u/ThinEntertainment921

My name is Robert Brown. I am a neurologist. I have performed numerous brain surgeries and spent years researching the human brain and its behavior. I have treated many complex patients, and I learned one thing: the human brain is the most mysterious system in the body. The more we understand it, the more complicated it becomes.

Five years ago, I met a patient who completely changed the way I understood the brain.

His name was John.

When I first met him, I was told that John had been in a coma for ten years. At first, his case seemed normal. But after observing him, I noticed something strange.

A coma can result from a severe head injury, stroke, brain tumor, lack of oxygen, organ failure, poisoning, or other serious neurological conditions. But none of these had happened to John. He had never been in an accident. He had never been poisoned, never used drugs, and all his organs were functioning normally.

Yet somehow, he was considered to be in a coma.

I spent nearly five years observing John. His behavior was completely different from that of a typical coma patient. Sometimes he mumbled in his sleep. Sometimes he moved as if he were walking. He appeared to dream and react to things around him, yet he never seemed to fully wake up.

Why was John behaving differently?

The answer was far more disturbing than I expected.

John had never actually been in a coma.

His brain had convinced him that he was.

John was suffering from an extremely unusual neurological disorder in which his brain had created a false reality. He believed he had been in a terrible accident and fallen into a coma, even though the accident had never happened.

The strangest part was that John was aware of everything happening around him. He knew when his family visited, what they talked about, who was worried, and who wasn't. But his brain interpreted everything as events happening around a man trapped in a coma.

Was John doing this intentionally?

Absolutely not.

His brain was giving him completely false information.

Eventually, I discovered that John had lived with two deep fears since childhood. His first fear was that he would one day die in an accident. His second was sleep. He believed that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up and could end up in a coma.

The fear began when John was twelve.

His father had been involved in a serious accident. He survived, but afterward, he told John that he wanted to go to sleep.

He never woke up.

That incident permanently connected sleep and the fear of coma in John's mind.

As John grew older, his fear became worse. He first slept only two hours a night. Eventually, he reduced it to barely thirty minutes.

Somehow, his brain created the very reality he had spent his entire life fearing.

Now I am treating John.

I don't know how long it will take, but I want to break the fear that created this false reality.

I want his hallucination to end.

I want John to finally wake up.

I found a deleted post on an old forum called R CreepyConfession. Most people had dismissed it as a fictional story, but the horror in that text sent chills down my spine.

The person who posted it claimed that he and his friend Griffin ran a YouTube channel that made dark reaction pranks. They rented an abandoned bungalow, set up hidden cameras, taped Griffin's mouth shut, tied him up in a bathtub, and covered his clothes with fake blood. The plan was simple: call a local plumber, pretend that they had accidentally committed a murder, ask him for help, and record his reaction.

Then the plumber arrived.

He was strangely short, with a hunched back, long, tangled hair, and a wild beard. Carrying an old tool bag, he entered the bathroom. Following the script, the narrator started crying and desperately asking for help. But the plumber didn't panic at all. Without saying a word, he reached into his bag, pulled out a heavy iron wrench, and struck Griffin directly on the head, who had been pretending to be dead.

Blood splattered across the bathroom tiles. Griffin died on the spot.

Terrified for his own life, the narrator was forced to help the plumber bury Griffin's body beneath the floor while the plumber held the wrench against him. The hidden cameras had malfunctioned—they had only recorded silence and static. The plumber disappeared into the darkness of the night, and before deleting his account, the narrator posted this confession online.

The story gave me goosebumps, but I thought it was fake. Out of curiosity, I used an archive tool to track down the poster's handle and found an active account belonging to him. I messaged him:

"I read your post about Griffin. Was any of it actually true?"

Two days later, he replied:

"I can't talk about it over messages. Come to this address tonight at 11:30. Come alone."

My mind told me not to go, but my curiosity won. At 11:30 that night, I arrived in front of a run-down house at the corner of the city. The main door was slightly open.

A dim lamp was glowing inside. I called out, "Is anyone here?"

A voice came from inside.

"Yeah, I'm right here. Sit on the sofa."

Sitting in front of me in the dim light was a 24-year-old man. I asked him, "Was the story about Griffin true?"

He nodded.

I asked, "Why don't you go to the police?"

He said, "I want to, but he won't let me."

I asked, "Who?"

He said, "You shouldn't have come here. He's going to kill you."

I asked, "Who?"

He said, "The same plumber."

It felt as if the darkness had suddenly swallowed everything in front of me. Before I could do anything, I heard the sound of the gate being locked.

And then it sounded like someone was dragging a large tool across the ground, slowly coming toward me.

​

I’ve known Ryan for years. He was the kind of guy who could sit in a room full of people and somehow remain completely unnoticed. He was easygoing, funny, and never really talked about his family or where he came from. I never thought much about it until one night, when I accidentally learned about something his family had been doing for generations.

It was almost eleven at night when Ryan’s phone rang. His father, Michael, was calling. Ryan answered immediately, and at first everything sounded normal. But after a few minutes, his expression changed. He suddenly sat upright on his bed and said, “Seriously? It’s my turn this year?” He listened for a few more seconds before saying, “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be there. I’ll leave tomorrow.” The moment the call ended, he opened his closet and started throwing clothes into a bag.

I asked him where he was going, and he simply said, “Home. There’s a family gathering.” When I asked what kind of gathering happened only once every five years, Ryan stopped packing and looked at me. After a long pause, he said, “We call it the Gathering of the Dead.” I laughed because I honestly thought he was joking. He didn’t. He just looked at me and said, “This is exactly why I never tell people about it.”

Once I realized he was serious, I asked him what actually happened during the gathering. Ryan told me that every five years, his entire family traveled to an old ancestral burial ground in a remote valley. They opened the graves, brought their dead relatives outside, cleaned the bodies, dressed them in fresh clothes, and kept them with the family for five days. I had heard of strange traditions before, so at first I thought it was simply some forgotten cultural ritual. Then Ryan told me the part that made me stop smiling.

“Sometimes,” he said quietly, “the bodies move.”

I thought I had misheard him. He explained that fingers sometimes twitched, hands shifted, and occasionally a chest appeared to rise and fall as if the person were breathing. His family had grown up around it, so they didn’t consider it unusual. But outsiders were strictly forbidden from attending because fear was considered an insult to the dead. According to Ryan, if one of them sensed that a stranger was afraid, nobody could guarantee what would happen next.

Naturally, that warning only made me more curious. I spent the next two days trying to convince Ryan to let me come. Then I told my girlfriend, Sarah, about it, and she immediately wanted to come too. Ryan argued with both of us for hours, but eventually he gave in. He made us promise that we would stay quiet, keep our distance, and never react to anything we saw. At the time, we thought he was being overly dramatic. We had no idea he was trying to keep us alive.

