The Curse of Hannah Cranna
| Written by | Tristan Mason |
|---|---|
| Published on Creepypasta.com | November 2026 |
| Length | 4,888 words · about 22 minutes to read |
| Story level | Long |
| Category | Body Horror |
“I swear I’m dreaming of someone else’s memories,” Samantha told her fiancé on the anniversary of their engagement. “I know I sound crazy. It’s just that—”
Caleb took another bite of his burger, leaning over the stainless steel table, and smirked. “You’ve said crazier things.”
She playfully slapped him on the shoulder and pouted. A clumsy server stumbled past them, dropping a tray of fries in front of the soda machine. They glanced at the server for a moment, who was cleaning and cursing, before clasping hands. They were two of the few people left in Village Side Burgers. Samantha struggled all week to find the words to talk to Caleb about her awful recurring dreams.
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Samantha said.
“Try me,” Caleb said.
“All right, well, every night this week, I’ve had these strange dreams of a quaint farmhouse. It’s like a faint red color, and there are weird things inside.”
“Like what?” Caleb asked.
“Upside-down crosses are hanging from the ceiling, some of them on fire.”
“That’s… disturbing. What makes you say these are ‘other people’s memories’?”
Samantha’s face turned pale as Caleb furrowed his brow.
“I see this wrinkly old woman in the farmhouse. It’s… always the same. She’s not from this decade, or century, even. She’s standing under the crosses, looking hypnotized. She’s wearing nothing but this white gown. I think my grandmother called it a chemise or something…”
“That’s… wow. Okay, so, why do you think these are her memories and not some random dreams?”
This question gave Samantha pause. She didn’t know exactly why she considered them memories, other than the strong connection she felt to them. Caleb studied her expression for a moment as she told him, “It’s also like I can feel what she feels. Every time I dream about this old woman, I wake up smelling smoke.”
Caleb shrugged. “I know, and I also know you’ve been under a lot of stress this past month because—”
“Don’t say because of the wedding,” Samantha snapped. A few of the other customers gazed over.
“Whoa. Sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to suggest that—”
“No, no, I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing onto his clammy fingers. “I know you didn’t. I didn’t know where that came from. I have been under a lot of stress, but it’s not the wedding I’m stressed about.”
Samantha had been lashing out all week, and she didn’t have the slightest idea why. Caleb was the least confrontational person she knew, yet she snapped at him every time he suggested she seemed stressed, and immediately apologized afterward. In the years since they started dating, they had always worked out their differences. Samantha snapped at her own mother and sister, too, which was also unlike her, in response to a simple question about the wedding photographer. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she didn’t want to talk about the seemingly most important day of her life.
“Want to get out of here? Clear your head a bit?”
She nodded. “But where to so late?”
“Great Hollow Lake.”
“That’d be nice, I guess.”
Samantha smiled sheepishly as they headed to the car. Aside from the burger place, Great Hollow Lake was one of her favorite hangout spots from the time they first started dating. During college breaks, she couldn’t wait to take Caleb back to her hometown, especially to show him off to the townies who thought she’d die an old cat lady or thought she was “too much of a church girl” to hook up at a place like the lake. Now, things were different. She wanted to recapture the magic before becoming Ms. Saunders, but all she could think about was the old woman in the farmhouse.
“We haven’t done this in ages,” Caleb said. Samantha nodded along as he scrolled through his phone to find their favorite Lifehouse song before driving out of the lot. “There are, like, two cops in town. I don’t think we’ll get caught.”
“There’s more than that…” she sighed. As Caleb found the song and sang along off-key, Samantha had an intense migraine. She closed her eyes so tightly that she could see stars, and beyond the stars, she saw the old woman’s face grow more distinct, her face porcelain and lifeless, illuminated by the farmhouse fires. “Can you turn that down?”
“I don’t know why I can’t take my eyes off— Wait, what? You want to turn off our first-dance song?”
“I didn’t realize how annoying it is,” she said coldly. Caleb gazed at her before taking a turn down a dimly lit road.
“I thought we loved this song?”
