Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - The Crooked Man Returns A Childhood Rhyme Awakens a Nightmare No One Can Escape PART1 #30

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #crookedman #childhoodhorror #nightmarecreep #urbanlegend #part1horror  A haunting childhood rhyme resurfaces, unleashing a relentless nightmare known as the Crooked Man. As the sinister figure returns, terror spreads through the lives of those who once thought it was just a story. This chilling horror tale explores the thin veil between innocence and darkness, and the horrors we cannot outrun. Part 1 of a terrifying saga that will grip you from start to finish.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, crookedman, childhoodnightmare, urbanlegend, darkrhyme, supernaturalhorror, haunting, psychologicalterror, horrorfiction, eerie, terror, nightmarefuel, scarytale, childhoodfear, partone

There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter Sports Extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place.

Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Hopps and Wild?

Wild and Hopps. The dream team. They're back in Disney's Zootropolis, too. Funny, fucks. This is a make-or-break assignment. In Cinemas, November 28th. No snake has set foot in Zutropolis in forever. Don't miss the wildest adventure of the year.

There's a snake. I want the fox and that rabbit. All right, carrots. Any idea where you want to start? Disney Zootropolis 2 in cinemas, November 28. Good luck. I love you. I remember when I first heard the rhyme

as a child. It terrified me. To me, the crooked man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record. There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence against a crooked style, he bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house. My brother, Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by

heart to this day. The crooked man watches you. His eyes are black, his lips are blue. The crooked man twists and crawls. He uses his crooked blade to kill. And when the curtain of night falls, he comes to get his thrill, so I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the crooked man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects. She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small

nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn't know about. But did you hear about the murders in Union? Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris, tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glass. and a low whisper of a voice. I just heard that some kids went missing, Ben murmured. I shrugged. I don't watch TV, I said.

The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That's all the news is, really, a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others misfortune and suffering.

Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude. I took a long sip from my beer, a harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes. While probably true, I don't care, she said, turning her green eyes on me. Don't you want to know what happened to the kids? I do, Ben said, leaning forward. Was it something, supernatural? Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended. What's so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they

told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark. I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated. So what happened? I asked, my curiosity peaked. Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers, Ben continued as the kitchen light sparkled off his glasses. One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off.

So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow. And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint. Holy shit, I whispered, horrified. They called them the radium girls, Ben said. That factory killed hundreds and hundreds. of people. That's why a lot of people think it's haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that's not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers' families. It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time

the factory was operational, and even after it shut down, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen, children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night. Strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town. So, any... There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky, they've asked me

to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time, we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the U.S. and all the best European Rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra.

Jam packed with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Hops and Wild. Wild and hops.

The dream team. They're back in Disney Zootropolis 2. Funny Fox. This is a make-or-break assignment. In cinema's November 28th. No snake has set foot in Zutropolis in forever. Don't miss the wildest adventure of the year. There's a snake.

I want the fuck send that rabbit. All right, carrots. Any idea where you want to start? Disney Zootropolis 2 in cinema's November 28. Good luck! I love you! ...ways, Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found, torn apart.

Their limbs were all amputated and crooked. She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just... grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms, and no one knows what happened. I asked. She shook her head. Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn't a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it.

Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn't end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the crooked man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world. At the mention of those words, the crooked man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice. What did you say? What did the

kid say? I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach. He said he got kidnapped by someone called the crooked man, Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamn months. Who knows what he saw and experienced. People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they're traumatized. My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and

I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Amelia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant. I think some of that stuff is real, Ben said. People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of are just hallucinations or delusions. I didn't know, but I thought I might know someone who might. My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flop house. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying

well. Jack, he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. What are you doing here? I need to talk to you, I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands. Well, what is it, little brother? You know I'm all ears. You remember that rhyme you used to me with when we were little. I asked. That rhyme you made up about the crooked man? He seemed to go a shade paler. I didn't make anything up, he said. That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to Dad when he was little, before she died, Grandma. I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late twenties. Did you hear about the murders over in Union?

