#paranoia

I owed it to him, I suppose. He was my best friend, after all, and he had always been there for me when I was in trouble. Six months ago, Mike's uncle had died after a year or so of illness. Mike took the news hard; the man had been like a father to him. It had taken him those six months to build up the courage to head round to his uncles old place in the country, and get his affairs sorted out.

Sitting in the back seat of a station wagon, two sisters, ages 6 and 8 start bickering. One won't scoot over, the other is making annoying sounds. Typical car ride for this family. The parents up front try ignoring the children, but soon enough it gets to be too intolerable. "Girls, be quiet and look out your windows." Snapped their mom.

I've always found it particularly difficult to start a story. It's easy to end one, but ever since grade school when my teachers would make me write a short story, I could never make a good start. I suppose I'll start by saying this is a story. A story about my best friend. He died about 2 years ago. He was in his living room, sitting, watching tv, and he had a heart attack. And boom. Just like that he's dead. Gone. Bye bye. See you later. It was really shocking when I found out.

Lytle, Texas - August

I awoke that night to Echo, my dog, barking up a storm. He was perched on the edge of my bed, facing the door and yapping away like crazy. I scratched him behind the ear to get him to calm down and guided him to his usual spot on my bed. In hindsight, him barking was the first warning.

In 1976 a new roll coaster was unveiled in Kings Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio. The roller coaster was called 'The Depths' and was at the time the longest roller coaster ever built; and it was only to be operated during October to celebrate Halloween. Having an 'annual' coaster was the park's latest idea of a holiday gimmick to keep attendance up during the chilly autumn season. Their big promotion and tagline for the coaster was: 'While in the Depths no can hear you scream'.

My father always had this one problem of talking to himself but at least it wasn't in public, as he always made sure he would talk to himself in his special room in our house. Me and my mother have gotten use to it over the years and it became normal in our house hold and we both never really questioned why my father enjoyed to talk to himself. My father didn't have many friends and he enjoyed his own company as he was a bit of a recluse. He did now and then due to the environmental mental…

Psychology bones - They sound weird, right, but I can feel my own psychology bones and other psychology bones in other people’s minds. Psychology bones aren’t bones for the body, but the mind, they are extremely flexible and cannot be seen by the naked eyes, they are constantly breaking and forming back together and breaking again. They make up the mind and they determine what sort of mind you have and why you think the way you do.

Everyone always says there not real there just a figure of your imaginations fairytales they say, but I know they exist I've never seen them, but I've felt their presence, eyes looking through the window staring, observing almost as if taking notes of humanity itself. The feeling was unreal almost as if it made me at ease. I was once one of them the non-believers I had thought it was dumb to believe in something you couldn't see it was like believing in unicorns or the end of the rainbows.

Two months ago, I almost died. When you imagine your death, most people think they're gonna go peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. Very few imagine you'll die because you slipped in an oil puddle in your driveway and cracked your skull on the cement. That's what happened to me, though. My car, an aging beater I had kept for longer than any rational person would have, nearly took me out before I had a chance to sell it. The betrayal cut me deep.

James Locke had always been a quiet man, the sort whose presence barely registered in a crowded room, and he had grown used to it. There was a strange comfort in being unnoticed, in blending into the gray pattern of city life without anyone truly looking at him.

Every school has had a teacher during their formative years that all the students hate, or at least seriously dislike. My case is no exception. For me and my classmates, this teacher was Mrs. Rowena Greene. She was the type of teacher that parents often liked because they saw her as a "nonsense" teacher. For us, it was a living nightmare and with good reason.    Now, when I tell you about Mrs. Greene, I think you'll agree that she was anything but a good person. Why she ever chose a profession…

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…

Throughout my time observing the everyday activities of humans, I've noticed several quirks about them. Many of these can be used to my advantage. One such quirk is that people seldom look up. Whether sitting alone in a dark room, running panicked through a forest, or dining in a crowded restaurant, they rarely glance skyward. I'm uncertain of the reason for this lack of upward glances, but it works in my favor.

Earlier in the month, I was sitting on my window seat and daydreaming, watching the sun disappear behind the Sierra Nevada mountains. I had been reading a crime novel when I recalled an old family tradition. During the holidays, my mother would light candles and place them on the window sill. As I was growing up, I never knew the real purpose of lighting these candles. I always thought they were a part of decorating our house for Christmas, and my mother insisted that the candles helped Santa…

I know, what a generic thing to talk about in a story like this, as stories about creepy dolls were shared around to death, but hey, surely someone on here will be interested in what I am talking about as I have something similar to share.

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. ----

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.

My name is Victor. I am a resident of a quiet village near which there was a forest, there were many stories and myths about it.

You can’t help yourself anymore when you see the man in black