“You love this song,” she said even more coldly. She almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth as Caleb stared at her, agape. “Maybe I don’t like the Christian buttrock anymore.”
“Buttrock? You sound like a total hipster. What’s gotten into you?”
Samantha grimaced as the migraine spread to her eyes. What followed was a tone she rarely took with him. “Look, I love you, but I want something that’s ‘our’ wedding song, not yours, okay?”
“Okay… do you want to go home or something?”
“No,” she sighed. “Let’s go to the lake. Clear our heads a bit.”
For the next ten minutes, they drove in silence. At first, Samantha was overwhelmed by guilt for speaking to Caleb in such a crass tone. As the silence crept on, however, she realized she hadn’t spoken truer words before. Something about those visions of the old woman in the farmhouse made her want to speak the truth. Something about the woman’s contorted lips made her content with the anger. As they drove closer to Great Hollow Lake, Samantha began to lose control of her body; her arms and hands shook violently. An intense migraine overcame her as her mind struggled to control any movement of muscle.
“What’s going on?!” Caleb screamed, swerving to the side of the road. He hit the curb and swore. For a moment, Samantha’s shaking stopped. For a moment, Samantha’s eyes flew open, then squeezed shut so tightly that they watered. The migraine dissipated, too, but now her mind felt empty, and she was unable to move even her eyelids. The urge to cry for help remained locked in the far, dark corners of her mind.
Caleb quickly flicked on his hazard lights and reached over to shake her. “Sam. Are you okay?! Sam, do you need a doctor?”
Samantha stayed motionless, her lips quivering. He waited for her to say anything, do anything. With each passing second, Samantha’s lips quivered even more rapidly. Her mind felt even more empty. Those words, those cries for help, were now lost in some deeper, darker crevice. She couldn’t even will herself to feel scared.
When Samantha finally spoke again, the words were not her own. She felt them gather somewhere behind her ribs, then crawl up her throat and escape her mouth in a scratchy, distorted, sing-songy tone.
“Little Jackie Wilson’s father
Set fire to my barn;
His descendants will feel my harm.”
“What the hell do you mean?!” Caleb said, shaking her again. This time, she stretched out her arms and clasped her hands around his neck.
“Little Jackie Wilson’s father
Stabbed me in the chest;
They’ll feel my pain and my unrest.”
“Sam, stop,” he gurgled. “Sam…”
As the last rhyme ended, Samantha collapsed and let go of Caleb, her head smashing into the dashboard. Caleb was gasping for breath as Samantha lay motionless, blood dripping from her forehead onto the dashboard and floor.
“Samantha, what the hell did you… Oh my God. Samantha!” Caleb frantically picked her up, cradling her heavy, frail head in his arms. She was breathing, but her breathing was shallow, her pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips. The longer he held her, the more her breathing slowed.
“Come on, honey. Please…”
Even with her eyes closed, she could still see him, still feel him holding her. She felt small and jittery inside her mind, like a little girl hiding under the covers from the monster under her bed. But even inside her mind, Samantha wasn’t safe. Somehow, the mean thoughts about their wedding song were lifted from the dark corners of her mind, something sinister she once thought when Caleb struggled to do a simple waltz and instead chose to sing the song off-key. Over the past week, Samantha wasn’t in control of her thoughts, and now she wasn’t in control of her own words or movements.
Each time she woke up from the strange dream, the little sing-songy nursery rhyme about little Jackie Wilson and the fire escaped her lips, only it didn’t sound like her singing. Samantha could actually sing; she’d performed in many high school and college madrigal concerts. When she sang, she sounded like her ailing Grandma Pearl, whose maiden name she could have sworn was Wilson. It didn’t matter anymore. If she couldn’t regain control of her own consciousness, her own thoughts, or movements, none of this mattered.
“Come on, honey,” Caleb pleaded, reaching for his phone in his jeans’ pocket, which was buried under tissues, keys, and all sorts of other junk. Suddenly, Samantha jerked her body upright and wiped the blood from the large gash on her forehead. “What—what? Honey, are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” Samantha’s voice said, feigning her usual honeyed tone. Samantha’s thoughts screamed for her to stop talking, but she couldn’t control her jaw as it unleashed a string of words she might use to reassure her love. “I’ve been under all sorts of stress lately.”
