The 2014 Ghost Story Thread

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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

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:38

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

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
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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

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Thanks Noni. Shame GBS got to that point, these were always really popular threads but there's just too many FYAD-reject assholes in there now diluting the signal-to-noise ratio for the thread to get going. I know it's PYF but hopefully we can still get original content.

SUPER NEAT TOY posted:

Haha holy poo poo is that really how bad GBS has gotten? Jesus it's a horror story in itself.

Where are the 50FA and whatever goon writes the Scooby stories writing their stuff? Was it in this or the seasonal thread?

I think Ant moved his stories to CC because people complained how they were so long and purely fictional.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2014 19:43

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I'm still going through old ghost story threads and this is another short story that was requested year after year. "The Patch," by Darth Tang, copied from the original post:

---

Frankly, I do not expect this to be believed. But I'm going to tell it anyway, simply because its been weighing upon my mind lately. I ran into Flash last weekend, who was back in town, and he spoke to me about it.

Knowledge of the physical environment is essential to an LEO in Patrol. It is one reason why seniority counts for a great deal in this line of work-the longer you work a given juridiction, the better you know it. And locals who become police officers quickly learn that growing up in an area does not mean you truely know it.

Part of it, is that an LEO, unlike most people, has no perception of private or personal space. We can go anywhere, given correct circumstances. And because of that, a great deal of 'idle time' or 'routine patrol' is spent exploring. Can you get a patrol car through the gap in this fence? Where does that track lead? Is there a way to get from this parking lot to another? If you walk this easement or power-line access, what will you see?

This is essential, because at some point this knowledge can mean shaving thirty seconds off a response time, or catching a fleeing subject.

In every police jurisdiction of any size, in my experience, there is always at least one strange place. Not the spots you take rookies and play Find the Mud Hole, or the crime scenes you use to scare Explorers, but the real thing. The places that nobody talks about much. The places you don't find out about until you have to go there. The places you go to only if you have to.

We have a place that is sometimes called the Patch. Its about thirty-five acres of very broken ground covered in scrub oak on the edge of town, completely isolated from everywhere else, out beyond an old brick plant that now makes clay pots. Nothing, as far as I can tell, have ever been built there, nor is it really good for anything. Its at the base of the tall ridge that currently marks the west boundry of our burg, cut by numerous gullies, and whose red-clay soil is about useless from growng anything.

The City seized it for taxes back in 1932 from a land company; it was listed as 'waste land' (no commercial use) back then.

Its really a strange place. I've been on search teams across it six times in eleven years, and every time I've been on it, it creeps me out. It gave me the willies when I first explored it shortly after being cut loose on my own; you can't get a car very deep into it, and frankly, a short walk on foot into it gave me such a bad feeling I never went back without a reason. It wasn't until about eighteen months later that I learned that I was not alone in my reaction to the place.

One factual thing that bothers me about the place, is that I get lost in it. I have, since I was old enough to think about such things, an unerring instinct about the direction north. I can always find it. Night time, snowstorms, forest, whatever; give me a few seconds to concentrate, and I know which direction north is. Even the desert, which screws many people up, never bothered me. And the Army taught me land nav to a fine degree; I've run compass courses with multiple dog-legs and hit my target location every time, even on featureless terrtain such at Fort Hood, where one bit of scrub is identical to every other bit.

But every time I've been in the Patch, I've gotten turned around. In broad daylight, with a ridgeline a quarter-mile away that is only a couple degrees off a true north-south axis. After the first search, I started taking a compass with me.

Near the center of the Patch is a structure we call the Playhouse. Its a building made out of sheets of old galvanized tin nailed to thick posts and four-by fours, with a dirt floor. We call it the Playhouse because there is absolutely no rationale for its positioning or design; firstly, you can't get a vehicle larger than an ATV or dirt bike to it due to washouts and gullies; maybe a jacked-up 4x4 if it was dry and you really did not care about your paint job.

Secondly, because the place is big (about 3000 square feet, as near as we can tell), but has no purpose. There's no animal pens near it, nothing; just a wood framework with tin nailed to it, no tar on the roof-seams, no doors (but several door-way sized openings), no windows at all. Inside its split into at least a dozen 'rooms' by either more tin sheets, or partitions made out of old packing crates from the railroad. Some of the rooms are completely isolated from the exterior walls.

There is no logic or reason to how the rooms are laid out; several have openings that are barely 3' high. It reminds you of how kids put together a fort or treehouse.

Except that this one has cut-down telephone poles for roof supports set several feet into the ground. Whatever else you can say about it, someone built it to last.

There no junk or litter about the PH, and no grafftti; while its not very obvious, its been there since before the City seized the place, and with all the generations of kids, you would expect some beer-drinking, ghost-hunting, or general spray-can antics.

Nor is there any sign of animals taking advantage of the shelter, nor have I seen any bird's nests, although hornet's nests and mud daubers are present.

And it smells odd. That's all I can say about it: it smells different than what I think it should. This has been commented on by others, as well. No specific odor. Just odd.

And flashlights fail in it. Yes, flashlights fail everywhere, but flashlights seem to fail a lot more in it than anywhere else. $70 Streamlight Stingers that are City-issue and have reliable rechargeable batteries go abruptly dead in there. And not in the usual fashion, the light going yellow for twenty minutes, getting dimmer and dimmer until they just fade away; rather, going from hard white light to dead in a minute's span. When you carry the same light every day for years, you know its battery in detail. Yet many of us have been caught by an unexpected dead battery in the Playhouse.

Some time in the past, we were searching for a missing girl. It was likely that she had been carried off by a recent high water after massive cloud burst (10" in ten hours), but foul play was also a possibility, for reasons best unrelated. A search was mounted. I was tasked with taking two officers and checking the area around the old brick plant and the Patch.

I had two veteran officers, both entry team members and well-known to me; call them MD and Flash. They readily accepted my suggestion that we change into tactical gear in order to protect our uniforms from the brush; to be frank, I was less concerned with the brush, than for having an excuse to bring my MP-5 along. I wasn't alone in that, as unbidden, both Flash & MD got their shotguns out of the arms room. Flash had a 14" pump, and MD a Benneli semi-auto.

We searched the Patch first; and although all three of us were carefully keeping track of where we were in a place we had all been in before, we managed to get well and truely turned around twice in the space of ninety minutes.

It took us a lot longer than it should have to search the area, because frankly, we weren't splitting up. At all. Anywhere else, we would have been twenty to thirty feet apart walking on line. Here, we stuck together. We had been on other search teams which had gotten got hopelessly jumbled and separated in the Patch before.

It was late afternoon when we went to the Playhouse. The sky was completely overcast, the color of lead. The ground was muddy, everything was wet, and there was a cold breeze out of the north. To say it was a miserable day was an understatement.

We circled the Playhouse, looking for footprints, and found nothing. However, drainage was such that it was possible that they could have been washed away, so a search was nessessary.

Inside, there were no gaps in the ceiling to speak of, and very few in the walls; the gray daylight hardly made its presence known through what gaps there were, although the dull light through nail holes made you think (unpleasently) of animal eyes in the night.

I led the way in. Twenty feet in a portable metal detector (a wand type used to check for weapons) that Flash was carrying suddenly started beeping, and did not stop until he pulled the battery pack; he swore it had been turned off the whole time he had been out. Later, at the PD, it worked perfectly.

We were clearing the place like a hostile building, rather than a seach; we had not talked about it, but all three of us were on edge. Very much so. The place smelled very wrong; not a smell of anything in particular, just not the way such a place should smell. I can't explain it any way better than that.

I was on one knee checking out a closet sized-'room' when abruptly the light on my MP-5 died, going from white & bright to dead in a couple seconds. Flash took point and MD center while I tagged along and switched batteries (I had a couple full-charged spares on me, as well as two more flashlights and some cylumes).

A minute or so later Flash's light died the same way, and he dropped to the rear to change out, while MD and I moved up a place. We stopped at that point, and we heard something. Flash muttered 'What was that?' and we all listened carefully.

It was coming from ahead and to our right; we did not speak at the time, of course, but later, we never agreed on what it sounded like. To me, it had sounded like a sick cat might sound as it whimpers.

We moved forward towards the noise, and came to a largeish room which had the exterior wall on one side. MD made entry, and at that exact moment his flashlight died. He immedately side-stepped and dropped to one knee; I moved in and past him along the wall as Flash slid along the wall on the opposite side of the 'doorway'.

Flash was to the left of the 'doorway', MD was right, kneeling, and I was about two feet to MD's right . The room was about twenty by eleven, with us at the narrow side.

And something moved in the far right corner. Flash hit it with his light a second before I did; I remember MD yelling, and then both fired.

To this day, I swear I saw a big dark dog, I mean large, 150+lbs, bull mastiff-sized, in Flash's light, moving fast.

I fired, three-round burst, and then kept firing as MD and Flash pounded away. Both went empty and yelled that they were withdrawing (team procedure), and I fired to cover them as I backed out last.

After the first burst, I couldn't see much for the muzzle flash, so I just ripped up the corner with three-round bursts. I fired off the full thirty-round mag.

In retrospect, I can not explain why I fired thirty rounds at a dog. There was no valid reason to simply hose it down; nor for Flash and MD to blaze away like we had. Nerves, is the only explanation I can offer. All I can say is that that encounter was quite simply the most stressful incident I have ever had, bar none.

In the second room, we reloaded, and MD switched out batteries. Then we re-entered the long room.

There was no dog. No body. No blood. Zip.

None of us decribed what we saw the same way. Flash was extremely reluctant to describe what he saw at all.

But there are a couple facts: all three saw a target 'in motion'. Despite the fact that we all perceived it as being in motion, we all saw it in a corner, and never shifted our point of aim, despite the fact that we all trained regularly on moving targets, MD & Flash were hunters (I shoot lots of moving varmits), I served in military actions, and both Flash and I had been in fatal police shootings.

And we had twelve 12 gauge 3" magnum hulls and 30 expended 9mm brass. Thirty bullets and 108 000 pellets were fired at a specific area, in this case an area consisting of a dirt floor and tin walls. All three of us were classified as expert shots.

No matter how closely we, nor the two investigators who came out later, looked, we could find no hits on the floor, and only 23 projectile penetrations in the tin walls. Out of 138 projectiles fired (000 pellets are 0.36" in diameter steel balls; 9mm bullets are roughly 0.38), 105 remain unaccounted for. The 23 holes we found were concentrated in the target corner; 9 to the left, 14 to the right of the corner, with the two groups 22" apart at the closest.

As if something solid between the two groups had soaked up the missing rounds.

The dept wrote the incident off as an 'accidental discharge'.

The girl was eventually found elsewhere.

Flash, MD, and I never realy talked about the indicent except indirectly. All three admitted having felt more stress than before or since.

None of the three of us have been to the Patch since. Both MD and Flash have moved on to other agencies for unrelated reasons.

Thats all there is to it.

(In response to questions in the thread)

I feel better for the input. This is one story that doesn't get told around the station; in fact, aside from my wife, I've never told the entire story before.

teucer, I told the others what I saw; MD shook his head and said it was leaner and longer; Flash flatly refused to say what he saw, then later said it was a dog and left it at that. He was the worst-shaken of all of us (not that MD or I were all that steady at that point), and he normally has nerves of steel.

WingedCoyote, that was one of the creepier things, later on: when we tried to explain the whole matter (and a firefight is not a joking matter to the police, no matter that no one got hurt), the administration members we were dealing with, who have been LEOs here for 40+ and 30+ years respectively, nodded, asked few questions, and let the matter drop.

---

(Darth Tang wrote a follow up which those with archives can read here if you want the story speculated upon.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 05:27

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

It's actually popped up a few times in past SA ghost story threads. Here's the version I've seen repeated:

I don't really know what I'd call this story if I was submitting it for publication in Fate or something of its ilk. "Brian vs. the Evil, Black-eyed, Possibly Vampiric or Demonic But At Least Not Bloody Normal Kids" doesn't have much of a ring to it. (Shrug.)

But that's at least an accurate title.

As so many things do, it all started out innocently.

My Internet Service Provider used to have offices in a shopping center before they moved to their (comparatively) lush accommodations elsewhere. There was a drop box at that original location. The monthly bill was due, and thus, there but for the Grace of the Net I went.

It was about 9:30 p.m. when I left. From my relatively isolated apartments, it's about 10-15 minutes or so to downtown (Abilene has a population of about 110,000).

Right next to Camalott Communications' old location is a $1.50 movie theater. At the time, the place was featuring that masterwork of modern film, Mortal Kombat. I drove by the theater on the way into the center proper and pulled into an empty parking space.

Using the glow of the marquee to write out my check, I was startled to hear a knock on the driver's-side window of my car.

I looked over and saw two children staring at me from street. I need to describe them, with the one feature (you can guess what it was) that I didn't realize until about half-way through the conversation cleverly omitted.

Both appeared to be in that semi-mystical stage of life children get into where you can't exactly tell their age. Both were boys, and my initial impression is that they were somewhere between 10-14.

Boy No. 1 was the spokesman. Boy No. 2 didn't speak during the entire conversation -- at least not in words.

Boy No. 1 was slightly taller than his companion, wearing a pull-over, hooded shirt with a sort of gray checked pattern and jeans. I couldn't see his shoes. His skin was olive-colored and had curly, medium-length brown hair. He exuded an air of quiet confidence.

Boy No. 2 had pale skin with a trace of freckles. His primary characteristic seemed to be looking around nervously. He was dressed in a similar manner to his companion, but his pull-over was a light green color. His hair was a sort of pale orange.

They didn't appear to be related, at least directly.

"Oh, great," I thought. "They're gonna hit me up for money." And then the air changed.

I've explained this before, but for the benefit of any new lurkers out there, right before I experience something strange, there's a change in perception that comes about which I describe in the above manner. It's basically enough time to know it's too late.

So, there I was, filling out a check in my car (which was still running) and in a sudden panic over the appearance of two little boys. I was confused, but an overwhelming sense of fear and unearthliness rushed in nonetheless.

The spokesman smiled, and the sight for some inexplicable reason chilled my blood. I could feel fight-or-flight responses kicking in. Something, I knew instinctually, was not right, but I didn't know what it could possibly be.

I rolled down the window very, very slightly and asked "Yes?"

The spokesman smiled again, broader this time. His teeth were very, very white.

"Hey, mister, what's up? We have a problem," he said. His voice was that of a young man, but his diction, quiet calm and ... something I still couldn't put my finger on ... made my desire to flee even greater. "You see, my friend and I want to see the films, but we forgot our money," he continued. "We need to go to our house to get it. Want to help us out?"

Okay. Journalists are required to talk to lots of people, and that includes children. I've seen and spoken to lots of them. Here's how that usually goes:

"Uh ... M ... M ... Mister? Can I see that camera? I ... I won't break it or anything. I promise. My dad has a camera, and he lets me hold it sometimes, I guess, and I took a picture of my dog -- it wasn's very good, 'cause I got my finger in the way and ..."

Add in some feet shuffling and/or body swaying and you've got a typical kid talking to a stranger.

In short, they're usually apologetic. People generally teach children that when they talk to adults, they're usually bothering them for one reason or another and they should at least be polite.

This kid was in no way fitting the mold. His command of language was incredible and he showed no signs of fear. He spoke as if my help was a foregone conclusion. When he grinned, it was as if he was trying to say, "I know something ... and you're NOT gonna like it. But the only way you're going to find out what it is will be to do what I say ..."

"Uh, well ..." was the best reply I could offer.

Now here's where it starts to get strange.

The quiet companion looked at the spokesman with a mixture of confusion and guilt on his face. He seemed in some ways shocked, not with his friend's brusque manner but that I didn't just immediately open the door.

He eyed me nervously.

The spokesman seemed a bit perturbed, too. I still was registering something wrong with both.

"C'mon, mister," the spokesman said again, smooth as silk. Car salesmen could learn something from this kid. "Now, we just want to go to our house. And we're just two little boys."

That really scared me. Something in the tone and diction again sent off alarm bells. My mind was frantically trying to process what it was perceiving about the two figures that was "wrong."

"Eh. Um ...." was all I could manage. I felt myself digging my fingernails into the steering wheel.

"What movie were you going to see?" I asked finally.

"Mortal Kombat, of course," the spokesman said. The silent one nodded in affirmation, standing a few paces behind.

"Oh," I said. I stole a quick glance at the marquee and at the clock in my car. Mortal Kombat had been playing for an hour, the last showing of the evening.

The silent one looked increasingly nervous. I think he saw my glances and suspected that I might be detecting something was not above-board.

"C'mon, mister. Let us in. We can't get in your car until you do, you know," the spokesman said soothingly. "Just let us in, and we'll be gone before you know it. We'll go to our mother's house."

We locked eyes.

To my horror, I realized my hand had strayed toward the door lock (which was engaged) and was in the process of opening it. I pulled it away, probably a bit too violently. But it did force me to look away from the children.

I turned back. "Er ... Um ...," I offered weakly and then my mind snapped into sharp focus.

For the first time, I noticed their eyes.

They were coal black. No pupil. No iris. Just two staring orbs reflecting the red and white light of the marquee.

At that point, I know my expression betrayed me. The silent one had a look of horror on his face in a combination that seemed to indicate: A) The impossible had just happened and B) "We've been found out!"

The spokesman, on the other hand, wore a mask of anger. His eyes glittered brightly in the half-light.

"Cmon, mister," he said. "We won't hurt you. You have to LET US IN. We don't have a gun ..."

That last statement scared the living hell out of me, because at that point by his tone he was plainly saying, "We don't NEED a gun."

He noticed my hand shooting down toward the gear shift. The spokesman's final words contained an anger that was complete and whole, and yet contained in some respects a tone of panic:

"WE CAN'T COME IN UNLESS YOU TELL US IT'S OKAY. LET ... US .... IN!"

I ripped the car into reverse (thank goodness no one was coming up behind me) and tore out of the parking lot. I noticed the boys in my peripheral vision, and I stole a quick glance back.

They were gone. The sidewalk by the theater was deserted.

I drove home in a heightened state of panic. Had anyone attempted to stop me, I would have run on through and faced the consequences later.

I bolted into my house, scanning all around -- including the sky.

What did I see? Maybe nothing more than some kids looking for a ride.

And some really funky contacts. Yeah, right.

A friend suggested they were vampires, what with the old "let us in" bit and my compelled response to open the door. That and the "we'll go see our mother" thing.

I'm still not sure what they were, but here's an epilogue I find chilling:

I talk about Chad a lot. He's still my best friend, my best ghost-hunting companion and an all-around cool guy. He recently moved to Amarillo, but at the time this happened was still living in San Angelo of Ram Page fame.

I called him and talked to him briefly. He had two female friends with him at the time, both professing some type of psychic ability.

I started telling him the story, leaving out the part about the black eyes for the kicker. One of the women (we were on a speakerphone) stopped me.

"These children had black eyes, right?" she asked. "I mean, all-black eyes?"

"Er ... Yes." I said. I was a bit taken aback.

"Hmmm," she said. "One night last week, I had a dream about children with black eyes. They were outside my house, wanting to be let in, but there was something wrong with them. It took me a while to realize it was the eyes."

I hadn't even gotten as far as them wanting to come in.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I kept the doors and windows locked," she said. "I knew if they came in, they would kill me."

She paused.

"And they would have killed you, too, if you had let them into your car."

So, from this extra-long post, we have three unanswered questions:

A) What did I see?

B) What would have happened if I opened my car door?

C) Why does Chad always get the cool psychic chicks?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 05:13

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I'm rereading the 2007 Spring thread and came across this one. Not overly scary but I enjoy the setting. I always wondered where the actual location was, sounds like a cool thing to check out on Google Earth. Unfortunately cardinalpuck hasn't posted since 2008 so there's no way of finding out, if it's even real at all.

-------

Okay, I'll post these as I edit them and double-check facts with my friend.

I�ve posted in these threads before a few experiences I�ve had in a haunted theatre, but there have been enough requests for me to post the whole story that I�m finally going to do it. A friend and I wrote this out so we could put some sort of capstone on our experiences, to chronicle in our small way the events that we witnessed and lived with for the year and a half the Rambledown Theatre was open.

Rambledown is not the real name of the business, but it does bear some resemblance to the actual name. I�m not going to include any place names and I�ll do my best to keep the location secret, because my friend and I truly believe that it would be a very bad idea to go back there today. I didn�t mean to fictionalize this story at all, and everything is just about exact to my memory, but the only way I could write it out was to write it as a story. To make it seem like it happened to a character, not me. I assure you though that everything I wrote about really happened, the Rambledown did exist, and so did all the people. I guess I hope you can get some enjoyment out of it, as it really does make a good story. Anyway, here it is.

Chapter One: Exposition

It�s been about three years since I�ve even set foot in the same state as the theatre, but I still get chills when I think about some of the things that I or others saw in the short time it was open. The Rambledown Theatre was a sprawling, three story building that looked like something out of the old west. In fact, it�d been built as a saloon and, as rumor had it, a brothel for the old mining town in which it sat. The mine had dried up, and the town had emptied out, and in the long years since the great western gold rush the buildings had crumbled around the Rambledown until nothing but a few vacant clearings were left to mark the place. The theatre itself, however, survived. Its strong grey stone form had protected it from bullets and fires common in a rowdy cowboy town, and so it protected the Rambledown for the hundred years it sat vacant.