We took two connecting flights and then spent several hours driving through winding mountain roads before reaching a remote valley called Kavresh. By the time we arrived, it was deep into the night. There were no streetlights, no traffic, and barely any houses visible through the darkness. Our phones had lost their signal hours earlier. The village felt completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Then, just before we reached Ryan’s family home, he suddenly told the driver to stop.

A short distance away, several lanterns were burning in the darkness. People were gathered around something on the ground. At first, I thought they were preparing some kind of ceremony. Then the headlights reached them, and I realized what they were actually doing.

They were opening graves.

We got out of the car and stood there in silence. One man was digging through the earth while two others pulled something wrapped in old cloth from a grave. When the lantern light fell across it, I realized it was a human body. Sarah grabbed my arm. I couldn’t move.

More graves were being opened around us. One by one, the bodies were being brought out and carefully placed on wooden platforms. Nobody spoke. There was only the sound of shovels breaking through the soil and the faint crackle of the lantern flames.

Then two men lifted one of the bodies into a sitting position.The lantern beside it flickered.For a second, I thought I saw the dead man’s chest rise.I stared at him, barely breathing

“Ryan...” I whispered.Ryan grabbed my arm. “Don’t.” Before I could ask what he meant, an old man stepped out of the darkness. He looked at Ryan first, then at Sarah and me. His expression changed the moment he saw us. “Who are they?” he asked.Ryan swallowed. “They’re my friends.”

The old man stared at us for several seconds before turning back to Ryan. “You brought outsiders here?” Ryan didn’t answer. The old man stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Then you should have told them what happens when strangers watch the dead.”

Ryan’s face went pale. The old man looked directly at me. “Because once they are brought out of their graves...” he whispered, “they know who is watching them.”At that exact moment, something behind me made a sound. A slow, quiet breath.I started to turn around. Ryan grabbed my wrist so hard it hurt. Whatever you do,” he whispered, “don’t look back.

My name is David Brown, and my company, Zoulous, helps expectant parents determine whether their unborn child has any abnormality, supernatural influence, or curse that could pose a danger to the baby or the people around it after birth. Most of the time, we find nothing. But the Robert Kaufman case was different.

Robert called me to his bungalow at midnight. Just a few hours earlier, he and his wife, Emily, had discovered that Emily was pregnant. They were both thrilled by the news. After two years of hoping, they were finally going to have a child. But that same night, everything changed.

Emily woke up screaming. She sat upright in bed, staring at a dark corner of the room as if someone were standing there. “She was here…” she whispered. Robert asked nervously, “Who?” Emily’s lips trembled. “Stephanie.”

Two years earlier, during their honeymoon, Robert and Emily had met Charles and Stephanie Brown. Stephanie was pregnant too, and within days, she and Emily had become very close friends. But then Stephanie’s baby died during delivery. Because of severe complications, doctors told her that she would never be able to become a mother again.

After that, she stopped speaking to Emily. But one day, she finally answered the phone. Crying, she said, “You’ll have a baby… I never will.” Then came her final message: “I can never become a mother. But you will. And one day, my child will be born from your body. It won’t be yours… it will be mine. And that day, I will take it away from you.”

A few days later, Charles and Stephanie died together in a car accident. Robert and Emily were devastated. They moved to Texas and slowly lost themselves in their new life. Two years later, when Emily became pregnant, they were overjoyed. But that night, Emily saw Stephanie. Robert immediately turned on the light, but the room was empty. The window, which he had locked from the inside before going to sleep, was wide open. Emily clutched her stomach and whispered, “She said this would happen, Robert…”

At that very moment, Robert called me. “Mr. Brown… we need the test. Tonight.” I went straight to my lab and processed Emily’s sample myself. Our machine had never made a mistake. Every report was ready in less than ten minutes. But that night, it took forty-three minutes. When the report finally came out, my hands began to tremble

. It stated that a dark, supernatural shadow was present over the baby. Beneath it was a warning: “If this child is born, the lives of the parents and those around them may be in serious danger.”

I decided I would tell Robert everything in the morning. The next morning, I called him and asked him to come to my office alone. I specifically told him not to tell Emily anything. But Robert never reached my office. His car was involved in a terrible accident on the way, and he died. Emily was completely shattered by the news.

I went to see her and finally told her the truth about the report. I said, “Emily, this child is cursed. Its birth could put your life and the lives of others in danger. There is still time… you should have an abortion.” Emily looked at me with tears in her eyes, but her voice was calm. She placed a hand on her stomach and said, “This is the last thing I have left of Robert. Even if it costs me my life, I will give birth to my child.”

A few months later, Emily gave birth. I went to the hospital. The nurse told me that Emily had given birth to twins. I entered the room. Both newborn babies were crying. Emily was extremely happy, but then I noticed something strange. One baby was crying for its mother, while the other lay completely still… and smiled. I had never seen a one-day-old baby smile before. At that moment, only one question was running through my mind:

Had our technology failed, or was there really something inside that second baby that science could never detect?

It has been nearly two years since my daughter vanished from our lives. She was an eighteen-year-old girl—but not like the ones who spent their time traveling, singing, or blogging. Eva was obsessed with uncovering lost relics and forgotten histories.

At first, she called it a simple hobby. Eventually, it turned into an unhealthy obsession.

There was an old cemetery near our house. As evening fell, Eva would head there with a notebook, sitting quietly in a secluded corner for hours. I assumed she went there to feel close to the memory of her mother, Elena, who had died in a car accident a few years prior.

One evening, as dusk settled, Eva didn't return home.

Panic set in, and I set out on foot toward the cemetery, gripping my flashlight tightly. The moment I stepped past the gates, I began calling out—"Eva! Eva!"

Suddenly, Eva came running toward me through the shadows. Her hair was disheveled, her shoes were gone, and she collapsed into my arms. I had never seen her so terrified. I calmed her down and brought her home.

I handed her a cup of hot coffee.

I asked Eva, what happened?

Eva said to me.

Dad... I went there like I always do, just to feel close to Mom. I didn't realize how late it had gotten. I said goodbye to Mom and turned to leave... when suddenly, someone grabbed my hand from behind.

She fell silent. The cup in her hand was trembling violently.

I asked again.

Who was it?

I don't know, Dad.

"You didn't see?"

She shook her head slowly. "No... but it was Mom's voice."

A cold chill ran down my spine.

And then?

I turned around... but there was no one there.

So you ran back to me?

Yess dad

"Where are your shoes, Eva?

She looked down at her bare feet, color draining from her face. "I... I don't remember.

She set the cup on the table.

Dad... I wasn't alone out there.

Who else was there?"

Her eyes held no fear now—only dread of her own answer.

A girl. Standing near a headstone."

Whose headstone?

She didn't answer. She stood up, walked to her room, and locked the door before I could follow.

