Creepy - Day 20 - Haunted House & The Kill Tape

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Haunted House***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***The Kill Tape***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.

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. And that means KREP is on the air and ready to guide you through this most magically devious time of year.

It's day 20 of the 31 days of horror. You're listening to KREP and I'm your host, The Creep. It goes by too fast, doesn't it? Already 20 days in. Only 11 to go until we have to wait again. And what do we do to get ready? maybe some decorations in the store in August.

All gone by the middle of September, unless you go to our little version of Graceland, the oasis and the tinsel, Spirit Halloween. Can't even wait until November to start playing the same ten holiday songs on repeat. Sorry, it's too soon to mourn. It's not that we only have 11 days to go.

We still get 11 days to rest. revel in the ghosts and ghoulies. Let's focus on something horrible and wonderful. Caller, you're on K-R-E-P. Caller. Caller, you're on the air. Caller, you're on the air. Caller.

You're done dialing. Sounds like we might have an older listener on the air. Caller, why don't you just go ahead and tell us your story? My producer tells us you may have something to tell us about a haunted house. Halloween means something different to everyone. When you're little, it's a night to dress up and ask complete strangers for candy. Once you age out from that, it becomes more about the tricks than the treats. If you're a bully or a bad kid, you start preying on those slightly younger.

Either to scare the crap out of them or steal their candy. Either way, you deserve to get a boot to the ass for it. Once you reach high school, Halloween becomes more about the parties. Costumes become more about attractiveness and revealing while still abiding by parental rules. There are the haunted houses, too. But for the guys, it's more to have your girl cling to you while you put on a brave face. Even though things are changing these days, and traditional gender roles are outdated, it still

happens. College level is again about the parties, but they tend to be more intense. At the legal age to buy and consume alcohol, the costumes become even more revealing, and their obvious sexual elements. Then again, everything had a sexual element at that age, but Halloween became a socially acceptable opportunity to get away with as much as you could. Once you graduated and became part of the working force, the partying aspect became less important for most,

especially those with little ones of their own, and they got to experience it from the beginning, all over again, but from their parents' point of view. That's how it was for me for a time, and I wouldn't trade those times for anything in the world. It's what happened after that I'd want to bargain for. You see, I'm an old-timer now. Well, past my prime.

Some would label me as crotchety. But considering what I went through, no one could blame me. not that any of these people know or care about my past. They just want to carry on with their lives of ignorance, with smiles on their faces and little worries in their mind. Ignorance truly is bliss, and it's the only way most people can live.

If they knew the truth, they'd be more like me than they care to get. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them, but my eyes are open. It was fall of 1993, the happiest point in my life before everything changed. I had a great job, a loving spouse, and two beautiful children. Lisa was nine, and Marcus was eight. A pair of troublemakers, to be sure, but I'd love them so much. I remember opening the paper on October 1st, and a flyer fell out of the folds as I flipped past the front page.

Lisa had been sitting next to me at the table and picked it up off the floor. It was an advertisement for a pop-up Halloween store, which wasn't very common back then. They claimed to have the scariest costumes available, which was right up my kids, Alley. Most children that age shied away from scary things, oh, but not my regrets. They loved scary things more than most adults I knew. While other kids were drawing castles and princesses, Lisa was creating her own Cronenberg inspired creatures. Marcus loved to play with Legos, and would put together his own version of the M-41A Pulse rifle while watching the VHS special edition of aliens. It's kind of my fault.

Lisa and Marcus were exposed to horror and dark sci-fi movies at a very young age. They used to have horrible nightmares because, while they were supposed to be sleeping, they'd have their ears pressed up against our bedroom door while we watched movies alone. The noises they heard, coupled with their wild imaginations, made for unimaginable horrors that plagued them while they slept. We sat down with them every time and listened to them describe what happened in the dreams. It hurt my heart to know there wasn't anything I could do for them other than assure them no one ever died from a bad dream. After all, a dream can't hurt you, unless you're in a West Craven movie. It took about a month for them to come clean about why they were having nightmares.

I was less than thrilled to find out they'd been sneaking out of bed. But it presented us with a solution. In broad daylight, when such things aren't nearly as scary, we showed them some of the movies they'd overheard. Seeing what actually happened in the movie wasn't nearly as bad as their dreams, and it put them at ease. It had been a gamble, but it worked. The nightmares stopped. Some kids just aren't meant for spooky things, and others thrive on it. With the drawings Lisa produced, I thought we had a special effects master in the making.

