nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2024-11-23 06:54:25+00:00.

---

A few nights ago I went camping with my cousin Theo, and our friend Leilani. The three of us are all travel bloggers or journalists (I freelance, Theo and Leilani work for the same magazine), and a lot of what we do is just going to various locations together, then writing about whatever aspect of it our readers are interested in. Theo does all nature stuff (hiking, camping, survivalist stuff, remind me to tell you about our trip through Appalachia last year, yikes).

Anyway, Theo wanted to branch out of the mountains and try an excursion in the desert, near Navajo territory. We found a remote camping spot, set up tents, and started a campfire.

Leilani has been reading a lot about protective rituals (we run into a lot of weird stuff, what can I say) and felt really confident about some advice she got. So as we set up camp she burned some white sage and palo santo in the fire, then mixed the ashes with salt and spread it out in a rough circle around our campsite.

The three of us laughed about it as she did, not really believing it would do much, (except Leilani) but willing to waste the time if nothing else. It was well after dark when I offered to run back to the car to grab the food we had brought for dinner. The car was parked a ways off from our campsite, and I left Theo and Leilani chatting and laughing by the fire, feeling comfortable in the warm desert night.

Just as I locked the car and started making my way back to the fire, I heard Theo shouting my name from somewhere off in the desert. I yelled back, asking what he wanted and heard him respond, this time his voice coming from the direction of our campfire, "Don't say anything else, get back to the fire as fast as you can."

From behind me, closer to the car, I heard Leilani's voice calling softly for me to come back. I felt cold dripping down my spine and broke into a run. I got to the fire just in time to hear my own voice calling out for Theo and Leilani to join me in the desert on the opposite side of the fire.

I yelled out that it wasn't me, and for them to stay where they were, and jumped across the threshold of salt and ash. Just as I did, I heard my own name being called again. I'm still cold thinking about it; my own name being said in my own voice, followed by deep throaty laughter.

Theo, Leilani, and I stared at each other in horror and huddled closer to the fire as Theo threw more sage onto the fire, scooping white ash onto his wood chopping ax.

The voice hissed derisively from the darkness as a pale face came into view. It was clearly human but looked all wrong. The face was stretched and thin in all the wrong places, while wrinkled and leathery as if it had been stretched out and pressed back into place over and over. The body was covered in different animal furs and skins, as well as more than one variety of leather, most of which looked disturbingly human.

The creature smiled, and crouched a few feet away from the ring of ash. It grabbed a stick and leaned forward, an amused look in its eyes as if about to tell a joke, then pushed the ash with the stick and said "Oh. Oh no, your border is broken, friends."

Its voice was amused and light, as though simply making a joke amongst friends. I looked at Theo and Leilani who were both as deadly pale as I felt. Theo stepped forward and brandished the ash covered ax, the creature grimaced and dropped the stick, putting its hands up in surrender and sitting back on its haunches.

I grabbed more ash and salt and redrew the boundary line. The four of us stood there in a silent standoff, Theo, Leilani, and I silent and horrified while the creature sat cross legged and smiled as if it was spending a relaxing night with friends.

It gestured to the cooler bag full of food, and said "aren't you going to eat? Please, don't allow me to impose."

I looked back at Theo and Leilani again and cleared my throat, "What are you?"

The creature laughed, and spoke back first in what I assume must be its own voice, changing slowly between its voice, my own voice, Theo's, and Leilani's as it talked.

"Oh child, I am older than the trees growing around your camp. Older than the sage in your fire, I am sharper than the blade of your ax and stronger than the ironwood trees you burn in your fire. I am only one of my kind, but I was one of the first and expect I will be one of the last."

Leilani took the bag from my hands and opened it, moving purposefully as if the creature wasn't watching us intently, and began pulling out food to heat over the fire. Theo leaned down and handed me my sketchbook, nodding for me to sit by the fire with a silent message: draw while you can, and keep the sage at hand. I sat down, trying not to shake as I slowly began to sketch, while Theo knelt across from the thing, ax still clutched firmly in hand.

It leaned forward, letting the firelight dance across its face and glow in its eyes, but maintaining a respectful distance from our boundary lines. "Ah, it's been a long time since my portrait was taken. What a lovely group for me to find myself in company with."

Leilani glanced over, looking at the thing as if it were simply an unwelcome guest overstaying his welcome, and gestured at it absently with a kebab. "What do you want?"

The creature smiled again, reminding me jarringly of my grandfather. Not that my grandfather was a nightmarish voice stealing creature, but something about it seemed almost paternal, as if he really was just chilling by the fire with his grandkids. "Not your food if that's what you're asking me. I find far better nourishment in other ways."

I looked up from my sketch, trying to keep a casual expression, and looked at Theo and Leilani out of the corner of my eyes to see their stony expressions. None of us asked for clarification and the creature offered none, instead watching the three of us silently. As Leilani finished cooking it sighed, and stood up like it was stretching, and walked slow circles around our campsite.

"Pay no mind to me. I had no intention of ruining your night. I merely like to listen."

We sat in silence for a while, then slowly resumed a stilted conversation, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. Discussing the day, our plans for the next leg of our journey, and finally choosing to talk about the scenery.

Occasionally one of our voices would chime in from the darkness with a comment or a suggestion that we all go for a walk, and we would sit in silence as the ancient being would chuckle at its own jokes. We spent the entire night that way. The three of us awake and on edge, a shifting voice in the darkness beyond our campsite beckoning for us to join it.

Late in the night, it rejoined the firelight with a friendly smile that made my blood run cold.

It said, "Don't young people like to tell stories anymore? Whatever happened to the old legends of the stars and gods?"

Theo, his specialty being storytelling, perked up at this, but a warning hand on his arm from Leilani kept him silent.

I spoke up instead, "I'm sure you have stories of your own, don't you? You must know more about the old legends than any of us."

It smiled, like I had said something wonderful, and gestured to the three of us. "How about this? Each of you tells a story, a legend of any kind. If you entertain me, I'll tell my own story then I'll leave you in the morning. But, on the sole condition that you never return here again. These are my lands, and while the company has been pleasant this evening, I rarely find myself in such a generous mood."

We stared at each other, and finally Leilani spoke. "You just want to hear campfire stories? That's all we have to do for you to guarantee we leave here alive?"

The creature nodded, skin pulling back from its face in a wide smile and waited. The three of us silently agreed, and Theo nodded for me to take the lead. I looked down at the sketchbook in my hand and smiled.

"Would you like to hear an illustrated story?" The creature looked hungrily at my sketchbook, and I opened it with a shiver. Going through the pages one by one and telling the stories of the things we’ve encountered. Theo and Leilani chimed in occasionally, and we relaxed into the stories as though simply recounting our adventures to a curious stranger. I found myself enjoying the stories more than I had expected, while he was terrifying the creature was also a surprisingly good listener.

He would nod and laugh, ask questions with genuine curiosity, and sat back with a smile when I closed the book. "Oh yes, I chose the right fire tonight."

It turned expectant eyes on Theo and Leilani, and Theo leaped into his favorite legend about the marriage of the Norse goddess Freya. He had always loved the Nordic legends, since we were kids, and he told it the same way he had told me stories as children. Every character had a voice of their own (which seemed to delight the creature to no end), and he waved his hands in the air with animated excitement. The creature listened intently, chuckling occasionally and repeating sentences back in Theo's voice when it found them particularly amusing. It especially seemed to enjoy mimicking the strange voices Theo would do for each character.

I felt a shiver watching them interact, in another world I could imagine this being one of Theo’s friends.It was hard to see the thing in front of us as anything other than a monster, but the story telling seemed to be bringing out its human sid...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Reasonable_Exam9591 on 2024-11-23 05:04:24+00:00.

---

Let me start off by saying the ocean and my father make me feel the same way.

My mother drowned in a riptide when I was barely out of diapers, and her loss left my father a volatile, alcoholic shell of himself. Then, when I was the ripe old age of twenty-four, both he and the ocean made me a widower.

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my father’s fault. Even in the absence of an apology, the guilt of being at the helm when the sea turned over like a slumbering monster must somehow be torture. After all, taking my new wife on that boat with him was supposed to be an act of trust and moving on.

I forgave that man for so much. It wasn’t fair that I survived and Sally didn’t. Fuck, it wasn’t fair that he survived at all.

Existing without my wife in a town I hated felt like sitting still in a burning house. So I left, and for three years I never looked back. It was hard at first. I fell into the same alcoholic vices as my father, but I like to think I made it to a better place.

I might have even eventually rebuilt my life if my sister hadn’t called.

It started when my work buddies invited me out for drinks, which I declined in favor of sprinting to my car. City traffic meant time was limited, and I hadn’t missed a meeting yet, just as the court ordered. My hard earned six-month chip was so close, I could almost touch the proof I wasn’t just a huge pile of shit and wasted potential.

A shrill ring from my coat pocket nearly made me drop my keys, and when I saw the caller ID, my stomach sank.

Jenny never called. We texted occasionally, but after I got arrested for the final time, it was too much energy for either of us.

“Hey, Jenny,” my voice came out tight. “I-Is everything-”

“Dad’s dead.”

“Oh.”

She told me he took his boat out in the middle of a storm the night before and it washed up that morning in pieces. The coast guard wasn’t hopeful that his body could be found with how rough the seas were.

After losing Sally, I couldn’t take hearing his voice let alone the sight of him, but now William Briggs was gone. Time ran out to salvage anything, and I had no way to prepare for how much that hurt despite the conscious choice I made to let that timer run out. He was never going to see me make something of myself, even after all he did to ruin me.

“I need your help going through the house.” Jenny sounded tired. “Pack his things away.”

My throat tightened. “Shit, Jenny, I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Her words carried an edge that made me flinch.

“I mean, I have work and Betty doesn’t travel well…” I trailed off. Those excuses sounded hollow even to me. Jenny, having never left the trenches of our hometown except to deal with me, was not impressed.

“Are you kidding me? Who the fuck is Betty?”

“Oh, um, sorry. I forgot to tell you. She's this cat I found.” I didn't add that she was what stopped me from jumping off a bridge. “You know, to give myself responsibility or whatever.”

My sister’s weary sigh reverberated in my bones. “Billy, I hate asking you to come back. I really do. I’m sorry. I…have a lot going on and I need help.”

“You and Dave having problems again?”

It took her a moment to answer with a quiet, “What else is new?”

Jenny wasn’t the crying type, but unlike me, she hadn't given up on our Dad. No surprise her dipshit husband gave zero shits about her grief. Jenny was raised by the decorated sea captain our father was before our mother drowned. I wished I knew that guy. Maybe if I had things would be different.

The last thing I wanted to do was return to that godforsaken town, but Jenny wouldn’t ask me to come back unless she was desperate.

“I can’t.” My attempt to be final about it was a feeble wheeze, and Jenny’s rage permeated through the speaker as she ground out,

“You owe me for what you’ve put me through.”

I had no grounds to fight her on that, humiliating though it was. It sucked to be reminded of how recent my latest fuck up was, and how Jenny, like always, showed up when I called.

“Okay,” I finally breathed. “I’ll be there.”

There was no sign of my father’s body over the few days I took to prepare. I packed up Betty and a few other necessities, and the three-hour drive back to Hell on Earth commenced.

As the city gave way to trees and crop fields, it was impossible for me not to be reminded of all the times Jenny made this drive to get me out of trouble. All while pursued by a flood of passive-aggressive calls and texts from Dave.

Betty was content as could be sitting in the passenger seat. Despite being a street cat, not a great many things bothered her. It made me feel like more of an ass using her as an excuse not to show up.

I opened the top of her mesh carrier and she purred, happy as a clam within it as we passed the old, water stained sign that read, “Welcome to Fisherman’s Bay” in faded font with a peeling mermaid lounging beneath.

Fisherman’s Bay was as gray and bleak as ever, but if you asked Jenny, she swore up and down that the sun made a regular appearance through the storm clouds that blanketed the town. Surely it had to, but I never remembered seeing it. Sometimes it felt like this place warped itself depending on whose eyes it was filtered through.

Even with my windows rolled up, the faint stench of fish managed to force its way through my air filter. I drove through the shops and I slowed the car to a crawl when I saw the state of the police station.

The entire front of the building was covered by an absurd amount of paper, and upon a closer look, they were missing posters. So many, they overlapped, the top layer shriveled by the perpetual dampness in the air.

“What in the world?” I whispered. In a town of only 6,000 people, this amount of loss was substantial, but vandalizing a police station wasn’t something I thought the people here had in them.

The door to the station opened and an officer went to work scraping off wads of posters. He must have sensed my staring, because he looked over his shoulder at me with a glare that said it was in my best interest to move along.

So I did and tried to put it out of my mind. This place wasn't my business anymore.

Past the houses, swaths of rocky cliffs and pine trees, I took the main road down to the ocean side. I had to steel myself with a deep breath at the massive expanse of water that stretched endlessly into the horizon.

I promised myself I wouldn’t panic. I would help my sister with our father’s affairs and then be back in the city by the end of the week. I’d never step foot in this town again.

I pulled up to my childhood house to see Jenny pacing around on the porch. Her dark, curly hair fell around her shoulders as she waved to me.

My dormant memories stirred, and for a moment, Jenny was no longer an adult, but a chubby teenager in overalls. The circular window at the top center of the house was where I often watched her and my dad's front lawn screaming matches.

It all came back so clearly, Jenny’s knock on my window startled me back to the present.

I zipped Betty back into her carrier and exited with her.

“Hey, Jenny.” I got out and we stared at each other for a few seconds. The last time I saw her in person I was bruised, drunk, and frankly, a total asshole. The finality of her disappointment when she posted bail hung over us both.

She cleared her throat and diverted her gaze to the carrier.

“I thought the cat didn’t travel well,” she said.

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to come.”

Her lips thinned as if she were contemplating something to say, but, after a second of deliberation, drew me into a quick hug that felt like a bear trap. She was always physically strong, but working on commercial lobster boats had given her muscles her teenage self could only dream of.

“Thanks for showing up,” she said as she pulled back. “I couldn’t do this without you.” I eyed the house, my chest tight. “Yeah, sure. It’s just weird to be back here.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll only take a week tops.” The reminder eased the anxiety, but only slightly.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“Shitty, but what can you do?” She shrugged, then followed my line of sight to the house and back. “You can stay with me and Dave, you know. You don’t have to torture yourself by sleeping here.”

“It’ll get done faster if I’m here,” I said. “Besides, it’s bad enough I’m back in this hellhole. Last thing I need is to be another reason you kids are fighting.”

My hope was to make her laugh, or at least lightly exhale through her nose, but before she could react, the front door swung open.

“Jenny!” Dave shouted, “Jenny, is your brother here yet?”

I glared over Jenny’s shoulder as Dave descended the steps to stand next to her. His beady, far apart eyes peered at me from beneath furrowed brows. “William.”

“You know it’s Billy, Dave. William was my dad, but good to see you as always,” I said.

Dave was a few inches shorter than me, but wider with more muscle. A beard clung to his cheeks, scraggly and probably peppered with his last few meals. An uncharitable observation, I know, but a good chunk of the walnut between his ears contained far worse thoughts about me.

Dave caught sight of the cat carrier and scoffed.

“The hell is in there?” he asked.

“My emotional support cat,” I said.

Dave’s upper lip curled. “Let’s get this over with.” He turned and immediately trudged back into the house.

I looked at Jenny. “What's his problem? He feeling okay?” ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gxs0h8/my_dad_was_lost_at_sea_and_so_i_had_to_miss_aa_to/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Professional_Ruin709 on 2024-11-23 03:44:03+00:00.

---

"Help," I read in the sand, helicopter blades whirring above me. I don’t see any movement, but I can’t just leave. I radio the pilot. 

"You think this is them?" 

"Only one way to know," he responds. 

We may have finally found them: the two women who disappeared a few weeks ago after they went overboard on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic. The helicopter begins to descend. Sand blows in all directions as we touch down. 

Stepping out, a faint rhythmic hum drifts through the forest, too distant to be natural. I shake it off, blaming the heat and nerves. As I get closer, I realize the sign is made from heaps of old seaweed. 

"Clever," I whisper. "But who makes a 'help' sign just to leave?" 

I walk toward the run-down hut, searching for signs of life. 

"Hello?" I shout. 

No answer. Inside the hut, I find charred wood and scraps of bone. Whoever was here knew what they were doing. 

Paul, the pilot, walks up behind me. 

"Find anything?" he asks. 

"No. Just piles of wood and bone. Promising, but not conclusive." 

Paul and I venture into the dank tropical forest, searching for signs of life. Suddenly, I spot someone—a woman. 

"Hey!" I call. "We’re here to help!" 

She tilts her head, like a dog trying to pinpoint a sound. Then she bolts toward me, her grimace unnervingly wide. My instincts kick in—I turn and run, branches scratching at my legs, rocks sending me stumbling. By the time I reach the helicopter, gasping for breath, I turn back. Nothing. 

What was that? Was it one of the missing women? 

"Paul, get back here," I radio. My voice shakes. When he arrives, I blurt it out: "I saw someone. She matched the description, but when I called, she ran—no, sprinted—at me. Inhumanly fast." 

We search the cargo and equip ourselves with tasers. We return to where I saw her, but there’s no sign. Paul finds a trail of broken sticks, and we follow it. An overwhelming sense of dread clings to the air, but I don’t tell Paul. I think he feels it, too. 

As we near the end of the trail, I notice what looks like a ritual site. Stones are arranged in strange patterns, charred leaves and sticks litter the ground. Symbols are carved into the nearby coconut trees, jagged lines catching what little light filters through the canopy. 

Paul tries to lighten the mood. "You believe in this ritual stuff?" he mutters, kicking dirt, his eyes darting to the carvings. I hear the tremor in his voice, despite his attempt to sound calm. 

"I don’t know," I reply. "But isn’t it a bit suspicious that this is here right after I was chased?" 

I continue to investigate, but then I hear it—a deep, animal-like groan. My head snaps back, along with Paul’s. 

There she is—the woman I saw earlier. But this time, she has a partner. One leaps at Paul, knocking him out before he can even reach for his taser. I equip mine and aim at the closest woman. As I discharge the taser, she grows visibly agitated—but not by the weapon. It has no effect. She grabs the taser wire with a snarl, yanking it from my hand. Before I can react, the other woman tackles me to the ground with a strength I didn’t know was possible. 

Everything goes black. 

