Just a collection scary stories from across the interwebs. I post all sources I can find.
Stay creepy, my friends.
*Warning* If possible, view full site for best experience.
I run a private campground. My family has owned it for generations now. It’s about 300 acres, most of that shaded by forest and the rest is an open field. We host events, like dog clubs, music festivals, etc. We’ve also got open camping weekends throughout the year and in the height of summer we’re open full-time for general camping. A lot of people take advantage of that. It’s a cheap and pleasant vacation. Hammocks get erected in the trees. Grills get unloaded from the backs of trucks. There’s some pretty elaborate setups from the people that come back year after year.
The return campers are smart. They know what they’re doing. Everyone knows their job when they roll in. They unload as a group. Tents start to go up. Community areas and kitchens go in the same place year after year, where they’ve found the land suits their setup best. Tent locations might change, but every camper knows where their tent is going in their allotted land. It’s a far cry from the disheveled masses that show up and simply expect everything to work out with no prior planning. By noon on setup day the experienced campers are sitting under their dayshades, sipping beer, while the newbies are relocating tents because they didn’t leave enough room for walkways.
I’ve tried to help. I put together a guide that everyone receives in the mail once I have their registration info and payment. Sure, the postage is a bit of an expense, but I feel having a hardcopy makes them more likely to read it. Not having to fill out as much paperwork with the police is worth the money. I’ve titled the brochure “How to Survive Your Camping Experience.” I wish people would take that name more seriously.
The first page is full of practical advice. Stuff like:
Have a sturdy, waterproof container that holds a spare change of clothes and a blanket. This will ensure you have something warm and dry if your tent floods.
Place solar lights near your tent stakes. This will keep people from tripping over them or the ropes at night.
If the ground is soft from heavy rain, reinforce tent stakes either by weighing them down or by using longer stakes. They can get pulled out of the ground by a strong wind, otherwise.
When planning your camp, allocate three extra feet per tent. This leaves rooms for ropes and stakes.
Have a sturdy, waterproof container that holds a spare change of clothes and a blanket. This will ensure you have something warm and dry if your tent floods.
Place solar lights near your tent stakes. This will keep people from tripping over them or the ropes at night.
Have a sturdy, waterproof container that holds a spare change of clothes and a blanket. This will ensure you have something warm and dry if your tent floods.
Place solar lights near your tent stakes. This will keep people from tripping over them or the ropes at night.
If the ground is soft from heavy rain, reinforce tent stakes either by weighing them down or by using longer stakes. They can get pulled out of the ground by a strong wind, otherwise.
When planning your camp, allocate three extra feet per tent. This leaves rooms for ropes and stakes.
The second page is advice more specific to the area. This campsite has been in the family for generations, after all, and a parcel of land obtains a sort of significance when it’s been passed down from heir to heir. It is an old place in the world, perhaps not an ancient place, but old enough to have attracted the attention of those things that prefer old places to make their homes. (we will have to sell the campsite before it becomes an ancient place, as it will be unusable at that point, but there are still many generations to go before that happens)
This is the part that the new campers don’t take seriously. They think it’s a prank, some little joke of the reclusive camp manager who perhaps doesn’t spend much time around other people. The experienced campers try to tell them otherwise, but they don’t always listen. I feel my rules aren’t onerous. Here’s a sampling:
If you hear something trying to enter your tent at night, sit up and say in a clear, calm voice that you are not receiving visitors, but it is welcome to visit in the morning. If a stranger appears the next day asking for entrance to your camp, invite them in and give them food and drink. This will give you good luck for the rest of your stay.
Fairy rings are generally benign. If there are the remains of a small animal inside the ring, however, inform camp management immediately.
Don’t follow the lights. I can’t believe I even have to say this one. Don’t follow the lights.
If you see a group of people dancing in a circle around a fire, you may join them. If they welcome you in, dance with them until the music ends. Do not look at the musicians. If they do not welcome you, but instead stop and stare, back away slowly and then leave. If they follow you, you can try to run, but it is likely already too late. Pray that death comes swiftly.
If you hear something trying to enter your tent at night, sit up and say in a clear, calm voice that you are not receiving visitors, but it is welcome to visit in the morning. If a stranger appears the next day asking for entrance to your camp, invite them in and give them food and drink. This will give you good luck for the rest of your stay.
Fairy rings are generally benign. If there are the remains of a small animal inside the ring, however, inform camp management immediately.
Don’t follow the lights. I can’t believe I even have to say this one. Don’t follow the lights.
If you see a group of people dancing in a circle around a fire, you may join them. If they welcome you in, dance with them until the music ends. Do not look at the musicians. If they do not welcome you, but instead stop and stare, back away slowly and then leave. If they follow you, you can try to run, but it is likely already too late. Pray that death comes swiftly.
I confess it’s a haphazard list, but there’s a lot of vicious things out there and they all function in slightly different ways. I do some things as part of camp management in an effort to minimize the danger to my campers. We set out traps for the creatures stupid enough to fall into them, so that they can be dispatched by my uncle and his two sons. We’re closed during Pentecost, on midsummer day, and other significant times of the year. But we can’t do everything. We can’t save people from themselves.
Many certified scuba divers think they are capable of just going a little deeper, but they don’t know that there are special gas mixtures, buoyancy equipment and training required for just another few meters of depth.
Imagine this: you take your PADI open water diving course and you learn your dive charts, buy all your own gear and become familiar with it. Compared to the average person on the street, you’re an expert now. You go diving on coral reefs, a few shipwrecks and even catch lobster in New England. You go to visit a deep spot like this and you’re having a great time. You see something just in front of you - this beautiful cave with sunlight streaming through - and you decide to swim just a little closer. You’re not going to go inside it, you know better than that, but you just want a closer look. If your dive computer starts beeping, you’ll head back up.
So you swim a little closer and it’s breathtaking. You are enjoying the view and just floating there taking it all in.
You hear a clanging sound - it’s your dive master rapping the butt of his knife on his tank to get someone’s attention. You look up to see what he wants, but after staring into the darkness for the last minute, the sunlight streaming down is blinding. You turn away and reach to check your dive computer, but it’s a little awkward for some reason, and you twist your shoulder and pull it towards you. It’s beeping and the screen is flashing GO UP. You stare at it for a few seconds, trying to make out the depth and tank level between the flashing words. The numbers won’t stay still. It’s really annoying, and your brain isn’t getting the info you want at a glance. So you let it fall back to your left shoulder, turn towards the light and head up.
The problem is that the blue hole is bigger than anything you’ve ever dove before, and the crystal clear water provides a visibility that is 10x what you’re used to in the dark waters of the St Lawrence where you usually dive. What you don’t realize is that when you swam down a little farther to get a closer look, thinking it was just 30 or 40 feet more, you actually swam almost twice that because the vast scale of things messed up your sense of distance. And while you were looking at the archway you didn’t have any nearby reference point in your vision. More depth = more pressure, and your BCD, the air-filled jacket that you use to control your buoyancy, was compressed a little.
You were slowly sinking and had no idea. That’s when the dive master began banging his tank and you looked up. This only served to blind you for a moment and distract your sense of motion and position even more. Your dive computer wasn’t sticking out on your chest below your shoulder when you reached for it because your BCD was shrinking. You turned your body sideways while twisting and reaching for it. The ten seconds spent fumbling for it and staring at the screen brought you deeper and you began to accelerate with your jacket continuing to shrink. The reason that you didn’t hear the beeping at first and that it took so long to make out the depth between the flashing words was the nitrogen narcosis. You have been getting depth drunk. And the numbers wouldn’t stay still because you are still sinking*.*
You swim towards the light but the current is pulling you sideways. Your brain is hurting, straining for no reason, and the blue hole seems like it’s gotten narrower, and the light rays above you are going at a funny angle. You kick harder just keep going up, toward the light, despite this damn current that wants to push you into the wall. Your computer is beeping incessantly and it feels like you’re swimming through mud. Fuck this, you grab the fill button on your jacket and squeeze it. You’re not supposed to use your jacket to ascend, as you know that it will expand as the pressure drops and you will need to carefully bleed off air to avoid shooting up to the surface, but you don’t care about that anymore. Shooting up to the surface is exactly what you want right now, and you’ll deal with bleeding air off and making depth stops when you’re back up with the rest of your group.
The sound of air rushing into your BCD fills your ears, but nothing’s happening. Something doesn’t sound right, like the air isn’t filling fast enough. You look down at your jacket, searching for whatever the trouble might be when FWUNK you bump right into the side of the giant sinkhole. What the hell?? Why is the current pulling me sideways? Why is there even a current in an empty hole in the middle of the ocean?? You keep holding the button. INFLATE! GODDAM IT INFLATE!!
Your computer is now making a frantic screeching sound that you’ve never heard before. You notice that you’ve been breathing heavily - it’s a sign of stress - and the sound of air rushing into your jacket is getting weaker.
Every 10m of water adds another 1 atmosphere of pressure. Your tank has enough air for you to spend an hour at 10m (2atm) and to refill your BCD more than a hundred times. Each additional 20m of depth cuts this time in half. This assumes that you are calm, controlling your breathing, and using your muscles slowly with intention. If you panic, begin breathing quickly and move rapidly, this cuts your time in half again. You’re certified to 20m, and you’ve gone briefly down to 30m on some shipwrecks before. So you were comfortable swimming to 25m to look at the arch. While you were looking at it, you sank to 40m, and while you messed around looking for your dive master and then the computer, you sank to 60m. 6 atmospheres of pressure.
You have only 10 minutes of air at this depth. When you swam for the surface, you had become disoriented from twisting around and then looking at your gear and you were now right in front of the archway. You swam into the archway thinking it was the surface, that’s why the Blue Hole looked smaller now. There is no current pulling you sideways, you are continuing to sink to to bottom of the arch. When you hit the bottom and started to inflate your BCD, you were now over 90m. You will go through a full tank of air in only a couple of minutes at this depth. Panicking like this, you’re down to seconds. There’s enough air to inflate your BCD, but it will take over a minute to fill, and it doesn’t matter, because that would only pull you into to the top of the arch, and you will drown before you get there.
Holding the inflate button you kick as hard as you can for the light. Your muscles are screaming, your brain is screaming, and it’s getting harder and harder to suck each panicked breath out of your regulator. In a final fit of rage and frustration you scream into your useless reg, darkness squeezing into the corners of your vision.
4 minutes. That’s how long your dive lasted. You died in clear water on a sunny day in only 4 minutes.
[More on Blue Hole - Dahab, Egypt]
Firstly, I am not the protagonist of this story. I just went to university with her, and though she went on to become a professional writer, I most certainly did not. She'll be taking over from me further down but, until then, please forgive my slightly awkward delivery while I give you guys the necessary context.
Secondly, I don't know what you will make of the following events, and I'm sure many of you might consider it all some sort of hoax. I wasn't present for any of what transpired in Phoenix, Arizona but I can vouch for the person who wrote the following logs. She is not, and has never been, a fantasist.
Ok so I once knew a girl called Alice Sharma. She was an undergrad at Edinburgh Uni the same time I was. My educational poison was History, a degree which has greatly benefited my career as a bicycle repairman. Alice Sharma studied journalism, though perhaps "studied" isn't the word. It's not an exaggeration to say that she lived and breathed the subject. Editor-in-chief of the campus paper, recognisable voice of student radio. She was frustratingly tunnel visioned, and she was a journalist in her own right before anyone gave her a professional shot.
We met in student halls and became friends almost immediately. A meandering waster trying to stay off his parent's farm and an intrepid, ambitious reporter may not seem the most obvious pairing, but I learned not to question it. She was inspiring, and smart and she proofread all my essays. I’m not too sure what she saw in me.
We were eventually flatmates down in London where she chased her dream and I chased my tail. She got a few jobs here and there, but nothing befitting of her skills. After months of fruitless internships and rejections, Alice called a flat meeting, telling us that she was moving to America, accepting a position chasing stories for National Public Radio. The job had come out of the blue, the result of a hail mary application she thought had been dismissed out of hand. We threw her a bittersweet going away party and put the room up for rent.
That party was the last time I saw Alice Sharma. She dropped out of contact a few months after her departure. Complete radio silence. I assumed she was just busy so I carried on with my small but happy life, and waited for her to pop up on television with some important words below her name; Chief Correspondent, Senior Analyst… something like that.
The radio silence was broken last week, and, for reasons you’ll glean further down, I’m less happy about it than I would’ve thought.
Arriving home from work I found a lone email in my otherwise bare inbox. An email that would later be described as "suspicious" by my tech literate friends. Despite being born in the early 1990's I didn't own a computer until uni, and I've missed several important lessons in the world of cyberspace. Lessons like "Don't call it Cyberspace" of course and more importantly, "Don't open emails with no text, no subject and no sender's address."
I realise most of you would have deleted this anonymous, blank email immediately, my friends certainly would have, but beyond my basic ignorance about online safety, something further compelled me to open it. The only thing of substance in the entire message was a zipped folder, labeled:
Left.Right.AS
I don't have to explain what I was hoping those final initials stood for.
Opening the zipped folder I found myself staring at a stack of text files. Each one titled with a date, continuing sequentially from the very earliest file "07-02-2017". (To any Americans in the room this is the 7th of February).
I’ve since read the files a few times, and shown them to some friends. They don't know what to make of it either, but they certainly aren't as concerned as me. They think Alice is just in a creative writing phase and, if I didn't know her, I’d have to agree. But the thing is, I do know her. Alice Sharma only cares about the truth and if that's the case with these files, insane as it may sound, then it’s very possible my friend has documented her own disappearance.
The people who suggested this forum said you discuss strange occurrences etc. If you guys have come across anything to do with the below, or know any of the people involved, then please send any information my way.
Has anyone here heard of the Left/Right Game?
[Read More]
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
One thing to know about diving is you get "heavier" the deeper you go. A key skill is learning bouyancy control aka balancing your ability to stay at a specific depth. Divers wear weights to get slightly negative (sink very slowly) and then as you go deeper, you use your air to inflate a "bouyancy controller" which is essentially a life jacket that you can adjust. Deeper water means higher pressure which means air gets "smaller" so you have to add air to stay bouyant. This is probably the hardest skill to learn.
So let's imagine you're diving. You're about 100 ft down, which is decently deep, but not crazy and you suddenly find a hole that looks like it goes into an open cavern - what a site. You see just a little light coming from the far wall, it must be another way out since you wouldn't see light otherwise, so you start swimming that way. It's a little deeper but since there's light, it's fine.
