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The Rake

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

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

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

The Rake

A Suicide Note: 1964

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

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

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

A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880

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

A Mariner’s Log: 1691

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

From a Witness: 2006

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

At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I 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.

#Creepypasta #Scary stories #creepy #The Midnight Society

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The Mountain Man who wanted to marry me

The following account occurred roughly three years ago during the summer of 2012. It has always been difficult for me to talk about, but I have found writing about it to be therapeutic. I was 17 at the time, and I had just gotten my first job. I lived in rural western Virginia, in a small mountain community. My mom’s friend owned a camping resort not far from my house that had a general store, and she said she’d pay me to help out in the store during the busy months in the summer. It was a pretty easy job, and I met a lot of out-of-towners, which was nice because our community could get so isolated; most of us lived pretty far away from each other. One day, a big burly mountain man type came into the store. He was in his late 40s/early 50s, probably 6’5”, and about 280 lbs. He looked dirty, like he worked outside a lot; his clothes were sort of tattered and he had a long beard. We had a few of the woodsy hermit types in the area, and he definitely looked like one of them. He bought some basic items, one of which was one of our homemade bars of soap. When he came to the register, he looked me up and down carefully. He didn’t talk for a minute, just stared. His people skills clearly needed work. “Did you make this soap?” He asked gruffly. “Possibly,” I said. “I help out with that sometimes.” “You make a lot of your own stuff?” “Toiletries and things like that, yeah.” “I like that,” He said, nodding to himself. I honestly did not know how to respond. I quickly rang up his items and he paid with crumpled money. Right before he left, he asked, “You cook, too?” “Sometimes,” I replied. “Bet the boys 'round here are itchin’ to marry you.” He said as he smiled to himself. I said nothing. I was puzzled as to what I said that stood out as wife material. I told Krista (mom’s friend/boss) about the bizarre encounter and she laughed it off; so did my family and friends. But then, Mountain Man started turning up more often. We chatted a little bit here and there, and I found out he had a cabin in the woods, he claimed he built “with his bare hands”. He said he hunted and lived off the land, other than the things he bought at the store. Over time our chatter escalated, with him making comments about how nice it would be to have a woman like me around who could make those things, and cook his kills. One time, he even said I had the "birthin' hips that men lust after". Shudder. He even started inviting me to fish with him, hunt with him, see his place, etc. and I always politely declined. But he got more and more insistent and I told Krista about how uncomfortable he was starting to make me. The intensity with which he said those things really scared me. She said that when he came in, go get her and she would ring him up. Thanks to her, I started speaking to him less, and I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. But one night, I was closing up, and it was late, around 10 at night. Krista had left about an hour before, and I was leaving by myself. The only two cars in front of the store were an old blue pickup and mine; I was immediately alarmed because I knew Mountain Man drove a blue pickup. But I didn’t see him in the lot, just his car, so I walked quickly to my car and checked the backseat before I started her up. But then when I first turned the key into the ignition, I got nothing but sputters. I tried several more times and got scared quickly. Of all nights, why is this happening tonight? I remember asking myself angrily. Just as I was reaching for my phone to call for help, there was a loud pounding on the driver’s side window. I’m shocked that I didn’t piss myself. I didn’t even want to look, because I knew it was him. But I did, and my suspicions were confirmed. He smiled a big grin at me, showing me exactly which teeth were missing. “Need some help?” He said loudly through the window. I shook my head furiously. “My dad is on his way.” I said, hoping to scare him off. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in years. Mountain Man laughed. “No he’s not.” He said. “Open the door.” The hairs on my neck stood up straight. How did he know I was bluffing? “No,” I said firmly. “Leave me alone.” Suddenly he looked angry. He pulled the handle but I had locked all the doors when I first got in. He kept furiously pulling the handle and started pounding on the window. “Leave now or I’m calling the cops!” I screamed at him. He clearly wasn’t getting the message so I pulled out my phone and called 911. I must have sounded hysterical to the dispatcher, and I knew she could hear him pounding. She said she would have officers out ASAP, but out here, that could be a while. “THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY! LEAVE NOW!” I screamed at MM, who didn’t seem to let it deter him. But after a few more minutes of pounding, he suddenly stopped and walked back to his truck. I watched him go, hopeful he would leave me alone. But then he started walking back toward me, with a fucking crowbar in hand. “NO!” I screamed at him. “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” He started swinging at the driver’s side window with the crowbar. I ducked down into the passenger seat on the floor and covered the back of my neck like they teach you in tornado drills. I heard the sickening crack of the window but not for long; suddenly, I heard male voices shouting, telling MM to get away from the car. I sat up and saw two men approaching, one with a shotgun pointed at MM. I recognized them as a couple of guests staying at the resort for a camping trip. I breathed a sigh of relief and got out of the car, telling them that the police were on the way. I thanked them profusely as we waited for the police, and surprisingly MM didn’t make any moves to get away, but the cops came pretty quickly after that, so he didn’t have much of a chance. They took him away and I gave them my statement; I was pretty shaken up for a while afterwards. A few weeks later I finally got the scoop on the man. Apparently he had a history of mental illness. He had been in and out of state institutions. He really had been living in an old cabin in the woods, where he wasn’t taking his meds and his issues were only getting worse. My cousin Luke is a cop, and later on he told me some more about the case that he had heard about through some other officers. The police did a search of the cabin after the incident, to see if there was anything that might be of interest to them. They found a journal that MM kept. Apparently, in it he said he was lonely and wanted a wife. He mentioned me by name a lot (stupid name tag), and Luke said there were a lot of lewd things in there about me that he didn’t want to share, but tried to put it simply by saying that MM had a detailed plan to abduct me, starting with sabotaging my car engine to get me into a vulnerable position. When Luke said that, I nearly burst into tears thinking about how horribly that night could have gone if those two men hadn’t come along. Thankfully, he has been put back into a state institution. With any luck, he’ll stay there for good. Mountain Man, let’s not meet again.

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Link to the story

#Lets not meet #Lets not meet story #Reddit #Creepy #Scary stories #The Midnight Society

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Turn It Off

I rested my arms behind my head, skim-reading the credits of a movie I’d just watched. After seeing them through about half way, I lifted myself from the sofa and walked to the kitchen, stretching my arms out above me. I opened the fridge door and found a full cartoon of juice, so I sat down on the kitchen counter by the window, cracked open the lid, and took several long, noisy gulps. When I couldn’t drink anymore, I gasped to let in new air and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. My evenings were uneventful around this time in summer. It was 9:15pm on a Saturday in July; school was out for the holidays and my parents had gone to visit my aunt and uncle who lived by the coast, they would still be gone for 2 more weeks. I declined the invitation to join them, I didn’t dislike the place or my relatives, but we usually stayed there so long that I’d miss most of summer break, and I’d truthfully rather spend it with my friends in town. I was a good kid who knew how to wash clothes and use an oven, and generally not an idiot, so they let me stay at the house so long as I kept it clean.

As I sat, I looked out into the garden to check for anything scary in the dark, it was empty and black. I kind of wished we had a pet, a dog or a cat would be nice about now, but their hair always made me sneeze and my eyes go red and itchy. With that in mind my dad said no, even though I wouldn’t mind it. 9:22pm, I put the rest of the juice cartoon back in the fridge door, and went back over to the window. Hoisting myself onto the counter again, I glanced out to the garden and identified the shadows one by one to make sure everything was in it’s place. The bushes were their usual shape, two small trees stood together by the back fence and a metal table with 4 chairs sat casually on the patio. I liked to check these things, which is largely why I wasn’t scared of the dark. I would always get up to investigate small noises in the night, and I hated sleeping with my face to the wall. If someone was in my room at night, I’d rather know about it so at least there was the faintest chance of getting away somehow. This meant that my worries were quickly put to rest as I either found nothing downstairs but the radiator popping with the heat, or opened my eyes to see an empty bedroom. Not knowing what could be making the odd noises coming from the kitchen, or on the stairs, or in my room is what makes my skin creep.

