nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/EmmyLee666 on 2024-10-15 08:08:49+00:00.

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I won’t bore you with the drivel I’m sure you’d expect of a doomed woman. I’ve made peace with it, and I urge you to not attempt changing my mind.

 

I first encountered it at the mall, in the food court, with my friend, Jessie. There wasn’t much irregular about the day, we had a habit of meeting – provided we were free – at the mall on Saturdays. We had just finished some routine shopping and Jessie insisted that we ordered something to eat before we left. When I told them that I didn’t have money to be spending on food they shook their head and said that they would pay for it.

We approached the desk of an outlet which seemed to have moved in within the previous week, as neither of us recalled seeing it the Saturday previous. Above the outlet glowed a neon yellow sign which read ‘Esser’ and behind an off-white counter there was a short, disturbingly skeletal man who tapped the countertop in an off-beat pattern. Behind him, the walls and floors appeared stained, but Jessie insisted we ordered food there, citing their admittedly appeasing menu and Jessie’s love for Indian food. Despite my own sanitary concerns and the unease the emaciated man inspired in me at the idea that maybe, just maybe, we may not be so different, I agreed.

 

 I rarely have two meals a day, if one. Yet I insist to all who make my acquaintance that I am quite chubby, no matter if a scale would disagree. I do not leave my house unless in the company of the few friends I have as when I am alone I become hopelessly frightened and get myself into frequent embarrassment.

So when Jessie finished their order, then informed me that they would not order for me as well, I stared at them scornfully and shook my head. They pushed it no further and to their credit, they did not know about my aversion to eating as far as I am aware; they did know, however, that I was deathly afraid of talking to people in even marginally pressured environments such as at a fast-food joint.

 

The man had seemed friendly enough though, his eyes lit up and he smiled widely at Jessie when they ordered. Yet I thought of it as a minor victory as I had a viable excuse to why I was not going to eat. I was planning to pick at the food while Jessie ate, then carry it home and toss it in the fridge. I would eat it eventually, of course, the very next day; I was above wasting my friend’s money, but I had already eaten before I came. I think I did at least.

We waited for the man to give us a receipt, but he just walked into the back, and came out with a Styrofoam box in a bag and my friend’s coke. He thanked us ecstatically for ordering, wished us a good day, then walked out from behind the desk, and disappeared into the business of the mall. I exchanged a strange look with Jessie but we just chuckled and shrugged it off.

 

Jessie and I didn’t linger longer at the mall after that, neither of us particularly liked the noise of conversation (Jessie tolerated it better than I did), so we got into my car. Jessie ate while I ventured to return them to their apartment. They made strange comments about the food. They said that the food was extremely warm, as if the man had just cooked it when he handed it over, and that it tasted unbelievably good for a place that we had never heard of. After they finished dancing their fork from the food and to their mouth, they muttered that they felt heavy but not fulfilled.

I arrived at their apartment complex soon after and they hugged me and wished me home safely. Before they walked off though, they said that they needed me to visit on Wednesday night; they had something to give me. I nodded, told them I would be there and drove home, thinking nothing of the day.

 

The apartment complex in which Jessie lived was scarcely maintained, and the hallways which connected the various rooms together had an air of decay about them. The ceiling panels were fallen or hanging in various areas, the walls were moist where the tenants within could afford air conditioning, and there was an old, pervasive, dusty smell present within each suite, or at least I assumed so, Jessie never was able to rid themselves of it.

When Jessie opened the door to let me in on Wednesday, it seemed the necrotic aspect of the building spread even to them. Their eyes lacked the brightness I knew of them, instead seeming to be quite sunken and sleepy. Jessie stood with the door half open, not quite inviting me to enter.

“Is everything okay?”  A frown tugged at the corner of my lips. I thought Jessie had to be ill.. I then perhaps rudely forced my way into their apartment, I wanted to ensure that Jessie was taking care of themself. However, after I pushed the door open, I noticed that my friend’s arm seemed to be held behind their back, but then noticed that they simply lacked the appendage.

I stared at them for a few seconds and tears welled in their eyes. They seemed like they were about to cry so I guided them towards their couch and allowed them to do so. They broke down, sobbing about… hunger. They held their hands on their forehead and made no effort to wipe their eyes or nose as they precipitated. I told them I understood their woes, by misfortune of my own condition, and that even if they felt themselves to have gained what they considered to be an ‘unacceptable’ amount of weight; it would simply not do to starve.

 

“Jess, look in the mirror! You look wired, your lips are cracked,” I lowered my gaze to their torso, and it seemed that either they had lost more weight than I would’ve imagined was possible in such a timeframe, or they had gone out of their way to wear a shirt that was several sizes too big. Yet, my mind returned to Jessie’s lost extremity.

“What the hell happened? To your arm I mean,”

“You don’t get it! You won’t get it. I- I ate-“

“What?”

Jessie grabbed my wrist with their remaining arm, “You need to eat, Emily. Promise me you’ll eat.”

“What are you going on about? I don’t understand, you ate your arm?”

“No! I didn’t eat my goddamn-“ they chuckled grimly, “I said you wouldn’t understand. He ate it. The Esser, he said that if I just give in, if I just eat, then he’ll make it quick, he’ll make the first bite end it all before he eats me whole, and then I won’t know this- this void anymore. Promise me you’ll eat, and make it quick! Once it takes hold, nothing feels like it has any weight anymore.”

 

I just nodded and sat awkwardly, gently pulling my arm from their grasp. They smiled at me and got up. They retrieved a sheaf of two papers from their kitchen counter, written on which was an annotated copy of ‘The Conqueror Worm’ by Edgar Allan Poe. I had begged Jessie in months past to read the poem (which I intended to joke about) and honestly thought it had slipped their mind.

“I was hoping to give you this with higher spirits, y’know, as a token of friendship,” they smiled wistfully, “Remember me.”

 

I didn’t know how to feel as I drove home. Neither did I when I sat at my table and ate a proper meal to fulfill my friend’s strange last request. Afterwards, I went to sleep, naively hoping that when I awoke, it would be revealed that the day was nothing more than a dream, or a well-executed joke.

 

When I awoke, there was a man standing in the corner of my room, the same man, I realized, who stood behind the register at Esser. He looked mournful, yet noticeably less skeletal than when I’d seen him at the mall.

He told me that he was the lord of the flies. He told me that he was sorry for what had to happen, but everything had to eat, and he had no other choice than to come to reap my ‘lacklustre’ mass due to my association with Jessie. Then, he got up, and ran straight through my window, breaking it.

 

I knew better than to doubt my sobriety, and I knew, failing insanity, that this entity was real. I fell into a deep depression for the next day or so. I didn’t eat; I didn’t call any of the few other friends I had. I merely lay on my bed, showered, and went on my phone. I wondered if I was failing Jessie by not doing as they asked, and though it seemed pointless, I made an effort to make myself a rather large sandwich.

I sank my teeth into the fibre of the sandwich and felt the slimy bolus slide down my throat and into my stomach. I still felt guilty, but I consider promises sacred and I would feel much guiltier betraying one I made.

When I woke up the next day, my hand was gone. There was a grievous wound which was haphazardly stitched shut, and caused me to gag as I looked on the raw flesh. I think, through a lucky delusion, I deduced correctly that it was missing due to my eating. The sandwich probably weighed as much as my hand did. I tended to blame things unreasonably on my eating though, as I’ve been told.

That day, due to said delusion, I refused to eat.

 

That night, I was watching a TV show on my laptop, sat on my couch, when I felt its presence next to me. It didn’t seem hostile, merely sitting next to me and in fact, it disarmed me when I noticed that it was watching my laptop as I was. However, its stomach growled constantly, every few seconds, and it fidgeted as if in withdrawal.

“Aren’t you hungry?” It asked, its voices were soft and numerous. Like a wave of cotton blanketing me.

I blinked at it and looked into what passed as its eyes. I saw in its eyes not quite the worry which I had become familiar with getting from friends and family, but rather, a hint of fear, maybe even desperation. I recalled what Jessie had said to ...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BuddhaTheGreat on 2024-10-15 18:26:03+00:00.

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No idea how you ended up here? Check out the index.

It just would not go away.

While Ram Lal was busy cooking, Bhanu and I busied ourselves in attempting to get the sludge from the man outside off my clothes. While it wasn’t debilitating any longer, the smell was like someone had stuffed a dead rat inside used gym clothes and left it there for a week. The slimy marks seemed almost alive under the dim light, shifting and wriggling as they attempted to eat through the fabric. However much we attempted to wipe them off, they wouldn’t budge.

“Leave it, babu,” Ram Lal called from the stove. “It will disappear by itself in a few hours though it will damage the clothes. Your father also had many run-ins with those things in his time. Ruined more than fifteen perfectly good kurtas.”

I touched my shoulder, still iced over. The massive ragged hole in the shirt left by the creature had already consigned it to the waste pile, so I supposed it didn’t matter anymore. “This was pretty expensive.”

Ram Lal waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, money’s dirt. You can buy ten thousand like it any time you want. Your life is what is important. Irreplaceable, in fact.”

“That’s what they keep telling me.”

Ram Lal finished stirring and put a lid on the pot, standing and crossing over to us. “The food will be ready soon. It is my honour to feed you in my humble abode.”

I raised a hand to supplicate him. “Please, don’t embarrass me anymore. Take a seat.”

He nodded and began to sit on one of the cushions.

“Hold on.” I got off the chair, leaving it to him. “It’s your house, after all.”

He and Bhanu looked at each other. “You are the Thakur, babu. We are your subjects. How can we sit on a chair while you sit on the ground? It is not right.”

I shrugged. “Alright. I’ll stand then.”

Ram Lal let out a shocked choking noise and fell at my feet. “Please don’t make me commit this sin, babu. You are my guest, my jajman. How can I make you stand in my house while I sit?”

“Okay, okay.” I extricated myself and resumed my seat. “Happy? I’m just not comfortable with towering above you like this.”

“Then you will have to get used to it, babu.” Ram Lal sat down, finally satisfied, and folded his hands together. “You have stood as a wall between us and… them, for centuries. Your sacrifices, your victories, are the stuff of legend. Your presence towers over us, and it always will.”

I sighed. “I don’t know if I can live up to your expectations, Ram Lal.”

He chuckled a little. “I have heard this exact sentence from your father, my father from your grandfather, and my grandfather from his father before him. You will rise to the occasion. I am sure of it.” His smile turned into a slight frown. “But sending you here, unprepared and unguarded… Maybe your family is not aware yet, busy as they were with your grandfather’s last rites.”

“Not aware of what?” I frowned. Beneath his easygoing exterior, my uncle was extremely methodical. I did not expect that anything had escaped his notice.

“The estate boundaries, my lord. Someone keeps vandalizing them. Stealing charms, scratching out sigils. Once or twice, we even found symbols of dark rites being conducted. The lathials repair the damage as and when they can, but the boundaries have been steadily weakening with time. Creatures like that pisach would not be able to enter this deep into your lands while your grandfather was still alive.”

Strange people have been entering the village, like my uncle said. Maybe they were responsible for this too. “Was the family not informed?”

“Maybe the guards wanted to avoid a scolding, babu. After all, they are responsible for regularly patrolling the walls. But they often sleep on duty or miss the patrol timings.”

“I see.” I would have to raise this issue with my uncles. “Thank you for telling me about this, Ram Lal. I want you to keep an eye out going forward. Anything goes wrong anywhere, you’ll come straight to me.”

He nodded. “Of course, babu.” He glanced momentarily at my injured shoulder. “Do you… feel fine? I can send Bhanu to the doctor and get some medicine for the pain.”

The makeshift bandage had dulled the pain completely by now. All I felt was a slight chill, like pressing an ice pack against a bruise. “I’ll be all right. Do you know anything about… that thing?”

“The villagers call it the bhuka pisach, Thakur. Hungry ghoul. I do not know when or how it came here, but my great-grandfather used to tell me stories about it. It has been on the land for a long time. But it usually hunts in the early morning or in the evening. This is the first time I have seen it during noon. I was chopping some wood outside when I saw it coming down the road, so I quickly tied the wheat to my door and hid inside. Then, a few minutes later, I saw Bhanu and you. I wanted to warn you, but before I could, it was upon you.”

The rules were changing. Everything was in upheaval. Just as the Ferryman had said.

“I survived because of you, and because of Bhanu. Thank you.”

Bhanu folded his hands. “We will lay our lives down for you, Thakur. I only regret that I could not return sooner. You were injured in my care.”

Ram Lal nodded. “If you must thank anyone, thank the lady, babu. We were merely doing our duty.”

“The lady, yes!” I practically jumped on the thread. “What can you tell me about her?”

Before any of you start your Lady in White x OP fanfics in the comments, I was just eager because I wanted to know where exactly she stood. Was she going to backstab me? Did she have an agenda? Was she actually, legitimately in love with me or something? That would be creepy, given she knew me when I was a kid. Either way, I just didn’t know. Any information would be useful.

Like any good old person, once Ram Lal got to talking, it was difficult to stop him. Apparently, the Lady appeared relatively recently in the village, during a particularly cold winter in the 19th century. No one is sure if she’s a ghost or some other monster wearing a human form, but what is known is that she stalked the village from dusk till dawn every night, hunting and killing humans.

“What kind of humans?” I asked, “Anyone she could find?”

“Anyone who was unlucky enough to find her on the streets. And, if a single man living alone ever slept with a window or door unlocked in the house, she would enter and take his life away. Her victims were found in the morning, frozen to death without a sign of struggle.”

“Was there nothing we could do?”

“Your ancestors tried many rituals to placate her, and when those failed, to bind or scare her away. None of them worked for long. The only people she would not attack were the Thakurs and their families, who were protected by their ancient powers. The rest of us had to stay indoors as soon as evening fell, with every door locked and every window barred, lest the lady come for us.”

“But there are people out there on the streets nowadays, even late in the night. What changed?”

Ram Lal smiled. “You did, Thakur.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I still remember the day you were born very well. The birth happened here, on the estate. It was night-time, so there was no way to leave the manor and take your mother to the hospital. Lots of things stalked the village in those days. For a few decades, the tides of power had turned. The other side weighed heavy on our own, and everything was spiralling out of control. The family was stretched thin just making ends meet. Even on that very day, your father was not with his wife, but out on the streets with his brothers, doing what he could to save our lives. Only your grandfather and grandmother were there. And me.” He looked up at the ceiling, almost transported to the scene. “The power had gone out again. I was running the maids back and forth, fetching blankets, water, and candles. Whatever was required. It was a difficult birth. She screamed so loudly that I thought my ears might burst in that small bedroom. Then, at the stroke of midnight, just when I thought it would never end, you were born.”

Bhanu was holding on to his gamcha, almost as attentive as I was.

“Your first cry… It reverberated throughout the land. To this day, every man, woman, and child in the village who was alive then swears they heard it, even miles away. It was as if something in you had shaken the very foundations of the place. Something like that had never happened. Not with your father’s birth, and from what I can tell, not with any Thakur before him.” Ram Lal exhaled. “That night, the lady came to the manor. Your grandparents had left with your mother for the hospital, now that you were safe. Apparently, the entire village was calm that night, calmer than it had been in years. The other servants had also gone to sleep. I was left to watch over you, but somehow, I dozed off from exhaustion. When I snapped awake, it was close to dawn. Frost was spreading over the walls. The window was ajar, its lock somehow broken. And there, over your little cot, the lady was bending down. Reaching for you.”

He touched his chest, his hand trembling slightly. “Even after so many years, I remember the dread that settled in my chest. There was nothing I could do to stop her, nothing in my knowledge that could save you from her. Only one thought ran over and over in my head: I had failed. The Thakur and his sons would return to find their heir dead. All I coul...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-10-15 17:50:12+00:00.

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First

I found myself sitting on the floor of my apartment, wearing three layers of clothing while cutting out coupons for tonight's meal. Any money in the bank was put aside for my phone bill and rent. I didn’t even have enough for a loaf of bread. My work options had also dried up. Who would want to hire a guy with a resume like mine? For most of my adult life, I did a job where I couldn’t be upfront with new employers. If I said I had been a monster hunter until two years ago, I would be kicked out of any interview. I found myself at a breaking point.

I needed a job soon or else I would be on the streets in a few weeks. Or starve to death. Whichever came first.

A ping came from my phone. I’ve been ignoring the emails for a while. Even though I stopped hunting monsters, the job offers were still emailed. I needed to face the hard facts. If I didn’t accept a contract job, I wouldn’t be around for much longer.

Hunting monsters wasn’t easy. Sure, some are pretty harmless to humans. Those kinds of assignments didn’t pay much but you had a better chance of walking away with your life. The problem is, it’s hard to tell between the harmless creatures and the bloodthirsty ones. The dangerous creatures tended to randomly show up. I’ve heard of hunters in the middle of a job relocating pesky supernatural creatures to get ambushed by something they didn’t have the strength to deal with.

Starve to death or get eaten by some sort of monster. What a choice my life had led me to. I finally caved and picked up my phone, scrolling through to see if any of the open requests were suited for me.

I didn’t have any weapons left over from my hunting days; I sold those first to stay afloat. If I didn’t have such a massive debt I might have managed not to resort to my old job. Almost all of the requests required a partner, or equipment I didn’t have.

I spotted one that might be what I could handle. Some pale human creatures had been spotted in popular camping grounds. Some people have gone missing, with no traces of their bodies. I’ve heard of white creatures made up of mushrooms that imitate humans. Those were too risky to deal with. If you’re touched by them, they infect you. From what the job request listed, there was a good chance these weren’t the mushroom creatures so I had a chance.

I sighed wondering if I was going to come back alive after I sent an email accepting. I really let myself go in the past two years. My old injuries didn’t help. The cold made my knees and hips stiff. I did some stretching to get ready for what I just committed to.

Within the next few hours, I found myself at the start of a hiking trail, a heavy pack weighing down my steps. Since I didn’t have any gear, I rented some out. The Corporation that sends out these requests is pretty generous. If the items aren't damaged, I could return the gear at the end of the job for no cost. But when it came to hunting monsters, you always ended up ruining your clothing and gear. Anything damaged would come out of my final pay. I rented out a cheap axe for a weapon. It was tipped with silver making it hit harder against creatures. Seeing someone with an axe in the woods wouldn’t raise as many eyebrows as a sword or other weapons might.

Most people think guns would be the best bet against monsters. Sadly, that’s not the case. Magic doesn’t stick very well to bullets and guns for some reason. It’s easier to bless a sword to make it more effective against a monster. For the most part, bullets just piss them off. It’s not impossible though. I’ve heard of special bullets. The material to create them cost more than I’ve ever made in my lifetime. So, no guns to hunt down monsters in my future.

I was given directions to the campsite that had been last attacked by the mystery creatures. My legs ached as I hiked, and I started to sweat under my heavy borrowed coat. Going right into hiking after not being active for years was a mistake. I pressed on wanting to get to the site before the sunset. My pack had been filled with some snacks and canned goods for the trip. It was a pleasant surprise. When I stopped to eat a granola bar, I reflected on an important fact.

I was lost.

I didn’t want to rely on my secret weapon so early on. It wouldn’t get me out of the woods, but it may lead me to what creatures stalked the forest.

I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. When I opened them again, the world was flooded with lights and colors normal people couldn’t see. Humans shouldn’t be aware of magic, let alone be able to see it. It was like how Mantis Shrimp could see color spectrums our eyes didn’t. Because I was pushing past human limits, looking at magic hurt like hell. Normally I used this gift to focus on one creature to see how much power they held. Looking at the entire flow around me nearly split my head open. In a few seconds, I was forced to shut my eyes again, pushing down the one talent that made me useful when it came to monster hunting.

Off in the distance I had seen a batch of light. Every living thing had a tiny drop of magic inside them. Supernatural creatures had far more than a drop. Since I saw a mass of light together, that meant the creatures I had been looking at were huddled in one spot. I bet when the sun set, they would all leave the safety of their home to go hunting. I hurried off in that direction praying I was going to face monsters on the weaker side.

I pushed through the woods and off the trail. I considered using my sight again to double-check check I was heading in the right direction. Finally, I came across a small cliffside. If I wanted, I could climb the rough, rocky wall. I followed it until I saw an opening just large enough to crawl through. A cave was perfect for darkness-dwelling monsters to hide inside.

I only had less than an hour of sunlight left. These creatures most likely would be asleep. You may call me a coward for wanting to slaughter creatures in their sleep. I didn’t have the power to deal with a hoard on even terms.

I guessed it was a hoard. The mass of magic I saw was either a lot of weaker creatures or one very strong one. If I came across just one, I doubted my axe could kill it even while asleep.

I left behind my borrowed pack. I only brought the axe and a water bottle attached to my hip. I double-checked that my phone was safe under layers of clothing. Even if I called for help, there wasn’t a good chance anyone would show up on time. The Corporation had the money and equipment for monster hunting, but not the manpower. And they always needed someone to hunt down monsters. I was on my own the moment I crawled inside.

I debated on leaving. I would get paid a small amount just for locating a monster den. My debt hovered over my head causing me to keep going forwards.

I used a small pen light to look around the small space. My feet crushed small bones when I stood up. Once past the opening, the cave was large enough for a person to take ten steps inside in any direction. There was another opening in the back that went even deeper. The layer of bones on the ground should have been enough to make me leave. I walked as quietly as possible, ducking down low through the other opening. The path caused me to hunch the entire way. I hated how loud my footsteps and breathing sounded in the small space.

Finally, I came into a large space. Drips of water echoed through the massive cave. And the sounds of breathing. I wished I hadn’t walked into that place. It smelled of the dead and unwashed bodies. I carefully used my small flashlight to scan the area. The piles of what I had assumed to be bones moved. The white shapes stirred in the dark.

A set of white glowing eyes appeared. Then another. I gripped the axe handle tightly in my hand for an attack. I thought I was ready but one of the creatures sprang up to latch into my back. I held back a scream as I slammed it against the wall to hear a terrible crunching sound.

I turned on my heel to bring down the axe on my attacker. Thankfully the teeth and claws hadn’t got past my coat. I heard more of the monsters in the dark. I swung my weapon in time to catch one in the head. To my horror, these creatures were nothing, but bones formed together in the shape of an animal-like body. This wasn’t good for me. It took a lot of magic to move the dead like this.

I hacked away at the bones at my feet, crushing a few of them. With more of those creatures coming at me in the dark, I decided I needed to keep moving. My light scanned the cave to show brief glimpses of the horrors it held. There were too many of these monsters. Teeth chattering in empty skulls. The clawed hands dig into the rough floor. Each sound echoed against the walls making it hard to tell where they came from. The only way out soon became blocked by a mass of bones.

I was scared. My heartbeat was so fast it overtook my hearing. I nearly dropped my axe when another creature jumped into the light and at my throat. No matter how many times I smashed them apart, the bones reformed ready to attack me again.

