Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo Rhodes from Sandcastle, California. Tonight I have for you spooky, scary stories about cryptid bugs and birds. Birds can be very creepy when they want to be and these birds will make you want to take cover. Bugs are even worse! Ewww!
I have a story about birds of my own. It’s called Hungry Little Mouths and is set in Sandcastle, California – the spookiest town in America. It is available either on my Sandcastle Horror Podcast and YouTube channel or on amazon in paperback and Kindle. A signed copy can be found on my Etsy store Spooky Boo Rhodes.
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A Childhood Memory
by CtrlAltDelete
When I was a kid, I would visit my Uncle Nathan every month or so. He lived in the middle of the woods in Washington, in this big aging Victorian house. I still remember driving up there the
first time, seeing the tall spire, its shadow seeming to envelop us as it approached. Nathan wasn’t much older than my dad, who was in his late 30s, but he certainly looked older. He’d traveled all across the world and, much to my delight, he’d often regale me with stories about his time abroad. He’d talk about how he camped on the African Sahara or how he’d sailed through the Arctic Circle.
He was a bit eccentric, yes, but my Uncle was one of the finest men I knew. He was the kind of person who’d give you the last dollar he had, even if it meant he had to go hungry. He always talked about the people he met or the culture he experienced, often times while we fished for cod in the nearby river. Nathan would always talk about that old phrase “walk a mile in another man’s shoes” and how I should always see both perspectives. He was a good man and, even today, I respect him infinitely.
There is one night, though, that stands out in my memory of him. I was eight at the time and the two of us had just finished working on Nathan’s old jeep. The sun was just about out of sight, peeking over the mountains and casting an orange hue across the sky. Nathan sent me to bed, since we needed to be up early the next day. He hoped we could squeeze some fishing in before I had to go home. As I pulled the covers up, I heard a small clattering outside. I was curious, so I hopped out of bed and crept downstairs. The drapes were pulled back, allowing me to see Nathan, sitting on the edge of the porch. He seemed sullen, breathing heavily as he scanned the tree line. It was then that I noticed the shotgun in his right hand, cold steel shimmering in the sunset light. A small plastic bucket sat on his left, filled with some kind of indescribable red sludge.
I looked around the small clearing, noting its various landmarks. The jeep, the large rock near the trees that Nathan let me climb, even mountains in the distance. One thing that caught my eye was the shed, just off the right of the house. It was a shabbily built mess that Nathan had always kept locked and bolted tight with several chains. He’d forbid me from going inside, saying that it was filled with equipment and I could get hurt. I only remembered this because it was one of the few times Nathan had been stern with me.
Now, the shed was wide open and I could barely see the glint of metal in the darkness. The sun had finally disappeared, casting darkness across us. Nathan checked his watch and started looking around. A rustling in the bushes caught our attention; Nathan’s grip on the shotgun tightened. A white form emerged from the woods, straddling across the clearing like a wounded deer. It had to have been seven feet tall, its limbs stretching and morphing as it moved. Its body was deathly white, composed of some amorphous substance not unlike gelatin. Human-like eyes peppered its form, moving to and fro in a bizarre frenzy until eventually settling on Nathan. A set of teeth, partly human and partly animal, emerged from the creature. Its head, if it could be described as such, looked down upon him. Saliva dripped from its mouth as Nathan placed the bucket before the beast.
It looked at it for a moment before another head emerged from it, diving into the bucket and consuming the fluid with a loud slurp. The creature continued to stand before Nathan, almost as though it were waiting. I heard Nathan speak:
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here.”
The creature continued to stare.
“I told you before, I’m running out of options here! You think it’s easy finding shit you’ll eat? I had to put down a dog for that, you fuck!”
Its grotesque, pearly white teeth shone brightly in the waning sunlight. They curled into a frown as the creature’s eyes focused on Nathan. It edged closer towards Nathan, whose form seemed so much smaller than the beast now. I could see his hands tremble as he raised the shotgun on the creature, the safety disengaging with a loud click. Nathan spoke, his voice cracking.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
The beast reeled at his defiance, its many eyes piercing into him. The mouths covering its body all morphed into angry snarls. It head snaked from its body and sat inches from Nathan’s face. It was so close I could see the organs and limbs forming beneath its disgusting pale translucent skin. Lungs and kidneys floated about, connecting and disconnecting with other organs. Then, it just turned and left. I watched its pale form gesticulate and morph as it disappeared into the bushes.
