Creepy - Day 21 - Every Summer My Neighbor Built A New Scarecrow

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Sometimes you just want someone to listen...***New Scarecrow written by NewToTownJam***The Black Friday Incident written by Fronkensteen***See your donation rewards at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3SrH_3fsROXFAjomKcUtw***Music by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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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. Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror. Day 21. Every summer my neighbor built a new scarecrow.

Written by New to Town Jam. The rural area I grew up in made the smallest town appear densely populated. It was the sort of place where he had to cycle a mile or so to the nearest neighbor, and the bus only came through twice a day. Most kids think growing up on a farm is some sort of constantly thrilling adventure. The kids of my school in the nearest town certainly did. They didn't see me waking up at four in the morning just to get ready in time for my parents to get me there, or how lonely weekends were when your friends lived so far away.

No, they thought it was all just chickens and tractors. In truth, I resided. The farm was on a large plot of land. We had acres surrounding the house, ending in a thick forest of border that separated us from two distant neighbors and some fields. My parents would let me play freely on the farm from a young age. My only rule was to stay on the land that we owned, where the trees started. I should have always stopped.

Boredom was a killer. Chickens aren't so exciting when they're your day-to-day life, and there's only so much fun a kid can have on his own. When I was about eight years old, I started to explore the woods and made up the border, at first weaving in and out of the trees on the edge of the farm, and eventually building up the courage to go deeper into the forest. I was careful, making sure that I embarked on my adventures almost as soon as I'd left the house so that I had maximum time to explore without being caught by mom and dad.

The day I made it through the border, I was trying to time how long it took. to walk through the trees. It was 15 minutes until I reached the clearing by Mr. Hinchcliffe, an elderly potato farmer to the left of us. He was known by the local people for being insular and quiet.

It was a large circular clearing cut off from the rest of his land by different species of trees to the ones in the forest. It was like they'd been planted years before to create and keep the clearing separate and hidden. In the center of the circle was a man stood facing me, unmoving.

I was terrified at first, convinced that Mr. Hangecliff was about to march me home for trespassing. I tried to conceal myself behind a tree while keeping my eye on the man, realizing that he hadn't moved an inch. It took me a moment, but the poles eventually gave it away. That had the lack of feet. The figure starting from the ankles. The man in the clearing wasn't a man at all. He was a scarecrow.

I was fascinated. I stayed behind my tree but strained my eyes to try and get a better look. My parents put scarecrows up around our own crops, but not of ours wherever is elaborated as one that stood in the middle of Mr. Hinchcliffe's clearing. He was realistic, more realistic than anything I had ever seen before. He wore a red-checked shirt. a straw hat and a wide smile stitched across his face from the corners of his lips. I wanted to get closer, but as I started to emerge from the trees, I could feel his eyes on me,

and I could have sworn that I saw his fingers move. I ran back through the woods to the farm, eager to get home and try and figure out about what I'd seen, my little heart pounding. I didn't tell my parents about the scarecrow. or the clearing. But as I laid in bed that night, all I could do was think about that smile, stitched across his face.

I spent hours that night convincing myself that Scarecrows couldn't move. What I'd seen must have been the wind. I was just freaking out over nothing. I tried to stop myself going back, but I desperately wanted to get a closer look. I wondered what Mr. Hinchcliffe used to make his scarecrow look so realistic.

And my curiosity eventually got the best of me. Three days after my initial discovery, I left the farm and made my way through the same dense section of woods until I reached the clearing again. I stopped behind the same tree, inspecting the scarecrow until I'd gathered the bravery to get a little closer.

Mr. Hinchcliff's creation was even more spectacular up close. I couldn't work out what material he'd used to make the face. It was like something out of a film. I touched the skin to try and understand what it was, but I couldn't. It felt like my own. Just colder. I was in complete awe.

The smile had been hand stitched into the skin-like material. It must have taken the old man hours. If the scarecrow had ever had feet, they'd been buried in the dirt to try and help him stand. poles were driven into the ground behind him and tied to his torso, keeping him propped up and secure. The longer I looked at the scarecrow, the more I started to feel like you were alive in ways. I was certain that he occasionally blinked and that his chest rose and fell. I was cautious and a little more than unsettled, but I took my time and inspected him as much as I could.

