You love them. You fear them. But do you really know them?
For decades, Spirit Halloween’s collection of animatronic horrors have stalked cemeteries, writhed within the depths of long-abandoned laboratories, and lied in wait within every nook and cranny that goes bump in the night. Mere snippets of their histories are known to us, but like fear itself, their origins are primal, expansive, and impossible to limit to a single tale. Here, we chronicle some of the most spine-chilling stories of our animatronics throughout the ages. Are you ready to learn the truth?
Read these tales of terror and sleep with one eye open tonight – and think twice before you cross these creepy characters at your local Spirit Halloween store.
Crypt Countess: Birth of a Monster
A chorus of shrieks ushered Alruna back to consciousness.
She would’ve screamed herself if she could in those final hours, however long ago that was. Time must have passed, surely; the cowering little maggots before her looked nothing like the ones who had condemned her to this infernal prison. Her garments were brighter, flimsier, with curling floral prints she had never known in life. But even if she had, it wouldn’t have saved her, no – she’d been far beyond that. She would have screamed for comfort, not salvation. The sound was an old friend to her, a kind of caregiver, even, as it had first greeted her from the moment of her birth. She could picture it now: a rustic logger’s shack with thatched ceilings and the thick aroma of strew and balsam fir woven into the air of the single-room abode. A tense but cheerful buzz courses through the small crowd – after all, a child is to be born. All is well for the young family. The mother, too, in her labor, swears she can even see guardian angels hovering in repose in anticipation of the child’s arrival.
But upon her entrance into this world, the throaty, agonized cries of labor subsided into a brief lull of confusion, then erupted into wails of terror, drowning out her own gentle squalling as Alruna was shoved into the midwife’s arms. Gangly, unnaturally long limbs. Contorted features. A sickly sallowness of the skin. Beady, penetrating eyes.
“Hellerabe! The work of the Red-Eyed Devil,”young Father Staupitz declared, his pale green eyes burning with disgust at her little writhing form. The mother wept.
It was only for the goodness of the midwife, Sister Hildegard, that Alruna was spared a swift end; she took the girl under her wing, naming her for the saint of her craft and teaching her the art of midwifery within the secluded depths of the abbey (its rank cobblestone and vaulted ceilings, Alruna now recalled, were not unlike the catacomb floor where she drew her final breaths). But goodness had nothing to do with it. Monsters were easy to hide in those dark, sprawling corridors – and the rod was seldom spared within them.
Yes, Alruna was raised alongside screams. Shouts of the pain of delivery, of shock at her own sudden appearance toward any passerby. But her favorites were those of the newborns. Pure, foreign to judgment, with no concept of the grotesque outside of the sudden coldness of the world. The screams of an infant could not despise her, could not recoil from her touch. They saw the world just as she did. But there was something else, too – the way a shriek made her pulse jump. The thrill of seeing – practically tasting – an anguish that wasn’t her own was intoxicating. It was a fascination that, to Sister Hildegard’s unease, only festered and grew with time. A fascination that resisted lectures and lashings alike. Alruna, in turn, was asked to assist with fewer and fewer deliveries. At least, until that of a stillborn child in the abbey. The child whose frozen gaze was the last thing to ever flash in her dying mind. Though her fingertips had grown cold and her vision dulled to a faint blur, her memory had pulsed with a vengeance.
It was an unusual birth. The minimal staff in attendance exchanged furtive glances and hushed tones over the young mother who – much to the shock and morbid curiosity of a now adult Alruna, who loomed large and imposing over the sisters – was more flinching bruise than anything, emitting only low, quiet whimpers as they worked. She had been attacked by something, but what that something was remained unclear. So dire was the young woman’s plight that Staupitz himself had attended, presumably to perform last rites. He lingered, statuesque, on the far end of the room. Far from the smell of blood. The sweat hung thick in the air. The filthy buckets of hot water were hastily passed between the sisters. The high whimpers. The low groans. And finally, the terminal shriek that announced the end of one life, and the short-lived beginning of another. Alruna was the one to deliver the child. He was a little mealworm of a thing; slimy, wriggling, unnatural in pallor and more so in construction. Its contorted mouth drew no breath, its gnarled, gangly limbs stiff in place. Its misshapen eyes were snapped open, frozen in a sudden and eternal shock. Its gaze was an icy, pale green.
The room was still with a collective, petrified horror, with the exception of Staupitz, who rushed at Alruna and the child.
