Lighthouse Horror Podcast - In 1968 something CONTACTED Us from The Moon | Scary Stories

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

There's something terrifying on the Moon  Scary Story exclusively written for the channel by Annie R. Cover Art from Ninerio More of the artist’s works at ninerioarts  Original YouTube link: In 1968 something CONTACTED Us from The Moon    Merch: lighthousehorror.shop For more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube  Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | Patreon 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 something on the moon and it doesn't want to be found. We never should have gone to space. Not after what I've seen at NASA. Yeah, that NASA. I used to work there during the height of the space race. But I'm retired now. My bones are hurting and I wheeze more than I breathe. But before I punch my ticket out of here, I've got a story to tell.

One that's been eating at me for decades. You see, we never really landed on the moon. We've always meant to, though. It was the summer of 69, and we were getting ready for the launch. The whole world was buzzing about Apollo 11. So that whole part's real. We have the rockets, the astronauts, and the math all worked out. Me, I was just a young buck back then.

I was fresh out of college with a shining, new degree in engineering. And somehow, I landed a gig as a junior engineer at NASA. And damn, I was living the dream. I was part of the team working on the communication systems. We had to make sure Armstrong and Aldrin could talk to us from all the way up on the moon's surface. Life at NASA was kind of like being in college again, actually. But this time we had something bigger to worry about than a mid-term test.

A regular day started with grabbing a cup of coffee that tasted like battery acid. Then it was straight to checking last night's data, just to make sure nothing blew up or decided to stop working. My desk was always a mess. I had papers everywhere full of scribbles I made at 2 a.m. that I hoped would make sense in the morning. The place was always humming. Folks would be in and out of the offices, walking fast, talking faster, and we'd have these meetings that could go on for days. It felt like planning a really complicated road trip, except the destination was the moon. And you couldn't just turn around if you forgot something.

Lunch was at our desks, usually a sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other. Sometimes we get so caught up in work, we'd forget to eat until someone looked up and saw it was dark outside. But man, you know, the thrill of it. You'd be sitting there, tired as hell, and suddenly something clicks, and you're one step closer to getting a man on the moon. With all the tech nowadays, that may not sound too impressive to you kids. But back then, it was as close to you. It was as close to magic as you could get. That's what kept us going, even when the coffee ran out.

But one night, a few weeks before the scheduled launch, we picked up something strange. I was testing the transponder we were supposed to use to talk to the guys up in space. My eyes were glued to my notes, but my head was dreaming about a cold beer. And that's when the signal came through. It wasn't like anything we'd ever heard before. It wasn't static. And it was too structured to be a glitch. It was a series of beeps and rings like Morse code.

And then we realized the signal was on a loop. That's not something you find in nature. We all huddled around listening to this signal. The text scrambled to find the source. Maybe some wires got crossed, or, you know, transmissions got mixed up. We looked all over to make sure it wasn't some sort of interference. Hell, maybe it was the Russians messing with us. Well, we did eventually find out the source.

the signal was coming from outer space. We don't know how, but the data was right there before our eyes. It felt like the air dropped a few degrees when we found out. The room was silent, except for that beeping playing through the speakers. I remember looking over my boss, a guy named Carl. He was a man who'd seen it all. He was there right when the space ran. race was just kicking off.

He went white as a sheet. He stared at the speakers, as if he'd just seen a ghost. Shut it off, he finally said. His voice barely above a whisper. The days that followed were a blur of meetings, rumors, and more coffee. The excitement had turned into a tension so thick you could cut it a knife. We were no longer talking about trajectories and fuel calculations. Now, all we talked about now was that signal. When we first caught that signal, it was like nothing we'd heard

before. It wasn't just beeps and rings. This was a complex, tangled mess of sounds that got under your skin. The sounds overlapped one another. There were a complex, tangled mess of sounds that got under your skin. There were layers to it, almost like a song. We thought it was a message, maybe even a warning. We just couldn't figure it out. But we couldn't do the launch until we did that. So that meant staying up all night with the team. Nights turned into a blur.