Nathan stood there for a moment. He stared into the distance like a statue, the wind blowing through the clearing in a shrieking crescendo. I watched him collapse onto the porch, head between his hands as he wept. I moved away from the window, unsure of what to think. I crept back upstairs and crawled into bed. As I stared at the ceiling that I became aware of a light scratching on the window.
I turned and immediately froze. There it was, the creature, staring directly at me. Its cancerous form was planted firmly against the window, a single arm protruding outwards and scraping the glass. I wanted to scream, but it felt as though every muscle in my body had locked up. Its mouths all curled into devilish smiles as it stared at me, slime dripping and smearing against the window. My breath caught in my throat as I watched one of its mouths open and an eerily human tongue emerge. The tongue lapped against the window as the beast moaned quietly. I took my attention from its horrifying display just long enough to realize it was edging the window open.
Just as I prepared to slam the window shut, Nathan pounded up the stairs and threw the door open. He eyed the creature, raised the shotgun and fired. Glass and slime flew about the room as I pulled the covers over my head. Another shot resounded whilst I felt my sheets become wet. Suddenly, I was grabbed from the bed and embraced. I screamed, only to realize Nathan was holding me, crying. He’d thrown the gun down and told me he was sorry, that he never should have brought him here. I looked to the window; the beast was gone.
When my father picked me up the next day, Nathan took him aside and whispered something to him. My father never told me what he said, even on his deathbed. I never went back to Nathan’s home, either. I went on with my life; I moved out, got a girlfriend, started going to college. I never even really thought much of my experience. I figured it was some kind of bizarre night terror. However, one day I was with my mother for a family gathering and the topic of my Uncle came up. When I asked her about him, she unceremoniously told me he’d died. When I pressed her about it later, she said that he’d died under bizarre circumstances about a year after my last visit. Curious, I decided to investigate further.
I checked into the local police station and managed to sweet talk the receptionist into letting me look over the files. What I found was…odd. The report stated that the house showed signs of forced entry, yet Nathan had apparently died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. I couldn’t find much about his death beyond that, so I decided to go directly to the source. I went to the house. The road was completely decrepit, huge rocks and bushes forcing me to abandon the car and hike the rest of the way. The house was equally destroyed; graffiti and peeling paint coating its monolithic walls. I broke open the door and poked around for a few hours. I still found nothing, apart from an insane amount of cobwebs and dust.
Then, whilst searching Nathan’s room, I tripped over a loose board. I caught myself, thankfully, and turned back to pry open the board. The space beneath with filled with piles of rotting paper. I rummaged through the mess and found a small, leather-bound book. It was almost like a scrapbook, but it contained a fairly large amount of newspaper clippings, most of them dated to after my last stay with Nathan. They were all about missing children. The kids had disappeared from the surrounding towns. Someone or something had gone into their homes and spirited them away during the night. The papers reported that there were no real clues, only that small amounts of clear slime were found in the children’s rooms.
I was unnerved, to say the least. I quickly grabbed my things and left the building. The sun had just fallen behind the tree line, bathing the open space in front of the house in amber light. Just as I started to head back towards the car, I spotted something moving in the bushes. I thought it might be a coyote or a mountain lion, but a cold chill rang down my spine when I got a better look at it.
An enormous creature, probably about eight feet tall, had stumbled out from behind the brush. Its limbs splayed about like a spider, it dragged itself out onto the barren field. Then, a worm-like head emerged from it and turned towards me, a pair of pearl-white teeth curling into a vicious smile. As I looked over the rest of its body, I saw that the creature was attached to the end of a huge, tentacle like appendage that trailed deep into the woods. I could see something beneath its translucent skin, something eerily human. I try to tell myself it wasn’t moving. I try to forget the muffled screams.
