Creepy - Night Shift & Have You Seen The Construction Workers?

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Night Shift (starts at 2:30)***Written by: Nicholas Waller and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Have You Seen The Construction Workers? (starts at 37:33)***Written by: Ryan Peacock and Narrated by: Nate Du...Fort***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence. and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hope you've been having a good week.
Starting point is 00:00:46 I rolled up to the station today and felt a little nostalgic. Probably because of how old I am and the fact that social media seems largely catered toward people of my age and making us feel all nostalgic for how life was back in the 90s, which I'm not even going to pretend was the best time in the world for me. But there is some stuff that I really do wish that I just, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:01:09 I just wish I'd been around for. There's something about old stories about working at radio stations that just absolutely fascinates me. I don't really remember much of that zoo crew type stuff that I think people on the coasts got more of than the flyover states, but just the craziness of the business,
Starting point is 00:01:29 the money, the substances. When rock stars were living what we actually think of as a rock star, star lifestyle, which is to say making choices that are great for stories and probably not so great for their internal organs. I just love hearing about the lawless days of certain industries and how there are those moments when things just grow faster than people are prepared to adapt with. Kind of like how we are with social media now, except fun. Then I walk into an empty building after everyone's gone, walk into a dusty basement,
Starting point is 00:02:03 and sit by myself listening to disembodied voices. So, you know, there are worse ways to spend your time. Anyway, hope you all are finding little moments of terror to lose yourself in. And if not, let's see if we can help. First up, from writer Nicholas Waller and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. Creepy Presents, Night Shift. The car was struggling as much as I was on the drive-in to work. We both groaned as we struggled up what felt like the world's steepest hill.
Starting point is 00:02:41 Every shift I hated driving up that fucking hill. The little rattle in the dashboard seemed to match the persistent dull ache behind my eyes. I truly despised working the night shift. The upside-down schedule. How the world feels tilted and strange at 3 a.m. the way I always end up feeling like a damn zombie the only reason I transferred was the difference in pay from working days it was how I made the math work
Starting point is 00:03:19 regardless of my feelings I sucked it up and told myself it was a small price to pay for the peace of mine it provided rent was paid the fridge was full the drives to and from work always gave me some time to reflect on things. Home had been feeling like a constant, delicate balancing act. And lately, I wasn't entirely sure it was one I was able to maintain when I wasn't a silent safety net for my elderly father-in-law,
Starting point is 00:03:56 whose pride outpaced his limitations. I was doing my best to keep a tune to the subtle shifts in my wife's moods while she clawed her way back from the darkest months. of grieving her mother's passing. I did my best to be an anchor for both. It was a role that I took on gladly, but one that left me perpetually exhausted. Hospital sighed and loomed ahead. It was a glowing reminder
Starting point is 00:04:29 that my second shift of the day was about to start. As I pulled into my usual parking spot, I began mentally preparing myself for whatever the night ahead might bring. I reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed my lunch. Once I'd gotten out of the car and confirmed the doors are secure, I slowly, begrudgingly, made my way towards the emergency department entrance. The automatic doors to the ED slowly hissed open. A sudden draft of sterilized chill there caused the hair on my arms to stand on end.
Starting point is 00:05:12 I gave a nod to Phil. one of my day shift counterparts on the way in he was stuck at the metal detector until one of our crew came to relieve him after debrief lobby was a liminal space at this hour bathed in a glimmering institutional hum and populated only by the weary i had a quick scan to see if i could spot any obvious problem children but these folks seemed okay The television flickered the usual muted news loop The ticker presenting whatever new chaos was going on The light from the screen reflected off the linoleum floors like moonlight on water I didn't linger
Starting point is 00:06:02 I was keen to get the day's shifts debrief over and done with as quickly as I could Most of that crew was fine But Joe the lead Jackass I kept my gaze fixed ahead My boots rhythmically clicking against the floor As I bypass triage I managed to dodge any potential
Starting point is 00:06:29 Small talk with the staff They were thankfully too caught up in their own conversation I always move with a practiced invisibility Once I punched the coat in It was through the door I turned down the narrow, dimly lit corridor towards the security office. The tiny wire glass window had the familiar, sickly glow of dozens of surveillance monitors. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:06:59 I thought as I took a deep breath, mentally stealing myself for whatever bullshit was going on behind that door. I stepped in. The security office smelled of stale. coffee and Joe shitty Cologne. He was regaling the rest of the team with tales of his command presence. I tuned him out as I reached for a radio and checked the battery. His ego was a physical weight in the room. I lacked the bandwidth to entertain it.
Starting point is 00:07:34 I just needed to grab my keys and get the hand off. Watch the green elevators. Benny muttered. Cutting right through Joe's narcissism. They're sticking. There's a guy in room 16 that's nuttier than squirrel shit. So watch yourself. I grabbed my key set off the hook and nodded.
Starting point is 00:07:58 The office was always this way as shift changes. A combination of day shift bitching and night shift fatigue. Kirk and Victor walked in. Thank God. They were on my crew. Two of the few guys I actually liked. They gave me their usual grimaces of solidarity. They gave me an empathetic pat on the shoulder.
