Horror Discussion Thread

Leon Czolgosz, assassin of William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was electrocuted for his crime on October 29, 1901, at Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York. Among the personal effects found in his cell was a U.S. quarter stamped with the date 2218. The face in profile on said quarter was not George Washington, but rather a face which has yet to be identified.

Found the shit on my porch one night... Fucking ding-dong ditch or whatever. A little baggie with two blue capsules. And a stupid note with two words... "Do try"

I figured it was some shitty prank from my "experimental" friends from down the street. We've tried nearly every reasonable drug there is, trying to get the most psychadelic trips, maintain the best highs..

DMT, E, Acid, some experimental shit this dude sold me for wayy too much. Shit fucked me up... I tripped I was dust floating down from the ceiling. Lasted like eight hours. Fucked... me... up...

Anyway, the pills had like an orange 17 on them... Looked them up online, and couldn't find anything.

I threw it on my dresser and crashed for the night.

I called all my friends the next afternoon. They all "claimed" they had nothing to do with it. "Wasn't them". I figured one of them would fess up eventually...

Over the next week, I pretty much forgot about it. None of my friends said anything, so either they forgot, or it really wasn't them. I didn't feel like mentioning it, we had some concentrated Salvia, so we lit that up.

The next day, curiousity killed me, I picked up the bag. Glanced at the note again... "Do it"... I swore it said "Do try" but I was high when I picked it up, so I dont know. But it entrigued me even more. I examined the pill. I reasoned with myself. I just couldn't take it, it could be anything, but I was so curious. What if it was THE best high, the MOST psychadelic trip. I talked myself out of it. I set it down again, and I couldn't help but feel like I was missing out...

The next few days were hell... I had a fever, and I felt like literal shit. Probably strep. I slept most of the day, but I awoke from the sound of my own heartbeat. My thoughts went instantly to the pills... I picked it up. It was practically calling my name. What the fuck did I have to lose. If I die, I die. I felt like dying anyway. For all I know, it could be some fucking antibiotics. I hoped for the latter. I looked at it one last time.

I downed it.

I remember "waking up". The world was in negative. I was strapped to a chair, and these dark pulsating lights were eating away at my vision. I had no Idea what was going on, but I wasn't scared. I was used to fucked up trips, but this was different. I felt empty. Time was moving backwards. Light was inverted. These dark lamps pulsing energy through my brain. A bass tone vibrating my body. I couldn't close my eyes... I needed these "lights". They were blackening the world. My world. The world where I resided and wasted time in the light. I finally understood. I was in the dark.

I started seeing the figures after what seemed like an eternity. Black masses of energy crawling towards me from every angle. I was seeing them in strobe. As the dark flashed, they crept closer and closer. I recognized them as friend. They were to free me from the light. Take me away from this yellow hell we all know so well. I wanted to go to them, but I made no attempt. I focused on the strobe. I needed them to move faster. To rid me of luminescence. Once and for all.

The strobe frequency slowed. Time started to speed up. The figures were stationary. The light was coming.

My cornea's burned as the trip wore off. My emptyness enveloped me. The stobe was near out.. The figures no longer visible. I finally closed my eyes. Such a pale dark compared to true darkness.

When I opened them, I was in my bed. I shut them back immediately. I hated light. I hated our world. I wanted nothing more than to return to my chair. I couldn't live here anymore. I could't open my eyes. I reasoned with myself for hours to get up, to open my eyes. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I didn't. I prayed for darkness. It meant nothing. I was in the white. The only way I knew to return to the black was the pill. I had one left, but I had to open my eyes.

My luminous mind was telling me it was just a trip. Don't go back. Forget the abyss and return to normal life. The darkness was in favor. I didn't want to go back, I needed it. It was the realization the world needed. But I didn't care about the world. Only the dark.

Night came. I finally opened my eyes. Not to let the light in, but to get the pill. The last pill. As far as I knew, it was the last pill on earth. My dark side convinced me I only needed one. The figures would take me this time. I would forsake the light for the wondrous dark. I cared not what was in the dark. As long as it was unlit.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. Everybody was sitting on the couch in front of the TV. There were Richard, Brian, Jenny and Doreen, the babysitter.
The telephone rang.
"Maybe it's your mother," said Doreen. She picked up the phone. Before she could say a word, a man laughed hysterically and hung up.
"Who was it?" asked Richard.
"Some nut," said Doreen. "What did I miss?"

At nine-thirty the telephone rang again. Doreen answered it. It was the man who had called before. "I'll be there soon," he said, and he laughed and hung up.
"Who was it?" the children asked.
"Some crazy person," she said.
About ten o'clock the phone rang again. Jenny got it first.
"Hello," she said.
It was the same man. "One more hour," he said, and he laughed and hung up.
"He said, 'One more hour.' What did he mean?" asked Jenny.
"Don't worry," said Doreen. "It's somebody fooling around."
"I'm scared," said Jenny.
About ten-thirty the telephone rang once more. When Doreen picked it up, the man said, "Pretty soon now," and he laughed.
"Why are you doing this?" Doreen screamed, and he hung up.
"Was it that guy again?" asked Brian.
"Yes," said Doreen. "I'm going to call the operator and complain."
The operator told her to call back if it happened again, and she would try to trace the call.

At eleven o'clock the telephone rang again. Doreen answered it. "Very soon now," the man said, and he laughed and hung up.
Doreen called the operator. Almost at once she called back. "That person is calling from a telephone upstairs," she said. "You'd better leave. I'll get the police."
Just then a door upstairs opened. A man they had never seen before started down the stairs towards them. As they ran from the house, he was smiling in a very strange way. A few minutes later, the police found him there and arrested him.

In winter of 1944, with overtaxed supply lines in the Ardennes, a German medic had completely run out of plasma, bandages and antiseptic. During one particularly bad round of mortar fire, his encampment suddenly became a bloodbath. The survivors claimed to hear, above the screams and barked commands of their Lieutenant, someone cackling with almost girlish glee.

The medic made his rounds during the fire, in almost complete darkness as he had so many times before, but never this short on supplies.

The bombardment moved to other ends of the line, most men dropped off to sleep in the still dark hours of the morning - New Year’s Day, 1945.

The men awoke at first light with screams. They discovered that their bandages were not typical bandages at all, but hunks and strips of human flesh. Several men had been given fresh blood transfusions, with no blood supplies available. Each treated man was almost completely covered, head-to-toe, with the maroon stain of blood.

The medic was found, sitting on an ammunition tin, staring off into space. When one man approached him, tapped him on the shoulder, his tunic fell off to reveal all skin, muscle, and sinew had been stripped from his torso and his body almost completely dried of blood. In one hand was a scalpel, and in the other, a blood transfusion vial.

None of the men treated for wounds that night, in that camp, saw the end of January, 1945.

There was a couple from Texas who was planning a weekend trip across the Mexican border for a shopping spree. At the last minute, their baby-sitter canceled, so they had to bring along their two year old son with them. They had been across the border for an hour when the boy got free and ran around the corner. The mother tried to find him, but he was missing. The mother found a police officer who told her to go to the gate and wait. Not really understanding the instructions, she did as she was told.

About 45 minutes later, a Mexican man approached the border, carrying the boy. The mother ran to him, grateful that he had been found. When the man realized it was the boy's mother, he dropped him and ran. The police were waiting for him. The boy was dead, and in the 45 minutes he was missing, he had been cut open, all of his organs removed, and stuffed with bags of cocaine. The man was going to carry him across the border as if he were asleep.

One day at a shopping mall in the afternoon, a woman was coming out of the mall from a shopping spree. She was in a happy mood. She had gotten to her car and loaded her stuff that she had bought into her trunk. When she was done loading, she shut the door of her trunk and she saw an old lady standing by the passenger side of her car.

The old woman said "Would you be a darling and give me a lift home? I don't have a car and I was walking all day." The woman said "I'd be happy to." So she unlocked the door for the old woman.

As she started to make her way around the car to the driver's side, she started to feel uncomfortable. So when she got in the car, she looked in her purse and said "Darn, I can't find my credit card. I'm going inside to see if anybody found it." The old woman said "I'll wait for you here."

The woman left to go look for help. Then she found a security guard and told him the situation. They went back to the woman's car and the passenger door was wide open. On the seat of the car was a shopping bag that the old woman had been carrying. Inside of the bag was the old woman's dress and a gray haired wig, along with a huge butcher's knife, a video camera, and a roll of duct tape.

During the summer of 1983, in a quiet town near Minneapolis, Minnesota, the charred body of a woman was found inside the kitchen stove of a small farmhouse. A video camera was also found in the kitchen, standing on a tripod and pointing at the oven. No tape was found inside the camera at the time.

Although the scene was originally labeled as a homicide by police, an unmarked VHS tape was later discovered at the bottom of the farm’s well (which had apparently dried up earlier that year).

Despite its worn condition, and the fact that it contained no audio, police were still able to view the contents of the tape. It depicted a woman recording herself in front of a video camera (seemingly using the same camera the police found in the kitchen). After positioning the camera to include both her and her kitchen stove in the image, the tape then showed her turning on the oven, opening the door, crawling inside, and then closing the door behind her. Eight minutes into the video, the oven could be seen shaking violently, after which point thick black smoke could be seen emanating from it. The camera then continued to stationary point at the oven for another 45 minutes until the batteries apparently died.

To avoid disturbing the local community, police never released any information about the tape, or even the fact that it was found. Police were also not able to determine who put the tape in the well.

…or why the physical stature of the woman on the tape did not in any way resemble the stature of the woman found in the oven.

A young man and his new bride were honeymooning in Paris when his wife went into a restroom and didn't return.
With time the man began to fear the worst and went to the police, the police thought it was most likely the girl simply had second thoughts about the marriage, but they checked it out anyway and found no evidence of foul play
As weeks turned into months the man finally gave up on finding his beautiful wife but his life fell into a shambles he was so filled with grief.

Unable to hold a job or go on with his life, he took to wandering the world looking for anything that might ease his pain.
Years later in Borneo he came upon a freakshow in an old shabby building, he went in on a whim. In the last filthy cage he saw a twisted, scarred and mutilated woman rocking back and forth and groaning strange animal-like noises. He screamed as he recognized the birthmark on his wife's face.

A few years ago, a mother and father decided they needed a break, so they wanted to head out for a night on the town. They called their most trusted babysitter. When the babysitter arrived, the two children were already fast asleep in bed. So the babysitter just got to sit around and make sure everything was okay with the children. Later that night, the babysitter got bored and went to watch TV, but she couldn't watch it downstairs because they did not have cable downstairs (the parents didn't want children watching too much garbage). So, she called them and asked them if she could watch cable in the parent's room. Of course, the parents said it was ok, but the babysitter had one final request… she asked if she could cover up the angel statue outside the bedroom window with a blanket or cloth, at the very least close the blinds, because it made her nervous. The phone line was silent for a moment, and the father who was talking to the babysitter at the time said, "Take the children and get out of the house… we will call the police. We do not have an angel statue."

The police found all three of the house occupants dead within three minutes of the call. No statue was found.

There is a video on Youtube named Mereana mordegard glesgorv. If you search this, you will find nothing. The few times you find something, all you will see is a 20 second video of a man staring intently at you, expressionless, then grinning for the last 2 seconds. The background is undefined. This is only part of the actual video.

The full video lasts 2 minutes, and was removed by Youtube after 153 people who viewed the video gouged out their eyes and mailed them to Youtube's main office in San Bruno. Said people had also committed suicide in various ways. It is not yet known how they managed to mail their eyes after gouging them out. And the cryptic inscription they carve on their forearms has not yet been deciphered.

Youtube will periodically put up the first 20 seconds of the video to quell suspicions, so that people will not go look for the real thing and upload it. The video itself was only viewed by one Youtube staff member, who started screaming after 45 seconds. This man is under constant sedatives and is apparently unable to recall what he saw. The other people who were in the same room as him while he viewed it and turned off the video for him say that all they could hear was a high pitched drilling sound. None of them dared look at the screen.

The person who uploaded the video was never found, the IP address being non-existant. And the man on the video has never been identified.

You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes? They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent. The reason for this is a lost episode from season 1. Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention

In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn't seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mention
The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you'll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn't work, the entire computer
The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you've seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents.
The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you'd expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons' world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart's corpse was barely recognizable, they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body.
Act one ended with the shot of Bart's corpse. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. This crying went on for all of act two.
Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets.
They decided to visit Bart's grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart's body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.
The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart's body. The camera zoomed in on Homer's face. According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, but it isn't audible in the version I saw, you can't tell what Homer is saying.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven't been on the show yet. All of them had death dates on them. For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die.
You can try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date.

So do any of you remember those Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1930s? The ones that were just put out on DVDa few years ago? Well, I hear there is one that was unreleased to even the most avid classic disney fans. According to sources, it's nothing special. It's just a continuous loop (like flinstones) of mickey walking past 6 buildings that goes on for two or three minutes before fading out. Unlike the cutesy tunes put in though, the song on this cartoon was not a song at all, just a constant banging on a piano as if the keys for a minute and a half before going to white noise for the remainder of the film. It wasn't the jolly old Mickey we've come to love either, Mickey wasn't dancing, not even smiling, just kind of walking as if you or I were walking, with a normal facial expression, but for some reason his head tilted side to side as he kept this dismal look. Up until a year or two ago, everyone believed that after it cut to black and that was it.

