I wake up on a cloudy day as if it were any other day. I shower and get dressed before heading downstairs to find an empty house which is odd, but I just assume my parents went to work early. Oddly, I don’t feel hungry so I skip breakfast.
I grab my stuff for school and notice something strange. My parents’ car is still in the driveway. I don’t know quite what to make of it, but I just push the thought off and get into my car before heading off to school.
As I drive to school, I notice things seem very off. It’s unnaturally quiet and void of traffic. Usually the roads a packed and busy with people trying to get to school or work. However, it’s dead quiet. Not a soul out on the road. As I arrive at school, the parking lot is full of cars to my relief. However, there doesn’t seem to be anyone walking to and from the school which is odd.
I park my car and head in. This is where things start to get weird. As I head inside, the school is completely empty. No one is in sight. What the fuck is going on? The bell rings as if things were normal, but there isn’t a single person in the hallways.
I head to my class and it’s empty. I can’t find any of my friends or any of the teachers anywhere. Just empty classrooms and empty hallways. Is there something going on that I’m not aware of? I doubt people would get this involved to do a prank on me.
I give up and head back out to the parking lot and get into my car. I drive downtown and find it has become a ghost town. There are still cars parked, but there’s no one on the sidewalks or in the businesses. Now, I’m a little freaked out. What the fuck is going on?
I park my car and get out to look around. I search some of the businesses and they’re all deserted. I’m seriously starting to freak out. This all feels wrong. Like some sick nightmare.
I have no idea how to explain this. It just doesn’t make sense. Where is everyone? There must be someone somewhere. I got to my parents’ work and both of their workplaces are empty. Did something happen to them?
This isn’t making any sense. I drive around aimlessly looking for someone, anyone, but no matter where I go or how long I search, I can’t find a single person. This is getting very creepy. I can feel my heartbeat faster and faster. My palms start to sweet as a chill goes down my spine. All the alarms are going off inside my head. Nothing seems right and yet I don’t know what to do.
I finally decide to head back home. There I find a newspaper stuffed in the mailbox. I pull it out and read through it. That’s when I find something that makes me sick to my stomach. As I read the obituaries I find my name listed. I died in my sleep from a brain aneurysm. That can’t be right. This must all be a bad dream. I try to wake up. I pinch myself. I do whatever I can to get out of this nightmare, but no matter what I try, I can’t wake up. This can’t be happening. Am I really dead? Is this hell? What do I do now?
I wander aimlessly for what feels like forever. I can’t bring myself to believe I am actually dead. This can’t be happening. As the days go by, nothing changes. Eventually, I finally accept the fact that I, Tucker Reid, am dead and this is hell.
The End
You’re never safe in the dark.
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My wife and I moved into a new house recently. It’s located on an old road called Pine Ridge. We moved to this small town because I had gotten a job opportunity I couldn’t pass up. The house itself was fairly big. Two stories with a basement. It was a typical style house you’d see in Northern Michigan. We were told by the realtor that it was an old house with a lot of history which has initially intrigued my wife who graduated from college with a history degree. She loved that kind of stuff and ate up everything the realtor said. However… The realtor neglected to tell us a lot of things that we would later find out on our own.
We eventually bought the place, moved, and started to make ourselves at home. Things didn’t start out weird at all. It felt quite normal actually. However, little by little things started to get strange.
At first, it was the small things. Doors would close randomly. Or they’d open when I swore I shut them. Lights would flicker occasionally. The outside sensor light would flash on in the middle of the night, but nothing would be there. We heard plenty of strange creaks and noises at random times of the day and night. For the life of god, neither of us could figure out where or what was causing the noises.
At that point, things were mostly explained away by coincidence. They were small things and went easily unnoticed. However, we should’ve realized then that the accumulation of strange occurrences meant something, but we were too stubborn and we didn’t want to admit that our investment into this house was a bad one.
We continued to try to make things work as we made the house our home. However, things drastically started to take a turn for the worst. One day my wife went to get up in the middle of the night and woke me up with a scream. She swore she saw a woman in the bathroom. However after I searched the entire house, I couldn’t find anyone. We chalked it up to a lack of sleep.
It wasn’t long after when I was in the basement something absolutely horrifying happened. As I was going through some of the boxes we stored down there, the upstairs door slammed shut and the lights flickered off and on. I swore I saw a man approaching me. I bolted upstairs and nearly broke the door off the hinges.
However, after I calmed down, I went back downstairs armed with a bat but didn’t find anyone down there. Things continued to get stranger and stranger as we stayed in the house. Both of us can recount moments when we swore we saw strangers in our house. Mostly women. They were dressed in a sort of 90s attire usually. Every once and again, I’d see that same man I saw downstairs. He had the most sadistic smile. A murderous one.