I risked using my Sight. My heart nearly stopped when I saw the true terror that had been hidden in the darkness. A mass of light sat on the back of the cave that had thin strings connecting it to all the other smaller balls of light. When I hit one of the creatures, they fed from the larger magic source to reform. ...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-10-15 16:10:38+00:00.

---

I’ve lived my entire life in a holler on the outskirts of Wyoming County, West Virginia, deep in the mountains of Appalachia. It’s a place so remote most folks don’t even know it exists on a map. Just a handful of families, and dense, unforgiving woods. This place doesn’t have neighborhoods, doesn’t have sidewalks, and most definitely does not have trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Halloween isn’t a holiday here. It’s a test.

My family, and the others who’ve lived here long enough to know, follow a set of rules on Halloween night. It’s not tradition or superstition. It’s survival. Those who didn’t follow the rules didn’t live long enough to tell anyone about it.

Our rules aren’t just about keeping doors locked or avoiding dark places. They’re specific, with reasons rooted in events we don’t talk about. My dad always said they came from my great-grandmother’s time, when people came to these mountains from Scotland and still believed in the “old ways." Whether it’s spirits, or something else that’s out there, or things just too old to name, Halloween night here has always been a game of life and death. And each rule existed to give you just enough of an edge to make it through till morning.

The first time I broke a rule, I learned why they exist. And I’ll never forget it.

Every October, around the second week, the rules went up on the fridge. We lived by them. My family took them seriously, and not just in a "keep the kids safe" kind of way. No. These rules were for everyone. Break one, and you’d put us all in danger.

Here’s how they go:

1. If you hear three knocks at the door after sunset, do not answer.
2. If you hear a single, hard knock, open the door, but do not look at who stands there. Hold out a basket of freshly baked bread and wait until you hear the footsteps leaving to shut the door.
3. If you hear someone call your name from the woods, do not answer.
4. If you see a figure at the tree line wearing a wide-brimmed hat, do not look at him for longer than one second.
5. If you hear chains dragging on the ground, sprinkle salt on all windowsills and door thresholds within one minute.
6. If a candle is burning in the window of the old, abandoned Anderson cabin up the hill, stay indoors, no matter what.

These rules didn’t exist for no reason. They were handed down because bad things had happened. People vanished, people died, and strange things occurred. That’s just how it was.

I remember one specific year, years back, when Halloween night fell on a full moon. The air felt different, charged. My dad had a sense for when things were going to be bad. You could just feel it in the holler, thick in the air, like something breathing down your neck. Dad told us to get all the preparations done early.

“Salt the windows now,” he instructed, standing by the door, his face tight with worry. “We’re not waiting for the chains.”

I followed his orders without question, pouring salt along each windowsill and at the front and back door thresholds. My brother was baking bread, already anticipating rule number two, the one we hated the most. It was the one that forced us to interact with whatever knocked, whatever stood on the other side of that door. We never knew who or what it was, but we knew if you didn’t offer bread, or if you dared to look, it wouldn’t be good.

By late afternoon, the house was fortified. The bread was cooling on the counter, its smell filling the kitchen. The fire was lit, burning low, and a 12 gauge lay across Dad’s lap like it always did on Halloween. Isaac, my younger brother, sat closest to the window, glancing out every now and then.

We had about three hours before sunset. The rules were clear, everything bad happened after dark. But the waiting was the worst part. The longer we sat there, the more anxious we became.

“Did we use enough salt this year?” Isaac asked quietly.

Dad didn’t answer. He just stared into the fire, gripping the gun tighter. That was answer enough.

The first knock came just after dark. A single knock, slow and deliberate. Isaac and I froze, staring at the door. Dad stood up, motioning for us to stay back and be quiet. I swallowed hard, heart pounding in my chest. It was time to follow rule two.

Without a word, Dad picked up the basket of bread from the counter, freshly baked, still warm. He walked to the door, resting one hand on the knob.

"Remember," he said, his voice low and steady, “don’t look.”

He opened the door just wide enough to slip the basket through the crack, his eyes focused on the floor. The warm smell of the bread wafted out, and I could hear a faint shuffling on the porch. Whoever, or whatever it was, was out there. I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye, a shadow stretching across the porch, but I didn’t dare look.

Dad held the basket out, his hand shaking slightly. For a few heartbeats, there was no sound, no movement, and then, footsteps. Slow, heavy footsteps retreating from the porch. He waited until they faded completely, then shut the door quietly, locking it tight.

Isaac let out a breath. “Why don’t we just leave the bread out early? Why do we have to wait for the knock?”

Dad’s face was pale, and his eyes were hard. “We have to wait for the knock. And if we don’t answer the knock, it’ll come in.”

We thought it was over. We had followed rule two to the letter, and for a moment, it seemed like things were quiet. But here, nothing stays quiet for long on Halloween.

Isaac was the first to notice him. He was standing at the edge of the woods, just where the trees meet the clearing. He was tall and thin, a wide-brimmed hat casting his face in shadow. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, but he was there, watching.

Isaac gasped, pointing. “It’s him,” he whispered, voice trembling. Dad didn’t need to ask who. He knew. We all did. The man in the hat.

“Don’t look at him,” Dad snapped. “Not for more than a second.”

I glanced, just enough to confirm he was there. A tall, dark figure, almost blending into the shadows of the trees, but distinct enough to make my blood run cold. I looked away quickly, heart hammering in my chest.

We got away from the doors and windows of the house, and sat huddled in the living room, the fire our only light. Outside, the man in the hat stood at the tree line, unmoving as the night crept on.

It wasn’t until after midnight that we heard the chains.

At first, it was faint, a metallic clinking that seemed distant, almost like it could’ve been the wind. But it grew louder, closer, until it was unmistakable. The sound of chains being dragged across the rocky ground outside.

Isaac’s face turned pale. He shot me a look, wide-eyed and terrified. “The salt,” he whispered.

Dad nodded grimly. “Go check.”

I got up slowly, trying to control the tremor in my legs. I circled the house, inspecting every window and doorframe. The salt lines were intact. Nothing had disturbed them. The chains continued to scrape outside, dragging closer and closer, but we didn’t dare open the door. We didn’t dare look. We stayed inside, sitting together in the flickering light of the fire, listening to the sound of the chains until the first light of dawn broke through the windows.

We had made it through the night. The man in the hat was gone. The chains had stopped. But as the morning light seeped through the shutters, I glanced toward the old Anderson cabin up the hill, and there it was. A single candle still burning in the window.

The rules are clear. When the candle burns in the Anderson cabin, you stay inside. No exceptions. No excuses. Even with the sun beginning to shine and the birds beginning to chirp, the sight of that candle filled me with a primal fear. We have to wait until the candle goes out before we can go outside, before the night is truly over.

And that’s how it goes here. The rules aren’t just there to be followed, they’re there to keep you alive. And if you’re smart, you don’t ask questions. Sometimes, it’s better not to know.

Halloween here had always been terrifying, but last year, last year was different.

It wasn’t just the usual unease, or the normal anxiety that came with the setting sun. It almost felt like the rules weren’t enough anymore. My dad was getting older, his movements slower, his hands a little less steady. We all knew it, but no one said anything. We just followed the rules like always, hoping that would be enough.

We spent the day in preparation, salting the windows, baking the bread, the usual. Isaac and I were jittery, pacing around, double-checking everything. With my dad getting older, we felt a greater pressure to take it upon ourselves to prepare. The sky darkened faster than usual, clouds rolling in from the west, blotting out the last rays of the sun. By the time dusk fell, the fire was burning low, and the house sat in darkness.

Dad sat in his usual spot by the door, the shotgun across his lap. The basket of bread, fresh out of the oven, sat next to him. We all waited, our hearts pounding in the silence. I kept glancing at the windows, expecting to see the figure in the hat or hear the drag of chains.

And then it came. A single knock, loud and deliberate.

Dad stood up, just like every other year. “Stay put,” he muttered, picking up the basket with his trembling hands. His face was pale, but his voice was steady.

Isaac and I exchanged a nervous glance as Dad approached the door. As always, I stared at the floor, focusing on the so...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Writer_On_a_Perch on 2024-10-15 11:09:50+00:00.

---

I've never had a kid before, but I've always loved my nieces and my nephew. I can remember the way the world looked as a kid, and I can see it in their eyes. That feeling that whatever is around every corner is new and exciting, that what tomorrow brings it'll carry with it the warmth of a sunny day, or the comfort of a rainy afternoon.

As a grown man the sun left my skin spotted and weathered, the rain left me shivering and cold, life had left me homeless and quite alone. It was easy to feel miserable, but those three kids didn't need to have my misery thrust upon them, that light in their eyes shouldn't dim around me. So I always tried my best to be their weird uncle. The one with the backpack and smelly socks, the one with a tooth grin and fun stories. I won't ever tell them this story though.

It was a child I had never met that woke me up that morning, my place of rest still shaded from the morning sun, slick with dew as it clung to my ragged windbreaker. "Excuse me? Excuse me?" A small voice cut through the morning traffic and buzz of cicadas. It was tinged with hope and fear, I knew those two feelings well.

My eyes parted slowly, embracing the morning sunshine. I saw before me a small blonde boy, his bushy blonde eyebrows and chubby physique almost immediately endeared me to this kid. "I'm awake, I'm awake." My voice cracked as I rolled over.

His thick eyebrows furrowed as he spoke again, "I'm really sorry to wake you up. I just don't have a phone and I really need to call my mom." His small voice had that deep fear in it that kids always had when they were worried they would get in trouble over something completely reasonable. My lips pulled up into a smile as I rubbed my messy hair. "Do you know her phone number buddy?" I reached into my bag and pulled forth a cracked dusty phone as he recited it by heart.

I suppressed a chuckle, someone had clearly drilled that phone number into him. I looked down at the phone's cracked face as it half heartedly turned on only to flash an empty red battery symbol and die in my hands "Fuck." I said under my breath, fumbling in my bag for a charger.

"Aha," I lightly intoned while I revealed a charger from my pack. "Sorry kid this might take a minute before you can call her." He swayed awkwardly on the spot as his fear of the whole situation was yet to be abated. I felt for this kid, I knew what it was like to be alone in places you're not familiar or comfortable with. It was my whole life. I patted the seat next to me and smiled brightly, attempting to infuse every ounce of kindness I could into my gaze, "Wanna sit?" He looked indecisive until I pulled out a big bag of Skittles. "Plenty to go around."

He plopped on the bench beside me and pulled a single skittle from the bag placing it in his mouth, before grabbing another one. "What's your name buddy?" He placed a purple skittle on his tongue, "My name is Trenton. But my mom calls me Trent." I offered him my hand which probably could have been a little cleaner, "I'm Melvin, but people call me stupid."

"Is it okay if I just call you Melvin?" He asked with an adorable sincerity. I laughed and smiled "That's fine with me Trenton." He smiled back, now being less cautious with the Skittles. "Do people really call you stupid?" "Sometimes. But I tell them to hang up and call me back when they're smarter." He laughed, "that's a stupid joke."

My phone now read 3% as it's screen feebly flickered to life. "You can call your mom now Trenton, just keep it plugged in alright?" He nodded enthusiastically and dialed her number. She picked up after three rings and a stern but gentle voice crackled from my shitty speakers. "This is Miss Waters how may I help you?" "Mom it's me, Jake and his mom left me here. Yes about 20 minutes ago. I'm sorry mom." I listened intently to the mother's furious tone as she reassured Trenton that none of this was his fault, it was then that he handed me the phone and said "She wants to talk to you."

I made a big goofy frowny face of fear and he giggled. "Hi there." I said casually. "I need your name and location please." I opened my mouth to speak but my eyes drifted over the large field of the park for the first time since I had opened them. A small black shape caught my eye as it bobbed up and down. I squinted and it sharpened just slightly into a shape that could have been a man. "Hello are you there? I need your name and your location now please." His mother asked a little forcefully.

"I'm sorry ma'am I just woke up. My name is Melvin Poole. We're at Green Park down the trail about a half mile." I said quickly as to not incur her ire. Yet my eyes never left that shape as it bobbed up and down. It was strange, it had gotten close enough to tell it was clearly a man, but his gait was off. His head rose and fell too much, far more than the inch or two most people's did as they walked at a steady pace. "I'll be there in 25 minutes exactly. I want you to stay on the phone with me for the entire time, do you understand?"

I smiled, she was smart. My name, where I was, and not letting me hang up on her. This kid was in good hands. I frowned however when I looked at my phone. It's battery was draining quickly. "Ma'am my phone's battery is about to die I'd say you have a minute or two left before it's dead again. I could almost hear her teeth grit through the speaker. "I'll be there in 20. Be prepared to accept my call when I'm close. Understand?" I felt myself immediately feel smaller than her as her authoritative voice echoed from my phone. "Of course, I'll be here with Trenton, I won't let him out of my sight." Her goodbye was curt and short.

My eyes once again darted towards the odd man from across the trail as Trenton began to speak about a new game he had recently taken up. I did my best to listen but my eyes won the fight with my ears as my attention was solely focused on the bobbing man. He had been walking in a straight unbroken line for the past few minutes now, his heading seemed to directly intersect with the shaded bench we now sat upon. Trenton was oblivious to this as he finally had let himself relax, I wasn't about to cut that short, yet I could feel my own body beginning to tense up.

There was something so deeply unsettling about this man as more details began to peek from the haze of distance. His black coat, his black bowler hat. If I didn't know any better I would have assumed he was attending a Renaissance Festival or a Funeral. The way he walked however made me wonder if he was the reason for the funeral rather than your average attendee. What was worse was that he seemed magnetically attracted to this bench I sat upon now. Every step taking him closer to where we resided.

I wiggled my charger in the phone's socket to no results. The phone's battery was now completely dead. Trenton laughed at something he said, and for the first time the man's head turned. He slowly brought his head all the way until his chin nearly rested on his shoulder, at first I was relieved, his gaze now broken finally. Yet when Trenton's laughing stopped, the man once again faced the bench as he continued the bob towards us.

A cold chill went down my spine. He had turned his ear towards the laugh, as if to absorb every decibel he possibly could. Now I was struck with indecisiveness and fear. Do I stay with him and wait for his mom like she said, or do I grab this kid and run?

The man's pace was steady and rhythmic like a puppet on a string, his masters hand steadily making him lurch towards us. The morning sun cast his shadow off to his side, it was so long and thin, as if it too wanted nothing to do with and was attempting to flee from him.

"Trenton, buddy let's go somewhere else." I said, my voice not yet revealing my fear to spare him. He looked at me his brow once again furrowing, "I can't do that, my mom is coming right here and I don't want her to be mad at me." My eyes darted back and forth between him and the steadily approaching shape in my peripheral. "She'll be mad at me Bud not you, I promise. I think she'll find us faster over here anyway."

He frowned and said "I can't leave. I'm gonna stay right here." He stopped and let his head hang, "If you wanna leave that's okay." I tried my utmost to not let an ounce of fear into my voice. I would never leave this kid here alone with this creepy fuck. "I'm staying right here then, alright?" He smiled.

The man was now close enough to read his expression. I wish I couldn't. Upon his face rested the most unpleasant smile I had ever laid eyes upon. It was a toothy grin that revealed the spaces between all of his teeth, small gaps to the black abyss that was his mouth. The corners of his mouth were pulled up against his cheekbones in a way that looked like it was carved into marble.

I had never seen a man this unsettling in my entire life. His fingers drummed against his leg one by one, two slow to be a rhythm to any music. Just one finger at a time. He was upon us. Trenton finally took notice of the bobbing man and stopped munching on the Skittles.

I desperately wanted to look away yet I forced myself to be transfixed by his ugly mug. This guy was a threat, my deepest of senses knew this. Every ounce of that superhuman ability we all have within us was triggered by this fuck. He addressed me first as his gait finally took him within ten feet of my bench. He tilted forward ever so slightly as he spoke, so his teeth were the closest thing...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/-Editor-484 on 2024-10-15 07:06:58+00:00.

---

“Female aged 20 to 22. Clare, supporting role. Brown/chestnut hair. Fresh out of school. Adventurous personality and a little rough around the edges.” 

Based on that short job listing I thought Jessica had a good chance of getting the part. When she did, I was delighted. I remember the light in her eyes when she burst into the room to tell me. This meant something to her, more than just a role in a movie. She told me it proved something, not just to her but to her parents. That the years she had spent in college were worth it. This would be something she could be proud of. She’s been taking the bus too and from Vancouver since then. 

The film is being produced by the upcoming film studio: Borderline Pictures. Initially I was suspicious of the studio. They don’t have a website… or almost any information when you look them up online. Neither did the film’s Polish director, Youry Nowak, have any previous work. At least now she can say she’s been paid for something in her field, I had thought. Hopefully it’ll be easier for her to get more work after this experience, whether or not the film does well. 

I’m writing this post because of an incident at the studio which occurred yesterday. Before then, I had seen none of her work. 

I had been excited all week—since Jessica had given me the invitation to tour the studio. She explained it would be a small group, (just the crew’s close friends and family). The plan was to show us the props department and some of the sets being assembled. It was going to be on a Saturday which meant no class for me. Even if there was, I would have taken the day off for this. I wasn’t going to miss it. 

“This one here,” Jessica pointed it out. I pulled my grey car to a stop just outside the grungy warehouse. Its walls had been a tan color I think, though the paint was stained and peeling.

My eyes wandered towards the trash bins outside the entrance. The mound of bulging black garbage bags were wedging the rectangular lid open. Jessica must’ve noticed as I pursed my lips. “I know…” she said, “it’s kind of a sketchy area. We should head inside.” 

“Aren’t we a bit early?” I asked, craning my neck to get a look at the front entrance, “don’t see anyone else going in yet.” 

“Youry should be here,” she said, “I could tell he was a bit nervous about today.” 

“Yeah?” I asked, “why’s that?”

“Just don’t want him to think nobody’s coming. And… you know that guy I told you about?” 

“The guy who lives at the studio?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “he sometimes can be a bit… unpredictable.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I told her, “you haven’t told me much about him, just that he gets really into character. Some people might be interested to see that even… don’t you think?”

“I guess we’ll see.” Jessica pushed open her door and headed up towards the studio. I followed, giving her what I hoped to be a comforting smile as she pulled the door open. 

I felt somewhat out of place standing in the front entranceway. Jessica went over to greet the other actors as I lingered at the doorway. There were a few people standing around me. An older couple walked over to introduce themselves. They told me about their grandson who was playing the main role of the protagonist in the film. 

“You must be excited to see the studio as well then” I said, “have you visited it before?” 

“Nah,” the old man shook his head, “he’s told us barely anything. Studio secrecy and all that.” 

“Right,” his wife nodded, “very professional around here I’d say. I’ve heard that about these things before. They want to keep everything a mystery.” 

I nodded, turning my focus to the sound of polished shoes approaching from the hallway ahead. His features were stern, but not unfriendly with an angular jaw. He was extremely thin, and dressed in a baggy grey suit. His mustache was well grown out, but flat as a comb against his lip. Jessica returned to me as a hush fell upon the assembled crowd.

“Welcome everyone,” said the man, waving. “I’m the director of the film, Youry Nowak. Glad all of you could make it out. If you follow me we’ll be off to the main stage.” He went over some basic rules, that we were not to touch anything and to watch our step when we entered the first set. 

I will say the interior of the studio was very well kept compared to the exterior. As Youry led us down the hallway the tiled floor was extremely smooth. Portions marked with wet floor signs were even noticeably fresh with cleaning solutions. Like they prepared it just for our visit. 

Through a set of double doors my eyes widened. The set was reminiscent of an old English street. It was built of cobblestone with black lamp posts along the sidewalk. Off to the left hand side was the exterior of a building—which Youry referred to as the clocktower. It was enormous, tall enough that it touched the roof. We were told that it was only the bottom half of the tower. The upper half would be added in post. 

My eyes roamed the space as Youry talked on. The loose stone shifted beneath my feet as I turned around taking it all in. I noticed some of the other guests wandering, a few kneeling down to get a closer look at some of the smaller details. Amongst it all something stuck out to me, seemingly unnoticed by the others. Near the storm grate along the edge of the clocktower was a large stone platform. As I got closer I could see a wooden trapdoor on its face. As I got closer I heard something that, I’ll admit, sent a shiver through my body. It was a hushed voice which oozed an aura of excitement. 

“I’ve found it,” the voice ranted with glee, “the voice, the movement. Thank you, Thank you for showing me. At last, It's all coming together.” I was now standing right above the trapdoor. There was a big gold star roughly nailed into the wood. 

“Excuse me…” said the director. Even at a distance I could see the single drop of sweat dripping down his forehead. He approached me at a brisk pace. The trail of guests followed behind. “I was just about to show you all the next room. There’s a lot more to see…” 

Just as I stepped back down from the platform there was a creek as the trapdoor swung open. I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be an ordinary room below. A bed with a white frame. Scattered pages of comic books… and something large and swollen I couldn’t quite make out. It was obstructed as the man climbed out, slamming the trap door shut behind him. The only skin exposed was the circle of his white face. Head to toe he was dressed in grey with small round blue markers stuck all across it. 

“Oh hello…” the man glared at me, “you didn't see anything, did you?” He gestured down at the trapdoor. 

“N… no.” I stammered, shaking my head. 

The man flashed his teeth as he smiled, “good… well, I’m glad to see you all then, I’ve been locked in my room, for… I don't know how long. You recognize me don’t you?” 

His eyes seemed to fix on each of us individually as he waited for an answer. The room remained completely silent. 

“I’m Andy Baker. No? Anyway, for this role they asked me to play a crazy man, a murderer who consumes his victims. All my acting is done in a motion capture suit—it’s a CGI Character. I argued with them about it for a while. Practical effects would be better I said, you know, with makeup. Not some modern generated character within a computer.... I’ve put everything into this role. To get into character I’ve gone so far as to…” 

“Very insightful…” Youry cut in, “thank you Andy.”  

Andy scowled. “I told you not to interrupt, remember?” he bit his grey thumb then pointed it at the director. “Or else I’ll do it again.” 

Youry went pale. “Not here.”  

I flinched as Andy’s eyes flashed towards me, “isn’t that why you brought all these guests? Why not give them a show. 

“Andy please,” the director gulped, “no.”

“Fine then… fade to black,” Andy snarled, clenching his jaw. He then darted away on all fours. Like an animal he reached the side of the clocktower. We could still see his eyes as he crouched among the rubble. The sound of chewing followed.

“He does sell the part well doesn’t he?” Youry laughed after a pause. He began to clap. Following his example the rest of us joined in. I tried to meet Jessica’s gaze as I clapped along with the others,  but she looked away quickly. 

“You alright?” I asked. She held onto my arm tightly as we followed Youry to the next set of double doors. She looked back towards the clocktower, making sure he was out of earshot before pulling me closer. In a hushed voice she told me Andy Baker wasn’t actually his name. It was his character’s name. The cannibal. 

“Oh I see…” I nodded, “what’s his real name then?” 

