I Explored An Abandoned White Supremacist Camp | CreepCast

Welcome back to Creepcast! We're reading some racist shit today. We're reading a story called I Explored an Abandoned White Supremacist Camp. It's not a lie, is it? It's not a lie. You said that was such. Oh, we're reading something that we shouldn't be reading. The way you went into that was like. All these years waiting for this moment. The build-up is here, and ladies and gentlemen, we are reading some truly heinous shit. So you may be asking why we're reading a story with this title. Well, dear viewer, the reason we're reading a story with this title is because it's a story by a very special author, Christian Wallace. Christian Wallace. We've covered four times on the show thus far. He did the. My wife has taken our roleplay too far. He did the. I found the bunker of a prepper family who disappeared. He did the only other astronaut on this mission died six weeks ago. And there's one more, Harry. Oh, my dad ate deer meat. What about the deer meat? The deer that walked on two legs. My dad ate meat from deer that walked on two legs. All four of those were creepy stories. They were fantastic. At this point, I would want to read this guy's grocery list. Like, everything he writes is fantastic. So, this story was posted to Tales from the Creeps, and I believe, looking at the comments, that it was removed from No Sleep. Was it removed because of the white supremacist thing? Or because there was no indestructible pedophiles in the story? We don't know. But, either way, if No Sleep won't take it, hey, I know a couple of creeps who will. Isn't that right? What does a white supremacist camp look like? I imagine there's a lot of, like. If I drove by, would I be able to notice it? Well, I mean, I imagine there's a lot of, like. Nazi flag. Black Nazi memorabilia. Maybe some, like, Klan hats and burning crosses. Yeah, stuff like that. People hanging. I mean, I guess we'll find out soon. Well, I think if we're talking about, like, bodies, that's. My God. My fucking Lord. What? What? What? My God. Well, I think if we, um. I think if we see that, it's gone beyond just a white supremacist camp. It is now an active crime scene. But. But who am I to say? Christian Wallace, one hell of an author. And we feel honored that they would post a story to r slash Tales from the Creeps. As always, as always. And to clarify, before we go into this, the story, I'm sure, is not racist. Racism just seems to be a theme in it. I'm not making any assertions like Hunter is. Christian Wallace's character. What we need next, we have Christian Wallace. Now we need Stephen King. Oh? We need Stephen King to write a little something for r slash Tales from the Creeps. And that's really going to fucking legitimize us, huh? Thank you so much to our audio listeners. Thank you for the support. You continue to show on audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And, of course, a very huge thank you. Be sure to give us a good rating on there, too, though. A very huge thank you to our patrons. You allow us to continue to do this and to do cool things with this platform. And it means. Thank you so much for your support. Extra content for them over there. It'll be linked in the description if you're interested. And also, we have merch right now, I believe, for sale at the time. You want to get up and show it again? Yeah, I'll show it again. This is the Creepcast 2026 Spring to Summer line. Give them a little smile. Pop the hip. Pop the hip. Now give a quiet. No, no, just pop it once. Pop it once. Give them a little kawaii peace sign. And then say, Sumimasen. Sumimasen. Almost. Almost. Well, are you ready to dive into the rest of the world of Christian Wallace? There will be other shirts for sale as well that you can check out if you're interested. Thank you if you support us in that way. Yeah, we'll do graphics up if you want to get a shirt for free. I see people sometimes wearing Creepcast merch out in public. I was at a restaurant the other day and a guy walked in on one of our first drops. And he didn't see me. You say, slug bug. Tag him. No, I paid for his food and he was like, oh, it was real appreciative, so that was cool. He did what? He saw me and went, oh. Oh. All right, well, let's dive into this racist story. Sorry about racist. Oh, okay. Important distinction. I probably should stop saying that. Editor, bleep all that, please. All right, I explored an abandoned white supremacist camp. Kid I shot was called Abner. All right, well. All right, just kind of jumping into a little American History X beginning, though, huh? Yeah, yeah. Or he gets shot at the end. When does he get shot? Is he shot at the beginning? The protagonist? The kid? Yeah. What's the Edward Furlong? His brother died? No, his brother's like a Nazi and he's in prison. And he's like, now he's also a skinhead. Yeah. Yeah. But what makes him not racist? What makes him not? Who? Yeah. What's his name? Edward Norton. Edward Norton gets in prison by other Nazis and then he befriends a guy that he works with who's like a black guy in the prison. And then went to jail for curb stomping that guy, right? Yeah, curb stomping the dude. Yeah. But he was also, I think he was also doing like borderline terrorist acts around his town or something. And then the guy who directed or made the movie like protested it. He's like, they changed it. They changed the whole thing. Because he was supposed to turn back the skinhead at the end. Really? Yeah. So how did they change it? They just like. Edward Norton just took the. The editing reigns and then just cut that part. And I changed the dialogue at the end. Really? Interesting. Yeah. He gets, his brother gets killed. Then he was supposed to. Yeah. Go back to being a skinhead. Yeah. Huh. But they just ended on the note of like. That's an interesting piece of lore. I didn't know that. What was Edward? What did Edward Furlong? He was in a. What's that movie we watched with him? No, no, no. I remember like the, the cheesy horror film we watched that was like supposed to be a classic. Oh. Oh. What the fuck was that called? Monster. Yeah. It's like, it's weird. It has like on his computer in his house. It's all about a guy who's like, oh, I'm playing this video game. And like, it makes this entity come out of the computer and like kill people. Whatever. This is like early, early. What is it? Brain scan. Brain scan. It has like a cult following now. I've heard of it. It's not a good movie, but it's, it has a cult following. But anyways, he has this A on his computer. That's like. Igor. Igor. He does. Igor, load this up. He does. He does. Right away, monster. Yes, monster. Then Igor dies. He fucking kills him at the end of the movie. Spoiler. The computer? Igor. Yeah. Cause he's like, fuck machines. Which is actually kind of funny. Cause then he ended up being in Terminator 2, which was kind of the same message. The kid I shot was called Abner. It's been all summer looking at me when he thought no one was looking. Didn't recognize it straight away. If anything, did my best to avoid catching anyone's attention. Abner was an older camper. Abner was an older camper and a nasty piece of shit who spent his time catcalling girls way too young for him and smoking cigarettes with some of the counselors. But when he wasn't shredding around the place like a chimp pacing its enclosure, I would often catch him looking at me in furtive glances. I guess he thought he was being subtle about it, but he wasn't. And one day his friends noticed. He looked at me. Then they looked at him. Subtle tilts of the head. That was all it took for them to convey their suspicion and in a desperate bid to save face. Abner stood up from the railing. He was perched on it and cried out. What the fuck do you think you're looking at, pretty boy? And I just had to be clever, didn't I? Aww. You think I'm pretty, Abner? He grabbed me. The others joined in. A knee to the chest pushed me into sodden mud as Abner's rain-slick hands gripped my jaw. Won't be so fucking pretty now, huh? Abner slid a pocket knife into the fat of my cheek and went to work. God damn. What? Straight to the just. Holy shit. Like. But it was wet. And his hands were shaking. The blade skipped across my cheekbone like a stone across water. The tip of the blade nicked the eye and carved up my brow and forehead, leaving a gouge that would forever remind me of tectonic drift. By the time my cries attracted any attention from the counselors, I was sobbing and running in circles, bloodied hands groping desperately at open air. I remember screaming for my mother, my gut twisting itself in knots. I wanted someone to enforce some logic back onto the world. I wanted to be a man of justice. they put both of them on an island? The guy who kicked his ass and the cripple guy? he's like dragging this fucking wheelchair around on this, this random Island out of nowhere. And then the whole thing is that the guy gets attacked by a bear and he becomes basically shredded up, whatever. And then the kid helps him. It's like a really, it's like a reformation program kind of thing, but where they put children on islands. Yeah. I don't know. Is it like a dystopian future thing? It was like a, it's like a juvenile. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's, uh, is it like a young fantasy kind of thing where it's like, you don't really ask questions about it. Like I don't know. I mean, I guess. Yeah. It's not futuristic like that. Okay. Cause longer games is like, like this is such an insane concept, but to the, you know, 13 year olds reading it, it's like, you know, it's fine. You know, it's enough to buy touching spirit bear. That's what it is. Touching spirit bear. Touching spirit bear is what it's called. I just remember. Cause when I was younger, I was like, Holy fuck the cover, put up a cover of the book. The cover of the book is like intense. Like I was like, Oh my God, this is fucking sick. Uh, it's a young adult novel about a violent, angry teenager named Cole Matthews, who was sent to a remote Alaskan Island and alternative as an alternative to jail time for assaulting a classmate. But I'm pretty sure what they don't put there is that the motherfucker, the classmate goes there too. Okay. Or whatever. Cause he like, he beats the shit out of him, like smashes his teeth into the pavement, whatever. But anyways, yeah, it just reminds me of that. If anyone so far, hopefully this is registered with someone, but it reminds me of that. Gotcha. It has that similar vibe. And also I didn't know if this is also one of those programs where it's like, is he a troubled? Well, it's, so more so it tipped me off is it's the reformation and reclamation. So it's like, okay, what are you reforming and what are you reclaiming? And also, uh, it's named after Eden, which obviously Christian, nothing wrong with, but typically a lot of groups will, um, hijack Christian terminology and stuff like that for their groups. Oh, so you're saying that like the Eden reformation reclamation, you're like, Oh, this is a white supremacist. