Creepy - Day 3 - Turnip Head & Choked Out

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Turnip Head***Written by: Desiree Horton and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Choked Out***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror. Day 3. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Good morning, Cole.

Hey, Doc. And how are we feeling this morning? Fine. That's good. Were you able to get much sleep last night? I don't know. The clock stopped working. It did?

It looks like it's working fine right now. Hmm. Someone must have fixed it. You want to hear about my dreams? If that's what you'd like to talk about right now, that would be fine with me. Okay, I... I just think I need to get it out. It was weird.

Whenever you're ready. Yeah, it was about turnip head. They buried me near the Darden on a Saturday night. It was raining, and it was a job hastily and might poorly done by the lads. They forgot to set my marker. I heard the misses given them hell the next day, sending them back with the box of their ears to place it. By how far away their voices sounded, I don't think they got it quite right. As the seasons began to change, I could feel myself slowly disappearing, becoming one with the

the soil that embraced me. Death hurts, but decay hurts more. To melt away, bit by juicy bit, until there's not left but bone meal. At least I got to hear my wife, tilling the earth, planting the seeds, singing loudly and a little off-key, as she carried on in our life for herself and our children. As she planted, she whispered things to the seeds. the seeds, things she thought no one could hear, things from our homeland. I heard her, and though I knew it was evil, I could not stop her. I could only listen and liquefy into the earth.

I heard them whisper back in the dark from the depths, and I knew terror. I heard her give thanks for such a lovely crop as she picked and harvested. She gave thanks. She gave thanks. to the god of this new land, the one we now hold true, and hosted our neighbors for supper. I listened as she whispered thanks to the gods of old, just in case. My Tess knew how to play both sides, she did. I felt the tickle of the roots from the garden as they stretched their tiny fingers into my putrid flesh, drinking of my essence. They fed from me, and so my family fed from me, an abomination that was the cycle of all life.

The ground grew cold and hard, and the roots that hadn't wrapped themselves around me, stopped reaching and pulled themselves away, turning in and guarding their own gentle spark of life. I know winter is coming. The whispers beneath me grow louder, a rumble in the dark, low me ground, and I am afraid. Something else was coming. There was an opening in the darkness, seeds of light peeting through like stars in the sky. A terrible, wrenching pain, and I am torn away and up towards the heavens. I think for a moment that the judgment day the pastor spoke of.

has come. Am I ascending to the heaven? The daylight blinds me and I have no lids to blink away the sun swiftly dimming in the sky. Pain. Cutting pain a knife through my very soul for I have no flesh. Perhaps I have misunderstood the pastor and have been raised for my eternal punishment. Perhaps hell is above and heaven is below, deep below in the soul. soft, cool soil. Who is behind it all? But my beloved Tess, my darling wife, why has she betrayed me so?

She tuts at me mercilessly, shearing away what I thought the ground had eaten away, and yet I am still like the dead. Does she know not what she does? She sets me upon the wooden porch that I built with my own two hands. My blood spilled beneath the nails and hammer, staining it with my soul.

I can hear the wood speaking it now softly, gently. I settle, letting the spirit of the trees soothe me. I am sorry that I cut them down, but they forgive me letting me rest among the fibers. The sun begins its descent into the horizon, and suddenly I feel her rutted hands upon me. I am a blaze from the inside, too warm, too bright. I am a fiery angel sent from heaven, set down before the threshold.

She gives me a gentle pat and whispers a prayer for protection. I hear her worn shoes scrape as she shuffles inside, away from the approaching dart. There are shadows beyond, sitting at the edges of the garden, at the edges of my newfound vision. The shadows stulk and crawl, pressing ever inward. I see my mighty visage cast upon the ground in front of me, sharp, upward slanted eyes, mouth-set, grim, teeth, sharp and pointy. I know my purpose now, what task my darling bride has set upon me. On this night, the night of Salon, the night of opacities, I am her protection from the things she cannot see. She cannot see them, but I can, and oh, they are terrible.

misplaced teeth, dark fur, crooked eyes, sharpened claws, and lurking beasts await. All night we battle, though I am afraid. I fear the morning will never come and my light fades. My threatening smile becomes softer and the things press in. How I wish I could close my eyes. And then I see it, a soft, warm glow upon the hillside. I hear the screams from the outsiders as they lament another year they will have to wait. One more year until the veil thins and they can press through their terrible heads and gnashing teeth.