It wasn�t until 1998 that a group of enterprising college friends decided that the untouched valley where the old mining town had once survived, only an hour from what had become a midwestern arts capitol, would make a perfect place for a trendy nightspot and dinner theatre. They bought the land and spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars clearing trees and brush and debris of a century�s neglect in order to make their business adventure a success. They installed fences around the yawning entrance to the old mine. They built a road out of the valley to connect their little slice of paradise with a major highway. Most of all, they refurbished the old saloon, installing plumbing and wires and every modern amenity that would be required. They changed the shape of the building, carving out a grand thrust theatre where brothel rooms used to be. The bar became a lobby and dance floor. They bought DJ equipment, theatre lighting, sparing absolutely no expense. I remember first coming over the lip of the valley and stopping my car to see these massive flood lights sweeping the far cliffs. The valley was really more of a slash in the earth, the walls cut straight down, five hundred foot bluffs that towered very majestically. The depression where the building sat ended in a V, with the mine entrance burrowing deep into the point. The road entered the valley from the other end, carving its way down the steep hill and affording an awesome view to all who entered it.

I was working in a coffee shop and finishing up another year of school when I saw a sign for employment at a new nightspot called the Rambledown Theatre. They were looking for workers of all kind, from actors to bartenders to janitors. I�d always been interested in theatre, and I�d recently become acquainted with booze, so on a whim I called the number and set up an interview. The drive was long and unfamiliar, and I missed the sign a half dozen times before I managed to make the turn into the valley. It was probably twenty miles from the highway, and the small, freshly poured concrete road plunged into a thick wood that blocked out most sunlight for a majority of the drive. You would start to climb a steep hill in your car, gears whirring and car straining until you reached the top of it and suddenly the vast expanse of open space would catch your breath in your throat. The valley was spread out directly ahead, and there were no more trees as far as the eye could see, just dirt and grass and high cliff walls. Night was falling by the time I pulled up in front of the building, all windows blazing with light, and ran up the steps to the lobby doors.

One of the group of businessmen greeted me as soon as I entered. They were doing small group interviews, and he led me to a conference room where five or six other young men were waiting. I sat down and we all smiled nervously. A woman walked in and began to speak to us, explaining with a Power-Point slide show the history and aims of the Rambledown theatre. She spoke at length about high art and culture but all of us could only sit with dollar signs in our eyes. She had promised us each twenty dollars an hour for the first six months, working part time to help the theatre run smoothly. We got a tour of the facilities, everything shining and new, but with the charm of history showing through it all. We were excited.

Professional actors were to be brought in from as far away as New York and Chicago to perform in classic Broadway plays. She promised a full house every night, people eating and laughing in the lobby before the show and paying big money to sleep in one of the fifty suites housed in the building. Dancing, weddings, a nightclub and all of it a near guarantee. It was to be a new kind of theatre, a hidden jewel of culture close enough to draw the public in from the city and others for hundreds of miles around, and we were going to make it all happen.

As we all drove away in the darkness, I stopped at the top of the hill and sat on the roof of my car. The building looked alive, bursting with promise and light from every window. I wouldn�t sleep until I got the phone call that told me I was to work there as the stage manager for the theatre. I would sit up and night thinking about how excited I was, and I would wait. But underneath it all, there was an uneasy feeling about the valley. If the building was a jewel, the valley was coal. As I slid off of my car to start the long drive home, my eyes swept past the Rambledown and fell on a great black hole in the darkness. The mine, I realized. I shivered in spite of myself, watching the pit in my rear view mirror as I drove away.

Chapter Two: The Tour

I dressed up for my first day of work and headed over about two weeks later. There wasn�t any need for me to look nice, it was only training, but I felt like I needed to fit and and make a good impression for my bosses. I drove out and found the turn off without any problem, and when I pulled over the ridge and the building came into to view, I was still awed. In the daylight, I could see that the theatre was surrounded by a dozen little outlying buildings. I assumed that these were the luxury suites we�d been told about. A half-mile from the main complex was the mine entrance, which was surrounded by three layers of chain link fence. We�d been told that the shafts were unstable and dangerous, but plans had been set into motion to turn the twisting tunnels into a restaurant and party room, once the proper stabilization had been completed. For now, though, it was blocked off from the world.

A tall, muscular man met me on the stairs, introducing himself as Jared and giving me a firm, confident handshake. He was about thirty, with dark hair and these blue eyes that were bright and constantly flitting around. This whole project had been his brainchild, he told me.

�I didn�t want to do anything else,� he said, �My great-grandmother used to tell me stories about this town, and for as long as I remember I wanted to come back and do something with this land.�

He and four friends from college, who majored in business, accounting, architecture and theatre, respectively, had banded together to build there dream out in the west, finding the area and buying it from the long-defunct mining company with grant money they�d received their senior year of college.

The man was full of dreams, I could tell, but he also seemed reckless. He�d purchased the area without a moment�s hesitation and was absolutely sure it would make him a millionaire. He asked me what my name was and which job I�d be handling, I told him Cardinalpuck and that I was to be the stage manager. He let out a big laugh and told me he didn�t know a thing about theatre, but would trade me off to Andrea, the theatre major, for the last part of the tour. He rubbed his hands together anxiously and asked me if I was ready to go, I said yes and we started off.

I figured we would head inside through the main doors, but Jared turned and started walking along the side of the building. As we walked around the property I got the sense of how massive it was. The front of the building faced East, towards one of the high cliffs, and stretched out for a long ways. It took us about two minutes to walk from the front door, which just about split the wall in halves, to the Northern corner. He paused to let me catch up when we got there, I was definitely out of shape, and then started walking again. The North wall was half-again as large as the East, with a large deck addition jutting from the second story.

�Its an extension of the ballroom,� he told me, �It doubles the dancing space and has a retractable roof for when the weather is nice.�

We ducked into a maintenance door halfway to the deck.

�This Maintenance tunnel one, this stretches the entire length of the building. Tunnels three and five run parallel to this one, north-south, and tunnels two, four and six intersect it.�

�Did you put these in?� I asked.

�No, these are left over from before. They actually used to flood these tunnels with just a few inches of water, and use sleds to move barrels and supplies from one end of the building to the other.�

�Does that still work?� I asked, curious.

He laughed, �No, all of our supplies are dropped off from a loading dock on the west wall, these tunnels are just open so we can get to the breakers, or pipes if there�s a problem.�

��-

I�m including a sketch of the tunnels and map of the building so you can check back on it later. The building really was massive, and it was easy to get turned around so I can imagine you might get lost in my storytelling. The maps are all orientated with west up, sorry

These are the tunnels, you can see how they run and intersect. Each closed off space is a room, used for breakers, pipes or just storage. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to what was in each room. At the east and west walls of the building, in tunnels 2 and 6, there were stairs leading up. Also on the west wall is a loading bay for supplies, thats the room right above the number 5. These, aside from the one maintenance door on the north wall in tunnel 1, are the only entrances to the basement.

The next is a map of the main floors, which is sort of a split level, with the guest rooms 1-8 and ball room being on the higher portion, and the rest of it at ground level. To reach the ball room and guest rooms, there was a stairway off of the lobby. All the other rooms just had high ceilings to make up for the disparity in space. The space between the ballroom and guest rooms was a low, columned walkway in which we hung art and things from local artists. Sometimes a live band would play here, or we would decorate it with the seasons. The box office was located directly beneath room 2, and there was a large display case of costumes and things from past productions under room 1. Rooms 1 and 2 were both suites.

��-
Jared led me through the tunnels and pointed out rooms of interest, the breaker boxes and the main wet room, where shining new pipes fed the entire building with hot water. We walked up the narrow stairs at the east wall of tunnel 2, and entered into the staff break room, which was already full of workmen and janitors who were resting for lunch.

�The entire building should be up in running by June 1st,� Jared told me, �And we hope to open our first production for the July 4th weekend. Our grand opening will be on the 4th, we bought a fantastic fireworks show.�

He took me through the museum, which chronicled the progression of the area with period pictures and rocks from the mine. At the end of the timeline was a picture of Jared and his four friends, smiling and laughing in front of the rebuilt Rambledown. I smiled to myself as we passed into the kitchens. The fires and stores were mostly empty, with only one lone workman making a sandwich on an aluminum table.

Across from the kitchens was the storage room and maid service for the guest rooms. The last stop had us cut into the lobby and into the food court area. It wasn�t really a food court, but thats what Jared called it and so the name stuck. Here were a dozen tables that could be done up for wedding parties or rehearsal dinners. This was the temporary restaurant while the mine was made safe enough for diners. I asked Jared if we were going to see the ball room, but he said no.

�Thats the last thing to be finished, the workers have to replace the floor and install our lighting, but they should finish by the end of May.�

He brought me back to the lobby and introduced me to Andrea, and pretty, small woman with straight black hair. She was to be the director of all the productions, and hugged me instead of shaking my hand.

I followed her to the box office, where she showed me how to use the ticket printer, in case I ever needed to. Then she unlocked the grand doors to the stage itself. There were seats enough for 350, each covered in dark red satin. The curtains were drawn at the proscenium, but the thrust of the stage extended far into the audience. There were no scuff marks on the black stage, this was virgin territory.

She led me behind the curtain, babbling as she went.

�This has basically been my dream since I was in my first high school production,� she beamed, �To own and run a theatre of my own. I�m bringing down actors from the rep theatre in the city, where I�ve been working for a while now. Oops, watch your step!�

There was a small stair leading down into the recessed shop, where sets were to be built. Past that were the dressing rooms, and past that was the green room, where actors waited for their entrances. It�s important to note now that the green room was installed with a monitor, so that actors could listen for their cues from the stage and know when to enter. Below the monitor was a large screen set into the wall, that was dark for now but would be hooked up to a camera in the technical booth. I thought this all was extremely high tech.

Andrea brought me back to the stage and sat me down in one of the seats.

�We chose you because you�ve got extensive theatre experience, and a basically free schedule,� she said, �You�ll have to be here every night of rehearsal and show, to call cues and help things run smoothly.�

I nodded, I�d done all of this before.

�Okay,� she smiled, hiding her big secret, �I suppose you�re dying to know, our first show, we just got the rights, is�� she waiting for the mental drum-roll, �Oklahoma!�

I barely suppressed a groan.

Andrea took me back up to the lobby and hugged me again. She was really very pretty, if a bit old for me. She told me that when rehearsals started, she would call me, and we could really get down to business. The last three weeks of May were a waiting time, they felt like an inward breath to this era of work and progress that I would enjoy, and get paid to experience. Looking back now, those three weeks were probably more like the calm before a storm, the bright clear sky before a long winter. At the time, however, I was completely oblivious to it all.

Chapter Three: Spotlight

It was mid-June and we were right in the midst of our rehearsal period when I first noticed that something was off with the old building. We had just finished up a choreography rehearsal, and when the last of the cowboys trickled out through the main entrance, Andrea and I stayed behind to lock things up.

I went to clean up the Green Room, just picking things up and moving furniture back in place, (the janitors would deal with the rest in the morning,) when I heard a loud bang from the monitor. I was momentarily surprised, as the monitor really wasn�t being used on a choreography night. The screen was off, but I was still getting clear audio from the speaker.

I did a mental check of what was still left to do. Andrea and I had already walked through the theatre, picking up stray water bottles and candy-wrapper trash that the actors had left, and I thought that she had locked the doors as we left. It was very possible that she had forgotten something and gone back, so I didn�t think much of it.

It wasn�t until the bangs started to repeat themselves in a rhythmic pattern that I started to wonder. I finished pushing a couch back against the wall and walked to the screen and flipped it on. The camera was dark, there were no lights on in the theatre. Hmm, very strange, I thought, and left the screen on as I continued to clean. The bangs sounded very like someone in a heavy boot stomping on a wooden floor. I had just about finished cleaning when Andrea walked in the room and became sort of wide-eyed when she saw me.

�I thought you were on stage,� she told me before her eyes slid to the monitor.

�I thought it was you,� I said, and gave a small shrug.

It was strange, I thought, she really seemed scared. Seeing her sort of shivering as she stared into the screen gave me the first inkling that maybe something really bad was going on. She turned her head to look at me when suddenly a light became visible in the camera. The bangs started to move around, like somebody walking in a circle, and I pointed over her shoulder. One spotlight was on, pointed lazily across the room and illuminated the first row of seats and part of the stage. Andrea and I looked at each other and I shrugged again. There really weren�t any words.

We walked into the hallway and she opened the door of the theatre. When we stepped inside, the banging had stopped. I ran up the stairs to the balcony and hit the off lever on the big spot and the stage plunged into darkness.

�Hey!� I yelled, �I can�t see poo poo!�

Andrea didn�t respond, but a few seconds later the house lights came up and I found my way down the stairs.

�So, what�s the verdict?� I asked.

�I don�t know,� she said, �that was really�weird.�

At our next rehearsal, after Andrea and I did our walkthrough of the seats and stage, I started to head back to the shop area to clean. She held her hand up.

�Wait a minute,� she said, and disappeared into the wings. She came back a minute later with a bare bulb set onto a tall iron stand. �This is,� she started.

�A ghost light.� I finished. I raised an eyebrow. For centuries theaters have traditionally left a lamp burning center stage when the space was left empty. It was to keep ghosts from taking up a home in the theatre that this was done, but the tradition had died out over the last hundred years.

�Ah, we can�t be too careful,� she said, her eyes flicking up to the stage left spotlight.

I watched as she set the light in the middle of the stage and ran a cord to one of the floor-boxes and plugged it in. The little bulb blared to life. I�m wasn�t sure what people would think of an electric ghost light, but I supposed it would have to do.

As we left the stage and started cleaning the Green Room, I flipped on the screen and looked. The little light cast a pale circle into the gloom. I wasn�t sure how it would fare, this little light. I wondered if it could really scare off any ghosts. I chuckled.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 05:37

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Chapter Four: Grand Opening

On July 4th, the Rambledown was packed. Hundreds of people had made the long drive to see the grand opening of this new theatre, and champagne and hors devours were handed out by waiters with big trays. As the fireworks shot off from the high bluff, Andrea and I were busy readying things for our ten o�clock show. Opening night had everyone on edge, but I was doing my best to put everyone at ease.

Mark was a guy a little younger than me who�d been hired as house manager. As a stage manager, I was responsible for everything that happened onstage and backstage, while Mike handled the audience and box office. We were sitting around in the technical booth at the back of the audience, just having a glass of champagne and bullshitting about the upcoming show when Mike brought up the ghost light.

�What�s up with that,� he asked me suspiciously, �You haven�t actually seen any ghosts, have you?�

I laughed, �No, man, it was all Andrea. Something happened that I think spooked her, and she�s pretty superstitious, you know, so-�

�What did you see?� he interrupted.

�Well,� I started, �Nothing, really. We were cleaning and heard some bangs from the stage, and then a spotlight turned on.�

�What?� he exclaimed, �How could you not tell me this?�

�Well, it wasn�t really anything,� I said surprised, �Probably just pipes and wiring. You�ve seen the basement, it�s all messed up down there.�

Mike got really silent for a while and then drained his glass.

�I saw something too.�

I was taken aback, �What?� I asked.

�I saw something. A ghost, I think.�

�You saw a ghost?�

�Well, maybe. I don�t know.�

�When?� I asked him.

�About a week ago. First dress rehearsal. I was walking through the house before the show, you know, making sure there wasn�t anything wrong. Just sort of practicing for tonight,� he looked embarrassed, �I was nervous, I didn�t want to gently caress up and get fired. And as I was walking through section two, stage right, you know, I thought I saw someone peeking out from behind the curtains. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned my head it was gone.�

�It could have been one of the actors.� I stated.

�No, man.� he said, �It was a face, but too-long, you know? It was.. like a horses face. But human. Or not human, I don�t know. It was long, and skinny and grey. And there was a hand, or something. Long spindly finger gripping the curtain, thats what it looked like. And besides that, it was about twenty feet up, near the grid.�

I shook my head. �I don�t know, somebody could have been loving with you.�

�Maybe,� he said, �but I don�t know. All I know is that it gave me a really bad feeling. Shivers up my spine, and everything.�

We sat quietly for a while as I finished my champagne. We let it stew. Our experiences could have been any number of things, no need to jump straight to the supernatural. Mike stood up and patted me on the back, and then went down to manage the house. After all, he was house manager. I sat in the booth alone for a while, looking out over the stage. I shivered. Very weird.

Andrea joined me in the booth, followed by the light and sound guys, and suddenly there was no time to stew about anything. The show went off without any major problem. Curly was late on a cue once, barely, and Andrea cringed. The house was packed, and we made a lot of money. There was a standing ovation. All-in-all, it was a roaring success.

Andrea bought me a dozen roses as a gift for all my help, and I hugged her in thanks. She wasn�t really that much older than me, I thought, less than ten years anyway. I shook my head and smiled, she stared at me for a moment, huge grin on her face, and then disappeared, to find her family and other well-wishers. That left me to take care of things backstage.

I was cleaning the dressing rooms when the lights in the shop flickered off. The shop was at the end of a the long hallway that bordered the dressing rooms and Green Room. I was wiping down the mirror with Windex when I saw the lights flicker out in the mirror, the doorway directly behind me going dark. For some reason I started to shiver, my eyes glued to the doorway, my hand still on the mirror. I felt cold. All I could think of was the thing Mike had seen in the curtain. I waited for long slender fingers to wrap around the edge of the doorway, maybe followed by a long toothy face that slipped out of the darkness with a murderous grin. In my mind it had white eyes and its skin was waxy and sallow, like a corpse left to rot in milk. As I stared into the mirror, I heard a tick-tick-click from the shop. It reverberated in the high empty space and made me think of fingernails. Tick-tick-click, it echoed, tick-tick-click. I suddenly panicked, imagining that ghosts were invisible to mirrors and I spun around. I found myself face to face with a figure that filled the doorway and let out a yelp.

�Hey, man, sorry.� it said.

In the half second it took me to turn and face the door, one of the actors, Brian, had slid into the room. I let out a sigh of relief as he moved to pick up his jacket.

�Forgot my coat,� he smiled, and started to walk away. He stopped. �Are you alright?�

�Yes,� I said, �Yeah. You just scared me.�

He laughed, �The lights turned off by themselves, did you see that?�

I nodded.

�Pretty freaky. Anyway, I�ll see you later. Thanks for a good show.�

�Yeah,� I said, �You too.�

I watched him walk out of the room and pause for a minute to stare into the dark of the shop, and then start to walk away.

�Hey?� I called.

�Yeah?� he said, and appeared in the doorway.

�Wait up, I�ll walk with you.�

�Sure thing,� he said, and I gathered up my things. As we walked down the hallway, away from the shop, we were silent. I tried to listen for the sound I�d heard before, the tick-tick-click, but heard nothing. I shrugged my shoulders hard. I just got spooked. As we hit the door to the columned area beneath the ballroom, I paused.

�Still though�� I said to myself, and stared down the hallway. At the end, against the west wall, the fluorescent lights started to flicker to life. I suppose I should have gone back to turn them off, but I was ready to get the gently caress out of there. I turned to see Brian looking at me.

�You going to get those?� he asked, smirking.

�No,� I said.

He raised an eyebrow at me and made a �tisk-tisk� motion with his finger.

�gently caress you,� I added.

Chapter Five: Things Heat Up

I�m not sure what caused the sudden spike in activity and experiences in the Rambledown, but it was obvious that when the weather started to cool down and we settled in for a long fall something else settled in too. We were on our second show, Oklahoma! had made us a lot of money and performances of Beauty and the Beast were set to begin November 1st.

I�d made a good impression on the five friends who ran the place, and Andrea especially seemed to like having me around, so I�d been hired full time and given a raise. Taking the job had required me to put school on the back burner for the time being, and so I would often sleep at the Rambledown, (as many of the workers did,) because I had no need to drive back to the city. Sleeping in the guest rooms wasn�t allowed, so I would usually crash on a couch in the Green Room, or when things got too hairy on that side of the building, on the floor of the staff lounge.

When I say hairy, I mean that the stage and backstage areas seemed to be a hotbed of creepy-rear end activity. I never saw anything akin to Mike�s grey monster, but I would hear things. Oh boy, would I hear things. It was never so bad when other actors would sleep there, which they did after long rehearsals or in-house cast parties, but when you were alone and huddling under blankets on a couch in the middle of nowhere, your mind seems to play tricks on you.

Once I thought I heard voices over the monitor, which I had definitely switched off. One night the voices persisted so long that I flipped on the screen to reassure myself that the theatre really was empty. Lights would frequently flicker out when people were backstage, and once a room full of actresses had melted into gibbering messes when a voice started whispering �Hey. HEY!� from the dressing room vent.

Jared and his architecture major buddy Jeff were working full speed to improve things in the mine. They�d run into trouble when state laws had forbidden them from serving food in the tunnels, so they�d resigned themselves to building a patio restaurant along the entrance, and turning the caves into a dance-floor and bar.

Andrea was sort of a mess, after a string of scary experiences that left her drained. It was sad to see her looking so drawn, it obscured her pretty face and made her look older, but after what she described I couldn�t really blame her.

Andrea claimed that she�d been locking up one evening when she heard a crash from the booth. She feared that a table had broken and sent the expensive light-board tumbling to the ground, so she quickly unlocked the doors and ran up to see what had happened. When she emerged from the spiral stairs into the booth, she saw a figure sitting in one of the chairs, its feet up, resting on the window. �Hey,� she had yelled nervously, and the figure had spun in its chair, only to disappear.
�It was like something folding into itself,� she�d later told me, �like a piece of paper turning sideways.�

The only reassurance she�d had that she hadn�t imagined the whole thing was the desk chair spinning around on its bearings, lazily sweeping the room.

