Lighthouse Horror Podcast - Police Puzzled: Cryptic Symbols on Victims Baffle Authorities | Scary Stories

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

The glow got faintly brighter and larger as I walked toward it.    Story from Eric Dodd  Cover Art from Express the Chaos Original Post: The Stairs and the Doorway | Creepypasta Wiki           Original YouTube link: Police Puzzled: Cryptic Symbols on Victims Baffle Authorities; Stranger's Claim Raises Questions  Merch: lighthousehorror.shop  For more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube  Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | Patreon Sound Effects: Freesound Zapsplat Music: Lucas King - YouTube Myuu - YouTube  Incompetech  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've never considered myself a nosy person, no more nosy than the next guy. I just have what Ma would call an unhealthy amount of curiosity. I was the kid who climbed to the top of the big oak in the backyard just to see what was in the crow's nest. I was the kid who dug a hole in the backyard so deep that I hit groundwater because I was convinced there was a cave under our house, and I wanted to see it. to see. My folks aren't dirt poor, but they're pretty close. They're part of that missing middle of America, the people who work 40 hours a week until they die with no savings to speak of.

I got my first job at a horse stable when I was 14. It didn't last very long. I knew I needed to get a job because I knew we needed the money. So I bounced around for the next few years, washing dishes, waiting tables, until I graduated high school. Pop was really tough on me about college. He never went, nobody in his family had, so there were a few fights about where I would go after school. It was a huge shock to me when, just after graduation, he drove me down to the uni.

He'd been classmates with the dean, and they'd come up with an arrangement where I'd get a full scholarship, provided I made good grades and worked for the university. university. I never felt like a scholar. In high school, I kept my head down and did enough to get by, pulling off bees and a few Cs. I wasn't interested in learning because learning wasn't interesting. Uni was different. I took mainly core classes, math, English, history, science, but they were fascinating. For one thing, nobody cared if I showed up or not. It was entirely up to me, to succeed. So I did. In exchange for my education, I worked security and did some light maintenance

duties. Maintenance was a no-brainer. I've always been handy, and most of the fix-it jobs were the type that could be solved with a liberal application of WD40, or elbow grease, or both. Security was a different story. Security gave me superpowers. The job itself was pretty easy. I got a uniform, a badge, a flashlight, and Ma gave me some keychain mace for my birthday. No, I didn't get a gun. They weren't allowed on campus anyway. I worked mostly nights and weekends and doubles during long holiday breaks. I was to walk around the full campus twice in a night, checking the labs, computer center, and library.

The rest of my time was pretty much my own. There were two other guards, Jake and Al, but they worked different shifts from me. We had overlap nights on Wednesday nights, where we'd get together for about an hour to discuss any major changes or events. There might have been some beer at those meetings, but I'm underage and you can't prove anything. Jake worked mostly day shift, and Al work swings and some overnights during the week. Jake was a younger guy, training to be on the local police.

force, so he took his job pretty seriously. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Al mostly slept during his shifts. Al was two years older than dirt, so he deserved his rest. Remember that bit about superpowers. My first night on the job, Al gave me a huge key chain with about a thousand keys on it. It weighed nearly five pounds, and was secured to my belt with a heavy-duty metal chain. Don't lose that keychain, kid, Al said. You got the keys to the kingdom right there. Any door that don't open, you don't want to go in it. My work hobby, the thing that kept me awake on those long cold winter break nights was exploring. I made it a point every night to open some door that I'd never opened before. I started in the news section, where we're

where the library and computer center were, opening each room, each closet, making a map in my head of where everything was. Some nights I might explore two or three rooms. Some nights I might not have time for anything more than an odd out-of-the-way broom closet. The uni is actually a pretty large campus for having a full student body of only 12 or 1,300.