Most of us camped out in the offices, hunched over the equipment, just endlessly replaying the signal to try and crack it. Our eyes were glued to printouts, ears filled with that eerie sound. You know, despite everything, we were excited at the actual thought of communicating with something out there. And that was part of the thrill. But the excitement turned to frustration real quick. We tried everything, running the signal through every piece of analysis software we had. Breaking it down, looking for patterns or repeats.

Anything that might give us a clue, but it was like trying to read a book with pages missing. So we called in the big guns, some code breakers from the NSA. These folks, they were the best of the best. They were used to dealing with the kind of secrets that could start or stop. up wars. If anyone could crack it, it was them. Or so we thought. They came in with their briefcases and serious faces. They set themselves up in an unused lab, and they got to work. Days passed, then weeks. We watched them, waiting for any progress,

but it never came. The looks on their faces went from determined to puzzled to down. own right pissed. The long nights eventually took their toll. Temperes frayed, and those frantic meetings turned into shouting matches. What does it mean? And why can't we figure it out? And nobody had the answers. With each failed attempt, the pressure increased. We were supposed to be launching a mission to the moon, but instead we were just stuck. With an operation, operation like this, there's no room for unknowns. We can't risk not knowing what this signal meant. With each passing day, the launch date loomed closer. I was practically living at the employee lounge now. Eventually, that signal started messing with us in ways we didn't expect. At first,

it was just headaches. The kind of it feel like a band tightening around your skull. We could easily say that was from the late nights. But then things got weirder. People started reporting nightmares, the kind that made someone wake up screaming in the night. Again, the medics could say it was from stress. But these nightmares, they were the same for everyone. Those who had them reported seeing strange, towering structures

on the moon. Twisty, pointy spires that were so tall they almost blocked out the stars, and there were things moving around between the towers. Huge lumbering

shadows that rocked the ground with every slab, and underneath it was a humming sound. It blended with a beeping signal to form a song that made you sick.

Then the paranoia came. You'd catch someone staring at the signal playback, their eyes glazed over, muttering to themselves. Simple conversations turned into arguments. People report hearing the signal, even when they've gone home. So no one really questioned it when people started bringing sleeping bags to work. Hallucinations were the last straw. an engineer came running into the canteen one afternoon.

White as a sheet. He kept yelling about seeing those towers from his dreams. He'd see them in the distance when he looked out of a window, and he'd feel the ground shake as those giant moon creatures moved closer and closer. The engineer had to be sedated after that. We tried to keep it all underwrable. to maintain a semblance of professionalism, you know. But the effects of that signal just kept getting worse.

We tried to focus on other work, but the beeping had dug into our brains. It spread among the departments. It was affecting people who weren't even involved in decoding it. One of the junior texts started talking about hearing a whispering sound. It came from the... the moon itself, he said. It was nonsense, of course. But when you looked into his eyes,

you could see he believed every word of it. The whispers told him about secrets buried deep under the moon's surface. Secrets meant for him to find. Then there was the astrophysicist who'd been with the project from the start. She claimed she could see the structures from him. her dreams on the images we have of the moon. She'd get people to look at her telescope and her printouts, insisting on it. We saw nothing, of course, but she was convinced.

And then one of the math guys started freaking out. He went around saying he was turning into moon dust. He was staring at his hands one day when he started screaming. He said his skin was cracking open. Little bits of him were turning to dust every time he moved. He was crumbling apart, he said. He could feel himself blowing away. It didn't make sense to us, you know, but the fear in his eyes was clear.

