The House of the Witch & Fire Creek

Yet, Tören, no-by-ordabra.

[MUSIC PLAYING] No. [MUSIC PLAYING] Yes, it is creepy.

“A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling”

and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened, or perhaps simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories made in teen graphic depictions of violence and explicit language.

Listener discretion is advised. Hey, y'all. Before we get to this week's stories, I just want to officially bid a deal to our longtime artist, Dakota Miller,

who's stepping away from the show to work on some new projects. Dakota has been a fixture on this show for the last eight years. All of the artwork you've seen from the regular episodes, the creepway camp, to the 31 days of horror art,

they're all the creation of Dakota.

“We've loved having them a part of the team”

and wish them nothing but luck on all of this future projects. Meanwhile, the horror goes on.

First up, from writer Stephen Howard and narrator

Bailey Shackens, creepy presence in the house of the witch. At first light, Ada enters a threshold of the forest, adjusting the strap of her heavy satchel to negate the weight digging into her shoulder. Bird song cuts out.

The smell of morning dew reminds her of happier spring times. Crows erupt from their hiding places among the branches, calling as they take to the sky. On the ground, the air is thick and earthy. The darkness eased only by slashes of heavenly light.

Already, Ada hears the padded footsteps of her assailant. It is stomped her through the night. She rubbed that the shadows beneath her eyes

runs a finger and thumb over the locket hanging

from a chain around her neck and marches on. With the trees are old and gnarled, they whisper of Ada's arrival, carry messages through the forest onto expectant, excitable ears. This forest, so remote, with mountains cloaked and missed

only faintly visible on the horizon, is a living, breathing entity.

“And its life is given by the one who lives here”

has always lived here. Ada opens her satchel, takes out a slab of meat, and drops it on the floor. She marches on. Beneath her feet snake roots,

though Ada's converse covered feet glide over them as if carried by tiny wings. She stops and bends down, runs her fingers through the dirt, breathes in its earthy taste. She smiles, though a tear escapes her hazel eye

and thinks of her sister. Thinks of her sister hopping from root to root among the trees of the woods near their home, insisting only the left foot can land on a root, else they rife to life and pull you underground.

Her sister lost her, something Ada knows now for certain. She rises, and a sharp wind throws back her thick hair, nicks at her skin like hailstones, but she stands strong. Nothing will deter her. Not those padded footsteps slinking between the trees,

nor the wet, guttural breaths of her hungry stalker. The forest pushes her back, but the creature's shepherds her forwards. She takes another slab of meat from her bag, and tosses it between the silver birches to her right,

then marches on. The yawning of the trees makes her eyes heavy, but she pinches her cheeks and ignores their sleep and inducing effects. A behead, there is a clearing. She steps through it, lights swallowing her,

silence engulfing her, as if tumbling into the stomach of a giant sea beast. There is the house. A log cabin, smoke puffing from the chimney spout, which pokes out of the thatched roof.

They're unblinking eyes on Ada,

but she ignores them.

“What catches her eyes are the thin sticks,”

the length of javelins, jammed into the ground and a circle around the building. Like the sticks, she remembers a sister placing in specific patterns around their home, toward often truders, all under the instruction

of their grandmother. But these sticks around the log cabin are different, drawing their power from the ground into which they're driven, and from what hangs around their necks.

Tied by string to the top of each stick is an item of clothing. Ada grasped the locket around her neck and opens it. She holds it before her, looks past it, then back to the locket.

Within the locket as a photo, in the photograph is Ada's lost sister, Marie. Smiling for the camera, Marie wears her favorite lilac scarf. Ada closes the locket and marches on.

She pauses,

“caresses the lilac scarf tied to the stick directly”

before the door. The crunching of leaves and the juttering of hungry breasts indicate the creature still follows her,

but she does not turn to look upon it for the first time.

Ada smiles, approaches the door and knocks. The door swings open, though no hand acts upon it. The hinge is squeak, Ada enters the door closing behind her, darkness.

Ada closes her eyes, counts the five. She remembers Marie teaching her this trick one night during a heavy storm. Eyes open, hedges flink her,

perhaps 10 feet high. The path is narrow, like a maze. She switches her satchel to her other shoulder, rubbed the tension from the other. She marches on.

Ada takes each step without hesitation,

“listening to a tiny something on the air,”

a quiet voice whispering directions, support and thanks. The voice drowns among the sound of footsteps, fast footsteps, thudding and purposeful. Ada reaches into her satchel,

brings out another slab of meat, and places it down on the ground before her. She steps past it and marches on, though the sound of teeth tearing into flesh snakes a whisp of cold on her neck.