We later found out that the previous owners sold the house for these exact reasons. We thought we could stick it out until one night. It was a dark stormy night and my wife wanted one of the board games that we had packed away downstairs. We both went downstairs to look for it among the piles and piles of boxes.
Suddenly the door slammed once again and the lights went out. They flashed on and that man stood before us with a bloody knife in his hands. There were bodies of dead women all over the floor and he was drenched in their blood. He started to make his way towards us. I grabbed my wife and bolted up the stairs. I kicked the door down and we exited the house.
After that day, we moved out and later sold the house. If I could, I’d burn the place down.
The End
You’re never safe in the dark.
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I’ve always believed in ghosts. I don’t really consider myself a spiritual person, but I had a respect for the paranormal. However, my sister, Caylee on the other hand was obsessed with the unnatural. She’s what you call a goth. She even had her hair buzzed off on one side and always had on black lipstick with black clothing. I’m kind of your average kid. Just a nerd really. I even wear glasses to prove it. Anyway, the night I’m about to tell you really made me a believer in the paranormal. It’s a hard story to tell. I’m still not over it. What happened that night… It still haunts me to this day.
It all started on a Friday night. My friends Brantley, Shawnee, and Kassidy came over to chill. We all hung out in my basement watching a horror movie including my sister who just so happened to be only a year younger than me. It’s a movie we’ve all seen a hundred times. I think it might have been the Shining, but I can’t remember for sure. No one was really paying attention to the movie. We were all trying to find something fun to do while Brantley packed a blunt. On this particular Friday, not a lot was going on, not that a bunch of high school teens live all that exciting lives anyway.
As we were throwing out ideas, it was Kassidy who mentioned the house. Deep in the woods behind my house, there was a house that was thought to be haunted. It was an old abandoned boarding house that was once an orphanage where a lot of kids went missing. No one really knows what happened to them. Kassidy was the one who thought we should go out there. My sister wanted to go even farther and have a séance. Of course, my sister had an ouija board and wanted to see if we could talk to the dead souls who were murdered.
“Nah, that sounds stupid,” Brantley said. “You can’t honestly say you believe that shit.”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared, Brantley?” Kassidy asked.
“Pff, I’m not scared,” Brantley said.
“I am,” Shawnee said as he cleaned his glasses.
“I think it’d be fun. It’s got to be better than sitting here watching the same movie we saw a hundred times,” Kassidy said as she ties up her blonde hair into a ponytail. “Besides, it’d be a perfect opportunity to smoke that blunt you rolled.”
“Fine, I’ll do it,” Brantley said.
Caylee was ecstatic. “Sweet, I’ll go get my ouija board.”
After she grabbed her board, we all made our way out to the woods. Luckily it was early October and it hadn’t got all that cold out just yet. We followed Kassidy out through the woods. The hike was rather long as Brantley sparked the blunt and passed it around. The sun started to dip below the horizon as we finally arrived at the old beat up boarding house. The windows were boarded up and everything seemed like it was only one storm away from falling apart. The paint was nearly worn off and most of the siding was rotten. I nearly choked at what I thought I saw in the window on the second floor. Everyone looked at me as I blinked and took a double look. I could’ve sworn I saw someone in the window.
Brantley thought I was just pulling their legs, but I swear I saw what I saw. It looked like a little girl. We all looked at each other before Kassidy was the first to head in.
“We should really be careful. This place doesn’t look structurally sound,” Shawnee said. As soon as we head inside, we all notice a rancid odor. It smelled like rotten eggs mixed with meat that had been left out for far too long.
“Let’s find a good spot to do our séance,” my sister said.
“Let’s split up and look around,” Kassidy said.
“We should stick together,” Shawnee said.
“Don’t be such a wuss,” Brantley said.
“I’m just being cautious,” Shawnee said.
I looked around in the living room and found an old framed photo of a group of people in it. There were at least 10 people. None of them looked happy to be in the photo and most of them were kids. A sudden creak in the upstairs floorboard made everyone flinch.
“We should leave,” Shawnee said.
“Fuck that, let’s go see what that was,” Brantley said.
“I agree. Besides, we’ve got strength in numbers,” Kassidy said.
Reluctantly we all followed them up the rickety stairs to find several rooms full of cobwebs and dust. Each room had several bunk beds. Brantley and Kassidy went into the room on the left. I was about to follow when something caught my eye. I went into the room on the right and as I walked inside I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. There was a mirror attached to the wall. Two bunk beds that were long past sleepable. I walked over to the mirror and a scream escaped my lips.
