Creepy - Day 9 - Don't Press Play & The Last Log on the Fire

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Don't Press Play (starts at 4:14)***Written and narrated by: Owen McCuen***The Last Log on the Fire (starts at 22:25)***Content is available under CC BY-NC***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence, and explicit language listener discretion

is advised okay everyone you just about packed up we got to head out soon and did everyone have a good time this year and did I mean I've been worse times and did I try to kill any of you no so do you think that

maybe there's something you all want to say to me seriously no one's going to apologize for thinking the worst of me? Again? This was by far the smoothest running camp we've ever done. John, you get that we have to prepare ourselves for the worst, right? No. Come on, so you're telling me that if you were in our shoes, that you wouldn't be a little nervous? Oh, you mean if I didn't have to be the one to set up an entire camp, planned schedules, travel, supplies, and literally everything else that we need to get through a month here? If I didn't have to worry about anything other than relaxing and telling some scary

stories, I'm not the one who told each of you to bring along extra baggage, am I? What? It was a metaphor. Never mind. Let's just get everything packed up and head out. And I hope. I hope that this will go a long way to prove to you all that nothing weird is going on here. And I don't have any weird ulterior motives with any of you. Can we stop and get some grilled oysters on the way. Ooh, and Benets?

Yeah. Oh, my God. We'll see if there's time. Hey, where'd everyone go? Hello? Did everyone leave already? How? Owen?

Of course it's me. You know, you could have asked that before shooting me in the arm with a dart. Oh, man, I am so sorry about that. That's fine. I'm just glad it wasn't my neck. Now, what were you yelling about? I was just... Wait, how are you still awake?

Yeah, I'm pretty much immune to this stuff by now. And sleep. Haven't slept in a while, but I'm sure I'll be fine. What were you saying? Wait, where is everyone? That's actually exactly what I was saying. Oh, do you think a predator got them? Like from the movie, not a politician.

They're called yautcha? And no. Not if they have any sense of self-preservation. What about swamp? He's a good guy. Man thing? Too busy guarding the nexus of all realities. Listen, I think we need to stop going any deeper into nerddom

and just assume that they all left without saying goodbye. Rude. Tell me about it. Hey, want to bury a time capsule? That feels a little off-brand. Should we tell a story? Might as well. Looks like Rideshare won't be here for a while.

What you got? Well, I thought there'd be more people here, but I was thinking that I'd tell you. you, don't press play. I walk into the rustic cabin where I'm spending the week. The door is slightly ajar. I grab a knife from my pack and explore the space, wishing to find myself alone. I find an antique tape machine seemingly lifted from a spy thriller. A loop is about to close. Way out in the Jersey Pines, sandy soil covers ancient knowledge and shifts aside as new growth reaches into the here and now.

Out there, something rustles beneath the leaf litter with every step you take. Roots, bones, folklore, and perhaps they're all one and the same. The mycelium network, the wood-wide web, is far older than civilization. The entire forest knows. Refuse lies on the forest floor as modern people wander by and discard their things out of disregard for the ecosystem. Or maybe they've been dropped in terror as fight or flight systems kick in when confronted with a sudden change in noise levels. Woodland critters going silent so as not to attract the attention of something dangerous.

Wind through the branches melting into moans of sorrow. Footsteps following far too closely. The whoosh-wosh-wosh of... Well, I don't know. The pine barons are a living time slip, where the blurred lines between magic and tech-woolshiv. technology register as analog noise. Even the premier scientific minds of Princeton University have ventured into the depths of these woods to travel time and space, to collapse parallel dimensions and traverse between worlds.

Maybe they've done it. Something has. I've heard suffering and fear in the pine barons, but not from the forest itself. Well, I have heard gunshots and strange cries, but those had a definite local localized sound profile, likely the real-life sounds of hunting in the woods. What I mean is that I've tuned in to sounds of unnatural horror through radios and telephones. It only happens out by Mount Misery, but I think I found the source. The first time I heard it I was camping with the guys.