9:30pm, I got down from the counter and wandered back into the living room to turn off the TV, and decided to take the rest of the juice upstairs. I went back into the kitchen, opened the fridge door, and stopped. Turning my head to focus outside, I could see someone was standing in the garden. I shut the fridge door and turned off the light so they couldn’t see me so easily, and moved slowly to lean on the kitchen counter to get a better look. All the doors were locked and all the neighbours were home, I took a moment to remind myself this. Still, my heart quickened a bit as I stood there straining to see his or her shape in the darkness at the end of the garden. I had to keep glancing away to keep their fuzzy outline clear in my vision. They were standing very still, and were a little thin, but that’s all I could see, I couldn’t tell anything else.

‘Oh.’ I said aloud. It was the garden umbrella leaning up against the back fence, I forgot that we used it for barbeques. I smiled at myself, pleased that I didn’t get too worked up and went upstairs to my bedroom. I laid on the bed and propped my head up on a pillow, opening my laptop on my stomach to see if anybody was online. Apparently someone else was bored and saw my name pop up.

Chris: Hey! Me: Hey, you ok? Chris: Yeah, bored, are your parents still away? Me: For a couple more weeks Chris: Why don’t I come round? Me: I don’t want to be rude, but I kind of can’t be bothered to hang out tonight lol, thanks though Chris: I know what you mean, it’s cool, what about tomorrow? Me: Yeah that sounds better Chris: Cool, I’ll be round about 1, I’ve got some family stuff to do in the morning Me: okay Chris: Do you still have a tent btw? We can camp in the garden or something. Me: Aww a slumber party, I love you too bro x Chris: Whatever lol, you got the tent though? Me: Yeah somewhere, let me check. Brb.

I got up from my bed and headed to check the cupboard under the stairs. I didn’t know where the tent was but it seemed a good place to start. I opened the cupboard door and started shifting coats aside, some cardboard boxes were stacked up at the back and might be hiding it, so I started unstacking them. I took out a couple of the easy to reach ones and had a stroke of good luck as the tent bag came into view. I leaned over the other boxes, and picked up the bag, and took the big garden umbrella that sat beside it too, just in case it rained tomorrow. I paused. I put the tent down.

It took me a couple of seconds to get back to the kitchen window and focus on the darkness outside. My eyes weren’t yet adjusted to the dark, so I couldn’t see all the way to the back fence. Turning off the kitchen light I leaned on the counter and continued staring at the same point. The other garden features began to fade into view one by one, fitting my previous mental image. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see, the darkness gave way to the familiar forms I knew, but after a while, I was certain there still stood a figure against the back garden fence. It hadn’t moved. I stood there for 15 minutes looking at it, I couldn’t tell it’s shape properly, but it did look like someone standing there. I decided it wasn’t a threat; I thought if I was in any real danger I would’ve been a lot more worried by now, that thought kept me calm. But I also wanted to find out what it was. I couldn’t stand there forever, I jogged upstairs, picked up my laptop, and brought it down to with me to the counter.

Me: Could you come round now? Chris: Oh? Me: Yeah, I think I can see something in my garden. Chris: What Is it? An animal? Me: No it’s tall, I thought it was an umbrella. Chris: And now you’re sure it isn’t? Me: I don’t know, I thought it was someone, but now I’m sure it’s not a person. It just looks weird and I don’t think it was there before. Chris: Before when? Me: I don’t know, earlier today maybe? I can’t remember. Chris: Are you scared? Me: I’d feel better if someone else was here Chris: Well I did offer to come round, and I am bored… Me: So yeah? Chris: Yeah, I’ll come soon Me: Cool, thanks, use the front gate.

I sat there watching the black shape lean against the fence for another 10 minutes, eventually, the doorbell rang. I opened it and Chris ran in, and bear hugged me.

‘It’s been too long!’ Chris mock-cried. ‘Yeah it must have been a whole day.’ I retorted, smiling. ‘The torment!’ He replied, pretending to ignore me. ‘Look, come over here.’ I said, pushing him off and walking to the kitchen. I switched off the light and pointed in the figure’s direction. ‘Look’. ‘Give me a sec,’ Said Chris, ‘I can’t see properly…’ A minute later he noticed, ‘That black thing?’ ‘Yeah’. ‘Um…’ We both stood there looking at it for a while. I half expected it to be gone when he looked. He leaned over the counter. ‘It’s just a big plant or plank of wood or something, Let’s go watch TV.’ ‘Will you check with me to make sure?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a torch?’ he returned. ‘No.’ I admitted. ‘Well, we could check if we keep the kitchen light on and open the back door a little.’ he offered. I thought for a second and agreed, but said we should stay right by the house.

We slipped on our trainers and opened the back door, stepping onto the patio I felt the air was heavy and warm that night. Chris walked behind me. We stood very close to the door, peering at the back fence.

‘Should we-‘, I had just started to speak when he quickly stepped into the house again, still looking at the fence. ‘What?’ I asked following him in. I turned, and realised that the figure was gone. It was obvious from the light coming from the back door, that the fence and the rest of the garden was just as it always was. ‘Where is it?’ Chris said. ‘If it was leaning against the fence, it probably fell over into a bush or something.’ I tried to convince us both. We stared out for a few seconds longer, and decided that we were too nervous to go and check. I don’t usually give into my night terrors, but now they were just beginning to click into my head. ‘Can you stay over for the night?’ I asked Chris. ‘Um, yeah, sure…’ It didn’t sound like he really wanted to. He kept his eyes on the fence. We both went inside and locked the door before going up to my room. I got out a sleeping bag for Chris, and drew the curtains without looking outside into the garden again. We talked about stupid stuff for a couple of hours to take our minds off the garden, and fell asleep.

In the morning, I found Chris’s sleeping bag empty. I called out to Chris and he said he was downstairs, so I threw on a T-shirt and went down. ‘Sleep well?’ I asked. ‘Yeah pretty well, but I kept thinking about the garden and stuff. Hey, did you find that tent?’ He returned. ‘Er, yeah.’ I answered, remembering that shape which I had forgotten about until now. ‘Well, I was thinking about the camping thing, and thought maybe we could bring the tent to my house. It would just make a change you know?’ I didn’t have to ask him why, I wasn’t to keen on staying in my garden after last night. Wait, last night… Come to think of it, the sun was up and I wanted to check the garden while it wasn’t pitch black. I asked Chris and he hesitantly agreed.

We put on our trainers and stepped out into the garden. I don’t know what we were so worried about, it was bright and colourful. The plants and bushes around the edges of the garden smelled good, and there was a bird in one of the small trees singing out for it’s mate somewhere. We walked to the back fence to find nothing out of place, and looked over the bushes in front of the panelling to check if anything lay behind them. We found nothing. I walked around the edge of the whole garden once more while Chris tried whistling to the bird. It cocked it’s head from side to side trying to figure him out. It was a warm day, perfect for camping that evening, I decided.

We talked as we filled a couple of rucksacks with sleeping bags and some food from the kitchen. We didn’t want to set up a fire, so we packed some tinned hot dogs, bread, a packet of tomatoes, and chocolate, as well as some bottles of water. ‘There’s a forest just next to my house which is actually pretty good,’ Chris explained ‘Our garden backs onto the edge of it. I stayed in a tent there once with my dad for my first little camping trip when I was like, 7. I remember I was so excited at the time, I thought we were really roughing it like some hardcore mountaineers.’ Chris laughed at himself. ‘If we get too cold or need more food we can just go to my house. My parents are out so we’ll have free run of the place anyway.’ ‘Yours are away too?’ I questioned. ‘It’s their anniversary so they’re out for the night,’ he explained, ‘They’re staying in a hotel the next town over, they’ll be back in the morning.’ Apparently leaving your kids behind was in fashion this summer.

