Creepy - Day 2 - Halloween Festival Clown & What Happened to Flight 342?

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Halloween Festival Clown***Written by: Allie Harrison and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***What Happened to Flight 342?***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***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. Listener discretion is advised. It's midnight. You've found KREP on the dial,

and we're just getting rolling during the, oh, so, most wonderful time of the year, the 31 days of horror. Day two, to be precise. A time of cool winds, falling leaves, costumes, and pumpkins. When the veil between what we know and what we will never understand is the thinnest, and the darkness that creeps around the shadows is free to play. You're listening to KREP, and I'm your host, The Creep. Looks like the phone lines have already lit up, so let's get right to it.

Caller, you're on KREP with The Creep. Caller, you there? Caller. Hello? There you are. Thought we lost you. You're live on KREP. Oh, thank God. I didn't think I was going to get through. I've been trying forever.

I hear you got a story to tell us. Yeah, yeah, I do. It's about a Halloween festival clown. It was the idea of the teeth that made my heart pound. Yet, as I stared at the victim a few feet away, I knew what was described about the teeth. No doubt. Had to be true. Still, clowns were supposed to be fun, comical, and have at least smiling makeup painted on their faces. They weren't supposed to have a grotesque mouth where the lips didn't close over pointed, hideous teeth. They definitely weren't supposed to have sharp teeth and jaws strong enough to rip open a human body. They weren't supposed to be murderers. The over-exaggerated smile and teeth described by the girl who had seen this clown was an obvious.

contrast to the rainbow suit, red nose, and white and yellow face paint, which I had seen on the majority of clowns today. After all, my town was smack dab in the middle of the Halloween rodeo festival, with a trick-or-treat parade every day and bull-riding every night for three days. Clowns outnumbered the cowboys and the trick-or-cheaters two-to-one. And being the police force who surveyed the parades, I had seen what felt like a record number of clowns. all of which looked like the normal parade festival rodeo clowns. I had not seen one as described by the dead victim's girlfriend. I'm certain I would remember had I seen it.

I stared at the dead young man, Kyle Forg, a few yards away. Although shaking and nearly hysterical, Katie Mathers, Kyle's date, had been able to describe the clown who grabbed Kyle, held him upright off his feet by his neck, and had, quote, unquote, chomped a big bite out of his belly. She insisted she'd been able to get a good look at the horrific clown before running for her life from it. I tried to study the dead body on the ground

while not seeing it all at the same time. In my time as sheriff, and a deputy prior to my election, I had seen a number of horrific traffic accidents. I tried to see this as another crime I needed to solve. It wasn't easy. This wasn't a traffic accident. I couldn't determine if the Vic was the girl's actual boyfriend or her boy toy. After all, the two of them had left the festival to spend some alone time under the high school football field bleachers.

Not that it mattered. The poor dead high school senior wasn't sleeping in his own bed tonight, or any night, ever again. Most of Kyle's midsection was chewed out as if the clown with the pointed teeth, took several big bites out of the middle of a foot-long meatball sandwich. I was no medical examiner, but I've noticed there were even a couple ribs missing, as if the bones were nothing more than crunchy chips. Brent Timmons, my first deputy, explained the way he saw things must have happened. So the two of them were under the bleachers.

He said he thought Bruiser the Clown came from that direction over there, he pointed south. I met Brent's gaze. It was nice to look away from the scene, even if it was just for a moment. I questioned his choice and nicknames for a murderer. Brett indicated that this was not our usual happy clown. I didn't need to be told that, but I let him roll with his examination. He squatted and pointed to Kyle's throat. The bruises told us that it was just like Katie said.

The clown held him by the throat while he chomped away. For the first time, Brent's voice held a shut up. as he said he thought it couldn't be possible. Never mind the teeth. This clown would have to be really strong to hold up what was obviously a 160-pound young man, give or take a few pounds, and hold him tight enough to cause bruising before. Well, before Kyle got his guts ripped out of him. I swallowed down the bile that burned my own throat at the idea.

