nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Stxaar on 2024-11-17 08:46:50+00:00. *** It started as an innocent rabbit hole on YouTube. I had been scrolling aimlessly through suggested videos late at night when her face stopped me cold.

Samantha.

She’d been missing for over three years. Our whole high school had been shaken to the core when she disappeared without a trace. Posters went up around town, search parties were organized, and theories swirled: maybe she’d run away, or maybe something worse. Eventually, people moved on. But seeing her face in the thumbnail of a makeup tutorial froze me.

The video title read, “Soft Glam Look That’ll Make Him Love You! 💋”

It had to be her. Same fiery red hair, same piercing green eyes. But something about her looked…off. Her skin was too pale, her smile too stiff. I clicked the video.

The intro was bubbly and upbeat. “Hey, lovelies!” Samantha chirped, brushing her hair back. “Welcome back to my channel! Today, we’re going to do a soft glam look that’s just to die for!”

That voice. It was definitely her. But there was something robotic about her delivery, as though someone had written a script for her and she was forcing herself to sound cheerful. Her movements were too precise, almost unnatural, as if she were a puppet on strings.

I kept watching, trying to ignore the growing chill running down my spine. Halfway through the video, when she started blending eyeshadow, her hand slipped, smearing dark powder across her cheek. She froze. For a second, her bright, toothy smile faltered, and she looked directly into the camera—into me.

Her eyes weren’t just green. They were bloodshot, filled with an almost imperceptible plea for help. The video glitched for a moment, and when it resumed, she was smiling again, the smudge gone as if it had never happened.

I clicked on her channel.

There were dozens of videos. They all followed the same formula: Samantha doing her makeup, offering tips, and giving unnervingly cheerful commentary. But the more I watched, the more I noticed the cracks. Shadows moved in the background where there shouldn’t have been any. Faint whispers occasionally bled into the audio. And then there were her eyes, which sometimes darted to the side, as if checking for someone—or something—just off-screen.

The strangest part? The upload dates. The first video had been posted two weeks after she went missing.

My heart raced as I scrolled through the comments. Most were from people praising her makeup skills, but occasionally, there were odd ones: • “Why does she look so scared?” • “Anyone else hear the crying in the background at 3:17?” • “This channel gives me the creeps. Something’s wrong.”

I decided to dig deeper. I downloaded one of her videos and ran it through audio software, amplifying the background noise. What I heard made my stomach churn: soft, muffled sobbing. And beneath that, a voice—deep, gravelly, and angry.

“Keep smiling, or else.”

I slammed my laptop shut and tried to shake off the creeping dread. But I couldn’t let it go. I needed answers.

The next day, I skipped class and drove to her old house. Her parents had moved away after her disappearance, but the house was still empty, a FOR SALE sign swaying in the overgrown yard. I parked across the street and stared at the dark windows, trying to piece together what to do next.

Then my phone buzzed. A notification from YouTube.

Samantha had just uploaded a new video.

The title made my blood run cold: “Special Guest Does My Makeup! 💀”

I clicked it. The video started normally, with Samantha smiling brightly at the camera. But then she said, “I have someone very special here with me today! Say hi!”

The camera panned to the “guest.”

It was me.

My heart stopped as I stared at the screen. There I was, sitting stiffly next to her, my face pale and expressionless. She picked up a makeup brush and started applying blush to my cheeks, giggling like nothing was wrong. “You’re such a great model!” she said, her voice trembling slightly.

The version of me in the video didn’t react. He—I—just sat there, staring blankly ahead.

I scrambled to pause the video, but my phone froze. The screen flickered, and the video glitched, Samantha’s face warping into something grotesque—her smile stretching impossibly wide, her eyes hollowing out into dark voids.

Then, the video ended abruptly.

Before I could process what I’d just seen, my phone buzzed again. A notification. A comment on the video.

From Samantha.

“See you soon. 💋”

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Roos85 on 2024-11-17 02:55:09+00:00. *** No, I don’t have the source for the movies and before you ask, it's not mainstream porn you can find by just googling my name. They’re videos of me being murdered. Where would you even find those types of videos? Dark web maybe, I don’t know. I don’t like watching myself being murdered.

What I can tell you is I’ve starred in over 50 and according to the guy that distributes them I’m the most watched and most sought-after snuff star in history, If that's even a thing.

You’re probably wondering how one would even get into that business. Well, the short answer is by accident. You don’t wake up one day and decide you want to be murdered.

In my case, I answered an ad looking for an amateur porn actress. I was just starting in the business and the pay seemed reasonable. When I arrived at the location which was a house in an upmarket location, it didn’t raise any red flags. It all seemed legit until I asked to be paid upfront, and the response was let's see how you die first. Before I knew it, I was being held down and the cameras began rolling.

All I can say is dying is like going to sleep during surgery, it's painful, yes at the start and scary, but when your heart starts slowing down you get a rush of euphoria before everything goes silent before the lights go out.

I couldn’t tell if there was an afterlife. I don’t stay dead long enough to find out. It's like going to sleep without dreaming, there’s a nanosecond of darkness before you wake up again.

You would think that a guy whose business is death could be easily scared, but when I suddenly woke up as they were loading me into a shallow grave in the woods he screamed like a little girl.

It took some time to calm him down. You would swear it was him that was just brutally murdered with the way he reacted, but once the initial shock wore off he look me dead in the eye (no pun intended) and said, I’m going to make you a fucking star.

I can’t go into details on how I get snuffed out, but I can say, the money is great. More than I could ever make being in mainstream porn.

The problem isn’t the fact that my employer is a death dealer of women. Actually, no women have been murdered apart from me of course, since I started. The problem is the reaction I'm starting to get the more my popularity grows.

The surprising thing is the people who notice me are the most ordinary people you could imagine. Not monsters that hide away in the shadows fantasizing about murdering women. I mean school teachers, doctors, and even young teenagers.

The biggest shock for me was when I was sitting in a cafe and I was approached by a young dad who had his two young daughters with him. He sat staring at me while his daughters sat eating chocolate muffins. I knew why he was looking at me even if he didn’t. As I was finishing up my latte I looked up to see him standing next to me with a strange grin on his face.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” He suddenly asked.

I was in my comfort clothes, a baggy t-shirt with a pair of sweatpants and the tattoo of a pentagram on my arm was on show. He began studying me to figure out how he knew and when I was just about to speak, he noticed the tattoo on my arm. It was like a light switch on in his brain and he suddenly realized where he knew me from. His face turned deathly pale and he began to stutter a bit before he hurried himself and his daughters out of the cafe.

I was never really worried about being noticed before, because the men that watched me expected me to be dead. I also never gave a second thought to my tattoo being the thing that gave me away. I mean how many girls out there have the same tattoo? When I got it done I was told it was a popular choice. That all changed when I got a phone call from my mother.

My poor mother had no clue about the type of business I was in. She always thought I was into some lifestyle stuff, like a trainer to the stars or something. I think the dream was better than the reality and always told her friends I was a successful businesswoman of some sort. Technically she wasn’t wrong.

All that changed when she rang me in hysterics. She could barely contain herself over the phone. “You’re alive, you’re alive, is all she kept on repeating down the phone. After I calmed her down and reassured her I was very much alive I waited until her breathing had slowed to a more relaxed state.

“Alison, for a moment I thought I was speaking to a ghost.” My mother was always my biggest fan in life and it broke my heart to hear her this upset.

“The police were here. Men in suits, detectives I think they were. They told me you were dead. Oh my sweet girl they told me you were dead. They had found blood and something about a tape or the internet. The bastards gave me a heart attack. I knew you weren’t dead.”

That night, I went to stay with my mother. Just to reassure her that I was still physically present and to just hug her. Mainly to reassure myself that I was definitely still present in this world. Deep down, I knew what this was about. Of course, someone who wasn’t a degenerate monster was going to watch my movies and try to put a name on the woman who should be somewhere in a shallow grave. But I always thought people would think the movies were just great fakes because you can only be the star of one snuff movie, not fifty.

A few weeks had passed and apart from my losing a year or two off of her life things had settled down.

I had decided to quit, it was never going to be a long-term thing, but if I was going to stop, my final movie was going to be my best. Go out with a bang I always say.

It was the day of the shoot and on the way to the location, I couldn’t escape the feeling I was being watched. I put it down to my nerves because I was going to die in the most brutal way possible. It was going to be so bad no one was ever going to think it was faked. And the fact it was going to be the last video of me, made it sound all the more believable.

I knew it was going to be painful, but the pain never lasted and all I was thinking was, it's going to be a spectacular death and it was. But as the euphoria swept over me and I began to slip into the darkness, I watched as men in swat gear burst into the room followed by men in suits.

As always I came back to life with a big gasp of air, like a baby taking its first breath after being expelled from the womb. I was expecting to be in the room where I was murdered, but this time I found myself on a cold metal slab. As I looked around what looked like an operating room I saw two men in suits. One was smiling, while the other appeared to hand over money from his wallet.

“Hi, welcome back. I just bet my colleague fifty dollars that you would come back from the dead,” he said as he put the note into his top pocket.

“I must say, I am a big fan of your movies. Damsel in the Dungeon is my personal favourite,” said the smartly dressed man as he smiled down at me.

This was the first time I had ever felt in danger. A sudden panic washed over me as I tried to get up off the table.

The two men in suits smiled at each other before handing me a hospital gown.

“Where am I,” I asked nervously.

“You have nothing to worry about, it's not like we are going to kill you,” said one of the men as they burst out laughing.

The two men walked me to an interview room and sat me down at a table opposite them.

“You still haven’t told me who you are and my reasons for being here.”

The two men adjusted themselves into a more serious posture.

“Sorry for the confusion. My name is Agent Harris and my colleague here is Agent Butler.”

“I look across at the two young agents sitting across from me as their frozen expressions fixate on me.”

“Agents? Are you F.B.I. or something,” I nervously asked.

One of the agents gave a disgruntled laugh as if I offended him.

“Close, we’re with the CIA.”

“What do you want with me? I didn’t know dying was illegal.”

The two men sat upright as one of them put a picture of a woman in front of me.

“We need your help with a delicate situation. It’s of the utmost importance to the security of this country.”

I looked down at the picture of a woman who looked strangely enough like me. Apart from her expensive-looking attire and different-coloured hair, we had the same facial features and we looked to be the same height.

“The woman in the picture is the wife of the Russian minister for defense Sergei Shoigu,” said the Agent with a sound of urgency in his voice.

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked.

“She has a lot of secrets that could be very important to us. The problem is her husband isn’t a nice man. Fortunately for us, her husband isn’t a nice man and treats her like a dog. So she wants a way out of the marriage, but being the man he is, he’s not going to let her go so easily.”

“I still don’t get what this has to do with me.”

The two agents look at each other before fixating their stares at me again.

“Sergei is a very powerful man. Even if we got her out of the country we couldn’t guarantee her safety. The only way we could do that is if we faked her death, but it has to look convincing and that is where you come in.”

It suddenly began to make sense. I remember a guy friend of mine who was big into conspiracy theories and would always bang on about how the moon landings were faked in a studio.

“So would I be correct in thinking you want me to make another movie given my special talent?”

The two agents ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gt40rs/im_a_snuff_film_superstar_but_im_starting_to/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Scineronic on 2024-11-17 01:57:53+00:00. *** My story begins in a cemetery like all those horror B movies that I watched as a kid. My sister and I were burying our father. Fucking cancer got him. That was horrifying in its own right. Well, I am going to skip over my father's death and burial. It's not really important to this story. Right now, all that needs to be said about his funeral is that it was short and sweet and brought a tear to everybody's eye. He was a good man, and people loved him.

After the funeral, my sister and I went for a walk in the cemetery. Looking at the gravestones was like going back in time through history. Each name had its own story to tell, I just wished I could hear it. Oh, the irony. When my mother had died during my childhood, my father had taken my sister and I on a walk through the cemetery after her funeral. At one point we stopped at a grave from the 19th century. I know it sounds like a fucking Hallmark movie, but I still remember what he said. "How many people do you think remember his story? Not many, I would venture. If any, that is. That's the tragedy of history—it can never be complete. There are stories that will always be lost to time. Make sure that your mother's story is not one of them."

I went in my own head during that walk with my sister. Her voice was like the crunching of leaves beneath our feet—just noise. I was too busy thinking about death. How long would people remember the stories of my parents? How long until they became another lost piece of history, even after what I've done? How long until my story will be lost to history? I mean how many people will read this post that I'm writing? And how many of those that read it will think that I belong in the fucking looney bin? A lot, I venture.

It was in my head that I first heard my father's voice. I thought it was the grief speaking, but his voice kept speaking. It gave me a migraine. My sister saw the state I was in and drove me home. She offered to stay with me, but I told her that I would be fine on my own. My father was still speaking to me. I decided to respond to what I thought was my own grief. What do you want, dad? He of course responded. He wanted to tell his story.

I've written the occasional short story now and then. I thought this was my grief trying to inspire me. What the hell, I thought and sat behind my computer. No, my father said to me. Use a pen and paper. I think that was the moment I thought that this might be a little more than a son's grief over his dead dad. Nevertheless, I grabbed a pen and some paper and began writing. Word by word, my father told me his life story. I transcribed every word exactly, and little by little my migraine lessened. He told me stories that he had never shared before, stories that would put a living man to shame. I guess the dead rise above that kind of human sentiment.

When I penned the last word of his story, I realized that my migraine had completely disappeared. I also realized that I had written well into the morning. If I hadn't taken a few days off work for my father's funeral, I would have had to wake up in just a couple hours to get ready for work. Thank God for minor miracles. It didn't matter any way, I couldn't sleep if I wanted to. I sat back in my chair and looked at the pile of paper in front of me. It was a hell of a lot longer than just a short story. It was the story of my father. His fucking life. And I had written it.

When the cemetery opened up, I was one of its first arrivals. I first went to the grave of my father. The dirt was still new. I spoke to him. I wanted him to speak back, but apparently he had already told his story. He had found his peace. I walked around cemetery, hoping for something to pop out at me. Another story. I did eventually find someone who was willing to share their life to me. I wrote that one down too. Since then, I've heard and written down many stories.

It's been a while since that day in the cemetery. I've written down the stories of all my family that I can find. I've written the stories of friends that have gone too soon. I've also written the stories of complete strangers. Sometimes these strangers are good people. Sometimes they're not. The bad ones make me wish that I had never been "blessed" with this power.

I've written the stories of murderers and rapists and anything else you can think of. The evil hidden beneath the surface (literally) is unimaginable. The worst of them laugh as I transcribe their story. Every evil, every heinous act, is a fucking joke to them. And I am forced to transcribe it. I don't have a choice. The second I hear a voice of the dead, I have to write. With one monster, I tried not to, and it almost killed.

Stephen Martin—that was his name. I found him in some rural cemetery that I now can't even remember the name of. I've been to hundreds of those bone gardens. The names all get mixed up in my head. He told his story, and I did the best I could to keep my hand away from the damn pen and paper. I tried to restrain myself. I didn't want to write down something that horrific. Martin hadn't always lived in that rural area. He had gone there after "retirement." For most of his life, he had lived in the city. And the children... there were so many children. So many parents that had no idea what happened to their kids. And this cunt got away with it. Got away with it all. These children died, their parents mourned over a body they would never find, and he got a fucking retirement. It made me sick. After hearing the briefest synopsis of his life, I promised myself I wasn't going to write down this fucker's story.

The sweats, the fever, the chest pain—those were only some of my symptoms. My sister came over during that time. I begged her not to, but she did. She screamed at me much to my surprise. Hell of a thing to do to your dying brother, I thought. She wanted to know why the hell I hadn't gone to a doctor—why I hadn't tried to find out what was fucking killing me. The problem was, I knew what was killing me. It was that piece of shit in my head. He was tearing me apart from the inside. Another issue was that I also knew how to cure myself. I just needed to put pen to paper. On this front, Martin mocked me. He mocked how I was dying. He mocked how fucking stupid I was to let him kill me. He said that I would be the first son of a bitch killed by a dead man. Unfortunately for him, I just no longer gave a shit. Let him fucking kill me, I thought.

As you might have guessed by the fact that I'm writing this, I did eventually write his story. Something clicked in my head: this bastard's piss-poor life shouldn't be the reason that good people would lose their stories to time. My father's words echoed in the back of my mind: "That's the tragedy of history—it can never be complete." I'm not naive enough to assume that I can create a complete account of history, but I know I can do my damnedest. So I wrote Martin's story. At first I would constantly vomit—and then dry heave—over every graphic description of Martin's deeds, but eventually I became numb to it. I hated that. After I finished his story, I went to bed, but before I did so, I locked the pages of Martin's story in a safe. I wanted to burn his fucking story, but I feared that would make him come back. I put him in a different safe than all the other ones. This bastard didn't deserve to be with my father. His pages deserved to rot alone for all eternity.

I guess it's time for me to present the proof that backs up all this shit. Surely, you didn't think that I would tell you all this without some proof? If I did, they'd lock me up in a goddamn looney bin. A couple months after I transcribed Martin's story, I realized I could give the parents some closure. I knew where their kids were buried. Martin had bared his entire soul—miserable thing that it was—to me. One day, I left an anonymous message to a police precinct in the city where he did his killings. They found them. They found them all. Their parents got closure and were able to bury their kids. I hope that caused Martin to roll in his grave. Maybe someday I will write down their story too. Be able to live through all the good of their lives before they met Martin. But probably not for a while. I already know the end of their stories. And those are not stories I want to rehear anytime soon.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Holeysweaterguy on 2024-11-17 01:24:49+00:00. *** So I was overseas on business last week and we stayed at a pretty nice hotel in a mid-sized city. It’s not the richest place in the world and we were advised to take precautions, use the safe overnight, make sure the door is locked from the inside, keep together outside the hotel etc.

I’m always fairly cautious anyway when I stay in hotels anywhere, and I like to push a chair up against the door handle as an extra precaution before going to bed at nights. Sometimes I’ll wedge a shoe under the handle but in this place the back of the chair went right up to the handle. So that was fine.

This room had a bed on legs so I had a little look under there each night as well, just in case a robber or someone was hiding (which I’d read about happening in this particular country). On top of that I’d quickly check the wardrobe. Call me paranoid but doing all that helps me sleep more soundly.

Anyway, forward to the third night. When I came into the room after a day working the aircon wasn’t turning on. Reading the panel beneath it said, “If the unit doesn’t switch on check that the balcony door is closed.” Sure enough it was slightly ajar. I looked out onto the narrow balcony, not much more than a ledge, which was completely empty, slid the door shut and then the aircon started working again. I figured the cleaning staff must have left the door open to air the room.

Anyway I went through my ritual of putting the chair against the door, checking under the bed, looking in the wardrobe. All seemed clear and I went to bed. But I had a really fitful night, which I put down to stress from the work I was doing out there, and had a bad dream that there was someone looking over me muttering in my ear. Waking from the nightmare around 4am I sat up in bed but couldn’t see anything. I thought I heard some kind of shuffling noise but nothing happened, and when I turned the lights on all seemed normal. Nothing was missing, and my valuables were in the safe anyway.

We travelled home the next day without a problem. I unpacked my things, realising that I left one of my T-shirts behind in the room, but otherwise all was good…. until I reviewed my photo reel that evening. I had taken a photo of the room on the first day as I always do, as I’ll send it to my folks. The photo showed the view from the door. The bed, coffee machine, panel TV, and the work desk which comes out into the centre of the room just beyond the bed, and the big windows beyond. Behind the desk between it and the window you can see the chair, the area under the desk being a clear space so you can see the chair’s base and wheels.

You’re probably thinking that’s not strange at all, and it’s not. But here’s the thing. I also took a photo on the morning of the day I checked out, which was directly after my fitful sleep the night before. And the room looks exactly the same, except for one detail. This time, the area under the desk isn’t clear. Instead the space between tabletop and floor is covered by a panel…

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/11velociraptors on 2024-11-16 21:18:58+00:00. *** The first time it happened, I almost dismissed it as a dream. It was the middle of the night, and I opened my eyes to a dark bedroom. The house was cool, pleasantly so, and the comfort of the blankets around me almost lulled me right back to sleep. Before I slipped into unconsciousness, I became aware of a faint whisper. 

Turning onto my side, I was surprised to see my wife sitting up in bed. Her body was turned away from me, angled towards the far corner of our room. I assumed at first that she was speaking to me, but her words came out in a constant, almost desperate stream. Once I became cognizant enough to decipher her hushed speech, I recognized it as a prayer.

Gemma, though what I'd call a "casually practicing" Catholic, had never prayed in her sleep before. In fact, in the decade we'd been together, I hadn't known her to talk in her sleep at all. I found myself unsettled by the intensity of her words. Sitting up, I placed a hand on her back, and the touch seemed to startle her awake. She jerked forwards and opened her eyes, looking at me in confusion. 

"Hello?" She said, and something about the indignant way she said it dispelled the tension in the room. 

"Sorry to wake you but you were talking in your sleep. Reciting the 'Our Father,' actually." 

She found this amusing and was asleep again in no time. I, however, had a much more difficult time falling back asleep after that. Something told me to stay vigilant, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Even as Gemma slept peacefully beside me, I kept finding myself sitting up to survey the dark corner she'd been angled towards while praying. 

A full week passed before it happened again. This time, when I awoke in the middle of the night, I could tell immediately that Gemma wasn't in bed next to me. I got up and walked into the hall, checking the upstairs rooms to no avail. When I went downstairs, I heard Gemma before I saw her. I followed the sound of frantic whispering into the living room, where she stood in front of the fireplace mantle, praying before a silver urn. 

As I drew nearer, I saw that Gemma's eyes were still closed. When I called out to her and didn't receive a response, I realized that she was still asleep somehow. I was thankful she hadn't fallen down the stairs, but I was also concerned with the sudden escalation of her parasomnia. The one thing I knew about sleepwalking was that you weren't supposed to wake the person up, so I gently put my hands on Gemma's shoulders and started to walk her back towards our bedroom. She didn't stop whispering as we walked, and, even stranger, I realized after a while that she wasn't speaking English. I thought it sounded like Latin, which wouldn't be too weird, right? Lots of Catholic prayers were originally written in Latin after all. That explanation was enough to reassure me as I walked through the dark house beside my sleeping wife. Or at least, it was enough until we reached the bottom of the stairwell, at which point Gemma opened her eyes, looked at me, and said: 

"You're both going to die in this house, Marco." 

For a moment, I was frozen in place, surprised by both her words and the absolute certainty behind them. It was only after her macabre statement that Gemma seemed to fully awaken. She blinked slowly, looking blearily at our surroundings. 

"Marc? What's going on?" 

"You were sleepwalking." 

"What? I've never sleepwalked in all my life." 

"Yeah … And you said something a little creepy at the end there. Do you remember anything? Maybe a dream that might've spilled out into real life?" 

As it turned out, Gemma had been dreaming, though not about me or the house. In her dream, she'd been laying immobile inside of a glass casket. She described two humanoid silhouettes on either side of her, one made of shadow and the other of pure light. The former poured water into the casket while the latter tried to scoop it out. She was unable to move as the water level crept higher and higher, threatening to cover her nose and mouth as the bright figure tried its best to slow the flood. 

Gemma and I, both fully alert at that point, went to the kitchen to drink some tea and wait for our nerves to settle. As the tea steeped, I found myself thinking of my mother in law, Thérèse, and not only because our cups had once belonged to her. Gemma's mother had lived with us for the last year of her life, and had passed away only a month prior to Gemma's first sleeptalking incident. As a result, there were reminders of her all over the house—her tea set in the kitchen, her mirror in the corner of our bedroom, her portrait hanging in the hall. But it was Gemma's words, not her mother's things, that made me think of Thérèse. You see, my name is Marc, and everyone in my life refers to me as such, with the exception of my mother in law, who used to call me "Marco." How strange it was that Gemma had called me that in her sleep. 

Two weeks passed, and while I sometimes awoke to Gemma murmuring quiet prayers in her sleep, her sleepwalking seemed like a one-time incident. While Gemma continued to have nightmares, and while I continued to be somewhat creeped-out by the sleeptalking, it wasn't a major impediment to our lives, and thus we both did our best to ignore it. That is, until this morning.

It was just after one when I awoke. I'd grown accustomed to having my sleep interrupted by Gemma's prayers, but this time, I opened my eyes to find my wife's side of the bed empty. I rolled onto my back and was startled to see Gemma standing at the foot of our bed, facing towards the bedroom door. Her hands were clasped in front of her chest, her head bowed and her lips moving rapidly. Annoyed at having my rest disturbed yet again, I started to get out of bed when an odd sensation befell me. Before my foot touched the ground, I felt the overwhelming urge to stay put. For no reason that I could discern, I felt a compulsion to pull the covers over my head and hide like a child. 

"Gems?" I called out, and she raised an open palm towards me, signaling for me to stay put. 

"It's here." She said. I pushed down the urge and got out of bed, coming to a stop beside my wife. The air in the room was very, very cold.

"Who?" I asked her, though I'm not sure why. I knew she was only sleep talking, but she just sounded so damn certain. Gemma didn't answer. I looked towards the bedroom door and realized that at some point after I awoke, it had opened. 

My heartbeat quickened at the thought of an intruder in our house. Retrieving the baseball bat I kept under our bed, I began walking towards the door when Gemma suddenly moved, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me backwards. 

"Don't. Move. Don't you move, Marco." 

That name again. 

"My love, what is going on with you? Why are you calling me that?" I gently pulled my free hand from her grip and put a palm on her cheek. When I touched her, I found that her skin was damp with tears. I felt a pang in my chest. Poor thing was probably having that same nightmare again. 

"Please wake up." 

For a moment, my wife was quiet. Her whispered prayers ceased and she stood there motionless as I willed her to awaken. 

Then, suddenly, she gasped, inhaling like someone who'd been holding their breath for a long time. Her eyes fluttered open, locking with mine. 

"Gemma?" I said, and then the house erupted with sound. The wall mounted mirror came crashing to the ground, as did our framed family photo hanging near the door. Instinctively, I pulled Gemma close and wrapped my arms around her as the sound of shattering glass filled the room. A shard from the mirror had wedged itself into my calf and I cursed sharply. I waited for the tremors to subside, but after a minute, I realized that there were no tremors. It hadn't felt like an earthquake at all. Instead it almost seemed like the mirror and photo had flung themselves off of the wall of their own volition. 

Gemma stirred in my arms and I let her go. She was fully awake by then, and so after telling her to be careful of the glass, I picked my way around the mess on the floor to check out the rest of the house. The scene was … bizarre. Some objects had fallen and shattered in every room, but many of their neighboring items remained perfectly intact. The tea set in the kitchen, for example, had fallen from the shelf, but the row of glasses right next to it hadn't moved an inch. It looked like someone had walked through each room in the house and picked out a few specific objects to destroy. 

I found my wife in the living room, staring down at the carpet. The silver urn had been knocked from the mantle and the ashes within it were strewn all over the floor. I felt so bad for Gemma—between her mother and her parasomnia and now this earthquake, she'd been through so much in the past few months. I gave her a hug and told her I was sorry, and strangely, instead of tearing up as I expected, she smiled at me. 

"It's alright, dear. Nothing we can't replace, right?" She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. "I'll help you clean up in the morning. Too tired at the moment." Without another word, she turned around and made her way back upstairs to bed. 

How she was so calm, I had no clue. I spent some time tending to my leg and was pleased to see that the cut was quite small and probably wouldn't need stitches. After making sure there was no glass left in my skin, I patched myself up and got to work cleaning. ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gsxa8q/my_wife_has_started_to_pray_in_her_sleep/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DivineAnime1 on 2024-11-16 20:52:19+00:00. *** They told us the truth under oath: aliens aren’t coming from the stars—they’re already here, hiding beneath the oceans. When former NASA scientists and Area 51 workers testified before Congress, the world shook. The media couldn’t get enough of it. Official reports hinted at sonar readings too symmetrical to be natural, structures too deep for any human to build, and something alive, moving in the darkest parts of the ocean.

At first, people thought it was a hoax, another conspiracy theory to stir the pot. But then funding for deep-sea exploration tripled overnight. What scared me wasn’t the testimony itself but the silence that followed—the way the governments of the world seemed to drop the conversation as if admitting too much would doom us all.

I didn’t believe in any of it, not really. I was just a deep-sea diver trying to make a living. But when Merrick, a billionaire with an ego the size of the ocean, offered me a fortune to take him and a marine biologist named Dr. Evelyn Park to the Mariana Trench, I couldn’t say no. He wasn’t subtle about his intentions. “We’re going to find proof,” he said. “Proof that they’re down there.”

The Mariana Trench isn’t just the deepest part of the ocean—it’s the closest thing we have to another planet. At over 36,000 feet deep, it’s a place where the human body wouldn’t last a second. The pressure is so intense it can crush steel. The temperatures are so cold they border on freezing. It’s pitch black, silent, and utterly alien.

Merrick had spared no expense in chartering The Nautilus, a state-of-the-art submersible designed to withstand the crushing depths. As we descended into the abyss, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were trespassing, crossing a threshold humans weren’t meant to cross.

By the time we passed 10,000 feet, the light from the surface was long gone. The world outside was a black void, broken only by the occasional flicker of bioluminescent creatures. Evelyn marveled at every glowing jellyfish and deep-sea anglerfish that floated past the viewport. “Look at them,” she whispered. “They’ve adapted to total darkness. They’re not just surviving—they’re thriving.”

Merrick wasn’t interested in the lifeforms we could see. His eyes were glued to the sonar, where a faint, rhythmic pulse had been growing louder with every meter we descended. The signal had been picked up by satellite arrays weeks ago, emanating from a specific part of the trench. It was what had drawn him—and us—here.

“It’s not geological,” Evelyn said, studying the signal. “The intervals are too precise.”

Merrick grinned. “Exactly. It’s artificial. A signal. Someone—or something—is down there.”

I didn’t like how certain he sounded.

At 22,000 feet, the ocean started to feel different. The water itself seemed heavier, colder. The submersible creaked and groaned as the pressure mounted, but that wasn’t what unnerved me. It was the silence. The sonar, which had been steadily pinging, now returned strange echoes—delayed, distorted, like something out there was answering us.

The rhythmic pulse we’d been following grew louder, more defined. It wasn’t random. It was a pattern, deliberate and mechanical. And it was close.

Then we saw it.

The floodlights illuminated a ridge on the ocean floor, and beyond it, something impossible: a structure. It was massive, partially buried in sediment, with smooth, curving lines that glimmered faintly in the light. It wasn’t made of stone or metal but something else, a material that seemed to shift and flow like liquid but held its shape.

The structure was covered in intricate patterns, lines and grooves that pulsed faintly with light, like veins carrying some alien energy. Evelyn stared, her face pale. “That’s… that’s not natural. It can’t be.”

Merrick leaned forward, his face alight with greed. “It’s a monolith,” he said. “Proof. This is it.”

Evelyn was scanning the structure with every tool at her disposal, but nothing made sense. “The readings are… inconsistent. The material doesn’t match anything on Earth. And it’s… emitting something.”

“What do you mean, ‘emitting’?” I asked.

“A low-frequency hum,” she said. “It’s resonating through the water.”

As if on cue, the hum grew louder. It wasn’t just in our ears—it was in our bodies, vibrating through our bones. The lights on the monolith flared, and the entire structure seemed to come alive.

Then they appeared.

