nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/fainting--goat on 2024-09-19 02:51:18+00:00.

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Previous Posts

“So we’re fighting a god.  That’s just… lovely.”

Cassie’s dire assessment of our situation was how the emergency house meeting started.  For a brief moment I almost corrected her in that Grayson wasn’t really a god and we probably shouldn’t ascribe that status to him and also we weren’t trying to fight him, really, just convince him to not go ahead with his whole ‘find a permanent body and that body is Ashley’ plan but then I decided to wisely keep my mouth shut.  Semantics didn’t matter.  We had bigger problems to argue about.

It was just myself, Cassie, and Josh.  I’d wanted to invite Professor Monotone, but we’d all come to the realization that it just wasn’t safe to involve him further.  We thought he’d be fine since the flickering man was gone and he didn’t have something inhuman watching over his shoulder, but we were wrong.

So very wrong.

I spent a good ten minutes or so freaking out over the thought that I’d gotten Professor Monotone killed by involving him in what little he’d been present for, until Cassie told me that what’s done was done and we couldn’t do anything to change it so, please calm down and stop pacing through the kitchen.

We’d taken our own precautions to ensure that Grayson couldn’t listen in on our conversations.  The kitchen was the best place to talk, as it was the most interior room of the apartment.  We covered the windows in the adjacent living room with blankets and then gathered around the small table for a hushed planning session.  I explained as best as I could the difference between inhuman things and ancient things, reminding them that all of this is just speculation on the part of my hometown and that the rules aren’t consistently followed.  However, we agreed that we’d treat Grayson as an ancient being now, because we surely couldn’t go wrong by overestimating his abilities.

Here’s what we understand so far.

Grayson is the rain.  He was likely an ancient thing before the college was established.  

The first president was seeking a path to immortality and decided to trap the rain in a human body.  What he planned to do with Grayson after that is unknown and we’re not sure how we’d find out, because no one wants me talking directly to Grayson anymore.  However, we do know that it started a cycle of souls being stuffed into the president’s body to keep it going and Grayson’s essence being stuffed into new bodies to keep him corporeal.

Makes me wonder if the president inadvertently created a trap for himself, one of those ‘wish gone horribly wrong’ situations where his soul was allowed to perish but his body was given immortality.  Serves him right, if so.

The tree was likely created by someone that assisted the president.  One of Professor Monotone’s ancestors, who then became the groundskeeper.  We suspect that this person regretted what they did and was trying to undo their mistake, but again, no way to know because they’re dead and didn’t write anything down.

(the moral of this story is if you’re going to do evil rituals please take copious notes because someone might have to undo your bullshit a few generations down the line)

We think the tree reduced the rain’s influence.  It was an alder tree.  Grayson talked about it trying to consume him, which I assumed was a figure of speech but now, I think he was speaking literally.  The devil wanted me to destroy the tree because then Grayson could escape campus and he wouldn’t have to compete with an ancient that seems very possessive of his turf.

Grayson wants to break the cycle of finding new hosts by merging??? with me.  Which I’m sure would be great for the college because it’d get rid of a body-stealing ancient, but I’m not keen on it.  And interestingly, I’m only tempted by the offer when I’m around Grayson.

Oh yeah and the pool of water in the basement sucks souls out.  I proposed a bet on the pool being where the original ritual was conducted and even though I only bet a bag of ramen, no one would take me up on it.

So there we go.  That’s everything.  Those are actually just a copy/paste of the notes I took during the house meeting, which is now my job forever or until we resolve the situation.  Because somehow I’m now the fastest typist of the group, can’t imagine how that happened, it’s not like I’ve been getting a ton of practice or anything.

“I’ve been talking to James,” Josh said.  “I think he feels more comfortable with me because I’m not as close to Maria as you two are.  He’s been trying to remember things from when he was a ghost.”

He wasn’t entirely alone in the water (for we’re pretty sure at this point that’s where he was).  There were other shapes that passed him by, distant, indistinct, and when he’d first returned and was trying to make sense of what happened to him he’d assumed they were students in the corporeal world.  However, the more he dwelled on it, the more he realized that might not be the case.  Some of them were too big.  Most were oddly formed, close enough to human, but not quite correct.

“We think they are students, but they only intersect with the ocean when it’s raining,” Cassie said matter-of-factly.

We think.  They’d already discussed this without me.  My friends are scheming in my absence.

Also we’re calling it the ocean now, because it seems too big to be the traveling river.  Maybe the traveling river flows into it.  Into Grayson’s actual body.

“So we might be able to access the ocean when it’s raining?” I asked.

Convenient, considering it is still raining.

“That’s a theory.  But there’s something more important that James told me,” Josh said.

The ocean had currents.  He felt like it was trying to drag him down to the darkest depths, an ever-present pull and the more he resisted it, the more like himself he felt.  But there were areas where the current wasn’t as strong and he tried to stay there as much as possible.  It wasn’t that he was stuck in one building.  He stayed there because the current was weak.

“The roots,” I said, my eyes widening as I finally made the connection.  “The lecture hall was covered in roots!”

Josh and Cassie both swiveled to stare into the living room, where the piece of petrified wood sat on the coffee table.  Titanosaur, sprawled in the entryway, stared back.

“But he wasn’t able to leave with me,” I continued, frowning.  “I was stuck in the gray world - this in-between space that I think is connected to… everything.  I tried to escort him out of the building and he got pulled back.”

“Oh yeah, he mentioned that,” Josh said.  “Says it was the most lucid he ever was.  And when you were holding his hand, he saw more than just the ocean.  He saw the hallway and the doors of the geology building.  Then the current grabbed him and pulled him away from you.  He said he could think of nothing more than to find you again, after that.”

Great.  So that explains why James followed me to the power plant.

“Did he tell you why he tried to shove me in the water?” I asked.

“I don’t think he remembers that yet.”

“Or he’s lying,” Cassie said.

Awkward silence descended.  Grayson is obviously at the top of Cassie’s shit list, but I get the feeling that James might be second on account of what he did to Maria.

“Anyway,” Josh said, thankfully breaking the silence, “if the power plant pool is connected to the ocean, then it explains why we haven’t been able to fill it with concrete.”

“Or with dirt,” Cassie muttered.  “Or water beads.  Or that futon mattress.  Or anything else we’ve tried.”

Goddamn I wish they weren’t keeping me out of the loop, I would have loved to see them dumping all that crap in there.

They’d also come to the conclusion that maybe it shouldn’t be sealed, now that it was our ticket for getting Maria home and Grayson out of here.  Both of them seemed pretty intent on returning Grayson to the ocean, swapping in James, and bringing back Maria.  I got the feeling that they already had a plan on how to get us all in the same place and that was why Josh has been talking to James.  I also realized that they had no intention on sharing that plan with me.

“I don’t know if this changes much,” Cassie sighed.  “Other than we need to be more careful about where we talk and maybe we should start carrying silicon packets to throw at him.”

Maybe it was because I’d actually experienced Grayson’s terror about being returned to the ocean, but Cassie’s joke didn’t sit well with me.  I snapped at her that it wasn’t funny and then I just stalled, not sure what to say after that, unable to explain why it upset me so much.  Cassie looked uncomfortable for a moment and then mumbled an apology I didn’t quite believe.

“I know you want to help Grayson,” Josh said.  Bless his emotional intelligence.  “We can’t really give you a timeframe because he’s hooked into your mind, but let’s just say that if you want to do something before we do, do it fast.”

 “And we’ll help if you need it,” Cassie added.

For a moment I didn’t know what to say.  It was clear Cassie didn’t agree, but she was still going to help.  I stared at the table and tried not to cry.  But what did I want to do about Grayson?  

“I think I want to visit the library ghost,” I said.  “With the heart.”

They didn’t ask a lot of questions about that, which was good because I didn’t have answers.  After the encounter with the steam ghost, it jus...

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Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fkavp0/how_to_survive_college_the_eternal_loser/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-09-19 01:45:10+00:00.

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I’m so fucked…

If you’ve ever worked in a coffee shop, you know the regulars. And if you’ve worked at the Kaldi’s in Clayton, you know Randy. You can’t miss him. 

He walks in almost every morning at 8:45 a.m. sharp, orders a small black coffee and sits in the corner booth by the window. But it isn’t technically Randy that gets people talking; it’s what he brings with him.

A puppet.

Not some ventriloquist dummy or a kid’s toy. This thing’s seriously unsettling. Pale as hell, with no face, no features at all—just a blank white head with a pair of limp cloth arms and legs. 

Randy holds it by the hand, drags it into the café, and sits it down across from him like they’re having breakfast together. Sometimes, he talks to it, whispering, like he’s expecting it to talk back. Other times, he just stares out the window, his hand resting on the puppet’s shoulder, like they were waiting for something—or someone.

At first, like most people, I laughed.

How could you not? 

Grown man, late-forties, walking around Clayton with a faceless puppet, acting like it’s his kid. Even the regulars, who were usually buried in their laptops or textbooks, couldn’t help but look up and smirk. We baristas made our share of jokes too. 

I joined in too much, I’ll be honest. I regret it.

Sometimes we’d even ask Randy if his friend wanted a piece of pumpkin bread. He’d smile warmly and explain that his son already had breakfast. It basically became part of the daily routine, just like his order.

Then Kara, who had been working at Kaldi’s for years, pulled me aside one morning. Kara wasn’t the type to joke around, which is probably why her words caught my attention.

“You should stop making fun of him,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Kara glanced over at Randy, who was sitting at his usual seat, staring out the window, his hand gently resting on the puppet’s arm like always.

“There’s a story behind it. Something dark,” she said, her voice low. “That puppet? It’s his son.”

I chuckled, thinking she was messing with me. 

“Yeah, we all say that,” I said.

“No,” Kara interrupted, her eyes serious. “I mean, his real son. The one who died.”

“What?”

“Six years ago, Randy’s son tragically drowned at a lake. Kid was 10.”

“Jesus…”

“Four months later, the puppet was left on Randy’s porch with a note explaining that it was his son. Made by someone who cared. It only required true belief to live.”

“That’s the dumbest -” I started saying before being cut off.

“Maybe it’s like the whole cracker and body Jesus thing the Catholics believe," Maurice said, another barista who had been eavesdropping.

“Exactly!” Kara said. “Though it’s a bit darker than that.”

“What?” I asked.

“Part two of the story is that the spirit of whatever that thing is has to take lives to keep living for Randy. And when you see the puppet for who it really is, you know you’re next. You’re toast.”

"You die?" I said aloud.

"That’s what you’re toast means," she scoffed. “My sister told me she heard about a high schooler who died. She lost her vision, then hearing, then couldn’t speak. A few days later, her heart stopped beating.”

“What the fuck?!” Maurice nearly yelled.

All three of us laughed.

Then we returned to slinging lattes and cold brews.

But the thing is, after that conversation with Kara, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. You know how sometimes you hear a story, and it just sticks in your head, no matter how ridiculous it sounds? 

It’s that old saying. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Well, that’s what this was to me. Every time I saw Randy dragging that puppet into Kaldi’s, I felt this nagging sense of unease creep up my spine. 

Months passed. 

Almost every day, he brought in that damn puppet.

Occasionally, I’d find myself staring at it blankly, transfixed almost. Sometimes I thought I saw it moving. Or it had moved already and was now staring at me.

But I would always smile and laugh at Kara’s stupid story.

Though I did find myself changing…

I would chat to Randy a little more when he came in to order. I tried to be nicer to him. The story about his real son made me feel terrible.

At first, it was just making small talk about the weather.

“The cool air is refreshing, isn’t it?” I’d ask.

“We enjoy it very much,” he’d say back with a smile.

I had never really acknowledged the puppet directly. It was a little too weird and unsettling for me, to be honest. Until last week when something came over me and I slipped up.

“What have you and your son been up to this weekend?”

Randy beamed a huge smile.

“Oh, we just finished a long walk in the park. It’s stunning outside! Now we’re here, of course. Drink a coffee and then I’ll think we’ll take the scenic path back home.”

“Amazing,” I said back to him. “Sounds like a top notch day.”

“Then we’ll go swimming later,” he added. 

“Even lovelier,” I said.

Randy stared at me for a long while. As if he was studying me. The gaze was so deep and eerie that it made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“You're a good boy, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“Let me grab your coffee,” I said with a feigned smile.

I watched Randy the rest of the morning, and noticed he couldn’t stop smiling and talking to the puppet about random things… things like what's for dinner that night, laughing about the movie they watched the night before, and their upcoming plans for the weekend.

“Sure, sure, sure,” he kept repeating as he nodded along to whatever he believed the puppet was saying to him. “We could do that, sure.”

Then he left as usual and I breathed a sigh of relief.

But this morning, while I was making a pumpkin cold brew for a customer… I found myself looking and gazing out our big shop windows, out at the park across the street.

When I saw it, the world went silent.

In the distance, I could see Randy walking in the park, pointing at all of the tall trees, whose leaves are just beginning to change color, while grasping the hand of a young boy beside him. A real boy. 

My stomach dropped. 

I couldn’t believe it. My heart pounded in my chest as something urged me towards the windows. I had to get closer. There was no way…

I pressed my face against the cold glass, hands trembling as I tried to focus.

But the more I squinted, the blurrier Randy and the boy became. I closed my eyes and rubbed them hard, telling myself it had to be a coincidence.

When I reopened them, all I saw was blackness.

I’m so fucked...

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/jeshi_O_toko on 2024-09-19 00:26:31+00:00.

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It's been about a week since this all happened, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

A close family friend needed someone to watch over their house while they went on vacation. I had done it a few times before, so they contacted me to see if I was interested in doing it again. I needed the money, so I agreed to it. They are rather affluent, and the house they live in is probably twice as large as mine. It has two stories, a huge front and backyard for the dog to play in, and fencing that wraps around the whole length of their property to keep their dog from wandering too far.  

The instructions they left for me were the same as last time: feed the dog in the morning, and let it outside while I was away at work.  When I got back to their house in the evening, let the dog back in the house, and feed it again. Simple as that. 

Their dog is a golden retriever named Cooper. He’s always a joy to take care of. He’s very energetic, lovable, and is super friendly to everyone he meets. That’s all there was to it. As long as Cooper was happy and taken care of, I’d done a good job. It was easy money. 

Okay, enough exposition. This happened on the last night that I was watching over their house, a day before they got back. 

I had fed Cooper and put him outside before I went to work. I’d fed him a little extra, because I knew that I would be coming home late, and I wouldn’t be able to feed him at the usual time. When I finally got off work, the sun was almost set, and it was beginning to get dark outside. I punched in the code to the main gate to get into the property, and parked my car. This was when I first noticed something was off. Cooper usually comes to greet me when I arrive back at the house, but he was nowhere to be seen. I had brushed it off, and figured it was because I came back so late in the evening.

When I had finally entered the house, I saw cooper outside, sitting behind the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. He remained still, staring into the house. It was strange seeing him like that, since he’s usually jumping at the door, eager to be let inside and get his dinner and some pets. Again, I ignored it and went to fill his food bowl before letting him inside. When he sees me doing this, he usually gets ecstatic, like it's his first time seeing food. I had glanced back, and saw him with that same stare, still motionless, waiting for me to open the door.

And without a second thought, I did. When I opened the sliding glass door, he immediately came inside. His eyes were fixed on me as he strode into the house, and once again, sat down and remained still. He didn’t go to his food bowl, and he didn’t go lay in his bed. Nothing but an empty, unwavering stare. My first thought was that he was sick. I also thought that maybe I was just overly tired from work, and was overthinking it. His owners were going to be back home the very next day, so I decided to simply wait it out, and let them deal with it.

By this time, it was fully dark outside, and I was sitting on the couch, watching TV in the living room. Cooper sat next to his bed over near the corner of the room. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, still motionless. 

It was quite hard to hear over the show that I was watching, but it was definitely there. Every once in a while, I would hear it; a scratching sound coming from behind me at the sliding glass door. With the TV on, and me being as tired as I was, I disregarded it. But it kept happening. Over and over and over again. The scratching only intensified, and soon it was constant. There was an urgent tone to it, like whatever was scratching at the door needed to get in. 

Eventually—and reluctantly—I gave in, and got up to see what it was. I had to do a double take when I got to the sliding glass door. Jumping at the door, trying to get in, was Cooper. At first, I thought it was another dog that just so happened to look exactly like Cooper, who I had let inside when I first got back to the house, and was sitting in the living room, still as a statue. But the dog that was outside looked exactly like Cooper. It had to be Cooper; his mannerisms were the same, and he was energetically jumping at the door, desperate for me to open it. And so I did.

Cooper immediately went to his food bowl and started eating. I returned to the living room only to find it empty. By this point, I was really starting to get confused. I called for the other Cooper, but heard nothing. If it had been walking, I would have been able to hear its nails tapping against the hardwood flooring of the house. I called out again, and the Cooper that I had just let inside came over to me. I could hear all four of its paws clack against the floor as he sauntered over.  

I walked to the stairs that led to the bottom floor of the house, and called out again. Just like before, there was nothing. I didn’t hear any of the doors open, so the other Cooper still must have been in the house. With Cooper by my side, we went to the guest bedroom, and I got ready for bed. I locked the door behind me, and got myself settled. Cooper laid at the foot of the bed, and I tucked myself into the covers, trying to brush off the confusing nature of the night, and finally get some rest after such a long day.

It wasn’t long after that when I heard it. The nails of a dog walking along the hardwood floor of the house. But it was different from the sound of Cooper’s. It was much, much heavier, almost as heavy as the sound a person would make. And the clacks of the nails on the floor were more spread out, as if whatever was out there was walking on two feet. It sounded distant, but it was getting closer. I could hear it getting louder as it took careful, slow steps up the stairs, one foot at a time. Eventually, it came up to the spare bedroom’s door, and stopped. The hallway lights were on, and they were casting a shadow of whatever was out there. The shadow was spread out, elongated, creeping under the door. And there it stood, motionless, inches away from the locked door. That was my only comfort; that the door was shut, and locked with a flimsy bolt. The only thing I could do was watch the door, and try to slow my alarmingly rapid heart rate.

Eventually, the sun rose, and the house was once again filled with the warm glow of sunlight piercing through the windows. I heard the rumbling of the garage door opening, and the sound of car doors closing shut. Cooper jumped down from the bed and waited for me to let him out. My hand was shaking as I undid the bolt, and slowly turned the doorknob to reveal an empty hallway. Cooper ran out, but stopped at the top of the stairs, and dropped his head to smell the steps. My heart rate slowed, and I quickly got myself dressed before Coopers owners walked into the house. 

I didn’t want to seem like an insane person, so I didn’t mention the events from the previous night. Strangely, Cooper didn’t come to greet them, but instead went downstairs. After a bit of small talk with the owners, I packed up my belongings and got ready to leave. As I was saying my goodbyes to the family and made my way to the door, I glanced back and saw Cooper, sitting motionless by the stairs, watching me with his big, blank eyes.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MaximusFurious on 2024-09-18 19:23:40+00:00.

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I currently work as a train station master, or rather, assistant station master even though I tend to do all the duties of both. ASM, as my name tag so helpfully proclaims to anyone with exceptional eyesight.  However, working out the acronym in itself might take some time. Although a small station in North Wales, it’s one that sees plenty of foot traffic due to the nearby mountains, especially Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales.

On a typical day, you'd find me behind the booking desk, issuing tickets to the constant flow of tourists and hikers or helpfully describing the best way to reach the summit of our beautiful mountain. It's a monotonous job, but it pays the bills, and I've grown fond of the routine over the years. I'd been eyeing the station master position for some time, eagerly waiting on the day old Gwyn would finally retire, but the old man has still got a spring to his step for a 70 year old, so I think it’ll still be some years yet.

The day my life changed forever was supposed to be my day off.  My wife Ruby and I had planned a trip to Anglesey to visit the South Stack Lighthouse, as I’d always had a love for these beacons of safety, or danger, on how you approach it.

The evening before our trip, I was relaxing on the couch watching the tele, whilst Ruby was busying herself in the bedroom

"Hey babe, you all packed for tomorrow?" I shouted to her

Her voice drifted back from the other room, tinged with amusement. "Unlike you, mister last minute, I packed yesterday. We're only going for one night remember, not embarking on a six-month cruise."

"I only wish," I chuckled, as she came back in and plopped down beside me on the sofa.

"Promises, promises," she said, rolling her eyes. "Just as soon as you get that promotion, right?"

I turned to her, a mischievous glint in my eye. “Well, I can definitely promise you’ll beg me to stop in less than a minute." before pouncing to tickle her mercilessly.

"Stop!" she squealed, curling into a ball and swatting at me playfully.

Our moment was interrupted by my phone ringing. I glanced at it over my shoulder, hesitating.

"Leave it," Ruby urged, trying to pull me back knowing where the seductive dance would lead.

"But what if it's work?"

She groaned, kicking herself away. "You and your bloody work."

I reached for the phone, answering with a hint of guilt. "Hey, Gwyn."

