Creepy - If You See This Man On The Side Of The Road & Don't Eat Today's Special

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

If you see this man on the side of the road, don't drive home***Written by: rick_the_intern and Narrated by: Nate dufort***Don't Eat Today's Special***Written by: hellohellohelphello and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Find our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastors 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 books. violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. If you see this man on the side of the road, don't drive home. Written by Rick the intern and narrated by Nate Dufort. We have this urban legend in my city called the Wrong Way Man. Supposedly, you might see him standing on the side of the road when you're driving. Some say it's always when you're on your way home. I've seen pictures of the wrong way, man. They circulate among us by text message.

They circulate among students, workers, friends, and family here. Oddly, I've never seen any of these pictures posted online. I'm not sure if it's because of fear, because those who've taken the pictures want to perpetuate the mystique of our local urban legend, Or because of something else. I was pretty sure those pictures had been a hoax, just so undressed up as the wrong way man. Maybe it was the same person every time.

As far as what the wrong way man looks like, he wears his tattered clothing backwards, usually a flannel shirt and jeans. His painted smiling face looks eerily realistic, until he turns to the side and you can see it's a small. smooth surface. It seems that he shaves his hair off, paints a face over the back of his head, and puts a shoulder length wig on that covers up his real face.

Those who I've met who claim to have spotted the wrong way, man, say they waited a week before driving home, staying over at a friend's house or a hotel, and not even bothering to go home to pack a suitcase. I've also heard, though, that you need to wait a month. The common consensus seems to be if you see him while driving home, don't finish the drive home. Turn around, go somewhere else, and wait for at least a week. I thought it was a bunch of nonsense. until my date and I saw the wrong way man when we were going back to my house from the movies. It was Katie who spotted him. Slow down, she said.

I think I see that wrong way man you told me about. Katie had only lived in my city for half a year, so one of the things I had told her on my quest to share with her as many interesting things as I could had been our local urban legend about the wrong way man. Was it a coincidence that we'd just been talking about him a few days before? I'd never seen someone dressed as the wrong way man in person. Picture, sure, but never in person. My foot was shaking as I eased up on the gas. It was dark, nearing midnight dark, and there were no other streetlights, or they were off. My car's headlights lit them up.

On the side of the road, he was facing us. Actually, he had his back to us. That painted face was facing us. The jeans and flannel shirt and wig were all turned our way as well. His arms and legs looked wrong. They were shoved down in his clothing the opposite way. I wanted to be amused, but... I was alarmed, and we got to be about ten feet away in my car.

He turned his painted head towards us. Those painted eyes, realistic but forever held too wide, seemed to be staring right into mine. As we drove slowly by, I waved to him and laughed to try to ease some of the tension. He did not wave back. I looked at Katie. She was waving, too, but she wasn't laughing. I glanced back in time to see the slick side of that person's shaved, painted head,

and the optical illusion of a real face being there was shattered. Shattered, but somehow worse for it. Also, when I peered into the rearview mirror as we increased our distance, I thought I saw something glinting beneath the shoulder-length wig-hear. War. Then, he was gone. Lost to the darkness. I picked up speed. He hadn't been walking, but somehow I was worried he would come after us too quickly. So what do we do now, Katie said. We can't go to your home or mine. I glanced at her, and soon we both started laughing. Well, I said, after tonight we'll be able to tell everyone around that we saw the wrong way man

and went immediately home. I wonder who was pretending to be the wrong way, Katie said. I wonder why they were doing it. Do you think we should turn back around and try to talk to them? I'd rather we didn't, I said. They could be dangerous, but I'm sure it's just someone looking to keep the urban legend alive. "'It's your car,' Katie said. "'But—'

"'If it was mine, all right,' I said. "'We'll turn back around. "'My grandpa used to say, "'if you're in doubt which turn to make, "'you can always take a U-turn until you figure things out. "'He used that as a metaphor for life. "'But as I did my U-turn, "'my heart was thrashing in my chest.

"'We drove down the entirety of that dark, Street without seeing that person again. It was a couple of miles long in that direction, so there's no way they could have walked or run the distance so quickly. Katie and I decided that the person dressed as the wrong way, man, must have left the shoulder of the road for the surrounding woods. The idea of them hiding in the woods as we drove by again made me feel like I had spiders crawling over my flesh.

