Creepy - The Strangest Stranger & Home Visit
Episode Date: June 29, 2023The Strangest Stranger***Written by: Joshua Bryant and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Home Visit***Written By: Juan Cardenas and Narrated By: Alicia Atkins***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/cre...epypod***Title music by Alex Aldea 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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Welcome to the bloody disgusting network.
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 biopictions.
Silence and explicit language.
Listener discretion is advised.
He presents the strangest stranger,
written by Joshua Bryant and narrated by Owen McCune.
I went into the city, hoping that I would find out what Mama meant when she said folks there was different.
See, she went and died a long time before I could even consider asking just what she meant by that.
So, it comes to my 18th birthday, or least why I was right close to it, and I walked down
the county road to where it meets the highway.
From there, I turned east because I know all cities are always in the east.
I went that way, barefoot on account of it being summer and all.
The weeds were awful high, and the skeeters were big enough to carry off the chickens.
But I went on anyway.
Sometimes a car would rinky dink its way past me, but never did one stop.
I wasn't sticking my thumb out, though.
I like walking, and cars are always too small for me.
When I got hungry, it was pretty easy to just hop off the blacktop and fish an old toad out of the culverts
or catch myself a couple of crickets.
Dang sure wasn't enough to button me up, but kept me going just the same.
I reckon most folks would have thought it was hot.
I didn't.
I grew up playing outside on days like that.
Anyhow, my first real taste of the city was the stink.
Gee-ho, it's, as Mama used to say.
It stank like you wouldn't believe.
Like a big pot of motor oil was being cooked over a shit fire.
I had to jam my fingers up my nose, and I could still smell it.
I don't know just how those city folks deal.
with it. About that time, I met my first person. They were walking up the other side of the road.
It was pretty close to sunset, so I didn't get too good look at them, but they were all scruffy and kind of
moved with this limp. Awful skinny, too. Well, they must have been mighty skittish because when they
saw me, they just turned off the road and began running into this field. Never saw them again.
As it would happen, it was the full moon that night, so I had to go into the stand of trees to worship Daddy.
I said the chant, did the dance, carved his symbol deep into my arm, and then fell asleep.
He blessed me with the most wonderful dreams.
The colors washed over everything and sparkled like the scales on the backs of the creek trout
when the sunlight comes through the cottonwood leaves.
The star cities waved and sang above the canals like heat ripples over ten.
And Daddy spoke to me.
I woke up with blood coming out of my holes and it was a good morning.
I made it back out to the highway and kept on towards the city.
I kept on walking for about an hour, maybe two, when this big truck roared past me.
But it screeched to a stop a little ways ahead of me,
and this skinny man leaned out of the window.
His mouth was about as wide as he could get it,
and his eyes was bulging out his head like someone had squeezed him real tight.
He held this rectangle in front of his face for a few seconds
before dipping back inside the pickup and speeding away.
Might as strange, but I did keep what Mama said in mind.
It wasn't long till I started to see in a smog in the sky.
It was dark.
and covered the fine blue like a screen.
Houses started popping up along the road,
houses with big old signs and lots of cars and trucks parked outside.
I saw the city folks walking in and out of these places,
families and folks by themselves,
little kids and women and men and old people,
all moving around each other like lots of ants.
Dressed all different, too.
Different colors, dresses, pants, shirts,
shirts with pictures on them, so many different things all over the place.
Some of those folks stopped and stared at me.
Others didn't even notice.
Some kids pointed.
One little girl with pigtails on her head hit her face in her mama's dress.
I felt their fear on my skin like splotches of fat popping off a skillet.
It was something else.
Night came and the moon was fat and yellow.
Fireflies were blinking in and out of the trees and brush,
and more houses were clustering real close together.
Orange lights shined from inside,
coming through windows and spilling out on green grass.
Dogs barked and cats ran back and forth across the road.
I knew just from the field stain in the air
that these were the houses city folks slept in.
These were their homes.
Every home had a different field stain.
Some were mad, some sad, others all happy and laughing.
But it still didn't compare to the ten million voices Daddy spoke to me with.
