Creepy - Introducing: Fear Daily

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Written by Brennan Storr, creator of The Ghost Story Guys, and hosted by Brandon Schexnayder, creator of Southern Gothic.Show link: https://podfollow.com/1755456394 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everyone. I wanted to share an episode of another podcast I think you'll really enjoy, especially if you're looking for your daily horror fix. Fear Daily takes you into the shadows of the past, unearthing the 1990s most terrifying tales of monsters, madness, and life after death. Every weekday, from Monday to Friday, Fear Daily explores ghost stories and supernatural encounters left on an old online bulletin board that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of the Pennsylvania Rust Belt. a time capsule of society's greatest fears.

Check out the show link in the episode description. And don't forget to hit subscribe or if you listen to podcasts. Enjoy. When the internet began, bulletin board services or BBS became the first online communities of the so-called information superhighway.

Using their phone lines, people logged in from all over America to talk about sports, games, movies, and on one BBS in particular, share their ghost stories. Over time, those communities all went dark, except for one lone server

that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of Pennsylvania's Rust Belt. A relic of the 1990s, veiled in mystery, it is a digital archive of humanity's strangest encounters with the unknown, as told by the people who experience them. My name is Brandon Sheck Snyder, and you are listening to Fear Daily. Subject, night hunting.

User, Emmer 1525. Posted July 19, 1996. My old man served in Vietnam, and when he came back, a lot about him had changed. The thing I noticed most was that he didn't have any fear. It was a good thing and a bad thing. good because he didn't take shit from anybody bad because he would sometimes get us into sticky situations. The only bright side to all of this was that almost any situation dad got us into he could get us out of. The one time that wasn't true was on the final hunting trip we took

with my little brother Gary and in dad's defense, I don't know there was anything anyone could have done. It was in summer 1975. After getting out of the service, Dad decided his new hobby was night hunting, which wasn't exactly legal in our state, but he never let that stop him. He said he could tell the animals apart by how far above the ground their eyeshine was. Close to the ground was a hair, knee height was a bore, above that was a deer. Mom wasn't crazy about Dad taking us out into the woods at night. night with a gun, but she knew better than to complain. Post-war dad didn't take criticism well,

and besides, there was always meat in the freezer. Nothing about this night seemed any different than the others we'd gone out together. The sky was clear, it wasn't too cold, and the ground on the walkout was firm instead of spongy. It was something different about dad, though. He seemed agitated and kept swinging the barrel of his rifle around behind him as if he was hearing something. Gary and I looked at each other baffled. Neither of us had heard anything. In fact, it was a surprisingly quiet night with not much in the way of game or ambient noise. Looking back, it was kind of like the forest was holding its breath. Sometime, around two or three in the morning, Dad raised his fist, which was a sign for us to stop walking.

He pointed toward a dark thicket, maybe 100 yards ahead, and sure enough, we heard a rustling sound. Gary and I knew what to do. Quietly, we set out to establish a pincor position on either side of the thicket, where we'd wait for Dad's signal to charge the bush and chase the animal out towards his rifle. We'd done this a bunch before, but there was an electricity in the air. The hair on my arms was standing up like we were walking into some kind of static buildup.

I couldn't make out Gary's expression in the dark, but his posture was tense. At that signal, we did what he'd trained us to do, but what came out of that bush was no boar or hair or anything like that. It was huge, dark, and had wings big enough to brush both mine and Gary's face as it took off. We're talking a span of maybe 15 to 20 feet. The air displaced as it flapped was intense, like an M-80 going off on the 4th of July before you got far enough away. Its cry was abrasive and painful to hear like nails on a chalkboard, and I clapped my hands over my ear. The huge wings beat one final time before the bird or whatever it was just went. And I don't mean it flew away.

I mean it disappeared right in front of us. That was the end of our hunting trip. On the drive home, we tried asking Dad what it was we had seen, but he would only shake his head. And it scared me, obviously, but in the chaos, it had actually scratched. Gary. I didn't see it happen, and he said it hadn't hurt at the time, but either way, when the truck's dome light came on, you could see a long, weeping red mark across his left cheek. I used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe at the clear fluid seeping out of the wound, but it kept coming. The only thing Dad said to us as we wound back down the mountain towards Riley was to stop

fussing at it. I did as I was told. Mom was still asleep when we got home, so trying to account for Gary's face was a tomorrow problem. Of course, I had no way of knowing the morning would have problems of its own. Back then, we shared a room. My bed was underneath the window. Gary's was against the far wall. On bright nights like that one, the moonlight would fall across him as he slept, and I always found that comforting. I was too young to understand why. All I knew was that looking at my little brother's chest, rising and falling,

made me feel like everything was okay. After that, I would always let out a big breath, close my eyes, and slip away into sleep. That was the last night I was ever able to do that. I don't remember the dream that woke me up, but I do remember the sickly ache had produced in my stomach. Opening my eyes didn't make it any better because I quickly realized I couldn't move a muscle. It was like I was paralyzed.

