nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-13 00:35:10+00:00.

---

Previous

It was summer time when we went camping again, taking advantage of the beautiful mountain weather to go up with just a couple of friends. Me, Hikaru, Matt, and another newly arrived soldier named Jacob. We went up into the mountains on a Friday afternoon, everyone having requested leave weeks ago to stay up there until Sunday evening.

We drove out to one of the mountain roads, parking off on the side and unloading the car. Tents, cooking supplies, and a decent amount of alcohol for a couple of nights out in the mountain air was exactly what we had all needed. Hikaru and I were starting to get a little serious, too, and I was thinking about popping the question. Not marriage, of course, but if she would like to either move back to the States with me or if I should stay here when my deployment ended. I was ready to get out of this life, take a cushy job in the private sector and put what I knew to use. I really liked her though, and wanted her with me.

The path to our camping spot passed by an old shinto shrine in the woods, though nobody was there. Hikaru and myself walked in to do a prayer and offering to the kami of the land, while Matt followed suit out of obligation or superstition I guess. I had told him about my experiences even after the talk with Ryu, but he still thought I was egging him on and just fucking with him.

Jacob turned his nose up at the idea of offering a prayer to the mountain spirits, saying he didn’t believe in hokey shit like that. First mistake he made that weekend.

When we got to the camp site, I was honestly ready to beat the shit out of Matt for bringing this kid along. He was a dick, to the highest degree, and just negative about every damn thing that happened. Even worse, I saw him go through at least three different snacks we had packed for the stay, and he threw every bit of trash off to the side. After we set everything up, I asked Hikaru if she wanted to go for a walk, doubling back and picking up the trash he left along the mountainside.

”He’s kind of annoying.” She said when we were far enough away from the camp.

”You’re telling me. I don’t know if Matt’s going to leave him out here in the woods at this point. Maybe we should set up our own campfire, huh?” I winked at her, making her blush and turn away. We got all the trash we found, tossing it in a recycling bin near the main road and heading back to camp. When we got there it was… not ideal. Matt was trying to set up his tent while Jacob was making a general mess of things, pulling all of our supplies out with no rhyme or reason and scattering them around the clearing.

Eventually Matt got his tent up, nudging Jacob and grabbing a couple of the fishing poles we had brought along. They headed down to the river, hoping to catch our dinner before the sun started to set. Hikaru and I stayed back, getting a fire ready and prepping other parts of dinner, plus getting our tent situated. We were both sitting in the tent, cuddled together and talking as the light grew dim outside, when Matt came running back screaming through the trees.

”Go! We have to go!” He shouted, tearing through toward our tent and bursting in without any notice. Jacob came tearing up behind him, screaming his lungs out in fear before tripping over some of the shit he had scattered when emptying out his pack.

”The hell is wrong with y’all?” I said, pushing my way out of the tent and stumbling to stand up. Matt was pointing to the edge of the clearing, the same direction they had just come from, where the sounds of something dragging itself along the ground was coming closer. Trees were shaking, heavy thumps punctuating the dragging sounds. As it got even closer, a dense rattling sound like windchimes knocking together grew nearer, clacking harder with each huge thud. I was having a damned flashback to the subway station at this point, hearing the sounds of the Teke-Teke’s bones scraping across the concrete. Hikaru stepped out behind me, looking off in the same direction. We were frozen in place when the perpetrator burst through the tree line.

I shit you not this thing was a massive, crawling skeleton. No… it was a skeleton made up of hundreds of smaller ones, skulls and bones forming together to make one giant abomination that was now making its way towards us faster and faster. Every single mouth on the thing was open, a raspy chorus of screams echoing forth as it made its way closer.

”Run.” Hikaru said, grabbing my hand and going back to the direction of the car. We hauled ass, tearing through trees and brush while getting cut by stray branches. The thing kept screaming rampaging further and further toward us as it reached out massive, bony fingers to claw its way forward in the dirt. It was gaining fast, with the car still at least a couple of miles ahead of us out on the road.

“Shit. Matt!” I shouted, remembering probably the most important thing. “Where are the damn keys!?”

He stuck his hand up, “I got them! Just run!”

Jacob was screeching his damned head off behind us, the closest one to getting overtaken by the creature. Hikaru was making better speed than I was, with her just a few feet ahead of me and Matt leading the pack. The rattling got louder, the skull amalgamation shaking with jaws open in another screech, every single face on it echoing as they glowed in the pale moonlight above. It made the dark sockets of their eyes even more hollow, deep pools of black death that wanted us to join them.

”Is there any way we can get rid of this thing?” I was shouting through labored gasps. I hadn’t had the misfortune of running into anything in months, now I was going to get flattened by a damned Halloween decoration in the middle of the mountains.

“The shrine!” Hikaru shouted, pointing at the dim light of a lantern hanging down from it nearby. I don’t know who came by to light it since we had been away, but thank god they did. As we got closer, Jacob started screaming louder, the rattling speeding up in turn. We finally made it, Matt ducking in first with Hikaru and I right behind. She pulled me in behind her, almost slamming me back into the wall. Jacob tripped as he went up the low stairs, falling right on his face before the doors to enter. Matt stepped forward, trying to help him by grabbing his arm. Even as he pulled Jacob in, something stopped the younger man from getting past the threshold.

“God please, no, please!” He was screaming at us, right there on the edge of the door with only thin air between, but unable to cross. The mass of bones suddenly swung a hand forward, stabbing right through his torso with two long, sharp bony fingers. It skewered him as he begged for help voice fading as it lifted Jacob to its mouth, popping him in like candy. The three of us could only scream, trying to push back to the furthest reaches of the shrine in hopes that it couldn’t get through the door to us.

”Gashadokuro.” Hikaru said, breathless next to me. “They can’t be killed. We just have to try and wait until it gets bored. Maybe it will leave if it can’t get us.”

Our hopes that it couldn’t get in were confirmed, a bony hand reaching toward the door only to get repelled back with a flash of light. The Gashadokuro stayed out on the path, pulling itself up to level one huge, empty eye socket right at the doorway, staring in at us with every small skull dotting it smiling toothy grins. It was just going to try and wait us out, knowing that we couldn’t go anywhere.

It eventually let out another raspy scream, blowing hot breath through the doorway and blasting us with the stench of death. Hikaru and I held each other, trying to shrink back from the atrocious smell, but nothing helped. Matt was cowering in a corner, crying and begging for help from whatever god might be out there. The Gashadokuro was getting impatient though, every angry spirit that it was made of crying out for nourishment in blood. One long, skeletal arm raised into the air, preparing to smash down on top of the shrine and just get rid of the barrier.

We braced ourselves, eyes closed and crying as we expected to be crushed to death. Instead the rattling started in earnest only to be cut off by a heavy thump, something crashing to the ground beside the shrine instead. I opened my eyes, just in time to hear the Gashadokuro scream again and get hit with the deathly odor before it started rattling faster, making its way back down the path from where it had come. Standing in front of the shrine now, the huge, skeletal arm clutched in one hand with a huge paper fan in the other, was a huge man with small wings on his back. As he turned, I caught site of harrdened eyes, exuding seriousness over a long, pointed nose on its red face.

“Kami…” Hikaru said, under her breath as she stared in wonder. The man waved his fan, disappearing into the night with a gust of wind and taking the arm with him. Just like that, the terror that was only feet away had come to pass, our lives saved by an unknown guardian.

We went back to the car, because hell with staying out there when we just saw a damned giant skeleton eat a man in one bite. There was no way we were staying to figure out if the yokai would come back.

Not like command was going to believe us when we told them any of this. Matt and I made up a story on the way back, Hikaru nodding along and putting it all to memory. Jacob started getting drunk, more an...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ffhw14/i_didnt_believe_in_ghosts_before_i_was_deployed/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/rclark141 on 2024-09-12 23:43:40+00:00.

---

As a child I was fascinated by urban legends. Each and every one of them is a snapshot of the culture of an area, and these outrageous stories are told for one of several reasons. They can be based on a true story, the babysitter and the man upstairs was based off of a murder in the 1950's and was widely spread during the 60's. They can be told to showcase the culture in an area, the couple who eats KFC because the wife is tired which turns out to be Kentucky Fried Rat is a story told to punish women who shirked their so-called "womanly duties" by joining the work force instead of homesteading. They can be told to scare children into behaving correctly, and listening to their parents. As the grandchildren of Eastern European immigrants, my brother and I were terrified of the The Black Volga, a black car that kidnapped and murdered children who talked to strangers.

These stories can encompass and consume entire countries and cultures, large swaths of the world all telling the same anecdotes around campfires, children all cowering in fear as similar tales are regaled. Growing up on the South Shore of Massachusetts there was the Whispering Man.

The Whispering Man was a story that I had first heard from my uncle, it was the summer before I started kindergarten, prime time for scaring a child into behaving well. My mother had brought us out camping by a lake in New Hampshire with her brother and his family for labor day weekend, sending off the summer with a "last hurrah". The first few hours were spent by the adults setting up the campsite, while my cousin and I were tasked with gathering firewood and kindling, my younger brother was excluded from our expedition due to him being deemed too young to join us.

My cousin and I wandered the forest around the campsite finding sticks and twigs that we used to battle one another in a mock Star Wars style light saber duel before ultimately putting them into a basket to bring back to our campsite. Our laughs and giggles echoed throughout the forest, ultimately letting our parents know that we were safe and sound.

Living in the suburbs, I had become accustomed to buildings lining the streets, small shops and strip malls scattered about main roads, plant life such as trees and grass only belonged in the front and backyards of houses on side streets. I was enamored by the forest, the way the trees stood sturdy and strong, the grass was overgrown, untouched by tools like lawnmowers and weed whackers. I could have never imagined the Sun could be entirely blocked out by the natural parasol that the leaves from the trees provided, and yet, there it was, infinite shade.

During our journey my older cousin, Ivan, asked me if I knew about the Black Volga, I nodded as it seemed our grandmother educated all of her grandchildren about the dangers of strangers in strange cars.

"Babusia made that up you know?"

"Nuh uh," I responded, "she wouldn't lie to us, why would she make that up?"

"That way we don't talk to strangers, think about it. She never talks about anybody that she knows who got taken by one, and do you even know what a Volga is? I've never seen one."

As easily swayed as my child-mind was, I started to put stock in what my cousin said.

"Do you wanna hear a real scary story?"

Fear and excitement danced in my eyes, before a small wave of apprehension washed over me, "How do I know that it's real? If Babusia tells a fake story then why would you tell a real one?"

"Because my dad will tell it, and he says that he actually knows someone who it happened to."

Later that night we gathered around the campfire where Ivan and I were able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The sun had set hours before, leaving our campsite illuminated solely by our fire, and the stars above us, untouched by light pollution. I caught myself staring into the sky, craning my neck allowing myself to feast my eyes on the stars that dotted the heavens above me.

"If you stay like that your neck will get stuck, and you'll look like that forever." My mother warned, sitting beside me. My brother was fast asleep in her arms, leaving myself, my mother, uncle and Cousin sitting around the campfire, wide awake and enjoying the nature that engulfed us.

The darkness of the night crept towards us as the fire ran low on fuel, suffocating as it ate away at the logs, sticks and twigs I had so diligently gathered. The warmth it provided waned as the chilling wind from the trees forced itself on to my back causing the muscles to convulse as I shivered. In this moment my cousin looked at his father, "Dad, tell the story about the Whispering Man."

My mother cocked her head and spoke to her brother in a language I didn't understand, despite her best efforts I never quite picked up the language passed down to her by her mother. My uncle responded in the same language, leaving Ivan and I completely out of the loop. My mother smiled and urged her brother to indulge his son's request, "Go on Kolya, tell the story."

My uncle smiled and nodded, "When Lyudmila and I were little, we grew up near a small patch of woods that was in our friend's backyard, his name was Travis. The trees in the woods weren't nearly as big as the trees here." He gestured all around us, pointing towards the still giants that loomed over us. "The trees there stuck out of the ground like fingers that were ready to grab you at any moment." He grabbed onto his son who sat next to him, Ivan nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Lyudmila, Travis and I all played in the woods together often enough, we even made a small fort one year, it took us the entire summer. One day we stayed out too long playing in the forest, it was dark out, and the three of us were playing around the fort, deep in the woods. Suddenly the crickets stopped chirping, and the wind stopped blowing, and we heard a voice. A child's voice. 'Come play with me' it said. Lyudmila and I were terrified, we ran out of the fort, and we ran home as fast as we could, but when we came out of the woods, Travis wasn't with us."

My uncle bowed his head and sighed before continuing, "The voice we heard in the woods at night was that of an evil in this world, 'The Whispering Man'. He walks around the woods at night looking for children to play with him, he draws them in and tricks them inviting them to play."

My shivering persisted, no longer was it motivated by a change in temperature, instead the rapid muscle contractions were fueled by pure, unadulterated terror. I spoke up, a frail voice that shattered against the progressively chilling air, "Where was Travis?"

"He was with The Whispering Man, we never saw him again, aside from the 'missing' posters that were put on all the telephone poles in our neighborhood." He paused for a while, the chirping of the crickets and the crackling of the dying fire were the only sounds emanating from the forest. "If you boys ever hear voices from the forest, you don't follow them, understood?"

Ivan and I emphatically nodded in agreement, and my uncle poured his water over the fire, finally putting it out of its misery. A plume of grey smoke was released from the blackened logs and twigs, its dying breath wafted into the air before dissipating into the sky above.

That night I spent the majority of the time listening as the wind gently swayed the branches of the trees. The leaves whistled almost as if they were trying their hardest to speak, but their own anatomy simply wouldn't allow it. My eyes were forced open by my overactive imagination, as I watched the faint shadows waltz against the tent I could have sworn that some of them shifted and morphed into the shape of a man. The chirping of the crickets combined with the whipping of the wind created unintelligible whispers in the night, whispers that I feared belonged to The Whispering Man. I cowered in fear allowing the sea of horror that had been built up inside of me to thrash me around.

My head spun, The Whispering Man isn't real, I thought.

"Play with me"

The voice penetrated through the thin plastic that acted as my sole line of defense. I retreated into a ball, deep in my sleeping back, keeping one eye fixed on the zipper that acted as the only point of entry. There against the plastic I saw a hand reach down towards the zipper outside the tent.

My heart raced. I held my breath for as long as my still developing lungs would allow, and when they failed me, my breath become shallow and fleeting. The sound of the zipper forced itself into the tent and the moonlight seeped into my tent.

He isn't real, he isn't real, he isn't real.

The thought repeated countless times. Reprieve washed over me as enough moonlight gave way to illuminate Ivan's face. He began to laugh and he whispered "Got you!"

Before I could respond he quickly zipped the tent back up, encasing me in darkness, and he returned back to his tent.

The years passed and gave way to several changes in life, my family had moved away from my early childhood home and into a small apartment after the housing crash in '08 caused us to lose the house after my Mom was laid off and our house went into foreclosure. Luckily for myself and my brother, James, we were able to stay in the town that we grew up in. Although we lost the friends that we knew from our old neighborhood, James and I were given the opportunity to make new friends in our new home.

Once we moved in our new neighbors were quick to meet us and incorporate them into the fold that they had built o...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ffgv78/the_whispering_man/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Voodoo_Clerk on 2024-09-13 00:32:15+00:00.

---

When you walk into this office and the first thing you see is me smiling back at you with a big old smile I bet you wonder why I’m the receptionist at a plastic surgeon’s office. And that’s a fair question I sometimes wonder that myself. I’m Maggie and I’ve been working at Dr. Harrison’s clinic for about three years now. One thing to know about me is that I am no supermodel. I’m a little overweight (I like to use my mom’s phrase of tastefully plump!) but my whole life I’ve always been comfortable with who I am. I’ve never let anyone’s words get to me and as such when I applied to work here I fully expected to get rejected, but I needed a job and was willing to try for this spot. 

Meeting Dr. James Harrison was like coming face to face with a perfect work of art hung up in an art museum. His skin is flawless and smooth without a single mark or imperfection. While a little messy, his brown hair is soft and silky. And those beautiful eyes. He has eyes that are so bright green you could swear that they were glowing. I was so intimidated when I met him for an interview for the position and his gaze was so intense I almost felt like he would reject me on the spot. But instead, he gave me a happy smile and began to make conversation with me. And before I knew it? I was the receptionist here!

Dr. Harrison is booked full almost constantly, and the flood of people that come in once we open our doors is insane! I swear there’s a line at the door when I go to open it once we’re finally open. Plenty of women and men check-in and eagerly await their turn to be with Dr. Harrison. My job boils down to answering the phone, booking appointments, confirming appointments, dealing with payments, and the occasional coffee run! The waiting room sort of resembles a hotel lobby with how big it is, and to my knowledge besides Nurse Rachel, it’s only Dr. Harrison doing all the work. 

I don’t think Rachel likes me very much, unfortunately. When I started my first day of work the look she gave me was one I gave some food I discovered in the back of the fridge that I’d forgotten about. A mix of disgust and annoyance is the best guess I can give. Rachel also has flawless skin and hair and she looks like she lept out of the pages of a magazine. She only seems to tolerate me because I’m so close to Dr. Harrison. But when she arrives at work before him, she lets me know how much she hates me. Unlike her though, I don’t have time to hate her. Especially since the phones are usually ringing off the hook with people looking to book appointments with us. 

Speaking of phones, there’s also this old-fashioned rotary phone located in the back of my little receptionist area. Dr. Harrison has given me explicit orders that if it ever rings I am to ignore all other calls and focus completely on answering that phone. So far that phone hasn’t ever rung and it just sits there ominously on the wall. When I say old fashioned I mean old, that thing looks like it jumped right out of an old black-and-white movie. I even had to ask him how I was supposed to answer it. 

Dr. Harrison let me decorate my reception desk however I liked so I naturally brought all the knick-knacks I could to the office. I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. I decorate the desk according to the season and the upcoming holiday, from Halloween decorations like pumpkins and skeletons, to Christmas decorations like my little tree and various stockings. But normally I just like to have pictures of my dog Sonny and a few pictures of my family.  

Well I wouldn’t be here on this site if strange things didn’t happen at Dr. Harrison’s office now would I? Well, I have some stories to tell you, folks. The first major red flag about this place is just how…enthusiastic let's say, the patients are. Once when I was trying to tell someone that they didn’t have an appointment and that the next opening would be in six months she very nearly lept over the desk separating us and started strangling me right there. It took a couple of the other patients to restrain her and for the cops to take her away. But that wasn’t an isolated case, and things like that happen nearly every day here. 

Another thing about the patients is how…I don’t wanna say bad, but how worse they eventually start to become. While we have so many patients they all start to blur together, and I do sometimes keep tabs on some of them. And as they progress they become more plastic-looking almost. They start to resemble those botched plastic surgery stories you see online and I don’t understand how. When they come here at first they seem flawless just like Dr. Harrison and Rachel. But slowly they become more and more plastic. And eventually, some of them just, stop coming. When I asked Dr. Harrison about it he quickly shrugged it off, telling me he simply forwarded them to a specialist who treats conditions like that. I remain unconvinced though. 

Then there was the incident that made me want to tell someone about the strange things going on around here. I’m usually the first to arrive at the office. I have to unlock the door and turn the alarms off. Once that’s done I usually finish off any remaining paperwork from the previous day and start on the paperwork for that day. Normally right after I come in and turn on the lights and turn off the alarms, Dr. Harrison comes in right after me. 

But on this day he was running late, and that’s rare for him. He’s normally very punctual and when I saw Rachel had gotten here before him I started to get a little worried. Mostly about what the patients scheduled for today would do if we had to cancel their appointments. Already I could see the line of them starting outside our doors. When the first phone started ringing I nervously grabbed it and fully expected it to be another patient arguing with me about an appointment. 

“Thank you for calling Dr. Harrison’s office, this is Maggie, how can I help you?” I answered with the cookie-cutter opening I always made when someone called the office. To my surprise, it was Dr. Harrison calling me. 

“Maggie, something came up. Tell Rachel to prepare the first patient immediately after you guys open for me. We’re going to need to start it as soon as I arrive, understand?” he asked me, talking so fast I had to focus on what he was saying to understand any of it. 

“Of course sir, are you alright?” I asked him as I stood up from my chair and got ready to talk to Rachel. 

“I’m fine, just…make sure Rachel sets everything up properly. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up without even a goodbye which upset me a little. It was the first time since I started working there that he hadn’t said bye to me. But I chalked it up to his rushing and placed the receiver back onto the phone dock. I took a deep breath and stepped back through the reception area and towards the consultation offices where Rachel was probably getting everything ready. 

