Most read stories

In case you’ve been following along with the events at the gas station on my blog, I apologize that my website was taken down so abruptly. For some reason, the city council found my public record of local events to be “troubling”--to the point that they hired a fancy Orwellian legal team to bury me in cease and desists. I tried fighting back, but as of last week, it looks like my entire site has been retroactively erased from existence. Presumably, these are the same guys who’ve been scrubbing…

“Hey y’all, it’s Red, White, and Ruin here with a new ghostbox urban exploration for you to watch from the safety of your home. Lucky you! Today, we’re walking through the dead Cherry Hill Mall. Let’s take a look, huh?” I said in my chipper announcer voice. I hit stop on the video I was recording and sighed. Being this perky all the time was exhausting. I sighed, took in my surroundings, and frowned. “Jesus, what a dump.”

I’m kind of scared guys. I’m a journalist at small town newspaper and just received an anonymous envelope containing some kid’s hand written journal. The name on the front cover of the journal has been scratched off, and there are what appears to be some blood stains on the cover and on some of the pages. I don’t know what to make of this journal or its contents yet, but I think something horrible happened to this kid. It seems so surreal and terrifying that something like this could even…

Both the best and worst kept secret of the generation is that the technology of the United States military is much more advanced than what is available to the public. It’s the worst-kept secret because everyone knows it. No one is walking around thinking they can buy all the parts of a B-2 and have it run with the efficiency and accuracy of the U. S. Air Force. However, it’s the best-kept secret because people don’t understand just how advanced their technology really is. Hell, even I don’t…

May, 1689 Josiah’s boots christened against the granulated sand as he hopped off the launch raft. His head shot upward, taking in the sight once again. The beach was peppered with large palm trees, each either gray or brown. In the distance, he could see the various mountains peeking over the tips of the jungle foliage ahead. It was a wall of trees and bushes, and Josiah knew it would be a challenge to navigate through.

The mind is a complex thing that no one can truly hope to fully understand. You can study it all day long but there are things inside that defy all human logic. In a way we are all prisoners to our own thoughts, and some are hard to escape.

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.

I Newcomer It was midday on a Sunday, and Johnathan Urbez was driving his dream car, an RX7. The engine was modified to be even faster; the tuned machine used a racing transmission, special brakes, suspension, and tires. The body was covered in all kinds of paintings and designs. After five years of hard work, dedication, and a lot of money, this beast was ready and John had to take it out for a ride.

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.’

It was a slow, mild Fall evening. We were sitting in our local Irish pub, The Lion and the Lamb, watching a beautiful young blonde woman on stage. It was karaoke night, and she was singing “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison. The song was mesmerising; her voice was like an angel’s. I suppose that’s how we ended up talking about dreams. “Has anyone been having any strange dreams lately?” asked Selena.I looked at her and the others at my company, pondering the question.

Why does conflict happen most often with those we’re the closest with? You would think that because we love our family, friends, and colleagues so much that we’d understand each other enough that conflict wouldn’t be necessary. But now I realize that because we show each other our vulnerabilities and flaws is why most major conflict occurs. With strangers, people are reluctant to open up to them and try to actively avoid conflict constantly, unlike with those we know all too well. When I was…

"Lady Valtin! Lady Rudova!" Béla, who had dozed on the steps of the gazebo, lifted his head and mustered a lazy bark toward the path. An elderly man, wearing a messenger's garb, stood past the bed of daffodils and looked around in confusion. The presence of my large hound didn't seem to concern him, or perhaps he sensed that Béla was not in the mood to cause any trouble on such a nice day.

The legend of the cursed samurai is a legend as old as time. An urban legend that tells the tale of a lone swordsman who is possessed by the ghost of vengeance and doomed to forever travel the nine realms in search of monsters, evil spirits, and unwanted creatures to vanquish with a single slash from his trusted spirit sword.

It would have been so much easier just to keep telling myself the worst parts of my past were all in my head, and assure myself it wasn’t healthy for me to think too much about it.

Ever since the caravan had reached the Unamur Mountains, the climate had become as irksome as the company I kept. Every day, a disgusting heat came with sunrise. Cool days were also rare in Dishare, therefore I hadn't expected it would bother me when I set out on this journey. However, I soon learned that the mountainous stretch of the Cursed Road was plagued by a different kind of heat; dry and draining. The silken canopy of my palanquin could as well not have been there as the little shade it…

The terrible sense of Déjà vu swept over him as Billy threw him to the black top. He knew he had been here before as his tormentor mounted him pinning him to the ground. His shrill cries only caused Billy to grin sadistically as he threw the first punch that broke his nose. His piercing screams that had served in his childhood to force his daycare provider to attend to his needs served no purpose in the brutal, adolescent world of high school. Billy set into the beating that would haunt his…

Something changed after the first broadcast, but not in a way people could easily name, and that was what made it dangerous, because without a clear shape, fear has space to grow into anything, and anything is always worse than something defined. The world did not stopnot collapse, did not react in any unified or immediate way, and that absence of visible consequence created a fragile illusion that whatever had happened during the night had been insignificant, forgettable, something that could…

I uncapped the red pen and added another "X" to our calendar. A small one, as not to take up more space than needed. After all, the box already had three others inside just like it. Who knew how many more we would have to add?

The sidewalk had a way of holding onto things, not objects or anything a person could reach down and pick up, but something far heavier and far more stubborn, something that clung beneath the surface of cracked concrete and refused to fade no matter how much time tried to grind it away, and it stretched through that forgotten part of the city like a scar that had never healed, uneven and silent and wrong in a way that people could feel without ever understanding, which was why most avoided it…

[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.