This is based off a true story experienced by my mother.

When my mother was younger, a teenager specifically, she was quite mischievous. She was a rebel, a non-conformist. She smoked, drank, and went out all hours of the night with her misfit friends. She often teases me saying she and I would have never been friends had I been alive when she was young. She was the flirty badass, and I am a studious nerd who would rather stay home reading a book than go to a party. I often muse on the path my mother was on and how she miraculously strayed and changed her life completely. She went to college, graduated with a degree in child psychology, married her soul mate, and had me, my brother, and my sister. We lived in the same town my mother grew up in. It was a special town, nothing exciting really happened, but beautiful nonetheless located in sunny Southern California. However, there are some wooded regions scattered near the mountains that my mother had always warned my siblings and me never to go near. I had always wondered why, until the night my mother told me what had happened there when she was sixteen, when she and her friends sought out a place to create an impromptu outdoors kickback.

As I mentioned before, my mother was quite the delinquent when she was a teenager. Life in the 70’s, with lax parental and legal control, made it easy for her friends and her to sneak out most nights to go smoke weed or drink. One night in particular, she collaborated with her friends to meet her at midnight at the local park, their usual hangout place, to rendezvous. Everything seemed to be going well. Her friends all confirmed, and my mom snuck out of her one story home with ease. Having no cell phone, the only items she brought with her were a pack of cigarettes and a flashlight. Her friends, Tony and Matt, planned to bring the rest of the drug paraphernalia. She wore high-waisted jeans, a plaid long sleeve shirt, and a light windbreaker. As she began her five minute walk to the park down the street, she paid special attention to the path her Converse were making as she jumped and skipped over the fallen leaves on the sidewalk. It was a breezy October night, and the wind was blowing slightly. She felt no need to turn on her flashlight just yet. Although it was dark, the streetlights were dimly shinning, and the moon was full and bright. The clear and comfortable night, the excitement of meeting with friends, and the worries my mother lacked, made her unusually confident that night. She had an approaching desire to do something dangerous. She wanted to have a different kind of fun that night.

“Hey guys,” my mother called to her friends who were almost all there, “Where’s Barb and Shelley?” “On their way,” Tony said as he began to light up. My mother watched him light his piece, then impulsively took it out of his mouth. “Not yet,” my mother smiled mischievously. “What the hell dude!?” Tony yelled as he snatched his piece back from my mother. Matt was watching her intently, picking up on the subtle undertone of her statement. “What’s up Chris?” Matt said, ignoring Tony walking to the corner of the park to smoke in peace. “I thought we could do something different tonight, ya know, go somewhere we’ve never been. It’s the perfect night to try something new” she replied then shrugged. Matt just stared at her in silence, then whirled around when he heard a something snap behind him. “Hey guys!” Barb smiled brightly with Shelley behind her. “Ready to fuck shit up tonight?” she laughed and Shelley rolled her eyes. “All right, the gang’s all here. Tony come over here! Chris has something she wants to share with us,” Matt stepped aside to let my mother have the center of the basketball court they were all standing in to give her proposition. Tony returned to the group and they all stood in a semi-circle around my mother. She looked around, making sure no one else could listen to what she had to say. A certain wave of paranoia suddenly washed over her, and she took one more look at the bushes and trees that surrounded the perimeter of the park. Nothing was there, so she began.

“Okay,” she said quietly, causing the group to lean in to hear better, “I think we should go to…the Campground.” Silence followed the last word of her sentence. For anyone else, what she said would’ve been completely bathetic. What’s so special about a campground? But, if you lived in my mother’s town during the 70’s and you weren’t a total homebody, you would definitely know exactly what the Campground was. Matt was the first one to speak. “I…I dunno you guys. I just thought we were gonna light up and drink a little. I’m not in the mood to get arrested or nothin’.” “We won’t get arrested!” my mother replied, almost pleadingly. “Come on, we can get a little tipsy and faded first, then go. It’s not like we have to stay long neither. It’ll be quick. Don’t you guys wanna see what’s up there?” Her friends looked at each other and smiled, bringing relief to my mother. “All right,” Tony said, and the rest agreed, “We’ll go… later.”

The gang took their time lighting up and drinking before beginning their voyage to the Campground. Admittedly, the drugs did ease any tension or worry they initially felt when my mother suggested what they do that night. It was apparent that they had at all first felt uneasy just at the name of the Campground. It used to be a Girl Scouts camp. It was only a little way into the woods which stretched far beyond the park, but it was completely dark with all the lights either burnt out or smashed in. A few teenagers went there on occasion to find a private place to have sex or do drugs, but for the most part, it was completely abandoned. The only thing the Campground still had was a very long log cabin, around 30 feet in length, the remains of a campfire that would sometimes be relit into a bonfire by the local teens, and a 6 foot teepee that was halfway burnt down. The teepee was fake of course, part of a past segment to teach the Girl Scouts about the Native Americans, but a sudden wildfire had burn part of it down. The cause of the fire was unknown, and although the damage it did to the log cabin was repaired, the Campground closed down soon after. Sometimes the police patrolled up there in hopes to catch kids doing illegal activities, but that was rare. Whenever someone went up there, there was always this feeling of being watched. The air seemed more toxic. The teepee and log cabin seemed more menacing. There also was this one instance, back in a two month period in ’68 where two teens traveled up there and never came back. Since they were known troublemakers, they were labeled as runaways and never spoke of again. My grandpa was a part of the major police force at the time and knew more stories of missing children than the public was allowed to know or report on. He would sometimes let these stories slip to my mother, who willingly told them to her friends. As far as anyone was concerned, the Campground was trouble. Whether it was tales of supernatural occurrences, rapists and murderers hiding in the surrounding trees waiting for unruly teens to show up, or spontaneous fires that would combust in order to draw out intruders, teens had no problem spreading these stories around. But, it only took the courageous, or high, to actually travel up there at night. If it weren’t for the calming effects the drugs were having on my mother and her friends, they would’ve turned back and never gone up.

As they made their way into the woods, a dark shadow was cast over the moon. This called for my mother, Shelley, and Barbara to turn on their flashlights. Tony held a small lantern and walked in front of the group leading the way. The path, not well traveled, was hard to follow in the darkness. Leaves and branches cluttered the way, and it took longer than expected to reach the Campground. Every now and then my mother would stop and look in the woods after hearing an eerie noise or a twig snap. She mostly blew it off as some forest animal scampering in the woods, but she could never quite convince herself that was the case. She hoped more than anything that the natural light of the moon would return. The woods were getting harder and harder to see through. The path to the Campground began to be more and more unfamiliar to the group and Tony stopped to recoup. “Are we going the right way, guys?” Tony asked apparently frightened. The whole group had pretty much sobered up at this point and fear was beginning to take control over their minds and bodies. “I think so,” my mother said calmly. She took Tony’s place at the head of the group and kept walking. She was scared, terrified even, but there was an overwhelming compulsion that radiated through her bones to keep going. This wasn’t so bad, she thought to herself. She clutched her windbreaker tighter around her body. She looked around the trees for what must’ve been the millionth time. Each time she saw nothing, just a darker abyss of blackness. She shivered, although the wind had stopped blowing. She looked around at the faces of her friends, each more terrified than the next. She was about to suggest to go back when all of a sudden Shelley’s shriek awakened her from her thoughts. “Oh…my…god.”

My mother whipped around to see what Shelley was staring with her mouth wide open. Up ahead to there was a faint orange light glowing at the end of the path about 20 yards from where they were. Shelley began to hyperventilate and my mother quickly covered Shelley’s mouth to prevent whatever was up there from hearing her. “Be quiet,” my mother harshly commanded. “Let’s go back…Please Chris,” Matt pleaded as he tried to take his eyes off the orange glow. “What the fuck is that?” Tony wondered aloud. Like the rest of the group, the orange light to him seemed to be hauntingly hypnotic. “You guys shut up please!” my mother whispered frantically. “It’s probably nothing, maybe just a small forest fire that broke out. Maybe a wire fell down and ignited a branch or something…or maybe…” my mother’s voice tapered of as she realized none of her friends were listening to her. Tony, Matt, and Shelley were still staring at the orange light. Wait, my mother thought, Tony, Matt, Shelley…where’s Barb!? “Oh my god you guys, where’s Barb!?” my mother hysterically whispered. The rest of the gang snapped out of there hypnosis and devolved into total panic. “She, she was just here!” Shelley whispered as tears gathered in her eyes. “Barb! Barbara!” the teens went off slightly in different directions in hopes to catch a glimpse of the missing girl. “Barbara, please come out!” my mother pleaded. “This isn’t funny!” Panicked thoughts raced through my mother’s head. Shit, shit shit. Where could’ve she have gone? She was right he- umph! My mother had tripped on a fallen tree branch and to catch her balance, stumbled backward into the trunk of a rather large tree. Her back had slammed so hard into the bark that the wind was temporarily knocked out of her small frame. In order to prevent herself from falling to the floor, she grabbed on above her to clutch some bark. Instead, she felt something wet and gooey. She quickly retreated her hand and a flash of Shelley’s flashlight exposed what was on her hand. She gasped as she saw the substance- red, sticky, and oozing between her fingers and dripping down her wrist. She grabbed her own flashlight which she had dropped on the floor and quickly turned to shine some light on the bark where she had grabbed on. “Holy fuck!” Tony gasped as he saw the insignia on the tree. My mother’s heart jumped, not realizing Tony was behind her, but was even more terrified at what she was looking at. A burnt, upside down cross was marked into the tree. And blood, fresh blood, was spread as a glaze atop the burnt markings. My mother quickly rubbed the blood off on her pants and stumbled backwards away from the tree. “Guys, we can’t find her anywhere,” Matt panted as him and Shelley, who had clearly been sobbing, returned to the group. “I think we should-…”

All of a sudden, the shrillest scream my mother had ever heard pierced her ears. All four friends stood in terror as they realized it was Barbara’s voice. It was nothing that they had ever heard, and the source of her painful howls was coming from the direction of the orange light. My mother was paralyzed in fear as Barb’s screams penetrated every bone and vessel in her body. It sounded as if Barbara’s limbs were being ripped off, or she was being boiled alive. It shook her to her core as the screaming never ceased, but seemed to be getting louder. My mother began to shake and sob hysterically, not knowing what to do or where to run. The screaming was getting louder and more high-pitched. It was also getting shakier, as if Barbara was running. The friends looked at each other in total hopelessness. Where was she? Why was she screaming? Where could they go? My mother felt defeated. Whatever was torturing Barbara was definitely coming for them next. All of a sudden, my mother’s attention was drawn back to the orange light. It was getting brighter, bigger. My mother kept staring in the distance, the light getting painfully bright, the screams getting painfully louder. Then, the orange light did something unusual. As it was getting bigger, it seemed to be breaking up into several smaller lights. The mass of light was being separated by some unknown force. My mother was transfixed at this phenomenon until she heard the footsteps coming toward her. Louder, faster. My mother and her friends grasped each other tightly and closed their eyes. They couldn’t run. The screams were almost unbearable. Whatever it was, it was coming toward them. The screaming was getting louder and louder and the footsteps nearer and nearer until my mother gathered the courage to lift her head at the last possible second. What she saw was terrifying. Barbara was running full speed towards the group, screaming her head off, with a large knife wound running from the bottom of her eye to right above her jugular. Her face was bleeding and a mess. Her hair was unruly and her clothes were somewhat ripped. My mother was relieved to see her, but Barbara ran right past the group. My mother was confused until she heard more footsteps. Twenty, thirty, forty of them, all coming towards the group. Whatever was chasing Barbara was going for them next! My mother detached herself from the group and screamed, “RUN!”