She remembers Marie's giggles while feeding treats to their old cat, waffles, who is snap and wrestle like a fiend from hell, and the whisp of cold receipts. Above, there is nothing.

As if the imagination did not stretch so far as the sky, if she squints, Ada thinks she can see what in beams and tightly bound straw. Lower,

Crowes sit atop the hedges, watching her progress. Ada understands as it's not the Crowes who see through their eyes. The maze winds left and right,

an impossible breeze shaking the leaves that line the way. Beneath her feet roots disturb the earth, though no trees are in sight, as if the veins of this land are on show. Something courses beneath her.

This house is alive. She marches on.

The path meander is until, finally,

it opens out into a wide clearing. At the center of the clearing is a door, suspended in space, nothing holding it up, nothing seemingly behind it. Ada strides towards it, grabs the brass handle,

turns and pushes. It is not the grass or the hedges she sees, but another room inside this spatially contorted house. A room containing rows of dusty shells holding books untouched in centuries,

Ada steps into the room and the door closes. She doesn't glance over her shoulder, knowing the door is no longer there. The books are old, all wrinkles and faded colors. She peruses them, stopping here and there

to rub dust from a spine with her finger, so as to read the titles more clearly. She remembers Marie reading and reading, until sleep would drag her into its malevolent realm, but not before she read passages

from Alice in Wonderland to the younger, bright-eyed Ada. She wonders if there's a copy of the Carol book here, but there are too many to look through and two little time. If she lingers, the creature will surely catch up.

The room also contains an empty open fireplace, before which sits a well-worn rug.

where it might be appreciated, the meat odor is stronger now, reminds Ada of damp clothing.

“In the fireplace, the charred remains of ribbons”

of all colors repose like corpses and a mass grave, a cleansing of spirits and attempted penance, though a failure. There is still some remorse here in the house of the winch,

for the first time since setting out, Ada is surprised.

But, adjusting her satchel on her shoulder, she moves towards a door that is growing in size between two of the bookshelves. Once large enough for her to fit through, Ada opens it and marches on.

A dirt path, the forest runs parallel to this path and the crow's line, the trees. Above, far above, as if forgotten, the wooden beams and the tightly-wound straw of the ceiling stretch on, yawning like the trees.

Ada knows she remains inside the house of the witch. She marches on, staying within the borders of the path. Gorse and butter cups flanked the way, aromac and bright.

“Among the trees, beyond the grasping fingers of light,”

well-fed but ever wanting more, the creature's saunters and step with Ada. Around it, the trees are indistinct, those formerly-thudding paws soundless. Still, it prowls.

Ada sees the trees curve around, forming a look within which a single chair is placed upon the grass. Roots and twine the arms and legs and back of the chair, like a giant crack and snaking around a hapless merchant ship.

On this tremendous chair sits a girl, not much older than Ada, a girl who bears a striking resemblance to Ada, a similar posture and bearing, a similar aura. The chair dwarfs her, yet she does not seem small.

For the second time, Ada waivers, feels surprise,

stopping short to the little nook. The darker grass of the nook swallows the end of the path, and Ada both wants to step from the path, but also not, remembering warnings about the ends of roads. She dare not approach, pass beyond the line.

Because a clear review of the girl in the chair means confirming the thing she knows cannot be true. Ada steps forward, her toe inches from the end of the path. Marie, she whispers, covering her wide hanging mouth with both hands, a low, guttural growls slips

between the trees to her right. The girl in the chair speaks, "Sister, do approach. I knew you of all people would find me here. She curls a seductive finger.

We thought you were, Ada has never set it out loud.

Saying it out loud means speaking it into existence, confirming it as reality. Marie cackles, her over-long fingernails clicking little beats on the arms of the chair. But, as you can see, I'm perfectly fine, Sister.

I did not stumble into the territory of some mean old chrome, as you so clearly thought. No, I sought out the keeper of this realm. I wanted this. I've always been drawn to magic.

Just as magic has always been drawn to me. Ada remained standing on the periphery. Magic was always a part of our lives. You are correct.

“Do you remember hopping from tree root to tree root?”

What was it? You had to use your right foot. Else the roots would drag you underground. Marie is mouth widens. The red of her tongue stark against her white teeth.

