The Showers | Creep Cast
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Welcome back to Creepcast! I am your co-host, Meat Canyon. Joined with me is... Windigoom, the other co-host guy. Feels so weird, we've never done that kind of intro before. I'll go with it. You want to do an old, like, 50s broadcaster? Yeah, I was about to say, can you do the Mid-Atlantic accent? There you go. Yeah, yeah, just a little type down here. Yeah.

I was just for people who are watching us on YouTube, be sure to also check us out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It helps boost us up there. And if you listen there, be sure to give us a nice little five star rating. It helps all the world. But today we are going over the showers, which is as I'm looking at here, it is the scariest story of 2012 is what it says at the very time. Wow.

That's right. This is apparently a r slash no sleep classic. Dare I say one of the greats on the Mount Rushmore of r slash no sleep? According to the internet, it certainly is. It's up there with things like Borosco, which I know we're all still very scared of. I remember this being talked about in the same capacity things like No End House were talked about.

or 1999. And unlike those stories that I've read and remember all the details of, I actually don't remember The Showers. I don't think I've ever read it. So I'm excited to get to experience it for the first time. Because most of the time, like, don't get me wrong, it's fun to know exactly what's going to happen and hold a teddy bear up to the camera to terrorize Hunter. That's great. Yeah. By the way, how dare you, by the way.

Oh yeah, the audience never got to see your reaction. No, nobody got to see that. And I want to say that's bullshit. I had people flooding, flooding me on Twitter after the fact and Reddit and everything. And I want to say that, like I saw the edit. I saw like when I was rewatching the cut and I was like this son of a bitch, I was like,

I was like, the entire time, played me like a fool the entire time. So I want to say, yes, I saw it. It's unbelievable. My mouth was agape during the edit. When I first saw the first cut of it, my mouth was wide open. I was like, he trolled me the entire time. Bro, when you...

when you were like, I think there's a picture of you with a bear. And it was holding it. All I could do was grip my teeth and clench my fist in rage. I was just like, you bastard! You make me look like a fool! The joy I felt in that moment has to be comparable to holding your firstborn.

Wow! I'm sure it's the same thing. Getting one over on me that much, was that pivotal? You don't understand how satisfying of a burn it is when you're like, I think you have a teddy bear.

And I keep gaslighting you. It's so good. As soon as you have your first child, I'm going to go up to him and I'm going to say, we're on the same level, you and I. That's what I'm going to say to him. I'm going to shake his little hand and be like, you and I are one and the same. Also, I want to say, the title of the story today is The Showers. From what we see here, it's by Clover10176. We'll put the link in the description, of course. But also, the way my hair is parted is because I...

And I took a shower just before this, just because I knew we were taking the showers. It definitely wasn't because I smelt

like shit and my hair was super greasy. So now this is why my hair looks like this. So I don't want people dogging on me. All right. I look like Roseanne bar whenever my hair is wet. So I'm sorry for that. It's very, it's, it's unfortunate, but I'm, I'm very, I'm, I'm excited. I, as always, I've never read this. I've just seen people in the comments suggest, suggest this. So once again, I am excited, but we have a very love hate relationship with, uh,

with suggestions, viewer suggestions. I don't know what you're talking about. I've been thrilled by everything we've covered. Listen. I will say it's always been entertaining. There's always been some kind of peak where I'm like, what the hell is this? What are we doing? Whether it be good or bad. Look, every single thing we've covered has been an utter joy and benefit to my life, for better or worse. That doesn't mean that they've all been good, but I've loved every single one of them.

Yeah, I'm very excited to talk about the showers. I will mention to the audience, I'm technically high right now and shouldn't be operating a vehicle. Not because I do illicit drugs, but because I do legal drugs. I had my wisdom teeth removed a few days ago. And I am hyped up on...

pain medication right now. So I feel great. I feel awesome. Are you doing the nice fentanyl flop right now? Yeah. That's what the doctor prescribed. Fentanyl. Yeah. He's like, so this is a very popular drug right now. There you go. The kids love this. So if I say anything weird or do anything weird, don't hold it against me unless it's funny. Just

You absolutely have told it against him. I want to say also you prefacing that you can't be driving large vehicles. It's like, are you recording and driving at the same time? For a second, I was like, is he in his car just barreling down the freeway? He's like, I got to record the showers. If you watch this, edit back and I'm like driving a truck. I would have to make some kind of disclaimer being like, I don't know what is happening, but this is not okay. We can't go on like this.

Well, without further ado, as I say, let's hop in. Absolutely. I do want to mention that the author, so yes, his username on Reddit is Clover whatnot. The author's legal name, because since this has been printed as a novella, he's worked on other things. His name is Dylan Sindler. However that name is pronounced, it's Sin and then Deller.

send alert, whatever. Dylan wrote the story originally. It's gone on to write other stuff. So he gets full credit for everything we're talking about and we're going to link his original post.

Oh, cool. Yeah. And like you said, there is a, it has been novelized, so you can pick up the paperback. It looks like as with a lot of these, like, uh, pin pal was like that. Uh, I think if brought, I know Baraska and left, right game were made into the audio shows. I think maybe Baraska also had a print version if I recall, right. Maybe I'm wrong. Uh, but yeah, a lot of this stuff kind of becomes popular enough that it's put into other like media formats.

I will say I can't remember on the Reddit page that we had but someone did a different cover for pin pal and it looked amazing it was really really good I think they submitted it to a graphic design contest and won from what I saw sick and it was amazing so if we can we thought well we should put it up here because it was really really cool to see I'm also trying to look right now for the showers the actual physical book and it looks it looks like it's like out of print

It's like a, it's, it's, it's apparently very hard to find. So if anybody has it, you might be sitting on gold. It could be a collector's edition type thing. That's what I'm saying, dude. I'm going to have to be digging. You could convince Hunter to buy it off of you for a lot of money. Cause if there's one thing Hunter loves, it's stealing money from our fans. As he's discussed. I do. I love it. Give me your money. I want it. All right. We should get to the story before you're canceled. Let's do it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, please hurry. Run, run. All right. Hmm.

The Showers: Part 1 Every area in all parts of the world has those area-specific urban legends that just refuse to die. Whether the stories are about a haunted asylum on the outskirts of the city, a creature that lives in the nearby woods, or a ghost that haunts a lonely stretch of road outside of town, there's always a common thread within the tales. No one has ever been to these places, seen the creatures, or witnessed any hauntings with their own eyes.

That's true. Do you think that's true? I think it's true with a lot of urban legends that work, right? Because the person who tells them never tells the story, oh, I saw this. It's always the old...

miner who lived in the hills or you know the trap yeah he said she said kind of thing of like oh my cousin's friend you know I mean something like that because it removes doubt from the storyteller or like removes like a line of questioning because it's not their story it's someone else's I don't know that's just what I heard yeah exactly it keeps urban legends alive

There are members of every generation who will proclaim that they know someone whose brother's best friend's sister went to the haunted house with 13 floors that used real blood and snakes and spiders and is so scary that no one has ever made it all the way through. That sounds like how people talk about McKamey Manor back in the day. No, God. Yeah.

Except those people are just actual assault victims that are just like, hey, can someone arrest this man, please? This fucking psychopath. Hi, I got punched in the face. It was fun, I guess. God. Those same people will swear by these stories without ever being able to provide a shred of evidence or a name of someone who could provide proof of the claim simply because everyone around here knows that it's a true story.

The storytellers eventually pass the tales on to their children, who modify them just enough to keep up with the changing times, and the cycle continues. I'm as skeptical as anyone when it comes to these stories, seeing as I was like a junkie when I was younger, constantly searching for more terrifying stories about whatever area of the country I was living in at the time.

I made up and spread stories about haunted pizza parlors in New York, my cousin's encounter with the Jersey Devil, or how my grandfather encountered a feral, human-like demon creature in the woods of Colorado. I even broke the one rule with these stories by putting myself in them. This took guts, in hindsight, because I had to make sure that I always told them the same way. Surprisingly, no one ever called my bluff.

I already like the intro so far. I feel like I used to do that as a kid. I used to try to eat up stories, scary stories from people I heard, and I would retell them, but sometimes I would embellish them a little bit, maybe make them a bit more intense or stuff. Yeah, it's kind of homey so far.

It is. One thing that I like, too, so far that the author is doing is admitting to that they fabricate their own stories, right? And admittedly, it's just like, yeah, I lie and no one really calls my bluff. And I feel like it's setting up an interesting ball where I think it's going to be a boy who cried wolf kind of situation is what I'm thinking. Yeah.

And again, I'm actually normally I just gaslight you by being like, yeah, sure, Hunter. That sounds cool. We'll see because I know where this is going. But this time I'm actually like, yeah, could be. I don't know. I'm glad finally.

the sadistic mastermind himself can't play one over on me. At least, who knows? You could be lying. I have no idea. That's right. Go back into your realm of doubt. Yeah, let it sink in. As I'm sitting here holding a shower head up to the camera. Yeah, you're taking a shower right now. You rewatched the episode, I'm completely naked, just like... Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, I see your cock and balls. We cannot put this in. I don't know why you had to stand so far away from your Logitech web camera. Why was this recorded on an iPhone? Exactly. I'm like, this is unsettling. Anyway, I'd like to thank that I've had some wonderful contributions to various urban legends around the Midwest and Northeastern states. I moved around a lot.

There was always a surge of joy whenever I would wander the halls at school and hear one of my classmates retelling my stories to another one of their friends, adding little bits here and there, like a massive game of telephone. I knew, of course, that the stories were complete fiction, but I stood my ground whenever someone asked me about them. I would even manage to act a little bit speaking with a shaky voice or looking scared when I would recount a situation that I supposedly experienced myself.

I suppose this aspect of my childhood has led to my current predicament, which I will recount, in full, for the internet to take from it what they will. I have laid this little introduction out as a sort of disclaimer, aimed particularly at those who would call my story into question. I've been like the boy who cried wolf for years, eh? I assure you with every ounce of honesty and integrity that I have that this time, the wolf is real.

You called the boy who cried wolf. I did. So much. Oh, God. He's shooting from the hip again. I like that, though. I like that also that string of sentences, too, of I have been like the boy who cried wolf for years, but I assure you with every ounce of honesty and integrity that I have at this time, the wolf is real. I think that's fun. Yeah. I like that line a lot. The wolf is real is a good tag, I think. Yeah. It works. The wolf is real.

Yeah, that's fun. This is interesting, too. It's very well written so far, but also very... It seems a lot, and I know we've said this before, but this is a 12-year-old story by this point, right? And it seems like back... The older the stories are, the less bullshit they throw in. It's very...

They give you a nice plump beginning and then they like... It doesn't feel like there's a lot of fat. Like, I feel like he's really ramping us up to something versus before or later on in the series. I think people found out that people like to actually chew on these things a lot. So they really have a lot of preamble. You know what I mean? Like a lot of like... Not necessarily unnecessary buildup, but stuff where it's like you probably could have cut that and the story would have been fine. But I like that this is probably the part right here where we're going to get thrown right over the roller coaster's edge. Yeah.

Into where we're going. I also feel like back in the day, creepypasta communities were very much so kind of like... It's weird to call them like a practice grounds because you're still publishing it for people to see. But especially because of like the anonymity and kind of the nicheness of the community for a while. A lot of people would...

like these sections into their creepypasta, I feel to kind of see how it worked to be like, can I kind of ramble about this for a bit? Does this work for a good tagline? Let me try it. Right. Because it's like, Oh, absolutely. It's like kind of low stakes. Right. I remember when I used to write like horror stories and stuff like that, I'd hear a cool concept and be like, can I do something with that? Let me go see. So I think a lot of these creepypastas kind of do that. So in a way I kind of feel the writer is like,

testing their own writing of building out like you're inflicting the literal elements of the story like a child who loved to tell stories but you're also introducing some kind of themes like it says boy who cried wolf or of someone that's always been obsessed with stories their whole life so now they're just telling a different one it lays the groundwork for a lot of stuff at once and I think it works well

No, I think it does too. I mean, I think that you're incredibly right that especially, especially, I know people say, they get mad when I say, especially. Well, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to keep saying it. Especially when, when,

12 years ago, right? I don't know how infamous r slash no sleep was, but there's no way that people would probably look at it with the same regards as having actual published work or something. You know what I mean? It's the same kind of thing when people look at YouTubers who make movies and then they're like, well, until you make that actual network or studio produced film, that's what legitimizes it. So this is just a way for people to anomalously, anomalously, anomalously,

be like make these stories and there's really probably at the time there's really no kind of weight behind it you're just like oh i'm just doing this for fun to see what you can do so it really does feel like these early days of stuff there really was just like a very pure like unfiltered way of testing out storytelling that's a good word for it it's pure it's just like

Here, here's me, you know, all the, I'm not worried about, oh, I can only have two paragraphs to set up this. I can only have one here. Like they're, they're just talking in the way they want to speak. And I think that's why a lot of really interesting stuff came out of it. Definitely. I mean, like no gods, no masters kind of approach of, you don't have to like, you're not doing it for anybody, but yourself. You know what I mean? I think that that's really cool. I agree. All right, go ahead. Cool.

From my introduction, it is probably apparent that I moved around the country quite a bit in my middle and high school years. Neither of my parents had anything to do with any branch of the armed forces, they simply didn't intend to hang around any given place for too long. I suppose it had some sort of effect on me, but I wasn't hurt by it or anything of the sort. Growing up, I was a complete ham. I made friends very easily, was often the class clown, and because of that, was often disliked by my teachers.

Again, this was never an issue, as I was usually in another state by the time the next semester rolled around. Have you ever heard anyone refer to themselves as a ham? I've heard the phrase ham it up.

But I've never heard ham it up, but I've never heard anyone say, I am a honey-roasted ham. I'm a bit of a clown. I'm a bit of a jokester. I'm a honey-roasted ham. Me, I'm known as the ham around these parts. I am the ham. People also call me Oscar Meyer. I'm a bit of a meat man myself. Yes, and my teachers, ooh, they don't like it. Yes.

Oh, you're talking about Jacoby? Yeah, he's just a ham. Me? Yes, I'm a ham. Hello. Don't confuse me with a turkey because I'm not. I'm a ham. I'm no bird. I'm a piggy. Okay, this is going nowhere. You just gave me flashbacks to a really funny story. So I haven't heard the name Jacoby in years. When I was in the sixth grade...

I remember, so like, I was like Christian kid. I was homeschooled for a few years in elementary school. So like socially in like the, or sorry, seventh grade, I wasn't like up to date with like other guys my age. So I remember I was at a sleepover and the other guys were talking about girls they thought were hot. And I was like, I thought girls were pretty, but I never like,

I was never, I'd say, like physically attracted in the way that like most teenage boys are until like eighth grade. Right. So anyway, seventh grade, they're asking me, it's like, oh, who do you think's hot? So I made up, I literally did the, she goes to a different school thing. So I made up a girl and I gave her the name Jacoby because I heard that name and just like, just picked the name out of the ether.