My sweet Tess comes to greet the dawn, lifts me gently and gives me a tender touch. "'This one sort of looks like your pa,' she says. "'My youngest daughter nods in agreement. "'She smiles at me fondly, "'another moment before carrying me away from the porch. "'I am satisfied, feel I have protected my family in some small way, "'and I can be reunited with the rest of my poor old bones "'resting too near the garden.

"'Until the next year, when she is ready to renew the right. But something is wrong. She carries me too far. My old bones call to me, yearning, reaching, but we go the wrong way. Where is she taking me? I see the garden,

my misplaced grave marker, leaning into the shifting ground. The ground bounces beneath me as she carries me none too lightly. Whereas the tenderness a wife may show a husband, husband. Beloved Tess, why do you jolt me so? I see the wooden post. The red paint chipped and worn. I had meant to paint last summer, but my untimely death had stalled me. I hear drunts, shrieks, such harrowing sounds as Tess approaches a leaning pen. Someone will need to repair that for her.

I am catapulting through the air spinning round and round. I land with a harsh, crash. that surely would have killed me were I not already dead, and not a turnip. I lie still, eye level with the muck, the smell strong enough to make me yearn for my soft, dark grave. Something large approaches, snuffles thickly against me, rocking me back and forth. Oh, Tess, the pages, do ye think so little of me? I feel the lips, soft and exploring, give way to teeth. It's virgil or boar. A solid, old boy, almost as large as my eldest son, Henry.

He picks me up beneath his massive teeth and gives a victorious squeal. I wish I could scream as he clenches his jaws, mashing and grinding up my turnip head. I feel it all, but thank you. Thankfully, I can no longer see it. The crack of my firm flesh, the fissure that forms almost perfectly down the center, ripping my fibers apart. The chips in Virgil's teeth dig in, catching bits of me as his teeth grind together with me between, shredding me into pulp. I feel myself working up over his slimy, putrid tongue and into the precipice of his throat. It's another kind of darkness down there, one I can feel but cannot see.

The walls of his throat drip me, undulating, pulling me further and further down. What Orphian journey awaits me within the gullet of this hellish creature. I am a light with fire wet and burning, coming apart and dissolving into nothing, slowly, excrucied. I am unbecoming. I am no longer. I feel. I open my eyes. I have eyes to open. Dark, wispy lashes settle at the end of my view. I'm in the pig pen with the straw, mud, and shit all around me. Has this all been a dream? I stood, only right. rising to a few feet above the ground, and I trod forward, my toes pressing into the mud, not unpleasantly. I see my wife, my lovely Tess, walking toward me from the house. I open my mouth to call to her a loud and boisterous groin. Tess dumps a bucket of kitchen straps into the pen, and the sows rush for the food, bumping me out of the way. Tess gives me a pat on the hairy

and smiles, then scratches under my chin. Delightful. She leans in conspiratoriously and chirps. Virgil, you plump old devil, don't you let those ladies push you around. Get in there and get some dinner. We only got a month till Christmas. She looks at me with something in her eyes that some may mistake for love. I see it and understand it as something else, something far more primal. in urge, one that all creatures have known since the dawn of time, the driving force behind all life and death in this world, and the next, hunger. Are you feeling better now that you told me about it? Yeah, actually. I'm already kind of forgetting about it. Is that normal?

We don't like to use the word normal. And when it comes to dreams, there really isn't a standard that we are trying to look for or grade. Part of what we want to help determine our root causes and symbolism within dreams over an extended period of time to get a better understanding of a world that, frankly, we don't know that much about. And your willingness to share is incredibly helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. Happy to help. I need to finish some rounds now. Have a wonderful day.

You too, Doc. Is it? Is it morning? In the morning? Yes, in the morning. Oh, okay. If you say so. Weird question, isn't it? Am I... What? Um, sure. No. I'm fine. Are you writing something down about me? Just like it's a part of my job to listen and be here. It's your dreams.

Oh. Okay. Um, I guess I remember something about being choked out. History repeats. You know, you'd think it wouldn't. With social media and people getting canceled or claiming to get canceled, you'd think it wouldn't happen. You'd think that with the mistakes of all human history out there to be seen and studied

and rediscovered over and over again, that we'd stop. But life just sort of spins in place. Old mistakes becoming new again. This is going to sound strange, but if there's one thing in this world I know and understand, it's choking people. I've been training submission grappling for over 20 years. Think about watching UFC fights is to take out the striking. Basically, it's collegiate wrestling with chokes and joint locks.

