Creepy - Grey Rain

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

It's just a little water...***Written by: William Jorgeson***Bonus episode: "Ghosts of My Past" Written by: Ray Daley and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Content Warning: Mild mention of child harm***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***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.

Please join me in welcoming and thanking new patrons. Chris Leach, Ryan, Amanda Thompson, Susie Hayes, Brandy, Greg, David Fife, Kevin Palmer, Abby Gooden, Rye Vanguard, Rose Mary Witt, April Smith-George, and Sister Banshee. As some of you may have noticed, there have been more programmatic ads instead of host red ads lately. Personally, I'd much rather be able to put a creepy spin on our ads. but the current marketplace is just that advertisers are preferring to use your own ads. Can't be helped. These ads keep the content coming and we appreciate you all for listening in the first place. With special shoutouts to everyone who shared their Spotify lists about how much you've listened to the show over the last year.

That said, the main perk for our patrons is that all patrons get early commercial free access to all Sunday and Wednesday episodes. Not just from when they start on Patreon, but any Sunday and Wednesday stories or October. We've run on the show since we first started posting on Patreon almost seven years ago. From there, tiers include weekly bonus episodes, immediate access to our entire back catalog of over a thousand Patreon exclusive episodes and logo merch. To see how you can support the show and be rewarded for it, please check out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypod. And in an effort to get myself back on track after the last few months of, let's call it,

strangeness, I'm going to do something I've been meaning to get back to for a long time. The Holders series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear both the cheers and the groans in the audience. I know. The Holder's series is divisive. Some of you absolutely love them, and some of you very much do not. I understand.

Which is why I won't be taking up any space on Sundays or Wednesdays with those stories, but we'll be adding yet another day of stories to the podcast. Starting this upcoming Friday, and every Friday after, I'll start to tackle the massive back catalog of Holder's series. Yes, there will be some repeats from previously read Holder's stories, as I think I read about 30 of them or so in the first year of the podcast, for those who remember back then. And yes, some are better than others,

much, much better than others. But hey, with a whole, over 538 stories, that's bound to happen. I'll be narrating anywhere from four to eight holders stories each week, depending on length to help justify the ad break in the middle. And even narrating that many stories, it'll still take about two years to get through them all. Wait, is my math right on that?

Can someone check with the accounting department? Sorry, I was just handed something from our HR department. Dear Mr. Grills, we have told you over and over again that this podcast does not have the budget for an accounting department. I thought you would have learned that with the office space conundrum from last month. Huh. Interesting. Wait, there's a postscript. P.S. You also don't have a legal department and you handed yourself this piece of paper. Are you sure you're okay and not still trapped inside a...

You know what? I don't want to think about that. Instead, more content. If you like the stories, here you go. If you don't, you will have no impact on the number of stories you're already getting on this feed. Win, win.

I hope. Okay. Back to your usually scheduled creepiness. 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. Written by William Jorgensen I awoke to the sound of rain on the roof. Glancing over at my alarm clock, saw nothing. No red numbers glowing in the dark to tell me what ungodly hour of the morning it was. I didn't hear any thunder, just heavy rainfall. Yet the power must have gone out.

I also felt a bit nauseous in a strange way that I couldn't quite place. After a few seconds of fumbling around on the bedside table, I found my smartphone and clicked the screen on. Two minutes after nine in the morning. That didn't make any sense. The sun should be up and shining by now. Even for a day blanketed by thunderstorms, there should be more light coming into the room than this. I slipped out of bed and took two steps before swaying unsteadily as the floor shifted beneath me. The sensation was so unexpected that it sent a wave of vertigo through my body, and I word

for a moment that I might puke. It felt like the entire house had somehow tilted slightly to one side, and gently corrected itself back to the other. What in the world was going on? I stumbled over to the window and pulled back the curtains in an attempt to find out. The world outside wasn't quite the pitch black in night. Nor was it the rising light of dawn. The rain that fell outside was visible to me in a dim twilight state.

