Creepy - The House of the Witch & Fire Creek

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

The House of the Witch (starts at 1:23)***Written by: Stephen Howard and Narrated by: Alicia Atkins***Fire Creek (starts at 18:13)***Written by: Michael Long and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Content warnings: child abuse, child death, pregnancy-related distress***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Before we get to this week's stories, I just wanted to officially bid a do to our longtime artist Dakota Miller, who's stepping away from the show to work on some new projects. Dakota's been a fixture on this show for the last eight years. All of the artwork you've seen

from the regular episodes, the creepway camp, to the 31 days of horror art, they're all the creation of Dakota. We've loved having them a part of the team and wish him nothing but luck on all of his future projects. Meanwhile, the horror goes on.

First up, from writer Stephen Howard and narrated by Alicia Atkins, creepy presents the house of the witch. At first light, Ada enters a threshold of the forest, adjusting the strap of her heavy satchel to negate the weight digging into her shoulder. Birdsong cuts out. The smell of morning dew reminds her of happier springtimes. Crows erupt from their hiding places among the branches, cawing as they take to the sky. On the ground, the air is thick and earthy, the darkness eased only by slashes of heavenly light.

Already, Ada hears the padded footsteps of her assailant. It has stalked her through the night. She rubs at the shadows beneath her eyes, runs a finger and thumb over the locket hanging from a chain around her neck, and marches on. The trees are old and gnarled. They whisper of Ada's arrival, carry messages through the forest onto expectant, excitable ears. This forest, so remote, with mountains cloaked and mist only faintly visible on the horizon, is a living, breathing entity, and its life is given by the one who lives here, has always lived here. Ada opens her satchel, takes out a slab of meat, and drops it on the floor. She marches on. Beneath her feet

snake roots, though Ada's converse-covered feet glide over them as if carried by tiny wings. She stops and bends down, runs her fingers through the dirt, breathes in its earthy taste. She smiles, though a tear escapes her hazel eye, and thinks of her sister, thinks of her sister hopping from root to root among the trees of the woods near their home, insisting only the left foot can land on a route, else they writh to life and pull you underground. Her sister lost to her, something Ada knows now for certain. She rises, and a sharp wind throws back her thick hair, nicks at her skin like hailstones, but she stands strong. Nothing will deter her. Not those padded footsteps slinking between the trees, nor the wet, guttural breaths of her hungry stalker.

The forest pushes her back, but the creature shepherds her forwards. She takes another slab of meat from her bag and tosses it between the silver birches to her right, then marches on. The yawning of the trees makes her eyes heavy, but she pinches her cheeks and ignores their sleep-inducing effects. Up ahead, there is a clearing. She steps through it, light swallowing her, silence engulfing her, as if tumbling into the stomach of a giant sea beast. There is the house. A log cabin smoke puffing from the chimney spout, which pokes out of the thatched roof. Atop the ridge sits the crows, their unblinking eyes on Ada.

But she ignores them. What catches her eyes are the thin stick. the length of javelins jammed into the ground in a circle around the building. Like the sticks, she remembers her sister placing in specific patterns around their home to ward off intruders, all under the instruction of their grandmother. But these sticks around the log cabin are different, drawing their power from the ground into which they're driven, and from what hangs around their necks.

Tied by string to the top of each stick is a number. item of clothing. Ada grasped the locket around her neck and opens it. She holds it before her, looks past it, then back to the locket. Within the locket is a photo. In the photograph is Ada's lost sister, Marie. Smiling for the camera, Marie wears her favorite lilac scarf. Ada closes the locket and marches on. She pauses, caresses the lilac scarf tied to the stick directly before the door. The crunching of leaves and the juttering of hungry breaths indicate the creature still follows her, but she does not turn to look upon it for the first time. Ada smiles, approaches the door, and knocks. The door swings open, though no hand acts upon it. The hinge

squeak. Ada enters, the door closing behind her. Darkness. Ada closes her eyes, counts the She remembers Marie teaching her this trick one night during a heavy storm. Eyes open. Hedges flank her, perhaps ten feet high. The path is narrow, like a maze. She switches her satchel to her other shoulder, rubs the tension from the other. She marches on. Ada takes each step without hesitation, listening to a tiny something on the air,

a quiet voice whispering directions, support, and thanks. The voice drowns among the sound of footsteps, fast footsteps, thudding and purposeful. Ada reaches into her satchel, brings out another slab of meat, and places it down on the ground before her. She steps past it and marches on, though the sound of teeth tearing into flesh snakes a wisp of cold down her neck. She remembers Marie's giggles while feeding treats to their old cat, Waffles, who would snap and wrestle like a fiend from hell, and the wisp of cold recedes. Above, there is nothing, as if the imagination did not stretch so far as the sky. If she squints, Ada thinks she can see wooden beams and tightly bound straw.

