Creepy - Day 15 - I Know What Happened to the Pledges of Sigma Rho & In the Scheme of Things

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

I Know What Happened to the Pledges of Sigma Rho***Written by: Taco Truck Massacre***Content warning: animal self-mutilation***In The Scheme of Things***Written by: J.J. Steinfeld and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***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.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. 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 biocations of bioccurys. Silence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror. Day 15. I know what happened to the pledges of Sigma Row. And I've decided to tell my story. Written by Taco Truck Massacre. Did you know that Thomas Edison did not invent a light bulb? that the basic fundamentals of relativity were first proposed by a Dutch physicist and a French mathematician.

Have you heard of James Kirk Maxwell, or Xinjiang Wu, or Lisa Mittner? Of course not. When non-academics think of physicists, Einstein comes to mind, as does Oppenheimer, maybe even Faraday or Tesla. Never mind that Sir Humphrey Davy produced a world's first manifestation of electric light nearly 80 years before Edison patented the light bulb. Or that Cambridge PhD candidate Jocelyn Bell-Bernel first detected pulsars in 1967, yet it was her thesis supervisor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

History remembers the proud and science rewards the predatory. Edison and Einstein. These are the names you remember. My lab is located in the basement of Wagner Hall and is physically and digitally the most secure location on campus. It is windowless and sterile with computers capable of performing an excess of 100 quadrillion floating point operations per second, with a cooling system that consumes more than 4 megawatts of electricity supplied by a microgrid constructed specifically for the lab.

Experiments using the machine are documented by phase-sensitive, compressed ultra-fast photography, which is so incredibly fast it can capture the image of shockwaves rippling through water. If you have not guessed, cost is inconsequential. My lab is funded by faceless organizations and corporations with no names. I answer to government departments that do not exist, and heads of countries you will never visit. The university where I work stopped asking questions years ago. Access to the lab is restricted by biometric scanners that recognize the venous structure of only three people in the world.

old. My late friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Phillips, myself, and David Clark. David is a PhD candidate, writing his dissertation on very number violation. I am his doctoral advisor, and he works in my lab. I have not mentored a student since my days at Berkeley, but I've had no choice since Paul's accident in the lab. Ever since the machine started working. David does not question his role. which is to follow my directions unerringly without hesitation or question. He does not speak of what he sees. His reward for unconditional obedience and discretion is the privilege of my tutelage, which guarantees permanent residence in the ivory tower,

admission to the most prestigious research institutions in the country, if not the world. I cannot say I am sorry for what happened to David. his presence was a sort of Democles, an ever-present threat suspended over my crown. I wonder, though, why did he bring the pledges of Sigma Row to the lab that Halloween night? In the minutes before David lost his mind, he never told me. But I suspect it was his way to prove to me that he understood the machine. in indirect, albeit unmistakable means of giving me the middle finger. Unfortunately, like so many tragic heroes before him,

if one were to assume David was a hero of sorts, pride was his fatal flaw, his inability to recognize his own intellectual limitations. Since our days' undergraduates, Paul and I had been intrigued by the problem of space-time and had spent nearly three decades manipulating the intersection of matter, antimatter, asymmetry, and gravitational repulsion to produce a viable prototype of the machine. Our first successful test of the machine occurred on the night of Tuesday, June 22nd, 2009.

Object 118 disappeared into the dimensional field at 22-32 hours in a matter consistent with prior trials, and object 119 followed seconds later. But this time, something manifested from the field, and it was not what we expected. Object 118 rematerialized in the lab 23 seconds after its disappearance, perfectly intact, except covered with a crystalline sheen of frozen substance. A digital timer affixed to its surface indicated that 72 minutes had passed since it had first entered the field. Object 119 was found on the lawn of Wagner Hall three days later, in perfect condition,

with its timer reading that 12 minutes had elapsed since it had been set. Upon our examination of Object 118, Paul activated the video on his iPhone and spontaneously thrust it into the dimensional field where it promptly disappeared. It would not be located until the night of the Sigma Row incident. After the successful tests of Objects 118 and 119, Paul was eager to commence testing of the machine on organic material. I resisted at first, arguing that we would not be able to collect any meaningful data from biospecimens without the aid of a molecular pathologist. But Paul was impetuous, and he convinced me, just as he always did. We started with tissue and single-cell organisms, but when examining the samples that re-emerged

from the field, we could not detect any discernible difference in their appearance or cellular structure. So we progressed to the next iteration of testing. which we dubbed phase three, fruit flies, and then mice. And we waited. At this point, I should tell you what I learned about the Halloween party and the events leading up to the incident from police reports and the attorneys representing the university.

