Creepy - Her Mother's Love & Lost in the Woods

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Her Mother's Love***Written by: Chrissy Winters and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***CW: multiple deaths of children, body horror***Lost In The Woods***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***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.

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. which listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents.

Her mother's love. Written by Chrissy Winters and narrated by Rissa Montanez. It is said that secrets fester and expand in the darkness. And truth brings light to the musty corners of our flawed souls. That takes courage, though, doesn't it?

To shine light on our own dark secrets. But this isn't a story about redemption. It's about the lengths one will go to to, to keep the lights turned off. My teenage daughter Mia and her best friend Jane were downstairs, laughing and listening to music in our comfy basement. The occasional waft of marijuana flowed up into the atmosphere. An odd sense of pride came over me, that my daughter wasn't afraid to experiment with things under my roof.

that she felt secure with me. As I sat on my sofa, feet tucked underneath me with my nightly glass of wine. The hairs on my arm stood up, and a chill ran down my spine. Taking a deep breath, I steadied my thoughts and fears and set my glass down on the table.

Those kids must be hungry. I stood and made my way down to the basement to grab a pizza from the freezer. As I descended the stairs, my ears searched for them. Their voices had hushed, and the music stopped. Quickening my pace, I entered the rec room silently. The plush carpet caressed my toes with every step. My mouth fell open, but I quickly composed myself in plastered a cool mom smile on my face.

Sitting on the floor in front of a dark television, their ponytailed heads huddled over a Ouichiport. Suddenly, Jane jerkily stood, her eyes bulged, her hand raised to her mouth. There was a look of desperation on her face. She took quick steps toward the bathroom, but her efforts were futile. Vomit erupted and assaulted my beige carpet. Heavy and shaking, her gags echoed in the basement as my daughter and I watched, helplessly. Green bile, putrid and forceful, relentlessly exited her body. The smell

burned my nose and turned my stomach. My thoughts for a moment mourned my plush carpeting. But then I glanced at the Ouija board. My daughter's fingers hovered over the heart-shaped planchette which spun, and it was spinning on its own. I knew it was taunting. and I could sense its glee. Finally, Jane collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. Her eyes were red and teary, and her skin, a ghostly white. I went straight into caring mom mode, blaming the marijuana in Jane's empty stomach.

We put the girl to bed in our spare bedroom to sleep it off. Mia and I then did our best to clean up the mess. Neither one of us had touched the Ouija board. And I swore it glowed up at us from the floor where it sat splattered and vomit. Mommy? Mia whispered when I turned off the steamer vac and lift the dirty water canister off to dump into the toilet. Jane wasn't drunk. I don't think it was the weed either.

Oh, well, it could have been food poisoning, or the flu. No, she rasped. Mia at that moment was both more vulnerable and more adult than I'd ever seen her. My stomach turned at the inevitability of that night. What a fool I'd been. The Ouija board glint in the corner of my eye. We found the board at a thrift shop today. Thought it would be fun to play with, but...

My heart shoved blood through my body, and it thundered in my ears. I wanted to comfort my daughter. to reassure her that Ouija words were a gimmick. But I wanted to know what happened. We started talking to it, and... She paused for a moment. I recognized the embarrassment in her expression. It started spelling things out.

It told us its name was... Joe. My heart plummeted, and I waited on bated breath for my daughter to finish. her story. Jane thought it was all bullshit. She didn't want to play. She didn't believe the board's power,

and she got mad at me. She thought I was messing with her. Notting. I tried to keep a placid look on my face, tried to ease my daughter's anxieties as she told me of her experience. It spelled out the word bitch, and then the word

liar. Mia looked at her feet. Her heart-covered socks were damp from standing on the wet carpet. She got sick. And that's when you came down. My tongue rubbed on the roof of my dry mouth. It felt like sandpaper. Just a coincidence, honey.

