nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Sonofposiden18 on 2024-11-18 20:50:09+00:00.

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First off, my name is Oliver Wyatt, and ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a police officer. I got an intense amount of pride out of the idea of upholding the law and being someone of authority. As a kid, I would run around my front yard, waving a toy revolver at imaginary bad guys like I was dirty Harry. That might sound like a tremendous cliché, and it probably is, but it’s my life. So, after high school, I picked up a minimum wage job until I was old enough to sign up for the police academy. Looking back, I wish I had stayed at that greasy burger place 15 minutes from my house. 

After 22 weeks of (not exactly intensive) training, I graduated and finally achieved my dream. Dad couldn't have been more proud, and mom couldn’t have been more terrified. I tried to console her, but even I was sweating a little. I will admit that years of anticipation began to climax in fear. Fear that all my ambition would get me is bullets flying in my direction. Only to see myself on the evening news, all of my dreams blowing up in my face. I have to say though that the first few weeks were more boring than I expected, even disappointing to some degree. Driving around dealing with car accidents, domestic abuse calls, and busy bodies welding cell phones like weapons. None of it scratched the itch for justice that I was looking for. I wanted some action! Some shit that you might see on numerous daytime TV cop shows. I was so naive.  If I had any sense, I would have listened to Carter. 

Carter Halpert was my old partner. He was an older man with a massive white mustache that would have put Nietzsche to shame. He had straight gray hair that was cut just above his shoulder and piercing green eyes that seemed to suck the truth out of any situation. All that and his thick Georgia accent that made him feel like the grandfather everyone wanted in their youth. The man genuinely carried himself like an old west sheriff, something that became quite clear whenever he scolded me for my action-hungry attitude. Or, whenever he scolded anyone for that matter. He always told me that I should consider myself lucky that I hadn’t seen something truly messed up, and maybe never would if I played my cards right. I knew he was right, even back then I knew that he was right. But I always wanted more action. I wanted to feel like I was doing a service.   

At first, this seemed like it was finally going to be one of those calls. Someone apparently heard gunshots at an apartment complex out in the middle of nowhere. It was called Paramount Apartments. I knew the address was odd. It was way out of town, seemingly right next to the highway —a more fitting place for a chain hotel, not an apartment complex. 

“Who the fuck is living next to the highway in the middle of nowhere?” I asked Carter, perhaps a bit more vulgar than I should have been. I remember that Carter made a face, a piercing scowl that I hadn't seen on him before, as he stared off into the distance. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but before I could say anything, he grabbed his radio.

“10-4, squad car on route.” Just like that, Carter made a few quick adjustments, and we were off with our lights and sirens blaring. I was almost positive it was some old woman calling about a kid’s video game being too loud or something like that. But I had hoped it would be something interesting. We drove for about 12 minutes before we came to the next exit. I can’t remember any exit signs, but then GPS just made us peel off at an exit that seemed to come out of nowhere. The road turned off seemingly into the forest. It was a more drastic turn than I had expected. I braced myself like a child expecting a crash, but Carter took the turn like a seasoned stunt driver. He seemed to chuckle at my sudden panic, only to focus back on the road as we disappeared into the forest. The road came to a sudden fork in the road at a flashing red light. A stop light that illuminated two roads going in opposite directions.

“Recalculating.” The GPS sounded. I turned to look at the GPS, and I wanted to say something. I knew the GPS shouldn’t have needed to reboot. Did we make a wrong turn somewhere?  I really wanted to say something. But I knew Carter was determined at this point, so I shut myself up. He made the right, and I found myself holding my breath as the red light drifted off into the distance. Carter made a right and continued down the dark road, with the red light blinking behind us. 

I looked out my window to try and catch my bearings as we drove. I thought we were in some kind of forest. The intense black surrounding us could only be explained by a dense forest in the dark of midnight. But as I looked around, I realized we were driving through a town. I thought I could see buildings of some kind, but with no streetlights and no lights on, I couldn't be sure. I tried to focus on the shapes moving past my window. They didn't look like they had any depth to them, like the silhouettes of buildings where they should have been. My eyes were quickly drawn to a bright light that seemed to appear right in front of me. The road suddenly opened up into a well-lit parking lot— a medium size parking lot with way too many lights for the space. I felt like I was under fluorescent office lights when I was outdoors. It also didn't take me long to notice that the parking lot was completely surrounded by trees. I could have sworn that the parking lot was surrounded by other buildings, but they seemed to lose their shape when we got out of the car. A well-lit apartment building with at least 15 floors sat at one end of the parking lot. I was confused as to how the two of us hadn't seen the building sooner. Sitting behind the tacky water feature was a sign that read, “Paramount Apartments.”

“Be alert. Something is wrong.” I nodded as Carter parked the squad car. I was at least happy he was just as weirded out as me.  

 When Carter and I pulled up to the building, there was a man in his mid-40s standing out front. He was dressed in a pair of cargo shorts, a pink polo, white sneakers, and Oakley sunglasses worn backwards. The man looked like some HOA asshole going through a midlife crisis. It was like all my worst fears were confirmed at once. This was some middle-aged entitled prick complaining about children. Or something else he happened to mistake for gunshots. In any other situation, the man wouldn't have raised any suspicion – and he certainly didn't beyond my first thought. But now I find myself looking for anything, any clue that could have let me know what was going to happen next. 

“Oh, thank God,” he said with seemingly genuine concern on his face, “I heard gunshots in apartment 307. I think someone might be hurt!” Carter and I glanced at each other before looking at the man skeptically.

“Do you live here, sir?” Carter asked, realizing we still had no idea who this guy was or what his business was here.

“My name is Matt Miller, and I am the building manager. I have been getting complaints about this room for a few months now. They seem like good folks–a nice family. They pay the rent on time, but a couple times a week, I get a complaint about fighting and screaming coming from that room. Then when I go to check on them, it always seems to be over and everyone is all smiles. I've never actually heard the fighting for myself and no one ever seemed to be hurt. ” He explained as Carter raised his eyebrow. 

“Please take us to the apartment, sir,” Carter said calmly. The man nodded and led us inside. He pushed a few buttons on a keypad; the door system let out a loud screech, and he let us inside through a dirty and somewhat bare lobby. I couldn't help but think the room was  absurdly small, with no chairs for anyone to sit in. One side of the room had an elevator, the other had an open door leading to a flight of stairs. The man calling himself Matt then ushered us into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. I then turned to him.

“But why have you never called the authorities to deal with it before?” I asked, wondering why I had never heard of this building before or even heard the address on a debriefing.

“Like I said, I have never actually heard the fighting myself or seen anyone hurt. I don’t go into people's private lives.” The incompetence of this manager started to get on my nerves. The elevator opened, revealing a long, cramped hallway with sickly green carpeting and dozens of doors on both sides. The green of the carpet struck me: it was the same green as dirty pond water and the smell wasn't too far off. I had to stop myself from gagging and Carter was right behind me in that regard. Many of the lights were flickering or were out altogether. The lights bathed the whole hallway in a piercing light, the color of movie theater popcorn butter. I couldn't help but notice dead insects inside the bulbs, but then I noticed some were alive. There were so many. The live ones seemed to be crawling over each other–and the dead ones–in a desperate attempt to get out. It was then that I noticed the bugs crawling on the wall. Every dark point on the wall seemed to move the more I looked at them. From that point on, I did my best to stay in the middle of the cramped hallway. The whole place seemed like it was falling apart, and I wanted nothing more than to get out of there. As the man calling himself Matt led the two of us down the hallway, a question popped into my head.  

“Do...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HughEhhoule on 2024-11-18 18:49:20+00:00.

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For anyone that was busy yesterday

In case anyone is wondering I'm typing this from the security of the attic with my very first smartphone. Well, it's not mine per sae but it's mine now is what's important.

Maybe being a bit more relaxed will let me relate myself better. I'd be a fan of that. The past few days, even by my standards have just been odd and violent, but that part goes without saying.

Looks like more and more people are trying to help me out, much appreciated, as always. Here is a little feedback for you. And a couple questions.

First off, why does everyone seem to know more about this flea market than I do? I'd have thought getting things first hand from something that looked like Pumpkinhead's church going cousin would have put me at an advantage but you guys seem to know what's up better than I do.

I'm going to hazard a guess it has something to do with the fact that there’s certain information I just can't see. That same vantablack that blocks my travels censors out all kinds of things, I'd tell you what, but you know the worst part of censorship is…

Doesn't seem to work with second hand info though (not yet anyway ) I'm chalking that up to my creator’s community college level sorcery skills. So please, if you know something I don't, pass it on.

Second, you guys seem to have some pretty high hopes for my morals. I expected a group of random folks to be telling me to slaughter the neighbourhood with the hero's skull for shits and giggles, but it seems things have gotten a little less edgy since the 90s. Probably not a bad thing.

Lastly, you guys seem to think Kaz can help me out quite a bit, got to say, he did seem like fear incarnate. I'll keep that in mind.

If I missed you, it's probably because i took your advice and I'll be getting to it in a minute.

The headline of the past couple weeks is the entire goon squad piling into their literal hearse and taking off. The bishop seemed to have packed a couple suitcases so I assumed I was going to have a few days at least.

But to play it safe I spent the first day in the attic. I'm still nervous about the glance the twin and I exchanged and not about to get caught in a trap invented by paranoid parents .

A little after one on the second night I hear what I initially think is the bishop and the 3 pawns ( better name? Worse?) . But as I focus , I hear 5 voices whispering, and most certainly sounding like nothing that stalks the night with any degree of real skill.

A window breaks, and I smell it.

I know most of you guys think of me as a good guy, I mean, I'm pretty sure someone is working on making a plush or a body pillow of me as we speak (I have so many questions about fads in 2024) . But there are going to be times you get a deep , uncomfortable look into the vile crap hastily sewn together that is me.

This is one of those times.

What I smelled was innocence. And with it, I gained an understanding. A look into what my base drive is, I'd love to say I didn't like it, to say I felt it was a vile compulsion, but the truth is, that's not how it feels. It's exciting, it's primal, and on a very real level it feeds me.

With that first whiff , I understood innocence. It's not being perfect, or young, chaste or naive. It's complicated of course, but at its core it's doing things for the right reasons . Having that spark of human kindness, loyalty and selflessness even among flaws that may appear irredeemable to some.

2 of those men had it. 3 of those men were acceptable collateral damage. Nothing in me, meat, cloth, or magic feels any differently. I respect you all too much to lie.

I start to salivate, the fluid pooling and dripping out of the bottom of my ceramic head. I feel power, I feel confidence. It's dark, it's my house, they’re not demons or heroes, just meat. I can feel my body twitch and thrum like a guitar string as they come into the house one by one. They split up, trying to ransack the place as quickly as they can.

I laugh. A clicking phlegmatic sound I find myself hoping they can hear as I run toward a vent, jumping down into it with no regard for the minor noise I make. In fact , I extend one blade and drag it along the duct. As they hear the sound I can feel their fear , I can feel where they are like a hellish radar.

The closest to me has no innocence to him. I smell crimes committed for pure greed and rage, that doesn't matter though, I need to warm up. I've spent so much time sneaking and cowering, I need to see what I can do.

I settle myself enough to open the vent without attracting attention. The large, mask wearing man rifles through drawers, looking frustrated as he finds nothing better than 25 year old computer errata.

My limbs move almost of their own accord , I climb with a spider’s grace directly above the man. There would have been a million ways to drop on him and kill him in an instant. But my mind went to none of those.

Instead, I let the ceramic headpiece unfold, thick red-grey saliva hits his the top of his mask. He jumps and turns toward the ceiling shining a high powered flashlight in my face. It doesn't matter, I know exactly where he is, and I get a giddy charge from the burst of fear that runs through his body as he sees my face.

I let go and extend both of my blades. Nothing to hack down a demon, but stout and sharp enough to slide easily through the man's eyes, the sockets behind them, and, propelled by my momentum, the brain behind that.

He makes no noise, but both of our bodies hitting the floor most certainly does. I rip my arms, shoulder deep in gore, out of his head and take a moment to admire the spewing cavern of his face.

I hear another man come running, another empty snack but I'm more than eager to whet my appetite.

I run to the door and place my back to the wall beside it. The second man, a wiry guy in his 40s, wearing no mask but a moustache that would have been at home back in 93 walks by me and screams as he sees his compatriot.

I walk behind him and drive both blades tip down into his Achilles tendons. Putting all my weight and strength into it, I tear upward, the blades catching flesh , tendon and fat and tearing them out as a formless lump. He hits the ground, wailing in terror and pain.

I can hear one of the group immediately leave his compatriots. I'm angered as I feel it was one of the innocent. I take this out on the thief screaming on the ground.

I climb his body facing the door , I'm stunned at how easy these instincts come to me, and at how much I'm loving this.

It’s like a hard drug, it scares the hell out of me, but I need it.

He tries to see what’s on his back, but he has no leverage to throw me off. I vent my rage by stabbing, randomly, almost playfully up and down his torso.

By the time the last two enter, he isn't dead but he isn't coming back. I stare at the two men as I petulantly stab a last 3 times, shut the headpiece with a snap and leap with greased eel speed into a floor vent.

They scream, at the situation, at each other, at their dying friend. And I hear the telltale noise of a gun cocking. I'm not scared, it makes me laugh, I let the sound echo through the vents as I move randomly, stoking their fear, their paranoia.

I stop and watch them back down the hallway from a ceiling vent. I pant with anticipation, as I confirm the innocent has the gun. I scrape the knife , herding them to the top of the stairs. The gun toting buffet fires randomly, coming no where close to hitting me.

I move to a vent between the two, letting silence ring. Letting them ramble possible plans and explanations to each other.

I drop ,putting them between myself and the stairs. With no room to aim, and nerves frayed thin, the innocent man, a 23 year old single father, working 2 jobs and doing this under duress, fires rapidly and poorly.

Soup can sized chunks blow out of his friends back as the bullets exit. I do nothing to speed the man's fate, I stand in the hallway letting the young man's shock and fear marinate his coming pain.

He sees me and fires his 2 remaining shots ,doing nothing more than sending harmless sprays of hardwood into my mask.

He’s stunned, but not enough to avoid making a break for it when I start a slow walk toward him, scraping one blade along my ceramic head, making a hellish screech.

He stumbles down the stairs and I leap. I overestimate my ability and land grabbing his waist from behind as opposed to his head.

I jam a blade into the side of his leg with the rapidity of a sowing machine, and as that steel buries itself into his flesh, I feel it, the pain of the innocent.

I don't know if I'll be able to explain this in any way that makes sense, but I'll try.

You know that false rush of strength and bravado you hear cocaine users rant about? That high that makes you feel you could fight and fuck all night , likely both at the same time?

Think of that, but instead of false promises you are actually stronger, faster and smarter, not just a twitchy loser who isn't making sense and can't get it up.

I roar , a sound like a rock tumbler with strep throat. He tries to grab me and throw me off, but I retract a blade and grab his hand, easily twisting the wrist to such a degree the man falls to the floor. Nothing I could do before the kickstart.

He tries to slam me into the ground, but I drive my legs into his back, briefly lifting him...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-19 00:14:36+00:00.

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Between 1971 and 1978, a series of child kidnappings plagued Pierce County, Washington.

The victims were abducted from locations typically associated with “family fun,” such as movie theaters, bowling alleys, playgrounds, and in one case Point Defiance State Park.

According to witnesses, each child vanished after being yelled at, grabbed, or otherwise publicly disciplined by a parent, after which the children went away to pout or cry and simply never returned.

Twelve children eventually vanished in this manner. 

In November 1978, a bizarre mass grave was discovered in rural Eatonville, Washington. Within the grave were the remains of twenty-three children in various stages of decay. The oldest remains were skeletal, while the freshest still had somewhat recognizable facial features.

Each child was laid out under a blanket with evidence of having been “tucked in,” and had a makeshift pillow under their heads and a toy of some kind pressed into their arms. 

At autopsy, all of the children were found to have moss, leaves, twigs, and tree bark in their stomachs. Seven appeared to have died of intestinal blockage related to this peculiar diet. The others died of starvation. 

Most disturbingly, six of the children bore injuries consistent with long-term physical abuse. Eight bore no such injuries. Nine were too decomposed to definitively assess the presence of injuries.

The discovery of the corpses was handled with supreme delicacy by the Pierce County Sheriff, who had prior experiences with the Agency of Helping Hands and recognized that this discovery was in line with AHH’s scope of responsibilities.

The agency promptly launched an investigation. Twelve of the corpses were linked to the abduction victims. An additional eight children were identified during the course of the investigation. Three of the victims remain unidentified to this day.

After interviewing witnesses to the known abductions, the agency determined that a woman with distinctive red hair and a mildly deformed face had been present immediately prior to each disappearance. 

Adult witnesses were uniformly unhelpful. However, witnesses who were minors or had been minors at the time of sighting provided valuable information. The most detailed eyewitness report is consistent with other known reports. It has been summarized below:

Five-year-old Breanna S. was at a pizza restaurant with an attached arcade with her parents and brother. 

Approximately an hour after arrival, Breanna asked her mother for additional game tokens. Her mother refused loudly, asking if Breanna thought they were “made of money.” Breanna argued, at which point her father began to yell at her, too. The witness described the father’s tirade as an expletive-laden temper tantrum that shocked witnesses.

Breanna began to cry, at which point her father spanked her for “being a selfish crybaby.”

Breanna broke away and ran off, weeping. When her father attempted to follow, a staff member intervened, resulting in an altercation.

Breanna fled to a corner to cry in private.

A few minutes later, a woman with red hair and an “unusual face” approached Breanna. Breanna initially pulled away, perhaps put off by the woman’s peculiar appearance, but the woman appeared to quickly win her over by asking Breanna her favorite food.

Breanna responded that her favorite food was ice cream. The woman asked Breanna if she wanted to go get an ice cream. Breanna agreed.

Other children in the vicinity, including the primary witness, clamored to tag along, but the woman gently refused, saying that Breanna deserved a treat because she had “bad parents.”

The woman took Breanna by the hand and instructed her to look over at her parents, who were still engaged in conflict with arcade staff. She gave a little wave in their direction. “Before we go, say ‘Bye-bye, Mommy!’”

Breanna obediently repeated, “Bye-bye, Mommy.” 

The moment the phrase was uttered, the juvenile witnesses begin to panic. According to the primary witness, this is because the phrase was consistent with retellings of a local urban legend known, naturally, as the “Bye-Bye Mommy.”

The juveniles tried to raise the alarm, but the ongoing altercation between staff and Breanna’s parents rendered them unheard as the red-haired woman melted into the crowd with Breanna by her side.

Breanna was never seen again.

After exhumation from the mass grave in Eatonville, Breanna’s body was among those that showed signs of long-term physical mistreatment. 

The agency investigated the the so-called “Bye-Bye Mommy” for weeks. According to urban folklore, she was a vengeful boogeyman who spirited away disobedient children — particularly children who defied their parents in public. Information was scant for such a widespread tale, primarily consisting of three rumors:

A. The entity looked deformed—or so the rumor went—because her mean husband punched her so hard that he broke her face

B. After selecting a victim, the entity insisted he or she say, “Bye-bye, Mommy” before kidnapping them

C. Children taken by the Bye-Bye Mommy were never seen again, resulting in considerable fear among local children at the time

Disturbingly, nearly half of the victims exhumed from the mass grave were never reported missing.

As previously stated, some were never identified. However, of the unreported victims that were identified, one was undocumented, four were homeless runaways, and three had been in foster care at the time of

disappearance. The parents of the runaways and the guardians of the foster children either already had, or were later discovered to have, histories of mistreating minors in their care.

This information contradicts the prevailing rumor that the entity punished disobedient children by way of kidnapping, and lends credence to her claims that she only took – or in her words, rescued – children living with subpar guardians. 

The agency experienced great difficulty in tracking this entity. As it was impossible to identify and set watch over every victim of child neglect or abuse in Pierce County, personnel decided to stake out the mass gravesite. 

