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When I said I had a sense of where the thing was, and whether or not it was "awake", I should have clarified that I think that sense goes both ways. I am pretty sure that the thing can only go certain places at certain times, but I also think it knows, vaguely, where I am. Especially if I talk about it out loud, in the open air at night. I realize that sounds like superstitious hogwash, but honestly, when you've clearly seen a monster more than once, you get a little more open-minded about things like that. Over the years, snippets of other people's stories would filter along to me, and there were many, many stories from people who had grown up in the area. People would tell me them without any direct prompting, and having never heard about my experience. Stories about how they had "seen something" down by the creek when they were little, and had no memory between playing by the creek and being inside their door, screaming, often so hysterically that an adult had to physically restrain them until they calmed down. Stories about having nightmares about the creek, or hearing something large following them in the tall grass. Most people just...didn't go down there at night. Nobody ever said why, but very few people spent time in that area after dark. Years later, I told my little sister the story in an e-mail. "Oh my god...I wonder if that's what my boyfriend saw?" Her boyfriend at the time, a nice-but-unimaginative guy, was about twenty or twenty-one at the time and had been goofing around with his brothers at the stretch of the creek that runs about a block from their house. My sister has no idea what happened, but they saw something that night that made them refuse to ever go near the creek at night again. If asked for any details, he would just get pale and agitated, and refuse to talk about it. A couple weeks later, My sister told me something else. After she had gotten a vicious case of the heebie-jeebies from reading my account of the thing, our younger brother had asked why she was so creeped out. She opened up the e-mail on her laptop upstairs in our dad's kitchen, and went downstairs to watch TV while he read the story. He came downstairs a few minutes later, sheet-pale, wide-eyed, and shaky. "That was it! That was the thing I saw last summer!" Apparently about eight months prior, my brother had been hanging out at a friend's house that happens to back up to the tall grass that borders the creek. They had seen something large rustling around in the grass maybe twenty feet away from them, still within the circle of light from the porch, and had gotten worried that a Coyote or stray dog was out there. Then it reared up out of the grass, looked at them, and dropped back down into the grass and started moving, possibly away from them, or possibly just angling around to the side. The thing they saw was exactly the thing I had described. They got the gently caress inside and stayed there.
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| # ? Jan 8, 2013 04:28 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 20:42 |
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In addition to the facts of what happened, I told my sister the parts that were rather more vague...how I feel like it "knows" me now, and that as a result I'm never completely safe, how talking about it in the open night air is a really, really bad idea, and how I think it's something very old, and connected to the land. I almost feel that it lives where the land is sick, or tainted. She decided to ask around, as she and I know some people who would know about any stories or history. A week later, all we were able to find out for certain is that whatever it is was known to the Ute who lived in the area, as well as some of the Cheyenne (although we only got any information from the Ute stories). We were told essentially that: It's real It can be dangerous There can be more than one It's Coyote's job to kill it when possible That's it, that's all we know. Be careful in the open air at night...if you're afraid, it may be for a very, very good reason.
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| # ? Jan 8, 2013 05:25 |
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AthenaH2SO4 posted:
Strangely, many Paranormal/otherworldly creatures are believed to basically be aware of those who are aware of it. This is even present in religious beliefs/demonology. That said I would love to see a drawn picture of this creature. I really relate to some of the feelings you've described in your posts, it's brought up quite a few...memories.
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| # ? Jan 8, 2013 18:05 |
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Yeah, I feel like talking about it out loud in the open night air is a good way to sort of send out a signal as to where I am...hence I never, ever do that. Sadly, I have really awful drawing skills at this point in my life, so I would have to get someone to help me with any drawings of it. If anyone wants to try their hand at it, feel free, as I currently don't know anyone who would be able to sketch it for me.
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| # ? Jan 8, 2013 20:11 |
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Live thread, liiiiiive! Here are some translated indexes from stories we will probably never know the full details of (most of this group is lost). Some of these are quite graphic, you have been warned. Unwritten are the dozens and dozens of "Person said this happened, no result", so don't think that every one of these is a treasure waiting to be discovered. **** Sudden Death Shepard found a group of people sitting in a circle. Upon finding them, he thought they were a group of bandits and ran back to tell the town. When the rest of the town returned, the people were found to be corpses. Many stated that the bodies still felt warm when they were found, and that ashes were still glowing in the fire between them. My father inspected them, and found their heads to be void of brains, with no blood or matter at the site where they were found. **** **** Flesh Listener Looking for a missing woman, the police found that her 9 year old son had killed her by repeatedly stabbing her in the neck with a knife. The boy then nailed pieces of his mother together and said he could hear the voice of his brother through them. The boy did not have a brother, and was held in a cell that night, where he killed himself by beating his head against the wall. **** **** Ivory Bakery Arriving at a town near Dinholde, we were beset by a young man who's father had been a baker. He had descended into ruin when he sold bread to an older woman who found 8 teeth in a loaf. To his horror, all the bread sold that day contained these teeth. The story was quite old by the time we arrived, as the mans father had passed away, but it was the talk of the town. Many had kept the teeth in small vials, and we were shown them. My father bought many, telling the folk that they were dangerous to keep in their house, but many of the people did not want to part with them. [Special note - teeth hold a special place in many gaelic myths, and many MANY ghost stories involve ghost / faeries that take teeth.] *** **** Field of Spirits We were asked to cleanse a stretch of road north of Kinshir which had been the setting of a skirmish where an estimated 130 rebels and soldiers died. Night travels had told stories of being watched by hundreds of glowing eyes in the night, one compared it to 'being watched by a field of cats eyes'. We performed a cleansing, but did not encounter anything out of the ordinary. We were informed later that this was still occurring. **** **** Sea Follower A captain requested his ship be cleansed of a curse. Him, and his crew, told matching stories of the following account - While fishing far west of the island, they were startled to see a man walking along the water far behind them. The captain declared this was a mirage, as the man who spotted the figure was young, but after several days the other sailors (counting 9) reported seeing it also. The tale escalated nearly a week later, when one of the sailors was heard screaming on the deck during a night watch. When the other sailors ran up to help, they found nothing but 'blood, and footprints'. The footprints, which were seen and traced by myself, were branded into the ships deck as by a heated iron. The brand stained the wood deeply, and the captain decided to pull up the boards completely. **** **** Tainted Farm A farmers wife came to us and said her husband had killed a faerie while it was in the guise of a bird, and since then the families harvest has been terrible. My father, much a disbeliever in faeries, doubted this but went anyways. The field was indeed thin, with large patches not taking seed. My father asked where the bird was killed, and the farmer took him to the area. We performed a small ceremony for the benefit of the family, and left. My father seemed troubled by the incident, and visited nearly two months later. Seeds were sprouting freely, but a portion of the field was still barren. At our instructions, the father and his son began turning over the soil, which unleashed a putrid scent of decay. The only item found was a child's shoe, which looked to have been there for many years. My father told the man and his sons to put a ring of large stones around the circle, and that it would never grow crops again. ****
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| # ? Jan 9, 2013 01:45 |
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Tewbrainer posted:**** Sounds like schizophrenia/some manner of crazy. quote:**** The shoe sounds like a curse from a person, not a faerie. I thought that faeries didn't need the use of physical objects to mess with humans, while burying something to rot on someone's property is a common part of curses in Irish (and other) culture. Out of curiosity, about when are these stories from? I love them, by the way.
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| # ? Jan 9, 2013 02:46 |
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Tewbrainer posted:Live thread, liiiiiive! I actually wanted to jump on earlier, but I didn't feel okay about writing about the thing until it felt "asleep". I'm hoping more people post soon!
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| # ? Jan 9, 2013 04:46 |
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quote:[Special note - teeth hold a special place in many gaelic myths, and many MANY ghost stories involve ghost / faeries that take teeth.] Is this where the whole Tooth Fairy thing comes from? I never really thought about the tooth fairy being Gaelic...
