Unseen People

Lights in the Distance

Loving Mother

Camping in the Woods

Deja Vu

That Nagging Feeling

Night Terrors

Fear

Manifested Fear

I Live Alone

Mother's Love

They Hurt Her

After lunch, her teacher announced that the school was holding a fire drill. When the alarm sounded, Carmen and the other students filed out of the classroom and assembled in the yard outside. As the teachers read out the roll call, the gang of five girls decided that this was a great opportunity to embarrass Carmen in front of the whole school during the fire drill. They moved over to where Carmen was standing, near a sewer drain, and began crowding the poor girl, getting in her face and nudging her towards the open manhole.

They pushed her and she tripped over and fell head-first down the manhole. When they saw her falling, the girls started giggling and when Carmen’s name was called out, they shouted "She’s down in the sewer!"

All of the other students began laughing. But when the teachers looked down the manhole and saw Carmen’s body lying at the bottom in the muck and the poop, the laughter abruptly stopped. Her head was twisted around at an odd angle and her face was covered in blood. Worse still, she wasn’t moving. There was nothing any of the teachers could do for her. Carmen was dead. When the police arrived and went down into the sewer, they determined that she had broken her neck. Her face had been torn off when she hit the ladder on the way down and her neck snapped when she landed on her head on the concrete at the bottom.

The police hauled Carmen’s body out of the sewer and sent her to the mortuary. Everyone had to stay behind after school while the police questioned all of Carmen’s classmates. The five girls lied to the police, saying they had witnessed Carmen falling down the sewer. The police believed the girls and Carmen Winstead’s death was ruled an accident and the case was closed. Everyone thought that was the last they would hear of Carmen Winstead, but they were wrong.

Months later,Carmen’s classmates began receiving strange e-mails on their MySpaces. The e-mails were titled "They Pushed Her" and claimed that Carmen hadn’t really fallen down the sewer, she had been pushed. The e-mails also warned that the guilty people should own up and take responsibility for their crime. If they didn’t there would be horrible consequences. Most people dismissed the e-mails as a hoax, but others were not so sure.

A few days later,one of the girls who pushed Carmen down the sewer was at home taking a shower, when she heard a strange cackling laugh. It seemed to be coming from the drain. The girl started to freak out and ran out of the bathroom. That night, the girl said goodnight to her mom and went to sleep. Five hours later, her mom was awoken in the middle of the night, by a loud noise that resounded throughout the house. She ran into her daughter’s room, only to find it empty. There was no trace of the girl. The worried mother called the police and when they arrived,they conducted a search of the area. Eventually, they discovered the girl’s grisly remains. Her corpse was lying in the sewer, covered in muck and poop. Her neck was broken and her face missing. It had been completely torn off.

One by one, all of the girls who pushed Carmen that day were found dead. They had all been killed in exactly the same way and were all found at exactly the same spot. In the sewer at the bottom of the same uncovered manhole where Carmen had met her doom. But the killing didn’t stop there. More and more of Carmen’s former classmates were found dead. It seemed that anyone who didn’t believe that Carmen had been pushed, was eventually found down in the sewer with their necks broken and their faces torn off.They say that Carmen’s ghost is still on the rampage, hunting down anyone who doesn’t believe her story. According to the legend, Carmen will get you, whether it is from a toilet, a shower, a sink or a drain. When you go to sleep, you’ll wake up in the sewer, in complete darkness, paralyzed, unable to move, hearing cackling laughter all around you. Then, as you scream in horror, Carmen will come and tear your face off.

So be careful who you bully, because you just might find yourself on the receiving end of the curse of Carmen Winstead.

Now, What Was I Just Doing?

You don’t know it, but someone has been removed from your life.

They haven’t died, they haven’t moved, they have simply ceased to be from present future and history.

However you still know they were there, you faintly recall broken memories of someone else there, someone who should have been there but you think you’re crazy.

You go to do something, but you can’t remember what …

It was them, they wanted to talk to you.

The Cabinet

Every family in every town in every country on every continent has one.

It’s a cabinet, not particularly odd, not out of place.

The paint was peeling a bit on the corners and the knob was a bit loose. The inside smelled like dust and the paint wasn’t the same as the kitchen walls.

You hid in there once during a game of hide ‘n’ seek.

No one told you it doesn’t open back into your reality. Don’t worry, you can’t tell the difference.

But everyone misses you.

