Creepy - The Light Beyond

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

The Light Beyond (starts at 3:11)***Written by: Scott Savino***Another Viral Internet Trend (starts at 42:50)***Written by: Jimmy Ferrer and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***An Account of My Disturbance (starts at 1:10:18)***Written by: Winona Morris and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***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. Back in the studio again.

A quick thank you to everyone who listened to this here's Creep Boy Camp. It was good to get out and stretch my legs a bit, but it's also good to get back to some routine and schedule. As such, I need to get back on task and thank some patrons. So please join me in welcoming and thanking new patrons, Rose the Benevolent, Elaine Scott, Cameron Beale, The Habe's, McKenzie M,

Matt's the cat who knows where the bodies are at and Oprah Cheddar worst Ufftripes Kurdensen To see how you can support the show And get rewards like early commercial free access to all episodes Please check out the donation tiers of patreon.com slash creepy pod Okay back to the business of digitizing archives

Not exactly the most glamorous or stimulating work But it's kind of nice to be able to turn off my mind for a little bit and get something done. Though it does look like they decided to move some stuff around while I was out of town. It shouldn't be too much of an issue to figure out where they put some of the gear that I need. On the plus side, it seems like while I was gone, there weren't any more issues with broadcast dropping into the feed. So there's that, right?

Oh, and before I forget, and I realize this might seem early, but we're officially open for 31 days of horror submissions. So, if you have a story for our October event, that's 31, okay, 32 days of episodes and stories, please start to send them in. When we fill up, that's it. And yes, there are always people reaching out in September and even October wondering if we're still accepting stories. Short answer to that is, no, we aren't. By September, we're well under production.

So, if you have an October-themed story, like Halloween, trick-treat, pumpkin, scarecrows, haunted houses, etc. Get them in ASAP. More information can be found at creepypod.com slash submissions. All right. Let's get on with the show. First up, a boy chases a distant light through a vast shifting sewer system

where every turn seems to defy logic and reality itself. As the maze deepens and his pursuit continues, he begins to question whether he's following something ahead of him or something that's been waiting for him all along. From writer Scott Savino, creepy presents, The Light Beyond. Hey, kid! The boy called out.

Hey, kid, don't run off again. I won't hurt you. He paused, breath catching in his throat, before adding. I need your help. Please! And then... No! Wait!

The boy had been chasing the... that light for hours now, although I never seemed to close the distance. Every time he grew discouraged, he recalled with misplaced hope that the dark, empty space between himself and the kid who held the flashlight also never seemed to grow. It didn't seem to matter how many times or how often he lost sight of him up ahead. The sewer was a thirsty thing, drinking sound the same way it drank the light beyond. Every cry from his throat was inhaled mid-echo, but he sawed. the cathedral hush that pressed in from all sides. The sound of the boy's voice bouncing hither and yawn on the grubby walls was broken only by the slop of its sneakers through the foul black water.

As he trudged on, each step with a splash or slosh, the muck clutching at him halfway up his shins in the dark, round tunnel. He couldn't help imagining that he'd been swallowed into the decomposing throat of some slain giant. He held the glow stick out in front of him, casting an eerie green light that refracted off the slime climbing the walls. The glow shimmered across the slick surfaces and rippled on the thick, dark water below. If he stood on tiptoe, he could almost touch the ceiling, but he didn't bother. He didn't want to. That, too, was coated in the foul black slime,

even more thickly here than the mucus sheen that wept from the walls around him. In the dull green light, the mildew clinging to the upper arch seemed to waver, flexing inward and outward like lungs. Breathing. Like the tunnel was breathing. It was subtle, rhythmic, and more than once he swore the breath could maybe be heard in moments when he strained his ears hard enough and listened close enough. The walls, he could see in places, were made of brick, the most of it vanished beneath layers. layers of mildew and rot. The filthy water stretched out before him in a never-ending river, backlit and shimmering emerald and black by the green beacon he held. It flowed forward

until it was swallowed by the darkness ahead, darkness that marked the abrupt, choking end point of his sight. He hadn't known a place could feel so confined while still seeming to stretch on forever and ever. This squelch beneath his sneakers shifted. The wet, the of each step thickened somehow, as though the walls around him were drawn back just far enough to give sound more room to exist. He still felt as though he was moving through swamp water or mud, but the splashing evolved into a broader sound that might have the power to linger in the walls the same way his earlier shouting down the tunnel had, but not quite.

It didn't grow louder and didn't exactly bounce from wall to wall, but it seemed to broaden. The breadth of his footsteps expanded as though something vast was being pried quietly open nearby. Then, in the same moment that his ears noted the tonal shift, he found himself already standing in it. Another intersection. The new tunnel ran perpendicular to the path he'd already been walking, spreading off to his left and reaching forward with the same sort of ceaseless, boring yawns voicelessly expressed by the tunnels. that the boy had been following for the last 10 or 20 minutes since he took the last right. The intersection was built from the same stagnant, dark, and slimy mildew as the way before this, and before that, and before that.

It was made with the same stink, the same bricks, the same forever damp. The offshoot was painted in the same sweating memories of dark, wet time. It surfaces shimmering in shades of verdant green. and gleaming lacquered obsidian, as he thrust the arm that held the glow-stick down the new path and compared it with the old. He hadn't seen it coming. There'd been no curve, no widening. This new pipe, same as the last seven or eight branches off to the left or right,

or on several occasions, both directions at once, appeared out of nowhere. One step followed another, and then, without one way, warning, the tunnel widened and he was presented with a choice in the silent dark. This time, he didn't turn. He was almost certain he wasn't supposed to. He kept going the way he was headed before the fork appeared. He only looked. He looked long enough to wonder if he was making a bad decision or a good one.