And I was like, yeah, she's really hot. She goes to a different school. So for the rest of seventh grade, those, because they immediately saw through it. They were immediately like, this guy's never spoken to a woman. What are you talking about? They made fun of me.

Constantly. It's so sad. They knew that my parents were religious and stuff, so they kept being like, I'm going to tell your mom that you said a girl was hot or whatever. I'm like, no, please. Don't tell my girls, please. She's real, I swear. Her name is Steve Walsh. Don't tell my mom that.

My girlfriend's name's Steve Wallace. When you said the name Jacoby, it shot spikes through me because I haven't heard that name. And for a brief second, I'm like, don't tell my mom! No, no, please! Don't tell her I like women. She's real! Anything! She's real, I swear! Don't tell my mom, Dad.

Yeah, I had to share that. I couldn't let that one go. That's a nice piece of, you know, that's a good piece of cringe. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. The author of The Showers is listening to this. Like, can they just read the story? Yeah, no shit. No, they're probably listening to this and they're like, I too had a girlfriend named Jacoby.

Yeah. I also think Jacoby's a man's name in the hindsight. It absolutely is. I have a friend named Jacoby. It absolutely is a man's name. I swear I met a girl named Jacoby, which is why that thought came to me. And Jacob is in the name! It's basically Jacob with a Y.

It's basically Jacobi. You're like, wait, that's not a girl's name. Okay, but there's like a button. Like, okay, you have Alex and then you add an IS and it's Alexis. It's a girl's name now. Like, there's a ton of names like that. True, true. I don't know if Jacoby sounds very feminine. She's real to me, okay? She's real to me. She's real to me.

She goes to another school, but she's really hot. She goes to a different school. She's very attractive. While we're on this, I remember the other guys would, like, told the girls in the class, like, hey, he made up a girl that he thought's pretty. So, like, the girls would bully me. They'd be like, oh, like, what's Jacoby look like? Stop incriminating yourself! You're incriminating yourself on this podcast. I literally, I was so scrawny and weird in seventh grade that

This is, I am a criminal. Like I said, the pain medicine, don't hold this against me. It became regular. You're doing yourself such a hole. You're like, I shit my pants. There was an empty trash can on the way to the bathroom at school. And if I passed one of the like eighth grade students going to or from the bathroom without saying a word, without like making a fuss about it, they would just pick me up and put me in the trash can and just like.

I have no response. I don't know how I'm supposed to... This is so sad. This is so unbelievably sad. We'll move on, but I promise that's not the worst of it. That was the stuff that was funny. There was other stuff. I got bullied a lot for being like... I had a lisp and I liked Dragon Ball Z. I was not... And I made up women. That's

I want to put you in a trash can right now without your talking about this. Yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. I want to pick you up and dunk you in a trash can. This is why I prefaced the pain medicine, okay? Because I knew it would be... I knew I would overshare, okay? I love Vegeta and I love Goku so much. Please. That wasn't my list. My list was... Have you seen a seven-foot-tall woman named Jacoby walking around? I'm missing her.

I do like tall women. I've always liked tall women. Okay, so maybe I did say she was seven feet tall. Maybe that's how they saw through it. I don't know. A tall glass of water. Can we get back to the story? I'm not even going to like... Can we get back to the story? You're hijacking this and you're like telling your whole sad life right here. I'm trying to remember where the hell we're even at. We're at...

My friendships were often fleeting. Okay, you're the one who said Jacoby, this is your fault. If you've used any other name, none of this would have happened. I'm sorry, I didn't know. What is this podcast? I don't know. I'm literally doing a podcast with a guy high on fentanyl right now. I have no idea what the hell's going on.

My friendships were often fleeting, as were any positive relationships that I ever had with my teachers. Because of the events that followed, my memory of one teacher in particular is probably slightly skewed, but I will attempt to give the least biased version of our friendship that I can.

I really hope this isn't another pedophile story. It's God. It's every time we like, because I accidentally slipped into it. If all the other ones I have set up as landmines for Hunter, but I don't want to get tricked by you all. Every time that it's just like, it's an old, all these stories always have to set it up where it's just like, yep. My name's Bryce. I'm eight. And this is my relationship with a 42 year old man. And you're just like, okay.

What? What's going on? He's like, yeah, there was a weird clown. He was really scary. You're like, okay. All right. Why do we always have to go here? Which, to be fair, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's just see what happens with Mr. Maze here. I'm going to hold out hope that he's not that. I hope he's cool.

Yeah. Mr. Mace was one of my social studies teachers in the early years of my high school experience. Being older now, I can understand how horrible children are to deal with around that age, and I respect him to no ends for the way he was able to connect with his students. Okay, good. Thank God. I was about to be like, being older now, I see some problems. But no, he's like, yeah, well, I'm still holding my breath. I don't trust it still.

Whoa.

Teacher that swore even a little bit was the epitome of cool to a freshman in high school. That's actually true I remember in high school like very try and some teachers that's for and I was like I this is the coolest thing I've ever seen like yeah, I think I heard one of my history teachers This is actually kind of fucked up Well, I heard one of my history teachers back in the day when I was like, I think a freshman in high school He was like Robert E Lee was the shit

And I was like, whoa, that's awesome. And then looking back on it now, I'm like, is it cool to say that a Confederate war general is the shit? You were so caught up with the swear. He said, shit, that's awesome. Robert E. Lee is super cool. That's how you red pill high school kids. You just swear while talking about something else. They're like, based, based. Based.

Little Hunter talking about base Confederate soldiers. Their flag sure is cool. My mom's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Mr. Mace had the typical teacher decorations around the classroom, smiling jack-o'-lanterns and black cat cartoons, typical and boring in the minds of egotistic high school students. However, on the 31st of October, when most other teachers were rolling their eyes at the fact that teenagers still took dressing up in costume on Halloween seriously, Mr. Mace took the whole cool teacher thing to a new level.

We walked into the classroom and were surprised to find the blinds drawn, sheets over the small windows, candles lighting the room, and a single, frowning jack-o'-lantern sitting on a stool in the front of the desks. Mr. May sat at his desk, just watching the students come into class and take their seats. He didn't have to ask anyone to be quiet because the moment everyone walked into the room, they were either too excited to care about petty conversations or too confused to bother with them.

The students took their seats as Mr. Mace began his lecture. He spoke quietly to set the mood. Anne took a seat on a chair right next to the jack-o'-lantern in the center of the room. "Today is probably my favorite day of the year, class. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I want to share with you exactly why I love it so much." One girl raised her hand with a concerned look on her face.

I'm pushing the due date for your papers next Tuesday, said Mr. Mays without bothering to look at the girl. He slowly put her hand down, looking around at the other students with a hint of embarrassment. God, what a... He just shut her right the fuck down. Just like raised her hand up and she's like, okay...

I remember we had one teacher in high school. He's looking, looking back. He's one of the coolest teachers ever. He like, he had, he was a literature teacher and he had us read the road in high school, um, which is an insane book to get junior high school students. But I remember reading McCarthy and then like developing a love for stories. I really attribute a lot of what he taught to where I am now. Um,

And I remember he had this policy that if any student... We couldn't game it, but if naturally any student was like, oh, you forgot to take up the homework, he'd be like, that's lame. No homework. I will say, too, that's kind of sweet to let kids read Cormac McCarthy at an early age. I think it's actually pretty fucking cool. Heavy subject matter, but I think obviously it's written by...

Like, I mean, a literature savant. So it's, it's, I just think that kind of stuff is always also, I think his stuff is hard reads, but I would never say it's smut or it's like gratuitous to be gratuitous. You know what I mean? Not at all. Like sure. There's heavy themes in it, but it's just good books with heavy themes. Uh, I'll tell you this really quickly. The moments that I kind of decided I wanted to dive into like why people tell stories and stuff like that.

So it was the road, right? And he had been a literature teacher for like 15, 20 years. And...

He said that he taught the road when he first started teaching, but he hasn't taught the road in like the past like 10 years or whatever. So he gets up there in class on the first day we're about to read it and he says, I'll let you all know I haven't read. I haven't taught this book since my son was born.

So now I'm not just looking at it as a man in a wasteland. I'm looking at it as a father seeing his son. Oh, sure, sure. So he opens the book and he starts reading and he reads the line that says, the father looked at his son that if his son were not the voice of God, then God never spoke. And as soon as he read it, he cried like a tear came out of his eye. And I remember seeing that and thinking this book matters to that guy.

I want to find out why. I want to read it myself. And I went home and read the whole book in one night, became obsessed with it, wanted to get more into literature, and now I'm here. So yeah, teachers who actually care about their work and put themselves into it can have such a profound effect on kids. Oh, absolutely. You also had a very mature response to that because I remember one time we watched, I think it was Gone with the Wind, and it's the part where the woman rides the horse and dies, and our teacher was crying, and the entire class was just laughing at her. LAUGHTER

I mean, without hesitation. I think the woman says, just like Paul. And my teacher is like tearing up and crying. And we're just like, I mean, like hysterically laughing. It's like could not be more polar opposite to your story. Okay. You know what? Without comment, let's continue. The class erupted in quiet cheers and Mr. Mays waited for the inevitable silence.

He began his story immediately after the classroom had calmed down. I will attempt to recreate the amazing story that Mr. Mays told us- told the class that day. The way in which he told this story rendered the horror junkie speechless and the rest of the class terrified. The same girl that had raised her hand to ask about the paper was holding her knees to her chest by the end of it, a look of terror on her face. The important thing to know was what the story was about. The specifics slip my mind now and aren't too relevant.

I'll try to recount the parts of the story that matter the most, but don't hold me to it. Basically, Mr. Mase and his friends set out on a road trip around the country after graduating from college. They took a truck, loaded it with camping gear, and set out to sightsee for the entire summer. The group went from the Poconos in New Jersey down to the coast of Florida, New Orleans to California, and up to Washington. From there, they went to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and then back home to New York.

This concept of the freedom to travel anywhere had the entire class hooked in an instant. Mr. Mace was the coolest teacher ever, in my eyes. Being adventurous college kids, the group didn't bring a map. There were no time constraints, so they just kind of drove in the general direction that they wanted to go and eventually found a town to stay in or some place that looked interesting.

He told us that after spending a week in Colorado, he and his friends had to travel through miles and miles of corn, plains, and more corn. He assumed that they were in either Nebraska or Kansas when they decided to pool their extra cash and stay in a hotel for a night. They settled into a motel in some town that Mr. Mays could barely remember the name of when one of his friends realized that they were somewhere near his grandfather's farm.

He wasn't entirely sure where it was, but being adventurous college kids, they decided to get a quick refund from the motel and try to contact the friend's grandpa. They were unable to get a hold of the grandpa on the phone, so the group figured it would be fun to just show up. Mr. May's friend was adamant that his grandparents would take them in and feed them without a moment of hesitation. So, the group set out with an hour of sunlight, seeking the salvation of a comfortable house to stay in.

In Kansas or Nebraska, wherever it may have been, there aren't a whole lot of natural markers that could guide lost travelers. Any directions given to someone who didn't live around the area basically amounted to go up a couple of miles to the corn, take a right and go down a dirt road to the other corn. There should be some wheat on your right. So, as is the case in most scary stories, the group got lost.

Never wanting to admit defeat, they drove into the night, making wrong turns every five minutes until they found themselves on a wooded road that Mr. May's friend was certain that his grandparents lived off of. Mr. May's described the road as basically a dark path to hell. I wasn't entirely sure how true this was, because he got very excited and a bit ridiculous with his explanations of the trees that almost tried to grab the car and the red eyes of countless animals looking at them from the darkness.

Regardless, the typical horror tropes worked on most of the class. Everyone was terrified. So the group of guys drove on this dark road for about 15 minutes before they came to a clearing in a small building with lights in it, and what seemed to be a silo. They figured that, at the very least, the people who lived here would be able to help find where the guy's parents lived. The whole idea of everyone knows everyone in these hick parts of the country fueled his hope.

They pulled the car up near the building, realizing when they were out of the car that it appeared to be like the kind of places where one would try to store a whole bunch of chickens. Not a home. Still, the lights were on, so they figured they would give it a try. They approached the building as a group, looking in the semi-open sliding door to find a big, empty room. Hanging fluorescent lights lit the room like it was daytime and they couldn't see a soul.

There were no cars, but one of Mr. May's friends was convinced he'd seen someone as they pulled up. So they decided to go inside, see if there was an office or something where someone might still be working. Why else would they have this huge place lit up like that? There were no doors on the inside of the building. Again, it was just a giant, empty hall. So the group roamed around the property and over towards the silo. As they got closer, they noticed what appeared to be a cellar door.

At this point, I remember Mr. Mays telling the entire class to learn from his idiocy. He told us that he hadn't seen many horror movies before that time and didn't think twice about approaching a creepy cellar door in the middle of a dark, scary, foreign place. He said that approaching the door was one of his biggest regrets. Mr. Mays let the whole class know that he was going to tell us as much as he deemed appropriate about the experience.

He felt that we were mature enough to handle it, but advised anyone that was squeamish to leave class early. Several students quietly gathered their things and walked out the door, a couple of them being stoners who saw this as an opportunity to smoke behind the school before their next class. I didn't even give the announcement a second thought. Like I said, I was and am a sucker for this kind of stuff, and Mr. Mays was telling a story much better than anything I had ever conjured up.

i wanted to learn from this guy even though i didn't believe much of the story i think that people also that maybe haven't grown up in the midwest or people that have grown up in the midwest uh will relate to this but i'm from missouri right on the kansas border as well there's something that's like very eerie about like

like Midwest open pastures and cornfields and stuff. It's very much like the ocean. It's very easy to get lost in there. And it's like a big sea of nothing. And it does sometimes like kind of stumble upon these houses and stuff like this old kind of building or whatever. It's so uncanny in a lot of ways. Like it's obviously it's just like, oh, it's just farmland. It's a guy's farmhouse, whatever. But it's still just like so weird to think that like it's almost like a small island in this like sea of like blank, empty land.

I mean, nothing. I mean, plants and all that kind of stuff. And even that little description of him saying, like, when you went down the roads and the trees are grabbing at us, like before he's coming about the red eyes looking back at us. I thought that was kind of peculiar because I've been down many, you know, just old dirt roads where the trees are kind of growing into almost the road itself. So you're almost like your car is almost scraping past some of these branches as well. It's like they're trying to retake the ground there, right? Like they're slowly approaching over it. Yeah.

You're also encroaching on something, too, where it's like these trees have not been trimmed. You're kind of like you're going to some place where it's like no one cares to clean this up. Like there's not enough traffic to go through that would make this place a via. You know, like if even like people driving down themselves and knocking the branches over or whatever, it's just it's such an untapped part of like.

I don't know, earth. It's very, I wish that more stories would elicit more aesthetics from the Midwest. It's so empty and like just so void of life in a lot of places that I think it's such a perfect spot. There's something weird about like looping geometry almost or looping like a landscape over and over, you know, where it does kind of become something you could easily be lost in. There's no place markers for it.

