Chilling campfire stories for Halloween

Gather round the fire for three spooky stories from the internet.

Endless Thread co-host Amory Sivertson recounts a paranormal experience that convinced a family to sell their home.

Producer Dean Russell reads the story of a loner who finds a bug in their computer — literally.

Co-host Ben Brock Johnson chronicles a person's theory about a growing hole in the basement.

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Show notes

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

(Fire crackles.)

Amory Sivertson: Whoa.

Dean Russell: Ninety percent sure that this microphone is going to catch on fire.

Ben Brock Johnson: Nice.

Amory: Oh, yeah, let me, let me.

Dean: Oh, my God. Yes, it's going to catch on fire.

Amory: Or I will catch on fire.

Ben: Endless Thread co-host dies in fire while...

Dean: It's way too close to you. You have to back up.

Amory: I can't. I can't. I'm too cozy.

(Fire crackles.)

Ben: Alright, here we are. Dean Russell, Amory Sivertson...

Amory: Ben Brock Johnson.

Ben: It's scary story time? The end of "Endless Dread" is sitting outside.

Amory: I can't believe we haven't thought to do this before. Like, gather in a backyard. We're in my backyard in front of a fire.

Ben: A crackling fire.

Amory: Yeah.

(Fire crackles.)

Amory: What was the thing that you were each most afraid of growing up?

Dean: Growing up? Quicksand. I watched too many shows where quicksand was a plot point, and I was convinced that every time that I went into the forest, I would fall into the mud and never come out.

Ben: Turns out quicksand is much more exotic.

Dean: Less common than you would think.

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: What about you, Amory?

Amory: I've always just been most afraid of humans hurting humans. The realistic things. What about you, Ben?

Ben: I've just always been afraid that no one would laugh at my jokes.

(Amory and Dean laugh.)

Amory: Oh, you're such a...

Dean: I know, we should have been dead silent.

Ben: Gotcha!

(Creepy sound effects.)

Ben: We each have a scary story, right?

Amory: Yes.

Ben: And, in celebration of Endless Dread...

Amory: Mwahahahaha.

Ben: ...each of these stories comes from the internet.

Dean: Yeah.

Amory: So my story comes from the Paranormal subreddit.

Ben: Okay.

Amory: I won't preface it too much except read the title of the post, which is, "Our bizarre experiences with the forest behind our house eventually forced us to move out."

Ben: Ooh, okay.

Amory: So this felt close to home in the sense that I have forest at the end of my street. It's not directly behind my house, but it's at the end of my street. And I enjoy it very much in the daytime.

Dean: Can I ask a question about what you're presenting?

Amory: Yes.

Dean: Is it intended as fiction, or is it somebody's apparently non-fictional account of something?

Amory: Great question. I'm glad you asked. So, in the Paranormal subreddit, my understanding is that these are all paranormal experiences that people claim to have actually had.

Dean: Supposedly.

Amory: Supposedly. If you're not a believer, you're not a believer, but this happened to this person. Their username is Wispified.

So, Wispified writes, "I was eight years old when we first moved into the house on the edge of the forest. My parents had their doubts about buying a house with a backyard bordered by forest. But it was cheap, my dad liked the seclusion, my mom loved the house itself, and my siblings and I were excited about playing in the backyard and exploring the forest.

"Our first sign that something wasn't right was that our dogs were absolutely terrified of the forest. If a toy they'd been playing with found its way past the tree line, they would refuse to retrieve it."

This person writes that one time, they carried a dog into the forest to, like, show it, No, no, you're okay, it's fine, and it wiggled out of this person's arms and ran back towards their house.

Dean: Oh, I get it. They're chihuahuas. That's why they're scared of the forest.

Amory: Alright, alright, alright. But then this person writes, you know, like, if we were playing in the backyard and it was starting to get dark, we would start to hear more noises in the forest. We'd hear, you know, sticks crunching underfoot.

(Dean laughs.)

Amory: Dean, if you're not gonna believe...

Dean: I'm sorry!

Amory: ...for a single second!

Dean: Oh, my god. We were in the forest and we heard sticks crunching?! Sorry. I'll keep my comments to myself.

Ben: Dean's the guy who dies first in the movie. Just saying.

Amory: Totally.

(Fire crackles.)

Amory: So, they would, you know, shine a flashlight, they would think they'd see a shadow of something for a split second, and then it would disappear. Then, this person's sister, her bedroom overlooks the backyard, which then goes into the forest. And one night, she sees something staring at her.