Starting point is 00:08:26 No, how are you bullshitting? He knew it looked like hell and felt worse. Dave, our fourth, was already scowling at the monitors. He pointed a thick finger at a grainy feed of a basement corridor. Look at this shit. Something's leaking out from under the janitor's closet. How the hell day shift missed that? I'll take it, I said.
Starting point is 00:08:57 My voice sounding gravely even to me. I didn't want to sit in the office and listen to any of Dave's political diatrives or nurses gossip in the ED. The solitude of the hallway sounded great. Just what I needed. I grabbed a flashlight from the charging rack. I'm all over it. I said while I'm backing out of the room.
Starting point is 00:09:26 I'll find the source and get a hold of maintenance. Good luck, Dave grunted. I exited the office and headed for the stairwell that led to the basement level. Once I had descended, the transition was pretty immediate. The ambient noise of the ED had faded. replaced by the drone of the hospital's heart. The air was heavier down here, scrubbed of humanity by industrial filters.
Starting point is 00:09:58 Even though I'd worked here for years, I still managed to get lost when it came to the maze that this floor was. Once I oriented myself and headed in the right directions, I turned the corner and approached the janitor's closet. That's when I saw it. Holy fuck. Dave had not been exaggerating. An amber sludge was pooling under the door.
Starting point is 00:10:29 Thick, clear, and crawling. It looked alive. Like a raw nervous system laid bare on the linoleum. Its tendrils weaving into tight, pulsating webs. I couldn't believe my eyes. And then I heard it. The steady metal hiss of the age fact that I was used to stuttered, replaced by a wet, heavy wheeze behind the ceiling tiles.
Starting point is 00:11:05 Like a lung struggling for air. What the hell? Trust me to volunteer myself for a time kill, only for it to end up being a huge pain in the ass. I pushed the door with the rim of the flashlight, bracing myself. It didn't creak on its hinges. Instead, sliding open with a wet, sickening pop. As if it was being pulled back by living tissue.
Starting point is 00:11:40 That can't be good. I blindly reach for the light switch. My fingers failing to find the plastic toggle. My middle and ring fingers suddenly dipping into something, that shouldn't have been there. It didn't feel like liquid. It certainly didn't feel like a wall. The context certainly wasn't what my brain had expected.
Starting point is 00:12:08 Instead, the wet resistance of whatever cold biological matter had taken place of the switch. The sensation felt like a betrayal of physics. No squelch of wet viscera. or the cold slide of some kind of slime. Whatever the substance was, it didn't only push back. It had vibrated, jolting me with such high velocity that it felt like my fingertips were suddenly being sanded down. Once my skin had made contact, the sun in the room vanished. Not into silence.
Starting point is 00:12:54 But into me, a wet, metrical thrum. Thrum. It completely bypassed my ears. Traveling up the radius and ulna of my forearm like a live wire, I yelped as I yanked my hand away in a spike of panic. I shine the flashlight on my fingers, revealing a thin, gooey thread stretching between them. My breath started to hitch and tremble.
Starting point is 00:13:31 Filled with dread, I shifted the flashlight towards a source of the bizarre sounds I had heard in the hallway. Finally landing on what could only be described as a biological obscenity. It clung to the wall like a tumorous growth, glistening, a disgusting weeping mass of raw, translucent tissue.
Starting point is 00:13:56 that was oozing directly out of the H-back. When the light hit it, the substance seemed a pulsing time with my rapidly quickening heartbeat. What the fuck is this? I thought. Mouth agape. I put the flashlight under my right armpit
Starting point is 00:14:16 and started to glove up, examining this thing, this chaotic weave of what looked like a thick, wet cluster of vocal cords. laryngeal cartilage and microscopic cilia fused into a convulsive hive-like structure. What the hell? I wondered while trying to get a closer look. Where this unknown meat, as I decided to call it, met the floor, the strange fluid which had been seeping into the hall continued to spread
Starting point is 00:14:57 and caught the threat of my boots. Fuck! These are relatively new. I shifted my weight so I could try to move to a dry area of the floor. But strangely, the sound of my soul's moving didn't echo through the room. The mass suddenly shivered. Then a split second later, the distinct crunch of my footsteps emanated from the center of this thing. Replicated perfectly.
Starting point is 00:15:32 but much louder, unnervingly so. It was as though this thing had drunk the noise. Tentatively, I reached out with my gloved hand, breath still hitching, only to realize that this meat was reacting to my silence already. It started to emit a soft, wet mimicry of my now panicked respiration. I pan my flashlight downward and landed on a glimpse of synthetic blue fabric. Half submerged within the translucent sap. This goddamn thing was leaking everywhere.
Starting point is 00:16:23 My ribs tightened until it hurt to breathe. This wasn't some discarded uniform tangled in this mess. The scrubs were pulled tight, woven into the meat's wet insides. Instead of running like anyone with half a brink, I stepped closer. As I did, the background hum changed. The HVAC drone died out, cut short by a wet, bubbling rasp. Like someone trying to clear a congested throat.
