The 2014 Ghost Story Thread

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Missing Name: Jan 5, 2013

2015 thread here :siren:

Wait, what was that? What was that out of the corner of my eye? There's nothing there, huh. Must be my imagination.

:iiam:

Spooky poo poo happens in this world, nothing that can be really explained. Knock knock, something's in the attic! Ding dong, your doorbell is going off for no reason! Holy poo poo, why is that shadow moving on its own? God drat, it's getting chilly in here.

Some goons have stories to tell about odd things that happened to them. This is the place to tell them. Got something that happened to you? Found an awesome creepypasta you want to share? Write some original ghosty tales? So go ahead and post away!

_{And now the small print. There is no need to mention if it's fiction for sure or not. Just don't be an rear end. Read the story, try not to judge. Even if you believe it or don't. No "oh man this poo poo didn't happen, you're full of poo poo." Just shut up about it. Leave it for D&D or something if you wanna debate the reality of the paranormal. And no "I had this really scary dream, lemme tell you" bullshit either.}

Ooga booga!

Useful links:
-The 2012 Ghost Story Thread, the dead ancestor of this one you're reading right now!
-Click here for Clickhere's story archive at Ghost Story or here for his favorites.
-Creepypasta.com, aka "Let's spook some poo poo up"
-Drimble Wedge was kind enough to linkdump some of the best stories around.
-not hot but spicy: HumperMonkey's compilations of great-stories. This is required reading, man. A real gobloon would have this PDF'd on their hard drive.
-Here's an old thread by a permabanned goon: Bizarre, unsolved mysteries.
-Anything Ghost Show. Now have your ghost tales read to you in a soothing podcast!

And now, for prime examples of stories.

a ghost posted:

The Wireman

Last night, I was derailed from seeing a movie by a pal of mine 'J,' who needed a ride to a barbeque, with an invite as barter. drat right I could see the movie another time!

We arrive at Lindsey's house, where her roommates were all running about, organizing the contents of 11 empty grocery bags; meat here, condiments there, booze here, etc…

I'd noted to Lindsey that I liked her new home, it's much bigger, roomier, and safer than her previous one, to which she looked a little puzzled.

"You… you must be referring to the house on 'Nashville St,' because you never saw…"

"…the other one," Lindsey's roommate Emily finished.

"So… you don't know the story of the place in between the place you knew us to live in and this one, right?" Lindsey asked.

I just stood there, curious of all of the wide-eyed, uneasy looks, making myself wordlessly obvious that I'd not a clue. They called in the third roommate, Brianne, followed by J.

They took turns adding in their 'two-cents,' confirming little details, adding others, to which they all agreed upon as the story progressed. Rather than make this a back-and-forth story of four people interjecting, I'll tell it to you third-person.

On Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Lindsey had parted with her previous roommate, and got together with two girls from school she didn't know so well, Brianne and Emily, and got a decent place. The place in question was rather roomy, in a good location, and, above all, a hell of a bargain. This house, like most in the neighborhood, is nearly one hundred years old.

When Emily and Lindsey arrived to move their belongings in, they saw a note on the door of the furthest room from the front door, there was a note by Brianne, saying that she'd already claimed it, which annoyed the other two girls.

A blessing in disguise.

Within the first week or two, Brianne and the girls were all in the house together, Lindsey and Emily supposedly asleep, and Brianne up all night, determined to finish the book she was reading. At somewhere between 2-4am, she reached the last page of her text, closing the book, and settling into bed to see if she was tired enough to sleep, just yet. Note that the book was NOT a mystery/horror book, and that she had an elated feeling about what she'd just read.

She was replacing the book back on the shelf, and general before-bed tidying up, when the light above her started flickering, then went out. Brianne then turned off all of the lamps around the room, leaving the one near her desk on.

She soon found out she couldn't sleep, so she sat up again, and turned on the television, putting in a cartoon DVD, in the hope it'd tire her out before the sun came up.

She heard a rapping on the wall, and stood, not knowing if it came from her door or her wall. Brianne lowered the volume on the TV, fearing it woke up a roommate, and approached the corner of the room where the noise was coming from. It wasn't the door, it wasn't the wall, it was coming from the closet.

What Brianne didn't know at the time was that her deep closet shared a wall with Emily's equally deep closet, not Emily's wall.

Brianne assumed it was Emily who was knocking, and crept back to bed, in silence. Again, the rapping coursed through the room, so Brianne got up, exited the room, only to find Emily fast asleep in her own room, her body splayed nowhere near the wall in question. She checked on Lindsey, who was also fully asunder, her room too far for her to have knocked on the wall, to do so loud enough to gain Brianne's attention would have woken up the whole house!

Confused, and a little weirded-out, Brianne returned to her room, closed the door, and turned off the TV and remaining lamps, and reached for the desk lamp, which turned off before she could hit the switch. She retreated her hand in surprise, and the light flickered on; she then reached forward again, and she successfully managed to turn it off, the desk lamp having given up on a life of its own.

Suddenly, light flooded the room, the overhead light blasted into life; perhaps it wasn't the bulb that broke, but simply a loose socket?

Brianne, in the few seconds it took for her to turn around, and head towards the light switch, became uneasy. Sure, it was scary, and the visual impact of the overhead light flickering like crazy was intimidating enough, but it wasn't without the realm of reason that this old house had loose bulbs, sockets, even wiring, to which she'd have a chat with the landlord about investigating before a inner-wall fire could occur.

Brianne consoled herself with such thoughts, as she approached the light switch in the strobed room, to finally turn it off, and put an end to this ordeal for the night. However, she began to believe the strobing effect of the light flickering on and off maniacally was making her see things… or not, for once she got to the light switch…

The light switch was been frantically flipping up and down on its own.

She jumped back in panic, as the strobing continued for a full few seconds, then suddenly stopped. Following a few moments later, in the darkness, was the knocking making a re-appearance, but much, much louder than before.

Brianne grabbed what she could, and got the gently caress out of there around 5am, not only not looking back, but too scared to even inform the other girls of what went on.

It took a long time for Brianne to be coaxed back into the house, since no strange events had occurred since, yet Brianne wasn't going anywhere NEAR that room, so, she slept elsewhere in the house. It was suggested that Brianne sleep on the second floor, since the weather was good, and the only reason it wasn't used was that the landlord had yet to repair the AC/Heating units up there. Brianne refused. As tall-tale hauntings go, Brianne reasoned, she was going to stay away from an attic as far as possible, despite the fact that all of the happenings occurred in the back bedroom that she once claimed.

Weeks passed, and Emily had some visitors come over on one occasion, and Lindsey had some of her own on another; neither group of visitors slept more than one night in that house, citing that they had 'strange dreams' that they refused to discuss, and they had an unnatural apprehension from going down the hall past Emily's room.

Lindsey decided to investigate a bit, and entered Brianne's room during the day, finding nothing out of order. However, upon inspecting the closet where Brianne heard pounding noises, she discovered that not only did the back of the closet share a wall with the back of Emily's closet, there was a sizable hole cut out of it, enough for a child to pass back and forth. Upon even closer inspection, the wall was shared, yes, but was hollowed, there was three feet or more difference between the two panels in the back of the two closets. Lindsey shined a light on the little space, and found a large spool of 'industrial' wire. She turned the light upward, toward the ceiling, and discovered this little 'hollow' went straight through the second floor, and into the attic, she could see a large beam stretching across, far above.

Lindsey kept this discovery to herself for a few days.

A night or two later, Emily was looking rather haggard, and explained that it was due to lack of sleep, since recurring nightmares kept jolting her out of slumber. The other two girls pressed on the contents of the dreams, the reslut of which much to their shock.

All three girls (and one overnight guest) had the same dream, as did the two previous guests, when contacted and insisted upon the details:

A very old, bald man was suspended above them, from wires somehow attached to his back, reaching up into the blackness; his arms were slung down, locked at the elbow, as to reach as far down as he possibly could; his arms began as skin, muscle, and sinew, but gradually terminated into a cluster of wires. The Wireman dangled above the dreamer, waving/scissoring his arms back and forth at locked length, as if trying to wipe past the faces of the startled dreamer. Finally, the man would buckle, as if a few inches of slack was granted from above, and the Wireman would immediately and eagerly grasp the sleeper's throats with its wire-hands, and choke them vigrously. They could hear him smiling. The dreamer would suffer and die in the dreams, before awaking.

The vast majority of these factors were shared with the dreamers, without deviance.

The profusely apologetic Landlord didn't question the girls' fright (obviously there's something he knew they didn't,) and offered to send in an exorcist. Apparently, Exorcists are few and far between, so the girls popped down to some of the (very few) reputable psychics that were marvelously expensive; she got three to come on half-pay, half-favor. Remember, this is New Orleans, even I know of 1000 'Psychics,' but I only believe 3 or 4 of them.

It should be noted that Lindsey was smart about this, she didn't mention anything about the room, dreams, or actual location of the house, and should the psychics wish to investigate before they come to the site. Lindsey convinced them to accept the job with as very little info as possible, and all of the girls were there when the Psychics showed up, offering them nothing, but listening to everything.

The Psychics entered the house and all of its rooms, feeling nothing, until they got to the last room of the hall, where all three of them looked at each other in discomfort. One began crying. They backed out of the room. Lindsey took them into Emily's room, and showed them the 'little room' between the closets (obviously from the 'safe' side,) and directed their attention upward. Soon after, the band of explorers would find themselves in the dreaded attic, and had found the crossbeam in question.

It had a deeply-etched groove of wear from a once-taut wire, and was indeed centered directly above that little hole.

The Psychics soon joined the girls in the living room, and discussed what they felt.

Apparently, a long time ago, a woman had run off from her husband, and little boy. The husband refused to let the child go outside, thinking that he'd run off, and the only way the mother would return was if the child was there, she'd surely not come back if it were just the father.

One day, tired of the wait, the father locked his son in his bedroom, and hung himself (with wire, we're not 100% certain, in the little room? Not 100% certain) until, of course, he died, assuming that the mother would soon come for the son. She didn't. The little boy died of dehydration in his room.

While this didn't explain a good half of what went on, the Psychic went on to say…

"Well, there was some sort of torture… perhaps self-torture, but I don't know if the preceded the man and his boy, or if it involved the man and his boy… we threw down many tarot cards, and, despite the meaning of 'The Hanged Man' that we all accept, it came up every drat hand… we use 108 cards, it came up EVERY three cards after a thorough re-shuffle. I think it's demanding a new meaning, perhaps an obvious one? We don't know, we don't normally do this, but certain impressions are undeniable."

The Landlord offered a second property, bigger, better, and cheaper, to which the girls took, and presently live.

The girls, when they think of it, did a little investigating, and here's what they came up with:

Neighbors had seen six sets of tennants come and go in the last two years alone.

Their pal, Brian, who had several nervous breakdowns (including crying in class, and walking around bug-eyed,) in the year previous turned out having lived in that very house, in that very room for six months. Brian was mortified when the girls admitted they stayed there. He even recalled the 'Wireman' dream with eerie clarity and description. Apparently his state has improved in the time he's been out of that house.

The house is currently unoccupied.

a ghost posted:

The Rake

During the summer of 2003, events in the northeastern United States involving a strange, human-like creature sparked brief local media interest before an apparent blackout was enacted. Little or no information was left intact, as most online and written accounts of the creature were mysteriously destroyed.

Primarily focused in rural New York state, self proclaimed witnesses told stories of their encounters with a creature of unknown origin. Emotions ranged from extremely traumatic levels of fright and discomfort, to an almost childlike sense of playfulness and curiosity. While their published versions are no longer on record, the memories remained powerful. Several of the involved parties began looking for answers that year.

In early 2006, the collaboration had accumulated nearly two dozen documents dating between the 12th century and present day, spanning 4 continents. In almost all cases, the stories were identical. I�ve been in contact with a member of this group and was able to get some excerpts from their upcoming book.

The Rake

A Suicide Note: 1964

As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence. And once I awoke and saw his form. Once again I awoke and heard his voice, and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear of what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye.

Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope.

Dearest Linnie,
I have prayed for you. He spoke your name.

A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880

I have experience the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. His voice (unintelligible text).

A Mariner�s Log: 1691

He came to me in my sleep. From the foot of my bed I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the Rake.

From a Witness: 2006

Three years ago, I had just returned from a trip from Niagara Falls with my family for the 4th of July. We were all very exhausted after a long day of driving, so my husband and I put the kids right to bed and called it a night.

At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I apologized and told him I though he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. It�s body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him.

My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before returning to the creature.

In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband�s face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds (or probably closer to 5, it just seemed like a while) just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids� rooms.

I screamed and ran for the light switch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara.

The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said �he is the Rake�.

My husband drove his car into a lake that night, while rushing our daughter to the hospital. He did not survive.

Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published and the local television news never followed up either.

For several months, my son Justin and I stayed in a hotel near my parent�s house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake.

It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history or follow up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first 3 pages, and never mentioned it again. A ship�s log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the Rake. That was the last entry in the log.

There were, however, many instances where the creature�s visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led us to wonder if the Rake had visited any of us before our last encounter.

I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night, every night, for two weeks. I would tediously scan through the sounds of me rolling around in my bed each day when I woke up. By the end of the second week, I was quite used to the occasional sound of sleep while blurring through the recording at 8 times the normal speed. (This still took almost an hour every day)

On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake. I can�t listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven�t let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I�ve heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don�t remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment.

The thoughts that must have gone through my daughter�s head make me very upset.

I have not seen the Rake since he ruined my life, but I know that he has been in my room while I slept. I know and fear that one night I�ll wake up to see him staring at me.

If someone can compile the direct links to all of Onic's fantastic corn crib adventures before me, pm or post 'em and I'll stick them here. Or any classics, for that matter.

AKA "byezimyannij" or some variant of that.

Missing Name has a new favorite as of 20:24 on Jan 29, 2015

# ? Feb 5, 2014 02:33

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 22:13

CatStacking: Jan 9, 2010; ~A Purely Preposterous Pussy~

Bookmarked and hopefully in the near future I'll have a few little bits up from my experiences at working in a supposedly haunted, nearly abandoned mall.

So spooky.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 02:57

cowboythreespeech: Dec 28, 2008

nice. you are a super guy. glad you linked not hot but spicy. i don't really read the humper monkey/50 foot ant things (short of the original one, that one's good.) but the misc./best-of section there is brilliant and super creepy.

my favourite from last thread was "they don't talk about it. no one does". http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3472214&userid=86971
it ended in a cliffhanger. i pm'd the guy who posted it a few months ago and asked if he'd finish it ever. he said he'd been really busy with school/coaching (i think?) but he would finish it one day. here's hoping!

edit: a couple from the nhbs compilation that i really like. yeah, they're all on the site already, but this is easier than skimming through the huge log!

this first one is one of my absolute favourite scary story ever. a++++++ highly recommended!!!!!

canis latran posted:

Wife Doppleganger
Let me see if I cant dig up something interesting. These threads combined with a bit of Humper Monkey really drew me to this site to begin with so I might as well contribute right?

Weird poo poo happens to me frequently enough as to seem pretty mundane and boring, only very rarely does something happen that really gets me, and the most recent something of that caliber happened just a few months ago.

Little bit of background for ya, my wife Ash and I have been married for four or five years and live in a little two story town house. Pretty normal place, living room downstairs with the kitchen and two bedrooms upstairs. We have recently got rid of a troublesome roommate so having the place all to ourselves has been really nice. She works at a bakery while I'm prepping for school and things are goin' pretty drat fine for us.

The day it happened was completely routine. She gets up and goes to work, I putter about doing bored guy stuff. She comes home, I make dinner, see to it I make her laugh (My sworn duty as a husband) and talk about the regular bullshit married people talk about. We go to bed and as I'm dozing off she plays her gameboy until she zonks.

