Day 5 - The Chimney Goes Down & The Shattered Funhouse Mirror

Creepy

This episode of Creepy presents two original horror stories read by narrator Jimmy Ferrer. The first tale follows a group of locals compelled by a

Key takeaways

• A voice from an abandoned chimney compels locals to dig a massive pit, triggering hallucinations of crimes they never committed and causing physical deterioration among the workers.
• The excavation reaches over 300 feet deep, revealing human bones from various eras and locked doors along the shaft walls before the site is sealed with concrete.

Main topics

• Haunted locations and supernatural compulsion
• Serial killer psychology and downfall

Notable quotes

"The idea that graves used to be dug by hand feels impossible sometimes."

Conclusion

Listeners are left with two distinct tales of inescapable dread, emphasizing

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) I'm John Grylls from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Creepy Presents The 31 Days of Horror Day 5 Speaker 3 (0:12) No. Speaker 1 (0:19) This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Speaker 2 (0:55) Does anyone else just feel better being here? Speaker 5 (0:58) Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:01) Why Speaker 5 (1:01) do you think that is? Could Speaker 2 (1:03) be the fresh air. Being off social media? Not Speaker 5 (1:06) feeling like John has something terrible in store for us? Yes. Well, Speaker 2 (1:12) that does help not feeling threatened by John. But actually, I just love how much butter they put in all the food here. I mean, my chest is starting to hurt a little after meals, but it's so worth it. Speaker 5 (1:24) I just think it's nice that we all spend so much time together. Speaker 2 (1:28) You'd think a dozen adults would kind of go their separate ways. Strength in numbers. I think it's more of a reflex at Speaker 5 (1:34) this point than anything. Speaker 4 (1:36) Hey, I think that's John up there. John, wait up. Speaker 3 (1:44) Hey guys, how y'all doing this morning? Speaker 2 (1:48) Good. We're just talking about how nice it is being here. Speaker 3 (1:52) Really? Even with how haunted this place is? Speaker 2 (1:55) About that. I know you've told a couple stories about this place being haunted and all, but it's not like the people here act like it. Speaker 3 (2:04) They've had practice. Remember, life is just life if no one shows you anything different. But make no mistake this place Speaker 5 (2:15) This place what? Speaker 3 (2:18) Come with me. I Speaker 2 (2:20) want Speaker 3 (2:20) to show you all something. Speaker 2 (2:21) Here we go. Owen, is that what I think it is? If you think I made a shank out of a toothbrush, then yes. Speaker 2 (2:31) Actually, yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking. How do you even know how to make that? I knew you guys never checked out my Etsy shop. I've sunk so much money into Owen's Homemade Shanks, and I just can't get any traction. I don't think Speaker 3 (2:45) you're gonna need that at the moment. Speaker 2 (2:48) Yeah, that's what Mom used to say. But she learned. We all learned. Speaker 2 (2:56) Well, Speaker 3 (2:57) glossing over that, I just wanted to show you this. Speaker 5 (3:03) What? Speaker 2 (3:04) An Speaker 5 (3:05) old... What is that? It looks like a chimney. Speaker 3 (3:11) It is a chimney. Speaker 5 (3:13) A haunted chimney? Speaker 3 (3:15) Not exactly. Speaker 3 (3:18) Sort of, though, I suppose. It's more like the land. This place. Some people claim they can hear something here, and they feel a compulsion. What sort Speaker 4 (3:30) of Speaker 3 (3:31) compulsion? A compulsion to discover for themselves that the chimney goes down. Speaker 3 (3:42) They first heard the crying in September. No one in the town can agree on the exact date because the sound had been dismissed for weeks before anyone took it seriously. Fall winds did strange things around old buildings. They slipped through cracks and whistled through warped boards. They moaned through empty rooms and rattled loose siding. Every farm family in the county had heard a hundred sounds they couldn't explain any better than, it's just the wind. This town was and is no different. The abandoned Mercer Farmhouse sits three miles outside of town proper, but still inside the city limits. Alone among dead fields and broken fences. Nobody's lived there since the late 80s. Even when it was still fully standing, the roof sagged and the windows were blotted out with dust and grime. But the structure had long since collapsed, with only the chimney still standing, surrounded by the fallen debris from the roof and walls. Speaker 3 (4:40) The crying came from the chimney, not the house. The chimney, drifting across the fields on cold nights. Depending on who you asked, most people thought it sounded like white noise, or maybe the psst sound you make to cats. But to some, it sounded like a