"Sorry it's late, Sam," Gwyn's voice crackled through the speaker. "I didn't mean to disturb you, but I'm afraid I had no choice. My son's been in an accident, and I need to get to Liverpool Medical Hospital ASAP. I need you to hold the fort tomorrow while I'm away."

My heart sank, both for Gwyn and our ruined plans. “Jesus, I'm so sorry Gwyn. Of course, I'll cover. Is your son okay?"

"I'm sure he will be, old boy. He's a tough nut to crack. I know you had the day off, and I'm sorry to ask as I’m sure you both had plans."

"Not at all. Anything I can do to help. Please let me know how he is when you see him."

After hanging up, I turned to Ruby, deflated. She instantly recognized my expression and moved to comfort me.

"What's happened?"

"It's Gwyn. His son's been in an accident. I need to cover tomorrow. I'm sorry, babe, but our trip will have to wait."

Ruby hugged me tightly. "oh honey that's okay. I understand. As long as his son's alright."

The next morning, I woke after a restless night, leaving Ruby sleeping peacefully. As I went through my morning routine, I caught sight of my unpacked suitcase in the corner. "Every cloud," I muttered with a wry smile, at least saved from the chore of packing.

The day at the station started like any other, albeit with the added responsibilities of Gwyn's absence. I surprised myself with how easily I took to the senior role, handling phone calls and coordinating staff. If anything, it was good experience for when I eventually took over permanently.

As the clock ticked towards the end of my gruelling 12-hour shift, I sent Ruby a quick text, promising to make up for our cancelled plans with her favourite meal and a relaxing bath. The lack of response didn't worry me; she was probably busy with her own work.

Just as I was about to leave, Kayley, our young ticket booth collector, knocked on the office door.

"Come in," I called.

She entered, looking a bit nervous. "Um, boss..."

"It's Sam, Kayley. We've worked together long enough now."

She smiled sheepishly. "Right, sorry, Sam. I'm all cashed up for the night. Is it okay if I head out to catch the early bus?"

"Of course. Have a safe trip home. See you tomorrow."

No sooner had she left than the office phone rang. I recognised the central control number and suppressing a sigh before answering. "Sam speaking. How can I help?"

"Hi Sam, its Steve from control. We've got an issue on your line – seems to be an obstruction on the southbound track just past the station. Probably just a broken branch. Any chance you can take a look? We'll have to delay any trains until it's sorted."

I glanced at the clock, my frustration mounting. "It's just me left at the station now, Steve. The night master won't be in until 9 PM. It'll be difficult to leave the station unattended."

"Completely understand Sam. Because of the obstruction, the last train has been delayed until 9:10 PM. It should only take you a few minutes to check as it looks like the error on the line is less than 10 meters from the station."

Realising I had no choice, I agreed. "Alright Steve, give me 20 minutes, and I'll ring you back."

"Thanks, Sam. It won't go unnoticed."

I hung up, took a deep breath, and prepared for what I hoped would be my last task of the day. Donning my station jacket, I grabbed the heavy portable torch and my mobile phone.

The station was eerily quiet as I left the office. With only one more train stopping tonight, I didn't expect many passengers this late on a Sunday evening. The emptiness felt oppressive as I walked along the platform and down the ramp towards the southbound tracks.

Switching on the high beam of the torch, I watched as the darkness retreated before me, revealing the path of the train tracks ahead. I looked back one last time, half-hoping to see someone enter the station, but was met with the same emptiness as before.

"I guess it's just me, you, and this fucking branch then," I muttered to the tracks, trying to psych myself up for the task ahead.

I'd walked only a few meters when my mobile rang. Not wanting to miss a call from Ruby, I fished it out of my pocket.

The screen read 'Red', my nickname for my auburn-haired wife. I answered quickly, "There she is, the love of my life."

"Have you heard of the trolley problem?" a distorted male voice replied.

My blood ran cold. "What? Who is this? Where’s Ruby?"

"I said, have you heard of the trolley problem?"

"Who the fuck is this? Why do you have my wife's phone?"

"Answer the question, Samuel. I don't like repeating myself, let alone thrice. And the last thing you want is for your wife to die because you couldn't listen."

My heart pounded in my chest as realization dawned. "Okay, okay. Wait a second. Trolley problem. Yes, I've heard of it. It's the question about ethics and making the right choice. Sacrifice one to save many."

"Correct. And you, you lucky son of a bitch, are about to solve it."

"Wait... why? What have I done to you? I've got money, not much, but it's yours. Just please, don't hurt my wife."

The voice chuckled, a sound that sent chills down my spine. "Oh, Sammy, I'm not going to hurt anyone. I'm going to leave that all down to you."

"What do you mean? Where's my wife, you bastard?"

"Someone's got a potty mouth, hasn't he? Keep walking and you'll find your answer." The call ended, leaving me frozen in place, mouth agape as the torch light danced in front of me.

Apprehensively, I moved forward, terrified of what I might find. After several meters, at the junction of the tracks, I caught movement in my peripheral vision to my left.

I directed the torch beam towards the movement, and something glinted in the light. As I moved nearer, I realized it was coming from human eyes. I rushed forward to the body strapped across the train tracks and instantly recognized the prone form of my beloved Ruby.

She'd been tied to the tracks with chicken wire, blindfolded and gagged. I immediately set about trying to release her from her binds as she squirmed beneath me. I removed her blindfold and gag, revealing her terrified face.

"Sam," she cried, tears streaming down her face "get me free... please!"

"I'm trying," I said, struggling with the restraints. My fingers were already bleeding from the sharp wire, leaving crimson smears on Ruby's clothes and skin.

The mobile rang again, but I ignored it, focusing on freeing my wife. It rang again and again, each time heightening my panic.

Suddenly, a message flashed across the screen: "ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE OR YOUR WIFE WILL DIE IN MINUTES."

Shocked, I jumped when it rang once more. This time, I answered.

"Finally. You listen!"

"What do you-"

"Shut it. You're done talking. You listen to me now, and that's it. No more talking. I will explain the situation, and then you will make a decision. It's as simple as that. You can choose between your wife-"

"My wife... please... I choose my wife. You can take me!"

"It's not that easy, Sammy. Interrupt me again, and I'll end you both right now."

There was a pause, and as I didn't answer, he continued.

"Good. Right then, th...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fk17zj/have_you_ever_heard_of_the_trolley_problem/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/sisoiqadra on 2024-09-18 18:01:46+00:00.

---

Let me start off by saying this: I’m not a good person. Life never gave me the chance to be otherwise; I have stealed, scammed, lied, and yes: I have killed. This is my first, and probably last, confession I would make since I know now that my life is about to end.

I was raised in El Salvador, where being born poor was a death sentence no matter where your life goes, either be part of organized crime or be a victim of it. I didn’t have parents; I didn’t have friends; I was alone most of my life. I’m not trying to excuse myself, because I know there is no excuse for all the things I’ve done.

With all that in the table, let me tell you about my encounter with El Cadejo. In our folklore, el Cadejo is a black dog created by the devil himself to give the damned souls a premature trip to the fiery pits of hell. I never believed it, why would I? Dogs aren’t typically scary; hell, I’ve had dogs, big dogs even, and none of them have ever frightened me. And yes, I’ve been bitten and scratched by dogs, every dog owner has been. How naïve I was.

I was walking to my house, if you could call my small, rickety structure made of mismatched planks that way. It was nighttime, the weather was warm as usual for a tropical country, no clouds at all in the sky, I could see the stars decorating the dark canvas of the sky as my footsteps where the only sound I could make out during the quietness of midnight. I came back from a shitty day, with not a single cent to my name for food or water. When all of the sudden, as I was reflecting on how I came to that point in my life, a chill ran down my spine.

Have you ever had the feeling of someone or something watching you? You probably had, now imagine it while you’re alone, down a path you have walked a million times, feeling as safe as someone who knows your road like the palm of your own hand. The sudden realization that I wasn’t safe at all, my legs started to tremble and my breathing got heavier, as if the air became thicker and impossibly hot.

My vision blurred as my hearing could capture a noise, an unfamiliar noise for the place. It sounded like a hoof, like the ones from goats, faintly but constant and approaching rapidly. When my sense of sight came to, I asked if someone was there, I screamed to the air, and no response at all. Then I saw it.

It emerged from the shadows, as if it was materializing from the night itself. Its eyes burned with an intense, blood-red glow that pierced through the darkness, its fur is matted and clinged to its gaunt frame, coated in shadows. A foul odor, like sulfur and decay, permeated the air around it, and its growls sounded like a chorus of anguished whispers. As it moved closer to me in seconds that felt like an eternity of suffering, the ground seemed to tremble faintly, as though the very earth recoiled from its presence. Its form is that of a massive dog, much larger than any ordinary pet, with a muscular yet unnervingly graceful build.

Just when I thought I would collapse or even die under its gaze, it stopped. It didn't leap or lunge. It just... stood there, as if savoring my fear. My legs finally responded, and I stumbled back, almost tripping. My mind was a storm of terror, but something pushed me to take another step, then another.

With every step back I took, it followed, always staying just out of reach, but close enough for me to see it. I walked backward, eyes locked on its burning red gaze, refusing to turn away. My heart pounded painfully in my chest, my breaths shallow and rapid. It felt like hours, that slow retreat, my feet dragging over rocks and roots. The scent of decay clung to me, the echo of its growl lingering in my ears.

I know the story, I know why it came to me; but what I don’t know is why, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. I stood there for a long moment, heart still hammering, legs trembling. The path ahead was empty now, but the memory of those glowing eyes burned in my mind. I had faced El Cadejo and survived. Why did I survive? God knows I don’t deserve it.

When I finally made it back home, I just stayed there, standing, contemplating every single choice I’ve ever made. I want to say that the encounter gave me a new perspective on life and death, how I want to live and where will I go when I die; but I fear that no amount of self-reflection can help me, as I look out the window and see glowing, red eyes coming from a silhouette that appears to be a massive black dog.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wooleyty on 2024-09-18 17:48:58+00:00.

---

Jack sat slouched in the chair across from me, his shoulders hunched, eyes constantly flicking toward the camera mounted in the corner. His fingers, pale and trembling, kept tugging at the frayed cuffs of his prison jumpsuit. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in days—worn down by something much deeper than exhaustion. It was fear. And something else.

I leaned forward, keeping my voice calm and controlled. "You said it started with a crack?"

Jack nodded slowly, barely meeting my gaze. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Just a crack in the wall. That's how it all began."

He paused, running a hand through his hair, and for a moment, I thought he wasn't going to say anything else. Then he took a shaky breath, his eyes distant, like he was trying to relive those first few days in his mind. "Solitary's always been a mess," he continued, voice hoarse. "The walls in there—cracked, dirty. You get used to it. It's like the whole place is rotting from the inside out. You stop noticing after a while. Mold in the corners, cracks everywhere... normal stuff for a place like that."

His fingers drummed absently on the table, the sound sharp in the otherwise quiet room. "I noticed the crack in my cell a few days before everything started. It was small, maybe three or four inches, right down by the corner where the wall meets the floor. Nothing unusual, right? These walls were falling apart all over the place, so I didn't pay much attention at first."

He looked up, his brow furrowed as if trying to decide how to explain what happened next. "But the next day, it wasn't just a crack anymore. There was… something growing out of it. Black stuff. I thought it was mold. That's what you'd think, right? This place isn't exactly sanitary."

Jack took a deep breath, his fingers tapping faster now, more erratic. "It didn't move, at least not that I could see. But every time I looked at it, it seemed like there was more of it. I swear to God, it was spreading. Slow. Maybe six inches a day. I couldn't see it move, but when I'd wake up in the morning, it had crept further along the wall, like it was crawling while I was sleeping."

I wrote down the details and looked back up. "You're saying it was growing that fast? Just overnight?"

Jack nodded, his voice growing more agitated. "Yeah. I'd wake up, and there'd be more of it. Not much at first—just a few more inches, but I could tell it was moving. The crack was getting wider, too. And it wasn't just mold. I knew it wasn't mold, not with the way it looked. It wasn't just sitting there on the surface. It was alive."

His voice grew quieter, as though he wasn't sure if he should be saying the words out loud. "It was like it was breathing."

I raised my eyebrow but kept my expression neutral. "What made you think that?"

Jack shifted in his seat, eyes darting toward the walls of the room before fixing on the table. "It wasn't just that it was spreading. It was how it made the room feel. Different. Like the air was heavier. It smelled wrong, too. Not like the usual mold or dampness. This was something else. It smelled like… like something rotting. Foul. The kind of smell that makes you gag."

He paused, rubbing his fingers against his temples, trying to recall every detail. "I told the guards the second day, right when I noticed it had spread. The guy dropping off food just shrugged it off. Said he'd file a report, but I knew he wouldn't. Why would he? It's solitary. They don't care what happens in there as long as we stay quiet."

Jack's fingers clenched into fists, knuckles turning white. "So I waited. Figured maybe someone would check it out. But no one came. And each morning, when I woke up, the black stuff had spread a little more. Not fast enough to notice while it was happening, but enough that I knew it was growing."

His voice lowered, his eyes widening slightly as he recounted those days. "By the third day, it had covered the entire corner of the wall. The crack had gotten bigger, and the black stuff—it wasn't just growing anymore. It was feeding. It had to be. There was no other explanation for how it was spreading so steadily. Every morning, it was a few inches closer. And the smell kept getting worse."

He ran his hands through his hair again, his face etched with frustration and fear. "I kept telling the guards. Every time they walked by, I'd bang on the door and shout that something was wrong. They thought I was losing it and told me to shut up and deal with it. But I wasn't crazy. That stuff was real, and it was spreading."

Jack took a deep breath, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. "I wasn't imagining it. I know what I saw."

The room felt heavier, his words sinking in like stones. He paused, waiting for my response, but I let the silence stretch, giving him time to collect himself. Finally, I asked, "What happened after the third day? Did it stop?"

Jack shook his head, his voice wavering. "No. It didn't stop. It just kept growing, slow but steady."

Jack took another shaky breath, his fingers tapping nervously against the table. He looked around the room again, like he was searching for something that wasn't there, then rubbed his face with both hands. I could tell he was trying to push back the memories, but they kept clawing their way to the surface.

"It kept spreading," he muttered, his voice strained. "Every morning, I'd wake up, and that black stuff was a little closer. Six inches, maybe more, every damn day. The crack, too—it was getting bigger like something was trying to push its way out from behind the wall."

He stopped, staring at the ceiling for a moment, then shook his head. "I couldn't take it anymore. I started banging on the door, yelling at the guards every time they passed. I told them the black stuff was spreading and that the crack was getting worse. They didn't believe me. They just looked at me like I was crazy."

His hands clenched into fists. "I wasn't crazy. I knew what I saw. But to them, I was just another inmate trying to get out of solitary. They told me to calm down and that someone would come check it out, but no one ever did. Not for days."

Jack's voice dropped lower. "By the fourth day, I could barely breathe in there. The smell… it was like something had died in the walls. Worse than that. It was foul, like the whole room was rotting from the inside out."

He stared down at his hands. "And I could feel it. In my bones, you know? Like something was wrong with the air itself. It felt thick and heavy like it was pressing down on me. I couldn't sleep anymore. I'd lie awake at night, staring at that black stuff creeping along the wall, knowing it was getting closer."

Jack paused, shaking his head again like he was trying to clear the memory. "I begged them. Every time a guard walked by, I begged them to move me, to get me out of that cell. They ignored me. Days passed. The black stuff kept growing. I could feel it getting closer, but they didn't care."

He let out a bitter laugh, the sound hollow. "It wasn't until the lawsuit threats started flying that they decided to move me. They couldn't risk me going to a lawyer, saying they were keeping me in a contaminated cell. So, they moved me."

I watched him carefully. "Where did they take you?"

"To another cell in solitary," Jack muttered. "A dirtier one, if you can believe that. No black stuff, though. But I could still see my old cell from the window in my door, just a few doors down. I'd look at it every day, but I couldn't see the fungus. Not yet."

His voice dropped, barely a whisper now. "I wasn't the only one in solitary anymore. They put someone else in my old cell."

Jack stared at the table, his face tight with anxiety. "At first, I didn't hear much about him. The guards didn't talk to me after I was moved. But after a few days, I started to overhear things. Little bits and pieces. They said the guy they put in my old cell… he'd touched the black stuff. They had to move him to the med wing."

He stopped, rubbing his hands together as if trying to warm them. "I didn't know what had happened to him at first. Just that he was unconscious, and they didn't think he'd wake up. Then the rumors started."

Jack's eyes darkened, his voice lowering. "They said his skin was changing. One of the guards said it looked like it was blistering, like something was eating him from the inside out. Another said his veins were turning black, like the stuff was crawling under his skin."

I scribbled down notes, glancing up at Jack. "How long after they moved you did this happen?"

He shrugged, his voice distant. "A couple of days, maybe. Not long. Whatever was in that cell, it got him fast."

Jack's hand shook slightly as he continued. "I started hearing more after that. The guards didn't want to talk about it, but I could tell they were scared. They were trying to keep it quiet, but everyone knew something was wrong. The guy they put in my old cell… he wasn't just sick. He was changing."

Jack shifted in his chair, his eyes narrowing slightly as if the memory of what came next still gnawed at him. "It wasn't long after that when things started changing. I could feel it—something was happening in that place. The guards… they stopped talking. Just did their rounds without saying a word. No more gossip, no more jokes. Nothing."

He paused, his fingers drumming nervously on the table. "The guy in the med wing… they said he wasn't getting better. They'd quarantined him and locked the whole wing down. That'...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Odd_Occasion4750 on 2024-09-18 17:40:51+00:00.

---

I don’t usually have nightmares. At least, I didn’t used to. But after last night, I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep peacefully again.

It started with the phone call. Late, around 3a.m. I was already half-asleep, the room dark except for the dim glow of my bedside clock. The phone rang, and I groggily reached for it, annoyed at whoever would be calling at this hour.

When I picked it up, there was no sound. Just silence.

“Hello?” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

Nothing.

“Who is this?” I asked, now more awake, a creeping unease starting to form in my stomach.

Still silence.

I was about to hang up when I heard it. A faint, crackling sound, like someone trying to breathe through a bad connection. Then, barely audible, a voice whispered:

“I’m inside.”

My blood ran cold. For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard it right. But then the voice came again, clearer this time:

“I’m inside.”

I bolted upright, heart pounding, and looked around the room. The door was shut, just as I had left it before going to bed. The windows were locked. Everything seemed normal, but that voice… it was so close, like someone whispering right in my ear.

I hung up the phone and sat in the dark, straining to hear any sound in the house. Nothing. No footsteps, no creaking floorboards. Just silence.

But that didn’t stop the feeling that someone was watching me. Every instinct I had screamed that something was wrong, that I wasn’t alone.

I grabbed the nearest thing I could use as a weapon — an old baseball bat from my closet — and slowly opened my bedroom door, peeking out into the hallway. The house was pitch black, the only light coming from the streetlamps filtering through the curtains in the living room.

I stepped out, gripping the bat tightly, and crept down the hall, my heart racing with every step. The silence was suffocating, making every tiny noise sound amplified — the creak of the floor under my feet, the soft hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.

I reached the living room, where everything seemed exactly as I’d left it. No sign of anyone, no open doors or windows. I let out a shaky breath, starting to feel a little ridiculous. Maybe it was a prank call, or my mind playing tricks on me.

That’s when I saw it.

In the reflection of the window, just behind me, was the outline of a figure. Tall, with long limbs that seemed to bend at unnatural angles. My blood froze as I watched it, unmoving, standing right behind me.

Slowly, I turned around. There was no one there.

But the reflection didn’t change.

The figure in the window was still there, standing right where I had been looking. Its head was cocked to one side, as if curious. And then, it moved. Not in the reflection, but in reality — a sudden, jerking movement that sent the blood in my veins to ice.

I swung the bat at the empty air behind me, expecting to hit something, but the bat just cut through nothing. Yet, when I looked back at the window, the figure was still there, now closer, its head tilting further, its eyes — hollow and dark — fixed on me.

Panic surged through me. I ran, stumbling back to my room, slamming the door shut behind me. I locked it, breathing heavily, pressing my ear to the wood, trying to hear if it had followed.

At first, there was silence. But then, from the other side of the door, I heard it again.

A whisper.

“I’m inside.”

This time, it wasn’t coming from the phone. It was coming from just outside the door.

I backed away, heart racing, staring at the door as it slowly creaked open on its own.

The hallway was empty. But I knew it was there, waiting, just beyond the reach of the light spilling out from my room.

Then, in the darkness, I saw them — a pair of hollow eyes, staring at me from the blackness. The figure slowly stepped forward, into the light, its twisted limbs moving in that same jerking motion I’d seen before.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. My body was frozen in place, paralyzed by fear.

The figure stood at the threshold, its face inches from mine. Its voice was a rasp, like wind through dead leaves.

“You can’t leave,” it whispered. “I’m already inside.”

And then, everything went black.

When I woke up, it was morning. The door to my room was still closed, locked just as I’d left it. The house was quiet, sunlight streaming through the windows.

But I know what I saw. What I heard. I can still feel its presence, lurking just out of sight, waiting for nightfall.