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or do they say Eden? Because it's like Adam and Eve are like, well, the, the, well, normally when you attach you to things means like perfection, paradise following after something. Obviously I'm not saying everything named Eden is various, but just bad people will co-opt. Yeah. Reclaiming. Yeah. What are we reclaiming? What are we reforming? Yeah. That's what I mean. Reclaim paradise. Bring it back. What do you mean by that? Yeah. They bundled me into a private cabin and wouldn't let me speak to anyone or make a call. I was kept prisoner for two days before they finally bribed some drunken vet to try and patch me up. When I told one of the counselors who stood guard outside my door that they'd be sorry once my dad found out, what had happened on their watch, he snorted and replied, who do you think recommended the vet should have figured dad was the reason I was sent there. He didn't like me wearing eyeliner. So when it was his turn to have me for the weekend after my 14th birthday, he decided to take me on a trip. If you can believe it, I was actually excited because even though he'd always been a dick to me, he was my dad and I wanted him to like me. But as soon as we passed eight lines, he pulled up on the side of this road. We waited for a full three hours. I wouldn't answer any of my questions. Just smoked one cigarette after another. Eventually this van drove up. Three guys with masks got out. I asked dad what was going on, but he said nothing as they dragged me from my seat. Cable tied me, threw me in the back of their van. A lot of intense things happening in this. What kind of camp is this? It's like one of those scared straight camps where like they'll, they'll have people come in the middle of the night and take the kids. And it's like a bootcamp kind of thing. This is real. That's a real thing. People do. They wear masks. They wear masks. They wear masks. There's a lot more restrictions around them in the day, but back in the day, like there'd be scared straight programs where I've heard of it in the prison system thing, but I didn't know that was, well, the idea is like, if you have a kid who keeps getting in trouble with like school, juvie, beating people up, the parents will talk to this group who it's like, yeah, we'll scare, we'll scare the crap out of them. So they'll take them. They would like show up in the middle of the night or show up at school and be like, you're coming with me or whatever. And the parents would be there. So it doesn't look like an abduction, you know? So the parents can say, to having the kid taken somewhere where they'll do hard work and they'll be like taught the value of a dollar and stuff like that, whatever. Just a very like, you know, that's surprising. Heavy hand thing. It was like, there was a TV show. There's a TV show. I feel like that followed one of them, like an old reality TV show. I think it's just scared straight. It's the fucking, it's the prison prison. That's where they take them to prison and let them see other prisoners. This was like a camp. They would take them to, but anyway, yeah, it was a thing that there, as you can imagine now, they're like super regulated. There's still programs you can go to, um, like you can take your kid to, but I would be surprised if there's any still openly doing like kidnap simulations. They do that with fat camp too. They kidnapped the fat kids. Did they? I don't think anyone's getting out. He's just making fun of me for being fat. Why were you looking at me the entire time? Then he's just looking at their tart on me. He's just kept doing this. I signed up today. Yeah. Can I get a band hogtie tomorrow? Yeah, exactly. Can we hogtie hunter tomorrow? This also sounds like a, with the eyeliner thing, it sounds like his dad tried to send him to like a, um, scared straight conversion. Well, well, I, I, I meant yes to conversion, but yes, literally scared straight. Yeah. Again, conversion camp. Yeah. I guess you could, depending on when actually Christian Wallace wrote this, he could just be like a little, like, Oh, a scene kid or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. He could be, but his dad, well, yeah, he's gay. He's wears eyeliner. He's gay. Yeah. It's like new nowadays too. It's like guys wearing like fingernail polish and then just like, all right, son's a fairy. Send them off. I'm not going to vibe. Yeah. Yeah. So you're like, it's just fingernail. Polish. Dad's not a big deal. No, that big of a deal. After that came the absolute nightmare. That was Eden. They didn't explicitly labeled themselves a white supremacist camp, nor did they particularly tout their gay conversion therapies. Kind of person who sent their kids to Eden didn't want any official connection to that sort of thing, but the camp's motto was setting America's youth straight. And their flag was a red flag with a white circle that encompassed a Germanic looking crucifix. Hmm. Not really hiding is pretty hiding in plain sight. Right. But that is like the thing about putting a cross in the center of that co-opt Christian stuff. I'm like, what's that? I can't remember. explicitly white supremacists or if there's just a tie-in um not the aryan nations the one that had the big standoff with the fbi uh they're called the covenant the sword and the arm of the lord i think was the name of the group that's another white supremacist yeah it was either white supremacist or like they had members that were tying to aryan nations and stuff like that it was like an early american militia group but all their stuff was like you know like the the name the arm the covenant sword of the lord or whatever um and then like their symbol out of bible and most people are like the light lightning crosses on fire and all that the cross is on fire yeah yeah that's from the they put the swords on fire oh yeah there's a rainbow well that's another yeah i hate everyone my son's gay but i like him you're like all right yeah a lot of them like the rainbow imagery will show up because they consider like um like um lgbt and like gay pride taking the rainbow to be an affront to god because the rainbow in the bible was the covenant that the earth would not be flooded again given to noah so a lot of them put the rainbow on the flag then they'll they'll do it to reclaim it and stuff oh i see we're taking it back yeah yeah that kind of thing now i actually what did well i guess the rainbow thing's been a part of gay pride movements for a while i mean right it has to be i mean forever because this was the covenant was like back in the late 80s early 90s okay oh wow yeah so yeah it's been around a while come to creepcast for your white supremacist history lesson fun fact but yeah a lot of them will do that like aryan nations has a bunch of like christian symbolism they use a cross a lot and stuff right yeah i'm real stoked about as you could imagine definitely yeah that thing i was talking about in the we were talking about the christian thing with like some go so heretical i would say that it negates the christianity part things like this right where they operated in the appalachian woods far from prying eyes those kids, singling them out for recruitment. That was the point. I pulled the trigger. I never bought into Eden's racist bullshit, but the genius of a lot of cults is that they don't always ask you to care that much about belief. Until I attended, I wouldn't have even thought of myself as a cruel or angry person, but the machine worked, and it didn't work just once. It worked again and again and again. Psychopaths Eden spat out, they didn't always start out as bullies. Many probably started out more like me because it was about teaching kids that you hurt others before they hurt you, and its lessons were written in blood and bruises. Abner gave me a chance to hurt him when he wrote me a strange and confused apology letter and slid it beneath my door. I still don't know why he wrote it, though I figure he must have been as dumb and confused as any other kid, I suppose. But in that letter, Abner tried to explain himself. I don't remember the words in detail on account of the anger it set off in me. Even a sincere apology. A sincere apology tastes like piss if you've got an eyeball-weaving puss. But what really set me on fire was the implication that somehow, I was to blame for his actions. I just ain't used to seeing cute boys. I remember reading those words clear as day. I don't know how to describe how angry they made me. A fat boy exploding in my chest and my head. Oh, I thought I was just calling Abner fat. He meant the bomb. A fat boy. A piece of the sun laid gently in my skull and left to burn for all eternity. I still feel it now, that anger. Something I'll never forget. So I guess the implication is Abner's family probably sent him there because he was. gay. Yeah. Yeah. I showed Abner's letter, complete with all its description of his confused feelings, to the counselors. And when I finally got off bed rest a few days later, I found that there had been an important change in the camp's dynamics. Where Abner had once lurched around the camp, threatening any poor kid, who made the mistake of rubbing him the wrong way, he now skulked in the shadows and stayed out of sight. When his friends walked by, he flinched. When they made hateful jokes with slurs for punchline, he tried to awkwardly laugh it off, but that only made it worse. I didn't want his camaraderie. Not anymore. Not after the counselors had made him stand in front of the whole camp as they read out the confessional he'd left me. His friends kicked him out of the older boy's cabin. Counselors wouldn't let him into the others, so he had to sleep in a tent. I remember getting up one night, and looking outside to see one of the guys taking a piss on him. I could tell by the light that Abner was inside, but he was just hiding in the corner like a beaten dog. There were moments when a better person than me might have felt sorry for him, but I was seeing the world through one eye, and his suffering made me happy. And when it came time for the wild hunt, and Abner was selected to be that week's steer, I spent an extra couple hours each day on the range practicing with the air rifle. I had to work real hard to learn how to shoot well with one eye patched up. Even then, I was never as good as I was back when I had two. But I figured Abner made for a bigger target than the pesky