Creepy - The Digging Woman & Death in the Periphery

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

The Digging Woman***Written by: Chris Kuriata and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Death in the Periphery***Written by:  Quincy Lee and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt ***Content Warning: Mentions of death***Support the show at: patreon.com/creepypod***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. which listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents,

The Digging Woman, written by Chris Creada, and narrated by Daniel Hewitt. Mother scans the thawed ground, poking her stick wherever there's softness, while Abby's young eyes comb the jumble of bare branches locked together over our heads. My daughter is keen on birds

and will not accept my refusal to install a bird feeder on our balcony. When she does spot something black perched above in the trees, she whistles a jittery bird call of her own creation, inviting the bird to swoop down and perch on her shoulder, sift its ticklish beak through her hair for bugs, and pour its sweet song into her ear. My mother warns that these birds are all crows. She calls them dirty things,

and commands them to stay in the trees. She tells Abby that if one of the birds takes off, she better duck. They'll swoop down and pluck her eyes out. Mother turns her hand into a claw and lunges toward Abby's face, drawing long strips of laughter from her prey. It feels good to see Mother smile in these woods. Even over the unpleasant image of Abby's eye sockets plucked clean by feathered scavengers. Mother's laughter and appreciation of the warm sun on her face makes me think.

She doesn't really expect to find anything. Mother had searched the woods beyond the trestle for the last ten years. I've accompanied her for the last eight years. This is Abby's first year joining us. At five, Abby doesn't understand what her grandmother is looking for. She believes we go hiking every Sunday because it's fun and the weather is nice. I, on the other hand, was never shielded by childhood and have always known what Mother is doing out here.

A gasp escapes Mother's lips, as pitched as one of the bird calls. She's found something. A tin can hangs from the end of Mother's stick. The label has been peeled off in a jagged star shape punched in the top, most likely from being pounded against a rock. The can is part of a stirring of debris beneath the crumbling black log. A couple of tins. Three crushed beer can.

and a littering of cigarette butts. Mother mutters that this is new. Over the last decade, she has earned a familiarity with the woods and feels the addition of people's trash as though it were pins sticking into her feet. This is fresh garbage. It came after the thaw, not revealed by it. She pulls open the waistband of her jeans and reels a snake of shiny black plastic onto the ground. Using the end of her stick like a golf ballpark.

club. She puts the trash into the garbage bag, removing it not for environmental concerns, but in case it may be evidence. Her eyes scan our surroundings carefully. She tells me once again, someone is living out here. Men used to inhabit these woods. Men unable to adapt to the two-story four-walled habitats that flourished in the connective bunches across the city. Men, who willed their mates and children to forget them, and haunted the city sidewalks with cardboard signs. As common as the sight of them was, no one remarked on their gradual disappearance from corner store alleyways and park bushes. Only after the last man of no responsibility was gone, did people realize a bountiful crop had withered and returned to the ground.

I saw one of them once. Just a leg of tattered striped pants protruding from a snowbank behind the skating rink. A small crowd stood, watching, while the police chipped through the blackened ice like archaeologist unearthing a fossil. Not all men succumbed to the elements. Others made their way across the trestle deep into these woods, where they sat out the winter and little camps around fires that blazed day and night. The men's presence became known.

Hikers saw evidence of the woods occupants. Scraps of insulating newspaper tumbled across the summer breeze. or a quadrant of sleeping bags would be spotted where the stream petered out. The men themselves were never seen. I imagine the men left the woods during the day to round up food or begged for enough change to procure that night's bottle. But then why did no one report seeing men back in the city? They would have been noticed out of the woods,

with their long winter beards full of twigs and burs. Perhaps they went to a different city during the day. But the men definitely were in the woods at night. On a clear evening, you could see their smoke signal reaching for the moon. It frightens me to imagine the size of a bonfire, whose smoke trail was visible from the city. I remember the first night Mother returned from searching the woods. She barely looked like a person. Her shoes were two boulders of dirt and stones.

