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The [Creepy Stories] Thread: Masturbating With One Eye Open

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  • DeadfallDeadfall I don't think you realize just how rich he is. In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    SniperGuy wrote: »
    GoodOmens wrote: »
    Deadfall, did you have to post the doll-face? I avoid that video like the plague!

    The Swedish Rhapsody is pretty cool. I will say, though, I prefer The Buzzer. It apparently broadcasts from about 40 km northwest of Moscow, and consists almost entirely of a single...well...buzz repeated in 2 second intervals, constantly, for no readily apparently reason. There have been occasional instances of people talking, but that's quite rare. Someone thinks it's worthwhile to broadcast a buzzing sound to the world, continuously.

    Since 1982.

    UVB-76 has become much more active as of 2010. In early June, many listeners also report that it simply stopped transmitting, although transmission resumed by June 6th, 2010. That same day, many listeners reported transmissions in Morse Code. Since the start of June 2010, the normal buzzing sound from UVB-76 has been replaced by a continuous high pitched noise, similar to that of a modem, with intermittent deeper tones like that of a foghorn.[5] Whether this is a malfunction or an intended change to the buzzing remains to be seen. On June 10, UVB-76 reportedly transmitted actual polytone data bursts followed by another Morse Code transmission. Several conflicting amateur reports on UVB-76's recent activities also date from June 2010.[6]


    IT'S STILL ALIVE

    See this. This right here. It's just you telling me about buzzing and modem tones, but it creeps me right the fuck out. I think it's the mystery. Why did it change? Who is behind it? Who is it communicating to? If, for instance, my tv suddenly went static and began broadcasting a numbers station, you'd see a Deadfall-shaped hole out of my wall.

    Deadfall on
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    xbl - HowYouGetAnts
    steam - WeAreAllGeth
  • AngryPuppyAngryPuppy Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    So I heard a thud while reading this thread earlier today, but thought nothing of it. I just came back from doing laundry in my basement, where I saw a row of wall-mounted cupboards that had snapped loose and fallen. I could blame shoddy constructions, but I think I'll blame you guys instead.

    THANKS CREEPY STORY THREAD!




    The Army Man did it.

    AngryPuppy on
    PSN: AngryPuppyEsq
  • nstfnstf __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2010
    Sipex wrote: »
    One thing I've always wondered about sleep paralysis, why is it almost always terribad things? Why don't people see talking bunnies or their boss asking them for an overdue paper? It's basically just dreaming while awake, right?

    I suffer from sleep paralysis.

    Your body paralysizes itself when you sleep so you don't actually act out that fight with a tiger and wake up to find your room trashed.

    For me, I wake up and find that there is a really odd humming noise and it's moving through my body at the same time. It's like some sort of energy that I can hear and see. It's when you realize that you can't move that panic hits. So you have this extreme panic attack while you're still half asleep and hearing/seeing/feeling things that aren't actually there, and then all sorts of crazy stuff starts to happen. But by that point you're already freaking the hell out because you can't move.

    It's not always horrible things. It happens to me a couple times a month and for the most part I don't panic anymore because I know what it is and I don't really see anything. I've learned to keep my eyes shut and if they are opened not look at the edge of my vision. Also sleeping on your back can help trigger it.

    It first started with me a while back, so I guess story time.
    I've always had problems sleeping. For as long as I can remember I've just tossed and turned maybe getting a few hours a night, and then crashing for an entire day at some point. This has been going on since I was a child and I've never really thought much of it. There was always something to blame. As a kid my family wrote it off as a combination of ADHD and the meds required, combined with the constant medical issues in our family. Growing up like this you start to lose track of when you are dreaming, and when you are asleep. I'd dream I was lying in my bed and then waft into being quasi awake lying in my bed.

    I wouldn't say I ever had nightmares, at least not more than any other kid my age. I just go used to be constantly out of it sleeping really odd hours. The only thing that really freaked me out was that at times, I'd see something dark by the door way in my peripheral vision, and I could have sworn something was there. But given my sleeping habits I just passed this off as me lacking sleep. It never happened when I was crashed out for 12 hours plus, it always happened when I could sleep around 3am.

    I joined the military out of high school, at sea our hours were 6 on 6 off for 12 months. That combined with boot camp and training wrecked even more havoc on my sleep schedule. Though by now I was completely used to my odd hours and didn't seem to notice when things were off. And as anybody who's ever been on a ship will tell you, being half asleep and out of it is part of the deal.

    Eventually I was out of the Navy, living on my own, with a nice job that gives me plenty of time to sleep. My ADHD is for the most part gone, and my life is pretty stress free. There is really no reason I should be suffering from insomnia or sleep walking now, and for a while I didn't.

    About 3 years ago it started to come back. Probably a mix of gradual stress at work, though I'm not sure why. I was drinking a good bit back then which also affects sleep patterns. The thing was this didn't feel like "I had to much to drink sleep" or "I can't fucking sleep damnit" sleep, it was just odd. I was tired as all hell and I'd constantly wake up soaked in sweat with this horrible feeling, I was having vivid nightmares that I could recall easily and they were starting to repeat. I figured the rational thing to do was stop going to weeknight happy hours and start taking sleeping pills. I should mention that I did not suffer these issues while I was in bed with my GF, nor did they happen when other people were in the room. Which given that my apartment was used for game night.

    Before I continue I should probably explain my apartment. I've got one of those tiny ass studios people live in because anything larger costs a small fortune here. It's one room. When you walk into it from the front there are two closets in the door way, then a walk-in closet/bathroom on the right, and all the way back on the right is a kitchen. Here is a diagram...

    apartment.png

    The back of my bed is against the wall so I look forward over the desk and to the door. This way I can see the TV and am alerted in case one of my friends comes by at an odd hour. The bean bags are by the bed and people pass out there when over all night. It's an old apartment so it creaks and makes noise, the closet doors will not stay shut through the night and the toilet constantly sounds like it's going to explode. I sleep with the TV on and never turn any of the computers off, I'm on the ground floor so people are constantly going through the hallway at all hours of the night. So when it's just me, there is a good bit of muffled noise and the lighting is rather odd from the glow of the TV/monitors.

    At some point the nightmares went away, but I kept walking up half asleep. There is this really loud hum that seems to be coursing through my body and it's keeping pulse with the flickering of the computer monitor. If you've ever gotten really stoned before you get the idea, but this is completely over powering and almost pushing on me, at first it was honestly kinda cool. This goes off and on for months. But I slowly begin to notice that whenever this happens there is something dark hanging around by either the closet doors, or in the door way slightly obscured by the computer. It's not really a shadow, it's kinda there, but not there at the same time. For months now I've been waking up around three am with that hummm. The only change is that darkness is moving closer to me and starting to take shape. It's getting taller, and vaguely has the outline of a woman. The closer it gets the more intense the feeling from the humm gets to the point it feels like there is something in the bed next to me, leaning into my back. It's a pretty terrifying feeling made all the worse by the fact that I can't stop looking at whatever it is that has been moving at me from the door. I can't tell if this is a dream or if it's real. I don't believe in super natural things, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe I'm hallucinating, maybe I'm half dreaming and all the extra noise/light is causing this. Either way, I've had enough of this. So I make a habit of turning everything off before I go to bed. Problem fucking solved. All is fine. I'm sleeping great, no distractions, sleeping with all your gear going full bore is probably stupid anyways and I've got some equipment that drives the neighbors nuts anyways.

    Then one night I wake the fuck up. There is no question about it, I'm wide fucking awake and I'm scared out of my fucking mind. There is something sitting on top of me, it's hot, it's humid, and the entire room fucking stinks. What was that hum has now changed into a voice that I can hear coming from inside me and radiating into room, but at the same time I can't really hear it, it's more of a feel it, I still can't describe it. The dark shape now really does look humanoid, but it isn't human and I can't really make out anything, and then it hits me, that is what is sitting on me, that thing is the noise inside of me, and I can't fucking move. I try to scream and I can't get anything out. The more I try the more clearly I can see that thing and the hotter and louder it gets. All I know, and by now I'm certain of it is that thing won't let me move and it's after something. And then pow, I wake up. Caked in sweat, confused as all hell by now. The room is normal, there is nothing there, no smell, no noise, the temperature is normal, but it felt so real I wonder if I've completely lost my mind.