You get inside and this massive hole is like nothing you've ever seen so you just take it in for 30 seconds. The waters cold and you can feel a tingle in your fingers. You think to yourself about how you should have bought those dive gloves. When you've had enough you suddenly notice your drive computer beeping. It's a rental so you aren't very familiar with it. The screen is flashing 175 and the number is going up. What the hell is 175? Anyway, you start kicking to swim back to where you came in. The hole seems farther away than you remember but no big deal, you just kick really hard and push some more air into your controller.
The effort starts to hurt your head and now you notice your computer is screaming. What the hell is wrong with this thing? You've never heard that noise. Because you're kicking so hard, you're winded and when you run into the wall, you get frustrated. You weren't swimming near a wall, how could you be so careless? Thats when you notice your regulator isn't pulling air like it normally does. You go to fiddle with it but it's a rental and you don't know how to adjust a reg - they don't teach you that. Why isn't my air working? At this point you start to notice the cave is getting darker. You pull the reg out to look at it and hit the "purge" button to clear the obvious jam. Almost no air comes out. Now you're panicked but it's too late. Youre dead.
When you were enjoying that view of the cavern? You were slowly sinking and you didn't notice because you weren't close enough to anything to see it. The deeper you got, the faster you sank. Your computer had been beeping nearly the whole time, but because you hadn't been this deep before, you didn't know the signs of depth narcosis and ignored it. Your fingers tingling wasn't from the cold. You were already 'depth drunk' and your fingers were the clear sign you missed. And 175? That was your depth. It was going up because you were still sinking. You were so negatively bouyant that your kicking only slowed your descent down. You pushed air into the controller, but at that depth, your air is so compressed it would have taken 45 seconds to compensate. Plus you'd been breathing heavily from all the kicking. That wall you ran into? It was actually the bottom. You were so disoriented from the depth that you couldn't figure out what had happened. And you had already run out of air because before you hit the inflate button, you accidentally purged all the air out of your BCD. Holding down the inflate button on an empty controller plus the breathing emptied the rest of your tank. You see, as you go deeper, your air doesn't last as long. At 30 ft, you can stay down for over an hour, no problem. But at 100 ft, that time is only about 10 minutes. And each time you hit a new atmosphere of compression that number gets drastically reduced.
You used an hour of air in 90 seconds without knowing it and drowned.
When I first saw him standing out there on the sidewalk, I thought nothing of it. I certainly didn't think he'd still be out there come September. I lingered at the window for just a moment, decided that the night-bound silhouette across the street was just some guy out for a walk, and went to my room and hit the hay.
As I stood blearily over the coffee maker the next morning, my eyes strayed up to the window over the sink, and a little shock of adrenaline removed the need for caffeine. He was still there, and still standing on the opposite sidewalk looking at my house. My roommates had all gone to work long ago, so I waited for my coffee, got dressed, and then approached the front door and peered through the peephole.
He was still there.
I took a deep breath, readied myself for whatever nonsense this was going to entail, and opened the door.
His gaze shifted to me as soon as I stepped out onto the porch, and he watched me as I walked across the grass. He tensed when I stepped onto my sidewalk, but then looked relieved when I crossed it and reached the curb. Stopping there, I kept the pavement between us. I didn't know exactly how to ask him what the hell he was doing. "Hey, uh, what's up?"
He looked a little bit nervous. "Nothing. Just hanging out."
From where I was standing, he didn't appear to be homeless or crazy. He was a man of about forty dressed in a dark blue robe, and I vaguely recognized him. "Don't you live in that house?" I pointed up the driveway behind him.
He nodded. "Yep, that's mine. Just came out to get the newspaper."
I glanced down at his hand, where he held an orange bag with the newspaper rolled up inside it. "Well, looks like you got it." I paused. Another orange bag was lying further up the driveway, as if the one he was holding was actually yesterday's.
He didn't say anything. He just stood there with a masked nervous expression.
"Did I see you out here last night, too?" I asked.
"Yep, that was me."
I looked down further, and saw that his feet were bare. "You weren't out here all night, were you?"
I expected him to laugh off the idea, but instead he replied, "I was."
"You've been out here all night in bare feet?"
Panic was oozing out from under his mask of calm politeness in a dozen different ways. "Yes."
Now I was starting to feel more than a little weird. "Are you going to stand out here all day, too?"
"I—" He strained to speak, but then seemed to change his reply. "I might. It's beautiful weather out."
Well, that much was true. It was a warm summer day, bright and beautiful. "Well, could you at least not stare at my house then?"
He began to give an apologetic shrug, but stopped halfway through the motion and tried to turn. His bare feet never lifted from the sidewalk; the attempted turn was more of a twist from the thighs up. That, too, stopped rather quickly, and then he said, "Um." His gaze moved in a circle before he finally looked directly at me. "Your house is nice. I like looking at it."
By then I was getting rather annoyed. "What's your name?"
"Russ."
"Russ? Nice to meet you." I shook my head. I'd never had to do this before. "If you don't stop being weird and staring at our house, I'm going to call the police."
His eyes lit up. "Yes, please do that."
That was a weird enough reaction that I actually got out my phone. I'd been raised to never involve the police for any reason, but this was abnormal enough that I felt I had to. I told the dispatcher we had a strange man standing outside our house and that he'd been there literally all night—yes, all night. She said two officers would be with us shortly.
Russ and I didn't talk much while waiting for them. He just stood there looking at me at random times and around the neighborhood otherwise. Ours was a quiet street populated by nice people who kept mostly to themselves; we'd never even had cause to really meet each other. If we had, I might have known more about Russ, but as things were he was just some man acting strangely. Although—his aura of masked nervousness calmed as a squad car turned down the lane and approached us.
Two uniformed officers climbed out and approached us with tired stances. One asked dismissively, "What seems to be the issue, gentlemen?"
Russ looked to me hopefully.
I told them, "This guy has been standing out here staring at our house all night long."
The second cop rolled his eyes, but he did ask Russ, "That true, sir?"
Russ gulped and stated, "Yes."
Both cops straightened at the unexpected answer. The first one asked, "Seriously?"
Russ nodded.
The second cop looked at each of us for a moment and then said, "Well, move it along then."
Russ tensed and stood a little taller. "No."
"What?"
"I said no." As the pair began walking toward him, he added, "Sir."
As one got out handcuffs, the other sneered and said, "Listen, asshole—"
But he stopped about two feet from Russ. His partner froze as well.
"Come on," Russ urged them. "What are you waiting for? Come on!"
The two men looked at each other with haunted expressions, then began to back away. The handcuffs were returned to their belt.
"No!" Russ shouted at them. "Do it, you pricks! You pigs! Ugly bastards! Come on, beat me up! Teach me a lesson! Knock me down!"
The first cop's face was pale. "You're fine, sir. You're absolutely right, we're pigs. Just do what you like; stand there as long as you want. You're on your property, technically, so this is none of our business." The second glanced at me with apologetic terror; both jumped in their car and peeled away.
Russ screamed incoherently after them, but did not move from his spot on the sidewalk.
I called the station a second time to ask what had happened, but after taking my address the dispatcher told me never to call again and hung up. The anger faded out of Russ as he saw me lower the phone, and I stood there awkwardly as the grown man across the street began to outright cry.
I'd never seen a forty-year-old man blubber from sheer hopeless terror. "Russ, what's going on?"
He couldn't answer past his tears.
Looking left and right first, I finally stepped onto the street and got near him. I had the strangest notion, but I couldn't articulate it. The words simply wouldn't come to mind. An instinctual awareness was the most I could manage.
I did reach the opposite curb right in front of him, and I was intent on pushing him back off of his spot on the sidewalk, but I changed my mind about two feet away from him. It would have been weird to touch a crying grown man.
I stepped back to the street. Confused, I tried a second time. At two feet away from him—literally within arm's reach—I changed my mind again. He could do what he liked; who was I to interfere if he wanted to stand outside on a beautiful day?
Each time I got close and then changed my mind, his tears and terror deepened.
I remember murmuring, "Alright, screw this," and I backed up to the middle of the street to get space for a running start. I couldn't articulate what I was doing, but I guessed that a leaping tackle might work. I braced myself and then launched forward, ready to spring up at the proper distance.
But as I went to jump at him, I changed my mind. There was nothing wrong and I was being silly. Who cared about any of this? I slowed and curved away.
His sobbing became a river.
Despite an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong, I turned and slowly went back inside. I could still see him through the kitchen window, and I began going about the business of my day with a muted horror that I could not acknowledge gnawing at my heart. Each time I looked, I would hope against hope that he had moved—but he was always still there, shaking, crying, and looking around for help.
That was June.
A pall hung over our neighborhood. Where once my roommates and I had held board game parties and had a dozen people over, now we ate meager meals in silence. Whenever one of us would think to talk about something that had happened at work or perhaps an event we were looking forward to, we would get out half a sentence and then be overwhelmed by a sense of hollowness. Who could care about a concert or a trip to a water park at a time like this? We would stop our sentence midway through and glance out the kitchen window as a group.
Always, always, Russ was still standing there.
He successfully avoided dangerous sunburns by lifting his robe over his head during the brightest hours, and he had a few nearby trees to shade him at other times. His bare feet took the worst of it, and were red and boiled over after a week.
During that second week, we gathered daily as a neighborhood. It was impossible not to have noticed him standing out there by then, and all the various residents of our street wandered out to speak to him and to one another about various polite topics with strained undertones.
"Terrible weather," a neighbor would say, her eyes fearful.
The weather was gorgeous and beautiful.
"Absolutely terrible weather," another of us would say. "Horrifying in fact. What the hell is happening with the weather?"
I remember the oldest of us, a woman who had lived through the Great Depression and was normally tough as nails, then cried openly and sobbed, "Why is the weather doing this?"
Russ stood through all of this, visibly hopeful and terrified.
The old woman screamed at him, "Why don't you just go inside?"
He could only shrug and shakily tell her, "I don't want to go inside. I like sunburns on my feet."
She approached with both hands up to throttle him, but changed her mind as she came within reach. "You're a man, you can take it. I shouldn't interrupt your enjoyment of nature." She hobbled away in tears, trembling violently.
Another of our neighbors stepped forward. "At least take these clothes." He held a folded shirt and a pair of jeans forward, but turned away before getting close enough to hand them over. "Eh, you probably don't want my old hand-me-downs."
It was the rainy season in our parts, and it began to drizzle on our heads, so we retreated to our homes to gaze out the window and watch Russ thirstily hold open his mouth to the sky. Once the torrent was heavy enough, he could also lean down and scoop water from the flow running along the curb. That gave us an idea.
As a neighborhood, we began to wash our cars more often. The runoff from the hoses would flow past Russ, allowing him to drink and stay alive, but only for as long as was normal for washing one's car. None of us mentioned it to one another—we just saw others doing it, so we did it too.
The rainy season also brought worms up out of the ground, which he ate, and he learned to stand still long enough for birds to come near. He would grab them and eat them whole. The sidewalk near him became foul with waste until each new rain washed it clean.
One of the men on the street began building a long wood and metal contraption. For the first time in a month, we had something else to see outside our windows, and we watched him for nearly a week before getting a sense of what he was doing: it was a massively long Rube Goldberg machine full of levers, swinging hammers, rolling balls, and other assorted nonsense. From the two-by-fours he'd laid out, he'd planned for it to extend all the way down the street, around the corner, and out of sight.
My roommates and I took a few days off work and wordlessly began helping. The older women in the neighborhood brought out drinks and food for us; Russ looked on while we ate and drank, but he watched especially carefully while we worked. I'd never been one for tools, but I muddled through figuring out how to saw and nail things effectively, and the other men in the neighborhood joined us without a word when they saw how serious we were.
It took six days, but we finally finished the contraption on the eve of a big storm. As the sky was growing dark, we gathered around the corner out of sight of Russ and stared at the button that would activate the machine. If all the levers and hammers and contraptions worked, Russ would be knocked over by a battering-ram mechanism at the very end.
We stared at the button.
A jogger approached, and we stared at her.
She slowed and looked worried that thirty-odd people were watching her.
We backed up and glanced at the button repeatedly.
"You want me to push this?" she asked, cautious but concerned. "Is this for some sort of prank video?"
We looked at each other, and the old woman who had survived the Great Depression shrugged and nodded.
The jogger moved close and hovered her hand over the button—before backing up. "Nah, I'd rather not participate in a prank video." Her expression was fearful and pained; she jogged on as we stood in despair.
The storm came and destroyed most of the mechanisms; the man who'd started it took it down in grief-stricken silence over the course of the next week.
Russ watched that process with despondent eyes.
A moving truck pulled up one morning, and we gathered on the street to watch his wife begin packing things.
"Russ lost his job because he stopped showing up," she explained. "And now we can't afford the place anymore." She looked over at him with narrowed eyes and said hatefully, "I don't understand why he's doing this, but I'm not staying with an unemployed loser who would rather stand around all day than do some honest work."
"This is honest work," he called over, crying despite his words. "It's tough standing here without rest. I do get tired, but someone has to do it."
We watched her put Russ' son in the passenger seat and then drive off with most of the contents of his house.
We looked to Russ.
He gulped, wiped his tears away, and gave the flimsiest reasoning I'd yet heard: "It's more important that I stand here than go after my family. I didn't value them anyway."
He seemed to give up after that, letting the sun sear his flesh day after day and not even bothering to eat the worms that followed each storm.
That was July.
The first party our street had seen in months nearly sparked a riot. Our place was one of two on the street designated as off-campus housing, and the other house kicked off a kegger at about seven o'clock one night.
Outrage and anger flowed with us into the foyer of that house. The college guys therein turned down the music and had their friends hang back a second as the entire neighborhood crowded in.
The old woman asked, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Having a party," one of the guys responded. "What's the problem? We're not being loud."
I was actually the one who spoke next. I remember my righteous anger vividly. "How can you have a party while things are the way they are?"
One of other guys who lived there protested, "So what? We're supposed to just stop everything and not live our lives because of the way things are?"
The guests looked at us in confusion.
The most painful part about that argument was that the guys were right: we couldn't just stop our lives because of what was happening on our street. The shouts and yells from each side were more about how we felt than any logical debate, and a fistfight broke out just long enough to knock over the keg and break two glasses.