So it didn't bother me all that much.
It was just kind of like chicken chatters, loud and confused, not making a lick of sense.
When Daddy speaks to me, it don't make much sense either,
but it's more like hearing the bubbling of the creek water and the sound of the
thunder and the scream of falling stars all at once.
But that's comparing termites to angels, I reckon.
All of a sudden, I felt something stir in the air around me.
My stomach growled.
I was damn sure tired of eating bugs and frogs,
and a particular field stain caught my attention.
I didn't know what it was that felt so tasty in the air,
but I was drooling like Mama's all.
old hound dog. It was getting pretty close to midnight, and that moon was telling me, whispering
in her sweet, sad voice, that something was ripe and juicy and ready to be yanked from its vine.
So, I walked down the street, towards a dark house with tape covering cracks on the windows,
and rusty gutters. All the other houses didn't matter to me no more. That dark, dark, dark house
at the end of the street, was calling to me with its tasty stank.
The moon, that yellow moaning mouth in the smoggy sky, kept on telling me there was someone
in that house, someone that would fill my tank for miles and miles and miles.
I got to the door and tried the knob, locked.
I jerked the door, rattling it on its weak hinges.
I squeezed the knob and felt the metal crinkling up.
in my hand. I pushed and the door opened. A light came on and there was a man standing in front
of me. He was wearing a white shirt and striped underwear. A double-barrel shotgun was in his hands,
but his sweat tattled on him. I let my other arms uncurl from my back and reached out with them.
I took that gun out of his hands and broke it in half.
He screamed and ran deeper into his home.
I followed, dropping the splinters of the gun behind me.
I walked on past the living room and felt the bodies wrapped in cellophane under the floorboards.
I couldn't see them, but I know from their field stains and trapped voices that their little boys,
all twisted up and screaming, even in.
death. I walk down a dark hall, the walls all covered in dirty pictures of naked women. The carpet
stinks like spit and shit. Flies tickle my skin with their scared wings. I get to the bedroom
where the man's trying to squeeze out the window. On his bed are books of naked women. On his
bubble screen TV, there's a grainy show of naked women, and he can't get out the window because
he hadn't opened it wide enough. He's a grutton.
like a hog and kicking and squirming. I reach out with all my arms again and grab a hold of his
ankles. I pull him out of the window, easy does it, and drag him closer to me. He's fighting,
but it don't amount to much. I set him straight so we're face to face, holding him with all
twelve hands to keep him from moving too much. Then I press my face to his, eyes to eyes, nose to nose,
mouth to mouth, and I let my tongue go inside of him. That's when it hit me. He was empty.
Nothing on nothing, over and over and over again. Just a small, empty thing that liked to jerk its
dick. I pulled my tongues back and I got real mad. I squeezed the empty thing in my hands
till it popped red and splattered all over the place. From under the bed,
I heard a scream. I look over and I don't know how I didn't notice her before. The moon above tells me
mistakes happen. I reckon that's true. I reached under the bed and touched skin. Such a wave of
feeling washed over me. I thought I'd keel over. Then I felt the kitchen knife going into my hand.
It wasn't enough to hurt me, of course. So I grabbed the woman and
anyway. She fought harder than the empty man had. As I pulled her close, I saw and felt her anger,
her fear. She was what I had been feeling down the street. She was what the moon was telling me
about. I got her face to face. Both of us all red from the blood and guts of the empty man I'd
squashed. I put my eyes and nose and mount to hers, and I filled her with my
tongues. Snap go of the neuron veins of my tongues, and I'm swimming in her. She is a flood,
and I am drinking her. I see her memories. Feel her feelings, live her life, and I devour it all.
I see her playing with her son in a small bedroom with white and green walls, dinosaur toys on the
floor. She has her wet hair wrapped in a towel, and she's wearing a big t-shirt and a pair of gym
shorts. She is so happy. Her son is small for his six years, missing baby teeth and hair musty,
fingernails dirty. His name is Tyler. Next, she's walking home, arms full of groceries and
plastic bags. It's grown heavy, and she wishes that her car hadn't died on her last Tuesday.
