I Saw Something Disturbing

When you see something traumatic, you’re supposed to go through some sort of short-term PTSD right? That should be normal and you’re expected to be jumpy and extremely scared to the point where you need a few months to a year of therapy. Perfectly normal.

Last week, I saw something disturbing. I had just finished a closing shift at my shitty retail job, leaving a quarter to midnight. After about five minutes on the highway, a big white truck merged in front of me off the ramp from the surrounding residential area. It was one of those square delivery trucks with the big windows on the back doors. Anyway, the truck was lit up from the inside and there were two figures fighting.

The sound of the gunshot brought me to a screeching halt. The splatter of what looked like brain matter and blood hit the back window with such force, I swear I heard just when it made contact. The truck kept driving, swerving left and right in what I can only assume was a struggle, before another gunshot rang in the air. It veered off to the left, just barely hitting the divider, before it started driving normally again at what was probably at least 100mph.

I called the cops, answered their questions. They said they’d look out for them, but without the entire license plate number, they didn’t have much to go on. They thanked me for contacting them and sent me away, while subtly suggesting I “talk to someone about it”, as in get help, because what you saw was fucked up. And it was. For a good majority of my time at the station, I found myself merely staring into space, in a state of shock.

That’s normal. Perfectly normal.

My parents picked me up, adamant about taking me to see a shrink. I refused, but now I’m thinking I shouldn’t have. I started hallucinating, I guess you could say. Hearing gunshots in place of car horns, and most disturbingly, seeing blood. I see blood everywhere now. When I greet customers at work, I see blood pouring down their faces, staining their clothes. When I wipe the mustard off my mouth with a napkin, I see blood. Kids were jumping in blood puddles down the street from my house. When I take out the garbage in the morning, the inside looks like it’s filled with torn up flesh and dripping entrails. This is all apart of the PTSD right? That’s normal.

Perfectly normal.

But in all honesty, should I be worried? I mean hearing gunshots whenever I drive is getting a bit annoying, but other than that, I’m not scared. Isn’t that part of being traumatized? Aren’t I supposed to be flinching at the sight of people guzzling brain matter out of a water bottle? Is it normal that in place of sheer terror and anxiety, I feel completely calm?

I find that I smile much more now.

I feel warm and happy.

Is that normal?

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Staying Late at the Office

I work for an engineering company in a sales role which keeps me busy all through the week. The office I work in is situated in the heart of an industrial estate amongst various other manufacturing and engineering plants. As you can imagine, the estate is a hive of activity during the day; forklifts and HGVs, industrial machinery buzzing and whirring, people shouting and beckoning etc. Sometimes I look out from our first storey window at all the commotion when my day is less busy. I take in every detail; the men holding clipboards, wearing overalls and shouting instructions; the men in suits demand and agree with whoever is on the other end of their telephone call; the women who leaving as a gaggle for their unauthorised extended lunch break. This continues until 5pm every day. At this point, all the workers descend to the exit and make their way home to their families, spouses or video consoles.

Every now and then I am called upon to stay later at the office. This particular time I was finishing a lengthy quotation for our most valued customer which kept me particularly late. My colleagues waved farewell and poked fun at my willingness to stay behind to finish the job. My boss instructed me to lock the premises and set the alarm on my departure before also vacating himself. I was the only one who remained behind. I got up to watch my boss drive away down the estate, his headlights illuminating the vacated industrial estate (In the UK it tends to become dark at around 5pm during the winter). As he disappeared from sight, I lingered a little while longer and mused on how abstract the turmoil from earlier in the day seemed. I worked for what seemed a solid two hours before returning to the window for a short break. This was when I first noticed her.

At a first glance you would never have noticed but as I was studying the landscape I squinted and leaned towards the street below as if questioning my sight. Some 50 metres away I saw what looked like a little girl. She was stood still. Unnaturally still. I could make her out behind the haze of a street lamp. Not quite being able to believe my eyes, I moved to a different position within the office to gain a vantage point. You have to understand that it would be strange for a little girl to be in this kind of area even during the day. I felt my heartbeat faster and my stomach drop a little as I stared at this little girl who was now in plain view. I would have placed her at around 8 years old. She wore what looked like a white summer dress; still standing, absolutely still. Not wishing to dwell, I turned back to my desk and attempted to continue with my work. I didn’t want to look again but I was so curious. As I thought about it, I entertained the idea that she might need help. Maybe she was lost and I should be concerned? Life isn’t a horror movie after all. A loud clink interrupted my thoughts. It sounded like a small stone or something had bounced off the window. Surely this couldn’t have been happening. Did she see me? Does she need help? I creeped slowly towards the window and glanced from the side to determine what had happened. I was slightly relieved but still horrified. She was still stood in the same place. She couldn’t have thrown something from that far away I thought. I scanned the area and saw him.

A boy of the same age stood directly below the office window. He looked straight up at me. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. Just a blank expression. I shot a glance at the little girl who had turned her head to look straight at me. Both “children” stood completely still. Now my heart was pounding. Kids aren’t clever enough to pull this kind of prank surely. As I returned to my desk, my heart pounding in my chest, another small object bounced off the window. That small clink made my throat close up and my stomach tighten. Feeling brave enough from my vantage point, I dared another glance. Both children now stood directly beneath the window. Both looking straight up at me, this time, smiling. Not an innocent, playful smile; a very wide, very unnerving smile. Something about their eyes wasn’t quite right.

Retreating slightly from the window, I studied the rest of the estate. Across the street, in the first storey window stood another little girl. She looked straight at me. I saw the last person leave that building every day. The MD of that company locked the door and drove off in his BMW every day. How had she got in there? I was truly sweating now. I was so scared. At this point I had suddenly thought about the entrance to my building. It was unlocked.

I looked once more out the window to make sure none of the “children” had moved. They remained where I had last seen them, still looking and smiling. I grabbed my car keys and the office keys and ran.

I ran outside, locked the office door, got inside my car and drove. I glimpsed briefly in my rear view mirror and saw them all. There were too many to count in that brief moment. All standing and looking towards me. I turned the corner and drove very quickly home.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

I Only Did It for Her

I stay hidden, out of sight, merging with the shadows, looming in dark corners. She feels my presence, though she denies it for that false sense of comforting security.

I watch her. I take care of her. I sit by her bed all night because I know she feels lonely. She looks so beautiful when she’s sleeping. One night, I took a photograph of her when the worry on her face was replaced by calmness and peace. I left it for her to find so she would see herself the way I saw her, so she would see how beautiful she truly was. Uniformed men came and searched the house with guns, so I never did it again. I didn’t want her to find me, not yet. One day we would be together, but I couldn’t let her see me until she was ready.

There was a man who came to visit her every Friday and Saturday night. He would put his arm around her and they would laugh together, but sometimes his voice was loud and intimidating. He would leave and slam the door behind him, and she would cry herself to sleep. It devastated me.

One day, after he hurt her again, I decided I’d had enough. Some of the shingles on the roof had come loose. It was easy to ‘accidentally’ let one slide off and hit him right on the head. She ran outside screaming but I know that deep inside she was laughing. After all, I did it for her. She made me angry. All I ever did was try to make he happy, but still she cried herself to sleep. It was like I wasn’t good enough for her.

One night, I slipped downstairs, nothing but a shadow, and crept to her bed where she lay sleeping, unsuspecting of what was to come. This part was easy; I’d done it many times before. Still, I was nervous. No one had ever been as special as her. My hands were trembling when they wrapped around her thin, pale neck. Her eyes opened wide, but she couldn’t scream. I was holding her too tight. I never wanted to let her go. After all, I was only doing this for her. Her arms flailed, nails scraping against my skin. Her legs thrashed and her back arched. My heart was racing at our first moments of physical contact. She was more beautiful that I ever could have imagined. She gasped, and from her eyes I saw all the sadness, hurt and tears leave her body. I only did it for her.

The uniformed men searched the house again. I didn’t let them find me though. I knew they would take her away from me. I couldn’t let that happen, not now that we were finally together. I held her close until they left.

After all, I only did it for her.

The Forest Figure

I was so excited for this day. Our school was having a picnic, which it really knew how to do.

The picnic was going to be in a large forest about forty miles from our school (our school likes to plan far-away trips).

Whenever I am going on a vacation or trip, I like to find out every single fact about it. It turns out this forest's history dates back four or five-hundred years.

It was inhabited by a Native American tribe who were known for their worship of evil spirits. When the settlers came in, the natives did not take kindly to them.

When the diseases brought in by the settlers killed many of the tribe's people, they cursed the forest and the settlers. The next day, the tribe was gone, and all of the settlers were either dead or missing. The one that survived lived for another week before committing suicide. The story goes on to tell of loggers who came in about one-hundred years later, and all died in mysterious accidents and murders. I am not superstitious; I did not believe in any of these curses.

That morning when I woke up, I went into the kitchen as usual and had my cereal. At about 6:30, my mom came and told me that the picnic was cancelled; the bus that taking us there was having engine trouble. I asked her if she found that weird, and she said it happens all the time. I thought about it but brushed it off.

My mother came back to inform me that they found a replacement bus at the last minute. I was overjoyed! We could finally go and have some time doing something other than math problems and English homework. The bus finally showed up and I got on. For some reason, they had the freshmen and seniors on the same trip. The seniors were almost evil. There were rumors of freshmen faces being shoved in toilets and urinals and freshmen being locked in car trunks for as many of two or three days. I was worried about this.

About twenty miles into the ride, our bus got a flat tire. We found that the bus had a spare underneath, so the seniors sent me to retrieve it. As I grabbed the tire and got out, I saw something out of my peripheral vision—a man standing about quarter of a mile away. He seemed to be motioning to go back.

I focused on him, but then he vanished into the mist.

We replaced the tire and continued driving. We finally got there and talked to the woman at the visitor center. She handed us each a brochure on the history of the park. Oddly enough it never once mentioned the old tribes of Indians, loggers, or settlers; it just said that its history spanned from about 50 years ago to the present.

We got out and set up the picnic. I hung around my usual friends and we did everything in our power to avoid the seniors. The picnics were okay. They provide time away from school, so we all liked them. After it was finished, we were informed the bus broke down again, and in the morning a few mechanics would come and fix it. That meant we would be spending the night on the bus.