Telling himself again that this wasn't the way the kid with a flashlight had gone. Then the boy kept moving the same way he'd been moving before. The next fork came much the same way, and the one after that too. They appeared like tricks of the eye, side passages revealing themselves only the moment who was walking past them, like reality only decided to render their existence in that same instant, drawing them into the tunnel after the fact to see what he'd do. They felt penciled into his peripheral vision, outlines of ghosted shapes not fully present until he turned his head this way or that,

drawn out only by a subtle shift in the sound of his own steps. Sometimes he turned. Most times he didn't. He couldn't ever be sure, not really whether these moments prompting sudden indecisions, forcing an unexpected choice, were even real. Would this sewer act this way if the boy was not himself but someone else? What if he was naturally someone confident and less indecisive?

He thought that his mother was like that, maybe. But this place still split itself open so often, forcing conscious decisions if he were his more adaptive, less insecure mother? Whether the decisions mattered at all, he didn't know. There were times he imagined walking forward without pause, without curiosity, head down, eyes on the water. No attention paid to the paths that revealed themselves. If you walked like that, with intention or commitment, would the forks stop opening? Would they split the tunnel like gashes and wet skin, bleeding the dark out sideways?

Blood. That's what flowed down here. The soaking, viscous muck at his feet. Breath held and thick was the city's blood. If he stopped acknowledging those perfectly straight arteries that branched from the main path at clean angles, would they vanish entirely? Or, if they were truly part of the sewer's intended design,

would they fold away before he reached them? Would they retract into whatever intentionless geometry they'd grown from? He didn't know. What he did know, what he started to believe was this. It didn't matter. The system wasn't a puzzle to be solved. It just was. Every intersection was just another artery split in the inner city's circulatory system.

Every offshoot, just another line carved in service of movement, of pressure, of life. These sewers existed to force something unnatural through the insides of the ironworks and asphalt that sprawled above. The city by daylight, by the glow of neon at night, should be something inanimate, made to appear alive, but not actually be that way. This series of man-made structures and the veins below it carried something older than the city itself, something dark, something that granted breath and a heartbeat beneath the playgrounds of the massive concrete organism. Whether the boy turned or not didn't change the fact that the sewer water turned blood sloshing thickly at his feet would still move, because the metropolis had existed beneath

had a pulse it should not have. And now, for reasons he couldn't explain, he moved through the sub-training veins that lie beneath the urban sprawl. An amoeba, a parasite, a human virus. What he believed was that no decision he made mattered, not really, or even at all. Deciding to leave this path and take that, to take every right intersection that presented itself, or to simply move forward forever, nothing he chose would change anything. He'd always find the kid ahead eventually, because blood only moved in one direction. And although the sewer had hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of art, They could only ever flow the one way.

Eventually, he would pass through the heart. Maybe he already had. Maybe he'd been there and left again, spiraling out into one of the smaller veins, doomed to return without knowing. He couldn't tell. Every pulse from the world above led in a single direction. Every pulse moved either to or from the heart.

If the kid with a flashlight was in the same same, circuitous system. Their paths would cross, not by choice, but eventually, inevitably. Another fork approached. It announced itself the way they always did, without warning. The light caught something in the water that hadn't been there before. The sounds of his footsteps shifted. The air pulled at him differently, as if the space had changed shape, and the tunnel had quieted. finally turned itself inside out. A path opened to his left again, continuing past the lane he'd been moving down and stretching onward into shadow to his right.

He looked left, holding out the glove stick and squinting, looking for something, literally anything that looked different. Each new branch made him clench his eyes, straining to see farther than before, hoping this time he'd spot something that broke the pattern. A grate in the low ceiling above, an inlet dug into a curb to drink away pooling rainwater, something he could climb up and out of, a service ladder leading to a manhole, a pipe going directly up. He didn't care if it led to one of the city's dirty fountains or someone's filth-incrusted toilet in the slums. Again, just more of the same.

Another copy of the tunnel he'd already been walking. He turned his head the other direction. This time, to the right, he saw something different. Far down the waterlogged lane, almost too distant to make sense. There was a flicker, a glinting pinpoint of white. He froze. It wasn't steady. It shimmered.

It moved without moving, like a celestial beacon through clouds or billows of smoke. A little smear of it wavered against the distance. and wet walls, so fainted almost disappeared when he blinked. Then the figure with the light in its hand turned, not fully or dramatically, turned just enough, and the light came with it. The beam shifted, catching him where he stood, dumbfounded with his glow stick, held perfectly out before him. Its sickly jade glow ready to inspect the new path.

The light moved directly into his eyes, pausing him and forcing him. him the stillness. That was the instant the faint white pinprick was no longer quite so distant. It was brilliant. It was blinding. The light did not just shine. It expanded. Surrounding itself in a ring.

A burning corona of hot, bright intensity that flared out from its origin like a sun dying in the cold vacuum of some vast and indifferent galaxy. It gleamed in a perfect circle. far beyond the place in the sewer dark where the glow-stick screen gave out, far beyond the six to ten-foot stretching reach of his sight in this lightless hole. It hovered now, a star suspended in space and time, a radiating disk of unburning fire suspended in shadow, burning bright with cold. He could not see the figure anymore.

Then the flashlight vanished sideways down another branch, as the kid holding it ducked into another artery even further down. As quickly as it flared, burning as brightly as a star at the moment of its end. The light collapsed and dark filled the void. The bright beam of the flashlight transformed into a singularity, sucking the emptiness ahead of the boy into a single inward gasp of the foul sewers' penumbrous breath. He stood there, glow-stick trembling in his hand, his own breath. caught somewhere between lungs and throat.

The water lapped at his ankles, the algae living on the surface, and probably within the brick behind him, continued to sweat. The tunnel seemed to widen for a moment and constrict as he called out into the darkness. No, wait, kid, don't run off. Why? Kid! Hey, kid, come back! For a moment, the boy stood at the tunnel crossroad.

finally ready to surrender to the breakdown he tried expectantly to brace himself for. It loomed in the back of his mind from the moment he opened his eyes, no idea where he was or how he'd gotten here. Disoriented, the boy quickly patted his pockets and found himself in the dark, without a phone and on the verge of hyperventilating and panic. He sat in foul-smelling water that coated his upper legs despite his shorts, seeping through them. His sneakers and shins submerged in a slick film of slime.