I entered the room she was prepping and met her judgmental gaze head-on. “Dr. Harrison just called me. He says to prepare the first patient immediately after I open. And that you guys are going to start as soon as he gets here.” The look she gave me quickly turned into one of urgency and a little bit of fear. 

“I told him we should’ve done that yesterday! This is just great.” She grunted tossing her pen at the floor and walking past me, bumping into my shoulder and stepping away down the hall towards the medical closet. Rubbing my shoulder and sticking my tongue out at her I walked back over to my desk and finished up my preparations to open. And at 9 o'clock on the dot I walked over and unlocked the front door for the patients, quickly jumping out of the way so I didn’t get trampled by all of them rushing in. 

Taking my place back at the desk I sat down and looked up at the first patient who had managed to get to my desk to check in first. “Name please?” I asked her as I checked my computer to see if she had an appointment, 

“Kara Smith, ” she told me. I could tell she was a regular since she acted like I should know her personally and immediately upon seeing her. Little did she know I saw at least a hundred people a day. I checked her name and scrolled around on the page before I found her. She was here for a rhinoplasty. I took another look at her and slightly raised my eyebrow. Her nose looked fine to me, but I wasn’t exactly allowed to say that to the patients. 

“Okay, you can go right ahead, Nurse Rachel will be there to meet with you. Dr. Harrison is running a little late today so I do apologize for that, but he should be here soon.” I told her with a smile. She returned my niceties by cussing me out and stomping over towards the door to the consultation rooms where Nurse Rachel was waiting for her. One of the better interactions I’ve had. 

I kept checking people in and turning away the people who didn’t have appointments. Usually, if they got too rowdy a little flash of my pepper spray was enough to at least get them to go away. After about an hour of being open and with patients starting to grumble, Dr. Harrison burst through the front doors and quickly ran past everyone including me. I normally only ever saw him in his doctor coat and scrubs so seeing him running in with a jacket and a scarf was certainly interesting. Especially since it was the middle of summer. He was so well covered up, that I almost didn’t know it was him. The only thing that told me that it was Dr. Harrison were those beautiful b...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ffhtyx/im_a_receptionist_at_a_plastic_surgeons_part_1/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Icy-Watch-4946 on 2024-09-12 13:00:29+00:00.

---

Better Bargains has a zero-kudzu policy. They have their origins in the American Southeast, where kudzu is just all over the place. A massive carpet of green smothering forests, burying houses, and causing all sorts of trouble. So, this chain of superstores goes crazy whenever they see the tiniest sprout of the stuff. But I don’t live in the Southeast. I live in the Midwest and I hadn’t even seen kudzu in person until they came here.

I should start from the beginning.

When I was hired at Better Bargains, one of the first things they trained me on was their zero-kudzu policy. This was about a year after they had first opened, and I think the kudzu appeared around that same time. There were many abandoned houses in the area and the tenacious vine already claimed most of them by the time I applied at Better Bargains. I would pass by some on my way to work every day. The town was dying. I don’t know why any superstores would open here. Maybe it was because the land was cheap or it was a good midway point between places that were doing better. Whatever the reason, it seems to be a good one because they are always busy.

Cutting back the kudzu was a full-time job in itself. The other front-end workers and I took turns so that no one worker had to spend their entire shift outside in the sun. It was early in the year, but we kept Summer in mind. There was always someone out there, pulling the vines off the walls and trimming them.

On the first day I trained with the shift supervisor, let’s call him Kyle. Kyle and I were clearing away kudzu together. He made sure I could do it properly.

“You missed some leaves,” a voice behind us said.

Kyle and I about jumped out of our skins. Kyle spun around and clocked the assistant manager in the eye, knocking him flat. He quickly apologized and helped him to his feet.

“That is alright, everyone makes mistakes,” said the assistant manager. He pointed to the trail of leaves we had left in our wake. “Just make sure you bag everything. Even the smallest piece left behind can sprout into a new vine.”

Not for a second did his used-car salesman smile leave his face.

The assistant manager, let’s call him Scott, had a special hatred of kudzu. When he was clearing it away, it seemed like he was on a personal crusade against the plant. When he wasn’t, he was checking up on those who were to make sure they were working up to management’s, or rather his, standard.

As for Kyle and me, we went back to pulling kudzu from the building. Kyle told me that Scott was once a used car salesman, and that was why he never stopped smiling. There were two things we knew about him. He used to be a car salesman, and he hated kudzu. It wasn’t the last time Scott would startle someone, but after this, he always seemed to appear just out of arm’s reach. The way he smiled was downright creepy. It was the smile of someone who knew they put you on guard and was trying to put you at ease.

Better Bargains was always busy, and we were always understaffed. I didn’t complain. All of my previous jobs were also understaffed, and I was used to it. When I was first hired, the sheer amount of customers baffled me. There seemed to be more people passing through the store than living in the whole town. I commented on this and the others just shrugged.

A week after I had begun working there, the building was vandalized. During the night, someone had spray-painted some sort of sign or sigil on the side of the building. Kyle was the one who discovered it when he started cutting kudzu in the morning. Scott must have thought it was somehow comical, as he couldn’t stop giggling to himself all day. The rest of the managers were more annoyed by Scott’s chuckling than the building being defaced. A crew of painters to cover had shown up to paint over the sigil by the time I had arrived for my shift and I didn’t have the opportunity to see it.

We had “anti-vandalism” training the next day. Mostly, it was a reiteration of stuff that was covered in the initial employee training. Stuff like, if we spot a vandal, alert management promptly, or report any spray-painted markings. But there were some new, oddly specific things too. Like, don’t bite any discovered vandals, no matter how delicious they appear; don’t drink anything they offer; and don’t ask for their teeth. Management explained these specific stipulations as the result of prior incidents at other locations and they had to include them for legal reasons.

The weirdness continued when roses started growing alongside the kudzu. At first, I thought it was just some wild brambles, but then it started blooming. Large red roses appeared all over the lawn and up the sides of the superstore. I did a little research and roses don’t just pop up in random places. They are shrubs for one, not vines, and are not nearly as aggressive as a kudzu. By all accounts, it seems to me that the kudzu should have killed the roses if our lawnmowers and garden trimmers hadn’t done the trick.

I think any other place would have killed to have an entire lawn of roses, but not Better Bargains. We were instructed to cut and bag them just like the kudzu. The managers reasoned that their thorns would cause more trouble than they were worth. The roses seemed to terrify them. They would only speak of them in hushed tones, as if the plants might hear them, and would wince whenever someone would speak too loudly of the problem. Kyle took great pleasure in doing this. Scott was especially fearful. He didn’t work outside for a whole week after they appeared. He never dropped that big, wide grin of his, but he was noticeably pale. Even I could see it, and I was horrible at seeing that kind of thing.

One time someone came back in for cutting and bagging with a section of rose stem stuck to their jeans. The thorns had caught enough to hold on, but not enough to prick their bearer. Scott yelped like a kicked dog and loud enough to echo off the superstore walls. Whether or not this had caused him to lose his big, wide smile, nobody could say. That wasn’t the bit that caught our attention. Afterward, management reminded us to leave all trimmed vegetation outside. Maybe Scott was allergic to roses, but then again he did go back to working outside after a while.

The building was eventually tagged by vandals again. They had painted more of that sigil on the wall during the night. I got to see it this time. It was a dot surrounded by three radial, vaguely S-shaped lines, which were all within an inverted triangle. The paint crew was called back. They had the sigils covered up by the time my shift was ended. Then, the superstore was tagged again. All three times they had somehow defaced the building without showing up on the security cameras or triggering the motion sensors.

Management had had enough. The police sent a couple of officers to watch over the building while Better Bargain looked to hire a security guard. This stopped the vandalism for a couple of days. But the day the guard was hired, the vandalism started again. The guard hadn’t seen anything. Nothing was caught by the cameras, either. The only evidence the vandals had ever been there were the sigils, and there were more of them now. It was like they were mocking us. Well, mocking management. The same sigil spray-painted over and over again.

Despite the vandalism’s frequency, its volume was manageable. I wondered how much it cost to undo for a brief moment. Ultimately, it wasn’t my problem. I just tried to avoid the wet paint when it was cutting and bagging. The days were getting longer and hotter and more than once did I get paint all over my gloves.

If the vandalism outside made management angry, they were downright furious when it started appearing inside. Whether it happened at night or during the day was impossible to tell for sure. But, it was probably during store hours because the latrines weren’t exactly under lock and key. The sigil was painted on the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. The real mystery was how they got the kudzu and roses inside without anyone noticing.

Management’s response to this was bizarrely tranquil. I thought they might call the police or hire more security. Instead, they brought out ladders and dusty cardboard boxes. They began to hang wicker effigies and charms from the walls, aisles, and ceilings. The ones doing the hanging were as if they were in a trance. Like the charms warded off the agitation caused by the rampant vandalism. They spent the rest of the day doing this.

This was right at the beginning of Pride Month and those who loudly disapproved of Pride were just beginning to make themselves known. The other employees told me this happened last year as well. The protesting of Pride, not the roses, vandalism, or wicker figures. A much less mysterious campaign of vandalism began.

Those in the throughs of moral panic began dismantling and scribbling on anything that vaguely resembled a rainbow. As we were already on high alert for this kind of behavior, the perpetrators were caught almost immediately. Management did not tolerate these people, not this year. Having ill-doers they could catch did wonders for their morale and they did not hesitate to take out their frustrations on the protesters.

One loud middle-aged woman demanded to see the “straight section”. At least, I think she was middle-aged. She had too many facelifts and lip fillers to tell. While she was carrying on, a...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ff1z82/can_someone_explain_this_weird_tattoo_on_my_chest/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2024-09-12 22:09:19+00:00.

---

I use a photo storage service. It’s like Google or Apple Photos, with some AI-powered features and facial recognition. One of the things it does is tag people that it recognizes across multiple photos.

It keeps tagging my friend, Addie Hemsworth.

There’s just one problem—she’s been dead for a year.

She passed our sophomore year. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to doxx myself here. Addie Hemsworth is not her real name. But her death made national news.

(Of course it did—it was the homicide of a white, female college student. The racist mainstream media eats those cases up like crack.)

Anyway, the whole tagging thing started a week ago. I was scrolling through photos from Mike’s birthday party, when I noticed the app was tagging Addie.

The circled area was right over my shoulder. Like Addie was standing right behind me. Except, of course, she wasn’t.

I zoomed in on the darkness and turned the brightness up on my phone, but I couldn’t see anything; just mashed pixels and blobby darkness.

I assumed it was just a glitch, although the app had never tagged anyone wrong before.

But then it happened again.

I took a selfie of myself because I’d done my hair for the frat party later. And the app suggested the same thing. It circled a little space behind me, with the name Addie.

As if she were standing behind my bed.

This time, however, the circle was several feet off the ground. Even if she were alive, even if she were standing behind me—she wouldn’t be anywhere that high. A chill ran down my spine.

I decided I needed to get out. I ran out of the dorm and walked randomly up-campus, towards the language art lecture halls, all held in enormous gothic stone buildings. The first leaves were beginning to turn orange, like the sunlight was singeing just the edges of campus. A couple laughed as they passed me. A bird squawked somewhere. I kept walking, foot over foot.

I found myself standing at the entrance of Addie’s dorm. Denton hall. 12B. I looked up at the window. It was closed. 12B had stayed empty this year, out of respect for Addie.

I lifted my phone—

And took a photo.

I waited for the photo to auto-sync with the photo storage app, and then—holding my breath—I took a peek.

Nothing.

It didn’t say Addie was in the photo.

I let out the breath I’d been holding and started walking back towards my dorm. Halfway back, when I came across a tree half-way orange, in the throes of autumn unlike the others, I lifted my phone and snapped a photo without even thinking about it.

Later that evening, I realized the app said Addie was there.

The circle was on the grass, as if she were lying on the ground.

…Dead?

The most horrible image flashed through my head—of Addie sprawled out on the ground, covered in gashes. Blood pooling on the ground, seeping through the grass. Sightless eyes turned towards me, mouth hanging open.

17 stab wounds, they said.

I shut my eyes and forced the image out of my head. Then I took a screenshot and sent it to our group chat. Lol my phone thinks addie is in this photo, I wrote, trying to pass it off as a joke, as some kind of fucked-up defense mechanism.

Three dots appeared. And then a text from Priyanka:

I thought it was only me.

She sent a screenshot of her iPhone photo app. The most recent photo of Addie, the app claimed, was a photo of Priyanka and Greg standing under one of the gothic archways on campus. No one else was in the photo.

My throat went dry.

It could be a glitch once, maybe twice, on my phone. But if it was happening to my friends’ phones, too…

Before I could reply, another text came in.

From Adam.

It’s happening to me too.

I stared at my phone, feeling chills.

What the fuck?

I got up and walked across the hallway to the girls’ bathroom, every bit of my body shaking. I went to the sink and stared at my reflection.

Deep bags lay under my eyes. My dark hair was tangled and uncombed. I didn’t remember looking this bad earlier. I shut my eyes tight and shook my head, trying to shake the anxiety out of me.

Then I opened my eyes.

All the blood drained out of my face.

There were two feet poking out from under one of the stall doors. Wearing mint green flip-flops.

Her flip-flops.

The polish on her bare toes was chipped. Dark liquid pooled under her flip-flops. It slowly crept over the grout between the tiles, towards the floor drain, towards me.

No no no.

I whipped around.

Nothing was there.

I burst back into the dorm room, my heart hammering. I broke out in sobs, holding myself, shaking. This was the one time I hated not having roommates, hated that I was so introverted I made sure to get a single.

No one to hear me.

When I’d recovered slightly, I picked up my phone to text the group. The floor fell out under me when I saw the notification from the photos app.

Addie Hemsworth was tagged in every single one of my photos.

The phone fell out of my hands and clattered to the floor.

I closed my eyes and cried harder, unable to move. When I finally opened them, through my blurry tears, I noticed something different.

There were two shiny scars slicing up my arms.

I tore off my clothes. There were more. I counted every single one—but I already knew how many there would be.

Seventeen.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MikeJesus on 2024-09-12 20:30:31+00:00.

---

Our basement is filled with VHS tapes. Originally, I kept them in a box under the old TV set, yet over the years I have developed quite the collection. There’s shelves of the stuff now. Uncountable black boxes filled with mystery.

Usually, the faint smell of plastic that envelops our basement soothes me. It reminds me that I’m not at work. It’s the scent of my cherished hobby. Of nostalgia.

Usually, the faint smell of plastic in the basement calms me, yet this time it does not.

The dog skitters past her legs, jumps on the couch and curls up into comfort. ‘Isn’t Betty so precious?’ my wife fawns, as she sits next to the dog. Her slender fingers quickly find the magic spot behind the ear. Betty’s eyes flutter and close. ‘Oh, look at her! She’s already asleep! What a beautiful princess! She must be so tired from the dog park.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, still standing on the stairs, ‘She did run a lot.’

I walk down the steps but stop on the last one. ‘Hey,’ I say, ‘How about we just go upstairs and watch something streamable? It’s a better TV. I can make some popcorn.’

‘Betty? Do you want to go? No? You’re too comfortable?’ the dog barely opens her eyes. She’s not moving. Neither is my wife. ‘Also,’ she says to me, ‘Dr. Shipman said we should engage with each other’s hobbies. Dogpark in the morning, VHS in the evening — we agreed.’

I don’t get off the creaky step. I keep searching for a way to get my wife upstairs.

‘You said there’s no porn on those tapes, Ryan,’ she says, with more than a glint of accusation.

‘There’s no porn!’ I say, ‘I just like collecting mysterious VHS tapes!’

It’s the truth, I’m reasonably certain. I haven’t seen half the tapes in my collection. It’s not nudity I’m scared of my wife finding. There are more disturbing things lingering on those old tapes than porn.

‘What about this one?’ she says, sliding a tape out of the shelves. ‘Professor Willow’s Amazing Dogshow. That sounds fun!’

I pick up the sleeve. It’s blank. Aside from the neatly written title, there’s no indicator of what’s on the tape.

‘It’s a VHS-C,’ I say. ‘A home movie. Anything could be on this thing. It could be disturbing.’

‘Well, if it’s disturbing, we’ll turn it off,’ she says, carefree. Then her brow furrows. ‘Come on Ryan, I don’t get this VHS obses— hobby but I want to try. We promised Dr. Shipman we would. There’s no point going to therapy if we’re going to ignore the homework.’

I feel no more assured, but I submit. With a staccato of clicks, the VCR eats up the tape. A faint image sharpens on the old television set.

We’re in some expansive, dark warehouse. There’s a sparse audience of silhouettes that shuffles before the camera. In the center of the warehouse, lit up by a handful of industrial lights, stands a tall bald man in a lab coat.

‘Friends, comrades and esteemed colleagues! I have gathered you here for another exposition of the research I have tirelessly worked on!’ The man does not speak loudly. The barren warehouse amplifies his words enough. ‘Professor Kamer’s fertilizer is, indeed, impressive. It will optimize the land and provide plentiful breeding space for the Hybrids. Truly, the scientific achievement of the decade. But now, it is time for you to see the greatest achievement of the century!’

There’s a religious zeal behind the man’s words. The warehouse, the scientist’s identity, the Hybrids he speaks of — it all picks at my hunger for mystery. Yet I still fear what the tape might reveal. I fear how my wife will react.

‘Bring me the dog!’ the scientist yells into the shadows.

My wife watches the fuzzy warehouse scene with a deep confusion, yet the moment the dog is mentioned she sits upright. When the said dog is trotted up on a leash from the darkness, a smile spreads across her lips.

‘Look, Ryan! It looks just like Betty!’ she squeals. ‘Betty, can you see it? That puppy looks just like you!’

Betty opens her eyes, but the screen is of no interest to her. She, instead, looks up at my wife in expectation of more ear scratches. When Betty gets them, her eyes slowly shut again.

‘Oh, how we have tamed the wild wolf!’ the scientist proclaims, as he takes the leash from his assistant. ‘Man has molded Canis Lupus to be small and meek and friendly. He has taken predator and turned it to ally, to guardian, to companion.’ As if to attest to its amicable nature, the dog at the scientist’s feet raises its paw.

‘Man has worked for millennia to transform Canis Lupus to his needs,’ the scientist continues, ‘Yet he has not done enough.’

The scientist holds the leash far away from his body, as if seized by sudden disgust. The assistant takes the dog, silently marching it into the darkness. The man in the lab coat doesn’t speak again until they are out of sight.

‘Man has tried to alter the genealogy of canines through selective breeding. Yet this process is far too slow,’ the scientist declares. ‘To mate, to gestate, to raise, to mate again — this is science fit for a monkey. To mate, to gestate, to raise, to mate again — this requires decades which we do not have. This requires time which we cannot afford. No, to truly tame the nature of the canine one must strike at its genome.’

Even in the fuzzy resolution of the aged tape, I can see it. A flash of static beyond the lights. Something materializes out from thin air in the darkness.

‘Friends, comrades and colleagues! Let it be my honor to present to you — specimen ND-059.’

There is no applause in the audience when the thing walks into the light. There is but curious shuffling and a single strained cough. The creature on screen is most definitely not the product of natural evolution.

‘Oh my god,’ she whispers, getting her face closer to the screen. ‘It’s adorable!’

The creature is, to my wife’s credit, cute. Discomfortingly so. It has the general form of a puppy, yet it’s bigger than our full-grown springer. Its eyes are like big saucers filled with innocence and one of its pointed ears hangs inside out. It looks like a dog.

It looks like a dog but it’s not.

‘Is that real?’ my wife says, her forehead almost touching the screen. ‘That can’t be a real thing, right? It has to be animated or something.’

I don’t need to take a closer look. My sellers are reliable. I know my way around image quality. I know the tape is legit, yet I still meet her face by the screen.

‘VHS-C,’ I say, ‘Putting any altered footage on it would require a lot of work with the tape. Too much work. Also, see these? Those are tracking lines. They show up on aged tapes.’

I guide her hand, tracing it along the distortions. When I let go, her slender fingers continue to run along the tracking lines. Her soft breath fogs up a bit of the screen. For a moment, a very brief moment, I find myself thankful to Dr. Shipman.

‘Canines have evolved to be loved by man,’ the scientist on the television preaches. ‘They have the eyes of babes. Their cries provoke our genetic similes. Nature lured the canine with treats to appeal to us. Hybrid ND-059 is a mere tug of the leash.’

A growl rises from the couch. Betty’s eyes are opened and her head is low. She doesn’t like what she’s seeing on the screen. My wife scratches her behind the ear, but the dog’s rumble doesn’t subside.

