Creepy - Night of the Jackalopes & The Cursed Grimoire

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Night of the Jackalopes***Written by: Desiree Horton and Narrated by: Heather Thomas***The Cursed Grimoire***Written by: Nathan Greaves  and Narrated by: Owen McCuen*** Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***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 creepy pastures 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. Creepy presents. Night of the Jackalopes.

Written by Desiree Horton and narrated by Heather Thomas. Candy was unpacking the boxes in the kitchen when she heard it. A thump at the sliding glass door. Her apartment complex sidled up to an open expanse of desert, so there should not have been anything out there bumping on her little patio. This was Candy's first apartment all to herself, having left her parents' apartment after she gained full-time employment at her local Walmart. The planets had aligned perfectly, and a cheap studio had opened up in a desolate, but not dangerous area on the edge of town. She couldn't believe her good luck, hardly anyone she knew could live without a roommate these days.

As the sun had already set, and the sky grew black in dents, she had drawn the long. long plastic swinging curtains closed to keep out the night as she continued to unpack. At first thump, candy froze and listened intently, wondering if she had heard it from the wall where her neighbors resided, instead of outside her slider, like she had first thought. Another thump proved her theory incorrect. It was definitely coming from the glass door. Curious, she made her way through the boxes in her living room, toward the western glass wall. She separated the swinging blinds with a tentative finger and peaked into the steadfast darkness.

There were no house lights or streetlights in that direction, and Candy could only dimly make out the last minuscule sliver of light from the sun sinking over the horizon. Nothing else. Puzzled, Candy turned back toward her tiny kitchen on the other side of her tiny living room, which doubled as her tiny bedroom. I wonder if I should get a cat or something, she thought bemusedly.

Mom would love that. The muffled thump came again. Her puzzlement turned to a flash of annoyance as she turned back to the window and pushed open the curtains with more force. She saw nothing through the glass. Thumb. Her eyes dropped toward her feet, and there she spied the culprit, Gazing at her from the side with a single black eye was some sort of rabbit.

With a coup, she sank to her knees in front of the glass, touching it softly with her finger. The rabbit was skinny, with tawny brown colored fur. There were multitudes of jack rabbits in the desert, so she knew it was a different sort than the fluffy bunnies they sold at the pet store. It was longer, leaner, and more muscular. It also looked hungrier and had some sort of injury on its head, as there was a small, fresh

wound near its ear. The rabbit's nose twitched once, twice, as it stared at her, unblinking. Poor baby, candy clucked. What are you doing out there all alone? Something could eat you. The rabbit stared vacantly in answer, nose twitching and wrinkling. Whiskers slayed in a white spray in all directions from its face. Candy watched it a moment longer, worrying for the little creature.

She stood and unlocked the slider and then opened it a crack. Surprisingly, the animal didn't scurry away in fear. It sat placid, as if waiting for an invitation. She opened the door further and stepped back, watching the rabbit to see what it would do. It didn't move. She thought for a moment and then took a few steps back to her kitchen to see if she could rustle up something for him to eat. Her fridge was pretty barren still,

as she had planned on eating pizza for her first night in her new home. The open door revealed a six-pack of sprite, a pack of lunchmeat, a small bag of shredded cheese, and... Hazaa! The remnants of a veggie tray she had taken from her mother's house, which had only the carrots and tomatoes left. She planned to pick at the carrots and probably tossed the tomatoes, so it would be a perfect use of them for this poor little guy.

She brought the vegetable tray back over and set it down on her floor. It made no move to run away from her, so she sat down next to it and waited for it to do something. She didn't have to wait long. She was delighted that the rabbit immediately hopped right over to the tray, It picked up the carrot with its long, skinny arms and began to nibble furiously. Candy chuckled and leaned over to get a closer look at the wounds on the rabbit's head.

Upon closer look, the wound was actually two wounds next to each other. The skin was cracked, with red splits leading up to a point next to each ear. What could have done that to the poor thing? Something trying to bite it? Candy pictured big fangs poking into the rabbit's head and him narrowly escaping being eaten by some wolf. It was a good thing he had shown up at her door. Candy had been hopeful that her newfound freedom

meant she could take in a stray cat or two. But this was so much better. She grabbed one of the empty cardboard boxes and one of the towels from the stack of hand-me-down ones her mother had given her for her new place and placed the towel inside. She set the box on the floor next to her mattress and then placed a few carrots inside.

