Creepy - Day 18 - My Parent's Halloween Party & Space is Filled with Bodies

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

My Parent's Halloween Party***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Bonus Episode: "Space is Filled with Bodies"***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***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 creepyposters and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror.

Day 18. My parents' Halloween party. Written by known of consequence and narrated by Michelle Kane. When it comes to Halloween, my family isn't what you would call typical. It's not just about the 31st like it is for most people. No, they celebrate the full 31 days. Everyone knows that Christmas decorations start popping up in stores way too early. This irritated my parents so much when they were younger,

so they decided to make Halloween more epic than Christmas. That doesn't mean we don't do Christmas, because we do. Our decorations start going up on the first. They love jamming as much into the yard. is possible without looking like a jumbled mess. By the 10th, the front yard is decked out to look like the world's most haunted cemetery. Dad even put up a grimly designed sign over the garage that says, Shadow Hills Mortuary.

But to be honest, I don't get the reference. Every weekend in October, my parents throw awesome Halloween parties. And since I became a freshman, I've been allowed to stay up later for the real fun. Well, that, and I occasionally managed to snag a glass of mom's voodoo punch. Just one of those, and I get a buzz at last the whole night. This year's decoration layout is a bit more complicated. It's the 15th, and I'm still making adjustments under mom's watchful eye. I'm working with this black cloth with a wire frame inside, trying to make this spectral anomaly seem like it's coming out of the ground in front of a tombstone. It's the third one,

and I finally got it how she wants. As I take a step back to appreciate my hard work, mom hands me the cups she's been drinking from. I take a sip, not expecting it to be her voodoo punch. She smiles at me, saying, you're 18 now. I know what 18-year-olds get up to. I just ask that if you decide to drink, do it at home and don't overdo it. Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year, which is unfortunate. When it lands on a weekend, the party is always insane. But that doesn't mean that the last weekend isn't awesome. With my mom's blessing, I had more than a few voodoo's so much that I don't really remember much of the party.

I remember something happening at the dining room table, but things get hazy after that. When Halloween falls during the week, only a select group comes over for the actual Halloween celebration. Dad informs me that this year is going to be a little different, and I won't be going to school a following day. This surprises me. They've always been adamant that I do well in school and have never lived. let me get away with faking sick. The fact that I get to skip school on the first tells me it's going to be a late night,

and I like the sound of that. All afternoon on Monday, I'm busy in the living room. The last couple of days have been oddly hazy, not just Saturday night, and I can't figure out why. I only have vague recollections of what happened at school. Maybe it was all the voodoo punch I had at the party? I have felt off since that night.

There must be a reason. While watching horror movies, I put together goodie bags. We've never just handed out a few pieces of candy to trick or treaters when they come by. My parents stock up on loads of candy, even some full-size stuff. Each bag has at least ten pieces of candy, a package of cookies, and some kind of cheap. toy like a yo-yo. I make at least 300 of these. Our house draws a large crowd and we usually run out of goody bags. As I put the last bag in the large plastic cauldron, I feel lightheaded, as if I'm coming down with something. My movements feel a little sluggish, but I shrug it off.

There's no way I'm getting sick just before Halloween. I won't let my parents down on their favorite holiday. Normally, I have free reign to pick my costume, but my parents change it up this year. They are dressing up like Gomez and Mortisha Adams. I'm expecting to be another member of the immediate family that when mom shows me these skin-tight bodysuit and enormous wig that I'll be in, I was hoping to wear something a little sexy and risque, but instead I get to be, cousin. In order to really pull off cousin it, mom decides to put tape over my mouth to keep me from talking. I somehow doubt the actor who portrayed this character had to go through that sort of treatment, but what am I going to do? I'm not going to disobey my parents, and this is a fairly minimal

inconvenience. As it is, I haven't said much since the party, so it's no big deal. Kids start showing up on the sidewalk at five, which I still find strange. I remember going trick-or-treating when it was actually dark out. Starting so early does prevent kids accidentally getting hit by cars, and it prevents mischievous teens from preying on the young and weak. Not completely, but it's less likely that some jackass 15-year-old is going to steal an 8-year-old's candy hall. Especially since these days parents' cops, their kids so much. I find it strange when a group of 13-year-olds show up with a parent or two.