Worse than that, there was a man in our room standing over Gary. The first rays of morning were beginning to stream through the window, giving everything a golden glow completely at odds with what I was seen. The man had no features. He was all black, and where his face should have been, it was what looked like a pile of rags. That's the best way I can describe it, at least. Despite not having a mouth, he had a voice. I could hear it. It sounded male, and it was telling Gary to come out to the forest. I'd so hard to move, to tell this person or whatever it was, to stay away from my little brother, but my body wouldn't cooperate. helplessly I was forced to watch as Gary sat up in bed. The man blocked my view of my brother's face, but from his movements he was going willingly. There was no tension, no fear.

Gary pushed back his blankets, swiveled until I saw his pale legs hanging over the edge of the bed, then stood. That's the last thing I remember. I must have passed out or fell back asleep or something because next I remembers waking up to chaos. Dad screaming, Gary's name, mom screaming at dad.

We never found my little brother. Sometimes I dream about him though and I wish I could say they were good dreams. Subject, the day it didn't rain. User, Illinois Dad Guy. Posted May 23, 1997. Last Thursday, Springfield got hit with the biggest thunderstorm I've ever seen.

It had to have started sometime around lunch because when the first big peal of thunder brought my head up from payroll, there was no one else in the office. Her company occupies the third floor of the Hampton building, and my desk is along the floor-to-ceiling windows with an expansive view of an industrial park, and past that, all the cornfields a guy could want. When I looked up on Thursday, ugly black thunderheads were moving towards us from the north.

There hadn't been anything about a storm in the forecast, I thought, but then that's the weatherman for you. Our youngest son, Thad, had been dealing with an ear infection all night, and consequently, there hadn't been time for either me or Shelley to make my lunch before I left for work. If I was going to get something to eat and beat the rain, I'd have to run out to either the Arby's or not. Nogles nearby and do it fast. Quickly, I pushed back from my desk and pulled on my jacket. The elevators were out again, so I double-timed it down the stairs, not seeing a single other person the entire way. Outside on the sidewalk, the air was heavy with ozone.

That storm was going to be a big one. Nogles was nominally closer than Arby, so I turned left out of the building lobby and started speedwalking. The glass frontages of the office park reflected heavy clouds bearing down. The air was muggy and still, like the whole town was in a bell jar. The click of the traffic light was dull and muted, but as I crossed the street a block away from Nogles, that was all I heard. No traffic, no pedestrians, nothing.

As if the world had decided to go home for the day. A creeping unease began to warm its own. way into my brain, a niggling feeling like something wasn't right. When I stepped into the restaurant, that unease wriggled its way down into my belly. Everything looked normal, the same blindingly white-tiled interior with its triple stripes of yellow, orange and red, the same menus hanging behind the counter, the same smells of taco meat and grease. Above me, the fluorescent lights buzzed and from the back I could dimly hear the coolers humming, but there wasn't a single person there. I called out a greeting, then a second later, the sky went dark and the rain started to

fall. Biblical torrents roaring like a river. The next crack of thunder was so loud I felt it in my chest. Outside the window of the restaurant, the light had taken on a sickly yellow color. and huge drops were bouncing off the asphalt, forming deep pools in the gutter. Something wasn't right. That much was obvious, but I couldn't quite get my head around the fact that the restaurant was empty. Had there been some kind of evacuation notice? Did the entire office, hell, the entire office park, head for higher ground without telling me? Carefully, I approached the counter and looked back into the kitchen.