The Belgian Tribe

My grandfather served in the European Theater of Operations during WWII, an experience he rarely talks much about. I’ve only managed to coax one story out of him.

He and a low-ranking officer (granddad was an enlisted man) were travelling by jeep somewhere in Belgium with a cache of much-needed ammunition. Taking a wrong turn on an unpaved road they first became lost, then began to run low on fuel. They sought to ask some locals for help, as the Belgians were highly sympathetic to the Allied effort.

They spied a small hamlet, made up of fewer than a dozen thatched huts, and began walking towards it. They were met halfway by a group of three men dressed mostly in animal skins, all of whom spoke angrily in a language neither of them understood (not French, not German, and certainly not English).

Negotiations proved futile, and one of the three drew a small rusty knife. The Lieutenant drew his .45 sidearm in return and killed the man when he rushed at them as if to attack. This act scared the other two off.

Eventually they repaired the jeep themselves and found their way back to base by the next day. A report was filed, but not much made of it. The following winter the Lieutenant was killed in an artillery barrage, making my grandfather the only known living witness to the event.

Now what’s interesting is what reminded him of the story: we were watching a documentary on the development of language, this one specifically about the Saxon tongue, which thousands of years ago developed into languages like German and English. Granddad remarked how much it sounded like the words he’d heard that day.

The Mission

There are exactly 17 people on this earth fated to kill you.

If you somehow manage to avoid these 17 people during your lifetime, you are taken to a place of monumental beauty where you are stripped of all clothing and branded on the space just above your navel with a name.

When you are sent back to earth, it’s your mission to kill the person branded on you.

Polybius

In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time.

This game was called “Polybius”.

The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black.

Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines.

The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects — amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and suicide appearing as having been caused by the game in various versions of the legend.

Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist.

Grinning

This morning I stepped out of the shower and this bathroom was fine: white walls, white tiles, sink and counter with toothpaste crusted all over. Three out of the four lightbulbs over the mirror were still good — 100 watt, clear bulb, blinding bright in the small white room. Like always I was late, so I skipped shaving. She liked it when I didn’t shave, anyway. I was thinking about doing mutton chops. She’d get a kick out of that. I passed the mirror and noticed I was grinning. I didn’t even know I was grinning.

I’m in the bathroom tonight before bed and there’s something wrong with the lights. All three are on again but they glow kind of brown and don’t really light up the rest of the room. I should get more bulbs from the kitchen. I should, but I’m busy. The date was shit and she shut her apartment door on me. You’d think that would wipe off the stupid grin from this morning. But I came back in the bathroom and, in the mirror, my face was still doing it. If I touch my face it doesn’t feel like a grin, but there it is in the mirror.

In the brown light it’s hard to make out but — have you ever actually counted how many teeth show when you smile? I lean in close. One, two, three, four — I didn’t know my mouth was so wide. Nine, ten, eleven — I can’t do mutton chops after all. The corners of my lips are out to my ears. It still doesn’t feel like a grin. But keep counting, for curiousity. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight.

The Hum

The Hum is what people have called a phenomena that occurs in some places in the world. It is a low-frequency humming noise that sounds not unlike a distant running engine. However, the source can never be found. Even with microphones and all sorts of audio technology

The source of the Hum has yet to be found.

The most popular location to hear the Hum is in Taos, New Mexico. Only some can hear it as well as feel it. They can hear it throughout the day and into the night. The Hum does not stop. It has never stopped.

Taken from Wiki:

“Many people hear the Hum only, or much more, inside buildings as compared with outdoors. Many Hum sufferers can also perceive vibrations that can be felt through the body. Earplugs are reported as not decreasing the Hum. The Hum is often perceived more intensely during the night.
…Common consequences include a lack of sleep, as the Hum can keep some sufferers awake or wake them in the middle of the night.

…During the last decade, the Hum phenomenon has been reported in many other cities and regions in North America and Europe and in some other regions of the world.”

What will happen when the Hum reaches you? Will you hear it at night when you don’t expect it? Maybe it is already there.

What's In The Darkness?

You might be getting yourself ready for bed, hopping out of the shower at night, or running to grab something before a date when you inadvertently find yourself descending a flight of darkened stairs. About halfway down said flight, the urge to go that much faster jolts into your mind and you immediately obey.

What are we running from that dwells in the darkness up the stairs? Is it simply the thought of darkness that causes us to want to leave the situation as soon as possible? Or is there something else? A darker, more sinister force awaiting us to take our time going down the stairs to nab us and take us with them to their hell-hole? Or perhaps is it a force of good, attempting to protect us from the things in the darkness?

