Scary Ghost Stories

Detective Rohit · September 26, 2011

Hello again my dearest friends. Well, 1-2 years ago, I used to pass time by writing some ghost stories. Most of the stories are combination of my work and some i found on net/ newspapers etc.

Note-: I have divided stories and writtern it on different post following this one just for a "Break Mentality", So its NOT A DOUBLE POST..

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• PAGE ONE

1 - Dancing

2 - Drip Drop

3 - Reality/hELL

4 - Skinny MD

5 - The Spot

6 - Don't Peek

7 - Portrait

8 - Your Turn

9 - Babydoll

10- 3:24

• PAGE TWO

1 - The Bell

2 - Tug Tug Tug

3 - China Doll

4 - The Rake

5 - Bloody Mary

6 - New Messages

7 - 3rd of December/Carnival

PAGE THREE

1 - Young Maddy

2 - An Apple a Day

3 - Hitchhikers

4 - The Grin

5 - The Oven

6 - The Cave

7 - Three Wishes

• PAGE FOUR

1 - Candle Cove

2 - Just His Face

3 - The Devil's Dance

4 - Inferno

5 - Wristbands

6 - Bad Dream

7 - Infection

8 - Smile

9 - Gentlemen

10 - "Thump" In the Night

And obviously, you all can also post your own stories if you have :D. It should be scary with some paranormal activity

You can discuss anything scary. Discussions about ghosts, haunted places, creepy killings, or horror movies, are all permitted. If it's scary, it's most likely allowed here.

BOO

^Okay..that wasnt scary at all

Detective Rohit · September 26, 2011

A man lived on the seventh floor of an apartment building and was lonely. One day, he noticed the figure of a woman dancing in a swaying motion in an apartment across from his building. The curtain was drawn, so he could see only her silhouette. Every day he looked out his window, he would see her dancing.

Finally, the lonely man fell in love with the dancing woman and decided to pay her a visit. He bought a bouquet of fresh flowers and went to her building, climbing the steps to her floor.

He knocked on the door but no one answered. He knocked again; still no answer. He could have sworn he had just seen her dancing in the window. Worried that something had happened to her, he kicked the door open. He was heart broken by what he saw.

The woman was hanging from the ceiling in front of the window, her body swaying from side to side as if she was dancing.

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A young girl is left home alone with only her dog to protect her. When night approaches, she locks all the doors and tries to do the same with all the windows, but one won't lock.

She decides to leave it unlocked and goes to sleep. Her dog takes its customary place under her bed.

In the deep of night she awakens to a dripping sound coming from the bathroom. The girl is too scared to go check so she reaches her hand under the bed. She feels a reassuring lick from her dog and falls back to sleep. She reawakens to the dripping sound, reaches her hand down to the dog, where she feels the reassuring lick, and falls back to sleep. Once more she awakens to the dripping sound. She reaches her hand down and feels the lick of her dog.

Now curious about the dripping sound, she gets up and slowly walks towards the bathroom, the dripping sound getting louder as she approaches. She reaches the bathroom and turns on the light. She is greeted by a horrific sight; hanging from the shower nozzle is her dog with his throat cut wide open and its blood dripping into the bathtub.

Something on the bathroom mirror catches her eye she turns around. Written on the bathroom mirror, in her dog's blood, are the words "HUMANS CAN LICK TOO."

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A recent study by the National Psychiatric Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, concluded that no activity can account for the phenomenon known as nightmares.

Whereas many dreams come from unconscious desires, most nightmares seem to come from an outside source independent of the individual. In fact, when subjects are asked to recall nightmares they are almost always found in the same memory section as actual physical memories, not the section where normal dreams are replayed.

So, in other words, those aliens and creatures you see at night in your "dreams"?

They're real.

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In America, there was a mass murder. Policemen went to investigate. Trying not to tread on the bodies, the police took pictures of each one. One policeman saw something on the opposite wall but he couldn't read it. He walks over to it and sees the numbers *7734” in calculator form, written in blood. When taking pictures of this he turned his camera upside-down and told an approaching police officer.

