Creepy - There's Something Strange Going on at the Funskate Skating Rink & The Record of Hillary Smithell

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

There's something strange going on at the Funskate Skating Rink***Written by: Jamie Polizzi and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***The Record of Hillary Smithell***Written by: Ashley Edens and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or not simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. There's something strange going on at the Fun Skate Skating Rink.

Written by Jamie Polisi and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. There was only one rule at my job. Never. At any point, let the music stop playing. I work at the Fun Skate Skating Rank off I-35. You know, that old building with an electric fence and barbed wire around it. It wasn't always that way. Up until a few weeks ago, it used to be full of life.

We were packed with skaters hosted birthday parties, ladies' nights. Now, it's filmed with something else entirely. I always hated going into the basement at work. No part of me wanted to climb down. the several flights of stairs and then a ladder, whose rungs always seemed wet, seemed to be dripping with something dark and pungent, despite there being no clear source for the viscous liquid. I'm still not exactly sure what the massive metal lined, matte black painted room had been used for, back before the owners bought the land above it and built the skating rink.

Fortunately for me, the basement house, the manager's office. I always tried to find reasons to avoid being down there. But my assistant manager Delaney had mentioned that she'd seen Preston, the new guy, trying to break into the AV room when he thought no one was looking. I needed to watch the tapes to verify. He'd been talking about his band from the moment we hired him, so she guessed he was trying to play something. of theirs over the speaker self-promote.

So much is even attempting to mess with the music was a fireable offense. Instant termination. The owners were generally reasonable people. The only rule that I ever found questionable was to always keep the same playlist, the best of the 80s, Friday Night Hits Edition, going on repeat at all times. It didn't matter if the rink was closed. It didn't matter if we lost power and had to rely on the backup generator in order to do so. That specific combination of songs was always supposed to be playing.

It was even blasted through the manager's office, too, for good measure. I grew up in the 80s and had never heard a single one of those songs before my time at Fun Skate. If you listen closely enough, the melodies sounded almost familiar. But the words were meaningless. Nonsense. But the military-esque bunker are in the need to keep the playlist going? Were just some of the many things I had learned not to question during my five-year tenure as general manager. We were required to keep the door to the A.V. room locked.

And only Delaney and I had copies of the key. A few months ago, when I was off duty, there was an incident when the power went out. It was the first time that it had happened during the key. business hours. In the seconds it took for the backup generator to start, something happened that shook my employees and our customers up so badly that those willing to even talk to me about it wouldn't meet my eyes. They just mumble about something not right. Delaney, who had been on duty at the time, was so disturbed by whatever she'd seen that she refused to speak. I insisted that she took the rest of the week off.

Unlike the basement, the rest of the building itself was a mess. After particularly heavy rains, water would seep in and settle in the corners. And that wet rot smell never left. There were spots that made me wonder if they had truly cleared out all of the asbestos. They'd renovated it back in the 80s, but I had made no effort to update it since. Stains and snags married the swirling, disoriented patterns of the neon carpet. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Working there felt like being sealed into a box of cringy lime greens and orange pinks.

The owners were just lucky that neglect could be mistaken for nostalgia. We always had more than enough business despite the conditions. It probably didn't hurt that we were the only skating rink in the county. As I sat down in the nearly soundproof basement and watched the security videos, I eventually saw Preston's grainy form doing exactly as Delaney described, lurking in the shadows, waiting until everyone cleared out before trying the door. I sighed, trying to prepare myself for an uncomfortable conversation. As I head back upstairs, I could just make out music, but it wasn't our usual playlist.

It was rough, too much feedback. There wasn't enough bass. The guitar was too loud. And the voice crudely layered on top of it all was clearly Preston's. At first, I thought the violent, loud humming was part of his song until it overwhelmed it, and then drowned everything else out. It was awful. Something I could feel not just in my eardrums, but in my eyes too.

For a brief moment, it felt like the building shifted. Everything seemed to move sideways. I swore I could taste colors and sounds. All of my senses overlapped. And for a brief moment the entire world fell out of sink. And then, an overwhelming sense of pure joy took over. I felt it in my throat, tight, like the air was being pulled from my lungs and the moisture from my eyes. I knew I needed to get back upstairs.

I needed it, more than I'd ever needed anything in my entire life. I frantically made my way towards the stairs. took the steps two at a time. And then, as I was ascending the ladder, as quickly as this sensation had come, the world returned to normal. At the top of the stairs, I heard the soft sound of the usual playlist start back up. He must have just added his song to it, and the universal tunes had resumed after his had ended. That wave of desperate happiness was gone, replaced by...

