Creepy - Play Monster

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Play Monster***Written by: Samuel Rich***Back to Your Roots***Written by: Wouldn’t You Like to Know and Narrated by: Alicia Atkins***It Comes from the Wall***Written by: Tor-Anders Ulven and Narrated by: JV Hampton-VanSant***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadia***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. For our first story this evening, returning home to confront childhood trauma, a man faces the lingering monsters from his past,

only to discover some nightmares weren't gone. They were just waiting. Creepy Presents Play Monster Written by Samuel Rich. Driving down the road, a old blended with a new. A familiar skeleton wearing an unfamiliar face. He felt the dissonance like body blows.

The cumulative effect piling up as he passed woods turned into subdivisions and fields that were now lots. Here and there, though, he saw the past peeked through. The generation that had come before him had mostly passed, but many of their landmarks remained from to recognize. Passing through a curve, his gaze swept across the turnout road to the right. In the triangle of land, shaped by the two roads, squatted a single-story cedar house. The sagging and the wraparum porch made it look brooding, and he wondered how long before the oddly peaked roofline did the same.

Built in the housing boom, it had never had a family call at home. He remembered it sitting empty long after its construction, the for-sale sign never coming down, but occasionally having to be replaced. In time, it had become a hair salon, but that hadn't lasted long. Then it was a chiropractor, and then a lawyer. The dormancy in between grew with each passing business, and by the time they'd moved away, it was abandoned again. Somehow it had always made sense to him, an orphan rejecting the society that had never

seen fit to give it a family. Further on and passed another sprawling piece of suburbs sat the huge two-story house at the crossroads, sat near the corner on a flat and empty lot to press up against both roads. Its position made it seem even larger. Its eve seemed to hang out over each road, its windows staring down into the windows of passing cars. His bus had turned there by the house when he was in elementary school. Going straight, he would have been the next stop.

But that turn meant an extra 45 minutes to an hour. When his mother wasn't working, she met the bus there, but those times were few. Once, when she wasn't there and there was a subsequent. to do driver, he'd lied and said that that was a stop. He'd never seen the man who lived in that house, not once, and didn't know anyone who did. But as a bus had pulled away and he turned to walk home, he saw him for the first time. He was standing in the middle of the open front door, the dark exterior behind him framing his gaunt figure. The man hadn't looked at all the way he'd

imagined. In his childhood mind, recluses at wild beards and wilder hair. Their clothes disheveled and their faces most likely dirty. This man's face was clean, stark and long. His head shaved the way his mother did his hair when they needed to save money. Their eyes only met for a moment, but in that moment, something inside his gut tightened. Instinctually, if not consciously, he knew he'd made a mistake. He'd turned to him. He'd turned to him. and looked down the road, gauging the distance and the speed he would need to run if he had to. When he'd glanced back, the look on the man's face and the direction of his gaze told him he was thinking the same thing. There had been a car coming fast on the two-lane blacktop, but he'd ignored it.

Flinging himself almost backwards, he'd turned and rushed across the road, the wind from the car enough to spin him around while the blowing horn made his head ring. In that moment he saw the man for the last time, standing just inside the doorway. His focus unbroken until the door swept him from sight. Passing by now, he couldn't help a look at that door again. Completely changed now, as was most of the exterior of the house. He'd gotten the belt for that one, both for lying to the bus driver and for nearly bringing about his own end. The driver of the car that had nearly painted him onto the asphalt had known his mother, and by the time the emotions had matriculated up to his

dad, there had been no saving him. He'd known there was no need to mention the man, or what he'd felt, or why he'd done what he did. His father didn't deal in feelings, unless it was detailing the ways he had hurt his mother's, or by doing it himself. He felt himself start to disassociate, as a predictable upswell of emotions began erupting. The temptation was strong to just give in and let it happen, but he fought it, forcing himself to be present. His eyes blinked rapidly, and his hands gripped the steering wheel tight. He forced his breathing into a repetitive mechanical rhythm, just like his therapist had shown him. Like a ghost sitting next to him in the car, he could hear her voice telling him to let go. That's what this whole

trip was supposed to be about, letting go. Freeing him. himself from the feelings haunting him, the ones hanging around his neck like a yoke for 40 years. There was a culmination of the hours of therapy, leading him here now at this hour. Back to a home that wasn't his and hadn't been for a long time. He felt the tension began to fade as he drove on. Eyes focused on the line in the road where it fell out of sight. He watched as it ate up the land, shortening the distance between him and his destination.

Then up out of the ground from nowhere it began. The dirt bank to his right that he climbed up and down a thousand times transitioned down into a long line of tall and closely planted evergreens. The people who had bought the house from his family had planted them, and the ones who came after had left them. The tall furred limbs formed an almost impenetrable wall to the eyes they reached up toward the sky, blocking out almost all sight of the house until the driveway that pierced through them.

He slowed, and as he neared the driveway, he remembered how it had once been. No crowding trees or poured concrete lane. Just a strip of gravel laid out across a sprawling green lawn. The large-for-sales signed positioned by the road gave him hope, but it wasn't until he was turning in and passed the tree hedge that he could be sure that there were no cars parked outside the house, at least not in the driveway, which curved on down and around to the back. There was a two-car garage back there, and for a nervous moment he wondered if someone might be home.

There was a small parking area at the front that his mother had insisted on when they'd finally laid the driveway. And it was there that he stopped the car. Even with the blinds drawn and with what the realtor had told him, he had to be sure. The last thing he needed while trying to heal his trauma was the trauma of encountering a board deputy sheriff with nothing better to do. Walking up the sidewalk and knocking on the door, he glanced down the covered porch, past the large picture window that dominated that half of the house. The front of the house faced directly to the west.