When Leonard Maltin was reviewing the cartoon to be put in the complete series, he decided it was too junk to be on the DVD, but wanted to have a digital copy due to the fact that it was a creation of Walt. When he had a digitized version up on his computer to look at the file, he noticed something. The cartoon was actually 9 minutes and 4 seconds long. This is what my source emailed to me, in full (he is a personal assistant of one of the higher executives at Disney, and acquaintance of Mr. Maltin himself)

After it cut to black, it stayed like that until the 6th minute, before going back into Mickey walking. The sound was different this time. It was a murmur. It wasn't a language, but more like a gurgled cry. As the noise got more indistinguishable and loud over the next minute, the picture began to get weird. The sidewalk started to go in directions that seemed impossible based on the physics of Mickeys walking. And the dismal face of the mouse was slowly curling into a smirk. On the 7th minute, the murmur turned into a bloodcurdling scream (the kind of scream painful to hear) and the picture was getting more obscure. Colors were happening that shouldn't have been possible at the time. Mickey face began to fall apart. his eyes rolled on the bottom of his chin like two marbles in a fishbowl, and his curled smile was pointing upward on the left side of his face.

The buildings became rubble floating in midair and the sidewalk was still impossibly navigating in warped directions, a few seeming inconcievable with what we, as humans, know about direction. Mr. Maltin got disturbed and left the room, sending an employee to finish the video and take notes of everything happening up until the last second, and afterward immediately store the disc of the cartoon into the vault. This distorted screaming lasted until 8 minutes and a few seconds in, and then it abruptly cuts to the mickey mouse face at the credits of the end of every video with what sounded like a broken music box playing in the backround.

This happened for about 30 seconds, and whatever was in that remaining 30 seconds I heaven't been able to get a sliver of information. From a security guard working under me who was making rounds outside of that room, I was told that after the last frame, the employee stumbled out of the room with pale skin saying "Real suffering is not known" 7 times before taking the guards pistol and committing suicide. The thing I could get out of Leonard Maltin was that the last frame was a piece of russian text that roughly said "the sights of hell bring its viewers back in". As far as I know, no one else has seen it, but there have been dozens of attempts at getting the file on rapidshare by employees inside the studios, all of whom have been promptly terminated of their jobs. If you find this film, do not watch it.

In rural southern Illinois a toy company began selling "realistic" baby dolls to expectant mothers. But apparently after the mother had her child the toy baby would start crying. Eventually the "rocking motion" advertised to calm it down wouldn't work, and you couldn't get it to stop without shaking it. Eventually when it started crying the parent would have to beat it, and the beatings and thrashings would have to get harder and harder to get it to be quiet. The only thing that seemed to shut the baby doll up permanently was the bash its head against the wall to destroy whatever mechanism triggered the crying. On more than one occasion though, neighbors called the authorities to report child abuse, and when the police arrived they found the the bloody remains of infants smeared across the walls and the floor. In most cases the mother couldn't understand why the police were there, she just "got rid of the stupid doll" as she rocked a baby-shaped bundle in her arms.

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

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

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

The Rake

A Suicide Note: 1964

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

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

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

A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880

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

A Mariner’s Log: 1691

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

From a Witness: 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake. I can’t listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven’t let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I’ve heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don’t remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment.

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

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

When I was a child I lived in a rented two-floor house. Both my parents worked so I was often alone when I came home from school.
One early evening when I came home the house was still dark.
I called out, “Mum?” and heard a voice say “Yeeeeees?” from upstairs.
I called my mum again, and again got the same “Yeeeeees?” reply.
I felt she was calling back at me and climbed up the stairs.
When I reached the first floor I called her once more and the voice “Yeeeeees?” came from the furthest room.
I felt both uneasy, but a strong urge to see my mother, and started to walk towards the room.
But just that moment I heard the front door downstairs open and my mother come in, carrying a lot of shopping bags.
“Sweetie, are you home?” my mother called in a cheery voice.
Hearing her voice made me feel instantly better and I turned back to go downstairs at once…but not before I had a quick glance towards the room.
While I watched from the top of the stairs, the door to the room slowly opened a crack.
For a brief moment, I saw something strange in there.
A pale face, staring at me.

After waking up with a jolt, the girl laid in bed a few seconds longer. Reaching over to switch on her bedside lamp, she tried to remember exactly what had stolen her sweet slumber away. When she couldn’t, the brunette swung her legs over the side of the bed and heaved herself up. Checking the time on her phone, she snorted when she saw it was midnight- the witching hour. Knowing that sleep would only evade her, she left her bedroom for the kitchen, a good cup of coffee on her mind.

As she passed by her front door, a chill spread like liquid fire down her spine. It’s only winter, she told herself, focusing again on the coffee plan. Measuring out scoops, water, and preparing her cup kept her occupied, but as the dark liquid boiled, she had nothing left to keep her mind from wandering off. The chill returned and she couldn’t help but glance behind her to the front door. It stood there innocently enough, just like always. The dead bolt was still in place and she could see nothing amiss with it. Turning back to her coffee, she did her best to forget about the feeling.

With her cup in hand, she started back towards her bedroom. As she walked by the front door, she decided that a quick glance out of the peep hole would help calm her restless mind. The chill worsened with each step she took towards the door and further away from the safety and warmth of her blankets. She pressed her empty hand against the cold, metal door and took a deep breath before leading her eye to the peep hole.

At first, she could only see an inky blackness and somehow seemed to swirl in itself. When she blinked in surprise, the void melted away. She wished it hadn’t. In it’s place, there stood what she could only guess was once a man. The limbs were long and inhumanly awkward, with bulky joints branching off into several arms, not unlike the branches of a tree. The creature was drapped in a black suit, somehow manking the thing more nightmarish to her. The icing on the proverbial cake, however, was what passed as the hellish thing’s face. It was as though her mind blurred the ghastly visage to spare itself further shock and horror.

She shoved herself away from the door with the hand still pressed against it. The scalding mug of coffee fell, the liquid burning her bare legs as she fell backwards and tried to crawl away from the door. She knew, somehow, that her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her. As she crab walked away from the door, she watched as tendrels as black as the void she first saw snake around through the cracks. The girl was trapped between the instinct to flee and the gut feeling to not turn her back on the door. When the door jolted, the urge to flee overcame her and she slipped in the burning liquid as she tried to make it back to her room.

She knew deep down that she was trapping herself in a corner, but she had to get away from the door. The girl was halfway down the hallway when she heard the previously locked door creak open. She screamed and slipped into a wall, cracking her chin on it and stunning her.

After that, there was only blackness.

–

“Nicole?” a warm, male voice snapped the woman out of her trance. As she turned around, she was met by one of her sister’s doctor’s. She nodded, not sure if she should say anything, or even if she could find her voice if she did have something to say. That morning, she had gotten an urgent phone call from the hospital, saying that her sister, Lindsay, was there. Before they had even let her see her, the doctor’s had pulled her off to the side and insisted that they talk to her about what might have happened. Phrases like ’self-inflected’ and ‘assault’ had been thrown around and Nicole felt her mind reel.

She still hadn’t fully understood what they had been saying until she saw Lindsay with her own eyes. Her little sister had a bandage wrapped around her head, covering both of her ears as well as her eyes. They said it was to keep her now deadened eyes from drying out and to try to keep infection out of the wounds Lindsay had made to her ears. The doctors had guessed that either she or someone else had jammed a pencil into them to keep her off balance or to deafen herself against something. There was the mix of first and second degree burns on her hands, legs, and feet, from what was assumed to be the coffee her neighbors found slipped all over the entry to her apartment.

As Nicole walked into her sister’s hospital room the first time, she thought she had spied the silhouette of a man in the window. That, she knew, was impossible. Her sister’s room was on the third story of the hospital.

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed.
The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to.
This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.
At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, “Did you look through the keyhole?” The man told her that he had and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”

I live in a house of rules.

I should explain.

I moved here three months ago. Flat number 27. The flat was a repossession. I never met the previous owner and to date know him only from the post I receive in his name. I could make up stories of him vanishing, or his screams being heard in the darkness one dark night... I could make exaggerated claims about all of this, but this is not a work of fiction, nor is it written to entertain.

I had just got a new job – a promotion I had waited years for, this was meant to be the next step to greater things – and I needed to move quickly to save on the long drive each day, so when I found this place I was overjoyed. It was well located, within my price range and apart from being extremely run down and dirty, had so much potential. It is a duplex apartment, with a guest room and spare bathroom on the ground floor and a dressing room and several storage rooms on the top floor.

The purchase was a complicated one – due in part to poor record keeping and the loss of deeds and plans of the house. What should have taken a month from start to finish took four times as long. Because of the length of time, I took several viewings and each time was amazed by windows and cupboards that I could not recall from previous visits. Rooms seemed bigger, lighter – more inviting. Even the estate agent was baffled that her property listing documents were constantly wrong.

The neighbours in the block of flats are a strange lot. They don’t talk. They keep to routines you can set a clock by. When I first moved in I tried to invite them to a housewarming – so desperate was I to meet new people. Not one of them came. They get in at the same time every day and never leave the house. I never hear them moving around at night. One of them apologised afterwards, a nervous man from upstairs who constantly fidgets and glances around. He explained his lack of attendance was simply that “he wasn’t allowed to”... at the time, I presumed he meant his wife, but now I am not so certain. As the only one I had got to know since the move, I did my best to become friendly... and even felt like I was making headway. Then I made the mistake about asking about the previous owner, to which he made an awkward and short response before making his excuses - I have not seen or heard from him since.

“The rules” as I came to understand them, became apparent over time. The first was sleeping only in my bedroom. I only slept once in the lounge on purpose, dozing on the sofa, until I woke up to my arm trapped between the sofa and the wall. .. a wall that was several feet away from the sofa when I closed my eyes a few hours earlier. I was overcome with a feeling – a very familiar feeling – that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. This feeling would not leave me until I hurriedly stumbled up to my bed, where I only felt truly safe when I hid under the blankets like a scared ten year old. I only fell asleep once more in the lounge after that, by accident. I was woken once again with a feeling that I should leave, that it would be unsafe to stay and that I should not be there. This time however, a sweater I had left across the room on a radiator was tied around my neck and pulled tightly enough to leave a striking mark on my throat.

The rule of sleeping only in my bedroom stands alongside others – countless others. I learned that I should clean up my dishes immediately, when I stepped out of the kitchen after depositing my plate and sat down on a safety pin that was jutting out of the back of the sofa. I learned not to take too long showers when the water suddenly turned scalding hot and remained so, no matter how much I desperately tried to turn it off... and then was inexplicably normal temperature when I tried it moments after. I learned that I must hoover and keep the place tidy, that I must not waste electricity, that no matter what noises I hear at night I should never EVER explore.

Another rule is guests are not welcome. The last time I had a guest, it was a friend who invited themselves, despite my concerns that I could not air, down for the weekend by making arguments to come and see me until I relented (how could I not?). I spent the entire time terrified for their safety and pretty much drove them away with my strange behaviour accordingly. But there were no events. Such things made me bold, and I began to relax. I stayed awake until late, played music at night and did whatever I wanted, even going so far as feeling like I had triumphed as the house remained meekly quiet. It was almost immediately after they left that I first noticed the headache and nausea, which got worse and worse as the gas leak continued. I only just made it out before I succumbed.

I have so many things I could tell you, example after example... I do not know where to begin. I need you to look past your scepticism and see that this is real, that this is more than coincidence; this is more than just childs play haunting. I am not being haunted, I am being ruled. But the rules are only a part of it, they are the part I play – the rest, the rest is done without me, and not only that, but done around me. The walls shift, doors that open some days, will not the next. The number of windows in my bedroom increased one by one over consecutive nights, and then there was only one again. There is a cupboard at the top of my stairs that changes in sizes quite regularly. One of the most terrifying experiences of my life was when I opened it and saw it went back several meters more than I remembered. When I walked in, somehow the door shut behind me, and I groped in the dark, silently reaching out for a wall I knew MUST be there, yet my fingers touched only air. I do not know how long I fumbled in the dark, but it was only as my panic attack rose that my shaking fingers finally found the wooden door.

Have you ever woken up in a room with a chair sitting at the end of your bed? A chair that came from the dining room, the dining room that is down a flight of stairs and along a hallway? Have you ever walked into a room and seen a storage cupboard that was not there before? Have you ever observed more stairs on a stair case as you go down them than there was when you went up? Have you ever entered a room, looking for something, and then when you gave up and left, realised an hour and a half had passed?

I have lived all these things, and were I a better- more scientific- man, I would have kept a running log of all of it. I would have found proof – proof I need to show the world I am not crazy, that this is real. That it is a nightmare I am living.

Five hours has passed since I sat down to write this, and when once I hoped to prepare some lunch (and hope there are no drawing pins in my bread, like last week when i realised I hadn’t hovered) instead it is getting dark. I now live a life of routine just like my neighbours. I just turned off the music – No loud noise after darkness is one of the rules. It is the one I hate the most because it makes me feel alone. Lights left on in rooms that are empty, or too many in one room, are also prone to fusing – or even shattering without warning- so I currently only have the glare of the screen, the television and a lamp. Soon I shall be going to bed, the doors that shut behind me as I head up to bed lock behind me... and I will wake up in a room with windows wherever they please, and doors that may or may not open to cupboards that can be as small or as big as each variation allows.

