Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I Work at a Funeral Home. We have Four RULES to Survive | Scary Stories

Episode Date: May 28, 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: I Work at a Funeral Home. We 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 - 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!

My name is William. I'm the head manager here at Red 32 Funerals. I don't like to talk much about before. You'll hear people say they were a man of the cloth, and it sounds like something soft. Velved robes, gold trim, a warm, safe kind of life. It wasn't like that. I was a priest, yes, but not the kind with a pulpit and parish potlucks. My sermons weren't about love. They were about keeping the doors shut. And if I left that behind, if I walked away from the collar and the cross, it's because I had to. Not because I wanted to.

Now, I run red 32 funerals, 16 years and counting. You're the new receptionist, aren't you? Huh. I'm surprised you showed. Most don't. That ad has been up so long. the paper has turned yellow. People call and ask about it sometimes, but they hang up when I tell them we do our own embalming, or they just stop responding after the interview. You shut up,

though. Maybe you're different. Now this is the kind of place that runs on more than one job title. You'll answer the phones, yes, but also help with intake. Deliver paperwork to the hospital, sometimes help me prep a body. I won't ask you to do it. anything I haven't done a hundred times myself, but I will ask you to take it seriously. And I mean dead seriously. People think funeral work is all sadness and candles. They forget the part about keeping order, the real kind, the kind that holds the bones and the ground.

Now, you'll notice a few things. I keep a silver pocket watch in my vest. It doesn't tick. You'll hear no sound from it, not even if you press it to your ear. It's not for the hour. It's for remembering how long they've been still. You'll learn why that matters soon enough. You might think I'm superstitious.

I am not. I don't believe in ghosts. I believe in rules. There's a difference. If you forget the salt in the prep room, I will yank you back by your conscience. collar. I won't raise my voice. I won't curse. But I will drag you back to that body, and you will do it again. Properly. Because salt isn't for taste, and it's not for show. It's part of the barrier. You forget that, and things slip. I don't preach anymore. Haven't raised my voice in

prayer in over a decade. But if you mutter a verse while we work, and I hear you don't mean it, I'll stop you. Right there. No halfway words in this place, no empty breath. Because everything here listens and everything here remembers. Now, you're still sure you want the job? Good. Then I'll show you the embalming room. Watch your stuff. Don't touch the door frame, and for God's sake, don't ask about the bell in the back hole. Not yet. Tucked beside a crooked old church no one remembers the name of. This small local funeral home has been open longer than the graveyard it's surrounded by.

That always bothers people the first time they hear it. Something about it feels wrong. Backwards. Like time should move in only one direction. And buildings meant for the dead. shouldn't come before the land meant to hold them. But Red 32 was here first. Not by a year or two, not by mistake.

The church came later. The headstones came later. Even the trees, tall and bent now like quiet old men, grew up after. The land, though, it always had something under it. You can feel it if you stand still long enough on the back lot. Something deep, not hollow, maybe not alive, just old. It started with a man. That's on most stories go, even the worst ones.

A man with countless hands and his spine shaped by labor. His name was Elias Kerr. Now, Elias wasn't from here. Nobody really knows where he came from. Some said Scotland. others said somewhere out west. No one could ever agree, and there are no papers left to prove it. But the story always starts the same.

In 1796, Elias Kerr walked out of a mine collapse that killed 42 men, walked out barefoot and bleeding, carried another man's arm in his satchel, thinking it was his own. He didn't speak for three days after they put. pulled him from the rock. When he finally opened his mouth, what he said was this. He owed a debt to the earth. Not to God.

Not to the men who died. To the ground itself. He stayed in town, but never went near a mine again. Instead, he started building. Not for profit, not for anyone else. He built something for him. himself, a chapel, small and gray, with thick stone walls and an altar that faced west instead of east. There was no congregation, no sermons, no cross, only graves. He buried each of the 42 men

with his bare hands, dug the plots himself, all on the same stretch of land behind the chapel. No help. No tools but a shovel and a length of cord. He didn't build the markers from wood. He carved them from left over stone. He wheeled up from the quarry every week. Their names. Well, they're almost unreadable now. Worn down by wind and rain and years of moss.