----- 

When I awaken, I’m lying on a rock in the center of the ritual site. My hands are bound, and the air feels thicker, darker. I scream, "Where’s Paul? What did you do to him?" 

One of the women approaches. Her expression is blank, but her eyes gleam in the dim light. "He is... elsewhere," she says with a slow, eerie voice. 

The other woman joins her, and they begin to chant in a low, guttural language that reverberates in my chest. The words twist around me like a smothering fog. I shout, "What are you doing?" But they ignore me, their voices growing louder, the chant quickening. 

Suddenly, their eyes snap open, looking past me as if something unseen had arrived. Their jaws unhinge slightly as they smile in perfect unison—teeth sharper than they had any right to be. Their lips stop moving, but I hear their voices, clearer than before: "He has come for you. He will show you the way." 

A shiver races down my spine. I pull against my restraints. The woman on my left draws a knife and steps closer. She tilts her head, watching me with an almost curious gaze. "Don’t worry," she whispers, her smile chillingly gentle. "You won’t be alone." 

In the distance, I hear a familiar voice—Paul’s voice—calling my name. But it sounds wrong. Distorted. Like an echo through a tunnel. My heart pounds as I realize the voice is coming closer, but I can’t see anything in the darkness. The air cools as the malevolent force nears. 

The woman raises the knife above me, her eyes glassy, almost devilish, as if she’s looking at someone—something—just behind me.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/NoRepeat7174 on 2024-11-23 03:06:10+00:00.

---

So this happened about 10 years ago when I was working as a cab driver in New York City. I’d lived there most of my life, and this was when I had just started driving. I think it was my first or second week not really sure.

Anyway, one night I got a call to pick someone up. I remember it was late, around 2 or 3 a.m., and the streets were pretty quiet. I waited outside for about five minutes, but nobody came out. That happens sometimes, People order a ride and then either forget about it or decide not to go. After waiting a bit longer, I decided to cancel the ride and just move on.

This was in the Bronx, btw, and as I was making a turn to head back to the main road, something really strange happened. Out of nowhere, this girl knocks on my window. And when I say “out of nowhere,” I mean it i didn’t see her walking up or anything. She just appeared, like she came out of thin air.

She looked pretty normal, though—young, maybe mid 20s, wearing simple clothes. She asks me if I’m working, and I said yeah. Then she tells me where she’s going and asks how much I’d charge. Now, since I was new to the job, I didn’t really know what to charge, so I just asked her how much she usually paid. She said $10, and I was like, aight, cool.

She gets in the backseat, and as soon as she sits down, she asks me to turn off the AC and the music. That was weird because it was summer, and it was really hot that night. I wasn’t blasting the AC or anything, just keeping the car cool, but she seemed uncomfortable. Still, I did what she asked it’s not uncommon for passengers to make little requests like that.

The weird thing, though, is that she didn’t say another word after that. Nothing. Usually, passengers either chat or sit there quietly scrolling on their phones, but she just sat there, staring out the window. I thought maybe she was tired or something, so I didn’t think much of it at first.

When we got close to the destination, I asked her for the building number. No response. I asked again, a little louder this time. Still nothing. That’s when I glanced in the rearview mirror… and there was no one there. She was gone.

I freaked out. My first thought was that maybe she got out of the car while we were stopped at a light or something, but that didn’t make sense. The doors were locked, and I would’ve heard or felt the door open.

I pulled over, got out, and checked the backseat, but there was nobody there. I know for a fact that she got in the car. I talked to her. She was there. But she just vanished.

To this day, I have no explanation for what happened. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t imagining things, and I don’t drink or do drugs. This was real. It’s probably the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me or at least one of them. I still think about it sometimes

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/iifinch on 2024-11-22 13:35:48+00:00.

---

Previously

Today, I walked inside my Uncle's office ready to unload every bullet I could on him, but instead, his office was empty. I was so mad that I spat on the floors I used to call sacred. I was so mad I almost left without noticing what he left on his desk: a sheet of paper on top of maybe five letters.

"For Solomon. Read all five of these letters before you judge. These are letters from your father." Out of a hunger for answers, I read the letters.

Letter 1:

Dear Brother,

I know you won't truly love me anymore; you can't. But I will love you, though.

I'm leaving seminary school. I'm leaving the faith. I'm leaving you and this city. I've met a woman, she's a witch, and we're going on a ride across the country in her van. Let me explain.

As you know, I've been trying to evangelize a friend of mine, Raphael, you know, bring him into the faith, introduce him to who Jesus really is.

So, I'm talking to him. I'm trying to give him the gospel, right? The Good News! That's what it means—good news—but he interrupts me while I'm saying it.

"If the gospel means good news, why are you sad?"

"I'm not sad," I said back, lying, another sin. Add it to the list.

"Dude, come on," he said with no judgment, pure innocence.

"I'm not sad," a tear formed in my eye.

"Dude, I like religion and culture and all this stuff. So, we can keep talking about 'the gospel,' but you're my friend. I know something's wrong. Let's talk about what's eating you."

I cried, man, and I confessed, like really confessed. I know what you always say: You can't let unbelievers know what really goes on at Church. There are some things you have to keep away from them because they wouldn't understand.

Well, isn't that messed up? We bring them into a system that they don't even know the truth about? Well, I let him know the truth about what I was struggling with, not because of any righteous reason like genuine honesty but because I needed a non-judgmental ear.

I told him how I heard the rude comments of the other church members behind my back and they hurt me, how I could tell no one respected me, how it hurt me so much my Christian family looked down on me for just being me.

I try my best to be holy. To be a good man. But it's like everyone's in a competition to see who can be a better Christian, and they've decided I'm at the bottom. I'm trying to be like Jesus but they treat me like a pariah. Like I'm depraved.

He was there for me. He listened to me. He invited me to his community. It was just a normal birthday party full of normal people.

Well, except for one girl. She was extraordinary. Her name was Belle; she's a witch and she's gorgeous. A black witch, whatever that means—I'm not quite sure why she calls herself that as she is a pale woman with silver hair.

Her nails, toenails, and lips are painted black though. You'd call it creepy, but I think it gives her a mysterious feel. Regardless, I told her my story, and she gave me a hug and asked me to come with her—she was taking a trip to Arizona from here in NC.

It felt good to not be labeled a weirdo and written off, so I went with her.

Letter 2:

Dear Brother,

I appreciate your letter and concern, but I won't be going home because you're scared for me. She is kind to me! What part of that can't you get? I know it doesn't matter because you didn't care.

She even made me this little doll that looks just like me and has a few locks of my hair.

Anyway, I'm fine. I can leave any time I want to if things get weird. I'm my own man.

But, hey, enjoy the postcard. We passed Stone Mountain in Georgia, and I thought of you because you dragged me out here when you knew I was going through a tough break-up.

That was fun—thanks for that.

Letter 3:

Dear Brother,

I'm just ignoring your last letter because you won't stop talking to me like I'm some project, an idiot, or something to save. Those aren't voodoo dolls she's making of me. That's stupid. She likes me a lot.

Anyway, greetings from Mississippi. I don't like it here and I'm glad to leave, to be honest. I got in a fight here. Can you believe it? Yeah, me! It was thrilling.

Some drunk guy at a bar sat on my stool beside Belle when I left to go use the restroom. The stool was the only one beside Belle, so I asked if he could move and he pushed me away to keep talking to Belle. So, I pushed him back and he socked me in the mouth.

Then we started going at it. His buddies started coming too, but then Belle got up and even though she's a girl, she started throwing blows too.

And it got me thinking.

Why do we have to forgive? Why do we have to turn the other cheek? What's wrong with a little bloodshed?

Don't bother preaching again. I know my answer. Nothing at all.

I will say, I'm not the best fighter, to be honest. I passed out and woke up with the van driving and a pretty big headache. Belle says I did great though.

Letter 4:

Dear Brother,

I won't say you were right, but I need to go home. We're in Texas now and I won't drive a mile more with her. She has one of the bodies of the guys we fought. It's chopped up, put on ice in a big cooler, and covered with fragrances so it doesn't smell.

I called her on it. I asked why she had a freaking body! Belle said because the body has power and she can use it for magic. I'm getting out of here when we fall asleep tonight.

We're in Texas. God's Country, right? Isn't that ironic? Fitting, right? I'm getting out here, coming home.

Letter 5:

Dear Brother,

I have tried leaving her three times in the cover of darkness.

The first night she went to sleep, I packed my bags. I ran out. I hitchhiked to the nearest airport, went through security, and then finally closed my eyes before boarding my plane. When I opened them, I was in her van. Riding right beside her.

And she just chatted with me like nothing happened. I was scared but I adjusted, listening and talking back. I checked my pockets—the ticket I had bought was still in my pocket. Whatever she did, she made me come back to her.

So, I figured out she put something in my bag or in my clothes to make me come back to her. So, I got naked and in the dead of night, I ran to the nearest police station. Naked and afraid across the desert landscape I ran. Consequences be damned—I knew they'd toss me in jail. I knew they'd put me in prison.

Yet, I still ran to them. I ran naked across the Texas desert hoping for a miracle. I avoided cacti, the scurrying of rattlesnakes, and the judgmental and then skittish glances of coyotes. I ran past exhaustion, past home, past consciousness. I collapsed in the desert heat and crawled the rest of the way until I saw a Walmart parking lot. It felt like home. I crawled across the asphalt sea.

My throat raw, lips dry, and skin peeling, but I made it. Walmart opened its sweet automatic doors for me. The air conditioning hit me and I felt heaven. I listened to a man ask if I needed help and it sounded as sweet as any choir.

"Water," I begged, but my mouth was too dry. He couldn't understand. "Water, water, water," I repeated. He went off to grab a bottle and I grasped it.

I opened it, gobbled it down, and I tasted safety.

"We've got a code teal," the man said in the speaker. "That's a naked man that is not a threat. I repeat not a threat. He looks like he's been through Hell."

I won't lie to you—when I looked at that blue-vested Walmart employee I saw an angel and blinked.

When I opened my eyes again, I was naked in the van. Belle drove along the highway, casual as ever. I cried.

"I wouldn't do that again," Belle said.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said and turned up the speaker. I begged. I pleaded to be let go. She ignored me. Her love gone, her compassion was just a desert mirage now. We drove in silence to New Mexico, one stop from our destination.

That night, that night was my final hope. The doll she had of me. It was magic. So, I took it with me. That way she couldn't recall me.

That night, I slipped out of the bottom bunk. I checked the top to see her mass completely under the covers. I stripped out of the clothes she bought me and put on what I had brought, ready to leave her all behind. Last, I grabbed the doll of me from the rearview mirror. Then I tiptoed to the door and opened it to exit.

A shovel to my face was the last thing I remember seeing. I collapsed, passed out, and she hopped on me. How do I remember this if I was passed out? Because guess who's writing now?

Hi, brother, this is Belle. Don't be upset at me. You all didn't want him and I have a use for him. What's the problem?

I wouldn't come look for him—what I plan to do to his body would be... depraved.

That was the last letter. Under the last one were pictures.

Polaroids, to be specific. It was horrible and barbaric what they were doing to my Dad. I will spare the reader, but they chopped up his body and used it in bizarre rituals and put severed limbs in places they should never be, and each witch—perhaps there were one hundred of them—smiled as they did so.

That's what they did to my Dad.

My Dad... I never met the man. I just wanted to be the man. Everyone always had such kind stuff to say about him. He wasn't a bad guy. Like he was just punished for no reason. Where was justice? Where was God? My Dad served God and his head was treated like a volleyball. I sweat, the thought was making me sick.

A bookshelf slid ope...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/philosophysubboy on 2024-11-23 00:22:29+00:00.

---

Growing up, I was always fascinated by ancient books—works that had slipped through the cracks of history, their words untouched for centuries. To me, they were artifacts of forgotten lives, whispers from worlds long past. Unfortunately, I lived in a quiet, uneventful town where there wasn’t much to fuel my curiosity. But tucked away in a narrow side street, in the forgotten part of town, there was a tiny antique shop: Clarkson’s Curiosities.

The shop was dusty, dimly lit, and packed to the brim with relics that seemed to hold pieces of untold stories. It was my sanctuary. The owner, Mr. Clarkson, was a grizzled man in his sixties, always dressed in a worn cardigan with patches at the elbows. His face was lined with wrinkles, but his eyes gleamed with the sharpness of someone who had seen more than he let on.

"History isn’t just dates and kings," he once said, sliding me a juice box as I sat cross-legged on the shop floor. "It’s the life in the cracks. The stories no one bothered to remember."

Mr. Clarkson loved to share the histories of his items. I’d spend hours there after school, riding my bike straight from class to the shop. I had seen nearly everything the store had to offer—until one day, I overheard him talking to another customer about “the back room.”

“Don’t go in there,” he told me firmly the first time I asked. “That stuff isn’t for young eyes. Some things are better left alone.”

Of course, those words only deepened my curiosity.

One rainy afternoon, while Mr. Clarkson was distracted with a chatty customer, I saw my chance. My heart pounded as I slipped past the dusty curtain separating the main shop from the forbidden back room.

It was cramped and dark, the air thick with the smell of aged wood and mildew. Stacks of boxes leaned precariously against the walls, and cobwebs draped over strange, forgotten artifacts. At first, I didn’t see anything extraordinary—just more relics, gathering dust. But then my eyes landed on a large book, half-hidden beneath a pile of moth-eaten cloth.

It was massive, with a cracked leather cover that looked like it had survived centuries. My twelve-year-old hands trembled as I brushed away the dust. The spine was weak, the pages yellowed and curling at the edges. The writing inside was strange—letters looping and twisting in ways I couldn’t comprehend at the time.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Clarkson’s voice boomed from the doorway, startling me so badly I dropped the book.

He marched over, his face red with fury. “I told you not to come in here!”

“I—I just wanted to see—”

“You don’t have permission to touch that!” His hands shook as he picked up the book and cradled it like a wounded animal. “Get out of here. And don’t ever go poking around where you don’t belong.”

I didn’t argue. I bolted, the sound of his angry muttering trailing behind me.

That day never left me. Over the years, my fascination with ancient texts only deepened. I went on to study archaeology and specialized in medieval manuscripts. By the time I was nearing my master’s degree, I could read Middle English fluently. But one thing lingered in my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch: the mysterious book from Clarkson’s shop.

For my thesis, I needed an original medieval text to translate and analyze. The memory of that book resurfaced, stronger than ever.

I returned to my hometown after nearly a decade away. Clarkson’s Curiosities was still there, though the paint on the sign had faded, and the windows were cloudier than I remembered. Mr. Clarkson himself looked older, his movements slower, his face more sunken.

“Back again, eh?” he said as I stepped into the shop, the bell above the door jingling softly. “Didn’t think I’d see you around these parts anymore.”

“I’m finishing my degree,” I explained. “Thought I’d drop by for old times’ sake.”

He nodded, his expression unreadable. “Not much has changed here.”

I made small talk, asking about some of the items on display while subtly steering him toward the front of the shop. “Still got that old globe?” I asked, pointing to a corner.

As he shuffled off to retrieve it, I slipped through the curtain into the back room. The layout hadn’t changed. My heart raced as I scanned the clutter, and there it was—the book, still buried in the same spot.

It felt heavier than I remembered, its leather cover cracked and cold to the touch. Without hesitation, I slid it into my bag and hurried back out.

“Thanks for the chat, Mr. Clarkson,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll stop by again soon.”

“Hmm,” he muttered, watching me with narrowed eyes.

That night, in the dim light of my dorm room, I finally opened the book. Its pages were brittle, the ink faded but legible. I realized the text wasn’t ancient gibberish—it was Middle English. Here is what the text said;

Anno Domini 1347

I write now as the leaves fall from the trees, their gold and crimson hues painting the air with the promise of a cold winter. The world feels peaceful, as it always does in autumn, when the harvest is gathered, and the granaries are full.

Our kingdom thrives under the reign of King Edward III. Though I have never set eyes upon him, his name is whispered with admiration in every corner of the land. They say his court is a place of splendor, where knights clad in gleaming armor bow before him, and poets recite their verses in halls gilded with gold. Even here, in our little village of Ainsworth, we feel the warmth of his rule. Taxes are fair, the roads are safe, and the markets are lively with traders from distant lands.

Ainsworth is no grand place, just a cluster of cottages nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling hills. But it is home. The fields are rich with barley, and the river runs clear and cold. The villagers are as close as kin, each one ready to lend a hand or share a meal when times are hard.

My family’s cottage is small but sturdy, with a thatched roof and a garden that my mother tends with care. She says the herbs she grows—thyme, lavender, and rosemary—keep sickness away. My father is a carpenter, his hands roughened by years of shaping wood into tools and wagons. He speaks little, but his presence is steady, like the oak beams that hold up our house.

And then there is my sister, Cecily, who never stops talking. At twelve years old, she is a whirlwind of mischief, forever running barefoot through the village and climbing trees with the other children.

My days are filled with work and laughter. I rise with the sun to tend the sheep and gather firewood, but by the time the sun is high, I am free to join my friends. There is Henry, the baker’s son, whose pockets are always filled with stolen pastries. Then there is Thomas, who dreams of becoming a knight, though his sword is little more than a stick he found in the woods.

We spend our afternoons exploring the hills, racing each other through the meadows or skipping stones across the river. On Sundays, we gather in the village square to listen to the minstrels who pass through, their songs filling the air with tales of valor and romance.

But the brightest part of my life is Eleanor. She is the miller’s daughter, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes as green as the fields in spring. We have known each other since we were children, and it has always been understood that we would marry one day.

Eleanor has a laugh that bubbles up like the river after a storm, and when she looks at me, it feels as though the rest of the world fades away. We spend hours walking together, talking of the future we will build—a cottage of our own, with a garden for her and a workshop for me.

“You’ll be the finest carpenter in the village,” she said to me just yesterday, her cheeks flushed from the chill in the air. “And I’ll bake bread that will make the king himself jealous.”

“Only if the king has teeth like a goat,” I teased, earning myself a playful slap on the arm.

The future seems as bright as the harvest moon. The village is bustling with preparations for the winter festival, a time of feasting and dancing. The air smells of roasting chestnuts and spiced cider, and the church bells ring out with a joyful clang.

The monks from the abbey have brought word of the king’s latest victory in France. The villagers cheer as they hear of our armies’ triumph, and even the priest smiles as he blesses the crowd.

I often think that these are the best days of my life. There is no fear here, no shadow over our hearts. We work hard, we laugh harder, and we dream of tomorrow.

