The Yellow Rabbit Of Willow Creek

Tanya: "In the quiet town of Willow Creek, in the year of 2000, june 25th, where the streets are lined with familiar faces and the hum of everyday life feels almost too predictable, something strange happened one ordinary night. A night that would turn the life of a successful, well-respected man upside down, leaving him questioning his own sanity—and the safety of his home."

Addison: "Our story begins with Steven, a man who had it all. Owner of a beloved family restaurant, a pillar of the community, and a man who prided himself on living a life far removed from the chaos of the outside world. But on that fateful night, the peace of his home was shattered by a sound—a sound that would lead him to a confrontation with a figure so bizarre, so unsettling, that it defies explanation."

Tanya: "It was late. The restaurant had closed for the night, and Steven was settling in for a quiet evening. But then, a noise—a faint, almost imperceptible sound—caught his attention. It was coming from outside. Curious, he rose from his chair, his heart pounding just a little faster than usual. As he approached the window, the moonlight cast an eerie glow over the backyard. And there, standing in the shadows, was a figure. A large man, towering over the average height, dressed in a clunky yellow bunny suit. A purple bow tie adorned his neck, and in his hand, he held a machete. He was staring directly at Steven through his window, his presence both absurd and terrifying."

Addison: "Without a second thought, Steven turned to grab the phone, his hand trembling as he dialed 911. But when he turned back, the figure was gone. Vanished into the night, leaving behind only the memory of an encounter that would haunt him for days to come."

Tanya: "So, what happened that night? Was it a prank gone wrong? A hallucination? Or something far more sinister? Tune in as we delve into the chilling tale of Steven's final days, the yellow bunny man, and the mystery that lingered in the quiet town of Willow Creek that fateful summer."

Addison: "This is Criminally Curious. True crime, one story at a time."

Tanya: "And we're here to keep you hooked until the very end. Join us next time for another spine-chilling tale."

Addison: "Stay curious, and stay safe. the first episode on our series on the Willow Creek massacre will air tomorrow at 8 AM so make sure your subscribed."

The Stalker in the Shadows

Tanya: we come back to the sound of clinking dishes and the hum of a busy kitchen. Steven is back at his restaurant, "Charlies Party Plaza" trying to maintain his usual demeanor. However, the atmosphere is tense, and his staff notices his unease. the restaurant was named Charlies after the mascot, an otter name Charlie, whom one of the staff members dressed up as. the mascot was named after his daughter who loved otters. butt she was away at college by then.

Addison: As Steven was closing up in the evening, a few days after his encounter at home, he hears an unusual noise in the kitchen. He cautiously approaches, heart pounding. In the dim light, he thinks he sees something in the darkness, he flicks on the lights in a panic to discover it was only the Otter costume with the employee chef aprons thrown on top of it. he let out a sigh of relief, he must have been going paranoid after what he saw a few days ago he thought to himself.

Tanya: But that's when all the way on the other side of the restaurant a pile of serving trays stacked up on a countertop in the front of the restaurant went crashing down. causing Steven to jump. he grabbed a flashlight from the supply closest as most of the lights had already been turned off and only the auxiliary night shift lights were left on. it was probably just the nightguard coming in for his shift, but he wanted to make sure just in case.

Addison: Now that seems weird right? like I know I wouldn't go check it out if I thought it was the night guard, because like, he's your employee, he should know how to clean up his own messes. Steven is tired, and is having a long day. he probably should have just gone home.

Tanya: yeah he should have, but he didn't. the mad-lad stomped through the halls until he reached the main, open venue. the spilled trays were across the floor but no sign of anyone. so he stomped forward, reasonably mad, going to pick up the trays before he left out the front doors which are right next to him when he notices something. something that makes him stop dead in his tracks.