Those boards are gimmicks. It was likely something she ate. Or the flu? Oh, poor girl. Let's get cleaned up and put on pajamas, okay? But mom, Mia, it was a coincidence. My voice was shriller than I intended. I softened my remark with a reassuring look. Mia seemed to accept my answer, and we went up the stairs. We checked on Jane who had perked up after drinking ginger ale. She seemed unaffected by the gruesome ordeal

and begged me not to tell her mother that she'd been sick. She had swim practice in the morning and didn't want to miss it. I agreed and insisted on getting an Uber for her, telling her we'd drop her bike off in the morning. After Jane was gone, Mia and I lay in my bed

and watch sitcoms until she fell asleep. When I was sure, I wouldn't wake her. I quietly made my way downstairs to the basement. Despite our best efforts, it still wreaked of vomit. But that wasn't my worry, narrowing my eyes on the Ouija board. I grabbed it, as well as the box that I found on the couch and marched upstairs. Gathering supplies, I went outside to our fire pit. The air was cool, and the air. The grass was dewy on my bare feet, and clouds gently muted the stars. Swiftly and with confidence, I threw the Ouija board onto the fire pit, doused it with lighter fluid, and threw in a match.

The area around the board ignite immediately into an angry blaze, and at first it looked like the board wouldn't burn. The flames danced and leapt around it as I waited with my jaw clenched, until it finally called. a spark and began to burn. Satisfied that my job was done, I glanced up at the bedroom window where my daughter slept. Mia would be safe. That's all that mattered. That my baby was safe. I walked back into the house. After checking on Mia, who lay in a peaceful slumber, I then went back down to the basement and into the storage room. where I unlocked a steel box that contained a picture of an ultrasound. Of twins.

The pregnancy had been easy until it wasn't. I was carrying a boy and a girl. Joe and Mia. I wanted them both. I swear I did, but they made me choose. And I knew a daughter would never hurt me the way a son could. My father had hurt me. and so had my brother.

So when I was asked to give up one, it wasn't a hard choice to make. The exchange was made, one child's soul, to spare another. I was in a torturous labor and delivered my babies at a temple, crowded amongst black-robed followers.

He was born perfectly formed and only cried once before they took him away. Joe My Joe After all these years He had found his way back to me I put the ultrasound picture back into the box locking it up before going upstairs

The sound of Mia snoring comforted me But I still couldn't get him out of my mind He'd come Which made my heart lurch with both love and fear How much of a threat was he? Could he forgive me? Falling into a frenzied sleep that was interrupted by the ringing of my phone, I quickly exit the room, not wanting to wake Mia.

It was Jane's mother. She was hysterical. The Uber had been in an accident and had caught on fire. The driver alone escaped. And the first responders couldn't put the fire out. Jane had been reduced to an unrecognizable pile of ash. She was dead. I couldn't offer the woman any comfort.

It was horrible. Who was to bear the blame? Her wailing became so powerful, droning on and encircled me. Soon I found myself standing in a tunnel of her raw grief and took it on as my own. Suddenly it stopped. and I heard a baby crying, meek, yearning and fleeting, then a voice familiar and sinister.

I wanted to hang up, but instead I gripped my phone with my clammy hands, the voice from my childhood, the one I'd given a piece of my soul to, in exchange for being left alone, a piece of my flesh, except it never really did she'll always be alone your daughter will have no one only you that's what you wanted this will be the fate of anyone who comes into her life that's the curse of her mother's love if she can't have me she won't have anyone, except for you, dear mother. It's what you wanted. My secrets were all an escape from the darkness that I could never escape from. Creepy presents, lost in the woods, written by known of consequence, and narrated by Danielle Hewitt.

The first thing I was aware of was the rapid rise and fall of my chest as I took in heaping gulps of air. My body was on fire. Sweat poured down my skin and I was so tired. As I opened my eyes, I saw monstrous trees towering over me as I lay on the ground. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't recall what had brought me to that point. It got worse when I realized I couldn't remember anything at all. Not where I was, how I got there. Or even what the damn date was. I continued to lay there for several minutes, concentrating on my breathing.

I kept telling myself it was the adrenaline coursing through my blood. It had flooded my brain and caused some serious confusion. No one wakes up out of breath like they've been running a marathon. Everything I was experiencing and could feel told me I'd been running. Not just any kind of running, but full speed and not holding anything back. I've never been much of a runner, so I couldn't have gotten very far. My eyes remained open the whole time, but I wasn't focusing on anything. As my breathing got slower, I started paying attention to what I was seeing.

The trees were enormously tall. The bark looked a lot like pine cone if you flattened it out, so the scales weren't sticking out. It took me a minute to realize that they were pine trees. The lowest branches I could see were over seven feet high. At least, that's how it looked with me lying on the ground. Waiting until I can hold a breath for longer than a few seconds, I slowly started getting up.