When he pointed with the hand that the camera was in, he accidentally took a picture of the upside-down numbers. The policeman was about to delete the picture when he realized something. The numbers were now a word.

The word was “hELL.”

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In the winter of 1944, with overtaxed supply lines in the Ardennes, a medic in the German army had completely run out of plasma, bandages and antiseptic. During one particularly bad round of mortar fire, his encampment was a bloodbath. Those who survived claimed to have heard, above the screams and barked commands of their Lieutenant, someone cackling with almost girlish glee.

The medic had made his rounds during the fire, in almost complete darkness as he had so many times before, but never had he been this short on supplies. No matter. He would do his duty. He had always prided himself on his resourcefulness.

The bombardment moved to other ends of the line, and most men dropped off to sleep in the dark, still hours of the morning - New Year's Day, 1945. The men awoke at first light with screams. They discovered that their bandages were not typical bandages at all, but hunks and strips of human flesh. Several men had been given fresh blood transfusions, yet there had been no blood supplies available. Each treated man was almost completely covered, head-to-toe, with the maroon stain of blood.

The medic was found, sitting on an ammunition tin, staring off into space. When one man approached him, and tapped him on the shoulder, his tunic fell off to reveal that large patches of his skin, muscle, and sinew had been stripped from his torso and his body was almost completely dried of blood. In one hand was a scalpel, and in the other, a blood transfusion vial. None of the men treated for wounds that night, in that camp, saw the end of January 1945.

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Look behind you. What do you see? Invariably, there will be a wall somewhere in your view. Now stare deeply into the space on the wall that lines up best with your eyes. Nothing will happen, but make sure you are clear on where this particular spot is. That spot contains all the negativity in your mind. Whenever you are on your computer, reading scary stories or whatever you do, sometimes you will get spooked. What do you do when this happens? You check behind you, that's what you do.

As you read this now, a feeling of dread will come over you. Check the spot. Nothing again, huh? That's because right now, all the evil is locked safely in your mind. Some people, upon learning of this "negative spot" resolve to remove the spot in an attempt to remove the negative energy. This is a grave mistake.

You must never let harm come to this spot. If you do, you will have released the energy. Now when you sit at your computer at night, you will feel chills even in the summer time. The feeling of dread that only presented itself when you were genuinely scared will now hang in the air constantly.

Within a week you and your loved ones will have a string of bad luck. Within a month your computer will begin to act erratic and eventually break down. On the anniversary of the spot's destruction, you will dream of your most horrible fears. The dream will seem to go on forever, and when you wake up you will notice your vision has darkened. Every year on the same day, the dream will repeat itself, and your vision will grow darker and darker. After you go totally blind, don't ever turn your back on that wall again. That is, if you can still tell where it is.

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A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that, on the way to his room, there was a door with no number which was locked, no one was allowed in there, and it was VERY important that no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances.

So, he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed. The next night, his curiosity about the room with no number on the door would not leave him alone. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough, it was locked. He bent down, and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye.

What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was pale as snow. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided against it. This choice saved his life.

He crept away from the door, and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.

At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and asked,

"Did you look through the keyhole?"

The man nodded.

"Well, I might as well tell you," she said. "A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it to this day. She was rather unusual. Very, very pale, and her right eye was pure red...”

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A few years ago, there was a hunter named Dustin. He was travelling through some dense forests in northern Washington. It was getting dark, and having lost his bearings, he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the increasingly oppressive foliage.

After what seemed like hours, he came across a cabin in a small clearing. Realizing how dark it had grown, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night. He approached, and found the door ajar. Nobody was inside. The hunter flopped down on the single bed, deciding to explain himself to the owner in the morning.

While he was laying in bed, he couldn't sleep because of the numerous portraits around the room. They were all incredibly detailed and almost all had scathing expressions. Without exception, they appeared to be staring down at him, their features twisted into looks of utmost hatred and malice.