Kyle was probably alive at least for a few seconds. I tried to look at the positive. Like the fact that for those few seconds, Katie managed to escape. It certainly helped that she held the high school record in the 300 hurdles. I'd seen that girl run. She could run and leap like a gazelle. Like everyone else in town who waved to her during her victory parade, I knew her.

I had cheered her on. And I knew she was destined for great things given her speed and grace. Now I couldn't help but wonder how something like this would affect her future Because I had a feeling it was bound to affect my own Brent said he was glad she managed to reach our office But as he stood and stared down at the blood and gore that used to be a young man He asked me where I thought our killer clown could be I glanced across town at the lights of the Halloween festival

Where another 5,000 unknowing potential victims enjoyed their evening and I replied, I had no idea. Katie also said she thought the clown chaste her, but she knew better than to pause and look. I was glad she was safe at my office. While sounds of the nearby festival reached us, I felt like the area around us was eerily quiet, and it left me feeling of vulnerability I'd never known before.

Brent asked if I thought this could be some sort of animal attack. I heard the hope in his voice. It absolutely did look like some sort of animal attack. Brent went on to remind me how we'd seen bear mollings and what a pack of wolves can do to a cow, as well as how often we'd seen what's left behind from a bobcat. But this? We both knew nothing does this. And no matter what Katie thought she saw,

I couldn't convince myself a clown did this. But I knew something did do this. I instructed Brent to get to the camera and get people. pictures of everything. I knew we needed to get some crime tape put up too. I pulled out my phone and called the medical examiner, who was a personal friend of mine. She agreed to bring a non-descriptive van, no lights, no sirens, and she promised it would be the same for the crime scene van. I wanted to keep this as quiet as possible for as long as possible. Any type of murder was bad for any town. But we had a festival in full swing, and we had the son of one of the town board members

dead on the ground. And dead in the most horrific way I'd ever seen. Brent asked if we should try and call his father. I shook my head knowing full well Kyle's parents were probably at the festival somewhere. And I didn't voice my opinion that Kyle's father, James Forge, was probably at the beer stand, well into a 12-pack. I knew if he learned about his son, he'd want to see him. And I couldn't let him see this. I advise Brent that we wouldn't let anyone see this. Hell, I wish I could unsee it myself.

I had to continue swallowing down the nausea I felt at seeing this. After I strung up some crime scene tape, just to give myself something to do while we waited for the ME, I called my office. My second deputy, Henry Fullerton, answered after the first ring with his usual greeting, telling me I'd reach the sheriff's office. I asked him if Katie's father came to get her yet. He told me no, and that neither he nor Katie had been able to reach either of her parents.

I advised Henry to keep Katie there and to call me when her parents were reached. The ME, Maggie James, and the crime unit van arrived. Brent and I stepped back and allowed the others to do their jobs. Neither of us had any answers to their questions. No one said a word when one of the crime unit guys puked a short distance away. I felt I owed it to Kyle to stay there, to remain with him until he was placed in the van to be taken to the morgue. But then my phone buzzed.

The caller ID told me it was Henry. I assumed Henry was calling to let me know Katie's parents had been reached, or even better, were there to take her home. But when I connected to his call with a yeah, Henry, what's going on? What I got in response was the sound of a breathless, terrified deputy, who called for help and begged me to get there in a hurry. It didn't matter that I didn't believe something as fun as a clown could kill Kyle Forg in a manner in which Forg was dead. There was a murderer on the loose, and my deputy was calling for help. I didn't hesitate. I didn't stop to ask

questions. I called for Brent as I raced toward my cruiser. All I could tell him was Henry was calling for help. The two minutes it took for us to speed back to my office felt like an eternity. The rifle I grabbed from the cruiser was heavy in my left hand. By the time I burst through the front door, my service revolver was clutched in my right hand, and I was certain my heart was somewhere in the middle of my throat, threatening to choke me, as I took the stairs up to the second floor where my deputies and I convene. There were only two times in my career as sheriff that I regretted winning the election by five solid votes. And this was one of them. The outer office was a mess. It took less than three seconds from me to recognize the struggle. There were chairs out of place.