We did another U-turn, and during that whole time, I had to go ahead. glancing around in case that person jumped at us out of nowhere. But soon, we're heading back in the direction of my house, with no second look at the wrong way, man. Katie and I tried to laugh it out, and we tried talking about other things, but both of us were pretty scared. We can stop chatting about everything and nothing,

or glancing out the windows or into our side mirrors. We turned into my subdivision. Then we turned on to my street And everything changed As soon as we turned onto my street We started to go backwards instead of forwards Did you put it in reverse? Katie said Her hand was gripping my arm

It was cold as ice I stopped the car Both of us were looking down The car was in drive I took my foot off of the brake And put it onto the gas pedal again The houses, familiar houses I saw every day when coming home or moving away from us.

Maybe there's something wrong with my car, I said. But then I tried driving forward again. I looked to the side and then in the rearview mirror, but we were not moving, not according to those views. In front of us, the house has receded every time I put my foot on the gas. But from the side and rear, it appeared that we were standing still. On my street everything was well lit. There were tons of street lights,

so we couldn't argue it away as if it had anything to do with limited visibility. Katie said. Her voice was almost a whisper. Yeah, I said in a similar way. But how are we going to leave? Put it in reverse. When I put my car in reverse and tried then, we actually move forward.

But to the side and rear once again, we seemed to have not moved like we were caught just past the entrance to my neighborhood. It was when Katie and I stopped the car and were debating about getting out that we spotted someone coming towards us on the sidewalk.

They were approaching us from the front of the vehicle, so I'm not sure how accurate the distance was. It seemed like they were already about 20 feet away. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but maybe it was because I didn't want to. But I recognized my neighbor by the back of his head and by his body shape, which was somewhat atypical.

I'd seen him often stooped, working in his garden while I was driving by. He was walking backwards towards us. When he got closer, he stopped. Then he began shouting, Ample, Emple! Over and over again, standing stock still his back to us.

Only later what I realized had he been saying, Help me in reverse. I rolled down the window. Mr. Nelson, I said. What's the matter? He stopped shouting. Now that my window was down, I could hear his body creak and snap.

Blood poured out of the fissures as the joints of his arms and legs changed drastically. When Mr. Nelson, Nelson's head twisted all the way around towards us. I was sure I saw the light go out of his eyes. Then whatever had taken over, Mr. Nelson, made a first step forward with a new architecture of his body. Katie and I both began to scream at that first step.

I rolled up the window as Mr. Nelson loped around on strange and human legs. His kneecaps and elbows had become stretched and exaggerated from being reversed. I put my foot on the gas, with the car still in reverse, and through the front windows we seemed to be careening forward, even though a glance out the sides of the rear view showed us to still be stationary. We slammed into Mr. Nelson. Blood slashed across the windshield. The car rose and fell as he went over his body. To the sides in rear, there was no indication of the car rising and falling. I did not see a lump appear behind us. I kept my foot on the gas, still, going forward in reverse.

I saw a window of a neighbor's house shatter. A couple I barely recognized crawled out like baby spiders out of eggs, leaking blood and more blood as they scrape themselves against the shards in the window frame. I don't think it was that they didn't know how to open windows. When the wife paused in the window, she smiled. She intentionally rubbed her scalp against a particularly sharp-looking piece of glass. Meat and blood came away. I think I could see the white of her skull.

By then her husband was already on the ground running towards us. I sped forward. They in their house vanished in the sides and rear of the vehicle, which were again still stuck near the street's entrance. More people were coming out of their homes. They came out all twisted and broken, damaging themselves further as they exited. They ran towards us on backwards legs,

churning their backwards arms. Everything about them was the wrong way. Before long, I found myself slamming on the brakes. Keep going, Katie yelled. They're going to catch up with us. Ahead I saw my own driveway. Someone that looked like me was talking to another person with a painted face. The painted face nodded.

Up and down, it nodded like a real face would do. Then, when I saw the wig shuffle and move seemingly on its own, I realized that the true face under the wig was talking, moving its lips, breathing. The wrong way man was talking to me or someone who looked like me. At the same time, Katie was reaching over me, trying desperately to put her foot on the gas. A couple of twisted pieces of bone and meat collided with the windshield. Two faces with bunched up folds of neck leered at me out of the glazed eyes. These were faces I should have recognized.