Starting point is 00:17:01 The mass shifted, exposing the unlucky first witness. Nausea tasted like copper in my mouth. A hand still in a late 10th. X-exam glove was melted straight into the wall. Fingers spayed. Vibrating so fast they blurred. There was no blood. No signs of a fight either.
Starting point is 00:17:29 The skin ended at the shoulder, blurred into the thick, pulsating trunk of what looked like throat cartilage. The meat hadn't just killed the staff member. It had unmade them. harvesting the raw parts and needed to become larger louder the fingers suddenly slammed
Starting point is 00:17:53 against the wall in a frantic erratic rhythm the sound wasn't a tap instead a crystal clear looping recording of a woman's voice code blue
Starting point is 00:18:08 med surge room 2035 over and over and over. The pitch climbing with each repetition until it scratched at my ear drums. The air in the closet felt razor thin. My flashlight shook as I followed the line from the cartilage to the gloved hand. Then I saw it. A distinct rose-gold wedding band pressed tight against the inside of the glove.
Starting point is 00:18:44 Lindsay, a nurse. I recognized it from yesterday. She'd been complaining about the vending machine. How it never took card payments. I felt the marrow in my own arms start to ache sympathetically. Flashes of times her daughter came to visit her plate in my head. My stomach turned. Lindsay wasn't trapped inside this thing.
Starting point is 00:19:13 She had been digested into a function. I watched as her hand became more glass-like. The ridges smoothed into the same rib texture as trachea. I voluntarily uttered her name softly into a choked breath. And the meat not only mimicked my speech, but perfected it, Lindsay, not only reverberated inside the closet, but rang out from the hallway walls, sounding clearer, louder, and more authoritative than my voice has ever been capable of. On instinct, I reached for my radio, fingers hovering over the plastic casing of the hand mic.
Starting point is 00:20:08 Then I froze. Don't be stupid, I thought. Any words that come out of your mouth, this thing is just going to absorb them. My eyes darted back and forth across the cramped space, eventually landing on the industrial floor buffer. Bingo. Without hesitation, I lunged for the handle, jamming my thumb down on the dead man switch while my fingers clamped the dual trigger levers. The motor groaned and the massive polishing disc began to spin deceptively fast, spooling up to a whine. I gritted my teeth and wrestled the machine forward,
Starting point is 00:20:56 tilting the handle back to force the edge of the spinning plate to go directly against the thick, stainless steel rim of the floor sink. The consequences were both simultaneous. and violent. The disc gnashed against the stainless steel, causing the closet to explode into a sustained metallic shriek. High-frequency vibration that felt like a drill pressing against the back of my skull. A horrific, jagged, discordant sound that had no place in the natural world. My arm shook violently. The muscle screaming while I fought the torque of the machine as best as I could.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Trying to keep the metal-on-metal contact grinding to force the frequency to hit its peak. The meat didn't just vibrate, though. It contorted. The cilia lashing back and forth into a blind frenzy. Unable to find a pattern within the industrial roar. The set on the floor spiked upward, as though it were under a sonic blast. The perfect imitation of Lindsay and I's voices shattered into serrated overlapping shards of white noise. The rose gold ring on her hand, vibrated so intensely that the latex gloves began to smoke.
Starting point is 00:22:42 The friction from the meat had started to generate. generated blistering heat, I felt a wave as I saw the creatures suffer. I felt a wave of relief as I saw the creature suffer, but the victory was short-lived. Within seconds, the mass started to thicken. Its surface began to harden into a dense, calcified ridge, like a row of giant, fused teeth. It began swallowing the vibration. The metallic shriek became muffled while the meat pressed its new bone-like mass against the metal rim of the sink so it could dampen the oscillation. Fuck. The meat wasn't dying. It was adapting.
Starting point is 00:23:36 It was no longer being hurt by the sound instead, using the chaotic frequency to build itself a new skeletal framework. expanding outwards along the ceiling tiles rapidly, a serrated wave of bone-colored tissue. My attack hadn't just failed. It provided this thing a fucking conduit. The meat absorbed the final, dying wine of the buffer, and a series of mechanical clicks began to echo down the corridor. Following the electrical pulse through the wiring,
Starting point is 00:24:13 and surging into the central nervous system of the hospital. The intercom. The overhead speakers all suddenly hissed alive. The sound of the meat, breathing, blaring through the building, causing the entire hospital to exhale a low-frequency drone. I could feel it in the soft tissues of my stomach instead of the ears. Above me, I heard the muffled shouting of the staff. Their voices instantly caught within the building's new throat.