Myself, I still wasn�t sure that these, dare I say it, ghostly experiences were anything more than pre-show nerves and an old creepy building, but I knew that it was scary to be left alone in the Rambledown, so I spent a lot of my time with Mike or Andrea.

We had our first wedding in mid-October. A pretty young black couple was to be wed in the grand ballroom, and so for a full week every guest room and outlying guest house was rented out. Our cooks worked at full speed, and we were to give a special preview of Beauty and the Beast for the wedding party.

All of us slept in the Green Room mostly every night, the actors for the most part were amateurs, the professionals of the summer had found jobs for the winter months at larger, big-money playhouses, and so that left us to hold open auditions.

It was sort of a bohemian atmosphere that fall, there was nary a day without at least a few of the actors staying the night. The management were new at their jobs, and didn�t really know what to make of our request to sleep there, so they just shrugged and told us not to make a mess. I�d be lying if I didn�t admit to smoking up with Mike or some of the actresses late a night, and it really was the kind of life that seemed too good to last. It wasn�t sure enough for me to cancel my rent in the city, but I figured I�d make the best of it while I could, even if it was just for the few short winter months.

I ran into Jared the Thursday before our special Friday show. He looked sort of agitated and I asked him how things were proceeding with the wedding. The couple was rich, and their entire family was being treated to five star dinners in the food court every night, and late night dancing and everything. The Rambledown was running at full capacity.

�Something weird is going on.� he told me, point blank.

�How so?� I wondered.

�Guest house five, the guests want to leave.�

I pondered for a moment. Guest house five was located to the north of the theatre, the closest building to the mine.

�Rats?� I guessed.

�No,� he shook his head, �Thats the weird part. They won�t say why. They just want us to put them up in the main building.�

�So what are you going to do?�

�Give them what they want,� he said, �But that leaves us with an open house. I�ve spread word around the wedding party that house five is open, so I�ll know tonight if its going to be filled. Otherwise, you and the actors could take it over, but just for this week.�

I smiled widely and crossed my fingers. The guest houses were like condos, two rooms, a full kitchen, the works. Best of all though, each house had a hot-tub.
Whatever had happened to the family from house five, it was enough to keep anyone else from moving in. The family had been split up among the eight guest rooms in the main building, and Mike, myself, and a slew of actors and headed over with booze, weed and movies. It was a night of debauchery that you goons would be proud of, swimsuits were not necessary for entrance to the grand hot tub of luxury, and we all got well and truly hosed up.

It was two a.m. before things calmed down and we all went to bed in anticipation of the next night�s show. I was sleeping on the floor in the kitchen, having given up the most comfortable spots to my friends. The night passed without incident, and I was almost upset that nothing had happened. I had expected some terrible bloody miner to come stumbling from the gaping shaft and bang on our windows, but no dead miner did. We packed up our things and headed back to the Rambledown. Mike alerted housing that we�d vacated the guest house, and we all set up camp in the Green Room.

We�d been chilling there for an hour, just talking and laughing, the actors running lines and fixing costumes, when Mike and Andrea entered, looking grim. They motioned me into the hall.

�We�ve got a problem,� Mike said.

�What is it?� I asked.

Andrea looked gaunt, �The ghost-light.�

�Yeah, what about it?� I was confused.

Mike licked his lips and looked to Andrea. �Maybe you should just see for yourself,� he said.

We walked through the shop and onto the stage, and my breath caught in my throat. The iron frame of the ghost-light had been bent all to poo poo, the light broken and cord frayed. My head snapped around to look Mike full in the face.

�You better not be loving with me,� I warned him.

�You better not be loving with us,� Andrea said.

We all paused, our eyes on each other for a moment. We all bent back to the ghost-light.

�Ah,� I said, �poo poo.�

Chapter Six: The Storm

Our show for the wedding party was fantastic, they all laughed and loved it. We had the rights for the Disney version, so most of the little kids sat up front and sang along. The wedding was beautiful, people cried and laughed and everybody was happy, and then they left. That left us and the production team just two more weeks until we opened. In theatre lingo, the week you spend not sleeping, working on the show until the wee hours of the morning is called Hell Week.

Ha ha.

I�m not sure Andrea slept during Hell Week. She was too busy running over cues and freaking out when an actor flubbed a line that she practically survived on coffee alone. Throughout it all, she still managed to produce a beautiful show, and I think she probably would have been able to keep on as a full time director if the following hadn�t have happened.

It was the night before we opened, and Andrea had let the cast and crew off early to rest up. She, Mike and I were walking through the theatre, picking up trash and doing last minute checks of sight-lines. Mike had taken to helping us clean up, as he said, �I don�t really have anything better to do.�

I took my customary position of cleaning up the Green Room, and Mike handled the dressing rooms. Andrea told us she was going up to the booth to check over the lighting cues one last time, and Mike and I smirked smugly and went off backstage. I turned on the monitor and screen for company while I was cleaning, hearing Andrea muttering to herself was oddly comforting. I had finished, and Mike was helping me vacuum when we heard Andrea scream. My eyes flew to the monitor, and it was dark. I figured we must have blown a fuse or something and we ran back to the stage.

�Andrea!� I called, �Is everything okay?�

�No,� she said, �It�s loving dark. I can�t get any of the lights to come on.�

�I think we blew a fuse,� I said, �I�m going to have to go to the basement to flip the breakers.�

�Fuuuuuuck,� Mike let out a low whistle.

We convened backstage and worked out who was going to go to the basement. I won two out of three with a scissors/rock combo that I�m still proud of, and Mike trudged off into the shop to take the stairs down to tunnel 6.

I walked back to the stage and plugged in the new ghost-light, after groping around in the dark for a while.

�You surviving?� I yelled to the booth.

�Yeah,� Andrea yelled back, then added a low �gently caress me.�

�Now?� I asked, and I heard her laugh.

We sat in silence for a while and I pictured Mike climbing around in those low tunnels. I didn�t envy him at all.

�Do you know any good jokes?� I yelled up to Andrea after a while. I waited for her response, but she was oddly quiet. �Hey, you okay up there?�

Nothing.

�poo poo,� I whispered, and called her name. She still didn�t answer. I could barely make out a form in the booth from the light the little pale bulb gave off on stage, but not enough to see if she was passed out or what.

�Andrea!� I yelled again, picking up the ghost-light and pulling it as far as I could before its cord snapped taught. I could have unplugged it and moved it to another, closer, floor-box, but that would have left me in thick darkness for a few to many seconds, and if Andrea was hurt or something I wouldn�t want her to freak out as the stage plunged into blackness again.

I was just about to leave the light on stage and run up to the booth when the house lights came up again with an audible click, and somewhere far off I heard Mike scream, �loving finally!�

I blinked in the sudden bright and sprinted through the house and up the spiral stairs to the booth. Andrea was sitting, facing me, with an empty look in her eyes. I stopped, suddenly scared by her expression.

�Hey,� I said, softly, �Are you okay?�

She looked at me, blankly, and shook her head.

�What�s wrong?� I asked, moving closer to her.

�I can�t�� She started, �This is just too much. I can�t do this anymore.�

�What are you talking about?�

�When you left,� she started to cry, �Why did you leave? When you left there was someone here with me.�

�I didn�t leave,� I said.

�You did, I called your name and you didn�t answer and then I turned around and I could feel someone here. Someone was here!�

She started beating at my chest with her hands when Mike appeared from the stairs.

�Hey, is everything okay?� he started.

�No!� Andrea said, �Someone was HERE!�

Mike and I helped her down the steps and into the lobby. I took her theatre keys and locked everything up. When I came back, she was gone.

�Where did she go?� I asked Mike.

�She left. She�s driving home.�

�You didn�t stop her?�

He gave me a look.

�Okay,� I said, �What the gently caress is going on.�

Mike shrugged. He took a few steps towards the window, to see if he could spot Andrea leaving, and I knew something was wrong.

�Hey,� I said, �What�s on your shoes?�

He looked down, his tennis shoes were soaking wet.

�I dunno,� he said, �The tunnels were wet.�

�Wet?�

�Flooded. There�s about two inches of water down there. It sucked. I guess its because of the rain.�

�Mike,� I said, �What rain?�

�The storm. You didn�t hear it? Huge loving thunderclaps, I could hear them from the basement.�

I just stared at him. He looked back at me and started shaking his head from side to side, his mouth forming words, No, no, no.

He ran to the doors and pushed them open, I followed. We stood there for a few moments, looking up. There was beautiful, clear night sky as far as the eye could see.

Chapter Seven: Halloween

Andrea�s spot was filled by a stern old man from the city. He wasn�t nearly as pretty as Andrea was, I lamented, but he was a proficient director, and our production of West Side Story the following summer was the best show yet. He had asked right away about our ghost light, and I�d not hesitated to tell him about every experience I could remember. I expected him to laugh in my face, but instead he just nodded and quietly hmm hmmmmed to himself.

�I suppose we can�t be too careful,� he�d said, and I�d agreed.

A long time had passed since any ghostly had happened, but our newer actors were constantly barraged with stories of our past three productions. In the spring we did a straight play, Oleana by Mamet, Oleana has only two actors, so cast party hi jinks were kept to a minimum. Mike had taken that show off, traveling the west coast with his brother, so I was left to train a new guy. I didn�t attempt to scare him, but I wasn�t really surprised when he�d emerged from the shop looking like a deer in headlights, claiming he�d heard someone call his name while he�d cleaned the dressing rooms.

But now Mike was back, and we had a huge cast, and our bohemian lifestyle was restored. We were well into our run, only a week away from closing, when Jared and Jeff had completed the new restaurant. As workers had put up supports and struts, plenty of stories had come out of those caves. A creepy humming noise had been heard in a deep cavern, as well as pale blue lights that seemed to float around. They ended up collapsing the tunnels that were too dangerous, and put up pleasant brick walls to hide the deeper spaces. One young builder had sworn to me he�d heard someone scratching on the other side of his wall as he lay the last few bricks, whispering, �let me out let me out let me out hey let me out.� It wasn�t really something anyone talked about.

Mike and I didn�t really talk about Andrea, either. We�d gone into the tunnels the next day to find them bone dry. Mike had never worn those tennis shoes again.

Things started to get really bad that fall. There had been a couple of times during the summer where things had happened and I�d been really shaken, but nothing bad enough to make me want to quit. In October, when the restaurant at the mine had opened, we�d started to get a steady stream of guests who would stay for our weekend raves that we hosted in the ballroom. A lot of the money was really hush-hush and under the table, and looking back I was pretty sure that Jared had some sort of drug deal going on to the young couples who came to party, but a stoned audience is better than no audience at all, and so we did very well.

Once Upon A Mattress was our show, and we had a professional actress from New York in the role of Winnifred. One afternoon she�d seen a man walk into the dressing room and point at her before disappearing, and we�d all held our breath when she�d emerged from the dressing room out of breath and anxious, but she�d decided that it was the coolest thing she had ever seen and wanted to hold a seance later that evening. Mike and I had decided to sit that one out, but I guess it really didn�t matter because the group of young actors and actresses hadn�t really discovered anything at all.

The first strike against me continuing to work at the Rambledown was the night of our Halloween party. We�d set up the whole place as a haunted house, (haha,) and invited people to come and revel drunkenly, which they had. The place was packed, and there was no performance that night, so the actors and crew had all partied with the rest of the guests. When a group of guests asked for a tour of the facility, Jared came to me to ask me to give it to them. I told him I would for a bonus, and he�d just rolled his eyes and waved me off. I took them all around the main floor, gave them a sort of backstage tour of the busy kitchens and theatre facilities, and was almost home free when one burly guy had noticed the stairway to tunnel 6.

�What�s that?� he asked, and he pointed.

�Oh,� I said, �just access to the basement.�

�What�s down there?� he wondered.

�Nothing, really, storage. Fuse boxes, pipes.�

�Can we go?� he asked, and the rest of the group agreed.

One of their number was the pretty young girl who I�d been chatting up all night, so I reluctantly agreed to take them down. Oh, fickle heart.

The tunnels are dank and dark in the best of conditions, and tonight they were cold and wet. I explained how the floors used to be flooded in the old days, and everyone found it fascinating. We were passing the junction with tunnel 1, when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone slink around the corner to tunnel 4.

�Hey,� I said, �Stick with the group.�

�We�re all here,� the pretty young girl said.

I turned around and counted. Sure enough, everyone was accounted for. I heard a shuffling from tunnel 4 and silently cursed my status as a guide.

�Wait here,� I intoned, and started towards the noise. I hoped it was just a lusty cook making it with some hot maid, but my intuition told me otherwise.

I got to tunnel 4 and turned towards where I�d seen the shape move to, when I noticed a door half-open. poo poo, I thought, poo poo. I took a step towards the door when a long, grey arm snaked out of the open room. It was impossibly long, seeming to bend with four or five joints, quietly reaching along the wall towards me. I stopped breathing, and the arm seemed to notice. It silently felt along the wall, moving to the floor and brushing up against the far door. I shook my head and when I looked again, it seemed as if the arm were just a smudge on my vision, the way your eyes will make solid objects from nothing in a dark room. I couldn�t shake the image of a dead appendage, though, and so that was the image that solidified in my mind. I waited there, silently, and I heard burly man call after me.

�Everything okay?�

The arm/smoke/whatever it was reacted to the noise, and withdrew into the room, and the door slammed with a bang. I let out a huge gasp of air and turned heel and walked quickly back to the group.

�What was it?� the pretty girl asked.

�Just a door left open,� I said, and did my best not to sprint to the stairs.

Chapter Eight: The End

Strikes two and three came in November. The noises and half-caught visions that would have made me run screaming a year before had now become happenstance. I�d run into the apparition in the booth twice on my own, the desk chair spinning by the time I�d turned my head to see who was sitting next to me. The novelty of a haunted theatre was starting to wear thin for the actors, the professional New Yorker long gone.

We were in rehearsal for A Christmas Carol, to be played to the festive holiday crowds and their families, right after a fantastic Christmas feast of ham and stuffing and everything else that goes with the season.

The night that prompted me to quit started out normal enough, rehearsal when fine, the actors had left, and Mike and I were cleaning up the backstage area. Strike two was something I saw as I walked from the dressing room to the Green Room, which meant I had to pass through the shop. I was used to all kinds of strange noises from the dark corners of the massive room, but as I bent to pick up the bucket of cleaning supplies I heard someone scream.

If I were a lesser man, I probably would have vomited, poo poo my pants or worse right at that moment. I slowly stood up and looked around the shop. The scream had come from the far north-western corner, where unused flats stood propped up against the wall. I opened my mouth to call for Mike when the scream came again, loud and piercing. It sounded like a man gut-shot.

�What the gently caress!� I heard Mike curse from the Green Room.

I was too scared to move, I�ll admit. I was shaking so hard the cans of cleaner in the bucket were rattling against each other. The scream sounded again, but this time it seemed as if it were far away, like someone screaming down a long tunnel.
�Mike,� I whispered.

He came running around the corner into the shop and just stared at me.

�Are you okay? Was that you?�

I shook my head and point towards the corner. When I turned back to look, there was a figure leaning against the flats. The only word I can use to describe it is static-y, like when you turn your TV off and there image distorts for a second, before finally fading away into a tiny blip. Thats what happened to the figure, it blipped out.

Mike shook me out of my stasis and pulled me along the hallway.

�I�ll finish cleaning, man, don�t worry.� he said, and sat me down in a chair in the lobby.

He walked backstage and was gone for a while, while I just sat there, trying to calm down. I wasn�t sure why the scream had startled me so much, but my heart was racing at a million miles an hour and all I wanted to do was run. It seemed that Mike was gone for a long time, but soon enough he came back.

�Hey, I promised Manuel I�d walk through the south wall area and lock up, you can stay here if you want, but I have to-�

�No,� I said, �I�ll come with you.� I didn�t want to just sit and do nothing, and I�m sure Mike would appreciate the company, and so I went with him.

The kitchens were creepy in their own right, bright, sharp steel just hanging from hooks in the open, the walk in freezer was an area I wasn�t even going to touch. Mike went though, locking the three doors. We moved into the museum and did a cursory check. Nothing was out of place. I looked at the picture of the five friends and smiled sadly. I missed Andrea. The last room to check was the staff lounge. The big, bay windows were a bit much for me to handle. I kept expecting a flaming skull to do a flyby before devouring my soul, but nothing happened. We�d survived the south wall without incident.

It was only as we were walking back to the lobby that something went wrong. Mike had made the turn to the area under the guest rooms when I�d heard someone call out, fairly loudly, �Hey.� from the museum. I�d turned around without thinking, and behind the glass of the museum room was an openmouthed man, bloody hand up against the glass and huge, black eyes facing right at me.

�Hey.� it said, �Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.�

That was it. Strike three. You�re out. gently caress two-week notices, gently caress locking up, gently caress the Rambledown. I tore past Mike so fast that he screamed, he later told me he had thought I was a vampire, finally sweeping down to finish him off. I�d run, tripping and falling, into the parking lot, refusing to look around, refusing to lend an eye to the long dark windows. I�d waiting with my back to the building until Mike came up behind me and asked me if I was alright.

�No, man. No. I�m quitting.�

He shrugged. Mike always shrugged. �Okay, I�m quitting to. I was only sticking it out to see if I could last longer than you, and it looks like I'm the bigger man.

�Hey,� I said, �gently caress you.�

We looked at each other for a moment and then laughed nervously. We hopped in our cars and drove the long road back to the city, I did not look in my rear view mirror as we drove away, nor did I stop at the top of the ridge to admire the view. I was finished with the Rambledown, it could burn up for all I cared.
Mike and I spent the night nursing beers in a bar and promising to write it all down someday.

Mike moved to California, where he�s doing tech work for the Disney concert hall, the one that looks like a big metal ship.

I moved away to Minneapolis, where I�m still doing theatre stuff, be it acting or stage managing or even writing, I�m happy just surviving.

I found out that Andrea moved to France, and I never talked to her again.

Talking with some of the other people who worked at the Rambledown afforded some stories I�d never heard. It seems that each section of the building had its own ghosts and events that scared people too much to talk about. The Rambledown closed down that very next month, in December. I emailed Jared and he�d told me it was just �Too much of a burden to keep it going, so we�re selling it back to the state.� Manuel, the museum curator, had told me a different story.

�People just couldn�t go inside,� he�d said, �something else had moved in. Not something you want to gently caress around with, for sure.�

Other people had told me stories of apparitions that appeared at all hours of the day, that last month. Figures that didn�t go away when you looked at them, that spoke to you, that tried to touch you. I figure it was good that I left when I did.

The one thing that everybody seems to agree on is that the area is better left untouched. I�m not sure what happened to the buildings, if they�re all still there, rotting, or if someone else had taken them over and tried to start a business of their own, but you can be sure I�ll never go back. Mike and I got this story out over probably too many beers. Its terrible enough to revisit in memory. Take our advice and don�t go looking for the Rambledown.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 05:37

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I've just been finding them while rereading old ghost threads little by little. Check the list I posted on the first page. I'm on the Skinwalker thread right now, which has a ton of great ones, and some fantastic art too that I think I actually have saved (the alligator teeth story comes to mind) so I'll post them when I get to them. You should check it out. I really like the stories that have a spooky atmospheric outdoor setting as opposed to "I woke up and saw a shadow in my room," so it's one of my favorite threads. I just don't want to flood this incarnation with reposts, but I don't really have any stories of my own.

Here's a couple from early in the thread if you don't have archives:

-------

The-Mole:

Drums at Night

The following story was first told to me by a good friend who went on a therapeutic wilderness program trip in eastern Oregon. Therapeutic wilderness programs basically take kids between 12 and 18 and dump them in the woods and make them live under tarps and make fires by rubbing sticks together (which really works). There is also a lot of hiking and therapizing. They tend to be pretty drat serious and solemn places.

Anyways, my friend Robert was at this program in the middle of nowhere Oregon and the entire group was getting ready to go to bed in the shelter they had made out of a tarp. One of the staff (who all had hippy-native-american-earth-names like "yellow water under buffallo" or "Purple Sage..." that sorta stuff) we'll call Rain, after taking everyone's shoes and pants so they couldnt run away at night, started playing her flute like she did most nights. She sat out for about half an hour playing the flute literally a hundred miles from any town bigger than Brothers Oregon (population 13 or something). After about half an hour of playing, drum beats could be heard in the woods. Like the sound of hitting a big leather drum with a big stick. They would be regular and would speed up and slow down and sometimes would be in a rhythym.

Being in the absolutely middle of nowhere, they got scared. Like really, really scared. It was night and seriously dark. Both staff and kids alike got so scared they tore down camp in the middle of the night, packed it up and hiked ten miles away AT NIGHT IN THE DARK. The drumbeats followed them about half of the way.

Not the scariest story, I know a couple that are a lot worse, but the thing that gets me about this story is that I later met Rain when she started working at a boarding school I used to go to. She had not met Robert in three or four years and told me the identical story. Both Robert and Rain swore that what they heard absolutely and without a doubt was drums. I also later met another kid who went to the same program a few weeks later who said people were still scared about that incident when he arrived.

-----

cardinalpuck:

I have a friend from my boy scout days, mostly Native American and really really chill. We would commonly go out to the middle of the wilderness and hike around for weeks, building fires with sticks and cooking fish that we had to catch from streams and things like this.