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| # ? Jan 9, 2013 15:18 |
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Bobbie Wickham posted:The shoe sounds like a curse from a person, not a faerie. I thought that faeries didn't need the use of physical objects to mess with humans, while burying something to rot on someone's property is a common part of curses in Irish (and other) culture. Out of curiosity, about when are these stories from? I love them, by the way. In response to faeries, the father in most of these stories was an extremely vocal disbeliever in 'faeries', and in one story goes on a paragraph long rant about how they are just a demon that have tricked people into believing the faerie is 'helping' them, when really the demon has just been making their life steadily worse and worse up until the person begins setting out offerings. As far as a timeline, most of these stories are undated [A tradition of the gaelic cag'sgeul, camping stories, where no date or names are given]. We can guess by events that occurred in them (specifically Tyrone's rebellion [referred to in these stories as simply 'The Rebellion' or 'O'Neill's War'] that most of these stories take place after 1594 at the earliest. Most of the stories weren't written down until 1650, which we can tell thanks to the unnamed author. The writings stop abruptly in 1797, with the author's (or author's son/friend/another person entirely since this was 100+ years after the first writing) last statement being that he was being recruited as a surgeon by the French (I assume to join the fight against  BRITISH TYRANNY in the French-driven revolution in 1798). There are stories after that sparsely through the 1800's , with no indication that they were written by anyone related to the original author. For those reading, these should not be considered historical fact as they frequently contradict themselves.Oracle posted:Is this where the whole Tooth Fairy thing comes from? I never really thought about the tooth fairy being Gaelic... Maybe not tooth fairy (both examples are from different stories)... 'The creature was insane with desire for teeth, as the dark force that had kept it chained had torn out its own, thus forcing it into a life of starvation.' 'In the wraiths home was a bowl containing the molars of dozen of victims. My father told me many nights later that some evil craves teeth, as it has been cursed to an eternity of hunger, and desires the curse upon the living.' History lesson over!
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| # ? Jan 10, 2013 00:15 |
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Hello everybody, It's been a hell of a long time since I bumped this thread, but lately I've been wanting to start working on starting over my second ghost story compilation (since the first, almost-finished version was lost in a tragic computer crash). The thing is, I lost the template I had for the layout in that same crash. I remember posting the first compilation in .docx format in the old thread (here is my original post). Alas, it was hosted on Megaupload, and we all know how well that ended. Does anyone have it saved somewhere? It would be really nice to send it to me, because a lot of work originally went into it and it would be nice not to have to start over on the layout... I already have to start over with the rest! Thanks in advance 
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| # ? Jan 12, 2013 16:05 |
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Noodle Incident posted:Hello everybody, http://www.mediafire.com/view/?epfa0747jn5v27x I believe that would be it.
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| # ? Jan 12, 2013 16:13 |
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I'm looking for some (advice? Catharsis from writing this all out?) with an odd situation. My grandmother passed away this November, and I am slightly worried, slightly terrified that her ghost will haunt me. I can't say I'm a particularly sensitive person, but this is an odd situation which requires some pretty intense backstory. The Back Story: Even when my grandma was young, she was not a very nice person. I haven't heard many stories of her childhood, but I know it was unstable and traumatic. She and my grandpa had 7 kids, with my mom being the youngest, so I never knew her as physically abusive so much as mentally ill, but reportedly she sent my aunts and uncles to the hospital a number of times, and everyone has their mental scars, including my browbeaten grandpa. When my mom was going through a rough patch, I lived with my grandparents for a few years as a young child. I knew she was odd, speaking to no one and doing odd things. Incredibly paranoid and incurably racist – she called the police on one my mom’s black classmates who dropped off a sweater she forgot at school. A few months prior to her death, she was diagnosed as heavily Alzheimer's (complete with volatility) and suspected schizophrenia & bipolar disorder. For the last several years of her life, she encapsulated herself in the upstairs of their house, with my grandfather caring for her as much as he (as an 85 year old man) could, while being too ashamed to ask for help. As her Alzheimer's overtook her mind, she lost the ability to mimic sanity, and we learned more about the people she talked to. One of them was an older woman, Ruby, her mother, and also the name of one of her daughters who still lived close by. This came in handy several times when she managed to get out of the house - my grandpa could coax her into the car by saying they were going to visit Ruby. I have a million stories that display, in retrospect how ill she was, and how we might've intervened earlier than we did, but we are not a close family, and it was over a year of locking his bedroom door at night and multiple attempted murders until my grandpa asked my family for help. My uncles flew in, power of attorney was finally transferred to my mother, and the next time she fell, my mother talked my grandpa into calling EMS, forced them to transport her (the emts that service my area are incredibly lazy, and should have transported her anyway considering her injury and general condition) and that was the last time my grandma was in that house. Within a week she was in hospice, and I spent the majority of my birthday that weekend sitting a death vigil, less to honor my grandma than to make sure my mother did not have to suffer that alone. Ultimately she survived another month, which my mom joked about it ‘being proof that she feeds off of the suffering of others’ which I am actually tempted to believe – she was refusing food, not on a feeding tube, and the main goal was to ‘make her comfortable’ – and she lived on a another month that that little boost of us being there that night? Improbably and silly, but I believe it as much as I do ghosts. The Creepy: I love ghost stories, I’m into horror, I watch crummy TLC shows – I even joked with my mom about bringing an Ouija board to the nursing home to keep us entertained. After my grandma left the house, we began working on cleaning out the upstairs – both to clear out the biohazards, filth, and make a storage space so my grandpa’s life downstairs could be streamlined and easier, since he never plans on going upstairs again. There were 3 bedrooms upstairs, and a small bathroom, and if it had been an episode of hoarders, they would’ve worn hazmat suits. There were bloody garments, bloody sheets, bloody fabrics and bloody …things everywhere, which we later found out was from a prolapsed uterus, which she was scheduled for a surgery for decades ago, and never went through with. Instead of washing any of the sets on a regular basis, she began buying new sheets, and tossing them in a corner when too dirty. Little scraps of paper everywhere, with handwriting that once looked like a cursive teachers, and now looked like the 2nd grader learning it, listing names and dates, and any bit of miscellany she tried to keep track of. Scissors and knives. You know, those old heavy metal scissors that were only different than garden shears in size? We found 23 pairs of those stashed about (for quick access, we assume) , more than 50 knives of various kinds – from plastic to a steak knives with the wooden handles removed. And then, on the walls, pictures tacked on. Mostly of me when I was younger. There are a number of reasons for the highest percentage of picture sin that house being of me – I was an adorable blonde show-off granddaughter, I was around when cameras and getting filmed developed was cheaper and easier, but it turned out that the main reason was that there was another voice/personality in my grandma’s head, a little blonde girl named Melinda who used to play with her. Near one of the nightstand was a collection of some of my old toys that had obviously been recently played with, many of the notes were scribbling of my name, over and over. If my name was more common, I’d think I’d be less weirded out, but alright, I knew she was crazy, I just didn’t know I happened to be a focus of this her crazy – she rarely recognized me post puberty unless I played the violin (which I was awful with, she just associated me with violins). The Current: Lately, I’ve been going over there to hang out with my grandfather, who is pretty lonely and bored, and he gave me the ok to turn the upstairs into a sort of art studio, which is an amazing prospect – a couple of rooms to work with clay and paint and sewing without worrying about my animals or getting my bedroom things dirty? Hell yes! At this point, the upstairs is mostly cleaned out – maybe two more trips to the dump and goodwill, and a bunch of scrubbing and fixing up to be done – but most of the evidence of insanity is gone. Most of this I’ve been doing on my own or with mu mom, since my family doesn’t like discussing ‘family issues’ with strangers, whereas I find it cathartic. The last time I was there, I went bootless, and wore foot covers (the floor still needs several layers of bleach scrubbing in every room) but I constantly stubbed my toes on the ceramic…things… that I was using as door stops. I’d swear I’d move them, and dammit, I’d stub my toe again. My grandpa has confessed to me he’s hearing things/ having objects move about- but he’s 85, and I’m clumsy, and neither of us trust our own judgment. I am terrified that if ghosts/ spirits/ the afterlife exists, my insane dead grandma who was obsessed with a child version of me is going to haunt me. I am terrified that this fear will only give power to the idea – through the form of though-forms and tulpas, or through my own anxiety disorder issues. For weeks after she died, I had nightmares of her pinching me and poking me awake (which was customary when I lived there) and while I can attribute this to having rambunctious cats and an extremely overactive imagination. I will be spending an insane amount of time in the same rooms that she holed herself away in, both to fix them up and when I have them in use as a studio type space. The offer is too good to refuse logistics wise, and I know fixing up upstairs and having me around will make my grandpa happy – for every negative thing my grandma did, my grandpa started a seed of something fantastic. I am not a jumpy person – I’ve worked on ambulances, and I can keep a clear head, but I am terrified that renovating her hiding space will activate my grandma’s ghost, be it a spectral or mental haunting and this fear will only increase its power over me. Also, written on the wall about 3 feet high was help scribbled in pencil with a child’s handwriting. Explainable, but it made the list of creepy things I remembered to take a picture of.