Eva, open the door.

Silence. Then, from behind the wood—"Dad... is Mom's memorial really out there? The spot where I always sit to talk to her... the nameplate had a different name today.

Whose name?

A few agonizing seconds passed.

"Eva."

My hand slipped from the doorknob.

My name was written on it, Dad.

I pounded on the door, then threw my weight against it, snapping the lock.

The room was empty. The window stood wide open, curtains fluttering in the night wind. Eva was gone. I searched the house, the streets, called the police—but she was never seen again.

The police said grief may have triggered a breakdown and she ran. Others blamed her obsession with that place.

To this day, I don't know what was real. I don't know who that girl in the cemetery was. Or whether that name on the headstone was just her fear—or a warning of something worse.

Sometimes, late at night, when the house is dead quiet, I hear someone calling my name from the direction of the old cemetery.

I have never gathered the courage to go look

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some fresh eyes on the first 10 pages of my script, "The Quiet List".

Specifically, I would love your thoughts on:

1. Is the screenplay formatting correct and up to industry standards?

2. Are these 10 pages engaging enough to keep a reader hooked?

LOGLINE:

A determined detective races to prove a psychopath's chilling confession to 42 active missing-person cases—crimes that, due to a complete lack of forensic evidence, logistically never seem to have occurred.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13svDoyvx8z\_a5J5q6TKn2ry6DIqdLPXB/view?usp=drivesdk

Thank you so much for your time and feedback!

My name is Maria Brown. I am fifteen years old.

If I told this story to anyone in real life, they would think I am crazy, which is why I am writing it here. I am absolutely terrified. Please, can someone tell me what is happening to me?

About two years ago, my father, David Brown, suddenly vanished. We searched for him everywhere, but he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, deep within the forests of Arizona, his partially destroyed campsite was discovered, and everyone assumed that wild animals had killed him. The police closed the case, stating there was no evidence of foul play or a conspiracy. The investigation was officially shut down.

For two years, everyone believed my father fell victim to the wilderness. Everyone... except my mother.

My mother knew something that no one else did. She screamed at the police, telling them that her husband absolutely despised the woods. He was terrified of the dark and open forests. How could his campsite be found so deep inside the Arizona wilderness, where he would never go willingly? The police had no answer. Citing a lack of evidence, they flatly refused to investigate further. The case remained closed.

This refusal completely broke my mother. She isolated herself entirely from friends and relatives. She would spend hours staring at my father’s photograph, waiting for a phone call that never came. She gradually sank into a deep, silent depression. She stopped talking to people. Eventually, she even stopped talking to me. Still, I was just happy that she was still with me, though her drifting away like this broke my heart.

Then, the dreams began. A heavy, exhausting cycle of nights that changed everything.

One night, while I was sleeping in my room, I woke up to strange noises coming from my mother’s bedroom. On tiptoe, I walked toward her door. It was locked from the inside. I peeked through a small hole in the window.

What I saw was completely beyond my understanding. My mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. My father’s old coats and clothes were scattered in a strange circle around her. She was moving her hands through the empty air as if she were touching a real face. No one was there. It was just an empty corner of the room. Yet, her voice sounded as if she were begging a living human being. I remember vividly, she kept repeating his name.

"David... why are you so wet? Why is mud falling from your clothes? What happened to you, David? Where are you?"

She kept repeating these words continuously. Then, suddenly, she collapsed onto the floor and fell into a deep sleep. Panic gripped me, and I ran back to hide in my room.

That was the first incident, but it wasn't the last.

Every few days, my father began appearing in her dreams. My mother became absolutely convinced that he was trying to tell her something. My mother, who had barely spoken to me in months, looked into my eyes one day and said that my father had spoken to her directly. She said he wasn't dead, but trapped somewhere.

He had told her in the dream that a human being never truly dies. He claimed that the bodies buried in graves only appear dead because an evil force suppresses them there, trapping them in an endless slumber. He claimed the same had happened to him—a spirit had trapped him inside a grave somewhere, and he didn't even know his own location. He told Mother that if she performed certain rituals on buried corpses, those evil forces would weaken and his location would be revealed. She told me she was having this exact dream every single night.

To be honest, at that moment, I thought my mother had completely lost her mind. I felt utterly helpless. I knew if I told anyone, they would take her away to an asylum, and after losing my father, I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from my mother.

She looked into my eyes and said, "I will definitely find your father. Just don't be afraid, my sweet child." Saying this, she walked away.

That very night around two o'clock, I heard the heavy sound of the front door opening. I stepped out of my room and saw my mother heading into the dark woods with a flashlight in her hand. I wanted to call out to her, but my courage failed. I couldn't bear to see her in this state anymore. She had never gone out alone at night before. Never.

Picking up my flashlight, I followed her into the darkness.

She was moving very fast and vanished into the dense darkness ahead of me. I called out to her several times, but my voice didn't reach her. Then, suddenly, I heard a sound—the familiar, wet sound of someone digging earth with their bare hands.

I followed that sound, and there she was.

My mother was digging an old grave with her bare hands. Her fingernails were completely broken, and blood was dripping from her fingers, mixing into the soil, but she didn't seem to feel an ounce of pain. She was muttering, as if chanting a spell.

Trembling, I stepped forward and placed my hand on her shoulder.

But my mother... it felt as if she no longer belonged to this world. As she slowly turned her head to look at me, a gasp caught in my throat. The pupils of her eyes had turned completely white—a milky, horrifying whiteness devoid of any humanity. Her face was completely expressionless, and she stared right through me with those white eyes as if I weren't even there. Terrified by her gruesome state, I ran back to my room and cowered under my blanket.

After that night, everything changed. Driven by her obsession to find answers, my mother began waking up almost every month to dig graves at night. I knew it was madness, but I stayed quiet.

Our house was on the edge of town, a few miles from the church where everyone gathered on Sundays. Hoping to pull her out of this depression, I started taking her there. But she would stand behind the church for hours, staring blankly at the tombstones. Eventually, our relatives noticed her behavior and distanced themselves from us completely, so I stopped taking her there.

At school, people whispered that I was the daughter of a crazy woman. I couldn't handle the bullying and taunts anymore, so I stopped going to school. My mother didn't even care; she was completely lost in her own world.

Then, things got even worse. Rumors spread through the town that a grave robber was desecrating graves at night, leaving them dug up. The townsfolk were in a state of terror. Finally, the local council agreed that until the culprit was caught, every single grave would be secured with heavy iron padlocks.

This restriction made my mother’s obsession unbearable. The dreams didn't stop, but now she couldn't reach the soil. One night, she went out again. This time, I didn't follow her. I figured since the graves were locked, she would give up and return home in a few hours.

But she never came back.

My mother always returned before dawn because she firmly believed her work could only be done in darkness. But morning turned to evening, and there was no sign of her. I went to several relatives' houses and called them, but they turned away from me as if I didn't exist. Finally, I called the police.

