Creepy - Day 21 - The Black Door & Pleasant Company

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

The Black Door: A Tale of Personal Phobia***Written by: Eman***Link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Black_Door:_A_Tale_of_Personal_Phobia***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/***Bonus episode: "Pleasant Company" Written by: Billie Leavenworth and Narrated by: Heather Thomas***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. Creepy presents the 31 days of horror. Day 21.

The Black Door, A Tale of Personal Phobia, written by Emin. I never like doors. There was always something about doors that freaked me out. When they were open, I felt exposed. When they were closed, I felt a closed. I felt a bit safer yet nervous about what was on the other side. So I often locked my doors, and the doors that led outside of my small rural house have plenty of windows. I've told people about dysphobia.

I guess you could call it that. They've rationalized it, saying, it's like how some people aren't afraid of the dark, but what the dark hides. Yeah. That makes sense. I guess ever since I was a kid, I always imagined watching one open on its own and a monster would come out and get me. Even now and again into my teen years, this happened.

It was always a door, never through a window, never out of a dark hallway or corner, but a door. The knob would turn, the hinges would creak, and out came a creature of utter blackness. that would take me away, kill me, or whatever monsters did. That's why I hated this particular door. This door was tall, nearly eight feet tall and about three feet wide. It was black, jet, black. I didn't like it. It was big, dark, and in my bedroom.

I didn't use this door often. I kept some old clothes behind that door on racks. Suits, ties, dress pants, just some random formal stuff I hardly used. I was just a cook, so I never really needed them unless I needed a job. Luckily, I was able to stay with this diner for a long time. I haven't opened that door for five years. I haven't wondered why I never got rid of it. If I didn't like it, why keep it?

Well, I guess because it just seems silly. It seems silly to get rid of a door just because of some childhood fears. I was a big boy now. I'm not supposed to be afraid of the dark or the boogeyman. Yeah. I wrapped my knuckle against the door as I stood in front of it. I'm not afraid of you. You're just a big piece of it.

a wood. All you got behind you are some old clothes that probably don't even fit me anymore. I tried to laugh away my concern as I looked at the door. It seemed to tower over me, and two small panels at the top of the door seemed to angle down at me. For a moment, I felt like it was looking right at me. I tried to laugh again, but I couldn't quite muster the humor. Instead, I gave it another wrap and walked off. I had things to do, get ready for work, bills to pay, and people to see. I didn't have time to be afraid of a door. A couple of nights went by after I mocked the door.

The feeling of being looked down on didn't leave me for the rest of the week. For some reason, I just felt watched by the door. I lay in bed one night paralleled to the door and stared at it. The door was hidden in the darkness, with only its brass knob to let me know it never moved. I stared for some time, looking directly at it. I felt like I was in a staring contest with the door. We just looked at each other, waiting for the other to make a move. We waited until one of us broke the stair.

which tried to intimidate the other. We stared for a long time before I finally blinked. When I did blink, I expected the door to suddenly swing open and reveal some sort of monster. Nothing happened. The door simply stood there, looking at me, looming over me. A chill ran down my spine and I finally turned away. I went to sleep. but not till after several glances back at the door.

I woke up in the morning with a headache. My head pounded like a death metal drum solo. I groaned. It hurt like a son of a bitch. I pressed my hands on the bed to feel something warm dampened my hands. I opened my eyes. There on my pillow and down under the white sheets, it was a pool of blood. I sat up, tearing my face away from the pillow.

It was sticky from the dried blood. When I examined the sheets closer, I saw drops falling from my nose. I had a bloody nose, of course. I quickly stood up from my bed and ran to the bathroom with my head up, like some sort of super snob. You know, the kind where they even looked down on God. Anyway, I ran in and looked at myself in the mirror. The left half of my face, mostly the cheek and mouth area, was dark red and brown and two streams of blood still dripped from my nose.

I held it up again, this time feeling around the bathroom for some toilet paper. I found some and quickly plugged my nose up in a hurry. The toilet paper stopped the blood and I was able to sigh in relief. I felt dizzy though. And when the crisis ended, my headache decided to take some. center stage again. With another groan, I wandered in my bedroom and called in sick. I couldn't go to work like this. I called my boss, and with toilet paper in my nose, I sounded more convincing. He told me to call someone, and so I called Fred. He's a good shit. Hello?

Came up his voice. I must have just woke him. Hey, Fred, it's Josh. Listen, man, I'm feeling like shit and I need you to come in for me, all right? There was a silence on the phone. He was probably nodding. Fred had a stupid tendency to do that, like he thought the phone had video or something. Finally, he responded. Yeah, yeah, sure. He said with a yawn.

Thanks, man. I'll take Friday for you if you'd like. I would like that, Josh, thanks. Yeah, I'll talk to you later. I hung up. There, I had the day to get cleaned up and my head to feel better. As I laid my phone back on the base and noticed something odd, there was a sheet missing from my bed.

Figured I just kicked it off as I slept. I took a look around the bed. Nothing. not under the bed not behind it not around it i looked all over and i couldn't find it with a sigh sat down on the bloody bed what a day and i just woke up my headache pounded as i tried to think tried to calm down i felt like crap but i also felt nervous for some reason a bloody nose and a headache then my sheet is gone I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. What a fucking day.