The next morning, Dustin awoke, blinking in unexpected sunlight. Curious, he turned to look at the portraits in the light, but he found that there were no portraits; just windows...

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There was a man who just got a new apartment, with a nice bedroom. This bedroom was completely ordinary, except for one thing; the shelf. This shelf did not look strange, no, no, no. There was something else about it, items had a tendency to just, appear, on it

For instance; one day he dropped his toothbrush in the toilet, the next night he found a new one on that shelf. Another day he misplaced his car keys, the next day he found them on that shelf, on Valentine's Day he found a bouquet of flowers.

As weeks passed, so did the value of the items. Once, he even found a solid gold watch!

One day he got up and could barely contain himself, he was so anxious to see what was on this magnificent shelf. All he could find was a note, it said “Now it's your turn.”

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In rural southern Illinois, a toy company began selling “realistic” baby dolls to expectant mothers. But apparently, after the mother had her child, the toy baby would start crying. After a while, the "rocking motion" advertised to calm it down wouldn't work, and you couldn't get it to stop without shaking it.

Eventually, when it started crying, the parent would have to beat it, and the beatings and thrashings would have to get harder and harder to get it to be quiet. The only thing that seemed to shut the baby doll up permanently was to bash its head against the wall to destroy whatever mechanism triggered the crying.

On more than one occasion though, neighbors called the authorities to report child abuse, and when the police arrived they found the bloody remains of infants smeared across the walls and the floor. In most cases the mother couldn't understand why the police were there, she just “got rid of the stupid doll” as she rocked a baby-shaped bundle in her arms.

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In France, a young ambient musician by the name of Charles undertook an interesting new project. He was going to record the sound of himself sleeping, and release it under the name “La Nuit” (The Night). Charles lived alone in a rural area, which would remove things like car alarms, traffic, and such from being recorded. He planned his project for many months, acquiring the sensitive equipment to capture all outside noises as well as his own during sleep.

Finally, on the 27th of September, he decided to execute his plan. He set up all his equipment, and fell asleep at midnight.

The next day Charles reviewed the recording. For the first hour, the recording played his own tossings and turnings as well as some distant dog barks and a few car alarms (So much for his plan to distance himself from cars). These continued throughout the 2nd hour as well, until Charles heard something that horrified him.

For at exactly 3 hours and 24 minutes in, the recording played the sound of his bedroom door opening.

Detective Rohit · September 26, 2011

Coffins used to be built with holes in them, attached to six feet of copper tubing and a bell. The tubing would allow air for victims buried under the mistaken impression that they were dead.

In a certain small town, Harold, the local gravedigger, upon hearing a bell one night, went to go see if it was children pretending to be spirits. Sometimes it was also the wind. This time, it wasn't either.

A voice from below begged and pleaded to be unburied.

"Are you Sarah O'Bannon?" Harold asked.

"Yes!" The muffled voice asserted.

"You were born on September 17, 1827?"

"Yes!"

"The gravestone here says you died on February 20, 1857."

"No, I'm alive, it was a mistake! Dig me up, set me free!"

"Sorry about this, ma'am," Harold said, stepping on the bell to silence it and plugging up the copper tube with dirt. "But this is August. Whatever you are down there, you sure as hell ain't alive no more, and you ain't comin' up."

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You could kick yourself. Its the middle of the night-or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it — and freezing cold: because you, like an idiot, kicked off your blanket in the night. Nearly entirely off the bed, in fact, with only one lonely corner clinging to the edge of the bed.

Sitting up you take it in your hands, feeling that familiar fear from your childhood; that if you don’t find something to cover yourself up, you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of supernatural horrors. You shrug it off with a chuckle and give the blanket a good hard tug, trying to pull it all up with one go.

No luck. It seems to be stuck.

Another sharp pull seems to free it a bit, and you work, tugging it back up and trying to ignore that silly feeling of growing dread. Tug. Tug tug tug…. There! Finally! The blanket is mostly back up on the bed and you are safely beneath it once more, teasing yourself mentally for getting all worked up over nothing. Until, just before you drift back asleep, you feel a tug from that one side still dangling down from where it had fallen before.