I remember one summer our trip took us to the BWWCA at the very top of Minnesota, which, to those of you who don't know what it is, is about a billion square miles of absolute desolation. Woods stretched as far as you could see, pocked with large lakes and islands. Our canoe trip had us rowing out to a smallish island and living there for a few days. We'd jump off of rocks into the water and whittle and talk and laugh during the day, and at night we would return to our tents that were pitched about fifty yards from the water in a clearing in the trees.

One morning we all woke up and put on our swimming suits and walked down to the water to splash around and sort of get clean. While I was in the water, I saw my friend shivering alone outside of the water, sitting on a long log that looked like the remnants of a fallen tree or something, so I climbed up the bank and went to talk to him. He was pale and quiet, like he'd seen some sort of ghost, so I asked him if he was alright and he recounted this story, which to me seems fairly related to this Skinwalker thing.

Apparently, he'd been awoken in the middle of the night with the burning need to piss, so he slipped on some pants and shoes and exited his tent to find a nice tree to go on. While he was standing, about fifty feet away from the tents at the edge of the woods, he heard the far off call of a loon, something fairly common in northern Minnesota. Now, if you are not familiar with what a loon sounds like, I would reccommend googling it, because it is the lonliest, most mournful sound in the world and will scare the poo poo out of you on normal occasions. He began to get nervous, for no good reason, and willed himself to piss faster, when the loon call came again, louder and closer, and again, louder and closer, until it seemed to be directly over his head.

He finished, pulled his junk back inside his pants and buckled up and was looking up in preparation to run all the way back to his tent, when he saw it: a naked man, covered from head to toes with black tattoos, wearing a buffallo skull over his face like some sort of mask, crouching at head level on the low branch of a tree inches away from him. There was a long moment of silence where he just stared into the face of the mask, before the man sort of curved his back and let out a long, mournful loon cry. My friend tore off back towards his tent, panting and shivering and trying to keep from throwing up and when he got to the zippered entrance he chanced one last look towards the woods, and, of course, there was nothing there.

He told me all this in a low voice, without a hint of irony or any clue that it might just be a ghost story. He didn't mention the name Skinwalker, but he did tell me later that his grandfather, a traditional Navajo man, sat him down in the middle of his kitchen and blessed him for a full hour after he recounted the tale.

It sounds fantastic, but the kid had no reason to lie to me and if he was faking his signs of distress and terror throughout the rest of the trip, whenever we heard a loon call, he was a drat fine actor. Take it, I guess, for what you will.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 09:05

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

The 50FA/Humper Monkey (I think they're the same person, but the lore goes that they're brothers except Humper Monkey died and saw Tandy on his deathbed...? Or something like that?) stories eventually got shifted to Creative Convention because of that reason. He's a great writer and sure knows how to paint a scene but the whole over-the-top Duke Nukem persona got annoying after a while, I guess. It's also posted out of order, which is hard to get into.

I'm still digging around on old hard drives for the original goon-made art from the 2007 skinwalker thread; so far I've only come up with this. There was much more but I don't think I saved nearly as much as I'd thought, unfortunately.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2014 05:51

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

pahuyuth:

About 18 years ago, my buddy Kyle and I went canoeing down in south Georgia during the summer. The first part of the trip took us down the Satilla, a beautiful black water river with white sandy beaches. That part of the vacation was uneventful. The trip through the Okefenokee Swamp was not, however.

Even at the age of 17 we were fairly experienced campers. Every weekend we would hike or float down a river. We never left without first plotting a detailed map and we had the best equipment a couple of teenagers could afford. We always planned for the unexpected and made sure to take an extra couple of days worth of supplies. The trip into the swamp was only going to be a short day trip, leaving early in the morning and returning before dusk. We were totally unprepared for what happened.

We set off into the swamp early Saturday morning, leisurely paddling along the well marked canoe trail. We took in the sights of the gorgeous landscape, the beautiful plants and of course we marveled at the alligators. The two of us were loving every minute of our trek. Nearing midday, we became hungry so we paddled away from the trail a short distance, tied up to a tree, and made lunch.

After eating our ramen noodles and jerky we relaxed in the canoe, and soon both of us fell asleep. We woke up a couple of hours later and started paddling back to the main path. We thought so, anyway.

It didn't take us long to realize that we were lost. Neither of us felt any panic or distress. We had been in worse situtations and never failed to get through them. We were both confident we would soon find our way out of the maze in which we found ourselves.

The hours passed and the sun was getting lower in the sky. Still far from panicking, we were growing a bit anxious. We were just chalking it up to another 'Scott and Kyle Adventure'.

The sky continued to darken. At this point, we realized that we were going to have to spend the night in the swamp. Again, it was nothing we were really all that concerned about. We knew that the park rangers would be out looking for us the next day since our return time had come and gone. Kyle's family was staying in a nearby lodge, and even though we knew they naturally worried about us, we also knew that they were confident in our abilities and outdoor skills.

In the Okefenokee, camping is allowed only on platforms built above the water. That way the gators can't get ya. Obviously, we didn't have the luxury of a platform, so we tied up to another tree and just made ourselves as comfortable as possible in the boat.

We passed the time by eating, fishing, and watching the gators. Soon the sun had completely decended and it was night. It was eerily beautiful, and it seemed that Mother Nature had cranked up the volume to 11. The birds, frogs, insects and other swamp creatures became louder and louder. We talked about the sort of things that teenage boys talk about. We laughed and just enjoyed the moments.

THUMP.

Something hit the bottom of our boat.

THUMP THUMP.

Again, something hit our boat. Kyle raised our small lantern and we saw what had to have been the largest alligator in the whole freaking swamp swim past. If it was less than 15 feet long I would be surprised. It turned around and came straight at us, hitting the boat again. Kyle grabbed his oar and smacked the water, hoping to scare the drat thing away. The gator seemed to grow even more brazen and aggressive and once again made a pass at our boat, really hitting it hard and rocking it a good bit. I felt like I was in an alligator version of 'Jaws'. We needed a bigger boat, indeed! I too grabbed an oar and we both began beating the hell out of the water. The gator went under us, REALLY knocked the poo poo out of the boat, and swam away. We thought it had left for good, but it returned after about 5 minutes. We repeated this entire cycle about 4 times. We were really getting scared that this fucker wanted to kill us. It swam away again, and we waited for it to make another strike.

Then everything went silent. Instantly. And by silent, I mean there was NOTHING making a sound. Not a loving peep. Even the mosquitos that had been pestering us by buzzing around our faces had suddenly disappeared. We both looked at each other; our puzzled faces were illuminated by the dim lantern. Neither of us wanted to say anything to break the silence. I don't really think either of us could have said anything, anyway.

SPLASH. SPLISH SPLASH. The sound was off to our right, probably 20-30 yards away. That drat gator again, I thought. Thankfully the eerie silence was giving way to some sort of activity. Nope, nothing else made a sound. SPLAAASH. This one sounded heavier; more violent. I told myself it was still just the gator.

Kyle whispered. "Why is it so quiet?"
I didn't have an answer. Surely, no animal in the swamp was so threatening that even the drat crickets and skeeters shut up. Not even our gator menace had quieted the sounds of the Okefenokee.

Of course, as in all movie thrillers, the lantern went out and we couldn't reignite it. And of course, as in all situations like this, the clouds parted and the moon revealed itself.

And of course, the two teenage boys who up to this point were relatively unrattled nearly pissed themselves.

SPLASH! Something darted through the trees to our right. It was not an animal. Well, if it was an animal it was walking on its hind legs. A bear maybe?

"Christ. What in the gently caress was that?!" I said, but not too loudly. Didn't want it to hear me.

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS". Something made a sound like air escaping from a tire. The same figure we saw earlier moved through the trees again.

CRACK! THUMP. CRAAACK! The cracks were sharp and violent. The thump was dull and had a hollow tone to it. Still no other sounds in the whole freaking area.

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS". There it was again, only a little louder.

Several minutes passed with nothing happening. Our little part of the world was still deathly silent.

PLOP.

Something landed in the water right next to our canoe.

PLOP.

PLOP PLOP PLOP.

It became apparent that the thing was throwing pebbles or something at us.
Okay, now this is getting loving ridiculous, I thought. Bears don't loving throw things. Both Kyle and I simultaneously drew our hunting knives from their sheaths, as if that was going to do anything whatsoever.

What happened next was something I will never forget. It is something that both of us wish we had dreamed. It is something that we don't even speak about when we see each other almost 20 years later. Jesus, I'm getting goosebumps and quite nervous even typing this.

CLINK.

Something landed in our canoe. CLINK CLINK. Two more somethings landed in our canoe. CLINK CLINK CLINK. Ok, enough with loving THROWING poo poo INTO OUR CANOE!

It was then we realized that whatever the objects were had come from above, NOT from either side. We looked at each other, our faces so white they rivaled the moon. At the same time, our gazes drew upward.

There it was. Sitting in the tree. OUR TREE. The tree to which we were tied. You know that goat in Jurassic Park that was tied up for the T-Rex to eat? Yeah, we were that goat.

I swear to christ that this thing must have been a child of the moon. The moon seemed to cast down its light on our friend in particular, illuminating it much more clearly than anything else in the area. It was as if the moon wanted us to see this thing in all its glory.

It was humanoid- it had the body of a man with the head of the skull of some kind of animal. It looked kind of like a wolf or coyote or something similar. The eyes glowed yellow, and there was fur covering the shoulders and upper body. This thing was built like a tank, too. Its muscles rippled under its pale skin. It breathed deeply and slowly. In one hand it held some sort of staff that was maybe 3 feet long with a huge knot at one end. Around its neck there was a pouch made from leather.

Oh, one thing I should mention is that this tree had no branches on the lower half of the tree where the creature was. It was grasping the tree with one arm, the staff clutched tightly in that hand. Its feet seemed to be dug into the tree trunk.
With its free hand, he pointed at us. Keep in mind that Kyle and I were in opposite ends of the boat, but each of us swore that it was looking straight into the eyes of each of us. Strangely, our sense of fear went away once it gazed into us. A sense of calm and 'This is gonna be ok' came over us. Slowly, it withdrew its outstretched hand, opened the pouch around its neck, reached two long fingers inside and took something out. It slowly extended its arm again, and dropped the objects into our boat.

"GWAHHHHHHHHHHHHH SSSSSSSSSSSSSKKKKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHH" is the best approximation of the sound it made. It pointed at us again, then pointed off into the distance, to our right.

It leapt from the tree, landed with a very quiet splash, and darted off. The clouds gathered around the moon, and all the swamp's inhabitants began making their music once again.

Of course, we didn't sleep a wink. We sat in silence for the rest of the night, too awed and scared to speak.

The direction it pointed to turned out to be the way back to the trail.

The objects in our boat? Alligator teeth. Freshly dug out from a recently dead gator.

It was clear that this thing had been watching over us.

Once we got back to the canoe center, we told the story of being lost and the gator to the park rangers and Kyle's family. We left the part about our friend out. After we all settled down a bit, we talked to the rangers about the history of the swamp, hoping to gain some insight into what had happened. They mentioned nothing about ghosts, and scoffed at us when we brought it up. They did say that many indian burial mounds have been found, though... some 4000 years old.

Anyway, Kyle and I talked it about once and only once after it happened. It was so amazing, unbelievable, and awe inspiring that we have no need to discuss it I guess. As for telling the story, no one would believe us anyway.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 08:42

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Drum posted:

FYAD burst.

Anyone have anything saved from an old cryptids/generally creepy thread that popped up in GBS a few years ago? I remember there was one story about a weird white dog-centipede thing that they saw in (I think) an empty lot.

There was another story I read in one of the old ghost stories threads, which unfortunately isn't on Not Hot But Spicy, about the poster as a child with a group of friends, and they come across I want to say old foundations or structures, and the one kid is later found dead in it.

Neither of these are ringing a bell for me, but I'll keep a lookout. Too bad archives search is still down. Can you narrow it down to a time frame?

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 00:22

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Still no luck on dog centipede, but hey Missing Name I found Onic's corn crib in the 2008 thread!

---------

A new ghost thread. Spiffy, been waiting for a new one to roll around so I can post some more of my stories.

I'm sure a lot of you know of my epic thousand year battle with the ghost that lives in my house. The last time I posted, it was busy loving with my weatherproofing. Stuff has happened since then, but I will save that for later.
For now, I have an older tale to tell. So without further adieu, I give you:

Corn crib on Haunted Mound

Cheesy title, but it's a good story. The farm I live on is quite old, as some of you know. Around 100 years old to be exact. My great grandfather owned this farm, and 4 others a very long time ago. He was forced to sell 4 of them during the great depression, but came out of it with money in his pocket, unlike most people. This farm was passed down to my grandfather, then his father, and then me. So there is a lot of history on this place.

Anyway, the farm includes the original corn crib. For those of you who don't know what a corn crib is, just imagine a building that looks like a barn. It is about
40 feet tall, it has 2 sides that are devoted to corn storage. They are like big bunkers, where whole ear corn is stored after the harvest. The middle of it is a big drive through gap. There is a grain elevator system running from the ground, up to the top. And at the very top, there are big holding areas for various grains. So basically, you could pull your wagons into the corn-crib. Open a hatch on the ceiling, and let the grain flow out with ease. It was a very good setup back in the day.

These days though, the corn crib is an old, decrepit building. I have been meaning to have it burnt to the ground for a long time now, but I never got around to having the fire department demolish it. It is old, and missing boards off the sides where the corn ears are held. I keep an old skid loader parked in the middle. The upper part of the building is still in great shape though.
The first thing that I found really weird about this building is the lack of pigeons.

Pigeons run rampart around these parts. They inhabit anything that could be considered shelter. The beasts live in my machine shed, nursery, old confinement building. They will not go near the corn-crib though. It's just so weird. It would be a perfect shelter from the elements.

Alright, enough of this boring back story poo poo that most of you probably skipped anyway.

My first problem with the corn crib happened when I was around 8 years old. This thing was like a jungle gym to me. There was boards draped around in it that I could swing from, or walk across. And if you crawled up the latter all the way to the top, you could get a perfect view of everything.
So, I was out there one day, playing around in it. When I decided to venture to the top. This was not something my dad wanted me to do. It was very dangerous. I started to make my way up the ladder, which is about a foot and a half wide, so it's not an easy climb.

I get up about half way, and hear noise bellow me. I kind of peak over my shoulder and see nothing. So, I keep moving upwards. I felt a hand wrap around my ankle and pull me down very hard. I start to fall. Not such a good thing. Underneath me was piles of sheet metal. I frantically grab for the ladder as I plummet to the cuts and boo-boos that waited below me. I finally get a grip on a rung and stop myself from falling. At that point I'm pretty much in tears. I'm shaking as I'm trying to get out of there.

I made it out and went to the house. My father asked me what the hell was wrong. There was no way I could tell him what I was doing in the corn crib. I didn't want to suffer the wrath of his belt. I don't remember what I told him, but it wasn't what I was doing. I had no clue what had happened in there. In the end I just put it off as me slipping, and my mind playing tricks on me.

I still played in it whenever I could. Being on a farm in Iowa..there just wasn't much to do. Years flew by, and I stopped playing in it. I did however start using it for better activities. Shooting pigeons.

Pigeons. I hate the things. they poo poo all over the buildings they get in, and drag nest crap with them. They just make a big mess out of anywhere they inhabit. So by the age of 15 or 16 I think, I had taken to shooting them from the top of the corn crib. It was a perfect deal too. I could sit at the very top, look right out a window towards the hog nursery. Which they loved to live in. They would pop out of the vents on the top and bask in the sun. That's when I would pick them off with an old 22 rifle. Then it was off to the fox hole by my creek, where I would leave the pigeons for the hungry fox and her pups.

Heartwarming in a twisted way huh.

So, one day I was up there. Picking off pigeons, having a grand old redneck time. I was doing great, everything was peachy for late fall. Then it got humid. going from 50 crisp degrees to humid in an instant is weird. Most of the poo poo I read, people say it gets cold. Well, I don't know if ghosts are choosy or what, but it gets humid around here in my experience.

So, there I am, sweaty now while wondering what is going on. I feel the 2x12 I'm sitting on hop up. Like if someone had picked up one end and dropped it suddenly. This wasn't a good thing. It was a good 12 foot drop to the bottom of the grain bins up top, and I was on a board set over the gap. I set my rifle against the elevator, and look around. There is nothing near me. Then it happens again. This time I get tipsy and have to grab the board with both hands.
loving thing started doing it really fast now. As if someone had hold of one end and was banging the board up and down. I was filling my pants by now. I just held on for dear life. It seemed like it went on forever, but it stopped after about 20 seconds. As soon as it did, I jumped over to the ladder and made my way down.

After I got down, I realized I had left my rifle up there. A mint condition Remington Nylon 11, that my dad had given me from when he was a kid. No way was I letting the frost that night get to it. So, I was forced to go back up the ladder to retrieve it.

I reach the top, and go to grab the rifle. It was loving gone. I just stood on the ladder in shock. The thing couldn't have fallen anywhere. I get up on the board that I was sitting on, and cautiously walk across it, while holding the beam above me for assurance. I go near the 2nd grain bin, look down, and theres the riffle, propped up in the corner of it.
Well, what the mighty hell!? I do not trust those grain holders. There's no real support under them. So, I really didn't want to walk on it, or put weight on it. I didn't have much of a choice though. I pulled the old makeshift ladder out of the first grain bin, and lower it into the 2nd one. I slowly make my way down the ladder. I reach the bottom and put weight on the floor. It creaks a bit, but seems solid enough.

I start slowly walking towards my gun, and reach it just fine. I pick it up and examine it. Everything on it is fine. I empty the round out before I sling it over my shoulder. I turn around just in time for the ladder to hit me in the loving face. Imagine if you will; Someone is up where I just came from and pushed the ladder off where it was leaned against. That is what happened, but it clocked me. Now I'm in this grain bin, bleeding out of my forehead like a stuck hog, I'm pissed off, and scared. A nail had caught me right below the hair line. I still have a scar/bump till this day on the spot.

I set the ladder back up and scrambled back up it, to be met with hot horrible breath in my face. Goosebumps raced over me, but there was nothing in front of me.
I quickly hauled rear end back down to the main floor, making sure to step on a loving nail in the process. At that point I'm more or less, hopping across old sheet metal and tires. I get out, and just lay on the ground panting and in pain.

One trip to the hospital later. I have 3 butterfly stitches in my forehead, and a nice tetanus shot. That corn crib seriously loving hates me. My father brings me back from the hospital later that night. We pull into the drive, and the corn crib is worse than when we left. One of the huge doors on the front of it is laying on the ground, and the other is twisted off to one side. He pulls up to it and shines the trucks lights on it.

We get out, and I hobble over to it. It looked like the door that was laying on the ground was ripped off out of the metal slide it was in. After further inspection we could see that the metal it was mounted on was bent outward. As if someone had ran a vehicle through it and pushed the door out. We were both baffled. My father chalked it up to the age of the corn crib. I on the other hand knew this wasn't anything natural. I didn't feel like standing near this thing anymore that night, so I went inside and tried to sleep as best as I could.

Many Years Later:

I was outside in the summer grilling. Cooking up some good Iowa Chops. I'm not one for cooking with stoves and ovens, so I mostly live on a grill diet. It's around 10 o'clock at night. It was a great night too. Stars were shinning, there was no wind, and it was about 72 degrees. It was perfect. I'm standing there, taking in the good atmosphere when I hear this noise. It came from the corn crib of the damned.

The building is around...50 yards from my house, so I look up over the grill at the building. I see nothing out of the ordinary, but that noise is still persisting. It sounded sort of like a raccoon, or some other large vermin. I hate raccoons, skunks, opposums, whatever. All those things could have rabbis, which I don't want around my farm. So, I kept my eye on the corn crib.
This noise just kept going on, with a few breaks in between. Then the screaming started. Oh god, that noise. It was like the critter that was in there was getting sliced open by a dull blade, but mixed with the sound of an old women screaming her lungs out.

Something started banging around in there. As if concrete blocks were being thrown against the walls of the building. I grab my big light and shine it up into the only window near the top facing me. I see two glowing eyes for just a half a second, then they whip down back into the building.

OH WHAT THE HELL!

Those eyes. They glowed a bright white. Heres the really hosed up part. The light I was using was some 1,000,000 halogen spotlight. It lit up the side of the corn crib like daytime, but that window was just pitch black. Save for those horrible eyes. The noises didn't stop after I used the light. That poo poo continued for a good minute. I was very antsy at that point to say the least. I didn't know what to do. Should I run inside and cower, or stay out here and make sure whatever is in the corn crib doesn't steal my pork chops!

So I stayed with the food. Cooked it as normal, but kept my senses at their peak. When they were cooked, I shut the grill off and walked inside. Each time I got through one of my 3 doors leading into my house I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand, and had an adrenaline rush. It felt like something was about to grab me whenever I had may back turned. I'm sure you all know that feeling.

I know that I ate some of my food, but couldn't stomach it all after what I had just witnessed. The next day I went to the corn crib to investigate. By this time I had taken all the sheet metal out, and replaced it with the skid loader, some old tires, and other random items. It was still bothersome to get to the ladder, but I made it. I cautiously climbed it up to the top, and peaked around inside.

Blood, everywhere. Like if you had water balloons filled with blood, and threw them against the walls. I looked down into one of the grain bins, and there lay the remains of something in several pieces. I think it was a raccoon, but I'm still not sure to this day. It was kind of, charred black. It was caked in blood, and was mutilated beyond recognition.
I look around at all this blood. I didn't think you could get that much out of a small animal. Well, I was right. I look in the other bin and theres a pile of dead animals. They all looked about the same.