I quickly looked behind me, but I saw nothing. I looked back at the mirror. I could’ve sworn I saw the face of a little girl with pitch-black hair.
“You okay?” Shawnee asked as they all rushed in.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just… I don’t know,” I said.
“What the fuck is that?” Brantley shouted.
We all whipped around to see what he was pointing at, but none of us saw anything. We turned back to Brantley who was laughing hysterically. “Gotcha.”
“You’re not funny,” Caylee said as she stormed out. For some reason, I felt this freezing cold chill. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone or something was watching us. I followed them downstairs. It was Kassidy that discovered a door to the basement.
“I’m not going down there,” Shawnee said.
“Fine, you can stay up here all by yourself,” Kassidy said as she made her way down the stairs. Caylee was right behind her followed by Brantley. I gave Shawnee a sympathetic look before going on after them. He soon followed.
Downstairs was a complete mess. Everyone pulled out their cell phone flashlights to look around. There was a big bookcase filled with dusty old books that caught Caylee’s attention.
“This spot is as good as any to have your little séance,” Kassidy said.
Caylee pulled herself from the books and took her ouija board and placed it on a table. We all grabbed a chair and gathered around it.
“So how does it work?” Kassidy asked.
“So basically, we all touch the planchette and ask the spirits or ghosts a question and it’ll answer using the board. It’s not too complicated,” Caylee said.
We all shrugged and placed our hands on the little wooden plank with wheels and a hole to see the letters below. The board itself had a yes on one side and a no on the other along with the alphabet, a set of numbers, and the word goodbye on the bottom.
“Spirits, can you hear us?” Caylee asked. The planchette started to move and I had a suspicion it was one of us. It moved to the word yes. We all looked at each other. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?”
The planchette started to move again. First, it bolted right to the F and then went straight to U. Next it flicked over to the C and I knew where this was going as it settled on K followed by the O and then two Fs. Caylee rolled her eyes and we all stared at Brantley. “What? Oh come on, it wasn’t me. I swear!”
“Seriously?” Kassidy sighed. “Not even the dead are that childish.”
Suddenly the planchette started to move. We all looked at each other as it flickered to the word Yes. All of our eyes were wide.
“What is it you want to say?” Caylee asked.
The planchette moved again. It went to the B and then it went to the O. It moved away and then back to the O. Next it hit the K.
“Book?” Caylee asked. “I saw the books, there’s nothing special about them.”
The planchette continued to move. It hit S and then H. E was next and followed by L before moving to F. “Bookshelf?”
We all looked over to the bookshelf before back at each other.
“So what?” Brantley said. “It’s just a bookshelf.”
The planchette moved once more. It hit a B then an E before going over to the H. Next was an I followed by an N and lastly a D.
“It wants us to look behind it,” Caylee said. We all got up and went over to the bookshelf. Brantley and I started to push it out of the way. Behind it was a door. We all looked at each other with gaping jaws. After a long moment of disbelief, Kassidy reached over and opened the door. It leads to a stairway that winded down to what seemed like another level.
“I don’t think we should go down there,” Shawnee said.
“For once, I agree,” Brantley said.
We all jumped as every door in the house beside the one in front of us slammed shut. We all looked at each other.
“Well, fuck it. Looks like we don’t have any other choice,” Kassidy said and without another word, she started to make her way downstairs. There’s no way Brantley could be out braved by a girl, so he went down after her followed by Caylee after she grabbed her ouija board. Shawnee and I looked at each other. I shrugged and headed down after them and I heard Shawnee follow. ‘
Upon arriving at the bottom of the stairs, we all stood there frozen in place. What we saw was beyond horrifying. What could’ve possibly been going on down here was beyond any nightmare I could’ve dreamed up. There was a long hall of rooms. After appearing in one of them we saw a bed with restraints to the bedposts. We followed the hallway down out to an opening.
All of us gasped. Our jaws hung open as we saw cages filled with skeletons. They were small skeletons of what could only be children. There was a table of saws, pliers, and other devices that could only be used for one thing, torture. There were several doors that lead elsewhere. We all looked at each other wide-eyed. Suddenly, Caylee bolted over to a table. She set her ouija board down before she picked up what looked like a picture album. She flipped through it before she threw it back on the table where she found it and threw up in a bucket nearby. What could she have possibly seen in that album? The rest of us shared some eyebrow-raising looks before Kassidy went for the album. She picked it up and opened it. The look on her face said it all. It was a look of pure horror and disgust.
She slammed the book shut and set it back down. This time Brantley picked it up and opened. “What the fuck?” he yelled. We all looked at him as Kassidy shushed him. Everyone quickly looked around as if someone else was here with us.