After eight weeks, the entity finally returned to the gravesite. When she saw that the remains of the children were no longer present, she flew into a rage. As is common with such entities, the high emotion disrupted her physical state and she began to “morph,” assuming a disturbing appearance that presented signs of decay, bodily trauma, and nonhuman proportions. 

Agency personnel failed to apprehend her using standard methods, in the process placing themselves in mortal danger. One agent, thinking quickly, screamed that she needed the entity’s help to rescue her baby brother, who was being abused by her stepfather. (Please note that this agent had neither a baby brother nor a stepfather.) She stated that her brother had prayed to Jesus for the Bye-Bye Mommy to help him, and was waiting for her to rescue him.

Due to the her distress over the missing bodies, the entity did not—or perhaps could not—resume normal proportions, but she followed the agent in order to help this nonexistent baby brother. The agent directed the entity to the Agency’s nearest field location, whose personnel were equipped to capture and transport the entity. 

Once in custody, the Agency was able to trace the entity’s origins quite easily.

Before her death, the Bye-Bye Mommy was a woman with multiple complaints of child abuse and one charge of neglect. Shortly before her death, she sent her young daughter to live with the child’s equally-unfit father after the child upset her.

This was the last time she ever saw her daughter.

Remorse quickly set in. She attempted to retrieve her daughter for the next three months, but was unsuccessful. One night, she had a nightmare in which her daughter was emaciated and panicking as a “pack of monsters” smothered her.

The nightmare was so powerful that upon waking, she immediately called emergency services before driving to her ex’s house, a trip of approximately thirty-five minutes.

By the time she arrived, EMS was onsite and had confirmed the child’s death.

In a fit of rage, the mother attacked her ex as the police escorted him out of the house. The ex hit her back with enough force to break her jaw and cheekbone. She then threw herself in front of an oncoming EMS vehicle, killing herself. 

Suffice to say she did not stay dead.

While issues arise in assigning human standards of sanity, insanity, and culpability to our extraordinary inmates, it is my opinion that the Bye-Bye Mommy is not sane.

Contrary to the belief that she abducted children to punish them, she believes she was saving them. Had she been a more competent and substantially less narcissistic protector, perhaps she could have. 

Instead, she held her victims captive at an undisclosed location rural Pierce County until they died. The entity insists she took her victims to a beautiful home she built after her death, and fed them the most delicious food in the world.

Initially, this claim was completely dismissed by Agency personnel. Later assessment of the entity’s abilities, however, showed that she is capable of throwing an immersive glamour, something akin to a full-body virtual reality experience. In her own words: “I took these babies away from hell to a heaven with a beautiful house, friendly pets, and delicious food – a place where treats grow on trees and nothing is ever dirty, where a mother l...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Cute-Tackle2310 on 2024-11-18 21:17:22+00:00.

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I work as a digital archivist for the state historical society, mostly handling old recordings, photographs, and documents. Last month, we received a donation of deteriorating Super 8 films and audio reels from a property sale in rural Wisconsin. The materials dated back to 1978-1979 and belonged to the Morrison family, who had vanished without a trace that winter.

The first few reels were mundane - birthday parties, Christmas morning, kids playing in the yard. But as I worked through chronologically cataloging them, I began noticing subtle irregularities. In the background of a summer barbecue footage, a tall figure stood motionless at the tree line, too distant to make out clearly. The children occasionally glanced toward it but the adults seemed oblivious.

The audio reels were mostly silent except for static, until I reached one labeled "Emily's Piano Recital - Sept 13." Instead of music, it contained what sounded like someone breathing heavily, occasionally interrupted by a dry clicking sound. The breathing continued for 47 minutes.

By October, the camera movements in the videos became erratic, often lingering too long on empty doorways or corners of rooms. The family members looked increasingly haggard, with dark circles under their eyes. Seven-year-old Emily was recorded sitting alone at the kitchen table at 3 AM, carrying on a cheerful conversation with someone off-camera, though motion tracking software confirmed no one else was present in the room.

The final tape was labeled "Thanksgiving." It opened on an empty dining room, table set for dinner but covered in dust. The camera slowly panned across family photos on the wall - recent ones showed the Morrisons' smiles growing forced, strained. In the last photo, their eyes were completely black.

The footage continued through the house, everything untouched as if the family had simply vanished mid-routine. Emily's bed was still made, her stuffed animals arranged neatly. The camera moved to her closet, where childish crayon drawings covered the back wall. They showed five stick figures holding hands with a much taller, spindly black figure. The same scene, drawn over and over, dozens of times.

The video ended in the basement. A child's voice, likely Emily's, whispered "It's time to go now. They're waiting for us." The camera tilted up toward the ceiling, revealing hundreds of scratch marks in the wooden beams. The frame distorted, flickered, and went black.

Police reports indicate the Morrison family - parents and three children - disappeared over Thanksgiving weekend 1979. Their car was in the garage. No bodies were ever found. The house remained untouched for decades until the recent sale.

While digitizing the final reel, I noticed something in the metadata. The timestamp showed the recording was made three weeks after the family's disappearance.

I submitted my findings to the cold case department. Yesterday, they informed me they're reopening the investigation. They're particularly interested in one detail - in the background of every single tape, if you enhance the audio enough, you can faintly hear children singing "Ring Around the Rosie." The same children, for over 40 years.

The historical society asked me to continue processing similar donations from that era and region. I've received three more collections this week. All show the same tall figure in the tree line. All contain footage dated after the families vanished.

I've started seeing it too, standing at the edge of the parking lot when I leave work late. I try to convince myself it's just a trick of the light. But last night, I heard children singing outside my window.

I'm recording this now as evidence. If something happens to me, you'll know wh-

[End of transcript]

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/35_47 on 2024-11-18 20:07:26+00:00.

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The following emails were recovered from the University of Cardiff's Biochemistry laboratory following the incidents of 19/09/XX. They are not to be released to the public in any form.

Unauthorised access to said emails will result in termination.

Dr Henrik Lars - 17/03/XX

Dear Professor Goldman,

Experiment #7 has been a resounding success.

I have learned from the failures of #6 and transported the stem cells to the dish using a sterile scalpel, so there was no chance of cross-contamination. Thank you again for the increased supply of 09-476, it has been vital to test larger doses if we wish to fully grasp its potential.

Report is as follows:

• Stem cells implanted in a 0.4 mol/dm3 solution of 09-476

• Cells enlarged in mass by a factor of 2 after exactly 15.3 hours

• Muscle tissue detected after 32 hours

I really feel confident about this one.

Dr Henrik Lars, PhD

Professor Brynn Goldman - 18/03/XX

Dr Henrik,

That's a pleasure to hear! I'm glad we managed to convince the panel to bring in that new shipment. Number seven already feels like a prime candidate for further experimentation.

Did you notice any corrosion with an increased concentration of 09-476? I'm concerned that it will negatively affect the growth of the cells.

I've allowed for more funding to be directed towards this project. Use it wisely. This could be our golden goose.

Best of luck,

Prof Brynn Goldman

Dr Henrik Lars - 30/03/XX

Dear Professor,

Experiment #7 has grown to almost 4 grams. It is entirely comprised of muscle fiber and stem cells, the latter already multiplying as I type. It has absorbed almost an entire syringe of 09-476. I am putting in a request for more, as well as a second batch of cells to replicate #7. In a few days, it will be ready for preliminary testing.

It has shown to be mildly resistant to high temperatures - I accidentally increased the heat of the lab whilst I was on lunch by 2 degrees Kelvin and it showed no signs of degradation.

This is more than a revolutionary new drug, Professor. I feel like I am on the brink of a scientific breakthrough.

Dr Henrik

Professor Brynn Goldman - 08/04/XX

Dr Henrik,

I'm delighted to hear that experiment number seven has been so informative. I agree with you, this has the potential to be a very interesting research task. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with the idea of your "scientific breakthrough". What you have cultivated is nothing more than a set of cells, it is not sentient or conscious. Please try to stick to the original project. It's what we're getting paid for after all.

Also - I've had a complaint from Floor Two that one of their barrels of synthetic amniotic fluid has gone missing. It's quite important to them. Now I'm not saying you did it, per se, but the security cameras did pick up somebody matching your physique rolling a barrel into a lift in the early hours of the morning a couple days ago. If you happen to know anything about it, they'd be very forgiving if it could be returned.

Thank you,

Prof Brynn Goldman

Dr Henrik Lars - 22/04/XX

Professor,

Experiments #8-12 are going very well. I am watching their progress with great interest. I request a few more samples of 09-476.

Experiment #7 is extraordinary. It has grown to the size of a foetus. In fact, it has taken the form of one. Analysis shows that it is behaving exactly like one, too, only growing at an enhanced rate due to the introduction of more concentrated 09-476. This is utterly remarkable. I have spent the day glancing at it while researching papers that might discuss something like this - I have found nothing. #7 is truly unique.

I have placed it in a tank in the centre of my laboratory. It requires very little care, no nutrients at all other than 09-476. It will not respond to stimuli at the minute, so I cannot claim that it holds any developmental cognitive function. Although, one time, I could have sworn it tilted its head toward me.

Please inform Floor Two that I will be needing more synthetic fluid. I am sure that they will understand how vital this experiment is when it is explained to them.

Dr Henrik

Professor Brynn Goldman - 24/04/XX

Dr Henrik.

This changes things.

If you're cultivating a foetus down there, you'll need some more staff. I'll send some junior researchers to assist with Number 7's development.

I agree, this is quite remarkable, but it has been done before. The most interesting part's the fact that it doesn't need to eat - how does it survive? Does it breathe? Does it think?

Please keep me updated, Henrik.

Prof Brynn Goldman

Dr Henrik Lars - 05/05/XX

Professor,

I was right. It is life. #7 has begun to move certain limbs within its tank. It has now grown to the size of a newborn, yet it shows no signs of the same basic intelligence. Its skin is pale and translucent - I can note the lack of basic organ development. It is hollow.

I have attempted to test certain responses, such as tapping on the tank or playing auditory stimuli. It has stirred slightly each time. Once, it placed a fleshy hand to the glass. I will not leave the laboratory this week. I will sleep under my desk, just in case there are any updates. The rate at which it is developing is incredible.

Dr Henrik

Public University Announcement - 08/05/XX

Students and Faculty,

We apologise for the recent power cut. The mains have been repaired and power should be redirected to the rest of the University as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience!

Cardiff

Dr Henrik Lars - 09/05/XX

Professor,

What the hell happened?! A power outage? When I'm involved in research this important?

There was no emergency power routed to my laboratory. #7 has suffered a catastrophic loss in muscle mass and size. I will be needing more 09-476 immediately. The space heaters and ventilation that provided #7 with the warmth and air it needs were switched off overnight, on the one day that I chose to go back to my home. I had to listen to it burbling when I walked back in the following morning. It sounded like screaming.

I attempted to email you on the day of the outage to notify you that #7 required more tissue to rebuild what had been damaged by the outage. You did not respond, so I spliced parts of my own calf tissue to implant in #7. I am fine. I will regrow.

This may take months to rebuild.

Dr Henrik

Professor Brynn Goldman - 10/05/XX

Henrik,

You did what?! You implanted part of your own body into an experimental homunculi because you thought it looked weak?!

This is really, really worrying Henrik. You're treating the thing like it's your own child, for god's sake! If I didn't understand how groundbreaking this thing was I'd shut it down. I mean - the ethical violations alone could destroy everything I've built here! And what if you start relying on it, huh? I don't want to have to send you to fucking grief counselling if Number Seven kicks the bucket.

This had better not get out to the rest of the University. I'm already telling the board that you're doing experiments on actual IVF foetuses just to keep rival institutions from stealing the data.

God, I swear if you don't give me something incredible.

Prof Brynn Goldman

Dr Henrik Lars - 16/05/XX

Professor,

I have something incredible. #7 was successfully transported out of his tank today. He has grown to be the size of a toddler, and he looks like one too. I believe the cells I transplanted have mixed with his DNA - he looks remarkably like I did when I was around 3 or 4. He has begun to take tentative steps, and although he cannot support his bodyweight nor open his eyes, he seems to have an understanding of the world around him. When lying on my desk, as he is now, he will pick up objects for mere moments before dropping them.

This is a conscious human! I have made something that no person living has been able to make!

I am requesting an expansion to my laboratory.

Dr Henrik

Dr Henrik Lars - 30/06/XX

Professor,

#7 has begun to say his first words. I lectured him on 09-476 today as part of his pre-schooling, and while he was perched upon the chair he muttered "Henrik" under his breath. He seems just like me - his eyes are the same shade of green and his hair is an identical russet colour. He is an inquisitive sort, he enjoys playing with the lego bricks I have placed in the laboratory. His designs are quite hard to understand but I believe he is simply making shapes at the minute. Some of them look quite like animals, however, which I have had to pluck from his mouth to ensure he does not choke.

Sometimes I see a glimmer of intellect behind his pupils, some flashing moment of self-actualisation. It is strange - for a second it is like a wildly intelligent creature lurks behind the facade of a boy.

Might childcare be an option? Supervised, of course. I wish to see how #7 grows when moulded by a mother-like figure. I have suggested some names in a list attached. They will obviously have to sign NDAs.

Dr Henrik

Professor Brynn Goldman - 01/07/XX

Henrik.

The results from Number Seven's check-up came back.

The thing has no organs. None. Still.

How in god's name does it survive?

I've looked over your nanny suggestions. Funnily enough, they all share a striking resemblance to your mother. Coincidence?

Prof Brynn Goldman

Professor Brynn Goldman - 12/07/XX

We found Number Seven in the cafeteria today, Henrik.

I thought you said it couldn't eat yet? I explicitly...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RooMorgue on 2024-11-18 19:30:00+00:00.

---

Justice, my sister, ran away from home when she was eighteen years of age, or so for many years I thought. My parents were vague on the cause of her disappearance, and all matters pertaining to my sibling, come to that.

“A saint,” was all my father would say of her. “She was a saint in the eyes of God.”

“An angel,” my mother would insist. “That’s all you need to know.”

They would admit no fault in her absence, and yet I sensed something false in their praise and winced to hear it from such bitter mouths as theirs.

I’d feared both of my parents for as long as I could recall, which is a pitiful sort of existence for a child to know. They belonged to some evangelical religion that devoured them through its miserable hold, being that their conduct in all things was not as individuals, but as the mortal enactors of their severe and joyless faith.

I feared to trespass their rules or express any complaint lest they, by force, grind it out. The house was perpetually cold, a temple of gruelling worship in which toys, or television, or casual literature were forbidden, each room instead committed to such quantities of religious paraphernalia that there was scarce space in them to move.

I knew from savage paragraphs of my parents’ beloved texts that all suffering was holy, and corporal punishment just one means of pain listed among them. To be spared other agonies was a gift rarely granted, only the act of killing forbidden; the only reason my parents had never once raised a hand to me by my recollection was that being a mute, shy, and anxious child I had given them no true cause.

So it was that I did not ask about my sister, only imagined a thousand configurations of destiny that might well have befallen her.

After years of pure behaviour she had trespassed, I suspected, had disobeyed a curfew, tasted alcohol, or exalted in the touch of men. My mother would wash her hands and rock with mumbled prayer at the rare utterance of her name alone: in this way I knew my sisters’ failure as it was written in the law of my parents’ holy works.

They had put Justice out on the street, perhaps, or else she had run from them, leaving me, a boy of then just six alone in the harsh church that was our house.

By the end of the following decade I was desperate to join my sister in the world beyond, but having never been permitted to work by my parents or been given sufficient allowance to hide away I was jailed there, groomed to be the prophet of their faith.

I took to pacing the house in obsessive repetition by habit, particularly when my parents absented themselves to proselytise in the poor quarters of the city in which they felt the Word was most needed.

Sometimes I stood at the thin, high windows of that hideous abode and considered leaping to a sinful death on the grey street below, but thoughts of my sister prevented me, for I had hopes still of meeting her again.

I envisioned her coiled like an ammonite in the sheathe of an old sleeping bag, somewhere, or against the back of a faceless lover in an apartment beyond our parents’ reaches. Dancing on a stage under lights like gasoline on a black road in all their lurid colours—

So many images of Justice I conceived of, some of them happy, others lonely glances of the fringes to which my mother and father had thrust her in their rejection. But not once in my grim musings did I suppose that she was dead.

I knew there was some possibility of it—perhaps my father had struck her down in a holy rage, or she had seized in the grasp of drugged overdose in the infected womb of the city, or starved there.

Yet my parents’ belief that it was a sin to outright take a life was so strong that I could not conceive of them having any hand in it, and for reasons inexplicable I was certain that no other death had claimed her.

That Justice had disappeared led me to think that I too may likewise fade from view, however. My parents’ obsession with me standing as some great example of their religion disturbed me in its fervour; my name was often uttered in their prayers, my photograph placed beneath the shrine of crosses they knelt to where other families observed the glass face of a machine.

They had no reason to think I did not share in their delusion, for through fear I’d clasp my hands and mouth to God as they did, and so I seemed devout. But I had no want of their baleful religion of self-abasement, and as the months went on and my fixation with my sister’s vanishing expanded I at last dared to ask my mother if Justice had always been as saintly as they claimed.

“She was,” my mother insisted. “Our good girl, that she was. But we had a fear she’d change, when she got older. She was always having notions of leaving us... well, we prayed on it, and God saw fit to make a saint of her so all she’d be remembered for was the good she’d done, and not the sins that might have come after. Fire and brimstone licks us all around the ankles, child, but through His love we’re saved.”

She touched my cheek with one cool hand, and I cringed from the zeal in that caress, the look in her eyes that was a blindness in the seeing of what was not there.

“You’re so like her, you know,” my mother said. “You’re good. A credit to your faith.”

“I’m not,” I signed, but as always she misread the frustration in my gestures and took me gently by the hand.

“Oh, love. You don’t have to speak for people to hear the Word. You’re enough.”

It was the kindest sentiment my mother had ever expressed to me, and in other circumstances I might have taken comfort in it, but being that I was no believer it only drove my fear and melancholy deeper into me.

Once my mother had gone out into the city with her pamphlets, my father presumably with her, I resumed my wandering of the house again, thinking of Justice, whose face I knew better from photographs than from the tatters I had left of memory.

A soft, pale face she’d had, like the bead of a pearl rosary, eyes like the glow that accompanied sirens in the night; she looked as my mother had done when she was young, before the whittling of the Order had made a haggard branch of her. I wondered if Justice had gone that way, and if I, too, would be incised merely by proximity to my parents’ beliefs.

By the time my pacing led me to the top of the house I again felt the call of those tall windows, so ensnared was I by the terror of my fate that this seemed my only egress. It was as I stood pressed to their murky glass that I became aware of distant music above me, much like the recordings my mother would play while kneeling to her shrine of saints.

I stared up at the ceiling, momentarily bewildered; only when my eyes touched the outline of the door to the attic did it occur to me that this room which I had never entered was the source of that dark melody. To my knowledge the loft had rarely been used except for storage purposes, and so I’d had no cause or interest to explore it.

Now, attracted by the strain of mysterious song, I went to fetch a broom from a nearby cupboard and prodded the attic door until the ladder descended. At once the yellow glow of candlelight fell upon me, and with it the odours of incense and human habitation such as I had smelled sometimes in the street side gatherings of religious fanatics my parents frequented.

Against my better judgement I followed the lead of my tugging curiosity and climbed the steps up into that skyward quarter.

I found myself within a makeshift church, though one characterised by the hoarding mania the rest of the house had fallen prey to. Pews over spilling with stale cushions bisected the chamber, and clustered pillars of white candles threw up a canopy of shadows from wall to wall.

Underfoot lay handwritten prayers and hymns on yellowed paper, dropped down like summer wasps from their stands, and there were so many plaster sculptures of biblical figures hemmed in about the room that even had I been alone there I would have felt observed by their painted eyes.