can sat up in the air. So, I mean, obviously, like, it's tragic Abner's sent here, stuff like that, but he straight up stabbed the protagonist, right? Yeah, in the cheek. Yeah, he pulled a knife and stabbed him in the head. I think he stabbed him in the cheek, and then also, he keeps referencing, I think that he, like, fucking hit him in the eye. I thought he was talking about his eye swelling up. It sounds like he stabbed him in the eye or something. No, I think he stabbed him through the cheek. He stabbed him through the cheek for sure. So, like, up through there or something? Well, somehow, he still can't see all this. Maybe he's just swollen. I just thought that he, yeah, they're like, he's got, he got the shit beat out of him. Yeah. And then he, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, I understand our protagonists, like, still want to, even though it's like, yeah, the situation is tragic, I understand our protagonist still being mad, you know. Yeah. Well, now you're also in an environment, too, where you're rewarded for- To kill or be killed kind of thing. Also, are they talking about airsoft rifles or air rifles, like pellet guns? I think they're saying pellet guns, I'm sure. That is insane. I mean- Yes. The whole thing's insane. But, like, you use pellet guns to- This is breaking skin and it's definitely, like, you're gonna have to- It's digging in there, yeah. You're gonna have to pluck them out later, yeah. Yeah, you use pellet guns to hunt squirrel, like, it's intense to get shot with. And now, apparently, little children, so there you go. Yeah. It's time to talk about something scary. 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On the day, I set off alone and hiked for three straight hours before I finally spotted him moving between the trees. Pale skin, shaved head, covered in bruises. Abner was a gaunt figure, panting and running desperately through the undergrowth. Sounds dumb to say, but he looked like a deer. I swear it. Not in shape, but in spirit. The way he moved around, looking so scared and alert. Dead and I had a few shared interests, but deer hunting was one of them, and I knew the look plain as day made it easy to pull the trigger. The pneumatic woompf of the air rifle was satisfying. Not as satisfying as the sound of the pellet striking him in the temple. Certainly, not as satisfying as watching him practically tumble head over heels and go rolling down the side of the mount. I was grinning when I crested the top and looked down. Panting and laughing, all half mad, filled with the kind of righteous anger that I loathe to admit I must have inherited from my father. God, when I finally saw him, when I saw the broken tangle of legs and arms, it made me think of a spider that's been stepped on. It was all bundled up, his violent descent down the hill stopped by the gnarled roots of a fallen tree. His face was streaked with blood and reminded me strangely of Jesus and his crown of thorns. In his eyes, his open eyes, Abner was looking at the sky too, just like Jesus with those chipped and painted irises. After that came the panic, and I don't remember much else. Got shot in the temple. He fell down the hill, probably broke his neck and his arms and shit. I mean, if you're shot with a pellet gun, if it pierces the skull, it could kill you. In the temple, my God. I mean, yeah. That was a rough paragraph. Like, kid falling down the hill, the arms twisted up and that thing looking to the sky like Jesus. The crown of thorns. Blood. Like, man. Brutal. They found me half-collapsed a mile out from the camp, feverish with an infection that was racing from my eye to my brain. I'd soiled myself. In my hysterical state, I'd told them about Abner. Terrible confession. Checked up on my story and found it to be true. Three weeks later, I woke up in the hospital, recovering from surgery to remove the infected eye. My dad was beside me and spoke in a tone that resembled pride, when he saw me looking nervous towards the door. He smiled and patted my shoulder. "Don't worry. We look after our own." "What a good dad." "I didn't really think much of you when you was my boy, but now that you killed a kid, welcome home, son." "Now that you're head-shaved and you're a white supremacist, I think I can look at you without throwing up." "Now that you got an SS tattoo on your arm and you killed a child, come home, boy." "Oh my God." "The meat grinder is effective. I'll give them that. It took me a long time to realize that the people who ran that camp were not the ones who were going to kill me." "I'm not going to let you kill me." "I'm not going to let you kill me." The way they treated me, they acted like they were doing me a favor. saving me from an unfair and unjust world that would have persecuted me just for protecting myself. I never bought into it. Not really. I don't know. I like to think I didn't do a great deal to actually help them, but whether I want to admit it or not, I became part of the machine. I was in videos. I was in brochures. I had tattoos that remain even to this day as blotchy scars across my chest and back. There are photos of me as a teenager that make me feel physically sick when I look at them. A gangly 19-year-old with an SS tattoo poking out from beneath the collar. These marks cost me educational and job opportunities, and that pushed me further into the machine. I went to rallies when they told me to. Gave speeches when they told me to. Threw bottles when they told me to. Eventually, they didn't have to keep telling me what to do. I was angry. So angry. All the time. Like the cancer of the mind. Do you want to know what ended it? What finally pulled me out? I was sent to jail for drunk and disorderly behavior when I was 21, and a young trans woman who was sharing the cell with me and six others looked my way. You're a pretty man. And instinctively, touched the scar on my face. The hollow socket that I never covered because I thought it made me look intimidating. She only smiled. It was so gentle. Like, she knew the fear I'd felt when Abner had held me down. She made a kind gesture. To a man with a swastika tattooed on his neck. She didn't have to. She didn't have to show kindness to a man who wanted her dead. And then the thought came to me clear as day. I don't think she deserves to die. After that, everything unraveled. For the last 20 years, my life had been dedicated to deprogramming people who got sucked up into the same machine I had. I've been on the news, interviewed for documentaries, lectured at every Ivy League university in the country. The charity I run has become my life's work. I've been a part of the community. Every step of the way, I've received letters from people calling me a traitor. They'll say anything if they think it'll keep me quiet, but I just ignore them all. I think this is an interesting perspective. For one, the story's very rough, very brutal in a lot of parts, but that note of a piece of kindness changing their mind. The guy who was, gosh, I can't remember if there was a movie made about him. He was played by Sam Rockwell. But about the big KKK leader who became like a civil rights leader. He had a, I forget his specifics, but it was a similar story where someone showed him kindness and he changed. I think with a lot of people like this, some people get mad at stories like this at the implication that people who are that hateful, people who are that dangerous and angry can be turned by just kindness. When in most cases, it's like, no, they need to be dealt with in much more extreme ways. But there are, you know, random cases of people just like a switch flips one day. Recognizing their place. So no, it's an interesting thing to frame like this brutal horror story around, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, the horror is, I don't think that we've gotten to the crux of what has happened yet, but I mean, everything is, it's just so extremely, everything that's happened, you said it's brutal so far. It's all very just true. I mean, like the amount of people, especially growing up, I mean, you probably got to relate to this in a way of growing up in like a more predominantly white Southern area. No, I'm kidding. A more predominantly white area. You have, I have tons of people who all of this racism shit is based completely in fear. All of these people are afraid. They're afraid for the future, their faith for themselves. And they're afraid of anything that's like different. And I think it causes all this hatred and evilness to fucking build up and rile up. But all these people, it's pretty much just generations of people telling them that. And it's a, it's a cold light mentality. And then, I mean, I've met a lot of people that have never interacted with, or not have known a lot of people that have like never made that connection to actually talk with anybody else that's outside of this comfort zone. And it's created this extremely toxic mentality that if you've never breached out and actually talked to any of these people, you just assume that they're all the things that your parents or the people have around you, all your friends, all the people that are around you say they are. And I think you get into that trap. So sometimes I do believe that an act of kindness can open your eyes of like, oh shit, that you, I think that you, I don't think that that's as ridiculous as, uh, you know, I don't think that that's as ridiculous as, uh, I don't think that that's as ridiculous as, uh, you know, I don't think that that's as ridiculous as, uh, you know, I think it's some people think, but I do think that like at the end of the day, it's complete mental delusion and it's like a complete poison of the mind. And a lot of times too, people, you're just so far gone, you know? Uh, but yeah, so far, I mean, it's just been a thing where it's, it's makes, it makes total sense, especially people being like repressed. You made to feel like you're basically a fucking animal. And that the only way to actually be a human being is to follow this exact way, line of thinking and everything else is stupid. Of course, you're going to have to be a human being. You're going to have to be a human being. You're going to people that are put into those positions and, and everything. It's, it's, uh, it's a horrible, horrible, real thing that happens all the fucking time. I think, um, so growing up, I'd never really saw that much like prejudice and stuff like that. I think mostly just because all my friends, like people we knew growing up, we're all church related. That's like where everyone came from and, you know, racism, all that's pretty far removed from Christian teachings and things like that, at least legitimate ones. Um, we'd always have missionaries from around the