There was nothing in his pocket save for a single round tube, a tube made of plastic. At first, in the tight darkness of the city's pipes, he wasn't sure what it was as he held it with both hands. But after about a minute, running his fingers up and down the cylinder and tracing the caps at each end, he realized it was a glow stick. When he snapped it alive, he breathed the sigh of relief for a moment.

Then the panic returned with undue haste. He sat in the viscous sewage longer than he cared to admit, only springing to his feet when something unseen and the shallow current brushed against his ankle. He shot upward, fully and firmly on his feet, moving fast away from where he'd awoke. Originally determined to find a service shaft, he walked the dark pipes. hand sliding along the wall with nothing but the green otherworldly glowing tube of plastic to light his way. He fought the urge to vomit while his fingertips passed over the oily, rotting, coating on the bricks at arm's reach on either side. The walls, the ceiling, and the water dulled every sound other than his sloshing footfalls and ragged breaths. Once his confused anxiety faded, it left behind a deep self-pity so strong he nearly wept.

Then he saw the shape outlined in light beyond. He guessed the distance between himself and the distant silhouette to be about a hundred yards, maybe less. The boy felt certain it couldn't be more, and he could tell from the shape of the outline in the dark that it was the shape of someone else stuck down here with him. Had to be. He knew this for sure when he shouted out. Hey! And the shape and light spun around. The black shadow vanished, replaced by a beam pointed straight into the boy's eyes.

When the illumination turned back again, a full 180 degrees, it paused there for a moment, just a moment, an intake of breath, held. Then the light shifted right and bounced once, then twice, before disappearing down a tunnel to the right. The boy understood then that whoever held the light beyond had taken the fork, at full speed, running as the dark closed over the empty space left in the flashlight kid's wake. The boy picked up his own pace, trudging through the shin-high, syrup-thick, dark miasma that engulfed his sneakers. The boy couldn't match the stranger's speed, but neither did he fall behind. He might have sprinted, really sprinted, were he not so certain he'd trip and land in

the polluted and foul, stenched waste water lapping at his legs, and trying to be able to to peel his trainers away like swamp mud, determined to pull them off. He moved like someone trying to quickly cross a bog and failing to move as fast as he meant. Now, as the kid ahead of him veered into a side path he couldn't quite make out, the boy raised one leg, pressed his foot unsteady against the slick wall and focused on his balance so he wouldn't fall. He pulled at the laces of one shoe, then the other, tightening both and tying each with a double knot. Now overtighted to the point his feet throbbed with the hammer of his pulse, he took off running with renewed determination. He moved as close to full sprint as the foul tide of putrid

liquid in the sewer pipe allowed, heading after the flashlight kid where he disappeared down the right fork ahead. He raced down the tunnel, feet slapping the black murk and flicking giant pregnant slops of the effluvial mire into the air behind him. The sludge wake at his back created a quickly dying tide, slapping rhythmically against the sides of the city's bowels. The tunnel didn't narrow, but in the jaundiced frail light of the glowstick, it seemed once again to pull inward the way he'd imagined earlier when he thought he saw the ceiling breathe. Now it seemed to grow close around him, closing in and then falling away as the weak

glowing light held and his fist bounced. The walls moved as though he passed through the stomach and into the large intestine, pushed along by rhythmic involuntary muscles through an endless black digestion. Sloshing, the sound of the sewage beneath his feet resounded in rhythm with his heart, while over and over the echoes of each footfall expanded, then constricted again with intersection after intersection appearing and disappearing. They came more frequently, than before, more frequently than he felt reasonable.

It happened with nearly every fourth or fifth step he took now. He ran not simply to catch the flashlight kid, but to outrun the feeling that everything above was so far away, miles away, and his life, interrupted, was completely out of reach. Meaningless. Everything replaced by this dark maze of rot and ancient intent lurking in the void ahead of him, to his left and to his right, as well as behind. As the river drift of the dark flow pressed him to go further and further into the depths of the pipes,

a certain fourth or fifth step opened up another intersection. Somehow, this, he knew instinctively, was the branch along the path where he must turn with an abrupt right face and continue. The current shifted direction as the boy shifted direction, and distantly, perhaps 75 yards ahead now, A faint white light pulsed dimly around another corner in the tunnel. It might have gone unseen if the passage were not so wholly and completely dark. He didn't slow. Cpping his hands to his mouth, he called out. Hey!

And before he realized his grip had changed, the glowstick slipped from his hand and plopped into the sludge. The sprint he'd barely managed was ground to an abrupt halt with a second and third strides, slowing him to a full stop. Turning, he saw the bleak, dark effluence, slowly molding itself around the sticks, ailing light, and hoped desperately to retrieve it, to not be fully lost in the dark.

He took one step back, followed by another, only to watch, too far to reach and hopeless, as the slurry of black grimes swallow the phosphorescent bit of plastic hole. It stole with it the faint green breath of light, and the sewer pipe began to choke on the sudden dark. No! He heard himself crying out the word as he fell onto his knees and began frantically digging through the excrement

that flowed unnaturally thick along the concave curve of the pipeway floor. The boy found himself so close to the water now in the empty dark that it's horrible miasma. Pryor kept at arm's length, fully assaulted his nose. He felt the scent like fingers. of something filthy and inhuman digging upward through his nostrils, up and then moving down, down, down. Fingers, then hand, then arm, clawing along his neck and forcing itself to be swallowed.

He felt the digits wrapping themselves around each organ and turn on their way down, gripping his lungs and then his heart, then his spleen, until they found the curve of his stomach and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed. With such force, he believed it would turn completely inside out. He felt a surge of vomit rush out along the same path the hand had taken down as it withdrew, its work complete. The expulsion broke past his lips and struck the surface of the sludge. His hands kept moving below the water.

frantic and blind. He tried to steady his breathing and failed. As his fingers brushed the unseen glow stick, he grabbed it tight and forced himself upright. He rose to quickly, bent over again, and vomited a second time before finally catching his breath. He found a dry patch on his chest near the upper cloth of his shirt and wiped his mouth. A little lower, he wiped the glowstick clean. Then he took a moment to take a breath. make sure he'd caught it fully and took up again after flashlight Kid as quickly as he could manage. Kid! He slowed slightly, calling out.

