Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I work as a Treasure Hunter. I have FOUR RULES to Survive | Scary Stories

Episode Date: April 2, 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 ninerioarts  Original YouTube link: I work as a Treasure Hunter. I have FOUR RULES to Survive.        Merch: lighthousehorror.shopFor more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | PatreonMusic:Lucas King - YouTubeMyuu - YouTube IncompetechDarren Curtis Music - YouTube Thank 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!

I never planned I'm living like this. If you told me as a kid that someday I'd be slipping through crumbling ruins and forgotten corners of the world, slicing open priceless paintings to steal secrets, or ducking bullets and handing off ancient artifacts to rich men, I'd have shaken my head and walked away. I wasn't thinking about treasure. I wasn't thinking about anything beyond the trees that line the edge of my home. In the market, they kept my family fed.

Back then, my world was small. My village wasn't much, just a handful of buildings clinging together like survivors of some long-forgotten storm. Everyone knew everyone. They knew your mistakes, remembered your triumphs. My parents sold fish and vegetables at the market. Simple work. Pull it from the dirt or the sea. Clean it up.

Sell it? Repeat. I helped them. hauling crates, counting coins, arguing prices. Wasn't a bad life. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was meant for something else, something bigger. Not better, exactly, just different. I wasn't made to stay still.

Wasn't made to plant roots. School was not for me either. Teachers talked, but my mind drifted far from lessons and books. Words blurred into meaningless noise. My parents argued, begged, tried everything to keep me there. But one afternoon, halfway through some endless lecture, I stood up, walked out, and I never came back. After that, I bounced between jobs. Nothing special, just honest work.

Loading cargo at the docks, fixing broken engines, delivering packages nobody bothered to ask about. I kept my head down, eyes open, learned how people lied, how things broke, how the world moved beneath everyone's feet without them noticing. That's the thing about paying attention. You start seeing the cracks. And eventually those cracks lead somewhere strange. I met someone older, rough-edged and weather-beaten, eyes hardened from a lifetime of doing this kind of work. He wasn't a friend or even a teacher, really, just a man who saw something

useful in me. He showed me the basics, how to find what people had hidden, how to open locks that weren't meant to be opened, how to vanish when staying meant trouble. I learned quick, maybe too quick for my own good. Soon, I was taking jobs all by myself, chasing money at first, more money than I'd ever known existed. But then the jobs got strange. At first, I did it for the money. That's how it starts for most people. You take a job, you get paid, and you do it again.

But after a while, the money wasn't the only thing keeping me in the game. There was nothing else like it. For a small village boy whose world had once been nothing but his parents, the market, and the four cramped walls of their house, treasure hunting felt like stepping into a life that was bigger, brighter, more important. I liked playing the hero. I liked being the guy who knew everyone, who had connections in every city, who traveled the world and did things other people only saw in movies. I could pick locks. I could take apart a weapon. I could talk my way out of a situation that should have killed me.

I like the places I visited, too. Cities older than memory, carved into cliff sides and buried beneath centuries of dust, hidden catacombs where the air was thick with the weight of history. Temples that no longer had gods

but still carried something in their bones, something heavy, something waiting. I like the danger. scaling walls in the dead of night, slipping past guards, running from people who would rather put a bullet in me than let me leave with what I came for. And every job, it was a puzzle. Every heist, it had its own rhythm. There was a thrill in it, an electric feeling under my skin. Every time I made it out just in time. Every time I held something priceless in my hands, something no one else had touched in hundreds of years. I didn't think about what I was actually doing.

It didn't feel like stealing. It felt like taking back something forgotten, like unearthing lost history. It felt like I was meant to be there, like I was doing something that mattered. That was the lie I told myself. because every job has rules, and I learn them the hard way. Now, it doesn't take long in my line of work before you see how things fit together. Normal rich people like shiny stuff, you know, gold, gems, paintings, things they can put on shelves or show off at parties. But not everyone hires me for the shiny stuff.

Some clients want things nobody should ever want. objects that feel cold to the touch, objects that have been sealed away or buried for a reason. I learn the hard way that these jobs have rules. Four rules, to be exact. Simple, clear ones that keep you breathing. The first rule. Don't take a job unless the client names the thing. I learned that lesson the worst way possible.

years ago, someone hired me for a simple grab and run. Easy money. They said the object was in an abandoned monastery deep in the mountains. Nothing but old stone and ivy. They gave me coordinates, cash up front, and a deadline. But they never said what the thing was. Just called it the object. I knew better. But the payday was too big. Big enough to class. judgment, to silence the voice in the back of my head. So I took the job. It was a stupid move, but sometimes stupid pays the bills. Two days hike up the mountain trail, legs aching, shoulders raw from carrying my gear. The monastery was waiting at the end, exactly as promised, ruined, empty, falling apart, just old stones, weeds, and silence. Then I found the door. It was red, freshly painted, out of place against crumbling walls.

