Creepy - Day 3 - The Last Pumpkin on Briar Row & Something Special for Halloween

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

The Last Pumpkin on Briar Row (starts at 1:27)***Written by: Yanina Litt***Something Special for Halloween (starts at 10:13)***Written by: D.H. Parish and narrated by: JV Hampton-VanSant***Content warning: suicide***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm John Grills from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Creepy presents the 31 days of horror. Day three. Now. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legend. in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or not simply fabrications is for you to decide.

These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Well, that was definitely an interesting take on the headless horseman. A little dirtier than what we usually go for, but still, thanks for the effort, Paula. Next up, we have John, Grids?

Close enough. Not going to be easy following erotica, but I was thinking about that tradition you all about carving pumpkins or turnips. And I thought I might tell you about my own experiences with something like that that just happened. It's called the last pumpkin on Briar Row. Every Halloween, the people on Briar Row

leave one pumpkin uncarved. It sits on the curb at the dead end, turned toward the woods, with no candle inside and no face cut into it. Kids make jokes about it during the day. Nobody touches it after sundown. I used to think that was just one of those neighborhood rules people kept because grandparents kept it. Then I spent my first October in the little blue rental at the corner,

and I learned what the last pumpkin was four. I noticed the pumpkin on the afternoon of the 13th. It was huge, too wide for one person to lift. and the color of a bruise under orange skin. Someone had set it on a flattened bed of leaves, with its pale stem aimed at my porch. A paper grocery bag sat beside it. Inside were a tea light,

a kitchen knife with a black candle, and a folded note. The note had been written in thick marker. Do not carve this one, leave it whole, bring it back before midnight. I should have ignored it. That's what I tell myself now.

and it's true enough to hurt. But Halloween makes foolish things feel planned. The air smells like wet leaves and sugar wrappers. Porch decorations lean and grin. Even an empty street seems to be waiting for applause. I carried the bag inside and left the pumpkin where it was, because the note had not asked me to move it yet. At dusk, every porch on Briar Row went dark, except mine.

That was when I saw the sandser. second note. It had been slipped under my door, though I had been sitting ten feet away and heard nothing. And this one said, no candy, no masks, no visitors. When the knocking starts, do not answer. I read it twice. Then I looked through the front window. The street was empty.

Plastic ghosts twisted from mailboxes, the uncarved pumpkin sat at the dead end. bigger than before. Its shadows stretched across the pavement like spilled ink. The first knock came at 7.15. It was small and polite, the kind made by a child in gloves. I stood behind the door with one hand over my mouth, although I had no reason to be quiet. The porchboards creaked. Something brushed against the welcome mat. After a minute a candy wrapper slid through the mail slot and landed on the floor. It was old and faded, with a price. printed in scents. It smelled like basement dust. Mornocks followed. Some were high, some were low, some slow enough I could feel them in my teeth. None of them came with voices. None came with footsteps

leaving afterward. The wrappers piled up by the door, not just candy but ticket stubs, school pictures cut into strips, birthday candles melted to nubs and little curled pieces of fingernail. Each thing looked to abandoned by a different year. Each thing smelled faintly of the woods. At nine, my portulet went out. I hadn't touched the switch. The house dropped into a darkness that seemed crowded, as if every corner had filled with someone holding a breath. I lit the tea light from the grocery bag because it was the only candle I had. The flame burned green for a second. In that green flash, I saw the pumpkin at the dad and turn a little. Not roll. Turn.

I faced my house straight on. That was enough. I grabbed the knife, not because I might carve anything, but because it felt better than holding nothing. Outside, Briar Rowe smelled wrong. Not rotten, exactly, more like the inside of a pumpkin after the seeds had been scooped out and left in a warm sink. The jack-o-lanterns on nearby porches had all changed.

Their faces were no longer triangles and crooked smiles. They were the same face, copied again and again, with round eyes and a mouth opened too wide. I knew that face. Not from any person I remembered clearly, but from a photograph taped inside the grocery store window every October. Missing. Last seen Halloween night. There were several of those posters in town, old enough that the papered yellowed around the tape.

Everyone passed them without reading. Everyone accepted them as part of the season, like cider and fake spiderwebs. The pumpkins had made masks of the missing, and all of them were watching the dead end. I walked toward the uncarved pumpkin. That sounds brave, but it wasn't. It felt like being pulled by a hook set behind my ribs. Each step made the knife warmer in my hand. A paper bay crackled in my pocket, though I'd left it on the kitchen table.