‘Those that do not tend to the land. Those that are called to higher purpose and have to spend their days away from life beyond their concern — they need these ties to nature. To the reminder that life is, in its core, simple. Dogs have long served this role in urban societies. When their time comes, Hybrid ND-059 will take up this labor.’

Off in the darkness there’s another brief flash. The silhouette it produces is considerably bigger. Betty’s displeasure at the screen grows. She bares her teeth at the hulking form in the shadows.

The scientist, this Professor Willow, he once again stays silent until his assistant has left the stage. There’s a commotion among the audience. A group of silhouettes moves past the camera to sit further away. They’ve noticed the creature in the darkness. They’re scared of it.

‘Hey, how about we go upstairs,’ I suggest. ‘We can check out the new season of Yellowja—’

‘Shhh! I want to know what happens next!’ She turns around, but she doesn’t look at me. Instead, she holds up a single finger to the dog as if it were a saber. ‘You too, Betty. Shush. I’m watching something. Be a good girl.’

‘Yet the canine was never just a simple companion! No! He served as protector, as hunter, as the right hand of law! The dog has helped feed us and keep order, yet its instincts are dull. Its body is frail compared to that which science can birth. Friends, comrades and colleagues! I present to you specimen OD-041!’

Betty’s growls immediately break out into terrified barks. My wife repels from the screen. ‘What is that?!’ she yells.

It looks like a mole rat. A mole rat with bulging muscles and the snout of a wolf and eyes that scream violence. The assistant does not lead the beast on a leash. He is dragged behind it.

‘Ryan?’ my wife says, breathless. ‘That can’t be real right? That thing is not real.’

‘It isn’t,’ I say, trying to think straight past Betty’s shrieking barks and the horror on the screen. ‘Probably a prank. Someone just used AI to… make that. Happens all the time.’

From the television Professor Willow rambles on about security forces and the inherent handicap of canines not being able to bite through steel. My wife is scared and the dog is going nuts, but there’s still a ...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CreepyScribbler on 2024-09-12 17:29:46+00:00.

---

I haven’t got much time, they’re at my door and have started trying to get in. My name is Luke Jacobs, I am of sound mind and not depressed, if I end up missing or dead, it is not from my own doing. I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see and now they are here to try and silence me.

I have been noting down over the last few days what I experienced, in hope for some answers.

The following events are based on what I can remember:

I am a keen hiker, rock climber and cave explorer, I live on the outskirts of a vast national park, which is ideal for all three. On my previous hike, I followed a short steep trail that looped through a section of the forest, the walk took about 2 hours in total. Near the end of the route, I noticed a small dark opening within the rock formation. It was around 60 yards away from the main trail, I curiously wandered over to take a look inside, it appeared to be quite a standard cave for the area. I took out my flashlight and inspected it for a moment, emerging from the shadowy right hand corner was a small narrow crevice. It was an opening to a new cave system below. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of my caving gear with me and it was getting late in the day, so I left and made my way home. I had the full intention of going back the next day to check it out.

The next morning, around 5am I packed up my gear and drove over to a clearing in the forest. I had told my brother Sam the night before, where I was going and what time I would be expected back. I did this as a routine, whenever I went out hiking or caving, just in case the worst happened.

I pulled up on the edge of the forest and made my way up the trail. I was excited to explore somewhere new, I had never noticed this cave before, even though I had frequently hiked the track over the years. The fact that there was a further cave system below, was something I was excited to explore.

The mudded trail was soft from the morning dew under my feet, as I neared the cave. I turned off the main trail and wade through overgrown grass and bushes. My eager pace slowed, I looked with suspicion at the cave entrance. It had been loosely covered by branches and foliage.

I moved the various branches and vines away and switched my flashlight on. I lit up the opening, making sure someone wasn’t using it as a temporary shelter. It was empty. Though strange, I thought possibly another hiker had found this gem of a spot and wanted to make sure no one else got there before them.

As I crouched and gradually made my way inside, I could hear faint dripping noises as condensation above fell around me.

I stood on the edge of the narrow crevice, I peered over the lip and looked intently into the darkness. My flashlight revealed a massive cavity underneath, about 70 to 80 foot below. I prepared my harness, got bolted up to the cave wall, as I made sure everything was secure I heard something echoing up from below. It sounded like inaudible shouting or screaming, but it could have easily been water or wind reverberating off the walls. It’s amazing how far sound travels in enclosed places. I switched from the flashlight to my headlamp and began to make my descent. As I eased my way down, the bottom seemed brighter than I would expect. As my feet touched the floor, I gazed back up at the sunlit gap above. I unhooked myself from the tether and switched back to my flashlight. I looked back and forth, it looked more like a large tunnel, than an enclosed cavity. The normally uneven ground was unusually flat and void.

I noticed that the concave walls were all lined with dim lantern style lights, this only intrigued me further. I wandered forwards cautiously, until I was going around a slight bend. Again I was hit with echoey shouts and screams, now, I was sure they were definitely people. They weren’t the kind of shouting you would expect from construction workers or an exploration party. No, it sounded much more sinister. My pure adventurous excitement, was in that moment replaced by an unsettling feeling of dread. I looked at my cellphone, I knew it had no signal, but it was a nervous habit I had when I felt alone.

After about 5 minutes of walking, my flashlight beam hit a jaggered wall up ahead. The lights on either side of me meandered round, as I came to a T shape. I looked from left to right, both led into darkness. As the wall lined lights faded into the distance. A wave of petrified screams swept over me from the left, I swung my body over and scanned the area, on the gritted rock and limestone dust below, I could see thin tyre tracks. I regrettably decided to follow the cries, but I just thought that a team of people had got into trouble down here. But, I couldn’t have been more wrong, as the more I stepped, the louder and more violent the cries became.

I reached a sharp corner, I switched my flashlight off and peered nervously round. The narrow tunnel opened out into a massive lit cavern. I gasped, my face contorted in horror at the scene unfolding in front of me. Four, large flood lights exposed dozens of metal bar cages, each one housing 10 to 12 Men, Women and Children. Shockingly, they were being guarded by our own military personnel. Fully armed guards patrolled around the cages. Many of the helpless people inside were hysterically crying and comforting each other. Some just looked shell shocked, staring, straight ahead, into nothing. Most wore dirt stained and ripped clothing, with many looking in poor health.

My eyes darted upwards, as a red light flashed on the cave ceiling. Everyone then slowly looked up as a siren droned out of a small loudspeaker, placed in one of the corners. It was quickly accompanied by a mass of people gasping, then the screaming continued. A deep rumbling sound then came from the far end of the cave, like something heavy being scraped along the floor. Four of the military guards then started pushing a cage full of people towards a dark point on the far side, it seemed to be a slope into another part of the cave. The trapped occupants started to pray and plead with the enforcers to stop but it fell on death ears. The shrieking cry’s of help filled the air, distress was visible in the onlookers faces.

They all slipped away into the darkness, a few moments of silence then pursued.

Heavy, fast paced footsteps began to echo out from the dark, as the four military personnel came sprinting out of the shadows. What followed were horrific screams from the doomed captives. It was proceeded by harsh sounds of metal twisting and snapping. The screams soon faded, and were replaced by snarling noises and what I can only describe as ripping flesh. Then crash! The mangled cage suddenly came flying from the abyss, it was now bloodstained and empty. As the cloud of dust settled around it, mass hysteria erupted. The low rumbling noise sounded out once more, as the ground vibrated.

I couldn’t believe what I had seen, these were our military! Dehumanising people, leading them to their certain death. Feeding them to whatever them things were down there. I had to get some evidence, as no one would believe me. I took out my cell, hand shaking in fear and shock. I tried to take a photo, a bolt of light flashed around me. Shit! I had forgotten to take the flash off before taking it, several guards then looked in my direction, they raised their rifles towards me. I turned to run, dust kicking up, as a commotion ensued behind.

As I ran, the lights began to get brighter, until the whole tunnelling cave was engulfed in light. I ran faster and faster, the sound of various hooks and clips on my harness resonated around me. My short shallow breaths echoed off the limestone walls, as I nearly missed the turn from where I entered. I skidded round the corner, catching my hand on a jaggered rock. I winced in pain but adrenaline kept me moving. I reached the cord and quickly clipped myself in, my blood covered hands slipped as I tried to hoist myself up. I gained momentum and started to see daylight streaming through the rock opening.

I could hear shouting and footsteps from the depths below, someone yelled, “He went this way!” While a second voice went, “Now, Cut them!” It then went pitch black below me. They had turned the lights off, a second before I grasped onto the rocks above. I strained and squeezed myself out of the tight space, blood slowly running down my arm.

My legs scrambled over the ledge just as beams of light flooded the space underneath. I held my breath as one of the soldiers shouted out, “Clear!”. I exhaled while slumping to the floor trying to make sense of the last hour. Before I could compose myself a voice barked out, “up,!up! up!” I jolted to my feet as six, bright red lasers streamed through the dusty opening, hitting the wall above.

I stumbled frantically out of the cave, I didn’t stop running until I had reached my car. I grabbed the first aid kit from my bag and wrapped a bandage around the blooded gash on my hand. I called my brother while driving home, I told him what happened, he of course didn’t believe me. Sam said to stop winding him up, he was busy and hung up the phone.

I got home and tended to my wounds, luckily it looked worse than it was. I tossed and turned all night thinking about those poor people, many of them looked like they were just picked off the streets. The next morning Sam came to mine, I showed him my hand, told him every detail and of course the ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ff8942/i_uncovered_a_dark_underground_operation_deep_in/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ConsiderationTop4315 on 2024-09-12 10:12:56+00:00.

---

I was staying at an old, rundown motel for the night. It was one of those places off the highway where everything feels like it's stuck in the 1970s—faded carpets, chipped paint, and a flickering neon sign outside that buzzed all night long. I was exhausted from the drive, so I didn’t care about the state of the place. I just needed a bed.

The room I got was 303. As soon as I walked in, there was this faint, rancid odor, like something had spoiled. I assumed it was the old carpet or maybe the mildew growing in the bathroom tiles. I opened the window to let some fresh air in and shrugged it off.

I settled into bed, but the smell grew worse. It wasn’t constant—it would come and go in waves. One moment, the room would be fine, just the faint smell of musty fabric, but then the stench would return, thick and putrid. It was like the scent of decaying meat, something rotten that had been left to fester for days.

I called the front desk to complain, but the old man who answered was indifferent. “It’s an old building,” he said in a gruff voice, like that was supposed to explain everything. “Air it out. There ain’t nothin’ we can do tonight.”

Frustrated but too tired to argue, I lay back down, hoping sleep would take me. But the smell got stronger, and I started to feel nauseous. I got up to inspect the room, convinced there had to be something dead in the walls or under the bed.

That’s when I noticed it—the closet door. It was slightly ajar, just enough for a thin crack of darkness to spill into the room. I didn’t remember opening it when I came in.

Hesitant, I approached the closet. The stench was unbearable now, as if something inside was rotting. I grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.

Nothing.

The closet was completely empty. No suitcases, no dead animals, just a barren space. But the smell was so strong it made my eyes water. It was coming from inside, I was sure of it.

I slammed the door shut and backed away, my heart pounding. I tried to convince myself that my mind was playing tricks on me—that I was just tired, that it was just an old building with bad ventilation. But something didn’t feel right.

I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying to block out the smell, trying to block out the creeping dread building in my chest. I must have drifted off eventually because the next thing I remember was waking up to a sound.

A soft scraping noise.

It was coming from the closet.

I froze, my breath catching in my throat. The door was moving. Slowly. Like someone—no, something—was on the other side, pushing it open. My pulse thundered in my ears as the door creaked wider, the darkness inside seeming to spill out, thick and suffocating.

And then, I saw it.

A hand. Pale, skeletal, with blackened nails, reached out from the shadows of the closet.

I didn’t wait to see what it was attached to. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my keys, and bolted out of the room. I didn’t stop running until I was in my car, peeling out of the parking lot.

I’ve never gone back to that motel. I’m not even sure it’s still there. But I can’t shake the feeling that something—someone—is still waiting in Room 303.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Luca_Til_Tschenisch on 2024-09-12 08:54:29+00:00.

---

I don’t know whether any of you will give a damn about what I say. Hell, most of you won’t believe me, and I can’t blame you. Truth be told, I would do the same. No, I won’t convince any of you about what happened to me, but at least I can share it.

Not just to get off my chest, but to warn someone out there. For the slime chance you ever see a white crow fly above you, landing on a tree branch or wire, observing the people below it, perhaps you will remember my words. Perhaps you will believe me in this one instance.

Don’t look at them. Don’t wave at them. Do nothing to attract their attention. Turn around and make sure you’re out of their sight. There is no fighting them. They will always find prey, but it doesn’t have to be you. Trust me.

I wish someone had told me the same.

…

At first, I found it beautiful. An albino in every species is a rare sight, but in a crow, it seemed to have something magical about it. I looked it up, and a lot of mythology interpreted them as divine messengers or omens of good luck. Back then, I couldn’t have agreed more. It just seemed to be… more. I don’t know how I could truly explain it.

I was on my way to school when it landed on a house nearby, watching the people hurrying past without noticing it. I stopped, pausing the music I was listening to. I was still a freshman at my high school, and time was running against me, but I couldn’t help myself. Who doesn’t love animals? Beautiful ones in particular.

Without thinking much about it, I got my phone out, zoomed in on the bird to get a better view of it, and took a photo. Right before I pressed the button, it twisted its head around, staring right at me as my phone’s camera went on.

Not gonna lie, it startled me. Not because it had any weird features or appeared more menacing than at first glance now that it looked at me. It was just that it noticed me. I had made no sound, and the crow was a decent distance away from me. By all means, I should have remained an unknown to the bird.

But now that it had laid eyes on me, it couldn’t stop staring at me. I moved a bit further up the street, changing directions, even jumping around; the crow’s head followed my every move. It seemed quite funny. Its eyes darted around to keep track of me. Not something you would expect from a wild animal. A cartoon, for sure, but not a random crow.

I giggled to myself and waved at the crow, before running towards my school. During the breaks between lessons, if I wasn’t busy talking to my friends, I looked up facts on crows. The white one had caught my interest, and I wanted to know more about them. Did you know that crows are extremely intelligent? They can hold grudges for quite a while, bond with people, and even hold some sort of funerals.

Fascinating animals, but I thought that the white crow would remain nothing but an interesting encounter. Something to be fondly remembered from time to time. So you can imagine my surprise when I encountered the very same crow sitting at my high school’s entrance, observing me as I left.

I wouldn’t have noticed it if one of my friends hadn’t pointed it out. A lot of other students from all grades watched the bird with great interest, but it had only eyes for me. I couldn’t believe my luck and took a few more photos before saying my goodbyes to my friends.

At my home, I didn’t share too much with my parents about the bird. Why would I? I was a fifteen-year-old dipshit, embarrassed by even a passing association with my parents and family at large. Nah, I went straight to my room and examined the photos I made of the bird.

There was something special about the crow, that I knew from the beginning, but not just its appearance. It seemed unusual. The photos confirmed my mild suspicion. It was a bird, all right, but it appeared a bit too smart. I know that sounds weird, but you have to trust me on this one.

By all accounts, it was a crow. Nothing you haven’t seen before. But it was its eyes. Again, the eyes of a crow, but they had a spark in them that shouldn’t have been there. Yeah, they were supposed to be intelligent but nothing on the level of perceiving things as we humans do. And to me, it seemed like this crow could.

This is something you have to experience yourself to truly understand. At this time, I had thought my encounter with the crow a bit odd but nothing out of the ordinary. As I was about to go to bed and close my window’s curtain, that changed.

This dumb crow was sitting on a tree branch right outside my window, watching me for lord knows how long. My guts told me immediately that something was off with this bird. There was intent behind it eyes. Something beyond the mental capabilities of a common animal. No, this was something different.

I closed my curtains, cursing under my breath. Perhaps this was all my imagination. Like a toddler, I thought if the problem was out of my sight it had vanished for good. That night, I didn’t get much sleep. And the little sleep I got, the crow haunted them, flying circles above them, waiting for its chance to feast upon me.

I woke up in a cold sweat, immediately feeling the effects of my nightmares. When I went to school that day, it started. At first, it wasn’t something to pay much of my mind to. But in the following weeks, it only worsened.

The way people looked at me changed. Their eyes narrowed, their heads half-turned, ready to exchange whispers. As soon as they could, they watched me, staring holes in the back of my head. When I noticed, they turned away, laughing between themselves. Confused, I constantly checked myself in the mirror. Did my hair look weird? Did I have something stuck between my teeth? Did I forget to zip up?

I couldn’t find anything, which made things only worse. Was something so obviously wrong with me that everyone around me noticed it except for myself? Did my obliviousness to my inaptness make the entire thing even more hilarious?

It didn’t stop with looks, though. Every conversation, as insignificant as it might have been, turned into this uncomfortable mess. My tone, my phrasing, how I pronounced words; it all was wrong and off to my surroundings. No matter who I interacted with, stranger or old friend, they all left with a worse opinion of me than when they entered.

The hostility towards me was tangible. With each new day, I lost more of my social standing, creeping closer and closer to becoming a true outcast. All the while I couldn’t tell what happened. The transition was so slow that I couldn’t point to a single thing that would explain the shift.

After hearing this, you might think that this sounds like normal social anxiety. Heck, you might have gone through something similar. Always believing the judging eyes of the people around you, stalking you like prey. For my age, something like that is not completely out of the ordinary.

But the fucking white crow was. Without missing a day, it followed me around, never losing me. Out of all the hostile glances that pursued me, it was the most persistent. It always tried to find a way to stare at me. When I walked to school it flew above me. When school lessons began, it landed on a branch and watched through the window. When I went to bed and closed the curtains, it remained there as if its vision could pierce through the fabric.

I tried to get rid of the damn birds more times than I could count. I threw stones at it. I used my broom to scare it off when it was standing in front of my window. Nothing worked. Hell, it made things worse. People saw me attacking the white crow, and their dislike of me intensified.

Once I thought of taking my dad’s gun, finding an isolated space in the woods, and putting a bullet in this thing. But at this point, it was already too late. All these weeks to months of constant social scrutiny affected my perception. If I’d taken the gun and done it, people would have found out. What would they think of me? How could I justify myself from shooting a white crow?

All the names that they must have been called me; they would have another reason to use them. No, they would be justified in making new ones. Names that sting even deeper. Would they use them on me in the open? Would they start to bully me? Would I sign my fate as an outcast by shooting the bird?

I have a question. Have you ever seen how bigger carnivores hunt prey that lives in bigger herds? Herds so big, that they have no chance of fighting them. They find a weaker individual and isolate it. Once cut away from the herd, there is nothing their prey can do but wait for its inevitable death.

 I came to see the white crow as such a predator. I don’t know where it came from, whether they are an entire species, or why they focused on humans. Truth be told, I don’t wanna know. But what I know, the white crow has specialized in hunting humans.

Think about it. We are social creatures. Belonging to a group is one of our deepest drives. Only in communities are we safe from what stalks the dark. This desire is so crucial that it shapes our very perception of reality. How you are perceived is your reality. Without the group, you will die, so you have to do everything in your power to stay in it.

So, what if something could meddle with this perception? What if a predator could manipulate how you interpret your social surroundings? It would be very successful.

Everything I have described up until now could be explained by other means than something hunting me and fu...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/burnedchain on 2024-09-11 20:26:49+00:00.

---

For all intents and purposes, I’m not sure how to express my feelings about this experience. I initially thought that I’d keep this story to myself due to the fact that I didn’t think people would believe it. And while that may certainly hold true despite me posting this, this is a story that needs to be told.  By the title, you might assume that my experience wasn’t abnormal in any way, or that it was at least incredibly frustrating or anxiety-inducing.

But even then, how is it possible? How does a certified American Airlines pilot land their plane at the wrong airport, and release their passengers like nothing was wrong? Was it even an error on their part, or was it an error on mine? And above all else, what could’ve compelled me to post this story to a place like this? To be honest, other than that last question, I don’t know the answers to these questions, nor do I have any answers to the other mysteries that this story will bring up. What I can assure you of is that this was no normal landing, and this was no normal airport.