Just barely enough light to see by. What was more? My eyes didn't recognize this weak light as anything that would have come from the sun that I knew. It felt like looking at the world through the lens of a black and white camera, casting everything in shades of gray scale. strange as this was it was not what truly concerned me. Outside, all I could see was water, not just falling from the sky, but also stretching out as a surface upon which my house seemed to be floating. Looking down through the window, I saw gray waves lapping gently upon my house's foundations.

There was no sign of the street that I lived on, my yard. or anything else of the world I knew. Only an endless sea all around. Gray rain falling into gray water. I recognized then the source of my nausea. I've been on boats often enough to feel seasickness before. Now I felt sick again for a different reason. Was this some kind of dream or nightmare?

I made my way over the light switch inflicted several times. Nothing. I suppose that made sense. No power grid in the middle of an ocean. I looked at my phone again. No service, no internet. Bringing up the Maps app just returned a blank screen with an indication that the app couldn't connect to the internet.

Suddenly I felt totally, utterly, completely alone. I live by myself with no pets. Never did I regret that decision more than I did now. I don't know what another person or friendly and what could have done for me in this surreal situation, but at least they could have shared it with me. I wouldn't have to face it alone. That thought drove me into a sense of panic and I leapt into motion, scurrying throughout the house and desperate hope of seeing something that might make all this make sense.

I went through every room, throwing open the curtain, and blinds looking out every window. I opened every door to see if anything else was different. All I found was confirmation of what I'd already observed. Somehow, my house was no longer planted in the earth and now floated upon the surface of an empty gray ocean. The dim light and driving rain didn't allow me to see too far out into the sea. But as far as I could see, there was a very dark.

There's nothing but waves in every direction. Other than a few things falling off of shelves due to the rocking of the waves, nothing inside was missing or out of place. The only strange thing was that the plumbing somehow worked. But the water that poured out of the sink was a cloudy gray, just like the water that now surrounded me in this dreary void. I had food and, if the gray water was safe to drink, water. I wasn't sure whether to feel better or worse about the thought that I might be able to survive

for months in my little floating castle. Much of the floor was already wet with water that had washed in under the doors. But what difference did that make? I figured I might as well get used to being wet, if this was my new reality. Opening the door to the basement revealed sloshing gray water upon the top step. It was completely flooded. It steps impossible to discern to the murky water and poor lighting. For some reason, that made me uneasy and I closed the door on it.

There was only one place left to go now. Taking a few deep breaths, I braced myself and made for the front door. The steady noise of the rain filled my ears as I swung it open, the sound wrapping around me like a blanket. it. My front porch was still attached to the house, gray water pouring across it with each wave that passed by. Getting down on all fours for stability, I crawled out and took hold of the wooden railing around its edge. The last barrier between me and the liquid expanse beyond. Despair filled me as I gazed out into the rain. Still, I could see nothing in any direction. What had

happened to the world? Where had everything gone? Or rather, where had my house gone to? A wild desire to throw myself into the dark waters ran through my thoughts. If this was all there was, why prolong the inevitable? Why not give myself to the sea now and be done with it? I knew I couldn't do that though. Not right now, not yet, not at this early stage of the nightmare. Of course, they always say that when you die in a dream, that's when you wake up. But the pit of dread in my stomach told me that no matter how hard I might wish it were, this was no dream. It was as these thoughts occupied me, that I finally saw something break the gray monotone in my new world. At first I couldn't be sure that I'd seen anything at all, just a suggestion of a shadow out among the waves.

Then I saw it again, clearer this time, closer. Something moving beneath the waves. A large webbed fin emerged from the waters, moving towards me at a steady speed. It was the size of a dinner plate at least, probably larger, and like no fish I'd ever heard of. A sudden terror gripped me as I realized just how close the creature already was. The poor visibility of this world had allowed it to come near before I ever caught sight of it. I scrambled in my feet and nearly slipped off the porch, saved only by my death grip on the railing. Falling back down to all fours, I crawled desperately back to the front door as a scaled hand reached up out of the water and dug into the surface of the porch several feet away.