Yet I was not alone, for upon entering the attic my gaze was drawn at once to the presence to which that shrine had been erected.

Upon the central altar sat a creature draped in pale fabric such as the saints wore in their portraits, its legs buckled in some weird mode of kneeling like plants grown twisted through disease or want of light. Its arms were bent backwards and vestigial, the fingers conjoined by a trellis of knotted skin; it had been burned, this thing, transformed by fire as my mother had described into a new and holy dread.

But it was only when that being turned its head to me, revealing, untouched, the miracle of beauty in its face that I recognised my sister, and what through an act of brutal ritual she’d become.

I screamed, first through the near thoughtless instinct of horror, then in despair, for even had I the ability to call through words for help I knew our few neighbours would bury themselves in the dark and dust of their homes and so hear nothing, or else tell themselves that they had not.

From some corner of the attic came a shuffling motion, and I pivoted so severely towards it that I near turned my ankle in the debris underfoot.

My father stood behind me, a dishevelled tent of bone and sallow features sunken into his clothes like some dead thing preserved by the sun.

Only his slow movement towards me across that junk room denoted his continued vitality, such as it had been reduced to through the dirge of his life.

“Ah, son,” my fa...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/geofflowe on 2024-11-18 19:39:37+00:00.

---

Content Warning: Mentions of child abuse.

My grandmother used to tell me stories that were supposed to scare me into behaving. She’d threaten that if I didn’t behave, my father would remarry someone wicked, and I’d be at the mercy of a stepmother who’d make my life hell. It felt like nonsense at the time—a bedtime story to keep me from acting out.  

She told one particular story often, especially after my mother died when I was eight. The idea of my father remarrying was terrifying enough without her adding a wicked stepmother into the mix. But after she passed away last month, I found her stories coming back to me in the worst way.

The story went something like this: 

There were once two children—a boy and a girl—whose mother died when they were young. Their father, a businessman, traveled frequently, and when he remarried a woman he met on one of his trips, the children hoped for love and care. But the new wife was cruel. She accused them of mischief, locked them in their rooms, and denied them food as punishment.

One day, when their father was away, the stepmother went too far. She left the children outside, forbidding them to come inside for water or shade. The boy collapsed first, his sister trying to drag him back toward the house. By the time the stepmother returned, both were dead.

Panicked, she buried their bodies in the garden, under the onion patch. When the father came home, she cried and claimed the children had run away. Distraught, he believed her, held a memorial, and invited the extended family over for dinner. He asked the stepmother to prepare a feast to honor the children.

She went to the garden to pick vegetables, but as she pulled at the onions, she heard a voice whisper:

‘My mother, my mother, don’t pull on my hair.

You’ve killed me and now buried me here.’ 

Terrified, she ran inside, claiming nothing was wrong. The father, confused, went to the garden himself. When he picked the onions, they looked like human heads, pale and weeping.

Still, the stepmother cooked the meal, her tears mixing with the onions as she chopped them. But as the family gathered to eat, a song echoed through the house:

‘Our mother, our mother, don’t feed us to him.

Our father will miss us; your future is grim.’

The guests restrained the wicked stepmother and tore apart the house, searching for the children who had been singing. Eventually, they found their way to the garden and noticed the freshly turned dirt. They dug down and found the children’s bodies, headless and rotting beneath the onions. The stepmother confessed everything. She was hanged that same week.

 

My grandmother would end the story with a warning: “That’s why you must always behave. Otherwise, your father might find someone like her.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t too close to her and felt only a little sad when she passed. My father never remarried, and I was his only child, so we inherited their house when she passed a few years after my grandfather. While cleaning the attic, I found my grandfather’s journals while sorting through her belongings.

I wasn’t expecting anything unusual. Most of it was routine: entries about work, the good weather, or my grandmother. But one entry near the end caught my attention.

It was an entry from early in their marriage, and it read:

I dreamt of the children again. They sang the same song, crying for justice. My hands feel so heavy when I work in the garden. What did you do, Eleanor? What have you hidden from me?”

 

The words didn’t make sense.  Who were the children? My father was an only child, as far as I knew. Why did he mention digging in the garden? I never saw anything strange in the garden or at their house. 

Until now.

The sole inheritors of their will, my father and I moved into their house, a beautiful Victorian with a sprawling yard and nearby streams. The first night I heard it, I thought it was a prank. A faint melody drifted through the house, barely loud enough to hear. It sounded like children singing, but the words were indistinct, mixed with the babbling brooks nearby.

By the second night, I was sure it was coming from the garden. I stood at the back door, straining to listen, and heard it clearly this time:

“Our brother, our brother, you live in our home.”

I froze. It was the song from the story.

By the fourth night, the voices followed me inside. They sang as I tried to sleep, whispering in the walls and under the floorboards. I swore I could hear dirt shifting beneath the house. I had trouble sleeping, and when I asked my father about it, he would shut my questions down and tell me to ignore it all. 

Then things escalated. 

One night, as we were having dinner, we both froze. The singing was clear this time, the words unmistakable:

“Our brother, our brother, you sit in our place.

Your daughter won’t miss you or remember your face.”

 

The blood drained from my father’s face. I could tell he recognized the words, even if he wouldn’t admit it. “It’s just the pipes,” he muttered, shoving his chair back and retreating to his bedroom.

But I knew better.

The nights grew worse. The voices followed us into the house, whispering accusations. They would call out in unison, chillingly playful:

“He took our place. We want it back.”

I started seeing them—two pale, translucent figures standing in the garden at night, their hollow eyes fixed on the house. My father saw them, too, though he tried to deny it. His health began to deteriorate. He barely slept, jumping at every creak of the floorboards or gust of wind rattling the windows.

One morning, I found him in the kitchen, staring out at the garden with dark circles under his eyes. “I don’t know what they want from me,” he whispered. “I didn’t do anything.”

I decided to dig in the garden. The soil felt damp and heavy as if it hadn’t been touched in years, but the deeper I went, the more I found. First, small bones—too small to be anything but a child. Then, there was a clump of hair, brittle and matted with dirt.

The spirits became more aggressive, targeting my father specifically. His bedroom door would slam shut in the middle of the night. He’d wake up screaming, clutching his chest, claiming he felt small hands pulling at his hair.

One night, I woke to the sound of breaking glass. I ran to his room and found him collapsed on the floor, clutching the broken shards of a picture frame. “They won’t stop,” he gasped. “They want me dead.”

I tried to reassure him, but the look in his eyes told me he’d already given up.

The next morning, he was gone. His body was stiff, his eyes wide with terror, as though he’d seen something no living person should ever witness.

I thought the torment would end with him, that the ghosts would finally rest. But I was wrong.

The night after his funeral, the singing returned. It was louder this time, and the words had changed:

 

“Your father is gone, so we wait for you.

Your place is here; you’ll never break through.”

 

I’ve tried leaving the house. I always find myself back at the front door, no matter how far I drive or how fast I run. The garden is thriving again, the onions thick and vibrant, though I haven’t touched the soil.

The singing never stops.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Days? Weeks? Time seems different now. The voices call to me constantly, lulling me into a strange, dreamlike haze. Sometimes, I see my father standing in the garden, just beyond the onions, watching me with those empty eyes.

If you ever inherit an old house with a perfect garden, burn it down. Burn it to the ground and never look back. Because once you’re here, there’s no escape. And if you ever hear singing in your garden, ignore it. And for God’s sake, don’t dig.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LanesGrandma on 2024-11-15 11:32:21+00:00.

---

You wanted it, you asked for it, now you've got it — for the time being, r/nosleep is suspending some of its guidelines. Consider this an experiment; we'll see how it goes and whether it'll continue long term. Be aware that adjustments may have to be made as the experiment goes on, so check r/nosleepooc for information.

 

IN BRIEF: WHAT THIS MEANS (THE BORING PART)

• r/nosleep still has Posting Guidelines which you need to carefully and thoroughly read before posting as they're your only warning. Failing to read and follow these revised guidelines is on you and will lead to subreddit bans. The revised guidelines include:

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-11-18 17:48:08+00:00.

---

First:

Previous

Bit by bit my living situation had improved. I could afford heat, at least two meals a day, and warm socks. Those comforts came at a cost. A bullet wound in my shoulder was still healing up. The company I worked for offered magic-laced medicine that could heal wounds faster, but they cost more than I could afford. Better to let things heal on their own. A deep ache from my legs bothered me. It got to the point that I knew I needed to get a checkup before working again. I hated needing to see the doctor for old wounds simply because medical costs aren’t cheap. After this check-up, I might not be able to afford heat for the rest of the colder seasons this year.  

I wasn’t certain what sort of creature Dr. Fillow was. He looked human enough. I called to see if he had any open times for an appointment, but he told me he could swing by in a few hours. He was very busy treating supernatural creatures and sometimes humans like myself. He was always on the move, so it was easier to see him outside his clinic.  

He’s been by my place three times in the past two years when my legs got too bad to deal with. The scar above the right knee looked redder than normal. My knee also felt weird. It made an unnatural creaking sound and sometimes popped out of place if I pushed myself too hard. My left leg needed to be wrapped with a special cloth. It had turned black, the darkness fading around my hip. I hated looking at the scars. I should be thankful that I was able to get my legs back, but they were a constant reminder of the day I lost the person I cared about most.   

Dr. Fillow arrived with a few months' supply of cloth for the left leg. He needed to redo some painful spell work because the magic that kept my leg attached had been weakening, when I pulled magic from other sources through my body while on the job, it had messed with the spell that attached new flesh to old.   

“I hear you’ve been working again.” He said after the treatments were finished.  

He often stayed for a few minutes to chat and get caught up. I always offered him a drink or a snack, but he refused saying he didn’t like sweet things or liked tea. Once he accepted a cup of coffee. He wore a mask over half his face and sounded as if he always had a sore throat. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen his full face before. He adjusted large glasses over top of his mask and brushed aside light brown hair.   

“I needed the money. I figured it was about time. I can’t seem to get any easy jobs though.” I shrugged.  

My legs hurt like hell. I dreaded the idea of staying in bed for a few more days to recover. I needed to get a job soon to pay for this treatment.  

“Don’t push yourself too hard. Paying off your debts is not worth your life. Have you found anyone to support you?” He asked looking around my barren and rundown apartment.  

“No. I figured I needed to get myself back together before I dragged a person into my mess. And with scars like these, it’s not as if I’ll find someone who would be interested in a simple fling either.”  

“No friends? Nothing of the sort?” He offered almost sounding worried about me.  

I shrugged again. I was about to tell him that August offered to work with me whenever he was free. I didn’t feel like boring him with my personal life. Or lack of one.   

“Go make some friends. Get some rest. Call me if your pain increases.” He said as he stood up ready to leave.  

This was all the advice I'd heard before. I paid what I could then mentally flinched when I saw the rest of the amount I still owed. I promised I would take it easy as the doctor left to see another one of his patients.   

I did plan on staying in bed and resting for as long as I needed. However, two days later I found myself sitting on a bench in a park ten minutes away from my apartment. A job came in saying a handful of people saw some sort of large animal and a young girl had gone missing shortly after the sightings. It wasn’t confirmed a creature had been behind these events, but The Corporation didn’t like taking chances. The park was so nearby I figured I would check it out.  

I walked over during the day looking for any kind of clues. The park led off into a short nature trail. I assumed if there was a creature it would hang out in the trees. An entire day of searching led to nothing. Since monsters came out at night, I was stuck staying up late.   

Aside from some recent graffiti, nothing appeared out of place around the park or the trial. My legs ached from all the walking. I spent a few hours sitting on a bench almost wanting for something to happen.   

I found out the hard way if I focused hard way not use my talent of seeing traces of magic after my leg treatments. The migraines I got did not mix well with the leg pain, making them both unbearable. Speaking of something unbearable, my phone kept going off because August figured out how to send GIFs. I should have blocked him. He would on occasion send a good cat gif in the mess of other memes that made it worth letting his messages go through.  

“Is your girlfriend worried about you?”  

A voice made me jump. A girl had silently walked behind the bench to see over my shoulder. She had gotten a glimpse of the random messages. I stood up to face her honestly expecting a monster. Instead, I found a petite dark-haired girl wearing a plain white dress. She even had sandals in this cold weather. She had her hands behind her back. Healing bruises spotted her arms.  She looked anywhere between sixteen and nineteen. She shouldn’t be out in a dark park at this hour without a coat. I put my phone and wallet in my pants pocket then took off my jacket. I offered it to her without hesitation.  

“Where do you live? Do you need help getting home?” I offered.  

She smiled in a way that looked very familiar. Her black hair and dimples made me think of August. She took my jacket, snuggling down into the warm collar for a moment.  

“I’m not normally the kind of girl who lets strange men take me home.” She joked in an overly sweet voice.  

“I’ll call you a cab.” I said not wanting her to get any ideas. “By chance do you have any siblings?” I added.  

She shook her head confused over the odd question.  

“No. Are you disappointed I don’t have a sister?” She suggested.  

It was as if she was trying to flirt. She was very bad at it if that was her goal.   

“No, you look like a friend of mine. Must just be the hairstyle. Now come on, let’s call a ride for you.”  

The smile on her face appeared forced. I wasn’t going along with the game she wanted to play. I started to walk down the pathway towards the park entrance with her following behind. My phone didn’t want to turn on again. Sometimes it shut off in the colder weather.  

“What are you doing out at this time of night?” I asked her as we walked.  

“Looking for monsters, how about you?” She said, her sweet tone dropping slightly.  

I froze. Carefully I turned my head towards her, my brain trying to work out if she was a threat. Some creatures looked like innocent weak humans to lure in their meals. She may be a monster ready to rip my heart out, or just a weird girl in the park because she had an interest in the occult. If I made a run for it, I risked leaving a poor girl stranded. If I didn’t leave, then I also risked getting eaten.  

I wasn’t aware of how right I was about the risk of being dinner for a creature. A burst of wind came down on us. I started to move to grab the odd girl to get her out of danger. My body was too slow. To my horror, a beast came down from the sky. In one lightning-fast movement, a black beak scooped her up around the waist. In two beats of its wings, it lifted back into the sky tossing her into the air. Her small body was swallowed whole by the monster that recently started to stalk the park.  

It was a crow the size of a car with three glowing red eyes but oddly enough, paws as legs. Like hell, I was going to let her get eaten like that. We stopped near a bench. I prayed I had enough strength to fight back in time to save her.  

Every living thing had magic. The amount depended on many different factors. I was in the middle of a park with countless plants, trees, and dormant insects all with their own life force. That magic leaked into the air. It was a reason why some forests felt so strange to humans. If you knew how you could ask to use the power nature held. Humans weren’t built to handle magic. I still made a silent request to everything around me. I put out my will to take whatever was given. I then grabbed a hold of the bench that had been bolted down into the stone walkway. A burst of power came through. I aimed for the glowing eyes in the sky and threw the bench as hard as I could towards it.   

The metal and wood found its target. I heard the impact and saw the crow fall from the sky screeching the entire way down. The backlash of using so much magic hit hard. My right knee popped out and I swore it felt as if it was going to come apart at the old scars. My arms burst with pain and my muscles cramped up. Each one of my hands curled uselessly. I forced myself forward towards the downed crow hoping it wasn’t too late to ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-11-18 16:57:30+00:00.

---

When I was a kid, I experienced something so traumatic that my brain erased it from my memory. Completely. For years, it was just... gone.

At least, it was until one afternoon.

I was sitting on the couch with my son, watching random educational videos on YouTube. He’s six, full of energy, and obsessed with learning videos. He wants to know everything about everything. It was nice. Just the two of us hanging out, him curled up next to me, asking a million questions.

Then it came on. The upbeat jingle, and that cheerful, sing-songy voice. School House Rock. “Three is a magic number, yes, it is, it's a magic number, somewhere in the ancient mystic trinity, you get three as a magic number…”

My chest tightened immediately, like a fist had closed around my heart. I froze. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. That song, that melody, it reached deep into my brain and pulled out something I didn’t even know was there. The memories hit me like a freight train.

“Daddy?” My son’s voice was distant, muffled, like I was underwater. “You okay?”

I blinked and realized I was staring at the TV, my hand clenched so tightly around the arm of the couch that my knuckles were white. My son was looking up at me, his face scrunched in confusion.

“I... ” I started to say something, anything to brush it off, but my throat felt like sandpaper.

“Daddy?” he said again.

“I’m fine,” I lied, forcing my hand to let go of the couch. “I just... need to run to the bathroom.”

I stood up, nearly tripping over the coffee table as I made my way to the bathroom. My legs felt weak, my whole body trembling. I gripped the edge of the sink, trying to steady myself.

The song was still playing in the living room, that stupid, happy voice echoing in my head.

3, 6, 9,12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27...30

It wasn’t just a song. It was the song. The one they played to calm us down.

When I was a child, I went to Crestwood Middle School. The school was large, but very old. It had poor insulation, making it freezing in the winter, and hot in the summer. No matter how much they tried to paint the place, it always looked outdated. The hallways echoed; the floors creaked. Hell, most of the faculty had been students there themselves as children.

The rules were strict, and the teachers didn’t mess around. Dress codes, assigned seats at lunch, even how we walked in the hallways was monitored. It felt like every corner of the school was under their watchful eyes, even when you couldn’t see them.

Most of the staff at Crestwood were all about rules and discipline. They acted like they were running a military academy instead of an elementary school. But my favorite teacher, Ms. Harper, was different.

 She was warm, playful, like she actually liked kids. While the other teachers scowled and barked orders, she’d crack jokes and smile. She wore colorful dresses that swished when she walked, and her room always smelled clean, unlike the rest of the school, which smelled more like old books, old wood, and mildew.

Everyone loved her. She was the one teacher who made me feel safe at that school. She’d ask about our hobbies, encourage me to draw or write stories, and even kept a stash of candy in her desk for when we did well on tests.

But despite the safety of Ms. Harper’s classroom, us kids couldn’t help but feel uneasy at Crestwood. Maybe it was just the age of the school, maybe it was the rules. Or maybe, it was the rumors. Every kid in the school had heard them. Stories about kids disappearing, about strange noises in the vents, about the principal supposedly eating kids who misbehaved. It all sounded ridiculous, but at Crestwood, the line between “weird” and “normal” was thinner than at most schools.

My best friend at the time was a kid named Alex. He was small for his age, with messy hair and a laugh that was contagious. We bonded over many things, Pokémon cards, PlayStation 2, but it was our shared obsession with urban legends that really fueled our friendship, and Crestwood was full of them. Whenever we heard a new one, we’d go off on “missions” to investigate them. Most of the time, it was harmless fun; investigating the “haunted” bathroom, or trying to sneak into the teachers’ lounge. But one day, we heard a new rumor. There was a hidden basement under the school.

Over the next couple weeks, Alex and I started asking around about the basement rumor to the 8th graders. According to the stories, it was where the teachers took “the bad kids.” No one knew what happened down there. Some said that is where Principal Johnson eats kids, some said its haunted, or there was some kind of monster that lived down there. But one thing was certain. The kids who’d gone missing over the years? Supposedly, that’s where they ended up.

Alex was obsessed with the idea. “We have to find it,” he told me one afternoon.

“I don’t know, man,” I said, kicking a rock across the cracked blacktop. “What if we get caught, or what if the rumors are true, and we go missing?”

He shot back, his eyes wide with excitement. “But what if we’re the ones who finally figure it out? We’d be legends!”

I wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was, but I went along with it anyway. It was hard to say no to Alex once he got an idea in his head. It didn’t hurt that he was my only friend.

That afternoon, after the final bell rang, we didn’t head straight home. Instead, we stayed behind, hiding in the bushes until the coast was clear.

“Okay,” Alex whispered, peeking out. “Now’s our chance.”

We slipped back into the building through a side door that never quite latched properly. The halls were silent. Just being in the school while it was empty was unsettling enough by itself.

“Where do we even start?” I whispered.

