Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I'm an Astronaut. NASA gave us a STRANGE list of Rules | Scary Stories

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Rule # 1: NEVER talk about what happened on the International Space Station 1 Story from J Campbell Make sure to check out more of their work at u/Erutious  Cover Art from huleeb               Original Post: The Metal Man of Courtney Nevada : r/nosleep  Original YouTube link: I'm an Astronaut. NASA gave us a STRANGE list of Rules          For more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube  Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | Patreon Merch: lighthousehorror.com  Music: Lucas King - YouTube Myuu - YouTube  Incompetech Darren 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!

There's one rule we astronauts have to follow. We don't talk about the first international space station. Now, people forget that one of the first things NASA screens for are people who can follow orders. You don't want to know what happens to astronauts who don't, but for our sake, we need to get the word out. The public has to know what they're really doing up here. It was supposed to be the best moment of my life. the moment I had prepared for since I was a kid. As I sit here talking, it's the last memory I'm choosing to remember.

I could still remember it all so clearly. The view from the shuttle as we approached the International Space Station to. It was the second greatest side of my life. It, only after my first ever look at the Earth from orbit. Ever since I was small, I wanted to be an astronaut. I grew up in D.C. My dad worked in a senator's office as an undersecretary. Mom was working for a nonprofit that provided aid for humanitarian missions.

Dad loved museums and science centers and things like that. I was taken to the air and space museums a lot earlier than I probably should have been. Dad, he always said I'd be doing something with aeronautics from the way my three-year-old eyes lit up at the display. pieces. And from then on, both my parents nurtured my love of flying in outer space. When I was 18, I went into the Air Force. I got my mechanics license, studied aeronautics, and became an engineer by 24. I was getting ready to work for Boeing or Airbus straight after graduation, but then I received a letter that changed everything. It was from NASA. They wanted me to come work on the brand new international space station too.

And I was speechless. I went over the letter a million times, trying to believe what I'm reading. And it was a dream come true. I called them immediately, and I told them I would be honored. I spent the next year getting ready to go to space. I thought that boot camp was the toughest thing I'd ever have to go through. It was way worse than the engine. engineering degree for sure. But none of that prepared me for the training I had to do to go

to space. There were simulations in ZeroG, training with the space shuttle controls, and a rigorous exercise routine. I wasn't there alone either. NASA had 60 candidates competing for 40 spots, but I was told that as long as I passed all the tests, one of those spots was mine. The head of the program was an old airman himself. And he was eager to get the right person in the sky. Now, I wasn't blind to the clear nepotism at work, but I couldn't deny that I was still excited. Fourteen months, two weeks, and six days later, I was strapped into a shuttle with the first eight that would be gone up. By that point, going through the launch sequence was second nature, as we launched ourselves

out of the Earth's atmosphere and towards the stars. It felt like something I've done my whole life. And when I got my first look at my new home for the next two years, I knew I was where I belonged. Now, the ISS2 is larger than the first one. It's capable of holding four times as many crew and housing 40 full-time staff. It had been operational for about five years at that point. The construction was in the works long before the fatal disaster on the first space station. You could still see the ISS-1 out there floating in reverse orbit from the new station. It looked like a tugboat beside an ocean liner compared to the ISS-2. The crew of the second station had been cannibalizing it for parts from what I heard,

but they were very careful about what they took and how deep into the station they went. No one was quite sure why. Details of the salvage operation were a closely guarded secret, known only to the head of the station, Captain Shaw. The only thing most people knew was that something had happened on the ISS-1 that resulted in the death of nine crewmen. It was an accident. the upper brass weren't interested in repeating, especially when the death toll could be much higher on the new station. As we docked, I couldn't help but watch as the sad old relic drifted by. I wondered if someday someone would look at the station I was now entering and see nothing but a pile of broken metal.

Captain Shaw met us in the hangar as we disembarked. He was a middle-aged man. His hair was a blizzard of salt and pepper sculpted into a high, tight flat top. He surveyed us critically from between a pair of officers in security uniforms. He seemed to approve of what he saw for the most part. He looked like a hundred other higher-ups I'd seen in my time in the service. It was comforting in its own way, if that makes any sense. He was a known quantity, and I could work with that. The captain then cleared his throat and addressed us in this big, booming voice.

