Creepy - Day 6 - The Day Halloween Melted & The Last Animal in the Zoo

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

The Day Halloween Melted***Written by: Well, That's a Thing and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***The Last Animal in the Zoo***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.

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. It's midnight, it's October, and that means KREP is on the air and ready to guide you through this most magical time of year.

It's day six of the 31 days of horror. A time of cool winds, falling leaves, costumes, and pumpkins, when the veil between what we know and what we will never understand is the thinnest, and the darkness that creeps around the shadows is free to play. You're listening to KREP, and I'm your host, the shape and the shadows, the breathing on the other end of the phone, the creep himself. As always, our time is not our own. If it were up to me, I'd be with you all night long, not just in your nightmares. But those decisions are a bit above or below me.

Caller, you're on the air with a creep on K-R-E-P. Hey, I need to talk to you. That works out just fine for me. I'm here to listen. No, I mean seriously. And I know it won't make much sense at first. Try me. It's about...

The day when Halloween melted. My therapist tells me that talking about what happened to me will help me to resolve my issues. I highly doubt him, but what's the harm? Only reliving the most horrible day in my life. Still, I should at least give it a try. So, here's my story. It happened when I was nine years old.

It was Halloween, and I had just left the house to go trick-or-treating. I was so excited because of the costume that I made with the help of it. my mom. It was designed like my favorite X-Men character, Gambit, like from the 90s animated series. My mom and I would get up early every Saturday morning just to catch the show. We both had a love of nerdy things and this was something that we bonded over. The costume took about a month to put together in our free time. I still don't know how she found the brown leather trench coat in a child size. Still, my costume was amazing. With the exception of the broom handle I carried in lieu of Gambit's bow staff. Adorning my outfit, I was ready to tackle the world.

My sister and I left the house and made our way to the sidewalk. Our parents hadn't come with us since my sister was 13, and they figured she can keep an eye on me. As soon as we were out of of the house. My sister told me that she was leaving. She said that she was too old to be trick-or-treating and that she was going to meet up with her friends. I couldn't have cared less. She'd become annoying ever since she became a teenager anyways. Plus, I wasn't worried about anything happening to me since we lived in a small town and everyone knew everyone else. So, with my broomstick... I mean both staff in one hand, in a pillowcase in the other.

I set off to get my candy hall. About an hour into my trek around town, I decided to take a quick break and check out what I had gotten so far. I sat down on the curb and started rummaging through my pillowcase. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Fun-sized candy bars, candy corn, fruity candies, etc., etc. Heck, there was even a little bag with pennies in it. Had to be the old lady who lived two streets over from us that gave that out. I stopped digging through my bag when I saw a candy I'd never seen before.

It was a small, individually wrapped piece of candy. The rapper was brightly colored with vibrant greens and pinks. In the center, what I could only describe as a dark scene. skin caricature of a certain famous Italian plumber, but missing his signature hat. Just below his chin was a disembodied cartoon hand giving a thumbs up. There was no writing on it, so I couldn't even figure out the brand or the name of the manufacturer. I opened the wrapper and poured the candy into my palm. The colors were the same as a wrapper, bright swirls of green and pink.

I popped the candy in my mouth and I'm surprised by the flavor. I was expecting something like watermelon based on the colors, but it tasted more like cherry. That worked out for me since cherry was my favorite flavor. I was surprised by how fast a piece of sugar dissolved on my tongue. So I decided to fish out another couple pieces of candy and snack on. After finishing off, peanut buttercup, I got to continue my journey for more free candy. As I turned back to the sidewalk, I saw a leaf fall off a nearby tree. This was quite odd, since it was the end of October, and all the leaves had fallen off the trees by that point.

Then I noticed another leaf, and another leaf, and another, and another. There was also something weird on how they were falling. It was like the leaves were falling straight down, like raindrops. Then the branches started to droop like they lost all their rigidity. More of these leaves dropped from the branches. That was when I noticed that they were not leaves, but the branches themselves were what was dripping. Startled.

I looked at the house in front of me. The house was sagging. The siding was warped and drooping, and the roof was misshapen, and the porch overhang was dripping large gobs of paint and wood onto the melting porch deck. I turned my head to look down the sidewalk and saw the other trick-or-treaters were just melting. Their costumes just slid off their bodies, exposing their skin that was underneath. dissolving just as fast as their attire did. The parents that accompanied them fared no better.

