Lighthouse Horror Podcast - EMERGENCY ALERT: If you see this Hole, RUN | Scary Stories

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Story written by Stephen & Rachel of Lighthouse Horror. For usage rights or more information, please contact us at [e-mail] Art from NinerioMore of the artist’s works at ninerioartsOriginal YouTube link: EMERGENCY ALERT: If you see this Hole, RUN Merch: lighthousehorror.shopFor more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | PatreonSocial MediaINSTAGRAM - @lighthousehorror FACEBOOK -  Lighthouse HorrorTIKTOK - Lighthouse HorrorMusic:Lucas King - YouTubeMyuu - YouTube IncompetechDarren Curtis Music - YouTubeThank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this new creepypasta story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new episodes every week, featuring ghost stories, haunted encounters, mysteries, true stories, creepypasta, and anything supernatural and paranormal. Don't miss out on the thrill and suspense that await you in each episode!

Hello? If you can hear this, you need to stay in the line. I don't know how far this will go. Could cut out any second, but I'm going to try to hold it together. I've rigged this signal through the old AM tower by Millie Silo, which I doubt the feds even remember still works. Got about 40, maybe 50 minutes till they trace it. If I talk too fast, I'm sorry. If I ramble, I'm more sorry. but I need you to hear me. I need someone to hear me. My name's Billy. Billy Cotter. Born and raised here in Thin Creek County.

Don't know if that means anything to you. Probably doesn't. We're the kind of place that doesn't show up on maps. Town signs are rested. And half the time spell thin creel instead of creek. No one bothers fixing them. Most folks here just call it the creek anyway. You should know a bit of

about me before I tell you everything else. If I'm going to talk into this void and hope someone's listening, then you should know who you're listening to. I'm 42, lived on Sycamore Road my whole life, house with a green porch and the satellite dish that's never worked. I fixed tractors, mostly. Some cars too, but tractors more. That's what folks around here need more of.

Engines that'll run through cornfields longer than the man who owns I never really had plans to leave. Not because I was scared or anything. Just I didn't see the point. Some people need to run off to feel alive. But I already knew who I was here, knew the rhythm of the place. I like that. I like knowing that Monday mornings meant black coffee at Ruby's diner. And that on Thursdays, the high school kids would race dirt bikes behind the train tracks like idiots until someone broke a two or worse. Mom passed six years ago. Liver. Dad went the year after. Not from sickness, but from something else. Something I don't think had a name. The kind of emptiness you can't fix with pills, maybe even prayer. After that, well, it was just me in the house. I kept the lawn neat,

the face painted, went to church sometimes. More for the pancakes afterward than the sermon. People here, they're not bad, but they're not good either. Mostly, they just are. You know the type. The kind of people who shake your hand, but they never mean it. Who ask how you are, but hope you say, fine, just keep on walking. I don't mind. You get used to it.

It's like background noise after a while. I had a dog once. Miller. Big lazy thing. more bark than brains. Got hit on the old service road out by the West Cornfield. I was back in 2018. Never got another.

I felt wrong somehow. Like I'd be replacing a part of the house that wasn't supposed to be fixed. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not special. I'm not a hero or some whistleblower from a movie. I'm just a guy. A guy who lived in a dying town and kept to himself. And maybe that's why this is all so messed up. Because if even I noticed something wrong,

then it must have really been wrong. It all started with that damn hole in Jameson's yard. Now when I say yard, that don't mean some neat pat of green behind a white picket fence. Jameson's place is out past the grain elevator, where the land dips down and trees not together real low. like they're whispering about you. His yard is more like a mess of gravel, weeds, and rusted junk.

Old tires, broken tools, half a tractor that is not run for a long time. He lived alone mostly. Had a brother, Clay, but it's never around much. I remember the day it showed up. Not the exact date. Not like it got marked on a calendar. but I remember the feeling. The weather was dry, sky pale as bone.

