CREEPYPASTA.COM – Scary Paranormal Stories & Short Horror Microfiction

The images we see in the mirror are the pure incarnates of evil. They are only allowed to exist in the area reflected in the glass. To them, life is like a never-ending hell, rotting away in the same room day after day. The only refuse from this purgatory is death, and the only way for them to die, sad to say, is if YOU die. Fortunately, they are bound by a code. You are their master, and they must mirror your every movement and expression. To do otherwise would break an unbreakable law, unraveling the space-time continuum. However, there is a loophole, and it can only be triggered by you, the master. To force them into error is to free them from their contract; after you let them out of your view, you’re on your own. Know this: when you watch them, they’re watching you back. They’re watching.

And they’re thinking.

At the bottom of a 50-meter high glacier, exactly two kilometers from Antarctica, lies the frozen remains of a long-forgotten civilization. The exact location of the glacier is unknown, only that it is two kilometers from the shore of Antarctica. Upon finding said glacier, one is to approach it on the snowbank and touch the side of the ice with the palm of their hand. The important thing here is to touch it with your bare skin. If you hold your hand on the ice for 5 minutes then speak the words, “I see and believe.” you will seemingly disappear from existence, your whole life erased from memory and transcripts. What happens next, you are in a rather swanky 80s cocktail bar, but there are a few stipulations: You must live the next 50 years in this bar; you are granted 5 free drinks from the bartender, no more. If you attempt to break the quota of drinks, you are immediately executed on the spot by the rather brawny bouncers. If you manage to wait the whole 50 years, you will reappear in your original life, and granted one single wish, which you must take immediately on your return. Needless to say, very few have actually waited the 50 years.

An unpopular young med student had been particularly annoying one day and some of her classmates decided to play a trick on her. They snuck into her room after she’d gone to bed and placed an amputated arm into bed with her. The next morning they anxiously awaited her reaction but got none. Eventually they went up to check on her and found her sitting on the bed, moaning and gurgling as she gnawed on the arm.

It’s about 9:35 at night. The show on your TV is silent, the volume turned down. Maybe you’re one of those people that has to have a static noise and picture, even when listening to or watching something else.

The living room light is on. Two of the five bulbs have burnt out. The one in the back seems the next to go, but you don’t think much about it as you stretch out in your chair.

Something begins gnawing at the back of your mind. It’s just a normal Monday night, the rain outside a steady drizzle that freezes as it hits the road. Something that makes you want to look out the large pannel window beside you, covered up by a Harley Davidson blanket to keep the warmth in the house.

You try and distract yourself, turning on your favorite band. Maybe it’s Collective Soul, or Rammstein, or anything. Something to take your mind off of it. It’s only 9:37 now, just a few minutes later, and you still have this urge to turn around and look out that window, shrouded by a black and orange blanket. You hear a slight tapping on the glass, like a fingertip trying to get your attention. You turn the music up louder, trying to drown it out. It becomes louder and more insistent now, faster and faster, still trying to draw your attention.

“It’s in my head, I’m just worked up, too little sleep. Last night was crazy.” You tell yourself. The rapping on the window ceases, and you begin to settle back in. It’s 9:41. You turn your attention back to the TV, commercials flooding your brain.

The tapping returns. A simple, sharp tap. Curiosity overwrites fear, and you lift up the blanket with your left hand, expecting to see a stray limb from a tree smacking the window from the wind outside, or maybe nothing at all.

A long, pale white tongue drags across the window, smacking back with another tap. Your heart stops as you look up, seeing two great, white staring eyes bulging from an elongated face, lacerated with boiling cuts and keloid scars, coated with burns, it’s face nearly as long as your window itself. It’s upside down, hanging from your ceiling. It’s mouth is lined with razor-sharp teeth, there may be thousands or millions of them. Several are rotten and pulsating, and it keeps staring at you. It’s cavernous mouth seems to be smiling. Like it knows something you don’t…

This morning I stepped out of the shower and this bathroom was fine: white walls, white tiles, sink and counter with toothpaste crusted all over. Three out of the four lightbulbs over the mirror were still good — 100 watt, clear bulb, blinding bright in the small white room. Like always I was late, so I skipped shaving. She liked it when I didn’t shave, anyway. I was thinking about doing mutton chops. She’d get a kick out of that. I passed the mirror and noticed I was grinning. I didn’t even know I was grinning.

I’m in the bathroom tonight before bed and there’s something wrong with the lights. All three are on again but they glow kind of brown and don’t really light up the rest of the room. I should get more bulbs from the kitchen. I should, but I’m busy. The date was shit and she shut her apartment door on me. You’d think that would wipe off the stupid grin from this morning. But I came back in the bathroom and, in the mirror, my face was still doing it. If I touch my face it doesn’t feel like a grin, but there it is in the mirror.