I pop awake at like three in the morning for some reason. It was one of those nice fresh "Bam your awake now motherfucker!" awakenings with zero sleep fallout, I love those. I had to take a leak and figured that what woke me up. Go to the upstairs bathroom and do my thing, and figure since I'm awake I might as well brew some coffee or get some breakfast ready for Ash. So I head downstairs, and immediatly notice a few things that are off.

The living room is lit and the TV is on to some ridiculous infomercial, might have been the "Is Colon Cleansing Hype?" one. I think it was because I distinctly remember the guy talking being so strange looking, fake tan and I swear he was wearing make up. I digress, but that guy really is weird looking. Anyways, TV is on and I notice Ash sitting on the sofa across from it. I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look at her. She's sitting upright, hands on her lap, just watching the commercial. "Hey, I didn't know you were up, good morning." I sez. She's still watching the commercial, has her everpresent smile on and says back, "Yes." I start to head to the kitchen when she turns her eyes to me without moving her head and asks, "Would you please hand me the remote?" I stop, turn and look at the coffee table thats between her and the couch, and the remote is sitting right there. "Dude, its right there." I say pointing, its seriously within reaching distance of where she is sitting. She's looking right at me, still not moving her head and she has some of the clearest blue eyes of anyone I've ever met. "Yes" she sez.

I didn't think any more of it really, yeah she could have obviously reached out and took the remote off the table, but maybe she was meditating or practicing ninja stillness skills or whatever. We are irregular people on occasion.

So I walk over to pick up the remote and hand it to her and about three steps in I get this feeling. I'm almost within arms reach of both her and the remote and every hair on my body just goes apeshit. Goosebumps from my cheeks down my back. My heart rate goes from calm and normal to "Sonic the Hedghog is Drowning Music" without any warning. It hit me so hard I felt faint. My fingertips are quivering, if I hadn't taken a piss moments before I would have right then. Some of you have described this feeling better than I can, and you'll know it well enough. My body is saying, NO. It's like a biological prey reaction, its how I imagine deer feel right before they bolt. I'm not exactly paralyzed but near enough to it. She still hasn't moved, just watching me with those calm, clear and safe eyes.

The guy on the TV is still talking about how science proves flushing your rear end with water makes you a happier person, gets rid of the toxins.

I'm getting tunnel vision, and little sparkles at the edge of my vision, the kind you get when you stand at attention with your knees locked like a recruit. I'm going to pass out, I am completely familiar with this progression of sensations. The twinkling, the sparkly chills and then bonk. I manage to break eye contact with her and stare at the remote and back away slowly. It's weird how I keep bringing up the anal hygienist on the commercial, but his weirdly androgynous voice was I think actually giving me something to focus on other than what was happening, as absurd as it may sound.

I manage to back up to the stairs and put a foot on the first step, the oh poo poo feeling is still there, but the twinklings are gone so I don't feel like I'm going to pass out anymore, but I feel...argh, like if I take my eyes off that remote I am hosed. The second I look away, when she isn't in my peripherial vision anymore its done. I can't blink, I don't dare shut my eyes, and even though I'm breathing steadily enough my heart is just going nucking futz. I can hear it, I'm loving positive so can she.

Felt like I was on that first step for hours. Couldn't have been too long in hindsight, but right then it was forever. Finally though, I took a dose of gently caress it and as calmly as I could turned and went up the stairs. I turned my eyes away and focused up at the top of the steps. I refused to look to my sides, I refused to look into the living room. I head up the stairs, and I can just feel slow movement behind me. I know if I book it I'm hosed, like that would be uncorking the bottle of very bad poo poo under pressure thats behind me, so I don't, but oh lord do I want to.

I make it to the top of the stairs and turn to go into my bedroom, I notice the lights are off downstairs, so is the tv. I can feel her at the foot of the stairs looking up at me but oh man I do not have the balls to look back. I step into my room, shut the door behind me and make my way back to my bed in the dark. I'm feeling around, my heart is still fit to burst. I feel a sleeping cat, Sam my erstwhile buddy and the only cat I havn't ever wanted to strangle despite him being a complete rear end in a top hat at all times. I feel around Sam, find the edges of the blankets and then I feel my wife's foot. She's warm and sleeping like a pile of rocks. She isn't making any noise but I can feel her rythmic breathing. I slip into bed, shut my eyes and throw the blankets over my head like a loving six year old.

I still don't know if I actually managed to go to sleep after that, I think I just stayed up until she woke up to the alarm at six in the morning. I do know that at sometime around noon that next day I passed out so hard, it was like I hadn't slept in days

unknown author posted:

Muppets

Long ago when I was about four or five, I stayed over at my grandparents' house for the night. My Mom stayed over with me, because Dad was out of town on business.

Granny and Granddad quite enjoyed their television programs, and had a set in each of the two bedrooms in the house, as well as in the living room. I was still stupid enough to believe TV's flickering, mind-sucking images were pretty neat, so I was in heaven.

Night came on softly, as it only can when you feel safety and warmth around you. With one of Granny's home-cooked meals in my stomach, I had begun to feel the need for slumber. So, we all piled in the monstrous king-sized bed in Granny and Granddad's mas ter bedroom, and soon we were all snoring blissfully.

I woke up in the night and sat upright, looking around. Something had disturbed my slumber. Granddad was still snoring rhythmically, and Granny looked like she hadn't budged an inch, so I sat back and prepared to visit the realm of dream once more.

Then the television turned itself on.

Now, I'm only 22 years old, but this was in the days when remote controls were the providence of the wealthy and debased. Granny and Grandad did not fit into any of those two categories.

To see a television turn itself on was an interesting thing. I sat up again to see what would come on.

At that time, the TV in my grandparents' bedroom was a black and white. I watched the white dot that had formed in the middle expand to full screen, but only the static of a dead channel appeared.

Then, images began to appear.

I couldn't really describe them. They were sort of shadowy things at first, but they seemed to be - for lack of a better term - "scoping me out." Slowly, an actual image began to appear.

Muppets! The Muppets were on! I was exalted, elated. I wanted to wake my grandparents up, but I then started to feel a bit uncomfortable about what was happening on the television.

Muppets did not usually have fangs as I recall. At least, not ones that looked so … real and out of place in an otherwise standard Muppet-style mouth.

I realize this is sounding goofy. You were warned.

Well, uncertain about what to do, I decided to keep a close watch on the television.

The "Muppets" looked at me. It was common of course on Sesame Street and the Muppet Show for them to acknowledge the audience, so I wasn't alarmed so much by that.

I describe these things as Muppets because that's primarily what they looked like. Other than the rows and rows of unusual teeth, one looked vaguely Groveresque and the other sort of reminded me of Harry the Monster (don't know if he's even ON Sesame Street anymore).

The Groveresque Muppet leaned over and pointed at me, while whispering something to his companion. They looked at me in unison, whispering all the while in a strange, unusually guttural tongue. It sounded completely random, although it did somehow seem to follow the meter and pattern of a language.

I noticed when the Groveresque Muppet pointed, he had very long, distinct talons on his furry hands. This, too, was quite disturbing.

The Muppets began to dance, sing and cavort about in that strange language of theirs. It was sort of amusing, I recall. I began to feel a bit more at ease.

The Muppets motioned for me to come forward.

I shook my head.

The Muppets tried again.

I shook my head. I was beginning to feel frightened. If there ever was a way Muppets could look pissed, these guys were doing it. With all those rows of fangs, it wasn't pretty.

I should mention that all of this singing, dancing, cavorting horror that was going on seemed to in no way disturb my grandparents. This disturbed me as well, because these guys were LOUD.

I got out of bed and crept into the living room, being careful to avoid approaching the screen. The Muppet-things wore visages of absolute anger now, motioning violently for me to approach the screen. My attempts rouse my grandmother and grandfather were in vain; they would not stir.

I ran into the living room, crying. I collapsed in my Granddad's chair, buried my face into the fabric, and began to weep, certain doom had come for me.

I looked over at the television in the corner of the living room. It had already begun to turn itself on, the shadow-forms that had dissolved into the Henson-styled horrors already beginning to flicker across its surface.

I screamed, rooted to the spot. But as the scream left my lungs and two grinning, fanged faces burst into being on the television screen, faintly and then with increasing tempo I heard footsteps.

The things in the television looked worried, swirled into their shadow-forms and were gone.

The television winked out just as my Mother ran into the room.

After consoling me, we went to check on Granny and Granddad. They were both awake, and had heard me scream.

We all sat up for a while talking, and eventually the warmth and love returned to fill the chill in my soul. I went to bed and nothing more happened that night. Or any other night I stayed with my grandparents.

A waking dream? Probably so. But one that still fills me with terror.

I was awake of course, Mom will still assert, when I was in the chair. So, I did move somehow from the bed to the chair. Still, it gives one pause. What better way to snare a young boy than to show him something he loves, then pull him in unawares?

Whatever those two things were, I'm sure the Muppet-forms were not their natural shape. I'm sure the fangs and talons were part of it, though. If they're still out there, I hope they haven't had much time to practice those forms. If they could get them just right …

I still wonder what would have happened - dream or not - if I had put my then-small hands up to the screen there in my grandparents' bedroom. Perhaps nothing.

And then again, perhaps it's better not to know.

Causality Jane posted:

It's not the darkness in my room that frightens me. The unidentified sound floating up from somewhere deep in my house doesn't set my poor heart panicking. I'm not terrified as I try not to notice my barely open closet door. It's the potential that gets me. It's what could be there. The more you think about it, the more likely every possibility becomes as the shadows thicken and every stray noise or movement forces you deeper into your fear. The scariest part, to me at least, is that you'll never know what is or isn't there until you go have a look for yourself. Unless it comes looking for you, of course. The rumors about my good friend Liz's house took their dear sweet time reaching me. They were just whispers of things, ominous hints, and I brushed them aside fairly easily. Liz and I were close, so close that people even mistook us for sisters, and were there any dark secrets about her house, I would have known. Like me, she was a storyteller, and storytellers just don't hide that kind of thing.

That is, unless it's serious.

As luck would have it, I ended up spending an afternoon at Liz's house to work on some project for Biology class. I had only been over to her place once or twice before, which even at the time I considered strange for best friends like us, but to a kid like me who had spent a good part of her life in apartments and military housing, the place was a dream. At just under 50 years old with 2 stories, 4 bedrooms, a massive basement area, and an equally huge backyard, the house was phenomenally beautiful. Sure it was a little too dark, but the weather was appropriately stormy, and that'll make any place more than a little spooky. Liz's sixteenth birthday was a few weeks away, and we got onto the topic of what the party would be like. She and I had a reputation of being little party animals, and therefore we had to make this party as awesome as possible. I suggested using her massive basement, what with its pinball tables, TV, and stereo system.

"No parties in the house."

Ah yes, the parents. They could be pretty troublesome for us wild teens, but I told her not to worry. If we could conjure up a few promises of no drinking, no smooching, and the like, we would get our party. Heck, I was already figuring out what food to bring. "It's not my parents." And that was how I got her talking.

Tick-Tock
Four years ago, Liz and her family had moved from their smaller, older house across town to the current one. At first no one sensed anything out of the ordinary. There were no creepy feelings, no moving shadows down the hallways, no nothing. Strangely, it was Liz's baby brother, Sam, who picked up on whatever was in the house long before anyone else did.

Liz and her parents started noticing that as soon as they left Sam in his playroom he would start talking to someone. Sam had made a friend. His friend's name was Tick-Tock. Why Tick-Tock was never really clear, but apparently he was a little shy. It took a few weeks for Tick-Tock to feel comfortable "talking" to Sam in other rooms of the house with other people present. They chocked it up to Sam playing with his first imaginary friend.

One afternoon, Liz was studying in their living room while Sam played with some of his toys. He was chattering away to no one in particular, and Liz wasn't paying much attention to him. It was when he suddenly went silent that she looked up. Sam was standing in front of her, transfixed by something on the wall behind her. As she watched, his eyes followed the thing as it moved up the wall and along the ceiling. Of course, when she looked there was nothing there, but he was so still and so amazed by whatever the hell it was that she felt shivers scurry down her spine.

"Sammy, what're you looking at?"

"Tick-Tock."

Indeed. From that point on Tick-Tock was no longer a friend. Sam couldn't be left alone for five minutes without him screaming bloody murder. He stopped sleeping through the night, and her parents had to move him back into their room for a bit. His toys would turn on and off by themselves or go missing and turn up in the weirdest places. Sam and their cat, Jabberwocky, continued to watch things move along the walls, sometimes in unison.

Ok, so that was creepy, I'd admit to that, but it could also be explained. Sam was a little kid, and who knew what made them do the things they do? Some of the toys were hand-me-downs and could have been screwing up like old toys tend to after awhile. Jabberwocky might have been watching dust or whatever it is that fascinates cats. "I guess so, but Jaber had other things to worry about."

Jabberwocky and the Bandersnatch
"Bandersnatch" was the name affectionately given to the critter that lurked around the little shed in their backyard. Tools would go missing, wood piles would be scattered every which way, friends and family alike would see a small shadow curled beneath the old elm tree or darting around a corner. Liz spoke of the Bandersnatch like a pesky family pet rather than a possibly undead being, and it never sent out threatening vibes to any of her family members, with the exception of poor Jabber. Jabberwocky hated the Bandersnatch and the Bandersnatch hated Jabberwocky. They loved to torture each other. Liz's father was forever rushing out to break up extremely vocal catfights only to find Jabber hissing and spitting into the darkness. Jabber's new pastime was chasing some unseen thing around the shed, darting this way and that before retreating to the safety of the porch. If Jabber ever chased anything with flesh and blood, it had some kind of camouflage, because no one ever laid eyes on it.

The only time the Bandersnatch ever really frightened Liz's family was after Jabber ended up on the receiving end of a minivan and had to spend some time at the vet for surgery. Right around sunset, a long howl/growl/moan could be heard coming from the shed. Now, I forgot to mention something: Liz's father always kept the shed locked, just in case, I don't know, tool-snatching aliens invaded. Nothing could have snuck into it because not ever Jabber could find any suitable holes. In addition to that little fact, there was also the issue of the howl going on for a good 3-4 minutes straight and sounding, if anything, like a large wildcat or possibly a crazy person. The pitch and volume varied, shifting erratically unlike the call of a frog or most animals in distress. This was just low and angry and feral. After it finished, Liz's father, armed with his hunting rifle, ventured out to unlock the shed and found it absolutely empty. To this day, they claim that the Bandersnatch was calling for Jabberwocky, angry that he wouldn't come out and play.

So these stories were nice and all, but I still failed to see what the big deal was. So her brother freaked out, so something had made a nest in the shed, so what? I demanded a real reason as to why the party of the century could not be held in the perfect spot! I pressed her for more information on the house, and reluctantly, she continued. I would get my answer alright. This was only the beginning.

The rain had stopped by this time, and I knew that if I was going to get more out of Liz, I'd have to get her out of the house. I proposed a stroll around the block to stretch our legs and give me a chance to view the shed. She happily agreed. For the record, I was expecting some sort of ancient wooden monster, but the shed was actually very well kept, padlocked, and sealed tight. No sightings of the Bandersnatch for me, unfortunately. As we strolled along, Liz became more emotional. It was as if she had been keeping all these stories bottled up inside of her for the longest time and now they were bursting out. Up next were the upstairs bathroom and the mirror.