I screamed in panic as something erupted out of the water before me, only catching the vaguest glimpse of it as I hurried back through the front door. I saw the silhouette of something humanoid, a thing with two arms and stood on two legs, but I knew that what I had seen was no human. As soon as I was back inside, I stood up and tried to slam the door behind me, but the same scaled hand had already wedged itself between the door and the frame. forcing it back open with irresistible strength. I backed away as it entered my home.

The best way that I could describe it would be as some kind of fish man. It was shaped like a man, not that much bigger than me, but its body was covered in glossy scales rather than skin. It had large fins on its arms and back, the largest of which had seen sticking out of the waters at swim, towards me. Its feet and hands were both webbed and clawed. Its flat pale face contained a keeping mouth of many sharp teeth and two black iridescent eyes. I could tell from its posture that it was getting ready to pounce. With only moments to act, I grabbed the nearest object I could,

a lamp from a small table near my couch. The creature lunged and I swung the lamp as hard as I could, howling like the frightened animal that I was. It took the blow on one of its bulky arms and stepped back for a moment, and seemed to collect itself and charged again, with more force this time. It batted the lamp away harmlessly and knocked me to the floor with the impact of its body against mine. I was no match for it in any sort of physical contest. I was at its mercy. I whimpered in fear and scrabble backwards on my elbows,

sure that I was about to die of painful death as this thing's dinner. It paced steadily after me into the hallway, growling as it came, as if it was still unsure of whether or not it really wanted to eat me. I had just gotten back past the basement door when it finally made up its mind and jumped towards me again. At the very moment that it passed in front of the basement, the wooden door exploded as something burst out of it, knocking the fishman into the wall and pinning it there.

I gasped in shock as an enormous tentacle, thick as a tree trunk held the monster in a vice grip. The thing only had time to let out a single piercing whale before the tentacle squeezed it so hard that its body warped and broke with a series of disgusting cracks and squelches. Then the great limb dragged it down into the basement. and all was quiet. Except for the unceasing patter of the gray rain,

I started to try and slam the basement door closed only to realize they had been torn to pieces and ripped mostly out of its frame. So instead I got up and dashed back to my bedroom and closed that door, getting as far away from the basement as I could without actually leaving the house. Well, I was grateful that the thing in the basement had saved me.

I felt sure that I would be its next meal, as soon as it finished my first attacker. Yet that never happened. Minutes turned to hours as I waited for a demise that never came. The house was silent, save for the rain. Adrenaline and anxiety eventually gave way to exhaustion, and I slept. I awoke to the sound of the rain, appearing cautiously out of my bedroom door revealing that the great tentacle laid in the hallway now. Its tip mere inches away. I immediately tried to slam the door, but it shot up and pushed it back open, then wrapped around me. Rather than crushing me or pulling me down to a watery grave, the tentacle pulled me gently and steadily down the hallway and into the living room,

where it deposited me harmlessly back onto the floor. I barely attempted to register that I wasn't dead before it was over. The thing then went back down the hall and battered my bedroom door. swimming it over and over again until there was little left but splinters. All around me, the world finally came alive with a sound other than rain. Water crashed and the house groaned as something massive took hold of it from the outside. I crouched and covered my head as the sounds of splintering wood and shattering glass-filled my ears. It only lasted a few moments, but when it was over, the swaying of the house felt different.

It felt almost stable now. The touch of the waves was still there, but barely. My curiosity quickly overcame my fear, and I looked up to see a second tentacle slithering along the wall, having entered from a window that it broke through. A third came in through the front door and held itself against the ceiling, while the first one from the basement once more lay dormant in the hallway. I could hear what sounded like the door.

several flexing in the kitchen, occasionally knocking something from the counter or across the floor. This house was no longer mine. It belonged to them now, or more likely to it, as I realize that all these appendages probably belonged to a single sea creature of unimaginable size. I still trembled in fear of being surrounded by something so alien and so powerful. Yet it seemed to mean me no harm. In fact, the tentacles ignored me completely as I got up and began to walk carefully around them, surveying the damage they had done. It was quickly apparent that every door and window in the house had been destroyed, but little else.