Tug tug tug.

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A beautiful 8 year old girl, Izzy, got this adorable china doll for her birthday. She called her Sam. One day Izzy was playing with her doll until her mom called her for bed. Izzy put the doll in the basement and went up to bed.

In the middle of the night she heard weird noises. Then she heard “China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, now they're dead.” Izzy fell back into a troubled sleep.

In the morning she raced to her parents room, and they were dead. She cried as her brother planned the funeral. Izzy did not play with Sam that day. She went up to bed early and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night she heard chanting again. “China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, china doll, china doll in your brothers room, now he's dead.” Izzy shivered and fell into another troubling sleep.

In the morning she went to her brothers room, he was dead. She spent the day in her room and wouldn't come out. Night fell again and she went to sleep.

She heard the chanting again. “China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, china doll, china doll in your brothers room, china doll, china doll in your room,” She gazed up to see the doll. *Now you're...dead.”

The police found her the next day with no sign of the murderer. All they heard was chuckling in the distance. The chuckle of a brown-haired, brown-eyed china doll on the hunt for her next victim.

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A Suicide Note: 1964

"As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence. And once I awoke and saw his form. Once again I awoke and heard his voice, and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear of what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye."

Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope.

"Dearest Linnie,

I have prayed for you. He spoke your name."

A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880

"I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. His voice (unintelligible text)."

A Mariner's Log: 1691

“He came to me in my sleep. From the foot of my bed I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the Rake.”

From a Witness: 2006

Three years ago, I had just returned from a trip from Niagara Falls with my family for the 4th of July. We were all very exhausted after a long day of driving, so my husband and I put the kids right to bed and called it a night.

At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I apologized and told him I though he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a man with no clothes, or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him.

My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before returning to the creature.

In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband's face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds (or probably closer to 5, it just seemed like a while) just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids' rooms.

I screamed and ran for the lightswitch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara.

The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said “he is the Rake.”

My husband drove his car into a lake that night, while rushing our daughter to the hospital. He did not survive. Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published and the local television news never followed up either.

For several months, my son Justin and I stayed in a hotel near my parent's house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake.

It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history or follow up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first 3 pages, and never mentioned it again. A ship's log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the Rake. That was the last entry in the log.

There were, however, many instances where the creature's visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led us to wonder if the Rake had visited any of us before our last encounter.

I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night, every night, for two weeks. I would tediously scan through the sounds of me rolling around in my bed each day when I woke up. By the end of the second week, I was quite used to the occasional sound of sleep while blurring through the recording at 8 times the normal speed. (This still took almost an hour every day)

On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake. I can't listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven't let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I've heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don't remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment.

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She lived deep in the forest in a tiny cottage and sold herbal remedies for a living. Folks living in the town nearby called her Bloody Mary, and said she was a witch. None dared cross the old crone for fear that their cows would go dry, their food-stores rot away before winter, their children take sick of fever, or any number of terrible things that an angry witch could do to her neighbours.

Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one. No one could find out where they had gone. Grief-stricken families searched the woods, the local buildings, and all the houses and barns, but there was no sign of the missing girls. A few brave souls even went to Bloody Mary's home in the woods to see if the witch had taken the girls, but she denied any knowledge of the disappearances. Still, it was noted that her haggard appearance had changed. She looked younger, more attractive. The neighbours were suspicious, but they could find no proof that the witch had taken their young ones.

Then came the night when the daughter of the miller rose from her bed and walked outside, following an enchanted sound no one else could hear. The miller's wife had a toothache and was sitting up in the kitchen treating the tooth with an herbal remedy when her daughter left the house. She screamed for her husband and followed the girl out of the door. The miller came running in his nightshirt. Together, they tried to restrain the girl, but she kept breaking away from them and heading out of town.