She debated for a minute and then gently reached out and picked the rabbit up. It was still, except for its rapid breathing. With her hands on her hips, she surveyed the studio, looking for the box that would contain the first aid kit her father had given her. Being unable to immediately locate it,

she decided to continue unpacking to see if it would turn up, and she could treat the bunny's cuts. He sat in the box, nibbling carrots, motionless except for his chewing. Candy continued emptying boxes and putting things away in their new homes, as she thought about what to do for the poor rabbit. Should she clean it with hydrogen peroxide? Perhaps dab some bassetrasin on it with a cotton ball? Hopefully it wouldn't hurt him.

Candy had always wanted a pet. Her mother had never allowed it because of allergies. Candy allowed herself a moment of daydreaming about getting a hutch for the rabbit and him becoming her companion. She would call him Rupert, she decided. By the time she dug the kit out of a box of blankets, an hour had passed. That's about enough unpacking for today, she said, bringing the kit over to the box that held the rabbit.

She dribbled some hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and gently dabbed it on top of the rabbit's head. Immediately, the creature went rigid, its mouth agape, revealing sharp-looking, crooked teeth. Its tiny paws clenched, and its back leg shot out at odd angles. A horrible keening escaped from somewhere deep inside it, deeper than its throat,

and the rabbit's head began to twist and twitch. Candy screamed and shoved back from the box, accidentally knocking it over in her haste to get away from the awful noise. The low screech grew louder and louder. Candy put her hands over her ears to block out the noise that made the hairs on her neck stand up fiercely. It dragged itself with its tiny claws across the carpet toward her. The shrieking stopped,

replaced by an unmistakable tearing sound that filled her studio. as something sharp and gleaming ripped through the remaining skin on top of the rabbit's head. Its beady black eye turned a shiny red, whether from blood or pure evil, Candy couldn't tell. It froze, its evil gaze turned to Candy. This was no mere injured rabbit. It was a monster. Candy knew she needed to get it out of her apartment.

It definitely has some sort of disease or something, right? Why else would it be acting like this? Or have those weird things sticking out of its head that look an awful lot like horns? Or maybe antlers? Oh, God, what is it? Candy thought as her eyes darted around the room, looking for some sort of weapon. She spied her broom in the kitchen. The rabbit still wasn't moving.

She took a chance and leapt for it, her fingers touching the broom handle just as she felt the sharp sting of teeth on her leg. She thrashed, attempting to dislodge the creature which had its tiny, jagged teeth sunk deep in the flesh on the side of her calf. It held fast, and Candy began to scream, a similar sound to what came out of the rabbit, only a moment before, kicking her leg back and forth. The motion caused the rabbit's teeth to tear through a chunk of skin Before it careened off candy and into a corner with a horrid thump Blood dripped hotly down her leg as she brandished the broom Ready to smack it if it came at her again It stared at her red eyes aglow blood staining the light fur around its mouth

The antlers protruding from the creature's head were impossibly large almost the size of its body. Small bits of skin still clung to the new rack, bits of cream and red hanging from the tines. Candy slowly inched toward her sliding glass door, keeping the broom like a ward between them. She saw the rabbit tense to jump, and she bolted through the door and slammed it shut,

hard enough that she worried the glass might break. She stood panting, staring through the glass at the rabbit who was bearing its teeth, smashing against it again and again, leaving glossy red smears all over. She was safe for the moment. Maybe I can run around to the neighbor's apartment and call animal control or something, she thought. She heard a clicking sound behind her. Then another. Then a clacking.

She whirled around but could see nothing in the dim light coming from inside. her house, as she had not turned on her porch light. She could hear the cacophony growing deeper and louder, as if there was a crowd of something out just beyond her sight. Shiny red dots appeared in waves in front of her. Eyes, she thought, all of those eyes watching me. Hundreds of beady red eyes peering at her through the ink of night. The crashing against her window ceased abruptly. Stardled by the sudden silence from the rabbit in her house, she put her hand above her eyes and leaned against the glass.

