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Playing With Sound



Estimated reading time — 2 minutes

Does anyone remember talkboys? They weren’t anything special, just a nifty looking tape recorder. They came out roughly around the same Christmas that Home Alone 2 was released, there was a whole load of hype over them, remember the trailer where Kevin plays back his hotel order down the phone after recording it? He uses the function that let’s you slow down the voice, posing as his dad. I thought that was awesome, I figured if I had one of those I’d be able to fool adults with ease, calling people up and ordering a new TV and stuff for the house…maybe my dad would even keep it, he’s pretty forgetful – you never know!

I never got one that Christmas, never really knew why but the huge collection of presents that Santa did bring me were enough to distract me from it’s absence, I was pretty happy with my new bike, that was the obsession of the moment. I forgot all about asking for it, actually, although I do remember seeing the ads on TV for a while. Instead I just let the snow clear and spent the next few months obsessing over the toys and games that I was given.

My birthday came in November much later the next year, I remember turning eight and having a party thrown for me at the house. Thankfully, the talkboy came too – along with Home Alone 2 on video of course. It was great unwrapping it, I mean I was never selfish and I didn’t really demand much as a kid but getting what you’ve asked for is a fantastic feeling. I ripped it out of the box straight away, tore off the packaging and carefully lifted it out in front of my friends. I was so pleased with it, it even looked cool. The microphone was extended towards you and it was so easy to hold, I grinned and laughed and pressed the record button.

“Hello!” I yelled into it before rewinding and playing it back.

“Hello!”

My voice sounded so odd, I’d never actually heard myself speaking before, it was such a strange sensation to hear how different it seemed. I looked at my dad, puzzled, and he laughed. Everybody laughed and I eventually joined in. I remember that Andrew reached over and tried to take it off me, demanding a chance to play with it but I pushed him away and shook my head.

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“Nuh uh, I’m not done yet.” I lifted the receiver again and spoke into it:

“Andrew smells!”

He huffed and folded his arms, pouting and looking angry with me but I wasn’t phased, this was why I’d wanted it so badly in the first place. I rewound quickly, flicked that little black switch to make the talkboy repeat what I had said in the slow, deep voice like in the movie, I held it up so that everybody could hear me insulting Andrew in slow motion.

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”Yes, he does,” said the talkboy.

//
Credited to Soreface.

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Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

122 thoughts on “Playing With Sound”

  1. Hahaha! I was telling my son what a horrible, feared ghost I will be.If you got out the recorder to do some EVP s with me, you might hear “lose some weight, fat ass”…

  2. The story itself had the potential to be great but in honesty it was more like a bunt in baseball rather than a Home run. Still enough to steal a base, but not enough to win the game.

  3. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

    Short, sweet, and to the point. Well, not so much sweet as creepy, but you know what I mean.

  4. I have creepy crap happen to me too, all the time.

    Doesn’t mean I go all brave-mode and pretend it doesn’t creep me out a bit… but I live with it. Like a boss.

    "Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but the willingness to go on despite it."

  5. is pretty cool, although I think it cuts off too early, feels kind of unfinished. i think you could make something really unnerving out of this if you continued

  6. So either a ghostly entity possessed the talkboy or Andrew smelled so bad that non living object could smell him.

  7. Haha!!! EPIC!!! Too bad we didn’t hear more about the talkboy itself. short and sweet. not creepy, but a great plot twist. Maybe integrate it into another story?

  8. This story is full of narm, not even narm really, no creepy atmosphere, no anything. It only works as a Goosebumps-esque joke.

    To the people saying this would be scary in real life, no, it wouldn’t. It might catch you off guard, but that’s about it. I’ve had weirder things happen in real life that left me completely unfazed. My one brother asked a ghost to show its presence and a picture that was safely perched on a stand, nowhere near the edge, was knocked to the floor. Another thing is that while doing a “ghost hunt” downtown at a railroader’s museum, I felt the tape recorder jiggle when placed in certain spots of one room and my hand felt almost like it was asleep. But the feeling went away when it moved, so I kept following it to different parts of the room. It ended up draining the batteries eventually. I also noticed flashlights that had brand new batteries would be drained within minutes. At the same ghost hunt, it was mentioned that people would sometimes hear big band music that had no source, I can remember in a small part of the museum a few days before when asking about the ghost hunt hearing big band music in a small part of the lobby, just outside of the visitors center, wondering why it was so faint and only audible in one part, but I assumed it was just period music for the atmosphere. My only thought when hearing testimony of the big band music was simply a “so that’s what it was”.