But you can still feel the grooves if you touch them. And people do. Strangers, travelers. Not many, but some. Every few years, someone drives miles out of their way to stand in front of those stones and press their palms flat against them. They never stay long.

After the graves were dug, Elias didn't stop. He built a second structure next to the chapel, smaller, lower, with no windows at all. Thick walls again, the kind that muffle. The kind that keep the cold in no matter the season. No one asked what it was for. But the rumors started quickly. It wasn't a home.

He didn't sleep in it. He didn't eat there. The town started calling it the cold room. It was where he brought the dead. Not just miners, but anyone else who passed, anyone without a family. Or with family, too. afraid to claim them. Elias would carry them in himself, one by one, sometimes on his back, sometimes on a stretcher he made from branches and canvas. He never locked the door,

but no one went inside, not even out of curiosity. He called it a settling room. That was the word he used, not morgue, not crypt, not parlor. A place. for the dead to settle before they sank. Now, no one knew exactly what that meant, but it was said with such certainty, like it wasn't just a belief. It was a rule. The place had no name. That came later, and not from Elias, but that little room of stone, table, and salt, that was the first version of Red 32. You can still feel the shape of. of it under the floor and the current building. When you walk through the back corridor past the embalming room, the wood shifts in a strange way,

not creaking exactly, more like pressure, like something underneath is holding its breath. There's no official record of when it was built. The city has no permits, no blueprints, no mention of a property line until the early 1900s, and even then, while the notes are strange, vague, descriptions of structures of indeterminate age and non-conforming use. But the building was there. Still is. We didn't knock it down, we built over it. You'll notice as you work here that some things don't fit quite right. Angles where the floor meets the wall, doors that don't swing straight, corners that feel wider on one side than the other.

That's because the original stone walls are still underneath, just behind the drywall. Some of the old supports are buried in the foundation. We couldn't remove them. We tried once. One of the beams cracked open during a renovation and let out a smell that emptied the whole building for two days. not decay, not sewage, not mold. It smelled like roses and rot. Both at once, thick in the throat, the kind of scent that clings to your clothes even after you've left the property.

We sealed the crack with resin and steel brackets, covered it with shelving. That was ten years ago, and the shelves have never hit. killed a thing. Anything we place there just tips over on its own. So now we leave it bare. Some rooms don't want to be used, and some names don't want to be remembered. There are no photographs of Elias Kerr, no portraits, not even a sketch, but the stone remains and the table. And the salt? That's where it all began. That's where it still begins. Every time.

Now that you know a little bit about this place, where it came from, what bones it's built on, you should know some of the rules. Not the kind you find in an employee handbook. There's no binder, you know, no HR desk. There are the real rules, the ones that matter. So listen close. Rule number one. No one is allowed to die on the property.

You might think that sounds strange for a funeral home, like we're trying to make a joke out of something that isn't funny. But I'm not joking. No one dies inside Red 32. Not anymore. It's not a matter of policy. It's not insurance. It's not about paperwork.

It's a rule. A real one. Maybe the most important we have. If someone dies inside the walls of this building, they don't leave. They become what I call a resident. Now I've dealt with spirits before. I know the difference. A ghost is a memory that refuses to let go.

Some of them don't even know they're dead. Others hang around for reasons of their own. Unfinished business, strong emotions, whatever keeps them tethered. But spirits, real ones, are usually just noise. They knock things over. They walk down halls. They stand too close to your bed and they make you feel cold. But they don't mean harm, not most of them.

Residents or something else. When a person dies on this land, on it, not just near it. They don't stay as themselves. Something in the ground twists them. It hollows them out and packs the space with rage. Some force inside this place peels them down to their most violent parts and builds from there. It doesn't matter who they wore in life. Good, bad, kind, cruel, death here reshapes them into something terrible.

and they remember. They remember the moment of death like an ember in their chest, burning hotter. Every time someone walks past the spot where it happened, that's what a resident is. They're not spirits, they're not mourners, they're not echoes, they're occupants. And they don't like company. The last time someone died inside Red 32, we had to close for six weeks. That was the last time I let someone die here. That was over a decade ago, and I still don't use the West Cold Room.