Kid, please! I won't take it, but I need that light! Don't you see, kid? This is how we find our way out of here! Then he picked up his pace again. He couldn't see the kid ahead of him anymore, but he'd been gaining. He'd been closing the distance. The flashlight ahead was faint and dying steadily, but it came from the circle of another intersection of pipes, a branch that had opened on the left

of the path about 20 yards away. As he drew closer and closer to the artery where the gleam of the flashlight grew steadily dimmer, he began slowing to prepare for the abrupt redirection into another off-shooting vein of the sewer pipe. The impending turn, now imminent, he pivoted his first foot, readying himself to follow his intended path, and as he did so, the boy began to slide, sliding off balance and unable to catch himself mid-fall. He went down. The boy landed, body still moving full speed hard on his shoulder, taking his entire body beneath the dark surface tension. He, unstopped by the blight of liquefied putrescence, without thinking, gasped reflexively, taking in a mouthful of thick, often.

water around him. He sat up quickly as the pungence of something entangled with flavors of organic but inhuman waste and the metallurgic foulness of iron pitted with rust moved down his throat. It slid thickly, rancid, like a mouth full of cold, rotten chowder. As he gagged, his mind swam with the screams of meteors as big as city buses ripping their way through the atmosphere of an alien world. He felt the soup change direction and returned itself to the pipe as he found himself sicking up again. Other images tread at the depths of his mind, slowly rising to the surface, fully conscious and awake, he dreamed nightmares, open-eyed, fist-sized cybernetic invertebrates, spidering their way through eruptions and clouds of

debris, each pressing its skullless cerebral mass one by one into blinding incomprehensible ruptures in reality. One by one passing through, escaping a collapsing dreamscape. One part organic and the other part mechanical. The robotic cephalopods crawled along the fractures of their reality as it choked to death all around them. They bent themselves into the cracks. They pulled themselves forward.

Each limb tangled across nearby surfaces, a dozen arms writhing in chaotic motion, while pulsating knots of translucent thought architecture floated on gummy membranes of skin stretched thin. Squid-shaped neuron jelly sprouted dozens of feelers of gleaming alloy, gunmetal blue and slick, clusters of obscene ball and socket joints, innumerable tendrils forcing through time and space as their home collapsed, going somewhere else. Going where? Somewhere safer. Somewhere. Here. Wide-eyed, the boy pushed himself upright and started moving again, following the direction he'd meant to take before the fall.

Overwhelmed, he quickened his pace into the tunnel's newest left-word branch. Moving now with the awareness that whatever these tiny Eldritch horrors were, their gelatinous labyrinthine folds of intelligence sparked with the light of impulse jumping, from synapse to synapse, creeping by way of robotic limbs beyond count and writhing like nightcrawlers. They moved unseen in the darkness of the sewer pipe's clotted depths. He kept moving quickly down the corridor, slowly only to gag and gag again each time he thought of the horrid, mouthful of chowder, putrid, black, interstellar bile and human excrement, replayed in his mind.

yet he refused to stop dry heaving while keeping pace as best as he could manage the other kids seemed to move through the tunnels like he knew them well how could he when every tunnel looked the same as the last what if the new paths appeared because he decided they will appear what if he thought what if i can see them in the corner of my eye only because i decided i would What if I could open one? The boy decided that if he could, he'd open a new corridor in the same moment as flashlight kid did, and turn, and there he would be, right in front of him. And when he resolved he would do just that if he could, were he given the ability to open new sewer pipes by will alone? He decided he would just open one right here and turn left, and there the kid would be, facing away, flashlight in hand, opening a new gash in sewerland reality as simply as opening a vein.

The boy turned. And there, the kid was in a brand new tunnel that hadn't been there before he decided it was meant to be. And as though the very thought became manifest, the kid was faced away from him. Stunned into quiet stillness, the boy didn't move. The timing of their breathing. was somehow in perfect sink in the sewage water soaked to dark. The kid gave no sign that the boy was even there, close enough to reach out and touch him. So the boy did just that. He reached out with both hands,

grabbed the flashlight kit by both shoulders, and spun him around. He threw the glow stick to the ground, and before it even began to sink, he yanked the flashlight away from the kid in one rapid and fluid motion. The boy shined the light into the kid's face and instinctively the kid raised his arm to shield his eyes from the glare, but not before the eyes of one passed over the other for one moment, like a shudder or a hiccup of recognition.

The boy lowered the flashlight a few inches. The kid lowered his arm. What was happening? How could there be a mirror down here of all places in the world? No. Not a mirror. How? Their eyes locked now, and the boy felt his eyes grow wide as he watched the kid's eyes grow wide in perfect unison.

The boy and the kid each took a step backward, each of their jaws slacked now in shock, hanging slowly open. Together they sang the same notes of a silent duet in the filthy dark tunnel. Then the sewer fell away around them. The sound of water, the sound of their breathing. all of it fell away. Even the steady dripping woven into the sewer's very walls seemed to fall away. The boy was looking at himself. The kid was looking back at himself.

They each took another step back, then slowly another. They continued slowly backing away without breaking gaze for what seemed like minutes, and the boy wanted to say something. He couldn't say something. something? What could he say to himself? Recognition hollowed him out. There was nothing to say.

He didn't know what was happening, and nothing inside him felt real. He couldn't be there, because he was here. He was right here. He couldn't be twenty feet away from himself, staring back at himself. It defied logic, divide reason. Something moved above them in the dark. moving somewhere behind the kid's head, sounding like iron nails tapping against the slick stone ceiling, a firm, quick, distinct tapping sound of metal on brick,

despite the thick mildew coating every inch of tunnel above. The boy's eyes flicked upward, and he traced the ceiling with the beam of the flashlight. But before he could see, one of the creatures from his mind, one of the creatures that couldn't possibly be real, dropped from the ceiling. landing square on the flashlight kid's dirty hair. The impact soft, wet, a lump of metal and flesh, glistening in the beam of light. The boy watched frozen as the thing unfolded.