In the evenings, that big window would flood the living room with light. The beams delineated with moths of dust from the wood-burning furnace. At night, it was different. The portal of light became a void, with even the yard just on the other side obscured. The window had become a scrying stone, in whose onyx emptiness he saw all the shapes and forms of his fears. His father would have told you in front of him that was the problem, an imagination he couldn't contain, fueled by an environment he couldn't control. He saw them everywhere and often. In the basement or friend's attic or a dark part of the woods, an army of boogeyman created in his own mind that tormented.

him, their shapes not always the same, but their signature unified. It was a crippling fear that when it took him, took him down deep inside, took his sense and his reason, and left him with nothing but the knowledge that it would always be there, living inside of him, not a monster under the bed or in the closet, but inside his own mind, ones he projected under the landscape around him. No one came to the door. He looked down the length of the porch again to where it turned at the end of the house, then turned and walked away.

Around that bend lay the deck his father had built, along with the door that opened into the kitchen. Before that, there had just been a stack of cinder blocks leading up to the door that he vaguely remembered. Walking back down the sidewalk, he looked up at the two-story windows just above him. His bedroom had been the one on the left. His sister is on the right. When she'd moved out and he'd moved to the opposite side of the house, both rooms had become empty.

One had been turned into a hardly used office, the other to a guest room for a rare guest. They'd become hollow spaces to him, places he hardly went for as long as the rest at the time he lived there. Looking back up to the windows, he could feel their judgment weighing on his thoughts. At his car, he hesitated. a not small part of him urging strongly to just get back in and leave.

The agreement between himself and his therapist was that he would come back, and he had. He'd come back to where he came from, back to the birthplace of so much of what he was dealing with in the present. He'd set foot on the ancestral grounds of his fears. Wasn't that enough? Before his hands could touch the door of the car, he'd already told himself, no. Looking up, he could see where he still had to go. Across from him stood what at one time had been a commercial chicken house, but that time had been a long time ago. Already here when his dad had purchased a property, it had been converted into a shop for his father's business.

To that end, the barn, as they called it, had been heavily renovated. The mesh-knitting sides and roll-out windows stripped out and replaced by proper wooden siding. along with a new metal roof. He stared at the pair of big sliding doors facing toward him, and over to the smaller door to the right. His father had put in long fluorescent lights on the inside that hung from the bare rafters and buzzed to life like angry insects when they came to life.

The light switches that turned them on were on the inside as well, far to the left of the wide barn doors. Even in the daytime, stepping through the door meant plunging into darkness and an immediate scramble with his heart racing as he tried to make it to the switches as fast as he could. They'd all been there in the darkness, waiting for him. All the monsters and devils and crones he'd concocted in his mind, all waiting for a chance to grab him around the ankles or pull his hair, pull him back into the same darkness that they lived in, and the perfect place for them to thrive. His mother,

had sent him down there often to fetch his father, to bring him back to the house because it was time to eat, or because she wanted something, or sometimes he thought just to break his peace, peace for which his father hid in the bottom of bottles. Sometimes she sent him down at night, when the lights from the house stretched out to meet the lone floodlight that shone from the barn. With his father in the shop, the lights would be blazing, piercing brightly through the slim cracks in the walls to diffuse out into the night. One time, the lights had been off. Pausing halfway across the yard, he could already tell. Even the window of the office tucked into the corner had been dark. He stood there for a while, pulled between two choices,

either go back and face the consequences of not doing what he was told, or go forward into what his mind told him could very well be the end. His dad would have ridiculed him for things. His dad would have ridiculed him for thinking that way. And did. But the math still added up. With so many dangers out there hidden in the world, waiting, it was only a matter of time before you might run across one. The only question would be the outcome.

Whether or not you survived or died because you made a mistake. Maybe it was something brushing against your leg as you swam in the lake. A just not quite right figure you saw. in the distance. Or maybe you never saw anything at all. Your whole life ending without you knowing it and no one ever knowing what happened to you. Or maybe you felt every last bit of it. Draged out to the bitterness end, the pain driving you mad before you could die. It was just a matter of time, he thought. But in the end, he'd gone down anyways. stepping through the doorway, he'd felt swallowed up by the darkness.

Without hesitation, he started to move towards light switches, but with the same quickness came suddenly to a halt. There was someone in the dark with him. Even as his mind had scrambled to try and come up with a fitting mask, he'd known right away what it was. A person, there in the barn with him, and somewhere close. a person just like the man at the bus stop. He'd started to turn and run, but ran right into something,

something hot and hairy and unyielding that had knocked him back down to the ground. In that moment, he'd felt his life end, felt copper in his mouth, and felt his heart stop. But it was all for not. It was his father, drunk and already on his way back, fresh from the corner where he'd been taking a piss. He'd helped him back up and in a rare moment apologized, but only for taking him down to the floor, not for the brief tear which had been worse than getting knocked down a hundred times.

He couldn't understand how someone could be scared by what he called so little, his father trivializing his fears as though his disdain could make them go away. As the memory played out in his mind, he turned away from the car and walked along the driveway, looking on past the barn to the follow field beside it. In his time here, it had been separated from the barn by a side yard and parking lot for the shop. Its tall grasses are barrier themselves to the thick woods on the other side. Without thinking, he turned off the driveway and began walking toward it. The irony in it all was he'd grown up loving monsters.

Most kids have an affinity for monsters, but his had been close. to obsession. They were the monsters on his television and the ones he'd watched at the matinee, monsters he'd read about in books that he knew were fiction. They were the wolfman and the vampire, the evil alien and the reanimated corpse. No matter how terrifying, each had been just unbelievable enough to mean nothing worse than a bad dream. His therapist had opined that perhaps that's why he sought them back then.