Starting point is 00:24:53 The intercom system had been transformed into a vacuum, sucking in all the beeps of the monitors, the crying of the infants, the ringing of phones, and feeding all of it back into the central mass. The horror had shifted from physical threat to total sensory override. The frequency began to renegotiate reality, causing my vision to oscillate. The edges of the hallway started to fray. The horrifying sound achieved a palpable, heavy quality,
Starting point is 00:25:34 which made me feel as though I'd been submerged in oil. Light itself failed. The fluorescent bulbs didn't flicker. Instead humming in a visible violet spectrum, rhythmically in sync with the respiration of the meat. Panicking, I attempted to shout. For no other reason beyond sheer terror. But the meat swallowed the sound before it even left my throat.
Starting point is 00:26:05 I was plunged into an acoustic vacuum, trapped in a configuration that continued to work. Corridors began to curve and stretch like the interior of a massive, fleshy gollet. And the walls morphed into a vibrating, semi-transparent membrane. Then the meat spoke, uttering something that wasn't exactly a word, but a concept of sound the human ear could never process. It started with a metallic screech that simultaneously blasted. through every speaker. The pop of the live mic replaced with that disgusting, wet stretching
Starting point is 00:26:52 noise, as though vocal cords were spasming behind the ceiling tiles. I felt the resonance rumbled through my marrow, as though a thousand voices were attempting to say the same thing at once, but slightly had a phrase. There was a sickening layering effect in the air. No consonants. Only a raw glottal stop that felt like it lasted for an eternity. As a sound peaked, the ceiling tiles began to weep more of the sap. It squeezed out of the speaker grills like sweat from a pore, turning the air hazy, a bruised purple. The meat had spoken its first word as a living cosmic instrument.
Starting point is 00:27:51 And when the sound finally ended, the silence was worse. It was heavy, as though the meat was awaiting some kind of response. Terrible sound lingered within me. I felt a sickening looseness in my joints, as if my connective tissue had vibrated right off the bones. I would have wept if I could. but my body wouldn't let me. Terrified, I reached for the wall. My fingers sank in.
Starting point is 00:28:30 Not because the wall had suddenly turned into mush, but because I had. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a small mirror that the staff had placed in the closet for grooming. I had become obscured, blurring into a pink, featureless smeared. My eyes were like elongated ovals of dark fluid, and my pulse was visible in the air around me. A faint ripple of light.
Starting point is 00:29:05 No, I wanted to scream as I tried to get away. I couldn't run. Every step I managed felt like a stone being skipped across the lake of static. My boots were leaving behind acoustic shadows, shimmering outlines of footprints that continued to hum, a sharp frequency after each step passed. The air had become a dense, vibrating medium, resisting my every moment, as if I were in deep water. Then it hit me. The power. I thought.
Starting point is 00:29:51 My mind racing against the reverberation rising in. my core. The frequency needs a medium, and if I can kill the current, I can kill this thing. The meat suddenly spoke again, letting out a monosyllabic roar that began tearing the physical laws of the basement apart. The pipes rippled like liquid. I felt my teeth resonate until they cracked. I tried to howl from the excruciating pain, but the meat just swallowed.
Starting point is 00:30:25 it. I continued towards the main power room, struggling through the pain. Every step taking everything I had to give. I kept picturing my wife's face. I had to make it back to her. When I finally reached the door to the main power room, the me began to sweat its disgusting viscous sap all over it. I fumbled for my belt. My hands shaking so violently that the brass key ring chimed with a dissonant melodic ring. I struggled to isolate the master key. My fingers felt like a bundle of wet glass. Finally, I managed to get a decent grip on the right key, shoved it into the lock.
Starting point is 00:31:20 The metal groaned. The tumblers began vibrating in a perpetual state of flux, nearly refusing to accept the solid shape of the key. I had to lean my full weight against the door, twisting the key until the lock finally gave way. The click disturbingly replaced with the sound of a snapping bone. I shoved the door wide open, using every ounce of strength I could muster.
Starting point is 00:31:51 My eyes immediately assaulted by the new heart of the meat. Massive transformers that no longer drowned. Instead, singing a chorus of industrial agony with the veins of translucent tissue wrapped around the high voltage bus bars, siphoning power directly into the meat's expanding nervous system. The air smelled foul and suffocating. I desperately reached for the lever. fighting the nausea and the pain.
Starting point is 00:32:27 My hand now a blurred, glassy fan of fingers. I prayed that a total blackout would destroy this monstrosity as I slammed the lever down. The ventilation fans groaned, slowly spiraling into a dead hollow silence. The violent hum suddenly disappeared, and darkness enveloped the entire floor. Did it work? I wondered as I stood there, panting, waiting for my body to solidify, for the looseness to return to sinew.
Starting point is 00:33:09 Please say it worked. But the silence didn't last. Suddenly I noticed a tiny rhythmic tick in the center of my chest. Thrumpe hiss. Thrumpe, hiss. It wasn't my heart. It was the exact mechanical cadence of the H-VAC system. I tried to clutch my chest in a panic,
Starting point is 00:33:36 only for my fingers to sink into my uniform, feeling like soft, fibrous tissue. The creature hadn't failed. It had simply found itself a more portable vessel. I opened my mouth to scream. But I felt a strange, uncomfortable sensation in my throat. And the only sound that emerged was the unmistakable chime of Lindsay's rose-gold wedding ring, hitting the floor as it flew out of my mouth in desperation.
