#reality

I’ve worked in prisons for the criminally insane for 10 years now, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t change my job for the world. With any hard work rehabilitation is possible, and I believe true justice can be served. I remember my first day vividly, how terrified I was to do night shifts. How uneasy I got walking that long dark, silent corridor. That phrase you hear on your first day sticks with you forever. “Eyes down, keep right.”

I’m writing on here about a missed connection. I was at the Bernard Mall retro game store around 3 pm on Saturday. You were in the fantasy aisle. Your hair was a shining auburn that graced your gentle frame, and when you turned to me. Your eyes lit me up like the mystical northern lights. Their hazel flecks danced even in the dull lighting, and you smiled. And your blushed cheeks a shade of rose so sweet a hummingbird would confuse you for a bloom.

The ball streaked towards little Jimmy Hanson, covering the distance uncomfortably fast. The scrawny boy two sizes too small with the aviator glasses, cringed out of the way. It landed directly where he had been standing, and like that the game ended. “Damnit Jimmy, you're supposed to catch the ball not hide from it!” a fat kid with a glove on one hand cried.

"I heard birds singing outside. I didn't know birds still came here." "It is a beautiful day to be alive." — Unknown ... I wake to warm light slanting through the curtains. The air smells of toasted bread and coffee, and in the distance, I hear my mother humming a familiar tune, soft, gentle, but off-key. It sounds like she's humming with her mouth closed.

Do you remember a show called Gilligan's Island? It was an American sitcom that aired in 1964 with three seasons and 99 episodes, one being in black and white and the latter in color, which started in 1965; Let me summarize what the show is about: There's a two-man crew on the charter boat SS Minnow and five passengers on a 3-hour tour from Honolulu who run into a typhoon and are shipwrecked on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific.

The past is not dead. It is not even past." — William Faulkner • I don't remember who called me about the funeral. I assume it was Aunt Lillian's neighbor, or maybe someone from the church, but the truth is, I picked up the phone, I heard my name, and everything after that is a smear of static and vowels. Now I'm standing on the porch of my great-aunt's house, our family's house surrounded by pines, decay, and a smell I can't name but instinctively hate. The front door is already open.

I was always told to stay out of the old garden behind the house. My parents kept saying it was unsafe, overgrown, and full of thorns. I believed them, as children believe their parents. When I grew up and moved back into the family home after they passed away, I decided to clear out that forgotten space. I wanted to reclaim it, make it mine.

You open your eyes, but there isn’t anything to see. It’s all blank- whether its white, or black, it doesn’t matter. But then it does- a blinding light fills your eyes, and you squint away. When you open them again, you’re in a building. No, not a building- a train. The windows show the scenery outside moving at such a speed that you can’t even tell what you’re passing by. The interior is simple but sophisticated- mostly white, with a few booths set up against the left wall.

In the early 1990s, police in Germany found something strange at a crime scene. A trace. A tiny piece of DNA. At first, it meant nothing. Just another clue. But then… it showed up again. Another crime. Different place. Same DNA. Months passed. Then years. The same DNA kept appearing—at burglaries, thefts, and other serious incidents. Not just in one city, but across regions… even in nearby countries like Austria and France. Police started to realize something unsettling.

My eyes are in a ferverous affair with the clock, and my focus is none the wiser. The police dispatcher is pleading for me to humor her inquiries, if for no reason other than to keep my consciousness afloat. It is so late, and today has been so challenging. Nevertheless, I’ll gratify her with my story, because I am really in no mood to tell it again later.

My life seemed like it was going pretty well. I had just received my bachelor’s degree at the state college, and received the fairly well-paying job as an office manager. The thing is, something felt like it was missing from my life… I wanted love. I wanted to have a wife to keep me company, but the only women I knew worked at the office—and were drop-dead ugly.

You lay in your bed, comfortably, staring at your ceiling. Your air conditioning is whirring, allowing you to completely relax and slowly drift into sleep. Just as you start to fall asleep your air conditioner cuts off. You can hear everything. You have a relatively large room. You're starting to become uncomfortable, but instead of moving to get into a better position you lay still. Almost frozen.

Alone… You never have thought of the concept alone before, but as you are in your bed, unable to sleep your mind starts to wander. You think about what you did or what you are going to do tomorrow. Then, you start to think of darker subjects, subjects you wish you had never thought of. You wonder if you are the only one if the house awake at this hour. You wonder if you are the only one awake…in your room. Right there you hear small and subtle creaks in your kitchen.

Appropriate. It says this in the rules, under the FAQ, word for word. Submissions are supposed to be creepy stories to spread around the internet for a bit of an adrenaline rush on those late nights alone. They're not real, they're not meant to be full of explicit gore or violence, they've always been simple stories - sometimes overdone, sometimes with plenty of cliches or plot-holes, but never... never truly chilling to the bone, not before that night...

Fingers trembling with excitement I opened the package. Just as I had hoped, it was the camera I won on ebay. With mild delight I realized I had received a better deal than I had realized because the previous owner had left the memory card in the slot.

There is a video on YouTube named Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv. If you search this, you will find nothing. The few times you find something, all you will see is a 20 second video of a man staring intently at you, expressionless, then grinning for the last 2 seconds. The background is undefined. This is only part of the actual video.

My cousin recently moved here from Secunderabad, India. On a recent road trip exploring America, we were shootin shit and exchanging ghost stories and laughing at similarities and differences between American ghost stories and Indian ghost stories when I asked her if she’s ever experienced anything supernatural. Her eyes widened as she averted her eyes to the window. Just when the silence was about to be too much for me, she softly responded “Yes. A few. One is troubling.”

Polybius is an urban legend about a rare arcade game released in 1981. The game was created by a mysterious company called Sinneslöschen (German for "Sense Deletion") and was a puzzle/shoot-'em-up somewhat like Tempest. It was only released in a few suburbs of Portland, Oregon.

On every college campus there is a hallway. Nondescript, tucked away, often on the top floor of a building or off of another hall where only a few classrooms have been placed. It melts into the background of every student’s life; drowned out by the music department or wedged between two lecture halls. Occasionally, a lost freshman will wander down it, running late for their first class. Should such a lost soul wander through that hall, all they will find is a single, empty classroom. This room…

What is it about being naked that makes someone feel so vulnerable? I mean, really, are you suddenly stronger with clothes? Maybe if you’re the type who goes around wearing steel toed boots and Kevlar, but if you are, something tells me that even in the buff you probably know more than the average Joe about self-defense and would stand a good chance in a fight either way.