The Man Who Looked Down

Before you read or listen to this, make sure you are alone. If you are in a room, close the door. If you are by a window, look outside and make sure there is no one there. The only way others should know about this story is by reading it, or listening to it themselves. Do not repeat this out loud to anyone, he will hear you.
But you are able to read it to yourself or record yourself. Right now, these are the only two exceptions I know about. Once you think you’re alone, look at the screen, and do not take your eyes off of it until you are finished reading or listening to a recording. He will know if you look away.

It started on Sunday, November 4th, 2012. I’m in my senior year of high school and I have…well, had a wonderful girlfriend. We were at my house, mourning about school the next day and terribly bored. She came over so I could help her with a project that just had to be due the next day. I had hoped we would be able to fool around a little, but she needed this A or she would fail the marking period. We finished around 8 o’clock and she didn’t need to leave until 10.

So we still had 2 hours with each other and the only other person who was home was my little 8 year old sister whom I had to baby sit. My parents were at some dinner meeting until 10, but I knew them too well. They would be home around midnight but I wanted to play it safe because they don’t allow my girlfriend over past 8. They were afraid I would get her pregnant or something. We went on the internet because there was nothing else to do. She wasn’t in the mood to fool around and I couldn’t stand another homework assignment. The internet was the only means of escaping these dull hours.

We watched videos on YouTube for a while, looking up the newest popular videos until we ended up watching some creepypastas. We both have been watching creepypastas before we were dating, so we knew what to expect and we had a hard time becoming truly scared of them like we used too. We kept trying to find some that would scare us, but the videos we watched weren’t as scary as we had hoped. By now it was almost 9:30 and we were upset that none of the videos we watched were creeping us out. We were about to give up on searching until I saw this unusual thumb tag. All it showed was a man standing with his head looking down and hair covering his face.

What was strange about the thumb tag was that there was no time limit and no author just a title that read, “The Man who looked down.”

We both agreed that this would be the final video and if it didn’t creep us out, we would give up. I moved my mouse to press on the video link and the moment I pressed it the video went into full screen and the man I saw in the thumb tag was standing there. I moved my mouse around to find the loading bar but it wasn’t there. I pressed escape on my keyboard to get out of full screen, but the screen didn’t move. For a second I thought the computer was frozen. But in the video, the man was standing in what seemed to be a front lawn of a house I’ve never seen before and the tree next to him was moving with the wind. My girlfriend and I had no idea what was going on. But I never took my eyes away from the screen because I felt like there was something I had to see. And if I took my eyes away for any moment, I would miss something.

I don’t know how long my girlfriend and I stared at that man, waiting for something. It felt like a couple minutes. But while I was staring at him, I felt like something was wrong, like something was changing me. I actually felt scared. I don’t know if my girlfriend felt it, but I didn’t have time to think about that before I felt something grab my shoulder so tight the nails pierced my skin. I turned around to see the face of my father. He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by my girlfriend’s ear shattering scream. I whirled back around to almost scream myself.

The man had looked up and must have run closer to the screen because all I could see was his face now staring at me. The background was now completely white. The hair was out of the way to show his disfigured face. His nose was torn on the left nostril, allowing people to look inside of the hole into his head. His mouth was opening larger than any normal human could bear. Part of his cheek was missing with a hole about the size of a large fist. He had no tongue and no top row of teeth. Only a bottom row of dark, chipped, teeth that were pure black. But the part of his face that will never leave my mind is his eyes. They were half red and half white.

The half white parts had red veins protruding out of them, while the red sides had white veins protruding. There was no sound, just him staring through the screen for a couple seconds before my computer turned itself off. I looked at the clock and it was 12:30.

“This wasn’t possible” I was thinking.

“It felt like 5 minutes.”

I looked back at my father who also saw the face and seemed a little shocked himself. He pulled himself together and told my girlfriend to leave. She left without saying goodbye. My father then gave me a talk about disobeying and other shit. But most of the time I wasn’t listening. I was too busy thinking about the man. He seemed to have moved the moment I looked away, which I couldn’t understand how that could happen. There was also the fact that we started watching it at 9:30 and had been interrupted at 12:30. We had been watching the man for three hours straight without looking away or blinking. Once my dad was finished, I had to sleep. I wanted to talk to my girlfriend about the video and what happened.

I woke up the next morning like normal. I got out of bed, took a shower and got dressed. I looked out my window for a brief second and noticed something out of the ordinary. It looked like a black smudge on my lawn. I looked again and it was gone. I shook it out of my mind thinking it was some stray cat or raccoon. I walked to the kitchen, grabbed my lunch, and started walking to the door to wait for my bus. At the corner of my eye, I saw something move. I turned quickly and ended up staring out my kitchen window. I walked slowly towards it to look outside.