One was lying on its side. Papers from the first desk were scattered about the floor with shattered pieces of the coffee carafe and splashed coffee covering them. I had just a split second a time to tell myself, at least it wasn't blood splatter, like what I'd seen at the crime scene I just left. Then I caught sight of the bullet hole in the wall above where the coffee maker should be, and my insides turned cold. When Brent started to ask the question that was rushing through my mind of what happened here, I harshly whispered for him to stay quiet. I was straining my ears, listening for sounds that would tell me where Henry and Katie Mathers

might be. I was not reassured by the fact I saw no dead bodies. Then the sounds of something rattling came from the back room where the two cells were housed. I had to force myself to stop and take a breath and not barge into an unknown situation. I motioned Brent to stand on one side of the doorway, while I positioned myself on the other side. I holstered my revolver and gripped the rifle. Blood rushed into my ears, and I worked to calm my breaths before I turned the knob and shove the door open. I don't know how long I stood.

there, stunned by the vision before me. It felt like ours, but I knew it couldn't be more than a few seconds. Henry and Katie were in the cell. The clown was huge, at least two heads taller than Brent or Henry, both of whom were much taller than my five-foot three inches. The clown's mouth was more hideous than Katie described, because the pointed teeth now held remnants of blood. and something that might have been skin.

For the span of perhaps a single heartbeat, I couldn't see beyond that small piece of flesh. There was more blood on the white suit the creature wore, and it was splattered across the decorative pom-poms that trailed down the costume. The clown rattled the door of the cell as of trying to get in. Smart of Henry to lock them in a cell to keep them safe. Katie stood pressed against the back wall of the cell.

Henry stood in front of her. I sucked in a warm breath and worked to overcome the terrified cold that caused my stomach to churn. I raised the rifle. Henry yelled something, and it took me a moment to decipher the fact he said

he already shot the clown square in the chest several times and it didn't phase it at all. I didn't hold a revolver. I held a bolt-action rifle rumored to be powerful enough to take down a large bear if necessary. It would probably knock me on my ass when I pulled the trigger. So far, I hadn't had to test either theory.

Before I get a chance to test it out, and see if the rifle I held was powerful enough to take down a killer clown, with teeth as sharp as a bear, or if the recoil would knock me on my ass, the clown charged at me. I heard Katie's scream and Brent's shout just before the floor slammed into my back and knocked the wind out of me.

It left me dazed, but not dazed enough that I'd I didn't smell the rancid, coppery smell of blood, which reeked from the monster on top of me. The rifle flew from my grasp. Then the clown shuddered and fell completely over me. The thing felt like it weighed a ton. Between the weight and the rank odor. Breathing was a struggle.

I shoved. Brent helped, and together we managed to turn the beast over, whereas I could slither out from underneath it. Breathing heavily and fighting off the shakiness that gripped me. I hauled myself to my feet before Brent got a chance to help me. Staring down, I asked, what the hell happened to it? Brent held his taser in his hand, and he told me he tasered it. I met Brent's gaze for a second, terrified to take my focus off the clown.

Brent said he thought if bullets didn't stop it, it couldn't hurt to try something else. I thought that was a good idea, and told him to taser it again. He did. and the jolt from the taser sent a shudder through the clown, which remained on the floor. I stared down, studying the clown's features. The hideous face was not a mask and did not appear to be makeup. Even unconscious, with its eyes closed, the lips of the clown remained apart, as if its mouth was unable to cover the large, very real, pointy teeth.

