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Trick or Treat



Estimated reading time — 8 minutes

Don’t bother trying to find it. You won’t find anything about the name of the town or what happened here. This manuscript will be found long after the events that transpired in this place, but I hope against everything else that you’re someone in a position of power. I pray to God himself that you can prevent this from ever happening again, but I don’t want to give you too much credit. Like me, you are only human, after all. They are not. They’ve been around for a very, very long time.

Fat chance, really. You probably don’t want that responsibility, and even if you did take it upon your shoulders to track them down, you can’t single-handedly stop the children. Their manipulators are not “on the grid.” Whoever engineered this is in control of the world on a very disturbing level.

This is what I want you to do. Read these pages, if they’re still legible, and take what you will from them. Don’t go on a wild goose chase, and realize that when you find this book that it will not be in the place where I left it. They’ll move it somewhere else, to deceive you. I’ve left my mark on a tree there. Only then, when you see my name, will you know, “this is the place.” You may have even heard of it in the history books, but be assured, any rumors on Wikipedia or Google pages that you pull up will be guess-work at best. None of them are even close to the truth. When you find the place, there may already be another town just like it. That’s what I’m trying to stop. If we’re not successful, then just realize, above all things, that evil exists. I’m not talking about bad people, or tragic accidents. I’m talking real, intelligent, ancient evil. It is calculated, and it is always one step ahead of you. Should you decide to take my place and become the paragon to prevent the corruption of the hearts and minds of children, I thank you in advance.

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I told you that I’m human. I lied. I used to be, before All Hallow’s Eve on that fateful night. I’ve been alive since then, far longer than any human being, and the reason is because I love children. I’ve always loved them in their purity and their innocence. That’s why I was taken in by their ruse. That’s why I’ve finally decided to put all this down, centuries later. I won’t be here much longer, and someone has to take up the burden.

I’ve waited….. until I saw them return. They’ll be back this year. They’re planning the same thing again, and I can’t stop them. Again, I can’t expect that much from you, but I’m only giving you all this so you’ll believe me. I have to be believable. If you think I’m crazy, you’ll throw this in a garbage can, and more people will disappear. It’s time to tell you what happened. I’m rambling.

Back then, All Hallow’s Eve was the time for evil’s ascension. You’ve all forgotten. If you left your house on that night in the old country, you were a devil worshipper. “Halloween” was not the term we used. We fled to the shores of this country because we were persecuted for our lifestyle choices. We worshipped nature, the changing of the seasons, the solstice of spring, autumn, winter, and summer. In the purest sense of the word, we were druids. Our names and accents were English, but we were servants of the earth.

We were some of the first to celebrate it as a holiday. The natives here were puzzled by our behavior, but also frightened by it, and so they left us alone. They misunderstood. We were not the ones to be afraid of. At the time, I was relieved. They’d attacked us in our settlements, time and time again, but as it drew closer to the end of October, they stayed away. Maybe in their own noble bonds with the earth and soil, they knew something terrible was on the horizon.

They were right. John Hunter’s little boy wanted to be a native, with a bow and arrow and a real headdress. Little Mary Taylor made a dress that was crafted after the local schoolhouse teacher’s prettiest outfit. She idolized her educator, of course. They all had their get-ups; they were the first trick-or-treaters in what was to become the United States of America, one hundred and fifty years later. We sent them out to frollick about the settlement, collecting apples and tarts and other sweet things in to their burlap goody bags. They were no Snickers or Milky Ways, and yet, the magic of this “holiday” held no less sway over them than it does the youth of our current time. They dress up as the Joker, the Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These children were their predecessors.

I sent my daughter with Mary and John Hunter junior. Despite our mistrust and wariness of the Anglican church and the monarchs that presided over it, my little girl was dressed as the queen of England. I refused to crush her fantasy world, and so I simply indulged her. We heard promises to return after sundown, to say yes ma’am and no sir, and not to linger too long if they were invited inside the households of our community.