The monster held my floating home steady in its colossal grip, neither withdrawing nor doing anything further. I remember the deliberate way that it moved me back before. destroying the bedroom door and the speed with which it had dispatched the fish man it seemed clear that the thing was keenly aware maybe even intelligent though i couldn't guess at its motives or intentions that should have scared me more but instead it put my mind at ease as it also seemed clear that it was not going to kill me not yet at least Days passed, and that did not change.

Initially, I had difficulty sleeping, too worried of what it would do to me if I dozed off. But this did not last. Unable to avoid its presence, I became accustomed to it quickly. After that first encounter, it never touched me again. Yet it stayed omnipresent in the house with me. They move rarely, and only with lethargy. never again using the fearsome speed that I knew it possessed if called upon. I spent the days, if there were even days in this sunless world,

staring out different windows or laying on the porch, gazing out across the gray waves. Every now and then I would see something new in the infinite abyss. I saw more fins like those of the fish man, though they never again dared to come near. I saw other things too. misshapen, bloated fish that leapt out of the waves, large-shelled things that floated across its surface,

and occasionally massive shadows into the surface that roiled the entire ocean as they drew close. Sometimes these would pass harmlessly, but at other times I would feel them disappear in an instant, as if something had suddenly yanked them down and away from the house. Only once did anything else, ever try to harm me again. A thing that looked like a cross between a shark and a crustacean rose up out of the ocean

and sped towards the house with alarming speed. Its great ma opened greedily and multiple pincers snapping furiously as it approached. A dozen familiar tentacles burst out of the water around it and took hold of it from all sides, ripping it apart as they pulled it beneath the waves. It was then that I understood that that. the thing in the deep was not just my companion, but also my protector. For sustenance, I succumbed soon enough to thirst and drank the gray water that flowed from my taps.

It tasted foreign, but not foul. It satin usually heavy in my stomach, feeling as though it had more weight to it than water should. But never did it make me feel sick or unwell. I tried eating a few things. for my pantry, but all the food tasted bland and unappealing now. I soon realized that I no longer grew hungry, only thirsty. Somehow, the gray water alone sustained me.

As time wore on and I grew more comfortable with my new existence, I grew bolder in my interactions with it as well. I dipped my foot into the gray ocean, then a leg. Then I took to sitting on the edge of the porch with both. both legs submerged. I could tell that the ocean was cold, yet its temperature never bothered me. Instead, I quickly found myself more at ease when I was in some kind of contact with the water. I took to hanging off the side of the porch, holding onto the house with one hand while my body floated freely. Then one day I let go and swam across the gray surface, feeling a sense

of liberation and contentment that would have been impossible when I first arrived here. I no longer feared the waters, knowing that my colossal custodian would keep me safe. When I lost track of my position and drifted too far from home, I felt one of the great tentacles take hold of me from below and draped me gently back to the porch. Before long, I was emerging from the ocean only to sleep. and then not even that, taking my rest by floating face up in the waves. At last the day came when I dove beneath the waters

and breathed in the gray water all around me. I had swum beneath the surface many times by now, but always by holding my breath. Now, without thinking, I took in deep lungfuls of the gray as naturally as if it were air. I felt its coolness suffuse itself into my veins and flow throughout me, bringing a serene calm to my being.

