Creepy - The People of the Sea

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Careful where you dig...***Written by Michael Whitehouse***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Produced by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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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. Creepy presents. The People of the Sea.

Written by Michael Whitehouse. A legend says that on the wind of the North Atlantic, there's carried a key to a strange land, a place of unequal beauty and unparalleled nightmare. For too long, I thought those stories is product of whimsical minds. Lazy lips espousing wishful dreams about what truly lies beyond the horizon. Now, I know that, like most legends,

a seed of truth has long been planted in the cultural memory of our ancestors. Some intrepid soul that once entered that forbidden land, perhaps more than once. It just so happens that I am the most recent guest, invited or kidnapped. choose whichever suits your interpretation. It was near the Isle of Lewis, off the northeast coast of Scotland, where I first encountered that land. Lewis is in the far corner of the United Kingdom, and, with its sprawling, grassy lowlands, paces the oncoming winds from the Atlantic.

Seas swell. Tides beat against the rocky shore. And the people who inhabit this part of the world are rugged, kind. and stoic. Unfortunately, my contact with people there lasted only a few days. After a scenic stay in the Moorsgale House, I travel by car and then boat across the water to Little Bernera. This remote island is uninhabited. Perhaps the reason that its secrets have been remained hidden for so long.

No permanent population has lived there since the 1800s, but evidence for its original inhabitants reaches far back. back into the midst of time. Forgotten people, with equally forgotten beliefs and, dare I say, sciences. What brought me to the island was my research. I was working on a thesis for my PhD at Strathclyde University, one which I had hoped would forge my name in the annals of British and Scottish archaeology. Suppose it's the American in me.

Most of the ancient language of Scotland were long forgotten. the cultures of those people who, thousands of years ago, had once roamed the mountains, glens, and islands of that mysterious country had always held a fascination for me. I wish I had never developed that fascination, for it has led me into the most frightening of places. I will not bore you with my academic work any further. Time is short. Suffice to say, I had developed a theory that, much like several islands that had some of the same, into the Mediterranean, ancient story suggested that at one time a large piece of land it collapsed into the dark abyssal sea off the coast of Scotland, taking with it an entire

people and its culture. This theory was roundly discredited and mocked by my colleagues. Nonetheless, there were tantalizing fragments of knowledge suggesting this reality. Allusions in ancient texts, depictions of a calamity carved in rock. and even an old folk tale about Darwin and Zamure A rough translation of which is The People of the Sea

With arduous research I discovered that the Isle of Lewis is most likely the closest place to where this mysterious land had fallen. Furthermore, the Lilburnero was intimately connected with the legend of the sea people and what befell them. This uninhabited island sat in the mouth of a huge sea lock. My research suggested that when the sea people and their land fell into the dark swalls with the North Atlantic,

that one of its survivors washed up on the shores of Little Bernera eons ago. I am proficient in sailing and hired a small fishing boat for three days. All that my research budget would allow me. As I approached a little Bernara, breathing in the sea air, I marveled at its beauty. An arching bay filled with sand and pebbles welcomed me. as I tied my boat to an old weathered mooring. The wind carried itself across the landscape, covering the surroundings and a sharp salted scent.

On a hill nearby was the only standing building, an old slated fish curing where the local fishermen once processed their catch. But it was not this structure which was the focus of my research, as to the many headstones that dotted the hills as they rose and dipped around me. You see, little Bernera has another side. secret. The entire island is a graveyard. The crofting town of Carloa used the island as a burial ground until its residents finally created their own cemetery nearby. They crossed the water and bury their dead in the soil, marking the site with a headstone. Looking around at the wind-swept

low-lying hills and rocks that looked out to the infinite depths of the sea. I understood why such a place could be seen as an entryway to the afterlife. I walked up a steeper incline, compass and map in hand, following my notes to a place I dreamed of. The keystone. This headstone was different from the others as it hit something precious beneath it. I had followed the trail of breadcrumbs and spoke to someone who knew of its location.

Perhaps the only person still alive who understood its importance. His name was Gilhaban. His family had long protected a secret. It was rumored that they were descended from a local elder who was among the people who found the survivor the calamity on their shores. Ever since, the family had kept hidden evidence of that survivor, now interred beneath a fake gravestone. Gilhabin, by this time an alcoholic, had no love for his family's duty. Anne was quite happy to spill the beans on the grave's location for a few hundred pounds.