An overwhelming dread. From the moment I threw open the door to the main entry, before I could see anything, I already knew that something was very wrong. The smell hit me like a wall. It was as if something had been burning for a very long time. Despite the lack of smoke, I could taste it. I could feel the accurate sharpness of char at the back of my throat. I panicked, wondering what on God's green earth had happened.

When I find myself walking into, it took me a moment to realize that something was missing. The laughter. The general wave of chattering that came from a rink packed with people on a Saturday afternoon. The lights were still going and the music was playing, echoing across the smooth wood of the rink. But it was abandoned. Well, empty of people, at least. In the distance, I could see crumpled forms encircling a portion of the rink.

When I called out for someone, anyone, it went unanswered. I passed by the A.V. room, the door ajar, onto the rink. Where I realized what I'd been seeing were piles of clothes and skates, forming a nearly perfect circle around the section of worn and newly warped wood in the middle. There was a reverence about it, as if everyone had been up there while I was in the basement had gathered around and bore witness to something incredible, fascinating. Encircling and I could see Preston sneakers next to Delaney's blinged out in lines. The people, every single sign of human.

human life. Gone. I was so focused on the only worldly remains of my employees and our customers, then it took me a moment to notice that the wood in the center looked scorched. Soft. Like it had bubbled up. Few of the skates have been pushed aside, breaking the circle as if to let something through. Thin layer a dark and streaky stain led away from the center on to the swirling, hypnotic

patterns of the neon carpet. As I cautiously approached the center, the music changed again. Back to what sounded like a different song from Preston's band. The buzz of the black lights overhead became overwhelming. Before they, too, were drowned out by the now-familiar humming. The wood of the rink that was encircled by skates, it rippled, moved as if there was something writhing underneath it, the smell, which from up close was that of burning plastic mixed with something more organic returned.

Something needed me to come just a bit closer, something itching to come out of that I would finally see. As I approached, to match my elation, I felt a grin for me. One so wide it hurt. And then, the interloping song ended, and a meaningless, unintelligible one from the best of the 80s, Friday Night Hits Edition echoed out. The hum feeling. That burning smell were all gone. I took that as my cue to get the hell out of there before the music switched to and ran past the rental booth now dark. I tried to ignore the sickening, squelching sound of something that moved along the linoleum within. I'm not sure how I knew it, but I could feel that if I looked in there, I see something

I was never meant to see. Something that would break me. I wasn't sure what else to do once I stepped back into the sunlight outside, so I called the police. It took them forever to show up. And once they came, I walked them through everything I knew and watched them share a look. I figured that they thought I was just crazy. I handed over the tapes per their request. The owners called me that night, reminding me that despite the small incident that occurred, I was expected to report to work the next day. After sitting in my car, before the next shift, fighting a wave of anxiety at the thought of going back inside.

I was shocked to see an entirely new staff when I walked in. They were all faces I'd never seen before. They all worked wordlessly. It acted as if nothing was wrong. Fun Skate never sits empty. Now, despite being closed to the public, after I clock out, The new employees all remain, only their eyes moving to watch me leave, still blocking the door to the A.V. room. Something about them unnerves me.

So I try not to stare at them too closely, but I'm fairly certain that they are armed. I went down to talk to the police the next day, but they claimed they didn't send anyone out there that night. They casually implied that nothing occurred there at all. Delaney, Preston, all those people missing from around town. No one else seems to even remember them. Sometimes, as I desperately broached the subject in conversation with someone, I'll see a brief flash of recognition behind their eyes. Before it's gone, just as quickly. I've been struggling just to find someone here that will even believe me.

I just want to know what happened that night. Creepy Presents The Record of Hillary Smith-El written by Ashley Edens and narrated by Michelle Kane. I follow this Instagram account. Shelly is haunted. She's not a huge influencer or anything.

I mean, I bet you've never heard of her, but she showed up in my feed one day and I liked her content. She posts a lot of pictures and videos of her travels to haunted in creepy places, primarily in the Midwest. I can relate to her macabre interests and split my time between envying her adventures and noping out of her page. Normally, she doesn't do any live streaming, but she did last night. It was pretty messed up. It might have been a prank, but something about it just didn't sit right, and her account

has been silent ever since. I know it hasn't been very long, but every morning she posts a spooky factoid for the day, which she missed, of course. So the recording starts at 11.52 p.m. and it's mostly dark and shadowy. It looks like the camera is sitting in her lap facing the underside of her chin. You can't see much, and everyone knows this is a horribly unflattering angle, and you probably wouldn't choose to share a video like this with the whole world under normal circumstances. Shelly's voice sounds shaky and distressed as she states her name, the time and date, and her approximate location on the interstate. It's very reminiscent of a recording that an ill-fated backpacker, stranded in the woods, might leave for a loved one.

