Day 10 - Forget-Me-Not & The Patchwork Man

0:00I'm John Grills from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid podcast network. Everyone wants to know the secret to staying consistent in the gym during winter. Truth is, there is no secret. We just adapt. We try new things and find new ways to do the old things. We take it one step at a time, and we move forwards. We take outdoor workouts indoors, or take our training partners outdoors with us. We find ways to do the things we've always done. Because strength isn't seasonal. It's non-negotiable. Gym Shark. We do gym. I've got big news. I switched to Verizon. And got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shhh! I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shhh! Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up! Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us.

1:02Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required plan and device payment purchase or separate agreements with separate-term service plan for watch or iPad required addition terms apply for all offers. Our unsettling. Together, they begin to form a picture that is truly horrifying. And then there's the Magnus Protocol. The true sequel to the Magnus Archives. It follows two employees of an underfunded government organization that stumble into the legacy of the Magnus Institute. And danger they were never prepared for. The Magnus Protocol is available on the Magnus Archives RSS feed and is currently releasing a second season. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Creepy presents. The 31 days of horror. Day 10. No.

2:09This is Creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Okay, okay everyone. We have time for one more story tonight. Setle down. They're still playing them on the left. Is there a header Thomas still around? You, your Heather? Well, come on up your Heather. Get some love.

3:15Hi, I'm Heather. And my story is called... Forget me, aunt. By the third murder, I was just about over it. At least this one was a woman killing a man, rather than the other way around. No poison for this particular girl boss. Lily Flanoi used a steel violin string to carot her husband. She dragged his body down here and left a bouquet of forget me knots on his chest. The husband's ghost has been seen in these parts, staggering about using both hands to keep his partially severed head on straight. I felt a small and voluntary smile twitch at my lips. Marco, the ghost to her guide, shot me in annoyed glance. He didn't like my attitude. While there was a lot of that going around, I schooled my face to sorrowful reflection.

4:16This just really wasn't my thing. It had been a long, long day at the conference, and the weather was colder than I'd expected. But once Sadie suggested the Halloween ghost tour, there was no way I could take the risk of sitting it out. Sadie slinked her way into the offices of Pickering in Price six months ago, and has made my life a misery ever since. Of course, she targeted other people too, mostly other women. But she definitely had it out for me in particular. Sadie was great at everything about the job, except the actual work we were paid to do. She would often invite co-workers to lunch, loudly proclaiming that she was already done with this or that assignment. Leaving behind a burning garbage pile of error-bridled product that somebody, usually me, would have to skip lunch to try to salvage. A number of my co-workers were decidedly unimpressed.

5:16In our long-running text thread, Kathy and I referred to Sadie as, pick me, and not like the other girls, and the underminer. There was always lots to say about Sadie. As soon as she arrived, she dove into office politics like a Medici Duke. She wrapped her flattery in so many layers it became invisible. She would let managers overhear her, making admiring comments about them to other people. Once a management type wandered into earshot, she would blithely toss out total non-sequitors about how, Jason handled this or that situation brilliantly, didn't I think? Her contributions at meetings seemed to be various versions of, I think Dave made a great point when he said. And of course, the managers lapped it up. I wouldn't say I lost respect for them. I already had so little.

6:19But I did grudgingly admire her for her deft manipulations. And I went from wishing she'd be found out, exposed as being terrible at her job, to wishing that she'd be swiftly promoted elsewhere. As long as she was out of my face. While the managers got all the cooing in praise, I got the undermining. I'd had plenty of people dislike me before, for both good and bad reasons. I was under no illusions that I was particularly charismatic or charming. But Sadie seemed to outright hate me. I suspected that hatred had a lot to do with the part where she was not too good at the actual work. I was demonstrably more capable and productive than she was, something that could and did show up in our quarterly metrics. So Sadie was determined to knock me down a peg. Tonight was a perfect example.