“I don’t even know, “ she shook her head, “I don’t think any of the cast does. He’s a serious method actor. At least… that’s what Youry told us the first day. He told us not to ask too many questions, just to go along with it.” 

Leaving the room Youry led us down a narrow hallway to what he informed was the motion capture room. It was significantly smaller than the previous space. Above our heads was a ring of cameras facing down into the center of the room. 

A more friendly looking actor was introduced who explained how the technology worked. She told us that the tracking markers would be recorded by the cameras above us. This would translate to movement in 3d space and would be a starting point to animate the character. They then showed us some recordings on the monitor at the front of the room and how it looked in the final rende...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SalamiMommie on 2024-10-15 02:04:35+00:00.

---

I couldn’t tell you the first time it happened and I wish I could tell you the final time it will happen.

A boy who would appear to be maybe twelve or so rides on an old rusty bike and tosses the paper with such precision, one could assume he’d have a promising career with the Boston Red Sox. Heck, he’d probably soar in the NFL too. But something was seriously off about “the kid.”

He didn’t show up every single morning. But when he came, you knew it. You could hear his rusty bike chain struggling. It was as if the noise itself was elevated by invisible speakers. He would throw the paper dead center of everyone’s door step.

The paper didn’t have a name such as The New York Times or whatever your hometown has. It was just simply blank.

I remember the first paper I got. I woke up extremely tired from a sleepless night, I brewed some coffee and opened the door to see the leaves falling. That’s when I seen the paper.

“Local restaurant closes down today.”

I didn’t think much of it, restaurants close all the time. It’s one of the hardest businesses to maintain. It wasn’t until I pulled up to my favorite Chinese restaurant that they announced on the door they were closed for good, no explanation.

Months go by and I seen him riding down to the next house on the street. I picked up the paper again.

“Drunk driver crashes today.” Sure enough, a man in our town drove his car into a used car lot, damaging one that was for sale. The man was over double the legal limit according to my cousin who is a cop.

Six months go by and another one.

“Jacob dies by stabbing.” There’s a lot of people named Jacob. Many of those people I’m sure were superstitious and stayed in home that day. The news crew were outside someone’s home and said it was an active crime scene. They never did find who did it.

At least a year went by when I heard the bike peddling again. I ran outside and the paper landed at my feet.

“Full moon tonight, Be cautious.” A homeless person was mutilated in the park. They believed it to be some sort of wild animal.

The rest of the paper everytime was like any other. Filled with weather and advertisements. No one ever tried to stop the paperboy to my knowledge .

Four months go by and I see him peddling, I jog towards him.

“Hey! Quit sending out these papers! Please.”

He turned his head and spoke back to me. I could have sworn his eyes were pitch black.

“Just doing my job, I don’t write these.” The paper went dead center of my porch step.

“Factory supervisor involved in terrible accident.”

I wasn’t at work for fifteen minutes when people began freaking out. A temp on a forklift collided with one of our supervisors and he was impaled. He died before the ambulance sirens lit up the rainy parking lot.

I don’t know what made me think it was a great idea, but a year and a half goes by when I spotted him again. I charged towards him on his bike and he tossed a paper so hard, it knocked me flat on my back.

“Just wait until you get the next one! You’ll regret doing that.”

I sat up and looked at the paper. “Body found with all blood gone.” The town mayor was found with bite marks on his neck. All the blood on his body was drained.

I lived in paranoia the entire day wondering what he meant. A day goes by when the paperboy came back.

“Tim gets what he deserved.” Shit, that’s me.

I run back in the house and lock the door when I heard an audible voice.

“You think you can avoid this?”

A man comes from my kitchen. He’s wearing black pants and a white dress shirt. He’s wearing a fedora and black suspenders. He was straightened his tie. His eyes were pitch black and the smell of rotting eggs filled the room.

His arms stretched from across the room and grabbed me by my throat. He picked me up and slammed me against my ceiling and dropped me to my hardwood floor. He picked up my couch and threw it on top of me. I tried to crawl away when I felt his arms start wrapping around my neck as if they were a snake squeezing the life out of its dinner.

He flipped me around and opened his mouth. Razor sharp teeth similar to a sharks plunged into my shoulder. I let out a scream and tried throwing a punch but was too weak.

I woke up in the hospital. My neighbor heard all the commotion and left, he explained he seen a well dressed man walking down the street and finding me in a puddle of my blood. They didn’t have any trouble believing him.

Once I made it home, I stumbled to the porch and seen another paper on my step.

“Local paper closing down once a sacrifice is made.” This time there were words below the headline.

“Fellow citizens of this great community, it is with our deepest regret to inform you that we decided to close shop under one specific condition. The condition being that you all choose one person to sacrifice. The decision is up to you all by majority vote. We have plans to set up shop in another town somewhere we choose not to share at the time. However, failure to pick a sacrifice will result in daily paper deliveries, many more creative than the next. Every childless adult is required to attend.”

I never seen town hall so full of people and such chaos. Of course no one volunteered, the person was selected after people took their turns speaking. Every business was closed down that day. The person chosen was a man in jail for producing and dealing meth.

He didn’t know what was happening when he was walked in front of all of us. I still hear his voice say “what’s going on?”

The officer said. “I’m sorry.”

BANG

we never did get anymore papers delivered, but the guilt has clearly eaten up this city.

I’m not sure if they planned on coming to your town or whoever’s town. But I am completely convinced they cannot be stopped.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ShoggothDontTell on 2024-10-14 09:30:05+00:00.

---

Part 1

Alright, update time. I tried my best to ignore the knocking coming from the back of the house, but as you can imagine it was incredibly difficult to do so. Focusing on writing out my original post helped a lot, but that relief was short lived. I wanted nothing more than to put in headphones or chuck on some YouTube videos or something to drown out the noise, but weirdly the thought of not being able to hear it started to freak me out more. It’s a good thing I didn’t distract myself though because not long after posting there was a change in the pattern of the knocking. It went from a gentle rapping to a violent pounding. Even at the other end of the house, I could hear the window frame shaking and vibrating, and I was surprised that the glass didn’t shatter based on the viciousness of the knocks. The new pattern sounded off once, then the knocking stopped. It started with the same sequence as last time with a new pattern added to the end. The new pattern went as follows:

Knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock. Knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock.

It was long and loud, and I was more than freaked out, so some of the pattern may be slightly off, but I’m pretty sure this is it. Again, I have no idea if this is important or relevant, but I don’t want to leave anything out just in case.

The louder knocking proved enough to stir Kiera awake, she was frightened and grabbed my arm so tightly I think I might bruise. I’m not sure if the sound woke them too, but underneath the bed Zelda and Pickles both starting hissing like mad and fighting each other. We couldn’t see the fight, but Zelda came running out from under the bed and jumped up into Kiera’s lap. We looked at her and she has several deep scratches over her, including one over her left eye, as well as quite a few patches where fur’s been ripped out.

Pickles still won’t come out from under the bed, and I can’t get much of a look at him. He’s hiding and anytime I poke my head under he hisses like mad. I really wish I kept the space under the bed less cluttered so I could get a better look at him, right now I can’t see much, and I really hope she isn’t hurt too bad.

 We thought about taking Zelda to the emergency vet, but to be honest going outside kind of scared both of us and we thought it best to wait until the sun came up. At this point that was only a couple hours away. I should note that Zelda looked relatively okay, that’s why we decided on this, if she was seriously just, we obviously would’ve taken her, our safety be damned.

With Kiera awake again I suggested we try leaving the room together, holding hands the entire way. Not much time had passed but I was going stir crazy in that room and wanted answers to what was going on. Also to be honest I needed to piss pretty badly.

She was not into it and grossly said I could go in her empty water bottle if I had to, but she was not letting us leave the bedroom until the sun was up. We argued for a while and eventually she relented; in hindsight I wish she didn’t.

Hand in hand we walked out of the bedroom and down the hall. We both kept stopwatches running on our phones and checked the time constantly, we agreed if there were any strange jumps we’d run back to the bed as quickly as possible.

Our hallway is narrow and walking side by side is awkward, so I was leading from the front with Kiera right behind me. As we reached the end of the hallway and the back window came into sight, I saw the lumpy shadow I had seen early standing at the glass, staring into the house. I froze. I couldn’t make out much detail, but some things I did notice were that the mass seemed to be quite large, close to seven feet at my guess. The body of it was vaguely cone shaped and the head, if it was a head, was large and perfectly round, sort of like a basketball.

I squeezed Kiera’s hand tight. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Do you see that?” I asked Kiera through gritted teeth.

No answer.

“Kiera?” I whispered a little louder.

Nothing.

I turned my head to look behind me. As soon as the shadow creature left my vision, I felt Kiera’s touch disappear. I looked back to where she should’ve been and there was nothing but an empty hallway. “Kiera!” I screamed.

Still, nothing.

I snapped my head back to the back window and the shadow was gone. Panic set in. I didn’t go to look for the shadow this time or for signs of intrusion, instead I simply bolted for the bedroom. I pulled up my phone as I went, the time was normal. I opened the stopwatch and watched the seconds tick by: 00:01.57, 00:01.58, 00:01.59, 04:02.00.

When I stepped back into the bedroom, the curtains were open, and sunlight was streaming in. Kiera was sitting on the edge of the bed beside a pile of scrunched up tissues, her face red and puffy, she’d clearly been crying for some time. Zelda was sleeping beside her, the cut on her nose now stitched up. Strangest of all was seeing Kiera’s father sitting in the corner of the room. He saw me first, “The hell have you been?” He asked, partly concerned and partly angry.

“Just down the hall…”

“Bullshit! I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but it stops now.”

Kiera’s father then went on to half seriously/half jokingly accuse us of being on drugs (I can assure you we are not, we don’t even smoke weed.) It took us about fifteen minutes of attempted explanations before we managed to calm him down and we could actually talk about what happened.  

I asked Kiera if she saw the shadow and she had no idea what I was talking about. “What shadow?” She asked.

“The one at the window, you could see it from the end of the hall.”

“I never got close to the end of the hall…”

My gut dropped. Kiera went on to tell me her side of what happened. Apparently, we only took about three or four steps together before I pulled my hand away from her, she stopped and called my name, assuming something was wrong. I didn’t answer so she took a few steps forward to the light switch and turned the hall light on (hindsight again we should’ve had that on the whole time, but I completely forgot about it.) When the light came on, I was nowhere to be seen. She called for me again and again but heard nothing and so retreated to the bedroom.

Hearing this terrified me! I know for a fact me and Kiera made it to the end of the hall, I was holding her hand the entire time. I’m certain I looked back multiple times during the walk and saw her behind me, but after hearing her side of events I’m starting to doubt myself. Either way I know for a certainty that I was holding her hand right up until I turned away from the shadow.

Once Kiera got back to the bedroom, she called her father again and told him to come over. It was about 45 minutes before he arrived, at that point they searched the house and backyard together. No signs of me and no signs of an intruder. Kiera’s father then cooked up some eggs which Kiera was too distracted to eat. Afterwards he caught sight of Zelda and worried about her decided to take her to the vet himself. He practically begged Kiera to go with him, but she didn’t want to leave the house without me and so she stayed in the room. Her father got Zelda checked and stitched up, then came back to the house, they’ve been sitting and chatting in the bedroom for the past half an hour.

I’m now sitting up in bed writing my account for all of you, still hopeful that someone out there will have some information on what’s happening to me. Kiera brought me a bucket to piss in and emptied it for me when I was done. Her father fried up some more eggs for me too. They both seem to be able to move about the house without issue. Her father has even left the house entirely and come back with no problems. Yet I can’t go more than a couple steps without losing time.

Since making it back to the room this time I haven’t heard anymore knocking. Now that it’s daylight I’m tempted to go check the window again, there’s something about the sunshine that makes me feel like things are different, like it’s safe or something. But I’m also scared to disappear again and what that’ll do to Kiera, she’s taking this hard, and I’m worried what’ll happen to her if I go again.

Please, if there’s anything I’m missing or if someone out there has experienced something similar reach out to me. I need to stop this. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Urban_II on 2024-10-15 01:59:43+00:00.

---

I started a new job last week. I found the posting on an online job board, a contract gig lasting three months. No benefits, no PTO accrual, but after a year of post-graduation unemployment, I had to take what I could get. The posting itself was incredibly vague: it listed the pay rate, contract length, and the terse description “logistics and recovery”.

 

The interview did little to clear up my day-to-day responsibilities, nor did it shed light on what exactly the company did. “Your job,” explained the hiring manager, “will consist mainly of data entry, with a bit of inventory management as well”.

 

“So mainly working at a desk?” I asked.

 

“Yes, though you will occasionally have to handle new deliveries as they arrive. You won’t need to unload, just scan in the shipment and update in the system that it’s been collected.”

 

“Sounds easy enough,” I replied. “So, what exactly does the company do?”

 

An almost imperceptible pause, and a strange look came over his face. It was gone before I could tell whether it was anger or derision. “Logistics.”

 

After an awkward silence, he rose, and I followed suit. He smiled and shook my hand, then leaned in, suddenly serious. “Our client’s privacy is very important to us, and we pride ourselves on our discretion. Do you understand?”

 

“Y-yes,” I stammered, though truthfully, I had no idea what he was implying.

 

“Good! In that case, we’ll see you here bright and early Monday morning.”

 

Monday came around, and I went in for my first day. I arrived at the building, a single storied brutalist style rectangle, and badged in through the only available entrance besides the loading dock. I was shown to a dimly lit office with an open floor plan, and no windows. I sat at the desk that had been prepared for me, furnished with an older Dell computer and surrounded on three sides with low, half-height cubical walls. Surrounding my desk, and in rows in front and behind me, identical workstations stood nearly empty. Spread throughout the room as if to deliberately avoid one another, four other workers performed their duties without glancing up at the newcomer.

 

The remainder of my first day was spent working through training material, of which there was very little. It quickly became apparent that I had only two responsibilities, both infrequent. First: When a new email appeared in my inbox, I would copy the name and address, find an available driver, and add the information into the driver’s queue to be dispatched. Second: If a new shipment arrived at the delivery bay, I would go out to the truck or van and scan a barcode, then update my records that the shipment had been collected. The end of the day came around, and I left feeling confident that the next three months would be incredibly boring.

 

On Tuesday, my work began in earnest. Well, if you can call sitting on YouTube for hours at a time “work”. I didn’t receive a single email until just after lunch. As I sat back at my desk and prepared to kick back for another few hours, I heard a cheerful ping alert me to a new request. Happy to in some way contribute to earning my paycheck, I opened the message.

 

Subject: Collection Order #12773

Perry Smith

325 Royal Lane, Huntington, Nevada

 

As the training had prepared me to expect, the only contents were a name and address. I diligently copied down the information and searched my directory for an available driver. While there were a decent number of drivers to choose from, each with a wide service area where they would be available to dispatch to, the next available driver who could dispatch to Huntington wouldn’t be available for 24 hours. Well, I figured my job doesn’t entail optimizing our response times, and this was the best I could do for the given information. I created a new email, including Mr. Smith’s name and address, and sent it off to the driver.

 

With that email, my day’s work was done. No further orders came in on Tuesday, and I was able to head home at my scheduled time, again feeling a bit of guilt that I was being paid quite well for so little work.

 

On Wednesday, not long after arriving at work, I received a new email:

 

Subject: Collection Order #13990

Delilah Henderson

4990 Airport Boulevard, Apt #200, Phoenix, Arizona

 

“Early start today, huh?” I asked out loud, vainly hoping one of my coworkers would engage in conversation. As expected, they barely seemed to register that I had spoken. Grady, whose name I knew from the tag on his desk, rather than him ever having spoken to me, glanced up at me with the same odd look that my manager had given me in the interview. I decided against further attempts at friendliness.

 

Reluctantly following the others’ lead and silently performing my duties, I returned to Delilah’s order. This time, a driver was available to head to Phoenix that same day, just after 7 pm. I composed a new dispatch order and sent it off, patting myself on the back for another job well done. The next few hours passed with no new orders, and I went out to get a burger for my lunch break.

 

When I returned from lunch, I found that an email had arrived while I was gone:

 

Subject: Re: Collection Order #12773

Order retrieved. ETA 1500.

 

So, my first order would arrive at 3pm. I set an alarm on my computer to remind me to head to the delivery bay and continued my new usual routine of browsing the internet. When the appointed time came, I got up to meet the driver.

 

The loading dock was accessed through an access door on the back wall of our shared office space, which opened into a T-junction hallway. Through the office access door, the hallway led straight across through a set of swinging double doors into the delivery bay. To the right was a second set of double doors, with a placard labeled authorized access only. I continued straight through to my intended destination.

 

I entered a cramped, concrete room with a gate at one end and a forklift parked against the wall. When I entered, the gate had been retracted up into the ceiling, the opening now filled by a small truck with a single metal crate loaded inside. The driver remained in his truck, not even bothering to wave through his rear view as I approached the trailer. From the wall near the lip, I found a handheld scanner which would allow me to perform my part of this process. Stepping across the gap into the trailer, I approached the crate.

 

The corrugated metal cube came up to my waist. On top, several latches held the lid firmly in place, and a paper receipt with a barcode was affixed to the top.

 

Perry Smith

325 Royal Lane, Huntington, Nevada

10/09/2024

160 Lb, 6’1”

 

I scanned the barcode and moved back off the truck. While I was setting the scanner back on the charger, Grady walked in from the hallway. Not bothering to glance in my direction, he climbed up onto the forklift and started it up. Sensing that he would have no issue impaling me if I chose to stay where I was, I stepped out of the way and watched as he skillfully loaded the crate onto the tines, backed back out, and proceeded with the crate through the double doors, swinging shut behind him. I hurried after him, for some reason desperate to catch a glimpse at where he was taking the order, but the second set of doors had already closed by the time I reached the junction. Strangely dejected, I returned to my desk, and marked the order as collected.

 

As I lay in bed that night, I idly went over the events of the week so far. With each odd occurrence that I recalled; more questions kept bubbling to the surface. If I was receiving so few orders, why did the number go up significantly in between the two I had received? Were there really that many people doing this job, and if so, why not just have one person take multiple orders? Why did separate people scan and unload the crates, and what was being done with them behind the third door? If we were picking up merchandise, why were the addresses all homes and apartments? And-

 

The last question made me shiver. I felt my heart pound in my chest, and my mouth dried out. I hadn’t even thought about it at the time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but now…

 

Why did the height and weight feel so wrong?

 

As this realization began to sink in, my phone suddenly came to life. Dissonance blared from the speakers, four unevenly timed tones. I looked down at the screen, eyes adjusting to the brightness:

 

AMBER ALERT: Phoenix, AZ

Delilah Henderson age 7

Last seen wearing a red t-shirt and blue overalls

Vehicle is a white Ford Transit

Last known location northbound I-17

 

I stared at the screen, unable to move. Delilah. I knew that name. I had dispatched an order to her just this morning. I felt a pressure in my chest, a horrible foreboding for what this meant. Unable to accept the implication, I thrust the thought from my mind. It was a coincidence. Just because we shipped something to her apartment, doesn’t mean her kidnapping was related. Besides, her family must have purchased something from us, otherwise why would we have gotten an order? Letting the denial take hold, I fruitlessly attempted to sleep.

 

On Thursday morning, my denial was shattered. In my inbox, a new email waited, received last night at 9 pm:

 

Subject: Re: Collection Order #13990

Order retrieved. ETA 0930.

 

It was 9:00 am. I had half an hour until…the next order arrived. I looked...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g3wxkt/i_took_a_contract_job_and_found_something_i_wasnt/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/philosophysubboy on 2024-10-14 23:42:52+00:00.

---

I don’t mean they’d leave for a party or a night out. No, they’d vanish—gone without a trace by sunset, leaving me alone in the house. I’d search for them, call their names, but they were always gone, like they’d never existed. It wasn’t something we ever talked about. The next morning, they’d be back, acting as if nothing had happened, like it was just another night. But it wasn’t. I knew that. I learned that the hard way.

It all started when I was six years old. I remember that first Halloween like it was yesterday. I was dressed as a witch, excited to go trick-or-treating. But just as the sun dipped below the horizon, I noticed the house felt different—cold, quiet, too quiet. I ran through the halls, calling for my mom and dad, but no one answered. Panic set in. I thought maybe they were hiding, playing a prank, but after what felt like hours of searching, I realized they were gone. The front door was locked, the windows were shut, and I was completely alone.

That’s when I found the first note.

It was on the kitchen table, written in my mom’s familiar handwriting. It simply said:

Rule 1: “Stay in your room. Do not come out until sunrise. Whatever you hear, ignore it.”

I didn’t understand then. I was scared, confused, and alone. I didn’t want to stay in my room; I wanted to find my parents. But something about the note made me follow the instructions. I took a flashlight and a pillow, locked myself in my room, and crawled under the covers. I thought maybe it was some kind of weird game. I wasn’t sure.

That night, I didn’t sleep much. The house creaked and groaned, more than usual. I heard strange noises—soft scratching at my door, footsteps in the hallway, whispers that I couldn’t quite make out. I told myself it was the wind or my imagination, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t. Something was in the house with me.

The next morning, when I opened my door, my parents were back. They were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee like nothing had happened. I asked them where they’d gone, what had happened, but they just smiled and said I must have had a bad dream.

That was the beginning.

Every Halloween after that was the same. My parents would disappear just before nightfall, leaving me alone with a note. Each year, the instructions got a little more specific, a little more ominous. By the time I was eight, the notes included things like:

Rule 2: “Don’t look out the windows.” and Rule 3: “Don’t respond if someone calls your name.”

And the noises—they got worse.

One year, when I was nine, the sounds outside my room became unbearable. There were knocks on the door, not gentle, but loud, insistent pounding. I pressed my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut, but I couldn’t block it out. The voice on the other side was familiar—my mother’s voice, calling my name.

“Ellie, it’s okay. You can come out now.” She sounded so calm, so normal. For a second, I almost believed it was really her. But the rule had been clear: “Do not open the door, no matter what you hear.”

So I didn’t. I stayed under the covers, trembling, until the knocking stopped. I never told my parents about the voice, and they never asked.

The years passed, and the game continued. It became a twisted Halloween tradition. While other kids dressed up and collected candy, I stayed locked in my room, listening to the house come alive with things I couldn’t see. I became used to the notes, the strange noises, and the feeling of being watched. It was all part of the game, my own haunted ritual.

But when I turned thirteen, everything changed.

That year, the note was different. I found it on my bed just as the sun was setting, but instead of the usual instructions, it said:

Rule 4: “There’s something new in the house tonight. Be careful.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but the moment I read it, I felt a chill run down my spine. Something new? What did that mean? I locked my door, as usual, and tried to settle in for the night, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

The noises started earlier than usual. At first, it was the familiar creaks and footsteps. I’d gotten used to those. But then, there was something else—breathing. I could hear it, low and heavy, just outside my door. It wasn’t human. It was too slow, too deep. I pressed myself against the headboard, clutching my flashlight like a weapon, even though I knew it wouldn’t help.