Doesn't anyone believe in independence anymore? Okay, who am I to talk? My parents are handing out goodie bags with me and watching me awfully closely. I wonder what's up with that. By the time the sky starts turning dark and the full effect of our decorations can be appreciated, the trick-or-treaters start dwindling down. There's a few stragglers, and I'm down to the last ten bags when the sidewalk is empty up and down the block. I move the giant plastic cauldron that held the bags inside, and that's when the first car parks on the sidewalk.

The guest list for this year's midweek Halloween party consists of five other couples, with one I've never met before. As a black Mercedes pulls up, I give as much of a greeting to the Maitlands as I can. I find it funny that they dress up like Charles and Delia Dietz instead of the characters they share a name with from Beetlejuice. Then again, I'm one of the only people I know

that actually gets the movie reference. The four couples I know have shown up when a 1958 Cherry Red Plymouth Fury pulls up to the curb. A woman gets out of the driver's seat and something that might be considered a dress, but honestly, I don't think there's enough there to truly qualify. I don't think I've ever seen so much leg when someone gets out of the car. The man that came around from the passenger side is in a vermilion suit

that matches her dress perfectly. As they approach, I do the only thing I can when greeting guests. I give a slight bow. The woman addresses me by name, thanking me for welcoming them into our home. home and commending my mother's craftsmanship on my costume. This is the first time anyone has acknowledged knowing what my mother had planned. Now that everyone is in attendance, I step inside and close the front door, leaving the warm air behind for the much more comfortable air-conditioned atmosphere of inside. I feel chilly. It hadn't been apparent to me just how warm I'd been outside,

and a light layer of sweat has absorbed into the body suit. I somehow managed to fight off a shiver. Walking into the dining room, I find all the guests seated at the large table of it, but it doesn't look right. I know we put the extension leaf in before going outside and even through a black tablecloth over it, but there's something on it I've not seen before.

What appears to be a solid plank of rosewood covers the center of the table, as if a slice was taken from the largest stump I've ever seen. I could count the rings if the light were a little brighter. I have no idea where this came from. It hadn't been here before, nor was it laying around the house anywhere as far as I can remember. It's certainly too big for one of the guests to have brought it into the house. I would have noticed something like that since I was on door duty.

Everyone has a drink in their hand, mom's voodoo punch, I assume. It's a shame I have to keep tape on my mouth. Kind of hard to enjoy a beverage with my mouth covered. I realize I'm incredibly thirsty and wander into the kitchen. My father is busy at the counter and my mother is pulling things out of a drawer on the kitchen island. I try to ask if I can take the tape off, but she says, Not yet, sweetie. I try to mime drinking a glass of water.

Soon is all she'll say before taking her items to the other room. I think this is the first time in my life that I'm not enjoying the Halloween party. At least the house is nice and cool, but the thirst is getting strong. Would it be so bad to peel the tape off for a few seconds and chug a glass of water? How long has it been since I had something to drink? As soon as the thought enters my mind, my dad, turns towards me and gives me a knowing look. He's always been good at knowing when I'm thinking of doing something I shouldn't.

It's kept my ass out of the fire more times than I care to admit. I wonder how he does that. None of my friends have a dad that can read them that well. It's even more impressive since he can't see my face. Dad grabs up a tray with three glasses on it, two matching the ones the guests are using, and the third looks like a tumbler made of some kind of stone. The tumbler is nearly filled to the brim with some kind of dark, murky-looking fluid.

If I didn't know any better, that stuff looks like oil drained from a car's engine that's been horribly neglected. With the tray in one hand, Dad puts his arm around my shoulders and ushers me back to the dining room. The guests are arranged at the table in a slightly crowded fashion. The woman in Vermilion is at the far head of the table. leaving the opposite end empty, along with the chair to its right. This spot is usually reserved for my mom, but she's sitting in the chair directly to the left. Once dad places her glass from his tray in front of her, he places the matching glass at the right chair. Then the stone tumbler at the head seat.

I'm shocked when he takes the right chair. Everyone stares at me, waiting for me to do something, but I don't have a clue as to what it is. Yes, there's one chair left, but I never sit at the head of the table. These spots are always reserved for heads of the household or honored guests. I'm just a teenager, no one of significance. This really feels off to me, but it's not like I can say anything about it. The woman in the almost dress, Cassandra, asks me to take my place at the table. Everyone continues to stare at me, so I do as she asks. I hate being the center of attention, especially when I don't know what the hell is going on. I feel like a deer caught in headlights. As I sit down, I catch eyes with

Cassandra, and she begins to whisper something. That's too low for me to make out the words, but I can clearly hear her voice. And chanting is the only word I can find to describe it. Sing-song, almost. With a hint of sweaty darkness, a voice meant for the bedroom. There's movement at both sides of my vision, but locked in her stare. I can't look to see what it is. Once her whispers stop, I'm able to blink. I didn't realize the level of my tunnel vision, and I look around the room.

