nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/YeetManXD69 on 2024-10-10 05:15:54+00:00.

---

Standing short at five foot one at the ripe age of twenty, I often longed for days when I could reach the top shelf. Daily reminders of my shortcomings existed all around every corner.

Going to the local gym with my acquaintances, I cannot help but feel envy. I watched in horror as Chow dunked a basketball into the hoop with ferocious force. That piano playing twat! Why is he so talented at everything?!

“Hey Bo, come join us! We could really use one more. The teams are uneven right now,” Chow said, motioning towards the ball, grinning.

I panicked. He’s just trying to embarrass me. What a jerk. He’s always done that, faking kindness just to show off how awesome he is. Ever since we were kids, he’s always been inviting me to play sports he knew I wasn’t good at. My stomach roiled as I brushed him off and went about my business.

When I arrived home, still upset over Chow’s rudeness, I sprawled out in bed and scrolled through Facebook as per usual. That’s when I saw it.

A small little ad in the bottom right corner of my screen, barely noticeable. It had a crude gif of legs growing taller. Of course. These targeted ads were becoming ridiculous.

“We’ll Make You Taller.” It read, followed by a ton of thumbs up emojis. Ok, weird.

It must be like one of those boner pill ads, I thought. Unfortunately I was intrigued, I clicked it. It took me to the most rudimentary webpage I had seen in a long time. It reminded me of the stuff I’d make in my HTML class that same year.

I lay there staring at my glowing laptop screen in the darkness of my bedroom. The website only had one feature: to make an appointment. Fuck it. What have I got to lose? Well, a lot more than you’d think. The funny thing is, it didn’t have payment options. Or even a time and place. All I did was click yes. I never expected anything to actually happen.

Two days passed, and I had almost forgotten about the whole ordeal. Until I picked up the mail. Well, now I had my time and place. Funny, I don’t remember giving them my address. This all, of course, felt like a horrible idea, but, I was desperate. I longed to dunk a basketball, for people to like me.

After thirty five minutes of driving I ended up in a part of town I’d never been in before. I didn’t even know this street existed. It was right next to a trailer park. I waltzed into the sterile grey building with no signage posted outside. Met with an empty waiting room, I headed for the front desk. No one was there, but I saw a bell, like the ones you find in hotels.

I dinged it and waited. Soon after, a very short woman meandered towards the counter. Huh, that’s funny. She must not have used the services here.

“Hi, I have an appointment with Doctor Okanavić at eleven A.M.” I totally butchered the pronunciation of his name, but I guess she knew who I meant. “Do you guys take insurance?” I asked. “Yes, we already have yours on file.” Alright then, that’s weird. I never gave them that information. But, I mean, my insurance surely wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. If they’re covering it, it must be safe. Right?

“Okay great.” I said hesitantly.

“If you’d fill out this paperwork for me, please.” She said without even glancing up at me. I took the clipboard and sat down in one of the many empty chairs. It was your standard medical information, list of medications, allergies, all that boring stuff.

I was eager to get this procedure done. I skimmed through it all, my head swimming. I stepped back up to the counter and slid the clipboard to the woman.

“Follow me through that door on the left.” I followed the woman through the desolate halls. Did anyone else even work here? The woman must have been four feet tall. Wow, finally, someone shorter than me. She probably makes more money than me though.

The lady led me to an empty room and sat me down on the table. That white paper material they used to cover the seat crinkled as I sat on the chair.

“The doctor will be with you shortly.” I sat there shaking my leg. I fidgeted with my phone when I heard a knock on the door.

He was a normal sized man with glasses and balding grey hair. I thought he looked like your typical doctor, almost too typical. That’s the last thing I remember.

It’s strange, usually in surgery, you’ll at least remember them putting you to sleep. Not this time. All I remember is the doctor walking into the room. And then I woke up. I already felt different, of course I probably still had the drugs in my system.

I squinted my eyes, looking up at the doctor. It looked like there were four people in front of me. The drugs definitely hadn’t quite worn off yet.

“How tall am I now?” I managed to say.

“Seven foot one,” the doctor said confidently.

“What?!” Is this real? I’m actually that tall now?

I stood up. Sure enough, I towered over the doctor, who, before, was a pretty tall man. I felt great. This was everything I had ever wanted. I was so ready to show off.

"Don't I need to wait around awhile for the drugs to wear off or something?"

"No." Alright then.

The following day, I went back to my normal life. Well, normal as it could be. I arrived at work and immediately caught everyone's attention.They couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Their responses disheartened me. Wishing to be praised, instead I was met with countless befuddled faces and even more questions.

After work, I went to the gym again. This time with the goal to accept Chow’s offer to play basketball.

“Bo? How are you so tall? Is that really you?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I got surgery. Isn’t it great?”

“What, seriously? That’s a thing?” He said blinking rapidly.

“Yean man, I’m finally tall.” I said with a grin.

“I don’t even know what to say. Are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, what are the side effects?"

I played two on two basketball with Chow but quickly ran into a problem. I may be tall now, but I still suck at basketball. Also, I am out of shape. I got so out of breath from running up and down that court; I had to take a breather on several occasions. This was a low blow. I thought being tall would fix everything. Desperate to get out of there, my stomach fluttered as I left the gym.

It was not going as planned. Most people were freaked out by my newfound height. I expected to be congratulated, but all I got were strange looks and so many questions.

But it got worse, not only was my mental state affected, soon my body was too. One night, as I was brushing my teeth, a sudden sharp pain entered my molars. I spit my toothpaste out and rinsed out my mouth. The pain was so bad it gave me a splitting headache. It felt like a million tiny razors were chipping away at my teeth.

Then I huddled over the sink in pain as my teeth fell out of my mouth, clinking into the sink. What happened? Was this a side effect of the surgery? My mouth was wide open, unable to close. I looked up slowly at my reflection in the mirror. Where each tooth once was, a long dangling red ligament protruded from the tooth hole in my gums. My bathroom sink was a bloody mess.

Stumbling backwards, I tripped and landed on the hardwood flooring. The pain in my mouth still remained. For an unknown reason, I had the strongest urge to rid my mouth of those disgusting ligaments. So I did. I got back to my feet, stood in front of the mirror and pulled them out, one by one. The pain finally ceased.

The next day I awoke to even more complications. When I went to cut my nails, they grew back tenfold. What was wrong with me? Why was this happening? I should’ve never agreed to that godforsaken surgery. I didn’t know it was possible for the human body to change in ways like this.

I stared back at myself in the mirror one final time. All my pores had enlarged to a disgusting degree. I had lost weight rapidly overnight, so much so that my ribs were visible. My skin turned as grey as the paint on my walls and my pupils had completely blackened. I didn’t even feel human anymore.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/glssshrk on 2024-10-09 20:34:08+00:00.

---

The dream never began with anything particularly noteworthy. Sometimes when I woke up I remembered little bits of the beginning, these quick ideas about being lost or aimless in a strange city. A sense that I needed to get off the street and find safety indoors flickered in the back part of my awareness, so I hurried through the nearest door. Often times, I didn’t remember the first part too much. But the middle act always stayed with me, the part where I had to run. 

Something followed me, kept pace just out of my range of vision. I sprinted away from it, through a labyrinth of interconnecting buildings. An ancient library flowed into a rotting hospital, which led to a huge array of unoccupied cubicles lit by dying fluorescent lights. The path changed, circled back, refused to make any sense by the standards of the waking world. And, really, the choices I made didn’t matter anyway. In the end it always caught me. I never saw it but sensed it gaining on me. A terrible thing that would never stop. It could chase me forever. Closer, closer, here. My stomach dropped, and I woke up. 

It used to bother me. In childhood I often slept with the lights on, not out of fear of the dark but because I was always trying to put off falling asleep. This was before we had internet, so I spent the nights reading mostly. Eventually I would succumb to exhaustion, pass out face down on a tattered paperback, and the forgotten lamp would coat my room in its dim yellow light until morning. It’s weird how even a little lost sleep makes you detach a bit from reality. I meandered through my boyhood in a haze of sleeplessness. Later I tried medications, both legal and, ahem, less legal to see if I could stamp the dream out. Of course, nothing worked.

Much later, when adulthood extinguished the jumpiness of childhood, I stopped minding the dream so much. I became a man, got married, got a good job. In all the busyness of day to day life I was too tired for nightmares. On the off night I did happen to find myself in my dream city, at least I knew where I was, what I had to do, what would happen. I even woke up with a kind of strange comfort, the ease of familiarity. After all, it was just a bad dream. I outgrew my fear. In light of what’s happened, I wonder if that’s why it waited so long to show me its face. Maybe it wanted to lull me into a state of blissful unbelief.  Or perhaps it needed to get me alone.

Eventually I started running in real life. It’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing when I look back on it now. I’m not sure if the dream inspired me, or if it was my own tendency toward the flight part of “flight or fight.” Whatever the reason, around my fortieth birthday I bought a pair of very expensive sneakers and took off. 

Ok, maybe “took off” is not the right phrase. I plodded off. Running, it turned out, was harder than I remembered. But I had time to get better. COVID lock downs forced my company to embrace remote work, and without the drive time I had a couple extra hours on my hands. 

My wife also had a couple extra hours on her hands. She used those hours to find an attorney and become not my wife anymore. I could have resisted, stretched out the process a little more, but I didn’t. I signed everything she handed me. I figured we’d had a good run. We’d never fought before, no need to start now. 

Now I had even more spare time. 

My runs stretched out into whole afternoons of wandering around the admittedly not great neighborhood that surrounded my also not great new apartment. After a couple miles at a brisk pace (by my standards) I would walk slowly, dreading the return to my empty living room. 

The building I’d moved into after the divorce used to be some kind of warehouse. It’s down by the old port and the decommissioned navy base. The city calls this area “up and coming.” Really it’s mostly abandoned buildings interspersed with the occasional rusty silo. A muddy river runs through it to the Atlantic, with little branches of creeks and marshlands splintering off now and then.

Whoever designed my building tried to carry the industrial look over into the apartments. When I first looked at it with the building’s sales lady, she made a point to coo over the original brick and exposed pipes. Even at opposite ends of the room (social distancing) we were maximally ten feet away from each other. I could see her surgical mask puff out when she spoke. The exposed pipes running across the ceiling made it feel even more claustrophobic. I hated to see the insides of things. It felt like looking at a wound.

I told the sales lady that Rachel would have hated it. She asked softly who Rachel was, and I said my wife, then corrected and said well she used to be. Then I realized from the look on the top half of her face that she thought Rachel was dead. My words fell over each other. I could see them piling up and tangling behind my own mask, one of those cheap black fabric ones you could get off Amazon. The whole situation kind of got away from me, and I suddenly found myself signing a one year lease for an apartment that looked and felt like the setting of one of the Saw movies. 

On the way to my car the triumphant sales lady told me the building had many single residents. Right on cue, a blonde girl with a bouncy ponytail popped out of the door behind us. She smiled politely as she walked past then broke into a light jog down the broken sidewalk. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

But before I had time to wax poetic to myself about new starts, an impossibly frail man creaked past on an old bicycle. He wore a tattered suit, capped off by a jaunty motorcycle helmet which appeared to weigh about a hundred pounds. It was the only part of his ensemble that looked new, a pattern of patriotic stars and stripes shining in the golden evening light. His head lolled on his shoulders as his neck struggled with the weight of it. He had somehow rigged several clear plastic bags stuffed to the brim with cans to the back of the bike. They rustled against each other as he pedaled past us. 

I think he nodded at the sales lady, but it was hard to tell if it was intentional or just the weight of the helmet pulling his head down. She glanced briefly at him, then turned to hustle back to her office.

A block away the blonde girl had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk for a quick quad stretch, so the can man had to bump off the curb into the gutter to avoid her. It would be an easy maneuver for someone less rickety, but I thought for sure this guy would wind up sprawled in the road, cans everywhere. Somehow he pulled it off. For a moment the stars and stripes of his helmet turned her way ever so slightly. Then he kept on riding, cans rustling into the distance. The girl didn’t take much notice of him. In a moment, she ran off. Her neon pink running shoes flashed away in the glow of the sunset.

A few days later I moved in my small but growing collection of Ikea furniture and the few odds and ends I’d hung on to in the divorce. Between the masks and the social distancing, there was no possibility of meeting anyone either in the building or out of it. We couldn’t even share the elevator. At some point the management had put up a sign restricting it to one household per trip. The loneliness compounded when I gradually discovered the group of friends I had accumulated over the years were all actually Rachel’s friends. Things became very quiet in my world.

I tried to embrace the enforced asceticism of my new lifestyle. This was the perfect opportunity for me to finally embrace the self-improvement ideals I always scrolled past on TikTok. COVID couldn’t go on forever, and when it ended I would be ready, a new man. I filled my fridge with bagged salads and the healthiest looking TV dinners at the store. I tracked my weight and muscle density on an app. At night, I read self help books while the filtered sounds of laughter from the apartment next door drifted in through the vents. I even got a journal, although I never could think of anything to put in it.

The only self care task I really enjoyed was the running. I ran every day, mostly after work, but before the sun went down. By the end of summer my mile time had dipped under the ten minute mark, and I felt like I was really on my way to something. Occasionally I saw the woman I’d mentally nicknamed “Ponytail” out running in the early evenings too. She went a lot faster than me. 

I always took the same route. Turning right out of my building took me to a train yard with a high fence, so I went left. On the inland side of the road I could see the collapsing roofs of the old navy base, and on the water side I passed mostly rehabilitated warehouses much like the one I’d come out of. There were docks on the other side of those buildings, but I couldn’t see them without venturing off the main road. The farther I went from home, the less rehabilitated the structures became, until I hit a row of fully abandoned depots. I crossed three rusted steel bridges over tidal creeks, then turned back when I hit a series of huge silos that still seemed to be in use. This path took me about three miles away, then I used the three miles back to delay sitting by myself in the confinement of my apartment.  

It wasn’t the best part of town, but despite the intermittent reports I saw on the news, I never worried too much about my safety. The only thing that gave me pause was the traffic. Not many ca...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g01f1k/ive_had_a_recurring_dream_since_i_was_a_kid_a_few/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Urban_II on 2024-10-11 01:19:09+00:00.

---

I work the night shift at a data center, from 10 at night until 6 in the morning. My job is network monitoring: basically, I stare at a computer screen all night watching for alarms. Once per shift, I walk back to the server racks and make sure all the cooling systems are functional. Assuming nothing is wrong, which is almost always the case, I am free to browse the internet until morning.

Last week seemed to be no different. After receiving the turnover from the evening shift, I settled in for another boring night. I read through the day’s emails, opened my monitoring software and camera feed, and started looking for the night’s entertainment. My typical activity is to freak myself out by watching scary stories on YouTube. The environment is perfect: lights dimmed, all alone in an empty building for hours. I pulled up a compilation of “terrifying true scary stories” and let my imagination run wild.

I was absorbed into the tense story of a hiker pursued by an unknown entity in the woods, my vision narrowed in on the screen and senses on alert, when I thought I noticed movement on one of the cameras monitoring the server racks. I felt a pang of anxiety and my heart jumped, but this was not my first time intentionally frightening myself, and paranoia is inevitable in this situation. I put the camera feed into full screen. The lights were all off in the data hall, as they should be. They only turn on when there’s movement. Just my imagination. Still, I kept the panel opened in full screen while I went back to my video, glancing back occasionally. Not five minutes later, I saw a shadow again out of the corner of my eye. Looking at the camera feed, I still couldn’t see anything, and the lights were still off, but I knew I saw something move.

I got up from my desk and walked out into the hallway, then through an access door into the data hall. The rows of fluorescent lighting all clicked on at once, flooding the room in light. I paused to let my eyes adjust and tried to slow my breathing. I strained to hear any signs of movement somewhere in the racks, but the drone of the servers covered up any noise.

With mounting dread, I began checking between the rows. With each corner I rounded, I felt my panic grow. My heart pounded louder than the scream of the servers. As I approached the last row, I knew that whatever I saw would be so unthinkably horrible, my body would not be able to bear it. I could barely breathe, my hands and face were dripping cold sweat, and I felt the urge to vomit. I willed myself forward and, in a moment that felt like an eternity, rounded the corner and saw-

Nothing. I was alone, of course. I let myself get freaked out again from those stupid videos. Relieved, I went back to my desk. I switched over to a documentary on fighter jets, and the rest of the night passed uneventfully.

At last, morning came. The morning shift came in with his usual hangover, and we discussed the (non)events of the night. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I packed up to head home. On my way to my car, I noticed something under my windshield wiper. Drawing closer, I saw that it was a Polaroid picture. With trembling hands, I picked it up from under the blade and held it up to my face.

Rows of server racks in a brightly lit room. I stood facing away from the camera, preparing to look around a corner. In the middle of the frame, reaching out from behind the camera, a man’s hand clutched a knife.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/dlschindler on 2024-10-10 16:15:22+00:00.

---

Bars have a lot of unwritten rules, unspoken rules, that are good to know. You might feel a little tense walking in, like you're being scrutinized or that you don't know what's happening. That's because you're in a kind of church - and that is what the feeling is like.

They'll simplify it for you, and say: "Don't talk about religion or politics." which seems obvious enough, but there's a longer list of things you don't discuss in bars. You shouldn't talk about finances, relationships or family affairs either. In fact, the less you say, the better.

Nobody is impressed by anything you say, when you're in a bar. You make friends by listening while other people talk, and you'll soon find out you don't really want to hear what they have to say. That's how they feel about what you might want to discuss.

You are boring, you are offensive or you are self-absorbed. The worst is when you are nosy, too interested in what someone else has said. If you don't speak at all, everyone presumes there is something wrong with you, being quiet and not talking is pretty rude.

Then there is that guy who comes up next to you and says something that gets your attention, but then you realize you're being had for a pick-up line. Will you be offended if he thinks he can have you for the price of a drink? If you don't care about yourself enough to be offended, you aren't worth his time, although he might be done hunting for the night and go for an easy kill.

Being hard to kill just brings on bigger and meaner hunters. They will flatter you and convince you they are Mr. Right, except you're just the one who is left. It's just you, you're the only girl who hasn't gone home to sell herself for free to another drunken John. To the men in the bar, every woman there is for sale, and they are just haggling over a price. Some men have too much pride and don't want a free kill.

Serial killers, all of them. Don't fall for the guy who seems innocent, he's the worst of them all.

I'm sipping my drink slowly. Bars aren't where I go to find a new body for my closet. I'm not that kind of girl. No, my momma raised a prudent and wise woman, and I am here to learn.

Gosh, I sure have learned a lot, and it breaks my heart to see how the game gets played. It's a little sickening, actually, but sometimes I think I am alone in that nauseating feeling. It's not that I don't enjoy intimacy, it's just that I prefer it has some kind of romantic meaning, some kind of expression of affection. Maybe even doing it for procreation instead of just casual recreation.

Even dogs have more purpose when they get it on and show more affection than these one-night couples who don't remember each other the next time they meet, somewhere along the way, months or years later. I'm not a dog, although I get called the B word a lot by guys I resort to scorning when they are too persistent.

I don't meet my lovers in bars. No, I am better than that. At least I was, until I met Merial.

I couldn't tell if Merial was a man at-all. He was so effeminate I actually thought "This is a lesbian."

But Merial was very patient, and quite different. He wanted something different from me, and it wasn't like he was trolling the bar, it was more like he was doing what I was doing, just people watching. I just want to know what I am, as I am a person too. I just don't understand people, and bars have become a kind of school, a kind of temple, where I see it all on display.

In a church people just act like sheep, following the flock, pretending they are holy and charitable and faithful or whatever they really are not. They are surrounded by a congregation all wearing the same face devoid of real emotions, playing nice for God and for their Sunday crew. I see the same people in the bar, on occasion, and that's their real face.

In a church they wear a mask and they think God is judging them for their honesty when they confess, their sincerity when they sing or their kindness when they tithe. God doesn't need our honesty, God knows what we are doing and why. God doesn't need our sincerity, we were made to rebel and to get lost. If God wanted obedience, there would be obedience. Do you really think God wants your money?

I found more of God's countenance in the bars, despite my disgust. I was actually an atheist, when I was dragged into churches by my family. It wasn't until I saw the real side of humanity that I realized that God is real.

We don't discuss religion or politics in the bar, because the bar is a place for truth. Nothing about religion or politics is honest. I looked over and saw the look on Merial's face, and I knew he understood me.

"May I speak with you?" He was asking, without words. I nodded and he walked over to me like we had agreed to talk. He just sat beside me and it felt nice, to have someone next to me who knew what I was doing there.

"Aren't you going to say something?" I asked him, after a few minutes of mutual silence.

"My name is Merial. I'm just observing people. I saw you are doing that too." He said plainly.