Her knees were covered in smooth mud, now dried and cracked, dropping little square nuggets with every step. Her hair had come undone and dangled a long chain of burrs. Her face scrunched up as if a vacuum sucked it from the inside. Tears flowed from her invisible clenched eyes, darkening the mud cake to her breast. She picked me up and tried to push me inside her chest for safekeeping as she staggered to the couch, leaving her apartment door wide open. I could hear others returning, lingering in the hallway to spread amongst the Rouse neighbors news of what they'd finally found, dug out of a hasty grave in the woods.

This moment was a culmination of the images I'd been collecting in my peripheral vision over the past year. My afternoons of apple slices and Tom and Jerry being interrupted by news films of weeping mothers, handing out pictures of their children door to door. Missing posters hung from telephone poles till the ink cracked and the paper turned back into pulp. It is fashionable today for people to dismiss the existence of a community of feral men living in the woods. You can expect to hear words like urban legend, mass hysteria, and witch hunt.

I sometimes use those words myself, but never around Mother. In the morning, Mother awoke, purged of her unbearable sorrow. She carried great purpose now, calling her job at the A&P to inform them she wasn't coming in. Instead, she found a neighbor to loan her tougher shoes, and wearing fresh jeans with her hair tied back. she joined the new wave sweeping the woods. After the horrible truth of the previous night, confirmation that the children,

some of them missing for over a year now, were in those woods. The turnout of volunteers was enormous. Standing in line like an advancing British army, they combed the woods. Two hundred people, searching desperately for the most awful thing imaginable. After the first week, the pool of available searchers dwindled.

Families and jobs needed to be returned to. No second gravesite had been found, not by the family, not by the dogs. It was time to wash the mud from their jeans, put the sturdy boots away, and raise their eyes from the ground. The men living in the woods also went undiscovered. Volunteers and police dogs came across dozens of empty campsites. They found filthy blankets circling fire pits, some with gray ash still warm. The men were all gone, chased away by guilt. You can only imagine the missing children in those dark woods, imprisoned by sick lust.

For how long did the children endure being passed from camp to camp among the men, like a communal bottle of whiskey to be slobbered over, and once emptied, dashed upon the rocks, an air of distrust lingered in the community. The men in the woods had to go somewhere, and the possibility could never be ruled out that they didn't pick off their burrs, razor their stubble, and stepped back into business suits and uniforms

before returning to the city, their wild years behind them. Mother persevered. She hadn't a lot of spare time, not between her job and her daughter. Yet by doing the dishes after midnight and laundry at 4 a.m., she managed to save a couple hours each month and eagerly spent them in the woods. On her own now. Looking for disturbed earth.

Looking for the horror of the other missing children. Today we walked further than last week. We are off the path but can hear the river. Mother uses the position of the sun to find our way out. No ineffectual trail or breadcrumbs for her. She's too familiar with these woods for us to get lost. Our boots scuff the ground as we slide down a rocky incline into a clear flat of land. Lying on the bare ground, cooled by a thick overhead of branches,

is the first person we've ever encountered this deep in the woods, roused from their nap. The young man rubs his eyes and stands to greet us. The boy's thin. Not so that he looks frail. but quick and nimble and in possession of an enviable supply of energy

he stretches his long arms above his head reminding me for a moment of a walking stick insect the boy greets us his voice apprehensive I don't want to frighten him and I wonder if I should lay down our walking sticks is he afraid we'll attack him

mother interrogates the boy asking him which direction he came from the trestles or the locks. The boy looks around, as though recalibrating his internal compass. A ring runs through one eyebrow, and complimenting his slender frame is a perfectly androgynous face,

one needing only the application of whichever hairstyle is fashionable, to be made male or female. His skin is smooth, no wrinkles or blemishes, a little pudgy in the cheeks, just a couple scoops of baby fat. He looks so young. I was astonished to think I'd had Abby at around that age.

The boy quietly answers that he came from near the waterfall. Mother nods. She asks him if he's seen any hikers this deep in. The boy shakes his head no and tells her he has only seen us. She keeps pushing for more information from this boy, asking him if he saw anyone yesterday. The boy's face has a guarded expression. as though he suspects Mother is setting him up to be caught in a lie.