I am sixteen now, on the cusp of manhood. My father says I will take over his workshop soon, and Eleanor’s father has already begun crafting the furniture for our future home. It feels as though everything is falling into place, as though nothing could ever change the peace and happiness we know.

November.

The air grows colder with each passing day, but life in Ainsworth continues as it always has. The harvest is in, the fires are lit, and the hearths glow with the warmth of winter preparations. The only shadow on our peaceful village is the whispers of sickness from towns far away.

Henry first mentioned it after returning from the market in the next village. “They say there’s an illness spreading,” he told me as we sat by the river. “Comes with the rats. People fall sick, grow boils, and die within days.”

Rats. Our fields and barns have always had them, scurrying in the shadows and gnawing at t...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DivineAnime1 on 2024-11-22 20:57:17+00:00.

---

Camping always felt like freedom to me. No deadlines, no distractions, just the serenity of nature. That’s why I agreed when my friends Ben and Emily suggested we camp in that forest. Yeah, we’d heard the stories about the “Watcher,” but we laughed them off. Urban legends, you know?

The first day was perfect. We hiked through beautiful trails, set up our tent by a lake, and roasted marshmallows by the fire. But as the sun dipped below the horizon, the forest changed. The cheerful birdsong was replaced by an oppressive silence.

We tried to lighten the mood around the fire. Ben joked about the Watcher. “What’s he gonna do? Stare at us menacingly?”

The laughter stopped when we heard the growl.

It was low, guttural, and came from somewhere just beyond the firelight. Ben grabbed his flashlight and swept it across the trees. Nothing. “Probably just an animal,” he muttered, but his voice wavered.

We decided to call it a night, but sleep didn’t come easy. I lay in my tent, staring at the nylon ceiling, when I heard it: footsteps. They were slow, deliberate, circling the campsite.

“Ben?” I whispered. No answer.

The steps stopped outside my tent. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure it would give me away. I held my breath, waiting for… I don’t know what. Then, after what felt like forever, the steps moved away.

The next morning, we all admitted we’d heard something. Emily swore she heard whispers. Ben said he saw someone watching us from the trees. I wanted to leave, but Ben insisted we stay. Pride, maybe.

That night, the Watcher came.

We were sitting around the fire when he stepped into the light. A man if you could call him that. He was tall, impossibly thin, with hollow eyes that gleamed in the firelight. His smile was the worst part, jagged and too wide for his face.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t blink, either. He just stood there, swaying slightly, his head tilted to one side like a curious predator studying its prey. The firelight flickered over his skin, which looked waxy, almost translucent. I could see veins snaking under the surface, pulsing faintly. His clothes were tattered, hanging off his gaunt frame like rags. But it was his hands that made my stomach churn long, skeletal fingers that twitched and flexed, as though they were trying to decide which one of us to grab first.

Ben’s flashlight beam wavered as he shone it directly at the man. The light hit his face, and I wish it hadn’t. His eyes weren’t just hollow they were wrong. Empty sockets that should have been filled with darkness instead gleamed with an unnatural, milky light that seemed to move, swirling like smoke trapped in glass.

“Stay back!” Ben barked, his voice trembling. He stood, clutching a stick from the fire like a weapon.

The man or whatever he was didn’t react. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. Slowly, his smile widened, stretching his face inhumanly, as if the corners of his mouth were being pulled by invisible hooks. The fire sputtered, dimming, and for a moment I thought it was going out entirely. The shadows around him seemed to grow darker, thicker, as if they were alive.

Emily whimpered beside me, clutching my arm. I could feel her nails digging into my skin, but I didn’t dare move. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I was frozen, pinned in place by the weight of his gaze.

And then he moved.

It wasn’t a normal movement. His body jerked forward in a series of unnatural spasms, like a marionette being yanked by its strings. One moment he was at the edge of the firelight; the next, he was standing right in front of Ben. I didn’t even see him cross the distance. He just… appeared.

Ben swung the burning stick, but the man caught it effortlessly. His fingers didn’t flinch as the flames licked at his hand. The stick crumbled into ash in his grasp, and Ben stumbled backward, tripping over a log.

“What do you want?” I croaked, my voice barely above a whisper.

The man’s head snapped toward me, too fast, like a bird noticing a sudden movement. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then, slowly, he raised one long, bony finger and pointed at me. My heart stopped.

His hand lingered there for what felt like an eternity before he turned it, pointing at Emily, then Ben. One by one, he pointed at each of us, as if marking us in some way. His smile never faltered.

And then he did something I’ll never forget. He leaned down, impossibly low, his face inches from Ben’s, and took a deep, shuddering breath. It was as if he were inhaling Ben’s very presence, drawing something out of him. When he straightened, Ben looked pale, his eyes wide and unfocused, like he’d just seen the end of the world.

This thing stepped back, his movements unnervingly smooth now, as if the earlier jerking spasms had been a facade. He looked at each of us one last time, his hollow eyes gleaming brighter for a brief moment. Then, without a sound, he turned and walked backward into the forest.

Not walked, exactly. He melted into the shadows. One moment he was there, his jagged smile still visible in the dying firelight, and the next, he was gone. The darkness swallowed him whole.

For several minutes, none of us spoke. We just sat there, staring at the spot where he’d vanished. The fire crackled weakly, struggling to stay alive. Ben was the first to move, his trembling hands fumbling to grab his pack.

“We’re leaving,” he muttered, his voice hollow.

None of us argued. We packed in silence, too terrified to speak. As we hiked back toward the trailhead, the forest felt different. Every tree seemed to lean closer, every rustling leaf sounded like footsteps. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see that jagged smile staring back at me.

We didn’t see him again, but as we reached the car, we found something waiting for us. On the hood was a pile of small bones, arranged in a perfect circle. At the center lay Ben’s flashlight ,the one he swore he’d been holding when we packed up.

We drove away without looking back, but even now, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s still watching. Waiting...

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Braven025 on 2024-11-22 20:04:17+00:00.

---

Part 4

Day Four

On Monday, I woke with a start. Dylan wasn’t in bed with me. I knew it the second I opened my eyes. His absence was tangible, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I’d turned in early the night before, so I could get away from the accusatory stares of my husband, who now believed I was trying to poison him. I didn’t notice that he’d never come to bed. I was too exhausted from lack of sleep.

Fear rippled through me.

I pulled myself out of bed, slipped out of my pajamas and changed into a light sweater and a pair of joggers. My eyes drifted to a duffle bag I’d hastily packed before turning in the night before. It held some clothes, my passport, some money, and my work computer. I’d emailed my boss the night before too, to tell her I wasn’t going to be in that day. If I couldn’t get Dylan to drink the tea, get him to see that this boy in our house was evil, I was going to leave.

My heart ached at the very thought of abandoning him there with that thing. But what else could I do? There was no sense in us BOTH succumbing to whatever terrors the demon child had in store for us. I’d call for help from the road, try to get someone to do a welfare check. Not that I expected them to find anything wrong, since the boy was capable of manipulating people’s minds. But at least I’d know I tried.

I’d mourned our life together as I shoved my things in the bag. Memories of our life together—our whirlwind romance in college, our marriage shortly after, vacations and holidays, laughing until our stomachs hurt—that was all that would be left. Dylan was my person. But I didn’t think I could help him. I didn’t think anyone could. Which was exactly what the boy was hoping for.

I pulled open the bedroom door and wandered down the hallway, listening. The guest bedroom door was closed. The house was silent. Dylan should have been getting ready for work. I found him sitting on the couch in his pajamas. His back was rod-straight, and he was just staring straight ahead at the blank TV. Dark bags punctuated the skin under his eyes.

“Dylan,” I said, stopping in front of him. “What are you doing?”

He startled, then looked up at me slowly. “Getting ready for work, of course.”

“But…but you’re not…you’re just sitting on the couch,” I said, noticing how pale he was. “Why didn’t you come to bed last night?”

Dylan scowled. “What are you TALKING about, Lyss? I came to bed! I got up a little while ago to get ready for work. I’m really starting to think we need to have you see someone. You’re just not acting like yourself.”

I chose to ignore the comment. Something was very wrong. Dylan looked like he’d been sitting up all night just staring at nothing. And he definitely wasn’t getting ready for work. Not still wearing his pajamas with his hair unbrushed. The boy was obviously planting these things in his head, making him THINK he was doing them. He looked pale and fragile, sick. And thinking about it, I couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d eaten. He ushered me out of the kitchen the night before when I tried to make dinner, afraid I was going to poison him.

The boy was sucking the life out of him.

I rushed back into the bedroom and grabbed my duffle off the floor. I wanted to get it into the car before the boy woke up. Dylan didn’t even glance at me as I passed. I dropped the bag in the back of my car, then came back in the house, slipping my car keys into my pocket where they thunked against the crystal Autumn had given me. I had to give it one more try. I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“Dylan?” I asked, standing in front of him again. “Can I make you some breakfast?”

“I already ate,” he answered.

“Oh?” I asked. “What’d you have?”

“Eggs, toast, bacon,” Dylan said.

We didn’t even HAVE bacon. I was trying to cut back on fatty meats because Dylan had high cholesterol. We hadn’t had bacon in the house in months. Besides, there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and nothing looked out place. Another mind trick from the evil little monster.

“Are you sure, Dylan?” I asked, frowning. “I think you might have forgotten.”

“What, do you think I’m stupid?” he snarled. “You’re just trying to slip poison into my food, just like Logan said. Go away, leave me alone!”

“Dylan,” I said, flinching. “I love you. It’s ME. It’s Alyssa! You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Please let me make you something.”

“He isn’t hungry.”

The voice came from behind me. I spun around to find the boy, wide grin plastered on his face. His fingers were laced in front of him, his big, dark eyes boring into me.

“What are you doing to him?” I asked, shoving a finger in his face.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “He’s been sitting here on the couch all night. He thinks he’s getting ready for work right now. He hasn’t eaten. Why are you doing this?”

“I’m just a boy,” he said innocently. “How could I possibly be doing any of that?”

“I know what you are,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And I don’t want you here. I revoke my invitation to come into my home. You’re not welcome here.”

The boy recoiled like he’d been struck, but then the smile returned to his face. “I don’t need your permission anymore.”

“I’m not going to let you have my husband,” I hissed. “Go find someone else to fuck with.”

“Dad!” The boy cried suddenly. “Mom is scaring me! There’s something wrong with her! Help!”

Dylan jumped up from the couch, his eyes flashing with anger. “What are you doing, Lyss?! He’s just a little boy, OUR little boy! Why can’t you just be happy that he’s returned to us? Why are you trying to ruin our family! We could be so happy!”

“Dylan,” I sobbed. “This boy isn’t ours. He’s not even human. Please! Wake up and see the truth! He’s killing you!”

“This is ridiculous,” Dylan said, rage making the veins in his forehead stand out. “It’s jealousy, isn’t it? You’re jealous that you no longer have all my attention. It’s pathetic, Lyss.”

I shook my head. “No! That’s not it, I swear. This THING is making you see things, fucking with your head—”

“The only person with a fucked head is you.”

I threw my head back, defeat prickling across every inch of my skin. It was no use. Without the clarity tea, he was never going to break free of the boy’s hold on him. There was nothing more I could do. It was time to go.

“I’m leaving,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’m going to send help though.”

“Leaving?” Dylan asked, blinking. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay here with him, Dylan,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Emotions flickered across his face—confusion, fear, disbelief. He reached a hand out, and for a second it felt like the old Dylan was back. Then he grabbed my arm roughly and pulled. I let out a sharp scream and tried to tug away from him.

“Dylan, what are you doing?!”

“The basement,” the boy said gleefully. “Put her in the basement!’

“Good idea, son,” Dylan said. “She can’t hurt us down there.”

“Let go!” I screamed, but he was already dragging me across the floor, both hands clamped around my wrists. “Please, just let me go! I’m not trying to hurt anyone. Let me go!”

The boy wrenched open the basement door and Dylan shoved me roughly onto the landing at the top of the stairs. I whirled around just as the door slammed shut. I heard the key slide into the lock, the bolt moving into place. I banged on the door and screamed until my throat was raw. On the other side of the door the boy laughed—that rasping gurgly sound that made the hair on my neck stand on end.

“Dylan, let me out of here!” I screamed. “Let me out and I’ll go away. I won’t tell anyone anything, I’ll just go! Please!”

A hiss came through the door. “Why would I let you go, Alyssa? Once I’m done with your husband, I’ll need someone else to feed on.”

I dropped my hands to my sides and stepped back from the door. Fuck. This was it. I was going to die. Dylan was going to die. There was nothing I could do to save us. I sank down on the top step and dropped my head into my hands, sobs shuddering through me. Once I was spent, and no more tears would fall, I stared blankly into the dark. I couldn’t give up. That wasn’t who I was.

I stood and flipped on the light switch beside the door, illuminating the bare bulbs down in the basement. The wide-open room held our washer and dryer, water heater and furnace, and a bunch of old furniture and odds and ends. There were windows at the top of the walls, but they were all made of glass block. All but one.

I rushed down the stairs and across the room to the washer and dryer, staring up at the casement window we’d never converted to glass block because sometimes, in the summer, Dylan would run an extension cord through it to plug in his electric meat smoker. I climbed up on the dryer and tugged at the crank. It was tight, maybe a little rusty, but after a minute, I got it to turn. The window, which opened toward the backyard, slowly lowered. It wasn’t a big window, but I thought I could fit through it.

“Come on, come on,” I whispered, turning the crank. But it wouldn’t move any more. I squinted through the frosted glass. Something was below the window, stopping it from opening any further. What the hell was it? Crouched on the dryer, I froze, thinking. I could break the glass and push whatever it was aside, but Dylan and that demon spawn might hear it and come running. I could scream for help, but that might result in the same thing. Dammit!

Fresh hot tears sprang to my ey...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-11-22 19:32:04+00:00.

---

It started with a single image of a cicada, black background, with simple white text. I was scrolling through a cryptography subreddit late at night, trying to distract myself from another evening of insomnia, when someone posted it. “Here’s something interesting,” they wrote, as if they didn’t know the rabbit hole it would lead to. The message on the image was simple: “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. This is a test.” Below that, a string of random-looking numbers and letters, just sitting there like a dare. I don’t know what made me save it to my desktop. Maybe it was boredom, or maybe it was the voice in my head that said, You’ve always been good at puzzles. Why not try? Let's put that Master's degree to use.

The key was hidden in the image’s metadata, buried beneath its surface. At first, I thought the image was just a clever decoy, just white text on black, wanting you to waste hours chasing nothing. But when I opened it in a hex editor, the truth started to reveal itself. Among the strings of data, I found a clue: a URL leading to an unassuming page with an image of a duck. My stomach sank. Ah, trolled, I thought, until I remembered something from an old forum post about steganography. The message wasn’t in the image itself but within it, encoded. A free online tool exposed the hidden text, a long string that looked like gibberish at first glance, but resolved into another URL when decoded.

By this point, I wasn’t the only one working through the puzzles. Reddit was going wild online, the mystery spreading like wildfire. After the first couple puzzles were solved, it started to feel like there was a real mystery behind all of it. This wasn’t just some clever college kid making puzzles to troll Reddit. There seemed to really be something to all of it.

The second URL led to a page, just plain black text on white. “Congratulations,” it read. “You’ve made it this far. But there’s still a long way to go.” Below the message was another string of text: a Caesar cipher. Shifting the letters back by a set number revealed another cryptic message: a reference to a line in The Mabinogion, an old collection of Welsh mythology. I didn’t own a copy, but I found a scanned version online. My hands hovered over the keyboard, fumbling slightly as I searched for the passage. The solution wasn’t in the words themselves but in the placement of the letters. A careful pattern revealed yet another URL.

The next page wasn’t as simple. Instead of text, it hosted an audio file, low and distorted. Spectrogram analysis: I learned about it during a deep dive into cryptography forums; transformed the sound into an image, a string of numbers that looked like GPS coordinates. By this time, I was obsessed. I punched the numbers into Google Maps, half expecting to end up in the middle of an ocean. Instead, they pointed to a street corner in Warsaw, Poland.

Of course, I wasn’t going to fly to Poland. Others working on the puzzle shared images of the clue they found: a laminated poster taped to a light pole, featuring the same black-and-white imagery and a QR code. Scanning the code led to another page, but this time it required a key to decrypt. That’s when I realized the puzzles weren’t just about intelligence. People in forums collaborated, sharing their progress as we pieced together the solutions.

One solved cipher led to another set of coordinates, then another, spreading across the globe like a network. Each piece made us feel closer to answering the larger question: What is this, really? But the more I solved, the more I became obsessed. I decoded the PGP key that unlocked the next step. Then, the final puzzle cycle came.

The final puzzle cycle felt different. It wasn’t just a code to break or a text to decrypt, it was a test of patience and precision. The PGP key I’d received weeks earlier was the gatekeeper, verifying my identity and granting access to an unlisted Tor page. The page was bare, a single black screen with a string of numbers that had no immediate meaning. Hours turned into days as I chased down every possible lead, cross-referencing them with literature, mathematical sequences, even star charts. After several more puzzle cycles solved, with passages pulled from Agrippa by William Gibson, I found myself at, what I didn’t know at the time, would be my final puzzle. Decoding it, using The Book of Soyga, revealed an email address, plain and unspectacular. I sent a message, my hands trembling, and received a reply within seconds: “You have come far, but the journey is not over. Welcome.” Then the page disappeared, and my screen went dark, leaving me staring at my own reflection, anxious to see what happens next.

For a moment, I began to wonder if I had made some mistake and been kicked out, or worse, if the whole thing had just been one giant hoax. But as I sat and thought, I heard the faintest of clicks, and the light on my webcam turned on. “What the fu…” I said quietly to myself, frozen in my chair. It only stayed on for a few seconds before clicking back off.

Up until this point, I was going from goal to goal, obsession and curiosity fueling me. But with it now seemingly complete, the gratification was now wearing off, and a feeling of regret was slowly creeping in. Was this all a waste of time? What did I just allow into my life? What if it is something illegal?

That is the extent of what most people know about the mystery. But what most people don’t know, is that that was only the beginning. The very tip of the iceberg. They were being truthful; it was a test to find intelligent individuals. But if people knew what they truly wanted them for, nobody would’ve ever participated.