world come in and talk all the time. So I didn't see a lot of it, but, uh, until I got to like high school and met people kind of outside my immediate purview, or I remember like, uh, we would have like bus ministries where we'd go to areas and we would help people out and, you know, meet more of the community then. Um, yeah. Well, I, which I, well, I just interject, I do feel like that's a rare thing. I think, especially in a religious aspect, I think a lot of people are even more judgmental and things, especially when it comes down to a thing that's so strictly like my worldview has to be this way. Cause I would say, I would argue that a lot of the churches that I went to and things that even pushed me away from the church and stuff like that was the limited minds that came from it. And the things of just being like, well, if you don't agree with me, you're fucking wrong. I hate you. You know? So I think that like, not to say once again, that's not everybody. I'm not saying that's you, but I do think that like people have probably had. And I think that's another reason why a lot of people get pushed away from those things too, is because it's not always welcoming. It's just where you are. And I think it's just around who you're, who you're surrounding yourself with. And I do think naturally, I think human beings are just extremely fucking nasty. I think, you know, it would, um, I think, cause I, I'm, I certainly know what you mean. You know, I talk to people all the time and there were like, I say that like, I never interacted with it. I would see it. I would hear stories about it and stuff like that. I'm just saying like my friends and people I was around just wasn't something we, we were grown and we were raised in the opposite of that, you know, to reject that and things like that. Um, but sure it was around is in other communities and stuff like that. Um, you know, all Christianity is at the end of the day is Jesus loves us all so much. He died for us. And some people will take that to a sense of betterment, a sense of entitlement with things and let it run rampant. Um, but when I did see it, cause you're going back talking about, you know, predominantly like way more wide areas and stuff like that. The only time you would, I would normally see it was in people who felt they were slighted by something, right. Either like, you know, their life, like, you know, low that, you know, they weren't making the money they wanted to, or there was something they couldn't get or, or like they lost their job or something like that. I mean, for me, my, for my family, people in my family, it was people being like, Oh, X person, uh, took work from me. Yes. Like that. Kind of thing. It would be just legitimately that. And then that would be forever. Yes. Yeah. It would be, it would be this, that I was slighted by this reason, or I can't get a job because of this person or I'm not making money because these people are taking our jobs and stuff like that. And it was always like, it was always stuff like that. Um, and it would be because that was the thing you could blame it on that you didn't have to confront, right. It was a thing out there, this nebulous target. That is the reason for the things that are wrong in my life. Not something I can change. Not, not a complex series of things that happened or someone doing me wrong. That's the problem. So that's what the issue is. And it always just be from a point of, um, I fear to a sense, but also like, um, determination to find a thing that's wrong other than, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, just lost them sick in the head people. Well, that's all it is. Yeah. There's also a lot of that. Of course. Yeah. I want to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, Warby Parker. Buying glasses shouldn't be complicated, but so often it is. It's often hard to tell if the glasses are going to fit your face or if you're even being charged a fair price. Thankfully, Warby Parker is here to help. Nothing comes close to Warby Parker's quality, price, customer service, and selection. They have 300 retail stores across the United States stocked with durable and stylish eyewear. And one quick trip to their website can tell you how easy they've made the glasses buying process. 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That's because right now if you buy one pair of glasses you will get 20% off any additional pair when you head to the link in the description at warbyparker.com slash creepcast. That's right 20% off any additional prescription pairs again when you get a pair at warbyparker.com slash creepcast that's w-a-r-b-y parker.com slash creepcast at the link in the description. Thank you to Warby Parker for sponsoring the show. Only one set of letters came close to rattling me. I always threw them away with the rest but they had a habit of getting stuck in my thoughts for days afterwards. There were mean-spirited things that turned up in the strangest places. Found them in my fridge, in my shoes, in gym lockers. I saw them as nothing more than attempts to scare or bully me into silence. Most of them were simple. A few lines here and there. Hurt when you shop. I confided in you. Something else found me in those woods. Or he did live and the members of his group wanted him to think he was dead. They quote unquote hit like hit uh swept under the rug but what does that even mean? Yeah yeah so he could be alive but I think someone's probably trying pretending to be him or there's a supernatural element. I don't know but I figured they were sad attempts at intimidation but if whoever was making them had any real guts they would have reported the crime for what it was but that was as likely to incriminate them as it would make them. That was a very sad moment for me. Then a few months ago one of the letters turned up in my car and it shook me to my core. Reading the words within felt like I was out in those woods again. My heart racing and my stomach churning as I looked down at Abner's corpse. I was hard as a rock when I cut you. Oh gosh. That's all there was on the page but that's all I needed to see because I never told anyone what I felt pressing down on my torso when Abner cut me. Ah. Jeez oh my gosh. He never mentioned it in his letter either. The only people on this entire planet who knew that he had an erection was him and me. Three days later I got another letter. This one was inside the pillow on my bed. God knows how it got in there but by this point I felt as if my grip on reality was weakening. I hadn't been into work for weeks. I hadn't seen any friends or family. When I read the final letter I think I already knew what it wanted long before I read the words. He didn't wait. Interesting. That's like a really fun catalyst of getting the character back to go back and see what's up. Yeah. It's like almost like a person that knows your deepest secret and somebody who's like torturing you with it is giving you physical letters that now it's it's you're it's impossible to run away from. It has to be this person. So now it's like now it makes you think that almost our main character is going to go back and finish the job. Kill him. Yeah. I would assume so or whoever's doing that go back and snuff them out too potentially. It could be. It could also be like because he talks about he still has that anger that rage even though it's not directed them like he still feels that hatred and maybe he carries it out on whoever this person is and stuff. So who knows. The side of Eden's gates downtrodden and collapsing beneath the weight of heavy woodland air made the breath catch in my throat. In the 30 years since I'd last seen it the forest had encroached on the abandoned grounds. Now the rotting cabins and algae-slicked decks were hidden in shadows. In places, the buildings had been torn down and the trees were gone. In places, the buildings seemed to grow out of the woodland. Their floors collapsing into the undergrowth the snarled roots explored and reclaimed the foundations. Doors left ajar offered glimpses of rooms crowded with ferns as tall as me. Their dripping fawns hiding faded posters with words like great replacement and skull shapes explained barely visible in the dark. My feet navigated a lone floor that had half buried the long forgotten remnants of camp life. Including old VHS tapes of revisionist documentaries, and rucksacks full of moldering clothes. In one cabin, there was even a flag still pinned by one corner to the wall. It looked like it had been used to put out a fire. Pressing deeper, I found a cabin with a half-charred timber frame. Dozens of jagged logs, planks, and even a few rusted iron beams had been jammed between the door and the wooden deck. To try as I might, I couldn't budge them. And the windows were thick with mud and filth. I never saw what lay inside, but I did note that the gate was closed. The gate was closed, but I did note the gaping hole in the roof along with splintered planks that jutted outwards. Stranger still, when I went down by the lake, I found two pickup trucks parked up beneath the canopy. Both had festered in the dank forest air. Rubber on the tires, flaking and frail. In one, the airbag had deployed, but there was no sign of damage to the exterior. In the other, the door had been left open, and embedded in the passenger seat dash was a single human tooth. So, so far, how long has it been between when he was last there and now? Cause this, this almost makes me think that the fucking spirit of that kid came back and wreaked havoc on the fucking camp. It could be. It could also be like the camp was found out at some point and everyone had to like- Well, see, I was like, okay, well maybe it's that someone came up and they like fucking firebombed the place. But I don't know, the tooth in the dashboard makes it seem like, oh, someone was like, pfft, bashed their fucking head into it. Well, the combination of the airbag makes me think that it was a wreck. Oh, well, I guess they didn't say, I just thought they were a wreck. Oh, well, I guess they didn't say, I just, I just thought they were both parked. Uh, found stranger parked up beneath the canopy. Both had festered. I thought, I thought it was, he hit him so fucking hard there. Oh, the airbag went off. I see what you're saying. That's right. That's what I thought. Someone got like, I see what you're saying. Yeah, probably, probably since I don't know. Uh, so maybe it was the kid. Maybe it was the ghost of the kid or something like that going through there. I didn't linger long in the camp, which I have to say, by the way, this has got to be one of the most unique setups like premises we've seen. To a horror story like this. I think I would say unique. Definitely. I think that like the, uh, it's very hard. It's very hard making a character where it's like, by the way, I'm a disgruntled youth who got turned into, uh, a white supremacist and that's your man. That's your protagonist. I think it's hard to dance that line while making them somebody where you're like, oh, I'm kind of curious to hear what they're about. You know, I want to hear what they have to say. I mean, obviously there's the note of like, they are reformed now, but even the description earlier on, there was, I think a successful sympathetic may not be the right word, an attempt to make you understand why someone so desperate became violent in this situation. They were indoctrinated into it and stuff like that. I was just saying, since they are reformed, as it said, it must've been some amount of time between. Yeah. Well, it says he's on news stations and he's doing interviews and stuff like that. Charity, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it's had to be years and years. It had to be years. Yeah. So now after 20 years, he's getting these notes. Yeah. That's from Abner. Yes. That's yeah. I mean, that's pretty fucking crazy. Well, so he said he was 14 when he went. Yeah. He went, he was 14 when he went. So now he's like 34. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been a while. Oh, so earlier when I saw, I'm sorry, I missed her there earlier. I was like, oh, maybe he's going there to snuff him out. He's probably going there to be like, well, one, what a crazy mystery. But then also if this guy did survive, I should probably fucking talk to him. Or if someone knows. True. Yeah. If Abner lived then and told someone, and they know I need to figure this out before it comes out that he, who is a famous public figure now for being a reformed white supremacist, it's like, Hey, do you know this guy killed a kid? Well, that's what I'm wondering is that's what I'm wondering is your all's take so far on, is it a selfish reason he's going back there to like clear his name or is it something where it's selfless? That's I guess that's what I'm curious with so far what you've heard. I think more than anything gets searching curiosity. Yeah. Because so far, if it's, if it is this route where it's like, well, I'm a big figure now I've been reformed, but people don't know my dark secret that to me, that's like immediately selfish. Like, that's not like that. It's not like a thing of, I should go back and I need to like explain myself or, or I need to like let people know. Well, that's kind of what I was inferring to when I pointed out how the story keeps saying, like, uh, I have my dad's anger. I still got to me. Well, yeah, it's like making excuses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I didn't linger long in the camp cursory examination. My old cabin revealed nothing. The cop got my attention. Once I realized there were no real answers for me there, I set out for the woods. I'd be lying. If I said I wasn't afraid as I took my first steps into the trees, but I couldn't have told you why only the feeling of eyes on my back. I also want to point out not to keep derailing, but Christian Wallace is such an expert at giving you just enough detail in moments to make the scene grizzly and like work, like the kid falling down the hill and then Abner and all that. Uh, and also knowing when to skirt on detail to keep the pace moving. Yeah. I was going to say, I found, I found that even with like, even just some of the explicit, like boner talk and all that stuff. I feel like that could have gone like extremely gratuitous, but it kept it right where it needed to be to still be shocking, but not like delve into it too much. Yeah. Yeah. Revealing in the best way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, he, he paces his stories very well. Yeah. I think I kept at it because I wanted something bad to happen. I had skirted justice for quite a long time. Sure. Most nights I told myself I'd probably just imagine I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to kill myself. I was going to imagine the whole thing, but so what if I hadn't shot him, I would have good half. Does it make that big a difference? I had it in me to kill and my sins were so great that i don't think the distinction between what had or had not happened in those woods even mattered anymore sure what he did to me was wrong but i excused a lifetime of screw-ups by saying i was just a kid difference was i'd had time to grow and learn while abner had been robbed of that chance i tried so hard to atone but hurting him was the one thing i'd yet to face up to okay so that points to a bit more of a selfless he's coming here for penance almost in this description so i don't you see even then according to him i was actually going to say that that was such a muddy description of because it was it was it was it felt it felt like it was like leaning selfless and that was kind of selfish it was leaning like so you're thinking maybe that he's just telling himself this i think that he doesn't know what to expect yet i think that at the same time it's a thing of like you know i was just a kid i've told myself this but i've had i think that he is ridden with gilbert but i think that he does not know what his plan is yet going there yeah you know yeah i was scared of what i might find but at least i didn't have to worry about getting lost the ground sloped upwards for a few miles before the hill broke and went down at a sharp incline all i had to do was find the crest and fall at one direction or the other 50 50 i'd get it right the first time and i had an instinct that there's anything i needed to see stand out to me i don't know how familiar you might be with the woods by the way if you are you already know what the woods are if you are you know just how quickly the horizon fades to darkness as it's lost the ever-growing ranks of standing leaning and falling trees it's important you understand that though the darkness of it it's like daytime's a bubble that only follows you everything farther than 20 or so feet away is in a perpetual dusk a little farther than that and it's as dark as any night when i finally reached the top of the hill and looked down i saw a mountainside disappearing into a wooded trench where the sun made little progress it was like finding the border between day and night i had this strange realization that there must be places down amongst those trees where the sun might not have reached for thousands of years i did not have to walk far along the hilltop before i found the shoe the red of its fabric laces was too bright for those woods it lay just a dozen or so feet down the embankment like bait in a trap god did i hurry to take it why wouldn't i in my memories of abner lying dead his left leg a bent backwards and reached all the way around the top of his head like a scorpion tail dangling off the toe was a single shoe with red laces decades later i was convinced i was looking at that very shoe i rushed down the steep hill with great speed my feet sinking into the soft loamy woodland floor like i was descending the snowy bank each step covered three or so feet as i took these great loping strides aided by gravity when i slowed to grab the shoe something beneath the leaves caught and i was sent careening towards the ground i built up speed so quickly that my descent was closer to free fall than a roll the world became a dizzying swirl of canopy and dirt that only stopped when something hit me in the gut like a car hitting a wall the world continued to spin around me that was just my inner ear failing to catch up in reality i've been stopped by a tree and i lay half wrapped around it like a t-shirt on a clothesline when i tried to breathe something my chest grated and hurt so bad i worried i might die craning my neck and looking back up the hill i saw an incline as steep as a cliff climbing back up would be no more possible than flying for some reason during my fall i grabbed a hold of the shoe and it was still clutched in one fist i stuffed it in my bag and tried to take another deep breath to steady myself but it was like someone had slid a knitting needle between my ribs pain was agonizing and i could just about manage to keep my head from going light and dizzy but it wasn't like i could stay there all those thoughts of sins and punishment gave way to the fear that i might die in those woods the way down would be difficult but i could just about manage a slow crawl if i was careful i rolled onto my stomach got to grips with the soft earth and then began my descent but i was moving for only 10 minutes and i felt something strange beneath the leaves it was another shoe at first i thought it must be the the size was all wrong it's barely as big as my hand better fitted one of the younger campers than a teen like abner angry and hurt i tossed it to the side and kept going but i soon found myself pulling up a pair of moldy boxers and a t-shirt jacket sock scarf i realized that the woodland floor was littered with scattered belongings of what must have been dozens of people that was just the beginning for long the leaves gave way and i was crawling over a carpet of old and discarded belongings at times there were so many that i imagined myself emerging out of the sea and mounting a coastline made of backpacks and clothes there were tents nets gun bags sleeping bags coolers that had been smashed open they couldn't all have come from eden that they've been tossed over the top of the hill i was hours away from the nearest road it wasn't like someone could have driven a dump truck up to the hill and emptied it the more i tried to think of some rational explanation the more the scale of the discarded old camping gear frightened me i had no choice but to carry on downwards but it was hard to swallow the growing sense that i was stumbling head first into a terrible forgotten place and then i found it the uprooted tree i felt like i just locked eyes with something terrible like i'd gone to the fridge in the middle of the night and seen a face staring at me from the darkness beyond an open window i couldn't even bring myself to breathe its gnarled and savage roots resembled a hand that clutched the darkness at the center of its naughty hollow in all my wildest imaginings i could not have fathomed that i would find the tree exactly as i'd remembered it a specter plucked right from the nightmares that had plagued me every single day since i pulled the trigger once when i was younger i found an abandoned bear's dead hunting with my father it was a it was just a hole in the side of an embankment its entrance littered with the scattering of small bones the air around it stank of blood and meat after it had been out by an apex predator dad told me it was abandoned but he