I started smiling, I was right about him. It felt really good. If he'd asked me to leave with him I would have gone out the door with him, it felt weird, but I liked being able to let go of myself and feel safe, feeling that way.

"I'm Catherine. I can't believe you noticed me." I said awkwardly. It didn't matter, he seemed impressed.

I'm trying to remember the rest of the conversation, it was deep and flattering. I felt really connected to him and the hours just flew by. When the bar started to close, I couldn't believe how long we had sat there talking. I didn't want it to end, so I said:

"Are you going to ask me to come home with you?" I must have sounded desperate, but he didn't shut me down, he just said:

"It isn't your time yet." Rather strangely and confidently. "But you have a good heart, and I won't let you out of my sight. I'm starved for a heart like yours."

"Okay." I stood up, embarrassed and feeling rejected. I wasn't sure if he'd shut me down, but it felt like he had, so I said, hearing myself:

"So that's a no, then?"

"Let's just take this slow. We'll see each other again." He promised. I watched him get up and leave, without another word. We hadn't exchanged phone numbers, so it felt like he was just saying that. I am ashamed that I was a little bit drunk or emotional or something I can't even say, and I said as he left:

"No, we won't. Goodbye Merial." Like I was having a little tantrum. That's another rule about bars, don't take things personally. I'd somehow forgotten that one, which is weird considering how many guys I've asked to leave me alone, and laughed at their immature reactions.

But I did see him again. I came back to that same bar night after night and I started to actually drink. The cost of the alcohol added up and I'd let guys buy drinks for me. That went on for awhile, and I would get pretty buzzed, trying to forget Merial.

Then one night, when I was actually considering going home with this seemingly nice guy, I saw Merial again. He was just watching me. It felt creepy and rude, and I glared at him and then ignored him.

The guy was with saw how I was reacting to Merial, and somehow ended up talking to him. Merial seemed weak and timorous, but insisted on staring at me. The two of them ended up in a fight, and when the guy I was with got hit by Merial, the guy fell down.

"Catherine, I just wanted to check on you. I can see I've caused you some kind of harm. You've changed, haven't you? I don't want to wait. Will you come with me? I am starved for your heart."

"Sure." I heard myself say. I walked out with him and found myself teetering in his arms.

"I am going to eat your heart." He said, staring into my eyes. I almost laughed, but it felt like he was saying he was literally going to eat my heart.

"Seriously?" I asked, feeling sudden dread. There was this grotesque look to him, this hungry sort of look, like a starved dog emerging from the darkness of an alleyway, baring its fangs - his smile. His eyes glinted too, in the dark we stood in. I shoved him away from me but he grabbed me and held me with supernatural strength.

"I can't let you go. You are too rare, and it's too hard to find someone with a pure heart." Merial was holding me with one hand and with the other he reached towards my breast, like he was going to do that thing from Indiana Jones when the priest reaches into the guy's chest and pulls out his heart.

I screamed in terror and fought him off of me, surprising him so that he suddenly let go of me. I took off running from him. I looked back and he was gone.

Then there was a shadow over me, blocking the streetlight I was under. I looked up and there was a blur of white feathers, like a giant seagull or something - except it was him, it was Merial. He landed before me, blocking my escape up the street, folding his enormous white wings behind him and then those same wings vanished.

"What are you, some kind of vampire or something?" I asked, my voice high-pitched, trembling with fear. I was terrified, but the look on his face was conversational, and in a confused way, I was speaking to him instead of shrieking in outright terror.

"I'm an angel, Catherine. I'm your angel, sent by God. I have a message for this world that I give to the pure of heart. Something changed when I met you, I remembered how hungry I am. I must feed. I need your sacrifice, I need to eat your heart." Merial spoke calmly, h...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g0mjmy/an_angel_wants_to_eat_my_heart/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/NotJustSomeNumbers on 2024-10-10 20:16:53+00:00.

---

I just needed some damn glitter.

Money started to get a bit tight, so I started a side hustle. I made small things with resin, like coffin-shaped trinket boxes and ashtrays. At first, they didn’t sell. Then I started to add this super holo round glitter to my pieces. I couldn’t restock them fast enough, leaving the older pieces to collect dust. Due to using that type of glitter in everything, I ran out fast.

A craft store near my place sold it and often had discounts. I decided to grind out filling the last few molds I could before heading to the store. One thing led to another causing me to arrive there half an hour before closing. I walked into a nearly empty store. It was a big place with discounted Halloween decorations. I was distracted for a few minutes looking to see if they had any cheap themed glitter I could use. As far as I could tell, there was only one cashier somewhat hidden behind a wall of other discounted items.

I didn’t see any new glitter I liked among the seasonal items, so I went to get the one item I needed. Two other customers were in the store. They passed by me, the older woman nodding in my direction. I returned the gesture to be polite. The girl with her was maybe still a teenager with straight black hair and dark eyes. Honestly, her stern face kind of put me on edge as her eyes followed my movements.

She carried bundles of yarn for the older woman so I assumed they were related. Walking down the aisle I quickly found what I was looking for. It would only take me a moment to check out and then return home to start working on crafts again. The glitter was placed near the front of the store and at the checkout. I again stopped near the front corner to look over some displays they had on sale. I swear, this place always had sales going on. I planned on starting to get into making jewelry at some point. The shelves were full of necklace or bracelet displays. I picked one up considering I could use it for my new keyrings for a craft show coming up.

I felt something at my feet. A ball of yarn had rolled down the aisle and stopped near me. The younger girl with black hair silently walked over to retrieve it. I bent over picked it up before her and handed it over. She nodded without a smile on her stoic face.

A loud bang and thud got our attention. We were a few steps away from a closed-door labeled ‘Manager’. I had heard voices in the office but not what they were saying. The girl matched my expression. We both decided to investigate, my hand in my pocket touching my phone in case of trouble. I reached for the door handle at the same time it flew open.

A man stood breathing hard with a wild look in his eyes. The sudden sigh shocked me enough to freeze. I felt the other girl gripe the back of my shirt tightly then he reached out to drag us inside the office. He easily tossed us hard against the back wall of the room and slammed the door shut.

My heart raced as my eyes took in the details of the room. There were a few monitors displaying parts of the store. I saw the girl's mother in one of the aisles, looking around for her now-missing daughter. A desk took up most of the space. My eyes lowered to see another woman face down on the ground, fresh blood pooling around her head.

“She made me! I she didn’t fire me I never would have needed to do this!” The man started rambling, his hand pulling at his hair in a frantic manner.

This was bad. Very bad. We had seen his crime and now he wasn’t certain what to do with us. I finally noticed a pistol holstered at his hip. One wrong move and we would be dead.

Everything happened so fast that it was hard to process. He grabbed my shoulders dragging me to the desk. My back was slammed down against it, my heart in my throat. I prayed he would shoot me instead of doing anything else. He started to shake my body, the edge of the desk digging into my lower back.

“This is her fault! I was doing my job! I didn’t do anything wrong!” He shouted, face red and damp with sweat.

Papers fell on the desk scattering to the floor. A round glass paperweight started to roll towards us. I needed to take a chance or else I would die here. My hand shot out, grabbing hold of the smooth glass orb. With one swift motion, I slammed it against his temple.

My attacker howled in pain, and his grip lessened. I slipped away, dizzy with fear. The other girl had opened the door to make a run for it. She was heading towards her mother who had been walking towards the office door. I turned the other way running towards the checkout and in the direction of the exit.

I turned my head to see if he was following us. The older man stumbled from the room, holding his bleeding head. His hand went to his side. Drawing his weapon, he raised it firing wildly in front of him. To my horror, I watched the girl step in front of her mother her head snapping back as a spray of blood exploded on the shelving next to her. The older woman wailed, collapsing to her knees trying to catch the body of her fallen child.

The scene made me stop. I hated myself for freezing. Thankfully the gun was empty so I wasn’t going to be shot. Instead, the man charged over grabbing a fist full of my hair to pull my head back. His arm started to wrap around my neck. On reflex, I grabbed it and then flipped him onto the ground.

I thanked God I grew up with three rough-housing older brothers I didn’t appreciate at the time. I knew a few throws but I wasn’t overly strong. I’d gotten one step away when he reached out to grab my ankle. I fell hard, my head hitting the tile floor. Within seconds we were in a wrestling match. He was winning.

I knew the cashier must have heard all of this. She would have called the cops by now. How long would it take them to arrive? Would I be dead by then?

He landed a few blows to my face when I tried to raise my arms to defend myself. Blood started to pour out of my nose. His large hands then went to my neck, the thumbs painfully pushing down immediately cutting off my breathing.

There aren’t any words to describe how terrifying being strangled is. This man out weighed me. He was so much stronger. I’ve never felt so hopeless before. No matter how much I clawed and struggled, he didn’t stop his attack.

I should have died. Turns out, there was someone in the store that was stronger than him.

His face grew pale and a shocked expression came. His gripe lessened enough for me to get away. I crawled backward, gasping my entire body in pain. My eyes unfocused but I saw a figure with long black hair stand up.

A rush of confusing emotions exploded in my chest. I was glad she wasn’t dead, but how? Her mother watched in horror as the child she loved steadily walked toward her would-be murderer. The main lights flickered then went out leaving only emergency lights.

The man stood up not understanding what was happening. He only knew he needed to run. His legs didn’t take him very far. He collapsed in fear as he watched the girl's shape change. Countless dark hands like shadows appeared from the floor surrounding her. I pressed my back hard against the shelf behind me, praying this was all a nightmare.

A set of hands caught him, large enough to cover most of his body. He was lifted into the air, sobbing and pleading to be spared.

There was no emotion on her face. She simply glanced in my direction, cold eyes chilling me to the bone. Without a word, the shadow hands turned into a dark smoke that forced its way through his mouth and nostrils.

His body tensed up, his eyes rolling back. Soon he started to jerk in unnatural and painful ways. Sounds like an animal being butchered came from him. His back arched, hands curled. Tears streamed down his eyes. I didn’t know what horrors he was experiencing and never wanted to know.

It felt like hours he was tortured by those shadows. Finally, his body was dropped and the lights came back on. The hands disappeared leaving the dark-haired girl calmly standing almost admiring her handy work. Then she turned around to go back to her mother.

The older woman was still on the ground, cowering in fear. She let out a yelp when the girl got close then reached out to throw the first thing she grabbed at her.

“Mom...” The girl said in a soft voice.

“Get away from me! What are you?! Why do you have my daughter's face?! I knew you weren’t right since the accident! Demon! Monster!”

The woman broke down in hysterics, her hand clutching a small cross around her neck. The girl didn’t have much of a reaction. She took a few steps away, the stoic expression still on her face. But I thought there were a few hints of sadness.

A pair of police officers came rushing in. One quickly went to me to help me off the ground. The other went to the mother who was still screaming and sobbing.

“What happened here?” One of them asked.

I found myself unable to speak. How could I even explain all of this?

“That man shot a worker here. We saw it and he tried to kill us. He had a heart attack. My mother isn’t well. Seeing all of this made her relapse.” The girl explained doing her best to act a little upset over the entire situation.

The pair didn’t question her. They just got us all outside. The poor cashier came up to us, sobbing wondering if we were alright. I thanked her for calling the police and hugged her until the cops wanted her statement. She could have left the store. Instead, she hunkered down behind her and sta...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g0s3ca/i_met_a_monster_at_a_craft_store/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CMCWrites on 2024-10-10 11:55:47+00:00.

---

I decided, on a whim, to join my local run club.

A flier on a lamppost in my neighborhood gave me the idea. A ragged thing, nestled among the missing person posters, boasting that all paces were welcome, even absolute beginners. An optional gathering at a bar afterwards.

It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d normally be interested in.You see, I've been running for two decades now, placed among the first at a handful of smaller races. I’m fast, very fast, and that sort of training is usually a solitary endeavor.  

I arrived early, where a handful of people were gathered in a small plaza by the river. 

The run club's members chatted amongst themselves, old friends. I tried to look for any other person who was standing awkwardly to the side like I was, but there were none, even as more people arrived.

I stuck out like a sore thumb, dressed in performance leggings and reflective gear, while everyone else practically wore flat-soled sneakers. I received glances from some of them, looking me up and down, hungrily devouring my embarrassment. 

Eventually a man took pity on me. He was dressed just like I was, another person who actually took the lifestyle seriously.

And honestly? He didn't look half bad. That’s hard to pull off in a dayglow orange compression tank top.

He introduced himself as James, the leader and organizer of the club. We chatted for a few minutes about races we’ve competed in, our pace time, and which shoes we favored.

He told me he started the club after the random disappearances began happening in the area around last year. Turns out, people feel a lot safer running in a group rather than alone on the street. He'd gotten to make a lot of friends and explore the neighborhood. And, he leaned in with a wink, he had gotten to meet some very interesting people.

He turned around – just in time to miss me blush – to announce the warm up stretches to the group. I was already planning our first date in my head as we worked through knee raises and quad extensions.

And then it was time to run. We had gone over the route briefly, but I missed most of it. I had better things to think about anyway, like Dayglow James. I figured I’d just follow the crowd.

That turned out to be quite difficult. After the first two blocks of running, I realized I was a block ahead of everyone else, even James. Hard to follow those who are behind you.

I doubled back and slowed to a crawl to keep pace with the group. Runs taken at a slower pace were also important for training, I reminded myself, plus I'd be able to keep my breath steady enough to have a conversation with James. He had announced he would be staying towards the back of the group to make sure no one got left behind.

At first we took a route I was familiar with, a few minutes along the waterfront before turning in to run in the neighborhood. We passed a deli, the post office, a convenience store. 

We made a left down an unfamiliar street, one I hadn't seen before, despite living in the neighborhood for over 5 years. 

There was a dilapidated church on each corner, towering and decrepit and covered in vines, and the sidewalks had seen better days.

“I don't think I've been this way before,” I said to James. 

He nodded. “Not surprising,” he said between breaths, “it's not exactly pretty here. I run this way because the streets are totally empty. Don't want to crowd a busy sidewalk.” 

He was beautiful, his dark hair catching the subsiding light in just the right way. As we passed between the churches, I imagined my own church wedding with him.

We were now passing warehouse after abandoned warehouse. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows. I was beginning to see my exhalation in the air, and I zipped up my vest preemptively, bracing for the cold. 

No one was chatting anymore but James and I, all of them too out of breath. All that was audible was the thump, thump of our shoes hitting the pavement – no cars, no other pedestrians. Our numbers sounded light. I looked around at the group.

“James,” I said, “I think we lost a few people.”

“Yeah, probably. Sometimes the newcomers give up part way through the run and turn back. Sometimes their pace is just too slow and they have to find the way on their own. You know how it is.”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought you stayed at the back of the group so everyone could keep up.”

He smiled. “You know how it is,” he said again. 

Down the block two large buildings on either side of the street grew larger as we approached them. The two old churches. But it was impossible, we hadn’t once turned since we started running in the industrial area. There was no way we could have been approaching them from the same way we initially had.

Perhaps I was distracted. I accepted it and kept moving past the graffitied warehouses.

“I live around here, you know,” said James.

“Yeah? In a warehouse?”

“You could call it converted. You could call it illegal,” he said, smiling.

“Sounds like I couldn’t call it cozy,” I replied.

He laughed. “No, you certainly couldn’t. You know what the worst part of it is? It’s really annoying to get food.”

“No delivery options?” 

“Not any that suit our dietary restrictions. You train too, you must understand my pain.”

I smiled. “I know how it is.”

We fell silent and kept running. I looked around and realized there were fewer people still, bringing us to around fifteen total.

“Maybe we should slow down? People seem to have trouble keeping up,” I said.

He shook his head. I understood. We could not possibly be going any slower. I felt a fondness for him. He was doing a service to the community by providing a safe space to run. If people couldn’t actually run, that wasn’t his fault.

And yet, slowly, we approached something looming in the distance. The two churches. Again.

Come to think of it, we had been going for at least two miles. If we really had been running in a straight line, we should by now have hit the highway underpass, about a mile inland from the river we came from. And yet it was nowhere in sight either, not even in the distance.

“We passed these before,” I said as we ran between the crumbling churches.

“A lot of them in the area, I guess,” he said. But something in the way he spoke gave me pause. His tone was no longer conversational. In fact, it sounded defensive, as if he knew exactly what I was talking about. I was in danger.

The sun was nearly beneath the horizon behind us, the temperature dropping by the minute.

For the first time I looked closely at the other runners. I expected to find them out of breath, possibly even confused like I was.

Instead they ran urgently, intently. The effort they appeared to exert did not match the speed they ran. It looked like they were almost running in place, slow-motion only in pace, as if they were charging through deep mud. 

And every single one of them was crying. They looked far, far in the distance ahead of them with expressions of absolute terror on their faces, tears streaming down their cheeks. I tried to see what they were looking at, but there was nothing but warehouses. No underpass, no pedestrians, no cars. Nothing.

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the whites of their eyes looked darkened, giving the appearance that they were completely black. 

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Keep going,” whispered another runner.

I looked to James. He smiled.

“Keep going,” he said too, “And stay with the group.”

“You’ll be safe with the group,” said another runner.

I looked behind us. The sun had set, but the river we had come from was nowhere to be seen. Just miles of warehouses fading into the darkness. The few street lamps lining the sidewalk had flickered on, dousing us in a sodium orange glow.

And there were even fewer runners than before still; I could count the lot of us on my hands. Eight people creeping forward like encroaching sludge, yet running as if they were in a 100m sprint.

I kept running at my slow pace, despite the alarm bells going off in my head.

I just had to make it to the corner. Fifty feet, forty feet, thirty feet - I still stuck with the group until the last possible second. Then I hit a hard right and tried to turn down another desolate and unfamiliar street. 

Something caught my arm. One of the runners, holding me firmly by the elbow, dragging me ahead as she sprinted straight ahead at a snail's pace. 

“You don’t want to do that,” she said, “folks who turn off tend to lose their way.”

I kept running forward, again between the two churches. Again past the warehouses. Again over the broken sidewalks. I was also beginning to tear up, afraid and confused and wanting to go home.

My smartwatch told me we had been running for over an hour, but had not logged any distance. I cursed myself for leaving my phone at home.

Just two blocks later, the ivy coated churches again.

“They’re getting closer together,” said James in a happy singsong, “we’re almost at the end.”

Our group was now just five runners, including James and I.

“Where-” I managed to gasp. I couldn’t finish my sentence.

“Maybe they got tired,” said James lightly. At that, the fear cocooned my ribcage, and I felt a few tears fall down my cheek.

I took a look over my shoulder, past the preternaturally slow runners, at the line of garages and warehouses behind us. The dark of night was encroaching, limiting the field of distance.

Just at the boundary of my vision, something moved and writhed in the darkness in complete silence.

It k...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g0h1p0/i_joined_a_run_club_after_a_string_of/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-10-09 16:17:10+00:00.

---

It was just another Thursday at the office. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead as I sat at my desk, staring blankly at my computer screen. I should’ve been working on my monthly budget report, but all I could think about was the ache in my stomach, and the impending doom of the yearly office Halloween party.

As if summoned by my thoughts, the office began to buzz with excitement. I could hear the chatter of my coworkers from behind my cubicle, hollow laughter and manufactured enthusiasm as they decorated their cubicles with cobwebs, orange lights, and plastic skeletons. It was the same every year, a forced camaraderie that had always felt more like a chore than a celebration.

“Hey, Aaron! You ready for the potluck?” Sarah, from accounting, called out as she passed my desk, her bright orange sweater clashing with the bland beige walls.

“Yeah... totally,” I replied, not bothering to look up from my screen. My heart wasn’t in it. I had felt sick for days. But I couldn’t leave. Back-to-back illnesses had drained my sick leave, and my company “attendance rating” had taken a massive hit. I couldn’t afford to miss any more time.

Sarah bounced away, leaving me with my thoughts. I never understood the appeal of these office gatherings. It was as if everyone had decided that pretending to enjoy each other’s company for a few hours was worth the effort of dressing up and bringing food. But, I didn’t care. The only thing I wanted was to survive the day and go home and crawl in my bed.

I clicked through spreadsheets, trying to focus on the report due next week, but my stomach churned uneasily. It made me feel even less inclined to partake in the festivities. Yet, there I was, making chocolate chip cookies the night before. I had even drizzled on orange icing and pressed some candy corn into them for good measure.

“Those look cute!” a voice chirped from behind me. It was Susan, the self-proclaimed office ‘party planner’. She was wearing a glittery witch hat and a dress covered in plastic bats.

“Oh.. thanks,” I replied, forcing a smile.

“Are you going to try my dish?” Susan beamed, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

“What did you make?” I asked, despite myself.

“Witch’s brew pudding!” she exclaimed. “It’s a secret recipe. You’ll love it!”

I managed a nod, though my stomach turned at the thought of eating whatever concoction she’d cooked up. “Sounds… great.”