When I reached the curb, the huge pumpkin split by itself from stem to base. The sound was soft and wet, almost gentle. Inside wasn't pulp. Inside was a narrow staircase packed with dirt. Roots hung from the walls. Candle smoke drifted upward, carrying that sweet, burnt smell of Halloween night after the fun has ended and streets are full of crushed candy. I should have run.

I know that. But there are moments when fear stops being a warning and becomes a set of instructions. I climbed down. At the bottom, I found a room line with jackalantrons. Hundreds of them sat on shelves dug into the earth. Their candles burned without wicks. Their carved mouths moved, not speaking.

just practicing the shapes of words. In the center stood a scarecrow made of old coats, broom handles and twine. It had no head. Its collar gaped open, waiting. A tag hung from its chest, and my address was written on it in the same thick marker. That was when I understood the rule. The last pumpkin was not left for the dead. It was left for whatever needed a face to walk among the living for another year.

The town had kept the bargain by giving it strangers, runaways, anyone else to misplace. This year, it had reached my porch first. I don't remember cutting. I remember the knife being taken from my hand without fingers touching it. I remember my skin feeling thin as paper over a candle. I remember the scarecrow bending low, its empty collar brushing my cheek with a smell of straw and damp cloth. Then I was back in my house, on the floor by the door, with pumpkin seeds stuck in my sleeves. Morning came clean and bright.

Children walked to school past the dead end. The huge pumpkin was gone. In its place stood a scarecrow wearing a coat I'd never seen, with a round head that had been carved into a face I almost recognized. People slowed to admire it. Some took pictures. By noon the first leaves had fallen into its open mouth, and the scarecrow seemed to be smiling around them. I moved out before November, but boxes do not close the story. Last week, a grocery bag appeared outside my new apartment.

There was a tea light inside, a black-handled knife and a folded note. The note had my name at the top, though I had never given it to anyone on Briar Row. Under it in thick marker were the only words that matter now. Bring it back before midnight. And next up, we have JV. Hey there, everyone. Hope everyone's doing well tonight. I'm J.V. Hampton Man's Sands, and I'm going to tell you the story of something special for Halloween.

I had a temp job last year working at a Halloween pop-up shop. You know the ones I'm talking about. They take over the vacant storefront of a failed business for a month or two before October 31st, selling overpriced costumes and scary decorations. Come All Saints Day, of course, everything goes on sale for 48 hours, and then the whole operation vanishes from the landscape. Unless, that is, the place is resurrected as a Christmas market, in which case they sell more of the same plastic doodads from the same overseas factories,

only now in red and green rather than orange and black. It wasn't a bad gig, especially for a college student needing extra cash. The pay was reasonable for not a lot of effort. You mostly helped parents find whatever superhero or cartoon character knockoff would fit little Johnny, pointed young women to the aisle with the sexy nurse, which, or fill in the blank, skimpy outfits and accessories, and directed the wannabe goths and middle-aged cool dads to the fake spider webbing, faux tombstones, and motion sensor skeletons that would temporarily adorn many a teenager's room, teacher's classroom, or suburban lawn until some sober adult,

usually a woman, sternly informed them shortly before Thanksgiving that Halloween was over, and they needed to put all this nonsense away. There are several advantages to working at a seasonal store. First, because there's no real established work culture, there's no built-in malignant vibe. I realize that's a low bar, but it usually means no one feels all. comfortable enough to make jokes they shouldn't make or hit on people they shouldn't hit on. Also, you don't have to give a damn about co-worker birthdays or other life events. You can just do your thing while away the hours with a joke or two and collect a paycheck.

In my case, I could multitask and do problem sets or study in between ringing up sales and assisting customers. Finally, most of the stuff we sold was so cheap and at such a ridiculous markup that no one obsessed too much about inventory control. A modicum of shrinkage was built into the business plan. On the other hand, no one was familiar enough with all the stock

to know when something was wrong. One day, when I was on the floor, restocking plastic crowns and laurel wreaths. This guy approached me from behind, insistently tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around to see a gaunt, unkempt man who towered over me by almost a foot. He shoved this small, disembodied head in my face,

presenting it with both hands like an offering. The thing was appropriately gross, with wide eyes, pale, life-like skin, matted black hair, and realistic blood pooling at the neck. If we'd been in a movie, this would have been the jump scare. I jumped. This guy, who not only had boundary issues, but also from the look and smell of him, hadn't bathed in a few days, demanded to know how much it was. I should have told him not to speak to me that way, but I was too startled.

I politely took the head from him. It felt warm. I knew it was probably warm because he'd been holding it, but it felt as if it were radiating heat, almost pulsating. Whatever artificial polymers were used to make the object, well, they were high quality. The skin seemed real. uncannily so.