Goals to get your partner or opponent to tap out. The one and only rule as far as I'm concerned is respect the tap. Someone taps the mat, your body, or says the word tap, and you let go immediately. Or I'll be a part of the group in the parking lot waiting to fuck you up. Yeah, it's that serious. We train to push ourselves to the limits, to get as close to injury and death as we can, but all under the same understanding and respect. The attack, you stop.

It's that simple. But that's the world I live in. Rules. Written and unwritten are important when you're literally holding someone's life in your hands. I know that sounds dramatic, but sometimes mistakes happen, and it can cost people their lives and their livelihoods. And these are largely adults making the mistakes. So it shouldn't have been any kind of surprise

that a group of kids with absolutely no understanding of self-defense, little lone submission holds and their danger, would find themselves in the middle of something extremely stupid. It's all around us. Fight videos. Kids and adults alike. Men and women getting in the saddest and most brutal fight over absolutely nothing.

I mean, I'm yet to see one of those videos where someone doesn't yell World Star. After watching one person getting brutalized, suddenly decide there are rules and they're the ref, authoritatively proclaiming, okay, that's enough. Like it's really that simple. The more I train, unless I ever want to fight, ever. Yes, I have extensive combat sports training, but remember, it's still just a game with rules. And to let social media fool you, it isn't going to save me from some asshole in a bar with a bottle who decides to sucker punch me while his friend distracts me. People die that way.

You want to call me a pussy? Go ahead. I'm going to go to sleep in my own bed tonight. No jail or hospital or morgue. But people who don't train, they just don't understand. They only have YouTube clips and movies to go off of. But you don't really know how terrible the world is until it happens to you. Only stupid people go looking for it. Other people? Well, other people don't have much choice. Sometimes Terrible finds them.

I never in a million years thought the choking game would come back. And I definitely never thought my son would be a part of it. If you don't remember from about 10 years ago, it was simple enough. One person chokes another person until they're just about to pass out. They get high from the lack of oxygen, which is really your body releasing endorphins to ease what it assumes as imminent death. When I was a kid, we just stole our parents' vodka and replaced it with water. I thought we were past it. But it will become new again.

My son never showed any interest in training with me. I know some parents are adamant about their kids walking the same path that he did, and I left the door open if my son was interested. He just never was. I mean, I didn't start grappling until I was 25, so why would I think he'd suddenly want to pick it up? If he found it, he found it, and I'd support him. Otherwise, his life was his to live.

I just never thought he would do something so dumb. Remember when I said, only thing I really know is choking. Yeah, that includes people. And evidently my own son. I ran downstairs to the sounds of screaming. There were six of them in the basement. Two girls and four boys, including my son, Eli.

Eli was on the ground. A little blood around his head from where his body had gone limp. Heading insult to injury, those little assholes weren't even trying to protect their friends once they passed out. They, and I say they, because none of them would admit to who choked him, just let him drop. And when he did, his body folded and hit his head on the metal frame of the coffee table, I think about that moment now.

I want to kill him all. I want to choke him all and let him feel what he felt. Let them see the walls of consciousness closing around him until they go to sleep. Maybe hold it longer and they don't wake up. But at the time, I was just scared for my son. They said he was out for 13 seconds. That's what his friend confessed that the EMTs between sobs. We were just playing, he kept saying.

It was only supposed to be for a few seconds. 13. That's all it took. But Eli lived somehow. The paramedic said it was a miracle. They inabated him on the way to the hospital, flooded him with oxygen, monitored his brain activity and stitched up his head. He spent three days in intensive care.

And when he woke up, he was different. First I thought it was just a trauma, a shock, a brush with death. He didn't talk much, didn't complain about any pain, or even ask about his friends. He just sat up in the hospital bed and stared at the wall. Eyes wide. Pupils huge. Like he was trying to remember something that he didn't recognize in this world. They let us bring him home a week later.

He didn't resist leaving, but he didn't smile either. He didn't even thank the nurses. The moment we walked through the front door, he went straight to the basement. The same basement I'd found him in. He stood in the middle of the room, hands at his side, staring at the carpet where the light brown stain could still be seen. My wife tried to get the stain removed before he got home, but couldn't get it all out. She called me from work reminding me to cover the spa with the rug before I went to pick up Eli, but I forgot. I was about to rush past him and tried to cover up my mistake when he finally spoke.