Inside, I found what I'd come for, a wooden box painted red to match. No hinges, no lock, just a smooth lid carved with words that made no sense. An angel's lungs drowned. I didn't let myself think too hard. Just took it, shoved it in my pack, and I got the hell out. The monastery had been too easy. No guards, no security, no traps waiting for me in the dark. Places like that always had something, you know.

Pressure plates, trip wires, old mechanisms that, would collapse a tunnel or seal a door shut behind you. Even the ones that weren't built to keep people out usually had nature working against you. Loose stone, unstable ground, a wrong step that sent you plummeting into something you couldn't crawl back out of. You guys have all seen Indiana Jones. But here, nothing. The path leading down had been smooth, like someone had cleared it. The door that should have been locked had been left unsecured. When I stepped inside the vault, there wasn't even dust on the handle. That was the weirdest part. The whole place had been sitting under the weight of time, stone crumbling, vines creeping through cracks, but inside, the traps

had been disarmed long ago. And I wasn't the first one there. I could see it in the dust. I could see it in the dust. It had settled thick in some places, untouched for years, but near the box, near the table it had been left on. It wasn't the same. Someone else had disturbed it. Not long ago, either. I knew the signs. A boot print half-fated. A streak along the stone, where something heavy had been dragged. Someone had been here before me. And yet, They left the box. That should have been enough to make me turn around. Should have been enough to make me ask questions.

But I was young and I was hungry. So I shoved my concerns to the back of my head and I told myself to focus on the money. The trip back was quiet. The driver was already waiting when I reached the road. No words exchanged. He took me straight to the clock. who handed me the envelope full of cash without checking the box.

I didn't ask questions. Didn't even think twice. Months passed. Other jobs filled my pockets. Life moved on. Until one morning, when I saw it in the paper, a rich man found it dead in his own bed. No struggle, no wounds,

just drowned in a dry room. beside his bed, in the photo from the crime scene, sat the red box. Clear his day. The same box I'd taken from that monastery. The box with the words, nobody else seemed to understand, carved into its lid. And angel's lungs drowned. I realized something that day. There were things people weren't meant to touch.

Things better left buried. I still work this job. I still take what I'm paid to take. But I'm smarter now. I've got rules. And rule number one, never accept a job if the client won't name what they want. Because if they won't name it,

there's a reason. They know exactly what they're asking you to take and exactly what it'll cost. The problem is, you never know who's going to pay that price, you, or the client. And that's not a risk you ever want to take. So I've been doing this job for a long time. I've stolen things from places that shouldn't exist. I've also done my fair share of illegal trading.

I've met monsters to... Yeah, it comes with the job. Not the kind people like to talk about. Not the ones in fairy tales or horror stories. The real ones. The ones that live under the surface of the world, moving between cities and forest, slipping through the cracks in places where the ground is thin. Some of them are worse than you'd expect.

Some are better. I met a mermaid once, years ago in the Gulf of Mexico. She was old. Her skin pale and smooth. Her hair a tangled mess of salt and seaweed. She was the closest thing I'd ever seen to something divine. Not beautiful in the way stories tell it, but something more, something otherworldly.

She had a scar along her side, a long white mark where a harpoon had once cut through her. She should have hated people. She should have wanted, to hurt them. But I watched her pull a drowning child from the waves and disappear beneath the water before anyone could see her. Then, I met a werewolf in Eastern Europe. He worked in a slaughterhouse, breaking down carcasses with careful, gentle hands. He smelled like blood, but he never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. He told me about this one winter when he almost starved,

when he could have taken what he needed to survive. But he didn't, because the only thing within reach had been a family, a mother, father, and a child. He couldn't hunt and refused to feed on those he thought were innocent. Hunters have codes, monster hunters have codes,

and treasure hunters, the ones who know what they're dealing with. Well, they have codes too. There's an order to things. Some things you don't touch. Some lines you don't cross. So here's the second rule. You never take a job involving kids.

Doesn't matter how much they offer. Doesn't matter who's paying. Doesn't matter if you think you can do it clean. You don't put children in the crossfire of greed, ambition, or darkness. He don't take the risk. And I guess I should tell you why. I had a partner once. I won't say his name.

