This may have been both the luckiest and unluckiest turn of events that could have ever happened. But it definitely takes the cake for being the most obscure.
It was a relatively simple scenario to start out with:
Four dumbass college kids go exploring in an abandoned structure near the outskirts of Arizona. It may have been a hospital. Could have been anything, really. Didn’t matter. We were just looking for stories to tell at future parties.
After about an hour of wandering around, risking respiratory disease from this dusty place, we still hadn’t seen anything. Despite being there in the middle of the day, the atmosphere was still pretty spooky, though. I even thought that I’d heard voices coming from a few floors below me, but they were so faint that they might as well have been in my head. All of a sudden, Austin remembered some demon-summoning ritual that he’d read online, thought was really cool, and had saved on his phone. Joe and Craig – the two other guys apart from me, thought that this was exciting for some reason.
Personally, I thought it was dumb as shit. I mean, a fucking demon summoning ritual? You’ve gotta be kidding me. I was the only opposition, though.The consensus had already been made, so I just went along with it. I wish I hadn’t. Actually… maybe it was for the best that I did. You’ll see why. It gets weird.
This ritual required that we perform it in a stairwell. Apparently, some serial killer who liked to use chains to whip and strangle his victims had been caught in the act and chased through a high-rise building, eventually deciding to avoid arrest by jumping down 9 flights of stairs. We needed 9 floors. This place had ten.
Austin didn’t really give us a comprehensive rundown of what we were actually supposed to be doing. He just gave us some vague, shoddy instructions. Once the ritual was complete, we had five minutes to make it all the way down the stairs before it spawned in on the 9th floor and started chasing us. Austin said that he forgot what would happen if we didn’t make it. Probably nothing good, though.
I was still against this whole idea, but the ritual required 4 people and these guys said they wouldn’t leave until we actually did it. I can honestly say that I was never explicitly scared beforehand. I mean, some of the steps had us playing this weird land variation of Marco Polo where we had to yell out some arcane, demonic language instead. You just never think that these fucking things will work, you know?
The whole process lasted about 30 minutes before Austin told us that it was effectively complete.
“So now what?” Craig asked him.
Austin shrugged. “Now we walk down the stairs before the 5 minutes is up.”
As they all nodded and began making their way down, I decided to speak up. “Hang on, if we make it down within 5 minutes, nothing’s going to happen? So we just wasted our fucking time, then. And you can't even prove that this worked.”
“I guess we could test it. Take longer than 5.” Joe said. “You know, it might be interesting.”
Austin shifted in place, looking anxious for whatever reason. “Umm, maybe we should just head down.”
“Oh so you don’t wanna admit it.” I said to him.
“No, look dude… this was a real thing.” Was his response. I remember letting out a laugh that was borderline obnoxious.
“Alright, let’s go. I don’t think we’ll make it down in 5 minutes anyway. Let’s see if demon-man comes after us.”
With that said, we began walking. The sun was probably an hour away from setting and I was getting hungry, so I was fairly glad that we were finally leaving. But… Austin was being weird. His pace was considerably faster than everybody else’s. Was he actually that worried about looking dumb when the ritual didn’t work? But that couldn’t have been the case, since nobody was actually keeping track of the time. He could’ve just claimed that we’d made it down within 5 minutes and we couldn’t have really proved him otherwise. Still, he was hauling ass.
Once we were on the 3rd floor, I called out to him. “Dude, relax. I don't actually mind. We weren’t going to do anything productive with that time anyway.”
He looked back at me, his expression becoming more anxious by the second. “You don’t understand, I think it’s been around 5 minutes now. We gotta move.”
With that said, he continued bolting down the steps. The rest of us kind of just stood there for a while, not really comprehending what the hell was going on.
The mood had definitely shifted. This was not normal behavior. It got me wondering. There was no way… right?
And then, seconds later - almost like an answer to my internal question, we heard something coming from some floor above us. Like a heavy thud. And then metal dragging on the floor.
The look on Joe’s face said it all. “Oh god, no.”
We started chasing after Austin, tumbling down the remaining flights of stairs. He was waiting for us on the bottom, eyes wide and face pale.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Craig bellowed at him. But Austin didn’t budge.
“Shit, we took longer than 5 minutes. I fucking told you guys!”
I listened for the footsteps that should've been coming down the steps, but there were none. I was relieved for a while before realizing why it was silent.
Out of nowhere, the thing dropped down, presumably all the way from the 9th floor, landing about 5 feet away from where I was standing. I let out the least masculine yelp that had probably ever been articulated, fell down, and started scrambling backwards.
Now, I’d seen demons in movies before. Never really scared me. But when the fucking thing is standing right in front of you… well, it’s a different story.
It was about 6 and a half feet tall, with twisted, wiry limbs erratically jerking around as it moved. Its head was wrapped in bloody bandages, save for one, large grey eye bugging out while it looked at us. To top it all off, it had a large rusty chain wrapped around its neck.
Everybody else had already started running. I pulled myself up, moving out of the way of what was surely to be a lethal, floor-breaking strike just in time.