Testimony establishes that David arrived at the annual Sigma Rope Pi Delta Halloween party around 9.30 p.m. on Thursday, October 31st, one of the few attendees, not in costume. Witnesses state that David did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and he was described as having navigated the raucous crowd methodically, with seemingly singular intent, as of stalking prey. He was seen handing a beer to Kate Daniels, an 18-year-old freshman pledge of Sigma Row.

It is speculated, but not confirmed, that David slipped benzodiazepine or another powerful sedative into her drink, as there is not a body on which to run toxicology test. Around 10.50 p.m., David, Miss Daniels, and six of Miss Daniels's fellow pledges left the party carrying two cases of beer. They were spotted by campus security meandering across the campus in the direction of Wagner Hall. IP surveillance shows David and the seven pledges entering Wagner Hall at 11.08 p.m. And biometrics at the lab registers David's venal scanned two minutes and 38 seconds later. Nothing more of significance is observed until 1138 p.m.

when demand on the microgrid accelerates in the graceful yet steep glide of a sigmoid curve. Cell phone triangulation places me nearly four miles north of campus when David called me at 1157 p.m. And my image appears 13 minutes later on the same security footage entering the east entrance of Wigner Hall. My steps faltering, troubled. When the paramedics and police arrive 34 minutes later, it was just David and me. With Paul's cell phone. It was a lifetime ago, when Paul and I paced with feverish agitation, awaiting the results of phase three.

Eventually the test subjects returned, but this time they were different and wrong. So very wrong. The flies were listless and circled to the left in never-ending circles until they died of exhaustion. The mice, however, they re-emerged from the dimensional field, shuddering and writhing on the floor. tearing at their own flesh, chewing holes in their stomachs, pulling it viscera on intestines with their tiny claws until fecal matter spewed. Then, with as much strength as their mutilated bodies would permit, they turned on each other, and when only one was left, it tore off the top of its skull.

As for Paul... My God. I cannot bring myself to say what my friend did to himself after he came back through the field. It is impossible to describe how they looked, as though their faces and bodies were inverted, or reversed, asymmetrical, like a photo-negative or a reflected image, maybe the way a picture of a picture of a picture might look. A misinterpretation, a failed recreation, a mistake. My stomach revolted, repulsed by the abomination that lay bloodied at my feet, and I vomited under the epoxy non-skid flooring. It was the only sound as Paul stood expressionless, his eyes watching the intermittent twitches of dying limbs.

Paul and I disagreed on the next steps. I wanted to temporarily suspend further testing altogether until we revisited the fundamentals and determined the source. of the systematic error, reworking the calculations, recalibrating the machine. Paul, on the other hand, considered the latest experiments a success, Riley pointing out that the results,

if not desirable, were precise, since the test subjects returned uniformly fucked up. When I failed to respond, Paul blamed random error, refusing to believe that our theory, our machine was flawed. Paul was adamant that we continued trials on complex organisms

and proposed substituting test subjects possessing regenerative capabilities, such as the amphibian ambistoma mexicanum, or marine invertebrate such as esterodia. This time, I could not be swayed, and in the end, Paul relented. We agreed to meet the next morning to plan error analysis. I should have questioned the readiness, with which Paul acquiesced. I should not have underestimated his hunger. It occurred to me that while Paul might be testing the machine without me,

and I have to believe that he must have found some success, or else Paul never would have gone through the field himself. Would he? Security footage failed to show the pledges leaving Wagner Hall, and the authorities were perplexed when forensics determined there was no evidence of tampering with cameras or SD cards or any deletion of recorded files from the cloud. I was questioned early in the investigation,

but with nothing to substantiate my involvement with the disappearances. I was summarily dismissed from further inquiry. David, however, remained a person of interest, even without a weapon or bodies or biological evidence of any kind. Until now, I never divulged what I know. What David said to me that night on the phone, in the lab. The words he whispered in between convulsions,

giggling as he was wheeled out of Wagoner Hall handcuffed to a gurney. Undoubtedly, incomprehensible and manic to most, but to me it was all perfectly coherent because I saw what was on David's cell phone. I watched the video, the night it reappeared, the night of the Sigma Row incident. And I think,

That is why David ripped his eyes out of their sockets, because he saw it too, where it had been. He knows of the one, if not infinite number of demonic, hellish iterations of this universe that exist. Ethics is a human construct that has no bearing on my conscience, and it is mortality, not morality, that compels me to tell my story. because I can never be a Bernal or Mettner or Davy, a mere footnote in the annals of scientific achievement. Consider the foregoing my confession, a record of my triumph, because it works.