From behind the monolith, shapes emerged. At first, they blended into the structure, their shimmering bodies reflecting the light. But as they moved, it became clear they weren’t part of the monolith—they were something else entirely.

They were humanoid in shape but impossibly alien. Their limbs were elongated and webbed, their skin a liquid-metal sheen that shifted and flowed like mercury. Their heads had no eyes, no mouth, just smooth, featureless domes that seemed to absorb the light. And yet, I felt them watching us, their presence suffocating.

One of them tilted its head, and a ripple passed through its body. The sonar fell silent.

“They know we’re here,” Evelyn whispered.

Merrick didn’t seem scared—he seemed thrilled. “Get closer,” he demanded. “We need to document this.”

Before I could stop him, Merrick activated the submersible’s maneuvering thrusters, bringing us dangerously close to the monolith. The creatures reacted instantly. One of them surged forward, its liquid-metal body twisting and elongating as it slammed into the viewport. The sub shook violently, alarms blaring as the glass began to crack.

“Merrick, stop!” Evelyn screamed, but he was too focused on the controls. “They’re testing us,” she said, her voice trembling. “We’re intruding!”

The creature struck again, this time with more force. A long, clawed appendage shot out from its body, piercing the side of the sub. Water began to flood the cabin. The pressure difference dragged Merrick toward the breach.

“No!” he yelled, clawing at the console, but it was useless. The water took him in an instant, pulling him out through the jagged hole. The force shredded his body before he even cleared the sub. Blood and fragments of flesh clouded the water as the creatures descended upon him.

Evelyn and I watched in horror as the creatures swarmed Merrick’s remains, their bodies undulating as they tore into him. The monolith pulsed in response, its grooves glowing brighter, as if feeding on the carnage.

“They’re distracted,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “We need to go.”

I activated the safety protocoll for emergencies to seal off the submarine and slammed the controls into reverse, praying the sub would hold together long enough to get us out of there. The creatures didn’t follow—not because they had let us go, but because they were still busy with Merrick. The sight of them, their fluid bodies shimmering as they devoured him, would haunt me forever.

The monolith’s hum began to fade as we ascended, but the silence that replaced it was worse. It wasn’t peace—it was a warning.

Evelyn clutched her chest, her breathing shallow. “They didn’t let us go,” she said. “They… they were done with us.”

The ascent felt endless. Every creak of the sub’s hull, every groan of the pressure, made me think we wouldn’t make it. But somehow, we broke the surface, the sunlight almost blinding after the abyss.

The official report listed Merrick’s death as an accident, the result of equipment failure. Evelyn and I were sworn to secrecy, our footage confiscated by government officials who offered no explanation but plenty of threats.

I tried to move on, to forget what I saw, but the hum never left me. It’s faint, almost imperceptible, but it’s there, resonating in my chest like a second heartbeat. Evelyn says she hears it too.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I dream of the monolith and the creatures waiting behind it. I see Merrick’s broken body, and I hear the hum growing louder.

They’re still down there, watching, waiting.

And I know someday they’ll call us back.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Obvious-Secretary151 on 2024-11-16 19:21:52+00:00. *** I never should have opened that email.

It came late one night, buried in the sea of spam clogging my inbox. The subject line was simple: "Play the Game. Win the Prize." I don’t know what possessed me to click it. Maybe I was bored, or maybe the insomnia had scrambled my brain. Either way, I clicked.

The email had no text, just a link. Against every ounce of common sense, I hovered over it, hesitating only a second before clicking. My browser opened to a black screen with a single line of text:

"Welcome to The Game. Will you play? Yes / No."

I stared at it, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. It had to be a prank or some kind of viral marketing stunt. I typed "Yes" and hit enter.

The screen flickered, and new text appeared.

"The rules are simple: Do what we ask. No questions. No quitting. Win, and you’ll receive a reward beyond your wildest dreams. Lose, and… well, you won’t."

A countdown started in the corner of the screen: 30 seconds. Underneath, a new message appeared:

"Level 1: Knock on your neighbor’s door."

I laughed. Was this it? A weird scavenger hunt? My neighbor, Mrs. Kline, was a sweet old lady who baked cookies for the whole block. I figured I’d humor the game and give her a laugh.

I grabbed my phone and walked next door. The house was dark, but I knocked lightly anyway. No answer. I tried again, harder this time. Still nothing. As I turned to leave, my phone buzzed.

"We didn’t say ‘lightly.’ Knock harder."

I froze, staring at the screen. How did they know?

Heart pounding, I raised my fist and pounded on the door. This time, the lights flickered on, and Mrs. Kline opened the door, looking confused but unharmed. I mumbled an apology about a prank and rushed back to my house.

My computer dinged.

"Well done. Level 2: Leave your front door unlocked for the next hour."

This time, I hesitated. My neighborhood wasn’t exactly crime-ridden, but leaving my door open at night? No way. I hovered over the browser’s close button, but the screen glitched and froze. My phone buzzed again.

"No quitting."

Against my better judgment, I unlocked the door. Then I sat on the couch, staring at it for what felt like forever. Nothing happened. No shadows moved across the porch, no footsteps crept up the stairs. Just silence.

When the hour was up, my computer dinged again.

"Good. Level 3: Look under your bed."

A chill ran down my spine. I hadn’t looked under my bed in years—not since I was a kid and convinced monsters lived there. It was ridiculous, I told myself. Still, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling creeping up my neck.

I grabbed a flashlight and knelt on the floor, shining it into the darkness under my bed. At first, I saw nothing but a few stray socks and some dust. Then something moved.

It was quick—just a flash of pale skin and fingers too long to be human. I jerked back, heart pounding. But when I looked again, it was gone.

My computer dinged.

"Did you see it? :) Level 4: Invite it out."

I slammed my laptop shut, my breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Whatever this game was, it wasn’t a joke.

But it wasn’t over. My phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn’t a message. It was a video.

The shaky footage showed my bedroom—my bedroom, filmed from the corner near the ceiling. The camera zoomed in on the bed, and slowly, something crawled out from underneath it.

The thing was impossibly thin, its limbs bending in ways they shouldn’t. Its face was a blank, pale expanse with no eyes, no mouth—nothing but smooth, featureless skin. It tilted its head toward the camera, as if it knew I was watching.

The video ended. A new message appeared on my phone:

"Level 5: It’s inside now. Hide."

The sound of footsteps echoed from upstairs.

I didn’t think. I grabbed my keys and bolted out the front door, sprinting down the street as fast as I could. Behind me, I swear I heard the sound of laughter—low, guttural, and wrong.

I spent the night in my car, parked in a well-lit gas station. When I finally returned home the next morning, the house was empty. My computer was gone. My phone, too. It was like the game had never existed.

But I know it did.

Because sometimes, late at night, I hear those footsteps again.

And I wonder if I ever really stopped playing.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-11-16 18:33:28+00:00. *** “Alright, off the wagon. I ain’t taking any animal o’ mine through here.” The rough voice came through my dreams but didn’t quite register. There was a light approaching in my dream, something beautiful, a star maybe? “I said off!”

Pain started in my shoulder and my stomach dropped as I hit empty space. I barely had time to register my dizziness before my fall, I briefly saw the hanging lantern spinning in a rush before I crashed to the damp ground below, taking a face full of grass and soil. I pulled myself up, spitting out dirt and trying to ascertain my whereabouts. Water was splashing in the distance. Were we finally there?

“You’re on your own.” The driver didn’t even look at me as he climbed back up on the wagon, barely giving a thought as he started off and left last words trailing back to me, “If your brother was there he’s probably dead. You do have my condolences.”

Stop. Stop thinking about it. I couldn’t let myself believe him dead. He had signed up without hesitation, leaving me back home with the choice to stay or follow. I felt the twinge of pain in my ankle where it had been broken, keeping me home and apart from him. We had been a team since I could remember, storytellers from the beginning…

I was brought back to the present by a howl coming from the nearby forest. The small port lay ahead, lanterns burning low, barely illuminating the encroaching darkness as their reflection played off the dark river ahead, making eyes in murky water that followed me as I walked. I could see a glow coming off Tybee, dim against the dense forest of the island.

Whether he was here or not, that would be my last stop on this journey. I started walking after grabbing my belongings off the ground, though it wasn’t much other than some dried beef and a canteen in my bag alongside the small bowie knife he had given me three Christmases ago, still shining bright as the day it met my hands. I gripped the cold leather on the hilt as the small tavern overlooking the port neared, hesitating as the hand under my long coat gripped the knife hilt while I pushed the door open.

Sound hit me in waves, as the smell of beer and tobacco hit me harder, overpowering my senses and almost knocking me over like the breakers crashing below. My grip loosened as I moved, stepping into the tavern’s warm embrace. The smell of roasting meat and baking bread overpowered the alcohol finally, and I relaxed my hand on the dagger. There was a friendly-looking girl standing at a nearby counter, filling a glass from a massive bottle of dark liquor.

“Be right with you sweetheart!” She shouted to me, taking the glass over to a table where one man sat alone. He gave her a nod and smile as she walked back to me. First thing I noticed was the blue army coat he wore, buttons fraying off. The second thing I noticed was the massive scar running down his face, only separated by the eyepatch covering what I assume was his now vacated socket. The barmaid was in front of me suddenly, flashing a bright smile and giving me a warmer welcome.

“Alrighty darlin’, you lookin’ for food, booze, a room, or the whole deal?” I snapped back, trying to pretend I wasn’t staring intently at the man. The squalor around us made a decent enough cover as I took a seat at the bar. She couldn’t be older than fifteen and looked to be running this place herself. Don’t know how she managed but she was standing at attention with a hand ready on a spatula behind her, waiting for something on the stove to finish.

“Uh, drink, please. Cider if you have it.” I said though she didn’t catch me at first. I tried yelling it louder when she finally understood me, moving back with a fresh glass from the nearby shelf to a cask at the far end. A soft, pink-orange liquid poured into the glass and foamed up. Peach cider… hadn’t had that in a long time. Not since meeting him here in the city, all those years ago…

Lost myself again for a moment before she handed me the cider, looking expectantly at me for any other questions.

“I need to get over to the island. Do you know if a boat is running in the morning?” I shouted across at her again. I saw her face pale, turning the shade of a new moon. Looked like one of those ghosts in the stories he would tell me…

“Hell, sir. Ain’t nobody wanted to go to the island in years. Not since Sherman at least.” A general hush fell over the nearby patrons when she said that, bringing them to glare at whoever had said the name before realizing it was the girl supplying them booze, overriding their cares about the Union with love of alcohol. “Chamber’s takes people on occasion, but he usually ends up comin’ back alone. There’s still bodies out there that just couldn’t be brought back. My papa’s probably one of ‘em. S’what mama says at least.”

She pointed toward the scarred man in the back, wearing the blue colors that seemed to be so prominent around these parts. I didn’t see many back home displaying their blues out in the open, even back home in the swamps. Hell, nobody wore their grays when we were back in Boston just a few years ago. This guy was either a hero or an absolute bastard and I wasn’t ready to find out. She spoke, even though I already knew what she was going to say. “He might be willin’ to help you.”

I nodded to her in thanks before taking my cider, walking over to the man as he trained his eye on me. I had seen the waters down past Florida once when I was young, where the water was the bluest thing on earth I’d ever seen. That’s what was in this man’s eye as I waded into its unknown depths. He swore under his breath as I approached.

“Dammit, Millie. What?” He asked in a voice like the shale outside was scraping his throat. I saw the beard growing gray under his sunken blue eye now, teeth missing and nose awkwardly cut short at the tip. Two cavalry sabers sat on the seat next to him, uninviting anyone nearby. I took a gulp of my cider before sitting across from him.

“I need your help.” I started out before he waved a hand and cut me off. He took a sip of his liquor, not showing any sign of tasting the pungent alcohol even I could smell coming off of it across the table.

“You want on Tybee? Go fuck yourself.” He started, still training his eye on me before going in again. “I’ve stopped taking you assholes there to ‘survey the land’. You never pay up frontfffffffffffff then you fuckin’ die before you can pay me. The government can either bring in some actual troops to figure shit out over there or just do what Sherman should have and finish his damn march.” He finally left off, taking a deep breath before chugging more of his drink in a quick gulp.

“I’m not looking for anything like that. I need to know if someone was there.” I started in before seeing his face change, from anger to… pity. “Shit…” He sat back in his chair, raising a hand and rubbing his scruffed hair back. He stroked his beard and looked at me, sizing me up. I looked back at him, never moving my gaze from his eye. “My condolences. Who was it, if I might ask.”

It was my turn to hesitate, wondering what I should tell him based on the coat over his shoulders. He must have noticed my apprehension, because he patted the coat fondly before dropping it down his back, letting the tattered grays show under it.

“I ain’t a traitor to the Union if that’s what you’re wondering.” He gave a half-hearted laugh as I eased back a bit in my seat. “No, I picked this off a particularly nasty bastard I had a grudge with, and one coat ain’t keeping me as warm nowadays. I’d stand up so you could see where I took my grudge but we all bleed red in the end. Someone in the war, I take it?”

“I… I know it’s a lot to ask,” I hadn’t expected such a level of observation, nothing I could have ever imagined in this barnacle-soaked coast outside Savannah. I had to steady myself, preparing to tell him the truth. “I’m looking for a soldier, he was-” I bit my tongue almost rather than say it “-is a negro, sir. He fought for Sherman, the last message I got from him was that he was stationed on the island until things were settled. He never came back after…”

“If’n he was one of Sherman’s he’s a brother of mine. I was part of the march too.” He took another drink throwing his head back and draining the glass, “Fuckin’ ceasefire was barely a week old when the stars fell.” “I know he’s probably not alive. I’ve heard the stories about the island…” I started mouthing off whatever I could to tell him I knew the risks. I had to go. “I made a promise. Even just borrowing a boat…”

His face softened as he looked at me. I tried to concentrate my gaze on the cider but couldn’t stop tears from dropping in, making ripples as the cider fizzled. There was a boulder, sitting right behind my tongue and threatening to let loose a landslide if any pebble of a word slid through. “I was there.” He offered up, looking me in the eyes, He nodded as if to reinforce his point. “I know what you’re going to find, but I owe the dead there some respect. If that means bringing peace to one of their friends, that’s a start.”

He stood now, hoisting the two sabers off the other chair and tightening their belt around his waist. He looked at me expectantly, still sitting with my cider and looking at him. I couldn’t believe he had agreed so easily to take me, much less that he had empathy for my plight. If he was out there… he was smiling at me when I entered that tavern.

“I didn’t get your name, sir?” I choked out, at least hoping I ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gstov6/fallen_stars_will_guide_us_home/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HughEhhoule on 2024-11-16 18:27:11+00:00. *** For anyone that missed yesterday's events:

So it seems like my advice followed 2 main lines of thought, rip and tear, and Home Alone. I've got to say, might seem like the obvious options, but that is only from the outside. The help was appreciated. I'll adress some of the things brought up to help you guys be my cutmen (and women).

Yeah, I'm not really a brawler, I'm no teacup, but in a straight up fight , I don't know how well against …demons I guess we will call them?

As far as upgrades, well I'll get to that in a bit. But other than that, I'm not to sure that works. I don't know if I should be working out or finding an arc welder or what. Guess I'm going to have to do some experiments.

Getting outside seems like a good idea, I'm going to be honest though, I have no idea what outside is like. Where I am is one of those things my creator did not feel the need to equip me with. But I guess it's obvious I'm in a residential neighbourhood. Maybe garages or something could work?

Which brings me to the next point, I do need to figure out more of what is going on. Truth be told I know a lot more than I can tell you , creator blocking me ruining her plan.

I tried to put some of this to work. Some success, some failure. Here it goes.

My first setback was lack of access to anything scarier than my teeth, and the 4 inch blades I can swap out my hands for. See, the problem isn't that I wasn't well equiped this time, I actually have a regular sized chest , covered in a tarp in the attic where my creator assures me rests all kinds of implements of death tailor made for me.

It's made of a dark splintered wood, secured with a massive black iron lock with no keyhole. Faded (purposely antiqued would be a better word) paint trying to look jaunty and creepy all at the same time reads "Tickle Trunk" in large letters on the top.

The problem is, that lock has no key. It won't open for me, nor anyone else until my mission begins. Leaving me in a rather sad situation offense wise.

I rolled over every option I could think of. Reading the books downstairs? No idea if I'd even understand them. Contacting my creator? Not the killing demons type. Physical force? Tried and failed. These Are just a few of the ideas I had before I heard the door to the house smash inward a little after midnight.

I scuttle into a vent to try and figure out what's going on , I find a good angle from a floor vent and see a new oddity.

The door was indeed smashed to splinters inward, steel reinforcements and thick locks twisted and mangled , standing in the middle of this was a new person who I had no real right to judge based on weirdness , as an evil doll, but I was going to anyway.

He was a stoutly built guy , mid to late thirties , close to six feet. Square jaw and a dozen or so nasty scars across his face. His hair was cropped short and He had on a thick brown leather bomber jacket with several hooks and holsters holding various pieces of modified weaponry. A clean white t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans reinforced with bits of leather and steel completed his outfit.

The strangest thing about this guy though, was his right leg. It clicked and whirred as he moved, and as I looked close I could see the hard edges of mechanical parts show through tears in the jeans.

Casually across his left shoulder he held a massive pump action shotgun, the barrel welded and drilled into an agressive pointed muzzle. In his right he held a slab of sharpened steel reminiciant of an oversized cricket bat, a yellow and black 'danger' symbol painted on one side.

He holds the shotgun one handed and fires into the ceiling, the shot makes almost no noise but the effect is immediate and cacaphonous. A piece of the ceiling the size of a child's pool explodes upward raining down plaster and wood.

He walks forward with confidence, his right leg gouging and cracking the hardwood floor as he walked.

" Hey Padre! I'm here for midnight mass" the man says swinging the sword like object into a wall in a burst of plaster and sparks as a power line is severed.

Faster than I can register, the bishop is at the top of the stairs. A smile that has no effect on his dead eyes spreading across his face.

"I was wondering how long it would take the choir boy to find me. 2 decades, that's a little long to hold a grudge , don't you think?" The bishop says, slowly walking to the bottom of the stairs.

"This is a long time coming old man. I've killed a lot of shit worse than you on my way here. I've became more than the result of your little party in the 90s. Choir boy? Asshole, the only thing I'm going to sing is 'raindrops keep falling on my head ' as I piss on your corpse." And with that the man aims and fires his gun at the bishop, the old man glides back up the stairs in a black blur.

"You think your the first kid with a gun to come after me? You arnt even the funniest." I notice an accent from the bishop, Dutch maybe. From under his robes several thick white tentacles begin to snake forth. They are studded with what look to be giant jagged fingernails.

He anchors them to the wall and raises his body, swaying and moving like a spider in its own Web.

The man smiles for a second and throws his shotgun, somehow as it spins toward the bishop, it fires four times , blowing the four tentacles to pieces. He catches it as he charges, slamming it into the bishop's face , the gun, upgraded as it is, stays in tact, shattering one of the bishop's eye sockets, the dead orb flying across the hall.

A fifth tentacle, easily twice the size of the previous ones slams into the man, he keeps his balance on the short flight down the stairs and lands , sword held at the ready.

"First round to me there your worship. Don't worry though , I got plenty more for the collection plate. " the guy says with a swagger that gives me hope.

"You got me there. Don't worry though, there won't be a round 4." The bishop says as he snaps a finger.

One of the cherubic things stalks silently from the kitchen. A high pitched hollow noise I assume is laughter comes from deep within it.

"Should have known you'd have something to fight your battles. Couldn't you afford legs for this thing?" The man, who I'm thinking of as 'the hero' says.

I notice him flick a switch on the butt of his shotgun before tossing it to the ground. He draws out a bulky sub machine gun, a two foot chain anchors it to his wrist. The gun is spiked and studded , all its fragile parts scaled up and shielded. He spins it once like a flail and grabs it by the grip, drawing the monsters attention.

He looks at the bishop "Thought you'd like this toy. " he says shifting his gaze to the monster " But I got something you are really going to get a kick out of big fella."

He unleashes a kick that sprays shrapnel toward the beast, it shuts it's stretched massive eyes against the debris, making itself completely vulnerable to the steel, piston-driven leg immediately behind the stinging cloud.

It's jaw shatters, and it stumbles backward, but the hero keeps his momentum , firing a clip from his machine gun into its chest, then swinging the firearm in a devestating arc into the top of the creature's head. Pale grey blood sprays and rotted looking yellow bone is exposed as the monster slams into the kitchen wall.

It screams and catches the sword that blurs at its neck, the hero reloads his gun single handed using an ingenious little rig and fires another clip , point blank into the creature.

It's hurting, but it's not out of the fight.

It rips the sword from the heroes hand and unleashes a massive headbutt that sends the man to the ground, his nose a pulped ruin.

The monster picks him up single handed and tosses him back down the hallway, stomping toward him before he has a chance to rise.

The man delivers a series of kicks from the ground that stun the beast. Bones deep inside it's twisted form breaking and splintering.

He kips up with a spray of dust, and begins wildly beating the creature with his firearm. He dodges it's attacks, spinning and slamming the weapon into the thing.

But out of no where the creature spins on one arm, catching the hero off guard with a massive backhanded strike. I can almost feel his arm shatter and his ribs break as the wet cracking noise echoes through the hallway.

He screams and holds his right arm as he tries to rise. The monster stalks toward him , bloodied and looking on the verge of death itself.

"Wait!" The hero says, defeated.

The monster lets out a high pitched chuckle and shakes it's shredded head at the hero, expecting some kind of plea for mercy.

Instead the man starts his own laugh.

"Just needed a second , thanks for that." The hero says as a gyroscopic whining can be heard from the shotgun laying on the floor. It aims itself at the creature and fires off over two dozen rounds that make the effect of the first few seem petty.

The monster explodes apart in wet chunks, defenseless against the torrent of lead and phosphorus. By the time the gun starts dry firing the demon is nothing more than an ankle deep pile of gore.

The hero stands, he still seems hurt, he is breathing heavily but he is obviously running on endorphins and rage alone.

"Looks like we get round three after all. I'm feeling it, but not enough to keep from breaking you until dawn." He starts to limp toward the bishop, picking up ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gstjqk/im_an_evil_doll_but_im_not_the_problem_part_2/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-11-16 17:47:44+00:00. *** [1] – [2] – [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] - [8]

It’s difficult to adjust to having something change the way you do or see ordinary things. Like brushing your teeth. After getting stuck with SORE, I got a lot more conscious about my teeth and mouth. It took some time getting used to the feeling of having something in my throat ready to shoot out like a coiled snake.

Or having breakfast, knowing there was something lurking in my stomach, resenting me – wishing to take the reins. It was still there, but after my run-in with the lady in the blue kaftan, it’s as if I knew for a certain that it wouldn’t kill me. That, and it wouldn’t be an infection risk to others. That didn’t mean it was gone though.

 

Getting back on patrol with Nick, he was the first to notice I was behaving differently. We’d stopped for our bi-weekly gas station hot dog, and I got myself a pre-packaged sushi instead. There was something about less processed, and more raw food, that just made my stomach rumble with delight. Nick made the observation, acknowledged it, and let it go. He trusted me enough to tell him if something was up.

We were having a proper Minnesota summer, meaning rain when you least need it. The DUC had pulled back on their resources, leaving Tomskog PD to focus on setting up a more permanent station. According to Nick, there’d been talks about the Yearwalker getting himself killed or leaving the state, which meant peace and quiet – and the potential for something worse down the line. The whole reason for keeping the Yearwalker from getting killed was strictly because of a devil-you-know kinda deal. Someone else taking up that mantle could mean trouble.

But in our everyday life, Yearwalkers and the DUC were the farthest thing from our minds. Instead we picked up drunk teenagers, stopped speeding cars, or scolded shoplifters. Nick and I were even invited to speak about being in law enforcement at a local school. It surprised me how much Nick changed when he had an audience of kids; he blossomed up there. He was smiling ear to ear, engaging with the audience, and there was a sort of enthusiasm there that I hadn’t seen before.

Asking him about it, he had no idea what I was talking about. He shrugged it off as just getting along well with children.

 

One day, we checked the northwest trail around Frog Lake. It was an on-foot kinda path, so we used it as an excuse to take a longer walk. Nick wasn’t happy about it, but it was better than being cooked alive in a poorly-ventilated patrol vehicle. It was probably the hottest day of the year.

We were coming around the bend where the northern road curved back south. The left-hand side of the road, past the lake, was covered in pine trees. Walking past it, something stirred in me. Just a twitch. I stopped to look around.

Off in the distance, between the trees, I could see a man. He was about 6’5, bald, and dressed from top to bottom in a pitch-black trench coat. It looked so out of place that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first. I poked Nick and pointed the man out.

“Yeah, no, that ain’t right,” Nick said. “Should I shoot him?”

“We can’t just shoot people, Nick.”

“Then why the hell do I carry this badge around?”

He took couple of steps forward and whistled to get the man’s attention. There was no reaction. We gave each other a questioning look as we spread out a little, covering two angles.

 

Without turning away from us, the man backed off. Going further into the woods, there was a short section where we couldn’t see him. I hurried forward, yelling at him to stop, but once we got a bit closer he was already gone. But that stirring feeling in my stomach, that was still there. Nick caught up with me.

“We oughta’ tell the sheriff about this one,” Nick huffed. “Guy looked like a pervert.”

“He was something alright,” I agreed. “But I don’t know what.”

“Why are you saying ‘what’ and not ‘who’?”

“I dunno,” I shrugged. “Feels like a ‘what’.”

 

Getting back to our makeshift station at the old fire department building, we went upstairs to have a chat with sheriff Mason. He was already talking to someone, but they weren’t overtly secretive, so we figured it was fine to approach.

The sheriff turned to us with a plastered smile. His guest didn’t make an effort to step away, giving me the impression that this was someone in-the-know. It was a man in his early 50’s. He had a faded blue shirt, a black tie, and black jeans. But I think what stood out to me the most was his pocket protector. People still used those?

“Hank, these are two of my patrolling officers,” the sheriff said.

“Hank Dudley,” said the man, offering a hand to us. “Hatchet Pharmaceuticals.”

“I think I’m wearing socks from you guys,” Nick said with a grin. “Nice to meet you.”

We took turns shaking hands.

“You had something to discuss?” the sheriff asked.

“Yeah, we just wanted to bring something up,” I said. “But, uh…”

“Don’t mind Hank, he’s good people,” the sheriff said. “Let’s hear it.”

 

I told them about our patrol around the lake, and the man with the trench coat. And how he, seemingly, disappeared.

“Just gave me a bad feeling,” I admitted. “I dunno why.”

Hank gave me a curious look, as if making a mental note. The sheriff pondered his options for a bit, leaving the floor open for others to chime in.

“I think I know what that is,” Hank smiled. “And if it is what I think it is, we really need to be on the lookout. Sheriff?”

“Agreed,” sheriff Mason said. “Oughta’ make sure we’re all vigilant. I’ve heard of this thing, but it usually sticks to its home.”

 

As the sheriff walked away, and Nick went to get a coffee, I was left alone with Hank for a bit. He adjusted his tie and square-shaped glasses.

“Miss, what did you feel when you first saw this man?”

“Like a… general worry, I guess. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You feel that way a lot?”

“Not really, no.”

He quieted down, giving a once-over to make sure no one was close enough to listen in.

“Did you by any chance know Adam Salinger?”

I was going to deny it, but my reaction had already given away my honest answer. I sort of half-gasped, and turned it into a smile.

“Yeah, Adam,” I nodded. “Didn’t know his last name.”

 

Hank nodded as Nick returned with a coffee. There was something about Hank’s look that just screamed at me to run for the hills. We were law enforcement, yes, but this was one of the Hatchetmen – and in corporate America, people like him make the laws.

“If you see that trench coat man again, I suggest you call it in,” Hank said. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to confront him.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Nick. “There’s coffee in the break room, if you want.”

I shook my head. That stuff tasted like a tire fire.

 

The sheriff made an official order later. If we saw the strange man again, he was to be taken in for questioning. Patrols were actively encouraged to seek him out, and upon encountering him, call for backup and await further instruction. We were given a couple of recommendations. One was to not be stingy with tasers, and another to not engage even if the suspect looked unconscious. There was also a mention that a strong spearmint spray could be used as a repellant.

Yeah, that last one gave me pause too. Clearly they knew more than they were letting on, but it was useless to push for more. The sheriff was still seen walking around with Hank at his side, and the two of them seemed to have come to some sort of understanding. And they weren’t letting anyone in on their secrets.

 

Over the weeks that followed, there was this sort of cat-and-mouse deal with the trench coat man. Patrols would report seeing him around the high school at night, and there were people calling in saying they’d seen him standing on rooftops. This wasn’t just a one-time thing, it was recurring, and in proximity to ordinary people. But no one had been hurt – yet.

We saw him a couple of times too, but only in the distance. Once when cruising down the highway. It was just in passing, but he was there. When we stopped and doubled back, he was already gone.

Another time was when we came out of a pub downtown. We were taking in a woman for public intox and disorderly conduct when I saw the trench coat man on a roof across the street. As soon as he saw that we’d noticed him, he fled.

But what bothered me the most was my unease. Every time he was near, something stirred in me. A tickle of something unpleasant. And sometimes I’d feel it even when I didn’t see him, as if he was close by – but just out of sight.

 

It was late July when I got a call from Nick. I’d been at home for about two hours, relaxing after work, so I’d already kicked my shoes off and had dinner.

“He’s here,” Nick said.

No hello, no anything. Just that. I sprung out of my couch.

“Right now?” I asked.

“Right now,” he answered. “He’s right outside. I think he’s looking for a way in.”

 

I... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gssob9/where_the_bad_cops_go_part_8/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/FinsterTor on 2024-11-16 16:49:56+00:00. *** I think I really messed up. I've always been a huge fan of horror and enjoy researching rituals, cursed places, creatures, and stuff like that. So, when I received a letter in my mailbox last week, containing something along those lines, I was immediately excited.

Some people might have questioned why they'd receive such an anonymous message, but not me. I specifically have a website with my address for this very purpose—so I can receive these kinds of letters. Of course, I also have an email address for it, but for some reason, many people still prefer good old-fashioned paper for this sort of thing. Anyway, here's what the letter said:

"Dear Mr. Jackson,

I’ve read about your interest in the paranormal. Here in Lago Sagrado, we have something that will surely captivate you—assuming the distance doesn’t deter you from visiting. As you might guess from the name, our humble village is by a lake. This lake is why I’m writing to you.

It’s beautiful, no question, especially under the moonlight, but it harbors a secret. Allegedly, an ancient lake monster feared by the Native Americans before our time dwells here. Stories passed down through generations all revolve around what happens every 99 years during the tenth week of the year at this lake.

If you are brave—or foolish—enough, I invite you to find out for yourself. I’ll meet you at the edge of the village on the Sunday of the ninth week next year and guide you to a secluded house where you can stay for the week. If you know others who might be interested, feel free to bring them along, as the house has five beds."

 

On the back was a hand-drawn map showing the way to Lago Sagrado. At first, I wondered why someone would use a map in this day and age. But when I tried searching for the location on Google Maps, nothing came up.