He flinched if he even tried to touch him. Watching him, you could almost believe. what he was saying was true. But it was the incident with Carl that made us all stop and realize just how bad things had gotten. Carl was a practical guy who never bought into any of the moon madness until one day he started screaming, screaming and pointing to an empty corner. He was saying he could see one of those moon entities right there, and it was reaching out for him. In his panic, Carl backed away so fast he tripped over a cable. He went crashing into a bank of

equipment, and he hit his head on a desk. He had to get stitches, and that was the wake-up call we all needed. This wasn't just stress or exhaustion. The signal was doing something to was. Something real, then physical. So NASA went into full damage control mode. They started rounding up anyone who was talking too much about the signal or acting weird. They were to be given special attention in a quarantine zone. They sectioned off an unused wing on the campus to house them. It wasn't long, though, before more people claimed they were turning into moon dust, the quarantine zone filled up quick. To keep the lid on all this, federal agents showed up.

You could spot them a mile away with their stiff suits and stiffer faces. They walked around like they owned the place. They were there to make sure no one outside these walls got wind of what was happening. And suddenly, we had actors smiling at cameras for press conferences. pretending to be NASA scientists, talking about how great the mission prep was going. And me, they slapped more work on the desk and they told me not to leave. But then I started seeing it. Moon dust.

Or at least, my brain told me it was moon dust. I had no way to actually check. But I saw a fine chalky sand collecting in the corners of my arms. office. On my papers, even on my keyboard, every speck of it glimmered like it held a diamond. But I clamped down every instinct to tell someone about it. The last thing I wanted was to end up quarantined or worse. So I kept quiet. I pretended I didn't see the dust and that I wasn't seeing them form into those towers from my dreams. I had to keep working. I had to crack that signal. It was the only thing left that made any sense. With everything going sideways, NASA was still hell-bent

on keeping the show on the road. The circle of us still poking at that signal had shrunk down to just a handful. The rest of the crew was all hands on deck for the long. The astronauts? Well, they were kept in the dark about the whole thing. They weren't allowed to really talk to any of us. The higher-ups were worried they could get infected by this moon madness. But as the launch date drew closer, things got even weirder. We were gearing up for what should have been a routine systems check.

It's something we'd done a hundred times before. before. Only this time, nothing went right. It started small machines freezing, readings not making sense. We rebooted, double-checked the codes, and ran diagnostics, the usual drill. But then the main control machines just lost their mind. Instead of the standard readouts, We got strange symbols no one recognized. We tried to bypass the affected systems, but it was like the signal, or whatever the hell it was, had jumped from our heads into the machines.

Commands were ignored or worse, turned into gibberish. And then the telemetry data from the test module, It went haywire. One second, it showed the module on the launch pad, stable as you please. The next, it was registering it as if it was already in lunar orbit. Impossible readings. The final straw came when the launch sequence initiated. All on its own.

Alarms blared, lights flashed. We scrambled. hammering at the keyboards and yanking chords. The sequence was stopped, thank the stars, but the damage was done. And there was no way to explain this. No amount of rebooting and recalibrating could scrub away the fact that our systems were compromised. We had to delay the launch. Officially, we blamed it on a technical glitch, but between us,

We knew the truth. That signal, it wasn't just a sound in our ears or in our dreams anymore. It was here, actively messing with the launch. And those symbols, they weren't just random, you know. They were trying to tell us something. The failure wasn't just a setback. It was a warning. And deep down, I think we all knew that.

But admitting that, it meant facing the reality of what we were dealing with. And that was a step nobody at NASA was ready to take. Uncle Sam poured way too much money into this to just back out now. But despite the whole mess with a failed systems check, I felt like I hit the jackpot. Those symbols that popped up on the screens, I figured they might just be the key to cracking this thing. So I grabbed the printouts and I put them all over my office.

Most nights, I went over and over those symbols. I tried to match them with anything. Ancient languages, astronomical charts, you name it. But as the knights dragged on, my grip on what was real and what wasn't, it started to slip. More than once, I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see my office coated in moon dust. It was getting to me, making me question what would crack first the code or my sanity. And then one night I had the dream, calling it vivid, it doesn't do it justice.

it was more real than anything I'd ever experienced. I was standing on the dark side of the moon, but this wasn't the moon like any photo or textbook I'd ever seen. The ground shimmered with a dull glow that cast eerie shadows all around me. The sky was filled with stars so dense and bright, It felt like I could reach out and touch them with my hand. But it wasn't peaceful or awe-inspiring.