The desperate cries of the miller and his wife woke the neighbours. They came to assist the frantic couple. Suddenly, a sharp-eyed farmer gave a shout and pointed towards a strange light at the edge of the woods. A few townsmen followed him out into the field and saw Bloody Mary standing beside a large oak tree, holding a magic wand that was pointed towards the miller's house. She was glowing with an unearthly light as she set her evil spell upon the miller's daughter.

The townsmen grabbed their guns and their pitchforks and ran toward the witch. When she heard the commotion, Bloody Mary broke off her spell and fled back into the woods. The far-sighted farmer had loaded his gun with silver bullets in case the witch ever came after his daughter. Now he took aim and shot at her. The bullet hit Bloody Mary in the hip and she fell to the ground. The angry townsmen leapt upon her and carried her back into the field, where they built a huge bonfire and burned her at the stake.

As she burned, Bloody Mary screamed a curse at the villagers. If anyone mentioned her name aloud before a mirror, she would send her spirit to revenge herself upon them for her terrible death. When she was dead, the villagers went to the house in the wood and found the unmarked graves of the little girls the evil witch had murdered. She had used their blood to make her young again.

From that day to this, anyone foolish enough to chant Bloody Mary's name three times before a darkened mirror will summon the vengeful spirit of the witch. It is said that she will tear their bodies to pieces and rip their souls from their mutilated bodies. The souls of these unfortunate ones will burn in torment as Bloody Mary once was burned, and they will be trapped forever in the mirror.

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It's early in the morning. The sun won't be up for another couple of hours. You're fast asleep in bed, lost in a dream, when the phone rings. Rather than waking up, you roll over and cover your head with a pillow. Hours pass. The sun rises. The phone is ringing.

When you wake up, your alarm clock is blaring and the phone is ringing. By the time you will yourself to turn the alarm off, the phone has stopped ringing. You realize that it's been ringing all morning. You slide out of bed and press the blinking red button on your phone as you stumble into the bathroom. The phone beeps, followed by the friendly, electronic voice. “Hello. You have six hundred and sixty-six new messages.”

Message one.

The phone beeps again, and you're not prepared for what comes next.

Screaming.

You spin around, thinking that she's standing right behind you. There's pure terror in her screams, accompanied by other disturbing noises. You stand there, horrified, for about ten seconds. Screaming gives way to hysterical, garbled crying before dying out with the sounds of spilling meat and tearing flesh.

The phone beeps again. You're shaking.

Message two.

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On the 3rd of December, find a hand-held mirror, just large enough to cover your face. Cover your face with the reflective side out, walk into the bathroom, turn the light on, and stand in front of the larger mirror. At exactly 11:34 P.M., raise the hand-held mirror above your head.

What is in the larger mirror will not be staring back at you, but nor will it be your reflection.

Very carefully walk out of the bathroom, backwards, not lowering the hand-held mirror until the one in the bathroom is completely out of view.

If you do not, what you saw in the mirror will notice, and realize what you have done...

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A young man and his new bride were honeymooning in Paris when his wife went into a restroom and didn't return. With time the man began to fear the worst and went to the police. The police thought it was most likely the girl simply had second thoughts about the marriage, but they checked it out anyway and found no evidence of foul play.

As weeks turned into months, the man finally gave up on finding his beautiful wife, but his life fell into a shambles, he was so filled with grief.

Unable to hold a job or go on with his life, he took to wandering the world looking for anything that might ease his pain. Years later, in Borneo, he came upon a freak show in an old shabby building. He went in on a whim. In the last filthy cage he saw a twisted, scarred and mutilated woman rocking back and forth, and groaning strange animal-like noises. He screamed as he recognized the birthmark on his wife's face.

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Detective Rohit · September 26, 2011

I have an odd habit a friend recently picked up on, a habit I developed about a year ago. He noticed that when I enter a room, any room, and shut the door, I turn my face away from it and close my eyes until I hear the lock click. Only after the door is fully closed will I open them. He gave me a hard time about it until I told him where it started.