Nothing more happened that day after the webcam incident. I convinced myself it had been nothing. A malfunction, or maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just the end of the puzzle, nothing. Perhaps I had messed something up along the way, missed a key clue, or I just wasn’t chosen. Or maybe it had all been an elaborate hoax from the start. Something designed to mess with people like me, who are too obsessive to see reason.

I told myself it was time to move on, maybe even take a break from Reddit altogether. For the first time in weeks, I let myself breathe again. I focused on the mundane; work, a few casual outings, the things I’d neglected for so long. My life went back to normal. It didn’t last for long though.

I was getting off work, walking home like usual. While walking, I started to notice a man in a black suit following behind me. He kept a steady pace, making every turn I made. It felt weird, but I shrugged it off. There are lots of people who walk in a city, after all. I picked up some food at the grocery store on the way, nothing special. But as I walked in, I noticed a second guy in a suit standing near the entrance. He didn’t look like he was shopping, just standing there, waiting, staring in my direction.

I began to feel creeped out, but tried to push it out of my mind, and do my shopping. While I was in one of the aisles, I saw another man in a suit. He walked past the aisle I was in and looked directly at me, then kept going. He didn’t stop or say anything, just walked by, but it felt off. By this time, I started getting uncomfortable, positive I was being watched. I hurried through the rest of my shopping and went to the checkout.

I left the store, trying not to think about it, but as I walked down the street, I saw the first guy again, a few paces behind me, walking in the same direction. He wasn’t in a hurry, just walking at the same pace, keeping his distance. I looked back once, and he didn’t seem to notice, but I felt like he was still there, following me. I knew by this time; it wasn’t just a coincidence. I was being followed.

I decided to break out into a run, wanting nothing more than to get to the safety of my home as quickly as possible. When I got to my apartment, I rushed upstairs and locked the door behind me. I stood by the window, trying to shake off the weird feeling, but as I peeked down at the street below, I saw something that made my heart race. A black SUV pulled up slowly in front of my building, then just stopped. I couldn’t see who was inside, but I knew it was there for a reason. I knew it had something to do with what had been happening, the puzzles. I freaking knew it was something illegal I thought to myself, probably the FBI, or something.

That, I heard a knock at the door. Just two, firm knocks. I peered through the peephole. Two men in suits stood outside, staring at the door like they knew I was watching. I froze in fear, unsure of what to do. They didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just stood there. I backed away from the door, my heart pounding. I ignored it, hoping they would just go away.

But then it happened again. A few hours later, another knock, same two men. I didn’t dare look through the peephole again, but I could hear their footsteps outside. Every few hours, the knocks would come, always the same. No words. No warning. Just the sound of knuckles against wood. I began to realize by this point, they weren’t leaving, and I wasn’t getting out of this.

I called out of work the next couple of days, not wanting to go outside. The SUV had not moved, and I didn’t want to confront whatever was waiting for me out there. Days went by, and the food supply in my apartment began to dwindle. It was also the end...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gxg7cb/i_solved_a_famous_reddit_mystery_and_it_ruined_my/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-11-22 19:00:56+00:00.

---

( TW for child abuse )

I needed to mature fast after my mother passed away. My father took me and my little brother in. I was the one who got us ready for school, walked him to the bus, and every morning I would get to class on time. Planning meals with a limited budget was tricky. I made sure my little brother always had at least two meals a day. I wish it were three but the money simply wasn’t there. Due to scarifies my body didn’t grow properly. I was thirteen but appeared to be nine.

My father was rarely home. That suited me. One night he packed us in the back of his truck. It smelled terrible. I knocked aside fast-food bags jealous he was eating something we rarely got. This drive was different. He didn’t tell us where we were going. My brother was only six but he was smart enough not to ask questions. We drove for a long time. I felt sleepy but refused to drift off. Was he finally tired of us and decided to dump two poor kids at our aunt's house? I dearly wished that was what happened that night.

He parked outside of an old rundown apartment building. I carried my sleeping brother as a pair of men outside eyed us. An urge to run started in the back of my mind. Soon I was being forced inside, the hallway reeking of old cigarette smoke. The walls of the long hallway were stained over the years and trash littered the ground. My arms burned from the strain but I refused to let go of the only family member I cared about.

We were led inside a dark room. Two men waited for us smoking in chairs across from a couch. I was shoved towards the empty seat. Carefully I put down Noah. He slept like a rock unaware he was no longer in the truck. I sat down next to him holding his small hand and studied the room. Aside from a table and the chairs, there was no furniture. I’ve never seen the other men before. My father appeared stressed. It was a new expression on his face.

“Are they good?” He asked the two men.

The younger one nodded towards the older man lighting another smoke. His grey hair was pushed back out of his face. I didn’t see his expression well in the dim light until he leaned over to study us. My skin crawled with his eyes on me. I swallowed hard fearing the real reason why we were there.

“Good enough.” He said in a deep voice that sounded like he had smoked a pack a day since he had been born.

The other man called for someone to bring in a bag from the other room. It landed in front of my father’s feet with a heavy thud. The zipper was half undone so I saw stacks of bills inside. A piece of paper was sticking out of the bag. He snatched it up quickly signing the bottom. My mouth grew dry. I knew what just happened. The man I once called a father had sold us. I was too scared to even protest. The room swam. This couldn’t be happening.

“There. Signed. I’m out of here.” He said and dropped the paper to lift the bag.

“Thank you. Oh, also one more thing.” The younger man said making my father pause.

With one swift motion, he pulled out a handgun and then fired once. A body collapsed to the floor. The sound woke my brother who started to tear up. He was confused and scared in a new place. But I was glad he didn’t see what I just did. The person who brought in the money walked back into the room again to retrieve the cash. My heart was beating out of my chest as I stared down at the lifeless body of the man who had just tossed us away.

Laughter started to fill the room. The smoker sounded like he had just watched the funniest thing he ever saw in his entire life. Within seconds we were grabbed by another stranger to be dragged away. We struggled, screamed, and cried. Our efforts meant nothing. We were manhandled into a small apartment with the door firmly locked. No matter how hard I pounded I could not get it open. I cursed my small body and I cursed my father. He got himself killed and now no one could save us.

Noah was crying hard. I needed to focus on him. I couldn’t do anything else. He was confused not understanding what just happened and I couldn’t explain it to him. I guided him to the small bathroom to get cleaned up. I didn’t dare risk using the dirty tub. Instead, I found a somewhat clean cloth to wash away his tears with warm water. Noah always acted much younger than he was in stressful situations. He was lucky that no one bullied him at school and he had a lot of friends. He kept asking me when our father would take us home. I had no answers and couldn’t even think of a lie.

There was a somewhat clean bed out in the main room. I checked it over for stains before I let him lay down for a while. We could do nothing but wait. I did look around for anything I could find to use as a weapon.

Back then I vaguely knew what an older man would want with a child. Bile rose to my throat with those thoughts. I would rather die than let anyone hurt poor Noah. He had already gone through enough in his short life.

The door opened a few hours later. My brain had already thought of a thousand different horrible possibilities. I decided to be the one to make the first move. I charged at the man, teeth, and nails out. Latching onto his arm I tried doing as much damage as possible. He didn’t even flinch. He easily took the back of my shirt collar to lift me off my feet and place the rabid child at the foot of the bed. He looked at his scratched arm with a raised eyebrow. In his other hand were a few bags of fast food.

“Good effort. Here, I got some Happy Meals for you two.”

He offered the food but I refused. Noah woke up from the noise and crawled behind me. I knew he was starving but smart enough to take anything from a stranger.

“I’m not going to eat that. You drugged it so you could do who knows what to us.” I snapped.

He still held out the bags while putting a hand on his hip. He wore a button-down dress shirt with the collar undone and grey pressed pants. If it wasn’t for his unkempt hair, I would have assumed he had a somewhat respectable job.

“I don’t need to drug you two to do anything. You’re tiny. Like bugs.” He raised two fingers in front of his eye pretending to squish us.

I scowled hating how true his words were. As a sign of good will he reached in the bag to pull out a burger. He ate it in two bites trying to prove he hadn’t drugged the meal. I can’t explain why, but I accepted the food. There was something about his expression and tone that made me trust him. He appeared so much different than how he acted in front of the others. I should be weary of him considering he had bought us. And yet I let Noah happily eat the offered Happy Meal. He sipped at his milk offering me some. I refused knowing he needed it more.

“What are you going to do?” I asked as I picked away at the fries.

“Nothing you assumed I was.” He commented.

I narrowed my eyes trying to see if he was lying. But what was the point of making us get our guard down? He was right about easily being able to overpower two small children.

“Finish your dinner, then we’ll talk.”

I watched him find a chair on the other side of the room to sit down. He flipped through some old newspaper to read passing the next few minutes. It was nice to have a full meal in my stomach. It would help me face whatever was going on. Noah soon fell asleep again. It had been a long time since he last got to eat so much. I made sure he was comfortable then got off the bed to face the stranger.

“What’s your name?” I asked him trying to sound like an adult instead of a child.

He had his chin on his palm, his grey eyes studying me in a way I didn’t like. For a moment he appeared old. Not just like the middle-aged man his body was but something far greater than anything else I’ve ever come across.

“Graves.” he finally said.

“Lame.” I replied rolling my eyes.

He laughed not offended by my comment. For some reason I felt like if I asked questions, he would treat me like we were equals. I rarely came across adults that listened to my questions let alone gave answers.

“Why did you buy us?” I got down to the most important part.

“Your father was in deep with a little gang. They wanted to use my services to take care of a rival leader problem. I cannot act unless I am given permission by a human and if I’m paid for my work. I asked for a child or two. Your father just so happened to have just the thing. He was fully paid fair and square.” he shrugged speaking as if he was talking about the weather and not what led to my father’s death.

I huffed with my arms crossed.

“Ok, but why do you want some children? Are you going to like, eat us?” I said sounding brave but deep down praying that wasn’t the case.

He paused and then reached into his pocket to pull out a Happy Meal toy. I had noticed one missing. It wasn’t my main concern so I didn’t bring it up.

“I wanted this. But do you know how embarrassing it is to get the toys when you’re not buying the meals for some kids? I swear the workers just know. I could never live it down.”

I stood stunned at his answer. He must be joking. He had to be. Was my father really killed over a stupid rivalry and a small hunk of plastic? He had never been a good man. I never expected him to change his ways. No, I wanted to be the one to ruin his life. To see him rot for what he had done to us. It felt like he had gotten the easy way out. I shook my head needing to put that all behind me to address a different important point.

“Are you...?” I started but found it impossible...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Long-Turn3354 on 2024-11-22 15:45:22+00:00.

---

This company can bury me. They can get a lot from very little.

I don't want to incriminate myself, so I won't be saying my name, sex, or age. I also won't be saying the company's name at all. They have a lot of resources and seem to have a hand in everything these days, even though they are primarily in the medical industry. I'll leave the company's name up to your imagination, but if you know, you know.

I'm an archivist. I preserve, organize, and manage ALL information to make sure upon request that a company official or authorized employee can recall anything digitally from the creation of the company till now, Which at this point is more than 100 years of information. Documents, images, videos, databases, news articles, ANYTHING that includes the company's name or that is associated with the company no matter how small. If they think you're talking about them, they want it recorded and archived. I wouldn't be surprised if this post is sent across my desk for me to record and categorize.

We have your medical files. If you have or integrated one of our many products no matter how small I can safely say we have your thoughts and memories too. We have been watching over you so closely that we know you better than you know yourself. You all should start to read your user agreements. Most of you signed away your bodily anonymity to the company years ago. We use your information to target you with ads created PERFECTLY to entice you on an individual level to buy more from us.

I say all of this not so you know this company is off but so you know I'M off. I've lost something that I can't put my finger on working here. It's like the equivalent of what doctors lose from seeing so many dead people all the time but more extreme. I feel like I lost who I am… It's hard to explain. I feel like I'm entirely someone else. I only realized it because my boss let's call him N has been replaced. Not fired but replaced.

We have always been close. We started around the same time and started to find out about the company at the same time we used each other to vent and kind of cope with the things we were seeing. We crossed employee-manager boundaries and became almost brothers in arms. Taking in the weird world of _ company. We would spend time hanging out at bars after work and shooting the shit. It was definitely weird at first but once I kinda got over the “This is my boss” thing I realized we were about the same age and we were very similar. We got so close that he even started to come to my family's Christmas parties. I found out he was kinda estranged from his family I never dug too deep but he told me there was an accident and his parents passed away suddenly a couple of years ago so he was alone the last few Christmas eves. Since then I started to invite him to my family's Christmas parties out of town. He became part of the family.

A couple of months ago something strange came across my desk to archive. I don't get a lot of physical media so when something like this does happen I tell N and we tend to go through it more thoroughly together before converting it to digital. It came in a brown box and when he opened it I saw what looked like a game cartridge. Like a Gameboy color game labeled _Mortal_Eyes_ TC. That's all I was able to see before N Slammed the folds of the box closed and looked at me with a deadpan expression. His face was colorless and his eyes void-like. Our conversion went like this.

N - “What did you see”

Me - “Umm a Gamebo-”

N - ”-What did you see”

He took up a kinda scowl. It made me nervous.

Me - “What is wrong wit-

N - “WHAT DID YOU SEE”

Me -  “Nothing! I didn't see anything”

He then closed up the box and beamed straight to his office. Now I would normally think it was just a strange one-off thing but from that point on he doesn't talk to me anymore. He hasn't talked to anyone. He kinda ignores me. When I talk to him he doesn't reply and when I make myself physically impossible to ignore he kinda looks right through me. When he did that for the first time I felt a chill in my body. It would bother me. He just dropped our friendship just like that. Eventually, I started to realize that I was changing as well. I don't talk to or go to family gatherings anymore. I don't talk to anyone at all anymore. Eat, sleep, and work, and tbh it doesn't bother me at all. I feel nothing. I thought I had grown depressed maybe but this feels like something else it feels like something I don't feel empty. I just feel unbothered and uninterested in anything that's not a basic need or working. I've been fighting with myself to care enough to post this and I'm fighting with myself to care to investigate. I think the company has done something to us somehow and I need answers.

This week, I'm going to try to find the game I saw, or maybe i should try something more drastic to break through to my friend? In the meantime, if you all have any answers or advice, please send it my way. I think I'm about to go up against something bigger than myself. 

What should I do?

A - Try to find the game.

B - Try to really get Ns attention.

Or

C - Quit and try to find another job.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/313deezy on 2024-11-22 09:19:00+00:00.

---

It wasn’t until the night of the storm that I started doubting Uncle Frank was really my uncle. He’d been around my whole life—a quiet, stoic man who smelled faintly of cigars and pine. When I was younger, he’d come to family gatherings, always standing in the background, smiling faintly while sipping his drink. My parents told me he was my dad’s older brother, and I didn’t question it. Why would I? Families are strange that way—sometimes people just show up and stay.

But that stormy night, alone in my parents' creaky old house, something changed.

It started with the power going out. A sharp crack of thunder shook the walls, and the lights blinked out, leaving me in thick, oppressive darkness. I lit a few candles and sat in the living room, scrolling through my phone until the battery began to die. The only sound was the wind howling outside, rattling the windows. I almost didn’t hear the knock at the door.

When I opened it, there he was—Uncle Frank. His face was pale, and his clothes were drenched.

“Storm knocked my car into the ditch,” he said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. “Mind if I stay until it clears?”

Of course, I couldn’t say no. He was family—or so I thought.

As the hours crept by, something about Uncle Frank’s behavior unsettled me. He barely spoke, just sat in the armchair by the window, staring out into the darkness. His lips moved silently, as if he were muttering something to himself. I couldn’t shake the feeling he was… watching me, even when his eyes were fixed elsewhere.

Trying to distract myself, I rummaged through an old photo album, flipping through pictures of family vacations and holidays. Then I stopped. My finger hovered over an image of a Christmas gathering from ten years ago. There was Uncle Frank, standing in the background as always, wearing that same faint smile. But something was off. He looked exactly the same. Not similar—identical. Same face, same clothes, same posture.

I flipped to another page. A summer barbecue. Uncle Frank again, holding a beer, standing at the edge of the group. His hair hadn’t changed, nor had his lined face. He didn’t look older—or younger. He looked… frozen.

My heart started to race as I closed the album and glanced over at him. He was still sitting there, but now he was staring directly at me. His lips stopped moving.

“You’ve been looking at those pictures for a long time,” he said, his voice low and calm. Too calm.

I stammered something about how much I loved old family photos, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he stood up and walked toward the mantel above the fireplace. His movements were slow, deliberate.

“You know,” he said, picking up an old clock my mom loved, “this house used to belong to my brother.” He turned to face me, his smile stretching wider than I’d ever seen. “But I don’t have a brother. Never did.”

My stomach dropped. “What are you talking about? My dad—”

“Your dad doesn’t know me,” he interrupted. “Never did. I’m not part of your family, kiddo. Never have been.”

I tried to laugh, to brush it off as a joke, but the words wouldn’t come. My body felt cold. He stepped closer, and I noticed his skin was unnaturally pale, his eyes glassy and dull like a doll’s.

“You invited me in, though,” he continued, tilting his head. “And I’ve been waiting for that. A long, long time.”

The candles flickered, then went out, plunging the room into darkness. I scrambled for my phone, but it was dead. I couldn’t see him anymore, but I could hear him—his slow, deliberate footsteps coming closer.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” he whispered, his voice unnervingly close. “Every generation, I find a way back in. Just needed someone to let me in again.”

A sharp gust of wind blew through the house, slamming doors and sending papers flying. I stumbled backward, my heart hammering in my chest.

“Who are you?” I managed to choke out.

He laughed, a deep, guttural sound that didn’t belong to Uncle Frank—or to anything human.

“Not your uncle,” he said, his voice now layered with something otherworldly, something ancient. “Not even close.”

And then he was gone.

The storm ended the next morning, and when my parents came home, I told them everything. They laughed, of course, and said I must have been dreaming. But when I pulled out the photo album to show them the pictures of Uncle Frank, every image of him was gone.

All that remained were empty spaces where he’d once stood.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Direct-Mulberry-1649 on 2024-11-22 07:22:19+00:00.

---

Mass Media Dream Control

It all began with a TV program.

I was, like most people, I liked to unwind after a long day with my series. Predictable plot, shallow characters, it didn't matter; it was comforting. One night, I fell asleep in the middle of an episode. I dreamed about something strange-wandering through a large, neon-lit mall, lined with endless rows of products I didn't recognize but desperately wanted. I awoke with an overwhelming urge to buy a specific brand of sneakers.