Whatever it happened, it was fast because everything had been left. It was like the fast food equivalent of the Merry Celeste. Tortillas, half-filled with beef and lettuce, a spoon-dug mid-scoop into the refried beans. The unease was now full-blown panic and every thought in my mind fell away except for one. Shelly and the kids. There had to be a phone here, I thought. I had to warn them or at least find out what. was going on. I walked down the hallway toward the bathrooms until I saw a door marked office,

and it pushed open noiselessly, and I picked up the cheap plastic receiver that sat on the edge of a desk cluttered with paperwork. The rain was battering down on the roof so hard, I was sure it was going to come through the ceiling. Putting the phone to my ear was about to punch in our home number, and I realized there was no dial tone. The phone lines must be down, I thought. I was so concerned about getting in touch with Shelley, the strangeness of all this, the suddenness, the emptiness didn't even register. That something was wrong was obvious, but I thought it was in the storm of the century kind of way,

not whatever it was that was happening. Back in the dining room, the yellowness of the air had deepened to the point where it looked like the rain was beating its way through mucus, and pooling inches deep in the road. My car was three blocks away. It was nothing to do now, but get there. Pulling open the restaurant's door, I immediately felt an intense wave of humid air wash over me.

My clothes instantly wet. The rain was actually painful, a thousand tiny needles pelting me as I stepped into the flooded street. The clouds were a cancerous mix. of black and yellow, spider-wept with near constant flashes of lightning. I'd never seen anything like it. The scale of the storm was such it made everything around me seem insubstantial.

The office park reduced to the set of a cheap disaster movie. In the corridors between buildings, wind blew the rain into great solid walls like giants on the march. My shoes were waterlogs squelching with every step. Even worse was my jacket, a soak-through albatross I discarded halfway down the block from Nogles. At this point, I couldn't possibly get more wet, and without it, I was at least 10 pounds lighter. Back at the car, I slumped into the driver's seat, soaking it with my ruined clothes. Somehow, the rain had gotten even heavier, and turning the wipers on to their maximum setting,

barely made any difference at all. Carefully, I nosed my corsica out of the lot, squinting to see anything at all through the deluge. The clouds were knit together in a single squamous mass, scales separated by strobing flashes of multicolored lightning. Out on the state road, the wind was worse, and my car bucked constantly, tires fighting for traction as it was pushed relentlessly to one seat.

side. I gripped the wheel as tight as I could, trying to stay between where I imagine the yellow lines to be. Not a single vehicle passed the entire time, and I knew something was deeply, possibly permanently wrong. This wasn't just a storm. It was an apocalypse. I wasn't sure there was anywhere safe to take my family. I just knew I needed to get to them. A burst of of static from the radio startled me enough, I let go of the wheel just for a moment, but it was long enough. The world spun, and I felt the tires lose traction as the car began to hydroplane. I retook control of the wheel and pulled my foot off the accelerator, gently tapping the brake. It didn't help, and the car whipped out of control. I closed my eyes and tensed, waiting for

a collision with either oncoming traffic or the guardrail, but neither happened. Instead, I opened my eyes to bright sunshine and wide-open cornfields. The wipers were still beating a frantic tattoo on the windshield, but there was no longer any rain. I could still see drops on the side windows, but it wasn't coming from the sky anymore. My ears rang. in a sudden quiet. The soft beep of a horn startled me, and I looked out the driver's side window to see a black forerunner pulled up.

The driver was a woman I vaguely recognized as a cashier from one of the local supermarkets, and she was saying something I couldn't make out, so I rolled down my window. I'm sorry, what? I asked. I said, are you okay? She replied, do you need help? I looked at her completely dumbed.

found it. Do you? She frowned, taking in my soaked clothes before giving me a look that suggested she thought I was either drunk or high. You're the one facing the wrong way. You need help getting home? My brain was completely fogged. How was she acting so normally? Wasn't this the end of the world? The storm, I said. Where's the storm? She pulled back a little. No one wants to be partied, a drunk driving, I guess. Look, it's none of my business, but maybe you should pull over and sleep it off a little before you drive on. Hey, it's the end of the month, the Stadies are going to be looking to write all the tickets they can. I just looked at her.

You take care now. With that, she rolled up her window and drove off. I sat there for a moment, listening to the drip of rainwater from my, sleeves down onto the console next to me. Fear Daily is an independent podcast hosted by Brandon Shecksnyder and written by Brennan's store with Joanna Smith serving as the consulting editor, audio production by Rachel Boyd and sound design by Southern Gothic Media. This podcast is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events or locations, is entirely coincidental. Ad-free versions of Fear Daily are available now on your favorite podcast apps. For more information, visit feardaily.com. But move fast before the server goes offline.