3 Internet Stories That Still Haunt Us | The Smiling Man, Candle Cove, & The Ring
episodePreviously titled “He Kept Following Until... | The Smiling Man, Candle Cove, & The Ring” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
Transcript
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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. It was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he finished each box with an odd forward stride. I guess you could say he was dance walking, headed straight for me. Deciding he was probably drunk, I stepped as close as I could to the road to give him the majority of the sidewalk to pass me. The closer he got, the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He was very tall and lanky and wearing an old suit.
He danced closer still until I could make out his face. His eyes were open wide and wild, head tilted back slightly, looking off at the sky. His mouth was formed in a painful wide cartoon of a smile. Between his eyes and the smile, I decided to cross the street before he danced any closer. I took my eyes off him to cross the empty street.
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