03 Dec Late Night Ice Cream

Posted at 12:53h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on December 3, 2025

“Late Night Ice Cream”

Written by J. Wampler
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 13 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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I grew up in a small town just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Technically, it was in South Carolina, but still a part of the metropolitan area. We were close enough to the city to enjoy some of the city amenities, but far enough away that we weren’t bothered by the lights and noises of that life. Hell, we thought our town was immune to even the minorest crime. The summer when I turned 13, we had an eye-opener. Children went missing. The local police thought they were just runaways. This was the mid-nineties, so no one had phones they could track. They couldn’t simply call their kids to tell them to come home. They just had to wait and see. They were all between 12 and 15 years old, and they may have just been letting off steam. At least, that’s what everyone thought before the first body showed up.

The first victim was a girl a couple of months younger than me. Her name was Rebecca Seawall, and she wasn’t really known to cause any trouble. As far as everyone knew, she came from a loving family that rarely argued. She had an older and younger brother, but she was the only girl, so, you know, she was her dad’s favorite. No… that’s not right. Favorite isn’t necessarily the term. She was just treated… differently. She would want to play football with her brothers and their friends, but she was repeatedly sent back home because it was too rough for her. She disappeared suddenly. The police concluded she was a runaway, but she didn’t take anything with her. No clothes, no food, nothing. Two weeks later, she turned up on the side of a back road, stripped naked and lying at an awkward angle. Her bright blonde hair was coated in mud, and her blue eyes were clouded over. She had a lot of thin cuts covering her entire body, and her left ring finger was missing. Why the left ring finger? No idea. This guy didn’t leave a note with reasons. But I guess I should explain how I know this. I’m not some weird freak that likes to go to crime scenes and stare at dead bodies. My dad is a police officer. Sometimes he overshares, probably more than he should, but he has to let all of that trauma out somewhere.

Soon, people started noticing the strange ice cream truck. Starting at around 9 p.m., an ice cream truck would wander through the neighborhood. Out of the darkness, Turkey in the Straw would begin playing, followed by a high-pitched “Hello!” From the start, I would get the creeps just hearing that thing. But the timing was way off. What kid goes to an ice cream truck in the middle of the night? What truck drives around that late to begin with? Sometimes I would see the truck pass by the house, or while my best friend, Michael Wallace, and I would be walking to or from one of our houses. It had pitch-black windows you couldn’t see through. It would never stop by us to see if we wanted ice cream, either. I know the driver saw us. The headlights shone on us like a spotlight. We just figured it was some whackjob being creepy.

Not too long after I had spotted the truck for the first time, another body appeared. It was a boy I knew from school. We weren’t really friends or anything, more like acquaintances. This one was also naked and covered in cuts. He was also missing his left ring finger. He was also my age. Jack Dawson was an only child to divorced parents. His stepfather sometimes hit him and his mother, which was ironically the reason his parents got divorced. He was forced to grow his black hair out long to hide the bruises on his face and neck. He had to wear long-sleeved shirts to conceal the ones on his arms, and long pants to conceal the ones on his legs. We never saw him in anything but winter gear, even when it was 95 degrees and humid. The coroners noticed something on him: the stub where his finger had been was frostbitten. He went back to Rebecca and checked her. Her finger was not. This guy is changing his game. Also on the stub was a bit of ice cream. Well, now we know it had to be this same ice cream truck, right? The police said that wasn’t enough evidence to stop and search this guy. Personally, I felt like his driving around in the dark in a fucking ice cream truck was enough, but hey, I was just a kid, so what do I know?

Later in the week, as Mike and I were walking to his house, we heard the song. It was close to us, just down the street, smoking cigarettes we bought from a friend’s high school sister. The creepy “Hello!” made us stop walking and step over to the side of the road as he passed on by.

“What do you think about this guy, Josh?” Mike asked me.

“Just some yahoo, man. I don’t know. What about you?” I responded.