During their search, they found something unexpected in the same Arizona wilderness where my father’s camp had been found. They found a second campsite—my mother's. Her glasses and flashlight were left right there on the dirt. Just like my father, she too had vanished.

I was left completely alone. Both of my parents had disappeared from my life. No relative wanted to take me in. Shortly after, I was sent to an orphanage where I began living with several other girls. Gradually, I made friends. I started laughing and playing again. For a while, I truly felt like my childhood had returned.

But I was wrong. Those dreams now began coming to me.

The exact same dreams that were eating away at my mother from the inside started coming to me every single night. I would see my parents standing in the dark, calling out to me helplessly. Gradually, I began to feel a restless, uncontrollable urge to dig earth. Sometimes I would sit for hours near that old, forgotten cemetery behind the orphanage, just staring at the ground. I didn't tell this to anyone. I didn't want anyone to think that I, too, was losing my mental balance like my mother and send me to an asylum.

But last night, that illusion shattered.

I woke up at exactly two o'clock. I felt a sharp, stinging pain in my hands. Trembling, I switched on my flashlight to check. Three of my fingernails looked as if they were being ripped away from the skin. At that exact moment, I heard the distinct, terrifying sound of shifting dirt and heavy breathing right beside me.

I snapped my head to the side, and horror choked the breath out of me. On my mattress, right next to me, lay a rotting, mud-covered corpse. Its skin was yellow and decaying, and a dreadful stench of old, damp earth and rot filled the room.

I screamed with the full strength of my lungs—a horrific, terrified shriek. The moment I flipped the switch to turn on the lights while screaming, the corpse vanished into thin air. Within seconds, the other girls and the orphanage superintendent rushed into my room. Under the light, there was nothing there. Even my fingernails were completely fine, clean and untouched. Everyone tried to calm me down, asking what had happened. I didn't tell them about the gruesome corpse or the pain; I just told them I felt like someone was in my room. They searched the entire room and told me it was just a nightmare, a hallucination born from my old trauma.

I wanted to believe them. I almost did.

But this morning, when we went to church for prayers, there was a massive crowd. They were placing a man into a coffin for a funeral. When I saw the man's photograph, my heart sank. It was the face of the town's local gravedigger.

People in the crowd were whispering to each other that the man had died suddenly of a heart attack during the night. According to doctors, his estimated time of death was right around 2:00 AM.

This was the exact same time I had seen the corpse. I became absolutely certain that it was not a dream. Still, I didn't tell this to anyone.

From that day on, the world around me changed completely. Strange incidents began happening to me.

The cemetery behind the orphanage was clearly visible from my bedroom window at night. In the silence of the dark, looking out the window, it felt as though that cemetery wasn't just behind the orphanage, but right there around me, as if it had surrounded our entire room. Whenever I slept at night, I would wake up at exactly two o'clock to find a rotting, wet corpse lying on the floor right next to my bed. In the beginning, I would scream and cry in sheer terror, waking up the entire orphanage. But as always, when everyone turned on the lights and entered the room, there would be no corpse. Just like before, nobody believed me. They all said it was just a horrific nightmare stemming from my past trauma.

I noticed that, gradually, the other children at the orphanage distanced themselves from me. They all began to fear me and consider me 'weird.' Even when we studied or played during the day, no child would sit near me. I became completely isolated. My parents were gone, and here at the orphanage, there was no one to stand by my side either. I was suffocating in the hell of that loneliness.

But they say that after every bad day, good days follow. A new turn came in my life as well.

One day, a wealthy and refined couple came to the orphanage—John and Elizabeth. Even after 20 years of marriage, they had no children of their own, so they had decided to adopt a girl. They saw me among the many children in the orphanage hall. I was sitting completely alone and miserable in a corner, far away from the other kids.

Elizabeth came up to me, looked at me affectionately, and said, "Don't you like to play? Look, we have brought so many gifts for you. All the other children ran to grab them, but you didn't? Don't you like presents?"

I looked at her, my eyes welling with tears. In a very quiet voice, I said, "I am all alone. My happiness doesn't lie in these gifts, it lies in my parents. Without them, these colorful gifts are just empty boxes to me."

These words touched Elizabeth directly in her heart. She immediately burst into tears and pulled me into a tight embrace. John also stepped forward, placed his hand on my head, and said, "Child, from now on, we are your parents. We will give you all the happiness in the world. From now on, you will live with us." They immediately spoke with the superintendent, completed all the legal paperwork and formalities for adoption, and brought me with them to Texas.

Both John and Elizabeth were highly prominent and famous psychiatrists, and they were also very wealthy. They lived in an incredibly luxurious and beautiful house in Texas. They enrolled me in a large school in the city. There, I made new friends who knew absolutely nothing about the horrific days of my past. For a short while, I felt like my life was finally becoming normal.

However, the nightmares still didn't stop. During the day, I would be happy, but as soon as night fell, my subconscious mind would drift right back into that darkness. Elizabeth perceived this hidden sadness and restlessness through both a mother's and a doctor's eyes. Finally, for the first time in my life, I gathered the courage and confessed my greatest fear to Elizabeth.

Apart from being a capable psychiatrist, Elizabeth also held a deep interest in spirituality. After listening to me, she started taking me to church every day—a church I had stopped visiting years ago because of my mother’s bizarre behavior. Because of the prayers and Elizabeth’s therapeutic affection, the nightmares gradually stopped appearing... and the hallucinations faded away...

But, an even more terrifying thing took the place of that fear.

Now, I began to develop a strange and uncontrollable obsession with the cemetery and grave soil. Day by day, this madness grew. Every night as I lay down to sleep, I felt this overwhelming urge to sneak out into the dark, go to a cemetery, and just sit there alone for hours by the cold earth. The scent of that soil pulled me toward it.

When this suffocation became unbearable, I wept and told Elizabeth about this as well.

Slowly, the years began to pass, and one day John received a phone call from the police stating that they had found my mother.

John and Elizabeth told me, "Your mother has been found. Would you like to come to the police station with us?" I immediately agreed because I desperately wanted to see her.

Elizabeth and John did not look happy. In fact, there was a strange unease on their faces, but they put me in the car anyway, and we drove to the police station.

The police explained that my mother had been found by a traveler in the forests of Arizona. She had completely lost her memory and did not recognize anyone.

They had run her details through the police database, matched it with the missing person's report filed years ago, and confirmed that she was indeed my mother.

I looked at my mother. She had become entirely like a little child, completely oblivious to her surroundings. I couldn't leave my mother like this. I begged John and Elizabeth, promising I would never leave their side if only they would let my mother live with us.

John and Elizabeth were not happy about it. A strange discomfort lingered on their faces, but they eventually gave in to my stubborn insistence. A few days later, my mother moved into our home.