I work for a water-seal company in St. Paul. We produce sealant for exposed wood - decks, boats, that kind of thing. You hear about sealant being a dirty word in the Ashland-Ichor Falls-Ironton area, but not all those companies were part of the infamous “Ethylor summer” that wiped out the local economy in the ’50s. I got sent to an industrial park outside of Ichor Falls on business.

I checked into this dismal hotel, the Hotel Umbra, that looked like the decor hadn’t been changed since 1930. The lobby wallpaper had gone yellow from decades of cigarette smoke, and everything had a fine layer of dust, including the old man behind the front desk. I hoped that the room would be in better shape. Mine was on the fourth floor.

Being an old place, the hotel had a rickety cable elevator, the kind with the double sets of doors: one of those flexing metal gates, and a solid outer pair of doors. I shut the gate and latched it, and pressed the tiny black button for my floor.

Just as the outer elevator doors were about to close, I was startled by the face of a young woman rushing at the gap between them. She was too late; the doors shut, and after a moment the elevator ascended.

I thought nothing of it, until I needed to take the elevator back down for one of my bags. I entered, pushed the button for the lobby, and pressed my tired back to the elevator wall opposite the doors. They had nearly completely shut when again I was surprised by a woman’s face moving towards the gap, staring into the elevator through the gate, too late to place her hand in to stop the doors from closing. This time I sprang forward and held the “Door Open” button, and after a moment the doors lurched and slid open.

I waited a moment. From the opening I could see partly down the hallway: no one in sight. Still holding the button down, I slid open the metal gate and craned my head into the hallway to look down the other direction.

No one. No trace of the girl, no recently shut hotel room door, no footsteps, no jingle of keys.

I released the button, but did not lean back against the wall. I stood directly in front of where the gap in the doors would be, in the center of the elevator. After a pause, the outer doors again began to slide shut, to move towards each other until the space between them was the width of a young girl’s face.

In that quarter-second several fingertips appeared, followed immediately by her face again, rushing from around the corner, staring at me as the doors met. I had been watching the gap where I thought she might be, so I saw her - she was about thirteen years old, and very plain, almost homely, with a pale complexion and neck-length dark brown hair that looked mussed or slightly dirty.

I did*’t have time to glance down at her visible shoulder, to see what she was wearing; from her behavior I wondered if she was a runaway or a homeless person who had gotten into the building. She had had a glassy, blank expression, tinged with a little desperation, some distant desire or need. A look that could easily be accompanied by the words “Please help.”

The next time I passed the front desk, I asked the old man if he’d seen a young girl running through.

“Heard the stories, then,” he said between throat-clearings, rocking gently in his seat. “Young Maddy has been here a long time. Takes a liking to gentlemen guests. Always been shy. Never says a word, not a word. Just curious.*

I told him I hadn’t heard any stories, and that there had been a girl taking the stairs and standing in front of my elevator on every floor.

“That’s our Maddy,” he said. “She likes you then. Sweet on you. She just wants to see, that’s all, just to see. All she ever does. Curious little thing. Just wants to see.”

I stayed at the Hotel Umbra for three nights. It was a four-night business trip; the last night I tried sleeping in my car. It did*’t help.

Let me tell you about Young Maddy. You only catch glimpses of her, of a face with a resigned look of quiet desperation, dominated by a pair of wide, dark eyes. Locked doors, barricades, nothing made a difference; she gets inside. I never saw her longer than half a second. Every time I laid eyes on her she retreated instantly, only to appear again an hour or two later. An hour or two if I was lucky.

Let me tell you about where I saw Young Maddy.

Every time I shut the door to my bathroom, in my hotel room, I saw her. If I watched as I shut it, at the last possible second I’d see the crescent of her face moving fast at the gap. I’d throw the door open to find nothing.

Every time I closed the closet door I saw her. If I watched that gap, she’d suddenly be inside the closet, leaning her head to watch me just as it shut. It’s as if she knew where to go, where to be, so that my eye would meet hers. But there was never an impact, never a moment when she’d make contact with the door or the wall.