The two of us stood there, staring one another down. I finally broke from my paralysis and ran down the trail, almost tripping and braining myself along the way. I couldn’t tell if it was following me, but I wasn’t keen on finding out. I eventually made it back to the car and drove home. Once I pulled into the driveway, I just collapsed against the wheel and started crying. For about a week, I couldn’t go outside. I was a complete wreck; I couldn’t stand the idea of going the same way Nathan did. I considered calling the cops, but I knew they’d just think I was insane. I can’t go in the forest anymore, and even when I’m near one, I can’t shake the sense that I’m being watched. I’m still not really sure what I encountered, nor do I have any intention of ever finding out. While I’ve considered the idea of returning to try and kill the creature, I have little doubt I’d suffer the same fate as my Uncle.
The old Victorian was destroyed, along with half the woodlands, in a massive forest fire. I hoped that maybe the creature had been killed, but then I turned on the news this morning. Three children, stolen from their homes in the night. The police were baffled; no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. The only thing they could find was translucent slime slathered on the children’s windows.
Big Bird
by TheBelugas
The Nanuq village, located in the farther north parts of the Alaskan peninsula is not a very well-known place. In fact, you probably won’t be able to find it anywhere, even online, due to the fact that it is a tribal village, consisted of only a few huts, and not a large and secured city such as Nome. However, the region that particular village is settled in interests paleontologists – many, even though partial fossils of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals alike have been discovered there, but, specifically, the village of Nanuq is only known by one small dig team, which has a camp on top of a small mountain nearby.
The day I arrived at the Anchorage airport was the 18th of February, and I would’ve frozen in place if I wasn’t prepared for the harsh temperatures during the late winter. Me and a few friends, Forrest, Grover and Joseph, have been notified of the existence of Nanuq, since Forrest worked with the dig team and was allowed to show us around, with one rule: not to tell anyone about the village. After we safely passed customs and retrieved our bags and the singular suitcase we brought, we took a taxi to the address that was given to us.
The driver stopped us at a narrow road by the forest, looked back at us with a concerned expression and said: “You sure this is your stop? There’s only one house around here, and I don’t think anyone lives there.”
Forrest cut him off, saying, “Yes, yes. This is our stop. Don’t worry, mister.” Forrest was usually correct with everything, from the number of sandwiches we packed for the trip, to even the exact amount of minutes we spent in the aeroplane (even though he did that as a joke).
Anyways, the taxi driver dropped us off, we took the bags out of the trunk very quickly, even though the bag with the hiking supplies was probably going to break my shoulder from how heavy it is, and watched the yellow car slowly drive down the hill until it disappeared with a left turn. From the road we had a glimpse to the sea, and in the early hours, it looked fantastic. Forrest broke the silence by saying he’s going to call someone, and pulled out his old flip phone. As soon as the person he called picked up, he started speaking loudly to him:
“Yes, hello? It’s Forrest.”
“We’re at the place, come get us!”
“Aight, in a few minutes, in a few minutes..”
He continued to mumble that sentence under his breath, until a heavy jeep arrived.
“Give it up for Jerry, everybody.”
The man inside of the vehicle was around our age, and had a dense beard and curly hair, which almost entirely covered up his face. He opened the front window and we all shook hands with him. After that, we packed our things either on the back seat, or in the large trunk. The trip itself was much longer than the flight we took – Grover had us stop a few times in the middle of nowhere so that he could smoke a cigarette, and Forrest was constantly telling Joseph to stop doing things: “Lower your volume!”, “Stop sniffing!”, “Dude, you’re cracking a cold one for the fifth time!” I honestly can’t blame Joseph a lot – if it wasn’t for my greater amount of patience, I probably would’ve had eight drinks by now. The pre-tundra scenery was the same old barren fields and dead trees, all the time. I feel asleep somewhere halfway into the trip, and woke up an hour or so later by the rocking of the jeep on the dirt road, and I felt an immense pain on the left side of my head, since it had been pressed to the cold window. Joseph was also asleep, Forrest and Jerry were telling jokes to each other at the front seats, and Grover was looking inside one of the bags.
“We there yet?” I asked.
“Twenty more minutes, pal,” answered Jerry.
“Everything’s here. I still hope we haven’t forgotten something,” exclaimed Grover with relief. He had checked on the luggage at least 5 times during the whole trip, and even got in an argument with the flight attendant, because he wanted to check up the suitcase during the flight.
