A funeral was supposed to be the hardest thing Marla and Noah Kelley faced that week.

Three days after burying their brother Eli, the two siblings return to Hollow Ridge — a trail the three of them knew as children. They’re looking for a few quiet hours away from casseroles, condolences, and a house suddenly missing someone who had always been there.

Then they hear a bell.

High in the trees sits something impossibly large.

An owl draped in bones, keys, jewelry, teeth... and tiny bells.

But the creature in the woods doesn’t simply hunt.

It listens.

It learns the voices you trust, the memories you share, and the words no stranger should ever know.

And when Eli’s voice begins calling to them from somewhere beyond the trail, Marla and Noah discover that grief can make even the impossible sound familiar.

How much of your grief would it have to imitate before you followed it?

The Bone Owl is Episode 3 of Tales from Cryptid Hollow — original dark folklore inspired by the creatures of Cryptid Hollow Studio.

Explore the creatures behind the stories and find printable coloring pages and bundles at:

cryptid-hollow-studio.myshopify.com

I really like that description because it doesn’t give away Noah’s disappearance, the clearing, the ending, or what the Bone Owl actually does. It sells the premise while leaving the nasty surprises in the episode.

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A missing grandfather. An old journal. A light moving through the woods.

When a grandson begins reading through the belongings left behind after his grandfather’s disappearance, he finds years of ordinary memories slowly giving way to something far stranger: sketches of a wax-covered fox with a candle burning from its head, warnings not to follow the light, and entries describing tiny changes in reality that no one else seems to notice.

Was his grandfather losing his mind?

Or had he crossed into a world that looked almost exactly like his own?

The Candle Lit Fox is a psychological horror story about memory, obsession, and the terrifying possibility that reality can change around you without anyone else realizing it.

And when the story ends, one question remains:

If your entire reality changed, but everyone around you insisted it had always been this way, how would you ever prove that you weren’t the one who changed?

Explore the Cryptid Hollow coloring-page collection at:

cryptid-hollow-studio.myshopify.com

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An original Tale from Cryptid Hollow.

Deep in the woods near Blackroot Creek, an abandoned cabin carries a warning locals have learned not to ignore: never answer a familiar voice calling from outside after dark.

When a group of friends spends the night inside, scratching at the walls soon gives way to something far worse. The creature watching from the trees does not merely imitate the people it hunts—it borrows their voices, their faces, and perhaps even their eyes.

The Hollow-Eyed Raccoon is an original work of fiction inspired by a creature created by Rachel Weston and narrated by Justin Weston for Strange Things Among Us.

Content note: This episode contains frightening imagery, violence, and scenes of intense peril.

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