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 10:42 |
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Hey, there's a new post in this thread!satiat posted:the list of creepy things I remembered to take a picture of. If you have pictures of the creepy, please share! Real advice: Don't be afraid. IF your grandmother sticks around, there's nothing she can do to you now. She's dead. If you feel uncomfortable, or if things keeps moving around, or whatever, you can do a few things to help. Sometimes simply saying out loud, "You're dead, you're not allowed in here. Go away." will work. Or you can burn sage, sprinkle salt around, or do whatever else to "purify" the area. But don't be scared. It's your workspace and you've worked hard cleaning it out. Enjoy it.
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 21:19 |
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Yeah, there's no reason to be scared of a haunting spirit in most cases. It is just another being sort of hanging around. You would not be afraid of a bird outside the window. There is little difference here. Even if she were somehow malevolent, which is unlikely, it's not difficult to defend yourself here. If you believe in thoughtforms, then create a defensive thoughtform to protect you, like a shield or something. If you believe in tulpas then there are a wide variety of defensive measures you can take to protect yourself from a spirit within the Bon or Tibetan Buddhist tradition whence that concept hails. I'd mainly just recommend offering gektor, a kind of food offering for negative spirits where you basically say "yo spirits here's some food, please take it and enjoy it but also maybe consider practicing Dharma and not being a jerk anymore, since nobody likes jerks, including you!" It's bizarre to me that "tulpas" are becoming a "thing" on the Internet but they are isolated from the tradition which gives rise to the idea and, as a result, they seem a lot more scary than they are.
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 21:41 |
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Paramemetic posted:Yeah, there's no reason to be scared of a haunting spirit in most cases. It is just another being sort of hanging around. You would not be afraid of a bird outside the window. Yeah, but the bird outside my window isn't watching me jerk off.
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 23:38 |
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I've had great success scaring ghosts away by putting up fetlife.com in my browser. The problem is, you gotta close your eyes really tight because even a little glimpse is enough to melt your face off like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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| # ? Jan 21, 2013 23:42 |
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Also, certain phenomena aren't sentient and may just leave imprints that are basically video recordings stuck on loop. Paramemetic posted:Even if she were somehow malevolent, which is unlikely, it's not difficult to defend yourself here. If you believe in thoughtforms, then create a defensive thoughtform to protect you, like a shield or something. I went to a local event several years back where a group of ghost hunters/demonologists showcased their evidence they've collected over the years, and the guy, Dave Considine, gave the same advice. Think of St. Michael/pure white wall surrounding you or whatever makes you feel protected.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 00:57 |
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Slenderman just had a cameo o n Lost Girl.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 04:29 |
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Sapper posted:Yeah, but the bird outside my window isn't watching me jerk off. Are you sure...
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 16:25 |
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If you really want to keep away ghosts I have a spirit repellant amulet I can sell for $6000.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 18:29 |
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AthenaH2SO4 posted:Unidentified white 'thing' After going through these posts, I think I can safely say there is one at Thompsons Beach north of Adelaide.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2013 12:11 |
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Oh, gods...I think I will avoid that beach, then. I'm assuming you do mean some sort of possibly supernatural monster and not just an unpleasant tourist, right?
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| # ? Jan 30, 2013 03:30 |
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This is actually from a roleplaying book, The Book of Unremitting Horror. I think the story should go in this thread because it is a) genuinely upsetting and b) about sleep paralysis -- OR IS IT? ------------------------------------------------------------- I told them again and again but they did not listen. The first time it happened was about two years ago, I think. I was seven then. I woke up in the middle of the night. I could see it was twelve eighteen because the clock was glowing. It was the only light in the room and then something moved in front of it. There was a strong breeze and it was warm. The curtains were blowing in. I was really frightened. I could not move and could not scream though I wanted to. It lasted for about thirty seconds and then it was gone. I didn't see anything that time apart from the thing that moved in front of the clock for a moment. I could not get back to sleep and did not want to get out of bed and turn the light on in case something happened. Then a few months later it happened again. I was lying in bed and again I woke up all of a sudden. I felt something holding me down. It was really strong and I could not sit up. I tried to scream for my mummy and daddy and could not make any noise come out. I tried to bang on the wall so they would hear me but I could not move my arms at all. I was more scared than I have ever been in my life. I told a couple of people at school. Tommy Price said it was the old witch that comes in the night. We all laughed at him and he cried but secretly I thought he was telling the truth. Nobody ever talked to Tommy much. He didn't have any friends. His mum died in the night and her face was all screwed up and scary. She had a heart attack. Tommy believed in the old witch and the more I listened to him the more I believed in her too. He said she climbs in the window and sits on your chest and steals your breath. Whatever you do you must never look. You have to lie still and wait for her to go away. If you turn on the light and look, you will see her, and she will see YOU, then it's all over. That was what Tommy said. It's all over. I told mum and dad about it in the evening and they just cuddled me and told me not to be afraid. Tommy was having emotional problems and I must be sympathetic, they said. He had had a lot of tragic things happen in his life. They said it was not a ghost. My dad made me go and sit with him while we looked it up on the Internet. We found a place that said it was a thing called sleep paralysis and lots of people got it. It is what happens when your brain is still full of dreams but your body wakes up, so you are stuck in the bad dream. When I went to bed I was not quite so scared as before because I knew it was all in my head. I went to sleep. There was a bright moon shining. I woke up again. The curtains were blowing and I had a heavy thing on me. I was scared all through my body. I wanted to turn on the light but I couldn't. I wanted to open my eyes so I could see there was nothing there. I was scared too, though. What if I did see something? I thought about the website and the sleep paralysis and I knew I was being a big baby. I opened my eyes. The old lady was looking right into my face. Her mouth was all open wide, like this: Oooooooo. Now I'm really frightened. I can't move at all. I haven't been able to move for ages. My mummy and daddy are crying. Some men came and took me out of bed and took me away to the hospital. That was days ago. A man cut me with knives and took things out of me. Then they painted my face to look healthy because it was all twisted up and didn't look like me any more. They put me in a little suit. I can't move. I'm scared. I don't want to be in the coffin. I don't want to go in the oven and be all burned up.
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| # ? Jan 31, 2013 17:09 |
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Happy February! Have a sort-of-ghost story from 1809, via a good friend of mine. It was a throw-away publication for soldiers families given to that circulated shortly after the retreat that is mentioned in the story. Short but sweet mental scariness! __________________ There are two types of man – those who fight, and those who run. I am the second. You may find me lying under a Portuguese skirmisher, on the night of the retreat of my ally's under the shadow of the worthless city of Corunna. My chest is wet and cold from the skirmisher's blood. I move him off me, thanking him silently for hiding me from the flocks of theifs that descend after a battle. The air still smells thick with sulfur, and the volume of the battle will echo in my head for eternity. A brief memory of a man named Alex being torn apart beside me drifts through the night. I walk cautiously between bodies that lay still. Fear laps upon my heart like waves, for each time I set my foot upon the grass I fear a man will cry out and reach for me. The criminals in the ranks say that mens' souls leave their bodies the night of their death, and their stupid stories bubble up in my mind. Watched by the dead who were too stunned by bullets to even close their eyes, I began to leave the death behind me. Lieutenant Lionne Willis was what men had once called me, men who were brave enough to die for their children and wives. For this thing called 'patriotism', 'freedom'. And worse of all, 'The King'. Where had the king been when the cannons roared like God himself come to earth? Where was the king when the French Dragoons ran through us like so many wolves through sheep? “So too asks the sheep – where was the shepherd?” said a voice behind me. My cowards instinct brought me to the ground immediately, and I lay on my stomach to blend in with the countless dead. Footsteps fell on the ground beside me, and I felt eyes drift across my back. A laugh, a laugh of the brave at a coward. I lay there for a long time before looking up. I was alone. I scanned the darkness around me, but there was no living soul in site. Far, far in the distance a cannon fired. From this distance, through the hills, it sounded like a deep voweled voice, perhaps a great demon with his tounge removed mumbling in confusion. Before me rose a hill, the rising moon casting rays over it. I was still in the dark for now, but it was essential that I crossed the hill before moonlight. The grass was slick with dew. “Perhaps blood, instead of dew” said Alex. “Shut up Alex, you can't talk because you are dead” I said. I could picture him smirking. All soldiers smirk. “You left us Lionne. You left us to die.” He accused. “You'll call me lieutenant, bastard!” I whipped around. Alone. Dark. The hill fell before me into the field of corpses. I knew that Alex wasn't there. He was laying in pieces, marched over by all the men unlucky enough to have been standing behind him. Then stars started to flicker in the dark field. Stars that appeared in pairs, blinking dimly and unmoving. My mind struggled with these stars, and they were appearing among the grass and bushes. They were a cool white. Fireflys that were hovering still in wet night. The moon crested the hill behind me. The stars were the eyes of the infinite dead. And then they were gone.