That worried me. There is no way those seniors would pass up an opportunity to prank us. So as night fell, my group would keep two people on watch, and we would rotate every hour and a half. Of course, the first two fell asleep within the first two minutes. Here we were, in a haunted forest, with seniors ready to scare us.

I woke up and checked my watch—2:30. A note on my chest read, "Have fun! -seniors"

I was extremely angry, but my anger turned to fear. There was something about this forest. The tall, leafless trees; the dark, foggy distance; the wind. My god, the wind. I kept hearing it as though it were saying, "Be afraid."

I kept hearing it. It wouldn't leave my head! "Shut up!" I screamed.

"Who are you?" I kept seeing movement from the corner of my eye. I ran. I didn't know which way I was going, but I didn't care. Then in the distance, there stood a tall, thick, unmoving figure. It was all black except for the eyes.

The eyes! They were an ominous blood red. It moved. It walked in an odd, disturbing strut. I ran. I could see its shadow. The trees swayed with the wind, as if they were alive. I tripped. It was gone. I saw an unlit, small cottage in the distance. I had no choice.

I ran towards it and took shelter in it. Was I going insane, or did I really see that creature? I was in a small room. The cottage looked old; its floorboards creaked and its doors squeaked. It was horrible.

Then I heard a deep, heavy breathing outside the window. Then, the window began to rattle. After thirty seconds it stopped. I decided I would wait out the night here and travel back in the morning. But then I heard a pounding on the door. I couldn't stay here any longer. I dove out the window and cut myself on some of the glass. I ran for some time until I looked behind me.

The creature was there again, moving faster. I ran until I found where the bus was. But it wasn't there. Neither was the visitor center. I sat down and I felt a cold breath on my neck, then a hand on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and began praying.

In Between The Trees

Marnie strolled right into the woods and never came back.

We waited for her. We could have just left the second she disappeared between the trees but she seemed so damn confident that we waited. Nobody wanted to say it but after two hours we knew that was it. Sure, we felt bad for Marnie but if I could have said one last thing to her it wouldn’t have been ‘stop’. It would have been ‘thanks’. It was her and not me. So if I feel anything for Marnie it’s gratitude, not pity.

In the end it was probably always going to be her anyway. She found it.

The small stone chapel had just sat there in its little clearing, protected by a ring of trees. Marnie saw it first and crashed through the bushes, calling out to us to follow. How had we never found it before? Perhaps it didn’t want to be found. It was deeper in than we’d ever been, right in the heart of the woods it felt like. The air was cold. More than that, it was dead. Nothing moved or made a sound. I know now that place was never meant to be found. Not by human eyes. It was far too sacred for that. There were a few lines of stone pews and a raised stone altar. That was it. And yet there was something more. There existed more in this place than could be seen. I wanted to leave but Marnie thought it was funny.

“Why would they build a chapel all the way out here?” she said.

We shouldn’t have done it. It was Marnie’s idea of course.

“Let’s do a ritual sacrifice to appease the gods”, she giggled.

Elizabeth laughed too. She gave a fake little sermon at the altar and we sat on the stone pews and bowed our heads. It was kind of funny and it might have been fine if we’d stopped there but Marnie was insistent.

“We need a sacrifice’, she said.

The others went off in search but I stayed seated. I should have just left but there was something about that place. I felt connected to it. It was so calm. Marnie came back smiling, holding a tiny lizard. She carried it out in front of her, humming some sort of hymnal tune. She stepped up to the altar holding the lizard down with one hand. Elizabeth passed her a rock. She seemed less sure now. Marnie took it in her other hand and held it up above her head.

“Mighty gods that bless these woods,” she bellowed in a deep tone, “please accept this humble sacrifice we offer to you in exchange for your eternal favour”.

And then she brought the rock down. A couple of us gasped. I don’t think anyone thought she would actually do it. There was a tiny stain of black blood on the altar. A chill swept through the clearing. That’s when I knew we had woken them. The others must have felt it too because everyone wanted to leave, even Marnie.

She waited a whole week before asking us to go back there with her. She passed it off as a sudden whim but I could tell the idea had been preying on her. It was in her eyes; they’d lost all focus. We went with her right to the edge of the woods. And we all backed out. She laughed at us, said we were scared. We were scared but we weren’t stupid. She tried to convince us but in the end the need was too strong. She decided to go by herself. And we let her.

It was easier to not talk about it. The police had questions but we never mentioned what had gone on in the woods. We all decided to stay away from that place except for Elizabeth. She would talk about it endlessly. She became obsessed. She pleaded with us to go back. She said Marnie was calling to her. She said she could feel that place calling to her. And I was terrified because I had felt it too. Lying awake at night feeling like my heart would just burst if I couldn’t go back there one more time. It seemed to affect her more strongly. She had been close to Marnie when it happened. Maybe they had sensed her presence.

So we all ended up back there at the edge of the woods in the exact spot where Marnie had left us. The others tried to reason with her but Elizabeth was beyond that. As I watched her disappear into the woods I whispered a final goodbye. We waited again. I don’t know why. With Marnie there had been some sense of hope she would return but this time I think we didn’t want her back. How long did we wait for? As long as it took.

We almost couldn’t believe it when Elizabeth emerged from the woods. She walked straight out as if everything was fine. She was scratched and disheveled and I don’t even know if it was still her anymore. She walked up to us, just stood there looking around at each of us with a lovely little smile of anticipation on her face. In her hands she held a heavy pointed rock.

“Watch this”, she said, and she smashed the rock into her left eye.

Blood poured down her face as she let out some ungodly shriek: some horrid mix of laughter, crying and screaming. We ran. We left her there screaming and laughing as we ran. That high-pitched wailing was the last thing I ever heard from Elizabeth. The damage done to her eye was irreparable and she was admitted to a mental institution. She’s still there.

Actually, it wasn’t the last I heard of Elizabeth, not exactly. I visited her just once about a month after the… incident. It was still her body but any semblance of Elizabeth was long gone. She sat there and just looked at me, still with that faint little smile, her one good eye following my every move. I tried to talk to her. I wanted to apologise, for what I do not know. Throughout it all she just sat there and smiled. I didn’t stay long; there didn’t seem much point. She waited for me to reach the door before speaking. Was it a warning or simply her way of showing me she held me responsible? Regardless, I still hear that refrain echoing through my mind in that childish little chant.

‘The trees. The trees. They came from the trees.
They wanted you but they settled for me.’

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Under The Blanket

    Looking back, I’d say I had a pretty enjoyable childhood, nothing bad ever happened to me. I barely ever got sick, never broke any bones, or got into fights with my cousins when I visited. I was basically a picture perfect child, not to brag. Except, one time when I was visiting my older cousins I experienced the strangest event, and even today, I still can’t tell myself that it was just my imagination.

    I was probably about six years old at the time, but I still remember everything about that night like it was yesterday. I was climbing trees with my cousins most of the day, and when it got dark, we went inside. My aunt and uncle went out for dinner so it was just us left in the old house. And then I suggested it, “Let’s play hide and seek!” Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if I hadn’t suggested that.

    Either way, it was Alex’s turn to be it first since he lost rock, paper, scissors, and Ray and I scattered to find a hiding place. First, I tried squeezing behind the sofa, my favourite hiding place, but it was closer to the wall than normal. As lanky as I was as, I couldn’t fit that time. Alex was half way done counting, so as a last resort I ran into their bedroom and looked around, trying to find any place to hide, obvious or not. Thankfully, the room was quite messy, so I figured that if I hid under the desk, I would blend in enough. Anything was better than being caught without a hiding spot.  As I was about to dive under the desk, I noticed my other cousin, Ray, had already beat me there. I could see some of her long dark hair peeking out from beneath the blanket she was hiding under. Alex was almost done counting, so I had no choice but to join Ray.

    I said to let me under the blanket with her, but when I reached out to pull some of it over me she scooted away. I scooted closer and reached out again whispering a really long ‘pleaaase,’ but she jerked away to completely avoid my touch. Fine, I thought, I guess that’s fair anyway, since she was here before me, it makes sense for me to be the one to be caught first. I teasingly whispered that I could see her hair anyways, and she rustled around in the blanket trying to cover it, not succeeding. When I looked around from my hiding spot, I could see that it was definitely a good place, with some boxes blocking the view of the door around the corner, so if someone just gave a quick glance over the room, they wouldn’t have seen us. I leaned over and whispered how this was a really good hiding spot. Ray rustled around under the blanket in response. Then suddenly I heard Alex walk into the room, he looked around, checking under the bunk beds, right across from the desk. I held my breath. He got up and walked to the closet, checking in there, before going back out of the room. I let out a quiet sigh of relief, and whispered to Ray how close that was. Ray rustled under the blanket again.

    From outside the room, I heard both Alex and Ray shout the traditional, “OLLIE OLLIE OXEN FREE!” from the other room. So I started to get up, proud of not having lost hide and seek, and said come on to Ray, but she didn’t move from under the blanket.

    That’s when I realised that I had heard both of my cousins call for me to come out. I backtracked in my mind to realise that only my two cousins and I were home. Panic fell over me as I ran to the other room as fast as I could and saw both of my cousins standing right there. I tried to explain to them as fast as I could that someone else was in the room with me, and they of course, being older, were reluctant to believe me. I tried pulling them to the hiding spot so I could prove it to them, and it took some actual pulling, but I finally got them there.

    My heart sunk when we looked under the desk.

    The blanket was completely flat.

    My cousins laughed at me as I frantically I searched the whole room, top to bottom, and scoured the boxes next to the desk for any trace of the figure, or anything I could have mistaken it for, with no luck.

    It was gone. And still, many years later, I have no explanation of what it could have been, and frankly, I’m glad I never got to see what was underneath that blanket.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

The Mortician’s Assistant

I’m a mortician.

Scratch that, I WAS a mortician. I quit about a year ago after a very unfortunate encounter.

It happened September of last year. We are all reasonable here, I was a practitioner of mortuary science after all. That’s why I was so good at my job. I was able to set aside all of the superstitious nonsense about the dead returning to life or hauntings by spirits not at rest to give people a few final moments with the bodies of their loved ones.

