Creepy - Day 2 - Martinmas Comes Early in Totenville & They Weren't Muppets

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Martinmas Comes Early in Totenville***Written by: Thomas C. Mavroudis and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***They Weren't Muppets***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.

Creepy presents the 31 days of horror. Day 2. 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 are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Good morning, Rissa.

Good morning, doctor. And how are we feeling this morning? Tired, as usual. I understand. Were you able to get much sleep last night? I'm not sure. Maybe a couple of hours total? That's good.

I know it might not feel that. way, but you've already come a long way in the short time we've been working together. Yeah, I guess that's something. Are you ready? The usual? If that would be okay? Yeah, yeah, it's fine. I actually remember one of my dreams from yesterday.

Mostly. Please start wherever you feel comfortable. And we will see if more details come back to you. Do you remember the overall theme or idea of the dream? Yeah. I remember that Martin Miss comes early in Tottenville. I was finally offered the reading specialist Jabba Totonville Elementary not long before Halloween. I applied for the position in late August and figured,

as the weeks went by, as the school year then said, settled in, that I ultimately was not a good fit. But then I got the call from principal Melina herself who said they had been waiting for budget approval, and that I was the optimum candidate for the role, and then welcomed me home. I grew up in Totonville, South Totonville, and went to Totonville Elementary until fourth grade when busing began. It was a culture shock for sure going from that community to an affluent one. Affluent by what I knew at the time. When middle school started, my mom remarried and we moved to the suburbs. And my world was upended yet again. Totonville sounds like a little rural town, but it's a community less than a

mile from downtown, nestled in the southeast corner of the Cottonwood Creek and South Platte River confluence, divided by the interstate highway, into South Totonville and Tottenville. Located along the rail lines, the neighborhood was the city's stockyards. Unless they came from the community, much of the city doesn't know the neighborhood exists, that people actually live there and it's not just factories and warehouses. They don't consider the people who used to work those factories and warehouses. The immigrants that built Totonville.

Although my great-great-grandparents on my mom's side were not founders of Totenville, they were part of the immigrant wave that settled here in the late 19th century, one group or another having fled a wide array of ethnic European persecutions. That first generation down to my grandparents worked in the slaughterhouses and processing plants and all their extended family as well. In fact, my mom was the first to do something different, and that was only because the industry was reduced from nearly a hundred independent companies to a couple of multinational conglomerates.

Beside the seasonal trips downtown on the bus for school and summer clothes, I rarely experienced the world outside of the neighborhood. We didn't even go into the north side of Totonville very often. My household considered it that part of town, the sketchy end of the neighborhood. Of course, I had friends that lived on the other side of the highway, but I was never allowed to go to their houses and they weren't allowed to come to mine. It sucked because there was a park up there with a swimming pool. Well, at least I had one of those fun fountain clown sprinklers.

You know, for the high 90-degree days in July and August? One of those to run through by myself. There are three churches in Tottenville, a tiny Russian Orthodox and two Catholic. We attended a smaller Catholic church on our side of the highway, but most of the residents went to the larger St. Martin's next to Upfern Park. More than once, I'd heard my grandparents call St. Martin's a cult. The only thing I knew about cults was what I saw on television, you know, new shows stoking the satanic panic. And the kids I knew who went to St. Martins were just like me.

As far as I could tell, we celebrated the same holidays, the same way. Except for All Hallows Eve. Halloween. In Totonville, they called Halloween, old Halloween. I didn't realize until I was in the school across town. that what most people considered to be Halloween was much different than old Halloween. I didn't get to participate in Old Halloween.

My family wouldn't let me. Many kids on the south side of the highway didn't get to celebrate Old Halloween. This was only made worse since the school was on our side and that was where the festivities began. My family even made me stay home from school. I couldn't tell you what I was.

was missing since my household kept the curtains drawn tight on that day. My mom wasn't allowed to celebrate old Halloween either when she was a child. I did get to dress up once at the school across town. It was a strawberry shortcake box costume. I didn't get to trick or treat though. The next year, I had strep throat and that was the extent of my Halloween participation. I learned all about traditional Halloween in middle school, which was weird because I knew almost nothing about old Halloween, but the moment had passed for me. At most, I dressed up like a punk rocker, which is eventually how I looked for all of high school.