It's a good setting for something like this. It's also a lot more chaotic than something like the left right game where, you know, Phoenix, the city or like cities themselves are built on grid systems and stuff. And while there's plots of land and farmlands and stuff like that, there's so much stuff that isn't marked like manmade roads, manmade trails, all kinds of stuff. That's just completely hidden from, um,

After the class had thinned a bit, Mr. Maze continued with the story.

He told the remaining few that he and his friends opened that cellar door, releasing a smell that he only described as "the most putrid thing my senses have ever experienced." The group was no longer concerned with finding the owners of the property, but was now set on finding the source of that smell. They went down the steps into the cellar, which was lit by single bulbs spaced sporadically along the ceiling of a long hallway.

No one spoke. Things had gotten too strange. The walls were lined with metal sheeting, similar to the roofing on farms. The hallway itself was crooked, and the ceilings constantly lowered in rows, like a tunnel that was hastily dug and then never touched up. There were sections where the boys had to almost crouch in order to pass.

Are we assuming that the lights are on there or are they just looking at the empty bulbs and they're just saying, I think they're on because otherwise in a crawl space like this, you couldn't see anything. It'd be pitch black. It's reading almost like a, uh, it's reading almost like a, like kind of like a kill pig pen or something. Oh yeah. It's reading very much like that. For people that don't know that, that they kind of use that kind of like edged, uh,

very cheap thin middle siding and they just have the pigs go through there but usually it's like you know it's a slaughterhouse or something the worst part Mr. Mace told us was that the light bulbs continuously flickered there's your answer to if they're on or not sometimes acting like a strobe light and making it very difficult to move through the winding and unstable hallways in hindsight he was certain that his mind was playing tricks on him but he remembered seeing flashes of things that couldn't be there

He said that when you are that focused on something, or if you are that nervous, your mind can do that to you. It can simply revolt, showing you things or people that aren't there. He continued to describe the hallway, and I was on the edge of my seat. The halls were windy and seemed to go on forever. Mr. Mays guessed they were somewhere under the creepy forest they had driven through when they found a door, but he couldn't be sure.

He said that they came upon a door after walking for what felt like a mile. It was simple and wooden, but it looked like it belonged outside of a suburban home. It had a nice design, seemed to be freshly painted red, and had a very nice knob and knocker on it. It was a door that belongs at the entrance to a nice house, not one that should be sitting in a dirt tunnel in the middle of nowhere.

His friend walked towards the door, moving carefully because of the flashing lightbulb and increasing uncertainty about the stability of the surrounding walls. He turned to the group, the rest of which were nervous at the very least, and attempted to lighten the mood with a laugh before he said, I should probably knock first. Mr. May's friend grabbed the steel knocker and hit it against the door several times, mockingly, quietly uttering,

"Is anyone home?" The group waited about 30 seconds before their tension broke. The guy next to the door shrugged his shoulders and went to walk back to his friends, but as he did, the lightbulb between them surged and exploded. The boys shielded their eyes and looked back to their lone friend by the door. As he lowered his hands, one of the metal sheets of the makeshift roof dropped. The edge of the sheet fell directly on the boy's forehead, slicing it open, sending a wave of blood down his face.

The impact apparently knocked him out, and he fell back against the door, knocking it open in the process. The entirety of the group rushed through the dim light to their friend, barely noticing the seemingly pitch black room that now lay before them. Mr. Mays was the first to make it to his friend's side. He lifted the guy's head to his arms, immediately taking off his jacket and putting it over his forehead to attempt to stop the bleeding.

Once the group had calmed down, Mr. Maze noticed that the arm that had been bracing his friend's head was soaking wet. He was confused about this and was attempting to sort it out when one of his friends started talking. He said something along the lines of, "The lights. We have to go." And Mr. Maze took notice. "You know when you turn off a light and everything is almost pitch black, except the light of the bulb dying out or cooling down? It was like that."

but there were so many of them. At least 20 light bulbs had lit the room seconds ago and now only looked like little stars in the darkness. That was definitely terrifying, but that wasn't the scariest thing. There was still a very dim light coming from the hallway behind them. Though it was weak, it lit the room up just enough to see the shape of tens of people standing less than 10 feet in front of them. Oh shit. Mr. May's friend went to say something else as one of the bulbs to their right flickered to life.

Let me interrupt at this point and say that Mr. Maze was a generally playful guy. He had that tone of voice that makes you want to respond. Basically, he could say, let's go jump off a cliff, guys. And you would want to respond with, all right, Mr. Maze, show us the way. That is a ridiculous statement, but it gets the point across. Oh, yeah, no shit. Hey, guys, let's go drunk driving. All right, I'm already drinking. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Let's go jump off a cliff. All right. It's like, what are you talking about? You'd follow him off a cliff. The fuck are you talking about? Do you psychopath weirdo? I think, I think he was just a normal guy. I don't give a fuck how cool the teacher is. I think you're the weird one. He's very much the weird guy. He's like, he's the best. Mr. We had this guy. I would do whatever he said.

When I was a kid, there was a teacher I had named Mr. Dykes. Yes, I know. And he would always joke around with people and stuff. And there was this really kind of weird kid in the class, but he would always make fun of me, Mr. Dykes. And he's like, no, I'm okay. And he's like, give me a nickname. Call me an idiot. And he would scream that out in the class. And the narrator is slowly becoming that guy, and I'm trying to not picture him, but it's becoming very hard. Okay.

Do you know what happened to that guy if he grew up after high school? This could be his story. Who knows? I don't know. Who knows? He was a charismatic guy. The whole story up to this point had been told like a campfire story. He had the voice inflections of someone attempting to be mysterious and scary, which worked but was noticeable. At this point in his tale, I recall that changing completely.

He was no longer attempting to spook anyone. I could tell that this section was difficult for him. Either he was a very good actor, or it was really a terrifying memory for him to relive. He told us that the light bulb came to life and illuminated the group of people in front of him. In the dim light, he could see children, at least 20 of them in just the visible light. They were all dressed in nightgowns that looked to be tattered and torn, staying dark with something.

Their hair was long. Every single one of them looked like they had not had a haircut since birth. Some of the children were almost completely obscured by the length of it. Every single one of them didn't appear to have seen a shower or a nice bath in their entire life. Mr. Mace told us that the most terrifying part of the whole thing was that none of the children were moving. They were all standing, staring, most of them only visible from the faint light reflecting off their eyes.

His whole group was paralyzed with fear for several seconds when they heard what sounded like an animal in the distance yelping. The way it was described was like the sound of a dog crying, multiplied by 10. This spurred the group to life just as the children began to step forward.

His friends grabbed the injured one and lifted him out of the room and into the hallway in an instant. Mr. Mace took another second to move and had difficulty finding his bearings. He reached to his left in an attempt to find a wall to lean against and ended up finding a handle, then pulled hard, never losing his vision of the children. He bolted for the door, right as he noticed what he had grabbed onto. A shower head protruded from a cement wall, reaching maybe a foot into the room.

There was something leaking from it, but it was too dim to tell what it was. He realized that it had been linking onto him, but he didn't care. There were now children stammering towards him as an animal cried in the distance and his friends were seriously injured. As he left the room, he made a point to emphasize that he could make out several more shower heads on the wall near the single, dim light bulb. "This is why I call the room the showers," Mr. Mace told the class.

I was transfixed, sitting as far forward as my desk would allow, bracing for more. I slammed the red door behind me. I ran through the hallway faster than I ever run before or since, but I made it back to the car. We drove out of there like a bat out of hell. A couple of students snickered at his use of the word hell. So when you're out trick-or-treating tonight, make sure you know exactly where you're headed. Don't go to any abandoned farmhouses. I mean, there aren't many around here, but...

The class laughed in the mood lighting as the bell rang for passing period. Mr. Mace turned the light on, thanked everyone for listening, reminded them about the paper due next week, and told us to have a safe and happy Halloween. Students all around me were abuzz with theories about the story they had just heard. Said one girl. Said another.

I couldn't theorize in the slightest. I was still caught up in the moment. The way that Mr. Mays had told that story and the detail that he included in it left me feeling like we didn't get the whole story. A couple days later, I stayed after class and asked him about how it really ended and what happened to his friend. He laughed and said that his friend was fine and that it was honestly, he whispered this part,

Probably due to some of the drugs that we were doing at the time. Mr. Mays winked at me as if to say, don't tell anyone about the drugs bit, kid. And I smiled and left. I lived in that town for another couple months and then was rapidly moved halfway across the country to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I twisted the story around and told it around campfires as I got older. It was always a hit, but I always changed the ending. Letting the friend die of blood loss or for being dragged away by the children.

Wasn't until college that I got a chance to talk to Mr. Mays again. Okay, initially, what do you think so far? How do you feel? I'm curious. I feel like... I mean, he's right. There's no way that's the full story and stuff. And I think that Mr. Mays is...

hiding probably some of the graphic stuff from the children and stuff and just, you know, whatever. But I think we're getting ready to take our first big nosedive into some real shit that's getting ready to happen. Especially, like, now he's in college, he's older. We're assuming that he's basically 18 to 21 years old here, and he's running into his old...

his old, you know, freshman teacher from high school. Yeah. So I'm curious. I'm very curious to see what happens. What do you think about you? What do you think about, so the way the story played out to me is they're going down the tunnel and then the friend gets to a door. The roofing falls on his head. He knocks open the door. And when they go to pick him up, that's when he sees every, everyone is standing in the room past the door. Correct.

Correct. Yeah. So it's there and there, there was like the shitty metal, metal, like barn siding metal jobs hit the guy on the head. He like blacks out from the, uh, gash in his head. He falls through the door. And from the light in there, you can just kind of barely see essentially 20 children with like nightgowns, extremely long hair. And you can just kind of see the light in their eyes a little bit. And they're kind of slowly moving towards them. Yeah. I've got to say initially, like, um,

I really loved the writing style. I almost kind of forgot that I am reading a fictional story about another fictional story. It felt like someone, a real person recounting a story they heard. Right. Um, it feels very legitimate, very earned. A lot of it. I would like Mr. Mays as a character, uh,

especially that part where he's like, it was probably some of the drugs, if I'm being honest, you know, trying to play it off. But yeah, I'm sold on it so far. I'm hook, line, and sinker. They did a nice thing here, too, where

we he's been very jokey the whole time and even the author made a note to be like oh he his tone changed which when i was listening to it i assume at first he's like oh this is a scary story from you know something happened to me whatever and then as he's recounting it i think that even he himself got kind of lost and retelling it and i think he's kind of like reliving that terror and he has to kind of snap himself back and be like oh but you know we made it out and we had you know so i i like that juxtaposition that happens there but i i think um

I'm curious to hear what he says here when he sees him as a college student. Yeah. I went to college in Northern New York, not for any reasons associated with this story. College was a fun time for me. I continued being the same ham that I'd always been. God, the fucking ham comment. It's got to be regional. It has to be a region. It has to be regional. It is. It has to be. It wasn't until sometime around my junior year that I ran into Mr. Mays at a bar that I frequented.

Initially, I couldn't be sure that the person I saw laying with his head buried in his arm at the bar was Mr. Maze. The only trait that grabbed my attention was a sweater that he used to wear on his birthday during class. The shirt simply read, I'm the birthday boy. Well, that's sad. Mr. Maze is trash. Sad. By himself. Just hammered on his... With the shirt that says, I'm the birthday boy. That's the most depressing thing ever. Man. Man.

I told my group of friends to grab a table and that I would join them in a second, then walked over to the man at the bar. "Mr. Mayes?" I said and the man looked up. The man took a second to look at my face before he smiled, put a hand on my shoulder and said, "Hey there, son. How have you been?" I could smell some strong whiskey on his breath and his cheeks were flushed. The look in his eyes told me that he was three sheets to the wind and probably had no idea who I was.

Mr. Mays, it's Jack. I was a student of yours for a couple semesters about six or so years ago. His face changed a bit and a genuine look of recognition set in. He took a calmer tone, smiled, and said, How you been, Jack? We talked for a solid 20 minutes. I told him what I had been doing for the last several years and he told me. Apparently he was still teaching at the same school doing the same old shtick as he called it.

I asked if everything was alright, and he said that they were as good as they ever have been or were ever going to get. It took me a while to realize that I was an adult that was having a conversation with another adult. Every time I had spoken to Mr. Mace previously, I had been in the student-teacher relationship, but now I was just a guy having a drink with a friend at the bar.

My friends eventually left, and I continued to drink with Mr. Maze. He told me all about his divorce and his kids, things I never would have asked or cared about previously, but now I cared. He was a real person to me, not just an idol anymore. This was a guy who had real problems, not the infallible teacher that I once thought he was. It had been several hours before I even brought up his story about the showers. I told him all about my history with Urban Legends and Scary Stories, and he just laughed.

When I mentioned the story that he had told us years ago, he almost seemed uncomfortable. Finished his whiskey, signaled for another, and then turned to me and got very serious. "Listen Jack, I don't know why I kept telling that story year after year." His words were slurred or my hearing was messed up. We were both sufficiently blitzed at this point. "That was what my therapist told me to do when I was younger. I had to tell people it, to come to grips with it or some shit."

took a big swig of his drink. "Wait, you're a therapist?" I said. Mr. Mays laughed heartily and looked at me. "Of course, Jack! You think that something like that wouldn't fuck a person up?" I was confused, but smiled nonetheless. Things just got very strange. "But I... I mean, you said you were all on drugs or something, right? No one was too terribly hurt. You were all okay, right?" He got almost cartoonish with his sadness in the next several seconds.

Of course we didn't, Jack. Why do you think I'm here right now? I was puzzled. Quickly filled with a thousand questions I wanted to ask him, but I let him carry on. Tim, fuck him. He didn't make it, Jack. He left, and his laugh turned suddenly to tears. Fuck, it took him. They did. I don't even know. The cops told us we were just drunk and that he wandered off and got taken by wildlife, but he didn't know. He didn't see it, Jack.

I was absolutely stone-faced at this point. Mr. Mays was carrying along like I knew the actual story, but I didn't. His friend disappeared. I didn't know. I wish that they had found the body, though. Then we could have shown them. That's a bad place, Jack. I don't know anything else to say. It's a bad place. Carried on for a couple minutes more about his friend and the fun that they had before they went on that trip. And I let him talk. It was only a few minutes later that his phone rang. Hello, sweetheart.

I'll be out in a second. I love you, baby. Person on the other end hung up the phone. Mr. Mays got up to leave. It's been nice seeing you, Jackie. You got a good head on your shoulders, boy. Make sure you use it. He began to walk out of the bar. Mr. Mays! I yelled after him. Yeah, Jack? He turned back towards me. Where'd you say all that shower business took place? Where? Hell, didn't I mention it? It's somewhere outside Broken Bow, Nebraska.

Fucking hell on earth if you ask me. Mr. Mace walked out of the bar after waving to me, running into the wall before eventually finding the door. That was the last time I would see him. I'd never be able to tell him the impact that he had on my life, or rather, the impact that his story had on me. You never know about the trip we took after graduation, almost mimicking the one he and his friends had made. He would never know that the things he saw at that place were real. Why? Well, he died about a month later.