As for Marcus, he wanted to be the guy in the movies. the one that saves the day. We started calling him our little monster killer. I wish we hadn't. More than anything, I wish they'd been more about fairy tales and puppy dog tales.

We went to the pop-up store and looked through their offerings. My love doted on the kids plenty, but wouldn't let them have everything they wanted. We may have been doing well for ourselves, but we were still on a budget. loose as it was. It took considerable doing,

but the costumes were eventually narrowed down. That year the children were dressing up as half human, half aliens, while my love and I were to be alien bounty hunters. Our costumes consisted mostly of brown trench coats and futuristic pistols that made noises when you pulled the trigger. I hadn't intended on dressing.

up when we took them out, but the kids insisted. When we got to the register, I was busy paying for everything while the kids were looking at all the stuff they kept near the checkout. Lisa would normally pick up stuff asking if she could get it too, but she didn't that day. Instead, she found a table to the side with stacks of flyers. They were for various haunted houses around the city, and she had to be. And she found a table to the side with stacks of flyers. And she got really excited. Marcus joined in on this, both begging to go to some of them. I said no, and the kids were disappointed.

But then I explained that if we went, there wouldn't be time for trick-or-treating. My love didn't call me on my crap because it was well-established that I didn't like haunted houses. The last time I went to one, someone jumped out at me for a sketch. and without thinking, I punched them in the face. That was before the kids were born, so they were unaware of my issue, and I certainly wasn't going to put myself in that situation again. My decision may have been final, but it didn't stop the kids from pestering me about it for the next three weeks.

They begged and pleaded, even trying to get my love to change my mind, but I wouldn't be swayed. The only way I'd agree is if I wasn't the one to go through the haunted houses with them. Well, that gave the kids hope until an unfortunate incident with an under-cooked sausage, and my love suffered some of the worst food poisoning I'd ever seen. Not so bad to warrant hospitalization,

but going to any of the haunted houses was out of the question. It was up to me to take the children trick-or-treating, and for the first time they weren't as enthusiastic about it. I hated to disappoint them, but once we were dressed up and ready to go, the promise of more sugar than they could handle in a week lifted their spirits. Lisa and Marcus looked truly wicked in their costumes, and we ended up making a game of the night. Every time they thought I wasn't looking, they tried to scamper away. But if they heard the distinct noise of my toy blaster going off, they knew they were caught. It really played up to the whole alien bounty hunter thing, and some of the other parents caught on to what we were doing. It was a big laugh.

For the time we made it to the far side of our enormous neighborhood, the side I wasn't very familiar with, it was getting lost. late. I was just about to tell the kids that it was time to head back when they saw something that had them mesmerized. Had I seen it before them, I would have gotten us away from there, but I didn't see it until well after they did. It was a house, unlike any in the neighborhood. It stood two stories tall with what looked like a three-story tower above the entryway. The wood looked old and decaying. like something that needed a date with a refurbishing crew, or better yet, a wrecking ball. It had one of those old Halloween tracks playing from the windows, though I didn't see any speakers.

A sign next to the open front gate declared it to be a haunted house. The sign was a red flag to me, because haunted house was sprayed over the word condemned. Before I could say no, Lisa and Marcus ran for the front door. I tried using the blaster to get them to stop, but they completely ignored it. I took off after them, but they made it to the front door well before me. It was at a distance, but I distinctly remember seeing the door open before they got to it. Reaching the door, I had to slam my shoulder into it because the damn. thing tried to close on me. Looking around, I couldn't see much of the eerie decor. There wasn't much

in the way of light, and what little there was wasn't very bright. As I took it in, I realized the lighting was so sub-pire, because there weren't any electric lights, but candles placed here and there. With all the cobwebs and the insane amount of dust, if one of those candles tipped over, the entire place would have caught fire in a matter of moments. The staircase was to my left and bent halfway up to the second floor. There was an elegant table, decayed with neglect, sitting against the wall in front of the staircase, a candelabra on it with only one candle. Two, two shares with horribly cracked leather sat on either side of the table, and on the opposite wall were two doors. Where the staircases connected with the upstairs, a hallway stretched underneath the