It was about three days ago, and I was on a return flight from a business trip in New York. I live in Texas, so you could imagine that it would’ve been a decently long flight from JFK International to DFW. I’d been planning to go home and spend some time with my family, since the trip lasted a little longer than I thought it would. I guess in retrospect, I did fulfill these plans, but nothing could’ve overshadowed the events that transpired on that flight. I’d been, admittedly, scrambling to get a ticket for the return flight since I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

In my luck, however, I was able to get an AA flight from NYC to Dallas, with only 7 seats left out of the 128 total seats on the plane. I got to the airport just fine, I went through customs just fine, and I made it to my gate just fine. By all accounts, this is as normal as a trek through JFK could go, save for my impeccable ability to lazily do everything at the last minute. Once they called my number, and I made my way onto the aircraft, everything proceeded out as normally as it could. I found my seat, stored my luggage, and sat comfortably until the plane took off without any abnormality.

Once we were in the air, everything was, once again, just fine. The food was as bad as usual, the seats were as cramped as usual, and my headphones worked just fine as they usually do. The old lady that sat next to me didn't bother trying to talk to me, and spent the flight reading what looked like some sort of crappy romance novel. The reason I emphasize this is because by all means, this was a perfectly normal flight. There was no indication; no symptom that would have or could have predicted what transpired once we landed.

Due to it being a long, overnight flight, I fell asleep at around 11 a.m. I’m not a heavy sleeper when I'm on anything that isn’t my own bed, so I figured I’d wake up a couple hours before we landed. When I came to, however, we were already descending to the airport. The plane stopped, and stationed itself at the terminal. While somewhat off-topic now, I just wanted to preface by saying that I didn't really pay attention to the surrounding area outside my destination. I'd been on this flight several times beforehand, so I never bothered to get a good look at the outside of the airport.

Getting off the plane was easy enough. Grabbed my luggage. Waited for the people ahead to start moving. Moved towards the plane’s exit. As I carried my fairly heavy bags into Terminal B, the jet lag starting to set upon me, I immediately noticed something strikingly obvious to anyone in the same mindset as I was. Airports aren’t exactly known for being buildings with immense personalities. Many airports use very basic layouts and architecture, leading them to look and feel very similar to each other.

However, if you travel often, you usually take note of the specific layouts and minor details that make the airport you’re traveling from stand out at least a little bit from the rest around the country. They, at the very least, have some sort of iconography and trivia about the specific city or region they're located in. The more you travel around these places, the easier it is to remember certain things about them. This was the same case for me. The reason I state all this is because of the realization I made in that very moment when I stepped into that terminal. Every aspect of it; every minor detail of it made it clear to me that this was not DFW.

I stood there in confusion, wondering if my eyes were tricking me, somehow. After around 10 seconds of contemplation, I came to the conclusion that I was correct. This wasn’t DFW, nor was it any airport I’d ever been to in my life. In pure instinctive confusion, I started walking back towards the entrance to the plane, thinking that there was a wrong turn I could’ve made. I stopped myself, of course, realizing that trying to go back on a plane with the intention of staying on it for the next flight wouldn’t be allowed in any way shape or form.

Because of this, I try to go for my second-best option: finding the customer service desk at the gate for help. However, as I started to look around for it, not only could I not find any such desk existing, the second most perplexing thing I’d noticed so far came into view for me. There were no airport staff anywhere I could see. There were many people, for sure, but none of them had any sort of uniform, badge, or equipment that would make me think they worked for this place. So, I tried asking the other people walking around.

Even if this was completely unfamiliar to me, I could at least be comfortable knowing that I wasn't alone here, right? Well, soon enough, that sentiment proved to be useless here. “Hello?”, I'd ask. “Please I don't know where I am”, I'd say. It all fell on deaf ears. Every person I tried asking just ignored me. Walking on by as if my presence was completely invisible and inaudible. As I stood there and took on that information, I was rightfully weirded out by whatever predicament I’d gotten into. What was this place? What do I do now?

While these questions entered my mind, time stood still in a way. Nothing felt real, as if I were somewhere that didn't really exist. With circulating feelings of perplexion, fear, and a slight sense of dread flowing in my brain, I could only stand there in awe of whatever new world I had ended up in, however mundane it seemed at first. Once I was able to move again, there was only one goal that clutched onto my thoughts, a survival instinct baked into the brain of every human being. Escape. As I clenched my fists with bated breath, I walked forward into a new world I wasn’t completely sure I could leave from.

Despite my earlier grievances with the airport not being what I expected, the airport was relatively normal, on the surface at least. As I trekked throughout the terminal, passing by shops, walkways, gates, it all seemed like it was perfectly fine. Yet, in a way, that sort of mundane normality felt more uncanny than if it were distinctly strange and unnatural. I had never been to this place before, and as far as I knew, it didn’t exist. I had absolutely no idea where I was or what I was doing here.

Eventually, I reached a place I recognized: the entrance where I arrived. I’d fully circled the airport. Despite the fact that I’d loosely ascertained the layout of the airport, I realized that there were still no answers to my questions.  While very stupid of me in retrospect, I only realized something important once this thought appeared in my head. My phone. I could look at my location on Google Maps and work my way from there. However, when I acted on this thought and pulled out my phone, it was to no avail. Every app I checked, every online service I tried, nothing would work right.

But it wasn’t just simply that every service was offline. No. It was just that nothing was working the way it should have. When I opened my phone, it turned on and worked just fine. But when I opened Google Maps to try and find my location, the map showed me nothing. Not that the map didn’t load, but all it did was show me an empty, blank terrain. No roads, no towns, nothing. I went to my messages app to see if I could text or call my parents and notify them of everything, to get any sign that I was still on the same planet as them.

But when I attempted to text and call my parents, they never responded. Unread message after unread message. Missed call after missed call. I try to do the same with my other contacts: My sister, my friends, my boss, etc. Still nothing. While I wasn’t entirely sure of the specific time zone I was in, there had to be at least someone I knew that was awake to receive my messages. With this information, I came to the conclusion that not only could I not understand where I was, no one else did either. They hadn’t received my messages, and I was completely, utterly alone.

I had to lean against the wall, and take in my situation. I really didn’t know what to think of this, and in all fairness, I still don’t. “What’s going on?”. “How did I get here?”. These thoughts echoed in my mind, and I felt myself falling into a complete state of panic. However, something brought me out of it. Something I'd initially written off as ignorable, but one that suddenly filled me with curiosity. It was the people.

I didn’t really pay much attention to the people as I was traveling through the ai...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fek8er/i_landed_at_the_wrong_airport/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/TheKoalaStoves on 2024-09-12 01:03:27+00:00.

---

I must have been eight when the nightmares began.

They started out as flashes—brief, terrifying images that would jolt me awake in the dead of night. At first, they were the typical childhood frights: shadowy figures lurking in the corners of my room, an orchestra of unseen monsters heard slithering to hide from moonlight bleeding through the curtains, and eerie whispers that echoed in my ears always waiting until I begin drifting off to sleep. Months had gone by, they grew darker, more vivid. In my dreams, I found myself trapped in mazes of shifting walls, chased by grotesque creatures with twisted limbs and empty, hollow eyes. They moved faster each time, their breath hot on the back of my neck as I would try desperately to escape.

No matter how tightly i latched my eyes or how fervently I prayed them away, the nightmares kept coming, gnawing away at my sense of reality and making sleep a thing that petrified me.

My parents were at a loss. They’d tried everything—night lights, soothing music, trips to therapists who promised that the nightmares were just a phase I would grow out of. Nothing worked. My nights remained haunted, and my days began to blur into a tapestry of exhaustion, my eyes ringed with dark circles. My friends would tell me that my once-vibrant energy appeared drained.

Every couple of years my grandmother would come to visit us from our home country. She was a small, weathered woman with kind eyes and a soft voice. I remember feeling like she arrived because of hearing about my nightly torment, she reached into her bag and pulled out a gift. It was a dreamcatcher, handmade, its web intricately woven with thin strands of twine, small feathers, and beads that glinted in the light. The hoop was aged, the leather wrapping cracked in places, but it felt powerful, almost alive.

"This was passed down through our family," my grandmother whispered, wrapping my fingers around the dreamcatcher. "It's an old tradition. It catches bad dreams, only the good ones may pass through it. This protected me when I was your age. I am praying it will now protect you, too."

I wasn’t sure what to think, but I gave her a hug and ran upstairs to hang it above my bed before dinner. I remember that night, because for the first time in months, I slept soundly. The nightmares vanished, as if sucked into the dreamcatcher's web and trapped there, unable to torment me.

Years passed. I grew, and the dreamcatcher remained above my bed, always watching, always guarding. I never had another nightmare. Even in conversations when my friends complained about terrifying dreams or restless nights, I would smile to himself, safe in the knowledge that my grandmothers tattered dreamcatcher was doing its job.

By the time I was an adult, and had almost forgotten what it felt like to be afraid of the dark. I moved into my own apartment, of course I brought the dreamcatcher with me—more out of sentiment than necessity. I was successful, content, and never gave the nightmares of my childhood much thought. The dreamcatcher was just another piece of decoration now, its purpose felt long fulfilled.

Until the nightmares came back.

It started slowly, just a sense of unease at first. A feeling that something was watching me, even in the safety of his well-lit apartment. I brushed it off as stress—work had been piling up, and i figured it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But then one night reality fractured into shards of my childhood nightmares returning.

They were different this time. More visceral. More… real. I dreamt of things crawling up from the shadows, their spindly fingers stretching toward him as I lay paralyzed in my bed. I dreamt of faces—twisted, grotesque, and familiar. People that I knew, my grandmother, my mom, dad… but distorted by something malevolent. And every time I woke up, the air in the apartment felt thick, charged with an oppressive energy, as if something was lingering just beyond the edges of my vision.

My mind begins to reel thinking about the dreamcatcher, I wondered if it had stopped working. It still hung above my bed, its web intact, the feathers and beads swaying gently in the breeze from the open window. But something about it seemed… wrong. The once bright strands of the web were dull now, and the air around it felt cold, as if it was drawing in the darkness rather than keeping it out.

One night, I woke up in a cold sweat, heart racing from a particularly vivid nightmare. I blinked, trying to shake off the lingering fear, but then i noticed something strange. In the corner of his room, where the shadows were thickest, there was movement.

At first, I thought it was just his eyes playing tricks on me, the remnants of my horrific dream warping my delicate perception. But then I saw it again—something shifting, crawling along the wall. My breath caught in my throat as the shape emerged from the darkness. It was one of the creatures from my nightmares, its eyes glowing faintly, its limbs twisted in unnatural angles.

I scrambled out of bed, backing away as the thing crept closer, its claws scraping against the floor. In my panic I grabbed a lamp, ready to defend myself, but when the light hit the creature, it vanished, as if it had never been there at all.

I lay there crumpled and frozen, my mind racing. Was I losing all grip on reality? Or was something far worse happening?

In the days that followed, the line between my dreams and the waking world began to blur. The nightmares seeped into my everyday life, small at first—flickers of movement in my peripheral vision at work, strange sounds echoing through my apartment. But then they grew bolder. I started seeing the creatures in broad daylight, glimpsing their twisted forms reflected in mirrors, hearing their whispers in the quiet moments before sleep.

It wasn’t until I found the first claw marks on my bedroom wall that I could accept the truth. The dreamcatcher hadn’t stopped working—it had been trapping my nightmares for years, holding them at bay. But it was old, worn out. The web had begun to fray, and now it was leaking. The nightmares, once contained, were slipping through, spilling out into the real world.

Desperate, I tried everything to fix it. I visited spiritual shops, consulted with experts in folklore, even reached out to my grandmother. But she was far older now, her memory fading, and in her more lucid moments when she could remember who I was, she only ever uttered one sentence "The dreamcatcher kept them away, but it can’t last forever."

One night, as the nightmares swarmed like locusts blocking the moon, I realized there was only one option left. I couldn’t fix the dreamcatcher, could never stop the nightmares from breaking free. But maybe I could stop himself from dreaming.

I stayed awake for as long as I could, swallowing caffeine pills and guzzling energy drinks, but exhaustion would inevitably overtake me. When I finally collapsed into bed, the nightmares came for me with a fury. They crawled out of the walls, their hollow eyes fixed on him, their twisted mouths grinning in malicious glee.

And this time, they didn’t disappear when the lights came on.

As I lay frozen, paralyzed with fear, the creatures crept closer. I realized, too late, that the dreamcatcher hadn’t just been protecting me from the nightmares. It had been protecting the world from them. I began to cry as I realized something that could not possibly be a coincidence. The nightmares coming back and my grandmothers decline happened at the same time.

Now, with the barrier broken, they were free.

And they were hungry.

---

I stare at the shredded remains of the dreamcatcher, its web torn to pieces.

What is real when your brain slowly starts working against you, and what is lurking just beyond the edge of sleep?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Interesting-Plan7574 on 2024-09-12 06:34:02+00:00.

---

I'm not usually one to post on forums like this, but lately, something strange has been happening, and I'm hoping someone here might have an explanation. For the past few weeks, I've been seeing a house - a house that shouldn't be there.

It appears in my backyard at night. I can't explain it. There's no house there during the day, just an empty patch of grass and the fence. But as soon as the sun sets, this old, crumbling structure is standing at the edge of my yard, silent and still, like it's always belonged there. I've tried to tell myself it's some trick of the light or my mind playing games, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it's waiting for something. For me.

It keeps coming back. Night after night. And now I can't stop thinking about it.

Every time I see it, I get this overwhelming feeling, like it's calling to me. I've been keeping my distance, telling myself that staying away is the right thing to do. But the pull is getting harder to ignore. Last night, I couldn't resist anymore. I stepped outside, trying to stay calm as I approached the house, thinking maybe if I got close enough, I'd be able to figure out why it's there - why it keeps coming back.

But the closer I got, the more I felt it - that terrible wrongness in the air. This was my first time walking toward the house, but it felt like I'd been near it before, like it had always been there, waiting for me to get close. It wasn't just a chill or a shiver - it was something deeper, something that settled into my bones and made my skin crawl. The air around the house felt thick, like it was alive, pulling me toward it even as some unseen force seemed to push me away.

The house loomed over me, dark and imposing, its windows thick with grime, like they were hiding something - or maybe someone - inside. The front door was slightly ajar, just enough to suggest that all I had to do was push it open a little wider. Step inside. See what was waiting for me.

But I didn't. I stopped right there, at the edge of the doorway, frozen. Staring into that thick, yawning blackness, I felt an overwhelming sense that something was holding me back. It wasn't just hesitation - it was as though the air itself between me and the entrance was alive, holding its breath, waiting for me to take that final step. But I couldn't. It was like I'd forgotten how to move forward.

I could hear things inside, though. Voices.

They were faint, barely more than whispers carried on the wind, just out of reach. I strained to listen, but the words slipped away before I could make any sense of them. They sounded like they were calling out names, but none of them were familiar. The whispers ebbed and flowed, tugging at something deep inside me, something that felt buried. It was like I should know who they were, but I don't.

They want me to come inside. I can feel it.

I don't know. Has anyone else experienced something like this? I know how it sounds, but I'm starting to lose my grip on what's real and what isn't. If you've had anything even remotely similar happen, let me know.

Because if this is real... what am I supposed to do?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HorrorStoryArchive on 2024-09-11 18:40:59+00:00.

---

I wanted to give a little bit of a background on my relationship with my cousin Jeremy. We aren’t some long lost siblings who have only met once. We were practically brothers growing up. But we lost contact when his parents had to move across the country for work while we were in middle school. We promised to keep in contact, and we did for the first year. But as we got older and our lives diverged into different directions. We slowly fell out of contact. We reconnected recently because we happened to go to the same college. Even with how many years have passed since we last saw each other, the amount he has changed is drastic. That’s why I don’t think the man sleeping in the room next to mine is Jeremy.

I’ll start with our reunion. There was a knock at the door to my dorm. I had moved in a few days ago and still didn’t know anyone in my hall yet. I was surprised to find a man around my age wearing a red beanie, black shirt, and jeans, standing in front of me. 

It took me a few seconds to recognize Jeremy. He had lost a lot of weight and had a beard masking a lot of his facial features, but the smile he flashed me immediately shot me back to middle school. I threw my arms around him laughing in disbelief, “Jeremy?” Looking back I should have checked it was him before possibly hugging a stranger, but I was so certain it was him.

He laughed and wrapped his arms around me as well, “I wasn’t sure if you’d recognized me at first.” He said as we stepped away from each other.

“I almost didn’t. Your beard made it hard to recognize you at first!” I invited him in and at least let him get settled on the sofa before firing off questions at him. 

He sat down while I just stood in awe. “What are you doing here? How did you know I was here? Are you a student here too?” Jeremy smiled at me from the couch as I threw question after question at him. When I finally paused to take a breath he tried to answer as many of them as he could before I started up again.

“Yeah I am a student here. Aunt Polly noticed when my mom had posted about my acceptance here. She messaged my mom to tell her that you were here too. Turns out we live in the same dorm hall and I wanted to come and surprise you.” I sat down in a chair across from him in shock. I couldn’t believe that he was actually sitting in front of me after so many years apart. “If we move quick enough we can still probably put in a transfer request so I could move into your dorm room with you.” I perked up at this. 

My dorm room was a two bedroom apartment style. It had two individual rooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen, and a living room. The roommate I was supposed to have moved in with one of his friends at the last minute, so I had an empty room.

Within the week, Jeremy had fully moved into the dorm. He had set up his TV in the living room with his Switch. We spent the first few nights playing Smash Bros and catching up. Jeremy is a biology major who wants to continue on to become an entomologist. This kind of surprised me, he had always been horrified with insects as a kid. “Why would you want to study insects? You hate bugs. I remember you’d shriek at the sight of a ladybug when we were kids.”

There was a long pause as he seemed to think about my question, before eventually shrugging nonchalantly. “Oh you know what they say about knowing your enemy” was the simple answer he gave me. At the time I thought that made sense. It was almost like forced exposure therapy or maybe by understanding insects he didn’t think they were as creepy. 

Another thing I started to notice was, I never saw Jeremy without a beanie. Every day when I woke up and came out of my room, he was already awake wearing that damn beanie. He went into the bathroom with it on when he went to shower, and came out with it on as well. I assumed he didn’t shower with it on because it wasn’t wet. I never asked him about it because I thought that maybe he had started prematurely balding and was embarrassed about it.

A few months into the semester I decided to play a prank on Jeremy. We used to prank each other all the time as kids and I thought that this would be a good way to test whether he was over his fear of bugs. 

There had been an unusual amount of centipedes in our dorm. Their bodies were dark black and shiny. They had orangish red legs that skittered across every surface in the dorm. Each one seemed to be about an inch long. I remember waking up to one trying to crawl into my ear while I slept. A shiver still shoots down my spine everytime I think about it. Now I don’t have an issue with bugs, but waking up to a squirming mass wiggling its way into my ear definitely put every single one of them on my hit list. Now I wear earbuds when I sleep now even if I don’t have anything playing on them. I’ve also thought of getting nose plugs…but I’m getting side tracked.

Anyway, I found one skittering across the counter while I was making food one day. Immediately, I had an idea, “hey Jeremy. Come here, can you check to see if this spaghetti sauce is too salty?” I turned to him as he set down his controller and walked over. As he got close I scooped up the centipede, but before I could show it to him I felt a stinging pain. I looked down to see the centipede had bitten me and started to actually dig into my skin like a tick. I shrieked as it began to wriggle its way under my skin. A shifting, squirming, bump began to form on my skin as it burrowed deeper. I looked up at Jeremy for help but he just stood there watching it happen. At first I thought he was frozen in fear but instead he was expressionless. “Jeremy! What the fuck? Help me!” 

All at once his expression changed to one of concern as he quickly closed the distance between us, “Shit sorry.” He grabbed the body of the centipede, half of its body was already under my skin. The second he grabbed it the wiggling stopped. It seemed to freeze. It didn’t try to burrow deeper and the bulge under my skin stopped shifting.

Slowly and carefully Jeremy pulled each section out of the hole in my skin. The upper portion of the centipede was covered in my blood. When he managed to fully pull out the centipede a hole was left behind in my skin. Liquid crimson slowly poured down my arm. I quickly grabbed a paper towel and covered the hole to prevent my blood from dripping onto the floor. I turned to Jeremy and saw him holding it close to his face. The bug hung limply like it was one of those rubber halloween decorations. It didn’t analyze its surroundings or look for a way to escape. It didn’t even try to attack Jeremy’s hand. It just hung there.

Jeremy turned it left and right analyzing it with interest. “J-Jeremy?!” I look at the centipede in his hands, “squish that thing now! I’m sick of these damn centipedes! I’m calling housing tomorrow and demanding they get an exterminator tomorrow.”

“But Sam…I’ve never seen anything like this.” He sounded as if he was in a trance. “I want to keep it for a bit to study it.”