    Neither of those were scary to me, but I’m sure this made a better creepypasta, and this was actually a documentation of three things that happened in real life that didn’t bother me in the slightest.

    PS: Sorry if this was a double post but it didn’t post the first time.

  9. This story is full of narm, not even narm really, no creepy atmosphere, no anything. It only works as a Goosebumps-esque joke.

    To the people saying this would be scary in real life, no, it wouldn’t. It might catch you off guard, but that’s about it. I’ve had weirder things happen in real life that left me completely unfazed. My one brother asked a ghost to show its presence and a picture that was safely perched on a stand, nowhere near the edge, was knocked to the floor. Another thing is that while doing a “ghost hunt” downtown at a railroader’s museum, I felt the tape recorder jiggle when placed in certain spots of one room and my hand felt almost like it was asleep. But the feeling went away when it moved, so I kept following it to different parts of the room. It ended up draining the batteries eventually. I also noticed flashlights that had brand new batteries would be drained within minutes. At the same ghost hunt, it was mentioned that people would sometimes hear big band music that had no source, I can remember in a small part of the museum a few days before when asking about the ghost hunt hearing big band music in a small part of the lobby, just outside of the visitors center, wondering why it was so faint and only audible in one part, but I assumed it was just period music for the atmosphere. My only thought when hearing testimony of the big band music was simply a “so that’s what it was”.

    Neither of those were scary to me, but I’m sure this made a better creepypasta, and this was actually a documentation of three things that happened in real life that didn’t bother me in the slightest.

  10. Not creepy, but I liked it, it got an honest chuckle out of me, I like haunted technology, even if it’s mostly harmless.

  11. I like this alot. Good pasta. Although I agree with some of the comments above – it was a bit lengthy. Clever ending though.
    Creepy indeed.

  12. To me this just reads like a beginning to one of those children\’s movies where a kid befriends some nonhuman creature. Talkboy phone home etc.

  13. To me this just reads like a beginning to one of those children’s movies where a kid befriends some nonhuman creature. Talkboy phone home etc.

  14. ReverendLostLamb

    I quite liked it. Not really that scary altough I expected something huge and a long story when I began reading it.
    The intro gave me goosebumps. It was perfect.
    The ending was ‘nice’ but not ‘perfect’. I feel it could be polished, but overall it was rather good.

  15. This freaked me out a little because my youngest brother had a tickle me Ernie doll that would laugh even when the batteries weren’t in it.

  16. This site should be shut down for a few months. Not because the creepypasta is bad (it is great) but because idiots who forget that horror is fucking subjective and are 12 year old fucktards are strangling it to death. With any luck, the morons will, due to ADHD, move to another site and it can experience good times again

  17. Rodina from the forums

    I liked this story to an extent. Soreface is a pretty good writer- no comparison to PoetsOfBlood, of course, but pretty good nonetheless.

    Now, Tower on the other hand is the suckiest writer I’ve ever seen. Compared to anyone else, his writing feels like a Sea Star ejecting the bile of its digestive system out of its mouth to distract predators.

    Also he unjustly temp-banned me on the forums. If only someone could intervene…

  18. ParanormalPenguin

    I thought it was pretty gay. No offence or anything, but it’s not a story that belongs here.

    Like a lot of people have already said, it reminded me of Goosebumps – the kind of thing that’s supposed to be scary but is really just funny.

  19. Rather predictable ending, reminds me of Goosebumps. It had a couple of interesting parts, the grammar was hit and miss, but all in all cool. Would have loved to see the parent’s reactions to the Talkboy however.

  20. The fact that the narrator still believed that it was Santa bringing him gifts threw me off track with the rest of the story.

  21. It wasn’t scary, in fact, it was rather funny. I think people are missing the point, though. I’m pretty sure it was never meant to be a “Scary” story. For comedic and maybe creepy purposes, it was a very good story. 7/10 if you take it as it is, 6/10 if you take it as a horror story.