The breathing moved away after a while, but then came the scratching. It wasn’t at my door this time—it was coming from inside my room. I whipped the flashlight around, scanning the walls, the ceiling, but there was nothing. The scratching grew louder, closer, until it felt like it was coming from beneath my bed. My heart pounded in my chest, my throat dry with fear. I didn’t dare look under the bed. I was too scared of what I might find.

The scratching stopped abruptly, replaced by a soft, childlike giggle. The sound of it froze the blood in my veins. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my parents. Something was in the room with me.

I backed up against the wall, holding the flashlight out in front of me like it could protect me from whatever was there. The giggling continued, soft and mocking. I whispered to myself, “It’s not real. It’s just a game.” But I didn’t believe it anymore.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang on the door. The whole room seemed to shake with the force of it. I dropped the flashlight, plunging myself into darkness. The breathing was back, but this time, it was right outside my door.

Bang!

Another hit. The door shuddered.

Bang!

The lock rattled. Whatever was out there was trying to get in.

I scrambled to pick up the flashlight, but my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold it. The banging grew more violent, each hit sounding like the door was about to give in. And then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

Silence. Pure, deafening silence.

I held my breath, waiting, listening for any sign of movement. Then, the voice returned, soft and sweet, like honey.

“Ellie, it’s okay. You can come out now.”

It was my mother’s voice again, but this time, I knew it wasn’t her. I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I just sat there, frozen in fear, praying for the night to end.

The voice called out again, more insistent this time. “Ellie, don’t be scared. It’s just a game.”

My hands were trembling, and I could barely hold onto the flashlight. The voice kept calling, but I stayed silent. I knew the rules. I knew I couldn’t open the door. But then, something strange happened. The door... it began to unlock. I heard the soft click of the lock turning, and the handle slowly twisted.

“No,” I whispered, pressing myself further against the wall, willing the door to stay shut. But it was too late. The door creaked open, just a crack, but enough for me to see a shadow in the hallway, something tall and thin, its limbs too long, its fingers clawed.

It wasn’t my mother.

The creature stood in the doorway, unmoving, watching me. I could feel its eyes on me, even though I couldn’t see its face. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I felt like I might pass out.

And then, just as it stepped forward, the first rays of sunlight crept through the window. The creature recoiled, hissing like an animal, and within seconds, it was gone. The door slammed shut, and the house was quiet again.

I didn’t leave my room until the sun was fully up. When I finally opened the door, the house was just as it had been the night before—silent, empty, as if nothing had happened.

My parents were back, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee like they always did. I stumbled in, shaken and pale, and told them everything—the creature, the scratching, the voice that wasn’t my mother’s. They just looked at me, exchanged glances, and then my dad laughed softly.

“You must have had a bad dream,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing like that happened, Ellie. It was just your imagination.”

 

My mom smiled that same strange smile and added, “You’re safe now. It’s over.”

 

But I knew better. I knew it wasn’t just a dream. The fear, the things I’d heard and seen—they were real. They had to be. My parents didn’t believe me, they never did, and that was the most terrifying part.

 

Now, as an adult with children of my own, I know the truth. Whatever haunted me in that house, whatever played that sick game, it’s still out there, waiting. And it’s hungry. I fear for the lives of my children. I’ll never let them go through what I went through. I’ll protect them at all costs, even if it means never celebrating Halloween, never letting the night touch them the way it touched me.

 

Because I know, deep down, that it’s only a matter of time before the game starts again. Halloween is coming

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Andy3103 on 2024-10-14 16:48:12+00:00.

---

First of all, I’d like to say that I’ve never really been a believer in the supernatural. Sure, I enjoy spooky stories, especially around this time of year, and I’ve definitely gone down a few rabbit holes exploring weird phenomena, but I wouldn’t really call myself a true believer.

I’ve asked for advice on this topic before, not here but on other forums, but nothing has ever worked. So, I figured that there’s no harm in following some people’s advice and sharing my story here, even though I’m not really sure what to expect from this.

Back in January, my university shared a job opportunity from a school in Northern Ireland, looking for a recent graduate to join them as a Spanish teacher in the fall. At the time, I was in my final year of English Studies at a university in Spain and wasn’t really sure about what I wanted to do after graduation. So, I applied, not really expecting much to come out of it. To my surprise, less than two months later, I got a call for an interview, and soon after, I was officially offered the position.

That led to a restless summer as I prepared for the life I was about to start. I had some reservations, but my parents had even more. The town where I would be teaching was so small and remote that it didn’t even show up on Google Street View, and the nearest hospital was almost an hour's drive away. It was one of those aging towns with very few children, and as such, the school didn’t just serve the local kids; it hosted children from nearby towns as well, with a total of about ten to fifteen students per grade, up to the sixth grade. The local convenience store was stocked only once a week, so I was warned not to expect too much variety, and on top of all of that, it was extremely cold.

Despite all of this, I still felt drawn to go. The town was isolated, sure, but the photos I found online were breathtaking, and the small number of students would allow me to focus more on each of them. The limited options when it came to sustenance sounded harsh, but having a car was sure to help the situation at least a little bit. The salary was generous, too, as remote teaching jobs in such areas were hard to fill, and the offer of free housing didn’t hurt either.

Knowing how isolated the town was, I decided to bring my car and take my time driving through Spain, France, and Ireland. What should’ve been a two-day journey turned into a week-long road trip. I took the scenic route, stopping at hotels and doing a little sightseeing along the way.

I arrived at my new house late at night, after countless wrong turns and much cursing at Google Maps, hours after I was supposed to arrive. I thought I might have to spend the night in my car, but I was relieved to see a light still on inside the house.

I knocked on the door and waited. After a couple of minutes with no response, I knocked again, and again after another couple of minutes. That’s when I heard a voice behind me.

"Hello."

I gasped and quickly whipped around, my heart pounding. The voice belonged to a man. He was tall, but not intimidatingly so, with neatly combed dark brown hair that looked oddly perfect in the midst of the howling wind. He looked at me like I was some kind of intruder.

“Can I help you?” he asked, his tone laced with annoyance.

Still trying to calm down, I replied, “Hi. No, that’s okay, thank you. I’m just waiting for someone to open the door.”

He gave me a look that made me feel like the stupidest person on earth. “There’s no one in there,” he said, matter-of-factly. “And nobody here takes well to intruders, so…” He stepped forward, grabbed my arm, and began pulling me toward my car.

“Wait! Wait!” I yanked my arm free and crossed them over my chest. “I’m not an intruder, thank you very much. I’m Sandra, the new Spanish teacher, and I’ll be living here for the foreseeable future.”

A smirk crept onto his face, amusement flickering in his eyes before he burst out laughing. He tried to contain it when he noticed how annoyed I was becoming. “I... I’m sorry, give me a second... okay. You? The new teacher? You look twelve.”

I shot him a glare. “Not that I need to explain myself to you, but I’m twenty-two, and this is none of your business.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Still a baby in my eyes,” he said, with an irritating grin. “Slightly older than twelve, sure, but a baby.”

I rolled my eyes, growing more annoyed by the second, especially since he didn’t look much older than me. “And how old are you, you wise elder? Twenty-three?” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words.

His smirk returned, but this time, something darker flickered across his face. It sent a shiver down my spine. “Slightly older than that,” he said, his tone unsettling. His words did something to me, made my throat tighten as I suddenly realized how alone I was with this stranger on a deserted street. I shook it off, refusing to let him get to me.

“Well, I’d say nice to meet you, and that I hope to see you around, but I’d rather eat glass than do that,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “So, if you’ll excuse me...” I began walking past him toward the house.

“There’s no one in there,” he repeated, his tone suddenly more serious, sending another chill down my spine. I remember thinking I should’ve worn a thicker jacket. “Everyone leaves a light on when they’re out, so they don’t come home to something they didn’t invite in. Everyone knows that.”

I rolled my eyes again, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling growing in my gut. “If everyone knows that, doesn’t it seem a little counterintuitive? Thieves will just target houses with lights on. Besides, it’s not like someone’s going to stumble upon this place by accident and rob a house. I could barely find my way here, and I wanted to come.”

“I wasn’t talking about people...” His voice trailed off ominously. “Anyway, Carmen waited for you for hours, but she had to go home eventually. You’ll have to make do until morning. I’d invite you to my house—you know, the neighborly thing to do—but since you’d rather... what was it? Eat glass?” His smirk widened. “I wouldn’t want to put you in that predicament. So, enjoy your night in the car. And turn on a light—cars are always free reign.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but the bark of a dog startled me. When I turned back to him, he was gone—vanished like he’d never been there at all.

I sat in the car, huddled under my jacket, laying down in the back seat and contorting my legs so I could find a comfortable position, trying to stay warm as the wind howled around me. The man’s words kept reappearing from time to time in my mind as I was trying to calm my racing thoughts enough to get at least a little bit of sleep. I kept trying to tell myself that his words were just small town nonsense, and that absurd superstitions weren’t worth risking running out of battery on my car, but I couldn’t shake the creeping sense of dread that threatened to drown me. Damn you, whoever you are. And here I thought sleeping with a nightlight was behind me. I remember thinking. The barking dog had finally stopped, but now an unnerving silence settled over the street, broken only by the occasional gust of wind rattling the windows. I flipped on the interior light, hoping it would make me feel less alone, but instead, it just cast strange shadows inside the car, making everything feel more claustrophobic.

Out of nowhere, I heard the distinct sound of hooves. At first, I thought it was my imagination, a desperate attempt on the part of my brain to try to lull me to sleep through the exhaustion, but the rhythmic clatter grew louder, unmistakable against the cobblestones. Squinting through the fogged-up windshield, I saw it: a massive black horse standing at the edge of the road. Its eyes glowed in an unnatural amber, and its black hair shimmered in the darkness, as if absorbing the shadows around it. There was something wrong about it—something too still, too perfect, like a statue. I tried to convince myself that that’s what it was, but my heart started to race as the horse took slow, deliberate steps toward the car. I wanted to move, to drive away, but I was paralyzed, locked in its gaze.

The horse circled the car, its breath coming out in thick, white clouds, fogging the windows even more. Its eyes never left mine, and with each step, the air in the car seemed to grow colder. I could feel it watching me, something far more intelligent and malicious than any animal I’d ever seen before. Suddenly, it stopped right next to my window, towering over the car, and lowered its head. 

Just as I thought it might smash through the glass, a loud crack echoed through the night, and the horse flinched violently, eyes wide with fear. Its ears pinned back as it reared up, letting out a bone-chilling neigh that pierced through the wind. It bolted into the darkness, hooves pounding the ground, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

My breath caught in my throat as I scanned the empty street, searching for the source of the noise. That’s when I saw it—just beyond the trees, a dark shape moving through the shadows, too large to be human, too quick to be anything natural.

I spent the rest of the night hugging my knees to my chest, flinching at every sound, every rustle of wind. My mind raced with possibilities, but no explanation seemed to make sense. All I could do was sit there, waiting for dawn to break.

When morning finally came, so did Carmen, the woman in whose ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HerScreams on 2024-10-14 01:43:40+00:00.

---

There’s a heaviness that comes with certain places. A kind of weight that sinks into your skin, that you don’t notice right away but feel creeping in slowly, day by day. That’s how it was with the apartment. It wasn’t much, just four gray walls in a tired, aging building on the edge of Norilsk.

People called it the most depressing city in the world, and they weren’t wrong. The air here felt thick, like it was clinging to you, and it never really warmed up, even when the sun peeked through the clouds. Most days it didn’t. You lived in a kind of gray, perpetual twilight, where the hours bled into each other, and you weren’t sure if you were waking up or going to bed.

I moved into the apartment because it was cheap. No questions asked, and the landlord didn’t care about anything more than getting the rent on time. It seemed perfect at first: a small place of my own, quiet neighbors who kept to themselves. Too quiet, maybe, but I didn’t mind.

I had been living there for just over two months when I noticed I was out of cooking oil. It seemed like a small inconvenience, but the thought of braving the cold again didn’t sit well with me. The store was a fair walk away, and I wasn’t keen on making the trip.

I remembered the babushka who lived a few doors down. I’d seen her a couple of times, a small, hunched figure with deep lines on her face, always shuffling in and out of her apartment. She never said much, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Just a little cooking oil, nothing more.

I knocked on her door, hoping she’d answer quickly. The hallway felt colder than usual that day.

The door opened, but only just. The chain stayed hooked, and the babushka peered through the small gap. Her eyes were pale, milky, like she hadn’t slept in days.

“Do you have any cooking oil?” I asked, trying to smile, but something about her face stopped me cold.

She stared at me for a moment, her gaze flicking past me to the hallway, like she was checking for something. Her mouth opened slightly, then closed, and I thought she might be confused by the question.

“You shouldn’t trust them,” she said, her voice low, almost a rasp.

I blinked. “What?”

She didn’t elaborate. Her eyes stayed locked on mine, sharp and cold. “The neighbors. Don’t trust them. Don’t get close.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, she slammed the door shut, the chain rattling against the frame.

I stood there, frozen, my question about cooking oil forgotten. The words echoed in my head: Don’t trust them.

I turned slowly, glancing down the empty hallway. The doors were all closed, the silence oppressive. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but something about the way she said it sent a shiver down my spine. I didn’t knock on her door again after that.

The next few weeks passed without much incident, but something felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was a strange feeling that lingered, like the air in the building had changed. It wasn’t anything I could explain, but there were small things, subtle things.

The apartment, for one, had started to feel colder. The radiator clanged and hissed like always, but the heat never seemed to reach me. I noticed small cracks appearing along the walls, just thin lines at first, barely noticeable, but they spread quickly, like veins crawling across the plaster.

And then there were the bugs.

It started with one cockroach skittering across the kitchen floor. I thought nothing of it at first, just a nuisance, something I could deal with. But then, more appeared. They crawled from the cracks in the walls, their shiny bodies slipping out in the dead of night, disappearing just as quickly.

I hated them. They made my skin crawl. I told myself it was just an old building, and old buildings had pests. But as the days went on, they seemed to multiply, no matter how much I cleaned. No matter how hard I tried to block the cracks, they kept coming.

One night, the sound of scratching woke me. I sat up, heart pounding, straining to hear it again. It was faint but persistent, like something was moving inside the walls. I threw off the covers and crept toward the noise, barefoot, my breath catching in my throat.

The wall next to my bed, the one with the longest crack, was trembling. I stepped closer, leaning in, and the scratching grew louder, more frantic, like something was trying to get out.

And then, without warning, a single crack widened. A wave of black bugs spilled out, flooding across the floor, scurrying over my feet. I stumbled back with a scream, brushing them off, my skin crawling as they scattered into the shadows.

My heart raced as I grabbed my phone, ready to call someone... anyone. But as I looked around, the apartment was still. The bugs had disappeared into the cracks again, leaving no trace behind. Only the silence remained. I didin't sleep that night ..

The morning after, I knew I couldn’t leave the cracks as they were. No one could sleep with the thought of insects slipping through those gaps. I grabbed my coat and headed out into the icy streets, determined to fix the problem.

The hardware store was a short walk, but the cold bit into me harder than usual. As I browsed the aisles, I grabbed some plaster and sealant, just enough to patch up the cracks and hopefully put my mind at ease. I didn’t want to deal with those bugs again.

Back at the apartment, I set to work. The cracks weren’t large, but they were everywhere, snaking along the walls in long, jagged lines. I plastered over them, smoothing out the gaps as best I could. I didn’t care if it was temporary. I just wanted to stop the bugs from getting in. When I finished, I stood back, eyeing the freshly patched walls. It looked better, cleaner even.

But that sense of unease didn’t go away.

I sprayed the corners with bug spray, just in case, and spent the rest of the day trying not to think about it. For a while, the apartment felt normal again, and I convinced myself that maybe I’d gotten it under control.

That night, as I lay in bed, I heard the first creak.

It wasn’t anything unusual at first, just the typical groaning of an old building. But then there was another sound, something softer, like a shuffle of feet or a door opening. I sat up, listening carefully.

The sound was faint, but it was coming from the hallway outside my apartment. I crept toward the door, pressing my ear against the wood. For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, a low murmur, voices.

I opened the door a crack, peering into the dim hallway. Two of my neighbors stood at the far end, near the stairwell. They were talking quietly, too quietly for me to make out their words. It wasn’t unusual to see people here, but something about the way they were standing, huddled together in the shadows, made my skin crawl.

I was about to close the door when one of them turned sharply, his gaze locking onto mine. I froze. He didn’t say anything, just stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment before nudging the other person. They both disappeared down the stairs without a word.

I closed the door, heart racing, trying to shake off the encounter. People here were strange, sure, but I didn’t think much of it until the next day, when I realized the two neighbors hadn’t returned.

Their apartment door stayed closed, the lights off, and for the next few days, I didn’t see or hear them at all. No footsteps, no voices. Nothing. It was like they’d vanished.

A week later, I saw the babushka again.

I hadn’t spoken to her since she’d warned me about the neighbors, and I wasn’t eager to bring it up. But that day, as I walked past her apartment, the door opened a crack. Her pale, milky eyes peered through the gap, her expression unreadable.

“You’re still here,” she said, her voice hoarse.

I paused, unsure of what to say. “Yeah...”

She glanced around the hallway, then back at me, lowering her voice. “Have you seen them? The ones who leave.”

I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “They don’t leave. Not really.”

A chill ran down my spine. “What are you talking about?”

“They disappear. One by one.” She coughed, the sound rough and wet.

Her words made my stomach churn, but before I could ask more, she closed the door with a soft click. I stood there for a moment, trying to process what she’d said, but it didn’t make sense. People left all the time, didn’t they? It was just a strange, old woman’s paranoia.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

The next day, I noticed something else.

One of the doors down the hall, the apartment where I’d seen the neighbors last, was slightly ajar. Just a crack. No light came from inside, and the air around it felt colder than usual. I hadn’t seen anyone come or go from that apartment in days, and I wasn’t sure anyone still lived there.

I stared at the door for a long time, debating whether to knock or walk away. But something held me back, an odd feeling, like the air itself was warning me to stay away. I backed off, heading quickly for the stairs. As I descended, I glanced over my shoulder, and for a split second, I thought I saw movement through the crack in the door.

Something, or someone, was watching.

Over the next few nights, the building seemed to grow more restless. The cold became unbearable, seeping through the walls despite the heat blasting from the radiator. The lights flickered constantly, plunging the hallway into darkness at odd intervals. And the noises... they were getting louder.

Every ni...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/JohnEv10 on 2024-10-14 06:43:04+00:00.

---

I don’t know where else to post this, I’ve been thinking about what to do for weeks now and I can’t seem to shake this eerie feeling I’m being watched.

I like looking at old barns and sometimes if they look decent enough I will look inside too. I find some cool stuff here and there and sometimes I can sell what I find. I found a milk bottle one time and an antique mall paid me $120 for it.

I saw a barn 2 months ago driving my side by side on a trail my buddy told me about and it stuck with me. It looked almost new but you could tell it had been there over a century, the wood just felt old. It looked like every plank was cut from a tree planted when the world formed.

After some probing I made a plan to do a deep dive into it and see if I could find anything inside worth bringing to the mall. Half a week later I was back at the barn door trying to loosen up the sliding rail enough so I could get in. Eventually after some trial and error I got in and found a huge amount of tires. I wasn’t that surprised because a lot of times in older barns people would just dump crap there they couldn’t figure out how to get rid of.

The loft is usually where I find the goods as most people aren’t willing to climb on wood that might fall apart if you look at it the wrong way. I made a small step of tires and got up the small hay chute only to be greeted by a smell of rot. It was so nasty I gagged so hard I choked on my own breath.

After settling and choking my face with my own arm I found that the loft was much bigger on the inside that it looked like on the outside. It was almost cavernous, kinda felt like the tardis from Dr. Who to be honest. After standing in shock for a bit I turned my headlamp on high and looked around.

There was nothing in this huge space, just loose hay on the ground and that god awful smell. I started walking around trying to remember which way the chute was and found a silo with steps into it.

Older barns had a small silo within it sometimes just to have extra grain or corn storage for winter. Sometimes you could find some cool stuff in it as well but I had never seen one with steps before.

After thinking about it I decided to abandon any thought of going and climbing those steps so I continued onwards. After walking for at least 10 minutes I noticed that the smell never left this place but I was getting used to it by now. I also found that as big as this barn was there was nothing here at all. Nor had it looked like there was anything other than hay up here.

I walked back and even though I knew it was stupid, I did not want to leave without at least looking in the silo.

The first step creaked so loud I jumped off it immediately. I had never been one to be afraid of specters and such but this place had already spooked me by its nature so I was reacting a little more than normal.

After regaining my composure I climbed the steps one by one, cussing myself silently on every step and suddenly got to the top of the silo. I inched my way to look down into it and saw a set of steps that winded to the bottom, a rocking chair with a lantern sitting next to it within.

Of course I had to get down there and look at it, by no means could I let such an odd thing go. I once again cussed myself at every step down praying my battery was still good enough on my headlamp to get back out and just as quickly as I reached the top I reached the bottom.

The smell of rot at the bottom of the silo reached a pinnacle here. It was permanently ingrained into my nose at that point but here it made my eyes water and my nose drip. I quickly looked around and found the chair to be almost dust free but the lantern was thick with it.

I grabbed the lantern handle happily but upon moving it I found it was sitting on top of a small box cut into the floor perfectly. I hooked the lantern handle to my side and opened the box to find an older looking fountain pen and a leather bound journal. I shoved the journal in my bag and put the pen in my pocket.

No later than the pen was put into my pocket did I hear a small noise. Now all of my nightmares could not have come true so quickly and I shut off my light and listened intently to hear the noise be made again. Sitting still at the bottom of that rotten silo was horrible, sitting in the dark made it awful, hearing the noise again right next to me was worse.

I knew I had to leave right then and there so without turning my light back on I started a mad dash up the stairs. I was making so much noise I couldn’t tell if my mind was making up a crawl making chase behind me or not but I was not about to find out.

The steps seemed to be much longer to climb in the dark but eventually I made it to the top and jumped off the silo. Only to fall directly into the hay chute and on top of my step stool of tires. Now the hay chute had been at least a 6 minute walk from the silo but I wasn’t questioning that at the time. I turned on my light and ran to the barn door and out to my side by side.

I booked it out of there and made it back to my truck and trailer without even thinking. I loaded up my side by side and without much celebration threw my stuff in the bed and sped back home. After pulling into my driveway I said a small prayer and maybe cried a hair. I got unloaded and began to look at my loot.

The pen was empty but that wasn’t a surprise since it looked like it was from the 20s. The journal was filled with notes but I couldn’t understand anything written in them as it had really bad handwriting in another language, I recognized the language as Pennsylvania Dutch so I tried an online translator and it gave me this out of a passage I could decipher:

“I grew up in a place that had no name and no station. The mail was delivered weekly, and pa had to ride to go get the mail. Mama had fresh baked goods on the table every day, and my dog liked to lie in the sun. I liked to lie with him sometimes.

