Stay Out of Crater Lake by JLGoodwin1990

I know, deep deep inside myself than it was. So I'm choosing to post my account of this here, both as a admittedly rather pathetic attempt to release some of the guilt and horror that I've carried with me since that day, and more importantly, as a warning to anyone who listened. You see, I used to love scuba diving. I became certified when I was sixteen years old. I've dove both in fresh water and saltwater ever since. I've met and become friends with many great and talented people

because of it, and Tyler. Tyler was one of them, daredevil at heart and always up for an adventure. I took him under my wing, as he was less experienced than I was and a few years younger than me. He eventually became close enough that we called each other brothers, and though we lived in different states, we always met up at least once a year to go on a

scuba diving trip. That was up until the pandemic hit a few years ago, And when it hit, due to the quarantines and difficulty to travel that it made, we wrote off our annual meet up for twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. We kept in touch, but it just didn't feel the same. One afternoon in April of twenty twenty two, I received a phone call from him. All the usual cheeriness and the bravado seemed to have been

sucked out of his voice. He told me that his work had chosen to lay him off as a way to cut back spending costs due to the strain his business had been put under. Had he been forced to go on food stamps and cash assistance as a result of it. To make matters worse for Veronica, his longtime girlfriend of almost seven years had decided at the same time to break off her relationship with him. Let me

tell you that woman truly did complete him. And losing her on top of the stress I'm losing his job and the inability to find a new one quickly, it quite literally deflated him. I felt helpless, unable to do anything to cheer him up. Standing in my kitchen holding my phone, an idea that had been floating around in my head sprang to the surface. Hey, ty, I asked, trying to fill my voice with as much excitement and mystery as I could. I thought of something we could

do that might make you feel better? Yeah? What? He asked, his voice inflectionless and hollow, like that of a robot. Well, I've been thinking, I mean, I have a few days off coming up in the next few days from my remote work. So what about just packing up, you know, having me come drive and get you and we take a scuba diving trip. I heard a slight stir on the other end of the line, but his voice remained the same. I guess, So, but where could we go?

So many places are off limits due to the you know, I mean, have you taken a look at the news? A slight smile crept across my face as I prepared to spring my little idea on him. The place I'm thinking of is one where there won't be as many people right now, just because of the season. You know, my smile grew wider. What's one of the places you wanted us to dive together the most? But we've never

been able to a pause? I mean, there's plenty of places like Superior Blue Hole, Great Barrier Reef, I cut him off. No, I'm talking about someplace much closer to both of us. I dropped my voice low. I'm talking about Greater Lake. There was the longest pause of the call yet, and then he spoke, his voice now filled with something I'd been hoping for, curiosity and a bit of excitement. Crater Lake. Huh, Yeah, that's one place you and I have had on our bucket list for years.

A hint of doubt crept into his voice. But I mean, how you know as well as I do that scuba diving isn't allowed there. I mean, if we get caught, I cut him off again. Don't worry about that, bro, I've been doing some scouting of the area, and there aren't many park rangers in the area as there would be in the summer or fall. If we go at a certain time. We have a few hour window to check out what we can and grab some quality picks and video. Another second of silence, Then why well not?

I got nothing to lose and this might help get my mind off the world of shit surrounding me. So yeah, let's do it man. A grin spread across my face as I heard the first hint of his old self creep back in. We spoke for a few minutes longer, fine too in the details, and then we hung up to both get some slip. As I walked to my bedroom, I glanced at a framed picture of the lake that hung on my wall. Couldn't help but grin as my gaze lingered for a moment more, looking from the edges

of the water to Wizard Island. I climbed into bed and drifted off into a sound sleep. That night was honestly the last decent night of sleep I ever got. The next morning, I packed all the gear we' knead into the back of my battered Ford Probe and then made the many hour long drive from northern California to Salt Lake City. When he answered the door, he was clearly beyond excited. He almost seemed like a kid on Christmas morning, ready to open his presence. He was infectious.

As we left back west, couldn't help but revel in the same feeling of excitement and a bit of risk and danger that we were about to undertake. After a few fill up combined with many snack and restroom breaks, we passed into Oregon, stopping a final time and clem Falls to spend the night before entering Crater Lake National Park the next day. We told the ranger at the entrance that we were merely heading in to do some snow shoeing around the lake, showing him the snow shoes

we bought in town as a front. After a moment of taking down our names, he smiled, Be careful, boys, he said, he had some recent snowfall and some areas are tricky going. He thanked him, then drove up into the parking lot, getting out and retrieving our packs, attempting to hide the obvious yellow glow of our scuba tanks underneath them. After a few minutes hike, we were rewarded with an amazing view of the place we'd come for.