At about noon we left my house with the 2 rucksacks, a sleeping bag for each of us, and the tent, and made our way to Chris’s house. It was fairly close by, and a part of the same pleasant neighbourhood. We talked and joked a lot walking side by side, nodding and greeting a couple of familiar neighbours as we went. It was a crazy nice day, the sun was almost too much, it was hot on our necks, and the trees by the sidewalk seemed to glow green from underneath as the sunlight passed through the leaves. A sprinkler offered us some water as we walked by one house, and it felt good on my hot arms. I was already sweating by the time we got to Chris’s place, we hadn’t been walking for more than 20 minutes. We didn’t go inside his house immediately because it was so hot, so we went straight to his garden and dumped our bags in the shade. He wasn’t joking, the gate of his garden backed straight onto an impressive forest. very tall, thin trees stood high above the house, and continued as far as I could see. Some bushes and shrubs littered the forest floor, but most of it was either grass, or fairly smooth sections of dirt. I didn’t see how this forest was classed as ‘small’.

‘Looks good right?’ he boasted. ‘It’s awesome.’ I admitted, opening the gate and surveying the area. I walked out in between the trees and found a flat spot for the tent. I turned around to ask Chris’s opinion, and paused, a little disappointed. It didn’t feel like real camping when his house was so obviously in our faces. ‘Let’s go a little further in so it at least feels legit.’ I said, and walked back to pick up my bags, Chris objected to carrying his ‘heavy shit’ any further. We walked in a straight line from Chris’s house, and kept checking behind us until the house was just about obscured by trees in front of each other. We had only gone a very short way in but the forest was already thicker and greener, there was even a long rope swing hanging from one of the trees, but it looked too old to hold our weight, so we decided to keep our spines unbroken and give it a miss. I unpacked the tent and set it up with Chris’s help, and we threw our sleeping bags inside. I laid down inside to test it out. It was so warm and humid I had to adjust my breathing for a second. I stepped out again, and asked Chris if he had a torch for the evening.

‘I can do better than that.’ was his response and he took off towards the house. I was too hot to run after him, so I opened my rucksack and cracked open a bottle of water, downing half of it and putting the rest back in the pack. I Laid down on a patch of grass and looked up at the canopy. The leaves were shifting gently in a breeze I couldn’t feel from down here, and I watched them sway and mesh together until I heard Chris return.

‘Did you get a torch?’ I asked closing my eyes. The sun shone through my eyelids and coloured my vision red. I listened to the soft sound of his footsteps on the grass as he walked past me towards the rope swing. ‘That’s not going to hold you,’ I warned as I heard him tug the branch with a small creak. He tugged it and it creaked in response. I listened. He tugged it once more, and again. There was a moment of silence as I guessed he was still weighing it up, and then another tug. He continued to tug a few more times, and the creaking followed each one. I was sure it wouldn’t hold his weight, and I smiled predicting one big creak and a snap as the rope or the branch broke. I waited as some final tugs were made. Creak, creak. I waited still. Creak, creak, creak.

‘Yo!’ I heard Chris’s voice coming from his garden, I sat bolt upright almost spraining my neck as I snapped my head sideways to face his house. He was jogging through the trees holding an electric lantern. I switched my gaze in the other direction towards the rope swing. It was hanging still, nothing nearby. I stood up and turned full circle, nothing in any other direction.

‘What…’ I mouthed to myself walking towards the rope. I tugged it gently, it didn’t creak. I pulled it harder, it didn’t creak. My mouth went dry. I jumped up, grabbed hold, and yanked it down. The branch bent a little as my feet touched the floor, and still it didn’t make a sound. I kept hold of it as I stared up towards the branches, but eventually the rope gave way under my weight somewhere in the middle, and a soft thud fell on my ears as the thick rope fell in front of me. Chris was rattling the lantern as he came by.

‘I’ve never used this before, I got it for Christmas from my cousin. She buys some weird presents. Ah, I see the swing is dead, lets have a proper burial in memory of all the joy it gave us!’ I didn’t respond. I continued looking up at the branch with half a rope swing tied to it. ‘…Hey, are you good?’ Chris followed my gaze.

‘I thought you’d already come back,’ I said immediately, I wasn’t the type to let things slide with an “oh… it’s nothing.” ‘What?’ He replied. ‘Someone walked by me and was messing around with the rope swing.” ‘Who was it?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Are they still around?’ ‘I don’t know! I had my eyes closed and was laying just there,’ I pointed, ‘but then I heard you shout, so I looked around and there was nothing here. I heard them walk by my head.’ I felt a bit sick. ‘Look, calm down a second’. Chris began. ‘It’s the middle of the day, we’re 30 feet from my house, and even if it was a person, so what? It’s just some public woods, anyone can come through here.’ That made some sense, and he was right about it being public. But then where were they? I glanced around one more time, however the trees quickly layered up and I couldn’t see far at all. I guessed it was possible for me to lose track of someone here in a short distance. ‘Okay.’ I said ‘Man… I can stay alone in the house for weeks on end, but I can’t handle a short walk through the woods on a summers day.’ ‘That’s why you’ve brought some muscle!’ Declared Chris, wielding the lantern above his head, and I laughed.

We spent the day walking around the forest, and returned to the tent to get some water when we were too hot. We talked about school and what our plans were for the future. We talked about dreams we’d had, and ghosts, and creatures that lurked in the dark. Neither of us were too scared of things like that, but they made for good camping stories. Chris told a particularly good one of a woman who lived in the woods. She had the head of a cat and if you heard her raspy meow, that meant she was trying to find you. If she stopped meowing, it signified you were found, and she was quickly making her way towards you. It made my skin crawl a little, and we stopped telling stories soon after that.

The light of day eventually faded, and it was getting hard to see, so we headed back to the tent for the night. The impressive heat during the day had killed our appetites, so we left the food for now and decided we’d eat it in the night if we got hungry. Chris hung the electric lantern at the front of the tent, flicking it on as he did so. It was surprisingly bright, and spilled a yellow light onto the ground and onto the trees that faced us. The warm glow looked dramatic, but whatever was beyond the light was hidden in blackness. Our immediate area was clear, but after a few paces the light seemed to stop dead. It looked weird. Chris ducked under the tent opening and I followed him. The sleeping bags looked inviting as the heat from earlier had gone and it was too cold for shirts and shorts. We got inside and took the lantern with us. ‘Can you hear meowing?’ I said, my head tilted as I strained to hear. ‘Yeah, I can hear some bullshit too!’ Chris smiled and zipped up his sleeping bag. Damn, I thought I had him, oh well, I zipped up my own bag and we laid there talking for a little while, and then the exhaustion of such a hot summer’s hit us and we fell asleep.

I had a dream that we were walking to Chris’s house again, but there were more trees than before, and it was getting dark very quickly. I blinked, and suddenly it was night, with the forest sprawling in every direction. The rope swing hung in front of me. I turned around and Chris was gone. I heard a creak behind me, a feeling came over me like I’d missed a step on the stairs. For some reason, I couldn’t turn around. I started walking straight ahead, and the rope swing soon came into my view again, I was aware I was in a nightmare. The rope swing slowly lifted itself up into the trees and I watched it disappear. I walked over and stood beneath where it had been, and there was a rustle above me. As I lifted my eyes to the canopy, a black figure with the head of a cat came hurtling downwards with it’s mouth open horrifically wide, one of it’s teeth touched my left eye, and I tore myself awake, gasping as I sat up in the tent. My back was damp with sweat and Chris was asleep next to me, the lantern was still on and I could see our backpacks at the end of the tent. I took a moment to breathe and then let myself lay back down, my head thumping on the floor a little too hard. I winced and reached for the bottle of water to my side, downing a few mouthfuls. I couldn’t fall asleep with the glow of the lantern on my eyelids, so I sat up and searched the tent for it. I quickly realized the light was coming from outside.

‘Chris?’ I said, still confused from sleep. He mumbled something in reply. ‘Chris, where’s the lantern?’ ‘Uh…Somewhere….’ He said slowly and sleepily, before turning over. Looking around again, the light was obviously coming from outside. I weighed up the options. Either some murderer had snuck into our tent and done nothing but take the lantern outside. Or, we didn’t actually bring it into the tent and I had remembered wrongly. That sounded more convincing. So I knelt by the tent door and unzipped it. From the opening I looked around, it wasn’t immediately obvious where the glow was coming from. Why couldn’t I see it? I looked up. The lantern was resting 20 feet in the air, hanging in the dark. Goosebumps swept across my skin and I zipped up the door before shaking Chris.