Mortician, while not considered by most as a good career path, is an outstandingly stable and important job. The old saying is that there are two things in life that are certain: death and taxes. I knew that to be true and I discovered at a young age that I was dreadful at math so it was the business of death for me.

While it’s a stable career it can also become overwhelming. I was located in a small town in the northern United States because where else would be better? Because of low population density and low murder rate it’d be a relaxing gig with a low volume of work, right? Yeah, remember I’m not so wonderful at math. I’d failed to take into consideration that a significant portion of the population was 70 when I arrived and 5 years in people started dropping like flies. Whereas before it was maybe 2 bodies a week I was getting 7 or so on average.

The town I worked in wasn’t like most where there were funeral homes where you’d have a funeral director take care of your whole mess with a small crew. Our town had one mortician, me, who would pick up, embalm, beautify bodies and deliver them to home burials. I bugged my boss constantly about getting someone to help me and he kept telling me he’d consider it and obviously forgetting about it right after he’d hung up.

Imagine my surprise when a young man showed up at the mortuary late in the month. He was normal looking enough. Medium height, lanky build, mousy, nothing shocking or suspicious really. He introduced himself as Jeffery Herbert with a smile and told me that my boss, Mr. Collingwood, had sent him to help me out with the sudden rush of work. You can’t imagine how grateful I was to finally have another set of hands to help out. He produced a copy of his mortician’s license, I glanced at it to make sure it was in date, and we got started.

We immediately set to working on the day’s bodies. It was so much easier with Jeffery to help. He was extremely skilled too. While the majority of deaths we got were old people who passed in their sleep we would still get some really gnarly farm accidents since we were in the country. The unfortunate man of the day was someone who got a little too close to their hay bailer. The reconstruction was the most difficult part but Jeffery handled it like a pro and made the guy look as good as new. I was impressed.

Mortician is an on call position here. We don’t really tend to sit around in an office for eight hours a day and go home leaving work for the next morning. Death waits for no man so we work when death works. We finished prepping and delivering the hay bailer victim sometime around noon that day. Since Jeffery was new to the town I decided to invite him to spend some off time with me to grab some lunch in the town center. He agreed and we went to my favorite little general store/sandwich shop.

The store’s owner Charles was happy to see me. I had prepared his father’s body a few months prior and he was obsessed with thanking me every time I came in. He would go on and on about how alive his father had looked and I’d blush to be polite and thank him with false modesty and say I’m sure his dad is at peace etc. That day I was happy to have Jeffery with me because it gave me another avenue of conversation. I introduced him as our new secondary mortician and Charles welcomed him to town with his extra special secret sandwich (it’s an Italian cold cut in truth) and a bottle of cola. Jeffery laughed and thanked him and we went out front to a crumbling picnic table Charles had put there several years prior to enjoy our sandwiches in the cool mountain air.

We got to chatting and Jeffery told me that he had just moved to town a week or so ago after he had called Mr. Collingwood about a position. He told me that he had just been re-licensed after taking a 3-year break. His father had been a funeral director in a more traditional operation and had insisted his son take the same path to keep the home in the family. Jeffery was happy to do so and got licensed right out of school. He was enjoying his apprenticeship until he had to prepare a little girl who had been murdered by her father. It messed him up inside. He turned his back on the profession of mortician and decided to go to a four year college. He flunked out after a semester and started wandering from town to town taking odd jobs. Something hit him during his wandering that made him realize he wanted to get into the business again so he started calling around for openings and Mr. Collingwood was the first one he found.

I told him I was impressed. There aren’t many people who would jump on a job in a podunk town like this just to be a mortician. I was from a few towns over myself so I got to stay near my family but be just far away enough that I couldn’t be counted on for too much “family togetherness time”. He said he wanted somewhere out-of-the-way and quiet. He gave off the vibe of someone who was very private so I chose not to pry.

We continued to chat and started really getting along. We had a lot of the same interests and hobbies. I ended up giving him a tour of the town and grabbing dinner with him that same day. I wouldn’t say I was in love, but what can you do as a woman in her late 20s in a town full of hillbillies hitting their golden years? He was young, I was young and so on. We got a call just as magic was about to happen and when death is calling you come running with no regard to the mood. It was unfortunate but you always need to be professional in this line of work.

We picked up old Wilma Waters from her house at around 9 pm and drove the body back to the mortuary and got to work. It was an easy enough preparation. Wilma died a natural death. We were able to wrap the whole thing up in a pretty short time. Once we were finished the mood had been thoroughly quashed in the way that only an overweight 80 year-old dead person can quash a mood. We said our goodbyes, locked Wilma in one of the coolers and went our separate ways for the evening. I made sure to hand the spare key to the mortuary to Jeffery before I left so he could get in in the morning if he arrived before me.

The next morning Jeffery was dressing Wilma when I arrived. He was one of those early risers apparently. It was barely 8 and it seemed like he had been here a while. Either way I pulled out my corpse make-up and painted the death away. We delivered Wilma around 11 am to the Waters house with gratuitous thanks from the Waters family. We bowed out quickly and quietly to leave the family to their grief and headed out to lunch.

Once again one thing led to another and death didn’t call us out of our reverie that time. It had been quite a while for me and I was just ecstatic that it was happening at all. The only thing that I found off was his cologne. He had absolutely bathed in the stuff and it was overpowering. It didn’t smell bad, per-say, just familiar and strong. I couldn’t place it then but I thought maybe it was my grandfather’s cologne from when I was a little girl. Anyway I was pleased, he was pleased, and everything was peachy keen.

Jeffery had called my phone the next day and left me a message about a family emergency and he was going to need to take a few days off. I was slightly annoyed because I was fighting some sort of sickness and had no interest in handling corpses. I’d woken up nauseated with a headache like I’d never experienced. I told him it was fine and I’d see him when he got back and headed in. I was in the middle of starting the embalming process on a body I had just picked up when Mr. Collingwood suddenly came into the lab.

I told him I hadn’t expected him and asked him what he needed. Mr. Collingwood seldom ever came to the mortuary since he wasn’t so much a mortician as a businessman anymore. He’d fill in for me if I was unable to drag myself out of bed but he clearly had no love for the profession anymore. I figured it must have been important so I set my work aside. He looked really disturbed as we walked over to my desk. He looked like he was ready to be sick at any moment. Even though Mr. Collingwood had been out of the business of handling corpses for a long time he was still an old hand and I couldn’t imagine him getting ill simply from the smell and sights of a mortuary.

We sat down at my desk and he began to speak.

“I’m sorry to burst in like this but I just received some disturbing news. About a week and a half ago a patient from a state psychiatric unit a town over disappeared. The staff didn’t notice him missing until just this morning. He’s not particularly dangerous but the state is warning all morticians and mortuaries in the area because … “ Collingwood looked disturbed again and coughed before forcing out the words “. . . he is a necrophile.” He shifted uncomfortably, and so did I.

I was at a loss for words. I couldn’t imagine what sort of creep this guy was. The idea that there was someone out there who was doing unsavory things to corpses was making my nausea even worse. It’s not that I felt it sacrilegious but it was so unsanitary. It’s an easy way to make someone sick. I leaned over a little and steadied myself against the desk.

“Alright Mr. Collingwood,” I swallowed the bile in my throat and took a deep calming breath “Jeffery and I will be on the lookout for suspicious people.”

“Jeffery? Who’s Jeffery?” Mr. Collingwood asked suddenly and sharply.

“Jeffery Herbert. The mortician you hired to assist me. He had some family problems come up so he’s taking the next few days off. I’ll let him know when he gets back.”

“You are the only person currently employed in this mortuary. You said that there was a mortician that came here to help you?” He looked very pale and very scared suddenly. The usually distinguished-looking Mr. Collingwood suddenly looked old, desperate and sickly. “The man who escaped was James Harold, he was a talented mortician before they locked him up three years ago.“

My vision swam. Mr. Collingwood stumbled past me, between the body lying on the table and my chair, to grab at the phone hanging on the wall while I sat in shock and horror. My nausea finally got the best of me I started gagging and reached under the dissecting table for a bag to vomit in. As I leaned close to the slightly embalmed corpse I smelled something familiar. It smelled like the cologne Jeffery had absolutely bathed in yesterday.

—
Credits to: StandardPractice

Rev 6:8

“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.” – Revelations 6:7

I may be insane, but I feel I should write this down while I still have the chance. I’m locked in my apartment, and I’ve barricaded the door, but I know I won’t be safe here. I just have to try to get this crazy goddamn story straight in the time that I have left. Before he comes for me.

I need to back up some. I’m Josh. Hi. Three days ago I was a normal person, with a normal apartment and a normal life. I worked a desk job for Golden Image LLC. Stupid name, right? We were a small image consulting firm, specializing in political appearance management. In other words, when a politician fucked something up and fell out of favor he would come to us, and we’d make the public forget how shitty he was at his job. And recently what with the war and these Midwest droughts, business was going great. It was dull work, but it kept the bills paid, so I didn’t complain. Much.

And then all this started just a few days ago, specifically while I was riding the bus to work, like I always do. It’s about a thirty minute commute to the office, and sure it smells funny, but I’ve always loved watching the other passengers. You never see a cross section of Americana quite as interesting as when you’re on the public transportation system. Anyway, that was when I saw him for the first time.

At first it didn’t seem that unusual. I was just sitting there ignoring the urine smell, looking at the other passengers. Man With the Ponytail, Mullet Woman, and Mr. ‘I Don’t Need to Wear a Shirt in Public’ were all present. The driver had his typical thousand yard stare, and seated towards the back there was a woman who was a regular like me. I don’t know where she rode the bus to, but she was on it almost every day at the same times as me. I remember she looked a little under the weather that morning. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes watery, and I saw about a million tissues overflowing from the massive floral handbag she always carried. But, hey, it was flu season. I didn’t think anything of it other than to remind myself to use some hand sanitizer once I was off the bus.