And I know that the next time I hear it whisper, I won’t be able to wake up.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SocietysMenaceCC on 2024-09-18 16:44:04+00:00.

---

My name is Captain James “Jim” Carter, and this is the account of Operation Black Frost. This story is not one for the faint-hearted, nor for those who seek comfort in the familiar. It’s a tale of darkness, treachery, and the cold, unforgiving grip of fear that comes from confronting the unknown.

In the winter of 1962, deep into the Cold War, I was part of a covert task force sent by the United States to infiltrate the frozen wilderness of Siberia. Our mission was to track down and eliminate a high-ranking Soviet official, Dimitri Ivanov, who was believed to be overseeing a top-secret government experiment. The nature of the experiment was unknown, but the little intelligence we had suggested it was a threat unlike anything we had encountered before.

Our team consisted of nine soldiers, each handpicked for their unique skills and unwavering resolve. There was Lieutenant John “Johnny” Rourke, my second-in-command, a man of few words but immense bravery. Sergeant William “Bill” Turner, a grizzled veteran with an encyclopedic knowledge of explosives. Corporal David “Dave” Hernandez, our communications expert, whose quick wit often lightened the mood. Private First Class Samuel “Sammy” Lee, a sharpshooter with nerves of steel. Private Gregory “Greg” Thompson, our medic, whose calm demeanor under pressure was a beacon of hope. Private Richard “Rick” Davis, a scout with an uncanny ability to navigate the harshest terrains. Private Andrew “Andy” Johnson, our engineer, capable of making or breaking anything mechanical. Finally, Private Robert “Bobby” Kim, a linguist and cryptographer, essential for deciphering Russian communications.

We were dropped into the heart of Siberia under the cover of night, our breath visible in the frigid air as we trudged through knee-deep snow. The cold was merciless, cutting through our gear and chilling us to the bone. We moved swiftly and silently, each step taking us closer to our target and deeper into the unknown.

Our journey began uneventfully, but as the days passed, an oppressive sense of dread settled over us. The forest around us seemed alive, the trees whispering secrets and shadows moving just out of sight. We had been trained to handle fear, but this was different. It was as if the very land was warning us to turn back.

On the third night, we set up camp near an abandoned village, its dilapidated buildings standing as silent witnesses to some long-forgotten tragedy. As we huddled around a small fire, the wind howling outside, Dave picked up a faint transmission on his radio. It was in Russian, and Bobby quickly translated. It was a distress signal, originating from within the village. Against our better judgment, we decided to investigate.

The village was eerily quiet, our footsteps echoing off the crumbling walls. We followed the signal to a small church at the edge of the village. The door creaked open, revealing a scene of horror. Bodies, frozen and contorted in agony, lay strewn across the floor. Their eyes were wide with terror, mouths frozen mid-scream. At the altar, a lone figure sat slumped over, clutching a radio. It was a Soviet soldier, his face twisted in fear, fingers frozen to the bone.

“What the hell happened here?” Rick muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here,” Johnny replied, his eyes scanning the shadows.

As we turned to leave, the radio crackled to life. Static filled the room, followed by a voice, distorted and barely audible. “They are coming… the shadows…”

Before we could react, the church doors slammed shut, and the temperature plummeted. The shadows around us seemed to come alive, writhing and twisting as if possessed by some malevolent force. Panic set in, and we fired blindly into the darkness. The shadows dissipated, but not before claiming Sammy. He vanished into the darkness, his screams echoing long after he was gone.

We fled the village, our morale shattered and our numbers reduced. The forest seemed more hostile than ever, the shadows watching our every move. We pressed on, driven by duty and the need for answers.

Days turned into weeks, and our supplies dwindled. The cold was relentless, sapping our strength and will to continue. Then, we found it—a hidden facility, buried deep within the mountains. It was heavily guarded, but we were determined to complete our mission.

Under the cover of darkness, we infiltrated the facility. What we found inside was beyond comprehension. It was a laboratory, filled with strange devices and jars containing grotesque specimens. The air was thick with the stench of decay and chemicals. At the center of it all was Dimitri Ivanov, overseeing an experiment that defied all logic.

He was using the shadows themselves, harnessing their malevolent energy to create weapons of unimaginable power. The shadows were alive, feeding on fear and pain, growing stronger with each passing moment.

We attempted to sabotage the facility, but the shadows fought back. One by one, my men were taken. Bill was torn apart by unseen forces, his screams filling the air. Greg was dragged into the darkness, his fate unknown. Rick and Andy were consumed by the shadows, their bodies disappearing without a trace. Dave and Bobby fought valiantly, but they too fell to the relentless onslaught.

In the end, it was just Johnny and me. We confronted Ivanov, but he was beyond reason, consumed by the power he had unleashed. In a final act of desperation, Johnny detonated the explosives we had planted, destroying the facility and the horrors within.

I barely escaped, my body battered and broken. I wandered through the snow for days, the shadows still haunting my every step. Eventually, I was found by a Soviet patrol and taken prisoner. They never believed my story, and I spent years in a Siberian gulag, haunted by the memories of that fateful mission.

The gulag was a place of misery and despair, but it was nothing compared to the horrors I had faced in that cursed forest. The other prisoners were hardened criminals, spies, and political dissidents, but even they sensed that something was different about me. They kept their distance, whispering about the haunted American who spoke of shadows and unseen terrors.

Years passed in a blur of hard labor, starvation, and the bitter cold. The guards took pleasure in our suffering, and any sign of weakness was met with brutal punishment. I learned to keep my head down, to endure the pain and the fear. But no matter how much I tried to bury the memories, the shadows were always there, lurking at the edges of my vision, whispering in the dead of night.

One particularly harsh winter, when the cold was so intense it felt like knives slicing through our flesh, I befriended a fellow prisoner named Sergei. He was a former KGB operative, a man of few words but with eyes that spoke volumes. He had seen things, things that made my stories of shadows seem almost mundane. We formed an unspoken bond, finding solace in each other’s company amidst the relentless bleakness of the gulag.

One night, as we huddled together for warmth in our barracks, Sergei leaned in and whispered to me. “I believe you, Jim. About the shadows. I’ve seen them too.”

I stared at him, searching his eyes for any hint of deceit, but found only sincerity. “What do you mean?”

“Before I was imprisoned here, I was part of an operation similar to yours,” Sergei explained. “We were sent to investigate a remote research facility in the Ural Mountains. What we found there… it was beyond comprehension. The scientists were experimenting with something they called ‘Project Nochnoy Zver’—the Night Beast. They were trying to harness the energy of the shadows, to create weapons that could strike fear into the hearts of our enemies.”

My blood ran cold as he spoke. “What happened to your team?”

“They were all taken,” Sergei said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The shadows consumed them, one by one. I barely escaped with my life, just like you. But I was captured and thrown into this hellhole, and no one believed my story.”

As Sergei spoke, a plan began to form in my mind. If there was another facility, another project like Ivanov’s, then we had to find it. We had to stop it, once and for all. The shadows could not be allowed to spread their darkness any further.

“Sergei, we have to get out of here,” I said, my voice filled with determination. “We have to find that facility and destroy it.”

Sergei nodded, his eyes gleaming with a newfound resolve. “But how? This place is a fortress. Escape is nearly impossible.”

“We’ll find a way,” I replied. “We have to.”

The next few weeks were a blur of planning and preparation. We gathered what little resources we could, bartering with other prisoners for tools and information. It was dangerous work, and more than once we came close to being discovered by the guards. But desperation drove us forward, the knowledge that we were the only ones who could stop the shadows from spreading their terror.

Finally, the night of our escape arrived. A brutal snowstorm raged outside, providing the perfect cover for our plan. Under the guise of a routine work detail, we managed to slip away from the main camp, making our way towards the outer perimeter. The cold was intense, sapping our strength with every step, but we pressed on, driven by the knowledge that failure was not an option.

We reached the outer fence, a towering barrier of ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fjxg8e/i_led_a_secret_mission_during_the_cold_war_today/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ConnectionFit4696 on 2024-09-18 12:06:03+00:00.

---

Two weeks ago, I visited my grandparents who live in the mountains. Their home is absolutely beautiful—it's a two-story house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a charming balcony. My grandfather built it himself, which makes it even more special.

When I knocked on the door, my grandmother opened it. "Oh, my sweet patootie!" she exclaimed. I hugged her and laughed, "Grandma, stop calling me that. I'm twenty-six years old now." She smiled and said, "Nonsense, you'll always be my sweet patootie."

"Where's Grandpa?" I asked. "He's in his shed, dear," she replied. I walked out the back door into the backyard. The shed was a bit of a walk since my grandparents have two acres of land. Grandpa spaced out his shed from the house because Grandma doesn't like him smoking near the house.

I knocked on the shed door and then walked in. Sure enough, grandfather was sitting in his chair, smoking a cigar. "Grandma's going to kill you if she catches you with that thing, you know," I said, pulling up a chair beside him. "Hey, Claire," he greeted me, giving me a side hug.

"How have you been?" he asked. "I've been doing well lately. How are you and Grandma?" I replied. "Oh, we're getting by. Reaching those old ages, dear—our backs ache, our joints creak, everything hurts now," he said with a chuckle. Each laugh sent a cloud of smoke escaping his lips.

"You'll see when you get there," he added. "Is John treating you alright?" my grandfather asked. "Yes, sir. He actually proposed to me a few months ago," I said. "Did he?" Grandfather said with happiness, and I simply nodded my head yes.

"I’m so happy for you, dear. Congratulations! So, does that mean I’ll be a great-grandfather soon?" he said. "You’re already a great-grandfather," I responded with a smile, placing my hand gently on his shoulder.

"I would like to know, though, if it’s possible for you to draft a blueprint for our house. John and I want to build our own, just like you and Grandma did," I said. "I suppose I can," he replied, taking a thoughtful drag from his cigar.

"Thanks, Grandpa," I said. "I just really want to create something of our own, you know? To be able to say, 'This is ours.' I bet it feels wonderful." "Yes, it does," my grandfather replied.

"What compelled you to leave your hometown in France, move to Maryland, and build your own home to start a family? Did you also desire something for yourself?" I inquired. My grandfather's face fell slightly as he took another pull from his cigar.

"Honestly, it's about time I talked about it. I probably won't have much time left to speak on it," he said. I furrowed my brow in confusion. "What do you mean?" I asked. He took a long drag from his cigar and said, "I didn't choose to move away; I had no other choice."

"I still don't understand, Grandpa," I said. "Listen, I'm about to tell you something that defies all logic, so I want you to listen carefully and try to understand me. To this day, I have no idea what happened. All I know is that I had to get out of that town before whatever was taking over it claimed me," he said.

I was genuinely starting to feel a bit apprehensive. "Are you on any new medication?" I asked. He shook his head and took a long pull from his cigar, releasing a thick cloud of smoke. "I loved where I used to live. My old town was beautiful and tranquil."

"Everyone knew each other; life was simple. The streets were lined with flowers and fruit trees, and the sound of children's laughter filled the air while the scent of freshly baked sweets tantalized your senses," he said with a wistful smile. He closed his eyes, as if reminiscing transported him back in time.

"Sounds lovely," I said. "It was, until the day everything began to change," he replied, taking another puff of his cigar. "It started very subtly, but one by one, people began to lose their minds."

"At first, it was very minor things, like people muttering to themselves or staring off into the distance, standing there blankly. But soon, it escalated into far more disturbing behaviors."

"Mrs. Thompson was a sweet old lady, a baker who owned her own bakery in town. One night, she was found wandering the streets, screaming for help. She claimed that 'the thing' was going to get her. The police detained her, took her in, and we never saw her again."

"Mr. Jenkins, the town's grocer, began collecting dead birds and hanging them around his yard as some sort of grotesque decorations. The madness spread like wildfire. Some people would laugh continuously for hours, while others would scream until they tore their vocal cords. Even then, they still tried to scream."

"The sound of their screams with torn vocal cords will forever haunt me. It was a harrowing cacophony of wailing, almost inhuman cries. Raspy, guttural noises filled with an unbearable pain and desperation." He paused, taking a slow, deliberate pull from his cigar before speaking again, this time in a quieter, more reflective tone.

"Some would cry hysterically, and I must admit, I couldn't help but cry too at times. This was my beloved town, and in the blink of an eye, it was all destroyed by what? We still don't know. It was as if the very air carried an infectious disease that deteriorated the brain."

He took a long pause and puffed his cigar again. I sat in silence, absorbing the gravity of his words. "The worst part was, they began taking their own lives. At first, it was just a few, but then it became a daily occurrence. Every time I stepped outside, I feared for my life as I stumbled over the bodies of those who had tragically succumbed to their dramatic fate."

“I recall vividly the myriad of doctors and scientists, all clad in protective suits, who were resolute in their quest to unravel the mystery of what was transpiring. It seemed they were more preoccupied with the prestige of discovering the cause than with genuinely aiding the afflicted.”

“Despite the countless tests and exhaustive studies they conducted, they remained baffled, unable to discern the nature of the affliction, let alone devise a cure. They began referring to it as the new plague, a term that only served to amplify the collective hysteria.”

“I endeavored to remain steadfast, to be a pillar of strength for my town. Yet, as the days passed, an insidious fear took root within me. I found myself unable to sleep, unable to eat, paralyzed by the terror that I would be the next to fall victim.”

“The day I discovered my best friend, John, lying lifeless in his home, I realized I couldn't remain any longer. It shattered my heart to leave, to abandon the place that held a lifetime of memories, but I had no other option," my grandfather said, drawing deeply from his cigar.

"I gathered my belongings and fled to the mountains, desperately hoping to escape whatever malevolent force was consuming our town. As I glanced back one final time, I saw the once vibrant community reduced to a ghostly shadow of its former self."

"The laughter and joy had been replaced by chaos and sorrow. It was the hardest decision I've ever made, but I knew I had to save myself. In hindsight, it was the best choice I ever made," he said.

"I met your grandmother, got married, had your father, and now I have you. None of that would have been possible if I had stayed in that town," my grandfather said, his voice filled with a mixture of relief and gratitude.

I was almost on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by the unimaginable horrors my grandfather had endured. I stood up and embraced him, expressing how much I loved him. I ended up staying for a week with my grandparents before returning home.

I now hold an even deeper respect for my grandfather. I can't fathom enduring what he described. It's even more frightening to think that we still don't know what it was that consumed his old town or if it's still lurking out there, waiting to infect a new group of people.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dangerous-Parfait-28 on 2024-09-18 10:06:31+00:00.

---

I grew up in a small, old town in Maine that most people wouldn’t recognize by name. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows each other, where the streets are quiet after dark, and where the past lingers like a heavy fog that never quite clears. I moved away years ago, but I still find myself thinking about that town, especially at night when sleep evades me. There’s something about the darkness that brings back the memories—the kind you try to forget but can never really shake.

When I was a kid, the town had this strange, almost otherworldly atmosphere. It was hard to put into words, but there was a feeling, a deep unease, that we all sensed but never talked about. The adults called it superstition, the kind of thing that happens in every small town. But we kids knew better. We heard the stories, the whispers in the schoolyard, the tales passed down from older siblings. It was always about children going missing, about kids who would wander off and never come back.

It started with the little things. Toys left on porches would disappear, bikes abandoned on the sidewalk would be gone the next morning, even when the chains were still locked. Parents would write it off as pranks or the work of some petty thief. But the kids knew better. We always did.

The first time I really understood the fear was when a boy from my class, Jamie, vanished. We were in third grade, and Jamie was the kind of kid everyone liked. Always laughing, always with a joke on his lips. He was the first to dare anyone to go into the sewers, a place we all avoided. He said he’d heard voices down there, that something was calling to him. None of us believed him, not really, but we didn’t want to test it either.

One day, Jamie didn’t show up for school. It wasn’t unusual at first—kids get sick or go on trips without much notice. But when a week passed and Jamie still wasn’t back, the adults started to worry. They searched the town, the woods, even drained part of the river. Nothing. No one talked about the sewers, though. Not even when someone found his sneaker by the storm drain near the old paper mill, the one with the faded sign and the rusted gates. The cops said it probably washed down from somewhere, that it didn’t mean anything. But we knew.

After Jamie, there were more. A girl from the next street over, twins who lived near the library, a little boy from the outskirts who’d just started kindergarten. One by one, they vanished, and the town grew quieter, like the life had been sucked out of it. The laughter of children faded, replaced by the whispers of the adults, who were now too scared to let us out of their sight. But it didn’t matter. When someone—or something—wanted you, it would find you.

I remember one night, lying in bed, listening to the rain patter against my window. I was half-asleep when I heard it—a voice, soft and melodic, like a lullaby. It was coming from outside, from the direction of the street. I crept to the window and peeked through the curtains. There was nothing there, just the empty street, the old streetlamp flickering like it always did. But the voice didn’t stop. It called my name, sweet and inviting, like it was promising something wonderful. I wanted to go to it, to step out into the rain and follow that voice wherever it led. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, but something in me knew better. I climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying to block out the sound. Eventually, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was morning.

Years passed, and the disappearances slowed, then stopped altogether. But the town was never the same. Some families moved away, unable to bear the weight of the losses. Others stayed, trying to forget, to pretend like nothing had happened. But those of us who grew up there, who lived through it, we never forgot. We never could.

Now, as an adult, I avoid small towns. I stay away from old storm drains and abandoned buildings, and I never, ever listen to strange voices in the night. But every now and then, when I’m lying in bed, just on the edge of sleep, I hear that lullaby again. And I remember.

I remember the missing children, the darkened streets, and the town that kept its secrets close, buried deep beneath the surface, waiting for the day when it might need to feed again.

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone else remembers, if the story still lingers in the minds of those who left. But I don’t ask. Because some things are better left forgotten. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself when the night comes creeping in.

And then there are the balloons. Red ones. I used to see them sometimes, floating by the riverbank or caught in the branches of a tree. I always thought they were just left over from some birthday party, but now, looking back, I’m not so sure. I still see them in my dreams, bright and crimson, drifting silently down empty streets. It’s strange, how something so innocent can fill you with such dread.

About a week ago, I got a letter in the mail. No return address, just my name written in shaky, almost childlike handwriting. Inside, there was a single photograph—grainy, black and white, like it was taken decades ago. It was a picture of a group of kids standing in front of the old library in my hometown, smiling at the camera. But there was something wrong. In the background, just behind the children, there was a figure. A tall, thin man in a suit, his face obscured by shadow. And at his feet, a red balloon.

My heart pounded as I stared at the photo, a cold sweat breaking out on my skin. I hadn’t thought about that place in years, and now it was coming back to haunt me. The letter didn’t include a note or an explanation—just that single, haunting image. I wanted to throw it away, to pretend I never saw it, but something stopped me. Instead, I placed it in a drawer and tried to forget about it.

But I couldn’t.

Two nights ago, I heard the voice again. The same soft, melodic lullaby, drifting through the air like it had years ago. This time, though, it wasn’t outside my window. It was in my house, just outside my bedroom door. I froze, too terrified to move, as the voice called my name, over and over, growing louder with each repetition.

When I finally mustered the courage to open the door, there was nothing there. Just the dark, empty hallway. But on the floor, right outside my bedroom, was a red balloon, bobbing slightly as if someone had just let it go.

I knew then that it wasn’t over, that whatever haunted that town hadn’t forgotten me. It had found me again, and this time, it wouldn’t let go.

Last night, I made a decision. I’m going back. Back to that town, back to where it all started. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I can’t keep running. Whatever this thing is, it’s coming for me, and if I’m going to stop it, I need to confront it.

I booked a ticket for the first flight out tomorrow morning. I haven’t told anyone where I’m going. I’m not sure I’ll come back. But there’s one thing I know for certain: I’m not the only one it’s after. And if I don’t do something, if I don’t end this, it will keep hunting, keep feeding, until there’s nothing left.

So, if you’re reading this, be careful. Pay attention to the signs—the missing children, the voices, the balloons. And if you ever hear a lullaby in the night, don’t listen. Whatever you do, don’t follow it.

Because once it finds you, it never lets go

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/According-Oven-7597 on 2024-09-18 06:31:18+00:00.

---

My husband and I haven't been back to his hometown for a few years, mainly because he has only few relatives alive.

Another reason is that they have very strange beliefs, you know, that kind of local gods that don't be known out of the town.

He once wanted to put a statue of the god in our new house, because his mom asked so,but I didn't agree. That's no use,i said. After all, he is a househusband, the main source of income for the family is me, and I am an atheist,and I pay for the house mortgage. So he just give up.

When I married him, I knew he didn't like to work. But he was so gentle and took good care of me at that time. And…too good looking.When I said I was infertile, he hugged me and said it must be difficult.

For a long time, I thought, if I wasn't infertile, and he wouldn be willing to adopt, and we would have a perfect family.

He said that this year has been the fifth year since his last went back, and we have to go back. I only went back his hometown for a few days in the early days of our marriage and his parents's funeral,and besides that he went back alone. But since he asked, I think it's okay to go back, after all, we haven't had a family traveled this year.