“What are you talking about? You saw what it did to me!” I hold out my arm and remove the paper towel. I expose the hold to emphasize my point. It immediately started bleeding when I uncovered it. I quickly covered it again, “Shit…I think I’ll need stitches.”

Jeremy continued to study the centipede and didn’t even bother to look over at me. “Don’t be such a baby, Sam. I’m sure you are fine. Just put a bandaid on it.” I stood there stunned. I’ve never seen him show such a lack of care for anyone. Before I could think of a response he turned on his heels and quickly walked into his room shutting the door.

I was pissed as I walked to the front door, “I’m going to get an exterminator down here!” I yelled as I opened and slammed the door. I walked to the housing office and was able to convince them to call an exterminator when I showed them the multiple pictures I had taken and the hole in my arm (luckily I didn’t end up needing stitches for it).

Within a few days there was an exterminator at our door. Luckily Jeremy was out at his classes when he arrived. The man I opened my door to was large. His polo shirt stretched from his beer gut. He had a professional air about him as he smiled down at me, “Good mornin’, son. I was sent down here for a bug problem?” 

I nodded as I glanced at his name tag. It had big bold letters that read, “Bob.” I shook his outstretched hand, “Thank you for coming.” 

I invited Bob in by stepping to the side and gesturing for him to come in. I closed the door behind him as he walked past the kitchen and into the living room. He was already looking around, probably looking for places they could be hiding. “So…what are we dealing with here?” He says turning to look at me.

I explained the constant appearance of the centipedes as well as the horrific encounter I had with the one from the other day. He seemed skeptical so I pulled out my phone and showed him some of the pictures I took throughout the months, as well as the hole in my arm. 

He stared at the pictures and my arm, “Well son…I’ve never heard of a centipede like this in the area.” I was a little disheartened at first until he said. “but…I’ll take a look anyway.” He smiled at me and I felt relief that these things would finally be gone.

Bob and I spent the next hour walking around my dorm. He searched in corners, behind furniture, and under my mattress. There was nothing. Not a single trace of those damn centipedes. I began to feel like Bob didn’t believe the...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/KD_PL on 2024-09-11 21:05:43+00:00.

---

I need urgent help, I think I am in a town that doesn’t exist. I will do my best to explain with clarity. 

My name is Roger, I'm a cop.  I was recently re-stationed to a small farming town. I thought since it would probably be less eventful then the city, I would have had more time to pursue things I neglected for the majority of my life. 

However, that's not what happened…

Upon my arrival at the station everything was fine, meeting my new colleagues I learned almost everyone came from out of town like me. It was nice to know everyone could relate to me. The first day was uneventful so to cure my boredom I made the mistake of reading some old case files. 

I thought I was reading an elaborate prank, calls describing impossible problems, monsters and flying spines? . I thought they were not cross-checked, so some officers decided to practise their writing skills. But the details were meticulous, vast with real and signed resident accounts…

I sent a complaint to the station's higher ups.

The station's higher ups were confused at my complaint, and gave a speech about how they ensure standards are kept high in the station. Speaking to my new colleagues I received similar reactions, as if I was explaining to them how it's weird that it's dark during night time. 

I didn’t know what to think at first. I thought maybe since I'm the new guy the station was just messing with me. However I saw it with my very own eyes.

 My next door neighbour and his house vanished within about 5 hours. It was replaced with a patch of grass dominated by a colossal tree… A whole 2 story house disappeared in just 5 hours, replaced by old oak a few decades old. Talking to my other neighbours about it filled me with extensive paranoia, I never thought a confused look would fill me with dread. 

I like to consider myself intelligent, so I rather quickly realised something is wrong with the place.  I collected all the evidence I could to send to my old station. Including some interviews I did with some of the officers who had weirder calls. I wanted to get their unprofessional retelling of events. 

Their off the record point of view.

I sent off the first few to my old station with no response coming back. In fact nobody from the outside responded. I tried calling everyone from: friends, family and even old colleagues. It seemed I had access to the outside world but the outside world didn’t have access to me.

Honestly I began to question my own sanity. I mean there are signs: outburst of emotion, foggy memory and hallucinations. I think that's the best way to describe them. Oh which reminded me, I don’t seem to recollect how I got into the town. I got here, but if I drove here or flew I don’t remember. On top of that a quick google search showed me the place I'm in doesn’t exist, satellite images show just a thick forest directly where I stand. Standing directly next to my new little house, on the phone I only see trees. 

I'm unsure what my next move should be. So I decided to post this here. Hopefully someone will read the first interview  and tell me that this is not “normal”. 

I need confirmation that I'm not losing my mind. 

I transcribed the interview below.

8.09.2024 1:34PM Rowoak Police station  Interviewee - Jack Murrow

R - “And the recorder is on, how are you feeling Jack?”

J - “Good, how can I not be? I'm getting paid to do my favourite thing. Talking.”

R - “Alright, as you know I found out that some of the records were. Let’s say, poorly kept. So I'm going to ask a few questions about one of your calls just to fill in the missing details.” 

J - “No problem.” 

R - “Tell me about the call you had a few days ago at midnight, the one in Maggies.”

J - “ Just some kids broke into the store I guess, played some tricks on me too. Really that one had missing details? It was pretty uneventful, not like there were many details in the first place.” 

R - “Yes that one, just talk to me. Step by step what happened that night.”

J - “Alright big boss…”

I think it was just about five minutes past midnight, I was cruising down the main road on my unexpected night shift. I wasn’t supposed to be there that night, Anthony called in sick a day before. Ruined my Friday plans. I sadly don’t get paid to complain so I did my job. 

I remember it was rather cold that night, the breeze snuck into the cruiser at some points revealing my breath. I didn’t shut the windows completely as the echo of the outside wind brushing against the thick treeline brought comfort in the darkness. So did the quiet talk host blabbering on the radio about some new internet trend. The combination of those kept me awake for the midnight shift, the midnight shift is more of a formality than a need. I was on it a few times before and nothing ever happened apart from occasional check ups on my walkie talkie. After dark all business shut, the streets become filled with emptiness and the roads with occasional plastic bags dragged by the wind. 

Safe to say when my walkie talkie told me there is a potential robbery in Maggie's, My pupils grew. 

It took me less than a minute to arrive at the scene, empty streets and all. The owner was outside eagerly awaiting my arrival. He rushed towards me before I even had the chance to take a step outside of my cruiser. 

“I caught em I caught em I finally caught the fuckers!” His words gripped at my collar and snatched me closer as he shouted his achievements to me. 

“Slow down sir, what is going on what do you mean you cau-”

“Every single night clothes began disappearing and mannequins were placed in random corners of the shop. Two days ago I even found the backdoor wide open. YOU GUYS didn’t take me seriously so I took matters into my own hands. AND I CAUGHT THEM” The owner spoke fast in an aggressive farmers manner as If I was the nuisance and not the apparent burglar in the shop. 

I remember a few days ago some of the boys did visit Maggie’s on multiple occasions, yet like suggested they didn’t find anything of note. Apart from the fact that the money kept in the backroom safe was never touched. 

“Please sir, listen to me. Slow down… Tell me wha- what do you mean you took the matters into your own hands?” 

“Alright…I bought motion sensors and upgraded my doors. The sensors went off a few minutes ago and the shutters dropped.” The owner responded. His slowed down tone gave me the time to finally get a good look at him. He was an older gentleman with a thick whitened beard and a protruding bald spot. He certainly didn’t look like an owner of a clothes shop. His jacket and jeans were rugged, worn out. I'm guessing he ran the finances while his wife did the clothing part.

“So this burglar is still inside?” I asked while peeking behind his shoulder onto Maggie’s. It was a brick rectangle with metal shutters protecting the front door. A giant sign above the shutters glowed and sparkled in my car's headlights, it read “Maggie’s, Clothes Fit For All The Seasons.” 

“Oh they are and I want you to arrest them and tell them TO LEAVE MY MANNEQUINS ALONE!” his saliva polished my boot. 

I reached over to my walkie talkie and lined out the situation. While the owner was preparing to open the shutter doors I got the grim news that no backup would be coming. I doubted that the burglar would be armed or dangerous due to their recent non-violent history. However the fear of an altercation was still eating at me. 

My flashlight failed to reach the back of the store, slowly cutting off at the midpoint right at the rotating clothing racks. I couldn’t see any movement in the gloom, a good yet bad sign. 

“Hello…? This is the police, we surrounded the building. Make it easy for us and come out slowly with your hands up. “ I heard my own routine spoken right back to me, I was quite startled even though I knew it was just an echo. 

“I'm afraid… Afraid that the light switch is in the store room right at the back of the store. We can enter it through the backdoor.” With no hesitation I shut the front door and marched onward towards the back entrance. The owner fiddled with his mass of keys until one eventually fit. 

“Take a few steps back sir.” I gently slid my arm onto the owner's shoulder and pushed him away from the door.  I grasped the metallic handle, slowly turning the knob while trying to control my racing heart beat. I felt my wrist tense as the door refused to pop open even though I turned the knob a solid 85 degrees. After a deep breath and a quick snap. 

The backdoor was open. 

My flashlight lit the concrete grey staff room, compared to the actual store it featured no aesthetics nor colour. It was just a formality. A quick glimpse showed that the door leading to the store was closed, but I still had to check if he wasn’t here instead. 

Each step created a loud thud that echoed throughout the room. My flashlight following my panning head showed the room was empty. The room was rather small, only featuring: an old sofa, table with a dusty computer, fusebox and bunch of clothing racks doing their best to hide the blandness of the walls. 

“Nobody’s here, come in.” The owner in an instant rushed towards the fuse box, while mumbling to himself he flicked some switches until the staff room exploded with a bright light. The sound of multiple lights springing to life and the corresponding buzz filled the orchestra. 

“There we go, let me get the computer I've got some cameras we can look at.” The owner rushed to the bright monitor while I r...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fel5o2/i_think_im_in_a_town_that_doesnt_exist/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-11 23:53:26+00:00.

---

Previous

I don’t know if it was the world taking pity on me, keeping any more bad shit from happening for a while, but I was going to take it. Though I did see the giants a few more times, and on occasion, when gazing out of the porthole, I would see the giant eye watching us in the distance.

A body drifted in near the platform three months later. Catching in one of the nets. At first we thought it was probably some drowning victim, maybe a suicide that threw themselves into the ocean. They were completely naked, long, pale body shining in the morning glow when Hap first reported it to us. Sandy and I went down in the dive suits, pulling it from the tangled safety net and bringing it up the ladder. We noticed immediately when we got to it that it wasn’t a normal person, though.

”What the hell is that?” Hap said, looking at the creature, now laid out on the platform. Sandy and I leaned over along with him and Shannon, inspecting the strange being that we found.

It was long, probably nine feet if I had to guess. Human-ish torso. Or human enough, at least. It was extremely lithe, tiny, delicate fins running down the arms and spine, though they were hardly noticeable unless closely inspected. Gills ran from the chest up to the neck, elongated and smooth as it reached the head.

Its face was close to ours, but with a smooth, almost flattened nose. Larger eyes were situated far apart, almost on either side of the head, while the lower jaw was huge, extremely wide with sharp rows of teeth visible as it jutted out from the upper half of the head. Webbed hands at the end of long arms must have been used for gliding through the water easily. The oddest thing to appear though, was that at the waist it became more leathery, long masses of tentacles hanging down from the abdomen. They weren’t like octopus tentacles, but the best I could compare it to was something like that of a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. Long, slender, and pale just like its skin, extending maybe ten feet longer from the torso at its longest.

“Is this… is this a mermaid?” Shannon asked, in complete disbelief at what was out in front of us. My mind was flashing back to the submarine now, wondering if this was what we saw on the edge of the cameras before things went to hell. Maybe it was related to the giant eye? “Help me get it to the lab, now.”

The four of us hefted it up, heading right into the base lab and throwing it up on the exam table, tentacles falling off the end and curling on the floor below. Shannon grabbed a scalpel immediately, beginning to line it up with the center of the creature’s chest. Before she could make the incision even an inch, the creature began to scream, a horrible sound like the screams of a drowning person, sound escaping into bubbles and stifling water even here above the surface.

”Holy shit!” Sandy shouted, stepping back from the table as it swiped a hand at her, vicious needles at the end of the webbed fingers extending outward like a cats claws. Hap wasn’t so lucky, catching a couple of good slashes on his shoulder as he fell back from the creature. It screamed again, using inhuman strength to heave itself from the table. The tentacles began moving, sliding it across the smooth floor and toward the door, searching for any route of escape. I was finally able to see the wide open eyes as it looked back at us, fear in its eyes.

They were the same glowing purple as what I had seen below, closed into slits once more. It looked like it was barely able to keep its eyes open, likely because of the blinding light up here compared to the depths of the twilight zone. The look on its face was frenzied though, obviously struggling to breathe without being in its natural environment below the ocean. I’m not even sure how it was alive, honestly, but it looked like it was fighting for its life to return home.

“Stand back. Everyone stand the FUCK back!” I shouted, raising my hands in a sign of showing the creature I wasn’t going to hurt it Not sure if it got the message, because it only backed into the door more before turning to claw at the metal, begging to be let out. I moved toward it slowly, still holding my hands out but now trying to talk it down. “Hey, hey, I can help you. Stop for a second and I can let you out.”

”No! Don’t let it escape! Do you know what a discovery this is!” Shannon was huffing her way toward me now, trying to pull me back from the thing as it desperately searched for another way out, moving from the door to look out of one of the windows. “If you let it out, we can’t show anyone what we found!”

It sliced a hand at the window, scraping against the thick glass to make the worst sound I’ve heard in my entire damn life. I ducked back, covering my head as it pulled a hand back again, this time ramming a huge, open palm full force into the glass, shattering it. It pulled itself out, catching tentacles and bleeding deep blue blood as it scraped along the glass. Before we could open the door, it had dove back into the sea, clearing the safety net with ease and disappearing.

Shannon was cursing up a storm, banging her hands on the railing as she screamed to the empty ocean before us. Sandy and I were trying to help Hap out, deep gashes bleeding through and soaking his clothes now. They were only on his shoulder, thankfully, and though it would hurt for a while, he would heal with some bandages and basic first aid. Sandy and I were the only ones keeping cool heads though, because he was in deep shock while Shannon couldn’t do anything but rant about her lost discovery.

I wish that was the end of it. Shannon became obsessed with trying to find one, taking the tentacles and blood samples it left behind on the window to examine every single thing about them. We got lucky when pulling it into the lab, because she found a neurotoxin secreted in the tentacles, though it seemed the creature could activate it at will to sting prey. Hard to believe this thing could be that deadly. We weren’t able to test the effects of the toxin, of course, but judging from the makeup of it, those caught only lasted long enough to see the jaws close around them.

Hap… started to change. It was subtle at first, his speech and voice becoming odd and what seemed like the development of an acute type of asthma. Trouble breathing, issues with keeping food down, and a persistent headache were the start. Then it became rapid after the two month mark, taking slow hold of him.

He came into the cafeteria that morning gurgling, saying he felt like he had aspirated water into his lungs. Then it quickly worsened, with him collapsing to the ground as he stood up to head to the lab. We called med-evac immediately, noting it was a life or death emergency this time so they needed to get their asses here ASAP.

It didn’t matter. Hap collapsed, desperately clutching at his chest for air as he tried ripping through his clothes. I noticed now that skin was coming up between his fingers, webbing his hands up to the knuckles. As he ripped his shirt off, I saw why he wasn’t able to breathe- huge, slashed gills were opening further into his chest, pulsating as they tried to breathe in through dry air. He was drowning on land, desperately gasping as the oxygen simply had nowhere to go now.

I picked him up as fast as I could, desperately trying to drag him out to the water in hopes it would help. I shouted for Sandy as I went, knowing Shannon was up in the lab where she wouldn’t hear me. As we rushed through the door, I grabbed a life preserver hanging on the railing before jumping over, Hap was barely standing as I pulled, trying to get him over the bars despite how much taller he was than me. The worst happened then.

He broke in half. More like just… disconnected at the waist. His lower body slid down to the deck, hitting the wet floor with a smack. From where his body was severed, I was holding his top half, now dangling down huge, lengthy tentacles that were writhing in agony. I was barely able to hang on as one of them hit me, stinging me on the hand before I dropped into the water, Hap falling after me.

We hit the water hard, me barely hanging on to the float as he began gasping in big breaths, voice becoming less drowned and raspy as he did. He was screaming though, face contorting in pain as his skull began shifting, taking on a more aquatic, steamlined appearance like the creature before. He was drifting away from me now, gasping while squeezing his head as eyes began to move, sockets widening and stretching outward as they went. His jaw disfigured, jutting out with a sharp snap and pop. I felt myself losing conscious then, a woozy feeling overtaking me as the neurotoxin began taking hold from the sting he gave me. I was slipping in and out, life becoming a dream as Hap’s screams faded out on the waves. I felt arms close around me, situating a life vest over my head as I went limp, Sandy’s face glowing like an angel through the sea foam as she pulled me up.

She took me into the lab, setting me down on an exam table while screaming at Shannon to fix me, now. Shannon looked surprised to say the least, and quickly went over to the case nearby, pulling a small vial out and hefting a syringe. I was trying to talk to them, I think, trying to tell them to go after Hap while they still could, but nobody was listening to me, only Sandy screaming at Shannon as she took a sample from...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1feovz3/point_nemo_is_the_most_isolated_spot_in_the_ocean/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/adorabletapeworm on 2024-09-11 23:48:24+00:00.

---

Previous case

It is with deep regret that I must announce that some self-proclaimed ‘monster hunters’ have arrived. This happens from time to time, and it's always a headache.

(If you're not familiar with what Orion Pest Control's services are, it may help to start here.)

The differences between specialty pest control companies and ‘monster hunters’ will become clear as I describe the events of this week. To start, these aspiring Winchesters and Van Helsings go out of their way to pick fights with the atypical, sometimes without even a basic understanding of what they're up against. This causes problems not just for them, but for those of us that have to do damage control afterwards.

Dealing with an infestation improperly only makes it worse. That's true of all pests, regardless of if they're typical or atypical. For example, most homeopathic or over-the-counter treatments for bed bugs are ineffective for the fact that they're sneaky little bastards. In order to stop the infestation, the entire colony must be eliminated. It's not enough to just kill every adult you see.

The reason for the impromptu bed bug PSA is because that's what Orion was finishing up with when the ‘monster hunters’ rolled up in what had to be the most ridiculous vehicle I'd ever seen in my life.

Their incredibly badass transportation of choice was a motor home boasting a flaming skull spray painted on the side of it with their phone number, which I will not disclose. My jaw dropped, watching it in disbelief as it parked at a few houses over from where we were.

Reyna and Cerri had the honor of basking in the motor home's glory with me, as well as cleaning up the mess its passengers would leave afterwards.

Cerri voiced my thoughts perfectly: “Is that a clown car?”

Anticipating that some nonsense was afoot, I joked, “Bet you five bucks they're all wearing leather jackets!”

Reyna quickly said, “I'm not taking that bet. They're definitely wearing leather jackets. And at least one of them has a cowboy hat. And possibly a katana.”

Sure enough, two large men emerged from their skull-emblazoned transport, clad in leather dusters. And one was, in fact, wearing a black cowboy hat.

Reyna muttered, “Huh. No katanas.”

Cerri was visibly cringing, “I take it you know these guys?”

I sighed, “No, I just know the type. Another group just like them tried to deal with a Dreamer a few years back and ended up making the entire situation several times worse, so… be ready to go to that house.”

“Worse how?” Reyna asked, loading equipment into the back of the truck.

“Rather than trying to catch and release the Dreamer, as we do, they tried to kill it. Unsuccessfully. In retaliation, the Dreamer ended up forcing everyone in the house into a comatose state until we could get it calmed down.” I explained.

She nodded slowly. “Great!”

When it comes to dealing with the atypical, it's best to do so with knowledge and respect. Going into it with the mindset of ‘hunting monsters’ already puts you at a disadvantage. The Neighbors belong in this world just as much as we do. They've lived through and seen things we can only dream of. While they can be dangerous, they are also capable of great acts of kindness as well as all the gray areas in between.

On the subject of vigilantes, humanity has done the Neighbors pretty dirty in the past; there's a part of me that can see why some of them hate us so much. We forced them to live in the Mounds. And now we take the world we forced them to give us for granted. The very least we could do to make up for it is not be complete dicks to them, if we can avoid it.

While my coworkers finished packing up, I called Victor, watching the house the vigilantes disappeared into for any signs of turmoil.

When I told him about the monster hunters, he said, “Yeah, I know about them. That homeowner called us not long after you three left. Tale as old as time: they pissed off a Housekeeper and didn’t like the answer I gave them. About an hour later, they called back all smug about how much cheaper it is to call those guys.”