I went to school until the sixth grade, “that’s all you need to know,” is what pa said when I came home on my last day. I didn’t understand it, but today it makes clear sense, he wanted to keep me away from society and its understanding of good works so I could make my own conclusions. I know what is good, and I know what good works are. I am writing this now to tell you about my good works so you can follow in my footsteps and finally end me.

Seven summers ago, strange people came to my woods and drove their loud machines through my dry creek. They ran over one of my ducks. I dressed the duck and preserved the fat, then I brought the fat to their campsite after they had laid themselves down and smeared it on their belongings.

I poured gasoline into an opening near their tent and lit it with a smoldering log. As they came out, I watched them run in circles, trying to put out their tent. They screamed at each other, trying to fix the problem.

The first one was easy, she was small and ran away as soon as they left the tent. I caught her and let her bleed. I caught the second one as he was rubbing fat off a flask. I ended him quickly because he was stronger. They realized something was wrong when the second one fell, so I came in and asked what the problem was.

They screamed at me and started running. I caught one after a short chase when she slipped in the woods. The next one tried to get into a machine but couldn’t get the key in. I had jammed fat into the keyhole and over the wheel.

We had a short conversation after I had disabled him. He asked me why I had done it, and I told him to ask himself the same question. All of them were dealt with and brought to the pig when I had time and when it was hungry. I buried the site and took the machine deep into the woods and set it ablaze. When I got home that morning, mama still had a warm pie on the table, and I ate some with ice cream. I knew I deserved it after a good work like mine”

Ive taken some liberties trying to make it understandable and I’m still working on the rest but there are hundreds of pages with terrible penmanship but so far they all seem to talk about this guys “good works”. I keep seeming to run into Amish around town now who I think are looking at me. I am almost for sure I heard a horse and buggy go down my road two nights ago and I feel like I hear animal calls at night that sound off.

I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking of just leaving town for a bit and giving the journal and pen to the next Amish person I see but I don’t know how that would go. I’m just confused and upset about this. A few things that are making me think something is definitely off is how warm that lamp was when I put it in the bed of my truck and how my house is starting to look bigger and smell a bit worse every day. Any advice is appreciated greatly.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MoeWanders on 2024-10-14 06:19:47+00:00.

---

Part 1

I took the day to gather my thoughts and calm myself. I'm ready to tell the rest of the story. Though I warn you: what came before was child's play in comparison with what comes next. Read on at your own risk.

So, picking up right where I left off . . .

I aimed my flashlight opposite from the way Jack had left, shining its light through a row of trees.

And gasped.

I saw a pair of legs, poking out from behind one of the trunks. 

By the style of pants, I knew at once that it was Jack.

My heart hammering in my throat, I ran over.

I rounded the tree trunk.

And relief washed over me as I found him alive and seemingly unhurt. “Jack!” I cried as I lowered myself next to him.

He didn’t respond. Though I could clearly see the rise and fall of his chest, his eyes stared listlessly up at nothing in particular. His arms were folded over his chest, hands resting right at his center.

In his hands was a bundle of sticks.

“Jack?” Tina cried. “Are you all right?”

“What’s wrong with him?” whispered Marcus.

Not only did he not reply – he didn’t even move. His eyes didn’t shift. Nothing.

“This must be part of the prank,” Tina muttered.

I scowled at her. “Weren’t you worried just now . . .” I trailed off as I recognized the confusion in her eyes. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Hell, none of us were, at that point. 

“We gotta get out of here,” Marcus said.

Tina replied, “But the project . . .”

“Look,” I said, “we’ll come back for the equipment, and maybe we’ll continue with the work, but right now we need to find Jack some help.” I shook my head, grimaced. “He’s not okay.”

“How do we get him back to the truck?” Marcus asked.

Jack was a big guy, well over 6 feet tall. There was no way we’d be able to lift him all the way. “Let’s get him up and see if he’ll walk between the two of us.”

Marcus nodded and we got to it. The bundle of sticks spilled onto the forest floor as we yanked him upright. Jack was limp as we raised him up, and even once we had him between us, his legs just dragged if we started to walk.

“Jack, enough already,” Tina said. Her tone was desperate, not annoyed. “Joke’s over.”

“Damn it,” I cursed. “All right, Marcus, we’ll take one arm each and drag him. There’s not much else we can do. Tina, you guide us. Take Jack’s flashlight – the brightest one – and look for his markings. We need to get to the truck.”

She did as I asked, though she didn’t say anything. She even set down the camera she had been so diligently filming with through the night, leaving it there by the tree. 

We set off. Marcus and I groaned as we pulled Jack, his legs leaving grooves in the mulch. We were facing away from Tina, so we had to manage in the dark. And that darkness felt like it was grabbing at us. Seeping into us. It’s hard to put into words, but it was an awful feeling.

The ghostly sighing of the wind seemed louder now than it had been for most of the night. I wondered what time it was. Probably 1 or 2 AM. A few hours from dawn.

The next moment was the first of the expedition that truly damaged my mind.

Marcus saw it first. He yelled in terror. 

I looked across to him—

—and saw a skinny, pale figure, with limbs too long to be natural, and flesh too ropey to be human. It was standing just close enough and with just enough faint light glancing off its skin that I was sure I was seeing true.

The creature’s drooped, twisted mouth parted to let out an agonized sigh as it lifted a lanky arm toward Marcus and I.

I joined Marcus in screaming. We both tugged hard on Jack’s arms and practically sprinted toward the glow of Tina’s light.

“What happened?” she gasped, spinning to shine the light right into our eyes.

“There’s something!” Marcus shrieked. “Run!”

Was it the Woodwick Walker we had just seen? I wasn’t sure, but the fact that we had both looked right at it and seemed fine told me that it probably wasn’t. As we scurried through the woods, I kept glancing into the dark, fully expecting to see that horrid thing ambling after us.

What happened instead was an abrupt ceasing of the wind and natural din of the woods. The way the sighing breeze and shifting branches ceased to make any noise at all caused the three of us to freeze in place. Again, I felt ice in my bloodstream. Marcus and I exchanged terrified glances.

Then we heard it.

Creaking wood.

My heart raced. As the creaking grew louder, only one thought rang clear in my mind. I opened my mouth and whispered sternly to my friends . . .

“Don’t. Look. At. Him.” 

Marcus clenched his eyes shut. I looked down at Jack; he was still staring idly up at the sky. I clapped my hands over his eyes, then shut my own and held my breath.

The whispering that was hidden in the creaking reached my ears, same as it had earlier that night. I strained to make sense of the whispers, but I couldn’t, even though it felt like I should have been able to make out the words.

When Tina spoke, my stomach sank.

“Oh, fuck this,” she hollered. “I’m not playing this stupid game anymore.”

“Tina, quiet,” I whispered as softly as I could manage.

She laughed. “Look at you two, with your eyes clenched shut. You’re grown men, both of you. Give me a break! There’s nothing . . .” 

She paused. 

“There’s nothing . . .”

While she didn’t say anything else, her breath quickened. I heard a thud and through the lids of my eyes saw shifting light: she had dropped the flashlight.

A few soul-scathing moments passed before the creaking ceased.

And when I opened my eyes, Tina was gone, though we hadn’t heard her walk away. As expected.

“It’s over, Marcus,” I quietly said.

As Marcus opened his eyes, I saw his cheeks wet with tears. “We need to leave this place,” he rasped.

“Let’s get Jack back to the truck,” I agreed. “Then . . . Then I’ll come back and find Tina.”

Marcus nodded. We got back to dragging Jack, pausing every few moments to shine the light over the trees to ensure we were going the right way. The woods were still pitch dark, and I hadn’t forgotten about the awful pale creature that had approached us. The minutes or hours that passed before we made it back to the Silverado were nightmarish.

But we did make it, finally. “Oh,” Marcus moaned, “thank god. Oh, god, thank you.” We opened the back door and grunted as we shoved Jack up in there. 

Once he was securely in the truck, I turned back toward the Weeping Woods.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “I’m not going back—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “Stay and watch over Jack. If he takes a turn for the worse, leave without us. Get him to a hospital. Otherwise, give me a few hours, at least. I’ll find Tina and get back.”

As I stepped back into the Weeping Woods I marveled at my own courage. I suppose that, when you’re faced with either taking on something terrifying or letting someone you care about die, the choice becomes easy. For me, at least, it was.

But god did I hate it. I felt like I was losing bits of myself as I stomped back into that loathsome place. At the edges of my vision I kept seeing pale limbs and couldn’t tell if they were just branches or actual monsters, but at that point it didn’t matter. I was pressing on regardless; there was no use in scaring myself further.

I assumed I’d find Tina laying listlessly somewhere like Jack had been. I also remembered that we found Jack right by the place where he’d first vanished. So I just followed the grooves Jack’s legs had left in the mulch, retracing our path through the woods and hoping I’d spot Tina soon.

Again, minutes or hours went by. It was impossible to tell in the woods and in the dark. I marched all the way back to our camp without finding Tina. Then I turned back and tried looking again along the same path.

It was on the return trip that I saw her legs protruding from behind a tree. I ran over, calling out to her.

She was laying there, blank eyes staring upwards, hands folded over her chest, with a bundle of sticks clutched firmly in them.

I knew it was useless, but I still tried to rouse her. “Tina? Tina, please say something. Tina, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

She didn’t reply, didn’t move. 

Angrily I snatched her hand and tossed the sticks aside. “We’re getting out of here,” I whispered harshly as I lowered my arms under her back and legs and lifted her.

Dawn had finally come, so I just left the flashlight behind as I struggled back in the direction of the truck.

The pale creatures were all around me at that point, sighing in a sort of accursed chorus, ropey limbs reaching for me. A few of the pale hands actually brushed against me, the long, boney fingers running over my jacket. I ignored them and pressed on. Better this than the Walker itself, I figured.

And just as the thought crossed my mind, the sighing ceased.

Total silence blanketed the woods.

Silence, until . . .

The disquiet creaking of wood reached my ears.

It was the third time I’d faced it that night, but the first time I’d faced it alone. And that was the moment that truly ruined me. The moment that shook me so badly that it’s haunted me in all of the years since.

I fell onto my knees, setting Tina down and placing a palm over her blank eyes. Somehow, in that moment of sheer terror, I couldn’t bring myself to fully shut my own eyes. It just felt too vulnerable, I suppose.

So, as the creaking grew louder, I tilted my head down and stared at the ground between m...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-10-14 02:32:15+00:00.

---

I always knew something was off about my neighbor, Alex.

Not in the creepy, staring-through-your-windows kind of way, but something subtler. Like he was pretending to be somebody he wasn’t. His stories about work shifted constantly, as if he couldn’t keep track of the life he was inventing. No friends, no family ever came to visit. There was always something that didn't quite add up.

But I never expected things to get as twisted as they did.

We lived across from each other in a four-unit flat. I was in 2W, and he was in 2E.

The first time I met Alex was the night I moved in.

It was pouring rain, and I was soaked, struggling to carry the last few boxes inside when Alex suddenly appeared. He was just there, standing in the rain without an umbrella, offering to help with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Later, I left a six-pack of Budweiser at his door as a thank you.

It sat there for days, untouched.

From then on, we’d occasionally exchange pleasantries in the hallway, small talk about the weather and sometimes weekend plans. But something about Alex always put me on edge. Maybe it was how his eyes lingered on me, or how he always seemed to know things about me… things I never remembered telling him.

There was one time in particular that stuck with me. I was late for a concert, rushing out the door when Alex stepped into the hallway. We exchanged quick hellos and how are yous, but as I flew down the stairs, he called after me.

“Enjoy Odesza!”

I was in the Uber for 10 minutes before I realized something. I never told Alex where I was going. I hadn’t mentioned the concert that night or Odesza ever. Especially that they were my favorite band. How did he know? Little things like that started to pile up. It felt like Alex knew more about me than any neighbor should.

****

One day, I came home to find a package at my door.

There was no return address, just my name and address written neatly on the label. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I figured maybe it was something from Amazon I had ordered and forgotten about. But inside was a small, black notebook, worn and frayed. At the top of the first page, my name and address were written in careful handwriting. 

Then a pink post-it note fell off and fluttered to the ground. 

It had a hastily handwritten note:

Found this at McGurk’s. No reward necessary. Pay it forward :)

I’d been to McGurk’s recently. Just a casual bar I go to with friends every once in a while. 

But I had never seen this notebook before. It certainly wasn't mine.

Flipping through the pages, my stomach turned. Detailed notes filled every line. What time I left for work, what I wore each day, where I went, who I spoke to. Everything was there, meticulously documented. 

Dates and times with events... repeating and repeating.

Walking to the grocery store, grabbing coffee at Picasso's down the street. Every page felt like a violation, a snapshot of my life through someone else’s eyes. But it wasn’t just the invasion of privacy that made me sick to my stomach. It was the realization that whoever had been watching me almost knew me better than I knew myself.

And then it hit me: Alex.

There was no other explanation. He had been watching me, keeping tabs on my every move. The strange comments, the way he always seemed to know what I was doing, it all made sense now. But why leave the notebook at my door? Was it some kind of sick joke, a way to let me know he was always there, always watching?

I couldn’t sit with the dread any longer. I had to confront him. It was late, but I didn’t care. My anger boiled over, fueled by fear.

I stormed across the hall and knocked on 2E's door, the notebook clenched in my hand. After a moment, the door opened, and there he stood, as calm as ever, with that same eerie smile plastered across his face. But the moment his eyes fell on the notebook in my hand, something shifted. The smile didn’t fade, but I saw a flicker in his expression. A glimpse of something darker.

"I think you dropped something," I said harshly, holding up my evidence.

Alex’s eyes narrowed.

For a second, I expected him to deny everything, to play dumb. But instead, he did something I hadn’t anticipated. He smiled wider, a grin that sent a chill down my spine.

"You shouldn't have opened that," he said softly. "You really shouldn't have."

Before I could respond, he stepped back and slammed the door in my face. I stood there, stunned. What the hell had just happened? Should I call the police? But what would I even tell them? That my neighbor had a creepy notebook filled with notes about me? That I thought he had been stalking me?

That night, I hardly slept. Every creak in the building, every soft sound, made me feel like my insides were jumping. I kept replaying Alex’s words in my head, trying to make sense of it all. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found the next morning.

When I walked to my door to leave for work, I gasped.

My door, which I had locked the night before, as I always triple checked, was slightly ajar. Just enough to make my skin crawl. Slowly, I scanned my apartment, searching for a sign that someone had been inside.

And laid out neatly on my coffee table, were dozens of photographs. All of me.

Me at work. Me walking to the store. Me inside my apartment. Me doing everything that had been cataloged in that damn notebook.

Every single one was taken from a distance, someone watching me. Some of the photos were recent, but others dated back months.

He had been watching me from the moment I moved in.

My hands trembled as I dialed 911, but before I could hit the call button, I heard a sound behind me. I spun around, my heart in my throat.

There was Alex, standing in the doorway, smiling that same cold, dark smile.

"I told you," he said softly. "You shouldn’t have opened that notebook."

Then I blinked and he was gone.

****

I tried to resume my life the next day, but a world of trouble waited for me.

My bank accounts were frozen. Credit cards were being declined. My emails were locked. It felt like my life was being erased. I tried to get help, but no one knew who Alex was.

My landlord said 2E had been vacant for a year, waiting on renovations to finish.

My downstairs neighbors had never heard of Alex.

Day by day, I lost pieces of myself. My habits changed. What I wore, how I talked, even my thoughts. It was subtle at first, then more pronounced. I stopped sleeping because every time I closed my eyes, I saw Alex standing there, smiling.

I even avoided mirrors. Because every time I caught my reflection, it wasn’t quite right. I looked different, like I didn't recognize myself. One night, I smashed every mirror in my apartment, shards of glass covering the floor.

Yet I still felt empty and confused.

Desperate for answers, I walked back to 2E and pushed the unlocked door open.

The apartment was empty, cobwebs in a corner, a new floor half-installed. The whole place was covered in dust. Then I saw it on the ground. The black notebook. My hands shook as I picked it up.

Inside were details about Alex. His name, his address handwritten. It sort of looked like my handwriting. And the person the notes were describing didn't sound like Alex. They sounded like they were describing me. How I looked. My routines and habits.

Panic set in, and I turned to leave 2E.

But Alex was there in the doorway, that same dark smile on his face.

“Your life is mine,” he whispered.

His voice echoed in my head. I ran past him, out of the building and into the night.

I just remember running.

I ended up somewhere in town I had never been.

And I couldn't quite remember how to get home.

Weeks blurred together after that. I wandered, forgetting where I was, who I was. My name, my apartment. All of it faded away, until there was nothing left but darkness.

The next memory I have is of a rainy night. It was pouring. And that I could see someone, a girl finishing moving into an apartment building. A six unit flat. 

She was working on the last few boxes. Suddenly I was next to her, startling her.

“Hello, stranger!” she said to me with a laugh. “You really snuck up on me!”

“Oh, sorry for that. I’m a little out of sorts,” I said instinctively, like I was on autopilot. “Could you use some help?”

“That’d be wonderful,” she said, stacking my outstretched arms with two boxes. “I’m Josie, by the way. Moving into 3W right here. Do you live in the building…”

She was waiting for my name. I tried to say it, to remember it, but only one name would leave my lips.

“Alex,” I said, unwillingly, with a smile. “I’m in 3E, right across from you.”

xxx

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ritaculous on 2024-10-13 23:51:44+00:00.

---

This weekend is a long weekend in the United states (Columbus Day, Indigenous People's Day, whichever), and so I, 20 F, invited some of my friends to my childhood home.

I grew up in a tiny town in the rural mountains Of Colorado. When I graduated highschool and went off to college, my parents moved but kept the place for family get-togethers and vacations. It was the perfect place to invite my friends.

I was super excited - not to sound lame, but this was literally the first time I'd ever had friends at the house. Growing up, I'd really struggled with being social. I had difficulty connecting, had done poorly in school, and had really just struggled. Going off to college had been such a fresh start for me, and the friends I'd made are very important to me.

So it was extra critical that this weekend be the best weekend ever, cementing my place as the 'fun' friend of the group.

We arrived early Saturday morning, a group of six all squeezed into Alexa's minivan. We all piled out, hauled our luggage up the porch, into the house, and I started unloading the groceries for the weekend.

"Wow, Kristy, this place is nice." Chelsea, our unofficial leader, took in the view from the loving room, before glancing back at us. "Hey, why didn't Ashley come?"

Maggie looked up from where she was helping me, "Oh, we decided she'd stay home this time. Sometimes rural areas can be kind of weird about identical twins, so one of us wouldn't go."

I winced when she said that. I hadn't even thought of that, and it was definitely going to be a mark against me, as far as being the hostess with the mostest went.

Alexa finished hauling in the last of her bags and dropped it, panting, right at the entryway. "This altitude is killing me. I swear I'm in such bad shape. Oh! Cute picture, Kristy."

I put down the box of pancake mix to help her move her stuff. Right to the entryway was a wall of pictures - all the school photos, family portraits, etc. Alexa was pointing to one of me, dressed in a Barbie from Rapunzel's Tale dress, holding a jack-o'-lantern.

"I thought you said you'd always had short hair," Maggie commented, having followed me over.

I shrugged. "I don't even remember that Halloween, to be honest."

I didn't remember the picture next to it either, of me standing in front of a piano in a sun-yellow dress, or the one of me at the park, smiling with my arm clearly in a cast. I rubbed my arm absentmindedly.

"Kristy, where's the bathroom?" One of my friends, Rosemara, called, and I turned away.

*

That night, I was mopping the kitchen. I had asked that my friends not bring alcohol - I hadn't exactly asked if I could borrow the cabin for the weekend, and I didn't want underage drinking to be added to my list of petty crimes. But when Alexa had brought out the beer she'd brought, how could I say no? Especially when everyone else had seemed so into it.

What I had seen though, had kind of talked me out ever drinking, and mopping up vomit while everyone else was sleeping stunk.

I took a break to go make sure I'd locked the front door, and why I was there, I stopped and stared at the picture wall. It was more than just not remembering a few of the pictures, I didn't remember any of the ones of me. Pictures of me at family reunions I hadn't attended, me with girls I hadn't been friends with, in clothes I didn't recognize -

I touched my arm again, staring at them. I hadn't said anything earlier, but I'd never broken a bone before. / Ever/.

I finally took that one, of me in a cast, off the wall, but when I did, I dropped it. Wincing and hoping I hadn't woken my friends with the noise, I squatted and picked it up. The back had popped off from the fall, and I noticed that there was another picture wedges into the back of the frame.

This was one I knew: me and my brother smiling and sitting on the back of a hayride.

I stared at it, and then started taking down all of the pictures.

Sure enough, behind each picture was one I knew, one I remembered being taken.

I squatted back on my heels, staring at all the pictures that surrounded me. What was going on? My memory has never been good - my brain had felt foggy my whole childhood - but to forget all this? And why had my family hidden all of the pictures that I knew? I could say, with certainty, that not only did I not remember these events, but I had never seen these photots before.

If there was really something weird going on, there had to be more to it than this. I'd started to stand when I saw it: a dim red light, blinking out from behind the fireplace mantle. I must have missed it in the daylight, but now, in the comparatively dim overhead light, it was much more obvious.

I already knew what it was before I started pulling down the decorations to get at it: a surveillance camera. And one that was bolted /into/ the mantle, that looked pretty expensive and pretty permanent. I mean, maybe my parents got it when we moved away, for security reasons, but it was pointed at the living room, not the door.

I smiled thinly, trying to think patient thoughts. I had asked that my friends not bring alcohol - I hadn't exactly asked if I could borrow the cabin for the weekend, and I didn't want underage drinking to be added to my list of petty crimes. But when Alexa had brought out the beer she'd brought, how could I say no? Especially when everyone else had seemed so into it. I knew it was recording me, and that probably my family knew that I was here without permission, and maybe they were even watching me now.

I felt like giving the camera the middle finger, but decided that I should spend that time looking for other weird stuff instead. Who knew if and when my family would show up?

The living room didn't reveal anything else, and neither did the kitchen. I tackled my room next, and found stuff immediately. It's hard to explain, vecause if I hadn't been looking for weirdness, I wouldn't have found anything, but now that I was alert, I couldn't miss it. My stuff wasn't right.

I always, always, folded my shirts so the logos showed, like they do at stores, but the shirts in my dresser weren't folded like that. My jewelry was moved, I had different stuffed animals on the bed, not the old ones I'd left when I'd gone off to college. The quilt on the bed was the same colors, but a different pattern. It was /almost/ my room, but not quite.