His liver failed on him. It's alright though, because his family was with him in the hospital room. He got to die around people that cared about him. And that is all I can ask for a man like that. I experienced that place too, several years later. That is where my story turns. The following is the story of how I came to find the showers. And why I will never, ever go anywhere near Nebraska ever again. I finish this story when I'm sober. The memory is clear enough.

That is the end of part one. Oh, yeah. Part one in I am ready. That felt good. That ending felt, you know, when it hits right and it's just kind of like...

yeah that that's the natural conclusion for those end points that's a good setup for what's coming later yeah yeah yeah no i think that that's really really fun i i i think um at first it was kind of it did have it's kind of interesting it had like a nice little uh what is it like uh it had like a nice way of like oh this does feel like it kind of like a child is writing this or like it has like a very kind of i would say albeit

childish tone in a way not that the writing is juvenile but like it's very light-hearted it didn't go really to anywhere too crazy whatever but then by the end there really did shift I liked how as he got older too it felt like even the tone of the writing was shifting it felt it got like a little bit more dark a little more serious I really enjoyed that yeah it went from like is this only two parts do you know it's only two parts to my knowledge okay all right so yeah this is awesome I'm very stoked

Yeah, the first part is him as a kid learning about it. Then part two is the actual journey. What I will say is I like, like you mentioned, there's more of a maturity to like the tone, especially the subject matter. Cause it goes from like, oh, it's cool. He said hell or damn to like, he died of liver failure. You know, he's, he's on his birthday at a bar going to some girl in the parking lot who he may not know that well, you know, like it's very different place, but,

But I like there's kind of a... There's a respect in the end, like he died surrounded by his family, which is all I could ask for a man like that. That's like... That's a very... It's solemn, sure. But it's also almost...

I don't even know how to phrase it. It feels like the way you would speak about some king or old legend, right? Well, definitely somebody you hold at high respect, which I think that they've done very well. One thing that he's done very well is stating how much that this person has made an impact on his life. And even he has regurgitated that story. The way that I like to have this story is pieced together so far is

He makes a very adamant thing about like, oh, I love urban legends. I like, you know, I sway them to myself. I, you know, I change them up. And then after he hears this story, even Jack takes the story and he makes it his own as well. Retells it kind of makes it up his own endings and stuff. But in a way, too, he then follows in Mr. May's footsteps that happened with his friend, which this was the question I was going to ask here. It's kind of a two parter.

Do you like the idea of Mr. Mays as a character? Because I like Mr. Mays' character a lot. I think that it's just a guy. You can tell he did something here. Kind of a cool teacher. I like the way he's set up. Do you think that... And yes, he was drunk as well. But him telling him the town feels... If it's such a pivotal and horrible thing, I feel like I'm like, why would this guy...

then tell him this right obviously he's drunk and stuff but in a way i'm like it made me suspicious of him or his thing until they immediately shot down that idea with um him dying a month later i don't really know if we needed that i was like kind of like hoping that it would just be like oh yeah did i not tell you and it would be some kind of weird setup for something else down the road did you like that whole sequence there i did but are you saying you think it would have worked better if he didn't tell him the location or if it didn't tell us he died

I'm saying that it's just oddly suspicious that a guy who's just like, this is like a horrible place. It's fucked up. Right.

And then he's like, oh, I didn't tell you where it was. Oh, it was in this town outside of whatever. It feels like if it's that horrible and he's like, it's hell on earth, it'd be like, don't even because you're doing two things here. You need to set up that Mr. Maze is like, don't fucking go there. Don't be me. Right. But then when he dies, you could have Jack maybe like go to his funeral or something. And they're like, oh, yeah, he would always talk about this town in Nebraska. And then maybe someone else who would tell him. Right. Right.

Or I think that you need to just have him find it and then we just never hear of Mr. May. I just don't know how I like him dying there. Like, I don't know how necessary that is. Like, I feel like he could have just left and then Jack never saw him again or something. Yeah. Yeah, maybe he goes to the funeral. I get what you mean that if it's such a serious thing to him, why would he blurt that out? The only thing...

that I could excuse that as is it's describing Mr. Maze as super drunk. Like it says that he runs into the wall before going to the door, right? Yeah, no, he's severely intoxicated. And that's like reason enough. But to me, I'm just like, I kind of wish that

Even Mr. Mays, it made me, I'm just like, God damn it, you stupid drunk bastard. You know what I mean? Yeah. Which, you know, it's totally fine, but I would almost like Mr. Mays to just be like, just have that moment where he's just like, don't go. Like, don't even, I'm not going to tell you, don't worry about it. And it sends Jack into the spiraling thing of like, holy shit, I got to know what this place is. Regardless, it was just a thought I had. I'm still completely bought in. It's awesome. I think that...

I get what you're saying. I kind of, I think I'd like it if there was more ambiguity left. It's kind of open and shut. I like the kind of idea. It works for me. The idea of like Mr. Mays kind of being like the mentor character that dies early in the story sort of sends the character on his journey or what have you. I think it works, but I think you're right. Maybe it would work better if he kind of kept that secret till he was dead and the, and Jack finds out some other way. Yeah, I could see that.

Just something, just food for thought. Because I really, the story built up so far, and I'm so excited to get into part two. But that was just one thing at the end of part one where I was just like, ah. You know, I wish that there was maybe a more satisfying way where he would have found that place. You know what I mean? Just a little food for thought. But I'm very bought in. I'm very excited. And, you know, part two, this is the last part here, so...

It's kind of crazy. It's like I didn't know if we were getting ready to go into like a pen pal adventure where it's six different mini stories or whatever. But now with just the last part here, which I'm just assuming is Jack and his friend's adventure. So, yeah, we'll have to see. Let's begin with part two. Part two. I'm awake now, semi sober and ready to finish this for you guys, the Internet and whoever cares to hear it.

I didn't find out that Mr. Mays had passed away until a couple months after the funeral service. Initially, I was going to seek out his family in order to send my condolences, but it wasn't as if Mr. Mays and I were best friends or anything like that, so I refrained. I continued through my college career and graduated a year or so after our bar meeting.

graduating with English as my major wasn't a mistake, but it wasn't exactly something that landed me any sort of immediate jobs after college. Okay. I like that for one that the guy who wanted to be a storyteller and like was so obsessed with the story kind of follows in the footsteps of the teacher almost becomes an English teacher. Oh, sure. Yeah. Makes total sense. Perfect evolution there. Yeah. Now I had saved a pretty solid amount of money while I was in school and decided that I deserved a bit of a vacation, if you will.

I took my spare cash, got together with my college buddy Steve, packed up and hit the road, aiming for somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. I had lived near Littleton, Colorado when I was younger and remembered loving the area, so this destination was as good as any. The trip was a success. We made it somewhere around Estes Park, Colorado and found a cheap cabin that we rented for about a month. The days were filled with lounging, hiking, and generally things that involved little to no work on our part.

After our rental was through, we packed up again and headed on our way back east. Sometime during this trip, we had met up with a couple Estes Park natives in one of the local bars. We never typically hung out with them or anything like that. We just had conversations now and then over drinks and food. One night, these guys were paying their tab and packing up to leave awfully early. They were usually there until the wee hours of the morning. When we questioned them about it, they told us that they were headed to a little get-together with some friends of theirs, and they invited us.

Having nothing else to do, we hopped in the car and followed them to the party. The party itself was very low-key, and ultimately inconsequential to the story. However, the important thing about it was that at some point in the night, we were all sitting around the fire and swapping ghost stories. At this point in my life, I wasn't as much of a ham as I was in my younger years. They're sprinkling that in there just for you, Hunter. Just to bother you. I feel it. You know what? I like it now.

Go ahead, hit me. Do it. But with a little bit of encouragement, I started on a couple of stories that I remember telling in my youth. Eventually, I made it to Mr. May's story about showers. Every time that I told it after hearing it from Mr. May's, I had spliced it up a little bit. But out of some sort of subconscious respect for my former teacher, I went straight into the version that he told my class in my sophomore year of high school.

The group enjoyed my stories for the most part, the showers being the mutual favorite among the partygoers. Steve and I left for the cabin at around 5 in the morning, and he asked me about the story on the drive home. I told him all about Mr. Mays, that class, my love for everything horror-related and whatnot, and he suggested that we try to find the place on our return trip to New York. Initially, I was- You dumb bastard. What'd you say? I said, you dumb bastard. All right, hold on, bro. If you and I were in this exact scenario-

Would one of us not be like, well, we have to go find it. God, I mean, probably you and I'd be like, you dumb bastard. Yeah, that's what would happen. Yeah.

Oh, I can't wait to see you in New Orleans. I can't wait to torment you with this stuff. Yeah, this is going to be. Yeah. Should we go down this creepy cave? I'm like, you dumb bastard. This is what I'm going to say every time. You dumb bastard. I love when the fan art people draw of us. It's always you crying. Doing something awful. Oh, it's so great. Keep it up, everyone. That feels very real. It's very, very real.

Keep traumatizing him, please. I enjoy it. It's not for you, it's for me. Initially, I was reluctant simply because I didn't feel like aimlessly wandering through Nebraska for days looking for some old farm building that was probably demolished at this point. But a couple of days before we left Colorado, I told Steve that it sounded like fun. We weren't going to be able to do another trip like this for a long time, so I figured that we might as well make the best of it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought of it as a little tribute to Mr. Mays.

A guy that, in retrospect, helped me realize that I wanted to be a writer. Anyway. I mean, I think that feels a little... I think that feels pretty fair. I think that, like...

I mean, if you had a teacher come to you like that and say the story, right? And he is drunk, mind you. Yeah. Would you believe that story to be true? Or would you just kind of be like, you know, oh, he's on hard times, whatever. He's an alcoholic. I mean, a month later, he died. His liver failed. Right. Would you just assume that it's just playing? Or what? I mean, like, what would you just be like? You know what? I'm.

What I would imagine if I heard this story as a kid and then years later he's like crying like, no, it's real. My friend died. I would think something actually happened. I would think maybe there was a farmhouse. Maybe his friend died there. I don't know if I'd believe the supernatural elements, but maybe it was something that killed his friend. Right. That's what I would think. Something happened. There was an accident basically. Yeah.

So if you thought that the accident did happen, I mean, I guess I'm still bought into the idea of him being like, yeah, his friend got hurt and it was probably a bad deal. It's not like they're going to go there and like, you know, disrespect the idea of like his friend's passing or something, but even just be there and be like, wow, this is what this is where it happened. You know what I mean? To pay some kind of respect or something that to me that tracks with the guy who has been obsessed with this story for a long time.

i kind of like that idea of him being like oh you know what i'm gonna go pay respect to this guy you know and actually be able to experience that place in person and kind of like maybe follow in his footsteps without because it would be different i think if he was like yeah i believe in all the paranormal stuff and then you're just like well why would you go then you know what i mean yeah yeah i agree i think so anyway we left colorado and made the long boring and barren drive to broken bow nebraska or hell on earth as mr mays had to put it

We found a motel in town and hung around for a couple of days, venturing out 100 miles or so in any given direction each day after that. I remembered Mr. Mace telling us that it was somewhere outside of Broken Bow, but I don't think he got any more specific than that. We tried asking the townsfolk if they had any information about the showers, but we were usually met with blank stares or eye rolling when we told them what exactly this place was. The only person who seemed to know anything about it was an older lady that worked at a gas station on the outskirts of town.

I don't recall her name, but this woman was just one of those cheerful old people, very helpful and generally interested in what anyone had to say to her. Steve had started talking to her at checkout, and she asked about our license plate, commenting about the fact that we're very far from home. We had nowhere in particular to be, so Steve and I ended up talking to this woman for about 15 minutes, at which point we brought up our hunt for the place known as "The Showers."

Initially, the name didn't ring any bells with the woman, which made sense, seeing as Mr. Mays had just given it the name after his experience there. But when I began to describe the details that I remembered from his story, a friendly old woman interrupted me. Her tone was not scornful or mean in any way, but she became very tense and deliberate with her words from that point on. "People don't deal with anything relating to that sort of business around here anymore. That was all a long time ago."

Following her statements, she attempted to be cheerful again, excusing herself to the restroom and wishing us the best on our return trip to New York. Okay, if this is a Boroska scenario, I didn't do it. Okay. No, but I'm wondering, I'm wondering if there's maybe some sort of infamous family or something. Also, I guess she's just like, excuse me, I have to go take a shit. She's like, have a good return trip.

Oh, yes, the children tunnels. Not me. The children tunnels? Yes, of course. To the bathroom I go. Yeah, now I'm going to go take my regular afternoon poop. Um, the, uh...

the the thing about her though commenting like oh you guys are really far away from home is very suspicious as soon as i as soon as you read that i was like okay uh-oh it can be it certainly can be and i had a bit of a tense there too but at the same time i've said that to people like i've been at a gas pump and seen someone with like a pennsylvania tag and be like what brings you down this way or whatever it's just a southern thing i think you creep

It's a crib. Awfully far place to be from your home there in Pennsylvania.

We'll bring you down here. Now, if you wanted to go down to the bog, feel free to peek around there late at night, friend. I'm just a regular citizen down here. Is that your impression of me? Do I have a Creole accent now? Is that what that was? Down y'all. We're going to go down to the swamp. I wouldn't say old Mr. Weller's voice down there, but good luck now, Mr. Pennsylvania man.

Big city man coming on down to this here swamp, you see. Oh, big city boy. Awfully far from his hoity-toity lofty lifestyle. Big city boy thinking he's coming down to this here swamp you hear, see, and thinking he can't get by you, see. But if old Mr. Wellers

Yeah, don't say Mr. Weller's name three times down by the bog. Mr. Weller's not like it when you say his name by the bog, city boy. Yeah, but anyways, you take care now. That's what you sound like. That's exactly it. Average Isaiah gas station moment. Be like... I hate when people say like, oh, like when I have my Missouri plates and I'm like,

I had to drive to, like, L.A. when I first graduated college. People would be like, oh, Missouri. Well, you're very far out. And I'd be like, why the fuck does it matter to you? Leave me alone. Who the fuck are you? Yeah. They're trying to start a conversation. Good fucking observation, dude. Hey, what do you want my social security number next, you creep? They're trying to talk to you. What's your blood type? That's your second question you always ask people. Oh, are you a universal donor?

Mr. Wellers likes them universal donors, don't you know? Oh, typo negative. His favorite blood type now. Mr. Wellers is going to be pleased when he hears about that. Mr. Wellers is going to be very excited. He loves people from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Wellers gets his universal donor blood type from Pennsylvania, see, it's a good season around here, you see.

He runs a plasma blood bank. Yeah, they get down there in the ball. They get down to the swamp and it's just like, oh, I'm Dr. Wellers. I run a local blood clinic here. Hey, how are you doing?

Yeah, how are you? He's like very normal. You're like behind an old oak tree. What did I tell you? He loves you. You've not said Mr. Weller's name and he's come for your blood, boy. Now you're gonna get a glass of orange juice because you donated blood. He that sows the wind reapeth the whirlwind, boy, and you've kicked against the pricks one too many times for Mr. Weller's name.