Mother sets her walking stick down and offers a bottle of water dangling from her belt. She asks him if he's living out here. The boy shrugs, keeping silent. But the tangles in his hair and the bits of moss growing on the cuffs of his pants, answer for him. Plastic crinkling breaks the silence as mother pulls a granola bar from her pouch, holding it out for the boy. The boy accepts the bar but tucks it in his pocket, saving it for.

for later. Abruptly, Abby yells out that granola bar was hers, and my face floods with shame. Abby stares at the boy grudgingly, as though he had just grabbed food off her plate with bare, muddy hands. I'm familiar with a child's ability to seamlessly shift between benevolence and complete selfishness, yet I still want to rend my hair over the poor representation offered by my progeny. Abby, don't be so rude. The boy pulls the bar out of his pocket. It isn't real granola. Just that sugar, cereal stuff shot throughout with marshmallows and chocolate.

The sort of thing Mother didn't need to be offering Abby. Abby has a whole lifetime to go before she needs to grow an enormous caboose like the one mom stretches her pants across. Abby scowls at the granola bar as if the boy has reproduced it to taunt her. He gently asks Abby if it's a little bit of a little bit of. okay if he has the granola bar. Abby's unpleasant face pops. Underneath is a new layer of fresh skin, all smiles and rainbows. She happily yells okay and scampers to the base of a thick tree, holding a couple of chirping birds, not crows, little brown wrens. She cranes her neck and makes her own chirping noises. I explain Abby's aviary curiosity and her intention to sing a bird down

for a cozy shoulder visit. The boy nods. He kicks off his shoes, cheap sneakers, split open and rotted with sweat. He strips his socks and paddles barefoot toward the massive tree. I simultaneously envy the contact of his bare souls on the cool dirt, and I'm disgusted by it. My mind has contaminated this ground, making it the keeper of vanished, perhaps mutilated bones. His hands sink into the bark, finding grooves and getting a good grip. With a kick of dirt and ants, the sides of his feet scramble against the base of a trunk with such force I can't believe the rough's texture doesn't grate his skin off. After a moment, he lands a grip and scampers up the tree.

The whole time his shoulders and back making waves like a dashing squirrel. My delight at his agility soon fades. Mother also holds her breath. The top branches stretch into the air, seemingly into the thick. clouds. The boy grows smaller and gives no sign of stopping. Dizziness overtakes me and I fix my eyes on the ground to keep from swaying. The boy is at the height of a three-story house. His momentum keeps him on the tree, but once he stops climbing, his grip will no longer hold and he will fall. Soon he will feel gravity's hooks pierce his stomach, and he will be faced with a terrible

decision. Either hug the trunk to slide down and pick splinters from his body for the rest of his life, or push himself away to land on his back and hope it doesn't break. He continues to inch his way to the top, often backsliding a couple of steps, digging his feet in to prevent picking up dangerous speed, then retaking those steps with more secure grip. Now at the height of two telephone poles. He's in reach of the top, swinging a long arm to grasp the lower. was wrong. His weight shakes the branches and unleashes a shower of grit. I hold my breath, concentrating on the strength of the branches he hangs from, willing it to not snap. After pulling himself into the bow, the boy takes a moment to rest. His dangling legs sway,

probably enjoying the high-altitude breeze washing through his toes. He waves and calls to us. How is he going to get down? I ask. A small black object. A small black object. tumbles out of the branches. I can see the swirling blot is a bird, one wing spread to slow its descent, but also sending it spinning every which way. It hits the earth floor with a thud. Forgetting the bird, I watched the boy. Certain he has trapped himself at the top of the tree. He lowers himself from the branch and swings his feet at the thick of the trunk, but can't find his grip. He dangles from the branch. Nothing below his feet. and I wonder how dry his palms are.