The television in the room I am in has a satellite connection, and with it countless channels. Right now all are a fuzz of static, except for national geographic... so I am forced to listen to the documentary on carnivorous plants as I type. I try not to dwell on the exhaustion of a beetle on the screen as it tries in vain to escape from the prison that will soon digest it. The remote does not appear to work. It took my pulling the plug from the socket to turn it off just a moment ago... and even that I was loath to do so, for the fear that it might stay on never left me and I knew that if those images had continued when the plug was removed, I would have screamed myself into madness.

I could push the neighbours to talk more, I could rebel against the rules, I could start a fire and torch the whole fucking building... but truly, I just want to get by. I get the feeling, up until now I have simply been coached, like a dog, to do what is required of me... I feel like the punishments could get a lot worse. The occasional demonstration of strength, the enforcement of the rules and the occasional mild punishment when I transgress, like ones taps the nose of a dog when it misbehaves- that is what I hope for if I can behave.... stepping out of line only causes me harm and fear. It is only out of fear and reference to my own human dignity that I do not explain here what happens when the house feels it REALLY needs to punish. Needless to say, the scar will be with me the rest of my life.

Which brings us to here. I cannot go on. I took the decision to write this with the remaining fight I still have in me to at least ask for help. I cannot do it over the phone, I cannot write a letter. My only hope is to write it into a story inconspicuous and without the details that might draw attention to the content. All I can hope is that someone see’s enough to spot my cry for help – that they find a way to contact me where I can get the lifeline I need to escape. I cannot ask directly, it is too risky. Besides, any form of open rebellion has been snuffed out of me with pain, suffering and terror. I fear for my safety, for my punishment for breaking the rules... I am surprised that it is being allowed to get even this far – in over a thousand words I have written, there hasn’t been a power cut or computer error that has lost everything. Perhaps there is still hope.

But the truth is I am scared. Scared of what touched my face in my sleep the night before last after I accidentally left a tap running, clutching firmly that the bruises on my cheek still remain. I am scared of what left a pair of scissors in my slippers... of what power moves wooden doors and plasters walls, seemingly at a whim. Most of all I am scared that by writing this, I may wake up in a tiny room with no doors or windows. A room that grows smaller every time I blink.

In many stores and establishments that provide videos of a less than savory manner, a business card is kept. Some stores keep it well hidden, locked in a safe, and will deny its existence. Others will show you if you ask for it by name. None will have it displayed in the open.

On this card is a name, "Moonlight Films", and a contact number. It is always a local number. Go to any payphone in your city and dial the number. The answer will be prompt but all you will hear is silence. Wait thirty seconds. Then you will be served.

A dry, monotone male voice will ask you a question: "Is the road from life to death dark?" The correct response is: "It is moonlit."

If you answer with anything but the correct reply, he will hang up on you. If you fail the first time, I'd suggest not trying again. But if the question is answered properly, the man will say one address in your city and then hang up.

Go to this address and you will find that it is a small, dingy apartment. The carpet will be dirty, the wallpaper flaking and wrinkled, the windows cracked. It will smell of tobacco smoke and decay. On the stained old coffee table there will be a paper bag. On this bag your full name will be written in red sharpie.

Open the bag and you will find an unlabeled video tape. Take it and place exactly $10.99 in the bag then leave.

You can watch the tape if you like, but you don't have to. I warn you: it's not pleasant. You will see a room or chamber papered in dessicated skin, the furniture will be crafted from flesh and bone. The tape will last approximately 32 minutes and will depict the murder of a person and the subsequent crafting of their body into furnishing - lampshades made of skin, tables made of bone.

After renting the tape for one week, you must return it to the apartment by sliding it through the mail slot when the time is up. After that, never return to the apartment and definitely don't call the number ever again.

I'd also suggest you not keep the tape more than a week. The owners will not be satisfied with a mere late fee - and you know, a good home can never have enough accessories.

Look behind you. What do you see? Invariably, there will be a wall somewhere in your view. Now stare deeply into the space on the wall that line up best with your eyes. Nothing will happen, but make sure you are clear on where this particular spot is. That spot contains all the negativity in your mind. Whenever you are on your computer, reading scary stories or whatever you do, sometimes you will get spooked. What do you do when this happens? You check behind you, that’s what you do. As you read this now, a feeling of dread will come over you. Check the spot. Nothing again, huh? That’s because right now, all the evil is locked safely in your mind.

Some people, upon learning of this "negative spot" resolve to remove the spot in an attempt to remove the negative energy. This is a grave mistake. You must never let harm come to this spot. If you do, you will have released the energy. Now when you sit at your computer at night, you will feel chills even in the summer time. The feeling of dread that only presented itself when you were genuinely scared will now hang in the air constantly. Within a week you and your loved ones will have a string of bad luck.

Within a month your computer will begin to act erratic and eventually break down. On the anniversary of the spot's destruction, you will dream of your most horrible fears. The dream will seem to go on forever, and when you wake up you will notice your vision has darkened. Every year on the same day, the dream will repeat itself, and your vision will grow darker and darker. After you go totally blind, don’t ever turn your back on that spot again. That is if you can still tell where it is.

Don’t bother trying to find it. You won’t find anything about the name of the town or what happened here. This manuscript will be found long after the events that transpired in this place, but I hope against everything else that you’re someone in a position of power. I pray to God himself that you can prevent this from ever happening again, but I don’t want to give you too much credit. Like me, you are only human, after all. They are not. They’ve been around for a very, very long time.

Fat chance, really. You probably don’t want that responsibility, and even if you did take it upon your shoulders to track them down, you can’t single-handedly stop the children. Their manipulators are not “on the grid.” Whoever engineered this is in control of the world on a very disturbing level.

This is what I want you to do. Read these pages, if they’re still legible, and take what you will from them. Don’t go on a wild goose chase, and realize that when you find this book that it will not be in the place where I left it. They’ll move it somewhere else, to deceive you. I’ve left my mark on a tree there. Only then, when you see my name, will you know, “this is the place.” You may have even heard of it in the history books, but be assured, any rumors on Wikipedia or Google pages that you pull up will be guess-work at best. None of them are even close to the truth. When you find the place, there may already be another town just like it. That’s what I’m trying to stop. If we’re not successful, then just realize, above all things, that evil exists. I’m not talking about bad people, or tragic accidents. I’m talking real, intelligent, ancient evil. It is calculated, and it is always one step ahead of you. Should you decide to take my place and become the paragon to prevent the corruption of the hearts and minds of children, I thank you in advance.

I told you that I’m human. I lied. I used to be, before All Hallow’s Eve on that fateful night. I’ve been alive since then, far longer than any human being, and the reason is because I love children. I’ve always loved them in their purity and their innocence. That’s why I was taken in by their ruse. That’s why I’ve finally decided to put all this down, centuries later. I won’t be here much longer, and someone has to take up the burden.

I’ve waited….. until I saw them return. They’ll be back this year. They’re planning the same thing again, and I can’t stop them. Again, I can’t expect that much from you, but I’m only giving you all this so you’ll believe me. I have to be believable. If you think I’m crazy, you’ll throw this in a garbage can, and more people will disappear. It’s time to tell you what happened. I’m rambling.

Back then, All Hallow’s Eve was the time for evil’s ascension. You’ve all forgotten. If you left your house on that night in the old country, you were a devil worshipper. “Halloween” was not the term we used. We fled to the shores of this country because we were persecuted for our lifestyle choices. We worshipped nature, the changing of the seasons, the solstice of spring, autumn, winter, and summer. In the purest sense of the word, we were druids. Our names and accents were English, but we were servants of the earth.

We were some of the first to celebrate it as a holiday. The natives here were puzzled by our behavior, but also frightened by it, and so they left us alone. They misunderstood. We were not the ones to be afraid of. At the time, I was relieved. They’d attacked us in our settlements, time and time again, but as it drew closer to the end of October, they stayed away. Maybe in their own noble bonds with the earth and soil, they knew something terrible was on the horizon.

They were right. John Hunter’s little boy wanted to be a native, with a bow and arrow and a real headdress. Little Mary Taylor made a dress that was crafted after the local schoolhouse teacher’s prettiest outfit. She idolized her educator, of course. They all had their get-ups; they were the first trick-or-treaters in what was to become the United States of America, one hundred and fifty years later. We sent them out to frollick about the settlement, collecting apples and tarts and other sweet things in to their burlap goody bags. They were no Snickers or Milky Ways, and yet, the magic of this “holiday” held no less sway over them than it does the youth of our current time. They dress up as the Joker, the Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These children were their predecessors.

I sent my daughter with Mary and John Hunter junior. Despite our mistrust and wariness of the Anglican church and the monarchs that presided over it, my little girl was dressed as the queen of England. I refused to crush her fantasy world, and so I simply indulged her. We heard promises to return after sundown, to say yes ma’am and no sir, and not to linger too long if they were invited inside the households of our community.

We didn’t realize that the house on the edge of the settlement existed until we saw the children go inside. There were no lanterns or sources of light in the windows, no fire or harvest dolls on the outside of the dwelling. As we sat in the middle of the town hall, imbibing in the pleasures of distilled moonshine (none of you will ever make it as potent as we did in those days) amongst our brethren, we watched our young ones gravitate across the middle of our town, to the foreboding household that had seemingly been constructed overnight. When we gazed upon it, it seemed as though the place were “shimmering.” It pained my vision to look upon the building, as if my senses were being forced and propelled in another direction. Such a thing is difficult to put in to words, but I seemed to be the only one who realized that our kids were all heading to the same place. When I questioned John Hunter as if something were odd about their actions, he stared at me as if I were insane.

“What do you mean?” He asked. “There’s no house there. They’re going to play by the stockades.”

The sun had set by that point, but as I said before, none of them were concerned. The natives hadn’t shown up for weeks. I decided to walk to the phantom dwelling that only I and the children could see, to peer inside and see who these new settlers were, and why it called to the youths as if it were a black hole in a sea of stars.

I tried to stand outside, to look through the window, but when I saw what was happening, it was too late. I breached the doorway with my buck-knife drawn, but there was nothing about the things inside that I could harm with a weapon.

There’s something deep inside of us, something embedded within the human spirit, that’s perfectly aware when we encounter something truly terrible. Fear, horror, evil, revulsion…. it all hits you in a spastic wave, like a fierce exploding bullet that shatters the innermost parts of your soul with a relentless and powerful fury. I saw it in that moment, standing in that darkened doorway. They weren’t people, and they weren’t spirits. They were halfway there, lingering over the unconscious bodies of my daughter and her peers in their hooded black robes of half-existence. There was one, in particular, who made me feel as though my eyes would pop like ripened cherries when I stared at it. It was the leader, the source of that tug, that pull….. and it was slowly fading, disappearing like a gaseous black cloud of death, through my little girl’s nostrils and mouth. She was gasping for air, as if every breath after the one that preceded it were filled with acid…. as if she were hungry for real, fresh air in her small lungs. With every breath, the figure faded deeper in to her, along with the rest of them.

I wish I could say that I was a hero, and that I hacked them all to bits; I wish I could say that I saved the day and made Halloween a night when the worst thing that children have to worry about is poisoned candy. It didn’t happen. There was one of them left, floating toward me on elongated, blackened tendrils of shimmering nothingness. By all real means of my imagination, it shouldn’t have BEEN there, but it was, and soon, it was going inside of me. The last thing I saw were their little feet, scurrying out of the phantom-house and in to the town. I FELT that something terrible was about to happen. I had no idea. Everything went black, and then, I was outside of myself. I was conscious, but observing my feet, my hands, doing things beyond my own scope of physical control.

They led me and our children in to our meeting hall, where, of course, the kids were embraced by the open, loving arms of their parents. I witnessed the betrayal, the brutal moments in which the truth instilled by the love for family and offspring would transform in to a cause for the destruction of our village.

They absorbed them. There’s no better adjective for what happened. One moment, they were there, and seconds later, they were nothing but dark essence, filtering in through the eyes and noses and mouths of their devil-children. It was over in minutes. A night that should have been a celebration of nature, of the seasons, had turned in to the end of everything that we knew and loved here in our new land.

I started to fight it. The kids knew. The moment I began to resist, to try and reclaim my limbs and mind from the corrupting influence within, their heads snapped back from their feast of souls to survey me in my struggle. My daughter’s eyes were sunken, black pools of the abyss, devoid of any emotion, any semblance of the bright-eyed stare that she once held for me in all her love and adoration for father. I miss that the most, really. The way she’d run to me when I came in from the fields every evening as the sun went down. I lived for that. What reason do I have to live now, other than to find her and stop them? I’m incapable. That falls on you, my friend.

They took the part of my daughter that counts, the part that I loved and cherished, and turned her in to a servant. You ask me why I’m still alive, and again, it’s because I love her, so very, very much. Her body is a hollow shell, filled with the malefice and blackness of evils beyond our world.

The black-robed things have grown as centuries have passed. They are from some place that is not of this world, but their urgency, their hunger, to devour and destroy, is insatiable. It’s an exponential, amplifying contagion on mankind, and All Hallow’s Eve is their pinnacle, their Christmas. I’ve done my best to warn you throughout history, to leave my mark in places where their desolation has left nothing but dust on the wind and empty houses. A deserted football field in a Texas ghost town. A card room in the back of a night club in Chicago, right under the nose of civilization. Roanoke Island, North Carolina, before Johne Rolfe found it in the aftermath.

