Creepy - Day 4 - Flashlight Tag & Below the Ice

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

Flashlight Tag***Written by: R.D. Davidson and Narrated by: Nichole Goodnight***Below the Ice***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 4. 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 our simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories make. contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Good morning, Nicole. Good morning. And how are we feeling this morning? Okay, I guess. Did you sleep well last night? As good as ever, but that's not really saying much, is it? Your words speak volumes. There's no need to downplay their importance.

I don't have any idea what's important. important in all this. I'm here to help with that. How about we focus on your dream last night? Yeah, sure, I guess. It was about flashlight tag. It's hard to open a news page or opinion section without seeing a piece lamenting the way kids' childhoods have changed. Instead of bike rides and Little League, they get social media and iPads. Nostalgam? Yes. Old man yells at clouds? Sometimes. But in mind, keeping the kids indoors and basking in the glow of brain rod is nothing to mourn. In fact, I'm jealous of them. When I was young, the kids in my neighborhood loved to get together for flashlight tag.

After the school year started and days got shorter, we would finish our homework and congregate outside at sundown. Someone would bring a flashlight and we would draw straws to see who was it. I knew most of the kids who played either from school or just biking around my neighborhood. Occasionally, someone's cousin would tag along, or new kids who moved into the cul-de-sacs dotting the area would hazard an appearance. The night I want to tell you about, the one you've probably seen in the newspaper, had just six of us who usually played, at least at first. We gathered in the dugout of our community baseball field. I drew the first short straw, as always. I swear James would rig it somehow so the only girl would have to be it, first. Looking back, he probably had a

crush on me, but I had always found him annoying. His brother Ricky gave him a slap on the back as I groaned about my bad luck. Assholes, I muttered and slipped the aluminum straw into my pocket. You all have 30 seconds to get out of here. I crossed my arms against a big oak tree near the ball field and buried my face in them. One, two, three, I counted loud and theatrically. By the count of 15 or 16, someone ran behind me and tickled something against the back of my neck. Chill shot like lightning down my spine and forced me to stop counting.

Picking my head up, I saw two people, presumably boys, standing on either side of the oak tree. Despite Halloween being a week away, both wore large masks. It was hard to tell in the partial moonlight, but the masks looked dark red. They stood for a minute staring at me. At least I think they stared at me. The eye holes of their masks were lifeless black pits. Can we play with you? A muffled voice reported from one of them.

The longer I looked at their faces, the more I got creeped out. They looked like dark versions of Michael Myers' masks until their gaping mouths distended and twisted to the middle of their chests. I guess so. My breath caught in my chest. Their demeanor didn't really seem like they would have taken no for an answer. Go hide, I'll start counting again. Before burying my face in my arms again, I cast a glance at the boys who stood awkwardly at both sides of me, rigid, tall.

They rotated their arms so their palms faced me with splayed fingers. A whiff of mold or rot clung to the air. I shuddered again, but managed a shewing motion with my hand. They turned in unison, hands still splayed, and disappeared into the black outside the streetlight by the baseball field. I hope those guys aren't moving into the neighborhood. I muttered and obscured my face again. After full countdown, I called,

Ready or not, here I come. After years of playing together, you'd think we would run out of good hiding spots, but the opposite was true. We got weird with our hideouts, compost bins, new sheds, renovations. Someone even went to the graveyard and hid in an unfilled plot once. But being it first had its advantages. Everyone tended to flock to the familiar but non-obvious spots. I had my work cut out for me.

At least I thought I did. I wandered from the field and into neighboring yards. Motion-sensing floodlights kicked on as I tramped past sheds and fences and grills and every other feature of the suburban landscape. I checked under cars and garbage cans at the playground, even the graveyard. No one was around. Usually I can appreciate a challenge, but those two new kids put me on edge and wandering around left me feeling exposed. I just wanted to catch someone and get this over with.