Lower, crows sit atop the hedges, watching her progress. Ada understands it is not the crows who see through their eyes. The maze winds left and right, an impossible breeze shaking the leaves that line the way. Beneath her feet, roots disturb the earth, though no trees are in sight, as if the veins of this land are on show. Something courses beneath her. This house is alive. She marches on. The path meanders until, finally, it opens out into a wide clearing. At the center of the clearing is a door, suspended in space, nothing holding it up, nothing seemingly behind it.

Ada strides towards it, grabs the brass handle, turns, and pushes. It is not the grass or the hedges she sees, but another room inside this spatially contorted house. a room containing rows of dusty shelves holding books untouched in centuries. Ada steps into the room and the door closes. She doesn't glance over her shoulder, knowing the door is no longer there. The books are old, all wrinkles and faded colors. She peruses them, stopping here and there to rub dust from a spine with her finger, so as to read the titles more clearly.

She remembers Marie reading and reading until sleep would drag her into its malevolent realm, but not before she read passages from Alice in Wonderland to the younger, bright-eyed Ada. She wonders if there's a copy of the Carol book here, but there are too many to look through and too little time. If she lingers, the creature will surely catch up. The room also contains an empty open fireplace, before which sits a well-worn rug. Ada sidles over to it, places a chunk of meat on the hearth, where it might be appreciated.

The meat odor is stronger now, reminds Ada of damp clothing. In the fireplace, the charred remains of ribbons of all colors repose like corpses in a mass grave. A cleansing of spirits, an attempt at penance, though a failure. There is still some remorse here in the house of the witch. For the first time since setting out, Ada is surprised. But, adjusting her satchel on her shoulder, she moves towards a door that is growing in size between two of the bookshelves. Once large enough for her to fit through,

Ada opens it and marches on. A dirt path. The forest runs parallel to this path, and the crows line the trees. Above, far above, as if forgotten, the wooden beams and the tightly wound straw of the ceiling stretch on, yawning like the trees. Ada knows she remains inside the house of the witch.

She marches on, staying within the borders of the path. Gorse and buttercups flank the way, aromic and bright. Among the trees, beyond the grasping fingers of light, well-fed but ever wanting more, the creature saunteres in step with Ada. Around it, the trees are indistinct, those formerly thudding paws, soundless. Still, it prowls. Ada sees the trees curve around, forming a nook within which a single chair is placed upon the grass. Roots, entwined the arms and legs in back of the chair, like a giant kraken snaking around a hapless merchant ship.

On this tremendous chair sits a girl, not much older than Ada, a girl who bears a striking resemblance to Ada, a similar posture and bearing, a similar aura. The chair dwarfs her, yet she does not seem small. For the second time, Ada wavers. feels surprise, stopping short of the little nook. The darker grass of the nook swallows the end of the path, and Ada both wants to step from the path, but also not, remembering warnings about the ends of roads. She dare not approach, pass beyond the line,

because a clearer view of the girl in the chair means confirming the things she knows cannot be true. Ada steps forward, her toe is. inches from the end of the path. Marie? She whispers, covering her wide, hanging mouth with both hands. A low, guttural growl slips between the trees to her right. The girl in the chair speaks.

Sister, do approach. I knew you of all people would find me here. She curls a seductive finger. We thought you were. Ada has never said it out. out loud. Saying it out loud means speaking it into existence, confirming it as reality. Marie cackles, her overlong fingernails clicking little beats on the arms of the chair. But, as you can see, I'm perfectly fine, sister. I did not stumble into the territory of some

mean old crone, as you so clearly thought. No, I sought out the keeper of this realm. I wanted this. I've always been drawn to magic, just as magic has always been drawn to me. Ada remained standing on the periphery. Magic was always a part of our lives. You are correct. Do you remember hopping from tree root to tree root? What was it? You had to use your right foot, else the roots would drag you underground? Marie's mouth widens. The red of her tongue stark. against her white teeth.