When I reached the window looked around my lawn slowly, taking in as much detail as I could to see if there was any change. There was nothing there. I was starting to get scared until I heard the school bus stop outside. I ran out the door and raced to the bus. Once I reached it, I almost collided with the door to the bus. The driver opened it and I walked onto the shuttle. I sat down quickly and stared out my seat’s window. Everything was normal around my lawn. As I was running towards the bus, I had the feeling of being chased. I felt like I was literally running for my life. I wanted to stop thinking about what was happening so as the bus started moving, I looked away from my window and decided to listen to some music on my iPod. But when I looked away from the window, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move again. I looked back at my house just in time to see a man standing by on my lawn before the bus moved him out of my vision. His hair covered his face as he looked down.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call the police? No. the man didn’t do anything. Not yet. He was just scaring me. But how did he find me? Did I know him? I needed to talk to my girlfriend about this. I arrived at school and waited till 2nd period to talk to her. It was our only study hall together. Once 2nd period arrived, she didn’t show up. I asked her friends where she was and they said they didn’t know. I assumed she was sick and I would visit her after school.

Her house wasn’t a far walk from our school. This wasn’t like her. Her project was due today and if she was sick, she would have texted me or her friends. The moment the last school bell rang, I sprinted to her house. I knocked on her door and there was no response. I slammed on the door loud enough for the neighbors to hear me. Still no response. Even if she wasn’t home, my girlfriend’s mom is a stay-at-home mom who is always home after school. I tried to turn the doorknob and surprisingly, the door was unlocked. I opened the door slowly and yelled in to see if anyone was home. No response. I yelled that I was coming in. I didn’t expect a response, and I didn’t receive one. I walked into darkness. All the lights were off. I felt the wall for the nearest light switch and turned it on.

The room was illuminated for a couple seconds before the light bulbs burst. I am still not sure about what I saw in those short seconds, but I thought there was a quick glimpse of a woman in the doorway to the kitchen. I found some curtains covering a window and opened them. The room was now filled with sunlight. I looked towards the kitchen doorway and it was empty. I didn’t go to the kitchen. I didn’t feel like I needed to yet. I went upstairs to my girlfriend’s room instead. I opened the door to her room and stopped. I was hit with an unexplainable, horrible stench. My eyes burned. Once my eyes were able to dilate I saw her…and him. My girlfriend was on the floor kneeling, looking directly at the man. Almost every inch of her body was sliced open and bloody. I just stood there. Horrified at what I was witnessing. It seemed like an eternity of staring at the man and my girlfriend before my girlfriend finally spoke.

All she was able to say to me was, “I’m sorry.” Then she turned around to look at me and her eyes…dear god her eyes! They were sliced down the middle of each making one half red and the other white. I only had time to hold out my hand to try and grab her before the man…no, monster fell on her, and started to rip off her skin and devour her like a wild animal. I could only stand there and watch. Her heart wrenching scream must have filled the entire neighbor hood’s ears.

I turned to run, but the moment I looked away I got pounced on. The monster slammed me to the ground and started to rip off my skin. Each time its fingers ripped off more skin and shoved it into its horribly disfigured mouth, I just screamed. My screams were almost as loud as my girlfriend’s. I don’t know how, but I was able to move myself and the monster towards the stairs. We toppled down them and I felt my arm break. The sound of cracking bone filled the house. The monster fell off me and I was able to get up and run towards the front door.

The pain on my back and in my arm was unbearable. I sprinted out the door and tripped on the steps. I felt my face collide into concrete. My nose was broken, and the skin on my face was almost completely torn off. I could still see through one eye as the other was covered in blood. It was standing in the doorway, looking at me. I was unable to move. I was in so much pain that I wanted to die. I was sure that the monster was going to kill me. But of course, that didn’t happen because I would not be writing this. He just looked at me for a couple more seconds before finally saying three unforgettable words. “Don’t look down.” And then I blacked out.

I woke up in a hospital three days later. That’s what my nurse told me. I was still in horrible pain, but the medicine helped to ease it a little. I never saw my back since then, but I’m sure the monster tore the skin off until there was only bone. The police came to ask me question about what had happened. I tried to tell them everything, but as I continued to tell the story, it seemed more and more unbelievable. They thought I was crazy. They stopped the search for my girlfriend’s killer days later because of unreliable evidence. The day they stopped the search was also the day I had gotten the news. My father had gone off road and crashed into some forest. When the police found his car, my father was not inside of it.

His body has not been found to this day. I’m sure that man had gotten him. There was no one with my father so the man probably devoured everything.

I left the hospital months later with an almost unrecognizable face, a crooked back, and a broken mind. I went home to find only my mother. She had hung herself. I didn’t bother to call the police. I went straight to my computer to find that video. After backtracking through my history, I found the video before “The Man who looked down” video. But it wasn’t there. The video that had changed my life was gone. I gave up shortly after looking through other videos. I closed the web browser and started writing this. Halfway through writing this, I got an email. It was a video link. I knew it was the man, but I forced myself to click the link. There he was, standing in front of another house. But this house was familiar. It was familiar because it was my house.

He is behind me. I can hear his soft wheezing. I can smell his horrible, death soaked breath. I can feel his eyes staring at me. He isn’t looking down. He is looking at me. He looks for his victims on the internet. I am writing this as a warning to everyone. Don’t look for me, for once I get this story somewhere on the internet, I will turn around, and look down. My only regret is leaving my little sister all alone. Please forgive me, Julie.

Credit To – James Hoban