I think I would have been content to float there forever if it had let me, only moments after realizing that I could now breathe the gray water. The ocean all around me lit up with a piercing light. The light came not from above, but from below. It dispelled the gray, casting the world in white and allowing me to see for the first time the seascape below me. I saw vast multitudes of alien creatures swimming in the pale depths, of all shapes and sizes. At great intervals far below, I could see enormous shapes that dwarved even the largest whales

back on the earth I knew. None of that was really what drew my attention. What I first thought to be mountains on the ocean floor, I soon realized, were actually living limbs. The titanic protrusions branched off like tree trunks into smaller branches, though these were still far greater than even the largest of the Leviathans that swam above them. Those branches then branched off into more branches of their own and so on and so forth, all the way up near to the surface. where I floated in awe of these sights. I could trace the tentacles holding my house right down to one of those immense roots anchored on the sea floor, and it was then that I began to truly grasp the size of my entity. My understanding was furthered when I realized that the white light had a source.

There was a particular area on the bottom of the ocean so bright that it hurt to look at. As my eyes adjusted though, I could tolerate it enough to discern what it really was. Shaped like an orb, it spilled its baleful glow up like a small star embedded in the planet's crust. Yet a narrow strip of darkness cut right across its center. That black band, large enough to swallow my house many times over, was a pupil. It was an eye. When I finally made this connection, I felt the whole ocean around me ripple, and then more of them began to open, dotted among the mountainous tendrils, spread out as far as I could see

in any direction, uncountable great eyes, all releasing their light together in an overwhelming flood. I realized that all the light in this world up until now had come from those eyes. It was what leaked through even with their lids closed at the bottom of the great ocean. Now that they were all open, there was no gray, only blinding white. I had just a split second in which I saw the lesser creatures begin to swim frantically, as if in a panic, before I had to squeeze my eyes shut and then shove my wrists into them. Even then, I felt as though my retinas were set aflame.

The light consumed me burning every inch of my flesh. The gray water, so comforting only moments ago, now churned around me as if set to boiling. I rised in agony utterly consumed as a great rumbling issued force from the thing below. The noise that it made was indescribable. A bellow from a being the size of a planet. a thing that was this planet if I was even on a planet. It tore my mind apart and shattered my bones into splinters, yet I knew a certainty that this was its equivalent of a soft word of greeting. Though it spoke no language, I somehow knew its meaningfully.

I had seen it, and now it had seen me. We had been properly introduced. Then I was back in my bed. At first I thought I had gotten deaf because there was no sound. It took me a few moments to realize that the mere silence sounded wrong after having spent so long accompanied by the constant rain. The red digits of my alarm clock glared at me. The only thing I could see in the pitch dark of my bedroom.

Slowly I shifted an arm, then a leg. I was intact, unharmed. Despite that, I felt uneasy. I soon realized that this was the result of another unfamiliar sensation. That of being dry. Another thing I hadn't experienced in a long time. I got to my feet and hobbled over to my window on unsteady legs, still readjusting to the feel of solid ground.

Outside, streetlights illuminated. of my neighborhood. I was back on Earth. Yet I knew that the nightmare was not over. I knew that the thing at the heart to the gray world could not have been merely a dream. At first, I didn't know what it wanted from me.

And part of me wasn't even that happy to have been released from its realm. As time has gone on, though, I think I've begun to understand. All of my interests and human connections, were gone after that night. Hobbies, friends, work, even speaking with my family, none of it interested me.

I could only bring myself to pretend to care about it with the greatest of efforts. I had a few half-hearted conversations with my parents, who were understandably worried about my behavior. I just told them I need to break, and I'm picking a trip. It's not a total lie. I don't think I'm going to talk to them again. I left my house and I've been traveling on my savings. I didn't know where I was going at first, only that I did have somewhere that I was going.

I don't eat anymore, but I always try to keep a source of water close at hand. I went through bottles upon bottles of the stuff until I reached a stream. That was where I'd been going, I realized. That was when I had my first blackout. I just lost myself for a couple hours. I woke up further down the stream away from my car with no memory of those two hours. It took me another couple hours to get back to my vehicle. I tried fighting it then, but I couldn't drive for more than a couple hours before a blackout.