That was when the screaming started. The kid nearest to me started bellowing out a loud, high-pitched scream. I watched as the skin slid off her hands and face. Then another scream. And another and another. I looked around to see that everything and everyone was melting. like chocolate left out on a hot sunny day, just slowly oozing away from themselves. I looked down at my hands to see that I was also starting to liquefy.

The skin on my hands started to roll down and drip to the ground. With each drop that fell, the searing pain of my nerve endings being exposed to the open air was excruciating, as fast as it was to experience that. pain. It left just as quick. Over and over again, the pain would come and go, like camera flashes going off rapidly. Each drip felt like a high-speed revolving door blaring pain, followed by a minimal respite of relief. This led to my own screaming. The constant flashing between extreme agony and relief was more than a child mind to take. I watched as my skin, muscles, and tendons melted away and dropping globules of flesh and blood. It didn't take long for me to see the bones

of my fingertips. The moment that all my flesh was removed from their respective digit, the bone would fall to the sidewalk with a splash. It didn't take long for all the bones. bones that form my hands to be gone down to the wrists, leaving bloody stumps mixed with quickly liquefying skin. Suddenly, I felt my weight shift, sending me to the ground. I landed on my knees first followed by my wrist stumps with what slaps into the newly softened concrete. Looking back between my legs, I saw my recently detached feet, becoming a very little bit of the newly softened an emulsified mess with the soupy sidewalk. The pain now became a constant sensation as more of my body melted. I could see rivulets of my costume, flesh, and organs freely flowing from my torso.

My breathing had become labored and I started to cough up globs of reddish-brown mucous. I was pretty sure it was my lungs that were coming up. My vision started to blur and within seconds everything went dark. Then the strength of my arms gave away, or more likely, they fell off. I couldn't tell at this point. Face down and slowly sinking into the sidewalk. I couldn't even tell if I was choking on the recently reliquified concrete or my own lungs. I felt myself slipping away and then nothing.

The pain was gone, and I could feel myself, whole. I could feel my hands and my feet. I slowly opened my eyes and realized that I was on my back on the lawn in front of the house where I decided to take my break. The world was back to normal, solid. There was a circle of people around me. I think someone said an ambulance was on the way. Last thing I remember was that I just started screaming at the top of my little lungs with tears flowing down my face. Like the type of reaction when someone experienced pure, instinctual terror.

Just non-stop screaming and crying. Nothing could stop me. I think I screamed until I passed out. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. The doctor told me that I blew out my vocal cords due to my screaming, but other than that, I was perfectly healthy. I didn't care. All I could think about was what I saw that night. The world and myself are melting.

Just everything melting. I became unresponsive. Semicatatonic is what the doctor called it. After I was discharged from the hospital, my parents had a hard time looking after me. Mainly because I suffered from something akin to what some people would call acid flashbacks. I would have moments when the world around me would melt. I'd scream and thrash about.

It got so bad. that they had to admit me into a mental institution. I never blamed my family for doing that. It was the best choice at the time. I spent about three years in the institution before I said another word. It took me that long to cope with the melting flashbacks. I ended up spending another seven years there to help me get back some of my normalcy. Parents helped me as much as they could.

They visited me often. even when I was catatonic. I'm still very thankful to them. I even remember when my sister first visited me. It was about three years after I started to talk again. She had come by herself and I could see that she was on the verge of tears. As soon as she sat down with me in the visitor's center, the dam broke on her.

While she was crying, she apologized profusely for leaving. leaving me alone that night and said that none of this would have happened if she was there. After she finally calmed down, I told her there was nothing to apologize for. There was no way she could have known what that piece of candy would have done to me. She ended up running around the table and she gave me a huge bear hug and cried on my shoulder for a good ten minutes. As time went by and with the help of a lot of intense therapy, plus very very, very much.

various different medications, I was finally released. I currently live by myself, after my parents helped me get back on my feet. I managed to get my GED and have a steady job as a night security guard at a paper factory. I actually prefer this, since I'm the only person on shift there. I no longer like being around a lot of people because of a particular reason. That reason is Because I still suffer from the flashbacks I don't think they'll ever go away

They're nowhere near as bad as they used to be Sometimes a cup will melt in front of me Or a book or a car or my hand Very rarely I'll see a stranger mount In great detail seeing their skin, muscle and bone melt off them while they scream in pure agony. And then, just back to normal.