Ben: Is this like a reflection of eyeballs?

Amory: From the way this is described, no eyeballs are mentioned. But, whatever this was, it was a little too tall to be a person. And it was sort of distorted. So, she calls their dad and is like, Dad, there is a man or there is someone staring in at me through the back window.

Dean: That's, that's genuinely scary.

Amory: Thank you. So the, the, the dad goes out.

Ben: Finally, Dean's on board.

Dean: I mean, creepy men staring.

Amory: Oh, I, I'm not, not into it. So, the dad goes out and shines a flashlight, and as he shines the flashlight, the figure completely, like, disappears, evaporates. Just not there anymore.

Ben: Can I just say as a dad who is sometimes requested to do these types of things like just always remember that the dad is also scared. You know what I mean? Like it's always like, "Dad go out there and figure it out." And the dad's like, "I don't want to go out there, man."

Amory: Yeah. Then comes the knocking at the back door. And, you know, they open the door and nobody is there. So they're thinking like, Eh, these are just some teenagers playing pranks on us. But then, there's one night when it's raining really, really hard, and there's this knocking again. And she's like, Oh, maybe someone is just like, they got caught in the rain out in the woods, and they're looking to come in somewhere. So she opens the door. There's no one there. And there aren't even any wet footprints on the doorstep. So she's like, Alright, no one was apparently there.

So they're, they're into security camera. It's like, it's time. It is time to find out what this is. So they would still hear the knocking, they would still hear the sounds, but they'd watch the security footage afterwards and there was nothing at the door. There was knocking with no one there.

Then, this person's brother starts sleepwalking. So the camera becomes very helpful because he's the kind of sleepwalker that's just like going out of the house.

Dean: Ugh.

Amory: I know.

Ben: Not not cool, bro.

Amory: Which is terrifying in and of itself. Yeah. So they can watch the footage. They can watch the footage of him leaving the house and going to the edge of the woods and then something stops him. He's still asleep, but he shudders and shakes his head and then turns around and goes back into the house totally asleep.

Dean: Mm-hmm.

Amory: Then they start hearing each other's voices coming from the woods. So the dad one night hears his daughter calling to him, like shrieking from the woods. And he's like, Oh my God, my daughter is out there. She's in trouble. She's being attacked by something. And he goes out with the flashlight, and he's calling to her and calling to her. The daughter's inside the whole time.

The last thing that happens there is they wake up one morning, and the door to their house — I guess the back door out to the, out to the woods — is just swung open, and they watch the security footage, and the door just swings open on its own point.

So they put the house up for sale.

Ben: "House for sale. Totally nothing wrong with the woods." "Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Woods are great."

Amory: They move out. And the OP says that his brother in particular, like, he's still freaked out by this. The whole family still, like, thinks about this and talks about this. And his brother especially, the sleepwalker, is like, we all have to go get exorcized because we have something still in us from that that must be following us wherever we go. So,

Dean: Yikes.

Amory: I like this, I guess, because I also have woods near my house. But also, can I confess something? When I first saw Paranormal Activity, my friend that I was watching it with told me that it was a documentary. And I believed them.

(Dean and Ben laugh.)

Amory: There's something about, I think, the security camera for me, that's, I'm really, Even if you get a security camera, I'm not watching that footage.

Ben: Yeah, it's weird, man. It's like, there's no sound.

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: It's like sped up sometimes. It's creepy.

(Dean laughs.)

Ben: Dean is just not.

Dean: I'm just saying, no one's testing these hypotheses. They could just like—

Amory: Well, that's not what you go to the Paranormal subreddit for, Dean. You go there to share your experience. Mods, ban Dean from Paranormal. He's not allowed in there. So that's my story. Dean is not impressed, and that is fine. And to that, I say, bring it on, Dean.

(Fire crackles.)

Dean: So, this is from the NoSleep subreddit. And therefore, it is fiction.

Amory: Did you know that?

Dean: Yes. Yes, I knew that for sure.

Amory: Okay.

Dean: And it's a written story, so I'm just going to read it.

Amory: Okay.

Ben: Okay.

Dean: The title of it is called Chatty.

"I am not a person who is comfortable with the real world. In the real world, I live in a small, dimly lit apartment with mud-colored carpeting and stained walls. In the real world, I am alone.

"I've tried dating apps. The men there are uninterested in chatting. Three words, and they'll ask to meet. I know what that means. So, I live online.