What did catch my eye however, was the man standing in the row behind her. He was wearing a black suit, and I mean it was all black. Black jacket, black shirt, black shoes, black leather gloves, neat black hair, irises so black they were indistinguishable from the pupils… The only thing that wasn’t black about him was the pale, sallow skin on his face and neck, which was white as a corpse. And this guy just stood there, staring at the woman with the floral handbag. It wasn’t the normal bus pervert leer, but a simple, steady gaze of what could have been mild curiosity that was somehow more disturbing than any sexual advance.

Despite not being the object of his unsettling attentions, I think I was more freaked out than the woman. She was ignoring him like a champ, and for that matter so was everyone else on board, so eventually I followed their lead. Mr. Black was definitely a creepy character, but I’d seen worse. Welcome to public transportation.

Work was pretty typical. Eight hours of familiar monotony in your average mid-American office, complete with artificial ferns and buzzing fluorescents. The only breaks from normality were that we were all a little disorganized that day, since Dave the receptionist was out sick, and me getting a random text from Sean, an old friend from college who I had deliberately lost touch with. “u seen the news?” Weird question. The answer was no, I hadn’t watched the news since the war broke out, and I didn’t particularly want to have a discussion about it during work, so I deleted the message without answering.

The other big event of the day was during lunch my friend Michael from accounting talked me into finally asking out Rachael the cute new girl after work. I’d been keeping an eye on her for a while, but it was time to make my move, so once the shift ended I gathered my courage and “bumped into” her as she was headed out the door.

“Oh hey,” she said, or something like it, “You headed out?”

“Just about,” I replied, suave as hell. “I just gotta drop these papers in
the boss’s office and then I’ll be gone.”

“Cool. I can’t wait to get home myself. Maybe some tea will help with this head cold,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe.” Awkward pause. “Hey, do you maybe want to get some coffee or something? With me, I mean. Say, after work tomorrow?” I asked, and God help me, she smiled, and it lit up the room.

“Yeah,” she said, “That sounds cool.”

I smiled too. “Cool.”

After another, less awkward moment we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. I dropped off the papers and paused by the window in the boss’s office to admire her as she walked across the twilit parking lot to her car. And something caught my eye. On the other side of the parking lot, half in shadow but still unmistakable, stood the man in black from the bus. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t freak me out. If seeing him twice in a day was a coincidence, it was a hell of a strange one.

Rachael didn’t seem to notice him, but from where I stood it was clear that he was watching her, not just in passing, but intently. I got out my phone, and was ready to call 911 in case he made a move, but he never did. He just stared from the shadows as she walked to her car, fumbled the keys a little, got in, and drove off, and then he turned and walked away.

What do you do in a situation like that? Maybe I should have called Rachael and told her what I saw, but at the time I thought the guy was probably harmless, if a little creepy. The rationale of “there’s no point in worrying her and making myself sound crazy” seemed awfully rational. In the end I decided to pretend it never happened. I dropped the papers on the boss’s desk and caught the bus home.

At the time it didn’t even strike me as unusual that the woman with the floral handbag wasn’t on it this time.
…..
I had one missed call and one new message when I woke up the next day. The call was from work. I figured they probably wanted me to come in early, but I was already late, so that wasn’t going to happen. The message was from Sean. “u seeing this?” Weird. I didn’t know what he kept texting me about, and if I weren’t running late I might have replied, but the fact is I hadn’t talked to him in years. It was easier to ignore him.

I remember feeling strange as I got ready that day. There was this persistant prickling sensation on the back of my neck, and my heart would flutter nervously at odd moments. It wasn’t anything serious, all things considered, just more of a general sense of unease than I was used to feeling while I brushed my teeth. I think it was because of the weird dreams I had the night before. They were the confusing, frightening kind that you can almost never remember, not that you’d want to.

In the end I just decided to put the nightmares and the anxiety out of my mind. It was probably nothing anyway, right? Still, I caught myself several times on the way to the bus stop glancing back over my shoulder, convinced that I had seen a figure dressed all in black from the corner of my eye.

As I got off the bus and walked the last block to the office I idly wondered what it was that Sean was so eager to talk to me about. Normally I would have asked the bus driver what he might have meant, since he was usually pretty up-to-date on current events and we discussed them from time to time, but there was an unfamiliar man driving today. When I asked him what had happened to the usual driver he shrugged. “Flu season,” he said.

I was snapped out of my reverie by the police surrounding my office building.

“Sir, Sir! You can’t go in there,” one of the officers said.

“What? Why not? What’s going on?” I asked, confused. Had I walked to the wrong building by mistake? No, doubtful. I’d walked this way a thousand times.

“I’m sorry sir, we’re not supposed to say. Just go home for now and wait for more information.”

“Please, officer, I don’t understand. This is where I work. Can you please just tell me—,”

“Look buddy,” he said, “What did I just say? Work’s cancelled today. Fuck. Off.”

So, rebuffed, mind racing and for lack of a better thing to do, I turned and started walking back to the bus stop, pulling out my phone as I did. I dialed Michael from accounting’s number. It rang a good seven times before he answered. “Hello?” His voice sounded hoarse, but maybe it was just the connection.

“Mike! What’s going on, man? The office is surrounded by cops, and they won’t let me in. What happened?”

There was a pause. “You’re serious? You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” This was doing nothing to calm my nerves.

“Jesus, man,” he breathed, his voice grave. “You’ve got to start answering your phone. Are you sitting down?”

I was a little panicked by now. “Fuck dude, would you just tell me what’s going on?”

There was another pause, and Michael’s voice cracked when he next spoke.

“Dave is dead. Rachael is in the hospital. Whatever he had wasn’t the flu, and they think he spread it to her. They’ve shut down the building until they can be sure—,” he tried to continue, but I had already hung up and started running.

I’m not sure why I reacted the way I did. Granted, I wasn’t close to Dave, but Jesus, we worked together. I’d seen him on Monday and he was fine, and now I was supposed to believe that he had just…? And Rachael…

I think part of me wouldn’t believe something that awful had really happened until I saw it for myself. On top of that, maybe I felt protective of Rachael and our fledgling relationship. Or maybe I took some kind of responsibility for what had happened to her. I had this awful feeling that whatever was wrong with her had something to do with the cold, black eyes that I’d seen fix on her the night before. If I had warned her about the man in black, maybe she’d have been ok…

Or maybe I was cracking. Either way I didn’t stop running until I reached the hospital, eight blocks away. People do strange things in the thrall of grief.

The place was packed. When I finally burst in through the doors (as much as one can burst through automatic sliding doors), sweat soaked and wheezing, I was actually shocked into stillness by the sheer number of people crowded into the room. Keep in mind, this was not a proper waiting room. It was an entranceway for visitors, but it was still full to bursting with sick, sniffling, coughing people trying to gain admittance. Some of them just looked a little green, others were nearly catatonic, but every one of them had this haunted look on their face, like they could break into a panic at any moment. Trying to make my way through the crowd of diseased felt like parting the Red Sea. I remember stupidly wondering if the hospital looked like this during flu season every year.

After a solid ten minutes of effort I managed to fight my way across the room to the exhausted-looking woman behind the counter, and tell her who I was looking for.

“I’m sorry sir,” she sighed in a practiced response, “but none of our patients are allowed to have visitors right now. If this woman is related to you, you will be contacted once the crisis has passed. Now for your safety, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the building.”

I very politely and graciously accepted her words, and then slipped past her into the hospital proper the second she looked away.

Again, I’m not sure why I did this, especially since there was no plan beyond “Find the girl, make sure she’s alright.”

And how did I expect to execute this plan? Simple. I was just going to check every room in the hospital until I located the one with Rachael in it.

The place was massive. For two hours I walked from room to room, peeking inside each one, looking for her. I kept my head down and tried to look inconspicuous the whole time as an army of doctors and nurses scurried past, but I really shouldn’t have bothered. Every member of the hospital staff looked harried and rushed, and in some cases on the verge of tears. They were all far too busy to stop and ask one lost looking me where he was going.

For two hours I looked, and I didn’t see any empty beds, apart from a handful that looked freshly vacated, and featured ominous reddish-brown stains. The hospital must have been far beyond capacity, and I started to fear that I would never find her in the crowd.

And then I found her. God help me, I found her.

I stumbled into the room where she lay. Rachael. She was the kind of girl who could make even a sickly green hospital gown look cute.

She could not, however, do anything to make the blood seem appealing. It dribbled from her nose and ears. It filled up her mouth and ran down her cheeks to pool on the thin pillow underneath her head. It poured out of her eyes in silent mourning of her own bloody passing.

She must have panicked at the end. Her limp hands were colored red, and the sheets and her gown were covered in thickening splatters of it. I could clearly picture her trying in vain to hold the blood in, as if she could stop it by simply clamping her hands over her mouth, and then flailing in a panic when it kept coming.

Rachael was still when I found her. Pale. Cold. It was pure luck that I happened onto her before someone came to take her away.

I walked back into the hallway.

And the man in black was right fucking there, walking from room to room, much as I had, focusing his black gaze on the occupants of each one just for a moment before moving on to the next.

I’ll be the first to admit that at this point I really lost it. I dimly recall screaming something along the lines of, “You fucking bastard!! What did you do? Look what you’ve done to her!”

That got the attention of some of the nurses. “Sir? Sir!” they said, “Who are you yelling at?” and then when I didn’t reply, “Code it! Get him restrained and to take him up to mental health.”

But I didn’t hear them, because when I started shouting, once he knew that he’d been seen, the man in black looked up from the patient he was inspecting, and fixed his eyes on me.

Something clicked. Cold pierced me on a profound level, and without making any conscious decision to do so I ran faster than I ever had in my life. I didn’t spare a single thought for where I was running to, or why for that matter. There was a primal fear coursing through me, and I knew that no matter how much distance I put between myself and that thing dressed up in the suit it would never be enough.

I lost myself for a while there, but eventually I somehow ended up running back to the bus stop. They say that in times of crises you just want to go back to what’s familiar, so I guess it makes sense. I really just wanted to go home to my apartment, but when I got to the stop there was a notice hanging from the marker.

“For your safety, all public transportation has temporarily been shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

I sighed. That made sense. I was calming down now, and putting things together. It all made sense. I turned and started heading to my apartment on foot. I didn’t rush. I wanted to enjoy this walk.