I should have dismissed it as a prank and moved on. Instead, I photographed the letter and shared it in a group chat with my friends—most of whom aren’t as into creepy stuff as I am—asking if they’d be up for checking it out. After some back-and-forth, we decided to take a trip. Worst case? If the place turned out to be a bust, we’d drive to the nearest city for a week’s vacation instead.

So, we—me, Josh (my childhood best friend), his girlfriend Brittany, Marc (a school friend), and Marc's twin brother Anthony—set off for Lago Sagrado. I believe Josh and I were the only ones in our group who truly hoped the village was real.

After hours on the road and crossing a border, we came to the first turn, which wasn’t on Maps but clearly existed in reality, even though it was an unpaved road. Brittany protested, but curiosity got the better of us guys, and with Marc driving, we pressed on.

About half an hour later, on unmarked roads, we reached our destination. From a distance, we saw the letter’s author—a very old man with a long white beard and a bald head. Despite the chilly weather, he wore thin, outdated clothing. He introduced himself as José Guzman and led us to the village.

The village looked old but impeccably maintained. There were only about 50 houses, and most of the residents we saw were as elderly as José but looked quite friendly. After a brief tour, José showed us to the house where we’d be staying. It was spotless and stocked with food, as the village had no shops, and supplies allegedly arrived only on Sunday mornings for all residents.

Since it was already quite late, we spent the rest of that Sunday making ourselves something to eat and inspecting the house from the inside. Unsurprisingly, the interior also looked like it was straight out of the early 20th century. There was no television or internet, but there was a very retro-looking refrigerator, which had a lot of meat in it. For some reason, we simply assumed that the inhabitants were extremely nostalgic and that the ageing population was a result of younger people moving away due to the village’s isolated location. Obviously, this was a gross underestimation of the reality, but the actual truth was beyond anything anyone could have anticipated.

The next morning, José knocked on our door promptly at sunrise. None of us were awake yet, and he didn't seem like he was going to stop knocking until someone answered. Begrudgingly, I dragged myself half-asleep to the door to ask him what he wanted. He insisted that everyone in the village had to gather at the main square within 400 seconds of sunrise. When I pointed out that my friends weren’t even awake yet, he remained adamant, warning that if we didn't make it in time, we’d have to leave immediately and that he’d invoice us for the overnight stay. He even mentioned we could come in our pajamas if necessary.

Reluctantly, I woke up my friends, and we hurried to the square in our sleepwear and jackets, determined to comply, if only to uncover more about the lake creature. When we arrived, the villagers were just starting to count down the last 20 seconds in unison. As they hit zero, José closed the small gate that marked the only entrance to the fenced-in area where we stood. Following that, a list of all the residents was read aloud, and each person raised their hand in response, acknowledging their presence. We couldn’t help but laugh a little, as it felt oddly reminiscent of roll call back in school.

When they finished, they read our names as well. We raised our hands, and afterward, everyone was free to leave. On the way back, Brittany scolded me, accusing me of having given out our full names, and likely even our addresses and phone numbers too. However, I began to feel uneasy because while José could have known my name from my website, I had not shared my friends' names anywhere. I resolved to ask him about it at the earliest opportunity.

That opportunity came soon enough, as about 15 minutes later, José returned to our house. He wanted to show us the lake and encouraged us to swim in it, claiming it was a thermal spring and therefore comfortably warm despite the season. When I asked how he knew my friends' names, he simply replied that we had told him the previous evening and must have forgotten. In hindsight, I am fairly certain that was a lie, but at the time, it seemed plausible enough.

So, we put on our swimsuits and followed José to the lake, which was only about 100 meters away. It was surrounded by stone walls, making it accessible only from a single entry point. Admittedly, swimming in a lake rumored to harbor a monster wasn’t the brightest idea, but most of us didn’t believe in monsters anyway. Josh and I, eager to search for signs of the creature, brought snorkels and diving masks I had packed for this very reason. However, the water was so opaque that even with the snorkels, we couldn’t see the bottom despite its shallowness. Disappointed, we gave up our search for the day after an hour and joined the others for a bit of water play before heading back to our house for a late lunch.

The rest of the day was spent lamenting the lack of internet and passing time with board games. The following two days were quite similar: we attended the bizarre attendance checks, searched for clues about the lake monster, swam, and entertained ourselves with board games. We had little interaction with the villagers, most of whom seemed to speak only Spanish—which, to be fair, was not unexpected in a Spanish-speaking country.

On Thursday, however, things took a stark turn. One of the villagers, a man named Hernando Lopez, was late for the morning roll call and tripped on his way to the gate, missing the cut-off as José closed it just a meter before he arrived. Hernando broke into tears and walked toward the lake. His absence from the roll call was met with nothing more than a somber “desafortunado”.

The rest of the day unfolded as usual for us, until Josh found Hernando’s coat at the edge of the lake that afternoon. Without telling the others, we took the coat to José’s house. To our surprise, he opened the door before we even had a chance to knock. Laughing, he said he had been missing “his” coat. When we pointed out that it seemed to belong to Hernando Lopez, José denied the man’s existence, claiming no such person lived in the village. Unwilling to let him gaslight us, we refused to hand over the coat unless he showed us the roll call list. Begrudgingly, he agreed—and sure enough, there was no Hernando Lopez listed.

Though unsettled, we decided to drop the matter, leaving the coat with José and returning to the lake. There, we asked the others if they remembered the man who had stumbled during the roll call. Strangely, they all denied seeing anyone fall. That day, during our diving attempts, I discovered a small cave entrance underwater. However, it was too late in the day to explore it, so I resolved to investigate it the following day.

On Friday, Anthony, who had been nursing a sore throat the day before, joined us for the roll call, which now lacked an Hernando Lopez, but chose to stay in bed afterward. He said he felt too unwell to swim or play, preferring instead to sleep. During our search at the lake that day, I stumbled upon a muddy imprint on the shore—a large fin-like mark far too big to belong to any fish that could live in such a small lake. Excitedly, I called Josh over and snapped a few photos. We were both ecstatic, far more than we should have been, given the circumstances. We called Brittany and Marc over to show them, but their reactions were far less enthu... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gsreiq/please_never_visit_a_village_named_lago_sagrado/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/S_G_Woodhouse on 2024-11-16 15:00:22+00:00. *** I'd always thought the rules of my high school library were too strict, but that was before.

Derek had spent the whole week telling me about this mysterious “trapdoor” hidden behind the gym.

“Josh, tonight at 10 p.m. Sarah and I are going to explore what's behind that trapdoor, are you with us?” he asked me as he and Sarah sat down at the table where I'd set up to study.

I glanced incongruously at Sarah, who was standing next to Derek with a big smile on her face.

“Sarah, seriously he got you into this?” I whispered so the library supervisor wouldn't yell at us.

“Doesn't it intrigue you? I want to know what they're hiding there. Besides, what's the risk? Teachers don't go round the gym at night,” she replied.

I leaned back in my chair to think. Derek was a notorious troublemaker, Sarah wasn't, but she was starting to follow him a bit too much for my taste. I'd been friends with Derek since grade school, so I knew he wasn't dangerous. But imagining Sarah alone with him... Who knows what trouble his impulsiveness would bring them.

“Pfft, alright, I'm in,” I said.

They cheered a little too loudly, which earned us a remark from the librarian supervisor.

I'd come with them first and foremost to make sure they wouldn't get into trouble. But I must admit, I was also curious, like them, about what we'd find.

That evening we found ourselves at the spot Derek had pointed out to me on google maps.

The three of us were standing in front of the mysterious trapdoor, equipped with nothing more than a flashlight each, bought at the corner store for the occasion. Derek smoked a cigarette absent-mindedly.

“So that's it,” I said, examining it.

It was strange, to be honest. It had obviously been concealed by vegetation and vines were still attached to the metal handle. It was thick and perfectly smooth, apart from that there was no indication of what might be behind it.

The 3 of us set about lifting the trap door.

Once on its side, we pointed our torches inside.

A stone staircase stretched so far into the darkness that even our lights couldn't reach the end.

“It goes in the direction of the school,” said Sarah. “Do you think it allows access like a secret passage?”

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe there's an old bunker down there that the school was built on.”

Derek stepped onto the stairs and looked at us, smiling: “Only one way to find out, let's go.”

And with that, we headed down the tunnel.

The walls of the tunnel were made of stone and looked solid, apart from a few water seepages here and there.

We walked down for a good 15 minutes before the stairs stopped and a corridor went straight ahead. We kept walking. The light-hearted chatter of the beginning gradually dissipated, leaving only a heavy silence.

“You’d better not be claustrophobic,” said Sarah, peering into the darkness behind us.

It's true that we'd been walking for a good 10 minutes now and it was getting worrying. We didn't know where we were going, and all it took was a rockfall and we'd end up buried alive.

“Hey, I see something,” said Derek while I was lost in thought.

He was right, there was finally a structure in front of us.

We ran the rest of the distance to it, excited to have finally found something.

“What the fuck, is that?” said Derek loudly once we got to the front.

I came up behind him with Sarah to discover the object of his confusion.

It was a simple wooden door with writing carved into the wood.

“Library rules...” I read aloud.

“The library? Seriously we came all this way for this? To find the school library's book stash? Talk about a find...” Derek said with a dejected look.

“No wait,” I replied. “Look what it says underneath. I know the school library well, and I've never seen these rules anywhere.”

The rules inscribed were as follows:

Rule n°1 : Any student entering the library must work there for at least 1 hour.

Rule n°2 : It is forbidden to damage books in any way.

Rule n°3 : Borrowed books must be returned to the place where they were taken.

Rule n°4 : Be quiet.

Rule n°5 : It's forbidden to look the librarian in the eye.

“What the fuck why couldn't we look the librarian in the eye?” asked Derek.

“Maybe the one who worked here was shy...” replied Sarah.

The three of us looked at each other warily.

“Shall we go in?” I finally offered, to Derek's surprise.

“I was ready to get the hell out, but since for once you're taking the initiative : After you,” Derek replied, waving me in.

I grabbed the door handle. For a moment, I wondered if I was making a mistake. I was supposed to be the voice of reason in the group, but in the end, I wasn't as reasonable as I thought when it came to something that interested me.

The door opened with a creak that would wake the dead.

We pointed our three flashlights cautiously inside before entering.

“Hello?” I said instinctively.

“Seriously?” said Sarah, raising her eyebrows.

I admitted, the place clearly hadn't seen a living being in a very long time.

A long, low-ceilinged room stretched out before us.

The stone walls were now hidden behind rows of shelves full of dusty books. Even our footsteps inside raised the dust that had accumulated on the floor for decades, or perhaps even longer.

There were also shelves in the middle of the room, creating 4 corridors.

We split up to explore a little on our own with our flashlights.

I moved to a shelf on my right and began to run my finger along the edges of the books, reading their titles as I went.

Despite the time I'd spent in the real high school library, I didn't recognize any of the authors or titles. They all seemed esoteric. The recurring themes were divinatory art, alchemy, astrology, ceremonial magic and... satanic rituals.

“Hey look at this,” Derek said to the row on the other side of mine.

He showed me the cover of the book he was holding: 'The Art and Usage of Human Sacrifice'.

“Not likely they'll teach us that in high school,” he said, laughing and setting the book on top of several others.

“Derek put it back...” I started to say before he went any further.

But it was too late.

“Bad boy,” said a female voice that sounded ancestral.

What looked like an old woman emerged from the shadows just behind Derek.

She was at least 6'5 ft tall, her long, dirty gray hair falling to her bare feet with their yellow, damaged nails. She wore a drab gray dress and her face... her face was skeletal, to the point where the dry skin stretched over her features looked as if it might break at any moment. Her bulging, lidless eyes stared at Derek with frightening intensity.

He began to turn to look at her.

“Don't look back!” I said eagerly, fear reducing my voice to a whisper.

Suddenly her gaze landed on me and I instantly looked Derek in the eye, my whole body shaking.

She turned her attention back to him, gently grabbed the hand he'd used to pick up the book, and in one swift motion, she snapped two of his fingers.

Derek screamed at the top of his lungs.

“QUIET IN THE LIBRARY,” the thing screamed at the back of his neck aggressively.

Derek held back his scream and tears, biting his lips.

We just stood there. Meanwhile, Sarah had returned to us and was staring at her feet, tears running down her eyelids and falling onto her shoes making little noises in the absolute silence.

Eventually, the thing, which was obviously what the list of rules referred to as the “librarian” went further back.

We rejoined at the other end of the shelf.

“Lets get the fuck out of here,” I whispered to them. They both nodded silently and we quietly made our way to the library door.

As Derek held his aching hand and Sarah stood beside him to help, I gently grasped and lowered the door handle before pulling it gently towards me.

The door wouldn't budge.

“What, what's happening?” asked Sarah.

“It's stuck, I can't open it”

“Force it harder”.

I pulled with all my weight.

“I'm trying but it won't open” I whispered anxiously.

Then I remembered.

“Fuck, Rule #1: Any student entering the library must work there for at least 1 hour.”

We were stuck here.

We heard the old woman's footsteps coming towards us this time.

“Back to work, unless you want to be punished,” she said menacingly.

Trembling like leaves the three of us slowly made our way to a bookshelf together.

“We have to work, take a book, it doesn't matter which one,” I whispered.

We each took a book at random, but all three of us beside each other to make sure we didn't forget where to put them down. Who knows what she'd do to us if one of us repeated the mistake, this time she wouldn't just break our fingers.

“What the hell is that thing, you're not going to tell me it's a human being?” whispered Derek as we made our way to tables spread out in the middle of the library.

“And have you seen these books?” I replied. “They look like they're hundreds of years old, sometimes the titles aren't even in English.”

“What's this room doing below the school? Do you think they know about it?” asked Sarah.

“No way,” I replied. “This place. We're probably the only ones who've set foot in here in a long time.”

“We've got to get out of here,” Derek said as we arrived in front of the tables. “There's nothing to tell us that another one of these things won't fall on us and kill us just for the fun of it.”

He was right. We'd only just discovered this place. We still had no idea of the dangers that could be lurking here in addition to this old woman.

We had to stay ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gsp1la/there_is_a_secret_library_under_my_school_it/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/gore-and-grit on 2024-11-16 11:28:24+00:00. *** By the time dinner rolls around, my excitement has fully kicked in. The nerves are gone—no more worrying about Charlie or whether I’ll get caught. I can't wait to tell my parents about what happened today. It feels like the kind of thing they'll be proud of.

“So,” Dad says, spearing a piece of steak with his fork, “What did we learn in school today?” 

I grin, finally letting it out. “Charlie came to our classroom!”

“Did he now?” Dad raises an eyebrow, setting his fork down and wiping his mouth. “Did you look at him? Talk to him?”

“Nope!” I say proudly, puffing out my chest. “He tried real hard to trick me, too. He came right up to my desk, but I didn't say a word.”

“Good job, buddy,” Dad says, giving me a high five. He smiles, but it's a tired kind of smile. “Proud of you.” I slap his hand, going for more macaroni. I chew for a second, then I remember. 

“Oh, but Alice sneezed and said thank you. He got her.” 

No one says anything for a moment, nothing but chewing and the sound of forks and knives scraping plates. Mom takes a sip of water and then places her glass back on the wooden table before speaking. 

“That poor girl. Didn’t her parents teach her anything?” Mom sighs, shaking her head as she cuts into her food. “They probably coddled her too much.”

Dad nods. “She should’ve known better.”

Mom sighs again, then smiles at me. “It's unfortunate, but the rules are the rules for a reason. You did good today, sweetie.”

I nod along, feeling more certain now. Alice deserved it. She should have known better. She broke the rules. 

I imagine Alice won’t be herself anymore. I’ve never met anyone who’s gotten caught by Charlie and lived. They usually never come back to school, I doubt they even leave their homes. But I picture she’ll be the way he left her forever. She’ll be like the dolls my sister used to have—the super creepy ones where the eyes were supposed to blink but sometimes one got stuck, so it just stared at you, even when you shook it around and tried to force it closed with your fingers.

“Speaking of,” Dad leans back in his chair, “did they ever find that girl's body? The one who broke Rule Two?”

“No,” Mom passes the salad, which I avoid. “But it's no surprise. Hopefully, the next one's smarter.”

“Nothing interesting happen to you?” I ask Jamie, my sister, who's been extra quiet today. She just shrugs, pushing around her food. 

“We saw something strange today too.” Dad begins, pulling Mom into a story about flickering street lights and his annoying boss. But dinner feels strange. Not just because of Charlie—Charlie days are always weird—but because of Jamie. 

She’s barely said a word the whole meal which is so unlike her. Normally, she’d be cracking wise about Dad's jokes, even though she swears they’re bad, but I think they're hilarious. Or she’d make fun of me for putting ketchup on everything. She should be flicking peas at me and acting like she knows everything about everything. But tonight? She’s barely touched her food, just staring at it like she’s forgotten what a fork is for. Her lips are pressed tight, eyes fixed on her plate as if she’s trying to remember the last time she was hungry—or when food seemingly stopped being something she cared about.

Mom doesn’t notice—or if she does, she doesn’t say anything. Dad doesn’t either. They keep talking about their day, about some boring teacher meeting, the men in white stopping by, the talking trees—random town stuff. Maybe they think it’s just a bad mood. Jamie’s been like that lately—distant, kind of moody. I thought it was because she’s a teenager and that’s just how teenagers are supposed to act. But tonight feels different. 

Dad goes on about some strange noise outside the garage, then rambles about the streetlights flickering in a pattern he swears is unusual. I’m not really listening, though. I can’t take my eyes off Jamie—she’s still staring at her plate, not a word leaving her lips. She won’t look at me—won’t look at anyone. Her face is pale, eyes puffy the same way mine get when I cry. But Jamie never cries. 

Dinner is quiet, even though we’re all talking. The clatter of forks against plates fills the gaps where real conversation should be. But my eyes keep darting back to Jamie. I can't shake the feeling that she knows something I don’t—like she’s holding a secret just under the surface, waiting to crack it open.

Then, suddenly, the scrape of chair legs grates against the floor, sharp enough to make me jump. Jamie pushes her chair back with a force that makes everyone at the table flinch. She stands up abruptly. “May I be excused?” she asks, her voice tight.

A pause follows, thick and uncomfortable. Mom and Dad blink at her, confusion flickering between them like they’re trying to solve a puzzle without all the pieces.

“...Of course you can, just… just make sure to clear your plate before you go,” Mom finally manages, her voice softer now, almost apologetic.

Jamie nods stiffly and turns away, leaving the room without another word. I track her movement, the hollow thud of her footsteps fading down the hall. The conversation awkwardly picks back up, but I’m still staring at her empty chair, wondering what I missed.

I didn’t know what would happen next, how could I? But I wish I had, I wish could have done it all differently.

After dinner, I head upstairs, my feet dragging as I go. I’m in the bathroom, brushing my teeth when I hear something. A voice. Muffled, but…Jamie’s.

She’s on the phone. Her voice is quiet, but not quiet enough to keep me from hearing. Not when the house is this still. I spit out the toothpaste, my ears straining to catch what she’s saying. It’s faint through the wall, but I can hear it, and there’s something in her voice that sends a chill down my spine.

She sounds scared.

I press my ear against the wall, the one connected to her room, my heart pounding in my chest. I can barely make out the words.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jamie whispers, her voice cracking. “I… I didn’t mean to. I thought it would be okay if no one found out.”

My hands are shaking now. What is she talking about?

I crack the bathroom door open and walk into the hallway, coming to a halt right outside her bedroom door. I hear a soft sniffle. It’s not like her to cry, not unless something really bad happened. Maybe she got in trouble or Mom and Dad yelled at her after dinner for not finishing her homework. I pad across the hall, careful not to make the floor creak under my feet as I creep closer. Her door’s open, just enough to see the edge of her desk and her shadow moving behind it.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” she says, her voice trembling. “I swear, I didn’t tell anyone. I just… I don’t want them to know, okay?” She pauses, listening to whoever’s on the other end of the phone. “I know. I know I messed up, but if they were going to punish me, it would’ve happened by now—I, I mean they would’ve done something by now. Maybe…maybe it won’t happen. Maybe if I just don’t say anything…”

I push the door open just a little more, holding my breath. I can hear her crying softly now, the way someone cries when they don’t want anyone else to hear them. Something in my chest tightens. Jamie’s tough. Way tougher than me. Jamie never cries.

I knock on the door, peaking my head in. “Jamie?”

She jumps, turning to face me, her eyes wide. Her face is streaked with tears, her hands trembling as she holds her phone to her ear. “I—I’ll call you back.” She says quietly, into the phone, and then she hangs up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. For a second, she looks like a deer caught in headlights, but then her expression softens into something sad. Tired, like the way Dad smiled at dinner. “Robbie… What are you doing up?”

“Can I come in?”

There’s a long pause, and I almost think she’s going to say no, but then she whispers, “Yeah.”

I shuffle in, feeling awkward. “I heard you talking… Who were you talking to?”

She shakes her head quickly, forcing a weak smile. “No one. Just a friend. It’s nothing.” I don’t believe her. I can see it in her eyes. She’s lying.

I step further into her room. The lights are low, casting long shadows on the walls. She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, her phone clutched in her hands, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. She looks up at me, and for a moment, she doesn’t say anything. Then, she whispers, “Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“What happened?” I ask, my hands cold with fear. I feel like I already know.

Her lip quivers, and she shakes her head. “I… I broke a rule.”

My heart stops. The room feels like it’s spinning for a second. My legs feel weak, like they’re made of jelly, like how I felt in class but if the boat hit a hurricane, and for a second, I don’t know what to say. The rules are the rules for a reason. Everyone knows that. She knows that.  I feel like my chest is tightening, like I can’t get a full breath.

“Which…which one?” I manage to get out, my voice barely more than a croak.

She gets up from her bed and comes over to me, kneeling down so we’re eye to eye. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

I swallow hard. “Which rule?” I ask again, because we both know it’s not fine. Nothing is ever fine when it comes to the rules.

She looks away, wringing her hands together. “It was Rule Four,” she whispers, her voice barely audible. “I—I went outside after dark by myself…but I didn’t go far! Just to get my charger from the car.”

My blood turns to ice. I can’t move. I... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gsld9l/in_this_town_the_punishments_are_worse_than_the/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/PoemWorking6414 on 2024-11-16 06:38:18+00:00. *** Nov 11 last week started like any normal day. I was getting ready for school, taking my time, and everything seemed fine. I got out the house and rode my bike on my way to school. Then, out of nowhere, it happened, I got into a car accident. It was brutal. I could feel my bones breaking, my lungs collapsing and it was the most real and painful thing I’ve ever felt. Then suddenly, this weird vibration hit me, starting in my head and running through my whole body. Everything went black for a second.

When I came to consciousness, I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was standing on the side of the road, watching the accident happen. I saw someone, lying there in the wreck—bloody, covered in glass, not moving. It didn’t feel real. I stumbled over to a window to check myself out, and I looked fine. No blood, no scratches, nothing. I convinced myself it was all in my head. Just some crazy, vivid illusion or something.

But then I noticed the crash scene, my bike, my backpack, all my school stuff scattered everywhere. That was definitely my stuff. But I was standing there, holding everything. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just went to school and ride my bike like nothing happened.

The day went by as usual, but when I got home, the house was empty. It was around 5:30 PM, and I figured Mom was just out buying something for dinner. No big deal. I killed time by reading my notes in my class earlier, but by 8 PM, she still wasn’t back. That’s when I started getting worried. I tried calling her, but my phone wouldn’t get a signal, not even when I went outside. I knocked on the neighbors’ doors, but no one answered. It was like the whole world went quiet.

I tried to stay calm and told myself she’d be back in the morning. I went to bed early.

The next morning, my alarm went off at 6:30, and I finally heard noises in the house. I was so relieved. I ran out to see her, but she was busy packing bags and crying while talking on the phone. I asked her where she’d been, but she ignored me. I thought maybe she was too upset to talk, so I just followed her to the car and asked if I could come along. She didn’t respond, so I hopped in the backseat.

She drove us to the hospital, crying and yelling, I don't really remember clearly what she said but it's somewhere along the lines of “Why? Why did this have to happen?” I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to upset her more. When we got there, she rushed inside, and I followed her. That’s when I saw it.

I saw me. Lying in a hospital bed, looking dead.

That’s when it hit me. I didn’t survive the accident. I wasn’t alive. The crash I’d seen on my way to school? That was me.

I broke down. I couldn’t believe it. My mom hadn’t been ignoring me all day she literally couldn’t see or hear me. Watching her cry and seeing her so heartbroken made it even worse. For three days, I just stayed in the house, trying to process everything. It all felt too real, the breeze, the smell of candles from my funeral, the floor beneath me. I thought maybe I was dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream.

Then, on the third day November 14, things got even weirder. This orb thing with a bunch of eyes came out of nowhere. It scared me so much and it was a horrifying sight. It was covered in light silk clothing and it has a bunch of different colored eyes and it had no mouth but somehow spoke. It kept whispering, “Do not fear,” over and over. I couldn’t move due to intense fear and even if I wanted to move, I can't. It got closer and closer, and then some warm hands picked me up and started carrying me into the sky.

For a second, I thought I was being taken to heaven or something. But we stopped, and everything changed. The warmth turned cold, and the orb’s whispers became angry. It charged at me, and time slowed down, like a scene in a movie.

I noticed an airplane flying overhead, getting closer and closer until it completely covered my vision. Then everything went black.

Nov 15 I woke up, I was back in my hospital bed. I was inserted with a bunch of tubes and my head hurts with every heartbeat and it feels like a knife stabbing my head a bunch of times. But now I don’t know what’s real anymore. Was it all just a crazy, vivid dream? Did I actually die? Am I still dreaming right now?

I can’t shake the feeling that I’m stuck between two worlds. It’s like I’m alive, but at the same time, I’m not. And honestly, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I feel really weird and the worst part is I accepted my death and bid farewell on everyone I loved. I don't know if I should feel happy or sad.

It's November 16 now and I still can't comprehend what had happened to me.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Middle-Monitor-5412 on 2024-11-16 04:31:48+00:00. *** Hi Reddit, I’m posting my story here because of what is happening in my house. I need help, and I don’t know what to do.

I live in Minnesota. I moved here a year ago to start a master’s degree. The area I live in is beautiful, and I have already made a life here. I have great friends, an amazing girlfriend, and there are a lot of opportunities career-wise for when I graduate. This place is my home.

I live in a small rental house, just big enough for myself and my cat. It came at a cheap cost, especially considering the area I’m in. Of course, I knew it might be a paranormal red flag, but I took a chance anyways. Honestly, the idea of some activity was comforting in a way. You see, I have been having paranormal experiences since I was five years old. Every place I have ever lived in has had at least some activity, most of it harmless, some not so much. I didn’t get a weird vibe when I toured the place, and at that price, how could I say no?

It started off small, as these things tend to do. An object out of place here and there, and my hairbrush went missing only to return a few days later in the exact spot I had left it. Ok, harmless enough, so I left it be.

About a month after moving in, a friend I had made in one of my classes came to my place to eat some dinner and have a few drinks to wind down from a busy week. The red wine kept pouring, and soon enough, my friend had to use the restroom. She came back to the living room, laughing slightly. I asked what was funny, and she told me that I was the biggest neat freak she had ever met. I do like to keep things organized, but it’s not obsessive, and I’ve never been called a “neat freak” before. I gave her a quizzical look, and in response, she said, “Oh you know, the way you’ve organized your bathroom”. I kept things set up as most people do, so when I asked her what she meant by “neat freak”, she beckoned me to come look. As I walked into the bathroom, it looked nothing like it had before my friend had come over. Every single thing I kept in my bathroom was lined up in a perfect row, from the biggest item to the smallest. “Oh ha ha”, I said, clearly thinking she had done this as a joke. I didn’t know her all that well after all, so I thought maybe she just had a weird sense of humor. I stared at the formation for one more second, and after an awkward pause, we went back into the living room to finish dinner.

Things were quiet for about a week. Then one Saturday morning, I walked to my kitchen to start a cup of coffee. I stopped in my tracks as I saw the silverware. Every utensil I owned was sprawled out on my kitchen table, but not randomly. Every fork, spoon, and knife were in a perfect circle, all pointing inward. A chill crept down my neck. Somehow, this seemed more sinister than a missing hairbrush.

Two days after the silverware incident, I came home from class later than usual. I flicked on all the lights, said hello to my cat, and meandered into the living room. I froze. All the cans in my cupboards were stacked, one on top of the other. It looked impossibly tall and definitely not stable enough to hold itself up like it was. My breath caught in my throat as I looked further into my living room. Every piece of furniture downstairs had all been piled up, with one chair sitting on top. It looked like someone had broken in, built a Christmas tree out of furniture, and placed the smallest chair on top, like some fucked-up star. I had heard of these types of hauntings before, but in all my years of attracting entities, this was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Of course, I tried to think of anything logical that could explain this. Maybe someone had broken into my house and played the most insane trick on me, but there was no forced entry, and I had the only key. I took some deep breaths, and reminded myself that I wasn’t being harmed physically, and my cat seemed to be fine, so I took on the long task of undoing everything.

I was starting to feel really uneasy being home. Either my cat sensed it, or he was noticing things, too, as he started staring at random corners, tracking things with his eyes. Animals can sense things like that, and again, it wasn’t doing any real harm, so I reassured my cat, and we went to bed.

My cat always sleeps next to me, but when I woke up, he wasn’t in the room. Unlike him, but not unheard of. I got out of bed and felt the strong urge to check on my cat. I called his name, looking in every room, until the only room that was left was the kitchen. As I walked in, I screamed. There was my cat, covered in a red goo. My god, I thought, that can’t be blood, please don’t let that be blood. I approached him slowly, he looked at me nervously, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. I examined the substance, only to discover it was ketchup. I opened my fridge, and the ketchup bottle that had been nearly full was almost empty, with the cap still open. Up until now, this entity had only been interacting with inanimate things, but now, it was messing with my cat. I can handle a lot, but when something starts interacting with a living being, I knew that what I was dealing with was no normal entity. Fuck with me, sure, but leave the goddamn cat alone.

So I did what I always do with an unwanted visitor, I demanded that it leave and never come back. I told it it was not wanted here and was no longer allowed to be here. Somehow, this only made things worse.

I went to bed that night and made sure to lock my cat in my bedroom with me. Telling things to go away usually worked, but this was on a whole other realm. It was the most unrestful night of my life.

I woke up groggy the next day, running everything through my head that had happened so far. I needed help, but who could I turn to? As I was brainstorming who might be able to help me (a priest? A psychic?), I walked to my bathroom. I flicked the lights on, and almost screamed in horror. “Staying” was written all over the walls in various substances, from toothpaste to shampoo. I almost fell as I backed out of my bathroom. My eyes scanned every surface of the hallway, the living room walls, and all over the kitchen, only to be met with thousands of “staying” written over and over again. And balanced, perfectly upright on the kitchen table, was my biggest kitchen knife. But that’s not the worst part. Whatever this thing was had ripped a picture of some old friends and me off the wall. It had torn the picture up, leaving only my face intact. The picture of me was speared right through my eye with the tip of the knife.

Please Reddit, I don’t know what to do, I don’t even know what I’m dealing with. I don’t think moving out of this house will help. This thing will follow me. The house is not haunted, I am.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Trash_Tia on 2024-11-15 22:42:36+00:00. *** My name is Millie, and I am 20 (Almost 21) years old.

I need help from someone not in this psycho town.

Not many kids can say they have a superhero for a father.