Starting point is 00:34:17 I exited the room to make one last attempt to escape, barreling towards the stairs that led to the exterior of the hospital with everything that I had. As I tried making my way up, the basement's stairs felt wrong. Each rise are wet and malleable. Underneath my boots, like a row of tongues, I pulled myself up by the handrail. The metal felt warm, pulsing beneath my grip. Once I reached the ground floor, I frantically stumbled towards the exit, nearly drained of all my energy. The heavy crash bar was slick with the sound.
Starting point is 00:35:03 As I shoved the doors open, the hinges didn't creak. They groaned like the sound of a waking lung. I staggered out into the gray pre-dawn light of the parking lot, unable to feel the cold air. Only the internal friction of my cells rubbing together. Like a million miniature tuning forks. I reached for my radio. Fingers still as crystalline as spun glass. And keyed the mic, but didn't have to speak.
Starting point is 00:35:40 The radio no longer emitted static. Instead, radiating the sounds of a typical shift. Clattering trays, the woosh. of ventilators, and Lindsay's soft, tired laugh. The sounds were coming from my chest cavity, amplified by the hollow resonance of my ribs. I tried to choke the noise back, but continued to transmit. Across the street, a stray dog stopped, sniffing the grass and tilted its head. I looked on in horror as this animal's breathing began to synchronize with my own. The same, wet, mechanical hiss click as I tried to keep walking.
Starting point is 00:36:33 The pavement under my boots began to whip a clear, viscous fluid, and the streetlights started to hum a perfectly clear C-sharp. I wasn't going to make it home. I had become a walking antenna, living broadcast for the meat. I looked up at the pale and different moon, suddenly feeling my throat stretch and tighten into an inhuman shape. I attempted to gasp for air, only for a violent roar to erupt out of me.
Starting point is 00:37:11 A call. The vacuum of space was finally ready to answer. And next, from writer Ryan Peacock and narrated by Nate DuFort, Creepy Presents, Have you seen the construction worker? The construction workers? Working on the roads at night, always busy, but it's never clear just what they're working on.
Starting point is 00:37:44 I've seen them, and I know that they've seen me. I'm a little drunk right now, so forgive me if this isn't the most coherent. I'm hoping the alcohol will calm my nerves enough so I can sleep, even for a little while. I don't really get a lot of sleep in the first place. I never have. Ever since I was really young, I've always had the worst insomnia.
Starting point is 00:38:13 I'll lie in bed, but my brain just won't shut off. My thoughts race at a thousand miles per minute. I can't make them stop. Questions, worries, self-doubts? The list goes on. I'm an anxious man by nature. The calm needed to drift off doesn't come easily to me, and sleep only comes quickly when I'm well and truly exhausted. Sometimes I'll go on my phone, but that really doesn't help.
Starting point is 00:38:46 I just stay up browsing all night. Sometimes I'll get up and play a video game or something, but really, that's no better than spending the night on my phone. So lately, I've been driving. I don't know about you, but driving calms me down. It soothes my nerves. My mind doesn't race or anything. I forget about the anxiety. I can just sit and focus on the road and whatever I'm listening to.
Starting point is 00:39:18 A podcast, some music, whatever. Lately, I've been listening to CreepyPod. That John Grills has a very calming voice. I'll go out for a couple of hours and drive through the dark country roads. Sometimes I'll pass through the nearby towns and take in their surreal beauty, quiet and abandoned in the early hours of the morning. If you've never seen it, you should. It's something special.
Starting point is 00:39:51 There's something so serene about being the only one around in the dead of night. It makes my heart race and, in a way, Makes my anxiety spike, but I love it. Anyway, it was during these drives that I saw them. I never put that much thought into the random construction workers I'd sometimes pass. I just slowed down and made a point not to hit them like a decent human being. They'd go about their business and I'd go about mine. Nobody ever really thinks that hard about road work.
Starting point is 00:40:29 it's just a little annoying thing you deal with. If there's a lot of traffic, it's frustrating, but usually it's just a mild annoyance at best. Sometimes while passing their work sites, I'd catch a glimpse of the workers and briefly imagine myself living their lives, scheduling my life around late-night construction shifts. I've never really been one for manual labor. I don't think I could do it, but I admire those who can. Most of the construction workers I've seen on my drives were just ordinary people. Up past midnight, fixing potholes. Most of them.
Starting point is 00:41:13 Every now and again, I'd see something different. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. While I was out on my late-night drives, I'd sometimes pass work-suff. that hadn't been there during the day. I know, I know. It doesn't sound that weird when you say it out loud. A lot of road work gets done at night when there's less traffic out and about,
Starting point is 00:41:40 but stay with me here. I know the area I'd drive pretty well. I'd know if they were doing road work in these areas during the day. They weren't. And the roadwork they were doing at night? Well, I'm not even entirely sure if I could call it road work. See, these work sites had a setup like they were doing road work
Starting point is 00:42:03 with orange and black construction pylons keeping cars away from their area. But they didn't really seem to actually be working on the road. I only ever caught a few glimpses of what they were doing, but in every instance that I saw them, there was always a car in the sectioned off part of the road, and they were always doing something to it. Does that even qualify as roadwork? Then, there were the workers themselves.