I looked around as I walked, trying to really take the view in, and retain it. There weren’t very many people on the street anymore, and those that I did see were drifting along in the same dreamlike state as I was. I sighed again. The city was kind of an ugly place, really.

Suddenly my phone rang, and I jumped. It had been a long day already. Sean was calling me. I answered.

“Holy shit, thank God you’re alive,” he said breathlessly by way of greeting.

I smiled a little, without quite breaking into tears. “Hey, Sean. I’m alive.”

“Shit, just thank God, man. I’ve been calling everyone in my contacts and you’re the only one that’s answered. I haven’t heard from my family in days…” He sounded like he was at wit’s end. Poor guy. “Dude, have you seen the news?”

“Not recently. Fill me in?”

He took a deep breath. “There’s some kind of disease spreading all over the world, man. They’re calling it a pandemic, and the fastest spreading disease in recorded history. Something to do with modern transportation. Apparently there have been outbreaks on all seven continents, the number of infected keeps skyrocketing, and they haven’t even begun to count the, uh…” he swallowed. Could he really not even say it?

“Well what are the people on the news telling us to do?”

“Oh God, dude, most of them aren’t even on the air anymore. Just these emergency broadcast screens. The ones that still are though, they say that things don’t look good. They just keep on telling us to barricade ourselves inside our homes, and stay safe.” He paused. “I’m scared, Josh.”

“Yeah. Me too,” I said, and I meant it. “Ok. I’m gonna go barricade myself in now. I’ll talk to you later, when all this has blown over.” I tried to clear my throat quietly. I didn’t want Sean to hear me start coughing.

“Ok, just… Be safe, dude.”

“You too.” And I hung up, and kept walking back towards home. After a minute I smiled again, thinking to myself. I’d forgotten how much I had missed talking to Sean.
…..
So here I am, locked in my home with a fever of 102, typing my story up for whoever might get to read it. I’m sorry if it wasn’t climactic enough for you, but I think the truth rarely is.

Now, I’m pretty sure this is the part in most stories where I would express my confusion and fear of the man in black, and talk about how I don’t know who he is, or what he wants, but honestly meeting his gaze in the hospital like that really brought a moment of clarity for me. My eyes are open. I’m absolutely afraid of Him, but I also know what He is, and why He’s here, and I bet that if you think really hard you can figure it out too. Hell, He’s on the news every day.

I’m not sure why I took the trouble to barricade myself in, when I know full well it won’t stop Him, and it certainly won’t stop me from hemorrhaging when the time comes, but I suppose it’s in our nature to try and hold Him off for as long as we can. After all, He is why we run and hide.

Like I said, I may be insane, but I really believe this is the end, ladies and gentlemen, for me and in the broader sense. It certainly feels apocalyptic. I’ve got that “this is it” sense of dread that you only get when things are really bad. I guess the only thing that still surprises me is how fast it all went down. Two days is all it took for my life to go from normal, to falling apart, to over. My ego tells me it should have taken longer than that. But I suppose that’s how it is for everyone. He sneaks up on you.

Ah, and He’s here now, with me. It’s time to go. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared—God, look at my hands shaking—, but there’s no sense in fighting. If my family ever gets the chance to read this, know that I love you. I thought about you in the end, and I want you to know that—

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Hearts of the Young

There have been few parts of my life that I remember in specific, lifelike detail. I’m not sure of this to be a blessing or a curse, as there are moments of my life I wish to forget completely. The most significant of which was the play.

I’m being quite vague when I say, “the” play, as I’ve seen plenty of stage shows in my lifetime. Presentations in the form of movies usually bored me, but there was something about the stage that just made a show different. Live actors (so long as they were good) made the experience much more real to me, and ever since I saw my first stage play as a young boy, I was hooked. I move to the city, and saw shows whenever I could.

Some stage plays can be quite expensive, but money was never an issue for something I loved. However, I was especially drawn in when I saw the poster for “The Hearts of the Young”. I had seen the poster for the show on the streets, not too far from the popular stage theater in my city. What attracted many to this performance was that it was free. Sure, this brought on assumptions that it would be terrible, but who doesn’t enjoy free entertainment?

The show was being presented by the Masked Midnight Players, who I had never heard of. I had done some research on them prior to the show, but I couldn’t find any information, which gave me the notion that they were a rather new group.

Something I should mention before I go on is that the posters for the show became quite numerous. As the night of the show grew closer, it seemed as if I couldn’t stroll down a single block without seeing an ad stating “The Hearts of the Young! Free Show! This Saturday!”. I know that a group should have the right to make themselves known, but it got a bit ridiculous in my eyes. They placed ads on cars, put flyers in every mailbox possible, and even put poster up on visible, but private property. This started to become a nuisance to some, until the day of the show finally came.

The posters clearly had an effect, because word of the show had clearly got out. Despite the fact that the show started at a late time of 10:30 P.M., the theater was still rather crowded. Not as packed as I’ve seen it at other shows, but certainly more so than the average night. Since the show was free, it had no problem attracting it’s crowd. Even still, I wasn’t at the highest of expectations for the production’s quality.

The time was 10:30, and the lights dimmed throughout the theater. Normally, a show would have a form of introduction at this point, but this show skipped it, as the curtains immediately opened to a lit stage.

The set for this scene was just a woman character, sitting on a chair in center stage. The woman wore a bright yellow dress, white gloves, and black high-heels. This would all appear to be normal aside from what she was wearing on her face: a pink mask that presented the face of a woman with a repulsing amount of makeup. The mask didn’t look professionally made, as in its makeup details were poorly smeared across, like it had been done in five minutes. The actress just sat in the chair on stage for about 10 seconds, staring at the audience, and then began to softly sob.

Throughout the scene, the woman would appear to quickly glance to the left, off-stage, looking at something (or someone). It didn’t look like it was intended for the show, as she would turn back quickly as if she had done something wrong. This all happened for about 30 seconds, with the sobbing growing louder at random intervals. I was about to leave the theater right there, until the curtains closed, abruptly, for the next scene.

The audience looked around in confusion. This was clearly going to be a poorly done play, but it was also going to be a rather strange one, which caught the attention of most. I had half a mind to not waste my time, but I thought I might as well see what else the production had to offer.

The curtains opened again to reveal a scene very similar to the last. The same masked woman was sitting in a chair, crying. There was another actor though, who appeared to be male, so I’ll address him as such. He wore a black formal suit, with a red and yellow tie that appeared very out of place for the rest of his outfit. He was masked too, but he wore a large gas mask as opposed to the female in the chair. He was just standing behind the woman and the chair, with his arms in front of him. Because of the mask, one obviously couldn’t see his face, but I could sense a sort of expression on it regardless. It felt like he was anticipating something, occasionally looking down at the woman with intent. The stage was like this for about 20 seconds, then the curtains closed once again.

At that moment, I had decided I was done. The show was different, sure, but I had better places I could waste my time. I was making my way to the exit, when the curtains opened to a completely different scene. The set change seemed way too fast, for the curtain was only closed for a few seconds before opening again.

Everyone gasped at the sight. The same woman was on the stage, still in the chair, except she wasn’t sobbing anymore. She was screaming.

Her dress that the woman had been wearing was torn, with some visible cuts to her skin on her legs and torso. She was tied to the chair, and her screams sounded muffled, as if something was covering her mouth behind the mask. Around her were more actors and actresses, eleven in total, though it was hard to distinguish which ones were male or female. They all wore formal attire, similar to the gas mask man, who was now sitting at a piano near the left side of the stage.

The characters around the girl also wore masks, ranging from strange to downright hideous. The best way to describe them would be greatly disfigured faces, not torn apart, but arranged in completely inconceivable ways. Some had noses placed on the forehead, with large, bloodshot eyes placed where a mouth should be. Others didn’t have certain facial features at all, with just mouths or eyes scattered about. Their heads were all turned to the girl in the chair, in a manner of eager anticipation, if I had to guess.

The gas mask actor looked at each one of the men and woman surrounding the girl, and then looked into the audience. Then, he began to play the piano. He played an overly upbeat and obnoxious jingle tune. I haven’t heard it before in my life, but it sounded very similar to a sort of annoying christmas melody one would hear on the radio constantly. I only heard the specifics of the song for a moment, as the curtains closed a few seconds after.

As the curtains were shut, the music still played, but it was drowned out by a series of stomps…then sounds of struggle. It was a barrageof noises that all happened in a short time, so sorry if I’m not being very specific, but the woman’s screams were more louder than anytime before. There were sounds of the chair breaking to pieces, then the ambience of a crowd pushing and shoving each other. The audience began to gasp and scream themselves as there were very faint sounds of ripping, gnawing, and an occasional, aggressive growl from somebody behind the curtain. The woman’s screams stopped after only a minute, perhaps less.

Everybody in the theater was completely silent. Nobody knew what to think, of what the point of this production was, or if it was even an actual production at all. I was only hoping that it was some sort of organized joke, or a startlingly good show designed to make a sort of sadistic point.

The piano tune still played before the next scene opened up, or what was left of it. The curtain opened to an empty stage, with the gas mask actor still at the piano. There were bloodied pieces of the chair on the center of the stage, with more red smears all around it. Aside from what appeared to be blood, there was no trace of the woman who was sitting there before. The gas mask man finished playing, and then walked towards center stage. He then looked at the stunned audience, bowed formally, and exited to the right of the stage. The curtains closed, and everybody was left silent.

I suppose everyone was just as hopeful as I was to see some sort of conclusion to this so-called “show”, but there was none. Once the gas mask man left, that was it. The theater was filled with panicked whispers and calls to family and police. The police arrived quickly, did a quick investigation, and evacuated the theater. The theater was closed for more than a month after the incident. I had no intentions of seeing another show for a while, anyway.

Following the night of the show, I of course had nightmares, as I imagine the entire audience did. I still clung to speculations that the show was still some sort of set-up, made to scare it’s audience in the most realistic way possible. I almost fully believed this, until the authorities finally released a report on the incident.

The crying and screaming woman, the one in the chair, was no actor. She was a woman who had gone missing shortly before the show. She had only been missing for a few hours, so there had been no reports of her missing. Nobody was able to identify her because of the mask she was wearing on stage, and her muffled voice was assumed to be because of a sort of mouth gag. The blood left on the stage was confirmed to be her own

The “actors” involved with the production have not been identified. When the police searched backstage after the show, no trace of the suspects was found, aside from a single note placed the the exit:

“The hearts of the young always taste best.”