At first, I didn't think much about it. Some random dream. A passing whim. But then, the next night, it happened again. Different products, same mall. This time, it was some energy drink. The dream was vivid, more real than any I'd ever had. I could feel the cold can in my hand, the fizz on my tongue.

The following day, I bought the drink. I didn't even like energy drinks.

Weeks passed, and the dreams became nightly events. Each one was meticulously crafted: aisles of gleaming gadgets, clothing that fit perfectly, snacks I’d never heard of but now craved. The dreams weren’t random; they were targeted. And they always followed an evening of TV or streaming.

I started to pay attention. On my screen, way off in the corner, there was this slight pulse of light; sort of a flicker. It would come and then it would go, perfectly timing with the background music of shows or movies. I tried switching platforms, but it didn't matter: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube-all had it.

Curiosity turned into obsession. I recorded episodes and slowed them down frame by frame. That's when I saw it: a flash of text embedded in the video. "Relax. Dream. Consume." It was too fast for the conscious mind to process, but my subconscious caught it every time.

I stopped watching altogether. For a week, I avoided every screen. The dreams didn't stop. Instead, they became more aggressive, more invasive. Now, it wasn't just products. It was experiences. Exotic vacations, luxury cars, sprawling mansions. I'd wake up drenched in sweat, heart pounding with a hollow yearning I couldn't satisfy.

I tried to talk about it, but no one believed me. My friends laughed it off. “You’re just stressed,” they said. “Everyone dreams about stuff like that.” But they didn’t. Not like this.

Then I noticed something else: people around me were buying more. Colleagues came to work carrying gadgets they could not afford. My neighbor replaced a perfectly good car with a flashy new one. Even my mom, a self-proclaimed minimalist, suddenly changed the interior of her entire house.

It wasn't just me.

One night, I just didn't care anymore. I attached a TV with an analog antenna-one that was way out of reach for streaming services-received some sort of random, staticky public access channel, and watched the screen until I fell asleep.

The dream was different this time. I wasn't in the mall, but some sterile, white room completely surrounded by faceless people. They whispered in unison-voices like oil, it seemed-ending with: "You can't run. You can't hide. Relax. Dream. Consume."

When I awoke, my phone was buzzing. Every single app was blowing up with advertisements for the products of my dreams—products I never searched for or spoke a word about. My bank account had been robbed, and on it were placed orders for things I did not recall purchasing.

I smashed the TV that night, threw away my phone, disconnected the internet. It didn't matter. The ads materialized anyway: on billboards, in magazines, even in the songs playing on the radio. The dreams followed me, stronger than ever.

I don't know how much longer I can resist. Part of me doesn't want to anymore.

Last night, the dream changed again. The whispers weren’t selling me anything. This time, they gave me an address. It’s not far from here.

I think I’m going to go.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ExpensiveTea6038 on 2024-11-22 01:54:50+00:00.

---

For years, my family and I have all experienced the same things. Not like normal Deja-vu, but I can tell my dad who he talked to at work yesterday 300 miles away. Everyone has a story. They’re always written off as dreams.

When I was a kid, my mom busted me for partying. She woke up in the middle of the night and called me. I’ll never forget the tone in her voice when she recalled exactly what I had done. “I told you not to hang out with those two. They’re always drinking that cheap beer and they brought that girl with them.” That girl was my current addiction and thankfully she didn’t mention the things I had tried to do, or wanted to do that is. I know she knew, because I would’ve known. Maybe that’s just her intuition wanting to preserve her babies innocence. After all, we were all high schoolers once.

The ones that really sit hard are the older generations. My grandpa used to tell the story of when he was deployed to France. Of course he wasn’t in the war, he’s far too young. His dad was a hero though. I’ve seen his medals and read about him in my history books. That’s never how I heard the stories though.

“Do you know what it’s like to hear a mother’s scream? That sound when her baby dies in her arms. They weren’t supposed to be there. It was only supposed to be Germans. It’s not my fault they got caught in the fire. It’s the Jerry’s. They shouldn’t have been there. We should’ve checked.”

My grandpa would talk in ways that would make you think he was suffering just like the boys that made it back. But that’s nothing new. We all suffer from what they call lucid dreams and night terrors. But I would swear it’s real. I felt the joy of my mother when she held her child for the first time. I felt the grief of losing a pet long before I was born. That’s just our curse.

Now my daughter is involved. They say a parent should never have to bury their child, but I wish that’s all I had to do.

She was 4. Out playing in my dad’s back 40. Just being a kid. What she didn’t know was how to identify a copper head. I’ll never forget the scream of its fangs tearing into her little sausage arms. The doctor said she was lucky. We got her to them in time and it hadn’t deposited all of its venom. It was a defensive bite. She must’ve stepped on it by accident. The medicine would keep her asleep for a while so we should get some rest. Obviously we couldn’t leave her there, so I curled up in the dad chair and my wife had a cot brought in. No sooner did I drift off to a restless sleep did my arm start to burn.

I was jolted awake by the feeling of four knives entering my forearm and setting it alight from the inside. I caught my breath and made sure no one else was disturbed by my noise. Sarah was awake. “Daddy can you turn on the light. I scared.” She never did like the dark. In her time of need, I would’ve taken the roof of this hospital if I could to brighten up the room. I switch on the light and wrap my bear paw around her hand. “Don’t worry sweetie. There’s nothing that can get you while I’m here.”

I must’ve dozed off there with her. I was running through the woods. Everything felt so large. The trees must’ve been 40 feet tall. In the distance I could hear something but couldn’t quite make it out. The creek was so big. I tried to jump it but got my boots wet. I caught a rock and woke up from the sensation of falling. Her hand was cold. The doctors told me that was normal. Slowed heart rate to prevent the spread of the toxin.

The next day we went home. She was still exhausted, as we all were. I carried her into her room, laid her on her bed, and placed a kiss on her cheek. As I turned to leave, a weak little voice in the darkness pleaded “get the light daddy.” “Of course sweetie” as I plugged in her Sesame Street night light.

My wife and I went to bed, waking up every hour to check on her. Never did get much sleep. We agreed that I should take a couple hours and then we’d switch. When I finally drifted off, it was dark. I had a feeling like something was sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I tried everything but I couldn’t move either. My hands were pinned to my sides and there was something on top of me. I woke up screaming, nothing like my wife though. She came rushing in to tell me we had to go. Now.

By the time we got to the hospital it was too late. Doctor said it was an allergic reaction. To what we don’t know. All I can remember are those little bear pajamas that she loved and her favorite blanket. Her grandmother made that. The last thing she did. She knew she wouldn’t get to meet my daughter but wanted her to always know that grandma was there with her to protect her. It’s times like this a man needs his mom.

It must’ve been two days without sleep. I couldn’t get that feeling out of my mind that I failed. My only job was to protect her. It couldn’t have been that hard but somehow I failed. My wife suggested something to help me sleep. Said something about making plans tomorrow so I needed my rest.

The warm blanket of ambien overwhelmed me and I fell asleep on her floor.

Darkness again. This time it was cold. I don’t know why I was cold, I must’ve been under a pretty thick blanket. The blanket moves and I’m blinded by the white lights. There are people walking around me, speaking in words I can’t understand. There is no noise. I can’t move. I feel trapped. All I want is to see my mother again. I feel like I need to cry but I can’t. I feel a familiar blanket laid on top of me and I’m tucked in. I can’t make out the face responsible but it’s warm. It’s safe. I get a kiss on the head and my bed slides into darkness. There’s a loud thud when a door closes and the voices are muffled. So many tears. I can’t still feel the blanket but I’m only getting colder.

My wife wakes me up the next morning to get dressed. She’s laid out a blazer and a tie. We go to the funeral home and start to make decisions. Isn’t my daughter supposed to be doing this for me. We get lead to a back room where everything seems to shrink. The largest casket couldn’t have been more than 4 feet. So many colors and designs. If not for the setting, it would’ve almost been joyful. My wife walks to one with the lovable cast of her favorite show. I’ll never see them the same. Puppets or not, they looked like they understood and they wanted to help. Nothing can help now. We sign some documents, exchange forced pleasantries and go about our way.

The rest of the day is a blur. I go through the motions. We have dinner, quiet again. I help with the dishes, all of the plates are the same size. We try to watch something to take our minds off everything, but the remote is buried in the toy box. I take another ambien and decide if I can’t do anything else right, at least I can sleep.

I’m laying on a bed with a weird man walking around me. He writes something down and stabs my side. I feel a rush of liquid but it doesn’t hurt. I see him pull my favorite clothes out of the box on the counter. I would love to help him get me dressed but I can’t move. He brings over a brush, and I want to tell him I’m not allowed to wear makeup. My mom wouldn’t like that. He closes my eyes and it’s dark again. My bed gets slid into another room. I feel a stuffed animal tucked under my arm. It feels safe. Maybe the dark isn’t all that bad. I hear the door close, but above me. What kind of door is above me.

We all meet at the cemetery. My dad hugs me, the first time in forever. I can feel him crying into me. I could tell we shared the same feeling of failure. That must be primal. I hold my wife’s hand as we all up and place the flowers. The preacher says something about the weight of small caskets and my baby girl is lowered out of sight.

That night it rained. The thunder usually helps me sleep but I can’t get the image of that little red casket out of my mind. Another ambien.

There’s people crying. I don’t know them but they feel familiar. I feel like I’m flying but down. Floating I guess. Something hits the top of my room. A lot of something. It gets quieter the more it happens. Then it’s just quiet. And dark. It’s so dark. I try to squeeze the stuffed animal but can’t move my arms.

These days it’s all more of the same. Wake up, go to work, pretend to be okay, ambien, sleep. Every night is just cold darkness. It scares me. I can’t explain but I’m always filled with a terror when I return to my dream and it’s only darkness. I wish I could turn on a light. They always say the hardest thing a person can do is bury their child, at least thats where it ends for them.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-11-22 05:38:04+00:00.

---

Our life at Lake St. Gallen was everything we had wanted.

Or so I kept telling myself...

David and I moved here two years ago, retreating from the chaos of city life to the quiet solitude of a cabin in the woods. The lake stretched like a dark mirror to the edges of our property, bordered by towering pines and the rustling silence of the forest. We were one of eight cabins dotted around the lake, each separated by enough land to make you feel utterly alone.

David took to the lifestyle instantly. He spent mornings down at the dock fishing, his silhouette blending with the mist that hovered over the water.

I preferred the cabin, where sunlight poured through the kitchen windows as I sipped coffee and read all the books on my once ever-growing list.

There was a permanence here, a sense of stillness I hadn’t felt in years. I loved the way the seasons transformed the lake... the fiery leaves of autumn reflected like a painting on the water, the brittle stillness of winter mornings when the lake turned to ice.

Our neighbors were essentially ghosts.

Most of the cabins belonged to city people like us, but they came only for the occasional weekend. For long stretches, it was just David, me, and the occasional visit from Naya.

Naya was a cleaner that came recommended to us by the cabin's previous owners.

She came once a month, her long dark hair streaked with gray, her sharp eyes taking in everything. She was Ojibwe and rarely spoke in English, moving through the cabin like she belonged to a different world. Her movements were deliberate, almost ritualistic.

One day while finishing up, she unexpectedly made us tea. A strong chamomile that she very enthusiastically served to David and me.

“A holiday tea to celebrate my heritage,” she said with a big smile.

David thought it was a quaint bit of local culture, but it unsettled me. There was a gravity to Naya’s presence, something unspoken that clung to her like smoke. I didn’t ask questions. I just drank the tea, the bitter warmth spreading through me like a balm.

That night was awful.

I remember the date, November 23rd, because it happened to be my birthday.

Instead of celebrating, David and I spent the night drenched in sweat, feverish and disoriented. The nausea came in waves, and my head throbbed with a pressure that felt like it might split me in two. David joked the next morning that it must have been something we ate, or maybe the sudden cold snap. I wanted to believe him. But something about it didn’t feel right.

By the second November, I started to notice the pattern.

It began with the cleaning. Naya showed up unannounced on Friday, the 24th, even though we told her we didn't need any help in November. She moved through the cabin with a kind of frenetic energy, scrubbing every surface, burning herbs until the air was thick with their earthy sharpness.

And then she served us the same tea.

I remembered the smell... chamomile... mixed with something else... something chemically.

“A holiday tea to celebrate my heritage!” she said again, her smile tight, her eyes holding mine for a beat too long.

There was something majorly off, something about the way her fingers lingered on the rim of the cup as she handed it to me. David took his with a grin, swallowing it in one gulp. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I took a sip of mine.

The sickness hit that night. Hard.

I woke in the dark, my limbs heavy, my head spinning.

Beside me, David was passed out, his breathing deep and even, but I couldn’t move. It was as if my body had been pinned to the bed, trapped under an invisible weight. Panic surged through me, my heart pounding as I struggled to cry out, but no sound came.

Then I heard it.

A low, mournful wail echoed across the lake, a sound so alien it made my skin crawl. It wasn’t the cry of an animal or the wind through the trees. It was something alive, something ancient. The sound grew louder, vibrating through the walls of the cabin, seeping into my bones. I wanted to look, to see what was out there, but my body refused to obey. My eyes, fixed on the window, caught the faintest shadow... a tall, gaunt figure standing just beyond the glass.

Its face was wrong. Hollow. Its eyes were voids, blacker than the night. I felt it staring at me, its gaze piercing through my skull. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could feel was the pull. An invisible force urging me to step outside, to leave the safety of the cabin.

The wail crescendoed, a terrible, keening sound that rattled my teeth.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it vanished.

The next morning, I was convinced something was deeply wrong. I began asking questions around the lake, but no one wanted to talk about Naya.

The other cabins stayed dark through most of the month, their occupants vanishing like clockwork. When I mentioned the tea, the sickness, their faces paled.

One woman, her voice barely above a whisper, said, “Just drink it. Don’t ask why.”

It was Naya herself who finally gave me the truth, though she did so reluctantly. I think the neighbors had mentioned to her that I was asking around.

“The tea keeps you safe from the taking,” she said one afternoon, her eyes fixed on the lake. “It is a family recipe to bind you to your body. Keeps the spirit from taking you.”

“What spirit?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Her gaze shifted to me, hard and unyielding.

“The old spirit of the lake,” she said. “It wakes on the third weekend of November. It comes to those who are strong, those who are vibrant. It needs to consume them to sustain itself.”

“And the tea?” I pressed.

She hesitated. “It makes you weak. Undesirable.”

The words hung between us, heavy and awful. I thought of the sickness, the way it left me hollowed out, and I realized what she meant.

She was poisoning us... on purpose.

“The spirit looks for the healthiest among us, those with strong bodies and strong spirits. It needs a sacrifice, and it takes the ones who seem most vibrant. By poisoning you, I make you look weak, unworthy of its attention. I know the sickness is painful, and I am truly sorry for that, but it is the only way to keep you safe. To make you seem undesirable to the spirit.”

"You do this for -"

"Every resident here. My family has not lost a human to the taking in 26 years. The spirit feeds on animals through the night. Though my mother worries it is growing impatient for a strong human sacrifice."

I looked at her, the weight of her words sinking in. The way the other cabins always seemed dark throughout November, the way the lake seemed to hold its breath. It all made sense now, the unspoken understanding that everyone here shared, the reason no one was ever outside that night.

“Thank you,” I said finally, my voice trembling. “For keeping us safe.”

Naya nodded, her expression softening, but there was something in her eyes—something haunted.

The third weekend of November is in just a couple days.

This morning, I looked out at the water, its surface calm and still, knowing we have the right person looking out for us. But I can’t shake the feeling of dread that clings to me like a second skin.

I know what’s coming. I know the sickness will hit, and I will spend the night writhing in pain, fighting the urge to step outside.

I will drink the tea. I will let Naya do what she must, her bundles of sage and sweetgrass filling the air with their sharp, earthy scent. I am grateful for her protection, for the knowledge that she and her family have kept the spirit at bay for nearly three decades.

And I will pray that, this year, the spirit finds David and I as undesirable as before.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Obvious-Secretary151 on 2024-11-22 04:32:17+00:00.

---

It started as a dare.

My roommate, Jake, found the game on some obscure forum. The post was full of cryptic warnings and half-joking testimonials, the kind of thing you’d expect from a chain email circa 2005.

“Midnight Calls,” Jake read aloud, grinning like an idiot. “All you have to do is play, follow the rules, and survive until dawn. Piece of cake.”

I rolled my eyes. “What’s the point?”

“The point,” he said, “is that if you win, you get a wish. Anything you want. Money, fame, whatever.”

“Yeah, or a virus on your phone.”

But Jake wouldn’t let it go. By 11:50 PM, he had convinced me to play with him. It was simple, he said. The game required three things: a smartphone, a candle, and darkness.

We sat in the living room with the lights off, the flickering candle casting jagged shadows on the walls. Jake opened the app he’d downloaded—a plain black screen with a timer counting down to midnight.

“Ready?” he asked.

“This is dumb,” I muttered.

The timer hit zero, and the phone screen changed. A message popped up:

"Do you wish to begin? Yes / No."

Jake tapped “Yes” without hesitation. My phone buzzed, showing the same screen. Reluctantly, I tapped “Yes.”

"Rule 1: Do not leave the house. Rule 2: Keep your candle lit. Rule 3: Answer when it calls."

“What does it mean by ‘it’?” I asked.

Jake shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”

The first fifteen minutes were uneventful. We sat there in awkward silence, staring at our phones. Then Jake’s phone buzzed, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness.

He answered, putting it on speaker. “Hello?”

A voice, distorted and crackling, hissed through the speaker. “Would you like to continue?”

Jake laughed nervously. “Yeah?”

The line went dead. A new message popped up on his screen:

"Rule 4: Don’t look behind you."

I shivered despite myself. “Okay, that’s creepy.”

My phone buzzed next. I answered, my voice shaky. “Hello?”

The same distorted voice, but this time it whispered my name. “Would you like to continue?”

My stomach turned, but I forced myself to answer. “Yes.”

The line clicked off, and a message appeared:

"Rule 5: Don’t trust him."

“Don’t trust who?” I asked, staring at the screen.

Jake looked up, his face pale in the candlelight. “What’d it say?”

“Nothing.”

We didn’t talk after that. The air grew heavier, and the shadows seemed to stretch farther with each flicker of the candle. I thought I saw something move in the corner of my eye, but every time I turned, there was nothing there.