Walking back to the farm through the forest, I couldn't get the scarecrow out of my thoughts. I struggled to make conversation over dinner. My mind completely filled with that stitched-up smile. I became obsessed. I returned every day for the next three weeks. The clearing became my place of solace and the scarecrow that stood there my best friend. I would sit by his planted ankles reading and drawing in my sketchbook. I named the scarecrow Peter.

and spoke to him whenever I could. I told him my deepest thoughts and feelings, cried to him when I was sad, and spent every moment that I could with him. I was careful not to sit in the clearing for too long, and I always returned to the farm before my parents felt I was gone too long. I wished I could spend more time with Peter. It's sad when I think back to what a lonely kid I must have been

to spend so much time with an object, a glorified effigy of a human. With every visit, the rising and falling of Peter's chest lessened. I stopped catching him blinking, and his skin started to sag and gray after a few days of rain. I knew it must just be me getting used to him, realizing that he was never going to spring to life to answer me like a real friend. But it still made me a little sad. After a while, Peter's man.

Magic was gone. I would go and visit like always, but I didn't feel the same. The clearing was as empty as the rest of my life, and my propped-up friend in the middle was in a sorry state. The stitched smile barely held itself in place and lumps of the material that made up his skin had stirred to dry and fall off. He couldn't even scare the birds away anymore, and often had multiple perched on his straw hat and shoulders, pecking at his face. One day, towards the end of summer, I made my way through the clearing to find it empty. Peter was gone. There wasn't a trace of him left bar the pole that still stuck firmly in the ground.

Despite the fact that my initial fascination with Peter had already depleted, it still felt like a loss. My parents couldn't understand why I was so withdrawn. I was grieving for someone that had never actually existed. Eight years old, and I already understood what it was to mourn a friend. I visited the clearing multiple times, and it remained empty. School restarted, and the autumn hit. Bringing with it, ice cold winds that would frost the entire land. I spent less time outside and barely visited Mr. Hinchcliffe's clearing through the winter.

By the time we reached the next summer, Peter and the time I'd spent with my silent friend was all but forgotten. It was by chance, on a sunny day, that I decided to walk through the woods one more time to my old sanctuary. I didn't expect it. I thought that part of my life was over. But there she was. An entirely new scarecrow propped up just like Peter had been. Ancles pressed firmly into the ground with the pole behind her.

She wore a different outfit, dungarees and a yellow checked shirt. But the straw hat was unmistak. her chest rose and fell gently just like Peters once had and her eyes appeared to move barely millimeters as I looked into them it was almost impossible to see but I was sure that she was alive she gave me hope that I wouldn't have to spend a summer lonely and sad on the farm her stitched smile gave me the same familiar comforting feeling as warm hot chocolate on a chilly night the process repeated Just like it had with Peter. As the weeks past, she started to look more haggard and less alive.

The magic became less. The loneliness returned, and eventually she disappeared entirely. Every year would be the same. Summer will come, and with it Mr. Hinchcliff will build a new scarecrow. They came in every age, shape, and gender. A new friend that I knew would wither and vans. just like the others. Regardless, I grew attached to every single one of them.

As I got older and my parents awarded me more freedom, I was able to spend more time in the town with friends that spoke back. After a while, I started to forget about the scarecrows entirely, favoring girls and nights out to sitting with inanimate objects. Years passed by and I left home to take a degree in art. University changed my life For the first time I had a group of friends around me all the time

ones that weren't planted in the ground I moved in with them and only went home for Christmas I never forgot about Mr. Hinchcliffe Scarecrow's They were my lifeline for so long But I did move on I didn't need them anymore It's been three years since I spent to

somewhere on the farm, and lockdown has forced me back here. When my housemates all returned to their families, I couldn't bear the idea of just me in the house, so I did the same. I wasn't intending to visit the clearing. In fact, it's been years since I really thought about it. I've been too wrapped up in a social life that I'd never had as a kid. It was only when my mother brought up her new friend Linda, who now lives in the farm to the left. that I was reminded of my childhood secret, one that now I wish I could erase.

What happened to Mr. Hinchcliff? I asked, my heart sinking at the sudden realization that I would never get to see another one of his amazing creations. My mother hung her head, trying to plan a response. It was awful, Charlie, all over the local news. He stopped responding to his sister's calls last year, and after a while she sent the local police to do a welfare check. When they arrived, he wasn't in the house. So they started searching the land, and they found him. Collapsed in a wooded bit just on the other side of our trees. He died of a heart attack.