Like nothing ever happened. Personally, I've become numb to this. Numb to people screaming in my own pain when it's me who melts. That's not why I avoid people, though. It's because every once in a grand while, When something melts, it just doesn't come back. And now a word from our sponsors. Thanks for sticking with us through the money business.

Your patience will be rewarded via a letter from a listener of ours who likes to spend his time wandering into those dark, mysterious places. In the time he saw, the last animal in the zoo. Ever since college, I always liked a good wander. Never really needed a particular destination in mind. Just like to go for walks. Not in nature or anything. I always liked it to be around cities. College was a good place, wandering through hallways and buildings I didn't normally have classes in,

discovering the dusty little corners and tunnels and places that most kids didn't know about. Sometimes I'd find a rare, if ever, used bathroom and used that should a weekend full of cheap beer and tacos hit me in the middle of taking notes during a lecture, which is probably more than I needed to share. After college, I moved to a big city and loved walking around skyways and stuff like that. Maybe it was a weird attempt to preserve some feeling from college or a youth or something. It didn't really matter much to me. It was relaxing.

Some people don't like crowds, but I like the idea that I can get lost in them. Give me a place like New York City and I'm happy. Millions of people who couldn't care less about what you're doing or where you're going. It's just my jam. I'd have to guess that's what led me to get into those urban exploring videos online. I know some people don't like that stuff, moaned about trespassing or not having more respect. But the way I figure, if you're willing to risk getting arrested or injured for some footage of an abandoned hospital or the like, go for it. Your life, not mine.

Plus, I like watching the videos. I can't speak to the motivations of anyone who runs those channels. Maybe they just want the money. Maybe some or all of it staged. I don't really care. It's fun. And maybe there are some people out there. the world is full of all kinds of dark forgotten corners.

And sharing them makes that darkness a little less scary. That's probably bullshit. But it's something to hold on to in those moments when I question my own choices. When I think about the zoo. There's really no shortage of locations for an urban explorer. I mean, go to any large city and really look around at how many of the buildings seem to be empty or abandoned or even on the verge of being condemned. Prime real estate did you think be there for the take and for some restaurant tour or whatever. Nah.

The rent in those places is so high that no one will ever move in, and the owner just takes the tax right off. Most probably don't even remember that they own the building in the first place. They're just another line item on some big conglomerates list of expenses. I spent about a year going around my local town and all the buildings, building up a small but loyal fan base for my videos and generally just having a good time messing around. It wasn't until I was on a work trip

that I stumbled across the place that would change all that. Like most people with any kind of a media account, it didn't pay the bills. In fact, if I got any money from it, I'd call it a win. So I had to keep my regular job. Honestly, I didn't mind it. I liked my job just fine. The boss was cool, and it made doing urbaks feel more like a treat or a vacation than if I relied on it to survive.

When I go out of town for work, I spend a good amount of my downtime driving around. Sometimes I'd be gone for a week or two at a time, and my alternatives was either to fly home on the weekends, which just seemed like a hassle since I'm single, or sit in my hotel room, which absolutely sucks. I think there was a time when I thought it would be cool to travel, see different parts of the country, site sea and all that. It felt old after just one trip. I've learned that most big cities have the same feel. You can find something good to eat just about anywhere,

unless you really like hanging out with your co-workers. It gets tedious fast. Kind of felt like urban exploration was a foregone conclusion to take care of the boredom. Like anyone seriously into Urbex, I don't really like to share my locations. Pick your reason. Whether it's selfishness or not wanting other explorers, probably with bigger channels, to find my spot and make money off a place I work to find, or the legal implications of some of the places I found myself.

But the truth is, I just know that no one should go there. As a sort of warning, I'm going to tell you about it as a sort of list of what not to do. You don't need to remember everything that happened to me. Just remember these key points. One. Don't go into an abandoned zoo. I know. That might sound like a stupid thing to say.