The melancholy was double, having missed out for the most part on both series of customs. So when the reading specialist job came through, I was anxiously excited to experience what was once strangely forbidden to me. After my grandmother died, there was no reason to go to Tottenville. She was the last of our first of our,

our family to live there. And I didn't keep in touch with any of the kids I moved away from. My memories of living there were blurrally happy. If sometimes strange, upon reflection, once we left, and I felt a nostalgic pull to the neighborhood. It's a weird feeling, you know, that first time you step back into your grade school as an adult, how the halls seemed to constrict and the room shrink simply because you've grown. Besides this sensation. Totonville Elementary was unchanged for how I remembered it. The building itself was three floors of dark red industrial brick and looked little different from the surrounding factories and storehouses.

Sure, there was some modernization, some updates. Mainly the dirt field of my youth, a world of countless red ant hills and stinging thistle, all replaced with a vibrant soft cover of grass. I couldn't believe the secretary was the same from when I was a student. I thought she was old back then. She remembered me fondly, and my mother. Not only that, but the other reading specialist was a girl that lived on the corner from my grandmothers.

I barely remembered her, Sheila, but she gave me a big hug when I ran into her in the hallway. My workspace was a cubicle on one end of the second floor hall near the second and the second and third-grade classrooms I'd be assisting. There was a short, empty bookshelf, a little roundtable, and three squat chairs. My chair was not much larger than the two for the students. Over the first few days, I quickly established bonds with my kids. Busing ended over 30 years ago and all the children were from Tottenville, so although separated by decades, we shared similar experiences. As ever, There are plenty of hot days in October. But that first really cold autumn day,

that day when the earth seems to finally recognize the sun is disappearing and it's time to give in to dormition, there is a distinct change in the world. The trees surrender more of their leaves. The morning is defined by the crispness of frost, and animals become slower and less cautious. Thanks to capitalism, children, and adults, who all have Halloween on their minds, it seems, from the day after the Fourth of July.

Planning for old Halloween was different. It took me a couple of times to remember, to add, old, when I spoke of the holiday. Even as an adult, I never had much interest in dressing up, but again, I was thrilled to experience what I'd always missed. After every student I asked what they were dressing up as told me it was a surprise, I decided that once I'd picked a costume, I'd keep it a surprise too. I did share my costume idea with Sheila, and she notified me that the staff, adults in general, did not dress up, at least not in costumes. And I was a little bummed. At lunch, Sheila explained old Halloween is what they call Martin Mus, the feast of St. Martin.

She said Martinmus wasn't until November 11th, but Tottenville, their descendants, coupled it with Halloween as a means to integrate and assimilate with the greater community. The time between, she jokingly referred to as the 12 Days of Martinless, which was a period of wild revelry. She said it made Mardi Gras look like Arbor Day. How did I not know any of this? Sheila said it was probably because I was hardly on the other side of the highway. I tried to remember what it was like after a day. old Halloween if there was anything out of the ordinary in the following week or so.

I did recall a lot of kids being absent, but at the time, that wasn't unusual. I missed a lot of school myself. Some days, my mom would just tell me I wasn't going to school. I wondered if there were still kids that did not join in on the old Halloween festivities. I mean, if their parents prevented them, you know? It made sense, I guess, but At the same time, the event, the holiday, seemed too parochial for a public school. Sheila convinced me it was no different from the school hosting folkloric dancers for Mexican Independence Day, and just because the ethnicity of the neighborhood shifted didn't mean the neighborhood's traditions did. Moreover, she described the holiday as more focused on harvest traditions than venerating a saint.

I was expecting a staff meeting regarding Halloween. Old Halloween. or at least a memo of some sort. But the day before, on my way out for the afternoon, Principal Molina reminded me to dress appropriately. I asked Sheila what she meant, and she replied, All black. She said, wear something that I would wear to a funeral.

I didn't know how serious she was or how serious, ironic, so I wore a long black dress and a pillbox hat with a veil. All the staff gave me sincere compliments, and Principal Molina thanked me for some reason. I was just trying to have some fun. The first half of the day was normal. None of my students were dressed up yet. But after lunch, the school was flooded with parents, grandparents, and guardians helping their kids into their outfits.

We were all sequestered in the library. It took the rest of the school day to get them all put together and at three o'clock, the costume parade began. After completing a circuit around the school, it wound its way beneath the viaduct into the heart of the neighborhood. The school staff escorted the children from the periphery. I'd never seen kids act so dutiful in my life. Their costumes were nothing at all like I would have predicted. There were no superheroes or cartoon characters, no witches or monsters, nothing supernatural at all. However, they were all unsettling.