My brother's room and the guest room were where I'd put the girls, so I searched my parents room next. I wasn't finding anything, and the hours were ticking away. Suddenly, around 3 a.m., I heard tires crunching the gravel in the driveway, and I froze. There was no way anyone else just drove up here, our driveway was an easy mile long.

I glanced frantically around the room, and spotted it: the tell-tale red beep of a camera. It wasn't pointed at the door or the window, but at the closet.

This time, when I opened the closet, knees shaking, I realized that it was much shallower than the other one. Fumbling along the back wall, I felt a seam, and when I dug my fingers in and pulled, the whole back wall swung out smoothly.

Past it was dark, but I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and hurried down the hallway it had revealed.

If that was my family in the driveway, I needed to find out what was going on before they got to me.

Ahead of me, in the harsh light of my phone, was a hospital bed. It sat in a small room - this had probably once been a walk-in closet, before. It was surrounded by plastic bins and drawers, some with obvious medical equipment, and others full of clothes, toys, books, and other paraphernalia.

I stopped to read the labels: Kristen, Fall 2008. I recognized the rainbow jacket inside. The one next to it was labeled Krystal, Winter 2008-2009.

The bed was outfitted with restraints, and a respirator mask lay abandoned on the pillow. Filled with trepidation, I picked it up and tried it on.

Ever since I can remember, I've had this scar on the back of my neck. My parents told me it was just a raised birthmark I could feel, but now, putting the mask on, I could feel where the snaps would have lined up with it. It wasn't a scar, it was a callus. From wearing a respirator mask.

I turned and looked back at the room, at the stuff divided clearly between two girls, and I think I know why I haven't remembered most of my childhood.

I don't know what to do. I could call the police, but as Maggie said, we're rural.

Besides, I don't have service. I barely have enough connection to post.

If anyone has advice, please help. Because my family is here. And the bed I'm back up against is just my size.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BadandyTheRed on 2024-10-13 23:43:35+00:00.

---

I held the phone up to my head with the arm that was not as injured and heard a panicked voice call out on the line.

“Help, there is a fire here and we are stuck in the building.” A brief coughing fit interrupted the caller, no doubt due to smoke inhalation. I could hear an inferno in the background and they continued.

“My name is Kylie Burke and I am a secretary at the Hope for the Future research center on 311 Lang street. We don’t know what happened but a fire broke out and someone blocked the exits. We are stuck in here, we tried breaking the door down but we can’t and it is getting hot to the touch. Help us! We are going to die unless you send the fire department now, please help!”

I was not sure how I was going to stop a fire, but I would have to do something to prevent it in the first place. It sounded like details were scarce and I was trying to think of what else to ask, to see if any more info could be gleaned when I heard the static and the panicked,

“Hell...o......plea.....hel.....us” A loud crash signaled the end of the call and the line was dead again. I had to find that building and do something to stop that fire, I did not know how many people were in that building besides Kylie but it could be dozens or even hundreds and they were likely all stuck and would be burned alive. My mind raced, lots of things could start a fire, but I considered the blocked doors and the situation stank of some malicious influence. It might even be the same person who has been committing all of the other future crimes, so far, he has been at every event and my gut convinced me that he would be there and he would likely be the one starting the fire.

I pocketed my phone and tried to rise but my whole body ached from being beaten almost lifeless. The shock and adrenaline of the fight and answering another call was starting to subside and I was finally feeling just how injured I really was. As I tried to stand up, I fell back down with a shock that made my body writhe in pain. Just then the woman I had saved from the attack earlier came back in and tried to help me. Her initial concern must have abated when she saw me try and defend her, though she still had a somewhat doubtful look on her face when dealing with me. She did seem to want to help now and said,

“I am sorry, I can't get a hold of anyone, this place became a dead zone all of the sudden and I can't get the police or an ambulance here. It seems like you really need some medical attention. Thank you for stopping that man, but who was he and how did you know he was coming for me?”

The question was a good one and I struggled to come up with an answer that she would believe since I couldn't exactly tell her I got a call from the future where she was likely dead.

“Oh I don’t know who he was, but I saw him creeping around and thought he might be up to something when I saw him come in here. I am sorry for scaring you earlier.”

I introduced myself and she did the same. I learned her name was Bianca Sinclair and she was a researcher at the Hope for the Future. That name was cropping up a lot, I wondered if maybe M was targeting people who worked there for some reason. This many employees being potential victims, it couldn't be a coincidence. I remembered what M said about how I should, “consider who you are really saving and why?” I needed to get more information about what these people were doing and why they might be targeted.

We moved out of the restroom and to a bench where we could await some help. The whole rest stop seemed to have no traffic today so no one else came through to assist. The emergency line was still out and Bianca was unable to call out to any other lines. We had been waiting so long it had been almost an hour and we finally flagged someone else down. As soon as the woman approached us and she spoke I recognized the voice as the one from the call and I knew I had met Stacy Thomas. After introducing ourselves, Stacy had offered to go get help for us, but I did not have time to spend at the hospital despite my injuries so I declined. I did ask her why she was heading into town and apparently, she had been coming this way to visit her family. It turned out her brother had just been killed and she was going to be with her family to mourn his loss.

I realized my hunch was likely confirmed but just to make sure I asked what his name was and when she told me I felt a wave of realization and despair. His name was Calvin Thomas and he had been struck by a car and killed while cycling at night yesterday. As I was mulling in my own sense of sadness and defeat at the memory of how my actions had inadvertently led to his death, Bianca perked up at the mention of the name.

“Calvin Thomas? You are his sister?” Stacy nodded and confirmed,

“Yes, why?”

“Well, your brother and I work together, or worked I should say, I am so sorry that is terrible what happened.”

My ears perked up and I listened to them speak more about Calvin. Now to find out he worked for the Hope for the Future foundation as well? It was all too much. Everyone I have met during this entire debacle has had some connection to this foundation, what were they anyway? I was in a unique position to find out more since some workers were here with me now. I could glean more info and maybe see what was going on. Then I could follow up tomorrow at their facility, assuming I could keep it from burning to the ground.

I tried to inquire about what sort of work the foundation did, but Bianca was tight lipped about it and Stacy indicated her brother was never forthcoming in the sort of research they did there either. Just vague statements about research and development into new technologies and some renewable energy solutions but few specifics. In the end I did not know why someone would want to kill the people who worked there. I had some suspicions that Bianca was not telling me everything though. I did not blame her; it was her work and it was private. I could not tell her what I really knew about why I thought she might be in danger, but something happened there that has made them a target for whoever, or whatever M is. I had to make do with the knowledge I had, since I had another incident to stop tomorrow.

Stacy departed as she had to get back on the road and said goodbye. Before Bianca could leave I tried to ply her with some questions about her work.

“I did have a question about the foundation, how many people worked at the Lang ave building? and is it open tomorrow?” Bianca regarded the question furtively and asked,

“Why do you want to know?” I told her,

“Well I just wanted to visit and see what sort of work is done there I am really interested in new technologies and innovation.” I was not lying at least not completely, but she had a doubtful look on her face. She tried to discourage me but I was persistent,

“Please, I am very curious and it could be a personal favor for me if you wanted to repay me for the help.” I smiled and the motion hurt my face after getting stomped recently. I could tell she felt sorry for me and relented.

“Alright I can take you on the investor tour and if anyone asks you are a new shareholder, its not open to public tourists.”

“Thank you so much! I promise I won't be any trouble.” It was sincere since if things went the right way, I would be saving her and all her coworkers from a fiery fate. I had my way in now, I just needed to ensure I could evacuate those people on time or stop the first in the first place. Since I couldn't bring a fire engine to the site, I would have to make due with a visit at around the time shortly before the call. I needed to stop the fire before it happened.

The next morning Bianca and I set out to the foundation. She spoke a little more on what they did and the answers were not something I suspected. It sounded like some sort of sci fi movie premise, but the Hope for Future foundation was actually trying to research Tachyons and the potential to send things forward or backward in time. I thought she was joking with me but when I started to laugh, I saw the look of genuine sincerity and my jaw almost hit the floor. I wondered just then if I should tell her about the phone? If she knew maybe she could figure out how it's happening and why to me? It could not be a coincidence I get embroiled with some futuristic foundation that can send things through time and I just so happen to start receiving calls from the future. I decided to ask her something , trying not to give away too much,

“I know you probably could not confirm to the public but, has anyone really done it? I mean sent an object back in time?” She looked uncomfortable and responded with a curt,

“That is classified and why do you ask?”

“Just curious. I was also wondering if something like a phone or computer could be used to send a message from a different time to now using that method. Would that be possible?” Her eyes narrowed and I was afraid a said too much.

“That is a very specific suggestion, why would you think that is something we could do?” I just mumbled a feigned excuse under my breath and then pointed to the building we were approaching like an impatient child and asked,

“Is that it?” Hoping it would change the subject from my all too specific question. She nodded and looked away, clearly not fully trusting my distraction but too polite to grill me on it. We had indeed made it to the foundation. Bianca parked and we got out and h...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g331eu/i_keep_receiving_911_calls_for_emergencies_that/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/APCleriot on 2024-10-14 00:36:30+00:00.

---

I didn't understand the object Freddy shook in my face or why he was so excited.

Halloween night in ‘87 wasn't as illuminated as today.

“It's a picture,” he yelled, and spat into my face. “Look! Look!”

I put my pillowcase down and held his wrist gently to see the fuss: a Polaroid picture with Freddy in his sad pirate costume.

When I looked more closely, however, I saw the singed boy beneath. Polaroid Freddy looked burnt to a crisp. His skin gone. The eyes melted away.

Freddy snapped the picture from my fingers. “Isn't it cool?” He studied it again. “Like a magic trick. Best Halloween ever. Right? It's cool, right?” He continued to bully me for validation, as ten-year-old boys do, until I relented.

“It's cool, Freddy. Where did you get it?”

“You know Mr. Malcolm's house?”

“Super green lawn guy? Tells dirty jokes to us at the bus stop? The weirdo pervert? That guy?”

Freddy nodded enthusiastically, missing my intended sarcasm. Everyone usually avoided Mr. Malcolm's house on Halloween and every other day. The man constantly invited kids inside for “candy and conversation.” I don't know if anyone accepted that offer. I hope not.

“Yeah,” Freddy confirmed, “but there's a young guy on the porch. Probably his nephew or something. He's got on a mega spooky demon mask, and he's got a camera, and he takes your picture, and it prints out all freaky like mine and-”

“Whoa, Freddy,” I said. He was getting overexcited. Freddy had something wrong with him. A weak heart maybe, though I can't recall exactly what we were told other than he could die should he get too worked up. Our teachers told us to look out for Freddy. So I did. “It's great. Calm down.” I started breathing with him and held his hand.

He smiled. “Thanks man. Wanna see?”

I smiled back. “Yup.” The photo had creeped me out, but also fascinated me. I didn't want to be the only kid who missed out on something cool.

Judging by the line extending down the walkway, bending at a right angle onto the sidewalk, it seemed I might. There had to be fifty kids waiting for their photo.

Polaroid pictures aren't fast. They don't present an image until at least ten minutes have gone by.

The guy on the porch wore a thin mask with horns that really seemed to grow from his forehead. A mouthpiece displayed jagged teeth. He carefully placed the undeveloped photo on a shoe rack at his side. You don't shake Polaroid pictures. You wait.

And so we waited.

He could have simply given the white rectangles to the eager kids before the image showed, but he didn't.

Instead, after taking a trick-or-treater's photo, he sat cross legged on Mr.Malcolm's concrete slab of a porch and stared at the child. Some kids tried to talk with him. He didn't answer. Others waited in silence, bearing the stranger's gaze with admirable defiance. One little boy began to cry. His parents ushered him away before he could collect his photo.

I remember thinking how fortunate I was that my parents let me trick-or-treat on my own. I would get my photo. I would endure the awkwardness of the adult gaze.

Time ticked on. It was late. Some kids gave up, and left the line, to my delight.

Freddy yawned, and said he had to go. I thanked him for telling me about the Polaroid man. I probably wouldn't have come down Ferry Street otherwise. Mr. Malcolm creeped me out too much.

Luckily, a few other school friends were revealed by the departures: May DeFranco and Vicky Rand. They'd already gotten their photos, but hung around because May's little sister wanted one too.

“Can I see?” I asked, pointing at the photos. They were grotesque, and I could hardly bear it.

May's body appeared popped open, entrails spilling from her guts and onto splintered remnants of bone and muscle. Only the pink princess dress she wore as her costume identified her as the corpse in the photo.

Vicky's was far worse. Her dead body had been tied at the wrists and ankles. Her pale face appeared stunned at the mutilation of her body. The top half had been pulled apart from the bottom, and there were more tortured dead around her in a dark field.

“Cool, right?” Vicky said. “It's like Freddy Krueger or something.”

“You've never seen Freddy Krueger,” May said. I hadn't seen A Nightmare On Elm Street either. I never have. At the time, I assumed the contents of the photo were typical horror movie stuff. I wasn't ready for it, but I wouldn't let my discomfort show.

After May's sister got her photo, more kids thought better of risking their worried parents’ wrath. They left, and after one more boy got his photo, my turn came at 11:42 PM. My parents were probably pissed off by eight. So I figured, wrongly, I wouldn't be in more trouble for continuing to stay out way past the time I should've been home.

Though I did have second thoughts, especially when I realized no other kids remained. I would be the last, and I was alone with the devil masked man.

“Don’t smile,” he growled.

I adjusted my face quickly to obey.

He snapped the picture, and sat on the stoop. We waited. The last leaves on the trees hissed a warning in the wind. Their dead brethren skittered away down Ferry Street. I could hardly breathe as he stared.

There were no visible eyes in the sockets of his mask, only oily voids, an unfortunate trick of the dim porch bulb. It had to be. The feeling in my stomach called for a quick escape.

“I think I need to go,” I told him.

His hand gripped my wrist hard.

I squirmed. “It's okay. I can pick it up tomorrow.” He did not let go. His face, that mask, got close to mine. He was perfectly quiet. No inhalation or exhale as he forced me to stay put. “Please,” I begged, “I want to go home.”

In the half inch space between our noses, he slid the developing Polaroid. This close, I could barely see anything. Then the devil's mask appeared in the photo. Then I or what would become of me materialized: the Polaroid featured us together, his hands around my neck, my face empty of life.

I yelped and pulled away. He let go, and I fell onto the walkway.

He stood up, and tossed the photo with precision. It landed beside me on the grass. Further details of the horror were revealed. A swath of blood matted my hair, and soaked the front of my costume like a gory bib. The man in the devil mask had done more than strangle me according to the image.

I backed away, a reverse crab walk of cumbersome doom. He hadn't moved because he could catch me anytime he liked. His first step knocked his camera off the stoop. It clattered, and a piece shot away from the impact. He didn't seem to care.

“P-please,” I pleaded with him.

I don't remember the specifics of how I got up and ran down the middle of Ferry Street. I only recall the chase was brief because I made a mistake, and got cornered in the variety store parking lot. The store, Brother's Variety, had been closed for hours. There'd be no help there. The streets were empty. Most people were asleep.

How I knew this or thought about it in such a terrible moment came down to dumb luck. I backed into a pile of leaves bunched up with fake spider webs that had blown off someone's house. Stuck, I raised my arms defensively and caught the time on my digital watch: the wrong side of midnight by twelve minutes.

His fingers caressed the sides of my neck. I closed my eyes, and started trembling uncontrollably. Pain would be next. Great pain. The photo promised. And death.

“No!” I tried to shout, but it came out like a squeak. “Halloween is over! It's over! It's done! You can't!” I don't know what I was saying or why.

But the fingers retreated, and he took noiseless steps backwards over the cracked tarmac. When he reached the sidewalk, he spoke. “See you next year then.” As if it had been a prank all along, he walked away, casually.

It took far too long for me to go the opposite way. Eventually, I managed a slow jog, working through the blocks to home, where my mom waited in the front window, worried and angry.

Punishment was left up to my father. When he returned from searching for me, I told him about the photo and the guy in the mask. He received the information passively before grabbing his baseball bat and calling his brothers.

Together, they went to Mr.Malcolm's and discovered the busted door in the backyard. The old man had died in his chair, completely naked; my dad told me this last detail some years later. Police were called but nothing came of whatever investigation might have followed.

My parents had, and have, no faith in the Bridal Veil Lake PD. Hence the reason he called his brothers and picked up his bat that night.

Evidence of the devil masked man existed, of course. Many kids had their photos taken. No police, or adults, asked about it, as far as I know. Mine had been left on Mr.Malcolm's lawn. But Freddy, May, and Vicky said they still had theirs at home.

Freddy's, however, likely burned up in the fire the following Christmas. His dad made the mistake of using a space heater in the garage. All of them, including Freddy, were dead the day before Christmas Eve.

I refused to go trick-or-treating the next year, and every one after that. My parents understood, and didn't pressure me. Within a few years, I aged out of the tradition, but still wouldn't risk going out for a walk on Halloween night.

“See you next year then.” And, if not, the next, or the next, or the next. He waits. I know because every photo has turned out to be true.

Vicky simply disappeared before her nineteenth birthday, and while ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ShinyMills on 2024-10-13 22:34:37+00:00.

---

I'm still trying to figure out how to start this off, I've never done this before and I'm not in any way, shape, or form some kinda great storyteller. What I am, is a woman with a fairly boring job, with the occasional burst of fucking weirdness.

I 'work' for a company that does transcriptions. Work is in quotations because technically we're just freelancers - honestly, I doubt any of ya'll give a single, solitary fuck about the ins and outs of my job, so yeah. I'm just gonna jump to the chase here!

So, most days the audio we get is fairly mundane. Interviews, surveys, just random marketting or legal things people want to have transcribed for whatever reason. Sometimes though, sometimes we get surprisingly interesting things, like maybe a police interrogation - I've got one of those twice so far - or, once, an interview between a lawyer and a potential client. I've heard of other people getting, like, private audio. By private I mean apparently, some weird ass mother fucker recorded himself having phone sex with someone, multiple times. Also, the audio was of the shittiest quality, so I'm glad I never got any of those.

Then there are the days when something truly weird pops up. Weirder than the phone sex thing, I mean. Like spooky weird. I'd never gotten one myself, just read about them from other transcribers in our group discord - the discord is absolutely not company approved, the company doesn't really like us speaking with each other beyond anything work related really, but fuck that. As I was saying, though, I'd never personally gotten one of those types, just heard about them from others who had stumbled across them. I have to say, some of the audio logs people have talked about, had to listen to, left us all feeling pretty fucking unnerved.

One person ended up quitting entirely after they had the supreme misfortune of taking on a particularly disturbing audio. They refused to give too much detail, claimed they were, and I quote 'sparing you all from having nightmares infecting you, too'. The way they had worded that had left a lot of us creeped out enough and left more than a few of us worried when they fell out of contact without a word. Not just on discord, a few of us had their socials, and there hasn't been a peep from them since that last message, a message that was left over a year ago.

Back on the topic at hand, though. My personal winning streak of not having to deal with any of that bullshit came to an exceptionally dramatic end a few days ago. I'll admit, in the past, when I first heard about them, I was a little curious about those types of audios, in a very morbid way. Any curiosity I had usually had been its death throes after reading about an especially gruesome audio. Everything that happened with the acquaintance I mentioned earlier, that one that completely fucking vanished - yeah, any ounce of curiosity I had left was practically beaten to death with a shovel. What I'm saying is I'd come to the conclusion that they were something I'd really rather not have to listen to.

Enough of my rambling, I'm going to post a copy of the transcription below. Yes, that is insanely illegal, which is why I'm not naming the company, myself, or the discord group. and it is very much why I abandoned the thing even after I finished. I don't think it'll be linked back to my account if someone else picks it up. They're only ever marked as previously abandoned when we pick up a dropped audio, so whoever takes credit for doing it, hopefully, shouldn't face anything. I got points docked for dropping it after the allotted grace time, but I'd rather have as little tying me to this as possible, you know? Anyway, enjoy, I guess.

Transcription Begins:

Male Interviewer 1: "I know you've been here for several hours now, Mrs. Smith, but we need you to go over this just one more time for us. It will help our investigation immensely, and could potentially save lives. Are you ready?"

Mrs. Smith: "I...yeah, I guess. Why [Inaudible]. Can I get some water or something?"

Male Interviewer 2: "That won't be possible at the moment, Mrs. Smith."

Mrs. Smith "You can't just take a moment to get me some fucking water?"

Male Interviewer 1: "I apologize, ma'am, I know you must be thirsty but we do need to get this done as fast as possible. The sooner it's done, the sooner it can be used to aid us. I give you my word, once we're finished I can make sure you get some water."

Mrs. Smith: "Fine. Yeah...okay. So, like I said already, multiple times in fact -"

Male Interviewer 1: "We do apologize for that, but it's important, Mrs. Smith."

Mrs. Smith: "Right, right. So, um, right. I'd had this entire camping trip planned out for a few months now, it was going to be my sister, our cousin, and myself. At the last moment though [Inaudible] that had my sister dropping out at the last minute. So it wound up just being me and my cousin. We weren't, um, the closest, but we got on pretty well, well enough that it would still be a fun trip. She...um, she-she was closer to my sister."

Male Interviewer 2: "So you weren't by yourself on this trip?"

Mrs. Smith: "I literally said my cousin was with me, it was myself and my cousin. So, logically, I wasn't by myself!"

Male Interviewer 2: "I understand your frustration, ma'am, but there's no need for yelling. Please try to calm down."

Mrs. Smith: "Calm down? Calm down?! Have you not been listening-"

Male Interviewer 1: "Mrs. Smith, my colleague misspoke. We're aware this situation has been [Inaudible] for you, but we have to ascertain that we're understanding everything perfectly. Do you need a break?"

Mrs. Smith: [Audible sobbing]

Male Interviewer 1: "Alright, we're going to take a short break."

Audio Resumes:

Male Interviewer 2: "Are you ready to resume, ma'am?"

Mrs. Smith: "Yeah, um, yes. Okay, okay. So, um, as I said earlier...it was just my cousin and I [Inaudible] and it was only supposed to be a-a weekend thing, so we, um, we didn't bring much with us. There's this diner that she...that she loved, and we-we were just going to go there for breakfast and dinner. We brought some hotdogs because, uh, what's a camping trip without hotdogs, right? Yeah, so, we left my place Friday around, I want to say noon? Noonish? We got to the campsite around four or so."

Male Interviewer 1: "Four pm?"

Mrs. Smith: "Yeah, um, yes. Four pm."

Male Interviewer 2: "Please, continue."

Mrs. Smith: "Right, okay. So. We got to the campsite around four, and the first thing we [Inaudible] getting our tents set up."

Male Interviewer 1: "You had separate tents?"

Mrs. Smith: "Yeah. You, um, you saw them, right? At our campsite? They're these-"

Male Interviewer 2: "There wasn't much left of either of your tents, Mrs. Smith. Which is why we needed clarification."