We had entered the forest by way of a not-quite developed road at the end of a housing development on Mount Misery Road. The paved path slowly got rougher, faded to gravel, Then to a grungy dirt path. The houses along the road were pretty nice, but they too became more rudimentary as the road reached into wilderness out of civilization. A clearing stood on the right-hand side,

where a lone oak that we dubbed the Tree of Knowledge stood sentinel over a cranberry bog and the overgrown footpaths that lay beyond. We kept driving past the tree and away from the homes and blacktop, deeper into the pine barrens. The dirt road was sandy, with some ruts worn into it, from other adventurers who explored the woods in their pickup trucks and ATVs. On this particular trek, our chariot of choice was a 1977 Plymouth Valari, not ideal for off-roading,

but it was slightly more accommodating than my 72 duster. We had gone deep enough into the woods that there was no light to speak of since there were no street lamps. The moon was out, but not high enough to illuminate the path. We slowed to a crawl, turned the headlights out, and drove by flashlight held out of the shotgun window. I had gotten out and laid down on the trunk, eyes to the stars that shone brilliant in the pitch dark sky. Eventually we spotted a path along the side of the dirt road that looked like we could pull in just enough to obscure the car. We backed in and unloaded our meager gear that would suffice for one night. A two-man dome tent, a five-dollar tube tent strung up on some laundry line.

a few bags of snacks, some stogies, and a boombox. We didn't dare risk a fire since we didn't have a fire ring or a portable stove, so munchies would have to suffice. We didn't even bring any alcohol since we were fresh out of high school and had no means to procure any. Just dumb-ass teenagers and a night away from family obligations. We turned on some tunes and washed down our cheap cigars with Doritos and gallon jugs of orange drink. The tape of Black Sunday by Cypress Hill was simultaneously hyping us up and chilling us out.

When we heard the sounds that changed the vibe from Guys Night Out to Maybe We Should Leave, the cassette seemed to glitch, then warp and slow down. A weird hiss and crackle popped in as if someone had recorded over the studio-produced album with a tape recorder. The noises sounded like wind at first. Then the moaning of the breeze turned into groaning of someone in pain. We heard footsteps running through the woods, but not in real life, not in the woods around us. The running was coming from the radio.

It sounded like a documentary of a person running away from something terrifying in the woods. The fear was contagious as the guys and I stared at the boombox with jaws open, stealing glances at one another, wordlessly asking each other, did you just hear that? Even more suddenly than it appeared, the frightening sounds stopped, and Cypress Hill popped back out of the speakers. We turned the radio off. Far too late to roll up at home, especially with an hour drive back to our neighborhoods,

we crammed into the tents and lay awake until the black sky turned gray. We didn't exactly forget what we heard that night, but somehow it didn't affect our woodland exploration much. I suppose we sort of repressed the memory, chalked it up to imagination or a malfunction of the tape. We listened to it many times since and never heard any other abnormalities, so the whole incident got stashed away in our collective subconscious, I suppose.

Our fascination with the Pine Barons didn't diminish, especially when we began our search for Aung's Hat. The 90s were a wild time. Rolling through the woods in a hoopty, guided by maps and a flashlight, we went on a quest for the lost town of Aung's Hat, New Jersey. Jersey. There was an actual town out there at one time, so we went looking for old signs and abandoned ruins, any evidence of the ghost town in the midst of Jersey Devil territory. But the 90s also saw the dawn of the web, and along with that, the first real internet snipe hunt

called the Incannabula Papers by Joseph Mathini. According to the papers, the forgotten town of Ong's hat may or may not have been the epicenter of alternative world research. Technology crept into the wilderness Faster than the paved roads And internet bulletin boards Were nearly indistinguishable From actual bulletin boards Chat rooms were becoming the new zines

But paper zines hadn't yet gone entirely extinct And what better place to blur the lines Between the analog and the digital Than the liminal space known as the Pine Barrens During our research We stumbled across a photocopy of an old flyer That seemed to give us some clues It advertised a book club meeting that was centered around two of the volumes featured in the papers.

Sadly, there was no address to be found. Perhaps it was listed on the second page of the flyer, which was lost at time. But on that photocopy was another photocopy of the back of one of the books. The publisher's information was at the very bottom, and in teeny tiny print was the phone number of the publishing house. We wrangled up a pocket full of quarters and headed out to a payphone outside of what we dubbed the Ong's hat Wawa. Since I found the number, I got to dial, but all five of us got our ears as close to the

receiver as we could without musling each other. Five rings, and the other end was live. We figured it would be an answering machine since it was well after business hours. That is, if the number was legit in the first place. Looking back, the flyer was probably all part of the game, and the publishing house was most likely a planted piece of fictional evidence, but we were going to die trying to Scooby-Doo this Ang's hat mystery. What we heard was not a business. The sounds of fear split the ambient noise of parking lot bustle and came through the phone so loudly that we all backed away from

the receiver. Footsteps, running, crashing through the branches. We heard the sounds of pursuit and human desperation. This person was running away from certain doom and seemingly toward our crew, lawyers now, with our ears pressed up against the door of another reality, about to swallow a life as we listened. And then, dial tone. The line went dead, but this time there was no be real to convince us that we hadn't heard what we just heard. Oh, we kept looking for Aung's hat, Nand found more than we bargained for.