The machine works. There have been times when only a hair's breath intervene between myself and defeat, but I have emerged victorious. And now, crowned with a million colors, son, of secret worlds incredible, I am going through the field, because I must see, I must know, and when I come back, the world will change. The juxtaposition of fatalism and probability, the duality of classical and quantum mechanics, they will collapse.

As for David, he too will have his own legacy. One forged on fallacy, synonymous with atrocity. And I am terrified. You see, the pledges of Sigma Row are gone, but they will be back. I do not know when or where, but they will be back. And they will be monsters. For your bonus episode, creepy presents in the scheme of things.

written by J.J. Steinfeld and narrated by Joe Stofco. The modern appetite for the supernatural and outer space aliens and the paranormal, believe me, is nothing new. I am 70, and my earliest thoughts are of space travelers, amorous space travelers. Now I even think of the word paranormal and paravar together. I don't want you to think I'm some dottering nutcase caught in the middle of an interplanetary porno flick. Actually, that's more a description my mother would use, bless her octogenarian, soon to be nanogenarian heart. My mental processes are on the firmest terra firma, but that does not mean life is without its unexplainable aspects. Let me explain.

On my 70th birthday, the cake candles glowing, encapsulating my life with miniature fires and melting wax, my mother, 89, who is working on her 25th Fortuna tumultuous adventure novel, the latest as with the earliest having Fortuna conducting her adventures in other galaxies. she told me that my father, her paramour, her last paramour, she emphasized, had been a renowned scientist who investigated the paranormal among other interests. Until that moment, I had never known whom my father had been. It had been a matter of principle and strength and pride for mom that she never needed a man or to identify the sperm donor, as she had referred to him, long before the term acquired modern

scientific and popular currency. Irrational as it sounded, I had thought my father was a space alien, something I had never voiced to anyone, let alone my mother, who I have lived with in the same old house my entire life. I don't know if it had anything to do with my reading my mother's first Fortuna tumultuous novel. Fortuna in full battle array gazed into the errant space wanderer's eyes, saw the sensitivity, the longing, and felt love suffuse her being. But the notion of having a space alien father grew in my mind. I developed that notion when I was quite young, and it has persisted in one form or another to this very day. Why tell me now, Mom, I asked, still breathing unevenly.

From the numerous expulsions of air it took me to extinguish seventy-one candles. Not to forget the one for luck and the grow on. We should never cease to grow spiritually, my mother argued. Fortuna hasn't. See, my lovely son, Mom said, you are 70, and even though I'm not superstitious or sentimental, you know me, at my age I'm giving in a teeny bit to sentimentality and superstition. You were conceived on his 70th birthday,

and, directly on the heels of that momentous revelation, she told me about the small town that she had grown up in, and left when, at the age of 19, she found out she was pregnant. It was a small town, like the one Fortuna had fled, except Fortuna's escape was in a sleek spacecraft. Then, pouring each of us a glass of scotch, Mom began to tell me the story of Gustavus. Gustavus, my mother said, could make people vanish into thin air. It was an ability, no, a power, a supernatural frightening power he acquired on his tenth birthday, a bungled exchange between his father and a mysterious old woman who had the flowing hair of a teenager. The father was trampled by a horse-drawn milk wagon, horses that one old-timer said had eyes the color of the devil's skin,

if evil incarnate indeed has an epidermis. Gustavus, during his younger years, rarely exercised the power. until his early twenties, when he found the sweetness of copulatory bliss, and in the town there was no shortage of eager accomplices. Married women for Gustavus, only married women. I, unmarried and therefore unpursued by Gustavus, believed it was his eyes, the color of a nighttime summer sky. Others said it was his singing voice. He was by no means a beautiful or handsome person, not quite ugly. I asked my mother to define not quite ugly, and she made a contorted face, and then smiled with indomitable composure, and said, the town he lived in, and where you were conceived,

is reputed to be the most active alien abduction area in the country. Although most people claim it is a tourist. detracting gimmick. Why would a sane person, I asked, want to visit a place where they might be abducted by aliens at any moment? Good point, my mother said, and poured herself another glass of scotch. My mother swam her tongue in the drink, moaned pleasurably, and then continued with her story. Bored and sad and ever so slightly guilty, Gustavus made himself vanish. and his neighbors said the aliens had abducted another. Was that 30 or 35 in the last 10 years?