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| # ? Feb 3, 2013 03:22 |
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I've been following this thread for a while and figured I'd finally contribute. It seems like nearly every place I've lived has had activity of some sort. Some of it can be explained and some of it can't. I'm not the only one to have the experiences, either. Both my roommates and now my husband have. Even my step-kids have at some point. The first house I remember growing up in had some activity, but only two incidents in particular that stand out. One was when I was young (maybe eleven or twelve). My family had just left and I was home alone. The phone rang, and I saw from the caller ID that it was coming from my sister's room upstairs. I picked it up and said for her to come down to talk to me. All I heard was static. I remembered that no one else was home, freaked out and called my mom. She assured me that it was probably a glitch in the phone and not to worry. After hearing what sounded like movement upstairs, however, I decided to wait outside until they came back. The only other memorable event in that house was when my youngest sister and I were playing hide-and-go-seek. We hid in the garage, waiting for my other younger sister to find us. After a while, we got bored and decided to watch TV instead. We tried opening the door, but it was locked from the other side. I ended up having to kick it open. My sister swore she didn't lock it, but it's very possible that she did. In the next house, not much happened until I moved into a room my father finished for me in the basement. At first I was thrilled. It was my own space with a door that led outside so I could come and go as I pleased without having to worry about curfew or waking my parents. As a senior in high school, I thought it was great. I started having nightmares about a man who would walk across my room and stand outside my door, waiting to be let in. I brushed it off as just a bad dream until my girlfriend slept over. She said she woke up in the middle of the night and heard what sounded like footsteps across my room that stopped outside my door. She felt so uncomfortable that she didn't want to stay over again. I was intrigued, but still brushed it off as nothing. We had been up late and she was probably just tired. My best-friend spent the night and told me the next morning that he'd heard someone walking across my room and wait outside my door. After a few minutes, he said he heard what sounded like someone walking towards the bed and felt someone tugging on the blanket. He said he felt like whatever was there didn't approve of him being there. I moved out shortly afterward and never experienced anything else in the house, so although creepy, I didn't mind it much. I moved in with my best-friend and started to notice a few things. The stairs leading to the bedrooms were visible from the family room. There were times where I could have sworn I'd seen someone coming downstairs, only to look up and see no one. My other roommates mentioned this as well. We would hear someone walking around upstairs, or things would be moved. At one point, everyone was gone and I was alone for a few days. The night that they left, I was in my room when I heard my friend call my name. I went to go answer him when I remembered there was no one else there. I slept on the couch until they got back. My friend said he felt there were two spirits in the house. One mischievous, the other one being nice. He said whenever he had a nightmare, he woke up to the feeling of someone rubbing his back and soothing him, only to find there was no one there. I myself was very sick at one point (my lupus had flared up badly and my joints, especially my knees, were in a lot of pain), and I woke up to the feeling of someone rubbing my knee. I thought it was my friend until I looked over and saw that no one was there. Still strange, but nothing too scary. Nothing paranormal happened after that until I moved in with my now-husband. I'd hear footsteps or feel like I was being watched, but it was benign so I didn't mind. His daughter and her half-brother (they were 9 and 7 at the time) stayed on the weekends. Right before he deployed, the kids and I noticed something strange. My husband and I were alone in our room, getting ready to go to bed, when I looked over and thought I saw my step-son standing at our door. I asked him what he was doing up, and he turned and walked away. We went to go check on him, only to find him sound asleep in his bed. A few nights later we were about to fall asleep when my step-son knocked on our door and asked my husband what he wanted. We asked him what he meant, he said he saw my husband peeking in on him. We didn't want to scare him, so we told him we were just checking on him and to go back to bed. He deployed a few weeks later and we moved out of that apartment. When my husband came back from his deployment we rented a different apartment in the same complex. This is the only time I've had truly frightening paranormal activity happen. Soon after we moved in, we adopted a cat from the local shelter. After we brought her home, she started behaving strangely. She'd stare at the wall or follow things that I couldn't see. I chalked it up to her hearing the pipes or whatnot. There were times when she'd be sleeping and would be startled awake, or would be sitting and then suddenly dart away, hissing. She wouldn't go anywhere near my step-daughter's room. She'd only sit a few feet away from it and stare. I started hearing footsteps and told my husband about it. He hadn't heard anything, however, so he blamed it on the neighbors. I went away for a few days to visit my family and received a phone call from him the first night I was gone. He said he'd heard paper tearing and turned to find a magazine torn. It wasn't the cat, however, because she'd been beside him at the time. He was at work when I got back. I went to the kitchen to make something to eat and heard an incredibly loud 'POP-BANG'. I looked down to see a champagne cork on the floor near the wall. We'd had a bottle of champagne on top of the fridge and had been saving it for a special occasion. One night I put the dishes away, left to go do something else, came back and found the cabinet doors open. Creepy, but not exactly threatening or harmful. There was always the smell of smoke in the bathroom, like someone was chain-smoking. Joe, on the other hand, always swore he could smell perfume. We lost power one day and I decided to take a shower and left the bathroom door open so I could have some light to see what I was doing. I looked over to see what I thought was my husband standing in the doorway. The figure turned and left, and after I got dressed, I asked him why he hadn't joined me. He said he'd never left the family room. His daughter ended up moving across the country with his ex-wife, and we were both pretty devastated. We started having dreams of a little blonde girl and figured it was just because we missed her. Only every dream of her took place in the apartment and there was something about her that we knew it wasn't his daughter. One night while my husband was working, I settled down in the family room with the cat to relax. My step-daughter's room is directly off of the family room. Her bedroom door is connected to it, actually. Everything was fine for a bit, until my cat started staring at her bedroom door and puffing up. All of a sudden she dashed off of the couch and took off for my room. I couldn't understand it until the bedroom door started shaking. I mean the entire drat door was violently shaking, like there was someone in her room trying to get out. I grabbed my cellphone and ran out of the apartment. I called my husband and told him what happened and asked if there was any way he could come home. Of course he couldn't. What would he tell his superior? "Sorry, I have to go home. My apartment is haunted and my wife is scared"? Unfortunately, he works nights so there was no way I could sit outside until he got home. I went back inside, shoved a chair in front of her door, and stayed as far away from it as possible. My husband called his daughter later and asked if she ever felt uneasy in her bedroom. She said she wasn't sure, just that she found it hard to sleep in there. We wound up having to PCS across the country, so we happily packed everything up and left. As soon as we got to our new apartment, our cat calmed down completely. We haven't heard any footsteps, any noises, nothing. My step-daughter visits for a few weeks once or twice a year and feels perfectly at-ease in our new place. I don't know if I was just unlucky in the places I lived or if something had been following me, but I'm glad it's over. I know what happened to me doesn't compare to anything else anyone has been through, but it scared the hell out of me at the time.