Could it be that every time we feel that urge to move faster the very hands of an evil force are grabbing our back, and because of our sudden speed we slip out of its grasp? Who knows. Just remember, next time that you’re going down that flight of stairs, don’t look back and skip some stairs if necessary!

The Guy in Room 302

It’s the summer, and you’re out of your college classes for at least a week or two, before the next semester starts. You’ve spent this time lounging around, and sleeping a lot. But lately, correspondence between your local friends has dropped off. They don’t drop by. Your phone’s been quiet for awhile, and your IM lists are all empty.

After five days of this, you’ve gotten bored enough to try chatrooms. They’re all empty; even the big ones. Any e-mails you send get no replies.

When you leave your apartment, the whole of the building is unearthly silent. The only noise that comes about at all is the whurr from the automated Rail outside. Nobody answers when you knock. All the buildings are dark and locked up when you look out the window; the only cars are of the parked variety.

A search of the entire building, and even further beyond that, yeilds nothing. No life; the only movement is from the wind, or the automated peices of machinary. Defeated, you slink back into the empty apartment complex.

On your door is pinned a note:

“Turns out the guy in room 302 really could sleep through the end of the world.”

The note is dated five days ago.

A Different Television Channel

In some television markets, people get two different versions of the same channel. This is usually caused by affiliates being nearby–for example, while living in New Jersey receiving the ABC affiliate from both New York City and Philadelphia, or living in Southern California and getting both the Los Angeles and San Diego stations. For the most part, these appear to be the same channel in all except local news and some daytime programming, with the exception that one is actually closer and more clear than the other.

These channels, in reality, should not occur. Television markets are set up to focus around ONE city, and offering two different versions of the same channel in one market can split viewer-ship in the ever-competitive ratings race.

If you are to watch the channel with worse reception, from the city that is further away, you’ll start to notice that the news reports major events that never occurred, on people that aren’t real, on technology that shouldn’t exist, the ads are for products that you’ve never heard of.

The conspiracy theorists think that these television stations belong to an alternate world. They point to the fact that the news tends to be getting worse over there, more separate from our own. There are reports of looking into an alternate world, and invading it for their own. Just pray they aren’t talking about us.

The House of Disappearances

There was this woman whose husband was acting very strange one day, very paranoid, she asked him why and this is what he told her:

“Twelve years ago to this day a whole bunch of my friends and I went to an old haunted house downtown to stay the night because we thought it would be fun. We were all settled on the bottom floor of the house and we were fine for the first few hours. We began to hear things that sounded like foot steps pacing on the floor above, and scratching on the walls.”

“We sent Jimmy, who was the oldest of us, up to have a look so he grabbed his flashlight and we watched him head up the steps. His foot steps seemed to stop towards the last few steps where he was no longer visible to us and slowly his light faded from view, we called after him but there was no reply.”

“Afterwards we sent Matt, the second oldest up to find him, he walked up the steps and the same thing happened. At this point we thought they were joking, and out third eldest, Jason went up to look shouting that he knew it was a trick and to give it up, at the last few steps where the other guys had vanished his shouting voice became distant before vanishing completely.”

“The rest of us got scared and went home to call the police who checked it out the next morning and found blood smeared up the sides of the stairwell. They searched the entire house and never found a soul. The house was eventually knocked down and not one body was found. Every year on this day one of us remaining from that house has disappeared going from oldest to youngest.”

Her husband was not seen again after that day. Police held an brief investigation, but nothing came of it.

The Disappearance of David Lang

David Lang’s two children, George, 8, and Sarah, 11, were playing in the yard when Lang and his wife came out of the vine-covered brick house. He spoke to the children and then started walking out across the pasture.

At this time, Judge August Peck, and Lang’s brother-in-law came driving up the lane in a buggy. The judge saw Lang in the field and was about to call out to him when it happened.

Lang vanished from the face of the earth.

One minute he was standing in an open field with no trees, stones, or fences. The next, he was simply gone. Lang’s wife and the two men immediately ran to the spot to check that he might have fallen through a hole in the ground. There was no such hole.

Mrs. Lang went hysterical and was taken into the house. Neighbors were called out to help, scores of people searched the field, but to no avail. A surveyor and geologist examined the field and found limestone bedrock a few feet underground without a single fracture in it.