The thing that I expelled through sheer force of will alone has left me with an unusually long and empty life, devoid of anything but my desire for revenge. I have failed. I’m pleading with you. October thirty-first is not long away. My little girl, or what’s left of her, is going to lead them to the same place. It’s been re-founded, except now, it hums with sport utility vehicles and cell phones. I don’t want this to happen to your child.

Go to Roanoke, and stop them from repeating the ritual. Those bodies they inhabit now are frail, on their way out. It’s been almost five hundred years. They’ll need new ones on this Halloween. Look for a building that appears as though it shouldn’t be there. It will be across from that very tree where I signed my name, where I made my mark. I changed my title, named myself after the tribe of natives who knew it was coming…. who, perhaps, tried to warn us, but for some reason, we failed to heed or recognize their warnings. They were more closely attuned to the earth than us, and yet, they were still wiped out, eventually.

Trick or treat?

Go now. You don’t have much time.

- Croatoan

In Edmonton, Alberta, there is a hotel called the Canterra, off of Jasper Avenue and 109th Street. During the night, go here and ring the doorbell. Should you be let in, look to see who the guard on shift is. If the man looks in his mid twenties, yet the hair on his head and face both are white as snow, take a seat beside the security desk. If it is any other guard on shift, leave and return in a week’s time.

Here you must wait. The guard will say not a word, nor answer any questions you may ask. He hears you, but he will not respond. He will only give you a sad look, as if knowing something terrible awaits. When the time is 2:52 AM, the guard will rise to perform a patrol of the building. Follow him only on this patrol – if you follow him at any time before 2:52 AM, you will be forcefully removed from the hotel, and lose your chance.

Say not a word as you walk the halls behind the guard. He will check that the rooms are all locked, as well as patrol the stairwells. When you both reach the 5th floor, you will notice that it is remarkably colder than the last four. Yes, the floor is deafeningly quiet – it is normal. When the guard secures all the rooms on the floor, you will both stop at a door that seems much older than any other door you’ve yet seen in the hotel. This is room 512. Only this particular guard has access to this room, Take note of the key of which the guard uses to unlock this door – it will be important later.

At this point, the guard will open the room for you and allow you to pass through. It will be quite dark, but do not yet be afraid – the worst is yet to come. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and step through the doorway. Do not open them until you hear the door close behind you, for seeing the transition can be maddening.

It will be almost unbearably hot, here. You will find yourself in a long hallway with numerous turns. There will be thirteen doors lining this hallway – do not open any of them. Take note which door has a splash of white paint on it, this will be critical soon. When you reach the end of the hallway, you will find yourself in the living room of the suite. In each corner of the room you should see a tall figure, each with burnt flesh. They should all be sitting on the floor, hugging their legs with their heads upon their knees and facing their respective corner. Their fingers will be chewed away until their tips are nothing but sharp, boney talons. Do not address these figures; do not touch them: they are Her guardians.

In the centre of this room, there She should be. She will be sitting in an old, ragged reclining chair. It is impossible to say how She will look, for Her appearance changes for everyone. She should, like her guardians, be asleep. Do not awaken her from her slumber.

For now, you have time to rest. There will be food and drink set out upon the coffee table in front of Her, and you are welcome to it. Do not partake in the pie, however, for it will numb your legs.

Should you be so bold, take a look outside the window. It will resemble a hellish version of the avenue which the hotel is on. The buildings will be burnt-out husks of their former selves, the river valley beyond will be dry and cracked. Fire will appear to be on the horizon, and the ever-burning sun will resemble blood set ablaze. Should you stay for hours on end, you will find no reprieve from the heat – there is no night here.

Now, look to the streets – you will find the same figures there as the ones in the room. They, however, are awake – shuffling, screaming and wailing from their back maws. They have no eyes in their sockets, but by some twisted means they can still see. Take care not to attract their attention, for they will follow you back to our world and this venture will be for naught.

When you are ready, stand before Her and speak clearly these words: “Save me, Mother, please.”

Say nothing else and wait. You should start to hear Her breathe.

At this point, one of two things will happen. Remember the key which the guard opened this room with? Should She place that same key on the table in front of you, count yourself lucky. Should She, however, place a different key upon the table, you will need to give Her an offering. A knife that was not previously on the table will now be present. The blade will be rusted, bloodied. Take this knife, and sever a finger, placing it beside the key. Wait.

If She places the same key as the guard’s on the table, you may take it and leave. If not, remove another finger. This will only occur a maximum of four times before the right key will be produced.

Once the key is in your possession, She will once again return to Her haunted slumber.

Now pay attention, for you only have a short amount of time. The Guardians will be stirring, now. Slowly they will rise from their sleep and turn in towards the room to face you. If they see you, they will slaughter you. Run. You have 10 seconds before they will fully turn from their corners.

Remember that door with the white splash of paint? That is the door you will need to use to remove yourself from this hell. If you hear screaming from behind you, the guardians are fully awake and are coming. You don’t have much time. Find the white-marked door, and get out!

You will find yourself inexplicably outside your own home, exactly a week after you entered the hotel. Keep the key on you at all times, wherever you go.

One day in the future, distant or near, a ragged old door with the number ‘777’ will appear wherever you happen to be. Use the key and open this door immediately. Leave anyone with you behind.

Wherever it leads, it will be far better than what is about to happen to this world.

If you are watching television, and the signal cuts out to static, turn the TV off immediately. If you watch the static on TV for long enough, the static will suddenly pause. All sound in the room will cease; even the white noise of the TV itself will disappear. If this happens you must not look away from the screen. You will probably not notice at the time, before you lose your gaze on the TV, your body will freeze as well. Time around and with you have paused completely. Specks of the black and white dots slowly come to life, creeping slowly in seemingly random directions. Not static as you know it, but organizing themselves into a moving picture again in front of you. As the static returns to normal, and the white noise of the TV comes back, you will regain control of your body.

You must never watch that television again. It will only play static, even when unplugged. If you watch the static any longer, these same events will reoccur, but with disastrous results. What exactly happens is unknown, as it is obvious that anyone that has been unfortunate enough to experience this has disappeared. It is rumored that if one continues to watch the static again, or during their experience, looks away, the white and black specs will slowly start to move again, but you will not. Your eyes will then be permanently fixated on the screen as you watch the picture come back to life, and what seems to be your station's signal return. You learn soon this is not the case, as all sound is still absent, and the picture on the TV shows a familiar surrounding: the room in which you sit.

The only thing you see next is movement on the TV, as you see yourself from behind, and subsequently, the cause of your disappearance.

A 15-year old boy in a small town in Maryland sat down at his computer after getting home from school one day. He turned it on, logged into AIM, and was then surprised to receive an IM from a classmate of his, who had been absent that day.

It consisted of two words; "please come". Confused, the boy sent a reply, asking why he'd been absent that day. After two more messages and fifteen minutes with no response, he decided to get on his bike and head over to his classmate's house. It was a short ride, only about five minutes away.

When he got to the house, he found the door was unlocked. Inside, partially dried blood was splattered over the walls and floors, and an unrecognizable figure was crumpled against the far wall. It was missing an arm and a leg, and bloody streaks on the floor lead away from the body and into the kitchen. The boy slammed the door closed, and immediately called 911 on his cell phone.

When the police arrived, they found three corpses, as well as tracks leading away from the house from the back door. The forensics report concluded that the entire family, the boy's classmate and his parents, had been killed sometime the previous night.

You are home alone, and you hear on the news about the profile of a murderer who is on the loose. You look out the sliding glass doors to your backyard, and you notice a man standing out in the snow. He fits the profile of the murderer exactly, and he is smiling at you.

You gulp, picking up the phone to your right and dialing 911. You look back out the glass as you press the phone to your ear, and notice he is much closer to you now.

You then drop the phone in shock. There are no footprints in the snow.

It's his reflection.

“Daddy, I had a bad dream.” You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows. Your clock glows red in the darkness—it’s 3:23.

“Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?”

“No, Daddy.”

The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully. You can barely make out your daughter’s pale form in the darkness of your room.

“Why not sweetie?”

“Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy’s skin sat up.” For a moment, you feel paralyzed; you can’t take your eyes off of your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.

Last year I spent six months participating in what I was told was a psychological experiment. I found an ad in my local paper looking for imaginative people looking to make good money, and since it was the only ad that week that I was remotely qualified for, I gave them a call and we arranged an interview.

They told me that all I would have to do is stay in a room, alone, with sensors attached to my head to read my brain activity, and while I was there I would visualize a double of myself. They called it my "tulpa".

It seemed easy enough, and I agreed to do it as soon as they told me how much I would be paid. And the next day, I began. They brought me to a simple room and gave me a bed, then attached sensors to my head and hooked them into a little black box on the table beside me. They talked me through the process of visualizing my double again, and explained that if I got bored or restless, instead of moving around, I should visualize my double moving around, or try to interact with him, and so on. The idea was to keep him with me the entire time I was in the room.

I had trouble with it for the first few days. It was more controlled than any sort of daydreaming I'd done before. I'd imagine my double for a few minutes, then grow distracted. But by the fourth day, I could manage to keep him "present" for the entire six hours. They told me I was doing very well.

The second week, they gave me a different room, with wall-mounted speakers. They told me they wanted to see if I could still keep the tulpa with me in spite of distracting stimuli. The music was discordant, ugly and unsettling, and it made the process a little more difficult, but I managed nonetheless. The next week they played even more unsettling music, punctuated with shrieks, feedback loops, what sounded like an old school modem dialing up, and guttural voices speaking some foreign language. I just laughed it off - I was a pro by then.

After about a month, I started to get bored. To liven things up, I started interacting with my doppelganger. We'd have conversations, or play rock-paper-scissors, or I'd imagine him juggling, or break-dancing, or whatever caught my fancy. I asked the researchers if my foolishness would adversely affect their study, but they encouraged me.

So we played, and communicated, and that was fun for a while. And then it got a little strange. I was telling him about my first date one day, and he corrected me. I'd said my date was wearing a yellow top, and he told me it was a green one. I thought about it for a second, and realized he was right. It creeped me out, and after my shift that day, I talked to the researchers about it. "You're using the thought-form to access your subconscious," they explained. "You knew on some level that you were wrong, and you subconsciously corrected yourself."

What had been creepy was suddenly cool. I was talking to my subconscious! It took some practice, but I found that I could question my tulpa and access all sorts of memories. I could make it quote whole pages of books I'd read once, years before, or things I was taught and immediately forgot in high school. It was awesome.

That was around the time I started "calling up" my double outside of the research center. Not often at first, but I was so used to imagining him by now that it almost seemed odd to not see him. So whenever I was bored, I'd visualize my double. Eventually I started doing it almost all the time. It was amusing to take him along like an invisible friend. I imagined him when I was hanging out with friends, or visiting my mom, I even brought him along on a date once. I didn't need to speak aloud to him, so I was able to carry out conversations with him and no one was the wiser.

I know that sounds strange, but it was fun. Not only was he a walking repository of everything I knew and everything I had forgotten, he also seemed more in touch with me than I did at times. He had an uncanny grasp of the minutiae of body language that I didn't even realize I was picking up on. For example, I'd thought the date I brought him along on was going badly, but he pointed out how she was laughing a little too hard at my jokes, and leaning towards me as I spoke, and a bunch of other subtle clues I wasn't consciously picking up on. I listened, and let's just say that that date went very well.

By the time I'd been at the research center for four months, he was with my constantly. The researchers approached me one day after my shift, and asked me if I'd stopped visualizing him. I denied it, and they seemed pleased. I silently asked my double if he knew what prompted that, but he just shrugged it off. So did I.

I withdrew a little from the world at that point. I was having trouble relating to people. It seemed to me that they were so confused and unsure of themselves, while I had a manifestation of myself to confer with. It made socializing awkward. Nobody else seemed aware of the reasons behind their actions, why some things made them mad and others made them laugh. They didn't know what moved them. But I did - or at least, I could ask myself and get an answer.

A friend confronted me one evening. He pounded at the door until I answered it, and came in fuming and swearing up a storm. "You haven't answered when I called you in fucking weeks, you dick!" He yelled. "What's your fucking problem?"

I was about to apologize to him, and probably would have offered to hit the bars with him that night, but my tulpa grew suddenly furious. "Hit him," it said, and before I knew what I was doing, I had. I heard his nose break. He fell to the floor and came up swinging, and we beat each other up and down my apartment. I was more furious then than I have ever been, and I was not merciful. I knocked him to the ground and gave him two savage kicks to the ribs, and that was when he fled, hunched over and sobbing.

The police were by a few minutes later, but I told them that he had been the instigator, and since he wasn't around to refute me, they let me off with a warning. My tulpa was grinning the entire time. We spent the night crowing about my victory and sneering over how badly I'd beaten my friend.

It wasn't until the next morning, when I was checking out my black eye and cut lip in the mirror, that I remembered what had set me off. My double was the one who'd grown furious, not me. I'd been feeling guilty and a little ashamed, but he'd goaded me into a vicious fight with a concerned friend. He was present, of course, and knew my thoughts. "You don't need him anymore. You don't need anyone else," he told me, and I felt my skin crawl.

I explained all this to the researchers who employed me, but they just laughed it off. "You can't be scared of something that you're imagining," one told me. My double stood beside him, and nodded his head, then smirked at me.