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| # ? Feb 14, 2013 05:35 |
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Just an fyi for all the ghost story lovers.In the back of the children's book "scary stories to tell in the dark" you will find the sources for all the stories. Its a nice way to find folklore ghost stories.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 08:35 |
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Here's one more story from The Book of Unremitting Horror, which I think is better than the first one I posted for being more internally consistent as well as more shocking (at least to me). Since it was structured as a folktale, I started reading it very carefully in hopes of adding it to my storytelling repertoire, but then it went to a very...upsetting place and I knew that there was no way I could tell it to a child audience - or even an adult audience. You've been warned. ---------------- Tell us a story, Mrs. O'Connell! You always want stories. I'm a tired old woman. Let me alone. But it's time for a story! I'm boooored! And why should you be bored, now, with all these lovely toys about you? People have spent a lot of money on those. You might be more grateful. I don't care. I'm bored of them now. I want a story. Don't care was made to care. I think you, young sir, and you, young madam, should be sent straight to bed. If you don't tell me a good story I'll scream, and I'll tell Father you hit me. Oh, will you now, Miss? That's a wicked thing to threaten your poor nanny with. Why, it's blackmail, so it is. You'll be put out of the house and he won't give you a reference, and you'll have to go back to Ireland, and you'll be poor and have to eat grass. And what would you know about what we eat in Ireland? You only eat potatoes! And I suppose you'd know all about it, would you? I'd sooner eat a nice, fat, wicked little girl than eat a mouldy old potato. I'd gobble you all up like a pooka would. Like a what? Never mind. Some things you're best not knowing. Oh, pleeease tell us a story. Very well. Since you are both wicked children, you shall have a wicked story. Hurray! Now, let me see, how does it begin. Oh yes. Once upon a time, there was a woman of Rosscommon, and this woman lived by a deep lake. At the bottom of the lake there was a pooka. Oh, tell us what a pooka is! You have to! There's one in the story! I was coming to that. A pooka has horns like a goat and smells like the oldest, rottenest bog in the world. This pooka was very old. He had been there since before Saint Patrick came and drove all the evil things away. He hid away at the bottom of the lake and Saint Patrick never found him. Now, this woman was a wicked gossip and told many lies about people. She loved nothing more than the sound of wagging tongues, telling some filthy lie or other. So long as she had something bad to say about someone, her black heart was happy. One day, she told lies about a young woman of the village. She said the young woman was working witchcraft, because she was so well loved by the young men. She called her many other bad names, too, that I won't repeat. Names you don't give a decent woman. It was jealousy, so it was, and she had no right to go calling anyone a whore. Well then, said the young woman, if I am going to be called a witch, then I shall act the part. And she went to the lake shore, where the woman lived, and she called three times, pwca pwca wak thysel, which is how you wake up a pooka. I oughtn't to be saying the words out loud, but if a pooka comes and carries you off tonight, it'll be no less than you deserve. So, she said the words and then she waited. Then there was a horrible smell and the water boiled up and the witch-woman ran back to watch. Out of the water the pooka came. I don't like this story! Oh dear. Shall I stop, then? ... no... tell us what happened next... Oh, I'll tell you what happened right enough. It went into the house and it found Aisling Farrell, the lying bitch that she was, and it grabbed her in its arms and ripped her clothes to pieces with its big hands. Then it had her on the floor, and oh! didn't I laugh at it! oh, to hear her screaming! And do you know what it did then, children? It took her by the hair, and it dragged her like a hunter dragging a hare, all the way to the edge of the water, and she bumped along the stones and her bones went crickety-crack! And still she was keepin' it up with the moaning! Still alive, she was, after all that! Right by me it went, and didn't it smell awful? Like a bucket of muck pulled up from the marsh where the old wives chuck out the slops. Down went Aisling Farrell, down ye go and fare thee well, and all her screams went to bubbles, and that was the end of her, and they never ever knew what happened. Her tidy kitchen was black with mud. They never found her, children. Nobody knows to this day. Nobody will care, neither, if I tell a couple of spoiled brats the truth. There's a story for yeh, ye wee shites. Why, look at the time. Lights out now, and no talking. Goodnight, Miss Amy. Goodnight, Master Russell. Sleep tight. -Secret taping by the parents of Amy and Russell Edwin. Mrs. O'Connell was dismissed without notice, and the matter referred to the police.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 09:28 |
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Anyone with Goatman related tales? I just started working for Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. I'll see what I can dig up on my end.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 09:32 |
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UndashingOne posted:Anyone with Goatman related tales? I just started working for Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. I'll see what I can dig up on my end. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I got just the one for you if you want to know about the goatman...
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 12:57 |
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Israfel posted:They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I got just the one for you if you want to know about the goatman... Horror beyond comprehension [wasn't there an Event Horizon smiley??]
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 13:59 |
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Hey, I hope this isn't considered necromancy. I'm really sorry if it is. I had a weird experience when I was a kid. I'd meant to post about it in past threads, but I talked with my dad about it over Easter, and I think I finally understand it well enough to be able to post it here. When I was twelve years old, my house was destroyed by a fire. I had no idea it had happened until I got off of the school bus and found my family waiting by the back of the fire truck. In an instant, my whole world had been turned upside down. The place I had lived in since my parents brought me home from the hospital was completely gone, along with everything inside of it. They never found our dog. My younger sister, Amy, had been trapped upstairs when the fire spread from the laundry room to the adjacent stairs, and it was only thanks to the efforts of the firefighters that she got out in time. Our entire world, and everything we had taken for granted, was gone, just like that. When you're growing up, you sort of always assume that your parents have everything under control, and that there's some sort of plan, however abstract and nebulous, that your mom and dad are working for. I could tell, though, that they had no idea where to go from there. My dad worked from home: how was he going to afford to feed us? My mom was earning her master's degree: when was she going to be able to go to school again? I think, for the first time, I noticed that a situation had gotten out of my parents' control, and it terrified me. Suddenly everything around me seemed terribly fragile. My dad has an expression that he's used his whole life: “take care of everyone, and someday everyone will take care of you.” After the fire, friends and family from all across the country swarmed to the rescue. We were given food, clothing, and everything that we needed to get by while everything got sorted out with insurance. My grandfather was one of the first people to call. He had a rental property two towns over that had just become available, and would we be interested in taking it? We would. It meant that my dad would be able to set up shop quickly, my mom would still be able to attend classes, and we would be in the same school district we'd been in our whole lives. It meant something of a return to normalcy. Less than two weeks after the fire, my parents signed the lease. I really loved the house. It was two stories, and the floorplan didn’t really have “rooms,” except for bathrooms and bedrooms. Instead, the kitchen, living room, dining room, office, and the rest of the common area was all part of one large communal space. Hiding under my dad’s desk on the second floor, I perfected hitting my sister with a nerf dart while she was sitting in the kitchen. Our yard backed up to a public forest. It gave me a lot of opportunities to explore, and on the whole I really couldn’t have been happier. Shortly after that, the nightmares started. I'd been prone to bad dreams my entire childhood, so I didn't even think anything of it at first. As time went on, however, I began to notice the same nightmare occurring again and again. I would be at school, and my day would continue normally, until I went to gym class. As soon as I opened the door to the gym, the entire room was completely empty. It was the same size and shape as the gym, but everything in it was gone. The basketball rims, the overhead ductwork, the floorboards and retractable bleachers. Even the paint was gone from the walls, replaced with an ugly off-white. The windows were replaced by solid wall. I'm not sure how the room was lit. It was just an enormous empty space. Everyone that was "supposed" to be in the room when I arrived, like the teachers, were nowhere. Anyone who came in with me, however, was overcome with a tremendous sadness. Many of my classmates visibly wept, others curled into balls and laid on the uniform floor. Walking felt like moving in quicksand, and I felt exhausted just moving ten feet. It seemed that there was no escape: every time I had this dream I moved heavily in the space until I collapsed, which sometimes felt like years, at which point I woke up. Once I noticed this dream, it started to happen more frequently. At first I would have it once a week, if that. Four months after we moved in, it was happening every night. The dream made me so uncomfortable that I started trying to avoid sleep. I would be so exhausted that I would often fall asleep in class. My grades started slipping and, for the first time in my life, I started getting detentions. My parents were worried, but I was afraid to tell them about the nightmare. I was somehow concerned that I would be punished for having it. The dream was changing, too. Where before I wouldn’t enter