The only reason I've lasted this long is that it doesn't seem to like driving. It always has me park, get out, and walk on foot. That let me stay ahead of it for a while, but it's worn me down. This last one took me for two days. It brought me back to a stream, but I don't know where. I don't know how to get back to my car, and I'm out of money. I'm typing this up on a library computer right now and sending it to someone to post online. People will think I'm crazy.

maybe they won't even post it but I want to at least try to tell the rest of you I don't think I'm going to resist any more after this is sent I'll have my story out there as best as I can I guess I could try to tell you how to find me somehow

some way but it doesn't want people to find me to try to stop me and I don't really want to be stopped I want to go back to the gray. You see, whenever I come into contact with water now, it starts to turn gray. If I wait into a stream, it starts with the water around me and spreads out from there. If I stay in long enough, the whole stream turns gray, that familiar shade from the other place.

I can drink it, and it tastes like home. I don't know why it chose me, but I know what it wants for me. I can't go back to the gray, but I'm going to bring the gray here. It wants me to follow that stream to a river. Then I'm going to follow that river to the ocean. And then I'm just going to throw myself in. I don't know what happens after that. but I have a feeling that it'll start to rain gray for the rest of you, too.

For your bonus episode, creepy presents, ghosts of my past, written by Ray Daly, and narrated by Cole Burkart. Something I always swore as a kid. If time travel ever became safe and affordable, I'd go back to see what haunted my childhood home. The family moved there before I was born and lived there until I was six, and it was crazy haunted by at least two ghosts. Of this, I am 100% certain. I'd woken up to find the white old lady sitting on the end of my bed one night. I had no clue who she was.

I'd never seen her face before. She simply smiled at me, and I went back to sleep. I wasn't scared by her, or the fact that a mysterious strange woman was sitting on my bed in the middle of the night. She wasn't the problem, though. That was the other ghost, the one who roamed the landing trying to get into any open room. We called it the dark man. No one in the house ever saw it, just a trace of a dark shadow. The energy felt masculine and extremely angry.

At what or who, only it knew. So I'll give you a quick science and history lesson. Time travel will be invented in 2024. By 2026, it'll be available to anyone over the age of 26. The age the world governing council set as being responsible enough to understand the consequences of your actions. If you're reading this after 2024, and time travel hasn't been invented yet, bad news. You've fallen into a branch in reality.

Those happen more often than you believe. The rules of time travel should respect the butterfly effect. Even though physics has proved it to be an impossible concept, nothing you do in the past changes the future. Whatever has happened will always happen, whether you were there in the original timeline or not. I know this contradicts branching realities, but the physics of time travel isn't set in stone. It's still being written and revised on a daily basis. Probably more often, if science is truly being honest with us. 1974.

I've checked my memory as best I can, and also consulted various siblings who are still alive. I go back in summer, during June, the 17th, I found out later. Targeting standards can't quite dial in precisely, so I'm not merely invisible. I can also walk through things like doors. As I understand it, there's a decent enough fractional percentage of temporal matching to allow me to walk upstairs and not fall through the floor. While I land close, I still have to walk a mile to get to the house.

At least I can just stroll right inside and don't have to wait for someone to open the door. I laugh at mere doors. I'm not concerned with downstairs. Nothing paranormal ever happened down there. Also, the house is completely empty. My past self is at a nursery with mum, who also worked there. Dad and the two oldest brothers are also at work. Everyone else is at school.

Upstairs, it's immediately obvious I am not alone in the house. I see a shadow, some subtle and furtive movement out of the corner of my eye a few times. I can hear footsteps too, clear and near to me. It's almost like he is doing his level best not to be seen by me. I take a few readings for the time band. Hopefully, with this data, I'll be able to land inside or nearer to the house on my next trip. It's weird seeing my family arrive home, all looking so young, almost 50 years younger. I hang around until 4 a.m.