Everything is as it was before, but there's no idle chatter among the guests. My parents deliberately keep their gaze averted from me, and I feel chilly again. Looking down, I find that the giant wig is gone along with the body suit. My pale, naked flesh is on display, and I don't know when that happened. Neither of my parents will look at me, and I raise a hand to pull the tape off, but I'm unable to. I managed to take hold of the tape's edge, but no matter how hard I try, it won't come up. It's not that I don't have this drink. The tape simply won't move. Catching sight of my reflection in my mom's glass, I see there are markings on the tape.

I begin to tear at it, desperately trying to remove it so I can ask what the hell is going on. But nothing happens. standing up from my chair, I go to leave, but I'm unable to take a step away from the chair. Looking at the ground, I see a white circle on the floor. It circles the chair I'm in, as if it creates some kind of barrier I'm unable to cross. Cassandra speaks again, this time louder, but I'm still unable to understand her words. Cassandra starts handling the items, in front of her, the same items my mother got from the kitchen island's drawer. There are several vials and jars, each filled with things I couldn't begin to guess what they are.

She takes pinches from some of the jars, adds them to a bowl I hadn't seen before. Some of the vials are uncorked and some of the contents poured in. I don't know if she's mentally measuring or just adding things in randomly. What I get from her confident actions is that this isn't the first time she's done this. After a few minutes of her adding various things to the bowl, she stirs it with an olive branch. How I know it's an olive branch is a mystery to me, but I know that's what it is. There are no leaves or olives on it, just a straightish twig that looks like she's had it for a while. Or was it one of the things my mom brought out to her?

I have no idea. Once the contents of the bull are mixed to her satisfaction, Cassandra picks it up. Uttering a few strange words, she tosses the oddly clear concoction onto the redwood plank. As one, everyone at the table reaches out with both hands, spreading the powdery concoction all over the plank. It doesn't take long with a dozen. and people working. I expect them all to dust off their hands when they finish, but none of them do. Cassandra stands while everyone takes their seats again. She utters more words in that bedroom voice of hers

and points at the plank with one elegant finger. Once the last word leaves her darkly painted lips, fire erupts and covers the plank. I recoil at the sudden eruption as far as my odd confinement allows. Light is intense and white, but there is no heat to the flames, nor fumes coming off of it to set off the smoke detector. This is far from ordinary fire. As if a switch is flipped, the fire dies off just as instantly as it began. For the most part, the rosewood is undamaged, but there are a lot of black symbols marring the wood.

It's as if the fire burned things into it, and there's something else there too. It's a plate-sized, roundish triangle, and it sits in the very center of the plank. I cock my head to the side, trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. This is as alien to me as any foreign language I've seen written. Hands from all over the table reach out for the oddly shaped triangle. Each person uses one hand to touch two fingertips to it. Some use their right hand, others their left. I notice my dad is using his left and mom her right.

It dawns on me why some are different. They are only using their dominant hand. Cassandra and I are the only two not reaching out like the others. I know why I'm not. Aside from the fact that I have no idea what's going on and therefore don't know my part in all this, I can't reach outside the white barrier around my chair. The only reason I can come up with

as to why Cassandra isn't following suit is because she's the one directing, whatever the hell this is. Her voice comes again, but a lot closer this time, and yet she hasn't moved. That bedroom voice is practically whispering in my ear. But how can that be

when there's 10 feet of dining room table between us. There's so much about this I don't understand. As a matter of fact, there isn't a single thing going on that I understand. The words are still alien to me. But then she says a string of syllables that sound oddly familiar. Something clicks in my brain and it's almost like my vision clears. The haze in my head that's been bugging me since the last, last party is lifting. I remember why school is a vague memory, because I didn't go. I only thought I

did. For that matter, I haven't spoken a word out loud since that night either. Cassandra calls upon the spirit world for a soul that has been hanging around, and I feel a pull. This can't be happening. I tried to scream out as the odd triangle on the rosewood moon. moves. You can't do this to me. I try to scream. I've been good to you, haven't I? The triangle is flying across the plank, spelling out words, and my mom cries as Cassandra's husband translates what the spirit board is saying. Why are you repeating my words? Stop this, please. I beg you. My dad's face is a tortured twist, fighting to not let the tears fall. What is happening?