landing, dark and threatening. I couldn't see anything down that way, only that the top of the entryway was covered in dangling cobwebs. What I didn't see were my kids, not even a hint to where they went. I'd been just behind them, yet they somehow managed to get farther into the house than a matter of seconds. I knew they were fast, but it didn't seem possible that they could have been that fast. We used to play tag at the playground, and I had to slow my speed in order for them to catch me sometimes. The Halloween track I'd heard from outside seemed to have stopped playing the moment I entered the house. It was quiet, except for the sound of wind rushing through old, cracked windows, and wood creaking from the walls. It hadn't been that windy outside, but this sounded like a storm was

moving in, and threatening to take the house down. Not that it would have taken a tornado to blow this house down. The big bad wolf could have done it with little effort. I grabbed up a candle holder in rushed to the hallway under the stairs. I swiped away at the cobwebs, so I wouldn't set the entire house ablaze, and set out to find my kids. The candle didn't illuminate near enough for me to see every nook and cranny. If anything, it made the shadows dance in a way that would have unnerved the hell out of me, but worry for my kids put everything in the back seat of my mind. I went from room to room running through the hallways and everywhere I could find. Looking back on it, there had been way too many rooms and hallways for a house that size.

But I didn't notice at the time. I kept shouting their names, and though I'd occasionally hear children giggling, they never called back to me. It was the weirdest haunted house I'd ever been in, but by far the scariest. not for the dank lighting, the thousands of cobwebs I ran face-first into, or the dancing shadows, but because there was no sign of my kids. Eventually I made it back into the entry room. I could see dozens of footprints in the dust on the floor now, and they all looked to be mine.

When I moved to go up the stairs, I saw my first sign of Lisa and Marcus. I know I looked before rushing off, and there weren't any footprints on the stairs, but there they were at the time. I know I looked before rushing off, and there weren't any footprints on the stairs, but there were at that time. They must have come out while I was running around. Either they hadn't heard me calling out to them, or they were purposefully ignoring me, but either way I was angry.

They knew better than a run off, but something about the place got to them. As far as I could tell, it wasn't even a haunted house, just a dank place that looked incredibly creepy. Taking the stairs two at a time I made it to the landing halfway up in seconds. When I turned to go up the rest of the way, I stopped dead in my tracks. Two children, dressed in traditional ghost costumes, stood at the top of the time. of the stairs. The white sheets draped over them were blood-stained below the eyes, as if someone had slit their throats before covering them. There were holes for the eyes, and I could see pale flesh

around dead black orbs. For a moment, I thought it was my kids because they were the same size, but then they spoke. "'You shouldn't be here,' one said. "'This isn't a place. This isn't a place for the living, said the other. I told them I was looking for my son and daughter. They just struck their heads in unison, making their costumes swish back and forth. If they are here, they are yours no longer. They belong to us.

And with that they giggled and floated down the hall incredibly fast. As they moved, I realized I couldn't see their feet poking out from under the sheets. I scrambled after them, screaming for my kids. But when I got to the top of the stairs, there was no sign of the sheets. More candles were placed here and there on little tables in what appeared to be a second-story lounge. But it still didn't illuminate much. I inspected the floor for more footprints.

There were two different sets of prints from what I could tell, what I believed to be Lisa and Marcus's, but that was it. The two ghost-costumed kids left no prints, and I was finally starting to believe that this was a real haunted house. I began following the prince, but they'd led me down the right hallway and dead-ended right at a wall. Well, it didn't make sense. There was no indication that they'd turned around and walked back the way they'd come. In fact, there weren't any doors down that hallway either.

After that I went down the hallway, those ghosts flew down, but it was the same as the other had been, a dead end, with no doors at all. I couldn't make sense of it, and I went to lean on the wall to cry. That's when I fell through the wall and landed on the floor, nearly catching myself on fire. As I got back to my feet, by some miracle keeping the candle from going, out, I had to blink several times to make sense of what I was seeing. Below my feet wasn't the old wood floor, but a wallpaper design. To my left was a dirty white ceiling, and to my right was the wood flooring.

I looked back the way I'd come, expecting to see it the right way, but it wasn't. Somehow I was standing on the wall, and it wasn't because the hallway was designed to look like that. I was really on the damn wall. This hallway moved further into the house and turned up ahead. Now, I don't mean it turned up to the right or left. I mean it went straight up above me. When I got to the end, I didn't know what else to do, and reached my foot out to place it on the wall.

