It was a dark, foggy night, as it really should be whenever something eerie happens. I was walking from my dad’s house over to my mom’s. I’d had a fight with my dad about something, the topic of which I’ve since forgotten, and realized at 17 years old that I was old enough and capable enough to walk alone back to my mom’s house, instead of stewing in my room at dad’s. Besides, both of my sisters were asleep already, so I wasn’t worried about them not getting their homework done or needing help with dinner. No, my self-appointed duties were done for the evening, and the only thing that stood in between me and the relative freedom of my…

TAG…YOU’RE IT!! The Graveyard Game Ten people. Ten people in ten different places,  doing ten different things. But all sharing one single thought… “What if it really works?” It seems an unwritten rule in tiny little spit shot towns all across the country that each has it’s own tall tales and legends of old, whispered through the ages and shared from one generation to the next, just as it has been since the beginning of time and as it will continue to be. This is simply the version of one of those tall tales and legends as it’s known here in our little town. You see, in the little town of Sawnhurst, California, there is an age old tradition tied…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

My parents live up North, and so every Christmas my drive to their house is defined by a lot of grey, brown and white, as well as bitter cold. Never liked the cold. I spent the first 18 years of my life in it, so I think I definitely have an educated opinion on it. I don’t like the passionless white-skied coldness, or the stark freeze of the deep dark night where you can see your breath billowing out from you like a smokestack, and I especially don’t like when the sky is a deceptive bright blue and all sunny, the rippled clouds all golden and hazy purple, and you go outside thinking it’ll be warm and it’s still fucking…

I’m a rabbi, so you can imagine the kinds of conversation I have when I counsel my congregants. Family troubles. Marital strife. And sometimes, theology. The other day, one of my congregants―a young, sensitive woman with hair almost black and eyes just as dark―came in to see me. She was in the midst of a crisis of faith. “If only God would speak to me, or give me some kind of sign…,” she was saying. “Oh, Rachel,” I said, smiling, “God indeed does speak to us. But not with a voice―that would be too dramatic… too Hollywood. Instead, He speaks through coincidences. Haven’t you heard the saying? ‘Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.’” Rachel held my gaze. “Has God…

I’ve heard all about all of the little “games” from the internet, little rituals with beings that hunt you, games that people spread stories about, games that people get wishes for, I feel jealous of them, most of the time it’s just a prank, or if something does happen, at least they’ll more than likely survive. I find it annoying whenever I spot one of those clickbait videos, (PLAYING BLOODY MARY AT 3:00 AM!), because they mock the people who made these stories, or in my case, encounters. My name is Jonah, but I prefer to be called Jon, and I am here to document my account of the ritual game known as “The Candles” I guess I should start…

“The mind over matter is me” – – – That was the quote that lingered in my mind. I saw it once—on a TV screen during a mental health awareness ad, which played after the show I was absentmindedly watching had ended. It stayed with me, I pondered how powerful our minds can shape our reality. The thoughts we think, beliefs we share, and our perceptions of reality aren’t merely passive but actively influence how we experience and interact daily. It had me thinking, that despite everyone living in the same physical world, billions of individual realities, cultivated by billions of other people co-exist under one shared present, does that make sense? But what do I know? I was just…

My son died yesterday, on an autumn evening, when the wind blew hard and the leaves hid from the first cold. The ambulance arrived too late. Since then, silence scratches my mind. But the worst thing was the wait every night, when he returned. My son died yesterday, but that night he came back to me. At first, I only heard a weak murmur with my name on his lips. A kind voice from the darkness. “I’m fine,” he told me. I saw him at the end of my bed, standing in a corner, barely a shadow. I knew it was him, it couldn’t be a trick of my mind My son died, and he has visited me every day,…

It’s been 25 years to the day since my friend Baptiste disappeared. Not officially. The date in the police record says ‘September 14’ because his aunt didn’t report him missing until three days later. I was the last person to see him though. I know when and where he disappeared, and I told the cops, but they brushed me off. I was just making things up to protect my friends, they said, and that I had watched too many horror movies. Baptiste and I were thick as thieves ever since first grade. To most people, we must have been an odd pair. The shy, withdrawn kid with the thick Haitian accent our classmates often made fun of, to a point…

This is a story of a boy I met when I was still young. His name was James Elkin, and he lived in the house two doors down from me. We weren’t friends, but I did greet him a few times when I saw him. He always looked small for a nine-year-old and had long, uneven hair. I remember walking past his home on my way to school each day. Many times, I saw him out collecting insects. He never harmed them. He wasn’t very friendly, but he wasn’t cruel either. His parents were always very kind, often offering jobs to us younger kids so we could earn a little change for bubble gum or something we wanted. Because of…