Our services aren't even that expensive, especially compared to some pest control companies. The client must be paying these guys in chicken nuggets.

“A Housekeeper?” I resisted the urge to groan. “Well, that thing’s going to transform.”

“Yup. If it does, just try to make sure it doesn't kill anyone.” He replied, sounding exhausted.

While Reyna, Cerri, and I have been attending to Orion's regular (and irregular) duties, he and Wes have been focused on the Gingerbread House. Namely, trying to track it down. But, just as Deirdre predicted, it seems to keep moving. One of them will smell something sickly sweet or find crumbs left behind from discarded confections, only to discover that they're following a dead trail.

A few days back, when we reconvened after the Dead Duo's search, Vic mentioned that they'd spotted black thorns wrapped around one of the trees decorated with cookies. That makes me wonder if the Hunters are doing the same thing Orion is. Iolo hasn't mentioned anything about it in our sessions, but I could tell that the news of the gingerbread house had troubled him.

The good news is that, so far, we haven't heard any reports of children going missing. We'll do what we can to ensure it stays that way. And since our initial meeting, the Cookie Hag (for lack of a better term) has not tried to contact me. No more desserts have been left by my door.

Something I want to be clear on is that I'm not planning on doing that deal with the gingerbread house's owner. Right now, the goal is just to get him to focus more on her than on me and in turn, use the threat of him finding her to keep her from luring any children to her home. The ultimate goal is to see if he considers her enough of a threat that driving her out would be sufficient in evening out my life debt to him.

I know that it's risky and it's not well thought out. Believe me, I know. It's not ideal. But what other options do I have? (And no, inmates. Getting with Iolo is not an option.)

More on Iolo later. Sorry to jump around so much; a lot has happened since I last spoke to yinz. These vigilantes were the root of the chaos we’ve been contending with.

The one with the cowboy hat flew out of the front door like a bat out of hell. Amazingly enough, the hat stayed on his head. That was my cue to get my happy ass over there. I told the other two to join me once they were done loading up.

Cowboy Hat saw me and started shaking his head at me, “Ma'am, you need to leave! There is a very dangerous creature inside this house, but we've got it under- HEY!”

I walked right past him.

Fun fact: they did not have it under control.

As expected, the Housekeeper had transformed. The lights were flickering. The TV showed static, which oddly sounded like a distant chorus of women singing hymns. Shouting was audible over the hymns, followed by the sound of wood splintering.

I hurried, ignoring Cowboy Hat as he tried to grab me, presumably to pull me to safety. After weeks of dealing with Iolo's strength, speed, and skill, it seemed as if this man was moving in slow motion. He looked bewildered as I easily evaded him as I sought out the source of the commotion.

The Housekeeper’s headless body was clawing at a closed door. From another room, I could hear the head cackling as its sharp, bloodied fingernails scraped more deep gashes into the wood. I tried to sneak up on it, keeping a hand on Ratcatcher.

The body abruptly froze. After a moment of stillness, it began to levitate, rising higher until its stump of a neck was nearly brushing the ceiling. It then turned slowly to face me, slumped and dangling as if it was hanging from a noose.

I swung Ratcatcher in an upward arc just as it dove for me, outstretched hands wiggling towards my eyes. It swerved away from the blade, but not quickly enough, earning a thin slice along its side.

More shouting. My coworkers had come in, much to Cowboy Hat's increased distress. The body had landed roughly on the floor, skidding to a stop against the client's white sofa.

“Find the head!” I yelled, racing towards the Housekeeper as its twitching hands groped at its injured side.

Afterwards, I heard Reyna's and Cerri's footsteps banging through the house regardless of Cowboy Hat's protests.

Reyna knew what she was doing and while Cerri is obviously still learning, she seems to follow directions pretty well. I could count on them to deal with the head while I contended with the body.

Meanwhile, poor Cowboy Hat was left standing in the living room, dumbfounded, “Who are you people?!”

“Please just stay back!” I replied quickly, knowing that the transformed Housekeeper was about to be even angrier and more dangerous after being hurt.

Sure enough, a chair flew towards me as if thrown. I dropped down to avoid having my skull caved in by it, adrenaline warming my spine. Cowboy Hat swore and drew his gun as if it was going to do something.

“Sir, please put the gun away and find somewhere to hide!” I tried to be polite, I really did, but I didn't trust this guy not to shoot me instead of the Housekeeper. And even if his aim was accurate, all he'd succeed in doing was pissing it off even more.

The Housekeeper then raised its arms, causing a shelf to tip over onto Cowboy ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1feos6i/orion_pest_control_monster_hunters/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/desasterpiece on 2024-09-11 21:45:29+00:00.

---

You guys know me—I’m obsessed with tech. I’ve been running my YouTube channel for years, testing the latest gadgets, reviewing every new release, and diving deep into the specs. If there’s a new phone, laptop, or even some weird piece of tech no one’s ever heard of, I’ve probably already taken it apart and put it back together. So when Apple sent me an iPhone 16 to review before the official launch, I was hyped.

They didn’t say much in the email. Just that I was among the first to get it and that there was a “revolutionary” feature in the camera system that they were particularly proud of. I didn’t think much of it at first. I mean, how many times can they really improve a camera, right? But when I finally got the phone in my hands, I realized they weren’t kidding.

From the outside, it looked like a slightly sleeker iPhone 15. Same general design, maybe a little slimmer, more glass. The real magic was in the camera. Apple’s big push was this new “Enhanced Night Vision Mode.” Apparently, it could capture images in near-total darkness—something to do with AI and some new sensor tech. I immediately thought of all the low-light vlogging I could do.

That night, I decided to give it a test run. I turned off every light in my apartment, leaving it completely dark except for the faint glow of the streetlights creeping through the blinds. I set the camera to night mode and started recording.

The clarity was insane. Even in the pitch black, the phone picked up everything—the details in the textures of my couch, the slight scuff marks on the floor, even the individual strands of my carpet. It was eerie how perfect it was. But as I was panning the phone around, something caught my eye.

In the corner of the room, near the hallway leading to my bedroom, there was… movement.

At first, I thought it was a glitch. Maybe some kind of artifact or reflection from the window. I panned back. There it was again. A shadow, long and thin, barely distinguishable against the wall. But the weird thing was, it wasn’t there when I looked with my own eyes.

I stared into the darkness, seeing nothing. But when I checked the phone screen again, the shadow was… shifting. It wasn’t just standing still—it was moving, slowly, almost imperceptibly, like it was swaying back and forth.

I laughed nervously, thinking it had to be some software bug. Maybe the AI was trying too hard to interpret something that wasn’t there. I kept recording, but this time, I zoomed in.

The closer I got, the clearer the figure became. It wasn’t just a shadow. It was a person. Tall, gaunt, dressed in what looked like old-fashioned clothes, the kind you’d see in photos from the 1800s. His face was pale, eyes sunken and empty.

My heart started racing. I quickly turned on the lights and pointed the phone at the corner, but there was nothing. Just an empty hallway.

I laughed again, trying to shake off the unease, but when I looked at the footage, the figure was still there. Staring at me.

I stopped recording and threw the phone on the couch. For the next hour, I tried to calm myself down, telling myself it was just some weird software glitch. Maybe it was a prank, something Apple programmed in to mess with early testers. But when I picked the phone back up, there were more of them.

In every corner of my apartment, through the phone’s camera, I could see people—figures, shadows. Some of them were just standing still, staring blankly at the walls, while others were barely visible, flickering in and out like static on an old TV.

I wiped the screen, rebooted the phone, even reset it to factory settings. But every time I opened the camera app, they were still there. And they were getting closer.

One woman, her hair matted and wet, was standing in the kitchen. She was dripping, like she had just stepped out of a river, her clothes clinging to her frail body. Her eyes were wide, almost bulging, but there was nothing inside them—just empty, black sockets.

I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I tried, I could hear them. Faint whispers, footsteps that weren’t there. And when I checked the phone, they were always closer.

By the next day, I was a wreck. My subscribers were blowing up my inbox, asking for the review, but I couldn’t bring myself to use the phone anymore. Every time I did, the figures grew more vivid, more real. I could feel their presence now, like the temperature would drop whenever I picked up the device.

I needed to get rid of it. I thought about mailing it back to Apple, but then what? They’d think I was crazy. So I decided to document it, make a video, and maybe one of my viewers would know what was happening.

I set up my camera and hit record. But just as I started talking, the screen on the iPhone 16 flickered. I grabbed it, and my heart sank.

There was a new figure in the room—standing right behind me.

I turned around, but of course, there was no one there. I looked back at the screen, and the figure—no, figures—were now all around me, closing in. Their faces, once blurry, were now clear as day. I could see every crack in their skin, every drop of water dripping from the woman’s hair, every twisted expression on their faces.

Then the phone buzzed. A notification. It was a FaceTime call, but there was no caller ID. Just a black screen. I didn’t answer. I didn’t dare.

The whispering got louder, and before I could stop myself, I answered the call. The screen was dark for a second, and then the camera switched to selfie mode.

Only, it wasn’t just me in the frame. They were there too, standing around me, their cold lifeless hands reaching toward my shoulders, their empty eyes staring straight into the lens. I screamed, dropping the phone, but the whispers kept growing louder, the room spinning, the air turning ice cold.

NY TIMES:

Local tech YouTuber Found Dead in Apparent Home Accident

[Sept 11] A popular technology YouTuber was found dead in his apartment late last night. Authorities were alerted after neighbors reported strange noises coming from the home. Upon entry, the police discovered the victim’s body in what they described as a “mangled” state, though details remain sparse.

Oddly, the victim was found clutching a prototype iPhone 16, which has yet to be officially released. Police have confirmed there was no sign of forced entry, but the cause of death remains unknown. The phone is currently being investigated as evidence.

At this time, officials have declined to comment on the cryptic footage found on the device, which is said to be “unexplainable.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/EllieRaineFreed on 2024-09-11 18:02:10+00:00.

---

I’m not sure where to start with this, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore. I work as a security guard in a mid-sized office building. Nothing fancy, just a regular office complex where I do the night shift. It’s usually dead quiet. I do rounds, check the cameras, and spend most of the time staring at my phone. But last night, something happened, and I can’t shake the feeling that something’s really wrong.

The night started like any other. I clocked in at 10 PM, took over from the day guard, and settled into my routine. The building’s empty after 8 PM, except for the cleaning crew that comes in for a couple of hours. They were just finishing up when I started. By 11:30, they were gone, and it was just me and the cameras.

I usually do a walk-through around midnight, just to stretch my legs and make sure everything’s locked up. The building’s got six floors, but only the first two floors are actively used by tenants. The rest are under renovation. I don’t like going up to those upper floors. They’re dark and full of half-finished walls, exposed wiring, and debris. I’ve always had a weird feeling about them, but part of the job is making sure no one’s up there doing something they shouldn’t.

I left the security office and started my round. Everything was normal—first floor was quiet, the doors locked, the lights dim. I made my way to the second floor. It’s a bit creepier at night because the motion lights only come on as you walk through, so you’re always stepping into a pitch-black corridor until the lights flicker on. But it was empty, as always.

I was about to head back downstairs when I thought I heard something. Just a faint, rhythmic tapping. I stopped, straining to listen, but it was gone. Figuring it was probably just some pipes settling or construction equipment, I shrugged it off and started down the stairs.

But there it was again. Tap-tap-tap. Faint, but persistent. Coming from above me.

I stood there, looking up the dark stairwell toward the upper floors. No one was supposed to be up there. I debated whether to go check or just ignore it. It wasn’t my first time hearing weird noises in this building. Renovations make things creak and shift. Still, the sound bugged me.

Eventually, I grabbed my flashlight and made my way up the stairs, the tapping growing louder with each step. The third floor was pitch black. My flashlight beam cut through the dust hanging in the air as I stepped off the landing. The floor was mostly unfinished—bare drywall, tools left scattered around by the construction crew. It was eerily silent except for the sound of my footsteps.

Then I heard it. A faint creak. Like someone shifting their weight on the floorboards ahead.

“Hello?” I called out. No answer.

I walked deeper into the floor, my flashlight bouncing off empty walls and exposed wiring. That’s when I saw it. A door at the end of the hall. One that shouldn’t be there. It wasn’t part of the renovation plans—I knew the layout of the building by heart. This door was old, with peeling paint and a tarnished brass handle.

I stopped, staring at it, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. No way was that part of the renovations. It was out of place. Like it had been there longer than the building itself.

I’m not proud of this, but I didn’t want to open it. Something about it felt wrong, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I turned to leave, and that’s when the tapping started again—this time from behind the door.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I froze. My heart was racing, and my mouth went dry. There was no mistaking it now. It wasn’t a construction noise. It was deliberate.

I took a step forward, then stopped. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to open that door. I backed away slowly, my flashlight flickering as the tapping grew louder. Closer.

I bolted. I turned and ran back down the stairs, nearly tripping over my own feet. I could hear it now, that tapping echoing behind me, faster, like something was coming down the stairs after me.

I didn’t stop running until I was back in the security office. I slammed the door shut, locking it behind me, and checked the cameras. Nothing. Every floor was empty, just like always. But I knew what I heard. That door wasn’t supposed to be there, and whatever was behind it... it wasn’t supposed to follow me.

I spent the rest of the shift glued to the camera feed, watching the stairwell, waiting for something to show up. Nothing ever did. When morning came, I left as soon as my relief arrived. I didn’t say anything. What could I even say?

I went back tonight, but I didn’t do the walk-through. I can’t bring myself to go near the upper floors anymore. Not after that.

I don’t know what to do. I need this job, but I don’t know if I can handle it if whatever was behind that door decides to come back.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nemmoph on 2024-09-11 16:40:30+00:00.

---

When I first met the Pale Man, he wore a suit of deepest black. There wasn’t a speck on it - not even a fleck of dirt from the muddy road he must have walked to reach my father’s pub. He stood out from our regular clientele, who struggled to go an evening without smearing gravy-stained fingers on their trousers or slopping beer down their shirts.

As I watched him effortlessly navigate his way across the packed room, and take a seat at the single empty table, my heart clenched. I’d kill for a suit like that, I thought. A suit that fit me perfectly. A suit made by a tailor instead of my mother cannibalising the clothes my brother had long since outgrown. A suit that would make people pay attention when I walked into the room.

As if I had spoken the words aloud, he locked eyes with me and smiled. Later, he would tell me that I might as well have whispered my desperation into his ear. He hadn’t read my mind - not exactly. “I could smell it from across the room,” he said. “The reek of your hunger.”

But that secret wouldn’t be revealed to me for many years. During the first few minutes of our acquaintance, I was thrilled by his sudden, unexpected attention. When he beckoned me to his table, I all but tripped over my own feet in my haste to reach him.

Up close, he was breathtaking. Auburn hair fell in heavy curls onto his shoulders, and his pale skin was almost pearlescent. His eyes, nearly as dark as his suit, seemed to laugh.

As I took the only other seat at the table, his smile grew wider. Through his parted lips, I saw that his teeth were stained black. It was not the usual decay that afflicted some of our neighbours - it looked as though he had tried to take a bite out of the night itself. I glanced away quickly, feeling ashamed somehow - as though I had peered through a keyhole and glimpsed something I shouldn’t. When I looked back again, I saw his teeth were straight and white. Relieved, eager, I dismissed it as a trick of the shadows.

“You like this?” He motioned towards his suit. I nodded, and he asked, “Would you like one of your own?”

The laughter bubbled out of me before I could stop it. “It matters little what I want - I’ve as much chance of affording one as a cat’s in Hell without claws.”

He tutted lightly. “A rather constrained attitude. In life, half the battle is deciding what you want. So tell me, Peter,” he propped his delicately pointed chin atop his laced fingers, “what do you want?”

Had I paused to question how he knew my name, I would have rationalised that he had heard one of our patrons summoning me back to the bar, demanding a fresh pint of beer. But I didn’t question. The Pale Man was too fantastical a sight - too rich for our humble village, too important to talk with the likes of me. I feared that, should I allow my attention to wander, he would evaporate before my eyes.

So I answered his question.

Of course I wanted the suit. More than that, I wanted one for every day of the week.

Every confession after that first one came easier.

Most people born into our village lived their entire unremarkable lives there. They were christened, married and laid to rest within the small boundaries of the same church and its yard. The thought of following that fate made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to escape, to travel dusty roads and churning seas, to see anywhere other than here.

And I wanted to do it comfortably - luxuriously, even. My entire life, I had watched my parents hoard each coin. Usually, it stretched just far enough, but in leaner times they agonised over how it should be spent - one winter, my mother skipped so many meals that she scarcely had the energy to rise out of bed.

I wanted respect, and my own small stock of fame - a name associated with something other than pouring drinks in a dingy pub. Mostly, I wanted to be seen.

All of this burst out of me in a rush. I didn’t care that I might be overheard, and that if my father caught wind of it, he would try to knock such notions out of my head with a sharp clap around the ear. Only two things seemed important: baring my soul to the Pale Man, and keeping my eyes on the table while I did it. At the corner of my vision, I could see his smile growing wider and wider, and a voice in my head I refused to acknowledge even as I obeyed it warned me that should I look, I would see those black fangs again.

When at last I fell silent, the Pale Man said, “Excellent, Peter! See, you’re already halfway there. You know what you want - now you must decide what you’re willing to do to get it.”

For that, I had no response. Dreams were all well and good, but I lived in reality. For a young man of humble origins, the best hope was to strike out for the nearest town and try to forge a life there. But there would be no suits in that future - no ships nor accolades, perhaps not even anything resembling comfort.

The Pale Man leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially into my ear. “What if I told you I could give all that to you? A long life filled with anything you could desire. And not in some dim, distant future, but right now - you could walk out the door and step into a new life.”

I should have laughed, or accused him of mocking me. Instead I had an image of a serpent and an apple, and what our rector might say if he could hear this conversation.

Deep laughter rumbled in his chest. “You give me entirely too much credit! I’m not Him. I’m merely a talented individual in a position to offer you an excellent deal.”

I risked a glance at him. His teeth were thankfully still white, but his eyes had grown sharp - hungry. I wondered whether that expression was mirrored on my own face.

“And what would my end be?”

“Once a year, you will need to complete an errand for me.” He waved an airy hand. “Nothing outside of your capabilities, of course, and you will be able to discharge your duties in a single day. The other three hundred and sixty four days belong to you entirely.”

In my entire life, I hadn’t owned a single day. They belonged to my parents, my brother, and as soon as I was as tall as the tables, the pub’s patrons. Sacrificing one day a year seemed like -

“An excellent bargain?” The Pale Man supplied. “I quite agree. If you wish to accept, we need only drink on it - no, wait!” He plunged a hand into one of his pristine pockets and withdrew a fat, gleaming apple and a silver paring knife. Dropping me an exaggerated wink, he said, “We all must have our little jokes, Peter.”

When he sliced into the apple, I had a sudden suspicion that the flesh inside would be rotten and worm riddled. But it was as crisp and juicy an apple as I had ever seen, the aroma strong enough to make my mouth water.

He cut off two slices and held one out to me across the table. As I reached for it, he pulled it just out of my grasp.

“One more thing: you cannot exit our deal prematurely. We’re entering a contract, of sorts, and it must run for its full term. Is that acceptable to you?”

I plucked the slice from his hand and crammed it into my mouth. Grinning, he did the same.

“Go then, Peter,” he said once he had swallowed, motioning towards the door. “Enjoy your new life.”

Standing up so quickly my chair clattered to the floor, I strode to the door and yanked it open. Just before I stepped over the threshold, a voice whispered in my mind, See you in a year.

As I set out down the road, with nothing more than the clothes on my back, I had no doubts. A single, irresistible urge dominated me: head south. After a mile of following my new compass, I found a young woman stranded by the roadside. She gratefully accepted my offer to escort her to the next village, some three miles further. The walk gave us time to get acquainted. I learnt that she was wealthy and well-connected. She learnt that I was charming and funny - although that was as much a discovery for me as it was for her.

The next week, in the city, I was fitted for my first suit - a gift from the grateful young woman.

The next month, we were married with the blessings of her parents, who were surprisingly willing to allow their daughter to marry a poor man of no name. As a wedding present, they funded a six month tour of the continent. We wondered at ancient ruins and paintings so exquisite they near moved me to tears, slept in sheets softer than anything I could have imagined, and dined with the wealthy friends of her wealthy parents.

They also had friends at home, as I discovered when we returned. Everyone was so eager to help me find a path in life - something on which I could build my name.