Some time later, we finally reached our destination – the Nanuq village. It was in the middle of a forest, that was isolated from the rest of the naked fields and barren landscape. My body was glad, yet annoyed at the same time that it had to leave the soft leather seats of the jeep. My legs, now as useful as toothpicks to be balanced on, could barely hold my weight, and having to carry one of the supply bags wasn’t going to help me. After walking a few minutes on a wet dirt trail, we reached the village – it consisted of several teepees, a campfire, and an old, mossy wagon, which probably wasn’t used all that often. Forrest told us to sit by the campfire while he tells the other part of the dig team to come down from the hill. Everyone, except for me, fell asleep due to the warm ambience of the dying campfire, and of course, due to being tired as hell. After fifteen minutes of silence, Forrest arrived with five more people. I was mostly too tired to remember their names, but I was able to hear brief words such as “Frank, Benjamin, Agatha”… Grover, or whoever that was helped me stand up and led me to one of the teepees, which was empty. I curled up in a ball in between the furry blankets and drifted off.
“Hey, hey buddy! Wake up!” – Forrest’s voice called out to me. I immediately stood up. My headache was fixed, and I was no longer tired now – looking at my watch then, it was 12:01, time for lunch, or at least for me – breakfast. I stood up and went outside to see everyone eating sandwiches and other snacks by the campfire(now a pile of steaming ash and charcoal). Joseph handed me a pretzel, which due to the fact it had stayed for over 12 hours in one of the bags, had now become as good as a shoe, even if it wasn’t so bad after all. After some twenty minutes, a part of the dig team starts leaves the village and starts heading to a trail off to the right of the campfire, which presumably lead to the dig site. I was also standing up just then, when Forrest stopped me, saying we’ll go a few minutes after them, since we have to unpack our hiking equipment.
After several minutes of intense struggles with taking out certain things out of our bags, we were finally ready to go – Me, Forrest, Grover and Joseph. The first 2-3 minutes of us walking up the trail weren’t so bad – the leafless trees around us, along with the light gray sky created a bit of a comforting atmosphere, which was disturbed by the smell of wet soil, leaves and mud. After a few more minutes of walking, a different stench hit us. Not a smell, but a stench. Everyone started complaining and asking what ever the hell that horrible stench was, when we flinched at a sight we didn’t expect.
Three, freshly slaughtered corpses laying scattered at the road. My first reaction was to run head first backwards until I reach the village, and so was that of my friends. I didn’t look backwards, but I heard something massive picking up someone, and that someone started to shout until I heard another loud noise. I tripped on a rock and fell to the side of the road, feeling an excruciating pain in my knee – I had accidentally stabbed myself with my pocket knife. I tried to hold in my screams, and looked around. I looked up in the trees, and what I saw was mesmerizing – a massive crow-like bird had grabbed someone and placed him on one of the highest branches, where it fed on it’s kill. The person’s clothes were scattered around the branches, with their blood-stained coat hanged on one of the lower parts of the tree. The bird was ripping off the intestines of the disfigured and partially naked body, with yellow and red fluids spewing everywhere. The stench was so disgusting it made me tear up. The beast opened up it’s wings to flap them in the wind, and unleashed a terrible, hoarse cry. That was enough to distract me from being silent, and I let out a helpless moan due to the growing and burning pain in my leg.
The thing saw me.
The Infestation
by Uberzombiemeat
It started out small, like most catastrophes. I was exploring my new house, checking out various rooms and noting where I could put down some furniture. As I was walking through the empty house, I saw a small insect crawling across the floor. I stepped on it and thought nothing else of it.
A few days later, I was putting my stuff away in my new room when I saw some bugs crawling around on my dresser. I remembered the time I stepped on the bug a few days ago, and thought that there might be a lot of bugs in the neighborhood. It was nothing serious; I just needed to make sure doors were closed so things don’t get in too much. Again, without thinking much of it, I squashed the bugs and went about my business.
Things escalated quickly from there. These bugs started popping up all over the house. I made it a daily routine to go room to room, killing various insects. I called in an exterminator multiple times, and multiple times he said he removed a small colony of the little bastards. The problem just got worse and worse. I eventually got a team of expert exterminators to do a complete sweep of my house, cleaning out every nook and cranny. They said they must have killed over 3 thousand of the bugs. Everything was fine for a few days after that, until I found one of the little shits on my windowsill. They seemed to multiply every day, and I couldn’t get rid of them.