“I think you need to go to the hospital,” Caleb said as he pulled her in closely, wiping the blood from her forehead. Samantha’s thoughts screamed for him to ignore her as he pulled some alcohol wipes from the first aid kit in the glove compartment and wiped her down. He was still visibly crying as he applied the bandage to her forehead. “Just to be safe. Honey, why would you do that?”
“I don’t know! I’m so sorry!” Samantha’s voice shrieked. Samantha’s thoughts groaned. Whoever—or whatever—was controlling her made her sound a little too much like a damsel in distress, something she tried especially hard to avoid as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the local theater scene. “Let’s just go to the lake. It will make both of us feel better.”
Caleb finished wiping the blood that had dripped onto her face and arms. He shrugged. “Okay, I guess. What was that creepy song you were singing about Little Jackie Wilson’s father?”
Samantha’s thoughts hoped this would stump the voice, but the voice didn’t falter, putting on an extra layer of honeyed reassurance. “It’s from a play I’m writing. I know it sounds weird, but saying it out loud makes me feel a little better.”
“In that raspy, awful tone?” Caleb said as he drove slowly toward Great Hollow Lake. “I didn’t even know you were writing a play.”
“You never asked,” the voice said coldly. As the voice’s honeyed tone turned to ice, Samantha could suddenly feel her body again. Her body felt old, so old that her joints could pop and break at any moment, even as slowly as Caleb drove. “But if you must know, when I got back to Monroe last weekend, Sara and I-”
“Sara Chamberlain or Tanaka?” he said as they drove past the entrance gate of Wolfe Park.
“For Christ’s sake, Caleb,” the voice snapped, a tone so icy that it froze any words her thoughts could form. She could feel her joints stiffen as Caleb pulled into a hard-packed gravel lot. “Sara Tanaka is from Monroe. We saw YouTuber Matt Drake film at the Four Corners Burial Ground last weekend. It was so cool. Um, why are you parking in the overflow lots?”
“What is with you?!” Caleb snapped as he pulled into the gravel lot. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m concerned. Really concerned. You tell me about these weird dreams you’ve been having. I drove us to the only place in this town that we happen to both love. Then, you make fun of our wedding song, almost choke me, and smash your head into the dashboard. You tell me you’re fine. I just. I need to go for a walk…”
“I’m sorry!” the voice cried as Caleb stormed out of the car in tears, taking the paved path down to the lake. If Samantha was well enough to snap at him and pretend nothing had happened in the last twenty minutes, she was well enough to be left alone for the five minutes he needed to clear his mind. He thought this tone and these actions had come out of nowhere, but then again, maybe he needed to listen a bit more. Truthfully, other than the lake, he didn’t care for the town she grew up in. It was a little too conservative for him, and the amount of wealth made him, a guy from a single, working-class mom, feel quite out of place. He remembered her going to see Matt Drake, but couldn’t stand the Ghost Hunter type, so he ignored the rest.
As Caleb reached the lake, he couldn’t help but feel the need to run back to the car and apologize. Under the harvest moonlight, the lake looked beautiful, and so did the trees that lined it, a vibrant tapestry of amber, copper, and crimson threads. A year ago, he got down on a single shaking knee on the grassy bank, almost dropping the white gold ring into the lake. He couldn’t stand even a moment without her at this place. But as soon as he was about to race back to the car, he felt his phone buzzing and answered without checking, hoping it was her coming to join him.
“Sam?”
“No, no, sorry. It’s Sara.”
He looked up at the moon that hung like a heavy amber pendulum, casting its crimson light across the waters. He was too lost in the guilt of her not seeing this sight to be fazed by Sara’s voice.
“What’s up?”
“There’s something seriously wrong with Sam,” she said in a low, steady voice.
“Tell me about it…” he muttered.
“You don’t understand…” Her voice trailed off. “There’s been something wrong with Sam since last weekend, and when I just called her, she sang me some creepy song. She’s not well.”