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

My Great-Aunt’s Mother in-Law

    I’m having a creepy night and remembered the story my grandma told me when I was 14 years old. My friend told me to share it, so here it is.

    All women in my mother’s family have had paranormal experiences, but this one is by far the weirdest and creepiest of all. My grandma claims that it’s true.

    Her sister, my great-aunt, whom I never met because she got in an argument with my grandma and moved away before I was born, fell in love in her early twenties. The man she fell for still lived with his mother and since his father died long ago, he was the “man” in the house, took care of everything, earned the money. Therefore, his mother had gotten really attached to him. When she found out her son was just as fond of the girl he had started to go out with as the girl was of him, she was not just upset, she was raging. She told him to break up with her, said “that bitch” wasn’t good enough for him, that he deserved better than her. My grandma and her siblings grew up very poor, but they always worked hard, and even though they don’t get along anymore, my grandma always says her sister has always been a very humble and good person.

    But her boyfriend’s mother didn’t like her at all. She hated her. She tried everything to seperate the happy couple and when they got engaged, she freaked out. She threatened my great-aunt not only once, physically attacked her, too, saying that she would never find her happily ever after with her son, and that none of them would rest until she managed to make them break up.

    They got married and moved to a house together, yet the mother never stopped to harrass them.

    She got ill and died very soon. My great-aunt felt relieved, believing the death of her mother in-law would finally free her from her harrasment, but she was wrong. It only got worse.

    The night after her burial, the couple went to bed together, as usual. As they pulled the covers aside, the matress was covered in mud. There was dirt spread all over the bedsheet, pebbles, dry grass. My great-aunt started crying in shock and her husband proceeded to quietly change the sheets, acting as if nothing happened. They went to bed. Of course my great-aunt couldn’t sleep. She had a very scary, haunting suspicion as to who was responsible for the mess.

    It happened again the next night. And the night after. And the night after. My great-aunt was on the edge of insanity because she was convinced that it was her mother in-law, haunting her from hell. Her husband didn’t want to believe in it, told her she was insulting his mother. They searched for help and a friend of them helped them, telling them they should put salt in the bed to keep the bad spirits away. It worked for one or two nights, but then it all started over again.

    The couple kept arguing. What’s “funny” is that my grandma says her sister told her there was less dirt in the bed on the nights in which they had had an argument.

    After a few months only, they decided to get divorced. Not just because of the problem with the bed. They were only arguing, discussing about every little thing, they literally started to hate each other. My great-aunt was terrified and nervous, her husband was exhausted and annoyed. So they broke up, left the house, got an official divorce.

    From that day on, none of them found dirt in their beds anymore.

    As far as I know, the man remained single for the rest of his life. My great-aunt moved away and found a new family.

—
Credits to: unexplained-events

I Loved My Dog

We didn’t have a lot when I was a little girl. My mother and father married young and had me when they were eighteen. My brother followed eleven months later. Dad went into the Marines right after high school and Mom worked as a receptionist at a massage parlor. We lived with my great grandmother in her home, a small two story house with a yard that seemed huge in comparison to that of our neighbors.

Both my brother and I had health problems in our earlier years, so most of the money that mom and Dad made went towards medical bills.

My eardrums ruptured when I was a few months old and I had to have tubes put in. There was a good span of time that mom was worried that I was going to end up deaf. She took sign language classes so that if the worst came to pass she would still be able to teach me to communicate. I was constantly suffering from ear infections. I hit two and stopped growing. There were trips to specialists, tests and bloodwork, until I hit four and shot up.

James, my brother, had a hyperactive gag reflex that could be triggered by eating too quickly and was learning disabled. He broke all his front baby teeth with one of those lollipops on a spinning base, and had to go to the dentist to have them pulled.

We didn’t have a lot when I was a little girl, so when Dad bought me a puppy it was a really big deal. I was five then and she was perfect in every way- Dad had made sure of it. Toto was a pure breed Maltese, bred from a line of show dogs. She already had her shots, and had been checked by a vet. Mom gave Dad a long stare when he told her she had cost him one thousand two hundred dollars, but melted and relented when he placed her in my arms and my eyes lit up.

She was perfect, all fluffy white fur and a black nose. I was in love the moment I laid eyes on her and, judging by the kisses she planted on my face, she felt the same way. I named her Toto, after the dog in The Wizard of Oz, and from that moment on she was my constant companion. Mom’s initial worries proved to be false. Despite my young age I took care of my dog. I fed her, bathed her, took her outside to play, and brushed her every night before bed.

I remember getting a really bad ear infection a few months after we got Toto. I was prescribed drops to help with the pain, but the air hurt so bad that mom had to hold me down to give them to me. The whole time Toto sat beside me on the pillows and licked the tears from my cheeks. It hurt worse than anything had ever hurt before, but Toto cried with me the whole time.

I used to sit on the floor beside her food bowl and feed her choice bits from my own plate. Mom had given me a list of things that she was not allowed to have, so she never got sick, and we dewormed her every month. If my dog wanted to share a cup with me I let her. If she kissed me I let her, giggling the whole time. I would put my baby dresses on her and carry her around swaddled in a blanket. I loved my dog.

Every day we would go play together in the yard. James would sit on the old play set that grandma had bought us, or play with a toy truck in the dirt. He always was introverted, a quiet one. He could sit and watch paint dry, pardon the cliché, with a look of utter contentment on his face. The only time he got in trouble was when I goaded him into it. I had a little trampoline in the front yard, the type that are used during aerobics classes that I would bounce up and down on. Toto would run around the trampoline while I jumped around, her tail wagging happily. Sometimes I would sit in the lilac bushes that grew under our front window and play peek-a-boo with her. Our yard wasn’t fenced in, but Toto never left my sight, and mom or grandma always watched us from the front window. Even if Toto was just going out to use the bathroom I would follow her. We were never separated…

Until I started kindergarten at six. The first day Mom had to hold Toto as I got on the bus, sobbing the whole time. I was scared, so very very scared, and I already missed my dog. School was okay, but I didn’t like my teacher, and I was always eager for it to be time to go home. A month or so in there was a presentation about stranger danger. The information was nothing new to me, but I enjoyed the video they showed, and the coloring sheets that they passed out. They had pictures of a cartoon dog that I gave brown eyes and a black nose.

I learned my alphabet, and how to count higher than I had ever counted before, and how to spell simple words. I already knew my colors, and how to spell my name. I played with the other children. Mostly though, I waited. James was in a pre-k program that gave him speech therapy and prepared him for kindergarten, so Toto was alone with Grandma for half the day. She spoiled her as much as I did though, so I didn’t mind. Grandma was a good babysitter.

Still, the most anticipated time of the day was the moment that I stepped off of the bus, and Grandma let her out the front door. She would let a little yip loose and run right to me. I would pick her up and she would turn in circles in my arm before licking my face raw. Once the bus drove off we would run around the front yard, her chasing sticks and me doing cartwheels, all while my Grandma watched from the front window. As long as I was home we were together.

Mom sent pictures of us to dad on base. Whenever he called James would babble, his speech stilted by his missing teeth, about the adventures his toys were involved in. I made him talk to Toto after he talked to me. He listened patiently to all of us.

“I told you.” He would tell my mother. “Hasn’t she been so much happier and calmer since I got her the dog?” It was the truth. I got into a lot less trouble with her around. I hadn’t put pop tarts in the VCR, or convinced James to flush all the paper towels down the toilet, or anything since he gave her to me. I didn’t bite, or kick, or scream when I needed eardrops in. I had fewer nightmares and slept deeper.

“You did good, Erik.” It was always weird when Mom used Dad’s name, but it made me smile. They really loved one another, loved us.

It wasn’t long after I started Kindergarten that I got the worse ear infection I had ever had, on top of the flu. My fever spiked at one hundred and three degrees and Mom brought me to the hospital. They gave me ear drops, again, and a bottle of penicillin. The first dose, there at the hospital, caused me to break out in hives and throw up violently. We spent the night there, my body shaking and shivering, but I was well enough the next day to go home, with a different antibiotic. Still, I was feverish and glassy eyed. Mom tucked me under a thick quilt and sat Toto beside me. I remember shadows dancing in front of my eyes and sweating through my clothes. When mom came to get her, to bring her outside, I stood up to go out too but ended up stumbling to the floor.

The carpet seemed like it was moving under my hands and knees but I was determined to go out. Mom helped me get back in bed, covered my forehead with a damp wash cloth, and took my dog. It was afternoon and the school bus had already dropped off all of the other kids on our street.

“Shh, it’s okay sweetie. We’ll be right back.” My mom whispered. Toto had never gone outside without me when I was home. I nodded my head and fell asleep, exhausted from just getting out of bed.

They weren’t.

Mom took Toto out via the front porch. It was on the left side of the house, by the swings. She sat her down and my baby ran over to the lilac bushes. Mom could just see her as she pranced around, looking for a place to go. She squatted down in the grass. The next thing Mom knew a van was peeling down the road. It braked suddenly and a man in a stocking cap jumped out, and rushed the bushes. He rustled around the area for a few seconds before Mom yelled at the top of her lungs. He noticed her for the first time, grabbed my dog, and ran back to the van with her in his arms. It speed off, tires shrieking. Mom didn’t even manage to get the license plate number.

She called the police but with nothing more than a general description of the van and the thief there was nothing that they could do. They talked to our neighbors but came up with no leads. This was told to me all through tears, me staring at her as if she was a monster. It was hard on her, explaining that someone had taken Toto from me. I cried until my face was red and I was gasping for air, terrified that they were hurting her, that I was going to hear on the news that they had found her dead body. It was three days after my trip to the hospital and my fever was gone. I felt worse than I had in my entire life.