‘Chris, please wake up!’ He heard the urgency in my voice and sat up. ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Chris said, rubbing his eyes. ‘The Lantern’s hanging outside.’ ‘But I brought it in.’ He assured me. I felt sick as my reasoning broke. We both looked at the front of the tent. ‘We should go back to the house.’ I said, my resolve buckling. I was just a kid in a forest who’s parents were away. ‘I’m not walking through the dark.’ He replied, Chris was now looking worried. ‘We’ve got a Lantern-‘ I stopped myself. We looked at the front of the tent again. We couldn’t sit there forever. We were getting scared as we sat there doing nothing, so this was the plan; we weren’t going back to sleep, we would get the lantern back somehow, leave everything here, and spend the night in Chris’s house.

I hated being the one to go first. I wanted to turn back even just crouching by the tent entrance. Unzipping the fabric door I looked around, nothing. I peered over the tent behind us, nothing in sight. Literally nothing, everything was black outside of the light. I took a step out and it was cold, Chris said the same as he stood right by my side looking over his shoulder. He turned back and saw the lantern in the air. ‘Oh my god.’

We stood there looking at it for a few seconds that seemed to crawled by. Eventually I worked out which tree it was hanging from, the broken rope swing at my feet confirmed it. Way up out of reach, the lantern hung above our heads, tied to the other end of the rope that still dangled from the darkness. I couldn’t work it out, it was high up, too high up for even a ladder. The trees were thin and bare besides the leaves that made up the canopy, There was no where to climb. Picking up the length of rope that had snapped off earlier, I bundled it up and tied a knot, and aimed at the lantern. I took a step back and jumped, tossing it into the air. It caught the lantern on it’s side and sent it swinging. It threw shadows rocking around us, I suddenly wished it hadn’t hit it. The light made the shadows lean from side to side with the lantern. The horrible, unnatural swaying made me panic and my eyes became wet as fear took a solid hold of me. I picked up the rope again, and lobbed it desperately at the lantern. I missed, and the bundle of rope sailed off into the darkness. Helplessly I turned to Chris who had already grabbed his backpack. He span around and threw it with a yelp, and it hit the lantern dead on. it fell and thudded to the floor with a crack, but the light was still on, I ran to pick it up.

I turned to Chris and almost cried with relief. ‘Okay go, go, go, let’s go!’ I urged, and he started jogging quickly towards his house as I followed. We half ran, half stumbled off into the dark, checking over our shoulders and working ourselves up as our thoughts were consumed by everything that may be waiting in the trees for us. I don’t know how long we were moving, but it soon became apparent that Chris’s house wasn’t in this direction. ‘For God’s sake, where is it!’ Chris said, tension taking hold of his voice, ‘We’ll have to find the tent and try again.’ A couple of tears were forming at the corners of his eyes. They were probably on mine too, but my heart was thumping so hard I didn’t notice. ‘Okay.’ I took a breath and we turned around, heading in a straight line directly behind us. What if we didn’t find the tent? I couldn’t stop myself thinking that over and over as we retraced our steps. We walked for what seemed like twice as long, before the light finally fell on the side of the tent.

We ran up and stood close to it’s side, looking around to try and figure out which direction we should go. The silence was like the build up of a nightmare, right before some horrible thing lurches out at you, screaming. The comparison made me gag and I scrunched my eyes shut, the hair on my skin lifting. My temples were so hot it felt like my brain was thudding against the inside of my skull. I couldn’t begin to guess where the house was. We could see about ten feet from the lantern, and then pitch black, there were no clues. Every direction looked wrong. Chris took the lantern from me and walked in a small circle, straining his eyes to try and see. I stayed put.

‘Chris, Turn it off.’ I whispered to him hurriedly ‘What?’ He asked I stepped quickly and quietly towards him, bringing my face to his. ‘There’s something in the tent.’

His gaze shifted past me towards the tent and he stood there staring. We were standing on the left hand side of the tent, and from this angle I could just about see the unzipped door hanging open, but I remembered leaving it that way. So that wasn’t what was making me clench my teeth together. A few feet away, my rucksack sat outside on the dry earth, with the food I had packed, now neatly arranged trailing from it. Our sleeping bags were also nicely laid out, end to end, making the line of belongings lead straight into the mouth of the tent. I took a careful step forward so the light could pass more easily through the fabric. It couldn’t have been a trick of the light, something big and dark was obviously crouched, with what I guessed was it’s front, facing the open door. I hated myself for not seeing it sooner. It didn’t move at all, or seem to breathe, it just sat, waiting for us to investigate the display it had made.

‘Turn it off.’ I whispered again. Chris continued staring, deaf to me. ‘CHRIS.’ I pleaded in a whisper.

A voice from nearby joined in.

‘Chris.’

We both heard it and the blood fell in our veins. It came from the tent. A slow, strained, rasp of a voice that sounded like a parrot copying a new word. The sound clicked across my skin and crept into my ears. The light flicked off with a click that was too loud. Chris grabbed my shoulder, and I clenched my fists closed, painfully tight. We stood there in complete darkness, I didn’t want to move and I didn’t want to stay. My brain fought for control as my legs waited for a decision, rooted in place. We breathed shallow, quiet breaths, blackness pressing on our eyes like water. Sweat ran down my neck, I couldn’t see the tent.

‘Chrisss.’ Something said. ‘Turn it offff.’

My stomach flipped inside out as the thing in the tent played with my words. I quickly grabbed Chris’s hand, yanking him in the opposite direction. I ran like I never had before, Chris’s legs thudding alternately with mine. The sprint continued for about a minute, we lost ourselves as we ran through absolute darkness. I forgot where we were and I couldn’t see what was in front of my face. I ran head on into a tree, and my forehead struck it’s side with a sickening, hollow knock. sparks lit up inside my eyes as I chocked back the pain. It hurt so much I couldn’t breath. Chris tried to pull me on, but I buckled to the floor on my knees and threw up. As I collapsed onto my back, my head went numb, Chris lifted me up.

‘Please don’t stop, please, please!’ He begged, I couldn’t reply. ”Please, please keep going!’ I forced my legs to take my weight as I locked my knees upright, leaning on Chris. My body felt empty and a little blood rolled down my forehead and into my brow, I wiped it away as I tried to grasp the situation again, but the pain was too much. ‘Wait, I can’t!’ I begged, ‘Just wait, just wait…’ We stood together in the inky woods, but we could have been anywhere. I couldn’t see Chris as he huddled next to me, it didn’t feel like darkness, it felt like someone had wrapped my head in a blanket.

Neither of us said a word as we waited, but our breathing was loud, and I wondered from what distance it could be heard. Reality began to return to me, and the pain was now just about bearable, I straightened up, grasping at what was happening, the pins of fear sank into me a second time, and I started counting in my head. One minute passed without any sound in the world. The wind was dead, and the birds might be too. another minute went by, I continued counting. Three minutes. We were still alone, was it even looking for us? I reached for Chris’s arm in the dark, he jumped when I touched it, but I steadied him with the other, he was still holding the lantern, good. We had light on our side, now if only we could use it. I went over the events hurriedly in my mind; the lantern was hanging from a tree, we got out of the tent, then couldn’t find our way home. By the time we returned to the tent, something was in it, but then why did it take the lantern and do nothing while we slept? If It was sheer luck that we were alone when we were trying to get the lantern, I wondered just how small the possibility was of us getting a second chance.

I stayed silent for a moment and then whispered as best I could. ‘Chris, we need to turn on the lantern. We need to fucking get away from here, we can make a run for your house but we need to see!’ ‘No! please, we have to stay here!’ Chris tried to whisper too. ‘We can wait for morning if we have to, you can’t turn it on.’ I could hear in his voice that a sob was breaking through. ‘Just keep quiet! You fucking have to, Please!’ I parted my lips to try again, but as I did, I heard something. A very faint clicking sound from somewhere in the dark. It was almost inaudible, but it was there. An irregular, stuttering, clicking sound. It sounded fingernails on a wooden table. And it was moving. It came from in front of us, I was sure of it. A steady ‘click, clack click,’ filled my ears as we tried gauge the distance. It was drawing closer. ‘Click Click Clack.’ It stopped. I was glad for the first time in my life that I couldn’t see what was waiting in the dark, perhaps that meant we were also hidden. As my thoughts fired off in every direction, I gave the thing in the darkness the image of the cat-headed woman, and it terrified me. I was just waiting to hear that meow. But my ears were met with something else.