“She sang me a creepy song too. Wait, do you mean you went to that stupid Matt Drake event?”
“Goddammit, Caleb. I mean it.”
“I’m sorry. We’re at Wolfe Park, and she’s acting really cruel and strange.” His voice trailed off as he heard footsteps in the distance. “What happened?”
“Look, you don’t have to like… never mind. Well, Matt Drake was filming this video at the gravesite of Hannah Cranna. She was this crazy old woman from the 1800s who was kind of like the town pariah. She claimed to put curses on people in town, affecting their livestock and livelihoods.”
“That’s strange. What’s that have to do with Sam?”
“Well, when we went to see the grave, she touched it, even though she was told not to, and—”
The call ended with a click, and then a clammy hand settled on his shoulder. “What’s that have to do with Sam?”
Caleb frantically stuffed his cell phone in his pocket and slowly turned around to see Samantha in just a black bra and a pair of oversized white panties, neither of which looked like anything she would own. He had no idea what had happened to her clothes. “Oh God, honey. Why the hell are you-”
She pressed a finger to his lips and pulled him in for a long kiss. At first, he relented and pulled her closer. This was something spontaneous they would have done during their college days. Then, she stuck her tongue into his mouth, which didn’t feel like her tongue. It was long, almost slimy. As Caleb tried to pull away, she bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, causing Caleb to stumble to the grass.
“I haven’t felt the warmth of a man in so long,” Samantha’s voice rasped. Caleb crawled backward a few steps as Samantha’s eyes turned from blue to black and her skin grew saggy, with wrinkles that multiplied all over her body. “Not even Joseph, my late husband, kissed that well. But he was the only one who stood beside me when the town turned against me. I watched them take him, too.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What the hell are you?”
“That’s not your concern, child,” the voice snarled. Caleb felt as if he might convulse as he watched his fiancée become a wretched bag of sagging skin, her coal-black eyes burning into his deepest fears. “You’re kind of a Molly, though, aren’t you, child?”
“And you’re a fucking hag!”
As Caleb scampered backward, the hag grabbed hold of his neck with a single skeletal hand and started dragging him to the water, cackling.
“I’ve been waiting for so long,” the hag snarled as Caleb gurgled and his legs went limp.
“It took so long for me to take form again—a perfect storm, if you will. First, a descendant of the man who slew me had to touch my resting stone. Then I needed a kiss from someone who had just stood at the threshold between life and death—you, after my little bride nearly strangled you. That only opened the way. To complete my resurrection, one person from each bloodline must die: a Wilson and a Tanaka.”
Caleb’s entire body grew limp as her skeletal hand dragged him a few yards into the water. Even in his limp state, he couldn’t help but gag, not from being choked, but from the awful sight of the hag in her lingerie, now slipping from his concave, greying body.
“This is where Little Jackie Wilson and his father dragged me to die,” the hag croaked. “They held me under the water on a night just like this.”
The hag’s hand now felt like clay as it forced Caleb under. As he gasped for air, the waters turned murky all around him, and a bloom of algae filtered through his mouth and nostrils. Just as he started to slip into total blackness, he saw plumes of orange bubbles and steam from above the surface, and the hag’s hand was engulfed in an even more fiery plume.
As Caleb forced himself upright, he gasped for breath, then gasped again when he saw a fiery, hollowed-out stake through the witch’s chest. At the other end of the stake stood Sara with her jet-black hair blowing in a now uncontrollable gust of wind that encircled them.
“Holy shit!” Caleb shrieked. “Sara, that’s—that’s Sam.”
“Sam’s inside it,” Sara said coldly. “Release her, Hannah!”
The hag cackled and began to levitate, flinging herself back into the water. The pure force of the wind knocked Caleb down too. They could only stare in horror as the stake fell loose from the hag’s chest into the water, flames encircling their bodies.
“The ritual is not complete!” she shrieked, her voice echoing ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand feet above the water. “A Wilson and a Tanaka will die before this night is over!”
When the hag was high enough to become a shadow in the moonlight, her body became completely engulfed in flames that dissolved and rained upon them. Caleb and Sara stood motionless as a heavy cloud of ash covered them and the area around them.