For those of you who had never seen Crater Lake, it used to be an active volcano called Mount Mazama with a volcano collapsed around seven thousand years ago. It formed what is known as the Caldera. The view is amazing. You can look from the top ridge and see the rim of the dormant volcano wrapping around the forested sides leading down to the water's edge. On the west side of the lake lay Wizard Island, having pushed out of the water from a secondary eruption. You could also see

Miriam Kane, a smaller spigot of land rising up. Tyler and I shared a grin and a high five before carefully making our way down to the shore of the lake. We looked around for a few minutes, catching a glimpse of some snowshoers disappearing into the treeline, before hiding our packs behind a rather large group of rocks that stripping off our clothes, revealing the dry suits that we had

underneath them. Helping each other put on our tanks, vests and weight belts, we made our final checks of our gear before pulling the hoods up over our heads to protect them from the cold water. I glanced at Tie as I picked up my flippers. Ready for this man, I asked him He gave me a dopey grin his trademark, signed that he was beyond stoked. Does the bear shit in the woods? He asked, earning a shared laugh between both of us. I picked up both cameras and handed

one to him. Let's do this while we still can, I proclaimed, slipping on the flippers and turning to walk backwards into the water. Even with a dry suit on, the water temperature still sent a small shock wave through my body. As soon as the water reached my waist, I pushed off to get myself into deeper water. A moment later Ty joined me. Staying close to each other, we dropped below the surface, marveling at the view around us. The waters of Crater Lake were extremely clear, very blue,

giving a large amount of visibility. Feels so surreal, to say, Flashing each other the OK sign, we pushed out towards the shoreline of Wizard Island, snapping photos and taking everything in. There have been a few other people to scuba dive here over the years, with a National Park Service's approval, of course, but recreational diving was barred to according to the reasoning that was given, not wanting to bring any invasive species or creatures into the lake, or to mess

up the ecosystem anyway. As we followed the rocky bottom next to the island, I felt at peace. The only sound that could be heard was the streaming of bubbles each of us made as we breathed in and out. I checked my air gauge quickly, noting that we had about two hours of air remaining, plenty of time to enjoy everything, I thought to myself. The thought was interrupted by a poke in my shoulders. I glanced and saw a tie pointing out ahead of us. After a moment,

I saw what he spotted. Swimming just ahead of us was a large school of Kokanie salmon, one of the two species of fish that the lake had been stalked for. Their large, bright red bodies stood out clearly in the clear water. Had it made for an amazing shot That brought the camera up to my mask and snapped off a few photos. Then noticed Time motioning to me. It began heading out towards the salmon, and after a hesitant moment,

I followed. As I followed him, I spared a glance downward and felt almost a sense of vertigo overtake me even under water. Not far off the shore of the island. The bottom simply dropped away into nothingness. The bottom of the lake is over one thousand feet deep, making it the deepest lake in the United States and one of the deepest in North America. It was so deep that submersibles had traversed the lake bottom before. I stared down, feeling an almost unwilling sense of my He's creep over me.

As I noted that for all the water's clarity, it was so deep that you couldn't see the bottom. I shook my head. Get a grip, Marcus, this is landlocked lake, not the Pacific Ocean. Only salmon and trouting here with you, nothing that could attack you. Refocusing, I noticed t I had gotten a little too far ahead of me, and I kicked hard to catch up with him. He had drifted close to the school of salmon, and as I approached, I must have been making too much noise, because they

quickly scattered into the distance. Tie shot me a bit of an annoyed glance over his shoulder, and I raised both hands to the universal sign of sorry. As I joined him, something caught my eye out in the distance, something bobbing up and down in the water. A large cylindrical shape. I topped tie on the shop than pointed. After a moment of looking, he gave me a cry of excitement, the sound muffled by the regulator in his mouth.

The old man of the lake. I'd seen it countless times from the shore of the lake, and others from the tour boats which crisscrossed the lake in the summertime. It was a huge floating tree stump, almost thirty feet in length. The thing had become as famous as the lake itself due to the fact that it had been floating around in the lake since at least eighteen ninety six, when it had been first spotted by a man named

Joseph Diller. For one reason or another, Even after over one hundred plus years in the water, it refused to sink and floated freely from one side of the lake to the other. It also held a lot of superstitious significance, as in nineteen eighty eight, a submersible expedition tied up the stump on one side of the island, resulting in storm clouds to immediately move in. They disappeared when it was released, and thus the legend of it being more

than just a dead tree began. All this flashed through my mind as I watched it bob up and down in the water like a buoy, at least a mile away from our location, deep out near the center of the lake. I spared another glance at TYE could immediately tell what he was thinking. By the look in his eyes. I knew it was one that I shared. He pointed toward it it held up a finger before again checking my air gage two hours left. I held it up

and pointed at him. He came beside me and showed that he was roughly the same amount of air in his tank. Nodding, I pointed toward the log and gave a thumbs up. Tie gave an underwater fist pump, and I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of an underwater fist pump, letting in a small amount of lake water into my mouth around my regulator. Shaking my head,