It was built as a Methodist college in 1896, and became state-owned in the 30s. There were three main sections. The old school housed the administration offices and a few unlucky classrooms, unlucky due to the lack of central heat and air, and the three-story building had no elevators. The labs were a brutalist horror of poured concrete slabs and tiny windows built back in the 70s when buildings that looked like Soviet radiators were in style. The new library was steadily losing its new, built in the late 90s boom, and made in that unique red brick and glass style like everything else during those years. When I think back to those early days, those days before, I think how stupid I was, how naive. I should have

thought about winter. I should have thought about the solstice. By December of my sophomore year of college, I had cleared every room in the new library. I had opened every door, checked every closet, and had a good mental map of the whole building. It was ultimately pretty unimpressive. I found no buried treasure, no secret stash of missing computer supplies cached in a forgotten closet. December is a slow time for the uni. After the mad rush of finals, the campus was suddenly deserted, the remaining few staff seeming lost. The building stood silent and dark in the thin winter breeze.

We had a steady series of snowstorms, but none bad enough to close the campus. I made sure the sidewalks were clear and the entryway salted and otherwise tried to stay indoors. Besides, I had the old school to explore. The main old-school building, Downing Hall, was a four-story V-shaped building. It had no elevators, tiny stairwells, and was only exempted from ADA compliance due to its historical importance. It had no air conditioning, save for sporadic window mounts that were only permitted to be installed on the rear of the building, so as not to spoil the building's historic charm.

The building's heat came from a massive, ancient boiler in the basement. As far as I knew, Al was the only person who knew anything about the boiler, and he must have kept it in good shape because I never heard any complaints about it. I spent the second week after finals poking through the top floors of Downing Hall. I didn't have a lot of time for exploring every night, as the snow gave me more than usual upkeep chores, but I made steady progress. I discovered a small room in the attic on the left wing that must have been in old Dean's office, complete with a beautiful antique desk and wardrobe.

I checked both, thinking I might find something historic to give to the Dean, but the wardrobe was empty, save for a moth-eaten wool scarf, and the desk contents were limited to a few old newspapers and some tax forms from the 1950s. a level below, on the building's fourth floor, I found two dozen small empty classrooms. In my handyman mindset, I checked the windows for loose glass panes and for water or rodent damage. I fully expected to see rat droppings, or at least some insect damage, but I found none. The second and third floors were much the same, except the rooms on the rear of the building were air-conditioned and thus actively used for classes when school was in session.

The main floor was administration and included the dean's office. I thought it was not to skip around in my boss's office or in payroll, so I skipped a lot of these rooms. I made my way from the stairwell to the basement, used my superhero keychain, opened the heavy door, and went down. The basement of Downing Hall was different from that of the new library. For one thing, it was a lot more cramped. The hallway was narrow and the ceiling was low, with doorways leading off at regular intervals.

I checked every room, flipping the old two-button switches to on, using my flashlight on the dark corners. I had carried a few packs of spare light bulbs, the fancy new CFC bulbs, in my satchel, seeking to replace any that had burned out and save the environment while I was at it. The little rooms contained mostly junk, spare desks filing cabinets full of 40 and 50-year-old papers, old holiday decorations and so forth, lit by naked hanging bulbs. I'm not an imaginative kind of guy. I guess I'm pretty smart.

I'd made straight A's in my college courses. But it never occurred to me. be scared. I didn't think I'm alone in a creepy old basement. This was my place, my job, my hobby, and it all seemed so normal. By the night of the 20th of December, I had made my way to the boiler room. The furnace was a massive monstrosity of iron and rivets, pipes, and gauges. It was hellishly hot in that room and equally loud. It was, however, neat and very clean. Al kept it that way, because he said, a clean boiler lets you get more shut-eye. The furnace had been converted from coal to gas at some point, but the soot had stained the walls of the room, and the old coal chute still

opened in one of the corners. I had no intention of giving the boiler room more than a glance. I'd been there dozens of times, and there was nothing to see, just a workbench in the furnace itself, when I noticed a small door to the back and left behind the furnace. That's weird, I thought to myself. I'd never seen that door before. But then again, I'd never stood in that particular spot beside the workbench, and I'd never really looked. The door was smaller than a normal door, maybe five feet tall, painted in the same thing.