I suggested we get it into a cell before it woke up. Brent worried the cell might not hold it. I wasn't damn well going to leave the thing lying there and wait around to see what it might do when it woke up. As much as neither of us wanted to touch it, Brent and I each grasped an oversized shoe and dragged the creature to the door of the cell. Despite the silky material of its costume,

the beast felt like it weighed several hundred pounds. Henry still held the key, which he'd used to lock Katie and himself inside the cell. The turn of the lock was loud, and the sound all but echoed through the office as he freed the two of them. I'm not going to lie. I let out a breath of relief once the killer clown was locked in the cell, and everyone else stood outside of it. But I still had no idea what to do with it now. I knew we weren't going to be able to cram him into the back of a cruiser and drop it off at county jail.

Henry studied it from outside the cell and asked what we thought it even was. I pointed out it was a murderer. Henry, being the computer game geek of the group, said it looked like some computer-generated monster we might see in comic books. I questioned the idea of computer-generated. Henry pointed out that if we dreamed up this scariest clown, it would be what was in our cell. As I contemplated the idea that someone could dream up this nightmare, I looked into the cell, to find the scariest clown dreamed up, was again awake, standing. and staring back at us through the bars of the cell. I hadn't even seen the thing move, much less open its eyes.

I noticed it seemed to be fixated on Katie, but before I could comment on it, Henry did. He admitted that the monster had the perfect opportunity to grab him when it rushed into the office earlier. But it didn't. It went for her. She just happened to be closer to the cell and could get in before Henry did. And right then? It watched her, not us. I took my attention from the clown in the cell to Katie. I asked her if there was something important she thought we should know.

Katie went from looking terrified to looking like she might cry as she looked down and licked her lips. Then she opened her small purse she'd managed to keep with her during her trek to the sheriff's office. She handed me a small box and said she'd found the box in her locker at school yesterday. I opened the box and looked down, expecting a live snake, and was taken aback by the small plastic clown that stared up at me with wide, fake eyes. The open mouth revealed pointed teeth. It was a perfect replica to what stood in my cell at that moment, except it was only about seven inches tall.

On the small piece of paper next to it were the words, you should have said yes. Enjoy the curse. I glanced back to the cell to find the clown now stood against the bars and gripped a bar in each fist as I asked Katie if she had any idea who might have left this for her. She sighed loudly before admitting that Lawrence Doolittle asked her to tonight's festival dance, but she turned him down. Her whispered, shame-filled words told me there was more to her refusal then. Thank you so much for asking, but I already said yes to someone else,

and maybe we could go out another time. I knew Lawrence Doolittle was a nerdy outcast at school. I also knew that Lawrence Doolittle was Agnes Doolittle's son, and Agnes Doolittle was known for. I closed my eyes for a moment, not wanting to finish the thought. It surged through my mind anyway. Black magic, witchcraft, spells. People visited her for cures, love potions, and healing teas. I had no doubt people approached her for darker things.

Was her black magic strong enough to create a killer clown from a toy for her own son? And what would happen if I tried to destroy the toy clown? The clown in the cell rattled the cell door. Hard. Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank. Katie let out a startled gasp at the sudden sound. I didn't know if Bruiser, as Brent had named him, was strong enough to get out of the cell,

but I couldn't take any chances. I looked at Henry, glad for the first time he took his brakes to step outside and light up a cigarette. I asked for his bottle of butane and his lighter. The clown rattled the door to its cage louder. I fought the urge to run. As Henry handed me the bottle of butane,

I looked at Brent and told him to have his taser ready, in case this didn't work, or in case the lock on the cell door didn't hold. Of course the lock on the cell didn't hold. We were in a world of hurt. I noticed Katie edging her way to the door. I didn't blame her. I douse the toy, the box, and the note and lighter fluid.