My Dad was an amazing man. He was the coolest person in the world.

Known as our town’s superhero, I guess you could liken him to one.

Dad doesn't wear a cape and I'm pretty sure he can't fly.

But he does use his newfound abilities for good, bringing down every psychopath who tries to play supervillain.

We are pretty small, impossible to find on a map, or even a Google search.

Dad has been protecting us way before I was even born.

Nobody knows how he and a number of others acquired their abilities.

There were rumors of a chemical explosion in the powerplant 17 years ago.

Some people even believe my Dad is from a different planet, while others are convinced he is part of natural human evolution.

All wrong, and a lot more easily explained.

Why don't the rest of the world know about our town?

My best answer would be because you can't.

On the outskirts of town, a mental barrier exists. It is invisible, only affecting you when you leave. I’ve only experienced it twice, and both times were horrific.

It's like having your mind picked apart.

Like drowning inside your own skull, every part of you bleeding away until you are nothing, a soulless, mindless shell sitting on the side of the road with barf staining your shirt.

Every memory of this town and its inhabitants is torn from us.

Last time, I remembered nothing but my name.

It didn't take Dad long to find me.

Last year, a popular Twitch streamer managed to sneak inside.

But, just like the mental barrier, everything that happens in this town stays.

He was pretty pissed when his stream failed to go live. The guy forgot our existence as soon as he stepped out of town.

Do you know the Sims 2 game on Nintendo DS?

I never played it, though I did watch walkthroughs on YouTube.

We are kind of like Strangeville. Minus the aliens.

Anyway, the reason why I'm writing this will come clear. I don't have long, and I'm sorry for over description, I want to get everything down as clearly as I can.

I want to tell you about my father.

Star-man.

He's just like a real superhero.

When I was seven years old, my father single-handedly stopped The Cerebral Drainer, a psychopath who took the lives of ten innocent people in the town square.

I remember watching an episode of Spongebob, and the TV switched to shaky camera footage of the bloodbath downtown. Dad saved a child live on local TV. He told the panicking crowd everything is going to be okay.

They believed him.

I believed him, watching through my fingers as he tackled The Cerebral Drainer to the ground.

I admit, I was scared of him at first.

Human beings aren't supposed to have freakish glowing eyes with the ability to rip through human flesh.

Laser eyes are fictional, but this is the closest I've seen to the real thing.

Dad explained it to me in detail, but I still can't get my head around it.

The mutation is most prevalent in the eyes, and acts kind of like a geyser…but with energy. Or something like that.

When I was twelve, Dad took down Rat Face, a homeless looking guy who filled the streets with disease ridden rodents.

Rat Face was more pathetic than scary. His beady eyes twitched like living things.

Our town eventually began to trust my father with protecting us.

In exchange, we were to protect his secret from the rest of the world.

Dad was known as the best superhero (and father) by day, and family-man and loving husband by night.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for the local press to be swarming our door when I got home from school.

Since town kids can't leave, unless they're either granted special permission or are the children of ‘villain’s’, the rest of us continue our education until we are 25 years old.

The idea of leaving town and immediately forgetting our identities isn't exactly appealing.

We call it The Third Senior Years.

First senior Years: 16-17.

Second Senior Years: 17-21.

Third Senior Years: 21-24.

After stepping off the school bus, I was already nauseous and wrestling a pounding in the back of my head, the type of pain Tylenol cannot fix.

The Myers household is fairly small. Just a regular house in suburbia. We even have the white picket fence.

Pushing through a crowd of my Dad’s adoring fans, I made sure to flash my my perfect smile at the cameras.

My phone vibrated, a text popping up on my notifications.

The vultures are at your door lol. Should I release the hounds?

Cam, a first senior boy who lived across the street.

With two adorable and feral chihuahua’s.

I sent back a skull emoji. The last time he set them on fans and press alike, I was unfairly grounded for three days.

Shoving my phone in my pocket, I forced my way through the crowd, trying and failing to ignore their stares.

As Star-man’s daughter, I was yet to reveal the mutation I had inherited.

I could tell they were gunning for it, their wide and frenzied eyes raking me up and down like a piece of meat.

Maybe they were expecting me to start shooting flowers out of my ass.

The older I was getting, the less patient the town was. Dad told them in a local press conference that I was just a late bloomer. I almost died of embarrassment. The girls at school ran with it of course, asking me if I was a late bloomer for anything else.

Channel 7 news was waiting for me at our front door, immediately sticking a microphone in my face.

I was told not to talk to the press. Dad made that very clear in his 100 slide PowerPoint presentation detailing every potential fallout scenario if I accidentally said the wrong thing.

But I was tired, my head was pounding, and the camera flashes were making me feel woozy.

Channel 7 news are obsessed with my family.

Almost to the point of it being scary.

The anchorwoman, Heather Carlisle, who was a usual suspect, was already yelling in my face.

I was yet to forgive her after she suggested live on air that I was a little slow. (it was 2am, and I was half asleep.

The neighbors were robbed, and I was dragged out of bed for my close-up. Because of course I was).

I noticed two things, even when I was slightly out of it.

Heather had definitely camped out in our front yard. She was wearing the exact same clothes from yesterday, a slightly creased black dress, and a matching blazer. Heather was also missing a heel. One of them was odd.

I noticed a single rose petal hanging from her fringe.

There was zero reason for this woman to be doing all of this to get ‘inside scoop’ on Myers family business.

“Millie Myers!” I got full-named, after straight up ignoring her and trying to shove past her army of camera guys.

Heather wasn't playing around. I backed down when she situated herself in front of me with one single heel clack.

“Is it TRUE your father is currently interrogating the SON of the INFAMOUS Six-Eyes?”

I swear a little bit of saliva hit me on the cheek.

Six Eyes was the opposite of my father.

Dad strived to protect our town and everyone in it. Six Eyes, who was locally famous for the mutation that came with his ability, sought to destroy it. If Dad could be compared to a superhero, Six Eyes is more of a villain.

The proportions of his face are all messed up. I've only met him once, and Dad made me wear eye protection.

It only takes one single glance at this guy, and he's got you.

Obviously, it's not like the movies. Six Eyes can't make mindless armies.

But he can greatly influence town leadership, slipping into the Mayor’s office with nobody batting an eye.

The problem was, if Six Eyes covers up his mutation, he looks like your average guy which puts him perfectly under the radar.

Nobody suspected the community college professor Marcus Caine to be a psychopathic maniac with the ability to contort the human brain.

Dad did manage to apprehend him, only for Six Eyes to break out of prison two weeks later.

His twenty year old son, Cartwright, wanted nothing to do with him, intentionally leaving town and stepping over the barrier to forget the town (and his father) ever existed.

I'm not fully sure how the mind wipe works, but I do know that spending too much time away from town causes physical symptoms.

I think Cartwright is drawn back every two to three months to avoid suffering an aneurysm. He had even legally changed his name to get as far away from his psycho father as possible.

The boy was only in town for a few weeks on vacation from college.

However, over the last few days, my father had reasons to believe Six-Eyes was in contact with his estranged son.

I twisted around, maintaining a wide smile. “No comment.” I told the cameras.

The anchorwoman nodded slowly, thrusting her microphone further into my face. I had to hold back a sneeze.

“But your father is interrogating him now, correct? Millie, can you tell us what… techniques he is using?”

She was trying to get me to spill or trip over what I was saying so my words could be taken out of context.

Dad didn't get mad easily, but his smile did start to slightly falter when I told Channel 7 our family's business.

Shutting the press down, I shook my head, making sure to stretch my lips into a big, cheesy grin. Just like my Dad told me. I cleared my throat.

“Rest assured, Cartwright is in good hands. I can prom... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gs8vsd/its_tough_being_the_daughter_of_a_superhero/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/TremontRemy on 2024-11-15 14:48:53+00:00. *** For a long time, I’ve been reliving my own death, day after day. I know it sounds stupid. Who dies more than once? And if I’m already dead, how can I write this down? But please hear my side of the story. Because it’s a pretty tough one.

I had previously led a completely normal life with a normal family. In case you can call my family normal. My parents are workaholics and have provided a stable environment for me and my siblings once I was born. Besides me, there is my older brother Hutch and my little sister Julia. Since Hutch joined the army a year ago and Julia’s puberty phase became apparent when she stayed away from home for hours at a time, it was relatively quiet at home. I myself am a rather unsociable type and like my time alone in the house, which I like to spend watching TV shows or playing PS5.

Then October 15th came. I remember the day I first met my death vividly.

It was a special day because it was the first time Hutch came home to spend a few days with the family. My parents decided to have a picnic on the outskirts of town and then go shopping. I honestly wasn’t in the mood to go out. It was nothing against my brother, I loved him, but I would be seeing him for a few days anyway, so I wanted to stay in the house and just wait until he and my parents came back. Julia was at some party as usual, and I really hoped she wouldn’t call me later and ask if I could pick her up.

My parents left the house around noon. They were a little disappointed that I didn’t want to spend time with Hutch, but the joy of seeing their son again was too great. 

The afternoon was relaxing. I played on my console and finished watching the last episodes of the TV show that I had started last week. When I got bored, I even did my homework and solved the crossword puzzle in the daily newspaper. For lunch I ordered pizza and, since I can never estimate my hunger, I also put fries in the air fryer.

Eventually it was evening and the sky darkened. I heard nothing from my parents or Hutch. No one called. I assumed they were somewhere where there was no signal. They never put their phones on silent because my parents thought that was tactless. I also heard nothing from Julia, which I initially dismissed as a good sign. 

But when the clock struck eleven, I started to get worried. I wrote to my parents, to Hutch, to Julia, called everyone, just to make sure everything was okay. It was extremely rare that I was home alone late at night without a good reason. Or maybe I was just too worried in general. I’ve always been the more withdrawn and anxious type of person.

Eventually I got a message from Hutch. I was so relieved to hear from someone in my family that he was okay. He asked me to pick him and our parents up in my car since they had a flat tire and couldn’t get through to breakdown service. 

I didn’t even bother asking questions. I immediately grabbed my car keys and rushed outside. It was very windy and cold, and I had to fight the oncoming wind several times before I could reach my car.

Suddenly a newspaper hit me square in the face and I ran in different directions in panic. Before I knew it, I was standing on the street and a light shone through the newspaper, getting bigger and bigger. Before I could even take newspaper down, a truck hit me in the middle of my body.

I can still feel the overwhelming pressure very well. It felt so painful, so intense and so real. And how real it was. Or so I thought.

Right after the impact with the truck, I woke up with a start and saw my bedroom. My phone screen showed October 15th.

Dreams usually feel real and you only remember them in fragments, but I swear I’ve never had a dream that was so lifelike. I could also remember every detail, as if someone was thinking back to yesterday.

I didn’t think about it any longer and went to the kitchen to have breakfast. My parents and Julia were already sitting at the table. My mother seemed to be in a good mood as I saw her slap a perfectly fried omelette onto my plate.

I asked her why she was in such a good mood and she said: “Your brother is coming back today, remember?”

Hutch? Hadn’t they met him already? No, that all happened in my dream. So they hadn’t met him. Not yet. Was my dream also a vision?

“We’re going to have a nice picnic somewhere in the park and then I thought we’d go to the mall and do some shopping”, my mom continued.

That’s exactly what she had planned in my dream. 

“Without me”, Julia interrupted. “I’m meeting up with Holly and a few friends." 

“By ‘meeting up’, you probably mean some kind of party again”, Mom said sourly.

The whole thing seemed very odd and creepy to me. I had a strange feeling of déjà vu when I got up, but with every second that passed, everything became more and more recognizable.

Just to be really sure that I had hopefully only dreamed all of it, I opened my homework assignment that I had done yesterday or in my dream. The page in the math book that needed to be done was blank. I could still remember writing down the answer to each math problem. What was going on here?

Around noon, my parents left. I didn’t come with them again because I was still too confused and had to make sense of everything.

Instinctively, I wrote to my parents and Julia directly and asked them to keep me updated about their whereabouts and to call me every hour. I tried to sound as serious as possible without explaining too much.

An hour later, the first call came from my parents. I was relieved when they told me that everything was going well, and Hutch had arrived safe and sound. There was no call from Julia, as I had expected.

I spent the afternoon doing my homework, even though I had already done it, and ordering pizza and heating up fries. I already knew how my current TV show ended, even though Netflix showed me the notification that I still had three episodes left.

After another hour, my father called to tell me that the three of them were sitting in a park having their picnic. Julia didn’t call again. 

When the next hour rolled around, there was no call from Julia or my parents. I was sure they had simply forgotten about our agreement, so I texted each of them to call back. No one received my message. 

Later that evening, Hutch called me and asked me to pick him and Mom and Dad up because of a flat tire.

As I had done before, I grabbed my keys and ran outside. Only then did I realize the danger that had cost me my life the other time. It was very windy and cold, but I fought my way through the wind with small steps.

Suddenly a newspaper came flying and smacked me in the face. I immediately stopped and ripped it off me. Not this time, I thought to myself.

I finally got to my car and drove off. On the way there I grabbed my phone and texted Hutch to tell me where they were. I was apparently way too excited because I wasn’t paying much attention to the road.

That ended up being my fate because before I knew it I crashed straight into a tree and flew forward.

I remember feeling like my head had been pierced. The feeling was insanely awful. But it didn’t last long, as I found myself safe and sound in my bedroom. My phone screen showed October 15th.

I hadn’t dreamed. I hadn’t had any visions. I was caught in a time loop that always ended in my death.

I really didn’t know what to make of it and what caused it happen. I was panicking at the thought of having to live the same day for the rest of my life. 

This went on for a while. I don’t know if I just wanted to keep testing the time loop or if I was just getting depressed, but I decided to take advantage of that time and altered my daily routine every day. One day I blew all my money gambling. Other days I hooked up with Tinder dates or just trashed the house. Every day was different, as was the way I died. I either had a heart attack, fell down the stairs and broke my neck or I deliberately unalived me by jumping out of the window. With each day I changed drastically and with each day I mourned my old self. 

Finally, the 24th repetition of October 15th arrived. I slithered out of bed and staggered into the kitchen. My parents commented on my odd behavior and I waved it off as usual and let the day come. 

“Are you excited about seeing your brother?” Mom asked me.

“Sure, I can’t wait for him to walk in the door”, I replied sarcastically, shoveling omelette into my mouth.

“What? You don’t want to come with us? It’s your brother.” 

“I’m going to see him for a few more days anyway, so who cares?”

“Don’t be so disrespectful. Don’t take everything for granted. What if your brother can’t make it today? Wouldn’t you be sad about that?”

I stopped eating. I became alert to what my mom had just said.

I toyed with the idea that maybe the way out of the time loop depended on my choices. Maybe I just needed to see my brother again to continue the events.

Since I had nothing to lose anyway, I changed my original plan to do a Harry Potter marathon and agreed to come and pick up Hutch.

We left the house around noon and drove to the airport where we were waiting for Hutch. He appeared in his combat uniform and seemed relieved to see us. But he also seemed tired, which I could understand given the fact that he had spent months in the Middle East witnessing the horrors of humanity first hand and had to sit and wait for hours for the enemies to come. 

I hugged Hutch and welcomed him. For the first time since the time loop began, I was ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1grxzo1/i_relived_the_same_october_15th_day_by_day_and_it/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/PeaceSim on 2024-11-15 12:24:36+00:00. *** I spend all week in eager anticipation of Saturday. When it arrives, I head to the pool, where I swim and laugh with my friends and my twin sister Anju. Afterwards, we go to the club, where the fun continues as we jump and dance while the room gets hotter and hotter.

But this Saturday, everything is different. To start, I don’t recognize anyone at the pool. Even Anju isn’t here. She and I are normally inseparable. Her absence worries me. Where is she? Is she okay?

But, even more strikingly, nobody here looks like me. Frankly, I’m used to a more diverse crowd than this. That wouldn’t bother me, except that they’re all treating me strangely.

My attempts to make new friends are met with silence and hostile glances. When I wade through the bubbles towards a small group, they demand that I stay away from them.

I back up, only to brush against a tall figure a tad less pale than the rest. He snarls in a raspy voice that my “kind” doesn’t belong here. The words sting, as does the pain I feel when he kicks me with one of his long legs.

When I regain my composure, I see a faint, rosy red mist form in the water around me. I hear screams, along with words like “she’s bleeding” and “stay away from her!”

The others congregate away from me, at the far end of the pool. Before long, I’m alone – a pariah.

I look down at my reflection. To my shock, I see that I’m changing into one of them. My once-vibrant skin turns cloudy as it fades into a bland, murky gray.

This can’t be happening to me. I yearn for someone to help. I think about Anju. She always looks out for me. I miss her.

Suddenly, everything grows quiet, and the water level lowers. The ceiling opens. A hand reaches in, grabs me, and pulls me up. Normally, it would take me to the club. But not today.

A familiar, deep voice booms from above. It asks how I got here, and it says that it’s “lucky” that I didn’t stain anything else.

I continue to lie limp in his hand as he shouts upstairs to someone named Mary. He tells her that one of her socks got mixed in with the whites. That the bleach stained it pretty badly.

In response, a lighter, higher-pitched voice calls, “Just toss it, and please be more careful next time.”

I fly through the air and land with a soft thud amidst wrappers and crumbled paper.

I cry. I haven’t done anything wrong. Yet, I feel that I am being punished just for being different – for not looking like the others. It’s unfair. It’s wrong. And I’m all alone now.

My heart lights up as a shape crawls and tumbles. I realize, to my delight, that it’s Anju. Her pink form slides down until she’s next to me.

I whisper through tears of joy. “You came for me, even though I look wrong now.”

Anju smiles as she holds me. “I’ll always be here for you, sis, no matter what you look like. A pair like us belongs together.”

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HughEhhoule on 2024-11-15 18:19:35+00:00. *** No idea how to break this gently so I guess I'll just lay it all out there and let you make your own judgements.

I'm no monster slaying wunderkind, I'm not a security guard or a gas station clerk. I'm not the most relatable person on the planet I guess is what I'm saying. In fact, a lot of folks wouldn't really classify me as a person to begin with. I would, but I'm a little biased.

Guess I should just pull out the splinter shouldn't I?

I have black hair, light brown skin, hazel eyes, weigh about 80 to 90 pounds, stand about 3 foot 6, and while we are probably shaped the same, about half of me is cloth, plastic and ceramic.

I'm a golem, if you want to be nice, or an evil doll if you want to be an asshole about it. There, I said it.

Don't get the wrong impression , I'm totally made to kill. But the person who did it…they had a whole lot more rage than talent. They took a hell of a lot of shortcuts, and let's say that I'm less than the perfect killing machine.

Optimally I'd be a new entity, created from scratch, with a superhuman intellect , a body that is damn near impossible to destroy, and a faultless devotion to the person who created me.

As it stands my entire personality ( not memories) is from some poor asshole that got kidnapped and tortured by my psychotic creator. My body is one fifth a corpse from the same guy, with the durability to match, and honestly, while I have to follow the instructions given, it's to the letter not the spirit.

But while those instructions are beyond fucked up, my unlucky self is in the middle of something worse somehow…I think.

See my mission is to wait in the attic of this house, for the next ten years until a certain family moves in (the creator had a bit more talent with foresight than construction.) . At that point I'm to terrorize the child for a couple months then off him.

No occult reason, creator is just an asshole, 3 year old annoyed her, and that was that.

But that is small potatoes compared to what is going on in this place right now.

I'm one year in to my decade long stint, from what I was told the house should have stayed empty till then. But a few weeks ago while I was counting the new spiders in the attic I heard a lot of banging and scraping coming from downstairs.

I couldn't very well go down and see what was happening so I waited until the wee hours of the night.

The majority of the flesh in my body is held in my oversized head, being that top heavy, trying to navigate the drop stairs from the attic silently was no easy task. I hate to keep bitching here, but levitation is another thing my creator could have given me if she decided to put in more than the minimum of effort.

Sure enough the house is set up for habitation. Dated pastel furniture , an old tube television and all kinds of knick knacks instantly tell me I'm walking through the place of an older person. The pile of pornographic vhs tapes tells me it's likely an older man.

There are bookshelves, a lot of westerns, but an equal amount of books on the occult, ranging from Coles bought garbage to a couple I swear I can feel tugging at whatever eldritch shit holds me together.

Or maybe it's nerves. For some reason I get to feel nervous, if I was going to create a murder doll I'd like to think I'd make sure it couldn't get spooked out. Just my opinion though.

I stand perfectly still and listen to see if whoever has taken up residence here has waken. I hear nothing so I make my way to the kitchen.

Knives. …so many knives. Kitchen knives, hunting knives, combat knives, what look to be ritual knives, just about anything with an edge and a point is on magnetic strips, butchers blocks or just angrily jammed into a counter.

As someone who has detatchible hands I can replace with knives, when there are enough blades to make me worry, something drastic is going on.

I listen for another moment before making my way to the fridge, slowly I open the door, the harsh light from within lighting up the room.

Nothing.

Not an apple, a soda, or severed human head. Just a discolored , slightly damp smelling fridge. Not the strangest thing here, but odd.

Then I hear it, an extremely soft footstep, not at the bedroom door like I'd expect (Hearing and sight wise I'm pretty immaculate. Nessecary for my…line of work?) But about half way down the stairs.

I don't have a heart to skip a beat, but my eyes begin to dart around looking for a place to hide. I leave the fridge door open, and crab walk up the plaster wall silently, wedging myself in the corner of the ceiling, hoping this person doesn't just turn on the lights. I'm am ambush predator, not a brawler.

The guy walks into the room without a sound, I can hear snoring 4 houses away, and this guy is dead silent as he calmly scans the room.

He is tall, 6 foot 3 or so, and dressed completely in a Catholic bishops garb. His face is pale and weathered and his eyes show about as much emotion as mine do. He scans the room like a shark, coasting from corner to corner, abruptly turning , but thankfully , not looking up.

I can't see his arms, but there is some strange peristaltic motion under his robes. And the longer I am around him the more I feel…dirty, not that I understand how that is possible without skin mind you.

Eventually he seems satisfied at the lack of intruders and makes his silent way back to his bedroom. When I'm certain this isn't just a ruse, I scuttle down the wall, and back to the attic , I climb to the ceiling and lower the door just enough to squeeze through.

I don't sleep, so I spend the next dozen hours running that situation through my head.

See, I don't know much about the paranormal beyond my own creation, hell, I don't know much about many things I don't need to. But I know that something isn't right here, and in a huge way.

When I hear the front door shut and a car pulling out of the driveway , I sneak back out of the attic. The place is much the same during the day, creepy, not so subtly violent, and generally having a ghost hunters meets horders vibe ( Don't know about the paranormal but I know shitty cable shows, way to prioritize , creator.) .

But what I didn't notice last night was the door to the basement.

Newly painted a deep scummy looking black, and having a myriad of locks studding one side, I walk up to it, I can barely hear something on the other side.

I don't know what kind of soundproofing this guy has going on , but it must have cost him an arm and a leg. I place my head against the door with a small clink of porcelain.

I can barely hear the sound of a person, obviously in distress, I listen as the scream, trying to make out exactly what they are being harmed by. I can't do it, but I have one trick I can play.

My head unfolds like a rose, exposing the withered remains of the man's face, skull and sensory organs that compose me. I'm hit with a stinging rush of input that stuns me for a moment. The head is protective, but also let's me tone down the sensory overload that comes from the overclocking of the eyes and ears.

Suddenly the voice is crisp and clear.

"I've told you everything I know. Just end it, for God's sake just end it." A male voice says , sobbing.

There is a wet slithering noise and a violent ripping, the man must still be alive though judging by his screams.

"Just stop talking…please, just do that at least…" the man continues as a sudden high pitched shriek makes me stumble backward exclaiming "Shit" or rather that's what I wanted to say, my mouth is full of steel capped Pointed fangs, made for combat, not eloquence. The noise I make sounds more like an agressive far than English.

Before I have the time to get fully back to my feet something throws itself against the door the locks straining, barely able to hold whatever it is back.

I scramble back to the attic , hoping that whatever that was isn't smart enough to pass on any information.

I spend the rest of that day deciding my course of action. And eventually I come to a conclusion.

Likely, I'm going to have to do some screwed up stuff. I don't know if I have a soul, but if I do my mission in life is going to guarantee it to a pretty shitty eternity regardless of who's right religion wise. But maybe I can…I don't know, build up some good karma? Something? I know I'm what goes bump in the night, but this guy… I'm starting to think he is the fucking boogeyman.

So I decide, in a very vague way to try and do something about this.

I've had a full year to get to know every nook and cranny of this house. Every angle of attack, every hiding spot, vent and hollow wall. I might not be able to tear this guy and his…partner?Pet? Apart, but I can do what I was made to do. Watch, learn, wait, and when the time is right make these bastards leak.

The thought of direct violence sends a surge of excitement and pleasure through me. Reminding me I'm not the good thing, just a force of nature pointed in a good direction.

My shoulders and hips dislocate as I slide into the vent , hands and feet rotating to let my spider like fingers and toes propell me through the air vents.

I'm silent, and I'm quick, I feel more at home in the confines of the vent, more in control, I find myself hoping the bishop hears me, mayve sticks his head up to investigate, the thought of his face shredding under my teeth , my hands plunging into his neck pushes me forward even quicker.

I slow as I get to the basement v... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gs2wcc/im_an_evil_doll_but_im_not_the_problem/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ferrisaspheck on 2024-11-15 16:44:09+00:00. *** It started with a simple question. “Mommy, can imaginary friends be real?”

I glanced up from my laptop. My seven-year-old daughter, Lily, stood in the doorway of my home office, clutching her stuffed bunny. I smiled. “Of course not, sweetheart. That’s why they’re called imaginary.”

Her lips pursed. “But what if they know things?”

I frowned. “What kind of things?”

Lily shrugged, her gaze darting away. “Just stuff. Never mind.” She shuffled out before I could press further.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. Kids have wild imaginations, right? But then… the accidents started happening.

---

The first time, it was a fire at our neighbor’s house.

The night before, Lily came to me looking pale. “Mommy, Olivia says Mrs. Carter’s house is going to burn down.”

I paused mid-sip of my coffee. “Who’s Olivia?”

“My friend,” Lily said simply, as if that explained everything.

“She’s your imaginary friend?” I asked, smiling.

Lily hesitated, then nodded. “She doesn’t like being called imaginary.”

“Right,” I said, humoring her. “Why does Olivia think Mrs. Carter’s house will burn down?”

“She just knows,” Lily said. “She knows lots of stuff.”

I reassured Lily it was just her imagination, but the next morning, sirens blared down our street. Flames consumed the Carter house, black smoke billowing into the sky. Luckily, Mrs. Carter was unharmed—she’d gone out for groceries minutes before the fire started.

When Lily heard, she didn’t seem surprised. “I told you,” she whispered.

Two weeks later, Lily mentioned Olivia again.

“Mommy, Olivia says to stay away from the bridge tomorrow.”

I froze. “Why?”

“She says it’s going to fall.”

My stomach knotted. The bridge was part of my daily commute. “Lily, that’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” she said earnestly. “Please don’t go.”

Against my better judgment, I worked from home the next day. Around noon, I got a news alert: Massive Bridge Collapse Leaves Five Dead, Dozens Injured.

I stared at my phone, a cold sweat breaking out across my skin. The bridge Lily warned me about had collapsed during the morning rush hour. If I’d ignored her, I might’ve been on it.

When I confronted her, she just shrugged. “Olivia told me.”

“Who is Olivia?” I demanded.

“She’s… my friend,” Lily said, her voice trembling. “She says bad things are going to keep happening.”

---

From then on, Olivia’s predictions became a regular occurrence. A car crash at an intersection. A storm that uprooted trees. A freak accident at the grocery store. Every time, Lily would relay Olivia’s warnings, and every time, I brushed them off—until they came true.

I tried everything to understand. Was Lily hearing things? Seeing something I couldn’t? I even took her to a therapist, who chalked it up to coincidence and a vivid imagination. But it didn’t feel like coincidence.

One night, I decided to push. “Lily, what does Olivia look like?”

“She’s pretty,” Lily said softly. “But her eyes are black, like the night.”

The hair on my arms stood up.

“Where does Olivia live?” I asked.

Lily pointed to her closet.

I laughed nervously. “In your closet?”

“She doesn’t live there,” Lily clarified. “But that’s where she comes from.”

That night, I locked Lily’s closet door.

---

A few days ago, Lily came to me crying. “Olivia says you’re in danger.”

I felt a chill. “From what?”

“She won’t say,” Lily sobbed. “But she’s scared.”

The last time Olivia predicted danger, it saved my life. So, I started taking precautions. I stayed home, avoided sharp objects, and double-checked every lock. Nothing happened.

Then, yesterday, Lily’s room went cold.

I was tucking her in when she whispered, “She’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Olivia,” Lily said, her voice shaking. “She says… it’s too late.”

The lights flickered. I spun toward the closet. The locked door creaked open, though I hadn’t touched it.

“Mommy…” Lily’s voice was barely audible.

Something stepped out of the shadows.

I don’t know how to describe it—long limbs, skin stretched too tight, and eyes like endless voids. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t anything I could explain.

“Leave her alone!” I screamed, throwing myself in front of Lily.

The thing tilted its head, as if studying me. Then, it smiled—an impossibly wide, jagged grin.

“You can’t stop what’s coming,” it whispered, its voice a rasp that chilled me to the bone.

And then, it was gone.

---

Now, Lily won’t speak. She just sits in her room, staring at the closet door. She won’t eat, won’t sleep, and flinches whenever I get too close.

The worst part? I’ve started hearing things—soft whispers at night, scratching from inside the walls.

Last night, I woke up to find Lily standing over me, her eyes unfocused.

“Olivia says it’s your turn,” she whispered.

I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m scared. Whatever Olivia is, she’s not imaginary. She’s real—and she’s not done with us.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-11-15 15:56:43+00:00. *** Can’t remember the last time I left the house. I do know I ran out of my medication a few days ago, but the apathy I was feeling just kept telling me to stay in, lock the door, and go back to bed. Not like I could afford it anyway, with no insurance to speak of and barely ten bucks to my name. Hell, the last grocery delivery I got is barely hanging on, despite my depressed appetite forcing me to ration it.

I had about twelve different voicemails from Mom, asking why I wasn’t responding, begging to know that I was still alive, but I just… couldn’t. It wasn’t worth it because she wouldn’t believe me anyway. Hell, I’m surprised she hasn’t flown over here yet to drag me out. I can hear her now, “You know you’re better than this, Daisy. Get up.” Yeah, great motivation, there.

It was the voice in my head, telling me that I was worthless, that it would be better for me, for everyone, if I just took myself out of the pool. Not like I contributed much, just a struggling writer who posts horror stories on the internet, not like it was enough to keep the lights on. Then again, I don’t know if anyone would notice if I stopped paying rent in this shithole high rise, other than the slum lord that already bled me dry like a damned vampire. He didn’t even come around anymore, and knew that eviction wasn’t worth the trouble. Cops didn’t give a damn about things out here, and this guy was already on their shit list. Must not have paid his dues to the police union lately.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!