We held each other back and retreated as a neighborhood, leaving the college guys to their party.
I was bitter, so bitter, and we all felt that bitterness together—until another neighbor had a party two nights later. A week after that, one of my roommates had our friends over for a board game night, and I had to admit that it felt like such a relief to return to normalcy. At the end of the night, I walked the last of our friends out, had one last joke and a laugh, and then waved after them.
Russ was just a silhouette in the darkness; always there, but no longer on our minds all the time.
Of course, the next morning the guilt hit me like a load of bricks as I stood over my coffee maker and studied the boil-covered red scarecrow across the street. His blue robes were growing tattered after months outside, and he looked like a burned corpse. Unfortunately, I had a stressful day ahead, and I couldn't afford to process my guilt at that moment.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was the one who did it: I closed the blinds over the kitchen window. It was supposed to have been just for that day—just so I could get through the big project at hand—but the blinds never came back up after that. As a house, as a group, we stopped looking out the window.
Just like washing our cars, just like working on that Rube Goldberg machine, and just like our reaction to the party, my neighbors took that as a cue. Within five days, all the blinds on all the windows on the entire street were lowered.
That first night that Russ was completely alone outside in the dark—with all the blinds closed, an absolute guarantee that nobody was looking out for him or at him—I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling and crying quietly. This was not like the other pains on this street, not like the ones that couldn't be articulated. I knew exactly what I'd done this time, and I could think and say the words since it was my issue and my guilt alone: I was the first one to close the blinds.
I wanted to be the first to raise them again, to look out upon our neighborhood problem and force everyone else to open their eyes and unite again, but I didn't have the courage. I needed to work; I needed to pay rent. I couldn't be the one, because raising my blinds would mean acknowledging the problem and I couldn't afford to be wracked by guilt and confusion and pain any longer. Each night, I prayed that someone else would be the first to raise their blinds. Surely someone would do it! It was the only conscientious path, and someone would definitely feel compelled to do the right thing. Then, we could all do it together.
I'd put the issue out of my thoughts for so long that I was actually startled when I saw Russ healthier than before. With nobody mowing his lawn or trimming his trees, and with an abnormally rainy season, the greenery around him had grown to shade him nearly the entire day. His skin was back to a decent color where crinkled parchment had peeled off, and a large number of crickets and other bugs had taken up residence in his waist-high lawn. On these, he fed, reaching down to grab insects at random and eat them when the urge struck him.
I'd looked because a car had pulled up, and I watched as a real estate lady got out and began pestering him.
"Hey!" I shouted from across the way, defensive over our issue. "You leave Russ alone!"
"This is ridiculous," she called back. "I need to sell this property, and I'm never going to get a buyer interested in a property with a weathered homeless man standing outside of it."
"He's not homeless!" I shouted at her. "That's his home."
"Not anymore. His wife got it in the divorce because he failed to show up to the hearings."
I don't know why I said it. "I meant the sidewalk!"
Somehow, at some unknown point, I'd accepted it as simply the way things were. The real estate lady glared at me and then at Russ—and then she got in her car and left. I knew what would happen next, and my roommates and I harassed the landscaping crew she sent until they got fed up and left too. If they mowed the lawn and pruned the trees, Russ would be in serious trouble.
We congratulated ourselves for a job well done and went back into our house for board game night.
That was August.
The derisive talk began earlier this month. As the first chill of autumn hit the air, I think people instinctively knew that the worst was yet to come for him. Whenever we happened to glance his way, someone would spit and call him an idiot for standing there like that.
"Why doesn't he just go inside?" someone would ask.
"Yeah, what a dumbass," someone else would say.
I just stared at them when they said things like that. I did wish it would stop, that he would stop, but—I don't know. I just don't know.
I was prompted to write this and share our situation because I saw it in myself. I saw my feelings turning toward blame and hatred. I asked the same questions: why was he doing this? Why wouldn't he just go inside?
But that strange dread notion that I could not articulate drove me to go outside and do something no one else had done in weeks: talk to him.
"Hey Russ," I said by way of opening, since I had no idea what else to say.
His hair was a mane and his beard was wild, but there was still a man under there. He coughed to clear his throat and then managed to say, "Hey."
There was really no beating around the bush. "You gave up for a little while there, didn't you?"
He nodded weakly.
"What changed your mind? Why are you eating and drinking again? Why do you fight so hard to survive?" I asked him, my heart full of compassion. I felt like I was such a great person for caring when nobody else did.
I will never forget his bemused angry laugh. He tilted his head and said, "To stick it to you assholes."
That was the one answer I'd never expected. We'd done so much for him, gone through so much guilt and angst and effort—but I guess I'd never thought about what it was like on the other side of the blinds, standing there night after night knowing the entire neighborhood was avoiding looking at you.
I don't have an answer. I don't have any answers. I wanted to tell him good luck, but it would have just sounded hollow. I nodded and went inside; this time, I raised the blinds and stood by the kitchen window. As the first flakes of snow for the season began to fall, I accepted his angry gaze. Would the heat of his hate be enough to keep him warm through the winter? Summer seems impossibly far away, especially without so much as a blanket.
And yet all the people who come over—all my friends and roommates and acquaintances—all just keep asking idly, "Why doesn't he just go inside?"
My grandma survived two wars, World War II and a Bosnian war of ’92. After receiving a letter from her today, I have an idea about how she survived them. For the sake of preserving intimate parts of the writing, I’ll tell you the most important details of her story rather than just copy the letter here.
Grandma was born in 1931 in a small Bosnian village. She describes it as your typical farm community; it was made of only 7 houses inhabited by 7 families. Besides the houses and barns, village only offered two more buildings: a small school that also acted as a courthouse, and a church. She says that life was really good back in the day (don’t all older people say that though?). She says that although not wealthy, all of the families in her village lived a comfortable life because they survived on mutual trade. One of the families was in charge of raising the sheep, the other was cultivating for vegetables, you get the picture. My grandma says that this system was quite uncommon, but it worked for them for many reasons. First, it kept them united and friendly: since they all depended on each other, there was never a major conflict that would dissolve the trading system. Secondly, it made the community strong enough to resist almost any outside dangers. In tough times, when the rest of the country was starving, this village would pull through.
While all these uncommon things seemed to work for her people, it did alienate them from the rest of the world. Grandma says that sometimes, months would pass without them meeting any “outsiders”. They would often be excluded from the world developments. She even mentioned that there passed a year before they even found out that World War II had started.
As I mentioned before, there were 7 families in the village. Only other person to live there was their priest; those were the times when even the smallest community had to have a church and its priest. It made them feel safe, and I cant blame them: if I lived in a 7-house excluded community, I’d wanna have protector as well.
By the middle of 1940, war became more and more apparent to the villagers. Black planes with a strange + symbol often flew above their houses, and explosions and distant shots could be heard almost every minute of the day. Village remained untouched by the German machinery for the first 3 years, but in 1943, Nazi army paid them a visit.
This is part of the story that my grandma doesn’t provide too much detail about. It seems that Germans took away most of their live stock, leaving only two cows and a goat to supply food for all the families. They ripped out any edible plants from the ground, harshly narrowing community’s supplies. Finally, they took all the flour they could carry, which left the village with, at best 10 days worth of bread. When Germans came, they found a vibrant village of welcoming, hard working faces; when they left, all that remained was a path of destruction and a pessimistic food supply.
My grandma’s dad decided to go to the neighboring village and ask for help. When he got there, my grand-grandpa saw the horror that not even he could process (and that man has seen some things). He said that every single man, woman, and child was dead by the time he got there. Men were beheaded by some force that seemed to have decapitated them in a single move; their heads were stacked to form a totem on the main road. Women were stripped naked and rammed on wooden poles. It is said that they suffered greatly because whoever did this used the ancient technique of murder where the wood was carefully maneuvered through victim’s anus all the way through their throat. This way, they were still alive for hours, and sometimes even days without dying. Finally, my grand-grandpa found all the children hanging of the largest oak tree in the village.
Most of the elders from grandma’s village have seen some horrors in World War I, but the troubling fact was: this wasn’t Germans’ style. They either shot (maybe occasionally raped) people, but never applied ancient torture methods such as whatever it was that women died of. No, this was something else, they thought. And the biggest question was, if it wasn’t Germans who did this, then who was? And even worse, was it coming for them?
They had more urgent worries to tend to, however. Food supply ran dangerously low after only 4 days. Elders decreased meal portions to bare necessity. Soon after, everyone was having one meal a day, and by the day 8, only the children received food. One of the men from the village decided to go to the nearest town, which was more than 80 miles away. Since Germans took all of the horses, he had to walk. Nobody had much hope. Priest gathered everyone in the church to try transmitting the loving message of god, but people started losing faith. One of the women held their starved baby up and yelled “Is this what your god wants?” while crying. Priest had no answer. People started losing faith. My grandma says that loss of faith in the village was directly proportional to strange events that started occurring.
It was the tenth night since Germans left. My grandma was up in her room playing with her hay-doll by the window. It was about 11pm, but she couldn’t sleep, probably because of hunger. Moon was shining bright that night, and she could see the only street of the village well from her room. At one point during her playtime, she noticed a shadow on the street. It appeared to be a man walking very, very slowly.
“Dad” she called “there’s someone on the street!”
Her house was pretty small, so her father heard her well. He got up, lit a candle and opened the front door.
“My god” he said almost dropping the candle “it’s Marko.”
Marko was the man who went to get help. My grand-grandfather ran to him and brought him into the house. Marko was speechless, his eyes wider than any normal human’s.
“What happened to you?” my grandma asked curiously.
“He’s coming” was all Marko said. Then he got up, walked to the kitchen counter, grabbed one of their butcher knifes (their house was in charge of pork production) and slit his own throat. Grandma says that she never again saw that much blood in her life, not even when slaughtering a pig. She said Marko gasped for air for few minutes, kicking his legs violently, going quiet after long and helpless few minutes.
The whole village quickly gathered in front of their house. After two hours of crying, talking, debating and whatever else people do when a close-one slaughters themselves, they put Marko’s body in the church. It was decided that Marko couldn’t find food for the families and couldn’t take it anymore, so he broke down and chose his way out of the misery.
My grandma decided to stay awake that night and watch for anything else that could happen. Two hours before the sun came up, she noticed another figure in the distance. It got darker during the night, so she wasn’t able to tell who it was. All she knew is that he (assuming it was a he) wore black. He went into the first house on the road, which belonged to family Radenovic, who were in charge of vegetable production. 10 minutes later, she saw the man (she was now sure it was a man) walk out of the house.
Every day in the morning, all villagers met to update on status of food supplies and decide on steps to take. It was 9am, and everyone was in front of the school but Radenovics.
“Someone get them” said George, the head of Popovic family.
Few children ran to Radenovic house. Everything went quiet for a second, only for that silence to be disrupted by the scream of a horrified child. Everyone ran to the house the screams came from. While the crowd tried to push through the door at the same time, my grandma decided to take a peek through the window. What she saw was shocking: whole Radenovic family, father, mother, and three kids sat at the table, but none of them were alive. They all had blue bruises around their necks. The most terrifying part of it all, grandma remembers, was the fact that they were all…smiling. Almost as if they were about to have a nice meal.
I did the elevator ritual. I think something followed me home. I haven't slept properly in days.
Hi NoSleep! Makayla again. The feedback on the hooded man honestly blew me away, thank you for showing such an interest! Glad to see me endangering my sanity is entertaining people. (I’m absolutely joking).
Link to the Hooded Man ritual I did on Wednesday night:http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2mxfmk/so_i_did_the_hooded_man_ritual/
So, like two comments told me to do the elevator ritual, and I’d honestly never heard of it before this, and I was seriously intrigued. Read up on it, and it honestly didn’t need that much preparation so I figured it’d be quick and simple. It was honestly one of the most nerve wracking things I’ve done. (I did on Friday night and had every intention of uploading this on Sunday night, but shit broke loose).
To anyone who isn’t familiar to the game, should probably read this: http://blahknow.blogspot.ca/2013/08/games-you-dont-want-to-play-3.html
There is an apartment building about a five minute walk away from my house and it has 20 floors, so finding a building wasn’t an issue. I started walking there around 4:30am, since I didn’t want anyone to up and around and using the elevator. That would be a bitch to be honest. Everything was dark and silent and getting in wasn’t a problem. There was like one security guard outside the gates, but he didn’t seem to care much since I’m a tame looking 20 year old white girl; probably looked like I was coming back from a late Friday night party. Summonin’ demons n shit in your general vicinity, son.
There were stairs on the right and three elevators on the left, and everything was quiet. I got into one of the elevators (the one in the middle) and did the 4-2-6-2-10-5 combo, I won’t bore you with the details. When the elevator stopped at the 5th floor, I had to hold in a fucking scream because the “girl” was standing there almost in my face, and I had to try really, really hard not to stare her right in the fucking face. She wasn’t even a girl, she was more of a halo of dark energy that glowed really brightly, if that makes sense. I don’t remember much about her which is pretty fucking weird. She was wearing a dress of some sort though and had short dark hair.
I’ve done Ouija boards, I’ve done rituals, hell, I didn’t even panic like this during the Hooded Man, but being in that elevator with that girl made me internally freak out like nothing else. I shakily pressed one, and boom, the elevator started going up to the 10th floor. And instead of being relieved that I was doing it right, it made me panic for no fucking reason. The doors opened, right on the hallway of the 10th floor. I’ve never seen it before, in normal circumstances, but it was so…dark. I couldn’t see the end of the corridor, but right at the very end, I could see this strange dark glowing light. I shakily stepped foot out of the elevator, and in my head, all I could hear was a stupid whiny girl’s voice going, ‘Where are you going, Makayla?’
Of course the ritual said to ignore it, so I did, and leaving the girl standing there, I started walking down the hallway. As I progressed further past, the glowing light at the end of the hallway illuminated the space around me. The apartment doors on either side of me were rusted shut, like they hadn’t been opened in years, and as my eyes focused to the stupid darkness, I figured out that the red light was in fact a glowing cross. Not the Jesus crucification cross, but like, an addition sign if anything.