I imagine him letting go, and plummeting head first. Finally, he drops and hugs the tree. With the points of his toes, he stalks down the trunk, much slower than he went up. A great rejoicing escapes my mouth as he hits the ground. He looked casual, like he just returned from a dip in a warm summer lake. But my nerves couldn't handle his adventure a moment longer. He picks up the bird from the ground, afraid it chirps, the good wing flapping against his hand,

the other pathetically pumping up and down, the expanse of its feathers all floppy like a busted umbrella. Smiling, the boy tells Abby that he saw it hopping through the branches, treat a tree to tree like a chipmunk. He holds the bird in his hands, grinning, and offering it to Abby. She looks uneasy, backing into the safety of her grandmother's legs. He tells her the bird will fit perfectly on her shoulder. Abby strikes the boy's cupped hands. The bird hits the ground for a second time, chirping frantically now.

Seeing the bird up close, I am revolted. More than a broken wing. The entire side of its face is a hardened crust of blood and pecked feathers. Other birds must have made a target of him. The right eye is gone. Either plucked out or pushed in by an aggressive beak. Just a useless, glistening socket.

I think we should leave the bird alone. I say scooping him up. I carry him into the shade and deposit the soft clump onto a nook of thick roots where he can expire in peace. The boy is not offended by Abby's rejection of his gift. He rests on the ground, sitting cross-legged.

The inside grooves of his feet are gray, thickly calloused and impervious to splinters. He inquires how much further we are hiking. Normally we walk. in a loop, our task ending once we returned to where we started. We deviated today on account of the markers left behind by the boy. Just down to the stream. Then I think we're ready to follow it back. He tells us not to bother going any further.

That there's nothing much beyond to see. I sense he's holding something back. Looking nervous, he rubs his teeth, transferring a tiny bird feather from his finger to his lip. The feather flutters in the breeze, making the boy appear like he carried the bird down in his mouth. Would you like to come with us? We could give you a ride someplace. He appears to think about it, and I am inexplicably struck by panic that he will accept my invitation. It sounds terrible to want to abandon a child out in these woods, but something inside me feels we urgently must leave. For the first time, I recognize how alone and far away from the city we are. He shakes his head dismissively and says that he's good.

He wipes his lip moving the feather to his chin, a small red blob pasting in its place. Do you sleep here at night? He avoids the question. He looks distractedly often to the distance, mumbling that we should go, and that we don't want to be trying to find our way out of here when it gets to dark. My mother tells the boy

that these woods used to be an awful place, asking him if he knew about what happened down here, how parents are forever grieving for children lost in these woods. She collects her walking stick and tells him he ought to get home to his. Before we leave, I creep back into the bank of roots where I lay the bird down. It's one eye pointed to the sky, glassy, an aunt already crawling around its perimeter. With a handful of mushy leaves, I cover up the bird.

I want to be out of these woods, back in my kitchen, back in my job, back in Abby's busy schedule. But despite the boy's insistence we leave, Mother wants to press on further. I parked myself on a pile of rocks. Mother, you don't really think you're going to find anything. What could be left that wasn't nibbled into ribbons by the shifting earth? A few threads of a dress? A pair of size four rubber soles. There would barely be bones.

Maybe only fragments you'd have to sift the dirt for. Mother stops and sighs. She will never forget the faces of those poor mothers. They needed the bodies found. She couldn't imagine how unbearable it is for children just to be gone forever, never knowing for certain where they were. She brushed my knee soothingly and says it's okay that I don't understand,

but she needs to keep looking for them. I'm quiet while we walk on. We pass a roll of blankets, neatly made up amongst the fallen branches and dead leaves. I put my hand to my mouth and think, Oh God, the boy really is living out here. This is where he sleeps. The sound of the stream grows louder. That's why the boy told us not to come down here.

He didn't want us finding his little camp. But as we continue, we find more piles of bedding. Some neat, others strown, with piles of busted open cans nearby inviting animals. The boy isn't the only one living out here. The ground at the very edge of the stream is soft, and we sink into deep footprints. The water rushes, but a cross isn't wide. An athletic person with a good run could clear the divide. Unnatural colors wave at us from the other side.

Fated blue and red. flannel blankets cover the grass. More bedding. Most of the blankets are tattered and full of dirt, but they are piled high and still hold the impression of the warm bodies that slept in them the night before. There are at least 30 beds across the stream, each one with its own fire pit. Some with pot suspended over them, still steaming, holding long wooden spoons waiting to be stirred. No one has seen their smoke signals in years. Yet the men are still here. a large, thriving community. Where have they been hiding?