7:21When she suggested the ghost tour, she put a hand on my arm and said, Of course, no pressure to go. You look really tired. Conferences aren't for everyone. And she added, The tour is underground. And I know that can be hard for people who are a little timid. So, of course, I had to agree to go. At a performance review recently, I'd been told that office culture was really important to pickering in price. And that I needed to make more of an effort to participate in team building. And generally, just be a good sport. Something that I'd never heard a whiff of before Sadie's arrival. I couldn't even properly drink beforehand. At a recent happy hour, when I'd ordered a second glass of wine, she'd pantomimed concern. Asked if I was sure I was okay to get home, that she knew I'd been having a tough time with the workload lately.

8:27And she totally understood. And I found out after I left, she leaned into my manager, Jason, and asked what she should do if she thought another employee might have a drinking problem. At the next happy hour, I went for club soda. And I should have predicted it. She loudly asked me why I wasn't drinking. Did I have any happy news to share? She didn't know I even had a boyfriend. I had smiled tightly and said, no, just meeting some friends for an early morning run tomorrow. Which was a lie. I had, in fact, been having a tough time with the workload lately. And lately, I had it made time for early morning runs. Or my friends, for that matter. So tonight, I'd had one glass of bland white wine. Which wasn't nearly enough to take the edge off this tour. Or my feet were getting wet in my flats.

9:29I also didn't think the thin layer would protect them from the rats I could hear scurrying about. And this underground space was actually pretty creepy. The stone walls crawled with moisture and moss. You had to walk a single file and claustrophobic passages between one stop and the next. They had hung up faux gas lamps at intervals along the walls, intervals that were slightly too far apart. The circles of flickering lights didn't quite touch. And it was very, very dark outside of them. Still, I made myself smile at Dave when we came to the next stop. Which was a half-hazard pile of burnt timbers. Yes, I thought to myself, burnt wood. Very scary. And then I smiled for real. Tour guide Marco glared at me again. He seemed offended that I wasn't taking things seriously. He seemed to be addressing me with his next spiel.

10:30He said, This is where it's important to remember that Lily Flanoi was never caught. She disappeared after killing her husband. And then the other bad men in the city started dying. Dying in ways where it was impossible to tell, what exactly had killed them. Burnt up in their houses, or tipped into the river, where fish nibbled them to the bone before the remains were found. But, in the places where those men died, bunches of forget-me-nots were left behind. Okay, this was dumb. Forget-me-nots bloom between April and June. So what was Lily supposed to be? A seasonal serial killer? Dealing death to punish the crimes of toxic men, as long as they happened in the spring? And what did any of that have to do with this particular pile of timbers?

11:31Did one of these wayward gentlemen build their house underground? But everybody else seemed to be going with the flow, so I pressed my mouth into a straight line. After all, I was here to demonstrate that I could be a good sport. I looked around for my co-workers to see if they were noticing my performance. But I didn't see them just then. Our group was one of several on this tour. It looked like I had fallen behind the people from my company. Sadie, of course, had taken the lead right at the start. Whenever we were going somewhere as a group, she had a habit of linking arms with Jason, or one of the other managers, saying, What was I thinking wearing these silly heels? Please help me so I don't fall and make a fool of myself. Tonight, she was wearing hiking boots with treads as thick and sturdy as monster truck tires. But Jason was so well trained at this point that he linked arms with her without questioning it.

12:34I could only imagine how Sadie was working on Jason right now, whispering a sides about Lily Flanoi. Crazy bitches, am I right? Reminds me of a few ladies in our office. As we trucked down another dark passage, heading distinctly downwards, I caught a smell. Gross! What is that? I said aloud. A smell of blood said the man in front of me without turning around. A smell of lots of fresh blood. I've never smelled anything like it, I said. Lucky you, the man replied. At the next stop, the two were gathered us around a hole in the floor. It was an uble yet. Once dropped in, a prisoner wouldn't even be able to turn around. The name comes from a French word that means to forget.