It was uneventful, for the most part, but the air was heavy with something, and it was making me really fucking antsy. Also, it felt like, the more I walked towards the cross, the more it grew away from me. I was pretty fucking determined to get to it, until those stupid doors started banging and rattling and knocking and it was the most terrifying fucking thing, fuck my life. No ritual has ever made me book it to the elevator like this one. Thank god, I took care to take the one I came in, because I couldn’t think straight at the time. This might even sound rushed because I don’t know what the fuck I was doing, I just wanted out. I don’t even want to write about it. I reached it fairly quickly, and I swear to god, I fucking stabbed that call button like nothing else. It took like ten fucking decades to show up, and those doors didn’t stop rattling until I was inside the elevator and hazily doing the combo.
I have never been more relieved to reach that first fucking floor. Everything looked normal, no more heavy air, no more darkness, security guard was still there, and yet I couldn’t stop fucking panicking. I ran home so fucking fast, and I know it sounds embarrassing now, because I didn’t even do anything, but I could not stop crying. I think the guard thought I was on something.
I got home, I watched a movie to make myself feel better. I even started writing the first part of this post, so if the first part sounds…cheerier than the second, it’s because I wasn’t as terrified then, as I am now. I even remember replying to someone’s reddit comment, saying I had done the ritual and I was alive and well and would write about it the following day.
I think I passed out around 7? Because I don’t remember falling asleep.
I woke up on that floor.
It was so fucking terrifying because I had been on my couch, and the ritual had said that if you made it home you wouldn’t be taken back, but yet there I was, passed out in that stupid carpeted hallway, with the air heavy around me, and no sunlight anywhere. There was no cross, but the panic I felt was like nothing fucking else, and I swear to god I’ve never run home this fast.
I didn’t even want to remember it, I didn’t want to write about it, I didn’t want to do anything, which is why I procrastinated making a post for so long. Something about this ritual fucking unhinged me, and although nothing happened the second time, just waking up there made me fucking nope. Today I finally built up the nerve to write about it, and I feel a bit better now, but I’m so fucking panicky and I feel so followed by something and I have no idea why. There’s nothing THERE. I haven’t slept properly since Sunday night, I feel like there’s someone looking at me all the time, and I want it to STOP.
A lot of people wanted me to do the midnight man, 3 kings and hide and seek alone, and I had plans to do the midnight man tonight, but after how shaken I still am, I think I’ll hold these off until the end of the week.
Thank you for the feedback, thank you for reading.
MAKE IT STOP. MAKE IT STOP. I FEEL LIKE SOMETHING'S GOING TO JUMP ME I FEEL LIKE THERE'S SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE, EVEN THOUGH IM HOME ALONE. STOPSTOSPTOP.
Best friend swallowed by cavernous tunnel under graveyard. Help - A young adult girl attempts to find her friend after blacking out during a rainy day adventure.
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The 1% - A plastic surgeon and his patients.
Today my Grandma told me that she has firsthand knowledge in time travel. And I believe her. - A grandson recounts his grandmother’s research position.
I lost my mother today. As well as 6 hours of my day. - An unfinished, but still intriguing account about a house.
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6 people tried to kill me because I didn’t tell my stepmum that my dad was cheating. - The first will be seen through a window, the second will ask for help three times, the third will come with a child in tow, the fourth will be dressed in nines.
My romantic cabin getaway with my fiancee isn’t exactly going as planned - the story of Faye.
Borrasca - “It’s a long story, but one you’ve never heard before,” a story of a town.
Dad’s Tapes - OP’s dad was a detective and kept recordings of some of his interrogations with criminals.
My girlfriend has conversations in her sleep - it took a weird turn.
Tommy Taffy - Third Parent | His Name Was Tommy Taffy | Twins | The Night I Met Tommy | - Two parents, a couple of children, and Tommy Taffy.
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I used to work at a pill mill in Florida - Creepier things lurk the beaches of Florida.
I’m a Search and Rescue Officer for the U.S. Forest Service - and I have some stories to tell.
That wasn’t my husband who slept next to me last night - They know a lot more about us than we think.
A glitch in the matrix is an experience that proves something isn’t right in the world or sometimes your brain.
Here are some creepy experiences that are supposedly true as reported by these users.
DEAD BUT NOT DEAD
by reddit user 3clipse
I knew my uncle had died.
My mom had called me and told me the news. It was very sad. She told me in the middle of work and I told one of my coworkers. He expressed his condolences on my loss.
A couple weeks later, my sister mentioned my aunt and uncle doing something. I said “but…he’s dead.” And my sister said no, he wasn’t.
I called my mom. No, he wasn’t dead.
To this day I’m still not sure how much of it my brain imagined and how much was real. Did I really talk to my coworker? Was I even on the phone with my mom at all that day?
It still freaks me out knowing that my mind could fabricate so complete and real a memory like that.
WHY DID WE TALK LIKE THAT
by reddit user WittyRepost
Several years ago I woke up in bed next to my (now ex) girlfriend and we had a conversation in fluent French. I got up and got in the shower, and as the water started running I realized, neither of us spoke French. When I got out I asked her about it. She remembered it happening but was as confused as I was. I can’t even remember what we talked about because I don’t fucking speak French. Brains are weird.
FORGOTTEN
by reddit user Joevual
My dad has epilepsy and says that he’ll experience this when he doesn’t take his meds. Sort of like a fugue state. He went to Aspen on a business trip to design a ski lodge and he forgot his meds at home. He was supposed to do a big presentation but he never showed up. His coworkers looked for him for hours until they finally found him walking down the highway in the snow, 8 miles from their hotel. Apparently he had completely forgot who he was, where he was, and why he was there. He figured if he just started walking he could piece things together and figure things out. He snapped out of it when he saw the familiar faces of his coworkers.
A DIFFERENT PATH
by reddit user A_lot_of_italics
One day I was walking to work and all of a sudden had an urge to walk a different path than usual. I work downtown in a big city. It was a strange spur of the moment urge to walk a different way that changed my life forever.
I turned into an alley I had never seen before. As I remember it, I made it about fifteen feet or so when an actual “glitch” happened. Everything in my mind scrambled. I felt like I didn’t have a body anymore, just that I was a semi-conscious entity floating through some weird dimension. All of a sudden in the array of different colors and shapes a vision came to me. It was a bunch of strange looking people that in my mind resembled businessmen in suits. They looked startled and panicked that I could see them. One of the “people” made a quick movement and everything turned to black.
When I regained normality, I was on a completely different street. It was the same street that I always use to walk to work. I felt sick, and severely disturbed/depressed.
I’ve never done any hard drugs, never experienced any hallucinations, never have had anything like this happen to me. The weird thing is, when the glitch was correcting itself and I could see those “people” watching me like a caged animal I had the feeling that I knew I was being controlled. It still bothers me very much to this day.
A SHARP BEND
by reddit user pistacchio
When I was like 10 or 11 I was going to the beach with my aunt and her friends. There were two cars of us. To get there we had to go through a very large industrial area. We didn’t know the direction, so our car was following the other. Suddenly, they did an unexpected turn and so our driver had to take a sharp bend.
In that moment we heard a very clear, loud voice inside the car saying laughing “Sharp bend, hm?!”. The driver immediately hit the brakes. We looked at each other, puzzled: we all recognized it as a voice not belonging to any of us.
In the very same time, we noticed that the other car has stopped as well. The other driver got out of the car with a scared face and shouted to us: “Did… did you hear that as well?”.
They heard the very same thing inside their car. The area around was full deserted.
THE SUICIDE DREAM
by reddit user 47attemptslater
When I was a teenager I had two really intense dreams one night. The first one was about an online friend of mine calling me to say she’d broken up with her boyfriend, and I sang a few lines of Seal’s “Don’t Cry” to her over the phone. The second dream was finding a (real life) friend dead body floating in her bathtub.
I didn’t think anything of it up until I logged online that evening and the online friend came online to tell me her boyfriend broke up with her. I immediately asked if I could call her, and she said no. I remember thinking that it meant something, like I could change it. Not long after, my phone rang, and it was Real Life friend from the dream calling me. I was completely freaked at this point, but talked to her normally… she was just talking about school and shit… up until I realized I heard a splash in the background. I asked her, “Are you in the tub?” and when she said yes I felt like my heart had stopped. I asked her, “What did you do?”. She didn’t answer me right away, and then after a very long pause she told me she’d taken an entire bottle of pills and chased it with mushrooms and vodka. She’d gotten scared waiting for it to hit her… so she called me so she’d hear someone’s voice. I hung up and called 911. By the time they got there she was unconscious, but alive. Today she’s a mom to a beautiful little girl, and she’s ok.
NO BRUISES OR SCRATCHES
by reddit user mbalsevich
Was monkeying on the hand rails of a balcony on the 4th floor of my building and fell off, as 2 of my buddies watched in horror.
I remember seeing the concrete floor approaching as I fell head first and thinking “oh fuck - I’m going to break my wrist” (Why my wrist? dunno)
Next recollection is seeing my buddies yelling, from up there, “Are you OK!? ARE YOU OK!?”.
I look up, I say: “What happened?”.
They did not see my actually hit the floor, they just ran outside and saw me already standing looking up.
Not a scratch, not a bruise, nothing hurted. I don’t remember hitting the floor, standing up, nothing. No memories exist for those 1 or 2 seconds.
None of us 3 ever understood what happened. But we all saw it and agree on what happened.
MY EYES ARE BURNING
by reddit user ClassicJenny
About 15 years ago my friends parents, Steve and Julie, were woken up at 1am to a very loud THUD that rattled the house. Worried that one of the kids had fallen out of the bunk bed Steve went downstairs to check on them but all three kids were sound asleep and safe in their beds. Julie told Steve to check the house in case of intruders so Steve checked the doors and windows before going outside to take a look.
After ten minutes of investigating the noise Steve came across nothing unusual and went back inside to go to bed. He found his wife absolutely worried sick and she demanded to know where the hell he had gone and what happened. Confused and tired Steve told her he found nothing and tried to calm her down before Julie pointed out that it was now 4am and that he had been missing for 3 hours. Julie had even gone outside to check on him and he was nowhere to be found and didn’t respond to her calling his name. Unable to figure out what happened they returned to bed and slept until Steve had to get up for work in a few hours.
Steve owns a painting business and a couple hours after working on a house he noticed his eyes started to feel itchy, then his eyes started to burn, then after a couple hours his eyes burned so badly that he was holding his eyelids open as to not blink because it felt like his lids were sandpaper against his eyes. His employees rushed him to the hospital and Steve was treated for second degree flash burns on his eyes. He was told his burns were equivalent to staring at a welders torch without eye protection for an extended period of time. His eyes were treated and he was lucky to have his vision fully restored.
So it's about 5:41 am from the time of me starting this and I just wanted to keep a little report of what's going on. Me and four colleagues are down here in South America on a bit of pleasure, bit of business expedition. Think of what we do as freelance archaeology, we go out of our way to get tips on possible sites that haven't been properly dug yet by a more... well, appropriate party.
Anyway, normally it's not as fascinating as it sounds. We go and find some dirt and sometimes an old pot is in it and we sell it to a collector, a museum, or whoever. That's our payday. But tonight we came across something odd, it's sitting right next to me in our command tent while the rest of the guys are still down in the site looking for more.
It looks like an old computer hard-drive, but we found it in an old cave system that wasn't on our maps and our informant never ever mentioned this. He said to just go out in the rain forest a ways and we'd find a cave that had some promising potential.
What we had found was a bigass hole in the ground that we had to rappel into. Not new to us, but it didn't match the description of a "small cave". Once down in there we turned over some dirt and found nothing, but Jeffrey saw some rock that he claims "didn't look right", and next thing I know he's rolling this boulder out of the way like The Hulk but turns out it didn't weigh much at all. Whatever it was, it was blocking a tunnel that had been smoothed out. By who? Who knows. We got excited though, sites like these usually have some good shit and if this tunnel hadn't been excavated before we were in for quite a find.
First thing we found though was this hard-drive. Just sitting right out in the middle of the tunnel. I about stepped on the damn thing if Jeffrey hadn't caught me by the elbow. It was in a ziplock baggy or something similar, the bag itself was filthy. It was covered in something sloppy like mud and dirt and old cave dust had settled on it for some time.
They sent me back with it, and here I am. I've got a laptop out that we normally use for satellite links. In the bag with the hard-drive was a working connection cable, lucky day huh? Only problem: It's encrypted. I'm no tech guru when it comes to stuff this advanced, but I do handle our equipment so that's why the guys sent me back with it.
Right now I'm running a program on it to see if I can force my way in, but I think we'll need to take this to a specialist. Every now and then I think I make a breakthrough, but the harddrive doesn't open up. It's like it just "dumps" a bit of information or data out periodically, maybe that's how this program works? Like I said, not much of a hacker.
I'm gonna keep a report of what comes out of the hard-drive and the general state of our excavation here starting now, in case I lose all of this data by some screw up.
UPDATE 1 Alright.
It's about 6:00am now give or take and the hard-drive has spit some data out. Looks like text files that I had to open with a few different programs until one ended up reading it right. It's like a list of e-mails, maybe this was the backup of some email server? Not sure what it was doing down in the cave all the way out here though. Here's what we've got so far:
00:00:05
FROM: Human_Resources
TO: All_Staff
SUBJECT: Happy New Year
Congratulations everyone on another successful year with PLUTO. Normally we have a little party but as you all know things have gotten very exciting in the past couple weeks. On the verge of a breakthrough, I don't think anyone here minds that we have cancelled the New Year's party in favor of mandatory overtime. Continue to work hard. Everyone's compensation will reflect the bounty of our discovery.
00:03:40
FROM: Robert S.
TO: Charlie P.
SUBJECT: Yeah, I really didn't want a break anyway.
Can you believe this shit? Mandatory overtime? Now, after the hell we went through this past week?
00:11:12
FROM: Charlie P.
TO: Robert S.
SUBJECT: Re: Yeah, I really didn't want a break anyway.
They don't give a shit about us down here, you know that. That email was more for the big wigs and the "scientists" upstairs. We're just glorified janitors. At least we get to leave soon, I miss my wife haha.
Weird, huh? Not sure exactly what this hard-drive is for or where these emails are from. While the decryption program continues to plink away, not doing much of anything I feel, I overheard on comms that Andrew found another boulder like the one Jeffrey pushed out of the way. Behind this one though was something that got us all super excited: a door. Not just a doorway, but like an actual man-made door. We're definitely onto something here.
UPDATE 2
While the guys are trying to figure out how to get this door open, more email files became available.
01:00:44
FROM: Gustaf L.