In times of survival like these, it was every man for themselves. My mother ran as fast as she could, dodging branches and jumping over rocks and other obstacles. She could feel her friends running behind her but she never ceased. She tried to keep her eye on Barbara who was quite ahead of the group. Once or twice my mother looked back, and every time she did, she wanted to throw up in fear. Fifty or so men, wearing black cloaks with ghoulish silver beams of lights radiating from their eyes sockets, were running after her and her friends carrying torches of gleaming orange fire. My mother had never seen eyes that color, or cloaks that frightening. These men ran faster and faster, blood dripping out of their mouths, and grunting and howling towards the children. My mother’s chest felt as if it was going to explode and fire seemed to erupt inside of her lungs. No matter what, my mother promised herself to not stop running. Not until she was safe. She could see the edge of the woods approaching, and relief immediately washed over her as she saw the familiar flashing blue, white, and red lights of police cars gathered in the park. My mother sprinted full force out of the woods and into the arms of the nearest police officer, sobbing and very much disheveled. She couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t stop hysterically crying. After a few moments of sobbing into the arms of this unknown police officer she looked up and saw Barb being taken away in a police car with bandages on her face. Tony, Matt, and Shelley were crying and talking with police officers about their experience. The men with the black cloaks and silver eyes were nowhere to be seen. The orange glow had disappeared. For the first time in what felt like hours, my mom was able to relax. Unfortunately, Barbara was not to fair as well.

As my mother, Tony, Matt, and Shelley returned to their normal lives after this incident, Barbara spent most of her adolescent and adult life in a mental institution. She was so traumatized she could barely speak of what happened. When she did, all the pieces seemed to connect. A traveling cult has been residing in the cabin at the Campground for a few days or so. They were the type of cult that was notorious for their upside down cross insignia, but were never caught or detained because of their nomadic tendencies. When the group was walking to the Campground, one of the cult members, walking over to a tree to mark their infamous symbol, saw the group of teens, and decided to pick one out to be the perfect human sacrifice. Barbara was this unfortunate pick. While the rest of the teens were caught up in their own paranoia and scared thoughts, he snatched Barb and covered her mouth to keep her from screaming. He slashed her face and finalized the mark he made on the tree by smearing it with her blood. He almost thought one of the teens had seen him, for she (my mother) had looked directly into the woods, but did not see him. He took Barb back to the campsite. Barb still has not revealed exactly what they did to her, or how she escaped. When she did escape, along with the rest of the group, the police were conveniently at the park due to a call by one of the neighbors for the overwhelming odor of weed seeping through their windows. When the police investigated the Campground, the only thing remaining was the remnants of a campfire, dead animals surrounding the fire, and thirty or so burnt out torches scattered along the grounds. It is unknown how the cult members seem to disappear so fast, but one thing is for certain, my mother never returned back to the Campground.

After my mother told me her experience, I promised her I would never do what she had.

Now excuse me, I must go for I’m about to meet some friends at the local park. It seems like the perfect night to try something new. To have a more… dangerous… type of fun. I have my cell phone, a flashlight, and some weed as promised. As I walk out the door, I almost forget the most important item of the night. I quickly grab my black cloak and sneak silently out the door.

I’m ready.

I live in a pretty small, relatively unknown town. This is the internet, so I won’t divulge too much information but I will tell you it’s in southern Wisconsin. I live on the corner of Lawn and Elm Street, and pretty near to my house is a stretch of road that most people called “Mirror Avenue”. Of course it’s not really technically an avenue, just an extension of Lawn Street, and it’s not the whole road, just a short stretch within the block adjacent to the one my house is on. I’ve lived here my whole life and everyone I know has referred to it as Mirror Avenue at some point, but many of them couldn’t give me an explanation as to why it was called that. The stories I got were mostly always different, usually something about a mirror maker (or whatever you call people who made mirrors) back when the town was founded who got caught up in some kind of cult, and the street being cursed. Of course the exact accounts varied, one told to me by a friend in Middle School included the street being split down the middle by a very long, man-sized mirror. People would look into this mirror and the reflection would be doing something different, usually mischievous and if there was more than one person in the mirror at a time the reflections would try to hurt each other, and it was said that the people could feel pain inflicted by the reflections. This was just the ramblings of a middle schooler, and tonight on my way home I found out EXACTLY why they call it Mirror Avenue.

I worked relatively late today, until 8 o’clock, and this being December it got dark pretty early. I got off at 8 and decided to walk home instead of calling one of my parents; despite being 18, I never learned to drive for financial reasons and the fact that I lived in a town small enough that there was very little that wasn’t in walking distance. I walk to and from work all the time, but I usually take Elm Street instead of Lawn, it’s faster but tonight I thought since I didn’t really have to be home at any specific time I would take the longer way. This route would take me right down Lawn Street to Mirror Avenue, where I had the single most terrifying experience of my life.

The walk home was pretty normal, until I reached the point by the park where I would have normally diverged onto Elm Street. I turned onto Lawn Street, without even thinking about the whole mirror thing; any time I had ever walked this way before was in the daytime, so I was never really afraid, and therefore it wasn’t anywhere near the front of my mind. I was only walking for about a minute before I noticed, but there was someone walking on the other side of the street. I looked over as soon as I noticed and they did the same. I couldn’t tell for sure but they were wearing the same coat that I had on, only I couldn’t see a face because they had their hood up. I walked for a few more seconds and almost tripped on the edge of an uneven piece of sidewalk. It was then that I noticed something strange; I guess had I thought more about the mirror thing before I would have expected it, but the guy on the other side of the street stumbled at the same time. I stood there for a second and then started to walk again, thinking maybe it was a fluke, but to test it I stopped abruptly, and watched to see what he did. Of course he stopped, watching me the whole time I was watching him.

Now I was certain something was off. I yelled across the street at the guy, but I didn’t hear anything from him, even though he seemed to be making the same motion I was as if he was yelling too. I stood there for about five minutes, waving my arms around and things like that, watching the man on the other side of the street as he mimicked me perfectly. Eventually I decided to see what happened if I got closer, and so I stepped out onto the street, and he did the same. I stopped, scared for a moment. I couldn’t tell who it was because of the hood and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I got any closer, and the whole time he was silently copying me, every aspect of my movement synced perfectly as if he was my reflection. Now I was thinking about the mirror thing, and based on the stories I had heard growing up I expected that nothing good could come of this. My curiosity got the better of me though, and I got closer until I was just about in the very center of the road, with my “reflection” just on the other side of the lane divider. I almost reached out and tried to touch it, but I was too afraid, and at the last minute pulled my hand back. It was then that I heard a sort of growling from the “reflection”. Apparently it had wanted me to touch it, as it made this clear by the mumbling from underneath its hood. I thought for a moment, and I wanted to see if this was some sort of reflection, so I figured maybe if I put my hood up, he would end up putting his down. And so I stepped back to the sidewalk because I was uncertain as to what would happen next, and I prepared myself. I was shaking, partially in anticipation and partially because I was terrified of what might happen to me. I was obviously in some deep shit here, as I knew now that this had to have something to do with the old legends. I stood there, my hands just above my shoulders, ready to put my hood up, with my “reflection” doing the same.

I counted down from ten, whispering to myself and praying that this was just some kid messing with me or that it was all somehow in my head. As I got closer to one I shook more violently, so much so that it had become apparent that my “reflection” was also shaking. As I finally hit one and put my hood up, my suspicions were confirmed as I saw the guy on the other side put his hood down.

I have no way to accurately describe what I saw, the only thing I can say is that it had my same basic features, but they were contorted and twisted in a hideous and disgusting way that left me staring at it in a horrified daze. It was smiling at me, and that’s when I realized that it was no longer doing exactly as I was. I stood there on the sidewalk in shock as it stepped off the curb and began walking towards me. I panicked and ran down the street, and my “reflection” followed. Only now it was staring at me the whole time, not just when I was looking at it. It was faster than me, and the closer I got to the edge of the block the closer it got to me. I was certain for a moment that I could hear it saying something, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

Just as I was about to reach the corner it reached out and grabbed my hood, tearing it off as I forced myself forward. I thought it had me, I thought I was dead, another victim of Mirror Avenue, but when I heard that coat rip it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, and I ran like hell until I got right in front of my house, and it was only then that I realized that it was no longer chasing me. I assume it must have stopped when I got passed the edge of the block, when I exited the stretch of Lawn Street that was Mirror Avenue. I looked back at Mirror Avenue, expecting to see it standing there on the corner or something, but I couldn’t see my “reflection” anywhere. This worried me, and I got inside as quickly as I could. My family wasn’t home, they left a note saying that they had gone Christmas shopping and to call when I got home. The first thing I did was lock all the doors and windows and close the curtains, and then I fetched my brother’s old sword that he had bought at renaissance fair, just in case. I called and didn’t mention anything about what had happened. Later when they finally got home I told them that I had run into a dog, and that’s why my coat was ripped. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything to anyone about what really happened or not; I was afraid that they might think I was crazy or on drugs or something. I might tell some friends at school, and there’s anyone who reads this, but one thing is for certain; I’m never taking the long way home again.

Credit To – Lowgan*

*ADMIN NOTE:  Yes, this is clearly an already established pasta, but I like it and we didn’t have it here yet. It’s been confirmed via Google Cache that Lowgan is the author.

If the video does not display, please view it at the source: Her Friends at the Ganges by jcnick

“Another pint should put just the right color on the day,” I half-whispered to myself as I rationalized ordering another creation of Arthur Guinness’s brilliance.  As the pub’s barman slid my libation past the ashtrays and napkins, a sniveling, and seemingly inebriated, derelict skulked past my stool and leaned his filthy frame over the bar rail.

After a few moments the man placed his order, and to my amazement his voice was crisp and precise. I had expected to hear a number of words that ended with the ‘ish’ sound that drunkards make, but his English was fine.

After a few deep draws on his ale, his bloodshot eyes turned to mine. I tried to look away, but it was too late. He knew that I had been looking at him.

Judging him.

“You’re not from around these parts, are you?” he demanded, more than merely asking.
“No,” I replied, “just here on business.”
“What kind of business?” he wanted to know.
At that point I was ruing having ordered the last pint, but what the hell, I figured, so I gave him a patronizing answer as I unconsciously stroked my smooth new fleece scarf.  “I guess like a lot of people that come to this part of Gloucestershire, I am in the American woolen industry and I’m here shopping for Strouds wool – the finest in the world, you know.”
The man made a “Hmmph” sound to himself and shook his head almost in disgust. “So, you’re just another mindless sot here to castrate a ram, eh?”
This was getting ridiculous. “Now see here…” I began.
“Save it,” he interrupted me. “You can make as many wethers as you want, I don’t care anymore. And nobody should. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does anymore, and nobody’s going to lift a finger to stop it.”
I knew that I was being pulled into a cockeyed conversation with a crazy old fool, but there was something just peculiar enough about him and his lamentations that caught my attention. Or, maybe I was just officially drunk.
“We’re all walking dead men now,” he went on as his gaze drifted away from my eyes. “All dead.”
Okay, now I just had to hear some more of this nonsense. “Go on,” I said.
“How about fancying a pint then, me old mucker?”

A ghost story for an ale. It was my last day in the Town of Stroud, and I figured this would make for some great story-telling while cruising on the lighter-than-air airship back to the States. “Go on,” I said again as I signaled the barman for a drink for my smelly new best friend.
When the drink arrived he caressed its glass the way a newlywed would passionately stroke his blushing bride. After a few moments of silence interrupted only by large gulps and parallel belches, he looked back hard into my eyes once again and began…

“Burial at our cemetery grounds is not just for the right honorable local politicians and the MPs, you know. Or the business gentlemen who made their fortunes literally off the backs of the ewes and tups that graze tranquilly on the grassy hectares of lush pastures until their wool has matured. Or even the surgeons and solicitors and other such scholars who rest now in the hallowed church yard. There are workhouse paupers buried there as well – the poor wretches whose only relief in life was a handshake with death itself.”