still hurried me away with whispered gestures that let me know we weren't completely safe the tree felt like that bear's den they were both little things but the old instincts that lurk inside all living things they were as big as the grand canyon the enormous craters in reality condensed into tiny spaces like a black hole i cannot escape its gravity and without thinking i moved towards it filled with the desperate urge to prove my nightmares wrong to grip the smooth roots and find nothing but wooden dirt when i reached it i knelt on an old plastic tent like they were pews and reached towards the hollow i expected my fingers to sink into old mud gripped tight by long dead roots instead i felt skin it was cold soft i snatched my hand away in disgust and tear stumbling backwards and crying out an abner came into light shaved head pale eyes the gaunt and angry frame of a teenage boy one leg still bent agonizingly over the back of his head an elbow where a neck should be a mangled mess of joints and limbs that bent in ways they should not bend the more of him that emerged the less his body made sense instead of a torso there was only bruised flesh the color of a sunset a canvas of skin stretched thin by fractured bones that moved for the sound like creaking floorboards his face was expressionless and tilted to the side as he gazed at me with pale and cloudy eyes nothing within those glassy orbs seemed to register my existence instead when he finally recognized me i think it was with some deeper stranger instinct andrew i rolled backwards and fled but a broken rib can't be magicked away with adrenaline i ran as far as i could before the magic i ran as far as i could before the pain lanced through me and i hunched over into a three-limbed crawl that quickly failed and sent me sprawling to the ground when i turned back the uprooted tree was a good 50 feet away andrew he was looking up at me from within an old hiking shoe a single cataract riddled eye that searched blindly for my face i screamed at the impossibility and launched myself into a loping crawl but i couldn't see where i was going and stumbled head first into a tree the crack of my skull was not loud but it shot through me as a sudden overwhelming nausea my limbs turned to jelly and i collapsed to the floor i tried vomiting but only a mouthful of thin acid came up swimming briefly over my tongue before trickling down my cheek something in the woods found me i opened my eyes and rolled over abner was there an amoebal mass of knotted limbs with a shaved head for a nucleus a nightmare bereft of all color he must have been 30 feet across the dozens of hands and feet that emerged and disappeared into his body defied easy categorization thumbs on thumbs and toes on toes heels with palms and hands with long canine arches it felt like i was trying to make sense of something you'd find fermenting in an old specimen jar squinting through thick glass at strange and veining protrusions only abner was not contained safely behind glass but instead floated freely above me his knuckled limbs waving gently like a girl's hair in the pool a hand reached out towards me, but I could not contain my tear and shrieked as it came closer. In a mad scrabble, I began to drag myself backwards in a desperate attempt to escape the reach of a hand with a fractal's worth of digits. But Abner was in no hurry, and as I pulled myself to twenty or so feet to the foot of the hill, his arm kept moving forward like wool pulled from a ball of yarn. It kept pace even as I reached the start of the slope and tried to kick my way up it. But I could get no purchase, and managed only to climb a few feet before falling to the ground. When this brought me closer to Abner's probing fingers, I sobbed and thrashed even harder at the loosely packed dirt and trash of the woodland floor. But that only made things worse, and I only made it another foot up the hill before I fell once more back towards the ground. This time, Abner's hand was so close I could smell him. Fungal growths and rotting meat, the dusty odor you ignore after opening an urn, the smell sent lightning coursing through my spine and limbs, and I was overcome by the kind of terror that blots out conscious thought. I would have crawled beneath the treads of a moving tank or slid headfirst into a wood chipper if it meant escaping this nightmare. Abner's voice paralyzed me. Have you ever seen educational videos on drowning? It's not splashing you're taught to look out for. People who are drowning are so close to death their nervous system nearly shuts down and they freeze in terror. Limbs locked. Head held up high. Legs straight and toes probing for the ground. Anything to avoid the rising water that's close to pouring down their open lips. Felt it flow over my toes, my feet, my ankles, my legs. A blanket of heavy black that flowed out of the spaces between the leaves and dirt below me, summoned by the dread in Abner's voice. It was born on the great lakes of America filled with blood, and its tribe worshipped what swam in those waters. If anything, its humanity remains. It is a humanity that we could never recognize. Its idea of mercy is a flint ax to the base of an infant's skull. The only love it knows is force and screaming in the dirt of a Neolithic breeding pit. The only humor it recognizes is the shrill braying of a crowd that watches flayed victims twitch in open air. I swear, I did not just hear his words, but I felt them. Their impact made it hard to breathe, and I felt like a man plunged into ice water. My gasps were short and shallow and tinged with the terrifying knowledge that I would soon die. Yours was the only soul I could find while swimming, lost in the dark. A beacon of guilt, a thread that connects us. Whatever found me won't let me go. It binds us to our old things. The detritus that makes up this woodland floor is a sea of fetishes used to keep its victims in the dark. And mine, and you have mine. I can sense it. The shoe. Take it out of these woods. Put it in the sun and free me. The darkness filled my throat, and the last thing I remember as my consciousness faded was the realization that Abner did not look angry, but instead heartbroken and frightened. I need your help. Interesting. Seems like almost like he has to like bring it out so people can see to actually be freed or something, you know? Yeah, so it's a creature that he says, goes back to when the tribes worshiped the thing in the water, but it's a creature that is only knows hate, only knows like evil, which is fitting given the, you know, setting beforehand, but like, uh, it's idea of mercy is killing a child. It's idea of laughter is people, you know, screaming and stuff. It's the worst parts of humanity, right? And it's keeping him alive. It's part of the system refuses to let it go. But if you can take this piece of him, this like, um, it's like a God to that white suppresses camp with all. They were doing the hunt and everything else. Well, it's kind of like, um, you know, almost makes me think of blood meridian a little bit where the concept with the judge is like, he could be at the, there's the line where the kid says, uh, I could imagine him amongst the crusades, like wherever the blue, the bloodiest place on the earth was, that's where this thing is. Right. And it's kind of like, this is a creature that thrives on hate in this area. It's going to go to the place where hate was stewed upon. Um, so, and now it has a hold of this person. And the only way that you can release it is to remove it. Remove the totem of that person that lets it keep, because you know, Abner's body's long gone, like long decayed, carried off by animals, but that shoe's still there. So if a piece of him leaves the woods and he's released basically, which is also fitting because our protagonist has had guilt over Abner all these years. Um, and it's like here, he can save him. Like obviously he can't make everything better. You can free him. He can free him. Yeah. When I came to, I was lying in an old bed, too small for me, my feet dangling over the bottom overhead. The bed lay the ceiling of a once familiar cabin, a place I'd once slept as a teenage camper, now turned to rot and ruin. Fallen beams and a patchwork roof that led the rain strike my face in a gentle drizzle. Fear propped me up quickly. Then pain nearly put me on my back again. Wincing, I lifted my damp clothing and saw a rainbow of bruises sprawling across the left side of my abdomen. Taking it slowly, I pushed myself to my feet and glanced at the crumbling ruins of what looked like a solid cabin where the boys aged 13-16 had bunked. It was raining, and great rivulets of water poured down the walls and cascaded through the open air. Outside, the sun was setting, and what little light made it into the camp's clearing was tinted pink and yellow. I limped to the nearest window and looked through an empty pane. In the fading light, the camp was a crowd of squat buildings lurking amongst the young growth of a healing forest, its pathways throttled by saplings and trees. My head was a mess, but I distinctly remember falling and decided I must have hit my head in the woods. Abner and the rest was just a dream, surely. But then, who had rescued me after the fall? I was going in hard. I thought I could see someone moving around out there. Was that them? I cried out. I sat, groaned. Some part of me cringed at the suddenness of the scene. My instincts told me to lay low, crouch, hide, but I ignored them and cried out again, this time louder, clearer. "Hello?" A hand grabbed my ankle. A desperate figure pulled themselves out from beneath the nearby bed and gazed upwards at me. They had no eyes or jaw, but the wounds said had been covered with smooth pink skin. Lips led to teeth, lead to palate, and esophagus. Every breath seemed to leave them gagging on spittle and blood. This was not Abner, but like him, they were pale, with a shaved head. Recoiling, I moved from the window and let some of the fading sunlight enter the cabin, and where the light had hit the poor wretched skin, their flesh simply ceased to exist like a shadow. It must have hurt because they cried out in pain and snatched their hand away, and I realized that with fingers so small, they couldn't have been older than thirteen. So that must be the boxers they found out there? Yeah, I think it's going to be, we're going to see a collection of like all the kids that had been murdered. A bunch have died there, yeah. They retreated, but I soon discovered escape wouldn't be so easy. In the mere moments that had passed, the camp had already fallen further into darkness, and there were more figures moving in the shadows. Limping, drooling, crying, sobbing. Naked, mutilated boys with scraggly matted hair