We worked together for a few years back in the early days when I was still figuring things out. He was ruthless, smarter than me in a lot of ways. He knew how to find the right clients, how to set up the best jobs, how to take the most without getting caught. He was ambitious. And that was the problem. Most of us. The ones who last? We know when to stop.

We know when to say no. We can look at a job and assess the risk and decide that some things aren't worth it. But him, he never knew one to stop. And that's what did him in. There was a job, though it was more of a slaughter than anything. A client came to us saying he needed pest, removed from the land he'd bought. This client had money to burn and was the type of person who hated saying no. He'd bought a stretch of forest in South America, miles of untouched green,

thick with old trees and older things. One problem. There was a village in the way. Not a big one, a handful of families. A few dozen people who'd lived there long before the client ever knew the land existed. They weren't leaving, and they weren't selling. So my partner found a way to move him. Fire. He hired men to set the buildings alight in the middle of the night, to burn the place down while everyone was still sleeping. He thought they'd run, that the destruction would scare them off, make them leave for good. But fire has a funny way of spreading. even when you try to control it. And that's exactly what happened.

The smoke rolled through the village before the flames did, thick and choking. People woke up too late. Some not at all. The lucky ones ran, but not all of them made it out. Some of them were too small to understand what was happening, too small to escape. Children died. and by the time the sun rose. The village was gone.

Ash and bones. There was nothing left but burnt earth and a few blackened structures, crumbling at the edges. The client got what he wanted. That was how these things usually went. The people with money always did. The land was his now. The village erased like it had never been there at all.

He sent in his workers, started cleaning the debris, cutting down the trees, paving roads where dirt had been. A grand villa was going to be built. Or at least, that had been the plan. It didn't happen smoothly, though at first no one thought much of it. Accidents on a construction site weren't uncommon, but these weren't normal. Machines broke in ways that didn't make sense. Tools went. went missing and turned up days later, bent and useless. And workers fell sick. Some bad enough that they never came back. The ones who stayed started talking. At night, they heard things in the trees, low noises that didn't belong to any animal they could name. They felt something watching

them from the brush. Just beyond the reach of their lanterns, and in the morning, they found red handprints smeared along the trunks of the oldest trees. Construction slowed, then stopped for months at a time. The client kept pushing. He threw more money at the problem, hired more workers, brought in more machines, and did everything he could to bend the land to his will. He didn't believe in stories or curses, and he'd built over places like this before. Lands with history. Lands where people had left things behind. This wasn't different. At least that's what he told himself. But the villa was never meant to stand. On the eve of its completion, a fire started. No one saw how it began. But by the time anyone noticed, the flames were made.

moving too fast to stop. The heat swallowed everything, burning so hot that even the glass in the windows melted. The workers living on side escaped, but the client didn't. By morning, there was nothing left. No investigation, no culprits, just a body burned down to brittle remains in the place where his bed had been. The workers had their own version of the story. They sent the village, had been protected, not by people, but by something older. The giants in the trees, big red-handed things that smoked tobacco and watched over their land. Some monsters don't just tolerate people. They live alongside them. When humans settle somewhere for long enough, when they pass their lives down from generation to generation.

Some creatures learn to accept them, maybe even care for them. They watch from the trees, from the rivers, from the caves that no one dares enter, and as long as the balance is kept, they let people be. But when the balance is broken, the retaliation is brutal. The village wasn't just a village. It was a place that had existed in harmony. A place where both sides knew the rules. The monsters had allowed people to stay, and in return, the people had respected the land.

They didn't take too much. They didn't expand beyond the edges, and they didn't challenge what lived beside them. The client didn't care about that. He didn't see the village as anything but an obstacle. He burned it to the ground, and with it, the trust that was. the trust that had existed for centuries. And monsters have a soft spot for the young. Whatever lived in those trees had let humans remain

because they had families, because they weren't just outsiders passing through, because they had children who played in the fields and grew up beneath the same sky. The fire took those children, the ones too small to understand, too slow to run. And so the monsters answered.

As for my partner, the one who set it all in motion. He didn't last long after that. He'd been laying low, taking jobs outside of South America, putting distance between himself and what he'd done. But it didn't matter.

Some things follow you, no matter how far you run. They found him strung up in an empty field, tied to a wooden post like a scarecrow, miles away from where the village had been. His arms were stretched out, legs dangling loose, stomach slid open, his insides gone. Instead, his body had been stuffed with straw. No one took credit for it, no human anyway.

I didn't go to the scene, and I didn't ask questions. I already knew what had happened. The monsters of that place had sought their own justice. That was when I made the rule. You never take a job that involves kids. Never. Some things aren't worth the money. Some jobs have consequences you can't outrun.

