My best friends Darius and Jordan learned about my fear of swimming during an impromptu tubing trip on the Farmington River. The summer after I turned twenty-six, Darius and Jordan took me to Foxborough Park, a park that ran alongside the river. Foxborough Park had recently undergone improvements as a part of the town’s beautification project. My parents once described the park as being “overrun by druggies and dropouts.” After the project completed, the town’s lilly-white, upper-middle class community became a mainstay of the park. We preferred the park the old way, even with its reputation, because it was our high school hangout and our getaway during difficult times. “The wonders of gentrification,” Jordan said, gesturing to the Black Bear…

That night, the words of my father lingered on… “Son, never allow wrongdoing without vengeance. Each time someone crosses you, don’t simply double-down, but make them pay threefold – they crossed you even if they didn’t have to!” …that night, after I finally found him…for so many years he’s kept himself hidden under a fake identity, a different address, with his wife and kids. Who would’ve even thought this man could live a life so familial, so ordinary, so fake? That night I entered a house; no one had heard me, nor suspected what I would do in the moments that would follow – he was upstairs, fucking his wife. Unnoticed, I entered the room and observed their act. He…

At first sight, maybe it was my fault. I refused to move with them to London, wanting to stay in Sweden to finish my astrology projects. I had a lot of plans for the future, but it all slid down into nothing except pure sorrow of mine. Realization of someone being dead hurts, it surely does. Even for a grown up man I’d keep on being mama’s boy who would visit her daily if he could. I didn’t expect them to simply vanish from my life, straight into the coffin, to rot and be forgotten. I now understood the phrases we learnt throughout our lives, they only appreciate us if we’re dead. But if I am dead, who will appreciate…

I found an old Polaroid camera at a yard sale. It was even still loaded with film. Excited, I just took a picture of myself in the living room. However, when the photo was developed, there was a shadowy figure standing behind me, its hollow eyes staring straight into the camera lens. I was home alone. So I tore the photo into pieces and threw the camera away. But that night I thought I heard the click of a shutter in the darkness. By the next morning, a new photo was sitting on my nightstand. The figure was closer this time, its face only inches from mine. Now, whenever the lights go out, I hear that click… and it’s getting…

For as long as he can remember, he’s had dreams where he feels completely unable to move. In these dreams, he sees only darkness and hears whispers—soft, yet relentless. As the dreams are about to end, he often experiences sleep paralysis, which only prolongs his torment, making the nightmare last even longer. His parents have always dismissed his experiences, saying that they too have nightmares and that it’s normal. They would tell him he just needs to get used to it, insisting it’s nothing worth focusing on. When he turned eighteen and got his driver’s license, his nightmares seemed like nothing more than echoes of the past. One day, when he came home early from his friends, he overheard his…

I should have listened to my brother all those times he told me about the mirrors. I should have believed him when he said mirrors were like a different dimension; a portal into a bad, horrible alternative reality. But, I did not believe him. I thought he was just being a pesky teasing older brother. That’s the way Brandon usually was anyway. Why would I have thought he was really telling the truth? It was just mere days from my fourteenth birthday. Mom said I could begin wearing makeup when I turned fourteen. All my friends were already doing so. My best friends Jimma, Rue, Adaline, and Daria had been using cosmetics for months. So, I was always looking in…

Do you remember a show called Gilligan’s Island? It was an American sitcom that aired in 1964 with three seasons and 99 episodes, two being in black and white and the latter in color, which started in 1965; Let me summarize what the show is about: There’s a two-man crew on the charter boat SS Minnow and five passengers on a 3-hour tour from Honolulu who run into a typhoon and are shipwrecked on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific. That’s all the plot is, I did get that information from Wikipedia, and honestly, the show isn’t bad to watch, but there’s an episode of Gilligan’s Island that has never been released by CBS Productions because of its disturbing…

The handwritten sign plastered to my door was not something I could miss. ‘Rent due on Monday: don’t be fucking late this time.’ Living with my best mate’s sister had been working out reasonably well, and to be fair, I felt terrible about being behind on rent so often, but I still wished Hazel would find a less passive-aggressive way of reminding me. If only my parents had bought me my own place after I’d graduated college, I’d get to be the one behaving like an overprivileged asshole, I reflected, before tearing the sign off the door and entering my bedroom. I flopped down onto my bed, exhausted after another morning of fruitless job searching. I knew I would have…

I had always been a traveler; a rambler of sorts. I had never stayed in one place for long. I had to be on the go, exploring and studying out of the way places and interesting and odd things. The small village of Sneeuqfognik was one such place. The village may have been just a dot on the map, but it was home to a museum with over a million abnormal findings from all across the universe. A cursed museum. As I stood on the dirt pathway in front of the structure, a tall, lanky man with snow white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard approached. “Hello, miss,” he tipped his Fedora. “I am Professor Ezra Donaby. I teach courses on…