She wishes she could have taken Tyler with her, but the walk would have been too much for his legs.
This makes her smile
She loves how small he is
Loves how he runs
Loves how he jumps
Loves how he's learned to traverse the world
She gets home
And her smile cracks
Breaks in two
And falls to either side of her pale face
She drops the groceries
The carton of orange juice busts open
And splatters up her legs
She's running up the driveway
to the slightly open door.
She flings it open and searches frantically up, down in the corners, in the cabinets,
in the closets, everywhere and anywhere, and Tyler is nowhere.
The stream breaks apart, like rapids, froth, and white over bowlers.
Here and there are images of police, detectives, snippets of words like,
we're doing all we can, and why was he left alone?
Over all this tumult, hate begins to pervade.
A delectable hate that I drink up with my greedy lips.
More images of the woman searching her house for clues, finding something, keeping it instead of giving it to the law.
Excitement now. She begins to unravel the mystery.
Elation, hope, but still fear, and still hate.
Things become clearer, but now are ten.
red, sunset colors, inferno colors. She's walking down the street, the same street I had
walked down back in my time. It is day. I see the house with tape over the cracks in the windows,
the rusted gutters. She's clutching a knife close to her thigh. She checks first to see if the
house is empty. It is. She goes around back.
She breaks into a window in what she guesses is a bathroom.
She crawls inside and calls out in a clear blue voice,
Tyler, there is no answer.
She begins looking through the disgusting place,
as horrified by the sheer amount of pornography everywhere.
It makes her uneasy.
It makes her nauseous.
She gets to the living room and it doesn't take her long
to find out that the floorboard,
are loose. She pulls one back, and the little face revealed for a moment is quickly smothered by a
flood of flaming, burning, firework, bleeding red. Snap, go my tongues, and I'm back. Full as a tick
in a deer's air. I let the woman go, and she walks over to the window. She's real quiet. I mean,
makes sense. While I was eating her, she was eating me. Just the way it is. She's looking up at the sky
where you can't see the stars. I bet she was thinking about, Daddy. She heard his voice through
me. I wonder what he said to her. Well, that ain't none of my business. I got what I needed,
so I turned heel and left the way I'd come.
The night had got cooler.
The bugs had calmed some.
A fog was rising up from the green grass
to amble its way over the wet black roads.
The moon had stopped talking.
Clouds were settling over her wide yellow face
like someone had bruised her up.
It rained soon after.
I walked home.
Didn't need to see no more of the sea.
City. Had a lot to think on. Still do, I reckon. One thing I do know is that Mama was right.
City folks is different. But different in the same way that everything, everywhere is different.
Like anything, anywhere is different. Like nothing, nowhere, never, and now.
Creepy Presents
Home Visit
Written by Juan Cardenas
and narrated by Alicia Atkins
Let me get one thing off my chest
I had lost my passion for my work years ago
Now, don't get me wrong
I don't think I'm a bad person
But the level of burnout that even the most well-funded
and well-trained staff face on any given day
is astronomical, and I have to look out for myself.
Who else will?
So I work for a school that has minimal oversight and abysmal ratings.
The principal in most of the administrative staff is currently under investigation for comments
made that threatened parents, as well as some questionable accounting issues.
Teachers here quit on almost weekly basis, and the hiring staff has been desperate.
So I have seized on this opportunity to hang on to this school like a barnacle on a dying whale.
I have job security, until the place inevitably gets shut down.
And the administration won't be hassling me for the kids' grades or lesson plans, since they're so busy with their own mess.
Then there's the students, abrasive and absent as they are.
They don't want to learn, and I don't mind, since I don't want to teach them.
I'm just a warm body with a stack of worksheets, collecting a paycheck as I wait out the clock.
But fuck me, this had to happen.
There was a student named Elias, a good kid, only good kid in this class, actually turned in the rotten work I made them do.
He wrote, he read, he was clearly putting in more effort than I asked.
Well, he stopped coming to class.
standard procedure is to call home.
I hate calling home.
There was never a need beforehand, so I never did.