I obliged in pain, and the information he gave me led to that very spot on the wind-swept soil and rock of Little Bernara. As I reached the crest of a hill, I saw that it dipped down on the other side by several feet. At the bottom of that depression, there's a hole in the ground, cast and shadow away from the sun which was now beginning to dip in the sky, my heart sank at what I saw. I leapt down the hill to take a closer look. The hill was there all right, just big enough for someone to slip inside. But I feared that what was underground had been disturbed. Taking a torch, I shone it into the darkness and could see that the headstone now lay broken on the floor about 15 feet beneath the opening.

Had a competitor gotten there before me? me here, the grave simply caved in, in the case, I'd intended to discover what relics the grave hid, and I was enthralled by what appeared to be an underground tomb beneath the grassy depression. I'd come prepared for subterranean sojourn. As you hold stores that suggested, I might find such a place. My supplies would allow me to stay on the island for several days, packed away in my trusty backpack which had accompanied me on many an adventure, alongside my sample containers and

good book to read by a fire at night, with some rope tied to another headstone, I lowered myself into the darkness. As I descended from the world above, the air changed immediately. No longer was there a sharp fresh smell from the sea rolling over the grass and rock. This was replaced by a musty scent like rotten compost. Ancient roots weaved in and out of the soil around me as I descended. the tree which had once given birth to them long since removed from the hillside, when I reached the bottom of the hole, I could see the grave broken on the ground, though the writing was barely legible. The Habin family had placed the gravestone over the entry point over 200 years previous to

market, though my research suggested that the cave beneath and what it contained was much, much older. I speculated that the gravestone had been erected because the family commitment to duty had been slowly waning. Perhaps it was left there to guide future generations of the heaven family. Should they wish to return to their positions as caretakers of such secrets, Gare was overpowering at first, and so I breathed through my mouth as much as possible to protect me from the rotting stench. Turning the light of my torch to the wall of the cavern, I saw that the roots above had given way to something else.

The walls were lined with a strange material, will look like leaves of intricate metal, perhaps a copper alloy of some kind, though darker. Each leaf was about ten centimeters across, and they were layered on top of each other like the surface of a hedge row in spring. The metal itself had been inscribed with strange symbols which I did not recognize.

It must have taken years to have created the unusual design. Thousands of metallic leaves, cold and still in the darkness of time, thoughts of sunlight were far from my mind. Only the chase mattered. I had to find evidence from my theories about the people of the sea. To prove the doubters wrong, how I wish now I had not pushed forward. I had a good doorway, the frame made from rock. Beyond that, there's a staircase that descended deeper into the earth. This both thrilled and frightened me,

for I could feel an unexplained draught of warm air flittering through it. And in the depths somewhere, I heard something moving. The closest I can compare it to from memory is the sound of an old mill, grinding weak. As I moved down the stone staircase, the walls soon changed from the leaves of intricate metal to a smooth, dark green surface, which glistened in the dim light of my torch. It was cool to the touch, but the air was growing ever more stifling with each step. The temperature was not the only thing apparent. For the draft of it, the movement of the air current was now stronger than before.

This was no mere flow of air from one room to another. Something was producing it, pushing it up through the staircase towards me. The noise increased as I reached the bottom of the stairs. My nerves began to get the better of me as I looked towards another doorway. God, there was a light coming from the next room. A yellow light like that given by a candle, but not flickering. I thought it must be someone else who had happened upon the underground structure before I had. Moving forward, I cautiously asked,

Who's there? But there was no reply. Walking through the doorway, I trembled slightly as the light suddenly vanished before I could see its source, and in its absence. And so I moved the beam of my torch around to see where I now was, what I had been searching for. The fruit of my work! Though I could not explain the vanishing light, I had quickly extinguished that question with awe at what I saw. In the middle of the room there was a stone altar. Ancient pseudo-Celtic symbols intertwined beautifully across the grey stone,

resembling that of a double helix. Upon the altar lay a stone sarcophagus. An ancient coffin beautifully carved out of rock, with striking geometric patterns running along its side. Running my hands along its intricately carved exterior, the rectangular sarcophagus felt warm to the touch. The flat lid had inscriptions in a language I did not recognize, but the carvings at the head of the coffin depicted a huge wave crashing over a complex and advanced city.