Addison: a piece of yellow felt, like for a kids art project. but what confused him was the fact nothing in his establishment used felt that was yellow. again it was probably nothing. it was a kids restaurant afterall, a kid probably had some stuck to their clothes. So he went about picking up the trays. and as he stood up to put the pile on the countertop he looked over to the right side of the venue, where the room split off into a hallway down to a private party room, the opening to the arcade room, and the access point to the mens bathroom. the women's restroom was on the other side of the venue for some reason. he could see part of the wall was clearly illuminated very brightly.

Tanya: a flashlight?

Addison: yep, a flashlight. and thanks to this flashlight that was for some reason left on the floor Steven could see part of a large smear of blood on the wall...

Tanya: uh oh... so he called for help right? surely he did.

Addison: nope, instead he ran over there, past all the tables, around the play pen, and into the area where on the floor layed the branded flashlight given to the nightguard, on the floor lay a small pool of blood, and smeared blood all along the walls.

Tanya: jesus christ... and it only gets worse for steven from here. in his shocked state he followed the blood on the walls down the hallway, all the way until he came across a supply closet. with a bloody handle....

Addison: i wonder what he will find?

Tanya: as you might guess, he opened the door to find the nightguard in the closet, horribly maimed and sliced up with blood all over the floor. Steven quite reasonably stumped back in fear and shock before a few slow thumping footsteps could be heard at the end of the hall. and there it was again, that clunky yellow rabbit, hidden behind the double doors that separate the hall from the party room at the end, all Steven could see was its face staring at him. in shock he stood there, petrified. before the yellow rabbit slumped back into the darkness.

Addison: so now he's going to phone the cops right? well yes he does. Steven ran over to the phone at the receptionist desk and activated the silent alarm, before turning and running towards the front doors. almost slipping on the blood puddle it seems, Steven was in full panic mode by now. as he exited the doors he turned around and locked them behind him. he didt want that murderous thing following him.

Tanya: and as he turned away from the doors to run to his car a large, menacing, yellow arm reached around from around the bushes that flanked the front entrance and close-lined him hard in the chest. knocking him flat on his back. Steven laid there looking up at a large, imposing, murderous Yellow Rabbit. various metal joints and screws barely visible in certain parts of the suit. he could see the Yellow Rabbit perfectly now. its face and torso, covered in blood. the purple bow tie glistening with blood. floppy ears, subtlety moving in the wind. and its face, those eyes. were human eyes. this yellow rabbit was no monster nor aprition. but a human being.

Addison: With fear oozing from Steven the yellow rabbit bent down, grabbed Steven by his shirt, and lift him up. higher and higher until he was held off the ground. the Yellow rabbit tilted its head side to side as if studying Steven as he yelled and squirmed to get free. it was no use as the menacing monster in front of him took the machete in its right hand, and plunged it deep into Stevens gut. squelching as it twisted the blade inside of him.

Tanya: that's when the CCTV footage cuts out, so we dont know what happened directly after that but we do know that by the time the police arrived that Steven had been thrown through the locked doors back inside the building and a trail of bloody, large, 3 toed footprints trailed off through the parking lot and into the forest.

Addison: the headlines struck the entire town with a panic, the Restaurant was "Momentarily closed" and the family of Steven mourned him. people were in complete chaos over this yellow rabbit figure that was stalking the town. and soon after being temporarily closed, the Ownership of Charlies Party Plaza declared bankruptcy and sold off all its assets. the fear and panic convinced the family owned restaurant that no good would come of further owning or operating that place any more.

Tanya: This is only the first document case in the haunting case of the Yellow Rabbit, there is more to this story, and we will tell you all about it. follow us for more on the Criminally Curious Podcast. thank you all for listening and stay safe out there.

Side bar: Helpless wonder

Tanya: Welcome back to the Criminally Curious podcast, today we have with us a special guest.

Addison: yes we do! he is a retired investigator who was critically part of the investigation into the early parts of the Yellow Rabbit case. why dont you go ahead and introduce yourself sir.