I asked him to buy some gifts, and he said, but dear, I don't have money. I wanted to say that I just gave him a few thousand yuan three days ago as food expenses for this month, and there were no large expenses in the past two days. But in the end I gave up. After all, if I asked him, he would only say that I was stingy and never gave him enough money.

I drove for a few days back to his hometown and gave several relatives the new down jackets and cigarette. Winter is coming, and down jackets are very practical.

They told me that I came back in time because they were about to offer sacrifices to the god activity. I asked them is that mean I needed to get up early to offer sacrifices to the gods, and they said no. But I still woke up very early the next day because I kept dreaming that I was in a foggy forest and I just couldn't get out.

They said I could be the first to the Poe divination. For fun, I asked if I would have a child. It gave me three same result,one of the blocks has its flat side facing up and the other has its flat side facing down, and the village chief was very happy. She told me that it meant that the gods agreed very much.

I didn't understand. I couldn't get pregnant. I knew it when I was in high school. The probability was only 2%. "So, he agreed? About me having a child."

"It's her, you can't call the god him." Her expression suddenly became serious. I apologized for my rashness and helped cook for the whole morning.

At noon, the whole village had a meal together. The food was delicious, but I suddenly vomited. I thought it might be too tired. Fortunately, they were very tolerant and let me leave early to take a nap.

The village chief gave me a bowl of porridge. She told me that it was normal and that every woman would feel this way,when you having a new life. I didn't tell her about my infertility. My husband and I had tried for two years but to no avail.

What made me angry was that my husband didn't come back that day. He was playing poker. When he came back, he apologized to me, but I was still very angry because he is drunk. I slept well that night and dreamed of a little girl. I braided her hair and blew bubbles for her。

The next day, they told me that the statue had to be delivered by my husband and me. I didn't ask why. The village chief told me that the mountain was called the God's territory in their dialect, and there was a temple on the top of the mountain.

As for the statue, it was made by a male carpenter a long time ago. Thry need to take the statue up there and only take it down the mountain the same time in next year.

I asked her what those nameless tablets were. She said that there used to be very cruel customs in the nearby villages. The more miserable the death of the baby girl, the more likely the next child would be a boy, so those nameless tablets were for them. I touched my belly and thought of the little girl in the dream again. I felt a chill.

It was foggy on the mountain that day, even though the weather forecast was for a sunny day.

After walking for two hours without reaching the destination, I realized that we might be lost, but my husband said not to worry, as he had been playing in the mountains since he was born. It wasn't until he took me to a cliff that I felt something was wrong. I was still holding the statue because he thought it was too heavy, and the last thing I heard him say was, "Go to hell."

I tried to get up, but my pelvis must have been broken. I tried to stay awake, but it was difficult. At this moment, I seemed to be back in my dream and saw the little girl. She looked really small.

"Thank you for helping us, now...it's my turn to help you." The voice didn't seem to come from her throat, but from dozens of little girls at the same time.

I asked her what I should do, and she said I needed to keep walking, keep walking, and I couldn't let go of her hand or ask questions during the process. Don't look back.

So I take her hand, and I heard a voice from behind that I still don't know how to describe, but my intuition told me that I couldn't look back, otherwise I would die, and she said, "Don't be afraid."

I don't know how long I walked, I was panting, and when I felt that my legs could no longer move another meter, I saw the light.

"See you on the other side." She waved at me, and I vaguely saw a woman more than two meters tall standing behind the little girl, but seeing her was not scary, but reassuring.

When I woke up, I found myself in the hospital, and the village chief was there. There were also a few policemen, who told me that my husband was dead.

Police said since he owed a gambling debt of 100,000 and bought me an insurance policy (but he was stupid enough to fill in the wrong name,He wrote me as the beneficiary), they thought that he was trying to murder me, so when he pushed me off the cliff, he also slipped and fell down. The statue was broken, and he seemed to be broken more than the statue.

I was shocked by the news and wanted to get up, but I couldn't get up because of the pain. Then they said that my pelvis was broken, and it was a miracle that the kid was still alive. I asked, what kid?

They said that because we hadn't returned for three hours, the village chief had someone look for us. Finally, she was the first to find me under the cliff.

When they found me, my lower body was bleeding. When they rushed me to the hospital, they found that I was already eight months pregnant. Logically, the baby should have suffocated to death or miscarried, but she cried very loudly after the doctor pulled her out. It was just because she was born prematurely that she was very thin. After checking the baby's health, they confirmed that it was actually a healthy baby.

I asked, can I hold the child? Doctor said of course, so I held my daughter, and she was as soft and warm as I imagined countless times in my dream

I just remembered that I never had a chance to ask the little girl her name, but maybe she just didn't have a name.

Because this matter was really bizarre, I received at least half a month of invitations for news reports. I chose a newspaper that was most reliable in name lists and said the name of the god, thanking her for blessing me, and finally attracted the research of folklore experts.

As for my husband, oh my ex-husband, I really wanted him to be dead,but he is already dead, and I can't let him dead again.

I asked the village chief what should I do of my ex husband's dead body. She thought that although my husband had done many evil things, he was a child of the village after all, so he should be buried in the village anyway.

We wanted to bury him casually near the temple on the mountain, but unfortunately it rained heavily the day after my accident, which triggered a small mudslide, destroyed the temple, and also destroyed the old tombstones of several craftsmen in the village cemetery.

The women in the village were discussing how to rebuild it. After all, it was a lot of money, and they didn't have time to care where a scumbag was buried. The village chief said she would take care of it, and I didn't have to care.

When I left the village with my parents, I asked the village chief if she felt ok, and she said she had a premonition that everything already happened in her dream. She also said that I was welcome to come back next year.

I took away a portrait of the god and a small wood carving of her.

Later I heard that he was hastily buried in the cemetery near the village.

At that time, I had moved back to my parents' house because I couldn't walk at least for a few months and my daughter was too young. I found an easy job at home, the salary was a little lower then my old job, but I didn't worry about the income, after all, although he was a scumbag, he left me millions of insurance money.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/aided14 on 2024-09-17 21:38:54+00:00.

---

Does anyone remember in the 80s of the famous Delphine Resort? Everyone travelled up there to spend the summer, leaving their homes after months of work and agony then being able to lay in the thick hot sun for hours on end or dip their feet in the cool water. I was told relentlessly by my friends that i had to find a job that summer, no more playing video games at the arcade or eating conchas until i pass out — i had to find a job and perhaps date someone who was not my bed.

I remember staying over at my grandparents house in Catalonia, Spain for the summer or longer even before i could travel back up to the US, that was when my grandma looked upon websites looking for a part time job for a sixteen year old who only had experience in small swimming and archery classes. She laughed in relief when she stumbled upon the page of the Delphine Resort, blue waves in the background with palm trees on either side of the large text that took me in a trance of beauty. The page was filled with pictures of children and people with massive smiles on their faces, then you can select what you are looking for. My grandma quickly selected the page to do with applying for a job at the resort.

I then found myself driving with my grandad sifting through colourful houses and painted sidewalks, then after thirty minutes, my eyes laid upon the vast green bushes and palm trees that stood up in strong positions against the soft wind that tickled my cheeks as i walked out the car, my grandad descending with it. The sound of children yelling and splashing in the water caught my attention as a warm smile crept up. I began walking towards the reception, my eyes catching the pink and yellow glow that shone into the glass windows.

“How may i help you?” A soft voice came from the lady behind the reception desk, her light blue eyes shining through mine, and her silk brown hair on either side of her shoulders.

“Hey there i am here to start my job as the lifeguard at the Delphine Resort..” I said in a huskily voice as my gaze was transfixed on the large paintings of old buildings and history books stacked on the coloured bookshelves that were evenly placed in order of appearance.

“Oh yes would you please state your name for me?” the woman asked kindly, her eyes drifting back into mine as i cleared my throat and replied.

“Jairo Ruiz”

“Lovely to meet you Jairo, would you kindly take a seat while i message Bernard on your arrival..!” the lady lowered her eyes back onto the old computer as i nodded and took a seat near the bookshelf of the reception room.

It was within seconds when my eyes lingered upon the dark haired man that stood in front of me. The man painted a large smile on his face as he lead me out of the reception and into the entrance of the resort.

I was in awe of the place, the miniature rocks in the grassy path and blue and green slides that looped and turned, buried into the water. I found myself gasping at the food bars with thick wooden roofs and pink, white drinks bubbling under the shade. Laughter resonated with every turn i made, my shoes clapping on every beat of the music from the indoor pools, the air was so sweet and indulging that i wouldn’t mind living in this place.

“Now my friend, you will be in Section A, and I’ll be in Section B.” Bernard said with a smile, his hazel eyes glistening with the orange glow that crept with the lapping of waves.

The resort had two sections, Orca and Dolphin.

Me and Bernard were placed on the other side of the resort, Orca. We primarily looked after the families that had hotels in the Orca region.

The large pool had many children and adults jumping and splashing in the pool, it was my duty on Section A to watch the front part of the pool whilst Bernard watches the back part, ensuring no child ever drowned underneath floats whilst the front part was the most important thing to look after.

The ruffle sound of the radio caught my attention as i quickly pressed it against my ear.

“Hey newbie how you doing so far..?” Bernard chimed in, as he quickly gave me a wave and a giggle through the radio.

“All good over here, how you keeping up..?” I replied back as i gave a brief thumps up.

“Alright, a kid just shitted in his towel and the mother is cleaning it up but yeah, all good!” Bernard chuckled as i did the same, my eyes fixated on the man climbing up the small steps of the slide.

“Hey.. Bernard.. i have a question, how long have you been doing this job..?” i asked, my words slipping up in my mouth as i looked across from the clear water and the children laughing on the side of the pool

“Been a while, but chico.. you’ll get the hang of it, you’ve passed all the examinations and tests to be a lifeguard.. and now you’re in!” Bernard replied as a beeping noise overcame his radio, then we stopped talking for a while.

My eyes stared up at the blue slide, as an unsettling feeling crept up through my body.

The large blue slide stretched out across the massive pool in loops, similar to the green slide — however, you couldn’t see inside. I grabbed my safety equipment and carefully walked over to Bernard who was sitting further away from me.

“Hey dude what’s up—“

“ALEJANDRA!!… ROSETTA..?!” a loud call came from a family who looked panicked and confused as they walked and ran up and down the resort.

Bernard’s face changed from polite to cold as he rushed over to the parents.

“What is wrong..? Tell me what is going on..?” Bernard reassured the family as the mother came forward, her hands shaking as she called out her daughters.

“A-Alejandra and Rosetta.. we cannot find them…we—“

“Where was the last time you saw Alejandra and Rosetta..?” I quickly asked the mother as her eyes widened in pure shock as she pointed behind me.

At this point, people started to gather around us, parents desperately ordered their children out from the pool as i gathered my equipment and went right into the water, whilst Bernard and other staff tried calming the crowd.

I swam towards the blue slide, and placed a foot upon the wooden ladder, my hands grasping each part of the slide as i made my to the very top. Looking down it was dark and not a place to slide down, but that didn’t bother me.

My heart began beating more rapidly, each beat filled my body with a cold, shivering sensation that something was very wrong here.

I slowly began entering the slide, one torch in my hand and the other gripping the slide so i don’t fall right down. It was really felt like a good hour had passed as i gradually held the slide and went deep down, in hopes of finding the two girls.

That was when i heard it.

A small cry that echoed down from where i was. It sounded like a man talking, but in a stern order as if they were demanding something — then followed a sobbing cry which was like two girls at once.

I motioned myself down, my heart was now pounding and screaming as the cries became more louder and desperate.

i slid.

And as i went down, so did the screaming and crying. i then spotted a glimpse of light, and i found myself in the water again, i managed to pull myself together and look around to see if i could spot the girls.

Bernard alerted me to his direction as i climbed out the pool and rushed over to him.

“W-we have a problem here—“

“Did you see the girls, Jairo…?” Bernard asked, his eyes narrowing as he pulled me to the side, away from the worried families.

“I-erm… no i-i didn’t..” I stuttered as a hint of urgency surged into Bernard’s face.

He then turned around and ordered the family of the two missing daughters to come forward.

Soon enough everyone started to look for the children. In the hallways of the villa, in the bars and restaurants, the water and slides.

One of the girls was missing a flower clip, so that was enough for all of us to search far and wide.

But there was no sight of them.

The belongings of the family that had lost their children were scattered in their villas. Bernard told me that they were devoting every minute that they had to find Alejandra and Rosetta — however, they had to return back to their country and i haven’t heard anything from them since.

It had only been a month before we had a conversation with a woman whose child had disappeared from the Orca restaurant. I was in disbelief trying to reason with myself about the entire situation, grandma begged me to look for another job but i couldn’t just bag it up and leave, i felt that there was something more to this story.

Delphine Resort still had many people entering as if nothing happened, many children played in the pool where Alejandra and Rosetta were last seen, many adults ate at the fancy restaurant where a three year old had disappeared.

I was on my last shift of the week. The only thing i had to do now was close up the pool area, and check if everything was safe before i could head off home. My eyelids constantly dragged themselves down as i scooped the weed rake from the corner of the slide and took the weeds out from the pool. My hands moved up and down as i caught the group of weeds and dipped them into the bucket — i took the last scoop, gathering the weeds in my rake as i noticed something odd lapping in the water.

Dumping the last remaining weeds in the bucket, i stretched the rake out as it dipped itself into the water.

I then tried grabbing the item with the rake which motioned itself with the water.

I stepped back. Trepidation consumed the remaining thoughts that i...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MrKringle111 on 2024-09-17 21:24:03+00:00.

---

There once came a time in my life when I had sincerely thought why do we do this? Why do we work? Why do we get up in the morning? Why do we do it at all? This thought was brief but was something I had genuinely considered. I have been trying not to think about this for quite some time but I think I’m ready to talk about the time I was indoctrinated into a cult and how I lost my former self. My name is Aron and this is my story.

I think it was around the late fall of 2017. I had just turned 18 and I lived with my parents in the middle of the desert. We were nestled between big mountains just off of a 40-mile dirt road. Or more easily the base of the famous Crown King mountain in AZ. I lived a pretty secluded life and didn’t get to meet many people other than those who lived in the old mining town at the top of Crown King and one friend from Phoenix. I was of course homeschooled and was never a fan of the the desert.

 It was so quiet and to be honest very boring. For newcomers, the endless trails and roads that lead to large canyons and old dams were fun and exciting. For me, however, I had seen almost everything within a hundred-mile radius of our 18-acre property. To me, nothing was new or exciting. Speaking of our property it was ancient and if you hadn’t lived there your whole life you’d assume it was an abandoned building only seen by people who go off-roading and exploring. But in fact, we lived there.

The house is at least a hundred years old and has been passed down from buyer to buyer. The most recent owner being a rich snob who trashed the property for years before he went missing in the late 90s before his family sold the property to us. My dad was always a hermit who never liked the city and its people. I for one longed for interactions with others and because I never really did I was always seen as pretty introverted. But I can happily say that most of my days were made better by my sister Trinity who lived in Phoenix and would stop by from time to time to say hi. She was always fun to hang around and made boring uneventful days much more interesting.

She would always bring a gaming console of some kind for us to play for hours, something I’d never get to do otherwise, and she would bring her and her friends to play airsoft battles and occasionally go shoot real guns. It was always a blast. However, my story really begins on December 23, 2017.

On that day I had planned to take Trin to the top of Crown King Mountain seeing as she had never been before. After she had heard of the ghost town that was up there she agreed to go with me on the journey. She had mentioned how she wanted to go through the main road that everyone takes to the mining town but I being the annoying brother that I was said we should take the back roads which would take significantly longer. She finally with enough convincing agreed once more and not long after we were off.

The journey there and back would take at least 8 to 9 hours depending on the weather and the roads themselves. This road up the mountain was very much considered dangerous and hard to move through. In other words, if you didn’t have the right vehicle you would most certainly get stuck. But I was not worried. I had been up that mountain at least five or six times. And three of which I went by myself or just with friends. And the weather was perfect, well, as perfect as Arizona weather can be. What I’m saying is that Trin and I had nothing to worry about... or so we thought. It was around two hours into our journey when something made me do something very stupid. And my following actions would lead us through a path of misery from here on out. There are many spots that you have to go through that are known as a wash. It is basically just a large river bed made by rain. This particular wash we were moving through was smooth and was nothing compared to what was ahead. However, it was smushed between two cliff sides effectively making it a small canyon in a way.

Then we were stopped. The wash was blocked. Large boulders blocked our path. I had never come across anything like it before and seeing it was a little strange for me. From here I had two options. Turn around and go back or... go around and make my own path. I think you know what I did. I got out and hiked up the steep cliff and saw that if I just bush-waked it for about half a mile I could get on another wash that would connect back to the main wash. Now everyone who takes this road to the top of Crown King knows that getting stuck is a pretty good possibility. And I knew this as well. I had packed two universal walkie-talkies. And these were no cheap things either. They could reach up to 100-plus miles away. Trin had also been talking to our parents throughout the trip so I was pretty sure we’d be fine.

I told Trinity the plan and she immediately hated the idea. In the end, I said I was the driver and that we would be fine. She was not convinced. To make her feel a little better I said if I felt like I was gonna get stuck even a little I would turn around. Thinking back it seems my words to her were also not very convincing seeing as I had just ignored her distress already. We started making our way through. At first, it was not too bad. We or rather I would have to get out occasionally to move some large rocks but overall it was nothing I couldn’t handle. That was until close to the middle of this half-mile trek the sound of rocks crumbling and falling from the left cliffside, the one we were closest to, could be heard. I stop and look up just in time to see a rock the size of a small car tumble down the mountain before hitting our Can-Am and sending us rolling. We rolled for several seconds before our vehicle stopped on its side.

I sat there in silence and shock for what seemed like 5 whole minutes before looking to my side and seeing an unconscious Trinity. She was bleeding from her forehead but more concerningly she had a 3-foot Mesquite tree branch sticking out of her stomach. I instantly unbuckled myself before the pain made me notice my own injuries. I looked down to see my foot was in the floor. I carefully pulled it out of the floorboard to see that my shoe was gone and my big toe was also gone. And it was bleeding profusely. I can only assume that my foot being exposed to the outside of the Can-Am while it was rolling ripped my toe clean off. Of course, I wasn’t thinking this at that moment.

I leaned over and unbuckled Trin but before I did I heard a quick whistle. I stopped, staying quiet for just a moment, and started listening. When I didn’t hear anything I continued to unbuckle Trin and then open her door. Of course, I wasn’t thinking and forgot that the vehicle was on its side so not long after unbuckling trin did her body slink onto me. I still managed to open her door though I was pretty much pinned by her body now.

As I struggled to get her body off I heard another whistle This one more distinct. It was a person. In a desperate state of panic, I started yelling for help. Asking for anyone to help me. Not long after I yelled I heard the crunching footsteps on gravel approaching ever closer. And expecting to see a fellow rider I saw much worse. Someone climbed the vehicle until I saw two hands on the passenger door. But when they pulled themselves up I saw not a person. But the face of a donkey. And as their head blocked the sun I could see fully the half-naked man wearing the head of a donkey.

I should mention that donkeys are pretty invasive from where I lived. They were everywhere. And You could always hear them braying into the night and even throughout the day. My mind at that moment was in such disbelief that I just stared with a little bit of fear but mostly confusion in my eyes. This... person finally spoke.

“Do you want my help?” The voice was muffled by the head of the donkey and was a little raspy but sounded so casual my eyes narrowed and my brows lowered as to show even more confusion than before. But before I could even think of anything to say he speaks again. “We can help. You just got to commit. Do you commit?” I was so thrown back that I couldn’t help but say aloud “What?” He then simply shrugs his shoulders and begins to turn to hop down off the Can-Am. In the worry that he was simply about to leave I quickly blurt out “Yes, Yes I need help!” He stops and turns back around slowly. He looks down and says once again “Do you commit?” I respond, “Commit to what?” He stares at me for a moment as he does the jaw of the donkey falls open revealing that it is missing almost all of its teeth. Looking through I could also see the bottom half of the man’s face.

And I could see he was grinning. I look at him now with a bit of fear visibly showing on my face. “Can you take us back to the bottom of the mountain? He responds “Sure can. Can you commit?” I looked around at my situation for a moment thinking carefully about what I was going to say. In hindsight, I wasn’t thinking at all and was actually acting out of fear and desperation. But I thought I had no other option... so I nodded. I can still remember looking through the dark mouth of the dead-eyed donkey and seeing his grin grow into a toothy smile. I knew almost immediately that I had made the wrong choice.

But I didn’t have much time to think at all before four other people, all women, hopped up onto the vehicle. These women were wearing much more clothes covering their whole body. Though clothes might not h...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/EclosionK2 on 2024-09-18 00:35:09+00:00.

---

Previously, my girlfriend Aiko and I had rescued a missing child. 

You might think I deserved to feel like a hero, that I might be filled with pride or honor. But instead my chest tightened with a damp, foreboding heaviness.

The kid did not look right. His eyes were permanently open, and his lips were frozen in a sinister smile. I know it might’ve been some crazy symptom of paralysis, but seeing the boy like that just felt so off.