“You,” he bellowed. “You did this!”
She clutched the child to her chest with one arm as she scrambled backward on the floor with her remaining limbs. An absurd act, in retrospect. Had she only stood up, she could have revealed the revered Father’s true form: a petty, raving pest beneath her. Now upon her, Staupitz seized her by the shoulder, declaring to all in attendance that the Devil itself was upon them. And Alruna wondered if, had her cheeks been rosy and her frame delicately formed, the sisters would have seized her with less fervor. But ignorant eyes only see monsters. And monsters must be dealt with.
That was the last time Alruna had seen a crowd, until today. These little squalling things that had so carelessly trampled upon her bones. The sound, once, might have delighted her, but it had been a long, long time, and frankly, Alruna had found peace in eternal silence. And what need did these things have to scream? They did not know horror – not really. Perhaps she could show them.
Mutant Sewer Rat: The Thing in the Pipes
“You live in the city, lady. You’re gonna get mice messing with pipes,” Bill said. “But this doesn’t sound like mice to me.”
“Because it isn’t mice, Bill, it’s – ” Jeanine snapped.
“But even then, no mouse nest could back up your system that bad. You sure your tenants ain’t just dumping cooking grease down the drain?”
“How long have I been renting out this dump? You think I wouldn’t have thought that? I’m no dummy, Bill – it’s septic. There’s something in my sewer, and I need you to take a look down there. Can you do that for me? Just take a look?”
“The city should really be looking at this –”
“You know as well as I do that they don’t take care of anything!”
“Jeanine – ”
“You’ve been my plumber for 25 years. You want the money? You come here tonight. If not, I’ll find someone who will.”
The line went dead – alongside Bill’s hopes of a quiet night at home. Who was he to turn down a job, anyway? His budding jowls and his salt-and-pepper 5 o’clock shadow (that was more salt than pepper) reminded him that he wasn’t a young man anymore. His rent kept getting higher, and he needed to keep the lights on no matter how tired he was. This city could eat you alive if you let it, and Bill had just about been worn down to the bone. And there was nothing like a thick, pungent blanket of sewage air in your face to put those lingering thoughts to sleep.
Jeanine was standing on the concrete stoop at the apartment building’s entrance when Bill’s rusted-out truck rolled up. She wore a crown of rollers atop her graying head and clutched her fluffy, baby-pink bathrobe tight against her chest.
“There you are, ya big lug,” she said, pulling Bill close. “I knew you’d come.”
“Paycheck’s a paycheck,” he grunted, drawing back.
“Ah, come on. I know you can’t resist my dazzling company.” She made a show of smugly patting her rollers as she said it. Bill blushed.
“Where’s the drain?”
She led him to the sewer grate on the side street behind the complex. Nothing out of the ordinary, save for the lingering smell of rot that emanated from the grate. It’d take a trained palette to be able to distinguish it from the usual, sickly-sweet tinge of these city streets, and this wasn’t Bill’s first rodeo. He took a gloved hand and gingerly hoisted up the grate, exposing its bottom side. It was pierced with deep claw marks the size of Bill’s head.
“Nope! Nah, not going down there. Not happening.” Bill said, throwing his arms up in surrender.
“But you said –”
“I don’t care what I said! Do you see this, Jeanine? I’ve seen some stuff in my lifetime, but nothing like this. What you need is animal control, not a plumber.”
“Oh, c’mon, I’ll – I’ll pay you double! You can’t just leave me hanging! I’ve got a business to run, here,” Jeanine wailed.
Bill stared down at the clawed grate in silence.
“Y’know what? I’m going inside. When you decide you wanna be a man and do your job, you can come in when you’re done and tell me what’s wrong with my sewer. Ridiculous.”
Bill continued to stare until he heard Jeanine’s door slam shut. He wasn’t exactly a brave man. Not a particularly smart one, either. Life had given him a limited toolbox, and he’d always done his best with what he’d got. But he was a good plumber – and whether he chose to admit it or not, he liked Jeanine, which is why, after a few minutes of pacing and groaning and rummaging through his rusted-out toolbox, Bill went down into the sewer. The smell was overpowering – its soupy sourness pierced straight through his protective goggles. The vast, rank blackness of the tunnel was made only more prominent by the solitary echo of his footsteps. This wasn’t Bill’s first time down in a sewer; so why, then, did he suddenly feel so small, so childlike? Like he was walking at the edge of the world?