By the end of that first year, I had a devoted, newly-pregnant wife, a grand home in the city, and I was in the exciting, early stages of building my reputation. I had all but convinced myself I had imagined the Pale Man, dreamed him up as a way of explaining my incredible good fortune.

But precisely one year after our first meeting, I woke suddenly in our warm marriage bed with the certainty that I was being watched. Unwillingly, I rose and went to the window. When I cracked the curtains, I saw the Pale Man standing with his hand on our gate, wearing his familiar smile.

I wish I could tell you what that first errand was. It appals me that I can’t, but you must understand - I spend the rest of the year trying to forget the one day that belongs to him, and those days he does own have blurred together over time.

Sometimes, the task is simp...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1feeq88/think_twice_before_accepting_the_pale_mans_offer/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/No-Glass-3279 on 2024-09-10 20:06:13+00:00.

---

I was fourteen when my parents sent me to stay with Aunt Meredith and Uncle Cole in Pennsylvania. I looked forward to a few weeks with my cousins, Sara and Ethan, in a town that felt like the perfect escape from the monotony of home. Their neighborhood was quaint—a quiet cul-de-sac with tidy lawns and kids playing until dusk, the kind of place where you’d expect the ice cream truck to make its rounds like clockwork.

Sara and Ethan were only a year or two younger than me, but they had endless energy and a knack for finding trouble. Almost immediately, they introduced me to Henry and Jacob, two boys from a few houses down. Jacob was sixteen, tall, with a sly grin that made you wonder if he was always up to something.

We spent most days exploring the woods of Kimber Hills at the end of the street, a place that felt wild and alive, where every shadow seemed to hide a secret, and every rustling leaf sounded like a hidden creature. I loved the thrill of stepping into the unknown, but one afternoon, as we were getting ready to head out, a woman from the last house on the street called out to us. She had a kind face and silver-streaked hair pulled into a neat bun.

"You kids can play anywhere," she said from her porch. "Even down by the creek. But stay away from Puckett Street."

We stopped, surprised by her tone. Sara gave me a puzzled look. "What’s Puckett Street?" I asked.

The woman’s smile faded. "Just trust me, dear," she said, her voice firm. "You don’t want to go there."

At dinner that night, I brought it up. Uncle Cole was sitting at the head of the table with my aunt to his left. He was usually easygoing, always ready with a joke, but his face darkened at the mention of Puckett Street. He set his fork down with a deliberate clink, eyes narrowing.

“You didn’t go there, did you?” His voice was low, almost a growl.

I shook my head quickly. “No, we didn’t. I just heard about it.”

Aunt Meredith exchanged a look with him, her fingers nervously twisting the napkin in her lap. “Mr. Stimble lives there,” she said softly. “He’s… not a nice man. Likes to keep to himself.”

Uncle Cole leaned forward, his voice firm. “You listen to me. Stay away from Puckett Street. No one goes there. Ever.”

The sternness in his voice sent a chill down my spine. I nodded, too afraid to ask more.

For a few days, we kept to the familiar trails, trying to forget about it. But Jacob was curious. He kept bringing it up in little ways, taunting us about being too scared to find out what was so bad about Puckett Street.

Then, one hot afternoon, Jacob threw a rock into the creek and smirked. “What do you think’s so bad about Puckett Street?” he challenged. “Maybe they’re hiding something, or some old guy just wants his privacy. Either way, I want to know.”

Ethan hesitated. “Maybe there’s a reason everyone says to stay away.”

But Jacob wasn’t convinced. “Come on. Aren’t you curious?”

I felt a pit form in my stomach. I wanted to say no, but I found myself nodding. “Just a look,” I whispered, glancing at Sara, who seemed equally unsure. “And then we go.”

We moved deeper into Kimber Hills, the path narrowing and the trees pressing in close. After about fifteen minutes, we reached it—a fence made of old wood and rusted wire, almost swallowed by ivy and brush. Beyond it, Puckett Street stretched like a forgotten road.

There it was—a small house with cream-colored siding, its faded purple shutters looking out of place. The lawn was too perfect, the rocking chair on the porch swaying slowly despite the stillness of the air.

“See? Just a house,” Jacob scoffed. “Nothing special.”

But everything about the place felt wrong—too quiet, too still. Before any of us could protest, Jacob grinned and darted across the street. “I’m going to knock!” he called back.

We watched, hearts pounding, as he knocked once, twice. No answer. He turned to leave, but then the door creaked open. A massive figure filled the doorway. A hand shot out, grabbing Jacob by the collar and yanking him inside. The door slammed shut, cutting off his scream as quickly as it began.

Henry began pushing me and Sara. “Go, go, go!” he hissed, and we ran, tearing through the underbrush, not stopping until we burst into my aunt and uncle’s house. Breathless and panicked, we blurted out what happened.

Uncle Cole’s face went pale. He grabbed a pistol from the drawer and headed out without a word. Aunt Meredith’s hands shook as she dialed 911.

Hours passed. The sun dipped below the horizon, shadows stretched long and dark across the walls. Henry’s mom came to get him, leaving just Aunt Meredith and me waiting in a heavy, fearful silence.

When Uncle Cole finally returned, he looked shattered. His jeans were smeared with mud, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. His hands trembled, and his eyes were wild, hollow.

“What happened?” Aunt Meredith whispered.

He swallowed hard. “The police broke down the door,” he said, voice barely steady. “Stimble… didn’t answer. They heard screaming—an awful, inhuman sound. They shot him… he’s dead.”

Aunt Meredith gasped, but Uncle Cole continued, “They found Jacob, or… what was left of him. Pieces. Scattered, like something had torn him apart.”

I felt a cold dread settle over me. “Did...Mr. Stimble...?"

Uncle Cole’s eyes were wide and haunted as he shook his head. “There was something in that house," he murmured. "Not a man, not an animal… but something. When they shot Stimble, a door to the attic creaked open… and this… thing came out. Skeletal, thin as bone, eyes burning like embers in a skull. It moved so fast, like a shadow given life, and it took Jacob’s remains back into the attic clutched in it's jaws. The officers… they swear it was some kind of demon.”

He rubbed his face, tears slipping down his cheeks. “No one believes them. No one believes us. But now, with Stimble gone… that thing has no one to control it. No one to feed it.”

Aunt Meredith stood up, shaking. “You’re going home,” she said to me, her voice trembling, exerting what little control she had over the situation. “First thing in the morning.”

I didn’t argue. I could feel the terror in the air, the way it pressed down on us. They put me on the first bus out, and I never went back. Aunt Meredith and Uncle Cole moved soon after, leaving without a trace, just like they had promised.

So, if you ever find yourself in northern Pennsylvania, and see a house with cream-colored siding and faded purple shutters… keep driving. Don’t look back. Whatever’s in that attic is still there, waiting. The caretaker is gone now.

And it’s hungry.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Neil4123 on 2024-09-10 16:48:21+00:00.

---

Growing up in rural Missouri, I lived in a small house at the edge of civilization.  A series of gravel roads winded through the area my house was in, but mine was the only house on our road, and was thus very secluded.  My parents and our mailman were the only ones to use our road at all, it was such a rare event for anyone else to drive by that my parents would always walk to the window and speculate on what the car was doing driving past our house, that’s the level of isolation my childhood home had. 

To the north, east, and west of our house were calm pastures with rolling hills.  Sparse areas of trees littered the pastures, but nothing very dense or large.  Just calm, peaceful hills as far as the eye could see. 

To the south however, was a short area of pasture, maybe 100 feet or so, then miles of dense, thick forest.  An area completely untouched by civilization, unchanged since the arrival of the pilgrims and settlers of centuries past.  It was from these woods that the source of my childhood fear lay dormant, a memory that I had repressed that has recently come out through a series of therapy sessions designed to awaken repressed memories.  Here is the recounting of those events, the best I can remember. 

This was a summer in the mid 90’s, the time just before the advent of the internet would come and take away the desire for kids to play outside a lot.  That wasn’t the case for me, my go to activity was playing basketball outside, especially after dark.  Not only did the darkness provide comfortable temperatures for me to play out the imaginary games and buzzer beating 3’s in my head, but I also appreciated the ambience.  Our large light pole providing a wide, gentle glow, which was all the illumination I would need to play.  I never got much time out in this situation, maybe an hour per night if I was lucky, but these moments are the fondest memories I have of my childhood. 

One such night, as I was imagining myself as an NBA star pulling a sick crossover on Michael Jordan, I noticed a dim light moving through the trees in the south, as if someone was walking through the forest carrying the light source.  From the flickering of the light, it appeared to be some sort of flame on the end of a stick.  I was immediately shaken, my vivid, childhood imagination running wild with what possibilities could be lurking in the darkness. 

Eventually, the torch reached the edge of the woods.  An old woman stood holding the light source at the edge of the trees, the slightly dark tinge of her skin led me to immediately identify her as a Native American.  She wore a very tattered, dirty dress, and wore a crown adorned with deer antlers.  Her eyes held a piercing quality, the type of stare that would make even the most stoic of adults squirm under its gaze, and it was laser focused right on me.  Her mouth opened very slightly, as if to speak. 

“Come...” was all she said, a dark scratchy whisper that reached my ears despite the woman being a good 100 feet from my location. 

For a brief moment, I was frozen.  My heart thudding against my chest harder than I thought was possible.  I SHOULD run into my house, my brain knew that was the smartest course of action, but I felt as if I was not in complete control of my body.  Her whispered “come” constantly scratched an itch in my brain, akin to the most powerful drug you’ve ever taken.  I was unable to resist.  Dropping my basketball, I began to slowly walk towards her, the dull bounce of my basketball hitting the ground and slowly bouncing to a stop the only sound accompanying the dull drone of insects in the night. 

As I approached through the pasture, she turned back into the woods.  She stayed just far enough ahead to keep her torchlight from ever reaching me.  As I strayed away from the light of our driveway, and into the woods, I was completely enveloped in total darkness.  The type of darkness that is only known by those living in God forsaken lands far away from all civilization, where even the light of the stars was not visible due to the canopy above.  The only thing I was able to see was the faint torchlight off in the woods, a beacon that told my feet where to step and kept me marching forward in my entranced state.  

As we marched on, I was overcome by the feeling of being watched.  Surrounded by darkness, and the eyes of a thousand beasts and souls invisible to me. Soon, the crackle of my feet against stones and sticks was accompanied by indistinct whispers coming through the darkness all around me, so faint that I couldn’t even be sure if they were really there at all, or just conjurations of my possessed imagination. 

I walked through the forest following the faint light through the trees for an indeterminate amount of time.  When thinking about it logically it was probably only 10-15 minutes of walking, but in my altered mental state, it felt like hours.   

Eventually, a clearing came into view.  However, as I was about to leave woods and enter the clearing, the woman turned sharply towards me.  During this brief moment I was jarred by the realization that her eyes now had no pupils visible, just the whites of her eyes glared at me, as if they were rolled back into her head.  In the same cold, scratchy voice, she whispered “stop...” I then halted at the edge of the tree line, staring at the faint torchlight and the other creatures it illuminated at the edge of the clearing. 

In addition to the woman, there were two others.  Try as I may, when I’m trying to recall the images of the others, my brain feels like it experiences some sort of glitch, and I’m unable to firmly grasp what I was seeing.  They are merely distorted, vaguely humanoid figures in my field of vision.  Maybe these 2 creatures were men, just like the one I would grow up to become, or maybe their terror and strangeness is beyond what our human minds are able to comprehend. 

The woman turned back and spoke to the others in a strange language involving a series of clicks and whines.  Despite not having ever heard or studied this language, I was able to comprehend its meaning as if I was a fluent speaker. 

“The witness has arrived, begin.” 

A series of guttural, distorted sounds began to emanate from the others.  Almost like the static sound you here coming from a television when the signal is lost, but with a deep, terrifying tinge.  A horrifying darkness descended on the clearing, all stars were blocked, erased by the overwhelming blackness.  Even the torch the woman was holding seemed to dim, where it was only a faint glimmer in the oppressive darkness.  The sounds I had heard surrounding me earlier increased in pitch, leaving no doubt that they were not just objects of my vivid imagination.   

The sounds of the others continued to escalate, increasing in volume and frequency.  As I listened, I felt that my mind was going to pop, that all sanity was leaving my human form and melting into a puddle on the ground beneath me.  I shivered and seized in my standing position, but my eyes remained focused on the small, faint sliver of light given off by the torch. 

Eventually, when I felt that my body and mind could handle no more of this onslaught, a loud “pop” ripped through the air.  The oppressive darkness was not immediately gone, but was slowly fading back to normal levels of reality.  The glow of the torchlight increasing in brightness through the darkness, returning to the point where I was just barely out of its reach at the edge of the clearing. 

The 2 others were gone.  In their place stood a tall figure, easily twice the height of the woman.  A naked humanoid covered in thick hair, composed of oily blackness.  It’s face gaunt and intimidating, with a long beard, and thick deer antlers protruding from its skull.  Its eyes glowed with a dark green, and it turned and met me with those eyes, staring into my very soul. 

Without saying a word, it spoke into my mind, with the deepest, most haunting voice I’d ever heard.  “You will return, when it is time.” 

After the words of the abomination, he and the woman simply vanished from sight. I regained control over my body, and took a seat on the ground, shivering in stunned fear.  The sounds of the woods were back to normal, with birds and insects making their normal sounds.  I even noticed a raccoon or other small critter walking by in the cool night.   

It was there that I waited until a number of flashlights spilled through the trees.  It had been several hours, but I was rescued.  Of course, when my parents noticed I was no longer outside playing basketball, they had briefly yelled for me and then quickly called the police.  A search was organized, and I was eventually found and returned home. 

I suppose it’s not surprising that the level of fear and strangeness I experienced was repressed.  Even when uncovering this memory I feel the same wave of fear.  I question whether it was even real at all, or if I simply had some sort of psychotic break and wandered into the woods on my own accord.  

In spite of this, as I sit here writing this from my childhood memory, I feel drawn again to the woods south of my childhood home.  My parents still live there, I could easily go visit them and take a walk to the clearing again.  In fact, the draw seems almost irresistible, I think, no, I know I will be returning there again this coming weekend...or maybe tonight.  Yes, tonight I’ll return to my parent’s house and walk deep i...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Prestigious-Watch-37 on 2024-09-11 13:59:57+00:00.

---

Series: Part 1, Part 2

I had given an immense amount of thought to how I might kill Toby, but talked myself out of it every time.

The truth was, I wasn't a killer.

It wasn't that I couldn't just grab a knife and hack into Toby's neck. I was certain I was capable of doing that.

The same way I was sure I could, hypothetically, bring myself to humanely slaughter an animal. Like ripping the head off a chicken.

The difference between a chicken or other farm animal was that Toby had a soul. Or something very much like it. The fact he had been able to carry over whatever essence it was to him to my family members was proof that were was something ethereal at work behind the blood, muscle, bone, and nerve endings that makes up human beings.

A chicken I could kill because animals don't have souls, at least not the type that could, possibly, maybe, be of the kind that carry on into some kind of afterlife.

I'm not religious, though my parents were vaguely, culturally Christian.

The more I considered killing Toby, and how I might go about it, the more I had to wrestle with the profound questions that came with taking a life.

The closest I was able to come to convince myself it would be okay to kill Toby, thus potentially severing whatever astral connection he had accidentally (so he said) used to take control of my family, was killing him in self-defense. That I could do.

But that was the problem. Toby wasn't out to kill me.

Weeks ago it had been revealed to me in my bedroom, with Toby-Leigh, and Toby-Mum present, that Toby was a suicide risk.

It was because he had tried and failed to take his own life that this whole mess even got started. He had astral projected into my sister without realising what would happen (again, so he said. But for the most part I did believe him.)

It was possible Toby would kill himself, take his piece off the board, without me having to take matters into my own hands.

A part of me held out hope he might take his own life. At the same time knowing I was hoping for someone to commit suicide sat with me as a constant sickening dread. Never in my life have I wished ill to anyone and I hated that Toby, by his actions, made me wish harm on another person.

I just wanted my family back.

My not-family stopped pretending to be normal around me at home.

Toby-Leigh and Toby-Mum had taken to wearing male clothing, for the most part, instead of anything Leigh and Mum would usually wear. Most days I would find Toby-Leigh sat in her room wearing the same old sweatpants and a large black hoodie. She had started to put on some weight because she ate a lot of junk food whilst she occupied her time playing video games and watching movies.

Toby-Mum was the same. Almost identically so. She spent the majority of her time also in sweatpants, though she had come to favor wearing Mum's usual pink fluffy bathrobe as her comfort-wear of choice. She, like Toby-Leigh, had started to put on weight because she too enjoyed eating an unhealthy amount of junk food.

Toby-Dad did the same thing upstairs in Mum and Dad's bedroom. He just sat in bed, ate junk food (Dad kept the weight off easier because of his job in construction); either watching TV or browsing the internet on his laptop.

The three of them hardly talked to each other except when it came to keeping up appearances outside of the house.

To their credit they were able to pretend to be my family outside of the house to a perfect degree. Toby-Leigh continued to hang out with all her friends, going to parties and on shopping trips. As far as I could tell she took little joy in doing these things, but was able to pretend she was enjoying herself in front of 'her' friends.

But the second Toby-Leigh got home she raced upstairs and changed into the same tired hoodie and sweatpants and kept to herself in her room.

Toby-Mum made outings to catch up with Mum's usual social circle of friends. Keeping up with all the gossip, birthday parties, and so on. Toby-Mum and Toby-Dad even went to a wedding together and pretended to be perfectly normal the entire time; I had gone with them to keep an eye on them, fearing they might become a danger to themselves or anyone that the party who might've seen through the masquerade, but nobody did.

There had been one moment when my Uncle had poked fun at Toby-Dad about something trivial. I didn't catch the start of the conversation though I think it had something do with Mum gaining weight. For a brief moment I saw the killer intent in Toby-Dad's eyes. He had taken hold of the cutlery nearest him at the reception dinner. It wasn't that Toby-Dad was angry about 'his' wife's weight being brought up as a topic of conversation, but I think Toby-Dad was afraid that my Uncle might have put two-and-two together. As soon as Toby-Dad was sure that my Uncle was just making a bad joke, and not actually investigating any strange change in behavior, Toby-Dad put down the knife and simply played along with my Uncle's poorly thought out joke.

I had been on edge for weeks waiting to be woken up in the middle of the night and threatened again, or for something, anything drastic to happen. But nothing did.

I did however stick to the golden rule of spending the majority of my time hanging out with Toby. Mostly this involved me playing video games whilst Toby watched. He became something like a shadow, there but hardly ever talking, just watching. It was like he had possessed this adjacent role in my life, vicariously being around me the majority of the time but never so much that he got in the way.

Never in my life had I met a more nothing of a person. There simply wasn't that much to Toby. He didn't have strong beliefs on things. No hard opinions on books or movies. No funny observations. He ate whatever was easiest to eat. Had given up drawing because he wasn't interested in keeping up the daily grind of getting better. I had spent the best part of two months in his company and hardly felt I knew him any better. At best he brought about a strong sympathy in me for how pathetic and lonely he seemed. I could understand that because (and especially because of everything going on) I felt lonely myself.

I missed my family and my friends. I stopped hanging out with my friends for fear of dragging them into this mess. I'd had to deal with a slew of upset calls and text messages for a few weeks but eventually my friends, each in their own time, gave up trying to hang out with me and seemed to accept that I no longer wanted to spend time with them (of course I wanted to spend time with them, but I loved them too much to drag into the hell that was my life.)

Toby-Dad spent the majority of his time at work. I think the Toby inside of him must have enjoyed the construction job Dad did. Out of the three, Toby-Dad seemed the most at ease stuck in the body he was in. Still being a guy must have also played a big part of that too.

Mum's role of buying groceries and making dinner fell to me. Nothing was said between me and Toby-Mum beyond me asking for money to pay for the groceries. It felt wrong to ask for the money, but I sucked up my pride and asked because I needed to make sure my family had access to regular meals to keep them somewhat healthy. There had been two weeks of nightly takeaway orders delivered to the house, expensive orders. I took it upon myself to do the shopping and to cook the meals to make sure the Toby's didn't bankrupt my family's savings out of sheer laziness.

I had considered learning how to astral project, but an experience I had three months after returning home from university made me decide never to attempt it.

I had finished cooking dinner for everyone, washed up, and spent an extra hour cleaning around the house (they all were happy to live like slobs, but I wasn't.) After putting away the laundry, I tiredly climbed the stairs and went to my room.

I lay in bed for a while staring off into the darkness. Too in my own head to drift off to sleep easily but also too tired to feel up to anything but laying in the dark. I didn't remember falling asleep.

