TRIGGER WARNING: This story depicts, and has conversations surrounding, sexual abuse and rape. In the longest episode to date, Hunter and Isaiah cover one of their favorite stories on the channel ever Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://zocdoc.com/creepcast to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of 'The Spire in the Woods'?
Welcome back to Creepcast! Today! God, dude, I feel like we're martyrs right now. Today, we're doing something that hasn't been done in years. Years! This is not grace. This is beautiful sight. And let me tell you, dear, beautiful, beautiful viewer, you're probably watching something that's going to get deleted very soon. So buckle in.
And before we go into all the introductions to this wonderful story, I just want to say thank you so much for the support on the merch drop so far. We do have new merch right now. Creepcast.store. Or .shop, I don't know, whichever one it is. Put it up on the screen. There it is. What is it? .store? I think it's .store. Creepcast.store. Check it out. We got a bunch of new stuff there.
If you want to support the channel or if you want to get some new kicks, feel free to check it out there. And also, please check us out on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Check us out on Spotify there. Give us a nice rating. It really does help us out. Now, without further ado, today we are reading... The Spire in the Woods.
Now, Isaiah, can you give us a nice backstory as to why no one's touched this story?
Yeah, so The Spire in the Woods, also known as The Bells, is a story that was written by Tony Lundy around 2013, 2014, I believe. And everyone really liked this story. I don't think I ever read it, but I remember people talking this thing up as being like one of the greats.
As a matter of fact, it got so much traction that the story got optioned for a film, I believe, that Steven Spielberg was set to produce.
Steven fucking Spielberg is producing it.
Yeah. It was going to be a huge deal. But when the story got optioned, because of that, the story became the copyright of the studio. So anyone who... had ever covered this story got nuked into orbit. Like all the creepypasta readings of it got taken down. All of the reposting or audio versions of the story got taken down. The story itself got removed from r slash no sleep and creepypasta.com.
r slash nosleep, also the physical copy that was on Amazon has been removed, and the only listing that I see of the Amazon book is on eBay for $250 fucking dollars. If you have a physical copy of this, you're sitting on gold, my friends, okay?
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Chapter 2: What happened to the story that made it hard to find?
I would have killed them too. Every man listening to this just became so insecure.
He burst into the room, pitchfork held aloft, and ran them through. Over and over, he plunged the fork into their tangled bodies before finally leaving them pinned, one on top of the other, to the bed beneath them. Looking at the bloody mess he'd made, Abel found his rage had not diminished. This seemed curious to Abel, but it dawned on him why when he spied a picture of his family on the mantle.
His children didn't look anything like him, nor like their mother. They were all exceptionally tall, with full heads of somewhat greasy black hair.
Abel waited, standing in the puddle of blood that had only moments ago been coursing through
Standing in the puddle of blood only moments ago that had been coursing through Mrs. Blood and her lover and stewed in his ever deepening anger. He was a cuckold. He had no heir. He had no heir. He'd been raising another man's children. A man who had been bedding Abel's wife. For years, Abel waited and stewed for several hours until his four children arrived home from school.
They say his sons and eldest daughter put up a noble fight. They were children fighting a grown man whose muscles had been hardened by a lifetime of farm labor. Only Abel's youngest daughter, barely five years old, made it out of the house alive. She sprinted as fast as her little legs could carry her in a desperate attempt to reach her neighbors.
But even with her head start, her little legs were no match for her father's powerful strides. Just as she scrambled up over the stone wall separating their farm from the Hollis's, April picked up one of the stones, smashed it down on her head. These days, if you go there, on the road that borders the cemetery, you'll see this curve full of skid marks.
People say that they are caused by cars swerving to avoid an oddly dressed little girl who runs out into the street each night. Oh, that's cool. I got, I got to say this, like this being your setup for like your haunted town is so cool. Well, yeah. The blood cemetery. That's awesome.
Yeah. I just, I love the, uh, the amount of like almost folk legends, how, how thorough the folk legends are immediately in this like small, cold Northeastern town. Really fun. Like almost like sleepy hollow vibes of like, you know, the, the, the ghost of a little girl who got murdered by her cuckold dad. And that's why there's skid marks here because she always runs across the road right here.