I didn't get far before a dizzy spell hit me with the subtlety of a Mack truck. It was so disorienting that the most I could do was just sit there. At least then, if I fell, I didn't have far to go. The world kept threatening to tumble over, and I wanted to throw up. It was the single most disorienting experience of my.

life. As things started to stay level, I kept to a sitting position as I looked around. For as far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but tall, thick tree trunks. Light filtered in through the thick canopy of leaves, but it was an eerie blue, as if it was the twilight hour. I couldn't recall seeing anything like it before. Pain began to throb on my forehead, and I reached up a hand. As soon as I touched the exposed skin, I was forced to take my hand away. There was an angry spot directly in the middle, a bloody gash that left smears of red on my fingertips. It didn't appear to be a free-flowing wound, but considering how deep it was, it should have been. I was afraid bone was exposed, but thankfully, there were no reflective surfaces around.

for me to see it. I checked myself for any other wounds but found nothing. I did come across a black bandana in one of my pockets. And not sure what else to do, I tied it around my head to cover the gash. It was better than leaving it exposed to the elements. As I lowered my hands from the back of my head, I realized that there was some discomfort at my throat. The skin there felt tender to touch.

like the skin was freshly bruised. I didn't know what to make of it, so I decided to ignore it. There was so much I couldn't make sense of. Able to get to my feet, I looked around more thoroughly, finally able to look behind me. Know what I didn't see? A branch low enough for me to have hit my head on. There weren't any rocks on the ground that my head might have bounced off of either.

The only thing that might have caused the gash in the way of, my head with some exposed roots sticking up from the ground. Closer inspection didn't reveal any with blood smears near where I had been lying, so I was at a loss. Getting frustrated with not finding a source from my wound, a thought occurred to me. If I'd been running fast enough to run into something that caused me to do so much damage to myself, what had I been running from? You don't run that fast unless you're doing some kind of time sprint, or if something is chasing you. I immediately turned around to look behind me again. I half expected to see some ominous figure in a black cloak standing there with some kind of large,

bladed weapon in their hands. But there was nothing. Surely if something had been chasing me, it would have caught up in the 15 minutes I'd been in that spot. Or at least, that's how long I'd think. thought I'd been there. My watch was missing, so I had no idea how long I was really there, or what time it was for that matter. That was just another thing I found odd. The only time I ever take off my watch is in the shower. The ground was nothing more than dirt and dead pine needles. I looked around for any sign of which way I'd come, but there wasn't one. The ground looked

completely undisturbed, which didn't make any sense. Even the tallest man in the world would have left a discernible trail that I'd had seen from that spot, either footprints, or at very least disturbed pine needles. But everything looked the same. I was completely lost. I picked a random direction and started walking. The woods were oddly quiet. My football is the only thing I could hear. Usually you can hear birds chirping, insects making their typical racket, but there was none of that. Of everything that had happened up to that point, I found that to be truly disturbing. Where there's life, there's noise. It's a plain and simple truth. One, most people don't realize until someone points it out. My father had pointed it out to me when I was nine years.

old. And it's one of those things that always stuck with me. As I walked, I kept my eyes open for anything that looked out of place. Even the smallest disturbances in the fallen pine needles and dirt, everything appeared completely perfect, as if no one had ever walked through these woods before. Not just people, but no animals either. Even the most uninhabitable places on earth are home to some kind of critters. Though those tend to be mean little bastards you wouldn't want to accidentally come across. Seriously, though, at that point, I would have been okay coming across the largest rattlesnake in the world. Any sign of life would have been welcome.

The feeling of isolation was starting to get to me as time went on. Everything was looking exactly the same, and it was unnerving the shit out of me. It's not that there was a uniformity to the trees. They weren't evenly spaced or anything obviously planned like that. There was a consistency in the randomness. Almost like it started to repeat itself after a few hundred yards. With that much distance, I couldn't be completely sure. But the idea kept nagging at me.

I was even starting to expect to come across the spot where I first found myself. I knew I wasn't going in circles for the simple, that I was walking in a straight line. However, the thought that I might have been stuck in some kind of continuous loop was really getting to me. So I decided to do something about it. The problem was there wasn't anything on the ground that I could use to mark my trail. Aside from dragging my feet in the dirt, which seemed incredibly unappealing, I started looking up. None of the branches were low enough for me to get at from the ground. Walking up to a trunk, I found it to be nearly perfectly round.