“I guess. Or maybe he’s the killer. I mean, it seems pretty obvious, right? He drives around at night trying to lure kids with ice cream; Jack had frostbite on his finger and that dab of ice cream. Seems cut and dry to me. You should ask your dad why they haven’t stopped this creep yet.”

He passed me the cig. “I did. He said that if it’s the wrong guy, and they arrest him and put him on trial, he could sue when he gets out. It’s not illegal to drive an ice cream truck around at night. There wasn’t much to go on, so if it is him and he does get off, they can’t try him again for the same crime. Some kind of jeopardy thing.”

“Like the show? What does that have to do with the cops?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “No, dumbass, not like the show.” Although I couldn’t really give him a good answer either.

Two weeks after we saw him, another body. We knew what to expect. This time, we were the ones to find it, riding our bikes down dirt roads that nobody really drove down. She was face down in the ditch, Allison Montgomery. This one hurt a little more than the others. I had the biggest crush on her. She was about six months older than I was, so she was already 14. Long, red hair covered up her freckles and green eyes. God, I could get lost in those eyes. She was tall, or at least taller than me, and man, was she gorgeous. Tears welled up in my eyes as we raced back toward town to find a pay phone and call the police. We went back to the site, and I put my jacket over her body as a courtesy. Of course, she was missing her left ring finger and was covered in cuts. I didn’t really understand what they meant by “covered in cuts,” but when I saw it, I was weak in the knees. Have you ever heard of a Chinese torture technique called death by a thousand cuts? That’s what this looked like. This psychopath kidnapped kids and tortured them slowly by cutting slices into their bodies before strangling them to death. There were hundreds of cuts in different stages of healing all over her body. Her wrists and ankles were bruised, and she was emaciated and dehydrated. This was the cause of death. She was tortured until she died from lack of food or water. Insane.

After Ali was found, a curfew was imposed on the whole town. People began questioning the local police’s competence to handle something of this magnitude. These people were politely told to sit down and shut up. Behind the scenes, the chief told the cops to stop this mysterious ice cream truck for anything possible and find something to get him off the streets. They needed to hang someone, and he was the best scapegoat. The problem, however, was that he didn’t hit immediately after he left a body. Sometimes he went a few weeks before showing up again. He also didn’t have a pattern of where he strikes. It seems he just drives around random neighborhoods until he finds his victim, then no one sees him for a while. The only thing they knew for certain was that he seemed to start at 9. So, the curfew was set for 8, an hour before the song starts.

One night, Mike was at my house. We lost track of time playing video games, and before we knew it, it was after 8. My dad was at work; he worked the night shift, and my mom was busy taking care of my baby sister, so no one realized what time it was. My mom told Mike he could stay the night. “I just have to double check with my mom real quick,” he responded. When no one picked up, he frantically said, “She didn’t answer. I have to get back, or I’ll get in trouble.”

“Well, let me get my keys. Josh, watch Liz while I take him home. Don’t want you getting caught up in this ice cream mess,” my mom responded.

“No, it’s ok, Mrs. Henson, I still have some time before he really starts up. I’ll run the whole way, no more than 20- or 30-minutes tops. Thank you, though.”

Out the door he went. That was the last time I ever saw Mike…alive. He never made it home that night. His mom called a little after 9 to see where he was or if he was going to stay over.

“He left about an hour ago, Marlene. He should’ve been home by now.” I only heard my mom’s side of the conversation, but I got the gist. Mike vanished. I ran outside yelling his name.

“MIKE! MIKE!” My mom ran out behind me, yelling at me to get inside. Then we heard it. The haunting song of the ice cream truck. Mom yanked me back inside by the elbow just as he sped past. He had shown up early and got Mike.

Over the next two weeks, Mike’s parents blamed my mom and me for his disappearance, saying we should have forced him to stay in our house. My parents blamed his, saying she should have picked up the phone. Two weeks later, like clockwork, Mike’s body turned up. It was the same way as the others: dumped in a ditch down a dirt road, cuts all over his body, dehydrated and emaciated, a dab of ice cream on his hand.