same colored drab, gray-brown of the walls, and was made of metal, just like the other doors in the basement. I went over to it and touched the handle. I think the body knows sometimes when things are wrong. Have you ever had that feeling like you're being watched when you know you're totally alone and nobody can see you, but you feel eyes on you? Have you ever gone left instead of right? Because you got a feeling that you just shouldn't go to the right today. It didn't work that way for me. When I touched the doorknob, nothing felt any different. My head didn't hurt, my neck hairs didn't stand up, and I didn't hear an inner voice saying, don't do it. The doorknob turned, but the door wouldn't open. I looked more closely and saw a small keyhole. I checked my magic

keychain and found three possible matches, struck out on the first two, and then the third worked, of course. Of course. The hinges squealed like they hadn't been used in a long time. My handyman instincts noted it. WD40, I mumbled. I hauled open the door and stepped through into another small, cramped hallway. The light switch worked, and the single bulb blew with a little.

a crack. Damn it. My hackles did raise then. I flicked on my flashlight and quickly swapped out the hallway bulb with a new one. I looked around and saw this hallway was narrow, straight, and ended a few yards away at another door. That door opened easily onto another stairwell. What the hell? I said. Nobody had ever mentioned a sub-basement for this building. The hairs on the back of my neck were still standing out. I shook it off as nerves from the blown bulb and walked to the stairwell. It was a standard stairwell and looked pretty much the same as the others in the building. I walked to the bottom and met another door.

I pushed through it to see another long, narrow hallway, with doors leading off to either side at regular intervals. The first door to my left was unlocked and opened fairly easily onto a storage closet. There were stacks of late 60s-era books, a few desks, and a decaying mop in its bucket. The door across from it was unlocked, but did not open so easily. I hauled the door open to find a larger rum that looked to have been used as a classroom. There were desks, a blackboard, anatomical diagrams, and posters of the walls. Everything was covered in an inch of dust and appeared to have not been touched in a long time. Why would anyone put a classroom down here? I mumbled to myself. How would they even convince students to get down here in the first

place? I remember thinking at that point that I must have somehow discovered a back way into the other wing of the V-shaped Downing Hall. Maybe this is where the old science classes were held before the labs were built. I moved on to the next set of rooms. They were both classrooms, abandoned, dust covered, and mostly emptied. So were the next pair and the next. I saw a total of 12 disused classrooms in that hallway and a small break room, complete with a lonely coffee pot. I also found two small restrooms. I didn't spend much time checking them out as the lights didn't work and I didn't feel like replacing those bulbs. I found myself getting slightly nervous. I was in a strange section of the campus and I was

working alone that night. In the back of my mind, I just couldn't truly justify the existence, the waste of a whole floor full of unused classrooms. When I got to the end of the hallway, I met another steel door. I opened it and saw another stairwell. I was fully expecting this stairwell to go up, to connect to one of the other main stairwells in Downing Hall. The stairs only went down. This was the point I remember at which I began to get scared.

No way. There's no way these stairs go down. How would anybody get down here? Here, here, here, here, the stairwell echoed at me. I should have checked the time. I should have been concerned with finishing my rounds. I should have been hungry for lunch. I should have run.

I started to climb down the stairs. This stairwell was unlit and appeared to be much older and in much worse condition than the others. It was also longer. much longer. After a few minutes of walking down the steps, I began to count them. At every 12 steps, there was a small landing, a turn, and another set of steps. Down. After ten landings, I reached another door. It was unlocked and opened easily. The hinges squealed, and the echoes died like lost things in the dark. I groped against the left wall for a light switch, and there was none. I checked the right, and the wall was equally smooth. I cast the flashlight

around, but saw nothing, nothing forward, nothing to either side, and nothing above. I snapped my fingers, listening for the echo. I may or may not have heard one. I slowly came to realize that the room into which I had entered was enormous, cavernous, possible. the biggest room I had ever physically experienced, I shrank back to the doorway for a moment. This room can't be here, I said to myself. I started to think about going back, but I also started to think about wanting to know what was in there. I took a step forward, and another, until I was walking steadily into the room. I kept a steady pace, counting my steps. I looked over my shoulder every few yards, using the light from the open doorway to orient

myself. I walked, slowly, for a hundred yards, 200 yards, until I saw a dim glow ahead. The glow got faintly brighter and larger as I walked towards it, another hundred yards, and another, and three more passed, until I could make it. out a small dim light bulb near a door. That door was of a different type entirely. It was huge, 14 feet tall at least, and half again is wide. The surface was black metal studded with rivets and bolts mounted on huge hinges. Across the face of the door, graved into the metal, were words in some strange looping script that I could not recognize.

