In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama, a region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajuns—that queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth century—stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Bill Tanner, a retired USPS mail carrier, ran a local haunted house that had become quite well known in the city where he lived. Established as a terrifying and fun way to unleash people’s greatest fears upon them, it was aptly named “Tanner’s House of Horrors.” People came from miles
Laughing in the Dark Read More »
After a short time of exploring the Oklahoma territory where they were forced to go, a group of Native Americans stumbled upon a mysterious plant while hunting. This plant looked like a gnarled tree root, with so many twists and turns within its seemingly fragile length that one could barely
The Roots of Wewoka Cemetery Read More »
“Halloa! Below there!” When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what
They gave me a million bucks to keep my trap shut, and I did, for fifteen years. But last night I was making the rounds, and I saw the professor again. I had a heart attack three years back, and I tell you, when I saw him standing there in
The Harvard Wormhole Experiment Read More »
In central Vermont you have to drive to get just about anywhere. In high school, once I had my own car, I built up a mental map of roads good and bad, this giant web linking my house, my school, my friends’ houses, my mom’s work, my dad’s house, my
The Strigil Institute Read More »
I’m writing this down to A) help me process what happened and B) create some sort of written record. I’m a Disneyland employee—have been for 5 years. I started running a concession stand, moved to ride operator, then into resort operations. All the while, I was a pursuing a degree
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My name is Oliver Stricc. I’m a 52-year-old biology teacher from a small town in northeastern Nebraska, and I have been for almost 14 years. I’ll be the first to admit that lecturing to a bunch of uninterested high school students wasn’t what I had planned to do after getting
My Students Are Disappearing Read More »
I moved into my apartment complex two months ago. I started hearing things a week later. It was subtle at first. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would wake up to a faint scratching sound from somewhere behind the walls. I thought it could be mice. Or rats.
The Empty Apartment Read More »
PART ONE At the edge of our town, there’s a shitty gas station that’s open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If you were to go inside, you’d see row after row of off-brand chips, cookies, potted meats and ramen. Expiration dates suspiciously missing from canned goods like
Tales From the Gas Station Read More »
John sat with his grandmother on the balcony terrace overlooking West Bay Road and the lower Hampshire valley. The lush green fields from springtime were now singed-brown; the lack of rainwater that summer was turning the place into the Mojave Desert. A screaming hawk flew overhead, much like John it
I’ve always been a creature of the city. The cold, hard streets. The tall, luminous sky-scrapers. And the people. All self-absorbed in their own little stories to be concerned with person next to them on the subway, or the person they just rammed into trying to get where they needed
Jack Mckay huddled in the cold midnight street with a pale green sleeping bag encasing his lower half. Spindled trails of light reflected off the gleaming roads from damp lampposts. But the cold wasn’t what gave Jack his nightly jitters—not by a long shot. The small flame bewitched his green
The Molendinar Burn Read More »
“Better Run Through the Jungle” My name is Michael Hasford. I am seventy-two years old and I have terminal bowel cancer. I haven’t told anyone this story in nearly fifty years, the last time being before I was made to sign the State Secrets Act and bound to silence by
The Only Vietnam Story I’ve Never Told Read More »
I’ve never really considered myself to be much of an explorer or even a particularly brave man, however that hasn’t seemed to stop me from getting in the predicament I’m in now. It was around 3 months ago that my girlfriend of 4 years left me for another man, and
There’s Something in the Fields Behind My Apartment Read More »
Chapter 1 It was a cold and lonely night as I drove mile after mile on barren roads that seemed to drag on forever and lead to nowhere. I had been driving for hours since i left home and ran away with my dad’s car. I don’t know what i
It was 2:05 AM when I did it. Everything around was completely quiet, not a single person in sight. I grabbed the folding ladder out from my garage and neatly placed it right under the light post in front of my house. I quickly ran back inside and came back
The Crimson Mansion Read More »
“Are you absolutely positive you locked the door when you left?” Denise’s voice was too desperate for her words to be an accusation. More like a plea. I adjusted the phone in my hand and the collar of my shirt. “Yes. Absolutely. I went back up and checked.” The latter
My Roommate Got Sick After Returning from Africa Read More »
Farrah stared up at the dark old house, with its boarded-up windows and doors, creaky wrap around porch, and flecks of paint so weather-worn it was no longer discernible what color it had once been. It was in need of some serious attention that was for sure, but structurally it
During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I had a job at the local cinema. I’m 26 years old now and well on my way to other, more important things in my life, but this is the first time I’ve told this story. Mind you,
I’d always been afraid of Scorpion River. Ever since I was eight, I’d gone with my aunt, uncle, and older cousin into the wilderness of southern Arizona where we’d spend two nights in their rickety, blue, camper. We weren’t alone. Around ten other families joined us for that December weekend.
We first set foot into this forest yesterday evening after spending just over an hour and a half making our journey. It was one of those evenings where the many Jet-Trails amongst the twilight sky had blended into light orange and pink among the distant orange and black horizon that
The Well in the Forest Read More »
Curtis held on to an unfulfilled joy for exploring. The prospect of discovering new places always enthralled him, and often, whether he was just lazing around at home, slacking off during a lecture, or just hanging out on a sober night with his friends, he would often daydream of traveling
I loved traveling. It was for research mostly. I worked as a paranormal investigator, going from place to place with my crew, to search for local “sightings” or “otherworldly instances”. My team ran a rather well-known YouTube channel, “The Plasmatics”. I guessed it was supposed to be some sort of