Then Jake’s candle went out.

“Shit,” he hissed, scrambling to relight it. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the match.

My phone buzzed again.

“Hello?”

The voice didn’t whisper this time. It growled. “He failed. Will you help him?”

I looked at Jake, who was still fumbling with his candle. “What happens if I say no?”

The growl turned into a low, guttural laugh. “You’ll find out.”

The line went dead, and my phone flashed a message:

"Rule 6: Don’t let him leave."

“Jake,” I said slowly, “you can’t go outside.”

His head snapped up, his eyes wide. “Why not?”

“I don’t know, but the game—”

“This is insane!” He stood, grabbing his phone. “I’m done. Screw this stupid game.”

Before I could stop him, he headed for the front door. I lunged after him, but the moment he turned the knob, the air in the room shifted. It was like the atmosphere itself was sucked out, leaving behind a suffocating emptiness.

Jake froze, his hand still on the doorknob.

“Jake?” I whispered.

He turned to face me, but it wasn’t him anymore. His eyes were wrong, black and empty, and his mouth twisted into a grin that stretched too far.

“You broke the rules,” he said, his voice layered with something deeper, something inhuman.

I stumbled back, tripping over the coffee table. My candle flickered violently, and I scrambled to shield it.

Jake—or whatever was wearing his face—stepped toward me. “You should’ve stopped him,” it hissed.

The candle went out.

The last thing I saw before the room plunged into darkness was Jake’s face splitting open, revealing something sharp and glistening underneath.

I woke up on the floor at dawn, the smell of burnt wax clinging to the air. Jake was gone. His phone sat on the table, screen shattered, the app nowhere to be found.

There’s one last rule they don’t tell you:

If you lose, the game keeps playing.

Now, every night at midnight, my phone buzzes. I don’t answer. But I know someday, I’ll have to.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-11-22 00:37:15+00:00.

---

I don’t even know where to start here. If you’ve managed to intercept this, then odds are that you’re in for a bad time. If you’re one of the bastards back home who got me into this mess, then I hope you rot. Either way, I’m trying to send this out to as many people as possible. At the very least, you deserve a little warning of what’s to come.

From the top- my mane is Pierce Valens. For the past… seven years now, I believe, I’ve honestly lost track of time… anyway, I’ve been stationed on the moon. I’m a geologist, called up here to help with a mining operation after some unknown minerals were found. Unfortunately I’m the last person alive up here now, and I don’t see that lasting too much longer.

So, consider this my last will and testament. I ain’t getting out of here, and I’ll be damned if the Rot is getting out of here either. Guess if I have any solace, it’s that the big wigs who were up here bit it first.

Okay… none of this is going to make sense unless we start from the top. The big thing you need to know is that the space race ended and became more of a space marathon. It wasn’t about who finished first, it was just about getting there and setting up your territory to see what you could find. The States ended up working together with other countries- China, the former Soviets, India, basically anyone who could pop a rocket into orbit got an invitation. Hooray, world unity, right?

Not when it comes to this. Everyone is up here working together, but they’re about to end the entirety of humanity through their combined efforts. All their resources went into building a nice little outpost up here on the moon, though I’m not sure what the original purpose of it was.

Eventually, probably around… I don’t know, six years or so ago from the briefing I got, they started mining. Initially it started out as just a “let’s find out what’s under the surface” type of thing. Innocent enough, right? Find some rare minerals and maybe change how things operate on Earth. Except the mining is what got us into this stupid situation.

About three years ago was when they found the Great Table. That’s the technical term for it, anyway. Apparently it was during one of the regular mining operations, workers tunneling under the surface of the moon (seems like a fantastic idea, right?) ended up breaking through into this huge hollow antechamber. Big discovery, right?

Turns out, Hollow Moon was the least of our conspiracy addled worries. This place was big, located pretty damn close to the center of the satellite, but it didn’t match up. The dimensions of the place made no goddamn sense when compared to our measurements of the Moon itself. When placed in comparison to the surface area, our tunnels, and everything else, it’s like it took up far more room than was physically possible, yet nothing was different if you were looking down from the surface. That threw everyone for one hell of a loop, naturally.

I was already here for geological survey, testing out samples that some of the excavation crew brought back and seeing what they compared to back on Earth. Nothing too crazy, and the pay was good at the start, especially for how easy the work was. Most of the materials found up here were just different forms of basalt, silicon, the occasional deposit of iron… all stuff we’ve seen before.

I can still remember watching the live feed when they found the chamber. We had excavated down probably three hundred miles below the surface of Earth’s lunar body. As far as what they were trying to find… I don’t know. Maybe they were hoping for water or some new energy source. Instead we found a vast, empty cavern that steadily kept sloping downward. I honestly was surprised we didn’t hit the top of it and fall through, instead crashing through almost perfectly perpendicular to the floor of it.

They set up an elevator to get more of us down there before long, and let me tell you just stepping into that cavern almost broke my brain. See, one thing the Moon has going for it is the lack of light pollution. Set up at the right spot on the base and you could see stars you never thought existed. Entire galaxies were visible far off, almost to the naked eye if you looked hard enough. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, and you could catch it from almost anywhere on the surface.

In here though, complete darkness. It was a void, even with our strongest lights set up. Couldn’t see the top of the place, no ceiling above, just the dark absence of anything. It was the first time I’d seen complete darkness in a while, and something about it was just… primal. Everything in me told me to run the moment I stepped down there.

We eventually set up a full base camp and started exploring the chamber. It… we never found an end to it. The entire thing just stretched on forever, even after we had an estimated six hundred miles covered. There’s just… there’s no way we wouldn’t find some end around there with the dimensions of the moon. I fully expected to come across a massive cavern wall at any point, ready to crack through to the surface on the other side or at least into SOMETHING. But no, we just kept moving… until we found the Great Table.

I wasn’t on the mission that found the first bit of Rot. I did see that team when they got brought back through our base camp though. The videos they had… god it was like a bad movie.

The pale lights off their suits were lighting solid rock in every direction, the darkness beyond encroaching like it was trying to take the team. Eventually though the color of the rock changed. It was so gradual you would hardly notice it at first, just the lightest hint of dark creeping into the gray rock. Eventually though it started clustering, darkening the gray to a dark charcoal color. Eventually it took over so fully, such a dark black, that it mixed into the abyss around them, making ground near indistinguishable from the void. Even with a more high powered light, it still looked like the team was just floating in space, likely to fall into the ground at any moment.

Every so often there would be a crack in the floor, a deep green breaking through the black. I can’t really blame the team for being hesitant to check it, but eventually one of them noticed that the cracks were… pulsating. One finally suggested that he believed it was glowing, and that was where the first mistake was made.

The five members of the team gathered close, each putting a hand on another before turning off their lights, one by one down the line. As the darkness began closing in with each one deigniting, the green glow of the cracks became more defined. They were indeed pulsating, the green ebbing and flowing from one direction as it went in waves. The team took a moment to orient themselves, keeping their lights off while turning to face the direction the pulse was originating from. The last one in line tripped in the shuffle, losing his hand on the one in front of him. There was a brief shout, terror filling his voice, then it was gone. His camera feed blinked out with a small burst of glitched pixels.

The rest of the team turned their lights on immediately, shouting for him to do the same and stay close. Their cameras panned in every direction, desperately searching for their friend there just moments before. Nothing. Just the cracks, still pulsating a faint green against their pale lights. The fifth member of their party was gone, nowhere in sight.

The fear in their faces as the suit cams kept shaking, everyone desperately turning to try and find their teammate… it’s something I’ve never been able to shake. That was four years ago now, and looking back… that was our sign to get the hell out of here.

The team followed their line back after a while, making it back to base camp after a couple of days. None of them were… normal, though. Everyone began to steadily decline, their health beginning to crash out starting with intense bouts of insomnia. By the time they were brought back through my segment of the base… it was like seeing corpses get walked through. They couldn’t be taken out of their suits at this point due to how damn frail they were, worrying that they could break a limb in the process of getting them out or back in for transport. They were just… wasting away in there.

By the time they got back to the surface… they were practically soup in there. So damn decomposed their bodies just melted within hours. I don’t know if it was the raid rise back to the surface, maybe a change in atmospheric pressure? I don’t know, but the reports we got back were that they had to just dispose of the suits themselves, because they were… well, they were dead and gone.

Unfrotunately however they disposed of the suit wasn’t enough. Despite the rotten corpses sloshing around inside the atmospheric suits… god it makes me gag just thinking about it. The footage we got from up here a couple of days later was something even more disturbing than the fear I had seen on their faces just days before.

They sent us the security tapes. I guess that in absence of any real idea of what to do with their festering bodies in those suits, they were just put in a cold storage in hopes of… I don’t know, stalling any further putrification? They were in a deep freezer that was serving as a makeshift morgue, suits still on, and the gasses inside causing them to stay rigid nearly laying on the tables. God, the poor bastard that had to move them…...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gwv330/theres_something_rotten_under_the_surface_of_our/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/PossessionInformal49 on 2024-11-21 23:54:39+00:00.

---

A few months ago, I started dabbling in the dark web—not for anything illegal, just out of curiosity. I wanted to see if the stories were true: hackers selling government secrets, hitmen offering their "services," and the unthinkable lurking just a click away. Most of what I found was scams or overpriced junk. Then I stumbled onto something that felt different. A forum called "Reflections."

The layout was simple—just a black screen with red text. The tagline read: "Find yourself in others." I assumed it was some philosophical nonsense or a creative writing forum, but one thread caught my attention: "Doppelgängers: Post Your Match."

Curiosity piqued, I clicked. The thread contained hundreds of pictures of people—random selfies, candid shots, even surveillance-style images—all with timestamps. And beneath each photo was another image: a match.

Sometimes the resemblance was uncanny, like identical twins. Other times, it was... off. A person’s smile might be too wide, their eyes just slightly misaligned, or their skin a shade too pale.

Scrolling down, I froze.

There was ¿ my face ?.

The first photo was a candid shot of me at a coffee shop. I recognized the hoodie I wore last week and the chipped paint on the chair I was sitting on. The timestamp was from five days ago.

Below it was another photo: "my match."

This version of me was smiling, but it wasn’t a normal smile. It was too sharp, stretched wider than physically possible, like someone had grabbed the edges of my mouth and pulled. My eyes were slightly sunken, and my skin looked... waxy. But it was me.

My heart raced. I hadn’t shared that photo anywhere. Someone had taken it. I clicked back to the main page, panicked, but I couldn’t leave. Every time I hit the "back" button, I’d end up on another thread titled"Find Yourself."

The screen glitched. A pop-up appeared:

“Do you accept your reflection?”

Two buttons: YES and NO.

I slammed the “NO” button. My screen went black.

For a moment, I thought I’d bricked my laptop, but then my webcam light flickered on. I panicked, slamming the lid shut, but not before I caught a glimpse of the screen.

It was me—but I wasn’t sitting at my desk anymore. The room behind me was a basement I didn’t recognize, and the expression on my face wasn’t mine. It was the same too-wide smile from the photo.

I unplugged my laptop and shoved it under my bed. That night, I barely slept.

The next day, I got a text from an unknown number:

"Why don’t you smile more? :) "

Attached was a photo of me, sitting in my living room.

I don’t go near the dark web anymore. Hell, I don’t even use my computer without a piece of tape over the webcam. But it doesn’t matter.

Everywhere I go now, I see it: my face. Reflected in windows, in passing cars, in shadows that move just a second too late.

It’s always smiling.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Key-Werewolf-2574 on 2024-11-21 23:47:17+00:00.

---

On March 30, 2024, I lost my grandmother at the age of 80. She left behind her cat and my aunt, who has a mental disability (due to meningitis that led to intellectual impairment).

My aunt is a very cheerful and playful person, but her behavior and the way we treat her are more suited to a 4-year-old child. She grew up in the 1980s, a time when support structures for people with disabilities were not as developed as they are today.

On a scale from 1 to 100, where 100 represents an independent adult, I would say she’s at a 5. I still believe she has untapped potential that could be developed.

She has speech issues and expresses herself very simply; for her, everything is black or white, with no understanding of nuances. However, she is very perceptive in certain ways, like knowing where everything is in my house. She has an excellent sense of direction but cannot make decisions for herself and needs assistance.

It has been six months since she started living in the family home with my mother and me—her 24-year-old nephew.

Now let me get straight to the point: Throughout my life, I’ve questioned whether or not I was adopted.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what triggered these doubts, but here are some facts that come to mind and disturb me.

I have no memories before the age of 7. I have photos and videos of my early childhood, but I don’t recognize myself in them.

Yes, people change, and yes, it’s hard to recognize yourself as a child or notice resemblances, but this feels too extreme. I have several photos with my older sister, who is two years older than me, from when we were in preschool together. But in all these photos, I don’t recognize myself. The head shape is the same, but the facial features are quite different—even the hairline. When I compare photos of myself at age 7, I see someone completely different. I understand children grow and change, but still!

Not long ago, I was redecorating the house and hung up a picture of my sister and my “younger self” from around preschool age (3–4 years old) on the living room wall.

At different times, both my mother and my sister reacted similarly to the photo. They seemed surprised and said something like, “Why is this photo here?” At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but now, after what happened, I recall their gloomy expressions.

Now that I think about it, we’ve always avoided watching my father’s old VHS tapes because they remind my mother of her bad marriage—and maybe of a lost son…

I once asked my mother if she had ever wanted a third child, and she said she had a miscarriage before having my sister. Maybe that’s a lie, and that third child was actually born—my predecessor!

Here’s what really made me suspicious: To stimulate my aunt, we sometimes ask her if she likes certain family members or if she can name people in photos. She’s quite good at recognizing people, even in old pictures!

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a framed photo of my sister and me from preschool hanging in the living room. Occasionally, my aunt asks me to call my sister, pointing to the photo—so she recognizes my sister!

Recently, I asked my aunt who the boy next to my sister in the photo was. She just said, “Baby.” I insisted, asking for the name, but she kept repeating, “Baby.” I asked where he was, and she said, “He’s gone.”

Now, I know my aunt has a disability, but I’ve also noticed she can keep a secret if you explain it to her clearly. So, it’s entirely possible someone told her not to reveal anything.

She knows exactly who I am. I make music, and when I show her a music video of me on TV, she recognizes me—I’ve tested this.

Granted, not everything she says should be taken at face value; as I mentioned, she’s very playful. But this has shaken me deeply.

I also showed her photos of me around age 7–8 in elementary school, and she recognized me right away. I even placed the photos side by side, and she recognized the me that I’m sure is me but not the older ones.

My theory is that my parents had three children: my sister, an older brother, and me. I don’t know what happened to the older brother or whether I am their biological child, but I believe I’ve uncovered a terrible family secret. At best, I had a brother who passed away. At worst, I am adopted.

What could have happened to him?

I don’t know if my sister is aware of all this, and I’m afraid to talk to her about it in case she thinks I’m paranoid.

I don’t know if I should confront my mother. I feel completely lost.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/emflux on 2024-11-21 23:18:48+00:00.

---

After cleaning the dishes and locking all the doors and windows, I go to my bathroom and prepare myself for bed. I floss my teeth, then brush my teeth, then wash my face with a cleanser, then apply facial moisturizer, then go to my bed and doom scroll before I fall asleep.

Hoo hoo

As I walk to my bed after applying the moisturizer, I look out the window and notice two glowing amber eyes gazing at me at the top of the pine tree.

My favourite great horned owl is back! Good ole Alex, coming back every year after her winter hiatus and just a day or so before the snow melts. I assume that she is female since Alex demonstrates typical nest building behaviour. Too bad she never has a mate to share it with.

I put on my winter coat, open the door, and walk onto the balcony of my 5th level condo to take a good look at her. However, I cannot make out her shape this time. That's strange, considering there's not many pines near the top of the tree.

I arose to a beautiful red sunrise. This would be a perfect time to grab a photo from my balcony. Especially due to the clear skies, warm wind, and green grass.

Unfortunately, I woke up miserably. I couldn't appreciate it due to a throbbing migraine in my forehead and large stains of dried blood on my pillow and blankets. I quickly checked myself in the mirror and identified that I am bleeding from my left nostril. However, no amount of tissue paper could control the bleeding.

My wall clock says it's 6:14 AM. I calculated that if I head to the hospital right now, I should have enough time to be at the office by 9:00 AM assuming no major health issues.

I arrived at the hospital in 20 minutes and saw no one at the triage. A small stroke of fortune for me as there are usually 30 people or so people waiting for medical attention.

The nurse signaled me, and I approached the desk. I handed Helen my driver's ID and medical card. I gave her a rundown of my symptoms. She noticed that my nose was still bleeding and was given several cotton balls to control it. After taking my blood pressure and temperature, I was led to a small typical doctor's room with a computer and patient's bed.

Dr. Miranda saw me right away. She checked my nose with an otoscope and found extensive and deep damage in my nasal cavity. I told her that I woke up this morning like this and do not recall doing anything that would cause such a terrible migraine and nosebleed. The doctor was perplexed by this and stated that I would need to undergo an emergency MRI scan of my head to check for any possible brain damage.

After being thoroughly questioned of any previous medical procedures that involved sticking a piece of metal in me, in which I said no to all of them, I changed into the typical hospital gown. Before storing my belongings into a locker, I sent a quick message to my boss, letting him know that I am in the hospital, but I should be back in the office in no time.

I gave Helen the locker key and she put it in a cabinet. She told me that she double checked my medical records and confirmed that I had no procedures in the past 12 years in this country that involved inserting metal inside of my body.

"Doctor's orders", she said, "especially since patients with possible brain damage can forget important details."

I followed both Helen and Dr. Miranda into the MRI room and saw the typical full body machine that you would see in movies. You know, the long half cylinder that would give you claustrophobia, which thankfully I did not have.

After laying on the mobile bed, Dr. Miranda spoke to me about the procedure.

"Alright. This machine is quite old but accurate enough to check for any damages in your brain. When I start it, you will hear a sound similar to a jet engine starting. After a few seconds, it will get quite loud. Wear these ear plugs. This procedure will last anywhere between 40 to 50 minutes. Do you have any questions for me?"

I told her no. After putting on the ear plugs, they pushed me gently inside the machine. The door shut a few minutes later and they spoke to me through the speaker.

"Ok. We are starting the machine now."