“It’s right out that door and just down the road on Cotswold, and it’s been there for all my life now. It’s divided into three sectors and you’re buried where it seems the best fit for you. The Church of England takes up a lot of the grass, the Nonconformists have their share, and then there be the paupers’ graves.”

“They usually wait until they’ve stacked up nine or ten of them poor folk in the shed before they dig a long and shallow hole to toss the bodies into. With all them fine folks in there, isn’t it interesting that the first body to go into the ground in 1856 was a man of no means, and now seventeen years later we don’t have any clue where he is or whose decaying corpses are buried with the other paupers, or where they first started digging those graves. They never even bothered to keep track where the poor people went to their eternities, so nobody knows where they be.”

“Now, I am not political any more, and I don’t care who the worms eat first, but let me tell you that death and politics go knuckle in knuckle in Stroud and its graveyard. Things in this part of England have always been rough and tumble, and it goes back way before the days of the Industrial Revolution, or the Liberal Party or the Conservatives. It goes back even before the days of the kings and knights, stories that your pappy would tell you while putting you to bed at night. There has always been bad blood between this one and that, or this party and the other, or this baron and that squire, and usually over land. And when there’s bad blood among men there’s red blood on the ground and butchered bodies in the graves.”

“I’ve never been a superstitious man, and I believe that most of the tales and folklore that have swirled through our county like the ghosts that moan at night in the Old Town Hall are nothing but hooey. But, this I have seen over the past few weeks, American, and you best be believing me. Politics and bad blood have crashed dead-on in Stroud, and every living soul is about to pay the terrible price for the greed and avarice of one man.”

“I was not always the wreck that you see before you today, American; I held a good and respectable post in this town. There was even a time not so long ago when I was a member of the county constituency and rubbed elbows with the men who went on to represent us in the House of Commons. Not that I had enough money to affect anyone’s opinions, still many people, from grave diggers to factory bosses  would come to me for advice and for common sense ideas. Not that there’s anything common about common sense.”

“There was a man, a good man who stood up for our tiny little community in Parliament. His name was Henry Summerton and he was as smart as a whip. I knew him from the day he was born, and I watched him grow from a playful, silly boy to a strong and confident man. Clinging tightly to his bachelorhood, he had the time and resources to go out and became a barrister in 1856 before he was bitten by the bug for politics. But as I knew, he was good at it and the county prospered for it. But not everyone was satisfied.”

“There was a younger man, John Loring, who came from a good and decent family that owned a modest slaughter mill. He also suffered from the same bite as did Henry, but there was nowhere to go politically for him since Summerton had such a firm grip on the partisan political machine in Stroud. And as I said, politics and bad blood were about to crash dead-on.”

“The debates started to become more heated and the rhetoric was taking a nasty turn. Where there had been relative civility for years with Summerton, Loring was challenging him at every turn and on every issue, especially the treatment of the sheep. Summerton maintained that their wool was at the cornerstone of Stroud’s long-term economy, and that everything humanly possible should be done to protect and nurture the sheep. While Loring agreed in principle, he took a more short-term view that some of the animals should be slaughtered and put on the world market as a meat commodity.”

“There could be no reconciliation between the two, and thanks to slipping more than enough cash into the pockets of those with the biggest tongues in Stroud, the community eventually sided with Loring. Summerton quickly became a pariah in the town he loved – men would spit on him and the women simply ignored him.  Eventually, something had to break, and it was Summerton’s heart for his beloved township. The man died with nobody by his side to provide even a few last moments of mortal comfort.”

“It was all a very murky death, though. The coroner issued an extremely vague death report while the mortician would not tolerate a public service or viewing. While some speculated over scotch that he was murdered, it is true that he did die a somewhat suspicious death; what’s more, nobody in authority seemed to care about him or his final arrangements. It was as if he just disappeared from the planet!”

“You have to understand, Loring had been installed immediately into office in a by-election, which happens when someone dies while serving Parliament. With such power, Loring could make certain things just ‘happen,’ and he lost no time in doing so. I still had contacts with the grave diggers, and they told me a terrifying tale over far too much mead one night. Being threatened with losing their jobs if they disobeyed, they said that Loring saw to it that Summerton’s corpse was stacked in the paupers’ shed and was buried along with the unwashed of the county. And like all the other buried poor, nobody can say for sure where he truly lies.”

“They also gave me a hand-written note from Summerton that they found in his jacket pocket as they were loading his rotting carcass onto the weather beaten pull-wagon to take the bodies to their resting place. The funeral director hadn’t even bothered to change the man’s clothes or apply any death makeup.  To be honest, the grave workers were looking for money, but what they found was much more enlightening.”

“The note said simply that Summerton feared that Loring was having him slowly poisoned.  And when he had confronted Loring with his suspicions, Loring only laughed and said, Why not get all your sheep friends to help you!”

Closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly, the man’s voice came out more softly than I would have imagined. “And that’s the truth, American. I swear to it on my grave.”

The distressing words from the filthy beggar’s mouth had pretty much sobered me up, and I was more than mildly pissed about that. Yet, as I had thought earlier, his peculiar thoughts and words had really caught my attention. And then as the fog continued to lift from my brain, a cold finger of anxiety found its way to the small of my back.

“Ummm. What did you mean exactly just now by saying, ‘I swear to it on my grave’?”
The filthy vagrant’s eyes remained closed shut as he spoke in a newly deep and intimidating tone, “You need to leave this town and this country right now, American. Get on your dirigible and leave.”
“How do you know that I have an airship?” I asked incredulously.
With that, his eyes sprung open wide and his face contorted into what I imagine a gargoyle might look like up-close.
“You know, American, nobody can tell where the rotting corpses of the paupers are buried. Not even the sheep.”
“What the hell does that mean, are the sheep…”
“Leave now American. And give me that scarf you wear around your neck,” he demanded, as if a demon was channeling through his voice.
It was then that I recognized that what I had mistaken for mud and filth was actually dried blood that topped his face. And with that, all that I could get out of my bone-dry throat was, “Oh, dear God.”

His face continued to contort in a hideous manner as he spat out his next few words. “Do you see that man wearing a dark turtleneck wool pullover at the table below the dartboard?”
I nodded the affirmative.
“Watch him closely as he goes.” And with that, the man in the sweater jumped to his feet clutching his chest and crossing his violently shaking legs. He began screaming, but quickly ran out of air as his ribcage crushed into his lungs. His bulging legs had burst through his trousers as his neck and face doubled in size. Seconds later, his eyeballs blew out of their sockets and his blood was squirting out of every possible orifice.
Everyone in the pub was frozen with horror as the man literally imploded as his wool sweater grew smaller and smaller until the man’s torso was the size of a pencil and his insides were all outside.

“And thus Mr. Loring has performed his final official public act,” the merciless monster standing before me hissed through a clenched-teeth smile.
Somehow through my nausea, it slowly came to me. “Henry Summerton?” I asked fearfully.
“May I please have your scarf now, American?”
As I immediately handed him my neckwear, all I could say is, “Why?”
“You know why,” he responded with a twisted smile.
“All right,” I heard myself saying, “then how?”

At that exact instant, scores of bleating sheep burst into the tavern, as if they had been trained to watch over particular tables and block the exits.
“The sheep have been grazing for decades in the fields and hills throughout the county, usually only guarded by dogs. Dogs that have no idea where the cemetery begins or ends, or that the blood from the poor wretches buried in shallow nameless graves has seeped into the grasses the sheep chewed.”
I had slipped into a state of near-unconsciousness as Summerton, or what was left of him finished his story.

“All the sheep needed was a good leader and my blood was as rich as any. A specially haunted few sheep used cloven hooves to free me from my blackened tomb, and our work began. As the sheep were shorn over the next few days, their blood-tainted wool was at my and my master’s command to ship around the world.”
“The mills made quick work of the wool, having made apparel for years for every man and woman in the pub and in this town; they never knew that their sweaters, socks, diapers, ties, dresses, underwear, shirts, and all of it were enriched with the precious blood of the ones they ignored and threw away. And now it is time to raise a little hell for all of them!”

At that moment, one of the sheep with large cloven hooves, blood-red eyes, and prodigious horns made a low growling sound, and with that every soul in the pub and in the town was doomed. The screams lasted only seconds as their lungs were crushed, and within moments the pub was festooned with blood, brains, intestines, bones, and who could know what other human effluence. My scarf had shrunk to almost nothing; if it had been around my neck I’d be dead for sure. But why was I being spared the bloodbath?

And then the feasting began as thousands of sheep with pronounced razor-sharp teeth crashed into the pub, and into houses and stores and garages and hospitals and schools and restaurants, enthusiastically chewing their fill of the humanly remains.

I turned to Summerton to beg him to stop, but he too had been crushed and was being eaten by the sheep with the large cloven hooves. A revengeful covenant apparently had been consummated. So, that answered the ‘why.’ I was left alive to tell the story of how a good man was broken after he had made a wicked Faustian bargain with the Fallen Angel.

I screamed and kicked away the Plutonian sheep, and wrapped what I could of Summerton’s gory leftovers into my burlap samples bag.
As I signed his name into the cemetery’s official registration log after burying his remains in an appropriate sector, I prayed for the souls of those taken, for Summerton, and for the protection of those who remained alive. And then I ran like hell to my airship to dump all of my high-class wool purchases deep into the ocean, a few hundred miles off shore on my way back to America.

Hours later, with the accursed wool safely  jettisoned, I loosened my lifejacket a bit, yawned extensively, and finally convinced my eyelids to close as the trip went on, until a violent lurch of the zeppelin threw me out of my seat.  The cabin doors blew open and the windows cracked from the vicious force of an explosion. All I could do was sit on the floor, and then on the ceiling, and then on the back of a chair as the blazing dirigible had become a whirling missile racing straight toward the deep black ocean. While I should have been screaming, all I could do with what I thought might be my final mortal breath was to let out a small, pathetic moan.

You see, in my panicked rush I had completely forgotten how handsome the new wool scarves looked around the necks of the pilots as they came on board the airship many hours earlier. So much for me being the one chosen to tell the stor…

–

“Let him rest now, Nurse Williams,” the obviously skeptical doctor mumbled as he finished writing his observation notes after hearing the survivor’s phantasmagorical story. “He thinks he’s been through enough.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the mousy little nurse replied as she pulled the recently delivered Strouds wool blanket neat and trim around her slumbering patient. While finishing her routine task, she sensed a weird prickling in her fingers and her wrists after moving the blanket. Her knees started to wobble as the room began to spin around her. She felt sick to her stomach, but she didn’t want to tell the doctor for fear of being reported unfit for duty. And then for no reason at all, she let out a low growl.

“Better have that cough taken care of, Abby,” the doctor muttered unsympathetically as the door to the hospital room closed behind him.
“Right away, sir,” she replied caustically, as her eyes began turning blood-red and a small bead of drool trickled down from the left side of her mouth.

Credit To – Douglas Parker

I went to a remote prison in Pennsylvania for robbery in 1989. If you try and find it, you will be out of luck because its gone, erased from most memories because it wasn’t well known in the first place.

While the prison was standing, it had a very low escape rate, because of a story that circulated around within the walls. The story was told to me by a friend, and it won’t leave my memory anytime soon.

Harry Winslow was an inmate in the late 40′s, who was in the prison for life. He had been going mad in his prison because he always had said he’d been framed. Every night, he would look out his cell bars and would see the river about 100 yards away. Past there was a thick and immense forest. He would always see children playing and laughing past the river next to the guard fence.

So with this gnawing at his mind, he went after it. It gave him a taste of hope and freedom, that’s why he went for it. The story gets shaky from here, because Winslow didn’t have a journal, so it was just eye witness accounts. On the night of his escape, his friend and cell mate Dom Solchec saw Winslow make his exit from the missing bars in the cell. What follows, Solchec told, was only sounds. Winslow was like a bull, so this made it easier to hear his footsteps on this foggy night, because Solchec couldn’t even see ten feet in front of his cell let alone 100 yards.