‘Chris.’ I tensed my throat and tried not to cry. ‘Chris.’

It said his name twice, and I cupped my hand over my mouth, the horrible, scraping dialogue sounded a few steps away. The words were said oddly, with no meaning behind them. They were just sounds that this thing had picked up, and was now using them to catch us out in the dark. Chris let go off my hand and I heard his foot plant softly on the grass behind him as he prepared to run. ‘Don’t you dare.’ I tried to project into his mind. ‘Don’t you make a sound’.

‘Chris. Pleeease.’

It sounded so wrong, drawn out like a door slowly opening. Chris let out a whimper as it called him. I froze and waited for something, anything to happen. There was a long silence and I held my breath for as long as I could. I couldn’t wait anymore. Very slowly I reached out to Chris and put my hand on his shoulder, and very carefully we both lifted our feet and managed to step without making a sound. We back stepped away from the voice and didn’t stop moving, but ever so carefully. So, so slowly. I didn’t care how long it would take us to get somewhere, if it took us an hour every step, we were going to get out. Chris backed into a tree, and gasped audibly. The clicking started up immediately, ‘click click clack click’, it rolled on, consistently moving towards us. I didn’t know what to do, All I could think of was to screw my eyes shut and try not to scream. As we stood there, the clicking came to a stop an arms length away from where we stood. Silence.

‘Chrisss. Turn it on. Pleeease.’

Fear took over, Chris switched on the light and tore off in the other direction without looking behind him, I wheeled in place and held that lantern in my sight like nothing else existed. We didn’t dare look at the thing, but we could hear it. Our footsteps thudded on the grass, and the thing pursued us with a ‘taptaptaptap’, now like scurrying little claws on hard earth. As I ran desperately to catch up to the light, the sound suddenly rose up behind me and over our heads in between the trees. This wasn’t happening, it was going to drop down on us. ‘Turn!’ I screamed. I didn’t care anymore, if we were going to get out with our lives, we were going to have to run for them . We suddenly changed course, the tapping stopped for a moment, long enough for us to gain a few feet before it came in our direction again. My legs were cramping horribly and Chris was gasping hard, We couldn’t keep this up. Where were we? I saw the light from the lantern come to an abrupt halt up ahead, I didn’t have time to stop, and braced myself to thump into Chris, but the light passed beneath my feet. He had dropped the lantern. I turned my head and watched it recede into the darkness, it was immediately too far for me to go back, the thing would be on me in a second.

‘Chris!’ I was crying and swiping tears from my cheeks as I ran, preparing for my face to connect with a tree at any moment. ‘Keep Going!’ I heard Chris from up ahead, ‘there’s a light!’ My vision was bleary from tears but could see it, an orange glow hanging in the air in the distance. Another one? What was happening? I wanted to scream at him to avoid it, but I realized it was a street light. My legs felt like I was running through water, but I pushed them harder with a goal in sight. Gradually and painfully the light drew closer, as did the clicking. This thing could move like nothing I knew. I saw Chris’s figure pass underneath the street light and then he was gone again. ‘Don’t stop!’ I yelled as I approached the edge of the forest, and my legs adjusted as the forest floor gave way to solid footing. I could see a row of more streetlights leading off to the right, and Chris’s figure was passing regularly underneath each. When I was sure I was completely out of the trees I didn’t stop, I ran under several more street lights putting as much distance as I could manage between us and the edge of the woods. I realised after a while that the clicking had stopped, I needed to see we were ok. I turned my head and looked back along the row of lights, keeping my gaze on the first light. my pace slowed as the pain in my head and legs came back. There was silence once more, and the lights revealed an empty pathway. I jogged on and kept my eyes on the glow, expecting to see something at any minute. but it lit up nothing but concrete and the edge of the road.

‘Is it there?’ The question pulsed in my mind over and over. As I turned my head to continue catching up to Chris, I caught sight of something pass under the first street light. An almighty shock went through me as my fears were confirmed, I let out a cry and picked up the pace once more, sprinting between the lights. The image was burned into my mind. I hardly caught a glimpse of the thing, but it was white, and massive, it almost brushed the street light as it went under it. It had a long, upright body full of kinks, like it had just unfolded itself, and that’s all I was able to tell. It must have had a face and limbs, but I didn’t have time to see.

I didn’t look again, the path gave way to more lights and soon I could see the glow of windows in some houses either side of the road, I recognized where we were, close to my house by some miracle. A little further and we would be there. ‘My House!’ I yelled, and Chris listened, turning left onto a side street and dashing down. With panic on my side I reached the turning and looked down the road to see Chris jumping the fence into my garden. ‘Hurry up!’ I heard him scream. Reaching the fence I planted my hands on top, hoisting myself over and shredding my elbows in the process. My ankles stung as I thudded into the garden, and sprinted towards the kitchen door. Chris stepped aside gasping for air as I fumbled the key into the lock and wrenched it sideways. We both flew into the kitchen and slammed the door behind us. I locked it from the inside and we both sprinted upstairs into the bathroom, locking it behind us.

‘What was that!?’ I managed to say in a panicked whisper, wondering if it would get in. ‘Did you see it?’ ‘No.’ Chris crouched under the window, letting tears roll. ‘Shit! It was so tall it- It was- I couldn’t-‘ ‘Don’t tell me’ Chris cut me off. I mulled it over again and again as we sat there, minutes slowly ticked by into hours. My head was fizzing all the while and I could still hear it’s voice, that disgusting voice. My elbows and fore arms were sticky with blood and we both looked at the floor, the occasional sob coming from the two of us. Our hearts banged in our chests, and we spent the night that way.

Light streamed in from the window, but we didn’t unlock the bathroom door until noon. We crept downstairs, the kitchen door was still locked and nothing was in the house. I looked out of the living room window, another perfect day. No people walked by, but the sprinklers were on and I could hear birds again. It helped to calm our nerves. ‘That tent can stay there.’ I said at last. ‘Yeah.’ Chris Agreed. We stayed in the living room with the TV off all day, we didn’t know what to do, and talked about if we should call the police or something. The day crawled by as we tried to rake our thoughts together and think of what to do next. but all that went through my mind was what had just happened, not what we should be doing. By the time it was dark at about 9pm, the phone rang. It was Chris’s parents asking if I had seen him as they were getting worried, they had just got back from out of town. I let them know he was ok, and asked if they could come and pick us both up from my house because something had happened. They wanted to know what, but I said we’d both tell them when they get here. They said they’d be here soon. Relief washed over us as adults were on there way to make everything alright. They would believe us, we didn’t lie about these things. Even if they were sceptical, they’d at least believe that some dangerous animal was in the forest and that was good enough for us.

I went into the kitchen to get some juice from the fridge and realised I hadn’t had a drink all day. I could hear water dripping in the sink, so I turned the faucet tighter and glugged some juice. As I headed towards the living room, the water started to tap again. I flicked the light on and realized it wasn’t coming from the sink, or anywhere in the room for that matter. It sounded like it was coming from further away. I looked out into the garden, and could just about see a fuzzy, tall silhouette leaning up against the back fence in the dark. Actually, the tapping sounded more like clicking. The figure slowly moved away from the fence and clicked across the grass towards the house.

‘Pleaaase.’

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#Turn it off #Creepypasta #scary stories #creepy #The Midnight Society

[the-real-midnight-society-blog]

Stranger Under the Bed

I am 22 and this incident happened a year and a half ago. I had just moved into my first apartment and was in the process of moving in. The door that led into my apartment locks itself automatically when closed. So, I was going to the entrance of the apartment complex to get my mail while talking on the phone with my boyfriend. I returned to my apartment and sat on the bed while opening the mail while using the phone, I dropped the phone on the floor and it landed under the bed so I had to lie on the floor and stretch for it. I saw something that caught my eye, there was someone under my bed... My eyes widened and I choked the urge to scream. The person under my bed was lying still with his back towards me and his head to his chest, so I couldn't see his face. And he didn't see me, trying to be rational while so many thoughts rushed through my head, I picked up the phone, said "Sorry I dropped my phone, I'm just gonna take a shower and call you back."