  22. I like all the people saying how not creepy this was. You’d all probably cry if this shit happened to you in real life.
    7/10 for the story.

  23. I dont normally comment but I felt obligated to let you all know the talkboy was awesome and this story does not do it justice….

  24. This was not very well done. There was no reason for the talkboy to be “evil” or “respond”, no buildup either. There shoulld have been a paragraph or two about hte boy playing with a friends talkboy, maybe breaking it on purpose because he was jealous he didn’t get to have one.

    “As the boy continued to slam his friends talkboy into the ground, he heard a strange digital scream erupt from the talkboy’s tiny speakers. The boy stopped for a moment and inspected the talkboy’s speakers closely, peering into each darkened slit. It was impossible, the batteries had fallen out while he had been smashing it against Taylor’s desk, there’s no way it could have made that noise.

    After a few moments of silence from the talkboy, the boy grabbed a hammer from Taylor’s tool box and began hammering at the microphone. It was just a flimsy piece of plastic, a few hits and it would come right off. The boy laughed.

    “STOoooOOOPPPpp”

    The boy’s eyes widen… he looked down at the Talkboy. The small cassette wheels were spinning.

    WhhhhHHHYYYYY??

    Startled the boy raised the hammer high and thrashed the talkboy one final time. The room suddenly felt very cold, and for some reason, he felt incredibly alone. He had to leave before Taylor and his mother returned home and saw what he had done. He closed the door to Taylor’s room and made his way to the backyard. As he rode his bike home, all he could think about was the strange scream that had come from the Talkboy.

    There.. I’m not that good but something like that :D

  25. Not creepy.
    It’d have been creepy if you’d have been there in real life and it happened, but as a creepypasta it isn’t creepy at all.

  26. Funny, but the writing needs a little work; that Christmas interlude goes nowhere and has no bearing on the rest of the story and we’re never told who Andrew is (I assume it’s the narrator’s friend or sibling but we can’t be sure. Simply adding “My brother” in front of Andrew’s name when he’s first introduced would quickly clear this up)

    The references to Home Alone seem really forced, almost like product placement (“Chocobots! put down those amusing Mattel(tm) products!”). I mean, I understand the inclusion what with the talkboy being heavily promoted in Home Alone 2 but I just feel the references are poorly implemented.

    Overall I think this pasta would work a hell of a lot better if it were condensed into a single paragraph and given a better writing style.

  27. if this happened to me in rl, my first reaction would be \"ZOMFG! *throws box at the wall*\"
    but story-wise, it did remind me slightly of goosebumps– it was a good story though, i liked it, it didnt drag on for an eternity.

  28. This reminds me of the “ghost stories” kids passed around in elementary school, which is who the story would scare the most.

    To second the poster above me, it was cute.

  29. All that buildup just for the thing to talk back to him. Am I the only one who thought this was terrible?

    And all the actually decent pastas are getting horrible feedback…

  30. Having an electronic recorder talk back is fairly creepy if you really think about it, but just having it agree with him and then the story ends isn`t the best way to execute this if you`re not trying for humor.

  31. I figured out one of the key problems with this story:

    It doesn\\\’t describe what the Talkboy looks like other than \\"it\\\’s that thing from Home Alone 2.\\" If you\\\’ve never seen Home Alone 2, you have no idea how to picture the critical events of the story, which makes the story much less effective.

    Okaaaay I image searched it and it\\\’s not like a Teddy Ruckspin or anything, it\\\’s just a handheld tape recorder.

    I\\\’m starting to feel like the story is more lame than anything else. Maybe it\\\’s because I use a handheld tape recorder every day – I just don\\\’t find anything creepy about it. Maybe if I had a mental image of what the \\"talkboy voice\\" sounds like? I don\\\’t know.

  32. Anti-climatic. I want moar. There should be more, seriously. This is just like what happens with Furbies after a few years, when they randomly start working again. Who cares unless something else happens too?

  33. I agree with Disappointed Reader. At the current length, it was just kind of cute. Also nostalgic, seeing as I had a talkboy when I was little, ‘cept it was pink and called a talkgirl.

  34. Not creepy. Tape recorder that talks back, no hints as to anything sinister it might do, and the fact that it happened in a room full of people also diminishes the creepiness.

