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Did you know tens of thousands of people die in their sleep each night? Most of them succumb to natural causes like heart disease, stroke, or just plain old age. But in that vast group of the fallen, a small subset of them have perished with no explanation at all. Hell, I've heard some have outright disappeared. The funny thing is they all shared one curse that led them to such a demise.

The first time Monty had seen Sevyn, she had been wearing some kind of mascot costume with matted, bloodied fur. Her red hair was a mess, her blue eyes sunken yet hypervigilant, and overall, she looked like she had just had the worst night of her life. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for Monty’s clientele, however, so his reaction was practiced and measured. “Are you in need of any assistance, Miss?” he asked.

Having just finished my Master’s in Classical archaeology, I decided to celebrate by trekking my way through Italy. I spent about a week in Rome seeing the usual sites and eventually I made my way south down to Sorrento.  But backpacking through Italy wasn’t just for leisure, it was actual fieldwork — well, sort of.

It wasn’t hard to imagine why it was called The Forsaken Coast. The bleak coastline was mainly miles and miles of high, jagged clifftops with no natural harbours, scarcely a living tree to be seen, with the silhouettes of long-abandoned and eroding megaliths standing deathly still in the shadowy gloom. Yet amidst the ruins, a lonely Cimmerian castle still remained, and the eerie green flames flickering within broadcast to all that it was not abandoned.

Tommy Morgan did not have the best life. Coming from a broken home, the young 11-year-old only experienced the worst: his father would return home drunken like a skunk, and he would get into heated arguments with his wife over money and how since he was the bread maker, he could do with his earnings what he saw fit. Tommy’s mother would do chores around the house, her eyes red from sobbing.

When my girlfriend, Ella, recommended we go to the local renaissance faire I absolutely jumped on the idea. I hadn’t been since I was a kid, but I always remembered loving it. The cool vendors, the food, the awesome jousting matches. It was everything a kid could love. My recent hyperfixation on medieval times and fantasy also definitely helped to drive my excitement for the event. I also had been needing a good excuse to get out and be social again. I had found myself too busy with school and…

I stand at your window and watch you sleep. The whole night long I make no peep. You do not know that I am there. Just know that I could get you anytime anywhere. I open the window and in I crawl. I don’t want a drop I want it all. Up on the ceiling is where I shall hang. The thought of your skin soon pierced by my fang. The taste of your blood will be a treat. The feeling of my teeth ripping through your meat. Closer and closer here I come. Into your ear is where I hum. You open your eyes and…

“Don’t let her fool you.” I tilted my head as I read my mother’s strange text. There was no context in a previous conversation or build up to warrant the strange cryptic message. I hadn’t texted my mother in a few hours and even then, it was to remind her to pick up dog food on her way home from church that night. “Who are we talking about?” I replied and waited… nothing.

I awake with my body screaming with aches and horrible pain, my head pounding. A hard, stony surface below my sprawled out form greeted my eyes upon sitting up, harsh wind rushed through my hair; sea air by the smell of it. I took my time standing, meticulously moving each of my limbs to ensure stability, despite their shaking protests. The stone was firm and smooth. It wouldn’t crumble if you took a hammer to it; however, the violent gales threaten to throw me off. The howling in my ears…

[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.

When we finished going through the rules Catherine decided that we should play a game of cat and mouse in the mansion, (I thought the idea was stupid) two people would be the cats while the others are mouses. Cathy and I were the mouses and Danel and Logan were the cats.

“This is still dumb,” says George.  He holds up the stack of note-cards, squints at them through the flicker of the firelight.  “I mean, it’s real dumb.” Our campfire has started to burn low in the gathering dark, and the embers swirl up and away in a sudden gust of autumn wind.  I shiver, and I pause the video I’m recording long enough to pick up another log.

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…

Chapter One: 14 US Their journey began at the end of everything. The world had ended, but theirs had only just begun. They had lived their lives in complete solitude, confined and alone for as long as they could remember. That was about to change. In a dark basic living quarter, a mass lay on the bottom bunk of a bunkbed built into the wall. Multiple blankets lay on him to sheild him from the cold, as the temperature in the bunker had been stuck on 62 degres for some time.

Last night, and the one before I had the strangest dreams. On the first night I opened my eyes and found my bedroom present in a dark aura despite the light being off. Above me, where my ceiling should have been blank (I have nothing in particular on my ceiling) was the outline of what appeared to be a window. I stared in shock, convinced I was asleep and dreaming. But it felt so real.

I wake with searing pain in my right arm. My left feels fine. My left hand tightly clutches my bedsheets and duvet. I squint in the silvery moonlight that flows from my white four-paned Georgian bedroom window. I can’t see much. Just the blur of the moon. I blink. My eyes are watery. My internal clock tells me it’s the early hours of the morning, but it isn’t always reliable. I feel pain. But it is feels dull, numb and distant. I breathe in. The air feels clean and pure at least.

Every small town seems to have its own claim to fame. Something that draws in the looky-loos to spend their big-city cash. I’m sure you’ve made your fair share of roadside stops or taken a backroad to see the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, toured the mistress’s house of Blackbeard, where he may or may not have buried his treasure, or touched the hanging tree of those poor ethereal women. Well, my town is famous for red pumpkins.

Please stop writing creepypastas. It's not funny, anymore. Just when I thought the genre was dead, a bunch of brand new chucklefucks start trying their hand at creating the next internet urban legend. Oh, wow, look at you... you live in a small town, right? There's a strange tradition, isn't there? Maybe a figure that's "entirely too" this with "way too many" that... For fuck's sake, just give it up. You want to go viral, to get noticed, reap accolades and secure a movie deal.

She walks into my life after dark—and disappears before the world wakes up. I rent a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a quiet coastal town just outside San Francisco. I work from home doing overnight tech support for a major software company I’m not allowed to name. Most of my calls come from system admins in Europe or Australia — people who get locked out of their accounts or freak out when syncs fail. It’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills. Anyway, I’m Nate.

If I could travel back in time, I would have changed a lot of things. Would you? I wouldn't just do better at everything or undo certain mistakes, I would probably become your friend. Do you remember, when we were little, that we actually lived quite close to each other? Y'know when you're born here you just don't seem willing to leave. All the locals have this problem. Well anyway, your house was just a couple of streets away from mine.