Best rated stories

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.

I never thought much about puppets. They were relics of another time, something my grandparents might have found amusing before the age of screens. I'd seen them in dusty attics and antique shops, their faces painted in stiff, eternal grins. They were lifeless, inert things that didn't deserve a second thought. But that was before it came to town.

I didn't remember how I got there. One moment, I was somewhere ordinary—a grocery store, maybe my car—and the next, I was standing in the polished hallway of a sprawling mansion. The floors gleamed like polished obsidian under chandeliers that glittered coldly overhead. The place was immaculate, almost painfully so, but something about it felt wrong.

Emily’s sightseeing expedition through Avalon included a trip to some of the notable local historical landmarks and the remains of an ancient Celtic settlement - one of many dotting the area surrounding our new home. ‘This town has a lot of history,’ Emily told me as we trudged past a pair of standing stones. They stood facing one another on either side of the road running to the left of us. ‘I’ve been reading up about it at the library. It's quite the rabbit hole to dive into.’

We had been sailing for months after departing from the port of Whitehill, and had left even the most remote hunting grounds of the whalers behind weeks ago. The charts put us northeast of the Forsaken Islands, but their bleak shores were not our destination. Our route led us farther north than most men had ever sailed, across the desolate black waters of the Northern Sea.

Everyone knew that Elias would die young. His life was cursed from the beginning. When he was only seven years old, his existence was already marked by death and chaos. He watched his mother Grace get murdered by his step-father Tim. He strangled the woman with his bare hands and when she was finally dead he picked up a large kitchen knife and proceeded to stab himself in the chest multiple times until he died of blood loss. Elias locked himself in his room and when he came out the police were…

Hi! I’m Peter. I work as customer support for a video game that you’ve almost certainly heard about. Let’s call it WizardQuest for safety’s sake. There are different ways that customers can contact us, but I prefer responding to text chat, since if I’m honest I’m not very good on the phone. That’s not to say that I’m great at text chat either, but let’s not tear me all the way down just yet.

It all began when our grandfather died.

Howdy. You can call me "Jack." It's not my real name, but that's what I'll go by for now. I reckon the time to tell my story has come. Believe it or don't, but here it is. I suggest you take away the lessons it teaches, even if you dismiss it all as bullshit like 98% of the other stories on the internet. But there's more truth in this story than any one of you could know.

The pain ended quickly. I rose and tried to find my body. Probably lying mangled underneath the metallic wreck. Dying in a road accident is definitely the worse way to go. "So! Had a nice life?" asked a voice behind me. I turned around to find a woman smiling. Since she could see me I was pretty sure she was a soul like me. She giggled, "You are taking it pretty well. I am Cindy by the way." I spoke evenly," What happens now? Hell? Heaven?" She laughed louder. Before I could say something I…

Everyone has tales about the strange and bizarre. My story is about how my half-hole mask saved my life, and continues to save my life to this very day. Late in December, I was traveling north from California to my home state of Oregon. Nothing fancy, I was just going to visit the family for the holidays. On my way north I hit a small snow storm, nothing awful, just a lot of snow falling all at once.

Melinda hated driving at night. She did her best to avoid it. Short trips to the store if she just realized she ran out of tampons or had nothing for dinner after getting home; that sort of thing happened now and then. But she did her best not to go out after dark unless someone was coming to pick her up. So, naturally, she found herself on the longest drive of her life tonight, with no moon, few stars, swirling clouds above her, and acres of forest on either side.

My friend and I always used to walk through a wonderful, spacious park when we were younger. It was full of tall trees, and it was very nicely maintained. In this large park, there was an abandoned mansion – I can’t really say how long it had been there, but on that day, the front door of the mansion was wide open. The two of us decided to check out what was inside the place. As we inched through the door, the very first thing we noticed was that the mansion’s floor was littered with crumpled…

The cold was the first thing I felt. Even before my eyes were open I felt a very deep chill in my core, a thousand spindles of ice sewn between my tissues. I blinked, my eyelids slowly bringing and stealing back the darkness, and with it the desire to keep them closed forever.