I quickly looked over his shoulder to find pictures so horrible, it made my stomach clutch in havoc. There were kids who changed up to beds without clothes. Some kids were shown to be tortured and even murdered. There was a picture of a big metal table covered in blood with body parts. I thought I was going to be sick.
“Is this what you wanted to show us?” Caylee asked.
A gasp came from Kassidy and we all looked at where she was staring. To our horror, the planchette on the Ouija board was moving. We all shuffled around to see what it was trying to say. The planchette first went to H and then an I before moving to a D. A sudden chills started to sweep over my skin as the planchette lastly landed on an E. We all looked at each other with fear in our eyes before a loud creak was heard upstairs somewhere. Both Caylee and Kassidy clamped their hands over their mouths. We all looked around before bolting into separate rooms. I was alone in one of the rooms with a bed with shackles as I listened to the creaks coming from upstairs. I was so scared, I was sweating profusely. That’s when I turned around and to my horror, there was a little girl sitting on the bed. She held up a finger to her mouth.
I wanted to scream, but nothing came out, which probably saved my life. It sounded like someone was walking around upstairs. From the sound of it, they were opening doors. We heard them go up a set of stairs. We also heard a loud slam followed by a scraping sound. Like wood sliding against wood. There was a sudden movement of footsteps as the person moved back down the stairs. We heard them trying to open a door. By now, my heart was clapping so loudly, I thought for sure everyone could hear it.
The little girl on the bed just stared at me as she kept her finger tightly pressed against her sealed lips. She seemed to have a faint glow about her. Her skin was as pale as a bleached wall and she wore what seemed like a dirty pillowcase. My heart sped up as I heard a loud crash and suddenly footsteps came down a set of stairs. I thought I was going to piss my pants as the footsteps clambered around the basement. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before they’d make their way down the secret stairway, knowing full well that none of us closed the bookcase behind the gap.
There was a long pause for what seemed like an eternity. I felt like I was having a panic attack as that little girl just stared at me. Her face was expressionless. Her finger still attached to her closed lips. Suddenly the footsteps made their way back up the stairs. We heard them walk out of the house. I looked back to find the girl was gone. My heart was racing so fast, I thought I was going to die of a heart attack.
I heard noises outside the room I was in. I knew it had to be my friends. I walked out to find Kassidy taking pictures of everything with her phone including the photo album.
“What are you doing that for?” Brantley asked.
“Someone needs to know about this. I’m taking these pictures to the police,” she said.
“Are you crazy? They’ll know we were trespassing. We’ll get in trouble,” Brantley said.
“These kids deserve justice,” Kassidy said.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said.
“Wait!” Kassidy said, grabbing his arm.
“What?” He asked.
“We can’t leave yet. Whoever was here still might be outside waiting for us,” she said.
“She’s right. I don’t think whoever came into the house was someone we wanted to run into,” I said. That girl definitely didn’t think so either. Caylee tapped my shoulder and pointed. I looked over to see the planchette moving again on the ouija board. “Look!”
We all circled around it. The planchette swiveled over to a G than an O before moving to an N and then an O, then a W before moving to the word Goodbye.
“Go now,” Kassidy mouthed. “Well you heard it, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Caylee grabbed the board and planchette and we all scrambled back up the stairs to find our path blocked. The bookcase had been moved to block the stairs somehow. That must’ve been what that noise was. It somehow moved back to cover the gap. Was it the girl?
Brantley and I managed to push it out of the way before we scrambled back up the stairs. That’s when I saw that photo again of all those people. It had been moved to the doorway. I looked at it closely and that’s when I saw her. The little girl was in the front of the photo. Her sad and fearful expression said it all. Caylee tugged on my arm and I grabbed the photo and left with them. I took one last look at the house and could barely make out the girl in the upstairs bedroom staring down at us. She waved with that same sad expression on her face.
We all sprinted back to my house. The next morning Caylee, Kassidy, Shawnee, and I went into the police station and Kassidy showed them the pictures she took with her phone. Brantley wouldn’t come with us. We fully admitted to trespassing, but fortunately, no charges were placed. The police later investigated the house and the story broke the news not long after. They called it the Orphanage of Horrors. We still have no idea who entered the house after us.
One night a few weeks later, my same friends were over and we were outside smoking a blunt when I looked over at the forest and froze. I saw the little girl standing at the edge of the forest. She was crying, but she had a smile on her face. She waved at me and then disappeared into the forest. I haven’t seen her since. I’d like to think she found some semblance of peace. To this day I firmly knew the truth. Ghosts do exist.
The End.
Remember, you’re never safe in the dark…
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