But Jacob's revenge is a story for another day. It said that time marches on. Does it, though? I mean, people grow up and grow old, but I'm not so sure that that's how time actually works, especially in a place like the pine barons, where the veil is thin. Someone out there was still running from an unseen predator,

and I was about to hear from them again. Years as we measure them had gone by, and I was on my way home from the shore. Some family had rented a house for the week, and I went down for a day trip and dinner on the boardwalk. It was later than I had hoped, but I had to get home so I could work the next day, so I ventured up the parkway in a bit of a haze. The highway had hypnotized me just enough to draw me past my exit to the Atlantic City Expressway,

so I was headed north, instead of northwest, toward my hometown, and Philadelphia beyond that. I had to get off at Route 72 and drive through the dense shade of the South Jersey forest that never quite let go of those who leave a bit of their hearts and minds out there among the ponds. lines. Drowsiness gave weight to my eyelids, so I opened the windows wide and cranked the radio to keep my energy up. Past Ang's Hatwawa, past Mount Misery, and through a particularly dark stretch, I cruised through at a reasonable speed so as not to get pulled over. The roar of the wind and the bark of the radio were doing their job until the station began to blink out. Between towers, I figured. But the stations melted into garbled noise as my reception yielded.

to the chilling sounds of a person calling out in desperation. Breathless, but for shrieks of terror, a voice called out for help, and to my mind, it seemed to be calling to me. I would love nothing better than to tell you that this was the last time I heard this harrowing chase. Sadly, it is not. I'm a grown man now, middle-aged, in fact, and my family makes a bigger deal out of my birthday than I do myself. So my wife, bless her heart, rented a cabin on a lake for my 50th birthday,

an entire week out in the Pine Barrens where my buddies and I spent so much time camping and exploring. The fan would stay with me the first few nights. Then I'd be alone for a few, before the guys would spend the final Friday night hanging out and grilling some brats under the moonlight. The cabin has a kitchen and a bathroom and electricity. It's too rustic to be considered glamping, but definitely better than some. spooning in a dome tent with blood-sucking insects buzzing in your ear all night.

There's a bedroom downstairs and two more in the loft above, perfect accommodations for heavy snorers. Thursday that week I went to work and came home to the cabin to sort things out before they get together the next day. I reached in my pocket for the key, but it wasn't there. It was in the door, opened just a bit. strange since I took extra care to lock the cabin while I was at work. Strange enough, in fact, to snap me into hyper vigilance as I crept through the kitchen

and into the main room. Hello, I called, hoping not to get a response. Nothing seemed to be missing or disturbed downstairs. I dug a decent-sized folding knife out of my camping gear and clicked it open before ascending the staircase to the loft. The steps seemed to stretch from me. miles as I slowly crept up each one, my higher functions whirring as they attempted to keep the lizard brain from bursting through my skull. Through the open door of the upstairs room, I spotted a

strange piece of equipment on the floor. About the size of a small typewriter, it appeared to be an old tape machine, something from a bygone era, easily as old as I was, and likely much older. I scanned the room around me, but again saw nothing else out of the ordinary. So I righted the machine and thought for a long moment before pressing play. Now if you've seen Evil Dead movies, you know that this was about to be the biggest mistake of my life. The tape rumbled to life and began to whine and hiss with the self-noise of an old analog audio device. But the hiss soon gave way to the whistling of wind, a rustling of branches, and the stomping of footsteps running through the woods.

The grim traveler had returned and was now here with me and my cabin. The breathing was labored and the frantic cries revealed themselves as those of a man. His desperation grew along with the impossibly audible darkness that followed him. Jesus, that voice sounds like mine. I've heard my own voice on tape before, but never quite like this. Run! Run! I heard my own voice shouting through tinny speakers. "'Run!'

"'Frozen for a moment. I looked around the room once again. The wood-paneled wall to my right had a seam around it, as if it had been cut away. A small latch that doubled as a handle revealed that the panel served as a storage space or a small closet.

All of a sudden, I no longer felt alone. Run. I tore down the stairs, nearly wiping out at the bottom and scrambled through the room like a dog trying to find purchase on the hardwood floor. My body out ran my mind through the kitchen, out the door, past my car, and down a trail by the lake. Farther and farther into the woods I ran, all the while feeling a dark energy gaining ground behind me. The wind whipped into a gale and moaned with longing at my back. Time measured itself in labored breaths and shouts of fear as I wound through dirt trails.