Aiko was worried about him too, so she joined his late night ambulance ride to keep an eye on his breathing.

That night I walked back to my accommodations at Aiko’s aunt’s cottage, and I wished the story would just wrap up there. Just a nice: We were Heroes! End of Adventure!

But it only got much worse.

***

You see, my phone started getting random notifications from the theme park app. The application called Bakery Park Hunt™

I was walking home, in the middle of sending encouraging texts to Aiko, trying to help her feel brave for her emergency ride, when my phone bombarded me with:  “Cinnamon nearby! Would you like to pick some?” 

I clicked on it, and immediately my phone entered camera mode, showcasing the dirt road at my feet. A cartoon stick of cinnamon walked into frame. "Follow me please!"

I didn’t feel like playing the Pokemon Go knockoff, so I closed the application. But that didn’t stop my phone from opening back up and pinging me ceaselessly.

“Cinnamon nearby!”

“Vanilla nearby!”

"Saffron (RARE) nearby!”

It was enough to kill the battery and end my communication with Aiko completely.

So I did the only thing I could. I snuck back into my room at the cottage, and went to sleep.

***

I woke up to the smell of green tea drifting through my room. Out of habit, I peered over to my left to see if Aiko was awake, but her bed was as empty and unmade as she left it.

On my phone I could see several messages from her:

1:04am - Remember 2 tell Nana

1:06am - Cant txt more. Guard.

1:32am - We’re at helipad. 

1:45am - The paramedic says the boy is stable! He is alive! I can’t believe we actually saved someone, its like the movies. We did it. We saved his life!!

1:50am - I didn’t want to be around that guard. So I took the paramedics offer and I’m taking the last seat in the helicopter. I can act as a placeholder guardian.

2:07am - I feel so much better being away from those guards!  ε-(´・｀) ﾌｰ

2:08am - Tell Nana I will be at the general hospital in Shimado, I should be back in 1-2 days!

2:10am - I’m so sorry they put you in that holding cell. It's unfair you’re in that jail. I hope they don’t keep you there long.  (｡•́︿•̀｡)

2:11am - But forget those stupid guards, they don’t know what they’re doing. Let me know when they let you go please! I hope they treat you okay (；_；)

 

I wish I had a chance to respond to these messages. Aiko still thought the other guard had taken me under arrest. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

 

2:14am - WOW the view is beautiful from up here. I’m so sorry for dragging you through this. But it was worth it. We saved the boy. The medics say he’s going to live. He’s in some kind of shock, but he will live.

2:16am - I promise no more adventures like this again. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I don’t want the police to get involved.

2:20am - I didn’t even think about how this could affect your visa. I’m so stupid stupid stupid stupid. What a mess. I am so sorry. I feel terrible. Please text me as soon as you’re free. I know they probably took your phone away.

2:27am - It was my idea to save the boy. I’ll tell them I forced you to help me. I’ll make everything my fault.

3:06am - Made it to the hospital. They’re giving me a room. I hope to hear from you soon.

6:05am - The boy’s family is here! And yes we were right, it is Kaito! This is crazy. 

6:07am - Mom and son reunited (♡´･ᴗ･`♡)

  

Attached was a photo of Kaito in a hospital bed, hooked up to some kind of respirator. His mother was there, in tears, but clearly happy to be able to hold her boy’s hand again. I don’t normally gush over this kind of stuff, but it honestly warmed my heart. 

 

6:10am - Text me please. I’m so worried about everything.

 

I did text her. I explained my phone had died, and that I wasn’t in any jail. I told her that I was so happy she was OK, and that she could text me throughout the day. More than anything I wanted to hear her voice, so I said to call at any time.

That sunken feeling in my chest had lifted a little. Maybe things weren’t so bad.

In the kitchen, Aiko’s aunt was already working on her sudoku. There was an egg and rice meal waiting on two different placemats at the table.  

I remember it feeling very strange to have a morning alone with Nana-obasan, especially after such a weird night. I didn’t really know what I was allowed to share yet, so I did my best to keep my composure.

“Good morning, Nana,” I said. 

“Good morning.” Her focus was on solving one of the columns. 

I tried to word my 5th grade Japanese in a way that would explain what had happened without scaring or alarming Nana. Eventually, halfway through my breakfast I produced my declaration.

“Nana, you should know that last night, Aiko and I saved a child who had gone missing. We called for help and an ambulance took the child away. Aiko was a real hero and even accompanied the child on the helicopter ride. She is currently at Shimado hospital, and she says she will be back in 1-2 days.” 

I held up my phone to show her the texts, but quickly realized she couldn’t read our English exchanges. So I lowered the phone and said. “She texted me all this in English, but you can call her if you want.”

Nana lowered her tea and looked at me briefly above her reading glasses. I think she believed me, but she only really seemed to focus on the tail end of my speech.

“So, Aiko is coming back in a few days?”

“Yes.”

She went back to her sudoku. “Okay.”

***

Although Nana-obasan may not have appreciated what happened last night, I kept replaying events in my head in total disbelief. Focusing on the positive.

Aiko's hunch proved true. We had saved a kid. We were heroes.

I avidly re-read all of Aiko’s texts, imagining her type them. There was a flutter in my chest from the anticipation of hearing more.

I took a shortcut rounding the forest edge to get to work. I still had a shift at Bakery Park today, and I felt it was critical not to show up late. I’m sure I would be asked a dozen questions about last night, and would have to explain Aiko’s absence.

As I walked along the gravel road I tried to get my story straight. I would focus on the good news: Aiko and I had rescued a kid for god’s sake. Surely, that would render our trespassing meaningless? Did anyone actually care that we had snuck into the park late?

Then my phone chirped. “Candy floss nearby! Would you like to pick some?”

For fuck’s sake. I clicked to close the app, but couldn’t. Suddenly I was staring at a polygonal version of Bakery Park’s premiere mascot.

It was Mashumaro, the marshmallow tanuki.

Just like in the Confection Showroom, half his face was missing. It's like his pixelated skin couldn’t quite cover his skeleton wireframe. He was dancing in a field of cotton candy. His voice was garbled, yet loud enough to peak my phone’s speaker.

"Jēmusu Naka jūgyō-in# 604373, kon'nichiwa!"

( James Naka Employee #604373, Hello!)

I tried to turn down the volume on my phone, but the interface was frozen.

"Sakuya wa issho ni asonde kurete arigatō!"

(Thanks for playing with me last night!)

This virtual mascot found a way to hijack my phone. None of my buttons worked. I freaked out a little. I even yelled without meaning to. “Stop. Stop this!”

The virtual mascot’s smile lengthened. He switched to English. “Stop what? Aren’t you glad you saved little Kaito’s soul? Hehehehehehe.”

I was surrounded by nothing but trees and the gravel beneath my feet. It was just me and this digital nightmare. I was irrationally afraid, but I covered it up with anger. “Who the fuck are you?”

The tanuki waggled his rear toward the camera, grabbing cotton candy from the field. “That’s a little rude. I don’t talk to rude boys.”

“Are you a hacker? Are you kidnapping kids at Bakery Park?”

Using the cotton candy as pom-poms, Mashumaro danced to the left and right, performing a little Macarena. “You better not be so mean next time. Or else.”

The app closed immediately. My phone returned to my home screen.

I tried to open it again, but all that loaded up was a benign-looking inventory. It said I had collected candy floss.

Jesus Christ what was that?

It seemed to me like there might be some nefarious hacking happening. Like some terrorist had been able to exploit software at Bakery Park to capture a kid in the first place. And now he was trying to manipulate me.

The thought chilled my bones.

And it was possible that this was the same hacker who was responsible for kidnapping the other two missing children. And if that was true, who knows how many future kids could still be at risk…

I decided I would have to tell the park staff my whole story.  Everything. Children’s lives could be at stake.

I typed out last night’s events in English on my phone, converting it as coherent...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MikeJesus on 2024-09-18 00:11:39+00:00.

---

It is with great sorrow that I must announce the end of The Burnt Quartet.

After the incident at our last jam session, we have decided to put all performances at the Rusalka to an end. We have also parted our ways as musicians, for good measure.

 I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who has been with us since 2017. Your constant positivity and words of kindness have made every show a pleasure. Even if you’ve only come once in a blue moon, thank you. You’ve kept us playing and helped us grow as musicians — as people, even.

If I could leave things at that. If I could just tell you that The Burnt Quartet broke up and tack on a warning to avoid The Hotel Rusalka at all costs, I would.

I would, but there’s the incident from the last show to contend with.

I hate to sour this goodbye to The Burnt Quartet with a recollection of that horrible night, but it’s been three weeks. I have already heard my fair share of rumors. Though I rather wouldn’t — it’s important I set the record straight.

As most of you know, The Hotel Rusalka burnt down in the summer of 2015. Finding the lobby of the hotel well preserved and the city uninterested in doing anything with the building, me and the guys started performing our weekly concerts there.

The doors beyond the lobby were locked, but it didn’t matter. It was the entryway of the hotel that had the fantastic acoustics. Staying out of the rest of the hotel was an unspoken rule. Even when we found the keys a couple weeks in, we kept the doors to the rooms locked. 

The fire had destroyed much of the upper floors. Most of the Rusalka was a burnt husk. It was a reminder of a terrible tragedy. Our weekly concerts weren’t about dissecting that disaster. 

The concerts were meant to be about something positive.

On our last show, however, that cardinal rule of avoiding the upper floors was broken.

So many lovely people stayed after the show and it was starting to rain. There was no way we could all fit in the lobby. We probably should have all just called it a night, but I knew where the keys were. I also knew, from the floor plan in the lobby, that there was a large dining hall just behind the entryway. 

I take full responsibility for my decision. As much as it pains me, I also take full responsibility for the consequences of my decision.

The floor plans were accurate. Not only was the dining hall big enough to fit everyone who stayed after the show — we also found a couple bottles of liquor and with them the energy to perform again. Just as we were setting up to play, however, one of the members of the quartet, who I’d presume would like to remain nameless, ventured out into the stairwell with one of the audience members.

Their tryst was short. It wasn’t even five minutes after our colleague left that he returned. Both him and his female friend looked terrified. They had ventured out into the stairwell looking for privacy. What they found instead, was a foreign voice.

From the upper floors of the Rusalka, the floors that had been eaten up by that terrible fire nearly a decade ago, someone was groaning. The suggestion seemed insane. The doors to the stairwell had been locked ever since we started doing our weekly concerts. There was no conceivable way that someone could make their way upstairs without us noticing.

The post-show gathering had turned into a party. The dining hall was filled with smiles and laughter and a steadily strengthening insistence that we play another round of songs. I was almost content with forgetting about the groaning and losing myself in the music. When I checked on the stairwell myself, however, I knew that I could not stand idly by.

The groans weren’t the sounds of the burnt hotel settling. They weren’t the wind and they certainly weren’t any animal. Undeniably, the groans were the sounds of a man in crisis. Without any hesitation, me and the guys went upstairs to see if we could help.

Not to put too fine of a point on our heroics, of course. Going up the charred steps of a building long condemned wasn’t a calming task. The idea of leaving someone suffering upstairs while we play jazz though seemed absurd and disgusting. Even with everything that followed, even with the dissolution of The Burnt Quartet, I would not have acted any differently.

The higher we rose through the hotel, the more apparent the fire damage had become. The groans were coming from the fourth floor. By the time we could hear the calls for help clearly, the walls around us were soot black.

The closer we got to the source of the groans, the more they took shape. There was a sense of urgency to them. By the time we got out of the stairwell and entered the fourth floor, the groans broke into words.

‘I’ll be late for work!’ a strained voice was calling from one of the rooms. ‘I need to go! I need to get up! I’ll be late for work!’

Carpet had been simmered away to reveal the cement flooring. All the doors in the hall had been turned to ash. With the light fixtures long gone and the sun outside having set, we moved through the darkness with nothing but our phones to guide us.

‘The sirens have already went,’ the voice called. ‘The sirens have already went and I haven’t left the hotel. I’ll be late. I’ll be late and I can’t be late.’

 Past the gaze of our flashlights, we saw movement. In one of the rooms, right by the doorway, lay a man pinned down by a chunk of debris. 

He was alive. He was alive, but he shouldn’t have been.

The moment we saw the man struggling under the chunk of wall, me and the guys descended to help him. It wasn’t until we were squatted around him that we realized the extent of his injuries.

‘They’ve all left,’ he rasped, through lips eaten away by rot and flame. ‘They all left for the institute and I’m still here. I need to go. I’ll be late for work!’

The man was alive, but he shouldn’t have been. All of his skin was charred beyond recognition. His limbs were worn away by starvation. The thought defied all reason, but the state of the man made it clear — Someone had survived the fire of 2015.

Though the state of the man was beyond disturbing, he was obviously in need of help. As we cleared the debris, he thrashed and screamed and made our job no easier. I did not blame him for it. The man was clearly delirious. Instead, I ordered one of my colleagues who was holding the flashlight to immediately dial rescue services so that the burnt man could receive medical attention.

The physical state of the trapped man defied all explanation. Once we got him freed of the debris, he defied reason once more. Though the man should have been dead. Though he had been burned so thoroughly that any chance of survival was absurd, the moment the man was freed he started to sprint.

He ran through the dark hallway towards the stairwell with nothing but the bobbing beams of light from our phones to guide him. I am not much of a runner, so I was not able to keep up. One of my colleagues, however, was able to catch the burnt man just as he was about to enter the stairwell.

When we first set off to investigate the strange groans, my colleague had taken a bottle of liquor with him from the dining hall. Much like me, he anticipated the strange sounds coming from upstairs to be of no danger. He didn’t want to put an end to his merriment.

Bringing that bottle with him nearly cost him his life.

My colleague tried to restrain the burnt man, but he failed miserably. The trapped stranger was not only shockingly strong. He was also dangerous.

When we caught up with my colleague, we found him lying on the floor of the stairwell. The burnt man would not be stopped. When my colleague tried to restrain him, he grabbed the bottle from his hand, broke it and delivered a strike to the abdomen. Blood was pooling around my colleague’s shirt and medical attention was required, but the burnt man was still on the loose.

Leaving the guys to deal with my injured colleague, I descended the stairs back towards the dining hall. The gathered audience had to be warned. Luckily, I was more adept at jumping down the stairs than the burnt man. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairwell I was right behind him.

I did not try to stop his mad sprint. Instead, I simply called out to everyone in the dining hall to not get in his way. Once people saw the broken bottle the burnt man was brandishing, no one had to be told twice.

I followed the burnt man outside of the Rusalka, yet by the time we made it out of the hotel he moved far too fast for me to match. Last I saw him, he was sprinting towards the industrial district. 

I pray that I will never see him again.

The injuries from the broken bottle my colleague received weren’t serious, but they were unexpected enough to make him swear off ever performing in the Rusalka again. The rest of The Burnt Quartet agreed unanimously. Our weekly tradition came to an end without argument.

But why not just perform somewhere else? I hear you ask.

Firstly, none of us are in the mood for music. After what we saw that night, we won’t be in the mood for music for a long time. More importantly though, it’s the implications beyond that night that haunt us.

The burnt man must have, somehow, survived the fire at the Rusalka. He must’ve survived and stayed trapped in his room for years and years and years. He survived and suffered and, every week, he would listen to The Burnt Quartet play.

Perhaps, we will come back one day in a different locat...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-17 22:27:34+00:00.

---

You know how we say that we don’t really know why humans need to sleep? I mean, we do to an extent, but it’s still a massive scientific work in progress. The body uses time sleeping to do a ton of wild stuff, from healing the body to compartmentalizing memories. The only thing is, that’s all we’ve found so far.

Of course, the best way to study what something does, is by studying what happens in the absence of it. The longest on record is eighteen days, and by that time the cognitive function of most people isn’t too great. Granted, this was all done without using any kind of performance enhancers, so to speak.

I got the job offer weeks ago- a sleep deprivation study sponsored by the US government. Ethical? Absolutely not. But, they gave me a proposition I couldn’t refuse, to use the old cliche.

You see, I’m genetically predisposed to a prion disease called Fatal Familial Insomnia. Right now I haven’t shown any signs of it, and on average it doesn’t start to onset until around fifty, so I have a few good years left before things go to hell for me. So, while I can, I’ve dedicated myself to research into finding a cure for prion diseases, in some desperate hope that I can fix my own genetic fuck up. No luck so far, but they recruited me with the promise of access to CRISPR technology to further work on genetic modifications, and I wasn’t passing that up. Even if I can’t do it for myself in time, if it can save people down the line from the hell I saw my mother go through. The hell that awaited me whenever the fucking prion decided it was my time.

So, the basic thesis of the experiment was that we have five subjects, all people that were made to ‘disappear’ by good old Uncle Sam. We weren’t given any previous information or even names, just these five people, literally assigned numbers as their names so we couldn’t figure out who they were. These people wou8ld be studied as they were deprived of sleep, using any methods possible to make sure they stayed conscious. These methods would range from drugs, rewards, torture, or anything that would prevent sleep. Again, it wasn’t ethical, but I’m doing this to hopefully save some innocent people down the line.

Myself, two other researchers, one guard to each of the subjects were given a modestly sized lab environment to work with, and amenities for non-subjects were pretty nice. We had beds, a full kitchen complete with a cook who came in for lunch/dinner, and entertainment for those of us not currently working. Good thing, because this place was our home for the foreseeable future, until this experiment was over.

The subjects had things a lot less comfortable than we did. They were kept in a common room, with individual rooms that split off from it consisting of bathrooms/showers and various entertainment options. I know, giving people so awful they were erased by the government doesn’t seem like a great thing, but we want to keep their minds stimulated to keep them awake. There would be meals brought in at regular intervals, all with the sufficient nutrition needed to thrive. Every single room was monitored by no less than three cameras, even the bathrooms, so we could constantly keep watch on every subject. In addition, there was a viewing room in front of the main common area, one way glass allowing us to directly observe.

From here on, everything is presented from my daily research notes for a full picture of how things develop. This is the personal record of Doctor Michael A Ripley, kept for my own future research and records.

DAY ONE

Everything is going smoothly so far. I met my fellow researchers, Philip and Taryn early on and we determined how we would split work and observation. Eight hour shifts each. Taryn would take the midnight to 8 AM, I would take over until 4 PM, then Philip would finish out the night before Taryn came back to cover for him. It was easy enough, and we would have at least two guards keeping watch with us at all times in case a situation arose.

Taryn’s shift came and went without incident. The subjects were gathered around one of the tables, folding chairs set up for seats. That was the most comfort they had, though. There were no beds, only a hard metal cot on the walls with no padding or pillow. I’m assuming that’s about what they were accustomed to though, because nobodyw as really complaining about it.

Subject One is a male in his mid-20s. Dark hair, scrawny, pale as hell. Looked like a school shooter stereotype.

Two is an older man, early 50s, balding and covered in some questionable tattoos. We weren’t given any info on what he did, but you don’t get that many swastikas permanently inked on by making good life decisions.

Three is in his forties. He had a kind face, wry smile that looked like he would crack a dad joke at any time. Honestly a pretty jovial guy. Probably the only one who I have no idea how he could have ended up here.

Four looked like Jeffrey Dahmer reborn in the digital age. I assume he’s in for similar acts as Dahmer, too. Hearing him talk over the monitor gave me the creeps, just monotone and uncaring. There was nothing behind his eyes.

Five looked like the American Psycho type. Wealthy, no human empathy or consideration for life, and that Tom Cruise look where every little move was rehearsed to best manipulate anyone he interacted with. I swear I saw him staring into the cameras a few times, right at me, and he would just smile.

None of them knew what the experiment was. As of now, the sleep deprivation methods weren’t in play, being so early. It wouldn’t be until near the middle of my shift that things needed a little push.

Two was yawning, and said he was going to his bunk for a nap. So, I hit the dial in his room to make sure that didn’t happen. There was no control for the lighting on their end, so I dialed up the intensity of the fluorescents. Then, I activated a small speaker hidden behind his bed, playing a frequency that would disrupt any attempt at sleep for a while. The others stayed in the commons area, bullshitting about why they were here.

Nothing of note happened otherwise.

——-

DAY TWO

They’re getting irritable. To be expected, considering that they’re now hitting over twenty four hours without sleep. So far the light and sound methods of deprivation have worked fine, with nobody wise to what’s happening yet. I do believe the irritability will lead to tensions by tomorrow.

Four is beginning to exhibit paranoia, frequently looking around, speaking to himself under his breath, and generally acting on edge. More than once I’ve seen him staring directly into the camera, though I’m not sure if he realized it was there. Creeped me out, nonetheless.

Around noon on my shift, One began to speak to Three. I’ve transcribed their conversation below.

ONE: Do you see them?

THREE: Sorry? Who? I can see all of us in here, but nothing else.

ONE: The kids.

THREE: Excuse me?

ONE: They told me what you did.

THREE: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

ONE: (laughs) Sure you do. How many were there?

THREE: Please leave me alone.

ONE: You’re the reason I’m here. Why should I leave you alone?