The survivor was talking about the crooked man, that's pretty freaking weird, man, he said. Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Amelia, you know. He sat down on a threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing. Why is it weird? I asked. Because, you know, that's where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn't Dad ever tell you?

I shook my head, feeling sick. So Grandma was one of the Radium girls. I said, My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body. I don't know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her. But what does that have to do with Amelia?

I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder. You don't remember. You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some crooked man. Don't you remember what happened the night she went missing? I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur.

I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn't been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time. No, I just remembered, screaming, and... police, I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick. We both saw it, he said. The crooked man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night, when it took her. I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. Where are you going? I'm going home, I said.

I can't deal with this shit right now. But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought. I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started.

started reading. Soul survivor of serial killer commits suicide, the article read in garish black and white letters. Michael Galantino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galantino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an urban exploration group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers. The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the

dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve. The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn't know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just

blown into the room. I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake. Fuck! I swore, grabbing it between my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt Fuck. I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood. I should have never gone to see my brother. God-danned bedbugs, I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flop house, I knew they would spread throughout the

entire house within days. The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim. Slowly, I raised my phone's dim light, shining. it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same

choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago. The crooked man watches you. His eyes are black, his lips are blue. It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring. I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn't

want to see what was hiding behind that door. I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away. The bed frame groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboard shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs. It was the crooked man, the nightmare. for my childhood. He towered over me with a top hat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless

eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim. He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer

in every moment. In panic and terror, I dived head first toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the crooked man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below. Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball.

As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact. on my right shoulder. The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp stick stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back. I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark. Suddenly, I was somewhere else. I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti

covered the concrete walls all around me. Don't look behind you, one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spray-painted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth. Destroy it with fire. Save your soul, another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.

I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back. Fuck, I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn't find some Eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed.

With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this. Hello. I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face, the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair. Grandma, I whispered, looking around and wonder, What is this? Am I dead? She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile. Jack, she said in a soft, melodic voice, I'm so happy to see you. I've been watching you. I've been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn't been murdered by that thing, she spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.

I thought you died of cancer, Grandma. I asked, What do you mean, he killed you? She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze. Everyone in that place was touched by something evil, she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girls. The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away.

After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn't just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it. Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror. You need to kill it, Jack, she whispered grimly. He's woken up again after all these years, and he's starving.

The crooked man must feed, and feed he will if you don't stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The crooked man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love. How? I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of hell were approaching. How? How do I end it? I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded. I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn't seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood. For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking

up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn't even sure if I could walk. Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the crooked man's teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone. A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing

slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the crooked man scream out after me. You'll be with grandmother soon, Jackie Boy, he hissed in his gurgling voice. No one escapes. No one. I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered grogily. Hello, she said. Jesus, Iris, it's after me, I said frantically. Something's happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom. Did you call the cops? She asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight. It wasn't a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it's after me.

Are you guys home? There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background. Yeah, sure, come over, she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better. Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests.

The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed and all around me. I didn't know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off. Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive, an Armolite AR-15, a judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little point-22s, a .45 Ruger, a nozzler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg.

I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside. The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a car. coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin. I stumbled out of the car. I'm sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones. I had nearly gotten to the front of the house. I had nearly gotten to the

house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the crooked man standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall. His hairless face was split into a grin like a death's head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house. I immediately tried opening the door to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered. Hello. What, are you here? She asked. Iris. Get the fuck out of the house. You and Ben aren't alone in there.

There's a man coming in your direction right now. I screamed. panicked. Jump out the window if you have to. It's coming. What? She said, sounding alarmed and confused. Are you being serious? I heard soft murmuring in the background. Tell Ben to grab a gun right now. I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment. Iris? Iris. Answer me. I said. The call immediately. went dead. From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots. At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn't stop the crooked man,

then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me. I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped. At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and

white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops battered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the point four-five Ruger in her hands, and she was limping. Where's Ben? I cried. She shook her head. I jumped out the bedroom window, he was behind me, she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise. We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken

as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone's boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up. Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.

To be continued.