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For my niece's sixth birthday I bought her a Barbie doll. She loved dolls and stuffed animals, and loved playing pretend with them even more. Whenever I stopped by my sister's house I could always hear my niece playing with her toys, speaking to them as if she was having a wonderful conversation and would sometimes make her dolls talk back.

Sarah gambled.  She played video poker and the ponies at the track.  She knew the odds of blackjack if she split a pair of face cards.  She’d played the office football pool--until she was fired for taking one too many three-hour lunches at the casino.  She gambled when she had money and, on credit, when she was broke--before she’d maxed out her credit cards and the debt collectors started dogging her steps.  She gambled when she was happy and she gambled when she was miserable--which was…

Some neighborhood kids and I are going to commit a felony tonight, but it's no big deal. We've been committing a felony for almost two weeks now. We've developed a new pastime, and this all began when Cody Winters told us about the Railroad Game. This is the type of shit that happens when you live in a quaint suburb, filled with kids and teenagers that have nothing better to do.

This happened to me many years ago, but I just can't get it out of my head. Maybe writing it down will help, so here it goes.

As a kid growing up in my neighborhood everyone knew about Farmer Fred’s, partly because it was an abandoned farm in the middle of the Pittsburgh suburbs, but largely due to the fact that it was haunted. A farm in my neighborhood was probably commonplace at the turn of the 19th century, but by the time I was a kid we were surrounded by strip malls, fast food restaurants and housing developments. That being said, there was and is still a good deal of green space, and at least one farm, albeit no…

Three years ago, a serial killer terrified my small hometown. He was referred to as the Chase Pond slasher. He was called that because he murdered four people near a pond with that name. Three bodies were found in the forest, and the other was in the pond itself. The terror lasted for six months until he was finally caught.

I have never been as happy as I was on my eighth birthday. My mother handed me a heavily wrapped present containing my very first gameboy and a mint Pokémon Gold edition.

I'll never forget the summer of 1998, or the encounters I shared with my classmates. When I was ten years old, just two weeks into the beginning of the school year, the entire fifth grade was taken on a special week-long camping trip to 'Camp High Hope' in Indiana. Being ten years old, the idea of spending a week away from home, without any parents or siblings, just friends and the other kids from school, was one of the coolest experiences you could ever hope for as a child.

“Look at it go, sweetie!” the loving father joyfully called out to his little girl, pointing upward toward the kite flying high above the secluded beach. “Here baby, you try.” The little girl stood there shy, timid and melancholy as she stared skyward at the pale, flapping kite. This particular kite always reminded the girl of her missing mother; each of them, the mother and the kite, seemed to share the exact same colorful tattoos.

"What do you mean, 'you're almost there'?" Ralf's voice was barely audible through the prattle of the nightly downpour. "Past the exit sign." I leaned closer to the phone holder. "I'll be there in 20 minutes. 30 at most." I tried to come up with a quick estimate how long it would take to unload the hodgepodge of furniture and crates from the estate sale, but Ralf cut me off. "It's Friday, Frank." A pause, then: "We said Saturday."

The nonstop pitter-patter of the cold rain against my bedroom window set the mood. I found myself rubbing my eyes, unable to follow the now swaying lines. My book was a jumbled mess of dyslexic text. I spent another minute trying to decipher the words, but my exhausted state of mind could not put meaning to them. I folded the top right corner of the page and gingerly placed Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, back on the windowsill.

I want your sickness. You see, I spend my time here, each hour of the day and night, I sit in the shadows just to watch. I study your every move. I know your routine well, in fact. You wake up each night at 03:00, still shuddering from a nightmare, and drag your tired body to the washroom. It gives me such a thrill, this routine, because what you don’t know is that it’s not a nightmare. I am, in fact, only inches away from you.

I’ve gotten into some trouble recently, and I need to tell people about it. I need to know if anyone has experienced something like this. I don’t want to be alone in this. I’m really, really scared. Please, bear with me while I explain what happened to me. For the purposes of this, I’m going to remain anonymous, so I don’t complicate my situation further. You’ll find out why in a little bit. I really appreciate you taking your time to hear me out and help me.

I think Captain Gold is worried that I'm losing it. Sometimes I think I might be. I haven’t seen Marty for days. He was supposed to meet me at the Larrabee last night, but never showed. I’m starting to get very concerned. Casey is gone. I think I lost her a long time ago, but now she’s gone for good. It occurs to me that I’m jumping ahead of myself. I need to stop and recollect my thoughts. There’s a lot I don’t remember, and even more that I do, but it might not be true.

The following story was originally posted across 8 different installments spanning the months from October to November of 2017. They describe the true events that occurred at a now infamous small town gas station. PART ONE

Everyone has that feeling some time in their life. Some able to explain the phenomenon, and others simply cannot. That unknown feeling of someone, or something, watching you. That experience where either dread or curiosity can get the best of you.

Hundreds of years ago the earth was flooded – a great flood. One that drowned away the evil of the world. Burying it beneath a great sea. Or so the legends would have you believe. I’ve never been one to place faith in any deities. In this vast world – there are too many different accounts of creation. Too many accounts of gods, goddesses, and the like. An educated person – and I would consider myself well educated – tends to place more faith in science. Such is my story.

We all make mistakes. It just takes one, little mistake, and everything will be over. I won’t let that happen this time.

In the shadowy, pine-filled countryside of Greece, there’s an old legend known to the older locals but half forgotten and unknown to the few young people living there. The legend centres around an eerie stone statue of a little girl named Magda, hidden deep in the local dark pine forest.

It's funny how tales like this cling to you, worming their way into your mind, gnawing away, festering like a wound. They say truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes the stories we pass down—the ones we whisper in shadowy corners or over drinks at seedy bars—are more chilling and grotesque than any proven fact. This is one of those tales. A fable, sure, but one that sits far too close to reality. Told by those who find comfort in the macabre, and believed by those who understand that the…