The Candy Man’s Return
Do you have a terrifying true story that sounds like something out of a horror movie? Home-made Creepypasta is now accepting submissions!
The Candy Man’s Return
It started with a garage sale.
The Wilson kids, Noah, eight, and his older sister Kayla, eleven, were poking through a mess of old toys and cracked porcelain dolls in the overgrown front yard of the Parker house. The Parkers had moved out years ago, after their youngest son went missing. The house had been empty since, but now the gates were open and the lawn dotted with rickety folding tables piled high with junk.
No one knew who was running the sale.
The jack-in-the-box sat alone at the far end, atop a milk crate. It was badly rusted, the paint peeled away in flakes. A twisted clown face was painted on the front, grinning too wide, with teeth like tiny white nails. The crank still turned, slowly, making a brittle clicking noise with every rotation.
No music came out.
No pop.
Just silence.
Kayla picked it up. “This thing’s broken.”
“Can we get it?” Noah asked, already hugging it to his chest. “It’s creepy. I like it.”
The man at the folding table, the one no one had noticed before—nodded. He had a long black coat and fingers that curled too far at the joints, like they’d been broken and never healed right. He didn't speak. He just smiled, thin and pale.
“Thanks,” Kayla muttered, feeling cold suddenly.
They brought it home.
That night, Noah dreamed of carnival music. Tinny and distant, like an old record warping underwater. In the dream, he stood in a field of candy wrappers, all of them glistening under a moonless sky. A tall figure in black and white stripes stood at the far end, waving slowly. His hair was stiff and curled, his smile impossibly wide, and he held a sack that dripped something thick and red.
“Wanna play?” the figure asked, voice like a music box cracked open and left in the rain.
Noah woke screaming.
By the third night, Kayla heard it too. Not the dreams, but something else—soft giggling coming from Noah’s room. When she pushed the door open, he was sitting up in bed, eyes wide, staring at the jack-in-the-box. It was unwound. Open.
But there was nothing inside.
“I didn’t do it,” Noah whispered. “He came out on his own.”
The next day, Noah was gone.
No struggle. No noise. No forced entry. Just the jack-in-the-box, sitting on his pillow. Open. Waiting. His shoes were found near the front door, coated in powdered sugar.
Then other kids in the neighborhood began having dreams.
All said the same thing: the Candy Man had visited. He offered them sweets in strange shapes, lollipops that melted into hands, jawbreakers that bled when bitten. He said he was building a carnival beneath the streets, and needed children to ride the rides.
One by one, they vanished. Each time, their shoes were found, neatly placed, dusted with sugar. Sometimes, pieces of candy were left too, twisted into impossible shapes.
The adults grew frantic. Some whispered about old tales, about the boy who vanished in the Parker house all those years ago. About how he’d been obsessed with something called Laughing Jack. About how the room was filled with childish drawings, of a tall, grinning clown, with dead black eyes and fingers like knives.
But the Parker house was empty. No clues. Just a sense of something... watching.
Kayla didn’t sleep. She kept the jack-in-the-box hidden under her bed, locked inside a wooden box, wrapped in chains. But she could still hear it. The creaking of the crank. The scratch of little fingers tapping from the inside.
One night, the music started again.
Not from the box.
From the walls.
She followed it to the basement, flashlight flickering. The air was sticky. Sweet. The concrete walls were smeared with bright colors, like melted candy mixed with blood. At the center of the room stood the jack-in-the-box. Open. Empty.
A voice drifted up from the shadows.
“Don’t you wanna see the carnival? Don’t you miss your brother?”
Kayla screamed as fingers wrapped around her ankles—striped gloves that stretched too far from the darkness below.
The police never found her. Just her shoes. And a note inside the jack-in-the-box:
"Now hiring: new friends. Sweet ones. Laugh lots. No crying."
And the garage sale?
It showed up again.
Two towns over.
Same crate. Same jack-in-the-box.
Same man with the crooked smile.
Waiting for the next curious child.
Waiting to wind things up again.
Do you have a terrifying true story that sounds like something out of a horror movie? Home-made Creepypasta is now accepting submissions! Share your eerie, unexplained, or downright chilling encounters in the comments below, and your story could be featured on the blog—and in an upcoming book collection published by Mark Watson Books.
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I loved the horror story. The end left me thinking about it since the horror continues leaving it open ended.
Btw I would like to submit one of my stories but I have some few personal questions I would like to ask.
I left them in your inbox, when you have time, you can check them out.
I loved the horror story. The end left me thinking about it since the horror continues leaving it open ended.
Btw I would like to submit one of my stories but I have some few personal questions I would like to ask.
I left them in your inbox, when you have time, you can check them out.