Cue Theme from Psycho

The master bedroom had its own master bath, but the other two bedrooms upstairs had a bathroom situated between them. The bathroom was terrible. Liz always felt like she was being watched in the shower, handprints had a strange habit of appearing on the mirror for no reason ( "No, I will not show you."), and she and her mother had both been physically tripped while bathing her brother. Could they have slipped on the wet floor? No, apparently this was a hand shoving them face first into the tile. The lights also had a habit of turning off on their own during inopportune times, leaving whoever was unlucky enough to be in there in complete darkness. At one point Liz was home alone, lounging in her room. She distinctly heard the sounds of water running, complete with pipes clunking and such. After a bit, the water turned off, and someone or something started splashing and messing around in the bathtub. Liz slowly got up and stepped out into the hallway.

"Mom?"

If only. The only response was more splashing, still audible in the hall. The bathroom door was cracked open and the light was on. With a display of more guts than I could ever have mustered, Liz crept up, reached out, and pushed the door open with her finger tips. As the door swung up, Liz got ready to bolt at any moment. The bathtub was completely empty.

Mirror, Mirror
I don't mean to take any glory away from the famous TacoCriminal's blood mirror, but this bad boy could very well have duked it out for supremacy, were they ever given the chance. The monster hung in the hallway. It was old and had evidently been left by one of the former tenants (though no one would claim it). The drat thing actually had a few gauges in it (or if you used your imagination they could almost be scratch marks), but what would be powerful enough to beat that thing up like that is beyond the realm of my imagination. Still, mirrors have a habit of being spooky, right? No big deal.

"Have you ever actually looked at the glass?"

What? Well… No, now that I thought about it, I had never really looked into it. In fact, I found myself walking as far away from it as possible, my shoulder always brushing against the opposite wall. Apparently no one looked directly at the mirror, and it took them years to figure this out. When the bright idea of confronting the mirror ever popped into their heads, they suffered a full blown panic attack, hyperventilation and everything. Everyone in her family had nightmares about poo poo coming out of that thing, stuff I won't even go into because it'll give me nightmares. In fact, I'm blasting loud, up-beat, obnoxious music as I type this.

The thing was evil. I apologize for my vagueness, but that's the only word I can think of to describe it. No one had the courage to take it down, and for all I know, when Judgment Day rolls around, it'll still be hanging there. Really, who knows what slinks around on the other side of mirrors? Sure, it's just a little reflecting light, but tell that to all the stories and legends and whatnot. No, I never looked directly into that mirror, and you better believe I'm drat glad I didn't. I firmly believe I would have stared straight into hell.

If memory has blurred or will blur anything about these events, it won't be this. The memory of the two of us standing there with the house looming before us like some kind of sleeping giant is burned into my mind. It was as if the house were challenging us, and I was about to make a witty comment when I realized that Liz wasn't paying any attention to me. She looked smaller, you know? Sort of sunk into herself. She was staring up at the highest window of her house, the one that reminded me of an angry, black eye.

"It's the worst part. I don't know why, but it is."

The Attic
I guess you'll have to take my word for it, but Liz's family was a rational bunch of people. They decided early on that they were going to stay in the house, both out of stubbornness and lack of money. They had filed the ghostly activity into two groups: "Creepy but Generally Harmless" (Tick-Tock and the Bandersnatch) and "There's Nothing We Can Do about It So Why Worry" (the upstairs bathroom and the mirror). As time passed, they got used to it, as most people do in such situations, and even started to joke about the oddities of the house.

Then the attic started up.

It began with pacing. Liz especially would hear something shuffling around at night, the ambling, wandering footsteps of something big. It usually traveled along a set path, but occasionally it would stop just above her head. On these occasions, she swore she could almost hear mumbling, though that could have been all in her head. After about a week of these sounds, Liz and her father gathered up the courage to go up and investigate. Their family only used the area closest to the trap door for storage, so the rest of the attic was bare except for the few remains that the other tenants had shoved near the little window. Incidentally, this was also the area where the shuffling took place. The closer they got to the window the colder it got (strange when everything else was baking during a pretty vicious heatwave), and they became more and more uneasy.

Next to the window they found piles of old junk, the most notable of which were a heavy, locked trunk and an old rocking chair. They found absolutely no evidence of vermin, and the thick layer of dust hadn't been disturbed in the least. After one more quick look at their surroundings, they quickly escaped down the stairs and securely shut the trap door behind them. For the sake of brevity, I'll sum up the attic like this: It started with shuffling, then scratching on the trap door, then wailing, and finally someone on the other side of the door would call out people's names and whisper. Her mother was so upset about the whole thing that she called their church to ask for help. I'm not sure that their preacher really believed them as they weren't exactly regulars at the church, and all he could suggest was to put up crosses in the house and read a few verses from the Bible. The crosses slowed down the activity, but apparently they had a habit of disappearing after awhile. The spirits, whoever or whatever they were, were there to stay.

You know that voice in the back of your mind that says, "This is not a good idea"? Well, I don't have that voice. I live to put myself in situations like this, and when I was younger I was five times worse. I was going to live forever, right? Nothing could do me any serious harm!

Now, you know that one scene in horror movies, the one where you're in the audiences thinking, "Walk away! Just walk away right now!" Yeah, this was that scene. It took me awhile, but I finally got her to agree on a small sleepover to find proof that these ghosts existed. There was a story just begging to be told here, and I was going to grab it. I was stupid. Oh man was I stupid.

The Sleepover
So now we come to the part you've all be waiting for: the sleepover. It took place after Liz's party (movie and dinner party, totally not as cool) and included Liz, myself, Katie, and Jessica. We were like the generic name squad. Here's what our amateur ghost hunting team brought to the house:

1) Flashlights - You'll see what happens to those.

2) Tape recorder - Batteries died and we had no more AAA

3) Junk food - Consumed to give us strength against the spirits

4) Caffeine - Did more harm than good. Keep reading and you'll understand.

5) Ouija Board - Because the Parker Brothers are obviously the masters of the occult

Oh yeah, we were set. We chose Liz's room as our base camp, and spent a little time getting a tour of the place and playing in the basement. Liz's parents and brother were in the house as well, but they stayed out of our way, allowing us chill and do girly things. Obviously, they had no idea we were here solely for the ghosts. If they had, we never would have been allowed to have the sleepover. Now, you have to give me some credit. I said, "No frikin' way!" to the Ouija idea. I don't like those things, I never have, and even I could see that busting one out in that house was bad news. Still, my friends pointed out that we were there to find ghosts, and I was stupid if I didn't go all the way. Even Liz was calling me a chicken, so I finally gave up and joined in.

We sat on the basement floor between the entertainment area and the foosball table (see the map I drew up). We brought out the tape recorder and pushed play but promptly found out that the batteries were dead. We pointed fingers and blamed stupidity, but after reading incarna's thread, maybe it wasn't our fault. At any rate, we didn't have a spare set of AAAs, and asking Liz's parents would have been too risky. We decided to proceed without it.

There was plenty of giggling and horsing around. We had "Elvis" make a guest appearance, along with "Ur Mom." Nothing much came of it, but I can't help but feel like our insults and mockery stirred something up. We soon abandoned our divining for video games and Mountain Dew. The real fireworks weren't going to happen until much later that night.

* * * * *

"CJ, are you awake?"

No, go away.

"C'mon, I have to pee, and I don't want to go alone!"

I shot Katie a pretty evil look, but the truth was that I hadn't been sleeping too well (bad dreams), and I really didn't care about escorting her. I grabbed my trusty flashlight, as we crawled out of our sleeping bags and made our way as silently as possible into the hall.

I don't really know how to say this, but the house had changed. The shadows seemed unnaturally thick, and things were almost too silent, as if all sound were being muffled by some invisible barrier, I my pitiful flashlight just didn't seem to want to penetrate the shadows. Katie was so spooked that I had to argue against standing in the bathroom with her. In the end, she left the door cracked, and I stood on the side farthest away from the mirror and the trap door. Things were going fine until my flashlight died. I started to shiver as the temperature dropped, and that's when I heard it.

Footsteps, but not coming from the hallway. These were shuffling steps moving from directly over my head to the trap door. The shadows at that end of the hallway seemed to deepen, and I decided to keep my eyes locked on the space directly in front of me. Next came the scratching. When animals scratch, the sound is usually lighter and fast. This was heavy and slow, obviously the sound of nails on wood. It repeated a few times before I told Katie to hurry the hell up and get out.

"I'm coming! Will you chill out already?"

Easy for her it say. She wasn't the one out here with the demon in the attic. It was at this point that time seemed to slow down, and I heard the sound that still haunts my dreams from time to time.

"Psssst…"

Oh no. No, no, no, that was not coming from the attic.

"Pssst! Hey! Come here!"

This was a sick joke. It had to be. Ghosts did not talk to people, especially not me!

"Look, just open the door. C'mon, please, please, please…"

Fat chance, buddy. I started singing a song in my head, hoping to make the voice go away.

"I know you're there! OPENTHISDOORRIGHTNOWBEFOREICOMEDOWNTHEREANDTEARYOURFUCKINGHEADOFF!"

I don't know what the voice was. It could have been a joke, I guess, but it was a really, really sick one. I don't know if any of you have ever had the pleasure of being near someone who is truly unstable, but there is a certain twinge their voices get when they are really off their rockers. This voice had that feral twinge, and something like that is really hard to fake well. Hell, I was fooled.

I heard the blessed sound of the toilet flushing, and Katie came walking out of the bathroom. She saw my face and asked me what was wrong, and I told her to listen, that something was in the attic. We waiting a few seconds, but before she could call me a liar, we heard a muffled bumping noise. In all my paranoia, I was sure it was the attic door being pounded in. "That's not the attic. That's the mirror!"

She was right. From where we were, we could just barely make out the mirror bumping against the wall. To say that we ran out of there is the understatement of the century. We shot down those stairs so fast, I swear we were flying. We only had a few moments to stand in the foyer and wonder what to do next before we heard the growling and moaning coming from down the hall. The playroom. The sounds were coming from the playroom. Determined to face whatever was tormenting us, I made my way to the end of the hall with Katie close behind me. We clutched each other's hands and opened the door, preparing to come face to face with the yowling demons infesting our friend's home.

It was Jabberwocky, pacing in front of the door. I'm completely against the harming of animals, but I swear I wanted to kill that stupid cat. I told Katie that he probably wanted to be let out as I nearly dragged her into the room. I think I was a little too optimistic. Jabber's fur was standing on end, and his ears were flat against his head. He was pretty worked up, and I was deciding whether or not I should get any closer to him when the door shut behind us. I asked Katie why she shut it, and, of course, she hadn't. Jabber made himself as small as possible as he crouched against the door, his pupils nearly engulfing the rest of his eyes. Everything went completely still, and I think I actually held my breath.

Then things went batshit.

Every single toy in that playroom turned on by itself. Teddy Whatshisface, Tickle Me Elmo, the robot dude who does math, all of them were yammering away.The little TV used to play kiddie videos turned on full blast and started to (hell, I really don't know how to say it exactly) manual fast forward through whatever tape was in it (I think 101 Dalmatians). Katie and I did what any red-blooded American girl would do in a situation like this: We screamed bloody murder and sprang for the door. I swear I almost had a heart attack when it refused to open, but thankfully Katie had the sense to turn the lock and set us free. We sort of collapsed in the back yard and started bawling for no reason. We just sat their clutching each other as the dew soaked our PJs, trembling and sobbing. I like to imagine that even back then I was not that big a baby. It's always taken a lot to make me shed a tear, and even something like that was not going to send me into hysterics. I felt like I was suddenly overcome with anger and terror and immense sorrow.

Let me put it this way: The next time I would cry like that in front of my friend would be a few years later in Katie's hospital room after she lost the fight to viral meningitis. (Right after she was accepted in LSU on an athletic scholarship too. Life's a bitch, know what I mean?) Still, even in our pitiful state, we faired much better than the other members of our ghost hunting team.

Now, at that time I thought that our screams had just been incredibly loud. She was a swimmer and I had been taking voice lessons for about two years, so we had some lungs on us. This, however, was not the case. Our screams sounded loud to me because at that point Liz, Jess, and Sam all woke up screaming in unison. Jess was so upset that she bolted for the bathroom and vomited, and I'm not talking about a little dry-heaving either. Apparently this was the kind of soul-purging puking that makes you wonder when you last had that Chinese food. Also (and I can attest to this) she was covered in scratches.

Jabber was downstairs with us. The family had no other pets. If she inflicted those wounds on herself, what would make her do such a thing? Jess never told us. The most Liz's parents and later her own family could get out of her was something about a nightmare and not feeling very well. It was Liz, during on of our last conversations together, who finally told me. I can't explain it, but this part is always hard for me to tell, and what with that whole rule against drunk posting, the going is going to be rough from here on out. You'll have to forgive me if the writing goes to poo poo.

Liz had been through nightmares about the mirror before, but nothing like this. In her dream, she saw the mirror. She said it began to jump, much like it had before were made a run for it. Apparently a man had "spider-walked" out of the mirror. She said his arms and legs were bent at all the wrong angles, and he moved fast and jerky like in the movies when they mess with the film speed. He came into her room, got onto her bed, pinned her down, and started laughing like a maniac. As he laughed, he transformed into something that she refused to describe, but I suspect was pretty drat disturbing. Whatever it was, it had a mouth full of sharp teeth, and she woke up just before it could use them.

She was shaking as she told me this. She actually said, "I don't know what it did to Jess." As she wiped the tears from her eyes (and if I'm making this up, someone better refund me about a month's worth of sleepless nights) I thought I saw bruises on her wrists. It was at the point I decided, if you'll pardon my French, to never go back to that loving house ever again.

So that's the story. What happened to us afterward? Well, rumors say that Jess became an insomniac and started taking medication after her sleep deprivation pushed her to a nervous breakdown. I can neither confirm nor deny this as she never looked any of us in the face again. Katie and I stayed friends long after this happened, but I told you about her earlier. Like I said, Liz and I had a falling out after this, I think because she and her parents blamed me for what happened that night, with good reason, I guess. I honestly hope they moved out of that house because whatever was in there was not going to stop. As for me, I moved (for the last time) at the end of the summer.

After all this time, you'd think curiosity might get the better of me. You'd think while visiting friends and relatives in that area, I might go look up that house, drive by a few times, maybe even ring the doorbell and ask if the current family happens to possess a certain antique mirror. However, there are some things even the wildest internet cowgirl won't do. Sometimes, it's just better to let things rest in peace.

Jib-Bib-Jo posted:

Rotting Meat
The following events occured during a two week vacation stay at a rented house in Cape Cod. I was not particularly old; I believe I was 9 and my sister was 4. My mother, however, was in her 30s, so I can't chalk up her experiences to an overactive imagination.

For the first few days, things were fine. We learned the layout pretty quickly; there was a basement with a washer, dryer and a tv in a seperate room. On the main floor was the kitchen, a proper living room and bathroom. And on the second floor were the bedrooms - three in total.

One day it was particularly stormy, so there would be no trips to the beach or nature walks. My parents, really eager for as much private time as they could get, sent my sister down to the basement to watch what little tv we could recieve. My sister and I managed to get a decent version of PBS, which meant the static wasn't too bad at all (antennae only at this place). We continued to watch, I absentmindedly playing my Gameboy, my sister more enthralled by some show.

And then it all stopped. My gameboy shut off. The lightbulb popped. The tv did not go off; instead it showed nothing but static.

And then the smell.

From the other room, the one with the washer and dryer, there was a smell that is not even partially described by the word rank. Imagine a bag of rotting meat kept in the summer sun for days at end, and you can begin to imagine it. "Let's go, please" my sister whimpered. I took her hand and we walked back up.

My parents were not terribly pleased. They listened to our story, sighing as we spoke. Finally Mom smiled and said "Alright, if I go down and check, and it's all ok, will you go back down?" We agreed, knowing if anyone could make it all better, she could.