Small mechanical tendrils dug into the kid's scalp and opened its mouth revealing a ring of razor sharp and shiny metal teeth, gleaming by the light of the flashlight. The kid's eyes shifted away from the boys. They lifted, slow. and terrified. The creature moved in an instant, moving from the crown of the kid's head in less than a second, milliseconds. It dropped from his hair and over his brow line and down his face so quickly. The kid couldn't have closed his mouth if he wanted to. It moved faster than recognition,

faster than reflexes, reaching his mouth and forcing itself inside. The kid convulsed in place, not falling as his throat bulged and the bulge moved down his neck and the creature drove itself deeper. Within every foot of darkness behind the kid a chorus of clicking metal tendrils rose. The boy cast the flashlight along the distant walls along the ceiling. They rippled in the thick dark water, churning it into a slow, moving rapid of current behind him, and a dozen, then more, crawled up for a little. the sewage, dropped from the ceiling onto the kid's head, closed every inch of space between him and them, every inch. Their mouths opened as they skittered across his body. His mouth

still hung agape as one after another they crawled inside, seeking entry through other openings big enough to accommodate their small fist-sized forms and finding none, they tore open their own. The boy stumbled backward, choking on the air. He could hear the wet, tearing noises of the metal teeth as they ground through skin and through bone. The kid had been dead before he could have known he was supposed to forfeit his dying breath in exchange for a scream. And within seconds, the body began to say beneath the feeding mass, torn apart, swallowed. The squid-like creatures worked with the calm efficiency of machines, eating until the shape of the kid began to collapse. And then the voice came.

Hey, kid! It called out from somewhere far away behind him. Hey, kid, don't run off again. I won't hurt you? If the boy couldn't recognize he'd called those very words earlier to a silhouette clutching a flashlight in the dark 100 yards away, He'd surely recognized the sound of his own voice, the sound of his own desperation. The boy turned. The flash lay wavered in his grip as he pointed down the tunnel. A figure stood there in the distance, shin deep in the polluted, mucky black of the slowly advancing sewer water current.

It wore the shorts he wore, the same shirt, once white, but not as stained as his own was. Not yet. I need your help, please. The figure called out. The clink of metal came quietly behind him, then another, then dozens. He turned back, and all the remained of the kid were his shoulders and head, now lolling forward and back,

rising up a foot from the water where he'd stood only moments earlier. His legs were gone. He watched as a kid's skull dented, pulled inward by something within and then collapsed entirely. He gasped as the collarbone cracked as one shoulder was yanked downward by an unseen hand, yanking in what was left of the kid's musculature and pulling half of his torso down into the filth in the process. And then the kid was out of sight, just completely gone. It could have happened within the span of two minutes, but the boy was sure, even without a watch,

that it certainly hadn't been three. He ran the flashlight along the curvature of the walls of the ceiling. They were still 20 feet from him, the distance that he and the kid had each backed away from the other, but the sound of clicking rose through the quiet, growing louder as each many-jointed chromatic tentacle inched to the eyeless membranes of gelatinous gray matter forward along the ceiling and the walls. One by one, their jaws open and closed.

quietly flashing rows of gleaming platinum teeth. The tunnel filled with the sound of their clicks as quietly. From everywhere in the dark, they began to hiss. One, then another, until the sound seemed to stretch through every inch of sewer pipe. The boy stepped back, holding the flashlight out before him, the beam trembling across the water, and catching the rolling boil of the tiny rippling waves as they slowly advanced. He wanted to run.

He wanted to escape. He wanted an opening. As he thought it, the air shifted, and the walls tore to his left and to his right. Just outside his periphery, all he needed to do was look at it. Then turned toward it. To run. He darted down the tear in reality that opened before him, a massive yawning sewer pipe stretching endlessly to his right.

And he was already out of sight when he heard himself crying out the words. No! Wait! From somewhere else in the distant, dark place that lay beyond the light. And next, a struggling content creator attempts in extreme sensory deprivation challenge to chase viral fame, only to experience increasingly vivid and disturbing hallucinations that blur the line between reality and illusion. From writer Jimmy Ferrer and narrated by Rissa Montanez, creepy presents another viral internet trend people will do a number of stupid things for fame

fortune or hell even digital attention think likes and shares myself i'd repeatedly tried to grow my social media pages over time with little success regardless of the viral internet trend i tried to copy on my page it would always receive a fraction of the attention that even the smallest influencers would get. I was about to give up when I started seeing a trend that interested me at an intellectual level. You might have even heard of it. The challenge was, essentially, to kill your senses and put your mind in a state of panic, so much so that it could cause hallucinations. I'd watch so many influencers try to last, but they'd go less than five minutes. And I think up to that point, The longest I'd ever seen was 15 minutes, with the guy acting like he was being murdered,

giving a dire warning to his viewers to not try the challenge. The challenge was as follows. The victim would tape half a ping pong ball over each eye, shine a red light over their face, and then put on a pair of headphones playing white noise. The thought behind this is that by blocking out all your same, for an extended period, you would cause your brain to panic in a sense. This panic is said to cause the brain to fill in the unoccupied space with noises,

with shapes, and general hallucinations of varying severity. As I looked deeper into this phenomenon, I discovered the name. The Gansfield effect. The effect is explained as your brain amplifying the lack of senses. The brain is looking for missing visuals to the best of its abilities, and then it just, well, makes things up to fill the space. What I would be doing is what is called the multimodal Gansfield effect, blocking my vision and hearing in a similar way.

It is thought that the longer the time of deprivation, the more fantastical the hallucinations. Some have even reported hearing voices and seeing altered realities. Seeing as people acted like they were horrified in all the videos I was watching, I decided to blow everyone out of the water. I was going to block myself out while live streaming for an entire hour. That had to be enough to get some attention. I could never have anticipated the horrors that I would experience.

Some fame isn't worth the trauma. Per my social media page info, I saw that any attention I did get was on Thursday evenings. A whole three to ten visitors. So I decided that would be the perfect time to start. My rules were simple. I would do the challenge, live. My friend Stephanie would come back and get me an hour after I started. I would have her come over prior to the challenge and help me get ready.