These were faces I should have recognized. Their twisted arms continued to beat at the window, even though their eyes told me that no one was home. A spider's web of cracks spread across the windshield. Its grooves caught blood. I slammed my foot on the gas while helping to steady Katie back into her seat. We flung those two off, and right after we ran over an entire family in quick succession. I didn't have time to feel guilty.

These were not my neighbors. These were not my neighbors. These were not. Katie and I both began to change. I heard some of my bones break. I felt at a moment later, like the reverse of lightning before thunder. Katie and I started screaming, almost in unison, and about in the same tune. It was like a choir of pain and fear and fear and pain had risen up with us as instruments.

Keep your head back, I yelled as I strove to keep my head pinned against my seat. Don't let it twist around. no matter what happens to the rest of our bodies, we can't let it kill us. I know, Katie said. Just get this car out of here. Make a U-turn or something. Make a U-turn, I thought. What was it my grandpa said about life and how if you didn't know what to do,

you could always make a U-turn. Still in reverse, yet still going forward. I wheeled the car screeching around. I didn't glance out the sides or rear. I gunned it, heading back towards where we had come from. The wrong way man waited. He waited for me at the juncture of my driveway in the street. His painted mouth grinned forever.

His painted eyes were too wide and incapable of blinking. We passed him and drove out of the neighborhood. Katie and I weren't out of the woods, though. I was able to get us to a nearby gas station before my legs and arms, which were partly reversed and leaking blood, completely gave out. We crawled out of the vehicle and onto the cold, hard concrete to the gas. station. I blacked out almost at once, but Katie tells me she retained consciousness until the ambulance arrived. I don't envy her. We spent months in the hospital with broken bones and torn

ligaments and muscle. I think the only thing that had saved us permanent damage might have been the seats of our vehicle resisting our changes. We told the doctors we'd been in a car accident. They shook their heads at us and kept asking questions. I did go back home, eventually. We both did. The reason I went home was because one of my neighbors that we had run over with my car came to the hospital to visit me.

They seemed completely fine, as if nothing had happened, and the wrong way, man, had never changed them. But damage was done to my vehicle, and to Katie and me, both physically and psychologically. And while our bodies are on the mend, I don't think we'll ever be the same.

I feel the wrong way inside. Creepy presents. Don't eat today's special. Written by Hello, Hello, Help Hello, and narrated by Owen McKeown. There's something terrifying going on in the restaurant downtown. I could give you the address, could tell you the exact location, could give you turn-by-turned directions on how to get there. But I won't. I'll describe how it looks so you can turn away if you ever stumble on it by accident, but that's all I'll do. I'd rather not have any of you trying to

find the place. The restaurant I'm talking about is in a rundown part of my hometown. It's in the kind of neighborhood that consists mainly of closed-up shops. Their dusty windows blocked over with old newspapers and cardboard. There are only two kinds of businesses that seem to survive in that place. There are filthy bars lined with slot machines on one hand, and on the other are the sort of second-hand electronic stores that seem to only exist so pickpockets can get rid of stolen cell phones. I used to take a shortcut through this district on my way home for my part-time job. Normally there was little to see, or rather what there was to see, was either gross or concerning, if not both, so you were better off not paying any attention in the first place. On this particular day several months ago, however, an illuminated window caught my eye, a simple tablecloth behind a dirty window.

It was the bright white color that did the trick. Nothing really special, you may think, and you'd be right, but its pristine condition stood out in a place like this, where an all-encompassing patina of filth was an expected part of any decor. The window belonged to a two-story house wedged in between some taller buildings. Graffiti covered its walls to an extent that rendered it barely recognizable as a restaurant. Once its name must have been painted onto the wall above the window. Now only a few faded letters remained legible. D.A. I something something S-T-R-O was all I could make out. I guess that the

second used to be bistro. No idea about the first one. Upon taking a closer look, through the illuminated window. I spotted a laid table housing a single lone customer. There were other tables and chairs haphazardly littered around the room, but this central one was the only table sporting a bright white tablecloth and a guest. Various pots and pans were strewn about on its surface. The air above was filled with the soft, foggy steam of freshly cooked food. There was a lot of it, far too much for the lone patron. He was a skinny man with worn clothes that seemed far too big for him. His cheeks looked hollow and his arms spindly. Maybe part of the local population of homeless drifters and addicts, definitely not the kind of

