Stay Out of Crater Lake by JLGoodwin1990

Author here! It's been a hot minute since MrCreepyPasta narrated one of my stories, and especially since the popular Abandoned Ship story of mine, but here you guys are! It is one of my older ones, as I'm currently working on a new, rather ambitious project I'm wanting to turn into a manuscript, but I hope you enjoy it anyways! ~ J.L. Goodwin

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm honestly not sure where to even begin with this.
It's been well almost a year to the day now,
and I still can't fully understand or comprehend what happened
that day. Neither have I been able to fully get
over it. I floated from one psychologist and psychiatrist to another,

(00:28):
which tell me that what I experienced couldn't possibly have occurred.
And yet as much as they try to make my
mind believe that, both with words and medication, as much
as I try and make my mind believe it wasn't real,
I know, deep deep inside myself than it was. So

(00:55):
I'm choosing to post my account of this here, both
as a admittedly rather pathetic attempt to release some of
the guilt and horror that I've carried with me since
that day, and more importantly, as a warning to anyone

(01:15):
who listened. You see, I used to love scuba diving.
I became certified when I was sixteen years old. I've
dove both in fresh water and saltwater ever since. I've
met and become friends with many great and talented people
because of it, and Tyler. Tyler was one of them,

(01:37):
daredevil at heart and always up for an adventure. I
took him under my wing, as he was less experienced
than I was and a few years younger than me.
He eventually became close enough that we called each other brothers,
and though we lived in different states, we always met
up at least once a year to go on a
scuba diving trip. That was up until the pandemic hit

(02:00):
a few years ago, And when it hit, due to
the quarantines and difficulty to travel that it made, we
wrote off our annual meet up for twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one. We kept in touch, but it just
didn't feel the same. One afternoon in April of twenty

(02:21):
twenty two, I received a phone call from him. All
the usual cheeriness and the bravado seemed to have been
sucked out of his voice. He told me that his
work had chosen to lay him off as a way
to cut back spending costs due to the strain his
business had been put under. Had he been forced to
go on food stamps and cash assistance as a result

(02:42):
of it. To make matters worse for Veronica, his longtime
girlfriend of almost seven years had decided at the same
time to break off her relationship with him. Let me
tell you that woman truly did complete him. And losing
her on top of the stress I'm losing his job
and the inability to find a new one quickly, it

(03:06):
quite literally deflated him. I felt helpless, unable to do
anything to cheer him up. Standing in my kitchen holding
my phone, an idea that had been floating around in
my head sprang to the surface. Hey, ty, I asked,
trying to fill my voice with as much excitement and
mystery as I could. I thought of something we could

(03:27):
do that might make you feel better? Yeah? What? He asked,
his voice inflectionless and hollow, like that of a robot. Well,
I've been thinking, I mean, I have a few days
off coming up in the next few days from my
remote work. So what about just packing up, you know,
having me come drive and get you and we take

(03:50):
a scuba diving trip. I heard a slight stir on
the other end of the line, but his voice remained
the same. I guess, So, but where could we go?
So many places are off limits due to the you know,
I mean, have you taken a look at the news?
A slight smile crept across my face as I prepared

(04:11):
to spring my little idea on him. The place I'm
thinking of is one where there won't be as many
people right now, just because of the season. You know,
my smile grew wider. What's one of the places you
wanted us to dive together the most? But we've never
been able to a pause? I mean, there's plenty of

(04:32):
places like Superior Blue Hole, Great Barrier Reef, I cut
him off. No, I'm talking about someplace much closer to
both of us. I dropped my voice low. I'm talking
about Greater Lake. There was the longest pause of the

(04:52):
call yet, and then he spoke, his voice now filled
with something I'd been hoping for, curiosity and a bit
of excitement. Crater Lake. Huh, Yeah, that's one place you
and I have had on our bucket list for years.
A hint of doubt crept into his voice. But I mean,

(05:13):
how you know as well as I do that scuba
diving isn't allowed there. I mean, if we get caught,
I cut him off again. Don't worry about that, bro,
I've been doing some scouting of the area, and there
aren't many park rangers in the area as there would
be in the summer or fall. If we go at
a certain time. We have a few hour window to
check out what we can and grab some quality picks
and video. Another second of silence, Then why well not?