But of course, sister. How could I forget? And now you see the roots travel up my chair. Come, inspect closer. Through the soles of her feet, Ada feels the reverberation of heavy footsteps. Ada shakes her head, refuses the request. Are you not cold in the shadow of the trees, Marie?

Have you not your favorite yellow scarf? Marie lifts herself from the chair, and, knees bent, she floats several yards forwards. There are leaves in her hair. The cold does not touch me so much these days. But I do miss that scarf, favorite of mine that it was. Ada shrugs the satchel strap over her head and holds it against her belly. I have with me a copy of your favorite book, she says. Marie cocks her head, scratches at a twitch beside her eye.

Oh, really? The reverberations are shooting up to Ada's knees, up to her stomach, unsettling every organ and muscle it passes through, like a high-speed train rattling buildings. Something approaches. Yes, really. Some of my best memories are of you reading snippets of Don Quixoteau to me. Do you think you could do that for me?

me again. Ada bends her knees and throws the satchel over to Marie, who catches it. This bag smells wrong. Marie whispers, lifting open the satchel flap. You can assume her face, witch, but you cannot fake memories. Ada says, turning towards the darkness. A white blur shoots from between the trees. The creature's teeth shine yellow, chunks of of red stuck between them. The tremendous white-furred bulk beelines for Ada. Two steps away it changes direction with easy grace, launching itself at the witch, crashing into her and tackling her onto the grass.

The witch screeches and wails, and the sounds are all around Ada. The creature first attacks the bag, and then the witch. As her screams die away, so too does. the forest and the crows and the path. Ada remembers her sister. Marie never forgot a thing. She had a head for detail, a keen eye in the spirit of a completionist. Forgetting to color in the sky is not something she would have done. Never. Ada knows this to be true. Between that and her questions, she knew something to be wrong. She's in Inside a small log cabin, the fireplace is empty.

The furniture is moth-eaten and worn, except for the elaborately carved oak chair in the corner. The chair is empty. Ada dallies. Finally, she turned from the chair and makes for the door. It hangs open behind her. Ada stands, staring at the real forest surroundings, and reaches for her locket. It's cold to the touch. She steps forward and unties the string attaching the lilac scarf to the long stick,

then wraps the scarf around her neck. Crows line the tree branches, staring expectantly at her. They know how these lineages work, are as old as the forest itself. But it is not a new, malign human hand this forest requires. This realm can look after itself. It needs no custodian drawing from its power. Ada decides that when she gets home, she'll read Alice in Wonderland. With that, she marches on.

And next, from writer Michael Long and narrated by Michelle Kane, creepy presents, Fire Creek. In 1843, in the town of Enos, Wisconsin, during a particularly difficult winter, the residents were forced to practice what is known as survival cannibalism. As the frailer among them succumbed to death, the rest received them as gifts from heaven, and they butchered, boiled, and consumed the corpses. They were thus able to survive until spring. Their tale could be added to countless others of the genre,

except that in Enos after the spring came, they kept on eating their dead. A local custom lasting several decades, the town's people butchered and distributed the bodies of their dead rather than commit them to the local cemetery. The practice was not shared or discussed with outsiders, and in town records, the practice was known as rendering. This continued until the town was folded in to Branch County, and under increased scrutiny,

the practice was quietly abolished and omitted from official histories. I came across Enis while researching cannibalism. They were the subject of a number of references in other documents, but nothing in the way of hard facts. So, in the interest of uncovering something interesting, I spent several days. there poking around. The county seat had an understandable lack of information on Enos before their inclusion, and the Enos Historical Society, consisting as far as I could tell, of three blue-haired ladies with sour faces, flatly telling me the rumors were untrue. And yet, when I walked the local cemetery, the grave markers stopped in 1842, only to resume in 1871, which the Blue Hair Brigade

explained was the result of a suspiciously targeted flood. I took some pictures. In 1938, Brighton, Kentucky, a family named Edbert is discovered to be practitioners of homicidal cannibalism, killing people in order to eat them. A highly, a highly insular community, the practice went unnoticed for untold years until a task force was formed to investigate the disappearances along the State Highway 24 corridor. And the string of clues eventually led to the Edwards and their 200-acre farm, where they found the very partial remains of over 300 people, mostly bones. Investigators estimate the crimes went back decades and was thinking, uniquely unique to this one family. The Edberts were all executed and they became popular

boogeymen to use to scare children. You behave or I'll feed you to the Edwards, for example. 1953, Colfax, California. A new mother distraught over her husband's infidelities, kills and butchers, her one-month-old child, and served her husband a kidney pie. which he eats. 1911, Smolensk, Siberia, long-standing winter cannibalism practiced by a community of several hundred.

