Chapter 1: What is the premise of the podcast episode?
Welcome, Task Force, to a new series from Red Web where we explore terrifying stories from the internet. My name is Trevor Collins, and as a lover of creepypasta, I'll be doing the narration for today's story. But joining me, reacting to these stories for the first time, is my terrified friend, Alfredo Diaz. I don't like scary stories, let alone ones that are curated to be just scary.
This reminds me of the Nickelodeon show. Is it the Midnight Society? Are you afraid of the dark? Yes. I had the Midnight Society. We are our own Midnight Society. This gives me that feel. And that was the first time I was ever introduced into scary stories. And, you know, they had those episodes. They were producing everything. And It was terrifying to me. Absolutely terrifying to me.
And I stayed away from a lot of scary stuff. And like I said, Red Web, big mistake for me because now I'm comfortable with all the like scary stuff, the true crime. And here I am going head first into scary stories. Luckily, we're shooting this in the daylight. Yeah. Well, you know, it's midnight somewhere. That's true. People listening, they can listen to it at any point in time.
Make it extra scary. Right. Turn off your lights. If you're driving, turn off the headlights. You know, you just gotta immerse yourself. Don't do that. But I think you're right. When you talk about Are You Afraid of the Dark or Goosebumps, I feel like that's my origin story for what ended up evolving over decades to become Red Web.
And so it's only natural for me to want to drag you back into the mire of terrifying stories. And like you said, Task Force, if you're a fan of Red Web, you know we explore a new unsolved mystery every week, and each of those has terrifying elements of their own. At redwebpod.com, we explore horror movies in movie clubs, so now let's explore some haunting stories from the web.
Task Force, if you want to submit your own stories, you can do so, as well as Unsolved Mysteries. You can submit those at redwebpod.com. There's a submission form there. But today, Fredo, I'm going to walk you through a couple of stories. In no particular order, we have a famous creepypasta, a true story that spawned an urban legend, and a paranormal encounter. Are you ready? Yep. All right.
Our first story today is The Smiling Man. About five years ago, I lived downtown in a major US city. I've always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking.
I spent four years like that, walking alone at night and never once had a reason to feel afraid. I always used to joke with my roommate that even the drug dealers in the city were polite, but all of that changed in just a few minutes of one evening. It was a Wednesday, somewhere between 1 and 2 in the morning, and I was walking near a police-patrolled park quite a ways from my apartment.
It was a quiet night, even for a weeknight, with very little traffic and almost no one on foot. The park, as it was most nights, was completely empty. I turned down a short side street in order to loop back to my apartment when I first noticed him. At the far end of the street, on my side, was the silhouette of a man, dancing.
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Chapter 2: What is the story behind The Smiling Man?
That guy wants the pain. And so that's just kind of what it reminded me here. It's like this guy's this thing or whatever it is, it's just the euphoric. And it just, I don't know, that's just, oof, that's the psychotic stuff right there. Right. And that gradual escalation, like when it went away, then it got larger and larger. Again, I don't know what the hell I would do in that situation.
I see something like that. It's getting hard. That's inhuman. And so I would say arguably unequipped to deal with a human, let alone something that's inhuman. And there's like anything running towards you.
terrifying period oh my gosh anything it could be anything at all it could be a gerbil that came out the bush in the middle of the night i'd still be scared it's terrifying there's intent in that gerbil's eyes when something bolts at you That's evolution, baby. You know that that's like, that's a DNA level scare. Yeah. I don't like that at all.
And I got to tell you, man, this story, the writer of this story is adamant that it is true that this is something that they truly experienced. But whether it's real or not, it certainly spawned an infamous urban legend. This has been around the internet for quite some time now. It has spawned many short films that all capture this energy quite well.
But it's one of those stories that has stuck with me since I read it. And I feel like as a proper episode one, you know, we did a pilot. But as a proper episode one, I had to bring it to you because, man, I think it's just one of those ones. It's almost like my Roman Empire where every now and then it's one of those stories I think about. I mean, it's a great story to think about, you know, and.
I think it's more of a twist at the end of the person survived, you know? Yeah. And they're just left with the fear. Yeah. And at that point, it's like, OK, I'm never going to walk alone at night, like they said. But then also at the same time, that shakes you to your core for the rest of your life. Like you are always constantly going to think of that moment
It hits nighttime, it's in the back of your head. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Like, you are marked forever with this incident. Yeah. Whew! I think humans are the scariest monsters sometimes, and this story proves it. But this next story, very much, Fredo, in the DNA of Red Web. I love the delivery of this.
It is very much... I'll tell you ahead of time so you can properly kind of envision it, but it's very much through the lens of forum posts, so I'll do my best to kind of evoke that as I go through, but It is a story told from various people on a old internet forum discussing a topic. Interesting. This one is called Candle Cove. Log on. Net Nostalgia Forum. Local. Candle Cove Local Kids Show?
Question mark. User Skyshale033. Does anyone remember this kids show? It was called Candle Cove, and I must have been six or seven. I never found a reference to it anywhere, so I think it was a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don't remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4 p.m. Mike Painter, 65. It seems really familiar to me.
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