and starved figures. Dozens of them, hauling themselves out of the dark and stumbling blindly. A few had arms outstretched, looking for something in their hair. The most shuffled, heads downturned. None of them were whole. Missing arms, fingers. God, one even had a hole going right through his chest. All of them were in pain. With every second that passed, the camp came alive and surrounded me with a waking nightmare. When two of the figures bumped into each other, their nature immediately changed. The sad whimpering of two lost souls was replaced with guttural rage as both erupted into violence. I've never seen anything like that. Fist fights are rarely mortal affairs. You want to kill someone, you stab or shoot them. You don't try to clobber them to death with the ball of your palm. You don't use bitten nails to fish hook a hole right through their cheek. You don't tear their jugular with your few remaining teeth. It didn't happen just once, either. Each time two or more of those figures bumped into each other, the violence appeared like a switch getting flaked. But the worst part was that once the fight was over and the loser had stopped thrashing violently on the ground, they would both just get back up. Injuries dripping black fluid, but quickly sealing with new skin. I saw one boy smash another's head in with a rock, and when his victim sat upright, he had nothing left of his skull above the nose. His teeth chattered briefly, and then he stood up and kept walking. My only hope was the light. Each time one of those things stood in the sun, they disappeared. As if they were made of shadow, only able to exist as long as they were not exposed to direct light. It was a risk, but I had to hope it wasn't just the sun they feared. I had a flashlight in my pocket, and I grabbed it, but as soon as my hand made contact, something outside squealed like a stuck pig. The instant I heard it, it was like being plunged into cold water. The atmosphere in the bunk and camp outside immediately changed, and I turned to see that the army of dark figures now stared at me. Panicked and afraid, I fumbled briefly before turning on the light and pivoted just in time to catch something leaping at me from beneath the dark. They faded to nothing in the light, but then something else in the periphery moved, and when I turned towards them, the previous attacker returned to existence. I was forced to flick the light desperately from one to the other just to keep the two at bay. Terrified, I tried to calm myself and think of some way to escape, but there was no time. From behind, there came the sound of tinking glass and hands so cold they left freezer burn on my skin, dragged me through the open window. I screamed, but did not let the flashlight go. As I was thrown to the floor, I saw nightmarish mobs surround me. They laughed and sneered as a knee pushed me into the sodden mud. I felt it then, the same fear I had decades before. The eyes staring down at me. This was a familiar violence. Then there came another nails-on-chalkboard shriek. A kind of gut-wrenching, wail that had belonged to a monster. My attackers reacted like sullen schoolboys. Clenched teeth and flared nostrils suddenly replaced with downturned eyes and sniffling noses. I parted reluctantly, and I saw it. Crawled towards me. A small figure. Lithe. No more than five feet tall. Dense muscle and a pot belly. A mane of hair that nearly touched the ground. He was the color of oil. No detail except a silhouette. Figure made of oil. Figure made of oil. He grunted and sniffed the air like a dog. He smelled of copper and violence. His presence was as heavy as dark matter. I swear, the only other things like him are swirling around supercolliders in Switzerland. When he touched me, I saw the world. The real world, onto which ours is only a painted image. An ocean with no bottom. An ecosystem with no ceiling. Only ever-growing predators. Some large enough to engulf stars. I learned some of his memories. He learned some of mine. I felt the vague imprint of wisdom earned over a hundred thousand years. Foul sorcery that might make a kind of twisted sense to a modern scientist. But for me to try and grasp any of it, even some of it, made me feel like I was at risk of dislocating something in my mind. Some joint or hinge that, once loose, can never be popped back into place. I shied away from it, and when I opened my eyes, that monster's hand was touching the place where my eye used to be. I was smiling. A vile sight, rich with cruelty and malice. The grin of a murderer dying peacefully in old age. That smile spoke to me. It told me that the modern world had been of no interest to this forgotten creature, or so it had thought. But as it scraped Abner's mind of every memory he had, it learned of Eden. It found echoes of the world it had once been fond of. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. It had been so long since it had so many people to play with. Then I noticed something I hadn't before. The thing only had one eye. I knew what Abner had done to me, and it knew what I had done to Abner. The grin widened, and a hand made out of darkness between atoms clamped around my head. What do you think this is the, like- I think this is the entity. Yeah, yeah. The visual representation though, like what, what do you think this is like? The manifestation of? Um, well it talks about being five foot tall, with the big, like has a pot belly and stuff like that. Imagine it being like the embodiment of like wrath, perhaps, or greed or something like that. Pot belly as in like it's always full of these things or something? Yeah, yeah. Full, full of, uh, 'cause it says that, right? Stuffed belly or something like that. Mm. Um, I imagine it being like, have you ever seen like old demonic depictions, like really old ones where- Yeah, yeah, like the medieval ones kind of- Yeah, where it's, it's, I mean there, some of them will look animalistic. Like Francis Boyer or whatever. Yeah, some of them would look animalistic, but other times it would just look like, like a guy. Almost like how we would describe a dwarf or something like that, running around, cause mischief. It almost sounds like one of those. Mm. Like I, I can imagine this is the embodiment of wrath. Interesting. 'Cause it shows him like the true world, and that is a world of nothing but predators. Things so big you couldn't possibly imagine. It's kill or be killed, so you better kill. Mm. Um. Once again, the same kind of mentality- Yes. That the camp was instilling. Yes, exactly, exactly. It's like this is that ancient base, like primordial emotion that over millennia has transferred into a white supremacist camp that teaches kids to fight. Right. Like this, this was, this was the apple in the garden of Eden, which, ha ha Eden, the apple in the garden of Eden that led to all the sin we know today. Sure. This is the apple for anger, effectively. When I awoke, it was in my car. Mm. Morning had broken, my chest was painted with dappled light, I wasted no time in trying to remember what was or wasn't real. I had somehow traveled halfway down the trail, a good two days hike, and was back near the road. Escape was in sight, and I took it. I drove so fast I nearly came off the dirt road on more than one occasion. Kept going, barreling down the mountain 'til some part of me remembered the broken rib. At some point, the pneumonia got the better of me. Mm. I must've passed out and the car rolled to a stop. The park ranger who found me said I had a hell of a fever, and it put me in the hospital for the next few weeks. I spent my time rambling at doctors about a darkness so heavy it could drown the sun like an ocean drowns a candle. It's been about a year since then. Not a day has gone by I haven't thought about Abner, or the thing that holds him captive, that smile. Sometimes I still see it, glaring at me from the dark spaces. Beneath the tablecloth at a busy restaurant. Dumpster in an alley. One time a homeless man asked for change and a single eye stared out at me from his open mouth. It's taunting me. It took Abner's shoe, and it intends to keep him. It thinks it knows me well enough that I won't go back to help him and the others. That mountain of trash at the foot of the hill, how long has it been up there collecting hikers and campers? Anyone unlucky enough to stumble into the dark places of Appalachia where the sun has not shone for millennia? I know why it let me go. For Abner to have come so close to escape. For him to know that he nearly got out and to spend eternity wondering if I might one day return. myself and i will conquer it but it's just a thing it's like the same thing when you hear a guy being like you know what no more drinking from here on out yeah or whatever versus addressing which i could be misreading it but it was just one thing that i was like yeah there's a bunch of stuff where it's like um he talks about the hatred he inherited from his father and still being angry and stuff like that 100 and then it's like if i'm at this point um like well now i'm atoning for it so maybe you are right in that he needs to confront something more base something deeper that like he's not acknowledging i think so yeah yeah i hear all this stuff about there's napalm and all that shit i'm like do you think that's just gonna fuck i mean if that's the case if napalm and all that stuff can do anything i mean i would just fucking punt that five foot tall well it sounds like like he talks about one of them like they would come near him and he would shine a light and they disappear i mean it's it's the so hypothetically if you made a truck look like a spaceship with the lights coming off of it you'd be relatively safe oh i don't think he would kill it that's what i mean like he could try and fail he could get killed when he goes up there sure but to him that may be preferable than going the rest of his life seeing abner's face everywhere he goes yeah i mean the whole idea too of like literally bringing things to light yeah take my shoe and bring it to me it just bring the evidence and show people where i'm at well that's what i think he would go back to do i think he would go back to get the shoe i think that's what maybe not necessarily to kill this creature no no i mean i understand that's what it's insinuating i'm just saying that like the the key thing is that if you're going to kill a creature though that has never brought it he's never brought his own story to light besides the besides the story that fabricates it to where now he has like a charity and you know i'll look at me i'm a reformed person look at me but he still hasn't revealed the darkest part of his past whatever it's just the is the interesting part to me and that manifestation of going back