The bathroom is right by my bed so I hastily walked in, quietly locked the door, turned the shower on, jumped out my window (my apartment is on the first floor) and called the police. They told me to wait nearby, but to go to across the street and see if anyone comes out the door to the apartment complex. This was during summer and it was still light out, I placed myself across the street, hiding behind a car while watching my open bathroom window and the entry door. I called my boyfriend and he came to me just before the police. I gave them my keys and they went inside. Only moments later two cops came out holding a thin and tired looking man. His eyes looked crazy, but he didn't try to get away. The policeman that had stood beside me and comforted me while the police searched through my house (I was a mess, shivering and crying) told me that the man stood outside my bathroom door with one of my kitchen knives waiting for me to come out.

This man had somehow crept in my entry door while I was getting my mail and hid under the bed.The man that was trying to hurt me turned out to be a homeless person and was placed in a mental hospital. My boyfriend moved in with me the very next day. Thanks for reading! I just wanted to share my story so that others might know what to do if a situation like this occurs! The police told me that what I did was truly amazing and rational, if I had screamed, this could've ended really badly for me.

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#lets not meet #reddit #scary stories #creepy #The Midnight Society

[the-real-midnight-society-blog]

Rabbits in the Creek

I’m writing this because my family won’t talk about it anymore. I’m the only one who can’t seem to forget.

I was raised on the outskirts of Preston, a small town in southern Idaho with a population of around 5,000. My more immediate community was an isolated, dead-end dirt road called Bear Creek. Less than twenty families lived on the Bear Creek. I didn’t mind being so isolated. I grew up in the comfort of wide fields and close neighbors that only rural people know.

We were a Mormon community. Very church centered. Very community centered. All the young girls, myself included, were part of the Young Women’s group. And all of the boys were members of the local Boy Scout troop (which doubled as a church group in our area). We had 4th of July parties at the local ballpark and swam in the nearby reservoir. It was a good, quiet community.

My house, a 92 year old farmhouse built by my great-great-grandfather, was situated on a small hill surrounded by a wide grass field on one side, and a snaking dirt road on the other. Across the road was the creek bottoms. Southern Idaho is categorized in a desert climate, so not much grows outside of the irrigated fields besides sage brush and burrs. The creek bottoms were the exception. The creek fed the growth of a thick tangle of pussy-willow bushes. In the late fall we used to go down into the bottoms and pick the white, cottony pussy-willow seeds to decorate the fences of our driveway.

Being so isolated, it wasn’t uncommon for animals to come down from the mountains. We had a female moose who brought her calf down and lived in our orchard every winter. And the occasional lion wasn’t unheard of either.

The summer when I turned eight (I remember because it was the same year as my baptism), a smaller mountain lion was spotted several times in our area. We weren’t worried. The big cats stayed away from the farms and usually moved on when the area didn’t yield enough food.

The same summer my neighbor, Payton, was working on his Eagle Scout project. He loved National Geographic, and thought it would be pretty cool to try putting together a National Geographic submission on our little creek bottoms. The young lion that happened to be in our area at the same time made him especially excited. He decided he wanted to try and get pictures of the lion and e-mailed the National Geographic team for advice.

They recommended setting up an automatic camera that takes shots every couple of seconds in an area the lion was known to visit. They also recommended setting some kind of bait so the lion was more likely to come by. No one in the creek liked the idea of live bait or carrion, so we came up with a different kind of bait.

We decided to set up an audio recording of a dying rabbit and play it on a loop through a set of speakers hidden in the willows. I remember when everyone was down in the bottoms testing the speakers, and I heard the noise for the first time. The sound of a dying rabbit is horrible. It’s been described as being almost identical to the sound of a screaming child. If you’ve never heard it yourself, there’s plenty of recordings available online. It’s worth a listen.

The camera was set up. The speakers were set up. Everything was perfect. Payton explained that he would allow the camera and recording to play uninterrupted for a week, and then he would go check on it. This would give time for our scent to fade from the bottoms and encourage the lion to come closer.

At first I was worried about the noise. It was a truly horrible noise, and our house was the closest to the set-up point in the bottoms. My father assured me that the noise wouldn’t reach as far as our house, and I was relieved when we arrived home that night and he was correct. The bottoms were far enough away that I couldn’t hear anything.

I remember Payton the next day at church. He was fidgety and excited to check on the equipment. But he had to wait a week, which everybody kept reminding him. He couldn’t risk going down too early and scaring the lion away for good.

That night I woke up to an awful noise. I sat ram-rod straight in my bed with my eyes wide in the dark, hands clutched so hard my palms bore the indent of my fingernails for hours after. I knew that noise. It was the recording of the rabbit. It sounded faint, and far off, like it really could have been coming from the bottoms. But that was impossible. Because the recording had been going all night the previous day and I hadn’t heard a thing.

I didn’t sleep that night. I was too scared to get out of bed and wake my parents. The recording played over and over again. I had the loop memorized. In the morning I stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast. My mom and dad were sitting at the kitchen table. They too had dark rings under their eyes. I hadn’t been the only one who’d heard it.

Mom was convinced that the equipment must have been broken. She wanted to go down into the bottoms to check it out. Dad refused. He was a kind, gentle man and didn’t want to stir up any unnecessary drama. He was sure there had been a strong wind last night, and the wind was carrying the noise farther than it’s natural reach. He told us to listen. We did. He was right, we couldn’t hear it now.

We forgot about it and went about our daily goings.

The next night, it happened again. I stayed up in bed with my back to the wall. The screaming was even louder than before. But this time something was different. It was lower pitched than I remember. And parts of the loop were slowed down, as if the recording were warped in places. At times the loop did not loop naturally, and instead picked up at a random place in the middle.

My mom didn’t mention anything at the breakfast table. But both her and my dad seemed tense.

The third night I mustered the courage to stand beside my bedroom window and look out into the yard. For a moment I stood, rooted to the spot, my hands shaking no matter how hard I clenched them. The noise sidled in through the cracks in the window. I watched the outline of the trees in the yard. Perfectly still. Not even the slightest breeze stirred their branches.

My mom announced that she would be going to visit her sisters in town the next day, and would probably spend the night there. She invited me to come along, but I was a daddy’s girl at heart and chose to stay at the farm. I took mom’s place beside dad in their bed that night but even that didn’t help. I don’t think my dad was asleep either, for he was unnaturally still the whole night.

We began to hear the noise during the day too. I was drawing with chalk on the sidewalk when it happened. My shoulders tensed and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. There was only one scream. A short, high pitched one. And then the recording fell silent. It happened again several times throughout the day, but never the whole loop. Just clips from it.

Later that evening Payton’s dad came up the driveway on his 4-wheeler. He said he was looking for their dog, a sweet yellow lab who had been missing since that morning. Dad said he was sorry, and that we hadn’t seen her. I stared at him, silently begging him to mention the recording. But he didn’t. He was a quiet man after all. He didn’t want to bring up any unnecessary drama.

Mom stayed away the whole week. Dad and I didn’t sleep. By Saturday the screaming could be heard constantly, though it seemed to have deviated from the familiar loop entirely. I didn’t recognize any of it. Sometimes the screams were thin and long, other times they were hardly more than growls. Once, while my dad had been heating up meat loaf for lunch, the noise rose into such a rancorous din that he dropped the plate and it shattered. I pressed my hands over my ears where I sat at the table and squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t help. The noise forced its way in through the cracks of my fingers and pinched my throat and rattled in my ribcage. The din lasted for a whole minute, then fell silent.

Dad was shaking. That was the last we heard of the noise that day.

Payton came by Saturday evening to ask permission to cross our road to collect the equipment. He was so excited. I watched him disappear into the creek bottoms with a sense of tired relief. After the equipment was gone, it would all stop. I couldn’t wait to get a full nights sleep.

