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[Originally posted to a paranormal forum in March 2023, split across four posts because of the character limit. Reproduced here in full, with the poster's section headings.] My counsellor thinks I should write this down. Not to post, necessarily. Just to get it out of my head and onto something that isn't my head. I'm posting it because if I only write it down, it's just me and the page again, and I've spent five years being the only person who knows the whole of it.

I like podcasts, I just don’t have time for them. I work from home and can’t work and listen at the same time. One of the two things always goes wrong. Either I stop working, or I stop listening. So when my friend Owen said he was starting a podcast, I acted supportive. After all, it was about spooky shit. One of my favorite subjects. In reality, though, I was thinking to myself that there was no way I’d ever listen to it. That was true until Owen brought me the recording of the call-in guest.

There’s a floor in my apartment building that doesn’t exist. Not Thirteen. That would be too cliché. Although, it doesn’t have a thirteenth floor, but not for supernatural reasons. It just doesn’t go that high. Some of the residents call it Floor Three and a Half, or Three and Three-quarters to invoke a Harry Potter vibe, but both of those are far too whimsical for my tastes. I just call it the Dead Floor, which I know isn’t any less cliché than floor Thirteen, but it feels appropriate.

Content warning: child death 1

Cry Baby Lane (or JosephTheSnail’s Cry Baby Lane, as titled on Spiral Nightmares) is a thriller creepypasta that retells the 2011 creepypasta of the same name while correcting many of its flaws, most notably the defamation of the real-life director Peter Lauer by replacing his role with an unhinged character who gradually proves to be even more deranged than initially believed, alongside the disturbing, never-before-mentioned-until-now “actual” (not really) history of a goofy Nickelodeon horror…

The lily pad rocked like a small, stubborn idea—barely there, stubbornly afloat. I stood on it because standing felt better than sinking, because the pond was quieter than the house and quieter than the questions that had been circling me all week. The city lights blurred into a distant constellation; here, the world reduced itself to water, breath, and the thin green circle beneath my feet.

WELL! Turns out he was right, and now “Tilna McGleek” Means “to ever-so-quickly go nuts” – But I’m sure that you’ll find only things that you seek When you stride forth as Grayven McFutz!

I still have the book.  And, reluctant as I am to share it with anybody, I can see no other way. Very well, then. This is how it begins: The Knights are lined up all the way down the hall To be blessed by the Queen and the King, With their shields and their sigils and armor and guns And their magical-gagical rings! - They’ve come from afar and they’ve come from a-near To kneel down and mount up and fight, They’re strong and they’re tall and they’re brave one and all –

I always found Baba Yaga as a concept, a rather disturbing idea. That witch from Russian folklore that would snatch bad kids away, never to be seen again, or a figure that would punish those that had wronged it. I always found those stories stupid. Not because I don’t believe, but because I know the truth: there IS something in the Russian forests, a cruel, inhuman being that is nothing like the way people paint it in the stories. I have seen Baba Yaga, and I know what it really is.

"I heard birds singing outside. I didn't know birds still came here." "It is a beautiful day to be alive." — Unknown ... I wake to warm light slanting through the curtains. The air smells of toasted bread and coffee, and in the distance, I hear my mother humming a familiar tune, soft, gentle, but off-key. It sounds like she's humming with her mouth closed.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe because if I don’t, it will stay in my head forever, scratching at the inside of my skull like something that wants out. My name is John, and a few months ago I found something I should have left buried. It happened during a trip out west, far from any marked trails, in a place where the silence feels wrong, like it’s not empty but waiting. I came across an old shack, barely standing, hidden between dead trees and dry grass. It looked like no one had…

“Creeeee….KLUNK”, the door of the old pickup groaned in protest as I swung it closed. The truck was far past its expiration date, having rolled off a Ford line in 1962. And now that we were coming up to the new century, it stuck out even more as a relic, just like its owner. “Go’on, git the feed outta the back” my Pa ordered, stepping down from the vehicle. A tall man at 6’3”, he was of slight build, his blue overalls hanging somewhat loosely around his frame. His skin resembled the pair of…

Nineteen straight days. That’s how long this storm’s been sitting on top of us. The view outside my duplex is nothing but a grey smear, I can’t even make out the other houses. Roads are flooded, power’s out. It's just canned food and cold water now. They tried having us work from home at first, but that didn’t last long. Paid leave’s not the worst outcome, I guess even torrential storm clouds have silver linings.

The rain carried on as mercilessly as it had the past two weeks which miraculously happened to be just the time when I moved into this dumpster of a town. Me, the 13 year old, Finn Junior Hollis. Watercliff, Bakersfield. Things that shouldn’t be associated at all, right here to shove in the universes face after all. Or rather, this was the universe shoving it into my face as if this is its idea of some cruel joke. First of all, not only was I damned to live in an uneventful place like…

Have you ever wished to go back? Even if it was just for a short while? I’ve seen many collapse under the weight of reality and instead choose the comfort of rose-colored glasses. It’s strange how we accept language for what it is and rarely question its origins. Take idioms, for instance—we use them every day with carelessness, never respecting their weight or power. I hear you hurl them into the void, not realizing how close you are to unveiling a path not meant to be traversed. These phrases…

We all have a story about how we ended up where we are. The details change. They soften, blur, rearrange themselves like furniture in a room you haven’t visited in years. The more times we remember them, the less we do. Parts get polished smooth. Others wear thin. Still… the core of it usually survives. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from the people I now call my neighbors. I’m hardly the right man to tell their stories. I probably will anyway,

“That’s my childhood house.” I wasn’t turning down the street I grew up in. I wasn’t standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I’d lost all my baby teeth. I wasn’t sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. “That can’t be possible,” my husband said.

Hazel Petti was the bane of our existence. By "ours", I don't just mean the students at Clara Perkins Elementary School. Everyone in town had a poor opinion of Ms. Petti, presuming they had the unfortunate luck to meet her. Opinions that ranged from mild annoyance to deep-seated hatred. If you ran a nearby business, no matter what kind, you could bet on Ms. Petti paying a visit now and again. Usually for no other reason than to search for a product or practice to get upset about.

I didn’t want to move there. Even now, when I try to remember the first day in that apartment, it feels wrong somehow, like the memory belongs to somebody else and I only inherited it after they disappeared. My father kept calling it “a fresh start” after my mother died, but nothing about that place felt fresh. The building stood at the far end of the city where the streetlights flickered even before sunset and every balcony looked abandoned. The elevator smelled like wet concrete and…

“Jalen, you sell drugs?” “What? No.” “Family sell drugs?” I laughed. “You for real right now?” His stoic face answered for him. “Not that it should matter, but I don’t really have a family. So, no, they aren’t kingpins in the drug game.” “Consider yourself lucky. No family is the way to go. No hassles. No buying gifts for ungrateful nieces and nephews who think just because you own a coupla properties, you’re Diamond Jim Brady. Gives me heartburn just thinkin’ about it.”