But of course, Sister. How could I forget? And now you see the roots travel up my chair. Come, inspect closer. Through the souls of her feet,

Ada feels the reverberation of heavy footsteps. Ada shakes her head, refuses the request. Are you not cold in the shadow of the trees, Marie? Have you not your favorite yellow scarf? Marie lives herself from the chair.

And, knees bent. She float several yards forwards. There are leaves in her hair.

But, I do miss that scarf.

Favorite of mine that it was.

“Ada shrugs the satchel strap over her head”

and holds it against her belly. I have with me a copy of your favorite book. She says, Marie cocks her head. Scratches at a twitch beside her eye. Oh, really?

The reverberations are shooting up to Ada's knees up to her stomach. Uncettling every organ and muscle it passes through, like a high-speed train rattling buildings. Something approaches. Yes, really.

Some of my best memories are of you reading snippets of Don Kyoto to me.

Do you think you could do that for me again?

Ada bends her knees and throws the satchel over to Marie who catches it. This bag smells wrong.

“Marie whispers lifting open the satchel flap.”

You can assume her face, which, but you cannot fake memories. Ada says, turning towards the darkness. A white blur shoots from between the trees. The creature's teeth shine yellow.

Chunks of red stuck between them. The tremendous white-fird bulk beelines for Ada. Two steps away a changes direction with easy grace, launching itself at the witch, crashing into her, and tackling her onto the grass, the witch screeches and whales,

and the sounds are all around Ada. The creature first attacks the bag, and then the witch. As her screams die away, so too does the forest, and the crows and the path. Ada remembers her sister.

Marie never forgot a thing.

She had a head for detail, a keen eye, in the spirit of a completionist.

“For getting to color in the sky is not something she would have done.”

Never. Ada knows this to be true. Between that and her questions, she knew something to be wrong. She's inside a small law cabin. The fireplace is empty.

The furniture is moth eaten and worn, except for the elaborately carved oak chair in the corner. The chair is empty. Ada Dallas. Finally, she turned from the chair and makes for the door.

It hangs open behind her. Ada stands staring at the real forest surroundings and reaches for her locket. It's cold to the touch. She steps forward and untyzed the string

attaching the lilac scarf to the long stick, then wraps the scarf around her neck. Crows the line, the tree branches, staring expectantly at her. They know how these lineages work,

or as old as the forest itself. But it is not a new, malign human hand this forest requires. If this realm can look after itself, it needs no custodian drawing from its power.

Ada decides that when she gets home, she'll read Alice in Wonderland. With that, she marches on. [MUSIC PLAYING] [SINGING]

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Their tale could be added to countless others of the genre,

“except that an enus after the spring came, they kept on eating their dead.”

A local custom lasting several decades, the town's people butchered and distributed the bodies of their dead, rather than commit them to the local cemetery. The practice was not shared or discussed with outsiders, and in town records, the practice was known as rendering. This continued until the town was folded in to Branch County,

and under increased scrutiny, the practice was quietly abolished and omitted from official

histories. I came across enus while researching cannibalism. They were the subject of a number of references in other documents, but nothing in the way of hard facts.

“So, in the interest of uncovering something interesting, I spent several days there, poking around.”

The county seat had an understandable lack of information on enus before their inclusion, and the enus historical society, consisting as far as I get tell of three blue-haired ladies with sour faces, flatly telling me the rumors were untrue. And yet, when I walked the local cemetery, the grave markers stopped in 1842, only to resume in 1871, which the blue-haired brigade explained was the result of a suspiciously

targeted flood. I took some pictures. In 1938, Brighton Kentucky, a family named Edward, is discovered to be practitioners of homicidal cannibalism, killing people in order to eat them. A highly insular community, the practice went unnoticed for untold years until a task force was

“formed to investigate the disappearances along the state highway 24 corridor.”

And the string of clues eventually led to the Edwards and their 200 acre farm, where they found the very partial remains of over 300 people, mostly bones. Investigators estimate the crimes went back decades and was thankfully unique to this one family. The Edwards were all executed and they became popular boogemen to use to scare children. "You behave or I'll feed you to the Edwards," for example.

1953, Colfax, California. A new mother distraught over her husband's infidelitys, kills and butchers, her one-month-old child, and served her husband, a kidney pie, which he eats. 1911, Smolensk Siberia, long-standing winter cannibalism practiced by a community of several hundred, two to three victims each year are chosen by a lottery. Viewed as one of the few documented cases of institutionalized survival cannibalism.