My Dad has always been a firm believer in the supernatural, or at the very least took great interest in it. He worked for the London Underground as an electrician and always had his fair share of ghost stories told to him by his fellow workers. He always told me it was “best to be open-minded about things we don’t fully understand.” Myself, on the other hand, always remained sceptical about these sorts of things, that was until one day when Dad told me a story with such sincerity, I felt genuine concern for him, and even though I tended to question anything that was regarded as paranormal, the way my father told this story with such honesty in his…

For me, life was a whirlwind of lights and smoke, music and men. I lived in a beaten up shanty close to North Edsa, crammed in a closet-like room with a bunch of other woman. We slept on mats on the dirt floor and shared the space with mange-infested dogs, flea-bitten cats and cockroaches. My wardrobe consisted mostly of skimpy skirts, tank tops and the cheapest high heels you can buy in Quiapo. After a hard night at the bars of dancing and exposing myself, sometimes spending time in a back room with a heavily drunk man and my eyes like a dead fish staring at the ceiling, I earned enough cash to go to the thrift shop. The weather…

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month. The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II. Everything was fine for the first…

It started when I was six years old. I was in school, it was the middle of a reading lesson, and I needed to pee, badly. At that age, actually, a fair few kids still wet themselves, and I always got paranoid about embarrassing myself in public like that. I stuck my hand up and told Mrs. Zebby that I needed to use the bathroom. After the usual speech about how I “should have gone at break”, she gave me the key to the Disabled-Access toilet (as it was the closest one to my classroom). It was the middle of fifth period, and the corridors were empty and seemed cavernous to me: I was a short, scrawny thing back then.…

Sunday I’m not sure why I’m writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I’ve just noticed some odd things. It’s not that I don’t trust the computer… I just… need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can’t be deleted or… changed… not that that’s happened. It’s just… everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things… I’m starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that’s the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and…

Let me start off by saying that Peter Terry was addicted to heroin. We were friends in college and continued to be after I graduated. Notice that I said “I”. He dropped out after 2 years of barely cutting it. After I moved out of the dorms and into a small apartment, I didn’t see Peter as much. We would talk online every now and them (AIM was king in pre-facebook years). There was a period where he wasn’t online for about five weeks straight. I wasn’t worried. He was a pretty notorious flake and drug addict, so I assumed he just stopped caring. But then one night I saw him come on. Before I could initiate a conversation, he…

You take the pills to keep them away. That’s what we were told when we were first brought down here–down through the sterile white halls with their flickering fluorescent lights, and our small, Spartan cells. Down into the nightmare. Why would we agree to this? I was tired of being homeless. I was tired of smelling like urine. I was tired of the looks that people gave me, like they knew I was there, but if they could just avoid eye contact maybe I wouldn’t talk to them, wouldn’t show up later, in their dreams, tugging at their consciences. I was tired of sleeping on cold concrete every night. I was tired of being so fucking hungry all the time.…

Do you ever watch other people in the subway? It’s so strange to have to ignore someone who’s right up there in your face. A can of sardines springs to mind, except passengers aren’t joined by a bond of thick oil or brine. Instead, they’re stewing in a miasma of sweat, cologne and annoyance. Everybody absorbed in their own little worlds, warm little cocoons. There, whizzing through the bowels of the city at a brisk clip, you’ll find people reading books, newspapers. Maybe on a Playstation Portable. Maybe on a smartphone. Except me. I’ll always be looking through the thick glass windows at the flickering blackness just beyond. Sometimes, late at night, I hope I’ll get on the same train…

We had just moved into a little ranch house in the suburbs. Storybook neighborhood – quiet, friendly neighbors, picket fences, the whole nine yards. Suffice it to say that this was supposed to be a new start for me, a recently single dad, and my three-year-old son. A time to move on from the previous year’s drama and stress. I viewed the thunderstorm as a metaphor for this fresh start: one last show of theatrics before the dirt and grime of the past would be washed away. My son loved it anyway, even with the power out. It was the first big storm he’d ever seen. Flashes of lightning flooded the bare rooms of our house, imparting unpacked boxes with…

I cannot describe to you how I feel right now. What I’m experiencing is so detached from the normal, I’m almost convinced I’ve finally gone insane. Almost. My wife, Bea, died during childbirth. She was gorgeous, funny, intelligent – stubborn. A woman whose laugh was so loud, eating in restaurants was a challenge. A woman whose stare was so intense, it made my hands shake. I lost her as she gave birth to our daughter. Sam. Of course, I could have resented Sam. For taking away what was once mine in a way nothing else can be. For taking what was so truly and utterly pure. But I didn’t. I knew Bea wouldn’t have wanted any resentment. She wouldn’t have…