His thoughts came crashing to a halt when he heard the sewer grate snap back into place above him. His blood ran cold.
“JEANINE!” He cried. “JEANINE, I’M DOWN HERE!”
His breathing grew heavy as he fumbled for the sewer’s ladder. But his flashlight kept slipping in his now sweat-drenched hands, and his ever-racing pulse made each step sloppy and uneasy. Panic blurred his vision. He stopped to steady himself on a protruding pipe fixture. A warm, prominent, furry protruding pipe fixture.
Furry?
Bill shrieked as his arm instinctively recoiled from the massive creature that stood before him. It was a rat – or at least, it looked like a rat. If a rat were four feet tall with piercing, glowing slits for eyes. Its skin was speckled with sores and dried blood. Whose blood, Bill wasn’t sure. He took a step back. The creature edged forward. In an instant, Bill pivoted on his heel and sprinted away from the thing with a vigor he didn’t know he still had. He ran through the darkness, casting his flashlight aside so that he had both hands free. He plunged himself into slimy darkness; further, further, and further still, until he spotted a tiny red light a few yards off. Some kind of emergency light, maybe, about the size of a golf ball. He charged forward, colliding with a reeking wall of lukewarm sludge with a sickening squelch before he could reach it. As he lay on the ground, stunned, the smell of rust flooded his nostrils. But the beast was nowhere to be found, which kept him from gagging. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, eager to get his bearings. He turned on his flashlight.
By all means, Bill should have been delighted to be alive. And to know that he was right; the sewer blockage wasn’t mice, or even some mass of kitchen grease. But delight was the last thing to cross his mind as he gazed in horror upon the wall of garbage stuffed with chewed, dismembered human remains. Entrails stuffed with crushed soda cans. A mangled, bloodied arm bent around a plastic, yellow quick-mart bag. A rat’s nest, if you could even call its creator a rat.
Its creator, whose saliva Bill could now feel running down his back.
Sinister Straw Man: Strange Fruits of a Stranger Harvest
In this world, Chuck knew, there are givers and takers. And Bennie was a taker. A talented one, too – though Bennie would tell you that there’s nothing talented about it, that instead it was a matter of reframing the mind. The world, he would tell you, was already his; and anything is easier to acquire if it’s already yours, ripe for the reclaiming. Chuck could see it in his eyes as they stood together in the field, his hungry gaze practically poaching the murder of crows above them mid-flight. Why, he would’ve plucked the false eye out of the old man’s head if he so much as fancied its ruby red gleam. But Bennie wasn’t after his eye – he wanted his farm.
“So, we’re looking at what, forty, fifty acres, here?” Bennie asked the old man, kicking at an apple core-ridden lump of soil as he surveyed the property.
“Ah, pitchoun, what you see here is sixty acres of the finest land in all of Limousin,” replied the old man as he wagged his finger, his thick French accent curling each syllable. “This land used to feed kings and queens, centuries ago. Golden wheat, plump grapes, round, juicy apples – and where are the kings and queens? Poof! Gone! But the land… the land is still fit for royalty. The land remembers its worth.”
The land in question, Chuck noted, had largely fallen to rot. Aged trellises stuck out of the dried vineyard like worn teeth hanging from blackened gums. The barn, if one could call it that, was a hollow shell of crumbling stone and creaking wood. All that was left intact was the admittedly lush apple orchard they now stood in, guarded by a burlap scarecrow in a purple robe and a wide-brim patchwork hat. He shuddered before its almost lifelike countenance. This place couldn’t be developed soon enough, he thought. What were a few rotting apples and an old strawman compared to the vast, untapped aquifer beneath them? Once the land was Bennie’s – which, by all means, it practically already was – he’d erect a data center fit for a king, a king of a new world that spoke less in a language of wine and wheat and more in that of information. Sheer quantities of information were worth triple their weight in gold – but did the old man know? How could he? He barely knew the monetary worth of his own land.
“Well, Mr. Baudelaire – a property such as this one warrants only the highest asking price, no?” Chuck asked, flitting a mischievous glance his business partner’s way.
Bennie cut in before the old man could reply. A wolfish grin poked through his lips. “Why, Chuck,” he said, “a distinguished, historical property like the good sir’s farm is beyond priceless. Now, I think if we play our cards right with the firm, we could get our dear Mr. Jacques Baudelaire, say, one million American dollars?”