They were the battles he could win. They were the monsters he could control. Monsters whose familiarity allowed him to know all their limits. They weren't the monsters, grown folks talked about in hush tones when little kids were around, or the ones he might fear mentioned on the news. Somehow, in the middle of his mind they met, the prehistoric creature lurking in the river waters, and the serial killer dumping children into the same.

He lived his whole life in the middle of that tormented knot. It was a knot he'd wanted his whole life to untie. The silver thread in that tangled ball had been the bonding it had allowed him with his father. His father might have seen it as a way to desensitize him of his fears, but whatever it was, it was one of the few places they found common ground. They shared a love for Japanese monster movies and classic horror like Frankenstein. once his father had taken him to a theater revive all of one of his favorite creature features. They were rare moments that he clung on to, seeking them out or instigating them whenever possible.

His success was rare, but when it came to it was sweet enough to keep him coming back. Looking back over at the barn, he remembered one of those times. The thought consuming him just as the tall grass of the field began consuming him as he walked into it. It had been a summer like all the summers of his childhood, hot and stretched out with long days of nothing to do. His sisters had moved out, his parents both worked, and the indoors could only hold him for so long. Most days he'd roam the woods behind his house for his neighbor's properties, meeting up with friends that live nearby and exploring the world around them. That day, there had been more friends than normal.

He'd had a sleepover the night before with a friend from school and a cousin who had to be. his age. Before it was noon, his friend from across the street had joined in. While his mother toiled in the house, they'd roamed. Their boredom increasing with the humidity as the sun rose higher. Past the tipping point, they'd gone to her for relief, but she'd turned them back out as quickly as they came in. Desperate enough, they'd turned to his father who was home at work in the barn. They'd pleaded with him to come and be their entertainment. They'd begged for hide and go seek and for him to be a monster, to give them even more reason to run and shout. Despite their siege and in typical fashion, his father had refused to budge, and in time they'd moved on to a previous endeavor.

On the backside of the field and just inside the tree line of pines was a fort they'd been building, less a real structure and more a combination of chambers hollowed out in the brush. It still served well as a base for their operations and as a rallying point. After rummaging around in the shop for building materials, they'd marched off. The four of them progressing off across the field with arms full of ropes and boards. In hindsight, he should have known. The grass was high then like it was now. Only unlike now, with the seed heads brushing past his hips, back then they had been just below the shoulder.

He trailed his fingers through them, his eyes gazing across the field. Along the path they had followed that day to get across it. Back in time to that day. The sun was higher then. They'd been walking in a line too abreast when his neighbor had suddenly stopped. Their proximity close enough that he and his cousin walked right into him. Thinking back, his hands and jaw all clenched. Before he could say a word or ask what was going on, he'd heard it too.

The sound that had made his friend freeze in place. The one that heard a second time was enough to make his hands shake. It was a deep, guttural sound. Not an animal sound, but not a sound a person should be making. There was something just inside the tree line, just where there fort had been. Just out of sight. He'd heard a limb snap under a heavy footstep and then another. All of them by now frozen in place staring into the forest. There'd been no need to contextualize what was happening. They'd all known right away. This was the moment they'd all seen in the movies. The scene right

before the fiend burst into sight. In an instant, his reptile brain had taken him over, his feet backpedaling away from the sounds in the shadow of the forest before he could even tell them what to do. Then it had happened. Out of the undergrowth had come a monster, bursting through the bushes and into real life, just like he'd always feared. Its face gnarled and arms outstretched. Its voice howled gibberish as it ran straight for them. In that moment, there'd been no thoughts, only emotions.

as the four of them turned as one to run away. Already at the back, and with a clear path, he'd taken off running without ever looking back. That chance moment of meeting a monster coming true as all his fears had finally come to life. He and his cousin had taken off back up the path they had come down, the troddened down grass making it easier for them to run as they'd ran without any reasoning in their minds but to get away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen both his friends running directly across the field, the tall grass hobbling them into an odd galloping gate. He'd only caught the slightest glimpse of the thing behind them, but it had been enough, turning his head back away, keeping on running until he saw an abandoned trailer to dive under and hide. He'd slid face first underneath it, losing sight of his cousin in the process, as he quickly burrowed himself up behind the wheels to hide. Hearted in his throat.

He'd looked out from behind the wheel to see what was happening, see if it was safe to run to the house. He saw friends again as they exited the field, finally heard their hysterical crying as they ran on toward the house. It was only because his own crying had stopped that he could hear anything, stifled unconsciously the moment he started to hide, to hide from the thing still chasing his friends down unrelentingly. Only, it hadn't been a thing at all. There beneath the trailer, as he'd hit out of sight, he got his first clear look at it. The one clear look was all it took for the

charade to fall apart. There, lumbering across the overgrown field in an old Halloween mask in a dirty pair of coveralls was his father. His company's logo clear on the sleeve despite the flailing of his arms. A bubble he hadn't known was there suddenly popped all around him. Huddled in the dirt. He'd watched as the show went on, his costumed father still driving his friends to hysterics while they scattered for their lives. It was the kind of cruel one-sided humor that was indicative of his father, the type that required a victim by its very nature. Crawling out from under the trailer, he dusted himself off and walked back to the house. His friend and cousin had already found their way there, both in the kitchen and each giving their own differing accounts of what had happened to his mother.