Two to three victims each year are chosen by lottery, viewed as one of the few documented cases of institutionalized survival cannibalism. 1967, Badmatar India, the Vaisha cast of this community, practices medicinal cannibalism, believing that the hearts, lungs, and brains transmit strength

and long life to the eater, leading to the regular abduction and murder of people of the Shudras caste. The practice persisted for decades. In 1906, in Beaumont, Oregon, a small religious cult arose that believed in the spiritual potency of human blood, and they fed on one another like vampires. Not technically cannibalism, but worth noting. In the 1930s, a small community in the western Sierra Nevada foothills called Fire Creek practiced a peculiar form of cannibalism, in which every family would consume their firstborn child. Widespread, philosophical cannibalism. They went undetected for years by never going outside their community until federal agents on an unrelated investigation uncovered all the grisly evidence they needed

to arrest every adult in town. The children of the town were removed and placed into foster care, including a red-haired little girl named Helen Grove. She was my mother. I have spent most of my adult life pursuing the question of what drives this kind of highly aberrant behavior. What makes someone or some group turn to actions that are widely regarded as beyond the pale? What turns normal people into cannibals? Do normal people exist? Or are we all potential cannibals waiting for the right catalyst? A teenage girl was asked why she,

and her friends had started to slice off parts of their own skin in order to eat it. And she said, I don't know, we just felt like it. I never met that teenage girl, but I've met plenty like her. People caught in their own compulsions, driven to extremes of behavior, with no other explanation than they felt like it. And this is what haunts me. I feel like doing a great many things in my life. Some of them strange or even disgusting to other people,

like putting mayonnaise on french fries. Yet I like mayo on fries. What's to stop me from liking slices of my own skin? How much of what I view as moral behavior is merely the product of cultural conditioning. And how much of that might I sweep away one day because I simply feel like it? What if I start to feel like killing people and wearing their bones as a necklace? Will I be betraying my humanity or merely betraying the mores of my community? And if I do all of that, and it feels right, am I still me? Or have I become a monster? Are we all monsters? Kept in line by nothing more

than social mores? The question for me is more than academic. When I was 14 months old, my mother was institutionalized for life, after she attempted to boil me in a large pot on the stove. Any attempt to tell the full story of Fire Creek has been stymied by the uniform silence of those who participated. Although all 147, adults charged in the case provided a full and detailed account of their gruesome crimes,

not a single one of them would say a word about what drove them to it. Stony Silence Because of this, they received the harshest possible sentences, death row in many cases and life for the rest, and among the lifers all but one was murdered by other prisoners. The one survivor did so by doing his time in complete isolation, and for years he spoke nothing but gibberish. The FBI report is the only official account of the crimes that exist, and it consists of a narrative of discovery and a cataloging of people and evidence. The document is remarkably

taciturn and goes to great lengths to shield the reader from the more painful details. For those, one must turn to the underlying case evidence delivered in 1998 as part of the trance of files released under the Freedom of Information Act. Some 4,298 different documents. I have read each one, looking for information about my grandparents, what bodies they literally had buried in the backyard. One will find a catalog of common kitchen tools and exhaustive. Bodhis butcher knives, basins, tarps, and other mundane supplies connected to the crimes, a map of each house and the excavations conducted there, interviews with every adult, brief as they are, and the names and ages of the minor survivors, all under the age of five and the youngest, just 18 months.

That was my mother. In all those pages, you will find not a single word dedicated to the crime. question of why. It is the question that hangs over this and other cases. What drove them to do what they did? What turned an entire community from loving parents into child eaters? What made them feel like it? I never knew my mother growing up except as a dark shadow of the past. She refused any visitors at the institution, and my father was grateful for the excuse to forget her entirely. I only learned the truth when I was 17 about to leave her college, and my father felt like I should know. He was so ashamed he couldn't look me in the eyes when he said was she did.

Like his credentials as a father were tarnished by his having chosen her as a wife, which of course they were. When I was 24 years old, flush with confidence about myself and my place in the world, I went to see my mother. She wasn't really all there by then, which is maybe why she agreed to see me. I was led into a common room, sunny and quiet, and my mother sat under a lap blanket in a straight back chair looking out the window. She was old, withered, her skin nearly translucent. I sat next to her and told her who I was, but she didn't acknowledge my presence or anything I said.