It was suffocating. There was a silence so heavy. It pressed against my ears. My head started to ache the more I trying to listen for something, anything. It was a quiet, so complete, I wanted to scream. And those structures, my God, they towered over everything. They were made of materials that looked like a mix between metal and sand. The surfaces were so dark that it seemed to absorb the light.

Their shapes were all wrong. The angles made my head hurt if I looked too long. It was as if they were designed to only be seen. from the corner of your eye, not stared at directly. And the most unsettling part? The moon dust. It wasn't just on the ground. It swirled around these structures,

sticking to my hands and my face. I tried to wipe it away. But it clung to me, trying to make me part of the moon. In my dream, I kept walking. Each step kicked up clouds of that strange glittery dust. I walked until I came across a canyon, but this wasn't any ordinary canyon. It stretched far and wide, deeper than anything I'd ever seen. Its edges shimmered under the starlight.

The sides were jagged like giant teeth, and it felt, it felt warm. A strange heat radiated from it, as if it led down to the core of the moon itself. Standing at its edge, I felt this overwhelming sense of calm. The darkness was. was calling to me, promising me answers if I only stepped forward. My feet moved on their own, leading me right to the edge. And that's when I heard it. A voice echoing up from the canyon's depths.

It wasn't loud, but it filled the silence around me. It resonated deep in my chest. It said calm and sad. Who are you? I asked. I... The voice replied. Not just rock and dust. Why are you telling me this?

I found myself asking. I was drawn to the voice. You... Not ready for what? I asked. Eyes beyond your planet. A thing. I felt defensive. I wanted to argue with him, but the voice continued. I do not beosity, a trait I admire. Listen to my warning. Some do...

What are you protecting us from? I asked. I put me forward. The voice faded, leaving me standing at the can. canyon's edge. The warmth from the canyon, it felt comforting now, like a gentle reminder of the conversation. The dream felt more real than any waking moment I'd ever had, and when I finally woke up, the memory of it clung to me. I sat in my office, the early sun across the desk. I knew now what must be done. The mission had to be stopped. The moon had spoken, and I couldn't ignore it.

Waking up from that dream, it felt like climbing out of one reality into another. There on my desk was a report. It was in my own handwriting, but I couldn't remember when I'd made it. It was a translation of the signal based on the symbols I'd collected. The logic was laid out so clearly. I wondered how I could have missed it for so long. It was all there in plain text, the message from the moon telling us to stay away. I grabbed the report, and I made my way to the top brass at NASA.

I had to tell them. Show them what I'd found, what I'd written. Somehow I just knew that there was a meeting that day. I knew which conference room they would be in, and that no one would stop me from getting there. I burst into the conference room to find the project heads, talking in hushed voices. We can't go, I said, holding up the report.

We have to cancel the mission. They looked up at me like I'd lost my mind. I tried to explain, to make them see reason, but before I could get far, the room filled with the sound of the signal. Phones, computers, every electronic device started blaring it out, louder and more piercing than ever. Dust, like the moon dust from my dream, started to gather in the corners of the room. And it wasn't just settling like regular dust.

It swirled and thickened in corners as if it had a life of its own, as if it wanted to bury us in it. People clutched their ears in pain as the sound overwhelmed us. Everyone started to panic. They were holding their heads, trying to block out the noise, but they couldn't. The sound was everywhere. It was inside us, grinding against our skulls. And then as if the sound flipped a switch, people began to drop.