Starting point is 00:42:32 If you've driven past a construction zone at night, you might have made eye contact with some random worker. If so, you'll know that it's a very surreal moment, kind of uncomfortable. But, I mean, you're still just looking at a person. But passing these guys, something just felt off about them. They'd always, always be tall and skinny, as in weirdly tall and skinny.
Starting point is 00:43:02 They'd be dressed in baggy uniforms and their facial features never seemed quite right. Their hair looked like a badly applied wig. Some of them were inexplicably wearing sunglasses, and those that weren't had a sort of vacant look in their eyes. The weirdest part was how they'd all just sort of sort of. stop and look at me as I drove by. In unison, they'd halt what they were doing and just stare. Eyes fixated on my car as I passed as if they were waiting for me to leave. The first few times I saw them, I never thought too much of it. I mean, you see, weird-looking
Starting point is 00:43:45 people all the time. It's not exactly unfathomable that some of them might work in construction. what they were doing was never really my business anyway. But as I started seeing them more and more over the next few months, those little weird traits they had stood out to me more and more. Like I said before, I never thought about it too much. If anything, it was just one of those funny things you see while driving at night. And I never mentioned it to anybody. Why would I?
Starting point is 00:44:17 Whatever they were doing, it wasn't any of my concern. And I guess it really was never any of my concern now that I'm thinking about it. I don't know. But I couldn't leave well enough alone. Not after seeing what I saw. I'm beating around the bush. I'm sorry. Putting it all into writing is hard.
Starting point is 00:44:41 I'm overthinking every little detail. I'll try to get to the point. It was a few days ago. And I was in the middle of another bout of insomnia. So I did what I'd do. always done. I went for a drive. I didn't want to go too far from home, so I stayed in town for the most part, skirting along some rural roads as I drove a familiar circuit I'd driven a thousand times before. I put on a podcast and let myself relax. It was nice and soothing. After about an hour or so,
Starting point is 00:45:15 I was skirting along one of the roads that separated the suburbs from the endless farmland that dominated the back roads when I saw the orange and black pylons up ahead. I cut my speed and moved into the other lane to give the construction a wide berth. As I passed, I spotted a white pickup truck inside the pylons. This didn't look like a work truck. It had way too many bumper stickers, most of them referencing God. The truck was idling, but I didn't see any trace of the driver inside. only several tall, pale figures were working on the body of the truck,
Starting point is 00:45:52 and as I passed, they all turned to look at me, fixating on me with wide, unblinking stairs. I looked back at them only briefly as I slowly drove past. On the ground, a few feet away, were four or five other workers. They were standing around something I didn't immediately get a good look at. Like their buddies, they all saw. stared vacantly at me as well. And as I drove past, I caught a glimpse of what it was they were standing over. It almost made me stop the car. It was hard to see clearly between the figures, but I could have sworn that there was a man lying on the ground. No, no, that's not the right
Starting point is 00:46:38 phrasing. That implies I have some doubt about what I saw. I did see a man lying on the ground. I saw him looking at me, his eyes locking with mine for a moment as I sat inside my car. I saw that he was terrified. That look, I don't know how to describe it, really. It felt like it pierced my very soul and left me slightly sick to my stomach. I've never seen the face of a man who knew he was about to die before. I've never had someone beg me for help with just their eyes. But that night, I was sure that was exactly what I was looking at. And the longer I looked, the more I realized was off. The man they'd stood over didn't appear to have any legs.
Starting point is 00:47:31 He was as pale as a ghost, and there were dark stains on the hands and uniforms of the workers, stains that looked an awful lot like blood. I stared at them. I stared at the man. and they all stared right back at me, silently warding me off. I took the hint. I hit the gas and sped away from the roadwork, looking in my rearview mirror. I could see every tall, pale figure at the construction site,
Starting point is 00:48:02 still staring at me as the darkness of the night consumed them again. My mind was racing as I left the scene of the roadwork behind. I tried to understand what I'd just seen. but no answer really seemed satisfying. Maybe they'd been helping someone who'd gotten into an accident. But why were construction workers doing that? Why were they set up around his car like that? There'd been nothing else they seemed to be working on.
Starting point is 00:48:32 I had so many questions, and none of them made any sense. I tried to justify it in my mind, but every logical explanation I came up with collapsed in on itself. Maybe it was just that my mind was tired. I wasn't thinking straight. Maybe it would all make sense in the morning. Maybe. After driving for a little while longer,
Starting point is 00:48:56 I eventually found my way back home, went up to my apartment and collapsed into my bed. I wish I could say I slept soundly, but I didn't. Not even close. Come morning, I was inclined to dismiss everything I'd seen the night before as some sort of a bad dream or an exhaustion-induced misunderstanding.