Now, having been a kid that played outside every chance I got growing up, I knew how to climb a tree like that. The fact that I only had to get about eight or nine feet off the ground made it easier. Shimmying my way up, I reached the first branch. And damn, that thing was thick. It had to have been at least six inches thick. It held my weight easily enough, and I stood on it while holding nearby smaller branches. I had to slowly walk farther and farther away from the trunk

to find something thin enough for me to try to break off. It's hard to break off a living branch. Living limbs tend to bend pretty far before breaking. By the time I finally found something small enough, I'd gone more than ten feet away from the trunk. That seemed pretty damn far for me, and the branch under my feet was considerably thinner that far out. It amazed me that the branch hadn't started to bend, at all, which I found odd. You'd think at that point I'd stop finding things odd since every damn thing was odd.

But things were unnerving me more and more. If I hadn't managed to break off a one-inch-thick branch, I'm pretty sure I'd lost my shit in that tree. Breaking the branch had been a little easier than I had originally anticipated, which is probably why I fell out of the tree. For the second time in two hours, I found myself lying on the ground staring up at insanely large trees. I even started to wonder if that's what happened to me before, and the gash of my head had been the result of me smacking my head against a branch on the way down.

Had I tried to break a branch off then, too? You know what they say about insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I quickly dismissed the possibility that I was going insane. First off, I don't have a new wound on my head, or anywhere else as far as I can tell. Second, the broken branch was still clutched in my left hand. There hadn't been a broken branch the first time. On top of that, I wasn't struggling to get my breathing under control.

Getting to my feet was quicker that time, and I quickly reoriented myself by finding my lazy footprints in the dirt. Pointing myself back in the direction I'd been walking before, I continued on, dragging the branch behind me. I wanted to make sure that if I was stuck in some kind of weird loop, I'd be able to find my trail easily. In addition to leaving a large disturbance in the dirt and pine needles, I used the broken end of the branch to scratch a big X into the every tree I passed on my right that came within touching distance. It would be hard for someone to erase my big-ass trail, but not impossible. That's where the X's come in. It's a lot harder to cover up scratches and tree bark than covering up an obvious trail on the ground.

Without my watch, it was hard to tell how long I kept up that pace. You'd think I could mark the passage of time with changes in the light. But that's the thing. The light hadn't changed from the first moment I became aware of my surroundings. And I knew that it had been at least three hours prior. My nerves were shot and I was losing what little calm I had left. On the verge of screaming my head off, that's when I started hearing it. It started off as soft whispers on the wind, too far away to make out any words, but I could hear them.

I looked around, but still there was nothing. to see. Aside from the sound of the broken branch dragging on the ground in my own footsteps, there were no other signs of life. I couldn't even tell which direction the whispers were coming from. The last of my calm was seeping away, and I increased my pace. The sound of the branch dragging on the ground got louder, but it didn't seem to drown out the whispers like it should have. my pace continued to increase, and so did the branch's noise. No matter how fast I got or how loud the noise behind me got, I couldn't drown out the whispers.

Even when my head started pounding and the gash on my forehead started throbbing, nothing could get rid of the whispers. I began to feel tremendous pressure on my forehead, right over the damn wound. It was like someone was pressing down on the gash, trying to stop the bleeding. But there wasn't anyone around to do it. The funny thing was, the wound hadn't bled the entire time I was there.

The bandana that covered it wasn't saturated in blood. And aside from red smears on my fingertips when I initially touched it, there'd been no indication that the wound bled at all. Things just kept getting weirder and weirder. The pressure on my forehead reached a certain point, and it hurt like hell. but once it got to that point, it didn't get any worse. It simply became a constant thing, like the feeling of the bandana on it had.