Mr. Wellerlore is going to go crazy in future episodes. You just got a little Paw Patrol bandage. You're like, no, it wasn't that bad. It's like, beware, boy, Mr. Wellerlore. Yeah, beware of him. Oh, no.

What are we doing? What were we talking about? We're adding lore to the universe. Mr. Weller will be... Mr. Weller is now the Creepcast poltergeist. He is the ghost now. He's just a blood bank guy. He just works on it. I imagine he'll get legs. We'll see. I feel like in the future, as time goes on, I have a feeling we'll experience Mr. Weller again soon enough. Okay.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for that idea, Hunter. No problem there, John. We had a point. Oh, the whole like talking to people. I had a conversation with somebody the other day because someone else had Tennessee tags. And he was like, oh, what brings you down this way? And I'm like, oh, down here, blah, blah. And we started talking about Tennessee and stuff like that. It's just a not. You can have nice one minute conversations with strangers. Don't fucking look at my car anymore is what I would say. Okay.

I'm sorry, are you from New York? Because you're acting like a Yankee. Okay, you know what? Maybe I am. You know what? Why are you looking at my license plate? Was it that peculiar to you, dude? Leave me alone. I have a feeling a lot of people in chat are going to agree with me. I think a lot of our commenters are going to be like, yeah. If a guy came up to me, he's like, oh. That's because they're afraid. You have a braised ale friend. No, that's because... Okay, for one...

Your wife sure does look pretty in that passenger seat. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're describing two different things. You're describing... Stop that. Stop doing the accent right now. No. Stop...

Mr. Wellers, I will tell Mr. Wellers this immediately. Well, I guess Mr. Wellers back in town now. No, there is a difference between someone going, oh, cool, what brings you this way? And someone going, your wife looking real pretty in that truck, boy. I don't see a delineation. I do not see any delineation at all. What brings you to town? It's the same to me as, oh, you have a pretty set of hands. That's the exact same thing to me.

Your head would look great on my mantle. You got soft hands, boy. Yeah. Oh, that's a very tight fitting pair of blue jeans you have there. This is a different kind of cowboy we're talking about now. I guess so.

I guess so. Okay. Where were we in the story? I think we're at 20 minutes ago. Steve and I returned. That author is like, good God. He's probably siding with me. And I imagine I want people to vocalize to make sure that they know that. Don't talk to me whenever I'm at a gas station. I don't want short. You know what's nice for short talk, whatever, is if, you know,

you're passing by someone in a store you're i mean you're doing whatever if you're outside don't give me an observation that you've been like looking at me from afar that's what i don't like i think that's the i think that's the delineation you made an acute observation that like yes i am not from here why do you need to like vocalize that you know what i mean that's where i'm at i thought you were also whenever you get kid whenever you get kidnapped whenever you get kidnapped i'm gonna be like yeah no shit probably because he's a labrador and

And he's just like, yeah, oh, yeah. What does that mean? No, I'm not from here. You're like, oh, happy-go-lucky? Oh, yeah. No, I'm not from here. Okay. No, I don't know anybody. Pick a lane, Hunter. I don't know a single person around here. No, pick a lane. I cannot be both Mr. Wellers is coming to collect his due and also like, oh, hi, dude. You got room in the back of your car? Sure. I'll breathe into this rag. It depends on where you're at. It depends on where you're at. Okay.

If I'm in your home today, I think that, yeah, you're trying to lure people somewhere. As soon as we hang out together, I'm going to publicly embarrass you as much as possible. I'm going to walk up to strangers and be like, hey, my friend here wants to know about your day or where you got that purse or something like that. I'm going to do that constantly.

I'm gonna say you know I'm gonna say I'm like that's really funny because my friend's been taking Polaroid pictures of you for about three probably about 30 minutes and he keeps talking about his basement so I don't know what that means so feel free yeah no I yeah I want to know stuff but I just want you know this guy's been taking pictures of you all day check his phone check his phone that's okay if I'm like oh my friend here wants to talk to you you're like he he's he God easy God

God, let's just continue the story. No, no. What do you think you were implying with the Polaroid pictures? Murder him. Oh, that's not as bad, debatably. Okay. All right. Anyway, Steve and I returned to the car. Okay. For those, because it's been 20 minutes of Mr. Weller. So I'm just glad something took off the Jacoby story. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah.

It's been 20 minutes since we last discussed it, but they went to the old lady who said they don't do that anymore, and then they drive back. Yeah, she went to take a shit, and now they're being like... Because she was the only person so far that I presume in this town of Broken Bow that has ever actually acknowledged the shower kind of thing. Or even just like... Not even particularly just like, oh, the title, the showers, but I'm guessing the cavernous thing or the children. Because I'm assuming that they probably told them like, oh...

you know, it's a place there's like kids or like, I assume that they probably told her a bit of the story and she made her uncomfortable. Yeah, probably. I think they started to be like,

Oh, you know, it's like a long tunnel and there's like shower heads and she knows whatever's going on. Yeah. I assume that they would probably also say like, oh, there's children with nightgowns, like whatever, like just giving her broad details. And there's well, she clearly knows, I mean, but she probably. Yeah. I mean, her even giving a reaction to that is crazy. Yeah. Steve and I returned to the car without a word. Both of us were thinking about what the lady had said. Again, she didn't seem to be angry at all. She just didn't want to hear another word about it.

We were driving back to the hotel before Steve said something. I mean, if I had to live in a place associated with an urban legend or something like that, I would totally mess with anyone who asked about it. I mean, eventually you'd get tired of people asking about it. So you try to scare them to get them to shut up, wouldn't you? Oh, yeah. Steve's gone. Steve's having a tough time. That fucked with him for sure. Yeah. I agreed with Steve and kept driving, but the whole experience wasn't sitting right with me.

If this was some sort of well-known legend in the area, why did no one else in the town seem to know anything about it? But I managed to shrug it off. Mind you, neither of us were scared of finding the showers. This little excursion on our road trip was more like a scavenger hunt. A cap-off to an overall relaxing vacation. Steve and I were basically like tourists, hunting for the site of which a famous movie was filmed or something like that.

We went into the whole situation with little to no expectations and a fleeting hope that we would be able to find this place. We spent another day in Broken Bow before we took our next trip out to try to find the showers. Nebraska isn't as terrible of a place as people make it out to be, but it really isn't all that exciting. We found a bar and spent some time there, and that was just about the extent of our activity on our quote day off.

When we did get back on the road, we decided that we would attempt to stay off of main roads for as much of the day as we could. I knew that there was no way that this place was going to be off of the highway, and I remembered some detail about a dirt road in Mr. May's story, so we went looking for those. This was a fairly futile effort. Most of Nebraska is dirt roads. It was 7 in the evening when we came upon a small but thick forest. I used the term lightly, but for Nebraska, this place was like an oasis.

The trees were full and thick, shrouding most of its insides in darkness. The sun was setting, and even though we had run into a few of those random crops of trees, we agreed that this one showed more promise than any of the others. There wasn't really a road, but there looked to be a path where a dirt road might have been at some point, so we drove along that. If the car was able to handle the Rocky Mountains, a dirt path in Nebraska wouldn't give us no trouble.

We moved slowly and carefully along this trail, making sure to clear any fallen trees in the road or rocks that would render the car useless, when the sun finished setting. It was pretty dark in this place during the day, but when night came, it was something else entirely. I had an inkling at this point that we had found the right place, but I didn't want to jinx it, so we continued onward.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the little bits of light that managed to penetrate the canopy in this miniature forest actually did make it look as if the tree branches were trying to grab the car, just like Mr. Mason mentioned in the story. I'm still convinced that he made up the part about the animal eyes, though. The most aggressive creature we saw in the woods was a dead rabbit on the side of the trail. I didn't have any obvious signs of death, it just looked like it had simply lay down and never bothered to get up. We drove around in the darkness for quite a while before we found a clearing.

We had to move several smaller clusters of branches out of the way before, but right in front of our exit was a giant, dead monster of a tree. There was no way we were moving this one, so we got out and turned on the bright headlights in the hopes that it would illuminate the area in front of us. There was a feeling of excitement mixed strangely with fear when I saw what lay 50 feet beyond the clearing. There, lit partially by the headlights from the car and the little bit of light from the crescent moon, was what appeared to be an old barn house.

This wasn't a typical farmhouse. It was larger than the barns that I had seen in films and didn't have any sort of crest. It basically looked like a small warehouse. I wasn't entirely sure at this point if this was the place we were looking for, but this was definitely the closest we had come. I moved through the brush until I was roughly 20 feet from the entrance, at which point all of the growth seemed to stop.

I don't know if the owners had done something to the soil, but the whole structure had a border around it that was clear of any sort of plant life. I approached the entrance to the building, large sliding door. Steve came up behind me with two flashlights in hand. So were you just going to run off into the place in the dark? I gave a half-hearted chuckle and grabbed one of the lights from his hand. Mine was a little but pretty bright flashlight. It was the kind that hikers would most likely fasten to their backpacks just in case they were stranded at night.

It worked well enough. I grabbed the metal door with both hands, holding the flashlight with my mouth, and gave it a tug. It moved slightly, creaked a little bit, but there was no way I was doing this by myself. Steve came up from behind, set his flashlight on the ground, grabbed the door, and said, One.

"Two." "Three!" We pulled at the door with all that we could muster. Once we had managed to move it a couple of inches, it must have latched back onto its tracks because it slid very easily, stopping hard with the loud, echoing thud when it was completely open. Steve picked up his flashlight and walked behind me. I'd already moved inside. The inside of the structure was exceptionally bare, almost troublingly so. I wasn't entirely sure how far we were from the nearest home or small town.

But there wasn't even the slightest bit of evidence that anyone had been in this building for years. There were no broken beer bottles or empty bags of chips. There weren't even any animal droppings or eager plants that managed to grow here. The room was expansive, larger than your average farm, but not the warehouse-sized monstrosity that I believe Mr. Mays had described in his story. I was sure that it was simply a holding area for farming equipment or something similar at some point.

Disappointed, I wandered near the entrance while Steve ventured into the expanse of darkness. As I was running over the details of the story in my mind, something struck me like a sack of bricks. In Mr. May's story, there was a silo near the barn. I ran outside, my eyes adjusting easily because at the very least it was brighter outside. I looked in all directions, running around the perimeter of the building. Surely, if there was ever a silo near this place, there would be some evidence of it somewhere.

But, despite my hopes, there was nothing but a cluster of thick bushes on one side, brush and dirt everywhere, and the forest that we had come from. I walked back into the building, frustrated and tired. Steve was still excited, eagerly running around the inside of the building. "Even if I could just find a showerhead or a pipe, then we'd know it was true. But just keep looking with me." I didn't want to ruin his excitement. I had told Steve the story several times, but obviously he didn't realize that this just wasn't the place.

The building was weird, yes. It was out of place and oddly pristine, but it wasn't the location of the showers. I let him explore for a little bit before I called him over. "This is probably as close as we were going to get, man. But this isn't it. Remember the silo?" His face went from excitement to disappointment in an instant, much like a young child who didn't get the presents he wanted on his birthday. I patted him on the shoulder. "This is still pretty cool though. I mean, we could still tell people that we found it." I was reverting back to my old habits quickly.

Steve laughed. Yeah, man, I guess we could. It is definitely creepy enough. We should get some pictures as proof, you know? I agreed with him. I'm going to go grab the camera really quick. He said as he bolted out of the entrance of the building, I was left alone in the building. It was very quiet when I was alone in there. I could hear the faint sound of Steve running through the brush and to the car. Once he was far enough away, everything was quiet.

I remember not even hearing the wind or the chirping or crickets as I walked deeper into the dark, flashlight in hand. I was convinced that there had to be something. As I approached the far corner of the room, the sound of my feet scratching against the dirt was interrupted by a soft, hollow thud. I stopped, trying to figure out what it was. I put my foot down hard against the ground and heard it again. I stomped one more time, realizing that the floor that I was standing on was covering something hollow.

I walked to the wall of the room, looking carefully at the floor to try to spot any holes or gaps. As far as I had known, it was solid ground that this thing sat atop, so I was convinced that I had found a hatch or a basement or something. I heard Steve coming back through the brush as I shouted, Steve! Come over here! It's hol- As I went to say the word hollow, I hopped a little bit, hoping to recreate the sound so that he could be able to hear it upon entering the door.

The second that my feet made contact with the floor, I felt it give out beneath me. The memory of the fall is a buzz, but I do recall hearing wood splinter. I remember seeing the light from Steve's flashlight falling away into complete darkness. It wasn't a long fall, but I must have fallen in a terrible position because I know that I lost consciousness for several seconds at least. When I woke up, I was staring at a bright light. For an instant, I had thoughts about approaching the fabled light at the end of the tunnel. I was angry at myself.

"You died in Nebraska, Jack? Wow. You do know how to fuck up." My self-depreciation in the afterlife was interrupted by what sounded like Steve's voice. "Jesus, Jack! Jack, can you hear me? Dude, wake up! Please wake up!" I managed to lift my head up off the floor just enough for him to celebrate. The pain in my head was immense, but it was outweighed by the pain shooting through my knee. I knew I had a concussion, but the pain in my knee was just so much more pressing.

I looked around until I found my tiny flashlight, set up, and reassured Steve. "I'm okay. I just hurt my knee. I bumped my head too, really hard." "Thank fuck, man. I thought you were dead!" "Imagine that though. Dying in fucking Nebraska. It'd be awful." His words made me laugh a little bit, but I stopped myself. Slightest shaking hurt my head and made me incredibly dizzy. "I guess a rope?" "What?"

Should I go get a rope to get you out of here or do you see a ladder? I looked around the walls that sat in front of me. They were smooth cement. There was no way that I was climbing out of here. Yeah, get the rope bag. It's buried under all of our stuff. I think it might be in my red climbing bag, but I'm not sure. Steve nodded, telling me to hang in there and that he would be back in a little bit and then he ran off. The silence that followed was uncomfortable.

After the sound of Steve's feet scraping the floor above me faded away, I was only able to hear that buzzing that occurs in the total silence intertwined with the pulsing in my head. I pushed myself over to the nearest cement wall and braced myself against it, resting and breathing deep in an attempt to calm myself. The cement was unnaturally cold against my back. It was summer, so I only had a t-shirt on, but it felt like ice even through that. Again, this observation was primarily made after the fact. In the moment, it just felt good to lean against something.

I sat there, waiting for Steve in this underground basement, and I began to feel uneasy. I felt like an idiot for falling down here. I felt pain for my injuries as well. This all seemed to fade into one emotion in an instant when I heard what I could only identify as breathing somewhere to my left. I convinced myself that it was my injured mind playing tricks on me for a few moments until my mind decided to rapidly replay Mr. May's story. When I had first heard it in the classroom years before,

I was more impressed than I was scared. But now, sitting in the dark basement in the middle of Nebraska, I felt something that I hadn't felt in a long time. It couldn't even be summed up in the word "fear." As I sat there, I felt all-encompassing dread. I pointed my flashlight to the left, the direction from which I thought I heard the sound. The light didn't reach the other wall. It was too far away. But I was comforted to see absolutely nothing there.