Suspicious, I returned to the playground and flipped on my flashlight. Sure I had scoured the place, but it was a target-rich environment and I may have missed something novel. Steaming breaths clouded my flashlight beam as the temperature. continued to drop. I approached the building that housed the bathrooms for the park. My light swept the doors for the men's and women's restrooms and caught an oddity. The padlock on the women's room hung snapped open. I crept towards the steel door and flipped off my light. My hands trembled a bit as I unhooked the padlock from the door and rested it on the concrete. A pained streak sounded from the door as I pushed it open. My breath pulled in the dark and I took cautious, silent steps into

the bathroom. Only my heartbeat pumped in my ears as I advanced through the pitch black room. When I felt myself at the room's midpoint, I flipped on the flashlight again. The beam cut through the room's inky black, and I aimed it at the toilet stalls. These boys are all the same. I rolled my eyes to no one in particular. Feel like they're getting away with something, breaking into the girls' room. I pushed open the first stall door and shone my light in. Nothing but a toilet. The second stall just had exposed pipes in the floor and some caution tape resting on the ground. As I neared the third stall, the air felt dense as I leaned on the door. I crouched and shone my light under the door and revealed nothing. Still, I pressed on the door with my full weight and found it was locked.

Gotcha. I crouched again and angled my upper body under the locked stall door. My light landed on a yellow-hitted sweatshirt, the arms of which flashed up and covered its owner's face. Come on out, Thomas, I sang and reveled in the sound. of the stall unlocking. You're it. Like a police officer leading a perp to her squad car, Thomas skulked in front of me. Do you know those kids in those weird masks? I asked as we progress to the oak tree. They're giving me the creeps. Thomas said he didn't know who I was talking about, but someone else we played with probably did. Before I could ask any other questions, we had reached the baseball field. Ali, Ali Oxenfree, Thomas shouted into the cold air. His words of defeat

echoed across the suburban sprawl and slowly, tentatively, the other players materialized from every corner of the neighborhood. My heart sank when the masked boys approached from the new construction at the edge of town. Their red masks glistened in the moonlight that managed to peek through the clouds. Once everyone lined up, I handed the flashlight to Thomas and he grunted his ascent. I cast a glance to the masked boys. Their mouths seemed to have grown larger and twisted into malicious grins in their absence. Thomas turned to the tree and began counting loudly. and we scattered in every direction. I looked over my shoulders to find the masked boys hadn't moved.

They stood, palms turned out at their sides, staring at Thomas as he counted. I shook my head and ran off without much consideration of where I was going. I just wanted to put some distance between me and those new kids. Cold air burned my lungs by the time I reached the construction site. A series of partially finished holes for foundations were arranged like huge open graves. At the far end of the development plot, a massive drainage ditch yawned in the dark. clouds covered the moon and left the ditch an inky splotch on the ground. I searched each partial foundation for somewhere to hide, but I found only piles of rocks and

dirt. With the moon covered, the ditches could work in a pinch, but once the clouds parted, I would be exposed. Then I remembered my last trip to the construction site. My parents pretended to be prospective buyers a few weeks back so they had an excuse to look around the area. Always the busy bodies. At the mouth of the drainage ditch, a pipe protruded a pipe protruded a half dozen feet. As I approached the pipe's opening, the temperature seemed to drop with each step. A frantic shiver took over my body by the time I reached my destination. Slowly, I lowered myself over the edge of the pipe and stared into the abyss. It's hard to describe the exact feeling, but something most certainly seemed to stare back. Don't be ridiculous, I scolded myself and crept into

the pipe. Just wait here a few minutes until Thomas catches someone else. But as I took a few steps deeper into the opening, my body collided with something solid. I fell backwards to the ground and yelped in surprise. It was hard to see in the dark, but it looked like someone had moved some large wooden boxes into the drain. From the darkness, a loud shush echoed. Who's there? I stammered into the void. James? Ricky? The voices didn't respond. How did you guys get here first? I ran straight here. The cold grew so severe my teeth began to chatter. Can I still hide in here? Silence.

All right, whatever. I rolled my eyes as if anyone could see me. You guys can't make me leave. A faint snicker echoed and it sounded like a few different voices. My palms sweat despite the cold. After rising to my feet, I approached the things I had run into with micro steps and gripped in front of me blindly. Once my hands landed on the objects, I gasped and recoiled. Some liquid.

Visciscus like motor oil in case. to my fingers. As I pulled my arm back, a hand shot from behind the object and grabbed my wrist. I see pain shot through my nerves, and I wrenched backward, but the hand tightened its grip and pressed deeper. Stars swarmed in front of my eyes, and I twisted and pulled towards the pipe's entrance. The moon shone into the dark as clouds peeled away from it, and the light I could see the dark red skin of the hand that kept me pinned in place. What I had thought were boxes looked like giant eggs or seed pods that stood at my eye level. From the, from the The split at their tops, fluid like blood oozed towards the ground.

