Most favorited stories

[Originally posted as a reply in a thread titled "Irish folklore creatures that are actually terrifying," on a paranormal forum, January 2026. The reply was long enough that the poster later moved it into its own thread. Reproduced here in full.]

“Hey sweetie, are you gonna open your eyes for me now?” I heard his voice. It was all sweet and nice, making my stomach feel sick. His hands were on my shoulder, squeezing slightly, shaking them side to side. I could feel a groan pass my lips and my eyes struggled to unstick themselves. “Yeah! There we go, I'm sorry about that special candy, I guess you're just a little bit smaller than the dose is made for.” He laughed, it's a quiet, airy laugh, making my stomach tighten again. I blinked,…

“Aww, Mervin, did you break Daddy’s wine bottle?” Emily was washing dishes when she heard the sound of the bottle shattering. “It was Ed, not me!” insisted Mervin. Emily knew there was no way the three-year-old could open the middle shelf of the cupboard yet. Mervin had turned six last month, and he was just tall enough to reach it. “Now, now, I already know it was you. I saw you playing with the cupboard handles. Don’t try to blame this on your little brother,” said Emily.

One time, near Prescott, Arizona, I witnessed a ghostly wagon train rumble across the scrub brush for nearly an hour. Kept pace with my truck as I screamed down the highway. The driver even doffed his cap to me. I returned the favor as he evaporated into a fine mist.

The heavy mahogany door clicked shut, sealing out the relentless autumn drizzle. Ashley leaned back against it, exhaling a breath she felt she’d been holding all evening. The wedding reception had been a blur of champagne flutes, blinding flashbulbs, and well-meaning relatives. Now, finally, it was just her and Dave.

On the morning of the 13th June 1997, an unidentified federal agent was found dead at his workstation deep within a secret government facility at an undisclosed location. The cause of his death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The following extract consists of the final entry logs of said agent prior to his suicide. Despite the lack of context and supporting evidence, this document was received from a trusted source.

For three days after I found the rabbit, nothing else had happened. That frightened me more than the noises had. The woods had gone quiet. Not truly quiet. The birds still called in the mornings. Cicadas screamed from the trees in the afternoon. At night, the frogs took over the creek. But the other sounds stopped. No howls. Not footsteps beneath my window. No knocking against the walls. Nothing watched from the pasture either. Nothing moved in the tree line.

They tell you nostalgia is a warm blanket. They lie. Nostalgia is a rotting canvas, and the paint never quite dried.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL COLLINS Unnecessary sounds, such as “ums” and “ahs” have been omitted from the following statement for the purpose of making this statement easier to read. Det. Lori Denny: Mr. Collins, thank you for coming, I'm Detective Denny. I would like to remind you that our conversation will be recorded… With that out of the way, how are you doing? Need a coffee or water? I can get one for you.

Have You Ever Had A Sibling That You Couldn't Stand All The Time And You Wish They Would Go Away Completely,Well Let Me Just Say That Wish May Seem Good At First,And Now Years Later I Regret Making That Wish,When I Was Kid I Had A Little Sister Named Abby Who Was An Absolute Pest Who Gotten Away With Many Things Due To My Parents Favoring Her Over Me,At The Time I was 13 and She Was 7,Being 7 Abby Would Always Cause Things To Make Me Mad By Going Into My Room And Taking My Things,She Would…

In December of 2015, Marceline Nightingale was declared missing. The lack of evidence, like many other older cases in this town, entices me. Maybe if this one could be solved so could the other ones.

Time has forced my hand to finally publish these truths. Other men of science plan to go where I have been, and I cannot let them witness what my colleagues and I have. I only regret coming out with the truth now— many years after our expedition —but even more do I regret doing this to my comrades without consulting them. I hope all of you can forgive me.

I still can’t sleep with the basement door shut. Even three years later, every time the house settles, I find myself staring at the handle, half-expecting it to slowly turn.

He had no idea how he had ended up in these foul depths, but all he knew was that he needed to find a way out before it was too late. The young Dragonnoid had sworn to himself he would never go into the city, so why was he wandering lost in its forsaken bowels?

No one remembers her name. Her real name anyway. She was a girl once- a regular girl, a good girl- who worked as a harlequin for her family's tiny traveling show. She had a white painted face, with a happy painted red smile. Jolly jinglin' shoes, and bright purple-dyed pigtails that bobbed comically as she capered about on the stage of some, now long-fallen kingdom. She made nobles and peasants alike laugh.

July 4th, 2028, the police are at their busiest on a hot Los Angeles summer evening. The station is fully staffed with officers going in and out on calls. All while Gordon sits at the front desk with his eyes going back and forth between his monitor and the front door. He was pretty pissed he had to work a double shift into the morning. Let alone miss the fireworks with his kids.

“Sir, we found a body!” I trailed toward the frantic yelling of my Assistant Officer. “Jesus Christ, the smell is unbearable!” The living quarters reeked heavily of thick rot and sharp iron. The overwhelmingly pungent odor hit me like a physical wall, forcing me to step out of the room immediately to catch my breath. “What are we thinking?” I asked, steadying myself before stepping back into the doorway. “What do you mean, Sir?” My Assistant Officer shot me a genuinely puzzled look.

Sebastian woke up to the sound of a loud and repeated banging on his bedroom door. He opened his eyes slowly: the pounding of each knock enraged every muscle within his head, and amplified his hangover. He groaned to himself as he was in the process of sitting upright in his bed, to find he’d fallen asleep wearing the gray sweat-jacket, jeans, and white shoes that had been worn the day before, and shook his head at the sight of himself. He grabbed his head and groaned louder. His bedroom was…

My dad Don may as well have been dead this past year. Hell, you could make the argument he may as well have been dead for nearly the past fifty… ever since his brother Tommy passed away from cancer in 1973.

Fun fact: There was a time when I was, technically speaking, a “Twitter artist”. Not in the sense that I was controversial or “corny”, as some people put it, but I was an artist with a Twitter account, and I witnessed a lot of the petty drama and general fuss that came with being on art Twitter. I’ve long since deleted my account for a whole cocktail of reasons, but the incident I’m about to describe definitely helped me in making my decision to leave.