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Chapter 3: What are the rumors surrounding Robert Kennan?
Did he pull her into his car to once more profess his love for her and, unable to handle another rejection, take his own life before her eyes? Or, God forbid, try to take Alina with him? Alina's friends and co-workers shouted her name. When she didn't respond, they fanned out to look for her. It was the manager, Mrs. Jaffrey, who found her.
Completely overwhelmed by Rob's suicide, Alina had retreated into one of the walk-in freezers. She was bawling her eyes out as Mrs. Jaffrey threw her coat over Alina's shoulders and led her to the manager's office. Oh, it's not your fault, the older woman whispered into Alina's ear, but it didn't do any good. No one else was unaccounted for, and no mystery woman was ever found.
No second bomb ever exploded, and no accomplices ever turned up. I guess we all assumed that those eyewitnesses were mistaken that the smoke and the flames had played a trick on their eyes. We were wrong. I just got to say the way this story gives us information where it's like, well, this is the tragic case that happened here, but Rob had a crush on a girl and then it like reads about the death.
And it's like, we assumed that they were mistaken. They were, we were wrong. Like those little end of paragraph, like, oh, what's this? What's this? It's such a fun, because every detail we're getting is interesting. And then at the end of that information, it gives us like a little clue to new information. It's just a very fun way to like give out a story like this. I like it.
Yeah, the story is setting itself up really well. Fletch wasn't in school for the rest of that week, and I didn't see him around the neighborhood either. I hate to admit it, but it was sort of a relief. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. What do you really say to someone whose friend has just killed himself?
In the weeks that followed, a new form of gossip slowly crept into the hallways of the school. Special counseling held in the cafeteria every morning before homeroom was supposed to be a safe space where anyone could share their feelings without fear of judgment and be secure in the knowledge that it would go no further. So naturally, it was all anyone wanted to talk about.
There's a strong backlash against the kids that the other students didn't feel deserved to be there. People who presented themselves as having been very close with Rob, but who in truth rarely spoke with him. Several of my close friends had been at Omitted that night.
They had watched Rob burn, seen him die, and although they were deeply affected, they weren't even entirely comfortable being there amongst his handful of close friends and, of course, Alina. I felt terrible for Alina Amenev. Sitting there in the cafeteria, surrounded by Rob's grieving friends, listening to everyone tiptoe around blaming her.
They never came out and said it, but they talk about how girls wouldn't give him the time of day. How someone had recently ripped out his heart. Jesus. That's pretty rough. That's brutal, man. It's a weird place to be because it's like if someone dies, you know, the dead have settled their debts. You don't want to talk bad about them. Right. And you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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Chapter 4: How does the story reflect on teenage relationships?
When the laborer entered the room, which was little more than a giant gearbox, the clockmaker stared at him, but did not move. The laborer leaned back out of the room and called to his lover. He's in here! He hasn't done anything stupid, has he? No, he's fine. The clockmaker was not fine. The laborer approached the clockmaker as cautiously as a man approaches an unfamiliar dog.
It's your fault, you know. The clockmaker, his watery eyes unblinking, only responded by staring as the younger man approached him.
Fine lady like that. Fancy. You can't keep her in a cage, especially around here in this dreadful place, and expect she won't get bored.
It was at that exact moment that the laborer stepped across the path of the automaton's tracks and the clockmaker yanked out the pin holding the spring coiled. The post, unburdened of a man-sized figure brimming with heavy metal gears, raced along the track and collided with the soft flesh of the laborer's leg. The crack of the bone splintering was even louder than the man's screams.
The clockmaker's wife called out at the sound of her lover's cries.
I'm cutting! I'm cutting!
The clockmaker picked up a large wrench and moved beside the door. As his wife rushed in, her eyes searching for her lover, the clockmaker crept up behind her and brought the wrench down on her skull. She awoke hours later with shooting pains running through her legs. She tried to look down, but her head was agony to move.
The clockworker stood over her, his mallet hammering the metal support rods into her thighs. Her lover was already mounted to the post, ready to fill in for the automaton and dance when the hour struck. Just as with the Rathaus Glockenspiel in Munich, the clockmaker's creation was hailed as a great artistic achievement.
