Paul nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized that his little sister was standing right next to him. He was focused like a laser, writing the next horror short that the Dark Shadows Rising podcast was demanding. The closer the deadline loomed, the...
It started out like any other work day. I had houses to sell and people who wanted to buy them. Honestly, I’ve always found being a realtor embarrassingly easy. People seek you out and ask you to sell them incredibly high-ticket items. I’ve done other...
“Look, Daddy! An airplane!” my son Sedrek pointed up at the sky at the brilliant metallic dot cutting a white line across the clear blue sky. This was something of a family tradition. When I saw airplanes as a little boy, I had to point them...
My name is Russell Green. At dawn on the morning of June 14 of this year I set off in a rented boat to a spot eleven miles north of Oymur on Russia’s Lake Baikal. My destination was informally called the Pit of Night. Three...
John Woodford in his first moments of returning consciousness was not aware that he was lying in his coffin. He had only a dull knowledge that he lay in utter darkness and that there was a close, heavy quality in the air he breathed. He...
The circumstances in which we found Ms. Kerry were unpleasant. She had been dead for just over a week by the time we were called out, though how much of the smell came from her decomposing body and how much was from the house she had...
I know someone that works for NOAA. The disclosure rumors are 100% true, and the species in question is aquatic. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, and that’s fine. I know a lot of B.S. gets posted on the Internet for shits and giggles. I’m...
Not far from where we’re sitting now is a pool of water no bigger than the width of a car. It lies stagnant, the breeze never touching its surface, as it is surrounded on all sides by large grey rocks that jut nine or ten...
It was a favorite spot of mine. I would happily sit by the clear water and look out to the surrounding hills as the sun peeked out from behind them. Each summer had been bliss there, but by then that bliss had turned to terror. For...
From the diary of Jake Sato: Dated: May 11th, 2019 I’ve always tried to rationally think through how we got here. What happened to lead us down this path? Why did life turn out like this? When I do, my mind always comes back to that summer’s...
Youth is forever entwined with adventure. The vast horizon speeds away from a young mind into infinity. A world to be discovered. Possibilities waiting to be made certainties. Out there, beyond. Not far from where we now sit, two teenagers propelled by that hunger for...
He liked to kill animals. It was a game he’d play during the longer drives. Jones wasn’t a bad guy entirely. He wasn’t particularly rotten, at least not to the core. He’d never kill a dog, for example, that would of course be wrong. Dogs...
I was but a boy when I first discovered the grove in the wood, or, perhaps, when it discovered me. I came across the path leading to it down from my grandparents’ house where I would often visit in the summer months, wild and free...
This is a true story. I know that’s cliché to say. In this day and age, claiming something incredible happened without video proof is a surefire way to make certain people won’t believe you. Everyone does it, though, especially in the realm of the scary...
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-traveled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he...
There was once a farmer who lived outside the city of Erie, Pennsylvania. On a small hill overlooking his fields he built himself a little wooden house with thirteen steps leading up to it and a barn for his horse and tools. He was a...
I try to live my life without too many regrets. I’ve had highs and lows like everyone else, sure, but I do what I can not to worry too much about what could have happened if I’d made a different choice, if I maybe hadn’t...
My name is Kenneth Vilma. December 17, 2010, marked the third day of my escape from Grovenor Penitentiary in Crystalis, Michigan, and my second day in the Wolf Paw State Forest with another convict, Ron Heil. We’d been on the run since paying off two...
Asphalt tires glided us along the black sea of the Interstate. My vision had become blurry, tired from the constant repetition of the white line, a dotted Morse code along the center of our path. We’d spent several days in Memphis: tourists indulging in the...
A curious case emerged in the fall of two thousand four. A man, aged nineteen, was found dead of an exhaustion-induced heart attack. The man, believed to be a casual user of methamphetamine, described his gradual descent into mental instability due to chronic insomnia, suffered...