From behind the pods I saw slow, steady movement. Bit by bit the red of those masks came into view. Dead black eyes stared, and the maws below them seemed to grow bigger with each second. High-pitched giggles echoed from the boys once their faces were completely revealed. Let me go! Tears stung my eyes. Please just let me go! More laughter.

The boy who held my wrist stuck. stepped back from behind his pod. The smell of rot was overpowering, and I stifled a dry heave. Locking eyes with mine, he pulled me toward him. I fought and pulled, but he forced me closer to him, closer to his gaping mouth. Inch by inch my hand disappeared into the void under his eyes. First fingers, then palm, then wrist, then forearm. The boy or thing stood with his hands at his sides as my elbow passed his open mouth.

After a moment I realized my hand hadn't made contact with anything, just empty space inside that thing. My arm kept passing into nothingness until my shoulder was next for consumption. The other creature stood watching from my periphery. His posture seemed hungry and desperate. Then I remembered it, the shortest straw. With my free hand I fumbled in my pocket and gripped the aluminum. With a guttural yelp, I rose my arm overhead and drove the straw into the mask's eye socket. The boy doubled over in pain.

Horrible gagging sounds belched from him as he returned my arm from his mouth. I turned and fled into the night. Expecting a close pursuit, I put a few dozen yards between me and the drain pipe as fast as possible. I couldn't hear anything besides my ragged breaths and footfalls. As I turned to the drainage ditch, I saw the boys standing in the pipe's entrance, palms outturned. Dark fluid leaked through the straw protruding from the one boy's eyes. Within a moment, the clouds returned to the car. cover the moon, and darkness enveloped my attackers. Guilt is probably the first word that comes

to mind when I reflect on that night. Even more than fear, guilt and shame are front and center. After fleeing the construction site, I didn't go back to the ball field. I hurried past the shadow of the oak I had leaned on not even an hour prior. The darkness distorted its body and limbs and twisted into something nefarious. As I put more distance between me and the oak, I felt like a million little eyes were following my movements. I didn't call out. I didn't look for any of my friends. I ran home, flicked off my bedroom lights, and spent a sleepless night under my sheets and blankets. When I arrived at the kitchen table for breakfast, I could tell from the expressions on my parents' faces that something was wrong. They asked if I'd seen Thomas the previous night. A certain

accusatory tone hid behind their words, and I wasn't sure whether I should lie. Why? What's going on? my eyes flitted between my mom and dad they repeated the question and the air seemed to grow thicker in the room eventually I told them I had seen Thomas but I didn't provide any other details God I hope they're just upset about him breaking into the girl's bathroom but after I admitted to seeing him they just exchanged glances and my dad left the kitchen without another word

from the next room I could hear one side of a muffled conversation and my dad returned his eyes wet with tears All they'd found of Thomas were his shoes, still filled with disembodied feet. The cuts at his ankle bone were so clean, the coroner's report surmised it could only have been performed with a laser or similar tool. That was the rumor anyway. Eventually, the police closed the case missing, presumed dead. No closure, no justice. Just a closed casket in aimless grief.

I've kept the story about these two creatures to myself all this time. Who could I tell that wouldn't think I'm crazy? What could be done even if they believed me? A few weeks after Thomas died, I went back to the housing development in the light of day. Those pods had decayed to mounds of loose dirt. I never saw those masked kids again. I don't lament the loss of childhood fun and games this generation is facing. Keep your kids close and safe in the glow of those screens.

And out of the glow of a flashlight. Thank you. How are you feeling now that you've shared that? I guess the same as I did before. Is that okay? That's perfectly okay. Dreams don't always leave us with instant revelations. Sometimes just speaking them aloud plants a seed.

So you're saying I might not even know what it means until later? Exactly. The mind has a way of working quietly in the background. meeting, can surface days, weeks, even years after the dream itself. That's unsettling. Like I've just dropped something into the deep end of the pool and I won't know if it sinks or floats until later. That's very clever imagery. And yes, dreams often come from those deeper waters.