People like to call it treasure hunting, as if that makes it sound noble. The name makes it sound like adventure, like lost cities and old maps with burned edges, but I don't lie to myself. I steal. That's the truth of it. Every time I take something,

it belongs to someone else. Maybe a person, maybe a family, maybe something older, something without a name, something that still remembers what was once its own. Some places are just ruins, empty spaces in the ground where time has done all the damage. Others still breathe, still hold on to whatever they used to be. Silent places.

Sacred places. And things don't like to be disturbed. That's why some people carry salt. Others wear iron, and the rest pray to whatever God they think is listening. I've worked with people from every background, and everyone has their own way of dealing with it. Some cross themselves before they take a relic, murmuring in a language they only half remember. Others hesitate, staring at what they're about to steal, lips moving like they're asking for permission. Maybe they're praying. Maybe they're apologizing.

Me? Well, I throw salt. It's a habit now, like tightening the straps on my pack or checking my exits before I reach for something I was sent to take. A pinch at the entrance. Another when I leave, a final handful scattered once the object is in my hands. Doesn't always work, but it helps. Somewhere iron rings, simple bands wrapped around their fingers. Not for decoration, but four pretty little. protection. Iron is meant to keep bad spirits at bay, to ward off misfortune, to stop certain things from following you home. I knew this guy once, who carried grave dirt sewn into the

lining of his coat. Maybe he was right. Maybe that's why he's still breathing when others aren't. The truth is, this job comes with risks, not just the ones that involve a lot of. alarms, guards, or locked doors. But the ones no one wants to talk about. You take something from a place that doesn't want to let go, and you feel it. It lingers. That's why you don't lie to yourself. Don't dress it up as something grand.

Don't convince yourself. You're doing the world a favor. Admit what you are. You're a thief. And you keep going anyway. Some do it for the money, others for the thrill. The rush of walking away with something priceless, slipping past security, knowing you beat the system.

That kind of thinking, it is dangerous. You pull off a few big jobs, and suddenly you're untouchable. You start believing the stories you tell yourself. The ones where you're different, where the rules don't apply to you. I saw it happen to a guy once. A rookie I crossed paths with a handful of times. He had good instincts, quick hands, do enough to move through a place without leaving a trace.

He pulled off a few high-profile jobs early on, Egyptian relics, or so they said, he lifted them straight out of a private vault, stolen from a collector who had spent decades tracking them down. If he'd been smart, he would have stopped there. taken his money, and walked away while he still had the chance. But he didn't? He wanted more. His next job was a grave site off the coast of a small French island,

a place with a reputation, not just among thieves, but among the kinds of people who pay attention to the things the world doesn't talk about. The island belonged to them. Vampires. Not the kind from books or movies, the real ones, the ones that lived in the trees, that moved unseen through the streets when the sun went down. They weren't elegant, they weren't tragic, and they weren't fragile. They were hunters, and they were hard to kill.

The rookie didn't care. He walked in unprepared, ignored the warnings, and convinced himself he could outplay them. He thought they were just another obstacle, another problem to solve. And he didn't survive. But they spared his body. A few weeks later, a casket was shipped home.

I saw it myself when it was opened. His skin was pale. Too pale. Like every drop of blood had been drained from him. His eyes were gone. The sockets hollow and black, and his hands had been cut clean off. In the world of thieves, the final sin is being stupid. The day you get cocky is the day you die. That's why you don't lie to yourself. That's where my third rule comes in. Believe in superstitions. Superstition keeps you alive. It keeps you parents. It keeps you parents.

Paranoid, careful, and anxious. Anxiety is good. In our field, being too brave is one step away from death. Learn about the monsters and what you're dealing with. Believe the locals when they say a place is dangerous. Carry your salt and iron. It's a small price to pay for walking away in one piece. And that brings us to the final rule.

This rule is the most important. It saved my life more than once, and it's the reason I still have both my eyes. Not everyone is that lucky. Now, a long time ago, I had a mentor. I won't say his name because it doesn't matter now. What matters is that he was the one who taught me the difference between a thief and a dead man. He'd been doing this work long before I came along. He wasn't some street-level runner or a lucky idiot who fell.