Alex pointed down the hallway toward the janitor’s closet. “Mark said it’s somewhere near there.” Mark was a 8th grader, the loud and obnoxious kind. I didn’t trust him, but Alex did.

We crept down the hall, our sneakers squeaking softly on the floor. The janitor’s closet was locked, as expected, but Alex had come prepared. He pulled an old, expired credit card from his pocket he had gotten from his parents and started fiddling with the door.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” I muttered, glancing nervously over my shoulder.

“Shut up and keep watch,” he hissed.

It only took him a few minutes to get the door open. I was about to congratulate him when I saw the look on his face.

“Uh... dude?”

I turned to see what he was looking at. Inside the closet, behind the rows of cleaning supplies and buckets, there was a small door.

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

“So... do we open it?” Alex asked, his voice trembling just a little.

I wanted to say no. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to get out of there. But Alex was already reaching for the latch.

Alex pulled the door open, revealing a narrow, dark hallway.

“Whoa...” Alex said, his voice barely above a whisper.

The walls were old brick, and the floor was plain, cracked concrete. The only light came from the janitor’s closet, spilling weakly into the space. At the far end of the hallway was an olde wooden door with a padlock dangling from its latch.

“Okay, it’s locked. Let’s go,” I said, my voice shaky.

But Alex wasn’t listening. He was already going down the hallway.

“Alex!” I hissed, glancing over my shoulder toward the main hall. “Come on, man, this is stupid! We’re gonna get caught!”

“Nobody’s even here,” Alex said, his voice echoing slightly off the cold walls. “It’s fine. Just come on.”

I hesitated, my heart hammering in my chest. The silence in the school was oppressive, my heart was beating out of my chest, but I couldn’t leave Alex there alone. With a sigh, I went after him, the cold stale air of the hallway hitting me like a slap.

Alex stood at the far end of the hallway, staring at the padlocked door. He reached out and jiggled the lock.

“It’s old,” he said. “I bet we could break it.”

“Or,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “we could leave. Right now. This is crazy, Alex. We’ll get in so much trouble.”

Alex ignored me. He turned back toward the janitor’s closet and climbed up. For a split second, I felt relief, thinking he was giving up. Then I heard the scrape of metal.

“What are you doing?” I called out.

Alex came back into view, struggling to carry a red fire extinguisher. “If we can’t pick it, we’ll just smash it.”

“Are you serious?” I said, panic rising in my voice. “That’s gonna be so loud!”

“So what? Nobody’s here,” he said, grinning. “Relax, dude.”

Before I could argue, he hoisted the extinguisher and swung it at the padlock.

Clang!

The sound was deafening in the tiny hallway. I flinched, glancing up at the door, fully expecting someone to come storming in.

“Alex, stop!” I hissed. “We’re gonna get caught!”

But Alex just shook his head. “One more, and it’ll break.”

He raised the extinguisher again and brought it down with all his strength. The lock gave way, clattering to the ground.

“There,” Alex said triumphantly, dropping the fire extinguisher with a thud. “See? Told you it’d be fine.”

I wanted to scream at him, to beg him to leave, but he was already reaching for the handle.

“Alex-” I started, but it was too late. He pulled the door open.

Alex pulled the door open, and both of us leaned forward, holding our breath as we peered into whatever was on the other side.

Behind the door, there it was.

A set of old stone steps, worn smooth in the center, descend...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gu9fgj/3_6_9_12_15_18_21_24_27_thirty/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/0hShaSha on 2024-11-18 10:08:08+00:00.

---

---

"AhhhhhHhh! Hello, we need an ambulance and police immediately! I'm here at... at..." cried the distraught teenager, barely able to string words together, her voice cracking under the weight of panic.

---***

1 Year Ago

"Shh, don't talk about that, Grace," Emily whispered. "Don't you know what happened?"

Grace hesitated, swallowing hard. She did know. Everyone knew—whispers and gossip filled the hallways whenever the subject came up. But what happened to Curtis was officially ruled an accident.

"Grace, you're new here," chimed another teacher, her voice carrying a tone of patronizing reassurance. "You’ll learn that kids have accidents. They fall, they get hurt—it doesn’t mean their parents are abusive. You’ll see when you have more experience."

Grace nodded, biting her tongue. Deep down, she wasn’t so sure.

---***

"Teeechs"

"Teeechs!" screamed Polly one afternoon, her tiny voice ringing across the room.

Grace turned, startled. "What did you call me?"

Polly repeated the word as she shaped playdough in her hands, then giggled and returned to her creation.

Grace froze. It had been years since she’d heard that nickname. Curtis had been the only child in her class to call her "Teechs." He used it like it was her real name, laughing each time he said it. But after his sudden death, the name disappeared with him—until now.

That night, alone in her classroom, Grace noticed something strange. On the chalkboard, someone had written, "Teechs." The letters were faint but unmistakable, as if scratched in with a nail.

Grace’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she quickly wiped them away. She couldn’t fall apart here.

---***

Christmas Eve

Polly tugged at her dad’s sleeve, insisting they buy a cake.

"But it’s not your birthday," James said, amused.

"Dad, it’s Curtis’s birthday," Polly replied, her voice soft but firm. "Please, can we? For him?"

James froze. Polly couldn’t possibly know about Curtis, his son from his first marriage, who had passed away before she was born. But Polly seemed so sure. For a fleeting moment, he imagined the life he never had—both his children celebrating Curtis’s ninth birthday together.

Later that evening, when her mom returned home, she was met with a shocking sight: Polly, wearing her favorite blue dress and a paper birthday hat, sat beside a cake adorned with nine candles.

"What the hell is this?" her mom barked, her voice laced with fury.

"It’s Curtis’s birthday," Polly said timidly.

Her mother’s face twisted with rage. "Don’t you dare talk about that boy again! Do you hear me?"

She grabbed Polly’s hat and tore it apart. "He’s a curse, not a blessing. Even in death, he won’t leave me alone!"

James intervened, restraining her as Polly cried. "Stop! You’re scaring her!" he yelled.

Polly whimpered, "Mom, don’t call him a curse. His name is Curtis..."

That night, James woke to the sound of faint laughter coming from Polly’s room. He found her sitting in the dark, whispering to someone. When he asked who she was talking to, she simply said, "Curtis."

---***

At School

Two weeks later, Grace noticed Polly dozing off during lunch.

"Polly," Grace said gently, "why are you sleeping? It’s lunchtime. You should eat."

Polly shook her head. "Mom forgot to give me lunch again..."

It was the sixth time that month. Grace’s frustration boiled over. She couldn’t ignore this anymore.

"I’m calling your mom," Grace said firmly.

Polly’s eyes widened with fear. "No! Don’t call her! She’ll hit me..."

Before Grace could process this, Emily pulled her aside.

"Let it go," Emily warned. "Don’t jump to conclusions. I’ll talk to Polly’s dad later."

Grace clenched her jaw. Something wasn’t right, but no one seemed willing to see it.

---***

The Secret

Polly tugged at Grace’s sleeve the following week. "Teechs," she whispered, "can I tell you a secret?"

Grace knelt down to her level, her tone gentle. "Of course, Polly. What is it?"

"Curtis taught me to call you that," Polly said, her face lighting up with a smile. "He told me you were his favorite teacher. He said he missed you & how you always made everyone close their eyes & count to ten before lunchtime to sneak tiffin in his bag."

Grace felt her stomach drop. "Polly, how do you know Curtis?"

Polly avoided eye contact. "I found his diary in my playroom. He told me things about you... about lunch breaks and the tiffin you used to give him."

Grace’s hands trembled. Curtis’s diary had vanished after his death. How could Polly have it?

That night, as Grace reread the diary entries, the temperature in her room seemed to drop. Shadows danced on the walls, and faint laughter echoed behind her. She made a decision: she would contact the police.

---***

Curtis’s Plan

As Polly lay in bed that night, the familiar voice of her brother echoed in the darkness.

"I can’t stay anymore, Polly," Curtis whispered.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. "Why not? You said we’d always be together."

"You can come with me," Curtis replied. "But you have to do something first."

"What?" Polly asked, her voice shaking.

"Remember the peanuts from class? Break them into tiny pieces and put them in Mom’s food," Curtis said. "And don’t forget to hide her epi-pen. You know where they are, right?"

Polly hesitated, her tiny hands trembling. "But she’s my mommy," she whispered. "She loves me, doesn’t she?"

Curtis’s voice grew cold. "She loves hurting us. She deserves this, Polly. Then we can be together forever."

---

---

The Final Act

The next evening, James found his wife convulsing on the floor, her lips blue and her breathing shallow.

"Why is Mom shaking like that?" Polly asked, her voice innocent.

"She hit us both," Curtis whispered in her ear, his tone icy. "She sent me to the sky when it wasn’t my time."

Polly’s eyes filled with tears. "Can I go with you now?"

"Yes," Curtis replied. "Go to the terrace. If you jump, we’ll be together forever."

---***

The Tragic Discovery

"AhhhhhHhh! Hello, we need an ambulance and police immediately! I’m here at... at..."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Braven025 on 2024-11-18 15:27:40+00:00.

---

Day One

It was Friday morning. I started my day nursing a hangover from the night before, drinking my way through a pot of coffee and munching on toaster strudels (real healthy, I know). I had a morning filled with zoom meetings, and was feeling thankful for the option to keep the camera off because, let’s face it, I’m not as young as I used to be and good lord, does a night of drinking do some damage.

Anyway, as I was going into my last meeting before lunch, my phone rang. I silenced it quickly and set it face down so I wouldn’t be distracted. It’s no good to be off cam AND distracted. After the meeting, I forgot all about the call and got up from my desk to make myself some lunch – a salad with grilled chicken (cancels out the toaster strudel, right? Right?)

Just as I sat back at my desk, my phone rang again. When I picked it up, I saw I had five missed calls – two from my husband, Dylan, and three from a number I didn’t recognize. What the heck? I dropped my fork and mashed the answer button. It was the latter that was calling me back.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mrs. Harding?”

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“This is Detective Phillips from the police department.”

My mind jumped to the missed calls from Dylan. Oh, God. Did something happen to him? A car accident? A shoot out? Fuck! My heart was beating out of my chest. Words lodged in my throat like a wad of wet bread. I sputtered, then asked, “Is my husband alright?”

“What?” the detective said, obviously confused.

“My husband,” I gasped. “Is that what you’re calling about?”

“Oh, no ma’am…”

“Thank God,” I breathed. “What can I do for you?”

“Ma’am…I’m calling because we found your son.”

Shock prickled through me. “Excuse me?”

“Your son, ma’am, we found him. He turned up at the police station last night and we were able to positively identify him this morning.”

My mind started spinning at the detective’s words. He must have the wrong Mrs. Harding. I don’t have a son. I don’t have any children at all. Dylan and I never wanted them. We have a nice life, just the two of us and our dog, Gus. Financially, we do well. We can pick up and travel whenever we want. Besides, I just never had that maternal instinct. And there’s nothing freaking wrong with that, despite what my mother thinks.

“Hello? Ma’am? Did you hear what I said?”

The detective’s voice jarred me from my thoughts. “Um…yeah, but…”

“We need you to come down to the station. Your husband is already on his way.”

Dylan was? Why?

“I think you must have the wrong number, Detective Phillips.”

“Shit,” he swore. “Is this Alyssa Harding, address 563 Pine Tree Court?”

“Yes, it is, but—”

“Phew,” the detective said. “Thought I’d really messed up there. You’re definitely the Mrs. Harding I’m looking for. Please, come down to the station at 555 Wilson Avenue ASAP.”

Before I could get another word out, the call disconnected. I pulled the phone back from my head and stared at it in disbelief. I was the Mrs. Harding he was looking for? It didn’t make any sense. What made less sense was that Dylan was headed to the station, too.

I logged off work, changed out of my “work clothes” (consisting of yoga pants and an old t-shirt), and pulled my hair up into a messy bun. Gus tap danced around me as I hurriedly got ready, then I dropped a treat on the floor so he wouldn’t get mad when I left him. Outside, there was a warm breeze, odd for an afternoon in mid-November. Something about it just felt wrong.

My hands trembled the whole way to the police station as I navigated my Prius through the leaf-strewn streets. I pulled up outside the low brick building and heard my name the second I stepped out onto the street. I turned. Dylan was rushing toward me, a grin plastered on his face. I almost didn’t recognize him.

“Alyssa! God, I tried to call you twice! Why didn’t you pick up?”

“I-I was in meetings all morning,” I said, thrown off by his intensity. “What is going on, Dylan?”

“Didn’t you talk to the detective?” he asked, grabbing my hand. He pulled me toward the glass entrance to the building with such force, I stumbled over the broken concrete a couple of times.

“Yes, but, I don’t understand,” I said, breathing heavy. Something was really wrong here.

“They found him, Lyss!” Dylan cried, prying open the door. “They found Logan!”

Logan. Logan. The word tumbled around in my head like a single item inside a dryer. Logan. They found him. What the fuck was going on?

I stopped short, yanking my hand from my husband’s, this man who looked like my husband anyway, but certainly wasn’t acting like him. “Dylan, stop!”

He stopped walking and blinked at me, confusion clouding his face. “Lyss, what’s going on? Didn’t you hear me? They found Logan! Why are you acting so strange?”

I bit down on my tongue, fighting the urge to unleash a series of swear words. I wasn’t the one acting strange here. Why couldn’t he see that? Who the fuck was Logan? Why were we even here?

I took a deep, measured breath. “Dylan, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who Logan is, and why the fuck we should care that they found him.”

My words were like a slap to the face. Dylan recoiled, a look of disgust coming over him. His eyes darkened and he leaned in close, murmuring to me, hot breath washing over my face. “Please don’t do this right now. Just come with me.”

I wanted to turn around and walk away. But I didn’t. I should’ve. If these past four days have taught me anything, it’s that following Dylan through that police station was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. But something inside me told me to go with him. Curiosity, I guess. Wanting answers. The urgency in Dylan’s demeanor. I should’ve fucking run.

“Fine,” I said quietly.

We took the elevator up to the second floor and pushed through a set of double doors to a reception area. Dylan approached an officer behind a desk.

“Mr. and Mrs. Harding here to see Detective Phillips,” he said.

The officer’s face lit up. “Yes, of course, he’s waiting for you. You can head right back to his office.”

He pointed straight back through a maze of cubicles and Dylan motioned me forward. Dread snaked through me and my legs started to tremble as we walked. Officers in cubicles stopped to stare at us. One was even crying, wiping tears from her cheeks with a wad of tissues. What was with all the fucking dramatics?

The office door swung open before we even got there, and a man in his mid-forties with a slight pot belly and a full beard grinned out at us. “He’s right in here, folks, come, come. He’s been waiting anxiously for you.”

He sounded so excited, it was almost contagious. Until I remembered that there was nothing to be excited about. Whatever was going on was seriously fucked up. Dylan went first, stepping over the threshold and into the small office. I saw his body tense, then relax with a rush of breath.

“It really is you!” he cried, his voice breaking. “Lyss, it’s him! After all this time, our son has come home!”

I stepped timidly into the office. A boy—maybe six or seven—sat perched on a chair, his dark curly hair disheveled and standing up at odd angles on his head. He clutched a juicebox in one hand and a ratty teddy bear in the other. He was pale, but his cheeks were unnaturally rosy, and he looked up at us with the darkest, widest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Seeing him was like a gut punch. Fear course through me like an electric shock. This kid, whoever he was, definitely wasn’t my son. In fact, I was pretty sure he was pure fucking evil.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CQ-Erickson on 2024-11-18 12:59:07+00:00.

---

Nobody writes about the Grinning Prince.

The thing about urban legends is that while they are supposedly an oral tradition, people love writing about them online. You can pretty much trace the whole Polybius myth from one message board post to dozens of podcasts over the course of 25 years.

Not the Grinning Prince.

And not even the show. Not really.

Everyone who was a kid in the NYC area in the 70s and 80s remembers this tv show. It was the most popular kids program on a local channel (the one that showed baseball). But somehow it never went to other markets, and even weirder, nobody in the area recorded it. By the time it went off the air in 84 plenty of people had VCRs, but no matter how much you search YouTube, you won’t even find clips of the garden full of psychedelic puppets being herded by singing hippies. Over the years a few people posted clips, but they were pulled almost immediately. You will never see a full episode posted , so you will never hear The Roster. You will never hear the puppets say the one thing they absolutely said at least once in every episode:

“ALL THINGS SERVE THE GRINNING PRINCE”

The Roster was the end of the show, when the hippies would put down their guitars, and sing (a cappella and off key) four names. For example “We see Jordan and Kyle and Kerry and Julie and… YOU!”

Everyone knew the rules. At some point, an older sibling or a friend would warn you: when they said your name in the roster, you had to place the thing you loved the most on the the ground in your yard, with a letter asking The Prince for a gift. If you did, you would get your gift. If you didn’t, first the Grinning Prince would warn you in your dreams that night. If you still disobeyed, the Prince would visit your bed the next night. If you disobeyed again… nobody knew. Something bad.

My name, the real one on my birth certificate, is uncommon. My nickname was (and is) marginally less weird, but still unpopular. So I never got called on The Roster.

My cousin Davey wasn’t that lucky. He tried not to cry when I asked him where his Wayne Foundation playset was. He had just gotten it for Christmas and I was incredibly jealous. If any of you collected Mego superheroes you would understand. He solemnly explained that he ignored The Prince when he dreamt of him.

The next night, Davey woke up to a withered, six fingered hand rising up from the side of his bed, reaching for him. He spent the rest of the night in his parents’ bedroom, screaming. In the morning, while his mom was doing laundry, he went in the yard and dug into the frozen ground. I was four. He was six. That conversation is my earliest, clearest memory.

There is no reason why I should have cared so much about finding this show as an adult. But I am stubborn and nosy. Being stubborn and nosy aren’t the worst flaws you can have, but they have cost me most of my relationships over the years. This gives me a lot of free time.

I have been selling stuff - mostly original comic art- at horror and sci-fi conventions for twenty years. Twenty years of pestering the other vendors for a copy of an episode of this show. Usually conventions are amazing for “lost” media like this. I have a 4k print of the unaltered versions of the Original Trilogy, and a VHS with what appears to be an authentic 20 minutes of London After Midnight. But I could never find a copy of this show.

Three months ago, at the big con in San Diego, a pink haired girl in her mid 20s came to my booth. She was holding a disc with the show’s name on it. I didn’t have a DVD player with me(or at home, not for ten years), but she only wanted twenty dollars for it. I don’t know how she knew who I was or that I was looking for the show, but she looked incredibly familiar. Which made no sense. I didn’t know any women her age, pink haired or otherwise.

When I got the disk home and finally found a laptop to play it, I understood where I knew her from. She was the girl without the guitar. Her clothes and hair were obviously different, but she hadn’t changed in 40 years. When the Roster came around I was sort of expecting it, but it still felt like there was ice going down my spine when they said both of my names.

Obviously at this point the logical thing to do was just put my guitar in the yard.

But I’m stubborn. And nosy.

I woke up screaming on my bathroom floor. I don’t know how I got there. Even immediately after I woke up I couldn’t remember The Prince’s face. Only his hand. The six fingers ending in long nails that burned like candles.

So the next night I put a 1974 black Fender Telecaster Custom(same model that Keith hit a fan with on The Stones 81 tour) outside in the yard with my letter. I live alone, and was more freaked out than curious. I left the television on for company.

Around 3AM I woke up with the sense that I was being watched. The TV was an old school snowy screen, like we would get when the cable went out.

Then the hand rose up from the side of my bed. I don’t know if I screamed. I only know that I froze. It came up slowly, no particular hurry, the fingernail candles casting shadows against the wall. It stank of soil and decay.

It didn’t move like a person. It didn’t move like anything in this world.

Even in my terrified state I was able to recognize it.

It was claymation.

I didn’t bother getting dressed before running for my keys and wallet and bolting out of the house. I ended up at White Castle(the only place open), frantically doing an image search. I was filled with cosmic dread. But I was still stubborn. And nosy. I found it right away. I was right.