For the first few days, everything seemed normal. Mother acted just like a toddler. Sometimes she would play with toys, and other times she would stare out the window with blank eyes for hours. Most of the time, she couldn't even recognize me.

But then... the bizarre things began.

Every night at exactly two o'clock, my mother would suddenly vanish from her room.

At first, we thought she was sleepwalking. But one night, Elizabeth decided to follow her.

And what she witnessed shook her to her absolute core.

Mother was out in the backyard, down on her knees in the dirt. Her hands were caked in filthy mud... and she was digging into the earth.

Elizabeth asked, trembling, "What are you doing?"

Mother slowly turned her head.

Her eyes were completely hollow, devoid of life.

And in a very low, raspy whisper, she said—

They have to come out...

They are still under the ground...

The next morning, right where Mother had been digging... small, grave-like mounds had been shaped in the dirt.

But the real terror began when...

​

My name is Maria Brown. I am fifteen years old. If I tell this story to anyone in real life, they will just think I’m crazy, which is why I am writing this here. I am terrified. Please, someone tell me what is happening to me.

About two years ago, my father, David Brown, suddenly vanished. We searched everywhere for him, but he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, his partially destroyed campsite was discovered deep in the Arizona wilderness, and everyone assumed that wild animals had killed him. The police closed the case, claiming there was no evidence of foul play. The investigation was officially shut down.

For two years, everyone believed my father fell victim to the wilderness. Everyone… except my mother.

My mother knew something that no one else did. She screamed at the police, telling them that my father absolutely hated the woods. He was terrified of the dark and open wilderness. How could his camp possibly be found deep inside the Arizona forests if he would never go there willingly? The police had no answer. Citing a lack of evidence, they simply refused to investigate further. The case remained closed.

The rejection completely broke my mother. She cut herself off from friends and relatives entirely. She would spend hours staring at my father’s photograph, waiting for a phone call that never came. She slowly sank into a deep, silent depression. She stopped talking to people. Eventually, she stopped talking to me too. Even so, I was just glad she was still with me, though it broke my heart how distant she had become.

Then came the dreams. A heavy, exhausting series of nights that would change everything.

One night, while I was asleep in my room, I woke up to the sound of strange noises coming from my mother’s bedroom. I crept toward her door. It was locked from the inside. I peeked through a small gap in the window.

What I saw was completely beyond my understanding. My mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. My father’s old coat and clothes were scattered around her in a strange circle. She was moving her hands through the empty air, cradling it as if she were touching a real face. There was no one there. It was just an empty corner of the room. Yet, her voice sounded as though she were begging a physical person. I remember vividly, she kept repeating his name over and over.

"David... why are you so wet? Why is dirt falling from your clothes? What happened to you, David? Where are you?"

She kept repeating those words continuously. Then, suddenly, she collapsed onto the floor and fell fast asleep. Panic seized me, and I ran back to hide in my room.

That was the first incident, but it was far from the last.

Every few days, my father began appearing in her dreams. My mother became utterly convinced he was trying to tell her something. My mother, who had barely spoken to me in months, looked at me one day and said that my father had spoken to her directly. She said he wasn't dead, just imprisoned somewhere.

He had told her in the dream that human beings never truly die. He claimed that bodies buried in graves only appear dead because a sinister force impresses them there, trapping them in an endless sleep. He claimed the same thing had happened to him—a spirit had trapped him inside a grave somewhere, and even he didn’t know his location. He told her that if she performed rituals on buried corpses, the evil forces would weaken and reveal where he was hidden. She told me she was having the exact same dream every single night.

To be honest, at that moment, I thought my mother had completely lost her mind. I felt utterly helpless. I knew that if I told anyone, they would drag her away to an asylum, and I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from her after already losing my father.

She looked into my eyes and said, "I will definitely find your father's location. Just don't be afraid, my sweet girl." After saying that, she walked away.

At around two in the morning that very night, I heard the heavy click of the front door opening. I stepped out of my room and saw my mother walking toward the dark forest with a flashlight in her hand. I wanted to call out to her, but I lost my courage. I couldn't bear seeing her like this anymore. She had never gone out alone at night before. Never.

Grabbing my own flashlight, I followed her into the dark.

She was moving too fast, disappearing into the pitch black ahead of me. I called out for her several times, but my voice never reached her. Then, suddenly, I heard a sound—the distinct, wet sound of someone digging into the earth.

I followed the noise, and there she was.

My mother was digging up an old grave with her bare hands. Her fingernails were completely torn apart, and blood was dripping from her fingertips into the soil, but she didn’t seem to feel a single shred of pain. She was muttering under her breath, chanting like she was reciting a mantra.

I stepped closer, trembling, and placed my hand on her shoulder.

But my mother… it was like she didn’t belong to this world anymore. As she slowly turned her head to look at me, a gasp escaped my throat. Her face was completely blank, staring right through me as if I weren't even there. Her expression was utterly empty and cold. Terrified by her state of mind, I ran all the way back to my room and hid deep under my blanket.

Everything changed after that night. My mother began slipping out almost every month to dig up graves, desperately performing those rituals for answers. I knew it was madness, but I stayed quiet.

Our house stood at the edge of town, a few miles away from a church where everyone gathered on Sundays. Hoping to pull her out of her depression, I started taking her there. But she would just stand behind the church for hours, staring blankly at the tombstones. Eventually, our relatives noticed her behavior and distanced themselves from us entirely, so I stopped taking her there altogether.

At school, people whispered that I was the daughter of a madwoman. I couldn't take the bullying anymore, so I stopped going. My mother didn’t even care; she was entirely lost in her own reality.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. Rumors spread through the town that a grave robber was desecrating plots at night, leaving graves disturbed. The townspeople were terrified. Finally, the local council agreed that every single grave would be secured with heavy iron locks until the culprit was caught.

This restriction made my mother's deep fixation unbearable. The dreams didn't stop, but she could no longer reach the dirt. One night, she went out again. This time, I didn't follow her. I figured since the graves were locked, she would give up and return home in a few hours.

But she never came back.

My mother always returned before dawn, because she firmly believed that her work could only happen in the dark. But morning turned into evening, and there was no sign of her. I went to several relatives' houses and called them, but they turned me away as if I meant nothing to them. Finally, I called the police.

During their search, they found something unexpected deep within the same Arizona wilderness where my father’s camp had been found. They discovered a second campsite—belonging to my mother. Her glasses and flashlight were left behind on the dirt. Just like my father, she was gone.

I was left entirely alone. Both my parents had vanished from my life. No relatives wanted custody of me. Soon after, I was moved to an orphanage where I lived with several other girls. Eventually, I made friends. I started laughing and playing again. For a short while, I genuinely believed my childhood had returned.

But I was wrong. The dreams started coming to me.