The Wallaces moved out after that. I guess they were waiting to get his body to give him a proper burial before they did. A lot of people moved out of our town that year. Every victim’s family left, some of the potential victims left, and even people who had no chance of being a victim left. A ghost town. The town had a blemish on its name, and no one wanted to admit they were from it. We didn’t leave, though. We stayed. My dad was a cop in this town, and even though we were being terrorized, he still wanted to try to protect those who were still there.

After Mike’s funeral, I was angry. I wasn’t scared anymore…well, not as scared, anyway. I was determined to get this killer. I went to see my dad with a plan to use me as bait. He didn’t like it. “We’re not putting you out there like this. Absolutely not!”

“But, Dad, I know how to protect myself! You showed me! We can get this asshole!”

“No! End of discussion! You’re not even in danger to begin with!” I guess being a cop’s son protects you from criminals. That’s fine. If he won’t go after a cop’s kid, I’ll have to not be a cop’s kid. After he went to work, I snuck into my parents’ room and dug around for some essentials to make me a whole different kid. I took a hat from my dad’s collection, stole his reading glasses, threw on some of my mom’s makeup to make my face and hands look tanner than I really am, added some dark sideburns, and even pulled out some of my dad’s clothes. Sure, they were too big for me, but the point is to look different. Checking myself out in the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. Then I went outside and waited.

It didn’t take long. Around 8:45, I heard the song start up, followed by the ever-chilling greeting. I couldn’t see the truck, so I had to follow the sound to the street he was on. Then I spotted the truck. I never really looked at it before. I mean, I saw it. A lot. But I never looked at it. As it sat under a streetlamp, I took it all in. It was your basic truck body style, squared and old. The once-white base paint had become dingy over time and due to neglect. The pink and purple clouds swirling around the menu were faded and peeling. The menu itself was cracked, barely legible. On top sat a yellow ball with a smiley face. I couldn’t understand how something so friendly could be so menacing.

Suddenly, the streetlight popped. I’m not sure if he did it or if it was just coincidental timing, but I definitely know it made me jump. Then the truck shifted into drive, and it inched forward. I was mesmerized. I couldn’t move. That damn song kept playing, and all I could do was stand there watching the truck. The brakes squealed as the truck slowed to a stop in front of me. The man opened the back door, scooped me up, and tossed me inside before I knew what was going on. By the time I could control my body, it was too late. He had me locked inside the back of the truck.

Eventually, we came to an abandoned warehouse outside of town. I have no idea which way we went or where we were. He pulled inside the building and parked. Then he turned around and made his way toward me, hunched over. I shuffled back as much as I could, but I could only go so far. He grabbed my hand with an iron grip and shoved it in the ice cream freezer. It felt like he held it there forever. It burned worse than anything I’ve ever felt. I fought, but all that did was make him hold me there longer. He took a pair of bolt cutters from a wall behind him. I was still too drowsy from whatever made me immobile that I didn’t see them before. He slipped my left ring finger between the fierce jaws and slowly closed them together. In that moment, I swear I could hear every single sound that my finger made as it was removed from my body. I heard the rip of skin, followed by the squelch of muscle, and finally the snap of bone. I was surprised. I couldn’t feel any of it. I wondered if that was why he froze the hand first. As he turned, I saw his face in the reflection of the headlights off the metal surrounding us. My heart skipped a beat as I realized who the Ice Cream Man was.

“Dad?” The word choked out of me. His smile dropped, and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Dad, what are you doing? You’re the Ice Cream Man?”

He turned on the overhead light and removed the glasses and hat. With his sleeve, he wiped my face to reveal a boy he held in the hospital. A boy he taught how to ride a bike and had dinner with on his off nights. He shook his head in disbelief. “Josh, what are you doing here?” His expression was a mix of embarrassment, shock, and a bit of pride.

“Me? Dad, what the fuck are you doing here?! What is going on?” I shouted back at him.

“Josh, you wouldn’t understand. You have no idea the lengths I have to go to in order to keep you and your mother safe.”