person sobbing. Sometimes it sounded like a child, sometimes an elderly woman. Occasionally, it was impossible to tell at all. Speaker 3 (5:10) The sheriff started getting calls. A deputy was sent to investigate. That same deputy returned later that day, pale and exhausted. Eventually, he told them what he saw in fragments. He had gone to check the fireplace, thinking maybe it was a cat or other animal stuck inside, as sometimes happens. But once on the property, he saw that the fireplace had been sealed shut, not boarded up, not simply bricked over. Sealed. Someone had poured concrete into the fireplace opening. The hearth was a solid gray wall. There was no opening behind it. No visible way that anything could have gotten inside unless it maybe entered through the top. Speaker 3 (5:52) Firefighters were called to bring all ladders and make sure no kids had somehow slipped inside. But when they reached the top of the chimney, they saw that there was concrete there as well, as if poured impossibly from the top down, meaning the entire thing was sealed up. Nothing could be inside. Yet the deputy swore he heard the crying. By October, dozens of locals have visited the property out of sheer curiosity. That's when things escalated. The voice began speaking. Now more people actually heard words. At first, it begged for help. But no one could agree on the voice, not the tone, the gender, even the accent. But they all heard the same words. It was giving instructions. It claimed that the fireplace opening had been buried. It claimed that the true hearth lay far below the visible one. It claimed someone had hidden it underground. The voice insisted that people needed to dig. Speaker 3 (6:57) Most people who visited and heard the voice left disturbed but unconvinced. Sure, it was a stupid prank. Speaker 3 (7:04) Some didn't. The first affected man was named Curtis Hale. Neighbors watched him arrive at sunrise carrying a shovel. At first, he spent his time clearing away the debris from the remains of the house before getting to work tearing up what was still there of the floorboards. Then he started to dig. He dug for 14 hours without stopping. People really don't understand how hard it is to dig a hole. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. The idea that graves used to be dug by hand feels impossible sometimes. Under ideal circumstances, someone knowing what they were doing could dig a six-foot-deep grave in under eight hours. But if the ground were filled with heavy clay and roots, like that of the Mercerland, the same job could take days. When Hale's family members attempted to pull him away, he simply walked around them and continued digging. He showed no anger, no excitement, no madness. Only certainty. He simply had to dig. What he was doing was the right thing to do, regardless of what anyone said. And the hole grew steadily along and around the perimeter of the sealed fireplace. Speaker 3 (8:19) Eventually, the sheriff ordered Hale to stop. He said it was dangerous, that there was no telling how stable the hole was. Really, he just wanted Hale to stop because he thought it was stupid. Hale was physically dragged away by family members. He didn't resist, just waited until they let go and calmly walked back after dark and dug through the night, shovelful after shovelful. When the sheriff returned with his deputy the next day, the same one who had first inspected the property, the deputy refused to leave the car. When the sheriff threatened Hale with some jail time to cool off, Hale just shrugged and said others would keep up his work. He was right. Others came. Not many, only four at first. Each behaved identically. They weren't zombies. They weren't erratic. They just wanted to dig. Speaker 3 (9:16) When the air got colder, they wore heavier jackets. They ate when food was brought to them. They slept briefly near the pit each night as exhaustion took over. When their hands bled from the shoveling, they would take time to stop and bandage their wounds before continuing their work in other ways. Like building stairs. You can only dig so deep by hand before you can't throw the dirt out of the hole. So a staircase was assembled, step by step, spiraling down and around the chimney itself. Dirt was brought up by the bucketful. No other equipment was used in the digging and excavating, as if there were rules that had to be followed. Even when others came, people who didn't seem to feel any effects from the voices to try and help in their own way, seeing the obsession but wanting it to end sooner, It was calmly and politely refused. Attempts at conversation produced little response. They acknowledged questions. They understood language. Yet every answer returned to the same objective. The opening had to be found. The voice had to be freed. When the pit reached 10 feet deep on all sides, the first incident occurred. Nobody knew precisely what had triggered it. There were witnesses