Surprisingly, the white lady doesn't make an appearance. While I certainly hear door handles being checked, there's no sign. it's the dark man. I only know this because I spent a good 20 minutes strolling around the landing to try and catch whatever is the source of the activity. As I hit the daily limits, the time band pulls me back into 2026. Everything is as it was. Hillary Clinton is still president, King Charles still rules the UK. The butterfly effect is merely an idea by Ray Bradbury. I spend a week, going over the data from the time band. It's my connection to the present day, whilst in the past. As physics has constantly evolved, so has our understanding of time. It used to be that

things could only exist as one state of matter. Then theories were postulated. Things were either a particle or a wave, but what if they could be both at the same time? A wave a soul. And from that humble, concept, we were finally able to unlock time travel. The amount of power required to send a solid body backwards is incredible. But slightly phase shifted so the body has no mass but is still a quantum event, billions of times less energy is required. Less than it takes to boil a kettle. A reference for the history students there. Anyway, we were able to create a small enough device to tether a person as a quantum event to a specific point in time. The further back you go, the weaker the signal is. We found that about 60 years is as far as we've felt

safe going. There are rumors people have tried to go further. Rumors, the time travel community do their best to quash. We aren't sure what happened to those travelers. None have ever returned. I managed to tune in my landing, refining the signal until I can finally land outside of the front door every time. That takes 15 attempts. Most of them put me within a couple streets for the house. One of them lands me in a house half a mile away. I can't say if the occupants detect my presence or not, but their pets certainly do. I run through their front. door before either dog decides they want me for dinner. It's not like you can simply go up to the house 50-something years later and ask, was this house ever haunted? People would think you were insane. Correctly so. Many times in my life, I had wanted to revisit the old house in person,

knock, and asked that very same question to whoever lived there. I know from my brother that no one has ever lived there as long as we did. We called it home for almost a decade. Since we moved out, 15 other families have lived there. The shortest spent only nine weeks, the longest, after us, that is, spent the best part of three years there, desperately trying to be rehomed from the week they moved in.

When I finally go back, it's for a whole day. I arrive in the front garden, mere feet from the front door. I guess that landing will require a little refinement. Again, I'll have to check my decimal places. It's early evening, according to my local chronometer. Ah, it's June 17th. Again. I pull up the record of my first trip,

and began checking the various waveforms and readings. Sure enough, temporal particles are present. Unbeknownst to me, I was already here. Am here. Will be here? Will has been here? Temporal grammar gets confusing. It's simple. There's another version of me, already in the house,

the one who had to walk a mile to get here. Unfortunately, for him, I know everywhere he's going to be. I can use the shadows to ensure he doesn't see me. Then, I realized, the footsteps he was hearing were mine, stepping far enough away to not register on his time band's detector. Okay, one mystery solved. I dial my phase shift just beyond his ability to detect. I'm barely able to keep myself from slipping through the floor.

If I push much further, there's a danger I'll end up going right through the damn ground and spinning off into space lost in time forever. In the end, I run along the decimal places, finding a sweet spot where I am barely able to stay on this level. My previous self checks the time far too often. A few times I bump into doors. Oh, I know that sound by now, so that wasn't handles being checked. It was me trying to hide from that bloody idiot myself. Hang on, am I the dark man?

Only seen as a shadow heard as footsteps, movement? Surely not. He pushed me down the stairs when I was a kid. I wouldn't have deliberately done that to myself. I know. It's still a source of personal falling-related trauma. I did myself a few hours after the, other me is gone. There's no movement in the house at all. Not the dead or living. No time travelers either.

Is the house even haunted? Have I debunked that idea? My childhood self was hearing me, hiding from another temporal version of myself. Eventually, the time band pulls me back, leaving lots to think about. Okay, logical conclusion. I need a witness. Someone impartial. A total skeptic not influenced by the idea of ghosts at all. So, I asked a work colleague, Maggie,

someone who I know is all about science. I don't mention anything about ghosts. purely that it's an experiment in temporal observation. Exactly the kind of thing she'll be interested. And I'm right. As we travel, we hold hands. Not for intimate reasons. I want to ensure she lands where I do,

as she has no idea about the location. We arrive mere inches away from the front door, and it's open. Mum's bringing shopping inside, followed closely by my yunder self. I checked my time band. July 10th, 1974.