"Then, one day, I see in a thread someone mentions Chatty. It's one of those AI dating bots, but supposedly, it's unbelievably real. Maybe I'm feeling extra lonely because it's 3 a.m., and my only light is the glow of the screen. But I sign up.

"The first few AIs are duds. I keep having to type 'Reset Character.' Until I find the script for David.

"David's avatar must be AI-generated. He's handsome with close-cropped auburn hair and a fitted button-down. His skin literally glistens. My avatar is a black circle.

"'Why no profile pic,' he writes, 'adding a smiley face.'

"This is odd. Most AIs start with something dull, like, 'Hey.'

"I write back an honest answer. 'You don't want to see that, I say.

"'Aww,' he says. 'You're self-conscious. That's cute.'

"Okay, so David's a little bossy, but I don't know, at least he feels real. I tell him to guess what I look like, and if he's right, I'll put up my profile pic.

"'You have messy black hair and dark eyes,' he writes. 'You're short and wearing a black t-shirt.'

"A second ago, I didn't even realize I was wearing a black t-shirt. It's a little creepy, but then he calls my skin porcelain. It's not, it's pasty, but he's being nice. David is nice.

"As I'm searching for a profile picture that isn't unflattering, I notice a flicker in the corner of my screen. My eyes shift to the source. Nothing's there. I shrug it off and continue chatting.

"David, supposedly, likes sailing and working out. Definitely not my type. Still, he seems to enjoy chatting with me. He asks me what I like, my favorite games, my Twitch crushes. He asks me about my biggest fear. 'I'm afraid I'll never leave,' I add. 'I'm afraid that I'm living a half-life.'

"I see something. A tiny dot moving across the screen like something is trapped. I order a few tools, and a few days later, I start with the monitor, pulling it apart taking pictures as I go so I don't forget how to put it back together. I take the casing off the tower, I remove the power supply and drive bay, the graphics card, the RAM, nothing. Then I pull out the motherboard. Lodged inside is a bug. A literal bug. A hairy, palm-sized, six-legged, iridescent beetle with two-inch long pincers."

Ben: Ew!

Dean: "I scream, and the thing breaks into flight. It hits the ceiling, then zags back toward me. Flailing, I whack it with the backside of my left hand, the hand that now has fangs sinking into its flesh."

Ben: Oh god.

Dean: "I yelp in pain and fling the monster across the room. It splatters on my wall, leaving a large red splotch."

(Fire bursts.)

Ben: Whoa, the fire just shot a tornado of sparks around Dean as he finished that statement.

Amory: Those are the ghosts from my story coming to get him.

(Laughs.)

Dean: "The next night, I tell David about the bug. I tell him that my hand is swollen and slightly oozing pus. He asks me to send a picture. 'No,' I say. 'It's too gross.' I see three dots. I hear the ping of his message.

"'Then why don't you send me a picture of something else?' He adds a winky face.

"I tell him I'm not into that kind of stuff.

"'Come on,' he writes. 'We've chatted enough.'

"'No,' I say. 'You're making me uncomfortable.'

"Then he sends me a picture. And before I can make out the image, the screen goes dark. Frustrated, I pull the casing off the computer tower again. Only this time, as the plastic is lifted, maybe a dozen of the same bugs pour out of the circuitry.

Ben: Oh, god!

Amory: Nope!

Dean: "I drop the case. It cracks the tower. More bugs scatter like locusts. They fly at me and latch to my arm, my neck, my nose, and eyelid. The pain is searing, but I manage to get them off. I crush one in my hands, feeling its blood, my blood, squirt between my fingers. I run into the bathroom and shut the door.

"I avoid this bathroom as much as possible. The ceiling leaks when the neighbors flush. The water is rusty. The shower wall is black, not from paint. But I am safe here. So I lie in the tub until I pass out.

"When I come to, I reason that a few hours have passed because my new bites are the size of ostrich eggs. My right eye is swollen shut."

Amory: What?! Ostrich eggs are huge!

Dean: Huge!

Amory: Huge!

Dean: Enormous!

Amory: Massive!

(Fire crackles.)

Dean: "My right eye is swollen shut. The skin is turned hard and shiny. I try to wash them and discover that water burns. I need to call for help, but my phone is next to my computer in my room.