1967, Badrothar India, the vysha cast of this community practices medicinal cannibalism, believing that the hearts, lungs, and brains transmit strength and long life to the eater, leading to the regular abduction and murder of people of the chudrous cast. The practice persisted for decades. In 1906, in Beaumont, Oregon, a small religious cult arose that believed in the spiritual potency of human blood, and they fed on one another like vampires.

Not technically cannibalism but worth noting. In the 1930s, a small community in the western Sierra Nevada foothills called Fire Creek practiced a peculiar form of cannibalism, in which every family would consume their first born child.

Wide spread, filocidal cannibalism. They went undetected for years by never going outside their

community until federal agents on an unrelated investigation uncovered all the grizzly evidence they needed to arrest every adult in town. The children of the town were removed and placed into foster care, including a red-haired little girl named Helen Grove. She was my mother. I have spent most of my adult life pursuing the question of what drives this kind of

regarded as beyond the pale? What turns normal people into cannibals? Do normal people exist or

“are we all potential cannibals waiting for the right catalyst? A teenage girl was asked why”

she and her friends had started to slice off parts of their own skin in order to eat it.

And she said, "I don't know. We just felt like it." I never met that teenage girl but I've met

plenty like her. People caught in their own compulsions driven to extremes of behavior, with no other explanation then they felt like it. And this is what haunts me. I feel like doing a great many things in my life. Some of them strange or even disgusting to other people, like putting mayonnaise on french fries, yet I like mayo on fries. What's to stop me from liking slices of my own skin? How much of what I view as moral behavior is merely the product of cultural conditioning

and how much of that might I sweep away one day because I simply feel like it.

“What if I start to feel like killing people and wearing their bones as an necklace?”

Will I be betraying my humanity or merely betraying the more A is of my community? And if I do all that and it feels right, am I still me or have I become a monster? Are we all monsters? Kept in line by nothing more than social more A's? The question for me is more than academic. When I was 14 months old, my mother was institutionalized for life. After she attempted to boil me in a large pot on the stove.

Any attempt to tell the full story of Far Creek has been stiny by the uniform silence of those who

“participated. Although all 147 adults charged in the case provided a full and detailed account”

of their gruesome crimes, not a single one of them would say a word about what drove them to it. Stony silence. Because of this, they received the harshest possible sentences. Death row in many cases in life for the rest. And among the lifers, all the one was murdered by other prisoners. The one survivor did so by doing his time in complete isolation. And for years he spoke nothing but gibberish. The FBI report is the only official account of the crimes that

exists and it consists of a narrative of discovery and a cataloging of people and evidence. The document is remarkably tasks a turn and goes to great lengths to shield the reader from the more painful details. For those, one must turn to the underlying case evidence delivered in 1998 as part of the transfer files released under the Freedom of Information Act. Some 4,298 different documents. I have read each one, looking for information about my grandparents, what bodies they

literally had buried in the backyard. One will find a catalog of common kitchen tools and exotic butcher knives, basins, tarps, and other mundane supplies connected to the crimes, a map of each house and the excavations conducted there, interviews with every adult brief as they are. And the names and ages of the minor survivors all under the age of five and the youngest just 18 months. That was my mother. In all those pages, you will find not a single word dedicated

to the question of why. It is the question that hangs over this and other cases. What drove them to do what they did? What turned an entire community from loving parents and to child

eaters? What made them feel like it? I never knew my mother growing up except as a dark shadow

of the past. She refused any visitors at the institution and my father was grateful for the excuse to forget her entirely. I only learned the truth when I was 17 and about to leave for college,

he said what she did. Like his credentials as a father were tarnished by his having chosen her as a wife,

“which of course they were. When I was 24 years old, flushed with confidence about myself and my”

place in the world, I went to see my mother. She wasn't really all there by then, which is maybe why she agreed to see me. I was led into a common room, sunny and quiet, and my mother sat under a lap blanket to an estate back chair looking at the window. She was old, withered, her skin nearly translucent. I sat next to her and told her who I was, but she didn't acknowledge my presence or anything I said. She just studied the clouds gliding over the tree tops. I told her about my life, my degree,

my career. Even though she didn't respond, it felt good to tell her these things. The way someone with the normal mother might do on a sunny afternoon. I felt good, pretending there was some

connection, and we sat in silence for a long time. And then for reasons I will never know,

I asked her why she did it. She turned for the first time and smiled, looked into my eyes,

