Speaker 1: I keep going back and forth on whether to post this.
Part of me thinks writing it out will help me
process it, and part of me thinks I sound like
a lunatic. But whatever, here it goes. I do cleanouts
for a living, foreclosures, mostly, some abandoned rentals, a couple
of horder situations a year. Basically, once a bank or
a landlord takes a property back and they call guys
like me to go in and we just get everything
out so they could sell it or they could rent
it again. It's not glamorous work. Most days. It's just
garbage bags and trying not to gag. See a lot
of sad stuff, you know, family photos, people left behind,
kid toys. One time a dog crate with a door
still zip shut. I want to talk about that. One
point is I've been in a lot of empty houses now.
I've never had anything happen that I couldn't explain. That is,
until three weeks ago, this place was a foreclosure. It's
been empty at least a year, probably more. Had that
wet wood smell that houses get when nobody runs the
heat for a while there's no power. Windows were grimy,
barely see through them. The standard stuff. Honestly, I've seen
way worse. It was working the upstairs bedrooms. Tiny closet
in the back bedroom, bearly big enough for a rod
and some hangers. There are a few coats still hanging,
and behind them on the floor there was this metal
lock box they've kind of keep documents in, you know,
the fireproof ones, the ones from Walmart whatever. There's a
part where I have to be honest about something because
people keep asking me, well, why didn't you just leave?
Answer is because at this point, nothing weird happened yet
it was just it was a box in a closet.
I open boxes containers in these houses literally every day,
because sometimes there's stuff worth salvaging, and sometimes there's stuff
what the bank needs to know about the box. The
box wasn't locked. It wasn't even latched all the way
inside one of those old clunky Polaroid cameras. Pack of film,
stack of photos, face down. They look blank on the back,
you're just white. Picked them up, flipped through them. One
slid off the stack and landed on my forearm and
my sleeve was pushed up past my glove. Except it
didn't land it it stuck, you know, flat against my
skin stuck like a sticker or like wet paper, except
it wasn't wet and immediately cold, not cool, cold like
I pressed an ice cube onto my arm. I pulled
it off quick. It made that sound you know when
you when you peel tape off skin, that ripping TACKI sound,
and it took a second to come free. It was
this white rectangle on my arm where it had been.
I don't mean it was pale. I mean it was
like it was white, like the color had been sucked
out of my skin if you took a photo and
erased one square of it down to nothing. I was
still looking at that, trying to figure out what the
hell when I noticed the photo in my other hand.
It was changing, It was developing whatever the word is,
you know when a polaroid goes from blank to showing
an image. Except what it was showing was skin. It
was showing my skin. I could see the freckle that
I have near my elbow. It was my arm, and
right in the middle of the image was this dark
square shape. I looked at my arm, I looked at
the photos same spot that my arm started hurting, you know,
not like a cut or sting. More like, okay, you know,
when you press your thumb really hard into a muscle
and you hold it, that that ache, but in a
spot where there was no reason for it to hurt.
The white rectangle on my skin started going purple while
I watched, not spreading out like a like a bruise
normally does. It's like filling in, you know. The color
was filling in from the edges towards the center, staying
perfectly inside the rectangle shape, like something was coloring it
in from underneath. Put the photo down on the floor
and pain didn't stop. The photo finished developing, and it
showed my arm with the bruise, the same shape, same size,
same location, like it would it had taken a picture
of something that hadn't happened yet, and then then it
it made it happen. I left, Okay. I want to
say that I was calm about it, but honestly, I
just kind of I walked out fast, didn't run, but
I definitely wasn't casual about it. So the next morning,
the bruise looks like it's been there for days, right,
dark in the middle, tender when I pressed on it,
perfectly rectangular, which I shouldn't have to tell you is
not how bruises work. In the center of it, still
lighter than the rest, almost pale. Also, and this is
gonna sound weird, but I swear my hair stopped growing
inside that rectangle, like that patch of skin, like it
wasn't mine anymore, that could been replaced with something that
looked like skin but wasn't exactly. I should have left
it alone. I know that. You know that, everyone reading
this knows that. But I went back to the house
told myself I needed to finish the job, because I do.
They don't pay me if I don't finish, and I'm
not about to lose a contract because I got freaked
out by a piece of film. The box is still there.
Everything was where I left it, except the top photo
on the stack wasn't blanket anymore, developed on its own overnight,
sitting in a dark closet and an empty house with
nobody there. The image was the closet floor, the box,
and a hand reaching for it, my hand from earlier,
but the angle was wrong. Was taken from inside the closet,
from up high, like from the shelf above the rod
looking down at me opening the box. Nothing was on
that shelf I checked when I first found the box,
there was nothing up there. I picked the photo up.
I had my work gloves on this time, because I'm
I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb. I mean twitched.
Did you do to understand what I mean? I don't
mean that it moved because my hand was shaking. I
mean the photo itself spasmm like a like a muscle,
like something alive. One quick twitch and then still again.
The image started getting darker while I held it. The
shadows in the closet and the picture were getting deeper,
the inside of the box going black, way blacker than
it should have been. And then something leaned forward out
of that darkness in the photo. Was not a face,
so everyone asks me, was it a face? No, it was.
It was more like a a face shaped dark spot,
like if if darkness had layers, and something pushed through
from behind. My bruise lit up, felt like someone put
a cigarette out of my arm. I dropped the photo.
I yanked my glove off because my palm was burning
now too, red rectangle in the center of my palm,
same size as the photo edge, right where my fingers
gripped it through the gloves. So obviously I took the
whole box home. Yeah, I know, I know. I don't
have a good explanation for why I did that, except
that I think I was already past the point of
making smart decisions. I think when something impossible happens to you,
your brain just kind of it stops running the is
this a good idea? Program starts running the I need
to understand this program, and you do stupid things. Kitchen table.