And to make sure I couldn't quit, I'd have her take me to a chair. How long can you go without looking at your phone? Really, think about it. Does your brain start to itch after too long? Do you pat your pocket and take your phone out for no reason and then put it away? Now, imagine if every one of your senses was screaming for some type of stimulation? That doesn't even begin to describe the hell that I visited.

When I started, I wished I were able to blind all of my senses, as being taped to a chair to the level that I couldn't possibly escape was severely uncomfortable. With my eyes covered and the loud static playing, I anticipated something weird happening and scaring me a little like the stories online. But fairly soon after I began, all I could feel was claustrophobia. I couldn't see. I couldn't hear. I could not move. The tight duct tape squeezing my body against the hard, cold, wooden chair felt like it was tightening around me like a snake. My breaths became heavy and labored. I felt sweat starting to beat on my skin. My senses were screaming for freedom. All I could see was the uniform red light over my eyes.

the static of an opera of a million screams. I felt like I was going to die when I felt one of the headphones pull off my ear. And Stephanie, asking me if I wanted to stop, it turns out in the entire 30 seconds I had been bound and blinded. I had a panic attack. I told her just enough to regroup and use the restroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and looked at how heavy, sweat had beat it on my face. I normally have some color, but I was all shades of white.

Something felt so wrong about this. It was just a stupid internet challenge. Nothing happened to anyone I watched. They just got scared or screamed. So why was I this petrified? I wiped the sweat off myself and change clothes. I dressed down to a t-shirt and yoga pants this time to keep cool. I forgot all about the live stream for a second. I actually had 20 live viewers. I wish, however, that I had completely forgotten about it and stopped then, but I read the comments. Why the hell did I read all the comments? Those sexist, hurtful, horseshit, comments, written by a bunch of brain-dead jack-offs who needed more than anyone else to step outside, bend down, and touch some grass.

I knew a girl wouldn't last in this challenge. Thirty seconds, L.O.L. You're not built for horror challenges. Get back in the kitchen and go make me a sandwich. Give it up and get an only, fans. You want a boyfriend to do the challenge? You want a boyfriend to do the for you, baby. I'm older and wiser now. Skin's a little tougher. Things like that roll off my shoulders like water off a duck's back. But back then, something primal awakened in me.

I needed to squash all the doubters and get this done. I strapped back in and took a deep breath. This time, for my sake insanity, Steph uses belts instead of the sticky tape. She covers my eyes again and I stared up into the white plastic. The headphones slid over my ears again and the static took over. I breathed deeply and again, red light shone through the white plastic. My world was now only red light and static.

Stephanie picked up one headphone and whispered, asking me if I was sure that I wanted her to leave and come back in an hour. I hesitated for a few seconds and nodded once, and then she dropped me back into my world of static. Three thousand six hundred seconds. That's how long I had to last. To try to keep my mind preoccupied, I started counting in my head. one, two, soon enough, 61, 62, 300. I had gotten to five minutes, the period of time most people I watch start to quit. I didn't really understand it at first, but as the seconds ticked past, I became gravely aware of what others may have experienced. This entire time, I had alternated between doing a few seconds with my eyes open and then

closed. The red light ever present, the static and a pressing noise in my ears. Once, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but black. At the same time, I no longer heard the static. It was as if I went blind and deaf at the same time. I tried to toss and turn, but something felt off. I did not feel restrained, but on the same token, I could not move. I couldn't feel myself breathing anymore. I couldn't even try to use my imagination to distract me, imagining sheep jumping offense. I couldn't think of anything. Just a black, soundless hellscape. I kept counting. Eventually, I had the weird experience of hearing myself counting as if I was counting across from myself. I was so sure that I was actually hearing the numbers that I felt as though it had to be

Stephanie counting to me. But it didn't sound like her. And how would she know what number I was on? Or that I was counting in the first place. Eventually, it was as though I heard six copies of myself all counting in unison before another long, uncomfortable silence. This silence was calming. almost like a soft reset where my mind was starting to understand it wasn't truly in danger. I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath in. I breathe out and opened my eyes as Stephanie peeled the tape off my eyes and took off the headphones. Great job, girl, you got an hour, she told me. I was doused in sweat again.

I have so much to tell you. I don't even know where to start. I laughed, relieved. She was peeling off the tape, and as soon as I had one hand free, I began ripping at the belts myself. I thanked everyone on my stream and told him I'd come back with a video on my experiences of the challenge in a few days. I was up to 60,000 viewers. I finally did it. I made it.

I shut my laptop and hug Stephanie tightly before she left. I walked into the shower and shut the glass door behind me. I was ready to wash this thick layer of sweat and anxiety away. I lathered my hair and reflected on what I had just been through. I had never felt so relieved. The darkness, the distortion of reality I felt subject. to was gone. But there was something faint in the back of my mind. Quiet at first, but once I really focused, eyes closed, letting the water run over me. I could hear it. 1001, 1002. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I opened my eyes, only to be fully clothed, standing on a thin section of tile no wider than one of my feet. A tile tightrope over a pitch black ocean of water to my left and right rising against the walls below. I immediately threw my arms out to the side and stood one foot in front of the other to gain purchase and balance myself. My heart was slamming against my rip cage. I had to be hundreds of feet high and this thin section had to be no more than eight inches wide. The only way I could tell the blackness was water was the rippling and waves as it crashed against the thin wall. It was oppressively dark here. Everything a faint dark blue, like moon lay through a dense tree canopy. Even worse, the thin tile platform stretched on out of my line

of sight and into forever. started moving as calmly and slowly as possible, steadily putting one foot in front of the other. 1,100, 1,100. Soon the water was above the walls and up to my ankle. The water was ice cold and the tile, now wet, was slick under my feet. I failed to keep balance and fell forward, grabbing the tile as tightly as I could. The water pushed me, but I gripped so hard my fingers popped. I forced myself back up to my feet, and the water was up to my waist now. The flow of the water back and forth now made it impossible for me to keep my feet flat on the tile. I bent my toes over the edge, grabbing the sides with my