and having those things actually manifest into like actual creatures that are like you know he's all curled up and he's like has toes upon toes and fingers and all that kind of stuff yeah i i just wonder uh how much of this ending is actually a positive versus it being a thing where it's like living in denial still i mean i can see it especially with it's like um you know he he feels good about himself for everything he did outside i mean as as you should you know exposing you know coming from what you were uh but then that little that little tick of the letters showing up being like hey remember this hey remember this like it's like everything's great but in the back of his mind there's this one thing that he can't recover i always read i read the letters after after digesting it a bit i feel like i read the letters as like the thoughts that pop up into your head or something yeah it becomes things when you could be going your whole life and all of a sudden you think about something that you're like fuck you know like a thing that you kind of you maybe a regret you have or something that it just kind of simultaneously pops up it's manifesting it's like a letter in that regard i will say too uh i mean first off i like the story i do think that i preferred the element when it was grounded i like when stories take this element of like i don't know i don't like the element of making like literal manifestations of monsters from trauma and all that i mean like visually very very fun but i will say i thought this was going to go more of like a uh um like a pen pal or like a barrasco i i almost wanted it to be like a more of a real world kind of thing as well that's i mean that's just a subjective thought but i'm just saying like i was curious to see how the white supremacist camp came back to be you know were they still going there because immediately my mind went to like green room and stuff and the kind of horrors that like that whole adventure was as well if you haven't seen that movie it's awesome it's about like a skinhead bar that these punks play at but uh it just i literally subjective it doesn't there's no critique to that thought i'm just saying that like it would have been i was curious to see if it would take that more realistic approach versus leaning into a thing where you go back and now there's like manifestations of uh you know your past manifested well it's kind of what it is with the ghost walking around everywhere oh wait i mean no it is i'm saying that i wish it wasn't oh oh i see what you're saying but once again subjective that's just i don't know i thought the monster was kind of cool they're cool i'm just saying that it was i was really drawn in at the beginning with the development of the character and all that yeah the supernatural note does kind of come it's not comparable to the beginning where it's just like all the white supremacist stuff and you could have kept it more grounded but i also kind of like the idea that there's a creature that thrives on hate that's in the mountains and it's ancient and it gathers up people in a weird way i guess it could have been i don't know i don't know i don't know you know what would have been a way to introduce it earlier i think is if the camp counselors or something like that had like he just mentions a weird religion or something like that i don't i don't i'm always weird i'm i never know about that because i can never tell if it takes away from the white supremacy angle right it almost not that it gives an excuse to the white supremacy but in a way like it feels like it's like well that's why well it kind of makes it if you were to do that then it's kind of like okay are we still on earth are we in some like other supernatural timeline where wanky stuff's going on and i know what you mean by it it can lessen the shot of the white i think it's just you set up a white supremacist camp we're in a fucking camp yeah whatever the idea of like people coming back and like i mean like the the visuals of it being like dead campers people that have been like torn away other dead uh uh people that like were just the deers and those hunts and stuff like that manifesting and now they're like having to live forever and this thing is an interesting uh visual for the memory of something or like how these things linger after the fact but i do think as a setup for like a white supremacist camp something more grounded like i said like a green room thing i was just curious is there something you could have stacked on top of that that you like you take the white supremacy angle and then you how do you keep elevating it to the point where it's like you don't shy away from it you fucking go hog wild with it you know which however that is once again these are open statements that don't mean anything but i'm just mean like you have an amazing piece that's like i'm bought in i'm bought in that i will say the opening was the strongest part of the story in my yeah i mean a guy being like hey i'm sending my son this scary straight program by the way i'm a fucking like nazi yeah and i'm sending my kid to a deal and i'm bought in on that idea i want to be like how do you keep elevating that there's this other movie did we watch this nick there's this movie i watched called marshmallow with the camp spoiler for anyone hasn't seen it but it's basically a camp where it's like oh we're talking about the super the superstition thing that or like a campfire story at a camp right and this camp is haunted but it turns out they like they elevate the uh the campfire story being like oh it's actually the camp like doing tests on kids oh or whatever it's just kind of an interesting thing where it's like you expect it to go into the supernatural realm of like a ghost story or like a jason vorhees thing but it ends up being something a little more grounded even though it is still fantastical uh in my opinion i was like really when i was bought in i was like holy fuck i'm really curious to see where they go and when it went when it went this direction where it was like hey i went i visited the literal manifestations of my past i was like i understand that but at the same time had a great time with it just a great time incredibly well incredibly well written as always my reaction to is just from a standpoint of had a great time just was excited for it to maybe veer a different way but once again christian wallace really interesting creating characters in an environment that is so kind of dicey and tricky yeah um so a lot of problems yeah he does a lot of those they're kind of sound like these uh tumultuous situations and stuff like that also christian your first story you posted tales from the crypt being the or tales from the creeps being uh uh the wise purposes uh one is it's definitely his most i would say hot title like that would say like his like the one we're like holy shit what yeah uh well it's pretty fun this was also his first story back in a while because he hadn't written in like nearly a year sick yeah i didn't know that was real i thought this was one that was just like oh they just didn't want it so i just been on the back burner that's two months ago oh okay well i mean that's cool yeah because he's i mean obviously he has a ton of stories um and then there's one from a year ago called i inherited an old creationist museum to my whore some of the displays were genuine that's a funny title my horse some of them were genuine he posted nine months ago and then he was like hey i'm uh writing update and then he posted that story to no sleep got taken down they posted to tales from the creeps i see um and a bunch of people seem into it so yeah it was uh that was him coming back from a hiatus that's cool though i mean i think if anything i'm glad that hopefully whatever inspired him to get back on the horse and keep writing it's awesome and once again i mean absolutely i love the premise i think it's sick and i think that uh it's awesome that's also regardless of all in all of his stories like i saw some people with the dear one who would say stuff like yeah i was not crazy about the concept but man he writes well like phenomenal writer fantastic writer so uh i think we can certify this even if the topic like people aren't crazy about our direction as far as writing goes another christian wallace banger i mean i think the topic is fine i just think it's it's just a funny headline like whenever we whenever you told him whenever i was told about the story today i was like what you know like i explored an abandoned white supremacist camp my first thing was why i thought it was going to be a guy walking through like an empty kkk tent or something that's the power of like something it's such a captivating title like i i was just like why would you want to do that you know so uh i think it's just a funny headline i think it's just a funny headline so uh i don't know i had a lot of fun with it and it was uh a lot of i i could tell too because i feel like uh just really engaged a lot of fun just kind of just just a fun story to talk about while reading you know not we don't always get that so it's fun that we kind of could go and actually discuss some shit during it so that was a lot of fun so well that's our story and we're sticking to it thanks christian wallace we appreciate you uh if you listen to this show on apple podcast or spotify or any of the audio platforms or what Whatever your fucking list, I don't know. Give us a good rating there, please. that'd be great also patrons thank you so much uh for supporting this channel and all the stuff that we do and if you're interested in some more content or just even uh you know just to help the channel out consider signing up it does help us out a lot um you have to say stay creeped oh and until next time guys uh don't be racist don't go to racist camps racism bad a round of applause for racism being bad oh you're tapping okay i was like he's not you my co-host not applauding there was yeah i don't i don't need to applaud because that's just understood and i don't need to well i still you know what's also understood hey medium rare steak tastes tasty and fucking racism sucks giant cocks and balls see that's both of those things are once again understood to me so i don't need to point that out i think it is interesting how my co-host needs to keep pointing out how not racist he is i just love saying let me and let me say for the record that i do not think christian wallace wrote a racist story unlike how my co-host addressed it at the beginning and multiple times throughout not throughout but at the beginning i will i will say at the beginning i did say i had a little goof a little gaffe yeah the first thursday i didn't know what was going on Thank you. Thank you.