Henry: Hello, my name is Henry Schmidt. like she said i was a part of the early investigation into the murders. actually, in preparation for this meeting I went back into my own personal notes and reviewed some stuff so I could give you the best account of everything.

Tanya: Awesome, again thank you so much for coming on the show It's an honor to have you here. so please go ahead and tell us all about how things went when you got there.

Henry: Ok, well, I arrived there with my partner and 2 other investigators at around 8 in the morning. the beat cops had arrived at the scene the night of the murder and secured the scene for us until we could arrive. so me and my partner, who asked to remain anonymous to the public. pulled up the scene of the crime. There were 4 cop cars, and lots of yellow tape lining the area, at the perimeter we could see the crying relatives of Mr.Stevenson as well as shocked and confused employees. you know that always kinda pulls on your heart strings but it wasn't our job to be their consular. it was our job to catch the guy that did this and get justice for their loved ones. we walked up the yellow tape, flashed our badges at the cop, he let us through. the Captain was already standing there, waiting impatiently.

Addison: wait so could you tell everyone what kind of investigator you were please, I feel like that's an important part of the story.

Henry: I was a forensics investigator.

Tanya: So like you dusted for finger prints and stuff?

Henry: yep that's pretty much the gist of it to be honest.

Addison: sorry to interrupt please continue.

Henry: So we go and talk to the captain, she gives us the rundown on what happened, who this guy was. what they have so far, and the locations we should check out right, so first we went inside and reviewed all the CCTV footage.

Tanya: was it the same footage we used while researching this case?

Henry: yes it was, I mean it's been 20 plus years so by now it's definitely in the public domain. anyways after we checked the CCTV we noticed how this yellow rabbit man thing had entered the building, through a large industrial vent on the outside of the building, he crawled in, then we saw how he got the night guard.

Tanya: how'd he do it???

Henry: the assailant had seemingly waited behind the corner of the entry way to the arcade room, then as the night guard walked past he rounded the corner, grabbed him by the shoulder with its left hand, whilst hacking and chopping away with the machete in its right hand. the poor man never even got the chance to scream.

Addison: God that's awful...

Henry: so once he had done him in, the yellow rabbit dragged the night guard by the neck down the hall, before throwing him into the supply closet, some 20 feet away from where he had murdered him. so after that the rabbit man stomped down the hall and went into the rear party room, were their is no CCTV so we don't know what he did there. but after watching the rest of the footage we saw all the places we needed to check out.

Tanya: so where did you start?

Henry: Well first we inspected the entry point, we went around the building to the large industrial vent. it had been ripped clean off. and yellow smudges from the material of the suit presumably could be found inside the vent itself. confirming the CCTV footage. after that we checked out the party room where there was no security footage, we found nothing in there. and then we went to check out the bodies themselves. this wasn't a super complicated crime scene. it was very cut and dry.

Addison: so what about them? did you find anything?

Henry: we found that no personal belongings on the victims had been taken, serial killers often like to take trophies you see. and as was clearly visible on the footage, we confirmed the causes of death for the reports.
But then again, we already knew almost all of this. the real question was why, and who. and that was harder to determine. we must have searched and searched and searched that entire place for any hair, finger prints, anything.

Tanya: and did you find anything? I know at the time the technology wasn't really as advanced as it was today so that must have made it harder.

Henry: no, we found nothing, nothing at all. so we only had one last option, looking for the suit, if we found the suit, we could find the killer.

Addison: so how did you go about looking for that suit? it surely must have been easy to find right?

Henry: actually, at the time it was quite difficult. every other restaurant and entertainment joint had a mascot, some robotic, some suits, some a mix of both. so that widened our search a lot. but out of every place that would have a suit like that in the entire state, not one used a yellow rabbit. we were perplexed, we had zero leads and the public was furious.

Tanya: and it is then that the next killing happened right?

Henry: that's right, we gained some valuable information from that case, sad as that is.

Addison: and so join us on Criminally Curious as we go deeper into this case and help uncover and unmask the yellow rabbit of Willow Creek. Henry will be joining us again later, and stay tuned!