Solchec warned him that it wasn’t a good idea, so he had stayed alone in the cell. He tried to go back to sleep immediately after Winslow had departed, but just sat in bed listening to the sounds.

First he heard Winslow’s heavy footsteps trudging in the mud, and by the sounds of suction it was pretty thick. Second came the noise of the fence rattling back and forth as Winslow struggled to climb the fence, all the while he could hear the faint noise of children laughing in the back round. Before this could register as being wrong, he could hear Winslow splash down into the river, probably 20 feet from the river bank. At this point Solchec leaped out of his bed to look out the window, if only to hear more clearly. All he could hear now was frantic splashing and the laughter that was now the overwhelming noise. By the sound of the panting, Winslow had hurried his pace in the water. Finally, and this he could only hear faintly, Winslow walked up the bank, and the laughter was replaced by something else. Screaming.

Screaming and tearing of clothes and flesh. The laughter was now deeper and primal sounding, and after thirty seconds that felt like an eternity, the noise was all gone. Solchec looked out his window the rest of the night for any sign of what happened. All he heard was rustling in the trees.

In the morning when it was discovered how he had escaped and Solchec’s story had been relayed to the authorities, they ventured to the river bank across from the prison and found three items of interest. The first was several pieces of torn clothing. The second was a human tongue. The third was a note that was messily etched into the ground and had since hardened in the wee hours of the morning, and it read as follows:

DO NOT FOLLOW THE SIRENS.

The rest of the body was never recovered, never found, and it was dropped into the cold files case within a year. One day it was said that The Sirens called Solchec as well. He followed them and disappeared just as Winslow had.

The river dried up and eventually, the prison was closed down.

So if you ever happen to find a large complex of bricks in debris form and large blocks with wiring all over the place, go to the far end. I recommend that you wear earplugs, lest the children still dwell across from the dried up river.

Let’s just hope they haven’t crossed the river by now.

Credit To – Mike S.

l once knew a man who was afraid of nothing. No monstrosity man made nor fictitious could subdue his spirits, and the mere mention of the word ‘supernatural’ would elicit a most cynical example of laughter. This bravery was both his greatest strength and his most profound weakness, for ignorance and heedlessness can often be mistaken for a deep and foolhardy sense of courage. He was to learn the limits of his bravery down in those oppressive tunnels, deep below the streets of Amsterdam.

His name was Henke, due mainly to his Finnish ancestry on his father’s side, and although his parents had passed away at an early age, it was clear that he believed his courageous convictions could be attributed to his father’s character.

I had met Henke four years earlier while travelling with some friends on a rather common rites of passage: Backpacking through Europe during a university break. He and a few of his friends were on a similar trip and happened to be staying at the same youth hostel as myself and my companions in Rome. We all got on well, but both Henke and I struck up an immediate rapport with one another as he was a keen musician and I was at the time still filled with the self promise, or should I say delusion, of stardom through my own musical pursuits.

This friendship continued onwards and we maintained it via email; swapping musical discoveries, talking about politics, and generally getting to know one another as best two people can through simple correspondence. I grew to enjoy our friendly debates over the years and on a few occasions we even visited one another. Henke moved around a lot and as such it gave me a good excuse to visit a number of mainland European countries, not to mention that he always knew which local pubs served the best beer and which restaurants were to be best avoided.

Last year I visited Henke in Amsterdam. The Dutch city seemed to be a good fit for him as he always liked to live in the liveliest of places, and with countless meandering canals, bridges, and walkways swamped with millions of tourists every year, Amsterdam, for Henke, felt like the very embodiment of life and vibrancy. At the time he had been recently hired to carry out some important maintenance work on the Rijksmuseum, which is one of Amsterdam’s most impressive buildings, and this seemed to have rooted him to the one place for longer than was usual.

When I met him in a small darkened corner of a local pub, well away from the burgeoning tourist trade, I was shocked at his appearance. Here was a friend I had grown to know as being larger than life, exuding bravado, and yet I was presented with a shell of a man, slight in stature and racked with self doubt.

He proceeded to impart on me the circumstances which resulted in his precarious condition, of which I will relay to you now.

Henke had been working as a civil engineer for some time and relished the challenge of renovating and maintaining the Rijksmuseum, a building with such a long and compelling history. The museum houses Amsterdam’s finest collection of historical relics, and being given access to some of its more hidden places which are inaccessible to the general public, piqued Henke’s fascination for the obscured and unique.

He had been hired most specifically to lead a maintenance crew which had been assigned to assess and repair the building’s foundations. This oldest part of the structure dated back centuries and had a most bizarre and, it must be said, quite horrific history. The Rijksmuseum itself had been constructed in 1885, but what it had been built upon possessed a much older and interesting history.

In the bowels of the building under its marble floors and deep red brickwork, lay a labyrinth of abandoned tunnels which at one time served as part of the old city’s sewer network. They had long been disused and fallen into disrepair but they were nonetheless an essential part of the building’s foundations and had to be assessed and repaired, otherwise the entire structure would be in danger of subsiding.

The ground and upper levels of the museum were beautiful and displayed many wonderful historical relics from all over the world. So welcoming and warm was the atmosphere of the building that it was difficult to imagine the darkness which festered below. After some quick words with the building manager, Henke proceeded to an old, seldom used room at the back of the museum which housed a rather antiquated, creaking, and cage-like elevator which was being used to access the lower levels and sewers underneath.

Pulling on a pair of dirt covered yellow overalls, complete with hard hat and head lamp, Henke entered the elevator for his first descent. On his trip downwards towards the abandoned sewers, Henke thought to himself that those of a nervous disposition may let such a dank and isolated place prey on their minds. This may have explained why the previous man in charge of the repairs had left so abruptly, citing nervous exhaustion and refusing to ever so much as set foot in those pitch black corridors of cold stone ever again.

The elevator winch and engine stuttered as it lowered Henke down four levels into the basement. With each passing floor he observed a slight dimming of the lights and each subterranean level appeared more sparse, and stone-like than the one before. A rusted plate attached to the elevator betrayed its age. It struck Henke that the year of its construction, 1932, must have been amongst the last periods of maintenance carried out there before the persecution of the Jewish people and the outbreak of war in Europe.

Henke knew much of the shameful history of the region as he was part Jewish and his great Grandfather had died during the holocaust. Many had fled to Amsterdam for sanctuary from the Nazi regime in the early 1930s, but the long blighting arm of Hitler’s horrific ‘final solution’ eventually reached the borders of Holland, sweeping many thousands away to those shameful and barbaric concentration camps.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and after forcing the rusted sliding door aside, Henke disembarked. The tunnels – comprising Amsterdam’s disused sewer network – were curious in construction and steeped in a history which stretched back much farther into the distant past than that of the museum itself. Having spoken to his employers, Henke had been specifically told to pay heed to the assessment and repair crews’ knowledge of the tunnel layout, as the place could be disorientating and as the lighting system required to illuminate repair work had not been fully installed yet, that he would find it all too easy to get lost.

Most importantly Henke was informed that the two-way radios normally used to communicate between team members had been playing up, and that they were very unreliable due to interference, probably produced by nearby metallic deposits in the ground. This meant that communication between his team members would have to be carried out verbally, or by using the light from their torches to convey simple messages via Morse code; this was particularly useful in the longer tunnels. In any case, it struck Henke that the catacombs below really were isolated, lonely places.

Care must be taken.

Henke was greeted by Jones, his second in command. Jones was a substantially stout fellow and was rather humorous in nature. He debriefed Henke on the current progress being made by his new team, informing him that the initial mapping and assessments of the tunnels had gone well. All in all there were 16 four man crews, each of which would be assigned a section of the sewers to repair. Henke would supervise two of the crews which were working in one of the more isolated tunnels.

After walking for 15 minutes Henke arrived at the area which would be his workplace for the next few months. The sound of occasional drilling could be heard in the distance as the workers continued to install the still non-operational lighting system. As Henke’s men would be working further away from the other crews, it seemed logical – although not desirable – that they would have a lighting system installed last.

Each passageway seemed oddly shaped with no two tunnels being quite alike, this entire section of the sewer was in fact so antiquated that it had been built long before the careful planning of such constructions had become commonplace. One tunnel would arch onwards for over several hundred metres in a strange semi-circle, while others bisected it at right angles, carrying on in a regimented straight line into the darkness. Henke even found a passageway which seemed to dip and rise only to slither its way along in an unnatural S-shape. Some tunnels seemed to go on forever, others stopped abruptly as if the original builders had been unable to complete their work, leaving in a hurry. Jones tried to keep the conversation light and with his experience of walking through the tunnels for the past two months, Henke was glad to have a guide to show him the way.

Waiting in a large alcove were four of Henke’s team. They would work this section of the tunnels during the day, while the other shift would take over later, working through the night. Jones introduced each of them. They seemed nice enough, but Henke was surprised to find the men largely in the grips of silence. In his experience humour was normally found in abundance, with repair crews using it to slice through the monotony of working in such cramped and repetitive conditions. Here though, he found them uttering not one word, sitting in silence in that imposing alcove, removed from any consideration of camaraderie or fellowship; the only inference that they were not a collection of subterranean statues was the occasional movement of their head lamps altering the shadows around them.

They seemed wholly disconnected from, not just each other, but the very environment in which they worked.

Henke brushed this feeling of unease aside and committed himself to cultivating conversation; if these men were in some way angry or uncomfortable with one another then Henke would soon lay that to rest; a happy workforce is a productive one.

The first order of business was to survey this section of tunnels and decide where repairs were most pressing. Preliminary assessments had already been made, but Henke liked to evaluate any repair project he was involved in from the ground up. Henke walked the catacombs with his team and noticed immediately that they were still on edge, that they seemed frightened in an almost childlike way. No amount of questions casual or otherwise could elicit anything other than one word broken replies. As they toured the numerous tunnels, lighting their way with the small torches attached to their safety helmets and taking notes about failing walls, water damage, and estimations of any possible repair time, Henke pressed the men on their obvious sense of fear, asking why such an experienced crew who no doubt had worked in many tunnels before, were so apprehensive of mere bricks and mortar.

They avoided the questions, looking nervously at one another and changing the topic of conversation with mono-toned lethargy whenever it veered towards their experiences of the old sewers, or of their previous boss’s unceremonious departure from the job. It began to dawn on Henke that the men’s verbal and physical awkwardness was not the result of tensions between workers, but rather of a deep seated and worrying apprehension; of what he did not know. What was clear was that his team seemed to be counting down the minutes until their shift ended, when they could finally clamber out of the darkness into the safety of the world above.

As the beam from his head lamp trickled over the damp and crumbling brickwork of the tunnels, Henke again conceded to himself that some may find such a setting unnerving; but not him. Whatever had caused such trepidation and disquiet amongst the men working down there, was surely a simple case of idle superstition, mischief making, and the quite understandable psychological toll of working in a dark, cramped, and forgotten part of the world. Even Jones, who had through most of the catacombs been jovial and talkative, now adopted the same sullen expression and seriousness of disposition as the others.

The passages wound and meandered their way through the ground, long steady trajectories intermittently and abruptly interrupted by sharp blind corners which made it difficult for Henke to identify exactly where they were. There were so many winding corridors that Henke felt slightly disorientated and was ready to joke with his men that if they didn’t like him as a boss that they could probably leave him there and he would never find his way out.

But his men were no longer with him.

He was standing at the mouth of a tunnel and while he had continued onwards talking, trying to fill in the difficult silences, his men had stopped at the last junction. They stood motionless some twenty feet behind, staring at Henke with blank expressions occasionally betrayed by the slightest flicker of a very real and gripping emotion beneath; a look of suppressed terror.