    Some google-fu later and I found out about sleep paralysis and that this isn't that uncommon. Knowing what it is now I don't enter freak out mode and while the humms and the like are pretty regular, it doesn't really get that out of control that often now. I know the triggers and how to avoid them. But hell, if that wasn't one of the most bizzare things ever.

    nstf on
  • PeffPeff Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Peff on
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  • SniperGuySniperGuy SniperGuyGaming Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Peff wrote: »

    This is an hour and a half long. You're gonna need to supply some backstory or something if anyone's gonna watch that.

    SniperGuy on
  • PeffPeff Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    SniperGuy wrote: »
    Peff wrote: »

    This is an hour and a half long. You're gonna need to supply some backstory or something if anyone's gonna watch that.

    Well that takes all the fun out of it.

    Creepy alien abduction footage found after an entire family disappears. Its presented as a documentary of sorts were 'experts' examine the film to try and prove its authenticity.

    Peff on
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  • shosarshosar Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I remember seeing Incident at Lake County as a kid when it was originally shown on Fox, and thinking that it was horribly fake because the person who was supposed to be the cameraman was clearly Radu from Space Cases.

    shosar on
  • SipexSipex Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Oh hey! I saw that...I think.

    Doesn't it have credits at the end?

    Sipex on
  • PeffPeff Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Sipex wrote: »
    Oh hey! I saw that...I think.

    Doesn't it have credits at the end?

    spoilered in case anyone does want to watch it
    yes...and it ruins the whole damn thing but up until that point I was loving it.

    It could also be its just not as creepy as I think it is and I fail :(

    Peff on
    steam_sig.png
  • XagarathXagarath Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The thing I linked to last page (and again here), Ghostwatch, is almost the original supposed-documentary scary thing.

    The original's actually Cannibal Holocaust, but it never caught on.

    Anyway, since it didn't get noticed:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTDHEeLI0A

    This scared my last ex so much she actually hallucinated. It's well worth taking the time to watch.

    Xagarath on
  • SiskaSiska Shorty Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I think I posted the gist of this story in one of the other threads, but here goes nothing.

    This story takes place about 5 years ago, in my home in a southern Iowa town out in the countryside. A very quaint and quiet place, I had moved there recently with my family at the time into a house that was about 4-5 years old. Some family friends of ours had owned the place before (in fact they built it) and we had lived in this house for a couple years before this incident occurred.

    It was a couple nights before I headed off for college for the first time that year, I had everything packed away except for what I needed to sleep on, my cell phone, and it's charger. It was about 10 o'clock when I turned in for the day after saying goodbye to some friends of mine and went home. It was a long day for me so I passed out fairly quickly. After falling asleep for the first time I remember waking up for a few moments to the familiar thud of my cat, Frank, jumping up onto my bed to cuddle up to my legs to fall asleep.

    An hour or so later I wake up to my phone ringing on my nightstand. As I reach for the phone, I see on the display that it is 11:58 pm. I grab my phone and see that the number is listed as "restricted." Thinking nothing of it, I answer and croak "Hello?"... After a few moments I hear nothing and then just as I am about to hang up, I hear the faint sound of a grandfather clock chiming in the background. After the fourth or fifth chime I begin to hear movement and breathing over the sounds of the chimes... fucking breathing. The sound of the movement was accompanied by a creaking sound which I interpreted as the creaking of a flight of stairs as someone walked down them.

    Finally the breathing and the sounds stopped by the twelfth chime and the call ended. Mildly freaked out, I cautiously walked to my door and locked it. I then turn back and crawl back into bed, petting Frank a little before laying back down to go to sleep, laughing a bit to myself at how worked up I had just gotten over an odd wrong number/mixed up call/ whatever I thought up of to explain the call. I laid my phone back on the night stand, noticing it was now midnight, and shut my eyes.

    Then, I heard it. From my room downstairs I could always here the sound of our grandfather clock whenever it chimed. Having previously heard what sounded like my grandfather clock chiming earlier through my phone, however, put me a little on edge. So, I laid there and listened to each chime... And sure enough, be it tricks by my own mind or some sort of force that I almost refuse to believe was at work here I began to hear something moving outside my door after a few chimes. Terrified, all I could do was lay and listen as the rustling from upstairs descended into the familiar squeaking noise the stairs outside my room make whenever they are used.

    Finally, the chimes end and the noise coming from the staircase outside my room stops. It is completely silent for a few moments until I begin to hear something scratching at my door. For the first few moments it was faint but grew gradually louder. After several moments of this, I stir and wake up Frank, my cat. Who, after a few moments of staring intently at the door, gets up and jumps down to the floor and slinks up to the door. Frank arches his back a hisses at the door as it continues to emit the scratching noises. After a few more moments, Frank hisses even louder and swats the door.

    The noises stop, Frank relaxes, and the feeling of uneasiness I had been feeling for the past 5 minutes subsides. Frank then meanders back to my bed a lays back down as if nothing remotely disturbing had happened in the past 5 minutes. Needless to say, I got little to no sleep that night, but goddamn am I glad my cat was around.

    I mentioned the fact that this house was only about 5 years old because I couldn't help but think at the time that whatever this was was not something that resided in this place, the house was new and from what I knew, nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened in this place. Whatever this was it came *here.* It didn't lie in wait for whoever decided to cross over into the creepy old abandoned house that kids always joke about and say is haunted. It moved from wherever the hell it was and came to *my* home...

    Moral of the story? My cat is awesome.

    Wow, that cat doesn't take any crap... from ANYTHING!

    Siska on
  • Professor SnugglesworthProfessor Snugglesworth Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Xagarath wrote: »
    The thing I linked to last page (and again here), Ghostwatch, is almost the original supposed-documentary scary thing.

    The original's actually Cannibal Holocaust, but it never caught on.

    Anyway, since it didn't get noticed:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTDHEeLI0A

    This scared my last ex so much she actually hallucinated. It's well worth taking the time to watch.

    On the subject, there are tons of shows about alleged "ghost hunters" visiting haunted locations and jumping over every sound and shadow around them. Is there a series of this type that doesn't feel like made-up bullshit?

    Professor Snugglesworth on
  • AgentBryantAgentBryant CTRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I like reading the creepy threads, but each incarnation is never as good as its predecessor. Each thread gets clogged up with repost after repost of the same stories that have been told several threads before with little new material.

    AgentBryant on
  • SniperGuySniperGuy SniperGuyGaming Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I like reading the creepy threads, but each incarnation is never as good as its predecessor. Each thread gets clogged up with repost after repost of the same stories that have been told several threads before with little new material.

    Maybe there's someone we should call...

    SniperGuy on
  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I dunno, I haven't ever told my sleep paralysis story before. It's not great, but it is new.

    joshofalltrades on
  • Johnny ChopsockyJohnny Chopsocky Scootaloo! We have to cook! Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Xagarath wrote: »
    The thing I linked to last page (and again here), Ghostwatch, is almost the original supposed-documentary scary thing.

    The original's actually Cannibal Holocaust, but it never caught on.

    Anyway, since it didn't get noticed:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTDHEeLI0A

    This scared my last ex so much she actually hallucinated. It's well worth taking the time to watch.

    On the subject, there are tons of shows about alleged "ghost hunters" visiting haunted locations and jumping over every sound and shadow around them. Is there a series of this type that doesn't feel like made-up bullshit?

    Ghost Adventures is the best one, because it's just so RIDICULOUS.

    "Hey ghost, I'm gonna kick your ass!"
    "WHOA I JUST HEARD/FELT SOMETHING!"
    "OH MY GOD AND MY LITTLE TALKING BOX JUST SAID 'PIE' I THINK THE GHOST IS TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH US!"
    "At this moment, you can hear a distinct voice on the EVP recorder."
    EVP recorder: *silence silence silence something quiet and unintelligible happens and you can't tell what it sounds like but the text says "Gonna kill you" and then they play it again two more times*
    "You like messing with people, ghost? Well I'm gonna mess with you! OH MY GOD MY ARM IS COLD NOW"

    Johnny Chopsocky on
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  • ChillyWillyChillyWilly Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Paragon wrote: »
    I am surprised Ted the Caver is not listed in the OP, it is BY FAR the scariest story I have ever read, full stop.

    I consider myself a fairly good storyteller and I have the entire story memorized because I love it so.

    I told it to my friend about two years ago, he was 24 at the time, by the end of the story he was shivering, curled up under the blankets begging me to stay the night and not leave him all alone. :p

    I demand to have an ending to this damn story.