The thing that was in my bedroom was the old intro animation from the Saturday night horror movie on the same channel that aired the show. A six fingered hand rising from a creepy swamp.

When the sun came up, I went home to find my guitar exactly where I left it. My offering had been rejected.

Of course it was. I had tried to cheat.

Later, I would go into the yard dragging the thing I really loved the most. The only painting my dad ever finished: a lighthouse at the cusp of a storm, guiding the ships in. I have had it on my wall my entire life.

The following morning it was gone, along with my note. That night there was a package at my door. I opened it and found three photo albums.

Once I knew that the whole thing was real, I could have asked for anything in the note I left. If The Grinning Prince could appear in my dreams, and the host of the show could appear ageless, then I could ask to be rich, or young, or immortal or whatever. That’s not how I’m wired though. For my gift I wanted three answers:

• what was the point of the show?

-why did it stop?

-what happened to the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t

leave the offering?

I sat on my couch and opened the first album. 1970s pale gold and olive tones shine in the pictures. I saw the hosts, their names, their real names, not the ones from the show, were handwritten above them: Carmen and Patricia. I touch the picture and suddenly I’m not me. I’m Carmen.

We are puppeteers. It is 1971, and we are in NYC trying to get a job with the public television kids show that has somehow become a huge hit. Our manager gets us an interview with a local channel. Station management pitches us on our own show. But there are rules. Very specific rules. We have to prove our loyalty to station management. We have to pledge ourselves to the smiling presence lurking behind everything. It seems like a game. Patricia and I sacrifice the puppets we made ourselves in sixth grade. We promise each other that we will ask for the same gift, for our show to go on forever. I don’t know what Patricia really asked for. It wasn’t to stay young: at her wake she was an old lady, and I was the same, like always. My mind is as fresh as my body. I can’t forget anything we did, I hear every kids name that I called. I see the ones that didn’t listen…

I snap the book shut, and open the second one. This one isn’t just pictures, it is a collage of 80s and 90s photos, newspaper clippings, magazine articles. They swirl into a vivid montage of what happened after the show stopped. It wasn’t needed any more. One generation of kids in one city was enough. Four names called a day. Five days a week. For ten years. Every kid grew up to serve the Prince in their own way. They gave him other names and made up party games to summon him. They put versions of him in 80s album covers and 90s comic books and 2000s creepypasta. They even backwards masked a worship service into a Philadelphia based teen dance show(also not on YouTube). Every bit helped. All things serve the Grinning Prince.

I didn’t open the last album. Not at first. I changed my mind, I didn’t want to know what happened to the other kids. The ones who wouldn’t listen. Nothing good could come from seeing that

But I’m stubborn. And nosy.

I really tried not to open the album. I tried to ignore my curiosity. I lasted a day.

I spent the whole day wandering through midtown.

I could have asked for so many things besides knowledge. I’ve never been to Europe. Billy Joel’s house is for sale. I haven’t had a hairline since Clinton was in office.

I could be like Carmen, with an eternally young face and pink hair, handing DVDs to unsuspecting idiots at conventions.

But no. I had to have answers.

So I saw the symbols of the Prince embedded in billboards and corporate logos. I heard the demonic cadence of his hymns in songs playing i...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/spnsuperfan1 on 2024-11-18 06:18:52+00:00.

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First | Previous

Of course, on top of a blood sucking serial killer, I now have this to deal with.

FML.

If you're new, you can read what I've been covering in my therapy sessions: here.

I might have to move my therapy session up from next week. It’s just been punch after punch these past couple weeks and honestly? I feel like I’m about to crash out.

Which is really disappointing because according to my therapist I’ve been making really good progress. I went down from two sessions a week to two every month for crying out loud!

Addressing the elephant in the title, I’m pretty sure the stalking started sometime after Halloween. I’m not sure when I picked up on it, but it started off small. The quick flicker of a shadow in my peripheral vision. The feeling of being watched or followed, only to find nobody there when I tuned around. The small pit of dread that formed in my stomach after thinking I heard my name being whispered in the wind.

A sense of paranoia started to invade the back of my mind. Deep down I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite place what.

Then everything came to a head the other night. My stalker approached me while I was in my backyard.

It was almost midnight. The sun had long since set. Pale blue light shone from the moon, bouncing off the litany of stars that littered the sky, making them glow ethereally. The celestial beauty was in its waxing gibbous phase. Not quite full, but close. The full moon would show itself in a day or two.

I live out in the woods, on the outskirts of Winchester, far away from people. I know it’s shocking, a self proclaimed city-girl roughing it in the wild. But I gotta say, it’s pretty damn peaceful out here. At least it was.

My home is a one story timber frame log cabin that was built in the late eighties. Since it was quite the fixer upper, I got it for dirt cheap. Most of the renovations have been completed though. The last things on my list are to fix the gutters above the porch, paint my bedroom, re-tile the kitchen floors, and fix a pesky leak in the roof.

I’d been out on the back patio sipping on a cold beer, stargazing. My eye particularly gazing upon the Cassiopeia, Orion, and Andromeda constellations. The quiet sounds of nature and the heat radiating off my crackling bonfire, coupled with the scenery, made for a perfectly relaxing activity. Just the thing I needed after an exhausting day at work.

I was on the cusp of falling asleep when something suddenly pulled me to attention. The sound of a stick breaking and leaves gently crunching just beyond the tree line.

I sat up in the green lawn chair I’d been lounging in, sobering up quickly. Slowly, my eyes analyzed the tree line and accompanying surroundings. ”Lucy~ the wind seemed to whisper, tauntingly.

Then I saw them. Soft glowing yellow eyes. The figure they belonged to loomed beneath the dark depths provided by the trees canopy. Then slowly, they pushed forward, revealing the tip of a glistening black snout. Soon, the moonlight illuminated a large white wolf.

My breath hitched in my throat as the wolf stood there at the edge of my property, watching, waiting. Analyzing. Those piercing eyes gazed right into my soul.

My staring contest with The White Wolf couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but in the moment it felt like thirty minutes.

A sweet tinkling emanated from the metallic wind chimes that hung on the low branches of my trees as a gentle breeze blew by. On other branches, dangling dream catchers and cedar bundles swayed in tandem with the wind. A slight feeling of relief rushed through me as I was reminded of all the protective wards surrounding my property. Two twin horseshoes were nailed to a pair of old oak trees at the apex of the yard. And every couple of days I’d walk the perimeter of the cabin, replenishing the mountain ash that lined the outside of my home.

With a slight chuff, The White Wolf stood in place and bowed his head while still maintaining eye contact. The look it gave was as if it were trying to say “I’ll get you one day. You’re mine.”

Then, just as suddenly as the creature appeared, it disappeared back into the woods where it came from.

Once again alone, I chugged the rest of my beer and went inside for the night. Paranoia wracked my brain rendering me unable to sleep. Like I was going to anyway after that interaction.

The White Wolf definitely wasn’t a regular lupine, my wards proved that fact. If it’s fae or something else, I don’t know. However, I have a sneaking suspicion this might be connected to Demon Dan in some way. But right now he’s like a fart lost in the wind, so…

Anyway, enough about me. You guys don’t come here to solely read about my personal crap. Nah, you come for the action and to see me get my ass handed to me time after time. I get it. I understand.

It’s why I’m still a rookie. I have only been at Winchester PD for about eight months now.

Moving on, there’s an update on Rudy, our supposed serial killer. I say supposed because the results came back on the blood we found on his clothes. It wasn’t human but cervid- deer blood.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t responsible for the deaths of Lana and our other victims. We just needed something concrete to prove it. Sure we have Ms. Walker’s witness testimony, but that’s circumstantial at best. Do you know how easy it is for the brain to misremember things? How easily memories can be misinterpreted, manipulated, and influenced?

And on top of all that, because Rudy is lucid- for the most part- the division doesn’t have grounds for termination. He’s a revenant, yes, but so far all we can prove is that he drank Bambi like a god damned Capri-sun.

For now, he’s being kept in one of the maximum security underground holding cells until we can prove he’s our killer or someone from The Court comes along to evaluate his case.

All Dustin and I could do is keep working the case until Rudy revealed something or new evidence surfaced. So that’s exactly what we did.

The morning after my encounter with The White Wolf was a bad one. My mind and body were exhausted from the lack of sleep and overthinking. During the commute to work, I was constantly peeking out the rearview mirror of my car, paranoid that I would spot it again. Standing, staring, analyzing.

I could’ve sworn I heard my name being whispered into my ear in the precinct’s parking lot. A quick look over my shoulder revealed the lot to be desolate of any living things. When I turned back around, the living shit was scared out of me.

“Ow! What the hell, Hale?” Dustin questioned rubbing his sore shoulder in an attempt to relieve the pain. I’d punched the appendage out of reflex after he startled me.“What’s got you so jumpy?”

“Had a bad night,” I replied apologetically.

Dustin pressed his lips together as he got a good look at me in the morning light. Still tending to his shoulder he said, “I can tell. You look like shit.”

“You gotta reason for sneaking up on me this morning, Dustin?” I asked, my lack of sleep making me more irritable than normal. I was seriously debating punching him again in the same spot just for the way he was grinning down at me.

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” he shoved his hands into his pockets to escape from the cold November air, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“Oh no, should I be worried?” I interjected with a sarcastic smile, heading towards the precinct.

Dustin rolled his eyes, his grin deepened before he followed after me into our place of work. “About Rudy. How we might be able to get something out of him.”

“We’ve both been interrogating him for the past two days, Dustin, and we still can’t get him to say anything,” I had to remind him as we walked through the main corridor after the lobby.

“I understand that, Lucky, but hear me out. Good cop, bad cop?”

I stopped, scoffing after pressing the down button on the elevators. “Let me guess, you want to be bad cop?”

Ding! The elevator I summoned reached our floor, the doors gliding open. We both stepped in. “No, actually, I was thinking you could be bad cop on this one. My gut is telling me if you get him upset enough you might lodge something free from his memory.”

Dustin stuck a key into the button panel. With a satisfying click, another hidden panel popped open. The white button lit up with a golden light as he pressed it.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe in that amnesia crap act?” I crossed my arms into my chest as the doors closed.

Davidson shrugged. “I mean… he did turn himself in. He seems like he genuinely doesn’t remember something.”

“I know, but something about him just doesn’t sit right with me.”

The door to the elevator opened as we reached the bottom floor. Dustin stepped out first, and I followed. We walked down a long concrete corridor filled with doors on either end, nearly all the rooms containing some type of dangerous supernatural. The division was still reeling from the events on Halloween night. Plus there seemed to have been an unusual surge of supernatu...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Jughead_J0nes on 2024-11-18 04:04:20+00:00.

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You know that optical illusion where you’re driving by a plane coming in to land, and you’re both moving at the perfect speed and the perfect angle, and it looks like it’s not moving at all? I’ve seen this dozens of times, and it never bothered me, until it destroyed my life.

I’m a pretty regular person, at least professionally. I show up for work at 6:58 AM every day, and leave right at 4:00. So when I noticed a 737 doing the “not moving” illusion two days in a row, I didn’t think anything of it. Nothing beyond “Hey, I saw a plane there yesterday.” The third day I figured it just must be the same flight. The 2:30 in from Chicago or something. It quickly became a fixture on my drive home, a little joke I had with myself. “There’s the magic plane again!”

After a week or so I had a day where I worked late. Nothing too bad, 15 extra minutes or so to finish up a project. When I drove back home, there it was, in the same spot, doing its same illusion. This confused me more than anything. I didn’t think the world was ending, but the chance that the plane happened to be 15 minutes late on the same day I was, seemed pretty much impossible. I thought that maybe it was a different flight, but the plane looked like the same model, same airline, and I don’t think two planes would land so close to each other on the same runway, right?

The next day I got curious, so instead of taking a little overtime I decided to leave 15 minutes early and break even on the week. When I took the curve onto the highway, there it was. The same plane 15 or so minutes early this time. If the fight being delayed the same day I was is almost impossible, the same flight being 15 minutes early the same time I was is definitely impossible. It really shook me, and I didn’t think about much else when I got home, or at work the next day.

I decided to run a little test. I felt on the verge of crazy, and even my test felt a little silly at the time. When I got off work, instead of heading straight home, I found a parking lot near the airport, an Arby’s. I parked and found my “magic plane” in the sky, expecting it to just fly by because I was at a different angle. I figured the optical illusion would break if I wasn’t driving. I was wrong, because it wasn’t an illusion. The plane stayed there. Minute after agonizing minute, it just hung in the air, refusing to move.

I stayed there for a half an hour, every second begging the plane to move. I tried to convince myself it had a crazy headwind. I even tried to convince myself it might be some new experimental commercial aircraft that could hover. I mean as wild as that sounds it seems more probable than a plane just… stopping. I stayed until I saw one plane land and another take off. That’s what finally convinced me I wasn’t going to see anything change.

Thank god it was a Friday, I couldn’t imagine going to work the day after that. I barely made it home. It was like driving after learning my Dad died, just so full of emotion that basic function was hard.

When I did get home, I didn’t do much. I just showered and tried to go to sleep. I guess eventually my brain just got tired of running the same few explanations and gave up.

I felt better in the morning. I managed to sleep off the shakes of the previous night and put together a decent breakfast for myself, trying to fill the gap of a skipped dinner. I contemplated going to the doctor, but I could only imagine the incredulous look on her face as she shipped me off to a shrink. I was always scared of doctors anyway. I ended up spending that weekend holed up, just watching movies and YouTube. I realized that I was gravitating towards things with movement, finding them more comforting than anything else.

The next few work days went by with very little of note. It might be more crazy than the plane itself how fast I adapted to it being there. I just kinda… didn’t look up. I knew it would be there, but I somehow managed to convince myself the whole situation was fine. As long as I didn’t look at it, I didn’t have to think about it too hard. Over that week at work my headspace slowly started to fill back up with the normal drudge any office type worker thinks about. PTO, deadlines, the works.

I asked a couple of my coworkers about the plane at the start of the week (indirectly of course, asking if they know the illusion I was talking about) and only got confused looks and segways to other topics. I left it alone after that, and by the end of the week I only thought about the plane when I was passing it on the highway. Again, crazy how quickly it became normal. I think that’s why it shook me so hard when I saw a tree off the highway that refused to move.

There was a breeze. I know there was a breeze. All the trees around this one were moving, just a gentle back and forth of their branches. This one was stuck. I guess it’s possible the trees around it were blocking the wind, but it was more than just not moving. It was stuck. Like pausing a movie. Even when something isn’t moving it has some sort of life to it, some imperceptible sense of change. This tree didn’t have that.

I took off work and went to the doctor the next day, yelling at myself for normalizing the plane so quickly. I should’ve gone the second I stopped and confirmed it was frozen in air. Like I said, doctors scare me. I don’t like being poked and prodded just for the doctor to tell me I’m actually fine and not to worry. I figured it was time to get over that, though, considering at this point I was genuinely scared I was losing it. I have some health problems that run in my family. My Dad died of some heart thing they never really got to the bottom of, and his Dad before that. I didn’t think some genetic heart issues would translate to going insane but I’d be willing to go with just about any theory that made a semblance of sense.

The doctor told me exactly what I expected to hear. Physically I was fine. I could tell she wanted to just ship me off to a shrink, but I insisted the problem had to be more material. I did do a psych evaluation, but that turned up nothing besides the obvious. Sure I was acting strange, but that all related back to the stuck things, easily explained by stress, nothing to imply why I was seeing them in the first place. After squabbling over a brain scan for what felt like hours the doctor relented, warning me that insurance would most likely not cover it. I told her I didn’t care and would pay out of pocket if I had too.

I never want to do an MRI again. I think I’d rather let my brain rot if fixing it meant going back in that donut of hell. If you don’t know, an MRI machine is LOUD, like can’t hear your own thoughts loud. Weird rhythmic thunking and clanging noises just driving into your head. I won’t embarrass myself by trying to type out the sounds but trust me, they’re awful. I was in there for 30 seconds of my 20 minute scan before waves of panic washed over me, made worse by the pads and tape that were immobilizing my head. I didn’t think I was claustrophobic when I went in there, but I sure as hell do now.

The worst part of it was that the MRI showed us… nothing. I guess it showed us something by showing us nothing. The scan came up clean. There was no tumor, no shadow, nothing. So either things really are getting stuck, or I’m just going crazy.

I went home. I put up all my PTO, told work I had a family emergency, and got on the road. Pulled an 8 hour drive in one go. I nearly ran out of gas but I really didn’t want to stop. The more I moved the less chance I saw something stuck. I still saw them though. I counted three on the drive. A sign on a chain link fence, a bush next to a stop sign, and a section of a wheat field. All frozen. I wonder how many I missed. I have to assume there’s more I just never saw.

I felt better after a few days at home. A nostalgic sense of normalcy was exactly what my head needed. Even just a change of scenery seemed to help. For the last half of the drive or so, I didn’t see any of the stuck things. Either my brain just started to calm down on the way back home, or the stuck things were somehow localized. I don’t know which one I was hoping for, but I didn’t really care. The stuck things felt far away, and that brought me some peace.

My Mom wasn’t totally sure what was going on, but she was happy to have me home. I hinted at what was going on with the stuck things, but dropped it when I could tell she wouldn’t understand. I ended up just telling her work had been stressful and I needed a reset, which seemed to satisfy her.

Three days into my impromptu vacation I felt good enough to go out. I called up a few high school friends and asked if they could hang out. I don’t make it back home that often, so even though they have their own lives to pay attention to, three of them managed to make time, which I appreciated. We went and saw a movie, which ended up being a mistake. As we walked into the theater, I saw my first stuck person.

I just glimpsed her out of the corner of my eye at first. A woman sitting on a bench, presumably waiting for someone. I barely saw her, but the fraction of a second I did was enough. I’m too good at spotting the stuck things. I could just tell something was wrong. I couldn’t look back, I just kept my head straight and walked right into the theater. My stomach dropped, and I spent the movie fighting off a panic attack. Did the stuck things follow me here? Am I causing them? Are they actuall...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Napsterblock2 on 2024-11-18 04:47:39+00:00.

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When I was a kid, around twelve or thirteen I used to make youtube videos. I think It's somewhat of a universal experience for my generation to try to replicate what our favorite creators were doing with the vague allure of “making it big” as the carrot on the stick to keep us moving. In the same way the children of past generations aspired to be astronauts or adventurers, this is what we did. Somewhere along the line, most of us realized how slim our chances were of ever being noticed and quit. Some people deleted their videos and pushed them out of their mind; while others, myself included, forgot about them entirely leaving them to fall into the sea of thousands of other channels just like it, never to be seen again. 

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my parents for the weekend when my father offhandedly mentioned all the old youtube videos that I used to make and asked what happened to them. I might be misremembering this but I could swear I saw both my parents tense on the mention; but that would make too much sense. Before he asked about them they were totally gone from my mind, and when she did the memories came flooding back to me. I remembered all the hours I spent adding shitty transitions in Imovie and running around in my backyard acting out skits for the audience of none. I couldn't believe that such an important part of my childhood was just gone from my mind like that, so I decided to look at all my old videos to see what the young me was getting up to back then.

I found the login information for my old account scribbled into a notebook that was tucked away in the attic of my parents house and I took it home with me. When I got home the next week, I logged in to the old account and looked at the old videos. They were all still public after all these years, but still maintained the same lack of engagement I remember being sad about so many years ago. I went back to the oldest video and started watching it. It was an old video of me playing in my yard titled “Super Spies”. The video started with a bad title that read the name of the video that then cut to me in my yard. There was a black and white filter over the whole video that I'm pretty sure I used when I recorded the raw footage. I acted out a skit where I was all the characters, I never had any friends or siblings to make these videos with and my parents refused to be a part of them. I acted out what I thought an old detective movie looked like; a man (played by me but with a hat) came in and asked me to help find his missing brother. The entire hour and a half long odyssey of a skit took place entirely in the office which was just my yard and consisted of this detective somehow figuring out that my client murdered his brother to give himself sympathy points to help him win the election for mayor. It was a cute video that I remember some parts of making. I somehow sat through the entire thing, I was kinda impressed by my own improv skills at such a young age.

