r/creepypastachannel

You need to forget everything you think you know about Easter. The colourful eggs, the chocolate, all of it. In my family, we don't look forward to Easter. We dread it. I'm telling you this on Good Friday, April 3rd, 2026. It’s been twenty years.

Twenty years to the day it all started, the day the Easter Bunny chose my family. His list isn't about being naughty or nice… it's a kill order. And the thumping I hear outside? That faint, sweet smell of damp hay and dirt creeping under my door? That means he’s here. And he's just chosen my children.

It started on Good Friday, back in 2006. I was ten, and life was still simple. We lived in a two-story house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac that backed up against a dense patch of woods. Easter was a huge deal in our house. My mother planned holidays with military precision, so the air was already thick with the smell of baking rolls and honey-glazed ham. My dad had just spent the afternoon putting together a new bike for my older brother, Michael, and hiding it under a tarp in the shed. We were just… a normal, happy family.

That Friday was when everything started to feel wrong. I was in the backyard with my dad, racking up the last of the dead winter leaves. That's when I saw it, right at the edge of the woods. A single, huge footprint pressed deep into the mud. It was way too big to be a person's foot, too long and narrow. It just looked… wrong. A twisted parody of a footprint. I showed it to my dad. He squinted at it, leaning on the rake. "Probably just some kids messing around," he said, with that easy adult confidence that shuts a kid down. "Or a deer, maybe." But it wasn't a deer. Deer don't leave one single footprint. And they don't leave behind a faint smell of wet hay and something metallic, like old pennies.

Later that night, after the sun went down, my mom called us in. As I ran back across the lawn, I looked toward the woods. For just a second, a flicker in the dusk, I swear I saw something standing there in the shadows. A tall, skinny shape. And the ears… you couldn't mistake those ears. Long and pointed against the last of the light. I blinked, and it was gone. I told myself it was just a branch, my eyes playing tricks on me. But this cold dread was already twisting in my gut. I knew, with that certainty only kids have, that it wasn't a tree.

At school, we had stories. Every kid does. Local legends you trade on the playground. Ours was the Bunny Man. The story was old and had a dozen different versions. Some kids said he was the ghost of an escaped asylum patient named Douglas, who skinned rabbits to wear and eventually started skinning people. Others said if you went to the old Colchester Overpass at midnight and said his name three times, he’d show up and hang you from the bridge. There's a reason they called it the Bunny Man Bridge.

We even had a rhyme for him, a jump-rope chant. Our voices were all sing-song and innocent, no idea what we were really talking about.

Bunny Man, Bunny Man, axe so bright,

Hides in the shadows, stays out of sight.

Doesn't use a list, doesn't check it twice,

Being good or bad won't save your life.

It was supposed to be a ghost story. But I'd heard the other whispers. The real ones. From older kids whose parents weren't careful. I'd heard about the Johnson family, five years before. The dad was a logger, and they found him out in the woods. Skinned. The police said it was a bear, but there were no bear tracks. Just rumours of a single, weird footprint, and some fibres that looked like they came from a cheap bunny costume. I'd heard about the Smiths’ little boy, who disappeared from his own backyard during an Easter egg hunt. They never found the boy, just the eggs he'd collected, arranged in a perfect circle in his empty room.

I tried to tell my parents about the footprint, the rhyme, the thing I saw in the woods. I tried to connect the dots that were burning in my mind. My mom would just give me that strained, patient smile. "That’s enough scary stories, sweetie. You'll give yourself nightmares." My dad would just laugh. "There's no such thing as the Bunny Man. It's just a story." They packed my fears away, labelled them "childhood fantasy," and put them on a shelf. They loved me. They just couldn't imagine a world where the monsters were real. Their disbelief felt like a cage, and I was trapped inside it, knowing something terrible was on its way. Easter was coming.

On the night of Good Friday, the sounds began. A soft, steady thump… thump… thump… against the side of the house. It sounded like a giant heart beating inside the walls. I laid in bed, frozen, with the covers pulled right up to my nose. I finally crept to my window and looked out into the backyard. I couldn't see anything but the dark shapes of the trees. But the smell was there again, much stronger now. Wet hay and rot. And blood.

On Saturday, the world seemed cruelly normal. The sun was out, birds were singing. It felt like a sick joke. My mom was in the kitchen, lost in a cloud of flour and sugar. She asked my dad to go get the big roasting pan from the shed. Michael's new bike was still in there, and I felt a little flicker of excitement for him before the dread smothered it again.

"I'll be right back," Dad said. He ruffled my hair as he walked out the back door.

But he didn't come right back.

After about ten minutes, my mom wiped her hands on her apron, looking annoyed. "What is keeping that man?" she muttered and headed for the door. I followed her. My heart was pounding. The shed door was open just a crack. Mom called his name. Nothing. She walked toward it, but I was frozen to the patio.

She pushed the door open the rest of the way and just… stopped. She didn't scream. That's the part I remember most. The silence. She just stood there, her hand clamped over her mouth. I took a slow step forward, then another, until I could see past her into the shed.

Dad was on the floor next to the overturned tarp and Michael's shiny new bike. The roasting pan was on the ground nearby, spattered with red. My dad’s head… it was turned at an angle it shouldn't be, and the wall behind him was painted in a spray of crimson. Propped against some tires was a hatchet. It was our hatchet; the one Dad used for splitting firewood. But it wasn't where we kept it. And it wasn't clean. The world just tilted. The only thing that kept me standing was the sight of my mom's back, stiff as a board. She turned around slowly, her face was a pale, waxy mask. "Go to your room," she whispered, her voice thin and strange. "Lock the door. And don't. Come. Out."