I keep it locked. Now, when we have a viewing or a family gathering, we keep a close eye on the guest. Some of them come in already weak. Old age. illness, grief. You can see it in their hands the way they grip door frames to steady themselves. It's worse when they sit down. That's when it starts. They lean back and let out this long breath like they're letting go. That's when we move. If someone starts dying, really dying, you get them out. No hesitation, no waiting. Doesn't matter.

if it's snowing outside or if you're in the middle of a prayer, I don't care. It doesn't matter how peaceful it looks or how close the end is. You put your arms under their arms and you drag them outside. Better a lawsuit than a resident. I've done it before more than once. We had a woman collapse in the chapel once. Maybe, what was it, eight years ago? Slid out of the pew like her bones gave up. Her nephew screamed. Her sister tried to lay her flat. I saw the signs immediately. Eyes half-lidded, fingers curling inward, that final slackening that comes when the souls halfway loose. I didn't ask questions. I didn't wait for permission. I lifted her by the shoulders and I dragged her down the aisle while her family screamed at me to stop.

They thought I was completely insane, but I was saving them. She died just outside the front steps on the gravel. I folded my coat under her head and said the words I still remembered from seminary. She passed quiet, gentle, and she left. We didn't have to board up the chapel. We didn't have to scrub the pews with salt and soap. We didn't have to move a family into a hotel for six weeks and have the walls repainted after something clawed its way through the plaster.

We just buried her like we were supposed to. That's the outcome we want. Sometimes families, they don't understand. They think it's disrespectful. you know, cold, cruel, and that's fine. They're not here long. They don't have to live with the consequences. We do.

It's also the reason. A lot of the long-term staff here come from the cloth. Not all or priest, but most used to be. Deacons, monks, a few nuns. I don't ask for credentials. I don't need a certificate to know when someone has been shaped by faith. Men of the cloth don't flinch

when they see something that isn't right. They don't blink when the light bends wrong around a corner. And more importantly, they know how to handle the dead. There's a way you move a body, a way you speak to it, a way you carry it down the hallway

that shows respect, but not fear. Fear invites things in confidence keeps the door shut. Civilians don't always get that. You will. If you stay here long enough, you'll learn the difference. You'll learn what to look for in someone's eyes. When they've already started slipping away, you'll feel it in the temperature of the room, not cold exactly, but paused, like the walls are holding their breath. waiting to see which way it goes.

If you hesitate, even for a second, that breath turns inward, and that it's too late? Look, I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'm telling you, because if someone dies inside this place, you will see them again. And it won't be as they were. It'll be what they became. You won't recognize their voice. You won't recognize their face. You'll just know one thing the moment they enter the room.

They don't want help. They want company. Rule number two. The cadaver must be spoken to before embalming. Some people think the body is just a shell. Once the heart stops, they say. That's it? Just meat and bone.

That's not true. When a body comes through our doors, it doesn't come in empty. There's always something left behind. Sometimes it's memory. Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's just confusion. Thick and quiet like fog in the skull. Most people don't die gently.

I know people don't like hearing that. That's another lie we like to tell ourselves, that death comes. like a soft hand in the dark. Most people die in pain. They die afraid or angry or surprised. Sometimes they don't even know what happened. When that body ends up on our table, stripped, drained, and prepared for the final steps,

it still remembers what it felt like to be alive. It remembers the rush, the panic, the last breath that never came back in. That's why we speak to him. It's not tradition, it's not habit, it's a rule. You must speak to the cadaver before embalming, not after, not during, before you touch a tool, before you adjust their limbs, before the first incision. Speak.