His neighbor had run all the way home and locked himself in his grandparents' house. It would be days before he came back over again, and only then with his grandfather in tow. His father had been nowhere to be found. Standing in the middle of the field, he could see the fence row that marked the end of the property, just past where their path had been that day. consciously relaxing his hands and taking a few steps further, he stopped. He could see just over the tops of the grass that a path still remained, not meandering or winding, but cutting a straight line down to the trees,

down to where their fort had been. His eyes followed it down, losing sight of it through the grass just as it turned into the forest, leaving his eyes to land on that very spot. His guts constricted, and he felt his history. chest tighten up. He thought about what had happened that day a thousand times. Once he'd started therapy, it was just a matter of time before it came up. His therapist had helped him dissect it like a dead thing, peeling back layers, revealing all the parts, encouraging him to understand how the gross and disgusting things all work together. There in the sterile confines and soft glowing

lights of a rented office space, they'd stuck their arms in up to the elbow. in his memories, pulling out pieces and examining each for significance. It had become such a recurring theme as therapists had come up with a term for it, asking him often if the anxieties and fears whose feeling were from real monsters or play ones. Steering into the brambles and bushes, he thought about all those times. It was during one of those sessions that it had happened, the thing that had brought him to where he now stood.

his therapist had been going on about something that he couldn't remember when the thought crept up on him, crawling in through the window of his mind to sit on his chest like a hag. Once positioned, it wouldn't leave. The longer he thought about it, the harder it became to think about anything else. For a long time, he'd sat there in silence, not realizing his therapist had stopped speaking or for how long. They'd sat there together silently for something. sometime, almost to the end of their appointment. When he'd finally spoken, his voice had felt rough in his mouth,

the words enough to push them back into silence until the soft chime signaling the end of the session had sounded. How did he know it was his father that day behind the mask? Born in that moment, the thought had grown, the absurdity of it replaced with an increasing uncertainty. His therapist had tried helping him work through it. tried dissolving the dissonance growing inside him with reason. How many times did he told her about the callousness his father had shown him of his willingness to invoke fear for his own reward?

They had asked him to play that day. He had seen the coveralls, seen the old Halloween mask. Yet despite all the stones of logic as therapists hurled, none could bring down the walls as anxiety was rapidly building. In time, it had become a methusianian. entrapped for his emotions, a cancer mutating his own memories, mocking, even his own attempts at logic. No matter how many times he went back, no matter how often he relived that day, he kept coming back to the thing he could now no longer ignore. Again, he relived that day

a hundred times in his mind. But this time the focus was different. They hadn't seen his father for the rest of that day. In the fog of it all, his dad and his truck had both disappeared, and by the time he'd finally returned, it was near dinner. With his friend long gone and just his cousin left, they'd rushed out together ready to air their grievances in an ambush. They'd both started to speak before his father could even open the truck door, before he could even step out with his shirt half-buttoned, smelling like whiskey.

He'd just smiled as they complained, stumble stepping past them, headed toward the house as they followed along asking how he could do such a thing. Never once had he answered them, never acknowledged a thing, and before long had ended up passed out on the couch. It hadn't been brought up again the next day, and like all things he brought up with his therapist, was hardly ever talked about at all. At the heart of it all, the thought that had latched itself to him, was really, realizing his father had never spoken about it at all. Combing back through his memories, he could remember the few times it had come up

and the way his father had laughed it off dismissively, until the one time he didn't. The derisive laughter had been replaced with an angry and explosive rant about his own perceived cowardice. It was a rage that had come unexpectedly, but had not been unfamiliar. He'd never mentioned it to his father again. His fingers unconsciously crushing the grass seeds brushing against his hand, he felt that moment all over again. The weight of the realization he'd had on his therapist's couch magnifying till it crushed him into the ground. Only he wasn't in his therapist's office. He was at his old home place, standing in the field where it had happened, and all alone.

The lilac painted walls have been replaced by the forest and the barn that now flanked him in the grass all around that had surrounded him. It was his therapist's idea to come back. Coming back here was a chance to get past the mental block, to perhaps have a breakthrough or some moment of clarity that would help him let go of this thought that was eating him up. To see firsthand that no matter how terrifying the thought might have been to consider, there were no boogeyman here now.

The past had gone, and whatever trauma-inducing spectacle there had been, Ben, it remained there, detached, and in a place where it couldn't hurt him. At least, not physically, help recognizing for himself that no matter who or what it was that had been chasing them that day, it was irrelevant, because time had surely put them in the ground by now, the way it had his father 20 years ago. The last thought gave him no relief. He'd done what he said he was going to do, though. He'd upheld his end of the therapy. purpose bargain. Whatever healing took place could now take place with her, or somewhere else.

But he didn't want to be here any longer. As the sun dipped down below the roof of the house, casting him in its shadow, he felt the pull to leave grow much stronger. Turning back in the direction of the house and his car, he heard a sound that made his breathing and body both stop before he could even take a step, a twig snapping, just inside the tree line. a sound that sent ice water racing up his back. Heartbeat quickening, he turned back around, eyes scanning the darkening undergrowth for a sign of anything sensible to stop to panic.

But there was none. He took a step back and heard another snap. His gaze able to lock on the location of the sound even as the source remained hidden in the trees out of sight. He quickly tried rationalizing what was happening. He was in an emotional state. His imagination was charged. Of course that's where his mind would go, but it was nothing.

Just a squirrel or a stray dog. Maybe it was a neighbor. But if it were a person, then why weren't they saying anything? Why were they hiding from sight but still making their presence known? He thought about what he could say to prompt a friendly response, but the words dried up in his mouth. He didn't want to know who was there. He just wanted to leave. this was a mistake.