I turned the head upside down to look for a price sticker on the base, but I couldn't find one. I asked him where in the store he'd gotten it, because I wasn't familiar with it, although, as I said, my lack of recognition in and of itself wasn't unusual. He pointed to a nearby shelf on which otherwise sat pumpkin lights and candlesticks. Some customer had probably picked it up from another display area and set it down when he got bored and decided not to buy or steal it.

Not quite knowing what to do, I had the customer follow me to the front. Jason, a 30-something who was the acting assistant manager, primarily by virtue of the fact that he'd worked at the store the year prior, was manning the register. I handed the head to Jason and explained the situation. Jason flipped the head to look at its bottom, which you may be surprised to learn once again, failed to make the item's price appear. Jason then furrowed his brow, removing the orange baseball cap he always wore,

presumably so he could study the head more closely. After a few minutes of consideration, he set the thing down gently, as if it were a valuable object de art, and type something into the computer. Ah, yes, he explained. It was a new, special order item. The cost was, he paused to look at the customer, $30.

Although, because of its bespoke nature, the store could only accept cash payment for it. The guy nodded in understanding, extracted three wrinkled tens from a torn wallet, handed the bills to Jason, and then grabbed the head. Jason and I watched him scamper out of the store clutching his purchase. Once the guy was gone from view, Jason pocketed the cash. I looked at Jason's side-eyed.

He just chuckled. The head wasn't part of our inventory at all, he explained. And Lord knows how it got there. But damned if he wasn't going to take advantage when the opportunity knocked. Heck, it wasn't as if he was stealing from the store. And if it was a new product, it was on the owners to make sure it got a code entered into the stocking system. I thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't.

The next day, when I was sitting up front myself, this hipster dad with a lumberjack beard, and thick tortoiseshell glasses approached the register trailed by his two preteen kids. They set down a whole mess of items in front of me, costumes, string lights, a laughing witch, and one of those skeleton hands you bury in the ground to make it look like the dead are rising. The last thing he placed on the counter was another head.

He couldn't find the price on it, but wanted to know how much it would be, The head was almost identical to the one from the day before, except it seemed thinner, the cheeks more sallow and crafted to look as if they were covered with stubble. As I rang up the other items, I told Jason, who was standing behind me, that we had another one. Without missing a beat, Jason palmed the thing, dramatically holding it in front of him, as if he were Hamlet addressing poor Yorick. Jason explained to the dad that the store liked to support local artists

and that this piece was one of a kind. Well, that's great, the dad said, and asked for it to be added to his bill. Unfortunately, Jason explained, because of how the artist needed to be paid, the store could only take cash for these special items, and the price was, ah, 100. The dad winced at the quote, but when his daughter exclaimed how cool it would be to have a unique Halloween decoration that no one else would have, he buckled and said to throw it in while he forked over the money. You're in another league, I told Jason after they left, giving him a slow clap that was half sarcasm, half begrudging admiration.

All in a day's work, he replied, as he added the 20s to his hall. My shift the next day, a Saturday, started early. I was helping to prepare the store for opening when I reached behind one of the fog machines we had as a demonstrator to turn it on. I felt something unexpected, hairy and warm. I jerked my hand back, fearing I might have found a rat and not a rat. rubber one. I cautiously pushed the machine aside to see what it was hiding. It was another head, except now it had a sculpted beard that partially hit a knife slash on the neck. This was getting

a little weird. I brought the head to the front of the store to place on the shelf. I wasn't sure who else to talk to about it except Jason, and he was a little weird. And he was a little bit of the head to the store to place on the shelf. I wasn't sure. do in until later. For the first time that season, the store was busy that morning, and for a change, I spent a lot of time actually working, enough so that I didn't get a chance to speak with Jason until my break at one. When I went up front to clock out and tell him about the reappearance of the head, I noticed it was gone. As I explained how I found it, he laughed and thanked me. Some sorority girls who were hosting a Halloween party and who had a bit too much money on their hands

had seen the head while they were checking out. He'd sold them a story about how it was an actual movie prop from some slasher flick and had the added reputation of being haunted. He made air quotes around haunted while pronouncing it with a Dracula-esque accent. He managed to convince them to pay 150 cash for it.

But, I asked, did you notice how the head looked, how it had a beard like the one on the guy who'd purchased one yesterday? Jason shrugged. No, he hadn't noticed, but these were different heads. This was obviously someone strange

but harmless prank, or maybe some sculptor. who styled himself a Halloween Banksy, trying to get exposure. If he could profit off it, who cared? We opened the next day, Sunday, at noon. Another busy day in the run-up to the holiday. Around four, I found another head, this one poking out on a shelf between a black cat and the angel of death. I grabbed it and raced around the store,

for Jason, finally finding him in the back eating a candy bar, he'd likely pinch from the front counter. Did the girls have blonde hair? I demanded. I must have sounded anxious, because he told me to calm down. I didn't. Jason, listen to me, the sorority girls, the ones you sold ahead to yesterday. Did they have blonde hair?