Rabbits, ducks, geese, some other types of wildlife. Then there were kids dressed as frogs and fish. And I think there was a crawdad and scores of farm animals. Cows, goats, pigs, chickens, sheep. Not farm animals, but livestock. These costumes were primitive. yet somehow elaborate. I couldn't tell if the masks were paper,

paper mache, rubber, latex wood, or a combination of them all. The suits the children wore, one piece and two piece were partially decorated with fur and feathers, were applicable while the frogs and fish were painted in skin and scales. Some of the material appeared antique,

and while many designs looked freshly assembled, It made me think of this old British movie that an ex-boyfriend raped about. While some of them were cute, one of the rabbits was in my reading group, I think. And she waved and said, Hi, miss, when she saw me. Most of them were grotesque.

Ugly, actually, and I really felt like this was how Halloween, especially old Halloween, was meant to be. The procession through the neighborhood to Opfron Park took about 30 minutes. Along the way, a tall skinny man dressed in a ratty patchwork of animal skins ran around smacking the children with a bat and then handed them a cup of pudding. When they lifted their masks, slurping down the treat, I thought I saw dark red on their lips before the mask covered their faces again. In the park, the carnival was already underway.

Smoke from grilling meats intermingled with bonfires of leaves, tree trimmings, and other detritus collected from the alleys. But in front of St. Martin's, a band played what was sort of like poca music, but more soulful than upbeat. Besides the accordion and tambourine, the other instruments were ancient in design. In the field by the baseball diamond, women played what looked like a type of cricket. The children scattered in all directions once we stepped foot in the park. Some lined up for food, but most of them wanted to. to play games. There was an archery course like an old arcade shooting gallery.

It was unnerving to watch children dressed as rabbits and pigs shoot real arrows at target shaped like rabbits and pigs. There was one of those games where you try to score the most points by rolling balls across the tilted platform into one of several holes. The nine holes in the platform were laid out in a diamond shape. Flames in the style of vintage tattoos spiraled from each hole. and tipping the flames was a point value. Decorating the three wooden balls

were human faces screaming in anguish. Then there was a dunk tank, but it was filled with what surely was red food coloring and syrup because it would otherwise be a severe health-quote violation. And where could they get that much blood anyway? A little boy dressed like a duck grabbed my hand and said, Come on, miss, leading me into the church. The eyes of his mask were sunken,

hollow. He handed me a piece of paper. It was a scavenger hunt. We had to find five objects, all animal bones. Obviously, I'd never been inside before, but it was somehow bigger than it looked from the outside. Maybe it only seemed that way because it was dimly lit by candlelight. I was the only adult. We walked down the aisle to the altar, silhouettes of little bipedal animals starting all around us. Then the duck boy dropped my hand and disappeared into a row of pews. What was I supposed to do? Hunt for the bones myself?

I strained my eyes to read the list. It was only crude drawings. Then something brushed behind me and as I spun around, I caught a glimpse of a ram's horns. I stepped up onto the dais, as most of the light was around the altar and right away, I saw a jawbone. I didn't know if I was supposed to take it with me or what, but I did.

Then I continued investigating around the altar and didn't find anything else. I didn't know what direction to follow next. The word miss echoed off the marble and wood. I went to one of the side walls where the first seven stations of the cross began. Unlike the stations in my church, which were paintings, These were large, intricate sculptures set into the wall. In the fifth station, depicting the man who carried the cross for Jesus, I found what I recognized as a baby-back rib without the meat and sauce.

After I found a third bone, which was particularly difficult, I was determined to find the other two. Managing to collect them all, almost two dozen students popped up from the shadow cheering, cradling all five bones in the crook of my arm, the kids clustered around me and we went outside where the residents of Totonville celebrated my success. I lost track of time on the scavenger hunt, and the sun was almost set. There were more adults in the park now, and the band's music selections turned to a more somber tone. The priest took the bones from me, and an ecstatic smile appeared on his face. Then a few of the kids.

The kids begged me to go with them to the pinata. To my shock, the pinata, in the shape of a priest, was hanging from a gallows. It was the first time I really felt uneasy about any of the traditions. The man in the mangled suit of animal skins handed his bat to the children who had one chance to strike the effigy. I was worried the kids were going to make me take a swing, but thankfully a tall girl in a mask with bulging fish eyes delivered the cleaving blow. Chunks of cooked meat sprayed from the paper corpse,

and the kids frenzied to get their share of the morsels. At that moment, I realized I'd had enough of old Halloween. But I didn't know if I was allowed to go. Was I still working? I tried to find Principal Molina to ask if it was okay to leave. Sheila found me first. She hugged me, kissed me on the lips. told me how happy she was, I finally came home.