The exact same dreams that had consumed my mother began visiting me every single night. I saw my parents standing in the dark, calling out to me in distress. Slowly, I began feeling a restless, uncontrollable urge to dig. Sometimes I would sit by the old, forgotten cemetery behind the orphanage for hours, just staring at the ground. I didn't tell a soul. I refused to let anyone think I was losing my mind like my mother and send me to an asylum.

But last night, the illusion shattered.

I woke up at exactly two in the morning. A sharp, burning agony was radiating from my hands. Trembling, I switched on my flashlight to inspect them. Three of my fingernails felt as though they were being torn from the skin. Right at that moment, I heard the distinct, unsettling sound of shifting earth and heavy breathing coming from right next to me.

I whipped around. Lying right on the mattress beside me was an empty, dusty indentation, and the scent of old, damp soil filled the air around my bed.

I screamed at the top of my lungs—a primal, terrified shriek. Within seconds, the other girls and the orphanage superintendent burst into my room. But the moment the lights flicked on, there was nothing there. Even my fingernails were completely intact, clean and untouched. Everyone tried to calm me down, asking what happened. I didn't tell them about what I felt; I just told them I felt like someone was in my room. They checked the entire room and told me it was just a vivid nightmare, a bad hallucination born from my trauma.

I wanted to believe them. I almost did.

But this morning, when we went to the church to pray, there was a massive crowd. They were placing a man into a coffin for a funeral. When I looked at the photograph of the man, my heart stopped. It was the face of the town's local gravedigger.

The people in the crowd were whispering to each other that the man had died of a sudden heart attack during the night. According to the doctors, his time of death was estimated to be around 2:00 AM.

That was the exact time I woke up screaming.

I don't know if it was just a dream or reality. Does that dream, that man's sudden end, and the disappearance of my parents share some deep, dark connection? Or is there a secret hidden behind all of this that I am yet to understand?

My name is Maria Brown. I am fifteen years old. If I tell this story to anyone in real life, they will just think I’m crazy, which is why I am writing this here. I am terrified. Please, someone tell me what is happening to me.

About two years ago, my father, David Brown, suddenly vanished. We searched everywhere for him, but he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, his partially destroyed campsite was discovered deep in the Arizona wilderness, and everyone assumed that wild animals had killed him. The police closed the case, claiming there was no evidence of foul play. The investigation was officially shut down.

For two years, everyone believed my father fell victim to the wilderness. Everyone… except my mother.

My mother knew something that no one else did. She screamed at the police, telling them that my father absolutely hated the woods. He was terrified of the dark and open wilderness. How could his camp possibly be found deep inside the Arizona forests if he would never go there willingly? The police had no answer. Citing a lack of evidence, they simply refused to investigate further. The case remained closed.

The rejection completely broke my mother. She cut herself off from friends and relatives entirely. She would spend hours staring at my father’s photograph, waiting for a phone call that never came. She slowly sank into a deep, silent depression. She stopped talking to people. Eventually, she stopped talking to me too. Even so, I was just glad she was still with me, though it broke my heart how distant she had become.

Then came the dreams. A terrifying series of nights that would change everything.

One night, while I was asleep in my room, I woke up to the sound of strange noises coming from my mother’s bedroom. I crept toward her door. It was locked from the inside. I peeked through a small gap in the window.

What I saw was completely beyond my understanding. My mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. My father’s old coat and clothes were scattered around her in a strange circle. She was moving her hands through the empty air, cradling it as if she were touching a real face. There was no one there. It was just an empty corner of the room. Yet, her voice sounded as though she were begging a physical person. I remember vividly, she kept repeating his name over and over.

"David... why are you so wet? Why is dirt falling from your clothes? What happened to you, David? Where are you?"

She kept repeating those words continuously. Then, suddenly, she collapsed onto the floor and fell fast asleep. Panic seized me, and I ran back to hide in my room.

That was the first incident, but it was far from the last.

Every few days, my father began appearing in her dreams. My mother became utterly convinced he was trying to tell her something. My mother, who had barely spoken to me in months, looked at me one day and said that my father had spoken to her directly. She said he wasn't dead, just imprisoned somewhere.

He had told her in the dream that human beings never truly die. He claimed that bodies buried in graves only appear dead because a sinister force impresses them there, trapping them in an endless sleep. He claimed the same thing had happened to him—a spirit had trapped him inside a grave somewhere, and even he didn’t know his location. He told her that if she performed exorcisms on buried corpses, the evil forces would weaken and reveal where he was hidden. She told me she was having the exact same dream every single night.

To be honest, at that moment, I thought my mother had completely lost her mind. I felt utterly helpless. I knew that if I told anyone, they would drag her away to an asylum, and I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from her after already losing my father.

She looked into my eyes and said, "I will definitely find your father's location. Just don't be afraid, my sweet girl." After saying that, she walked away.

At around two in the morning that very night, I heard the heavy click of the front door opening. I stepped out of my room and saw my mother walking toward the dark forest with a flashlight in her hand. I wanted to call out to her, but I lost my courage. I couldn't bear seeing her like this anymore. She had never gone out alone at night before. Never.

Grabbing my own flashlight, I followed her into the dark.

She was moving too fast, disappearing into the pitch black ahead of me. I called out for her several times, but my voice never reached her. Then, suddenly, I heard a sound—the distinct, wet sound of someone digging into the earth.

I followed the noise, and there she was.

My mother was digging up an old grave with her bare hands. Her fingernails were completely torn apart, and blood was dripping from her fingertips into the soil, but she didn’t seem to feel a single shred of pain. She was muttering under her breath, chanting like she was reciting a mantra.

I stepped closer, trembling, and placed my hand on her shoulder.

But my mother… it was like she didn’t belong to this world anymore. As she slowly turned her head to look at me, a gasp escaped my throat. The pupils of her eyes had rolled completely upward—only the blank, milky whites of her eyeballs reflected my flashlight. I had never seen anything so horrifying in my entire life. Terrified, I ran all the way back to my room and hid deep under my blanket.

Everything changed after that night. My mother began slipping out almost every month to dig up graves, desperately performing those exorcisms for answers. I knew it was madness, but I stayed quiet.

Our house stood at the edge of town, a few miles away from a church where everyone gathered on Sundays. Hoping to pull her out of her depression, I started taking her there. But she would just stand behind the church for hours, staring blankly at the tombstones. Eventually, our relatives noticed her behavior and distanced themselves from us entirely, so I stopped taking her there altogether.

At school, people whispered that I was the daughter of a madwoman. I couldn't take the bullying anymore, so I stopped going. My mother didn’t even care; she was entirely lost in her own reality.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. Rumors spread through the town that a grave robber was desecrating plots at night, leaving corpses exposed. The townspeople were terrified. Finally, the local council agreed that every single grave would be secured with heavy iron locks until the culprit was caught.