He raised his eyebrows and frowned. Maybe. I'm not sure. Why? He asked. Because of this, I said, thrusting the newest head in front of him. Look, another head. No beard, but now it's got long, blonde hair. He examined it and nodded. acknowledging that it did sort of look a little like one of them.

Are you punking me? I asked. He smirked, asking why he would do that, or even how he would do that. Don't you think this is all really strange? I asked. Something's not right. Jason shoved the last of the candy bar into his mouth, telling me between sticky chews that I was letting my imagination run wild and getting worked up over nothing. The only thing he knew was that he was, he paused to count, about $280 richer than he'd planned to be this time last week.

He advised me it wasn't healthy to go through life overthinking things. He took out his wallet and offered me a 20 as a tip, for helping him earn the extra cash. I demurred. It somehow felt wrong to take it. Your choice, he said. Either way, he proposed I'd take off the rest of the afternoon. He'd clock me out after two hours, so I'd still get paid for the time.

And, holding up the latest head, he swore he'd just leave it up front and ask the store owners about it when they came in next week. I took him up on the offer to leave early. I went home and fell asleep studying, not waking up until some time that evening. Trying to economize, I enjoyed a gourmet dinner of ramen noodles while I scrolled on my phone.

As I did, a local story came up in my feed about a homeless man who'd been found hung about a block from the store, his neck snapped. It was suspected he'd committed suicide, although police hadn't completely ruled out foul play. Another story reported a tragic, most unfortunate accident. A man and his daughters had snuck up on his wife to surprise her with their Halloween outfits.

They scared her too well. She'd been chopping vegetables for dinner and when she turned to look, she got frightened and instinctively swung out in fear with the blade, slicing her husband's throat from ear to ear. Despite quickly recognizing the horrible mistake, she couldn't staunch the flow, and he bled out in front of them. The funeral would be later this week. The picture of the man accompanying the article was of the father who'd been in the store. Jesus.

I had Jason's number, and I texted him links to the stories. He didn't reply. I called him twice, but it went to voicemail. Worked up by what I'd read, I decided to go for a walk, hoping the brisk fall air might do me some good. I soon found myself strolling down sorority row. One sorority, Pi Kappa Sigma, was cordoned off by police tape, which, given the time of year, I expected was some elaborate

Halloween haunted house setup. Two women, dressed as Mario and Luigi and obviously on their way to some party, stood just outside the perimeter talking. What's the deal? I asked, gesturing at the yellow tape. They answered in breathless voices, finishing each other. other's sentences as they talked. Oh my God, hadn't I heard? There was this party at PKS last night, and this girl was doing an upside-down kegstand,

and while she was drinking, someone knocked a large mirror off the second floor wall, and it was a freakish accident, but the mirror had sharp edges, and fell with such force and at such an angle that it chopped her neck clean off. Just as if she'd been guillotined. I almost threw up. The women noticed me dry heaving and agreed that it was gross, but also sad, gross and sad. I called Jason again.

Still, no answer. I didn't sleep much that night. I had classed the next morning, but I skipped so I could talk to him in person. Joanne, who logged more hours at the store than any of us, was the only one there at nine. And she let me in. Jason was supposed to be there too, she said, but he was late, which was unusual for him. I scanned the shelf behind the register.

There was no head. I asked Joanne if she'd seen one, trying to describe it. Oh, yes, she said, but she was pretty sure it had been sold. Sold? I asked. This guy, she said, had noticed it on the shelf yesterday evening, near closing time, and wanted to buy it. Jason took over negotiating with him since she'd had no idea we had real art amidst the junk we sold and didn't know its value. Evidently, it was quite an expensive piece.

The customer still wanted to buy it, despite the exorbitant price, but didn't have enough cash with him to pay for it. Jason agreed to go after work to his place, which was just a few streets away, and complete the sale there. Anyway, she was sure he'd probably be in soon, since he always was so reliable. He was definitely quite dedicated to the store, more so than she ever would be. I wandered the aisles somewhat aimlessly, wondering exactly how I was going to confront Jason. Then I saw it, sitting on a shelf, nestled amidst a display of cartoonish white ghosts.

A small, lifelike, severed head. A severed head wearing an orange baseball cap. 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

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