“Sweetie, people don’t kidnap dogs to kill them,” She said stroking my hair. “They must have thought she was a stray. I bet that she’s being taken good care of.” Her lap was warm but it didn’t matter to me. My Grandma made me my favorite cookies, but I refused to eat them. James tried giving me his favorite truck, but I just sat there beside her food bowl and cried. I went to school and came home. I stopped playing outside. Dad called and listened to me crying for half an hour before suggesting to Mom that maybe we could get a new dog. That suggestion did not sit well with me. I screamed myself hoarse. I loved my dog, I didn’t want another.

---

If the story ended here I wouldn’t be telling you about it. It would be just another tale of a girl losing her dog. Sad, but not terrifying. Maybe if it had ended there, I could have gotten over this. Instead, I am still obsessing over this, even though I am twenty three years old and this happened when I was six.

---

I never really ‘got over’ Toto being taken. I kept a little picture of her on my desk at school.

“Monsters took my baby,” I would whisper whenever anyone asked what was wrong. I told my teachers and classmates, the school therapist, anyone who would listen that she had been taken by monsters. I scared the other children but I didn’t know another word to describe the men that had taken her. Who else but a monster would have taken my best friend?

The little pink porcelain bowls that she had eaten and drank from were empty, but still on the floor. Moving them was too much of a reminder that she was gone so they just sat there, waiting for her like me. I started dragging James around the house. He sat next to me while I did my puzzles, or watched television. Mom drew the line at me putting him in my old dresses though. We didn’t go outside. I loved James, but he was my brother, not my dog. It wasn’t the same.

Recess at school was no longer as fun as it once was. We had this wooden playground with all these little hiding places. It was shaped like a castle. When I had first started school my favorite thing to do was wiggle into those secret places, like the platform under the draw bridge. I would make noises to startle the other kids, and the teacher’s aide always had the hardest time finding me.

My depression made me a miserable companion. I didn’t want to play. I would go to the big tire swing, made out of a tractor tire suspended by three chains, and mold myself into the opening in the tire. Everyone knew that I was there. The other kids would sit and swing on it, their feet careful not to hit me, and I would let the movement lull me into a relaxed state. Sometimes they would stay all recess, just swinging around. Other times, they would be over at the monkey bars, or the carriage, or high in the castle. I never moved from the swings by the hill, not until one of the teachers or staff came to get me.

It was a warm blue sky day, a month since Toto had been kidnapped, when it happened.

“Nicole? Nicole Nicholas?” I heard my name spoken by a deep voice. I figured I had fallen asleep at some point, because it didn’t feel like recess should be over yet. I carefully extracted myself from my hiding place only to come face to face with a man I didn’t know. I was getting ready to scream for a teacher when he said something that stopped me in my tracks. “I found your dog, Toto? She’s with my friend in our van, if you want to come get her.”

It was like the first breath of spring after a particularly long winter. I brightened instantly.

“She’s okay?” I asked looking up at him. He had a scruffy beard and dark hair, and a smile on his face.

“Yes, she’s okay. I’m sorry we took her, we thought she was a stray or had gotten out of someone’s house. By the time we had noticed her tags we couldn’t find our way back to your house, so we went looking for you. She’s missed you just as much as you’ve missed her, I think.” He offered me his hand and I took it as we began to walk down the hill and towards the road. I nodded my head, because his explanation was similar to the one my Mom had given me. I could hear the other kids far behind me, in the front part of the castle where all of the teachers sat and talked while we played. They didn’t matter. Toto was coming home.

At the bottom of the hill there was an old dirt road that cut through the forest. It was pot hole ridden and uneven, so most people didn’t drive on it. The black van was parked there with its back door ajar. It felt like it took forever to reach it. When we were ten feet away the man let go of my hand.

She was there, a leash latched on her harness, and tied to the door handle on the other side of the van. Someone had tied a pink ribbon in a bow around her neck. The moment she saw me she made the same high pitched yip that she had made every time I got off of the bus. Her white paws skittered across the floor of the van but the leash kept her in place.

“Go ahead and grab her. We just didn’t want her to get loose.” He encouraged. I took slow, careful, steps terrified that I was going to wake up and find out that I was dreaming. I was so close to Toto. All I had to do was take a few more steps and then I could crawl into the van and untie her.

The next thing I knew someone had grabbed me under the arms and yanked me back. The man swore, jumped into the van, and took off. A cloud of dust trailed behind them leaving me, dangling from my armpits, sobbing. I had lost her, again. Once they were out of sight I was carried back to the playground before I was placed back on solid ground.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” The teacher’s aide for the classroom beside ours asked me. It was her who had grabbed me before I could get in the van.

The police were called first, and then my mother. They didn’t get anything meaningful out of me, just the words ‘my dog’ over and over again like a mantra. The aide had gotten the license plate number though, and a description of both the van and the man who had walked me down the hill.

“It was a black Dodge van, a Ram, I think.” She told the officers. At that description, my mother lost all color in her face. I didn’t understand why at the time. They never found the men in the black van. The license plate was from a car that had been stolen two towns over.

I never saw my dog again.

---

I still think about what could have happened after that. Did they hurt her, my baby with her big eyes and soft fur, out of anger? Or did they keep her, that pink bow on her collar, and use her to lure in another little girl? I didn’t understand back then, what had almost happened to me. But now…now I just keep imagining another child, her hair in ribbons, her eyes wide with fear while Toto made that little whimpering noise in the back of her throat. Trying to comfort a child that she had unintentionally lured into harm.

I loved my dog. Whatever happened after they sped away in that black van, it wasn’t her fault.

The monsters didn’t want my dog.

The monsters wanted me.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

The Devil’s Jaws

I suppose when I say, “Noroi Gakkotsu,” most of you would guess I was talking about some exotic delicacy, or maybe some holiday resort in the far east. You’d be dead wrong. A Noroi Gakkotsu is a very nasty object that has been part of Japanese folklore for centuries, maybe even millennia.

Please keep reading! I know that folklore, especially folklore from a completely foreign culture, bores a lot of people to snores. I can assure you, I’m no fan either. But please believe me when I say that it’s essential that you read this and understand what Noroi Gakkotsu are and how they work.

As best it can be translated, “Noroi Gakkotsu” means “Devil’s Jaws” in English. According to Japanese tradition, a Noroi Gakkotsu is made of two thin boards of wood, one upon the other, that are bound together on one side with either a strip of leather or length of twine, so that the boards can be opened and closed like a book (or a set of jaws!). A certain spell is then written upon the boards to give the object its dark powers. Basically, so long as they knew the magic words, anybody could make one from household objects.

Noroi Gakkotsu were used to strike a bargain with something they called “Kofuko-oni Koun,” which I’m told means “He who pays for his food with good luck.” Don’t be fooled, though. Even though the name might sound benevolent, Kofuko-oni Koun was regarded as a cruel, evil creature and was greatly feared.

He was believed to have sway over the forces of luck and a person could request him to turn a near-certain failure in their future into a glorious victory, by writing what they wanted upon a piece of rice paper and placing it inside a Noroi Gakkotsu. But there was also a catch.

Kofuko-oni Koun would only honor the request if you nominated your payment for his ‘services’ on the top of the message – and the only payment he would accept was the life of someone you held dear. It had to be someone you truly cared for, though not necessarily a family member, it could also have been a close friend. If you named someone who you didn’t care for, or even someone you actually wanted to die, somehow the Kofuko-oni Koun would know and the wish wouldn’t be granted.

But if the Kofuko-oni Koun approved of the nominated payment, then the person who made the wish would be blessed with the best possible luck in whatever matter they’d asked for the Kofuko-oni Koun to help them with. After that, the nominated victim would mysteriously disappear almost entirely without a trace.

The worst part of the story is that after it had claimed its price, the Kofuko-oni Koun would leave a “souvenir”outside the front door of the person who made the wish. Sometimes it was the victim’s bloody clothing, or some other personal affect. But more often than not, it was part of the victim’s remains! Some people believe that it did this to traumatize the person who had made the wish; to remind them of the terrible fate they’d placed upon their loved one. Others apparently think that it was more like the Kofuko-oni Koun leaving a ‘receipt’ behind for the person who made the wish, acknowledging that it had received its payment and that their business was concluded.

Either way, making a Noroi Gakkotsu and striking a bargain with Kofuko-oni Koun were forbidden practices in Japan, punishable by death. So once the deal was done, the person who had committed the crime would usually destroy all the evidence: the Noroi Gakkotsu, and whatever traces of the victim had been left upon their doorstep.

Even if you are into old monster legends, I’m sure you’re probably just reading this and thinking that it’s just some old superstitious hokum. Well, a few days… hell, probably even a few hours ago I would’ve agreed with you. But not anymore.

I can’t tell you too much about who I am or how I know what I know. What I can tell you is that I have connections in the missing-person-turned-homicide investigation of a teenage boy somewhere in the Midwest.

About a year ago, in the lead-up to Halloween, there was this meme going around with a picture showing the top of a skeleton: the skull, neck and shoulder blades. People would forward it on with MMS’s, tweets and the like with simple messages like “Happy Halloween,” or “Boo!,” etc. You might’ve gotten one yourself.

Eventually, the meme found its way to somebody with a bit of knowledge about anatomy and they realized that the skeleton in the picture was awfully realistic. They reported it to law enforcement. But it would be weeks before the report made it through the bureaucracy to a medical examiner who verified that the image did indeed warrant some an investigation.

The M.E. was convinced that the skeleton was indeed the genuine article, but of particular concern to her was the pinkish tone of the bones, and the trace amounts of what appeared to be blood and flesh still on it. What also concerned her were a series of scrape marks that could be seen on the bones when the photo was examined at high resolution. They appeared to encompass the entire skull and the M.E.’s opinion was that these were made when the flesh was stripped off the body – by something with very sharp and very hard teeth.

There seemed to be no legitimate reason for a photo like this to be circulating among the public. Law enforcement determined that it was either a leaked crime scene photo, or evidence to an as-yet undiscovered crime. They considered that the photo might’ve been taken by some callous private citizens (read asshole kids) who’d found a dead body, photographed it, published it online, and never reported it to the cops. Even more disturbing was the possibility that the photo was published by the psycho who had done this and wanted the world to admire his handiwork.

The trouble was that we had only one photo to go on, which made it really hard to determine whether or not the photo was even related to an active or solved case. The exif-data; the data buried within the jpeg file that detail where the photo had come from, what camera had taken it, when it had been taken, etc., had all been wiped clean; which isn’t hard to do if you know what you’re doing. All we had to go on was the photo itself.