13:35But once a person was thrown into that hole, they weren't coming out. They wouldn't get food, or water, or light. They might, however, get company. The two were guys told us that they didn't bother to clear out the uble yet before they tossed the next victim inside. They didn't even check if the first one was dead. When the Historical Society got a hold of this place and started cleaning it up, they had retrieved three sets of human bones from the hole. Two of them had teeth marks. This time, I did actually shudder. The tour guide glanced my way with satisfaction on his face. Because it was, after all, easy to believe that inconvenient people could be tossed aside and forgotten. So much of the suffering in the world comes from carelessness and indifference. Sadie would probably have loved to stuff me into an uble,

14:37forgotten in a forgotten hole. And who, after all, would come look for me? My parents, who I'd cut off a few years ago? My friends, who had seen less and less, as I slogged through overwork days and collapsed in exhaustion at night? Kathy would kick up a fuss for sure. She was a real friend, not just a work friend. She would demand that the authorities search for me. But she'd be no match for Sadie, who had been right here by my side, after all. She'd say I had been acting erratic lately, and how did people notice I was drinking too much? I shook my head, deciding to yank the leash on my morbid imagination. Thankfully, we left the chamber with the uble, I had just had to get through the rest of this tour, and then I could spend Halloween the way God intended, in my hotel room with the horror movie and a drink from the hotel mini-bar.

15:38We were definitely going downhill again, and the smell of blood was replaced by something a lot worse, something that provoked murmurs of disgust from the crowd. The people behind me were talking about it in low voices. It's not just rotten meat, one man said. It's different when the skin and hide are rotting along with the flesh underneath. Okay, so it's dead rats, I thought. And it's not an animal, another voice said. Riding hair doesn't smell like rotting fur. Okay, it's a dead labradorodle. This tour sucked, it seemed like we'd be walking a long way between stops. I was bone-tired. Sadie did have a point earlier. Conferences really weren't for everyone, especially someone as introverted as me. So why was I spending my limited social battery on these people?

16:42My friend Jill had invited me to go trick-or-treating with her and her kids, and we were dressing up as pebbles and bam-bam from the Flintstones. I urgently wished I was there, holding hands with six-year-old Cleo, who would have shared her candy with me afterwards. Cleo loved chocolate with a feverish intensity, sharing a piece of candy was for her, an act of the most ardent devotion. Down we went into the darkness and the close-stone walls, the cold and the shuffling shadows of strangers before and behind me. I was one of the last people to step into the next open space, so at first I just saw the backs of taller people ahead of me, then the crowd parted, and they turned, and they were all looking directly at me. Somehow we were back in the chamber of the obelette. The tour guide was standing near the edge of the hole. He extended an arm in my direction.

17:45Come along, he said. You know this is where you've been headed, all along. The crowd behind me started to shuffle forward, pushing me closer. I looked around for the people I knew, even once from earlier in the tour, but none of these faces looked even vaguely familiar. The floor in this room slipped slightly downward, towards the hole at its center. I tried to stop in my tracks, but my flats couldn't get any traction on the slippery floor. A well-adjusted person would probably have felt only straightforward dread and fear, and I did at first, but almost immediately those feelings were smothered by a swell of pure rage, not even so much at these people, if they were people, but at myself. What the hell was I even doing here in the first place? I had allowed my life to be whittled down to the job, and only the job like a pencil being sharpened,

18:50until now when I found myself spending my time doing things I didn't want to do, in a city I hated, with people I couldn't stand. Until I found myself here, so forgotten even to myself that I was a perfect disposable sacrifice. Such a stupidly simple lesson, but apparently I had to be brought to the edge of hell to learn it. I had been fighting a losing battle, building broken seashell ramparts around my sand castle while the tide was coming in. It hadn't occurred to me to leave the beach behind. I was jostled and pushed another few feet, closer to the ubalet, helpless to resist. I couldn't think of a way out, so I decided to stop thinking. I ran straight toward the hole in the floor, then I leaped over it. It was a very narrow opening after all.