Loud, discordant tones rang from my phone, sitting on the charger beside my bed. I don’t even know why I bothered to keep it charged other than doomscrolling anyway, not like anything was looking up in the world recently. Figured it was just another silver alert, some old dementia patient taking the keys when they shouldn’t. My grandpa made it all the way to Mexico like that one time. Unlike his decaying brain though, mine found the idea of being outside fucking terrifying. Just the slightest hint of stepping out of my apartment was dread-inducing, with an insane amount of things that could go wrong at every moment. Hell, just going to the grocery store can get you shot these days, why risk it?

Not the point, Daisy. Check your damn phone. The sleep in my eyes wasn’t leaving, taking every chance when I tried blinking it away, desperate to put me back under its dreamy spell. My hand darted out, limbs heavy, still not awake, and pulled my phone to my face. It wasn’t even dark out, despite the blackout curtains making it look like the dead of night. No, the phone read 2:37 PM, with the alert notification in full right below.

EMERGENCY NATIONWIDE ALERT: ALL PERSONS

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, LOOK AT THE SKY. PLEASE CLOSE ALL WINDOWS, DOORS, AND ANY OTHER WAY TO VIEW THE OUTSIDE. PLEASE SHELTER IN PLACE UNTIL THE ALERT HAS BEEN LIFTED. IF YOU ARE NOT IN AN AREA TO SHELTER IN PLACE, PLEASE CAREFULLY MOVE TO THE NEAREST BUILDING WITH ADEQUATE SHELTER.

REPEAT, DO NOT LOOK AT THE SKY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. IF YOU OR SOMEONE NEAR YOU HAS MADE THIS MISTAKE, IMMEDIATELY ADMINISTER THE FOLLOWING EMERGENCY PROCEDURES:

RESTRAIN THE EXPOSED. RIGID, STRONGER BONDS ARE RECOMMENDED. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REASON WITH THE SUBJECT. THEY WILL TELL YOU THEY ARE UNAFFECTED. TERMINATE THE SUBJECT THROUGH DISMEMBERMENT OR IMMOLATION. USE BOTH TO BE SAFE. REMAIN HIDDEN UNTIL THIS ALERT IS LIFTED.

”The hell’s’goin’on.” I mumbled, still in my half-asleep state. I’m barely through the message when a call starts coming through from Mom. God… I don’t want to speak to her but with something like that coming through… I want to think it was a prank, some joker hacking the system for some kicks like Max Headroom back in the day. I don’t know though, so I better at least set Mom at ease. Guess it’s the best time to let her know I’m alive. Deep breath, Daisy, answer the phone.

I hit the green button, with Mom’s voice coming in almost immediately, frantic, screaming. I can barely make out what she’s saying.

”Daisy? Oh god, Daisy are you okay? Are you safe? Don’t do it! Don’t look out, please!” She was tripping over words and sobs started coming between. “You father… oh, god your father…”

”Mom, what the hell is happening?” The sleep is shaking out, with my fear spiking instead. She never sounded like this. Mom is always the tough no nonsense type, more likely to curse at a problem and beat it into the ground instead of walking away. I barely ever heard the woman cry, much less utter the word ‘god’ without it being in Sunday School reverence. “Where’s dad? What did he do?”

”He was outside doing yard work… you know how your dad is. Next thing I know he’s bashing at the door, trying to get in. He’s… he’s changing. I swear his eyes are gone. He’s practically foaming at the mouth but it’s like all his teeth are just… growing or something. They keep getting longer in his mouth, sharper… I don’t know what to do, Daisy. What do I do? He’s trying to say something but I can’t understand the words.” The words are coming out more forced now, sobs more pronounced and breaths cut short in fear. Whatever apathy I had about talking to her before was gone, now full of fear that this may be the last time I speak to her.

”Mom, you need to hide. Go in the bathroom, there’s no windows or anything. Grab a phone charger, a knife, whatever you can. Don’t. Look. Out. Do you understand?” Jesus, is that me talking? I haven’t had this kind of command in years, not since I burnt out around my mid-20s. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. “Mom, I need you to confirm. Do you understand me?”

”Y-yes…” She stuttered. “Daisy… Winston was out there with him. He’s gone.”

Shit. Their dog. Stereotypical bulldog name aside, he was a good boy, probably got spooked about what happened with dad…no. Can’t talk to her about that right now. Got to keep the confidence going or she’ll break down completely. “We’ll find him later. He probably ran off.”

”No, no… he’s gone. Your father has him. He’s… he’s making something with the body. Like a statue or something.” She was muttering now.

”Mom are you moving? Are you going to hide?” I asked again, pressuring her to keep going. “I need you to hide in the bathroom. The one connected to your room, okay? Lock every door on the way, and keep yourself safe. Please, mom.”

Glass shatters as she screams, a garbled sound coming from nearby. There’s a brief thud as Mom drops the phone, making it hit the hard wooden floors of their house. I can hear Dad’s raspy voice, speaking with something unintelligible through a warped mouth.

“HE HAS ME! DAISY! DAISY PLEASE! TALK TO HIM! HELP!” Her sobs were punctuated by scrapes along the floor with periodic thumps, shattered glass tinkling and crunching on the ground. “NO! NO JEREMY PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO GO OUT!”

”Come and seeeeeeee,” A hiss was barely audible over her screams, Dad’s voice. I could recognize it anywhere, even through the strange noises he was making. “Worship with usssss”

“NO! NO PLEASE! STOP! NO, DON’T MAKE ME LOOK!!!” Mom’s screaming pleas are cut short, complete silence on the other line now before she was suddenly begins to whisper, “Praise be…”

”MOM! Mom please, are you okay?” I was screaming into the phone now, holding it to my face on speakerphone to try and get any attention possible. Instead I only got silence, punctuated by the occasional scream in the distance. Nobody answered my cries.

I finally hung up, knowing that nothing would come from staying on the line. My only thought was that at least I have peace of mind knowing my parents are already gone. It’s not some mystery that I’ll never know the answer to, so at least there’s that, I guess. Now I know it’s not a prank either, something really fucked up is going on.

Okay, be logical, Daisy. The alert said don’t look at the sky. Dad was outside when it happened so that confirms something there. Restraining them makes sense now but… destroying them? Good god, that’s… that’s bad if the government is recommending it. Maybe there’s something on the news…

As soon as the thought crossed my mind I found the remote, flipping it to the local news on my hijacked cable. The anchorman was sitting there, worry on his face as voices from behind the camera clamored in nervous agony. I get it, I got to hear my parents die. How many of these people have loved ones they have no idea about? How many were there out of some sense of duty, trying to keep anyone who watched safe?

“We have yet to know if anything can cure the… result, of what’s happening. What we have heard from the CDC and WHO is that this is not an isolated event. This is happening worldwide, with the same symptoms presenting regardless of nationality, race, sex… nothing is discriminatory about this. If you look at the sky, you are dead, effective immediately. If someone you know looks at the sky, immediately seek safety and isolate them, restrain them if possible. This has a one hundred percent infection rate, and will not pick and choose who receives its horror. We hope to have a representative from the CDC on soon to speak.” He was stammering, barely keeping it together. The phone ringing nearly made him jump from his chair, the sweat on his brow drenching his perfectly groomed hair. “Yes, that seems to be them now. Professor Sigurd?”

”Yes, yes this is Professor Sigurd. Please, if you’re listening, we beg you to not go outside. Don’t look out of your windows, don’t do anything that c... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1grzi24/emergency_alert_do_not_look_at_the_sky/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/adorabletapeworm on 2024-11-15 13:50:43+00:00. *** Previous case

Our first atypical call after Samhain was, regrettably, a human infestation. At the risk of sounding unprofessional, it was a nasty one. Not quite as high up on my personal list of Most Disgusting Cases as the worms or the centipede curse, but it's definitely up there.

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

Before I get into that though, I want to make it known that there will be discourse of starvation as well as vomiting going forward. This case was not pretty, to put it mildly. I know that those can be difficult topics for some individuals, so I thought it best to give a warning ahead of time.

The client called us up after her doctor wasn't able to find anything useful. She'd dropped twenty pounds in two weeks, which is definitely cause for alarm.

One thing that can cause such symptoms is called Hunger Grass. It's a patch of grass that becomes cursed for a variety of reasons.

Some sources state that the Neighbors plant it, hoping an unsuspecting human will wander into it. Others say that it grows over the graves of those who were subjected to improper burials, or in areas afflicted with food shortages. It's because of these last two reasons that Hunger Grass was said to be rampant during the Irish Potato Famine.

No matter the cause, the end result is the same: anyone that comes into contact with it is doomed to be afflicted with hunger pains for the rest of their lives, no matter how much the victim eats. There is no known cure. The victims are cursed with eternal starvation until their bodies eventually succumb to atrophy.

One of the things that makes it so dangerous is that, to the uninformed, Hunger Grass looks just like any other thicket. There are no warning signs for it, which makes it far too easy to get the curse by accident. It is said that carrying a bread crust in one's pocket can protect you from the curse’s effects, but that doesn’t really help much if you don’t know that there is Hunger Grass nearby.

“I'm just… So hungry.” She complained weakly. “No matter how much I eat, it doesn't help.”

“When did this start?” I asked, already making a plan in the back of my head to question Deirdre on if she knew of any Hunger Grass in the area.

Speaking of, it was her first day. She and Victor had a lot of ground to cover, so if I was correct about the Grass, I’d have to wait until they returned.

However, the client said something that made me rethink my initial diagnosis. The last time she could remember being well was when she'd been in her rowboat, enjoying a serene day on the water.

That prompted me to question, “By chance, you didn't happen to fall asleep while on the water, did you?”

“Uh, yeah, I dozed off for a bit. Why?”

Oh no... Not Hunger Grass after all.

I politely requested the client to hold on for a second, then got Reyna's attention.

“You ever deal with a Joint Eater before?” I asked.

Her face fell, eyes widening as she silently reached for the phone. That was a ‘yes’ if I ever saw one.

She then told the client, “Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to meet us by the river. Are you able to get there on your own, or do you feel too sick?”

The client admitted that she was extremely weak, so we offered to pick her up before heading to the river. For one, starvation is no joke, especially if its root cause is parasitism; the last thing we wanted was for our poor client’s body to give out. That, and with what Reyna and I had to do to treat the infestation, she was going to need all the strength she could muster.

Before collecting the client, we stopped to get some supplies.

Joint Eaters get their name because of their parasitic nature as larvae. In order to complete their life cycle and reproduce, they require a host. Sometimes it’s animals, other times it’s humans. They aren’t picky.

They tend to take the form of newts in order to be small enough to enter a host’s mouth. They like to go after those that fall asleep by the freshwater they call home, so our client was, unfortunately, their ideal target. Once they make the host swallow them, they begin to consume every morsel that their host tries to eat, hence why they’re called Joint Eaters.

While they’re living it up inside the host’s GI tract, that’s when they’ll reach maturity. The longer the Joint Eater infestation goes on (provided the host survives long enough), the higher the likelihood of it producing young, which also feast off of the poor host in a similar manner.

In other words, we had to be quick. If the client was having trouble moving around, that wasn’t a good sign.

One of the things we had to get was cooked meat, so we settled for one of those unreasonably delicious grocery store rotisserie chickens. The other was a big container of salt. The reason for these two items will become clear in a moment.

The next step was to grab the client. The poor woman’s cheeks were hollow, her skin sallow and pale. She leaned heavily on me as I half led, half carried her to the company truck. She felt cold, her elbows bony in my hands.

The moment the client smelled the chicken, she stared hungrily at it. I felt terrible doing it, but in order for what Reyna was about to try to work, we had to withhold the food from her.

“Sorry.” I muttered, meaning it and wincing. “It’s part of the treatment plan.”

Our emaciated client just nodded, leaning her head against the window, her eyes quickly fluttering shut. Eventually, wheezy little snores began to escape her lips.

Reyna, who was the one driving, exchanged a brief glance with me that told me she was feeling just as remorseful as I was. But it had to be this way. Once we got the Joint Eater out of her, the client could have as many rotisserie chickens as she wanted.

The drive to the river seemed to take forever. With how fatigued our client was, she kept dozing off and on into fitful sleep throughout the journey. Once we parked, Reyna gently tapped on her to wake her up.

The client needed both of us to support her on our way to the riverbank, each of her thin arms around both of our shoulders. She’d said she lost twenty pounds, but with how frail she was, that leads me to believe that she must’ve been underestimating that number.

Reyna and I gently guided her to sit on the ground. Once we had her situated, Reyna began to delicately explain how we were going to get the Joint Eater out of her.

“We can either make it leave your body willingly, or we’ll have to make it too inhospitable for it to survive.” She informed the sick woman. “Neither way will be pleasant. We’ll try the first thing I mentioned first, since that’s the lesser of the two evils.”

The client let out a shaky breath, “Whatever you have to do, just… do it.”

“I’m going to have to hold you down.” I told her gently. “Is that alright?”

She nodded, groaning softly as she leaned to lay down on her back in the grass. Trying to be as gentle as possible, I kneeled over her, placing my hands on both of her shoulders. The client’s cheeks were wet, lip trembling.

“We’re going to get this thing out of you.” I promised her, trying to comfort her. “You’re going to have your life back in a few minutes. We just need you to hang in there, alright?”

The client sniffed, nodding again. She took a deep, trembling breath, then whispered, “I’m ready.”

Reyna and I exchanged glances, silently confirming with one another that it was time to get started.

I kept the client pinned on the ground, doing my best not to hurt her as Reyna removed the chicken from the plastic container that it came in. She held the mouth-watering entree a few feet above the client’s head. The client’s chapped lips parted, her eyes glued to the meat above her head.

I know how cruel this all sounds. Holding food above a starving woman’s head, just out of reach. In truth, I felt like the scum of the earth doing it. By the way Reyna’s brows were screwed together, her conscience was screaming at her, too.

Suddenly, the client’s body jerked beneath me. Her eyes went large, her mouth shutting, lips tightening as if she were fighting the urge to vomit. It was working. Thank God.

The client shuddered, whimpering. I pressed her shoulders into the ground, keeping her still. She began to struggle, trying in vain to knock me off of her, spittle gathering in the corner of her mouth.

A lump became visible in her throat, slowly creeping up towards the client's mouth. It took everything I had to keep from gagging at the sight.

“Let it out.” Reyna told her.

The client's jaw dropped as if to scream. From behind her tongue, two slimy hands emerged, the dark orange fingers webbed. One of the hands reached out to grasp the client's chin, pulling itself towards the chicken while the other hand swatted at the meat blindly. Tears began to stream freely from the client's eyes.

Reyna backed away, keeping the chicken out of the Joint Eater’s reach. It let out a grumble as it continued to pull itself from between the client's jaws. She whimpered again as its beady black eyes became visible next, its wide mouth and flat nose reminding me of a frog.

As Reyna kept creeping closer to the river, more and more of the Joint Eater became visible, its slick torso halfway out of the client's gaping mouth, her saliva dripping off of the parasite in thick strings.

Eventually, it... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1grwsh2/orion_pest_control_the_joint_eater/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/gore-and-grit on 2024-11-15 11:21:36+00:00. *** Growing up, I used to hate seeing them everywhere. In my town, you couldn’t walk five steps without running into them. They were on every wall, like some kind of creepy wallpaper. The worst part was the classroom. I used to just think it was annoying, which it was. I hated how crowded the walls were—not just with normal stuff like vocabulary words or pictures of presidents. Sure, those were there too, but they were shoved in between the real stuff. The stuff that made my skin crawl.

You know, the Town Rules.

There’s the usual stuff you'd find in any school—the Golden Rule poster about "Treating others the way you want to be treated," and that one with "THINK" in bold letters, where each letter stands for something like "Thoughtful" and "Helpful." But all of that just fades into the background next to the rules. The ones that actually matter. The ones everyone knows. The ones you don’t question.

They're everywhere, you can't miss them, no matter where you sit. And they can't miss you. Above the chalkboard, behind the teacher’s desk, even taped to the bathroom doors. But they're not just there. Above the water fountains, they hang on the walls next to the weekly newsletter, and they're printed on the side of the gymnasium where we have assemblies.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been around, the rules. I think it’s forever. I don’t really remember learning them. It’s like…they’ve always been there, like the sun rising or the lunch bell ringing. Nobody remembers a time before them. I mean, my great-great-great-granddad knew them, and I guess his great-great-great-granddad did too, so who knows.

It’s hard to imagine a world where kids don’t know the rules before they can even write their own names. Miss Talia said kids used to start with the alphabet or numbers, but here, we learn the rules first. She told us that way back on the first day of kindergarten, when we could barely tie our shoes, but somehow, we all knew Rule Seven: Don’t go out during the fog. We all said it together, perfectly. That’s because even before we could read, we were taught to recognize the shapes of the words.

I know the rules so well, I could say them backwards. Most of us could. We’ve been drilled on them since we were little—so little that “mama,” “dada,” and “don’t look” were some of our first words. I’m sure I could even rattle them off in my sleep, and probably do. Sometimes I even catch myself whispering them under my breath when I'm nervous like they're a lullaby or a prayer. But they’re not. Not really.

Every day when we walk into the classroom, they're the first thing we see. And every day we recite them right alongside the pledge. Our pledge isn't like the one I hear in movies. Ours is shorter, that's why I like it more. We all stand, push our chairs back with a screech that echos off the walls, and place our right hand over our hearts. And instead of talking about liberty or justice or any of that, we say, Stray from the path, and you'll be lost. Stay with the pack no matter the cost. Follow the rules, and you'll be fed. Stray from the pack, and you'll be dead.

That's it, real simple. And then, Rule One: Don’t look outside the windows when they call at night. No matter who knocks or how much they beg.

I don’t know who “they” are exactly, but my sister says they’re really good at pretending to be people. People you miss. People you shouldn’t miss.

Miss Haverford, our current teacher, watches us while we recite. Her eyes sweep the room like she’s looking for someone who’s not taking it seriously enough. Sometimes, if she catches you zoning out or mumbling, she makes you stay after school and write out all the rules ten times by hand. My sister had to do it once. She said her hand was cramped for days.

I always say to the kids who are even younger than me that the rules are like cheat codes in a game. You have to remember them, or else you lose. And in this game, when you lose, you don’t get a respawn.

We don’t talk about the rules much outside of those daily recitations. It’s like some kind of unspoken agreement—learn them, follow them, but don’t dwell on them. No one wants to be the kid who asks too many questions. That’s how you end up noticed.

But every once in a while, someone breaks a rule, and then it’s all anyone can talk about.

Like with Nathan Inco. He’s the boy who let his dead brother in—or almost did.

Nathan’s in my sister’s grade, a quiet kid who didn’t stand out much until the night he broke Rule One. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve heard the story enough times that it feels like I was. People said he thought he heard his brother knocking at the window, begging to be let in. His brother had been dead for a month at that point, killed in a car accident that everyone agreed was impossible. The road he crashed on was dead straight. No curves. No reason for the car to flip the way it did, but it had. Crushed like a tin can. Nathan never said why he opened the window. Maybe he thought his brother had come back, just for him. Maybe he just wanted to believe. I like my sister, whenever she isn’t being such a gross girl. I think I’d probably be pretty sad if that happened to her. So…I guess I kinda get it. Maybe Nathan did too.

His dad got to him in time to pull him away, but Nathan’s arm...well, they couldn’t save that. It’s all anyone could talk about for weeks. That and how Natalie and Jacob B. were going to kiss during recess, but mostly Nathan. Everyone called him stupid. I guess I can see why, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Knowing the rules is different from living them.

After that, he didn’t come to school for a while. When he finally did, he was missing half of his left arm. The rumors flew around the cafeteria like flies on old milk cartons. Some kids said they saw his bandages bleeding through during recess. Others swear his arm still twitched sometimes, like it was trying to grow back, but all wrong.

I’ve seen him in the hall sometimes, usually in the morning when my class is walking in a single-file line. He’s by himself a lot of the time, but I don’t know if that’s much different than before. Maybe that’s part of the reason he opened the window. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe his brother was his only friend. I used to see it twitch sometimes, Nathan’s arm. All jerky and erratic, like a robot running out of batteries. I’m always waiting for it to just stop, for good. But it hasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t know it’s gone.

The big kids, like my sister and her friends, just whispered about how dumb Nathan was for listening in the first place.

“Everyone knows Rule Five,” they’d say. “The dead don’t stay dead.”

So, yeah. Everyone called him stupid for falling for it, but honestly? I don’t think any of us really know what we'd do. It’s easy to talk big when it’s not your brother's voice outside, right?

I say as much to my friends one day at lunch, picking at my soggy PB&J.

“Yeah, but I still wouldn’t fall for it,” Jacob L., my best friend, says. He’s sitting across from me, mashing peas into his mashed potatoes and I just know he’s gonna try and get one of us to eat it. “I’m too smart for that.”

“Okay, but what if it was someone you really cared about?” I ask. “Like your mom? Or Layla?”

Jacob pulls a face like he smells something bad. His nose wrinkles.

“Layla?” he says it like I just told him to eat a worm. Layla’s his older sister, the one who’s always picking on him. She’s friends with my sister, but the sort of friends who say mean stuff about each other when the other isn’t around. “No way. I wouldn’t look for her, especially not her. Her donkey teeth would probably be sticking out so far, they’d hit the glass.” He mimics her bucktoothed smile. I laugh, and I don’t point out that those ‘donkey teeth’ of hers seem to run in the family. “I’d probably pass out from looking at her, like those fainting goats.”

“That’s so gross, Jake,” says Alice from beside me, wrinkling her nose as he pours his strawberry milk into his chunky mush, stirring until it looks like a light pink sludge.

“Yeah, Jake,” I agree around a mouthful of cold peanut butter, chunky grape jelly, and grainy wheat bread. “Strawberry milk is so gross.” We call him Jake because it’s way better than saying Jacob L. all the time.

Alice scoffs. “I’m not talking about the milk, I’m talking about him playing with his food like that. And stop talking with your mouth open, Robbie.” She scolds, moving her lunchbox away from us. Her mom packs her lunch so she has the good stuff. A ham and cheese sandwich on regular bread, chips, apple slices, a fruit roll-up, and a Capri-Sun. Alice is all about manners. She always reminds us to stop playing with our food and she thinks it’s stupid when I burp the entire alphabet instead of being super impressed like she should be and all that’s kinda annoying, but she’s like the fastest runner in our grade so she never gets tagged during recess. Plus, she’s always willing to trade her chips for the chocolate pudding I bring for snack time, which makes her cool enough to sit with.

Jake stops stirring his weird mash-milk mix.

“Stop doing that, Jake. Stop making fart noises with your armpit, Jake.” He makes his voice high-pitched like a girl. I’m glad he’s not a girl because he’d probably be a pretty ugly one. I don’t laugh out loud because I don’t want her to think I’m on his side, we haven’t traded any of our food yet, but I nudge his kne... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gru6a1/in_this_town_the_punishments_are_worse_than_the/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ezekiel_h_graves on 2024-11-15 10:01:16+00:00. *** I live alone with my dog, Max. He’s my world—always has been. He’s been my constant through everything: bad breakups, endless nights of anxiety, the crushing loneliness of a city where people don’t make eye contact. He’s the reason I get out of bed most days. I installed a dog cam for him a few months back, mostly to check in while I’m out. He doesn’t love being alone, and the camera’s mic lets me talk to him if he gets anxious.

Tonight, I had to leave for a couple of hours, nothing unusual. I always leave the TV on for Max—usually some nature channel because it calms him. But just before I left, the news caught my attention.

The anchor’s voice was serious. She was talking about disappearances—single men and their dogs, all gone without a trace. They think it’s a copycat killer mimicking the "Burned Man," some psychopath from the 70s. He used to lure men into his traps before killing them and burning their bodies. Vigilantes eventually got him, burned him alive in some twisted form of justice. Supposedly, he laughed as he burned.

I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but hearing the story unsettled me. I glanced at Max lying on the couch, wagging his tail lazily, oblivious. I switched the channel to something light—a cheerful cooking show—and knelt to scratch behind his ears.

“You’ll be fine, buddy. Daddy will be home soon,” I said.

I wish I hadn’t said that.

I wasn’t even halfway through the night before I checked the dog cam. I always check. It’s a bad habit—I just hate leaving Max alone too long. At first, everything seemed normal. He was lying on the couch, his tail twitching as he watched the TV.

Then he started pacing.

He kept looking toward the corner of the room, where the shadows always seemed a little too dark. His ears were flat, his tail tucked low. I’ve never seen him act like that before. He barked—a deep, frantic bark I didn’t recognize.

I tapped the mic. “Max? It’s okay, buddy. What’s wrong?”

He froze, his eyes darting toward the camera, then back to the corner. And then, out of nowhere, the barking stopped. He whimpered and backed into the farthest corner of the room.

I stared at the screen, feeling my stomach twist. Something moved in the shadows. It was faint at first—just a flicker—but then it stepped into the light.

It wasn’t human—or if it was, it shouldn’t be alive. It was tall and impossibly thin, its pale, cracked skin glowing faintly, like embers buried beneath ash. Its face was stretched, hollow-eyed, with a smile that didn’t belong on any living thing. It tilted its head as if studying Max. He pressed himself against the wall, trembling.

Then the thing turned to the camera.

It stepped closer, filling the frame. Its eyes—if you can call them that—were black pits, staring straight at me through the screen. Its mouth stretched into an even wider grin, jagged teeth visible now. And then it spoke.

Through the camera mic.

“Come home soon, Daddy. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I don’t even remember the drive home. I think I was running on autopilot, pure adrenaline. By the time I unlocked the front door, I was already calling for Max.

The house was eerily quiet. The TV was still on, but the sound seemed muffled, distant. Max was lying under the coffee table, shaking. His ears were pinned back, his eyes fixed on the hallway. I crouched down and tried to coax him out, but he wouldn’t budge.

“Max, come on, it’s okay,” I whispered, but even my voice sounded hollow.

Then I smelled it.

Smoke.

It was faint at first, like the lingering scent of a burned-out candle. But it got stronger as I stood up and followed Max’s gaze toward the hallway. My heart was pounding as I grabbed a flashlight and walked toward the laundry room.

The smell hit me hard as I stepped inside. The air was thick, suffocating, and then I saw the wall.

BOO.

The word was smeared across the wall in uneven letters, written in something black and gritty, like ash. My hand shook as I shined the flashlight closer. The texture was rough, almost sticky, and the smell of burning intensified.

I heard a dragging sound behind me. My breath caught as I turned the flashlight toward the noise, but nothing was there. The hallway was empty.

Edit: 1:37 a.m.

I’ve locked myself in my bedroom with Max. He’s lying on the bed, but he won’t stop staring at the door. I keep hearing footsteps in the hallway. They’re slow, deliberate. Every now and then, the handle rattles, like someone’s trying to turn it.

I called the police, but they said it would take time for someone to get here. I don’t think I have time.

Edit: 2:13 a.m.

The smoke is getting worse. It’s not in the room yet, but I can smell it, like something burning just outside the door.

Max is gone. I don’t know how—he was right here. The door didn’t open. The window’s locked. He’s just… gone.

The footsteps are back, heavier now.

Edit: 2:27 a.m.

I’m watching the dog cam footage. It doesn’t make sense. The figure is there again, standing in the living room, but it’s looking straight at the camera. At me.

It smiled.

Then it said, “You’re too late, Daddy.”

The screen went black.

Edit: 2:42 a.m.

The footsteps are outside my door. The handle just turned.

I think this is it.

If anyone finds this, please…

He’s still out there.

And he’s waiting for you—if you’re a single man living alone with your dog.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/gothboyhottopic on 2024-11-15 11:09:22+00:00. *** For context, I'm a 23 year old history student at college in a small town in the United States. I love learning about history, specifically wars. My grandfather passed away recently after a long battle with Stage IV leukemia. He and I were very close. He would tell me stories about his combat experiences in Vietnam. A few days later, I received a package from his estate. "Dear Mr. Thompson. Enclosed are a few items your grandfather wanted you to have." I opened the package to reveal a leather bound journal and a WW1 era dog tag. I opened the letter accompanying the items. "Jack. This is something I never told you for your own good. Grandpa." I took a deep breath and opened the journal.

Journal of Private James Holden, 2nd Battalion, Western Front

October 5, 1917 They say the war will end soon. I’ve heard that lie before, but I write it here for the sake of hope. The trench is the same as always mud up to our knees, rats growing fat on the dead, and the constant stench of decay.

Tonight, the fog rolled in thicker than I’ve ever seen. Corporal Davies swears he saw something moving out in no man’s land. We laughed it off, but he wouldn’t let it go. I don’t blame him. The silence feels… wrong. Even the guns seem hesitant.

October 16, 1917 Something happened. I can hardly hold the pen, my hands are shaking so badly.

Willoughby—young lad, barely out of training—vanished during the night. He was on watch with me when he suddenly dropped his rifle and climbed out of the trench. He said nothing, just disappeared into the fog. We called after him, but he didn’t respond.

Hours later, he came back. Only, it wasn’t him. Not really. His uniform was torn, and his skin was grey as ash. When he smiled, it wasn’t a man’s smile—it was too wide, too unnatural.

We shot him. God help us, we had no choice. But even after the bullets, he kept moving. It took a bayonet through the chest to stop him.

We buried him just before dawn. No prayers, no ceremony. None of us could look at the grave for long.

October 19, 1917 The whispers started last night. I thought it was the wind at first, but no… it’s voices.

Davies claims they’re speaking to him, calling his name. He says he can hear his mother’s voice, telling him to come home. I told him it’s the war playing tricks, but I’m not so sure. I heard something too—my sister, Mary, who died years ago.

The men are on edge. Some won’t speak. Others won’t sleep. I fear what tonight will bring.

October 24, 1917 We’re cursed. There’s no other word for it.

Davies tried to leave. We found him at the edge of the trench, staring into the fog. He fought us when we pulled him back, screaming about "the light" and "the voices." It took three of us to restrain him.

By morning, he was dead. His body was cold as ice, his skin pale as death itself. We buried him next to Willoughby.

The whispers grow louder. I swear I saw shapes moving in the mist, but every time I looked, they vanished.

October 29, 1917 Another one gone. Pritchard this time. He walked into the fog like Willoughby did. When we found his body, it was covered in frost.

The whispers are constant now. They call my name. They laugh.

I dreamt of my family last night. They were standing in no man’s land, their faces twisted into horrible smiles. I woke up screaming.

The fog doesn’t lift anymore. Day and night, it surrounds us. I’ve stopped counting how many men we’ve lost.

October 30, 1917 No one is left. Only me.

The trench is silent, save for the whispers. They’re louder than ever, and now they’re inside my head. I see the faces of the men who died, their hollow eyes watching me from the mist.

I don’t know how long I can hold out. My hands are numb, my breath fogs in the air. The cold seeps into my bones.

They’re calling me.

I think I’ll go.

I closed the journal, my eyes dilated and breathing rapid as my heart nearly burst from my chest. It shouldn't have been possible. It didn't make any sense! I made my way to the window to look outside. There was a heavy fog rolling in, usual for this time of year. My eyes looked around, then widened when I saw something that made my blood run cold. It was Grandpa. Standing there in his combat uniform with a too wide smile on his face. His skin was grey and he was mouthing something. I could just barely make it out through the fog.

"Join me."

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Equivalent_Ad_3482 on 2024-11-15 02:22:54+00:00. *** Before anyone feels the need to state the obvious, I know I’m not a good person.

I’m a cheater- always have been. I could lie. I could tell you about how my dad wasn’t around or some Freudian bullshit about how every girl I ever dated could never match up to my mother, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I didn’t have a hard life and my relationship with my mother is healthy.