At this point I'm thinking the chupacabra or some poo poo is living in the my corn crib. I am in no mood, or good state of mind to clear the remnants of animals out of the building. I just make my way out of there, and stay the hell away from it for a while.

Still, every night I go outside I can hear what sounds like fast, skittering footsteps in the building. Also agonizingly long scratching noises, and what sounds like celery breaking. That breaking noise just echoed throughout the farm.

I'm a complete loving moron. Because I went back inside that cursed building a few weeks later. The light was on inside of it. This single bulb that is 30 years old was turned on. How in the hell does that work. I don't even have power running to the building anymore. This should have tipped me off. But nope, I'm pretty dumb like that. It was at night too. Oh Goody!

As soon as I get inside of the building the light goes off, and I hear quick running in the upstairs part. I leave. Fast. No way am I getting drug upstairs and slammed against walls, till I'm a red stain. I back away from the corn crib, and towards my yard light. Something at the top catches my eye. I look up and see that the old glass globe around the lightning rod is glowing. This really beautiful color. Something I've never seen before, and still haven't seen to this day.

I'm just standing there, mesmerized by this glow. I couldn't pry my eyes away from it.

"Hahhhksssss" Whispers in my ear.

I whip around and see nothing. I'm doing a full 360, but there is nothing around me. "Enough of this poo poo", I say to myself. I started screaming and cursing at the top of my lungs. I was getting pretty sick of this scary poo poo. I went on a pretty rage induced tangent for quite a while. Until my yard light went out and it turned complete pitch dark. Oh good, a mercury light goes out on a whim. It sure was my lucky night!

I walked back to the house. Not ran, I walked. I heard poo poo behind me, clomping after me. I didn't turn around. I just kept swearing up a storm. The noise would get right up behind me then stop. then about 10 feet later it would repeat. I got to my house, opened up the first door and shut it. My 2nd door opened for me. Oh dandy! I get into it, and close it. The 3rd door was locked. I had to kick it down, which was easy, with how old it was.

As soon as I got inside I felt at ease. Whatever was loving with me must not have followed me inside. The inside ghost that I still deal with was probably territorial or something. He gets to gently caress with me inside, while the other gets my outside time. After that night, nothing much happened for a while. I would still hear the random noise from the corn crib, but nothing too big. Friends that I would have out would hear stuff, and get a little freaked out. None of them wanted to go into it, no matter how plastered we were.

One night however, we sort of saw what was in there. We were standing around the good old grill at about midnight. It was a severe case of the drunken munchies that drove us to grill top sirloin. It was a calm early fall night.
We all stopped talking because the banging had started in the corn crib. My one friend asked if there was an animal in it. I told him to wait and see. So we watched intently.

Instantly the one door left on the front flew over to the side and out came this huge black figure. It was hauling rear end towards us. Imagine if you will, a buffalo running full speed at you. That's what I would compare it to. It got within 20 feet of our scrambling asses, before it took an immediate turn right, and plowed into my cornfield. You could see corn stalks bending in the moonlight as whatever it was took off through the field.

I went from making GBS threads myself to laughing at my friends, who were terrified. I had somewhat gotten used to this poo poo by now, so it wasn't much of a surprise to me. They all left shortly afterwards though, for apparent reasons. I kept an eye on the crib that night though, but didn't see the thing that came out of it return.

The morning yielded an great thing. The field had a nice path cut through it. The path was about as wide as a large SUV, and went in about 30 feet then just stopped. Real nice of that thing to wreck my perfect field so close to harvest.

That was the last major incident with the corn crib. Since then I just hear noises, and see a moving shadow in the window on top, but that is about it.

So there you have it. The story of the corn crib. I hope you enjoyed it. I have plenty more to tell. And an update to the story about the rear end in a top hat ghost in my upstairs. I'll do those some time soon here.

Also, if you want pictures of the corn crib, just let me know. I can give you guys a full tour as soon as daylight...I'm not going in there at night.

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Here's his next post, but the pictures are dead. However I think there might be some sort of witchcraft that makes imageshack images viewable, which is what I think we were using for hosting back then.

---------

I have returned from my picture taking fiesta. What started as a simple thing, turned into 2 hours of bullshit. First off, as soon as I set foot outside and start walking towards the corn crib, the wind goes from a slight breeze to about 40 mph winds. Combine that with the fact that it was already zero degrees out, and you have an uncomfortable situation.

So, I trudged my rear end over to the corn crib, through the blistering wind. And thats what leads us to the first picture.

This is the beast itself. Around 100 years old, and still standing. At first glance, you might be thinking: "That doesn't looks safe to go inside of" Well, you're right, it's not. If you look at the very top, you can see the lightning rod, with the glass globe around it. That's the thing that was glowing that one night.
Also, notice the door that is on the front of the building. As you can see, it is split in half. One section is sitting in the middle of the opening, while the other is barely hanging off to the side.
That blackness up towards the top is the window that I saw those eyes in, and that I still see stuff moving around in.

Here is a side view of the corn crib. You see that large opening at the top? That is my destination. That is where the bad poo poo happens.

Well, guess it's time to move on to the next picture.

Here is the inside of the ground floor. As you can see it is very messy. It is full of crap like, old tires, boards, a metal grain bin, and a skid loader cage. The vertical Grey things you see are the elevators that tote the grain up top. In between those is where the ladder is located.

So, I cautiously made my way through the crap and to the ladder.
I tilted the camera up, so you can see what I have to climb. I notice that there is now a board above me, perched between two other boards. Upon closer inspection, I can see that it has been ripped from the wall at the top.

I made my way up the ladder to the top, and whipped out the camera to start taking pictures. No go. The brand new batteries were dead. That's when the swearing started. It's not easy or safe to get all the way up there, and it was loving cold and windy. So, I made my way back down, and spent a good half hour looking for new batteries. I ended up having to steal some from a flashlight.

I made my way back into the corn crib, and to the top of it.

The first picture from the top is of my trusty old 2x12 board that had a jumping fit while I was sitting on it.
As you can see, it is covered in snow, and is over the gap between the grain bins that I would talk about.
Also, while I am taking these pictures I am standing on a single ladder rung thats not too big as you will soon see.

Well, I plopped my rear end down on the 2x12, since it seemed sturdy as ever. I then snapped a picture of what was directly below me. I'd have to fall through all this poo poo if I slipped.

I peaked out of the window at the very top, and snapped a picture of the view outside. That red building is where I used to shoot the pigeons that polluted my farm. The top of that yard light pole you see, is about 35 feet at the peak. So you can sort of gauge how high up I am.

I swing over and take a picture of what I'm holding onto this entire time. The ladder just isn't really that big at all.

I look upward, and see the light poking through the ceiling of the corn crib. At this point, the very top is about 10 feet above me still. You could continue up the little ladder, but I wasn't going to do that. It's only nailed to the side of the rickety old elevator.

Speaking of the elevator, here it is. It is a simple design. Small metal buckets on each side of me. They operate with a belt and chain, that attaches to a wooden pulley. They have gotten quite rusty over the years though.

I muster all the testicular fortitude that I can, and grab a hold of a chain swinging in front of me. While holding onto I, I lean out over the first grain bin in hopes of taking a picture.
As you can see in the picture, the bottom is covered in snow, about 2 feet worth I would estimate.

I glance down and see something odd. To me it looks like a bunch of blood splattered onto the snow below me. What makes this strange, is there is no evidence of animals in the corn crib at all. No footprints, feces, or nesting. The splattered stuff in the picture is spread out over a 10 foot square area.

I glance over to the right, and notice something sticking out of the other grain bin. It's the dastardly ladder that smacked me in the face that horrible night. As you can see there isn't much to it. It's a bunch of old boards nailed to a couple of 2x4s. Here is what bugged me. The last time I was up here, it was sticking out of the other grain bin, the one with all the blood or whatever in it.

Upon further inspection of the grain bin with the ladder in it, I see some things. Also, take notice that I'm standing on that old 2x12 at this point. Not fun at all. Anyway, the shovel that is in the bottom was not there. I have been looking for that shovel for about a year now. How it got up there, I don't know. I also notice that the window is busted out and laying on the floor of the bin.
The last time i checked, the window was fine. There wasn't any glass missing out of it, and it was still mounted in the window up top.
The white round thing thats sitting next to the shovel is what caught my eye next. It's a skull of some kind. Probably from one of the animals that got thrashed up there. Now, do you see all that black chunks of whatever? That is the charred animal remains that I was talking about. Most are still hidden under the snow, but as you can see, there is still some visible.

Next I kind of hung over the side of an old plank, and took a picture of the holding area in the corn crib. Each side has these. They used to house entire ears of corn. Now they are used for storing old firewood, and other such things. You can see though, why I called it a jungle gym though. There is all sorts of stuff for a kid to hang from/play around on in it.

Before I left the corn crib, I made sure to walk over to the one end, and take a picture of what I call "The Den". This is in the upper part, and I won't go in there. I never have, and probably never will. Right when I got close to it, I heard creaking in there that wasn't caused by the wind. It sounded like something slowly pacing around.
I quickly snapped a picture.
You see that. It's really loving dark in there! The rest of the corn crib is always lit up on the inside, but not that space. It's been pitch black in there, for as long as I can remember.

Well, there you have it. That is the corn crib in all it's glory. This post more or less turned into a "rural exploration" but oh well. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I might even develop enough balls, to take some pictures in there at night.

But before I leave...

Fan Service.

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I'm still reading through the thread, I'll update as I find more.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 07:05

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

The images for the Corn Crib story were stored on Waffleimages, not imageshack. Still can't figure out how to make them appear though.

SourceElement posted:

For what it's worth, the dogipede story is in the Goonbumps book one of the previous threads produced.

Actually, I can't believe Amazon is still selling these things.

Well there we go. If someone bought this book then they could just scan it.

edit: And HumperMonkey/50FAnt's stories are on sale for 12 bucks.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 08:06

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Nice! Thanks for uploading those, I've been trying to find them for ages. One other thing:

coronatae posted:

It Is a Mystery compilation

What is this and can you upload it somewhere?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 02:39

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Onic posted:

Hahahhahaha wow, I'm glad someone saved all these old pictures of my corn-crib before waffleimages died. Thanks a bunch.

I'm still kicking around and am going to pound out some new stories soon, so stick around the thread if you're interested in new content from me within the week.

I'm psyched for this and everyone who found this thread should be too, because pretty much all Onic stories are great.

Like the Dog Creek story I'm reposting from the 2008 thread, if you don't mind:

-------------------------

This one happened to me a few years ago. I have only gone back to the spot once, and it was with another goon. That night however was completely boring and there was too many bugs. So, I'll talk about the more interesting night.

Along Dog Creek

So there I was, typing away on the internet. Making sure to waste my life the best I could. I then received a phone call from a buddy of mine. He sounded really high, which he usually did, but I listened anyway. He wanted me to go fishing with him and another friend. I asked him where exactly he wanted to go. "Dog Creek" was his response.

Dog Creek is more of a river than a creek. It's pretty big and deep, and extends for a very long ways. The best you could hope to catch out of there was some catfish and carp. It was early spring though, so the fish weren't as muddy as they would be in the summer. Making them more edible.
The creek itself is located in a wooded area, with some cliffs and other cool features. If you go there, chances are you wouldn't even think you were still in the farmlands of Iowa.

So, I agree to go with him. He pulls into my yard and picks me up not to long after the phone call, and we set off. We drive the 45 miles to the area where it's located, but needed to pick up some bait. I was going to use canned corn, but he insisted on getting night crawlers. We stopped at this little ranch style home that sells bait. Outside of the house sat this leathery old man. I stayed in the truck, as I wasn't buying anything. My friend who we'll call "Mike" wandered over to the old man and conversed with him for a while. I sat there thinking, "this old fella must be a talker" because they went on and on for about 20 minutes.

Mike finally did come back to the vehicle with his tub of worms, and we took off. I asked him what the old guy was talking about. He said it was just talk about fishing. I figured, yah, that sounds about right.
We drove about another 10 minutes, then got onto a gravel road. From there it was a 5 mile drive to the woods. After you get in the woods, you can drive for about 2 miles. After the 2 miles we reached the dead end, and had to set out on foot. This is the part that I hated, because it was a walk through woods for about a mile to the river. We had 2 fishing poles each, our tackle boxes, a few coolers of beer, and some camping stuff. Talk about a load of stuff to carry around.

I don't remember how long it took us to get to there. We set up camp when we got there, since we were planning on spending the night. We had decided to spend the night on a sand bank that had developed along the creek. It was the perfect area really. The sand bank itself was about 200 yards long, and 50 yards wide. Behind us was this wall of tall thin trees, so thick you couldn't see between them. The other side of the creek was probably about 60 feet away. You could tell erosion was taking it's toll on the waterway. The bank looked like it used to be about 8 feet higher, but all that was left was a crumbling dirt wall. In retrospect, I think the sandbank we were on used to just be the bottom of the creek.

Anyway, we got the camp set up, and started hunting firewood since it would be dark soon. We cleaned out the sandy area of all the dried up driftwood, and soon ventured into the woods themselves. We split up since we could cover more area, and find more stuff to burn. There really wasn't that much to find out there. I was quite surprised. I figured the woods would yield lots of old branches and stuff, but nope. I returned with a pitiful armful of twigs and sticks.

I waited and waited for those 2 to get back. The one friend returned with about the same amount that I had found, but Mike was nowhere to be seen. We figure he was just smoking a bowl or something, so we started fishing. Around an hour later, it was dusk and we heard rustling in the thin trees behind us. We glance back and see Mike stumbling out of the woods. He had a lot of sticks, and small logs. He dropped the stuff on the ground and started doing a little dance. I thought it was weird, so did the other guy. He then rips his shirt off and screams like a little girl.

Ticks! By the dozens! Those little bloodsuckers were all over him. He starts doing a frisky dance shake deal while screaming. Which I personally found hilarious. Ticks take quite a while to actually suck onto you, so I think he was overreacting a tad bit. Then it hit me. I probably had them too. So the next 15 minutes was spent getting those horrid little parasites off me. Some actually got into my boots!

When we were done, it was dark, so we started the camp fire up. Well, it was more of a bonfire. We had kind of went overboard with all the driftwood we found. Soon, we were fishing once again, and actually catching a decent amount of channel catfish. We got quite a few and cooked the the old fashioned way. Cut the heads off, gut them, shove a stick in them, and hold'em over the fire for a good slow cook. A lot of you probably think thats unhealthy. You're probably right, but I'm still alive, so I don't ponder on it too much. Mike dropped a couple of his in the sand unfortunately, but that didn't stop him. No sir. He ate them without washing or anything. You could hear the sand crunching between his teeth. Yikes.

We kept on fishing, drinking, and telling stories throughout the night. The fire started to dull down at around 1 in the morning I think. So it was off to find more wood. Problem was, we didn't bring any flashlights. There was a bright moon though, so it should be no problem right. We took off into the woods, but decided to stick together this time. The Department of Natural Resources had confirmed that bobcats and mountain lions were in the area, so we were not up for getting mauled to death.
The air was calm that night as we moved through the woods. Well, not really moved, more like stumbled. We couldn't see where we were going to well, so tripping over rocks seemed to happen a lot.

A dark image up ahead caught our eyes. We moved closer to inspect what we had seen. My god, it was a stump pulled out of the ground. We could burn this thing for hours! Problem was that it was kind of big. About the size of a 30 gallon trashcan to be exact. Size wouldn't stop us though. We banded together and started to roll the stump towards the encampment. Not really roll, more like...Pick up on the big root and tip it over, then repeat.
It took a while to get back, but we made it to the camp safely.

The fire was long burned out by the time we got back. Just some glowing coals remained. We shoved the stump onto the embers and doused it with starter fluid. One flick of a lighter later, and the entire river was lit up with this fire that was way too big. The warmth of the fire was more than welcome, being as it was still very chilly outside. I plopped back down to continue fishing. I wasn't catching anything for a bit, so I decided to take a pee break. I shuffled off into the dark and relieved myself.
On my way back I took a survey of the area and noticed some weird things. I got my friends up and told them to look at what I had saw. All around the camp was these weird footprints in the moist sand.

We were baffled as to what the footprints could have came from. They looked like a human foot basically, only crooked and larger. I know you're thinking bigfoot, but that's not what I would compare it to. Imagine taking your foot and bending it to the outside down the middle till it's kind of at a 45 degree angle. That's what it looked like. We saw the prints leading off into the dark towards the tall thin tree's we had come out of.

The problem was, is that these were not here when we showed up. There was deer, and raccoon, and all other sorts of things. But nothing even closely resembling these prints. So in other words, whatever it was, must have showed up while we were out getting our stump.
Well that's just fantastic! It didn't take long for me to remember my fun in the woods at the lakes not too long ago. I wondered if it was the same thing that I had seen up there. I actually wanted to leave at that point. We all did. Problem was that we didn't want to have to walk through the woods where this thing obviously was. That was the only way to get back to the truck.

It was time to crack open the scotch. As clich� as it sounds, but I really needed a good drink. We made the best of the situation. We kept drinking and fishing. The fish however had other plans. They were not hungry at all. We couldn't catch a drat thing. I guess they just decided to move down the creek or something.

An hour or so later we were feeling better about the situation. We had a little liquor in us, and nothing had happened. So we started talking and joking around once again. That's the poo poo that gets you. You put it out of your mind and then something happens. That something was those tall thing trees shaking behind us. I turned quickly and look at them. Something was moving through them. Not running, but more or less, pacing. The light of the fire showed these trees bending then springing back up through about a 20 foot length of land.
Mike said something, I don't remember what, but when he did, the thing stopped moving. We all were still, not moving. Something caught my ear. It was a sound of heavy breathing. Like a really big dog was trying to pant with it's mouth shut. We stared into the trees for what seems like a thousand years. Then the breathing stopped and there was just silence.

The silence didn't last long though, something took off through the trees back into the deep woods, it was big enough to sound like bowling balls being dropped in succession onto the ground. It was a thumping noise. We could hear it running until it just faded into the distance.

"Was that a cow or something" asked Mike.

A cow? That actually kind of made sense at the time. There was a lot of pasture in the area, so a cow getting out and going into the woods was more than possible. It was the only reasonable thing any of us could come up with, so we went with. Not more than 10 minutes later though we hear a howling noise. A very deep howl, sort of like a monkey that smokes 3 packs a day. It was very loud though, and it came from the direction the thing took off in.
Then another Howl, this time from the other side of the river, and a lot closer. Oh poo poo. There is more than one of whatever is making that noise. At the exact moment I was thinking that, the bushes on the other side of the creek start moving. Then we hear splashing noises. We can just barely make out clumps of dirt falling into the water from the 8 foot bank.

We are then treated to a large black thing jumping or falling into the creek. This made us stand up pretty drat fast. The splashing started as soon as we saw the dark image go into the water, and it was getting closer to us. Whatever was in the water was headed our way. We took off running down the sand bar we were on. I turned back in time to see this huge black mass lunge out of the water and block the complete view of our burning stump. We kept hauling rear end along the creek. We reached a point where we had to go back into the woods, so thats what we did. The truck was east of our point, and we had been through the area enough to know how to get back, even in the dark. Or so we thought.

All the running got us turned around somewhere, and we found ourselves lost. I had ran so much, I had to stop and take a breather. The other 2 did the same. We stood there for a minute, trying to get find out bearings. It was really dark now. The sky had clouded over, covering the moonlight that we had come to love before all this poo poo happened. I still wasn't sure what the hell that was. Maybe it was just a cow. Sure the howling made no sense, but everything else seemed to. The cow must have slipped on the bank and fell into the water, then started swimming towards shore. That had to be it. I think I was just trying to calm myself at that point.

We started walking after our very short break. Running seemed stupid at the time, since we had no clue where we were running. The problem with walking, is that you're more aware of whats around you, and your mind tends to play tricks on you. I swear I heard snapping noises in every direction and heard breathing all around us. My imagination was just loving with me at that point. We had to have walked for a good half hour before we stopped again. This time because of a god drat cliff. Well, an Iowan cliff, it's nothing impressive, but also nothing I wanted to climb up. The fact that we found this was a problem, because there are none of these around where we parked the truck.

We started making our way around the small cliff type thing, but heard noises behind us now. Not imagination noises like I was hearing before, these were real. Something was tromping through the woods quite a ways behind us, you could just barely pick the sound up. Our walking turned into jogging. We had to get a move on, and fast. By this time, my legs were burning and my lungs were on fire. Being a smoker never helps with running. No matter though, we had to keep going. I'm not going to be the guy on the news that gets killed by a cow so it can lay it's eggs inside me!
We were jogging along, but that noise was getting closer. Whatever was following us was moving at a faster pace than we were going. We saw what looked like a clearing up ahead. At that point our jogging turned into sprinting. We burst out of the woods onto a dirt road.

"Where the hell did this come from!?" I think to myself. each side of the old decrepit road was the woods. It was running right down them, but I didn't even know this road existed. Neither did either of my friends. We took advantage on not being in the woods, and made a moderate pace down the road. After a few minutes we realized that the noise had stopped. Nothing was following us anymore. So we started walking once again. Thank God. I was pretty sick of moving around like a healthy person.
We got probably 100 yards down the road, when The thing that was following us burst out onto the road in the direction we were heading.