 After that, I went on to the next oldest video, called “Minecraft”. In this video which was a much more approachable fifteen minutes was my playing Minecraft pocket edition on my mother’s phone. I didn't know that you could play minecraft on a computer at the time, or at least that's why I assumed I was using a laptop to record a phone screen in some glare filled disaster of a video because I had zero memory of making any videos about video games. I started a new world and started to play. I built a small wooden box with a fence post for a window and stayed the night there. I waited for the entire night with zero commentary at all, just my own breathing into the microphone. When the morning came, I went mining for the rest of the video; from the way I was talking it looked like I was making a tutorial for how to play the game. At one point I said something that I found a little strange. I said that I would soon figure out how to play multiplayer and I would be able to play with my best friend Tanner. I found it a little cute that I didn't know that there was no multiplayer yet; but I found it strange because I don't remember ever knowing anybody named Tanner, and I wouldn't have had a best friend because when I was a kid I didn't have any friends. When I was watching all of these videos it was pretty late at night but that one line inspired me to dig deeper and find out who this Tanner was, and I wouldn't have to look much deeper to do so.

I was going to go to bed, but the next video piqued my curiosity; It was titled “Lego with Tanner”, and so I had to press on. This video was another gauntlet to get through, clocking in at an hour, fifteen for length, and it didn't make up for it with entertainment value. In this video, I was sitting in my room playing with Lego. The camera was looking at a base plate where the Figures were and my hands were seen playing with the pieces. But there was also another set of hands that I assumed belonged to Tanner, whoever he was. We both acted out some skits that we were making up as we went along, each voicing our own characters. I used my regular voice for my character but the other child used an exaggerated voice the whole time. I thought about how much dedication it took to keep it up for that Long. We were each trying to make our own character the coolest one, despite the efforts of the other one. It was a ridiculous video full of new powers made up on the spot and impossible challenges. I didn't care much for the video, I only really wanted to find out more about this kid. I still don't remember any of this happening, which wouldn't be a problem if I didn't remember clearly that I had absolutely no friends when I was young. It might seem sad but that's besides the point, I never had any friends and I was hated by anyone I tried to befriend. So who was this kid? At this point, it was late and I was tired; I decided to go to bed and watch more of these videos the next day.

I wracked my brain all through the next day, trying to remember there being anyone from my childhood who didn't hate me, and found nothing. At one point I texted my mother to ask her if I had any friends when I was young, she said that she couldn't remember me ever having friends. She asked why and I told her that I had been looking through the old videos that I made and In them, I was with another kid my age. She seemed to get upset with me after that and told me to stop using my phone when I should be working; she didn't reply when I told her I was on my lunch break.

When I got home later that day I tried to call my mother to no avail, so I went and started to watch the next video. This one was titled “The Battle”. It was three hours long, (a new record for length) and consisted of me and Tanner acting out a fight scene in my yard. This video was particularly momentous because it was the first time I was able to see tanner fully. He was a regular looking kid, darker skin then my own and black hair that was spiked up with an ungodly amount of hair product. Seeing his face and hearing his real voice continued to not ring any bells. I don't know why but  felt a strange feeling seeing him so close to me; I had no reason 

 In this video we were acting out a fight between two characters that we made up. It was less of a skit and more of the both of us play-fighting in my backyard. It made me happy however, to see my young self happy, most of my memories from my childhood were not as nice so it was good to see that It wasn't all bad. One thing stuck out to me that I still can't get out of my head as I write this, Tanner was so nice to me. Every time he hit me a little too hard he would ask if I was okay and I don't know why but it touched me. I'll spare you readers any trauma dumping, but I was never liked much and I still don't have any friends. It made me really happy to see someone being nice to me, even if I still don't remember it. I don't know why I can't remember this and It makes me mad that I can't, I deserve to have happy memories too, don't I?

After the video ended, I noticed that my eyes had been a little bit. I wiped my eyes and then saw that I missed a call from my mother, how focused must I have been on that video. I called her back and she answered. I greeted her but she started on something immediately. She seemed angry. She said that she had been thinking and that she didn't want videos of her child to be on the internet, she wanted me to delete them. I told her that I would unlist them and explained what that meant to her. She refused to accept that and started yelling at me for not doing what she said. She continued to berate me and told me to delete them, she wanted them gone and said she didn't want anybody to see them, not even me for some reason. I told her I deleted them and that satisfied her, I tried to turn the conversation around and ask her how she had been doing, but she hung up abruptly without an answer. I obviously didn't delete the videos, my parents have never been very good with technology and wouldn't know if I did or didn't. I unlisted all of the videos just in case she searched for them. This is nothing special for her but I got some similar feeling to when I saw the other boy in the video, that strange feeling that I was in immense danger.

Today was a rough day, I don't want to watch more of the videos. I do but It would just take so much energy to do so, energy I don't have. I know I would feel even more like shit if I did nothing to unravel this mystery, so I'm writing this. I will see if you know anything, I don't know what you could know but anything more than I do would do.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2024-11-18 05:34:07+00:00.

---

I was sitting on the floor of a yoga studio, in the lotus position. I took a deep breath, and then opened my mouth.

“Try YogaFit free for seven days!”

I froze.

Why did I say that?

Wait… where am I?

I was sitting in a large room that looked like a yoga or dance studio. Except, there was no one else here. Just the huge mirror covering the wall opposite me, and the cool linoleum floor under my lycra-clad tush. The studio was so quiet I could hear a pin drop.

Uh… what?

I cleared my throat.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

My voice came out as barely a whisper, even though I’d meant to shout. I frowned and stood up, starting towards the door—

There was no door.

Wait, what?

I glanced around the room. Four walls, one of which was the gigantic floor-to-ceiling mirror. The other three were painted a sickening shade of beige. No door on any of them.

“Hello?” I called, finally finding my voice this time. “Anyone there?”

Silence.

How did I get here, anyway?

I stood in the center of the room, kneading my temples. I didn’t remember driving here. This wasn’t even my usual yoga studio. I went to the shitty one in the strip mall on 85, where you’d be lucky if you didn’t elbow someone or get an ass to the face. I’d never seen this studio before in my life.

Think. What’s the last thing you remember?

Maddie falling off the bed. Wait… that was a few days ago, wasn’t it? No—the last thing I remembered—was going to the doctor, an ENT for my vertigo. And then...

I didn’t remember coming home.

No, the last thing I remembered was walking in the parking garage, towards my car.

Then everything was blank.

I spun around, scanning the walls again. There wasn’t a door—not even a hidden one, from what I could tell. That made no sense. How did I get in here, then? Unless—

I looked up.

There was a square cut into the ceiling, about five feet above me. Was it some sort of trapdoor? Had I been dropped in that way?

I reached up and jumped—but of course, I couldn’t reach it. I tried a second, then a third time. I cried out in frustration—

The studio tilted in front of me.

Then I was back on the floor.

My arms and legs moved of their own accord, like they were attached to invisible puppet strings. My body twisted into the bridge pose, and speakers buzzed to life overhead. A man’s voice echoed through the studio: “Feeling sluggish and tired? Try the YogaFit app! Only ten minutes a day can double your energy levels and make you feel calm and relaxed.”

My body continued moving. I wanted to scream but my jaws were locked shut. My body stretched into the downward facing dog position, then cat cow, then finally lotus.

I smiled—even though I didn’t want to. Even though every muscle in my body felt like it was fighting against it.

“Try YogaFit free for seven days!” I said in a chipper voice.

Then whatever invisible force was bending my limbs disappeared. I leaned forward, panting, my entire body feeling like it was spasming.

What… the… actual… fuck?

This has to be a dream. Or… maybe I’m having a breakdown. Or something.

I stumbled up. Then I glanced around the room. There had to be some way out of here. Assuming this was real, which was a big if. I scanned the walls, the mirror, looking for something, anything.

Then I saw it.

A flicker of movement in the mirror.

I stared. There was something off about the mirror. I could see my own reflection, my bleached hair and my wide eyes. But there was a dim, sort of bluish light, coming from the mirror itself. I scrambled up and ran over to it. Then I cupped my hands and looked in.

It was a two-way mirror.

I don’t know what I expected to see behind the mirror—maybe some unshaven creep watching me, maybe scientists nodding and taking notes?—but it wasn’t what I saw. Instead I saw a plain, dilapidated room, which was empty except for a camera perched in the center.

It was filming me.

Rage shot through me. I banged my fists on the mirror. “Let me out!” I screamed. “Please! I have kids—please…”

I continued screaming, slamming my fists into the mirror until they ached. The mirror wobbled slightly underneath me, but didn’t give way.

The pain in my fists made me mad.

“LET ME OUT, YOU FUCKERS!” I screamed.

And then I heard it.

Speakers overhead, buzzing to life. I looked up, confused, trying to place the sound. Before I could, a woman’s voice cut through the silence. It sounded mechanical and lifeless.

“User report: offensive ad content.”

And then I screamed.

Buzzing pain coursed through my body. I collapsed to the floor, convulsing wildly. And then, abruptly, the pain cut out.

I quickly figured out what happened.

A thin strip of metal encircled my ankle.

Those fuckers shocked me.

Before I could fully recover, the studio tilted again. “Feeling sluggish and tired?” I was going through the yoga poses against my will again. I finished in a lotus position, and looking straight ahead, I said in a chipper voice:

“Try YogaFit free for seven days!”

Then I was released, again. Breathing hard, I stood up, my legs still wobbly from the pain. I stumbled over to the place under the trapdoor.

There was no way I could reach it.

I glanced around, looking for something, anything I could use to get up there. I walked the perimeter of room, inspecting the wall closely. That’s when I found it—a little door hidden in the drywall, only about four feet tall. I’d missed it before because it was so short, and it looked like it was purposely made to be hidden—the gap between the door and the wall was incredibly thin.

I yanked it open, but it didn’t lead to the outside. It was a little crawlspace, stuffed full with junk. I started riffling through the stuff: some rope, a toolbox, some empty cardboard boxes, and—a stepladder.

Bingo.

I dragged all the stuff over to the area of the floor under the trapdoor. I placed the stepladder first and climbed up it—but I was still too short. Dammit. I grabbed one of the cardboard boxes and balanced it on the top step—

The studio tilted in front of me.

“Feeling sluggish and tired?”

When the invisible force released me again, I glanced around—and to my horror, all the stuff I’d dragged out was gone. I ran over to the closet door—it had been put back, somehow. Like the room itself had magically reset. I yanked out all the stuff, dragged it over to under the trapdoor. Balanced the carboard box on top. I stepped, and the box collapsed halfway under my weight.

I reached up.

I was still six inches short.

I jumped—

“Feeling sluggish and tired?”

My aching body went through the motions again. Bent and posed like I was a doll. I tried to scream, at the top of my lungs, but my jaw was clenched tightly shut.

“Try YogaFit free for seven days!”

As soon as I could move, I scrambled over to the closet. Pulled all the stuff out. Climbed the stepladder. Stacked two boxes. Stood on top—

My body wavered, and then I was falling. My body hit the ground with a sharp snap.

“Feeling sluggish and tired?”

It felt like I’d broken something. I tried to scream as my body tilted down for the downward facing dog. White hot pain shot along my back. Tears rolled down my cheeks. But I couldn’t stop my body from folding into the positions. The pain intensified until it shut everything else out.

“Try YogaFit free for seven days!”

And then I fell face-first onto the yoga mat.

I just lay there, breathing heavily, as the pain began to slowly fade. Minutes went by; and then, of course, the ad started up again. “Feeling sluggish and tired?” My body moved, but it hurt a little less, now.

As soon as the whole thing was over, I scrambled to the closet and grabbed everything out. I climbed the stepladder. Lined up the boxes perfectly on top of each other. I took in a deep breath and climbed. My body wavered to keep my balance, and I stretched up, up, praying I could do it in time—

My fingers pried into the seam of the door.

And then I pulled.

With a loud creak, the door pulled downwards. I poked my head out and grabbed the sides of the opening, pulling myself out.

I was standing on the roof of a huge building. Some kind of warehouse. As I looked around, I realized I’d been here before—I recognized the office building across the street. This was on the south side of Franklin, the town fifteen minutes from us.

I heard the man’s voice through the trapdoor. But somehow, I’d escaped whatever invisible force was holding me there. “Only ten minutes a day…”

I walked to the edge of the roof and screamed for help.

***

My ordeal never made the news. It seemed like no one cared that a woman had been trapped in a building and forced to act in some sort of weird ad against her will. The police said they’d investigate, but it’s been weeks, and I haven’t heard anything. All traces of “YogaFit” seem to have been scrubbed from the internet.

The weird thing is when I tried to search online for what happened to me—without using my name or “YogaFit,” but describing what actually happened—I did find something.

I found comments, on YouTube videos and elsewhere. They varied in text and tone, but they all roughly said the same thing.

Hey… did anyone see that yoga ad just now?

The woman in it…

She seemed really freaked out…

And then she climbed up on some stuff… and tried to escape?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Holiday-Peanut-7189 on 2024-11-18 01:58:12+00:00.

---

I’ve always had this subtle unease around mirrors. Not enough to call it a fear—just a feeling, like they were showing me a little more than I wanted to see. I never thought much of it until last month, after my roommate Evan went missing.

Evan and I weren’t best friends or anything, but he was a good guy. Reliable. The kind of person you’d notice missing right away because he was always there—in the kitchen making tea, playing music in his room, calling out, “You need anything?” whenever he went to the store.

One morning, he was gone.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. He’d mentioned being stressed with work and needing some space. But then hours turned into days. His bed was made. His keys, wallet, and phone were still on the counter. Even the mug of tea he’d brewed the night before was sitting cold and untouched in the sink.

The police came, asked their questions, and left without much to say.

“People leave,” the officer said, shrugging like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Sometimes there’s no reason.”

But Evan wouldn’t have left. Not like that.

For the first week, the apartment felt unbearable. It wasn’t just the silence—it was the emptiness. Without Evan’s presence, the place felt massive and hollow, like a space too big for me alone. I started leaving lights on in every room, the TV playing softly in the background. It helped, at least until I noticed the mirror.

There’s this little mirror in the hallway, cheap and barely big enough to check your hair in. I’d walked past it a thousand times without ever noticing it. But one night, I glanced at it as I walked by and saw something that stopped me cold.

My reflection didn’t move.

I’d turned my head toward the living room, but my reflection stayed perfectly still, staring straight ahead. It was just a split second, but it was enough to send a chill down my spine.

I stopped, turned back, and leaned in closer. My reflection stared back, moving as it should, every detail perfectly normal. I laughed at myself, brushing it off as exhaustion or maybe some trick of the light.

But I couldn’t shake it.

The next time it happened, I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom. I looked up at the mirror, and my reflection… smiled at me.

I wasn’t smiling.

The grin was wide and wrong, stretching just a little too far. My heart jumped into my throat. I dropped the toothbrush, stumbled back, and when I looked again, everything was fine. Normal. Just my tired face staring back at me.

That’s when I started seeing it everywhere—windows, darkened TV screens, even the surface of a mug when the light hit it just right. I’d catch flashes of myself smiling when I wasn’t, tilting my head when I was perfectly still.

And then the dreams started.

Almost every night, I’d see Evan. He’d be sitting on the couch in the living room, his back to me. His head would tilt slightly to the side, as if he were listening to something just out of reach.

“Evan?” I’d whisper, though my throat always felt tight and dry in the dream.

He would turn, slowly, and I’d wish he hadn’t.

It looked like Evan, but his face was off. His skin was too pale, his features stretched like they’d been pulled too tight over his skull. His eyes were the worst—empty and wide, staring at me without really seeing me.

“They’re watching,” he said one night, his voice flat and hollow. “Through the glass. Don’t trust what you see.”

I woke up drenched in sweat, his voice still echoing in my ears.

After that, I couldn’t handle the mirrors anymore. I threw blankets and towels over all of them, anything to keep from seeing my own face. But it didn’t help. I’d still catch glimpses out of the corner of my eye—reflections where they shouldn’t have been. Always watching.

A few nights ago, I found a note tucked under my bedroom door.

Stop looking. It’s not you.

It was written in my handwriting.

That night, I heard noises coming from Evan’s room. It started as soft scratching, like nails on wood, and grew louder until it sounded like something was being dragged across the walls.

“Evan?” I called out, my voice barely a whisper.

The scratching stopped.

Then came the tapping—slow, deliberate, and rhythmic. It sent shivers through me, but I couldn’t stop myself. I crossed the hall to his door and pressed my ear to it.

The tapping grew louder, more frantic, until it sounded like fists pounding on the walls. I yanked the door open, and everything went silent.

The room was empty.

But the mirror above his dresser was uncovered.

I stepped closer, my breath catching in my throat. At first, everything looked normal—just the room reflected back at me. But then I realized: I wasn’t in the reflection.

The dresser, the bed, the window—it was all there. But I wasn’t.

I spun around, panic surging through me, and the door slammed shut.

When I turned back to the mirror, my reflection was there again. Only it wasn’t me.

It stepped closer to the glass, its movements slow and deliberate. Its head tilted slightly, and its lips curled into a wide, unnatural grin.

“You’re on the wrong side,” it said, its voice soft and amused.

This morning, I woke up in Evan’s room.

The mirror is gone.

And I can’t find the door.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LyriumDreams on 2024-11-18 01:10:55+00:00.

---

My friends are probably dead, but it’s not my fault.  I just want to get that out of the way up front.  You’ll say I shouldn’t have gone along with it.  Maybe you’ll say I could have helped them.  But it wasn’t my idea, and I didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.

So give a guy a break.  I’m telling you this so it doesn’t happen to you.

I don’t remember the name of the party we went to that night.  The police are sure that means I’m hiding something, but honestly, we went to so many parties that they all kind of blend together.  Even when we talked about them, we never called them by name.  It was always “Hey, remember the party where that naked guy fell through the roof?” or “Remember the one where Jazz stole Keoki’s bathrobe?”  It was easier than trying to keep track of who played at what venue on what day, especially since we weren’t always coherent while things were going on.  I mean, it’s a party after all.

There were six of us packed into the car that night: me, Jazz, Hula, Candi, Tommy, and this girl Rachel that Tommy invited at the last minute.  Tommy was driving his SUV, Baby.  Tommy always drove, no matter whose vehicle we took or where we were going.  Said he couldn’t handle putting his life in someone else’s hands.  I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since he regularly risked his life buying and taking drugs at parties, but when you’ve known someone as long as I’ve known Tommy you sort of take their quirks for granted.  Besides, he’s never gotten a ticket or been in an accident. Which is more than I can say for the rest of us.

Anyway, it was this huge desert party, and we had a bunch of stuff crammed into the trunk because we were planning on spending the night out there afterward.  Candi and Jazz were really hyped because they were supposed to meet up with one of the DJs between sets-- some girl from New York, I think.  They were playing her latest mix in the car and it sounded like experimental acid house.  Not really my thing, but it was cool watching them get so excited.  Their good mood was wearing off on the rest of us, and even Hula was doing this weird sort of half-smile.  Hula hates desert parties.  She’s terrified of scorpions, and every time we go out there somebody has to convince her to just get out of the car and have a good time.

We got out there about a half hour before the music started.  Usually we like to show up a little late, but this was supposed to be a big party and we wanted to make sure we got our stuff set up before things got going.  Nobody wants to carry tents and blankets through the middle of a party in the dark.  So we chose a spot and I started setting up the tents while everybody else ran back and forth to the car to get all the soft toys, blankets, and coolers full of water and ice.  At some point Rachel ended up helping me nail the tent pegs in, and I finally had a chance to talk to her.

