u/BlinkingInMorseCode

So I found this in a private Discord server I got invited to about eight months ago. Someone posted it in a channel called #verified-methods and it had a pin on it. The original poster deleted their account shortly after. I’ve copied it here exactly as it was written. I take no responsibility for what happens if you try this.

This ritual has been performed successfully four times that I know of. The goal is to see the Baking Soda Man. Not to receive a box, he decides that. The goal is only to see him. What you do after that is your own business.

You will need: one box of Arm & Hammer baking soda, unopened. One glass of tap water. One mirror, any size. A dark room you feel uncomfortable in. Do this on a night when you cannot sleep. Not a night when you choose not to sleep. A night when sleep will not come to you no matter what you do. He can tell the difference.

At 3am, go to your dark room. Do not turn on any lights. Bring the box, the water, and the mirror. Set the mirror against the wall so it faces the door. Sit with your back to the mirror. Put the box of baking soda on the floor in front of you. Put the glass of water on top of the box. Now open the box. I know I said it needs to be unopened. Open it now, slowly, and do not spill anything. Peel back the inner foil completely. You should be able to smell it immediately, that clean, alkaline smell, the smell of something that neutralizes things. Breathe it in. This is the only part of the ritual that feels good. Dip one finger into the baking soda. Taste it. Just once. Now say, out loud, in a normal conversational voice — not a whisper, not a shout — say: “I threw it away.” It doesn’t matter if you did or not. Say it anyway. Wait.

If nothing happens in five minutes, say it again. You should only ever have to say it three times total. If you’ve said it three times and nothing has happened, turn on the lights, pour the water into the box, and throw everything away. You’re done for tonight and you should not try again for at least a month.

If something happens, you will know because the smell will change. The clean baking soda smell will get stronger, much stronger, the way a smell gets when the source of it enters the room. Do not turn around. Do not look in the mirror. Keep your eyes on the open box in front of you. He will not touch you. Everyone who has done this agrees on that. He does not touch people. You may hear the sound of cardboard. A soft, dry folding sound, like a box being handled. This is normal. This is expected. Do not turn around. At some point the smell will begin to fade. When it is completely gone, count to sixty. Then and only then, turn around. He will not be there. He is never there when you turn around. But on the floor behind you, there will be a box of baking soda. Sealed. Arm & Hammer. Orange. One pound. Leave it there and go to bed. This is important: leave it there and go to bed. Do not pick it up that night. Do not move it. Do not open it. Go to bed and do not think about it.

In the morning it may still be there or it may not. Either outcome is normal. If it is there, you may do with it whatever you choose. Most people keep it. Most people keep it.
Additional notes from whoever pinned this: The person who wrote the above ritual was a woman named Claire who had been receiving boxes for almost two years before she figured out how to initiate contact. She said the first time she did it, she cried afterward and didn’t know why. She said she felt like she’d given something away that she couldn’t name and couldn’t get back. She also said the next morning she slept until noon for the first time in a decade. She said it was worth it. She said she’d do it again. Her account was deleted four days after she posted this.

I don’t know if that means anything. I don’t know if any of this means anything. I have not tried it myself. I have the box he left on my porch six months ago, still sealed, sitting on my dresser. Every night I tell myself I’ll throw it out in the morning. Every morning I don’t. I’m going to try the ritual tonight. I’ll update this post if anything happens.

so i’m sitting here pretending to take notes and i had a genuine realisation, i don’t have a single friend who matches my vibe. not one.

like i just want someone to lose their mind over Sleep Token with me. someone who gets it. instead i’m surrounded by people who have never once felt personally attacked by an Architects breakdown or cried to Snuff.
Linkin Park? love them. Three Days Grace? my Roman empire. Sleep Token? i will talk about them for an uncomfortable amount of time if you let me.

and look i’m not asking for much. i just want friends who won’t show up head to toe in Shein and then clock MY all-black outfit like i just crawled out of a coffin. babe. these are just clothes. YOUR fast fashion is literally destroying the planet but sure, i’m the weird one.

is that too much to ask for? apparently yes.
anyway. drop your favourite Sleep Token era and let’s be friends or whatever. i have 2 more hours of this class to get through and i need something to not leave early because im responsible or whatever.

I know how this is going to sound. I’ve deleted this three times already and I never post on Reddit. But I need someone else to know, in case something happens to me, in case he comes back.

My older brother Danny first mentioned the Baking Soda Man the summer he turned nineteen. We were in the kitchen, I was maybe fifteen?And he said it the way you’d mention the weather. “The guy on Crestwood has baking soda again.” I didn’t understand. I said we had baking soda, pointing at the yellow box in the cabinet. Danny looked at me with this flat, tired expression, like I’d said something embarrassing. He left without eating.

Over the next few months I started hearing the name more. Not from Danny, he’d gone quiet the way people go quiet when something important is happening to them. I heard it from his friends, from older kids at the bus stop. Always the same way. Casual. Reverent. Almost nervous. “He’s on Crestwood.” “He’s over by the old Regency lot.” “He’ll be behind the Presbyterian church tonight, after nine.” Nobody ever said what the baking soda was for. I assumed it was slang for something. Drugs, probably. I was fifteen. I filed it away.