“Just you wait!” Susan winked before skipping off to her desk, leaving me with a strange mix of dread and reluctance.

As the clock inched closer to noon, the buzz of excitement grew louder, permeating every corner of the office. One by one, my coworkers filed into the break room, each unveiling their own Halloween-themed creations. There were the usual suspects: a bowl of ‘ghostly’ pasta salad, cupcakes decorated like monsters, and red punch that bubbled in a plastic cauldron.

The smell of various dishes wafted through the air, competing with the sharp scent of cleaning products and warm copy paper that never quite went away. I stood back, watching as everyone got in line for the buffet table, filling their plates with colorful food, laughing and mingling like they were old friends. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outsider.

As I surveyed the spread, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. My body was protesting, begging me not to eat anything. “Just a few more hours,” I whispered to myself, clenching my jaw in frustration.

When I finally mustered the courage to grab a plate, I filled it with a few of the safer options, some chips, one of my cookies, and a very light scoop of Susan’s pudding, mostly to avoid her relentless questioning about whether I had tried it.

“Hey, Aaron! Let me know what you think of the pudding!” Susan insisted, appearing beside me like a ghost, her excitement palpable. “I changed my recipe this year.”

“Oh.. how’d you make it?” I asked, feigning interest.

“Oh, you know,” she waved a hand dismissively. “Just an old family recipe. But this year, I added a little something to give it a kick. I promise it’s delicious!”

I forced a laugh, the ache creeping back into my gut. “Sure, yeah, I’ll give it a try.”

The laughter around me grew louder, but I barely heard it. I was watching the small group of coworkers clustered around the punch bowl. They were sharing stories and laughter, but it felt like a mask. Everyone seemed to just be pretending to enjoy each other’s company when we were merely coworkers navigating through the corporate grind.

As the clock ticked toward 1 PM, I settled at a corner table, trying to stay unnoticed. It was quiet here, and I felt more at ease away from the clamor. I nibbled at the chips, but the heaviness in my stomach made it hard to enjoy anything. I began to get that cold sweat feeling you get, right before you hurl.

I closed my eyes, trying to take a minute for myself, when suddenly, a scream pierced the air, cutting through the laughter like a knife. My heart raced as I turned to see Jennifer from marketing clutching her throat, her face turning an alarming shade of red.

“Oh my God!” someone shouted.

“What’s happening?” I said.

“Is she choking?” Eddie, from IT, yelled, rushing to her side.

I watched in horror as Jennifer staggered back, her hands desperately clawing at her throat. Panic spread through the room as more people turned toward the commotion. She fell to the ground, gasping for air, and within moments, she lay motionless, her eyes wide and bloodshot.

“Someone help her!” I screamed, my voice barely cutting through the rising chaos. The laughter that had filled the air only moments ago turned to shouts of confusion and terror.

A few people rushed toward Jennifer, but as they approached, I saw Eddie clutch his stomach, his face contorting in agony. “Ahhhh” he groaned, doubling over.

A wave of nausea crashed over me, the feeling of panic and fear mixing with the already present feeling of illness. My pulse quickened, and bile begin to rise in my throat. I stumbled backward, my heart racing.

“Eddie!” Sarah cried, rushing to his side as he fell to his knees, retching violently. The sound was horrifying, guttural, desperate. I could see the remnants of the red punch he’d just consumed spew onto the floor, mixed with bile.

“What the hell is going on?” Sarah yelled, backing away. I didn’t want to believe it, but something felt wrong, more than just the flu season or a simple case of bad food.

From my corner of the room, I watched as panic spread like wildfire. People began to collapse one by one, faces turning purple, their bodies seizing as if gripped by an invisible hand. I spotted Susan at the edge of the crowd, her eyes wide with shock.

“Call 911!” someone shouted, but the chaos drowned out any rational thoughts. No one was thinking straight anymore. The office, once filled with laughter and the smell of baked goods, transformed into a scene from a nightmare.

Sarah fell next, her mouth foaming as she tried to scream, but only choked sounds escaped her lips. Panic morphed into pure horror. All of my coworkers were now sprawled across the ground, some convulsing, a red viscus liquid coming from their mouths. Others now lay completely still. I vomited into a trashcan, the mix of fear, adrenaline, and illness all finally coming to a head.

“Aaron” Susan’s voice pierced the noise, startling me. “You have to try the pudding...”

“Are you fucking insane?” I shouted. “You’re worried about your stupid pudding? Look at everyone!”

Susan smiled, unnaturally calm in the chaos. “Month after month, year after year, birthdays, holidays, I pour my heart into this office. I plan the parties. I buy all the decorations. And what do I get? Nothing. I’m never appreciated. I see the ways people roll their eyes when I pass by. But this Halloween, this Halloween is different. Now they’ll see. Now they see they should’ve appreciated me.”

I took a step back, my heart racing. “The pudding...? What… what did you do to it?”

“Oh! It’s a secret family recipe!” Susan insisted, but her frantic demeanor was starting to unnerve me. Her smile had slipped, revealing something darker lurking beneath the surface.

More bodies crumpled to the floor, and the stench of sweat and vomit filled the air. I stumbled, narrowly avoiding tripping over the limp body of Eddie, now lying face-first on the ground. My stomach lurched, and I pressed a hand over my mouth to stifle the rising nausea.

“Somebody help! Please!” I called out, but no one answered. Everyone was too busy succumbing to the terror that had been unleashed by Susan.

I felt trapped, suffocated by the chaos, frozen in fear.

The room fell eerily silent, except for the sounds of my own ragged breathing. The realization hit me hard. Everyone was gone. All my coworkers, people I’d shared mundane conversations with over coffee for years, were now all lifeless on the floor. It felt surreal, like a scene from a horror film. I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream.

“Aaaaaroooon” Susan said in a sing-song voice, cutting through my thoughts, and I turned to see her now standing in front of the exit, with a manic gleam in her eyes. “You don’t understand! You’re going to try it, whether you want to or not!”

I shook my head, panic flooding my veins. “You... you crazy bitch! You killed them! You poisoned them!”

Her laughter echoed off the walls, a sharp, discordant sound that sent chills down my spine. “Yes! And now it’s your ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fzvaj9/the_year_my_offices_halloween_potluck_ended_in/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/0anonymousv on 2024-10-09 08:46:36+00:00.

---

This might seem rushed, I may end up leaving details out in the moment. I don’t know how much time I have to type this out.

In hindsight, spectacular as it always is, I should’ve known better than to apply for an internship under a man I’d never heard of. I’d kind of just started applying to them in a blind panic, though, after getting rejected too many times. This was the first I heard back positively from, so I went with it without waiting for more options.

Dr. Henry Dalton, completely unknown even in his own field of computer science. One single internship opening. I expected that to mean he already had other employees and interns, but when I showed up at his meager little office downtown, I very quickly discovered what it actually meant. I was going to be the only other person working with him.

His office is just a rented-out studio filled up with projects and technology. I thought I was at the wrong place at first, but when I knocked, the door swung open before I’d even stopped.

Dr. Dalton is a pretty tall, gangly guy, with sloppy brown hair and glasses with eyes that look like they’ve never torn away from a screen in his life. He looked down at me almost judgmentally before bothering to speak.

“You’re the intern I hired, right?” Deep and gravelly, the voice of a smoker.

I bit back my hesitation and nodded. “That’s me. -Priscilla Jennings?”

“Yeah, the… compsci major.” He waved dismissively and let me in. “I’ll let you know now, the empirical research I’m working on right now is pretty unheard of outside of science fiction. I don’t have anyone else lined up though so please stay.”

I gave him a look when his back was turned. “…okay?”

Stepping inside, I got a full view of his mess of a studio. It was midday, but the office was dark, blackout curtains pulled over the windows and the door. The whole space was only illuminated by the countless computer screens and devices, as well as something that looked like a prison’s electric chair more than anything. I caught myself staring at that in particular, wondering about it after what he just said, but Dr. Dalton cut right to the chase before I could get any questions out.

“Computers, whole different world. You know, you study them too. It’s an accessible world. What if it could be more accessible, though?” He began rambling. “VR is great and all, but nothing in there is real. It’s just line after line after line of code. How does one make it real? And how does it feel different from the code if we could make it real?”

I was already lost.

Dr. Dalton sat down in front of one of his computers, producing an apple from a basket beside it that I hadn’t noticed before. Pulling some more things out - wires, clips, etcetera - he strapped the apple up with them and spun around in his chair, placing it down into the execution chair over there.

I continued to watch in awe as Dr. Dalton fine tuned it like a radio, eventually rolling back to his computer and typing at it rapidly. He waved another vague little hand at me in the midst of things. “Step back.”

I did, of course, waiting behind him to watch. I couldn’t really get a grasp on what he was doing on the PC; whatever it was, it was flying by fast, too quick to comprehend. It didn’t really matter, though. My attention was seized by the throat when the apple started glowing.

In something straight out of a science fiction film, just like he had said, I watched as the apple turned pixelated, then seemingly phased out of existence. My jaw fell open.

“The thing is, you can’t hook up things like a room to this machine, so they just sort of go into the code,” Dr. Dalton mused, leaning back and gesturing to his screen. I brung myself to look down at it, seeing as new lines of code started showing up by themselves in the program he had opened. “Which isn’t the end of the world, but if there’s a “space” inside there that they exist, I can’t see or access it without something to view it in. Nothing’s worked with that so far. I’m hoping your assistance will get me there quicker, to be able to see inside the code. Between the lines, if you would.”

I found myself pretty speechless, all my thoughts still convoluted from what all I’d just seen. It took me a moment to gather my words.

“Well- I’ve, never seen anything like this in real life- I’m not exactly sure-”

Dr. Dalton cut me off with another wave. “I wasn’t expecting experience, so don’t put that on your own shoulders. Just another set of educated eyes. No graduates will look twice at what I have to offer, they don’t think it’s true or worth anything if it is. But you’ll get paid even if this doesn’t pan out. Win-win.”

I pulled myself a bit closer back to reality again. “-right. I’ll do my best.”

“You will. It only functions on this computer right now so I’ll show you.”

We spent most days huddled over the one computer that allowed for this, uploading objects in growing size and trying to figure out what exactly happened to them when they entered the world of code. It didn’t seem to ever make any more sense. Every new line added nothing. We could put things in, but never see them or take them back out.

I could tell Dr. Dalton was getting stressed. The office smelled more of smoke every time I came in, he always looked even more tired than the day before. I was fascinated - I still am - but I’m not as attached to the work as he is. I still don’t quite understand how he made it happen in the first place. This is his incredible invention, not mine.

I came in on a Friday after my classes were over, like usual. All the same, Dr. Dalton was sitting at the computer, carefully going through lines of code. He didn’t bother looking up. “We’re putting a rat in today.”

I halted a few yards away from the computer. “What?”

“I found a rat in the vent and we’re uploading it. I want to see what the code will look like, and it’ll be especially valuable once we figure out how to upload them back to reality.”

I looked past him to see there was indeed a rat already hooked up, writhing and biting at its bindings to free itself. I felt my heart sink into my stomach.

“Isn’t that a bit… cruel?” I asked him, glancing his way again.

“Science doesn’t progress without a little bit of risk,” He responded tiredly, beginning the uploading process like always.

I really should’ve walked out right then. But morbid curiosity had already taken ahold of me in her tight grip, strangling me with deep claws.

I stood there behind him watching the rat glitch itself out of reality, taking a bit longer than all the inanimate objects we’d put in already. Trying to put the thought of it squirming desperately out of my mind, I turned my attention to the computer screen, observing the lines of code it was now spewing out. They were clearly far more complicated - significantly longer, too, unsurprisingly. It reflected back on Dr. Dalton’s glasses as he stared at it with a blank expression, deep in thought.

“Okay. That should do it right now. We can put the focus onto removing things from the computer rather than uploading for now so a behavioral study can be performed…” He goes back to typing, moving over to give me the space to join him.

I paused, stepping over but not sitting down just yet.

“…are we going to be uploading more animals?”

He stopped for a second, finally taking the time to look my way.

“…no.”

The third red flag there should’ve been the clear hesitation in his voice, just in that one word alone.

Saturday came. I don’t usually come in then - but he asked me to. So there I was.

When I arrived, Dr. Dalton was pacing around. Not unusual, but it put me more on edge after yesterday.

“Did you need something specific today, doctor…?” I mustered up the courage to ask him after a moment.

He paused, turning to look at me with a hand to his chin. “I’m going to ask you something, Priscilla.”

I blinked at him.

I should’ve ran.

“What is it?”

“What do you think the inside of the computer is like?”

I glanced aside, giving it a few moments of thought. It’d been on the forefront of my mind on and off for weeks, so I had an answer. I just needed to word it.

“…vast. Probably pretty empty, aside from what we’ve uploaded, and what already exists inside of it… but I can’t really think of what files would look like in person.”

Dr. Dalton massaged his stubbled face, turning to pace again. “I agree.”

A disturbed silence fell between us. I slowly stepped over to the computer, glancing down at the code and not seeing anything new. He spoke again just as I sat down.

“You should see it.”

My shoulders tensed. Wordlessness fell over me again as I turned to look up at Dr. Dalton.

He was already looming over me with wires in hand.

I screamed, fought back, but he was so much stronger than I thought he would be. Or maybe I was weaker than I knew. Whatever the case was, it didn’t matter, because I was being strapped to that chair like the day of my execution had come. No matter how much I thrashed and kicked. He was prepared. I could do nothing as the process started again.

The other end of it feels like utter agony. My screams so quickly turned to nothing, even before reality was too glitched to make out anything. It hurt, god, it was the worst pain imaginable. My body wasn’t uploaded all at once. It may have looked that way outside; but each and every single cell loaded through individually. It felt like hours, years, a painstaking misery that I couldn’t possibly describe well enough.

And...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wild-Tea-9242 on 2024-10-10 00:15:39+00:00.

---

That's what I call him, although he's neither a man nor a pole. I understand there may be a few of you who think it's a silly title for what very well may be a monster or demonic entity, but it makes sense and it doesn't need some epic name anyhow. It's not some magnificent beast of legend, rather, it's an unnerving cryptid that's actually quite benevolent…if you don't notice it, or ‘him.’

I first saw him walking down the street one night. My part of the city is in the slums. I'm a factory worker making pennies trying to save up for college to make something of myself and the rent there was cheap. The streets there are filled with abandoned buildings, graffitied with boarded up windows, and the streets themselves are a Frankenstein mash of cobblestone from the 19th century and modern asphalt, because the city thought it was good for tourists here for the history and also didn't want to pay money to completely fix it.

Even as a man, I felt unsafe walking around at night, and carried a switchblade with me because I couldn't afford a gun. However, my anxiety about being mugged didn't outweigh my desire for a late night convenience store run. My check had come through on my bank account extremely late, and the little store up the street has hot dogs rolling under heat lamps, chips, and energy drinks, all perfect for a midnight movie binge. I couldn't sleep, thinking about how much I hated our economy and despised capitalism, how much more I had to save to go to college, and to cheer myself up I was gonna watch some horror flick classics until I passed out at the crack of dawn.

So, I was on my way towards that little convenience store, pulling my jacket tighter over me as a gust of Autumnal wind blew through, when I noticed it.

One of the many telephone poles which cluttered the area looked different than the rest. I can't fully explain it, it was just… off. Like an extremely difficult game of ‘spot the difference.’

There were a couple of broken and flickering lamp posts on this block, and the tops of the telephone poles were heavily shadowed as they towered above the orbs of yellow glow the posts emanated. Their wires branched out, weaving in between roof tops, connecting to each other like a web.

Of course, I wasn't gonna puzzle and ponder over a utility pole, so I kept walking, reaching the middle of the street where it was. I bustled past it, my hands shoved into my pockets for warmth, and I only made it a few steps before I stopped in my tracks.

I had heard a creak, just barely noticeable under the blanket of nighttime noise, like the sound of cars honking and driving on a busier road some miles away, and distant police sirens. Now, my first thought was, holy shit, is this thing ready to fall on me?

I turned around and looked up at it while continuing to back away. That's when I realized that it wasn't a utility pole at all. It was a living, breathing creature which looked identical to one. The part of the pole which was shadowed heavily had two glowing pinpoints for eyes which stared down at me with a strange sense of intelligence. The “wires”, or whatever they were, which branched out from what may have been his head, quivered and twitched as if they were limbs, something I hadn't noticed before.

Two of those limbs disconnected from the wires they were mimicking and hung down at his sides, making it clear they were black, tendril-like arms. The reason I call it a he is because he moaned in a gravelly voice that sounded masculine, like an ancient man disturbed from his deep slumber.

Then, he leaned his misshapen head forward, lifting a wiry arm towards me, and I finally broke into a run, and I didn't stop until I reached the convenience store, which glowed like a Christmas tree on the otherwise dark curb.

The man behind the counter gave me a weird look as I entered, breathless and terrified. I ignored his gaze and wandered about the store, trying to process what I'd seen. I noticed the man behind the counter was eyeing me warily, probably thinking I was some junkie tweaking out, and he seemed on the verge of telling me to leave. I told myself that I was hallucinating from lack of sleep, and gathered up the items I had come for. I checked out at the register and left with my food in a little white bag swinging next to my thigh.

Jesus Christ, I didn't want to walk down that street again, so I went out of my way to find a different route which would take me longer to get back to my apartment. So yeah, I went the opposite direction and turned down a street I’d never used before, planning to get back to the street my apartment complex was on without passing that same pole again.

I was almost home, and I could almost taste the cheap junk food, and feel the warm comfort of my bed as I snacked and watched TV. I just wanted to stay awake until dawn, I wanted to be in the safety of my apartment, and I was almost there.

But of course, it wouldn't be so simple. I heard a low moan, which sounded like misery and unrest, and I looked up and saw that the utility pole on the curb of the right hand side of the street up ahead was actually the Pole Man again. He stood out more than he did before, there was no brown wood, just a weird black cylindrical body with many arms and hairs as thin as wires. Its head was like a hammer shape, sprouting long hairs, and its eyes glowed yellow like the lamp posts.

His stare was fixed solely on me. He was big, and overwhelmingly tall, and the only thing he wanted to focus on was me, which felt like being a lone insect singled out by that one sadistic kid who liked to rip the legs off bugs. There was no one else on this street, and the windows of the few shoddy looking houses on this block were black, letting me know everyone was fast asleep.

The look we gave each other was like the stare down of a predator and its pretty. I looked at him with total fear and confusion, wondering if I was losing my mind, and he looked at me with something I could only describe as hatred. It didn't have any expression, at least not from what I could see standing where I was, but I could feel it. Like how you feel someone's eyes on you from across a room, feel them burning holes into the back of your head.

This thing, I got the feeling that he didn't want to be noticed, and now that I had noticed him the first time around, he was going to notice me in return. But his attention would be malicious, unlike mine. He stood there in the dim lighting, still looking like a silhouette as if he was covered in darkness, and it felt like he was a sentinel whose only purpose was to ensure I didn't make it past him.

So I turned and ran back, attempting to go the original route and retrace my initial steps from the convenience store. I ran past the store and down a block, turning and feeling hope shine inside me like a beacon as I knew I only had two blocks left to go.

I felt something thin and wiry brush along my back and screamed, propelling myself forward and running even faster than I thought possible. I dropped the bag in my hand and didn't even look behind me. I didn't need to look behind me to know that I was so hellbent on getting back home that I forgot to survey the street for The Pole Man, and had inadvertently ran right under him. His touch burned like an extremely scorching hot light bulb grazing my skin, and then it itched something fierce, like a thousand mosquito bites.

I turned the final corner and saw my apartment complex standing at the end of the street, but he was also there, right across from it, looking for all the world like a thick vertical black line with fine tendrils wriggling and waving in the air. He now swayed gently side to side like a tree. The more I looked at him, the more angry he seemed to get, swaying even more violently and moaning like a disturbed animal.

But I was damned if I was going to stay out in the street all night. I ducked out of sight, behind a building, and made my way to my complex’s back door through the back alleys. I punched in numbers in a keypad and went straight for my front door on the third floor, and the first thing I did was close every curtain inside. My living room and bedroom window faced the street, and I yanked those drapes shut before I even gave myself a chance to look at him again.

Although I couldn't afford to, I took a few sick days, too afraid to step outside even during the daytime. I didn't end up watching any horror movies, I watched light hearted comedies and romances instead as I tried to scrub the image of that monster out of my mind. I have no idea what it was or what it wanted. Well, I suppose it wanted to go unnoticed, if anything, but what it was doing in the urban area of a city I have no clue.

But that was the last encounter I actually had with it, and it left me with an angry red imprint on my back like someone had whipped me with a wire. I moved into a better area in a month, rooming with someone so it wouldn't be too expensive, and once in a blue moon, the few times I must go out at night, I do hear the solemn creaks of a utility pole looming just out of my line of sight. Instead of looking directly towards the sound though, I decide not to give him any sort of unwanted attention.