Well, that was before they got it in their heads that tourists could be financially beneficial to the small out-of-the-way town. Even before the narcotic effect of tourist dollars on scientific objectivity took hold, people fought the rumors. His eyes were ordinary, not unique, His voice was wonderful, not super, no, but the rumors persisted.

And one day, the world's foremost expert on alien abduction, a tiny, long-bearded man, I'm 52, at least I was in those days, and he was shorter than me, spent a full week in town talking to residents, wandering about with his notebook, and meeting a young author to who, craving worldly experience, bedded the tiny, long-bearded world-renowned scientist, and wrote a story about the occurrence, a story that became her first published piece. Well, Astari's son was bitter than the reality. Fresh in your drink, she asked, and I reminded her that my tolerance for alcohol was not equal to hers. This is the first you've ever mentioned this name, Gustavus, in my presence.

I said, trying not to sound accusatory, reminding her of our lifetime of mother and son conversations and confidences. I have reasons, mom said, and announced that she had to get back to her writing. There was a book waiting to be finished. Then my mother remarked, with an exuberance befitting a woman a third her age, that her literary output and my theatrical achievements will coincide upon the publication of book number 25. My last theatrical role, I pointed out, was eight years ago, but she reminded me of my dinner theater work and the charming TV commercials I had done,

from serious stage actor to song and dance, man, mom. My looks are faded, by hoof and talents diminished. But my love of performing, I had to admit, was stronger than ever. The commercials were all for health-related products, and I touched various parts of my body to indicate where the thesbian and the medicinal had dovetailed for me. I felt caught in my most challenging role. I was praying myself. But at 70, I was asking as though I were an adolescent, who am I? See the mayor, my mother told me. He's been mayor of that little dot on the map for nearly four decades. Tell him you were brought by the spirit of Gustavus.

As a mature man, having believed that I had been fathered by some amorous space traveler, but instead, finding out it was an amorous renowned scientist, I went to the town of my mother's birth and youth and visited the mayor in his town hall office. A plaque on the building set forth the town's worldview. Go out into the night air, cast your eyes skyward more than the moon and stars are playing their roles in the scheme of things. I introduced myself, uttered the name Gustavus as matter-of-factly as I could, and the mayor, seated at his desk, ordered me to get out of his sight. Gustavus, I said again. I've been brought here by the spirit of Gustavus. Gustavus, he fumed, the mayor of King Lear gone ballistic.

That's why I'm here in breathing, why you're here in breathing. When instantly I said, well, I'm here because my mother told me she was born in this town, left as a teenager. You're here, he shouted, the mayor of Lear going even more ballistic, because of Gustavus, and that scientist who visited here to investigate the strange goings-on. The mayor put his head down on his desk, and his demeanor considerably drained, said, You're my brother, half-brother. I suggested that he was mistaken.

A stirring, heartfelt, forceful, five-minute monologue by the mayor made me accept that he was my half-brother. We have twin half-siblings, a half-brother, and a half-sister, but they were lured aboard this alien spaceship many years ago, he revealed, tears in his eyes. I accused my half-brother of being lame-brained and fool-headed, of thinking he was in an episode of the X-Files. We argued furiously for an hour, half-brother against half-brother, and I felt upon the stage transformed, magnificently transformed, despite my inspiring performance and our newly discovered, and our newly discovered, consanguinity, my half-brother pushed me out of his office. His last words to me were that our half-siblings were abducted by aliens. And my last words to him were, get yourself some professional help real quick.

But late at night, the constraints of one's mortality squeezing dreadfully, certainty is not the most appealing of conditions. I now often return to the town of my conception and cast my eyes skyward, seeing lights from unidentifiable sources, hearing inexplicable sounds. 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 Creepod.com. You can also follow us at Creepad. on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons Share Alight licensing, or with written consent from the authors.

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