the space until I got to the gymnasium, it started to happen earlier and earlier. The hallway that led to the gym became empty, too. Then it was the library, and then my homeroom classroom. Soon, the entire school became that same emptiness. One night in January, I dreamt that I walked out to my bus stop, and when I got on, the bus itself was that same dreaded void. As soon as I stepped in I was caught up in that same vacuum. It felt like a decade, but I slowly walked to where my seat would have been, laid on the floor, and wept bitterly until I woke up with a scream. Whatever the dream was, it was spreading. In February, everything outside the house was a single homogeneous space. I’d been really intrepid my whole life, and especially so once we’d moved out next to the forest, but for the first time I was afraid to leave the house, even during my waking hours. I started to dread sleep. My grades slid even further, and my health started to deteriorate. Even when I wasn’t actually sick, I would fake illness to avoid going to school. Whenever I blinked, I was afraid that when I opened my eyes I would see the gray out of the window. It was mid-March at this point. I can’t remember if I was actually sick, or if it was just the exhaustion and dread, but I remember that I was under a blanket on the couch, shaking uncontrollably. I can’t remember specifically, but I think it had been forty-eight hours since I slept at that point. My mom was at class so my dad decided to go out to Acme and get some soup for dinner. I think I must have been running a fever. I was alone in the house, and I became aware of how oppressively quiet it was, the sort of quiet where it rings in your ears. I swallowed heavily. It had gotten increasingly painful to do so as the day went on. I shivered again, and pulled the blanket over my head for warmth. I became aware that the blanket was gone. I opened my eyes and found that I was surrounded by emotionless gray. I felt my heart plummet. Tears began to stream down my face. The dimensions were the same as my the room I was just in. Gray walls reached up to the vast ceiling. There were no windows. The doors were all gone. The only perceivable space was the large, open living room. Unlike my dreams, though, I could move freely. Where before I had been drawn inexorably towards the emptiness, I felt just as strong a desire to flee it. I hoped against hope that the back door, hidden from sight by the blank wall, would still be there. Maybe the gray hadn't gotten out back yet. With enormous effort, I rose from the floor. Each step felt like a day, and with every moment my head throbbed with sorrow and pain. But I did move forward, knowing that the door must be there. Halfway, I became aware of an intense pain in my stomach. This starving feeling grew stronger with each step. Finally, after a seeming month, I clutched at the cold corner and looked at the exit. But the door wasn't there. Just that same dead wall. I collapsed immediately, tears coming more freely now. I rolled over to rest my back against the blank wall behind me, and jumped with surprise. Where the kitchen had been was a man. He, too, was gray and textureless, but he was so distinct from the hard angles I'd grown accustomed to that he had might as well have been glowing. His faceless head was smooth and featureless. He held his head in his hands, and as he did so I began to feel a tremendous sobbing. It didn't seem to come from him, instead reverberating from the gray walls in a deep bass frequency. It grew louder and louder until I felt my head about to rupture. I screamed, and as I did so, the man turned to face me. Horror overcame me as the man drew closer. My screaming, the bass weeping, and the pain throughout my body built until I felt myself fall backwards as the world went black. My father shook me awake. I'd fallen asleep in the time he'd been at the store. He said that dinner was ready. I stood uneasily, feeling very dizzy. The room was fully furnished. I must have been dreaming. Dinner was uneventful, but I had a lot of trouble swallowing with the illness. My hand was shaking a lot, and twice my dad asked if I was alright. I told him I just was feeling weak. When I was done, he gathered our plates and started to do this dishes. I could see out of the corner of my eye that my sister was giving me a strange look. I looked up at her. "You've seen him, too," she said quietly. It took me a moment to realize what it was that she meant. The recognition struck me like a lightning bolt. I stared at her as she stared at a pea she was playing with on the table, markedly avoiding my gaze. I didn't know what to say. Finally, she spoke. "I don't know what he wants," she said, finally lifting her head to look at me. Her eyes were beginning to water."I'm really scared of him." She again turned to the pea. After a few minutes she said she was tired and went to bed. I said nothing the whole time. I was out sick the rest of the week. The nights when I could sleep, I dreamt of the gray man watching me as I vainly tried to escape the endless empty space. I started crying spontaneously during the day, and I heard my parents discussing, in hushed tones, that they were considering taking me to see a child counselor. Early Friday afternoon, I was the sort of sick where it feels like an out-of-body experience, where it feels like your legs aren't attached quite right. I was still avoiding sleep, but I had become so ill that I don't think I could have slept if I'd wanted to. I heard my sister come home from school and walk slowly up the stairs. She entered my room, looking deathly serious. I was feeling too weak to speak, so I just looked at her as she began to speak with great deliberation, as though every word was crucial. "He spoke to me last night," she began, "and he said that he feels so alone in the gray. He called it the Place without Things. He wants someone to be there with him, to help him." She turned to look out of my bedroom window. I could tell there was something more she wanted to say, but it was several minutes before she spoke again. "He said he doesn't like you very much, after all. He said that he doesn't think you can help him. He said he's giving up on you. He wants you to leave me alone," she said. "Amy, where did he come from? What help does he want?" "He didn't say. I don't know." She turned to me now, "I don't want to go with him." Without another word, she left. By the end of the weekend, I was feeling worlds better. My parents sent me back to school on Tuesday. I started to sleep again, and my dreams were free of the gray man and the Place without Things. My grades and my mood began, by degrees, to recover. Things were finally getting better for me. I was so exhilarated by this, and I'm even now a little ashamed to admit, that I didn't notice that Amy started to wilt as I recovered. I remember Amy shaking violently through Good Friday services, and when we went back to the house she had to be physically carried into her bedroom. I fell asleep to the sound of sobbing through our shared wall. Around one-thirty, I awoke to the sound of Amy screaming. I leapt out of bed, arriving at her door just seconds after my parents. My mom was frantically calling Amy's name. My father threw his shoulder into the door, breaking the cheap lock. I hadn't thought about it until I wrote it just now, but that was very odd, in and of itself. After she needed to be rescued from our old house as it burned around her, Amy developed a strong phobia of locked doors, closed windows, or anything else that could conceivably obstruct an escape if another fire were to break out. I don't think she ever would have locked her door knowingly. My dad rushed in. I moved to follow him, but my mother held me back. She must have been afraid that someone had broken in. Through the now-open door, I could see Amy huddling under the blanket. Tears flowing freely as she continued to scream. My parents calmed her down a little, and she stammered something about a man in her dream touching her. I felt a shudder go through me. However awful the nightmares had gotten, the featureless man had never made a move more aggressive than following me at a distance. Amy's dresser had toppled over, which was very strange: I had been asleep, but I thought the heavy dresser falling to the floor would have woken me. Dad grabbed the gun and made a sweep of the house. While he did that, my mother and I righted the dresser. When dad returned, he told Amy he hadn't found anyone. She was still quite shaken, so he offered to let her leave the light on for the rest of the night. But, afraid of it sparking while she slept, she insisted they turn it off. After getting her assurance that she was okay, we returned to our own rooms. I had trouble falling asleep. I could hear Amy crying through the walls again. But this time, I thought I could just make out a second voice. Things got worse and worse for Amy from that point forward. The sobbing became a nightly occurrence. When I would wake up to use the bathroom, I would sometimes find her sleepwalking, talking to herself while tears streamed down her face. She would be in weird places, too. The basement, the garage. Once trying to fit herself in the refrigerator. As soon as I asked her what she was doing, she would jolt and claim that nothing was wrong, and return to bed. A few nights, her door would be wide open and I would see her standing up on her mattress, stock still, whispering things I couldn't hear. I was so frightened that I would conjure up justifications for her behavior. And, surely, if things were that bad, mom and dad would know what to do and help her. Right? Like I said, things were getting a lot better for me. My better outlook on life really helped me make more friends at school, and my parents agreed to let me have a friend stay the night while they were out for the weekend. Owen came over and we played Nintendo 64 in the basement until Amy told us to be quiet so she could sleep. We waited until we were sure she was out cold, and then turned it back on. Once we were done that, we started to tell each other scary stories. "But the call was coming from inside the house!" "There was a hook on the door handle!" Stuff that was really cheesy, but set my mind into motion, especially with everything that had happened. I was jumpy, and I don't think I actually fell asleep until close to 3. I woke up when Owen started shaking me. "Dude, what the hell is going on?" Still disoriented from my quick awakening, it took me a moment to recognize what he was talking about. There was screaming somewhere above us. It sounded like Amy. I staggered to my feet and ran for the basement stairs. "It's... it's nothing, Owen, I just have to deal with something real quick." I couldn't think of what to tell him. "Hey, a faceless man is trying to abduct my sister into a gray world, and I think he might have finally succeeded. I think we have an open Ocarina of Time save, I'll be back in a few!" Even at this juncture, even with everything I had experienced, the whole thing sounded