Good to have you all on board. I am Captain Charles Shaw, and you will all be serving under me for your tour of duty here on the International Space Station 2. This station currently houses 20, and when the 40 of you who pass the screening process gets settled in, we will be fully staffed. Some of you will belong to the Engineer Corps under Chief Engineer Roberts. Some of you will work under Dr. Williams in the Science Corps. A few of you will work security under me personally. But no matter where you work, you should consider yourselves one team and one family. We are all here to help each other and to ensure the safety of this great, station.

So, engineers, follow the arrows to your left, science staff to your right, and security staff, well, you're with me. We split off for our respective departments, and so began my first day working in the ISS2. Roberts is one of the best supervisors I'd ever had, and turned out to be another past airman. He was unbelievably calm, and the 15 of us who made up the engineering corps were proud to work under him. He assigned us into three main groups, three engineers for each wing of the station. We spent our days working like Santa's elves, trying to stay out of sight as we made the repairs

that kept the ship floating along. You would think that working on a space station would feel odd, but it's amazing to be what you can get used to. There's simulated gravity in some of the areas. There are the pods under the rotating rings on the end mostly, but the rest just has you free floating. I was under the engineering core, so most of my job is just rigging things up and fixing consoles. We go out every now and again to fix problems with the exterior, but spacewalks are harder to get clearance for unless it's an emergency. The station housed around 60 people at any given time.

We had a few more from time to time and a few less from time to time, but most of the time there were 35 members of the science team, 15 engineers, and 10 security personnel. Why we needed so much security? Became clear during my first week. The members of the science team were brilliant, but they did get passionate about, their work sometimes. Fights were not uncommon, and the security staff was constantly being called to help settle disagreements. For our part, we mostly stayed out of sector drama, but there were more than a few times when the engineers would be witness to some of the more

spirited debates from the science team. Speaking of the science team, well, they were the ones doing the real work. I used to love going to the botanical labs, to rig up different systems or work on their hydration systems. It was like stepping into a greenhouse back on Earth. And they were always developing something new. Most of it was over my head. My thumbs are greasy as opposed to green, but the gist of it was that they were growing plants

that would be able to survive on other planets. The focus currently was Mars. But they were preparing for things like deep space columns, colonization as well. The botanical labs also provided most of the oxygen for the station. They were considered one of the more important sections of the ship. One of my earliest spacewalks was to install thicker siding on that part of the station, in case of bombardment by foreign bodies. Besides the botanical labs, there's lab two, which served as the engineering bay. This was something I was a little more experienced

They were working on hypothetical aircraft there, things that could survive in space for long periods and travel long distances on small fuel reserves. A lot of the science was concepts I could understand, but rarely was I asked to design an aircraft on Earth that needed to sustain that amount of pressure. They were building some prototypes on site. My teammates often had to pull me away so that they had to pull me away so that they needed to sustain that. the scientist would stop picking my brain for ideas. Lab 3 was long-term food sustainment, and it was essentially a bunch of engineers trying to make a replicator. All of us had grown up watching Star Trek, and we knew that every spaceship needed a replicator

to make meals and snacks and hot Earl gray tea. They were trying to make a 3D printer for food, but it was hard to decide on a food-base that would be easy to store and replicate for long journeys. Lab 4 was focused more on Earth problems and had the usual think tanks for things like pollution and deforestation and such. They were working on compounds for removing oil from seawater, solvents for putting out wildfires, things that seemed to be plaguing people's lives recently. It wasn't a lot of practical work, mostly hypothetical stuff, but they were always

hard at it. Finally, Lab 5 was deep space broadcasting, and they seemed to need our help the most. They were trying to get something to return one of their signals, something to return a broadcast. They had so much equipment in there, so much weird tech that always seemed to be breaking, and a lot of it was older stuff that I had no idea how to fix. With all these things to look after, it was no wonder that I blinked and I'd suddenly been in space for six months. And that was when they sent us to the ISS One for the first time. We arrived at the start of our shift and were told that four of us needed to report to Captain Shaw's office. He was reading some reports when the four of us arrived.

He seemed to be weighing something heavily. He kept looking up at us as he chewed over whatever was in the report before finally steep laying his fingers and taking a look at us. I felt extremely judged in that moment, and I found myself hoping that I wasn't in trouble. Gentlemen, he said, this is an extremely important job. It will need to be followed to the letter,

and there's no wiggle room here. You'll be going back to the ISS-1 to remove three of the large dishes from the northern face. Broadcast team needs them to replace the ones they lost to debris this morning. Unless we salvage them from the ISS-1, it could be three weeks before we can get a new one up on the next shuttle. That being said, I need all four of you to follow the rules in place for going to the station. He raised a finger, raking us all with his gaze as he prepared to laid out. 1. Under no circumstances are you to enter the ISS for any reason. 2. Do your best not to look at the station while you work.