I looked up the phone number, and his address was all laid out for me using the school's database.
I called, but got a message saying the number had been disconnected.
Almost every phone number in here is provided by the students themselves,
so they frequently just pull whatever number and we get an error message.
Elias wouldn't do that, though.
His mother's phone must be disconnected.
Who knows?
She could have moved and not told the school.
Sure enough, we'll get a message in a week or so
saying a new school needs his records to enroll him,
and with any luck it's in any school district outside of this miserable city.
Still, it bugged me.
So I followed the protocol.
I asked the other teachers if he had shown up in their class.
Nope.
The art teacher approached me and told me he had been making weird drawings,
ones of a thin, emaciated figure in all black,
with huge serving bowl-like eyes.
No matter what she assigned, he drew the figure in all black.
Like it haunted him, she said.
I had to go to the Blue Book,
our catalog of emergency numbers and student information.
Same number, unfortunately.
It had an address.
I did what I was supposed to, and told the school's social worker,
who just kind of looked sad, giving me a knowing look,
like we both knew that he wasn't going to get this anytime soon.
So that's how, on a Wednesday night, I took the bus,
while it rained and bellowed, strained wind scraping against the brick,
metal and concrete of the city landscape,
giving a howl that sent shivers down my spine.
His apartment complex was massive.
Imagine a whole city block dedicated to apartments,
and I was traversing the inner courtyard looking for the right building.
It was barely six, but the storm chased away the weak winter sun,
and I was ambling around the outsides of four identical brick monoliths looking for this child's building.
Why did I come here?
Was this for the kid's well-being, or to satisfy my guilt?
What was going to happen if I got to the apartment and found them there, and he's fine?
The parents might assume I'm child protective services and be hostile, or they might think I'm a pervert.
He had been gone now for over a week without a note.
This is just a wellness check, I thought.
I could hide under that, not give my name, the kid would know me, but, hey, it might just be fine.
Then again, what if I walk into a crime scene?
I heard thunder, and the wind picked up violently.
I could see shapes and dark hoods running around.
Probably people avoiding the storm, I thought.
But they were too fast, too thin.
So thin.
I found the right building, right past the dilapidated playground in the complex.
It was definitely the place.
I tried to buzz the room, but the system was broken.
Luckily, the door was broken, too, and I just walked in.
I stepped over a man slumped on the mailboxes near the elevator.
He was breathing, shallowly. He mumbled.
I pressed the call button on the elevator.
I had to reach the 20th floor.
As I waited, I heard a slow scraping from behind me.
I turned around and the slumped over man was gone.
I cursed under my breath and pressed.
the button again. I guess I had to get my steps in. Each floor had two flights of stairs between them
in this open, yellow and beige tile scheme on the floor. The steps were painted over gray,
and you could see the cracks and chips develop. It got to the point where on the fifth floor
there was gray dust and full of cracked tile pieces and chunks of concrete. I could faintly hear
a crying woman, and the light started to flicker. I should have.
have left. Though the longer I was in here, the worst of a fate for Elias, I imagined. This place was
beyond condemned. The lights would be off on an entire floor. I made it to the 10th floor when I needed
to break. I heard a low growl emanating from beyond the stairwell. All the doors were shut,
without any sign of life or movement. There were over a dozen doors on this floor. As I caught my breath,
I felt a shivered on my spine when I heard of barking, then a howl, as if it was right on me.
I could feel the hot breath on my back, but nothing was there.
I looked down, thinking maybe I should just leave, but the stairwell looked too long and foreboding.
It must be in my head, but it looked like there were way more than ten floors down.
I kept going.
I had to know the kid was okay.
The rest of the way, I felt a peripheral hum, like a buzzing coming off the walls,
like the place was writhing with bees or something.
I finally made it to the 20th floor, and as I stepped into the floor proper, the noises all stopped.
It was silent. As I walked the floor, I was taken aback by how spacious it was up here.
You could walk down and pass several doors. All the while, there were windows that gazed down to the courtyard.
now obscured by the thunderstorm outside.
I made it to the door I was looking for.