    ChillyWilly on
    PAFC Top 10 Finisher in Seasons 1 and 3. 2nd in Seasons 4 and 5. Final 4 in Season 6.
  • DuffelDuffel jacobkosh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I wouldn't hold your breath, the website's been that way since ca 2001 :P

    And the lack of an ending is kind of the point, IMO. It's based off of a short story from the 80s (forget by who), using the website format as a storytelling device. Makes the story much more interesting and much more convincing.

    The original story had a big dramatic showdown ending and it wasn't nearly as good.

    Duffel on
  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Paragon wrote: »
    I am surprised Ted the Caver is not listed in the OP, it is BY FAR the scariest story I have ever read, full stop.

    I consider myself a fairly good storyteller and I have the entire story memorized because I love it so.

    I told it to my friend about two years ago, he was 24 at the time, by the end of the story he was shivering, curled up under the blankets begging me to stay the night and not leave him all alone. :p

    I demand to have an ending to this damn story.

    There is one, and it's not that good. Ted the Caver was basically a website created from the short story The Fear of Darkness. It's almost word for word with a few small changes, but the story keeps going. I thought it was pretty lame, though.

    I'll post it here. "B" is "Matt" in the story.
    Crawling head first through a tight passage into darkness and the unknown is as unnatural as climbing up the side of a cliff, or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for recreation. We do these things to satisfy our hunger for adventure, as a subconscious desire to conquer our own little Everest. Matt once said, "Caving is the last opportunity for exploration for the person with modest means.” If you define yourself only by your exploits, by your feats of physical courage, when the time comes that you can no longer perform them, you have lost the standard by which you measure yourself. If I am ever to experience restful slumber, if I am ever to walk the halls of my own home in peace, I must return.

    It took Matt another month to recover before he agreed to go back into the cave with me. Neither of us could believe we were subjecting ourselves to the terrors of the cave but we could not avoid it. We spent a little time enlarging the hole to make it easier to get through, stalling for time, working in tense silence. Then it was time. In we went, one after the other, passing quickly through the Tomb. We brushed ourselves off, stood up, and looked around the room. Then, just past the round rock, which had not moved back into its original position, my headlight shown the bones I thought I’d seen last trip. Approaching them warily, we made a grisly discovery.

    There were shards bone and tattered clothing surrounding skull. Close by was another skull, this one neatly sliced in two, again surrounded by scattered pieces of bone, and what looked like the lacy hem of woman’s shredded skirt. Just as I started to approach the remains for closer inspection, I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. A girl’s voice seemed to whisper urgently in my ear, “Get out!” and then an even more desperately, “Run!”

    Completely freaked, I turned to Matt who had obviously heard it too. We paused briefly to consider our options, and then began simultaneously to move to the room’s exit, just as the floor of the chamber began to tremble. The wind began to howl through the chamber much stronger last time, and the rumbling began deep within the passage. Terrified already, we didn't want to stick around to find out what the hell was about to happen. As I scrambled backwards towards the chamber’s exit, Matt quickly followed. The ground was now shaking so badly, I was afraid there was an earthquake and the cave was going to collapse upon us.

    I was the first to make it to the exit, which seemed little more than a mole hole now. I started squirming and squeezing through, with Matt yelling for me to hurry. I obliged, skinning my knees and elbows as I forced my way through. Once I was into the passage, I turned to help Matt who was frantically trying to squeeze through. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the hole was shrinking right before my eyes. Matt had begun to struggle harder, and I pulled him through with both hands. Suddenly Matt screamed in what I thought was agony from being tugged too hard, but he was looking up at me with complete terror in his eyes.

    “Something is touching my legs! Something is touching my legs! Pull harder!” He screamed. I yanked him once more with all my strength, and he finally popped through. As his feet appeared, my headlight revealed what resembled a webbed hand or claw releasing its grip on Matt’s leg. Although it had shape, it was more opaque than solid. The second Matt was on his feet he began running, and as it dawned on me what I had seen, I too turned and ran as fast as I was able. The rumbling noise began to grow louder as a strange glow began to illuminate the passage behind us, and the sickening smell of rotting meat and bile began to overtake us.

    As we scrambled upward, the spiraling effect of the passage became disorienting and started to take its effect on us. If Matt wasn't tripping on something or banging his head, then I was, and the escape to the surface seemed to take forever. It was like a Laurel and Hardy movie scene gone terribly wrong. Since we had ascended high enough through all of the twists and turns, the light from below should not have been visible. Instead it seemed to be getting closer and brighter, now lighting the passage behind in a sickly blood-red light. Finally we reached the long, straight passage that led directly to the cave entrance, and Matt and I were able to pick up speed putting more distance between us, and the light from below and the overpowering stench. However, the rumbling continued to grow louder, and became higher pitched, like a teakettle approaching the boiling point.

    As we finally reached the ledge we turned to each other in shock. There was nothing but darkness ahead. We had entered the cave about noon and had only been inside for about 2 hours. It should have still been bright daylight. Matt aimed his headlight up to the cave entrance and what we saw chilled us to the bone. Our rope was gone and the entrance looked blocked. We frantically jumped onto the slope and began to claw our way upward, but for every two feet we gained, we slid back one. The light from below began once more to encroach on us and the rumbling intensified.

    We started screaming for help, though who would hear us we had no idea! The light behind suddenly came racing towards us flickering with blinding speed and intensity. We covered our eyes and screamed for our lives. Instantly, the light faded to complete darkness like a wave cresting over. The unbearable noise stopped and the stench faded. The only sound was our own heavy breathing.

    “What in the hell was that?” I gasped, trying to catch my breath lost to fear.

    “I don't know, but let’s get out of here. Now!” Matt answered.

    No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we heard a horrible crash below followed by a sound that still gives me nightmares. Our headlights immediately went dead and we were thrust into complete and total darkness, as a horrific, tortured sound came rushing closer. We were now too scared even to scream. I remember pressing myself against the rock wall, frozen in fear, reduced to no other capacity than to listen as the sound began to transform into more of a primal, demonic scream as it flew up the passage towards us like a freight train going 200 miles per hour. The air grew searing hot and a putrid wind swirled around us. We were about to pass out from fear and the ear-piercing pain of the scream when something semi-solid surged past. Almost reading each other’s minds, we shot up the last few feet and through the exit, me first, then Matt. Not knowing whether to run or collapse, we stared at each other waiting for the other to make a move, finally realizing daylight had returned. We sighed with relief, after all things are always better in the light of day. Right? Wrong!

    However, our ordeal had not yet ended. A man with long, unkempt hair and deep lines crisscrossing his face appeared out of nowhere. Despite our initial reaction to shake off our immobility and run, there was something about the man that made us stay, something non-threatening almost peaceful. As he approached us slowly, staring at us with piercing red eyes, the screaming came roaring through the woods. Matt and I stood frozen, powerless to stop the thing rushing towards us, powerless to move. The old man stopped his approach, his face one of steely determination. He reached his arms up toward the sky and began forcefully chanting in a language I did not recognize nor understand.

    The scream crested the hill emb odied in a dark shape, almost like a black cloud of soot, with just enough form to be called solid. It flew down the hill, snapping small trees that stood between it and the old man like matchsticks. The haggard old man blocked the entity’s path towards us as he more loudly chanted those strange words that echoed through the woods like the howl of a wolf.

    The entity slowed, and, as if it had legs, seemed to take a step back just as the strange light began to emanate from the entrance to the cave again. This time, however, it was not the sickly blood red from before, but a brilliant white light. The entity, or whatever it was, struggled against the light. It was sucked back down into the cave screaming loud in protest. Suddenly, silence as the light retreated into the cave, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

    Stunned with disbelief and shock, Matt and I just stared at the old man. Coming out of his trance, he again took notice of us and asked if we were okay. Matt and I both looked at each other as if checking for any number of untold wounds. Outside of skinned knees and elbows, we were both merely dirty and dripping with sweat, so we nodded numbly in silence.

    “You two nearly met your end there,” said the old man.

    “Who, I mean, what was that?” Matt stammered.

    “It was evil, cruel and eternal. You could call it a demon or you could call it the devil.” He paused for a second and then continued. “It is both and it is neither. What’s important is that it didn't get to feed again. It grows much more powerful if it gets to feed.”

    With that, the man drew back, crossed in front of us and began walking. He chanted quietly for a few more minutes, and then walked into the woods. Matt and I stared at each other, eyes wide. Full of questions, yet still too much in shock to speak, we began to search for the old man.

