KFC HORROR STORY

It was supposed to be just another late-night food run. I was driving home from my shift at the gas station, stomach growling, when I saw the flickering red glow of a KFC sign through the fog. The strange thing was, I didn’t remember a KFC being on that stretch of Route 19. It was nestled between an abandoned motel and a boarded-up liquor store, but the bright neon “OPEN 24 HOURS” sign buzzed with life.

Curiosity—and hunger—won. I pulled into the empty lot. The building looked old, too old. The logo was the 1970s Colonel Sanders face, faded and slightly warped like it had been baking under the sun for years. A faint smell of grease and something sour clung to the air. But the lights were on. So was the drive-thru speaker. I figured maybe it was one of those weird rural places that hadn’t been updated in decades.

I parked and went inside. The air was thick. Not just warm—thick. Like walking into a room where someone had been cooking meat for hours without ventilation. The lobby was empty, except for one worker behind the counter. She looked about seventy, hair pulled tight under a paper KFC hat, smile frozen like it was glued on. Her name tag said “Mary.”

“Welcome to KFC,” she said without blinking. “The family feast is ready.”

I blinked, confused. “Uh, can I just get a two-piece with fries?”

She paused. The smile stayed. Then she nodded. “The family feast… just for you.”

Before I could correct her, she turned and vanished into the kitchen. I stood there, tapping my card on the counter, but the reader was busted. No modern payment options—just a rusted cash register and a paper menu with prices that looked like they hadn’t changed since 1993. I reached for my wallet, but the moment I looked up, she was already back, holding a tray. Chicken. Biscuits. Mashed potatoes. But the chicken was wrong. It was… raw in the center. Pink. Leaking something dark.

“I—uh—this doesn’t look cooked,” I said, pushing the tray slightly away.

Mary tilted her head. “It’s how he likes it.”

“Who?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Her eyes twitched toward the back door behind the kitchen. “The Colonel.”

I laughed nervously, thinking it was some creepy marketing bit. “Right. Sure.”

She leaned in closer. Her eyes were glassy, dead. “He doesn’t like when people waste the family feast.”

I pushed the tray back and turned toward the exit. But the door was gone.

Literally gone.

Where there had once been a clear glass door leading back outside was now a blank wall, coated in faded red wallpaper that looked… sticky. I spun around. The room had changed. The walls were darker. Greasier. The windows were bricked over from the inside. The air smelled like old meat, rot, and bleach.

“Mary?” I called. But she was gone. So was the counter. The kitchen door now hung open, leading to darkness.

Panicking, I pulled out my phone. No signal. Of course. I turned on the flashlight and stepped into the kitchen. What I saw made my stomach twist. The counters were splattered with old blood. Knives sat in sinks full of murky water. A large industrial fridge in the corner was slightly ajar, and from it came a low, wet slurping sound.

I backed away slowly, but the fridge door creaked open by itself. Inside was a mound of meat—at least, I hoped it was meat. Pale, veiny, and moving. Something shifted under the flesh. Something with eyes.

I ran.

Past rusted fryers, through swinging doors, into a hallway that shouldn’t exist. It stretched on and on, lined with framed photos of Colonel Sanders. But in each one, his face was more distorted. In the first photo, he looked normal. By the fifth, his eyes were bleeding. In the tenth, his smile had split his face open.

The walls began to pulse.

From behind me, I heard the sound of footsteps—slow, dragging, and heavy. I ducked into a side room. It was a dining area, or had once been. The booths were torn. The tables were covered in something black and crusted. One of the chairs still had a handcuff attached to it. In the corner sat a kid’s play area—except it was filled with bones. Tiny ones. Chicken bones, maybe. I hoped.

Then I heard it.

A voice.

Low. Groaning. Mocking.

“Welcome to the family… boy.”

I turned.

There he was.

The Colonel.

Not a man in costume. Not an actor.

This… thing was tall, too tall, in a grease-soaked white suit that stuck to his skin. His face was cracked like old porcelain, leaking a thick red fluid from beneath. His eyes were glowing, and his mouth never closed—just hung open, revealing rows of teeth that didn’t belong in a human mouth. He dragged a cane that wasn’t a cane—it was a sharpened chicken bone the length of a sword.

I ran again.

The doors led to kitchens, to freezers, to rooms filled with meat hooks and chicken feathers that moved on their own. At one point, I burst through a swinging door and landed in a room full of deep fryers—each one bubbling with oil despite no power source. Inside the fryers floated pieces of… people. Fingers. Eyes. A whole face stared up at me, lips still twitching.

Something hissed from behind me. I turned and saw Mary crawling on the ceiling, upside down, head twisted fully backward.

“He’s hungry,” she said. “He needs fresh meat to keep the store open.”

I threw a fryer at her and ran. Her screams followed me, turning into laughter. High-pitched. Childlike.

I finally found a staircase and took it, two steps at a time. It led to the attic. Or what I thought was the attic. The space above was pitch black. No windows. Just a single red lightbulb swinging from the ceiling.

In the center of the room were five chairs. In each sat a person. Or what used to be a person. They were wrapped in yarn—no, chicken skin—stitched together like puppets. Their mouths were wide open, but no sound came. Their eyes followed me. One blinked.

Above them was a giant chicken mascot costume, hanging by a rope. It turned slowly, its empty eye sockets dripping oil.

Behind me, I heard the Colonel again.

“You can’t run from the family, son. You’re one of us now.”

I screamed and leapt through the wall. Literally crashed through rotten plaster and landed hard in the back alley behind the building. It was raining. Cold, real rain. I gasped for breath and looked up.

There was nothing there.

No KFC.

Just an empty lot.

I looked at my phone. It was 4:33 a.m. Full bars. A text notification popped up from my friend: “Where are you, dude? You left 3 hours ago for food.”

I ran to the main road, flagged down a passing trucker, and told him what happened. He looked at me like I was crazy, then paled when I described the location.

“That KFC?” he whispered. “Burned down in the ‘80s. Gas leak. Killed the whole night shift. Rumor was, the manager had gone nuts. Served human meat. Whole town covered it up.”

I never drove that road again.

But sometimes, when I’m hungry late at night, my phone buzzes with a strange notification:

“Family Feast available. One seat left. Route 19.”

And the worst part?

I’m tempted.

Every time.