I ran. I ran upstairs, past Michael's room where he was still playing video games, totally oblivious. I locked my door and hid in the closet, burying my face in a pile of clothes, trying to erase the image of the hatchet and the wall.

The rest of the day was a blur of police officers, flashing lights, and hushed voices in rooms I wasn’t allowed to enter. My mother wanted to take Michael and me somewhere else, a hotel, my aunt’s house, anywhere but there, but the police told us to stay put. They said they’d have officers nearby through the night. They said the house was secure. I remember the look on my mother’s face when they said that. She didn’t argue. But I knew. She knew. Whatever had killed my father wasn’t finished.

That night, the house was silent as a tomb. Mom had put Michael to bed, telling him Dad had to go help a neighbour. She locked every door, every window. Then she just sat in the living room in total darkness. I couldn't sleep.

The thumping was back, but it wasn't outside anymore.

It was in the house. Soft, heavy footsteps downstairs. A floorboard creaking in the hall.

Then, I heard water running in my parents' bathroom. A splash. Then… silence. A thick, heavy silence that was so much worse than the noise. I waited for what felt like hours. I couldn't stay in my room. I slowly opened my door and crept into the hall. The door to my parents' room was open. The bathroom light was on, spilling out onto the carpet.

I tiptoed forward and peeked around the doorframe. My mother was in the bathtub. But she wasn't taking a bath.

She was hanging from the showerhead by my father’s belt, her body just—dangling. Her throat had been cut, a horrible, gaping smile from ear to ear. The water I'd heard was from the shower, washing her blood down the drain.

And on the white tile wall, drawn in blood, was a sloppy picture of an Easter egg.

I stumbled backward; a scream stuck in my throat. I had to get Michael. I ran to his room and threw the door open.

His bed was empty. The sheets were torn and thrown on the floor. The window was wide open, the curtains blowing in the night air. And on his pillow, right where his head should have been, was a single, robin's-egg blue Easter egg. Next to it was a half-eaten carrot.

I heard a floorboard creak right behind me.

I didn't turn around. I just bolted. Out the back door, into the woods. I ran until the sun came up and my legs gave out. I hid under a bush, shivering, as the first sirens cut through the Easter Sunday morning. I was the only one left. He didn't use a list. He didn't check it twice. For some reason I'll never understand, he let me go.

The police called it a robbery-homicide. A drifter, they guessed. The open window in Michael's room, some missing jewellery, that was their story. My father fought back, and my mother was a victim of senseless cruelty. They had no story for Michael. He just became a missing person. A face on a flyer. A ghost.

They didn't believe a ten-year-old girl in shock. The Bunny Man? They just looked at me with pity. My story was buried under therapy sessions and psych reports. I was sent to live with my aunt in another county, far away from the woods and the whispers.

For twenty years, I tried so hard to be normal. I went to school, made friends, went to college. I met my husband, Mat. His world is so grounded, so blessedly normal, that for a while I could almost pretend mine was, too. We got married. We bought a new house, with no history, no creaks, no shed. We had two kids. Lily, who has my eyes, and Sam, who has his dad's easy smile.

I built a life on denial. But every year, when spring came, the dread would creep back in. I’d see Easter displays at the grocery store and my throat would close up. I'd see a guy in a bunny suit at the mall and have to fight off a full-blown panic attack. The past wasn't dead. It was just sleeping. And I always knew that one day, it would wake up.

Tonight, it woke up. It’s Good Friday, twenty years later. And the thumping is back.

It started an hour ago. That same soft, rhythmic beat against the living room wall. Thump… thump… thump…

"It's just the house settling, honey," Mat said without looking up from his laptop. "New houses do that."

But I knew…

Then came the smell. That same rotten hay and damp fur, seeping through the window frames. I checked the locks three times. I closed all the blinds.

"What's wrong with you?" Mat finally asked, closing his laptop. "You're white as a ghost. Is this about Easter again? We've talked about this. It was a horrible, random tragedy. But it's over."

He was trying to comfort me, but it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. He doesn't get it. He can't. For him, the Easter Bunny is just chocolate and baskets. For me, it's a killer in a dirty costume with an axe. It's a monster that tears families apart for fun.

My kids are asleep upstairs. Lily is eight, Sam is six. They spent all night talking about the town egg hunt tomorrow. They even left carrots out for the Easter Bunny. Their innocence feels like a fragile piece of glass, and I can feel it about to shatter.

The thumping stopped. And that's what scares me the most. The silence is always worse. Mat sighed. "Look, I saw a branch tapping the siding earlier. I'll go trim it. Will that make you feel better?"

"No, Mat, don't," I said, my voice shaking. "Please, just stay here."

"I'll be two seconds," he said, kissing my forehead. "I'll go out through the garage. Lock the door behind me."

He walked toward the kitchen, toward the door to the garage. To the back of the house. Just like my father walking toward the shed. The old rhyme slammed into my head. My blood went cold.

He's been gone five minutes.

It feels like an hour…

The motion-sensor light in the backyard just clicked on…

I can't see the back of the house from here.

Just the light.