How did they go undetected for so long? A sound echoes from the tree branches above us. Someone whistling a jittery bird call. Is it the boy hunting for more birds? Wanting to show Abby a surprise on our way back? Or is he alerting others to our presence? My mind plays tricks on me and soon the spoon handles poking from the stewpots turn into bones. I snatch Abby off her feet lifting her into my arms.

My legs shake. It's a long walk back to the car and I am terrified of not delivering her safely. But I stopped dead in my tracks when I realize Abby and I walk alone. Mother! Without hesitation, Mother wades across the stream into the men's camp. I call, but she won't listen. Now I see more beds spilling out of the bush. There are thousands of them.

As many beds as there are leaves on the tree. Any moment now, the men will return. So I hold Abby tight against my chest and keep moving forward. Never looking back even as the squelching sound of mother poking her stick into the soft ground goes fainter and fainter. I can only trust she will return. Her grieving arms loaded with the last of the missing bones. She's been too persistent and difficult. dedicated for the men to swallow her up.

She is stronger than they are. Once Abby is safe in the car, I will race back to the stream and together we will give the mothers of my childhood, even the ones who have already passed, the peace of knowing. Their children finally arrive. Creepy presents.

Death in the periphery, written by Quincy Lee and narrated by cold. Burkart. I first saw it happen at work. I just finished wringing up a customer when every hair on my neck stood on end. Something in my peripheral vision caught my eye. I worked at a board game store and standing in the outcove peering at the game shelves was a steamy dude with a straggly beard. His back was to me, but when he turned sideways right at the edge of my vision, I could see his mouth was gaping wide open like he was screaming. Weird, right? I glanced up, ready to laugh and asked him what was up. But the dude was just chilling, totally normal face. A slight wrinkle on his forehead, lips pursed as he read the back cover of wingspan.

He looked at me and asked if I had heard anything about this game being any good. Slightly overrated, in my opinion, but many people seem to enjoy it. He went on to explain that he was trying to find a game that his girlfriend might actually play. She wasn't really into board games or competitive stuff, but he may be able to convince her to play a co-op game. Might I suggest to Roland Wright? Technically competitive, but you can't attack or interact with other plays.

and mostly do your own thing on your board. They're also very beginner-friendly. I turned to grab one of the reserved ones from behind the counter, and as I turned back around, I nearly jumped out of my skin because that man had approached, so he was directly in front of the counter, and his mouth was wide open in a scream, eyes wide, like he was a zombie about to bite me.

But it must have been. been my imagination, because as soon as I looked at him straight on, he just looked back at me, mouth quirt. He stared at me, confused. Cartographers is our top-selling role and right. I stammered, recovering myself. But every time I took my eyes away from his face, in my periphery, he seemed to be like one of the undead, a corpse with a gaping mouth. I decided to ignore his behavior in the hope that he'd stop. He placed an order for cartographers, and I told him I'd give him a call when his copy came in. As I took down his details, much to my annoyance, he did not stop, but continued to stand in my

periphery, silently screaming. The next week, when I went in for a haircut, the guy sitting a couple of chairs over was also plain dead. He appeared to be slumped in the barber chair, head lulled to one side, blue eyes wide and unseeing. But the stylist kept flitting around him, scissors sniffing, and when I turned to look at him directly, he was no longer plain dead, but instead, speaking to the stylist, one hand gesturing from under the tape. Yet when I looked away a moment later, gone were his gestures. I could hear his voice, but he appeared to be lying motionless in his chair in the corner of my eye. A corpse.

When my haircut was finished, I looked over again. He was gone from the chair. This just kept happening. Honestly, I thought it must be some sort of online, fad with people randomly pretending to be dead. I mean, the internet has spawned stranger pranks. I don't have much of an online presence and don't keep up with popular memes or TikTok trends. And in my head, it made sense. It remained a relatively rare occurrence for me and mostly happened in large crowds.