person who might be able to afford a meal of a size. He was facing my direction without ever directly looking at me or the window in general. His attention was completely focused on the food. He shoveled a spoon filled with mashed potatoes and green beans into his mouth before grasping the nearby glass of water to flood the generous portion down his throat. There was an obvious appetite in the way he hungrily wolfed down anything he could get his hands on. And the longer I stared at the simple but generous meal, the more I started to grow hungry myself. For a minute or two I fruitlessly walked back and forth in front of the place, searching for a way to enter. The only visible door was closed, and it didn't look like an entrance in the first place. It was a plain steel door sporting an electric

warning sign. After returning to the window one last time, I gave up, went home, and proceeded to forget about the whole encounter. I didn't think about it at all until I passed by the window again the week after. As soon as I caught a glimpse of the white color, the memory came flooding back.

The very same man was still there, or more likely was there again, and once more he sat in front of a lavish meal. A sweaty gleam was covering his face, and I could see the muscles in his neck tense and twitch whenever he swallowed. The only thing that had really changed from the week before was the food. The simple mix of potatoes, soups, and steamed vegetables had been replaced by more intricate

and expensive meals. Plates housed nicely arranged cutlets of various meats, each artfully drenched in a different sauce and adorned with a few herbs. With a twist of his wrist, the patron scooped up a serving of thin, delicate noodles dripping with olive oil and roasted garlic. He squeezed the fork again. his lips, his jaw still trying to chew the previous load, then opened his mouth and shoved the noodles in, nearly choking in the process. He looked slightly distressed as he tried to swallow

the portion while his hands were already scooping up the next load. A tender piece of chicken breast from its roast dipped in brown marinade. He slightly shuddered as he forced the food down, took a second to sip on a glass of red wine, then went back to stuffing himself. I watched him for five minutes before moving on. The scent drifting through the window was enticing, but I had already given up on the notion of finding an entrance to the building. When I came home, I emptied my pantry

and cooked myself a giant meal as well. The next time I came back to the restaurant wasn't by chance. Something about the whole place had piqued my interest, I was looking forward to seeing whether the same singular customer had returned for a third time. To my disappointment,

something was blocking the view that particular night. A board of some sort was propped against the window from the inside. I could still see parts of the room through a small gap, could see that the light was still burning, and that somebody appeared to be still sitting at the place the man had been those last two weeks. But there was no way of getting a good look at what was going on. With my curiosity left unsatisfied, I went home.

The next day I made a detour to return. I just hated to be left hanging like that. The window was blocked again. Over the next few weeks, I'd develop a habit of dropping by the place every now and then. Sometimes the window was blocked. Sometimes I got a good view into the room. Whenever I did, I'd find the same sight, the skinny man sitting in front of increasingly luscious meals, gorging himself on the food.

By now you couldn't really call him skinny anymore, though. He had gained at least a little weight. His cheeks were no longer sunken in, and his formerly loosely hanging vest had grown a bit tighter around the waist. While he had eaten with a healthy appetite at first, his expression had turned slightly pained by now. Every bite had become a struggle. Every motion seemed forced. His nose wrinkled and disgust every time his lips opened. Still, he kept eating. I have to admit, however, that I didn't pay all that much attention to him. The increasingly exotic food was just too bizarre to look away from. Every time I was allowed a glimpse at the table, I'd see more and more alien items appearing in

more and more strange arrangements. Jelly cubes encasing sharp, fanged anglerfish. Mishapen eggs the size of my fist, emitting a faint glow. Noodles were so thin and dark, they looked like hair. It had become hard to even recognize half the stuff as edible in the first place. I watched the man crack open the gigantic body of a purple spider crab, watched him bite down on moss-covered mushrooms that spat out clouds of yellow spores with every touch, witnessed him sitting in front of a plate of little squirming black bugs that tried to flee

from his spoon as he shovel them into his maw. Giant algae plants shaped and twisted around each other like strands of DNA. Needle-covered orange balls that slightly shivered as if breathing. The roasted body of some eight-legged animal, either remnants of some freak of nature, or several animals stitched together to create a new abnormal shape. Soon I ignored the patron completely and just dropped by to see what kind of absurd ideas the cook had come up with this time. And strangely, no matter how bizarre and abhorrent the food looked, it left me wanting to try it myself, left me hungry and searching for something to fill myself as well.