Caleb and Sara coughed profusely, frantically wiping ash from their faces and bodies.
“What the hell was that?!” Caleb screamed. “We have to find that thing. We have to find Sam. We have to!”
“No,” Sara said firmly. “That thing is Hannah Cranna, and we brought her back to life. The ritual requires one death from each bloodline. Now she’s coming for my grandpa—and for Sam’s grandmother.”
“How do you know?” Caleb said weakly.
Sara led him by the hand out of the water. When they got to shore, for seemingly no reason at all, the ash turned translucent, rapidly fading from their skin. “None of this makes sense, Sara. Does that thing have Sam? Is she dead?”
“No.” Sara motioned for him to start walking toward her Honda CR-V in the parking lot.
“When we went to Four Corners Burial Ground, Matt Drake told us something that isn’t in any book or town record. The whole town blamed Hannah for their harvest and financial woes. She was a widow; her husband, Joseph, had died years before the town turned against her. She knew she would die, but not of old age. She knew she’d be hunted down, and vowed to come to life again.”
“Why should I believe any of this? And where the hell did you get that stake from?”
“That was my Tanaka great-great-grandfather’s,” she said in a hushed tone, opening the car door. “He helped Jackie Wilson and Jackie’s father try to kill Hannah twice. The first attempt failed. During the second, Jackie Wilson drove that stake through her chest while my great-great-grandfather and Jackie Junior held her beneath the water. That time, they succeeded. My grandpa Ren told me all this today. He can’t remember my name, but he remembers what they did. After Hannah was killed, they told the townsfolk about her final wishes: she was to be buried after sundown, with plenty of pallbearers, in the hope that one of them would notice the marks on her body. Then, after the burial, they set her house ablaze, claiming it was one last act of vengeance. They warned everyone not to touch her grave, probably to prevent anyone from digging her up.”
“Uh.” Caleb did not know what to say as he got into her car and buckled his seat belt. It was too much to take in or even fathom. Samantha and Sara believed so strongly in the supernatural that he had always dismissed it outright. Although both women had been raised as fundamentalist Christians, they were obsessed with the occult, cryptids, and ghosts. Until now, he had dismissed it as a silly hobby, like when he and his best friend Benji used to battle with Pokémon cards.
“I know. It’s a lot to follow. I’m not even sure if I have it all right. This was the most my grandfather’s spoken in years, or at least the most my mom’s let him.”
“What are we going to do?” he asked hoarsely. “How are we going to—”
“Sam’s grandmother and my grandfather live down the street from each other. That’s like five minutes away from here. We have to get there before Hannah does.”
Caleb nodded and gripped the door handle as Sara’s foot hit the gas pedal.
The hag’s body re-formed high above the lake, with the vast trees below appearing as shades of brown and black through her eyes. As the amber moon glowed upon them, Samantha started to feel her body inside the saggy skin and bones of the hag. As the hag descended toward town, Samantha realized she could control its body.
“I forgot you were still in there,” the hag groaned as her body twisted. “You wretched little whore.”
Samantha could feel her hands and legs again, though she couldn’t see them inside the hag’s hollow body. With all her might, she began snapping the hag’s bones, making it shriek and plunge toward the ground. But the hag regained control and glided downward at a steadier pace toward a backyard with a gazebo and brick patio.
“It will only be a matter of time before you and your grandmother feel the pain of your ancestors and my wrath.”
The hag stretched out a skeletal hand to break her fall, her long, scaly legs gripping the gazebo’s asphalt shingles. “Unlike me, she won’t die quickly. I’ll tear her limb from limb.”
Through the hag’s eyes, she saw her grandmother’s porch light turn on, and her grandmother step outside in her silk nightgown, moments later adjusting her large spectacles, which dropped the moment she saw the hag. Samantha felt another bone and snapped it, causing the hag to jerk and shriek once more.
“Hannah Cranna be gone!” her grandmother hollered, stumbling backward onto the patio.
“So you remember,” the hag snarled. “You remember all the tales your grandfather told you. Did he tell you I would come for you?”