The clown shook the cell door with enough venom to shake the entire room. I set the box in a nearby metal trash can and lit it with Henry's lighter. There was a slight whoosh sound. The clown in the cell screamed. its lips became even more horrific as it opened its mouth wide, revealing an unusually long tongue. The rattling of the cell door stopped as the clown shimmered, like black glitter floating in the air. Then it vanished. Completely. A strong odor of something burnt lingered in its wake. For a long moment, the entire sheriff's office was as still as a tomb.

Henry picked up his lighter. I'll be damned, he let out. He held the lighter up and studied it. I'm never getting rid of this little baby. This is a lifesaver. He put it in his pocket. Katie sank into a nearby desk chair. Her voice was shaky as she asked if she could go home. I let out a breath I didn't realize until then I had been holding.

I had no idea what I was going to write in the report. I had a lot to report given Kyle Forge was dead. Told myself it could have been worse. Katie and Henry could be dead. Brent could be dead. And I could have felt those pointed teeth, too. I instructed Brent to take Katie home. Brent agreed readily,

seeming as eager to leave the office as Katie was to go home. He grabbed his hat, and the two of them were out the door before he placed it on his head. I couldn't blame him on that note either. It was an odd energy in the room, and it was more than the lingering, sickening, burnt odor. Henry grabbed a push-broom and began sweeping up the mess in the room

while I tried to call Maggie, the medical examiner again. I writeed one of the overturned chairs as I listened to Maggie's voicemail message instructing me to leave a message. I did, asking for a preliminary report. As minutes ticked by and I didn't get a return call, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more wrong than what I knew. As if a dead body under the high school bleachers wasn't enough to be wrong.

When the room wasn't completely restored, but it would do, and I still hadn't gotten a return call from Maggie, I headed to the door telling Henry I was going back to the scene to check on things. If the crime unit was still there, I could see where things stood. If not, I planned to head to the morgue. Henry said he was going with me. He voiced that it felt funny in the office, like his hair wanted to stand up. And like me, he also thought the burnt smell was getting worse. The fresh fall air outside felt wonderful in my lungs. I took several deep breaths of it. As Henry climbed into the cruiser with me, he asked what we were going to tell people. I admitted I had no idea.

Neither of us spoke more during the few minutes it took to ride back to the scene. I think we were just trying to digest the horror we'd witnessed. When we arrived back at the scene, we found it devoid of anything that indicated a crime had even happened here under the high school football field bleachers. Henry looked around. I know he didn't see the original scene, so he wouldn't know the extent of the cleanup necessary, but he still commented that the scene got cleaned up fast. I wanted to head to the morgue and find Maggie. But it would have to wait, because just then a call came over the radio.

There was an altercation at the festival, and help was needed. Henry and I spent the next few hours helping other officers defuse a fight that broke out at one of the three beer stands at the festival. And by three in the morning, I was exhausted, but I had six men in various stages of drunkenness in my two cells. I was sick at the heart that one of those drunk men was Kyle Forge's dad. I felt like I had sand in the back of my eyes. I longed for my own bed and knew it would be a while before I could feel the comfort of it.

I was still haunted by the vision of Kyle Forge's body and by the memory of that horrid clown. Festival or no festival? I decided clowns, all of them, were now outlawed in my town. It stinks in here, one of the drunk. from the tank called to me. I was aware, I didn't reply. I laid my head down on my desk, and the next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake and looked up to find the morning light burned my eyes. The office receptionist dispatcher, Gail Graham, stood above me. For a moment, there were two Gales. Then they blended together into one. She asked what I had burned in the office,

said it was disgusting. She held fingers up to her nose as if the action would ward off the reek. She moved around me and opened the window. She didn't give me the chance to answer before she went on to comment about how the cells were filled. I rolled my head from side to side trying to work out the kinks in my neck and not succeeding. I wondered if breathing, whatever, was left in the air from burning that cursed clown toy was what left my head feeling as if I was underwater. Gail asked why I didn't answer the phone. I hauled myself to my feet, my legs feeling stiff as my neck and asked her what she was talking about. She informed me there were six messages and asked if I had been drinking last night.