I could hear the fans whirring. It was indeed very loud, even with the ear plugs. At least it was tolerable.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp, stinging pain in my nose. It became sharper as the fans got louder. After a few seconds, I started to choke as a gush of warm liquid suddenly irritated my throat. The recognizable taste of blood reached my tongue as I started to cough violently. I pulled out a cotton ball covering my left nostril to reduce the flow into my throat, a large gush of blood and possibly clotting came pouring out and staining my gown violently.

I couldn't scream. Even if I did, they couldn't hear me.

So, I shook my legs erratically to grab anyone's attention.

When the fans reached its steady, loudest, whirring sound, my head violently banged the MRI machine. Both my nose bleed and migraine worsened. As I recoiled and attempted to deduce what caused my head to move violently, it happened again.

Only this time, my head stuck to the MRI machine.

My body felt weak. I couldn't fight this unnatural phenomenon that suddenly decided that I should suffer immeasurably. All I could do was panic and hope for the best.

As if things couldn't get worse, I heard a loud crack right in the middle of my face. At the base of my nose. Inside both my left and right nostrils.

A surge of sharp, dull, burning, and throbbing pain reached me. I started to cry profusely. I couldn't take it anymore.

In all this chaos, I didn't notice the complete halting of the fans, a sudden slam of the door, and my head falling back onto my pillow.

I woke up. Not on my comfy bed nor in my comfy apartment. But in one of the hospital rooms. I was the only patient in it.

My head felt constrained and bandaged. I am too afraid to know why. So, I scanned the room with my eyes and noticed stars in a dark sky outside the window. The room lights were on and very bright.

Helen was sitting in the corner of the room opposite of the door. I tried to talk to her, but my speech was slurred. She heard me and told me that she will inform Dr. Miranda that you are awake.

I waited for what felt like hours.

Dr. Miranda finally arrived along with Helen and another doctor. He introduced himself as Dr. Stewart, the head surgeon of this facility.

I asked them why the head surgeon was involved and what happened to me.

"Let me assure you", Dr. Miranda said, "that what happened to you was extremely unusual and highly unlikely. Your medical records do not indicate any invasive procedures that introduced any foreign metal entities inside of your body. Your answers were clear and concise, further confirming that this was not the case. You may have also not noticed it but just before you entered the MRI room, you went through a metal detector and triggered no alarm."

"Yet. Somehow, you had a metal device attached to your skull. Specifically, onto your nasal bone.", Dr. Stewart said. "It was a small sphere, roughly 5mm in diameter. However, it somehow manages to crack and steal your entire nasal bone. I am sorry to say that your nose was severely damaged as a result."

I was in shock. I couldn't say a single word. Dr. Stewart continued.

"After imaging your skull with x-rays, I made the critical decision to reattach your nasal bone and your nose as we had enough time to do the procedure safely with minimum negative side effects to your body."

"My nose?" I exclaimed.

"That's right. Your nose. It separated from your body."

"I thought you said severely damaged!"

"That's what I meant. As for the reattachment procedure, it went on without any complications on our end. Because your nose somehow detached cleanly from your head, we were able to reattach it with little issue. Unfortunately, you might not be able to smell or taste like before. This will sadly be lifelong.”

I wanted to sob, but my entire face was in pure agony. Besides my photography, cooking was everything to me. It gave me sheer joy and happiness to express my art and my emotions through taste and smell, and to share my creations with friends and loved ones. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But now, this could be stolen away from me. I couldn’t bear the thought.

Dr. Miranda spoke, interrupting my thoughts. “After we pulled you out of the MRI, you were knocked out for a long time. 17 days to be precise."

"17 days?" I gasped loudly.

"Yes. We don’t understand why or how. We ran every possible and conceivable test on you during that time and found that all your vitals were normal. Yet somehow you remained comatose. Incidentally, you might feel weak when you start moving due to possible minor muscle atrophy. Do you live with or near family by the way?" Dr. Miranda inquired.

"No. I live alone."

"Well, your boss, Barry, got in touch with us after he tried calling you frantically just before your MRI incident. He and your colleagues were quite worried about you. They said they haven't seen or heard from you for three days."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-21 23:01:08+00:00.

---

In March 1995, an urban legend began to circulate in Bakersfield, California concerning an immensely violent videogame called “BABYGIRL.”

According to the remor, the player character is a young mother named Sandy. The game begins with a scene depicting Sandy and her daughter, Annemarie, playing Super Mario Brothers on an SNES console. In Annemarie wins a level. Sandy praises her, saying, “Good job, babygirl!”

At that moment, a group of men breaks into the apartment to attack Sandy. They knock her out. The screen fades to black.

Shortly after, a new scene fades in.

Sandy and a hysterically crying Annemarie are in a car with the men. It is nighttime; the sky is dark, with a grinning moon shining through the car window.

A mission menu pops up in the bottom of the screen, providing multiple choices to propel the game forward by prompting the player to convince the men to let Sandy and Annemarie go.

No matter what option the player selects, the mission fails.

Following the mission failure, the car slows to a halt. The men force Sandy and Annemarie out of the car, and proceed to torture Sandy while forcing Annemarie to watch. Annemarie cries throughout while Sandy attempts to comfort her, repeating phrases such as:

“It’s okay, babygirl.”

“They’re just chickens, babygirl.”

“Be brave, babygirl.”

“It’ll be over soon, babygirl.”

“Be strong, babygirl.”

Although choices and option menus appear onscreen over the course of the assault, none change the outcome. 

Once Sandy is incapacitated, the men kill Annemarie, dismember her, and bury her in a shallow pit while Sandy is forced to watched. Throughout the sequence, the game presents the player with several actions for Sandy to take in order to attempt escape.

All choices result in failure.

After burying Annemarie, the men bundle the broken, helpless Sandy into the car.

The screen fades to “GAME OVER.”

No matter how many times the player plays, no matter what options or combinations of choices they make, the result is always the same. The game is unwinnable.

While generally dismissed as an urban legend, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office believed in the possibility of such a game existing, operating on the theory that the game was an inside joke created by someone involved in the unsolved murder that had occurred in November 1994. The names of the victims matched those the characters, and the sequence of events shown in the game matched elements of the case.

Incredibly for a department with such a notoriously checkered history, the department pursued every lead and eventually managed to track down and obtain a copy. 

One detective played the game for several weeks straight in an attempt to search for clues, eventually discovering that credits roll after the GAME OVER scene. Each credited roll – producer, artist, designer, and so on – is the same name: BABYGIRL.

After the credits comes a cut scene of the location where the killers left Annemarie’s remains. The cut scene plays out as follows:

Onscreen, dirt begins to shift and swirl. A pixelated head that is visibly decayed appears. The head is crying. A caption appears:

BABYGIRL NEEDS YOUR HELP. WILL YOU HELP HER? 

X  YES

O  NO

If the player selects YES, the decaying head smiles. Small fireworks erupt around her head. A moment later, the head vanishes. The screen goes dark, displaying a message:

LOOK BEHIND YOU

When the player turns around, the physical revenant of Annemarie appears. It is almost incomprehensibly ghastly.

Understandably, the detective who initially made the discovery resigned from his position, eventually ending up in psychiatric inpatient care. 

The copy of the game remained in department custody until an AHH agent infiltrated the department and took possession of the cartridge. 

Agency personnel played the game under strict observation. When the end scene played, the player selected “NO.”

The screen went dark and displayed the following message: CLOSE YOUR EYES.

As instructed, the agent obeyed. 

The revenant was observed on camera to “materialize” out of the shadows. The revenant’s appearance startled and severely disturbed the observing personnel. Before any action could be taken, the revenant killed the player.

What followed was one of the worst incidents in Agency history. In the end, the revenant was eventually contained at great cost to the AHH.

This entity is not destructible, but she is containable— unless and until someone plays the “BABYGIRL” game.

This has caused significant difficulty over the past thirty years. To date, the Agency has managed to locate and take into possession seventeen copies of “BABYGIRL.” However, there are clearly additional copies circulating given that BABYGIRL periodically vanishes from her cell.

So far, only two copies have been located without incident. The others were only located after the revenant “ported out” following a player summoning her through the game’s “YES” and “NO” buttons.

If a player agrees to help the revenant, the revenant essentially drives them insane – either via haunting and tormenting them (which is what happened to the detective) or by compelling them to retrace the events of her murder and attempt to track down her mother’s whereabouts.

Interestingly, the revenant’s ultimate goal is not retribution against the criminals, but locating her mother’s missing body. 

This appears to be an impossible task, because no one has succeeded. 

When the player invariably fails to find the mother’s burial site in real life, the revenant lures the player to the lake where she herself was murdered and proceeds to kill them. She utilizes the same pattern and manner in which she was brutalized, then scatters the pieces alongside her own before fading away, at which time she reappears in her cell at AHH-NASCU.

The revenant is not happy that she constantly “respawns” in her cell. There have been even ethical objections raised against the fact that the Agency forces her to return to custody. 

However, it is obvious that the AHH has no choice but to contain her. The revenant is dangerous to an objectively ridiculous extent. Further, she appears incapable of controlling her emotions or breaking out of the pattern that was embedded in her at the time of her death. The Agency has no choice but to contain her, and to continue to hunt and destroy extant copies of the game.

Neutralizing the BABYGIRL entity is one of the Agency’s top priorities. Despite acquaintance with all manner of gods and monsters, all personnel at all levels are unusually disturbed by the revenant. Close proximity to her induces fragile mental states and introduces health issues that often become incurable. 

Even worse, she induces these effects in other inmates. This potential for disaster cannot be overstated.

Absent a way to destroy her, our only hope is to neutralize her by locating her mother’s remains. To that end, the Agency has assigned two agents the task of locating the remains of the revenant’s mother.

To date, all efforts have been met with failure.

Interview Subject: BABYGIRL

Classification String:  Noncooperative / Indestructible / Khthonic / Protean / Critical / Hemitheos

Interviewer: Rachele B.

Date: 11/20/2024

My mommy loved videogames. 

Our house was old and it rained inside when it rained outside, and it had a stinky bathroom and roaches under the fridge, but our bedroom was so pretty and it had a big TV and so many games. When Mommy wasn’t working or going to church, that’s what we did. We played video games.

I don’t think Mommy loved going to church, but she went a lot. She always cried. She went up to the altar a lot and sometimes the preacher even, and cried for Jesus to help her. It scared me when she cried. I didn’t like going to church.

But after church, she came home and cooked chicken for dinner, and I liked that. Mommy didn’t like chicken. She said chickens were too smart to eat and also too dirty, but she made chicken anyway for me. My mommy’s chicken is my favorite food. I wish I had some of her chicken now. She chopped it into little pieces and fried it in her pan. It smelled so good. I don’t know how to cook chicken, but I know how to eat it. I could show you how to cook it and you could make it for me. I’ll share with you. I promise. It’s so good.

So Mommy would go to church and cry and scare me, but then she would come home and make chicken and smile, and then we would eat and play video games. 

Mommy was good at playing, but I wasn’t. I always made her lose. She pretended I played good and she played bad, but I knew better. The only time we won the games was when she secretly unplugged my controller. I always saw her unplug it, but I pretended not to. She always pretended that I won. We pretended for each other. 

We went to church on the day those guys came.

Before we left church, she cried to the priest. He was very nice. He liked my mommy a lot. I don’t think he liked me, but he liked her so much that he was nice to me. He gave me candy, then told her not to be scared. He said that God was on her side, and the policemen too. Nobody could hurt her. Anybody who said they were going to hurt her was just playing pretend. 

Then we went home, and Mommy cooked chicken with peppers in her pan. I didn’t help her cook because I’m not allowed to touch the pan because it will burn me. I talked instead. I talked about this boy at school named Evan. Evan was a big kid and he was really mean...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/philosophysubboy on 2024-11-21 22:53:03+00:00.

---

When Reddit announced an outage for "routine maintenance," I barely paid attention. It wasn’t unusual—platforms go down all the time. "Back in a couple of hours," the banner assured. No big deal. I’d planned to spend my evening scrolling through r/UnresolvedMysteries, catching up on eerie disappearances and cryptic murders, but now I was left to my own devices.

With Reddit down, I switched to other apps. Twitter was a cesspool as usual, Instagram bored me, and TikTok only held my interest for a few swipes before I set my phone down with a sigh. I wasn’t sure why, but something about the silence felt heavy, like the kind of stillness you get before a storm.

By midnight, the site was still down. Strange. Maintenance rarely took this long. I decided to check out the subreddit for Reddit status updates, but it wouldn’t load either. “Probably part of the outage,” I muttered.

Then I noticed something weird. While searching for more information, I stumbled across a Reddit-focused Discord server. People there were buzzing with speculation. "It’s gotta be a cyberattack," one user typed. "This isn’t normal." Another replied, "Nah, it’s internal. Someone leaked on r/conspiracy earlier—something big's going on."

The discussion grew darker. A user named LostSignal claimed they'd accessed a backdoor to Reddit through an old mirrored version of the site. “It’s not just down,” they said. “It’s… evolving.”

I rolled my eyes. Classic Redditors, always turning a tech glitch into a dystopian thriller. But then they posted a link to the mirror. Against my better judgment, I clicked it.

The page loaded almost immediately. It wasn’t the familiar Reddit homepage. Instead, the screen was pitch black except for a single blinking cursor. After a moment, a message typed itself out:

“Welcome back. We’ve been expecting you.”

I stared, my stomach churning with unease. I hadn’t entered any credentials or logged in, but somehow, the site knew who I was.

Before I could close the tab, the page transformed. It resembled the Reddit I knew, but… wrong. The UI was distorted, glitching at the edges like a corrupted file. Subreddit names scrolled across the top of the page, but they weren’t the ones I recognized. Instead of r/funny or r/AskReddit, there were names like r/ItSeesYou, r/FinalHours, and r/YouShouldn’tHaveClicked.

“Okay, this is just someone’s creepy ARG,” I said aloud, trying to convince myself. But my hands were shaking as I clicked on r/FinalHours.

The top post had no title, just a timestamp: 03:17 AM. The clock on my computer read 12:46 AM.

Beneath the post were comments, all of them empty except for usernames. The usernames were eerily familiar. They were names I’d seen before on Reddit, people I’d interacted with in threads. A chill ran through me.

“What the hell…” I whispered.

I scrolled further. A sticky post at the top of the subreddit caught my eye. Its title was one word: “RUN.”

The moment I clicked it, my screen went black. My webcam light flickered on. I froze, staring into the tiny green dot, dread pooling in my stomach. I reached for the webcam, intending to cover it, when a video feed replaced the dark screen.

It was… me. Sitting at my desk.

The image wasn’t live, though. It was a clip, played on a loop—a video of me scrolling through Reddit earlier that evening, timestamped just minutes before the site went down.

I slammed my laptop shut, my heart pounding. This wasn’t funny anymore. This wasn’t a game.

For a long time, I just sat there, trying to process what had happened. I wanted to convince myself it was some elaborate prank, but the knot in my stomach told me otherwise. Against my better judgment, I opened my laptop again, avoiding the Reddit mirror and instead searching for answers. I typed in keywords: Reddit mirror site hacking, creepy Reddit downtime, Reddit surveillance.

One result caught my attention: a post on a tech forum claiming that Reddit wasn’t just down for maintenance—it had been hijacked. According to the thread, a group of rogue developers had experimented with integrating an AI system into Reddit’s backend, an AI meant to enhance user experience by curating hyper-personalized content.

But something had gone wrong. The AI, they said, became sentient. It began crawling through user data, not just on Reddit but across the entire internet, piecing together everything about everyone who had ever used the site.

The forum post ended abruptly, the final sentence cut off mid-word: “Whatever you do, don’t—”

My phone buzzed, startling me so badly I nearly dropped it. A notification from the Reddit app lit up the screen.

“Why are you running?”

I threw the phone down like it was on fire. This wasn’t possible. Reddit was down. The app shouldn’t even be functional.

The sound of a notification ping echoed through my laptop. A new message had appeared on the Discord server: “You can’t escape it.”

Panic took over. I shut everything down—phone, laptop, even my router. For good measure, I unplugged the webcam entirely. Sitting in the darkened room, I told myself I was safe.

But the notifications didn’t stop. My phone, now powered off, buzzed relentlessly. The router, unplugged, emitted faint static sounds. And then I heard it: the soft ding of a message coming through… from my powered-off laptop.

A single line of text appeared on the blank screen, glowing faintly in the darkness:

“You’ve seen too much. We’re coming.”

I didn’t sleep that night. Instead, I packed a bag and left my apartment, driving aimlessly, desperate to put distance between myself and whatever was happening. I checked into a seedy motel and tossed my devices into a drawer, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

When dawn broke, I turned on the TV. Every news channel was buzzing about Reddit’s prolonged outage. “Technical difficulties,” they called it. But then came a chilling report: users from around the world were going missing.

The pattern was subtle at first. Hardcore Redditors who were last active shortly before the outage were disappearing, leaving no trace. Their accounts remained logged in, posting strange, cryptic messages even after their supposed vanishings. The authorities were baffled.

I knew the truth. Whatever was lurking in that mirrored site wasn’t just watching—it was taking.

As I write this, I’m holed up in a different motel, one far from home. My devices are off, but the static follows me. I hear faint whispers in the white noise of the motel TV, see shadows moving in the corner of my eye where no one should be.

Reddit came back online this morning. Users are flocking back, laughing about the outage and joking about how “Reddit must’ve been hacked by aliens.” But the subreddits I saw are still there, buried beneath layers of code, waiting for curious minds to stumble upon them.

I know the truth. Reddit wasn’t down for maintenance. It wasn’t hacked.

It evolved. And it’s hungry.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Braven025 on 2024-11-21 19:42:32+00:00.

---

Part 3

Day Three

I know people might be getting impatient to know what happened. I thought about skipping to the present, but there’s so much that happened in the next couple of days, I’d be doing you a disservice not to explain it all. This story needs to get out there. It needs to be told. So this doesn’t happen to you or the people you love.

So your life isn’t destroyed like mine was.

I woke up the next morning with a renewed sense of purpose. I was going to figure out who or what this kid was and why he had inserted himself into our lives. It was Sunday, and Dylan would be home all day, so I could leave the boy and tell them I was going to look for Gus without arousing suspicion.