(05:41):
I got nothing to lose and this might help get
my mind off the world of shit surrounding me. So yeah,
let's do it man. A grin spread across my face
as I heard the first hint of his old self
creep back in. We spoke for a few minutes longer,
fine too in the details, and then we hung up
to both get some slip. As I walked to my bedroom,

(06:02):
I glanced at a framed picture of the lake that
hung on my wall. Couldn't help but grin as my
gaze lingered for a moment more, looking from the edges
of the water to Wizard Island. I climbed into bed
and drifted off into a sound sleep. That night was

(06:25):
honestly the last decent night of sleep I ever got.
The next morning, I packed all the gear we' knead
into the back of my battered Ford Probe and then
made the many hour long drive from northern California to
Salt Lake City. When he answered the door, he was
clearly beyond excited. He almost seemed like a kid on

(06:45):
Christmas morning, ready to open his presence. He was infectious.
As we left back west, couldn't help but revel in
the same feeling of excitement and a bit of risk
and danger that we were about to undertake. After a
few fill up combined with many snack and restroom breaks,
we passed into Oregon, stopping a final time and clem

(07:07):
Falls to spend the night before entering Crater Lake National
Park the next day. We told the ranger at the
entrance that we were merely heading in to do some
snow shoeing around the lake, showing him the snow shoes
we bought in town as a front. After a moment
of taking down our names, he smiled, Be careful, boys,
he said, he had some recent snowfall and some areas

(07:28):
are tricky going. He thanked him, then drove up into
the parking lot, getting out and retrieving our packs, attempting
to hide the obvious yellow glow of our scuba tanks
underneath them. After a few minutes hike, we were rewarded
with an amazing view of the place we'd come for.
For those of you who had never seen Crater Lake,

(07:50):
it used to be an active volcano called Mount Mazama
with a volcano collapsed around seven thousand years ago. It
formed what is known as the Caldera. The view is amazing.
You can look from the top ridge and see the
rim of the dormant volcano wrapping around the forested sides
leading down to the water's edge. On the west side

(08:14):
of the lake lay Wizard Island, having pushed out of
the water from a secondary eruption. You could also see
Miriam Kane, a smaller spigot of land rising up. Tyler
and I shared a grin and a high five before
carefully making our way down to the shore of the lake.

(08:34):
We looked around for a few minutes, catching a glimpse
of some snowshoers disappearing into the treeline, before hiding our
packs behind a rather large group of rocks that stripping
off our clothes, revealing the dry suits that we had
underneath them. Helping each other put on our tanks, vests
and weight belts, we made our final checks of our
gear before pulling the hoods up over our heads to

(08:56):
protect them from the cold water. I glanced at Tie
as I picked up my flippers. Ready for this man,
I asked him He gave me a dopey grin his trademark,
signed that he was beyond stoked. Does the bear shit
in the woods? He asked, earning a shared laugh between

(09:16):
both of us. I picked up both cameras and handed
one to him. Let's do this while we still can,
I proclaimed, slipping on the flippers and turning to walk
backwards into the water. Even with a dry suit on,
the water temperature still sent a small shock wave through
my body. As soon as the water reached my waist,

(09:38):
I pushed off to get myself into deeper water. A
moment later Ty joined me. Staying close to each other,
we dropped below the surface, marveling at the view around us.
The waters of Crater Lake were extremely clear, very blue,
giving a large amount of visibility. Feels so surreal, to say,

(10:01):
Flashing each other the OK sign, we pushed out towards
the shoreline of Wizard Island, snapping photos and taking everything in.
There have been a few other people to scuba dive
here over the years, with a National Park Service's approval,
of course, but recreational diving was barred to according to
the reasoning that was given, not wanting to bring any

(10:23):
invasive species or creatures into the lake, or to mess
up the ecosystem anyway. As we followed the rocky bottom
next to the island, I felt at peace. The only
sound that could be heard was the streaming of bubbles
each of us made as we breathed in and out.
I checked my air gauge quickly, noting that we had

(10:44):
about two hours of air remaining, plenty of time to
enjoy everything, I thought to myself. The thought was interrupted
by a poke in my shoulders. I glanced and saw
a tie pointing out ahead of us. After a moment,
I saw what he spotted. Swimming just ahead of us
was a large school of Kokanie salmon, one of the

(11:07):
two species of fish that the lake had been stalked for.
Their large, bright red bodies stood out clearly in the
clear water. Had it made for an amazing shot That
brought the camera up to my mask and snapped off
a few photos. Then noticed Time motioning to me. It
began heading out towards the salmon, and after a hesitant moment,