I was over there helping Jameson, move some metal sheets from his shed when I first noticed it. Round hole in the ground. Just sitting there. Maybe 15 or 17 feet wide. Clean edges. No dirt piled up around it like you'd expect. Just a perfect dark circle like someone had come. and punched the earth in the mouth.

We both stood there looking down at it. He asked if I'd ever seen anything like that. I told him, no, of course I hadn't. Still haven't. First thing we did was drop a rock in. That's what everybody does, right? We figured we'd hear it hit bottom, maybe bounce once or twice. But nothing.

Silence. I thought maybe we'd use two. small rock, so I got a bigger one. Basketball-sized chunk of limestone. I heathed it in, and we waited. Still nothing. Jameson frowned, scratched his beard, and muttered something about sinkholes, said maybe the dirt collapsed way down and left an opening. But it didn't look like that. It didn't look natural. No loose earth, no cracks. Just smooth black. Nothing. Well, next day Ward got around.

Not because Jameson told anyone. Wasn't the chatty type. But because Tommy Mitchell's kid wandered onto the property and saw it for himself. You know how kids are? He told his buddy, who told his cousin, and by sunset half the town had heard about it. Soon people were showing up to look. bringing flashlights, cameras, even those little toy drones.

None of it held. The light didn't reach far. The camera couldn't pick up anything but darkness. The drone flew in, but the signal cut out ten feet down. It crashed or vanished. We never saw it again. Someone, I think it was Merle Atkinson's nephew, had the idea to lower a walkie-talkie down,

on a fishing line. They wanted to see if we could talk through it while it dangled inside. So we turned it on, tested it first, then tied it tight and slowly lowered it in. The line kept going, and going, and going. We hit maybe a hundred feet before we realized we were almost out of rope. Still no bottom, still no sound. Jameson started pacing at that point. point. You could tell he didn't like it. Not just because of the whole, but because of all the attention. His yard was turning into a circus, and he wasn't one for company. The next day, we'd try to tape recorder. Not one of those new digital ones, an old school cassette tape. Somebody hit record, lowered it down on a different line. We figured we'd get some sound,

maybe wind, maybe underground water, something. We got 70 feet down before we ran out of rope again. When we brought it up, it was still running. We played it bad. Nothing. Silence. No white noise, no hum. Just blank?

By then, well, folks started to get nervous. Nobody said it out loud. but you could see it in their faces. That look people get, when they're trying real hard to convince themselves, something isn't weird when it clearly is. Then came the animals. Birds don't fly over it. I mean, not a single one.

We watched flocks shift in mid-air just to avoid the space above the hole, like they sensed it was wrong somehow. And dogs, forget it? They dig their paws into the dirt and refuse to walk if you tried to bring them close. My sister's dog, Buster. Usually happy-go-lucky. Loves everyone, eats anything. But that dog hates that side of town now.

He starts whining when we're a block away. When I used to walk him down there, he'd yank the leash so hard it left marks on my hand. Ears flat. tail between his legs, eyes locked on the dirt like something's going to crawl out of it. Wouldn't take a treat? Wouldn't budge? Had to carry him away the first time. After that, I stopped bringing him.

Same with other folks. Abby Coleman said her German shepherd pissed itself just getting within 20 feet. Eddie Brewster's lab broke its collar, trying to run the other director. We joked about it at first. You know, nervously. Maybe the holes cut dog breath, someone said. Got a few laughs, but that didn't last long. Because deep down, people know.

We try to act like we're smarter than animals, but truth is we aren't. Now, we're a count. You ever see a dog refuse to go into a room and then later find mold, in the walls or gas leaking? They know. They always know. And the whole... Well, every animal around here knows it's wrong.

Of course, people didn't listen to the animals. They never do, not really. We got used to the birds swerving and the dogs whining. That's the thing about people. We get used to strange texts, longer in small towns, maybe. But it happens all the same. First, it's... The hell is that.

Then it's... That's weird. And then it's just background. And that was our first mistake. We stopped paying attention. At some point, folks stopped being scared of the hole. Don't ask me why. Maybe because it didn't do anything.