Every surface was carved with that script, or with strange diagrams made of splayed circle-ended lines. In the center of the door was a large spoked wheel lock, and in the center of the lock was a tiny keyhole. Above the keyhole was a sigel, enclosed in three circles. I looked behind me and could not see the light from the stairwell. I couldn't see anything at all. I held the superhero keychain to the dim light and flipped through the keys.

Of course, there was one small battered key that looked as if it might fit. I inserted it into the lock and turned it. I heard a click and a thud and a sound from within the door like pouring. pebbles or dry teeth. I pulled the key from the lock and grasped the spokes of the wheel lock. My heart was racing and sweat was dribbling into my eyes. I turned the spokes to the left, counterclockwise. Witterschens, some buried memory in my head said, and kept turning until the wheel stopped. There was another thud and a crack. And then silence. The darkness behind me no longer felt empty. In fact, it felt positively crowded,

as if I had an audience watching me. I stepped back from the door and flashed my light around, still nothing, dry, empty floor. I turned back to the door, grasped the large cast iron handles, and pulled. Nothing. I tried hard. harder, putting all my weight into the pull, and at the last moment, at the end of my strength, I heard another crack, and the door groaned open on a draught of cool, stinking air. The smell was heavy, moist, and musky. I had a flash memory of my mother taking me to the zoo as a child, and the smell of the cat house with the lions.

But the thought of the lions, I let go of the handles and stumbled back a bit. I carefully shone my light into the yawning black crevice of the open door. I saw a short hallway that opened onto a small, cramped room. I saw a filthy, rusted, metal chair. I saw bones, small bones. I saw or heard or smell. I smelled a form so black it seemed to suck in the light of my flashlight. I saw a black form rushing towards me, running towards me, filling the hallway, howling and

laughing and speaking, and a voice that sounded like mountains collapsing. I remember fangs and words that turned my bones to rusted glass. I remember feathers, and a hand with too many fingers, jeweled with something unspeakable, and the smell, the stink of something long caged. I remember wings. I don't know how long I wandered in the dark, alone under hundreds of feet of rock. There was no light. There was no way to judge time.

My flashlight was dead, and my cell phone and even the small specks of luminescent paint on my cheap wristwatch were dark. There was something wrong with my right leg. It hurt, but I couldn't see enough to find out why. I kept hearing my audience there in that cavernous room. I screamed at them. I felt one of them touched my face, and I threw my flashlight at it. The flashlight bounced and rattled and became still somewhere that I was not.

Something laughed. Later, I raved and screamed, but didn't throw anything else. I found the doorway after hours or days of crawling. There were no lights in the stairwell. After years of climbing, I crawled into that first forgotten hallway. I sliced my fingers on the crushed remains of the light bulbs I had packed in my satchel. I crawled down the hallway and reached the next stairwell. I hauled myself up them and finally out into the boiler room.

When I staggered out of Downing Hall two full days after going in, it was into dim winter daylight and a full police presence. people had been found dead on and around the campus. All had been brutally, savagely murdered, bodies splayed open, viscera, missing. The teeth mark suggested a wild animal, but the murder scenes and body positioning also displayed a certain intelligence to them. There was also the writing, carved into the flesh when it was not yet dead meat. The cops wouldn't talk about about the writing. The cops wouldn't talk to me either. Not afterwards. When they first saw me stumble out into daylight, covered in blood, they assumed I was the perpetrator. They quickly

changed their assumptions when the medics pointed out the green stick fracture, the dehydration, the concussion, and the obvious shock. The cops asked a lot of questions, and I answered as best as I could. I told them about the door in the boiler room. They couldn't find it. They showed me the bare smooth wall from where I had crawled, dazed, and broken. My track stopped at that wall. Two cops tried breaking through the wall in that spot, only to meet old brick and older earth past that.

The cops wanted to know where the long black feathers came from, stuck to my clothes like dried blood. I didn't know. I didn't want to know. The cops, the medics, nobody would look at me anymore. The scars on my face. The deep, gouged out writing was not a sight that most would want to see. I was marked. Whatever I had let out, whatever had killed and eaten five people, and a week later, six more, had marked me as a friend.