Sometimes they rise back up. Sometimes they don't. But the act of noticing. changes the relationship. So, even if nothing makes sense now, the fact that I remembered it means something? Yes, it means your mind is showing you something it doesn't want you to lose. That makes it feel heavier somehow. Heavier can mean important. Not all burdens are bad ones. Some are simply waiting to be understood. Let's just take this one step. One step. step at a time together.

Thanks, Doc. Have a wonderful day, Nicole. Is it? Okay, if you say so. Did you sleep well last night? Define well. Let's try this. Did you have any dreams?

Yeah, but I don't think they were mine. Not yours. They felt borrowed. Like, somebody else left them lying around, and I just, picked them up. Sometimes we dream through another's eyes. They have exploring parts of ourselves we've hidden.

Or maybe it's not me at all. Maybe they're pushing them in here. How am I supposed to know? I'm locked in here. What you say? About this dream be with these feelings that it doesn't belong to? Sure, why not? Maybe you can understand what's going on below the ice.

I used to work for the NOAA. That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I specialized in ocean acoustics. I sat in a cramped room in Alaska with headphones clamped to my ears and a computer screen full of waveforms. Hours of static, sonar pings, occasional whale songs. It wasn't glamorous, but I loved it. There's something humbling about listening to the deep.

We still know so little about our oceans. Heck, we know more about space than our oceans. Who knows what's still out there waiting to be found? There's a kind of reverence, like you're eavesdropping on something ancient that never expected to be heard. Until we heard it. They called it the bloop.

Maybe you've heard of it. It was and is kind of, big deal. The name stuck because it sounded funny, light, almost cartoonish. But sound, that wasn't funny. Not when you listen to the raw file. Not when you slowed it down. Not when you felt it crawl into your bones. It happened in the summer of 1997. A lifetime would go for some people. Yesterday for me. I was an intern. at the time. It was a low-frequency burst so loud it was picked up by sensors thousands of miles apart. We triangulated it to a dead patch of ocean near 50 degrees south, 100 degrees west,

which is just west of the southern tip of South America. Almost nothing out there but open water and ice. No ship traffic, no seismic activity, just a cold, empty stretch of Pacific. It's easy to forget or just not think about how big the Pacific Ocean. is, but if you take a globe, you can turn it to an angle where just about everything you see is just the Pacific Ocean. You could put about seven North Americas in the Pacific Ocean, and I'm talking Mexico and Canada too, not just the United States. At first, we thought the sound was geological, an icequake may be, or a shifting fault line. But something about it was wrong. Organic. There were harmonic.

You don't get those from rocks or ice. You get those from a voice. Some of my colleagues were a bit more dismissive of the sound, curious at most, but the more I listened to it, the more certain I became. Something made that sound on purpose. I got kind of obsessed. I started isolating pieces at the waveform, slowing them down, filtering frequencies. there was a pattern to the sound, not just a single bloop, but subtle, subsonic layers underneath. It reminded me a whale communication, but twisted, distorted, like a voice slowed down to the point of breaking.

I kept telling myself I was chasing shadows. I mean, that's what others said. They joked about it. Said I was going full lovecraft. But they didn't hear it the way I. I heard it. I didn't feel it. Because every time I played it, even on low volume, something in my gut tightened, like a survival instinct kicking in, like some ancient part of my lizard brain recognized that sound, and was afraid of it. And like with all things, time made it fade into

background noise. Almost 30 years after the initial sound, I volunteered for an expedition that I was going to that general area. I didn't tell the team why I was so eager, just that I wanted water samples and environmental data. Truth was, I needed to get closer. I needed to know. Even if absolutely nothing interesting or out-of-the-ordinary happen, it was an itch I had to scratch

so I could get on with the rest of my life. Call it a bucket list item if it helps. The expedition itself wasn't for the sound, honestly I think most people I worked with had completely dismissed it at that point. The reason anyone was heading out there were reports coming in about a dip in the surrounding water temperatures. The water was colder than it should have been for summer, several degrees lower. At first we chalked it up the deep currents. But the closer we got, the stranger things became.

At the middle of the night, I woke to a sound. Not loud, just barely on the edge of hearing. A long, low moan, like metal under strain. It wasn't coming from the ship. It was coming up from the water. I rushed to the deck, barefoot and shaking. The ocean was perfectly still, unnaturally still. Not even the wind stirred.