It was the strangest sensation I've ever felt, like I was about to pitch forward and land face first on that wall. Imagine you're standing on a chair with one foot on the back and the other on the edge of the seat. Now, imagine that the chair is balancing on the two back legs instead of all four flat on the ground. Well, that's what it felt like standing with a foot on each wall. Fitching myself forward, I brought up my back leg and stumbled down the hall going up my new floor at that moment. The whole experience slashed my stomach around and spun my head in circles. Still, I fought past the strangeness, determined to find my missing children. I was about to call out for them again, but a sound behind me struck me silent.

I'd heard my kids scream plenty of times throughout their short lives, crying out as infants, screaming bloody murder when they hurt themselves as toddlers, and screaming with delight while running around playing. What I heard in that moment chilled me down to the bone. There was the distinct sound of wood-breaking, and then Lisa and Marcus screamed in a panic. It was followed by a crash and then silence. whirled around to run back down the hall, but gravity shifted on me before I could, and I fell to

the wood floor. The candle didn't stay lit this time, and I was plunged into darkness. When I got to my feet, I felt around the hall, ignoring the disgusting, squishy things that my hands came across as I hurried out of there. It seemed to take forever for me to emerge from that darkness, but when I did, I wasn't on the second floor anymore. Somehow I'd ended up back on the first floor, and I came out the hallway under the stairs. Lisa and Marcus lay on the floor atop the broken railing from the staircase above.

They weren't crying out in pain, or trying to get up, from the wrong angles of their necks and twisted limbs. I knew they were never going. going to get up again. I fell apart, crashing to my knees next to them, and wailing loudly. As a parent, you're supposed to protect your children. Keep them safe. I had failed, and it broke me. I gathered them up in my arms, holding them close to me, and cried like I never cried before. Those ghosts and creepy shadows could have converged on me in that moment, and it wouldn't have mattered.

My world was already shattered. I don't know how long I stayed like that, but eventually someone started talking to me. It wasn't the creepy ghost children, but a pair of cops with flashlights. They were asking me if I was okay, or if I needed assistance. I opened my eyes to ask them if they were really that stupid, but I realized several things in that moment. I was no longer in the house, and my arms were empty. Lisa and Marcus were nowhere to be seen,

and I was in the middle of an empty lot. The house wasn't there anymore. I've spent years trying to figure out what happened that night, hundreds of hours spent researching the vacant lot, digging through archives and newspapers, but finding nothing. As far as I could tell, there had never been a house on that land. I wasted thousands of dollars on private detectives, paranormal investigators, and psychics. No one has ever been able to tell me a thing.

The police labeled it a missing person's case, noting my negligence as a parent, but the case didn't go cold. It started that way. After my messy divorce, I bought the house directly across from the vacant lot, and have spent every Halloween since making sure no children go near there. The decrepit house has never reappeared, but if it does, I'll be here to see it. Who knows? Maybe, if I get back inside, I'll find Lisa and Marcus at the top of the stairs, wearing typical ghost costumes stained with blood.

Now a word from our sponsors. We're back on the air with KREP. Things started off a little shaky with that last caller, but we righted the ship, and I'm grateful to hear the older voices out there, still kicking around on the right side of the grave. Or was he calling from the wrong side? I suppose we'll never know. Just like this listener who wrote in to tell us about his own urban legend, something he calls the kill tape.

You ever heard the urban legend about the kill tape? I'm old enough than my childhood largely consisted of renting video cassettes and watching the clock to make sure Domino is delivered in 30 minutes or less. Seriously, I can barely find my friend's house without Google Maps. I have no idea how they did it back when there was some paper map tacked up to a wall. Anyway, before you younger people roll your eyes at the old guy talking about the glory days of video rental, just bear with me. It explains how I got here.

Like a lot of people my age, there was a different sort of air around watching movies. I still remember going into the grocery stores with my mom. My hand in hers, walking past the small rack of tapes. the music video documentary for Thriller, Catching My Eye. But not for long before seeing the price tag of $100. Yeah, people don't talk about that much anymore. People forget. The new generations can't grasp the idea of spending that much money on a movie.

Unless you want to buy popcorn at the theaters, I mean. See, back in the 1970s and 80s when it was new technology, If you owned a VCR, you were, without a doubt, rich. Today, you can buy a 60-inch flat screen TV for about half the price of what a VCR used to cost in the 80s. And that's pre-inflation rates. I saw an old episode of Colombo with William Shatner, where they were using a VCR and commenting that it cost something like $3,000 just for the VCR. And VHS tapes are so limited in production that their price matched it. For context, that would be like paying $250 today just to buy a movie,

let alone the VCR, which would run about $4,500 in today's money. Imagine paying that for tracking lines. So maybe you can imagine what sort of mystical aura there seemed to be around VHS tapes. There were treasures. They were magical. And soon, they were taboo, too. faces of death is usually the one I hear most when it comes to tapes being handed around. I actually think it's on a shudder right now if people haven't seen it.