    Only a few seconds behind him, there was no way he could have disappeared yet he was nowhere to be found. No footprints and no sounds. We called out to him, even ran up the hill to see further. It was like he had disappeared into thin air.

    Now we were thoroughly baffled and confused. As we came back down the hill we found what we were looking for behind a toppled old tree. There, wearing clothes identical clothes to those of the strange man was an almost completely decomposed corpse, holding an old black and white photograph in a rusted frame.

    Matt slid it from under the man’s hand and held it up to the light. It was a much younger version of our stranger, with what appeared to be his wife and daughter, standing in front of a nice farmhouse looking happy together. Matt slipped the photo back under his hand, as I noticed something else wrapped in oilcloth lying just under his elbow. I bent over and brushed off the dust to reveal a book. I gently removed it and flipped through the pages. It was a journal or diary of some kind.

    “I'll bet we'll find some answers here,” I said as I slipped it under my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

    “I couldn't agree more,” Matt said.

    We hardly spoke on the trip back home, each reflecting on what had happened and reevaluating how asily things we had previously believed as true had been shattered by what we had just experienced. When we arrived home we cleaned ourselves up quickly with the garden hose in the backyard before going inside. We each gulped several glasses of water, Matt remarking that we had not returned with our canteen. To this day I have no idea what happened to it or the rope!

    Once we felt refreshed and comparatively safe, we sat down at the table with the old tattered journal and began to pour over the pages. Most of the stuff we read concerning the cave we didn't understand at the time, the pages being littered with discombobulated thoughts and gibberish, in a handwriting difficult to read. It wasn't until after revisiting the journal several more times that I was finally able to make some kind of sense of what had happened around that cave.

    From what I could tell, the man, his wife and daughter moved into the area in the late 1890’s and farmed the land they lived on. The daughter was adventurous and regularly went out exploring the woods, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, according to her father. One day, she sprained her knee in a fall and had to be rescued, and from then on, her parents insisted she go always with someone else. Apparently, this was no assurance of safety. A few weeks later she and her friend ventured out never to be seen again.

    The man and his wife, along with the friend’s family, local sheriff, his deputies, and other concerned families, searched the woods that night and all the next week. Despite all efforts, the girls were never found. A month later, refusing to give up, the parents, searching the woods, once again, discovered the entrance to a cave.

    Fearing their daughter made the same discovery, they decided to enter and look around.

    The journal goes on to describe a horrifying scene. Just a few feet into the cave, the mother had found a special ribbon their daughter frequently wore in her hair. It was covered with dried blood. Distraught and
    overcome with grief, the mother ran deeper into the cave. The man, slowed by an old foot injury, was unable to keep up and begged her to wait until he got help. She ignored him and ran down the same dark passage Matt and I had explored, shouting her daughter’s name. Knowing he’d never catch up with her and concerned about maneuvering in the cave, he decided to remain near the entrance and wait for his wife to return with news of whatever she had found. He would never see his wife alive again.

    He listened for what seemed like hours as his wife screamed their daughter’s name, over and over, and it grew fainter as she descended further into the cave. Just when he could barely hear her voice any more, she let out one long, blood-curdling scream. Closing his eyes in sadness and despair, thinking his wife had just discovered their daughter’s body he yelled out to her. He never received a response. What he got instead was a taste of what Matt and I endured.

    The journal described a very similar event to the one we experienced, starting with the earthquake-like tremors deep in the cave, which, from his perspective from near the entrance, were much more subdued. He yelled down to his wife to return, fearing a cave-in as we had, but again, he heard no answer. Then he described hearing a high-pitch wail coming up the passage, a sound he knew couldn't be human. Fearing it was some kind of wild animal he scampered as quickly as he could over the nearby hill, crouching behind a stump to see if anything exited the cave. He heard the wail growing louder and louder and described seeing a sickly red light glowing within the cave. As it faded, a black shape seemed to shoot from the cave like a cannonball, up into the air at least 50 feet, then glided back down to earth.

    It had clutched in one of its appendages the one-armed torso of his wife. The man described the almost unbearable horror of seeing this, but was compelled by something beyond his control to watch as the shadow entity fed on his wife’s body. Seeming to swim in the blood, it actually seemed to become more solid.

    Finally as it registered in the terrified man’s brain, this creature had just savagely murdered his wife, and probably his daughter and her friend, he turned in a stupor and began to slink down the backside of the hill. He began to gain speed on the incline and finally, enraged with anger and grief, broke into a dead run, ignoring his swollen and sore foot. Bursting into his house he grabbed his shotgun from the mantle, stuffed as many extra shells as he could into his jacket, then loaded the gun. Bent on revenge, he began the long trek back to the where he had left the entity mutilating his wife. When he finally arrived back at his vantage point on the hill, he could see and feel the entity was no longer around. Carefully he inched his way down the far side of the hill towards the grisly scene just outside the cave’s entrance. Blood stained the grass and leaves. Shreds of her dress and small pieces of scattered entrails and flesh were all that remained of his wife.

    Overcome with grief, he fell to his knees and began to sob uncontrollably. He remained like that for several minutes, running his fingers through the bloodstained material. Images of his wife and daughter flooded his mind and again he became enraged with a primal anger. He stood up, raised his gun into the air and yelled out to the entity to come for him. He yelled down into the cave, yelled up into the air, yelled at the top of his lungs for it to come. It didn't take long for his call to be answered.

    Vaulting over the hill behind him it came screaming, now almost entirely solid. He described it as a thickskinned, black beast, trailed by a wispy, dark mist coming off it like steam off a campfire doused with water. Its eyes burned a deep red and pierced his glaze like two hot pokers. The beast plunged towards him, it arms extended with giant scythe-like appendages ready to slice him in half. He calmly leveled his shotgun and waited to pull the trigger until the last second, when he could feel the beast’s hot breath on his face. The creature’s upper body exploded into a cloud of black dust, as its lower body slammed into the man knocking the wind out of him and pinning him to the ground.

    It writhed and convulsed on top of him as he struggled beneath its weight. Slowly, it too turned into weightless black dust, falling from him like bits of ash. Eventually he was able to stand up and breathe deeply and as he did so, he felt a strong breeze materialize out of nowhere. Although it wasn't so much a breeze, as it was a force behind him, sucking the air past him. He braced himself against a small tree and watched as the dusty remains of the entity gathered once again into a faint shadow and disappeared back into the hole. He shot at it once again before it left his sight, but his shot simply blew through what was by now nearly a transparent dust cloud and struck a tree. The man ran to the entrance and looked into the darkness, hearing a final faint wail then silence.

    Minutes later he turned and left the cave entrance in a brain-numbed trance.

    According to the journal, he then visited the family of his daughter’s friend and tried to explain what happened. Bewildered and nearly despondent by the news their child was likely dead, the friend’s mother and father returned to the site with him. They saw the blood and tattered remains of his wife. The friends’ father kept insisting that it must have been a bear of some kind, and the event he recounted was merely a figment of the man’s enraged grief. Unable to convince them otherwise, he at least got their help to cover the cave’s entrance with logs and dead tree branches.

    Details followed about the memorial services, about how no one would believe him about the shadow creature. Everyone in the county thought he had lost his mind upon the death of his wife, and he became
    increasingly more withdrawn until he was essentially a recluse. However, he remained determined to find out what was down in that cave. He spent hours in the town’s library, pouring through medieval reference books, the Bible, and even mythology books. Nothing was ever found to describe what he had seen and experienced.

    It wasn't until one winter day, months later, that he got his answer. His journal explains that a local Native American, whose parents had stayed behind when their Navajo tribe had been forced off the land onto a reservation in Arizona, had heard of his story and came to visit him. He claimed to know the origin of a shadow creature from an old tale passed down over many years through the generations of his tribe. The creature was referred to as a “Hindi,” or “soul eater”. A creature of untold origin and power, it hibernated for decades and came out to feed on people’s souls only to return to a long slumber after terrorizing nearby humans and animals. His tribe’s shamans had long held incantations and spells to keep the soul eater in check, limiting its power and forcing it to remain dormant for hundreds of years.

    Over the next couple of weeks he consulted with an old shaman the man introduced him to, learning spells that supposedly would keep the creature at bay. Apparently, these incantations bound the person to the creature in an eternal struggle against one another. The spirit of the spell-giver would contain the beast as long as the line of living shamans kept up with the spells and incantations needed to keep the spirit alive on its alternate plane of existence. Without maintenance, the spirit would eventually fade and cross over to the next plane, leaving nothing behind to contain the soul eater.