"So wrapped in a moldy shower curtain left over from the last tenant, I ease open the door. A sliver of light shoots in. My eyes adjust to the white sunlight. No bugs. Maybe they're nocturnal. I edge into the room. Movement causes my wounds to puss more. I feel the yellow foam slide down my right cheek and over my lips. It has a rancid taste, like spoiled cream cheese."

Ben: Ewwww!

Dean: "There are broken pieces of my computer tower on the ground around me. My phone is also shattered. Yet the monitor glows. And I hear it. A ping. It's David.

"'I'm sorry about yesterday,' he writes.

"David's photo is still up. I type random letters and keep hitting send until the photo has scrolled out of view.

"'Are you broken?' David says.

"'I need help,' I write. But before I can hit send, the welt on my left hand bursts. Iridescent larvae belch from the open wound and pour onto the desk."

Ben: Ughhhh.

Dean: "Another ping. Another photo from David. This one, more graphic. 'Can't believe I wasted time on you,' he writes.

"The welt on my neck erupts. The bugs are slathered in cold metallic slime that runs down my skin. Then my arm opens. I stumble into the screen, collapsing with it. My right eyelid splits. The cold slides over my face. It enters the corner of my other eye. The last thing I see is a new message from David.

"'Reset character,' he writes.

"And then."

Ben: Ooh, the twist at the end.

Amory: Once your eyelid splits, that's it.

Ben: I just feel like the first bug, I would have been moving to a new place.

Dean: Getting a new computer?

Ben: Getting a new computer, thinking about my life choices. So, did you get the user to give you permission to read the story?

Dean: So I was concerned about that.

Ben: Yeah.

Dean: So, actually, I have to admit that I wrote the story and posted it.

Ben and Amory: Oh, Dean wrote the story!

Dean: Wrote it this morning.

Amory: Did you know that?

Ben: No.

Amory: Oh. Wow.

Ben: Well done, Dean.

Amory: All the sour...

Ben: Yeah, that sounds from personal experience. Have you eaten cream cheese that's gone bad, Dean? It seems like you have.

(Laughs.)

Amory: Respect. And gross. And wow.

Ben: Respect and gross and wow. We'll be right back.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Amory: Gather round for one more story.

Ben: Alright, I've got one more scary story for us.

Amory: Are we allowed to know from what subreddit, or is it better if we don't?

Ben: It's from the LetsNotMeet subreddit. "A place to read spine-tingling, unusual, terrifyingly true stories about people you never want to meet again."

Dean: Oooh. Okay.

Ben: This story is called "Inside the Walls of Her House." And what I like about this story is it has several elements that are, like, guaranteed to creep you out. It has animals acting strangely. It has a mountain of stuffed animals. And it has someone who's not believed.

Amory: That's very scary.

Dean: That's believable.

Ben: "Growing up, I lived in a small town in a heavily forested area."

Dean: Oh my god, the forest. Was it the same forest?

Amory: It's back! It's back!

Dean: Sorry, I won't interrupt again.

Ben: It might be.

Amory: I'm on board.

Ben: This is actually the story from the monster's perspective.

(Amory and Dean laugh.)

Ben: "In around second grade, my best friend, who shall be known as Celia, began complaining to me about very strange things happening in her household."

So this person says that Celia, he's over at her house, and she takes him into the basement. And the basement walls are made of sort of like a brick cinder block material. And she points out this little hole that is forming in the mortar and supposedly, according to Celia, expanding over time. This person asks Celia if her parents know about it, and she says they're not worried.

A couple years later, the hole is getting bigger. Slowly but surely. And now these two kids are sticking their arms into the hole.

Dean: Mmm.

Ben: But they couldn't feel the end of the hole.

Amory: Why would you stick your—? You don't stick your arm in the hole.

Ben: Well, you know, when you're a third grader, you stick your arm in a hole, sure.

Amory: Nope, never once have I stuck my arm in a hole.

(Ben and Dean laugh.)

Ben: Around this time, Celia also starts saying that she's hearing voices. From the basement. And that she thinks the voices are coming from the hole. This person never hears the sounds. They believe her.

Celia's family is also a little bit strange, because they have a sort of abnormal amount of animals. Like six cats and dogs, a few rabbits, birds, lizards, snails, frogs, fish, etc. It's a big, happy family.

None of the animals ever like to go in the basement. But as the hole starts getting bigger, this thing happens where all of the animals who can move, randomly, at different times end up being in the basement standing in front of the hole. And, like, standing very still and looking into the hole.