(11:28):
I followed. As I followed him, I spared a glance
downward and felt almost a sense of vertigo overtake me
even under water. Not far off the shore of the island.
The bottom simply dropped away into nothingness. The bottom of
the lake is over one thousand feet deep, making it
the deepest lake in the United States and one of

(11:48):
the deepest in North America. It was so deep that
submersibles had traversed the lake bottom before. I stared down,
feeling an almost unwilling sense of my He's creep over me.
As I noted that for all the water's clarity, it
was so deep that you couldn't see the bottom. I

(12:11):
shook my head. Get a grip, Marcus, this is landlocked lake,
not the Pacific Ocean. Only salmon and trouting here with you,
nothing that could attack you. Refocusing, I noticed t I
had gotten a little too far ahead of me, and
I kicked hard to catch up with him. He had
drifted close to the school of salmon, and as I approached,

(12:32):
I must have been making too much noise, because they
quickly scattered into the distance. Tie shot me a bit
of an annoyed glance over his shoulder, and I raised
both hands to the universal sign of sorry. As I
joined him, something caught my eye out in the distance,
something bobbing up and down in the water. A large

(12:56):
cylindrical shape. I topped tie on the shop than pointed.
After a moment of looking, he gave me a cry
of excitement, the sound muffled by the regulator in his mouth.
The old man of the lake. I'd seen it countless
times from the shore of the lake, and others from

(13:17):
the tour boats which crisscrossed the lake in the summertime.
It was a huge floating tree stump, almost thirty feet
in length. The thing had become as famous as the
lake itself due to the fact that it had been
floating around in the lake since at least eighteen ninety six,
when it had been first spotted by a man named
Joseph Diller. For one reason or another, Even after over

(13:39):
one hundred plus years in the water, it refused to
sink and floated freely from one side of the lake
to the other. It also held a lot of superstitious significance,
as in nineteen eighty eight, a submersible expedition tied up
the stump on one side of the island, resulting in
storm clouds to immediately move in. They disappeared when it

(14:01):
was released, and thus the legend of it being more
than just a dead tree began. All this flashed through
my mind as I watched it bob up and down
in the water like a buoy, at least a mile
away from our location, deep out near the center of
the lake. I spared another glance at TYE could immediately
tell what he was thinking. By the look in his eyes.

(14:24):
I knew it was one that I shared. He pointed
toward it it held up a finger before again checking
my air gage two hours left. I held it up
and pointed at him. He came beside me and showed
that he was roughly the same amount of air in
his tank. Nodding, I pointed toward the log and gave
a thumbs up. Tie gave an underwater fist pump, and

(14:46):
I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of an
underwater fist pump, letting in a small amount of lake
water into my mouth around my regulator. Shaking my head,
I led the way out into open water. It took
us about ten to twelve minutes to reach it, but
when we did, we couldn't help but stop swimming, bobbing

(15:09):
up and down vertically in the water as we marveled
at how big it was. Close up at the waterline.
The top of the stump rose about four feet out
of the water. It was about two or three feet
thick down here, though it was much thicker. I mentally
calculated that it had to be about four or five

(15:30):
feet thick. In the middle. The entire underwater section of
the stump was covered in a thick green moss. It
was also present much farther down in the lake, but
this was the only place near the surface in which
it resided. I raised my camera and snapped off a
few pictures, some looking head on in the mass of shape,

(15:50):
and others looking down as it fell away from us
at the few roots which still clung to its bottom.
TI padded my arm, then motioned for me to go
float next to the stump. He raised his camera, indicating
he wanted a snapshot of me with it. I shrugged
my shoulders, then fulfilled his request by kicking over a
few times until I floated almost directly in front of it.

(16:12):
As he prepared his camera for the shot, I felt
an odd sensation began to creep over me. I wouldn't
call it outright fear, but it was almost uncomfortable. I
felt like all the hair on my arms and legs

(16:34):
had stood straight up underneath my dry suit. I glanced around,
trying to figure out what had caused the instinctive reaction
in me, but I saw nothing. I glanced a tie
and motion for him to hurry up. He motioned for
me to be patient and kept fumbling with his camera.