Crowds gathered on the formerly quiet street to watch the myriad Union and Rebel automatons zip along their tracks, round and round in an endless race. It was weeks before anyone noticed something wrong with two of the automatons. Their lacquered veneer bulged in weird places and looked slick as if it were wet.
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Chapter 5: What role does mental health play in this narrative?
The details about his wife, uh, cheating on him and the ghost story and all that stuff may not be, or the dead bodies hooked up to the mechanism may not be. I, considering this is a horror story, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that they are real or something similar happened. Um, But it seems that him being a clockmaker that built a clock is definitely real. Okay. I think at least.
We're in thick here, but also there's still... It's taking its time. It's building itself out to be, I don't know, something I think we're getting ready to get into. Because usually when we read a lot of creepypastas too, this is the big difference, is that usually there's like a little hook or a little something that kind of gets you going.
Not to say that the ghost story angle hasn't been there yet, but I do think that like... in other stories we've read where it be left, right game, Baraska, usually they do something to kind of show their hand to kind of entice you to be like, Oh, this is, you know, you know, we're elite. We're leading somewhere here, right? This, this story is like really building itself into that folk.
Like the, the, the folk tale angle is really building itself up to where I think we're going to fucking hit the gas very soon is what, is what I would assume.
Yeah. I think you're right. I'm, I'm fully bought in right now. Hmm. Alright, so with that, we are now into part three. Part three. Rob had reached the first island. He had been searching fruitlessly for nearly 40 minutes when he heard them. The bells. Being so much closer now, they were even clearer. He fell to his knees, letting their sensation, their warmth, wash over him.
For a moment, he knew bliss. The bells rolled back like the ocean at low tide. Rob found himself shivering on the ground. He could hear nothing but frogs and crickets. He rose on unsteady legs, sure of only one thing. In an hour, he'd be there. He'd be standing before the spire. He'd hear the bells, feel them up close. He ran to the shore and dove into the waters.
Something else I want to mention is we get hints because our author has established that he's writing all of this in the future. Like early on when he was like, if we were doing this nowadays, it'd be easy because of the internet. But in 1999, I didn't have that. And there was that brief mention right before part two ended.
Where he said, if it was anything like my first time, then Rob probably felt the euphoria of it. So that means eventually our author finds the bells and hears them. So that's a thing to note. Yes. Rob emerged from the reservoir onto the rocky bank of the second and far larger island. He stumbled barefoot through the woods, increasingly aware of how dark it was beneath the trees.
As the bell siren's call faded in his mind, he began to doubt himself. The island was nearly two miles long and half a mile across. He could search it all night and never find a damn thing. The bells chimed once more. He turned to face them. There it was. In the center of a grove of dead trees, the spire jutted out of the ground like a pike set to receive a charge.
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Chapter 6: What is the connection between the clockmaker's tale and the present?
Yeah, I agree. I hope the story ends and it's like me and Carrie are married. Now we have like three children. Yeah. God, of course you would say that. What do you mean, of course I would say that? It's just funny.
You're like, I hope they get married at the end. They're obviously not going to get fucking married at the end.
With that attitude, sure. Of course you would say that. Like, of course I'm the guy who wants a happy ending with two characters he likes. Yeah, what a jerk move of me to pull. Yeah. What a horrible idea. I wanted to leap into the backseat to lurch away from Carrie and retreat into the furthest recess of Ecto-1.
I wanted to throw open my door, sprint to the nearest house, and demand that its occupants permit to shower. Oh my gosh!
Oh my god! Bro...
It's not that I couldn't literally cannot be that bad.
He is over exaggerating. Yeah. Yes. But I couldn't do that as it's fun.
It's fun. But I couldn't do that now. Now my brain's going the opposite way. Like I made the jokes about her being six foot goth and all that stuff. Now in my head, she's like the, she's like comedically beautiful. Like she's like typical like goth girl. And he's like, and she's like trying to kiss his neck. And he's like, I've got to share.
I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here. You gotta let me leave. She's like, no one's keeping here. You gotta let me leave, girl. Come on.
