#madness

I didn’t want to leave Miller County High School. I didn’t want to leave my friends and essentially leave my whole social life in Colquitt, Georgia behind. My stepdad got a new job in Columbus, Georgia. I guess the pay was great, the new house amazing. So naturally my mom talked my younger brother Jimmy and I into the move. She had a new job as a middle school secretary already lined up too so neither my brother nor I had a choice really.

I am a cover guard which basically means I only get called to guard places when someone has fallen sick or a last minute emergency has risen. I am put down as self employed by my manager which means I have to deal with my own taxes, and being self employed does give you a lot more freedom than being employed. Like for example I can quit whenever I want and I can decide which shifts I want to work, but I have to work most days because days off are costly. I have been a cover guard for various…

Henry had always been a bit different. As a child, he was quiet, more interested in books and toys than in other children. He grew up alone, but he never seemed to mind. His mother, Grace, worried that her son wasn't making any friends, but Henry always reassured her that he was fine just the way he was.

Mark Fischer was infamous in his hometown. Much to his own disdain, he was largely harmless. Even still, he had a notoriety similar to that of a local serial killer that violently forced their way into a place's history. The act that earned him his infamy was not violent, though it did have a certain aggressiveness to it. His act was that he walked every day. He made it his mission to be a one-man parade for the residents of his hometown. He didn’t want to go out every day but didn’t need to…

December 27, 2024 Alternate universes are real I can swear on it. There’s rumors circulating on social media about leaked studies on alternate universes and how it could be possible. I remembered all my visions from when I was younger, and some of the visions from more recent times. Could it be possible that there are alternate universes and I just so happened to keep seeing them? I’ll be committing most of my time to these studies from now on. January 2, 2025

I wake up to the sound of sizzling oil and the smell of eggs. I bring my hands up to my face and I am met with caked blood on my wrists. It is not surprising anymore. I hear tiny feet pad down the hallway and my brother opens my door. "Ada, breakfast is ready," Timothy says. I chuckle. He still has not managed to get his lisp under control.

Don’t go in there! It’s all a trap." Josh was a 25-year-old hotel receptionist in Black Stone, a town in northern Pennsylvania. He had started the job shortly after graduating from university in Michigan. He was a quiet, down-to-earth kind of guy who always tried to find a rational explanation for everything. But that night, something happened at the hotel that put his sense of reality to the ultimate test.

It was just like any other day when I received the call. I had been sketching the horizon for the past hour when my phone began ringing with with an unfamiliar number. I would have ignored it if the call hadn't been from my home town. Fast forward 24 hours later, and I'm sitting in a stark conference room and waiting for a team of doctors to arrive. I would have never imagined myself in this position. Who could? My mind was racing, and I wished that the doctor had given me a clearer explanation…

(Inspired by the The Zodiac Killer) The letter arrived on a quiet morning. Plain envelope. No return address. Inside, a message—neatly written, almost calm. “I like killing people because it is so much fun.” The newsroom fell silent. At first, they thought it was a prank. Until the police confirmed it. The details in the letter… only the killer could know. He didn’t stop there. More letters came. Each one colder than the last. Each one playing a game.

“She opened her arms. I should have kept mine closed.” It was a sunny day in a new neighborhood, the third one I had moved into that year. I walked slowly, observing the streets. The houses all looked alike, fences lined with rusted gates, stray dogs wandering aimlessly, and children playing and shouting somewhere far off.

The first thing you notice isn't the cold or the smell of damp concrete it’s the silence. When you finally blink your eyes open, the world is a blur of grey shadows and a single, flickering lightbulb hanging from a low ceiling. Your wrists ache, and when you try to reach for your phone, the heavy rattle of a steel chain snaps you into a cold reality. You aren't in your bedroom. You’re in a basement clean, organized, but windowless. There’s a plate of your favorite food sitting on a small wooden…

“Pluggy the Plug-in,” that is the name I keep remembering for some reason, even after those posts of the lost show titled Sammy the Cat. I wonder who that character is; I might as well talk to the creator of the show about it. Yes, it has been a long time since Richard Turner was arrested. Even after my two posts, I never heard anything about him being released.

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.

I live in a small village and nothing rarely exciting ever happens, and its one of those villages where generations pass on traditions to the next generation. I like the area but most of my friends have decided to move towards the big bustling cities where there is noise and excitement. I was just going for a walk on a Sunday morning when I saw a gathering around the park and I knew straight away something had happened. We don’t get much trouble around here and when something does go off it…

Summer in Colorado Springs was exceptionally hot that year. Jim, Jack, and their younger sisters, Judy and Jill, were spending their time carelessly, playing in the front yard. One day, their parents went out shopping, leaving the siblings with strict orders not to wander off and to watch the house. As the shopping took longer than expected, the boys grew restless and decided to go for a short walk in the woods. Their sisters followed them.

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?

I needed the job. Without a bachelor's degree, my previous nursing work hadn't paid much, certainly not enough for me and my four-year-old son Julian to get by. So yeah, life as a single Black mother wasn't easy. Especially considering I was only twenty-three.

Feedback "This, too, shall pass." — Persian Proverb . . I woke up lying on the cold floor, my cheek pressed against splinters. No wind. No storm. No voices. Just quiet. Dry, suffocating quiet. Dust drifted in the shafts of pale light like falling ash. My mouth tasted like old rust. I stood slowly, my footfalls creaked loud in the emptiness, and wandered into the bedroom. There, resting on the bed, was my notebook.

I don’t remember falling asleep, and that’s the part that keeps scratching at me the most. There was no slow drift, no soft surrender into dreams, no moment where the world dimmed and gave me permission to leave it. One second I existed somewhere real—my room, I think, something familiar, something that should have grounded me—and the next I was standing on a sidewalk that stretched too far in both directions, like it had forgotten how to end. The sky above me was a pale, exhausted gray, not…

This is another I posted on /r/nosleep several years ago. I wanted to write something in the style of the horror anthologies I enjoyed as a kid in the '90s, such as Ask the Bones, The Scary Story Reader, or the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. ----