So if you ever experience something like this, I implore you to do the same, and not look into things too hard when you're alone and it's dark and eerie outside. I just believe some things in this world were simply not meant to be perceived, and The Pole Man is one of them.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/bohemiancouchpotato on 2024-10-10 03:38:46+00:00.

---

Everything was completely normal until last year. We had what felt like a totally typical marriage. I remember the night things started to get weird because it was right after our 5th wedding anniversary.

It was a regular day working at the bank when I got a text from my wife. A text from her in the middle of the day was not unusual, but what the text said was definitely not like my wife.

“Hey babe, I had an idea for something new we could try when you get home;)”

Now, don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to get this text in the middle of my workday. I think any man would be ecstatic at a text like that, but I was having a hard time getting too excited because something about it felt so off. My wife has never been the kind of woman to send a message like this, let alone want to ‘try something new’. She is a very shy and to herself woman.

The day moved at a snail's pace as I anticipated what my wife had in store for me. I tried not to overhype it in my head. I prepared myself to find a baked good or something when I walked into the house. I fully believed she didn't mean to send a winky face.

Not to say I would have been disappointed with whatever she had in store, I'm not much of a wild guy myself, but a little spice never hurt anyone…right?

When I pulled into the driveway I was surprised to see most of the house lights were off. I suspiciously unlocked the front door to see my beautiful wife standing facing away from me in the doorway to the bedroom. My happiness from seeing her quickly grew into confusion when she didn’t turn around to look at me when I walked in and said her name. She would normally run up to me and give me a big hug. In the past, my wife has always been the sweetest person I've ever known. For her to not run up and give me a hug and a kiss was strange.

I made my way inside after waiting a second. Trying to be as loud as possible in the hopes she would suddenly notice I was home and look at me. I got closer and noticed she wasn't moving other than her soft breaths.

I was standing right behind her and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey, sweetheart. Um, are you okay?” right as I got out my words she jumped around to face me with a giggle and smile.

“Ha! That was so funny! Did I scare you?” She said while covering her mouth in an attempt to hide her toothy laugh.

“Yeah, I guess you really did scare me,” I replied with a nervous chuckle. “So was that your special surprise you talked about?”

“Of course not silly! That was just the beginning of the fun.” She remarked with a smirk and a wink.

She grabbed my hand and led me into our bedroom. Under normal circumstances, I would have been over the moon about it, but her scaring me just before leading me into the bedroom felt so off-putting. Did she think this would turn me on somehow? Did one of my buddies reach out to her and tell her to do this? All I knew was that I was not interested in whatever romantic endeavors my wife had planned. I never thought I would say that.

As we got to the bed, she pulled back all the covers and told me to lie down. I honestly felt like telling her I had a headache or something, but it was clear she had been thinking about this all day and I really didn't want to discourage my wife from initiating things in the future.

My mind was spinning with thoughts of what she might do next but she did something I didn't expect. She put the covers back over me and tucked me in. I was both relieved and more confused than ever. She gave me a soft smile then in one fast motion fell to the ground like a sack of wet hammers. I intuitively sat up and leaned over the side of the bed to make sure she was okay and was only met with the ends of her long brown hair peeking out from the bottom of the bed.

“Hey Katlyn, why are you hiding? Can you please come out? I’m not a fan of this game you are playing.” I murmured in a tone trying to not sound freaked out. I was only met with the sound of a muffled giggle.

I sat in bed for the next 10 minutes trying to tell her to stop. It went from polite asking to begging, but the laughter didn't stop. After my begging didn't seem to work, I got the courage to get out of bed and look beneath me. As soon as I put my foot down she grabbed my ankle.

“What the hell Katlyn! This isn't funny. You have fun here, I'm sleeping on the couch.” I slammed the bedroom door behind me and curled up on the living room couch. I could still hear her laughing from the joke I seemed to miss.

It was so hard to sleep that night. The image of her hair barely peeking out from under the mattress really stuck in my head for some reason. It took a while but I finally fell asleep.

The next morning I was up for work a couple hours before her so we didn't get the chance to talk. I had to go into the bedroom to get my clothes for work so I peeked under the bed to check on her. She was sleeping peacefully on her stomach and I tried not to wake her.

It was a long hard day at work. I wasn't really feeling all that scared anymore, more so worried for my wife. I wasn't sure how I could help.

Around 10am I got a text from her.

“Hey Emmett…I'm really sorry about last night. I have a lot of explaining to do once we both get home. Can we talk over some pizza?”

I felt so much better after reading those words. It might seem insignificant, but my wife hates pizza so whenever she is willing to eat it with me I know she is putting in the effort.

It was the end of the day and I headed home looking forward to some pizza and some time with my hopefully back-to-normal wife.

I walked through the door and was relieved to see my wife setting the table and putting down a pizza box. She heard the door shut and ran to give me a hug and a kiss. I really felt like I had my wife back.

“I'm so glad you are home. Sit down, sit down, I got pizza from your favorite place down the road.” She said as she pulled a chair out for me to sit down.

We were both quiet for a minute or two after we both sat down. I don't think either one of us knew how to start the conversation. Just as I was about to speak up, she started to talk.

“So I know last night was weird. I just got really insecure after hearing a few of my coworkers talk about the things they do with their partners and I was worried you thought I was too boring. I know I can be shy and don't like to do anything crazy and started to feel guilty for not doing more with you. I wasn't entirely sure how to even go about it or what you would like so I just went for it. I understand now how I went wrong. I'm sorry I just don't know how to do this kind of thing” She said as if she had rehearsed it many times in her head.

“Why would you ever think I was bored of you? I don't need any of that wild stuff. I married you for a reason. You don't need to try to be something you're not. I love you for who you are.” I said as I grabbed her hand. She took a deep breath and looked at me with watery eyes.

“I love you too, thank you for being so understanding. I really want to make it up to you.”

“That's very kind, but the pizza is enough for me.”

“No, I'm really serious. I did some more research and found a few good ideas.” She said as she put her hand on my thigh.

I was so torn at that moment. I was terrified from the night before, but it seemed like she learned from her mistakes. Sure, it was an incredibly strange mistake to think scaring me would get me in the mood, but she is extremely sheltered. That's what I was trying to tell myself. I knew deep down something was still wrong and I should just say no, but I think many people can understand how your body can go on audo pilot in moments like this. At this point, nothing was going to stop me and I'd give every excuse in the book as to why it was okay to let her do her thing.

Just like last time I was led to our bed. She made me lay down and immediately put my hands over my head into handcuffs and put a blindfold on me. My heart was racing at this point. I was terrified but human nature was taking over and it could not be overridden.

Right as she put the blindfold on me, she stepped back and I didn't hear her move. I was expecting her to do something to me, but nothing…

I laid on the bed feeling more exposed than I ever felt possible. After a couple minutes, I heard the floor squeak and it confirmed that she had been standing right by the bed the whole time. I felt like I could feel her eyes staring at me. It was practically burning a hole in my skin. I heard the light switch flick off. Now I really couldn't see anything.

After a few moments of anticipation, I felt her fingertips graze the sheets near my sides. Then by my feet, just barely missing any part of my body. I started to maybe get hope again that I shouldn't be scared. Sure, this wasn't what I had in mind, but she was new to this. I was very wrong. That was the last moment I had hope for my wife. This was teasing. This was torture.

I was soon met with the sound of her scraping her fingernails against the walls like a wild animal. She moved around the room scratching anything she could find, along with a brief giggle here and there. It was like she was silently moving from corner to corner. I would hear her make the awful scraping then it would stop for a second. Then I would be jumpscared by her doing the same thing in a different spot.

It made my skin crawl like I had a million little bugs crawling on the inside of my skin. I wiggled violently, ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g0a1nd/my_wifes_obsession_is_scaring_me/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Hobosam21 on 2024-10-10 02:56:59+00:00.

---

previously

So I’m at the call center, I’m by myself for now. If you read the last part you know things were getting out of hand, it sounds like they might be under control for now. And if they aren’t, I’ll be here to take your calls and send help.

Dean had been staying at my place off and on lately, Allyson and I were working nights at the call center and he was pulling night shift at the police station.

The three of us were growing steadily more exhausted, the call volume was through the roof. Dean was going out to violent crimes daily. It was wearing us out.

Things came to a head Wednesday night. You see there’s this taco truck that parks a few blocks from my house. Allyson and I were tired of our own cooking so we got dressed up and walked to Angels truck.

I was no stranger to his menu but Allyson was confused, “so what kind of food is this?” I didn’t understand her question, “what do you mean? Like is it authentic Mexican?”

She shook her head, “no like what is a torta or casa or carne?” “Allyson have you never had Mexican?” She looked embarrassed, “no I guess not”.

So we had the sample platters.

On the walk back we saw him, he was behind us but approaching fast. His seven foot tall stature easily visible, he pushed his way past people in his pursuit of us.

Before we had a chance to run a siren whooped right next to us, tires screeched as Dean came to an abrupt stop. He jumped out of the car and quickly placed himself between us and the lumber jack from hell.

“Hey! Stop right there!” To his credit the lumber jack obeyed. Dean rested his hand on his service gun, “ok now slowly lower the ax and place it on the ground”.

The man’s presence was so intimidating I hadn’t noticed the weapon in his hand. The blade was as large as my head and was polished to a mirror like finish.

The lumber jack looked at the ax than back to Dean. He shook his head and stepped forward. Dean raised his voice, “HEY! Hey back up right now!”

The man ignored him, “come on man! No one needs to die today!” the lumber jack was nearly on top of Dean.

Dean swore, he let go of his gun and drew his Taser. He fired it into the lumber jack who stiffened and grunted in pain before grabbing the leads and ripping it from Dean’s hand. Dean stumbled forward and the lumber jack swung a giant fist into his head.

Dean flew back, his skull bouncing off the pavement. He was bleeding but managed to roll over, the lumber jack kicked him in the ribs sending him flying. He landed in a crumpled mess, Dean looked up at us then threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Get out of here!”

In two enormous steps the lumber jack was at Dean’s side, he swung his giant ax! It caught Dean in the chest knocking him clear across the street and out of sight.

I grabbed Allyson’s hand and we ran, when we got to my house the lumber jack wasn’t far behind.

I knew it wouldn’t do much but locked the front door anyways. The gun was upstairs, I had stupidly left it on my nightstand. I rushed to the bottom of the stairs but froze, there was footsteps running across the second floor. Someone was in the house!

Allyson grabbed my arm and pulled me back, “there’s someone up there!” Just then I heard a crash at the front door, an ax head was poking through it. In the distance I heard sirens but they were minutes away and we had seconds left to live.

Allyson opened a door behind me, the basement door. “Abso-fucking -lutely not!” I yelled but she pulled me in with little effort.

The door closed and we were bathed in darkness. We fumbled down the stairs until we reached the bottom and turned on our phone lights.

Allyson went deeper and I hesitantly followed. I doubted this would buy is enough time for the police to arrive but it was better than dying instantly.

That’s when I saw it, an old door propped against the wall. I think it was my houses original door, I just know I never tried to remove it from the basement because it was heavy as can be.

Allyson walked up to the door, she gently traced its perimeter. Light suddenly engulfed us, we both looked up to see the lumber jack at the top of the stairs.

We were cornered.

Allyson grabbed my hand, with her other hand she opened the door. The door that was leaning against a concrete wall. The same door that I had moved out of my way in the past. She opened it, and on the other side was brightly lit forest meadow.

Allyson shoved me through just as that giant ax struck the concrete wall next to the door. I flinched at the shower of sparks. Allyson jumped through the door as well, as she was closing it I saw a second figure at the top of the steps. I couldn’t be sure but it almost looked like Jordan.

The door closed and the air instantly felt different, there had been a strange hum to it before. Now it was calm, almost therapeutically so.

I couldn’t bring myself to care about the weirdness that had just happened. I just wanted to take a nap, but Allyson kept pulling on me.

“Come on Kylie, you can’t stay here. We have to get you back”.

Man did my head feel light, I couldn’t really stand. Is this what huffing markers feels like? I knew I was being led somewhere.

“Focus Kylie, you can’t be here”.

I couldn’t help but laugh, “Allyson you nut, of course I can be here. Where ever I am is here so I’m always here no matter where I go”. Clearly this truth was so profoundly obvious she had to be able to see it.

Allyson yanked my hair, like the little ones on my temple. I opened my eyes, how long had they been closed? Why did Allyson do that? It hurt!

Was that a circle of flames floating in the air?

I hit the ground, way to much feeling rushed into every inch of my body. Before I could stop myself I puked all over the ground.

“fuck!”

Everything hurt, another convulsion racked my body and I dry heaved a couple times. Even my eyes hurt.

Allyson was leaning over me looking concerned. “Are you ok?” I shook my head, hell no I wasn’t ok.

“What just happened Allyson? I feel like I got turned inside out, and where are we?!”

I didn’t recognize our surroundings, we were clearly in some sort of forest but how did we get here?

“That’s normal” Allyson replied, “it will all fade shortly. But we should figure out where we are and start moving”.

My head was still too fuzzy to bother pressing her for answers. And not a nice fuzzy but more like having been kicked in the face by a mule fuzzy.

I did have the wherewithall to pull out my phone, I had service. My first thought was to call Dean but then I remembered what had happened.

Instead I went to Google maps, we were in the Darkwood Park. It looked like there was a gravel road not horribly far away. I mentioned as much and we decided to head for it, we needed backup. I tried calling 911 but there was no answer.

I didn’t get a chance to try any other calls. My phone shut off on me, typical for this area. Everyone knows you don’t take electronics into Darkwood Park.

Allyson dropped into a crouch, I followed suit. “What is it?” I whispered. Allyson looked hesitant to answer, “you should stay here Kylie. There’s something I need to do, it could be dangerous and you’ve already shown me so much kindness and I can’t bear the thought of you getting hurt”.

I put my hands on my hips, “Allyson what are you talking about? First of, if it’s dangerous I will most certainly not let you go alone and secondly what aren’t you telling me?”

There was that aura about her again, nothing that could be picked out. Just a difference, like she wasn’t coded right. That’s when I saw the concrete building behind her, it was nearly invisible but I could see a key pad on it.

“There really isn’t time Kylie, just know that I’m thankful for all that you did”. She stood and started towards the little concrete shed.

I grabbed her hand stopping her, “I’m coming with you. And that’s final”. She pulled her hand free but didn’t argue.

As we got closer I could see the concrete building was just ten by ten with a slanted roof also made out of concrete. The door was thick steel but Allyson typed in a code and it opened smoothly. Inside was almost completely dark, the only thing the building contained was a staircase that spiraled downward.

Each step had a dim light illuminating it. I glanced at Allyson but she was already starting the descent.

A lot of things weren’t adding up, “are your parents really in Europe?” I asked in a whisper. Somehow whispering felt required.

“Yes but not in the way you understood it. I never lied to you, but I did conceal the truth when I felt it was necessary”.

I thought that was a pretty bullshit excuse and told her as much. She didn’t disagree.

“So what are we looking for?” We had reached the bottom of the stairs and were facing another door. “Records, I need to remove information before I can go home. I honestly thought I could get away with living here but it’s just not possible as long as they know I’m here”.

Her answers were getting more and more annoyingly vague. “That’s not much of an answer Allyson”.

She sighed and turned to me, “Kylie I’m not going to tell you everything. It would be counterintuitive if I did. Just let me know if you see computer things”. I was a bit miffed by her reply. I felt like she owed me some answers.

We walked the dark quiet halls of the underground labyrinth for an hour. We found multiple rooms of unknown uses but none that held w...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g09b3l/im_a_911_operator_and_some_of_our_calls_are/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Correct_One1695 on 2024-10-09 19:13:26+00:00.

---

I’m not sure how many of you remember a children’s show called The Goodnight Friends Show. It aired sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s—I can’t recall exactly when, but I remember the times I’d sit on the carpet in front of the TV, completely glued to it. I’ve tried asking people about it recently, but every time, I’m met with blank stares. It’s like no one remembers this show ever existed. That’s probably for the best.

At the time, it was supposed to be a fun, simple puppet show for children. I was young, maybe 5 or 6, and my parents would let me watch it in the evenings before bed. The show was built around four puppet characters—Mr. Tickles, Lucy the Lamb, Dandy Duck, and the lead character, Uncle Goodnight, an old man who always wore a striped nightcap and a long robe. Uncle Goodnight would gather the puppets for bedtime stories, songs, and lessons about "being good." But what I’ve come to realize now is that the lessons were always...off. And the more I think about it, the more disturbing they become.

I didn’t think much of it as a kid; in fact, I loved the show. The puppets were funny, and Uncle Goodnight had this soothing voice. But even then, there were moments when something just didn’t feel right. For example, the music would occasionally shift from playful to this unsettling, slow lullaby, like something you’d hear in a broken music box. The puppets’ laughter would drag on too long, almost becoming shrill and distorted. But it was the “lessons” that truly unsettled me.

I’ll never forget the episode where Uncle Goodnight taught us about keeping secrets.

"Now remember, little ones," Uncle Goodnight said in his calm, gravelly voice, "secrets are special, and keeping them makes you a good friend."

The puppets—Lucy, Dandy, and Mr. Tickles—all nodded enthusiastically.

"But what if someone tells a bad secret?" Lucy the Lamb asked, her wide plastic eyes staring blankly at the camera.

"Oh, Lucy," Uncle Goodnight chuckled, "There are no bad secrets. If you’re told one, you must keep it forever. If you don’t, well..." He paused, the smile fading slightly from his face, "you might lose something very dear to you."

I remember the way his eyes seemed to linger on the camera. At the time, I thought nothing of it. But now, it’s...chilling.

In another episode, Uncle Goodnight taught a lesson about “always being nice.” On the surface, it sounded like something you’d hear on any kids' show. But the execution was...disturbing.

"Being nice is the most important thing you can do," Uncle Goodnight said, his smile wide but stiff, almost forced. "If someone is mean to you, don't get upset. Don't tell anyone. Just smile and let them have their way. That's what nice people do."

Dandy Duck’s puppet wobbled over to Lucy and pushed her off a small stage they were standing on. Lucy hit the ground with a squeak, but she didn’t cry or react. Instead, she just got up, turned to the camera, and smiled.

"See? That’s the right thing to do!" Uncle Goodnight exclaimed with his unsettling cheerfulness. "No matter what happens, always smile!"

Looking back, the entire premise of the show seemed to be about obedience and silence. The more episodes I try to remember, the more I realize just how sinister the lessons were. They weren't about learning or growing—they were about control. But that’s not the worst part.

I remember one episode in particular, and I wish I didn’t.

It was close to the end of the show’s run, and by then, I had started to feel uneasy about watching it, but I didn’t understand why. Something just felt wrong. In this episode, Uncle Goodnight was sitting in his usual armchair, but there were no puppets. The set, which usually had warm, dim lighting, seemed darker, and Uncle Goodnight looked...different. His eyes were sunken in, his smile weaker, almost strained. I still hear his voice sometimes.

"Tonight, children," he said, "I want to talk to you about something very important."

He leaned closer to the camera, his wrinkled face taking up more of the screen than usual.

"Sometimes, we have to say goodbye to our friends. And when we do, we can’t be sad. We have to stay quiet and smile. If you’re really good...they might come back."

I remember staring at the screen, waiting for the puppets to appear. But they never did. Instead, Uncle Goodnight just stared at the camera for what felt like forever, not saying a word. His smile slowly disappeared, leaving his face expressionless. The episode ended abruptly after that, the credits rolling in complete silence.

After that night, I never saw The Goodnight Friends Show again. It just...disappeared. No reruns, no mention of it on any TV listings. Even the VHS tapes we used to record it on were blank. My parents couldn’t remember the show at all. No one could. It was as if it had been wiped from existence.

I’ve spent years trying to find out more about The Goodnight Friends Show, scouring the internet for any trace of it, but there’s nothing—no episodes, no fan discussions, no records of it ever airing. But I know it was real. I can still hear Uncle Goodnight’s voice in my head. I can still see his face, smiling, then not. And I know I’m not the only one who remembers.

Recently, I found an old VHS tape buried in a box in my attic. It wasn’t labeled, but I recognized it immediately—it was one of the tapes we used to record the show. I was hesitant to play it, but my curiosity got the best of me. The tape was old and damaged, but after some effort, I managed to get it working.

It was an episode of The Goodnight Friends Show, but something was...wrong. The quality was grainy, and the sound was distorted. Uncle Goodnight was there, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared at the camera, his eyes dark and hollow. The puppets were lying on the floor behind him, unmoving, their eyes wide and vacant. After what felt like hours, Uncle Goodnight finally spoke.

"You remember, don't you?" he whispered.

Then the screen went black.