It turned towards us. It looked like it might be a cow after all! Until it kind of stood up on 2 legs...poo poo. The thing was probably 150 feet away from us, and the dull light from the cloud covered moon barely illuminated it. But I remember clear as day, how that thing stood up.
We turned around and walked the other direction slowly. No I'm just kidding, we tore rear end down the road in the opposite direction of the thing. It had started chase once again. I could hear it tromping up behind us. It didn't hold chase very long, for soon there was a thump and skidding noise. One look back confirmed what I was thinking. The beast had slipped and face planted onto the road. We took advantage of this and kept running full speed.

The road stopped, dead end. Tree's once again. What the hell is wrong with this place! Into the woods we go once again. This time however we saw something that we recognized. It was an old rusted out car frame, that the woods had consumed long ago. The truck wasn't far from here. We ran our smoke ridden hearts out and saw the truck up in the distance. We had made it!
We jumped into the truck and fired it up. Mike tore rear end out of there. We had apparently made it just in time. For one look back proved that the thing was still chasing the truck! It wasn't fast though, so obviously there was nothing to worry about. We pulled away from it soon enough.

20 minutes later, and we had made it to some little hillbilly town. Civilization had never looked so good before. We took our breather there, and filled up his gas tank at the co'op. He had almost no gas in that truck. Thank god it actually started and we made it to a town. We left for home after the trucks tank was full. When we got back, we chilled out at Mike's place.
That is when the discussions started. We talked and talked and talked about what the hell was after us.

Personally, I thought it was a cow of some kind. Maybe something with rabbis...I wasn't sure. The howling and the standing up was bugging me too much to confirm my thoughts though.
Mike and my friend both thought it was Iowa's bigfoot. Granted, there has been quite a few sightings of a bigfoot type thing in the area. That stuff though..I don't know. I also kept pondering back on the thing that I had seen up at the lakes. That thing however, was silent. It was quite enough to lick my drat hand.

We went back after our stuff in the afternoon, after we got a few hours of sleep. This time we were armed with shotguns. Sometimes the redneck way, is the best way. We get to our camp to find that nothing is really touched. The one cooler is knocked over, and a fishing pole is gone, but thats about it. The ground around it told another tale though. The footprints that we had seen before were now everywhere. Not as neatly pressed into the sand though. They were more shuffled through the sand. It was all pretty messy. I figure it could have been our prints, but none of us emerged from the water.

That's the story of Dog Creek. To this day I still don't know if it was a cow. I guess I'll just let you guys be the judge of what it was. Who knows, maybe those things are in your area too, and someday you can enlighten us with your experiences.

------------------

I also like the one with the horse/raptor/monster that stalks dudes drinking beer by the shack in the woods but I need to track that one down.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2014 02:21

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Archives and search are both broken and there is no plan to fix them in the near future. So if you're like me and you enjoy reading the old threads, QCS has basically said "tough poo poo."

# ¿ May 5, 2014 07:09

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Wulfling posted:

drat man. I just found/read this thread and fell in love. This kinda stuff has always been awesome to me. I was going to buy archive access as well so I could read all the old stuff.

Ozma finally stepped in and made a forums-wide announcement. Unfortunately I think they still allow people to purchase a broken feature, although she said they're working on preventing that. Based on reading QCS it seems like Lowtax can't do anything because he's out of the country and the forums currently have no one on staff capable of actually fixing the problem anyway.

I've been getting my fix from thuneral and the nothotbutspicy site (which has a lot of the old pictures saved).

# ¿ May 21, 2014 19:51

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I remember the story said the guy was called a "Zip," or an Italian hitman. I wish I could remember the dude's name. Can't help you more than that until search/archives come back.

edit: Got it.

Originally posted by Swanson Broth
2006 Fall Ghost Stories

In the Eighties I was a child in Brooklyn, in New York City. Italians lived in the area, and they kept the streets safe with what little muscle remained after the U.S. government broke the Mafia�s back in the Seventies (sidenote: the Mafia is still alive and well these days, and always will be; I hate them, but they�re like roaches. No matter what you do, you can never completely get rid of them).

Immigrants have always streamed into New York City, and my neighborhood was no different. We had the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Russians moving in, but also an oddity and a bit of an anachronism � we had Sicilian immigration. This was a holdover from the Seventies, when the powerful mafia families imported friends and relatives from Sicily so they might serve in New York as paperless, untraceable trigger men, or �zips.� We all knew why the Sicilians were coming to our neighborhood, so many years after the major zips were busted in famous cases like the Pizza Connection, in which Gambino boss Paul Castellano smuggled millions worth of cocaine using pizza shops: the local gang was building its numbers.

Shortly before I was born, a man called �Poccione� came to live in the neighborhood. Poccione didn�t speak English � only Sicilian-dialect Italian � yet he drove a Cadillac, dressed exceedingly well and carried himself with great dignity, despite having no marketable skills in America. Everyone knew he was a zip, and steered clear of him. Even the other zips did, and the zips were known for their crazy bravery and fearlessness. The local gang head resented Poccione, but we grew to understand that Poccione was part of the package. Either he came with the zips, or none of them came. The Italians in my area needed the zips to avoid losing their territory to the Chinese and the Russians, and so Poccione was tolerated and respected.

People tolerated Poccione a little too much. His demeanor was cold, and he made no effort to learn English. He often demanded to be let into people�s houses so he could look around, on the pretense of sharing dinner with them (which he would always leave early), or on the pretense of visiting their young children, which he claimed to love in his remote yet rhythmic Italian.

Poccione did take a particular interest in children. One of my first memories is of him, tall and black-haired, with cold eyes and pale skin, staring down at me while visiting my grandparents (who could not refuse). He claimed to love children, but he never talked to us. We passed him on the way to the store, we saw him walk by as we played kickball in the street, but he only stared, as if appraising something.

He was pushy about more than visitations with the parents in the neighborhood. When a child was born, people talked about how Poccione would visit them and demand that they accept a small gold charm. The parents would place this around their child�s neck and would not take it off, Poccione explained, because they should be honored that he would give it to them, and he would be very upset indeed if he saw the child without it. Why, he would question their friendship, he would say.

I had one of these charms around my neck for the first years of my life. I remember it as a kid. I remember thinking it was very strange. It was a small gold hand with its fingers arranged in the popular devil�s-horns metal gesture, and it hung from the neck with the fingers pointing down and out. I remember that it was heavy and always cold. I would take it off sometimes, or hide it, but my parents would never let me walk around the neighborhood without it. I had to stay in the house, and know where it was at all times so I could rush to put it on if Poccione stopped by for coffee.

By the time I was six, in the late Eighties, my parents started thinking about moving away. I had been to about fifteen different doctors and I was always sick with infection. When I was a younger child, I would do strange things. When I was three my parents told me that more than once I walked out of the house in the middle of the night and stood in the street (only the vigilance of a neighbor saved me from getting hit by a car, I think). I would go into the basement of our house and tear at the wood panelling with my fingers until my hands were raw and bleeding. I needed a nightlight because I would always complain about seeing shadows and feeling unbelievable terror at night. My parents only let me go into a pool once, because, as they explained, I stood by the lip of the water for a good minute, staring in before I pitched face forward, limp, into the pool. I don�t remember that.

I was a hosed up kid, and it�s a miracle I didn�t kill myself. Bad, dangerous things kept happening to me. I remember being very young and climbing up furniture to get to the top of the refridgerator (just to do it). I grabbed onto a knife rack as one of my handholds, and brought the thing crashing down on me. I fell to the floor and watched the knives tip out of the drawer and fall, helpless to move. They punctured the ground around me, forming an outline like a cartoon machine gun makes. I laid there until my parents found me. And throughout all this time I was in and out of specialists� offices, because I was getting worse.

My parents found out that this was not abnormal in the neighborhood. If you lived in Brooklyn in the late Eighties, you may remember reading a news story about how a certain neighborhood in Bensonhurst had an unusually high rate of child mortality. That was my neighborhood. I grew up with no friends because the families with young children either moved away or lost their kids to car accidents, illness, or going missing (and in New York, you have to assume that�s abduction).

It was at this time that I remember Poccione becoming very pushy with my father. I remember that Poccione used to take food to the house, saying it was for me, because he had heard about my illnesses and wanted to �get my strength up�. He claimed that they were old-fashioned Sicilian recipes, but the food looked and smelled wrong. My father took the food from him, but threw it out. He didn�t refuse; I remember that Poccione looked angrier in those later days, more gaunt, paler.

One day, Poccione disappeared from the neighborhood. Apparently, he was killed in some gang dispute. When the cops raided his house, they found a weird altar in his bedroom, filled with candles and idols of a bipedal goat, and reportedly the altar gave off a very strong smell of sweetish rust (cops today won�t tell you this sort of thing, but back then, the neighborhood cops were the sons, brothers and fathers of neighborhood families, and word got around).

With Poccione gone, the gold charm was removed from my neck that day. I remember throwing it into the trash. I stopped getting sick after a few weeks, and my odd behavior ceased almost immediately.

I haven�t talked about it with any of the other kids who survived that neighborhood. I�ve lost track of them. I�m not sure I want to think about it.

Hazo has a new favorite as of 06:43 on May 27, 2014

# ¿ May 27, 2014 06:31

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

To celebrate the return of Archives here's another Onic classic.

----------------

Camp Hell

Camp Hell is a boyscout camp in Iowa (Not the Real Name) It is located in a forest area near Des Moines. Being a good christian child, I was initiated into the cub scouts at a young age, and then eventually the boy scouts. I eventually made Eagle, but that has nothing to do with this particular story.

Our troop had decided that our summer trip that year would be to head to Camp Hell. There we could do our lifeguard training, C.O.P.E. which is basically rock climbing, and other random fun things. I think I was 15 or 16 at the time.

We get all packed up and start the long drive down there. 6 hours later, and we reach our destination. We get all our gear out of the vehicles and start to walk down to our designated site. The camp is god drat enormous though. The walk from the parking lot to our site took 45 minutes. Talk about being hard on the arms and legs. We finally get there though, and get to see what our lodgings will be. Our camp site was about the 50 yards around. The tents we would be sleeping in were those world war 2, olive green pitch tents. Throw a couple of pallets in the bottom of them, and you're out of the mud for the most part.

I opened up my tent and was greeted with an ungodly amount of spiders. The majority were daddy long legs, and wolf spiders. Back then I still had my sense of smell, and let me tell you. That tent smelled like loving spiders. It took me a good half hour to brush all of them out of it, and get my cot set up. I opened the back of the tent, and look down. It's on the edge of a ravine. There was a good 30 foot sharp drop off right there. Down in the bottom was a small stream and some rocky outcroppings.

I walked out of the tent and saw everyone gathered around the tent next to mine. I walk over to see what the fuss is about, and take a look inside. Sitting on the ceiling of this tent is the biggest wolf spider I have ever seen. The drat thing looked like a large tarantula. It was about as big as your hand spread out, and boy was it hairy. Someone jabbed it with a stick, and the thing plopped down with a thud onto the pallet. It then ran towards the back, and leaped out into the ravine. We actually watched it glide down into the woods.

So already we have an infestation of the oogly booglies in the camp. What I didn't mention was the noise. God drat cicadas were going off like crazy. It was one of their big years. There was an estimated 25,000 per acre I think they said. It was so bad, that when I later walked over to a small cabin, I saw that the entire side of it was cicada shells. You couldn't see a piece of wood on that thing because of all of them. The huge snails were cool though, they were all over the damp woods.

Anyway, after we got all set up, we headed to the main hall for the welcoming to the week of hell. There was some stupid poo poo speeches and other boring stuff that kids don't want to hear. We then dined on the finest baked beans and hot dogs.

Later that night we all gathered around this huge fire, in a semi-circle. There was about 1000 of us, so it was a big fire. Behind it was this huge totem pole with a platform at the top. I'd say about 50 feet up. Standing on the platform was some fruit cake in body paint screaming. Then shirtless weirdo's ran around us screaming with torches. I swear, the boy scouts organization is one of the weirdest in the world. After all the batshit insane stuff had died down, we were treated to stories of the camps history.

The main guy told us of all the people who had died at this camp, and of the weird creatures that lurked in the woods and lakes. The way he told the stories though was so funny, due to his crackly, whinny voice.

I think the stories ended at around midnight, and we were sent back to get some sleep. So, we get back to our campsite, and I'm pretty bushed, so I decide to head to bed. I crack open that tent, and flip a flashlight on, only to see that all the god drat spiders were back! Let me tell you, a week in that place will cure you of all your arachnophobia. I didn't even bother with the spiders, I just got undressed, hopped in my sleeping bag, and conked out.

5 a.m. rolls around and I hear the blaring sound of reveille playing a few feet from my tent. Since when did I join the army!? I got dressed and headed out for my first day of fun and festivities. The first thing on my agenda was C.O.P.E. So, I headed down to the designated area, which was a 2 mile walk through the woods. By the time I get there I'm soaked from all the dew. About 15 of us had signed up for cope this year. The first thing we do is go to climb the 100 foot tower, then repel down the back side. No big deal really, we had all done it before. So, we get our swiss seats tied up, and start going up in one by one...eh, it's nothing really to talk about. Nothing interesting happened on it my first day. So, I'll skip ahead.

My first day was pretty normal for the most part. Cope, followed by canoe safety, then some other stuff that I can't remember. That night was once again filled with spiders and 100 degrees plus humidity.

We had to get up the next day at the same time. This day though I had to go to the mess hall and prepare the table for breakfast. Queue me trudging through the woods at 5 in the morning. I noticed that the woods were dead quite for the most part, besides the common sound of rabbits or squirrels. The cicadas hadn't come out yet, so it was less annoying. It was still dark out, so I had a flashlight with me to guide my way through the trees.

I don't know what made me look up, but when I shined my light up at the tops of the trees I saw something. A large black image was leaping through the tree tops at a fast pace. It went directly over me, then off in the direction I had just came from. My light didn't carry on it for too long, but long enough for me to confirm that I had seen something strange. It didn't make a sound, which was pretty weird. I had already seen some strange stuff in my life at this point, so I wasn't really scared at all. I just kept moving onward towards the mess hall.

It took me about 30 minutes to get there, and once again I was soaked up to my knees in dew. Setting up the table only took about 15 minutes, and by 6 everyone had shown up and started eating.

After breakfast they sang songs about using the pancakes as toilet paper, and coffee for cuts. Really, boy scouts=weird.

After breakfast it was off to another uneventful day of cope. Then onward to canoe safety. Today during my canoe class, we had to go out into the middle of the murky lake, and sink my canoe. Then attempt to un-sink it. The only thing that worried me about that lake was the unusually high amount of large snapping turtles. Those things were mean too. I didn't want one of those taking a finger off or a chunk of flesh.

Our instructor demonstrated how to do it properly. He would sink his, then 2 other canoes would pull up and you would work your canoe to the surface, then kind of stack it on the other two so it could drain out properly. It seemed pretty pointless to me. Since if you're by yourself, you're not going to get it out from under water.

I waited until my turn, then I rowed out into the middle of the lake. I started rocking my canoe until it flipped and started to go under. The drat thing only sank about 5 feet down, so I was able to stand on it under water. The instructor sent out 2 guys with canoes as soon as mine was sunken. I had a good 10 minute wait though.
So, I stood there on my sunken canoe waiting for those slow rear end people to work their way out. I felt the canoe start moving from under my feet, as if a current was pulling on it. I kick my heel over the edge of a support beam in it to hold on. That stopped the canoe dead in it's tracks. Suddenly I felt something wrap around my ankle and pull me down. It pulled hard enough to submerge me completely, even with my life jacket on. I open my eyes up under the water and see these pale rotting hands fly at my face and grab my ears. A screaming face is then thrust into mine. I could hear the screaming perfectly, even though I was underwater. I start frantically trying to get away. I'm kicking and waving my arms as hard as I can. It seemed like an eternity, but the thing let go of me, and I was able to make it to the surface.

My life jacket bobs me up above the water line, where I proceed to cough and sputter. The guys in canoes show up just as I bob up to the surface, so I start trying to climb into one of their canoes as fast as I can. They won't let me though. "You have to get yours out before you can come back." God dammit! I told them something underwater had grabbed me, but they told me to stop making poo poo up and get my canoe out. So, I did just that while all the time wondering if something was going to grab me and drag me to my death.
I get my canoe out, and floating again, then speed into shore. When I get there, the instructor asked me why I was underwater for so long. I told him of what had just happened, and he said "Oh yah, that happens." That happens!? What the hell kind of place is this.

I went down to the showers to get cleaned up, but am greeted with a fat elderly man showering naked...so I waited. This place was giving me a serious case of the heeby jeebies. I eventually got showered up, and walked back to my campsite, where I planned on taking a nap. I layed down for a good hour, but couldn't get to sleep on account of all those drat cicadas going crazy. So, I decided to hang out with my buddies for a bit. They wanted to go explore the woods, so of course I went with. We all found some nice branches, and made them into walking sticks, and we were off. We found a path down the ravine behind our campsite and took it. We then followed the stream for a while. The stream turned into a small river with some fast current going down it.

I was checking out the little fish that will swimming around in the nice clear water, while my friends walked off further down the path. I was waiting for a friend to catch up anyway. I glanced over at a huge pile of branches that were hung up on a bend in the river. I see something weird sticking out of them. I walk over that way, and finally see what it is. A nice mangled torso slung up in the branches. Intestines were floating out of the eviscerated stomach. And it wasn't fresh at all. The whole thing was a pale white, and looked like it had been there for a while. I start yelling for them to come look at it. Nobody was coming yet though.
"Don't" That 's what I hear. I look at the torso again, and hear "Don't" A head then slowly cranes it's way out of the rushing waters, and stares at me. There is no lower jaw on the head, and the eyes are popped out of it. The lips are huge and purple. It says "Don't" Once again. I take off like a bat out of hell screaming my head off. I ran and ran, until I saw the friend that I was waiting for. He's yelling "what's the matter!" at me while I'm running up to him. I catch my breath and tell him that I had saw the torso caught up in the branches.

We bust rear end back to the spot, and take a look at the branches. There's death there alright, but it wasn't what I had saw. It was a freshly killed deer this time. Still had all it's hair and color. He questions me as to why it was such a big deal. I explained to him the whole time, but he would just laugh and tell me to stop trying to scare him. He went on to catch up with the other guys. I just headed back to the camp at a very fast pace. Behind me I could hear the word "Don't" echoing through the ravine. What does it mean? I couldn't figure it out.

No one else at the camp would believe me. They said it was either making up stories, or my imagination. gently caress, imagination. Last time I checked, people don't imagine ripped up torso's and talking severed heads.

I already wanted to go home. This place was too hosed up for me, and apparently other people had poo poo happen to them here also. I still had 4 more days to look forward to though.

That night there was a huge electrical storm. I'm talking big. There was so much lightning that it was brighter than daylight out. I was lucky enough to be in the tent 5 feet from the tall metal flagpole. Lucky me. The wind was howling at about 50 miles per hour. Everybody except a few of us had moved into the wooden shack that stored our fire wood. I was one of the lucky people that got to stay in the tents. The wind was so strong that it was untying the double knots that I had made to keep the tent flaps closed. It wasn't raining at all though thankfully. More and more spiders had decided to get out of the storm. By now my sleeping bag was covered in smooshed spiders from my rolling around at night.

I tried to get to sleep but the thunder was so constant and loud that it was just impossible at first. Then the talking started. "Don't!" That thing was yelling at me from the river. Over and over it would yell "Don't" at me. I flung the sleeping bag over my head to stop the noise of the thunder, wind, and talking. It was pointless though, everything got through. I must have eventually fell asleep, because before I knew it, it was daytime again.

Today, was the day I had been at first looking forward to, but now I dreaded it. It was the oh so fantastic "Survival Trial". We are given a tarp, a sleeping bag, a small shovel, a bucket, a book of matches, and our knife. Then we are supposed to go deep into the woods and make a campsite for the night. This was not a good thing for me, after all that I had went through.

First thing to do was try go find a good spot to set up. I headed over to the huge bridge that went over the ravine, and tried to set up under it. But saw someone else there, and they were getting peed on by people on the bridge. So, that was a no-go.

I tried a couple of other places. I was looking for a good, elevated flat spot, that was away from that river or stream or whatever it was. I found a good area that was about a mile into the woods. I to this day don't know how they got away with this stuff back then. Sending kids into the woods unattended, it's so unsafe. But oh well, what can you do. I'm sure they don't allow it anymore these days.

The spot I found was on the top of a little hill, with a nice big tree. So, if there was rain, it would all go down, and not pool up around me. I dug a small ditch which resembled a shallow grave. I covered the dirt in it with pine needled and dry leaves. I set my sleeping bag in it. I used the tarp as a makeshift tent.

I was proud of my campsite when I was done. It looked pretty drat good. I then went off and gathered a decent amount of firewood. I dug a tiny pit, and lined it with rocks. That was where I would have my fire. I found a nice flat rock that I could use for cooking and set it next to the fire. Then, I went down to the lake and pulled up the lines I had set earlier. The lines had 6 baited hooks on them, and I had thrown them into the water along the shore. Most of the hooks were full with mediocre sized rock bass, but I kept them. Part of the survival course was catching and eating your own food.

Night rolled around and I had eaten my fish that were cooked on the flat rock in the fire. I sat there alone, smoking about a half a pack of ciggs that I couldn't touch until I was alone. At least that was one good thing about this survival crap. It was a calm night. The storm the night before had blown all the bad stuff away apparently. There was only the sound of crickets and the crackling fire. I sat there, enjoying my fire and nicotine for quite a while. Then I noticed that all the crickets had stopped chirping. Well, isn't that the best sound ever. When they do that, it means something is about to die. I had this happen later on in life, but that's part of another story.