“Safe from what, you? How are you keeping us safe by killing kids? Kids are not a threat to you! You can keep us all safe by doing your fucking job and ditching your hobby!”

“That’s the problem. This isn’t a hobby. This is what I do to push down the urges. You don’t remember this, but you were almost my first victim. You were a baby, and I was home alone with you. I worked nights–”

“This is why you still work nights, isn’t it? So, you can say you were at work all day.”

“–I worked nights, so I had you during the day while your mother ran some errands. You started crying so much, and it was so loud. I couldn’t console you. I tried talking to you, holding you, rocking you, feeding you. It wouldn’t stop. I don’t know how long I stared at you after I put you back in the crib, but when I heard the front door open and your mom yell for me, I realized I had a pillow over your face. I snatched it off and picked you up. You were still breathing and began to scream again. After that, I told your mother to never leave me alone with you again. I made up some bullshit about not knowing what to do if you cried like that again. She eventually relented and told me she wouldn’t do it. Ever since the,n I haven’t been left alone with you or Lindsay.”

“Why did you cut the kids? Did you get off on that?”

“No. That wasn’t what was most pleasurable to me. It was when they were crying and screaming. Sometimes they needed a little…encouragement..” We sat there looking at one another. It was a stalemate between two people who loved each other but no longer trusted each other. Both of us wanted to kill the other before we knew who we were.

“If your ‘urges’ wanted kids, why did you say you were keeping mom safe?” I asked, my heart beating a little slower now.

“If she found out I couldn’t trust her to keep it to herself, could I? You, on the other hand, may be able to keep this a secret. I don’t want to hurt you. If you go home, are you going to tell anyone?” he finally asked.

“I will keep this to myself if you leave for good. You leave me and mom, you leave this town, you leave this state.” I had a similar problem. I loved my father, without a doubt. But he killed my friends and classmates. He tortured and murdered children. I couldn’t have him close to us. He agreed. “Tonight,” I finished.

He dropped me off up the road from a hospital. I walked the rest of the way. I came up with a story about how the Ice Cream Man took me, but, miraculously, I escaped. He left a note for my mom at the house while she was with me in the emergency room, saying how this case messed him up, and he had to leave. He told the police station that it had broken him and that he needed time off. He apologized to both of them. He apologized to me without leaving a reason, but I knew why.

I saw my father one more time three months later. He had finally been caught in Tennessee. It wasn’t some fancy detective work that caught up with him. A taillight was out on his truck, and he was pulled over with another victim in the back. The cops heard the child and yanked him out of the truck at gunpoint. When news broke that the Ice Cream Man was none other than Robert Henson, our town blew up. The police department began checking records for his car and found that it had spent an alarming amount of time at an abandoned warehouse just outside of town between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. He had been handling the evidence for the case and altered or disposed of it to keep the authorities off his trail. The ice cream truck was an auctioned off impounded truck from some drug dealer that he bought using an alias and paid cash. My mom asked me numerous times if I knew it was him, even as he chopped off my finger. I denied it, but deep down I think she knew the truth. He was charged with nine kidnapping and eight murder charges, among others. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Despite his lawyer’s advice to take a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, he didn’t. I went to see him one time; my mother did not. I asked why he didn’t take the deal. He said he would rather die than live in a cage. He told me he loved me. I did not. I didn’t love this man anymore. This was not my father.

We watched when his sentence was carried out. Lethal injection. My mom cried, mourning the man she loved. I comforted her. He looked at us as he died, a slight smile forming as we made eye contact. Mom, Lindsay, and I ended up moving out of the Charlotte area altogether. Found a small town in Texas where no one knew who we were. It probably helped that we changed our names. My mom died when I was 23. She wasn’t that old and had no illnesses. Her heart gave out. I believed that she just died from a broken heart. I still live in Texas with my wife and three sons. I’m planning on a long life with them.

I have to go now. I just pulled into the neighborhood.

Nearby, I hear Turkey in the Straw playing.

…Hello!