I thought I heard people reveling in a clearing up ahead. The sounds of boombat murky in the slapback of forest air. The music disappeared when the lights and sounds of a busy parking lot shimmered in the distance. Figures huddled around a pay phone. Maybe they can help. Gone too. Racing down a trail that seemed to run parallel to a road, I shouted and tried to flag down a passing car, but it didn't see me. This looming shadow was gaining ground.

and hope had just about exhaled its final breath when I found myself on a familiar path. The cabin stood waiting on the shore of the lake. I reached in my pocket and fumbled for the key attached to a rough-hewn pine tree keychain. Throwing the door open, my reflexes propelled me up the loft stairs and into the upstairs bedchamber. I scanned the room for a place to hide and miraculously spotted a small knob-like latch on the wall, a closet. cramming myself into the small space, I tripped and fell over a box that could have been a squirrel trap or an appliance of some kind. Whatever it was, I chucked it out of the closet and grabbed a piece of the framework with my fingernails to pull the door shut. The silence of the space yielded to

the muffled sounds of my breathing and my hammering heartbeat. Whatever was chasing me would most likely find me at some point, but I gave it my damnedest. A car pulled up outside. Footsteps entered the structure and a voice called out, Hello? My voice. My other self crept slowly up the stairs and entered the room. Was my pursuer masking itself as a version of me?

Or am I the doppelganger? I peered through the crack in the door and saw the figure pick up the box I had tossed from the closet. It looked like a tape recorder of some kind. Please, please, please, God, please, I whispered in my mind. Don't press play. So, what'd you think? John.

John. Huh? Sorry, what'd you say? I just asked what you thought of my story. Oh, yeah, totally. Hey, um, it's starting to get late. I'm thinking it's time to wrap things up and get going. We don't want to miss our flights home.

Are you okay? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Probably just a little sad that camp's over already. Ride chairs should be here soon. We should make sure everything's locked up. Good idea. Just one sec. What are you doing? There's a piece of firewood left. Just figured I'd throw it on. Um, no. Are you kidding me? Why would you do that to us?

John, did you take a dart to the neck? What are you talking about? Haven't you ever heard about the last log on the fire? To be clear, this isn't my story. I heard it years ago from a man who claimed it happened to his uncle. Though he did admit that the details have been passed down so many times, that the details have probably been skewed a little. He said that the exact location didn't matter, that the force had changed names and boundaries since then,

and that the only constant was the fire pit. The rule was simple. At that particular clearing, you let the fire burn out on its own. No one remembered who made the rule or why. It was simply repeated to anyone who camped there. Old timers said the pit had been dug long before the campground existed, back when trappers moved through the woods in winter and built fires that lasted for days. That the place became a haven for freezing travelers low on supplies.

They said the stones around the ring were older than the marked trails, older than any ranger station, older than the road that now brought campers in by the carload. You didn't add a final log before bed. You didn't smother it. You didn't interfere with whatever the fire decided to do when you were done watching it. The uncle in the story didn't believe in rules without being given a good reason to follow him. He was that sort of person. He was practical and stubborn and liked the comfort of certainty.

On the last night of the late-season camping trip, with the air turning sharp in his lungs when he take a deep breath, He decided he wanted more heat before turning in. The fire burned down to a low-reg cradle of coals, steady and controlled, the kind that'd fade to ash within the hour. The others in his group had already crawled into their tents, leaving him alone in the clearing with the steady pulse of the embers. He found one more log near the edge of the woodpile and set it across the coals.

It caught quickly, like it had been kiln-dried. The flames rose in clean vertical ribbons, licking along the bark and breathing life back into the pit. He sat for a while longer, satisfied with the warmth against his face, and then finally turned in. The fire was still strong when he zipped the tent shut behind him. Something in the deep part of the night woke him. At first he didn't know why. The forest was silent in the way it only becomes after midnight, when he had insects thinned up and the wind settles into high branches.

He lay there listening to his own breathing and the slow pulse of blood in his ears. Then he realized the tent was glowing. Orange light seeped through the nylon walls, so bright he thought he hadn't been asleep for more than a few minutes. Until he checked his watch. Hours had passed since he laid down. He unzipped the flap halfway and peered out. The fire wasn't dying. It was roaring.

