There is an old hotel that has been around for hundreds of years. If you stay in Room 6, you will find yourself in an unknown place, where exactly at 12:16 AM the power will go out and you’ll be thrust into utter darkness. If you choose to stay awake,
Every family in every town in every country on every continent has one. It’s a cabinet, not particularly odd, not out of place. The paint was peeling a bit on the corners and the knob was a bit loose. The inside smelled like dust and the paint wasn’t the same
You were out of town for the weekend. When you came back to your apartment, your mailbox was stuffed full. At least 30 letters. Letters with no return address, several of them felt soggy and heavy, as though they were recently wet, or perhaps contained a liquid. All of the
If you ever find Dargaia’s nectar, you’ll probably be one of the ones who have been looking for it all their lives, and thus won’t need any instructions on what to do with it. Just the same, it’s pretty simple, at least to start with. Make sure your affairs are
My grandfather served in the European Theater of Operations during WWII, an experience he rarely talks much about. I’ve only managed to coax one story out of him. He and a low-ranking officer (granddad was an enlisted man) were travelling by jeep somewhere in Belgium with a cache of much-needed
Any night, around 10 or 11 pm, take yourself to a flat, open area where you can walk in a straight line for two minutes or so without running into anything. Once there, face in the direction you plan to walk, with your arms at your sides and your hands
There are exactly 17 people on this earth fated to kill you. If you somehow manage to avoid these 17 people during your lifetime, you are taken to a place of monumental beauty where you are stripped of all clothing and branded on the space just above your navel with
In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time. This game was called “Polybius”. The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits
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
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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
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
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
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
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
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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,
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
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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
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
You jolt awake to some noise off in the distance. You look at your red lettered clock: 3:21. You hear it noise again. Someone’s knocking on your door. There’s no reason to be afraid, you remind yourself, but you can’t imagine any reason why someone would be up this late.
It’s a simple enough thing. It’s all a part of the body’s sleep processes. Sleep Paralysis, right? No big deal, really. Your body produces a chemical that paralyzes your body during R.E.M sleep to prevent you from hurting yourself by thrashing about during your dreams. No big deal. Okay, so,
And I am always with you. I was there from the time you were born. I stood in the delivery room, staring down at you before you could even open your eyes to see me. Your parents, relatives and doctors couldn’t see me there, in the corner, watching you with
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In rural southern Illinois a toy company began selling “realistic” baby dolls to expectant mothers. But apparently after the mother had her child the toy baby would start crying. Eventually the “rocking motion” advertised to calm it down wouldn’t work, and you couldn’t get it to stop without shaking it.
One school day, a boy named Tom was sitting in class and doing math. It was six more minutes until after school. As he was doing his homework, something caught his eye. His desk was next to the window, and he turned and stared outside. It looked liked a picture.
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You’re in a strange room. You don’t remember how you got there, but you know that you don’t necessarily need to be there. As such, you decide it would be a good idea to leave. You turn around, and find yourself in an enclosed garden with a single row of