Then I looked up, intent on some aspirin, and I noticed something else. My closet door wasn't closed all the way. I could tell because the latch rested on the outside of the frame. Now I was really freaking out. I stood up, nothing about my boxers, and approached the door. I reached for the handle. I looked up at those two panels again. They seemed to angle down at me, staring me dead in the eye.

I hesitated and took a step back. Why was it open? And why was I so scared of it? It was just a door. Nothing to be scared of, yet I was. I was absolutely terrified at this door. right now. My head pounded. My nose was plugged with toilet tissues, and I was alone in my boxers. Dawn was just creeping through my window. I gripped the handle. There was nothing, absolutely

nothing, to be scared of. I told myself this probably a million times as my hand shook on the knob. The quaking knob made small rattling noises as the latch vibrated against the fire. frame. Finally, I took a deep breath, made a tight fist, and swung open the door. Inside was the five jackets, dress shirts, dressed pants, and two pairs of shoes I wear for interviews. They were all aligned and straight on the rack they hung on by their hangers, just as I had left them five years ago. I looked down and there was my sheet under the coats. It was folded up neatly into a perfect square. One word raced across my mind a thousand times.

How? How, how, how, how, how, how? I didn't know. And I didn't think I wanted to know. Mustering my courage again, I reached down and grabbed the sheet, then I shut the door. I must use more force than usual as the door shut with a small slam. I jumped in response, but I stood my ground otherwise.

I looked back up the two panels and remained still. They looked back. They seemed to be waiting for some sort of response to my findings. Did they want praise, fear, scolding? What was I to do? Should I tell it how much it scared me and how terrible of a trick it was? I looked up at it. it looked back.

I didn't move from where I was until about 10 a.m. The day pressed on. I was downstairs cleaning up and my headache was gone. I was sitting on my couch watching TV. I was watching a documentary. It was about the Civil War on how Sherman marched through Atlanta, burning all on his path. Next to me in a chair was the sheet I found in the closet.

I didn't take the time to do. put them back on the bed, nor did I take the bloody sheets and pillow to be washed. I didn't intend to sleep up there anyway. Yet it seems my venture to avoid the door was not something I was destined. As a man talked about how Sherman planned burn atlant to the ground, I heard something that made my blood wrung cold. A loud slam echoed to the emptiness of my house. It was a fierce slam.

Like someone who was running for their life would slam a door. door in front of a killer, or like how a child looking for attention would slam their parents' door. I jumped up from the couch and looked up at the stairs leading to my room. The slam echoed in my ears a few times as I gazed up, unable to move. I was not just scared anymore. I was terrified. Something was in my house.

Something hid behind that door. And that something wanted my attention. Hello? I called out. I wasn't sure how I was able to muster the courage to call out into the empty house. I wasn't even sure why I thought I'd get an answer. I didn't, and the house was silent once again. My nerves were not settled, however.

I took a few steps forward, my socks whispering on the pale carpet. I stopped, and nothing continued to happen. I licked my lips. They were incredibly dry. I then jogged. I couldn't believe how fast I decided to see the door. My body felt like it was on autopilot as I skipped up steps to my room. I flew past the bathroom and suddenly followed myself at the doorway leading to my room.

I looked around the corner. There was the door. It was shut tight, no latch left out. I stepped into my room. I stepped slowly, cautiously. Those two panels watched my every move like the eyes of a hawk or that of a demon. I looked at them as I continued. Every few steps I paused to listen and watch.

Nothing happened. Then I was at the door. I looked up at the panels again. This time something else caught my eye. It was a long streak. The door was covered with them. But this one was larger than the rest. The streak extended between the two panels and curved.

It was smiling at me. I was downstairs again. This time with a beer in my hands. The quilt over me in my head and the arm of the couch. The time was 11.30 p.m. I was watching the movie. one of the diehards, I think it was. I sat.

My eyes blank and my body cold. I was very cold now. I even wore my jacket under the quilt and I was still shivering. I was probably actually very scared yet I didn't feel all that scared. Just cold. I watched his explosions came off the screen. His gunfire passed back and forth between Bruce Willis and some terrible. I watched. My body's still shivering, yet still. I took a drink of the beer only every 10

minutes on the minute. I watched and waited. I knew I was waiting for something, for the door to do something. Yet I couldn't leave. I didn't feel the need yet. I felt distant, actually. I felt like I was watching myself watch TV. I only ever came back to the present whenever the ten minutes came up. I watched TV and kept an ear out for something. At 12 midnight, just as I drank my beer, I heard what I was waiting for. The walls shook, the ground quaked, and my heart stopped. There was another loud slam.

Oh, but it wasn't over yet. The slam was followed by another and another and another. The pace was slow at first, but it picked up quickly. It was almost like listening to a giant smash against the wall over and over again. My body moved faster than I ever thought I could. Yet I remember every moment. My hair is standing up, my legs kicking off the quilt, my hands grabbing the keys to my car, my head turning to the stairs.