TO: Zeta_Staff
SUBJECT: Incubation procedures and vaccination.
You all know what this is about. The vaccinations are ready, come get them now. Drop what you're doing and come to my office, I'll administer them myself to be double sure you all have taken them. If you haven't had a vaccination by the next hour I am terminating you from this project. This is non-negotiable. Do not mention these vaccinations to any staff member not assigned to Floor Zeta.
01:33:02
FROM: Cherie Q.
TO: Gustaf L.
SUBJECT: Re: Incubation procedures and vaccination.
Did you not go over my medical file? I have some serious allergies to most conventional vaccinations and an autoimmune problem. I can't take any random vaccine without consulting my doctor back home. Is there an alternative?
01:40:00
FROM: Gustaf L.
TO: Zeta_Security
SUBJECT: Please have Cherie Q. removed from Floor Zeta.
Cherie Q. is not complying with mandatory protocol. Her employment with the project needs to be terminated ASAP.
01:49:00
FROM: Cherie Q.
TO: Gustaf L.
SUBJECT: Re: Incubation procedures and vaccination.
Hello? Did you get my last e-mail? I see you in your office checking your computer. Let me know if there's something else I can do until I know the vaccine is safe for me to take.
01:50:55
FROM: Zeta_Security
TO: Gustaf L.
SUBJECT: Re: Please have Cherie Q. removed from Floor Zeta.
Cherie Q. has been removed from Floor Zeta.
Looking over these emails I'm still confused about why we found them in some unmarked hole on the map. Good news though, the boys got the door open. It was like some metal door you'd find on a battleship or something, I dunno, Phillipe is shit with descriptions. They say there's stairs leading further down in there, I made sure to tell them to leave relays setup so we can stay in contact. I told them about the emails and so far none of us have any clues.
UPDATE 3
Oh shit, big update. Been about an hour since my last. Lots of stuff has happened. The guys aren't sure that this is an archaeological sight necessarily but rather a more current, abandoned facility of some type. They said there's tons of computer equipment and huge machinery everywhere, but not a soul to be found. There's even still power down there and lights. Our plan has shifted from selling some old pottery to seeing if we can find some abandoned goodies to pull up out of this place.
The hard-drive is still decrypting, but the way it's giving me information is bizarre. I know I keep saying that but it's honestly really weird. Every now and then it just gives me access to a little bit, and I copy what I can over for review. Here's what we've got to work with now while I find out where this hard-drive came from.
02:55:13
FROM: Robert S.
TO: Charlie P.
SUBJECT: What's going on upstairs?
I've heard the elevator running more times in the past hour than I have in the past year. What happened to protocol? Isn't it just for emergencies?
03:13:20
FROM: Charlie P.
TO: Robert S.
SUBJECT: Re: What's going on upstairs?
I heard through the grape vine that there was an accident on the floor just above ours. Maybe the ambulance had to come get someone.
03:22:10
FROM: Robert S.
TO: Charlie P.
SUBJECT: Re: What's going on upstairs?
Dumbass, you know there's no ambulance that even knows where we're at. They're not coming all the way out in the jungle. What's the point of the hospital we have here then?
03:30:10
FROM: Charlie P.
TO: Robert S.
SUBJECT: Re: What's going on upstairs?
What hospital?
05:19:41
FROM: Human_Resources
TO: All_Staff
SUBJECT: The power has been restored. No cause for alarm.
Our recent power outage was due to a mistake by our construction team. That same construction work is the source of all the noise we have received many complaints and concerns about. Bear with us, it will be over soon. There is no reason to be alarmed. An associate will be by your dormitory or work station soon with ear plugs for your comfort and safety. Until construction concludes we are issuing a temporary restriction on traveling between floors. You will receive an e-mail when it is once again safe to travel between floors. Thank you for your hard work.
05:24:02
FROM: Robert S.
TO: Charlie P.
SUBJECT: Where you at?
Hey I got trapped in the mess hall when the power went out suddenly. I didn't see you in there but it was hard to see shit with that red emergency light and nothing else. I haven't seen anyone else on Delta that wasn't in the mess hall when the doors got jammed. Did you all get stuck in a different room?
05:34:39
FROM: Robert S.
TO: Charlie P.
SUBJECT: You there? Read your emails dumbass.
I can see that you're receiving these at least. Are you reading them? Where are you? Still haven't seen anyone else from Delta since the power came back on.
06:00:00
FROM: Gustaf L.
TO: Frederick D.
SUBJECT: It got out.
Sorry sir but I don't have time for a long email. I'll report the rest in person soon. I know I'm in no place to give orders but make sure everyone on your floor has been vaccinated. This is bad.
06:03:22
FROM: Gustaf L.
TO: Zeta_Security
SUBJECT: Terminate any nonessential personnel on Floor Zeta.
See subject.
UPDATE 4
Andrew has gone missing. They were exploring a room filled with some giant glass walls while Andrew went down another set of steps. They haven't been able to find where he went and he didn't set down any voice relays, I haven't heard from him in about twenty minutes now.
Didn't have emails come out of the hard-drive this time. Had something even stranger happen. A little light on the hard-drive started blinking and then a part of it popped out. There was a small vial that had just a few drops of some red fluid inside it. I've set it aside for now. I asked if they wanted me to come help look for Andrew but they said I should stay where I am for now doing what I'm doing. He probably just got too far out of range.
The first time someone died near me was the first time I consumed a soul.
I didn’t realize that was what happened at the time. When I was thirteen my friend was hit by a car while we were on our bikes, and I got the hard privilege of being the one to hold her hand as she passed. I knew the precise moment she died, not because her breath stopped or the light went out of her eyes or anything like that. I knew because the most immense feeling of pleasure I have ever experienced passed from her hand into mine.
It caught my breath, and while I felt the sorrow at my friend’s passing crushing me, I simultaneously felt an immense, warm glow enter through my hand and spread through my body like the first rays of sunshine on a wonderful summer day. Despite the grief I felt I closed my eyes and smiled as a tingling feeling I had never experienced filled me. When I didn’t think I could handle it anymore, when I felt full to bursting, I blacked out.
The paramedics found me collapsed over my friend’s body and were able to revive me with little difficulty. They claimed I fainted from the shock of holding my best friend while she died. While I didn’t believe shock was what I had felt, I was certainly smart enough not to say I had passed out from overwhelming feelings of ecstasy. They cleaned me up and sent me home, filled with the most confusing mixture of pleasure and sorrow I have ever felt in my life.
And that was that for another couple of years. I convinced myself the paramedics had been right, that it was just a weird fluke from passing out. My body, though, ached and craved that feeling again for the next several months, and I didn’t know how to provide it. Though I never really put my friend’s death or the weird cravings behind me, I did learn to not dwell on either and moved on with my life.
At least, until my mom passed away. She got sick some years after my friend died. I was just starting college when they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer, and it was aggressive. I once again got the hardship and honor of being at her bedside as she passed, and once again was holding a hand to ease the suffering of the dying.
And once again, the feeling of ecstasy returned. This time others were with me as I went slack-jawed, my gaze going distant as I concentrated on the warm tingles filling me. I didn’t pass out this time, but a small moan escaped my lips, which I quickly tried to turn into a wail of sadness. Most people weren’t focused on me anyway, and my grief was real. To my shame though, it was once again mixed in with a feeling of pleasure greater than anything I had felt before, and this time I was sure of what had caused it - the link between death and this pleasure was forged firmly in my mind.
Knowing that link made it harder to deny my body’s cravings. I switched my major to nursing - I couldn’t yet bring myself to kill anyone, but I secretly hoped it would put me in the presence of death. I tried to deny this, convince myself that I just wanted to help people, but in my own consciousness I knew the truth. After a few months the cravings subsided a little, but having experienced it twice and knowing what could bring it about meant the cravings were always just simmering under the surface, waiting to be fed.
Unfortunately, it would be a few more years before I could satisfy that urge. It turns out you need quite a bit of experience before you actually get to work with dying people. Even when you do, nurses, even those doing emergency room work, aren’t very often touching people when they die, and unfortunately I needed to be touching people as they passed. But eventually, it happens - inserting IVs, staunching wounds, lots of things need physical contact, and every so often a patient dies. It’s part of the job, and the first time it happened to me my theory was confirmed - pleasure flowed through me, though this time I managed to keep it a little more under control. No passing out, no moans, though my concentration was certainly wrecked.
I became addicted. A lot of my colleagues couldn’t handle the pressure, but I wanted, needed to be on the job site every day. My hits were infrequent, and putting in hours at the hospital was the only way I had to get souls. My bosses had to send me home, but I was there as often as they would let me. If my tiredness made me sloppy I shamefully never minded - if the patients lived, the more lives I saved, the better I felt about myself. I could tell myself I was doing good work, even if I knew the real reason why. If they died, the darker side of me relished the feelings of death. Slightly sloppy work marginally increased the chance of a mistake happening. Mistakes cost lives, which got me fed.
Getting fed rejuvenated me - it was like sleeping for a week and being awakened by a jolt of pure adrenaline. My brain worked on overdrive after a feeding, and my body felt at its physical peak. I justified the part of me that rooted for death by saying that for every one patient that died I was able to save ten more.
After a few years though, it wasn’t enough. Patients may die every day in a hospital but I couldn’t be physically touching every single one, and the more souls I ate the more I craved them. It was like the effect was wearing off - it felt good, but not great. I felt refreshed afterwards, but more like a nap instead of a full night’s sleep. But still, I resisted killing anything.
My body seemed to be enjoying the fruits of the feedings - coworkers would often comment that I looked like I was in college. But as the years went by my mind wasn’t doing well. The infrequent hits combined with the growing tolerance meant that my mind was almost always operating under a craving. More and more frequently I found myself hoping that patients would die just to give me another hit, which immediately produced a wave of guilt that did nothing to satisfy my urge.
So, I expanded. There were woods not far from where I lived and I learned to set snares and traps for small animals. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, and combined with my inability to check every day meant I experienced many weeks of frustration. But that frustration eventually paid off when I caught my first rabbit.
Seeing an average, maybe slightly undersized rabbit with big ears and grey fur caught in my snare filled me with happiness. I practically ran to the trap and dropped to my knees, fumbling to get my knife out. It wasn’t until the knife was pulled out of its sheath that I paused and considered what I was doing. Nausea filled me as I realized I was about to stab an immobilized, totally helpless animal that at one point I’d found adorable.
On the verge of vomiting I dropped the knife and turned away. Tears filled my eyes as I realized it wasn’t just trapping the rabbit or even killing it that was really getting to me. It was that my body was filled with joy. I felt alive at the thought of holding its quivering form as I plunged the knife in, the ecstasy that would come as I felt the life draining from its body.
I wept at what I had become and willed myself to walk away, to crawl away, to just move, but I couldn’t do it. My body was filled with an unspeakable need, a craving that had taken on a life of its own and that I was powerless to stop. I picked up the knife, the whole time willing myself not to do it but helpless to stop it. I placed my left hand on the trapped rabbit, and while I screamed NO in my head, I watched my right hand plunge the blade in.
All the guilt I’d felt melted away with the sweet, sweet warmth filling me as the rabbit’s life drained away. It wasn’t as good as consuming a person, but it was good enough to get me by. My body relaxed at having its need fulfilled, and at the thought that I had a way to get my own supply. I wouldn’t have to rely on the irregularity of humans dying in a hospital.
Despite the fact that squirrels and rabbits weren’t near as satisfying as people, having a regular supply kept me on far more of an even keel. I got better at building traps and could soon get a hit a week. The first few filled me with almost as much guilt and shame as the first one, but the satisfaction gleaned from their deaths quickly overwhelmed those feelings and replaced them with a hungry expectation. I should have been worried at this change, but it was so easy to justify their deaths.
I wasn’t hurting anyone. Really, it was better this way. With a regular fix of squirrels and rabbits my work at the hospital improved. Without withdrawals I was less distracted, and being less distracted made me less likely to make mistakes. Not to mention it was easier to keep myself from wanting mistakes to happen. Honestly, that was probably one of my biggest justifications - as long as I kept a supply of animal souls going I could keep myself from feeling like I wanted people to die, and the relief from that change in mental state was astounding.
For a long time things were good. I got my life together. Coworkers complimented me on my improved focus. My work improved since I actually wanted to do better. My social life improved as my mind wasn’t constantly distracted by my next hit and I could focus on what people were saying. I even met someone and I’m hoping one day we could get married.
But the Pavlovian response to the animals deaths should have taught me that things would change. After a while a death a week couldn’t keep me going and I had to up the number of traps. Soon I started getting cravings in the middle of the week and I had to alter my routine. Finding a couple hours every weekend to drive out to the woods by myself was difficult enough, but with the cravings increasing I’ve had to find a way to make it happen in the middle of the week as well.
The multiple trips bought me some more time, but it’s been getting worse. The more lives I take the more my tolerance grows. The animal deaths just aren’t doing it for me anymore. Every death only leaves me frustrated and angry at the lack of response. For the last few weeks every trip out to the woods has left me weeping, not for guilt or shame or any noble reason, but because I feel nothing anymore.
It’s caused my work to slip again. People deaths, while not ever as satisfying as they used to be, still give me a temporary fix. I’m distracted again and coworkers have been questioning if everything is okay at home. My mistakes are increasing. My mind has become consumed with the thought of death. How just a few moments in the ER can change a patient’s outcome. How easy it would be to slip a patient the wrong medicine. To inject them with something a little more… deliberate.
But the worst part isn’t just having the thoughts. It’s that I can’t feel guilty about it. The only thing I feel is a desperate hope that maybe the mistake will give me another death to consume. Wondering if I could get away with giving the wrong medicine. Or maybe if I could bring some of it home.
See, at work I’m always surrounded by other people. The thought of getting caught is ever present and probably the only thing that has kept me from trying anything. But there are plenty of things I could bring home that would look like a perfectly natural, if perfectly tragic, death.
The thought of injecting my boyfriend with something is the only thought that feels me with guilt, but his death is the only one I’m reasonably sure I could get away with. I try to resist, but as the weeks turn into months, I’m losing the battle. Every night I see him sleeping is another night I have to fight to leave him alone. But I’ve already brought some syringes home. My sleeping boyfriend wouldn’t even be conscious to notice what I did. And soon, I’m going to lose.
Best friend swallowed by cavernous tunnel under graveyard. Help - A young adult girl attempts to find her friend after blacking out during a rainy day adventure.