I tried to take their words to heart, but over the next few days I found myself growing more and more anxious around my tulpa, and it seemed that he was changing. He looked taller, and more menacing. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and I saw malice in his constant smile. No job was worth losing my mind over, I decided. If he was out of control, I'd put him down. I was so used to him at that point that visualizing him was an automatic process, so I started trying my damnedest to not visualize him. It took a few days, but it started to work somewhat. I could get rid of him for hours at a time. But every time he came back, he seemed worse. His skin seemed ashen, his teeth more pointed. He hissed and gibbered and threatened and swore. The discordant music I'd been listening to for months seemed to accompany him everywhere. Even when I was at home - I'd relax and slip up, no longer concentrating on not seeing him, and there he'd be, and that howling noise with him.

I was still visiting the research center and spending my six hours there. I needed the money, and I thought they weren't aware that I was now actively not visualizing my tulpa. I was wrong. After my shift one day, about five and a half months in, two impressively men grabbed and restrained me, and someone in a lab coat jabbed a hypodermic needle into me.

I woke up from my stupor back in the room, strapped into the bed, music blaring, with my doppelganger standing over me cackling. He hardly looked human anymore. His features were twisted. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and filmed over like a corpse's. He was much taller than me, but hunched over. His hands were twisted, and the fingernails were like talons. He was, in short, fucking terrifying. I tried to will him away, but I just couldn't seem to concentrate. He giggled, and tapped the IV in my arm. I thrashed in my restraints as best I could, but could hardly move at all.

"They're pumping you full of the good shit, I think. How's the mind? All fuzzy?" He leaned closer and closer as he spoke. I gagged; his breath smelt like spoiled meat. I tried to focus, but couldn't banish him.

The next few weeks were terrible. Every so often, someone in a doctor's coat would come in and inject me with something, or force-feed me a pill. They kept me dizzy and unfocused, and sometimes left me hallucinating or delusional. My thoughtform was still present, constantly mocking. He interacted with, or perhaps caused, my delusions. I hallucinated that my mother was there, scolding me, and then he cut her throat and her blood showered me. It was so real that I could taste it.

The doctors never spoke to me. I begged at times, screamed, hurled invectives, demanded answers. They never spoke to me. They may have talked to my tulpa, my personal monster. I'm not sure. I was so doped and confused that it may have just been more delusion, but I remember them talking with him. I grew convinced that he was the real one, and I was the thoughtform. He encouraged that line of thought at times, mocked me at others.

Another thing that I pray was a delusion: he could touch me. More than that, he could hurt me. He'd poke and prod at me if he felt I wasn't paying enough attention to him. Once he grabbed my testicles and squeezed until I told him I loved him. Another time, he slashed my forearm with one of his talons. I still have a scar - most days I can convince myself that I injured myself, and just hallucinated that he was responsible. Most days.

Then one day, while he was telling me a story about how he was going to gut everyone I loved, starting with my sister, he paused. A querulous look crossed his face, and reached out and touched my head. Like my mother used to when I was feverish. He stayed still for a long moment, and then smiled. "All thoughts are creative," he told me. Then he walked out the door.

Three hours later, I was given an injection, and passed out. I awoke unrestrained. Shaking, I made my way to the door and found it unlocked. I walked out into the empty hallway, and then ran. I stumbled more than once, but I made it down the stairs and out into the lot behind the building. There, I collapsed, weeping like a child. I knew I had to keep moving, but I couldn't manage it.

I got home eventually - I don't remember how. I locked the door, and shoved a dresser against it, took a long shower, and slept for a day and a half. Nobody came for me in the night, and nobody came the next day, or the one after that. It was over. I'd spent a week locked in that room, but it had felt like a century. I'd withdrawn so much from my life beforehand that nobody had even known I was missing.

The police didn't find anything. The research center was empty when they searched it. The paper trail fell apart. The names I'd given them were aliases. Even the money I'd received was apparently untraceable.

I recovered as much as one can. I don't leave the house much, and I have panic attacks when I do. I cry a lot. I don't sleep much, and my nightmares are terrible. It's over, I tell myself. I survived. I use the concentration those bastards taught me to convince myself. It works, sometimes.

Not today, though. Three days ago, I got a phone call from my mother. There's been a tragedy. My sister's the latest victim in a spree of killings, the police say. The perpetrator mugs his victims, then guts them.

The funeral was this afternoon. It was as lovely a service as a funeral can be, I suppose. I was a little distracted, though. All I could hear was music coming from somewhere distant. Discordant, unsettling stuff, that sounds like feedback, and shrieking, and a modem dialing up. I hear it still - a little louder now.

During the war a soldier faithfully wrote his mother every week so she would know he was all right, until one week she didn't get a letter and immediately began to worry. Within a couple of weeks she got a letter from the Army saying that her son had been captured and was being held in a Prisoner-of-War camp, and they assured her that they had no reason to believe the American prisoners were being mistreated in any way. A few weeks later the woman finally received another letter from her son, it read: "Dear Mom, Try not to worry about me, they are treating us well and I'll be released as soon as the war is over. Make sure that little Teddy gets the stamp for his collection. Love you, Joe" The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, but was confused because she had no idea who "little Teddy" was. She decided to steam the stamp from the envelope and have a look. When she did she saw that written on the back of the stamp were the words: "They've cut off my legs"

You are lying in your bed, the dull whirring of your air conditioner is the only thing separating you from total silence.

You know, that particular silence that is so heavy, and so thick, it’s almost the equivalent of a loud noise itself? The kind of silence where you could hear a pin drop three rooms away in; the kind of silence that fills your ears with the sound of your own heartbeat as your ear presses against your pillow. That kind of silence.

The dull whirring is the only noise you can hear, a noise that typically goes unnoticed, until it is the only noise present. It’s comforting, whether you realize it or not. A sort of white noise. But suddenly, your room is back at the temperature specified on the thermostat, and the whirring comes to a stop, as the vent makes a dull clang. To your misfortune, you are not yet asleep, and the silence sets in.

You should be comforted by the knowledge that you could hear anything and everything in your surroundings; making up for the lack of vision provided by the darkness. But you aren’t. It’s this very environment that sets you on edge, causes your heart to beat a bit faster, makes your body tense without explanation, and that makes you aware when you are not alone.

But you are alone right? You’ve been laying there with your eyes closed for almost 15 minutes now, and you made sure everything was normal in your room before you turned off the light; you’re a smart one. All those Facebook quizzes you took have just reinforced what you already know, if you were in a horror movie, you’d survive until the end. You’ve even made a carefully laid plan of what you would do in any of the situations you’ve read about on creepypasta.com. But that stuff is just nonsense anyway, right?

You aren’t scared. Or at least that’s what you keep telling yourself.

But wait…what was that? Was that the rustling of fabric? But, you didn’t shift in your bed, or make any movement. Did you make that noise? No, you couldn’t have. You’re paralyzed your bed, stiff with an unease that was not present until these very moments. You must have imagined it…you must have.

You roll over to face the wall. Out of sight, out of mind. If there’s something in the room with you, it will just have to accept that you are much to tired to deal with it at the moment. You’re still stricken with uneasiness as you hear rustling again. This time, the rustling is accompanied by a soft thud on the ground.

Your heart seizes in your chest…did you really just hear that? No no, you’ve just gotten yourself worked up about nothing. You really should stop play horror survival games so late at night, it’s messing with your brain. You’re a rational person, stop acting so childish and just fall asleep already.

You close your eyes tightly, silently hoping sleep would whisk you away soon. You’re practically begging for the safety of the nonexistent dreamworld of your own creation. You’re running away in a sense; but there’s nothing there…right? You’re just tired. I know, I know.

As your eyes are clinched tightly shut, you become aware that no matter how much you want to, you can no longer move your arms and legs. Come on now, are you really letting this get to you? What are you? 12 years old? Suck it up and fall asleep already.

Now, more tense than ever, that unnerving sound echoes across the room again. The rustling of fabric, followed by a soft thud on the ground. Unwittingly, you’re holding your breath now, eyes shut as tightly as possible. You have childish urge to pull the blanket over your head. You’re imagining it all! It’s all in your head; I thought you were better than this.

You heart is pounding loudly in your ears now, but not loudly enough to drown out the now repetitive sound approaching from across the room. What’s that rustling!? Maybe you left some paper on the ground. That has to be it! And that thumping? Probably the cat, or the dog, or something. They probably ran in when you weren’t looking before you closed your door. Yeah, you’re just paranoid.

The noise is now within a foot of your bed, and with your back to it, you don’t dare turn around to investigate, not that it’d do much good; the only light in your room is the dull glow of your cell phone on the nightstand next to you, you plugged it in before crawled into bed remember? But you don’t dare turn around and look; there’s nothing there anyway.

Minutes that feel like hours pass as you face your wall, stiff as a board, unable to will your uncooperative body to move. You haven’t heard the noises in a while now, not since it reached the edge of your bed. You know there’s nothing there you silly. It’s this silence. It’s messing with you. You really should have turned on some music or something before you went to bed. Oh well, maybe next time.

Suddenly, a familiar clang echoes through the room, followed by that familiar whirring. You exhale deeply, your body relaxing as you are flooded with relief. Thank God that’s over, now you can finally sleep in peace. That silence was really getting to you. You roll over and open your eyes to check the time on your lit cell phone, it must have been at least an hour since you first went to bed.

You are greeted face to face with his ear to ear grin. Dimly lit sockets where eyes once resided stare intently at you.

Ah, I see you’re still awake.

An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path. He wasn't sure of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to...and who he was.
He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him.
She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: "Now your third wish. What will it be?"
"Third wish?" The man was baffled. "How can it be a third wish if I haven’t had a first and second wish?"
"You’ve had two wishes already," the hag said, "but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That’s why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes." She cackled at the poor man. "So it is that you have one wish left."
"All right," he said hesitantly, "I don't believe this, but there's no harm in trying. I wish to know who I am."
"Funny," said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. "That was your first wish..."

I am Thomas' reflection. Every morning, he rises from sleep and walks into the bathroom....and he makes faces. I am so tired of the faces. He makes them for at least half an hour. Mocking, ridiculous faces. I have no choice but to mimic his every action, although inside I am seething with anger. He does this every day...well, used to. One morning he awoke as usual, and entered the bathroom. On this particular morning, against his will, he picked up a pair of scissors. On this particular morning, against his will, he gripped those scissors tightly in his fist... and he plunged them directly into his right eye. Thomas screamed, and screamed. I screamed and screamed too - with one difference. I can't mimic his pain. Just his face.

In some television markets, people get two different versions of the same channel. This is usually caused by affiliates being nearby–for example, while living in New Jersey receiving the ABC affiliate from both New York City and Philadelphia, or living in Southern California and getting both the Los Angeles and San Diego stations. For the most part, these appear to be the same channel in all except local news and some daytime programming, with the exception that one is actually closer and more clear than the other.

These channels, in reality, should not occur. Television markets are set up to focus around ONE city, and offering two different versions of the same channel in one market can split viewer-ship in the ever-competitive ratings race.

If you are to watch the channel with worse reception, from the city that is further away, you’ll start to notice that the news reports major events that never occurred, on people that aren’t real, on technology that shouldn’t exist, the ads are for products that you’ve never heard of.

The conspiracy theorists think that these television stations belong to an alternate world. They point to the fact that the news tends to be getting worse over there, more separate from our own. There are reports of looking into an alternate world, and invading it for their own. Just pray they aren’t talking about us.

A snuff film is a recording of the actual murder of human being that is subsequently passed around for entertainment purposes. Suicides and accidents don’t count. According to the MPAA, the FCC, the FBI and the ever-lovin’ Snopes.com, there’s no such thing as a snuff film. Yes, this includes Faces of Death Anything you think might count is faked, falsified, or not made for that purpose, such as those tasteless videos you find on shock sites.

This is a lie.

There are, as best as anyone can tell, between 30-40 snuff films floating around out there. The earliest is a silent film on decaying nitrate celluloid, simply titled La mort d’une fille, and bears the date of 1896.

The latest, judging by the hairstyles and the presence of a “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt, was probably made in 1983 or 1984 and is on Betamax.

The films vary in violence, but they all include seemingly ritualized sex, followed by the slaying of a girl with dirty blonde hair and piercing blue eyes who appears to be around 19 years old.

That’s right…every film has the exact same girl in it.

Still no messages on my phone.

I guess he wasn’t going to call me back after all. I can’t really blame him, maybe I came on a bit too fast yesterday.
I had noticed him long before he noticed me. His shiny black hair and unnatural blue eyes. I wasn’t the only one watching him, that’s for sure. His movements were elegant in a boyish way. And his smile…his smile.
I would die for that smile.
Still no messages…
I thought about calling him, maybe apologize for going too fast yesterday. I’m a coward, I know, but I just couldn’t bring myself to dial his number.
Besides he’d promised he’d contact me when he’s ready.

So I’ll wait. I’m patient.

I know, I’ll just casually stroll past his house. Just to see if he’s home. Maybe he’s out, that would explain why he couldn’t call me yet.
He only lives half an hour away anyway. Maybe he’s shy and is scared to call me. Silly boy. I’ll go to him and tell him that he doesn’t have to be scared. That I don’t mind if he needs time.

He lives pretty secluded in a farm on the outskirts of town. I can hear the sheep in the stables as I approach. My heart skips when I see there’s lights burning inside. He must be there, he told me yesterday his parents would be gone for the weekend. They left him to look after the sheep for those days. Poor baby, that must be hard work. He was probably just too busy to call me. I’ll have to stay here until his parents come back and help him take care of all those sheep.