The slamming continued throughout the process. I ran out the door. I ran to my car. And I drove. I drove so fast, so fast to get away from the slamming. It continued in my head, pounding over and over and over again. It just wouldn't stop. I couldn't concentrate.

I just with the slamming of my closet door over and over again like a jacket. camera. It pierced my mind and broke my sanity. I began to laugh and laughed even louder as I watched a pair of headlights rush into my car. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, Pleasant Company, written by Billy Leavenworth and narrated by Heather Thomas. The charisma in the Franklin's is a of venom. I see that now. I wish I'd seen it sooner. We met them at a restaurant in Denver. They were so chummy with the bartender and the other diners that I assumed they were regulars. My husband, Sam, normally stodgy and reserved, cracked a joke for all to hear, and the Franklin's laughed loudest of all. They came by to introduce themselves. Jerry and Cynthia were both in their

50s and dressed in hiking attire. We learned they had arrived at the restaurant minutes before we did, and that they were hitchhiking across America. Hitchhikers in the 21st century. I couldn't believe it. My son Parker loved them right away. Oh, he had a glimmer in his eyes that even his grandparents couldn't bring out. Jerry knelt by his high chair, pulled a card out of his shirt pocket, it, made it disappear. Parker giggled and clapped his hands, and Jerry ruffled his hair. That raised my hackles. Sam didn't seem to mind. Before long, my husband had offered them a ride. I pointed out that we just only met them. He said, nonsense, they're good people, and the RV is plenty big. They were going to Mount Antaro. But we could take them a

as far as fail. Jerry smiled and said we were too kind. This sick, uneasy feeling grew in my belly as I drove down I-70. Mount Ontario is stellar, Jerry told Sam. Your family must really see it sometime. Someday, I said, sure, but we're going to Yosemite. Jerry said that Yosemite is beautiful, but nothing in the world compares to Colorado. They knew a family with a cabin at Mountain Tarrow. Great people. They'd surely let us stay there too, since we're so nice. How about it? Sam asked. Yosemite can wait. I told him no. My tone was harsher than intended, but we had plans, and I wasn't about to cancel them for a couple of strangers. He told me to be a little spontaneous for once in my life. Who was this man? This wasn't like my

husband. I was pissed, but the Franklin's must have already gotten their hooks into me, because I didn't kick them out at fail. I kept driving, took the exit to CO-24 South. I was seething, but more at myself than at my husband. Why wouldn't I put my foot down? They wanted to stop at Turquoise Lake for a walk. I wasn't in the mood, so I stayed in the RV. When the others were gone, I opened Jerry's backpack. They had to be serial killers, or drug runners. Whatever it was, I would find evidence. Clothes, toiletries, snacks, and a notebook, yellowed with age.

I flipped through it, names and dates on every page except the first. There, Jerry had written an essay on what? what he called his formula. It described the elegance of how they'd find their marks, their gift for training marks to adore them, the way this adoration culminated in a ritual of self-sacrifice that transferred life energy to the Franklins. I looked again at the pages of names and dates. They went back to the 1930s. I shivered. I stood in the doorway of the RV and waved the notebook at the returning party and explained the whole thing. Jerry and Cynthia had unreadable faces. But Sam looked at me like I was crazy. You're getting worked up over nothing,

he said. I held the notebook open and stabbed at the page with the finger and shrieked that it was all written there in plain English. They want us to kill ourselves, I said. They've been doing it for decades. Sam's response lives on in my nightmares. He shrugged and said that if Jerry and Cynthia thought it was for the best, then he trusted them. The Franklin's looked at me with pity.

I asked if they cared that I had discovered their formula. Cynthia said no. It made no difference. In fact, she promised me that by the end I would be most eager of all of us for the ritual to take place. I couldn't breathe. I wanted to tear my hair out, to scream. I had slipped into a fun house mirror where nothing made sense.

I stomped over to Sam and reached for the pocket with the RV keys, but he swatted me away. I said, fine, he can stay and die with the Franklin's for all I cared. I'd walk home with my son if I had to. I took Parker's right hand. He grabbed Jerry's leg with his left. I won't go. I love them. He wailed. I bent to scoop him up, but he writhed and screamed, and Sam put his hand on my back. He pleaded with me. Don't do this. Please don't break up this family. Desperation tightened around my chest as I fell to my knees. I wanted to cry.

But I was too tired. I couldn't fight this. I couldn't alienate myself from my husband and my baby. They were everything to me. We've been at the cabin for a week now. Just the five of us. No mention of the family that would supposedly meet us here. Sam and Parker revered Jerry and Cynthia like gods.

For me, it's been a gradual shift. I've carried an impotent colonel of. anger in my chest this whole time, but it's slowly shrinking, and by tomorrow I think it will be gone. I'm not afraid of dying here with my family anymore. The scenery is so beautiful, and the Franklin's really are pleasant company. There are worse ways to go. Something inside me still knows this is wrong. I'm writing this on a page from Jerry's notebook, and I'll be sending it down the creek in a plastic coke bottle. My final act of rebellion is straight from the children's stories.

I'll never get to read to Parker. I pray the bottle goes far, because I know I will look for it in the morning, mortified that I even wrote one word against the Franklin's. 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.

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