She disappeared into the black basement, flashlight in hand, replacement lightbulb box held in the other. We expected her to return quickly. She didn't. After ten minutes that stretched into eternity, she finally came back up. "Ok kids, you can can stay up here. In fact, I don't want you going down there again."

We didn't know what that meant, but accepted it gladly. Mom never went down in the room either; she insisted on doing laundry at laundromats in town. I would not ask her what happened for years.

Another night I was woken by a horrid scream from my sisters room. My Dad burst from his room and slammed her door open, picked her up and took her downstairs. It took over an hour to calm her down and a couple smores, but she finally agreed to tell us what was wrong.

She had seen the entire room soaked in blood. Top to bottom. Handprints in blood, streaks, dripping splatters. We wrote it off as a dream, but she refused to go back up for the rest of the night. Mom took a look in the room, and I caught her whisper to Dad: "That smell is there."

Finally, my encounter with whatever it was. My parents had taken my sister into town, planning on doing some shopping with her. I voiced my dismay and they said I could stay at the rented home if I wished. I whiled away some time watching Disney videos, and eventually started to read a book.

Eventually I had had enough reading. I put down the book - and my eyes shot open in surprise. Near the ceiling, slowly circling about as if it were some ethereal shark, cruised an orb, fire red and yet translucent. I didn't move as I watched it, hoping not to scare it away. Part of me was fascinated by it, as if it were as ordinary as a bird on the porch.

Then I heard the car door slam. My parents had arrived, and the orb, a trailing tail following, raced towards the wall, vanishing. "Hi Scott!" called Dad as he walked in, cooler in hand. "Anything good on TV?"

As for what happened to my Mom in the basement - when I finally did ask her years and years later, she suddenly became very still, and quietly spoke. She had intended to simply change the lightbulb downstairs, figuring the bulb had simply died and I had turned off my Gameboy in surprise and that one of us had nudged the antenna out of clear reception. So, she had taken out the old bulb and put a new one in. It didn't work. She tried a new one. It also didn't work. As she tried the remaining two bulbs, she began to smell something too, but this time it had an oily stench to it.

She figured that one of the machines in the washing room had broken, or perhaps a breaker went off or something. She put down the bulbs, and walked into the room. She shone her flashlight on the machines - nothing. Then she looked at the other end of the room - only to see it.

"It" was a short man, crouched over, a piece of maggot covered meat held in its hand. It looked at my Mom, smiled with sharp teeth and black eyes, and whispered "Hello, Laurie".

Then it sank into the floor.

Mom left in a god drat hurry after that.

cowboythreespeech has a new favorite as of 03:11 on Feb 5, 2014

# ? Feb 5, 2014 02:59

cowboythreespeech: Dec 28, 2008

awww, my first q!=e

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:11

Drunk & Ugly: Feb 10, 2003; GIMME GIMME GIMME, DON'T ASK WHAT FOR

Yo i'm here to give my support to this thread so nobody be a dick suck: just post real good ghost stories!!!

Last night I woke up yelling at a ghost in my dreams asking if it was evil or not and I woke up a friend we have visiting. Fortunately in reality nothing paranormal happens to me cause niggas be scared of me not vice versa like in dreams.

That said please post your real ghost stories and thanks for your understanding

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:23

Cucking Mama: Sep 27, 2013; Gold Medalist, 2014 shit post olympics

last year I saw the words 'you look like you seen a ghost' tagged on the side of a train and later that day a woman remarked that I looked 'ghostly ill' (not a common phrase where this happened). gave me the creeps and I came down with something.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:28

MarioTeachesWiping: Nov 1, 2006; by XyloJW

My favorite tv show is ghost adventures. couple brohemians walk into a dark empty room and start yelling "come at me bro!"

# ? Feb 5, 2014 03:56

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Missing Name posted:

If someone can compile the direct links to all of Onic's fantastic corn crib adventures before me, pm or post 'em and I'll stick them here. Or any classics, for that matter.

I've been following these threads for some time because they're so great.
In the Spring 2011 thread a kind poster shared a collection of links (originally compiled by Narmi) from all the ghost story threads dating back to 2004. I've found that infinitely valuable so I'll retype it here and update it a bit.

Onic's stuff was from 2007 I think.

Goldmined:

2005
Tales of a Ghost Hunter

2003
Ghost stories!
Scary Stories & hosed-up Dreams Combo-Thread

2002
Ghost Story Time Again!
You want a ghost story, I'll give you a ghost story.[LONG]

Archived:

2014
The 2014 Ghost Story Thread [This thread, for posterity]

2012
2012 Ghost Story Thread

2011
Spring/Summer Ghost Story Thread

2010
Winter Ghost Story Thread
Summer Ghost Story/Paranormal Thread!

2009
Ghost Story Thread - Spring Edition!
Summer Ghost Story Thread!
Winter Ghost Story/Weird Thread

2008
Creepiest, Inexplicable Things That Have Happened in You Life
Ghost Story Thread - Fall Edition
Ghost Story Thread - Summer Edition
Ghost caught on tape, sets off motion detector
Inaugural Rolling Paranormal/Cryptozoological Catch-All Thread
Ghost Story Thread - Winter Edition

2007
Ghost Story Thread - Fall 2007
Catchall Urban Legend/Weird History/Ghost Story/Legend Tripping Thread
Spring ghost story thread of 07
Summer 07 Ghost Story Thread
Think ghosts are scary? You haven't heard of skin-walkers then. [Super pro-click right here]
Isn't it about time for another ghost thread?

2006
Share your Ghost Stories
Share your ghost stories - The Holiday Special Edition
Summer '06 Ghost Story Thread
Springtime Ghost Story thread - Fresh Weather, Fresh Stories
Time for another ghost story thread...
I may have walked in on a ghost playing the piano...

2005
The Fall/Winter '05 Ghost Story Thread
The Christmas Ghost Story Thread 2005
Ooh, do have I a NEW Ghost story for you... +Bonus Material...

2004
The Ghost Story Thread of Summer '04
The Ghost Story Thread of Fall '04
Not Another Ghost Story Thread

Finally, if you don't have archives, some goon has a bunch of old threads stored at http://www.thuneral.com/eerie/. Another compilation can be found at http://nothotbutspicy.com/para/compilation/#_Toc285674393.

Anyway, I've always liked the Cowman story because stories from the woods are the best.

quote:

�The Cowman of Copalis Beach!�
by S. D. Baker

My dad worked in the timber industry his whole life. His father was a logger, and he grew up in and around the woods. My dad started his own logging company when he was eighteen, and has owned and operated shake and shingle mills from Oregon clear up to Thorn Bay, Alaska.

He is an intelligent man and holds over a dozen patents for various pieces of equipment he has designed and built over the years. He has employed dozens of people over the years, all of them spending extensive time in the wilderness.

When I was a boy, I remember hearing bits and pieces of conversations among some of the men at the mill. Although nobody would tell me directly, I understood that something had gone on before I was born, and it involved one of the foremen, �Jon�. They weren�t joking around, they were genuinely afraid, and wouldn�t talk about it with a kid.

When I was young, my dad wouldn�t tell me about it because I would often go out into the woods cutting blocks with him on the weekends, and he didn�t want me to be afraid of the woods. While I was speaking with him last weekend, I told him of a couple of strange events that happened to me later in the wilderness, and that reminded me of the hints at a story I heard when I was a boy. After some prodding he told me the following story.

In the mid 1960�s, my dad owned a large roofing product mill in Aberdeen, WA. He had teams of men that would cut the fallen old growth cedar salvage left after a logging operation. He had permits to salvage a large amount of wood in the coastal areas of Grays Harbor County, primarily in the area around Copalis Beach. Several of the men on his cutting crews lived in and around Copalis Beach. His foreman, a man I will call Jon for the story, was a bright, down to earth hard worker. My dad trusted him with thousands of dollars of vehicles and equipment, as well as the safety of his crews. He was not the kind of man to make up stories.

On a Monday morning sometime in July, Jon was several hours late for work. This was highly unusual as he was always there early, getting the saws and trucks ready for the day. My dad said he was visibly shaken up, and when he asked him what was wrong, he asked my dad to go in the office so the others wouldn�t hear them. They went in and sat down, and Jon simply said �Something destroyed our house this weekend.� My dad thought he said �someone� broke into the house, and asked Jon if it was someone he knew. Jon said, �You don�t understand, this wasn�t a person. It was a� I don�t know what it was, but it completely trashed the house. The family is going to stay with my brother in Elma for a while.�

My dad asked him to explain what had happened. Jon said that when he got home from work Friday evening, his youngest son Tim, who was around four at the time, told him he saw a big �Cowman� walking at the edge of their field that afternoon. He thought the boy meant �Cowboy�, because some of his neighbors wore cowboy hats when they were out in the sun. He asked him if the man was wearing a cowboy hat, and the boy said, �No daddy, he was a Cowman, furry and stinky like the cows.� He asked his wife if she knew what he was talking about, and she said Tim was playing on the porch that afternoon, when he came running in and said the cowman was stuck on the fence. He was very excited, so she went out to see what he was talking about. She said as she opened the door, she was hit by a horrible smell, like wet dogs and garbage. Tim was pointing across to the field opposite their house and said, �He got loose!� She looked where he was gesturing and could see the top strand of barb wire bouncing up and down, as if somebody had just pulled on it really hard and let it go. She didn�t see the �Cowman�, and noticed nothing out of the ordinary except for the smell.

She told Tim to come inside to play for rest of the day, she felt uneasy and a little scared. Their older son, Jon Jr. who was twelve at the time, was at a friend�s house and walked home a short while after Tim saw his �Cowman�. He told her somebody had followed him home, walking in the woods off the right side of the road. He never seen who it was, they never left the woods, but he said it had to be a really big man. He would hear large sticks cracking, and the footsteps were very heavy. Once he got to the driveway of their house where the woods stopped at the field where his brother had his sighting, the footsteps stopped and Jon Jr. never saw anything. He was pretty shaken up by the event, and wanted his Dad to go out to the woods and check it out with him.

Later that evening, Jon strapped on his .357 and took his older son out into the field to have a look. They first walked to the area where the �Cowman� was supposedly stuck on the fence, and walked down the fence line looking for anything. They came upon a large clump of long, reddish brown hair tangled in the top strand of barbed wire. He tried to pull it off but it was really tangled up, so he pulled out his buck knife and sawed it off. He said the hair was over a foot long, real coarse and stringy. There appeared to be a bit of flesh matted in the clump, and the top wire was pulled loose from one of the posts. Whatever was hung up on the fence was very big. He handed the hair to his son to hold, and they climbed through the fence and walked toward the woods. He said he was looking for any sign of tracks on the ground; the hair kind of looked like it was from a horse�s mane or tail. The ground was a solid grassy field, and there were no hoof prints or any other tracks he could see.

The edge of the woods began about ten feet from the fence line, and they entered on a small game trail that deer frequented. It was around eight at night, and in the woods it was getting to be fairly dark. They walked for a ways, and soon began to smell the rotting garbage/wet dog odor his wife reported earlier. Jon said he got the feeling they were being watched; the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. He told his son they should head back before it got dark, and the boy didn�t argue. As they began walking back out, they could hear heavy footsteps off to their left. They stopped, and the footsteps stopped. They walked on nearly to the clearing, and Jon whispered to his son to run like Hell to the house on the count of three. Jon Jr. nodded, and Jon whispered, �One, two�Three!� and gave his son a push in the back to get him started, then spun around and raced off the trail in the opposite direction, toward the footsteps with his gun drawn.

Off the trail, the underbrush was dense with ferns and bushes; he had a hard time making headway. But as he got closer, he could hear it moving away from him, deeper into the woods. At this time, he told my Dad that he thought it was a vagrant camping out in the woods and possibly scoping houses out to rob at night. Jon was a big man and capable of taking care of himself in most any situation and he had a large caliber handgun so he wasn�t too worried about confronting a vagrant in the woods. He was a few yards off the trail in deep brush when he heard the movement stop just ahead of him. He stopped to look and listen, and thought he saw movement by a large tree, like someone was trying to hide there. He leveled his gun and said �Come out nice and slow, or I swear to God I�ll come back there and shoot you!�

It was silent for a moment, and then he caught movement out the corner of his eye and spun around to his right for a better look. He said it looked like a huge bear moving through the brush, he could only see bits of it through the dense ferns, but it was moving quietly away from the tree on four legs. It was about fifteen feet away from him. At first he thought it was a bear, and then suddenly he saw a huge hairy arm with a human like hand reach out of the brush and grab a small alder tree. The tree was about four inches in diameter, and it grabbed hold about five feet up. He said it happened so fast it was a blur, but the thing pulled itself upright out of the brush by holding the tree. It stood on two legs and turned its upper body to glare at Jon. It was enormous; he couldn�t believe how bulky it was. He said it was well over seven feet tall, and at least half that big through the chest. It was too dark to make out many features, but its eyes seemed to glow a deep red, and he thought he could see teeth, like it was curling its lips back.

It stood for just a brief moment, and then lunged ahead, pushing back on the tree with tremendous force. The tree snapped loudly and crashed into the trees around it, getting hung up in the branches and not falling to the ground. It then disappeared into the deep brush with frightening speed, sounding like a bulldozer with no engine sounds. Jon stood there in shock, his gun temporally forgotten, and then he realized it was heading toward the house, the way his son had went. He turned and ran to the trail, hoping to gain ground on it and cut it off before it reached the clearing. He hit the trail and ran as fast as he could toward the clearing, all the while hearing the creature thrash through the brush on his side.

He burst into the clearing and looked franticly about for his son. Jon Jr. was standing just inside of the fenced field, waiting for his Dad. Jon screamed at him to run to the house, then he saw the thing crash out of the woods about fifty feet to his left. It crossed the ten foot clearing and stepped over the fence in two strides, and was running through the field parallel to his son in a matter of seconds. Jon screamed at his son to run faster, and took aim at the creature. He didn�t fire because he was afraid to hit his son or his house, so he vaulted over the fence and ran in pursuit of them. He could see it angling toward his son, and knew there was no way his boy would make it to the gate before it cut him off. In desperation, he pointed the gun to the ground at his side and fired as he ran, hoping to scare it. It veered more sharply toward his son, and put on an enormous burst of speed. He heard his boy scream as they seemed to collide, he saw the creature dip its shoulder down a little bit and suddenly Jon Jr. was airborne, he flew about ten feet then hit the ground rolling.

The creature never paused; it continued to run at an amazing speed in a loop back towards the woods. Once the line of fire was clear, Jon stopped and squeezed off the remaining five rounds at the retreating creature. He was pretty sure all the shots went wild; the creature never made a sound or slowed down, and was soon over the fence and back in the woods. He reached his son, who was shaken up but not physically hurt. He asked his Dad
if it was a bear. Apparently, little Jon was so busy running for the house that he didn�t see the creature running after him, he said something big and black suddenly ran into him, and he felt a huge paw hit his bottom and he said he felt like he was falling.

Jon pulled his son to his feet and they ran through the gate and into the house locking the door behind him. They were both out of breath and white as ghosts, his wife was screaming at him, demanding to know what the gunshots were for and if they were all right. When he could catch his breath, he told her to make sure the back door was locked, he was going to call the Sheriff. He went to the phone and began to dial the number; this was before 911, then stopped and wondered what exactly he was going to say. He hung up the phone, realizing what an idiot he would look like if he told the Sheriff the boogie man just chased them out of the woods.