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Chapter 7: How does the protagonist's journey unfold in the story?
We only found one more reference to Adolf Reifler, an obituary published by the Boston Globe in 1941. I wish I could remember the date. It mentioned that he was wanted for questioning in regards to a disappearance, but that was all. Riefler had died in Munich. The cause of death was omitted, but at 84, it was probably just old age.
Riefler must have fled the country sometime in the mid-30s, at a time when the Germany he returned to must have been very different from the Germany he had originally left. I don't know why, but somehow knowing these historical details made the story of the widower's clock so much more plausible.
It was no longer a story of a man with an unfaithful wife, the characters defined by nothing more than their relationship to one another. It started to become the story of two people. Amy Lowell Putnam, restless and starved for marital attention, shackled to an old man incapable of giving her what she needed, and proud Adolf Reifler.
obsessed with proving himself after his failure designing the clock for customs house tower too busy and too old to see that his young wife was up to since her mom had the car that day when we got hungry carrie and i had to choose between waiting for my mom to pick us up or hoofing it down to the hometown omitted house of pizza to grab a bite despite the cold we opted for the latter
Settling into a booth, a hot slice in front of both of us, thanks between Carrie and me felt right again for the first time since our trip to Greenfield. We quickly fell into discussing the plans for our trip.
We should head out early. The first time Ron heard the bells, it was just after sundown.
Yeah, but the later it is, the less likely we are to bump into some park ranger. You think there are gates or fences? The roads in and out might be gated, but fences? Nah, the Quabbin's too big.
Just as the words left my mouth, Fletch plopped down right next to me, his friend Murph lingering behind him. Hey, I didn't see you guys come in. How long you been here? I didn't know what I felt exactly. Embarrassment? Shame? But even though... This guy's a jerk, dude. Well, I thought he was going to be pissed.
Well, I thought he was going to not like Fletch now because he's like, you talk shit on my girl.
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Chapter 8: What are the themes of guilt and responsibility in the story?
It's called passive rewarming, and Carrie clearly needed it. Crawled over the emergency brake into the back seat with the half-naked scary Carrie. She didn't fight me or complain about being warm. But it was difficult to get close to her. Kia wedged herself down on the floor, mostly behind the passenger seat, a space I would have never imagined could accommodate me, let alone both of us.
You got a blanket back here or anything? I said, looking around in the mess of clutter that Carrie sat on top of. No, but hang on. Fletch wrestled himself out of his jacket while he drove. It occurred to me that I could use the uninflated raft as a blanket, but when I looked for my duffel bag, I realized I must have dropped it somewhere between the reservoir and the car.
Fletch threw his jacket back to me. It'd have to do. I stripped down to my underwear. Scary Carry was completely unresponsive. I did my best to move her into a position where I could lay next to her, draped Fletch's jacket over my shoulders and mine over our legs before spreading myself across her corpulent belly. That's a crazy word.
I'd like to say I spent the next hour concerned only for the well-being of my friend, but that's not true. A million thoughts ran through my head. Yes, I did think about Carrie. I thought she already looked dead and hoped that at least some of her pale complexion was just the moonlight. I noticed how slow her breathing was. I could barely feel her cold gut moving at all.
But I also thought about Rob and the rumor I repeated when I was in the sixth grade. The one about how he'd been found naked in the woods with a mentally handicapped girl. I thought about how everyone said he tricked her into sleeping with him.
And even as my friend lay beneath me for all I knew dying, there was a small part of me that was thankful we were so far away from home and nobody would hear about this. Shortly before 1.30 in the morning, we pulled up in front of the emergency room at Cooley-Dixon Hospital. Fletch got out of the car and ran for help.
Carrie was unconscious when a pair of nurses or orderlies or whatever they were pulled her out of the car and put her on a stretcher. When they asked me, I couldn't remember the last time I checked to see if she was still breathing. It had been a few minutes, at least. They couldn't find a pulse.
No!
Fletch and I were forced to stay in the waiting room. We couldn't do anything else for her. Carrie was in their hands now. In a way, that was worse. At least for us. When we were in the car, we had a goal. Something to focus on. We had to get Carrie to a hospital.
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