She explains how she's driving home after a trip with a friend to Omaha. Shelly said they were planning to visit a haunted museum there, but the museum was inexplicably closed. So she looked online to find another creepy attraction to fill the afternoon. Some throwaway Reddit user posted about a place called The Record of Hillary Smithell. claiming you'll never leave this place the same. Come to the white back door. We'll accommodate you whenever. And they left a contact number.

So sketchy, right? I mean, who would actually reach out to that number? But Shelley said she did, and in response, she only received an address. They pulled up to a farmhouse outside a neighboring suburbs Saturday afternoon. The place was deserted, but for an old brown. station wagon parked beside the house and a small hand-painted sign in the yard with a museum name. I checked into this after watching her video and Shelley did have a post from Saturday,

showcasing an old two-story house surrounded by fields. In the first photo, paint flakes off the shabby siding and the front door is a deep burgundy. A crude wooden sign sticks out of the Grass, the record of Hillary Smithell, scrawled in black elementary penmanship. The second picture shows a gravel path leading to a dingy white door. The caption says, Here we go. Followed by a ghost and a screaming face. When I searched this place online, no businesses or websites came up, but I did get a hit from a Reddit user asking, scariest places in Omaha? I clicked on the link, and my blood went cold when I scroll down to find that very answer

from Throwaway 873-95. Shelley and her friend were greeted by an elderly man at the door. He appeared friendly and harmless as he welcomed them inside. The kitchen was immediately to the left and an open set of stairs leading to the basement on the right. They were surprised to see a man. in his mid-forties at the bottom of the stairs. He was thin and short with a comb over. He introduced himself as Jonathan and explained that he ran the museum out of his parents' basement.

Hillary was his sister, and after her tragic loss, his parents wanted to spread her story. Due to their age, he ran the operation, but seeing as he wasn't very technologically savvy, they still didn't have a proper website. Shelly didn't post any further photos, but she described the basement as clean and partially finished. Jonathan started by asking them if they had ever heard of Hillary's case. They said no, as they examined a large board filled with pictures of Hillary throughout the years. Jonathan detailed Hillary's early days and her bubbly zest for life. There wasn't anything too remarkable about her, just the usual story concerning every

every person be falling a tragedy. She lit up every room she was in, and she was the most loving person to ever walk the earth. About six months before Hillary's demise, she began to change. She grew paranoid and became withdrawn. Others overheard her talking to herself, but whenever they would ask her if she was okay, her disposition would flip, and she responded in her old bubbly persona. Her skin grew blemished and inflamed. Co-workers commented on the dark bags that formed under her eyes. Despite all this, she maintained her job as a hotel housekeeper. It seems like the obvious answer here was that Hillary was using or suffering for mental illness, but Jonathan maintained that wasn't the case. She had always been a well-adjusted adult with no history of mental

illness and as for any drug use, she was clean as a whistle. The climactic reveal of the museum was the bizarre set of circumstances regarding Hillary's disappearance. One frigid day in November of 2004, Hillary called every contact in her phone six times. When the contact answered, they would hear dead air, followed by a distant scream. These phone calls all took place over an exception. short period of time in the morning. I think Shelly said between 825 and 8.35 a.m. For those that didn't answer the call, the same message was left on their voicemail or answering machine. This obviously caused a great deal of concerns, so several people called the local police to ask for a wellness check. When an officer reported to her home, a duplex in a quiet

neighborhood, he found the door slightly open. Shelly's 98 Buickless Sabre was parked in the driveway. Once inside, he discovered a messy residence, but there was not any indication of a struggle. The trash cans were brimful, and stacks of dirty dishes overwhelmed the kitchen counters in sink, but there was nothing broken or out of place otherwise. And no evidence of blood or any obvious attempts at cleaning of a crime scene. The officer did find something a little unusual on the kitchen table. In a small wooden box, there lay a homemade doll. The white cloth exterior smudged. It was stuffed with straw. The pieces deliberately sticking out of the arms and legs where the fraying cloth had been cut. It bore no face, just smooth cotton.