Mrs. Smith: "Oh...okay. I, um, I didn't...I hadn't been back to the campsite. I didn't know..."

Male Interviewer 1: "We understand, Mrs. Smith. [Inaudible] please continue."

Mrs. Smith "Okay, we had separate tents, like I said. And, [Inaudible] had taken us, um, my sister and I, I mean, camping all the time when we were younger. So, um, getting them set up was easy. After that we went to the diner for dinner. That would have, um, I think it was around eight? We made it back close to ten, it was dark out."

Male Interviewer 2: "What did you do once you'd [Inaudible]?

Mrs. Smith: "We started a campfire. We, um, we wanted to roast some marshmallows before going to bed. Make some s'mores. It was-"

At this point, the audio became severely distorted for several minutes, before resuming:

Mrs. Smith: "I'm, um, I don't know what time it was, exactly. When I checked my phone the battery was-was dead. I remember thinking that was weird, because, um, it had been a little over fifty percent when I went to sleep. But, um, yeah. It was dead. So, yeah, it's hard to say the exact time it had been."

Interviewer 2: "If you had to guess, though? What would you say, ma'am?"

Mrs. Smith: "I thought you needed to be perfectly clear about everything? Isn't that what you said?"

Interviewer 1: "We do need to be as precise as we can, Mrs. Smith. However, having the beginnings of a timeline would prove immensely helpful to us."

Mrs. Smith: "Right, yeah...sorry. If I had to guess, maybe somewhere around six? Maybe a little before that? It wasn't dawn yet, but it wasn't completely dark, either."

Interviewer 2: "Perfect, thank you, Mrs. Smith. Continue, please."

Mrs. Smith: "Yeah, um, sure. It-it was before dawn, and-and my cousin wasn't an early riser. She'd normally never get out of bed before ten on the weekends. But, um, it was hearing her that woke me up."

Interviewer 1: "Hearing her? What do you mean?"

Mrs. Smith: "I-I heard her talking. I thought at first that [Inaudible] she-she did that sometimes but, um, I realized pretty fast that her voice...her voice was, um, coming from somewhere in front of my tent. Her tent had been beside mine."

Interviewer 1: "I see. Could you hear what she was saying?"

Mrs. Smith: "Not-not really, no. I, um, I heard the tone though. It was the-the same tone she used to use on stray cats and dogs when we were kids. Just, um, really gentle, do you know what I mean? I heard her talking like that, and I, um, I immediately though she was doing something stupid like-like trying to pet a raccoon or something."

Interviewer 2: "Was that what she was doing, Mrs. Smith?"

Mrs. Smith: "You fucking know it was...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RaynaClay on 2024-10-13 18:08:04+00:00.

---

I was 11 when doorways… broke. I mean 'broke' in the sense that they no longer consistently worked the way doorways are supposed to. It’s hard to explain. It started with little things. The first time I remember something strange happening, I had walked from the kitchen into the living room and as I passed the threshold, suddenly there was this vase of flowers on the table that I was sure hadn’t been there the moment before. They were large, bright sunflowers and I had no idea how I could have missed them, but they were clearly there, and so I figured I just hadn’t been paying attention. I was only 11, after all. Everything else seemed fine. I put it out of my head.

After that day, however, similar things started to happen more frequently. Or maybe I just noticed them more. Mostly it was little things. I would follow my mom through a door and suddenly she was wearing a different shirt than she had been a moment ago. Or her hairstyle had changed. One notable time it was suddenly dyed fiery red, when it had been its usual brown before we left the house. I would search everywhere for my favorite stuffed animal, only to find it sitting in its normal place on my bed when I gave up and went back to my room. I would go downstairs to watch my favorite show, only to be told that it always aired on Thursdays, not Fridays even though I was certain of the timing. That sort of thing happened so often that my parents began to worry that something was wrong with my memory. They took me to a series of specialists and had a bunch of tests done, but if anything, they found that my memory was better than average. The conversation then shifted to discussions about hallucinations and a possible psychiatric diagnosis. At that point, I pretty much stopped mentioning when something unusual happened. But that didn’t mean the incidents stopped. For a long time, I just tried to pretend nothing was wrong. It was easy as long as the changes were small. But occasionally, something shifted that was difficult to ignore. Not just a missing item, or a different colored shirt, but a change that mattered to me. One that hurt.

The first time that happened I was 16. I had just started dating my first real boyfriend. He was a sweet guy named Shawn from my homeroom class and we had gone on several dates. The morning it happened, I woke up to get ready for school and noticed that the bracelet he gave me the week before was missing. I was sure I had left it on my desk yesterday, but I realized I hadn’t checked for it after I entered my room to get ready for bed. I cursed, knowing something must have shifted the last time I entered the room. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain that to Shawn, but I hoped he would understand. I had a reputation for misplacing things and being absent minded, so it wouldn’t really be a surprise. I showed up a bit early to school, hoping to talk to him alone, but when I got to his locker, he was there with Shannon McGuire. I remember the way he smiled, then leaned in and kissed her. Bracelet forgotten, I stormed over and demanded to know how long he had been cheating on me. The fact that we had only been dating for about a month really limited the possibilities, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. Shawn just looked at me with genuine confusion and asked what I was talking about. He and Shannon had been exclusive for a full year, in fact today was their anniversary. Shannon showed off her bracelet with a sneer, apparently concluding that I was simply delusional and pathetic, having some imaginary relationship with her boyfriend. At least I knew why the bracelet wasn’t on my desk.

I went home sick from school that day. I cried all afternoon but wouldn’t tell my parents what was wrong. They wouldn’t have understood, anyway. How could they? How could I ever explain that for me, every doorway had at least a small chance of depositing me in the room I was aiming for, but in an alternate reality, where things were somewhat different from the one I had been in only moments before. Mostly, these alternate realities were close enough that it was hard to even notice the differences, but not always. Most concerningly, I had no control over when this happened, or what changed, and no way to tell how many times I had accidentally slipped between realities since all this started. I often wonder what my life is like in the reality I came from originally, but I don’t even know where that place is. The only things I can be sure won’t change or disappear whenever I cross a threshold are the things I have on my person. Those travel with me, but for everything else, all bets are off. Unfortunately, that is also true for people.

The weekend of my 21st birthday I travelled home from university to visit my parents. That was a tough time in my life, honestly. I was still coming to terms with how my… condition was going to affect the rest of my life. I had already started calculating the most efficient path of travel in every situation, to minimize door crossings in my day-to-day life. I was careful to never double back and if I forgot something in my room, well I would just have to do without it for the day. It helped, but in modern society, you can’t really avoid all doorways. This meant that, despite my efforts, there was a decent chance that any assignment I turned in was at least partially incorrect because the questions had changed subtly between when I received it and when I handed it in. I also missed a lot of tests when scheduling changes occurred and flaked on a lot of ‘plans’ I had made with people. As a result, I hadn’t made many friends at school, and those I did manage to make had a nasty tendency to forget that I even existed at random intervals. So, I was very glad to be home with people who loved me and were mostly used to my… odd behavior.

I slept in late on Saturday morning, and when I came down for breakfast, something was wrong. My mom had made banana pancakes for my birthday every year for as long as I could remember, but this year there was nothing cooking when I came down. I will admit I was disappointed, but these types of changes happened to me so often that I was also kind of used to it. So, I simply headed to the pantry to make some myself and found a strange woman emerging with a can of beets. I said hello cautiously, and she smiled, wished me a happy birthday and slipped past me into the kitchen. She seemed to know me, so I figured my parents must have a ‘new’ friend. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, so I didn’t think much of it. Until I returned to the kitchen with my pancake ingredients to find her sitting with my dad, her hand touching his cheek in a way that was clearly intimate. My dad smiled and wished me a happy birthday, but I barely heard him. Part of me already knew what had happened, and I knew I shouldn’t say anything about it. It wouldn’t end well. But I just couldn’t stop myself from asking where mom was. I watched my father’s face fall. I heard him remind me, with pity in his voice, that she had died 5 years ago. That surely I remembered my stepmother, Veronica. I didn’t stay to hear any more.

No one understood why I was suddenly grieving for my mother as if her death had only just occurred. Certainly no one understood why I spent 2 days continually walking in and out of rooms, back and forth across the threshold until I collapsed. It didn’t work. Maybe there was no way to go back. Maybe the odds were just so low that it would never practically happen. Either way, it took me a long time, but I came to accept that my mom was truly gone. It helped to know that somewhere out there, she was still alive, living her life, even if I can’t be there with her. It also helped to think that there is a version of me that woke up that day to find that their mother was suddenly alive again. I just hope it isn’t the ‘me’ I am worried it is.

You know how people say you are often your own worst enemy? I think that may be more literal for me than for some people. More than once, after a shift, I have found signs that something… unsettling has happened before I arrived. I don’t know if that is because I am always following behind the same person, or if many versions of myself have broken, like the doorways, under the strain of our shared situation. All I know is that sometimes I think I have done terrible things. It’s frustrating, because there isn’t really anything I can do to stop it. I just have to follow in behind and clean up the mess. Deal with the angry spouses, or the vandalism charges or the lawsuits. Which means I don’t just have to worry about the universe screwing me over, but another version of myself, too.

There wasn’t much I could do though. So, I just tried to manage my condition as best as I could. I avoided getting too close to anyone, because there is no way to tell if they will even know me tomorrow, or if ‘I’ will do something to hurt them. I even pulled away from my family. My dad thinks I developed a sudden dislike of my stepmother, Monica, and it isn’t like I could explain that that isn’t the problem, or that I liked Veronica better. He doesn’t even remember who Veronica was. I also started carrying everything most precious to me in a small backpack everywhere I go. Anything I don’t have on me could disappear at any time. So, I guess you can probably imagine that I have a pretty minimalist lifestyle. I live in a studio apartment, I work from home, order most of my groceries deliver...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/EmmaWatsonButDumber on 2024-10-13 18:48:29+00:00.

---

I really felt like moving out, but it was never that easy. You know when you watch horror movies and say how stupid the protagonists are? Well, sometimes that stupidity has its reasons. Move out? I couldn't, because I was broke and I had nowhere else to go. Investigate? Investigate what? I wasn't in a mood to play detective. All I could do was ask around about the old man.

The thing is, maybe I'm just not one of those people who can afford to watch out for themselves. I had one option left - keep going in the same way.

The tapping had stopped, but the fear hadn’t. I spent my nights in a state of high alert, every creak of the floorboards, every whistle of the wind sending shivers down my spine. I counted my windows—twice, three times, sometimes more—obsessively checking the locks and double-checking the latches. Yet the paranoia never left. It was as if the house itself had become hostile, its walls too thin to keep out what lurked just beyond the glass.

The old man did have relatives, but none knew anything about this and just claimed his mind had begun to slip up.

I tried to contact the previous tenant, but she'd left without a trace. I desperately sent word out for her to help me, even sent a letter to where her address was supposed to be now.

It was mid-afternoon when I heard the knock. A sharp, deliberate rapping at my front door. For a moment, I thought it was the tapping again, but this was different—more human. I approached cautiously, peering through the peephole. A woman stood on the porch, her face partially obscured by the hood of her jacket. She looked tired but determined.

“Can I help you?” I called through the door, not willing to open it.

“I think we need to talk,” she said. “About your windows.”

My blood ran cold. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Claire. I lived here before you.” She paused, as if weighing whether to continue. “I know what’s happening to you.”

I had not expected her to reach out. Why would she? If I could leave, I'd selfishly never come back to help whoever would live here after me.

I hesitated, then unlatched the door just enough to open it a crack. Claire’s eyes were dark, sunken, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. There was something haunted about her, a desperation that mirrored my own growing fear.

“Thanks for coming.”

She sighed, her breath fogging in the cool October air. “The windows, the tapping, the… thing that comes at night. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

I opened the door a bit wider, my heart thudding in my chest. “You knew?”

Claire nodded grimly and stepped inside, glancing nervously around the house as though expecting something to lunge at her from the shadows. “I tried everything,” she said, her voice low. “Moving out didn’t help. They followed me. They always do.”

“They?”

She looked at me, her eyes filled with the kind of fear you can’t fake. “There’s more than one. I don’t know what they are or where they come from, but they’re drawn to certain houses. This one… it got... infested... The old man next door, he was the only one who knew how to keep them out."

"Yeah, he died."

Her eyes widened, bloodshot and twitching. "No."

"Yes."

She frowned, then shook her head. "His advice—count the windows twice every night—it’s a warning, not a superstition. Did you follow it?”

“But I did that!” I protested. “I counted them! Twice, just like he said. They still came!”

Claire’s expression darkened. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe the problem wasn’t the windows themselves?”

I blinked, confused. “What do you mean?”

“They don’t just want to get in. They want to replace.” She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in. “You have five windows, right? What if, one night, there were six?”

I froze, the implications of her question slicing through me like a blade. I’d never thought to question the number of windows—just that they were closed and locked. But the memory of that night, the feeling of something being off, came rushing back. The handprint on the glass, the figure outside the window—what if it hadn’t been outside? What if it was already inside, a window I hadn’t counted?

Claire watched the realization dawn on my face. “They don’t always come from the outside,” she said quietly. “Sometimes, they’re already here. They mimic what’s familiar, but there’s always a flaw. A detail you missed. Maybe it’s the number of windows. Maybe it’s something else. You have to be vigilant.”

My mind raced, recalling every night I’d counted the windows, every creak and whisper in the house that I’d dismissed as normal. Could it be that I’d already let something in without even realizing it?

“There has to be a way to stop them,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“There is,” Claire said, but her tone was heavy with doubt. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. They can’t stand certain things—mirrors, for one. They can’t see themselves. That’s how I spotted the one that got into my place. I saw it in a mirror, standing just behind me. It wasn’t a reflection of me, but something else, wearing my face.”

My stomach churned, the idea of something wearing me like a mask making my skin crawl. “And what did you do?”

“I broke the mirror,” she said simply. “But that only stopped it for a while. They’re patient. They wait.”

I felt a cold sweat form on the back of my neck. “How do you know they’re here?”

Claire turned to face me fully, her eyes locking onto mine with a gaze that sent a chill through me. “Have you heard the tapping lately?”

I shook my head slowly. “Not since last night.”

“That’s because they’re already inside.” Her voice was barely audible now, more a warning than an explanation. “They don’t tap once they’re in. They’re quiet, waiting for you to slip up.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat as I glanced around the room, my mind racing. I could feel it—the oppressive weight of their presence, the way the air felt too thick, too still. The house wasn’t empty. It never had been.

Claire stepped toward the door, her expression grim. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But once they’re inside, there’s no going back. You can’t fight them. All you can do is keep counting. And hope you don’t forget again.”

She left without another word, disappearing into the gray afternoon mist. And I stood there, alone in the silence, the growing dread coiling in my chest like a snake.

That night, I counted the windows again. Five. I counted twice, then a third time just to be sure. But when I reached the window at the end of the hallway, I saw it.

A sixth window.

And something was staring back at me from the other side of the glass.

The sixth window stared back at me like an eye—a dark, gleaming pane where there should’ve been a blank wall. My throat tightened as I approached it, feeling the pull of its wrongness in my bones. This wasn’t possible. There were only five windows in this house. Always had been. But here it was, as real as the others, yet impossibly out of place.

And then there was the figure on the other side.

It didn’t move. It stood there, perfectly still, an outline against the faint moonlight. The features were indistinct, shrouded in shadow, but I could tell it was tall. Far too tall to be human, its shape contorted, limbs just a little too long, a little too thin. Its face, if you could call it that, seemed to stretch and blur as I looked at it, as though reality itself was bending around it.

My heart pounded in my chest, a cold sweat trickling down my back. I couldn’t look away. My breath came in shallow, panicked bursts. It wasn’t tapping. It was waiting.

The words of the old man echoed in my head, mixing with Claire’s warning: They don’t just want to get in. They want to replace.

I took a step back, my body trembling, trying to convince myself that this was a dream, a hallucination brought on by too many sleepless nights. But the figure remained. Its head tilted slightly, as if it were observing me with an almost predatory patience.

Then it moved.

Not in the way a person would, but with a slow, gliding motion that seemed to defy gravity, like a puppet pulled on strings. It drifted closer to the glass, the outline of its body becoming clearer, and I could see now that it wasn’t just a figure—it was a *reflection*. But not of me.

No. This thing was showing me *itself*, wearing something familiar, as if it had studied me, learned how to mimic, but got the details wrong. I watched in horror as its face sharpened into something resembling mine—eyes, nose, mouth—but all wrong. The features were too symmetrical, the eyes too dark, like black holes sucking in the light.

Panic surged through me, and I stumbled backward, nearly tripping over the edge of the hallway rug. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the thing in the window. The way it stood, motionless now, mimicking me but not quite right—like an eerie, distorted mirror image.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket, jolting me back to reality. I fumbled it out, my hands shaking, barely able to swipe the screen to see the message.

It was from Claire:

"Whatever you do, don’t turn your back on it."

I felt a cold wave of dread wash over me. My hand tightened around the phone as I slowly backed away from the window, careful to keep my eyes locked on the thing mimicking me. The hallway felt impossibly long as I edged toward the living roo...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CynicismNostalgia on 2024-10-13 12:13:18+00:00.

---

I always liked having my own space. I’d had my fair share of experience with cramped dorms and messy, inconsiderate roommates. It wasn’t for me. So when I found a small, ground-floor apartment near campus, I didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t fancy, but it had everything I needed. Quiet, private, and fairly cheap—perfect for my last year of university.

Everything was good—until the neighbors started complaining.

It began with Mrs. Reed from next door, catching me in the hallway one morning. She looked tired, her eyes heavy with bags.

“Elizabeth, are you having late-night parties?” she asked, her voice sharper than usual.

I blinked, confused. “No? I go to bed at 10.”

She shook her head, a deep frown settling into her jowls. “I hear music. Laughing, banging on the walls. You should be more considerate.”

I hadn’t heard a thing. “I’m sorry, but it’s not me. I promise.”

She squinted at me like she didn’t believe a word I said. “Just keep it down.”

Nights were quiet on my end. I didn’t throw parties or invite friends over, I’m a bit of a recluse, honestly. I barely left the apartment, aside from classes or library runs. Still, the complaints didn’t stop. More neighbors started approaching me in the hallways, their faces drawn and annoyed, asking about the noise. To keep it down.

The thing is though, every night I slept like a rock. Nothing woke me up. Nothing ever stirred. I tried staying up one night to catch the sound, but I was too exhausted. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my sleep for something I knew I wasn’t contributing to, so I passed out around 11p.m. with no disturbances.

One evening, after a long day of studying at the library, I came home to find a note slipped under the door. It was crumpled and hastily written: “Noise complaints. Handle it.” Next to it, bizarrely enough, was a chocolate bar wrapper. A small amount of slick, melted chocolate still inside. The letter itself smeared in it.

I was pissed tbh. What the hell? It wasn’t even me making the noise, and why? Why stuff your own trash along with the letter? Frustrated and tired, I tossed the note on the counter and the wrapper in the trash. Then, I collapsed into bed and fell into a study-induced coma.

That was the night things started going missing.

At first, it was small stuff—pens, keys, a sock here or there. The usual, nothing suspicious. They always turned up, but never where I left them. I figured it was stress; finals were around the corner, and I was so drowsy all the time. I chalked it up to forgetfulness.

Then one morning, I found my toothbrush sitting on the coffee table. It was damp, tinged brown. The odd thing? I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet. I knew I hadn’t. I still had morning breath.

I started to wonder if I was sleepwalking. Could I have been getting up in the middle of the night, moving things without realizing it? Making loud noises? I considered having a friend stay over to keep an eye on me, but that felt… extreme?

I finally got my answer a week later, at a point where I was being threatened with eviction due to these unexplained noise complaints. I noticed a panel in the base of my closet was... ajar? I froze. The base always looked solid before, nothing loose. Curiosity got the better of me, sliding it open some more and being met with a stale, cool breeze rising up from below. Stupid I know, but I peaked my head in, discovering a crawlspace.

It couldn’t be more than three feet high, dank and covered in thick dusty cobwebs. Scattered throughout the space were chocolate bar wrappers. It smelt like mould and sickly sweetness.

I guess I was naive. I assumed I’d find some wily raccoons, a stray cat. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and peered further in. There were several cushions steeped in mould, discarded soda cans, more chocolate bar wrappers. It smelt of sugar and rank air. No scratching, no animal sounds.

But deeper into the darkness, I saw them. Four pairs of eyes, squinting from the light I brought in with me. As my eyes settled. I realised what was staring back at me.

Two children sat cross-legged on the floor. They were pale, gaunt, with dark circles under their eyes. But their knees rocked with giddy excitement, their smiles smeared with chocolate. The boy let out a small giggle as his eyes met mine.

Slumped against the left side was a woman. Her face was blank, her eyes unfocused. Staring at everything; and nothing, in particular.

And in the far corner, drenched in darkness, was a man. Hunched on all fours, watching me intently with a calm expression.

“You’re finally here,” his voice was soft, with a hint of malice.

He gestured toward the children, who were still giggling. “The kids love playing at night. Apologies, they can get a little loud.”

He smirked. A small, controlled smile. From his pocket he revealed a tiny glass bottle. “I’ve been helping you though. You’re a sound sleeper when you’re… properly dosed.”

My blood ran cold as the cramped, rank space I peaked my head into began to spin. “...You’ve been drugging me?”

He shrugged, nonchalant, then gestured toward the woman slumped in the corner. “My wife doesn’t talk much these days, but she enjoys the company.”

The woman didn’t react to being addressed.

Something cold brushed against my hand. The little girl was crouched next to me, her fingers icy as she tugged at my fingers. Her eyes were wide as she stared up at me, her smile never fading. “Wanna play?”

I scrambled backwards, out of the crawlspace, before slumping back in a daze. My limbs felt like lead, my vision blurry. I heard the children let out disappointed cries as the man’s face peaked out of the crawlspace, half hidden in shadow.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, his voice dripping with menace. “You’ll love it here. We all do. Don’t we, kids?”

High-pitched cheers echoed out.

That’s the last thing I remember. The sound of happy children and the man’s toothy grin rearing up from underneath.

---

And do you know what? He wasn’t wrong.

A difficult transition, as all things are. Didn’t sleep the first week, and now I sleep all day. Probably sugar crashing tbh.

Now, I love it here. I’ve grown fond of the kids and their games. I’ve come to learn that the “wife” is called Margaret, and she isn’t officially his wife. Sometimes, her eyes follow me, and she’ll mumble something incoherent. Like she has something to tell me, but it comes out twisted. Generally she’s quiet, but I enjoy her company.

Mrs. Reed doesn’t complain anymore. In fact, I haven’t seen her in days.

I’m sure she’ll understand eventually. Just like I did.

Anyway, the apartment’s finally prepped for a new tenant. $550pm, a really great bargain in this area! Especially with such... quiet neighbors. Enquire Below!

We can’t wait to meet you!