She was gorgeous, so I could see why Tommy liked her.  Long blond hair, tanned skin, a bright pink tanktop and a pair of tight jeans; she looked like she should be on her way to a sorority party, not hanging out with a bunch of ravers in the desert.  Then she told me she’d met Thomas-- Thomas!-- in her sociology class, and I couldn’t help but laugh.  She laughed a little too, like it was totally obvious to her that she didn’t fit in and she didn’t care.  She told me that she was working on a paper about how psychoactive substances could “dissolve barriers between people of different subcultures”.  I took that to mean she had a thing for Tommy and wanted to roll with him, and I dropped it.  She seemed like a nice girl.

Finding the pills wasn’t hard.  We didn’t even have to go looking.  We finished setting up our roll station just as it got dark and the music began to pick up, so we walked around as a group for a while and checked out all the stages.  We made a slow circle and an hour later we were standing in front of the tents again, trying to figure out which stage to go to, when this little goth chick settled down on one of our blankets and gave us a big smile.  She was wearing black and white striped stockings and these crazy contacts that made it look like her eyes were solid red.  Pretty badass, but there was something about her I didn’t like. Not a cop thing. She was just… creepy. Like she didn’t belong at a desert party.  “You guys looking for anything?”

Jazz settled in next to her and started negotiating.  Jazz looked like a dork, with his giant glasses and overbite, but he was our party guy.  If you only had ten bucks and wanted to have a great night, Jazz could make it happen. After a couple of parties we’d learned to just give him the money and let him work.  After a couple of minutes he handed the girl most of the money we’d pooled, and she disappeared back into the dark.  He gave her a minute, then held up a little bag stuffed with pills.  His teeth flashed bright white in the dark. “Got it.”

We split the bag six ways.  There were two pills for everyone: a red Mitsubishi and a dark purple one without an imprint.  Jazz said the goth chick had called those “Vex”.  Apparently they were the new big thing.  The ‘ultimate high’. Everyone else was really excited to try them, but I tucked the Vex into my pocket.  I’d had Mitsubishis before and they were a long-lasting, energetic, cuddly dance pill.  That vibe was exactly what I was looking for, so I figured I’d take the Vex later, when the Mitsu started to peak. There’s a science to these things.

Everyone else headed off to the trance stage, and I talked Hula into coming out of the tent and going with me to see who else had shown up.  I didn’t even think about the Vex again until about eleven o’clock.  By then we had run into a couple of people we knew from past parties, and Hula was finally starting to relax and have a good time.  We’d heard a couple of amazing sets and the pills had definitely kicked in.

Hula slipped her hand into mine and gave me an enormous smile.  “I’m so happy,” she said, sounding like a little girl.  Her pupils were enormous and her dark eyes shone in the colored lights from the stage.  Her hair was tangled with sweat from the pills and the dancing, and her t-shirt was stained with it. I knew mine was, too, but we didn’t care.

“I know!” I laughed.  “That’s the point!”  I was grinning like a fool, feeling the music travel in waves up my legs and along my spine.

“You know what would be really great right now?  Let’s go back to the tent and get some water, and I’ll give you a backrub!”

We were halfway back to the tent when Hula started stumbling. At first it was just a couple of steps, and I thought she’d tripped over the rough ground. That’s one of the hazards of desert parties. But she was staggering like a drunk, her movements jerky and badly-timed, and eventually I had to throw my arm around her to make sure she wasn’t going to go face-down in the sand. It made me laugh, but she was kind of heavy. Hula’s a big girl.

“Sorry,” she said, and her words were slurry but kind of bright, like she was still smiling through them. I hugged her and slid one of my bracelets over her hand: the silver beads with the blue stars that said “MUSIC”. She grinned at me.

That’s when we heard the screaming.  There was a big crowd of people gathered around the jungle stage, so we couldn’t see what was going on, but it sounded like somebody up front had either gotten hurt or was having a really bad trip.  Still holding hands, Hula and I pushed through the crowd to see what had happened. Everyone moved out of the way, though it still took a minute to get through all of them.

At first I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.  There was this guy hunched over on the ground, holding his face, and this girl in fairy wings standing over him.  It was her doing most of the screaming, but the guy was making plenty of noise of his own.  Something dark dripped from his face, and at first I thought he was throwing up.  Then I realized the blood was coming from his eyes.  He was still clawing at them.  I shuddered and stepped back, pulling Hula by the hand.  She stared at me for a second, then said seriously, “I wonder what he saw.”

“Who gives a shit?” I said, trying to pull her away from the stage, but she wouldn’t budge. She just kept staring at the guy, her mouth slightly open like she was seeing something I wasn’t. I gave her arm a gentle tug. “Hula, come on.”

She turned to look at me, her pupils still blown wide, but something in her smile was weird. It was lopsided, like she was trying to remember how to use her face. I felt a cold knot form in my stomach.

The screaming stopped all at once, like someone had flipped a switch. A few people gasped. The guy on the ground was completely still now, his face turned away from us. The girl in the fairy wings staggered back, her hands pressed to her mouth. I thought she was going to scream again, but she didn’t. Instead she backed into me, and I could hear her muttering, “It’s not real. It’s not real.”

I didn’t want to be there anymore. Hula still wasn’t moving, though, and I was starting to freak out. I grabbed her by her shoulders and tried to turn her around. “Hula! We’re leaving!”

She blinked slowly, like I’d just awakened her from a nap, and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” Her voice was soft and sluggish, but at least she started walking when I tried to guide her back to the tent.

I did look back to see if anybody was help...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gtsxz2/i_thought_vex_was_just_another_party_drug_i_was/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CreepyClothDoll on 2024-11-18 00:46:49+00:00.

---

“If you say yes,” said the Devil, “a single man, somewhere in the world, will be killed on the spot. But three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, missus.”

“What’s the catch?” You squint at him suspiciously over the red-and-black striped carnival booth. You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you. 

“Well, the catch is that you’ll know you did it. And I’ll know, too. And the big man upstairs’ll know, I ‘spose. But what’s the chariot of salvation without a little sin to grease the wheels? You can repent from your mansion balcony, looking out at your waterfront views, sipping a bellini in your eighties. But hey, it’s up to you– take my deal or leave it.”

The Devil lights a cigar without a match, taking an inhale, and blowing out a cloud of deep, sweet-smelling tobacco laced faintly with something that reminds you of rotten eggs. If he does have horns, they’re hidden under his lemon yellow carnival barker hat. He wears a clean pinstripe suit and a red bowtie. No cloven hooves, no big pointy fork, but you know he’s the Devil without having to be told. Though he did introduce himself.

He’s been perfectly polite. 

You know you need the money. He knows it too, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, to this strange dark room, whisking you away from your new house in the suburbs as fast as a wish. Now you’re in some sort of warehouse, where all the windows seem to be blacked out– or, maybe, they simply look out into pitch darkness, though it is the middle of the day. A single white spotlight shines down on the two of you. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” you say. “I bet the man is someone I know, right? My husband?”

“Could be,” the Devil says with a pointed grin. “That’s for the wheel to decide.”

He steps back and raises his black-gloved hand as the tarp flies off of the large veiled object behind him. The light of the carnival wheel nearly blinds you. Blinking lights line the sides. Jingling music blares over speakers you can’t see. The flickering sign above it reads:

THE DEVIL’S WHEEL

“Step right up and claim your fortune,” the Devil barks. “Spin the wheel and pay the price! Or leave now, and a man keeps his life.”

You examine the wheel. 

The gambling addict

The doting boyfriend

The escaped convict

The dog dad

The secretive sadist

“These are all the possible men I can kill?” You ask, thumbing the side of the wheel. It rolls smoothly in your hand. Then you quickly stop, realizing that this might constitute a spin under the Devil’s rules. He flashes a smile at you, watching you halt its motion. 

“Addicts, convicts, murderers– plenty of terrible options for you to land on, missus!”

“Serial wife murderer?”

“Now who would miss a fellow like that? I can guarantee that the whole world would be better off without him in it, and that’s a fact.”

The hard worker

The compulsive liar

The animal torturer

The widower

The desperate businessman

The failed musician

The beloved son

“My husband is on here too,” you say. 

“Your husband Dave, yes. The wheel has to be fair, otherwise there’s simply no stakes.”

“I know what’s gonna happen,” you say, crossing your arms. “This wheel is rigged. I’m gonna spin it around, and it’ll go through all the killers and stuff, and then it’s gonna land on my husband no matter what.”

“Why, I would never disgrace the wheel that way,” the Devil says, wounded. “I swear on my own mother’s grave– may she never escape it. In fact, take one free spin, just to test it out! This one’s on me, no death, no dollars.”

You cautiously reach up to the top of the wheel and feel its heaviness in your hand. The weight of hundreds of lives. But also, millions of dollars. You pull the wheel down and let it go.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity

Round and round it goes. 

The college graduate

The hockey fan

The Eagle Scout

The cold older brother

The charming younger brother

The two-faced middle child

The perfectionist

The slob 

Your husband Dave

Clackity-clackity-clackity.

Finally, the wheel lands on a name. A title, really.

The photographer

“Hmm, tough, missus, but that’s the way of the wheel. But hey, look! Your husband is allllll the way over here,” he points with his cane to the very bottom of the wheel, all the way on the other side from where the arrow landed. “As you can see, it’s not rigged. The wheel truly is random.”

“So… there really isn’t another catch?” You ask. 

“Isn’t it enough for you to end a man’s life? You need a steeper price? If you’re really such a glutton for punishment, I’ll gladly re-negotiate the terms.”

“No, no… wait.” You examine the wheel, glancing between it and the Devil.

You really could use that three million dollars. Newly married, new house, you and your husband’s combined debt– those student loans really follow you around. He’s quite a bit older than you, and even he hasn’t paid them off yet, to the point where the whole time you were dating you watched him stress out about money. You had to have a small, budget wedding, and a small, budget honeymoon. Three million dollars could be big for the two of you. You could re-do your honeymoon and go somewhere nice, like Hawaii, instead of just taking two weeks in Atlantic City. You deserve it. 

Even so, do you really want to kill an innocent photographer? Or an innocent seasonal allergy sufferer? Or an innocent blogger? Just because you don’t know or love these people doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t. 

The cancer survivor

The bereaved

The applicant

Some of these were so vague. They could be anyone, honestly. Your neighbors, your father, your friends…

The newlywed

The ex-gifted kid

The uncle

The Badgers fan

“My husband is a Badgers fan,” you say.

“How lovely,” the Devil says. 

Then it hits you.

Of course.

The weightlifter.

The careful driver.

The manager.

The claustrophobe.

Your husband Dave lifts weights at the gym twice a month. You wouldn’t call him a pro, but he does it. He also drives like he’s got a bowl of hot soup in his lap all the time, because he’s afraid of being pulled over. He just got promoted to management at his company, and he takes the stairs to his seventh-story office because he hates how small and cramped the elevator is.

“I get your game,” you announce. “You thought you could get me, but I figured you out, jackass!”

“Oh really? What is my game, pray tell?” The Devil responds, leaning against his cane.

“All these different titles– they’re all just different ways to describe the same guy. My husband isn’t one notch on the wheel, he’s every notch. No matter what I land on, Dave dies. I’m wise to your tricks!” 

The Devil cackles. 

“You’re a clever one, that’s for sure. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“Thanks but no thanks, man,” you say with a triumphant smirk. “I’m no rube. No deal. Take me back home.”

“As you wish, missus,” the Devil says. He snaps his fingers, and you’re gone, back to your brand-new house with your new husband. “Don’t say I never tried to help anyone.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Snowglyphs on 2024-11-17 21:55:26+00:00.

---

I live in a reasonably safe suburban neighborhood in Connecticut, though I won't disclose what town or area in particular. I get along well with all of my neighbors and it's almost like the people on our street are part of one big family, as cliché as that may sound.

I'm currently by myself in what I'm sure most people would consider a nice house. Two stories, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a nicely furnished kitchen downstairs, a garage, you get the deal. I've done well for myself as a financial analyst, but I just haven't had the time to find anybody else to share my success with. I guess most people would consider me lonely.

The only family I have (or, had, I suppose), my father, passed recently and I'm still trying to figure out how to grieve on my own. I'm seeing a therapist, and my current mental state hasn't really been improving as much as I'd hoped for.

Anyways, my personal life isn't what I came to this subreddit to write about.

The other night I was sitting at the couch and finalizing details for my dad's funeral. This couch faces away from the entrance to the house. Sleep was starting to overtake me when I heard a sort of clicking noise behind me, coming from the door, so I got up and looked out the peephole to see who was there. I always keep my doors locked. I guess I just have a habit of keeping people out.

Anyways, I couldn't see anybody at the front step, so I shrugged and returned to the sofa to keep doing paperwork. Right after, I checked the time, and it was eleven thirty at night. Around a half hour later, just when I was starting to fall asleep again, there was another click from the doorknob. I sighed and got up, checked the peephole, and saw nobody, yet again.

I turned around, yawned, rubbed my eyes, and as that happened, there was a third click behind me. Muttering a curse under my breath, I grabbed a baseball bat that I keep in a closet just down the hall. I'd say that took me about five seconds, tops, and when I pushed the door open, nobody was there.

Directly across the street, from behind her kitchen window, I saw old Mrs. Smith hold her hand up to wave at me. When her eyes glanced over the bat in my hands, her eyes widened slightly and she raised an eyebrow. I made an irritated shrugging motion and went back inside.

This went on for about a week before I got really pissed and called the police and explained to them that somebody was trying to open the door to my house at night. They told me, and I quote, "okay, what do you want us to do about it?" I (politely, I should add) suggested that, maybe, they should send a cop to watch my home for the night and catch whatever hoodlum is playing this prank.

The person I talked to pretty much laughed and said that wasn't a possibility since they need every patrolman on duty for actual harmful crimes going on in other parts of the city. I'd figured they'd say something like that, but knowing the police couldn't help until this person actually made a move on me seemed to make the situation feel more real, if that makes sense.

Last week was when things got worse. So much worse. At this point I'd gotten seriously tired of trying to do anything in the living room downstairs when whoever was outside kept trying to open my front door and get inside, so the entirety of my afternoons were now spent upstairs in my room, watching television or reading or, most of the time, looking out the window that looks directly over my porch.

I never see anything. When I would walk downstairs to get some food, there'd never be a sound from the door. So, I'd thought whoever was doing this must have gotten bored of their stupid game when I stopped going outside to figure out where they were.

Then, last week, while laying down on my bed and finishing a finance report, I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a slow tap, tap, tap on my (thankfully locked) bedroom door, as if somebody was drumming on it with their fingernail. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, and while I was on the phone with the dispatcher, whoever was outside the door continued to make that slow, rhythmic tapping noise.

The police arrived around twenty minutes later, and the tapping noise persisted the whole time I was waiting on the phone. I was sitting in my closet when I heard, in this order, a car pull up outside my house, a car door open and close, the tapping stop, and a knock on the door. The dispatcher confirmed that I was okay with them knocking down the door and I said it was fine.

Long story short, they found nobody in the house, no sign of a break-in, no sign that somebody had even been around the place except for me. The next day I had a meeting with my therapist, and he suggested the idea that I may be suffering from auditory hallucinations, which seems unlikely to me since my family doesn't have a history of mental instability or anything like that as far as I'm aware.

Every night now, that tapping happens at my bedroom door. I called 911 the next two times and essentially the same thing as the first night happened. The police showed up. No sign of anybody except me even coming within fifteen feet of the house. I can't sleep anymore. When I put my head down to the pillow I can hear footsteps downstairs, even while the tapping is happening at my door.

One time, I tried yelling as loud as I could for "whoever is in here to get the fuck out before I get my gun!" I don't actually have a firearm. Laws in Connecticut regarding stuff like that are very strict and, though it sounds very dumb, I'd never thought something like this would happen to me. Anyways, after I yelled that one time, whatever was out there stopped tapping abruptly and then, almost smugly, continued its racket slightly louder and faster.

The sounds used to be slow, almost methodical, just loud enough to hear, and they'd always stop in the morning. Now, it's constant, fast, loud, tapping and clicks and heavy footsteps downstairs, for hours at a time, morning or night. Even when the noise is gone, I'm still afraid to walk around in my house. What if it's in the walls, or under the floor or some other crazy shit?

I ordered one of those Ring doorbells and put it on my bedroom door, about a month ago from the time of writing this post. Then I sat on my bed and watched the pitch-black hallway on the other side of the door through the Ring app on my phone. At around twelve, I heard the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced in my life. The doorbell camera didn't show anything, but there was a hissing sound outside my bedroom that filled the whole house, like the biggest snake in the world was crammed into the upstairs hall. It was almost as if the walls themself were making the sound.

And then it changed from a hiss to a snarl, and whatever was outside was throwing itself into the door and shaking it on its frame. I shrieked in terror and dialed 911 for a fourth time, and the dispatcher gave no indication that she could hear the cacophony of banging and wild, desperate roars outside my room.

This time, it took about forty minutes for the cops to arrive, and just like the last few times, once they pulled up in their patrol car the noises ceased immediately. The police didn't seem happy. The door was undamaged. Again, no sign that anybody (after this encounter I was pretty damn sure it was a "thing," and not a "one") or anything had been in or around the house.

Now they've slapped me with a court summons. It's supposed to be tomorrow. I've been fired from my job because I'm too afraid to leave the house and I've used up all my PTO, sick leave, etcetera. There's no food either for the same reason, so I've pretty much been starving for the last week and a half. Luckily, I pay for my internet yearly rather than monthly and I have enough money saved up to pay for the utility bills and house payments, at least for now.

What am I supposed to do here? The police want to throw me in jail or at least fine me for wasting their time, and I don't have a job anymore. The neighbors think I'm crazy and none of them will testify on my behalf.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Scarlett_Nocturne on 2024-11-17 18:51:46+00:00.

---

On the advice of my therapist, I'm writing about this incident for the first time. I'll just get right into it, I was seven, and the world had just started revealing its shadows. The nightmares started suddenly, vivid and cruel. Every night, I’d wake up gasping, my sheets tangled around me like restraints. In my dreams, unseen things stalked me, whispering from the corners of my room where the moonlight couldn’t reach. Sleep became something to dread, the dark a prison I couldn’t escape.

My parents tried their best. They bought night lights, banned sugary foods before bed, and tried to shield me from seeing anything scary during the day. But nothing worked. The nightmares continued and I started to really suffer from a lack of sleep.

Then, one morning, my dad entered my room with a surprise. It was a robot, or at least it looked like one. Its body was made of taped-together cardboard boxes, with Christmas lights threaded through in chaotic loops. I remember giggling when he showed it off, tapping its "head" with his knuckles like a magician introducing his trick.

My dad told me it would be my new night time protector. I liked the sound of that. But it needed to charge and it wouldn't be ready until I came back from school.

The rest of the day at school felt endless. I told my friends about my new robot, spinning wild stories about how it would fight off nightmares with lasers or super strength. By the time I got home, my chest was tight with excitement.

But the house was quiet when I walked in—too quiet. I called out for my dad, but there was no answer.

When I opened my bedroom door, my robot was waiting.

Its Christmas lights blinked rhythmically, almost alive, and it stood taller than I remembered, its boxy arms dangling stiffly by its sides. Then it moved. Slowly, awkwardly, but deliberately. It raised one heavy, cardboard-wrapped hand and patted my head.

“Hello, Scarlett,” it said in a voice that sounded like a choir of broken radios. “I am here to protect you.”

It told me it wasn’t a toy. Its job was to keep me safe from monsters, from danger, from anything that might hurt me. But it wouldn't be available whenever I wanted. It needed to conserve energy, staying dormant until I truly needed it.

When my mom got home later, the robot told me to go to her and ask her how her day was. I obeyed and was listening to my mom when my dad joined us in the kitchen. I ran to him, saying “Thank you for the robot, Daddy!” and hugging him tight. I remember he looked very pleased with himself and ruffled my hair.