but a strange symbol was drawn on the doll's stomach and marker. Hillary's cell phone was placed neatly beside the box. When the family was contacted by the police department, they were, of course, very concerned. Hillary would not have left her home without her car or cell phone, and they believed foul play was certainly at hand, considering the eerie calls. Additionally, Jonathan explained how he and his parents had never seen that doll

before, and it was very out of Hillary's character to make any crafts of that sort. I'm not sure if Hillary's family was taking her strange recent behavior into account or how frequently they visited her home, but apparently the whole scene was very surprising to them. I guess they thought somebody had left the doll as a clue or some part of a fucked-up game. The police were not sold on this theory. interviews conducted with the neighbors revealed that none of them had seen anything unusual. The woman living in the other duplex unit also confirmed not seeing or hearing anything suspicious, and she was home all the time with her baby.

While the phone calls were unsettling, the time of day they were made was atypical for a crime. Everyone was leaving for work or school, so it would not have been in a criminal's best interest to attack Hillary. The police reasoned to wait and see if Hillary showed up for work the following day, as this happened to be her day off. Perhaps she was playing a strange joke, or pulling this stunt for attention. The family desperately wanted to file a missing person report immediately, but they were met with resistance. Finally, when Hillary did not show up for her shift the next day, the report was filed, and minor efforts were made in her search. Two months later, Hillary's body was recovered in a field 50 miles away,

clad only in her bra and underwear. She was partially buried under the snow, luckily spotted by a couple of snowmobilers, or who knows how long she would have laid there. The family thought this solidified homicide for the reason of her terrible demise, but autopsy results proved otherwise. natural causes, most likely hypothermia, the autopsy report stated.

Due to the sub-zero temperatures, her body was in remarkably preserved state, and the medical examiner did not find any evidence of sexual assault. Additionally, drug use was not believed to have been a factor, but I'm not sure about the accuracy of those results. While nobody wished murder upon Hillary, this resolution provided more questions than answers. Had Hillary wandered off independently? If so, how did nobody spot her during her 50-mile journey?

Did somebody hold her captive before releasing her, traumatized, and improperly dressed? What significance did the clues at her home hold? Jonathan wrapped up his story, somber and weary. Two long folding tables were set up in the basement. The first one was filled with awards and special mementos of Hillary's. The second table had an array of crime scene photos. Do they still call them crime scene photos when there's no crime? Well, police photos anyway, of her house after her disappearance. There were also several old newspaper clippings displayed. At the end of the

table, the creepy cloth doll sat, nestled in its little wooden box. Jonathan's tone changed slightly as he gestured to the box, slightly mischievous, which seemed wholly inappropriate given the circumstances. Some people don't like to touch it, he told them to feel closer to Hillary. At this point in the video, Shelley stops for a moment to take several deep breaths. She takes her right hand off the wheel momentarily to wipe her nose before continuing on. I shouldn't have done it. It felt wrong from the start like a tree. But I was just so damn curious. She shakes her head slightly, her tone growing bitter.

Shelley goes on to say that she went to pick up the doll, and as her fingers curled beneath it, a cool sensation trailed slowly up her spine, like a cold finger tracing each vertebrae. Then Jonathan's voice in her ear, it likes you a much better fit. She grabbed her friend's hand and quickly blurted out an excuse. She rushed them back to the stairs, and as she reached the top,

she looked back to see Jonathan standing at the bottom. A wide grin planted on his face, his hand pointing at her in a finger-gun gesture. His sleeve had slid down his wrist slightly, and she noticed the top of a black tattoo peaking out. They raced out of the house, Shelley yanking her friend behind her. As they got in the car, she could see the elderly man and Jonathan standing in the window, smiling. She thought maybe there was another person beside them, but it was more shadow than discernible figure. I'm not sure what Shelley said to her friend about the whole situation. She kind of glazed over all that stuff with her friend.

I thought about messaging the girl, but she wasn't tagged and she wasn't in any photos, so I don't know. Originally, Shelly was going to stay at a hotel with her friend until Sunday. After this whole fiasco, they grabbed dinner and hung out for a while, but Shelly said she just couldn't shake the feeling of wanting to crawl out of her skin. So she got on the road that night. She still felt weird, but relaxed a little as she put some distance between her and the city. Shelly stopped at a rest area that was right off the interstate. It was dark at this point, and the rest of the stop was empty, aside from a couple of semi-trucks.