I remember, he said. There's the first time he'd spoken since waking up. I swallowed and asked him what he meant. Eli turned to me slowly. His face was calm. Too calm. There was something down there. I felt cold.

I asked if you meant the basement. He just shook his head. No. Down there. Under the dark. That night I heard him talk. to himself. I got it at bed, careful not to wake Sarah, and crept down the hall of the Eli's room. The door was open just a crack. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in his pajamas,

facing the closet, and whispering. I couldn't hear the words, just to cadence, slow and steady like he was reciting something. I pushed the door open, and he stopped, turned his head just enough to look at me. But I was surprised. like he knew I'd been there all long. There's no such thing as forever, he said. That's what it told me. I asked him who told him that, but he didn't answer. Over the next few days, the house changed.

Nothing dramatic, just little things. The mirrors were always fogged. You went in the showers hadn't run. The dog refused to go near Eli's room. Lights flickered. especially when he was near him. I found dead birds outside his window. Three of them in a perfect triangle.

I asked him about him, and he just smiled, a small, tight little smile. They were gifts, he said. I didn't ask from whom. I didn't say anything. What could I say? By the second week, the dreams started. I'd wake up gasping,

heart racing with images I couldn't remember. Only sensations. Weight on my chest, pressure behind my eyes. A sound in my ears like someone was trying to breathe through a stone. And always, just before I woke, I'd see Eli, but not Eli. His eyes were all pupil. His mouth moved without sound. His arms were too long, and behind him something vast and wrong shifted in the shadows. Always watching, always waiting. I started staying up late, drinking too much coffee, sitting in the living room with TV on mute. One night, just after 2 a.m., I saw Eli walk down the stairs. He didn't notice me. Went straight to the front door, unlocked it and stepped outside. bare foot into the frost-covered yard.

I didn't even bother her to stop him. Something was happening to him, and I wanted answers. So I followed. He was walking towards a woods at the back of the property with slow, deliberate steps, like stepping on stones across a pond. I caught up to him halfway across the grass and grabbed his shoulders and asked what he was doing, thinking maybe he was sleepwalking. He looked up at me.

His skin pale in the moonlight. His breath didn't fog the air. I wasn't supposed to come back. He said. And then he screamed. It wasn't a child's scream. It was raw, bottomless, like metal tearing and bone breaking and teeth grinding on stone. I stumbled back.

He collapsed onto the ground convulsing. Eyes rolled back. I carried him inside and called the doctor. They said he had a seizure. He didn't remember any of it the next morning, or so he claimed. Then came the drawings. They started small with little sketches in the margins of his homework. Shapes, spirals, crude faces with blackened mouths.

Then they got worse. I found an entire notebook filled with them, page after page of creatures. Tall and thin, eyes like holes, limbs ending in nothing. One page was filled with hundreds of vertical lines, scratched over and over until the paper tore. I confronted him. He stared at me, completely still, and said, They live between the seconds.

Thirteen is enough, I called the therapist. We had exactly one session. Eli sat in the office, silent for 20 minutes. The doctor was doing that control thing where Eli would have to speak first, I guess. Then he turned to the doctor and whispered something in her ear. She went pale. Didn't say a word the rest of the session. Her hide's just fixed on some random point in space, staring.

Took all of another minute of this before I broke the silence. All she said in return was that the session was over and we should go. She called me that night and told me she wouldn't be continuing treatment. She wouldn't say why. I tried everything. Church counseling, bribing them with a new switch to or PS5. Nothing helped. Every day, Eli grew colder.

His skin felt smooth and dry like paper. His voice lost tone, became dry, rasping. He spoke less, but when he did, it was always about them. They sleep in the dark between thoughts. They like the quiet. If you hold your breath long enough, you can hear them whisper. I begged him to stop, but he didn't. One night I found him in the basement again,

standing, looking back and forth between them where the bloodstain had been and an exposed rafter. A rope lay coiled at his feet. I shouted his name and ran into the room and grabbed him by the shoulders. And he yelled, what the hell are you doing? He blinked. They want me back. My hands were shaking as I shook my head.