The first time I saw him I was sixteen. Danny had stopped coming home for dinner. Mom had started keeping the kitchen light on all night, the way parents do when they’re too scared to say what they’re scared of. I was cutting through the parking lot behind the old Rite Aid when I saw the small crowd, maybe six or seven people, all adults, all with that look. You know the look. That hollow, waiting look.

They were standing in a rough semicircle around a man I’d never seen before. He was ordinary. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Medium height. Maybe forty, maybe sixty, genuinely impossible to say. He wore a gray jacket, the kind with too many pockets. His hair was the color of dirty snow. He had the face of someone who’d been described to you, not someone you’d actually seen. He was holding a box of baking soda. The standard kind. Arm & Hammer. Orange box. One pound. He was handing it out. Not selling. I didn’t see any money change hands. Just giving. One box per person. And every person who took a box held it the way you’d hold a religious thing. A relic. Both hands, close to the chest.

I want to be very clear about the next part because this is the part nobody believes: the baking soda boxes were always new. Sealed. The little freshness tab always intact. Every box. Every person. He seemed to have an unlimited supply, and nobody ever asked where it came from, and he never seemed to run out. I watched from behind a dumpster for maybe ten minutes before he looked directly at me. He didn’t react the way you’d expect, no surprise, no anger. He just looked at me the way you look at someone you’ve been expecting. He reached into his jacket, and I thought he was going to pull out another box. Instead he just adjusted something. Patted his pocket. And went back to the line. I ran home. I didn’t tell anyone.

Danny came home in October. He looked the way people look after something long and consuming. Thinner. Careful about what he touched. He sat at the kitchen table and our mom made him soup and he ate it all and he said “I’m done with that.” Our mom didn’t ask what he meant. I think she knew.

That night I knocked on his door and asked him about the Baking Soda Man. Danny was quiet for a long time. Then he said: “He smells like it, you know. All the time. Even outside. Even in winter. Just that clean, chemical smell.” I asked what the baking soda was for. Danny said: “Nothing. That’s the thing. It’s not for anything. You just…you want it. You need to have it. One box and then you go home and you put it in a drawer or a cabinet or under your bed, and it just sits there, and that night you sleep better than you’ve slept in years, and then after a few days it starts to run out, the feeling, and you need another one.” I asked: run out how? It’s just baking soda. It doesn’t — “I know,” Danny said. “I know it doesn’t.”

He told me the rest in pieces over the following weeks. How the first box had appeared on our porch, three years before, with no note. How he’d thrown it away and found himself digging it out of the trash at 2am without understanding why. How he’d sought the man out after that, first out of curiosity, then out of something else. How everyone in the little communities that formed around the Baking Soda Man were totally normal people. Professionals, parents, kids from the college. Quiet, slightly embarrassed, perfectly functional in every other area of their lives. Just dependent. On a box of baking soda from a man whose name nobody knew.

How nobody ever got sick from it. How it didn’t seem to do anything. How that somehow made it worse. “The boxes are always sealed,” Danny said. “I opened one in front of him once, just to see what he’d do. He didn’t care. He just watched. And it was just baking soda. I tasted it and everything. Normal. Nothing.” He paused. “But I still kept it. I kept all of them. I had seventeen boxes under my bed. Mom found them once and threw them out and I…I didn’t handle it well.” He didn’t elaborate on that. I didn’t push.

Danny moved away two years later. He’s okay now, I think. We don’t talk about it. I’m writing this because last week I came home from work and there was a box of baking soda on my front step. Arm & Hammer. Orange. One pound. Sealed. No note. No footprints on the wet porch. My neighbor’s ring camera shows the porch at 4:14am, and the step is bare. At 4:15am, the box is there. The camera didn’t malfunction. The timestamp is unbroken. Nothing walks up. The box simply appears.

I threw it in the dumpster down the street. I have not slept properly since. Not because I’m scared, exactly. Because I keep thinking about how much better I’d sleep if I hadn’t thrown it away. And I’ve started noticing an orange corner of something in every cabinet I open, every drawer I check, every shelf I pass at the grocery store, and I know it’s nothing, I know it’s just baking soda, it’s everywhere, it’s a normal household product. But I can still smell him. That clean, chemical smell. He’s on Crestwood again.

I know how this is going to sound. I’ve deleted this three times already and I never post on Reddit. But I need someone else to know, in case something happens to me, in case he comes back.

My older brother Danny first mentioned the Baking Soda Man the summer he turned nineteen. We were in the kitchen, I was maybe fifteen?And he said it the way you’d mention the weather. “The guy on Crestwood has baking soda again.” I didn’t understand. I said we had baking soda, pointing at the yellow box in the cabinet. Danny looked at me with this flat, tired expression, like I’d said something embarrassing. He left without eating.

Over the next few months I started hearing the name more. Not from Danny, he’d gone quiet the way people go quiet when something important is happening to them. I heard it from his friends, from older kids at the bus stop. Always the same way. Casual. Reverent. Almost nervous. “He’s on Crestwood.” “He’s over by the old Regency lot.” “He’ll be behind the Presbyterian church tonight, after nine.” Nobody ever said what the baking soda was for. I assumed it was slang for something. Drugs, probably. I was fifteen. I filed it away.