The ringing of the phone hadn't awakened me and I told her no, I hadn't been drinking. I gave up drinking almost a year ago, vowing never again to lose time out of my life. And yet, it appeared last night, I somehow had. Gail hit the play button on her phone recording. The first three calls were from Sarah Mathers reporting that her daughter Katie, hadn't come home all night and was pleading for a return call. The following three messages were the wives of the three men sleeping in the cells in the next room. Gail wrote down the number that Sarah Mathers rattled off and handed me the scrap of paper

she used. I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and swallowed, trying, unsuccessfully, to ease the sick feeling that washed over me. I asked Gail if she heard from Brent this morning. Dizziness joined the sick feeling that trembled through me. If Henry and I hadn't been busy with the beer fight, I would have noticed Brent didn't check in to let me know he'd gotten Katie Mathers home safe. Gail voiced what I was thinking. Brent was usually the first one into work.

It wasn't like him to be late. I pulled my phone from my pocket. There were no calls from Brent, Henry or Maggie, the medical examiner. I knew I needed to take a step. Look for Brent and Katie Mathers. Find Henry, find Lawrence Doolittle, and find Maggie. Right then, however, I thought if I moved, I might throw up. Well, look at this. Gail drew my attention.

She held up a small, ugly, plastic toy clown. Its hideous mouth was open, revealing long, pointed teeth. My knees grew weak. The room spun as I asked where she found it. She held up a box and said it was left right on the corner of her desk. Now a word from our sponsors. Welcome back. This is KREP and I'm your host, The Creep.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're having some technical difficulties with the phone lines. So back into the mailbag we go. Here's one from a listener who's curious about what happened to flight. 3-4-2. There's something inherently fascinating about the idea of air travel. It doesn't matter how much time you've spent in the air. There's something about stepping on to a plane that puts nerves on end. Handing over your life and safety to physics and the hope that your pilot's competent.

We've filled pop culture with airline-related catastrophes and mysteries. Lost, the edge, alive, cast away, the twilight. Flight Zone, Airplane, Airport 77, and dozens, if not hundreds of other movies and TV shows that feature a plane crash or near crash. The news of Flight 342 barely even registered with general public, at first only appearing as an afterthought, mentioning that Flight 342 had disappeared off an air traffic control radar for four minutes and 16 seconds before reappearing, which was true. What was not released to the public was that Flight 342 had been Newark, New Jersey bound when it disappeared from radar. And while it did appear on radar again those four minutes later, Flight 342 was in the process of landing in a small airfield in Indonesia,

some 9,000 miles off course, all in the matter of four minutes. No communication was received from the flight in the minutes prior to the disappearance, or upon its reappearance. It simply landed at the airfield and slowed to a stop at the end of the runway. It wasn't until Airfield crews, escorted by the local military, boarded the plane that the lack of communications was understood. So why? With over six million people taking a plane trip every day, would we fill screens with images of plane-related catastrophes? My theory is that it's like true crime.

The majority of true crime fans are female, and recent studies show a direct correlation with heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and depression among true crime fans. So why watch, read, and listen to horrible things that we're afraid of? Maybe it comes down to something as simple as, if it's going to happen, at least it didn't happen to me. That single sentiment was either uttered or thought by every single person involved in the investigation in Flight 3-4-2. Probably why we came up with the nicknames we did.

What follows is what we saw when the door to the airplane was first opened. I wasn't the first one in. And I was geared up, so I wasn't going to smell anything anyway. But claims are that the overwhelming smell of sulfur rolled out the doors when they cracked open. It could also be that what they saw next made them completely lose any semblance of caring about What a smell. Gemini. At first, investigators believed the occupant of seat 3B had been a morbidly obese person. The majority of the seat being filled with charred remains.