The rabbit was gone. Her house was quiet. She glanced behind her at the assembly of eyes encroaching on her. They had forms now, fluffy and lean with large antlers on each of their heads. More than she could possibly count. Their antlers tapped and cracked into each others as they shoved closer together and closer to candy. The sound was hair-raising. She knew she couldn't get to her neighbor's apartment before they came for her.

One monster was better than the countless multitudes waiting for her out there, right? Her mind was made up. She threw the broom at the horde of rabbits and darted inside as quickly as she could, locking the door behind her. Not bothering to look for where the stray rabbit was in her house, she ran through her apartment in a few steps, grabbed her phone off the counter, and leaped inside the bathroom,

and landed hard on the linoleum floor. She heard scampering feet and kicked the bathroom door shut, holding it in place with her foot. The animal took up its incessant crashing at her door again, jolting the fake wood paneling with each hit and emitting a strange growling. bark. The crashes grew louder and seemed to be coming from multiple directions. Candy began to cry, unsure of what to do. She pulled her phone off the floor and thumbed over to

her mom's number, her sweaty fingers fumbling with the call button. After a few tries, it read her attempts, and Mom trailed across the top of her screen as the phone rang and rang. Hey, Candy, how are things going at the new pad? Her mom asked you. carefully. Mom! Candy screamed. Mom, please! I need your help!

Candy screamed into the phone, her apartment quickly becoming alive with noise. Candy? What's wrong? What's going on? Her mom demanded. Mom, please help me. I'm so scared.

She said as she sobbed. I took in this stray rabbit. Candy trailed off as the sound of shattering glass echoed throughout her barely furnished flat. Then she listened helplessly to the growing clamor of a stampede of thousands of long, fuzzy feet, thumping their way inside, turning her home into a nightmarish burrow. Creepy Presents The Cursed Grimwar, written by Nathan Greaves and narrated by Owen McCune.

Elliot Thorne had always believed that certain books held power, not the kind found in libraries or universities, but the kind whispered about in the margins of forgotten journals, buried in obsidian ink sealed in iron clasps. The kind that weren't meant to be read, only feared. Since he was a teenager, Elliot had been obsessed with rare occult texts, pouring over grimauds and lost manuscripts,

driven by a hunger he never quite understood. His cramped apartment, tucked above an old clockmaker's shop, was overflowing with yellowed pages, untranslated symbols, journals written by men who went mad mid-sentence. Among them all, one book stood out, not because he had it, but because he didn't. It had a name, though likely not its true one. The Grimoir of Ozirin. Some called it the ink book. Others refused to name it at all. He had seen only faint mentions in letters exchanged between 19th century occultists,

and once in a photograph in a crumbling collector's journal. Its cover blank, the leather, a strange sheen that seemed to warp in candlelight. The final note in that journal had read, Never read the words. Even thinking of them invites the scribe. Elliot's obsession started long before he knew the book's name. As a child, he would sketch symbols in the margins of his schoolwork, images he didn't remember seeing, but knew instinctively.

His dreams were filled with books that opened by themselves and hands that weren't his turning the pages. When he was nine, his father, a once promising scholar, vanished after locking himself in the attic with a trunk of books. All they found was a single page, handwritten and curling at the edges. It watches through the ink. His mother never spoke of it again. She burned every book in the house two days later.

For years, Elliot tried to trace the grimor. He spoke with collectors who laughed nervously and quickly changed the subject. He tracked it through estate sales and haunted libraries, every lead ending in silence or madness. Until one day, his search led him to Blackwood Manor. The manor had long since slipped from the maps, swallowed by the forest on the northern cliffs. The stories around it were as old as the town that once bordered it, before the land was declared cursed and condemned. It had belonged to Thaddeus Blackwood, a Victorian occultist and the founder of a secretive sect called the Silent Binding.