When I got back to my room, I found the robot slumped in the corner. I moved it's arm and it was light as a feather. The arm seemed to fall lifelessly when I dropped it. But I knew better. As promised, I knew it was just biding its time while constantly watching over me.

That night, for the first time in weeks, I slept without nightmares.

For the next three weeks, my protector became a quiet constant in my life. I told it all about my day as soon as I got home from school. My dad wanted me to call him 'Robbie' for some reason but I settled on Nigel. I just thought it sounded funny.

Very occasionally, Nigel would be activated and able to talk and play simple games. It was always when my dad had to go out on some errand so I appreciated the company. But mostly, Nigel stayed still, watching.

Then came the night everything changed.

I woke to the sound of something at my window. I opened my eyes and looked at Nigel but it was still slumped in its corner, lights off. For a moment, this reassured me. Surely if it was a monster, Nigel would have detected it by now.

I tried to go back to sleep but there was a persistent scratching sound behind my curtains. I turned and looked at them, not expecting to see much. The room was dark but then moonlight entered as my curtains slowly parted. I froze, my heart hammering as a man climbed into my room.

He moved cautiously, placing a crowbar on the floor and setting down a heavy duffel bag next to it. Then he reached into the bag, pulling out a bottle and a hand towel.

My throat felt like it was glued shut. The man seemed to be pouring the contents of the bottle onto the towel when he suddenly looked up, in my direction. I screwed my eyes shut, silently begging my robot to wake up.

The man whispered hoarsely, “It’s okay. Just a dream. Relax. Breathe.”

I tried to believe him, to melt into my bed, invisible. But then I felt his presence, looming, and I opened my eyes to see him standing right beside me, the soaked towel in his hand.

That’s when the lights came on.

Blinking, flashing Christmas lights filled the room as the robot stood up. Its movements were slow but purposeful, its boxy frame towered over the man.

“What the...?” The burglar stumbled back, dropping the towel.

The robot advanced, its steps heavy. The man grabbed his crowbar and swung it with a sharp crack against the robot’s head. The sound echoed, but the robot didn’t even flinch.

Instead, it grabbed the man’s wrist.

I’ll never forget the way he screamed, raw and panicked, as he tried to pull away. The robot stepped forward, pinning his foot to the ground with a crunch that made my stomach twist. The man’s scream turned into a shriek as the robot’s grip tightened, snapping his arm with a sickening pop.

I closed my eyes as the robot delivered the final blow, a headbutt that sent the man crumpling to the floor. When I opened them, the robot was still, its "face" coated in something dark.

My parents burst in moments later, my dad’s horrified gasp cutting through the silence. The man lay motionless, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood. But I didn’t see him.

I was on the floor, hugging my robot, its cardboard shell damp against my cheek. All the fear in me had been replaced by pride and love for my protector. I looked at my father and said, “Thank you so much for the robot, Daddy!”

But he didn't ruffle my head this time. At the time, I couldn't understand why he looked so scared. I had a better idea after all I went through at the police station later but I still couldn't understand why everyone suddenly wanted to take Nigel out of my room.

Even now, 3 decades later, I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. No matter where I've lived, I always made room for Nigel in my bedroom. He waits there now, dormant. Biding his time. Just in case.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Roos85 on 2024-11-18 03:11:04+00:00.

---

Whenever I heard that familiar sound of the door opening, I would get so excited. Molly had taken her two young sons to soccer practice, while I sat and waited patiently for them to get back.

I was trying to keep myself entertained when the sound of broken glass caught my attention. Then the sounds of footsteps creeping around the house. A sense of fear washed over me as the door slowly opened and a masked figure crept into the room while whistling a creepy tune. There was nothing familiar about him which only heightened my sense of fear.

The man in the mask walked slowly around the room, whistling in sheer delight as if the excitement of his intended goal made him giddy.

"Perfect!" I heard him say as he began to conceal himself behind the curtain. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him breathing deeply.

It wasn't long before I heard the sound of the front door opening. The sound of the masked intruder's breath intensified as Molly came into the room unaware that someone was lurking in the shadows.

She came over to greet me as she always did. I tried my best to warn her but it was too late. The maniac was already behind her, slipping a steel blade in under her chin and slicing her throat.

It didn't take long for Ben, the older of Molly's two kids, to walk in and find his mother holding her throat and gasping for breath. She tried to warn him of the danger that was still in the room and all I could do was sit and watch.

He never saw it coming. The killer plunged the knife into his spine and then finished him off with a slice to the throat.

Alex had gone to his room and had no idea the man who had just murdered his brother and mother was now making his way upstairs to finish what he started.

Alex sat in his gaming chair, headphones blaring as the killer crept up behind. I couldn’t see what happened, but the sounds that echoed through the house were much to go by. I was glad I didn’t.

After the killer was done he came back to the room. The killer was careful to remove any evidence he left behind. He was very meticulous and knew exactly what he was doing.

Before he left, he walked over to me and leaned down to me, lifting his mask and revealing his seemingly normal appearance.

"It's funny, you're the only witness and you can't speak, " he laughed as he turned and walked away.

The heartbroken father eventually came home and discovered his whole world had been torn apart. He was inconsolable, a broken tormented shell of a man, forever changed by the sight of his slain family.

After a little nap, men in white suits came into the house to gather evidence from the bodies that were still laid on the floor. One of the men was whistling a familiar tune as he took pictures of the bodies. He took the camera away from his face to reveal, to my horror, the same man who had committed this horrible act.

He turned to me and smiled. "Hey, little hamster, remember me? Do you want to hear something funny? I'm going to make it look like Dad did it.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-11-18 01:03:39+00:00.

---

The only word that I can think of that describes how I feel, inadequate.

I’ve always wanted to do more for my wife. But she’s always assured me over and over that things are fine and that she just needs the time and space to process things. 

Yet night after night, the routine has been the same.

Just before 11 p.m., as if driven by some unseen force, Ellen rises, quietly excuses herself, and disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut, and the locking of the door is followed by muffled sounds of her crying—not super loud, but loud enough to be the only sound I hear once she starts.

I often find myself thinking about our life together. 

When did this start? Did I do something? Did I miss something when we first started dating?

I tend to then replay our entire relationship in my head, looking for signs I might have missed, while I wait for her to come out of the bathroom.

We met during our junior year of college.

Our first run-in was at one of those cliché frat parties, an event called Jerseys & Jorts. And as you guessed it, every guy and girl there was sporting some sort of sports jersey and a pair of cut off jeans. 

Our eyes met while we were both waiting in an obnoxiously loud line for a drink. She was stunning. Then, after I probably stared a little too long, she said hello and introduced herself.

“Ellen Callas.”

She complimented my Mutombo Nuggets jersey, an old vintage jersey imbued with a rainbow of vibrant colors. I complimented her retro Robinson USA jersey, a bonafide classic. She had borrowed it from her roommate.

A couple minutes into our conversation, I realized she didn’t know who either Dikembe Mutombo or David Robinson were. Then we laughed at everyone in jean shorts, and how everyone would secretly look forward to somehow coming up with a new excuse or themed party where they could sport their jean shorts again.

“Why can’t people just admit they like wearing jean shorts?” 

We continued poking fun at Greek life at schools, and somehow ended up talking about our classes and our majors, then our roommates. It felt like we talked the entire night.

I was in love.

We followed each other on Instagram. It took me three weeks of barraging her with memes, which she often hearted, before she responded with a fateful message.

DO YOU WANT TO GET COFFEE WITH ME?

I thought I was dreaming. 

One morning later that week, we were in line at Picasso’s Coffee. I was babbling about how much I love cold brew. When we were finally up, she ordered tea… 

I was so caught off guard by her order, I somehow ended up ordering a berry blast smoothie. A thought had infiltrated my mind, I guess… What if she didn’t like coffee drinkers? 

When we finally sat down with our drinks, she laughed and pointed out that neither of us got a coffee, and that maybe it was a sign we would have to go again sometime soon. 

I officially asked Ellen to be my girlfriend at the art museum one morning while we were finally sipping coffees. We were standing opposite Van Gogh’s painting, The Ravine. It was her favorite painting in the museum. She loved talking about it.

“Not only is it one of his masterpieces, but underneath, there’s a totally different painting, maybe another masterpiece. He struggled to pick which image he wanted to present to the viewer.”

I loved the way she looked at that painting. She’s always been so much wiser than me.

Then time flew by. 

At times, the years feel like a single memory.

Ellen and I have been married three years, and we have a beautiful eight-month-old daughter named Zoe. I like to think we’re the picture of a happy family—weekend trips to the park, family dinners, and bedtime stories every night. 

Ellen has been everything I ever wanted in a partner: loving, supportive, and devoted to our family. I think we’ve been in love since our first "coffee" date, and having Zoe has only strengthened our relationship.

But this peculiar trait of hers has always weighed on me, and it’s something I still, after everything, can’t make sense of. Every night at 11 p.m, Ellen is in a locked bathroom and crying.

When she returns, her eyes are red and puffy, but she smiles and insists everything is fine.

The truth is I can’t quite remember exactly when it started, but I’m almost sure I first noticed it a couple weeks after we moved into the new house. Looking back, maybe it did start around then.

It was a lot of change quickly.

In one year, we got engaged and then married. I lost my job and it took longer to find a new one than we expected. Ellen lost her mom to breast cancer. And then we found out we had a baby on the way.

I figured this was Ellen’s way of coping. Grief, stress, enormous change. I tried to give her space, hoping she’d tell me when she was ready. 

“Ellen, are you okay?” I asked her as she slowly climbed into bed one night.

The crying had been more intense than usual. She looked as if she was hiding physical pain. She responded with a gentle smile, her eyes still glistening from the remnants of tears she hadn’t fully wiped away. 

"I’m okay, really. Just… thinking about things," she finally said.

“What kind of things?” I pressed gently.

She waved it off, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and changed the subject. I let it drop, thinking it was just a rough patch. We all have those, right?

But as time went on, I realized it wasn’t just a phase. 

It was something much deeper, something that didn’t fade.

Her 11 p.m. ritual continued.

No matter where we were—on vacation, at a friend’s house, even out at dinner on a date night —at 11 p.m., she’d find a bathroom, go in alone, and cry.

One day, I hoped that Ellen would bring it up to me in bed. That one topic that your partner finally feels safe enough to share with you just as you are both about to doze off.

Some strong mixture of sleepy comfort and courage.

I was ready for any explanation. But I realize now I’ll never know.  

I’m sorry, I read back what I’ve written and haven’t made it clear. I guess in some ways, Ellen is still here with Zoe and me. 

We lost Ellen in a car accident recently.

On July 5th, just before dawn, Ellen got up early one morning to go meet her dad at the harbor for a mile swim. It was a tradition of theirs, always the morning after the 4th. They joked that their time in the water calmed down the fish, who were spooked by all of the fireworks from the night before.

But she never made it to the pier. 

She was hit by a drunk driver who was just coming home from the bars.

So it’s me and Zoe now. And our families. 

My parents have been helping out as much as they can, though they both still work. 

Ellen’s dad tried his best for a while.

But I think the grief of losing both his wife and daughter was too much. Just a few weeks after Ellen’s funeral, he abruptly said he needed to go to Greece to visit family. I honestly didn’t even know they had family in Greece. Ellen nor anyone in her family ever mentioned them.

I look back now and wish I had asked Ellen’s dad about it after I first noticed.

Had they ever noticed it when Ellen lived at home?

Or maybe I should have pushed further with Ellen herself, to get an answer. I could have mentioned therapy. I could have gone with her and we could have figured it out together.

But now I find myself in the same position. Unable to help someone I love.

The night Ellen died, after the hospital, after sitting for hours in that cold, fluorescent waiting room, I finally came home with Zoe. My mom and dad stayed over with us.

Just a baby. Too young to understand what had happened. 

But that night, only more questions came.

When I put Zoe to bed, she started crying. It was loud and heart-wrenching, nothing like the soft cries of a sleepy baby. I held her, soothing her as best I could until she finally calmed down.

It wasn’t until after she’d fallen asleep in my arms that I glanced at the clock. It was just a few minutes after 11 p.m. My stomach dropped.

I hoped it was maybe just a coincidence.

Though as the days and nights passed, it was clear...

Every night at 11 p.m. on the dot, Zoe cries a horrible cry. Her body writhes, as if she's in some great pain. I can’t do anything for her. I hold her tightly in my arms and just let her cry out. 

Sometimes, when Zoe starts crying, the room seems to grow colder, like a sudden drop in temperature that chills my skin, my bones. The air itself feels heavy, as if something unseen is pressing down on us. It's not like this every time.

Sometimes it seems to do the opposite. Like the room gets warmer, lighter.

I know I probably sound crazy.

It's been like this longer than I'd ever care to admit. I just haven't known what to do.

Feeling hopeless, I finally confided in my parents about Zoe’s nightly crying.

At first, they thought I was just overwhelmed with grief, imagining things. In their defense, I couldn’t bring myself to explain that Ellen did the same thing. It’s like I was embarrassed to admit it. Not embarrassed of Ellen, but embarrassed I didn’t do more to help.

My parents did say no matter what was going on, I should get Zoe looked at it if she was crying terribly all the time. I first took her to our regular pediatrician.  

Dr. Connelly performed a comprehensive physical exam, checking Zoe’s vitals, growth metrics, and reflexes, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. 

After a thorough discussion of her symptoms, Dr. Connelly suggested we rule out any unde...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Morpheusismybrother on 2024-11-17 14:45:03+00:00.

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When we were little, my brother and I spent a lot of time with our nana. She was always full of joy and laughter, baking for us, giving us an endless amount of sweets, singing, crafting and cooking together with us. We had the most amazing times with her. My granddad had died before my brother and I were ever conceived and nana never married again. I'm not sure she ever even dated anyone. Not for lack of opportunity though, my nana was a beautiful, elegant lady. She truly always looked effortlessly stunning and will forever be my role model.

Since our parents had to work a lot and most likely also wanted to enjoy some time without their unruly twins, we spent weekends and most of our summers with nana in her cottage. A beautiful little house, with a thatched roof and flower pots in the windows, surrounded by a huge garden with all kinds of flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables and trees. Nana grew everything there. She even had chickens. For us city kids, that garden and the cottage were a playground.

What we enjoyed most though, were her stories! When it was cold, the three of us would built a blanket fort in front of the fire place and huddle together with hot chocolate and biscuits, while nana read from her big, red, leatherboound book. The stories revolved around princesses and princes, fairies, gnomes and all kinds of fantastical beings. Also, they always had a happy ending. No matter what trouble the protagonists (suspiciously often a pair of twins, a boy and a girl), would find their way out of it and live happily ever after.

Two years ago, our beloved nana fell sick and even though the doctors tried everything, they couldn't do anything. Her life had reached it's end and my amazing nana died. Our whole family was distraught, I think I've never seen my mum in more pain. In that moment I, a grown woman, understood for the first time, that my nana was also my mother's mother. After nana was gone, none of us spoke for a week. It was too much.

We kept her cottage and gave her chickens to a trusted neighbour, but couldn't bear to set foot in the garden or the house for a year. Nana's absence ripped our hearts open every single time we tried.

Three weeks ago, I decided to give it another try. Especially since I'm thinking about having my own children soon with my fiancé. I really wanted to see, if I could find nana's story book and share these magical stories with my own kids. I met him right around the time nana died and he has comforted me so much. I don't know, how I would've made it through without him.

I arrived at the house, opened the garden gate and felt that familiar pang of sadness. I will never get used to her being gone. I made my way to the garden, biting back tears and into the house. The door creaked in the way it always had, as did the floor boards and I avoided the worst offenders, as if nothing ever happend. I started looking for the book and found it very easily. It lay on the kitchen counter, a letter on top of it. I was sure we didn't place it there, after we left last time and I was also pretty sure that I was the first to come back. Yet, in the moment I thought nothing of it. I looked at the letter and saw my name on the envelope, in Nana's cursive. I could've sworn the ink still looked wet.

"My darling granddaughter,

If you're reading this, I'm gone and you're looking for my book and I'm glad you are, I have a sinking feeling you'll need it. Please take it with you and keep it safe, so it in turn can keep you and our family safe. There are a few things you should know though and I should have told you all of this before I went away. I regret not doing that, but I never wanted to acknowledge the reality that one day, I would have to leave you behind. Trust that I did my best to stay. This book is special and powerful. If you start reading, always read to the end, never leave anything out and never change it's words when you say them aloud. It's also very important that nobody but you ever reads from this book. It chooses who it belongs to and for now it chose you. Trust me, it doesn't like to be shared. Make sure you do as I said, everything else you'll ever need to know will be in the book, just follow it's rules. If you break them, there will be unpredictable consequences. Make sure to always follow its advice. The book has always been a great asset to me, you could even call it a friend."

I was taken aback. This was definitely Nana's handwriting, but it didn't make sense at all. It sounded like she was being deeply sincere, but it seemed so odd. How would a book keep me safe and why could I not share it? Also how on earth would a book choose an owner? It seemed a bit batty, but regardless I took the book, carrying it out of the house, tightly pressed to my chest. The leather smelled like Nana's perfume and it felt warm to the touch. Holding it was strangely comforting. Nana had always worried about us a lot. Over the years, she has gifted us numerous talismans, one a pretty silver necklace with an "E"-shaped pendant I used to wear a lot, but took off after she died. It reminded me too much of her.

When I came home my fiancé was still out and I contemplated reading a little but then just put the book away. I decided to heed the letter's warnings, so I tucked the book into my sock drawer. I felt I had to keep it a secret, because if I told him, my fiancé surely would want to look. That couldn't happen. I also had this strange sense, that he could never know about the book. The next day we were invited to dinner at a friend's place, but I feigned a headache and encouraged him to go alone. I needed to read. Alone. My heart pounding in my chest, I took the book out from underneath my socks. Holding it felt instantly comfortable, just like last time. Gingerly I then placed it on the kitchen table, sat down in front of it and opened it. The first page was blank, then came the title, I brushed past all that, right into the text on page 1. The first words read: "Good afternoon, Ella" she read, with her heart pounding in anticipatory curiosity. She was wondering what she would find in this book her Nana left her."

The words were there, printed on the page. I glanced up and said to myself, "what the actual fuck is this?" I looked down again, still there. It wasn't like the words were appearing there. It looked like they had always been on this page, but how? It even called me by my name! Frantically I tried to remember, if there had been an Ella before me in our family. Was it coincidence? I then remembered that I would have to read until the end and I was scared that I couldn't make it, before my fiancé came home. I still had this uneasy certainty, that he shouldn't know about this. I did make it tough, just in time for him to return, the text in the book stopped and I shoved it back into its hiding place.

For the next few days I felt uneasy, almost like someone was standing behind me. I swear, I did feel someone breathe into my neck a few times, only there was nobody there. Luckily I was with my fiancé most of the time, so I couldn't think myself into a frenzy.

A week ago, I finally got a chance to look at the book again. This time it gave me instructions.

"Basic ways to keep yourself protected

To protect yourself from Fae, make sure you have iron at hand. It needs to be without impurities and can be wielded to fight them off. It is also advisable, to have salt and silver at the ready, in case ghosts, werewolves or other unsavoury guests show up in your house. Before you let anyone enter your house, get them to touch the aforementioned metals, to test their humanity. This also works for vampires. Make sure to regularly cleanse the house with sage. For other useful herbal remedies, turn to page 33"

It feels like a fever dream, I've followed the instructions to a t and the feeling of being watched disappeared. The sense of relief was so great, that I wonder, if there had been an underlying fear for much longer than just these past two weeks. Could there really be something watching me?

Though the book is surely a very strange thing, reading it is strangely comforting. Or it was. Until I opened it this morning. There was only one sentence, bold and red.

"Run or he will hurt you!"

The text hasn't changed since this morning, but it keeps getting darker and more distorted, almost like the ink is running, almost like letters written in fresh blood. I have no idea where to run to or who I'm supposed to run from. What do I do?