When he asked why the men were not following, they whispered in reply that where they stood was where the last of the repair work was needed. Pulling out a map and perusing it intently by the light of his head lamp, Henke surmised that he must have wandered into the most remote part of the sewer network, at the back of the catacombs, and while the tunnels continued into the foreboding distance this must have marked the boundary of the Rijksmuseum’s foundations.

What confused him was that where he stood had been marked for repair. He was standing at the entrance to what appeared to be a rather innocuous tunnel, but on the wall next to the opening Henke could clearly see that someone had placed an identification plaque there, marking it for repair. It read ‘Tunnel 72F: Water damage & failing brickwork’.

After double checking his map, it was clear to Henke that tunnel 72F was indeed still under the Rijksmuseum foundations and had to be appraised and repaired, but when he told his men this they simply informed him that where they stood was as far as they would go.

Anger began to take over, accompanied by frustration that the team he was supposed to be supervising were being so difficult, but even raising his voice and demanding that they head into the tunnel did not seem to move them. Just as things became heated and Henke began demanding that the men do as he say, Jones interjected:

“We’ve worked down here for two months, Henke. This is a good, hard working, talented crew you have. They will do exactly as you ask, when you ask it, but you will have to accept that for them, and me, our work stops at this junction and that none of us will go near tunnel 72F. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is something in there.”

Taking a deep breath and calming himself, Henke explained to his men that he understood the stress induced by working in such an environment for an extended period of time, but that repairs in that tunnel had to be carried out. He would talk to them later about it, but for now he would carry out the survey himself.

As Henke stepped over the threshold and into the apparently forbidden tunnel, Jones and the other men protested vehemently, shouting on Henke to leave the passageway immediately, but he saw this as foolish. He was not to be swayed by unsubstantiated, superstitious nonsense. There was nothing in this tunnel to fear, and once more Henke would prove to others that they should not be so scared, by stepping up, being a man, and pushing forward into places others who are more timid in nature fear to tread. It was a point of pride for Henke, he believed in always being bold.

While the tunnel seemed fairly common in its construction at first glance, as Henke progressed deeper into the darkness it was apparent that this was unlike any sewer he had seen before. The ground was uneven; the floor dipped and rose much like some of the other tunnels, but what was peculiar was how fractured the surface felt under his feet. The ground was obscured by a thick, almost oily water which in places reached up as high as his knees. He trudged through the stagnant water slowly, not because he was scared, but simply to insure he had a sound footing. One thing was apparent, however long the water had lay there it was long enough to fester and produce an unpleasant, rotten stench.

The walls were of a different, much older composition than most of the brickwork he had seen in the sewers elsewhere. Whatever the material was which had been used, it was hundreds of years old and was obviously failing, with long penetrating cracks scarring the surface of the increasingly unstable walls and ceiling.

The light from Henke’s head lamp was enough to illuminate much of the tunnel, but as he ventured further towards what he thought was a dead-end, he realised that the passageway was narrowing and that the tunnel itself did not stop there, but rather tapered slightly before curving abruptly into a blind corner.

Henke estimated that he was around 80 feet into the sewer and while his curiosity for what could be beyond that corner urged him to move forward, he believed he had made his point to his men and would now ask them to abandon their fears and enter the tunnel with him. He unholstered the black hand held radio which all the workers had been issued with from his side, and began requesting for Jones and the others to meet him at the corner of the tunnel.

No one responded, and nothing but a quiet buzz could be heard from the radio speaker. Of course Henke now remembered that he had been warned about how unreliable the radios could be, but just as he was about to turn and shout on his men, something caught his eye.

Surely not.

There was nothing in this old tunnel but stagnant water and himself! But pushing relentlessly against Henke’s bravado and self assured disposition was the creeping reality that something was standing at the end of the tunnel. Obscured by the turn, Henke could only see a glimpse of it, but it was unmistakable. A ragged piece of cloth poked out from around the corner and although Henke’s mind was unwilling to accept it, the cloth was obviously part of a sleeve, a sleeve which contained an arm, of who’s or what’s he did not know.

Disbelief.

Stubbornness can be an effective tonic for even the most horrifying and unbelievable of situations. Henke’s belief in himself and his long history of triumphs over adversity welled up inside of him, filling his chest with pride, and with a strong confident stride Henke marched towards whatever was behind that corner.

The slush and slosh of the black water echoed throughout the tunnel as he made his way to that blind turn. Apprehension now turned to sadness and empathy, for standing there, shivering and dishevelled, was a girl who could not have seen more than 13 years. Her face and hands were blackened with grime and dirt hiding her pale and malnourished frame. A ripped shirt was all that she wore, hanging from her loosely with much of her body exposed to the cold of that dank, isolated place.

Gazing at him between strands of dark matted hair, Henke was struck by how beautiful the young girl was, and how afraid she must have been. At first he believed that somehow she must have made her way into the sewers and lost her way, but no matter how softly he asked her she would not answer, appearing afraid and nervous.

Henke tried his radio again, but was greeted with the same meaningless static. Regardless, he had to get her out of that tunnel, back through the sewers and into the Rijksmuseum and seen by a doctor. He did not want to shout on his men as it may have added to the girl’s disquiet, so he decided to lead her out of the passage himself. As he approached, Henke spoke gently to the girl explaining that he would take her up above to safety. She seemed terrified of him, and this made Henke feel uncomfortable as he prided himself on being someone who would do anything to protect the vulnerable, and not at all someone to be feared.

She made no sound, but as Henke neared she raised her hand, pointing one finger at the light on his helmet. He suddenly realised that the light must have been frightening her somehow, so he merely took the lamp off and held it in his hand, the torch now illuminating the girl’s shirt more starkly. The changed angle of light brought something unsettling to Henke’s attention. Pinned to the shirt was a yellow cloth star. It surprised him as it was entirely familiar but it took a moment for his mind to grasp the memory; it was exactly like the yellow stars forced upon the Jewish populations during their persecution, to allow non-Jews and members of the Nazi regime to identify them.

Henke’s mind fought against the ramifications of such a discovery. After a momentary pause, he once again was resolute, disregarding the cloth star and asserting to himself that he must take this poor girl out of such horrible surroundings.

A tremendous sense of sadness overcame Henke as he grew closer. The torch flickered unusually in his hand as he looked down at the girl, her face momentarily illuminated by the shifting light, as he prepared to carry her out of the sewers if need be. But this sense of duty, this compulsion to be brave and assertive in even the darkest of places, was now replaced with something which Henke had never felt before. Up his spine and from the very pit of his stomach fear gripped him, terror took him, and a horror so potent made him feel anxious, weak, and unsteady.

For Henke had not noticed something so subtle, yet essential to his predicament. The girl had not stopped pointing at him as he drew closer. Her arm was ridged and her finger remained outstretched, even the light which was now in his hand seemed entirely unimportant to her. Realisation swept over him like a plague of abject dread.

The girl was not pointing at the light, she was pointing behind him.

Henke did not remember much more of what happened in that tunnel, but he knew that he had indeed turned to face whatever was standing there. He thanked God (not something he was normally inclined to do) that Jones and those men who feared that dark hollow so acutely, had dispensed with this fear and ran into the passageway as soon as they heard his screams.

Henke regained his composure back at the alcove where he had met the men, but he immediately pleaded with them that they take him back out of the tunnels, which is what they did. Once back in the elevator room of the Rijksmuseum, the men sat and had a frank discussion with Henke about what had been happening down there over the past few months. Jones explained that the first survey team which had encountered that specific sewer passageway resigned from their posts after just one night down there. A week later one of their co-workers who decided to stay on, committed suicide after complaining to everyone that he could hear whispers coming from that tunnel while he worked nearby. Not long after that Jones’ previous supervisor had seen someone standing at the mouth of tunnel 72F and had followed them inside. One of the clean-up crews found him crawling out of the sewer on his hands and knees, crying hysterically like a child.

He had been heavily medicated ever since, but no one knew exactly what he had seen down there, he would not talk of it, but the men who recovered him claimed he was repeating one word over and over frantically:

“Nazi”.

Henke was a nervous wreck after his experience and ordered that no one go into tunnel 72F. He continued to work down in the sewers, day after day in the dark, but he was consumed by the notion that he had seen something so frightening that he had forced himself to forget. Over the next few weeks he lost weight, and had trouble sleeping often waking up in a disturbed state, drenched in a cold sweat, unable to recall what he had been dreaming about.

The very idea that brave Henke could be reduced to this, that he could be affected so deeply by something he could not even remember in its entirety, preyed on his pride and his sense of self worth. He first tried to combat this feeling of helplessness by increasing his knowledge of the tunnels. Knowledge, as they say, is power and Henke felt that if he knew more about that place in the dark, that he would somehow be less afraid of it. He read about the history of the museum, and while he found very little of it helpful, one local legend struck a chord with him.

It was rumoured that during the second world war a number of Jewish families took refuge in the tunnels below the Rijksmuseum. When two SS officers were tipped off as to their whereabouts, they entered the tunnels with some local volunteers hoping to arrest them down there and most probably send them off to a concentration camp. The rumours were that the families ambushed the SS officers and their Nazi sympathisers, killing them and dumping the bodies somewhere in the sewers.

This was the story Henke related to me. It was sad to see him so shaken and vulnerable; a strong powerful individual who had never shown so much as a hint of fear for, or of, anything, to be reduced to a diminished man living on his nerves.

Unfortunately the story does not end there; some men are haunted both by what they have seen, and by what they cannot understand. Ego can be a terrible burden on anyone. Once it is fractured or damaged, the lasting effects can be devastating. Henke could not let go of his pride, nor his desire to feel strong again, whole. He had never been afraid of anything before and no matter what was in that tunnel, no matter how much I attempted to dissuade him, he was determined to confront it and reclaim his self worth.

Three days later Henke’s body was found at the mouth of tunnel 72F, stuffed into an old duffel bag. It was a heart attack which had killed him, but whoever broke, twisted, and shoved his body into that morbid sack after he died was never caught.

I should mention that the bag was of particular interest to the police in case it could reveal something about Henke’s death. It was traced to Germany, army issue to be precise, and hadn’t been manufactured since 1941.

Credit To – Michael Whitehouse

The following is based on true events.

On October 31th 2004, it was reported that 6 young adults had perished on the Uhkaava mountain pass in the northern wilderness of Finland. News reports excerpts stated “… four males and two females tragically lost their lives following an expedition… made the discovery 50km southeast of Ivalo… [believed] to have perished following unfavourable [weather] conditions…”.

The news reports did not delve into details regarding the specifics of the tragedy. Grieving family and friends of the deceased were informed by investigators that the group had got into difficultly during the early hours of Wednesday 27th October after a small avalanche descended onto their camp. Death was caused by hypothermia in all cases with the exception of Anni Järvinen whose demise was found to be the result of cerebral hemorrhaging caused by blunt force trauma to her right temporal bone. This was attributed to debris, possibly a large rock or tree branch, propelled at speed through the avalanche. No further details were disclosed.

Authorities and law enforcement officers found the ruined camp after being made aware of potential missing persons by concerned friends who informed them that the group failed to contact them on neither the 29th nor 30th October to confirm that they had returned safely from the wilderness.

The six deceased were transported to their respective home towns to be claimed by their immediate kin. All six were transported in closed caskets which remained closed. Authorities cited the poor conditions of the bodies, exposed for too long to the relentless elements before discovery, as the reasoning behind this. Many people were of the belief that the bodies should in fact have been preserved in good condition but the stricken emotions of the bereaved meant that they did not voice any objections and cause further stress. The bodies were buried and the tragedy receded into memory for all but the closest family members.

It has since been discovered that this information does not amount to the full story of what occurred on that fateful night.