19:52I crashed into Marco and knocked him down. I had the satisfaction of seeing the expression of pure shock on his face, and then of his head smacking down into the stone floor. When you're hopelessly outnumbered, chaos is your only shot. Other arms were reaching down to try to grab me. I used them to pull myself up, kicking Marco in the head on my way up. The leaflanoi would have been proud of me. I grabbed one woman by the hair and slammed her head into a man's nose. I kicked and clawed and scratched my way through the last few people and took off running into the dark. It didn't take me long to find my way out after that. Once I broke free, there was actually nothing holding me back. I knew I had to do a lot of thinking about my life and my career and my future, and I probably needed to spend some serious time in therapy. But one thing I knew for sure was I was getting out of pickering and price toot sweet.

20:55Under the circumstances, I figured I would forego giving my two weeks notice. Everyone wants to know the secret to staying consistent in the gym during winter. Truth is, there is no secret. We just adapt. We try new things and find new ways to do the old things. We take it one step at a time and we move forwards. We take outdoor workouts indoors or take our training partners outdoors with us. We find ways to do the things we've always done. Because strength isn't seasonal. It's non-negotiable. Gym Shark. We do gym. I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shhh, anything else. Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up! Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade and needed.

21:56And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and Device Payment purchased are separate agreements with separate-term service plan for watch or iPad required addition in terms of apply for all offers. Okay, that's it everyone. Like the man said. Yeah, ain't got to go home, but you gotta get out of here. John, what are you doing standing out here? What? Oh, um, nothing. I-I just, um, the way the night looks reminds me of...

22:58Would you mind walking back to the hotel with me? Of course. Is there something wrong? You ever get that feeling like you've done something before? Sure. Hasn't everyone? I don't know, I guess. Just at the worst case of it. Back when I was a kid, there was... Oh, God. You ever have that thing where you stop and wonder if your memory is even real? Like, something couldn't have been as bad as you remember it? Or like, you can't trust your own memories? You tell a story too many times and it stops being a story? John, what are you talking about? I'm talking about the patchwork, man. It's only all this time later that I look back and wonder how it ever occurred to me to think that it was just a man in the scarecrow costume.

24:01I mean, it had to be, right? If you saw something standing in the field at night dressed in rotting clothing and straw, your mind would reach for something rational. Some idiot on stilts or something. Somebody trying to scare people. Some dude in a mask trying to get his scary clown-style kicks. Not me. Not me. The moment I saw it, some deeper part of me understood immediately that it wasn't right. There wasn't even a process to it. No careful realization or growing panic. Like, the first time I felt uncomfortable watching one of those stop-motion movies, and eventually realized it was the uncanny valley of it all. I just immediately knew without having the words. It stood in the cornfield behind Michael's property during the last week of October, maybe 70 yards from the road. I say, Uncle, but it wasn't really my uncle, just a family friend that had grown up calling Uncle.

25:06I stayed with him a while when I was younger for reasons that you don't need to know. The truck headlights swept across rows of dead stocks before catching it for a split second. At first glance, it looked gigantic, but even now I can't confidently describe the shape of it. The height kept changing in ways that made no sense. Sometimes it looked seven feet tall in a way my mind could almost accept. Other times the legs seemed impossibly long, stretching upward like still to the tiny body hanging above them. Occasionally it appeared short, no larger than a child. Except the point it had extended upward into darkness far beyond anything that would make sense. Every time I tried focusing on the proportions they changed again. It felt less like looking at a living thing and more like trying to remember a dream while still trapped inside it. My uncle never noticed it. He kept talking while driving, rambling about weather damage and fencing costs while I stared through the truck window on silence.

26:12The headlights passed over the thing for maybe half a second before darkness swallowed it again. That was enough. Long enough for me to see the skin. Square patches of what I came to know were human skin had been sewn into the clothes with thick black thread. The pieces varied in tone and texture. Some looked old and pale while others were dark and fresh, the edges that still glistened wetly. One carried part of a tattoo. Another still had blonde hairs growing from it. The seams surrounding each patch were dark red with dried blood. The worst part was how naturally they moved. When the scarecrow shifted slightly toward the truck, the skin flexed and wrinkled. That night it stayed awake staring out the farmhouse window toward the fields. We're on three in the morning and notice something standing beside the silo. At first I mistook it for equipment but then I realized the shape extended impossibly high into the darkness.