into a few big scores. He was sharp, careful, and smart enough to stay alive in a field where most people didn't make it past their first real job. But even the best make mistakes. His mistake was a needle. The job was simple. A client with more money than sense wanted an artifact from an abandoned medical asylum. Something small. Something delicate. A bone needle. It'd been used for surgeries in the early 1800s, back when medicine was closer to butchery than healing. The asylum had been one of those places where people disappeared. The sick, the unwanted, the inconvenient. The doctors weren't doctors. The patients weren't treated. Somewhere inside those walls, a surgeon had worked for years, cutting into the living,

taking things from them piece by piece. That was the history behind the needle. But my mentor didn't know that. He took the job without looking into it. The client gave him one instruction, do not touch the needle with your bare hands. Do not let it break the skin. He didn't ask why. He thought he didn't need to. The needle had been tucked inside a rotting wooden drawer in the old surgical ward, sealed in a glass vial with brittle wax. The room had collapsed years ago, rusted tables overturned, shattered glass crunching underfoot, surgical tools scattered across dirt-covered tile. The ceiling had caved in just enough to let the light cut long, thin lines through the dust. He picked up the vial. The needle inside was thin, almost too fragile to be real.

The color of old bone carved into a sharp, precise point. He didn't see the harm in touching it. It was just a piece of history, just a touch. Just a tiny. tool somewhat had once used. He'd stolen wars. He'd taken things much older, things with curses written all over him. I don't know why exactly he touched it. Maybe it called to him. Objects like that sometimes do. The moment his fingers closed around it, something went wrong. A deep pain, like a hook sinking behind. his eye. Not just pressure. Not just a headache. A sharp, violent pull, like something was yanking it straight from the socket. He staggered, knocked over the drawer, and hit his head against the side

of the table. Then it was over. No blood, no wound, just pain. He didn't think much of it at first. He'd been stabbed before, taking a bullet in the shoulder, walked away from falls that should have broken him. This was just another entering, something he could shake off. He pocketed the vial and left the asylum. And now is the last time anyone saw him for four days. His phone went dead. His safe house sat empty. He didn't show up for jobs, didn't answer messages.

didn't check in with his usual contacts. People thought he was lying low, waiting for the right time to surface. But I knew better. Something had happened in that asylum. And when he finally reappeared, I found out the truth. The right side of his face was different.

His eye was gone. Not missing. Gone. The socket. It was smooth, unbroken skin stretched over bone like it had never been there at all. The pain had gotten worse. He tried everything. Medicine, sleep, alcohol, anything to dull the ache, pressing deeper into his skull.

Nothing worked. Then one morning, he woke up and it was just gone. No blood, no tearing, no mess. just skin healed over it, like it had always been that way. Later, he went back through the asylum's records and found out the truth. The bone needle had belonged to a surgeon who spent years experimenting on patients, cutting into them, removing things from them while they were still alive. He took fingers, ears, whole organs,

and when they died, he took their bones. That needle had been his tool. And even after all this time, it still did what it was made to do. If you touched it with your bare hands, it took something from you in return. It didn't matter if you let go. It didn't matter if you left it behind. The moment you made contact, it decided. excited what to take. And that's how I learned my last rule. Always research the job and always

follow the warnings. So that's it. Those are all my rules and all the stories that came with them. The way I see it, I've been lucky. Luck keeps you breathing in this line of work. You can be the smartest, fastest, most careful thief in the world. But if luck isn't on your side, You end up like the others. Dead. Missing. Or worse? I've lasted longer than most.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Gulf of Mexico, a cheap cigar burning between my fingers, watching the waves roll in. The sun's setting. The water is gold at the edges. And for once, the world feels quiet. It's nice. but I can feel it in my bones.

I'm at the end of my rope. I've pulled too many jobs, walked away from things I shouldn't have survived. The box, the village, the needle. I've made my money, more than enough to disappear and never look back. And that's what I want, because luck runs out.

I have seen too many people stay too long. chase one last payday ignore the warning signs until they slip up and the world swallows them whole I don't want to be one of them I want to leave while I still have

both feet on the ground and maybe just maybe go home I have not seen my parents in 20 years can you believe that I've been sending them money all the time

and from what I last heard They used it to buy a little farm, vegetables mostly. Enough to live nicely. I wonder what they'd think if I showed up after all these years. If they'd even recognize me. If I'd even recognize myself. Sometimes I think about the life I could have had. If I'd stayed in the village, if I'd been satisfied with small things,

if I'd never left. Maybe there's a version of me. somewhere that never picked up this line of work. Someone who wakes up early. Works the fields, sells produce at the market, and goes to bed without a single nightmare clawing at the edges of his mind. But thinking about that now is useless. That life isn't mine. Never was. There's one last job before I leave all this behind. One last run before I walk away for good.

Then I'm done. And you, the rookie sitting across from me, taking all this in, maybe thinking about stepping into my shoes, are you? Well, I wish you the best. Just remember the rules because you'll need them.