I looked around into the dark woods, but my small fire didn't light up much. I heard the crunching of dead leaves and sticks off in the direction behind me. I figured someone must be out checking on us survivalists. I called out "hello?" and waited for an answer, but got none. The crunching kept going on off into the distance, away from me, and soon faded into nothing. I thought it was someone just being a prick.

I rolled my bag out into my shallow grave...man that sounds bad doesn't it. I hopped into the bag, and snuggled in. It was actually quite comfortable. I was pretty surprised with how well things were turning out. It didn't take me long to fall asleep.

I woke up some time later. My eyes opened and I stared into the face of something. I was still very groggy so I just looked until my eyes adjusted. It was some sort of beast. It was just inches from me. The thing had stuck it's head under my tarp and was eyeballing me...kinda. It had no eyes. Imagine a deformed wolf, with no eyes, or eye sockets. It was huge, and white. It inched closer to my face till it was almost touching. I'm trying my hardest not to move or scream my head off. It starts to smell me. It's hot stagnant nose breath wafts over my face. The smell is terrible. It smelled like the essence of death. It sniffed for a few seconds then started to growl slightly. The growling got louder, and louder, until it whipped it's massive head around and looked over it's shoulder. I move my eyes over and see that it's looking at something.

What it's looking at is...gently caress I don't know. It was like a tall skinny human being that was hunched over. By tall I mean about 9 feet tall. It was naked, and had no mouth or arms. It was looking right at me. The growling turned into snarling. I could see the wolf things mouth open. Inside were several sets of teeth, like a shark would have. The wolf type thing turn around roared at this humanoid thing off in the distance. The tall thing started backing up slowly, while the wolf thing was walking at it slowly. I'm laying here with the biggest amount of fear and what the gently caress rolling through my mind.

In an instant the wolf thing leaps into the air and slams into the tall thing. The tall thing starts writhing around on the ground. I could hear muffled screams coming from it's non-existent mouth. The wolf was snapping and bitting at it. I could hear flesh being ripped from bones, followed by the crunching of bones. I loving black out at this point. I couldn't take that much poo poo in one sitting.

I wake up and look at my wrist watch. It is 3 o'clock in the afternoon. gently caress! I had been sleeping for a very long time. I get up and remember what I had seen. Was it all a dream? Apparently not. There is black tar like stuff splattered all around my camp. I could only assume it was blood from those things. There was huge patches of dirt kicked up, and a tree was snapped in half not more than 10 feet from where I was sleeping. It was a tree about the size of a leg.

I decided the poo poo must have actually happened, so I got my poo poo packed up and ran back to the main camp.

When I got back I was greeted with a lot of "where the hell were you?". I explained to them that I had overslept. I found some of the other guys that had done the survival course, and had a word with them. I asked them if they had anything strange happen to them during their stay in the woods. Only one person said that he had seen something lurking around in the dark. He said it was shaped like a dog, only a lot bigger. The other people seemed uneasy, so I don't know if they were telling the truth about noticing nothing, or if they were hiding something.

At 5 p.m. I headed over to my cope class for the biggest fun we were going to have. That would be the 2nd longest zip line in the world. Or it was at the time, I'm sure there are some bigger ones by now.

To get to the zip line, you have to climb up this wire ladder onto the top of a light pole. Then grab onto one wire, and walk across another wire to the other side, which is another light pole. It's about a 20 yard wire walk. At that point you get yourself hooked up and take off. I don't even remember how long it is, but it's a long drat way to the other end. You fly over the ravine and a ton of forest. At the other end are your fellow boy scouts ready to stop you. Theres a bunch of bed mattresses nailed to trees too. Well, thats comforting.

I had to wait an hour before it was my turn because someone chickened out, and had to be forcibly removed from the pole. It took me 15 minutes to walk to the line start from the end, so that kinda shows how long a distance it is.

I get up the ladder, and make my way across the wire. I get hooked up to the line, and kick off the platform. The zip line takes off like a bolt of lightning. I'm soaring over the land, and it is just kick rear end. I look down as I pass over the ravine and see a mass of thousands of bodies writhing around. They are reaching up at me and screaming. I throw up all over myself.

I get to the other end, and am shaking terribly bad as they catch my line and help me off. They pass it off as me being scared, and the rush getting to me. It wasn't though. I had enough of this place, it was too much now. I waited around at the end for the instructors girlfriend to come down the line. We got radioed that she had started, but she never showed up. What the hell happened to her?

Turns out that she got above the ravine, and her hair flew up into the pulley and got caught. It half way scalped her. That was a very bad thing. She hadn't tired her hair back and put it under her helmet like she was told to. a rescue guy had to climb out to the middle where she was stranded, and cut her hair so she could get moving to the end. She was passed out from what I would assume to be pain and blood loss. It was all bad, and I'll never forget it. She lived fortunately.

Later that day, the other instructor fell off the tower, and his line didn't catch. He shattered both his legs. He was about 40 feet off the ground at the time, trying to show off. poo poo was going sour awful fast.

These 2 things happening in one day got cope canceled for the rest of the trip.

I skipped the rest of my courses that day, and just hung around the mess hall. I wanted to be near some kind of civilization, and that was the closest I could get at the time. Night rolled around, and I was back in the tent with my buddies, the spiders. I didn't mind them by now. They didn't bite me or anything so it was no big deal. There was something wrong with me the whole trip though, I couldn't take a dump no matter how hard I tried. It wasn't constipation, I just didn't have to go. It was weird. I'm just letting you guys know I was having trouble pooping.

I lay there in bed, wondering what was going to gently caress with me tonight. I soon dozed off and was met with nightmares of epic proportions. I don't remember what they were about, but I know I had them. I woke up from them in a cold sweat. And it was freezing cold in that tent. It was about 90 degrees when I fell asleep, now I could see my breath. I was shivering in my sleeping bag, wondering how it had got so drat cold. I go to flip on my electric lantern, but it wont turn on. Batteries must be dead.

I hear the tent flap behind me head start to open. I turn my head and look over. Through the flap comes the head of the tall skinny thing. It cranes it's foot long neck and stares right at me. There is black tar stuff oozing from cuts that riddle it's face. It looks at me for a few seconds then starts talking.
It says "Come with me. You must come with me." I actually said "No" It's face moves closer to mine, and it keep repeating it's phrase.

I'm in absolute terror. The thing suddenly starts howling in pain. Like a man would. It's then jerked back out the tent. I say jerked because it looked like something pulled it out. I hear thrashing going down into the ravine. Followed by a roaring noise and now screaming. I curl up into a ball in my sleeping bag and close my eyes shut as tight as I can get them.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke up to the sound of the trumpet at 5 a.m. Today was the day we leave. I was so loving happy to leave that godforsaken place. I had all my poo poo packed up by 7 a.m. and I was waiting out by the van. I said gently caress the ending gathering and waiting in the parking lot. Everyone got back an hour or so later, and we took off. As soon as we left the parking lot I had to take a dump. My bowels knew what was going on.

That's it. There is your story guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Now I have to get to bed, I have work way too early tomorrow.

------------------------------

# ¿ Jun 9, 2014 04:00

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

By Khazar-khum

--------------------

Intruders

I grew up in a haunted house.

It was a big Moderne/Streamlined house, not the stereotypical Victorian mansion, with turrets and gingerbread, waiting patiently at the end of a tree-lined lane for fools to wander in. Oh, it had its own circular driveway and plenty of trees, but that's where the resemblance ends.

The man who built it was a genius with concrete. In places the walls were 3' thick, lined with lead and rebar. Everywhere the house was built of reinforced and lined concrete, making serious renovation all but impossible. He had peculiar design ideas: no walls were exactly even, no room precisely square. My bedroom, for instance, was 13'3" x 15'2" on the east/south walls, and 13'4" x 15'4" on the west/north walls. No windows or doors were centered.

Downstairs the living room had a barrel vault for the ceiling, with indirect neon lights. There was a massive Palos Verdes limestone slab fireplace, full of fossil shell. The dining room had the most bizarre ceiling in the place: it was a pyramid, with a big brass lamp suspended from the center. The kitchen was long and wide, with a backdoor that seemed to be a refugee from somewhere in the midwest:it had windows that rattled whenever the door was touched.

We had been living there for a couple of weeks when this particular incident occurred.

The old wool carpets had to be pulled as I was allergic to them. My dad still complains about having to get rid of them. Anyway, the new stuff hadn't yet arrived, so we had bare concrete floors downstairs. We had big moving boxes everywhere while my Mom decided what needed to go where.

They had to go to a meeting for the horse show committee, which meant I would be alone for a few hours. It wasn't a problem: I had my dog Kimba, the phone was right outside my room, and I had a ton of homework. I said goodbye to them and went up to my room. By force of habit I shut my door.

My bedroom was right over the dining room. Off of it was a little sun deck/patio that linked to one off the master bedroom. I planned to enclose that one day for a studio for myself. It would be a couple of years before that happened. Right now I moved out there to do homework, since the house tended to be stuffy. By the time I finished math it was getting dark, so Kimba and I went back inside.

I found a good station on the radio and settled down to draw. I had been working on a big project for history and I wanted to make a map. So I was merrily shading away when I heard the back door downstairs open and slam shut.

They were home early. Cool. Maybe we could go get ice cream or something.

I heard my dad drop his keys on the kitchen counter, followed by movement in the living room. I figured they had brought back junk from the meeting, so it was no big deal. I heard the TV come on, with the voices drifting upstairs. Someone started for the stairs, their shoes clicking on the floor.

Kimba growled.

At that moment the temperature in my room dropped. Not plummeted, but definitely colder. I grabbed Kimba and hung on.

Someone started on the bottom step. The first three or four stairs creaked, and I could tell that whoever was coming up was much bigger than my Mom. It was eight steps to the landing, and eight more to the top. I counted them until they stopped.

We had three bedrooms and one big bathroom upstairs. My Mom always insisted on opening every closet door & looking under every bit of furniture in the house. I would have thought that was what was going on, except that she didn't call my name. I heard whoever it was go into the guestroom. The door clicked shut.

They went down the hall to my parents' room. I heard the door open and close, followed by footsteps as they walked around the room. Kimba snuggled close to me, which worried me because she wasn't really a snuggler. Finally they came back down the hall, and stopped at my door.

The room was icy cold. I clung to poor Kimba, who was no longer growling. Instead we sat there, waiting for the door to open.

I don't know how long we sat. I didn't look at the clock. All I know is that we stayed still until I heard the backdoor open and slam shut, and heard my Dad call up to me.

I shouted back that someone was in the house. He came upstairs, and then we all searched the place. No one was there. Nothing was out of place. I told them what had happened, and they insisted it was my imagination.

Two days later, there were cop cars in the driveway when I got home from school. My Mom was sitting outside, smoking, talking to one cop. I asked her what was up. Just about then a deputy came out and said that he didn't find anyone in the house.

She admitted she'd heard people in there, talking and moving around upstairs. The cops told her it was OK, she did the right thing by calling, you can't be too careful, all that good stuff.

She finally apologized to me over the whole thing. It was good, because after that we started to see them. But that's another story.

It wasn't midnight here. Yet.

Telephone Man

If I were to list every thing that went on in the house it would fill this forum and a couple others, too. My Dad owned the place for 25 years. I lived in the house & in another house on the same land all that time. So I have quite a trove of stories to tell.

If you ever watch the Ghost Hunters on TV, you know that they want to see some kind of evidence before calling a place haunted. There's one little problem with that: ghosts are like fish. You're in the boat, you've got the lines out, you know that there's fish in the lake; but if they're not in the mood to bite, forget it. With ghosts, you can place all the high-tech gear you want in the place, but if they won't or can't appear, there's nothing you can do.

Anyway, just about everybody's favorite story involved the phone man

When we moved in, the place still had party lines. My Mom wouldn't settle for that, so we had the phone company come out and place a single line. Everything was OK outside: they ran the lines to the house and outbuilding, a long, low construct that had housed the man while he built the house. We later converted it back into an apartment for me when I got married.

He did the downstairs, and then went up. To get into the very large attic, you had to open a closet door and then climb up into the opening. There were shelves in there, which could be used as a ladder if needs be. The phone man was able to hoist himself up in with no problem. My Mom left him alone and went back downstairs.

A short while later, he came down, got some tools or somesuch, and went back upstairs.

And disappeared.

We never saw him come down. The phone company had to send someone to get the truck. They never spoke to us, and we never signed off on the work order. But we had phones, so it was OK.

And that was it. You'd think it was a joke, except for two things. One, he left his flashlight in the closet. We used it for years, until it finally got lost. And two, when people came to install AC & add insulation, they found a hard hat in the attic.

So what did happen to the phone man? I don't know.

Telephone Man – Second Version

When we moved to the house in Norco, the are was still on party lines. Party lines are pretty much like you see in old movies: you pick up the handset, and if someone is talking you can either listen in or wait for them to stop. For a 15 year old from the OC this was exotic and fun. For my folks it wasn't. They started the process for a private line.

One day the telephone company truck pulled into the driveway. The telephone repair/installation man got out. My Mom showed him the two phone lines in the house, both at built-in telephone tables. The man made some notes about the one downstairs, then asked about the attic.

Access to the attic was through a very wide closet in the hallway leading to the master bedroom. There was a series of shelves and drawers, which were climbed like a staircase, and then the access panel in the ceiling of the closet. You had to be reasonably tall, or agile, to get into the attic that way, but it was doable.

The telephone man thanked my Mom. He went downstairs, got some stuff, and went back upstairs.

That was the last anyone saw of him.

Around five another telephone company truck showed up. A man got out of it and into the one the telephone man had driven over. They both drove away.

My Dad went upstairs. The access door was open, and there was a telephone company flashlight sitting on the top shelf.

And no telephone man.

Many years later we had air conditioning installed. While laying the ductwork, they never found the telephone man, either.

Someone once asked if he could have gotten trapped inside a wall. Well, the walls on the house ranged from 1-3 feet thick. They were concrete blocks, reinforced with lead & steel, and then covered with more poured concrete. So, no, he wasn't in the walls.

What really happened to the telephone man? To this day, I do not know.

Ghostly Phone Sex

In my Dad's house, we had many many things happen.

There was a building behind the house that the owner had lived in while building the main house. It had a bathroom, the making of a rudimentary kitchen, and a phone. The line was separate from the main house.

We used the place as a garage/storage/whatever for years. Then when I got married, we decided to convert most of it back into a living space. We laid carpet, tile, put in a shower, stove, etc. My folks had turned the phone off to prevent anyone from using it & running up a bill. Now it was time to turn it back on. They had to replace some lines and naturally that meant climbing the poles.

We were inside when he fell off the pole. Fortunately the neighbor was a fireman. He kept the phone man quiet until the ambulance came. Someone went up in a cherry-picker to finish the job because they couldn't just leave things as they were. According to the new man, the guy's harness wasn't loose or anything--he just fell out of it. No one could figure it out.

And then the phone bill came. $850.

From the time the guy climbed the pole to the time the second guy finished the job was roughly 2 hours. My Dad called the number that the bill said had been dialled something like 3000 times. It was a long-distance pay phone-sex line.

So we went to the phone company to complain. The lady at the desk had to get her supervisor because they'd never seen anything like it. They calculated that the actual number of calls that could be placed was something like 80. But even that didn't make sense, as the calls were made before the phone had been connected.

They sent someone out to check the lines, I guess to see of someone was tapping them. But no.

Who or what made the calls?

Sealed Window

Still more stuff from my Dad's old place.

We had an outdoor riding arena to work the horses at night when it was cooler. My Dad put up a light pole so we could see what we were doing. Friends would ride over and we'd play around with the horses all night.

This one evening my best friend and I were out, playing games on horseback. We could see my bedroom window quite clearly. I had the curtains closed because my room faced west & I didn't like being blinded in the morning.

My folks left to go shopping. They drove past before leaving so we'd know.

Anyway, we're playing tag or whatever it was, when we saw the lights come on in my room. We hadn't seen my folks pull up, but thought maybe they were around front and we just missed seeing them. A few seconds later the curtains in my room get drawn open. We stopped to see what was up. My folks never bothered my curtains, so we wondered just who was up there.

Just then one window opened partway. That was a good trick--a real good trick. We had the windows sealed shut because of the wind & dirt. There was no way to open them unless you used a special tool to break the seal.

Now we thought someone was robbing the place. We had a phone in the barn, but it was locked. I'll have to tell the story about that phone and why it got locked another time.

We decided our best bet was to stay put and try to get a good look at whoever was in there. Since my room was at the back of the house, AND had a separate enclosed patio room that led onto the lower roof, we figured that they were planning to go out that way. Why they'd opened the window we saw made no sense, but hey--we weren't the robbers.

We saw one person--male, we were pretty sure--walking back and forth. We didn't see him moving anything, but then maybe he was just trying to decide what to take. He left the main room for the patio room, which had no windows on our side. It did, however, have my stereo & TV. We could see the light from it flashing out onto the lower roof--so he was in there, probably bagging all the stuff.

The headlights from my Mom's car came up the road. We rode over to them and told them what we saw. My Dad was convinced we were screwing around. While he was telling us to cut it out, the lights went off everywhere--the house, barn, street, everything. Power was flaky there, so this wouldn't normally have been a big deal, but with someone in the house it was. We went back to the barn for a flashlight because the one in the car was dead.

Once we had the lights, we started in. We took maybe three steps into the house when the lights came back. My Dad made us stay down while he went upstairs.
Nothing. Nothing was taken, everything was OK.

Except the window had been opened & then closed.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 14:28

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I think someone else asked for it too. It took place in Ireland and I haven't been able to track it down despite searching for keywords like "security guard watching porn."

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 00:42

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

ATM Machine posted:

We aren't talking about the story about the hidden room above...I wanna say a garage? and there were a bunch of drawings and a slightly disfigured girl ghost? That's the only secret room story I can remember that's been posted a few times.

Nope, that's "The Secret Room." JohnnyCanuck's description is correct.

--------

Secret Room

Okay I haven't posted this story because even though things worked out okay I was terrified and thinking about how she looked and how I felt makes me feel the same way when I remember it.

I lived in the second oldest house in my area near Waco, Texas, from when I was about 11 til I was 18. I don't know the significance of this really but I feel it's the only possible explanation for any supernatural presence. I'm not sure when the house was originally built but the rest of the houses around mine were built in the 40s and 50s so I supposed it's older than that.
The house seemed normal when we first moved in. Only two families had lived there over the years so it wasn't like there was a high turnover rate. In fact no one really noticed or mentioned anything supernatural with the house.

However, there was a "secret room." This room was actually a selling point for my parents to help us deal with moving. Even though my dad was in the military we had lived at our past house for quote awhile and didn't want to move. So of course when my parents said there was a secret passage connecting one of the possible bedrooms with a secret room we became excited about the new house. My sister and I fought for it but I won because the other bedroom already had flower wallpaper up. When I first saw my room I went straight to the closet to see the "Secret door."

The secret door wasn't really secret, it was right in the back of the closet and plain to see. However it was a lot smaller than any normal door. Even when I was only 11 or 12 I had to squat down to get in. It looked like it was made for a child to use.
Another interesting thing was that the door handle was not really built into the door, it was just a handle added as an afterthought. This made me think it was originally just some sort of attic or crawl space door and not meant for a room. The door was lockable by key from my side of the door, the other side had no handle or keyhole. When you open the door there's a very small hallway which is the same height as the door and not really fit for an adult, but it's just a few feet long and then you get into the room.

The room was just an empty room added above the garage of the house. There was no way out except for the "secret passageway" to my closet. There were no windows, one light with a string used to turn it on hanging from the ceiling, and the room was completely white with seemingly new wallpaper. There was no furniture or anything left in the room from the previous owners, in fact I don't think the previous owners used it at all. I believe it was sealed before or soon after they moved in and wasn't touched since then, since it was pretty dusty, but who knows. The lock did seem very old and had a hard time moving as if it was rusted or the wood was warped or something.

Now my parents thought the room could be me and my sister's own little toy room or whatever when they first saw it, but after moving in they had second thoughts. I'm not sure what it was but they said it was because they wouldn't be able to hear us if we got hurt in that room since it was so detached from the rest of the house. Of course since we wanted our own secret room so badly they gave in, but said that we had to tell them when we were playing in there and we had to keep the door to my room, my closet, and the secret room open at all times when we were there. So we went on and like I said earlier nothing much really supernatural happened in the rest of the house, and not even too much in the "secret room," at least not to me.

My sister began having an imaginary friend. Whenever I wasn't in there I could hear her talking and whispering to someone. I noticed that although at first she used to have fun in there that as time went on she kind of seemed sadder when she was in there. However up til now this could all be coincidence so I didn't give it much thought.

The only weird things that happened with me was at night I thought I could hear some sort of scratching on the walls behind my room, except it wasn't really with fingernails it was softer sounding. It wasn't on the door, but coming from inside the room.
Now I believe that I only heard this at night because it was quiet at night, and the scratching rubbing sound was so soft that you normally couldn't hear it. I really had no idea what it was, I told my dad once and he looked around for some animal but couldn't find any so we just forgot about it and I lived with it. Like I said it was so soft it never really bothered me. It could be some far off tree rubbing against the house for all I knew. This rubbing happened consistently but like I said I never paid it much mind, at least until my sister went into the room one night.