The citizens were fleeing through the streets between tall buildings. There was more evidence to suggest that the lost people from the sea were real. And if my research was correct, that the sarcophagus held the remains of a body washed up on the shore of Little Bernara more than 3,000 years ago. I knew that my discovery would now have to be carefully vetted by a team of archaeologists. So I took some photos on my phone of the stone sarcophagus and readied myself to study further inscriptions on part of the surrounding dark green walls. As I stood there marveling at their artistry and pondering their meaning,

I heard something that chilled me to the bone. The sound of stone on stone. I shuddered as I turned and what I saw utterly terrified me. The lid of the sarcophagus had moved. There was now a definitive gap exposing the interior of what was contained therein. Call of madness, clut stupidity. Though I was terrified, I had to see what was inside. persuading myself that some unknown mechanism or pressure changed shifted the stone lid.

Back to the sarcophagus and peered into the darkness. I expected to see the skeletal remains of an ancient Celt, but what I saw was utterly inhuman and remarkably preserved. Its bleached white skin, if you can call it that, was pulled taut over its sharpened bones. It appeared to me that the eyes had long since rotted. away, but the depth of the ocular cavity suggested that it evolved to see in low light conditions. The head was elongated slightly, and from its neck, there was something protruding.

A type of limb was my best guess, one which was utterly unrecognizable to modern science. The rest of the body appeared humanoid in shape. As I peered inside, I puzzled as to how the remains could have still been largely intact. There was no apparatus that I could see, and the sarcophagus was clearly not sealed. On closer inspection, what I had initially thought were empty eye sockets. I soon realized were the product of some sort of troglodytic process, where a species, perhaps in this case a hominid one, had evolved to lose its eyes as there were a useless resource in the dark. I knew that this was quite common in cave-twelling spiders and insects,

but it had, to my knowledge, never been seen in larger animals. After all, there was very little to sustain larger animals underground. What would they eat? Speculated that the strange protrusion from the neck, which looked almost like a long, thick finger and knuckle about two feet long, with some sort of sensory organ. This had most probably evolved to replace the loss of sight with a new sense. The face of the thing was repulsive.

The nose had receded like a skull leaving two vacant holes through which to breathe, and the mouth had no teeth at all. In fact, the smoothness and roundness of the mouth made speech, at least through normal means, seemed quite impossible, as I wondered how such monstrous things would have communicated with each other. I noticed that in one of the creature's hands lay a strange object. It was a metallic cube, though it appeared to be a polished metal, no reflection could be seen on its surface,

as though the light from the surrounding world had no real impact upon it. And yet, I could see it clearly in the dark. Reaching inside, I stretched my arm out and touched the cube with my finger. It was almost in my grasp. As I stretched further, my hand brushed against the top white skin of the body in the stone coffin. In horror, it was warm to the touch. And a wet liquid which I can only describe as sweat. Smeared along the back of my hand.

A gasping noise sounded. Lungs which had not breathed air for an age weased in and out of a toothless, caping mouth. A smell of rotten seaweed came with it, and I cried out as the thing moved, wrapping its long fingers around my throat. I pulled back with all my way, but the grip was not relinquished. It tightened, and before I knew what was happening, the pallid body pulled me through the small opening into the sarcophagus inside. Our bodies lay together as I tried in vain to scramble out of the stone coffin, but the figure with me lurched its arms upward and pulled the lid back down.

down tightly, tapped inside the coffin with the naked, sweating creature. My face was buried in the emaciated cavity of the thing as it wrapped its arms around me and helped me close. The appendage in its neck, lit by the torch in my hand, moved around like the twitching of a spider's leg, bending at the knuckle. A cracking sound accompanied the movement. From the end of the limb, a sharp protrusion came forward. The crooked appendage struck the sweating flesh of the thing's body pushed up against my mouth,

tasting and smelling of rotten fish and decay. Looking up, I watched as the appendage moved towards me. It lungished at my head, and I bedded away with a torch in my hand. Then again, and again, you changed tact, and a sharp protrusion then plunged deep into the back of my hand. Cutting straight through and out the other side of my palm. I cried out, yet I knew no one would hear me. I was on an island in a remote part of the country,

deep underground where no human had any right to be. A slurping noise came, and I finally realized why the thing had no teeth. The appendage in its neck was used to putrify the innards of other things so that could suck the juices drawn. eye. I felt something hot inside my hand, as the insides were turned into necrotic fluid, the appendage pulled out and then searched for somewhere more succulent. It was in that moment, that brief pause between being eaten alive, that I reached down with my other hand and grabbed the metallic cube.