I dump everything out, camera, film, stack of photos. I'm
just sitting there staring at it like it's going to
explain itself. The camera clicks, My hands were on my lap.
I wasn't touching it. It clicked by itself. The mechanical
sound of a polaroid taking a picture, and then the
motor noise. Then a photo slid out of the front,
slid across the table, stopped right in front of me.
I don't mean it traveled because the table is tilted
to My table isn't tilted. It slid across the flat
surface and it stopped in front of me like someone
pushed it. I didn't pick it up. I just sat
there and I watched it develop. It was me sitting
at my kitchen table. From across the room, like from
the doorway to the living room. In the picture, my
left hand was up. There was a black square in
my palm about the red mark that was actually there.
It was black like a hole. My real hand started
burning deep, not surface level, like the pain was coming
from inside my hand, from the bones or the tendons
or whatever is in there. I ran to the sink.
I held it under the cold water. It didn't help
at all. I watched the skin of my palm go white,
then red, and then this dark, angry color, perfect square
edges like it was printed on me. The camera was
pointed at me from the table. The lens was facing me.
I had dumped it out randomly, and somehow it landed
pointed right at my chair, or it moved, I don't know.
I grabbed of admits, shoved the camera in a metal
trash can and dumped all the film and photos in
after it, and I put the lid on top, and
I wrapped the whole thing in packing tape, took it
to the garage. Felt like I was disposing of a
body or something, but to urgent care for my hand.
The nurses wrapped it up, asked what I touched, I said,
I touched an old camera. She gave me this look
like she wanted to ask for more, but didn't. They
gave me burn cream and they sent me home. And
that night I woke up because I heard it that sound,
the polaroid mikes, the click, and then the whirring, right
next to my head. Camera was on my nightstand, the
fresh photo sitting right next to it. I left it
in the garage. I taped the lid. I know I did.
The next photo showed my hand bandaged up, except in
the photo the bandages were soaked through. They were dark saturated.
My actual hands started itching under the bandage, then stinging,
then this pulling feeling like something under my skin was
being plugged sideways. I ripped the bandage off and the
burn had changed. The skin inside the rectangle was smooth,
not scarred, smooth, but like like new shiny, like a
different type of skin had been installed there. And in
the dead center was a gray mark. It looked like
a like a doorway, tiny rectangular doorway shape in the
middle of my palm. Camera clicked again. Another photo came out,
then another one, then another one. I didn't think. I
grabbed it with the kitchen tongs, ran to the bathroom,
threw it in the tub, dumped bleach, tile cleaner, drain
opener and everything under the sink on top of it.
Didn't even think about the fumes. I probably should have.
The camera sank to the bottom of the tub. It
sank wrong. It say, too fast, way too heavy for
what it was. Then it started whirring loud, not the
normal sound it makes, angry or faster, like it was
trying to take photos rapid fire from underwater. My palm
felt like something was pushing out from inside, pushing against
my skin from underneath, trying to get through. I yelled,
I'll admit that I'm not. I'm not gonna pretend I
was tough about it, I yelled. I almost passed out.
I had to sit down on the bathroom floor. The
skin inside the square and my palm cracked along the edges,
clean straight cracks, and underneath the cracked skin was raw, pink,
new skin, like something had been pressing into it from
the inside, molding it. Then the camera stopped everything. Everything stopped,
the worrying, the pressure in my hand, all of it.
It just done. I left everything in the tub for
three days. I didn't go near the bathroom. He used
the kitchen sink to brush my teeth. I don't care
if that's gross. And when I finally went in there
and fish stuff out, the photos were ruined. They warped, swollen,
fused together. The camera looked partially melted plastic, all warped, discolored,
and I thought, okay, it's over. Whatever that was is done.
And I picked it up, top photo from the stack,
and on the back of it pressed into the surface
like someone wrote it with a fingernail with the words
keep still while it develops. That night, my phone wouldn't
unlod face ID wouldn't work, tried the passcode, tried fingerprint.
I looked at my fingers. The ridges were gone. My
fingerprints they were just they were. They were smooth, both hands,
all ten fingers, smooth like paper, like like photo paper.
It's been a few weeks now, nothing else that's happened.
The rectangle scar on my palms still there. Skin inside
still feels different, tighter, thinner. It's cold sometimes randomly, like
really cold, staying cold, I felt, and that first photo
stuck to my arm. My fingerprints still haven't come back.
I had to set up a new pass code of
for everything. Couldn't even log into my banking app for
three days explaining to your bank that you need a
password reset because a haunted camera stole your fingerprints. Can't
you just say you forgot it. I don't know what
was in that camera. I don't know what it was
trying to do to me. I don't know if that
gray doorway shape on my palm is what I think
it is. But sometimes at night, my hand gets cold
in that spot. It feels like something on the other
sides pressing back for another picture. So yeah, don't touch
old polaroids you find in an empty house, because whatever's
on the other side of that film doesn't just take pictures,
takes prints. Hey they're kids. It's me, mister Creepy Pasta.
And before we say good night, I just wanted to
say thank you so much for watching tonight's video, or
for listening to tonight's episode or the podcast. I also
want to say, if you guys like the stories you're
hearing now, please check out The Creepy Pasta Collection, Volume
one and Volume two. They're available now on Amazon. They're
available at Barnes and Noble. They're available wherever you like
to get books. They're some of the best authors I've
worked with over the years, of my absolute favorite authors
and some of my friends, so I'd appreciate it if
you guys check those things out. There's also an audiobook
that I wasn't involved with. I don't know why Simon
and Schuster did that, but they did, so you can
check that out. Two if you'd like listing the books
but you just don't want to hear me. As always,
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