She knew about the rubbing too and never really said anything about it. One night though, probably about a year or so after moving into the house, the rubbing was going on as usual. I was in that limbo before falling to sleep when I thought that someone was in my room and unlocking the closet door. I thought it might have been a dream but I looked around and saw my door and closet door open, so I got up to check it out. I was a little scared but I realized it was probably mom or dad checking out the rubbing sound since I told them it still happened sometimes. I turned the light on in my closet and looked in. I saw a figure sitting in the room facing the wall. Now even when I was a kid, I had been pretty brave. I was still scared since I was pretty young, but I knew that you can't just run or you'll never know. I said "Hello?" and I heard "She wanted me to see" in what sounded like my sister's voice. The light was in the middle of the room, and it was tough taking even those few steps to get to it in the middle of that dark room. But like I said, I couldn't just leave so I just went there and turned it on. When I looked at the figure, it was indeed my sister, sitting and scratching at the wall paper. I touched her and she was crying so I pulled her up and took her out of the room. I'm really glad that I didn't just lock the door and run or else she'd be stuck in there all night (this is one reason why I never run away from anything abnormal). I locked the door, took her to her room and watched her as she went to sleep. I really thought she could've been sleepwalking or something although she never had before, and since it was over I didn't want to wake up my parents. I went back to sleep.

The next day I asked my sister in the morning if she remembered going into the room and she looked freaked out. I told her she was probably just sleep walking but she said that "the girl" asked her to come look at her pictures. She didn't start crying but she was about to because she was so scared. I didn't ask who "the girl" was. I told her it was just a dream and went to prove it. She didn't want to enter the room again so I went in and saw where she was scratching on the wall. Only a little bit was scratched away, so I started peeling some more wallpaper off. Under the wallpaper were different pictures drawn in what looked like crayon. They were typical kid pictures of mainly cats, and houses, however there was one picture that I thought was weird.
It was a little girl, a cat, a mom, and a dad. Now everything looked like a normal kid family portrait, except the dad had no face. It was just a circle. Of course my rational side said she just never finished it. But still the dad picture looked strangely out of place, like the lines were distorted like she had trouble drawing it. Anyway I told my parents and they yelled at me for pulling back the wallpaper. I didn't want my sister to get in trouble so I didn't say anything about her or what happened last night. My parents said we had to get it fixed now and were mad, and didn't let me play in there again as punishment. The whole thing still seemed normal to me. Kid draws on wall, parents put wall paper up to cover it up. I didn't realize until later that night when the scratching rubbing sound started up, that it sounded like a crayon. I really started thinking that it was "the girl" that my sister talked about was drawing on the wall.

Now after this happened, I started believing that the girl was actually in there. Once I started acknowledging her presence, weirder things began to happen. It happened really slowly. I was about 14 or 15 after the episode with my sister, and the weird things were happening slowly over the course of the next years I lived in the house up until I was 18. The changes were so subtle that I didn't really notice that they were happening until much later. The drawing sounds increased a little bit and soon were audible even during the day. I also started hearing little pattering of feet. The more I heard these things the more emotional I felt about them. I started feeling angry the more I heard the sounds, especially when I was trying to sleep. However I always managed to control myself and try to think that this girl was obviously sad and just trying to have fun and I calmed myself down. However this was going on so long that I finally asked my sister when I was about 16.

I asked her if she ever heard the sounds. She said that she did, although they were pretty quiet. Now I didn't think this was so weird since obviously I could hear them too, and I told her how annoying it was. She kind of looked at me as if she was hurt, and said that every time she heard the sounds she felt really sad. She had trouble talking about it, but I told her this is pretty important since it's going to affect the rest of my years left in the house. She told me that "the girl" was the girl that she used to talk to when she played in the room. She didn't know her name, but they used to play together. She said she looked just like a little girl about her age so they had fun together. However, as my sister got older, the little girl seemed to get older too, except very unnaturally. It was subtle at first but soon she began hating seeing her. She said she looked as if she "shouldn't have been alive anymore." I didn't really know what this meant. My sister said she wore the same dress the whole time, even when the girl grew out of it. I asked her why she went into the room that one night to find the pictures, and she said she really didn't want to but the girl made her feel so sad and she'd do anything to help her out. However this still freaked her out and I didn't ask anymore questions.

Things got worse every night, and I hated hearing that sound. I was so mad that she wouldn't just shut up so I could sleep. The weird thing was I was scared at the same time, since I knew that whatever it was in there wasn't actually alive anymore. What also freaked me out was that the sound didn't annoy my sister, but I guess she had more tolerance than I did.

I asked my parents who used to live here, and they said a family with two sons. Of course this didn't have anything to do with the room, since they had it locked off the entire time they were there. So I asked if they knew anything about the family before them. They said the original owners were the ones who had the house built and that they didn't know much about them, except that they had a daughter who died when she was 11. I asked if they knew how she died, but they said it was some sort of accident, so it wasn't murder or child abuse or anything. I also asked if she died in the secret room, but they said they didn't think so. I really think that this was the girl in the room, although I have no idea why she inhabited it still.

Once I knew this I sort of had an idea with what I was dealing with. Last year was when things got the worst. I heard almost constant drawing and her jumping around inside the room. The footsteps sounded heavier and were louder. If I ever heard it I'd pound on the door to the room and she'd stop immediately, but I'd hear soft whimpering or crying. She'd also start drawing again later on. Sometimes I'd scream at her to shut up. I really got mad every time it happened since it had been going on for 6 years. However, I knew that I had to do something about this. I was a lurker by this time so I've read a lot of ghost story threads, and I remembered how pussy most of the goons were regarding ghosts and never checked anything out. So I knew that I had to at least understand what was going on exactly, and if possible end it. I didn't really have a plan but I knew I had to see the girl or talk to her or something.

Last year, shortly before I turned 18, my parents went away for the weekend, so I took the key to the secret room from their room (they kept it ever since locking it that day when I took off the wallpaper). I was determined to see her so I stayed up expecting to hear sounds. I couldn't hear anything so soon I just fell asleep. It was about 1 am when I woke up to a loud bang, like someone jumped or fell. I heard her footsteps afterwards and of course the drawing. The first thing I felt before any fear was pure anger. I hated that she woke me up, even though this was what I wanted. I immediately grabbed the key and went to the door. I was pounding on it as I said "That's it!" and unlocking the door. The sounds stopped and I heard whimpering. I threw open the door and this was the first time I saw the room in years.

The light coming from my room illuminated a figure in the room, much like when I saw my sister years earlier. This was when I began to feel a wave of different emotions. I was really angry, really scared, yet I also knew that I had to do this and remain calm. I went into the room and stood a few feet away from the figure which was standing in the corner. I turned on the light. What I saw was probably the most horrific sight I could probably have ever even thought of in my entire life. Any horror movie monster had nothing on how unnatural the girl looked.

I finally realized why my sister described her in such a weird way. Her body was taller than she should have been. Her limbs were so lanky and bony and stretched like she kept growing past how tall she should have been. She was wearing a really small dress, and it was really tight on her body. Her face looked as if her head had continued to grow but her face had not. The skin was stretched and the eyes were sunk back into her head yet wide open and her small, childlike teeth were exposed since her lips were stretched back with the rest of her face. Her hair was down to her waist, her face had tears streaming down. I took all of this in in just a moment, and as soon as we met eyes she let out a wail as if she was crying and moaning at the same time. It wasn't a loud wail like most people describe ghosts, it was pretty soft and it was as if she was in terrible pain, but I couldn't tell her expression since her face was so unnatural and stretched.

As soon as I heard the wail all the anger in my body was overcome by fear and I ran. I wish I could say I ran for a video camera, but I just ran. I know I've been talking about how much I hate when people don't investigate things but I was so terrified that I ran. Once I got out of my room I ran to my car and drove away and spent the night at a friend's house. Once I realized what happened I was in a cold shiver and scared out of my mind for the entire night. I was too scared to go back home until my parents came home.

I waited until they came back on Sunday, and then I came over. They asked me why I took the key and left the closet door open and I just told them I wanted to see if I could sell any of my old toys on eBay. I took one last look in the room and locked the door. Ever since then nothing happened. I don't know why things stopped, but I'm always hoping its not because I "let her out" like in the Ring or something and that she's really evil. Since nothing has happened since then I do really hope that I helped her out in some way, but in all honesty I don't care. My parents moved after I went to college, and I have no intention of ever going back. I came up with a theory that the male family member in her life was really mean to her and hated her playing in there, and possibly beat her, while the female family member always felt sad (hence my sister, and the girls willingness to open up to her first). Anyway like I said that's just all theory but it kind of makes sense. This all happened last year, and the more I think about it the harder it is to remember. Sorry for typing such a long post, I didn't realize I had this much to tell.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 06:21

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/29kd1x/my_dead_girlfriend_keeps_messaging_me_on_facebook/

Tonight�s kind of a catalyst for this post. I just received another message, and it�s worse than any of the others.

My girlfriend died on the 7th of August, 2012. She was involved in a three car collision driving home from work when someone ran a red light. She passed away within minutes on the scene.

We had been dating for five years at that point. She wasn�t big on the idea of marriage (it felt archaic, she said, gave her a weird vibe), but if she had been, I would have married her within three months of our relationship. She was vibrant; the kind of girl that would choose dare every time. She was happiest when camping, but a total technophile too. She always smelled like cinnamon.

That being said, she wasn�t perfect. She always said something along the lines of, �If I kark it first, don�t just say good things about me. I�ve never liked that. If you don�t pay me out, you�re doing me a disservice. I�ve got so many flaws, and that�s just part of me.� So, this is for Em: the music she said she liked and the music she actually liked were very different. Her idea of affection was a side-hug. She had really long toes, like a chimpanzee.

I know that�s tangential, but I don�t feel right discussing her without you having an idea of what she was like.

Onto the meat. Em had been dead for approaching thirteen months when she first messaged me.

September 4, 2013.

This is when it began. I had left Emily�s Facebook account activated so I could send her the occasional message, post on her wall, go through her albums. It felt too final (and too un-Emily) to memorialise it. I �share� access with her mother (Susan) - meaning, her mother has her login and password and has spent a total of approximately three minutes on the website (or on a computer, total). After a little confusion, I assumed it was her.

November 16th, 2013.

I had received confirmation from Susan that she hadn�t logged in to Em�s Facebook since the week of her death. Em knew a lot of people, so I instantly assumed this was one of her more tech savvy �friends� loving with me in the worst possible way.

I noticed pretty much immediately that whoever was chatting with me was recycling old messages from Em and my�s shared chat history.

The �the wheels on the bus' comment was from when we were discussing songs to play on a road trip that never eventuated. �hello� happened a million times.

Around February 2014, Emily started tagging herself in my photos. I would get notifications for them, but the tag would generally always be removed by the time I got to it. The first time I actually caught one, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. �She� would tag herself in spaces where it was plausible for her to be, or where she would usually hang out. I�ve got screenshots of two (from April and June; these are the only ones I�ve caught, so they�re a little out of the timeline I�m trying to write out):

Around this period of time, I stopped being able to sleep. I was too angry to sleep.

She would tag herself in random photos every couple of weeks. The friends who noticed and said something thought it was a hosed up bug; I found out recently that there have been friends who have noticed and didn�t say anything. Some of them have removed me from their Facebook friends list.

At this point, some of you may be wondering why I didn�t just kill my Facebook profile. I wish I had. I did for a little while. On days when I can�t get out there, though, it�s nice having my friends available to chat. It�s nice visiting Em�s page when the little green circle isn�t next to her name. I was already socially reclusive when Em was alive; her death turned me into something pretty close to a hermit, and Facebook and MMOs were (are) my only real social outlets.

On March 15th, I sent what I assumed was Em's hacker a message.

On March 25th, I received an �answer�.

It wasn�t until I was going over these logs a few months later that I noticed she was recycling my own words as well.

My response seems kind of lacklustre here. I was intentionally providing him/her with emotional �bait� (�This is actually devastating�) to keep them interested in their game; I was working off the assumption that the kind of person to do this would be the kind of person that would thrive on the distress of others. I was posting in tech forums, looking for ways to track this person, contacting Facebook. I needed to keep them around so I could gather �evidence�.

Before anyone asks, yes, I had changed the password and all security info countless times.

16th of April. I receive this.

This seems like word salad. Like all our conversations so far, it�s recycled from previous messages she�s sent.

29th of April.

I hadn�t discovered any leads. Facebook had told me the locations her page had been accessed from, but since her death, they�re all places I can account for (my home, my work, her mum�s house, etc). My response here wasn�t bait. �yo ask Nathan� was an in-joke too lame worth explaining, but seeing �her� say it again just absolutely loving crippled me. My reaction in real life was much less prettier. I�m not expecting my bond back.

Her last few messages had started to scare me, but I wouldn�t admit it at this point.

8th of May. I don�t really have the words for this.

�FRE EZIN G� is the first original word she�s (?) made. This has given me nightmares that have only started to kick in recently. I keep dreaming that she�s in an ice cold car, frozen blue and grey, and I�m standing outside in the warmth screaming at her to open the door. She doesn�t even realise I�m there. Sometimes her legs are outside with me.

24th of May.

I wasn�t actually drunk. She wasn�t an affectionate girl, and it always embarrassed her to exchange �I love you�s, cuddle, talk about how much we meant to each other. She was more comfortable with it when I was boozed up. I got fake-drunk a lot.

Her reply is what prompted me to finally memorialise her page, thinking it might help curb this behaviour. It might seem innocuous compared to her previous message - it�s pasted from an old conversation where I was trying to convince her to let me drive her home from a friend�s.

In the collision, the dashboard had crushed her. She was severed in a diagonal line from her right hip to midway down her left thigh. One of her legs was found tucked under the backseat.

Going back in time. 7th of August, 2012.

These are logs from the day she died. She was usually home from work by 4.30. This, alongside a couple of voicemail messages, is the last time I talked to her under the assumption that she was alive. You�ll see why I�m showing you these soon.

Yesterday. 1st of July, 2014.

I memorialised her page a couple of days after I received the message about walking. Until today, she�d been quiet; she wasn�t even tagging herself in my photos.

I don�t know what to do anymore. Do I kill her memorial page? What if it is her? I want to puke. I don�t know what�s happening.

I just heard a Facebook alert. I'm too afraid to swap windows and check it.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 09:13

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Yeah, that's why I tried to fix it up best I could.

Bonus, I finally rediscovered the cable story! Enjoy.

----------

by Mystery Steve

My last major brush with whatever it was, was back in 2006. My last job was a data telecomms engineer. For about three months solid, I'd been working around Ireland in nearly all of the Tesco stores, installing access points for new wieghing scales for deli counters and wifi points for stock scanners. It was a pain in the arse. Thankfully many of these stores were new buildings. Which made running a cable from the A to B quite easy. However there were the smaller stores, in towns and villages, which were usually three or more old buildings, knocked into one, creating a bigger shop floor.

Myself and my boss arrived there at about 12:30am. I can't remember the town, we made a mission to finish 3 stores a day, this being our last. This store was built into three very old buildings, I could tell from the shopfront, all glazed and shiny new. Where above the signage were three different styles of brickwork and window. I knew this job would be fun. The cable routes proved to be a challenge, the offices and upstairs being like a maze. The middle building upstairs didn't have any through ways to the back offices which meant going up and down 3 different flights of stairs to get to it from the offices either side. We thought we'd make a new route by passing from the first building (1st floor) to the middle, third then through the floor to our (G floor) locations. Easy. It was that or follow exhisting traywork zig zagging everywhere adding about 100ft+ to our cable length. So we worked out where we needed to drill and run our cables. We decided to run the cables from a box room though one of the original walls into the middle building. I lifted up the false ceiling tile to be greeted by a scratched sandstone wall with a foot long drill bit sticking out from it. Whoever had the same idea as us had been beaten and robbed of a drill bit. Judging by the growing rust it had been there an age. We brought out the DeWalt and starting hammering away.

I must have been half way through when my boss who was footing my ladder tapped me on the calf. As the the dewalt scilenced I could hear a what sounded like a woman moaning inconsolably for just a few seconds.
"Could you hear that? It sounded as though..."
"-Yeah, it must be somebody outside theres a pub round the corner"

What Dick! I'd tried my best to not think about how creepy this building really was. I could feel it the moment I walked into the stock rooms. As a rule I'd never think about stuff like that on a job (I've worked in a lot of creepy places) I'd just concentrate on what I was doing, I thought if "something" isn't screaming for my attention then I'm not going to give it any reason to give me any. Which worked, don't be a pussy, just get on with it. We paused for a moment to hear if it was some drunken party or something.
Nothing. I pull the trigger and hammered at the wall. Then it died.
"What the gently caress have you done to it?"
I pulled it from the wall and tried again. Nothing.
"Is it the battery?" Stupid question I knew it wasn't the battery because we'd both made sure it had been on charge at the last store, it was fine. We tried the spare battery then the cord. Nothing. The boss got quite irritated at this. He'd just had it serviced at a DeWalt Dealer. "He must have given you a dud motor?" So we had to settlle for the 110V beast which meant running to the van and back bringing all the 110 gear to power it. I eventually got the better of the sandstone wall. a nice hole half and inch in diameter.

"Right pop next door and I'll feed you the cable" So off I lumbered out the room down unlit stairwell to the first stockroom thats when I heard it;

".. N O..."

You know where you heart and stomach and arse leap into your mouth, thats how I felt. Some little invisible irish girl had said NO to me. In an unlit stairwell. In a closed store. There was only myself the boss in the building and one security guard who was permenantly sat in the other stockroom reading porn in his little cube. I'm getting shivers just typing this. I'm surprised I didn't break my ankles bounding down those steps, I went for the door, and I felt what seemed to be a luke warm hand very lightly holding my right hand. I can't say I've ever had a panic attack but I'm assume thats what I nearly had. I felt beter walking around through the lit shopping isles to the second stock room. The guard waved at me not taking his eyes away from his Razzle magazine. I felt like asking him "WHat the gently caress" but I told myself it was just the door making an odd sound as it closed behind me. The second set of stairs were lit and warm I found myself in the room opposite where I'd drilled. My boss spoke over the walkie making me jump.

"Hang on I'm just moving these ceiling tiles boss" And there it was. A blank wall.
"Forget the tiles! Keep pulling the cable your way, its clean!"
"I'm not pulling the cable... I'm staring at a blank wall here."
"Whatever, keep pulling like that, yeah steady, signal, when you've got enough!"

"Boss I swear to you. I am not pulling any loving cable in here."

Que a lot of arguing and quick run back to the box room up those loving stairs with my teeth chattering, I could see it on his face when I opened the door, he was still feeding the cable through the wall. His hands dropped at his sides and the cables became taut slowly dragging their boxes towards the wall then up it.

My boss grabbed at the boxes and started yanking the cables back into the boxroom it came easy at first but then he was beginning to put more effort into it and the sheaving became torn exposing the rainbow colored cores, I got my snips and cut at the cables just to watch the wall slurp them up like spaghetti.

"What the gently caress was that? Wheres that guard at?"
"He's in his cube?"

I can't remember much of the conversation but I don't think I'd ever seen anybody genuinly freaked out as much as me. We left the room and got the guard up and told him what had happened. He looked at us and said "you sure?" My boss cut a length of cable and fed it into the hole the three of us watched the cable zip up the wall above the false ceiling. Words failed me. The guard started shouting who was back there. He turned around, "It must be one of the staff loving about" he led us to the room opposite, again a blank wall. Then the office next to it, The door read Manager.
"We'll try in here"
"I hope theres a manager locked in here with a lot of cable" My boss grunted. The guard unlocked the office and found nothing. None of us spoke, we trapsed back next door to the only other room left worth checking an office next to the boxroom. The opened it up. It wasn't noticable straight away. A second glance and it clicked. This room had more depth. We' had drilled into a void. No way. There had to be something else the guard really wasn't sure what to do. My boss checked around where this void was. Inside and out. Even scaling the roof of the building to see if it was there, pehaps a seagull had been pulling at the cable? Again nothing. He made me check underneath the room no void. Only concrete.

We all had a coffee and decided to use the exhisting trunking, gently caress that room and it secret. The guard spent the rest of the job talking to us and bringing our spirits up, we finished up quite quickly and began collecting the gear. The DeWalt began working again and once or twice I could feel my hand being held by the fingers, only in that stairwell.

My boss and I didn't speak about what happened it was too loving weird. I haven't told many people about this it was just so surreal, I feel like we should have knocked that wall through. But I suppose it wasn't our problem really.

edit -I'm a terrible writer this is just thought this might help.

Some of you my be wondering Why we just didn't got throught the other office into the managers, well these were locked off to us and off limits, however by the time we had stopped freaking out and looking for people loving with us we'd already wasted enough time and the other drill mysteriously broke yet to work again later.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2014 22:26

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

I wouldn't mind kicking off the new thread. I've kept up with nearly all of them them and can pretty much track down any story from the past threads. But yeah, since the seasonal scary story threads usually went to GBS and now that place is a FYAD-lite forum, I'd like to know where it should go before I write anything down.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2015 08:01

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:38

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

cuntvalet posted:

Whoever does create it, please link back to it here. I'm a sucker for ghost stories and off season spookiness.

Edit: I totally missed Mister Bungs post above mine. Sorry about that!

I don't know if there's really an "off season" for ghosts, but here's the thread I just put up.

Missing Name: I took a bunch of your links from this thread and updated them for the new OP. I tried to be as comprehensive as I could but if anyone has new suggestions for improving the new thread let me know.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 10:03

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