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We didn’t realize that the house on the edge of the settlement existed until we saw the children go inside. There were no lanterns or sources of light in the windows, no fire or harvest dolls on the outside of the dwelling. As we sat in the middle of the town hall, imbibing in the pleasures of distilled moonshine (none of you will ever make it as potent as we did in those days) amongst our brethren, we watched our young ones gravitate across the middle of our town, to the foreboding household that had seemingly been constructed overnight. When we gazed upon it, it seemed as though the place were “shimmering.” It pained my vision to look upon the building, as if my senses were being forced and propelled in another direction. Such a thing is difficult to put in to words, but I seemed to be the only one who realized that our kids were all heading to the same place. When I questioned John Hunter as if something were odd about their actions, he stared at me as if I were insane.

“What do you mean?” He asked. “There’s no house there. They’re going to play by the stockades.”

The sun had set by that point, but as I said before, none of them were concerned. The natives hadn’t shown up for weeks. I decided to walk to the phantom dwelling that only I and the children could see, to peer inside and see who these new settlers were, and why it called to the youths as if it were a black hole in a sea of stars.

I tried to stand outside, to look through the window, but when I saw what was happening, it was too late. I breached the doorway with my buck-knife drawn, but there was nothing about the things inside that I could harm with a weapon.

There’s something deep inside of us, something embedded within the human spirit, that’s perfectly aware when we encounter something truly terrible. Fear, horror, evil, revulsion…. it all hits you in a spastic wave, like a fierce exploding bullet that shatters the innermost parts of your soul with a relentless and powerful fury. I saw it in that moment, standing in that darkened doorway. They weren’t people, and they weren’t spirits. They were halfway there, lingering over the unconscious bodies of my daughter and her peers in their hooded black robes of half-existence. There was one, in particular, who made me feel as though my eyes would pop like ripened cherries when I stared at it. It was the leader, the source of that tug, that pull….. and it was slowly fading, disappearing like a gaseous black cloud of death, through my little girl’s nostrils and mouth. She was gasping for air, as if every breath after the one that preceded it were filled with acid…. as if she were hungry for real, fresh air in her small lungs. With every breath, the figure faded deeper in to her, along with the rest of them.

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I wish I could say that I was a hero, and that I hacked them all to bits; I wish I could say that I saved the day and made Halloween a night when the worst thing that children have to worry about is poisoned candy. It didn’t happen. There was one of them left, floating toward me on elongated, blackened tendrils of shimmering nothingness. By all real means of my imagination, it shouldn’t have BEEN there, but it was, and soon, it was going inside of me. The last thing I saw were their little feet, scurrying out of the phantom-house and in to the town. I FELT that something terrible was about to happen. I had no idea. Everything went black, and then, I was outside of myself. I was conscious, but observing my feet, my hands, doing things beyond my own scope of physical control.

They led me and our children in to our meeting hall, where, of course, the kids were embraced by the open, loving arms of their parents. I witnessed the betrayal, the brutal moments in which the truth instilled by the love for family and offspring would transform in to a cause for the destruction of our village.

They absorbed them. There’s no better adjective for what happened. One moment, they were there, and seconds later, they were nothing but dark essence, filtering in through the eyes and noses and mouths of their devil-children. It was over in minutes. A night that should have been a celebration of nature, of the seasons, had turned in to the end of everything that we knew and loved here in our new land.

I started to fight it. The kids knew. The moment I began to resist, to try and reclaim my limbs and mind from the corrupting influence within, their heads snapped back from their feast of souls to survey me in my struggle. My daughter’s eyes were sunken, black pools of the abyss, devoid of any emotion, any semblance of the bright-eyed stare that she once held for me in all her love and adoration for father. I miss that the most, really. The way she’d run to me when I came in from the fields every evening as the sun went down. I lived for that. What reason do I have to live now, other than to find her and stop them? I’m incapable. That falls on you, my friend.

They took the part of my daughter that counts, the part that I loved and cherished, and turned her in to a servant. You ask me why I’m still alive, and again, it’s because I love her, so very, very much. Her body is a hollow shell, filled with the malefice and blackness of evils beyond our world.