No chance of running into another temporal copy here, unless I make this trip again in the future. I take us upstairs right away and find a quiet spot where we shouldn't disturb any of the family. While it requires a little shifting around as various people go to bed, we eventually settle on a spot.

However, I'm concerned about my yonder self. I know I can't watch him. I don't have any memories of the dark man in our room as a child. I asked Maggie to take up station by my bed and warn her in case the white lady appears. She's in my room with the door closed, but we can communicate through the time bans.

I walked around the landing, examining every inch of the place, while taking stands on every frequency and wavelength I can think of. If the time ban can stand or detect it, I'm getting records to take back with me. It is worth saying, not to the future. The future doesn't exist and never will. I'm from the present. Whilst that is constantly moving away from the past, it will never be far enough to become. the future. No one is ever going back to the future is what I'm telling you. We've been quiet for an hour. When Maddie alerts me, there's a technical problem with her time ban, some kind of temporal meshing overload, so I'd go and take a look. Oh boy. Maddie's sitting on the

bed exactly where I remember her, glowing white from the overload, subatomic meshing. It's a class passage sign. My underself waits and sees her. I assume he's so focused on her that he doesn't see me standing by the door. Maddie smiles at him, to reassure him she means no harm. Damn it. Precisely how I remember. My underself closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. I quickly motion for Maggie to come outside. You're the white lady. That's what it was. Clearly, we'll make this trip together at least three or four more times. And that's precisely what happens.

On one trip, my time band fails, and I remain in the present as Maggie finds herself back in my room. I've given her specific instructions. Never speak to my under-self. Either stand by the bed or sit on the end. If he wakes up, smile, and wait. If he doesn't go to sleep, trigger the return sequence. That's clearly what I witnessed when she vanished once. I was four, I couldn't possibly comprehend the fact that a time traveler from my future had just returned there.

I didn't start watching Doctor Who until I was about five or six, so no clue about science fiction or time travel until then. We made several more trips. Maggie is concerned by the temporal overall overall overall. on her time band. I reassure her that's exactly as it should be. On our final trip, it happens. I've got the time band on a broad spectrum, set to detect other temporal signs other than ours. I'm trying to ensure that Maddie's time band doesn't overload too much, and we arrive somewhere I don't want to be. July 10th, 1974. Seven hours late, than our previous arrival.

I spent three hours playing temporal chest against the other version of myself. Of course, it's an accident. Other future me is stirring around the landing, dead set on finding the dark man. I step backwards. My time ban is synced with maggies, so my phase shift is far enough

that I can still physically interact with other solid matter. I don't see past me. There's enough temporal essence to interact with him. From memory, it always felt like a push or shove, hard, deliberate, spiteful, intent on causing me harm. Until then, I don't realize I am merely trying to avoid my other future self. That's the one thing I know for certain we never see. see each other, my past self never sees any of us either. I have a strong recollection of immediately

looking up the stairs to see who pushed me. I'm not able to confirm with my siblings if anyone found me at the bottom of the stairs, and my memory isn't clear on that either. I've collected more than enough data when Maggie and I returned to the present for the final time. The past holds no more mysteries for me. I was haunted. myself. Ghosts don't exist. Those I've been able to trace records of all appear to be time travelers. Temporal dynamics allow for a certain scale of interaction with the equipment they use. In all, I logged 32 journeys back to my old house. Only one thing remains left to explain. Who were all the other tenants seeing there?

I can account for every sighting and interaction while we lived there. Those were all me, or Maggie, and she's assured me she has no further interest in my time-travel experiments. So if it wasn't her, what else is left? Science has been able to explain many things. However, the universe still has mysteries left to solve. 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.

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