Not just any words, not whatever comes to mind. There is a phrase we use. and only this phrase your name is known your rest is earned you say it clearly calmly like you mean it

because they hear you they might not show it but they do and if you skip it if you forget or rush you think it doesn't matter the body knows We had a new tech here once, fresh out of mortuary school. Eager, sharp.

Thought he knew more than the rest of us because his textbooks were newer. First day, I gave him a chance to prep a body while I watched. Told him the rule. Even wrote it down on the whiteboard. He didn't say the words. I was ten feet away when it happened. The body had already been drained. tubing was in place.

The jaw was wired shut, and then it moved. Not a twitch, not a spasm. Not the kind of shift you can blame on nerves or posture. It seized. Every muscle locked at once, arms pulled in tight, toes curled so hard they cracked, you could hear it. He dropped the tools. Backed away like he'd touched fire.

I didn't say a word. I just stepped forward and repeated the phrase. Your name is known. Your rest is earned. Slowly, the tension left. The hands opened. The feet relaxed. The skin turned cold again the way it's supposed to be.

I told him to go home. home after that. He didn't come back. And that's fine. Not everyone is meant for this work. You will be if you learn. Look, the thing you have to understand is that dying, it's not a single moment. It's a process. For some people, it ends fast. For others, it drags. And sometimes, it keeps dragging even after the heart stops. That part of the soul, whatever's left behind, it doesn't always understand where it is, or why it can't move.

My gosh, if you start cutting, draining, sewing, if you violate that confusion without acknowledgement, you risk waking something that doesn't want to be awake. You may see nothing, you may hear nothing, but the moment you ignore that kindness, something bad happens. Not because it's angry, because it's scared. That's why we say the words, not for ceremony, not to honor the dead in some grand way, but because it's the only thing that reaches across that boundary. The phrase itself doesn't come from scripture.

It's older. No one knows exactly where it came from. But it works and that's what matters. You'll get used to saying it. Some of the bodies twitch when they hear it. A finger jerks. And eyelid flutters. It's normal.

Just nerves responding to the echo. If the body blinks, start over, repeat the phrase until the eyes stay closed. If it takes three times, say it three times. Never walk away until you're sure. But if the mouth moves, if it talks, you leave the room right away. You lock the door behind you.

You don't respond, you don't ask questions. You don't finish the prep. If the dead starts speaking, it means they haven't crossed over. It means they're caught between and clawing for a way back. And that's not your job. We're not shepherds. We're not reapers.

We don't lead people through death. That is someone else's role. We just prepare them for burial. You need to know the difference. When the dead speak, they don't want peace. They want answers. And they think you can give them some. They'll beg, they'll lie, they'll curse.

They'll sound just like they did when they were alive. Because they are still inside. Don't be fooled by the voice. Don't be moved by the sorrow. They're not your responsibility. Your job is to guide them from one place to the next. Not explain why the bridge exists. If you follow the rules, they settle.

If you don't, they don't. It's that simple. So before you lay your hands on a body, before you unwrap it from the delivery shroud, before you so much as open your mouth to comment on the clothes or the toe tag, say the phrase. Say it like you mean it.

Because sometimes it's the only thing standing between a peaceful procedure in a room you'll never walk into again. Rule number three. Never autopsy a body wearing red. Rib 32. It's not just a name. Not really.

It's something deeper. Some of the staff think the numbers the important part. That maybe we're the 32nd funeral home in a line of others like this, or that there were 31 others. before something finally went wrong. Some say it's a countdown.

I've heard everything from biblical references to conspiracy boards. Doesn't matter. I don't think it's the number. I think it's the color. And if you've worked here long enough, if you've seen the messes we've had to clean and the prayers we've had to say, you'll stop guessing too.

You'll understand the rule for what it is. We never autopsy a body wearing red. Not a red shirt, not a red dress, not a necktie, scarf, glove, or sock. Doesn't matter how small it is. It doesn't matter why they were wearing it. Red. It holds things. In the medical setting, colors shouldn't matter.