The black-robed things have grown as centuries have passed. They are from some place that is not of this world, but their urgency, their hunger, to devour and destroy, is insatiable. It’s an exponential, amplifying contagion on mankind, and All Hallow’s Eve is their pinnacle, their Christmas. I’ve done my best to warn you throughout history, to leave my mark in places where their desolation has left nothing but dust on the wind and empty houses. A deserted football field in a Texas ghost town. A card room in the back of a night club in Chicago, right under the nose of civilization. Roanoke Island, North Carolina, before Johne Rolfe found it in the aftermath.

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The thing that I expelled through sheer force of will alone has left me with an unusually long and empty life, devoid of anything but my desire for revenge. I have failed. I’m pleading with you. October thirty-first is not long away. My little girl, or what’s left of her, is going to lead them to the same place. It’s been re-founded, except now, it hums with sport utility vehicles and cell phones. I don’t want this to happen to your child.

Go to Roanoke, and stop them from repeating the ritual. Those bodies they inhabit now are frail, on their way out. It’s been almost five hundred years. They’ll need new ones on this Halloween. Look for a building that appears as though it shouldn’t be there. It will be across from that very tree where I signed my name, where I made my mark. I changed my title, named myself after the tribe of natives who knew it was coming…. who, perhaps, tried to warn us, but for some reason, we failed to heed or recognize their warnings. They were more closely attuned to the earth than us, and yet, they were still wiped out, eventually.

Trick or treat?

Go now. You don’t have much time.

– Croatoan

CREDIT: D.A. Wilcox 

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104 thoughts on “Trick or Treat”

  1. Yes. It was long. No. We don’t care.
    Pick up a book. Flip to the last page, take note of the page number. Close the book. No matter what book you picked up (Assuming it’s not a kids book) that was at least ten hundred thousand words. AT LEAST. This has nowhere near that amount.
    Now get over it.

  2. Queen of Frosts

    Beautifully written story, almost an outline for a novel, or submission for a compilation. Reminiscent of ghost stories from the 1800’s. Would love to read more from you, and i hope we will. thank you for the effort, this story gave me chills!

  3. What’s up with everyone claiming this was copying from Harry Potter, honestly the only kind of reference between this and that I’m seeing is how the things in this story suck out souls lie the dementors in HP. It’s actually a good pasta, a bit much of rambling from the narrator but I find it adds to the suspense of finally hearing the story.

  4. You’re on a site to read scary stories. Yes, some people like long stories that have substance to them unlike most of the short ones that are “Then he turned around and a monster ate him” Seriously, it isn’t a 700 page novel, get over it.
    Oh btw I’m a potter head and there is NOTHING like this in Harry Potter. I also am a huge fan of Supernatural and their version had croatoan and roanoke in it and thats where the similarities end. It’s about a demon virus not killer children. Try writing a story of any substance yourself and you’ll regret judging this gem so harshly.

  5. I really liked how this story worked out, though I wish you hadn’t signed the bottom with croatoan. I would have much more enjoyed it being left more out there.

    I also felt like the beginning of this story was very similar to the movie American haunting

  6. Heh. I knew from the first two paragraphs that Roanoke would appear some how in the story. It fits well. Good story, the mysteriousness and the feeling of impending doom are welcoming.

  7. ok 1) I thought this pasta was great and anyone who is critisizing it for being to long is being silly. I can understand a lot of the critism other than that one and the one saying it was done in Harry Potter, though I could see it being done by supernatural. Anyhow I don\’t ever remember seeing it done in this particular way.
    2) I absolutely loved the mixing in with the Druids and Roanoke Island. During one of my college classes the case of Roanoke was one of the things I studied and in actuality the case was never truly solved. Some people thought that the people who disappeared on Roanoke Island merged with a nearby tribe, but it was never confirmed just as the idea that there could have been a big volcano explosion that destroyed the people at Roanoke Island was never confirmed. I would be interested in learning about what truly happened there though. For credentials as to how long ago I got my information I got the information on September of 2010 so my information is pretty current.
    3) Great Pasta. Had I not already done my research you would have had me looking up Roanoke Island from this. 10/10

  8. I actually forgot I was in the middle of reading this…
    That was almost 6 hours ago.

    I had to force myself to finish reading.
    It just didn’t have much “grab” or interest to it.
    And it was way too long for the story’s point.