The pointer on the spirit board continues to move, even though I've stopped screaming. The man in the vermilion suit has to be making all this stuff up now. No one is calling out for help like he says. There's no invading spirit that has taken me over. Why is he saying these things? Mom's tears are pouring down her face, but she keeps her fingers on the pointer. Maybe. If I can get her to break contact, this will stop and things can go back to the way they were before this started. I once again tried to call out to her, but my words aren't coming through.

Whatever malevolent spirit is manipulating the spirit board is keeping my messages from coming through. Cassandra starts chanting as her husband continues to translate the messages. I scream so loud in my head, but it's no use. There's too much going on and they can't hear my pleas. I don't want to go back. You can't make me. My cries have no audience. The chant Cassandra is saying is no longer in her bedroom voice.

This is loud and commanding, the voice of a drill instructor that will not tolerate, disobedience. Her volume rises and I feel a pull on me from somewhere inside and my vision starts blurring at the edges. No! I yell at her and she seems to hear me. I won't let you cast me out. But what could I do against a powerful witch like her? The stone tumbler in front of me levitates off the table and spills down my head, sending eyes. I see fire down my entire body. I start to fall and possibly far through the floor, through the earth, through eternity.

The abyss below stretches on, but it won't last as long as I'd like. I really fucked up this time. But what was I supposed to do? They called me up from the fireplains of hell and offered me an out. Didn't I do a good job of being a respectable child? Didn't I respect my host's parents the way they wanted? I mean, yes, their child's soul was rotting away inside our shared body, but I tried to be a gracious guest.

Did they really hate me that much? For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents. Space is filled with bodies. You ever look up at the night sky and feel like someone's looking back at you? Not like God or anything like that, but a person looking down on you. You should? Maybe after this you will. I think most of the time when people think about space, if they think about it at all,

They think about this vast nothingness, depending on your beliefs, and honestly, I don't care what you believe. That nothingness goes on forever. Or at least as forever as our minds can comprehend, since theoretically the universe is constantly expanding, I can't really speak to that. I'm not a scientist. I'm not even not smart.

I just happen to have a sort of moral flexibility, that a job like this requires. How I got here doesn't make any difference to anyone, because this isn't about me. This is about all the bodies floating around in space. Since the start of this so-called space race, over 500 people have ventured into space. If you don't include that tourist bullshit,

that's a huge mistake, if you ask me. And of that, a few dozen died in their attempts to get to space or because of a malfunction in space. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. I wasn't involved in any of that. The fact is, though, people get this horrible fear about floating away into space forever thanks to movies like Armageddon. I mean, they didn't even address the fact that Max just pieced out off the asteroid,

looking them in the eyes the whole time. Worst part about that shitty movie, if you ask me. Justice for Max. Anyway, I work for a company that specializes in sound experiments. Doesn't sound too weird or fancy, right? Like one of those places with a zero-decibo chamber or a speaker manufacturer or maybe something more covert ops like making sound wave weapons, right? It's not really any of those.

We're a publicly traded company, board of directors, the whole circus. Big company, too. thousands of employees around the world. The thing about big companies is they usually start out small, the old guy in a garage with an idea sentiment. Then things grow and grow and grow. And before you know it, there isn't a single person in the company

who has total visibility to what's happening. They keep their eye on their stock prices and gross margin. If I had to guess, that's what happened here. We get a lot of smart people working here. Not like the smartest think-tank people in the world. I really don't think that those are the people who change the course of human history. If anything, it doesn't have so much to do with how smart you are, as much as how far you're willing to go.

Back in the 70s, there was this university study of 50 cases of people complaining about a low-throbbing background noise that other people couldn't hear. The sound always peaked between 30 and 40-40-her. which is on the low end of what people can hear. And the study said it was only heard during cool weather with a light breeze, and often early in the morning. These noises were often confined to about a six-mile-wide area. Over the years, there were reports in Taos, New Mexico,

Auckland, New Zealand, and Windsor, Ontario. It became known as the hum. Ever hear people chant Ome, like in meditation? In Buddhism, Ome is considered the syllable which preceded the universe, verse and from which the gods were created. Ome is usually the first word or sound in some of Buddhism's most important mantras. You know you can hear the Big Bang? About 50 years ago, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won a Nobel Prize basically by accident

when they thought their telescope was broken because it was detecting a background layer of noise that messed up the data they were tracking. Turns out, that noise was a reverberation of the Big Bang. the start of the universe, if you believe that. Again, I don't care if you do. The point isn't to make you believe anything. The point is to tell you that sound and vibration are way more important than you may think about with your morning coffee. Every atom in every molecule is always vibrating.

