessed it. I'm a network admin. Skip to the present day. And about four weeks ago, you can imagine my surprise when I get an email informing me that new users are registering accounts on the forum.

At first I figured it was some of the old guys coming back for nostalgia. You won't find the site on Google and the URL is in something you would just guess either. So I logged myself in and went to check out the new thread. The subject line was a series of numbers. 1088887 7BR 286-33P-Z-00. I clicked on the title to inspect the conversation, but there was only one post. A series of letters and numbers with spaces at random intervals too long to post here.

My first thought was that it was a prank, so I checked the admin log for IPs just to see who it was. Turns out, my supposedly private forum had received 400 unique hits in the exact time of posting from IP addresses all over the world. I should have known then that something weird was going on. But I was curious, and it felt like a puzzle I was being asked to solve,

As I racked my brain over the next few days, I began to research as much cryptography as I could. But whatever code these posts were in wasn't something I could decipher. After about three days of searching, another post appeared. In much the same theme, and again, there were around 400 unique hits at the time of posting that prevented me from finding the origin. This is when things began to take an even stranger turn. So far, the same user had posted each entry in the thread. A few hours after the second post, five other users started leaving messages,

all of which were huge entries of letters and numbers. The post came flying in over a four-hour period until they just stopped. The server started going insane. CPU and RAM usage began to max out, but the traffic never changed. At that point, I'd seen enough and pulled a plug on the server, assuming it was being used as a Bitcoin miner and forgot about the whole thing. The next day, I got a text on my work phone. Turn on the server.

I was more than a little shaken. But I didn't do anything straight away as I was at work. A few hours after my lunch break was over, I got a Facebook message from my teenage son, which was unusual, so I checked it straight away. The message was a picture of his face from his laptop webcam, along with our home address. If you have any kids, you can imagine my callman measured, and it wasn't, reply. A few minutes later, my work phone started ringing with one of the support technician's caller ID. But when I took the call, they weren't on the other end. Instead, to my surprise, it was Stephen Hawking's voice speaking at me over the line.

The form is being used for great things. Leave work. Return to your family and plug the server back in. You have two hours. I knew that was a threat. I'm not an idiot, so I didn't take any chances. I raced back home, plug the server back in, and waited for a response. My personal phone buzzed this time with a new text message from my daughter.

Well done. No more interference. We're waking up. We were waking up. What the hell did that mean? mean. I made myself a coffee and tried to log into the server, but I was locked out. Whatever was happening, they had full access to everything we owned, which shouldn't be possible. The more I thought about it, the crazier my theories got until I eventually realized whatever

was happening was way beyond my capacity to deal with. Remember the old college buddies I set the forum up with? Well, one of them works for the NSA. His name's Pete. I figured that if anyone would be willing to help me all. with this be him. I mean, I just didn't trust local police to have the know-how and the FBI doesn't exactly have a call here if you don't think the local police force has the ability to deal with your situation without getting your family killed hotline, you know? I just needed a way to contact him without them realizing what I'd done. I knew I was traceable by my phone GPS so they would know wherever I went with them.

I also know my car was tracked the same way, so I couldn't go anywhere with them, but I also couldn't just leave them at the house or they might get suspicious. I had no idea to what extent they had access to CCTV around the area or other webcams in the house or at work either, so I had to make everything seem normal, but not too normal.

I drove back to work with my phones, my work laptop, and a hoodie. When I arrived at the office, I sat at my desk, returned my devices to the usual places, and got back to work. When I was satisfied a believable amount of time it passed, I began an operation. Call for help. Step 1. I walked at a smooth and completely normal pace down the hall and to the left where I entered the conveniently camera-free server room. Step 2.

After entering the server room, I got changed into the hoodie I brought with me and limped out at the office. hopefully with my head covered and my gate change they wouldn't recognize me through the out-of-date low-res Chinese cameras. Step 3. As soon as I got out of the office, I limped at the nearest bus station and took a ride to the nearest mall, where my Oscar-winning, Dr. House performance would take me to the nearest mobile store. With a piece of paper on which I'd written my friend's phone number, I quickly hobbled over to the men's bathroom, picked a stall, and made the call. The phone rang.

and I rang again then I hit a voicemail no worries hang up and try again no answer shit fuck shit it took 12 tries in the mall

toilets before I got anywhere when I finally got through to him he understandably wasn't very happy who the fuck is this and why have you called me 12 times I blurt out as much as I could in 30 seconds I even got as far as the weird code still being posted on the forum.