absurd. I couldn't bring myself to tell Owen. I didn't want to believe it myself. I felt ashamed of my heart racing as I hurried up the stairs. Owen must not have bought my excuse, because I heard him follow me up to the landing. The screaming got louder and louder as we approached the landing. But, it wasn't as loud as I was expecting. Even standing in the kitchen, it sounded faint, muffled. Something else was nagging at me about the scream, but I couldn't put my finger on it. "Is it coming from outside?" Owen asked, shakily. The situation was quickly becoming too much for him. Hell, it was already way past that point for me. But he was right: the only thing that made sense was if the sound was outside. I ran to the back door, half expecting to see the gray man carrying Amy into the emptiness. Instead, as I threw open the door, I was greeted with darkness beyond the porch light's poor illumination. The screaming was easier to locate, now; it seemed to be coming from around the corner of the house, directly beneath Amy's room. More mundane fears swirled within me, now. Could she have fallen? I hesitated, afraid to leave the light. But the screaming continued unabated, and I stepped out onto the rain-dampened, black lawn. I stepped softly, slowly towards the corner of the house. The screaming got louder. Where were the neighbors? Then, I felt my heart stop. Amy 's cries had ceased. I tore off around the house, Owen at my heels. I got to where the screaming had been coming from, and looked around. There was no one to be seen. No Amy, no strange man. Everything was still. Amy's window was open, and the light off. With the rain earlier, there was no way she would have opened it. "Amy?" I called, hesitantly. "Dude, what the hell is going on?" Owen asked. Before I could answer, I heard a faint noise behind us. Click. The front door had been locked. In a flash I was back at the door, frantically twisting the knob. Whoever it was, that thing had gotten us outside. It was now alone in the house with my sister. Dread pounded coldly through my heart. Everything had been locked up for the night, save the door we had opened to come out. Now that, too, was locked. There was no way into the house. Except through Amy's window. Hope kindled within me as I hurried back to the window. I looked up and my stomach dropped. This time, the window was closed. I hadn't heard it, still as the night was. A panting behind me told me that Owen had caught up. I was panicking now. "Owen, there's someone in there with her," I blurted out hysterically. "Should... should we call the police?" These were the days before cell phones, so we would have needed to go to a neighbor's house, I was afraid to leave the window, and feeling too sick to speak, so I simply shook my head "no." "Can we break a window?" This jolted me out of my dread, and I nodded. I reached down, hand shaking, and picked up a decorative stone from the garden. As I cocked my arm back, I hesitated for just one final moment. This is crazy. I let the rock fly. The crash seemed ear-splittingly loud in what had been an oppressively quiet night. Before I could think twice, we hurried to the hole in the window, stepping carefully so as to not cut ourselves on the shattered glass. I hurried up the stairs and ran into Amy's room, ready to throw my arms around my sister. But she wasn't there. I checked the bathroom, my parent's room, and finally my room. I started frantically calling my sister's name as I ran down the stairs to the living room. It took less than five minutes to search the whole place. Amy simply wasn't in the house. We looked under my mom's car in the garage, in all of the kitchen cabinets. Under the beds. She had simply disappeared. With each new empty location. I felt my breathing accelerate a little until, by the time we had reached the end of the search, I was nearly hyperventilating. Where had my sister gone? "I think," Owen began, tentatively, "we have to call the cops. Or something. This is too big a deal for us to do alone, dude. If someone kidnapped Amy, what if we're trapped in here with him? We need to get help." I hadn't considered that. What if Amy was just the bait? Feeling bile rising in my throat, I nodded, slowly. It was hard to speak. “Owen, what if she’s g—” Suddenly, there was a huge bang beneath us. Wood splintered as I yelled in terror. A voice was roaring, and it took a minute to make out the speech. "This is the police! We’re coming in," a deep voice called authoritatively through the broken door. Hearing our shouts, a police officer came hurrying up the stairs to find us in a state of complete disarray. Somehow, I hadn't realized that the neighbors would have heard the window breaking. That no one had come to investigate the screams had made me think that we were alone. But, plainly, someone had, and had reasonably called the police. Tripping over my own words, I stammered out that we had gotten locked out and I had thrown a rock through the window. I couldn’t bring myself The officer took on a stern tone. "Son, you scared a lot of your neighbors. I'm going to have the station call your parents," he said, walking away. I started to cry again. He just didn't understand! "Someone's taken my sister!" I finally choked out. He stopped. “Who’s taken her where?” “I don’t know!” I cried hysterically, “but they have to be somewhere in the house!” The officer’s expression darkened as he pulled out his radio and called in a kidnapping. He told us to stay in the room, assuring me that everything would be fine, and quickly began to search the house. We heard him check the basement and ground floor first before returning upstairs. It seemed like an eternity before we heard him down the end of the hall. “What the gently caress? This wasn’t locked before.” My parents’ bedroom. We rushed up to see what he had found, catching up just as he threw his shoulder into the door, knocking it off of its lock. There, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by broken, blackened matches, was Amy. “Amy!” I screamed. Was she dead? I didn’t understand what was happening, I had checked this room! I gasped when she stirred. As she opened her eyes, she looked at the matches scattered around her and began to cry. I don’t know that I have ever seen someone as scared as Amy looked then. She was completely lost for words and shaking uncontrollably. I ran to embrace her. "He asked me to come with him!" She choked out, "And I told him yes! I was so tired and so scared, I didn't know what else to do!" "Little girl," the cop said with growing fear in his voice, "who told you to come with him? Is he still in the house?" "He's always been here, he's trapped here! He led me through a door, and when the door started to close I knew I'd never be allowed to go home again. So I started to scream. I asked for my mommy, I asked for my brother, but they couldn't find me. I started to run. I jumped through right before it closed. Everything went black, and then I was here! "I didn't take the matches! Please, he must have given them to me!" she said, gasping for air, "please help me, I'm so scared!" Ashen faced, the officer sat Amy down and tried to calm her. A few minutes later, the backup arrived, and we remained in my parents' room trying to comfort Amy with one officer while the others swept the house. After half an hour, they returned. The man who'd first responded to the break-in shook his head. Of course, they'd found nothing. No one. By this point, the sun was rising. The police managed to get in touch with my parents, who gave consent for us to stay at a neighbor's. Owen, of course, went home. My parents arrived at lunchtime and immediately set about making sure both that we were okay, and making sure that they understood what had happened. They decided not to disclose a lot of this information to us at the time, and most of it I only found out when I asked my parents more than a decade later, over Easter. The police never found any evidence of an intruder. Apart from the smashed window, all of the entrances to the house were sealed including, strangely, all of the window latches. All of the doors on the first floor were firmly closed, although I don't remember specifically closing any of them during my search for Amy. When I told my parents about the screaming I'd heard coming from outside, I was told that a number of foxes can frequently sound like humans, particularly when our imaginations were as overexcited as Owen and mine were. Amy won't talk about it. Someday I might ask her again, but it'll be awhile. For my part, I was grounded. I wasn't allowed to have another friend stay over until college. Owen and I never really spoke again. Less than a week after the whole incident, my dad sat Amy and I down after school and told us we would be moving. Our grandfather had let us out of the lease early, and we had found a house across town that my parents live in to this day. I was happy to leave, and I was still young enough that I wouldn't have thought to question their decision anyway. It was until I was older that I realized it was odd for them to pick everything up and leave what had been, for them, a very comfortable situation. Over Easter, I finally asked my dad about it. Mom was out at a friend's house, and Amy had a party the next town over. My dad and I found ourselves alone on the couch watching hockey when I decided to ask him what he had thought of the whole mystery. "I just wasn't comfortable there anymore. I felt like a stranger in my own home." Not content with this, I pushed further. "Well, I think it was just all of the emotions of that week taking a toll on me, with your sister and everything. You remember how Amy would always talk about that gray dude?" In fact, I hadn't. I didn't think she had ever told anyone but me. "Well, right after everything happened with her, your mom told me that she had started seeing him, seeing this guy, in the mirrors. The night we decided to move out, she told me when we were lying in bed that when she was coming home she saw him in Amy's mirror, just for a second. When she went up to check, he was gone. I told her she was being ridiculous, it made me feel really nervous, anyway. That night I had a dream that I woke up in the house, but it was just like Amy said it was. Everything was gray, and all of the texture was gone. It was like the whole world was made out of modeling clay. And everything felt really, really sad. "I thought I had to get you, your mom, and your sister, so I went over to the stairs and started to climb. When I finally got up there, you guys weren't. Amy's door was gone, just wall, but my room and yours were both there, and they were empty. At the end of the hall were the other set of stairs to the attic, so I climbed up there, too, hoping that you were there. The attic was totally empty, except that in the middle of the floor was a baby carriage, colored just like it was real-life. It was right over Amy's room. That really freaked me out. I turned to run, to get out of the house and find you guys, but when I turned to the stairs, the gray man was there, blocking me. He started to walk towards me, sobbing the whole time. I felt it rattling my bones. I tried to yell for help, but nothing came out. He reached his arm out for me, and I woke up in the living room. I fell asleep in bed with your mom, I must have sleepwalked. When I went back upstairs, I told your mother about it and we decided it was time to go somewhere else. "I just didn't feel comfortable, like I said. I didn't want to be afraid of things going 'bump' in the night in my own house." I nodded, my heart in my throat. I'd never seen any object in any of my dreams. Why a carriage? Why was it over Amy's room? Why was it in the attic at all, when- "House never did have an attic," dad said. "No, it didn't," I agreed. "I think I'm going to go to bed, dad." "Sure thing. Sleep well." So that's my story. You guys are free to ask any questions, but I can't promise I have any answers for you. I haven't had any other weird experiences like that in my life, and I haven't had any other dreams about it since then.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2013 03:22 |