Withheld information and retrospective investigations, the results and conclusions of which were secreted away in an archive until now, paint a very different picture of the events which occurred. Presented for your consideration are those missing facts, alongside conjectures and suppositions designed to recreate, in so much as is possible, the true nature of the circumstances which transpired on October 26th and 27th 2004 on the Uhkaava Pass.

The six deceased in question are: Manu Okkonen, 23, studied for an MA in architectural design, Lempi Litmanen, 19, studied for a BA in Finnish language, the aforementioned Anni Järvinen, 20, studied for a BSc in geology, Jaak Ilves, 20, also studied for a BSc in geology, Raine Järvinen, 20, studied for a BSc in electrical engineering and Ole Aadland, 21, a Norwegian who studied in the School of Medicine at the University of Tampere. Manu, Lempi, twins Anni and Raine, and Jaak (an Estonian national) all studied at the University of Oulu.

Subsequent interviews conducted among staff and students of both universities have been used herewith to help piece together the components of a bizarre puzzle and the conjectures which will follow in due course. All six students lived on their respective campuses and all lived long distances away from their families. The funerals afforded the authorities time for unofficial searches of their dorms and to conduct interviews away from the watchful gazes of inquisitive families, some unsatisfied with the information released to them. It also allowed authorities to complete their investigations of the dorms of the deceased before relatives were afforded the opportunity to claim the possessions of the dead. Certain known possessions, including diaries, were never claimed by families and have never been accounted for.

The five attendees of the university of Oulu were a tight-knit group. They were popular among their peers (with the exception of Jaak, who had gothic tendencies which were the subject of some ridicule by other students) and they spent much of their leisure time together. They were an active bunch, fond of pursuits including hiking, ski-boarding, rock-climbing and abseiling. Weekend sojourns to locations suited for these activities were a common occurrence for the five. Analysis of evidence has revealed that between the 12th and 15th of October a 6 day long trip, to coincide with midterm break, was planned. The trek was to commence on the 23rd October with the group due to return to the university on 29th October.

The five diligently planned their junket. They were experienced adventurers and were only too aware of the potential dangers that awaited them. They laboriously planned every aspect of their trip and inventoried absolutely all equipment and gear which was to be taken on the trip.

On the 15th of October, Manu Okkonen received an email from Ole Aadland. The two were good friends from Ole’s time in the University of Oulu where Ole studied for one year before relocating to the University of Tampere. At the time, (before the other deceased members commenced third level studies) both Manu and Ole were integrated into a large fraternity who liked to make the most of their weekends: partying, pranks, girls and occasionally sports. Manu and Ole in particular, along with (NAME WITHELD) had a passion for outdoor activities. Manu’s passion would eventually infect the rest of Uhkaava mountain pass party. Manu invited Ole to join the planned trip. Ole accepted.

At 9.30am on Saturday October 23rd, the Uhkaava mountain pass party convened on the grounds of the University of Oulu. Ole was introduced by Manu to the other members of the group for the first time. They set off on their trip at 9.40am.

The intervening days between October 23rd and October 26th are believed to have passed without much incident, with one notable exception. The group travelled in two cars and made their way north to the town of Ivalo (located approximately 500km away from Oulu). They arrived there two days later on October 25th. The group are known to have visited several bars in Ivalo before retiring for the night. It is believed that at some point Ole and Jaak almost came to physical blows. This is believed to have been caused by simmering, underlying tensions between the two (Ole disliked Jaak’s gothic lifestyle and believed him also to be a homosexual). The situation was only exacerbated by alcohol and it is thought that Manu and Raine helped to maintain the peace. The group set off early the next day in a southeasterly direction. It was in this isolation that they intended to rock-climb and snow-board. They also intended to spend their first and only night outdoors.

The group are believed to have enjoyed a successful day of activities. At approximately 4pm they arrived at the Uhkaava pass where they decided to set up camp. A forested area lay beyond the pass but Manu felt that it was too risky to travel further for the shelter as nightfall was rapidly approaching. The campsite was made on the pass at the base of a steep slope with a river located 200m away and a few lone trees dotted around the pass.

The group stayed together in one large tent as the collective temperature produced by body heat was greater than if spread over two or three individual tents. Digital imagery recovered from the scene showed that the group had a meal at 8.30pm and, sat around a paraffin lamp, proceeded to imbibe alcohol until approximately 11.30pm. The group sang songs and played games before retiring to sleep, most drowsy from the effects of alcohol. The paraffin lamp remained illuminated throughout the night. DNA analysis showed that Manu and Lempi shared the same sleeping bag and had sexual intercourse. It is presumed this occurred when the others fell asleep. Semen belonging to Jaak and found in the stomach of Raine indicates that they too had a sexual tryst after awaking briefly some time between 12.45am and 1.00am.

At 1:58am, an incident occurred which caused the entire group to suddenly evacuate the tent. It was significant enough to prompt everyone involved to step outside into estimated temperatures of -22°C without stopping for long enough to collect warmer clothing on the way out. They were outside for approximately 90 seconds before returning to inside the tent. Images found on Ole’s cellular phone showed that he attempted, probably in a haste, to take photos of Lempi who appeared to be wearing only a brassiere at the time. His attempts were somewhat unsuccessful as an object (probably his thumb) partially obscured the lens which resulted in partial images of her naked buttocks. It is believed that he snapped these pictures unbeknownst to Lempi or any of the rest of the group.

Further digital imagery reveals that the group joked and laughed, possibly to brush off the incident, and seemed in high spirits before returning to sleep.

The cause of this initial evacuation remains unknown.

Analysis of the scene suggests that a light snow fell between 2.30am and 3.15am concealing most of the original tracks and footprints. It did not snow again between the time of the incident and the discovery of the bodies.

An avalanche did not take place, this was a fabrication on the part of the investigators.

At some time between 3.25am and 3.35am, the fatal events unfolded. The body of Anni Järvinen was discovered 20m away from the tent. She was found wearing a t-shirt, pyjama bottoms and one thermal sock. It was initially believed that as she fled from the tent in the darkness, she ran headlong into a single tree, fracturing her skull and fatally wounding her. However, an inspection of the ground showed her footprints moving just past, and not into, the tree in question before falling from her injury. The injury stemmed from another source.

The bodies of Raine Järvinen and Jaak Ilves were found in each other’s arms some 540m away from the camp site. They both died of hypothermia. Jaak wore only his nighttime attire and a bobble hat, Raine wore nighttime attire and also a coat and his unlaced boots. It appeared that he attempted to keep Jaak warm by drawing him into his unzipped coat. Further anaylsis of Jaak’s body showed that he had sustained two non-fatal injuries; a broken rib and a severed tongue. It is believed he unintentionally bit off his own tongue. Jaak was introduced to Raine through Raine’s sister Anni, with whom Jaak shared his geology classes. Their sexual orientation and fondness for one another was never known by anyone, not even Anni.

The body of Manu Okkonen was found beside the partially collapsed and partially burnt tent. He wore only boxer shorts and a t-shirt. He, like Anni, died from trauma to the cranium. However, the trauma he suffered was far more severe. An apparent blow to the head completely caved in the left side of his head, knocking out an eyeball, most of his teeth, fragments of skull and a large portion of brain matter. The cause of the trauma is unknown. Found embedded in the remains of his head was one solitary hair. The hair was 5 inches long and thick like that of animal. The hair was jet black with veins of a turquoise pigment running through the length of the hair. Scientists have determined that the hair is organic in descent and not man-made. The species from which it came is unknown.

The body of Ole Aadland was discovered in the river, some 600m downstream. He had drowned. He was found wearing a one-piece pjyama suit, boots and a trapper hat and a zipper hoodie which forensics later discovered both belonged to Anni. Traces of Anni’s blood were found on the right shoulder of the hoodie. The hat had also been severely damaged and contained Anni’s blood and hair. It has been determined that both Anni and Ole fled from the tent in a similar direction. Ole, who had picked up a hatchet during his escape, struck Anni the fatal below with the blunt edge of the weapon. He removed her hoodie and hat and, donning both items to help maintain warmth in the extreme cold, continued his escape towards the river. Analysis of his footprints on the riverbank reveal that he stopped, looked back towards the camp as if considering his options before committing himself to the plunge. He drifted downstream until the hood of Anni’s hoodie, snagged a fallen tree below the surface of the water. In darkness and panicking, Ole struggled to free himself but only served to also catch the sleeve of the hoodie on the fallen tree. Trapped beneath the surface of the water, he quickly drowned. The discarded hatchet, upon which were traces of Anni’s blood, was found discarded on the riverbank next to Ole’s footprints.

The body of Lempi Litmanen was never recovered. No footprints matching hers were discovered at the scene. An inspection of artifacts at the site by authorities also leads them to believe that she was still wearing only a brassiere when she disappeared. Two weeks after the initial investigation, authorities covertly performed another search of the site. A severed hand was found in a tree 1km from the campsite. Many of the lower branches up to a height of five metres were broken. They were subjected to an extreme weight or pressure. The hand belonged to Lempi.

Rigorous examinations of the tent and its contents were carried out. It was initially assumed that the partial burning of the canvas had resulted from an accidental overturning of the paraffin lamp as the group rushed out of their quarters during the second evacuation. This notion has since been scuppered by compelling evidence that suggests Manu intentionally ignited the material but the fire failed to take. The reason for this arson is unknown. Aside from minor burns and damaged doors, the tent showed no other indications of compromise.

Authorities originally suspected that Ole Aadland was responsible for the gruesome events at Uhkaava Pass. However, whilst responsible for the manslaughter of Anni Järvinen, he has been eliminated as the cause of the devastation. It has been established that he was the second to leave the tent after Anni and his tracks continued only one way to the river.

Attacks from hostile locals or wild fauna such as lynx, wolverine or bear have also been eliminated as triggers for the destruction. No foreign human or animal prints were found at the scene. The group also had a hunting rifle (licenced to Manu Okkonen who was a very capable hunter) and two Bowie knives within the tent. It would appear that no attempt was made to utilize these weapons for self-defence despite the fact they were close to hand. In fact, the only item missing from the tent was the hatchet.

The last piece of evidence present at the scene was a claw mark which ripped though the inner door of the tent. The claw mark entered the door near its top and travelled downwards leaving the material dangling in ribbons. The inner door was never unzipped as the group were able to move through the tattered remains of the inner door unimpeded. Again, officials had believed a carnivore may have been responsible for the devastation but an inspection of the claw mark revealed it was one swipe made from an animal with seven claws on one appendage. The door, while in its taut and undamaged state, would allow for one swipe and no more. The presence of seven claws ruled out any local fauna which would have a maximum of five. The lack of any DNA evidence also aided in eliminating a local predator as the culprit as no hair, saliva etc was found. The only item found was the unidentifiable black-blue hair on Manu’s body.

Anni was known to be the first to exit the tent during the second evacuation. She forced her way through the sealed outer door without undoing the zipper. Damage to the zipper, blood (identified as Anni’s) on the zipper-teeth and a small, fresh wound on her arm, confirm this theory. What remains a topic of debate amongst certain authorities is the nature of the claw mark. It was determined to have struck the inner door of the tent from within. Anni Järvinen fled through the tattered inner door and burst through the secure outer door. The others quickly followed.

While the authorities do not know the cause of the destruction that night on the Ukhaava Pass, one irrefutable, disturbing fact remains: the attack originated from inside the tent.

Credit To: afish

First of all, I want to stress the fact that this is a real happening. This is not some story written to get what I write on to a public medium. I am only doing this because I think the story needs to be told. The events that I am about to describe took place by the account of my brother in law. All I have is his story and the fear on his face when he entered my house that afternoon in the fall of 2007. The story is as follows.