I don’t watch the tape anymore. I don’t even go near it. But sometimes, at night, I swear I can hear Uncle Goodnight’s voice, whispering in the dark. "You remember, don't you?"

And I do. I wish I didn’t.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HorrorJunkie123 on 2024-10-09 23:59:25+00:00.

---

When my girlfriend told me that she still hung out with her ex from time to time, I was shocked. Who wouldn’t be, right? I mean, we’d been dating for a whole month and a half before she decided to drop the bomb on me. It obviously stung, but honestly, knowing what I know now, part of me wishes that I’d never found out. 

We were lying in my bed when she told me. I had my arms wrapped snugly around her waist, while some cheesy romance movie that I can’t remember the name of droned on in the background. I don’t know what made her think to tell me at that moment, but it put a damper on things, to say the least. 

“Joey, I have something that I need to tell you,” Allie said, rolling over to face me. 

“Yeah? What’s up?” I replied, staring deeply into her eyes. 

I was head over heels for that girl. I was fresh out of high school, and the way I saw it, Allie was my first real girlfriend. The only one worth putting in an effort for. So, I never could have anticipated what she told me next. 

“You remember my ex-boyfriend, Luke, right?” A pang of jealousy jolted through my chest upon hearing that name. 

“I think so. What about him?” 

Allie sighed, averting her gaze momentarily, before locking eyes with me once again. “I’ve kinda been meeting up with him. Like, sorta regularly.” 

I bolted upright, my mouth involuntarily falling open. My heart shattered into a million pieces, and I instantly assumed the worst. 

“Joey, please, let me explain. It’s not what you think.” 

“Allie, don’t you think this is something that you should have mentioned sooner? We’ve been going on dates and shit for four months at this point, and you didn’t think that was something you should have told me about?” 

She sat up to face me, her cheeks blossoming with color. Her bottom lip began to tremble, and I could see tears welling in her eyes. 

“This is why I didn’t say anything. I knew you’d get all heart-broken and want to dump me. Just give me a chance to explain, please!” 

I reluctantly glanced at her. The utter hurt and betrayal that I was feeling still hadn’t completely dissipated, but the logical part of my brain had started to function. Maybe she really did have a good reason. 

“Okay. Tell me. But I want the truth, alright? No more games.” 

Allie vehemently nodded her head, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. She took a deep breath before responding. 

“So, lately I’ve been getting more into my religion. I decided to start going to church to get right with the Lord, but… Luke is the pastor’s son. I couldn’t avoid him with how small this place is.” 

I mulled it over for a moment. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. From the sound of it, they weren’t seeing each other one-on-one. At least, not with the way she’d framed the story. 

There’s something else, too. Allie’s hometown has a population of thirty-two people. I’d never really considered it, but being that small, it would probably be nearly impossible to stay under the radar. 

“So, you only see one another when you go to worship… Like, in a group.” 

“Yeah. That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” she whimpered. 

I pursed my lips, continuing to think on it. If it wasn’t a big deal, then why did she keep it from me for that long? If Allie didn’t have anything to hide, then wouldn’t she have wanted to tell me in order to avoid problems down the road? Her reasoning didn’t make much sense. But either way, if something fishy was going on, I was determined to get to the bottom of it. 

“Alright, I believe you,” I said. Allie instantly loosened up, and she released a breath. “But, I want you to do something for me.” 

“Anything for you, b-”

“I want to go to church with you,” I blurted out, completely cutting her off. 

Allie’s mouth was still agape, the remainder of her sentence dying on her lips. “Uh… really?” 

“Yeah. I’ve been a dirty sinner, and it wouldn’t hurt to make amends with the Big Man Upstairs,” I replied, a grin inching across my lips. I was a staunch atheist, and Allie knew that, but hey. It’s not like one visit to a chapel would cause me to burst into flames or anything… right? 

Allie giggled, her worried demeanor melting away. “Okay. You can go with me to the Wednesday service tomorrow night, if you’re free, you filthy heathen.” 

***

Before I knew it, the time had arrived. I met Allie at her place, and we made the fifteen-minute walk down to the chapel. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a tad bit nervous. A small, crowded room with dozens of people who would immediately recognize me as an outsider didn’t sound very appealing. But, I’d gotten myself into that mess. It was up to me to deal with the consequences. 

“So, like, is there anything I should know before we go in? It’s been years since I’ve set foot in a church,” I admitted, turning to my girlfriend for comfort as we approached the nearly empty parking lot. 

“Nope, not really. Just sit there and enjoy the ride,” Allie replied, winking at me. My heart fluttered. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Her makeup looked amazing, her hair was curled, and she wore a white, frilled dress that was a great match for her aesthetic. I was one lucky man… Or so I thought. 

Once we finally reached the wooden double doors leading inside, I was a bundle of nerves. Sweat began to bead atop my brow, and my hands were getting clammy. I reached for the door handle to pull it open, but before I could, Allie grabbed my arm. 

“Joey, it’s all going to be okay. No need to worry. I’ll be with you the entire time, alright?” she said, flashing me a warm smile. That was one of the things I adored about my girlfriend - she always knew how to calm me down. 

“Right. Thanks babe,” I said, swinging open the door and holding it for her. 

From the moment I entered the chapel, I could tell that something was off. Everyone in the room snapped their heads towards us and immediately directed their collective attention to me. My blood turned to ice, and my stomach twisted itself into knots. No one uttered a word. Their prying eyes just followed me around the room the whole way to my seat. Allie and I chose to sit in the back, for obvious reasons. 

I was immensely relieved when the parishioners directed their attention back to the preacher, who stood at the helm of the congregation. “What the hell was that?” I hissed under my breath as Allie settled into her seat. 

“Oh, don’t mind them. Just small town drama. You know how that goes,” she whispered into my ear. 

She did have a point. While Allie’s town was microscopic, mine wasn’t much bigger. A population of two hundred fifteen isn’t that big of a leap. In a little backwater town like that, gossiping was most people’s favorite pastime. 

I directed my attention back to the podium, where the preacher had been joined by a young man, clad in a white robe. As he was the only other one remotely close to my age, I assumed that was Allie’s ex. 

As much as it pains me to admit, the guy was handsome. He had a chiseled jawline that looked sharp enough to cut glass, his wavy, dirty-blonde hair was cleanly cropped, and his deep blue eyes seemed to pierce through me every time they made contact with mine. I didn’t hold a candle to him. 

Allie interlaced her fingers with mine and gave my hand a light squeeze. I found it comforting. “Don’t worry about him, okay? Just sit back and relax.” Her voice was silky smooth. I turned to her and nodded, gripping her hand a bit tighter. 

“Good evening everyone,” the preacher said, snapping my focus back to the altar. 

“We will begin the service momentarily. But first, it appears that we have a guest. My name is Father Abrams. Welcome, young man.” 

To my utter horror, the congregation again turned to face me. Their cold expressions sent a chill running down my spine. No one but Father Abrams was smiling. 

“And now, if you will kindly make your way to the front, we will start with the offertory,” he said, taking the focus off of me. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. That relief was short-lived when I had a chance to soak in what he’d just said. The offertory already? I thought that was supposed to take place toward the end of the service. 

“Why are we doing this now? I thought we were going to have to sing hymns and stuff first,” I whispered as Allie and I rose from our seats. 

“My church is different. Just go with it,” Allie replied, tugging me into the aisle. 

I won’t lie - I was mortified walking up to there. Dozens of people were crowded around a plate with a single loaf of homemade bread, their dead, unforgiving stares stabbing through me like daggers. Every instinct told me to run from that place and never look back. But, I loved my girlfriend, so I stayed. 

Now, I wish I would have listened to my gut. 

“Let’s begin. Everyone bow your heads.” I did as I was told, eager to shake the feeling of being watched. 

“Dear Heavenly Father, I humbly ask that you bless this bread and cup with your divine strength, so that we may better serve you. Let us walk in your holy light, and live by your teachings. Amen.” 

Amen. The congregation chanted in unison, startling me. I anxiously glanced up, only to find that all eyes were on me, once again. The whole thing felt wrong. The prayer was too short. The people were too harsh. This didn’t feel anything like a church should. But, I foolishly told myself that I just needed to stick it out a little longer. 

“Young man, come. Guests go first,” F...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g05xcz/sometimes_my_girlfriend_still_meets_up_with_her/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Cheb1337 on 2024-10-09 21:33:12+00:00.

---

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania 2024 

The excavation has gone smoothly these past three weeks, but today we’ve encountered something so strange that it warranted the creation of this entry you’re presently reading. As of this moment I’m not sure whether or not to officially publish these finds, as I fear for the repercussions it may produce and I do not wish to tarnish my professional legacy. 

The reason I’m even writing this entry to begin with is to keep a personal record of these recent events while they’re fresh in my mind, but I also intend to post it anonymously to the internet where it will likely be swept away and disregarded as a hoax or urban legend. I’m fine with that, I just need to get it off my chest. I know it’s not rational or even a good idea to share this with strangers, but I just need to tell someone. Maybe someone will know what is going on. Until I have fully decided on whether or not to publish, I will keep this as anonymous as I can. 

I’m a paleoanthropologist at an esteemed university in the States, and I’ve been leading a small excavation team here in Tanzania at one of the oldest sites of hominin occupation in the world; Olduvai Gorge. Our excavation site was located on the eastern stretches of the gorge, in a particularly hilly area, as scouted by our surveyors. They chose this spot due to the presence of a series of small and seemingly undiscovered rockshelters hidden away behind thick shrubbery and debris. It is nothing short of a miracle that they were able to be located by our team. Over these past weeks we have found here an abundance of lithic assemblages, most of them consisting of Oldowan scrapers and cores, but we also found a pair of Acheulean handaxes and a few bifacial points. Deep in one of the rock shelters we even unearthed the partial remains of what is most likely an Australopithecine upper skull, though further osteological analysis is pending. 

All seemed to be going well until today, when my lunch break was interrupted by one of my students. I will refer to him as Edward. He came rushing over from the easternmost rockshelter, nearly stumbling over all the pebbles and sticks in his way as he hurried down the hill toward the tents, calling my name. 

I rose from my seat to greet him, fearing that some sort of accident had happened. 

“What is it?” I anxiously inquired. I had never seen him this upset. 

“You gotta come check this out. Right now!” He replied enigmatically and ushered me to follow him. 

I went with him up the hill and into the mouth of the rock shelter. Immediately I noticed what all the fuss was about. Deep in the innermost end of the rock shelter, past all the excavation tools and equipment, where there had previously been a solid rock wall, there was now a small opening. 

“I saw this small hole next to this big rock, and I just kept digging and digging and I moved some more rocks and I —”

“Oh, okay. You should have notified me sooner.” I said, cutting him off as I ventured deeper into the shelter, toward the gaping hole. I feared that, in his eagerness, he may have disturbed an important context. 

“—but the thing is, I looked inside it, you know with my light and whatnot, and I saw these, uh…things. You better take a look”

I crouched down beside the hole and searched my pockets for my flashlight. The opening seemed big enough for someone to crawl into, and as I turned on the light, the shining beam illuminated a massive cavern on the other side, probably big enough to stand in. 

“Remarkable” I uttered.

“Shine your light at the far end walls. Do you see them?” Edward probed. 

I did as he had asked me, and as my light moved across the dusty volcanic rock walls of the chamber, I laid my eyes on something that made my heart skip a beat. First believing it to be merely a trick of the light, I stuck my head deeper into the opening to get a better view. 

“You see them, don’t you?” Edward’s voice echoed behind me. 

Lost for words, I began crawling through the opening, eagerly disregarding any health and safety precautions one would be wise to employ when venturing into such undiscovered cave environments. I heard Edward calling out to me as I did so, begging me to be careful. I scraped up my arms and legs in the process, and as I emerged on the other side I was completely covered in dust, which I promptly brushed off my rugged clothes as I stood up. 

On the far end wall were a series of rough carvings onto the rock. Carvings in the Latin alphabet. Carvings in English. The whole wall was full of them, as if it was a page in a book. Behind me I heard Edward grunting and shuffling as he made his way through the opening to join me in my astonishment. I scanned the rest of the cavern with my light and saw that the inscriptions continued on the other surfaces and walls of the chamber. Not only that, but I noticed a series of strange artifacts scattered about, seemingly undisturbed for millennia. Among them were several aforementioned Oldowan stone tools and a ring made of mostly pure gold judging by its pristine condition, as well as some bones randomly strewn around. 

My immediate thoughts were that the cave must have been used in modern times, perhaps recently. I hadn’t yet actually read the content of what was scribbled on the walls, but even still, something about that explanation immediately felt off. The strata next to where the opening had been was undisturbed and had naturally accumulated for millions of years. I should know because I monitored it closely yesterday when we started digging in that part of the rockshelter. I realize some of you reading this might not be familiar with stratigraphy and thus not fully understand why this would be an issue when regarding the date of the inscriptions, but those well acquainted with the law of superposition should know exactly why this shouldn’t be possible. If you don’t, I urge you to google it. But to make a long story short however, the law of superposition states that geological layers accumulate over time, and that under normal circumstances, the layers that are the oldest are those found further down. 

Now, assuming the entrance we came in is the only entrance into the cave, and taking into consideration the opening was buried under a dozen stratigraphical layers, it means that it was last sealed around a million years ago at the earliest. 

Everything about this was strikingly anachronistic, but I saw no other explanation. There seemed to be no other way to enter the cave, and there was no sign of a previous collapse.  

“What is this, Edward?” I asked him, who was now full of dirt and standing beside me. “Are you pulling my leg here? Is this some kind of elaborate joke?”. 

“No sir, I promise.” 

“It shouldn’t be possible then” I said pacing back and forth. 

“Yet, evidently it is.” he somewhat snarkily replied. I ignored him.

My pacing took me around a slight bend in the cave and I noticed a heap of what looked like different chunks of various metals. Some seemed to be nearly reduced to dust as a result of deterioration over time, while others looked pretty much to be in pristine condition, although not as shiny as they once probably were. There were also snake-like lines in the sandy floor of the cave with traces of heavily oxidized copper encompassed within them. Had these once been wires? If they were ever covered in plastic, as most wires today are, it must have broken down millennia ago, leaving no trace. Quite remarkable.

“Doc, you should see what’s written on these walls”. Edward’s voice echoed around the bend. 

“Just a second.” I replied, carefully observing the strange assemblage and analyzing it as best as I could. I had never seen anything like it in my life. Was this a machine?

“Woah, like you really need to come right now.” Edward again urged me. 

I emerged from behind the bend to see what all the fuss was about, and when I did I noticed the dusty visage of Edward looking pale as a ghost. 

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking at where the beam of his flashlight was illuminating the inscribed wall. 

"Read what it says!" Edward urged me. And so I did.

In the following section of this entry I will recount word for word what was inscribed on those walls. Where there is significant erosion or other obstruction of the text, I have filled in the gaps. From what I interpreted to be the beginning, the upper left corner, it read as follows:

“Upon arrival, the machine broke down almost instantaneously. I am the only living Homo Sapiens in the world, and there won’t be another like me for at least 2 million years. There is an overwhelming hopelessness to it all. There is no hope for me, I have accepted it. These things… these devils…have left me no other choice than to seal myself into this… this tomb. I can hear them at night, digging and scratching.”

Thus read the first section of the text. Beneath it the next one read:

*“My name is Bill Hartnell and I was born on the 29th of September 2029 in Exeter, England, and this is my full story. I’m stuck in here for the foreseeable future, so I might as well tell my tale in as much detail as I can. I’ve got nothing better to do to pass my remaining time. Apologies if I don’t get to finish it. Writing on this wall is somewhat tedious however, so I will be concise, forgive me. I studied Quantum Mechanics at Exon and graduated with my PhD in 2058. The machine I built subsequently took me 10 years to complete and was o...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g02seb/im_an_anthropologist_digging_at_one_of_the_oldest/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HerScreams on 2024-10-09 20:15:37+00:00.

---

It took me almost three years of therapy to process what happened to me in that village and to finally be able to talk about it with others. For a long time, I believed what I experienced was tied to the trauma of losing my mother. My therapist thought it might be PTSD… grief playing tricks on my mind, making me see and feel things that weren’t real. And for a while, I accepted that explanation.

But deep down..I know it was more than that. It wasn’t just my grief. What happened in that village was real...

It all started in late 2021, when a friend recommended I watch the Chernobyl miniseries. I was hooked from the first episode, like an addict to cocaine. After watching it, I became obsessed. I spent weeks reading everything I could find about Chernobyl. Not just the facts, but the personal stories, the ones that spoke of a world frozen in time and abandoned overnight. The thought of visiting those places, left to decay in eerie silence, consumed me.

That’s how I found the website offering tours near the exclusion zone. The moment I booked the trip, it felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I told myself it was just curiosity, but the pull was stronger than that. It was as if something was drawing me in, beyond just fascination. I arrived in Ukraine a few weeks later, ready to finally see this forgotten world for myself.

I ended up on a small bus with a guide and a group of people, strangers bound together by the same curiosity that had brought us all there. The bus rumbled along the uneven road, its windows fogged from the cold, damp air outside. Mist hung heavy around us, swallowing everything beyond a few feet and turning the landscape into a blur of shadowy shapes. Broken buildings and twisted trees flashed by, fading into the white fog before I could fully make them out.

As the bus crept deeper into the fog, I felt the weight of the place pressing down on me. The excitement I had felt before started to fade, replaced by a growing sense of unease. The air was cold, sharper than I expected, and the mist clung to everything around us. The guide was explaining our next stop: Yaniv . A village only a few kilometers from the reactor, abandoned like so many others. His words barely registered. My mind was focused on what was waiting outside, on the crumbling remains of a place that had been left behind.

We slowed to a stop. The doors hissed open, letting in a cold, biting air that clawed at my skin. My boots hit the ground, and the cold earth seemed to absorb the sound, muffling everything. The others murmured behind me, their voices low, blending into the dense fog that swallowed the village of Yaniv whole.

The guide pointed to the crumbling buildings, his words drifting through the mist. I wasn’t listening. I stood apart, eyes tracing the jagged lines of rooftops and shattered windows. The village looked frozen, untouched for decades. No movement. No sound. Only the mist, curling through the streets like something alive, weaving around the broken structures.

My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag. The hum of the Geiger counter clipped to my jacket was a steady reminder of where I was. I didn’t need it to remind me of the unseen threat in the air. But that wasn’t what held me still. There was something else. A weight hung over the village, thick and heavy, like the air itself was watching.

I stepped away from the group, moving toward one of the houses. The door hung loosely, barely attached to its frame, and the windows were broken, dark openings that gave no hint of what lay inside. The fog thickened, wrapping itself around my legs as I moved closer, making it hard to see beyond a few feet. The others faded behind me, their voices disappearing into the white silence.

There was nothing left of Yaniv. Just bones of what had been, crumbling into the earth. But as I stood there, staring into the shadows of the abandoned house, I felt it. A shiver crawled up my spine, slow and deliberate, like a hand brushing against the back of my neck.

The silence deepened as I moved closer to the house. My breath hung in the cold air, curling into thin wisps that disappeared into the fog. The ground beneath my feet was uneven, cracked by time and abandonment, and each step seemed to echo in the stillness around me.

I paused at the threshold, my hand hovering just inches from the rough wooden door. The wood was warped, weathered by years of exposure, and the faint creak of the door moving slightly in the wind made my pulse quicken. Inside, there was nothing but darkness, a heavy kind that seemed to press against the broken walls, swallowing everything.

The air was colder here, sharper, biting at my skin. My eyes flicked back to the others in the group, now distant figures, barely visible through the fog. Their voices were faint murmurs, like whispers carried on the wind. I was alone, standing in front of a place that had been forgotten by the world.

Suddenly , a voice behind me broke through the stillness, low and hoarse. “You don’t want to go in there...”

I spun around. A man stood a few feet away, his face pale, gaunt, his clothes worn and dirt-stained.

His eyes were fixed on mine.. wide and unblinking, the fog between us swirling with each shallow breath he took. His skin was too pale, stretched thin over hollow cheeks and dark, sunken eyes. He looked worn, as if whatever had once made him human had been slowly pulled away, leaving only a shadow of the person he might have been.

He didn’t seem to notice my stare, his own eyes flicking nervously around the fog as if expecting something to materialize out of it. His chest rose and fell rapidly, each breath creating small clouds of vapor that dissolved almost instantly in the cold air.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said , his voice barely above a whisper. His gaze flicked to the house, then back to me. His body was tense, like he was ready to bolt at the slightest movement.

“I’m with a tour group,” I said, trying to sound confident, but my voice faltered. “We have a guide… we were exploring the village.”

His gaze snapped back to mine, sharp and filled with something close to desperation. “What group?” he asked, his voice suddenly tight, eyes narrowing.