Once a body's dead, it's dead. The clothes are just fabric. They're removed. tagged and either return to the family or disposed of. But here at Red 32, Red does something fabric isn't supposed to do. It keeps things alive. Not in the scientific sense. No heartbeat, breath, or brain function.

It keeps the feeling. Anger, grief, confusion. All the noise people carry in their final moment. all the emotional weight. The red doesn't let it leave. It traps it, holds it down like heat sealed in a metal box. You can't see it. You won't measure it with instruments. But when you work the table, you will feel it. It sticks to your gloves. It turns the room heavy. And when you cut into a body still wearing red, even a sliver of it still on the skin. You let all that trapped rage out all at once.

Not symbolically, not metaphorically. I mean the body will bleed. And it won't stop. This isn't normal post-mortem bleeding. Every embalmed body has some fluid that leaks. Every incision can drip. This isn't that. This is pretty.

pressure, volume, persistence. It doesn't matter if the veins were drained, tied, clamped. Doesn't matter if the heart is gone. The blood will come. We didn't always know this rule. One night, early spring, a body came in from out of town. Young man, 23, found dead in his park car. No wounds, no signs of violence.

No OD. He was sitting upright, like he just dozed off. Autopsy was requested by the family. Standard procedure. There was no warning on the char, nothing flagged. He came in wearing a red track suit, synthetic fabric, glossy, like something you'd wear to a gym or a party. It didn't look ceremonial. It didn't look intentional.

But red is red. One of our newer assistants started prep before I got to the room. It wasn't careless, just inexperienced. He assumed the red would be removed like anything else, that it was safe to proceed. And he was wrong. He made the first incision along the lower torso. Standard Y cut, no blood at first, just tissue, soft and pale. the way it should be.

Then it started. A slow trickle at first, which he assumed was left over from transport. But then it kept coming. Not thin like embalming fluid. Thick, wet, too much. The body had been drained. He'd check the tags.

Tubes were clean. Lines were closed. But the blood poured out like, the body didn't know it was dead. He tried to stop it. Pressure, clamps, cauterization, nothing worked. By the time I stepped in, it was spreading across the floor in a sheet. Too wide for one body. Too steady. It looked like someone had opened a main. We called for help. Not medical. Clergy. Two of my contacts. Priest who no longer work in parishes,

arrived with the proper tools. They didn't ask questions. Just started working. Salt lines, incense. Words that aren't spoken in Sunday sermons. Even after the bleeding stopped, the damage was done. The autopsy room had to be shut for a month. Blood had soaked under the tiles into the casters of the table, into the grout.

It had a weight to it, the kind that clings to your boots, even after the floor looks clean. We sealed the body without further examination, buried it in a double-lined casket with a red garment still inside, per our amended protocol. And after that night, I changed the intake checklist. Now we check for red first. It's on the top of the form, highlighted. and bold, you'll see it. If red is found, we stop everything. We remove it using gloves and seal it in a separate bag. The bag is buried with a body. Never returned, never burned, never reused. The family is not consulted. It is not their decision. We had to learn that too. A few months after the track suit incident, a woman came in wearing a red silk scarf, thin, soft, elegant.

The family insisted we return it, said it belonged to her grandmother, said it had been passed down for generations. We told them we couldn't. They argued, threatened to sue, said we were violating personal property laws, said it was just a scarf. And I let them. yell. Then I showed them the photos from the last time someone ignored the rule. They didn't bring it up again. You'll get used to those conversations. You'll learn how to stand firm when people push, and you'll learn to recognize red before your hands even touch the fabric. You'll feel it. So remember the rule. Say it to yourself if you have to. Write it on your sleeve. Tape it to the mirror above your sink. Never autopsy a body. Wearing red. Rule number four, never recite a prayer

you don't believe in. This job isn't about faith, not really. It helps, sure, but we don't hire people based on what God they pray to, or if they pray at all. You could be a monk, a heretic, or someone who lights a candle only when the lights go out. That's not exactly what matters here. What matters is whether or not you understand what a prayer actually is. Because a prayer is not just words. It's not just noise dressed up in holy clothes. A prayer is a key.