In the brown light it’s hard to make out but — have you ever actually counted how many teeth show when you smile? I lean in close. One, two, three, four — I didn’t know my mouth was so wide. Nine, ten, eleven — I can’t do mutton chops after all. The corners of my lips are out to my ears. It still doesn’t feel like a grin. But keep counting, for curiousity. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight.

There is a certain road near the Everglades in Florida, which, if you drive down it alone in the rain, day or night, you will suddenly have a very real feeling of being completely lost. Your radio will turn to static, your CDs will skip, and your tapes will play slower than normal. If you try to find a map in your car, it will have mysteriously vanished. If you continue forward down the road for more than a minute, you will find that you can’t turn around, and everything behind you is pitch dark. There are no other roads and no other cars. Continuing down the road, you will come upon a fork with no signposts. In the middle of the fork, there will be a man, covered head to foot in various pieces of clothing. The only skin visible will be around his eyes, which will be bright green. You must get out of your car, but do not turn it off or close the door after you. You must approach the man, but stop at least three feet away. You must stand there silently, waiting for him to speak first. If you break the silence first, you will find yourself back on a main road, but you will die within 24 hours. If he speaks first, he will ask you what you require. Tell him that you need to know which road will take you to your destination. He will then ask you what you will offer him in exchange for his assistance.

If you offer him a ride, he and your car will disappear, and you will become the new guardian of the crossroad. If you offer him an umbrella, he will take it and stab you through the chest. If you offer him your love, he will take your heart still beating from your chest and eat it, condemning you to walk the earth without a heart, insane from the pain and loss. You must offer him your loyalty and kneel before him. If you do this, he will close his eyes and bow in return, extending a hand to whichever path will lead you back to safety. If you try to run from him, you will be dead before you reach your car, and your body will be found back in your car in some random location.

Every year, for an unknown number of years, an ad is published in the New York Times Classifieds section. The advertisement is short and lists a seemingly mundane household appliance: a refrigerator, a vacuum, a piece of furniture. A select number of people in the U.S., and indeed the world, search for this advertisement, which contains three keywords seemingly unusual for a simple ad. Once found, these people wait exactly one week for a second ad in the NY Times, also ostensibly a normal–if strangely worded–ad, but combined with the first, provide both a code key and message.

The code, when completed, is a series of numbers, which correspond to the Washington, D.C. Yellow Pages, and page number, column, letter number, etc., and this in turn creates a text message. The text of the message is vague, but contains the following information: soon, a gathering will be held in
Washington, D.C. The searchers are instructed to bring a fellow guest to accompany him/her to the gathering. The destination is a very old hotel in Georgetown, a establishment dating back to the time of the founding fathers.

Sometimes searchers are instructed to bring a scientist, such as a physicist or biologist. Other years the instructions are to bring along an engineer or a doctor; the requested person is always a professional of some kind.

The seekers and their guests are admitted to the restaurant on the appointed night only after giving a password, also in the message, to the masked maitre’d waiting at the entrance. What follows after that is unclear and there are conflicting accounts. The general consensus is that the seekers are rewarded for solving the puzzle, and are made wealthy for the rest of their lives, provided they remain silent about what they discovered. The fate of the professionals is unknown.

There is a Wal-Mart somewhere in Indiana, with a concealed trapdoor in the frozen food section. If you tap on the door three times with your left foot, a voice will ask you for a toll. Open the trap door, put three lemons inside, and close the door. After ten seconds, you will hear a knock on the trapdoor and find a red piece of paper that tells you two of the following three things: the exact location of your death, the manner of your death, or the exact date and time of your death.

In the heart of Washington, there’s a house that used to be owned by a family of five. Nobody really knows what happened to them. Their neighbors at the time say that there were no signs of weirdness or fear in the family. The common testimony is that one day there was nothing wrong. The night that followed, there were very loud noises coming from the house, and although people in the area came to investigate what was keeping them up, the windows were blocked by millions of post-it notes, and the windows would not break. The following day, the house was empty.

Nobody has lived in that house since. But people have gone inside. In every bedroom, there is a mirror facing the corner of the room. If you turn it around, it won’t show your reflection. The area you’ll be standing in will be empty. They say that on the rare occasion, you’ll see the person who used to sleep in that room, mutilated and bandaged from head to toe. If you turn around with your eyes open… All they know is that you don’t exist afterwards.

Somewhere in the world, there is a collection of books. Perhaps it’s in a dusty, unpainted shelf in the back corner of someone’s attic; perhaps it’s in a set of musty boxes in the basement of some tiny, obscure library. It contains a few hundred volumes, all handwritten, ranging from leather-bound volumes with yellowing pages two hundred years old through to modern spiral-bound notebooks. All of them are diaries, some by famous people, some by not-so famous people, but all by the most horrific madmen and murderers the world has ever known. And the collection is growing. For if you ever find it, you will hear a faint scratching sound, coming from the newest volume of the set. This volume will be new, and filled with blank pages, except for the first. On this first page, you will find the beginning of your own diary, written in your own hand.