Not right away, at least. It just sat there. round, quiet, waiting. So people stopped gathering around it with flashlights and questions. They stopped warning their kids. They stopped watching it. And then, like always happens in places like this, people started doing dumb things.

They started throwing trash in it. First it was just beer bottles. Candy wrappers. soda cans. Stuff they'd toss out the window if they were driving down a back road. Then someone chucked an old tire in. Then a microwave. And when nothing happened, well, that was it. The hole became a dumping ground. You could walk by Jameson's place on a weekend and see the thing ringed with junk. Broken TVs, busted chairs, worn out boots, radios, even couches.

One guy even pushed a full refrigerator across the yard and rolled it in. It was like some twisted contest. How much crap could you get rid of without hauling it to the landfill? It worked, too. Can you believe that? Nothing ever bounced? No thuds, no crashes, everything just dropped and vanished. Didn't matter how big.

How small it was like the whole swallowed it all up without chewing. I threw in an old bed frame once and been sitting in my shed for years. Rusty, squeaky thing. I dragged it out, walked it over, and watched it disappear piece by piece. It never made a sound. Just slipped away like it'd fallen into deep water. At the time it felt harmless, helpful even, a good way to clean up the junk piling up around town. But then someone threw in a bag of fish guts.

I don't know who it was. Probably someone who'd been out by the lake, didn't want the smell in their truck. They figured the hole could take it. And that was the first time we noticed it gave something back. I remember the stint, thick, sour. It drifted all the way down Sycamore Street and settled like fog. I thought maybe something had died under my porch, spent half a day crawling around with a flashlight looking for it, but nothing. Later, Jameson came by, white as a sheet, told me about the bag, said it was the only thing new near the whole. and I believed him. That smell stayed for three days. After that, people got curious. They wanted to see what else it could take. Someone tossed in a box of frozen meat gone bad. Another guy dumped a pile of rat corpses from his barn. Still no bottom, still no sound. But the smell always came back and worked.

than that. It changed. It stopped being just rot. It started to smell like metal, like batteries left in the sun. And sometimes, just for a second, it didn't even smell like anything from this world. I can't describe it. Your nose doesn't know what to do with it. It makes your eyes water, your tongue it, your jaw feel. too tight. Then came the deer. Late spring, someone hit it near the old post office.

A clean hit. Broke the legs, crushed the ribs. Now, normally we'd call animal control, but they've been less reliable the last few years. Budget cuts, I guess. So Jameson,

as still him, he hauled the body to the hole. Figured he'd get rid of it like everything else. He said he barely got it there. The closer he got, the heavier it felt. Not like he was tired, like the deer weighed more near the hole. But he managed, rolled it close, didn't push it in, just left it there beside the edge and walked home.

Three weeks passed. It should have rotted by then. should have stunk the place up, but it didn't. It still looked fresh, skin smooth, eyes glossy. No bloating, no flies. It was like it died an hour ago. And that's not right. You know that's not right.

Well, Jameson got real nervous. Said it made him feel watched. He wanted it gone, but didn't want to go near. it again. So I went with him, and I will never forget what I saw. We got there just before sunset. The trees were real still. You ever feel like the world's holding its breath? The deer was lying in the same spot, but something was different. The skin looked stretched like it was under pressure. And then right in front of us, it split down the middle. No blood, no guts, just movement. Something uncoiled itself from inside, long, pale, slick, bent in ways that

made no sense. It dropped to the dirt and moved quick, faster than snake I've ever seen. It was a centipede. At least that's the closest word I've got for it. But bigger, way bigger, the size of a house cat, with too many legs and a mouth that opened sideways. It didn't look at us. It just slipped into the tall grass and vanished. We didn't speak on the walk home. The next day, the town held a meeting. First one in years, folks argued, shouted, pointed fingers. Eventually, the HOA stepped in.