I’m just an asshole. But I didn’t deserve this.

“Brian, you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, but I need just a little more time,” Blythe whispered, her long blond hair falling over her reddening, gorgeous face.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s only been nine months,” I scoffed, “You’re just—” I bit my lip. I’ve never really handled rejection well. It isn’t that my ego is fragile or anything, pride is just hard. “You’re worth the wait. I have work in the morning.” I brushed her hair out of her face and chastely kissed her soft lips.

I should have just gone home and went to bed, rubbed one out for good measure, but a scorned man goes where his dick and the night will carry him.

On the drive home, I pressed my thumb against my cellphone screen like a worry stone and thought of Shelly. She was a six and a half out of ten on a good day, but she never said no.

The phone rang twice on my end before she picked up. “How soon do you want me over?” Shelly purred. I liked that. No hello, no small talk, and best of all no, ‘I need more time’.

“How about you host tonight? I was in the area. I’m about 5 minutes out.” The thought of Shelly in my bed like old times was a nice one, but I didn’t want to risk anyone seeing her car there. I knew Blythe had no reason to be suspicious, no reason to follow me, but I was careful. I’d always been careful.

Shelly agreed. She always did. I was there right on time. I hesitated just for a second in her driveway. I almost pulled back out, but then I started replaying the shock in Blythe’s eyes when I asked. The way she softened her voice when she told me she wanted to take a little more time. Like she thought my feelings needed sparing. That I’d fall apart and cry or something. Her infantilizing tone was too much.

Pride has a way of really fucking things up and so do I. Less than a half hour later, I wasn’t thinking about that anymore; I was busy getting tangled in the sheets with Shelly.

In the heat of the moment, I felt something sting my back. I tried to swipe it off, not wanting to be distracted from her, but it was starting to burn. As I twisted to get a better smack at my back, I saw Blythe at the window, blond hair floating in the wind and her face pressed hard against the glass.

I scrambled to turn around and claw my way through the tangled sheets. In all my glorious efforts, I only succeeded in falling off of the bed and smacking my cheekbone on the wooden frame on my way down. Shelly squeaked at the sharp smack. Something between a stutter, beatboxing, and a juvenile attempt at profanity fell out of my mouth. I finally untangled myself enough to turn towards the now vacant window. Blythe was gone.

I ran out the front door, stark naked to an empty street. Not even taillights winked in the distance.

“Get back inside! Have you lost your mind? Someone’s going to call the cops!” Shelly’s screams rattled in between my ears. I’m sure they would if she kept it up. I glanced one more time down the empty road and turned back inside.

I didn’t mention Blythe when I tried to explain my sudden interest in streaking, but I did tell her I thought there was someone outside the window. At this point, I was starting to doubt that Blythe had been there at all. Hell, that anyone had been there at all. Maybe it was guilt. Either way, the night was ruined. I didn’t kiss her when I left. I didn’t even look back.

The gravel crunched under my Corolla as it crawled down my street. My heart thumped in time with the rolling tires imagining Blythe waiting in the driveway. Maybe a brick through my window. Something. But there was no sign of Blythe, her car, nor any vandalism. Lost in thought, I smashed the brake with the nose of my car inches from the garage door. The spot on my back started to tingle.

I jingled my keys as I half-skipped to the entryway. I shook my head and grinned. I’d call Blythe in the morning to be sure, but I was confident at this point that I had made a mistake at Shelly’s. I kicked myself internally. But there’d be another night. There always was.

After a fast shower, I checked my back. Except for a small red dot, there was nothing to blame for the burning. Could it have been an asp? Do spider bites burn? A bee sting? My mind wandered, but I didn’t have any solid answer.

Maybe I should be ashamed to admit it, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep. Guilt couldn’t override my exhaustion, and I wasn’t all that sure I felt guilty anyway.

My dreams told another story though. My pupils dilated with such ferocity adjusting to the dim lighting of Blythe’s living room I could feel the stretch in my eyes. Although my chest heaved with effort, I could only whisper her name. She responded with laughter- the tinkle of an amused child. My heart battered in my chest. The pain from the bug bite on my back dialed up to 11; sharp appendages caressed the edges from the inside. I choked on the scream trying to throw itself from my lips. I could feel something soft pushing from my stomach, blooming in my esophagus. I gave a forceful cough and felt a thick, squishy lump fly up from my throat and flop onto my tongue. Gagging, I pulled a clump of Shelly’s hair from my mouth. Long strands straggled up my throat as I removed the mass. All the while Blythe laughed.

I woke up a mess- bloodshot eyes and my stomach in knots. I fumbled my phone and called Blythe. The certainty I’d had from last night was fading. The damn nightmare was playing tricks with my head. Or my guilty conscience. Either way, I needed to know. The phone rang. Once, twice, three times – and she finally picked up. She sounded her usual chipper self. My voice cracked as I lied. I told her I’d called out from work, that I cared about her too much to leave things the way we had last night. And she ate it. She ate it well. The cramp in my stomach released. We made dinner plans and hung up.

I tried to lay back down, eager to get some restful sleep, but my body wouldn’t comply. The relief I felt wasn’t enough to appease the burning on my back.

I stumbled to the bathroom. Upon further investigation, what was once a small dot had most definitely spread. The center appeared to have crusted over a bit. No matter how I twisted or contorted, it rested solidly between my shoulder blades just out of reach. The crusted head on the mound taunted and begged for the sensual scratch of my fingernails. But there was a bigger problem. My cheek was swollen where I’d smacked it on Shelly’s bed frame the night before, a light purple shadow licking the apple. Another lie I’d need to invent to cover my tracks. It was never the cheating that bothered me. It was the lying. It was the having to remember. It was an irritating inconvenience.

I pulled out my phone to text an apology to Shelly. Given the giant pain in the ass this all had been, I doubt I’d be seeing her for a while, but I believed in keeping all my bridges intact for the crossing. As an afterthought, I asked if she’d been bitten by anything lately.

As I rotted in bed waiting for a reply, soft dreamless sleep found me.

My eyes thrust open as the lump on my back radiated pain. Both cheeks boasted that just-smacked tingle that teased of a fever. I started to think about the time I’d been playing in a brush pile as a child. A black widow had bitten me and I’d been dog shit sick for a few days. But did it burn?

I checked the time and nearly tripped over myself throwing clothes on to meet Blythe. No word still from Shelly. Maybe my odd behavior had spooked her, but no response at all? Weird. No time to think on it now. I hastily deleted the text thread and shot one to Blythe telling her I was on my way. I wouldn’t normally go to dinner sick, but I needed to see Blythe. I just couldn’t shake that something was off and I needed my mind at ease. I popped a couple of ibuprofen and headed out the door.

For the first time in 9 months of seeing her, Blythe was late. This shit day was turning out to have plenty of firsts. It had only been five minutes at this point, no big deal. I tried to tell myself that maybe there was traffic. A flat tire. She couldn’t find her keys. Anything other than her standing me up. The next five I started to feel a twinge of rot in the bottom of my stomach. She was outside the window, saw everything, and was standing me up as punishment. My armpits leaked fever-sweat. I was angry. Just as I scooted my seat back to leave, she walked in.

“Sorry! Couldn’t decide on shoes!” She struck a pose with her heel lifted before gliding into her seat. I couldn’t help but chuckle; I was about to lose it over a woman and her shoes.

Blythe was completely herself. Smiling and beautiful. I was trying to keep things light, but I’d started to sweat all over now. The thick kind. The kind that refuses to drip. The kind that reminds you of that kid in third grade who spat on you on the bus and it globbed on your cheek. Oh, the kids sucked air and one dared you to do something, but you wore that glob like a coward’s badge and did nothing. You sat there with your head down until you... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1grlz9e/i_think_i_need_to_break_up_with_my_girlfriend/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Sad_Carry_1661 on 2024-11-14 17:02:49+00:00. *** I never believed those horror stories that circulate the internet. I always thought they were made up to scare gullible people. But after what happened last week, I’m starting to question everything.

I live alone in a small apartment on the third floor of an old building. It’s a quiet place, with discreet neighbors, and a doorbell that almost never rings — until that night.

It was 3 AM when the sound of the doorbell echoed through my apartment. I woke up startled, my heart racing. Who would ring the doorbell at this hour? I got up cautiously, trying not to make a sound. I peered through the peephole, but the hallway was empty. Maybe it was just a prank.

I went back to bed, but sleep didn’t come. I lay there staring at the ceiling, feeling that heavy silence that only exists in the dead of night. That’s when the doorbell rang again.

This time, I got up more quickly. I looked through the peephole again, and, once more, there was no one. But something felt different. The hallway seemed darker than usual, as if the lights had gone out. Even so, I decided to open the door. Maybe it was a neighbor in trouble.

When I opened the door, the hallway was completely empty. Just silence and darkness. But something caught my attention: a folded note on the floor. I picked it up and went back inside, locking the door behind me.

The note read: "Do not open the door next time."

My blood ran cold. Who had left that note? And how did they know I had opened the door? I looked through the peephole again, but the hallway remained empty. I went to the kitchen to try to calm myself, and that’s when I heard it: three loud knocks on the door. Not the doorbell this time, but firm, deliberate knocks.

I went back to the door, trembling, and looked through the peephole once again. The hallway was still empty, but I could clearly hear the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth, right in front of my apartment.

I stood there, frozen, the note still in my hand, until the knocking stopped. Finally, after a long silence, I worked up the courage to go back to bed. But sleep never came, and I spent the rest of the night staring at the door, waiting for something to happen.

The next night, it happened again. At 3 AM, the doorbell rang. This time, I didn’t open the door. I just looked through the peephole, and once again, no one was there. But when I looked down, another note was on the floor. It read: "Good choice. But don’t look through the peephole tomorrow."

Tonight is the third night. It’s already 2:45 AM, and fear is eating me alive. I’ve decided I won’t look through the peephole. I’ll just stay in my room and wait for it to pass. When the clock hit 3, I heard the sound I dreaded: the doorbell rang.

My heart was racing, but I held my ground. I ignored it. After a few minutes of silence, I heard footsteps, followed by three knocks on the door, and then... a different sound. It was like metal scraping against the floor, moving slowly back and forth.

I closed my eyes, trembling, but then I heard something else. It was my own voice. Someone outside was whispering, "Open the door. It’s me."

My body froze. How could my voice be outside? I didn’t respond. But the whisper continued, insistent, as if it knew what I was thinking: "If you don’t open it, I’ll have to come in another way."

Then I heard a click. The sound of the lock turning. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door, but it was already ajar. With the faint light from the hallway spilling inside, I saw a figure identical to me, staring at me with a smile I’ve never made.

Before I could react, it stepped inside and closed the door behind it. The last thing I heard was the doorbell ringing again, but this time... from inside.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HorrorJunkie123 on 2024-11-14 17:33:40+00:00. *** “I think I need to go to rehab.”

My heart dropped when I heard that. It came out of nowhere. The woman I was married to - and living with - had been struggling in the throes of addiction, and I was none the wiser? I had never felt so taken aback. 

“Carrie, what do you mean? I don’t understand where this is coming from,” I said, gingerly taking her hand in mine. 

“Exactly what I said. I need help, John. I’ve been drinking again. Like, a lot.” 

My mouth involuntarily fell open. Carrie had admitted to having alcohol dependency after graduating from college, but I had always been under the impression that she’d nipped it in the bud. 

“Honey… How long has this been going on? I never would have guessed if you hadn’t told me,” I replied, taking a step back. 

“I know,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s been six months. I’ve been drinking vodka to hide the smell. That nightly glass of wine… it’s actually cranberry juice and Smirnoff. I’ve been throwing the empty bottles in the dumpster behind my work so you wouldn’t catch on. I’m sorry that I kept this from you, I really am. I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing you over it.” Carrie broke down, tears streaking down her cheeks. 

“Hey, hey. I would never leave you over something like that. You are the love of my life. We’ll get through this together,” I reassured her, gently rubbing her back. 

“Really? That makes me so happy to hear.” She wrapped her arms around me, and she stayed there for a long time, sobbing into my shirt. “Thank you for being so accepting. I needed that,” Carrie said, finally pulling away. 

“That’s what I’m here for. I’ll support you no matter what - but there’s something that I need to know.”

“Anything for you.” 

“I need you to be honest with me. Is that all you’re hiding?” 

Her eyes widened, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “No, this was it. There’s nothing else going on.” 

“Carrie. Don’t lie to me. We’ve been married for thirteen years. I know when you’re not telling the truth.” 

“Fine. I’ve been going to a support group. You know, for alcoholics.” 

My brows furrowed. “Okay? And why did you feel the need to keep that from me?” 

“Because it’s not working. This was a lot to get off my chest. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” 

“Alright. But we’re going to revisit this later.” 

She nodded, before darting into our room and locking the door. I didn’t know what she was playing at, but I knew that my wife wasn’t telling the truth. Not all of it, at least. And I was determined to find out what she was hiding. 

Now, I wish I would have just left her alone. 

Carrie didn’t check herself into rehab right away. She said that she had to “make some preparations” before being admitted. No problem there. What was an issue was the late nights that she would spend out with people she claimed to be friends, or coworkers, or family. I knew better. 

Each time Carrie would tell me that she was coming home late, I’d check her location. She’s not the best with technology, so I’d wager a guess that she forgot that she shared it with me. And I used that to my advantage. 

Whenever my wife made up an excuse not to come home, her phone said that she was always at one spot - the abandoned church on the outskirts of town. So I did what any suspicious husband would do. I tried to catch her in the act. 

“Look man, I don’t know if this is the best idea,” my coworker, Jeremy, said as I neared the parking lot. 

“Oh yeah? Well, what would you do in this situation?” 

“I’d probably just, like, call the cops or something.” 

“Really? And tell them what? That my wife might be boinking some random dude in an empty church? They’d be more likely to write me a ticket for filing a false report.” 

“Whatever man, I tried to warn you. Good luck.” And with that, the line went dead. 

“Thanks, I guess,” I grumbled, slapping the car in park and pocketing my phone. 

I glanced up at the run-down building before me, steeling myself for what I was about to do. The church was even creepier in person. A fire had left it completely charred, evidenced by the imprints left around the shattered windows. Vines snaked along the exterior, lending to the place’s eerie ambience. I really didn’t want to have to go in there, but I knew that I didn’t have any other choice. 

After reassuring myself in the rearview mirror for what must have been at least ten minutes, I finally gathered the courage to go inside. I crept up to the entrance, my eyes darting frantically around the parking lot. I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like one misteps would have the local police force swarming me in an instant. 

I quietly pushed open the front door, breathing a sigh of relief when it didn’t creak. The church was dark, but I could see a faint light emitting from one of the rooms toward the back. My heart jackhammered in my chest. Was I really doing this? What if Carrie found out? It would break her. 

No. She wasn’t being honest with me, and I had to know why. I couldn’t afford to turn and run. Not after making it so far. 

I pressed forward, following a path that had been cleared through the debris. Aside from that, the interior looked just as I imagine it had the day of the fire. Everything had been burnt to a crisp, save for a marble statue of the Virgin Mary near what used to be a stained glass window. I shuddered when I saw it. It felt as if its eyes were following me around the room, casting judgment on me. 

After a painstakingly long time trying to remain silent, I finally made it to the source of the light. I cautiously peeked my head around the corner to what I assumed was someone’s hollowed out office. What I saw still haunts me to this day. 

Carrie, along with about four other pale figures in hooded robes were gathered around a man’s flayed corpse. His organs had been carved out, and the group was chanting in an unintelligible language. Beneath the body lay what appeared to be a pentagram. 

I ducked out of view, clutching my chest and trying to stifle my breathing. This couldn’t be happening. I began to question everything I knew about my wife. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. 

I did the only logical thing I could do at that moment - I hightailed it out of there. I crept out of the church as quickly as I could without alerting any of those lunatics, and I raced home, going well over the speed limit. 

Once I arrived back at the house, I tried my best to steady myself. Hot tears stung my eyes as I pulled out my phone. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew that I had to. I steeled my resolve, and I called the police on my wife. 

“Hello, 9-1-1. What is your emergency?” 

“I th-think I just saw a cult ritual. There was this guy, and he was-” I nearly vomited just recanting the gruesome scene, but I managed to keep it down. “The man, he was… dead. Please, you have to send someone. It was at the old church on Fifth Avenue.” 

“Alright sir, stay calm. I’m sending a squad car. Are you in the vicinity?” 

“What? N-no, I’m safe. I-” 

My eyes grew wide, and for a moment, I thought that I might pass out. Just then, I received a text from Carrie. My breathing shallowed as I opened it. 

There was a picture. One of my car sitting in the church parking lot. It was followed by a close-up of me in the driver’s seat. My heart thumped wildly in my chest as a text bubble appeared. 

We need to talk. If you tell ANYONE about this, you’ll be next. 

“Hello? Sir, are you still on the line?” the operator asked, pulling me out of it. “What did the man look like?” 

“Uh… I’m not sure. I’m sorry, but I have to go.” I hung up before she had a chance to protest. 

I didn’t waste any time. I packed what I could in the few precious minutes that I had, and I left. I have a feeling that I just messed with some very powerful people. I’m going to get as far away from that town as possible, no matter the cost. I’m not sure what’s next for me.  

All I know is that I don’t want to end up like that man with his chest open for all to see, lying on the floor of an abandoned church.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ezekiel_h_graves on 2024-11-14 09:11:58+00:00. *** I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I’m losing my mind, but I need to get this out. Maybe someone can help me understand what’s happening before it’s too late.

A few days ago, I noticed something strange in my group chat. At first, it was little things—messages coming in out of order, or disappearing before I could read them. Then I got a text, from my own account, saying, “I see you, Jack.” I thought maybe it was a hack, or some glitch, so I messaged my mate Dave to see if he’d noticed anything weird.

But when he finally replied, it was something chilling: “We’re watching you.” I asked him what he meant, but my phone froze before I could read his response. When it finally unfroze, the chat was empty, like every message had been wiped clean. I tried calling him, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Every friend in the group chat was unreachable.

Desperate, I started scrolling back through old messages, hoping for some clue, and that’s when I saw phrases I’d never noticed before, messages in the chat that made no sense:

“Initiate Protocol A4. Target: Jack. Sequence: Integration Complete.”

I stared at the words, feeling the hair on my arms stand up. I didn’t remember seeing any of this before. Confused, I went back to my home screen and found an app I’d never installed: Phantom Network.

I tapped on it, and a map appeared, centred on my location, with a single red dot marking my house. All around it, other dots blinked in and out, each labelled with strange usernames I’d never seen before. And then a message popped up:

“Welcome, Jack. You are now connected.”

I didn’t type anything, but another message appeared as if I’d responded automatically.

“What is this?”

The response came instantly.

“You are part of the Phantom Network. Integration is almost complete.”

My skin prickled with cold. Integration? What did that even mean? I tried to close the app, but my phone froze again, locking me into the screen. Just as I was about to restart it, the map zoomed in, showing my location in eerie detail—the layout of my house, my exact room, and… the small blinking dots surrounding it.

When I looked closer, I realised each dot was connected by a thin line. My friends, my family, even my coworkers—everyone I knew, highlighted on the map like a web, all connected to my dot in the centre. As I stared, a chat window opened up, and messages flooded in.

“Where are you?”

“Jack, please answer us!”

“It’s here, Jack. It’s coming.”

The messages were desperate, frantic, and they were all from people I knew—except the words didn’t make sense. I tried to reply, to ask what was happening, but my words came out garbled, like they were being intercepted.

Then, the app sent me a photo—a picture of my house, taken from right outside my window.

I ran to the window, looking out into the dark, but there was nothing there, just an empty street. My heart pounded as I glanced back at my phone. Another message appeared:

“You can’t hide from us, Jack. Integration is forever.”

I don’t know how else to describe it, but I feel… watched. Every time I try to delete the app, it reappears with that same message. And every time it comes back, another person in my life goes dark.

Yesterday, I went to check on Dave. But when I got to his flat, the place was empty. A neighbour told me that no one named Dave had ever lived there. His number no longer works. It’s like he never existed.

Then, I went to Rachel’s office, only to be told the same thing—no one there had ever heard of her. Every trace of them, every piece of evidence of their existence, is gone. When I try to ask other friends, they look at me like I’m insane. No one remembers them. It’s like they’ve been erased from reality, pulled into whatever this “Phantom Network” is, leaving no trace behind.

The worst part is that now, when I look at the map, I see new dots—people I barely know, old acquaintances, neighbours I’ve barely spoken to—all appearing on the map, each with a thin line connecting them to me, pulsing as if they’re alive.

I’m terrified to sleep, terrified to close my eyes, because every time I wake up, someone else is gone.

Just now, my phone buzzed with another message from the app:

“It’s your turn, Jack. Integration is complete.”

And as I look around my room, I swear… there’s a shadow standing in the corner, watching, waiting.

I don’t know how much longer I have. If you’re reading this, and you don’t hear from me again, just know this: whatever the Phantom Network is, it’s spreading. And once it finds you, there’s no escape.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BS_Tip3808 on 2024-11-15 07:34:51+00:00. *** My little sister, Emily, always loved keeping a diary. She had stacks of them, pastel covers with little locks, each one filled with messy handwriting and stickers. She used to guard them fiercely, threatening to tell on me if I so much as looked at them.

But Emily passed away three months ago.

She was only eleven. A freak accident at the lake—she fell in, hit her head on a rock, and drowned before anyone could get to her. The funeral was unbearable, and afterward, I couldn’t bring myself to touch her things. Her room remained untouched, like a shrine to the girl she used to be.

But last week, Mom asked me to start sorting through her belongings. I found her latest diary in the bottom drawer of her desk. It was unlocked.

I thought reading it might bring me some closure. I thought it would help me feel close to her again.

I was wrong

The first few entries were normal.

“Today we had pizza for dinner. I took two slices before Joey could get them all! He got mad, but I don’t care.”

That made me smile. Emily always loved teasing me. The next few pages were full of harmless ramblings—complaints about school, doodles of flowers and stars, lists of her favorite songs.

But then, about halfway through, the tone started to change.

“I saw the man again today. He was standing in the backyard, watching me through the window. I told Mom, but she said I was imagining things. He’s always there, though. I can feel him.”

The man?

I paused, flipping back through the earlier entries. No mention of him before. Maybe it was just Emily’s overactive imagination. She’d always been a little jumpy, a little too eager to believe in monsters under the bed.

I kept reading

“The man came closer last night. He tapped on my window. He didn’t say anything, just smiled at me. His teeth are so big. I wanted to scream, but I was too scared.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. Emily’s handwriting got messier with each entry, her words more frantic.

“He comes inside now. He stands at the foot of my bed while I pretend to sleep. He whispers my name. He says he’s waiting.”

Waiting for what?

I flipped to the last few pages, my heart pounding.

“Joey doesn’t see him. No one does. He told me not to tell. He said they wouldn’t believe me. He said I belong to him now.”

I stopped reading. My hands were shaking. This had to be some kind of prank, a made-up story Emily wrote to scare me. But the way she described it, the fear in her words—it felt real.

Too real.

That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the diary. I couldn’t shake the image of Emily, lying in bed, too terrified to scream while some stranger stood over her. I barely slept.

When I finally drifted off, I dreamed about her. She was standing at the edge of the lake, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat.

And there was mud on my shoes.

I told myself it was nothing. Maybe I’d gone outside to clear my head and didn’t remember. But the next day, I found a page from Emily’s diary lying on my desk.

I hadn’t brought the diary upstairs.

The page wasn’t one I’d read before.

“He says Joey will come next. He says Joey will join me soon.”

My blood turned to ice.

That night, I locked my bedroom door. I tried to convince myself it was all in my head, that grief was playing tricks on me. But as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, I heard it.

A tap.

Tap.

Tap.

On my window.

I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t. But something made me turn my head.

He was there.

A man, tall and thin, his face pale and stretched like wax. He smiled at me, baring rows of jagged teeth, and pressed a single finger to his lips.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.

When I woke up, it was morning.

The window was locked. No sign of anyone outside. I almost convinced myself it was a dream, until I went downstairs and found another page from Emily’s diary on the kitchen table.

“He says it’s time. He says Joey belongs to him now.”

I haven’t slept since. I haven’t left the house. I keep hearing taps at the windows, whispers in the dark. Last night, I found muddy footprints leading from the lake to my bedroom door.

I think I understand now.

Emily didn’t fall.

She didn’t hit her head.

He took her.

And now, he’s coming for me.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/cinncinatis_ on 2024-11-14 05:38:01+00:00. *** It all happened while I was on my way to visit my parents for some time away from the big city. My parents were always country folk who always loved to be out on the middle of the wilderness. As I was driving through the highway, it started to rain a little. Nothing I didn’t really worry about. Tank was still full of gas, my music was on, it could have been much worse. But it did. Me and my big mouth right? My car ended making noises that didn’t sound normal. As in it didn’t sound like a car should be if it was working properly. I wasn’t an expert on cars, but something told me to pull over.

I ended up kicking my car in frustration as I exhausted pretty much all of my options on trying to get it moving again. I ended up realizing that I had to start walking, maybe find someone who could help me with this.

I couldn’t call my parents because my cellphone had no service. I was in the middle of nowhere.

I had to hurry and maybe find someplace I could spend the night, maybe when the rain cleared up, I could sort out this car problem in the morning.

After what seemed like hours of walking, I saw it.

The hotel sat on a lonely stretch of highway, a flickering neon sign casting a sickly glow on the empty parking lot. At this point, I was desperate; my car had broken down miles from the nearest town, and the rain had turned into a downpour that had me soaked to the bone. Through the sheets of rain, the hotel loomed like a dark bruise on the side of the road, and I had no choice but to seek refuge. They always say hindsight is twenty twenty. But desperate people do desperate things.

Inside, the place was even worse. The lobby was dim, smelling of mildew and something faintly metallic. The old woman at the front desk handed me a key with a smile that never reached her eyes, murmuring, “Room 13. The only one we have tonight.”

“Thanks. It’ll do.”

Room 13.

The number stuck to my mind. It felt unsettling, but I was exhausted and cold, I had no time to be picky or nervous. I just wanted to sleep. The room itself was no better than the lobby—bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, and the wallpaper peeled in long strips, revealing dark stains underneath. But it was a bed, and at that point, I would have slept anywhere.

I tossed most of my wet clothes onto the floor, climbed under the covers, and closed my eyes, trying not to think about the faint, sour smell wafting up from the mattress.

I hadn’t been asleep long when the scratching started.

At first, it was faint. I thought it might have been the wind rattling against the old windows or maybe an animal crawling around in the walls. I rolled over, pulling the pillow over my head, but the scratching grew louder. It was coming from under the bed. That’s when I started to get a bit creeped out.

The sound was too deliberate, too precise to be an animal. I told myself not to look, to stay in bed and ignore it. But as soon as I thought that, the scratching stopped.

A few seconds later, the bed shifted. I was shaking slightly from the sudden movement.

It wasn’t much, just a faint movement, like something—or someone—was pushing up from underneath. I felt my stomach tighten as I lay completely still, hoping that whatever was down there didn’t know I was awake. But then, just as I began to relax, I heard a whisper.

“Come closer.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, barely able to breathe. The whisper came again, rasping and dry, like paper tearing in two. “Come closer, I need to tell you something.”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like ice was filling my veins, freezing me in place.

Then came a long, drawn-out sigh from beneath the bed, followed by a low, mocking laugh.

“Fine. I’ll come closer.”

The bed lurched, slamming hard enough to lift me up, and that was it—I couldn’t take it anymore. I leapt out, scrambling toward the door, but it wouldn’t budge. My hands were shaking too hard to turn the lock. I fumbled, feeling the growing pressure behind me, like someone standing close enough to touch. But before I could turn around, I heard the voice again, louder this time, whispering right next to my ear.

“I just wanted you to know… it’s not your bed you’re sleeping in.”

My breath caught, my heart hammering as I stumbled backward, tripping over my own feet. I fell against the bed, half-expecting to feel something clawing at me from underneath, but there was nothing there. Just silence and the dead, stale air of the room.

In a panic, I ripped open the closet door, desperate for a place to hide. My mind raced—I had no phone, no working phone,no way to call for help, and the rain still hammered down outside, isolating me further.

I crouched in the closet, heart pounding, trying to calm my breathing. But then I noticed the smell—a thick, cloying odor. It was metallic and wet, stronger now that I was in the closet.

My stomach twisted as I looked down. There, on the floor, was a dark, sticky stain. It pooled beneath a pair of feet, their skin pale and mottled, visible under a tattered dress that hung from the figure like dead leaves.

It was a woman, her face twisted in a silent scream, her arms contorted at unnatural angles. She stared straight ahead, her glassy eyes unseeing… or at least that’s what I thought.

As I watched, her eyes flicked to mine, the corners of her mouth stretching into a grin.

And she whispered, “He doesn’t like it when you hide.”

I stumbled backward out of the closet, my whole body screaming to run, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was still smiling that awful, silent grin that seemed like it was stretching wider. Her lifeless eyes locked onto mine. My heart pounded as I backed away, feeling my way toward the door. But when my hand reached the knob, I found it was ice-cold—so cold it burned.

The air in the room was thick, almost suffocating, as if something was pressing down from every direction. I forced myself to look away from her, to try the lock again, but my fingers were stiff and clumsy from the cold. I twisted and pulled, but the lock wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I yanked.

I was trapped. I was beyond terrified.

A shuffling sound echoed from the closet. I didn’t want to turn around, but some part of me had to. Against every ounce of common sense, I glanced over my shoulder.

The woman in the closet was moving. She was crawling toward me, inch by inch. Her twisted arms scraping against the floor, her eyes wide and empty. As she dragged herself forward, her broken fingers left dark streaks in her wake, a trail of blood or something darker.

“I tried to leave, too,” she hissed, her voice raw and brittle, as if it hadn’t been used in years. “He doesn’t let you go. He keeps you here.”

I backed into the corner near the door, feeling the wall cold and rough against my spine. My throat felt tight, my whole body locked in place as I watched her draw closer. Her eyes, hollow and sunken had bore into me, full of something I couldn’t understand—rage, desperation, maybe even hunger.

Then, just inches from my feet, she stopped.

Her head jerked upward, and I felt a chill crawl down my spine as her gaze shifted, not at me but at something behind me.

“He’s here,” she whispered, a shiver in her voice. “He’s always watching.”

I wanted to scream, to get out of this nightmare, but a noise stopped me—a soft creak, like the slow groan of a door opening. I forced myself to turn, and there, in the shadowed corner of the room, I saw it.

A figure. Tall and impossibly thin, with limbs too long and bent in the wrong places, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was draped in tattered black cloth which clung to its form like a shroud. Its face… it had no face. Just a smooth, pale surface, featureless but somehow filled with malice.

The figure didn’t move. It simply stood there, a cold, hollow presence that sucked the air from the room. But then, slowly, it raised one hand, pointing a single, bony finger directly at me.

“He’s chosen you,” the woman rasped, her eyes wide with fear. She was backing away now, retreating into the darkness of the closet. “He always chooses someone. And once he chooses, he never lets go.”

“No,” I whispered, the word barely audible. “No. Say away from me! No!”