My sister, along with her new husband and child, had just moved into a house about a half a mile down the road from my own. A month had passed and, from what they had told me, they were settling in nicely. At the time I was living with my parents after just graduating high school and trying to build up money for college. I was busy doing the dishes when I saw my brother in law, Richard, walking in a hurried fashion from his car, up my dirt driveway, under the porch and stopping in front of the door. The entranceway was a French door so anyone walking towards the house was easily seen. He looked at me and sweat was pouring from his face. Concerned, I walked over and let him in asking if everything was ok. He pushed his way around me and made his way to the sink, where he quickly grabbed a cup and poured a glass from the tap. He moved over to table and took a seat guzzling the water down as if he had just run a marathon, then abruptly set down the cup and stared into nothing. My sister walked through the door next. She had been taking the car seat from the back of her Dodge neon and was a few steps behind her husband. She came in, gave me a look of concern, and went about setting her child, who was sitting in the car seat, and diaper bag on the table. She sat down and clasped her hands together looking at Richard with a frown on her face.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I slid the chair at the tables head and sat down with caution. Richard never looked at me. Cassie, my sister, turned her head towards me, her eyes welling with tears.

“You’re not going to believe it.” She said. Her voice cracked as she placed her hand over her mouth. She turned to her husband and nudged his shoulder. “Tell him Rich.”

Richard just sat there. His eyes focused on a point in space only he could see. His mind, as far as I could tell, was trying to puzzle out what had just taken place. I leaned my head in the path of his starring and broke him free of his thoughts.

“Rich?” I said in a calm tone. “What happened?” He took a deep breath and told me the following.

He had been raking leaves in his yard for the better part of the day, arranging them in piles to be picked up later and placed into a garbage pail. The goal was to arrange all of the leaves in a large pile and burn it during the winter when friends and family come over for coffee and general visiting. This was common practice of families in my town and Richard wanted a piece of that nostalgia for himself. After sectioning off the small piles he took a seat on the stairs that led to his front door and admired his work. He told me that he was thinking about how he was finally a homeowner and his thoughts at the time were of the future for his family and himself. The story continued. He sat there on his stoop for a few minutes when his father’s car entered the driveway and parked. His father got out and walked over to sit with him on the stairs.

“Yard work huh?” His father asked as he bent his knees to rest on the step beside his son with a grunt of old age. Richard nodded his head and his father began to talk to him. He spoke about how difficult it was to raise a family and how, if he could do it over again, he would have washed his hands of the whole ordeal entirely and lived his life alone. He said to Richard that it would be better to live alone. Richard grew uncomfortable and began to tell his father about how he was happy and wouldn’t have it any other way, that he loved his wife and daughter and how they were the best thing to ever happen to him. His father smirked, patted him on the shoulder and with a low tone in his voice stated. “You keep them safe. You never know what could happen. “After saying this, his father walked to his car, opened the door and left still smirking at he exited the driveway. Richard sat there watching his father leave his house with a chill running up his spine. He felt a hand touch his shoulder and a familiar voice call out to him. It was Cassie.

“Richard? Are you going to stare at it or rake the yard?” Rich snapped back. The yard was covered in leaves. There were no small piles dotting the property. No sign that any work was done. He just sat there with rake in hand. The most disturbing aspect of the whole ordeal was that Richard had not seen nor heard from his father for five years. His mother had divorced him year’s earlier and he had moved far away from the state of Louisiana to escape his now ex-wife. It was impossible for his dad to have been there, and when he asked my sister if she had seen his father pull up she stated that no one showed up in the time he had went outside to work. Rich hesitantly asked what time it was. My sister stated plainly that it was five o’clock. His eyes widened.

“Cassie, I came out here at one.” He had been on the porch for four hours sitting there speaking to………..someone. Richard grew pail. My sister became concerned and asked what was bothering him, to which he explained the story I am telling you now. My sister, having a firm belief in the supernatural, came to my house to try to make sense of the situation. He finished his story. Richard looked at me with hesitation, his eyes searching mine for any hint of disbelief. I myself have had encounters with the unexplained in the past, and for me to look at this situation with any judgment or condescension would be grossly inappropriate. I grabbed his shoulder and looked calmly into his eyes.

“We need to find the history of that house.” I stated in an assuring tone. His face relaxed and his shoulders untightened. Immediately I began to search the internet for previous owners, criminal occurrences, or deaths relating to that house. I found much. The most outstanding story that I had found was of a massacre that had taken place in the house during the 80’s. The story goes that the house was notorious for meth and other illegal drugs going in and out of the property. An argument occurred between a few customers and the dealer and his partner that led to a brutal fight between the two parties. All five victims had stabbed each other repeatedly until they all lay dead on the floor. Other stories told of an old man during the 70’s that would show up in the middle of the night claiming that the current tenants were trespassing on his lands yelling threats to kill them and the like. All of the deaths recorded about the house seemed to follow the same order of deranged and angered people lashing out and committing murders in fits of rage. Later I would find out from my father that during the 50’s that his grandfather used to live in this area, and that in that house lived an old lady who was deranged and mad. She would threaten people on the street passing by claiming that she would shoot them and drag their bodies away for no one to find. When my grandfather made the mistake of accidentally walking on her property, she ran after him with a shotgun madly firing into the air shouting that she was going to kill him and eat him. The lady eventually died in that house from a heart attack and wasn’t found until days later. As we talked the uneasiness of my brother in law fell away. Richard, not wanting to believe that something was wrong with his house, dismissed it as being overtired and stressed and went back to his house, shaken but not deterred. It wasn’t long after our talk that something else happened.

A month and a half went by with no further happenings in the house, when a frenzied call came to my home. My mother picked it up. It was Cassie crying and partially yelling as a loud thumping echoed over the call. She kept screaming ‘He’s trying to get in! He’s trying to get in!’ as the thumping sound grew more and more violent. My mother shouted over the phone that my father was on his way. He grabbed his .357 handgun and took off out the door to his truck. My mother hung up the phone, called 911, and we waited in silence for our father to return from rescuing my sister. An hour passed and my father walked through the door alone.

“The police arrived shortly after I got there. Not a moment too soon.” He explained. He was never one to give over to emotion in intense situations, but his face was pail and stressed. “I thought I was going to have to shoot him. “

“Shoot who?” My mother asked.

“The man who was trying to break in to Cassie’s house, that’s who.” He shakily placed the gun on the counter and wiped the sweat from his brow. “He kept shouting I know you have it in there! Come out and give it to me! When I yelled at him to stop he turned and faced me. He walked slowly towards me saying that if I didn’t leave he was going to cut me up and eat me for dinner. That’s when the cops arrived and arrested him. He kept screaming it even as they were putting him into the car. ‘I’m going to cut you all up and eat you!”

“Where was Richard?” My mom asked almost in tears. The next words out of his mouth stopped me dead in my tracks.

“His father came into town and he took Richard out to dinner. He left about four hours ago. Dumb idiot left his phone at home.”

Shortly after that incident, my sister and he family left the home and moved into an apartment on the other side of town. Later I would ask Richard what he thought of that house. His answer was simple.

“If I had the gasoline I would burn it to the ground. It… and whatever lived inside it.”

Credit To: Johnathon Blanton

September 14th

My doctor suggested I start keeping a journal in order to organize my thoughts. Said it would help reduce stress, and god knows I need that. I don’t even know what to write, I’ve never done the journal thing before but I guess I’ll start simple.

My name is Milo Stokes, I’m a corporal in the U.S. Marines stationed at Cherry Point North Carolina. Almost a year ago my wife left me after 4 years, said she couldn’t take this lifestyle anymore.

Can’t say I blame her though, if I had a way out I’d take it too, This place is a fucking hole.

But I don’t.

September 23rd

It’s been a little while since my first entry (What can I say, this shit’s new to me) though I’ll admit writing whatever I happen to be thinking is sort of liberating.

As of right now, nothing new to report. Same old bullshit at work, drinking every night, screaming at the walls… you know… normal stuff.

September 26th

Okay, so I’m really hoping my own fucking journal isn’t gonna judge me here, but I’ve always been kind of afraid of the dark.

Not the dark itself, but the prospect of what may be in it.

The unknown.

And don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean at all that I avoid it. On the contrary I’m sort of a thrill seeker and get a rise out of scaring the shit out of myself. Mary (My ex, by the way) and I used to hang out in graveyards at night (Kinda weird, I know) taking pictures, just in the hope that we WOULD find something. And her? Man, she would see shit all the time.

Especially here, in this house.

One night shortly after we had moved in I was in the living room watching TV while she had headed to bed. After a while I heard some loud movement and she shouted my name. I rushed over and into the bedroom to find her sitting up in bed, blankets up to her chin, staring wide eyed at one particular spot in the room.

She explained that she was falling asleep when she heard a sound, something like a knee cracking, coming from the direction of the closet. She looked over to see a man in uniform staring at her from the closet doorway. Well, not staring at her she elaborated, more staring through her. She had glanced at the bedroom door when calling my name and when she looked back, the man was gone.

The next day she described him to me. Going on google I searched the specifics of his uniform and found it was a marine corps service uniform from the WWI era.

She saw him a few more times. Once just standing in the hallway, staring through her. Nothing particularly threatening, he was just kind of… there, watching.

September 27th

Fell asleep typing last night, never finished the entry.

Woke up late for work, got bitched at, the usual. So anyway, after she started seeing this guy, we would do like we saw on the paranormal shows and set up a recorder to see if we could catch any strange sounds or voices digitally. We met with some success, we got a few weird sounds as well as some moderately audible voices.

Every time it would be a deep man’s voice, sort of what we expected. Throughout the time we did this we got some that were memorable, such as “He’s not a bad boy” which I could only assume referred to our newly bought beagle puppy, Dayton. “It’s so cold here” Is another one we could make out, deep and raspy. Again, not altogether surprising as we had a habit of keeping the AC lower than most people would find comfortable year-round. But the one that stuck out, and haunts me to this day, happened probably a few months before we split. I was still recording mostly out of habit when one day I heard “We won’t always be here” the next few lines were hard to make out, but it definitely ended with “Protect you”

I still wonder what he meant by: “Protect you”

September 29th

So in relation to my last entry, the voices on the recording stopped altogether when she left. I literally heard nothing, not even the static that used to permeate the spaces in between the messages he would leave us. But recently strange things have been happening around the house. I’ll see what looks like children playing outside the windows, but when I go to check, there’s nothing there.

Probably just the nerves, gonna finish this drink then head to bed.

October 1st

Alright, I was on duty at the barracks last night and some weird shit went down. I let my A-duty take the first sleeping post, and in those few hours I was totally alone in the duty hut, no one went in or out. So tell me why I found a fucking ragdoll just sitting in the middle of the passageway just outside. All of the marines that live here are at least 17 and up, who the hell would own a ragdoll? And who would leave it just lying in the middle of the hall…? staring at me…

October 2nd

I’m having a hard time typing this as my hands are shaking pretty badly. All these recent incidents going on lately have been of a totally different manner than the ones I’m used to.
No strange but accurate observations on the state of the house.
No still, harmless specters standing in the halls and closet.
I’ve been hearing voices, without the recordings now.
Kids voices.
And occasionally I’ll here the voice of an older woman, and then everything will stop.

Dead silence.

This all reminded me of the time we started looking for info on our uniformed ghost. Looking up the legends and ghost stories that Cherry Point has gathered over the years since it’s construction.
We didn’t find anything on our WWI marine.

This is what we did find:

“Havelock, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
It is said the ghost of Kissie Sykes haunts the flight line and the housing looking for her children. She does not like men, and the men who yell at kids are in big trouble. There is a story of a young Lcpl on post was found the next morning, huddled in a ball in the corner of the guard shack crying; “she wants her kids… she wants her kids”. In the housing you can hear children playing, and from personal experience Kissy herself appears in childrens’ bedrooms after they are put to bed. Toys in the childrens’ rooms are moved when they aren’t even there. There are many different stories as to Kissy’s origin, but the most common theme is that she and her children were abused and murdered by her husband who had returned from the war suffering from shellshock (Now known as post-traumatic stress disorder). She and her children were buried together on base, but upon construction of the current flightline, half of the graveyard was relocated to another section of the installation. Separated from the graves of her children, she now searches for them, taking vengeance on men who have mistreated their families.”