Said enough was enough. No more throwing anything in. Not trash, not food, indefinitely not anything living or dead. Signs went up. Warnings. Fines, the works. It didn't mean. matter. You know how people are. They still dump stuff in. Just do it at night now. Quiet,

quick. Nobody talks about it. But we all know. You drive past the hole some mornings and you see new tire tracks. You smell something strange. You hear something skitter through the grass when nothing's there. I don't go near it anymore. because I'm scared of the hole, but because I'm scared of what's already come out of it. And then the voices started. It was a woman first. Old Miss Darling lives by the grain silos. She came knocking on my door one morning, face pale as flower, and shaken. Said she heard her brother's voice, said it came from the hole. Now her brother, Clyde, he died five years back.

Hart gave out in the church steps. Funeral was small, but the whole town knew. So when she said she heard him calling her name, calling from the hole, I figured she'd finally cracked from the loneliness. She always talked about him, said he used to hum to himself when he worked, said the house felt quieter than it should have. ever since he passed. I didn't believe her,

not right away at least. But then it started happening to other folks. See, here's the thing. Everybody's lost someone. Doesn't matter who you are. Maybe it's your ma, your pa, your cousin, your old high school sweetheart.

That one friend who never made it back from the army. The teacher who told you you were smart when nobody else thought you were. Loss comes for all of us, sooner or later. And whatever that thing in the hole is, it knew that. People started hearing voices, real ones, familiar ones. The guy who works the gas station said he heard his sister calling him,

soft and sweet like she used to, back before the river took her. Abby Coleman said she heard her baby crying. She lost it to a crib death a decade ago. Even I, I'll admit it. I heard my dad. He called me, kid, just like he used to. His voice came up clean, steady, like it was echoing off the inside of a tunnel.

And I stood there right at the end. edge of the whole knees weak, just listening like a fool. It wasn't hallucination. I wasn't dreaming, and I ain't got the kind of imagination that'd make up something like that. He said, Billy, son, you out there? I didn't answer. My mouth went dry, and I just backed away real slow. that I didn't look back.

But not everyone could do that. People started jumping. Jameson was the first. He came by my place a few days after I'd heard the voice. Didn't look right. Eyes red, hands twitching. I saw my wife, he said. She needs me, Billy.

She's real scared. Now his wife had died in a car wreck near the county line three years back. And the next morning, he was gone, left his porch light on. His boots right by the edge of that hole. We found a note in his truck. It just said, I heard her. She needs me. and after that

Moore followed Randall Hill lost his little boy to cancer I remember the funeral he couldn't stop crying said it should have been him instead when the boy's voice came calling

out from the pit Randall didn't stand a chance then Susie Mallard her dad never came back from deployment she grew up without him said he used to read her to sleep. One night, she heard his voice calling for her from down there. Susie, it's me, Dad.

Remember when I read you that story about the lost kingdom and your druid and Cran? You remember, don't you? With the red castle and the sky that never ends. It's real, honey. It's down here. All you have to do is climb down to see it. I'm waiting for you, Susie. She left her shoes right at the end, jumped right in.

And that's when we knew it wasn't just voices anymore. The hole wasn't just watching. It was calling. We tried to stop people. Some of us, anyway, built a fence around the thing. Tall one, even added barbed wire on top. Didn't matter. Folks climbed over.

Cut through, crawled under. One guy even brought a ladder in the dead of night. They always found a way. And the more people jumped, the more others wanted to. Like it was contagious. like grief was leaking out of the hole and settling over town like a sickness. I started staying home more. Wouldn't answer the door.

Wouldn't go past a certain street. I didn't want to be near it. Didn't want to hear another voice. I didn't want to feel that pull again. But I still heard the stories. A police officer tried to stop a man. from climbing the fence, a young father, said his daughter was down there, calling to him. Officer grabbed him by the arms, tried to wrestle him back. And they both went over.