(16:54):
The feeling amplified within me, now accompanied by a feeling
of being launched, and not by something that you would
want its eyes to have on you. I glanced around,
but aside from the stump, I saw nothing, and that's
when I realized something odd. All the while before we'd

(17:17):
been diving, we'd seen dozens of salmon and trout. I
mean how the salmon population in the lake was over
sixty thousand, But now I couldn't see a single fish.
A chill went up my spine. Something's not right here.

(17:39):
As much as I wanted to shrug it away as
a paranoid thought, I knew better than to ignore my instincts.
I waved a tie, but he was too preoccupied with
a camera to see me. I made a grunting sound
around my regulator, but I still got no response. That's
when I felt something sly against my leg. It was

(18:04):
only for a moment, but there was the most unnatural
feeling I've ever felt on or over my body. It
felt it felt like bark, but alive. At the same time,

(18:27):
I shot a glance down but saw nothing near my body.
As I looked, I felt the sensation again, this time
on my shoulder. I spun around quickly, so fast that
I left a small trail of bubbles behind me. There's
still nothing there, only the stump. Okay, fuck this shit,

(18:48):
I thought. It began to kick back towards my friend,
and that was when I felt something wrap itself around
my ankle. This time, however, it didn't let go. In fact,
it tightened almost painfully, so I instinctively reached down to
swat at whatever it was, hoping i'd frighten it off,
but instead I felt something thin, hard there, still refusing

(19:08):
to let go of my leg. I shot a glance
behind me and couldn't help but let out a muffled
scream at what I saw? What the fuck? The object
that was gripping my ankle looked like a fucking tree root.
He was thick and black and covered with green moss.
That wasn't what had caused me to scream, though what
had caused that was where it was coming from. It

(19:33):
came from the goddamn stump. I could see where it
had slid out from under the very bottom of the log,
and it was not alone. From the bottom and sides
slid out many more of the tree things, for all
intents and purposes, looking like the roots they appeared to be,
but slithering through the water and snakelike fashion, they were
coming from me. I screamed again, kicked out as hard

(19:56):
as I could, attempting to free myself, but unable to.
A blur appeared besire, and after a moment of confusion,
I realized it was tie He'd seen and heard my struggling,
and now floated beside me, his eyes wide and full
of fear. Reaching down, he attempted to pry the root
for my ankle, but to no success. The other root
appendages had almost reached me now, and I involuntarily let

(20:16):
out another muffled scream, almost in defiance at my fate.
In that moment, I felt with certainty that I was
going to die. Tye reached down and unsheathed the knife
from his ankle, and with a fury I didn't know
he possessed began slashing at the appendage that clutched me,
But then a few cuts the water began to cloud
with a strange greenish fluid. I felt the grip on

(20:39):
my ankle loosen unwind, and I instinctively kicked forward to
fully free myself from its clutches. And after a few kicks,
my mind caught up with me, and I realized something
tie wasn't with me. I turned and was met with
a horrific sight, one which I still see when I

(20:59):
close my eye. The reason the root had loosened itself
from me was to go after what was attacking it, Tyler,
Oh my god. It had caught him by the arm
that he had used to slash at it with. It

(21:20):
was tightening its grip far more than it had on me.
I heard the sickening crunch of his wrist breaking, a
sharp sound that pounded through the water along with his
muffled scream. And worse, the other roots had reacted as well.
They had reached him, one large one as thick around
as my thigh, wrapping around his chest and squeezing. Still

(21:41):
more of varying sizes slid in and wrapped around his
arms and legs, breaking myself free from the horrifying sight.
I kicked back towards him rapidly when the root had
broken his wrist. The knife had fallen from his hand,
disappearing into the depths. But I had to do something,
and as I approached him, however, this seemed to move
away from me, almost to keep me just out of

(22:03):
reach of my friend. A particularly large route made its
way out beyond all the rest, But unlike the ones
which were gripping Tie's body, this one lashed out like
a squid's tentacle. It struck me upside my head and
my vision blurred as I spun a circle from the impact.
For several seconds, I saw nothing but fuzzy shapes, and
then then my vision cleared and I saw a red

(22:28):
cloud begin to surround me. I reached up to feel
a rather large gash dear my hairline. Trying to keep
myself conscious, I turned back towards the stomp and Tie
and God, I wish to God as much of a
coward as that makes me that I hadn't. If you've

(22:50):
seen John Carpenter's The Thing, you remember the scene where
Cooper attempts to defibulate Norris, who turned out to be
the thing in disguise, and how his chest, his chest
opens to bite off his arms. That was the sight

