EPTI know it’s a really cliché thing to say but how else do you describe it? It actually didn’t stem from anything supernatural, at least, not first-hand. You see, I’m basically addicted to horror stories at this point. I’ll read them for hours, creepypasta, /r/nosleep, threads on various forums, if I find something of good quality, I’ll read it.
This is the reason I can’t sleep, can’t stop reading these stories that scare me shitless and render me incapable of closing my eyes at night. I’ll lose complete track of time as I read 5+ part stories or comb through lists of shorter ones bit by bit. The fear sets in, I get goose bumps, cold shivers, I close my window for fear of something looking back at me, my mouth dries up because I’m too frightened to go to the kitchen for a drink and yet, I keep reading.
When I finally get into bed, I’m panicked, things race through my mind, my eyes dart through the darkness, I jolt awake at the slightest thing and often hallucinate, panic and jump out of bed to turn the light on. Hallucinate…it’s not uncommon for people to think they saw things they didn’t on the verge of sleep and I didn’t think much of it at first, until what I was seeing began changing.
At first it was 2 things, always one of them. The first is a strange shadow by my mirror, almost as if someone was continuously bending down and picking something up, or just standing there. The second was spiders. I have arachnophobia and living in Sri Lanka doesn’t help, the spiders here usually give you reason to fear them. I would turn or shuffle and open my eyes a little like most people do, but when they opened I would see one in the darkness.
See this is perfectly explained through an overactive imagination, especially when I’m reading too much horror, right now you’re thinking I’m just a coward who gets scared at spooky stories, which in fairness was true. My obsession would come and go, I would go weeks without reading for obvious reasons only for something to remind me of it and I would be instantly hooked for a couple days, but I always seemed to be drawn back for longer, a few days, a week, reading every night for a month. I haven’t stopped reading horror stories every day for 6 months now.
Things started getting weird after the first month. My hallucinations were changing, the shadow seemed to move when I shone my light, just out of view, the spiders seemed to scatter off into the darkness only to loom in a different place a moment later. I was getting more unnerved as the nights went by and was sleeping less as a result, it became the norm for me to fall asleep after dawn, hours after I went to bed and began the nightly struggle with these things I was seeing.
I jolted awake that night to something crawling up my leg, I screamed, I hate insects and this one felt big. I jumped out of bed and turned the light on, searched the room head to toe twice and found nothing. This was normal routine for when I saw the phantom spiders, before it became a daily occurrence at least. I was drifting off back to sleep when my eyes caught the shadow by my mirror, I noticed something seemed different about it, I could see it more clearly, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I spotted it, 2 red dots where its eyes would be, fixated on me. I panicked and fumbled for my phone light, the shadow didn’t move. The shadow didn’t disappear. That was the last night I slept.
I’ve come to accept I’m probably insane at this point, three months without proper sleep does a number on you. My body lapses into unconsciousness for a few hours every week or so but I’m plagued by nightmares, the same nightmares I’m seeing when I lie in bed each night, awake. I told you the hallucinations were changing, the shadow remained the rest of that night and the night after that but things got worse.
I realised I had read about the shadow before, at least something similar and I haven’t seen it since, almost as if it didn’t want to be recognised. In its place was something far worse. That night my walls were covered in dark mould, it gathered in the darkness and spread thin spider-like veins across the walls and floor. The stench filled my nose and I was forced to breathe it in until dawn, I was frozen in place out of fear, if I was hallucinating, how the fuck was I smelling it? There were also sounds coming from underneath my bed, like something was dragging itself around under there.
This went on for a few nights, the sounds were getting increasingly violent, like it was struggling to get out from under the bed, it started hitting the bed as If trying to force its way through and finally I caught a glimpse, a white arm trying to pull itself out from under me and I remembered. This was completely reminiscent of a story I once read on nosleep. Immediately the arm withdrew, the sounds stopped and the mould retreated back into the darkness until it was gone.
I won’t carry on with my experiences, at this point I’m fairly sure you all have an idea of what’s going on. The things I’m reading are becoming reality, within the confines of my bedroom things manifest and show themselves in the form I imagined them, I only read the stories, I never saw pictures and these things never look anything but what I thought them to be. I’ve seen it all, a woman holding an orange, the rake, the fucking inverted mickey mouse, I pissed my pants when that thing from the nosleep story “:D” came at me.
I’m not sure what it is or how it works, but it seems to feed on my fear and use my own memories against me. I’m not sure why the moment I remember things they disappear but i know for certain it is messing with my mind, my memory is excellent yet I have always failed to remember these things haunting me on the first night and rarely before the third.
At this point you’re thinking “you fucking idiot, get out of that house!” – This is the 4th house I have lived in since it began manifesting with intent. “Stop sleeping in a bedroom!” – “STOP READING FUCKING HORROR STORIES” – I told you already I can’t. It has some sort of passive control over me, almost without thinking I will search out horror to read in my free time, I’ve been finding myself climbing into bed too, without realising what I’m doing and its already too late, I’m under the covers with the light off and there goes another night. I’m losing control.
If you are reading this, then you’re an avid horror reader, or at least interested in it. Don’t make the same mistakes I have, if you are seeing things more than occasionally, if you are being drawn back to read more, if you are being kept awake at night by things you can’t quite see. Stop. Stop reading horror, stop thinking about it and stop waking up when it happens. STOP FEEDING IT.
You might remember it began getting worse with a crawling sensation on my leg, that was when it was too late to stop whatever this thing is, when It had fed on my fear enough to start gaining control. The crawling never stopped.