Screaming, fighting, gone. The fence didn't help after that. Folks didn't care anymore. Some even tore sections of it down so they could get in quicker. And that's when it all turned to chaos. We tried locking people up, blocking roads. Didn't matter. If someone wanted to go bad enough, they'd find a way. They'd sneak out windows, steal cars, walk barefoot across cornfields just to get close enough to listen. And if you tried to stop them, tried to grab them, pull them back, they would fight you.

claw at you, scream at you like you were the enemy. Sometimes they weren't alone when they jumped. Some folks fell in just trying to help. Neighbors, friends, people who didn't believe the voices, but believed in stopping pain. I have been to five funerals in the past month. All closed casket. Not that there's much to bury. They're still going in one by one.

We don't gather around the hole anymore, not even to look. We avoid it now. Keep our eyes straight, our heads down. It's like it's not even part of the town anymore. Just a dark mouth no one wants to speak of. But we all know it's still there. And we all know it's not done. The people who've jumped

They come back Not all of them Not right away But enough that we've stopped being surprised When we see them lying there again Right at the edge of a hole Like they never jumped at all I have seen it with my own eyes

You go to sleep one night thinking they're gone forever And in the morning There they are. Like the whole just spit them out. But they're wrong. They're not how they were. Their skin looks off, swollen, damp. Like they've been soaking in something.

Not blood, not water, just something. Sometimes it's stretched too tight over the bones. Other times, It's sagging like their insides melted. But their faces are the worst. You'll see someone you knew your whole life. Someone who made you coffee. Taught your kids math class.

Fixed your windshield wipers. And their face will be mostly there. But not all the way. A patch of hair missing. One eye sunken or gone completely. teeth loose or gone. Fingernails turned black or just torn off. Always something just missing. We thought they were dead, of course. They looked dead, but they don't decay. That's what messed with us the most. You leave a body out in the sun in this county. It bloats, it splits, it rots. It rots. It always has.

Not these ones We left them for days weeks Not even a fly would land on them They just stay Same bloated shape Same twisted arms Same skin that looks too smooth

In one place and torn in another And it's not just one or two There's more every day You drive by the edge of the hole and you'll see them lined up like driftwood, stiff, wrong, and silent. Except when they're not, I wish I was lying. But last week, I saw Jameson move. He was face down like he'd been dropped from a rooftop.

His arms weren't right, been under him, like broken. broken tree limbs. I was walking past on the other side of the fence just on my way to get gas, and I heard a sound, not a voice, a movement, skin dragging on dirt. I looked over. His leg twitched. Didn't kick, didn't spasm, just twitched. Like something inside him, Was adjusting? Getting ready? What could I do? I ran.

I haven't gone that close since. And now we're all hearing it. Not just the voices anymore. There's motion. Sometimes you wake up to find one of them a little closer than they were before. Like they crawled while you were sleeping. Like they're figuring it out. The hole brings them back, sure, but not whole.

But not empty either. It's like something borrowed their shape and forgot how to finish the job. I've been sleeping with my doors locked. Windows covered. Gun next to my bed. Never used to keep a gun in the house. Never felt the need. The town didn't have much crime

But now I sleep with it held real close Because I don't know when one of them might come knocking And still Still I hear her voice Marion She was my wife We were only married a year She died giving birth to her son

I remember the night clear as day Her hand and mine her breath slowing. The nurse is moving too fast, then too slow, than nothing. Our son lives upstate with her side of the family.

Grow up healthy, far away from all this. I send him cards on his birthday and he calls sometimes. Called last week, asking, what the hell is going on? Said they saw something on the news then the broadcast cut, said they heard about a containment effort, but no one would say where.

I haven't called him back. I can't. How do I explain this? How do I tell my son the place he was born is bad now? The government shut off all major roads, block the highways with fake construction crews. Bridge repairs, they say. Sinkhole warnings. We haven't had a real working exit in two months.

They've turned us into a ghost town, and no one outside knows the truth. Not yet. That's why I'm doing this, this broadcast, because no one else is going to tell you what's really happening in Thin Creek County. They can't shut me up if I don't stop talking. And you need to know what's coming.

