u/Glum-Square-3675

I got back from a trip to Karelia 14 years ago, and honestly, I still can’t bring myself to turn off the lights in the hallway. This all happened back in July 2012. My friends and I were camping by a lake; it’s a remote spot, maybe thirty kilometers from the nearest village. At night, I woke up to something scratching against the tent's rainfly. The sound was very strange—not like a branch in the wind, but as if someone was dragging dry, bony fingers across the fabric. I thought it was a prank, so I stayed quiet and listened, but then a heavy, wheezing breath came from just behind the thin layer of nylon. When I finally risked a look outside, my flashlight caught something in the darkness that shouldn't exist. A few meters away from me, perched on a fallen tree, sat a creature. It was completely hairless, with deathly pale skin stretched so tight over its skeleton that its spine looked like it was about to burst through its back. It sat in a broken, twisted posture with its knees pointed upward, slowly turning its head. It had no nose, just two dark slits, and its eyes—huge, black, and bottomless—reflected the light of my flashlight. The most terrifying part began when it leaped to the ground. It dropped onto all fours, its arms unnaturally long with thin, clawed fingers. It didn't run back into the woods; instead, it began to circle the tent, making a sound like clicking joints and a muffled, guttural croak. I locked myself inside, clutching an axe, praying for dawn to come. It wandered around for another two hours, sometimes stopping and pressing itself right against the tent fabric—I could see the silhouette of its long fingers. When the sun began to rise, everything went silent. In the morning, I found tracks on the ground: they weren't animal paws, but prints resembling human hands with extremely long phalanges and deep gouges from claws. Once I got home, I started scrolling through old archives and creepypasta forums, and I stumbled upon a description that made my blood run cold. From the looks of it, what I encountered that night is most similar to the entity the internet calls The Rake. The same proportions, the same terrifying way of moving, and that feeling of total paralysis when looking at it. Now I know for sure that those old stories about the "pale man" aren't just fabrications for easily scared teenagers.

I got back from a trip to Karelia 14 years ago, and honestly, I still can’t bring myself to turn off the lights in the hallway. This all happened back in July 2012. My friends and I were camping by a lake; it’s a remote spot, maybe thirty kilometers from the nearest village. At night, I woke up to something scratching against the tent's rainfly. The sound was very strange—not like a branch in the wind, but as if someone was dragging dry, bony fingers across the fabric. I thought it was a prank, so I stayed quiet and listened, but then a heavy, wheezing breath came from just behind the thin layer of nylon. When I finally risked a look outside, my flashlight caught something in the darkness that shouldn't exist. A few meters away from me, perched on a fallen tree, sat a creature. It was completely hairless, with deathly pale skin stretched so tight over its skeleton that its spine looked like it was about to burst through its back. It sat in a broken, twisted posture with its knees pointed upward, slowly turning its head. It had no nose, just two dark slits, and its eyes—huge, black, and bottomless—reflected the light of my flashlight. The most terrifying part began when it leaped to the ground. It dropped onto all fours, its arms unnaturally long with thin, clawed fingers. It didn't run back into the woods; instead, it began to circle the tent, making a sound like clicking joints and a muffled, guttural croak. I locked myself inside, clutching an axe, praying for dawn to come. It wandered around for another two hours, sometimes stopping and pressing itself right against the tent fabric—I could see the silhouette of its long fingers. When the sun began to rise, everything went silent. In the morning, I found tracks on the ground: they weren't animal paws, but prints resembling human hands with extremely long phalanges and deep gouges from claws. Once I got home, I started scrolling through old archives and creepypasta forums, and I stumbled upon a description that made my blood run cold. From the looks of it, what I encountered that night is most similar to the entity the internet calls The Rake. The same proportions, the same terrifying way of moving, and that feeling of total paralysis when looking at it. Now I know for sure that those old stories about the "pale man" aren't just fabrications for easily scared teenagers.