I did spend that last night in my car, but like I said, it did no good. Tossing and turning on that rental car seat, the back ratcheted as flat as I could get it, I’d have to open my eyes sometimes, and if there was a place for her to dart from my view when I opened them, she did. In the side-view mirror, or peeking over the hood of my car - once upside-down, at the top of the windshield, as if she was on the roof.

I’m back in St. Paul again, and I’ve been back for a year. But Maddy hasn’t stopped. If I keep my eyes open long enough, if I watch a place long enough, I’ll eventually catch sight of movement - near the copier in my office, a pile of boxes in an alley, a column in a quiet parking lot - and my eye will get there just in time to see her eye retreating from view. There’s never anything there when I go to look, so I’ve stopped looking.

That’s how I’ve had to change things since the Hotel Umbra. I’ve stopped looking. I keep my eyes shut when I close doors, when I shut drawers and cabinets, fridges, coolers, the trunk of my car. Not all spaces. Just ones that are big enough.

At least, that used to work. I was getting ready for bed a few nights ago, standing in front of my bathroom mirror, door shut, cabinets shut. Watching myself floss. I opened up wide to get my molars.

I swear I saw fingertips retreat down the back of my throat.

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Have you ever heard the expression “an apple a day keeps the Doctor away”? Most assume, with no reason to think otherwise, that it is simply an easy-to-remember rhyme that stresses the importance of eating healthily to young children. But the saying did not originate as a harmless reminder. It was born in a frontier town in the early years of the gold rush, where food was scarce and money even scarcer.

One August, when a bad drought had struck the region, a series of bloody killings swept through the town. Every night, a single house would be broken into, and anyone who saw the invader would be swiftly, brutally slain. Nothing was ever stolen, save for a few scraps of food.

After two weeks of this, the local grocer set out a few apples and a glass of milk in the town square overnight. He then hid in the tower of the church, hoping to catch a glimpse of anyone who came by.

Fighting fatigue, the grocer waited for any sign of life below. Just after midnight, he was rewarded by a chilling sight; a man, carrying a black bag stuffed with dully shining metal tools and covered from head to foot in cloth bandages, staggered into view. He paused at the sight of the apples and milk, and then whipped his head around, as if looking for the one who dared to patronize him. Seized with fear, the grocer ducked out of sight, staying hidden 'til sunrise.

The strange man had only taken one of the apples, and didn't even touch the glass of milk. No houses were broken into, and no one was killed. For decades, the town continued to place out an apple or two every night, even long after a single apple stopped disappearing.

_____________________________________________________________________

There are stories about a certain kind of hitchhiker - they only ever appear at night on quiet roads, seeming to flicker into existence in the very edge of headlights, never carrying a sign, always with an expression of deep despondency on their faces, swathed in a heavy coat and long pants, usually with gloves.

If you stop, they will seem cordial enough, polite, but hardly chatty. They will assure you that the next town or city along your route will be a fine spot to leave them. Normal enough. Unless you try killing them.

They die easily enough. But look underneath their clothes, and you will see that their skin is marred with lines of scars, forming repeating patterns that are unsettling to look at, and even more unsettling in the context of their skin. They have no wallets, no identification. If you slice their belly open, however, they're different inside.

There's no blood, no muscle, only a hollow cavity containing a single object. The object varies. Examples include a single coin, heavy and golden and engraved with runes nobody could ever decipher. A diamond gem with fractal edges that slice bare flesh to ribbons. A small vase, quite unbreakable, that smells of the ocean and is always damp...

Once you possess a Hitchhiker's object, you'll find yourself always driving the quiet roads at night. You'll never mean to, but somehow, you just will. The lure of possessing a second one will hum quietly in your head. You'll strain to catch sight of a figure appearing in your headlights, try to resist the impulse to stop, and sometimes you might.

But sometimes you won't. You'll try telling yourself that this is just a normal person on an adventure, someone who ran out of petrol. The logical part of your brain will scream at what you're doing. You'll smile and nod and they'll get into the car and you'll slowly, casually, reach under the seat or across to the glove box...

_____________________________________________________________________

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

I passed the mirror and noticed I was grinning. I didn't even know I was grinning.