3. Whatever you may or may not see while on the ISS is not to return with you. It is not to be spoken of with anyone and would be best left in the airlock when you return. Understood. We all nodded, but it seemed pretty weird. What was he worried that we would see? There shouldn't be anything to see on the space station, right? It was abandoned after the disaster, and the only thing to see there should be whatever had been left behind. The more I thought about it, the weirder the requests seemed. As we piled into the small shuttle, I expressed my concern to the others. Beside me, there was Rob, Patty, and Clemens.

All solid guys I'd become pretty good friends with. Rob was an engineer from MIT, with a background in aeronautics like me. He was another victim of Lab 2's intense Q&A sessions. Patty was retired Navy, and he bragged about working on nuclear submarines back in the day. Clemens was Army, but he'd done a lot of battlefield engineering in war zones and was good at rigging things up on the fly. They all just shrugged at the question, saying it was probably just something they told everyone. Probably had something to do with the NDAs we'd signed before they sent us up. I mean, at the end of the day, it's his show.

Patty said, we got to play by his rules. Still, I couldn't shake the weird feeling as we came to the station and docked on the outside. We had about two hours before we needed to leave. Plenty of time to do what needed doing. As we disembarked, I remembered feeling a rush of excitement that tamped down on my uneasiness. Spacewalks were always so cool. It's hard to be anxious about anything beyond the quality of your suit while you're floating through the void. We came hopping around the outside of the station, probably looking silly to anything that might have been watching us.

We found the first dish pretty easily. Patty set to work with a torch while Rob helped him. Meanwhile, Clemens told me to follow him so we could get the second dish. It was close, but this one was neat. near one of the observation windows. It was hard not to look inside as we got to the dish ready to remove it. Behind the glass floated all sorts of discarded items. And as they smacked silently against the pain, I dragged my eyes back to the task at hand.

Clements had lit the torch and was removing the bolts that held the big dish in place. I held onto it, not wanting it to go full. floating off after it was free. But I found myself glancing back to the window again and again. I could see a teddy bear floating near the glass. Its black button eyes seemed to be begging me to come and rescue it from the station. And then the first bolt went floating off into space as Clemens started on the second. A food bag danced lazily past, the cellophane twinkling a little in the reflected light.

Put your foot down on the left side, please. It pulling against the third bolt. Clements said through the walkie. I did as I was asked, turning back to the task at hand. The arc light made me squint as he cut the third bolt free. I turned away so I wouldn't get a retinal burn. As I did, my gaze went back to the windows of the station, and that was when I saw it. A gray-skinned, humanoid, its eyes, the color of glaciers, staring out at me from the inside of the International Space Station. Its eyes were no more expressive than the teddy bears had been, but they seemed to stare right through me. I screamed, but it was only heard by me and the void.

When the last bolt was removed, I felt a sudden weightlessness take over as the dish that I'd been leaning on suddenly came loose. I tilted, my terror giving me momentum as I tried to flee from the blue-eyed thing behind the glass. As I began to fly. As I began to feel, I'd float into the void along with the satellite dish. I wasn't sure I'd be able to stop myself. Luckily, Clemens grabbed me by the ankle as I floated past. He yanked me in the dish back from the void. Easy there, kid. Lose your balance for a second?

I looked back at the window, wanting to show him what I had seen. But it was gone. There was nothing there but floating garbage, and I couldn't help but notice that the bear was gone too. Whatever that thing was, had it been after its teddy? And now neither were anywhere to be found. Kid? Clemens asked again. You okay?

I nodded after another second or two. I thanked him for the save and saying I must have just lost my footing. As we returned to the ISS2 with our dishes, my head was filled with the image of the creature now, and I had more questions than ever. Someone was waiting for us in the airlock when we returned, and I wasn't surprised to see it was Riley, the chief of security. Riley looked more like a nightclub bouncer than a NASA security officer. He was six and a half feet of intimidating muscle with arms that would definitely feel cramped

in your average spacesuit. Rumors were that he was a Marine who'd been handpicked by Shaw. He answered to the captain and no one else. I knew that my boss was terrified of him. The science lead avoided him at all cost. Other than Shaw, it seemed that no one was in a big hurry to interact with him. He was smiling as he blocked the door to the airlock, but it was hard to miss his hand resting on the lever that would open the hatch

and send us all careening into space. Successful trip? He asked Clemens, who happened to be in the lead? Yeah, very. Got all three dishes as ordered, and we came back early. Terrific, he said, showing way too many teeth. You guys find anything else out there? Bring back any souvenirs by chance.