At this point I called in one of the guards, Murray, just in case something started to go down in there. Three, despite his kinder, laid back attitude, was definitely starting to get on edge. One did leave him alone though, walking over to his own room and sitting on the metal cot, staring at the wall for the next two hours with this smile on his face like he was totally zoned out.

I’m still not sure what any of them did, so I don’t know if One was actually onto something or not. Three was certainly shaken by it though, sitting alone and not saying anything for the rest of the day. Eventually he went to his room, laying on the cot while tossing and turning. From the notes Philip left, he’s been complaining of the others being too loud, saying they’re shouting when everyone is talking in whispers at best. Likely an early sign of prolonged sleep deprivation.

Two and Four have been oddly friendly, though I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve heard them briefly talk about their jobs in their early life. Two was some sort of construction contractor, while Four specialized in industrial chemicals. Of course, that’s before or during whatever got them in here. I’ll keep an eye on how their relationship develops. I expect many of them to break down after a certain point.

—-

DAY THREE

Today was relatively calm, with barely anything of note happening. The subjects have begun to isolate after over forty eight hours without sleep, each staying to their own room or corner of the main area.

I have noticed Four increasingly talking to himself, more hurried and louder than previously. Most of it was nonsense, sounding like the paranoid ramblings of some budget Alex Jones.

Subject Five is the one that’s been most interesting to watch. He’s going along with this just fine, not even a sign of irritability or paranoia. All he’s done is sit in his own corner, just watching the others. Occasionally he would give a smirk, but for the most part he just remained quiet there.

—

DAY FOUR

They’ve begun to realize what’s happening. Three approached Five, asking him when the last time he slept was. Upon realizing it was before they were sent in here, they started to ask the others. One said he was awake for seventy two hours prior to arriving, suffering from insomnia as is, so I guess we had a little he...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Trash_Tia on 2024-09-17 19:42:00+00:00.

---

I need to talk about my sister’s roommates before I go completely insane.

A few days ago, my older sister (28) stopped returning my texts and calls.

As the youngest sibling at twenty five, I felt weirdly responsible, so I decided to check on her.

Rosie has always been stubborn, so ghosting me instead of explaining what was going on was pretty in character for her.

Still, nearly a week had gone by without a word from her—not even a mediocre TikTok, which screamed millennial.

I hadn’t had a chance to visit her new place yet.

Life got in the way, and I was struggling with some pretty intense depressive episodes when she had her housewarming party.

Mom spent three hours freaking out over her gift to Rosie—an exotic plant she’d bought online. She wanted it to be the perfect gift, but apparently, the other attendees showered my sister in expensive silverware and paperweights.

Still, Rosie is obsessed with plants, so it was the perfect housewarming gift.

I didn't realize the severity of my sister’s infatuation until I was standing on her doorstep, face-to-face with an overgrown lily, its leaves spiking me in the forehead.

There was no flower garden—the house was too small. Instead, someone had planted flowers between the cracks in the concrete path leading to the door. I almost felt bad for stepping on them.

But when I reached the door, I noticed vines creeping through the frame and snaking up the walls. I knocked, swallowing my nerves.

Rosie had three roommates, all of whom were college friends I had never met.

I had, however, heard enough about them to feel like I knew them better than they knew themselves.

Ever since we were kids, Rosie had attached herself to various obsessions, becoming hyper-fixated with TV shows, actors, singers, plants, and now, her friends.

Every time she came for dinner, it was never about how she was or her life.

Rosie talked about her friends with a sparkle in her eye, her smile broadening every time she mentioned them—which made me wonder if the four of them were, in fact, more than just friends.

When the door swung open, I was hit in the face with an overpowering scent—too strong, too intoxicating.

It bled into my nostrils, clinging to the back of my throat, almost choking me.

Somehow, though, it pulled me in, teasing me to take a deep inhale, allowing each aroma to fill my lungs, suffocating me further. The guy who peeked through the narrow gap looked closer to my age—mid-twenties.

His sandy-colored hair was a shoddy mess, as if he'd run his fingers through it too many times, with noticeably greasy, wayward strands entangled with—daisies?

I found myself entranced by each individual flower sitting comfortably on the crown of his head. His smile was crooked and knowing, one eyebrow raised, almost like he was expecting me.

I thought my sister was exaggerating when she described him as having "plant boy energy," but I had to agree—though not for the reasons you might think.

Yes, he was wearing a flower crown, and I was starting to think this was where my sister’s infatuation had stemmed from, but this guy was filthy.

His short-sleeved tee was no longer white, no longer any color at all—just a smear of dirt ingrained in the fabric, clinging to his visibly clammy skin.

I don’t think he had showered in weeks—maybe even months. When he swatted a fly buzzing around his head, I found myself staring at his feet.

He was barefoot, dirt caked between his toenails. He looked almost high, his pupils visibly dilated as he swayed back and forth, swinging on the door.

High on that smell, maybe?

High enough to forget basic hygiene?

I found my voice, my own hands growing slick with sweat.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to stare at his feet. “I'm—”

“Posie.”

The guy's smile widened, his voice smooth, almost melodic, which only strengthened my theory that my sister and her roommates were unknowingly getting high off that smell.

I didn’t think he’d know me by my childhood nickname, yet he cocked his head slowly, as if I were a puzzle he was struggling to solve. I can't fully explain it, but this man did not like me.

His smile was friendly enough, but it felt patronizing, as though he were being forced to talk to me.

He was giving off high school mean-girl vibes, his lips pricking into a smile, his eyes raking me up and down like he wasn't covered in dirt.

He was laughing at me, squeezing his lips together to try and hide it, and painfully failing. “You're Rosie’s older sister.”

“Poppy,” I corrected him.

His smile didn't waver. “Interesting choice of name.”

“I didn't choose it,” I quipped back. “Can I talk to my sister?”

He shrugged. “She's not available right now.”

I nodded patiently, though this guy was slowly getting on my nerves. His gaze never faltered, like he was drinking all of me in with just a single glance. “Can I come in?”

“It's Noah.”

“I didn't ask.”

His lips curved into a smirk. “It's common courtesy.”

“Can I just see my sister?” I swallowed a yell. “Please?”

He rolled his eyes, exaggerating a sigh. “Urgh, but then I'd have to climb up the stairs.”

I could sense my smile thinning. “You're in your mid-twenties.”

He shrugged. “Exactly. Halfway to thirty.”

“Can I see my sister?”

“She's tied up with something.”

“Okay, then, can I come in and see her myself?”

His smile didn't waver. “We have a lot of plants.”

“I know.”

“You miiiiiight get overwhelmed.”

“I'm fine.” I said. “I can deal with a few flowers.”

Something in his expression twitched suddenly, the quirk of a genuine smile. Whatever face he was wearing on top of his face began to splinter, making way to the boy underneath, who's expression brightened at the mere mention of flowers.

“Do you… like flowers?”

When I didn't respond, he straightened up, mockingly bowing and gesturing me through.

“Come on in! But don't say I didn't warn ya.” He winked, settling me with that infuriating smile.

When I hesitated, he danced back inside, and down the hallway. I followed, transfixed by the amount of plants.

When the door slammed shut behind me, I jumped, but Noah just laughed, commenting about a faulty hinge.

I could sense his gaze following me, immediately triumphant.

He was right. I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of green in my face, leaves tangling with my hair and prickling my bare arms.

When I had to push through overgrown leaves to follow Noah, tripping over flowering buds growing through cracks in flooring, I knew my sister and her equally insane roommate were at the point of no return.

This house was more suited to plants than humans.

I took slow steps, drinking in every flower, every mini tree, mushroom—everything that she could grow, she had.

My sister had turned their hallway into a mini rainforest. I caught a spider scuttling across my arm and brushed it off.

The further I delved into the house, the more obvious it became that my sister’s plant obsession was going a little too far.

Noah, unfazed by the dirt caked into the carpet and spider webs clinging to every wall, coaxed me into what I guessed was a kitchen. But there was far too much green—entangled vines and leaves hanging from the ceiling and sticking from the walls—to prepare food.

There was a refrigerator and an oven, but like everything else, they were caked in dirt.

I was half aware that I was standing under a giant sunflower growing from the ceiling. Under my feet, what was left of kitchen tiles had been removed to fill with fresh soil. Noah gave me a small tour, and somehow it got worse.

The upstairs was out of bounds, apparently, but I did see the stairs, and that was enough. Whatever was growing on the floor was spreading, tangled through every piece of furniture, every splash of paintwork, and eventually, had found the ceiling, spider webbing into the kitchen and beyond.

Noah was a fairly decent tour guide, though he did stop at every single fucking plant, perfectly naming it and telling me of its origins.

He led me into a lounge area that was again suffocated by plants.

I was pretty sure these kids had planted grass inside their living room to accommodate a variety of strangely colored flowers blooming from every corner. There was a semblance of a living space, with a shabby couch in front of a television screen gathering dust.

I glimpsed a girl in yellow knelt in front of the window, bathing in the rich afternoon sunlight, her head tipped back, eyes closed, dark brown curls tangled with roses flowing down the curve of her spine.

The bright yellow was her dress, a discolored curtain sculpted to an almost skeletal figure.

She was beautiful, and yet her beauty didn't slide into the usual standards.

When she slightly turned her head, presumably to drink in the sunlight, letting it caress every inch of her face, I noticed her angular nose and crooked teeth. Somehow, though, she fit perfectly inside this room as one of the flowers.

Looking closer, something twisted in my gut.

She was in the same state as Noah. Her hair was in a matted, entangled disarray.

I could tell she hadn't showered in a while, stewing in the exact same dress, which almost framed her, bleeding into her, binding itself to her skin.

“Noah.” Her voice was a sigh, and I detected the soft cadence of a British accent. The girl’s eyes flickered, her lips pricking into a smile. She shook her head, enjoying streaks of sunlight pricking her cheeks. This girl...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/JoseTheSlime on 2024-09-17 16:29:10+00:00.

---

I became a teacher because I couldn’t decide on the right major in college and ended up switching to English. This reawakened my love for writing and reading and I ended up enjoying all my classes. This even got me to start writing again and my creative workshop was an amazing experience. I started to get into the nuances of writing and loved working with older students who could help me critique my work.

When it came time to pick a job, I was stuck with either a teacher or being jobless so I did the prior. As a kid, I hated school and told myself that no matter what, I’d never end up becoming lame like my teachers...pause for obvious irony. I began to apply for jobs and studying for my licensing test and my first day of school was approaching fast.

I ended up being stuck teaching 7th grade ELA in a school that was an hour away from home. At that point, it felt like the universe was pelting me with the consequences of my actions and I was about ready to give up and live at home with my parents. The night before the first day I was looking at the curriculum and dreading the idea of teaching children about themes and how to properly cite evidence; it all felt so below me. I already missed being able to talk to adults about complicated writing and theories of the author’s reasons for writing.

I woke up still dreading the idea of teaching 11 and 12-year-olds, but when I got there and met my students, I was shocked by how quickly they grew on me. My homeroom was filled with quiet, smart, and polite students and my other two classes had some talkative kids but they were all extremely well-behaved. Although I wasn’t teaching exactly what I wanted to be, I was glad to be able to talk to students who didn’t make me feel like I was talking to infants.

As the year went on I still really enjoyed my job and was glad to be able to form these connections with the students. I felt like I was making a difference and looked back on my shame of having to be a teacher with reverence. I told my family that I was going to be a teacher and while they admired it I loathed the idea. Now, I went back to them and admitted I was wrong and it was actually amazing. Every day wasn’t perfect but they were just kids after all, not adults who knew better. I was happy and the dread that filled my body before was long gone.

As all teachers have that one student who makes their life a living hell, so did I. For the sake of confidentiality let’s call him Jacob. Jacob wasn’t a demon or anything but he would randomly refuse to do work and act out whenever he struggled with something. Rather than try to better himself, he would get frustrated and throw things. Because he was the only real problem in any of my classes, I let it slide until I couldn’t. One day he came into class and immediately knocked over a chair; this was the first sign of things taking a turn for the worse. When I asked him why he did that he ignored me and sat in his seat, eyes full of hate and a frown so deep it was like staring at the living embodiment of evil. Class went on and he continued to act out in small ways until he hit another student for making a joke. I reprimanded him but instead of listening and trying to do better, he screamed.

“FUCK YOU!”

I reacted how I was instructed if something like this was to happen and I called out into the hall for the dean. The dean’s job in our school was to deal with the discipline so teachers didn’t have to. He came in, grabbed Jacob, and took him to a room where students were taken if they did something wrong or needed to cool down. The lesson continued as normal and the rest of my day was just fine.

When my last class for the day ended and I was getting ready to head home, Jacob came into my class with a piece of paper gripped tightly in his hand.

“Here,” he said, looking at the ground but holding his hand out.

“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to show him that I was already over the outburst.

“Just take the God damn paper”

He held the paper out until I took it, and then he marched out of the room. Written on the paper was the word “sorry” written in horrid handwriting. He was forced to write this and bring it to me. I finished reading the single word and caught a glimpse of Jacob staring at me from my doorway. My skin crawled as I saw the look on his face: it was similar to his look earlier in the day except somehow much more sinister. When our eyes met he left the room and slammed the door. I tried to let this experience go and move on but Jacob did not feel the same.

The next day I saw Jacob again and without saying anything he sat in his seat and glared at me. This was the case for the whole class and he refused to even write his name on the paper. I would be lying if I said his look didn’t scare me to my core. There was something about seeing such raw, horrifying evil in someone so young. He didn’t act out or talk, he just sat there. Class ended and everyone including him left the room. I wanted to see if other teachers have noticed this behavior from him before so I spoke to his teacher from last year.

“He’s always been like this,” his homeroom teacher from last year said, “He barely does any work, he overreacts, and he stares at anyone who gets him into trouble. I’m assuming the dean told his mom, he’s terrified of his mom.”

“Has he ever held this sort of hatred for any other teacher before?” I asked, almost worried for my safety.

“Not in the way that you are describing but he’s just like that, give him some time, he will have to get over it eventually”

Her words did not console me at all but I wasn’t going to give up on him, he’s just a kid.

This went on for months but only for my class. It got to the point where I couldn’t wait for Christmas break just so I didn’t have to see him for a month. I saw him in other classes and he was acting perfectly normal, but the moment he came into my room or saw me in the hall, that menacing look took over. I started to find him spying on me from the window next to my door but he would just stare with that look until I met his eye, then he would continue down the hall. I’m not sure if I was scared of him or I wanted to believe this would all just blow away eventually, but I didn’t tell anyone in the school about what was going on...this was where like college, I knew the universe was going to be assaulting me with the consequence to my action.

At the beginning of the year, kids were asking me all sorts of questions about who I was as a person: where I was from, what was my ethnicity, and how old I was. I explained that I lived in a city an hour away and they were all shocked by this. They thought I was crazy for living so far away and wanted to check the distance from the school to the city I lived in on Google Maps, so, I told them the name. It seemed so innocent at the time, it was just a city, it’s not like I gave out my address or showed a picture of my house or anything, but this was another mistake.

When we got back from Christmas break, I started grabbing a coffee after work at a local cafe near the school. I made it a New Year’s resolution to start writing again for at least an hour a day because I felt like I wasn’t doing what I loved enough. It helped me get back into a rhythm and the cafe was my new favorite comfort place. The music was great, it was within walking distance from the school, and they had a great cappuccino. The baristas started memorizing my order and I sat in the same place every day and wrote; it was wonderful.

I started forgetting that Jacob was even in my class because he would just sit there and I ignored him because I knew nothing was going to change. It seems he didn’t like that because one day as I was enjoying my coffee and typing away, I noticed someone glaring through the front window of the cafe. There was a glare so I couldn’t see who, until after half an hour, I got up to throw my trash away and head home. The person glaring was still there and I only realized who when I grabbed the handle to the door. The person scurried away but I recognized his face – it was Jacob. How did he know that I started going there every day? Did he follow me? Why was he doing this now? I should have realized that ignoring him was not going to solve my problems but the cafe was so close to the school that I justified how he could have stumbled across me. I was still freaked out though, so the next day I was going to keep an eye out and see if he followed me.

He did. Jacob tried hiding behind the corners of the buildings we walked past but I saw him; not only that, I could feel his eyes on the back of my skull. I was being stalked by a student, what was the protocol for this? I had enough and the next day of school asked him to stay after class.

“Jacob we need to talk about you following me after school,” I began, tone serious but careful, “You cannot be doing that. Not only is it strange but it’s also very creepy. If you continue I’ll have to tell…” He cut me off before I could finish my sentence.

“YOU’RE GOING TO RAT ME OUT AGAIN?” his voice echoed in the classroom and I jumped, “I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

He ran out of the room, once again slamming the door on the way out. Why did I believe him when he said those words?

Jacob stopped coming to school. I informed the principal of his threat and the way he had been behaving for months and I was scolded for not telling them sooner. He always had issues but they had no idea it was t...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-09-17 18:51:52+00:00.

---

Every night around 7pm, the door to my dimly lit bedroom creaked open. 

My dad always entered with a glass of water and two white pills, his footsteps soft, measured, as if he was afraid of waking something. 

“Time for your medicine, Sara,” he’d say gently.

I swallowed the pills without question. The bitter taste clung to my throat as they slid down.

Then the drowsiness would set in as he sat and watched me.

“You’re on the road to recovery now. Soon you’ll get to go to college,” he would say. 

I would feel myself nodding off, dreaming about the future life waiting for me. 

The next day was the same.

Endless tests. Blood drawn like ritual offerings. Nurses plunging needles into my skin while my dad talked about my health and future treatments. 

My dad analyzed my blood for hours, believing it held the answers we needed.

I trusted him. He was my dad. 

And then Emily arrived. 

She was different from the other nurses. 

Most of the other nurses had faded into the background, their faces blurring together in the shadows. But Emily was sharp, alive. Her eyes were deep and warm.

“Hello, Sara,” she said the first time we met, adjusting my blanket. “How are you feeling today?”

“The same,” I said, weakly.

Emily stayed in the room longer than the others. She waited until we were alone one night, then asked me a question no else ever had.

“Do you ever wonder why you need these pills?” she asked one night, her voice calm but probing.

“They are helping me get better,” I said confidently.

Her gaze softened, and she gave me a smile, but it was an odd smile, almost sad. “Maybe,” she said, before moving on.

From that day forward, the questions grew louder in my mind. 

Why did I need the pills? What was wrong with me?

One stormy night, Emily stayed even longer than usual. 

Thunder rumbled in the distance, rain drumming furiously against the window. There was an odd calmness inside. It almost felt like the house itself was holding its breath.

“Sara,” Emily whispered, leaning closer to me, her face more intense than ever. “You’re not sick. You’ve never been sick.”

“What? My dad says I would die without my treatments.”

“He’s lying to you,” she snapped back, her voice almost a whisper, but still urgent. “He’s keeping you weak, keeping you from remembering.”

“Remembering what?” I asked, confused.

“What you are,” Emily replied, her face grim. “You’re not human, Sara.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but a creak from the hallway froze us both. Margaret, my oldest nurse, stepped into the room, her usual bad mood visible across her face.

“Your shift ended an hour ago,” she hissed at Emily. Her eyes darted between us, cold and calculating. “It’s time for you to go.”

Emily stood tall, her shoulders squared up towards Margaret.

“Sara deserves the truth.”

Margaret slowly reached into her pocket, pulling out a syringe filled with a glowing liquid. “You’re meddling where you shouldn’t be.”

My bedroom seemed to darken as Margaret took a step towards Emily, but Emily’s hand shot out, stopping Margaret in her tracks. And then everything changed.

Emily’s body began to twist, her bones cracking and reshaping.

Her skin rippled as her form expanded. Her once human face distorted into something monstrous, both hulking and terrifying. Long claws sprouted from her hands, and her teeth, now sharp and glinting in the dim light.

Her eyes remained locked on Margaret with an intensity that chilled me to the core.

Margaret stumbled backwards, her eyes in disbelief.

“What... what are you?”

Emily let out a low growl before lunging at her, faster than I could have imagined. She slammed Margaret against the wall with such force that pictures hanging on the wall fell to the ground.

Margaret screamed, but it was cut short as Emily’s claws ripped into her, tearing through flesh and bone. Blood sprayed across the room, the sounds of ripping fabric and muscle filling the room.

I watched, frozen in horror, as Margaret’s body was torn apart, her limbs flailing uselessly before finally falling limp. The metallic scent of blood drifted in the air.

When it was over, Emily stood over the mangled remains of Margaret, her chest heaving, her monstrous form covered with blood.

I couldn’t breathe. 

My heart raced in my chest, fear surging through me. 

Emily then turned to me, her terrifying features softening as her body slowly shrank and returned back to its human shape. Her eyes, still sharp and warm, found mine.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said softly, wiping the blood from her hands. “But she wasn’t going to let you leave.”

I couldn’t find any words. My whole body shook.

“I know you’re scared,” Emily continued, stepping closer, her voice gentler now. “But you need to know the truth. You’re yōkai, Sara. That’s why Eddison has been giving you those pills, drawing your blood. He’s been using your blood for transfusions to keep himself and his friends young."”

“Yōkai?” I asked.

