It started with my 3 year old son screaming in his room in the middle of the night. When I came in to check on him he was in hysterics. Tears ran down his little cheeks as he cried about how the Boogeyman had frightened him. I let him sleep […]
My name’s Charlie, and I’m 15-years old. I’ve lived in Chicago for just about my entire life before my entire family moved to the small town of ********* (I’m not going to name it for personal reasons). There’s been a story going around this little town, something about children getting
On one of two big hills sandwiching the sleepy little town of Maldoona, twins Sasha and Tasha, aged nine, sat gazing at the stars. In the throes of boredom, Sasha bit and chewed at her nails, tearing them off in thin strips before spitting them out through her teeth. Tasha
On an early dim morning an elderly woman rested her hand atop a gravestone. “Henry Blackwood-1938-2004.” She rested flowers on it and wept, something she didn’t usually do. She always made sure to bring something of Henry’s when she made her annual visit to his grave. Her memory wasn’t what
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Gordon Simmons slammed into his locker. “Ow! What the hell?”, he struggled to shout with his face pressed against the cold blue metal. “Man, Gordo! Your locker stinks worse than you do!”, chastised the bully. Judging by the voice, Gordon could tell it was Jordan Merrick. Jordan was always a
I’ve decided to share this here because honestly? I feel like I NEED to talk about this before I go crazy. And this is probably the only place where I could talk about this and not have people think that I’m crazy. My name is Elizabeth Black. I’ve lived in
Ever since I was a young child, that automated recording that plays when you try to call someone, but can’t, has frightened me to the core. You know, the one that goes, “We’re sorry, but the number you have reached has been disconnected.” And it’s always preceded by that sound,
(The following was found in an envelope on a bus bound for Chicago) My name is Jason Grimes and I am writing this so that when the room is eventually opened people will perhaps understand the things they find within it. And so that I will not be thought of
I sat on my balcony, preparing to smoke the last cigarette of the night. It was late and my bones themselves were tired. As I snuffed out the cigarette and stood with a stretch, a noise caught my attention. It was so faint that I immediately brushed it off as
The Wind Whispered A Secret Read More »
This all began with a family trip to Las Vegas; the year was 2009 and we decided to go on a little vacation for my 20th birthday. Now that I think about it, why couldn’t my parents have just waited a year and made the Las Vegas trip at my
I’m Not Saying It Was Aliens Read More »
In the darkness we are strangers to ourselves, gray-skinned, white-eyed and black-haired demons rather than the usual familiar streaks of color that we see in a lighted mirror. Our grayscale faces are as blank as that of Slenderman’s, our hearts as black as a killer’s, and there’s not a thing
I remember the first time I witnessed that gruesome sight, right in front of me. It had been all over the news for the past week but until that moment, I was still unable to take any of the stories seriously. I guess that’s what happens in a world where
On my sixteenth birthday, just after I had blown out the candles on a fairy cake, my mother told me that I was born dead. “I’m so happy that you made it,” she said. I pulled the fork out of my mouth. “What?” “Oh,” she said. “I guess we never
Margaret had, as usual, been left to the confines of her bedroom. With her father working the night shift and her mother ill with pneumonia, she didn’t have anyone to talk to. The only noise was the ticking of the clock, the slight humming of the radiator in the corner,
I am terrified of the dark. My grandmother, on the other hand, had an affinity for the dark. She loved and enjoyed the dark so much that most windows in her house were walled shut and the few that remained were, except for rare occasions like family visits, blacked out
Don’t Ever Let Them In Read More »
I always admired my grandfather’s courage. He had fought in the war on what we nowadays think of as the wrong side, but he had never been a believer in the cause. Sometimes a rifle is pressed in your hand and your choice is either to fire and worry about
My Grandfather Knew Why We Run from the Dark Read More »
It was the latest in a string of sweltering summer nights, where the air was thick with humidity and even the faintest breeze was an honest-to-God miracle. Outside, the lawn had withered to a sickly yellow, with earth showing through in intermittent patches like the branch of a tree peeking
Away With the Fairies Read More »
“What’s your story?” berated the man. It was dark, and the boy couldn’t see the man’s face, yet he could still tell it had a twisted smirk on it. “What does it matter now?” whimpered the boy. His weakened mind wandered to the thought of his struggles, a long and
As long as can I remember, I’ve had that mirror in my room. It was long and spanned over almost half the wall. Just a plain, simple mirror. My parents had told me it was there since we had moved in and thought it was certainly fitting for a girl
While it is known by some that I have a keen interest in the uncanny – seeking it out on occasion – nevertheless it proved a decidedly unsettling experience to find such a strange event taking place just a few feet from my front door. The street that I lived
Marnie strolled right into the woods and never came back. We waited for her. We could have just left the second she disappeared between the trees but she seemed so damn confident that we waited. Nobody wanted to say it but after two hours we knew that was it. Sure,
In Between the Trees Read More »
The streets, roads and dusty lanes of Colombia have been fertile territory for myths and legends since before the arrival of the Spaniards. Tales of ‘La Patasola’, a one-legged wailing banshee that forever sought her child, and of ‘El Duende’, a backwards-footed goblin that led travelers to their doom, nibbled
You know what our problem is? We’re too damned accommodating. That’s what I told my wife when she agreed to look after that awful bird. We already look after a friend’s toddler every Thursday, and take the lady across the corridor shopping, and then there are all the charity-case kids
So, three friends and I decided we were going to camp out in this 30 acre sanctuary down the street from my neighborhood. It’s paralleled by railroad tracks and a road on one side, and then a small road on the other said. There’s a lot of forest and trails,