I breathed deeply for a couple more seconds before I heard another noise in the darkness. It was very quick and I could not be sure that it wasn't my own body moving around without my noticing, but I thought that I had heard a scraping sound not ten feet in front of me. It sounded like the noise your feet make when you are walking across a dirt-covered floor. Before I could react, I heard the breathing to my left again, closer this time. There was no way this was real.

I hadn't seen so much as a spiderweb in this building and now I was convincing myself that something next to me was breathing? I was angry at myself for getting so worked up. I told myself that the human brain is constantly hallucinating. I told myself that while in silence or darkness, the brain will make sounds to fill the gaps. Or make you think you see things that aren't there. I channeled my inner skeptic in order to calm myself. It worked. It worked until I saw a flash of something in front of me.

I can't be entirely sure what it was, but I heard the accompanying sounds of feet scraping against the floor and I began to swell with dread. I saw that the best course of action at this point was to turn off my flashlight, assuming that if they couldn't see me, they couldn't get to me, whatever they might be. I turned off my flashlight and was left in complete and total darkness. The bulb of the flashlight faded as it cooled and I put it into my pocket, simultaneously pushing back against the cold cement wall in an attempt to stand.

I managed to get up to my feet, well, foot, and found that I couldn't stand to put any pressure on the injured knee. I limped to the corner, humming to myself, trying to break the deafening silence. I called for Steve, as loud as I could manage, but heard no response. He was probably in the back of the car, still hunting for the rope. There had to be a ladder, something, somewhere. I continued to hum, and my heartbeat, which had been beating almost out of my chest, slowed to a manageable rate.

I moved along the cement wall, keeping my whole body against it and the weight off of my injured knee. I had traveled what I guessed to be about 10 feet when my head made contact with something in front of me. I tumbled to the ground. My concussion must have amplified the pain, because it was blinding. I reached both hands to my forehead when I felt something warm and wet with my fingers. I searched for a cut anywhere on my forehead, but couldn't find one. I desperately searched for my flashlight as I sat up and tried to get back against the wall.

I grabbed the light in my right hand, bracing against the wall with the other. I turned it on and pointed it onto the darkness where I was just lying. The floor was wet. The dirt had muddled the color of whatever the liquid was. I tried to get my eyes to focus on the puddle, tried to convince myself that it was my blood when I saw another drop fall into the puddle. Words lack the ability to describe the way I felt when I heard the drip noise again, and saw yet another tiny ball of liquid fall into the puddle.

Hell yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty good. You know that feeling when your stomach drops? In this case, I think mine literally did because I vomited. Oh, that was the story.

What? Oh, no, I'm just listening. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you thought I asked, you know, when your stomach drops, like I personally was asking you, I wasn't part of the story. Oh, yeah. No, I definitely do. Yeah, I know that feeling. No, you're feeling. Hold on. There's like a three. Oh, my God. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just now realizing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That was too good because I kept reading the words on screen and you're like, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I was like sitting there and I was like, yeah, my stomach did drop. Wow. Wow, Isaiah. Good point. I never thought of that. What do you think the liquid is? Do you think it's just blood? No, because he says he wanted to convince himself it was blood. I thought he said he wanted to convince himself that it was his blood. That's true. It could be his blood. It could be some other blood.

I don't know yet. Honestly, I have no clue. Could just be rusted water from whatever was done down here. Sure. I don't know. We'll see. You know that feeling when your stomach drops? In this case, I think mine literally did because I vomited immediately. It got all over my shoe, but that wasn't the least bit important at the time. I ignored the pain in my knee and shuffled along the wall as fast as I possibly could. I heard noises, but I can't be sure if it was just the sounds of my own movement or something around me.

I managed to duck under the next showerhead. This one was higher up on the wall and seemed to be leaking the same liquid that the other one was. I felt like I was moving along something infinite. Every now and then I would have to duck or move under another metal bar, another showerhead. They began to pour more profusely. The liquid was too thick to come out easily. The room began to smell. I remembered immediately the way that Mr. Mays had described it.

I grabbed my shirt and put it over my nose, trucking onward, but it didn't stop to smell for an instant. It smelled like vomit. It smelled like shit. It smelled like burnt hair. It smelled like rot. I was still moving against the wall when I fell into some sort of outlet. I hit the dirt ground hard, adrenaline coursing through my veins. The pain still managed to break through though. My flashlight was still in my hand. I aimed it and examined my surroundings. Setting in front of me was a doorway.

There was a door there, though it looked aged now. It had a nice little design on it, a doorknob and a knocker that looked like a snarling demon. Red paint was peeling from it, flaking off and falling to the ground in front of me. I clumsily rose and busted through the door, narrowly missing a piece of hanging sheet metal in front of me. I was crawling now. There was no way that I could run. The walls and ceiling were lined with metal, the kind that you would see on the roof of a farm.

Large pieces of wood seemed to brace the sheets, holding this makeshift tunnel together. I couldn't risk sliding against that and possibly cutting myself on the metal or hitting the wood and causing a cave-in. So I crawled. This is interesting. He's going the opposite direction than Mr. Mays did. Yeah, he's going the opposite direction. I'm wondering. Well, I'll just I'll I'll I have a thought for afterwards, but yeah, I'll keep going.

I pulled myself for what felt like miles, running into walls every now and then because the path seemed to curve like a snake. I had no idea where I was in relation to the hole that I had fallen through, but I told myself that there was an exit at the end of this. Had I not been crawling, I would have surely hurt myself far worse. There were parts of the tunnel in which the ceiling dipped down to maybe three feet above the ground. It hadn't caved in because the ceiling still lined it.

Someone had built it like this. This, again, is in hindsight. I didn't care at the time. I kept telling myself there was nothing behind me, but I swore that I heard feet scraping only a few inches behind my own. My jeans would brush against my legs every now and then, making it feel like someone was touching me. Even now, I still can't completely convince myself that someone wasn't. I crawled and crawled until I reached an upslope.

With joy, I looked ahead of me. There was a cellar door. The door was made of wood. I knew this because I could see light through them. I couldn't be sure, but I thought it might have been the light from the car's headlights. Besides all that, I was just so immensely happy to find an exit. I crawled all the way to the door and threw my shoulder into it. It budged, but didn't open. I began to scream, but my throat seared with pain. The most I could manage was a harsh crying noise. It sounded like a dying animal.

Huh. What? I'm just thinking, like, it sounded like a dying animal. That's the, that's a weird way to phrase it, because earlier in the story, Mr. Mays heard a dying animal when the door was open to the showers.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Like that's, it seems like a specific choice, right? It does. I mean, like it certainly does either. So are you, are you trying to assinuate that like a time parallel thing? Maybe you're like, maybe that's just, maybe that noise has happened. I'm reading it more. So, uh,

I'm reading it that there are other people down here screaming. And it's like, for some reason, what I don't know is like, he's screaming. And if he, he screamed, he's like, but I, my throat seared with pain. If he's screaming so much or being down there causes him to have some, I don't know. I'm kind of curious to kind of keep reading and see. Yeah. So anyway, just the phrasing of that interested me. Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, it is very almost serendipitous. It could be nothing, could be coincidence. But yeah, it just caught me for a second. I collapsed in exhaustion and pain, my eyes staring up at the slits of light before me. I was so close to being out of here. I could taste it. It was in that moment of silent defeat that I heard a noise that was, without question, something moving in the tunnel. It sounded like something was being dragged across the floor. It would move, pause for a second, and then move again.

I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up, but I began to gag. I gathered myself slightly and tried to steady my hand enough to focus the flashlight into the tunnel. That's also an interesting point before we get into like the reveal. Have you ever been so scared you throw up? No, I don't think I have.

I haven't. I'm wondering if it's a matter or it's a mixture of tense emotions and also I'm guessing that the smell is just absolutely revolting. I mean, it's decaying bodies, which is horrible. I mean, like...

spoiled rotten meat or something. Yeah. Because now whenever I heard the showerhead thing, it almost made me think of like a meat grinder, how meat pours out of those holes like that. I was thinking like a whole body shoved through there, right? Yeah. And that's why I was like, it's just like grease, blood, like

I mean, just basically liquefied, like a liquefied body going through. Yeah, liquefied people or like some kind of animal, right? Being shoved through. Yeah. Yeah. But rotted, old, like it's become seepy, you know? Almost like a corpse ran through that. Right. What I saw, I can still not rationalize. I know what I saw, but I cannot convince myself that it was actually there. I can't stop telling myself that I was hallucinating.

I saw a child in a dirty sleeping gown. The gown was stained with something dark and brown, with occasional splashes of a deep red. The child was extremely frail, like the pictures that people might see of a Holocaust victim. I could only make out one eye, brightly reflecting the light of my flashlight, in between huge tufts of long, dirty hair. It reached down beyond the fingertips of the child, which were caked with dirt.

The boy or girl, I'm not entirely sure which, moved towards me with difficulty. It wasn't breathing hard, but it seemed that every movement of every muscle took every ounce of strength the child had. The thing that froze me, though, was the eye. It was only visible because it was reflecting my flashlight, but even in that glint, I could feel anger or deep hatred or something like that.

This is the point in which the English language really lacks the right words to explain the situation. I could tell that the child meant me harm. Whether it was a hallucination or not, the thing was getting closer. I started to cry. It was getting closer and closer, and I heard a voice from behind me. "'Hey, Jack,' whispered the voice. It was Steve, I was certain. I tried to talk back, fully intending to say...

"Open this up and get me out of here right now!" However, given my current state, I am sure it just sounded like garbled nonsense. I clawed at the door, pushing against it with everything that I had and finally breaking eye contact with the child. As I did this, the flashlight rolled down the slope, coming to rest somewhere near the child's feet. "What do you see?" the voice asked. "What are you talking about?" I closed my eyes. I remember hearing a reply along the lines of, "Just look at it. Tell me what you see."

With my own screams of frustration drowned it out. I was mumbling like a maniac when the voice told me calmly, "Rest for a second. I'll get it." The statement took a second to settle in, at which point I closed my eyes tight. "Steve, just do it please. Please, just get it open, please. Just get me out of here. Steve! God damn it, open the fucking wooden door!"

I opened my eyes for a split second to see nothing but black hair dangling in front of my face, a small glint of light hidden in the mess of tangles. I slammed my eyes shut and screamed with every ounce of energy I had. "Open the fu-!" The door behind me gave way, and I fell onto the dirt, taking in a breath of fresh air. My eyes were still closed, but the first thing that I did was scramble to find the cellar door and close it. Once I had done that, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

I saw the barn in front of me, illuminated by the headlights of the car. My head was pulsing with pain. I was covered in dirt and liquids that I didn't even care to know the origin of. My knee was, at the very least, dislocated. But despite all of that, I was out of the tunnel. I took a deep breath, buried my head in my hands, and said, "Steve! Why didn't you just open the fucking door?!" I waited for a response, but none came. "Steve! Seriously!

I was fucking clawing and screaming for my life! I said as I looked behind me. My stomach must have been on the verge of falling out of me at this point, because it shifted again. The only thing behind me was the large mass of bushes that I had seen while examining the perimeter of the building. I was angry. Steve! This is not the fucking time!

"Come out of the fucking bushes, man!" I was getting ready to stand up when I heard a yell from the front of the building. A flashlight bobbed up and down in the semi-darkness. Steve was running into the open door of the structure, yelling my name and telling me not to worry. I must have lost consciousness at that point. When I woke up, Steve was standing over me, desperately trying to wake me up. His words were almost incoherent, at least to my ears. He held me to my feet and began to walk me to the car.

As we walked away, I saw my flashlight sitting just outside the cellar door. The light was fading. Steve brought me back to the car and then drove me to the nearest hospital. I fell asleep, but he told me that he drove around for an hour before he found a main road. I don't think I ever told him the whole story. I believe he thinks that I was just injured from the fall. He never really asked about it, and we didn't stay in contact for much longer. It's not like we deliberately parted ways, we just sort of stopped hanging out after the trip and went our separate ways.

I've never been able to fully understand what happened that night. There are many things that I can't explain away as being hallucinations. There are still many things that don't make sense. The shower heads were there, and they were leaking something. The door was real. The tunnel was real. Most everything else can be semi-rationalized if I can convince myself that I had a very bad concussion. A very, very bad concussion. But the one thing that I couldn't have imagined was that...

Cellar door was locked, and then it suddenly wasn't. I'm still as skeptical as I have ever been, but I believe in what happened to me at the showers. I'm not a hermit or a social recluse because of this. I drink a lot, but I am still functional. But I will never return to Nebraska. No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. I don't watch horror movies either. There is absolutely nothing entertaining about being so desperately scared. That's it really.

There's no typical ending for my story. I was changed by my experience, yeah. But there's no way to change anything about it or fight back against it. Can't even convince myself that I wasn't just seeing things. Believe me, I've been trying for years. Prior to this, there was really no way to find any information on the showers. The legend didn't extend outside of the classroom of Mr. Mays. No one told stories like this to keep children away from a certain place or to scare them.

It just wasn't known. I guess that's really the point of this whole story. I want people to know, firsthand, what this place is like. Maybe it is a Drunk's rationale, or the kid inside me wanting to spread these kinds of stories again. I don't know. I don't care. But it's out there now, for people to mold and warp to their needs. Most importantly, it's finally out of my head. It's getting late, and I'm getting another drink. Cheers.

And that is the end of the showers! You know, um... It's really interesting for a story that's so... I mean, 12 years. That's insane. Long time ago. Right? It seems like, um... Such a... Gripping tale. You know, at the beginning of this, um, story, I talked about how the older stories really don't... They... They... They don't fuck with a lot of the fat, right? A lot of, like, really getting, like, really preambling and doing these things...

and it seems like I like that towards the end at the beginning, what it just kind of throws us in. But being in those, being in the tunnels down there, I wanted to just like be down there a lot longer to experience more of that. We have these creepy children and we don't really know where it goes. And it leaves all these kinds of ambiguous things up in the air, which I think is pretty fun. But I think, um, I just, I wanted more. I wanted to, I was so invested, really wanted to see what was going on. Also to have him fall that much, to have it be,

Pretty far down, if you think about it. If he fell from the floorboard all the way down to the ground and actually dislocated his knee, that'd be a pretty substantial drop. Yeah, if it was... I mean, he also says he landed weird. And it is shallow enough, I should say, that Steve was able to jump back out. But yeah, it's got to be significant if...

He didn't just go out, like pull himself up out of that hole. Right. I could maybe like stuff up out of it. Seven feet high or something like that. Sure. Yeah. To where it's like, it's, I'm not saying it's the deepest thing, but I do think it's deep enough to where, yes. Well, you could stand up fully at first. Yeah. You can stay it up. I imagine it's like, if you reach your hands up, you can touch it type thing.