I was part of Queen’s Guard in England... - A man recounts his experience working as the Queen’s Guard at night.
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The 1% - A plastic surgeon and his patients.
Today my Grandma told me that she has firsthand knowledge in time travel. And I believe her. - A grandson recounts his grandmother’s research position.
I lost my mother today. As well as 6 hours of my day. - An unfinished, but still intriguing account about a house.
M59Gar and the Multiverse - Judging by the message I found, someone, somewhere is lonelier than I am, and I was told that everyone I’d served with in the military died, today I saw one of my old squad mates.
6 people tried to kill me because I didn’t tell my stepmum that my dad was cheating. - The first will be seen through a window, the second will ask for help three times, the third will come with a child in tow, the fourth will be dressed in nines.
My romantic cabin getaway with my fiancee isn’t exactly going as planned - the story of Faye.
Borrasca - “It’s a long story, but one you’ve never heard before,” a story of a town.
Dad’s Tapes - OP’s dad was a detective and kept recordings of some of his interrogations with criminals.
My girlfriend has conversations in her sleep - it took a weird turn.
Note: The ending was a little strange, but really liked the process of reading this one. Something about the tone of it all was just very eerie.
The email arrived on a Tuesday morning. There was no subject, and I didn’t recognize the sender. Suspicious. On any other day I might’ve hesitated before opening it, but on this particular Tuesday I was in a different type of mood. I had put down my ten-year old golden retriever the day before, and I felt like absolute shit. My head ached, my eyes burned, and sluggishness glued me to my couch. Determined to think about anything other than that godforsaken needle entering my dog’s side, I decided, what the hell. I clicked on the email. The body contained one sentence:
Can I tell you a story?
Fishy. I assumed by responding I’d be asked to wire money to a deposed Nigerian prince, but I didn’t really give a shit about email scams at that particular moment. I clicked reply, and I typed my response:
Lay it on me. What do you got?
And so began my two-week exchange of emails with a complete stranger.
After we became unofficial email penpals, our communication fell silent for a few days. Truthfully, I forgot all about it. I wasn’t waiting on pins and needles. In a canine-mourning stupor I had possibly replied to a scammer and moved on with my life. When the stranger replied on Friday, I was initially caught off guard.
Something happened to me a very, very long time ago. I kept it a secret for forty years, but I’m not sure how much time I have left. I’m sick. Quite sick. I’ll be typing a damn sentence and I’m not sure if the old ticker will give out before I get to the end of it. I really just want to get it all down before I give up the ghost, and conversations are a helluva lot more interesting when someone is on the other side. I promise it’s a good story. Interested?
It could have been one of my friends messing with me. I wouldn’t put it past them. But pranking one of your buddies while he is recovering from putting down his companion was pretty low. I considered flat-out-asking who he or she was, but that would ruin the fun. A little hint of mystery would be good for me. Anything to take my mind off of my dog.
I decided to have a little fun with my new penpal.
Does it begin with, “It was a dark and stormy night?” I wrote back.
The stranger’s reply came back seconds later.
Pfft. Can I tell you my story now? Or are you going to keep on being a wise ass?
This person actually wrote, pfft. I smiled to myself - the first time I had smiled in days, actually - anyone who took the time to type out incredulous grunts was pretty interesting in my book. But who was my penpal? I Googled the email address. No hits. It was worth a shot. I replied back:
I’m listening.
The messages quickly became longer and more personal. The next email I received was this:
This story begins when I was 17. I was working for the city during the summer...landscaping for area schools. Cutting lawns, hedging, stuff like that. Around early July I was given a special assignment: some recluse in town hadn’t touched his backyard in what looked like years. It was a goddamn jungle back there. He must have had a friend in City Hall or something, because I found myself under the direction of the city to clean it up. I took one look at this guy’s yard and I knew it would take months, especially for a kid like me. I had an accident when I was younger and my right arm was all messed up. It never worked quite right after that. You might be wondering why I was working in landscaping or how I write emails with a goofy looking right arm, and if you are, then you can pucker up and kiss my wrinkled ass.
Had this guy (it certainly seemed like a man at this point) gotten hypothetically pissed off and just abruptly ended an email? I dug it. I wrote back:
I wasn’t wondering that at all. Tell me more.
The reply came a few hours later.
It’s good not to make judgments. It will serve you well.
So I was roasting under the sun at this recluse’s place for a few weeks - and I didn’t see him, by the way. He never came out of his house, never thanked me, didn’t so much as offer me a glass of water. I wondered if anyone lived there at all. Curtains closed, bolts on the doors. Damn place look condemned.
But I was making progress.The grass was so deep I couldn’t go mow more than a few yards at a time. I spent most of my time bagging grass and lugging it to the truck. Christ, those were some long days.
I think it was the third week that I saw the old man for the first time. He was in an upstairs window with a Super 8 video camera. It was pointing out at the yard behind us. I didn’t know there was another yard back there, because you’d need a goddamn ten-foot ladder to see over those prickers along the back of his property. Anyway, he must have realized I’d seen him, because he kind of jumped and moved behind a curtain.
Is any of this interesting to you? You might think these are some crazy ramblings that lead nowhere. I can write more, but if you’re sick of this landscaping shit I’ll leave you alone. I haven’t even gotten to the finer points of hedging technique, yet (that’s a joke, in case you are a completely humorless dolt). I do want to tell you about the girl, though.
This guy had me. Absolutely had me. He was putting on this wonderful act of mixing banal details with clues and mysteries yet presuming I didn’t really give a shit about any of it. My penpal could have been some loon, yes. And he could have been making it up, sure. But if someone hands me a mystery box I sure as hell am going to open it, whether it’s true or not.
So at this point I had two burning questions:
Who are you?
Why did you email me?
I was tempted to ask him one of these things, but I didn’t want to scare him off or throw him for a loop. A story was developing, and I wanted it as uninterrupted as I could get it. I replied back:
I’m interested. Tell me about the girl. Was the old man filming her?
His reply arrived the following morning at 3:17 AM.
Well, aren’t you a budding Columbo? You got it. The old geezer was filming a girl. I wiggled through these prickers in back and ran smack-dab into a fence. I peered through the lattices and there was this beautiful girl lying outside sunbathing. I think I even said out-loud, “what a goddamn pervert.”
But my tact wasn’t much better at that moment. I watched her for a bit, my jaw hitting the ground. The girl stood up and stretched. Really showed off the goods. I’ll never forget it. She was wearing this white, two-piece bikini, and she was absolutely glistening. And let me tell you, brother, I was hypnotized. I had never been with a girl at that point, and I’d chalked it up to that goofy right arm of mine. This young lady looked a few years older and was far out of my league, but at that moment I thought I had a chance. I must have been getting too much sun.
Of course, I didn’t talk to her. I was still a chickenshit. I backed away from the fence, but she knew I was there. Women always know.
Well, that same afternoon I talked to the old man. I was raking some grass clippings when I heard all these locks being undone from the back door. It creaked open, and a slightly timid voice called to me from inside. After three damn weeks he finally offered me a cold drink. I walked to the door and got my first good look at the old guy. He was maybe mid or late fifties, but he definitely hadn’t aged well. He looked, well, tired. Beaten down by life.
He didn’t open the door all the way, but I got my first look inside. It looked like a tornado had ripped through a garbage dump. Boxes and trash everywhere, but the main thing I noticed was, oh, let’s call it, his “collection”.
Hanging in what must have been his living room was a goddamn Medieval arsenal. I’m talking torture devices - knives, chains, a scythe, one of those metal masks used for Lord knows what. The old guy noticed my snooping eyes and slammed the door in my face. Never did get that drink.
I went home that night and thought about it some more. He could have been a historian or something. Maybe he was into some weird sex stuff. But it just didn’t sit right with me.
This is getting kind of lengthy. I guess I’m wondering if you’re still reading. Make it this far?
I didn’t even consider my response:
I’m here. Did you tell the girl about what the old man was up to with the Super 8?
Days went by with no response. I was worried it was over and I’d be left dangling forever. I thought about emailing him again. Maybe my reply got lost in his inbox? Maybe he thought he sent me a reply but it was simply sitting in his drafts? What if he was dead? This anonymous story told entirely through email had lifted my spirits after making the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make. My dog was gone, and this was all I had right now.
My penpal’s story couldn’t be over, it just couldn’t.
I needed it.
I took to watching my computer screen far more than I should have. I’d be doing work or watching a movie online, and every few seconds I’d glance at my email tab. Finally, after five long days of waiting, that welcome (1) appeared next to the word “Inbox”, and I had a fresh email from the stranger.
Sorry for the delay. I had some business to attend to. Where was I?
Oh yes, the girl. I did talk to her. After working those prickers for a few days, the girl finally stood up from her lounge chair and sashayed towards me. She moved so smoothly and with so much grace, I nearly dropped my hedge clippers on my damn foot. She got close and leaned up against the fence, and we made eye contact through the lattices. I did my best to look her straight in the eye and not creepily shift my gaze down her long and slender frame. This girl leaned in close, and she whispered:
“He’s such a creep, isn’t he?”
I agreed with her. And then she said:
“I know he’s filming me. Can you ask him to stop?”
She’d barely spoke a dozen words to me and I would’ve jumped off a damn bridge if she asked me to. And Christ, I’m sure any red-blooded teenager or even grown man would have done the same!
But I didn’t know how to confront the geezer. The old guy had that placed locked down like Fort Knox. I tried the only thing I could think of: repeatedly knocking on his door. Of course, he didn’t answer. I went home that night, defeated. I thought about telling my parents or talking to my boss, but there was this chivalrous part of me that wanted to take care of it myself.
Well, the next morning I was greeted by some surprises: a pitcher of lemonade, a plate of cookies and a crisp $20 bill sitting on the old man’s back stoop. Either I had this guy pegged wrong, or he was trying to buy me off. I pocketed the cash, greedily inhaled the cookies, and then the locks clicked behind me. The door opened a few inches, and I saw just a sliver of the old fart:
“You stay away from her, you here?” he said. “For your own good, just stay away.”
The door slammed, and that was that. I did my work and went home. The girl wasn’t outside that day, either. It was pretty cloudy, if my memory serves.
I’m going to stop here for now. I want you to think about what I’ve told you. Put yourself in my shoes all those years ago. What do you think was going on? What would you do? I’ll email you the rest soon.
Paranoia gripped me. The stranger had an agenda in mind, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
I went about my routine. Wake up, work, home, sleep, repeat. I tried to focus on everyday things, but my penpal’s emails kept creeping into my brain. Just what was his endgame? I was looking at things differently. In the evening I scanned the neighborhood windows, looking for Peeping Toms. I found none. When my attractive neighbor waved hello to me one morning, I thought, is someone watching you, and was my penpal warning me about this?
But nothing was out of the ordinary. Everything was the same, which disappointed me in some strange way. On the bright side, I was getting over the death of my dog. Maybe it was all a prank by a friend of mine, simply meant to distract me from my sadness. There was a moment where I believed that, and it made everything okay. I didn’t need to hear the end of the story, because for me, it had served its purpose. Perhaps it was a helpful distraction, and nothing more.
I was wrong. So very, horrifyingly wrong.
The stranger’s next email arrived on a Sunday at 2:37 pm. To this very day, I wished I’d never clicked on it.
You’ve had time to let it stew, now let me finish it for you.
I was going to let my boss know about the old man and move on. That was it. But fate intervened.
I was cleaning some debris out back. There was this pile of rocks in this horribly overgrown garden, and I noticed that one looked very different from the rest. It was plastic. I picked it up and shook it - it jingled and jangled. It was one of those hide-a-key rocks, and I twisted it open. Inside was a set of keys - the old man’s keys, I presumed. It was my way in.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do. Interrogate the son of a bitch? I pocketed the keys and went to the fence, to let the girl know. But she wasn’t outside. Cloudy again, if I recall. I did my work and went home, edgy the whole time.
I returned to the old man’s neighborhood that night. I creeped to his backdoor and quietly undid all the locks. I gently pushed the door open a bit, but I didn’t have the stones to go inside. So much for chivalry. What if he was waiting around the corner with a blade the size of a broomstick? I softly clicked the door shut, leaving it unlocked. I was planning on coming right back.
But first I went to the girl’s house. I needed backup, someone to confront him with. It was my first time seeing her place from the front. It was small and yellow and unassuming. No lights on. I approached the front door, wondering if she’d even recognize me.
The place was totally dark. I peered inside through a window, and even through the blackness I could see the house was empty. Totally empty. Like it had been completely abandoned or never lived in at all. It didn’t sit right. I knocked, and when no one answered I just opened the door and poked my head inside.
I heard some commotion that sounded like struggling. I approached the noise, worried that maybe the old man was there and doing something terrible. The sounds led me to a bedroom, and I pushed open the door.
There was the girl. Kind of.
She was on all fours, writhing in pain. Her bones were cracking and breaking. A large, black serpent slowly made its way out of the girl’s body, its head emerging from the girl’s mouth. Her jaw spread wide and broke apart, teeth rattling to the floor. The skin of the girl stretched and ripped apart. It was, I guess there’s no other way to put it, it was a snake shedding it’s skin.
I got the hell out of there, as you would imagine. Ran about four blocks away, and I collapsed to the curb. A million thoughts ran through my head, but I was instinctively sure of one thing: I was wrong about the old guy. That snake thing was out to get him. I felt it in my gut. He had been protecting himself with all that crazy shit, the home fortress, and maybe filming her to get proof, I don’t know. But he was the good guy, and it was pretty clear where that serpent was headed. Hell, I’d even unlocked the door for it.
I booked it to the old man’s place, and his back door was wide open. I ran inside and upstairs, and I’ll never forget what I saw: the old man shaking and gasping in a chair, a giant snake coiled around his body squeezing the life out of him. He didn’t reach out to me, nor did he call out for help. I’m not sure if he could. The snake squeezed tighter, and the old man expired before me.
I ran again, and I didn’t stop until I got home. I called the police and stammered something about an attack happening at the old man’s place. The police arrived first, and they found the old man. He was dead, of course, but there was no sign of a struggle. It appeared that he had simply died in his easy chair. Peacefully, they added. I jabbered something about a giant snake, and the cops thought I was fucking nuts.
My boss at City Hall got the official word: the old man died of natural causes. No marks around a neck where a giant snake had gripped him like a vice. A lonely, old man had simply expired. There was nothing unusual about that. The only unusual thing, the cops said, were the guy’s windows. Thickest they’d ever seen.