Edgar raised his head up from his chest; back pressed firmly into his favorite recliner, his entire body drenched in cold sweat. He stared into shadows at the edge of the living room, eyes welling with tears as he lifted the revolver slowly and deliberately to his temple. “Seventeen”, he whispered to the darkness. The index finger of his right hand had already found its perch on the trigger during the weapon’s ascent, during which he had hesitated no more than a second, his only concern ensuring that the angle he chose would prove fatal. He clenched his left hand into a fist at his side, steeling his will. He inhaled sharply. And with further need of neither breath nor…

It was a nice summer day, my 5-year-old son James was playing outside in the backyard of our suburban home. James has always been a quiet boy, he plays by himself mostly, he never had many friends, but he has always had a wild imagination. I was in the kitchen feeding our dog Fido, when I heard what sounded like James talking to someone in the backyard. I’m not sure who it was he could be talking to, could he have finally made a friend? Being a single mom it’s hard for me to always keep an eye on my son, so I decided to go outside and check on him. When I went into the backyard I was a…

Some of you may have heard that the Disney corporation is responsible for at least one real, “live” Ghost Town. Disney built the “Treasure Island” resort in Baker’s Bay in the Bahamas. It didn’t START as a ghost town! Disney’s cruise ships would actually stop at the resort and leave tourists there to relax in luxury. This is a FACT. Look it up. Disney blew $30,000,000 on the place… yes, Thirty Million Dollars. Then they abandoned it. Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule. That’s where the factual…

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…

In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was surgically severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could…

I’ve been lying down for hours now. It’s 5:35AM and there’s not much I can do. You know what the worst part about my situation is? I’m in the same room with my parents. They keep looking at me, and I can’t help but look back and try not to cry or scream. Their eyes are focused on me and their mouths are wide open. There’s the strong scent of blood and I feel so paralyzed with fear. Here’s the thing. The second I make any hint that I’m not asleep anymore, I’m completely fucked. I will die and there’s nobody around to save me. I’ve been trying to think of a way out but the only idea I have…

“The year is nineteen-ninety-nine.” That sentence brings me back to my senior kindergarten class when I was five years old, where we used to read out the date on the blackboard every single day. The year 1999 exists as a stain in my mind however, as a memory that will not go away no matter how I try to forget it. 1999 marked the year I lost my first tooth, my first time on a plane, and unfortunately the early loss of my childhood innocence. That one memory that refuses to be wiped, it all started with that new (or old) TV. At that time Pokémon was the latest fad to hit the school. Pokémon cards, games, stickers, and the…

It’s Christmas Eve in snowy 1800’s London, England, and in a small house at the edge of town, there lived a lonely, 7-year-old boy named Isaac. Isaac was a sad child with not a friend to his name. While most children were spending time with their families and eagerly looking forward to opening the presents that were placed with care beneath a beautifully decorated Christmas tree, little Isaac spent this most holy of nights alone, in his cold, dusty attic room. Isaac’s parents were very poor, his mother was a strict crow of a woman who stayed at home and schooled Isaac. His father worked long hours down at the London harbour to support his family, although a large portion…

Post #1 (Sept. 7, 2010) Okay, /x/, I need your help with this. This is not copypasta, this is a long read, but I feel like my safety or well-being could very well depend on this. This is video game related, specifically Majora’s Mask, and this is the creepiest shit that has ever happened to me in my entire life. Having said that, I recently moved into my dorm room starting as a Sophomore in college and a friend of mine gave me his old Nintendo 64 to play. I was stoked, to say the least, I could finally play all of those old games of my youth that I hadn’t touched in at least a decade. His Nintendo 64…

I’m sure that all of you on /r/nosleep are used to the cry for help type stories by now. Help me, help me, blah-blah-blah. I won’t bore you with another. Even if I wanted your help, you couldn’t give it to me, because your help is useless. Why? Because you’re not a member. I just wish that I wasn’t either. It all started innocently enough. With a phone call. I’d been up for a few hours, unpacking and cleaning, waiting for the plumber to call. I just moved into a cabin and the contractors fucked everything up. Because of that, I now have the wonderful task of making calls to competent people that can fix what the original contractors did…

The devil on the fiery porch. He was back again that year, the same as he had been for five years running, keeping the majority of Trick or Treaters behind an imaginary line of uneasiness drawn at the edge of the curb with his Hell-red grin and burning cauldrons. It was a scene from Faust, only this was no play; this was my neighborhood. It wasn’t just kids who lingered apprehensively in the street, but parents as well. In a place where the definition of Halloween was more like cardboard skeletons and plastic jack-o-lanterns, a guy with a penchant for fire and pitchforks could be extraordinarily scary. Really young children were hurried past the residence altogether via lawns on the…