“He told me what pain you caused!” she wailed. “I have nothing to do with what he did!”
“The pain I caused?!” the hag cackled. “You are him.”
The hag launched herself toward Samantha’s grandmother, and Samantha tried to seize control of any bone she could. Inches from her frail, fallen body, something hollow hit the hag, causing it to moan, an awful moan that echoed into the night. From the corner of the hag’s eye, she saw a brick repeatedly smash into her face. She recognized the hand attached to the face. It was Caleb’s. From the other side of the hag’s face, she saw another brick, this one belonging to Sara.
The hag shrieked and flung both of them from her body. Her shell, her skin, was tearing now, but it was not enough as she levitated above the ground once more, an awful gust of wind flinging her loved ones through the porch’s glass window. The hag shrieked and cackled again as they lay helpless and bloodied on a hardwood floor.
Samantha screamed as she tore through the hag’s bone and flesh. She fell with the body to the ground. She kept screaming as she tore through each inch of flesh and bone, bursting out of the cavity. Samantha was only in her bra and panties as she rose to her feet, wiping the wrinkly flesh from her face and the loose bones that clung to her ribcage.
She rushed toward the three of them. Caleb and Sara were helping her grandmother to her feet. Her grandmother was covered in glass, more than either of them.
“Grandma!”
“Burn the rest of her,” the grandmother wailed. Samantha looked around frantically as Sara handed her a lighter.
As she stepped upon the wet grass, she noticed that only the witch’s cracked skull with patches of wrinkles remained. The skull began to cackle as Samantha clicked the lighter. “If you burn me, the world will spin backward for you to watch it burn one day again.”
Samantha spat on the skull and set it ablaze. From its eyes billowed a black cloud of smoke that permeated the world around her.
When the smoke cleared, the hag’s words rang true. Samantha lost her memories, and time itself seemed to spin backward for hours, every memory dissolving like ash into the deepest crevices of her mind. She felt dizzy, spinning in darkness, until she opened her eyes and found her fiancé holding her on the grassy bank beside the lake. She was clothed again, her shirt drenched in something wet. For one brief moment, she smelled smoke, though nothing around them was burning.
“I’m so sorry,” Caleb said, his voice cracking as he continued. “I didn’t mean for anything to get this bad. I love you so much.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, too.”
Samantha didn’t remember what she was sorry for, but she knew everything would be okay in his arms now that the weight of the world had stopped. When the world spun again, all was right. The next month seemed like absolute bliss as they planned their wedding on the beautiful Gardner Lake. They couldn’t wait to celebrate with their family and friends in a beautiful red barn in Monroe, a venue her grandmother had paid for.
“This barn belonged to your great-grandfather,” her grandmother told them on the night of their rehearsal dinner. “It survived many a hardship.”
Samantha’s eyes watered as she stepped toward the beautifully lit barn surrounded by dozens of family members. She had always loved barns as a little girl, and this was the perfect place to celebrate.
“I have to get something from the car,” Caleb said. “You go on ahead.”
Samantha squealed as the cool December air hit her and burst through the barn doors. She couldn’t wait to see the venue. It would be an absolute fairy tale. But as she stepped inside, the smell of smoke caught in her throat. All the tables and chairs were empty. Upside-down crosses hung from the ceiling, some of them burning.
Samantha began to gasp and scream when she felt a skeletal hand cover her eyes.
“It’s only me,” the hag’s voice whispered.
When the hand lifted, Samantha saw Caleb standing beside her, smiling as their well-dressed loved ones filled the barn and cheered for the couple-to-be. For a moment, she thought the nightmare had passed. Then she smelled smoke. Somewhere in the crowd, the hag began to sing:
“Little Jackie Wilson’s father
Set fire to my barn;
His descendants will feel my harm.
“Little Jackie Wilson’s father
Stabbed me in the chest;
They’ll feel my pain and my unrest.”
Somewhere in the crowd stood Hannah Cranna in her loose white gown, watching them with a smile. The unmistakable smell of smoke grew stronger.
Credit: Tristan Mason
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