27:17The body remained visible enough for me to make out the hanging sleeves and straw covered limbs. But the pointed hat stretched upward so far that looking at it created a strange sense of vertigo, like standing too close to the edge of a building. Then I realized it was facing directly at my window. So much for sleep. The next day my uncle found three cows dead near the property line. Huge sections of the hides had been removed from their bodies, exposing dark muscle beneath the frost. The flaps of skin lay not far away from the bodies with a few strands of thread in them. Like whatever happened had been interrupted. Or maybe what was taken wasn't up to standard. My uncle blamed coyotes regardless if I would dumb that sounded. He didn't comment on the thread. I saw the scare coat again the following night standing beside the fence behind the house. The proportions looked almost normal for a few seconds.

28:18Then it moved. Its legs bent backwards beneath the denim, with a slow, deliberate motion that my eyes struggled to process correctly. Not in a dramatic way. Just enough that my brain refused to hold onto the image like waiting into the uncanny valley. The thing swayed as it walked. Not with the balance of anything living. We're like a marionette without strings. And I can't be sure. But I think there was more skin sewn to it, including what looked like an ear. My uncle disappeared two nights later. There was no sign of struggle. No blood, no broken windows. Just the back door hanging open slightly. Search parties found a piece of skin stuck on some barbed wire a few properties away. Everyone who saw it immediately knows from my uncle. Because it had the faded blue horseshoe tattoo from his shoulder.

29:19I went back home to mom and dad after that. The next time I saw it, it stood at the edge of the parking lots we stayed away from my uncle's farm. Nobody around me reacted to it. People walked within feet of the thin carrying bags and pushing carts while it remained motionless beneath the street light. The scared curl looked taller now. They had stretched upward into the darkness at impossible angles. And most of the clothing had disappeared beneath layers of stitched skin to the point that I didn't immediately understand what I was looking at. Time heals all wounds. And it felt like I was a part of something I wanted to remember in the first place. It was the horrible memory of the shifting perspective that made a click. And for one horrible second, the proportion stopped shifting. For the first time I saw what existed beneath the scarecrow appearance. Something towering and horribly thin wrapped in stolen skin because a human mind couldn't tolerate seeing the real shape underneath it.

30:26I know I couldn't. Its face was smooth beneath the shadow of the hat. Featureless except for folds that moved like breathing flesh. Then the distortion returned. The scarecrow with a patchwork skin stood there again, smiling without a mouth. And it's when I understood that the skin it kept soing to itself wasn't decoration. It was camouflage. That the thing wore people because human beings were never meant to look directly at whatever existed underneath. It wasn't stealing people's skin out of hatred or joy. But out of its own warped sense of consideration for the minds of the people that walked among. What's a little skin surrendered when it comes to saving our minds from the reality of the horror it hides beneath it. For more information on this podcast including how to submit your own story for consideration please visit Creepypod.com.

31:35You can also follow us at Creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative commons, share a light licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the Creepypodcast production team and the stories author. This is the first time I've ever seen a Creepypod in my life. I've never seen a Creepypod in my life. I've got big news. I switched to Verizon. I got the new iPhone 18 Pro. I can keep my old phone. Can I also get the latest iPhone every year? Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now, no trade and needed. The latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan plus choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us.

32:37Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms service plan for watch or iPad required addition terms apply for all offers. Everyone wants to know the secret to staying consistent in the gym during winter. Truth is there is no secret. We just adapt. We try new things and find new ways to do the old things. We take it one step at a time and we move forwards. We take outdoor workouts indoors or take our training partners outdoors with us. We find ways to do the things we've always done because strength isn't seasonal. It's non-negotiable. Jim Shark, we do Jim. Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 cheap cherry? A carnival cruise vacation? Gift cards from DoorDash and Best Buy. Peel and play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag. No purchase necessary 50US and DCH 18 plus. Cplay at McD.com for rules and plant McD.com slash AMOE for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd.

33:38Chantscar Game Man's November 8th. Game Man's November 22nd, 2026. C-Rules Surprise details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.