He told his wife that it was a large animal, possibly a bear. He didn�t know how to begin to tell her their four year old was right, his Cowman was real and it was more frightening than anything he could imagine. He told them all to keep the doors locked, and stay away from the windows. Around ten o�clock that night, both boys were in bed and Jon and his wife sat down to watch the news. They soon heard a loud moaning cry, kind of like the siren on the volunteer fire department. It would stretch out for a long time, and then end with a �whoop whoop� sound. It was coming from the woods opposite the house.

His wife asked �What the Hell is that?�
Jon answered truthfully; �That is Tim�s Cowman.�

He then described to her the full details of what had happened, and she immediately wanted to call the Sheriff. He persuaded her that they would sound crazy, and that he would handle it himself. She reluctantly agreed, and told him she didn�t want either of the kids to go outside until this thing was gone. The howling went on until around midnight, when it got quiet again. Jon wanted to stay up through the night and watch over the house, but he had a long day at work and the excitement earlier had worn him out. They went to bed around one in the morning, and had no further problems that night.

They slept in that morning, and the boys were already up and watching cartoons when they got out of bed. The first thing little Jon said was that he had heard the bear rubbing against the house last night. He said he was too scared to get up and tell his parents, and fell back asleep soon after.

Then Tim said �The Cowman talks funny.�
This stopped Jon cold. He asked his son �When did you talk to the Cowman?�
Tim replied �Last night, in my room.� Jon asked: �The Cowman was in your room?�

�No Daddy, he�s too big for my room, he talked to my window.� Tim said, and turned back to the cartoons. �What did the Cowman say, Tim?� Jon asked.
�He talks funny; I don�t know what he said. He talks like this�OOH AHH AHH OOH!� Tim said, and started making strange monkey like noises. �Did the Cowman try to get in your window?� Jon asked, breaking out in a cold sweat.
�He�s too big for that. He made funny faces, he has Lincoln Log teeth!� Tim said with a smile.

Jon later learned Tim meant it had square teeth that looked the same size as the small blocks in a Lincoln log set. It apparently spent quite a while �talking� and making faces outside the boy�s window. Tim said it lay down and went to sleep outside, and he could hear it snoring. Jon walked to his younger son�s room, and cautiously peered out the window. No sleeping Cowman. Jon told the boys to get dressed; they were going to go visit their uncle in Elma for the day.

After his wife and kids left, he called one of the men from his crew, and asked him to come over. I�ll call him Patrick, he was an ex-State patrolman and my Dad said he was kicked off the force because of his drinking problem. He was a good worker and never got drunk before dark, so Jon figured they would have most of the day to look for this thing. When Patrick arrived, Jon greeted him at the door and said, �Are you up for some hunting?� Seeing how it was not hunting season, Patrick told him he doesn�t poach, and doesn�t even want to know about it if Jon did. Jon told him it wasn�t deer he was after, and went on to explain the previous night�s events. Patrick didn�t really believe him, but could see he was sincere and still shook up. Jon had his pistol and a bolt action 30.06, Patrick had a .38 in his car and Jon loaned him a 12 gauge. They first circled the house looking for any signs of a nocturnal visitor.

At the back of the house, there was a spigot for the garden hose, and it always leaked. There was a patch of ground worn bare of grass under it, and it had turned to mud. In the center of the mud, there was a huge, clear imprint of what looked like a bare human foot. Jon said it was at least 18 inches long, and very wide. It was so clear that he got the feeling it was left there on purpose. They found no other prints around the house, and in places in the field and woods where a track could be made, the creature seemed to avoid them. Off to the side
of the track in the mud were four straight lines about eight inches long. He said it looked like someone had raked their fingers through the mud. When they circled around the side of the house and got to Tim�s window, they saw what it was for.

Above the top of the window, a good seven feet up, were four muddy streaks. And on the window itself were dozens of large, muddy fingerprints. The glass wasn�t cracked or broken, just smeared with mud. By this time Patrick was fast becoming convinced something strange had indeed happened the night before.

Before going out into the woods, Jon wanted to feed the families pigs. They had two of them apparently fairly young weighing around 40 pounds each. The pig pen was about a hundred yards away from the house, behind an old barn. As they got closer Jon became concerned because they couldn�t hear them making any noise. Usually they squealed like crazy when they knew food was near at hand, but this morning it was completely silent. They rounded the corner and the pen was empty. No sign of damage or struggle, the pigs were just gone. They searched the barn but found nothing out of place, so they decided to hit the woods and try to kill this thing.

They entered on the same trail Jon and Jon had used the day before, Jon showed Patrick the broken fence wire and told him again about the hair. It was a bright summer morning, and Jon was surprised at the difference from the previous evening. The night before had been still and silent, now the woods were alive with birds and small animals. He showed Patrick the broken tree, and they followed the creatures� trail and found several more trees and large branches twisted and broken. They could see large, faint impressions of footprints where the ground was soft. They followed the deer trail further into the woods, and encountered nothing unusual. By noon they were both getting hungry, so they hiked back to the house for lunch. They spent the rest of the day poking around, but saw nothing more out of the ordinary.

Just before dark that night, his wife and kids drove up. He and Patrick were sitting on the porch with the guns, watching the woods. His wife asked if they had seen anything, Jon told her about the footprint and mud on the window.

Patrick had retrieved a pint of booze from his car and was well on his way to getting smashed. Jon decided he didn�t want a frightened drunk with a gun around his family, so he suggested that Patrick could go home, nothing was going to happen anyway. Patrick agreed and drove off, and Jon continued to watch the woods. His wife brought out a plate of food and a Coleman lantern and a flashlight. He told her he would stay out here and watch the house through the night. Before they went to bed, he went into their bedroom and with help from his wife, pushed the king sized bed as far from the windows as they could. They agreed that his wife and kids would all sleep in that bed for the night and he would keep watch around the house. She had grown up hunting and knew how to handle a gun as good as him, so she insisted on keeping the shotgun in the room with them. He agreed after making her promise to ask for a name before shooting anything. If it replied �Jon�, please don�t shoot it.

There was a full moon that night, and Jon could see across the field and into the inky dark of the woods. The night air was filled with the sound of thousands of crickets, and the pond behind the house was full of croaking frogs. As the moon rose higher, clumps of weeds in the field began casting sinister shadows, and before long Jon was seeing big hairy creatures sneaking up on him in each of them. He stood up and lit a cigarette, trying to shake the fear and concentrate on the task at hand. As he smoked, he wandered to the end of the porch, and stood looking at the darkened barn. Something was different, but he couldn�t quite place it. The front of the barn facing the house was open, and the moonlight was hitting it from the side, casting the interior in deep shadows. He stood watching the black opening as he finished his smoke, thinking about the missing pigs. He then realized what was wrong. All the crickets and frogs had gone silent. It was as quiet as the inside of a mausoleum at night; he could hear the minute shrill buzz of his own nervous system. As he turned to walk back to his chair, he thought he saw movement in the barn. He looked intently at the opening and could make out nothing, then turned his head a bit to the side and saw what looked like two red eyes hovering about eight feet off the ground. He couldn�t see them if he looked straight at them, but when he averted his eyes a little, they became clearer. They were a deep burning coal red, almost invisible in the dark. Every few seconds they would disappear when the creature blinked.

His heart began thudding in his chest, and he waited for it to leave the barn and approach the house. He slowly backed up to his chair, never looking away, and picked up his 30.06. He walked back to the end of the porch and watched and waited. He stood looking at the blinking red eyes for what seemed like hours, and then the eyes blinked out and never came back. He watched intently but could see no movement. He thought for a moment, then grabbed the flashlight and shined it at the barn. The flashlight was too small to penetrate the darkness of the barn from this distance, he had to get closer. He was none too keen about leaving the relative safety of the porch and confronting a glowing eyed monster in his barn, but he was damned if he was going to live in fear in his own house.

He left the porch and began slowly working his way toward the barn, taking his time, building his courage up. He got closer and could still see no movement; it had gone further into the dark. He got within 20 feet of the opening, and his flashlight would now penetrate the gloom in the barn. He moved the feeble beam of light over the contents of the barn, an old tractor, and old pickup, boxes and buckets. Too many places for something to hide, even something big. He cautiously walked closer, now shining the flashlight down the barrel of his rifle. He stopped at the entrance and shined the light all over, searching the corners and under the vehicles. He stepped into the barn, every sense straining for sound or movement. He walked around the pickup, tensing for a huge, hairy arm to reach out and grab him at any second. He made his way clear to the rear of the barn without seeing anything, and slowly turned around to leave. He felt both relieved not to have encountered it in the dark barn, and frightened and somewhat confused about where it could have gone.

As he was walking out he glanced at the wide stairs leading up into the hayloft and froze. He knew with complete certainty that it had climbed those stairs and was waiting for him to walk out under the hayloft and jump down upon him. He couldn�t move, he was literally frozen in fear. He swore he could here the floorboards softly creak above him as an enormous weight edged stealthily closer to the edge. He stood with his heart pounding in his ears, unable to move or act. Suddenly there was the booming explosion of a shotgun from the house, followed by his wife screaming. His paralysis broke and he bolted out of the barn toward the house, completely forgetting what may have been in the hayloft.

As he ran toward the house, he heard an inhuman roar coming from the woods behind the house. It sounded pissed off and in pain. It screamed again and he heard branches breaking as it plowed through the forest, thankfully away from the house. He got to the house and almost knocked down the front door in his hurry to get inside.

He ran down the hall to their room and found his family huddled together on the bed, sobbing. One of the windows was blown out, and his wife was still pointing the shotgun at it. When he burst into the room she swung the gun in his direction and screamed and he hit the floor. He waited for the blast but it didn�t come. He slowly stood up and she had put the gun down and he went to the bed. He asked her what had happened, but she was too shook up to answer just then. Tim started crying: �Why did you shoot the Cowman Mommy, why?� Jon Jr. Had his face buried against her shoulder crying. After they calmed down a bit, he told them to get up and follow him. He led them to the living room, then went out the open front door and looked carefully around. He could see no sign of it, all was quiet again. He told them to come out and get in the car. They ran out in their pajamas and piled in the car; he got in and drove them to his brother�s house in Elma.

On the way there, they had calmed down enough to tell him what happened. She said a couple hours after they went to bed, she finally dozed off. She was awakened by Tim talking to someone, and this bizarre clicking chirping sound. Tim wasn�t in the bed; he was standing in front of one of the windows. The moonlight was shining through both windows illuminating the room pretty good, but there was a large shadow, like a tree obscuring the window in front of Tim. She knew there were no trees close enough to cast a shadow, she told to get away from the window. �Mommy, listen! The Cowman can sound like a bird!� Tim said pointing excitedly at the dark figure in the window. �Timmy, get away from the window.� She said, trying to keep her voice quiet. Right after she spoke, the noises from outside changed, it went from a soft chirping, to a strange gibbering, almost like human speech with an occasional pig-like snort thrown in.

At this time, little Jon woke up and said �What is that?� rather loudly. This seemed to incite the creature and it hit the side of the house with its fists hard enough for the walls to tremble. At this, Little Jon screamed and Tim yelled �Quiet, you�re going to scare him away!� She yelled at Tim to get away from the window again, and reached up on the headboard and grabbed the shotgun. She got out of the bed and started toward Tim; the creature leaned down and looked straight in the window at her. She screamed and raised the shotgun, afraid to shoot because her son was so close to it. She started forword to grab Tim, and there was an explosion of breaking glass; a gigantic hairy arm reached through the window toward her son. She screamed again and fired over Tim�s head, blowing out the rest of the window and hitting the creature with .00 buckshot. It jerked backwards out of the window and disappeared into the dark. A few seconds later she heard it screaming in the woods. �It was trying to get Tim, it was trying to grab my baby!� she started crying again and he comforted her as best he could while driving.

They stayed the rest of that night and the following night with his brother�s family. He told his brother about it, but could see he didn�t really believe him. He agreed to ride back to Jon�s house with him early Monday morning before work. They had left the front door open in their haste to leave, and he was afraid animals or vandals would have got into the house. When they arrived, the house looked like a tornado had gone through it. The couch was upside down. They had a large, heavy console TV and it was apparently thrown across the room, lying in a spray of broken glass. The kitchen was trashed, the refrigerator knocked over and food everywhere. The doors to both of the boy�s rooms were left closed, and the rooms were untouched, same as the bathroom. The master bedroom was torn apart, the pillows ripped up and feathers everywhere. The chest of drawers was knocked over and the large mirror smashed. Jon�s brother looked around in awe, and said �You better call the police!� Jon looked at him and said �And tell them what? Bigfoot destroyed my house?�

They left and closed the front door this time, and drove to my Dad�s mill in Aberdeen. Jon�s brother waited in the car while Jon went in and told this to my Dad. After he was done, my Dad said, �Well, let�s go have a look at it then.� They drove back out to the house, and Jon showed my Dad the damage. He pulled the clump of hair from his shirt pocket and let my Dad look at it. As they were walking through the house surveying the damage, my Dad pointed out cracks in the ceiling where it had apparently stood up and hit its head. Jon told my Dad that they couldn�t live there anymore, even if the creature was gone, they would always be afraid. Their homeowners insurance wouldn�t cover the damage; the adjuster claimed Jon must have done it in a drunken rage. My Dad helped them find a place in Aberdeen, and gave him a loan for new furniture and stuff. The house was eventually fixed up and sold, and my Dad never heard about another problem there.

A few observations about this story; My Dad lost contact with �Jon� and his family in the mid eighties. They moved out of state and my Dad hasn�t heard from them since. His brother died around the same time. Why didn�t they call the cops? Jon had a lot of pride as well as a lot of common sense. He knew he couldn�t logically explain what had happened to the authorities, and he didn�t want the story to get out and have him branded a nutcase. I asked my Dad if they saved the hair, he said Jon never mentioned it again and my Dad never asked him about it. I asked my Dad if he saw the footprint and muddy fingerprints, he said he did. He said it looked like a giant barefoot man had stepped very carefully in the center of the mud. He�s not a tracker, but he said it was the clearest print of any kind he had ever seen. I asked my Dad if the neighbors had heard any of this. He said if they did, none of them ever mentioned it again. I also asked him if he thought it was possible Jon had made it all up. That he HAD trashed his house in a drunken rage, and made up this elaborate cover story. My Dad said Jon and his family were terrified of that place; they didn�t even want to go back and get their clothes.
If was just an elaborate story, what did he stand to gain? To profit from a story in any way, you have to share it with people. My Dad and the other folks mentioned in the story are the only ones who ever heard it, until now, of course. He also said that whatever trashed that house was no man. The TV had to have weighed close to 200 pounds, and it was obviously thrown across the room with great force. He said that even after two days, there was still a wild animal smell in the house.

I asked him if thought there might have been two creatures involved, considering the incident in the barn. He said he asked Jon that same question, and was told that Jon felt there was only one, that it lured him into the barn then snuck out the side door to the house. The thing he thought he heard in the hayloft was either his imagination, or some common animal like a raccoon.

For whatever reason, this critter seemed focused on their four-year-old son. Their son was the only one who never showed any fear of it. He seemed to think of it as his friend. And although the sex of the animal was never determined, it was referred to as a male because of the predatory stalking type behavior. That and the conspicuous lack of breasts, or perhaps it was just not as well endowed as the Patterson Film Subject?

Anyhow, its behavior almost seems indicative of a mother that has lost her little Bigfoot and is looking for a replacement. I rather facetiously asked my Dad if little �Timmy� was a particularly hairy child, perhaps suffering from that rare condition that causes uncontrollable hair growth all over the body. He said �Timmy� was a normal little boy, with normal brown hair on his normal head. I didn�t ask if �Timmy� regularly reeked of rotting garbage and wet dogs, didn�t seem a polite course for the conversation to take.