It didn’t stop there. Neighbors started complaining about the bugs, and called more exterminators to try and help. I decided that I wanted no part of this and promptly moved out to a place farther north. I had thought these things liked it down in the warm, humid south, so I wouldn’t find them up north. For a while, I was right.
About a week after I moved, I saw a news story about how a major crisis had risen in the town my old house was in. Bugs were everywhere. Grocery stores closed because of the bugs being found in the food. Medical stores closed when bugs started contaminating medication. Some buildings were actually quarantined because of the absolutely massive number of bugs living in them. The worst one: my old one.
It’s been two months. Six continents have been consumed by this plague of bugs. The people who stayed died from various diseases, or from the anarchy that began because of these damn bugs. There are barely 100 million humans left. Anywhere these bugs go, they breed, and breed, and breed. Scientists estimate that one of these bugs has an average of 10,000 offspring in its six week life cycle. When new ones are born, they are capable of breeding in 4-9 minutes, depending on the environment. They can survive anywhere from 140 degrees Fahrenheit to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. They will never be stopped. Wait a second, what’s that black thing on my desk? Oh shit.
Dang Bugs
by Ericho
It’s been years since I moved into my apartment with my roommate. For the longest time, we haven’t had any problems with bugs or pests or anything, but recently that changed. I’ve been noticing for the past couple of months that little annoying bugs have been appearing everywhere in our apartment. I try my best to kill them, but there are always more. On the plus side, my reflexes have gotten better. I keep thinking that there must be something old and smelly that’s attracting them.The food? I try to keep the dishes clean every single day by washing them religiously. They still appear in the apartment over and over. I don’t know why it’s suddenly like this. I haven’t been leaving food out any more than I used to in the months before they keep coming. There must be some secret nesting area where these beings procreate and spread their filth. They’re not all the same species. Some are much larger than the others. I’m no bug expert so I can’t even tell if they’re cockroaches or not.
I just wish I was strong enough to lift up everything in this apartment and search for this secret nest. It’s not like I’m going to hire some movers to take care of it and besides, it’s probably in crevices so deep I would never reach. I guess all I can do is simply kill them over and over as it’s better than simply doing nothing. You might be wondering what my roommate thinks of this predicament. The thing is, I don’t even know what he thinks.
He hasn’t moved in ages.
The Brood
by HopelessNightOwl
I have learned a lot of interesting things while volunteering for the historical society of my county. Right now I am in the society’s museum, looking at the only known photograph of an unknown insect; the photo itself is a black-and-white still of a lost preserved specimen, and remains the only graphic evidence of the local legend. Though the resolution is poor, the specimen looks quite formidable for its size: a mothlike insect sporting long mandibles and antennae, somewhat resembling a dobsonfly.
Apparently, there were swarms of these things in scattered areas throughout our county for several weeks during the summer of 1828. They were mainly active at night, and several sources mention that their red eyes could be seen faintly glowing in the dark. It is unclear exactly what their diet was like, but they were said to have decimated crops and killed several pets and livestock. One source claims they consumed blood from humans, but this has not been corroborated. We do know that they had stingers. A few children and elderly folks died from their stings, which the few physicians who lived in the region at the time were almost completely unable to treat. Except for a couple of primary documents that mention a similar swarm event occurring in 1628 in the same area, this is the only known appearance of these insects.
Recently, an entomologist has been working with the historical society to explore the story further. With only the photograph and some period documents, he does not have many leads, but he has come up with a theory based on the two references to a similar occurrence in 1628. Some insects lie dormant in the ground or in wood for years at a time, emerging after several years to mate, reproduce, and die, whereupon their offspring burrow back into the earth to repeat the cycle. A well-known example is the magicicada, which emerges and swarms at 13- and 17-year intervals in many regions throughout the Midwest. The entomologist believes the strange insects from 1828 were on a 200-year brood cycle, something he had previously thought impossible.
I pray he is wrong.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed these stories please head on over to my website at www.scarystorytime.com and make a comment. If you would like to listen to the podcast commercial free on Patreon and get other fun goodies, check out it out www.spookyboo.club.
That’s all for tonight. I’ll see you in your nightmares.