Why would that make the news? I asked. I'll beat a sweat running down my neck as I imagined Mr. Hinchcliff, dad in the clearing. My clearing. My mother's face somehow lowered further. He wasn't alone, Charlie. They found a woman strapped to a pole next to his body. He'd been injecting her with some sort of drug that kept her completely paralyzed while conscious.

He planted her feet in the ground to keep her upright and dressed her up like a scarecrow. Police combed the land and found 45 bodies buried. He'd been added for years. I felt bile rising in my throat. my mind started to connect dots that I'd never imagined. What happened to the girl? I asked. She survived, barely. When they finally got her conscious, she wrote a letter explaining that she'd been strapped to that pole for two weeks before she was found.

Hinchcliffe took every precaution possible to keep her alive up there. Worst of all? She can only communicate through writing now after what he did. her face, the sick fuck cut her mouth up, only to stitch it back into a smile. From the Patreon Vault. Creepy Presents The Black Friday Incident. The early stages of production on the film Toy Story were a complete nightmare.

The production was in a sort of development hell until the infamous Black Friday incident. Disney harassed the then-new animation studio. Pixar constantly. They were to produce and release the film, and they wanted results as quickly as possible. Disney tried everything to eliminate Pixar's efforts to deviate from the Disney formula, even at times threatening to shut the production down. Disney sent notes on revisions that they thought would improve the film. They insisted through their notes, all which read, Edge, the film needs more edge. The people working with the on the film at the time struggled so hard to maintain all Disney's notes and demands.

Once a week, they were required to fly across the country to Disney's office to present them with progress. Every time, they were met with the same response. Edge. The film needs more edge. Pixar revised the film so hard to meet the deadlines that resulted in some rather interesting changes. In order to achieve edge, the film became a... quite a lot darker. Woody became a wildly unlikable character,

much angrier and far less comedic than that in the final film. Bo Peep's role in the story was far more prevalent, often flirtatious towards the male characters, and is the first to accuse Woody of pushing Buzz out of the window. Buzz Lightyear was referred to at this point in production as Lunar Larry.

He's highly reminiscent of an older superhero. Talking in a deeper voice and is even more deluded and ignorant of his surroundings. Other toys were relatively unchanged, say for minor aesthetic differences. Pixar employees worked literally 24-7 non-stop. Director John Laster joked on more than one occasion that he had the best parking space at the office because his car hadn't moved for over three days. Some of the writers and storyboard artists began to suffer from chronic insomnia. A few writers reported seeing visions of Buzz and Woody taunting them on their lack of progress, chanting,

Edge, the film needs more edge. Many of the initial writers quit due to the distress it was putting on their personal lives, much to the distress of the remaining crew. By November of 1992, there were two of the five writers left, and only one of the three storyboard artists. The remaining storyboard artist was named Ralph Thompson, He joined the Pixar team in the winter of 1987, working on short films such as Tintoy and Nickknack. He, at the same time, did some storyboard work for the nightmare before Christmas with fellow artist Joe Gramp.

Joe came down with the serious illness and hadn't been able to work in a week. Rolf worked constantly in fear the inevitable correction by Disney. More edge, more edge. Each presentation meant another role of sleepless night. of rewriting and redrawing the same characters in the same bedroom over and over and over. It was maddening. One morning, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, another higher-ups at Pixar office, came into the office and told everyone what happened at their last meeting. Disney felt that things were not looking very good for the film and demanded that, in less than a week,

they see the complete film in story reels, storyboards with audio, with massive revisions. There was a general groan in whining from the crew and they went back to work. Ralph worked harder than all others involved. Sometimes at 2 o'clock in the morning, one of the writers would walk into Ralph's office with a pack in a newly written scenes. More to draw. And with more drawings meant more scratch voice work. When a film's still in the writing, storyboarding stage is artists through the temporary voices for the story reels. He had Disney's vague instructions racing through his mind.

More. More edge. Edgier. More. We want results, people. Edgier. This is business. Faster. More edge. Move on already. He thought to himself this exactly. The film needed an edge. It needed to be darker. More cynical. It needed more adult humor in situations. It needed an attitude. Of course, Rolf, you damn idiot. How couldn't you see it sooner? Edge. All those hundreds of hours bent over a desk and all you needed was Edge. Why didn't you listen sooner?