Not a minute later I spotted Payton coming back up from the creek. I was confused. It had taken us much longer to set up the camera and speakers, so I’d only assumed it would take just as long to collect them. My breath stilled when Payton came closer. He didn’t look right. His eyes were wide and his face pale. Something wet dribbled from his chin and onto his shirt; I later realized it was vomit. My dad caught him before he fell and demanded to know what had happened.

Payton couldn’t speak. He just cried.

We called his dad. I looked after Payton as both my dad and his dad went into the bottoms. They were gone a long time. When they returned, their faces were grim. And they smelled funny. I noticed red on my dad’s hands. I asked what was wrong but they brushed right passed me and immediately called the police.

Nobody would tell me what had happened. I sat on the couch as a blur of neighbors and police officers swirled around me. At one point an officer placed something on the kitchen table and left. I looked into the kitchen curiously. It was the camera from the bottoms.

I wish I hadn’t looked.

The camera was a little banged up. Tiny scratches and dents covered the plastic casing. When I lifted it my hands stuck to the plastic. Something tacky and odorous covered the screen, but it turned on fine.

The first set of photos were normal. Just the pussy-willows cast green in the glow of the night setting. As I continued to click through them they quickly became strange. At one point the camera angle changed, as if the camera had been knocked from its post. Grass now obscured most of the frame. Flecks of red appeared on the lens and remained for the rest of the sets. One photo made me pause.

There was a figure in this one. Or half of a figure as most of the upper torso hadn’t made it into the frame. I thought it could be human. But it didn’t look like it should be standing upright. It’s legs were twisted, like an animal, and it seemed to be having difficulty supporting itself in an upright position. Beside the legs a long, thin arm hung. Whatever it was must have been stooped over, for its fingertips hung below its crooked knees.

The next set was different. It was as if the camera had been picked up, and was now being held. The first photo was of the bottoms at night. The next startled me. I had to look closely before deciding what it was. A rabbit had been laid in the bushes, but its ears and most of its scalp had been peeled away. The next was of the same rabbit, but a thin, dark hand was holding it up against the sky. It’s limp body hung like something from a nightmare.

In the following photos more rabbits joined the one, each with their ears and scalp removed. Then a cat. Then more cats. Then a dog, the yellow lab. Then the lion. The following photo was of seven rabbits, three cats, one dog, and the lion all laid out in a row facing the same way. Their arms and legs had been arranged as if they were marching. Like some parade. All of their scalps had been removed and tiny white glints of their skulls could be seen.

The last photo was overly bright. Like the photo had been taken too close with the flash on. An eye dominated the frame, but it was yellowed and crusty, and had a bar pupil like a horse. In the bottom corner the edge of a mouth could be seen. No lips. Just teeth. Sharp and little, with wide gaps of red gum between them.

I wish I hadn’t looked.

I heard my dad talking to the police outside. They said the speakers had malfunctioned. The recording had only played the first night.

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#lets not meet #lets not meet stories #creepy #reddit #scary stories #The Midnight Society

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Sorry!

Messing with the queue and accidentally posted tonight’s story. I’ll mix it up with something new. Look forward to it tonight :)

[the-real-midnight-society-blog]

The Leather Cape

Early in the summer a few years ago, I started dating this girl whose mother worked at the local flea market. The girl – let’s call her Tiffany – and I had been dating for a few months when she asked me if I would like to come help her work with her mom. I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice one of my precious Saturday mornings to go work all day at a dusty flea market, but I really liked this girl and, to be perfectly honest, wanted to get into her pants, so I decided to go.

That’s how I found myself on my way to the craphole flea market at seven thirty in the morning on a Saturday morning that I really wish I had slept in on. We opened her mom’s store at eight, waited around for customers for a while, but when it got close to ten and only one woman had shown a passing interest in the handmade ashtrays her mom was trying to sell, she told Tiffany and I we could go take a look around the rest of the place.

Tiffany and I walked around for a while, but we didn’t find anything of interest. There was a movie store that had pretty much every movie you could think of, but so did I at home, so no help there. Both of the book stores were a bust, finding nothing interesting but some old Stephen King novels that I already owned and a crotchety old man who watched us like a hawk – probably because we were some “damn teenagers” who, of course, would go out of our way to steal an old dusty book barely held together with spit and glue. We had meandered our way through most of the building when we happened upon a small shop that was selling EXCLUSIVE! RARE! HARD-TO-FIND TV PROPS! according to the very loud banner stretched across the top. “Want to go in?” I asked Tiffany.

“Nah, I have to go use the bathroom. You can go in though.”

“Oh, fine, make me go into the shady store by myself!” I joked.

“You’ll be fine. Go!”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. You have to go inside. I’ll be right back.” She gave me a playful slap and walked away.

As I walked into the dingy booth, the owner gave me a grim nod without a smile. I didn’t really see anything of interest at first. They really did have some obscure stuff, such as old plush dolls from Rocko’s Modern Life and Ren & Stimpy. There were also some old Pokémon playing cards – not sure if that counted as “rare TV props” but it was still cool – and even some of the old Nickelodeon themed board games. I had several nice hits of nostalgia, but nothing really stuck out at me enough to make me want to buy it. I was about to walk out when the owner said “got some more stuff here behind the counter.”

He pulled out a box of assorted dolls and junk and dropped it carelessly on the counter. “Ain’t had a chance to put them away yet, but you can look.” I half heartedly picked through the box out of politeness, but I really just wanted to get out of there. I pulled out a couple of old Rugrats dolls and a Squidward doll that had an odd red stain on its head, and was about to just say “no thanks” and put them back and get out of there when I saw something that hit me with such an intense blast of nostalgia that I almost fell over. A dirty white skull stared at me from the bottom of the box, his huge, black glass eyes that were entirely too large for his head – just as I remembered. I reached down and picked him up, almost forgetting the entire world around me as I looked over the thing I had completely forgotten about until this moment. The tan top hat and cape, made of some of the roughest leather I’ve ever felt, was sewn up in the same crazy patterns I remembered so vividly from my childhood. As I rubbed some of the dirt off of his body, noting the feeling of a rough little bump on his hat and the leathery stitches holding together his clothing, I noticed that his jaw didn’t open all the way. Instead, it barely opened just a bit and slid sideways, from left to right, making an almost unpleasant grinding noise. Every detail was exactly as I remembered.

“Well?”

I jerked out of my stupor with a start. Looking stupidly at the owner, I used every ounce of intelligence I possess to come up with a brilliant reply. “Uh. What?”

“I said, are you gonna buy it or just stand there all day molesting it? Come on kid, I wanna go on lunch.”

“Uh… yeah. I’ll take it.” There was no way I was letting this go. “Would you happen to know if this is… like, actually from the show?”

“Kid,” (I really wished he would stop calling me kid. Just because he was probably in his late fifties doesn’t mean he can address me, at 26 years of age, as a kid) “I don’t even know what show that’s from. All this crap is my brother’s. He would tell you that it’s all the real deal. But I just wanna get rid of it.”

“Well, I hate to be a bother, but is there anyway I could get in contact with him? This show doesn’t even… well, I just need to know if this is actually from the show.”

“Can’t. Dead. Three months now. And the doll is ten bucks. Take it or leave it.”

I handed the rude owner the cash and left the shop with the doll, deep in thought. There was no way this doll should even exist. That show didn’t exist. There was no way it did. I had dreamt it all, hadn’t I? All that screaming…

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even see Tiffany until she was almost right in my face. “Oh, hi.”

“Hi! Did you actually find something in the shady store?”

“Uh… yeah.” I told her about the doll. She didn’t recognize it, but I didn’t really expect her to. Our conversation quickly turned to other things, such as the creepy old lady she had encountered in the bathroom who had taken up fifteen minutes of her time asking too many personal questions.

We finished out the day, her mom thanked us for our help, and we spent the day together. For those who are curious, I did not succeed in getting in her pants, but that’s inconsequential to the story.