I swallowed, glancing around at the thick fog that had swallowed the village. The others were gone, and the silence was suffocating. “The fog..it must have separated us.”

He didn’t seem convinced. His expression darkened, his fingers twitching at his sides. “There are rules here,” he muttered, almost to himself. “You need to follow them if you want to leave.”

“What rules?” I asked, my throat tightening with the weight of his words.

He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Don’t stay out after dark. Don’t let them see you’ve noticed them. Never follow the lights and never enter a house that has a red door.”

I frowned. “A red door? Why so specific?” The rule felt oddly precise, and for a moment, it almost seemed ridiculous.

The man’s face turned serious, his voice low but sharp. “It’s not just the color. It’s what’s behind it. You can’t ever open a red door in this village...”

I shook my head, still not understanding. “But why? What’s behind it?”

He leaned in closer, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know exactly. Nobody does. But the ones who’ve opened a red door… they never come back. It’s like they vanish, swallowed by whatever’s in there. The house, the door...it’s not part of this world. Once you cross through, there’s no coming back.”

I felt a chill run down my spine, his words carrying an eerie weight. “But what’s inside?” I asked, my voice quieter now.

He shook his head, his expression grim. “No one knows for sure. Some say it’s a trap, that it leads to something that isn’t part of this village. Others say there’s something inside ... something waiting. And it feeds off people’s fear..”

“Whatever it is, the moment you touch that door, it knows you’re there. And it won’t let you go.”

My pulse quickened. “What happens if I break the other rules?”

His eyes darted back to me, and his voice dropped even lower. “They’ll find you.”

Before I could speak again, a flicker of light appeared in the distance, cutting through the fog like a small beacon. It was faint, but steady, and seemed to hover just beyond the crumbling rooftops.

The man’s face drained of color, his body stiffening as he stared at the glow. “Don’t follow it,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “No matter how close it seems.”

My chest tightened, and I couldn’t pull my eyes away from it. The air felt heavier, pressing against my skin, cold and thick. It wasn’t just the light that unsettled me..it was the way it seemed to move, slowly drifting like it was searching for something.

“We need to leave, before they come.” he muttered. His eyes darted toward the village, scanning the buildings around us.

Without another word, the man tugged at my sleeve, pulling me along. My feet felt sluggish, but I followed him, each step echoing in the stillness of the village. The ground shifted beneath me, uneven and cold, the air heavy with the weight of silence.

The houses rose around us, dark shapes against the mist. Each building seemed to sag under the weight of years, some barely standing, others collapsed into rubble. But as we moved, one house stood out. It was mostly intact, its windows dark and lifeless, but the door…a sharp, vivid red..stood out like a wound in the fog.

I froze.

...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g00zfj/this_town_near_chernobyl_has_a_strange_set_of/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-10-09 19:47:11+00:00.

---

I’ve always had a bad habit of getting myself into trouble. But I’ve never accidentally walked headfirst into a disaster before.

A group of friends invited me to a newly opened bar. Work ran late and I was the last one still on the way. The address led me downtown to an area I’d never been to before. I’d only moved to the city a year ago so I was still finding my way around. I took the bus relying on my GPS. At some point, the signal was lost because of the large buildings. My GPS jumped around confused about where I was. I’ve always had issues like this on the rare trip to the larger populated areas. Normally I had someone with me to fill in the blanks before I got too lost. This time my phone guided me to the wrong location.

I stepped off the bus and followed the jumpy directions on the screen until it told me I arrived at my destination. In front was a small alleyway that led to a bright red door. I heard the sounds of music mixed with voices. Assuming this was the back entrance to the bar I walked forward hoping I could go in that way. The door opened to worn wooden steps with flaking paint. If it weren’t for the clear sounds of activity, I would have second-guessed myself.

At the bottom was a dim smokey room with a large wooden bar on one side. A handful of tables filled the rest of the space. Most were empty aside from a few people with their backs turned towards the door. I didn’t see my friends and started to think I got the wrong place. Maybe I could ask for directions since I was here.

My eyes adjusted as I walked closer to the bar. The person behind it appeared... odd. This must either be a themed place or some sort of early Halloween event was happening. At first, I assumed he had some kind of hairpiece. When he turned to face me, I stopped in my tracks seeing his face. It appeared bright blue flowers were growing out of the left side of his face upwards mixing with his long mossy hair. Whatever makeup he used was very impressive. The sight of the leaves coming through the skin made me internally squirm.

“Um...” I started getting the attention of the others.

Sweat started at the base of my neck. The others were also dressed up. Some had horns or glowing eyes. I swear I noticed a pair of realistic hooves peek out from under the table.

“Could you-” I got cut off by a smaller person suddenly slamming into my side and hooking their arm into mine.

“There you care! You’re late!” A thin whispery voice said.

Looking down I saw it belonged to a short person with long grey smoke-like hair. At first, I thought it was a girl but the loose top gave away his gender. My eyes must have been playing tricks on me. His bare feet looked to be floating off the ground for a moment and a long lion tail flicked behind him.

“Barry, I’m taking my client to one of the comfort rooms. Can you ask Mitty to drop off some drinks?” He asked the bartender who nodded.

I found myself getting pulled aside with strength I didn’t think this guy had. I was confused to put it lightly. He guided us to a hallway lined with more doors. We quickly ducked inside into a small room with a deep red leather couch taking up most of the space. I started to panic wondering what on Earth I got myself into.

The stranger sat down letting out a massive sigh. His face was red from embarrassment. He didn’t appear threatening. I sat beside him waiting for answers.

“What is going on?” I finally asked after giving him a moment.

“I should be asking you that! How did you even get in here!” He pressed leaning forward.

His voice was so light that even though he was raising it, it sounded like it could be lost in a gust of wind.

“I walked in here? What kind of dress-up event is going on? How does your tail work?”

I reached out for the tail on the couch cushion for it to be pulled away from my hand. The stranger studied my face deciding if I was lying or not.

“You really don’t know what kind of place you walked into?” He said cautiously.

“It’s just a bar.” I shrugged.

My words were proved very, very wrong after a knock came to the door. It opened a second afterward, a set of drinks on a small silver serving tray in one of the many hands of the creature that appeared. My body shrank back, the massive shape spilling through the door like liquid. It appeared to be made up of a mess of dark limbs swimming into each other. The drinks were set down on the small table and the creature slipped away leaving behind a strange burnt smell.

I sat in shock trying to get my heart to slow down. I was too scared to move aside from glancing to my side to see if the other person in the room was freaked out as well. When I was able, I grabbed the drink chugging it in one go. If it was poisoned, then I wouldn’t need to deal with seeing any more of those monsters.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped.

“Bitty. He's nicer than Mitty.”

Yeah, that didn’t explain anything at all.

“What about you?” I said when I realized we never introduced ourselves.

“I’m Wisp.” He awkwardly held out his hand for me to shake.

“Joey.” I said feeling odd that a simple handshake calmed me down a little.

I stood trying to pace around the room attempting to make sense of all of this.

“What is even going on? I mean, that was a monster. Things like that aren’t real. How can they be without people knowing about it?” I questioned my fear coming back.

“Do you want the really long and complicated answer you might not understand or the simple one?” Wisp offered.

“Simple.”

“Magic.” He shrugged.

I let myself sink back down onto the couch head swimming. Ok sure, whatever, monsters and magic were real. That didn’t help me out right then. I needed to get out of there.

“I’m sorry this happened. Normally humans can’t enter this place. I’m not sure if it was by accident, you were able to get in here or it was on purpose to lure in an unaware meal by the bar owner.” He looked distraught over the mix-up.

I had the feeling no one would expect Wisp to step up and help an unsuspecting human giving the lie that he had been waiting for me some credit. He saved my life by some very quick thinking.

“Can I just wait a few minutes and just leave?” I questioned.

Wisp shook his head, his hair moving slowly as if underwater.

“Maybe. There is a chance you’ll be able to walk out of here after it seems like you’re done with my services. The issue is I owe a few people outside favors. If one of them asks me to hand you over for a meal, I’ll need to listen to them or give up myself instead. I would like to think of a way for both of us to get out of here.” He explained with another shake of his head.

I studied him closer than before. He had slim delicate features and clothing made of a light almost sheer fabric. I found my mind wandering over what kind of services he offered. He did call this a comfort room after all.

“You uh... What services? I mean, surely they’ll be listening for certain noises...” I commented feeling my face starting to turn a shade of pink.

An amused smirk appeared on Wisp’s face following my train of thought.

“I’m good at massages. What do you think I offered?” He teased.

My face turned a deeper shade of red as I refused to answer.

“Can’t I just sneak out the back door?” I suggested.

His face lit up with an enthusiastic nod. He grabbed my wrist ready to lead.

“We’ll try that!”

He opened the door and poked his head out seeing that the coast was clear. Slowly we walked down the long hallway of red doors the stress building. I stopped when I heard a scream cut short behind one of those doors. A Faint crunch came that made my skin crawl. Glancing at Wisp his expression confirmed what I suspected. These rooms were used for monsters to eat in private as well as to do other things. I tightened my grip on his small hand relieved he had been the one to approach me at the bar.

We finally found the end of the hallway. It ended in two paths. One appeared to go further inside with another line of doors, and the other led to a double set of doors. Through the circular window, I saw it was a kitchen. There was also a set of doors I assumed to be for some washrooms. We needed to get through the kitchen without anyone noticing us and we were in the clear.

Somehow something had been following us without making a single sound. I suddenly felt eyes at my back. Glancing over my shoulder I was met with a horrifying sight. The monster behind had been the same one that served the drinks. The body filled the entire hallway behind us. The shapeless mass silently moved the countless limbs and black liquid connecting them.

A hand from the mass reached out and pointed in the direction of the washrooms. Wisp gave me a stressed expression showing I should go inside the room. Dragging Wisp behind me we stumbled inside locking the door behind us. The room was small with only a single sink and two stalls. I waited for my heart to slow down enough to think clearly.

“Should we-” I started.

Voices outside made me shut up really fast. My hands flew to the door hands to keep it locked.

“Do you know what room they’re in?” The deeper voice asked.

“Why are you asking? Unlike me, Wisp doesn’t owe you a meal.” The softer voice pointed out.

“It’s a human that walked in here with his own free will. He exposed himself to us. I can eat him if I want to without breaking any rules. Come on, I’ll share.”

I held my breath, my brain almost shutting down from fear. God, why did I ma...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1g00b15/i_walked_into_the_wrong_bar/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/lnr-phoenix on 2024-10-09 18:07:11+00:00.

---

Hopefully this is the right place for this, because I have no idea what else to do. The police are useless. No one I’ve talked to takes me seriously. I know this story sounds impossible but SOMETHING happened to my brother and my friend and I need to figure out what it was and how to get them back, I am so scared something horrible has happened to them. 

The cops found this typed up on Steph’s phone and asked me if I could explain it. (I can’t.) It looks like she was trying to post it here but couldn’t get enough of a signal for it to go through. I’m posting it now to see if anyone can actually help, because I can’t make any sense of it. 

I haven’t changed a thing, I even left the typos in case I missed something important. Steph didn’t mention the name of the town and I won’t either because I don’t think anyone should go looking for it. I certainly won’t be going back any time soon, not unless I have to.

Please, just read, and help if you can.

****

I’m sorry for any typos or if I leave stuff out, I’m trying to make this make sense but I don’t have long and it’s getting hard to type. I hope somebody can tell me what’s going on and how to stop it, I'm so fucking scared and I don't know what to do.

I’m in this cabin in the mountains in Pennsylvania, I don’t even know what this fuckign place is called, I just followed my friend’s directions, please just help me.

I’m supposed to be dogsitting for my friend’s brother but shit started going wrong pretty much immediately.

My friend Amy, we’re 26 now but we’ve known each other since sixth grade, she knew I was strapped for cash and she let me know her brother needed a dog sitter this weekend. I’m not really a dog person–there was an incident when I was a kid, I still have the scar to prove it, it took me for-fucking-ever to mostly move past it–but I need the money. ANd I won’t lie, I’ve always kind of had a crush on her brother, so I jumped at the chance to get his number and maybe an in with him.

WHat she failed to tell me is that her brother, jason, lived in a creepy-ass cabin in the middle of the creepy-ass woods in the creepy-ass mountains. I knww it was rural, she’d said as much before, but I figured he was at least near a town of some kind. Nope. Miles from anything that could remotely be called a town. I probably should have guessed when Amy sent me typed-up directions instead of just giving me an address to plug into Google Maps, but I was toorelieved about the job and didn’t ask questions.

I’d been trundling along a dirt road for over an hour, maybe two, wincing every time I hit an unavoidable pothole in my crappy old car, before it happened. It was dark as hell, I couldn’t see more than  ten feet in front of me even with my highbeams on–no streetlights, and the trees blocked every last scrap of moonlight.

Anyway. I was creeping along, trying not to do any permanent damage to my car. I was munching on some of the french fries I’d picked up before I got off the highway–and thank god, since I doubted any pizza place would deliver out here, and I was too wiped to cook for myself.

I had rolled a window down since my AC was on the fritz and the weather was weirdly hot for this time of year. I always thought of the woods as quiet, butt he noise was ungodly–the crickets  were absolutely shrieking, to the point where I couldn’t hear half of what was bening said on the podcast I was listening to. It was honestly starting to creep me out, but I couldn’t put the window up or I’d boil to death in the car. 

Then I heard what sounded like a scream – a human scream – and hit the breaks. I realized pretty quickly it couldn;t be a person, not this far out in the wilderness, and on what must be Jason’s private property. I knew some animals could make a sound like that. A fox? A mountain lion? Whatever it was, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. I hit the gas again.

Something streaked across the road in front of me and I slammed on the breaks and swerved, almost careening off the road in the process.

I threw the car into park, my heart pounding, hacking up the french fry I’d been chewing.

When I’d finally coughed it up and caught my breath, I heard the barking. I looked out, and there was a dog on the side of the road, barking and growling, hackles raised. It had a collar on, so it was clearly someone’s pet, not anything wild.

I was too scared to get out of the car in case the dog decided to lunge at me, so I rolled the window up until it was only open a crack and whsitled. It took a few tries, but eventually the dog turned to look at me.

Almost instantly, its demeanor changed. Ears went back, tail tucked between its legs, it crawled over to my car, jumping up and scratching at the window to be let in.

That’s when I saw the tag–it had the dog’s name, BARNEY, printed on it, alogn with the owner’s phone number. This was Jason’s dog.

I looked into the trees, wondering what he’d been barking at. Probably whatever I’d heard screaming. I needed to get out of here, with Barney.

I unbuckles myself, reached back and threw open the back door. Barney leapt in, panting and shaking, and I slammed the door shut.

The dog whipped around to look at me, and I swear for a second he looked ready to attack. But he sniffed my hand and calmed down again, laying down on the back seat. I turned and took off again, hands shaking. 

I turned a corner and saw Jason’s house. On top I saw the silhouette of what appeared to be a large fallen tree limb with gnarled branches sticking out in every direction. But the house was in a large clearing, no trees nearby. It wasn’t until I pulled up closer to the house that I relized what it was.

A mass of antenndas and satellite dishes covering basically the whole top of the house, with cables stretched and twisted between them to form one haphazard mass, making the whole thing look like the floor of an untamed jungle.

What the FUCK could that be for? Was that how jason had an internet connection out here? Or was he losing his mind from the isolation and building his own techie version of the Sarah Winchester house at the instructions of the ghosts in his head? Can’t say I’d blame him if he was, being out here by himself.

All the lights were on, and I could see his car parked around the side of the cabin. ANd, right in front of me, I saw the front door open wide.

Immediately, a million different horrifyign scenarios run through my mind–Did Jason have some kind of terrible accident? A heart attack? And run from the house for help? Did someone break in? Could that have been him screaming in the trees?

I checked my phone–no bars out here. I knew Jason must have wifi because he worked remotely from up here , but it must not extend outside.

I glanced at my mirror. Barney was quiet and still now, but his eyes were wide open, watching me intently.

Sighing, I got out of the car, walked up to the porch. I glanced through the open door, standing way back–everything looked okay from out here. I took one tentative step over the threshold. 

Still nothing out of place. No signs of a struggle. The furniture was all upright and where it should be. Jason’s big-screen TV and expensive looking speakers were still there and his car keys sat on the dining room table so I doubted it was burglars. I was still fucking freaked though.

Next to the fireplace, a glass-front cabinet contained a number of rifles. I thought having one might make me feel safer, but I had no idea how to use one,or even where Jason kept ammunition, so they were useless to me. Then my eyes moved to the fireplace, where two axes were mounted over the mantle. 

Perfect.

I took one down–it was heavier than I expected, but it would have to do.

I went from room to room quietly as I could, but everything looked normal.

Finally, I made my to Jason’s office. My heart was practically beating through my chest now. I turned the knob and pushed it open half an inch. I used both hands to hold the ax over my head, ready to strike, then kicked the door open and jumped back.

The room was pitch black, eprfectly dark. Somehow the light from the hallway didn’t seem to seep in there at all. Someone could be hiding out in there and I’d have no way of knowing. I tried to think what to do.

“Hey!” I said. “The cops are on their way, so you better not do anything stupid. Just…stay back. Or you’re in deep shit.”

My voice sounded high-pitched and shaky, not intimidating like I’d hoped. I inched forward and, against my better judgment, reached inside the doorframe to search for a light switch, holding the ax awkwardly in my other hand. Any second I expected something to reach out and grab me and yank me into the yawning black.

But it didn’t. I found the light, switched it on, d.

The light, first of all, was weird. Dense and orange-brown, so that I could barely see even with it on.

Inside the room, there was no one. But this place was weird as shit. I’d expected a desk, a chair, a computer–normal office stuff. There were a bunch of computer monitor, maybe a dozen? More? On a series of folding tables that wrapped around the room. Under the tables, a bunch of processors were stacked horizontally on top of one another, basically as many as could physically fit down there, and everything was connected with a tangle of cords and wires, some of which ran up the wall and into the ceiling. One long cord  stretched out of this mess and connected to a cube sitting in the center of the ...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/No-Glass-3279 on 2024-10-09 16:41:21+00:00.

---

The iron shutters are already closed, each one clanging into place as Dad moves from window to window, his face set and pale in the fading light. I press my fingers to the cold metal, feeling their weight and the chill that seeps through. They’re old, heavy, and rusted, but they’re the only thing standing between us and her. Lady Gray. The only thing keeping her out. I try to convince myself they’ll hold, but every year someone makes a mistake, and she gets in.

Our town is small, barely 500 people, nestled by the sea. On the surface, it’s picturesque—white houses with picket fences, gardens bursting with flowers, and the kind of charm you see on postcards. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was perfect. But there’s a heaviness here, like a fog that settles from the sea and never quite leaves. It lingers, weighing down on you, making it hard to breathe. Everyone feels it. Everyone knows why. The shutters on every house aren’t just a quaint tradition; they’re a necessity. The iron, ancient and rusting, is meant to keep her out.

Lady Gray. The wife of the town’s founder, her story woven into every brick and stone of this place. The older folks say she was once beautiful, but there was nothing beautiful about her now. She had a habit of collecting families, luring them into her grasp. What she did to them is still a mystery, but when they tore up her garden—bodies, small and large, were found beneath the flowers she so carefully tended—it was clear she was far more than a ghost story. The gardener, who found the first tiny skull, dropped his shovel and ran straight to the constable, leaving the gardenias trampled in his wake. That night, her laughter filled the air, and she’s haunted us ever since.

Tonight, she comes again. We’ve been preparing for hours. Every few months, Mr. Shawn, the Crosscreek Cemetery caretaker, hears the first sign—Lady Gray’s laughter echoing from her tomb. It’s his warning to us all. We have one job: seal up the house. One forgotten window, a single open door, that’s all she needs.

We’re in the basement now. Mom, Dad, my little brother, and me, huddled together like animals in a den. The air is thick with the scent of fear and the musty smell of the old blankets we clutch like they’ll protect us. The darkness presses down, and every sound feels too loud. My heart pounds so hard I’m sure she can hear it. We sit in silence, listening. Waiting.

And then it begins—the laughter, a high-pitched cackle that echoes through the streets. It’s close, so close it feels like she’s standing right outside our door, her breath fogging the glass. Then, it drifts, moving away like she’s toying with us, hiding just out of sight. I clamp my hands over my ears, but it doesn’t help. The sound worms its way into my head, clawing at the edges of my sanity.

The next thing I hear is the scratching. It’s soft at first, like the rustle of branches against the shutters, but then it grows louder, scraping and clawing as if she’s testing every window, every door, looking for a weak spot. My brother whimpers beside me, and I squeeze his hand, trying to stay calm. My breath comes in short, panicked gasps. It’s like she’s everywhere at once—above us, below us, scratching at the roof, clawing at the walls. I can almost feel her long nails dragging against the iron, seeking a way in.