This restriction made my mother's obsession unbearable. The dreams didn't stop, but she could no longer reach the dirt. One night, she went out again. This time, I didn't follow her. I figured since the graves were locked, she would give up and return home in a few hours.

But she never came back.

My mother always returned before dawn, because she firmly believed that the exorcism of the dead could only happen in the dark. But morning turned into evening, and there was no sign of her. I went to several relatives' houses and called them, but they turned me away as if I meant nothing to them.

Finally, I called the police. During their search, they found something unexpected deep within the same Arizona wilderness where my father’s camp had been found. They discovered a second campsite—belonging to my mother. Her glasses and flashlight were left behind on the dirt. Just like my father, she was gone.

I was left entirely alone. Both my parents had vanished from my life. No relatives wanted custody of me. Soon after, I was moved to an orphanage where I lived with several other girls. Eventually, I made friends. I started laughing and playing again. For a short while, I genuinely believed my childhood had returned.

But I was wrong. The dreams started coming to me.

The exact same dreams that had consumed my mother began visiting me every single night. I saw my parents. Wet, black mud poured continuously from their open eyes and open mouths. Slowly, I began feeling a restless,

uncontrollable urge to dig. Sometimes I would sit by the old, forgotten cemetery behind the orphanage for hours, just staring at the ground. I didn't tell a soul. I refused to let anyone think I was losing my mind like my mother and send me to an asylum.

But last night, the illusion shattered.

I woke up at exactly two in the morning. A sharp, burning agony was radiating from my hands. Trembling, I switched on my flashlight to inspect them. Three of my fingernails had been completely ripped from the skin. Wet blood was pooling over my fingers. Right at that moment, I heard the distinct, unsettling sound of sand and soil sliding and hitting the floorboards.

I whipped around. Lying right on the mattress next to me was a wet, decaying corpse. Damp, dark earth was actively spilling from its rotted clothes onto my bed sheets.

I screamed at the top of my lungs—a primal, terrified shriek. Within seconds, the other girls and the orphanage superintendent burst into my room.

But the moment the lights flicked on, there was nothing there. Even my fingernails were completely intact, clean and untouched. Everyone tried to calm me down, asking what happened. I didn't tell them about the body; I just told them I felt like someone was in my room. They checked the entire room and told me it was just a vivid nightmare, a bad hallucination born from my trauma.

I wanted to believe them. I almost did.

But this morning, when we went to the church to pray, there was a massive crowd. They were placing a man into a coffin for a funeral. When I looked at the man's face, my heart stopped. It was the exact same man I had seen lying next to me on my bed last night.

The people in the crowd were whispering to each other that the man had died of a sudden heart attack during the night. According to the doctors, his time of death was estimated to be around 2:00 AM.

That was the exact time I woke up screaming.

I don't know if it was just a dream or reality. Does that dream, that dead man, and the disappearance of my parents share some deep, dark connection? Or is there a secret hidden behind all of this that I am yet to understand?

It's 1:54 AM while I'm writing this. My hands have started hurting again... and I think I can hear dirt falling onto the floor beside my bed. Please, if anyone knows how to stop this, tell me. I don't want to go out there tonight. Please reply and help me .

​

My name is Maria Brown. I am fifteen years old. If I tell this story to anyone in real life, they will just think I’m crazy, which is why I am writing this here.

About two years ago, my father, David Brown, vanished. The police closed the case, claiming there was no evidence of foul play. His partially destroyed camp was discovered deep in the Arizona wilderness, and everyone assumed that wild animals had killed him. The investigation was officially shut down.

For two years, everyone believed my father fell victim to the wilderness.

Everyone… except my mother.

My mother knew something that no one else did. She screamed at the police, telling them that my father absolutely hated the woods. He was terrified of the dark and open wilderness. How could his camp possibly be found deep inside the Arizona forests if he would never go there willingly? The police had no answer. Citing a lack of evidence, they simply refused to investigate further. The case remained closed.

That rejection completely broke my mother. She cut herself off from friends and relatives entirely. She would spend hours staring at my father’s photograph, waiting for a phone call that never came.

She slowly sank into a deep depression. She stopped talking to people. Eventually, she stopped talking to me too. Even so, I was just glad she was still with me, though it broke my heart how distant she had become.

Then came the dreams. A terrifying series of nights that would change everything.

One night, while I was asleep in my room, I woke up to the sound of sobbing coming from my mother’s bedroom. I crept toward her door. It was locked from the inside. I peeked through a small gap in the window.

What I saw made my blood run cold. My mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. My father’s old coat and clothes were scattered around her in a strange circle. She was moving her hands through the empty air, cradling it as if she were touching a real face. There was no one there. It was just an empty corner of the room. Yet, her voice sounded as though she were begging a physical person.

"David... why are you so wet? Why is dirt falling from your clothes? What happened to you, David? Where are you?"

She kept repeating those words over and over. Then, suddenly, she collapsed onto the floor and fell fast asleep.

That was the first incident, but it was far from the last.

Every few days, my father began appearing in her dreams. My mother became utterly convinced he was trying to tell her something. She told me he spoke to her directly,

claiming that human beings never truly die. He told her that bodies buried in graves only appear dead because a sinister force imprisons them there, trapping them in an endless sleep. He claimed the same thing had happened to him—a spirit had trapped him inside a grave somewhere, and even he didn’t know his location. He told her that if she performed exorcisms on buried corpses, the evil forces would weaken and reveal where he was hidden.

I remember it vividly; she spoke to me that day for the first time in months. She said, "I saw your father in my dream, Maria. He isn't gone. He is right here, we just have to find him. Don't be afraid, my sweet girl." After saying that, she walked away.

It was around two in the morning when I heard the heavy click of the front door opening. I stepped out of my room and saw my mother walking toward the forest with a flashlight in her hand. I wanted to call out to her, but the words caught in my throat. I couldn't bear seeing her like this anymore. She had never gone out alone at night before. Never.

Grabbing my own flashlight, I followed her into the dark.

She was moving too fast, disappearing into the pitch black ahead of me. I called out for her several times, but my voice was swallowed by the silent trees. Then, suddenly, I heard it—the distinct, wet sound of digging.

I followed the noise, and there she was.

My mother was digging up an old grave with her bare hands. Her fingernails were completely torn apart, and blood was dripping from her fingertips into the soil, but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She was muttering under her breath, chanting like she was reciting a mantra.

I stepped closer, trembling, and placed my hand on her shoulder.

But my mother… it was like she didn’t belong to this world anymore. As she slowly turned her head to look at me, a gasp escaped my throat. The pupils of her eyes had rolled completely upward—only the blank, milky whites of her eyeballs reflected my flashlight. I had never seen anything so horrifying. Panic seized me, and I ran all the way back to my room, hiding under my blanket.