For example, at the airport. That was where I finally figured out the cause. I was on my way to visit family. going through airport security. A little farther behind me in line stood a young couple who were pretending to be corpses whenever I stopped looking at them. It was annoying,

and I kept turning my head quickly, hoping to catch them in the act, but they were always behaving normally the moment I looked directly at them. And of course, what should have tipped me off is that no one else in line was reacting to their behavior.

Only I could see it, But at that point, I was still acting under the assumption that everyone else was in on some new TikTok prank and I wasn't. I'm 42 and definitely give, how do you do, fellow kids, vibes by today's social media standards. So, anyway, I put my belongings on the conveyor belt and the couple in my periphery were now 100% normal. Finally, I thought, they stopped pre-mail. pretending. But the moment I collected my stuff and turned around, I nearly shrieked because both of them loomed next to me, standing slouched, faces contorted into death masks. You can't see sharp details in your periphery, but you can catch when someone is making a terrible dead face. But when I looked

at them head on to tell them to cut that shit out, they were both normal, staring at me like I was the weird one. The woman actually hid behind her partner. That's when I realized two things. One, that I was the source of the weirdness, and two, that more specifically, the source was in my stuff. I felt around in my pockets. My fingers closed. on cold metal, and that's when it all clicked for me. I found my father's pocket watch. Now, a little background on this watch. Dad gave it to me the day before he died.

It's cracked and doesn't run. He'd had it for as long as I can remember, and when I was little, I asked him why he always carried a broken watch. He told me that it was a family heirloom. and that the cracks didn't matter because it told time in a different way. Those were his words. When he finally passed it down to me, he looked troubled, as he told me he didn't know if it's a blessing or a curse

to be able to see the things it shows. His father told him to sell it, but he could never bring himself to. Dad was always very soft-spoken and polite. He ran an antiques shop that closed after he died. I think he wanted me to run it, but I never had the passion or the interest. Our lives just took different paths. The watch is the one antique he made sure to give to me. What I'm still trying to figure out is why.

Because as far as I can tell, there's no ambiguity about it. The damn thing is definitely cursed. See, once I knew the source was the watch, it all fell into place. At the end of that family trip when I came back to work, I followed my hunch and looked up that guy who ordered the cartographers game. He never came back to pick it up when he came in. I kept it sitting on the shelf for him, even though I should have just put it out on the main shelves for people to browse.

It still had his name on it, and I searched his details and right away found his obituate. from that same week he'd come into the store. So that's what Dad meant about the watchtelling time in a different way. If I had known what was going on back when the customer ordered the game, I could have warned him, could have let him know. Hey, bud, maybe grab something that's in stock currently. But better yet, forget the games.

Go do whatever it is you want to in your last hours of life. Start checking off that bucket list. Maybe buy something more meaningful since it'll be your last chance to give your girlfriend a gift. But... Would he have listened? Looking back, I remember when I was a kid

how things would happen with dad that didn't make sense at the time. He'd get into random arguments with strangers. It was so uncharacteristic because my father wasn't a confrontational man, always polite. But once in a while, at the Antich store, I remember he'd step outside with a customer, and the customer would leave upset, yelling or swearing, or hysterically sobbing,

sometimes leaving so quickly they'd forgotten whatever it was they'd purchased. And once, too, at the mall, dad was told to leave a store after upsetting an employee. Stuff like that. Now, I realize, he must have to. have tried to warn people. But did it actually help those people? Any of them? Is the watch a blessing or a purse? The watch wasn't always cracked. Somebody cracked it. Hulled it against a wall or the floor, maybe in a moment of frustration. Maybe my grandfather. But he didn't throw it away. He passed it to my dad. Now, I wish my dad had sold it, wish he'd given it to someone else. I know it's not his

fault. Everyone has their time. But there are some things that maybe people are just better off not knowing. And maybe dad thought warning people was the right thing, but I'm team curse on this one. Knowing is definitely a curse. I'd rather not know. I should have thrown this watch away. But like my father and his father before, I just didn't. Now, it's too late. I'm sitting here at home, and every time I pass the bathroom mirror,

every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection at the edge of my vision. It's just too late to unsee my own dead eyes staring back at me. 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 comments, 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 story's author.