Why does any of that matter? Because, a while back, some smart guys where I work, figure, figured out that there's a certain signature by combining principles of sound and vibration. And using that sound and vibration, you can pinpoint exact places and times in the universe. Sort of like tracking a ripple in the water backward to find the pebble that caused it. No, they weren't stoned. Or maybe they were. It doesn't really matter.

What matters is that they started to play around with a machine that could mimic those universal sounds and vibrations in an isolated change. in an isolated chamber. What they hoped to learn, I have no idea. But what they discovered at some point was that within the chamber, they were able to make a connection with a specific time and place in the universe, essentially making it the same point.

Ever see Event Horizon? I know it helps when people have some sort of movie reference for their political, religious, or scientific knowledge. It's kind of like that. The shortest distance between two points is zero. except it wasn't bending space, and there was no black hole or anything. It was something outside of physics as we know it. At first, they thought all they were doing was effectively disintegrating any test material they put in the chamber.

Then, by sheer fluke, a message was leaked from NASA from an astronaut in low orbit, reporting that they saw lights flashing in space, like an emergency beacon. That, in fact, was an emergency beacon. Just not one NASA was tracking. It was one we were tracking. At some point, scientists had the idea that maybe they weren't making things disintegrate, and that maybe there was a chance that they were going somewhere. So they put the beacon in the chamber, and history was made,

history that you'll never hear about. After that, just about any incident you've ever heard, heard of an astronaut seeing something strange in space can be attributed to our experiments. NASA astronauts story Musgrave seeing what he called space eels go by his capsule. Yep. Those were actual eels during some live testing. Musa Manorov seeing lights outside the Mir space station in 1991? Us again.

Flashlight this time. All those reports of fire in space between 2009 and 2012? Yep, us. But those were just a few incidents out of thousands, and I mean thousands. Those are just ones that anyone was around to see. As far as I can tell, we don't actually know what happened to about 99% of all tests once they disappeared from our chamber. To call back to Armageddon again, it's a big-ass sky.

The important part, the most important part, is that a long time ago, The scientists cross the threshold that can never be uncrossed, and it's one they can never share with anyone. They started human testing. They started sending people out there. At first to see if it would work, using previous coordinates so they'd know where to look,

except they didn't consider that time just keeps on ticking. You can't send the same thing to the same spot using the same coordinates twice. The signal degrades and changes the stamp itself in time. So, the theory goes, that they started to send people backwards in time. My personal theory is that their tests responsible for almost any captured footage or audio of strange occurrences around the world. Someone sent something somewhere they shouldn't have, and the results got so messed up that no one could figure out what happened. And when there's a void of logic, people fill it with theory. God, ghosts, aliens, and whatever.

the hipster time traveler in that picture from 1941 looks a hell of a lot like Jeff to me I can never get over the bodies in space you wouldn't know because you can't see them but they're out there one second they were in the test chamber the next they were in the middle of nothing and all the air in their body was boiling out because of the pressure they say you can survive for a full minute or two in the vacuum of space

It makes me wonder if those people realized before the scientists did that the fatal flaw in their calculations was not to take into account the Earth's rotation around the sun. One minute you thought you were sending someone to Nebraska and to find out they missed the mark by a few hundred thousand miles. And they can never tell anyone. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies floating around in the void of space. Some might be alive, actually in atmosphere suit. sending back data.

Others were unlucky enough to sign up for the wrong paycheck. But I think they know they can never tell anyone, no matter what they may find, because the atrocities they've done to get the data as unforgivable in a humane world. But make no mistake, the tests are still going on. They're looking for something.

Maybe they've already found it. I can't say for sure. I leave this behind just in case. Just in case one day someone sees a ghost that looks an awful lot like me in a place I've never been, and I'm not answering my cell phone. Sooner or later, they're going to run out of test subjects, right? When you've sent hundreds of innocent people to their death, what's one less loose end? Or worse, if my company decides to start selling it to other companies looking to get rid

of their problems? How much do you trust your boss? Maybe the next time you look into a telescope and see that so-called face in the moon staring back at you, you might consider all the actual faces looking back at you, with panic looks of terror in their eyes frozen forever, as the last air was finally pulled from their lungs. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com.

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