He told me of other possible Bigfoot encounters he and his crews had in the woods around Grays Harbor. None of them are quite as titillating as the �Cowman� story, but interesting nonetheless. Perhaps I�ll share them if there is an interest here in them.

So in the end I was left with no leads to follow, no new evidence of anything, but I did come away with a pretty damned good story. And I guess that�s better than a poke in the eye with a filthy encrusted hypodermic needle. Those of you who actually read this far; I give you a big thumbs up, you are truly an ardent and stoic follower of all things Bigfoot, or like me, recently underemployed and in desperate need to fill the endless empty hours of your life.

Hazo has a new favorite as of 05:52 on Jul 4, 2014

# ? Feb 5, 2014 04:30

JimBobDole: Nov 6, 2005; 'Tis the season.

cowboythreespeech posted:

my favourite from last thread was "they don't talk about it. no one does". http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3472214&userid=86971
it ended in a cliffhanger. i pm'd the guy who posted it a few months ago and asked if he'd finish it ever. he said he'd been really busy with school/coaching (i think?) but he would finish it one day. here's hoping!

It's posted.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 04:53

DARPA Dad: Dec 9, 2008

i want to poo poo into my own prolapsed and homosexual asspussy

# ? Feb 5, 2014 04:54

SmokaDustbowl: Feb 12, 2001; by vyelkin; Fun Shoe

DARPA Dad posted:

i want to poo poo into my own prolapsed and homosexual asspussy

sounds super spooky

# ? Feb 5, 2014 05:42

Missing Name: Jan 5, 2013

Here's a link for Hedningen's stories involving his attic.

DARPA Dad posted:

i want to poo poo into my own prolapsed and homosexual asspussy

Make it into a ghost story, now.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 06:00

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Here are Onic's ~~corn crib~~ stories. edit: Not the corn crib ones, these are the ones I remember from him though. You sure it was Onic?

Hazo has a new favorite as of 06:10 on Feb 5, 2014

# ? Feb 5, 2014 06:07

The Man From Melmac: Sep 8, 2008

that horrible kefka laugh

# ? Feb 5, 2014 06:08

treasured8elief: Jul 25, 2011; Salad Prong

Spooky stories are always my favorite threads to lurk and read, thank you for your great list of old threads!

# ? Feb 5, 2014 06:14

Titty Warlord: Apr 28, 2013

the last living thing wept, then promptly shat himself as he heard something knocking on the door

# ? Feb 5, 2014 06:33

cowboythreespeech: Dec 28, 2008

JimBobDole posted:

It's posted.

missed that. and after reading it, loved it. as an aside, i read the entire "no one talks about it" thing to my dad and my sister, sitting around the campfire last summer. they loved it. thanks for the story, bud.

# ? Feb 5, 2014 07:36

Scathach: Apr 4, 2011; You know that thing where you sleep on your arm funny and when you wake up it's all numb? Yeah that's my whole world right now.

Great new thread... I end up sitting around reading these in the dark and spooking myself. Yay!

# ? Feb 6, 2014 04:00

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Is Canis latrans still around? Because his stories still are:

Another story from the jungle, this one being the one that still gives me nightmares on occasion. Now, I can not really claim this as happening exactly as I remembered it, not in any honest sense. I remember it as happening like so however, which still has me waking on occasion in a cold sweat.

This is back in some weird little island in the Philippines learning jungle survival stuff from the nigridos. My friend Tony and I were getting the hang of some of the finer points of staying alive in a world that wanted you dead and festering with larvae. Tony is a solid guy, the kind of friend your lucky to have. He had my back, I had his, and it didn't matter what stupid poo poo the other decided to get himself into, he wasn't going into it alone. Seriously the guy was loyal to a fault, still is. This is actually how we ended up in the middle of the bush together god knows how many miles from whatever could be considered civilization and light years away from anything remotely safe. Part of the final test of what you learned out there was to go out alone for a coupla days and make your way back to the village. It was a basic practical test, ideally you had a nigrido shadowing you not too far off making sure you didn't get yourself graved by being an idiot. You'd never know these guys were there though, ever, they knew this territory and knew how to work it. The jungle is dense, profoundly thick. I know you've probably heard stories about how you can walk past like...an entire ruined temple in the middle of South America and never even clue in that its there even though your practically on its doorstep. Its true, you step ten feet from your buddy in the wrong direction, blink wrong and bam, your alone.

We had both done pretty good as far as the nigridos cared, we picked up things fast and weren't shy about doing things most westerners balk at, eating bugs, getting filthy and reaching into mysterious holes to grab whatever might be lurking in there. I had no problem with this as my dad was kind of a nutjob survivalist in my early youth and had a thing for doing things "the Traditional Way," Tony had no problems doing this stuff because he had balls the size of a C-130, loaded with tanks, and driving those tanks were condors with helmets.

Anyways, its time for the practicals, and although we were supposed to solo that noise, Tony and I basically said "no dice we're going in as a pair," to which the nigridos smiled and nodded and agreed that we were smart to demand such a thing. You never go out there alone. I always thought it was kind of a trick question thing anyways, sending your goofy rear end out into the dense solo when all throughout the training they go on and on about how you're a dumb poo poo if you go out there alone. Bonus points for us I guess right?

We get bags over our heads and led to a little riverboat. They rumble us out for a few hours and then unceremoniously dump our asses onto the beach. The nigrido tosses us a knife, stares at us for awhile before making this weird little gesture and buggering off on his boat. I couldn't catch the exact gesture, but it was like a gang sign I guess, quick, fingers all tangled up. His boat was poo poo, I swear it was made out of warehouse pallets or something the like. Tony and I both figured the guy probably went up river a bit then bailed on his own craft and fixed to shadow us and keep an eye out.

With bravado fed by the others presence we went into the jungle all smiles and ego. We were good, we knew this, we were not afraid and figured this would be fun as hell, and give us some future stories to tell the ladies about and hence get laid. Tony has a knack for direction and the two of us sussed our whereabout after only a few hours. It was daytime, so climbing a tree gave us a pretty decent view. Not a lot to see really, but somehow he figured on a direction we were supposed to go and we headed off. Moving through the jungle can be slow work, in the movies you have to hack your way through poo poo with a machete like Indiana jones or some poo poo. Reality is a bit different. If you know where to step, you can avoid all the work of cutting stuff down. Along fallen logs is pretty good, up roots and the like, but don't ever put your foot alongside something like that, that's snakefood. The nigridos do it at kind of a lazy jog, we were more deliberate but still moving at a pace that was comfortable to us.

We chattered constantly, it wasn't to keep predators away, as far as we knew the island had no real big threats like cats or anything, we did it because Tony and I couldn't shut the gently caress up when we were around each other. I'm sure you guys have friends like that. Those two chucklefucks in the back of the classroom in highschool always snickering and loaded with injokes, that was pretty much us, in the jungle...with a single knife and something to prove. The first day was pretty drat uneventful, we didn't eat, and we spent almost the entire time moving. We found water in different places, big cone shaped leaves are good for that, and they typically come with snacks of differing squiggly varieties. We made camp up in the branches of a big goofy rear end looking tree, took light watches and slept like babies. I woke up covered in bugs the size of my fingers and Tony fell off his branch and got stuck in the crook of the tree when he woke up, clumsy bastard.

The second day started out like the first, chattering, moving, high spirits. The jungle was getting smellier and bleaker as we went, I think we were close to an estuary or something because there was a briny smell. The soil went from firm with a heavy layer of dead vegetation, to black-brown silt and loose. Tony and I tried making some fire, took us awhile but we did the trick with thread from his shirt and long bendy twig to make a bow with and whatnot. We got some smoldering going, but poo poo out there was so wet it just made a lot of thick black smoke and never really caught. I figured if we kept some tender dry ontop of our heads or something and maybe found some good dead wood we'd have something worth burning. As time went on we got to talking about old times, funny crap we had done, new ideas for pranks with which to torment our hapless buddies with and the desire to come out of this not only successful but as badass as possible. We didn't want to be the Swiss family loving Robinson, we wanted Rambo. I mean seriously, how could anyone want anything BUT that. Imagine that crap, coming out of the bush all grim faced and scarred, with like a dead deer over your shoulder and the skulls of your enemies tied around you in a belt made out of human hair. Not that we had enemies local, but I'm sure we could make some right?

That's pretty much us. It was around mid-day Tony and I noticed this weird echo effect with the jungle. It was hard to notice because we never really shut up, but when we talked, there was this weird echo that was soft and sounded far away at first. Until he pointed it out and we started listening more carefully. Everytime we talked, there it was, that echo...it wasn't as far away as it initially sounded either, just deceptively soft. We figured it was maybe soundwaves bouncing off the broadleaf plants in the area or something and coming back at us all curved up. We weren't rocket scientists, but we weren't proper dumb either. Tony and I made a game out of it, we'd start chattering at each other and then he'd hold up his hand, fingers splayed and visually countdown with em, we'd stop mid sentence when he hit zero, and could hear the last few words said bounce around us in a weird jungle whisper. At dusks we had been getting kind of tired of the game and blew it off, but before we went up to rest Tony pulled it on me one last time. Normally echoes just kind of stop or trail off right? This time...I dunno, it just kind of looped, and it looped wrong.

The last thing I had been saying to Tony was something along the lines of "I'm a goddamned sexual tyranno-" and cut off. What we heard bouncing around us in that quiet sibilant way was, "I'm a god damned, god damned, god, god, I'm, damned." Tony and I stopped talking and just kind of stared at each other for a bit. We weren't ruling out echoes yet, though over all our time out here doing this training we hadn't ever really heard it before, or mention of it. We were both creeped right the gently caress out, and when one of us is creeped, the other picks up on it and the hackles go up. We found ourselves a solid tree and that night we did not pull light watches, we pulled proper. I'm figuring a little after midnight Tony woke me up with a hand on my shoulder.

It's dark at night in the jungle, god damned dark, and noisy. The canopy over head pretty much prevents any good starlight coming through, and the skies are most always fat with gray clouds. The bugs get set to screeching at night and they don't quit for nothing. Underneath our tree something was rooting around in the bushes, even through the bugs we could both hear it. Shuffling, a quiet snort, crunches, snuffling. Sounded like a pig to me and I was set to bark at it and maybe spook it off when Tony's hand on my shoulder tenses. Then I could hear it.

Muttering in between the snuffles. A snort, some bushes rustling and a few low scattered words. Bits and pieces of sentences. It took me a second, but gently caress me if it didn't sound like Tony down there pissed off and searching for something he'd lost in the bush. You know when a grumpy rear end drops a contact or something and gets to searching for it muttering under his breath, it's like that. Whatever was down there was loving talking. It wasn't making any sense though, the weirdest loving thing. "So tits," snortsnort "Yeah the green," shuffle, "Named after fucker," rustle. Then a laugh, and I froze when I heard that. It started with my laugh, which is this goofy Mark Hamill as the Joker thing and ended with Tony's troublemaker's drawl. See we had been bullshitting for the past what, day and a half, and spent a good time laughing our asses off at each other. Whatever the gently caress that thing was down there it was like it was trying our voices on for size.
We'd both seen Predator, we'd been quoting that poo poo for days out here. I can't even begin to count how many times I'd just stop while one of the instructors was explaining something, stare off into the horizon and mutter, "Theres something out there, up in them trees." Which never failed to make Tony
Canis latran
FantasyPhantomAdded by FantasyPhantom
laugh like a retard. Military types watch a lot of god damned movies, and your typical boots on the ground motherfucker can quote like a champ. No lie, we can even do crazy poo poo like quote a movie line for line with a different cast from yet another movie. You haven't lived til you've seen a bunch of petty officers do a scene from Aliens with Thurgood from Half-Baked as the Sarge. We caught the similarities to our situation pretty god damned fast. It was eerie listening to this thing natter about imbecility down there, it had no comprehension of the noises it was making, but it was loving making them.

Tony slid me the knife and secured himself in his spot and I kept the watch until dawn. The thing trundled off a half hour or so before daybreak. I'm no Apache, but I know knives well enough to be comforted by holding one, but even that didn't break the "oh what the gently caress have we gotten ourselves into," gloom that caught us.

The next day was a grim loving thing. We weren't chattering, we weren't joking around anymore. Nerves were on edge and both of us had to have looked like someone had gutted our favorite dog. Tony did at least, I'm a goofy looking guy so I probably still looked like a run of the mill dork. Believe me, the urge to quote predator was pretty god damned strong but we just couldn't get past the feeling that we needed to be quiet and careful. Tony managed a half-hearted Arnold gargle when we were headed up a ridge, I think in an attempt to beat the gloom, but even that couldn't do it. He does a good Arnold gargle too, for those that don't know what that is, its hard to describe really its like a weirdly accented "Arghlearg" noise done in Arnies manner that's pretty unmistakable when you hear it. Wow, actually writing that down makes it seem so dumb as hell, still funny as all get out though I think.

We didn't hear that weird echo as long as we didn't talk. We were starting to get hungry though, and random bugs wasn't doing much to assuage that. It felt like, I dunno the right description, it felt like we were being bullied if that made any sense. We couldn't talk, we weren't allowed to. That got us both feeling a little pissed off. Tony and I individually aren't anything I'd call cowards, we aren't heroes by any stretch of the word, but were not pussies. Together though, we get stupid brave. I'm sure you might see where this is leading. To us it was a natural shift. It took a few hours of grimly trudging along in the direction we believed was the right way to go for the shift to happen, but it was kind of inevitable. Screw this thing. Screw this stupid talking thing. I broke the silence proper, started bitching about the girls on this island, how they had curves like a dirt road. Tony countered immediately that I lacked the proper gear to drive a dirt road. We started chattering again, this time aggressively, we were defying this damned spooky thing. We began the most ridiculous conversations. How do you properly screw a dolphin? Do you beach it and plug the blowhole? Do you sneak up on it in a zodiac, spear gun it's rear end and go at an eye socket? Crap like that. We were uncouth savages. We were listening for that stupid echo, waiting for it.

We were not disappointed. The echoes started up, it was hard to get a location, but the best I could figure was back and towards my side a bit. Tony scored a major victory when he said something along the lines of, "Dance around that flagpole bare-assed and body-painted like I'm a drag-queen paramount." The echo came back as "I'm a drag-queen." Tony stopped in his tracks, turned around and screamed back at it, "YOU'RE loving RIGHT YOUR A DRAG-QUEEN YOU DICK EYED JUNGLE oval office!" It was liberating, terrifying though. That was the first time we actually addressed the god damned thing. But we did, we addressed it, we acknowledged it as existing and that just sat bad. A small victory but that feeling in our guts, that wasn't the feeling you get when you win a fight. It's the feeling you get when you start a war.

When Tony had called that thing out it was a declaration of war. We both started getting hostile, not towards each other mind you, but towards this whatever the hell it was.

We got to planning, and threatening, vocalizing the horrible things we were planning on doing to it once we caught a hold of it. I distinctly remember Tony saying something along the lines of "I'm strangle this goofy-assed thing, I'ma kill it with my bare hands." I laughed, "Dude what if it's a fuckin' nigrido and he's just screwing with us." Tony just stared at me. I shrugged, couldn't blame him for the sentiment really.

Thing is, we kept going on, we never turned around, neither of us wanted to actually stand our ground or charge off after it. There was this distinct sensation that doing so would have been one helluva bad idea. We were getting hungry though and figured that it was probably time to do something about it. There's a lot to eat in the jungle if you're not shy, frogs, bugs and the like can keep you going like a trail ration, but if you want something with more substance you have to kill it, or if you're some sort of fancy botanist I suppose you can tell a jungle death turnip from a potato and do it that way. We were not botanists, and I only knew which plants could get me high, unconscious or stop bleeding. Tony climbed up a tree and managed to brain some sort of monkey critter with a rock. The guy could be quiet as hell, and the monkey critters out here were curious and stupid. The specific trap we used to catch the monkey off guard was me laying down in a space between some trees and doing my best curly impression from the Three Stooges. You know the thing where you lay on your side, and start running and kind of churn circles while going "whooop whooop whooop." Well, that's what I was doing, which got a few monkeys coming down and looking at us like dude, what the gently caress are you doing, and Tony hit one with a rock. We were some crafty bitches.

