The Radish Man -- TAPE 16

Through a series of chilling recordings, police reports, and lost audio logs -- sent anonymously to an Investigative Reporter -- "The Radish Man" unfolds as a found-footage horror mystery, documenting one man’s descent into madness as he fights to save his family from an unstoppable terror. But the deeper he digs, the more the truth becomes clear: no one escapes The Radish Man. No one ever has.

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"The Radish Man" created by Star Chaser Productions, written & directed by Matthew Ewald.

Produced by Karen Ewald, Shannon DeSalvo & Matthew Ewald.

For my wife. On this and every world.

© Star Chaser Productions | 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

It was the year of the famine. The crops had failed, the livestock starved, the river ran thin, and the bones of the land pushed up through the soil. People were hungry, desperate. The elders, they had rules. Rules that cannot be broken. There was a barrier, a line drawn not in stone, nor wood, but in something far older. The trees beyond the village, beyond the pines, were not theirs to touch. They belonged to the others. Travelers. Some called them outsiders. Outsiders, strange folk who spoke in stranger tongues and carried their lives in unnatural wagons. Some said they were cursed. Some said they cursed others. But the elders the elders only ever said this. Do not cross the barrier, do not take what is theirs. Do not upset the balance. The boy did not listen. His name is gone now, lost to time, but his story remains. He was young, eight, maybe nine summers as they used to say. He was small, but he had a strong heart. He heard his parents argue it that night. There was no food, no milk for his baby sister. He saw the fear in his mother's eyes, the malnourishment in her face. She could not produce milk. He saw the way his father held his hands, the strength bled from his very soul. And with his strong heart he decided to help. The next morning he slipped past the village gates, past the dying fields, past the warning stones, and he disappeared into the woods. At first he found a little wild carrot, bitter greens, but with time, with time and distance he saw them. Radishes growing wild along the creek bed, fat and red, more than he'd ever seen in his life. Hundreds, enough to feed the entire village. And so he dug. For hours he dug, pulling them from the earth with his small, dirt streaked hands. He loaded them into his father's rickety cart and wheeled them home. His heart bursting with pride, he left them on the doorsteps of every single house. A gift, a salvation. When he ran home breathless, calling for his parents to come see what he had done, they ran into the evening with worry and swiftness, and yet when they laid their eyes upon him, they did not smile, they did not embrace him. Instead, his father struck him, his mother fell to her knees in horror, and the town bell rang. The elders gathered, the villagers screamed. The boy did not understand. He had saved them. He had saved them all. Why were they afraid? Then came the whispers. One by one they vanished, taken in the night, taken by the night, dragged screaming into the soil, into the dark, into the rot. The villagers begged the elders for answers, but the elders only wept. Grown men with all their wealth and power reduced to infantile blubbering children, crying out, begging, and pleading to a god that previously their wealth had blinded them to, believing themselves untouchable, enough to turn their backs upon him, believing their longevity was as endless as their pockets deep. The devil didn't care about the paper in their wallets. Ego, wealth, power, and hubris made men believe themselves kings over other men. The devil? The devil knew that kings died, just like peasants did, on their knees begging. Nothing funnier to the devil than watching a man made king beg for his life. And when they were he came. They saw him first as a shadow at the edge of the town, standing where the pines met the fields, tall, unmoving, watching, his arms long, his fingers clawed, a man yet not a man, a beast, a nightmare and monster, something feral and vicious, yet ancient and wise, a thing made of root and soil, and something far worse, its face, if he had one, hidden beneath rock and ruin, and then he walked. House by house, door by door he came for them all. House by house, door by door he took them all until the boy was last. By morning the village was silent, but the houses were empty, and the radishes had turned to rot. But it wasn't the devil, it wasn't the fallen from grace Lucifer who had done this to them. The elders were right about one thing, what the indigenous people had warned them about, warned them of what was on was in this land. It was all true. The tribes knew it. The tribes knew the red man and dirt. And he's still there. He's still waiting, waiting for us in the rot. The land had its rules, and the boy had broken them. They deserve to die because of it. We all deserve to die. And we will too, because it's happening again. My daughter, she wanders. She's not right, you see, needs care, constant care. And two days ago she just she wandered, slipped away from us, sight unseen, searched for her for hours, eventually found her just beyond the creek, picking wildflowers. Sweet as a button, like a painting. She clearly was happy as could be. She meant no harm. She doesn't understand. She can't understand what she did. She didn't know what she was doing. She just wanted everyone to have a flower. So she picked them for the whole town. She didn't know, but this devil has no pity. And everyone in this cursed town is dead because of it. A few got out. My sister was out of town with my brother in law. They'll never know what happened. Not really. I'll leave this tape for her, but she never believed. No one really does until it happens. Nevertheless, tonight the radish man will come for my sweet baby girl. The radish man will kill her mama and I no matter how hard we fight against it. And then he will drag her into the rotten soil. And even though I know I'm a dead man, I will fight like hell till end thus beast clawing at our door. I will fight it. I'll go to war. I I I just I just wanted her name to live on. Somehow I just wanted her to be remembered. Her name was Tilly. Tilly and Beckett.