Sure. Yeah. I think that it's high enough to where if you didn't know you were falling and you didn't have yourself properly set to brace yourself, you could probably fuck up your knee. So it's interesting. I mean, what's your takeaway? What do you think, man? So first of all, I love it. I think it's really good. I'm kind of glad...

Well, I don't know. There's a bunch of stories that I read when I was a kid that I didn't fully appreciate then, but I do now. Like, I think Pen Pal. I think if I recall right, I listened to that as a kid and it didn't mean as much to me then as it did now, or one of those stories. So I don't know if I would have appreciated this as much as a kid because I'd just be kind of like, oh, that's it, right? But we're really given everything we could have, right? About we're given the puzzle pieces, we're given the experience, right?

I love the story a lot. I'm sitting here, my mind's like racking itself theorizing what it all means, like what all happened. Yeah, I wonder how much the author knows versus I wonder if a story like this comes about from just the idea of a showerhead leaking an unknown, almost mysterious, like

bile or something. And then, you know, just kind of like going from there. I wonder how much of it do they actually know? Cause you have so many different things like the door, which is presumed. Okay. Oh, let me ask you this then too. Do you think that the, that was the same place as Mr. Mays? Or do you think that just in this town specifically, there's multiple of them? Cause it seems like the tunnels go on for,

How long are they interconnected? You know what I mean? He says it feels like miles, but I don't think it's actually miles per se, right? Maybe one mile or something, but crawling that far? No, no, no. Yeah, I definitely think. I'm just wondering because the silo thing in particular kind of,

where i was like well if the silo's not even there because they're like why why would the silo be gone so that's why i'm like oh i wonder if it was like an interchanging amount of tunnels and then some of them have like weird tight crawl spaces to where you get out or yeah sure that are kind of like interconnected between stuff especially the idea of i don't think that mr maze also put an emphasis on like the red door a red door because on this one in particular he was talking about the knob which um

Had some sort of demon face shape or something But he made it an emphasis jack did at least made an emphasis to talk about how the door was like flaking red paint pretty much And I feel like if the I feel like if it was a red door before I feel like mr Mays probably would have said oh there was a small red door just cuz it's so pronounced because whenever he was talking about it I just imagined a regular wooden brown door. It's kind of what made me think so the first thing that comes to mind is

So I think there's definitely a supernatural element, right? At least a little bit. Because how else are things appearing than disappearing? Or how are they living down there without, you know, supposedly food or whatever, right? That or it's some kind of cult who lives down in the tunnels. Hmm.

A cult of children, or do you think like a cult of people and they just have children? I think more like either they have children or the children are the things being summoned. Because they have the door that has, as he describes it, a knocker that looks like a demon, right? Right. And it leads to effectively, like you described it, a kill shoot, right? So, and then there's like this fleshy fluid that comes out of the walls. There's a lot of...

My mind's like concocting itself right now. What do you think, initial theory? Yeah, it's difficult. I think there's a lot of things that are aesthetically put there that are fun, but they don't really add up to anything that is leading my mind, which is interesting because there's a couple of things. I mean, like the nightgowns are such an out-of-date thing and to have children just be there, they're as deprived as a Holocaust victim, as he so put it.

um and their hair is so incredibly long so it's like they've been living essentially this way for how long underneath there i'm guessing that he means that the eye the glint of the eyes being you know angry or something i almost read that as if it was a blind eye like they've been living in the darkness because he didn't put emphasis on you know that like whenever mr may said the story he was talking about how the lights were kind of like flickering on and off or whatever and i'm guessing that you would have to assume that

That was the same for this tunnel or he didn't really put an emphasis on the lights. I don't think he was. I think it was just a dark tunnel, right? I imagine it was a dark tunnel when he goes in again because everything's abandoned. Because in Mr. Mace's story, there were lights on around the barn and the door was locked. Like something was going on in there and they couldn't get in, right? So that explains why the lights are also on in the tunnel. So yeah.

I would imagine it was dark in the tunnels when Jack goes to it years later. Unless, like you said, this is just a different tunnel system. It's a different location that maybe they're interconnected with. Yeah. I am in belief of that because I just feel like...

If it was the same, I feel like there would be more context clues that Jack himself would say, like, oh, I saw the lights that he said. The lights were off this time. You know what I mean? There would be more stuff of him trying to piece together that this was the place that he was looking for, the thing that he's heard about and retold however many times in his life, right?

And the story is kind of taking a shape where, I mean, the barn itself is just an industrial farm equipment barn, essentially, which is for people that have never been on those barns. I mean, it's basically just a giant metal structure with cement flooring of some kind, which in this case, I'm guessing it's even just wooden flooring if he's able to bust through it.

but it kind of reminds me of this, actually this SCP story, which is SCP. I think it's zero four zero JP. And it's all about like a, a random structure built around a well where if you look, if you look in the well, that's when you become cursed. So I'm almost wondering if these people in this town, um,

In some kind of vicinity. And I think you're right. I don't think it has to be this massive, massive thing. But think about even a five-mile radius. That's a lot in terms of tunnels and stuff. And even just being around some kind of wooded area where you probably can't see the other structures. Who knows how close Mr. May's structure was if it is a separate building. And they are interconnected in that way. But to me, I almost...

the way I'm deciphering it and the thing that I'm having the most fun thinking about is essentially some kind of pagan

like religion or some kind of cult that you're saying that is underground that has been plagued there and now they have people have built these structures on top of it to either contain it or to monitor it in some kind of way and that has like been like like filtered out and i by by monitoring it i'm just mean like who knows maybe locals i mean this old woman is the only person that has that has any kind of resemblance of it so it's like maybe like back

in the back in time, it was like more monitored or people, you know, kept more of an eye on it, but it's kind of faded through the generations of stuff, or maybe they've assumed that it's kind of died out, but these doors, these interconnected doors, or even a door underground, it's just like, who, who builds that? Right. Yeah. Who, who knows? So it's, I don't know. Personally, I like to think that people built something on top of it, that it's a structure that existed underground and,

And that they have been building it regardless of the people that who set it up because, you know, you know, did the people who are also like who are watching this thing? Did they fabricate the lights around it to the doors or something? Where did the shower heads come from? There's so many non sequitur like set pieces that just don't connect well.

to where I'm trying to find... I'm trying to rationalize in my head. And while these visuals are cool, I'm trying to think of some kind of fun thing because the story is so ambiguous. I'm trying to think of some fun thing that ties it all together, but it's very hard because there's a lot of non-sequitur set pieces that are going together. I'm so fascinated. There's a lot. There's visually a lot of good stuff. Okay, so what do you think of this? What if...

The cult is summoning something or worshiping something or what have you. I'll take back what I said about the children maybe being the pieces of worship and say maybe they're just children of the cult, whatever.

Maybe they're emaciated. Maybe it's part of the ritual that you need to keep children around for it or whatever. The mention Maze has of right before they leave, how they hear what sounds like an animal screaming. You know, he says like it sounds like a bunch of dogs. What if that is the creature being summoned back in the shower room? It could be. It very well could be. I mean, like maybe. Okay. Maybe it's a fun. Okay. When people get near.

the showers because they have the ritual in place or whatever maybe it requires someone from the outside to come in right they get near the showers and then in the demon room which has like a demon crest over the door these shower heads begin to fill with rot effectively like a fluid out of hell a fluid out of damnation and

The cult does whatever they do to create that using maybe human bodies or corpses using the children. It fills the floor of the room with the rotted water and then the demon they're trying to summon rises out of it.

Some kind of like basically like summoning ritual or something I feel like the kids are such an important part of it of like it'd be kind of interesting if even the kids were like a Just a different take on a paranormal entity like that because I don't think you would ever associate a demon looking like that but it's like them being trapped down there and the door being a seal itself and

Like, once you open the door, they're able to get out and stuff. I mean, such an emphasis, too, on them saying that the eyes, you know, that they wanted to harm me makes the children also feel so evil. Like, I really didn't feel sympathetic. I was just mostly terrified of the kids down there. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, they're a part of it, almost. Yeah. They feel like such a pivotal piece of this kind of thing, which...

Who knows? I mean, it also, which I don't know if you read it like this too, but it almost made me think that like, are the children even children? Are they just like, do they have the appearance of children, but who knows how old they are? Right. Because almost when he said that they were like, you know, so frail and stuff to me that also reads kind of like an extremely old person as well.

So I don't know. I mean, like, they could have these kind of, like, you know, some kind of... These entities trapped in time, and they're kind of just physically decaying very slowly. Like, almost like a fucking mummy or something. I think it's kind of interesting. But there's a lot... There's just so much stuff of, like, very emphasis on, like, the demon head on the door. You know? So many very peculiar things. I kind of wish we had more. I just want more, you know? And I think that if it was... If this story was written...

God, I would say if the story was written in like 2017, I feel like you would have had way more. I feel like I'm wondering this too. I wonder, you know, I wish I could go back and actually be a part of the culture of this at the time. But I wonder how much of this back in the day where it was like, oh, yeah, this was just the way, like the aesthetic, the kind of flow that people had where you're like, you want to be short and sweet.

versus really getting into more and more or what? That too, another big aspect of it was if you make some details of your story unclear and people decide to talk about it, then that's going to boost your story, right? I mean, you see the same thing now with like, look at indie video games, right? They all try to do what Five Nights at Freddy's did with being like having obscure lore that YouTubers talk about. It was the same thing back then, only they would talk about it like message boards and stuff.

Most of them were bad. That's where memes come from of the creature, you know, like really vague or whatever. It's so ambiguous because at a point when you do that, ambiguity works so well in stories because your own human mind is going to conjure something that

really fucks with you in particular, which is sometimes whenever people are like, oh, I didn't like this ending because in your mind it was going somewhere else and it isn't as satisfying as it would have been in your mind if it would have been left kind of ambiguous. But at the same time, ambiguity can be an extreme crutch, an extreme crutch to where it feels cheap. It cheapens it to such a degree. Um,

And I think, and that's one thing too, that you're right with like, you know, five nights at Freddy's, even parts of like the back rooms and stuff, or even other pieces of media online. People love to theorize about like universes and worlds and stuff. And like, especially like environments, you know, conspiracies, these kinds of things and storytelling. And I think it especially grabs people to have that discussion. And I think one thing too, that I wrote down when we were about halfway through, um,

That I wanted to wait till we got to the end of was with stories like this, which I'm unfamiliar and I could be, you know, saying something that is already happens. But do you think that there's a world here where people want to add on to these stories to where it's like, so let's say somebody who isn't Clover or Dylan, our author here.

somebody else is like hey i went to broken bow nebraska and they write their own version of this years apart that is just inspired by the story because that was one thing where i was like this is such an awesome opportunity it would be to see other people be like oh i went to broken bow nebraska and this is what happened to me and you kind of get to keep this this uh

this story and this universe alive by doing so from different perspectives as well and you get to add on to in its own way which granted i don't think that you know you you could uh

You could have probably a lot of bad media that way, but I'd be curious just to hear other people's interpretations that are trying to pay homage and add to the universe of something. And it doesn't take away from the original story at all. You could not read those, and it would still make the original story just as good. Or if you're somebody like me, and you just want to see...

more of this i think it could be really interesting if there was talented writers out there who are just like oh you know it's cool all the hard work too of like conceptualizing something is done and i get to just add to whatever um the story is do you think that would be kind of interesting or does that happen at all that that does happen there's a lot of um

It's really like fan fiction out there, you know? Well, no, no, I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, like, you know, fans of the stories writing like, oh, here's my tale of what happened in this universe, you know, stuff like that. I see. That kind of thing was pretty common. I can't recall any specifically, but.

that were that famous, other than the author coming back later. Like, The Showers actually has a sequel. The author came back and wrote a part three, like, years later. There's stuff like that, but...

I can't think of any examples where someone else wrote their own. Because there's like the left-right game. I've heard that some people have made their own stories about that. Like within, you know, like, oh, this other group of people found the maps and, you know, started charting their own course, things like that.

So I think it's fairly common. I'd be interested if any of them did well, you know? Yeah. I mean, I just think that it's a thing where it's like, if you could have a, I mean, 12 years is crazy. You know, there's been so much advancement into this subreddit into the, even just like online storytelling. I think people are,

You know, because people absorb these things. People are more talented at writing and everything now, too. I think there's so much talent out there that it'd be kind of interesting, you know, and not in a way where you're taking away from the original at all. But I just I just wonder if there's a way, especially when something is this ambiguous. You obviously can't do that with Pen Pal or like a Baraska.

Like if you tried doing a Baraska, I feel like you would just be like, that's just, it's just doesn't work, you know, but something that's this ambiguous and this kind of paranormal in a way, I think they could take it a bunch of different ways, you know? And I don't think that, and I don't think that you do it from the perspective of Jack at all. I think you just put your own character into it because if you look at some of the comments here on the Reddit, so many people are like, I want to take a trip to Nebraska or whatever. It's the same kind of people that also like, I want to do the left, right game myself, which granted the left, right game,

I don't think you could do that one

Particularly either just because it's the exact same setup every time. So it would just be like new characters going through the same thing that we've heard of before without probably, you know, with just like slightly different results. But this one, it's just there's so much that is left on the table. So much that we don't know. You never know, you know. And if you do abide by the theory that there's different tunnels and there's different approaches you could take, it could just be interesting, you know. Who knows? I'm looking at, so I've been reading a bit.

While you were talking. So the author six, five or six years after the showers came out, he made a part three, uh, which most people on Reddit are saying, isn't that good? Um, I read a quick synopsis of it. It's basically like he goes back to the showers years later. And then the only extra thing he sees in the tunnels is there's a deer in the tunnels, which is implied to be some supernatural entity or whatever. Um,

But this is interesting. So someone points out, and this is on an analysis on the No Sleep Podcast discussion subreddit. Someone in the comments, Swirl25, points out that a couple of years before the showers came out, there was an Ask Reddit post that said,

The showers outside of Hastings, Nebraska. My 12th grade teacher told a story a few years ago about a place called The Showers. TLDR, he and his friends went to a satanic ritual site in an old military barracks and heard strange voices. This is not the strange part, though. When he went back to the dorms with his friend and asked around about it and got an identical response from everyone he asked. They all went pale white and said something like, don't ever go there again.

He said this searched the internet about it and couldn't find anything on it. Well, I busted out my internet skills and found this and this. And a few years ago, I came across a website referencing it with much of the text blacked out. This has confused me for the past two or three years. And then the, this is that he links to our, uh, it looks like now deleted Yahoo post of other people who had a similar experience near Hastings, Nebraska. Hmm.

So it looks like there's a chance this is kind of based on a true story a little bit. And the idea that people near this town in Nebraska had an experience like that.

And it was described, it could not be accurate because it was just the way like a guy described his teacher, but said it was a satanic ritual site in an old military barracks. Now, clearly there's some, you know, there's obviously a lot of, that's the inspiration for the story. It doesn't say anything about the silo or the tunnels, which by the way, I don't think the silo was a silo. If it moved and there were no signs of it,

It was maybe a storage for whatever the fluid that comes out of the showers were. It was maybe some kind of holding. Maybe it was some kind of obelisk, something they were using to worship, whatever they were selling, right? And the teacher just assumed it to be a silo. Yeah, I don't think the silo was a silo.