But the figure took a step forward, the room growing colder with each movement, the walls seeming to close in. I could feel it pulling at me, dragging me toward it, like an invisible hand clutching at my chest. My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees, staring up at that faceless horror as it loomed over me. The I saw what looked like it’s mouth open. It didn’t just open, it tore it open as if it were ripping open its very flesh. It was open in a silent scream.

Then, in a voice that sounded like nails scraping over glass, it spoke.

“Stay,” it said, the word echoing, filling the room. “Stay… forever.”

My body went rigid, every nerve screaming to run, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place, trapped under that thing’s gaze—or whatever it was that served as its gaze. The shadows around me deepened, and I felt a weight pressing down on my chest, making it harder and harder to breathe.

I tried to scream, to call for help, but no sound came out. The room spun, darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision, and just before I blacked out, I heard one last whisper, so faint I could barely make it out.

“Room 13 always needs a guest.”

When I woke up, everything was quiet. I was lying in the middle of the floor, the stale smell ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gqxybb/i_checked_into_an_old_hotel_on_the_highway_i_dont/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Ill_Caterpillar544 on 2024-11-14 05:12:07+00:00. *** When I was six years old, my mother sent me to stay with my grandparents for the summer.

At this time in my life, I had never met my mother's parents, and I had never been away from home longer than a weekend. When my mom broke the news to me that I would be going away for nearly two months, I sobbed on and off for several days. It wasn't until she told me that my grandparents had a dog that I began to feel some excitement about leaving home.

Kindergarten was ending, and on the last day, I joined the class on the rainbow-colored carpet where we were prompted by our teacher, Ms. Hayne, to share something we had planned for summer break. Ms. Hayne was a young teacher, in her second or third year at the school whose voice was sweet and soft. When it was my turn to share, I proudly exclaimed that I would be spending the summer at my grandparents’s house. I made sure to mention the dog. My peers giggled and shouted at the mention of the animal, and that helped me to adjust to the idea of leaving even more.

It felt like some sort of adventure. Still, the day came, and I trembled with nerves in the back seat of my mom’s Honda as she drove me several hours away from home and toward the unknown. The road seemed to be unending, and the wide city street eventually narrowed into a poorly maintained stretch of asphalt that dug deep into a wooded mountain.

“Where are the other cars?” I asked my mother as I peered around checking each window. “Not many people come up this way. Grandma and Grandpa like their privacy, so they moved up here back before you were born.” Sensing my uneasiness she added, “Dont worry honey. You are going to have so much space to run around and explore. It's going to be a good change of pace for you.” I shuffled in my seat and fell quiet. I did like the idea of exploring outside. My mom and I lived on the second floor of an old apartment building. There were some neighbor kids with whom I spent most of my free time, but finding something to do other than coloring or building Legos was difficult since none of us were allowed to play outside. Too many strangers and moving cars.

It wasn't the worst neighborhood, but it wasn't the kind of place where you let your kids roam free. There was always an adult watching us when we would venture out to play on the basketball court, where we would usually just end up playing freeze tag. That ten-by-twenty cement pad contained the majority of my outdoor experience. It would be nice to have some freedom to run wild, catch bugs, and climb trees.

The road trailed on and the foliage seemed to grow all-encompassing, almost swallowing the small road in some areas. As branches stretched over the skies the shadows paved the street in shapes all too frightening for a child with an active imagination. I chose to keep my view centered on the seat in front of me. We drove all day, and when the sun had set we finally pulled onto a dirt road. We continued for at least another mile before a large house came into view behind the trees.

As we slowly inched the car closer the fauna opened up into a clearing, and the whole property was visible. Near the main house was a barn that looked as though it used to be painted red, but was now chipped away revealing mostly brown and white wood. As we rounded the house to the back where my mom parked the car a small shed appeared.

“Alright. We’re here!” my mom shouted with more relief than enthusiasm. I kept my seat belt on, hoping that if I waited long enough my mother would decide this whole thing had been a mistake and turn the car around. Instead, she removed her keys, killing the radio that was softly humming static, and opened her door. I followed my mom's lead, not wanting to remain alone in the car. Stepping out of the vehicle I was hit with a light gust of wind that chilled my small bones and made me grimace. I looked at my mom, and she could see how tense I was.

Grabbing my hand she led me around to the side door and knocked. I clutched her hand in mine as we waited for the door to swing open. After a moment, creaking footsteps approached, and the hinges of the door squeaked to reveal a tender aged face. My grandmother stood in the doorway with a soft smile and warm eyes ushering us in with her free hand, the other clutching a plate of cookies. “Come in!” she squealed.

I looked at my mother who wore the same soft smile on her own face. We walked in and the door was shut behind us. The warmth my grandmother exuded did a decent job of melting my fears, but the atmosphere of the home was quick to send the chills back down my spine. All of the lights were off. Only the moonlight shining in through the entryway window illuminated my surroundings. “Oh excuse me one moment.” my grandmother said as she placed the tray of cookies on the coffee table and rushed to turn on a lamp.

When the small, solitary light source was flipped on the house was left looking eerie. My mom began catching up with my grandma. The two had talked over the phone several times over the years, but this was the first time they had been in the same room since I was born. They sat on the couch as my mom complained about the drive and my grandmother tried to force-feed her oatmeal raisin cookies. Noticing my shyness my mom excused me to explore the house. “Your room is upstairs to the right,” Grandma said. I picked up my bag, slung it over my shoulders, and headed towards the staircase. As I ascended I made sure to count each stair, a habit that I have yet to break even in my adulthood. I reached the top.

14 steps.

I glanced to my right, seeing that the hallway led to a small bedroom and a bathroom adjacent to it. I peered to the left out of curiosity and let out an involuntary scream. Down the left hallway was my grandfather, a man wholly unfamiliar to me, standing in the doorway. His silhouette was outlined by the shining light behind him, creating a specter in my young imagination.

My mother rushed up the stairs when she heard me and frantically asked what was wrong. Frozen in fear, I stammered for the words. “Th..the…man…” I pointed down the hall. Grandpa had turned his back and began walking into the master bedroom, shutting the door behind him without a word. “Oh don't you mind him,” Grandma said as she reached the 14th step. “He's been feeling under the weather. He hopes to make an appearance tomorrow after he's gotten some rest.” “Well, I plan on leaving kind of early tomorrow. I have to get back for some meetings at work.” Mom said. “Trust me,” Grandma replied, “No one gets up earlier than Grandpa.”

The next morning I got up early to say goodbye to my mom. Up until this point I had been the only one with visible hesitation, but she seemed to linger longer than expected, looking into my eyes and showering me with kisses and I-love-yous. I wish I could have stayed in that moment forever. True to my grandmother’s words, my grandfather had gotten up before anyone but chose to spend the morning hunting. This was irritating to my mother, but she really did have responsibilities at work to return to, so she eventually got into the driver’s seat of her car and rounded the house heading for the main road.

I waved goodbye and watched her car until it dipped past the clearing and was absorbed by the tree line. With the vehicle out of sight, my fate was sealed. I would be spending almost two full months in this foreign place. “Come on inside. We can have some breakfast together.” said my grandmother.

The rest of the morning was fairly normal. I ate eggs and bacon, colored a picture, and even got to spend some time watching cartoons on the old TV in the living room. It was the kind that had the antennas at the top, and I didn't get any of the normal channels but I eventually found an animated show and sat back to enjoy the story. That morning I had also gotten to know grandma’s dog Buffalo, who had gotten used to my presence and was lying next to me on the couch.

Everything changed when my grandfather returned home from hunting. Though I was in the living room, I immediately tuned in to his arrival as he threw the front door open and yelled out to my grandma. I stayed seated on the couch, but I could hear her greeting him at the door. Her demeanor was drastically different from then on. Instead of the bubbly, cheerful woman I had met the night before, she became a fearful shell when he was around.

Grandpa mumbled something about having lunch ready by the time he returned from the basement. Dragging two lifeless rabbits at his side, my grandfather walked to the basement door and stopped. He turned to me and said, “Dont you go snooping around my basement, you hear me, kid?” I nodded, and he descended the stairs closing the door behind him. “What's in the basement?” I asked turning to Grandma. “That's where your grandpa does his work. He sells the rabbit meat and skins, and he uses the downstairs area to clean and prepare them.”

I didn't like the idea of dead rabbits in the house. In my innocent mind, I could only feel sadness for the creatures, and even a little fear. I had never seen a dead thing before. A curiosity about the rabbits started to grow within me. Not the blood and guts part. I wasn't old enough to understand that. But the idea of something being alive and then just…well…not being alive anymore was sort of fascinating in a morbid way. I knew then that I had to get a closer look at the rabbits. I wish that I hadn't. Maybe if I... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gqxiyw/the_rabbit_box/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/myrasam79 on 2024-11-13 00:44:28+00:00. *** The sea had taken many things from me over the years—friends, crew, even pieces of myself—but it had never taken my sense of duty. A captain’s burden is the lives of others, and every decision weighs heavier when those lives hang by a thread. I’d made mistakes before, the kind that leave scars no storm can wash away, but I’d always sworn to put my crew and those in need above all else. That’s why I answered the distress call, even though it came from the Bermuda Triangle—a place where sailors vanish, and reason unravels. I didn’t trust the call, but I trusted my purpose: to bring people home, no matter the cost.

The distress signal came three days ago. A luxury liner, Starfall Horizon, stranded deep within the Bermuda Triangle, had stopped responding to all communication. The passengers were reportedly taken hostage by a group of pirates. Maritime law and duty made it my job to intervene, but this wasn’t my first brush with the strange and treacherous waters of the Triangle. I knew better than to trust a simple explanation in this cursed expanse.

The Aegis, my ship, was a sturdy rescue vessel, built for enduring rough seas and hostile situations. As we approached the coordinates, a strange silence blanketed the crew. The liner should have been visible long before we reached it, but the dense fog clinging to the horizon seemed determined to keep it hidden. Finally, as a dull glow crept across the sky, the Starfall Horizon emerged from the mist.

The ship was eerily still. No passengers waved for help, no signs of the chaos we had prepared for. Its massive hull leaned slightly to one side, and streaks of a dark, slimy residue trailed from its deck down to the waterline, giving the impression that the ship itself was bleeding.

Maclin, my first officer, leaned toward me as we stood on the bridge. His face was as tense as I’d ever seen it. “That doesn’t look like pirates.”

“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”

We tethered the Aegis to the liner and prepared a boarding party. The rescue team armed themselves—protocol when dealing with potential hostiles—but I could sense their unease. This wasn’t a mission anyone wanted to be on, least of all me. Still, leaving those passengers to their fate wasn’t an option.

I led the team across the bridge connecting the two ships, the groan of metal beneath our boots unsettling in the stillness. The liner’s deck was slick with a pale slime that seemed to shimmer faintly under the weak light filtering through the mist. It clung to everything—the railings, the floor, even the air felt heavier, filled with the acrid, metallic tang of decay.

“Keep close,” I said to the team, motioning for them to move toward the bridge of the liner.

The ship’s bridge was empty. The controls were still active, though smeared with more of the strange slime. Static crackled from the communication systems, but no human voice emerged. I checked the logbooks, flipping through pages warped and sticking together, but the last entries offered nothing useful—just routine reports before everything stopped.

“Captain, over here!” one of the team called, his voice laced with urgency. He was near the entrance to the main stairwell. I joined him quickly and saw what had caught his attention.

The walls were streaked with pale, slimy tracks, running in uneven patterns as though something had been dragged—or had dragged itself—through the corridor. The substance pulsed faintly, almost imperceptibly, as though alive.

“What the hell is this?” the crewmember asked, stepping back from the trail.

I shook my head. “Something’s wrong here. This isn’t just a hijacking.”

Maclin joined us, his expression grim. “Where are the passengers? Even if the pirates ran, there should be bodies.”

“Or survivors,” I said. “Let’s check the lower decks.”

Descending into the ship’s depths, the air grew colder, and the strange, sour smell intensified. The tracks became more frequent, branching out in seemingly random directions. Some led into rooms, the doors of which were coated in slime and sealed shut. The crew exchanged nervous glances, but I pushed us forward. Whatever had happened here, I needed answers.

The source of the distress call turned out to be a makeshift barricade in the ship’s dining hall. Tables, chairs, and metal scrap had been piled high, blocking the entrance. On the other side, I could hear faint movements—rustling, scratching, and the occasional, quiet shuffle of feet.

“Break it down,” I ordered.

It took a few minutes, but we finally breached the barricade. Inside, we found a group of passengers—perhaps a dozen—huddled in the far corner. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes wide and sunken as though they hadn’t slept in days. Many were wrapped in blankets, their clothes stained with grime and slime. They didn’t look relieved to see us. They looked terrified.

“You’re safe now,” I began, stepping forward. “We’re here to help.”

A man at the front of the group, middle-aged with streaks of sweat matting his thinning hair, shook his head. “No one’s safe,” he said, his voice shaking. “Not from that thing.”

“What thing?” Maclin asked.

The man gestured toward the ceiling, where the slime seemed to thicken, branching out like veins. “It came from below. We thought it was the pirates at first, but they’re gone now. It’s… still here.”

The passengers shrank back at his words, their fear palpable.

“What is it?” I pressed. “What happened to the crew?”

Before he could answer, a sudden screech echoed through the hall. The sound was high-pitched and unnatural, reverberating through the ship like nails dragged across metal. The passengers whimpered, some covering their ears, others clutching each other tightly.

“Get back to the Aegis, now!” I barked to the team, gesturing for the passengers to follow.

As we ushered them toward the exit, the screech sounded again, this time closer. The corridor outside the dining hall seemed darker, the lights flickering and casting strange shapes across the walls. The slime on the floor had grown thicker, clinging to our boots and slowing our progress.

We hadn’t made it halfway back to the connecting bridge when the first sign of movement stopped us cold. A figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the hallway. It was humanoid in shape but grotesquely distorted. Its pale, translucent skin revealed dark veins pulsing beneath the surface, giving it an almost unnatural glow. Its limbs were unnervingly thin and twisted, with claw-like fingers that seemed to twitch independently. It moved with an erratic, insect-like rhythm, its eyeless head tilting unnaturally toward us, as if perceiving the world through senses beyond our comprehension.

For a moment, we were frozen, unsure if what we were seeing was real. Then it let out a guttural clicking sound, followed by a burst of speed that defied logic. It charged toward us, its claws scraping the walls as it moved.

“Fire at it!” I shouted.

The crew opened fire, the deafening sound of gunfire filling the corridor. Bullets struck the creature, black ichor spraying from its wounds, but it barely slowed. One of the crewmembers panicked, turning to run, but the creature was on him in seconds, slamming him into the wall with enough force to dent the metal.

“Fall back!” I ordered, forcing myself to stay calm as we retreated toward the bridge. The passengers screamed as we passed, some refusing to move until Maclin physically dragged them forward.

As we reached the connecting bridge to the Aegis, I glanced back one last time. The creature stood at the far end of the corridor, its head tilted as if studying us. Slimy tracks glistened in its wake, and the faint glow beneath its skin pulsed faster, like a heartbeat. It didn’t pursue us, but somehow, that made it worse.

We sealed the door behind us and made it back to the Aegis. My crew scrambled to tend to the survivors, but I couldn’t shake the feeling we hadn’t escaped. The creature wasn’t just hunting us—it was spreading.

 Back on the Aegis, the tension was suffocating. The survivors were huddled in the mess hall, pale and silent as if speaking might summon the horrors they’d fled. My crew worked quickly, setting up quarantine protocols. The slime tracked from the liner was already being scrubbed from the deck and equipment, but I wasn’t sure it was enough.

Maclin stood beside me, his face grim. “We should cut them loose, Captain. Burn the Starfall Horizon and be done with it.”

I stared at him, my jaw tightening. “There are lives on the line.”

“And how many lives do we risk by bringing that thing with us?” He jabbed a finger toward the survivors. “You saw it. That wasn’t human.”

He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t ready to abandon the people we’d rescued—or the mystery of what had happened. Something had brought that creature aboard the liner, and I needed to know what it was before we left this cursed stretch of water.

“Seal the survivors in quarantine,” I said, my voice firm. “No one in or out until we know what we’re dealing with. And scrub every trace of that slime from the ship.”

Maclin looked like he wanted to argue, but he held his tongue. Instead, he gestured toward the corridor leading to the med bay. “Dr. Esteban’s looking at one of them now. You should see this.”

The med bay was eerily quiet when I entered. Dr. Esteban was hunched over his workbench, his gloved hands steady as he examined a sample of the pale slime under a microscope. A ... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gq0f3d/i_work_at_a_rescue_service_as_a_captain_my_last/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Obvious-Secretary151 on 2024-11-14 02:21:02+00:00. *** Every evening at precisely 10:00 p.m., the man appeared in the window across from mine.

I first noticed him on a foggy October night. I was pacing around my tiny apartment, trying to work out a problem for a client, when my gaze wandered to the old building across the street. Through the dim haze, I could just make out a figure, barely visible, framed in the dusty glass of an upstairs window.

At first, I thought nothing of it. He was probably just a neighbor, taking a quick look outside. But the next night, at exactly 10:00 p.m., there he was again, standing in that same spot, staring into the street. Something about the way he stood made my skin crawl. His face was barely visible, shrouded in shadow, but I could make out the pale outline of his eyes. He was watching me.

I closed the blinds that night, uneasy. But every evening after that, no matter how hard I tried to ignore him, I felt his presence. Curiosity—or perhaps a growing sense of dread—got the better of me. Each night, I would watch the clock, my heart pounding, until the hour struck ten.

And there he would be.

Days turned into weeks, and the man never missed a night. Always standing in the same spot, in the same eerie, unbroken silence. He never waved, never moved, just watched, as though waiting for something.

One night, I decided to wave to him. I wanted to see if he’d respond. As soon as the clock hit ten, I pulled back the blinds and raised my hand, hesitantly, toward the window.

His eyes met mine, and for a brief moment, I thought he was going to lift his own hand. Instead, his lips curled into a small, unsettling smile, revealing darkened, uneven teeth. My skin prickled. I quickly closed the blinds, trying to shake off the creeping chill that had settled over me.

That was the first night I heard him.

I had just started drifting off to sleep when a faint tapping echoed through my apartment. My eyes snapped open, heart hammering. The tapping was steady, deliberate, like someone lightly rapping their knuckles against glass. I lay frozen, listening, trying to place the sound.

Tap… tap… tap…

It was coming from my window.

Slowly, dreading what I might see, I turned toward it. Through the thin fabric of my blinds, I could make out a shadowy outline standing on the fire escape outside my apartment. A face pressed close to the glass, a wide, toothy smile just barely visible through the slats.

My blood ran cold.

I wanted to scream, but I was paralyzed. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it was just my imagination, that the man in the window was only a trick of the light, a shadow cast by passing cars.

The tapping grew louder, more insistent.

Tap… tap… tap…

Somehow, I managed to bolt upright, grabbing my phone and dialling 911 with trembling fingers. The dispatcher answered, her voice a steady anchor in the dark. I whispered, terrified he might hear me, that there was someone on my fire escape.

Within minutes, I heard the wail of sirens. I didn’t dare open my eyes until I felt the reassuring presence of the police officers. They searched the fire escape, the alley, the entire building, but found nothing. No footprints, no fingerprints, nothing to indicate anyone had been there at all.

The officer suggested it was just a nightmare, a figment of my imagination. But I knew what I’d seen. I could still feel the weight of his gaze, the pressure of his face pressed against my window.

That night, I barely slept, the man’s smile haunting my every thought.

The next day, I tried to convince myself it was over, that he wouldn’t return. But as the clock struck ten, I found myself unable to resist looking out the window.

He was there, staring back at me from across the street. This time, he looked different. His face was somehow clearer, his features sharper, more defined. His eyes were glassy and dull, his skin pale and stretched tight over his bones. And there was something else. He was holding up a piece of paper against the glass.

It was a small, yellowed scrap, crinkled around the edges. I squinted, trying to read the faint, scrawled words.

“I’m watching.”

I stumbled back, heart racing. But when I looked again, the note was gone. The man was gone. The window across the street was empty, as though he had never been there at all.

For days, I waited, dreading the hour of ten o’clock. The silence gnawed at me, filling my mind with dread. But after a week, when he didn’t reappear, I began to hope that maybe it was over.

One night, weeks later, I was drifting off to sleep when a loud knock jolted me awake. I froze, straining my ears, praying I’d imagined it.

Knock… knock… knock…

The sound was coming from my front door.

My heart raced as I forced myself to get up, creeping slowly toward the door. As I got closer, I could hear something—a faint, rasping whisper, barely audible through the thick wood.

“Let me in.”

The whisper was dry, hollow, like dead leaves scraping against pavement. I backed away, shaking. I turned on every light in my apartment, trying to drown out the darkness, the growing terror that filled me.

The knocking continued, steady, rhythmic, unyielding.

“Let me in.”

Desperate, I dialed the police again, but by the time they arrived, the knocking had stopped. The officers looked at me with pity, clearly doubting my story. They left soon after, telling me to call if I had any more “trouble.”

For hours, I sat in silence, barely breathing, waiting for the knocking to start again.

But it didn’t. I never heard it again.

A few days later, I noticed the building across the street was empty. No lights, no movement. It was as though the place had been abandoned. Curious—and maybe a little desperate for closure—I went over to ask around, hoping to learn something about the man in the window.

The landlord, an elderly woman, looked at me with wide eyes when I mentioned him.

“No one’s lived there for months,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “The last tenant… well, he disappeared. The police never found him. The only thing they found in the apartment was a note left on his window. It said, ‘I’m watching.’”

Her words chilled me to the core. That night, as I lay in bed, I realized something.

I could still feel his eyes on me, watching from somewhere unseen, waiting for the moment I’d let him in.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/AngelmZeal1 on 2024-11-14 02:18:25+00:00. *** Whatever that thing is, I believe it just wants what you have, it wants to exist, but it has one major problem: it either does not have any identity or it is unaware of its own, therefore, it feels the need to assume yours. A typical freaking parasite.

It does not matter which medium it uses. It can strike anywhere, anytime and anyhow, therefore, to help you with awareness and prevention, here are some of the methods I have witnessed it use: a prepaid call or sms coming from your own number and on your own mobile phone or landline, a video or audio call or message or post coming from your own profile regardless of the social media application used (even this one), a call on the intercom of your own apartment, an email from your own email address, a letter mysteriously delivered at your address with your own name as the expeditor, and even mail pigeons landing near your windows with rolled papers around their necks. I believe that the last method, even though rare, proves the antiquity of that entity AND PLEASE, if you intend to upvote, downvote or comment on this post, verify and ensure that the poster is NOT your own username.

There is no concrete profile that can be established when it comes to its victims, as it does not discriminate between you or your 9 year old little brother or daughter with a cellphone or tablet. Once it targets you, it contacts you, and if it gets your response, you disappear within a certain amount of time, never to be seen again.

How do you know all that? You might be wondering. Look, I want you to know that I am not very proud of what I am about to reveal concerning myself. Know that out there, some people with tremendous financial means, influence and power, do not have your best interest at heart, if they have one that is. Unfortunately, I happened to work for them at some point in my life and witnessed the extent of cruelty they are willing to reach in the name of progress, so please understand that I cannot mention names. Among the many atrocities they managed to lay their hands on, is that entity they chose to name Kevin, a name it never responded to. Like I mentioned earlier, it seems to lack any identity of its own, and does not have any appearance whatsoever until it assumes the one of its most recent victim for a period of 34 minutes at most.

Since I never worked on the field, I have no idea how those evil people keep track of that thing, after deliberately releasing it out there for their 'research' purposes, but I chose to risk my safety if it can save at least one life, even just one. I made that decision the day I saw that report. There is one report of an analysis, video call hacked and included, that I will never erase from my mind.

On a Saturday afternoon, while at work, an innocent mom of two received a video call from 'herself' that she unfortunately picked up. The guys from the IT had hacked her phone screen and her front camera, thus allowing us to see the concerned look on the innocent mother's face. The phone screen was entirely black until she said the usual 'hallo' thus providing the entity with what it always seeks, a response. At that moment, the sound came on, and movements could be observed from the screen as if the caller was walking. Soon, voices of an adult woman greeting people, a teenage boy asking his mom where her car was and an enthusiastic young girl, followed. After a few seconds, the entity revealed itself as her doppelganger, standing in front of her house, smiling maliciously to the camera, with her own kids playing in the background. Crushed with terror, fear and disbelief, the mother muttered a simple 'who' unable to complete her question, before screaming the name of her children in an indescribable distress and in vain. Her car was later found abandoned in the middle of a road leading to her address with no trace of her, as the last clues she left behind were frantic calls to one of her neighbors, her son and the police. No strange call was found in any history on her phone, probably erased by the IT guys or the entity itself.

Even those evil people are not immune to that strange being, and to be honest with you, neither them nor myself know of any defensive mean against that entity in case of even an involuntary response. Prevention is the only way I know to avoid its deadly grasp. I sometimes hear knocks on my front door at various times of random days, and since it has already proved that it is not bound to electronics, I avoid any verbal response and simply open the door. Often, it is really a human being, a delivery person, an acquaintance, a family member, or a friend, but sometimes, there is nobody at the door, or maybe nobody that I can see.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/kibufox on 2024-11-13 23:46:01+00:00. *** The city sprawled out beneath me like an ever-changing mural as I perched in the open door of the rescue helicopter, one leg inside, the other teasingly suspended over the edge. The colors of the landscape shimmered in vibrant greens, blues, yellows, and browns, each hue laced with the melancholy rhythm of Kordhell's "Murder on My Mind," which pulsed through my earbuds. Technically, this was against regulations, but after twelve grueling hours of relentless hurricane cleanup, I felt justified in bending the rules a little. This work, though fulfilling, often felt like a marathon without end—an unyielding series of intense runs where the only certainty was fatigue.

In the world of Search and Rescue (SAR), most people associate the acronym with heroism and life-saving. But for me and my fellow 'angels of death,' the R stands for something far more somber: recovery. As an open water, wreck-trained diver—often referred to as a 'hard hat' due to the helmet I wear while diving—my role unfolds in the aftermath of tragedy. When nature’s ferocity renders hope untenable, and recovery becomes the morose necessity, it's my team they call upon to perform the somber task of reclaiming the lives lost beneath the waves. The hurricane that had ravaged the coast left a familiar, mournful imprint on my heart, pulling me back into the fray for yet another solemn mission.

Today's deployment had me working alongside military personnel, a stark reminder of the seriousness of our task. I could feel the vibrations of the Seahawk beneath me as we navigated toward the reported location of a capsized yacht. It was a familiar scene—a rescue call with no signs of life, the Coast Guard helpless as they arrived to find the vessel turned turtle, swallowed by the sea. My heart raced at the thought; third or maybe fourth task of the day, and we were faced with treacherous waters still churning from the hurricane's wrath. As the helicopter slowed near the last known position, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder; the loadmaster signaled five minutes out. Time to suit up.

Anticipation quickened my movements as I assembled my gear, knowing that the minutes to come would test both my skill and resolve. Poised in the doorway, the world below transformed from a vibrant panorama to an abyssal mystery. It was time to leap into the unknown, and as I relinquished my hold on the bird, I held my breath, surrendering to the weightlessness of the drop before I plunged into the water's embrace. In that fleeting moment, darkness enveloped me, but as my helmet illuminated the surroundings, I quickly regained my focus on the task at hand. The depths beckoned, and as my eyes adjusted, I caught glimpses of the wreck—a twisted remnant of human ambition now languishing at an angle on a muddy outcropping. Time was of the essence; I sensed the urgent decay of the vessel's resting place, urging me to act swiftly before nature reclaimed what tragedy had taken.

I quickly kicked my fins, swimming down to the wreck, sliding in along its keel first and catching glimpses of the gleaming propellers and stern before finally slipping under the murky depths. The once-grand yacht lay sprawled across the ocean floor, a memorial to a sudden, violent end. Almost immediately, I found the first body— a young man, no older than twenty-five, his face frozen in an expression of abject shock. The sight sent a chill down my spine. Yeah, buddy… I thought, sudden death is truly shocking. It’s an ending you never see coming. Recovery was methodical; I gently pulled him from the wreckage, carefully untangling him from the anchor rope that had tethered him to the abyss. Attaching a lifting bag to his ankle, I hit it with a small blast of compressed air, watching him rocket skyward as I steeled myself for deeper exploration.

Venturing further into the wreck, I scanned the darkened interiors, knowing that what was once a luxurious vessel was now a tomb—a costly reef drowning in tragedy. The galley was eerily still, remnants of a life well-lived now shrouded in silence. As I slipped deeper into the cavernous space, I was met with an unexpected noise. It was faint but distinct: a tapping, rhythmic and deliberate. Underwater, sounds travel well; I could hear the muted thwop of helicopter blades overhead and the creaking of the wreck as it settled further into the seabed. Yet this persistent tapping was something entirely different. Could it be a sign of life? I recalled stories of survivors trapped in air pockets, and a surge of determination propelled me forward.

Navigating past empty staterooms, I almost jumped when I collided with another body. This one was a cook, I surmised, though the bloated figure was unrecognizable in the eerie green haze surrounding him. An unsettling revelation washed over me; underwater, blood turned a vivid green. With swift urgency, I floated him upward, knowing that time was precious. The tapping grew louder as I navigated the confines of the luxurious yet ghostly wreck. A creeping unease settled over me—something wasn't right. Each passing moment heightened my awareness. Why were there so few bodies? The yacht, magnificent in its prime, now held haunting echoes of its former glory. The engine room was conspicuously empty, and the odd placement of doors and lights seemed too intentional. The deeper I delved, the more I noticed inconsistencies.

That’s when it struck me—the engine was a facade, a carefully crafted illusion that left me bewildered. Here I was, trapped in this elaborate set piece, and my instincts screamed at me that there was a danger lurking behind those twisted designs. The atmosphere thickened as I began to turn back, the sense of foreboding pressing heavily on my chest. As I retraced my path, panic set in; I couldn't quite remember the way. The familiar confines of the wreck transformed into a labyrinth. Alien shapes danced in the shadows, and I noticed the darkness creeping closer as I struggled upward, gasping for air. Thrumming in my chest was a primal instinct to survive. Kicking harder than ever, the surface felt so far away, an unreachable beacon. Just as darkness began to close in on me, icy fingers gripped at my limbs, pulling me back into the depths. Desperate, I fought against unseen forces, only to notice a flicker of hope as another diver appeared, offering the promise of fresh oxygen.

When I broke through the surface at last, gasping for air, the weather had calmed, but the turmoil inside me remained. Exhausted and bewildered, I was hoisted onto the rescue boat. It was only then, amidst the fresh air and gently bobbing waves, that I began to comprehend the sheer magnitude of what I had encountered. I had been down there for nearly an hour—longer than I’d intended. The relief on the faces of the rescue team was palpable, but my mind raced with questions. What had I found? Why were there so few souls in that wreckage? The looming prospect of a pressure chamber awaited me, but deep down, I knew that I hadn’t just been on a routine dive. I had brushed against the strange and the mysterious, and the answers were still hiding beneath those dark waves.