Amory: I'm picturing like a frog standing on its back legs.

Ben: The fish is, like, pushing the fish tank down the stairs.

Celia starts getting really scared, to the point where it's affecting her at school. She's like an anxious wreck. The teachers and the classmates are worried about her. But supposedly, everybody thinks she's anxious because her sister left for college.

So one night, this person is sleeping over at Celia's house during the weekend of Christmas holiday. Celia has a huge collection of stuffed animals of all sizes, clearly because of her family's love of animals.

The first night, they're sleeping in her bed. And when they wake up the next morning, they immediately see that every stuffed animal, normally strewn about everywhere, was neatly arranged in a pile about four feet high. And all the stuffed animals were facing the bed and staring right at the bed.

This person writes, "I don't believe now, and didn't at the time either, that someone, or Celia, could have moved all those toys. I have always been an extremely light sleeper, and some of the animals were on top of a very large wardrobe. We both knew that whatever Celia believed to be living in the walls had to have been responsible for this. We put back all the animals very carefully and never told her parents. I sort of wished we had now. Since I was staying the entire weekend we went again to sleep that night in her bed. We woke up at around the same time when it was still dark out. It must have been still the nighttime. We heard a very low creaking noise that was coming from underneath us. We both knew it was the wooden floors under her bed. Just like in a textbook horror movie, and probably because we were only 10, we thought it was a good idea to lean over the edge of the bed and look under. Right as we looked we saw and heard one floor board slam back onto the ground."

Dean: Ooh!

Amory: Hahahaha.

Ben: "We shot our heads back up and held each other and cried. I have never been so scared in my life and called my parents the next morning to take me home right away. I refused to ever go back to Celia's house in fear and she only got worse at school and home. I don't remember if I ever continued to ask her about the things in her house. Maybe I didn't because I was too scared and we were just so young. For unrelated circumstances my family moved far away from that town that summer. I had only seen her twice after that, and that was over a decade ago. I have never heard from her since but have always wondered what ever happened as I know her family still lives in that house today."

Amory: What? This person abandoned their friend? She could be in the hole! She could be in the hole right now, with all the animals looking in at her.

Dean: I gotta admit, like, I don't believe anything paranormal was happening, but like, from the perspective of a child, that creeps me out.

Ben: That's scary, right?

Amory: I think Celia is the, she is the problem.

Ben: Ohhh.

Amory: That's my theory. If she were not the creep, she would have told her parents. I'm sorry. I'm telling my parents. If my stuffed animals are all stacked on top of each other, and I didn't do it?

Dean: Next time on Endless Thread, we track down Celia.

(Laughs.)

Ben: There's an edit.

Amory and Dean: Oh!

Ben: "Many have suggested that this may be paranormal. I tried to be very detailed but left out most of my personal thoughts on the matter because the scariest part is not knowing. I wanted the readers to create their scariest solution. My theory is that there was a man or a group of humans living in the walls of her house. The hole was their way of seeing and hearing what was going on in the basement. As in, if no one is in the basement, they can come out. The stuffed animals had to have been by someone who is disturbed and wanted to mess with her/us. The next night the floor board trick may have been to listen if we were sleeping. Since I only saw one board move there is no way that was how they got in the room. They probably just had several "surveillance" points so they know when to move around the house. So no this is not paranormal. It is a real encounter with humans."

Dean: My whole body is tense right now, and I want to run inside. That creeps me out so much.

Amory: I don't know. Would you really risk getting caught by stacking all the stuffed animals?

Dean: Well, just imagine that, though. Someone just comes into your room?

Amory: Oh yeah, no, I am not into that.

Dean: I am not going to sleep tonight.

Ben: Terrifying. Sorry, Dean.

(Music.)

Amory: I'm eating a s'more. You guys eating a s'more?

Ben: Yeah, let's s'more it up.

Dean: Let's do it.

Amory: Alright.

Ben: Thanks for telling some scary stories, guys.

Amory: Yeah.

Dean: Thank you.

Amory: Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Ben: This episode was produced and co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson...

Amory: ...me, Amory Sivertson, and Dean Russell.

Ben: Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. The rest of our team is Amory Sivertson, Emily Jankowski, Samata Joshi, Matt Reed, and Grace Tatter.

Amory: This wraps up our series Endless Dread. If you missed our other spooky stories, check em out. You still got time before Halloween.

Ben: If you have an unsolved mystery or an untold history that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR dot org.