Sure. I mean, I'm curious to hear what also the commenters say too. Usually there's always a couple of good, there's a comments that always have a lot of like really fun insider observations or takeaways and stuff. So I'm pretty curious. So the interesting points about the story that I want to mention are the old lady, when they see her, she says, we don't do that anymore. Right? So, uh,

It is something that the town was aware of, even if it still doesn't go on. And I think it involves some kind of death. Either they use dead bodies or the children were killed or something like that. The other thing that I think is important.

Is the scene when Jack is stuck in front of the door to the tunnels or he's stuck inside of the door to the tunnels and he hears what he thinks is Steve. Remember? So he's in the tunnels and he hears a voice say, Hey Jack, we later know that this is not Steve. So whatever this voice is just said his name, it knows his name, right? So the voice says, what do you see?

And then it says, just look at it. Tell me what you see. And then he starts screaming, you know, like, get me out of here. Then the voice says, rest for a second. I'll get it. Then it says the statement took a second to settle in, at which point I closed my eyes tight. And then he starts screaming, you know, whimpering, all that stuff. He opens his eyes for a split second to see nothing but hair, which is a horrifying line, right?

Like it's in his face. He can just see the hair right there, you know? Right. Reminds me a lot of like the grudge type imagery, right? Yeah, definitely. Very creepy. And then creepy and like imposing. Yeah. And he sees a small glint of light from the eyes. So then that's when he starts to scream and then falls out of the cellar door.

So maybe when this thing, this girl, or I don't know if it's a real child or if it's a demon or what, but the thing that looks like a young girl or young boy is standing in front of him, whatever spirit is in the tunnels or maybe the voice of

the child or some entity in the tunnels is telling him to like, look, tell me what you see rest for a second. It kind of feels like they want him to worship whatever is being worshiped or they want him to join them or something. It feels malicious with how calm it is. Like the whispering for sure. It doesn't, it doesn't feel good. Yes, exactly. So when this voice is saying, what do you see? Oh, just look at it. Tell me what you see.

And then it says rest for a second. I'll get it. It sounds to me like they're wanting him to look at this child and maybe become a part of the cult, worship whatever demon they're worshiping, but he fights against it. So they let him out because remember Steve wasn't there to unlock the door. The door just became unlocked. So it had to be by some supernatural means in the cave. So maybe because he wasn't willing to worship whatever showed up, they, they threw him out. Like he's not a part of us. Right. Yeah.

It's interesting. It's interesting because that feels like a very... Yeah, I don't... I don't know. It does feel particularly...

Like something did let him out. Like just mysteriously, the thing wasn't locked anymore. Because even after that, he calls attention to it. He says, all I know is that the door was locked and then suddenly it wasn't right. And yeah, exactly. And after he gets out, Steve is still running over to him. So it had to be whatever entity was down there saying, look at it rest for a second. So either Steve,

There's two competing entities. There's two competing entities in the tunnel or because he wasn't willing. This one, I think is more likely he wasn't willing to worship or give in to whatever the present entity was that the children and the showers and everything are involved with. It doesn't want him anymore. Cast him out. If he won't worship, it doesn't want him in the congregation. Yeah.

If, you know, if, if, if that's the case, the two, cause I can see how you could read it that way. If that's the case in two, I kind of wish that there was more trials of like them trying to like pin him down to give into this thing, but his like will to get out pushes him out of their grasp. You know what I mean? Kind of have like have a bit more just because I feel like it's also not that it's a stretch, but it feels like we're having to do all the heavy work of like thinking of like these things, you know what I mean?

And it's like, as a reader, I kind of, you know, you just, I want that information or that kind of thing, even if it is ambiguous to, I don't have to feel like I'm reaching so hard for these explanations, I guess.

But, you know, that's just my opinion. But, you know, it's interesting. Like I said, I'm always fascinated when I read the comments on these videos and stuff. People always have such good takes. I'm curious to see what people say as well. I feel like a lot of people are going to line up with what you're saying, though, because I think that...

Some kind of test, some kind of divine test of some kind, or even demonic test of some kind. It seems kind of interesting and plausible here. If it's a test, then that explains why it activates. Or hold on, let's not say a test. If it is an outreach, if it is an invitation to join, then that explains why the showers start and everything kicks into gear when someone new steps in.

So you think that the showers are only going on whenever people are coming in? You don't think that they're just continuously dripping? Because every time it's described as, oh, I start to feel something wet, it gets more. The showers are picking up pace, right? That's true. Do you think that at all? Do you think that the kids could be turning on the system somehow? It could be, or their presence invokes it.

Okay. Their presence is kind of the thing that's starting these things. I'd be curious to, if there was some kind of like, if, if we missed some kind of context clues as to like, maybe what the showers could have been before, like some kind of, because

Because if they're saying if what you're saying to the military bunker thing of the other story, if that's if that kind of ties in at all, then at least maybe it was like, oh, this were army barracks beforehand or something. And then something maybe they unearthed something mysterious of some way. I don't know. It's very interesting that this the site to of, I guess, just industrial showers is just such a.

There's just such a definitive thing of like you almost think of like gym class or something every time I think of this kind of showers I think of like Jim like old-timey gym class stuff of like oh, you know hit the showers or whatever Is it what I always think of or like, you know the same with like barracks or something? It's like a very outdated source of like how people used to like do that kind of shit. I

So I don't know. It definitely makes it feel older. It puts age on the tunnel, in my opinion. But who knows? Okay. It was a fun read. Let me deliver a final theory. This is like crack to me. What if you have it doesn't you know what? It doesn't even have to be a cult. Let's say it's an individual obsessed with it, right?

He becomes obsessed with, because the only number of, no way, there's a scene where they're in the tunnel and he says he sees many people and children standing in front of them, right? Like 20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When Maze is making it up. Okay, so it is a cult. So let's say there is a cult in this small town who worships the devil, some pagan entity, something that isn't a common religion, right? So...

Maybe the entity, maybe to summon it, it requires some level...

blood or some level of rot or filth or whatever. So this cult, they begin to do their worship ceremonies by either collecting dead bodies. It doesn't even have to be humans. It can be dead bodies of pigs, cows. Like you said, it's an old farm, right? It has a kill chute. Maybe that's what the bodies are being used for. Probably not even alive, just rotten corpses. And I'm going to say they're kept in the silo or something like that, right? Yeah.

So once they have amassed enough flesh there and they, they conduct whatever their normal ritual is. When maze was there, while the cult was still active, there was something going on in the barn that was locked up, right? With the lights on around it and all of the vegetation around it was dead. I think what was happening in that barn was the original cult, right? Yeah.

Hmm. So also think about this. If the way maze described it is you go through the cellar door next to the silo and you work your way for like a mile and then you come out at the shower room. And then when Jack does it years later, he falls through the floor and he's in the shower room, which is like 50 feet away from where the cellar door is. Right. That just means the tunnel snake around a lot. Right.

That they're actually next to each other, but there's just a lot of twists and turns to confuse people. So all within this one property, there's people conducting some kind of ritual within the barn that they use to summon something. Once they've conducted this ritual...

And they've brought about their God. Anytime someone new shows up to the area, fresh blood, so to speak, the entity makes itself known. The showers begin to run. In my theory, the rot fills up the bottom of the floor and then something comes out of the pool. This, I love the only description we get is it sounds like a dying dog. It could be a

It could be a Moloch-esque creature. It could be a goat head, a horse head, a bull head on like this twisted body. Like it could be the worst parts of your imagination, right? It rises up out of the water and maybe these children we see, these children that are impossibly frail, that never cut their hair and are so emaciated and dirty, there's no way they could live down there.

Maybe those children aren't children. Maybe those are the forerunners, so to speak, of whatever this entity is. Maybe as the ritual begins, they make their presence known and they're effectively the priest of this religion who bring converts over to the side of their god.

So, what Mr. May saw when he originally went was an active ritual in practice. He makes his way through the lit tunnels until he gets to the room that the worship is occurring in, and he sees the cult members surrounded by these children wrought from hell, so to speak. These, like, spirits that look like small emaciated kids.

And the group gets away. Mr. May said that that guy died. Maybe he just bled out. Maybe the beast showed up and killed him. For my theory, I'm going to say that that guy bled out, that the beast didn't kill him. Because what I think happened, maybe his body was used for the rot pile, if I'm right about that. But he died of the injury he sustained from the roof falling in.

They leave. Years later, when Jack gets there, the ritual is no longer taking place. The cult is inactive. There's not a single person he sees while he's there, but the supernatural children that were brought forward originally still inhabit the area and still continue the customs, even though the cult no longer can. We can assume they're dead, gone. As the old lady at the gas station says, we don't do that anymore.

So the cult's now gone, but the forerunners of this beast, the children, are still in the tunnels. And once again, anytime someone shows up, they turn up once again to offer them this new religion. Going to Jack in the tunnel saying, open your eyes. What do you see? Rest well. And when he fights against it, they let him go. But because of what the cult did,

That site underneath Broken Arrow, Nebraska, or sorry, underneath Broken Bow, Nebraska, will always be the summoning grounds for whatever this crying monster is.

Yeah, almost like a permanent altar kind of thing would be sick. Yes, yes. Like they made it a hollow ground and it won't go away. And the silo, I think disappearing is the... Not only is the building that was previously had lights on and there was no grass around it and they thought they saw someone walk inside. Not only is that building being gone proof the cult isn't there, but the silo disappearing might be that the cult like...

Either the cult destroyed it or I think a cooler theory, maybe the cult angered the entity and the entity dragged them and everything they had to hell. Or like it took them away, it killed them, and it took the silo with it, right? Like it destroyed it from the ground so they're no longer worthy of it. That's why there's not even a sign that a silo was ever there because it was a supernatural reclamation of it, so to speak. But even though the cult failed him, he's still looking for new converts within the tunnels.

i kind of uh i kind of like the idea my mind was kind of going to which that like everything you said i think is really really fun my mind i i things i always like the idea of entities just like height like like living in darkness and by that i mean like

Because we never really push into the room and fully see past those 20 children. You know what I mean? We don't really know what's in the room past all that in the darkness. And I like to think that there's some kind of entity back in there that is basically...

producing rot or something. Like, I don't know where exactly. I don't know. My mind hasn't connected where the rot is exactly coming from, right? But all these, like, flesh and guts. I like the idea of him making whatever entity it is, making its children, and they're just like these sickly children made of rot, basically. And they harvest...

all of this dead meat and bile and bring it to him and like form them like almost like little mannequin dolls. And then he like is able to manifest life out of these like big stacks of like flesh. And then all of these, like all of these like kids are just literally born from rot, which is also why this, this tunnel smells so bad. Not only from that, but the children moving perpetually smell fucking, uh,

and they're just made of death themselves. I feel like that would be kind of sick too. The children made of filth, and their father, the architect, who waits in the showers. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Some kind of weird thing like that. Yeah, I think that like... And then if they're born out of hate or some kind of evil nature, their eyes are perplexed with it. But then also it would kind of make sense too of one of them is like... One of them lets them out. Maybe they're not inherently...

like uh evil or something or you know maybe it like just depends on which ones but people born of these things or whatever you know we never really know their intentions but just this thing lurking in the distance and creating it's like basically many children and stuff which i don't know if he goes to gap to get the nightgowns but he could go to gap i don't know who knows where the nightgowns i'll say i like the i like the niche the story hits of being a

Like you're given a lot of clues, but you're also given a lot of room to make your own theories. I like it. It feels, it feels fun. I do too. I mean, I think that what it does well is it effectively gives you great visuals of like visuals that are very, very good hooks.

And what I think it does with that as well is you're able to run with those really great visuals because they're so pronounced at the front of your head that your mind starts going wild with it. Like I said, I really do think that if this was written even like six, seven years later,

I think that the author would have gone crazy with like showing exactly what their intent was. And I'm very curious to see what, like, like, like what you're saying too, of like letting theories build. Cause what 12 years around this time, you're probably not wrong. That's like, what is like FNAF that old FNAF is probably that old, right? 12 years. Oh man. If it is 2012, 2012 or whatever, if it is, I mean like that, I mean like makes sense to have this kind of like world building 2014. Man. Oh, there you go. Well, yeah, this is 10 years old. My word.

around that time i think like i'd be curious if it was if that was like a very pronounced thing if there's people in their comment sections who were kind of around this time or remember stuff from this time i'd love to have any insight from people who were kind of active around when those kinds of stories were happening and if that was just kind of the flavor of the of the times you know i mean so i think it's great though i think this is cool it was a fun story i think that it's a

this feels like a fun one uh as always too guys if there's any suggestions i know people keep saying tales from the gas station people keep requesting that one um so i think we're definitely gonna uh switch up some stuff too and try to dive into different areas of uh

horror stories as well so any suggestions always let us know but i'm stoked you know as always we appreciate your support and also uh we uh are always always interested in just reading new that's like been my favorite thing about this podcast is being able to just continuously dive into new facets of horror really fun stories oh your favorite part isn't talking about old mr wellers

Mr. Weller will become a new staple. He will become a featured meme on this podcast for sure. I will forcibly bring him into any kind of story at any given time, but who knows when. You know in Smiling Friends, the whole shmormoo bit.

Yeah, yeah. Shmoo! Shmoo! This cannot be undone. Yeah, this cannot be undone. Except this time, we don't even get to have a fake text to see if he's going to be in. It will happen. I will force this. I don't feel good about it. I'm praying to God that it lands well. Mr. Weller, he must be with us. The first Kinkast merch is just going to be a t-shirt. It's just a white Hanes t-shirt that says in black TASC,

Mix mr. Wellers, that's it. That's yeah, that's all you get mr. Weller Yeah, it could not be a cheaper shirt and it will be $75 not even a picture of him It looks like the supreme. I'll go just the word It really could not be a lazier design and we are doing an extreme markup so I don't know what else But yeah without further ado is there anything else that you want to do or are we ready to hit the road I

I think that did it pretty well. Again, I really enjoyed this story. Everyone go, we'll, we'll link his Twitter or something, or if I put all the, all the links and stuff, we'll be sure to put in the description as we always do. So, you know, once again, be sure to read it yourself. Who knows? Uh, or even with some of the things too, with the links, uh,

I like to put, I like to think that maybe people like follow along with us, uh, with a text as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you can go post down there, show some support on the original post. If we have the socials as well, be sure to check out the people's profile and maybe some of the stuff they're doing. And again, that's Dylan Sindler. So thank you very much, Dylan for a cool story. I liked it a lot and it's also scary. So good job. We appreciate you, buddy. Well,

Until next time on Creepcast, we will see you, I guess, when we see you. I was trying to think of an outro, but I don't have it. We will see you when we see you. Great. We'll see you when we see you. Did we still say stay spooked? Is that our catchphrase or no? Did you say stay spooked or stay spooky? Stay spooky. Stay spooked.

Stay scared. You're killing it. Good job. We need to have... Continue in terror. I guess have a... That's what will be in our poll. What's our log line out of here? Stay...