Being the graveyard rats we were, we set out not long after to learn what we could about Kissie Sykes.
We found her grave on one side of the flightline, and just as the website described, on the other side there were several smaller graves. Some bearing only a first name, most without any dates.

And suddenly, the only thing I hear in the ears of my mind are that last recording I got from our uniformed guardian.

“We won’t always be here… protect you.”

The lights just cut out. Except for the light of my computer screen the entire house is pitch black.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM M

Police Report, October 4th

After missing an entire workday, Corporal Milo Stokes was reported missing by his platoon. PMO was immediately dispatched to his residence to investigate, and soon found him dead sitting at his computer desk. The cause of death has not yet been clearly determined, however the rate of suicide within the Marine Corps is currently the highest in the nation. Upon investigation, it has been speculated that Corporal Stokes took his own life in a manner yet to be determined, in response to increasing workplace pressures, an alcoholic tendency, and his pending divorce.

End of Report.

Credit To: John

There I was, at the front entrance to Camp Slenderwood. The beginning of my 7 day long prison sentence had begun. I never was into the outdoors; I much preferred staying inside browsing the internet. The only reason I was there in the first place was because my parents wanted some privacy to do their “taxes”. I was almost 18, and I knew what that really meant. I figured it would be better to just go with their plan than interrupt their alone time.

Still, I had to admit to myself that the camp didn’t look particularly unpleasant. The weather was nice, the trees were fresh and filled with green, and there was a crystal clear lake nearby the cabins. I figured it would at least be tolerable to stay there, even without a Wifi connection. I decided I would give it a fair chance and keep an open mind about the new experience. In the middle of the camp, between the lunch benches, was a stage with a mustached man wearing a Camp Slenderwood T-shirt. Dozens of campers had already begun to surround the stage while the man yelled through the microphone.

“Welcome to Camp Slenderwood, kids!” he shouted, “My name is Elwood Dolcy, but you can all call my Elwood. I’m the owner of this place and I live here all season to help run the camp and answer any questions. We had an amazing turnout this week! There are 64 teens here ready to learn what it means to survive!”

I wondered to myself what he meant by survive. There was nothing in the brochure about this being a survivalist camp; we were supposed to be provided sleeping quarters and three meals throughout the day. Was I going to be expected to hunt a boar or something? I figured he must have been exaggerating and let the thought go after a few moments.

“We’ve already assigned everyone their cabins.” Elwood continued, “Just grab your camp ID cards from Lexi over there and she will point you in the right direction.” He pointed to a pretty blond in her twenties who was also wearing a Camp Slenderwood T-shirt. She looked cheerful, almost overly cheerful, and was waving ID cards in her hands enthusiastically.

Kids began rushing over to Lexi to grab their ID cards and get their assigned cabins. I followed as well, tuning out the rest of Elwood’s speech. With any luck, I’d find someone to spend these 7 days with that felt just as out of place as I did. Fortunately, not long after that I bumped into a quiet looking guy trying unsuccessfully to load up my favorite forum on his phone. His name was Bryan and we hit it off instantly, spending most of the first day talking about how dorky all of the camp supervisors looked. They all were over-the-top friendly, and seemed to care just a little too much about what kind of day everyone was having. Two counselors had already asked me if something was wrong when I had not finished all of my Salisbury steak. One of them even offered me cold medicine when I cleared my throat. The only worker there who seemed normal was Mr. Todd, the cafeteria supervisor and cook. He wasn’t quite as talkative but at least he didn’t constantly patronize us.

Bryan and I wound up getting separated after dinner. I got to know a few more of the campers at that point, as well as see the camp supervisors put on a show and dance with no background music. When I got to my cabin that night, I was disappointed to see that Bryan was not in the same one. There were three campers inside who apparently were my room mates. They seemed like alright guys, but none of us talked much before going to sleep. I was actually excited about what was in store for the next day.
Morning came very quickly, and it wasn’t long before I found Bryan sitting near the cafeteria. The benches were less full than yesterday, but it was still early. At first I thought most of the campers were still in bed, but by late afternoon it still felt like half of them were missing. I went up to Mr. Todd and asked him if all of the kids had come for breakfast and lunch. Mr. Todd shook his head and plopped a burger on my plate. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something odd was going on. Everything felt much more active yesterday. There were only a few people circling the Camp Slenderwood puppet show, and even fewer were spread out in the woods area. I became more suspicious when I realized that a good amount of campers were still missing by dinner time. What was going on here? I wished I had gotten to know everyone better the first day, so I could figure out who was still here and who wasn’t.

When I got back to my cabin, all three of my room mates were already inside. It comforted me a little to see all of them, perhaps I had just made a mistake. I decided to check with them to see if they had noticed anything strange. To my surprise, they all shrugged my question off and acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about. Was I just making myself go crazy? How could over 30 kids just up and vanish without a trace, or without anyone saying something? The thought was ridiculous, and I laughed about it to myself as I fell into a deep sleep.

The third day things got even weirder. I guess my nerves were pretty worked up, because I woke a little before daylight. The camp looked much more foreboding under the darkness, the slender trees wrapping around the sky until all you could see were shrouds. Even creepier was the fact that I could see all the camp supervisors standing in a circle outside. I couldn’t tell what was going on, but several of them were hunched over awkwardly. The sight was very unsettling, and I quickly hid away from the window so they wouldn’t see me. It was at that point that I realized that two of my room mates were not in the cabin. I had seem them go to bed that night, but now their beds were fully made and their belongings were nowhere to be found. Out of panic, I woke up my remaining room mate to get some answers. When I told him our room mates were gone, he got agitated with me and said we had no room mates before going back to sleep.

When day came I left the cabin to investigate. Now there were only one or two kids near the cafeteria, but none of them seem alarmed in any way. I kept repeating what my remaining room mate said to me in my head. Was he pulling some kind of sick joke on me? The camp supervisors were acting completely normal, but I didn’t dare ask them anything. I started asking every kid I could find where the other campers were, and each time they said there were only 16 of us. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There were definitely more than 16 campers the first day; Elwood had said there were 64. Were they abducting some of us during the night? If so, why was I the only one who could remember anything? Something wasn’t right here, and I had to figure out what it was.

I was beyond relieved to find Bryan out by the lake. At least there was one person here who would listen to me. When I got to him I frantically started explaining everything that I had seen. The more I told him, the more concerned his expression got. By the time I finished, he was actually sweating and he had completely lost eye contact with me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he said blankly. “There were only 16 of us that registered to stay. Maybe you just got confused when all the families were here.”
Bryan was staring at the ground so hard you’d think there was a snake there. My heart sank as I realized that I couldn’t trust him anymore. I had never felt so utterly and completely alone. Without saying another word I got up and left. I was walking in a fog, not even aware of where I was headed. Fear and dread was beginning to take over me; I had to find someplace to hide. Eventually I wandered back to my cabin, where I stayed under my covers for the remainder of the day. I didn’t know what else to do, so I laid there helpless until I miraculously drifted to sleep.

I wasn’t surprised at all when I woke up to see my cabin completely empty. Sure enough, the few campers I managed to track down believed there were only 8 of us. This was way too much for me to handle. My survival instincts were beginning to kick in. I made sure no one was looking and darted off as fast as I could towards the exit of the camp. I was surrounded by at least 70 miles of wilderness, but it was better than just waiting to disappear. But they must have been watching me, because I was intercepted within less than a minute by Elwood and three supervisors. Elwood had a huge grin on his face and was staring at me with his eyes wide open.

“Whoa there, little buddy! Where ya runnin off to? I’d sure have hell to pay from your parents if I lost one of my only 8 campers!”
An impulse told me to fight, but I knew I was outmatched and outnumbered. They started closing in on me, causing me to back up slowly. Suddenly Elwood stopped.
“I know what you need.” He smiled ominously at me. “You need to play charades with us! Come on, it’s just about to start!”

Feeling trapped and violated, I reluctantly agreed and followed him to the bench area. I played charades all day, feeling sick as I pushed down my desire to yell for help. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I didn’t look out the window either, I didn’t think I could handle seeing any more late night gatherings by my prison guards.

When the morning of the fifth day came, I felt hungover from stress. My eyes had sunken in and my skin felt dry. There were now only four campers left, which didn’t even make sense anymore. As I got my breakfast, I looked up at Mr. Todd and remembered how he had been the only one that I felt was normal. Now that I was thinking about it, I didn’t see him in the circle of supervisors outside either. He was my only chance, so I very quietly whispered to him.

“Mr. Todd, please help me. They’re going to take me if you don’t do something.”
Mr. Todd didn’t look at me, but I could see him trying hard to keep his composure. His eyes looked like they were slightly watering and he was shaking. It reminded me of the way Bryan reacted when I reached out to him.

“If you need to talk, come see me by the lake this afternoon.” He responded after what felt like an eternity. I could tell by the way he said it that he wanted to end the conversation for now, so I quickly headed out to eat. I waited by the lake for the entire day but Mr. Todd never showed up. I waited until dark, when a supervisor came and escorted me back to my cabin. I felt defeated, and due to not having slept in two days I felt exhausted. I fell asleep within minutes and enjoyed the temporary peace.

It was the sixth day now. The week was almost over. I wondered to myself if I would survive it, which made me appreciate the speech Elwood gave the first day. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said I would learn what it means to survive. I knew that if I somehow made it through this, it would be a miracle. To my disappointment, Mr. Todd was not in the cafeteria serving breakfast that day. The new cook was Mr. Beardsley, and he had never heard of Mr. Todd.

It was now down to 2 campers, but what really shocked me was that the only other camper left besides me was Bryan. I hadn’t spoken to Bryan since he had lied to me. I still felt uneasy about him, but I was beginning to accept that there may be nothing more I could do. Perhaps as a way to make peace with my situation, I sat down with Bryan and began to talk.

“You may be hiding something from me, but you are the closest thing I have here to a friend. I don’t want to try to force the truth out of you, I just want one last day to enjoy. Can you give me that?”
Bryan looked at me, his eyes lighting up a bit.

“I knew you’d come around, there’s no need to be depressed during your whole vacation.”
The two of us talked about Sci-fi shows and website design for the rest of the day, and I actually felt some comfort in taking my mind off my grim reality.

I awake on the seventh day with a heavy heart. I knew Bryan would be gone, and it would just be me and the supervisors. My parents were due to pick me up early tomorrow, so I didn’t completely let go of the hope of getting home. I felt genuinely spooked walking around camp. The workers were all fixated on me and staring at me obsessively. They kept calling me their “favorite little camper”, and tried to put on show after show in front of me. The new cook still made all the meals in bulk, and just left the food I didn’t take sitting out to rot. I tried jogging as a distraction, but Elwood would just follow right behind me and compliment me on my form. I was thankful when the sun finally went down and I was left alone in my cabin. There was no way I was falling asleep tonight; I couldn’t risk being abducted like all the others.

I started drinking from a mug of coffee that I had gotten from the cafeteria. I expected to feel energized quickly, but it felt like it was making me more tired if anything. I drank more to try to wake up, but it only made my eyelids feel heavier. Something was in that coffee…something was…….

“Welcome to Camp Slenderwood!” Elwood shouted through his microphone. “We have a great turnout this week, 64 teens have come to learn what it means to survive!”
“I didn’t see anything in the brochure like that.” A freckled face kid whispered to another camper in the crowd. “You don’t think that has anything to do with that missing kid from last year do you?”
“Nah, this place is totally safe.” The second camper answered back. “By the way, I’m Bryan.”

Credit To: Drew Trippel