It was so quiet, so naked and exposed was I in this place,
that my knocks seemed to echo down the entire building.
No answer.
I waited.
I guess this was it then.
The family probably just moved.
Not that I blame them.
I started to turn around when I heard the door click.
I turned back, for when I touched the door, it just creaked open into the apartment.
Then, like it had been too old and rusted, just fell off the hinges, leaving a loud thud
in a cloud of dust.
As I jumped back to avoid the door, I heard heavy footsteps coming towards me, rushing inside
I picked up the door and propped it up against the entrance, just barely covering the entrance.
I crouched and moved into the apartment.
I heard those footsteps getting closer, then further again.
My ruse had worked.
But who opened the door?
Inside the apartment, I walked down the hallway to the apartment proper.
There was a soggy carpet, no lights on.
I tried the light switch and only a dull light turned on in the kitchen.
I could hear a constant drip in the background.
I went further in.
The kitchen stunk with rotten food, and there was a pot charred black with a black sludge still bubbling in it.
I did my best to cover my nose and continue.
In the living room, a TV was on, but only displaying a black screen with no signal on it.
I decided it was time to call the police.
But sure enough, I had no reception.
My only choice was to go back downstairs.
when I heard a weak voice from the armchair gurgle.
An old woman with a deep gash in her throat and torso
through mouthfuls of blood managed.
Off the light.
The shadows cast by the dull kitchen light seemed to move and collect.
I ran over and hit the light switch.
The noise has returned, the hum, the buzzing in the walls.
I fumbled in the dark as a razor-sharp needle,
were grazing my feet and legs.
I heard the old woman gurgle and scream.
A sound like a popped watermelon came out of her,
and I could hear a splash of what must have been fresh blood on the floor.
I kept crawling and moving away from the kitchen and the entrance.
There was a bedroom.
I rushed in and shut the door behind me.
The crying.
The crying from downstairs was louder here.
I saw what looked like Elias,
that same gray hoodie he was sitting by the window.
His window overlooked a balcony.
It seemed like the storm had died down,
and a weak moonlight poured into the room.
I called for him.
He just sobbed.
We have to leave, I said.
Does this go downstairs?
He didn't answer.
He just sobbed, facing the window.
It's okay.
We need to leave, okay?
I grabbed his shoulder.
The shadow he cast on the ground grew larger and larger,
and a deep voice emanated from him,
much deeper and sinister than his real voice.
No one leaves.
He said.
I saw the shadows form into a humanoid being,
but sharp,
with pointed shoulders and jagged black claws and teeth,
a silhouette with absent white eyes.
It shrieked,
and I went straight out the open window.
Elias, thin as he was, grabbed me.
He felt cold with an unrelenting grip.
The shadow that hung over his shoulder was reaching towards me,
and I just panicked.
I must have gone over the edge of the balcony,
taking the boy with me and his spectre.
This black mass of shrieking, carnal rage echoed like thunder.
I fell, and I could see it fall with me.
I felt its hate.
I could see black shadows elongate from other windows as I slowly made it to the ground.
It was morning.
Every siren imaginable was going off.
I could hear radio chatter.
I was laid out on a stretcher, I think.
It got hazy after this.
The next few weeks were so confusing as I was overhearing conversation after conversation.
I heard the terms traction, blood loss, broken bones, miraculous, all thrown around.
I didn't think anything that happened that night was miraculous.
When I was finally able to stay awake long enough to listen, I realized I was in a full body cast.
A nurse filled me in a few details.
That I'd fallen out of the building, probably to escape the fire that engulfed the whole apartment building.
It was a real tragedy.
so many people died.
She told me that I was holding on to a young boy, a teenager,
and that he was recovering as well,
that he was in a coma.
They think I might have broken his fall or vice versa.
Both of us were lucky to be alive.
I weezed and gasped for air.
She told me to take it easy, not to try to talk.
I had many broken bones,
but that the doctor would explain.
when the time was right.
With every bit of strength I had left,
I gently wheezed out a request to the nurse.
Turn off the lights.
And she did.
Then went into a dreamless sleep.
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