He gave the film an edge. The story reels were flown over with the main crew to the head offices at Disney. The date was November 27, 1992, Black Friday. The film was brought into Disney's screening room. The reel was about 48 and a half minutes long. The room started out as a western-style shootout between Woody and Andy resulting in Andy being shot down. It was revealed that this was just a game played inside of Andy's mind. The film continued on with little problems for about 20 minutes or so,

though several gags seemed off with the overall tone of the film. For example, Mr. Potato Head would pull one of his eyes out and kick them under Bo Peep's dress for a look-see. There were several scenes of Woody yelling at the toys to stop caring about Buzz and Larry to pay attention to him, culminating in insults and minor acts of violence. The scene comes where Andy can only take one toy to Pizza Planet and Woody pushes Buzz out of the window. Woody offers to shake hands with Buzz, Larry, only to throw him out the window. There's a stock smashing noise.

The other toys are shocked and antagonized. Woody for what he's done. Woody shows little remorse and screams at Slinky Dog to make the toy stop harassing him. After much yelling, one of the green army men saying the word goddamn, the toys grab Woody and toss him out the window as well. He falls to the ground with a loud thump. Chearing is heard from the interior of the house. The quality of the storyboards become much less refined and almost like chicken scratch.

Woody gets up and sees Buzz, Larry. Buzz's body shattered on impact. His arms and lights were broken off and located only a few inches away. There was a large crack down the middle of the chest, revealing a mess of buttons and wires inside. He gave off a sort of electrical twitch motion in his head. His eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of their plastic sockets. The twitching stops after a few moments in Woody looks in fear of what he's done to Buzz

and runs off. There's a jump cut to a scene where the two get stuck in a claw machine. The storyboard art is back to its normal level of quality. The machine is filled with sunglasses wearing pizzas as opposed to the aliens in the finished movie. Buzz is completely unharmed and intact. The scene is almost verbatim to the final film. Sid, the antagonist in control of the claw, is wearing a yellow t-shirt and is smoking three

cigarettes at once. The claw grabs Woody and Buzz, putting them in the clutches of Sid. There's another jump cut, once again returning to the chicken scratch style of artwork. The scene is inside of Sid's room. Woody looks around the room in fear. He tiptoes around the room and collapses after seeing one of Sid's mutant toys. Real now shows unrelated test animation of characters running. A few seconds of Buzz running in place, a few seconds of Woody running,

and nearly a minute of the two running together. The footage is distorted and Spanish text is present on the screen. Quote, it looked like clay models that got life, unquote. There's no shot of Woody standing in front of a black background, and the trademark Pixar ball is rolling around in the distance. The animation style now is the traditional animation style of a typical 2D Disney film. Woody's completely naked, with anatomically correct features. He stares directly into the camera.

His flesh begins to rot away with the exception of his eyes which remain intact. Woody begins to moan in a low voice. What remains of his lips curl into a smile, bits of his flesh peeling off as this happens. He lifts up his decomposing arm manually and waves it into the camera. His fingers did. deep into his eyes. Dark blood oozes out of the sockets. Woody begins to scream and growl.

Don't you want it? Don't you want it? Don't you love it? He digs so deep as to have ripped the entire top half of his head off. Woody gives a sigh of relief and begins eating the flesh off the skull before tossing it aside. He writes the word edge on the screen with his rotting fingertips. The remaining 15 minutes of the reel were pencil scribbles accompanied by the shrill screams of a young woman. The word edge is burned into the projection screen.

The screening ended in complete silence. Chairman at Disney at the time, Jeffrey Katzenberg, walked out of the screening quietly telling his colleagues. Notes. They were following all the notes we were giving them. Upon returning to the Pixar offices, writer Pete Doctor found the body of Ralph Thompson in an enormous. pile of paper in his desk. Further analysis found that the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by lack of sleep and

stress. The papers were all storyboards and animation cells of the final coherent scene of Woody. The word edge scrawled in the back of each one. After the Black Friday screening, Disney was far less involved with the film. Pixar was given the freedom to make the film their way. The film went on to be a huge success, both critically and financially. The Black Friday incidents still remains very much a mystery. Further information.

There's a short bonus feature on the Toy Story Blu-ray about the incident, curiously not mentioning the more notable scenes. You can also be found on YouTube for anyone who's curious to see the whitewashed history. Disney produced a short documentary to avoid discussing the incident. If you contact them about it, you'll be redirected to the Blu-ray's Amazon page if you're used. get a response at all. For more information, including pictures and videos of the stories told on this podcast, or to suggest stories for future episodes, please visit us at Creepypod on Twitter,

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