(23:13):
that greeted me as I fell frozen in place. It
was opening up the middle of the stump, split apart
and opened like it was on hinges, like it was

(23:35):
a mouth. More roots slid out from inside the darkened shape,
and I heard my friend let out another muffled scream
as his air tank was ripped off of his back
by a few of them. The regulator torn from his
mouth as the appendage tossed the tank out to the side,
and more wrapped around his neck and head, effectively rendering

(23:57):
him unable to move. I tried again to kick towards him,
feeling my head spin with dizzyness as I thought to
keep from passing out, but I already saw it was
too late. The roots had a firm grip on him
and rapidly pulled him back towards the opening. I wanted

(24:18):
to look away, but I couldn't. He still had his
mask on and behind the lenses I could see his
eyes wide with fear as he fought in vain to
free himself, and then he was pulled inside, and I
heard my friend scream one last time. As the opening

(24:40):
and the stump closed, I saw a quick flash from
the camera still attached to his wrist, momentarily illuminating the
hellish interior, and then it sealed up. It floated further

(25:04):
away from me and the roots. The tendrils retracted back
in the span of thirty seconds, it again looked like
nothing more than an ordinary tree stump. Feeling a wave
of nausea pass over me, as well as a growing

(25:24):
blackness and enveloped the edge of my vision, I could
do nothing but kick for the surface. My head broke
the water into the chilly afternoon air, and I spat
the regulator from my mouth. I began kicking backwards towards
the shore as hard as I could, all the while
keeping my eyes locked on the four foot tall white
shape bobbing up and down above the small waves, until

(25:46):
I reached shore, where I passed out. I awoke two
days later in a hospital. A bandage covered my head
where I had been gashed open and hurt like hell.
I was greeted by the nurse, along with two policemen
and park ranger who had led a center. After a

(26:07):
few questions from the nurse about how I felt. I
was left alone with the policeman and the ranger, who,
after telling me that the snowshoers that I had seen
earlier that they had found me unconscious on the shoreline
on their way back, proceeded to bombard me with questions.
I tried explaining what had happened to them, doing full

(26:29):
well that I would sound insane and not caring. They
needed to know what had happened. You've kind of believe me,
I shout out. I swear I'm not making this up.
The fucking thing is alive. But of course they didn't
believe me. They chucked my story up to my head injury.

(26:52):
They also decided Tyler had drowned, having something faulty happened
to his air supply. Apparely got to mention in the
local paper, just another drowning victim. I was slapped with
a huge fine for illegally diving, and given a lifetime
ban from the National Park with a penalty of jail

(27:13):
time if I ever stepped foot in it again, like
I would ever want to. Veronica and Tyler's parents blame
me for his death, and as much as the doctors
I kept seeing telled me that it wasn't. I can't

(27:40):
help but feel consumed with guilt. After all, why shouldn't I,
I mean, I was the one who thought it up.
I would still be alive if it wasn't from my idea. Now,
the one year anniversary of that horror flying day is

(28:00):
fast approaching, only weeks anyway, I can't help but think
about anything but it says I said on my couch
night after night, and try to drown my memories and
guilt with bottles of whiskey and vodka. But not even

(28:23):
the alcohol is enough to chase away the memories of
that day, of the thing which pretends to be a stump,
one which has floated around the lake for over a century.
Every year there are a few people who are reportedly
drowning Crater Lake. Oftentimes, their bodies are never recovered, the

(28:43):
lake being too deep to retrieve the remains. I'm pretty
damn sure that the true reason swimmers disappear is much
worse than that, Because when the camera flashed in Tyler's
hand before it closed around him, I saw something that's
still wakes me up in the middle of the night,
screaming as it closed, I saw the routes forcing their

(29:13):
way into his mouth, down his throat. I think about trees,
about how their roots dig into the soil to slowly
extract the nutrients from it, and I shake uncontrollably at
the thought that that thing might have had a similar
purpose for my friend. So I'm posting this as a warning.

(29:41):
You can go visit Crater Lake National Park. I mean,
it's a beautiful place. You can even go walk around
the edge of the lake or take a tour on
one of the boats, both perfectly safe. But whatever you do,
stay the hell out of the water of Crater Lake. Heither. Kids.

(30:11):
It's me mister creep Pasta, and I just wanted to
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(30:31):
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