It was now ice cold to the touch and heavy. Lashing out, I thrust the cube into the empty. eye cavities of the thing in the sarcophagus and then nothing strange abyss awaited me the darkness consumed my thoughts momentarily and i was aware of hideous entities outside of imagination creatures and intelligence is far beyond the rim of understanding then a flash of light i was outside and the creature was gone but such a place i had never dreamed of seeing. A strange volcanic landscape revealed itself. Black rocks dotted the world around me, many of them reaching up towards the sky, uneven and worn.

A hand was badly injured, and I could no longer move my fingers. The metallic cube was nowhere to be seen. I was utterly, alone. Dazed, I walked the solid terrain and found nothing familiar to my eyes. If I had not seen the position of the sun, I would have thought I'd been stranded on some unknown distant world. Somehow, that metallic cube had sent me to that place. And yet the cube itself did not come along for the ride.

At least that horrid thing in the sarcophagus had stayed in its burial chamber and not come with me. Trying to gauge my location, I walked up a steep incline to see the sea. the lay of the land. It was then that the true horror of my situation made itself known. Looking down, I could see several vast openings burrowing into the ground, and deep inside what looked to be deep lakes of seawater. In the mouths of those openings, pale dots moved and writhed. I knew them now to be the creatures who had once been described by the ancients. as the people of the sea.

They seemed to be looking out of their subterranean submerged world, looking to the sky and waiting for the sun to set, when they could once again set foot on land. I laughed to myself. The translation was nearly right. It wasn't of the sea. It was the people in the sea. The same creatures who have been considered,

consumed by some cataclysmic event and buried in the Atlantic. One of the survivors had made it to Little Burnera, where no doubt a cult grew up around it. To early people on the Isle of Lewis, the creature must have been a god or a devil. The tomb that I had entered had obviously been constructed and not only preserve the creature, but somehow sustained it. It has been three days since I arrived here. I now know the truth. The creatures are not gone.

They are not temporal. Their land may have been once swept into the Atlantic thousands of years ago, but that eventual end was not their end. I've hypothesized that the metallic cube that sent me here allows the people of the sea to return home whenever they choose. Was the horrid thing in the sarcophagus the last of them in our time? Are there more hidden beings in caves and in the darker places of the world? I do not know, but I worry deeply for the future of humanity,

for if that thing was a treacherous emissary from the depths of time, it now knows humanity is waiting. I've watched from afar these last few days, hidden behind rocky protrusions, watching as the white figures move in and out of the huge openings into the ground and water. It seems they are doing something. There's a purpose of sorts. I doubt I shall ever know the true depths of that purpose, unless they find me here and show it to me.

But it appears that they are coalescing in number, like an army staging an invasion. I am nearly out of food and water. I do not think I can last much longer. I've written these notes for those in my time, and I will seal them inside one of my titanium sample containers. I've also included samples from the ground, this black, lifeless volcanic island,

which seems to stretch for untold miles. Out there somewhere is the coast of Scotland, as it was thousands of years ago. If only I could see those. green shores once more. At night I hear the creatures chattering among themselves, because they're much more active in the dark. Their voices are like the crumbling of rocks and the twitching of an insect's legs. Last night, one nearly phoned me, but I managed to slip away undetected. My strength will leave me soon. I have left details in this container for my loved ones.

please contact them and tell them what befell me. I did not just vanish. Perhaps those who do vanish from the remote places in the world are never gone, but instead find themselves stranded on this piece of hell floating in the sea. How I would hope for such an outcome. So that I may have human company. I wonder if these words will ever be found. If you are reading this, alert the military.

in Scotland, pass these samples to them, and tell them that on the island of Little Bernara, one of these creatures still lives, hidden underground in a sarcophagus with the means to return home at any time. But it did not. What was it waiting for? For more information, including pictures and videos of the stories told on this podcast, or to suggest stories for future episodes, please visit us. At Creepypod on Twitter, Instagram.

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