Starting back through the tall grass, he could hear himself putting on his best convincing voice for his therapist, the same voice he'd used on his father when he'd had to stuff the fear down inside him and hide it, telling her about how it had all gone just as she'd hoped, how he'd realized that of course it'd been his father in the mask that day. It was the only logical choice, the only thing that made sense,

how all that fear had been made up in his mind all along, just like his father had said. His mind turned away from what he didn't want to see, fleeing from the fear he was feeling, hiding in a daydream from the nightmare he was living, hyperfixating on the imagined dialogue until another sound ripped the covers off his mind. Somehow, low and loud at the same time, it was a sound he'd only heard once before, heard only in this place. place. The thing he'd heard right before it happened that day all those years ago. A deep, guttural sound. A sound people shouldn't make. He was already starting to turn and run when he saw

it starting to come out of the trees. Glancing back as he turned to flee, he saw it for only an instant, but it was enough, enough to see the sallow face in the sunken eye sockets, the flailing arms thrusting out from dirty cover-alls as I ran straight for him. He ran and he screamed without knowing he was screaming. The screams of the thing behind him blending with his own as his reality collapsed. Unrestrained this time by the height of the grass he tore through it, brown blade slashing against his thighs, whipping him forward as he ran. Glancing back over his shoulders he exited the field he saw the thing again. More clearly now and closer than ever, However, without reason, he ran with no thought but to escape, just as he'd run then.

Except this time, there were no friends to be diversion, no trailer to duck under and hide. He ran on down across the yard faster than he'd ever run. Driven by fear he didn't run to the house or to his car, but to the closest shelter you could find, down to the barn that lay directly in front of him. Russian past its corner there were only a few steps until his hands were gripping the door, whipping back the latch that held it closed and throwing it open. Turning to run inside, he saw another glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye, hurtling over the lengthening shadows stretching out over the grass,

heard its howling gibberish as it looked right at him. He flung himself through the doorway, not even trying to close it behind him. No thought to what might lie ahead of him in the darkness as he ran off into him. it. His fear dilated pupils were slow to adjust to the darkness, forcing him to grope his way as he searched in a panic for somewhere to hide. Before there'd been a broad lane down the middle of the shop for his father to drive his truck through. He tried running toward it, put as much distance between himself and the door as he could. But just as he started to run, his shin struck

something hard and unforgiving that sent him tumbling forward. He hit the groan hard enough to knock the wind out of him, causing him to suck in dust and spit, even as his body forced him to scramble forward out of instinct. With pain radiating up his leg, he crawled forward to the dirt, up underneath what he soon recognized as one of the shop bins his father had built. Curling up into a ball around the knot in his stomach, he tried making himself as small as possible, looking up above him to the structure overhead, once used for holding pipes. They had also served as a combination jungle gym and scaffold for his friends.

He remembered scurrying up their sides to the top, felt the coarse boards against his skin, remembered what it felt like scrambling up to the very top, then out through one of the vents in the roof, up into the sunlight above, where he could feel the warmth radiating off the metal roof, where he could feel safe and free. There was no sun up there now, peering. into the darkness, he could see the slim fingers of light barely penetrating the cracks in the walls, fading like a ghost that's been seen as night settled in. Looking up again, he could barely make out a thin square highlighted against the blackness, the last rays of sun

revealing a roof vent just above him. Staring up at it, he remembered how easy it had it been, how they'd shot up like rockets through the interconnecting beams, going from ground to roof in a matter of seconds. Now much older and in the dark, he wondered if he could do it at all. Before he could think of an alternative, he heard a sound in the darkness telling him he had no choice. It was a dragging sound, the sound of something pulling itself along the ground. He hated how easily the sound became an image in his mind, the stringy gray hair dragging through the red clay dust as it crawled belly down on the ground. He heard a sharp inhale and a mask. It was imagined at sniffing the air, saw in his mind's eye the thick tongue protruding through thin, cracked lips, dragging over black teeth as its clawed fingers drug it across the dirt floor.

The rising panic exploded, and he moved in an instant. His muscles and nerves reacting on pure need to survive as his body propelled him upward from his hiding place. Before he was even all the way to his feet, a blinding pain and crack in his neck sent him crumpling back down to the ground. ground. His vision full of stars filling the dark as he lay clutching the top of his head in a heap. In his panic, he'd launched himself straight up into the bin above him, hard enough to nearly knock himself out and guaranteeing a concussion. Dazed and staggered he managed to claw his way back up, reaching out, fumbling in the dark for a handhold, panic driving him forward past the throbbing pain clouding his head. Grabbing for the rough-hewn boards to help pull himself up.

He could see them more clearly now, their pale sides shining like bones in the dark. Trying to look up, he felt a sharp pain in his neck, felt warm blood as it cascaded down across his forehead from the laceration in his scalp. He could still just barely see the hatch just above, somehow closer than he remembered, seeming to be just within reach. Finally back on his feet and getting a foot into the side of the bin he heaved himself up, his hands stretching out in desperation, grabbing for the rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of the after, just as another hand grabbed onto his ankle from below.

It was the cold hand of something dead, but with a power in the grip that made his bones crack. His eyes and mouth both flew open wide. His hand gripped the board above him as he tried pulling himself higher, screaming and thrashing as he did so. The fear and adrenaline weren't enough, though, as another hand grabbed him by the top of his pants. The nails attached to the callous flesh digging bloody furrows in his skin as it started pulling him back down. He didn't feel the splinters impaling his palms as they slid down the planks,

didn't realize his arm broke underneath him as his body fell to the ground on top of it. He begged and pleaded, crying out for survival without registering the words he was saying. All he knew is the weight of it as it slowly crawled on top of him, the stink of it invading his nostrils until he could taste it, its straw-like hair caressing his face, a spit dripped on to his cheeks. His sanity left him in a moment, swept away in the flood of visceral horror. In the dark, there was a furious motion, followed by the sound of something wet hitting the ground. Then a low, idiot laughter, blinded by the viscer in his eyes and detached from all reality