Starting point is 00:49:18 I mean, realistically, what were the chances that there was anything suspicious going on out there? Probably zero. Right? Yet, I still couldn't shake the memory of the man watching me from the ground
Starting point is 00:49:34 as the workers surrounded him. I still couldn't justify the fact that those workers look to be covered in blood. Perhaps it was just an act. accident. Perhaps. I don't know. But if it were, wouldn't there be some record of it? When that idea crossed my mind, I had to look into it more. I scoured the local news for any reference of a car accident last night, but found nothing. That, in and of itself, shouldn't have been too suspicious, right? The news can't cover every little fender bender. What was I saying?
Starting point is 00:50:14 This wasn't a little fender bender. In a best case scenario, that man had to have been at least injured. There'd been no other cars at the scene, so he had to have crashed into something, a guardrail, a signpost, something. That was it. If he'd hit something on that road, there would be some sign of it, wouldn't there? It hadn't looked like his truck had hit anything when I'd passed him, but, well, it had also been dark and hadn't stuck around for long.
Starting point is 00:50:41 I still had time before work started. I could drive down, get a coffee and a donut, take that road, and see what damage was done. It would alleviate all my fears, no problem. So, that's exactly what I did. I took a long route to pass by the spot where I'd seen the accident, and I expected to see pylons or maybe even a police car. Judging by the time, the accident had only been about six hours ago.
Starting point is 00:51:07 There probably wouldn't be any trace of the truck or its driver. and I had little doubt I'd seen what he'd hit. Yet, as I drove down the highway, I saw nothing. I'd never really stopped to closely study the signs and guardrails along that road before, or more accurately, the lack of them. What few rails and signs I saw had no damage, and when I passed the area, I'd seen the truck in, there was nothing there that could have hit.
Starting point is 00:51:39 Let's say the driver had been drunk and had gone off the road. It would have ended up in a farmer's field. Perhaps he had, and those workers had carried him out, but wouldn't there be some sign of it, some evidence? I saw none. After getting my coffee, I passed that way a second time to get out and take a closer look on the off chance I could find more evidence. The golden glow of the rising sun didn't offer the best love.
Starting point is 00:52:09 light to investigate by, but as far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing. No signs that anything had gone off the road, no evidence of blood stains, no chip pieces of paint or signs of damage, nothing at all. I almost wondered if I was in the wrong place and spent the next 15 minutes walking up and down that stretch of highway, searching for something, and yet there was still nothing. After a while, I got back into my car and went home to start getting ready for work. As I meandered through my workday, my mind kept wandering back to that car accident from last night. Why did this matter to me? Why was I putting so much effort into this when really it shouldn't matter? Was it the look in that man's eyes? Why would that drive me? I sat mindlessly at
Starting point is 00:53:06 my laptop, replaying those precious few seconds I'd shared with him over and over again in my head as I'd driven past. Maybe it was that fear that I saw, a mortal fear that was hard to describe. But that was stupid, wasn't it? This shouldn't be bothering me? Why was it bothering me? When I had a moment, I scanned the news again. I looked for any announcements of recent deaths and found nothing of note. Eventually, I gave myself two shots of espresso and shifted my focus back to work, or as much of my focus as I could spare, at least.
Starting point is 00:53:47 Then, when my day ended, I had a microwave dinner and played a video game until I got sleepy. I woke up at around one in the morning. Usually I wake up gradually, but that day was different. I don't have a lot of nightmares, and the ones I do have are pretty minor. The most recent one I can remember
Starting point is 00:54:09 involved me putting too much soap in the sink while washing the dishes and being terrified that my parents would find out. Don't ask me why I thought this was so terrifying. I don't know how to explain it. But the nightmare I'd just woken up from was far more vivid than any of the others. In it, I was back in my car,
Starting point is 00:54:30 coasting along that back road and watching as the strange, tall construction workers stood over the man with the Jesus truck. I watched as they tugged at his body, not as if they were trying to help him up, but as if they were trying to take him apart. I'd looked into his eyes as I'd driven past and both the man and the workers stared at me. I got to see the terror in that man's eyes all over again, the mortal fear he felt, and it was intense enough that I felt it in my own. heart, too. I wanted to help him. But the workers were staring at me, their eyes burning into me,
Starting point is 00:55:12 silently willing me away, warning me with an unspoken threat should I get closer. In my dream, I drove away like I'd driven away the night before. I'd woken up in a cold sweat, the knot in my stomach was anything but a dream. And though I tried to lay back down and rest, my brain was wide awake. I didn't feel rested. I still felt exhausted. But after an hour, sleep wouldn't come, and browsing on my phone quickly felt like a hollow distraction. So I got up, got dressed, and grabbed my keys to go on another drive. I passed by the spot where I'd seen the truck again, although there was still nothing there, no evidence of roadway. And I was, work. I didn't linger there for much longer. I moved on, taking a back road that I knew would
Starting point is 00:56:10 lead me to one of the small towns just outside the city I live in. I didn't listen to a podcast this time. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a little while. I don't know what I was expecting or hoping to accomplish. I just figured it would help. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it didn't. I'm not really sure. Roughly an hour. Roughly an hour. hour into my drive, I noticed a flash of orange just down the highway. Roadwork. Even from a distance, I recognized the tall, lumbering forms of the workers. These were the men I'd seen before. On instinct, I slowed my car down, pulled over to the side of the road, and killed the engine. My lights fell dead, immersing me in darkness. I saw one of the workers look over in my direction,
Starting point is 00:57:01 and for a moment I dreaded that they might stare at me, noticing me through the darkness. But they didn't. They just went on with their business, seemingly none the wiser. I felt like I was doing something wrong. At the very least, I was doing something weird, spying on random construction workers. These probably weren't even the same guys I'd seen the night before. I mean, they looked similar, but I had no proof. But I still figured that I'd watch that.