They believed knowledge itself could summon divine or infernal forces, depending on the will behind it. and they believed in writing as a form of worship. In 1887, the manor burned. The cult vanished. What remained was a hollow, creaking structure buried in fog and silence. No one visited it anymore except Elliot. The journey took him two days. The road disappeared by the time he reached the hills,

leaving only overgrown trails and the sound of wind that didn't move the trees. As he walked, the forest seemed to grow quieter with every step, like the world itself was holding its breath. He felt eyes on him, sometimes in the trees, sometimes in his own reflection on wet stones. Crows watched silently. The air was heavy. When the manner appeared between the black branches, it was like it had grown from the ground itself. The structure was massive, decaying, its roof sagging under time's weight. windows stared blankly into the forest like dead eyes despite the fog no moisture clung to its surface it was dry bone dry the gate creaked when he pushed it the front doors groaned in protest inside it smelled of dust wax and something else something coppery sweet and old furniture sat undisturbed a tea set still balanced on a tray atop a top of cracker table. Portraits lined the hallway, their faces blurred as though time had smeared their features. The silence inside was heavier than outside. Every step he took sounded like a scream.

It took hours to find the library, and when he did, the temperature dropped noticeably. The room was massive. Floor to ceiling shelves loomed like giants. Their contents rotting or torn. Candles had long melted into puddles atop blackened holders. In the center stood a pedestal, untouched by time, crowned by a book bound in leather that shimmered slightly in the gloom. No title. No markings. But Elliot knew.

He didn't remember walking to it, only that he was suddenly standing before it, fingers brushing the cover. It pulsed beneath his skin like it was breathing. He opened it. There were words, symbols, illustrations that should not have been possible, language that hummed in his bones, pages that seemed endless turning themselves. His heartbeat quickened.

He couldn't stop reading. He didn't notice when the shadows behind him began to move. When he finally tore his eyes away, night had fallen. He was alone, or thought he was. He didn't leave the way he came. Somehow he walked through a door that brought him back to his apartment. He didn't question it. The book was with him, and nothing else mattered.

For the first few days, he read it obsessively. At first, the content was academic, diagrams of rituals, writings on soul partitions, invocations of the scribe beyond the veil. But then the text began to change. Pages he had read, transformed, drawings moved when he blinked. And then his notes, written in his own hand, appeared in the margins.

Words he didn't remember writing. Ideas he didn't understand. Then the book began speaking. Not aloud, but in presence. It tugged at his thoughts, rearranged them. He found himself mouthing syllables in his sleep, strange guttural sounds that left black stains on his tongue. The more he read, the more the air in his apartment thickened.

Light dimmed, time slowed. He dreamed of Oziren. The demon's name was whispered by the ink, a being not of fire or rot, but of knowledge, of endless transcription. It did not consume flesh, but selfhood. Its worshippers, the silent binding, believed that to be read by Osirin was to achieve immority, mortality, but not salvation, only replication.

To write for Osirin was to be unmade and rewritten forever. Elliot began to see the cult in his dreams. Hooded figures kneeling in vast chambers, each with bleeding eyes, each inscribing pages into the walls with their own fingers. He saw blackwood, eyes black and empty, mouth full of writhing letters, reciting names not meant for sound. Objects in his apartment began to change. Clocks reversed. Pages wrote themselves. Mirrors showed rooms he'd never seen. He heard footsteps from above, but there was no floor above his. Whispers called to him from behind the closet. One night, the book was gone from his

desk, only to be found inside his refrigerator, soaking in melted ice, dry as ever. The hallucinations came then, or maybe they weren't. He saw people on the street with blank faces, birds falling from the sky. A woman at the cafe spoke backwards, then vanished mid-sentence. He tried to call his friend Mark, a fellow collector. But when the line picked up, all he heard was scratching. And behind it, a voice repeating, You are the ink, you are the ink.

He stopped sleeping. Not because he didn't want to, but because sleep was no longer rest. Each time, he returned to the manner deeper into its shifting rooms. One night he found a library within it that stretched into the void. Every book on the shelves containing his name, each one ended with a blank page. And when he opened the last, he saw his own eyes staring back. He tried to stop reading. He hid the book, locked it in a chest, buried it,

beneath the floorboards. The next morning, it was on his pillow. Blood began to leak from the corners of his eyes when he tried to resist. His skin grew pale, and his veins turned dark like rivers of ink. The book now opened itself. It demanded to be read. And then came the writing. It began subtly. He'd wake to find ink-stained fingers and parchment in his lap. filled with writing he didn't remember composing. The language was alien, looping sigils and harsh, jagged symbols that made his eyes water if he stared too long.