“We’re not from here. You must trust me.”

The world tilted.

My mind was reeling.

Yōkai? My dad was stealing my blood? Nothing made sense, and yet… it felt right. Like a piece of a puzzle finally clicking into place.

“Eddison’s not your real father. You were taken from your real family in Japan,” Emily continued, pulling a small wooden charm from her pocket. It was a small raccoon, intricately carved from dark wood. 

“I have been searching for you ever since.”

As soon as I looked at the charm, memories I didn’t know I had flooded back. I was running through forests and changing… into anything I could imagine.

“You are tanuki and I am kitsune.”

“I am tanuki?”

She nodded.

“We are both yōkai. You must remember. Feel it,” she said. “We have been great friends since we came to being. I was there the day Eddison’s company kidnapped you from our home in Hokkaido.”

Emily held up her left arm and pulled up her sleeve, revealing a deep, jagged scar.

“They almost got me too,” she said.

My hands trembled as I clutched the edge of the bed, gasping for air.

Emily knelt beside me, her expression soft but serious. “It’s time to go, Sara. He’ll come for you soon. I don’t know what tools he has at his disposal.”

I nodded, my mind still swimming in confusion and fear. But beneath it all, something else stirred, something powerful, something ancient.

Emily offered me her hand, and though my heart was pounding, I grabbed it. I could feel the strength returning to my body. Strength I didn’t know I had.

She helped pull me up out of the bed.

We stepped out through the window into the night together, leaving the only life I knew behind. I knew it would take time to remember my life before captivity.

The storm outside was raging, but I wasn’t afraid.

I was something else.

Something more.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Yearbook01 on 2024-09-17 18:25:40+00:00.

---

I cant sleep anymore.

My husband was always worried about his appearance, always fixing up his hair, making sure his clothes weren't crumpled, cleaning up his shoes to get rid of any dirt or dust. His dirty blonde hair was always perfectly quaffed, his salt and pepper beard always brushed. His teeth always whitened to that weird uncanny valley shade of white. His beautiful icy blue eyes were my favorite part about him though, they really could pierce through the darkness in the best way possible.

My husband wanted to try this brand new miracle drug. "Get rid of wrinkles in as little as 3 days!" those commercials peddled. It was supposed to be a way to de-age yourself several years back. I told him he was perfect the way he was, he didn't need to get rid of his worry lines that creased his forehead. His hair hadn't even thinned but he claimed that he wanted his old hair back. We had ordered these little pink pills from a really sketchy website, you know the ones that looked like you needed to check your bank activity to make sure you didn't just hand over your life savings to some lowlife that was going to hack you. They had arrived within the day. The package came in a cardboard box, our address listed on the shipping label. "Darling, there's no return address is there?" I asked. "What if we need to return them?"

"Don't be silly honey, they're going to work! for the price of these bastards I'm going to make sure that they do." He reassured me.

My husband though.. He's.. very impatient. Even waiting as little as 3 days seemed to be as if he was waiting for a garden to grow. The first day I noticed that the little gray hairs that speckled his beard had started to go away, where there was a solid handful the day before, there was only one or two remaining. The second day the little laugh lines he had grown from all of our years of being happy and making memories started to fade. They weren't all the way gone sure, but they were fading.

It had honestly made me quite sad, I loved those little perfect imperfections, it showed me that we had lived a nice happy life.

By the 3rd day he was growing impatient as he normally does. "Honey, what do you think would happen if I just took all of them at once?" he had asked me. "Probably nothing good darling, you could overdose!" I told him. "But what if I can get the look I want sooner? These things are fuckin expensive and I think they should work sooner than this. It doesn't even feel like it's working."

"You're being ridiculous darling. I can see it working from here!" I spat.

"Not soon enough."

The 4th day I wish I had watched him closer. It was the weekend for us. We had planned to run errands together. Groceries, picking up odds and ends, what have you.

I was sipping my cup of coffee in the dining room, waiting for him to preen his hair. Then I heard the glass breaking and him screaming. Running into the bathroom scared out of my mind.. I can't get that image out of my head. The empty pill bottle on the counter, the blood spattering the sink, the shattered mirror. His feet.. they were flat, like the bones and the muscle mass completely eviscerated. It was slowly working its way up his legs, his legs rolling up like an empty tube of tooth paste. His screaming reaching new heights. I tried to grab him, I tried to calm him, but my eyes weren't working, were they? There was no way I was seeing his knee caps fold in on themselves, the little disks snapping and crumbling to dust. He was on the floor now, watching the invisible wood chipper destroying everything under his skin. He was yelling for me to make it stop. I don't know why I didn't call 911 right then. Maybe because I thought it was just a bad dream, how could this possibly be real?

His thighs and pelvis was next. The strongest bones in the human body, his normally strong thighs? Gone.

I don't remember running out of the bathroom. I do remember his gargled screams. He was choking on his own blood, I know that much. There was so much blood everywhere.

I finally got enough courage to call the police, trying to not scream at the operator who was just trying to do her job that my husband was being destroyed from the inside, that he took these mystery pills from this shady ass website. "Have you taken any of these pills ma'am?" she asked too calmly. "No I didn't take any of those freaking pills!" I screamed at her. "Okay. How many did your husband take?" God, she was infuriatingly calm. "I don't know like 25? Please just get to my house and help us!" "Ma'am do you know where you got the pills from?" she asked.

The screams stopped abruptly. Like the ash finally ripped his vocal chords out. The silence was deafening. Dropping the phone I dared to take a look into the bathroom. God, I wish I hadn't.

My husband was nothing more than a skin suit left on the bathroom floor. His skin floppy and perfect. Not a single blemish in sight. Even the blood was gone. The empty holes where his beautiful eyes used to sit were an open gaping maw, showing the sinew and connective tissue on the inside of where his skull should be. His mouth still open as if he was shocked.

A knock on the door jolted me out of my daze. "Hello this is the police. Open up." a voice rang out from the front door. "Thank God." I whispered to myself. I opened the door to two police officers, their hands on their hips reaching for their guns, as if I was some mad woman who was a danger to society. "He.. he's in the bathroom. I think he's dead. Please. Help me" I choked out.

The two officers looked at each other and brushed past me down to the bathroom. I couldn't bring myself to look.

"Ma'am is this the only bathroom?" I heard one of them ask.

"Yes, why? I replied

"There's nothing in here." He replied, almost with a sense of pity.

My blood was cold, starting from my toes to the top of my head. The static that raised the goosebumps on my skin was palpable. "There's no way, he was just there!"

Slowly creeping to the bathroom to dared to take a peek. There was nothing. The officers looking at each other like I was some mad woman who had gone off the deep end. "He was just here." I repeated over and over again as they headed to the front door. One of them left a card to a local hospital, as if I was crazy.

I sat down on the couch that night, truly at a loss of what to do. My husband of 8 years was gone. Nothing was left of him other than this stupid unmarked orange pill bottle. I found out where he went though. His skin suit was looking at me from the bedroom, his face and empty sockets peaking around the corner like a sick game of peek-a-boo. I can't even pretend to be brave enough to go down there. But he's just there. As still as a picture. He's still there actually, as I'm writing this. His papery thin hand is grasping at the door frame, but there's no shape to it. It's just resting floppily on the wood, like a curtain drawn for the final act.

It's midnight now and I don't know what to do. I can't sleep, not with his skin suit looking at me from down the hall. I almost don't want to, for fear that he won't be there when I wake.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/madwzdri on 2024-09-17 10:53:08+00:00.

---

Ok, so I know everybody reading this will probably think I'm some nutcase. I'm prepared for that. I just wanted to share this story in case anyone else has experienced anything similar.

It all began 2 months ago.

I had recently moved to British Columbia from Washington state for a new work opportunity. I had been interested in Canada and was still relatively close to my friends and family, so I took the role and moved to an city called Kelowna. Nature had always appealed to me and I was excited to move to a place where I could be surrounded by the beautiful scenery of the Okanagan Valley. I'm a pretty anxious guy and thought this move to a calmer, more scenic location would help me with that.

Unfortunately, what didn't help my anxiety was the difficulty in finding a place to rent. But after a few weeks, I managed to find a place with a great mountain view and a beautiful park within walking distance.

While I was correct that the scenery did improve my mood immensely, I'll admit the neighborhood creeped me out... a lot. This should have been my first sign to turn tail and get out. The neighborhood was gorgeous landscape-wise, surrounded by beautiful mountains, but still felt ominous at the same time. The residents seemed much older and, by their reactions to my moving truck, not very happy about my being there. Almost all of the houses except for mine seemed run down. Lawns were overgrown, paint was peeling. All the windows seemed to have blinds for curtains. Now and then, I would see someone peering out from their blinds, but no one ever came to greet me.

Still, it didn't get to me too much since the house I was moving to was newly renovated and the rent was much lower than others on the market. I felt like I got a deal.

I settled in, and the first 3 weeks were fine. But still, there were constant red flags.

Each night when I took out the trash, I would see some of my neighbors sitting out on the porch at 10 pm. Drinking. I didn't find this too out of the ordinary, but it always seemed like whenever I would show up, they would instantly stop talking and start looking at me. As if they were talking about me. I know that seems really self-centered, but what would you think if every time you showed up, people stopped talking and started staring? I chose to ignore it.

It first happened on the 4th week after I had moved. I had just come back from work, tired and hungry. I made some TV dinner and decided maybe it was time I got to sleep early for once. I turned off the lights and promptly went upstairs.

It wasn't more than a few hours into sleep when I heard it.

Click click click

At first, it sounded like something was knocking at the window. I wasn't fully awake, but the noise was getting louder. I thought it was coming from outside. Maybe a raccoon was jumping on the roof.

But then my heart sank as I slowly came to the realization. It was my doorknob.

Someone was trying to get in.

It almost felt like my mind was read though because as soon as I realized this, it stopped.

I was paralyzed with fear that whoever did that might come back. After a while, I mustered up the courage to rush out and turn on the lights. I yanked open the door, but obviously, no one was there. I turned on all the lights in the house and went to check the door, but it had been locked the whole time. The windows were all closed and locked as well. I felt my stomach drop. There had to have been some squatter from previous years still living in the house.

I barricaded my door and tried to go to sleep.

I woke up early the next day and started scouring the entire house. And I mean inch by inch. When I was done, I started checking the walls to see if there were any cracks or hidden entrances. None.

I was doubting myself at that point. Maybe I had dreamt it. Or maybe it was some weird version of sleep paralysis. Obviously, I wasn't fully awake at the time, and I'd had wacky dreams before. But maybe this was just one of them, or maybe the door just does that sometimes. I couldn't really come up with an explanation. I had thoroughly checked the house and found nothing. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I tried to move on. But due to paranoia and a mix of fear, I decided to set up a lock in my room so it could be locked from the inside.

Things went back to normal, and I didn't notice anything strange for a bit. That was until I noticed that for some reason, in the morning, the door to my room would be unlocked. At first, I thought maybe I had forgotten to lock it. So the next night, I made sure to actually lock it. I woke up the next morning and, lo and behold, it was unlocked. Now I knew something was going on. No more doubts.

I decided then I would stay up and confront whoever this squatter was or at least find out what was going on with my door. I bought some energy drinks and got ready. I turned off all the lights, drank my energy drinks, and locked the doors to get ready for the long night.

Time crawled by as I kept watch, trying to pass the time, but every minute felt like a thousand. Time was moving so slowly that it felt like morning would never come.

After about 2 hours, my bladder started filling up, and I started taking more trips to the bathroom. I was worried this would scare off my potential squatter, but I had no choice.

I kept waiting and kept drinking energy drinks to stay awake, but at this point, it was 3 am and still no sign. I was starting to worry this whole thing might have been for nothing.

That was until I had to take another quick trip to the bathroom. I finished and started to head back to the room.

That was when I saw it. Just then, as I was walking in the hallway. Someone or, to be honest, I should say something was walking up the stairs. My skin instantly went cold as my heart leapt up in my throat. There was no sound. It moved without touching the stairs, but as it was turning the corner for the second flight, it saw me and stopped. That was when I realized this wasn't a squatter at all.

It was pure black, almost as if it was a shadow that came to life. It had the outline of a person, but it didn't seem very human. It was much too small. The outline of its head seemed entirely too big for its body. And the arms much too short. It had no face but I knew it was staring right at me. I could feel cold sweat dripping at this point.

Then... it started moving towards me. It was slow but its movements felt very fast. It seemed to float up the steps. I couldn't move a muscle. I couldn't breathe. My body refused to respond. At this point it was 4–6 feet ahead of me and that was when I somehow broke out of my paralysis. I quickly turned on the light in the hallway but inadvertently blinded myself for a second as my eyes took a moment to adjust. But just when I was able to see again, it was gone.

I knew I wasn't going crazy. I knew what I saw. I bolted downstairs, turned on all the lights, and started looking around the house. Then I rushed outside to see if I could find anything. Nothing. But I spotted something else. It wasn't clear at first since it was still dark, but the street lamps illuminated just enough to spot something that brought back that terrible feeling I had just felt.

I saw someone peering out from the blinds. I thought it was just one of my neighbours, but as I looked around, I spotted one, two, three, four... almost the entire neighbourhood was watching me at 4 am stumbling outside. And I knew it wasn't because of any noise because I made absolutely none while looking outside. All I did was open the door and come out. It was almost as if they had been awake too, expecting me to come outside. Why else would almost the entire neighbourhood be awake at 4 am watching me?

I walked in the middle of the street looking directly at them as they watched me but no one took a step back. They just kept watching. And the way they were looking at me wasn't just out of neighbourly curiosity. It was different. It was like they were privy to something I didn't know. Like I said, I can be somewhat prone to anxiety and paranoia, but even I could tell that there was something else going on here.

I went back inside, locked the doors, and just stayed in the living room for the remainder of the night with all the lights on until the sun came up.

The next day, I got all my belongings, put them in a suitcase, and started renting a hotel. I didn't care how many months were left on my lease or how much it would cost to break it. I just left.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CreepyStoriesJR on 2024-09-16 18:43:34+00:00.

---

I had never thought I would be the kind of person who could live alone in a big house. Yet, here I was, standing in front of the two-story house that would be my new home. It was a stroke of luck, really, to find a place like this, especially for the price I got. The neighborhood was quiet, lined with old trees that whispered secrets to each other whenever the wind blew. It was situated on the outskirts of a large city, close enough to feel connected but far enough to have peace and quiet, something I craved after years of cramped apartment living.

The house itself was charming, a bit old but with a certain character. Tall windows, a wraparound porch, and an attic with a small circular window that overlooked the front yard. It was the kind of house that seemed to come alive in the evening light, with its long shadows stretching across the lawn. I had envisioned a fresh start here, away from the noise and chaos of city life. I couldn't wait to make it mine.

The price had been almost too good to be true. When the realtor showed me around, I couldn’t help but feel like I was getting away with something. She mentioned that the previous owner had moved out rather hastily, and there had been a few “strange incidents” around the property. She brushed it off, attributing it to neighborhood rumors and nothing more. I should have asked more questions, but I was captivated by the house’s charm and potential. The thought of having so much space to call my own was intoxicating. I signed the papers that very day.

Moving in was a whirlwind. I spent the first few days unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, and personalizing every corner. It was exhausting, but in a satisfying way. I painted the kitchen a warm yellow, hung curtains in the living room, and set up my little reading nook in the corner, complete with a plush armchair and a stack of my favorite novels. This was it, a new chapter in my life. A place where I could finally be at peace.

On my second day, I met one of my neighbors, Phil. He was a bit older, probably in his mid-40s, with a weary look that suggested he had been through a lot. He lived alone, having recently gone through a rough divorce. When he saw me struggling with some boxes, he offered a hand, and we ended up chatting for a while in the front yard.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said, his voice gruff but friendly. “It’s been empty for a while. The last guy left in a bit of a hurry.”

“Oh? Did something happen?” I asked, curious about the house's history.

Phil hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not really sure. He was… different, I guess. Paranoid, if you ask me. He used to say he heard things around the house. Whispers. It got to him, I suppose.”

I felt a chill, but I quickly brushed it off with a smile. “Whispers, huh? Probably just the wind playing tricks. Old houses make all kinds of noises, you know.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Phil replied, but there was something in his eyes that made me uneasy. “Anyway, if you need anything, I’m just a couple of doors down.”

As Phil left, I couldn’t shake off his words. Whispers. It was a silly thought. Houses creak and groan; it’s what they do. And yet, a seed of doubt was planted in my mind. I went back inside, closing the door behind me, the lock clicking into place louder than usual.

The rest of the day went by smoothly. I organized the kitchen, hung some pictures in the hallway, and made myself a simple dinner. As the evening approached, the house took on a different vibe. The long shadows in the corners seemed to deepen, and the air grew still, almost expectant. I convinced myself it was just my imagination. After all, I was still getting used to the new surroundings.

Later that night, as I settled into bed, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. This was my place, my sanctuary. The room was comfortably dark, with only the soft glow of the streetlights filtering through the curtains. I lay there, letting my thoughts drift, feeling the gentle tug of sleep creeping in.

Then, I heard it. Faint and distant, like a murmur carried by the wind. I jolted awake, my eyes snapping open. I strained my ears, holding my breath to listen. Nothing. I must have been half-asleep, I thought. Probably just the wind or a loose branch scraping against the house. I shook my head, trying to dismiss it, but the unease lingered.

Minutes passed, and just as I began to relax again, there it was, soft, almost melodic whispers, coming from the direction of the window. My heart pounded against my ribs. I wanted to get up, but my body felt paralyzed, caught between fear and disbelief. Finally, I managed to sit up and glance at the window, the curtains slightly swaying as if someone had just brushed against them.

I stood up slowly, every step toward the window feeling like an eternity. With trembling hands, I reached out and pulled the curtain aside. My breath caught in my throat. A pale figure stood in the backyard, illuminated faintly by the moonlight. It was a woman, standing motionless, her face turned toward the house. Her features were obscured by the darkness, but there was something deeply unsettling about the way she stood there, silent and unblinking.

Panic surged through me, and I let the curtain fall back into place, stumbling backward. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. I stood there, frozen, trying to make sense of what I had just seen. After what felt like hours, I gathered enough courage to peek out again, my heart hammering in my chest. This time, she was gone.

My mind raced. Was I hallucinating? Had I really seen her? I had to check. I had to know. I grabbed a flashlight from the bedside drawer and crept toward the back door, every step echoing in the silence of the house. Slowly, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. The night air was cold against my skin as I stepped out onto the porch.

The yard was empty, the shadows stretching long and menacing across the lawn. I scanned the area, sweeping the flashlight beam over every corner. Nothing. I let out a shaky breath, trying to calm the storm of fear inside me. Maybe I was just imagining things, I told myself. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or my mind playing games with me.

With reluctance, I went back inside, closing and locking the door behind me. I poured myself a glass of water, my hands still trembling. “It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself. “You’re just tired. Moving is stressful. That’s all.” But deep down, I knew that I had seen something, or someone, out there.

I went back to bed, pulling the covers up to my chin like a child afraid of the monsters under the bed. Sleep did not come easily that night, and when it finally did, it was filled with restless dreams and shadowy figures that whispered in the dark.

The next morning, I awoke late, feeling groggy and out of sorts. The memories of the previous night came rushing back as soon as I opened my eyes. For a moment, I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to rationalize what I had seen. I had to convince myself it was nothing, a hallucination brought on by exhaustion from the move. Yet, no matter how I framed it, I couldn't shake the unease that had settled deep within me.

I finally dragged myself out of bed and got ready for the day. I brewed a pot of coffee, hoping it would clear the fog in my head. I wandered around the house aimlessly, trying to busy myself with minor tasks. I cleaned the kitchen, swept the floors, and reorganized a few shelves, but all the while, the unsettling image of the pale woman standing in my backyard stayed with me.

By the time I made something to eat, the sun was already beginning its descent. I had spent most of the day trying to shake off the lingering fear, but it clung to me like a shadow. I decided to spend the evening relaxing on the couch, hoping a mindless TV show could provide some distraction. I flipped through channels until I found something tolerable and settled in, pulling a throw blanket around me. Eventually, the dull droning of the TV began to lull me into a light sleep.

I woke with a start, the room now dimly lit by the glow of the TV. It was completely dark outside, and I squinted at the clock. It was a little past nine. I rubbed my eyes and got up, deciding to fix myself something to drink to fully wake up. I had just poured a glass of orange juice when I heard it, knocking coming from the front door.

The sound was crisp, clear, and deliberate. My body stiffened, a cold sensation running down my spine. Who could possibly be at the door at this hour? I cautiously approached the hallway that led to the front entrance, the knocks still echoing in my ears. As I got closer, I felt a strange pressure in the air, almost like the house itself was holding its breath.

The knocking continued.

I stopped in my tracks and took a deep breath. It could be Phil, I thought. Maybe he needed something or wanted to hang out. Still, an uneasy feeling gnawed at me as I peered out the small side window next to the door. The front porch light was on, casting a circle of brightness onto the steps, but they were empty. No one was there.