And you probably already guessed it just by listening to the story. But don't go into any abandoned zoos. First there's trespassing, of course. But more than that, I think people might not quite understand exactly what happens to a zoo when it closes down. Dependent on your stance on zoos in the first place, you might already hate the idea of them.

You know the horror stories about animal confinement and treatment, or those occasional stories about some kid drowning or falling into an animal enclosure or whatever. Zoos under the best conditions still carry with, with him a weird feeling of danger. I suppose that's why people like them. You can get up close with animals that could easily kill you without the risk of actually dying. In reality, the risk is always there.

It's just low enough to people forget it's there. But start to add in wildlife taking over again. Unkempt sidewalks and other buildings. Suddenly you have an overgrown terrarium full all kinds of hidden pitfalls. Two, don't go off the path. If a tourist wouldn't be walking there, you shouldn't either. I know the temptation is to go where people be the most interested. Remember, these places are abandoned for a reason.

And while the general safety of the area is going to have declined across the board, the last thing you want to do is falling, get hurt in some dark corner where it was hard to get to in the first place, and possibly impossible for a emergency cruise to get there. Just because you might want to think of yourself as an explorer doesn't mean you need to expose yourself to a lot of unnecessary risks. Which leads me to my next point. 3. Don't go in employee only doors.

Of course I did. People don't watch Erbeck's videos for you to just stroll around places they've seen before or could do themselves. They want you to take risks for them to live through. They want to see the things they've never seen. Maybe things they didn't even realize they wanted to see. Like what the zoo looks like behind the scenes. The feeding areas, the vet stations, the tunnels,

and all the other things you don't see that makes the zoo even function in the first place. Since, you know, there are people working there who actually do have to risk their lives to get close to the animals. 4. Remember what the word abandoned me. There is nothing and no one there that should be there. Just because the zoo went under doesn't mean they just abandon everything inside and walk away.

Animals get transferred, equipment, files, sold, or given to other locations. So if there's something there, it's because it either has no value to move or it wasn't there when the place got shut down. So if you hear a sound coming from a door, leave it alone. In fact, run. Fuck it. It's not worth it. There are no poor animals left in cages waiting to be freed. I heard once there's a rule of three in survival.

Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. I don't know how accurate any of that is, but I'm betting it's close enough. Same thing holds true for animals. Maybe more, maybe it's less. But unless you just walked into that zoo the day after it was shuttered, don't think that there's something living in there that needs rescuing. I say this now, because in the moment, common sense rarely wins out. Curiosity tends to be the biggest motivator for people like me.

So hearing some kind of noise in a room at the end of a hall, three stories underground. It felt like I found a diamond mine in my gold mine. I already had amazing footage. Did I listen to any of this advice? Would I be telling you this story if I did? No, of course not. Then again, I also wouldn't be telling you this story unless I found something.

Some thing. It wasn't anything as ominous as being at the end of a long, dark hallway. Maybe a single exposed light bulb gently swinging as if by some unseen force. A metal door, cold and foreboding that seemed to call. out to me. Nah. I just got to what I assumed as a bottom floor and tried some doors. Most rooms were empty.

Some doors were curiously locked. But one. One was unlocked and had something inside of it. Actually, there was a lot inside of it. I'm sure it was all connected. But it was like my mind couldn't put it all together into one big picture. I can only really focus on one thing. at a time.

And the first thing, the most important thing, was the animal in the cage. There are no words I can share that'll do it justice. And honestly, I'm afraid to show the footage to anyone for multiple reasons, not the least of which is fear that someone will go try and find it. And worse, they'll try to let it out, like I did. It was in what I'd guess to be about a seven foot by seven foot square cage. Like something you'd see out of some old movie where the animal in question was just some guy in a costume. Bar is spaced maybe three or four inches apart.

Just thin enough so whatever was inside couldn't get out. If it wanted to get out, my being there did nothing to excite it. I hope this doesn't sound like a cop out. But there really aren't any words I can't. accurately describe what I saw and what I felt like when I saw it. I'll try my best because that's the point of this, right? But know that whatever you hear and whatever picture you have in your head, it doesn't even come close to the absolutely paralyzing fear and wonder that I felt the moment

that door creaked open. The lights were on, but for the life of me, I couldn't have told you if anything else was in that room the moment I had, light eyes on it. Sure, there was the cage like I described, but what was inside the cage didn't make sense. It's only in hindsight that I can even draw a comparison. But it looked, for what it's worth,

like a shaved gorilla. I couldn't tell you the size because it looked like it was hunched over, looking away from me. But I could see the muscles clearly defined and outline like some picture from an anatomy class. I could see striations in its back muscles as it appeared to breathe. Its lats were practically wings that extended from the sides of its body.