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That's scary as poo poo, dude. Thank you for sharing your story. Your bit about the "Place Without Things" made me recall a dream I once had when I was a senior in high school. In my dream, I was walking through this vast, abandoned building. Floor after floor of vacant apartments, each with the door missing so I could see in. There was trash and burn marks everywhere, and I got the feeling that the reason why the building had been abandoned was because of a huge fire. As I wandered the building, I turned down a long hallway and saw an untouched, pristine heavy oak door all the way at the end. When I reached it, I turned the handle and pushed it open. Inside was an immaculate room, unmarred by whatever trauma had destroyed the rest of the building. There was furniture neatly arranged atop a clean, black and white checkerboard floor. That's one detail that stuck with me- the checkerboard floor. My eyes panned to the center of the room. Sitting on a sofa was a little man dressed in a pressed suit. When I say little, I don't mean like a midget- I mean that he was a normally proportioned human, albeit about 4.5 feet tall. As I stared at him, he stood up, opened his mouth to reveal disturbingly large white teeth in a way too wide smile, and he said in a monotone voice: I'm not what I look like. He then began to walk towards me, still smiling that too wide smile. I felt a wave of dread come over me and I couldn't move as he slowly walked toward me, smiling every step. I knew that he posed a mortal threat to me, but I couldn't act. Couldn't move, couldn't scream, nothing. At this stage, I kind of had an inkling it was a dream, and thought I'd wake up when he reached me. When he reached me and grabbed my wrist, it was with the force of a fully grown, very strong man. I didn't wake up, and then he stared at my thigh, opened his mouth and reared his head back. Dream logic instantly imparted that he meant to sink those huge pearly whites into my leg to sever my femoral artery and watch me bleed to death on that checkered floor. Suddenly, my body snapped back into "fight" mode, and I realized that this was going to be a fight to the death. I kept thinking "Dude, you're gonna wake up any second, it's cool, just get through it." I still hadn't woken up when we began grappling and fell hard to the floor. He was on top of me- impossibly strong and heavy for a man of his size- and all the while, he kept trying to grab my leg to bring it to his mouth. Finally, I got my hand free, clenched a fist, and drove it with all my strength right into his teeth. Now, in other dreams that I've had or had since that involved fighting, I don't think I ever really landed a blow, or when they did, they always felt weak or otherwise ineffective. This time though, I felt all of his teeth shatter as my fist connected. He reared his head back in pain for a moment, then brought it back down low. He smiled again, but his huge white teeth were gone. Now, they were jagged clumps and shards of enamel. He then opened his jaw and began to rake his destroyed teeth on top of each other. I somehow knew what he was trying to do: break them more and make them sharper. If you've ever had a badly broken tooth, then you know it's up there in terms of the worst pain you can feel. Drinking hurts, eating hurts, any kind of accidental contact with the nerve is pure white hot agony- even loving [iIbreathing[/i] hurts. When I was younger, I broke two off at the gum line (different occasions) and it left me severely dental phobic to this day. And this guy had a mouth full of dental trauma about 14x worse than what I experienced, and he was making it worse for one purpose only: to make it easier for him to kill me. What if this isn't a dream We continued fighting, with me hitting him and him keep trying to slice my artery open. Finally, I managed to overpower him and climb on top of him. I had to win this once and for all. I got my hands around his neck and squeezed. At this point, I was so caught up in staying alive that I couldn't even comprehend if I was dreaming or not. All I knew was that I was killing a man, and for non-violent me, that was pretty loving hard to come to grips with even if he was trying to kill me. I shut my eyes, squeezed harder, and eventually felt his thrashing stop and his body sag. I'd done it. I'd won. And then I opened my eyes. I wasn't in that horrid room in that burnt out building. I was back in my bedroom. It was daylight. But there wasn't the body of a demonic little bastard under me. It was my dog, the one my family had gotten as a puppy when I was nine. The one I'd walked, played and wrestled with and had all kinds of idyllic boyhood adventures with. My hands were around his throat, and he wasn't moving. I'm not what I look like. I had killed my dog. For a few horrifying and disorienting seconds, I thought about what I'd done and the consequences that would come. The sheer terror was nothing short of crushing. And then, I awoke in a dark bedroom, safe and sound in my bed, with nothing out of place, no signs of a struggle, and most importantly, no dead beloved dog at my hands. I bolted up right, ran out of my room and nearly tripped over my very much alive and perturbed dog who had been sleeping only seconds before, ran into the bathroom, and vomited. I then went back to my dog, hugged him for a small eternity, and got back into my bed. I don't recall if I slept again that night. I definitely felt jumpy the next day, but otherwise, everything was fine and I felt 100% within a few days. I've had some pretty vivid and hosed up dreams at very infrequent intervals since, but nothing ever came close to that, save for the time I had my one episode of sleep paralysis in conjunction with an opiate nightmare while I was recuperating from an orthopedic surgery some years later. My dog went on to live the rest of his long life well loved and happy. But, goddamn. I've told that story more than a few times in person, but writing this all out has made my hands shake from thinking about it for so long. Not at all paranormal, but the previous story just instantly made this all come rushing back.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2013 05:16 |
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Farchanter posted:The Place Without Things This is terrifying and definitely deserves to go along side the wireman and others as like the quintessential goon ghost stories.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2013 20:51 |
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Fish Of Doom posted:This is terrifying and definitely deserves to go along side the wireman and others as like the quintessential goon ghost stories. I agree with Fish of Doom. The image in my mind of finding your sister surrounded by burnt matches sends chills down my spine!
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| # ? Apr 25, 2013 16:02 |
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Has a new season thread been started yet? I absolutely love these slices of creepy
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| # ? May 7, 2013 15:37 |
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That was an awesome story Farchanter, thank you
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| # ? May 7, 2013 17:00 |
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Mister Bung posted:Has a new season thread been started yet? I absolutely love these slices of creepy I hope we see a new one, too, to incense the spirits as it were.
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| # ? May 7, 2013 17:08 |
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Maybe it would be easier to ask a mod just to change the title of this one to "GBS Ghost Story Thread" or something similar. Everything's in here already and it would save linking/searching around etc.
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| # ? May 7, 2013 18:06 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 20:42 |
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Coulrophobia posted:The Thing in the Pathway I haven't posted in a while despite leaving a whole list of stories I needed to work through so I'll give you this one, courtesy of my roommate. Despite currently living at the other end of the country, my roommate and I grew up in a small mountain town together. Secluded, relaxed, full of animals, that kind of fairytale town you don't acknowledge as real beyond the scope of tourism ads. It was also very, very strange. Like, "unmarked helicopters at night and lots of ghost stories" strange. More than a few of my own are from there and keep in mind this was in no way a superstitious or even moderately religious town. But it was strange. My now-roommate went walking with her mom and brother one night. It was along a trail we'd walked many times before, close to our homes, safe at the right time of year. They were making their way down it when they suddenly froze, unsure as to why until they finally saw it. Rather, it was more of what they saw around it, because the figure was so dark that its species nor vaguest form could be determined. All that they knew was that it was huge, dark, and they shouldn't have been anywhere near it. No reflective eyes, no repugnant bear smell, no identifiable calls. And we'd encountered animals in places we shouldn't have before...but the feeling she described was not the fear of stumbling onto a rutting elk or a bear (a feeling summed up quite well as a point-blank "oh poo poo"), but a hair-raising cold dread. It growled. They veered off the path, ran through a patch of woods and out into the street, to where they made it home safely. There were no animal sightings in the area the next day, the day before, or several days after. But I still wonder what else lived out in those woods.
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| # ? May 10, 2013 00:30 |
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