It wasn't until the autopsy, the investigators quickly discovered it wasn't one person, but two, with distinct skeletal systems. One apparently male, one female. Part of the issue with initial identification came from what is believed to be. the male's clothing. The hoodie, Ben wearing, was fused to his skull from the heat. Heat that did no damage to the seats or anyone around seat 3B. Investigators believe that whenever whatever happened happened, the person in seat 3C had leaned

across the seat in front of the person in 3B, effectively blocking their face and body from whatever blasty heat was strong enough to essentially fuse them together. X-rays viewed by an unknowing person would think they were looking at a picture of two skeletons kissing, not realizing the surrounding tissue had melted and fused together into what amounted a little more than a burnt meat sack filled with two skeletons. The short stack. Two rows back from Gemini was the short stack. A small, 50-something woman who appeared to have been crushed from the back of her own seat and the seat in front of her, as if she'd been pressed in a hydraulic press.

The issue with that being that all the seats were accounted for, except the one that had crushed her from behind. It was as if she'd been in a car accident going a hundred miles an hour into a wall. Then someone took the remains at the wreckage and set them into an airplane row. Mount digits. The entire 13th row was empty, except for 13A. Sort of. It's not so much that there was a person in the seat as much as the remains of what we all just assumed were the rest of the row.

In a reasonably neat pile in the middle of the seat were what turned out to be 59 fingers and 60 toes, all human. We can't be sure, but we think one of the passengers in the row only had nine fingers, unless one was lost during landing. But frankly, there's no way that pile of digits should have looked the way it did. even under the smoothest landing. The fingers were standing straight up and balanced in a large circle, like wafers around the outside of a trifle, or a log wall at some old Civil War fort. Inside the fingers were the pile of toes in a neat little mound,

hence the nickname. Not one finger seemed even crooked in the design, like they were glued together. But the moment one of the investigators touched the finger, finger wall, the entire thing fell down. We spent the next five minutes trying to make sure we had all the fingers and toes. So there is a chance we lost one of the fingers. I don't want you to think that these were the only things we found.

There were the usual bodies you'd think you'd find, though their wounds looked more like they had been through a riot than any sort of plane incident. Bruising that suggests at least a couple of days of healing, wounds with scars not quite healed. Still, there weren't as many passengers as the manifest showed that there should have been. But as I understand it, there was, what do we even call it? Let's say biological material found in the fuel tank. See, that sounds weird.

I don't know why I'd have to start mincing words now. So let's just say it appears like human slurry found its way into the airplane fuel system. And judging by the displacement, there are about 200 people down there, which would account for the rest of the missing bodies, besides a few I've left to mention. But even that number is subjective. That's when I learned some real messed up science. The average density of a person is 1.01 grams per milliliter,

which is surprisingly close to the density of water. For the sake of the equations, they needed an average weight. So being dumb Americans, we went with 200 pounds, or 90.72 kilograms. Which means if you stuff a 200-pound man in a blender, you're going to get about 89.82 liters or 23.73 gallons of human slurry. And they found over 5,500 gallons in the tank. So your guess is as good as mine. How many questions does all that leave you?

Waste of which being how the hell they got in there in the first place. And there's the seat cover. Don't get my delivery wrong, though. There wasn't just another day on the job. I've woken up screaming more than a few times, especially right before I need to take a flight. Nothing sunk in deeper than when I came across seat 21B. I'll never forget that face.

At least partially because that's all there was. Jesus, how the fuck do we even describe this? Um, I want to think about some horror or sci-fi movie where someone gets cut in half by a door. You ever see that? Like on Star Trek when the doors slide open. Although I don't think anyone got cut in half on that show. Think about standing right there on the middle of the door frame

and letting the door close. Perfectly cutting the person in half. They have that surprise look on their face as their brain key. keeps working for a few more seconds and tries to understand what's going on. It was like that, almost. Except that instead of the entire front side of a body, it was just a face there on the headrest of the seat is if you'd been sewn into the seat. Frankly, we thought that exact thing,

that somehow the person had been forced back into the seat, regardless of how little sense that would make. There was nothing apparently wrong with the seat, no cuts or exposed seams, but more than that, as we stared at that gaping scream of a face, when no sound coming out, we realized that its eyes followed us when we moved.