Some pages would move on their own, curling inward like they were folding into another dimension. The words pulsed when he touched them, and the more he wrote, the more the book smiled. Not visibly, not with teeth, but with presence. The book was feeding. Every stroke of his pen was like a heartbeat added to it, and it beat louder with each page.

He tried calling for help once, just once. Mark arrived after two days of silence, worried. When Elliot opened the door, Mark reeled back. Jesus, man, are you sick? Elliot looked in the mirror after Mark left. His skin had taken on a faint gray hue. His eyes were ringed with red, the whites veined with inked. threads. His smile felt wrong, like someone else was wearing his face. Mark never answered his

phone after that. Elliot found out a week later that Mark had been institutionalized after a breakdown. He had tried to rip his own tongue out, screaming that it was scribing him from the inside. Elliot laughed for a long time after hearing that, then cried. Then laughed again. He tried burning the book. The flames danced around it, refusing to touch. He doused it in holy water. It hissed, and the sound echoed with laughter. He took it to the edge of the ocean, hoping to bury it beneath the surf,

but as he stood over the crashing waves, he looked down and saw the book already in his hands, open, a new page appearing. You cannot drown a door. From then on the changes accelerated. The book began following him between dreams and waking life. No matter where he hit it, it was waiting. Its pages rearranged themselves constantly, displaying warnings, prophecies, and instructions he didn't remember needing, but instinctively understood.

It told him things, about others, about himself, that his mother had whispered his name in sleep while pregnant. That his father had gone mad, not from grief, but from something he'd read and buried before Elliot was born, that his bloodline had been marked. He didn't believe it until he found the box in the attic of his childhood home. Letters. Notes. His father's scrawl, describing a presence, a book, visions of a man with black teeth and no face. The handwriting matched Elliot's. The book was not a book. It was a being, a mouth, a voice of something older than sin.

Ozyron, the scribe of the hollow tongue, the demon not of fire or death, but of authorship. It did not burn, it wrote. It did not destroy. It documented. And to be written by O'Iron was to become its property, its apostle. It's ink. Elliot felt his bones shift when he tried to resist. On the 23rd day, he opened his mouth to scream,

and a swarm of ink flies flew out, wings buzzing in languages he didn't know. The floor of his apartment cracked like old paper. The windows no longer showed the outside world, only the manner. He was in both places now. His bed led to a staircase that hadn't existed before. It spiraled downward, lit by flickering lamps filled with a black flame. The walls breathed. Whispers followed him down, and at the bottom, the library awaited, ten times larger than it had been, filled with copies of the grimoire, each one named.

Each one bound in flesh that moved when he passed. He wandered there for what felt like days, perhaps years. Time didn't exist in the manner anymore. Not for him. It unraveled in loops. He watched himself enter, over and over. Sometimes different, sometimes the same. One version wept.

One laughed. One tried to warn him. None escaped. When he returned to his apartment, if that's what it was anymore, the city outside had fallen silent. No cars, no people. Just blank streets and ash drifting down like snow. His neighbors were gone. The television played only static.

The book was open on his desk. Another blank page waited. He sat and wrote. He wrote his memories, then his thoughts, then his fears. The book drank it all. And when he finished, it opened to him. a new page showing a door drawn in such perfect detail that it shimmered like real wood. He touched it and was inside again.

The manor swallowed him. This time there was no leaving. Elliot was no longer entirely human. His veins pulsed with black ink. His fingerprints had vanished, replaced by glyphs. His voice echoed even when he didn't speak, as if other versions. versions of him were muttering behind his ears. And still, the book fed. You are the story, the voice of Ozirin whispered. And stories never die. They multiply. That's when he saw

the truth. The grimroar wasn't just one book. It was many. Infinite. Every time someone read it, They added to it, became part of it. Every page was a soul. Every word, a memory. Every book, a life stolen and rewritten into something else. He turned the page. On it was the room he sat in, his own desk, and the book before him, drawn perfectly. The final line simply read,

Another reader approaches. There was a knock at the door. Elliot looked up. He felt his hands move without permission. The pen scratched across the page. He was writing again. Not just words, but you. The one reading list now.

Your breath. Your hesitation. Your thoughts as you consider whether this is fiction. It isn't. The final page is blank. waiting for your name. For more 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. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-like licensing, or with written consent from the authors. no portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.