I woke some time during the night and knew right away I wasn't alone in my room. The thing was, I couldn't move at all from the neck down. My face also felt stiff, with just my mouth and eyes moving freely. I was paralyzed.

"Mike?" whispered a voice.

I knew the voice right away. It was Leigh's. Or rather, it must have been Toby in Leigh's body.

"Toby?" I whispered back.

My entire body was rigid, and felt hot under the bed cover. For a moment I feared a repeat of what had happened last time was about to occur. But, from what I could just make out in the near pitch darkness of my bedroom, there wasn't anyone around. Toby-Leigh must have been in my room somewhere, at the far end in the darkness, but I couldn't make her out and I couldn't raise my head or sit up to attempt a better look.

"It's me," said Leigh's voice, "I've missed you so much."

I didn't understand. Toby-Leigh saw me everyday. I had served her dinner earlier at the dining table (the only time my possessed family gathered together in the house anymore was when I presented them with food.)

"I can't move," I whispered, choking the words out with great effort.

"I...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nubats on 2024-09-10 17:54:12+00:00.

---

My last message feels like an eternity ago, but I'll be able to tell exactly how long when I eventually send this one. Circumstances have changed a bit, but one thing at a time.

I've just now finally found enough protection to risk a new post. Actually, this is probably more of a cry for help, but back to the topic. As it turns out, time didn't freeze permanently after all, the whole phenomenon seems to oscillate. Unfortunately, I can't say at what "correct" intervals this happens, only that the thawed time intervals have never lasted more than about 6 hours up until now. So far, I've experienced two of them.

I've also found out that I'm the only exception to the rules during the time freeze. Whatever I touch becomes part of this exception, and as soon as I let go of it, it is immediately subjected to the strange laws of the environment again. But these things don’t just have to be tangible objects, they can also be physical processes that are normally commonplace, like sound. The reason why I can't hear my own voice most of the time, but can hear the rubbing of my clothes, is because the sound waves and their medium must be in direct contact with me. The surrounding air represents this medium. As soon as the sound waves move too far away from me, so far, I estimate around 15cm, they freeze just like everything else. So, I can hear a dull hum in my chest or the movements of my tongue in my mouth, but my voice has been taken away from me.

In any case, this is at least how I try to explain to myself how the whole situation works and, at the same time, how I fight the part of me that doesn't want to accept it all. But I don't know whether my theories are correct. What also gives me something to think about is the fact that I can use bicycles, but not other vehicles like cars. Perhaps this has something to do with the battery. I can, in fact, use my smartphone without any problem during the time standstill, so I suspect that I must be in direct contact with the energy source, which also my guess as to why the automatic doors didn't work back then. To make them functional again, I would probably have to be connected to the power plant and touch all the live wires. So far, I've stuck to small vehicles, but haven't had much time to study the rules of this phenomenon in more detail, because I'm not alone in here.

My experiences so far were real, as I've discovered. I don't yet know exactly what it is that’s trapped in these phases with me, but with each experience, I have more reason to believe that it doesn't like my company. When I read these last few lines again, I feel a little... let's say unsettled. Not because of their content, more because I sound a little too unstable to myself. I started to construct a lot of “what ifs” in my head that make me doubt that whatever is happening is even real. Maybe that's why I'm writing everything down because it reassures me that my brain isn't winning the tug-of-war against madness. Time is frozen right now and my current location is inside my apartment. I will try to recall the events of the past timewaves as accurately as possible, or at least as much as I can, before I have to move on again. Because it never takes exceptionally long for it to find me, once everything around me stopped moving.

Okay, let's pick up where I left off last time. When I wrote that message, I hid in the luggage storage area of the train station, lying between several layers of suitcases and backpacks, so that I could feel at least a little safe. The looks I received were rather strange when, not long afterward, normal time began to resume, and I suddenly emerged from a mountain of luggage. The way time went back to normal felt like a ramp-up, starting rather slowly but eventually reaching the usual speed.

I must have looked like an undead, at least that's how the events before made me feel, but I have rarely felt as relieved as I did at that moment. A small part of me, looking back it probably was actually the largest part, hoped that this would have been a one-off experience, but as you can see from these lines, it wasn't.

My next stop was the apartment, a warm bath and several irrelevant videos from the Internet were definitely necessary to digest the shock. The train ride and the short walk there had no reason to feel so carefree, not after everything that had happened before. When I got home, I was immediately overcome by a feeling of relief and a small, gentle laugh began to tremble in my chest. This time I could for sure hear it, louder and louder and, with more relief, I let the laughter flow freely until my ribs began to cramp and my lungs could no longer get enough air. Slowly, the events before moved into the less relevant areas of my brain and the adrenaline finally stopped, so I decided to prepare my well-deserved bath.

At this point, I was not yet aware of the danger of my situation; how could it have been? As far as I knew, the incident could have been just a one-time event or one of my usual changes in perception, with perhaps a little more spice than usual. The warm water with the aroma of roses greeted me with a gentle hug, washing away the horror of the last "hours". The more I thought about it, the stranger the situation seemed to me, but first came relaxation, then I could worry again. The bath went without any notable incidents, relaxed and relieved, I got out of the tub, the fluffy bathrobe was already ready and calling me to it. Wrapped up and comfortable, I left the bathroom, quickly pressing the button that opened the tub drain on the way out, which made a faint gurgling noise every time.

It got louder as my still slightly damp feet carried me into the kitchen. Without thinking too much about the noise, I reached for the toaster, threw two slices of bread in and let them bake. The noise from the bathroom had already reached a strangely loud level by then. Maybe something was caught in the drain, so I made my way back into the bathroom when I noticed something. The water wasn't going down the drain. A waterspout-like whirlpool swept through the tub, hurling drops across the room with a wind that almost knocked me off my feet and found its end in the inlet opening. The wild movements slowly died down the closer I fought my way to the little wet tornado. It soon stood almost completely still, the outer surface shimmering in a bluish silver tone that reflected a distorted version of me. The slurping sound of the water being pushed back into the pipe also quieted down when I reached out for it. Slowly, the sounds of the roaring and slurping merged into a kind of noise, like you hear on old TVs, until my hearing was able to filter out something. It was speaking. Like thousands of little demons in purgatory, tortured screams mingled together, all screaming the same thing at slightly different times.

"You can't delay!"

"You can't delay!"

"You can't delay!"

Even though I didn't know what it meant, the screams put me into a kind of trance, more and more each time they spoke, drawing me to the whirlpool and asking me to get in. Almost out of control, my head headed towards the faucet, something inside me wanted to reach for the tornado. It seemed so beautiful, so warm, so calm. The sounds continued to wash over me like a wave of honey, swallowing me whole in its beautiful noises. It would take away all my worries, it told me. I believed, not being able to find a reason for it to lie. With every sweet cry and every second that passed, the desire to dive into it grew stronger.

"Join us!"

"Join us!"

"Join us!"

Those screams seemed different from before, the sweet tone all of a sudden deep and yearning. The deliriousness cleared just a bit but enough, that my brain could begin replaying the fresh memory of my experiences during the time break. What if this moment was part of it too? What if it could influence things outside of a time anomaly as well? No, I couldn't give in. I couldn’t fall for the beautiful sounds of its sirens. With the last of my willpower, I was able to break the spell and almost fell over, but just managed to stumble to the button and close the drain.

Immediately, the water feature disintegrated before my eyes and was soon nothing more than a quiet puddle. Only then did I feel my heart racing and the ice-cold feeling running down my backside, which must have been there for a while because my back felt frozen solid to the touch, as if all blood circulation had been interrupted. There was something in this water and I urgently needed to get away from it. I practically rushed out of the bathroom as fast as I could, slamming the door as if my life depended on it. My hands found support on the wardrobe in the hallway, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief for a moment, then my skin began to itch.

That’s right, I had bathed in that water before. Perhaps whatever was in it had settled on my skin? I had also drunk from it. Maybe it was now decomposing my lungs from the inside? An inner panic of unimaginable proportions began to wash away the warm feeling of the bath before and replaced it with sheer fear, but I had already been through enough. I needed to calm down and told myself that I would be safe within my apartment, that I had only been confused and out of sorts from my previous experiences during the timestop and that the symptoms o...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fdo8di/if_youre_able_to_read_this_then_time_should_have/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/peebloescobar on 2024-09-11 07:57:35+00:00.

---

DON'T LOOK BACK.

DON'T LOOK BACK.

As I crossed the same Peepal tree on my left for the 7th time, I tried hard to NOT turn right again at the crossroad ahead me.

"Fuck! There it is again", my boyfriend, Advait, whispered in my left ear, pointing to a stone temple coming up to our right just before the turn. He was sitting behind me on the old grey moped we had rented for the weekend just that evening. We loved exploring rural parts of India whenever we could. I saw the same temple on my right again for the 7th time. Getting closer and closer. It had carvings on its walls. I couldn't tell what they were though. In the darkness of the night, with the moon shining above, it just looked like an abandoned temple. The moonlight highlighting some uneven surfaces of the carvings.

As we reached the crossroad and I tried hard to keep going straight, the front wheel of the moped turned right. Again. My heart skipped a beat.

"Why are you doing that, Avni?", my boyfriend panicked. "You took the right again!"

"I...I swear I didn't", I cried, my hands trembling on the handle. Tears rolled down my cheeks. "I didn't, Advait".

YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK BACK.

DON'T LOOK BACK.

My grandma's words kept buzzing in my mind. I remembered her beautiful face with a gold nose-ring shining in the light of a flickering lantern hanging in the corner of the bedroom. "It's called a Chakwa", she'd told me with her eyes so wide that I could almost see the full round of her pupils. She used to apply a thick line of black Kohl under her eyes and a big red circular Bindi on her forehead. She was a loving, kind woman (perhaps the only woman who loved me as much as my mother); but the Kohl and the Bindi made her look scary when she told me horror bedtime stories. I loved how they added to the experience as I hid beneath the blanket giggling, too scared but equally curious to hear the stories.

"They say if you are ever stuck in a Chakwa, don't look back. Just keep going. If you're walking, keep walking. If you're on a cycle, keep cycling. Don't stop. Don't get down. Or else..."

"Or what, Nani?", I asked with only my eyes peeping from the blanket.

"Or you'll never get out of there! Not until someone else intervenes to get you out", Grandma said. Something troubled her as she said it. My young brain couldn't comprehend it. But I still knew a sad, troubled face when I saw one. She looked up at me and forced a kind smile. "Just remember, keep going and..."

"And don't look back", I followed.

The memory of her etheral beauty and her words faded away as I turned right, putting the temple behind us yet again.

"Advait, listen to me. I think I know what's happening. My Nani had told a story... It's called a Chakwa...We are basically... stuck... like in time."

I didn't know if I was making any sense. I couldn't really think straight to be honest. I was scared. I didn't know if this was it- the Chakwa. It had to be. It was similar to all the stories I had heard about it so many times before from my Grandma.

"So, look, I am going to keep riding. It will stop eventually. I don't know when. Just don't look back, okay? No matter what," I said, more composed than before.

We stayed quiet for the rest of the ride, as we kept crossing the same places and took the same turns. It had to be very late at night. There were no cars crossing us. No one walking by. The houses and huts we crossed didn't have any lights on. Nobody stayed up late in the villages. I knew that. But it felt as if nobody was even in the houses- awake or asleep. The only lights were the ones on the road, unevenly spaced, leaving patches of darkness with only the moonlight to accompany us. The air was getting cooler. I could hear Advait sniffing his nose and breathing heavily behind me in the quiet. Was he crying? He had checked our phones a couple of times by then but we both didn't have cellular network. Our moped made a sound that creaked and echoed. And that was the only sound we heard.

Time kept passing. Or it didn't? But it felt like forever. Just as we were getting used to this abnormal ride, I saw a figure walking in front of us. It looked like a man, appearing blurry. Just when he crossed a street light, I noticed his white long shirt and a loose white pajama. He had grey hair. He walked slowly, slightly limping, with his hands dangling on either sides.

"Should we talk to him?", Advait asked me, noticing what I had.

"Yeah", we approached him, our moped just a few feet away from him. I kept riding slowly, so as to not stop.

"Uncle, we are lost. Can you please help us?", Advait said aloud. But the man didn't stop. Or even turn. "Uncle?", Advait called out again. No acknowledgment.

"Why won't he look at us?", Advait whispered.

Something felt wrong. Was he deaf? Was he drunk? Or high? Or a mad man? I decided to slowly ride past him. As we crossed him, he didn't so much as even glance our way. Just kept walking. His eyes staring straight ahead.

"This is weird", I said, and decided to not get further involved. I rode ahead slowly. But what if his intervention could get us out of here? If only he intervened. Just to give it another shot, since we were worn out and exhausted, I looked at my side mirror to spot him behind us. He wasn't there.

My heart tightened in my chest. I had looked back and he wasn't there. Did it count if I looked back through the mirror? Where had he gone? He was right there just a second ago!

I saw the stone temple ahead again. I was losing hope. Advait had gone silent. We had been here for what seemed like eternity. Something else was riding my moped. Something else was controling this. I felt helpless. Would it be morning soon? Would someone see us then?

Just then, as we approached the crossroad, a car with bright headlights approached from ahead. Indians never keep their headlights low, do they? Unable to see clearly because of the brightness as it approached us, I slowed down. The car stopped a few feet ahead of us. A man popped out his head and a hand from the driver seat window and yelled, "Dapoli! Which road goes to Dapoli?"

Something felt different suddenly. Like a weight had been lifted off of us. As if the air was somehow lighter, warmer.

"We don't know. Maybe that one?," I yelled back, pointing towards the road on the left.

"Okay, thanks!", the man replied. "Where are you guys headed at 4 in the morning?"

"Ho...hotel Rajtara", Advait replied, as if trying to remember if that was indeed our destination.

"Oh, I think I just crossed it. Well, thanks again. Be safe." He drove off into the direction I had pointed.

Advait and I headed towards the road straight ahead. Both of us holding our breath to see if we turned right again after the temple. We didn't. Ee reached out hotel. Went to our small room. And fell on the bed. I don't even remember how we got to the room. I don't remember when I fell asleep.

The next day, we woke up to the sound of a group of people laughing and talking beneath our room window. The sunlight came in through the sheer curtains, making our room hot. We were tired. I checked my phone. 13:08. We freshened up in silence. No words exchanged. And went downstairs towards the outdoor dining area where the group of people were.

As we crossed the parking lot to get to the dining area, something made Advait stop near our moped. He glanced down at the speedometer and then back at me with confusion and horror.

"Avni, when we got the moped yesterday at the rental place, do you remember the kilometer reading the guy marked down before handing it to us?"

"No, but he wrote it down on our receipt. Let me see." I hurried into the pocket of my track pant which I hadn't changed and took out the receipt. "48,287. Why, what's the matter?"

"That's impossible", he said, barely audible.

"What happened, Advait?", I went over to him and checked the kilometer reading on the speedometer.

48,303.

Just 16 kms for almost a night full of traveling?

Advait and I went to the owner of the hotel, Ram dada, to talk to him. We were confused. Scared. Surely, we thought, we were not the only ones to experience this?

"Long ago, in the same ancient stone temple, there lived an old man known as Pandit Vishram, a deeply spiritual man who had served the temple since his youth. He was a well-respected figure in the village, offering guidance and prayers to those who sought it. But beneath the surface of his serene exterior, there was a haunting secret, one that the villagers were unaware of..." Ram dada said, with a fluent ease of having reiterated the tale many times before.

"Pandit Vishram had once been in love. In his younger days, he had fallen deeply for a woman from a neighboring village. They had planned to marry, but due to a cruel twist of fate, she passed away suddenly, leaving him devastated. Heartbroken, Vishram turned to the temple for solace, believing that serving the gods would help him find peace. He never married, devoting his life to the temple and hiding his pain from the world.

"Years passed, but Vishram could never let go of the love he lost. He became obsessed with the idea of reuniting with her in the afterlife. According to old, forbidden texts, he discovered that if one performed a certain ritual on the temple grounds during an eclipse, the barrier between the living and the dead could be broken.

"Consumed by this desire, Vishram secretly prepared for the ritual. On the night of t...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fe4rvq/the_villages_of_india_hold_many_secrets/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/GeneralP123 on 2024-09-11 05:08:18+00:00.

---

If you ever see a man that looks like a Gandalf rip-off holding a "Gift Or Curse" sign, just turn around and pretend you didn't notice him.

As random as this advice sounds, it will save your life if you choose to follow it.

I wasn't so lucky, no one was there to tell me to just avoid the odd eighty year old wizard, instead I chose the wrong option and gave in to my curiosity.

You see, months ago I just finished work and was walking back home, but then an unusual sight caught my attention, standing right next to the nearby grocery store was a frail old man with an incredibly long gray beard wearing a cheap blue wizard robe and a matching pointy wizard hat, when I say cheap, I mean it looked like something a kid would buy at the costume store for Halloween, it definitely wasn't something I'd expect a man that looked to be well into his eighties to be wearing.

More importantly, his shaky hands were holding a small wooden sign, "Gift or Curse" was written on the sign in big red letters.

I couldn't resist, so I immediately walked up to the man and asked "So, are you providing a service?"

The man instantly responded "Oh I wouldn't say it's a service, you have to pay for a service, what I'm offering is free!" he said with a cheerful tone.

"Alright, I'm interested, tell me more." I said, genuinely curious.

The man put the sign down and calmly said "What I'm offering is a game, you can choose to play it or you can just walk away, naturally, if decide to give it a shot and play the game, you will either win or lose, if you win you will get a great prize, but if you lose you will receive an equally great punishment."

"Perfect, so can you tell me what those prizes and punishments are?" I asked.

The old man smiled and said "The prize is the ability to see warnings of the future, the punishment, however, is the ability to see creatures that exist far beyond the mortal plane."

"Yup, he's definitely crazy" I thought to myself.

The old man reached into his right pocket and showed me a plastic card, "Certified Wizard" was written on the card.

The so called "Certified Wizard" winked at me and said "As you can see, I'm a real wizard, my game is real as well, best part about the game is the fact that it's completely luck based, just shake my hand and I'll know if you won or lost, think of me as a human slot machine."

I was stunned by his confidence, he was telling me insane things, yet he seemed to be so clear-headed and coherent.

The strange man offered me a handshake, curiosity got the better of me, so I accepted it, his grip was surprisingly strong, but he almost immediately let go of my hand.

Calmly, he said "It's done, now you can figure out if you're a winner or a loser!"

Before I could even think of an acceptable response, he quickly grabbed the sign from the ground and walked away, as soon as I blinked he was gone.

I didn't know what to think, was I just too tired after a long day, so I hallucinated a wizard out of sheer exhaustion?

I wish that was the case, instead I quickly realized what happened was undisputably real, even worse, I thought I lost the game.

I decided to ignore the whole experience and just go home, but for some unknown reason I had an urge to look behind me.

I turned around, about ten feet behind me was an odd creature, it's body was that of a mangled and twisted human being, it's face was horribly disfigured and covered in dozens of bloody wounds, it was missing one of it's eyes while the other one was bulging and bloodshot, the creature's jaw looked like it was shattered by a sledgehammer, blood was dripping from it's scarred mouth, it's tongue was hanging out of it like a dead earthworm, the creature just stood there, frozen in place, staring at me with it's barely functional eye.

I almost vomited as soon as I saw it, so I quickly averted my gaze, based on the reactions of the people around me, I was the only person capable of seeing the creature.

Days passed after this incident, the creature would appear randomly when I least expect it, sometimes I would see it in the mirror standing right next to me, but more commonly I'd see it in the corner of the room, just standing there and staring at me like it always does.

The creature, even though harmless on paper, was destroying my mental state, I couldn't even sleep without seeing it in my nightmares.

My last encounter with the creature was the most meaningful one, It was an average day like any other, I was just about to cross the street, but before I could do that I received the all too familiar urge to look behind my back, as soon as I did, I unsurprisingly saw the creature once again which in turn caused me to walk away as fast as I could, completely disregarding the fact that I was crossing the street at a red light.

I don't even remember the car that hit me or how painful the hit itself was, but I do remember waking up in the hospital, feeling like every inch of my body went through a meat grinder.

Later on, the doctor explained to me that I was lucky to be alive, the truck that hit me has left my body in an almost unrepairable state, It would be easier for me to list the parts of my body that aren't fractured, because there's very few of them left.

As soon as the doctor let me take a good look at myself in the mirror, the only eye I had left twitched as I slowly realized that I didn't lose in the wizard's game, after all.