Anyway, that night when I got back to my apartment, I pulled out the doll, something I’d been dying to do all day but had avoided so I didn’t seem like a freak, and gave it a closer look. I couldn’t get over how genuine the cape felt. I loved the feeling of running my fingers over it, enjoying the smooth, yet rough, texture of the stitches. The top hat was removable, and the glass eyes were indeed made of really thick glass. It was all as I had remembered. I was in utter shock, even still. How did this exist?

I sat on my couch and began thinking about the show. Candle Cove. God, I hadn’t thought about that show in easily fifteen, maybe even twenty years. I couldn’t have been older than six or seven when it ran. I only remember it being on for a couple of months before it got cancelled. I remember greatly enjoying it at the time. I would come home from school, always so excited and always making my mom turn the TV channel 58 to watch it. I remembered sitting on the floor, way too close to the TV, watching her turn the dial with the finger that had a mole on it, always the same way every time. Yeah, I’m old enough that the TVs of my childhood still had manual dials instead of a remote, so sue me. I chuckled to myself. I hadn’t thought about any of that for so long. I missed my mom, thinking back on it now. She had passed away about five years ago from skin cancer, and it had hit me hard. She had always been such a big influence in my life. She would always tell me about what an imagination I had, and how she just knew it would take me far. I wish she had lived long enough to see me graduate college and land a job at a small, independent film company where I edited movies. It certainly didn’t make me famous or anything, but it paid very well and I was responsible for some of the better editing in many different films. Some of which I knew she would have loved to watch. I missed her terribly. I missed how when I was sad she would pretend to draw on my face, and I would always watch the mole on her finger as it traced my face because I thought her “freckle mountain,” as I called it, was pretty cool. I missed the way she would chuckle and shake her head at me as I watched the show, remarking on what a big imagination I had “with my little pirate show.” I had always wondered exactly what she meant, but the older I got, the more I realized it must have all been my imagination. The whole thing. The entire show must have been me just thinking too much or something because there was no way that they could have aired that episode. The one with all the screaming… All the characters, screaming bloody murder and jumping and flailing. I remembered vividly the horrible feelings I got from that episode, and even as a child I thought it was strange. Things like that don’t even get aired today, much less all the way back in ‘71.

I must have been rubbing my finger over the doll’s face again, and hadn’t noticed what I was doing until I felt a strong pinch. I gasped and looked down, and quickly pulled my finger out of the doll’s mouth. What the fuck? Why did that hurt so bad? The teeth weren’t sharp or anything. I hadn’t even realized I had put my finger in there. I must have bumped his jaw or something and pinched myself. I sighed and shook my head at my own foolishness, and went back to looking at the doll that was responsible for so many of my childhood nightmares.

As I examined the doll’s mouth, I found myself wondering why it only moved side to side. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more the memories came flooding back. The Laughingstock… Jesus. That old piece of shit pirate ship that was always so close to falling apart. The Ed Wynn voice it had, telling the pirates they had to go inside some place and face the danger – usually the Skin-Taker, whose image I held in my very hand. I remember Janice, the little girl from the show, asking the Skin-Taker why his mouth moved like that. God… What was it he had said? I strained the muscles of my memory until I suddenly got goosebumps when the phrase drifted through my mind, leaving icy trails of fear running down my back.

“To grind your skin…”

It was such a cheesy thing to say, but there was nothing cheesy about the way he had glared so silently into the camera with his evil, black eyes, almost challenging someone to defy him.

Shaking off my childish fears, I tossed the doll on my coffee table and went to go take a shower. I needed to clear my head, but the entire time in the shower my thoughts only wandered more and more. I started remembering more about the final episode that had aired, and the way all the puppets and Janice had screamed and thrashed and shook so violently… there hadn’t even been a plot or anything. The entire episode had consisted of nothing but all the characters screaming and crying and it was all so chaotic and traumatic. I remembered how I had started to cry and my mom had run in from the other room, asking me what was wrong, and I had told her through my tears how Janice was crying and no one was helping her and my mom had turned off the TV and picked me up and made me feel better. Then she went and put me to bed, tracing my face with the finger until I fell asleep and had terrible nightmares all night long about the Skin-Taker chasing me and screaming incessantly… all these thoughts ran through my mind and even though my shower water was pretty hot, I still had chills all over my body.

It didn’t help that when I turned off the water, I could hear my TV was on.

I froze. I knew I hadn’t left my TV on. I hadn’t even turned it on since I got home. I had simply walked through the door and sat on my couch and looked at the doll, and I knew I had never even touched the remote to the TV. I slowly got out of the shower and dried off, listening carefully to the sounds coming from my living room. I couldn’t believe my ears.

Calliope music.

The last set of memories came with a refreshing course of nostalgia. My mother’s finger, the one with the mole that had always comforted me so, turning the dial to the station with all the static. The station always had static, I remembered that. Until 4:00, when Candle Cove came on, there was never anything but static, but when Candle Cove came on the calliope music, ridiculously happy, would start to bleed through the static, slow and distorted at first but speeding up and being more bouncy as the picture cleared and Pirate Percy and his friends greeted Janice to a new day full of adventures. Now I suspected that it had always been static even when the show was on… maybe that was why my mother had shaken her head and laughed at me. But, if it had always been static, where did the doll come from? How did it even exist if the show did not? I was so confused, and the stupid, catchy music coming from my living room was not only making me more confused but was creeping me out a bit too. Shaking off my thoughts, I opened the door and heard the tail end of a sentence spoken in a voice that sounded remarkably like Ed Wynn…

“…GO INSIDE!” it was saying.

I stepped out and slowly walked into the living room. My hallway was ridiculously long and it only served to increase my tension, but just as I rounded the corner, the TV turned to static.

As the only light in the room was the whiteness from the static on the TV, I got really creeped out. I rushed to the lamp and flicked it on, and saw that the doll was exactly where I had left it – right on top of the remote.

I sighed in relief and shook my head in embarrassment. It all made sense now. I had simply thrown the doll on the remote and the force of his impact had turned on the TV. I simply hadn’t noticed because my TV takes forever to turn on and by the time it had, I was in the bathroom. It had been static-y the entire time, and it was simply my confused, slightly disturbed thoughts and emotions that had projected the noises I heard into my brain. I really needed to get some sleep. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to wake up at the crack of dawn to go to the flea market. I could have slept in all day and avoided this whole mess. There would be no questions about where the doll came from or if the stupid fucking show even existed or what all my disjointed, confused memories were trying to tell me… everything would have been alright if I had just slept in. Sound advice for life. Always sleep in. This is all stuff I tried to tell myself to relieve the creepy feelings I had. And it almost worked. It had almost worked, and my heartbeat had finally slowed, and my blood pressure was normal, and the goosebumpbs had finally gone away, and all the things I told myself had made me feel better. My justifications and explanations had almost… ALMOST made me feel better. Until I picked up the doll and started absentmindedly started running my fingers over it again. I started playing with the funny little bump that was on the top hat again and I remember being extremely comforted. All the bad feelings suddenly went away and I felt so much better. All was well. The show probably had simply existed in another format, and since I was so young my confused mind had simply combined my memories with something else and projected them over the show, giving me all theses confused feelings. I would simply get dressed, get on my computer, look up the show, and put all this crap to rest. Maybe I would even throw away the doll. It would be for the best. I shouldn’t have even bought it, but now that I had, $10 was not too much of a price to pay for some peace of mind. I got up to put the doll in the trash, but the towel wrapped around my waist started to unravel so I reached to grab it and dropped the doll. Tonight was just not my night.

I bent down to pick up the doll and his top hat, which had fallen off. It was then that I got a good look at the hat, when it was separate from the menacing black eyes that demanded all my attention before. I had been playing with the funny little bump on the hat, and I had felt an intense sense of comfort as I did so. When I looked at the top hat, I realized, with a sudden blast of recognition and fear, what my memories had been trying to tell me. I realized what it was about the funny little bump that had given me comfort. It was the same bump that I had stared at for endless hours as a child, in times of happiness, sadness, pain and fear.

The funny little bump… was my mother’s mole.

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#Creepypasta #Candle Cove #Channel Zero #Scary Stories #Creepy #The Midnight Society

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