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/adorabletapeworm on 2024-10-13 14:28:13+00:00.

---

When it comes to Samhain, Orion takes great pains to keep the Neighbors from causing complete chaos in town. While some of our practices might be controversial, believe me, things would be far worse if we didn't follow through on observing them.

(If you're not familiar with what Orion Pest Control's services are, it may help to start here.)

My tips for staying safe from the Neighbors and other spooky things that could be lurking about on Halloween are fairly simple: follow traditions, and by that, I don't mean that yinz have to go as far as Orion does. Generally speaking, all you really have to do is participate in some typical Halloween fun.

For starters, carve some pumpkins. You don't even have to be good at it. Any design will do. As you will see in a moment, they're not just decorations. And if you're planning to leave the house, make sure to wear a costume. It'll make it harder for less intelligent Neighbors to discriminate between who's human and who's not. The more of yourself that you conceal, the safer you'll be.

Not the outgoing type? Hand out some candy. Even if you don't encounter anything unusual during the evening, the kids on your block will appreciate it. And don't be that person that hands out raisins. Not only are you at risk of having your house egged (which you would absolutely deserve, by the way), you never know if one of the trick-or-treaters is going to take it a little too personally. It's best to keep in mind that what you're handing out is an offering.

In summary, all of the usual Halloween traditions aren't just for fun. They have ancient roots, all designed to protect us. Unfortunately, many people have forgotten that. Others were never warned to begin with, which is why I'm making a point to do it now. This way, everyone has time to prepare.

So those are the steps I recommend for regular people to take. That brings me to the extra measures that Orion takes to keep our operating area safe.

So, to start, here's a little linguistic fun fact: the word ‘bonfire’ is a combination of the words ‘bone’ and ‘fire.’ Many ancient celebrations involved the use of such fires to purify and protect against evil. For Samhain, in particular, it was believed that the flames would help the sun push back the darkness and cold of the upcoming winter.

Here's where the ‘bone’ part of the bonfire comes in for us. Every year, one of the local farms will donate one of their cattle. To make things fair, each of the farms around the area rotates who is responsible for this donation each year. Because of that, sometimes the bones are provided by a sheep, sometimes it's a cow, though chickens and ducks seem to do the job as well.

Our preferred spot to hold this bonfire is on a hill just outside of town that's devoid of any trees to lower the risk of brush fires. The fire will be lit an hour before sunset and maintained until sunrise. When it comes to the sacrifice, we try to do it as humanely as possible. Once the deed has been done, the animal will then be placed onto the fire as an offering.

I know, it sounds barbaric, but believe me, these animal's deaths are not in vain. They serve an extremely important purpose.

There are some Neighbors that can only come out during Samhain. The bonfires that we maintain are the only things that can keep them at bay.

Before we used the hill we do now, we were at another spot that was near the ‘burbs. But then one fateful year, someone on the HOA got a bug up their butt about us doing ‘Satanic rituals’ and called the police on us. To top it off, the HOA had also announced that they would not allow any ‘occult’ decorations, including skeletons, witches, and of all things, jack o’lanterns, much to the outrage of many residents. Quite a few homeowners flocked to party stores in droves to buy as many tacky decorations as they could in protest.

Yeah. One of those HOAs.

Because of that, our bonfire was cut short. Since I was still relatively new at the time, Victor put me in charge of starting another fire somewhere far away from the ‘burbs while he patrolled the area to see if something had emerged from the Mounds during this momentary distraction.

That something was The Lady in White.

About an hour after our initial bonfire was forcibly extinguished, Victor got a call from one of the suburbanites.

“Hey, so, uhhhh, I just got chased by a- I don't know what to call it! A giant… demonic… pig thing! It's just outside my door and- Oh my! Oh my God!”

Once Victor asked the client where he was, the client gave him the address before finding somewhere in his house to hide. Victor went off to deal with it alone.

Just outside of the client’s house stood a headless woman, dressed in opulent, lacey finery, hence why we call her The Lady. When we did more research on her garments, trying to determine where she could have come from, we discovered that she had been wearing a wedding dress that looked to be from the 1500s. We still aren't sure what the significance of that is.

The Lady was accompanied by, of all things, a large black pig. Although, according to Victor's description, ‘large’ is an understatement. It was only a little bit shorter than the client's Toyota Corolla. Another notable feature was that the pig had no tail, though, given its size and temperament, the missing tail is the least worrisome thing about it.

The pig had stood outside the client's front door, grunting as it sniffed aggressively with its nose pressed against the wood. It kept grating its hooves against the ground impatiently as if wondering why the door wouldn't magically open.

Just as Victor withdrew his pistol, The Lady had turned towards him. Despite not having a head, he knew she could see him. Her hands were folded politely over her midsection, her posture stiff from centuries of propriety. At the same time, the pig's head suddenly snapped in Victor's direction, quickly forgetting about the client. It let out a guttural squeal as it charged, excited that it had found new, more readily accessible prey.

Victor had taken a shot at the pig as he raced back towards the company truck. Unfortunately, he'd missed, so the pig was hot on his heels. The Lady, hands still folded, slowly glided after them, the skirts of her fine dress billowing in the wind as she took each step.

Victor stumbled onto the porch of the house across the street, taking aim as he pounded on the door. It hadn't escaped his notice that the pair didn't appear to be able to get inside the other house. That most likely meant that they couldn't enter human dwellings without the homeowner's permission. Unfortunately for him, there were no lights on inside the house he'd chosen. Nobody came to answer the door.

He'd thought he was completely fucked until he turned to see that the pig's pursuit had abruptly stopped. So had The Lady's.

In his haste, the boss hadn't noticed that there was a row of jack o'lanterns sitting on the porch right by the steps, each face carved into goofy, lopsided smiles. The pig stared down at the family of pumpkins as the candles within danced. The Lady came to stand next to the massive animal, reaching one hand down to stroke its head. The pig grunted softly, then the ghastly pair turned back to patrol the street for any more souls unfortunate enough to be caught outside after dark.

Victor had gotten incredibly lucky that he'd come across one of the households protesting the ban on ‘occult symbols.’

He'd waited until The Lady and her horrible pet had wandered further down the road, watching them, silently hoping that I'd get that bonfire started before they got to someone else (I promise, was going as fast as I could).

His heart sank when he heard the whooping of two drunks walking home from a nearby Halloween party. Following the riotous noises were the shrieks of the monstrous black pig.

In a moment of desperation, Victor picked up one of the smaller jack o'lanterns, tucking it under his arm as he rushed towards the commotion. It might seem silly, but at the time, it was his best defense.

The drunks had gone from joyously hooting and hollering to screaming as The Lady's terrible companion charged them. Victor opened fire on the pig's large behind, managing to hit it just as it clamped its jaws around one of the drunk's forearms. The pig didn’t appear to notice as it began to shake him around in its jaws like a chew toy. All the poor man could do was wail as his friend tried in vain to pry the pig's jaws apart.

The whole time, The Lady just watched, hands folded in a show of perfect manners.

Victor held the jack o'lantern up at the pig. At the same time, I'd managed to get another fire going on the hill that would grow to become our usual Halloween bonfire spot.

Victor had said that the pig suddenly released the man, its ears twitching. The Lady began to walk forward, heading towards the forest. The pig followed, blood dripping from its massive jaws. Victor waited until they disappeared into the treeline before rushing over to the drunks.

The pig had broken the man's forearm so severely that the appendage was facing backwards. His shoulder had also been dislocated while being flailed around. As grotesque and painful as his injuries were, at least he got out with his life. By some miracle, he even managed to keep his arm, though I guess to this day, it still doesn't move properl...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LucyEphemera on 2024-10-12 20:07:56+00:00.

---

Every day, and every night of the week I made the same commute for almost three years. I used to work at the Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, but I live in Mont Belvieu, always have. It’s an hour drive, but it was simple enough. Just a straight shot down I-10 til you get to Winnie and take the exit onto Highway 73, taking you right into Port Arthur. I’ve driven that stretch of road so many times I could tell you anything you’d ever want to know about it. All the spots to fill up on gas, where to get a bite to eat, every name of every tiny town from Wallisville to Hankamer to Stowell. But, that’s not why I’m posting here. I don’t like to think, much less talk about that drive anymore if I can help it. If it can be avoided, I never drive east. At least, not that route. I’ll take the extra hour, hell I’ll take five if it means I never have to drive that length of I-10 again.

I’m only revisiting this memory that I’ve tried my best to bury for the sake of warning anyone living in the area, anyone traveling through there, a detour may be well worth your while. That drive nearly cost me my life, it’s the very reason I quit working at that refinery. If I’m still breathing after what I saw, I ought to do what I can to tell people about it. Might save someone a brush with the reaper, might not. Maybe they’ve moved on to someplace else. Either way, I like to think this is worth talking about. If nothing else comes of it, at the very least it might help me come to terms with what happened.

It started off unassuming enough. Two months ago, almost to the day, I was making my way home from work. I was tired, hungry, and ready for a shower, but even in such a state there was no mistaking what I saw. There’s a part of the drive between Winnie and Mont Belvieu where there’s little activity, especially at night. You don’t see too many other drivers, or much of anything really til you get close to Lake Anahuac. 

About halfway along that quiet stretch of road is where I saw it. An orange glow, off in the distance, slowly getting closer. I could just make out the pillar of black smoke rising above it, cutting through the dark blue of the night sky. As I closed the distance, the details of the scene became clear. It was a car, completely overtaken by fire, sitting in the median strip of the highway.

At least, it had once been a car. There was little left of it besides the bones. After taking in the sight for a second something really struck me as strange, nobody was around. No cops, no fire truck or ambulance, no signs that anything was out of the ordinary. When I passed by the wreck, I could feel the heat radiating off of it even through the side of my truck. I had the brief thought to stop, see if anyone needed help, but there wasn’t anybody on the side of the road, near the car or further along. I came to the morbid conclusion that if someone was in that car, and they hadn’t already been picked up by somebody, they had gone up in smoke with the vehicle they were in.

I’ve had to deal with fighting a few fires before, a refinery’s not the safest place to work after all, but I wasn’t equipped to deal with something like this by myself. So, I drove on home, accepting that if there was even anyone left to help, I wasn’t the one to do it. When I got back to my apartment I grabbed a beer, heated up some leftovers and tried to not think about what I’d seen. But, it was useless. 

For whatever reason, the image of that burning car had settled itself in my mind, there was something I found captivating about it. I questioned my decision to keep driving, my refusal to get involved. I tried to figure out what had happened with only that one piece of information, but it was futile. It felt like an incomplete picture, and I wasn’t satisfied with any answer I could come to, they all felt wrong. This argument with myself went on for an hour or so before I tired my mind out, and decided to go to sleep. That night, I saw the car again in a dream. I heard someone screaming from inside.

I woke up in a pool of sweat, like my body felt the heat of the fire even from within a nightmare. But, I had no time to worry about that, I had to get ready and hit the road in an hour if I was gonna make it to Port Arthur on time. It was another normal day at work, nothing out of the ordinary. I thought about telling my coworkers about what I’d seen but decided not to. They weren’t exactly a talkative bunch, and that kind of work doesn’t inspire much in the way of conversation. It’s hard, thankless. 

Since I worked there for a while they let me take longer shifts on weekdays to get guaranteed weekends off, usually you’re expected to be available any day of the week if they need you. I took the extra money, but I didn’t see much of a difference besides that. I just got home later. I didn’t do much with my free time anyway, the weekends always escaped me.

When it came time to clock out, an anxious feeling started brewing between my temples. I got worried, wondering if I’d see something like that again tonight. I tried to shake it off, but it followed me outside, stopped me in my tracks when I reached to open my truck door. I felt silly. “What are the chances of me seeing a thing like that again in my lifetime, much less two nights in a row,” I asked myself. This question was enough to quiet my whining nerves, so I got in and drove off the lot to make my way home. If only I knew, the chances were already rigged in advance.

I felt a knot come up in my throat when I made the switch from Highway 73 to I-10 in Winnie. I felt something else was gonna happen that night, another piece of that picture was waiting for me. As my truck glided along the asphalt I scanned the sides of the road, looking for anything to confirm my aching suspicions. Then, near the same spot I’d seen that car the night before, almost down to the mile, I saw the same glow that’d haunted me all day. There was another car between the opposing sides of the interstate, cocooned in flame. But, there was something different from the first wreck I’d seen. All around the car, a circle of people were holding hands.

The sight of them standing there was enough to tip the scales, curiosity weighed too heavy on me to let me keep driving without an answer. I came to a stop, parked my truck on the shoulder and got out to ask them what was happening. But, with every step I started noticing some details about this group of strangers that made me slow my pace. They were all dressed in long black robes, and I couldn’t make out any of their faces. Their features were obscured, even those facing the bright glow of the fire. 

They noticed me coming, and had stopped holding hands. Once I felt I was in earshot I had enough sense to stop my advance before I asked them, “what’s going on here? Is anyone hurt?” They didn’t offer any answer, all staying silent. There was a stomach-churning smell on the air, and it wasn’t the smoke. I tried again, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to stand that close, y’all might get hurt. I can call the police, did any of you see what happened?” At this they finally stirred, suddenly making their way towards me in unison, like they all came to the same decision at once.

I started backing away from them, saying with admittedly little confidence, “easy now, stay back.” This failed to slow their step, so I quickened mine. They didn’t utter a single word, all steadily approaching with their shrouded gazes fixed on me. “I have a gun in my truck, I don’t wanna use it, just calm down!” I was lying, out of some desperate hope this might get them to reconsider their course, but not one of them paused at the threat. I gave up any hope of reasoning with them and turned to run back to my truck. As I did, I heard the scraping of boots across gravel as they began to chase after me. A couple dozen yards had never felt so far.

Luckily I had forgotten my keys in the truck’s ignition, I’ve never been so thankful to be forgetful. I slammed the door shut and kicked the gas pedal to the ground, seeing flashes of them sprinting towards me in my right side mirror. As I took off I felt a thud against the side of my truck, but I paid it no mind as I raced back up to the speed limit. I escaped, but that anxiety I felt at the refinery was nothing compared to the panic I was lost in at that moment. Every few seconds my eyes darted from one mirror to another, looking to see if my pursuers had followed me in their own vehicle. After passing through Wallisville about 15 minutes later I finally eased up, figuring they hadn’t been after me any longer. The thought brought me very little comfort.

Even after concluding I hadn’t been chased back home, I wasn’t much less of a frantic mess when I reached my apartment. When I parked my truck I was breathing sporadically, hesitant to get out, so I took some time to catch my breath. That was when I noticed it, as my eyes reflexively checked that right side mirror again. Something was sticking out of the side of my truck bed. Whatever ease I had settled into left me, my whole body tensed up at the sight of it. I slowly opened my door and walked to the back to see what it was. It was a knife. One of them jammed it into the side of my truck right before I drove off. That’s how close they were.

After struggling for a bit I got the knife unwedged. It was a hunting knife, 8 inches long, still sharp even after being stabbed into the chassis of a truck. I ran into my apartment, dead bolte...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MuttLoverMommy01 on 2024-10-11 22:12:41+00:00.

---

I need help, but honestly, I don’t even know if that’s possible. Right now, it feels like there’s no hope for me, and I’m struggling to share this without sounding like a rambling old man.

This problem has haunted me for as long as I can remember. The first time it struck, was when I was just seven years old. It was a hot summer day, and my older brother, my twin sister, and I were playing hide-and-seek with a couple of our friends. I snuck into my mom's room, careful not to make a sound, and opened the bottom drawer of her massive dresser. Being a scrawny little kid—just a tiny pipsqueak—I knew I would fit snugly into that small space.

Once I crawled in, I found a wooden support beam for the drawer above and pulled it shut, stifling a giggle as I heard my brother yell, “Here I come!” He started his search under the bed, rifling through the closet, and peeking behind the door, blissfully unaware that I was hiding right there. I could hear him finding our friends one by one, their laughter echoing through the house.

But as the seconds turned into minutes, that cozy hideout began to feel like a coffin. The clothes around me felt suffocating, each breath drawing in the stale air and amplifying my growing panic. I pushed against the sides of the drawer, trying to pull on the beam above me, but it wouldn’t budge. I could hear my brother’s voice getting more frustrated as he called out, “Where is he?” Then one of the kids piped up, “He probably broke the rules… he’s outside, I just know it.”

That’s when dread crept in. “Please! Somebody help! I’m in Mom's room! I’m in the dresser!” I shouted, but the sound only felt muffled and distant. I could hear the kids racing out the back door, and for the first time, a chilling thought crossed my mind: “I’m going to die here.”

My breathing turned frantic, each inhale feeling tighter than the last. The more I panicked, the harder it became to breathe. I was just a scared little kid, trapped in the most humiliating way. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I cried out, “Please… Please… Help me. Mommy, I don’t want to die. I didn’t mean to…” My voice broke as I sobbed, and it felt like the air was being sucked out of me.

I sat there, helpless, for what felt like hours, the frantic search outside growing increasingly desperate. I could hear my family calling, “It’s not funny anymore! Seriously, where are you?” 

Time dragged on, and my panicked cries turned into soft whimpers, each plea growing weaker. Exhaustion washed over me, and as the minutes slipped by, I felt myself drifting into a numbness, like a slow, painful fade into nothingness. Alone at seven, I let go of everything.

Then suddenly, I jolted awake, gasping and choking, the reality of panic flooding back in. My lungs felt like they were on fire, and it seemed impossible to catch my breath. My mother rushed into my bedroom, her eyes wide with concern as I incoherently screamed about suffocating to death. I cried harder than ever as she wrapped her arms around me, murmuring, “Shhh… Shhh... I know, baby. You’re okay, it was all a bad dream.” She stroked my hair gently, rocking me back and forth, and sent my twin sister to fetch a glass of ice water to help me breathe again.

Eventually, I started to calm down, though the remnants of terror clung to me. I tried to explain, my voice shaky. “Mom, I died. I was stuck in your dresser, and Jesse couldn’t find me.” Before I could say more, I noticed the look of confusion on her face. “Jesse?” she asked, concern etched in her brow.

Frustration bubbled up inside me. “Mom, that’s not funny! Why are you saying that?” I shot her a look, bewildered. This wasn’t the time for jokes; as far as I was concerned, I had just died. I glanced at my sister, hoping for solidarity, but she looked just as perplexed as our mother. My anger shifted to fear.

“Mom… Maddie…” I looked between them, feeling trapped in a nightmare of confusion. Instead of trying to explain something that seemed pointless to two people who had known Jesse their entire lives, I slipped out of bed and headed down the hall to my brother's room.

As I turned the corner, ready to knock on his door, I nearly crashed into the wall.

“W-what?” I stammered, barely above a whisper. My mother and sister were right behind me, and as I stared at the empty wall, a wave of anguish crashed over me. I couldn’t even process their worried voices as they called my name, my mind consumed by shock and confusion. My mother scooped me up and placed me in the back seat of the car.

They say I was nearly catatonic, staring straight ahead the whole ride to the ER. Everything felt like a blur, memories flickering in and out like snapshots from a movie. The doctors ran tests, and the on-call therapist fired questions at me that I struggled to answer.

“Who is Jesse?” 

“My brother.” 

“How old is he?” 

“Thirteen.” 

“What happened before you woke up?” 

“I died.” 

“How did you die?” 

“I-I…”

And then I froze again. They kept me under observation for a few days, insisting that Jesse wasn’t real, that everything I had known before waking up was just a dream. Once I finally agreed to their explanation, they sent me home. I quickly learned to grieve in silence; the thought of returning to the hospital terrified me.

But I knew Jesse was real. At least, he had been real to me. Memories flooded my mind: him teaching me how to ride a bike, tying my shoes, standing up to the bigger kids. All of it felt like it had been ripped away in an instant.

I didn’t have a father—not really. Everyone has a father, but mine was a ghost. I knew nothing about him; I didn’t know if he was dead or just absent. My mother never spoke of him, and when I once dared to ask, her expression shifted into something I couldn’t quite place—neither sadness nor anger, but a look that seemed to echo dissociation. I dropped the subject then and there… forever.

Jesse had gladly taken on the role of my protective figure. He wasn’t an adult, but he had always seemed wise beyond his years. An old soul, my mother would say. Now, in his absence, I felt lost, a void where his presence had once been.

Over time, I began to believe that it had all been a vivid night terror. I mean, how could someone just blip out of existence? They say that time heals all wounds, and as I began to grow older, I slowly forgot about Jesse. 

It was still a sensitive topic. My sister tried to joke about it a couple of years down the road, but it caused a huge argument. I felt like I still had to defend the existence of someone I once loved. Regardless of his existence, I had loved him deeply. Just as deeply as my sister and mother. It became a secret fear of mine to lose someone close to me again. It was hard to sleep most nights because I feared I would dream up another life.

When I was fourteen years old, I asked my mom if I could go swimming with a few friends at a local lake. She told me no, and I was pissed. All the other kids were going, and I was the only one that had a loser mom. So I thought… 

That night, I snuck out my bedroom window after stuffing my bed with pillows to make it look like I was sleeping. I walked a few blocks away to one of the kid's houses and they gave me a ride after deciding to join. 

It was a fun night. We had some stolen beers that some kids brought from their parents or asked their older friends and siblings to buy. This was only the second time I had ever had alcohol. We were all swimming and throwing mud at each other when one of the girls shouted over everyone. “We should jump off that cliff!” as she pointed over everyone's heads to the cliff that stood about fifteen feet above the water. “I ain’t doing it,” one guy said with a scoff. 

I had had a few drinks at this point, and I probably would have gone skydiving if someone asked me to. “I’ll do it,” I said loudly as I slurred my words. A few of the kids cheered as I climbed out of the muddy lake water and began trudging up the hillside. I stumbled and tripped a few times before reaching the top of the cliff. 

I looked down at everyone and threw my fists up in the air like a champion. I screamed, “Wooooo!” before looking down at the water. It looked like it was miles away from where I stood. I took a deep breath and mumbled “Fuck it…” Before jumping off into the dark water. 

The fall felt so long, and somehow, I ended up flipping and I landed head-first into… something. I only remember the sound of my skull shattering before I felt every vertebra in my neck crunch before the lights went out. 

I don’t know how long it was black, but it felt like a deep, sharp sleep—an experience that’s hard to put into words for anyone who hasn’t been through it. It was as if time had folded in on itself, and I was lost in a void, weightless and serene.

When I finally woke up, I found myself lying on cold, dewy grass, the chill biting through my wet trunks. The world around me was quiet, almost eerily still. I sat up abruptly, gasping for air, my fingers instinctively reaching for the back of my neck. I frantically felt for any wounds, heart racing in panic, expecting to find something—anything—that signaled I was injured. But I was fine. Just freezing and disoriented, but alive.

As I looked around the empty field, my gaze settled on the remnants of a wild night—beer cans crumpled and empty bottles scattered like forgotten memories. I stood up slowly, my legs trembling from the cold and the shock of what had just ...

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