his consciousness ebbed as his life bled into the dirt. He didn't see the fiend. as it tore through him, didn't see the mockery and made of his dignity, as his body was defiled. As he lay there dying in the dirt, he saw his father step out of the darkness, drunk and bare-chested. He saw the man at the bus stop. He watched as all the monsters he'd feared as a child gathered around, watched them creeping out of the darkness from all the places they'd hidden from him as a child. revealing themselves in a writhing horde. His last thought before his head split open

was how right he'd been all along. With so many of them, it was just a matter of time before your luck might run out. For our second story this evening, after unknowingly consuming a supernatural route, a woman finds herself paralyzed, buried alive, and reborn into something else. Creepy presents, back to your roots,

written by Wouldn't You Like to Know, and narrated by Alicia Atkins. You ever hear your own heart slow to the point you think it's stopped? I have. And let me tell you, it's not peaceful. It's not some graceful slipping away like the story says. It's violent. It's lonely. And it's loud. So damn loud. Like your whole body is screaming on the inside while you just lie there. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to the beginning. I live alone in a hollow at the base of Black Elk Ridge, where the mist never fully lifts and the trees whisper things you'd rather not hear. It's the kind of place people. People are you'd rather not hear. It's the kind of place people. leave and never come back to. Unless you're like me, born into the soil, raised with dirty

fingernails and an accent sharp enough to slice through the silence. Names Clara May. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the rhythms of life out here, hunting my own food, growing my own crops, making tentures and teas like Mama taught me before she disappeared into the woods one day, and never came back. I should have known better than to eat something I didn't recognize. It was a root, thick and pulpy, pale as bone and coiled like a sleeping serpent. I found it in a clearing that hadn't been there the day before. I swear to you, the land shifted.

I woke up and the trees were leaning differently, and there was this patch of earth all turned over like something had crawled out of it, or into it. And there it was. that root, sitting like it was waiting for me. I brought it home, boiled it into a stew with some wild onion and rabbit. Smelt sweet, like honey and cloves. The first bite was warm, comforting.

The second made my tongue numb. By the third, I couldn't move my legs. My last thought before the darkness swallowed me was stupidly simple. I forgot to write down what it was. When I came to, I couldn't move, couldn't blink, couldn't speak, couldn't scream. But I could feel. God help me. I could feel everything.

My breath was shallow. My heart thumped like it was underwater. I was trapped inside my own body, buried like a layer of dead flesh. And then I heard voices. It was my brother, Jace, and my cousin El. Ellie. I knew the sound of their boots, the clomp of Jace's steel toes, the shuffle of Ellie's soft souls. They kicked in my door. I felt the vibration through the floor. Elie's voice was filled with despair as she said that I was gone. Jace noted the color of my lips, describing them as

blue as a J. I wanted to shout, to thrash, but nothing moved. Not even my tongue. They wrapped me in a blanket and carried me outside. Ellie suggested calling for help, but Jace dismissed the idea, frustrated by the thought of waiting for emergency services. He believed I deserved more than to be left to rot, insisting that they would handle things themselves. I screamed inside my head, but no one heard. I was still screaming when they laid me in the truck bed, screaming as the road jostled

my head against rusted metal. screaming when they stopped at the old cemetery behind the church, where the fog clings like cobwebs. They dug the hole fast. Jace was always strong, but now he was crying, I think. Hard to tell with the dirt and sweat streaked across his face. Ellie knelt beside me, her hand cold on mine. Ellie whispered to me that I looked peaceful. I wasn't.

I was awake. They lowered me to the ground, and that's when it really hit me, the panic, I mean. Because some part of me still believed this was a dream, that I'd wake up, cough up the poison, and stumble back into the light. But the first shovel full of dirt hit my chest like a hammer. Then another and another. Then my world turned black. Time doesn't exist underground. Minutes stretch into hours.

Hours bleed into days. At some point I stopped trying to track it. My skin prickled. My lungs felt full of ash. The weight of the dirt compressed my ribs until every breath was a prayer. And yet, I didn't die. That root, whatever it was, had done something to me. I should have died.

Instead, I dreamed. or maybe they were memories. Not mine, though. Other peoples. A woman with moss growing from her scalp. A child with black teeth crawling through the earth. A man who tore his own eyes out to see better in the dark. Then, through it all, I heard a voice.

Soft, female, familiar, saying that I had to come back to her. When they pulled me out, I thought I'd finally died. It wasn't Jace or Ellie. It was something else. Tall figures would bark for skin in eyes like sap. They unwrapped me like I was a gift. I still couldn't move, but I could see now. They carried me back to the clearing, the one that hadn't been there before.

Only now, there was a tree growing in the middle. twisted and white, like bone. Mama stood beside it, or what was left of her. Her eyes were roots. Her mouth split open like wet bark. Her voice was in my head, not in my ears. The mountain gave you back. It needs you.

She knelt beside me, pressed her palm to my chest. The paralysis broke. I screamed until my throat bled. Then I smiled, because now I understood. The root wasn't poisonous. It was a seed. And now I was growing too. The screaming didn't last long.

My throat had gone too dry, and my voice had no air to rise on. But I didn't need it anymore. The white tree, the thing in the clearing. It heard me without sound. Mama, too. Or the thing wearing Mama's face. She smiled. Oh, God, that smile.

Her teeth were gone, replaced with gnarled black thorns like briar and rot. Her skin, once soft and worn from years of homesteading, had hardened to something that looked like bark soaked in blood. Wet, flaking. peeling. Her hands were no longer hands. Fingers curled into thin tendrils, slick and twitching, and her eyes. Her eyes were pits of soil, swarming with pale little roots that pulse like veins.

And still, she was beautiful to me. Familiar. In the same way, a cicada shell is still shaped like life. She whispered that I should have been dead, as those things, those guardians, I later came to call them, knelt around me. She continued to whisper, explaining that they had made a place for me, a place that I always belonged. The ground beneath me pulsed warm, rhythmic, like a heartbeat in the soil. It felt like it was breathing, and I breathed with it. They didn't speak with words. They pressed images into my skull. Memories that weren't mine.