  9. Hi , don't turn around

    WHO WAS FIGURE…
    ok i guess it didnt have to come to that, but honestly, i figure satan and some demons.
    men to the crossbows and silver bullets >3

  10. What the hell is wrong with you people?
    I thought it was a great story, Something worth the time it takes to read!
    That’s what’s wrong with people of today, NO PATIENCE

    CAREBEAR-JIZZ
    “Take back the world we once loved!! Say NO to the new breed of humans being twisted into submission and forced into the role of APATHY over EMPATHY. Say NO to TYRANNY! Say yes to the fight for FREEDOM “

  11. I got about halfway through.
    It didnt get my attention at all, other than the fact that it was centered around Halloween.
    However, I’ve read worse.

  12. Didn’t grab me in the begining as i’d hope it would, Sorry to say didn’t get very far past first three paragraphs.

  13. Not sure how it can feel forced when it’s mentioned in one sentence in the entire story. If anything, the allusion to Roanoke is very small, and independent of the plot-line itself. This is “small-town fiction” and could be applied to any old-era colonial settlement… it’s inspired by Stephen King and his tendency to base most of his fiction in small villages or communities. Thanks for the feedback though.

  14. It was doing well until the author brought Roanoke into it. Seriously I don’t understand why people are so fascinated by that supposed bit of forteana, it has the single most obvious explanation ever: Settlers were starving and abandoned, realized the nearby Natives seemed to have their shit together, fucked off to live with the local natives instead of starving to death and wrote where they went on a tree.

    My reaction to this story is fairly meh, I’m sad to say. It has potential but needs a bit more work and the attempt to tie it into a real world event just feels forced.

  15. It was another interesting story to read. It made my mind wander as I read what would happen next, Not sure how it would end. It made me a little tired and more diffucult to read, but what I did read erased the boredom I’d had before.

  16. A little too “flowerly” writing for an undead person sending an urgent message warning civilizatin of these whispy beings.

    Otherwise, a good Halloween story :]

  17. colonists of Roanoke would have been driven by economic prosperity, not religious freedom. They wouldn’t have had a problem with Queen Elizabeth at all. They also would not have celebrated Halloween; that was a tradition for more Catholic-dominated cultures such as Irish and Scottish. Instead they probably would have celebrated Guy Fawkes Day.
    Still, despite the giant plot holes the writing itself was good. Colonial-centered stories are very hard to do. 6/10.

  18. Wha- WAIT A MINUTE!

    There is a story here about a log being found on a ship. go to the Locations section. At one point “The captain was found in the hold today. He seemingly woke up when we approached him, and starting yelling something about Roanoake. All I know about Roanoake is that it was a very old island.” And, at another point, when they reach their intended destination of Siakon, they find the word ‘Croatoan’ carved into a tree.

    COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!

  19. TheOnlyOneWhoKnowsHowToReadOnThisSite

    It’s not actually about Roanoke, that was just one example of the many places the narrator left a mark, you silly shits.

  20. It tied in two stories and tried to shed some light on Roanoke, but it was just way too damn long and I felt like the narrator just honestly wouldn’t stfu. I wanted to know what happened. At the end it ended pretty abruptly with a clever Trick or Treat comment, but felt it would’ve been creepier if something read this to me. Decent pasta, pretty tl;dr though.

  21. The treato, I’ve heard, seen and almost experinced what you are. The unforbidding maddnes is true. But one step on that cement concrete in Winnipeg, I felt brand new :)

    Everything was so new. so sharp . I fell inlove with it then on.

    The treato, you have no idea what more they possess.