Part of me wondered if I'd be able to take the bandana off, or if it was being held in place by the unseen force. I decided to leave it alone. If what little blood was there had dried onto the fabric, peeling it off would only make it bleed. I had enough to deal with without adding an actively bleeding head wound. Those distant whispers were getting louder,

almost to the point where I could understand them. For some reason, it was like I was listening to someone speak while they were underwater. No matter how loud it got, the distortion kept me from being able to understand the words. Or even if it was my language. At one point,

it nearly sounded like the whispers were counting, and I started to feel something else. It was so alarming that I stopped cold in my tracks. Like the invisible force on my head, something pressed hard on my chest. I felt like I was getting my ass kicked by the invisible man. I even brought my arms up, but it didn't block the hits from coming. They hit me solidly in the chest every time. The assault stopped for a moment, just when my vision was. was getting blurry around the edges. For a moment, I thought I was going to faint. But then I caught a movement in the corner of my eye, whirling around to face it.

I saw a black shape scurrying behind the trees. It wasn't close enough for me to get any details, even if my vision wasn't blurry. All I could tell was the damn thing moved really fast. I was having trouble keeping it in my sight. Every time I got whatever it was, nearly centered in my line of sight, it moved. And it wasn't always the same direction. At one point it even went up a little, as if it was climbing a tree, just as easily as it ran across the ground. It made me think of those times when you catch sight of those squiggly lines in your eye.

No matter how hard you try to keep it in your vision, it keeps moving, as if trying to escape. The only thing was, the black shape was getting closer. I was no longer frozen in place. My feet started moving again. But this time, I didn't bother dragging the branch behind me. It would have only slowed me down. And I knew I needed as much speed as I could to put distance between me and the black thing. Part of me knew I wasn't going to be able to outrun it.

And that was before I felt the assault that my chest start up again. The hits knocked me off balance, but I fought to keep my legs underneath me. I'd stumble on the flat ground, trip on roots that poked up from the dirt, and use passing tree trunks to try and write myself. I honestly don't know if I was running as fast as I thought I was, or if my brain's ability to comprehend what was happening was getting worse. Even the details of the trees, which had been so damn clear to me from the beginning. We're starting to get blurry. I stagger ran through the woods, panic full-blown at that point.

Not only was I completely lost, but I was being chased by something that I couldn't identify while losing focus of my surroundings. The only thing I could actually tell was that the light seemed to be getting brighter than that odd blue twilight. It gave me a sense of hope, even while my focus continued to get worse.

I began to think that this is what it must have been like, to be aware while passing out. Only I didn't get that far. There wasn't enough of my faculties left to discern if my foot got caught on an exposed route, or if that black mass had hit me from behind. All I know for sure is that I took another tumble. I ended up on my side that time, the bright light shining on my face from above, and the assault on my chest finally stopped. The trees must have gotten less dense at that point.

But the light was too bright for me to even see outlines. Then it all went away. That black shape was on top of me, pressing me into the ground. It felt like my whole body was being slowly smashed into the dirt. Thinking back on it, I guess you could say it was like that thing was trying to bury me. But instead of sticking me in a hole in the ground, it was like it was trying to press me through the dirt. Hard to imagine, but that's the impression I was getting.

Just when the pressure was too much for me to handle, a new kind of pain erupted in my chest. I can't describe it, other than it hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. And I felt like I was on the verge of dying. Between the pressure on my body and the jolt to my chest, I couldn't draw in a breath. I was suffocating. right there on the forest floor. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. The jolt came again,

and the black figure above me randomly drifted away. I didn't understand why. The thing had me dead to rights. It could have killed me so easily. But it didn't. Then I felt a third jolt, and the bright light above me went away too. The last thing I remember was the towering pine trees above me.

and a thought occurred to me for the first time. In all that time in the woods, not once did I see a pine cone. I came to, delirious and confused as hell. There were flashing lights all over the place and people yelling. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but there was urgency in the voices. Some were far away. Others were right in my face. The world was dark, and I tried to breathe, but it was damn hard.

My throat was on fire. My head throbbed in agony, and my world was pain. With everything going on at that point, I realized everything I felt in the woods had been muted. I actually missed that. It took several days for me to recover enough for someone to tell me what the hell happened. I'd been leaving work when someone came up to me. me in the parking lot. What I'd mistaken for a mugger or a carjacker had actually been some crazy douchebag with murderous intent. The asshole chased me into the woods right next to my

office building, and I caught a tree branch to the head. A patrol car happened to see us going into the woods, and they came across the asshole as he was choking me to death. All my life, I've heard stories of people surviving near-death experience and talking about seeing a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Me? I got to see an endless forest, but there had been a bright light toward the end of my time there. I can still see those woods when I close my eyes. And sometimes, that black shape is there too. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com.

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