The Slaughter at Astro Burger

Tanya: welcome back to criminally curious we are here with my dearest friend Addison.

Addison: hello everyone, and we are back with Henry Schmidt once again,

Henry: Thank you once again for bringing me on the podcast.

Tanya: Of course, now when we last left off in this story the police were trying to gather information and leads on who this mysterious murder was.

Henry: rather unsuccessfully mind you, unfortunately we had nothing on this guy at all. but we were actively searching the state for any signs of this yellow rabbit costume that was plaguing our town.

Addison: So what happens next you may be asking? well let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. about 3 days after the murders at Charlie's, the yellow rabbit moved on to a new target, another mascot themed and entertainment restaurant. So let's set the scene...

Tanya: The Astro Burger restaurant was a small chain restaurant with a few locations opened locally, and it was doing quite well for its size. it was themed around Astro the dog, and his other dog bandmates as they provided entertainment from the stage for party goers. unlike the last location we talked about, these mascots were all machines. animatronics.

Addison: the owners and operators were a family, Jill and Robert, the two parents who were in their early 40s, the restaurant was mostly run by Jill, it was her dream project afterall. and their two kids, Jack and Elizabeth, jack was around 11, and elizabeth was 9.
the news about what had happened at Charlie´s had shocked the entire community and put everyone on edge. including Jill.
She arrived on Saturday at 7 am to prepare to open the restaurant at 8, the morning staff was also arriving too.

Tanya: It looked like it was going to be another normal day at the restaurant, there were no signs anything had happened there or that anything was going to happen. Jill greeted the night guard as he was clocking out to go home and said good morning to her morning shift staff, all college or high school age kids. Jill clocked in, and went to her office off to the left side of the main room. while she whittled away with her pen signing papers and documents and paychecks she heard a shriek of fear that made her shoot right up.

Addison: when she burst out of her office she looked over to the far side of the restaurant, down the hallway going past the stage with the animatronics, to see one of her workers, a young women, run in fear from the back room and fall into the arms of her coworkers, furiously pointing down the hall and screaming,
¨ there´s someone back there! ¨
Jill asked her,
¨Did they have weapon?¨
the girl responded,
¨Not that i saw.¨
Jill spun around to the rest of the morning crew, some 10 people, after what happened at Charlie ´ s, she couldt wait for the police.
¨ Everyone, go grab the knives from the kitchen, lets go get this bastard.¨
with that the workers nodded before running off to the kitchen, and coming back armed with various types and lengths of knives from vegetable knives to pizza knives. Jill held up a metal rod that had been a part of a broom and advanced with her team.

Tanya: they slowly approached the doors to the rear hallway, no sign of anything. they burst through the double doors like an angry mob, no sign of anything. the back party room was empty, they spread out and searched every closet, under every table, and even checked to see if the vents were still screwed shut. they found nothing. with that Jill called out to her people,
¨False alarm everyone, lets get back to work.¨
she was reasonably annoyed with the situation but they still had to get ready to open it was a saturday afterall. with that the group trudged back out to the main lobby, disheartened.
Jill turned around to look at her workers and give them some words of inspiration to make up for the feeling of discomfort after what had just happened.
¨ Ok team, don't be discouraged. it was probably Tammy ´ s imagination playing tricks on her, it happens to the best of us ok? Now let's get out there and get ready, It's a big day today. Let's put forward our best foot-¨ when she was then interrupted.

Addison: the stage curtains behind the animatronics furled some as something stepped through, it was then when the group of that morning shift heard thumping heavy footsteps fall on the wooden stage they turned in horror to see standing above them, only some 5-10 feet away, The Yellow Rabbit standing before them. he scanned the group, watching as horror and fear registered upon their faces before hefting up a fire axe into his hands. he quickly hopped down from the stage and quickly swung the fire axe overhead and into a shocked and stunned young man, landing it right into his upper chest, before pulling out and letting the young man drop to the floor, spasming.