I knock on the door, but he doesn’t answer. Maybe he fell asleep. The thought of his beautiful face even more softened by sleep makes me smile. I try the door, it’s unlocked. There’s hardly any crime around here, so I guess locking the door is not needed. I try to be as quiet as possible as I sneak through the house. I want to surprise him. I cringe at every creak the stairs make as I climb them.
Finally I’ve reached the bedroom and I carefully open the door.

There he is, lying in bed as I thought. Quietly I switch on the nightlight on his desk so I can see his face.
His blue eyes are open, staring into space and his whole face is one bloody mess. His cheeks have been carved, the skin mostly removed and hanging loose on the sides of his face. He’s missing his fingernails, they are laid out on the bed carefully arranged. On his bare chest words are carved.

I look at him, my hands covering my mouth.
He’s still the same as I left him yesterday. He must have been so tired that he slept all day. How cute!
I softly kiss his forehead, making sure I don’t wake him. Then I write another message below the one on his chest, letting him know I’m here when he needs me.
I leave the room, heading back outside. I think it’s time for the sheep to go to sleep.
And tomorrow I’ll introduce myself to his parents. I’m sure they’ll love me too.

A couple months ago my friend's cousin (a single mother) had gotten a new cellphone. After a long day of work, she placed her phone down on the counter and started watching T.V. when her son came to her and asked if he could play with her new phone. She told him to not call anyone or mess with text messages and he agreed to do so. At around 11:20p.m. when she was getting tired, she decided to tuck her son in and go to bed herself. She proceeded to his room to see that he wasn't there. She went to her room to find him sleeping on her bed with the phone in his hand. Browsing through her phone, she noticed only minor changes such as a new background, banner, etc. and headed towards the pictures section. She began deleting the pictures he took when she came across the last one.. When she first saw it, she couldn't believe it. It was her son, sleeping on her bed but it was as if the picture was taken by someone else above him. It shows the left half of what seems to be an elderly woman's face.

He lived a very happy life. He was married, he had children, he had a lovely family in a nice house. There was a white picket fence. There was a dog. There was everything he needed. Every day was perfect for him. He got a raise the day he asked for it at work, he got a promotion too.

But there was something very wrong. He couldn't shake the feeling his life was too perfect. He woke up every day and looked at his beautiful wife. She seemed to get more beautiful everyday. Maybe she did. He walked downstairs and ate breakfast with his children. They were the sort of children he always wanted, the kind of children that never caused trouble. His boy was the star of his baseball team, his girl got perfect grades in school and played the piano with skill and grace.

He soon became sure that something was very very wrong with his life. He went to bed that night feeling uncertain. When he woke up he looked at his wife. Somehow she didn't look as pretty as he remembered. Her hair had darkened, her eyes were a dark blue instead of that piercing blue he loved so much. Her skin was worn and wrinkled. He gasped in surprise.

"Is something wrong dear?" She asked. Her voice was raspy. Her expression wasn't curious or worried, but....it was angry.

He shook his head and stumbled down stairs. His eyes widened when he saw his children. Their clothes were ragged and stained, their faces grey and shrunken.

"Hi Daddy!" they cried out. He said nothing. He wanted to vomit. He stumbled out the door and gasped in horror at what he saw. Everything was dead. The grass was dead. The homes had the paint peeling off the walls. There were no cars except his own. There was nothing.

He got in his car and drove to the place where he worked. He felt, for whatever reason, that he had to "play along" and that maybe if he pretended everything was normal that life would return to the way it was. Maybe it was a dream.

He entered his office building. It was tattered, lit by dim lightbulbs hanging off of the moldy series. His coworkers were hideous. Not even human. Their eyes were now a menacing red, staring at him with big fake smiles that revealed rows of fangs. He sat down at his desk and began typing away at a computer that didn't work. His boss came in. He didn't want to look.

"Very good work you've been doing lately" The boss' voice became a growl, something inhuman and dark. He couldn't speak. He managed to stammer out an answer.

"why th-th-thank you, sir..." he stammered. Shit. He knew he wasn't acting the same. The Boss put a hand on his shoulder. His touch was cold as ice.

"Are you alright?" The Boss asked. Again, his voice wasn't worried. His voice was angry, menacing, overflowing with ill intent.

"No, I'm not!" He smacked his Boss' hand away and ran for the door. Two of his coworkers blocked it. This had to be a dream. It couldn't be real. They tackled him to the floor and one of them pulled a syringe out of his pocket. Their faces were a pale blue, their skin pulled tight against their skulls like rubber.

"Why!? Why?! What is this world?!" He screamed.

His Boss stood over him as the others pinned him down.

"You're the only one left. You're the only one left alive. We need you to feed. To survive. We can't let you die, we can't let you run." The Boss seemed almost sad at this point. "Don't worry. Everything will be as happy as can be."

The needle plunged into his arm and everything faded to black.

He woke up the next morning next to his wife. She was so beautiful. Her long blonde hair always shimmered against the sunlight. "Honey, weren't you going to donate blood today?" She asked him, staring into his eyes. She was so gorgeous.

"I get the feeling I've done that already..." He said.

"No, I don't think you have" She said quite seriously. He trusted his wife, of course. He walked down the stairs to be greeted by his beautiful children. His son had just won MVP for his little league! How wonderful his life was. He drove down to the hospital to donate blood before heading to work. He couldn't help but smile at how grateful the doctor was for his donation.

Maybe he'll ask for another raise.

They say when you take a picture of someone you capture their soul in the camera. They also say if you print it off, that picture contains the soul itself and you can control them with it.

I'm not sure where to start. Do you know what the Primordial Soup is? A veritable ocean of elements, all floating around randomly. And through millions of years of time, eventually the right set of random circumstances came to pass, and the elements were able to connect together and form the worlds first single cell organism.

Now that's a really boiled down version of it but I'm sure you get the gist of it. Fast forward a few billion years to the early 1990s, when internet use began to rapidly accelerate. Every home had a computer, and new connections between computers were opening on a by the second basis.

Trillions of bytes of data began to transfer around the world at the speed of light, music, text, sound, and most importantly; pictures. Now if, when you take a picture of someone and capture their soul, what happens when that picture is converted to data and placed on a hard drive? Does the soul follow? 15 years later we believe so. We believe that when you take a picture of someone and upload it onto your computer, alongside the image data a blueprint of the person's soul itself is imprinted on the file itself.

Look at your pictures folder. How many souls reside in that folder alone?

That's just the beginning though. These soul blueprints each retain pieces of a puzzle, parts of the soul itself as well.

Recently a group of hackers, who referred to themselves as the Cardinals, took an interest to this theory and began experiments. They found anomalies within the binary sequences of images based on similar features of the person they had taken a picture of. A binary DNA if you will.

Now these hackers had come to posses a set of three extremely important data files. One avi, one jpeg, and one .mp3, each of which possessing interesting unexplainable qualities.

The first, cradle.avi, depicts what appears to be a group of teenagers with a low quality video camera, exploring the basement of a house. The quality of the video is distorted completely beyond any comprehensibility, and the video is very low quality. For most of the video the camera is passed around the group, handed back and forth and jerked around too much to make anything noticeable out.

But near the end the camera turns at an odd angle, and you can semi clearly make out a young girl standing in the corner facing the wall. Her hair is long and black and she is wearing some form of white dress. You only see her for a split second but many people who have seen the video claim there just seems something wrong with her. A bit deformed but not in a way anyone can explain.

But the truly peculiar property of this video is what happens to the users computer at the end of it. On the last second of the video, if not already so the video will force full screen itself. Along with this you are left with a one second looping clip of a window in a wall. It loops 15 times, and then the girl is seen again, standing on the other side of the window with her back to the viewer, slowly wavering back and forth. After a few moments the video ends and the user's computer permanently shuts down.

Inspection has shown that the entire registry becomes completely corrupt, requiring the user to do a total wipe and reinstall.

The second file is known as needles.mp3. This sound file, when played, plays for about 3 minutes. It is extremely distorted. One can occasionally make out some form of voice talking, but most of the sound is some form of growling, rolling crackled roar.

Users who listen to this file often experience extreme nausea and loss of balance for a brief period of time.

The final file is known as burningman.jpg.

The file name has nothing to do with what the actual picture depicts. Instead it just displays a haphazard mess of overlayed and meshed images of dolls and a hallway. There also seems to be an image of a man standing with his head cast down in the background, but the image is too distorted to make anything out, much like the other files.

The image, when downloaded and opened on a users desktop, will proceed to stay permanently open on whatever program it is opened through. Not only that, the program becomes disabled. Nothing else happens, the image just permanently sits there on your desktop, unclickable, unminimizable, and your just left there with the mans invisible gaze staring at you.

From what the group of hackers were able to discern, this file seems to have precompiled into the data something along the lines of Cmdow. Yet, as complex and intricate as the program is (it works across all OS platforms) no one knows who the original creator is. In fact, few people have heard of it as the file is uncopyable nor sendable.

This in fact further adds to the mystery, as often receivers of this file will obtain it from random anonymous emails, posted on forms on a download link. Posing the question, how was that poster able to upload it?

If you ever see any of these files, refrain from downloading ANY of them. They all have varying detrimental effects on your computers, from practically taking out your whole registry, corrupting system 32, freezing your mouse or crashing your computer.

Now onwards:

This group of hackers, the Cardinals, took to analyzing these 3 files and comparing their odd behaviors. They had heard of other such odd files, images, data, etc, but were never able to get their hands on them. At least as far as we know, though rumour states they in fact were able to locate and collect all of the known files like the original smile.jpg, barbie.jpg, even suicidemouse.avi. Not even the grifter was able to escape their grasp, rumour states. But rumour also states the grifter video even exists, but thats another story.

Nonetheless, all these files in hand, the group lined the files up and begin to meticulously work through the binary one 0/1 at a time, checking for similar strains and series of binary that matched.

And they did manage to successfully do so, at least legend states. The result were 7 individual execute files that did nothing. Simply a gibberish pile of 0s and 1s. They endless puzzled over the files, each tackling an execute each. They decided to name them after themselves, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Pride.

At last they attempted to line the files up. Remarkably, something odd happened. The copies of the files quite suddenly meshed together. The result was a single complete Execute, already named.

“BarelyBreathing.exe”

And what of this file? Well not much else is known after that point. They were too smart to just execute it. They analyzed the file every possible way. Hex, binary, conversions, anything to figure out what this odd file would do.

To no avail, even after forming together it was an even bigger jumble of 1s and 0s and made no more sense than the separate executes.

They backed the file up on a flash drive and proceeded to run it. That was the last command found run on their destroyed computers a week later. Their corpses had been disfigured beyond recognition. Description of the corpses stated that it almost seemed as if they had been brutally slashed across their faces and arms. Every square inch of skin that had been bare had been mutilated. Almost microwaved and then sliced repeatedly by a micro thin razor.

The government attempted to hush up the event, but there was some media leakage, and because the Cardinals had been keeping a blog amongst themselves and a few close friends (its closed down and deleted now so don't go trying to find it) it quickly spread out as per what they had been attempting to accomplish. And if it was or was not related to their terrible deaths.

And what of the flash drive? A friend, who knew of its existence, later checked the home of the group and was unable to find it. According to reports the drive was found in the pocket of one of the group and had been taken into custody by the police, and then simply vanished.

The trail continues on, far more though. The file resurfaces every few weeks around the globe. Governments attempt to cover it up but some media leaks out, of course. Look to the news for people mutilated in their own homes by a “murderer”, their computers stolen, etc.

In Berlin, after World War II, money was short, supplies were tight, and it seemed like everyone was hungry. At that time, people were telling the tale of a young woman who saw a blind man picking his way through a crowd. The two started to talk. The man asked her for a favor: could she deliver the letter to the address on the envelope? Well, it was on her way home, so she agreed.

She started out to deliver the message, when she turned around to see if there was anything else the blind man needed. But she spotted him hurrying through the crowd without his smoked glasses or white cane. Shewas, naturally, suspicious, so she went to the police.

When the police paid a visit to the address on the envelope, they made a gruesome discovery, 3 butchers had been harvesting human flesh and selling it to the starving people.

And what was in the envelope the man gave to the woman? A note, saying simply "This is the last one I am sending you today."

Have you ever gotten a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye? A simple movement caught in your peripheral vision. Most will simply dismiss this as a shadow brought about by a flickering candle, or perhaps a pet jumping down from a piece of furniture. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, these people are right.

But then there's that one elusive sight. It can easily be explained by the above conditions, but something feels wrong about it. A chill down your spine, a slight pain in your side. Maybe even a complete blanking of your mind, only to recede moments later.

Should any of these symptoms be felt, there may be cause for worry. Our peripheral vision is designed to catch motion, even in the dark. This was used to defend against predators in our early days, and as with many aspects of our human nature, it has remained, but weakened.

This view out of the corner of our eyes still alerts us to danger, and although predators have dropped on the list of dangers we may face today, they still exist. Should you ever feel that queer chill in your back, try not to focus on that shadow you saw in the corner of your eye. It might be better not to see.

It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not wake up. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to wake up was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to wake up. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and please wake up.