“and reached over to pat my hand. "You'll see," she said. "I was raised a Christian, and I believe”

in good and evil. I believe people are responsible for their choices, and those who make choices that harm others are evil. There is no more relativism that can justify the murder and consumption of other humans, and so I have long accepted the fact that my own mother was evil. She is currently experiencing eternal torment for her actions, and such is God's judgment. I am also a scientist, and I have to acknowledge that human beings are biochemical machines. And like any machine,

they are subject to malfunction for reasons ranging from genetic to environmental. Have the wrong combination of polymorphisms in your genome, and you die before you can be born. Or you live long enough to get cancer, or you acquire a rare personality disorder. The potential things that can go wrong with humans are vast and terrifying. All of them. Before you can even consider what can happen outside the body, and then you have poisons and pathogens agents that wear you down quickly,

or slowly. Mutations that are forced upon you to who knows what end. Any damn thing can happen. I don't waste my time pitting the evil for their misfortune to be the way they are, whatever the reason. Instead, I plot the variables against my own life

“and wonder. I live a good life, and when a faith in service, and I believe myself square in”

the eyes of God. But what floats within my bloodstream, waiting to activate some hideous aberration in my nature? What genetic mutation do I carry, that might transform me into an evil doer? These are the things that occupy a prime position in the back of my mind as I pursue my investigations. How confident am I in myself? And the matter comes to the point. In the March of Life, I married the love of my life, and I believe him when he swore better or worse.

He is my port in the storm, and I can no longer imagine a life without him in it. But as we approach the three year anniversary of our marriage, I have to face the fact

that I have never told him about my mother, about my family background, about any of it.

I told him my mother had a mental illness and I was raised by my father, which are both true. I always assumed we would come back to it, and I would confess the gruesome details. But then we never did. He never asked and it never came up. Time passed, and I figured I would get to it eventually. Except that now, I'm pregnant, and I still have not told him. I have not told him about the pregnancy, and I haven't told him about my history.

I don't know what is stopping me, except the potential that this knowledge will change how he feels for me. When his love for his unborn child is met with the knowledge of my past,

his child? Will he believe me when I assure him that I am not my mother or my grandmother?

“I almost woke him last night, as I watched him sleep, but I had a vision of a violent conflict,”

and I had to leave the room so my crying would at wake him, and now I find I dread the moment. The inevitable reaction he will have to what he may regard as our impending doom. I don't know if my husband's love for me will outweigh his horror at what he fears might lie at

end, and as I consider it in the black of night, with him sleeping beside me, I am finally admitting

to myself that I don't all together care. It isn't that I don't love him or trust him or one him by my side to raise this child. It's more that my love for this child has already grown to the

“point of eclipsing my love for my husband, and his response will not alter this core love that”

I feel within me. Whatever happens, I will protect my child, and I can only hope that my husband will be on our side. I am driven now by pure maternal faith, which sustains my newborn girl in me.

We are together in this world and have a bond more powerful than anything I might have imagined.

The first time I held her in my arms, I felt a completeness that I'd lacked in my life up to that point. This dome of protection I have cast over the two of us feels like the work of my whole being, and what I am meant to do. Nothing will harm this girl while I have breath to defend her. My husband wanted her gone before she was born, and he didn't get his way in any possible way. He had the potential to use my family history to separate me from my child,

and there was simply no way I could allow such a thing. This alone demonstrates the strength of

my love for my baby girl. I know what my mother tried to do to me, and I know what happened at far creek. I know it the way nobody on earth knows it, to the foundation of my intellect and the shuddering crux of my soul. I know all the cases, know where these things can go. Normal people emerging as monsters. The worst things that can happen. I know all of that, and I don't think it applies to me. Nothing will determine from protecting my child,

and nothing I have done to protect her makes me a monster. I don't need the ab solution of a priest or the forgiveness of a skeptical husband to reassure my moral compass. I will keep my daughter safe, whatever it takes. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypard.com. You can also follow us at creepypard on social media and YouTube. All

stories told on this podcast are done so through creative comments share a light licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be re-broadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepypard cast production team and the story is also there. Hello, my name is Natasha Orksson Kinecht. I'm going to make the podcast "Wanna Mom",

and I have a lot of exciting guests, Michael Tocos, Oliver Pocker, Rika Dalang,

“and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on. And that's what I really hope.”

Everyone has a new episode and has a new episode and has a new episode where it's podcast. I would love to be with you every time.