creepypasta origins

The Devil's Toy Box

(A/N WARNING, I HAVE NOT READ THIS YET, ONCE I HAVE I WILL PUT UP THE WARNING(S))

"The Devil's Toy Box" is an urban legend that savvier horror fans will recognize as the inspiration for the infamous Lament Configuration from Clive Barker's seminal Hellraiser series. Though in reality the titular "box" is not a toy at all but rather a small room where the floor, the ceiling, and the walls are each composed of one giant mirror.

According to the legend, if you stood inside this mirror-room alone for too long, supposedly the devil would show up and steal your soul. In most versions of this story, he did so by flaying you alive.

I mention all of this because about two weeks ago, I got an email from an old friend (someone who was well-versed in my sordid past) asking if I could help out their younger sister, an 18-year-old girl who we'll call "Erin" located in Northern Louisiana (the specific parish where Erin lived shall go unnamed for reasons that will soon become obvious.)

Like pretty much everywhere else, the place where Erin grew up had its own annual haunted-house attraction that went up every October. The attraction was called Farmer Grave's Haunted Orchard and in years past, it had been every bit as thrilling as that name suggested; which is to say not very. So for the previous Halloween, the owners decided to spice things up by building several new interactive installations which included a windowless shack called The Devil's Toy Box. This shack housed a small room composed of large wall-sized mirrors.

That's how Erin heard it described anyway — she had never been inside the Toy Box herself. Farmer Grave's closed less than a week after opening — a result of the numerous people who had to be hospitalized after going inside the Devil's Toy Box attraction. Erin didn't get a chance to try out the Box for herself before the closure, but she had heard countless stories about it from her classmates at school.

Apparently, no one could last longer than five minutes inside the room. There was even a large timer set up beside the building that showed the current occupant's length of stay under a second clock displaying the longest recorded time up to that point, which maxed out at just over four minutes before the attraction finally closed. The man who managed to last that long (Roger Heltz, age 52, father of three) had been reduced to a wide-eyed mute. To this day, he still hasn't said a word.

One woman suffered a heart attack after just 90 seconds inside the Box. A 17-year-old boy had to be dragged out, kicking and screaming. The boy was from a nearby parish and hadn't gone to Erin's school, though her friend Celeste claimed her parents were friends with the boy's mom. They went to his funeral when he killed himself two weeks later. Whatever the truth of the matter, town officials were quick to act in getting Farmer Grave's shut down.

Of course, that didn't stop people from talking about the now infamous attraction, which they began to do almost immediately. For the next month or so, it seemed like the Toy Box was the only thing on anyone's mind. It had become the stuff of legend and of course, it didn't take long for the local kids to start venturing out to the Orchard at night to see the Box for themselves.

Farmer Grave's Haunted Orchard was owned by a middle-aged couple named Will and Darlene Sawyer. When the town council ordered the Sawyers to shut the place down, they were so pissed about the ruling, they left most of the attraction still standing, including the Devil's Toy Box. The actual orchard was on a plot of land located at the rear of the Sawyer's property and was only accessible by a narrow two-lane dirt road.

One night, several seniors at Erin's school snuck out to the Sawyer's property on a dare and claimed they found the Toy Box's entrance padlocked, but then Will Sawyer showed up out of nowhere and asked them if they wanted to go inside. Will's sudden arrival had startled the young men, but once they realized that he wasn't mad at them for trespassing and in fact seemed genuinely happy to see them, the guys decided to take him up on his offer to have a go inside the box. Of course, they chickened out as soon as Will unlocked the door and it seemed to swing open on its own, like a hungry mouth at the sight of food.