feet, clawing desperately to stay upright. One thousand two hundred, the frigid water was up to my neck. The cold stung my skin like thousands of shards of glass rubbing across my entire body. And then a wave carried me off the platform and flung me into the open waters. I flailed about and tried to tread water, but I could feel an undercurrent pulling me straight down. I held my breath and tried to find where. which way was up. But everything was so dark I couldn't orient myself. I couldn't so much as see my

hand in front of my face. It didn't matter, though, as I had nowhere near the strength to fight the vacuum under my feet. I was flying downwards at a horrifying speed. The water was flowing against me with more force than a water cannon. I gasped for air, but felt a rush of cold water flow into my lungs. It burned like acid, and coughing only moved the water in and out. I felt like I was being strangled. Every breath I tried and failed to take made my lungs burn deeper and hotter despite the cold. I did the last thing I could do. Keep counting. 1003. I was back in my shower, vomiting violently. the water just as cold as when I first breathed it. I was still choking but did everything I could to express the water from my lungs and stomach.

It felt like minutes before I got my first breath of air. I continued to spit up water and lay on the bathroom floor, the warm water of my shower flowing over me. It was when I was finally recovering that I heard it. Laughter. It was familiar and uncomfortable, like those laughs that they plug in every few minutes in a sitcom, to try to establish whatever was just said was funny. I looked up to see a whole movie theater's worth of a black-and-white film-grained crowd,

pointing and laughing at me. I gasped through my coughs and choking. I immediately ripped a towel into the shower to cover myself, to which the crowd fell into an uproar of laughter, some even clapping. It was like I was the subject on a movie screen. I got into my clothes without drying myself off and felt so violated. These colorless humans watching my every move entertained by my horror, they would smile and laugh but there was nothing behind their eyes.

As empty and black as the ocean I almost drowned in. I stepped out of my bathroom and into my living room to find that the entire side of my house, which faced these people, was gone. It was like my house was turned into a stage play for their entertainment. Once I made this realization, some of them stood and began clapping, whirling their closed fists with woo-woo-woo. noises. The side of these monsters captivated me long enough to not see the real danger of the situation I was in. As I gathered enough courage to turn away from these things, I realized I could

not see my yard through my window. My bushes that came up halfway through my window pane were gone. I ran to the window to see that all I could see outside of my house were clouds. And what had to be a thousand feet below my house. Somehow, my house was miles in the air. I gasp, and the crowd laughed again. I had only counted to 2,000 in the time all of this had occurred, about 33 minutes. I was barely passing the halfway mark. One thousand six hundred seconds remained, about 27 minutes, and as time passed, more of the audience began to stand, no longer laughing, watching me now with a predatory stare. The unease between me stares and the laughing kept me scrambled.

Nothing pleased these monsters more than my panic. I try to get water from the sink or open my fridge to get something to eat. No food, no water. Not even in the toilet or shower that stopped by itself as soon as I see. stepped out to get dressed. This time felt like so much more than an hour. It felt like weeks, months passing like this. But the entire time I was counting, every second feeling longer than the last. I felt as though I wouldn't make my goal. By 2,500 they were all standing and beginning to walk towards me. I was in equal terror and awe as I came to realize their immensity. Each of

of them giants, taller than buildings. They thundered on closer, reaching my space, and some began to reach in through the border between the theater and my home. One almost had me, until I made the only choice I could. I opened my front door, looking down upon the endless sky below, and jumped. My senses were screaming. The air rushing past me, sounding just like the static I heard at the start of all this. I heard one last cheer from my audience on the way down, and then I hit the clouds and got to see what was below, which was more of nothing.

All I could see was the clouds now above me and the orange setting sun in the distance. 2,700. I fell like this for an eternity. 3,551, 352. The nothingness finally broke me, and I saw something in the distance below. When it came into focus,

it looked like a giant, circular, white tile platform, two large circles and an upturned crescent cut into its face, a smiley face. It grew so far. fast on the way down, expanding into the horizon. It would be almost impossible to avoid it. 3,589. Only 10 seconds left. 10. 9. 8. As I got closer, I realized the eyes and mouth weren't empty. They appeared to be a smooth, black, glass-like in appearance. Water? The same black, black water from before?

Seven. Six. But what was it that I had read about hitting water at terminal velocity? Five. Four. That's right. It's hard as cement. So how would I survive?

Three. I had to try breaking the surface tension of the water surface with my feet. It was the only way I could maybe. survive. The surface of the smiley face felt like it was racing to meet me. I aligned my body to hit it vertically, feet first, struggling against the air rushing over my body. Two, I did it. I was able to get myself over the smile. It was water. I was sure of it. One, I woke up in the hospital with two broken legs in a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors told me I'd likely never walk again when they kindly informed me that the bones in my legs were essentially obliterated from heel to

hip. They asked me non-stop questions about what had happened to me. But I couldn't risk being put in a psych ward, all because of saying, well, I was doing a viral online challenge and somehow transported myself to a literal hell where I almost drowned in an infant. in a definite black ocean and fell for an eternity before smashing my legs into dust to save myself from the free fall comparable to a space jump. And oh yeah, did I mention the giant studio audience? I could have never guessed what would come next. Stephanie filled me in on what happened later when we watched the recording of the stream together. She had no way to explain what she saw when she came back to grab me at the end of the hour. In the video, I could see my original attempt at bailing

and strapping back in. I could also see that I wasn't counting in my head. I was counting out loud. When I heard copies of my voice counting with me, that was in the video. When I reached the black ocean and began to get wet, that was in the video. You could watch along as my clothing became soaked

from my feet up to my hair. As I was gagging and coughing in a video, you could see a dark, and now that I could see it in the lit video, dark blue water shooting from my nose and mouth. The vomiting must have been leaders of water. That happened in the video too. Way more water than I could ever hide in my mouth,

so much so that I was accused of using CGI or camera trick by the watchers. I could relive each horror in each moment of my experience by watching the file. My face twisted in horror and disgust as my count out loud matched when I remembered first seeing the audience. And worst of all, you could see my legs get smashed into useless piles of meat when the time runs out.