I told her I had to go, but she said I couldn't. The sun was gone and people were lighting torches off the bonfires. I searched in the gloom for the best exit route out of the park. What did Sheila mean I couldn't leave? If I made it out of the park, would I be able to get back to Tottenville Elementary and my car? What a dumb thought. Of course I could leave. Sheila meant I couldn't leave because I would be missing out yet again on a part of my history.

I could understand why my family found the traditions unusual. The typical prejudice of one culture against another, I suppose. I mean, there was really nothing to fear, right? If Totonville was a dangerous place, dangerous beyond what is normal for a city, my family would have left a long time ago. Still, it had been a long day, and I was ready to wind down in the quiet of my apartment with my cat, and a glass of red French wine and some HGTV. When I waved goodbye to Sheila, she had an alarmed expression on her face.

Whatever. I started walking south out of the park and towards the tunnel to South Tottenville. As I came to a bonfire at the edge by the sidewalk, I sent scurrying behind me. Students, no doubt, saying goodbye or trying to get me to stay. Then something touched my arm. I thought it was an insect, lazy with the cool season. But then in rapid succession,

I realized with horror I was being lassoed. The ropes were cinched tightly around my arms and chest. Flickering in the firelight, pigs, fish, chickens, goats, and cow. clung to the ends with both hands. They dragged me back to the center of the carnival. Then other children, armed with sharpened staffs, forced me into the dunk tank chanting,

you must be born again. Men and women with torches made a circle around the apparatus. The band played a keening song that pierced my ears. I refused to sit down, but it didn't matter. The priest proclaimed, You must be born again And hit the target with the shepherd's crook. It was dark in the warm fluid.

Salt and iron flooded my mouth and nose And it burned my eyes. My ears were clogged And a soft hum pulsed beneath. I struggled to find my feet. But the tank seemed bottomless. I was no longer in the tank. But the womb.

I was about to be reborn. And as I calm in the gentle heat, I looked forward with fear and joy at a new life. Thank you so much for sharing that. How are you feeling now? Okay. It's still kind of jarring, though. Nightmares can feel incredibly real.

And the emotions they stir up don't just disappear when we wake up. It makes sense that the anxiety is still with you. Your body and mind experienced something intense, and they're still reacting to it. Let's slow down and acknowledge that. Rather than trying to force the anxiety to go away, let's be curious about it. What was it about the dream that felt so threatening? Was it something specific? like being chased, losing someone, or feeling powerless.

Sometimes dreams exaggerate emotions we're already feeling, even if we're not fully aware of them while we're awake. We can also work with the dream directly in future sessions, if you're open to it. Sometimes when we revisit a nightmare while we're awake safely and with support, we can change how it feels in our body. It becomes less about fear and more about understanding. You're not alone in this.

Thanks, Dr. Hall. Have a wonderful day. Is it? I'm sorry? Is it morning? In the morning? Oh, okay. If you say so.

Weird question, isn't it? Are you doing a mattress ad right now? It just felt familiar for a second. No, not really. Like, I can remember everything. The second that I try to think about any details, it just sort of... Yeah. Yeah, it fades away.

Why? Together. Me and here talking to you through a locked door. Not real big on trust, are you? I... I guess I don't. I have to think about it. My dream?

What's that going to solve? Okay, um, I guess I remember that they weren't Muppets. A lot of people my age have a very specific kind of trauma rattling around in our heads. And a lot of it is due to Jim Henson. You know, the guy who invented the Muppets? Back before streaming, when all TV was was appointment television, there was an era where a lot of our viewing options had creations from the legendary puppeteer. Well, things might have started out all nice and friendly with Kermit and Miss Piggy and Gonzo.

They quickly rolled into darker territory. Mind you, I don't know if the chronology of events I'm about to go through is accurate, to when all this happened to premiere, but this is the order I remember discovering them. Remember Labyrinth? A classic, right? also filled with more unnerving parts than I care to remember. That's even without getting into David Bowie's prominent bulge in a children's movie. I swear those orange things, able to pull out their eyes and pull off their heads and dance around.