Not knowing where to go, I sprinted through rooms and corridors, trying to get away from the atrocity chasing me. At some point, I turned a corner and ran into somebody. At first, I thought it was one of my friends. But after getting a good look at him, it was obvious that I’d never even seen this guy before. He looked just as petrified and disoriented as me. He also had no shirt on, and I remember seeing some weird symbol that looked like it’d been carved into his chest. He barely paid any attention to me, simply getting back up and running towards what I was running away from.
“No, dude. You do NOT want to go down there!” I yelled after him. But it was too late. I heard the swing of a chain and the subsequent cracking of bones. I almost threw up in my mouth there. Trying to avoid a similar fate, I started running again. But not for long. I halted to a stop as another figure came out of an open door in the hall in front of me.
It was… a lady. Problem is, it was one of those grudge-looking ladies. You know the type – long black hair, pale skin, white dress, etc.
What the actual fuck? I thought to myself. The lady turned to face me, revealing two empty eye sockets and a square-shaped mouth lined with dark, razor-like teeth. Then it got on all fours and began crawling towards me.
With my adrenaline levels through the roof, I turned the other way and ran. I guess the adrenaline also resulted in short-term memory loss, because I forgot about the serial killer chain demon, who was now boxing me in.
I turned back around. The spider-lady had stopped, now looking at me curiously. But I realized it probably wasn’t me she was looking at. It was the big demon asshole behind me, who had also stopped moving.
In the moment, I ran my potential outcomes – Dr. Strange style, through my head. But unlike the Avengers, I could not see one single scenario where this ended well for me.
Simultaneously, the two demon things started advancing towards me. The only thing I could really do was press my back against one of the walls and close my eyes. So that’s what I did.
I stood there and waited for what was sure to be an excruciating death. But it never came. Instead, it sounded like they were… fighting each other.
I opened my eyes again, watching as the two entities brawled. The chain demon was attempting to strangle the spider-lady while she was trying to claw at his face.
I’m not an idiot, I took my chance and got out of there. But there was another problem that had presented itself. I didn’t know where the fuck I was. And I was fairly certain that the spider-lady was getting out-matched. The fight probably wasn’t going to last much longer.
I maneuvered through the maze of corridors, feverishly trying to map my way out of there. No dice. I should’ve tried harder to recall where I’d come from, but given the circumstances, that’s asking for a lot.
Eventually, I’d managed to find a familiar area. The pathway to the lobby that we’d come in from. I was home free. Or… I thought I was home free. The chain demon came stumbling out of the ONE corridor between me and the exit, fresh off of its conquest. The bandages on its face had now been ripped to shreds, revealing gruesome, rotting flesh underneath.
Remember when I said that this was both the most unlucky AND lucky turn of events ever? Well, I wasn’t lying. As it started lurching towards me, the boom of a shotgun echoed through the mostly empty space, and a portion of its head exploded. But it still wasn’t dead. It moved a couple more inches before the rest of its head had been drilled into the wall by another slug.
I stood there, absolutely dumbfounded at the events that had just transpired. I started hearing more footsteps coming from the corridor in front of me. As it got closer, I braced myself for the worst.
But it was just a woman. A regular woman, this time. She looked to be around my age, with her clothes torn and scratches across her face while she held the smoking weapon.
She looked at the now unmoving chain demon before looking at me.
“What the fuck is this thing?”
I didn’t want to explain it right there, so I quickly thanked her before bolting out of the building. Probably confused as hell, she followed suit.
Once outside, I saw Austin, Joe and Craig waiting for me.
“Oh, thank God.” Craig yelled out. “I didn’t want to call the police, my parents would’ve killed me if I had to make a statement.”
But they weren’t alone. There were two others – one man and one woman, standing with them. They didn’t react to me, but looked relieved when they saw the woman who had saved me.
There was really only one question on everybody’s mind.
What the hell had just happened?
After some confusion and bickering, we finally got our stories together. They had showed up around an hour before us, and by some fucked up stroke of chance, decided to perform a demon-summoning ritual as well, but in the basement instead of on the 9th floor.
Long story short, the spider-lady-demon crawled out from a portal in the floor, shit got out of hand and they started scrambling. The woman who had saved me managed to escape first and ran to their car in order to get the shotgun. She came back, looking for her friends, but during that period, her friends had actually escaped without her knowing.
Eventually, she came across the chain-demon and began following it. That chain-demon led to me. You know the rest. They got our side of the story as well, but I don’t think they really cared. They just wanted to get the hell out of there. Couldn’t blame them. So did we.
Right before we got into our respective cars (theirs was parked on the other side of the building, so that’s why we never saw it when we pulled up), I decided to thank the girl one last time.
“I’m really sorry about your other friend as well. He ran into our chain-demon and uh… yeah.”
Her face twisted into confusion after I said this.
“What friend? It was only us three.”
Her response left my mouth agape. And this probably wasn’t something that she would joke about. Without saying anything else, I got into our car and we drove off.
The drive back wasn’t silent, like you’d might expect it to be. There were a lot of things to discuss. But I didn’t join in.
I… don’t think all the loose ends are tied up here. It probably shouldn’t be something to worry about, though. I hope it isn’t something to worry about.
If you go urban exploring, I'd advise against performing rituals while there. It probably shouldn't need to even be said, but apparently... it does.
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