I never told the police about having the keys. I felt bad, in a way, lying about that. And I recanted the story about the snake. Told them I’d gone back to the house to fetch some landscaping equipment I’d left behind, and in the darkness I could have sworn I saw a giant snake slither into the house But even I admitted, it must have been my eyes playing tricks on me. The cops responded with confused stares, they promptly informed my parents that their son may be a drug user, and that was that.
I ditched the keys in a garbage can in town. It felt like I was committing a crime, but that was the least of my worries. I was primarily concerned that a giant fucking snake was going to creep into my house and strangle the life from me. I barely slept, and I was a red-eyed zombie in the daytime. My parents thought the cops were right: that I was on drugs.
A few weeks went by, and...what do you think happens next? This is a story after all.
That’s how that email ended. I was enthralled and mortified. I stared at my screen until the computer went to sleep. And I wasn’t thinking about if the tale was true or not. I didn’t give a damn if it actually happened or not - although I was 100% leaning towards absolutely, no chance in hell - I just wanted to guess what happened next.
I can’t fully explain it. This stranger had unpacked himself to me, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. I wanted toImpress him in some strange way. Like some kid desperately seeking a pat on the back from daddy.
I thought for a moment, and then I typed my response:
That giant fucking snake creeped into your house, didn’t it?
I hit send.
The reply arrived at 12:33 AM. I was still awake.
Bingo. You’re a smart cookie, and maybe not a humorless dolt after all.
Yes, the giant fucking snake creeped into my house. I woke to the sensation of that serpent slithering under the covers of my bed. It ran across my body until its head was inches from my face. It waved its tongue around and hissed.
I just lay there, motionless. The serpent head moved down my body, and it stopped at my right arm. The funny looking one. And at that moment, I think it pitied me. Maybe it identified with me in some way. Lord, I don’t know. Why would a giant demon snake have compassion? But I swear to Christ, it did.
It shot up, flinging the covers clean off my bed. And I watched, absolutely petrified, as this ten-foot-long creature raised its head to the ceiling, towered over me and hissed a few more times for good measure. Then it slithered away. I’m not sure how it got in or out of my house. But in the morning, it was gone.
And that was that. But one part has nagged at me throughout the years. I sometimes wonder if the old man wanted me to find those keys. Maybe he was tired of hiding.
I wonder.
I was dumbfounded. I reread the email ten times to make sure I didn’t miss a single detail. I considered motives and objectives and circumstances and happenstances and everything in-between, but I kept arriving at one question:
Why did he choose to email me?
So I asked him. I drafted an email, demanding this stranger tell me who he was, and why he took the time to string me along with a story that was obviously an utter and complete fabrication.
I clicked send. He replied in less than twenty minutes.
My name is Russ. And I told you my story because she’s back. I don’t know why she waited all these years, but I guess there’s some things you just can’t explain. The evil was dormant, but now it’s awake.
I didn’t tell a soul for four decades. And you know what’s funny? After a while, I thought it didn’t really matter - who would believe me, anyway?
I’ve tried to rationalize it, but I can’t. There’s no rationalizing evil. But you can help me.
I quickly replied:
How can I help you? This has gone on long enough. Do I know you? Are you a friend of mine? This was a marvelous prank. Simply astounding. Now, tell me who you are.
The man called Russ responded with the last email he ever sent me:
I contacted you because you can make the tough decisions. I know what you’ve been through, and you’re stronger than me. I’m not strong enough to do it, but you are. Help me.
That was it. I emailed Russ back three, four, five times. No response. I tried again and again over the next few days. Nada. Eventually, the emails bounced back, undeliverable.
I thought it was over, but the story of me and Russ was just reaching its third act. Four days after Russ’s email account went dark, a yellow package arrived in my mailbox. I shook it.
It jingled and jangled. My stomach dropped.
Along with the set of keys was a sticky note with an address and a short, handwritten message:
She doesn’t know I sent these to you. At least I don’t think she does. Remember, I’m not strong enough to do it, but you are.
The town was an hour away. I drove to the address on a Saturday afternoon, and I pulled up to a quaint, blue and white, two-story home. My car grumbled softly, and my hands clenched the wheel. The keys in the yellow envelope rested on the passenger seat.
All of the curtains were shut. I counted six locks on the front door.
A figure appeared at the upstairs window. It was a man of medium build with graying hair. He raised his left hand as if to say hello. His right arm stayed at his side, bent inwards at an awkward angle.
I’d had enough. I peeled out and drove off.
It was the best prank I’d ever been a part of. How much planning did it take, and who was involved? It was stunning in its delivery. And even if it was true, simply because I made the decision to put down my dog, I’d be okay with opening up the doors for a deadly and evil serpent creature to murder an old guy? It was ludicrous.
I was crossing a bridge on my way back home, and I abruptly skidded my car to a stop. I grabbed the keys from the envelope and hopped out. With as much gusto as I could muster, I launched the keys off the bridge into the water. They quickly sank and vanished into the depths below.
I got back into my car, and I took one last look at the river. I spotted someone trudging through the weeds near the riverbank. It was a young woman. She dove into the river, her tall and slender frame gracefully gliding through the water. Her movements were smooth and hypnotic, and when she reached the middle, she dove underneath the surface.
I didn’t wait for her to emerge. I put my foot to the gas, and the bridge shrank in my rearview mirror until it disappeared completely.
Russ had told me that maybe it didn’t matter if he kept his secret - no one would’ve believed him anyway. Now I had my own story to tell, and I wondered what to do with it.
Maybe it didn’t matter. No one would ever believe me, either.
I read Russ’s obituary a few days later. It said he died of natural causes.
“Where did they say they’re going again?,” asked Laura.
I sighed. “Dad said he was going to put gas in the car and mom needed to use the bathroom. The one here’s broken.”
I studied Laura’s face, knowing she was close to tears. She never wanted to be too far from our parents. Even though we could see them across the street at the gas station, Laura was worried they’d abandon her and she’d be stuck with her big sister forever.
“Look,” I told her, pointing out the enormous, floor-to-ceiling window. “There’s dad next to the gas pump. And there’s mom running toward the bathroom. I guess she really had to pee.” That got a giggle out of Laura, but I could tell the waterworks were imminent.
“What if they leave us here?,” she whispered, the latter half of the inquiry nearly inaudible under her burgeoning whimpers.
“Laura, it’s okay.” I did my best to sound confident and authoritative; Laura needed to believe with certainty they’d be returning momentarily. Otherwise, I’d be left with a blubbering wreck as we waited for our food in the middle of a crowded diner. “She’s four,” I reminded myself. “You were scared of everything when you were four.”
My sister took a loud, deep breath and exhaled slowly. It’s a technique I taught her for when she felt sad or scared. A tear dripped out of her right eye and slid down her cheek. She wiped it away, but no others came. She stared intently out the large window at our parents, who were getting back in the car.
Our food arrived. All four of us had ordered some variety of grilled cheese. Laura’s was on white bread with American cheese, and she picked it up and started shoveling the thing into her mouth. I didn’t bother to tell her to wait for mom and dad before eating. I was hungry too. I picked up my cheddar on rye and took a bite.
Down the street, a gasoline tanker was making its way in our direction. It appeared to be going much faster than any of the cars I’d seen on that road as we sat there. Mounting dread formed knots in my viscera.
I don’t know what caused me to push my head back against the soft leather of the booth and press my face into its corner, but when the truck careened into the gas station across the street and exploded, shattering the thick glass of the diner windows, I was shielded from the majority of shrapnel and the blast of heat. Laura wasn’t.
By the time I’d collected myself enough to react, I saw the left side of my sister’s head was blistered and encrusted with glass. She stared at me, motionless, in obvious shock. Then her hand rose to touch the side of her face. The touch became a rub. Blood oozed out of her small palm as it was lacerated by the jagged edges. She looked to her right and picked up the grilled cheese that had fallen onto her seat, wiggled it slightly to get the biggest shards of glass off, and began to eat.
The ringing in my ears had drowned out the overture of hysteria playing around us. But, gradually, screams filled my ears. I ignored them. All I could do was look outside at the hellscape of fire and twisted metal. I saw our car. A Subaru station wagon. It was facing in our direction, but upside down and on fire.
I watched a shape crawl out of the driver’s side window. Its clothes and hair were gone. All it looked like was a figure drawn in red and black. Still, I was with it enough to know it was our father. He hobbled over to the other side of the car and pulled another figure from the wreck. Mom. She didn’t move. Dad collapsed to his knees in front of her, and after a few moments, turned toward the diner. I’d noticed Laura’s shock had worn off and she’d begun howling in fear and pain.
I tried to get her to calm down. It was an exercise in futility; even I was crying and near panic. I held her hands and babbled, “it’s okay, it’s okay.” In the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I jerked my head around to see dad moving toward the diner. He couldn’t run, but he was hobbling on what looked like half a left foot. As he got closer, I could see how horrifically injured he was. Laura noticed him coming, too, but didn’t recognize him whatsoever. She screamed.
Dad made his way to us as the wail of sirens grew louder. The details of his injuries became clearer with every awkward step. Despite being burned, he was sopping wet. Fluid dripped from hideous burns on his head, chest, and legs. He made it to our table and reached out, grabbing Laura. Laura twisted in his grasp and scratched his arm, gouging deep tracks in the destroyed flesh. He pulled her out and held her tightly.
I clambered onto the table and through the window and stood, stupidly, not knowing what to do or how to help. Dad’s voice wheezed out of his lipless mouth. Over Laura’s screams, it was hard to make out what he was saying. He clutched my sister against his oozing chest and, suddenly, she realized who he was. She abruptly stopped shrieking and merely whimpered.
Dad looked up at me and I got closer. He repeated what he said before, over and over, his voice gradually tapering into gurgling nothingness. “We’re still a family. We’re still a family. We’re still a family. We’re still a family.” I looked across the street at the motionless, charred figure next to the Subaru. Then I looked at dad, still cradling Laura despite having slumped over.
I gently took Laura from our father’s lifeless arms. She sobbed into my chest as I ran forward, across the street. I darted between blackened vehicles and unidentifiable wreckage. “Still a family,” I thought to myself, and closed my eyes. The emergency workers managed to restrain me before we could reunite with our parents in the fire.
That sick, bottomless-pit-in-the-stomach feel crept upon me last night when my wife slipped into bed.
I knew I had made a mistake trust me, I knew that I was a shitty human being. Not just because what I had done to my wife, but what I had done to Michelle, my recent "fling" from work. If I strained my ears, I could hear her in the closet. A muffled sob, or a shifting about. Our mixed sweat still clung to my body, our sin still hung onto my mind.
My wife rolled over.
Every breathe my wife took gripped my heart. Every yawn paralyzing. It grew worse when she spoke.
"What's wrong dear?"
I tensed, and stuttered out an unconvincing excuse. I was always a bad liar. This time however, I was out not to save myself. The thought and disbelief that must have been going through Michelle's mind added onto my guilt. I imagined her coming up to me tomorrow at work. Soft blows with her fists and curses with her tongue. "You said you weren't married! You stupid bastard!". My thoughts went to the wedding ring still in the nightstand. Probably dusty from the lack of use when I could help it. Most people want to keep the sanctity of marriage alive in their hearts, and it made my mother smile when she saw my "faithfulness". She always loved my wife, hoped that together we would have a beautiful baby with luscious locks of golden hair and lovely green eyes. We were close.
"Dear I'm cold...won't you come closer?"
I couldn't get out a reply this time. She inched closer, and wrapped an arm around me. Her once warm hands that I loved to wrap mine into were freezing. Her breath that once filled me with life and love was hot on my neck. She commented on my lack of clothing, and my apparent state of despair. She pulled on my body, and I followed her command. I rolled over to meet her eyes, and stroked her hair. I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Hollow grey eyes haunted my thoughts. Clumps of black hair clung to my hand. My lips tasted like dust, and felt frostbitten. None of this was new, it was the same feelings I had last time I kissed my wife. The last time I stroked her hair as she always loved.
She rolled over, and in a few minutes fell asleep. Tears began to roll down my eyes. I heard Michelle exit the closet as stealthily as she could, and slip out the door. I couldn’t leave though. Not this time. Not when my baby girl began to cry beside me, muffled by layers of blankets and flesh.
You would think that turning over to my wife would make me happy. That the sight of her would fill me with memories of our lives together. However for the last few years, any thought of her reminded me of my failure as a husband and father. Reminded me of a hospital room, filled with blood of the two people most important in my life. Reminded me of the night my wife died in labor. A half-asleep voice spoke out next to me, in a half-familiar voice.
Part 1 (Below) | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Final
I write this because as of now, I am not sure if I am privy to a terrible secret, or if I myself am insane. Being a practicing psychiatrist, that would obviously be bad for me both ethically and from a business standpoint. However, since I cannot believe I am crazy, I’m sending this story to you because you’re probably the only people who would even consider it possible. For me, this is a matter of responsibility to humanity.
Let me say before I start that I wish I could be more specific about the names and places I’ve mentioned here. But I do need to hold down a job, and can’t afford to be blacklisted in the hospital system as someone who goes around spilling the secrets of patients, no matter how special the case. So while the events I describe in this account are true, the names and places have had to be disguised, in order that I can keep my career safe while also trying to keep my readers safe.
What few specifics I can give are this: My story took place in the early 2000’s at a mental hospital in the United States. I was, at the time, going through my residency, and was assigned to assist the actual presiding physicians with their various duties, including therapy, prescriptions, etc. Normally, a resident doesn’t do any actual medical work on their own. You’re just supposed to watch and learn, for the most part. However, at this hospital, the staff was stretched so thin that I actually ended up less an assistant to the presiding physicians and more an unofficial equal of theirs, since I got little to no assistance with the patients I was assigned to treat.
This might’ve upset some residents, but I actually found it very refreshing. I’d graduated from one of the top medical schools in the country, and had taken this position primarily because I’d wanted to stay close to my then-fiancee, who was just finishing up her senior year at college, and this was the only hospital near her school. My professors tried to talk me out of it, saying such an appointment was beneath me, and that I could have better prospects, but my heart won out over my wallet. Besides, I told myself, it’d just be a job I’d take for a year, until my fiance had completed her studies and would be free to move on with me. About this much, at least, I turned out to be right.