I won’t bore you with the technical details, but suffice to say that the computer forensics techs made a thorough sweep of the national crime scene photo database and determined that the photo didn’t pertain to any case in the digital archives.

Several other analyses were run on the photo, but the one that paid off was the facial reconstruction simulation – a piece of software that scans the photo of the skull and determines what the guy would’ve looked like when he was still alive. Eventually, we were able to match the reconstructed face to an active case file out-of-state: the skull belonged to a teenage boy, let’s call him “Jack,” who had been reported missing.

While the photo itself was being investigated, the meme was also being examined. We were charting its course back from the concerned citizen who initially reported the image to the police, to the first person who’d ever sent the image. It wasn’t easy as the meme leapfrogged back-and-forth across several popular messaging services along its way. Just over a week after the victim’s identity was confirmed, we were able to determine who had started the meme. We’ll call her “Jill.”

What was of immediate interest to law enforcement was that Jill’s name was already on record in Jack’s case file – she was apparently a school friend of his and one of the last people to see him alive.

A warrant was issued for Jill’s cell phone and she was brought in for questioning. The phone was thoroughly analysed and an MMS was recovered containing the skeleton photo. But while the phone had a definite record of receiving the message, it was later discovered that Jill’s service provider had no record of ever transmitting it to her.

Another weird thing was that the sender ID for the MMS didn’t contain any numbers; it contained only unicode Japanese Kanji characters. This is technically impossible! The way the system is set up, the phone should only be able to log a series of numeric digits into the sender ID field! The characters in the sender ID spelt out “Anatano Shitauke.” This isn’t someone’s name; the techs translated it and discovered that it roughly means “Your employee,” or “Your business partner.”

Under interrogation, Jill recalled receiving the MMS. She said that the message “kind of creeped her out,” especially because it came from an “unknown sender” (which is what the messaging software told her, because it wasn’t able to interpret the invalid sender ID). But because it was close to Halloween, she assumed that one of her friends sent it as a seasonal thing and so she forwarded the “cool, creepy photo” on, starting the meme.

According to the MMS’s time stamp, she received it only a few hours after Jack was last seen. But Jill claimed she never linked the message to Jack’s disappearance in her mind because at the time she received the MMS, she didn’t even know Jack was missing. The detectives grilled Jill for over three hours, but when she began to get really upset, her father ended the interview and without harder evidence, the detectives couldn’t hold her.

The tech who analysed the phone… well, let’s just say that he’s very thorough at his job, and he didn’t give up on the mystery of how this phone could’ve received an impossible MMS, that its service provider had no record of ever sending. He dug deep into its software, looking for his explanation. Eventually, he came upon a curious anomaly embedded in the phone’s firmware: more unicode Japanese characters, this time a long block of them. The firmware is supposed to be just universal machine code that tells the phone how to work. Japanese text, or text in any human language for that matter, doesn’t belong in there. But as intriguing as this discovery was, it still didn’t explain the impossible MMS. At least, that’s what we thought at the time…

You see, the Japanese text was ‘garbage data’ – which means it was worked into the firmware in such a way that it had no actual effect on how it worked. It was on the phone, but it wasn’t doing anything.

By this point, I was involved in the investigation. When I learned about the Japanese text in the firmware I got curious, so I ran it through google translate. It didn’t translate well, though. A quarter of the words weren’t even recognized and the ones that were didn’t make any sense together. Frustrated, I called upon a Japanese-American acquaintance to translate for me. I’d expected it to be the manufacturer’s copyright on the firmware code, or perhaps even the programmer signing his work. But it actually turned out to sound more like a sombre poem of sorts. My Japanese-American friend agreed, saying that the language was far more elegant than day-to-day Japanese and more than a little archaic.

Seeking answers, we phoned up the phone manufacturer’s development lab in Japan. We eventually got through to the manager of the team who developed the phone’s software and, with my friend acting as translator, we asked him about the mysterious text in the firmware, and also if he had any explanation as to how a Japanese phrase could be recorded as the sender ID for an MMS on one of their phones. He very politely denied knowing anything about either of these matters and assured me that any garbage data in the firmware was of no consequence.

Still wanting answers to at least one of the mysteries, I phoned a professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo University to see if he could recognize the verse in the firmware. Before my colleague could finish reciting the verse, the professor cut him off. He recognized it, all right.

Despite the language barrier between us, I could hear the discomfort in the man’s voice as he explained that the “verse” was the incantation written upon Noroi Gakkotsu to give them their dark powers. It was at this point that my colleague explained the Noroi Gakkotsu legend of his culture to me. He knew the story well, he just had never heard the actual incantation used to create one, until now.

While this was all quite educational, it really didn’t get us anywhere in terms of the investigation. But I kept thinking about the problem of the MMS and eventually I had this crazy thought: The fact that Jill had received a photo of Jack’s remains was eerily similar to the part of the Noroi Gakkotsu legend where the monster would leave behind some proof of his victim’s death.

I suppose just for fun, I skimmed through the rest of the case notes to see if there were any other parallels between the murder and the Japanese legend. I almost wish I hadn’t.

When I read through Jill’s original witness statement – the one taken when police were just investigating Jack’s disappearance as a missing person’s case – she remarked that she remembered the last day she saw him clearly, because it was the same day her history teacher had returned a test that she’d surprisingly aced, even though she’d thought she was sure to flunk it.

My stomach sank when I read that statement. Because I was quite familiar with the contents of Jill’s phone and I remembered reading about this history test before. About 3 days before Jack’s disappearance, Jill had typed a text message into her phone: “I need to pass this history test.”

Jack’s name was marked at the top of the message, as the intended recipient.

The similarities between the old stories I’d been hearing and the murder were suddenly clear as day. Jill had a phone that for some reason contained an old Japanese spell used to summon a monster. She typed what could be interpreted as a demand for a good history mark into the phone, with her close friend’s name on the message, and just like in the stories, Jill aced her test, Jack disappeared without trace, and Jill received a sick memento of his death.

If you’d pointed this out to me at the time, I would’ve chuckled and said, “Yes, it is a weird coincidence, isn’t it?” I wanted to believe that that was all it was. I really did. But deep down, in that hidden ‘doubting Thomas’ part we all have that doesn’t completely trust modern rationality to be our salvation, I was frightened.

Then, a couple days ago, which was about a week after I’d called the phone manufacturer, I received a package in the mail. There was no return address, but the postmark was from Osaka, Japan.

Inside, were a heap of papers. On top of the stack was a cover letter explaining what the package contained. It was written in bad English, although I was able to get the gist of what it was saying. The sender didn’t identify themself, but it’s clear that they must work for the manufacturer of Jill’s phone and that they were aware that I’d been asking questions about the hidden text in the firmware.

My informant was part of the development of the phone series that Jill’s phone belonged to and he/she had an explanation for how the Noroi Gakkotsu incantation had gotten into the phones’ firmware.

There was a guy on the development team; smart, but a real emo-loner type. Not the shy kind of loner, the crazed-gunman-in-the-making kind. People would try to be friendly and reach out to him and he’d stare daggers at them. For whatever reasons, the guy had issues.

Shortly before the phone series’ went into production, the guy hung himself. My informant believes that before he died, the guy implanted the hazardous spell into the phones as his ultimate “screw you” to the world.

Within a few months of the phone’s release, somehow the company’s executives got wind that there was a problem with them ‘receiving’ disturbing MMS’s that the phones seemed to be generating themselves. The company began to investigate the problem quietly themselves, secretly querying all their active phones remotely. They found scores of incidents where a phone had a record of an incoming MMS from “Anatano Shitauke” (“Your business partner”), containing a single jpeg file. Most people who had received these messages had subsequently deleted them. But in several dozen cases, the jpegs were still on the recipients’ phones and were retrieved by the company.

An upgraded version of the firmware – with the incantation removed – was developed, but ultimately never implemented because it was discovered that the phones kept rejecting it. The guy who put the incantation into the firmware had also rigged it so that it would never allow itself to be overwritten.

Two months before Jack’s disappearance, the company abruptly terminated their investigation. By this time, they were aware of nearly 800 instances of MMS’s being received from “Anatano Shitauke.” An unspoken agreement was made that the problem was unsolvable and that their best course of action was to simply turn a blind eye. Everyone involved in the informal investigation was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Orders were issued to destroy all the records. But my anonymous contact managed to keep copies of most of them, which he/she has sent to me.

It’s taking me a while to get through the documents he/she sent me, as most of them are written in Japanese. But luckily their list of the phones that received an “Anatano Shitauke” message was written in regular digits. I ran all the American numbers on that list through our database and all of them, every single one, belongs to somebody who was questioned in relation to a missing person case that began within days of them receiving that message!

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that my contact also sent me printouts of all the jpegs they could salvage that turned up during the manufacturer’s investigation. They are all just like the photo of Jack’s remains that began this entire case: a realistic skeleton grinning into the camera, covered in the scrape marks left by whatever sharp-toothed nightmare stripped them of all their flesh. I don’t have access to the advanced software that synthesized an accurate face for Jack’s skull. At least, not the kind of access that allows me to use it without answering a lot of difficult questions first. But I scanned the photos and overlayed them with photoshop on to the case photos of the missing person associated with their recipient. I admit I’m no expert, but as far as I can tell, every one of those skulls fits perfectly inside the face of one of those missing people.

I can’t tell you the name of the manufacturer involved, nor the name of the phone series. Suffice to say, they’re a well-known company and the phone series is quite popular.

I wish I could tell you more, but if I do, I have no doubt that the company will have this warning suppressed as defamation and that can’t happen. The word has to get out and I figure that half a warning is better than no warning at all.

There’s a common series of phone out there with an evil curse marked inside them. You may well be carrying a Noroi Gakkotsu in your purse, or pocket. And even if you aren’t, someone who cares about you may be.

So please, be wary of typing out what you wish for, or hope for, or even think you ‘need’. But most of all, be especially careful of whose name you place on those messages…

Because you just may be sending them into the devil’s jaws.

Spread the word.

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Credits to: photofreecreepypasta