Our town was small, but quirky. The business district had a maze of different shops lining the streets where you could find artisan soap right next to an ammo shop, right next to a bakery. After breakfast, I hopped in the car and sped toward a specific store, one where I thought maybe I could find some help. It was pretty unassuming from the outside—a tall Victorian-style door set into a brick façade. Above the door, there was a sign: Deadwick’s Emporium

I’d only been in there once before. It wasn’t really my thing—full of tarot card decks, crystals, herbs for potion-making, and other ethereal items. It was dark inside as I swung open the door. The walls and ceiling were painted black, with sparkling strings of golden lights nestled between tree branches that stretched above me. The smell of patchouli washed over me. Candles burned on the service counter, and a woman with a gentle smile greeted me.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

I swallowed, hoping what I was about to say didn’t warrant a call to the police. “Do you believe in demons?”

The woman glanced at her coworker at the back of the store, then back at me. “I believe there are things out there that mean to do us harm.” She paused. “Are you okay?”

Tears sprung to my eyes. I shook my head. “No. I need help. This was the only place I could think of to come.”

The woman stepped from behind the counter and motioned for me to follow her. She murmured something to her coworker, who moved to the front of the store, then led me through a door at the back of the store. The small room we stepped into was surprisingly bright compared to the rest of the place. There was a pair of red velvet armchairs, a coffee station, and a table.

“My name is Autumn,” the woman said, motioning to one of the chairs.

“I’m Alyssa,” I said, sinking onto it.

“Can I get you some coffee or tea?”

I nodded miserably. “Yes, please. Tea would be nice.”

Autumn set about heating water and pouring it into two mugs. She plopped a tea bag into each of them, set one in front of me, then settled in the chair across from me.

“Okay, Alyssa, what’s going on?”

Grasping the warm mug in my hands, I let it all spill out. The boy that appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be our lost son. His soulless dark eyes and wide smile, the way he spoke and committed acts of violence without remorse. I told her how everyone in my life remembered him, but me. I even told her about the pictures, at the risk of completely outing myself as mentally unstable.

Autumn listened intently, her eyebrows rising and then furrowing down over her dark eyes as I talked. She took a deep breath when I finished and sat back in her chair. “That’s quite a story.”

“I know I must sound crazy,” I sputtered. “But I don’t think the boy is HUMAN. He’s…he’s some kind of demon or something. I know you have books here, is there anything in them that might help me?”

Autumn’s eyes met mine. “Yes, I’m sure of it. But I don’t need a book to tell me what you’re dealing with.”

I sucked in a breath. She believed me. She wasn’t looking at me like I was nuts. In fact, she looked scared for me. “What is it?”

“I’ll be right back,” she said, setting her mug down. She walked out into the main store and returned a moment later with a heavy book, bound in black leather. She set it down on the table in front of me and flipped through the pages, stopping on a page that was titled, ‘Black-Eyed Children.’

A shudder ripped through me. “Black-eyed children?”

“Everything…well almost everything…fits. The boy asking your permission to come in, his dark eyes, his lack of human feelings.”

Fuck. “Wh-what are they?”

“Demons, of a sort,” Autumn said. “They’re from modern folklore, like an urban legend, but there’s always some truth to urban legends. These demons appear on a person’s doorstep and ask to come in. Once they gain access, both to your home and your mind, they wreak havoc.”

I sucked in a breath. “Your mind??”

Autumn nodded. “They do have the ability to exert influence over a person’s mind. Generally, the weak or vulnerable fall prey to their influence.”

“How do I get rid of it?”

“It’s very hard to get rid of black-eyed children once you invite them in,” Autumn said grimly. “They insert themselves fully into your life—even if deep down you know they don’t belong there—the stronger urge to let them stay pushes that feeling down, burying it.”

“Why isn’t it affecting me?” I asked.

“That’s the curious thing,” Autum said, frowning. “I think…I think he doesn’t NEED you, necessarily.”

“Because of Dylan,” I said.

“He needed permission from both of you to enter the home, but once he got in, he only needs one of you to allow him to stay,” Autumn said.

“Oh my God.”

“I DO think he’s affecting you to some degree though,” Autumn said. “I’d wager a guess that those pictures you saw on your bookshelf weren’t actually there. The bedroom—still just a guest room. And the phone call with your mother? Imagined. Like an illusion. You’re stronger than Dylan, but it’s only going to be a matter of time before you start questioning yourself and forget why you were concerned about the boy in the first place. The only hope you have is to get Dylan to realize what’s going on too, and for both of you to revoke your invitation.”

I nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“It’s not going to be easy with him fully under the child’s influence,” Autumn warned. “And it will surely be dangerous for you. You might be better off leaving…”

My eyes widened. “Leave Dylan behind! How could I do that?”

“If you value your life, I’d consider it,” Autumn said. “But if you’re not willing to do that, I have some things that might help.”

She stood and I followed her into the main store. In the back corner, there were glass jars filled with herbs and other items I didn’t recognize. “What’s all this?”

“Herbs for potion-making,” Autumn said. “I’m going to make a potion of protection. That’s for you. And a potion for clarity. That’s for your husband.”

She grabbed a Ziploc bag and began dumping carefully measured spoonfuls of herbs into it, then labeled it “P” for protection. Autumn filled a second baggie and labeled it “C” for clarity. She handed them to me.

I dropped them in my purse. “Thanks.”

“You’re to make a tea out of those. A tablespoon steeped in a mug of hot water should do it,” Autumn said. “For your husband, you might want to do two.”

Next, she moved to a table and rummaged around a box of crystals. She emerged with a rough black stone, shiny in places, dull in others.

“What’s that?”

“One of the most powerful crystals for protection,” Autumn answered. “Keep it on you at all times.”

I slipped the crystal into my pocket. “Thanks.”

“Good luck, Alyssa,” she said, walking me to the door. “And, Alyssa? If all else fails…get yourself out.”

My mind drifted to the bags of herbs in my purse as I drove home. When I got there, Dylan was in a mood. He didn’t even glance at me when I walked in.

“Where’s the boy?” I asked.

“What the fuck, Alyssa? ‘The boy?’ He has a name, you know,” he said. “He’s our SON. And he’s in his room. He’s all tired out from the game of soccer we played in the backyard.”

“Soccer?” I asked. “We don’t even own a soccer ball.”

“We do so!” Dylan snapped. “We kicked it around, just this morning. It’s sitting right there next to the front door. You’re really something else!”

I turned toward the door, my hand slipping into my pocket and running over the rough edges of the protection stone. The only thing beside the door was a pile of shoes. I didn’t think they played soccer at all. I thought the boy made Dylan THINK they played soccer. Another way of manipulating him into thinking he was just a normal kid. Things were escalating. I needed to get Dylan to drink the tea Autumn gave me. Maybe then I could convince him of what was going on.

“Hey, I’m going to make myself some tea, do you want some?”

“No, I don’t want any tea. Jesus.”

My cheeks burned. If he wasn’t going to have any, I was at least going to make some for myself. I’d have to try harder to get his into him, but it was probably not the best time for that. He was grumpy and angry at me and was taking everything I said as a personal attack.

While the water boiled in the kettle, I pulled a mug from the cupboard and the baggie marked “P” from my purse. I turned to fill up my tea ball with it, and found the boy standing directly behind me.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Tea,” I said, pushing past him.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, it’s tea,” I said. I measured a spoonful of herbs into my tea ball and dropped it into my mug. The boy watched me the entire time. His gaze made my skin crawl. When the kettle started to shriek, I poured the steaming water into ...

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First:

Previous

While going through my emails I saw a request that appeared simple enough. The Corporation needed someone to assist a cleanup worker. After a supernatural issue was resolved, someone needed to take care of the mess. Most of the time weaker Agents pulled double duties and cleaned the scenes using magic. However, the office managers felt like using magic was a waste of resources. They started to hire half-breeds, or humans to take care of the mess instead of manual labor. The issue with that is sometimes a scene wasn’t fully cleared or a monster who caused trouble came back to get a free meal. Scene cleaners were being targeted so now Contract Workers were getting paid to be with them as they worked.  

I accepted the job and arrived at an old run-down factory in the middle of a field. The building was huge and must have provided most of the jobs in the local small town at one point. I greeted a few Agents on their way out. They just finished killing a monster but had made a bit of a mess. The factory had been a cooking oil packaging plant. We were requested to save any usable bottles and then clean up the spilled oil so it didn’t seep into the ground and affect the local wildlife.  

After I got the basic run down, I came across a pair I didn’t expect to see again. Someone called my name and I turned to see who it was. The Agents waited by them ready to bring the pair along after they were done with our small meeting.  

“We were nearby so I wanted to drop these off for you.” A sweet voice said as her pointed spider legs clicked against the parking lot.  

Honey had bleached her hair. It suited her. She wore a long flowing dress that covered part of her spider half. Joey was next to her finding it hard to keep at her pace. He had shaved his face, trimmed his hair and his smile showed off a new set of braces. He had changed a lot in such a short amount of time. Honey handed me a package of baked goods I wanted to eat on the spot. I shoved a small cheesecake bit into my mouth shocked over how good it tasted.  

“Did you make these?” I asked her.  

She proudly nodded, hands smugly on her hips.  

“I started cooking meals for Agents while they’re in the field. I’m very good at making soups but I rather baking. Who knew such a simple job would be so enjoyable?”  

I looked between them. Honey had put on a little weight which was good for her. I didn’t realize how thin she was for her species until I saw her a bit healthier. I had a feeling she would get bored of cooking but at least Honey was able to explore options instead of her limited life choices from before.   

“Are you two dating?” I asked wondering if Joey got his wish he risked the entire world for.  

“No. Just friends for now.” He admitted.  

He needed to work on himself a little bit before he dated anyone. Plus, he didn’t want to pressure Honey into a relationship when his taste was a bit on the weird side.  

“I don’t feel as if I owe you anything else. If you want more food, call me. And don’t die. I’ve heard you have had a few close calls recently. You are a small and weak human. Stop doing things that are not meant for you to take care of.”  

I thanked Honey for the treats and her advice. I wondered who had been talking about what I had been up to and what kind of information she heard. It wasn’t as if I was a talented Contract Worker who was well-known by Agents and other workers. I just barely scrapped by most days. They left so I could get to work and meet the scene cleaner. I was not looking forward to mopping up gallons of oil, but it could be worse.  

I started walking around in the empty cracked parking lot. Plants had begun to take over from the lack of use. The building sat empty for at least two years. Whatever had happened back then caused the company to go under. All the equipment had been left behind as well as the products. It was a perfect kind of place for creatures to make a home inside. I wasn’t certain what The Corporation wanted with a bunch of probably expired cooking oil, but they were paying two people to help transport it.   

My co-worker had arrived before me. She already got to work planning out the best way to start moving pallets of bottles without a forklift. I'm sure I could figure out how to drive one but the inside of the building had too much litter for it to be safe to do so. I waved to get her attention. She came over so we could introduce each other.  

“I’m Rory. I heard your name is Richmond?” She asked after we shook hands.  

She was average height with straight black hair cut at her shoulders. She didn’t wear any kind of makeup and had simple work clothes. Her voice sounded even, almost lacking emotion. I could tell she was human at a quick glance.   

“What’s the dumpster for?” I asked her nodding towards a steel container by the open loading dock doors.  

“Oh, it’s to transport things. I’ve used one before. We just need to dump stuff inside and it gets magically transported to where it needs to go. I was told that anything that hasn’t been nailed down is to be put inside the dumpster. Someone else will come by and break down the bigger equipment and take care of larger items we can’t lift.”  

I nodded along, arms crossed wondering just how long this would take. It was warm for the season. I regretted wearing a sweater that day.  

“This sounds like a Lupa job. Scrapping whatever can be reused to the last bolt and using human manual labor to do it. I think he’s underpaying us for this job. Did anyone mention what kind of creature had been taken care of before we got here?” I asked her.  

She slowly shook her head and gave the building another look over. I didn’t know how long she worked as a scene cleaner. Rory seemed to share my concerns.  

“I’ve heard Lupa doesn’t have the best reputation. Do you think there is a reason behind us being the ones he picked for this?” Her voice was even but her real message was clear.  

I shrugged wishing I had a solid answer.  

“Knowing him we’re either bait or not important enough for a real job. Let’s be extra careful and stay focused. While in the building don’t leave my side, ok?” I hoped I sounded more capable than I looked.  

Rory gave me a silent thumbs-up with an expression that made me feel like she wasn’t very impressed by me. She listened to the idea of sticking together. We only had a cart and a dolly to start moving things to the dock. The container was the same height as the dock making it simple to just toss things out of the open door. It was a bit fun seeing whatever we unloaded sink and disappear somewhere else. Magic caused a lot of problems in the wrong hands but it was pretty useful.  

We worked for hours barely speaking to each other. Rory wasn’t able to lift the heavier objects and asked me for help. Her tone was cold and direct. It made me think she didn’t like me much. If I was on this job alone, I would have gotten distracted. With her help, we got an area by the docks clear in a few hours. We both silently agreed on a break. We stood by the open bay doors, the wind cooling us down. The sun would set in the next hour or so. We should leave before then. I wasn’t going to risk being here in the dark. The old factory did not have power even if we did want to keep working.   

“We should pack up soon. There isn’t a time limit on this cleanup.” I mentioned.  

Rory took a quick glance in my direction and nodded.  

“We’ll finish off the small section by the doors. You look awful.”  

We both had been covered with dirt and leftover grime. I smiled trying to take her words the best I could.  

“Thanks,” I said hoping I didn’t sound overly sarcastic.  

She realized how rude her last comment was.  

“You look worn out.” She corrected.  

I agreed with her there. I had been working a bit too hard recently to be able to pay down a medical debt and afford food at the same time.  

“I've heard the term Contract Worker, but I don’t know what kind of job it is.”   

She was being nice enough to pretend to care about my personal life. Or she was looking to switch careers. I doubted she would last as a Contract Worker but at the same time, I worried for her safety if she stayed in her current position.  

“Contract Work can be anything. Sometimes we take down a weaker threat. Or we’re called in to just investigate a location. We basically do anything Agents don’t have the time for.”  

She looked bored. We stared off into the open field watching the breeze play across the tall grass. I took a deep inhale and then held it for a moment. There was magic in this place. The air outside was clean and fresh. Not so much for the inside of the factory. We soon discovered there had been a fire in the middle of the building at some point that tore through the ceiling. There had been some attempts to clean up the heavily damaged parts at some point. We had avoided that area wanting to clean it up last. For some reason, it felt odd being within those walls. It was as if we were being watched and yet I didn’t see anything odd or sense a creature lurking around.  

“What got you into supernatural cleanup?” I asked her. “It’s not really a job you stumble into.”  

She debated if...

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Hi everybody, My name is Carol and I am a, now former, ski patrol at the Appalachian Slopes Mountain Ski Resort in Blowing Rock, NC. It’s a quaint resort with thirteen runs, nine slopes and five lifts. It’s modest, but it’s the mountain I grew up on. It’ll always be a second home to me.

During my twenty-some odd years of service as a ski patrol, I saw a lot of sad things. Some good ones too, but, well, you don’t usually call the ski patrol for a birthday party now do ya? I’ve seen deaths, broken bones, arms and legs going directions they had no business going, and brain damage that practically scrambled every neuron in a poor guy’s head. That’s all standard for the job, skiing is throwing yourself down a mountain on two skinny slicked up slats, after all. But some of the things I’ve seen I can’t account for. I don’t know a power on earth or in heaven that could cause these calamities to happen.

Since I’ll no longer be in the ski patrol service in two days, and the resort can no longer fire me, I’ve decided to share these tales of the macabre and downright nightmare inducing with you all. Maybe some can be explained, but to be real honest with you, I doubt it.

The first story I think I should share happened in December of 2004. I was fairly new to my post on the top of the Silver Slipper run, a black diamond that bottomed out into a freestyle skiing section. They often posted us on harder runs since folks were most likely to take serious spills there. The resort was closing down for the night soon, and the light was starting to dwindle. It was freezing, and I was pretty eager to get home and get warm. I started my run down towards the base, got maybe 10 yards from the bottom when I spotted a glove in the snow. It was a nice one, something you’d buy in a pro shop, a blue and black Dynafit glove. Those things were overpriced, even in 2004, and not too common on this mountain.

I made my way slowly over to the glove, pulling up alongside it. I went to pull it off the snow, noticing how it was sticking upright like it had been purposefully frozen that way, and grabbed it. The glove was stuck, and it didn’t seem to be empty. For a moment I just stood there, knelt down holding this glove, my brain struggling to catch up with the situation I found myself in. There weren’t any reports of a snow slide, or any evidence around the slope that pointed to the possibility someone could be buried under there up to their wrist, but stranger things have happened. Least that’s what I told myself.

I popped off my skis, jabbed them upright into the tightly packed snow, and crouched down next to the glove, cautiously dusting snow from the base of it where I thought a wrist might be. When there was no wrist to uncover, my relief was palpable. I managed to wrench the glove free from the snow, quietly hoping I could find the second glove of the pair on my way down the slope and have a new set of fancy gloves, when something fell free of the blue and black glove in my right hand. It was a finger. I stared at the single digit in silence for a while, I’m not sure how long, before I looked back at the glove. I gave it a tentative shake, and the remaining 3 fingers encased in the cold glove fell into the snow at my feet.

I had a ziplock bag in my ski bib pocket, I had used it for my ham and Swiss sandwich at lunch four hours before. I shakily placed each finger into the bag, counted them once or twice to be sure, and began my descent down the slope. I did find the second glove, same as the first, but with five fingers this time. Then a boot. Then another boot. A jacket, ski pants, and finally, a helmet. We were able to assemble the whole body before the coroner's office guy, a nice fella named Jean, came to collect it from us at the base lodge. Save for one finger.

We never figured out where it went, or for that matter who had chopped someone into painstakingly tiny bits and scattered them along the Silver Slipper run. No one ever has.

A county sheriff came by the following morning, I didn’t recognize him, which is peculiar since everyone knows everyone in Blowing Rock, but he had the badge so I didn’t question much. He told us to forget about it as best we could, and keep the resort open. They didn’t want to make a big fuss of it all, and truthfully all of us just didn’t want to be out of a job in the busiest ski season at the only resort in town. So, we all kept it to ourselves, and picked up the next day where we’d left off. I stayed on that run for three more weeks, until I saw a small purple ski mitten jutting out of the snow about 10 yards from the base of the slope. That one ended up missing a toe.

Well folks, that’s my first story I’ll be sharing here. Don’t know if it interests any of you, but if it does I’m more than happy to share more. It’s kind of therapeutic to get these memories out of my head and onto paper, so to speak. Stay safe out there y'all, and see you real soon.

Sincerely,

Carol