Then the son of a bitch hung up on me. I just sat there for a few seconds, stunned. I didn't know what else to do. So I dialed in 911, but before I could put the call through, the burner phone rang. Unknown number. It was Pete. He spoke very quietly down the line and told me he couldn't talk on his personal number, but that I did the right thing by calling him.

I quickly picked up the story where I'd left off, leaving out no details. I felt sorry for the guy who sat in the other bathroom stall. I must have thought I was a maniac. After I finished, I felt the tone of the conversation changed, and then it was my turn to listen to see. He blurted out a ton of technical questions about the nature of the traffic and forum posts. I told him he could see the post for himself if he got on the website. But he quite wisely told me that that would be a bad idea.

Any unexpected traffic they spotted would be a dead giveaway I told someone what was happening. Then I asked what the hell he thought was happening. How could they even have found our old forum, let alone have the resources to infiltrate my life like this? He tried to bypass the question, but I kept pressing him. I figured my kids were in danger and I had a right to know who the hell these people were. But he refused to answer and told me to head home. I refused to cooperate until I know who was threatening my family. He said,

It's not a matter who. It's a matter of what. That's all you want to know, for your safety and mine. Agents will be at your house in a few hours. Your family will be at home and we'll take it from there. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'm a glorified network guy whose computer was probably hacked by well-informed Chinese kids somewhere. Now my family was being questioned by federal agents?

And who or what the hell are these people? And why is the federal government getting involved so quickly? Two hours later there was a knock at the door. Outside was a white guy and a crisp blue suit and tie. To his right, a black guy and a tan get up. Both were easily six foot five and had little American flag pins on their collar. I realized then I'd walked into an episode of Homeland. The two introduced themselves as NSA agents, but I don't recall their names.

I asked for their ID and they presented their cards. I even made a note of taking down their agent numbers for my own record. After we'd exchange pleasantries, I made sure everyone was on the way back home to talk to the two men. I went to the kitchen to make coffee. When I came back in the living room, the agents had already begun tearing the place apart. They took every device they could get their hands on. our laptops, home PCs, even our smart TV, and managed to stuff all of it in the back of their car. It felt more like robbery than police work.

When they'd finished, they returned to the house and sat with me in the living room. They asked me a lot of personal questions about who my family was, and how long it would take them to arrive. More than anything, it made me feel like they were more concerned about getting us all in the same room than helping us. The low buzz of their phones put an end of the barrage of questions. Simultaneously, they pulled the devices out of their pockets and exchanged an exasperated look with one another before thanking me for my time and rushing out of the door, taking thousands of dollars of my equipment and personal items with them. Ten minutes later, there was another knock at the door.

Pretty shaken by this strange intrusion, I didn't answer the door at first. but after a second more intense knock I opened the door in front of me were two men and a woman average height nothing notable other than the badges in their hands our exchange went something like this sir Pete informed us of the situation if it's okay with you we'd like to begin didn't you guys just send some people

I'm sorry sir we're at but what about the other two just left I have their badge numbers written down here. The agents at the door looked pale as I explained what had happened. Then I went pale as they explained that those two men hadn't been sent by the federal government. They left after they realized everything of value had been taken, but assured me they'd be working the case in the meantime. I haven't heard anything back from them since.

I've been trying to get in touch with my buddy for weeks about what the hell had happened and whether I was safe, but he never picked up. and eventually the number was disconnected. I even made the drive to his house, but when I got there, it was for sale and him and his family were gone. I thought this nightmare was over, but last week I was followed on my way to work. I think my family may be in danger, so since then I've finished building a new server. I'm going to put the forum back up and see what happens. So far, all I know is,

is there is something or someone out there using computer resources that has the intelligence to outsmart the NSA and the FBI. What worries me most is that no one I've spoken to has any idea exactly what it's up to. I've put my story out there in the hopes that I'll be able to give an update when this is all over. But if I don't, then I hope someone out there finds this and it helps them. Be careful out there on the web. more information, including pictures and videos of the stories told on this podcast, or to suggest stories for future episodes, please visit us at Creepypod on Twitter, Instagram,

and Facebook. All stories told on this podcast can be found at creepypasta wiki.com and are protected by a creative commons license. Some rights reserved unless otherwise stated.