at this point. People who didn't want or need to dig, but wanted to see what was happening. Wanted to be there if something was actually found. Like watching Al Capone's vault being opened on live TV. Speaker 3 (10:47) One volunteer descended the stairs, empty shovel in hand. He emerged 30 minutes later, running and stumbling up the stairs, screaming. By the looks of his face and hands, he had clawed chunks of his own flesh off. He claimed spiders lived under his skin. Speaker 3 (11:06) Doctors at the local hospital found nothing, and the man had to be restrained and sedated. For the rest of his life, any moment he was awake, the man remained convinced that thousands of insects were crawling inside his muscles, their dead corpses floating through the blood in his veins. Speaker 3 (11:27) The diggers, even when told about what had happened or witnessed it for themselves, showed no reaction. They continued working. Another person showed up and replaced him in the effort. The hole deepened. Fifteen feet. Twenty. Twenty-five. More people began hearing the cries. Local news crews arrived. Experts examined their recordings. The sound they captured contained impossible characteristics. Multiple voices seemed to be layered together. A child's cries existed beneath an adult's voice. An elderly man's breathing existed beneath the child's. Every recording revealed different details. Every listener heard something slightly different. The area was eventually cordoned off under the pretense of public safety. Speaker 3 (12:19) The excavation reached 30 feet when the second horror arrived. Speaker 3 (12:24) Workers descending below the 30-foot mark reported hearing footsteps behind them. Only behind them. Never ahead or beside them. The sounds matched their own pace. Stopping caused the footsteps to stop. Hurrying caused them to hurry. Turning revealed nothing. Everyone who heard it relayed the information casually, but with a slight concern in their voice. Never enough to stop digging, though. One man spent an entire afternoon attempting to catch whatever followed him. Cameras showed him repeatedly spinning in circles. Each time his expression grew more confused. Finally, he began laughing. Witnesses describe the laughter as exhausted rather than joyful. Speaker 3 (13:13) The next morning he was gone. and never seen again. The hole grew deeper and wider. Initially, it consisted of rough wooden platforms wedged into the clay walls. Eventually, landings connected to descending switchbacks. Handrails appeared. Floodlights illuminated the darkness. The project looked more like a mine shaft. Speaker 3 (13:37) No one could explain how any of it was happening. The people working there had no construction experience. There was no coordination that anyone witnessed. Yet somehow materials arrived. People donated lumber. Contractors supplied equipment. All the while, the voices inside encourage them. Every day it sounded closer. Every day it sounded more desperate. The pit passed 40 feet, then 50. Then came the third torment. This was more difficult to document as it was inconsistent beyond the description of having memories that didn't belong to them. A woman descending the stairs suddenly stopped and fell to her knees, remembering drowning her infant daughter. She remembered everything, from the feel of the wet fabric in her fingers to the child's final desperate attempt at breathing, pulling the final gulp of water into its lungs. Speaker 3 (14:37) She had never had children. Speaker 3 (14:41) Another digger remembered shooting a man during a robbery. Another remembered strangling a man in a motel room. Each memory felt absolutely real and contained emotional certainty. People openly wept over crimes they never committed. Some spent days attempting to locate victims who never existed. Others became so consumed by guilt, they only saw one answer anymore. Speaker 3 (15:08) And still, people came. Not many, often just enough to replace the ones who are now gone. Speaker 3 (15:16) The digging continued. Speaker 3 (15:19) The staircase spiraled 60 feet below the farmhouse. The pit walls remained strangely stable, despite warnings from the professionals who had seen the work. And yet, there were no cave-ins, no flooding, regardless of how much rain fell. No structural failures. Some call it miraculous, others absurd. The diggers simply called it progress. Speaker 3 (15:45) The voice grew stronger all the time, not in volume as much as intensity. There were no questions anymore if there were voices. Even the unaffected heard the voices if they got too close. The voices no longer begged, instead speaking with confidence. It praised the diggers on their good work. It thanked them for their time and effort and sacrifice. It promised relief when it was all done. The fourth horror arrived at 70 feet. This one spread beyond the excavation site. The diggers began to comment on people watching them when they would emerge