Ancient and hungry. I saw the first burial. A woman, not unlike me, convulsing from the roots toxins. Her family mourning over her as they dug into soft earth. But she lived, barely. And she woke, like I did, underground. The root had changed her, preserved her, planted her. She came back years later, feeding the mountain, calling others.

Mama hadn't disappeared. She had been reborn, and I was next. The pain came after that, slow and sharp, like a thousand needles pushing out from under my skin. It started in my fingertips. The skin there grew thin, splitting in perfect lines. From those wounds, white filaments reached out, twitching like baby eels. I screamed again, or thought I did. My legs followed, bones warping, marrow hardening into something fibrous and hollow.

I couldn't bend my knees anymore. They locked at an angle. that felt wrong, like I was being bent into something that could root into soil and stay. I scratched at my face, clawing for the reflection I couldn't see, but felt changing. My hair fell in clumps. My eyes ached like they were filled with needles. My tongue shriveled in my mouth like dry moss. And Mama, she just watched, nodded. I heard her whisper that I heard her whisper that I was.

would learn like she did the pain stops when you stop being human I don't know how long it took days maybe I passed out more than once time meant nothing in that place the sun never moved the shadow stayed frozen eventually I stopped hurting but I also stopped feeling and I don't know which was worse they buried me again willingly this time, in the same clearing, but not like before. This time, I dug the hole myself. The dirt didn't resist me anymore. It opened for me like a mouth, like it had been waiting.

I lay down in it, cradled by the earth like a babe in a womb. And then I slept. This time, I dreamed properly. veins beneath the ground that pulsed with memory, of roots that whispered old names and older hungers, of an endless tangle of flesh and fungus and wood and bone, that stretched beneath the Appalachians like a second skin. It was alive, all of it.

The mountain wasn't made of stone. It was made of us. I woke up again two days ago, buried no longer. changed stronger I don't sleep now I don't need to I watch

I wait and I feed yesterday Ellie came back Jace too they were arguing about me I think

they brought flowers put them on the grave only it wasn't a grave anymore it was a mouth The roots reached up before I could stop them. They wrapped around Jace's legs first. He screamed.

Ellie tried to run, but the soil swallowed her feet, pulling her down like quicksand. I rose from the earth, half of me still buried. Jay stared at me like he'd seen a ghost. I guess he had. He whimpered my name and asked what I was. I didn't answer with words. I touched his chest

gently, like Mama had done to me. My fingers burrowed through his shirt and into his ribs, past bone, into his heart. He didn't scream after that. Ellie did.

Oh, she screamed and screamed until she joined us too. We're part of the route now. All of us. They say Appalachia is haunted, They're right But it ain't ghost It's us

We're under your feet Waiting Growing And when you step too far off the path When you stray into a place that doesn't show up on maps When the wind dies and the woods go silent And you swear something's watching We are

For our final story this evening After his brother's death A boy is haunted by a creature that slithers from the walls every night. As he grows older, the horror still follows. Creepy presents, it comes from the wall, written by Tor Anders Olvin, and narrated by J.V. Hampton-V. I was eight when my brother Josh died. I remember it vividly even now. every little detail from when we woke up until his very last breath.

He was two years older than me, and we would fight nonstop, like most siblings do. That day was no different. We got up early before our parents did and raced down the stairs. He won, like he always did, and was able to claim what little was left in the box of cereal. I was so mad at him for that. After we finished breakfast, we ran outside to play. It was a warm summer morning, and I can still imagine that wall of heat hitting me as I opened the front door.

We played for hours without pause, and it remains one of the best memories I have of him. He died around noon. a long drop, a crunch, and a snap. It all happened so fast. I just stood there frozen, watching as the pond of blood grew, and listening intently as his final wheezing breath left his broken body. Shock, my parents said.

I was in shock. They couldn't get me to speak, for weeks. I observed when the ambulance arrived, the paramedics and firemen shouting to each other and moving with urgency. Then the sirens dying out in the distance. My mom and dad left sobbing inconsolably. I stood silent as the funeral came. I held my breath as they lowered the coffin into the awaiting depth. And only after I saw the headstone loom before me, could I allow myself to talk again.

We moved shortly after the funeral. My mom could no longer stand living in the house. My dad reluctantly agreed, but kept telling her that they would be losing money on the sale. Mom didn't care. No amount of money. money could have persuaded her to stay, to live on the property that stole Josh from her. I knew then that nothing would ever be the same again.

The new house was quite a bit smaller than the old one, but I liked it. It was cozy and sweet and had sort of an old cottage vibe to it. And even though I missed Josh, I was happy to have a bedroom to call my own. to decorate as my own, to grow up in. Days, weeks, and months passed, and not much changed. There was an aura of gloom about the family, a lingering grief that wouldn't quite let go. It was like the days just faded into nothing,

like none of us were really there. Originally, I thought that was the reason it came. It was drawn to our grief, to our constant, ever-present sorrow. The first time it came from the walls was three months after Josh's death. It was a day like all the others, gray and uneventful, and I had drifted off to sleep later than usual. my body may be somehow aware that there was something unnatural nearby. I awoke in the darkness by an unidentifiable sound, somehow coming from all the walls at once.

It was a sort of soft, clicking sound, rising in pitch, then lowering again. I had never heard anything quite like it, and I sat. up in bed, squinting, trying to make out where it could originate from. After a few minutes, my eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, and my gaze was drawn to a hole in the wall. It was just a tiny knot hole, maybe an inch or two, but for some reason I was convinced it was the source of the sound. I sat there for minutes, trembling, just staring into the hole, not knowing why. Then I noticed it started widening, yet inexplicably remaining the same size. I crept under my sheets in fear when the head squeezed through.