The log he'd placed across the pitiful. pit had long since turned to ash, yet the flames were higher than before. The stones around the rain glowed faintly, as though heat had soaked into them. The air above the pitch shimmered in thick waves. He stepped out barefoot down to the cold ground. Spark spiraled upward into the black sky, but didn't fall back down. They seemed to hover briefly, suspended, before vanishing into nothing. Then he noticed the figure. It sat down. on the far side of the fire, just beyond the brightest light. At first it looked like a trick of shadows and flames,

but as his eyes adjusted, he saw the outline clearly. Something was crouched low near the pit, hands extended toward the blaze as if warming them. It didn't look up at him. In time, the uncle's eyes adjusted, and he saw what he thought might be an unhoused man crouched near the fire. There was something strange about the way he was dressed. The strange man wore what looked like furs, not just a fur coat, but literally fur hides draped

over his shoulders and wrapped around him. He wore a thick beard, but still the uncle could see what looked like cracks on his skin, skin that appeared almost blue, even in the firelight. The bearded man simply squatted there, patient, and still, palms open toward the flames. The uncle said he felt no immediate terror, only confusion. He took a step closer. When he reached the near edge of the fire pet,

the bearded man moved. Its head tilted slightly, as if listening. Then he raised his face. There were no eyes in the way he expected. Instead, just the milky white eyes of a blind man. The uncle stared into them like he had to, like there was some answer there that he'd needed his entire life. But there,

Just feet away from the blazing fire. The uncle fell nothing but an impossible cold. A cold that made his skin hurt. A cold that made his very bones ache. Then he realized that he wasn't alone. Out in the treeline shadows moved. The light from the fire made it impossible for his eyes to adjust enough to pick out details. But he knew there was more than one person out there, more than two.

So many more. One by one the shadows started to move closer to the fire, not just slow, but hesitant, like animals exercising their ingrained instincts to be afraid, or at least wary. But soon enough, they started to step forward one by one. A woman and a torn dress, a man wearing hiking gear,

a child drinking a teddy bear through the dirt. More and more of them approach the fire. hands raised the flames. All had the same white eyes, the same blue-tinged skin, each of them, wearing a story they never spoke out loud. Of course, the uncle had no idea who they were and where they were from. But the way he told it, the way I'm telling you now, I suppose, each one of them, with their cold, dead eyes, their frozen, cracked skin, they had all died there in those

woods. Campers, travelers, wanderers, people whose last moments on this earth were spent in the cold until their heart slowed, until their blood froze in their veins, slipping off whatever life still clung to them. And the fire had called them, the one thing that could have saved them and their final moments had turned into a beacon that cut through the afterlife, pulling them like literal moths to the flame. At this part of the story, the uncle held up his hand, showing only a ring finger, pinky finger, and thumb remaining. He'd reached out to the child at some point, instinctually reaching out to try and help the small boy.

Dead eyes or not. The uncle recalled that as his fingers touched the boy's hand, at first he didn't feel anything. Then he felt the cold. Cold as bad as anyone had a cold. ever felt. Cold that turned into a burning heat as the uncle screamed and fell to his knees in front of the mute chorus. They watched on as the skin on two fingers turned black and necrotic. The uncle ran to his truck, leaving everything and everyone else behind. As you probably guessed,

the doctors couldn't save his fingers. A split second of contact had developed a third-degree frostbite in a matter of moments. When they asked him what happened, he didn't know what else to say. So he told him the truth. The truth as far as this telling of the story goes, I guess. The doctors ordered a talk screen and a site consult. After getting out of the hospital, the uncle enlisted his brother, my friend's dad, to go with him to get his gear.

Supposedly when they went back, everything was just as it had been left. With one exception, that the fire pit was still. Still smoking. The last remains of heat slowly draining out. A fire that should have gone out days sooner. As it packed up, it looked like nothing had been touched or taken. In fact, something had been left behind. A small riggedy teddy bear lay in the dirt just outside the fire pit stones. The old rule is still told about that clearing, though the campground has changed names since then. Those who repeat it don't claim to understand why the fire must be left alone.

They only say that the last log doesn't belong to you. It belongs to whatever waits for the flames to grow high enough to come and warm itself. Okay, all packed up. John? John, where you at? Over here. Sorry, dragging. It's been a long month and haven't been a long month.

sleeping very well. Really? I've been sleeping like a baby. That's because you've been tranquilized for half the month. Can't argue with results. Hey, between you and me, are you doing okay? Yeah. Yeah, I just need a good night's sleep and I'll be right as rain.

That looks like the ride shares. Oh. Dude, did you order a smart car for a ride share? We're never going to both fit. in with all our stuff. Oh, you, um, you want to rock, paper, scissors for it? No, you take it. I'll hang out here and wait for the next one. Are you sure you want to be out here all by yourself? Yeah, I'll be fine. Maybe I'll be able to grab a nap or something. Hey man, before I go, I just want to say thank you for all the work you put into this stuff. I know sometimes it doesn't work out how you hoped, but we do appreciate

the effort. Wow. Um, thanks, Owen. That really means... You shot me. To Owen. Oh, don't thank me. It's the least I could do. Now get some rest. You earned it. I'm so tired. So... Sweet dreams, buddy.

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