The old man’s eye gleamed. Even his ruby-like prosthetic seemed to take on a fiery twinkle. He brought a gnarled hand to his chest in awe, staring back at the strawman and his orchard as he processed the offer. “Why, gentlemen… I don’t know what to say,” he breathed.
“Say that it’s a deal,” Bennie chimed.
“One million American dollars…” Baudelaire murmured. His gaze scanned feverishly over the horizon. If Chuck didn’t know any better, he’d say that the old fool was holding back a laugh. He began to bounce from foot to foot in a makeshift jig. “Ah, one million dollars! My boys, you have a deal! Wait here – I’ll run and grab the paperwork!”
Chuck and Bennie watched as the old man practically skipped toward the truck, where they’d left their briefcases. “You’re sick, you know that?” the former told his colleague.
“Nothing sick about it – all I see is business ripe for the harvest,” Bennie replied, as he plucked a low-hanging apple from the tree beside him. He tossed it from palm to palm, then passed it to Chuck before picking another for himself. “Might as well sample the goods before this place gets dozed – fit for a king, right?”
The two men clinked their apples together as one would champagne. Chuck hesitated for a moment as Bennie crunched greedily through the fruit’s taut, scarlet skin. As much as he’d learned under his partner’s tutelage, taking didn’t come as naturally to him. He almost felt bad for poor old Mr. Baudelaire. But how much time did the man have left, anyway? Surely, he’d lived a full life out here. Maybe, if they could turn a decent enough profit from the place, Chuck would invest in a country estate of his own. He sighed, then brought the apple to his lips, siphoning a nibble of sweet flesh from its shiny exterior. Just as he swallowed it, a hand slapped the fruit out of his hand. A nauseating choking sound followed suit. Beside him, Bennie sank to the ground, one hand lingering on Chuck’s arm as the other desperately clawed at his throat as his body convulsed.
“Bennie?”
Chuck glanced down at the fallen apples beside Bennie, which had withered into lumps teeming with wriggling maggots. His stomach lurched. Bennie cried out – a pathetic, strangled sound – but was soon interrupted by a surge of fresh maggots pouring out of his mouth. They swallowed all noise, squirming out of each of his facial orifices until his features were unrecognizable, consumed by the fleshly, writhing masses that drilled through his skin. Chuck reeled backward as Bennie’s raw, infested arms clawed toward him. Bennie, or, rather, the mass that had once been Bennie, let out a final, guttural moan before collapsing in upon itself, squelching in the soil below. The crows overhead joined in the chorus. A land fit for a king, yes – but the time for kings had long gone.
Chuck pivoted on his heel, spinning around toward the truck in vain. Perhaps he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, or perhaps the scarecrow had somehow moved. Regardless, it had appeared behind him mid-flight, and now he laid prone at its feet, head pounding from his sudden collision. The strawman’s scraggly burlap face slumped down toward him. The crows above picked up their circling into a frenzy. Chuck could’ve sworn that the scraggly old thing’s eyes started to glow. But how could he have been sure?
He was too distracted by the wriggling sensation building in his throat.
Jack the Reaper: The Devil’s Right Hand
Death had come to Philadelphia.
The city itself lay largely dormant against the pale orange sky, a humid, cobblestone mausoleum of deserted storefronts and footpaths rank with bile-soaked cots. Felicity pressed her vinegar-laden handkerchief closer to her face. She walked in the street’s center, carefully avoiding the doorways of afflicted homes. Kensington may have appeared empty, but fever – and, in turn, death – lurked everywhere. It started in the ports, steadily crept through the shanties, and eventually sank its teeth into the heart of the city itself, leaving convulsing, pulseless, yellow-eyed masses in its wake. It was devils’ work, if there were such a thing as devils; but Felicity, hailing from a family of physicians, knew better. Any devils at play could be smote by Archangels Bloodletting and Calomel, if the epidemic of 1763 had taught them anything. And yet – nearly 5,000 lay dead. Devils’ work, indeed.
But Felicity was at work, too. She had been sent at the request of the good doctor Jean Devèze, who toiled restlessly at the fever hospital on Bush Hill. A right slaughterhouse, Felicity thought to herself with a shudder. She’d known its body-ridden halls only briefly; but the overpowering stench of soiled clothing, rotting breath, and decomposing bodies tossed within the churning masses of the sick would perfume her senses for a lifetime, she felt. All that could be done was to wait for the impending frost – or, in Felicity’s case, retrieve fresh supplies for Dr. Devèze from Moffet’s Apothecary, one of the few vendors left untouched and unevacuated. Though, as Felicity approached the shop’s boarded windows, no one would have known by the looks of it. She knocked at the door. A heavy silence, followed by a sudden clattering and whimpering, greeted her.