And when you speak one, whether you know it or not, you're turning that key in a lock you can't sit. See, that lock might be in the ground. It might be behind the eyes of the body lying in front of you. Might even be in your own throat? And once it's turned, there's no turning it back. See, here at Red 32, we don't ask our workers to follow any particular religion. We don't take you aside and quiz you on what scripture you've memorized.

I don't really care what you believe. but I care very much whether you mean it when you say it. That's the difference. Not belief, exactly, but sincerity. It's the only thing that matters when speaking to the dead. Some rights are spoken out loud. Some are whispered. Some are silent movements of the hands across the skin.

All of them count if the person doing them believes. That belief charges the action, fills it with something the dead recognize. It's like a light in the dark, not warm, not safe, but seen. The soul doesn't always know where it is after it's left the body. It drifts, it lingers, it forgets what time feels like. But it remembers tone, intention, familiar, patterns. And when it hears something it once knew, an honest prayer, spoken with real feeling, it settles not into sleep necessarily, just into place, into silence. But if you fake it,

if you say the words just to fill the air, or to please a family member watching you from the doorway, or worse, to mock the ceremony itself, then the soul doesn't settle. It doesn't move on. It sharpens. We had a technician here once, long before your time. Fast learner, bright. The kind you always finish the checklist before anyone else. But he treated the rights like background music, a formality. Something to do with your mouth while you're hands worked. There was a body brought in, middle-aged man, long illness. The family was part of a small religious sect, not something you'd find in a textbook. Their only request was that a certain phrase be spoken while the body was being washed. Just eight words. Easy enough to remember. They even

wrote it down phonetically, so there'd be no excuse for mispronouncing it. That tech thought it was funny. He told the joke about it while we were getting supplies, called it a magic spell. The family wasn't there to hear it, but I did. And later, when he was alone in the chapel doing prep, he said the words, I know he said them, because I found the slip of paper still tucked under the tray, but he didn't say them as right. He said them with a sneer. That matters. When I found him later, he was hanging from the rafters. He was alive, just barely.

His eyes were open but unfocused. His mouth was moving, but the words weren't his. They weren't in any language I could place. Not Latin, not Aramaic. Not anything I could match to a right. We cut him down, Very careful. We kept him sedated for three days, watched over him in shifts.

He never stopped speaking. The rhythm stayed the same. Like a litany, he couldn't stop repeating even in sleep. And then on the fourth morning, he was gone. No sign of forced entry, no open doors, no footage on the cameras, just an empty bed and the faint smell of cancer. candle smoke. After that, we rewrote the employee manual. We changed how we train people. We started with one sentence carved into the first page of the rights log in all caps.

Never recite a prayer you don't believe in. And now I'm telling you the same. The danger doesn't come from saying the words wrong. It doesn't come from following a faith that isn't your own. We perform ceremonies from dozens of traditions here. That's not the problem. The problem comes when someone pretends. When you recite sacred words without meaning them, the dead no. The weight of those syllables passes through your body but finds no anchor,

no honesty. And that emptiness becomes a kind of invitation. And something answers it. Because that's how prayer works. It opens. If you say something sacred with mockery in your voice, the dead don't see a mourner. They see a liar.

And liars have no place among the dead. Well, that's all the rules you need for now. Enough to get you through your first shift without getting yourself or anyone else hurt. There are more, of course. A lot more. Some of them written down. Others passed between staff and the break room when the lights flicker. A few are only learned the hard way.

One mistake at a time. But those can wait. You'll hear them when you're ready. This place, it has a way of knowing how much a person can handle. It gives you what you need, right up to the edge of what you're not supposed to know. yet. Sometimes if you're lucky, it gives you time to brace yourself before the next lesson starts. But that's the trick, isn't it? You don't always know when a lesson is beginning.

If you respect the rules, if you speak gently, walk steady, and keep your eyes open. You might just last. Welcome to Red 32. Funeral Homes. Thank you.