    With his family gone and no one in town believing him, he decided to live near the cave to prevent anyone from trying to enter it again. He basically dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the area from any further attacks from the creature and carved symbols of a spell into the cave walls to keep his spirit alive after his corporal death, and contain the entity in its lair.

    The incantations engraved into the wall apparently had enough power for the man to return to our plane of existence long enough to once again contain the entity, protecting us from certain death.

    After reading his journal and understanding what had happened, Matt and I felt safe enough to return to the area and explore a little more. About a mile past the cave we found two unmarked gravestones. Could they have been the man’s wife and child? We never told anyone about our experience. Who would have believed us?

    Many questions go unanswered even until today. Where did that evil thing come from? Was it a natural creature of earth, a demon, or some other ancient creature? Are there more of them out there, living the cycle of feeding then hibernating? Who or what recovered the hole while we were in the cave? Was it the spell trying to contain the beast or was it some other force trying to keep us in there for the creature to feed on? Why didn't the beast kill us while it had us trapped instead of breaking through the barrier and coming back for us? All I know is there are things on this earth still left for us to discover and understand. But we had seen, read and heard enough never to enter the cave again.

    Sir Carcass on
  • SipexSipex Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Yeah, that ending is kind of 'meh'.

    Sipex on
  • DuffelDuffel jacobkosh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Well, the thread needs new stories, so here's one for you. This was related to me by my best friend, and creeped me out so much when she told it to me over the phone (in the middle of the night, of course) that I had to watch stupid youtube videos for like two hours before I could go to sleep.

    ---

    I was hanging out with one of my best friends in her hometown in eastern Kentucky this summer, and we were both sitting outside with a friend of hers watching her goddaughter play in the sandbox. The goddaughter is about two and a half and has an imaginary friend, "Clementine" (named after the song, apparently), who she sits and carries on conversations with. I remarked at the time how strangely creepy it was to watch this little kid sit and apparently talk with someone who isn't there.

    Later, we were talking about it over the phone, and my friend told me another story about an imaginary friend a girl she knew, Amy, used to have. Lots of kids have imaginary friends, of course, but Amy said that this one was particularly unusual in that she actually saw her imaginary friend, an adult woman named Lucy. To this day - in her mid-20s - Amy remembers exactly what Lucy looked like, and remembers how she could sit for hours and carry on conversations with her.

    Now, children actually physically perceiving their imaginary friends is unusual - most of them know that, in reality, they aren't actually "real" - but not entirely unheard of, if you read some studies on the subject.

    But it gets stranger.

    Sometimes Amy would threaten her family members with Lucy. In one incident, she was apparently about to get paddled for some reason, and said to her mother, "You better be good to me, or Lucy will get you" - upon which the closet door slammed for no apparent reason.

    Later, when the family moved into a different house, Amy noticed it was next to a cemetery, and said, "Oh, good, now Lucy will have a place to sleep too."

    Finally, one day Amy's parents went to visit some relatives, and her mom was talking with someone (her aunt or somebody, I forget who) about Amy and Lucy and how strange it all was, and the relative just stared at her. Amy's mom asked what was wrong and the relative said,

    "You do know we had a relative named Lucy that died in your old house, right?"

    Her mom hadn't known, as it turned out. I don't know what her reaction was - I can't really imagine what I would think after having something like that told to me.
    ----

    Anyway, that's one of the creepier stories I've heard, told to me as true. I kind of hope my friend was pulling my leg about all this - she knows that I'm a superstitious person and I'm especially freaked out by ghosts in particular - so if this is actually the synopsis to some movie I've never seen I'd be glad to hear it.

    I've got some other good stories from some of my folklore classes I might type up later, if I can find the books. Ghost stories are so much better when you know they're peer-reviewed.

    Duffel on
  • ShadowBladeShadowBlade Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I was listening live when this happened. As you can see by the date here, this was no prank and not halloween.

    http://www.hauntedhamilton.com/Great_Teasers_Ghost.mp3

    http://www.hauntedhamilton.com/media_evps.html

    ShadowBlade on
    This world needs a new philosophy. No more, "Could be worse..." I say SHOULD BE BETTER!
  • Capt HowdyCapt Howdy Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I need to stop being lazy and post a few of my experiences. They all actually happened to me. Must find time!

    Capt Howdy on
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  • ChillyWillyChillyWilly Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Duffel wrote: »
    I wouldn't hold your breath, the website's been that way since ca 2001 :P

    And the lack of an ending is kind of the point, IMO. It's based off of a short story from the 80s (forget by who), using the website format as a storytelling device. Makes the story much more interesting and much more convincing.

    The original story had a big dramatic showdown ending and it wasn't nearly as good.

    Oh, yeah. I noticed that nothing had been done to the site in nearly a decade before I posted. And while I do like a good bit of suspense, I also like closure. :D

    ChillyWilly on
    PAFC Top 10 Finisher in Seasons 1 and 3. 2nd in Seasons 4 and 5. Final 4 in Season 6.
  • ogcam777ogcam777 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    On the Ted the Caver thing, I think the obscure ending is the point.
    His last entry details his resolve to go back to the cave and get video and pictures, and he "expect(s) to be home later tonight, or tomorrow at the latest." When hitting the Next link at the end, it only reloads the page, leaving the reader to possibly think "Oh no he went back to the cave but never updated again oh noooooo"

    At least, that's my take on it.

    Edit: Nevermind, I'm dumb and can't read a few posts before mine.

    ogcam777 on
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  • Bacon-BuTTyBacon-BuTTy Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Welp.

    I'm creeped out by this thread, and I need to go to bed soon.

    Awesome decision Bacon. Well done.

    Bacon-BuTTy on
    Automasig.jpg
  • AeytherAeyther Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Paragon wrote: »
    I am surprised Ted the Caver is not listed in the OP, it is BY FAR the scariest story I have ever read, full stop.

    I consider myself a fairly good storyteller and I have the entire story memorized because I love it so.

    I told it to my friend about two years ago, he was 24 at the time, by the end of the story he was shivering, curled up under the blankets begging me to stay the night and not leave him all alone. :p

    I demand to have an ending to this damn story.

    There is one, and it's not that good. Ted the Caver was basically a website created from the short story The Fear of Darkness. It's almost word for word with a few small changes, but the story keeps going. I thought it was pretty lame, though.

    I'll post it here. "B" is "Matt" in the story.
    Crawling head first through a tight passage into darkness and the unknown is as unnatural as climbing up the side of a cliff, or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for recreation. We do these things to satisfy our hunger for adventure, as a subconscious desire to conquer our own little Everest. Matt once said, "Caving is the last opportunity for exploration for the person with modest means.” If you define yourself only by your exploits, by your feats of physical courage, when the time comes that you can no longer perform them, you have lost the standard by which you measure yourself. If I am ever to experience restful slumber, if I am ever to walk the halls of my own home in peace, I must return.

    It took Matt another month to recover before he agreed to go back into the cave with me. Neither of us could believe we were subjecting ourselves to the terrors of the cave but we could not avoid it. We spent a little time enlarging the hole to make it easier to get through, stalling for time, working in tense silence. Then it was time. In we went, one after the other, passing quickly through the Tomb. We brushed ourselves off, stood up, and looked around the room. Then, just past the round rock, which had not moved back into its original position, my headlight shown the bones I thought I’d seen last trip. Approaching them warily, we made a grisly discovery.

    There were shards bone and tattered clothing surrounding skull. Close by was another skull, this one neatly sliced in two, again surrounded by scattered pieces of bone, and what looked like the lacy hem of woman’s shredded skirt. Just as I started to approach the remains for closer inspection, I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. A girl’s voice seemed to whisper urgently in my ear, “Get out!” and then an even more desperately, “Run!”

    Completely freaked, I turned to Matt who had obviously heard it too. We paused briefly to consider our options, and then began simultaneously to move to the room’s exit, just as the floor of the chamber began to tremble. The wind began to howl through the chamber much stronger last time, and the rumbling began deep within the passage. Terrified already, we didn't want to stick around to find out what the hell was about to happen. As I scrambled backwards towards the chamber’s exit, Matt quickly followed. The ground was now shaking so badly, I was afraid there was an earthquake and the cave was going to collapse upon us.