I managed to start an acceptable fire, previously I had taken our tinder and folded it up in a dry leaf and worn it on my head like an idiot. The campfire was tiny, but it did the trick, I cleaned the monkey critter as best I could and we cooked it old school on some sticks. The sticks caught fire frequently, and a lot of the meat burned to inedible carbon but my god it was good. We cooked the hell out of that monkey, I'm sure it was loaded with parasites, but burning the hell out of it had to help, and I figured we could get purged when we got back to our unit, or hell, just the village if I could boil some water and drop some tabs. The other monkey critters watched us eat, they were quiet, just staring. Probably should have felt bad about that in hindsight, but neither of us was feeling charitable or friendly really. Something about having meat in our bellies and actual fire, albeit a small one made us feel a lot more ready for this weird poo poo and we got to planning on how we were gonna handle it.

Idea one was to continue on as we were going and maybe just pick up the pace. It was the safest idea by far and Tony figured we had another day until we got to either a lovely road we could navigate off of or a larger river we could follow. Idea two was to cover ourselves in mud, arm ourselves with bows made from roots and poo poo and ambush the thing. I poo poo you not, we figured why the hell not. Idea three was to split apart at night, have each person in a different tree and stay up until whatever it was came snooting around. Whoever was in the tree it decided to investigate would signal the other who would come down and murder the hell out of it from the rear. I liked idea three and voted for it, Tony voted for two and the monkey's skull sided with me making it a unanimous vote for idea three, because Tony was Italian and Italians don't get to vote.

There was some threatening of each other's life, but in the end we pretty much settled on our two tree ambush idea.

We didn't move from that site that day. We sharpened some sticks, thick short ones make good spikes. Tony let me keep the knife since I was a bit swifter with it than he was and he carried the spikes. The guy is strong, much stronger than me and I figured he could put those things too much better use than I if he could get a good line up. Figured it would go like this. It would start bothering one or the other of us who would throw a twig at his buddy. Buddy would come down and engage whatever it was, at which point the initial target would drop down and help secure the kill. We went over it a coupla different times, figured out some possible oh-poo poo secondary plans but really, there wasn't much to it. This thing had been creeping us out for awhile and we wanted it dead, we felt kind of elated by the thought of killing it. Turn the tables on its rear end and come out like badasses. We got ourselves motivated and I did something which is I guess kind of embarrassing but whatever. I put on warpaint. I guess that's dorky as hell. I took some of the black-silt soil we had been around, mixed it with monkey-juice and smeared three dark lines across my face. Tony thought I looked kinda badass so he did the same. We used to do this during training and paintball games, hell, once during a hide and go seek game with some corpsman girls at camp lester we did it. Yes, we played hide and go seek, with the legitimate intent of getting laid by said corpgirls, yes we smeared our face paint on the aforementioned corpgirls. He did a full on handprint on his face, it looked very Conan meets Geronimo meets a Guido. The paint tightened up into pretty solid noticeable lines when the fluids coagulated, which took all of fifteen minutes or so.

Our site was decent too, an opening in the canopy over where we had set our campfire promised that if there was any light to be had that night, we'd be able to make some use of it. We picked out our trees, climbed up there and took a few practice throws with twigs we had nearby. I hit him in the eye, he kept aiming at my balls. Spirits were high, sort of...it was a false high, bravado I think.

Night came, and with it, bugsong. High chirps and cackling buzzes all over the place. I near pissed myself when what I had assumed to be a knot of wood next to my thigh twitched and started this staccato screech that ricocheted off the trees. Was a big assed beetle thing. We lucked out in that cloud cover was lighter than it typically is and we had a good moon. Not bright by any stretch, but more than we had any night previous. We waited. Felt like forever, sitting up in a tree, trying to keep your heartbeat regular. Knowing the second we heard whatever it was we heard we'd get that adrenaline kick to the nuts that would make our whole body start shaking. I'm not sure how long we waited up there before it came. At first I missed it entirely, I was so intent on listening for it I missed it entirely. When I finally zeroed in on the snuffling, rummaging, muttering beneath me I realized I had been hearing it for some time now. It was under me. Me.

I pulled my knife up and crouched on my branch, my free hand making sure for the love of god I had a strong hold on a nearby branch. I took a few minutes to steady myself and really listen. I wanted to make sure of a few things before I alerted Tony. I desperately wanted this thing to be alone, and I wanted to get a general idea of its size. Size wasn't too hard, judging by the heaviness of the rummaging going on beneath me it was man-sized, maybe a bit bigger but lower to the ground. As for the numbers, well gently caress...I only heard one. Small comfort that.

I had a pile of little pre-snapped twigs and I grabbed the whole drat thing and tossed it towards Tony's tree. Now, remember I said Tony can be a quiet guy. I had no idea if I had hit him, or if he had started moving, I could only really guess as to the actions over on his end. I got a good grip on the branch with my legs and made to swing under it, do kind of spider man maneuver and maybe stab downwards. It was a bit overelaborate yeah, but I used to climb trees all the time as a kid, and dangling like a douchebag was second nature. Nowadays the dangling not so much, douchebag I still got. Anyways, I'm dangling, I let go with my hands and get ready to knife this loving thing in the head when I see it.

A huge moment of confusion washed over me when it happened. I drat near went loose and fell off my branch. Tony is looking straight up at me. He's gotta be like, four feet off the ground just lookin at me with this blank retarded look on his face. Mind you, its pretty dark, but I can see a face...swear it looked like him, at first. Then I focus on it a bit more and notice. It has no loving facepaint.

It's not Tony.

poo poo, it doesn't even look like Tony's face anymore, it's just A face. But it's a god damned human face, looking up at me, blinking. My blood runs cold and I can feel my body come to a screeching halt. "Tony, get the gently caress back up in your tree." I say.

"Up in your tree." It says back, sounding pleased with its god damned self.

I can hear Tony, the real Tony over there in his tree rustle as he gets right the hell back up in the branches. "What the hell is goin' on, what the hell, what the heeeeell is that." He's got this angry nervousness in his voice. I've heard him like this only a few times, usually before we got our collective asses kicked by some angry merchant marines. The thing is still staring at me, and I'm making out more of its body. It's a loving pig. I mean, it's body. Its got the broad rectangular barrel of a body. Its quadruped though I cant make out the distinct feet, its got a human, or at least human-ish face. "It's a pig Tony, it's just a god damned pig." I say, and the thing is mimicking me just the same as always. I can hear an exasperated sigh over in the other tree and I continue, "It's got a people face though, stay the gently caress up in that tree Doc." Doc is a magic word to corpsmen, its a business word and it isn't lightly used, marines call us Doc, but usually only after we've proven ourselves I guess you could say, corpsmen rarely refer to each other as such, unless were trying to elaborate on a point. I was elaborating my point as hard as I could, as calmly as I could, without making GBS threads myself. I was still upside down, if I had poo poo myself, well...think about how unpleasant it would be to fill your pants and then have it run up your damned back and into your hair. Blech.

Man-face is looking up at me and Tony goes silent over there. We stare at each other for along while before I manage to find purchase and swivel back upright. I'm not looking down anymore, let that thing root around.

I didn't sleep that night.

It left before morning, like it always did and Tony and I went to ground and moved out, as fast as possible. We talked little, only that what I had seen was an unquantifiable thing, I could not predict any actions outcome on something I knew absolutely nothing about. I mean poo poo, if it had been like a tiger or something ridiculous like that, I could have figured something out, even something stupid, but not this thing. If it had been the nigrido, well, Tony and I would have likely kicked the hell out of him, but I woulda chilled Tony out before he killed him no problem. It wasn't anything I knew though, it was wrong, and bizarre and very disturbing. We immediately initiated idea one. We didn't hunt anymore monkeys, we didn't fish, we didn't eat bugs. We drank sparingly as we went, which gave us some serious dehydration issues. Tony had an idea of where to go and that's where we went, fast.

Thank god for the river, when we found we made so many miles. We weren't playing around anymore either. The first civilian craft we saw, which was this lovely little rickshaw thing, we flagged it, asked for a lift and we got back home.

When we arrived at the village we were haggard, dehydrated, cut up and miserable. This wasn't a big surprise to the nigridos, everybody came back from the practical like that. What bothered them is the man they sent out to watch over us never came back.

# ? Feb 6, 2014 10:18

MILF destroyer: Feb 6, 2014

Tonys a solid guy the kind of friend your lucky to have, he had my back and i cupped his balls. It didn't matter what kind of poo poo we were getting into because he was as solid as a blood clot and I was gay.
The jungle was thick, dense and kind of not thin, you dont take two steps away from your buddy in there because if you do bam, you're two steps away from your buddy before you know it. It was like that level in tomb raider tony and had played together the night he stayed over and i accidentally fondled his rear end and i think he liked it.

Time for the particulars. Although we were supposed to solo that thing me and tony said 'no dice jungle man' and they smiled and nodded their heads and covered their mouths with their hands and whispered 'fags' and laughed and I knew they thought we were wise.

We get bags over our heads and plugs up our asses and the guy they sent after us? who knows. all i know is this; i went into that place a man and came out a man, not the same man but different because of what happened to me and my solid friend tony in that weird phillipine jungle.

# ? Feb 6, 2014 13:23

Mexican Deathgasm: Aug 17, 2010; Ramrod XTreme

Jimmy decided to take advantage of the last couple of weeks of summer break by taking his beat-up old Volvo and heading south. He'd never taken a road-trip before, and he was looking forward to being alone with his thoughts.

After a day or so of driving, he found himself lost on some back roads. He didn't care, he knew he'd come to civilization eventually. But that was when the deer darted out in front of his car.

"SORRRRRYYYYY" he screamed as he tried to swerve around the stupid animal, causing his car to fishtail and a tire to slip off the embankment, which caused his poor Volvo to flip onto it's roof and then back onto it's wheels in a spray of torn up bushes.

Dazed, Jimmy crawled out of the wreck and staggered up the old country road, bleeding from some minor cuts and scrapes. Luckily, a little while later a friendly older man in a pickup truck stopped and offered him a ride to the nearest hospital. Jimmy gratefully accepted, although he was rather put off by the little pistol the man carried in a holster on his hip. Jimmy hoped the RCMP didn't pull them over.

After bidding a grateful goodbye to the old man, Jimmy entered the little hospital and approached reception. Jimmy explained about the accident and asked to see a doctor, and the nurse said "Do you have any insurance?"

With a slowly dawning horror, Jimmy realized he had accidentally entered the U.S. He backed away slowly from the nurse, eyeing her as if she were a wild animal, and ran from the hospital. He had to hide, oh god, there were gun-toting Americans everywhere. He dove into the bushes on the opposite side of the street, breathing heavily, but he noticed there was a thug gangsta from the hood in the bush beside him.

"Give me your wallet or I break a cap into your rear end", said the thug gangsta from the hood, which Jimmy apologetically did. The gangsta cackled and ran off, screaming about "baby mamas".

Jimmy then knew he only had hope of escaping this fascist hell-hole. He took a toonie from his pocket and popped out the metal bit in the middle of the coin. <Tax-funded Canadian emergency rescue activated>, said a tinny voice, and then played the Canadian National anthem, which Jimmy proudly sang along to. Within minutes, a Sea King helicopter flew overhead, and Mounties in bright red tactical suits dropped from the sky.

"Secure the area, but don't make eye contact with the locals, eh!" yelled the Prime Mountie, and they quickly found Jimmy and scooped him up into the waiting helicopter.

On the flight home, Jimmy dozed in the silent interior of the helicopter. He'd survived. Even though 3 in 4 Canadians who enter the U.S. die, he had managed to get out alive. He said a prayer to Canadian Jesus in thanks, and turned to the Mountie beside him to express his gratitude.

The Mountie was already looking at him with wide eyes and an unsettling grin, and then the Mountie slowly reached up and peeled off his mask, revealing the snarling face of Barack Obama. "SWEET SOCIALIST FLESH", Barack muttered, as he reached for Jimmy's throat.

# ? Feb 6, 2014 15:27

GrrrlSweatshirt: Jun 2, 2012

are skeleton stories acceptable

# ? Feb 6, 2014 18:07

Jerry Mumphrey: Mar 11, 2004; by zen death robot
(and can't post for 4 years!)

I once took a pee in a haunted house and a ghost came out and kept looking at my dick and I was like "hey ghost quit looking at my dick!" and the ghost was like "but it's soooo haaaanddsssooommeeeeeee"

a pretty positive experience

# ? Feb 6, 2014 18:09

GrrrlSweatshirt: Jun 2, 2012

zoomdog posted:

I once took a pee in a haunted house and a ghost came out and kept looking at my dick and I was like "hey ghost quit looking at my dick!" and the ghost was like "but it's soooo haaaanddsssooommeeeeeee"

a pretty positive experience

yeah hiv positive lmao

# ? Feb 6, 2014 18:11

Jerry Mumphrey: Mar 11, 2004; by zen death robot
(and can't post for 4 years!)

GrrrlSweatshirt posted:

yeah hiv positive lmao

gently caress. good burn :tipshat:

# ? Feb 6, 2014 18:13

GrrrlSweatshirt: Jun 2, 2012

zoomdog posted:

gently caress. good burn

ty i've been practicing

# ? Feb 6, 2014 18:13

Erghh: Sep 24, 2007; "Let him speak!"

ChuckMaster posted:

I don't like telling this one to people I know, since it either makes them afraid for my safety or sanity, but the goons here might find it interesting.

I live in a duplex with a hard wood floor. It's not a very old house but it creaks all the freakin time. It's two floors, with a basement/garage and an attic too low to stand up in. The weird thing about the attic is that you can only get to it from the closet and through an access panel.

Last year I woke up to a loud noise. Now granted, in my neighborhood people come home at 3 am, party, and to make things worse I can hear my neighbor walking around since the house creaks. So it's usually a loud car door, a door slam, and sometimes the domestic fight. The year before that the other side was broken into, so I was on my guard.

Now normally, I have learned to tune myself out, since often I would get scared, search the house with a weapon, and then feel stupid and paranoid afterwards. Nevertheless, I keep a 45 inside the bed's two small sliding drawers, one side keeping the gun and the other keeping the ammo (I don't load a gun unless I'm using it.)

Well, so I'm wide awake in my bed, and I heard another bang. I turn on my reading light, and then I walk over and turn on my bedroom and hall light on. I peer over the stairs and I just listen. I hear it again, but I'm having trouble pin pointing it. And it's loud enough to cause me concern. So I walk downstairs in my boxers, check the living room door, check the kitchen door, and everything is fine.

I have the dishwasher in front of my kitchen door which blocks it from opening. Rather than pulling that away I flicker the basement light on a few times, figuring that would freak out an intruder. I hear nothing. So as I walk back up stairs I hear it again, but I attribute to my neighbor walking around again.

So as I turn off all but my reading light I hear it loud and clear. It's above me. I then hear slow footsteps moving about, and some small shuffling. I wait for a moment while listening to it, making sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.

I grab my 45 from the head of the bed and push the clip in. I turn on the light again and I open up the closet door and turn it on. The noise continues, but seems startled now since the pacing of the footsteps increase.