And then I saw the ice. We were surrounded by broken sheets of pack ice, then jagged flows that hadn't been there the night before. No radar blips, no warning, just silence and ice. The water between the ice flows was dark. Too dark. I leaned over the railing and felt it again. That pressure, like something vast and coiled beneath the surface,

like being watched. I leaned back, feeling suddenly seasick for the first time since I was a kid. I didn't sleep too well that night. On the third day, the instruments started acting up. Depth sound was malfunctioned. The thermometer showed sudden drops in temperature, 20, 30 degrees at a time. We were hundreds of miles from the Antarctic shelf. It didn't make sense.

Then we picked up the signal. At first I thought it was interference. but when I filtered the noise, my stomach turned cold. It was the bloop. Not the same clip from 97. This was new. A different pattern, but the same tonality, the same subharmonic drone that made my skin crawl.

It was closer now. We dropped the hydrophones over the side and listened. The audio came in live. They were voices. Not words, not human, but there was structure, rising and falling tones, repetition, call and response, like something ancient and intelligent was speaking through pressure and frequency. And then the screaming started. The sound was faint at first, distant and garbled, like someone was underwater, begging through static.

Then it got louder. Closer, full of panic, pain, agony. For reasons I'll never know, the sound didn't record. So no one else heard it. But they sure as shit saw me rip my headphones off and fall to the floor clutching my head. They saw the blood coming out of my ears. Because I heard them. I needed a sedative to finally calm down.

That night something scraped the hull It wasn't a bump It was nice There was a long, slow drag Metal on metal Deep enough to send vibrations up through the floor The kind of sound you feel in your fillings The others scrambled topside

I stayed below Frozen in my bunk Heart racing Something moved under us The sonar picked it up For two seconds we had a return. A massive shape rising from the abyss. No defined edges, no skeleton.

Just a dense, pulsing mass at least four times the size of our vessel. Then it was gone. The rest of the crew dismissed it as a glitch. Ocean acoustics are tricky, they said. Could have been a pod of whales, a submerged iceberg, even a submarine. Anything, but I knew better. I'd seen the wave form. And that night, with the help of more sedatives,

I dreamed. I was under the ice, sinking, light fading above me, pressure closing in, and below it. A shape too vast to comprehend. Not a creature, not really. More like an idea given form. Flesh like glistening stone, covered in fissures that breathed. A mouth that wasn't a mouse. And behind it a sound like the end of time.

A vibration so deep it cracked reality like glass. I woke gasping, nose bleeding, the scream of the bloop still echoing in my skull. We left the area the next morning. No more samples, no fanfare. We all came to the same conclusion. without even talking about it. We were, our, scientists. We want to know the truth.

But somewhere deep inside each of us, we knew where that pursuit would take us. They were there because of cooling waters. I was there because of a sound. None of us wanted to die for these reasons. The ocean watched us go. Back on land, I handed in my resignation. Said I was going to retire early.

I didn't explain why. No one would have believed me. But I kept the recordings. I still have them, tucked away on an old hard drive and a fireproof box. I don't play them anymore. Not after what happened to the dog.

A few months ago, something tripped the motion light in my garage. I went down with the flashlight and found the same fireproof box on the floor. Hard drive half pulled out. Still home. humming impossibly on its own. And in the corner of my dog,

a German shepherd, smart, steady, never spooked by anything, was cowering, eyes wide, tail-tucked, howling, not barking, howling, long and low,

just like that sound I heard beneath the ice. She won't go near the garage anymore. Sometimes in night I still hear the low throb, through the walls, just below the edge of hearing, calling, approaching. People these days are scared of the wrong monsters. It's not belonging to you. Thanks for at least giving me that much. So, whose dream was it?

Dreams don't usually come with the name tag. They're stitched together from fragments, your memories, your fears, your fears, sometimes even stray pieces of things you observed but never noticed. Well, that's a neat answer. Very professional. But you didn't answer my question, did you? I didn't. Because in a way, you're right.

Some dreams can feel like they're carrying someone else's shadow. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's like I'm walking through a house where none of the furniture belongs to me. Well, being in that habit. Wrong. Like somebody might come home any minute and catch me. What do me?

Existing where I shouldn't? Breathing someone else's air? Or maybe... Maybe I'm not the trespasser at all. Then who is? Is it? For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com.

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