She hustled into the brightly lit haven and buzzed into the bathroom. While she was sitting in the stall, she heard someone enter the bathroom, which may have been a little creepy on its own, as it was late, and the parking lot was desolate when she entered the building a few moments before. This was different, though. No woman quickly hurrying into a stall eager to get back on the road. No mother and child chattering about using the potty. No throat clearing. No rustle of clothing. No cell phone sounds.

All she heard was the slap of feet against the tile, reverberating off the walls. Swack. Swak. Instinctively, she froze. The feet smacked across the bathroom slowly as she tried to form a plan. I mean, can you imagine that? She was literally trapped and in one of the most vulnerable positions possible. The feet stopped in front of her stall.

The ghoulishly white backs of the heels were splattered with muck and facing Shelley. She held her breath while the person lingered just on the same. the other side of that door. The room unnaturally silent. Finally, the person turned left and slowly moved along. But that's when Shelley dared to peer through the ridiculously large gap that bathroom stalls always seem to have between the door and the frame. The woman was nearly naked, wearing only a grimy pair of underwear and a braw. The rest of her grotesquely pale skin modeled. Her nasty feet were slapping away while her hideous grin faced the opposite direction. Shelly gasped, and the woman's freakish, undead face swiveled right to Shelly. The woman,

or whatever it was, quickly darted for the stall, its body still. backwards. Shelly said it happened so fast, but she could never unsee those cracked, icy blue lips that stretched so wide and the huge eyes like a rodent's bulging and solid black. Shelly flung the door open, slamming it hard into the bathroom thing and ran for her car, not risking a glance back. As she hurled herself into the driver's seat, she was surprised to find the rest area calm, eerily, calm. The building was once again an innocuous retreat for those with bursting bladders. The bathroom ghoul had not followed. That was about it for her story. Shelly got back on the interstate and started filming shortly after this encounter. At this point in the

video, she had grown completely quiet. Aside from some sniffling and inconsistent, shaky breathing. During her story, she would rush through certain parts so fast it was hard to keep up, and other times she would stall, hesitantly pushing each word out like it physically pained her. After a minute or so, she attempts to start a new sentence but gets hung up repeating the first few words. Finally, she says, I'm recording this because I don't think I'm alone. And I'm just hoping that if there's video, I'm just, I'm so scared to turn around right now. She's openly weeping now. Everything is still mostly dark, but for some flashes of light periodically from passing cars or other exterior lighting.

But this next part, guys, it isn't right. Because that's when from behind something says, I like you. In a raspy, loud whisper, Shelly cries out and it looks like she's twisting around. Maybe there's a possible scuffle and then her phone drops to the floor. The camera is now black and muffled and that's it.

The video continues with a black screen for two minutes and 22 seconds before it ends. You think it's a joke, right? But it really bothered me, so I had to look into it some more. Like I said before, there's nothing that pops up for the museum thing, but I did find some articles about this girl's death from 2004. Hillary was a real person. She doesn't have any social media, of course,

and I couldn't find anything for Jonathan either. However, there's a picture attached to one of the articles associated with the case. Jonathan stands by Hillary in their last picture together, approximately six months before her death. He wears a blue polo shirt and his right arm draped around her shoulder loosely, has a large brown band wrapped around his wrist. Hillary smiles politely next to her brother, her petite frame next to his thin body, so fragile. A sweet photo taken during a nice family get-together. This moment in time that is captured forever where Hillary offers a smile.

But I swear, from the look in her eyes, she's terrified. Hold on, I have an update. It's been just over a week since Shelley's livestream. The video has since disappeared from her page, and she hasn't had any action on her Instagram account until today. I still think the whole thing was weird that... I never found anything on the news about her missing, and I was thorough. Trust me, I googled her so many times that my search history would make me a person of interest in her file.

I guess it was all just a stunt because today she posted a selfie. She's sitting in front of her laptop and holding her phone from above with her right hand. The caption says, Planning my next adventure! She looks legitimately happy. I mean, the intense grin looks genuine anyway. I'm surprised she didn't use any filters or photo editing. It looks like her face is starting to break out pretty bad.

That's kind of refreshing, though. It's so nice to have someone looking real on social media. I was just always so jealous of her perfect skin. Oh, and it looks like she got a new tattoo. She has a few, and in the past she always made a big post about it. That's a little odd. Seems a little out of character. I guess it could be old, but I think I would have noticed it before,

seeing as it's on her wrist. Yeah, it's a black symbol. I wonder what it mean. Oh, oh, shit. 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.

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