Minutes pass like hours. The scratching intensifies, each scrape a reminder that she’s out there, waiting.

Suddenly, silence.

We sit in the quiet for a while, barely daring to breathe until we heard it. Faint at first but growing louder, come the screams. Someone else this time. My mother’s grip tightens on my arm, her nails digging into my skin, but I barely feel it. All I can focus on is that scream—high, desperate, and echoing through the night. We listen, paralyzed, every muscle frozen in terror as the sound rises and then fades into silence.

When the dawn finally breaks, we venture out. The air is heavy with dread as we learn the news. It was the McLearys. They’d forgotten to shutter their attic. The hazmat team is still there, their suits glinting in the morning sun as they comb through what’s left. I don’t want to know what they’ve found.

If you ever think about moving to Terra Grace, Maine, don’t. Ignore the beautiful two-story with its cheerful garden and odd iron shutters listed on the website for a too-good-to-be-true price. Maybe try the South instead.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/princessjasminebelle on 2024-10-09 15:51:56+00:00.

---

A few years ago when I was younger, I used to stay at my dad’s house a lot. During this time, I used to sleep on the sofa a lot and my sleep schedule was awful. If I had to guess I would say I committed to just falling asleep every night on the sofa maybe for almost an entire year. The only people in the house was me, my brother who at the time was no less than 4 or 5 years old, and my dad. My dad’s house was pretty big especially the downstairs and the area itself was pretty sketchy but none of this bothered me as I spent every night staying awake watching TV and playing video games until I fell asleep on the sofa from exhaustion. Nothing out of the ordinary ever really happened from what I can remember while being alone downstairs apart from one night which really messed with my head.

I was doing my usual watching TV into the late hours of the night, my dad and brother slept in the same bed upstairs and they were both already fast asleep. There was a sofa and a chair in the living room and on the back of the chair was a pile of blankets that were placed perfectly on top of each other , I also had a laptop that I would use to death while I was watching TV, I remember that night I was getting so tired that I slouched down into the sofa, still with my laptop screen and the TV turned on in front of me. I fell asleep soon after that, I woke up feeling confused as when I finally opened my eyes, one of the blankets from the back of the chair was neatly placed on top of me, I turned my head to where my laptop was, or where my laptop should’ve been. There was a coffee table that separated the TV and sofa from itself, I looked down at the table and saw that my laptop was also very neatly closed and placed perfectly under the coffee table. The TV was turned off and the remote was again, just like everything else, perfectly placed where it belongs. I remember feeling confused and displaced as I know for a fact that I didn’t do anything of this at all, I didn’t really think much of it though for long as I just told myself that my dad must’ve came down in the night and done it all, surely right?

Anyway, my dad eventually comes downstairs with my brother and I ask him if he did this, he looked at me confused and said no. I thought maybe he was playing a joke on me as he was the type to do that but the look on his face told me that he had no idea what I was talking about. My mind felt scattered, my brother couldn’t have done it as he was only 4 and everything was so perfectly done, it wouldn’t have been him at all. I started to get scared at the prospect of the entire thing, did I sleepwalk and do it myself? I tried to convince myself that it must’ve been me sleep walking but it was still strange as I’ve never sleepwalked at all before and why would I put back everything where it belongs and get the blanket? And why was everything so perfectly done? Especially the fact that there was no indication that the second blanket was taken from the rest of the pile at all, if it was me; I would’ve been sure that I would’ve left a bit of a mess behind. I’ve heard of people sleepwalking and getting food but this just wasn’t like me at all. I would say I’m quite a deep sleeper apart from when someone touches me in my sleep, I’ve always been like that and I always immediately wake up. Wouldn’t I have woken up if I felt a blanket being placed upon me?

This continued to bother me for weeks on end and even when I returned to my dad’s house. I started sleeping upstairs in my actual bed again because of how freaked out I was. I did tell other people about the incident but I just laughed it off with them but even they were freaked out about it which just made me feel worse. I started thinking about maybe it was a ghost and I do believe in paranormal activity and the supernatural but I’ve never really taken it seriously.

Still to this day, I can’t think of a logical explanation that would make complete sense of what actually happened while I was asleep..

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/lightingnations on 2024-10-09 12:06:49+00:00.

---

On the night of our 29th birthday, my twin sister got in a car accident. She was fresh out of surgery by the time I reached the hospital, and more wrapped up than an Egyptian Mummy. She wouldn’t quit asking about her husband, whose smeared remains needed to be scraped off the asphalt, so the doctors asked me to break the bad news.

Gently squeezing her bandaged hand, I said, “Becca, you were in a crash. Tony’s gone.”

The heart monitor beside her bed went crazy until the meds kicked in.

After Becca got discharged, I invited her to live with me. I told my wife, Alice, it was only until she’d regained the ability to walk.

On more than one occasion Becca grabbed her crutches in her sleep and hobbled around the apartment, searching for her keys and screaming Tony’s name, and at least twice a week she’d shake me awake and say, “Daniel tell the truth, was the accident my fault?”

“NO,” I always replied firmly.

Even though she’d done nothing wrong, Becca couldn’t escape the shadow of what happened. So in the end she used Tony’s life insurance payout to buy a house in the country.

This decision hit me worse than a ton of bricks. Becca was my only living relative. My closest friend. She’d almost been ripped away from me once already, wasn’t that bad enough?

At first, we talked over the phone every day. This morphed into every other day. Her new job kept her busy, you see. Plus she joined a reading group which occupied her evenings.

Without her I found myself adrift. I started driving the long way home from work, picking out landmarks from our childhood. We used to have a secret ‘treehouse’—really a bundle of sticks tied together by a length of rope—in an elm by our house, and we once hid there for an entire day because Becca gave the first girl I ever kissed a bloody nose.

Unfortunately, the girl’s three older brothers threatened to turn me into a human slinky as payback. Clasping hands like we always did whenever life got too real, we promised we’d be there for each other no matter what.

I would’ve killed to experience that closeness again.

When Becca invited me to visit, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Alice wasn’t happy about cancelling our trip to Rome (we’d booked it to help decompress after the stressful year), and that ice still hadn’t thawed when we drove down there. Alice just stared out the side window, her golden hair flashing in the passing streetlights.

Becca’s house sat on the lower slope of a mountain. A banner draped across the front porch read: Happy 30th birthday Becks & Daniel.

“Well if it isn’t my baby bro,” Becca said, greeting us at the door. She loved lauding our five-minute age gap over my head.

Like me, Becca inherited our mom’s curly brown hair and Dad’s delicate chin. Our welcome hug felt nice, don’t get me wrong. But something was missing. A sense of warmth, maybe?

Alice and Becca exchanged a polite nod, then we dropped our coats off in a little cloakroom. Down the hall and to the left, a set of folded back double doors connected a lounge and a dining room. Several guests stood around a long table covered with sandwiches and chips and salsa, murmuring hello as we walked past.

In the lounge, Becca took her place behind a home bar with a mirrored backboard and said, “So what’s your poison?”

Secretly furious, I let out a low whistle. I had conflicted feelings about how well she’d flourished without her baby brother.

Glancing around, I said, “Bluh-dee-hell.”

“Nice, huh? I haven’t even shown you the garden yet. Ten steps past the gate and I’m already in the forest. It makes getting rid of corpses a breeze.”

“It is a pain keeping them all in the freezer.”

“Tell me about it. Bet you’re wishing you didn’t stay in that toilet of a town now."

Alice shot me an icy glare. I’d neglected to mention how Becca almost talked me into moving with her.

Eager to lighten the mood, I said, “I don’t think I could afford it. Not unless I started an OnlyFans.”

“You’d probably make more accepting donations to not start one. What can I get for you both?”

“I’ll take a strawberry daiquiri,” Alice added, making zero effort to disguise the anger in her voice.

“Same.”

While Becca mixed the cocktails, I glanced around the room. A photo of her and Tony on their wedding day hung from the wall.

I said, “So how many folks are coming tonight?”

“Oh, about thirty or so. Not including Tony.”

“Tony?” Alice asked, confused.

“That’s right.”

“Tony who?”

“Uhhhhh, Tony Turnball.” From the way she replied, you’d think it was the most obvious answer in the world. “He’s running fashionably late. As usual.”

Behind us, conversations seemed to taper off. Either that or the pop music playing from a hidden speaker grew louder.

Alice said, “Let me get this straight, are we talking about your late husband Anthony Turnball?”

Rebecca smiled in an overly exaggerated way that showed way too many teeth. “Oh, I’ll need to remember that one. My late husband. Y’know I once told his mom how bad he was at keeping time and do you know what she said?”

Alice and I stared at her, completely silent.

“‘…That boy was born two weeks late.’”

My stomach twisted in a knot. Becca always had a killer sense of humour—a famous comedian once even encouraged her to try stand-up—so maybe this was an inappropriate joke?

From down the hall, the doorbell piped up.

“What the fuck was that?” Alice asked, after Becca excused herself.

“Just forget it. It was one of her pranks. Try not taking the bait for once.”

“Prank? It sounded more like the surgeons forgot to give her an MRI scan.”

I tapped the side of her cocktail. “What happened to ‘taking it easy’?”

With a roll of her eyes, she took a sip even sailors would describe as ‘generous’. When she lifted her arm the gold bracelets around her wrist clanked together. That jangling sound was like a royal procession announcing she was about to enter a room.

Becca re-entered the room accompanied by a tall man with grey, bushy eyebrows.

“Okay, introductions. Daniel, I’d like you to meet the greatest neighbour on planet Earth, Ben.”

As Alice planted her empty glass on the counter, Ben’s expression darkened, but then his eyes flicked toward me and he was all smiles again. "Ahh, the famous twin.”

We left Becca to her hosting duties and relocated to the adjacent room, making ourselves comfortable on a ring of sofas surrounding a low, glass table. The way Ben stretched out set my teeth on edge. Did he think he owned the place?

He hit us with a barrage of questions, like what we did for work, and barely waited for an answer before droning on about life in ‘the IT game’ (which wasn’t as dull as it sounded). Meanwhile, guests kept appearing, and soon we needed to raise our voices above the rabble.

As my attention wandered, I caught part of a conversation about football. The three men left of me went quiet for ten seconds before picking up a new thread about a recipe for beef stew without skipping a beat. Weird.

“What about you Daniel?” Ben asked, dragging me back to the tasteless conversation. “What’s your dream car?”

“Oh I’m not much of a petrol head. If it gets me from point A to point B, it could be a Del Boy three-wheeler for all I care.”

“Well, pobodies nerfect. Now Tony! There’s a guy who loves his automobiles.”

All energy drained from the room. Alice and I exchanged a glance, then she leaned forward and said, “Did you say…Tony?”

“Oh yeah. If it’s got four wheels and an engine, that brother-in-law of yours could write an instruction manual for it. Why just last week he helped get my Subaru purring like a kitty.” Ben set his whiskey on the table. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta shake a little dew off the lily.”

“He said Tony fixed his fucking car,” Alice whispered when we were alone.

“My ears do work y’know.”

“Why’s he talking like Tony’s alive?”

“It’s just a joke. Becca told him to wind us up. Stop taking everything so seriously. Enjoy the party.”

“Good idea.” She shook her empty glass in my face, jewellery rattling away. Honestly, sometimes it amazed me that she could lift her arm at all.

I marched over to the bar, glass in hand. A line of people were queued for a refill, so I made idle chitchat while I waited, sticking to the typical safe subjects: weather, jobs, family.

With a raised eyebrow, Becca said, “Another refill already?”

“Please,” I replied, a little apologetic.

I wanted to ask about the Tony joke, but in the mirrored backboard guests kept shooting me a sprinkling of looks, and my neck hairs bristled.

Back by the sofas, Ben had a very bored Alice pinned down. I handed her the fresh drink, which she wasted zero time draining.

Ben was explaining why bird watching was more exciting than people believed when a chorus of greetings went up. Becca stepped through the door accompanied by a man in a red, chequered shirt. On their way across the room, the guy shook hands with the various partygoers like a politician at a campaign rally, gradually working their way toward us.

“And last but not least,” Becca said, “I’d like you to meet my brother Daniel—”

“Hello.”

“—his wife, Alison—”

“Hi.”

“—and of course you know Ben. Everyone, this is Stu—"

Ben leaned forward so he could shake Stu’s hand.

“—and his wife Vicky.”

Without missing a single beat, Ben clasped an invisible hand inside his own. “Always a pleasure.”

Becca stared at me, hard. I searched her face for any hint of a punchline, finding none. Some...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/WordNerd1983 on 2024-10-09 07:33:30+00:00.

---

We live in Appalachia, my husband, daughter, and I, near to where Helene hit hardest, but far enough that we were spared any permanent damage. Still, a weather event of that proportion leaves a weal.

The morning after the sky stopped falling, Jay put on his work boots and hardhat, then took himself and his chainsaw on a saunter around our twenty acres of forested mountainside, focusing mostly on our mile-long driveway. He got back early that afternoon, mud-spattered and sweating.

“I got the driveway clear. There were thirteen trees across it – thirteen. I also saw where some trees fell on the power lines. I didn't touch those,” he hastened, seeing my concern. “I left those for the power company. They're better equipped.”

The work on our property was done. Eleven-year-old Alice and I had spent the morning clearing the debris from our porch and the clearing around our house. At least, the work my family could do was done.

The only road out was blocked by that downed power line, and cell service was spotty at best.

We thought about checking on our neighbors, but the only one we knew by name was visiting her mother in Ohio, and walking onto someone else's property without an invitation could be dangerous in our area. Stories of hillbillies with their dogs and rifles have their origins in these mountains.

So, helpless until the power company could finally reach us, one customer among millions, we went inside, grateful to be safe, grateful this outage wasn't like the one our first year here that had left us stranded in a snowstorm with no heat and no well water for two weeks. That one had nearly cost my husband his sanity. But we'd learned, and we now kept plenty of portable chargers, and ample cans in the pantry, and gallons of drinking water in the closet, and buckets of rainwater in the shed for flushing the toilet.

I checked my phone. A trickle of data let me check in on the tragedy of Western N.C. A murmured prayer, a sign of the cross. I tried to scroll down to see more, but the trickle had dried up. With a small sigh, I set down my phone and started setting up candles for sundown.

* * *

The evening breeze, pleasantly cool, danced the curtains into the kitchen and made the candles frolic.

“Natural 20!’ Alice cried, peering into the dice tray.

“Yes!” was Jay's enthusiastic response. “Your arrow hits the ogre straight in the eye. Aaarrgppplbt! And with that,” quickly rolling some D6’s and checking his scratch pad, “the last of the ogres is dead.”

We both smiled at Alice, but she did not smile back, her eyes instead focused outside our glass front door.

“Sweetie, are you okay?” I asked.

“I think I saw something. Outside. It was big.”

Jay and I both stood immediately. I moved beside Alice; Jay checked that both the lock and the deadbolt were in place. Black bears had become more common since COVID, so we knew the drill. When Jay started closing the windows, I hurried to help. Alice remained in the kitchen, peering past the reflection of the candles, into the darkness.

Suddenly, she screamed and stumbled back. “It's not a bear. It's a big deer. Only– only it doesn't look like a deer.”

My throat constricted, my heart raced. I'd read stories about the cryptids of Appalachia, about the Not-a-Deer. Only those weren't true. The stories on scp-wiki.wikidot.com are made up. Hell, the whole SCP Foundation is made up!

And then it was on the porch.

Ploddingly, it drew closer, its legs seeming backward, seeming as though they should creak and groan, though the world outside had gone deadly silent. Its eyes, too far forward, made contact with mine, then shifted to Alice. It tilted its head, its neck appearing to break in the process.

And then its mouth – its hideous, predator-toothed mouth – opened, and an impossible voice ground out, “Let me in.”

The spell broke. I shrieked, grabbed Alice, ran from the kitchen – where was Jay? “Jay!” I screamed, then saw him at our bedroom window, transfixed.

Outside the bedroom window stared another Not-a-Deer.

“Mommy!” wailed Alice – she hadn't called me that in ages – pointing through her bedroom window across the hall. This one seemed to be smiling a horrifying, hideous leer.

I grabbed Jay by the wrist, I physically hoisted Alice by the waist, and I dragged my family into the bathroom.

That's where we are now, Jay perched on the toilet, Alice and I cowering together in the tub, all of us praying harder than we ever have before. Two five-gallon buckets of rainwater are against the door, feeble insulation to aid a flimsy lock.

We can hear them inside. There was no sound of breaking glass, so they must have figured a way past the locks. They're taking their time to get to us. What are they doing? Examining our family pictures on the wall? Puzzling over Alice's stuffed animal collection?

I seem to have a little data. I don't know how long we can last. I don't know if any help could even get here. I'll try to let you know if

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/diana_avri on 2024-10-09 05:07:04+00:00.

---

It started on a Wednesday. I remember that because nothing ever happens on a Wednesday. I was at work, sitting in my cubicle, scrolling through emails, when I felt it: a sharp tug in my mind, like something had clicked out of place. It wasn’t much—just a fleeting sensation—but it was enough to make me stop mid-scroll. I blinked, shook my head, and kept going. It was nothing, probably stress.

But on my way home that evening, the world felt different.

It wasn’t obvious at first. The bus ride was the same, with the same people. The woman in the red coat, the old man with his briefcase, the kid with headphones too big for his head. They were always there. Except, today, they weren’t quite right. The woman in the red coat kept glancing at me, her eyes darting away every time I caught her looking. The old man gripped his briefcase tighter than usual, his knuckles pale. And the kid? He wasn’t listening to music.

I could hear the static leaking from his headphones. Just static. No rhythm, no melody. Just white noise.

When I got off the bus, I felt eyes on me. That prickling sensation that makes you glance over your shoulder to see if anyone’s following. But no one was there. Everyone was moving the same as usual, filing off the bus, walking down the street. But it was like their steps were too... deliberate. Too synchronized.

When I got to my apartment building, I practically ran inside, feeling a sense of unease gnawing at my chest. My neighbor, Jenny, was standing in the hallway, fumbling with her keys. She smiled at me, but something was wrong with her smile. It looked forced, like her mouth was too tight, too strained, like she wasn’t sure how to move her face anymore.

“Long day?” she asked, in that casual, neighborly way. But her voice was flat. Hollow, almost. Like she didn’t actually care about the answer.

“Yeah,” I muttered, fumbling with my own keys. “You?”

She blinked at me, too slowly. “Same as always.”

I went inside, closed the door, and stood there for a long time, my back pressed against the wood, listening. Her footsteps didn’t move. She stayed in the hallway for far longer than she should have, just standing there. I could hear her breathing.

When I checked the peephole, she was gone.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that I felt watched—although that was part of it—it was more that everything around me felt wrong. The silence was too thick, too dense. I could hear the faintest hum, like the world itself was vibrating beneath my feet, waiting for something.

I stared at the ceiling until my eyes burned, until I finally drifted into a restless sleep. And when I woke up the next morning, everything was the same. But also not.

People were acting normal. Or at least, they were trying to. But as I walked to work, the cracks started showing. A man in a suit stood perfectly still at the corner, waiting for the light to change. But when I looked closer, I realized his eyes weren’t blinking. He was staring straight ahead, unblinking, motionless. Not even breathing.

A woman with a stroller passed by, and I swear to God, the baby wasn’t moving. Just laying there, its eyes wide open, staring straight up, mouth slightly open in a frozen expression.

At work, things were worse. My coworkers, people I’d known for years, were acting off. They’d smile too long, their mouths twitching at the corners. They’d laugh at things that weren’t funny. And sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, they’d stop, just stop, and stare at me like they were waiting for something.

At lunch, I asked my friend Mark if he’d noticed anything strange.

“Strange?” he said, stabbing at his salad with his fork, his movements too mechanical. “Like what?”

“I don’t know... people. They’re acting weird.”

Mark gave me a look, but his face didn’t seem right. His eyes were too wide, his mouth stretching unnaturally. “You’re just tired, man. Maybe you need a break.”

Maybe I did. But as we talked, I couldn’t stop staring at his hands. They didn’t stop moving, even when he wasn’t talking. They twitched, flexed, tapped the table. Like they had a mind of their own. I looked around the cafeteria, and suddenly, I noticed it. Everyone’s hands were moving. Twisting, tapping, fidgeting. But their faces stayed perfectly still.

I left work early that day, telling myself it was just in my head, but deep down, I knew something was happening. The world wasn’t the same anymore. People weren’t the same. And the worst part? I could feel it starting in me too.

That evening, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at my reflection. My face looked the same, but I didn’t feel like me. My smile didn’t look right. I tried to smile, tried to make it normal, but the corners of my mouth stretched too wide, too tight, like I wasn’t in control of it anymore.

My hands were shaking. And not just from fear. They wouldn’t stop twitching, jerking in tiny, uncontrollable movements.