I led the way out into open water. It took us about ten to twelve minutes to reach it, but when we did, we couldn't help but stop swimming, bobbing up and down vertically in the water as we marveled at how big it was. Close up at the waterline. The top of the stump rose about four feet out of the water. It was about two or three feet thick down here, though it was much thicker. I mentally calculated that it had to be about four or five feet thick. In the middle. The entire underwater section of

the stump was covered in a thick green moss. It was also present much farther down in the lake, but this was the only place near the surface in which it resided. I raised my camera and snapped off a few pictures, some looking head on in the mass of shape, and others looking down as it fell away from us at the few roots which still clung to its bottom. TI padded my arm, then motioned for me to go float next to the stump. He raised his camera, indicating

he wanted a snapshot of me with it. I shrugged my shoulders, then fulfilled his request by kicking over a few times until I floated almost directly in front of it. As he prepared his camera for the shot, I felt an odd sensation began to creep over me. I wouldn't call it outright fear, but it was almost uncomfortable. I felt like all the hair on my arms and legs had stood straight up underneath my dry suit. I glanced around, trying to figure out what had caused the instinctive reaction

in me, but I saw nothing. I glanced a tie and motion for him to hurry up. He motioned for me to be patient and kept fumbling with his camera. The feeling amplified within me, now accompanied by a feeling of being launched, and not by something that you would want its eyes to have on you. I glanced around, but aside from the stump, I saw nothing, and that's when I realized something odd. All the while before we'd

been diving, we'd seen dozens of salmon and trout. I mean how the salmon population in the lake was over sixty thousand, But now I couldn't see a single fish. A chill went up my spine. Something's not right here. As much as I wanted to shrug it away as a paranoid thought, I knew better than to ignore my instincts. I waved a tie, but he was too preoccupied with a camera to see me. I made a grunting sound around my regulator, but I still got no response. That's

when I felt something sly against my leg. It was only for a moment, but there was the most unnatural feeling I've ever felt on or over my body. It felt it felt like bark, but alive. At the same time, I shot a glance down but saw nothing near my body. As I looked, I felt the sensation again, this time on my shoulder. I spun around quickly, so fast that I left a small trail of bubbles behind me. There's still nothing there, only the stump. Okay, fuck this shit,

I thought. It began to kick back towards my friend, and that was when I felt something wrap itself around my ankle. This time, however, it didn't let go. In fact, it tightened almost painfully, so I instinctively reached down to swat at whatever it was, hoping i'd frighten it off, but instead I felt something thin, hard there, still refusing to let go of my leg. I shot a glance behind me and couldn't help but let out a muffled

scream at what I saw? What the fuck? The object that was gripping my ankle looked like a fucking tree root. He was thick and black and covered with green moss. That wasn't what had caused me to scream, though what had caused that was where it was coming from. It came from the goddamn stump. I could see where it had slid out from under the very bottom of the log,

and it was not alone. From the bottom and sides slid out many more of the tree things, for all intents and purposes, looking like the roots they appeared to be, but slithering through the water and snakelike fashion, they were coming from me. I screamed again, kicked out as hard as I could, attempting to free myself, but unable to. A blur appeared besire, and after a moment of confusion, I realized it was tie He'd seen and heard my struggling, and now floated beside me, his eyes wide and full

of fear. Reaching down, he attempted to pry the root for my ankle, but to no success. The other root appendages had almost reached me now, and I involuntarily let out another muffled scream, almost in defiance at my fate. In that moment, I felt with certainty that I was going to die. Tye reached down and unsheathed the knife from his ankle, and with a fury I didn't know he possessed began slashing at the appendage that clutched me, But then a few cuts the water began to cloud

with a strange greenish fluid. I felt the grip on my ankle loosen unwind, and I instinctively kicked forward to fully free myself from its clutches. And after a few kicks, my mind caught up with me, and I realized something tie wasn't with me. I turned and was met with a horrific sight, one which I still see when I close my eye. The reason the root had loosened itself from me was to go after what was attacking it, Tyler, Oh my god. It had caught him by the arm

that he had used to slash at it with. It was tightening its grip far more than it had on me. I heard the sickening crunch of his wrist breaking, a sharp sound that pounded through the water along with his muffled scream. And worse, the other roots had reacted as well. They had reached him, one large one as thick around as my thigh, wrapping around his chest and squeezing. Still more of varying sizes slid in and wrapped around his arms and legs, breaking myself free from the horrifying sight.