Starting point is 00:57:31 them for 20 minutes or so before getting bored and driving off. I'd probably spook the hell out of them, but it would put those nagging voices my mind at rest. So, and I sat. I waited, and in time I saw. I watched as the worker set up something on the road. Just what I couldn't say. Some sort of strip right across the highway, though. It came out like a jack.
Starting point is 00:58:01 Oddly enough, they didn't seem to mark where it was. They just laid it out, then went back to the safety of their orange cones. I wondered if perhaps this was some sort of road treatment. I never thought it'd be anything dangerous, and yet when the next car came, I'd seen a car's tires pop before. The sound is hard to forget, as of the smell of burning rubber. The second that car ran over whatever they'd put in the road, the tires shredded instantly.
Starting point is 00:58:34 I watched the car skid and struggle to break before veering over to the side of the road, and as it did, I watched the workers approach it, carrying their pylon silently and dutifully, probably just to help him, right? But if so, why were a few of them picking up whatever they'd laid out across the road? Why did whatever they'd laid across the road
Starting point is 00:58:59 looked like it had spikes on it. I watched as the driver, a man in a warm-looking sweater with a matching scarf got out. He didn't seem to notice the workers coming towards him at first, and while I considered getting out to check on him, my instincts told me to stay put. The workers were almost on top of him when he finally noticed them. And when he did, I saw his eyes light up a little. He spoke to them warmly, almost like, friends. Hey, sorry, something blew out my tires. Before he could say anything more, he trailed off.
Starting point is 00:59:39 His eyes followed the pair of workers taking their road spikes off the road, and I could see him piecing together what had just happened in his mind. His warmth immediately faded away and was replaced with rage, then panic. I heard him yelling at them. What the hell's going on here? What's your fucking problem? They didn't seem to care. They just kept drawing ever closer to him. And when they started to grab him, he fought them, screaming and thrashing all the while. But there were too many of them, and only one of him.
Starting point is 01:00:15 He fought, but in the end, it meant nothing. In the end, they dragged him to the ground and his screams of rage all too quickly became screams of pain. I watched as they began to pull them apart. Not cuts. They had no tools. All they had were their bare hands and they just pulled. I heard the squish of flesh being ripped from flesh,
Starting point is 01:00:44 the inhuman throaty screams of a man being eviscerated while he was still alive. Then the choking gasps, the horrified sobs, the begging. Stop! Please stop. Why are you doing this, please? Then the vomiting, as the horror of what was being done to him settled upon him. Within ten minutes, all was silent. The workers who had pried off parts of his body took them away, disappearing into the night with them like ants carrying pieces of their prey.
Starting point is 01:01:20 I watched it all with a growing feeling of nausea in my stomach, and I knew that this was the night. the hell the man I'd seen the other night had gone through. They started on his car next, prying at the metal before ripping chunks of it off, once again, with only their bare hands. I didn't stay long for that. The spikes were off the road. I didn't want to wait around for them to finish with his car in case they spotted me and
Starting point is 01:01:49 decided to make me the next victim. That wasn't stupid enough to drive towards them. For all I'd knew, they'd see. seen me and had set up another spike trap up ahead. Instead, the moment my engine came to life, I made a violent U-turn and hit the gas, speeding away from the workers. In my rearview mirror, I could see them all looking up at me as I fled. I haven't slept well ever since that night. I barely slept at all. I can't unhear the screams. I can't forget the sound of the flesh. being ripped apart. Part of me doesn't want to forget. I saw a report on the news the other day.
Starting point is 01:02:35 They found parts of several disassembled vehicles dumped in a nearby lake. Some of them even date back to the 1960s. There was even some video of the vehicles being pulled out. One of them looked like it used to be part of a white pickup truck, and it was even covered in decals and stickers, praising Jesus. Hard to say for sure, but I can hazard a guess as to where it came from. I haven't left the house in a few days. I don't think the workers go out in daylight, but I don't want to chance it. I know they've seen me at least twice now. I don't know if they can find me, but I've seen a lot of construction on the street outside my window lately.
Starting point is 01:03:23 And it seems more active at night. 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 Commons 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.

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