One of my first memories as a child was a funeral. My uncle’s funeral. He was my mom’s half-brother and considerably younger than her as he was from her dad’s second marriage. I think he was in his mid-twenties and he was addicted to ecstasy. Of course, I didn’t know […]
There are many stories about monsters. Have you ever stopped to think about what makes something a monster? Charybdis, Dracula, Grendel, and Slenderman are all different, yet they share some fundamental quality. I suppose you could say you know one when you see one, but do you really? What is
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When I graduated from college, my best friend Diana and I embarked upon a grand tour of Europe. Halfway through our trip, we had planned to spend three days in Prague, but had completely failed to account for poor weather hindering all of our sight-seeing plans. As a result of
Ever since I was small I’ve had a fascination with old things, buildings specifically. Something about things that rot and decay is beautiful to me, I don’t really know why. As a kid I’d get into all the dark, dusty spaces I could. The attic, the crawl space in our
It has been exactly a year now since the incident happened… The day that my younger brother, John was killed. I have tried and tried to forget about what happened but it is still burned in my mind. So I know this is rather a cliché but I am recording
I touched the button in the middle of the screen, and a quick blue flash filled the room. I turned my phone’s screen towards me, and looked at the photo I had just taken. I was smiling, and my new fluffy kitten was nestled into my arm, looking off to
Coming from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, where driving to town was a big to-do, I realized at a young age that people tend to lean toward the supernatural for things that they cannot understand. The women in my family were particularly guilty of this kind of superstition –
JayJay suspected herself of having a mild form of ADHD to balance out her high IQ. It was undiagnosed, if so; she had better things to spend her money on than psychoanalysis. Still, there were the occasional days like today, when her concentration was shot, and whatever was in her
My grandfather was an inventor. All his life he’s be tinkering with something, either taking something that existed and changing it, making it into something brand new (Or at the very least different) or inventing something entirely from spare parts. And while nothing he invented was ever earth shaking it
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It was your standard blue collar work day—in at 9, work for eight hours, out by 5. My dad was on his way home to have a standard blue collar evening when something not-so-standard happened. Driving home from work, his car was hit by some douchebag pickup truck driver on
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I remember the first time I ever saw Grandpa’s hand…I was a little kid at the time, and I didn’t know the story behind it. Nobody did, as I found out. It was…just a skeleton hand he’d picked up somewhere. When I first saw it, of course, I was frightened.
In autumn 2003, my first year studying at Cambridge University, a rumour began circulating about a VHS tape that was causing students to go insane. Nobody knew who had first found the tape, or where they had found it, but the stories started in October, when a history student allegedly
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“I’ll never ask for anything else again, I swear, Mom!” As kids, we’ve all said it at one point. We find something that seems the most amazing item in the world and we just have to have it, no matter what. For me, it was the newest handheld, a Game
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I’ve always been curious about the histories connected to belongings. I buy many of my things second hand from charity shops, retro speciality stores – those sorts of places. You can call me cheap all you want, but for me things have feelings. The vinyl record you listened to the
George never got sick, well, almost never. He was well into his thirties and had been working an office job for almost seven years now. It was a standard 8-5 job and he found comfort in the monotony of it. This particular Tuesday, however, George woke up from stomach pains
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Jason loved to read. Every day he would take a walk to a nice place, like the park or the beach, and sit down to read for hours. It didn’t matter what the story was about, or who the author was, because Jason just loved to read. One weekend, his
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‘The first time I heard the legend of the Mad Hangman was from another inmate in our prison. He told me that there was a man with the ability to ward off death. That he was immortal. At first I thought it was a comforting fable for people who were
My mother had gotten it for me at a neighborhood garage sale. The family had just lost their son, about my age too, nine or ten and they were trying to get rid of some of his older toys, and other things they didn’t need around the house. It had
From the Case File of the Marquis Manor Massacre Suspect: Nicholas Jacobs Investigator: Michael Wells The audio tape clicks on and a voice comes in… It does not matter what more I say or add to my testament. You and the others will not believe me, and perhaps it is
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Part 1 I hear voices, they’re all around me. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to never play that damn game. They say I’m crazy and maybe I am. Maybe whatever it is that haunts me, took my sanity and hid it away. Somewhere where
Deacon loved yard sales, yet despite the size of the ‘neighborhood’ sale he’d found on his way home from work, nothing had caught his eye. Disappointed, but glad he’d stopped anyway, Deacon turned away from the table he’d been going through and tripped over something at his feet. With a
The first thing you should know about me is that I’m very faint of heart. There’s a pamphlet I’ve been looking for for a while now. I remember coming across it a while ago while I was a child. I was at the doctor’s office, the waiting room, getting a
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Martin looked somberly into the murky gold of his lukewarm scotch. He hated these kinds of functions. Not only was he not particularly good at large crowds, dancing, loud music, and general social interaction, but it only became all the more painful when you combined a room full of people
James said he found the iPhone in the lawn as he was leaving the party. Afterward, we wondered what had really happened, how he had actually found it. But then, when he told us, we had no reason to not believe his story. He was walking out, he explained, completely