    I was the first to make it to the exit, which seemed little more than a mole hole now. I started squirming and squeezing through, with Matt yelling for me to hurry. I obliged, skinning my knees and elbows as I forced my way through. Once I was into the passage, I turned to help Matt who was frantically trying to squeeze through. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the hole was shrinking right before my eyes. Matt had begun to struggle harder, and I pulled him through with both hands. Suddenly Matt screamed in what I thought was agony from being tugged too hard, but he was looking up at me with complete terror in his eyes.

    “Something is touching my legs! Something is touching my legs! Pull harder!” He screamed. I yanked him once more with all my strength, and he finally popped through. As his feet appeared, my headlight revealed what resembled a webbed hand or claw releasing its grip on Matt’s leg. Although it had shape, it was more opaque than solid. The second Matt was on his feet he began running, and as it dawned on me what I had seen, I too turned and ran as fast as I was able. The rumbling noise began to grow louder as a strange glow began to illuminate the passage behind us, and the sickening smell of rotting meat and bile began to overtake us.

    As we scrambled upward, the spiraling effect of the passage became disorienting and started to take its effect on us. If Matt wasn't tripping on something or banging his head, then I was, and the escape to the surface seemed to take forever. It was like a Laurel and Hardy movie scene gone terribly wrong. Since we had ascended high enough through all of the twists and turns, the light from below should not have been visible. Instead it seemed to be getting closer and brighter, now lighting the passage behind in a sickly blood-red light. Finally we reached the long, straight passage that led directly to the cave entrance, and Matt and I were able to pick up speed putting more distance between us, and the light from below and the overpowering stench. However, the rumbling continued to grow louder, and became higher pitched, like a teakettle approaching the boiling point.

    As we finally reached the ledge we turned to each other in shock. There was nothing but darkness ahead. We had entered the cave about noon and had only been inside for about 2 hours. It should have still been bright daylight. Matt aimed his headlight up to the cave entrance and what we saw chilled us to the bone. Our rope was gone and the entrance looked blocked. We frantically jumped onto the slope and began to claw our way upward, but for every two feet we gained, we slid back one. The light from below began once more to encroach on us and the rumbling intensified.

    We started screaming for help, though who would hear us we had no idea! The light behind suddenly came racing towards us flickering with blinding speed and intensity. We covered our eyes and screamed for our lives. Instantly, the light faded to complete darkness like a wave cresting over. The unbearable noise stopped and the stench faded. The only sound was our own heavy breathing.

    “What in the hell was that?” I gasped, trying to catch my breath lost to fear.

    “I don't know, but let’s get out of here. Now!” Matt answered.

    No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we heard a horrible crash below followed by a sound that still gives me nightmares. Our headlights immediately went dead and we were thrust into complete and total darkness, as a horrific, tortured sound came rushing closer. We were now too scared even to scream. I remember pressing myself against the rock wall, frozen in fear, reduced to no other capacity than to listen as the sound began to transform into more of a primal, demonic scream as it flew up the passage towards us like a freight train going 200 miles per hour. The air grew searing hot and a putrid wind swirled around us. We were about to pass out from fear and the ear-piercing pain of the scream when something semi-solid surged past. Almost reading each other’s minds, we shot up the last few feet and through the exit, me first, then Matt. Not knowing whether to run or collapse, we stared at each other waiting for the other to make a move, finally realizing daylight had returned. We sighed with relief, after all things are always better in the light of day. Right? Wrong!

    However, our ordeal had not yet ended. A man with long, unkempt hair and deep lines crisscrossing his face appeared out of nowhere. Despite our initial reaction to shake off our immobility and run, there was something about the man that made us stay, something non-threatening almost peaceful. As he approached us slowly, staring at us with piercing red eyes, the screaming came roaring through the woods. Matt and I stood frozen, powerless to stop the thing rushing towards us, powerless to move. The old man stopped his approach, his face one of steely determination. He reached his arms up toward the sky and began forcefully chanting in a language I did not recognize nor understand.

    The scream crested the hill emb odied in a dark shape, almost like a black cloud of soot, with just enough form to be called solid. It flew down the hill, snapping small trees that stood between it and the old man like matchsticks. The haggard old man blocked the entity’s path towards us as he more loudly chanted those strange words that echoed through the woods like the howl of a wolf.

    The entity slowed, and, as if it had legs, seemed to take a step back just as the strange light began to emanate from the entrance to the cave again. This time, however, it was not the sickly blood red from before, but a brilliant white light. The entity, or whatever it was, struggled against the light. It was sucked back down into the cave screaming loud in protest. Suddenly, silence as the light retreated into the cave, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

    Stunned with disbelief and shock, Matt and I just stared at the old man. Coming out of his trance, he again took notice of us and asked if we were okay. Matt and I both looked at each other as if checking for any number of untold wounds. Outside of skinned knees and elbows, we were both merely dirty and dripping with sweat, so we nodded numbly in silence.

    “You two nearly met your end there,” said the old man.

    “Who, I mean, what was that?” Matt stammered.

    “It was evil, cruel and eternal. You could call it a demon or you could call it the devil.” He paused for a second and then continued. “It is both and it is neither. What’s important is that it didn't get to feed again. It grows much more powerful if it gets to feed.”

    With that, the man drew back, crossed in front of us and began walking. He chanted quietly for a few more minutes, and then walked into the woods. Matt and I stared at each other, eyes wide. Full of questions, yet still too much in shock to speak, we began to search for the old man.

    Only a few seconds behind him, there was no way he could have disappeared yet he was nowhere to be found. No footprints and no sounds. We called out to him, even ran up the hill to see further. It was like he had disappeared into thin air.

    Now we were thoroughly baffled and confused. As we came back down the hill we found what we were looking for behind a toppled old tree. There, wearing clothes identical clothes to those of the strange man was an almost completely decomposed corpse, holding an old black and white photograph in a rusted frame.

    Matt slid it from under the man’s hand and held it up to the light. It was a much younger version of our stranger, with what appeared to be his wife and daughter, standing in front of a nice farmhouse looking happy together. Matt slipped the photo back under his hand, as I noticed something else wrapped in oilcloth lying just under his elbow. I bent over and brushed off the dust to reveal a book. I gently removed it and flipped through the pages. It was a journal or diary of some kind.

    “I'll bet we'll find some answers here,” I said as I slipped it under my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

    “I couldn't agree more,” Matt said.

    We hardly spoke on the trip back home, each reflecting on what had happened and reevaluating how asily things we had previously believed as true had been shattered by what we had just experienced. When we arrived home we cleaned ourselves up quickly with the garden hose in the backyard before going inside. We each gulped several glasses of water, Matt remarking that we had not returned with our canteen. To this day I have no idea what happened to it or the rope!

    Once we felt refreshed and comparatively safe, we sat down at the table with the old tattered journal and began to pour over the pages. Most of the stuff we read concerning the cave we didn't understand at the time, the pages being littered with discombobulated thoughts and gibberish, in a handwriting difficult to read. It wasn't until after revisiting the journal several more times that I was finally able to make some kind of sense of what had happened around that cave.

    From what I could tell, the man, his wife and daughter moved into the area in the late 1890’s and farmed the land they lived on. The daughter was adventurous and regularly went out exploring the woods, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, according to her father. One day, she sprained her knee in a fall and had to be rescued, and from then on, her parents insisted she go always with someone else. Apparently, this was no assurance of safety. A few weeks later she and her friend ventured out never to be seen again.

    The man and his wife, along with the friend’s family, local sheriff, his deputies, and other concerned families, searched the woods that night and all the next week. Despite all efforts, the girls were never found. A month later, refusing to give up, the parents, searching the woods, once again, discovered the entrance to a cave.

    Fearing their daughter made the same discovery, they decided to enter and look around.

    The journal goes on to describe a horrifying scene. Just a few feet into the cave, the mother had found a special ribbon their daughter frequently wore in her hair. It was covered with dried blood. Distraught and
    overcome with grief, the mother ran deeper into the cave. The man, slowed by an old foot injury, was unable to keep up and begged her to wait until he got help. She ignored him and ran down the same dark passage Matt and I had explored, shouting her daughter’s name. Knowing he’d never catch up with her and concerned about maneuvering in the cave, he decided to remain near the entrance and wait for his wife to return with news of whatever she had found. He would never see his wife alive again.