It was like watching Domino's fall, one after the other. People would clutch their heads, cry out, and then just collapse. Some tried to brace themselves on tables or walls, but down they went, slumping onto the floor in heaps. And then they'd start to bleed. It started as a small nose bleed here and there, but it got much worse quickly. The blood would start gushing from noses and ears. The contrast was shocking.

that bright red against the harsh lights of the room. Panic turned into terror. The air was now thick with dust and filled with the iron scent of blood. It was chaos, pure and simple, and at the heart of it all was that ungodly noise. Please, I begged, you have to listen to me.

me, the moon it's warning us. We can't go there. For a moment, everything seemed to stand still. The officials stared at me. The report in my hands was now stained with my own blood. The realization of what was happening finally seemed to break through to them. I saw NASA's chief executive officer nod his head. And as soon as he did, the room fell silent. The signal was just gone. The decision that followed was made in silence. It was a mutual unspoken agreement that the launch could not proceed.

After that meeting, it was clear we couldn't go forward. NASA had to pull the plug, but they couldn't tell the world the reason why. They said it was technical difficulties, which wasn't entirely a lie, considering everything was breaking down around us. Walking out of that room, it felt like stepping into a disaster movie. The control center, which was usually buzzing with activity, was silent. except for the occasional groan or whimper. People were scattered everywhere, some of them still unconscious.

Others were trying to stop the blood. It was a real bad mess. I noticed the computer's next. Screens were black, not even a flicker or cursor blinking. I tried flipping a few switches, pressing some power buttons, but nothing. dead as door nails all of them. And the wires, my God, the wires. They'd melted into the floor, even fusing with the tiles.

You could see where some had sparked and left scorch marks. The communication equipment wasn't much better. The radios, the satellite links, anything that could send a signal out or bring one in. it was fried. Handsets were hot to the touch, and the films were melted through. And then there was the dust. It was like a thin blanket had settled over everything. It gave the whole place an eerie, abandoned look. It coated the desks, the equipment, even the chairs. Every step I took kicked up little clowns of it, floating in the air, before settling back down. Everything that would have made the moon landing possible was either broken, bleeding,

or buried under a layer of dust. It felt like we were caught off from the rest of the world, left alone in the aftermath of something that we didn't understand. But we all knew what had to be done. done. The cover-up, man. It was something out of a sci-fi flick. They roped in everyone who knew anything about space and movie magic. We had these big sets. They looked just like the moon's surface, all dusty and cratered. Scientists like me got pulled in to advise on how to make it look legit. They ran calculations on how the astronauts should move in low gravity. Oh, the astronauts. Yeah, they were in on it.

They were forever sworn to secrecy. They were told to act out their parts, bouncing around on wires to fake that moon gravity. It was all filmed, then broadcasted, as if it was happening live from the moon. They even planted a flag in the fake moon dust. And me, I was right there on the thick of it. I was suggesting tweaks to make it all look more convincing. Sometimes I'd wake up from more of those dreams where I was walking on the moon. The voice from the canyon would whisper these little details.

Like how to get the shadows just right or make the flag. flag flutter without wind. I couldn't tell if those dreams were the moon actually speaking to me, or if I was losing my grip. But every suggestion from those dreams, it made the fake landing seem more real. And as the world was celebrating our one giant leap, I was in my office, dreaming about the moon.

After everything that happened, I couldn't stay at NASA anymore. Faking the biggest achievement of human space exploration didn't sit right with me, even though we didn't really have a choice. I walked away, but I kept in touch with a few guys. They told me that some of the quarantine staff got better, like nothing ever happened. The lucky ones? Well, they came out of it with total memory loss. They couldn't remember anything that happened in the weeks before.

The official story was that there was a meningitis outbreak in the compound. NASA blamed it on some weird mold in the air vents. Over the years, I'd catch wind of new plans to communicate with what's out there, or to finally get boots on the moon for real this time. But like clockwork, something would always go wrong. Equipment failure, communication breakdowns, you name it. I also know that other countries with space programs had their sights set on the moon too. And sure, some of them would say that they've sent people up there.

But I know all that was fake, too. Nobody could make it work. And deep down, I knew why. That signal, it wasn't just for us. It was for everyone. Humanity is not welcome beyond Earth.