My heartbeat quickened. I hadn’t heard any footsteps, nothing indicating that someone had walked away. I cautiously unlocked the door and cracked it open, peeking out into the chilly night air. There was no one. Just the rustle of leaves and the distant hum of the city. My breath fogged up in the cool air as I looked around, scanning the front yard an...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HorrorSoup_ on 2024-09-17 11:03:12+00:00.

---

I can think of anywhere else to share my story. But people need to know....

Unfortunately, my story doesn't begin any different than most others. It was a usual, uneventful kind of day.

Until it wasn't...

The sun was low when we started the day, the three of us - myself, my husband Dom and his best friend Tyler had decided to call in sick to work in favour of a sneaky mid week fishing trip.

Spring had finally come and i'd woken that day to look out at the ocean, it was flat as glass, shimmering like diamonds without a white peak in sight- the sky was empty of any clouds and there was not enough wind to even shift my fringe from my sleepy eyes.

I flopped back down in bed next to my husband, Dom.I suppose he could tell from my expression that there was mischief on my mind. He didnt take much convincing, he'd already been nursing a sore back from working overtime on the weekend, and (as I assured him) he'd earnt a bit of R&R.

We couldn't forget his best friend, Tyler. He was never going to be left alone whilst we spent the day lounging on the boat, beers in hand and lines in the water. It only took us about 30 minutes to pack the cars and most importantly the esky before we were driving towards the harbour, music on blast and phones turned off.

Soon we were cruising out towards our favourite spot.Gap Tooth Rock.

It was a collection of two pillars of stone, jutting out of the water connected to a long break of a reef. It looked like a pair of crooked buck teeth, hence the name and had once been the home of a colony of fur seals.

However, when we were setting up the boat I overheard one of the tour charters lamenting that there had been no sightings of the seals for some time. 

Most just assumed they had moved on, others at the Marina vehemently denied that and stated that something in the water was preying on them. Tyler, Dom and I agreed- most likely they were being taken by sharks. It was the general consensus and a few anglers boasted excitedly that they would be the ones to return with a White Pointer, belly full of fur seal. But as there had been no sighting of any sharks for over a month, I was disappointed when we reached the Teeth that there were no seals to be seen.

Handing me the first drink of the day as a consolation, my husband tried to cheer me up as he baited my line, smiling at me and squinting against the sun, 

“Maybe you’ll catch a shark instead,” he joked. Always the optimist he claimed that less seals meant more fish for us.  

For a few hours we just laid out on the boat, talking about everything and nothing whilst our speaker sang with my 90’s playlist as a backing soundtrack for us. Nothing was out of the ordinary, drinks were drunk, jokes were made and Tyler shared a little too much about his activities with his new girlfriend. 

Things only got weird when I felt a sharp pull on my rod. 

I knew immediately something wasn't right, the way the line was pulled was just too sharp, so abrupt- one yank and then absolutely nothing- there wasn't even a ripple on the water left over.

I frowned and stood up to move to the side of the boat, pushing my polarised lenses up my nose so I could get a better look through the water. I thought at first i’d snagged the reef that grounded the Teeth, but i’d made a point not to cast so close to the rocks - I’d lost a good dozen lures on prior trips and I knew to avoid them.

A second yank came and I had to brace myself against the boat for a second. It was so strong that I almost lost my rod overboard.I planted my feet and I started to pull back, the rod almost doubled over on itself and I thought it was going to snap as it curved towards the water. I grimaced as I pulled against the great force, the line remained tense- as if it was frozen in place to the ocean, the line had no slack and the reel wouldn't budge at all.

Suddenly there came an awful sound - I dont even know how to describe it but it was enough that I dropped the rod in favour of covering my ears.

It was as if it was a cacophony of every awful sound I had ever heard, the high pitch ringing of a car alarm, the crushing of metal, a jet breaking the sound barrier and nails on a chalkboard all combined in one. I looked around me to try and see the source of the noise, my rod was hanging over the side of the boat and the water was still glassy.

Dom and Tyler were behaving strangely, it was like they weren't hearing what I was - their eyes were fixed on the water, their backs rigid. The sight made all the hair on my arms stand up, and gritting my teeth - I stood to go and check on them. Neither responded to my calls, they just stared frozen at the water, their lines tense like mine had been reaching down into the dark. 

The noise was filling my head, so loud I couldn't think of anything aside from how wrong everything felt.

How my whole body was screaming over the noise that I needed to leave.

I tried to pull them away from the edge of the boat, which was now starting to slowly pull towards the left side, following the same direction as their lines. I tried yelling their names, tears making my vision foggy as I exclaimed they were taking the joke too far, that I was scared and they needed to stop.

I watched my rod slide over the edge and splash into the water and when Tyler started to reach into the water. It was then, when I was sure my eardrums would burst with the sound that it finally went silent. 

I flew into action, snatching the knife from our bait station before looking over to the water. 

Out of the darkness came a mottled grey arm, at the end there was a clawed fist gripping onto Tyler's braided fishing line.

I sliced the line in a panic and pushed both men away from the side of the boat. It took all my strength to force them off their anchored feet, and the two fell back as both lines went slack. The boat righted itself violently and I would have lost my footing if not for grabbing onto one of the handles on the left side of the boat.

I thought I must have been seeing something, maybe I hadn’t drank enough water, maybe I had listened a little too much at the Marina when the fishermen talked about monsters around the Teeth, maybe I had been in the sun just a little too long.

Clutching the knife I peeked back over the boat and this time I saw more of the creature. 

Its eyes were black and beady, with needle pointed teeth and a sick smile - it glared up at me. It’s head looked human shaped, with wet hair slick against the blue/grey scalp. No ears but the shoulders and the torso of a woman. The underbelly was that of a normal, nude woman if not for the white and shimmering reflective scales which flashed rainbow in the light From the waist down it disappeared into the depths and I swear the water around it was darker then I had ever seen, a black abyssal cloak which shrouded the rest of the monstrosity. I watched water around its head shift as it opened its mouth and took in a breath and then the noise came again.

It took everything to not cover my ears and duck away from the sound.

And again Tyler and Dom stood to walk back towards the water. 

I grabbed their arms, but both were stronger than me and easily barged their way past me.

I stared into my husband's eyes, usually bright and blue. They were cold grey and vacant. The eyes of a complete stranger, and fixed on the horizon.

When I looked back, Tyler was leaning over the side of the boat- his face just inches from the surface. The sight was enough to force me into action and I flung my hand over the side, slashing the knife wildly at the water.

I felt the knife make contact with something, the tug of resistance before the clean slide of the blade against flesh. The noise stopped instantly at that moment, breaking whatever spell that had taken over the men. I grabbed Tyler’s collar and yanked him away from the side, looking over as the creature stared back at me, a thin line was carved across its cheek. They were both groggy and confused as I pulled away from them, dropping the knife and running to start the engine before putting the boat into full speed away from Gap Tooth Rock.

They asked what my problem was, why I was in such a sudden rush and why I had let their rods just tip over the edge into the sea. I couldn't think of any way to even start explaining what had happened and seemingly they hadn't been aware through any of it.

All I could focus on was getting away from that place. 

It's been a week since then, and I tried to share this with them - Tyler laughed at me and Dom asked if I was still taking my medication, a meek - sympathetic smile on his face.

I wanted to forget about what I had seen.

I wanted to chalk it up to dehydration or sunstroke.

But yesterday they went fishing without me.

They promised they would stay away from Gap Tooth…But they havent come back.

I don’t know why I wasn't affected by that thing like they were but I am hoping it will work to my advantage.

I’m writing this from a hired boat and I think I will leave my phone at the Marina once I post this, I don’t need it with me- I know the Police can’t help me.

This time I have added a spear-gun to my pathetic arsenal and I hope this thing, whatever it is - spends some time playing with its food, for the sake of Dom and Tyler. 

Wish me luck I guess… and stay away from Gap Tooth Rock.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/greydeus on 2024-09-17 07:53:14+00:00.

---

I realize now this is all his fault. He made that thing. If you're reading this, stay out of the woods in Australia. It could still be out there, and it’s smart.

This all started about a month ago. I was startled awake from my couch.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Who the hell is all the way out here banging on my door this early?

I grumbled as I approached my front door and gazed through the peephole. Sure enough, there was a middle-aged man, balding with a wrinkled forehead and not very tall. He noticed the peephole and gave me a wide smile.

Well, this guy isn't creepy at all; might as well see what he wants. I opened the door, and the man greeted me.

"Hey there! I just moved in across the street... just wanted to say hello. I'm Tulio." His aged expression shifted to a grin.

Annoyed but not wanting to be disrespectful, I greeted him back. "Nice to meet you. Name's Ned." Hiding behind him, I noticed a little girl.

"Come now, don't be rude. Ned is our new neighbor," Tulio said. "Say hello."

"Hello..." the girl muttered, then more clearly this time, looked up at me and said, "I'm Olivia."

I smiled. My wife and I were expecting to have a little girl. Olivia's brown hair and eyes reminded me of my wife's—a beautiful shade of orange-brown like that of autumn leaves. I scratched the back of my head and greeted her as well. "It's nice to meet you, Olivia."

I glanced at the house across the street behind them; nobody had lived there for years. My house is in the middle of nowhere, and the other closest house is the one right across the long road that stretches for dozens of miles out of the woods. A strange place to put two random houses, I know. But apart from the terrible phone service and internet, for me, it was perfect.

"If you don't mind me asking... uh, Tulio, was it? What brings you around here?"

The corners of his grin shifted down slightly. "Well... the city life gets kind of overwhelming, you know? Besides, they need some space too." He pointed at the van parked beside the road. "I know. Let me introduce you."

I raised an eyebrow at Tulio. "Don't worry, haha, it's nothing strange," he said, noticing my suspicion. My curiosity piqued, I followed him and his daughter down the driveway leading to my front door and onto the pavement to the back of the van. "They must have grown tired of staying in here by now," he stated as he opened the doors to the van.

My eyes widened. Inside the van were all sorts of birds: parrots, peacocks, many that I'd never seen before. Tulio gave me a pat on the back and smiled. "Beautiful, aren't they? These guys are my whole life... I'm an ornithologist, you see."

"Ah, that explains all these birds then. I'm guessing you couldn't keep all of these back where you lived, right?"

Tulio's dark brown eyes looked down for a bit as if contemplating his next words. "Yes, something like that."

I looked back at the birds. They really were beautiful; all of them had vibrant colors, and there were species I'd never seen before. One of them, however, caught my eye. I'd read about them in a book back in middle school. It was a lyrebird, "nature's greatest mimic," I thought out loud.

"I see you noticed," Tulio said as he climbed into the van and took out the caged lyrebird. "This one is special to me, you see... she was my wife's favorite as well." I noticed Tulio's expression changed to one of melancholy.

"Your wife... where is she now?"

"She passed away not too long ago," Tulio looked down at the cage of the bird he was holding, his gentle grasp tightening ever so slightly on the wooden handle. "This bird has been with us for many years. It's all I have left to remember her by. But I like to believe my wife’s closer to us than you’d think."

There was silence between us for a bit, I knew the feeling he had all too well. I opened my mouth to try and break the silence with some words of comfort when the sound of a woman's soft voice stopped me.

"Tulio... I love youuu," sang the lyrebird. It was a gentle voice; even when replicated by a bird, it could give you a sense of ease. I looked down at the bird, its beady brown eyes staring back with intelligence I didn't think possible of an animal, and then I looked back at Tulio. I could see his eyes begin to dampen with tears, his surprised expression shifting to a grimace as he held them back.

Feeling a bit guilty about what had just happened, I racked my brain for anything I could say. "Wow, that bird's super cool. You're super lucky to have something like this; it's like a living recording of your wife, right?" I stammered.

Immediately, I regretted my words. I'm a dumbass; that was the worst thing I could've said. In what world is he lucky? For crying out loud, I should have been able to sympathize with the guy, and this is the best I could say?

But before I could apologize, Tulio flashed me a smile and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. "You're right; this little one is a blessing... it's the reason I'm able to see her again after all."

In hindsight, that was a strange thing to say, but I was too busy feeling relieved he didn't take my words of "comfort" the wrong way to notice the grim meaning behind his previous statements.

Regaining his composure, Tulio spoke, "Now, me and Olivia could use some help bringing these guys inside, if you don't mind."

"Sure," I replied.

Tulio led the way to his house with Olivia following close behind him and then opened the front door. Inside, I was surprised to find that the house was already furnished, and not so surprised to find that everything was painted in a fine layer of dust. Aside from this, the only furniture of note was a large bookshelf and a portrait depicting a white-haired woman, clutching in her hand a long slender blade.

The portrait was beautiful, and as for the bookshelf, its contents were a little odd—books about biology and human anatomy, as well as bird anatomy. A couple, however, caught my eye—strange books about rituals and others about alchemical sciences. I took out another book that seemed the most normal. It read ''Hiding in Plain Sight'' by Susan Lewis. Disinterested, I placed the book back on the shelf and resigned from inspecting it further.

But then something else caught my eye. A small picture frame on a table by the bookshelf—there was something familiar about it. After looking at it for a while longer, I realized it was a picture of a young Tulio and a woman with long brown hair like that of autumn leaves. Why would he lie about just having moved here? Well, technically he never claimed to have not lived here, but something's off, I thought.

I decided to stay quiet about it and turned to face Tulio, who was admiring some of his "new" free furniture.

"Lucky me," Tulio laughed. "Must be from the folks who lived here. Too lazy to move stuff out, huh? Saves me some money."

"Looks like it," I replied.

Olivia ran up the dusty wooden stairs, yelling enthusiastically, "I'm gonna look at the rooms, Dad!"

"Okay, but be careful!" Tulio yelled back.

Together, we made our way back to the van and began to bring all the birds inside the spacious living room of Tulio's house. But when I was picking up the cage of a large parrot, I stopped to look at something. I put down the cage and got closer to the front of the van, where I saw a large bag leaning up against the wall of the van… in the shape of a human body. A strange smell was coming from it.

My heart sank, and a million thoughts raced through my mind in the span of a second. But my rushing thoughts stopped when I heard the sound of footsteps coming up to the rear of the van.

Tulio's once gentle and aged voice, now sounding cold and empty, called out to me, "Ned, you've been taking a while. Everything alright? That parrot should be the last one."

Deciding the best course of action was to act normal, I stammered, "Y-yeah, sorry, just having some trouble carrying the cage."

"Oh yeah, that one doesn't have a handle, huh? Sorry about that."

I carried the bird past Tulio, his small and unassuming figure now looking much larger in my eyes. Inside the house, I placed the cage down, and then my thoughts once again began to race. That bag could have been anything, but why was it shaped that way? Could this guy really be a murderer? What about his daughter? Does she know about this? When he comes back, what should I do?

The noise in my head was forced to quiet once again as I noticed Tulio returning, and to my horror, over one of his shoulders was the large bag. Act cool. He settled the bag down near the front door. I could feel a cold sweat running down my neck, and stupid as it may have been, I spoke.

“H-hey, uh... just out of curiosity, what’s in that bag?” I pointed towards the large bag he had just set down on the floor. Good going, dumbass, you just asked the now potential murderer about his painfully obvious victim. No way this could go wrong, huh?

“Oh, this?” Tulio looked down at the bag. A pit formed in my stomach as he pulled out a pocketknife from his back pocket. I watched in silence as he sliced open the top of the bag and reached his hand inside, showing me the contents. Seeds. The bag was full of bird feed.

I felt a wave of relief as my tensed body began to finally relax. Tulio put the knife back in his pocket and then approached me. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “Thanks for the help, Ned. My back has been killing me, you know, haha... I’m gonna go ahead and get the birds situated.”

 I let out a n...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fit81b/dont_fall_for_it/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wannabe_writer87 on 2024-09-16 13:46:43+00:00.

---

Sometimes I doubt the events of that night so many years ago are any more then a half remembered dream, yet in my heart I know they are true. That particular night started out quite normally. Having just arrived home from grocery shopping I deposited the few bags I had upon the kitchen table and before I put my foodstuffs away, I realized that the morning feeding of the cat had been neglected . So I walked toward his dinner bowl calling out “Dinnertime H.P.” and I proceeded to fill his bowl as I waited for him to arrive. After his bowl was full H.P. still had not showed himself. So again I called out slightly louder this time “H.P. It’s time for dinner, get it when it’s fresh” then after about ten seconds the “thump thump thumping” that could only be his hungry trot came echoing from upstairs. Down the stairs and around the corner he walked into his room. As I looked down he glared up with that “Where have you been with my food” look that all cats seem to have and then strolled to his dish and began to eat.

The master fed, I decided that I had better put away my foodstuffs lest I forget. To this means, I began to deposit all of my items into their respective places. As the last can of soup was placed in the cupboard a low sound came from upstairs as if a heavy person was standing and had shifted weight. But it being an older house, and being in need of numerous repairs it was passed off as just another creak. I began to walk toward the den heading for the bookcase when the sound came again. This time I couldn't just pass it off, there was something in my house that did not belong.

There is only one room in the upstairs of my house, the bedroom. Believing it to be an animal that had wandered in through the window above my bed I decided it would be best to either chase said animal back out the window or, failing in that goal, catch the creature and release it back outside. After making a momentary stop in the utility room to grab my burlap bag that I keep for times like this, and another in the den to pick up the hunting knife just in case. I proceeded toward the bedroom. As I entered, H.P. rubbed against my leg. Not wanting whatever was in the room to harm him, I pushed him out of the door and quickly closed it behind me. Scanning across the room I noticed that the single window had indeed been left open, however there was no animal in sight. I did notice a peculiar odor I had not smelled in years, not since my wife dragged me to that New England town.

The smell of the sea, of fish that were not quite rotten but not far from it. My search began under the bed, and except for a few dust bunnies, nothing could be found. I moved to the closet, and again nothing out of place. Behind the dresser, I found the copy of Bentley Little's "The Collection" I had believed stolen the week before, but still no sign of any wild animals. Having realized that whatever had made the noise must have left through the window by which it had entered I stuck my head out of the window to look for tracks. As my hands laid on the window I drew them back quickly. A thin layer of slime covered it. Closer inspection revealed it was the source of the odor. Leaning out the window, being careful not to touch it, looking for what had left the slime. I could hear the splashing in the river of large catfish but sadly the time of night made seeing the ground below impossible. Deciding that all that mattered was that the animal had left I closed the window.

Upon opening the door and stepping out I was greeted with a bite on the ankle from H.P. and a look of “Why do you always leave me out of the fun stuff”. Dropping down to my knees and rubbing him generously behind the ears was all it took for forgiveness. Rising back to my feet I glared at my watch and observed that the hour hand rested just before 9. Seeing as I like to get in at least an hour of reading before I surrender to sleep, I set my course for the den bookcase.

Walking through the house with H.P. trotting along behind me, the memory of my late wife Jamie arose in my mind. Why the lord decided to take such a sweet and beautiful creature from this world I will never know. I plan on asking him in twenty years or so, maybe sooner. Arriving at the case and having my beautiful Jamie still on my mind, I picked her favorite book “Green Comes, And Green Goes”. I settled myself in my favorite reading chair, a simple wooden chair picked up one summer on vacation in Vermont. I began to read, however my mind quickly wandered back to thoughts of Jamie. I began to think about what had taken my Jamie away from me.

I sat remembering the day five years before when I discovered her in our bed. She had just returned home from a month long research trip to the hills of eastern Kentucky, a town called Rock Nest. Curse that damnable place. She was researching for her new book about the folk gods that still lurk in the black holes nestled in America. She told me she wanted to take a nap and half an hour later I found her with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in one hand and a note in the other.

All the note said was "Ka-ish waits in his lair for me dreaming.” At the time I did not know what it meant, except that my life had changed forever. I searched through her notes for days trying to make sense of it all. I learned more then I could ever what to know the Ancient Gods. Information about Ka-ish proved to be not as simply found. Only one harshly scribbled note revealed anything. I found a napkin tucked into the back of a notebook, it said only “The hills of Rock Nest worship a creature they call Ka-ish, son of the dark . I will speak to the elder tomorrow”

Before long I realized that I had sat there remembering my lovely Jamie for an hour without reading a single page. I closed the book, intending to return it to the case, when again the same noise sounded from the bedroom. Being sure that I had closed the window and knowing that H.P. could not of made such a noise, I became a sight nervous. Walking back toward my bedroom once again, having my knife at the ready just in case, I kept hearing the noise.

Upon reaching the door I paused a second to steel myself, and then opened the door. The same odor assaulted me, only stronger. Again I searched the room and again found nothing. Checking the window it was still shut tight. I jumped as something hit me in the back of my knee, spinning around ready to gut the foul creature. The face that greeted me was none other than H.P., I had forgotten to shut the door. “Damn it kitty, you trying to give me a heart-attack. If I die, I can't feed you.”

It was then that I saw it, I grabbed H.P. and ran out of the room and out of the house. I do not care to return to that house, what I saw that night has seen to that. For on the stand beside the bed sat our wedding photo with a note written in her hand stuck into the frame. Written on the note were these words “Now Ka-ish waits for you”. God save me, as I turned to flee the picture winked.