    He listened for what seemed like hours as his wife screamed their daughter’s name, over and over, and it grew fainter as she descended further into the cave. Just when he could barely hear her voice any more, she let out one long, blood-curdling scream. Closing his eyes in sadness and despair, thinking his wife had just discovered their daughter’s body he yelled out to her. He never received a response. What he got instead was a taste of what Matt and I endured.

    The journal described a very similar event to the one we experienced, starting with the earthquake-like tremors deep in the cave, which, from his perspective from near the entrance, were much more subdued. He yelled down to his wife to return, fearing a cave-in as we had, but again, he heard no answer. Then he described hearing a high-pitch wail coming up the passage, a sound he knew couldn't be human. Fearing it was some kind of wild animal he scampered as quickly as he could over the nearby hill, crouching behind a stump to see if anything exited the cave. He heard the wail growing louder and louder and described seeing a sickly red light glowing within the cave. As it faded, a black shape seemed to shoot from the cave like a cannonball, up into the air at least 50 feet, then glided back down to earth.

    It had clutched in one of its appendages the one-armed torso of his wife. The man described the almost unbearable horror of seeing this, but was compelled by something beyond his control to watch as the shadow entity fed on his wife’s body. Seeming to swim in the blood, it actually seemed to become more solid.

    Finally as it registered in the terrified man’s brain, this creature had just savagely murdered his wife, and probably his daughter and her friend, he turned in a stupor and began to slink down the backside of the hill. He began to gain speed on the incline and finally, enraged with anger and grief, broke into a dead run, ignoring his swollen and sore foot. Bursting into his house he grabbed his shotgun from the mantle, stuffed as many extra shells as he could into his jacket, then loaded the gun. Bent on revenge, he began the long trek back to the where he had left the entity mutilating his wife. When he finally arrived back at his vantage point on the hill, he could see and feel the entity was no longer around. Carefully he inched his way down the far side of the hill towards the grisly scene just outside the cave’s entrance. Blood stained the grass and leaves. Shreds of her dress and small pieces of scattered entrails and flesh were all that remained of his wife.

    Overcome with grief, he fell to his knees and began to sob uncontrollably. He remained like that for several minutes, running his fingers through the bloodstained material. Images of his wife and daughter flooded his mind and again he became enraged with a primal anger. He stood up, raised his gun into the air and yelled out to the entity to come for him. He yelled down into the cave, yelled up into the air, yelled at the top of his lungs for it to come. It didn't take long for his call to be answered.

    Vaulting over the hill behind him it came screaming, now almost entirely solid. He described it as a thickskinned, black beast, trailed by a wispy, dark mist coming off it like steam off a campfire doused with water. Its eyes burned a deep red and pierced his glaze like two hot pokers. The beast plunged towards him, it arms extended with giant scythe-like appendages ready to slice him in half. He calmly leveled his shotgun and waited to pull the trigger until the last second, when he could feel the beast’s hot breath on his face. The creature’s upper body exploded into a cloud of black dust, as its lower body slammed into the man knocking the wind out of him and pinning him to the ground.

    It writhed and convulsed on top of him as he struggled beneath its weight. Slowly, it too turned into weightless black dust, falling from him like bits of ash. Eventually he was able to stand up and breathe deeply and as he did so, he felt a strong breeze materialize out of nowhere. Although it wasn't so much a breeze, as it was a force behind him, sucking the air past him. He braced himself against a small tree and watched as the dusty remains of the entity gathered once again into a faint shadow and disappeared back into the hole. He shot at it once again before it left his sight, but his shot simply blew through what was by now nearly a transparent dust cloud and struck a tree. The man ran to the entrance and looked into the darkness, hearing a final faint wail then silence.

    Minutes later he turned and left the cave entrance in a brain-numbed trance.

    According to the journal, he then visited the family of his daughter’s friend and tried to explain what happened. Bewildered and nearly despondent by the news their child was likely dead, the friend’s mother and father returned to the site with him. They saw the blood and tattered remains of his wife. The friends’ father kept insisting that it must have been a bear of some kind, and the event he recounted was merely a figment of the man’s enraged grief. Unable to convince them otherwise, he at least got their help to cover the cave’s entrance with logs and dead tree branches.

    Details followed about the memorial services, about how no one would believe him about the shadow creature. Everyone in the county thought he had lost his mind upon the death of his wife, and he became
    increasingly more withdrawn until he was essentially a recluse. However, he remained determined to find out what was down in that cave. He spent hours in the town’s library, pouring through medieval reference books, the Bible, and even mythology books. Nothing was ever found to describe what he had seen and experienced.

    It wasn't until one winter day, months later, that he got his answer. His journal explains that a local Native American, whose parents had stayed behind when their Navajo tribe had been forced off the land onto a reservation in Arizona, had heard of his story and came to visit him. He claimed to know the origin of a shadow creature from an old tale passed down over many years through the generations of his tribe. The creature was referred to as a “Hindi,” or “soul eater”. A creature of untold origin and power, it hibernated for decades and came out to feed on people’s souls only to return to a long slumber after terrorizing nearby humans and animals. His tribe’s shamans had long held incantations and spells to keep the soul eater in check, limiting its power and forcing it to remain dormant for hundreds of years.

    Over the next couple of weeks he consulted with an old shaman the man introduced him to, learning spells that supposedly would keep the creature at bay. Apparently, these incantations bound the person to the creature in an eternal struggle against one another. The spirit of the spell-giver would contain the beast as long as the line of living shamans kept up with the spells and incantations needed to keep the spirit alive on its alternate plane of existence. Without maintenance, the spirit would eventually fade and cross over to the next plane, leaving nothing behind to contain the soul eater.

    With his family gone and no one in town believing him, he decided to live near the cave to prevent anyone from trying to enter it again. He basically dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the area from any further attacks from the creature and carved symbols of a spell into the cave walls to keep his spirit alive after his corporal death, and contain the entity in its lair.

    The incantations engraved into the wall apparently had enough power for the man to return to our plane of existence long enough to once again contain the entity, protecting us from certain death.

    After reading his journal and understanding what had happened, Matt and I felt safe enough to return to the area and explore a little more. About a mile past the cave we found two unmarked gravestones. Could they have been the man’s wife and child? We never told anyone about our experience. Who would have believed us?

    Many questions go unanswered even until today. Where did that evil thing come from? Was it a natural creature of earth, a demon, or some other ancient creature? Are there more of them out there, living the cycle of feeding then hibernating? Who or what recovered the hole while we were in the cave? Was it the spell trying to contain the beast or was it some other force trying to keep us in there for the creature to feed on? Why didn't the beast kill us while it had us trapped instead of breaking through the barrier and coming back for us? All I know is there are things on this earth still left for us to discover and understand. But we had seen, read and heard enough never to enter the cave again.

    This story made me think of this.

    Aeyther on
  • DraculaDracula DARCUL DAS WAMPY Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I've got a pretty tame story. Kind of creepy, but not a whole lot of substance. Probably just one of those things that was disconcerting at the time.

    My parents have a pretty old house, probably near the one hundred year mark. It makes some creepy sounds at night. The basement is downright terrifying, even in the middle of the day. A lot of sounds come from down there, mostly from the old furnace, I imagine. Anyway, the point is that I'm used to it.

    When I lived with them back in high school I had a bedroom on the second floor. There were two windows, one next to my bed on my left that faced the street and another facing towards our neighbors. There was a good amount of light that came in through the street side windows, especially after the town put in new, old-style street lamps. Pretty much the whole front of the house was illuminated.

    Anyway, I would stay up pretty late, so it was probably like 3 in the morning or so on this particular day when I finally went to bed. I was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep. I'd been there in the dark for about half an hour or so when, out of nowhere, there was a loud noise from out the window as if something had hit the porch roof (I should also add here that the street side window by my bed also looked out over the roof of our front porch). I was startled but after a moment or two of nothing I decided it was nothing.

    But then I saw it. I don't know what it was, but a large shadow passed across the drawn curtains, lit from behind by the street light. It looked like it was as big as the window. I suddenly became terrified. Hairs on the back of my neck standing up and all that. I stared at the window, motionless, waiting to see if the shadow would pass by again. My mind raced with images of what it could be. At the time (15 or so, I'd guess) all I could picture was the moth man perched outside my window, trying to gaze in at me through the cracks of the curtain.

    The shadow passed by again. Another moment passed and I heard a faint sound outside. After about 15 minutes of nothing I finally willed up the courage to look out the window. There was nothing there.