  22. Lol @ Millions Overman. Someone posted under my name.

    I am a pretentious jack-ass, but I’ve entered my writing into things before, and have allowed myself to be criticized. In fact, I have a story posted on this site.

    I think I’d probably know that about myself. Someone was just mad that I didn’t like this pasta and had a damn good reason for not liking it.

    Then again, I guess I’m just spoiled. I usually spend my time reading things that aren’t three steps below average, so a story like this just gets all my biased. Shame, isn’t it?

  23. “It’s time to tell you what happened. I’m rambling.”

    NO KIDDING.
    The narrator builds up so much “This is so scary and important and you’re never going to believe it but you have to or else, etc, etc.” talk, and takes forever to get to the actual story.

    That aside, it was fairly good pasta.

  24. Where are all of these Harry Potter connections? I see none.
    This was amazing. I liked the connection between the mystery of Roanoke and druids.

  25. Interesting and entertaining, but not 10/10. I’d say… 8/10. AND I learned something that I didn’t know before (and had an excuse to look up something on Wikipedia!) /win!

  26. Inventive, imaginative story, but too long and somewhat cliched turn-of-phrase (example: the phrase “that fateful night” snaps me out of the narrative). If this story was revised down, however, perhaps with some of the unnecessary verbosity removed it would be a really nice read.

  27. Grow a pair then, post a story you think is good and allow it to be torn to shreds, Sama. Put your money where mouth is, I think you could write a decent creepy pasta.

  28. I’m pretentious enough to slam someone else’s writing, but I’d never have the balls to enter any sort of writing contest myself. How are you guys?

  29. Any and all of you who are criticizing VH’s work, especially this entry are honestly out of your god damn minds. If you had the appreciation and the mental capacity to read a story longer than one-hundred words, then you would love this story. Not that I’m on anyone’s nuts or anything, just disappointing to see that people don’t appreciate great writing when it’s right in front of them.

  30. I’m glad I went through a period of apathy for creepypasta and did not end up visiting the forum for the Halloween pasta contest. If this was the winner, I’d have lamented reading any of the entries.

    This story was far longer than it needed to be. While I’m perfectly content spending a long time reading a good story, it has to be GOOD for me to want to read it all. This was boring. There were long bouts of story when nothing was there to keep my interest. I might’ve considered it decent if it were about half the length, but dragging on a less-than-mediocre story is just enough to ruin my mood and kill the rating.

    Not to mention, the amount of originality is miniscule. It’s been done before, and it’s been done better.

    4/10

  31. Is it just me, or does everything this guy writes have a really obvious thing he stole his ideas from… this one is Harry Potter… Violent Harvest, do you have any original ideas?

  32. CROATOAN. A demonic plague that causes humans to kill each other. Pretty good story. But it gives me the vibe that its a trap.

  33. But… wasn’t Roanoke proven to have just been the colonists merging with the natives who knew how to work the land? That accounts for the pale-skinned ones that were found later as well.

    On the pasta, too much description. It tires the story out a little.

  34. But… wasn’t it proven that the colony merged with the native americans there, explaining why pale-skinned ones were found in a tribe close by.

    On the pasta: too much description, it tires the story out.

  35. But… wasn’t it proven that the colony merged with the native americans there, explaining why pale-skinned ones were found in a tribe close by.

    On the pasta: too much description, it tires the story out.

  36. Pretty good, but reminded me of the Croatoan Virus from Supernatural. Even the “creatures” seeping into the humans. But overall, a good pasta. :D

  37. Since you asked, the Croatoans were members of the Tuscarora tribe of native indians. Contrary to popular belief, there was no such people called Croatoan, that was just what their village was called.

  38. But Roanoke was planned. Before they left they dismantled all of the fortifications. I can’t see any creatures carefully taking apart the city’s structures.

  39. I knew it! Throughout the whole story I kept thinking to myself this had something to do with the Roanoke Colony – CROATOAN.
    When I got to the last line I couldn’t help but smile, it was a good read, I really enjoyed it.

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