Clemens shook his head. Nope, again, as instructed. Good, good. Riley said, still arresting his hand against the pull-down. Head to Deacon Tam, and then get him. back to work. We'll have a couple of guys from Lab 5 come and get those dishes. Can't be too careful after all. He let us pass then, and I saw Clemens sigh deeply when he finally got to the end of the corridor. Apparently, I hadn't been the only one afraid that he would pull that lever.

I tried to put whatever I saw out of my mind. Really, I did. But it just just wouldn't leave me. Sometimes I would wake up with those piercing blue eyes looking at me from across the void, and I'd remember it all over again. And I just had to know more. I had to figure out what that had been. In my first step was research. The station had a wide array of digital media that could be used for research purposes and work studies, but surprisingly. there was very little info about the first international space station. We all knew the story, how they'd been hit by debris when a meteor collided with another passing meteor. The trajectory threw the shards into the station. It had been sudden. The crew had barely known

what was going on. The cabin had depressurized far too fast for evacuation to be possible. Seven people had lost their lives that day. Three women and four men. Three had been Americans, two Germans, and two from Russia. As I was flipping through the pictures of the deceased, I stopped on one of the Russians. I felt sick as I examined his perfect blue eyes. Uri had been a scientist studying the effects of zero gravity on the human body. He was also the ship's doctor.

He looked miraculously unchanged for a man who had gone through sudden decompression. Other than the graying skin, he was the picture of health. It made me wonder how many others might be in there after they were presumed dead. Were they hiding something in the first ISS? I began quietly making inquiries about the previous crew, but most of the information I got was vague and unreliable. Chief Engineer Roberts had known one of the astronauts, Major Glenn. He was working on some kind of deep space protocol or something. It was all really hush, hush. But he said NASA was getting ready to attempt manned missions out

of our solar system. One of the scientists in lab too said that Dr. Haber had to I'd discussed a new engine with him once when they'd been searching research assistants at Boeing. It was supposed to improve spaceflight and trip time. One of the guys in Lab 3 told me he'd been emailing with engineer cursed about a new compound for the food printers. Their joint research helped push forward his current project until the incident with ISS1. I talked to more than a few people, careful about the questions I asked. But I was careful not to let the security staff see me being nosy. I couldn't say why, exactly, but after the little incident was security chief Riley,

I didn't want this falling back into his radar. But I wasn't careful enough, it seemed, because one day I looked up the article about the incident, and I found that it had been altered to remove the names of the deceased. A memo came out a few days later about interest in the old ISS being counterproductive to the current mission. And people were suddenly a little less willing to talk to me about old times and dead friends. It was only a couple weeks later that I found myself face to face with Riley again. I was fixing a console in Lab 5 when I looked up to see him looming over me with a wrench in his hand.

Now, he wasn't being threatening, but just the sight of a hulking muscle head, lightly tapping a tool against his palm, it got me on edge. He was smiling too, something I wasn't used to seeing. Riley was the kind of guy. I could imagine petting bunnies to death. not by accident. Hey there. I heard you been asking some questions about the old station, Hoss.

Riley never bothered to learn people's names. Everyone was sport or bud or hoss with him, unless you outranked him, and then it was sir. Yeah, I said, trying to act nonchalant about it as I finished wiring the console. Any particular reason? He asked. Uh, I was just curious, I replied. Oh, you writing a book report or something? Why does it matter? I asked.

Getting a little tired of this. Well, it matters, because Captain Shaw doesn't like it when people look too closely at the ISS incident. He lost a lot of friends on that station. men and women he knew well and he doesn't like it when people decide to pick at old wounds now you wouldn't want to make the cap upset would you I told him I understood

and he left after that in reality I only want to learn more now that I knew there was more of the story turned out there was a deeper mystery here than even I was aware of When I got back to my bunk later that day, there was a note tucked inside the pillow.

It read, Meet me in the East Passage Storage Room. I have something you might be interested in. I didn't know who'd left it, but it had to be one of the people who bunked here. We were the only ones with key card access other than security. So it had to be Robb or Mackey or Davies. I suppose that it could be a trap by security, but why would they bother? Riley had scared me. Wouldn't that be enough?