And then when I finally returned home to plunder my kitchen, I'd end up unsatisfied. As time passed, my chances to catch a glimpse at the goings-on inside the restaurant grew rarer. More and more often the window was blocked, and I was relegated to squeezing my head against the corner in hopes of at least catching a little glance at that day's special. Minced meat shaped to resemble realistic human heads, with hairs and teeth taken from various animals. A thin glass that emitted a seemingly endless stream of bluish fog. A red soup that followed the motions of the spoon before it. ever came at a contact, as if driven by some magnetic force.

By now I can't believe that I never noticed anything being wrong with these things when witnessing them, but back then I kept telling myself that there existed a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, that everything I saw were just tricks, manufactured by some creative and probably slightly deranged cooking genius. But this little lie I kept telling myself could only get me so far. It was only a matter of time until the strangeness crossed the threshold. That's what happened last week. Things just got a little too weird to ignore and mentally push aside.

There's something wrong with that place. There's something terrifying about the restaurant downtown. Before the day in question, I hadn't gotten a clear view into the restaurant for a month, just little hints here and there, but never enough to leave me satisfied. And on that day, finally, the window was free again. The moment I stepped closer, this joyful excitement I felt turned into a subtle horror. There was only a single item lying on the table. It looked like the carcass of a large stag at first glance,

a four-legged animal with short reddish-brown fur and huge dark antlers. At second glance, the alterations that had been done to this creature were unmistakable. I say alterations because I refuse to believe that a thing like this could come out of any natural process. It must have been crafted artificially, maybe taxidermied out of different animals. If so, then the creator of this monstrosity did a perfect job of blending the various parts into one seamless hole. Instead of hooves, the stag was sporting four hands, like those of an ape or some similar primate, wrinkled and calloused, but hands nonetheless. Its face, too, was not that of a deer. The nose was flat and thin.

The mouth large and adorned with human-like lips. Its skin around these parts hairless and flesh-colored. A large hole had been torn into its side. Broken ribs were sticking out. Blackish blood darkened the fur around the opened wound. The man was leaning over the carcass. His mouth stained with the dark red color of blood as well. Some entrails were hanging between him and the corpse,

and with a motion of his head, he slurped them down as if they were spaghetti. He had changed completely. His formerly lithe body was now encompassed by layers of fat. His eyes had turned into beady black holes, almost as if they had retreated into his skull. His clothes, now ill-fitting in a completely different way, had burst in several places, revealing the hairless, greasy, pale skin underneath.

He looked less like a man and more like a giant maggot. The way his neck had swollen to the size of his body, of his shoulders, the way his arms barely peaked out of the armor of fat surrounding him. And then he looked up, looked away from the meal for the first time, and straight at me. There was nothing but a deep and bottomless hunger. Saliva gathered in the corner of his mouth. His gaze wandered up and down my body. He licked his lips. I turned and left. It took some force of will not to run, but I managed to keep walking at a slow and steady pace.

Maybe running would have been an appropriate response to being looked at like that, but at that moment I was still trying to hold on to reason, was trying to find logical explanations, was trying to laugh all this off. Maybe I was just confused. Maybe this was a completely different customer. Surely the blind hunger in his eyes wasn't actually targeted at me. But nothing could quench the growing unease and fear in the back of my mind. I didn't want to go back, didn't want to be forced to look at this creature ever again.

But I had to. I just needed to make sure the man was still there, locked in the room. Just one last time. When I returned today, my worst nightmares had come true. The man was gone. The table was empty. The metal door with the electrical warning sign stood open, leading into the room, and an enticing smell floated through the air towards me.

Despite all I had witnessed, I found myself taking a step towards the opening. Before I could take another, something heavy moved in a nearby alley. Some streetcat let out a startled screen that was cut short. A moment later, the sound of cracking and munching echoed from the buildings. This time, I did run. I will not return to this place ever again. I will not return to this part of the city ever again. I'm even making plans to move far away.

The scent that drifted out of the open door is still stuck in my nose, and no food I touch can satisfy my growing appetite. And then there's one detail about tonight that keeps popping back into my mind. Right next to the open door, somebody had propped up a simple blackboard. It read, Today's special. All you can eat. For even more from creepy. including how to submit your own story for consideration,

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