It's early morning. The sun won't be up for another couple of hours. You're fast asleep in bed, lost in a dream, when the phone rings. Rather than waking up, you roll over and cover your head with a pillow.
Hours pass. The sun rises.
The phone is ringing.
When you wake up, your alarm clock is blaring and the phone is ringing. By the time you will yourself to turn the alarm off, the phone has stopped ringing. You realize that it's been ringing all morning.
You slide out of bed and press the blinking red button on your phone as you stumble into the bathroom. The phone beeps, followed by the friendly, electronic voice.
Hello. You have six hundred and sixty-six new messages. Message one. The phone beeps again, and you're not prepared for what comes next.
Screaming.
You spin around, thinking that she's standing right behind you. There's pure terror in her screams, accompanied by other disturbing noises. You stand there, horrified, for about ten seconds. Screaming gives way to hysterical, garbled crying before dying out with the sounds of spilling meat and tearing flesh.
The phone beeps again. You're shaking.
Message two.

The last few weeks, I've only slept a few minutes at a time, spreading it throughout the day. My dreams pick up where reality left off. When you do this to yourself, the logic of dreams still applies as you awaken. It's easier to accept the strange things, then. You accept them as you accept all things you see in your sleep, as proper without context. I can't start at the beginning, and I'm sorry for that. I don't know when the beginning was, only when my character entered stage right, played his part, and exited, fate implied. I'm a regular poster here, browsing through several forums, but I spend most of my time in /x/ and /r9k/, making the occasional venture into /b/, when I'm up for that level of chaos.

One night, two or three in the morning my time, I saw one of those rare useful threads that share useful information. Someone posted something that caught my eye, a guide on how to find unsecured webcams on google.

A few simple terms, and you could find fifty thousand results. Not all were what you would be looking for, not all would be on; more than a few were tucked away in dark corners, or outside with nothing to look at, but a few were interesting. Schools, restaurants, sometimes back yards. I once found one for a security company; I found that kind of funny, a looking through the empty halls of their building because they never secured their cams.
The trouble started after a few weeks. I had a few favorites that I logged into. I started noticing someone in them—one person, who seemed to appear randomly in all of them. She was a teacher of grade school students, a bartender, a waitress, a cop. I saw her married to a dozen men, I watched her take thirty kids at different times to different parks.

I started noting things, dates, times. I mixed up my sleeping schedule to try and get a larger amount of coverage, and soon I hardly slept at all. She seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. What began as a person noticed once every day soon became a person seen constantly. She would walk out of a classroom in Seatle and enter a bar in Tokyo. She walked through London as a tourist, carrying a map all the while, looking and pointing and laughing with friends I'd never seen her with before. Later she would drive a cab through New York, and I would see her picking people up at the Four Seasons and drop them off at the docks. Occasional sightings became a constant presence when I watched. She was never in two places at once, but she was always, always somewhere.

The more I saw her, the less I saw anyone else, and the less others saw me. Close family became casual friends, casual friends became rare acquaintances, rare acquaintances became strangers on the street. Not simply metaphorically; the more time I devoted to finding out who she was, the less people seemed to know me. I didn't care. I don't care. One day I saw a place I recognized, a place that was close. A coffee shop, just down the street, an almost impossible find. I packed up my laptop, showered and shaved, and went in. Ten minutes of standing at the counter and someone noticed me, half-heartedly taking my order, my coffee never coming. I sat down, logged onto their wifi connection, and searched. Soon I saw her again, as always without pattern, no rhyme or reason to any place, no purpose in her actions. She walked through her living room, herding small children; she strode across the beach, holding hands with her husband; she waited tables, avoiding grabbing hands and picking up large tips; she walked out of the storage closet of a coffee shop, and stood behind me.

I watched her, on the screen, watching me. I turned my head, slowly, fearfully, and looked at her. She was looking at the camera. When I turned back to the screen, she was gone. A stranger sat at my table, paid me no mind, drank his coffee and chatted with a friend who'd followed him in. I wept, waiting for them to leave so I could get out of the booth without having to crawl over anyone, and ran to my home, where someone else was already moving in, my landlord having given up on me long ago.

I don't know what to do anymore, so I keep on keeping on, walking place to place, sleeping where I can. I know that I can go anywhere, walk in any house, and crash on a couch, use their showers, eat their food. They don't care. A person who can be anyone has made me no one.

NetNostalgia Forum - Television (local)

Skyshale033
Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Does anyone remember this kid’s show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7. I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don’t remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
it seems really familiar to me…..i grew up outside of ashland and was 9 yrs old in 72. candle cove…was it about pirates? i remember a pirate marionete at the mouth of a cave talking to a little girl

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
YES! Okay I’m not crazy! I remember Pirate Percy. I was always kind of scared of him. He looked like he was built from parts of other dolls, real low-budget. His head was an old porcelain baby doll, looked like an antique that didn’t belong on the body. I don’t remember what station this was! I don’t think it was WTSF though.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in ‘71, not ‘72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news. Let me see what I remember.

It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn’t a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don’t remember the girl’s name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Thank you Jaren!!! Memories flooded back when you mentioned the Laughingstock and channel 58. I remember the bow of the ship was a wooden smiling face, with the lower jaw submerged. It looked like it was swallowing the sea and it had that awful Ed Wynn voice and laugh. I especially remember how jarring it was when they switched from the wooden/plastic model, to the foam puppet version of the head that talked.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
ha ha i remember now too. do you remember this part skyshale: “you have…to go…INSIDE.”

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Ugh mike, I got a chill reading that. Yes I remember. That’s what the ship always told Percy when there was a spooky place he had to go in, like a cave or a dark room where the treasure was. And the camera would push in on Laughingstock’s face with each pause. YOU HAVE… TO GO… INSIDE. With his two eyes askew and that flopping foam jaw and the fishing line that opened and closed it. Ugh. It just looked so cheap and awful.

You guys remember the villain? He had a face that was just a handlebar mustache above really tall, narrow teeth.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i honestly, honestly thought the villain was pirate percy. i was about 5 when this show was on. nightmare fuel.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
That wasn’t the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain’s sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye.

But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can’t believe what they let us watch back then.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
jesus h. christ, the skin taker. what kind of a kids show were we watching? i seriously could not look at the screen when the skin taker showed up. he just descended out of nowhere on his strings, just a dirty skeleton wearing that brown top hat and cape. and his glass eyes that were too big for his skull. christ almighty.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Wasn’t his top hat and cloak all sewn up crazily? Was that supposed to be children’s skin??

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
yeah i think so. rememer his mouth didn’t open and close, his jaw just slid back and foth. i remember the little girl said “why does your mouth move like that” and the skin-taker didn’t look at the girl but at the camera and said “TO GRIND YOUR SKIN”

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
I’m so relieved that other people remember this terrible show!

I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming. The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this. I woke up many times from that nightmare. I used to wet the bed when I had it.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i don’t think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
No no no, not possible. There was no plot or anything, I mean literally just standing in place crying and screaming for the whole show.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
maybe i’m manufacturing the memory because you said that, but i swear to god i remember seeing what you described. they just screamed.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Oh God. Yes. The little girl, Janice, I remember seeing her shake. And the Skin-Taker screaming through his gnashing teeth, his jaw careening so wildly I thought it would come off its wire hinges. I turned it off and it was the last time I watched. I ran to tell my brother and we didn’t have the courage to turn it back on.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i visited my mom today at the nursing home. i asked her about when i was littel in the early 70s, when i was 8 or 9 and if she remebered a kid’s show, candle cove. she said she was suprised i could remember that and i asked why, and she said “because i used to think it was so strange that you said ‘i’m gona go watch candle cove now mom’ and then you would tune the tv to static and juts watch dead air for 30 minutes. you had a big imagination with your little pirate show.”

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

Did one ever know the reason why the pacing and story development change after Ash was hit by lightning in the beginning episodes? How Ash and his world were relatively normal until after the incident? I have a theory. The accident with the bike put Ash in a coma. Days later he was found and was hurried to the hospital and treated with heavy medications. This is why Team Rocket became less menacing. The medication took effect and stabilized his coma dreams, instead of being terrifying, they became idyllic, and he's able to live out his Pokémon master fantasies.

If one had noticed, the early episodes of Pokémon were of amazing quality. The rest of the series is just the results of his subconscious mind fulfilling his desires, as well as attempting to escape them. Should Ash realize he's in a coma, he would wake up, but suffer brain damage. So he has to take down all his mental barriers one by one until he can come to grips with what he is and escape his coma.

The image of his gaunt, tube-fed, ten-some-year bed ridden body on the bed. His head appears bulbous from atrophy. As he utters his last words, he barely opens his eyes, seeing a silhouette of the figure at the center of his turbulent emotions, his mother, her face obstructed by her hands wiping away tears. He makes contact with her eyes and lets out one last tear before losing all strength. She breaks down in hysterics.

The worst part of all this is that Ash will die, never having experienced actual love, imagine if you will, having lived in a world like his, completely shut off from all things but yourself, and your perception of yourself, with nothing but better yourself. No other people to interact with and issues to solve with no guiding hand.

The boy will die, never having known his dream, except as naught but a dream. The second he gets out into reality for that last moment, part of him knows it was all a lie, his faithful Pikachu? His friends? All his imagination, and maybe, he could have fought and clung to life, maybe even made a full recovery. But knowing that his efforts and ambitions had all been for naught, he just gave up and let the motion carry him away, just so he could be with Pikachu, in a place where his friends were waiting.

I would like to think that he'll realize that his mother loved him and was holding out hope that he'd recover all that time. On the flip side, though, when he sees her he knows that the hope she had is totally broken and she'd come to the crushing realization that the worst thing that can befall a parent has happened to her: outliving her only child. At once he knows he is loved and that it means that the one closest to him is utterly crushed.

This explains why he doesn't change much physically. Also, the worldwide socialism can be explained if you once again realize that this is a dream world; he thought up a safe system of government that would run smoothly and keeps the world going allowing his adventures to work like they do. It also explains a few other things, such as how a child can go off on his own in a world full of dangerous untamed animals, and why every Pokémon center has the same exact nurse. Joy and Jenny he knew from his hometown, and they act as a safety net or anchor, allowing him to feel safe no matter where he goes. The professors, like the Joy's and Jenny's represent stability, and ash's ideals. This is why Gary became a professor. It's also the reason that every time he enters a new region, virtually no one has heard of him, despite his conquests, and why Giovanni leads Team Rocket. How could Paul, the rival of the Sinnoh area, not know of someone who has placed in at least the top 16 of all three leagues and has destroyed the Orange league and Battle Frontier?

Ash’s travelling partners are actually aspects of himself he can enjoy, but doesn't like to associate with himself. Team Rocket are his qualities that he deems "negative", but is coming to terms with. Jesse and James want to appease Giovanni, Ash's Father. Meowth especially wants to appease him because he remembers the good times with Giovanni. This Places meowth in a category known as ash's (corrupted) innocence, and another fragment of ash's humanity. If you note that meowth can speak this quickly becomes apparrent. In fact the whole reason for meowth's speech is so he can help Ash accept Team rocket as part of himself eventually.

Brock is Ash's repressed sexuality. He fell into the coma a virgin and needed an outlet for his growing sexual frustrations. Since he can never experience sex, Brock must never succeed. Brock is a projection of his sexuality, and is constantly shot down because Ash could never “know” sex. Brock isn't just Ash's latent sexuality, he's also his fatherly instincts, neither of which Ash can come to terms with. Brock leaves his siblings to "journey" with Ash. because Ash can't cope with having that much responsibility, much as his foray with a real relationship ends on mysterious terms. Ash just cannot handle commitment at his mental level. Brock's Stay with professor Ivy was an.attempt to outright suppress his sexuality. You'll notice that James got much more dialogue in this part of the series, as well as getting more touchy feel-y with his pokemon and getting most of his backstory. Ash didn't enjoy this much, hence the reasons Brock comes back all horrified, and refuses to speak about it. (ash's subconscious was repressing him at the time, so other than a general feeling of dread he has no idea of what went on then.) This is also why brock keeps coming back to the series....Usually AFTER Ash meets a new girl aspect of himself.Misty is an image that Ash had of a girl. This is why she plays so prevalently in the series but is ultimately unattainable because he never really knew her before the coma. Likely the one that helped get him to a hospital. I have a theory in line with this: Since Misty was his initial love interest (if only subconsciously), he needed her to reach a level of womanhood. He felt that people could only have relationships when they've matured. But in practice, it turned out he couldn't cope with it and just wanted the normal, pushy, arrogant Misty he knew, and wouldn't let her keep Togepi anymore.

Misty is Ash's first attempt at a girl he could love, however, being a girl from the real world, all he really he knew of her was her anger, as a result she ended up quite hot headed in his mind. Constantly berating his sexuality, but eventually mellowing out until she had faded into the background. This was also traumatizing to him, being attached to it. Since then, the thought of anyone around him maturing to adulthood has been blocked, and anyone who shows signs of it will quickly end up leaving for another, more naive fill-in.

Max came with May, she played the Id with great aspirations, and he played the sensible Ego that "Session". They worked for a little while but Ash, being a teenager, eventually had his sexuality had to come back into play. He kept reinventing himself and eventually wrote new aspects, but his mind slowly brought back the old ones as a crutch to make the transition easier.

Dawn is Ash giving himself a chance to love. since he already established Misty as someone he's not likely to go anywhere with, he created a new super female, one that was more like him, and less violent all the time. (One will note that both May and Misty had no tolerance for Brock whatsoever whereas dawn seems to try and shrug it off.) .