No. His voice dropped to a whisper. They said you can come too. And I locked to the basement. I removed every rope, cord, belt. anything I thought he might use. I even put locks on the cabinets that had cleaning supplies and medication.

I can keep anything out sharper than the butter knife. But that didn't stop to change. His eyes turned dark around the edges. His teeth turned gray. His smell changed. No longer the sort of constant funk of a teenage boy, but something else.

Something rotten. And at night the house creaked with sounds I couldn't explain. Footsteps that weren't mine. Whispers through the vents and shadows that moved when no one did. Last week I woke up to find Eli standing beside my bed, staring down at me. I'm not afraid of much. Not because I'm some great fighter, but because I know how to avoid them.

And if something happened, I know that I've done all I can to be ready for the worst. But there isn't one fucking thing I ever learned on grappling mats that's going to prepare me for that moment. Fuck, I almost pissed myself. He didn't blink. He didn't smile. He only said one thing. They're hungry.

He walked away without answering any of my questions. I didn't follow him. My wife slept through it, and when I told her, she said I must have been dreaming. She had a theory that whatever was going on with Eli wasn't as bad as I made it seem. She was convinced I felt. guilty over at all, for not being there, for not teaching him the dangers of chokes, for not being a better dad, I guess. Maybe she was right. But none of that changes the fact that I didn't know how to help him. I didn't even know if it's my son anymore. Something died in that

basement and something else came back. Something that Sawal lives beyond breath. Something that remembered it, something that loved it, and he brought it back with him. It was 13 days since he woke up and I couldn't stop thinking of those words he told me. They live between the seconds. 13 is enough. I woke up at 3.13 a.m. I know the time because the numbers on the digital clock were burned into my vision. 313 glowing red in the dark like eyes staring back at me. The air was still, not quiet, but still. Like everything had paused, like time had exhaled and forgot to breathe back in. I sat up and felt the pressure in the room.

Not weight, but presence, like someone watching me from every angle at once. Like something had slipped inside the house while the world was asleep. And then I heard it. 13 footsteps 1, 2, 3 Heavy, slow, deliberate Coming from the basement I couldn't move

My body knew before my brain did that whatever was coming up to stairs wasn't Eli anymore The door creaked open but I didn't hear it The sound had gone thin, swallowed before it reached me and then I saw him, Eli, my boy, but taller, too tall. His limbs were stretched like someone had been tortured on the rack too long and started pulling apart at the seams. His mouth didn't smile and split. His eyes were all pupil, wide, black, and wet.

In them I saw reflections of things that weren't in the room. clawing shapes, cracked teeth, ropes twisting in a windlass arc. He didn't say anything. He just stood there breathing, but not with his lungs. It's like the room breathed with him. The wallpaper curled. The curtains shook. Eli tilted his head and said, They said you can come too. I didn't answer. I couldn't. He wasn't speaking with his mouth. The words came between the seconds, slipping in through the cracks between my thoughts.

Behind him the shadows shifted. I saw arms and legs, not attached anything just present, like parts of things that never should have been known. And they were waiting. He whispered again. And then he stepped back. Out of the doorway, into the dark. I could breathe again.

I didn't move for hours. I'm both ashamed and not afraid to say that I was scared. Fuck, I was terrified. The next morning, Eli was gone. His bed untouched, front door unlocked. No footprints in the frost, no note. Just one thing. A rope laid gently across the threshold at the basement door.

coiled like a question mark. It's been 13 days since he disappeared. That therapist won't return my calls. Police took a rapport, but I could see in their eyes. Teen run away, over-predictive dad, maybe unstable. No signs of force to entry,

no prints, no blood, just absence. But I know the truth. Eli didn't run. He returned to whatever lives in the dark, beneath breath. to the place between thoughts, to the things that hunger and stillness and silence. They took my son, and I think they left the door open behind him. Because sometimes late at night, when the world forgets to spin, I stop breathing.

I feel them watching, and I hear his voice in the walls counting softly. one two three four every night he's counted a little higher and I know how this

ends today at 13 and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it really or is that what you're supposed to say especially one like that

well don't go reading into it too much. I'm not here to be psychoanalyzed like some test subject. I think I'd like to rest for a while. Alone. Patient continues to have no memories beyond the current day.

He also continues to react consistently with applied scenarios and verbal stimuli. Recommend continuing current course of monitoring for now. 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.