I mean, how is that a nightmare fuel? How did a studio approve that for a kid's movie? Then there was Fraggle Rock. It wasn't weird enough to have these wild animals living underground eating the construction sites of small animals. But then you throw in stuff like a talking trash heap or the freaking gorgs for that matter. Those huge monster things that were always trying to hunt down the fragels to eat them? That was supposed to be fun for kids? Then there was a black crystal.

Do I really need to get into the black crystal and they're not human, almost human characters? Nothing like staring into the uncanny valley before you even know there's a name for it. Then, and I thought this was a nightmare for the last. longest time. There was return to Oz. I mean, how is a kid going to watch a movie about a girl getting committed to a mental health facility only to undergo electro-shock and find herself in a fantastical land and think, oh, this must be a Wizard of Oz movie.

Between a queen who keeps decapitated heads in a case and the wheelers. God, those fucking wheelers. Exactly how did people think we were going to turn out? And there was a show called The Storyteller, hosted by John Hurt. Sometimes as a kid there were times when you had no idea what was going to be on TV. You just change the channels and something appeared. In a rare instance, my parents weren't watching TV after dinner, I'd flick through their channels looking for something familiar.

The episode called The Soldier in Death was anything but. When you grow up with that sort of imagery all around you, it's going to change some things. Shit, I tried to show my daughter Fragel Rock and she lost it, terrified immediately. The hell if I'm going to subject her to the rollers. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who missed out on that is lucky anyway. I mean, it's been years since I thought about the Barley Street House, or whatever that old puppet show is called.

Sounds right. I tried searching for it again last month after a weird dream. I've had on and off since I was a kid. A puppet with no face, gliding across a tiny carpeted stage, seeing in a voice too human, You're going to forget. That line really stuck with me. But after 20 years and nothing, no clips, no mentions, not even rumors, for it was something I'd imagine or a nightmare I'd confused with TV.

Not too hard, given what I'd already seen at that age. Then, three weeks ago, I found the VHS. It was at a garage sale. A buddy of mine retired early and didn't take him too long to get really bored with his days. He started to get really into selling things on eBay of all places. And along with that came a new obsession with yard sales. It didn't take long before he'd rope me into making runs with him. Afterwards, we'd stop at a bar to celebrate his fines or just get drunk.

We found the VHS in one of those late spring clearouts in a rundown part of town with warped cardboard boxes full of sunbleached books and broken kitchenware. The cellar was in his 60s, wearing an old mechanics jacket. He didn't say a word to me or my friend. We almost left without buying anything. According to my friend, most of it was junk anyway. And then I saw it. A black clamshell case with no label, no markings, just masking tape along the

the spine, yellowed with age, scrawled in shaky handwriting read, Blue Room episode, Do Not Play. My heart felt like it stumbled. It was so stupidly specific. It shouldn't have meant anything, but that phrase, Blue Room, dragged something out of me like a hook pulling through a cheap piece of meat. I asked how much. The man looked at the tape, then at me, and just shook his head before telling me to just take it, waving me off like I was a fly. I mean, I don't own a VCR anymore. I'd borrow one for my friend, because of course he had one. But he only agreed to do it after I promised him that he got first dibs on selling it if I didn't want it anymore.

I was hooked up to an old TV he kept in his guest room. Kind of the built-in static and rounded corners on the screen. It's after dark by the time we got back and hit play. Maybe I should have waited until morning. The tape seemed to whine when I pushed it in, not mechanical, or like a person. The video started immediately. No logos, no previews, no copyright warnings, or like a whole movie. And on the screen appeared a cardboard house in low-resolution footage, surrounded by cotton clouds and scribbled trees.

The music played. off-key, too slow. Every note reverberated somewhere deep in my soul. Then the puppets appeared. Familiar shapes and unnatural poses. The red one with the zipper mouth lying on its side. The goat puppet in the rocking chair. Its strings tangled.

The armless bear sitting against the wall with its head drooping like it was asleep. They weren't talking. just swaying slightly like the whole set was shaking. Or maybe it was just a camera. It was hard to tell with all the tracking lines. Then the red puppet raised its head and in that warped broken voice, He's coming from the blue room. Even though I knew it was coming, I flinched.

The door on the far side of the set, a faded wooden panel painted sky blue with crooked star stickers swung open with a soft creek. The blank-faced puppet stepped out, just as I remembered it. I paused the tape. Maybe it wasn't the tape with a camera that was moving. I looked down to see my hands were shaking. I took a photo of the screen and reverse image searched it, but didn't get anything. I posted a two nostalgia subreddits.