No blinking, no other movement from the face, except for the wide eyes following us back and forth. I'm told that once they cut open the seat and saw there was nothing inside. The eyes stopped moving. Vlogger. For a moment, we thought we'd found something that would shed some light on what happened

when one of the techs found a phone screen up on the ground that appeared to be a recording video. The rescue tech picked up the phone and turned it over, checking for damage, but it was in perfect working order. Should we have played the video that recorded? Probably not if you're talking about preserving the scene. But at that moment, those of us who could still stand to be in the plane wanted something we could wrap our minds around. He pressed play, and we saw that the phone had been recording for over six hours. I won't even get into how little that makes sense for our own timelines.

Well, you'll get it soon enough. The first frames show a young man, early 20s, appearing to be Filipino, talking into a camera. One of the texts translated and told us it sounded like the typical, Hey guys, it's your boy, crap you see from YouTube influencer types. He was all smiles and talking about the trip and how the seatbelt lights were off. Then he stood up instead of walking up and down the aisles. The thing was, despite the plane appearing to be full, no one was moving. Everyone was just looking straight ahead, silent as statues.

After walking up and down the aisles a few times, he started to laugh. A chuckle that turned into something maniacal, into something that looked almost panicked. His eyes went wide as he laughed until he started to cough. Then blood started to dribble from his lips. Then he started throwing up. First vomit, then we'll live. look like gallons of water.

Then, then I saw someone vomit up their own stomach. I watched it bulge up his throat. Jesus, the sound of it, before seeing that reddish, brown, fleshy sack start to push its way out of his mouth and finally dangle out from between his teeth. At that point, the phone fell to the ground, camera side down, so we couldn't see anything.

But we could hear it. The screams. The pleas for mercy and forgiveness. Almost six hours of screaming that only ended when, and this is what no one can figure out. The screams abruptly stopped, just a split second before the camera moved again, turning over to reveal the face of the rescue tech

who first phoned the phone. There are only three of the phone. us left inside at this point. I thought I'd gotten through it all. But the next body was the one that pushed me over the edge. Bread bag. By this point, we were all just wandering around, mentally exhausted and lost. We didn't know about the human goo inside the fuel tanks yet,

so we were just doing our best to find the rest of the passengers, looking in the bathroom, which was covered in our own. what appeared to be squid ink, for the record, in overhead compartments, and where we could think of. He'll never admit it, but the taku found the bread bag was probably looking for a drink. Why else would he look in the flight attendant's drink cart? No one could fit in there. Unless, well, unless you are the flight attendant we found. Why did we call her bread bag?

Because it appeared as though her body had been twisted at the waist so that her top half was looking down at the back of her bottom half. Then she was folded in half and tucked inside, like what you do to a bread bag when you can't find the twist tie. I started to laugh. But I don't really remember much after that until I found myself in the back of an ambulance breathing into an oxygen mask. A lot of us got transferred soon after.

Pick a reason. Doesn't really matter. Better for us in the long run. But I still do have to fly sometimes. Still have to endure the panic because evidently I am in a rarefied air of people who have seen some things, some terrible things that aren't isolated incidents. Some people see terrible things and they lose. their faith in any sort of order, justice, or divinity.

I went the other way. I pray every day. I go to church whenever I can. Because if this world can have horrors even remotely like what I've seen, nothing scares me more than what hell would have waiting for me. Sometimes I wonder if that's where the flight disappeared to in the first place. if they saw even a glimpse of hell and then brought it back with them.

We'll be with you all night long. We've got all kinds of secrets and goodies ready for you. But before we get to them, this is the creep, and you're listening to KREP today, tomorrow and forever. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit

your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.