By the time I got to bed, my whole body felt wrong. My skin felt too tight, like it was stretching over bones that weren’t mine. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm myself down, but the hum was louder now. I could feel it, like a low, vibrating pulse under the mattress, in the walls, under my skin.

I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. The darkness behind my eyelids was alive, shifting and pulsing, full of shadows that shouldn’t have been there. And just as I was drifting off, I heard it.

A knock.

It was faint, but unmistakable. A slow, deliberate knock at my bedroom door.

I sat up, heart racing, listening. Another knock, and then a voice.

“Let us in.”

It was my neighbor, Jenny. But her voice was wrong, just like her smile had been. Flat, hollow, like a recording.

Another knock. “Let us in.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t.

Then, more voices joined hers. Mark. The old man from the bus. The woman with the stroller. Their voices, all layered together, echoing through the door.

“Let us in.”

I pressed myself back against the headboard, trying not to breathe, trying not to make a sound, but the knocking grew louder, more insistent.

Then, the door handle began to turn, slowly, deliberately. My heart hammered in my chest. The knob twisted with a soft click, but the door didn’t open.

I didn’t breathe.

“Let us in,” Jenny’s voice whispered again, but this time, it was joined by others. Mark’s voice, the woman from the bus, the baby’s laughter. They all murmured in unison, voices layering over each other until it became a low, rhythmic chant.

I pressed myself tighter against the headboard, feeling my skin crawl, every fiber of my body telling me to run. But I couldn’t move. I just stared at the door, watching the handle twist back and forth, like someone was playing with it.

Then came the scratching.

Soft at first, like fingernails dragging across wood. Then louder, more desperate. Scratches, scrapes, until it sounded like claws raking the door from the other side. My throat tightened. My hands began to shake. I wanted to scream, but my voice caught in my chest. All I could do was press my hands against my ears, trying to block it out, but the sound—the voices, the scratching—was inside my head.

"Let us in."

My reflection flickered in the mirror across the room. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now, I couldn’t look away. The dim light cast strange shadows on my face, and for a moment, it didn’t even look like me.

The scratching stopped.

The door didn’t open, but the air felt different now—heavier, thicker, like I was underwater. I glanced at the mirror again. My reflection stared back, but something wasn’t right.

My smile was wrong. I wasn’t smiling, but the reflection was. It stretched unnaturally across my face, too wide, pulling at the corners of my mouth.

I blinked, and the smile vanished, but the feeling stayed. The door handle clicked back into place, and everything went silent.

I don’t know what’s real anymore. I don’t know if it’s them, or if it’s me. But every time I look in the mirror, I can see it. The twitching. The smile that doesn’t fit. The way my hands won’t stop moving.

I think I’m becoming one of them.

And I don’t know how to stop it.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Smart-Bus3973 on 2024-10-08 14:22:14+00:00.

---

I don’t remember hearing it right away. I think, at first, I convinced myself it was nothing more than the natural sounds of an old house.

 Houses make noise—creaks, groans, the wind lashing against the windows, the floorboards settling. That’s what I told myself when I first heard the dripping. 

But now, standing here in the basement, the sound dominates my senses. The steady drip of water hitting a surface fills my head, growing louder with each passing moment. I’ve followed it, searched for it, but no matter where I go, it remains just out of reach.

My eyes scan the aged stone walls of the basement, meticulously searching for the elusive source of the disturbance. The air hangs heavy and thick, each breath feeling laborious as I struggle to draw in enough air.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when this place felt like home—quaint and charming, a bit rough around the edges sure, but full of potential.

Sarah and I had fallen in love with the house at first sight.

The realtor had given us a brief tour, and when we reached the basement, he quickly brushed past it, barely mentioning the fact that it existed at all. It seemed odd at the time, but we didn’t think much of it. Old basements are creepy; everyone knows that. 

Now I wish we had listened to our instincts. I wish we had never set foot down here.

The dripping had started about two weeks after we moved in. I remember Sarah complaining about it while we were eating breakfast one morning. 

"Tom, do you hear that?" she’d asked, her brow furrowed in that way she does when she’s frustrated. "It’s driving me insane." 

I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out. And that’s when I heard it for the first time.

A faint, rhythmic drip was coming from somewhere beneath us. I dismissed it—probably a leaky pipe, I thought. It’s an old house; these things happen, I reasoned.

That very night however, the sound, it seemed to get louder. As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I could hear it clearly.  

 drip… drip… drip… 

It sounded close, too close.

I tried to block it out, but the more I focused on it, the louder it became. Sarah turned over next to me, restless, and I knew she was hearing it too. I could sense the tension in air as she was trying her very best to ignore and sleep through it.

"Can you check it out tomorrow?" she finally whispered to me, her voice barely audible over the steady drip. 

"Yeah, I’ll look into it," I replied, though I was already dreading the idea of going down into the basement. Something about it felt off—like a cold weight settling over my chest.

The next day, I made my way down the narrow stairs to the basement. It was dimly lit, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling casting weak shadows across the space.

Boxes were still piled up against the walls, remnants from the move we hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. The air smelled musty, like old earth and damp concrete. 

The dripping echoed all around me, but I couldn’t pinpoint its source.

The pipes along the ceiling looked fine—no signs of leaks or condensation. I checked the corners, the floor, the walls. Nothing.

I even crouched down near the floor drains, but they were bone dry. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. 

Frustrated, I climbed back upstairs and told Sarah I couldn’t find anything. She wasn’t convinced.

"You didn’t look hard enough," she said, her eyes dark with concern. "That sound is getting louder."

She wasn’t wrong.

Over the next few days, the dripping grew more insistent. It followed us from room to room, a constant, maddening noise we couldn’t escape.

And it wasn’t just the sound. The smell started shortly after—faint at first, like damp wood, but soon it became overpowering, rancid. It clung to everything, seeping into the walls, the floors, our clothes. It chased us around like a shadow.  

I called a plumber, thinking it had to be a hidden leak, maybe a burst pipe we couldn’t see. He came, checked the entire house top to bottom, and found nothing. Not a single drop of water out of place.

Oddly enough, the dripping ceased the moment he set foot in the house. The rancid smell we had grown accustomed to, seemed to vanish in his presence. As we watched him go through every room, running his checks, we could hardly believe our senses.

"I don’t know what to tell you," he said, scratching his head. "Everything looks fine to me. Are you sure it’s not just in your head?"

I wish it had been in our heads.

 

That night, the smell grew worse. Sarah was coughing, gagging from the stench, and I wasn’t much better.

We couldn’t sleep, not with that goddamn dripping and the rotten, cloying odor. Desperate, I grabbed a flashlight and headed back down to the basement, determined to find the source. 

This time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

In the farthest corner, behind a stack of old furniture the previous owners had left behind, there was something odd—a patch of the wall that looked different. The bricks were older, crumbling, almost as if they didn’t belong to the rest of the foundation. 

The dripping seemed to be coming from that direction.

I cleared away the furniture, heart pounding in my chest, and there it was—a sealed well, hidden behind the wall.

It was small, barely large enough to fit a person, with a rusted metal cover and bricks haphazardly piled around it as if someone had tried to seal it off quickly.

My stomach turned as the rancid smell hit me full force. I gagged, pulling my shirt over my nose, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. 

The dripping had stopped.

I called Sarah down to see, and her reaction was much like mine—horror and disgust. We debated what to do, but the smell had become unbearable. We needed to open the well, air it out, get rid of whatever was causing the stench. 

The moment I pried the cover off, a wave of cold air rushed out, thick and stale, like something had been trapped down there for decades.

I peered inside, shining the flashlight into the well, but there was no water. It was dry—bone dry. 

That’s when I saw them. Wet, slick handprints on the stone walls, leading up from the bottom of the well. My heart skipped a beat. There were only handprints and nothing else.

"What the hell is this?" Sarah whispered, her voice trembling. 

"I don’t know," I replied, stepping back, my legs weak. "We need to seal it back up."

We hastily put the cover back on, but the damage was already done. That night, the dripping returned, louder than ever. To make matters worse, it was accompanied by footprints.

At first, they were subtle—small, damp marks near the basement stairs, as if someone had walked through water. But as the days passed, the footprints grew more frequent and larger, appearing in places they shouldn’t: on the walls, the ceiling, and even in our bedroom. They materialized out of nowhere and slowly dissolved on their own, leaving me unsettled.

I suggested to Sarah that perhaps it would be best to move into another place, but she shot me down immediately. We had poured all our life savings into buying this property, and abandoning it now felt unthinkable to her.

“This is our home, Adam,” she insisted, her voice firm. “I’m sure we can get to the bottom of this. Let’s just give it a few more days, and I’m certain something will turn up.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to trust that we could fix whatever was wrong with the place, but all I heard was drip... drip... drip.

What made me truly paranoid was when I began hearing whispers. It happened during dinner with Sarah.

At first, the voices were faint, barely noticeable beneath the sound of the dripping. It was like listening to an echo.

But soon, they grew louder, more distinct—like voices calling out from the depths of the well.

“Adam… please… let me out… please,” a raspy voice echoed in my mind.

I tried to ignore it at first, convincing myself that stress and exhaustion were playing tricks on my mind. But then I noticed Sarah’s face pale as she looked away, unable to deny what we were both hearing.

Finally, I put my foot down and told her we were moving out. If it meant spending a few nights in a cheap motel, so be it; but we were leaving first thing in the morning.

To my surprise, she didn’t protest this time.

As I watched her lay on the bed, relief washed over me, and I drifted into a fitful sleep.

But when I woke in the middle of the night, I found her missing from the bed. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either. My heart raced as I passed the kitchen and noticed the basement door standing ajar.

I gasped as I slowly descended the stairs and found Sarah standing near the foot of the well.

She had already removed the lid and appeared to be in some sort of trance. A full moon from a nearby window illuminated the mouth of the well, casting an eerie glow around its edges.

“Sarah?” I whispered, my throat dry as I slowly approached her from behind.

She didn’t respond. Her eyes were glazed, her face ashen white, and staring into the abyss.

 And then I saw it. A figure, pale and gaunt, slowly lifted its head over the edge of the well, its eyes glinting in the moonlight. The creature’s mottled skin stretched taut over its bones, lending it an unsettlingly fragile appearance.

Strands of dark, matted hair clung to its scalp, casting eerie shadows across its hollow features. It extended its bony hand at Sarah with palm outreached, silently beckoning her to respond in kind.

I screamed, pulling Sarah back,...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fz0znk/drip_by_drip/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nitroninjagamer on 2024-10-08 02:40:00+00:00.

---

Lately, I’ve been experiencing some really unsettling things in my apartment, and I’m starting to wonder if something paranormal might be going on. For the past few nights, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and this overwhelming sense of fear, like something’s watching me. It’s not a normal feeling, and it lingers for a while before I can calm down enough to fall back asleep. I’ve never had issues like this before.

The strangest thing happened yesterday. I know I closed the back door to my apartment before going to bed. I’m certain of it because I have this habit of double-checking all the locks before I go to sleep. But when I woke up, the back door was wide open, and the room was freezing. I don’t mean slightly chilly—I mean ice cold like someone left the freezer open. I immediately shut the door, but the whole thing made no sense to me. When I told my parents about it, they weren’t even surprised. They mentioned they’ve seen the door open on its own in the past, even though it should have been locked. And just to clarify, in case anyone is thinking it could’ve been a gust of wind, my lock is an Alrop—look it up. There’s absolutely no way a breeze could have opened it. It’s designed to stay secure.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s also this strange thing that happened when I first moved in. I was on a call with a friend while gaming, and out of nowhere, he asked me, “Why does he keep calling your name? Go check on him.” I was confused because no one else was in the house with me, so I asked him what he meant. He insisted that he heard an old man calling my name, and he thought it was my grandpa. But here’s the thing—there was no one else in the apartment, and my grandpa doesn’t live with me. The whole situation left me creeped out, and to make matters worse, I’ve also heard someone calling my name when I’m home alone. It’s usually faint, like it’s coming from another room, but when I go to check, no one is ever there.

As if all that wasn’t strange enough, the street dogs outside my building act really weird too. They howl like crazy almost every night. I’ve lived in places with street dogs before, and this is not normal behavior for them. It’s this constant, frantic barking and howling that goes on for hours, and it always seems to start around the same time, late at night. One time, my dad even went outside with rocks to scare them off because they were being so loud, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

Then there’s the strangest thing of all. One night, I was on the top floor of my apartment building, which has an open roof, just hanging out and talking to the same friend who heard the voice. I was taking pictures of the sky, trying to capture the stars. After I went back inside, I looked through the photos and found one that I definitely didn’t take. The image wasn’t of the sky or stars at all. Instead, it was full of strange lights and colorful orbs, like something out of a ghost-hunting show. I have no idea how that photo got there, and it really freaked me out.

At this point, I’m wondering if all of this is just a series of weird coincidences, or if there’s something more going on in my apartment. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Could this be paranormal, or is there some other explanation I’m not thinking of? I’d love to hear your thoughts or similar stories if anyone has had any experiences like this.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Hobosam21 on 2024-10-08 20:55:26+00:00.

---

I came out of work to find this little leather book under my windshield wiper and my back window shattered. I’m both pissed and curious. Here's what it said.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this down, perhaps it’s a way of coping? Maybe deep down I still have some hope and this will serve as a written record. No matter the reason, I find a bit of comfort in putting the events on paper and will continue to do so for as long as I am able.

My memory is not perfect and I didn’t begin writing things down immediately. It took awhile for Helen and I to accept our situation.

We were just your average American couple in their late twenties, we had just attended a football game with our little Bud and were attempting to return to our car when we entered The Lot.

9/8/23

Bud had grown cranky, neither of us were big fans of the teams playing so we elected to leave the game a little early. It would give us a chance to beat traffic we reasoned.

The sun was already low in the sky when we left the stadium behind. I don’t remember who noticed it first but the sheer desolation of the parking lot was eerie. Not empty of cars mind you, every spot was full. But rather empty of people.

The next thing we noticed was the hills, “I don’t remember the lot being this steep” Helen had said, “did we go out the wrong door?”

We had been to this place a dozen times over the years, never had the parking lot been made up of rolling hills like this. It made it feel as if we were on the ocean, surrounded by rising and falling waves of multicolored steel bugs.

When the sun finally dropped behind the horizon and darkness flooded the lot I found an irrational fear rising up. Bud whimpered and Helen comforted him. The air wasn’t overly cold, just chilly enough to be uncomfortable.

Something was wrong. There were no lights. Not only were there no lights in the lot there were none on the distant hills. No buildings rose up, I looked in every direction. All I could see was the ever darkening lines of cars.

It simply couldn’t be.

9/9/23

We had walked all night taking turns carrying Bud. The sun rose revealing the endless cars. Our phones didn’t work, there was no service. We fought, I blame the stress and sleep depravation.

I felt we had to keep moving, this couldn’t go on forever. Helen insisted that we stay put, that walking would just make us harder to find.

9/10/23

We didn’t want to but we broke into someone’s car. They had a pack of water in there back seat. We needed it.

I left a note just in case.

9/11/23

The infighting was replaced by silence. Our feet hurt. We must have walked a dozen miles by now.

9/12/23

It was worrying how accustomed we had become to breaking into strangers vehicles. We slept in a conversion van that night.

9/20/24

We left the van, the food had ran out and the batteries were dead. It had given us a chance to rest out legs. I worry Bud isn’t getting the nutrients he needs.

9/22/23

I had tried a few times before with no luck. This time I got it started. It was an older Ford pickup. But my joy was short lived once I realized I couldn’t steer it. We used the running engine to stay warm that night and to charge our phones. They didn’t have service but they felt like our last connection to the real world.

9/23/23

I saw a deer today. It’s the first living thing I’ve seen since this started.

9/24/23

Bud was sleeping, Helen and I got intimate. We’re going to have to be more careful, a pregnancy would be disastrous.

9/25/23

Call it naïve living but we have settled into a comfortable routine.

Bud rides in a wagon we found along with our extra food and water. While I have grown tired of hotdogs, granola bars and candy we won’t be starving anytime soon. Water bottles are the most common thing we find. Occasionally we will come across a vehicle filled with groceries.

10/8/23

It has been a month. Despite our less than ideal diet Helen and I are quite lean. I don’t know how many miles we have walked, I’m on my third pair of shoes at this point.

Luckily the weather is still mild. I don’t know what we’re going to do if it starts to freeze.

Bud has grown, the little rascal is always getting into things.

10/15/23

I haven’t told Helen. There’s been a shift. The food we’re finding is more stale than before. But it’s not just the food. The vehicles are older, I don’t know when the shift started as it was so gradual. The newest vehicle I’ve seen all day was a 2010 Toyota.

10/30/23

We’ve decided to turn back, not only have the vehicles grown older yet but food and water are more scarce. The tipping point was the discovery of a line of cars with the windows smashed.

It felt ominous. We will be returning to greener pastures.

11/2/23

It didn’t work. I don’t think the lot will let us go back.

11/3/23

I did an experiment last night. I marked a car as we passed it. This morning I tried to return and the car wasn’t there. What if Helen and I had decided to look in different directions? The very thought of it makes me sick. I don’t even want to leave Bud in a separate vehicle while we make love. I couldn’t imagine the horror of not being able to find him again.

11/12/23

We can’t go back, we don’t want to go forward. The leaves one option. We will be staying put.

I erected a flag pole from what I could find. Even though it is visible from quite a distance we still travel as a trio everywhere.

11/15/23

It wasn’t easy but we managed to move multiple vehicles. We have a square of vans, in the center we carpeted the asphalt and set up bench seats as couches. I was never much of a hands on guy before this, necessity has forced me to learn. We even have a small solar panel feeding a battery bank.

In turn we use the batteries to power a TV I pulled from an Escalade as well as a string of dome lights around our home.

It is nice to finally be able to let Bud wander around without fear of him disappearing or getting hurt.

12/25/23

If I kept track of things properly today should be Christmas. I gifted Helen a necklace I had found awhile back.

We spent the day sitting around watching DVDs and getting tipsy.

12/30/23

It snowed this morning.

1/5/24

We aren’t alone.

I woke up and went outside to pee. When I did I saw footprints in the snow. Bare feet, a couple different sizes. The tracks led all around our home, they congregated near the windows. They had been watching Helen and I sleep.

I rushed inside and checked on Bud then Helen. They were both peacefully sleeping.

1/6/23

I told Helen about the footprints, she was visibly disturbed and wanted to leave right away.

“We should go, if we leave they won’t be able to follow us. This place doesn’t let you go back after all. They can have this, we’ll make another shelter”.

I had thought of this place as more than a shelter, it was our home and I wouldn’t let anyone take it from us.

“No we should stay, I would rather have a barrier around us then be caught out in the open”.

Helen reluctantly agreed to stay. She had always been the level headed one.

1/8/23

We did our best to prepare for a possible siege. The snow was gone so we had no way of knowing if there was still other’s out there.

I think I found the jackpot. Under the seat of car I found a revolver, it has six shots in it. I’ve never fired a gun before but it should be pretty simple.

1/9/23

They came back last night. I woke up to Bud crying, I jumped from our bed and saw an arm reaching through a window. It was blindly grasping about. In a protective rage I charged forward and grabbed the offenders wrist.

Bending the arm against the window frame I pushed until I felt the bone snap. The owner of the arm didn’t make a sound. I pulled on the arm again and again slamming the mans body into the outside wall.

He managed to wrench himself free of my grasp. Helen was right behind me, she crouched to sooth Bud. She didn’t need to say it but I knew she was pissed that I had decided to stay.

2/1/24

We’re on the move again. The weather is better but it’s still cold. The cars are from the 90’s now. Food is getting hard to find.

2/2/24

They’re behind us. I could hear them last night breaking windows in the distance. I held Helen close, Bud was between us, he seemed to instinctively know to keep quiet.

2/29?/24

I haven’t written in a while, nor have I been keeping track of the days.

Keeping Bud fed has been my biggest priority now that Helen is gone.

They found us the next night. We had taken shelter in a contractor van. There were no windows in the rear and the floor had plenty of room for us to stretch out. We thought it would be perfect, the doors weren’t even locked when we found it.

We later discovered the locks on the back were broken.

I woke to the slapping of bare feet outside. I nudged Helen, she woke instantly. The darkness really can’t be described, it was the complete absence of light. No moon, no stars, no distant cities. Just pure undefiled black.

I heard Helen shift as she pulled Bud in close. I held my breath, the feet continued past. A window near by shattered scaring Bud. He was still so young, he couldn’t have understood.

Screaming like banshees they assaulted the van. It rocked violently side to side as they crashed into it. The front windows were smashed in, a dim light shone around. They had flashlights and headlamps. There was a divider between the cab and the back of the van. It was made of sturdy steel.

I used the light spilling in to grab the re...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fzade1/the_lot/