I push my clothes aside that are handing and I proceed to tear away the empty boxes I placed in front of the access door (I was meaning to put these in the attic but I got lazy.) My heart is racing, I'm half terrified and half hoping to catch the intruder before he gets away.

I pull open the attic door and reach for the chain light. The light comes on, and I hear footsteps and stumbling on the other side of the attic, opposite of the small staircase.

Now, there still isn't a lot of light in the attic with the naked bulb, so I reach outside the closet and grab a flashlight I had on a small dresser. I crawl onto the shelf that the boxes were on and shine the flashlight in the direction of the noises, while keeping me safely hidden in the staircase. The noises continue as I blindly shine it on the far side of the attic. So I slowly crawl on the first step and rise to poke my head above the attic floor.

My flashlight is shining on a white figure. It's skinny and lanky and it's hunched over like an ape. At first I'm thinking it some crack head that crawled on my roof and somehow found a way in my tiny attic but couldn't figure out how to get out. So I yell at the guy, asking him how he got in here. He just stares at me with these black eyes. I didn't know if he was naked or just wearing underwear, and at this point I'm just pissed and disgusted. I put the flash light down, figuring the light in his face may be scaring him more than I need to. After that he still isn't moving or talking. So I yell at him again, telling him he needs to get the gently caress out of here.

Well, the white figure stands up, as much as he could in that little space, and strikes a pose that reminds me of a bull about to charge. I can hear the joists creak as he shifts his weight.

I chamber the gun and point it just below his feet. I'm doing my best to breathe slowly to keep myself calm. I tell him he needs to sit down and tell me how he got in or how he plans on getting the hell out of here. I tell him I have a loaded 45 on him and he'd better sit down.

He starts making slow strides towards me. He takes about two steps, each one creaking the floor boards, exaggerating each sound. I start to squeeze the trigger and I am damning the slow trigger pull on this cheap browning knock-off. He takes a third step, he's halfway across the attic, and I'm aiming at his legs. The gun finally goes off.

Now there is a loud band, the shell ejects and bounces off my face, slightly burning me, and the attic fills with dust. My hearing goes away for a moment and I can smell the gun powder.

A moment later the dust starts to clear, but there's now a white cloud where the figure was, and that clears away as well. At first I think I'm seeing things or going crazy, but I'm alone in the attic and I just fired a gun in a residential neighborhood. I uncock the gun and set it down. I pick up the flashlight and check every corner of the attic. I don't see a drat thing. I check the small window above me, but it's intact. There seems to be no way in or out other than the stairwell I'm standing in which I had to clear crap out of my closet to get to. I walk over to where the white figure was standing. I look down and I see black footprints on the joists. I trace the prints and see that they seemed to have moved back and forth the attic several times. There were even prints on the stairs.

I peer down at one and poke it. They're made of some soft, black mud and the smell like poo poo. I look down at myself and I seemed to have kneeled in it when I was on the stairs and didn't notice until now. So leave the attic and head to the bathroom to clean up, I'm still in disbelief of everything that had just happened. Then the front door starts pounding.

It's the police and they're pissed. My neighbor called them when she heard the shot. I let them in, and there are three of them. I tell them I saw an intruder, shot at him, and tell them where the gun is and how many rounds are still left. So they sit me down on the couch and two go to check upstairs. This takes them maybe ten minutes. I can hear them muttering amongst themselves and they don't sound happy. They come back down and start drilling me to go over my story several times. I mention the foot prints, and they said they say them, but if someone was in the attic they're gone now. Then they start asking if I've been drinking or on drugs or medication. I tell them no, and that I'm drug tested at work.

So they have a pow-wow outside with one babysitting me inside. I can see a few neighbors trying to peak into the open front door from across the street. I'm tired, pissed and embarrassed as all hell. I'm in my drat underwear with a tiny burn on my face and poo poo smeared on my legs that's half washed off.

So one sergeant comes in, gives me a speech about gun safety and how I could have hurt someone, and tells me they're going to call me to come to court and issue a citation. They don't leave until I give them a trigger lock to put on the gun and close it in its case.

So I'm awake the rest of the night. In the morning I check out the attic again. The foot prints are still there but the wood has absorbed most of it. I look at the window again and wonder if there was any possible way anyone could have got through it. I take one last look and I notice something in the corner. There is the skeleton of a rat or other small rodent. Its head is crushed and its back legs are torn off. There are some tiny bits of rotted fur or flesh around it.

I reluctantly clean it up.
So a year later, the cops never called me back, and I'm moving out of that place.

tldr; guns cure ghost

# ? Feb 6, 2014 19:43

Rime: Nov 2, 2011; by Games Forum

Did a mod move this thread back to GBS 1.4 to die? I thought it was going to be put in PYF or somewhere else in order to avoid the /b/tards?

# ? Feb 11, 2014 01:33

Pimpcasso: Mar 13, 2002; VOLS BITCH

you are a goddamn moron or hosed in the head if you think you really saw a ghost hth

# ? Feb 11, 2014 01:56

Cucking Mama: Sep 27, 2013; Gold Medalist, 2014 shit post olympics

Daedra posted:

you are a goddamn moron or hosed in the head if you think you really saw a ghost hth

# ? Feb 11, 2014 02:00

Missing Name: Jan 5, 2013

Rime posted:

Did a mod move this thread back to GBS 1.4 to die? I thought it was going to be put in PYF or somewhere else in order to avoid the /b/tards?

I decided to experiment and spook up GBS. I think it's been somewhat of a failure so far.

Hazo posted:

Here are Onic's ~~corn crib~~ stories. edit: Not the corn crib ones, these are the ones I remember from him though. You sure it was Onic?

Yeah, it was him. His stories are just scattered about pretty drat well. Here's the link to the 2012 content.

Daedra posted:

you are a goddamn moron or hosed in the head if you think you really saw a ghost hth

I'll bring it up with my shrink.

# ? Feb 11, 2014 02:56

Sid Delicious: Oct 31, 2007

THIS IS THE STORY OF A DAY WHERE THERE WAS ALL THIS BLOOD. A MAN WAS WALKING AROUND AND BLOOD STARTED COMING OUT OF HIM EVERYWHERE. THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOOD THAT IT FILLED UP AN ELEVATOR. HE WENT TO THE STORE AND THERE WAS JUST BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE! PEOPLE WERE SLIPPING IN IT AND THEY WERE ALL GROSSED OUT. HE TRIED TO GO SWIMMING AND ALL OF THE SHARKS WENT NUTS AND BITTENED EVERYBODY. HE GOT CHASED BY ALL THE VAMPIRES EVER. ONE TIME THE BLOOD GOT A KID AND A DOG. AT THE END OF THE DAY EVERYONE DECIDED THEY WOULD SEND HIM TO SPACE SO THAT HE WOULD STOP GETTING BLOOD EVERY WHERE. THE SCARIEST PART IS THAT THE MAN WAS YOU!!! (OR HE WAS A LADY IF YOU ARE A LADY) AND YOU FORGOT THAT THIS HAPPENED

# ? Feb 11, 2014 03:00

Dropbear: Jul 26, 2007; Bombs away!

Missing Name posted:

I decided to experiment and spook up GBS. I think it's been somewhat of a failure so far.

Yeah, I think it'd be a good idea to make a new thread to PYF since GBS seems to have degenerated to 4chan-levels. In every previous thread there's been a bunch of people who have joined SA just for these stories and this shitflinging isn't going to continue that, quite the opposite.

# ? Feb 11, 2014 11:16

circ dick soleil: Sep 27, 2012; by zen death robot

there is a ghost that lives above my ceiling in the attic and he makes scratching noises at night

# ? Feb 11, 2014 11:51

circ dick soleil: Sep 27, 2012; by zen death robot

Sid Vicious posted:

THIS IS THE STORY OF A DAY WHERE THERE WAS ALL THIS BLOOD. A MAN WAS WALKING AROUND AND BLOOD STARTED COMING OUT OF HIM EVERYWHERE. THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOOD THAT IT FILLED UP AN ELEVATOR. HE WENT TO THE STORE AND THERE WAS JUST BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE! PEOPLE WERE SLIPPING IN IT AND THEY WERE ALL GROSSED OUT. HE TRIED TO GO SWIMMING AND ALL OF THE SHARKS WENT NUTS AND BITTENED EVERYBODY. HE GOT CHASED BY ALL THE VAMPIRES EVER. ONE TIME THE BLOOD GOT A KID AND A DOG. AT THE END OF THE DAY EVERYONE DECIDED THEY WOULD SEND HIM TO SPACE SO THAT HE WOULD STOP GETTING BLOOD EVERY WHERE. THE SCARIEST PART IS THAT THE MAN WAS YOU!!! (OR HE WAS A LADY IF YOU ARE A LADY) AND YOU FORGOT THAT THIS HAPPENED

holy poo poo!

# ? Feb 11, 2014 11:52

Crewmine: Apr 26, 2012

GHOSTS AREN'T REAL, THEY AREN'T RE*is dragged from room by invisible force*

# ? Feb 11, 2014 11:59

Avshalom: Feb 14, 2012; by Lowtax

Dropbear posted:

Yeah, I think it'd be a good idea to make a new thread to PYF since GBS seems to have degenerated to 4chan-levels. In every previous thread there's been a bunch of people who have joined SA just for these stories and this shitflinging isn't going to continue that, quite the opposite.

lmao you sex bird :dong:

# ? Feb 11, 2014 12:03

MegaGatts: Dec 12, 2004; The Enteroctopus dofleini, also known as the giant Pacific octopus (GPO) or North Pacific giant octopus, is a large marine cephalopod belonging to the phylum Mollusca and is tripping balls.

Stop dick loving around and post some stories dawgs.

The Midwest.

The midwest is a region that conjures nothing to the imagination if you haven't lived in it. To those who have, it's true most is forgettable; a yard stick of strip malls and recycled culture from the coasts, the woods stand out. The dark living feel of the ground after a spring rain or the wet summer air clinging to every pore are impossible to forget. This story, however, was told to me about the winter. One January morning a hunter, or rather poacher if you want to get technical turned down a old gravel road. A sheet of snow covered the ice, potted with the red iron clay of the road bed. When I asked why a person would be out in those conditions it was explained to me that the worse the day the less likely you are to run into forest rangers on state land or shotgun packing property owners. The half ton truck skidded along, all four wheels struggled to grip, turn, and spin against the ice. It was slow going, but the hunter managed to park on a small embankment, it was nothing more than a bare patch about a carlength long and a few yards wide.

The poacher opened his door and felt his feet sink with a dull crunch into a foot of fresh fallen snow. His mind was fixated, a mounted head can bring hundreds of dollars, more if it's a high point buck. He liked what he saw when his eyes covered the area, blackberry bushes clung around the north side of the road and black cherry trees mixed. He knew this could be a potential gold mine and reckoned even if he didn't get a head today he'd be sure to find some well worn paths in the snow that would yield fruit later. A cold wind reaped from the north, harvesting any warmth exposed. Steeled, the poacher drew the strings of his heavy coat's hood tight and produced a 30.06 from the truck's cab. Up close the camo of the jacket seemed nothing more than a joke, a garish clash of dark green and black against the backdrop of ivory powder. As he moved away from the truck the illusion took shape and it started to become indistinguishable from the dark outcrops of the bare trees, limbs stretched skyward like the hands of skeletons. The last thing seen from the truck was a faint glimmer as the sun reflected from the scope of his rifle.

The hunter made a long circuit before working his way back toward the truck. At some point the north wind must have gotten to intense for confront or maybe he just figured luck wasn't with him that day. Regardless the dark figure came marching out of the woods. Puffs of steam flashing out of him like a locomotive. Each step toward the vehicle exaggerated as he had to raise his knees nearly chest high to trudge through the snow. The sun had moved considerably, not quite dusk, but getting darker, the sky began to change; frozen blue into a faded yellow. The poacher's legs dragged, body visibly exhausted as he approached, rifle held in the right hand by the butt, the barrel propped against his shoulder as a solider would.

I was told he had just awoken from the back of the cab. That on normal circumstances he would go with his father to help field dress the head. That day he was ordered just to stay in the cab, that his short little legs would just slow him down. He guessed he'd been asleep for four or five hours, and was glad just to see his dad coming back. Even protected from the wind it had to be in the negatives inside the truck. He remembered not being able to feel his thighs despite the heavy pants he was wearing. He was just excited to get the engine purring and some heat flowing.

All of that was chased from his mind with the smallest of glances. His mind wandered for a moment, he was curious how far his dad must have walked and his eyes darted to the foot prints as they led from the truck, they wove a line north with an acute angle at each black cherry or black berry bush. It was the small observations he made first, the scouting of the food trees, distance at it faded into the horizon, but after a brief instant his mind froze. The foot prints of his father's boots were spaced roughly every couple feet, his size 11 imprinting the snow with the proof of his passage, but behind each boot print a large indentation resided. He told me they had to be two feet if they were an inch following the exact route of the poacher's.

He remembered screaming, struggling with the seat to get into the front of the cab. As he fought to climb over the seat he felt his head jerk back, the hood of his jacket had become caught on the gun rack that adorned the rear window. It didn't take more than a couple seconds to free his clothing, but he said it moved in slow motion. In the distance, he saw his father stop, if from seeing the terror in his son's face contorted in the truck, a noise from behind, or maybe just sheer exhaustion he could not say. A hand pierced the hunter's belly from behind as easily if it reached through an open window. The snow around his feet started to drink the red pouring from his body.

The world sat silent for half an instant then the body fell to its knees. He didn't have time to feel shock, as the body's head fell toward the snow a face peered out from behind. A red face bordered by course white hair, teeth like a thousand needles, a nose like a bull's nose was revealed as the life blood of the poacher dripped to the ground. It's eyes, dark red and filled with hatred, fixated at the truck, and its legs made gigantic strides towards it. Its body a blinding swirl of thrashing limbs and droplets of red from the belly of the hunter surged forward.

He remembered the eyes most vividly, like drops of lava red fire caked with dark black cracks. He pulled with all of his strength and the rack sprung from the rear window with a crash. He fumbled with keyes still left in the ignition. The engine roared to life and they eyes moved closer still, hundreds of teeth chomping at the air, a monstrous black tongue darting in and out from between the rows of razors. He struggled putting it in gear, he remembered managing to get it on low gear and flooring it. He felt his heart sink as the wheels spun against the ice, the thing became clearer as it approached. He could see a coat of matted hair blanketing its body, rusty stains clinging in patches, its left arm painted red. Hands with long, thin fingers capped in dagger like claws. He finally locked eyes with the beast, in moments it would come shattering through the window, and he say the thing's eyes open wide and mouth curl into a toothy grin. Then the truck lurched and yanked itself free. Speeding away, sliding nearly off the road at every curve.

He told me he finally crashed out highway O, a patrol car spotted him late that night. After hearing his story they conducted a search. No body was found and he spent the next few years in a therapy until he made up a story about how his father had just left him alone in the truck and never came back. It's easier for people to think he just abandoned his family, but he told me he still knew the truth. He told me if I ever wanted to know the truth to find a road flanked with black berry and wade into a deep snow.

# ? Feb 11, 2014 13:11

Stick Figure Mafia: Dec 11, 2004

circ dick soleil posted:

there is a ghost that lives above my ceiling in the attic and he makes scratching noises at night

# ? Feb 11, 2014 13:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 22:13

Missing Name: Jan 5, 2013

Dropbear posted:

Yeah, I think it'd be a good idea to make a new thread to PYF since GBS seems to have degenerated to 4chan-levels. In every previous thread there's been a bunch of people who have joined SA just for these stories and this shitflinging isn't going to continue that, quite the opposite.

Welcome to PYF, thank Noni.

# ? Feb 11, 2014 15:15

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > The 2014 Ghost Story Thread

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