I just lay there, frozen, unable to move or make a sound. I could hear it moving around out there, like it was exploring, searching. I must have stayed under the sheets for hours before I finally just passed out. The next morning, I jolted awake with a scream and immediately ran to tell my parents about it. They dismissed it, of course, just some vivid dream caused by an overactive imagination. They were sure. I tried to reason with them, but soon just gave up. They just wouldn't listen.

This kept happening for weeks. I would wake up to a soft clicking sound, stare at the hole, and hide under my sheets when I saw the head emerge. I could never get a good look at. it. I was far too frightened, but it was completely bald and the skin had an ashen gray complexion to it. I could never really judge the dimensions of it because of the impossible nature of its arrival. I would plead to my parents to just believe me, or let me sleep with them, or simply just explore the knot hole or tear down the walls, but they would dismiss me every time, usually just telling me I was being childish, that it was all just a nightmare, and that it would eventually stop.

One night, I decided I wasn't going to hide anymore. I was going to face the thing that came from the walls. Figure out what it wanted. I was terrible. terrified, but resolute. I woke up, like all the other nights, listening intently to that eerie, clicking sound, staring at the knot hole with absolute concentration. Swallowing deeply as the hole started to widen and choking back my fear when the appalling head squeezed through.

It landed on the ground with a thump, and I stared at it. in horror as the tiny, underdeveloped body writhed on the floor, struggling with the weight of the oversized head. I let out a scream then. I just couldn't hold it in anymore. The creature raised its head strainiously, like an alerted animal, and stared directly at me. There were holes. Nothing but holes. The mouth was a yawning chasm of nothing. The nose and eyes the same.

Just endless abyssal riffs. I screamed again, this time probably loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood. My mom says she still has nightmares about that scream, and she'll easily admit it froze her blood to ice. My parents came running into the room in a hysterical frenzy only to find me, alone, curled up on the floor in a fetal position, screaming my lungs out. It took them hours to calm me down, and they said I only spoke nonsensical gibberish.

They took me to my aunts for a few days, but eventually I was forced to sleep in my own room again. The ritual continued. I woke up, stared at the hole until the head emerged, and then hid under my sheets for the remainder of my conscious night. I was slowly, but surely, getting used to it. I'd still tell my parents about it, but they still wouldn't believe me. I know it sounds horrible, but you have to understand they were still dealing with the death of Josh. They simply had no energy to indulge my self-induced traumas. But at some point, I got too used to it.

I simply stopped waking up. The sound no longer bothered me, and I would just sleep through it. Problem solved, right? I certainly thought so. Until I woke up one night with The Thing on Day. top of me, staring me right in the face. Those endless abyssal eyes swirling away, that gaping chasm of a mouth hovering inches above. I was too mortified to scream, my body now somehow unable to move at all. As an adult, I could have simply written it off as some extreme form

of sleep paralysis if it wasn't for the next part. Foul-smelling, black liquid, started pouring from the creature's orifices, completely covering, drowning my face in it. My mouth was filling with the awfulness of it, and at some point I swallowed some just to catch my breath. The taste was that of death, of decay and rot.

I was panicking, desperately trying to move, scream, or do anything at all. But I couldn't. I was trapped. And sooner or later, I just passed out. I woke up in a pond of the black liquid. I showed my parents the foul stuff and explained what had happened. My dad said they had seen some signs of leakage around the house, so it must have been that. Just some stale, putrid water seeping through the roof.

I resigned then from ever asking them anything again. They simply couldn't be trusted. We moved a couple years later. I would see the creature every night but made sure to set an alarm so that I never had to wake up to that horrible creature's face ever again. But now I was free, I thought happily. We were going to get along better as a family, and we were finally moving away from that cursed place. And for months I felt wonderful. I had a semblance of a life again, of freedom, of joy. But then, one night, I woke up to the soft sound of clicking. I sat up and scanned the walls, and there it was, a tiny knot-hole and a head squeezing through it.

Moving didn't help at all. The creature followed me wherever I went. I'd be free for a couple months' tops. Then I would wake up to that sound and that head. Every once in a while I would sleep through it and wake up with that ashen gray face inches from my own. The liquid would pour and I would swallow. Then I'd wake up.

in a pond with no one there to believe me. I grew up, depressed, stressed, unhinged, half mad. Somehow I made it through school, college, even got a job. But it would never feel good. I could never feel joy. I could never connect with another. human being ever again. The creature wouldn't let me.

It slowly drained my life from me. When I was 25, my doctor told me my physiological age was that of a 50-year-old. Start exercising, he said. One day, three years ago, I was a one day. went back to the place it all started. I had known for years already, maybe even always, what caused it, what brought it to me, what it was. But I could never take it in, never admit to it, never confess. And that was always the reason for my punishment. I stood by the gaping chasm of the abandoned, dried up well.

where Josh had fallen in, staring into the depths. I remember every moment of that day. Every detail, vividly. I remember playing hide-and-seek. I remember hiding behind the garage. I remember seeing Josh looking for me around the well. He stood so close, so dainty. dangerously close.

Then I remember how mad I was at him for eating the last of the cereal. And I remember creeping up behind him and pushing him with all my might. Then an endlessly long drop, a loud crunch, a blood-curdling snap. I am sorry, Josh. I said then. I didn't mean to do it. I thought it was just water. But his vengeance is endless.

Endless like that drop. Endless like the black of the creature's eyes. Endless like my suffering. I will go to sleep tonight. Every night. forever. And it will come from the walls. 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 Commons, Share a Like, Life, 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 story's author.