I got no replies, just downvotes and a sarcastic comment asking if it was from, Don't Hug Me, I'm scared. I let the tape play. The blank-faced puppet glided across the floor without moving its legs. The other puppets shivered as it approached. Then the screen went black. When it returned, the puppets were lying in new positions like they had been rearranged. Their limbs bent in wrong ways.

Their mouth was partially open. The blank-faced puppet stood in the center, and then in that same human voice, slow and deliberate, We didn't want this. I hit stop. The room felt cold, like the tape had leached the heat from the walls. I turned down the lights, checked behind me, looked out the window. Nothing.

I was alone. Some in the distance, I heard my friend rummaging around in the kitchen upstairs. I was scared for reasons I couldn't quite understand. But still, I couldn't bring myself to eject the tape. It stayed in the VCR, humming faintly, like the reels were still spinning even after being paused. I couldn't bring myself to eject it. But I could bring myself to leave. I went upstairs, thanked my friend, and made up a lie about why I had to go home, saying I'd text him tomorrow about finishing the tape.

I was secretly worried he'd watch it or take it. Maybe that would have been better. That night, I had a hard time sleeping. I kept thinking about the puppets. The way they didn't look like characters, they looked like victims. In that line, we don't want this. The next day I watched the rest. The blank-faced puppet turned to the camera and leaned forward slightly.

Then directly toward the camera said, You are going to forget. Exactly how I remembered. Why hadn't I just watched the end then? night before. Why did I feel they need to stop it with just a few seconds left? But the date didn't end there. It kept going. The screen flickered. The set changed. The puppets disappeared. Now it was just a blue room, empty and quiet. Then the camera moved, jolted like someone picked it up and walked forward down a hallway of torn paper walls and fabric sky through backstage tunnels.

You could see the strings, the wooden skeleton of the set, the foam and wires. And then, without warning, the camera turned to a mirror. The person holding it was wearing a puppet costume, an actual, a belt-sized puppet suit. Canvas skin, black button eyes sewn in. The mask was wet. The tape ended there, or glitched. I'm not sure. The screen flickered, then static.

But not normal static. Slow moving, soft, wet static, like it was crawling into my skin. And finally from the speakers, You are going to forget. You are going to forget. You are going to forget. Over and over.

I finally unplugged the VCR. through the whole thing in the closet. But the sound kept coming, faint, barely there. Not loud enough to be real, but I heard it. I still hear it. Sometimes in the shower, sometimes when the fridge hums, sometimes when I try to sleep. You're going to forget.

But I haven't. Not yet, because now I remember things I didn't before. Other episodes, other phrases, other moments. One where a puppet was sewn into the floorboards, another where the goat marionette told the red puppet, if we blink, he'll come back. And a voice that said, It's okay if you scream, just not on camera.

And the worst one, a close-up of the blank-faced puppet. whispering, not to me, but to the camera operator. You are part of this now. I've been having dreams. Not just about the blue room, more than that. I dream of a hand inside me. Not touching me or anything sexual, if that's what you're thinking.

I mean, controlling me. Sometimes my limbs moving just jerks. My mouth doesn't open when I wanted to. My eyes can't close all the way. I wake up with words in my throat. We didn't want this. I've tried recording the tape, uploading it, but it won't copy. Every time I digitize it, the file corrupts.

I posted about it in a video creepypasta form and someone replied, That's not a show that was a containment. It was never supposed to air. I responded, asked what they meant. Their account was deleted within minutes. So here's a part I need you to understand. If you find a tape like this, blank unlabeled or marked, do not play, don't test it. Don't try to be the hero of some lost media ARG.

Because the Barley Street House was real. And I think it's still running. Not airing. Running. Somewhere deeper than cable, deeper than analog. Somewhere I can keep going long after we've forgotten. Every time someone remembers it gets a little stronger. Every time someone finds a tape, it adds a new episode.

And I think I was in the last one. I think I'm part of it now. And I can feel the blank-faced puppet watching me now. Not from the tape, not from memory. From the mirror behind me. You're going to forget, but please. Try not to. How am I supposed to feel?

Yeah, there's something wrong. What is this place? Are you writing something down? Are you telling me that I know where I am? Or you've told me before and I don't remember it? How's that possible? Rest? Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that?

I've had such a busy social calendar lately. Yeah, sure. Great. Interesting. 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,

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