I still can't believe they're remaking it. But back in the day, the United Kingdom, well, they went a lot further in terms of how they reacted to videotapes, especially horror. Maybe you've heard of Video Nasty's. Video Nasty's was a term used in the United Kingdom in the 1980s to describe, films that were criticized for their violent content and released on video cassette. The term was popularized by the National Viewers and Listeners Association, the N-V-A-L-A,

and often referred to low-budget horror or exploitation films. 72 movies appeared on their list at one time or another. Movies ranging from Cannibal Holocaust to Blood Feast and Even Evil Dead, if you can believe that shit. It was learning about this list about 20 years ago that I really became obsessed. DVD technology was still reasonably new, so I had one of those VHS DVD player combos. eBay was up and running, so suddenly there was new access to long since forgotten or lost movies. There are probably people out there who can take up a hobby and not go too far down the rabbit hole. But I think there are a lot of people like me who want to see how far the path leads.

Find one rare VHS, like say torture dungeon or warlock moon, and see what else is out there. Some people go the money route, looking for original copies of Halloween 2 for $15,000, or John Carpenter's The Thing for $35,000. But I wasn't interested in mainstream. I wanted horror, but I wanted rare. Rare, rare. You can imagine the sorts of places it took me to. Forms filled with questionable people.

Video stores hanging on by a thread. Mostly just thanks to their beaded curtain back rooms and any number of conversations with fans, obsessives, liars, and cheats. I've heard about movies you couldn't even imagine. Movies by studios no longer remembered. actors and actresses whose lives have only gone down since filming and content that even I have a difficult time watching

and all the while the same sort of question and idea bounced around look for dark movies and try not to hear anyone mention snuff honestly I can't imagine how people can still debate the validity of snuff films in this day and age as we see more learn more uncover more about exactly how low we can get? Why would it be a surprise to anyone that murders have been captured on film? Now, I haven't seen him myself, not for lack of trying. Call me what you will, but would you turn down the chance to see your Holy Grail?

Maybe it's your perennial loser sports franchise finally winning a championship, despite the star athlete being a sex offender. Maybe it's finally posting a video that goes viral, and your name is known by the world at someone else's expense. Maybe it's winning a county fair baking competition by accidentally knocking a competitor's pie off the table. The issue isn't the content you seek. It's what you're willing to ignore or cognitively refrain to get it.

It's called the kill tape. As rumor has it, it's been around as long as VHS tapes have existed, originally used by someone in the act of a crime. Then used again, and again, and again. Each time filming over the crime, so there's only the most recent record. Layer after layer after layer of the most disgusting acts imaginable. All there and forever gone at the same time. A legacy of evil and depravity all in one little black plastic rectangle,

7.4 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. And regardless of what some horror movies want you to believe, you can't actually pull the images apart once they've been taped over. Maybe if some point was fast-forwarded so an old version was still visible. But no, not on this tape. This tape is a prize for both the casual and the participant alike. There's reverence. There are rules, supposedly.

I couldn't tell you for sure, but it makes sense, wouldn't it? A relic that could put someone away for life, and if handled wrong, put someone else away before them if they aren't careful. And at the same time, ending the line forever, I think the part about all of this that gets me the most, assuming it's real, of course, is that there's a chance that no one even knows where it is anymore. Yeah, I get that it could be in some rich douchebags vault

or in the camera of someone stalking their next victim, but it could also just be in a cardboard box in someone's basement or on the discount table of a yard sale. It could be out there anywhere. A relic of singular importance. A record of murder for almost 50 years. The evidence of deaths from families who would pay anything for answers, sitting there, both found and lost forever,

hidden under any number of other atrocities, on a polyester plastic base coated with polyester urethane binder material containing magnetic oxide particles. But if you think about it, finding that tape could open up a completely different level of understanding, a possible roadmap of murders. Who has the tape? Where did they get it from?

Did they know what it was? Did they understand the importance? And how? How many deaths are captured and lost on that tape? One, ten, a hundred? I'm sorry. But who wouldn't want to see that? That's our time for tonight, listeners.

As always, 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.