SCARY FACTS AND STORIES

The Grunp

The Grunp was just something my cousins and I made up while at our grandparent's place. We went up almost every summer for a week or two at a time when we were old enough, and I think we first started telling Grunp stories when I was nine.

The Grunp's appearance and personality would evolve and change as we got older. The first time we told stories about the Grunp, he was a naked man with one giant eye in the middle of his head. The next year, he was covered in thick, white fur, with empty holes for eyes who walked on all fours and chewed on bones.

The last year we told Grunp stories he'd finally evolved to his final state- a white, furry creature who walked on two legs, smelled like a dumpster, had two blazing orange eyes and a drooling mouth crammed full of dozens of yellowed and rotten teeth. He could climb up walls and had claws half a foot long. He hated the kids that tramped through his forests every summer and plotted to steal one away so he could skin it alive and spit roast it for a delicious meal.

One thing never changed about the Grunp though and that was that he lived in my grandparent's old barn.

The barn was ridiculously creepy, I'll admit. It didn't have any light or electricity out there, hadn't been used in years either so it was empty other than a few remaining piles of hay and a broken lawnmower. We weren't allowed to climb into the lofts because Grandma was afraid that the old floor wouldn't support our weight so we'd fall and break our necks. I climbed up only once because I thought I heard something.

I didn't see anything other than a dead rat but there was a lot of unexplained sounds in that barn. That's probably what planted the idea of the Grunp in our heads. Some unexplained monster that lurked just out of sight, full of hatred and salivating at the idea of ripping us to pieces.

Given all this, probably the shittiest thing we could do was send Sissy Sandy into the barn for a night. And that's exactly what we did.

I was eleven at the time and most of the cousins were about that age too, except for Sandy. Sandy was only six. Unfortunately, she was the only cousin in that age group, but since the rest of us started going to grandma and grandpa's around that age her parents sent her with us anyway. The closest cousin in age to her was Bobby and he was nine.

You can imagine how we all felt about Sandy. It didn't help that Sandy was a crybaby. She didn't like sleeping in the dark, so whoever had the poor luck of bunking with her had to deal with a nightlight. She didn't like being alone. She hated bugs and if she saw one she'd start screaming like she was being murdered. And she was terrified of The Grunp.

Most of the time we'd manage to ditch her with Grandma, who would play Go Fish and bake cookies with her. But when Grandma took a nap or we didn't escape fast enough, we'd have to deal with Sandy tagging along. And oh boy, she'd complain about everything. She was too hot, she was too cold. She didn't want to play near the barn. She didn't want to play in the backyard. She was hungry. She was thirsty. She was bored.

I mean, typical six year old, but all of us were tired of it. We didn't help the situation either by constantly teasing and picking on the poor kid. I think Jay was the one who started calling her Sissy Sandy, because well, she was scared of literally everything. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Sandy was probably scared of her own shadow.

It's probably why we'd tell the most Grunp stories when she was hanging out with us. We'd get increasingly more morbid, talking about how the Grunp liked to peel off the fingernails of his victims and make them into earrings or that he'd use them to pick the flesh of his victims from his teeth. I think one time I even said that he would hang up his living victims in his cave and wait until he was hungry before chopping off their heads and chewing off their faces.