She just studied the clouds gliding over the treetops. I told her about my life, my degree, my career. Even though she didn't respond, it felt good to tell her these things, the way someone with the normal mother might do on a sunny afternoon. I felt good, pretending there was some connection. and we sat in silence for a long time. And then for reasons I will never know, I asked her why she did it. She turned for the first time and smiled, looked into my eyes, and reached over to pat my hand. You'll see, she said. I was raised a Christian, and I believe in good and evil. I believe

people are responsible for their choices and those who make choices that harm others are evil. There is no more relativism that can justify the murder and consumption of other humans. And so I have long accepted the fact that my own mother was evil. She is currently experiencing eternal torment for her actions. And such is God's judgment. I am also a scientist, and I have to acknowledge that human beings are biochemical machines. And like any machine, they are subject to malfunction for reasons ranging from genetic to environmental. Have the wrong combination of polymorphisms in your genome,

and you die before you can be born, or you live long enough to get cancer, or you acquire a rare personality disorder. The potential things that can go wrong with humans are vast and terrifying, all of them, before you can even consider what can happen outside the body. And then you have poisons and pathogens, agents that wear you down quickly or slowly, mutations that are forced upon you to who knows what end. Any damn thing can happen. I don't waste my time pitying the evil for their misfortune to be the way they are, whatever the reason.

Instead, I plot the variable. against my own life and wonder. I live a good life and one of faith and service, and I believe myself square in the eyes of God. But what floats within my bloodstream waiting to activate some hideous aberration in my nature? What genetic mutation do I carry that might transform me into an evildoer?

These are the things that occupy a prime position in the back of my mind as I pursue my investigations. How confident am I in myself? And the matter comes to the point. In the march of life, I married the love of my life, and I believe him when he swore, better or worse. He is my port in the storm, and I can no longer imagine a life without him in it.

But as we approach the three-year anniversary of our marriage, I have to face the fact, that I have never told him about my mother, about my family background, about any of it. I told him my mother had a mental illness, and I was raised by my father, which are both true. I always assumed we would come back to it, and I would confess the gruesome details. But then we never did. He never asked, and it never came up. Time passed, and I figured I would get to it eventually. except that now I'm pregnant and I still have not told him.

I have not told him about the pregnancy and I haven't told him about my history. I don't know what is stopping me except the potential that this knowledge will change how he feels for me. When his love for his unborn child is met with the knowledge of my past, which will win? Will the devotion he swore to his wife outweigh his paternal obligation to protect his child? Will he believe me when I assure him that I am not my mother or my grandmother? I almost woke him last night as I watched him sleep, but I had a vision of a violent conflict, and I had to leave the room so my crying wouldn't wake him.

And now I find I dread the moment, the inevitable reaction he will have to what he may regard as our impending doom. I don't know if my husband's love for me will outweigh his horror at what he fears might lie ahead. And as I consider it in the black of night, with him sleeping beside me, I am finally admitting to myself that I don't altogether care. It isn't that I don't love him or trust him or want him by my side to raise this child. It's more that my love for this child has already grown to the point of eclipsing my love for my husband, and his response will not alter this core love that I feel within me.

Whatever happens, I will protect my child, and I can only hope that my husband will be on our side. I am driven now by pure maternal faith, which sustains my newborn girl in me. We are together in this world and have a bond more powerful than any thing. I might have imagined. The first time I held her in my arms, I felt a completeness that I'd lacked in my life up to that point. This dome of protection I have cast over the two of us feels like the work of my whole being and what I am meant to do. Nothing will harm this girl while I have breath

to defend her. My husband wanted her gone before she was born. and he didn't get his way in any possible way. He had the potential to use my family history to separate me from my child, and there was simply no way I could allow such a thing. This alone demonstrates the strength of my love for my baby girl. I know what my mother tried to do to me, and I know what happened at Fire Creek. I know it the way nobody on earth knows it,

to the foundation of my intellect and the shuddering crux of my soul. I know all the cases, know where these things can go, normal people emerging as monsters, the worst things that can happen. I know all of that, and I don't think it applies to me. Nothing will deter me from protecting my child, and nothing I have done to protect her makes me a monster. I don't need the absolution of her,

priest or the forgiveness of a skeptical husband to reassure my moral compass. I will keep my daughter safe, whatever it takes. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-lite 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.