Because the bodies, the ones lining the hole, they've started moving. Not just twitches, not just sounds, moving. I saw Randall's corpse stand up. I was at the diner. The windows face the hole, if you know where to look. I was sipping coffee I didn't want, trying to feel normal for five minutes. And I saw him not standing tall, not running, just slowly rising up like a puppet being pulled by strings. His skin looked like wax paper,

his eye sockets hollow. But he turned toward the town and faced us. And I knew her right then. I knew that this was just the beginning. These things, they're not our neighbors anymore. They're not family. They're not the people we lost. But people still keep going toward the hole. Keep listening. Keep leaving. But I don't. If you're listening to this, If somehow this broadcast reached your car, your house, your phone, I need you to hear me. Stay away from Finn Creek County. Don't come looking. Don't try to help.

Just stay away. If you're still listening, then thank you. I don't know how far the signal's reached. I don't even know if it's gotten past the ridge. But if it did, if it made it out, that I have done what I came here to do. You've heard the stories now? All of it.

The hole in Jameson's yard. The voices calling to us. The people jumping in, the bodies that came back wrong. The dead that won't stay that way. The government blockades. The quiet panic building in every street and alley of this place. And that's Thin Creek County. now. That's where we've become. You know, I've been talking into this mic like it was my last

chance to scream, but now that the signals almost have, I'm starting to realize something. Maybe this isn't just our story anymore. Maybe this isn't just about one town in the middle of nowhere, because I've been listening. When I can't sleep, and that's most nights, I turn the dial all the way down the AM band, past the static, past the Spanish news and gospel sermons, and talk shows from 50 miles out. Sometimes I hear things,

voices, cracks and other transmissions, fragments of words that don't belong on the air. I heard someone mention a sinkhole in Kentucky, A weird one Swallowed a whole playground Heard a trucker Talk about something he saw in Nevada

A round opening in the dirt That wasn't there the day before He swore he heard A baby crying inside it Said it sounded just like his daughter Who died last year And then there was a college kid On a call-in show out of Wyoming

said his roommate vanished after standing near a hole behind their dorm. Campus sealed it up, told them not to talk about it. I don't think it's just us anymore. I think these things, these holes, are appearing in other places. Quiet places, forgotten ones. Places like ours, where people don't ask too many questions. where folks disappear all the time and nobody outside cares enough to wonder why.

They all start the same small, quiet, easy to ignore till it's too late. You've heard what happened when we stopped paying attention. You've heard what happened when we threw in our junk, then our dead, then ourselves. You've heard how it caused. to us and how it never gives anything back the way it took it. So I'm telling you now, wherever you are, stay away from the holes.

You see one, don't go near it, don't throw anything in, don't look down, don't listen, especially don't listen. They sound like the people we miss most. They sound perfect, but it's not them. It's never been them. I haven't heard from my son in days. Maybe they've cut off the phones. Maybe he gave up, trying.

Maybe I'll never hear from him again. But I don't want him to come here, not ever. Tell someone, anyone, if you believe even a sliver of this, get the word out, burn a CD of this broadcast, I don't know, copy it down. Send it on the internet if you still can. I don't care how. Just don't keep it to yourself.

Because I won't be able to talk much longer. I know they're coming for me. The feds, the ones in black trucks with clean boots and no names. They've been shutting people off one by one. Anyone who speaks about the outbreak, anyone who mentions what's really happening in Thin Creek, they vanish. They say they're containing it. They say they're protecting us.

But I know what they're really afraid of. They're not afraid of panic. They're afraid we'll believe each other. And when I go missing, when the signal cuts off and you never hear from me again, it won't be because I gave up. And it won't be because I jumped. So remember what I told you. Remember Thin Creek.

Remember it all started with one hole in the ground, just one. And if you ever see one, no matter where you are, just run. Good luck out there. And whatever you do, stay away from the holes.