#monsters

I’m a trucker. Been one for almost twenty years. I’ve seen a lot of strange things on the road—but nothing like this. It happened during my early years, when I still ran long international routes. The kind that cut through nowhere, threading across mountains and ghost towns. I was somewhere in northern Spain, driving through the Babia y Luna Natural Park, heading toward Portugal.

I always liked the stories my dad would tell me, the time he met the devil, times he almost died. But one story stood out to me. In 1977 he moved in to the house we still live in, they lived peacfully for 3 years until one day on 10/20/1980 at 3:33AM my dad and his brother mele were outside in the backyard fixing the bike they had gotten from the dumpster. Until my dad saw somthing tall pale with long arms and legs, human hair, toothless, wide mouth staring into their souls behind the fence…

Every neighbourhood has a place children are warned never to cross. A tunnel, a fence, a creek, sometimes just a street or an abandoned house. A line drawn in fear, and if you dare step past it, something bad will take you. In my town, the forbidden zone was a decommissioned storm drain at the edge of town.

Since so many of you have been trading your own run-ins with the creepy and unexplained, I figured it was time to throw my story into the mix.

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.

By the end of our first week, father had stopped talking about Boston. That was how I knew he was happy. Every morning he woke before sunrise, dressed without lighting a lamp, and went outside with an axe over one shoulder. By breakfast, he had already split enough wood to last us for several days. He repaired the barn roof. He cleared the weeds from the garden for mother. He even found an old plow beneath a pile of rotten boards and spent the better part of two days repairing it.

I used to think the worst part of my job was the blood. The stink of it, thick and metallic, clinging to my clothes, clogging my nostrils. It soaks into everything, wood, concrete, carpet, skin. You scrub it off, bleach the scene, pretend nothing ever happened. But doesn’t lie. It leaves stains, no matter how hard you try to erase them. It tells a story, even when no one don't want to listen. Yet, it's not the worst part, the worst it 's the silence.

I was seventeen years old when my father took us out of Boston. I loved the idea! Or at least I thought I would. For many years afterward, whenever someone asked where the trouble began, I told them it began in those mountains. That wasn’t true… It began long before we saw them.

I’ve been a Cleaner at the Association for six years now, and in that time, I’ve seen my fair share of strange and horrifying things. I still can’t decide what’s worse—the half-decayed corpses of creatures that shouldn’t exist or the Wardens, walking around freely, who can transform into absolute monsters in the blink of an eye. But the strangest, most unsettling experience of my life didn’t involve blood or gore. It involved a series of conversations I’ll never forget.

My wife and I always dreamed of living off-grid on our own land, but we were never able to afford anything—not even a small quarter-acre lot. We were sick of paying rent for shitty houses and apartments that charged way too much for the condition they were in, so we started wondering if there was anywhere we could actually afford to live.

Mr. Pike arrived shortly after noon. I knew it was him before father said anything. There was something about the way the man approached the house that made him uneasy. Most visitors, as in would imagine, would look towards the farmhouse first. Not Pike. He looked straight to the woods. He came up the road in a dark green truck that coughed smoke behind it and rattled like loose bones. The truck stopped near the barn, but Pike didn’t immediately get out of the truck.

Samantha was a young, pretty, active girl with a positive outlook on life. Above all, she was down-to-earth, didn't believe in any ghosts, phantoms, or other such things, and had a very analytical mind. ​She loved long forest hikes, which relaxed and calmed her down greatly, allowing her to rest and escape from everyday problems. That day, right after finishing her lectures, she decided to head down to the river. She packed her backpack, put on a denim jacket, denim pants, and sturdy, heavy…

Hi, I’m Zack, and I’m going to share my experiences with Carbon, a high-tech security lab. Though I’m sure you know me for my experience as a security guard watching over an abandoned Disney park that had lured children to their demise. I had never wanted to talk about any of my other experiences before, but now that I’ve said my first one, I think it’s time for me to explain.

I remember one day, slumbering comfortably. I was experiencing a great dream. Full of colors, and bright lights. But that's when I woke up in the middle of the night. I was sweating, everywhere, and anywhere. I wiped my head clean, and noticed something strange. My door was slightly open, showing the light outside. Then I got a frightful epiphany, I must hide. The next day I fell fast asleep, exhausted from work. But the same thing happened once more, Woke up, sweaty, door open.

The small town of Ravenswood was plagued by a terrifying creature, known as the Dogman. It was said to be a creature that was half-man half-dog, with glowing red eyes and razor-sharp teeth. It was a creature of legend, but the people of Ravenswood knew it to be all too real. It had been attacking and killing their livestock for months, and the town was in a state of crippling fear.

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…

“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.”

LAB EXPLORATION DAY 1: Randy: We made it to the research facility after about two days. There were so  many close calls that I almost lost count. There were the obvious threats, the false copycats and Mimickers were at almost every damn turn we made, but we made it.

By the end of the spring semester of our senior year, the state of mind for me and my friends could be described simply as “burned out”. The semester was hard on all of us, and we desperately needed a reset for our brains. I’ve never been one to make plans and this time around was no different. I knew that if I waited long enough, Steven or Josh would make plans for us. “You guys are going to love this idea!” Steven said with way too much enthusiasm as he walked into our dorm.

Hiking has been an obsession of mine for a while. Finding a new trail and exploring the woods just makes me feel alive. I remember living in Birmingham, Alabama, and hiking the trails at Oak Mountain State Park. The blue trail was my favorite cause it led to a waterfall at the end. It's been a dream of mine to hike the Appalachian Trail, which stretches across 14 states, and tomorrow I was going to start my 2,198-mile hike. The start of the Appalachian Trail begins at the top of Springer…