I kicked back towards him rapidly when the root had broken his wrist. The knife had fallen from his hand, disappearing into the depths. But I had to do something, and as I approached him, however, this seemed to move away from me, almost to keep me just out of reach of my friend. A particularly large route made its way out beyond all the rest, But unlike the ones which were gripping Tie's body, this one lashed out like

a squid's tentacle. It struck me upside my head and my vision blurred as I spun a circle from the impact. For several seconds, I saw nothing but fuzzy shapes, and then then my vision cleared and I saw a red cloud begin to surround me. I reached up to feel a rather large gash dear my hairline. Trying to keep myself conscious, I turned back towards the stomp and Tie and God, I wish to God as much of a

coward as that makes me that I hadn't. If you've seen John Carpenter's The Thing, you remember the scene where Cooper attempts to defibulate Norris, who turned out to be the thing in disguise, and how his chest, his chest opens to bite off his arms. That was the sight that greeted me as I fell frozen in place. It was opening up the middle of the stump, split apart and opened like it was on hinges, like it was

a mouth. More roots slid out from inside the darkened shape, and I heard my friend let out another muffled scream as his air tank was ripped off of his back by a few of them. The regulator torn from his mouth as the appendage tossed the tank out to the side, and more wrapped around his neck and head, effectively rendering him unable to move. I tried again to kick towards him, feeling my head spin with dizzyness as I thought to keep from passing out, but I already saw it was

too late. The roots had a firm grip on him and rapidly pulled him back towards the opening. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. He still had his mask on and behind the lenses I could see his eyes wide with fear as he fought in vain to free himself, and then he was pulled inside, and I heard my friend scream one last time. As the opening and the stump closed, I saw a quick flash from the camera still attached to his wrist, momentarily illuminating the

hellish interior, and then it sealed up. It floated further away from me and the roots. The tendrils retracted back in the span of thirty seconds, it again looked like nothing more than an ordinary tree stump. Feeling a wave of nausea pass over me, as well as a growing blackness and enveloped the edge of my vision, I could do nothing but kick for the surface. My head broke the water into the chilly afternoon air, and I spat

the regulator from my mouth. I began kicking backwards towards the shore as hard as I could, all the while keeping my eyes locked on the four foot tall white shape bobbing up and down above the small waves, until I reached shore, where I passed out. I awoke two days later in a hospital. A bandage covered my head where I had been gashed open and hurt like hell. I was greeted by the nurse, along with two policemen and park ranger who had led a center. After a

few questions from the nurse about how I felt. I was left alone with the policeman and the ranger, who, after telling me that the snowshoers that I had seen earlier that they had found me unconscious on the shoreline on their way back, proceeded to bombard me with questions. I tried explaining what had happened to them, doing full well that I would sound insane and not caring. They needed to know what had happened. You've kind of believe me, I shout out. I swear I'm not making this up.

The fucking thing is alive. But of course they didn't believe me. They chucked my story up to my head injury. They also decided Tyler had drowned, having something faulty happened to his air supply. Apparely got to mention in the local paper, just another drowning victim. I was slapped with a huge fine for illegally diving, and given a lifetime ban from the National Park with a penalty of jail time if I ever stepped foot in it again, like

I would ever want to. Veronica and Tyler's parents blame me for his death, and as much as the doctors I kept seeing telled me that it wasn't. I can't help but feel consumed with guilt. After all, why shouldn't I, I mean, I was the one who thought it up.

I would still be alive if it wasn't from my idea. Now, the one year anniversary of that horror flying day is fast approaching, only weeks anyway, I can't help but think about anything but it says I said on my couch night after night, and try to drown my memories and guilt with bottles of whiskey and vodka. But not even the alcohol is enough to chase away the memories of that day, of the thing which pretends to be a stump, one which has floated around the lake for over a century.

Every year there are a few people who are reportedly drowning Crater Lake. Oftentimes, their bodies are never recovered, the lake being too deep to retrieve the remains. I'm pretty damn sure that the true reason swimmers disappear is much worse than that, Because when the camera flashed in Tyler's hand before it closed around him, I saw something that's still wakes me up in the middle of the night, screaming as it closed, I saw the routes forcing their

way into his mouth, down his throat. I think about trees, about how their roots dig into the soil to slowly extract the nutrients from it, and I shake uncontrollably at the thought that that thing might have had a similar purpose for my friend. So I'm posting this as a warning. You can go visit Crater Lake National Park. I mean, it's a beautiful place. You can even go walk around the edge of the lake or take a tour on one of the boats, both perfectly safe. But whatever you do,

stay the hell out of the water of Crater Lake. Heither. Kids. It's me mister creep Pasta, and I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for watching tonight's video or for listening to tonight's episode of the podcast. And as always, I want to give a very big thank you to everybody who supports me over at patreons patreon dot com slash mister Creepypasta. I cannot thank you guys enough. You guys have been there when I'm struggling like a half of the past year, and it sincerely helps me

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