Even so, if I’d known what that year would hold, I’d have reconsidered.
It probably won’t surprise you that working in a mental hospital, especially an understaffed one, is both fascinating and dreary. On the one hand, you get to encounter people with views of the world that would be darkly comical if they weren’t causing so much suffering. One of my patients, for instance, tried desperately to tell me that an undergraduate club at a certain elite university was keeping some sort of giant, man-eating monster with an unpronounceable name in the basement of a local restaurant, and that this same club had fed his lover to it. Actually, the man had seemingly had a psychotic break and killed his lover himself, but it wasn’t any good telling him that. Another, meanwhile, was sure that a children’s cartoon character had fallen in love with him, and had murdered some random internet artist for depicting her in a manner he found demeaning.
Then there were the three or so elderly black gentlemen, every one of whom thought they were Jesus, which made them all yell at each other anytime they were in the same room. The funniest part was that one of them even had some sort of background in theology and kept shouting random quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas at the others, as if this somehow made his claim to the title of Savior more authentic. Again, it would’ve been funny, if their situation hadn’t been so depressingly hopeless to watch.
But even among company like this, every hospital has at least one patient who’s weird even for the mental ward. I’m talking about the kind of person who even the doctors have given up on, and who everyone gives a wide berth, no matter how experienced they are. This type of patient is obviously insane, but nobody knows how they got that way. What they do know, however, is that it’ll drive you insane trying to figure it out.
Ours was particularly bizarre. To begin with, he’d been brought into the hospital as a small child and had somehow managed to stay committed in the hospital for over twenty years, despite the fact that no one had ever succeeded in diagnosing him. He had a name, but I was told that no one in the hospital remembered it, because his case was considered so intractable that no one bothered to read his file anymore. When people had to talk about him, they called him “Joe.” ,
But no one talked to him, because he never came out of his cell, and pretty much everyone was encouraged just to stay away from him, period. Apparently any kind of human contact, even with trained professionals, made his condition worse. The only people who saw him regularly were the people who had to change his sheets, or who had to make sure he took his medication. These visits were invariably eerily silent, and always ended with the staff involved looking like they’d drink a liquor store given the chance once they’d finished.
Being a young, ambitious doctor with a lot in the way of grades and little in the way of modesty, I was fascinated by this mystery patient, and as soon as I heard about him, made up my mind that I would be the one to cure him. At first I only mentioned this as a sort of passing, half-hearted joke, and those who heard me duly laughed it off as cute, youthful enthusiasm.
However, there was one nurse who I confided my wish to seriously. Out of respect for her and for her family, I’ll just call her Nessie, and it’s with her that this story really begins.
I should say a few things about Nessie, and why I told her in particular about this. Nessie had been at the hospital since she’d first emigrated from Ireland as a newly minted nurse in the 70’s. Technically, she was a night nurse, but judging from the hours she worked, you’d think she lived at the place, and seemed to always be on hand.
She also was an immense source of comfort to me and the other residents, who weren’t used to working on a mental ward at all, let alone one that was so understaffed. But Nessie seemed to know how to solve practically any problem that might arise. If a raging patient needed calming down, Nessie would be there, her fading black hair done up in a no-nonsense bun and her sharp green eyes flashing from her pinched face. If a patient was reluctant to take his medicine, Nessie would be right there to coax him into it. If a member of staff was absent for an unexplained reason, Nessie seemed to always be there to cover for him. If the entire place had burned down, I’m pretty sure Nessie would’ve been the one to tell the architect how to put it back just the way it had been.
In other words, if you wanted to know how things worked, or wanted advice of any kind, you talked to Nessie. This alone would’ve been reason enough to make me approach her with my rather naive ambition, but there was one other reason on top of all that I have said, which is that Nessie was the nurse on the night shift who’d been given the task of administering medication to “Joe” himself, and was thus one of the few people who spoke to him on any sort of regular basis.
I remember the conversation distinctly. Nessie was sitting in the beaten up hospital cafeteria, a worn styrofoam cup full of coffee held in her surprisingly firm hands. I could tell she was in a good mood because her hair was down, and Nessie seemed to adhere to the rule that the more tightly wound she was, the more tightly her hair should be done up. For her to leave it undone meant that she was probably as relaxed as I’d ever see her in months.
I filled a cup of coffee for myself, then sat down opposite her. Noticing me, her face opened into a rare unguarded smile, and she inclined her head in greeting.
“Hullo Parker. And how’s the resident child prodigy?” she asked, her voice still carrying a slight Irish lilt that somehow made it that much more comforting. I smiled back.
“Apparently, suicidal.”
“Oh dear,” she said with mock concern. “Should I get you a spot of the antidepressants, then?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” I laughed. “No, when I say suicidal, I mean I’m thinking of doing something that everyone else will probably think is very foolish.”
“And since it’s foolish, you come and speak to the oldest fool on the ward. I see how it is.”
“I didn’t mean that!” I protested.
“Obviously, lad. Don’t shite your britches,” she said with a calming gesture. “So what is this daredevil stunt you’re thinkin’ of?”
I leaned in conspiratorially, allowing myself a dramatic pause before answering her. “I want to try therapy with Joe.”
Nessie, who had also been leaning in to hear what I was saying, sat back so suddenly and frantically you’d think she’d been stung. There was a splash as her coffee cup went flying to the floor. She crossed herself, as if by reflex.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she breathed, her full Irish accent flaring up. “Don’t go makin’ jokes about tha’, ye bloody eedjit. Didn’t yer mum ever tell ye not teh frighten poor old ladies?”
“I’m not joking, Nessie,” I said. “I really--”
But she cut me off. “Yes, you bloody well are joking, and that’s all you should ever be. Because otherwise oi’ll ‘ave to box yer ears, and there’ll be a loin o’ the rest of the ‘ospital staff behind me waiting their turn.”
Her green eyes were livid with anger now, but I could sense looking at her that it wasn’t at me. She looked like a bear who’d just pulled her cub out of danger. Gently, I put a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry, Nessie. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The look of fury in her eyes softened, but it didn’t make her expression any better. Now she only looked haggard. She placed her hand on mine.
“It’s not your fault, lad,” she said, her accent fading as the fright faded from her features. “But you don’t have any bloody idea what you’re talking about, and it’s best you never find out.”
“Why?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong with him?”
Then, knowing she might not answer, I added, “Nessie, you know I’m too smart for my own good. I don’t like puzzles I can’t solve.”
“That’s not my fault,” she said coldly, her eyes hardening again. “But fine, if it’ll stop you. I’ll tell you why. Because every time I have to bring medicine into...his room, I start to wonder if it wouldn’t be worth locking meself up in this ‘ospital just to avoid ever ‘aving to do it again. I barely sleep from the nightmares I get sometimes. So take my word for it, Parker, that if ye’re as smart a lad as ye think ye are, ye’ll stay away from him. Otherwise, ye might end up in here with him. And none of us wants to see tha’.”
I wish I could say her words weren’t in vain. But in reality, they only made my curiosity burn hotter, though suffice to say, this was the last time I openly discussed my ambition to cure the mystery patient with a member of staff. In fact, now I had an even better reason: if I could cure him, Nessie and everyone else who had to deal with him would lose what sounded like the main source of misery in their lives. I had to find the records on him and see if I could come up with a diagnosis.
But no sooner had I resolved to follow this plan than I encountered one big problem: since no one had bothered to remember his name, requesting his file would’ve been tricky under the best of circumstances. Worse still, it would’ve only been on paper, because the hospital was ludicrously behind on digitizing its old records, which meant I’d have to find some way to convince the records office to let me see it. I once tried to request it, saying there couldn’t be more than one file that matched whatever it was he had, but as soon as the records clerk on duty realized who I was asking about, she told me to get out of her office in terms so colorful that I’m sure you can’t print them.
Eventually, I hit on a solution, though. The records clerk who’d screamed obscenities at me generally only worked from Monday to Friday, and was replaced by someone else on the weekends. I still had no idea what to look for, but decided to act on a hunch that the name “Joe” must’ve come from somewhere. Of course, I couldn’t go in and ask to see every patient whose name could’ve been shortened to “Joe” without arousing suspicion, but I knew that records clerks would probably expect residents to ask stupid questions. I put in a request to take the following Saturday off, which was swiftly approved, and waited with high anticipation.
When the day finally rolled around, I rushed to the hospital records room. There, I asked the very apathetic old man now sitting in the records office if he’d let me have a look at the “J” section, because I thought one of the old guys who thought he was Jesus might have seized on that name due to its being somehow close to his own real name. It was a ridiculous theory, even for a first year psych major, but the records guy was obviously too interested in getting back to whatever he had stashed under the desk to care. He let me in, gave me directions to where to go, and slurred at me that I’d better “put the f--king files back” when I was done before slouching back in his chair.
I didn’t need telling twice. I almost ran to the section he’d indicated and quickly started sorting through the massive number of files with either “Joseph,” “Jonah,” or even “Joe” as their listed names. I immediately ignored anything that had been entered after 1990,, since I knew the patient we had was supposed to be older than that, but this still left me with hundreds of files. However, most of these were easily dismissed as well, since most of them bore documentation showing that the patients involved had either died or had been discharged.
Only a handful of files remained once I had finished my search. Two referenced paranoid schyzophrenics who I recognized as two of the “Jesus” trio (my initial dumb excuse, ironically, had been correct). One showed a photo of a bald-headed man who I recognized as the cartoon lover. And then, there was the last one. I won’t write the patient’s full name, but his first name was indeed “Joe,” he’d been first admitted in 1982 at the age of 6, and he was marked as still in hospital custody. The file was so covered in dust that I doubted anyone had opened it in a decade, and so thick that it looked like it might burst.
But the clinical notes were still there, and in surprisingly good condition, along with a crude black and white photo of a fair haired boy giving the camera a wide-eyed stare. It made me feel like I was staring down a predator. Averting my eyes, I turned to the notes and started scanning them.
Reading these, I saw that the many doctors who’d told me that there was no diagnosis for what Joe suffered from had been actually misstating the truth. It wasn’t that there was no diagnosis. It was that there had been a couple, but that Joe’s symptoms seemed to unpredictably mutate. Most surprising of all, however, was that Joe had actually been discharged at one point very early on in his chronic brush with the mental health system, after only staying 24 hours in the hospital. Here are the full contents of the physician’s notes at the time:
June 5, 1982 Joseph (last name omitted) is a six-year-old boy suffering from acute night terrors, including vivid hallucinations of some sort of creature that lives in the walls of his room, and which emerges at night to frighten him. Joseph’s parents brought him in after one particularly violent episode, in which Joseph’s arms sustained significant bruising. He claims it was from the creature’s claws, but the more obvious solution would be to assume the wounds were self-inflicted. A full course of sedatives, along with some basic therapy, was prescribed.
June 6, 1982 In his therapy sessions, Joseph was quite cooperative, though it took some time to get him to be receptive to the attending physician’s explanation that the monster he thought he saw was really only his imagination. Even if the therapy didn’t take, though, the sedatives seemed to work, so we’ll be releasing him after monitoring him for an additional 24 hours.
I almost laughed. It seemed ridiculous that such a brief set of entries would become the prelude to decades of horror. Nevertheless, I pressed on. The notes indicated that Joe was apparently discharged after the additional 24 hours as promised. There was also a reference to an audiotape of Joe’s one therapy session, the number of which I was careful to write down in the notebook I’d brought with me.
However, the optimism of the doctors during Joe’s first visit had obviously been misplaced, because two weeks later, Joe was back again, this time with a much more serious set of disorders. And this time, he was never discharged. The notes from his second admittance follow:
June 21, 1982 Joe (last name omitted) is a six-year-old boy previously admitted for night terrors. A course of sedatives and some rudimentary coping techniques were prescribed. Unfortunately, instead of working, these measures seem to have worsened Joe’s psychosis, which has also changed markedly since his first admittance. Rather than fearing a monster that lives in his walls, Joe appears to have regressed to a pre-verbal state, while becoming unpredictable and violent.
In his first few hours of being admitted, Joe has already assaulted numerous members of staff, and has had to be restrained. It is notable that despite his being too young to know what he is doing, all his attacks have been on parts of his targets’ anatomy that are typically fairly vulnerable and/or sensitive to pain. The one exception was an elderly nurse who he kicked in the shin, but even this fairly routine bit of violence had an unintended consequence, as that particular nurse had just had extensive surgery done on her shin, and had to be sent home in a wheelchair as a result.
We have attempted therapy, but after one session, Joe made no progress. Instead, he only made bizarre clicking and scratching noises, and seemed incapable of bipedal movement throughout the entire session. Eventually, he became violent again, and had to be restrained. Furthermore, his condition degenerated when he was moved back to his room, as one orderly, Ashley M----- broke hospital protocol and told him angrily that he was a bad little boy for kicking and punching so much. This seemed to make Joe able to speak again, but far from leading to more lucidity, he instead began screaming abuse at Ms. M-----, mocking and belittling her with a variety of insults, almost all of which showed a level of psychological insight far beyond that of a six-year-old boy. They were so nasty that Ms. M----- herself requested leave and subsequently entered therapy herself, claiming that the words Joe had used had triggered traumatic memories for her.
Joe’s violence, combined with this variety of psychologically targeted abuse, suggest either some variety of child abuse, or else that he is a sociopath with paranoid delusions. Further study is needed.
Now fascinated, I flipped to the entry from the next day.
June 22, 1982 Joe continues to make no progress. However, we now believe we are dealing with at least some variety of sociopath, and a very precocious one at that. Today, when brought in for therapy, Joe began verbally assailing his therapist, Dr. A------ much the same way he had attacked Ms. M-----. However, the content of his insults were completely different and, once more, targeted with a high degree of precision at Dr. A------’s personal issues. Fortunately, Dr. A------ was able to disengage from the attacks and try to use them as a means of inquiring about the state of Joe’s mind. He was able to learn nothing from this, and eventually released Joe from therapy in disgust. Dr. A------ later stated that the whole episode made him more tempted to break his 20-year AA pledge than any patient had in 20 years.
No entries on Joe’s therapy followed this one. Apparently one session had been enough to make the writer and attending physician give up in disgust. I shook my head. Even an understaffed hospital should put in more effort than this. Indeed, the only item from even the same year was a curt note from the Chief of Medicine to keep Joe isolated from the rest of the population. For four years after that, there was nothing.
