Speaker 1: Calorogu Shark Media, Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This episode is titled Veil's Edge, The Unraveling of Hollow Creek,
Episode three, The Whispering Woods.
Speaker 2: Good evening, dear listeners, or is it evening? Time has
become fluid here in Hollow Creek. The sun rises and sets, yes,
but the hours in between stretch and contract, like a
living thing breathing in rhythms. I can no longer fathom,
but I'm getting ahead of myself. Allow me to collect
my thoughts, if I can trust them at all. I
am still Reverend Arthur Blackwood, at least I believe I am.
The face in the mirror is mine most of the time.
But the eyes, the eyes belonged to someone else, someone older,
someone who has seen things no mortal mind was meant
to comprehend. But I digress. I promised to tell you
about the woods, didn't I? The dark heart of Hollow Creek,
where young Timothy vanished and returned changed. I've been avoiding
those woods, dear listeners, avoiding them like a guilty man
avoids the scene of his crime. But last night, or
perhaps it was a hundred years ago, I could resist
no longer. It began with the whispers. They came on
the wind, slithering through cracks in my windows, coiling around
my ears like spectral serpents. They spoke of secrets buried
in loam and leaf, litter, of truths etched in tree rings,
older than human memory. And they spoke my name, not Arthur, No,
they used a name I had forgotten. I once possessed,
a name that tasted of starlight and oblivion on my tongue.
I found myself at the forest's edge, as twilight painted
the sky in bruised purples and sickly greens. The trees
loomed before me, their branches reaching out like grasping fingers.
For a moment, I hesitated, I could turn back, returned
to the fragile illusion of normalcy that still clung to
parts of Hollow Creek. But the whispers grew louder, more insistent,
and so God helped me. I stepped into the shadows.
The moment my foot crossed the threshold of the tree line,
the world shifted. The air grew thick, resistant, as if
I were wading through invisible molasses. Shadows deepened, taking on
substance and weight, and the whispers. Oh, the whispers became
a cacophony, a thousand voices speaking in languages both ancient
and yet unborn. I wandered for what felt like hours
or perhaps mere minutes. The trees around me seemed to
move when I wasn't looking directly at them, rearranging themselves
in impossible geometries. I saw things in the corners of
my vision, flitting shapes that vanished when I turned my head,
eyes gleaming from hollows that shouldn't exist. And then I
found the clearing.
Speaker 3: It was a.
Speaker 2: Perfect circle, as if carved by some cosmic compass. At
its center stood a single, massive oak tree, its trunk
easily twenty feet in diameter. But it was wrong, dear listeners,
so terribly beautifully wrong. Its bark spiraled in fractal patterns
that hurt my eyes to look upon. Its leaves shimmered
with colours I have no names for, colours that whispered
of realities beyond our own. As I approached the tree,
drawn by a compulsion I couldn't name, I saw that
its trunk was not solid. There was an opening, a
kind of door that seemed to lead into endless darkness,
and From that darkness came a voice, Timothy's voice, but
not as it is now. It was Timothy as he
should be, untouched by whatever horror had claimed him in
these woods. Reverend, the voice called a kingly familiar and
yet utterly alien. You need to remember it's the only
way to save us, To save yourself. I reached out
my hand, trembling to touch the bark of the impossible tree.
As my fingers made contact, a flood of images assaulted
my mind. I saw Hollow Creek as it was, as
it is, as it will be, all at once. I
saw myself, not as the aging Reverend, but as something else,
something vast and terrible and beautiful. I saw the truth
of Timothy, of Sarah, of every soul in Hollow Creek.
We were all connected, all part of some grand design
that my limited human mind couldn't fully grasp. And behind
it all, lurking just beyond the veil of reality, I
glimpsed something, something that wore the universe like a skin,
something that was waking up. The vision lasted an eternity
and no time at all. When I came back to myself,
I was on my knees before the tree, tears streaming
down my face. The whispers had stopped, replaced by a
silence so profound it seemed to have physical weight. As
I struggled to my feet, I noticed something carved into
the trunk of the oak, a symbol, complex and ever
shifting that seemed to burn itself into my retinas.
Speaker 3: I knew, with a.
Speaker 2: Certainty that chilled me to my core, that this symbol
was important, that it held the key to understanding what
was happening to Hollow Creek.
Speaker 3: To all of us.
Speaker 2: I staggered back through the woods, my mind reeling from
what I'd experienced. The trees parted before me, no longer hostile,
but almost reverent, as if they recognized something in me
that I couldn't yet see in myself. I emerged from
the forest as dawn was breaking, though I could have
sworn i'd entered at twilight, had I been in there
for an entire night longer, or had time itself buckled
and warped around me. As I made my way back
to town, I noticed changes, at first, but growing more
pronounced with each step. Houses stood where there should be
empty lots. People I'd known for years suddenly had different faces,
different names, and everyone. Everyone looked at me with a
mixture of fear and awe that made my skin crawl.
I've locked myself in my study now, dear listeners, trying
to make sense of what I've seen, what I've learned.
But the more I try to grasp it, the more
it slips away, like trying to hold onto the details
of a dream upon waking.
Speaker 3: But the symbol remains.
Speaker 2: I've drawn it a hundred times now, covering every scrap
of paper I can find. It pulses in my mind's eye,
a beacon calling me towards something, something both terrifying and wonderful.
I fear I'm losing myself, Dear listeners. The man I
thought I was is unraveling, revealing something underneath that I
don't recognize, something old, something powerful, something that knows far
more about the true nature of Hollow Creek than I
ever suspected. Part of me wants to run to flee
this town and never look back. But I know now
that there's nowhere to run to. The Strangeness in Hollow
Creek is spreading, seeping into the world beyond, and somehow,
someway I'm at the center of it all. I don't
know if I'll be able to speak with you again.
Already I can feel myself changing, becoming something other. If
these are my last words, let them be a warning.
The veil is thinning, reality is fracturing, and what lies
beyond is vaster and more terrible than anything we could
have imagined. Pray for us, dear listeners, Pray for yourselves
for when the final veil falls, when the last barrier
between what is and what should not be crumbles, Well,
perhaps it's better not to contemplate such things. This is
Reverend Arthur Blackwood, or perhaps it's what remains of him,
signing off one last time from the edge of oblivion.
Good Night, dear listeners, and may whatever gods still exist
have mercy.
Speaker 3: On our souls.
Speaker 1: Ghost is a Calorogus Shark Media production, written and hosted
by Alexander Ian McIntyre, produced by Mark Francis. Executive producers
Mark Francis and John McDermott. Portions of this podcast may
have been created with the assistance of AI. This show,
along with hundreds of others from Calaroga Shark Media, is
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