I actually did some math. If my count was right, I was falling for 900 seconds. If I fell for this whole period of time, I estimated that I would have fallen almost 30 miles before smashing against the surface. What I don't remember was the laughing. I was laughing hysterically from the second you see my legs smash. I kept laughing when Stephanie freaked out when she got back. The laugh only intensified as she ripped off the eye covers and headphones.

She screamed and yelled, asking me what the hell happened. and over and over, only for me to laugh more forcefully, totally unhinged. Stephanie said that it only came to an end when I suddenly went limp in the back of the ambulance. But hey, I made it. You know, the big time. I have interviews lined up all the time to discuss my experience. I'm up to five million followers now. and an unforeseen consequence. I do indeed have the fame that I so desperately desired.

Most commonly, though, through scientific journals, everyone tries their best to explain what happened to me. People invoke God, superpowers, or break in the universe, multiverse theories, whatever. But no one will ever be able to explain what happened to me, just like I will never be able to able to explain the hysterical laughter I hear whenever I close my eyes, and it's just a little too quiet. And finally, a woman writes to her absence sister about a series of increasingly disturbing night-type occurrences centering around a watchful owl and a mysterious presence invading her home. From writer Wynonna Morris and narrated by Michelle Kane, Creepy Presents, an account of my disturbance.

My dearest Ophelia, I pray this letter finds you in better health than it leaves me. I had delayed writing this for as long as I could bear it, for I do not want to cause you any more strain upon your heart. The house has grown cavernous with your absence. It began the night you departed. Each corridor yawns like an open throat as I pass it, and the temptation to walk into the shadow and be done with what ills me is this tempting. Ophelia, how glad I am that you are not here to witness my falling. I do fear that I have become ill, not with the same melancholia that has afflicted you so deeply.

No, I have been having terrors in the night. I have woken in places other than my bedchamber, with no memory of how I've gotten there. It is so that I've become afraid to even try to sleep. And now even my days are besotted with exhaustion. It is the owl, Ophelia. It will not leave me be. The first night after your departure,

an owl settled upon the iron rail outside my chamber window. White like a ghost, with eyes like the abyss, was looking in on me. My heart raced when I frowned. first looked up and saw its face there. But I laughed at myself when I realized it was only an owl. I am no longer laughing, my love. Once my initial startle passed, I welcomed the bird. I know you loved your nocturnal animals, being greatly crepuscular yourself. I remember once you told me that an owl

represents knowledge. To be exact, you said, an owl is a school. Scholar of Darkness, a patient archivist of secrets. I fear this owl is no scholar. If anything, it is a sentry. But is it watching me? Or is it watching over something else as it watches over me? Ophelia, you know I am not a fanciful creature. Doubt has always been my shield against hysteria. But there are footprints now, everywhere in the frost below the house. They are neither the prince of bird nor beast. Neither are they the footprints of man nor maiden. Elongated and claw-tipped. They sink deep into the snow, down even into the soil beneath. These prints have no beginning, and they have no ending. They appear as if something

came down from the sky and rose again once finished with its torment. I doubt not that whatever this creature is stalking my land is also the source of my ill. Just three nights ago, I woke to the sensation of breath upon my face. At first, I thought it was you, Ophelia, sneaking into my chambers, as you have since they first set us apart. When I remembered you were abroad, I thought maybe I had left a chamber window open. I had never opened a chamber that night because it was too cold out for that. Also, because the owl perched on the iron, watching me. My breath would not catch. When I opened my eyes, I saw a creature perched up on my chest. I couldn't see past its eyes, Ophelia. I have never seen such large orbs before. They looked like the giant eggs of that African bird.

The bird the captain showed us. Only they were black instead of white. They were on a living creature, but there was no life in those eyes. Though they held no soul, they were full of stars, as if I were looking into the heavens. Stars so thick, I could have swum in them. This creature was drinking the very breath from my body as it crouched there on my chest. I think it finally meant to kill me that night. I think it would have, if not for the owl. The bird was thrashing its claws and wings against my chamber window until the panes blew inward and the bird came in with them, so much larger than it seemed once it was inside. Its wings filled the room and its talons opened wide as my head. It grasped the being on my person and carried it out and up into the

winter night. I had sparse breath left to scream. but I rose out of the bed enough to latch the window panes and found strength enough to shove the wardrobe in front of it. I forbade the steward for moving it out of that position, even though I've taken to sleeping in other rooms. It has made no difference, Sophia. That damn bird is still there, night after night, perched upon the sill beyond whatever glass the room holds.

Even on the nights I've taken to sleeping in the servants' quarters. where there are no windows to peer through. I can still feel its eyes watching me, through the very wall itself. The only good thing to have happened since your departure is that since the creature's abduction, I once again feel rested when I wake. Unfortunately, I am still not waking in the same place.

I fell asleep. I scarcely dared to commit all of this to paper and even now doubt claws at my reason. Just this morning I awoke lying in the garden in a state of undress which was very unbecoming. There were scratches all over my body, as if I had fought against something with claws. All around me were large white feathers,

such as the one I have enclosed with dismissive. Ophelia, please respond to me soon and tell me there was such such a large white feathers, a feather still enclosed with this letter when you receive it. If nothing is there, or if something other than a feather is there, I do not know what I shall do. There is no explanation for what is happening to me. It is not too grotesque for me to entertain for more than a moment. I am rather happy you are away now, Ophelia.

Perhaps I should demand that you stay away for your own safety. But I cannot do that. I miss you so, sister, that if, once you get home, I am not to be found, do not call out for me, do not look for me, and do not stay within these walls. See, I am not alone inside myself anymore. Sometimes as if the thoughts in my head are not my own. I catch myself staring at my reflection, as if I were a strange thing being studied by something apart from myself. If I gaze too long at my own eyes in the looking glass, I see a depth there that it should not be with galaxies swirling inside.

I have stars in my eyes now, Ophelia. Until we meet again, should an owl alight on. your soul, please do crack the pain so that it can come in if it must. I feel that is where I went wrong. Ever yours in trembling devotion, Lee. 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 Sherrillite 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.