For a month the search carried on. All the Lang servants quit in fear. A year later, the grass where Lang was standing had grown high and thick in a circle 20' in diameter. No farm animal would graze there, and it seemed free of insects.

One day in August, 1881, Sarah and George approached the green circle and called out “Father, are you anywhere around?” They repeated the question 4 times. Hearing no answer, they began to walk away…when they heard a faint cry for help from out of nowhere. Quickly, the children ran to get their mother and pulled her outside. They called to their father again. And he answered.

For several days, the family returned, and each day when they called, the answering voice became fainter, until finally there was no response at all.

The Pregnancy

Since before I could remember, I’ve wanted to be a mother. It seemed my whole childhood and teenager years were spent yearning for a child of my own. By the time I was nine, I had names–and color schemes for the nursery–picked out. All I needed was someone to make them with. But college was disappointing.

I went through a whole string of bad boyfriends and bad father material. Getting on with my career didn’t seem to help much. I realized, though–when I was twenty-seven, and there were no suitable prospects on the line–that, technically, I did not need a man to have a child with. Just a very particular product of his. I found a sperm donor bank, chose the best prospect they had, got out my turkey baster and… well… hoped for the best.

I was overjoyed when my first pregnancy test came out positive. My doctor was surprised to see me coming in sooner than he’d expected. Before I was four weeks along, I had the nursery painted, and the furniture set up. Toys and diapers, bottles and books, bibs and coveralls. I had everything a new mother would need.

I couldn’t explain all the weight I was losing. I kept getting thinner–everything except for my belly. My friends all joked that it had to be at least twins. Or the biggest baby they’d ever seen.

I got weary of the kicking somewhere in the third trimester. And the scratching.

Just one more week until my due date.

I just wish it would stop gnawing.

16 Choices

Every individual will make 16 choices in their lifetime that will forever alter the course of humanity.

No more than 16, no less than 16. These choices will be small, and at the time of decision, will mean nothing.

They won’t have to be choices which result in action, they could be choices that result in inaction.

But months, years along the way, when the full impact of your decisions and the chain reaction of events they have caused are felt… you may have been the one who caused the end of the world.

And you will never know.

Remember to Turn the Lights On

I was six, maybe seven years old when this happened. My family had just gotten back from visiting my aunt’s house. My cousins were watching a scary movie in the basement, and even though my parents said I would get scared, I snuck downstairs and watched some of it. I don’t remember what part I saw, but there were little monsters with teeth that would eat people in their sleep.

When we left for home it was dark outside and my parents scolded me for watching that movie. I secretly hoped they would keep scolding me, because I was feeling sleepy and didn’t want those things to eat me.

We got home fine and my parents even managed to calm me down enough to the point where when my bedtime came around I could go to sleep.

I fell asleep almost immediately and slept pretty well. I woke up sometime during the night. Knowing where everything is in my house I didn’t turn the lights on, but instead used the street light coming in the windows. I went to the bathroom and then got a glass of water. As I was putting the glass in the dishwasher, something pricked my hand. I pulled my hand back and switched on the lights, but there was nothing in the dishwasher.

I looked at my hand and it had four little indents on the top and bottom where something had broken through the skin. Since that day I’ve had little bumps on my skin where the marks were, and I always remember to turn the lights on.

The Missed Call

A strange ringtone plays on your cell phone, you reach for it but whoever it was must have hung up, a wrong number maybe.

You look at the phone anyway.

You’ve missed a call.

You listen to it.

When you put the phone to your ear.

Suddenly you hear a scream of pain, you toss the cell across the room, but you can still hear it.

When you finally pick the phone up you see who the call was from, you realize who’s voice it was.

Yours.

Just A Meaningless Coincidence

In 1938, over 6,000 patients were checked into mental hospitals all across America within one week of each other.

Reports of similar instances supposedly came from Europe and Asia as well.

The circumstances of each patient were, eerily, identical.

Every patient completely shut down, shivering in the corner until their family, unable to calm or care for the individuals, committed them.

The only thing the patients would say was: “There is not, and never has been, such a thing in this world as a meaningless coincidence.”

This is Just a Test

You’d fallen asleep to late-night television, but curiously woke up to the sounds of the static playing on the T.V.

As you sit up, rubbing your eyes, you read the scrawling words of the Emergency Broadcast System “This is just a test – This is just a test – This is just a test…”

You glance at the clock.

3:33.

Yawning, the television catches your eye, and as you watch, the EBS say something different, “This is just a test – This is just a test – You are being watched – This is just a test…”