    Freaked me out pretty well at the time. Birds--sometimes big ones--would perch on the roof all the time but they'd never made a noise as loud as this thing did. I don't know. Maybe it was an owl. But aren't they known for being quiet?

    Anyway, that's it. Not too exciting.

    Dracula on
  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I never heard of numbers stations before this thread... now there's an episode of Covert Affairs talking about them.

    Nothing creepy, just thought it was interesting.

    Shadowfire on
  • syndalissyndalis Getting Classy On the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
    edited July 2010
    I guess I could post my Deer Woman story also... never posted it here, and it is just as fucked up as the Tall Spirit one.

    I sometimes find it hard to reconcile the two very different lives I have lived. To those who know me... think of me with really long hair, hefty, torn jeans, moccasins and a goatee... living on indian reservations (or out of a van), and traveling wherever the wind blew me.

    And now I am a clean cut businessman, engaged to be married and pulling in decent bank. Life is interesting.

    Anyways, yeah. I'll write up Deer Woman today.

    syndalis on
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  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I posted this in one of the previous threads and didn't get much response, but I'll go ahead and write it up again.

    Many years ago I used to work as a security at a building that used to be a nursing home but then just being used as a storage building by a company that owned other nursing homes in the area. It was a pretty old building, I'd say probably at least 30 years old. We were really there only for the insurance policy, and it was just one person per shift. Usually we'd play video games or watch movies, so it was a pretty awesome job. My shifts were Fri 4pm to midnight, Sat 8am to midnight, and Sun 8am to midnight. I'd usually just sleep up there on the weekends, as would the midnight person.

    Anyway, being up there by yourself late at night would be interesting sometimes. We'd often see strange shadows or hear noises that didn't seem to have a source. There were rats in the building, but some of the stuff was well beyond what rats could do. Some things I personally experienced:

    One night I was the only one there (was covering the midnight shift for someone), and I was sleeping in one of the rooms. I was on my side facing the (closed) door, with the lights off in the room and the lights in the hall way on. For some reason I woke up, and opened my eyes just in time to see a shadow slowly go by the light under the door, like someone was walking by the door. I didn't hear any sounds. A few seconds later it came back, then went back again. I got up and looked out in the hall. Nothing. I checked every room in the building and didn't see anything.

    One night a friend and I were playing some tabletop game in the center area (the building was laid out like a plus sign, 4 halls going outward from a central area). We got quiet for a moment and heard this tremendous crash down the north wing. We went to investigate everywhere on that side of the building but never found anything that would have made such a sound.

    The most blatantly creepy happened one Friday night. I was working my till midnight shift and my boss was doing the midnight - 8am shift. We were both up there hanging out about 11, watching a movie or something, I don't remember now. There was a pretty bad storm coming through the area and it was raging outside. All of the sudden the power to the whole building goes off. If it had backup generators, they were long out of service. Since it was pitch black, we decided to go outside under the front awning where there was at least some light. We just kinda hung out there for about an hour until the storm passed and the power finally came back on. We headed inside to the center area to reset the giant fire alarm panel that was going off. My boss had just reset it when all of the sudden the organ in the small chapel right off of the south wing started playing. It wasn't playing a fugue or anything, just a couple of solid notes, but it lasted for a good 4 or 5 seconds, then just quit. We looked at each other for about a minute then decided to go look. There was nothing in there, and the organ wasn't even plugged in.

    Sir Carcass on
  • SipexSipex Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Wow, those are pretty short but very creepy Carcass.

    Also, I enjoyed that window story, windows make things creepier for some reason.

    Sipex on
  • PsychoCucumberPsychoCucumber Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Nah, windows aren't creepy.
    It's the guy in the ski mask that stands outside your window every night, watching you, that's creepy.

    PsychoCucumber on
  • Cedar BrownCedar Brown Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Nah, windows aren't creepy.
    It's the guy in the ski mask that stands outside your window every night, watching you, that's creepy.

    Nah, what makes it really creepy is that you couldn't see him until you turned off the lights and his silhouette was revealed by the moonlight outside... And he was there the entire time.

    The creepiest stories either involve something completely unknown or have the character realizing it afterwards. You know, "they had red eyes", "humans can lick too", "there was a hook hanging from the door handle", "they were windows", "a picture of her sleeping."


    I was told by staff that strange things happen at night at a certain highschool. Father Goetz Secondary. The head custodian told me that she would hear footsteps when she was the only one there and things you would leave at a certain spot would move. Like a bucket would be down the hall from where you left it. That spot was the floor above where the former locker of a student who committed suicide was. Nobody liked working there alone at night.

    Cedar Brown on
  • DeadfallDeadfall I don't think you realize just how rich he is. In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    When I was younger, we lived in a house that was built in the 50's. I grew up in a mountain town, and our house used to be a one-room hunting cabin. It had since been updated and made into a two-story family home. It was old and creaky, and when the furnace turned on or the wind blew just the right ways or the cat and dog stepped on certain boards, it made all sorts of creepy noises.

    But this story does not involve creepy noises or strange sounds.

    Because of its age, the house had settled somewhat, and my room was at a slight slant. You couldn't really notice it, but if you put a pencil on the floor it would roll downward. This also caused my door to close on its own. Very slowly, but it definately would not stay open. Which was fine with me because I liked my door closed as a highschooler. It didn't always close completely, but if you shoved it open it would usually get enough momentum to lock.

    So one day, I was in homework mode and needed the bookbag I kept under my bed. It was getting dark so I fumbled around under the bed to find what I needed when several points of pain, like tiny needles shot up my arm and something grabbed my hand.



    Turned out the cat had wandered into my room that day and got trapped in there after the door closed shut and decided to wait for me and play a game of "Gotcha!"

    I know it doesn't sound terrifying, but when you expect privacy in your room because your door closes on its own, I'd like to see you not howl in terror when something grabs your arm under your bed.

    Deadfall on
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  • BolthornBolthorn Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Carcass, short but creepy. Other than those few instances sounds like it was a pretty sweet gig.

    Bolthorn on
  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    It was. I worked there about a year and a half before some drama went down, but I spent more time there than I did at home.

    Sir Carcass on
  • DuffelDuffel jacobkosh Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I'm interested in hearing some ghost stories from universities. I know that we all know a few; they're basically one of the most popular on-campus rituals for freshmen, probably second only to binge drinking.

    The dorm that I moved into freshman year was supposedly haunted (aren't they all?), but I can definitely say I never noticed anything creepy or weird while I was living there. The closest I got was one time I'd went up to one of the girl's floors and I looked behind me to see that the head of the school mascot was peeking outside one of the doors down the hall, just staring at me. I must have looked surprised because the residents then started giggling and ducked back in.

    However, there was one dorm on campus that everyone who had lived there said it was haunted, and I can totally believe it. By the time I went to school there it had already been condemned; it was one of the oldest buildings on campus and was probably at least pushing the century mark. It wasn't designed like your typical sterile college dorm, but had a big crazy lobby with lots of stairs and a chandalier like some kind of weird mansion. Everything in it was on the verge of crumbling apart (it took the university like two years to renovate it when it got condemned).

    I can't remember most of the stories - been a long time since freshman year - but IIRC it was typical stuff. Sometimes you'd hear footsteps behind you walking down the halls in the wee hours of the morning, but of course nobody was there, or you might hear scratching on the doors and other unexplainable noises. I never lived there, so I can't speak from experience - my only direct contact with the place was one time when I snuck up onto the roof during the day, and there was a dead squirrel on top of the building, strangely untouched by maggots or other decomposers, even though IIRC the weather was still warm.

    Our archaeology lab was also pretty creepy. Never actually saw ghosts or anything like that, but the building it was in was really old, dark and run-down, infested with bugs and spiders and stuff. The pipes made noise constantly for some reason at all hours of the day and night. Combine that with the fact that there were a lot of human and animal skeletal remains scattered all over the place and nobody laughed at you for saying you were creeped out by the place. I hated closing it up at night and being the last one out the door.

    Duffel on
  • ArchArch Neat-o, mosquito! Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Did vaelor or whoever ever return and finish his story about the crazy thing in the forest?

    Arch on
  • SpacemilkSpacemilk Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Arch wrote: »
    Did vaelor or whoever ever return and finish his story about the crazy thing in the forest?
    no :( that still makes me sad

    maybe the forest creature eventually got him

    Spacemilk on
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