  35. That was lame. It was a very, very large build up, then BAM — you get absolutely NOTHING.

    And that wasn’t creepy at all. I’d be laughing and having a nice time with the talkwhatever if it agreed with my opinion about the semen odor emitting from Andrew’s pants.

  36. I’m pretty sure everyone going “LOL, NOT SCARY” would shit their pants if this happened to them in real life. I’d give this an 8/10. It could have very easily passed for one of the pastas that were posted at this site\’s creation.

    That\’s a good thing.

    1. I HAVE had weird crap happen. When submissions open again, I’ll post the copy I have of Rammstein’s song Engel.

      I didn’t edit it in any way, but when it was being converted from my laptop to my MP3, somehow, there was static in a few parts and then a bark. I’ve had spirit-dogs around me all my life, so this doesn’t surprise me…

  37. to tell you the truth i want expecting that
    i thought it would be the basic, person finds object likes it at first but automatically has a foreboding about it (in this case it was his voice sounding different)
    object haunts person
    person becomes tramautized
    climax : object does something to person
    and ending it either kills him or gets rid of the thing and is never the same again

    however, although this pasta is refreshing, short and to the point, i cannot overlook the overall flavor.
    its a 5/10 for me

  38. The ending was funny, but creepy at the same time.

    At first I thought it would turn into a long stupid rant about how the company was shut down years later, “OMG it was a demon company blah blah blah”, but it didn’t, which was good in my opinion.

  39. It’s a good start but not much else. The rest of it could be great if it continues. Maybe the family plays it off as a prank from the protagonist and the rest of the series is about his struggle with the supernatural force or being in the Talkman blah blah etc.

  40. haha, actually really awesome! I didnt expect it to be at first, but then I just shivered at the end. Really great pasta. :)

  41. This is your stereotypical crap ending, you know something’s gonna happen with it, something DOES happen with it, but you’re somehow left unsatisfied and still hungry.
    This plot, when I think about it, didn’t really have that much you could do with it, so for its kind, it was rather okay; For the general, it was pretty bad. I’m not gonna have a horrible night sleeping because of this.
    Meh pasta is meh and rather raw.
    3/10.

  42. Well, the story itself was good. It brought back memories of my (evil) older sister’s talkboy, which we never really got to work. The end wasn’t in-your-face creepy, either, which is a nice change of pace from the “And then he got DED” things I usually see on here.

    However, the grammar you used almost made me stop reading entirely. You seem to use way too many commas in some spots, and not enough in others. You have some run-on sentences, and you kinda seem to jump back and forth between flashbacks. That absolutely destroyed the flow of the story. So just work on that.

  43. It was a good story. Not something that should go on this website but it was actually well-written and an enjoyable read. xD

  44. Well Finally a good pasta for a change! I like this. Everything leading up to it really made you think about it…I liked it.(:

  45. Well Finally a good pasta for a change! I like this. Everything leading up to it really made you think about it…I liked it.(:

  46. short, but an excellent ending. this could have been drawn out much longer, but the snappy ending, almost like a punchline, works really well, i think.

      1. I am getting tired of this, I am not sure how it even gets passed moderation.
        You even said the name of the person you were talking about so you made yourself out to be worse off the the rest of the people who post this crap.

  47. Pretty nice. I feel like it would have been better if the kid would have said something other than \"Andrew smells\" though.

    I don\’t know that\’s just me.

  48. I thought this was pretty cool. Didn’t try too hard to be scary, and in the end wasn’t in-your-face scary but just creepy enough.

    That’s not saying that it was perfect, of course…

    “I never got one that Christmas, never really knew why but the huge collection of presents that Santa did bring me were enough to distract me from it’s absence, I was pretty happy with my new bike, that was the obsession of the moment.” made me cringe BIG TIME.

    And perhaps having the creepy voice agree about Andrew’s stink wasn’t the creepiest thing that could have been done. But at least it’s different, and I am pleased with it.

    1. First thing, cool name. Second thing, that same sentence made me cringe as well, you could have used periods, that section is one long run-on sentence. Third thing, a few errors, like run-on sentences, fragments, and spelling, but overall, an okay story, but could have used a bit more work, so 7/10 for the errors.

      -Herobrine

      Always watching…

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