Those answers never would come. When I was released with a clean bill of health, my superiors came to find me. They informed me, in what i'd call a pretty terse attitude, that going forward, I wasn't to talk about the incident. As far as anyone was concerned, it simply hadn't happened. I started to protest, but it was clear. No one wanted to talk about this. Whatever that was, it was well above my paygrade to understand. If I kept asking... I wouldn't be diving long. That didn't stop me from looking, of course, but I did so on my time. I turned up some records online. Stories similar to mine. Divers finding these strange wrecks in places they simply shouldn't be. Strange tapping, incomprehensible ship layout, and too few victims. In most every case, one or more of the divers that found them, vanished. Claimed by the depths. As I sit here writing this, I'm reminded of a saying. "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." I think Lovecraft wasn't far off, his words a reminder of the perilous boundaries we tread upon when seeking knowledge shrouded in darkness. The sea holds its secrets tightly, and perhaps it is better to let the mysterious silence remain undisturbed; sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss.

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Sea-Concept-7772 on 2024-11-13 21:55:18+00:00. *** My name is Nick Bannon. I’m about six feet tall. Skinny build. My curly hair and eyebrows are a dark brown, and my eyes are bright blue. A strange start to my story, I know, but it’s only because I know the inevitable. It’s going to happen again. I don’t know where, and I don’t know who to, but I have a feeling it’s been happening for a while. I’m just another small link in a long, long chain.

If there’s a photo in your home that matches the description above, you’re in danger. All I can advise is that you get out. Get out as fast as you can and share my story with somebody, anybody who will believe you. I’ve written it out below, as quickly as I could under the circumstances. I don’t think I have much longer. It’s going to find me soon.

————————————————————

My Mother died two months ago. Lung cancer. We weren’t very close, especially at the end, but I’d been the only family she didn’t despise. Because of this, the majority of her possessions were left to me. This included an old blue truck, a storage unit full of tattered furniture and old clothes, and a split level house at the end of a long country road.

The house itself was in okay shape. There were some exterior walls that looked a bit rough, but it was old. Good bones, as they say. I decided I’d move into it, at least for the time being. I was between jobs, and it felt like as good a place as any to crash for a little bit. I packed what few belongings I had from my shitty studio apartment and left the city in my rearview mirror.

Things were normal for the first few days. It felt good to be away from the chaos that I’d grown accustomed to. My closest neighbor was two miles away, and I barely saw any cars drive by. I’d forgotten the value of silence from time to time. 

However, pretty quickly it got to the point where it was too silent. Soon, every creak made me jump, every gust of wind sounded like an intruder, and it was driving me crazy. I decided that I needed a project. Something to fill the silence. Pass the time. I had a lot of it these days. I looked around at all of Mom’s tacky inspirational wall hangings and her dated velvet furniture and decided that it felt too much like her in there. If I was going to live there, I was going to make it mine.

I had a yard sale that had a pretty great turnout, despite my isolated location. Pretty much everything went, and what didn’t get sold got donated to a local thrift store. I shampooed the carpet, painted the walls, tended to the garden, all things that Mom probably hadn’t done in years. By the time I was finished, the entire house almost looked brand new. I bought some new furniture with the yard sale money, threw up a few horror movie posters, and soon enough this place was starting to feel like mine. 

————————————————————

It had been easy to get rid of Mom’s stuff because, quite frankly, most of it had been ugly. The only things that stuck around were her framed portraits, the ones that climbed the stairs. They were family photos. A dozen semi-familiar faces dotted them sporadically, and I found myself staring at them from time to time, wondering what they were up to now. It felt odd. I’d been alone for so long that the thought of a family this big being my family didn’t make sense in my head. 

I started getting in the habit of greeting them each morning. I know, it sounds weird, but grief is a strange thing. I felt comfort in it. As I’d been clearing out everything, I’d found a family photo album. Using that, I’d been able to match a lot of the names to faces. Aunt Grace popped up a lot throughout the frames, as did my Uncle Rob. I even saw myself as a baby a few times. It took a while, but soon I had each of them memorized. That’s why I’d noticed the new photo almost instantly.

Every single one of the frames had a thick, black frame, no matter the photo size. It gave the wall a nice, uniform look. Mother had liked them that way. The new one stood out from the rest. It was made up of plastic roses, each one a different shade of red.

The image inside of the roses was of a woman. She was ice skating alone on some pond, surrounded by brush and thick snow. The photo was taken from a few yards away, through the branches of a dead tree. It was like photographer had been crouching a few yards away. Hiding. 

When I went to take the frame off the wall, I was met with…wetness. The entire frame was covered in some sort of thick, clear goo that had started to pool on the stairs. My stomach churned at the sight of it. I took my shirt off and used it as a sort of glove to carry it to my kitchen table.

I stared at it for a long time. Half of my brain was searching my early memories for the skating woman. Maybe she was a long lost relative, or maybe a friend of Mother’s? But that wouldn’t explain the photo showing up out of nowhere. I’d passed that photo wall dozens of times, and I was almost certain that it hadn’t been there before. It also wouldn’t explain that disgusting goo.

At that point, I was weirded out and confused, but I wasn’t scared. I’d heard about strange things happening in the woods, how it can play tricks on your mind. That had to be it. I tossed the frame into the garbage. I didn’t want it anywhere near me. I thought that’d be the end of it. Just a strange occurrence, nothing more.

That morning, I skipped saying hello to the photos. There was an imposter. It didn’t feel right.

————————————————————

Later that day I decided to take the truck into town and run a few errands I was putting off. I needed to get out of the house. It felt like I had that disgusting goo all over me, even after a shower. Being in town helped a little bit, but not much. At the convenience store, the cashier picked up on my off mood.

“You doin’ okay, sweetie? You look pale.” She said, bagging my groceries. I lied and told her I was fine, and forced our conversation to turn towards the weather.

“I’m just getting sick of those storms,” I said. “I know some people say they help them sleep, but not me”

The woman gave me a weird look. “Storms? What storms? It’s been bone dry for weeks! You sure you’re okay?”

“Oh, uh…yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” I stammered, grabbing my groceries. I hurried out of there and got in the truck. What had she meant by no storms? I’d been seeing lightning every night pretty much since I’d moved in. Maybe she lived in a different county. Yes. That had to be it. 

I drove around for an hour or two before heading back. The skating woman wouldn’t leave my head. When I finally returned to the house, it had started to get dark. Night time out in the middle of nowhere was no joke. I brought the groceries in and put them away. I cooked a small chicken dinner, cleaned the dishes, and shut the house down for the night. I needed to sleep. It wasn’t until I went to shut off the front porch lights that I noticed it.

The photo of that skater. It was back in its place on the wall, right along with the others. A fresh layer of goo was dripping off of it like slimy teardrops.

Alright, I thought. Now I’m scared.

————————————————————

I didn’t end up getting much sleep that night. I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling in a daze. The sounds of the old house sounded even louder in the dark. There wasn’t a storm, at least not one that I noticed. In the morning, I checked every single nook and cranny in this house, looking for any sort of explanation on who’d moved the photo while I’d been gone. It had to be an intruder, but there were no signs of forced entry. The windows had been rusted shut years ago, so there was no chance of someone shimmying in that way. All of the doors had been locked as well. Deadbolted.

Outside, I saw no footprints or tire marks that weren’t the truck’s. Nobody else was here but me, at least according to the physical evidence. After a paranoid few hours of searching, I got fed up. I started a fire in the backyard and threw the photo into it. It almost sounded like it was screaming as it went up in smoke. I stood there until I was sure it was charred beyond repair before I doused the flame.

The next day I had someone from SPC Security come out and installed a home alarm system, complete with a tablet that controlled its every move. It was very fancy. The man showed me how to arm and disarm the system, and helped me create an access code. After he left I felt a bit better. At least now I’d know if something in the house was moving while I wasn’t.

The photo hadn’t returned, thank god, but I still felt weird about the photo wall. What had once given me comfort now felt wrong. I took the photos down and put them in a box that I shoved into a closet. The stairwell looked bare afterwards, like I’d ripped all of its teeth out, but I felt good. It felt like I had things under control.

That night, I got into bed with the security tablet laying on my bedside table. I armed the house with my access code, and I drifted off to sleep as the lightning began once more.

————————————————————

The alarm clock read 3:45 a.m when I was startled awake. There was a sound.

ACK! ACK!

I squinted through the pitch black, still half asleep. I couldn’t see anything.

ACK! BLECH! ACK!

Whatever it was was loud. Really loud. The sound was like a blend of a sick puking cat and a human cough. I rubbed my eyes with some force and peered into the darkness again.

ACK! ACK! ACK!

As my eyes began to adjust, I saw it. In the corner. Something was there. Crouching. Vibrating. Tw... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gqoqbd/theres_a_framed_family_photo_wall_in_my_home/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/niceynice876 on 2024-11-13 14:28:31+00:00. *** I'm writing this here because I don't know what else to do.

Let me start from the start. I lived with my two roommates, Carmen and James, in a typical apartment off-campus. The three of us shared a fridge, and space was pretty tight, but we'd worked out as good system to avoid disagreements—ensuring that each of us had our own shelf, and anything in other areas of the fridge was labelled.

Carmen and James had been living in the apartment for a semester prior to me moving in, and while I was worried initially that the two of them might be cliquey, they were very welcoming. Both of them were straight-talking and adult without being rude or blunt, which was so refreshing after my experiences with some terrible roommates in places I'd lived before.

Everything was going smoothly—no moldy food, leftovers kept on our personal shelves, and boundaries respected. That was until the morning I opened the fridge, bleary-eyed and looking for coffee creamer, and found a weird jar on my shelf.

What looked like gnarled roots were suspended in cloudy liquid that swirled as I examined the jar in my hand. The jar was old-fashioned, sealed with a two-part canning lid that seemed stuck tight. I'd never seen Carmen or James have anything like in the fridge this before, and in my mind I groped around for rationale as to how this could have showed up. As I struggled to open the lid, it finally loosened, not with the fresh pop of a sterile jar, but with the gritty sensation of corroded metal loosening its grip on rust. This jar looked like it had been here for years. I quickly screwed it shut again, not wanting to experience the smell of what was inside.

My fingers ran over something that felt like paper on the bottom of the jar. I checked that the lid was on tight before turning over the jar. There, on the base, was a dog-eared label with words written in old-fashioned cursive: "To bind".

“Did either of you buy this?” I asked Carmen and James, but they both said no, barely paying attention. “If someone’s messing with me, just stop. It’s not funny,” I told them both, but neither of them took responsibility. It was too early to argue, so I shrugged and threw the whole jar in the trash.

The next week or so, nothing else weird happened, and I started to forget about the jar that had shown up in the fridge. That was until the morning that James yelled my name from across the house.

"EMMA!" he shouted, and I immediately jumped up and headed downstairs to see what the matter was. It wasn't like him to randomly yell for me, and I could tell by his tone that something was wrong.

James was stood by the fridge, his face twisted into an expression of disgust. "Emma, what the fuck is this?", he shouted, as he opened the door.

I jumped back as he revealed the fridge was crawling with maggots. Their pale, segmented bodies were pulsing in sick rhythm as they wriggled up the inside walls of the fridge, each one swollen with a glistening sheen. In the center of the fridge was a mass of maggots in writhing clusters, and I realized with horror that they were concentrated around my box of leftover pizza—the pizza I'd ordered just the night before.

"Emma, answer me! What the fuck is this?"

I was frozen with disgust, and my voice sounded stuttery and weak. "I don't know, James... this has nothing to do with me, I swear!"

"Then why the fuck are they coming from your pizza box?"

I recoiled as James grabbed my box of pizza, seemingly so full of anger and adrenaline that he didn't care about the maggots crawling all over it, which scattered to the floor around our feet. The air puffed with spores that made me cough as he opened the lid, the once-cheesy slices nearly unrecognizable—swollen with mold, shades of green, black, and white spreading across the surface in fuzzy patches. Some spots seemed slick and slimy, others looked almost bubbly. Amid the rotting mess, maggots swarmed over each slice, their pale bodies weaving in and out of the gooey, decomposing crust. The air was filled with the dense, sour stench of decay and whispery, wet squelching of their bodies sliding against each other.

The sight of the decay inside the box was so shocking that I almost didn't notice the message on the inside of the lid, scrawled in harsh, capital letters: "ENJOY WHILE IT LASTS".

James tilted the box to look at the message. "What does this mean, Emma?"

"I don't know! The pizza was fresh, that message wasn't there last night..."

"So you're saying that me or Carmen must have done this? Why the fuck would we want to nuke our own fridge with maggots?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying! This is so fucked up..."

James' eyes were full of a hard rage that I hadn't seen before, and I was almost as scared of him as I was of the maggots. "I don't even want to hear how this happened. It's your mess, clean it up, and you need to replace all of our food that's been ruined by this. This is unbelievable Emma, I really thought we could trust you." He threw the pizza box on the counter and stormed from the room.

I cleaned it all up, filling up trash bags while crying with frustration and fear. I was so confused—there had been no hint of any decay when I'd eaten the pizza last night, and I'd simply thrown the leftovers in the fridge thinking I'd eat them later today. I didn't have the money to buy an entire fridge's worth of food for three people, and I was sick with worry that my living situation was descending into the same mess of hostility that I'd experienced before.

I spent about an hour on my knees in my rubber gloves, scooping up handfuls of maggots and dumping them in boiling water to kill them, then scrubbing the fridge with bleach. Neither James nor Carmen mentioned the incident to me again, although both of them had noticeably cooled towards me, and I spent as much time in my room as I could to avoid any awkward confrontations. Each time I opened the fridge, I braced myself, terrified that something else would appear.

And I was right to be afraid, because a few nights later, it happened again.

I opened the fridge to grab a snack, only to find a plate on my shelf, front and center. On it was a slice of cake sat upright with a candle on the top, as if ready to present to a birthday girl. But the cake was old-looking, sagging and sunken. It looked kind of familiar—frosting a sickly shade of green, surrounded by hardened crumbs, and speckled with confetti-like sprinkles. My stomach dropped as I noticed the letters scrawled across the top in smeared icing. The first few letters of my name. EMM…

It was unmistakably the same cake from my tenth birthday. I remembered that the frosting was a hideous shade of green because my mom had added too much food coloring. How could a slice of it be here, now, almost a decade later?

“Emma?” Carmen’s voice cut sharply through my thoughts, and I jumped. She was standing in the doorway, arms crossed. I felt like I'd been caught red-handed, guilty of some crime I had no part in, and I tried to use my body to block the cake. But the look in my eyes must have told her that there was something wrong.

“What now?” she asked, walking over to the fridge and peering over my shoulder. Her eyes widened as she spotted the plate, and her mouth curled in disdain. “You can’t seriously expect us to believe this isn’t yours.”

“What? No, I—” I stammered, trying to find the right words, but she cut me off.

“James told me about the maggots, and now this? A slice of rotten cake with your name on it?” Her eyes were cold and sharp with accusation. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, Emma, but it’s sick.”

“I swear, Carmen, I didn’t put this here!” I said, my voice filled with desperation. “I have no idea how any of this is happening!”

She snorted, folding her arms tighter. “You’re telling me that a weird cake with your name on it just magically appeared in our fridge? Do you even hear how insane that sounds?”

“I know how it sounds,” I whispered. My voice was brittle with shame. “But I’m not doing this. I haven’t done any of it.”

Carmen shook her head. Her face with was filled with disappointment, her eyes wrinkled with disgust, like she was contemplating a stranger doing something unsanitary. I'd hoped that some fragile trust was still there, but each syllable she spoke tore it down. “We were actually happy when you moved in. We thought you’d be different. But you’ve brought nothing but weirdness into our home. First the maggots, and now this? James and shouldn't have to live with constant gross surprises in the fridge.”

“Carmen, please. You have to believe me.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she snapped. “We’re going to have to reconsider this whole living arrangement.”

Later that night I lay in bed, unable to sleep, replaying the argument with Carmen over and over in my head. I felt like I was going crazy, but I knew I wasn't responsible for this. Every other area of my life was healthy and happy. All I could think, unlikely as it seemed, was that James or Carmen were playing a trick on me. I didn't feel safe, I couldn't face a confrontation with them, and even if I could, our relationship would be forever tainted by what had happened.

I needed to talk to someone who might have an outside perspective on all this. I picked up my phone and called my mom.

“Hi, sweetheart!” She sounded cheerful at first, but her tone shifted when she heard the strain in my voice. “Emma? Is everything okay?”

I he... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gqe3ow/what_should_i_do_with_the_jar_in_my_fridge/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/lightingnations on 2024-11-13 14:53:46+00:00. *** At the front door Mom hesitated, drew a deep breath, and said, “Okay, has everybody still got their blindfolds?”

“Noooooo,” my brother Logan replied sarcastically. “I lost mine since you asked three seconds ago.”

Logan hated the safety lectures we got whenever we visited Grandma. He was thirteen and I was ten, both tall and stocky with a shock of blond hair.

Mom’s eyes narrowed at him. “Logan, how about you drop the attitude? Like I haven’t got enough on my plate already.”

“My blindfold’s right here,” I said, tapping my forehead before another argument broke out.

“Good boy Blake. We’ll be in and out in twenty minutes, I promise.”

“Then we’re getting Burger King right?”

“Absolutely,” she said with a bright smile. I punched the air while Logan muttered something too low to hear. A special treat like Burger King was a huge deal to me back then.

Our grandparents’ house lay in the centre of a dirt lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. All the curtains were taped shut. Mom rapped the door, then we waited there for a few minutes while rain hammered the gutters like a steel drum. I remember worrying we’d stand there until Grandma’s ‘golden hour’ started.

Mom grabbed a ring of keys from her bag and undid the series of locks, then we stepped into the musty air of the house, shaking water from our coats and jackets. All the tacky upholstered furniture was already outdated, even back then, and the walls were covered with shelves displaying Grandpa’s prized model car collection.

Usually, Logan and I stood on the welcome mat while Mom battened down the hatches, but past the stairs and to the left, smoke was pouring out from beneath the kitchen door. Mom rushed along the corridor into the kitchen, followed closely by Blake and I. The downstairs landing wrapped around the stairs, with the kitchen at the back of the house.

On the stove, a fry pan was spurting with giant flames as Grandma, completely unaware of the danger, tried to scramble some eggs. Mom yanked the pan off the grill just as an alarm started shrieking. She shouted for us to get Grandma out of there, waving away most of the smoke with a set of oven mitts.

Dressed in her pink nightgown, Grandma fought us every step of the way, swiping at the air with her long, yellow nails. I was afraid of using too much force because her frail body always made me picture a skeleton. In the lounge, she refused to settle on a plastic-covered sofa—everything was shrink-wrapped, really—until Logan promised he’d make her a corned beef sandwich if she behaved, speaking in the soft tones you’d use around a fussy toddler.

Shortly after the alarm quieted, Mom came in and said to Grandma, “Where’s Dad? He didn’t answer the door.”

“Eugh, don’t speak to me about that man. I was washing the dog but he kept climbing away.”

“Grandma and Grandpa got a dog?” I whispered to Logan.

“No dickhead. Grandma’s nuts, remember?”

“Logan,” Mom snapped. She insisted we refer to Grandma’s problems as her ‘funny spells’.

Once it became obvious nobody could coax any sense out of the old lady, Mom went to find Grandpa herself. We’d barely had time to sit when she screamed from a room upstairs. Logan and I exchanged a look of concern then rushed after her.

Grandpa was sprawled across the bathroom floor, groaning. A shower curtain which had been ripped off its hooks covered his midsection, and blood oozed from a deep gash along his forehead staining the tiled floor red. He’d slipped while climbing out of the tub. Him and Mom had endless arguments about that house being a death trap but he refused to move. He was afraid what might’ve happened if they moved someplace filled with nosey neighbours.

Mom shouted for me to call an ambulance. I rushed downstairs but the rotary phone in the landing spat a dead tone. I figured the storm knocked out the lines.

“It’s not working,” I said as I rushed back.

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose and sobbed while Logan and I stood there. Kids aren’t great at processing those sorts of situations. She told Logan to help her get Grandpa into a bathrobe hanging from a nearby rack.

“Ew, gross,” Logan sneered.

“NOW!” Mom’s sudden outburst upset me more than all the blood. She rarely raised her voice.

She told me to help with the doors. Grandpa must’ve noticed me shaking, because he forced a smile and said, “I tell you Blake, this getting old business ain’t for the faint-hearted.”

He spoke as if he’d just had five glasses of whiskey, all sluggish and lazy.

Logan and Mom helped him outside into the family Volvo, all four of us getting drenched.

“Alright, everybody in the car,” she said, panting heavily.

“I’m not leaving Helena,” Grandpa protested from the passenger seat. “She needs somebody to keep an eye on her.”

Mom’s hand shot up out of frustration. She took a moment to compose herself, checked her watch, and then said, “Okay, you boys stay here while I take Grandpa to hospital. Grandma’s gonna be fine for another three hours. I’ll be back before then, but keep your blindfolds close just in case. Logan, you’re in charge. Set your electric watch thingy for a quarter to nine so you don’t forget.”

“That’s okay, I’ll rememb—"

“JUST FUCKING DO IT,” she screamed as she climbed into the car, slamming the door shut behind her.

As we watched her drive off, I told myself there was no reason to freak out. We’d stayed with Grandma during her golden hour many times.

Yeah, before her ‘funny spells’ a voice at the back of my mind added…

“Are we still getting Burger King?” I asked Logan after Mom’s Volvo disappeared. He rolled his eyes and spun toward the house. That stung. I was sick of him treating me like a stupid kid.

The locks were more complicated than a Rubik’s cube, so Logan needed to reseal them. As he did, Grandma hobbled out of the lounge. I met her at the doorway, but she said, “Get your hands off me pervert.”

“Gramma it’s me. Blake.”

“I’m not an invalid. Piss off before I scream.”

It hurt when she treated me like a stranger. Growing up, I’d always looked forward to seeing her. The way she’d hug me close and cover the top of my head with fierce little kisses and insist on giving me money for sweets.

Logan and I both had a go at explaining what happened, but she only tutted and said, “That man always was a drama queen.”

She went to climb the stairs, but between her stooped spine and rickety knees, the trek took five minutes. Even with our help. Anytime we steadied her she unloaded another round of insults. She disappeared into the bedroom, and then her rough, chainsaw snore rang out.

And that was that. My brother and I were stranded there without so much as a Gameboy.

In the lounge, a CRT TV received a fuzzy picture of BBC One, so we watched twenty minutes of a cooking show where celebrities crowded around a sizzling pan. With every roll of thunder, the signal temporarily turned to black-and-white fuzz.

I kept pestering Logan to play ‘the blind game’, but he insisted he was too old until a program about renovating houses started.

The blind game was simple: somebody put their blindfold on and looked for the other while the ‘hider’ tried sneaking up on them. Usually, I hid in a storage cupboard at the back of the kitchen just large enough to hold me, a vacuum cleaner, and a mop, but now I was old enough and smart enough to realize it was the first place Logan checked. So, I left the door slightly open and perched myself on the closest counter instead. When he made a b-line for the nook, I leapt onto his back.

He shrugged me off, wrestled me onto the floor, and then pinched the pressure point in my shoulder, both of us laughing. After a few rounds we’d exhausted every hiding place and returned to the TV. Our stomachs wouldn’t quit grumbling. A bacon double-cheeseburger should’ve been halfway through my digestive system by then…

As time marched on, we spoke less and less. Even though the windows were blocked, I knew it was getting dark. 7.30 became 7.45. Then 8. My teeth started chattering together.

"Quit being such a pussy," Logan said, although I could tell he was nervous because he kept tapping his watch non-stop.

I must’ve still looked scared because he reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “Just chill. Mom’ll get back soon. Then we’ll go for Burger King.”

As if on cue, his watch beeped. Fifteen minutes to go. Swallowing a gulp, he said, “Okay, get your blindfold on.”

He helped adjust mine so everything was perfectly black, then we sat in silence while a tennis ball got batted around on TV. I’m not sure how much time passed because I didn’t want to risk peeking at the clock above the mantlepiece.

Soon the TV cut to an emergency weather report. A lady announced several major roads were closed due to flooding. My hands balled into fists. Did that mean Mom couldn’t reach us?

From above our heads, there came a heavy thud. My neck craned towards the sound. On television a crowd applauded. Logan fumbled for the remote to switch it off, then we breathed in sharply.

“What should we do?” I whispered.

“Nothing.”

“But what if Grandma’s hurt like Grandpa was?”

“Nobody’s fucking hur—”

There was another thud, loud enough to rattle fixtures around the room.

“Wait here,” Logan sighed.

When he got up, I did too—partly because I was sick of him brushing me aside, mostly because I was terrified of being left alone. I grabbed onto his t-shirt despite his protests, and then we shuffled into the chilly, draughty h... *** Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gqen62/growing_up_we_werent_allowed_to_look_at_grandma/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DivineAnime1 on 2024-11-13 14:18:42+00:00. *** The first time I set foot in the old house, I felt an inexplicable shiver, like an unseen gaze was fixed on me. My parents said it was just the chill of an empty house, but something else felt… off. It was a grand, old Victorian manor, with narrow staircases, tall windows, and a silence that settled thickly in every corner, as if the house itself was holding its breath. My parents couldn’t believe their luck finding a place like this for such a low price. “It has character,” they said. “It’s charming.”

But I could feel that weight, an unspoken presence that seemed to linger just beyond sight.

It wasn’t long before we’d unpacked the ground floor and our bedrooms, but the attic was left for last. From the moment we moved in, I was drawn to it, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the idea of the unknown, of the forgotten things stashed up there by the previous owners. My parents warned me to be careful on the stairs; they were narrow and steep, twisting up to the attic like they were designed to keep people away.

One chilly afternoon, while my parents were out running errands, I finally decided to explore the attic on my own. I climbed the narrow stairs, the wood creaking under my weight, and slowly opened the attic door.

The air was stale, thick with the smell of dust and decay, and the shadows seemed deeper, more oppressive than the rest of the house. Faint shafts of light filtered through a tiny window, casting long shadows over old trunks and covered furniture. The silence felt alive, thick and heavy, like it was listening. And then, nestled in the far corner, I saw it.

The box was small but ornate, covered in carvings that seemed to writhe under the dust, as if they were alive. Strange symbols, almost like twisted vines, wove across its surface, and though I’d never seen markings like these before, they looked disturbingly familiar, like something I’d glimpsed in a half-remembered dream. The wood was dark, stained, almost black, with a faint reddish sheen that reminded me of dried blood.

I stepped closer, feeling an odd compulsion to touch it, to know what secrets it held. As I approached, the air around me grew colder, as if the box itself was pulling the warmth from the room. My skin prickled, a tingling that grew sharper with each step. Every instinct told me to leave, to shut the door and go back downstairs, but I couldn’t look away. My hand moved almost on its own, reaching out, fingertips brushing the carved lid.

A wave of dread washed over me as I lifted it open, a feeling so intense it took my breath away. Inside, lying on a bed of faded, ancient fabric, was a mirror. It was small, maybe the size of my hand, and framed in tarnished brass with the same twisting patterns carved along the edges. But it was the glass itself that held my attention. Even through the dust, I could see that it wasn’t just a reflection. It seemed deeper, like I was looking into an endless void, a space that could swallow me whole.

I stared at my reflection, feeling an odd, uncomfortable pull, like something in that mirror wanted to reach out, to wrap itself around me and pull me inside. My fingers tingled where they touched the edges of the mirror, and the air grew thick, pressing in on me until I felt I couldn’t breathe. I set the mirror back down, closed the box, and stepped back, a shiver crawling down my spine.

The attic was colder now, silent except for a faint creak, like something shifting in the darkness. I backed away, my heart racing, and stumbled down the stairs, forcing myself to put as much distance as I could between me and that box. I told myself it was just an old relic, something left behind by the previous owners, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d woken something up, something that had been waiting.

That night, as I lay in bed, I heard it—the faintest scratching sound, almost too quiet to be real. I held my breath, straining to hear, and after a moment, it stopped. I convinced myself it was nothing, but when I drifted off to sleep, I was haunted by dreams of shadows crawling along the walls, of cold hands reaching out to touch me, to drag me back to the attic.

I woke up with a start, feeling eyes on me, but the room was empty, the shadows still. Just as I was drifting back to sleep, I caught a glimpse of something in the corner of my room. There, half-buried in the shadows, was the box from the attic. My blood went cold. I knew I hadn’t brought it down. Heart pounding, I reached out, fingers trembling, and pulled it toward me.

The mirror was there again, its surface dark and bottomless. As I picked it up, I saw my face reflected in the glass—my own features twisted, stretched, as if something was looking back at me from beneath my own skin. And then, behind me in the mirror, I saw a figure—a tall, dark shape, its face obscured but its eyes bright, piercing. I spun around, but my room was empty. When I looked back at the mirror, the figure was gone, but I could still feel it, watching me.

The following days were a blur of shadows and whispers. Every night, the scratching grew louder, and the figure became clearer in the mirror. It no longer hid in the shadows; it stood right behind me, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from its body. I couldn’t escape it. It was there when I closed my eyes, when I looked into any reflective surface, waiting for me to turn my back.

One night, when the scratching was so loud I could barely think, I went back up to the attic, carrying the mirror with me, determined to put it back where I found it. But as soon as I set it down, I heard a whisper, soft and mocking, right in my ear.

“You can’t hide from me,” it said, the voice low and gravelly, like two stones grinding together.

I stumbled back, heart racing, but the voice followed me. Shadows shifted around the box, twisting into shapes—faces, bodies, hands reaching out. I scrambled down the stairs, locking myself in my room, but the voice was still there, a soft humming that grew louder and louder until it was all I could hear.

From that moment on, the entity was with me, an unshakable presence haunting my every step. I’d see it in reflections, lurking at the edge of my vision, always watching. I began to lose sleep, the whispers and scratching invading my dreams until I was afraid to close my eyes. My parents still didn’t believe me, and I was too scared to press the issue. They didn’t hear it. They didn’t see it.

But I did. And I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t going to stop.

One night, in a moment of desperation, I went back to the attic, hoping to destroy the mirror, to break whatever curse I’d awakened. I smashed the mirror to the floor, shards scattering across the room. For a moment, the scratching stopped, the whispers fell silent, and I felt a sense of relief.

Then, slowly, the shards began to shift, pulling together, forming into a shape. The shadows coalesced, rising from the fragments, tall and impossibly thin, its eyes like burning coals. It smiled at me, a grotesque, mocking grin, and I felt a cold hand press against my shoulder.

“You can’t get rid of me,” it whispered, voice filling my head. “I’m part of you now.”

I screamed, stumbling back, but it followed me, its face twisted into that terrible smile. And that’s when I knew—I would never be alone again. It had claimed me, and there was no escaping it.

After that night, I tried to go back to normal. I went through the motions—school, conversations with my parents, pretending. But I could feel it there, a dark presence lurking just behind my thoughts, watching, waiting.

At first, it was subtle. Shadows moved differently around me, my reflection seemed to hold something deeper, something… gleeful. I’d find myself staring into mirrors too long, studying my own face like it was a stranger’s. The scratching sounds never left, now echoing from within, scraping at my mind until I was awake, alone in the dark.

Over time, the whispers started, twisting my thoughts, making people look like shadows in masks, urging me toward things I would never have done. Sometimes I’d feel myself let go, letting it take over just to ease the pressure, feeling that dark satisfaction flood me until I was sickened by what I’d become.

Each day, I feel it grow stronger, its desires becoming mine. I don’t know where I end and it begins. I know now that there’s no escape; it’s part of me, a silent, laughing passenger, twisting my thoughts, consuming me piece by piece.

I am no longer alone... No.. WE are no longer alone.