Tracey, The Breeder was a possible future for Ash that he discarded. It was one that he sent off to work with the Professor (the professors being Ash's ultimate ideal of a father figure) when he disrupted the dynamic Ash had with his other possibilities. Ash's mind is fighting the coma and since Ash viewed this one as a companion he was quickly replaced with a more threatening Rival.

Pikachu obviously represents Ash's Humanity, hence the episodes where they get separated, and ash wants desperately to find him, even to the point of working with the rockets ( aspects of himself he woould never normally associate with) but for some reason cannot. They want to steal Pikachu (Ash’s humanity) and hand it over to his father, Giovanni. Jesse and James will always oppose ash because ash is terrified of the thought of his humanity lying in the hands of his father. However this is the same reason that he will work with those aspects of himself in order to save his humanity from just becoming flat out LOST. He couldn't evolve his Pikachu without challenging his concept of who he was, something he wasn't comfortable with while he was still working through his original issues.

Another thing is the narrator. The narrator is Ash's higher mind, recapping and explaining the progress he's made and the tribulations he will face allowing itself insight into how best to awaken him.

Ash has issues With his Father; so he put him atop the evil corporation, and demonized him. There may be an actual team rocket, and I'm positive they're quite dastardly, but I doubt that ash's father is their leader, in fact the head of the rockets wasn't really identified as anyone until later on in the series. The split between ash's parents was likely over ash's homosexuality and some sort of incident as a catalyst, forcing his father to disown him and his mother to move out of the city and down to pallet town. This is why Giovanni runs the faceless Vile corporation, and Why he Berates Jesse, James, and Meowth as much as he does, and why they keep trying to please him. Another thing to notice is the difference in uniform, The rockets Wear Black and Red, where Team Rocket wears White....a symbol of their purity and naievete. They're willing to please father despite his utter hatred of those parts of Ash .

Team rocket are aspects of Ash's personality that he has deemed "bad" James implied homosexuality, and Jesse’s vanity. You'll remember that Meowth has the potential for rehabilitation, and doesn't want to be evil, so yet again this fits in with the conflicting personalities and demonized self theory. Team rocket started cross-dressing because ash had to come to terms with that part of himself. It was something he was able to allow his ***/vain side to experiment with (and by virtue of that himself) When he found that it wasn't something for him, his "Free" side stopped playing with it. Further, their methods of capture become more and more ludicrous (and physically impossible) because Ash is just a kid dreaming these things up. This is the reason Team Rocket's disguises are always believed. He knows it's them (on some level), but chooses to ignore it, so he can better himself, in a sense the Ash who wants to escape is sabotaging the ash who wants to stay lost in his mind. So that there can be more conflict, and hopefully an eventual escape.

The filler episodes that don't focus on Ash and the gang are his mind working through, and humanizing the parts of himself that he demonized. It's a way for him to deal with issues that Ash and crew wouldn't touch, because it involves treading ground he himself had sworn not to go near. As I said, Team Rocket and the episodes they occupy are Ash dealing with ground he feels uncomfortable with tackling on his own. Jessie is Ash's vanity and gullibility, she will trick Ash's submissive homosexuality into doing her bidding so she can please father. James' troubled childhood is his way of justifying his latent homosexuality. Now James is Ash's latent homosexuality, hence why he is constantly punished by Pokémon and attacked by random attractive girls. I believe the split between Ash's parents was caused by this part of Ash, maybe an incident at school, bringing shame on the family and forcing them to move to the small, country town of Pallet. Ash's motivations for his journey were to escape mounting pressure at home.

So in a way, Ash IS Team Rocket. The rest of the whole organization Including Butch and Cassidy is symbolic of his inability to escape his father's machinations.

Mr. Mime is actually a stand in for Ash's father, one that can't emotionally abuse him or his mom. He is a Pokémon, a peace loving creature that's oddly humanoid, but that can never hurt a human. Ash's was never really hurt by a Pokémon, so he sees them all as harmless; whereas, in the real world they may be quite feral or vicious (as seen in the early episodes). Again falling back to the theory that the only real Pokémon are the ones from the first season, and everything else is just further speculation coming from his mind on what new species would look like.

The new teams ( magma, aqua, and galactic) are Ash attempting to work out the problems he has with his father. to do that he first needs a new "bad guy" to feel good about beating, and if Giovanni isn't leading a criminal organization he can more easily relate to him.

If one recalls, there were real animals early in the show and references to animals in the game and show. For example, a clear case to point out is the aquarium of fish in the Cerulean City Gym or that by the Pokédex that Pikachu is a “rat-like” Pokémon. But they don't matter to Ash's psyche so they don't come into play much. If Ash had loved puppies, everything would be about different breeds of dogs, and a dog fighting circuit. But, as the series goes on longer, we've been seeing less realistic animals and more Pokémon. This could be a sign of Ash’s mind deteriorating. As he's in this coma, he's losing concepts of some animals and machinery and replacing them with Pokémon. It could explain things like electric Pokémon working as power generators. A sign that his memory of the old world is slipping more and more as time goes by. The Pokémon realm will be idealized continuously the longer he has no stimulus from the real world. He may or may not be mentally deteriorating , but he is becoming more accustomed to his fake world's rules. The wild Pokémon are his rationalizations of the functioning of the world. It’s the "A wizard did it" Syndrome. If he doesn't know how it works, his mind says Pokémon. He justifies anything he can't explain with Pokémon, and real animals fall into the background because he has no real interest in them.

In Ash’s “world”.
Ash has finally defeated the elite four, and one by one the people around him start disappearing. eventually everything is black. Pikachu comes dashing towards him glowing brighter and brighter in the darkness. Eventually Pikachu reaches ash and the two embrace one last time.
Back in his room, as his life signs fade, Ash mutters his genuine, final words.
I...Want...To...Be,
The...Very...Best.
The image of his gaunt, tube-fed, ten-some-year bed ridden body on the bed. His head appears bulbous from atrophy. As he utters his last words, he barely opens his eyes, seeing a silhouette of the figure at the center of his turbulent emotions, his mother, her face obstructed by her hands wiping away tears. He makes contact with her eyes and lets out one last tear before losing all strength. She breaks down in hysterics.

The worst part of all this is that Ash will die, never having experienced actual love, imagine if you will, having lived in a world like his, completely shut off from all things but yourself, and your perception of yourself, with nothing but better yourself. No other people to interact with and issues to solve with no guiding hand.

The boy will die, never having known his dream, except as naught but a dream. The second he gets out into reality for that last moment, part of him knows it was all a lie, his faithful Pikachu? His friends? All his imagination, and maybe, he could have fought and clung to life, maybe even made a full recovery. But knowing that his efforts and ambitions had all been for naught, he just gave up and let the motion carry him away, just so he could be with Pikachu, in a place where his friends were waiting.

Anyways, theory goes that Garfield is in a family with Jon and Odie, and has interactions with all the other characters. However, this is all within his mind, as he suddenly wakes up from the nightmare one day, to find the real world a cold, desolate, and abandoned place. Where he once found food, he now finds nothing, and his warmth and shelter are completely devoid, as if the world has suddenly died.

Garfield cannot comprehend this, and begins hallucinating. Since then, all of the strips of Garfield have been created by his twisted imagination as he slowly starves to death in his abandoned house.

Okay, well. Obviously, Inspector Gadget can't be the man's real name. Whoever he was, he was a regular human who worked for the cops or whatever. Well I think that while on the job, something happened to him. Some terrible accident. Some explosion or collapse that left him completely destroyed. Once the cops found this, the chief (the guy in the show all of the time) decided to do something never before attempted. They used the newest and most secret technology to recreate this man with super human powers (sorta like the bionic man or whatever). They programmed this robot version of the inspector to look and sound just like him, even to think like him. He was programmed with the very best AI and all. He continued working for the company, even watched over his niece and dog, just like the real human version did. The only problem with all of this was that he didn't die in the accident. No, the real human version survived, only he was changed. The accident deformed him, warped his brain, and made him see things differently. Once he discovered that they had replaced him with a robot doppelganger, he swore to destroy it no matter what it took. They had taken his life away and replaced it with a robot, that they now call Inspector Gadget. The human version decided to use everything he had and knew to fight against this robot version, and to do evil to the company that had ruined his life. He also changed his name. Now he is known as Dr. Claw. You never see his face because it is the face of Inspector Gadget, only deformed from the accident.

The Tick is a child sick with a blood disease fantasizing about being a superhero while he's in bed. The Tick is unstoppable and can go and do whatever he wants, but his mind is child-like. Arthur is his father, who he loves, but is ineffectual. American Maid is his mother, who has divorced his father and gone off to be, essentially, a slut. He still looks up to her, hence her ideas of justice, but she's hypersexualized and yet The Tick has no sexual interest in her (or anyone else.) The enemies are toys and things he can see from his bedroom window.

He calls himself The Tick because that was the insect that transmitted the blood disease to him. He sees them as powerful creatures to be revered.

There's a theory that interprets Ed, Edd and Eddy's entire cast of kids as all being dead and living in a purgatory of an eternal childhood cycle (originally an eternal summer, but then they started going to school), thusly the complete lack of any adult agents in the purgatory.
They're are a number of explanations for their deaths, ranging from an explosion due to a gas-leak in the neighborhood to apocalyptic ones such as nuclear explosion or the spread of a deadly disease that killed most of middle-America.
Another theory suggests that the kids in the cul-de-sac are dead children from the neighborhood, each from different times (Johnny and Rolf from the 40's, Kevin from the 90's, Naz from the 60's, Jimmy from the 00's, and so on).

Eversion is a really fun old-school style platformer. It's available for free and is very easy/fast to run. I highly suggest this game, it's a small file so check it out.

The game mechanics have a fun twist on 2D platforming. You can use the X key or Spacebar to "evert" the level. This power only works in certain areas and it changes the map, making previously unpassable locations passable. An example eversion is making all of the clouds solid so you can use them as platforms. Experiment to find the eversion locations. The maps are small, so it isn't difficult.

I don't want to spoil the game, but you essentially are playing backwards. That will make sense if you really think about the ending. Think Doom meets Kirby meets I Wanna Be The Guy!

Download Eversion:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?kv2oynammzv

Yume Nikki is an atmospheric and very creepy adventure game. As you may have deduced from my other blogs and my thread in general, I really dig this sort of thing. If you do too, it's definitely worth checking out.

I'm probably late to the show, in fact I know I am because there was a blog about this about two years ago. The blog got only 7 measly replies and as TL has had a great influx of new members and a large group of people who probably missed it, I'll point it out yet again.

In Yume Nikki, you play as Madotsuki, a young reclusive girl who lives alone in her apartment. You cannot leave the apartment, unless you are dreaming. You can play her one videogame (which is rather creepy in and of itself) but otherwise the only significant interaction you can have with her room is to fall asleep in the bed. The bed will throw you into the dream version of her apartment where things work a bit differently.

When you leave the dream apartment, you enter the Nexus. From the Nexus, you can enter various dream worlds and interact with their inhabitants. The point is to get 25 different effects, which are basically powers.




Each world is very unsettling and creepy in its own way. I am personally most disturbed by the Numbers world, but it is likely different for each person. The symbolism in each world is important, as they reveal hints about Madotsuki's thoughts and past. Many believe he is a victim of rape, a girl who witnessed a tragic car accident, or an MTF transsexual. Either way, Madotsuki is not normal or sane in any way.

The music is the best part of the game, in terms of delivering the unsettling atmosphere. Distorted an discordant, the music is a constant reminder that something is not quite right here. I played this game for a while last night and it made me very uncomfortable, just the way i like it.

You can get effects by interacting with various things in the world. Interact with any objects of interest or NPCs and you may get a new effect. For instance, a frog in the forest world grants you the frog effect.

I will teach you how to get one effect, the bicycle effect which makes you move much faster. At the bottom of the nexus there are two doors. One is white, the other is purple. Enter the purple door. This is "The Graffiti World"

Enter the door at 5 o clock and start moving left/right immediately. You will eventually come across a bicycle. Interact with the bicycle. That's it. From here in out, you're on your own in gathering effects and exploring the worlds. There are multiple worlds within the worlds, interacting with objects can transport you to even stranger worlds that are otherwise inaccessible.

The game installs quickly and easily on Windows:
http://rs75.rapidshare.com/files/104712976/yn0.10enginstaller.rar

Studio Trophis' debut public production, the white chamber, is a point and click horror adventure game. Explore a strange environment crafted in luscious 2D. Control a trapped young woman from 3rd person perspective as she solves puzzles and overcomes the twisted obstacles in her path.



Like Yume Nikki, this game is all about fucked up environments, although this game is a bit more hostile. A fun game, even if the graphics are a bit cheesy.

Download:
http://www.filefront.com/14630037/thewhitechamber1.7SETUP.exe/

A very odd and creepy japanese puzzle game. To play, left click shoots a block up with light power, and right click shoots a block up with high power. If it collides with a shape, it will "Activate" it causing it to fall down, and any other blocks it collides into will "activate" too. If it collides into a shape with the same color, it will glow, and if it hits the bottom or stuck shapes, it will disappear and give you points, and some life to your life bar. If it falls onto a shape with the same color, it will destroy that shape too.

As you progress, you unlock photos that tell a story. The second button on the menu allows you to view these photos.



Download:
http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dl/win95/game/se463417.html

A very simplistic action/platformer with haunting music and visuals. Simple, fun, and fast: you can probably beat the whole game in under thirty minutes. Not too scary, but actually quite challenging.

Play here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/dont-look-back