Tanya: now this is when the fight or flight kicked in, some of the group ran for the front door down at the end of the main hall. while others tried to charge the yellow rabbit with the knives they still had in their hands. Jill had panicked and chosen either, instead she turned and ran for her office.
after cutting down the first man the yellow rabbit quickly moved on to those who had decided to charge him, swinging the axe into a young womens chest, before using the butt end of it to hit another worker in the face that had charged him from the other side to stun him back, before bringing the axe over its head and swinging it down into the stunned mans skull, splitting it in two. but while he was pulling the axe back out one of the older workers on the crew, a man in his late 20s, got close enough to take a stab at the yellow rabbit, he was lucky enough to swipe right at the point in the suit where black fabric connected the joints, the man had sliced the yellow rabbits elbow, causing him to bleed and getting blood on the knife. remember that for later. but very quickly the yellow rabbit grabbed him by the throat with one hand before lifting him up and tossing him onto a table 5 feet away. the young man tried to get up and run away but the Yellow Rabbit had retrieved its axe and had charged forward, lodging it square in his back.

Addison: now the poor individuals that had decided to run for the exit had made a horrifying discovery. as they ran from the slaughter happening behind them they made it to the end of the hallway only to find,
¨Sh*t Sh*t Sh*t the door is stuck!¨
¨What?! we didn't lock it!¨
¨F*ck its chained up from the outside!¨
¨How!?? that thing is in here! who would chain it up?!¨
¨No no no no!¨
through their sobs of horror they kept yanking the door relentlessly hoping someone would make it out. only when the sounds of carnage stopped, and the screams of pain faded behind them that they all turned around to see the menacing, blood soaked, Yellow rabbit, slowly round the corner down at the end of the hallway. the eyes of the suit now glow a faint blue. it stood there for a moment, before for the first time so far, it spoke.
the yellow rabbit let out a menacing, psychotic, slightly distorted raspy laugh before pointing the axe at them from down the hall.
¨Lucky me! This is perfect...Symmetry, my friend!¨
before he charged down the hallway.

Tanya: and with that, unfortunately... none were able to escape... The Yellow rabbit had claimed all of their lives. except for Jill, who still hid inside her office, behind her desk. after the screams ended she slowly, cautiously, peaked her head up to see the Yellow rabbit stomping back out from the hallway, she quickly went back down, horrified. Jill crawled over to the vent in her office, right behind her desk, and started pulling off the clips that held it in place, she could crawl out of here, she could survive. when she turned back around to check behind her she froze in horror.
the yellow rabbit was standing there, head cocked to the side, when she locked ¨eyes¨ with this monster, it gingerly waved at her. Jill thought to herself, she was safe right? those windows were inch thick bulletproof glass, in case of an attempted robbery, no way an axe could break through it right?... then she realized, the door was made of wood... she quickly turned back around and kept yanking and pulling the vent clips as she heard axe blow after axe blow carve up her door, she was panicking, she thought she was done for when... boom, she got the vent open, she crawled through and kept crawling, her heart beating out of her chest, her breathing faster then a race car until finally, she made it, she pushed off the cover and crawled out the vent onto the green grass that lined the side of the sidewalk that went around the entire strip mall. she broke down immediately, crying and screeching, causing people passing by to run over to her, with that the police were called and they arrived at the scene of the crime.

Henry: officers on scene immediately used bolt cutters to cut off the chain that had been rapped around the door handles, and went to go push open the doors, they pushed the doors open to find the scene of a massacre. some got sick instantly, others welled up in tears, it was a massacre, never before seen in a town like Willow Creek. Either way they closed the place off and waited for us, the investigators to arrive, now they had two questions to answer, who was the yellow rabbit, and who chained the door?....

Addison: We will come back to this story after a short break but thank you very much for continuing to follow this case with us and as always, Stay Criminally Curious.