I’m in the bathroom tonight before bed and there’s something wrong with the lights. All three are on again but they glow kind of brown, and don’t really light up the rest of the room. I should get more bulbs from the kitchen. I should, but I’m busy. The date was garbage and she shut her apartment door on me.

You’d think that that would wipe off the stupid grin from this morning. But I came back in the bathroom and, in the mirror, my face was still doing it. If I touch my face, it doesn’t feel like a grin, but there it is in the mirror.

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

Thirty-six - thirty-seven - thirty-eight...

_____________________________________________________________________

During the summer of 1983, in a quiet town near Minneapolis, Minnesota, the charred body of a woman was found inside the kitchen stove of a small farmhouse. A video camera was also found in the kitchen, standing on a tripod and pointing at the oven. No tape was found inside the camera at the time.

Although the scene was originally labeled as a homicide by police, an unmarked VHS tape was later discovered at the bottom of the farm's well (which had apparently dried up earlier that year).

Despite its worn condition, and the fact that it contained no audio, police were still able to view the contents of the tape. It depicted a woman recording herself in front of a video camera (seemingly using the same camera the police found in the kitchen).

After positioning the camera to include both her and her kitchen stove in the image, the tape then showed her turning on the oven, opening the door, crawling inside, and then closing the door behind her. Eight minutes into the video, the oven could be seen shaking violently, after which point thick black smoke could be seen emanating from it. For the remaining 45 minutes of video, until the batteries in the camera died, it remained in its stationary position.

To avoid disturbing the local community, police never released any information about the tape, or even the fact that it was found. Police were also not able to determine who put the tape in the well, or why the height and stature of the woman in the video didn't come close to matching the body they'd found in the oven.

_____________________________________________________________________

I was through hiking the Appalachian Trail last year, when I got lost and found myself off the trail, in a strange, dark hollow with heavy moss and one running stream. It was getting dark, and starting to rain. I found a cave just above the creekbed, and there were no bear-tracks, so I went in for shelter.

Sometime in the night, a bear did come, right into the cave, and I had no way out! Keeping my head, I crawled deeper into the cave and found a passage too small for the bear to fit. It led to a long crawlway ending in a little alcove.

I had no light, and was terrified. But the sound of the bear in the bigger room faded away. This new room was cozy, with what felt like mounds of soft moss and crackly leaves all over the floor. A breeze blew through, and the leaves, though I couldn’t see them, seemed to move all over, they tickled me all night long, making it hard to sleep.

The next morning I crept back out to see if the bear was gone - he was. So I exited back into the hollow. I had a terrible rash all over my body from the itchy bedding I had slept on, and couldn’t stop scratching as I gathered my stuff and went down the creek looking for a road and some directions back to the trail.

I found another trail along the creek, and in a few hours, it ended at a dirt road. There I rested, trying to decide which way to walk for help. My skin was bleeding in spots now, and pustules were forming at the itchiest places. I thought I might need some cream or something.

A game warden Jeep came around the bend, and when the Warden saw me sitting at the trailhead, he stopped.

“You planning on going up there?” he asked, gesturing up the trail I had come down.

“No, actually -- ” I began, but the itching on my skin made me stop short to scratch.

“I wouldn't if I were you, especially that cave.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They call it Spiders-Nest Cave.”

____________________________________________________________________

An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path. He wasn't sure of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to...and who he was.

He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him.

She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: “Now your third wish. What will it be?*

*Third wish?* The man was baffled. “How can it be a third wish if I haven’t had a first and second wish?”

“You’ve had two wishes already,” the hag said, “but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That’s why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.” She cackled at the poor man. “So it is that you have one wish left.”

“All right,” he said hesitantly, “I don't believe this, but there's no harm in trying. I wish to know who I am.”

“Funny,” said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. “That was your first wish...”

Detective Rohit · September 26, 2011

NetNostalgia Forum - Television (local)

Skyshale033

Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Does anyone remember this kid’s show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7. I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don’t remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.

mike_painter65