In the end, I decided to go out and see who it was. I mean, what did I really have to lose? The storage rooms were where we kept extra parts and equipment that we might need for certain jobs. Wires, tools, insulation. It was all in here waiting for us. The storage units were not under the areas of artificial gravity, so the bins were topped with plastic covers so they didn't float off. It was spooky inside the East Passage storage. But as the lights came on, I found Davies waiting for me there looking impatient.

Now Davies was an old boot, a guy who had been here before I arrived. He was the right hand of Roberts. We all liked a joke that Davies had been waiting here for them to build the second station. But he definitely knew some things when it came to the crew and the inner workings of the compound. Some even said. He'd worked on the original space station before the accident, but no one could verify that. I heard you've been asking some questions about the old ISS, he said. leaning in close as he floated towards me.

He almost whispered then, Did you see them on the old station? I didn't have to ask what he meant. I just nodded. He pressed a little notebook into my hand before floating for the door. He didn't say anything else. But when I got back to my bunk and started reading,

I realized he didn't need to. Inside was confirmation that I wasn't crazy. There were others in that old station, and Captain Shaw knew. Davies wrote about a meteor that the station had been studying. A meteor was some strange bacteria living in it. The crew had been experimenting with a metal in the rock. They were taking all precautions, but accidents still happened. One of the scientists had been exposed to the bacteria.

It was Dr. Haber, and his skin had turned gray from it. He was fine, better than ever, but they also discovered that he didn't need to breathe. His new skin was thicker, too, not capable of withstanding the vacuum of space indefinitely, but he can survive exposure for quick periods of time. He also needed much less food to sustain his body. Whatever it was, it had changed him on an evolutionary scale, and they were fascinated by it. The crew had been experimenting with this change

when they made another discovery. The bacteria was in fact that. Soon they all had it, and that was when NASA, specifically Captain Shaw, had decided to quarantine them. The accident had been to cut them off from the rest of the world, but it allowed NASA to experiment on the affected crew. Now Shaw was hoping to test the limits of their affliction and present them to the scientific community. as the crew of his new deep space exploration program. They would be the pioneers of the next generation, but at the moment, they were being held in the old ISS like prisoners.

That was the real reason we had to take those dishes. They were trying to get messages out to the real world, and Shaw was having trouble keeping them quiet. The journal suggested that I destroy the book after reading. But how could I? It was evidence of what Shaw was doing. I thought I could keep the journal hidden until I could somehow get the word out. I carried it around with me at all times, thinking of what to do next.

But after a few weeks, I got complacent. I hadn't seen security following me. around and I hadn't received another visit from Riley. So I thought maybe I was forgotten about. I forgot how easy it would be to get rid of me and make it look like it was an accident. There was an infinite void to take advantage of. Turned out, there were fates worse than that. It all started when I came back to find Davies missing. The story was that he'd returned to Earth, something to do with his family. But I knew better.

Davies didn't have family on Earth, and the station was his home. I felt a knot growing in my stomach for the rest of the day, and when I settled into bed that night, I wondered how long it would be before they came for me. I didn't have long to wait. I struggled. But the hand over my mouth was clamped down hard. I guessed my crewmates slept through my abduction. They had me in flex cuffs before I could figure out what was happening, but it hardly mattered. Riley had come with two other security guys. They manhandled me as easily as they would have a toddler.

The corridors were dark as they pushed me through them. I'd never questioned how soundproof the cabins might be. but most of them likely knew better than to mess with the security team either they took me down to the airlock and I was afraid for a minute that they would just launch me into space Captain Shaw was waiting for us there instead of looking triumphant like I expected he actually looked disappointed a kid if you wanted to know what was on the me old ISS so badly. All he had to do was ask.

I hope your answers were worth it, kid, he said. When Riley shoved me onto the little carrier that we used for missions to the ISS, I knew I wasn't getting a quick death. They slid a needle into my neck before they pushed me out the door and towards the opening to the station. I only had to gasp for a few seconds. before a gray hand came out to grab me, and Davies pulled me inside the rotting ISS1.

And now, I'm a permanent member of the International Space Station 1, and, I suppose, of the Deep Space Program. Hopefully after they've catapulted us beyond the solar system, someone will find this consul entry. I hope word gets out. People need to know that my participation was far from voluntary. It is far more likely, however, that this log will end up in the recycling bin after I'm space dust.