If I had been anywhere else, I might have thought I'd stumbled across some performance art piece featuring a bodybuilder. I've never seen muscles like that in real life. But like looking at the stars in the sky, where there was just one suddenly turning into another and another and another, the details stared to reveal themselves to my obviously overworked mind. It wasn't just muscles hidden under snare drum-tight skin, but also patches where there was no skin.

I could actually see the muscle, wet and red in places around its back and arms. There was a slickness, a wetness that wasn't sweat on those patches. Maybe pus from open wounds that covered the exposed muscle? I noticed that it wasn't breathing steadily either, but in shaky, almost panicked breaths. There was something so sad that even while I was trying to figure out what I was looking at, some part of me wanted to console it. to make it feel better.

Like I could feel its fear. I stepped into the room without pause. Empathy I never realized I had making my feet move before I could think better of it. I didn't walk right up to the cage, but sort of circled it warily. I still had caution and reasons screaming at me inside my head.

No matter how far around the cage I walked or how many laps I took, I could never see the thing's face. I couldn't even really make out its shape or height or anything. It was drawn into a sort of sitting fetal position with its back to me, and its back was always to me. Every step I took, there was a sort of imperceptible shift of its skin, and it seemed to rotate without moving.

The faster I walked, the more I could make it out. out, as if its skin were clay or putty or something and it kept folding over itself so I could never see anything other than its back and the awful, oozing sores, as if blaming me for whatever had happened to it. As I walked around the cage, something else occurred to me. There was no lock. There was no door at all. Just metal bars soldered to the base and the ceiling. Whoever had put this ape thing in this cage didn't intend for it to ever get out. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.

How was it even still alive? Would it have been eating and drinking in the months, if not years, since the zoo had closed? Or had it just arrived? Had I stumbled on some kind of testing facility and I wasn't nearly as alone as I thought I was? I was too distracted. I wasn't paying attention. Walking in circles almost hypnotized by the shifting mass of flesh quietly weeping in front of me. My head filled with questions.

Before I knew it, its arm shot out and grabbed my hand. I immediately tried to jerk it away, but its grip was like a vice. And more than that, I watched as its fingers seemed to stretch out, slithering up my forearm. prodding at me, trying to push into my flesh. And then I felt it, not just the pain in my hand, but fear, depression, and anxiety. A desperate feeling that I needed to escape like I was trapped underwater with no oxygen. I pulled and fought against the grip, pleading for it to let me go. All the while these strange thoughts and images swam through my head.

that didn't make sense. I saw this strange kind of liminal world where the clouds melted and bled, where people walked into the sea and disappeared forever. A land of false gods and totems no one ever believed in as the world wonders how it can even be. After pushing as hard as I could with my foot against the cage,

the grip finally released and the thing shriveled back into its ball. never once having shown its face to me. I hit the ground hard and felt jarred for a moment. But then I was in the hall again, running. Running. Running. And now I'm telling this to you.

I don't explore much anymore. At least not anything beyond the occasional abandoned building. I don't even go to fully operational zoos anymore. It's not worth it. There are things out there that don't make any sense, and maybe they aren't meant to. But when that thing touched me, I saw another world. When it terrified me so much with its irrational existence that I don't go looking for the unknown anymore. Because that thing in the zoo, that animal, and whatever, it came from somewhere.

Maybe it fell from space Maybe it simply appeared here It doesn't matter What matters is that the place exists And it's close enough to send things here And if there's a door to that world And it has things like what I saw and felt in that cage Then I sure is shit

Don't want to be the guy who finds it first And that's all we have time for today. I've been getting some cryptic messages from the station manager about some interference that's starting to sneak into the signal. But don't you go worrying just yet? There's plenty of other things for you to worry about. Like letting your foot hang out from under the covers.

Sweet dreams. As always, this is the creep and you're listening to KREP. Today, tomorrow. And for a little. 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 story's author.