“Mr. Moffet?” prompted Felicity. She could feel a swishing scurry of movement from the floor, as if something was crawling across the floor toward her.
“GO AWAY!” bellowed a shrill man’s voice from inside.
“Mr. Moffet, it’s Felicity. Felicity Laume.” She paused, nervously gripping her handkerchief. “I’m here to fetch supplies for Dr. Devèze.”
The scurrying stopped, and after a brief pause, was replaced by a chorus of intricate locks snapping open from the other side of the door. It slanted open just a crack, revealing a sliver of Moffet’s face. His eyes were puffy and red.
“Oh, Felicity, dear,” he said, “have you come for deliverance?”
Felicity considered the shakiness of his tone, the distant softness of his voice. She took a half step back. “Are you… well, Mr. Moffet?” she ventured.
The eye behind the door widened. “Oh, yes, yes, please… don’t be afraid. Come in, child, I have what you seek.”
Before Felicity could decide whether or not to heed Mr. Moffet’s call, however, the door swung open and a sore-spotted arm pulled her inward. The pungent blanket of sourness that erupted from the doorway alone was enough to suspend her senses. Inside was an infinite blackness that slowly dissolved as Moffet lit an oil lamp on the counter. His plump, aged hands hovered over the flame. They were stained with rusty splotches. The stains, she realized, covered most of what little she could see of the place. It looked ransacked: toppled stools, shattered specimen jars, the wooden paneling of the walls carved in with tallies and nonsensical ramblings littered with a man’s name. Jack. Moffet’s voice cut through her thickening dread.
“I’d almost lost hope, Felicity,” he started, pacing about the room. “I’m sure you’d seen it, over at Bush Hill. The medicines weren’t working. We were dying by the droves – and after seeing the contents of so many a man’s innards, who would go on, yes? But no – death is out of the question. What good were my studies and my work without meaningful, practical application? And what use was this application without the promise of continued life? Continued, eternal life?”
“…do you have Dr. Devèze’s supplies, Mr. Moffet?”
“Better…BETTER! I have something better,” he replied. “Just…stay. Stay right there.”
Moffet retreated into the blackness of the pantry. Felicity edged toward the lamp, gingerly taking it into her hands – which had begun to tremble themselves. She slowly traversed the perimeter of the room, illuminating a new, violent curiosity with each step. Swirling vials of limp mosquitoes, bones picked clean, bloodletting tools rusted and sticky with Heaven-knows-what. And inscribed all around them was Jack, Jack, Jack. Moffet bustled out from the pantry, hoisting a small vat of thick, wine-colored liquid. His arms were speckled with fresh, oozing gashes.
“Why, Mr. Moffet –”
“MOVE!” he bellowed, charging toward the rug behind Felicity’s feet.
She leaped out of his way, watching in horror as he flung back the rug to reveal a cluster of carvings – ancient sigils, by the look of it. Moffet began to chant in a tongue foreign to Felicity. With each verse, he dipped his hands into the vat, coating the sigils with its rust-tinged contents. To her horror, the runes began to glow a cool, unnatural green. Black smoke plumed from below, compounding into the shape of a hooded figure. A skeletal hand reached from the depths. It rose steadily and extended its gnarled finger into a point. A point directed straight at her. And, before she could even think the word Jack, it lunged.
As if on instinct, Felicity threw the lamp toward the thing, sending the flames clattering upon the floor where they quickly ate at the wood paneling. With one final look at Moffet – who was now limp within the circle, eyes rolled back so that only their muddled whites bade her goodbye – she flung open the door and retreated into the street.
The thing’s singular, red eye bore upon her in a simmering contempt (or was it amusement?) as she raced down the street, crying out to the dead, to the dying, to anything that would listen.
Devils’ work, indeed.
Is it cold in here? Funny… we could’ve sworn that we could hear the shivering of your spine back there. We hope you enjoyed your journey into the twisted histories of some of our most terrifying animatronics. Can you bring yourself to face these fearsome figures at your next Spirit Halloween visit? There’s really only one way to find out. For more frights, fun DIYs, and everything Spirit Halloween, be sure to keep up with the Spirit Halloween Blog! And remember – fear always finds a way.