The first time I saw him I was sixteen. Danny had stopped coming home for dinner. Mom had started keeping the kitchen light on all night, the way parents do when they’re too scared to say what they’re scared of. I was cutting through the parking lot behind the old Rite Aid when I saw the small crowd, maybe six or seven people, all adults, all with that look. You know the look. That hollow, waiting look.

They were standing in a rough semicircle around a man I’d never seen before. He was ordinary. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Medium height. Maybe forty, maybe sixty, genuinely impossible to say. He wore a gray jacket, the kind with too many pockets. His hair was the color of dirty snow. He had the face of someone who’d been described to you, not someone you’d actually seen. He was holding a box of baking soda. The standard kind. Arm & Hammer. Orange box. One pound. He was handing it out. Not selling. I didn’t see any money change hands. Just giving. One box per person. And every person who took a box held it the way you’d hold a religious thing. A relic. Both hands, close to the chest.

I want to be very clear about the next part because this is the part nobody believes: the baking soda boxes were always new. Sealed. The little freshness tab always intact. Every box. Every person. He seemed to have an unlimited supply, and nobody ever asked where it came from, and he never seemed to run out. I watched from behind a dumpster for maybe ten minutes before he looked directly at me. He didn’t react the way you’d expect, no surprise, no anger. He just looked at me the way you look at someone you’ve been expecting. He reached into his jacket, and I thought he was going to pull out another box. Instead he just adjusted something. Patted his pocket. And went back to the line. I ran home. I didn’t tell anyone.

Danny came home in October. He looked the way people look after something long and consuming. Thinner. Careful about what he touched. He sat at the kitchen table and our mom made him soup and he ate it all and he said “I’m done with that.” Our mom didn’t ask what he meant. I think she knew.

That night I knocked on his door and asked him about the Baking Soda Man. Danny was quiet for a long time. Then he said: “He smells like it, you know. All the time. Even outside. Even in winter. Just that clean, chemical smell.” I asked what the baking soda was for. Danny said: “Nothing. That’s the thing. It’s not for anything. You just…you want it. You need to have it. One box and then you go home and you put it in a drawer or a cabinet or under your bed, and it just sits there, and that night you sleep better than you’ve slept in years, and then after a few days it starts to run out, the feeling, and you need another one.” I asked: run out how? It’s just baking soda. It doesn’t — “I know,” Danny said. “I know it doesn’t.”

He told me the rest in pieces over the following weeks. How the first box had appeared on our porch, three years before, with no note. How he’d thrown it away and found himself digging it out of the trash at 2am without understanding why. How he’d sought the man out after that, first out of curiosity, then out of something else. How everyone in the little communities that formed around the Baking Soda Man were totally normal people. Professionals, parents, kids from the college. Quiet, slightly embarrassed, perfectly functional in every other area of their lives. Just dependent. On a box of baking soda from a man whose name nobody knew.

How nobody ever got sick from it. How it didn’t seem to do anything. How that somehow made it worse. “The boxes are always sealed,” Danny said. “I opened one in front of him once, just to see what he’d do. He didn’t care. He just watched. And it was just baking soda. I tasted it and everything. Normal. Nothing.” He paused. “But I still kept it. I kept all of them. I had seventeen boxes under my bed. Mom found them once and threw them out and I…I didn’t handle it well.” He didn’t elaborate on that. I didn’t push.

Danny moved away two years later. He’s okay now, I think. We don’t talk about it. I’m writing this because last week I came home from work and there was a box of baking soda on my front step. Arm & Hammer. Orange. One pound. Sealed. No note. No footprints on the wet porch. My neighbor’s ring camera shows the porch at 4:14am, and the step is bare. At 4:15am, the box is there. The camera didn’t malfunction. The timestamp is unbroken. Nothing walks up. The box simply appears.

I threw it in the dumpster down the street. I have not slept properly since. Not because I’m scared, exactly. Because I keep thinking about how much better I’d sleep if I hadn’t thrown it away. And I’ve started noticing an orange corner of something in every cabinet I open, every drawer I check, every shelf I pass at the grocery store, and I know it’s nothing, I know it’s just baking soda, it’s everywhere, it’s a normal household product. But I can still smell him. That clean, chemical smell. He’s on Crestwood again.

so ive been having trouble sleeping lately, not sure why. it’s fine though, i’m used to the quiet by now. mostly.

I don’t really have many friends and thought i’d try this. i’m 22, somewhere in europe,near Germany if you want a hint.

i look how i look. pretty into metal and punk, always open to recommendations. saw Sleep Token live a while back and i genuinely have not recovered. i don’t think i will. there’s something about them that just stays with you, like something got in and never left. if you know you know.

horror is basically my whole personality too, movies, games, all of it. Blair Witch Project is probably my favourite film ever made, keep going back to it. the way it makes you feel like something’s just behind you.
i notice things like that. small sounds, something at the corner of your eye. probably just being tired.

hit me up if you’re also a bit of a night owl or just want someone to talk to. i’m always up.