Everything changed after that night. My mother began slipping out almost every month to dig up graves, desperately performing those exorcisms for answers. I knew it was madness, but I had already lost my father; I couldn’t lose her too. If I reported her, they would take her away to an asylum. So, I stayed quiet.

Our house stood at the edge of town, a few miles away from a church where everyone gathered on Sundays. I wanted to pull her out of her depression, so I started taking her there. But she would just stand behind the church for hours, staring blankly at the tombstones. Eventually, our relatives distanced themselves from us, and I stopped taking her there altogether.

At school, people whispered that I was the daughter of a madwoman. I couldn't take it anymore, so I stopped going. My mother didn’t care; she was entirely lost in her own reality.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. Rumors spread through the town that a grave robber was desecrating plots at night, leaving corpses exposed. The townspeople were terrified. Nobody knew who was responsible. Finally, the local council agreed that every single grave would be secured with heavy iron locks until the culprit was caught.

This restriction made my mother's obsession unbearable. The dreams didn't stop, but she could no longer reach the dirt. One night, she went out again. This time, I didn't follow her. I figured since the graves were locked, she would give up and return home in a few hours.

She never came back.

After two days of agonizing, I called the police. During their search, they found something unexpected deep within the same Arizona wilderness where my father’s camp had been found. They discovered a second campsite—belonging to my mother. Her glasses and flashlight were left behind on the dirt. Just like my father, she was gone.

I was left entirely alone. Both my parents had vanished from my life. No relatives wanted custody of me . Soon after, I was moved to an orphanage where I lived with several other girls. Eventually, I made friends. I started laughing and playing again. For a short while, I genuinely believed my childhood had returned.

But I was wrong. The nightmare was bleeding into my own mind.

The exact same dreams that had consumed my mother began visiting me. Every night, I saw my parents. Wet, black mud poured continuously from their open mouths.

Slowly, I began feeling a restless, uncontrollable urge to dig. Sometimes I would sit by the old, forgotten cemetery behind the orphanage for hours, just staring at the ground. I didn’t tell a soul. I refused to let anyone believe I was losing my mind.

But last night, the illusion shattered.

I woke up at exactly two in the morning. A sharp, burning agony was radiating from my hands. Trembling, I switched on my flashlight to inspect them.

Three of my fingernails had been completely ripped from the skin. Wet blood was pooling over my fingers. Right at that moment, I heard the distinct, unsettling sound of sand sliding and hitting the floorboards.

I whipped around, and my breath caught in my throat. Lying right on the mattress next to me was a decaying corpse. Damp, dark earth was actively spilling from its rotted clothes onto my bed sheets.

I screamed at the top of my lungs—a primal, terrified shriek. Within seconds, the other girls and the orphanage superintendent burst into my room. But the moment the lights flicked on, there was nothing there. Even my fingernails were completely intact, clean and untouched. Everyone held me and tried to calm me down, telling me it was just a vivid nightmare, a bad hallucination born from my trauma, and that I should just sleep it off.

I almost believed them. I wanted to believe them.

But this morning, I walked out to the old cemetery behind the property. One of the old graves had been freshly dug up, the dirt thrown carelessly around it. The coffin was wide open, and the body was completely gone.

And the name on the tombstone matched the face of the corpse I saw lying next to me in the dark last night.

How can they tell me it was just a dream?

“I am Maria. I watched my mother lose her mind, slowly — but to this day, I still don’t know if it was her who was going mad… or me.”

My name is Maria Brown. I am fifteen years old. I live with my mother, Catherine Brown. My story is probably one of the most terrifying experiences any human being could ever go through.

About two years ago, my father, David Brown, was kidnapped — and he never came back. The police closed the case, claiming there was no evidence of a kidnapping. His camp was discovered deep in the Arizona wilderness, and it was assumed that wild animals had killed him. The investigation was officially shut down.

For two years, everyone believed my father had fallen victim to wild animals.

Everyone… except my mother.

My mother knew something that perhaps no one else did. She told the police that my father hated forests. He was terrified of darkness and wilderness. So how could his camp possibly have been found deep inside the Arizona woods? The police had no answer for that. But they didn’t investigate further. The case was already closed.

That broke my mother.

The woman whose laughter once filled our home with warmth now carried a permanent sadness on her face. I watched her slowly drift from light into darkness. She cut herself off completely from friends and relatives. She would spend hours staring at my father’s photograph, waiting endlessly for a phone call that never came.

But the waiting only grew longer.

She knew sitting still would change nothing, so she chased every lead, knocked on every door, searched for every possible clue. But she found nothing.

My mother became like a living corpse. She stopped talking to people. Eventually, she even stopped talking to me.

And yet, I was still happy that she was with me.

What I didn’t know was that this was only the beginning. The real storm had not arrived yet.

Then came the dreams.

A terrible series of nights that would destroy everything.

One night, while I was asleep in my room, I heard crying coming from my mother’s room. I slowly walked toward her door. As I got closer, I realized she was talking to someone between her sobs.

The door was locked.

I tried peeking through the window.

And what I saw froze the blood inside my body.

My mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. My father’s old shirts and clothes were scattered around her in a strange circle. She moved her hands through the air as if she were touching someone’s face.

But nobody was there.

There was only an empty corner of the room.

Yet my mother’s voice sounded as though she were begging a real person.

“David… why are you wet? Why is dirt falling from your clothes? What happened to you, David? Where are you, David?”

She kept muttering with her eyes closed.

And then, right there on the floor… she fell asleep.

That was the first incident.

But it was far from the last.

It was only the beginning.

Every third night, my father began appearing in her dreams. My mother became convinced that he was trying to tell her something.

One night she dreamed that he spoke to her directly. He told her that human beings never truly die. The bodies buried in graves only appear dead because evil forces imprison them there, trapping them in an endless sleep.

The same thing, he claimed, had happened to him.

A spirit had trapped him inside some grave somewhere, and even he didn’t know where he was. He told her that if she performed exorcisms on buried corpses, the evil spirits would flee — and as they escaped, they would reveal where he was hidden.

After that, she started muttering those things even during the day. She pretended everything was normal, but the truth was something far darker.

I still remember that horrifying night.

It was around two in the morning when I heard the front door open. I stepped outside my room and saw my mother walking toward the forest with a flashlight in her hand.

I wanted to call out to her.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t bear seeing my mother in that condition anymore. She had never gone out alone at night before. Never.

For the first time, I followed her.

She disappeared far ahead of me into the darkness. Soon, I couldn’t see her anywhere. I called out to her several times, but there was no answer.

Then suddenly…

I heard digging.

I followed the sound.

And there she was.

My mother was digging up an old grave with her bare hands. Her fingernails were torn apart. Blood ran down her fingers, but she didn’t seem to feel any pain. She kept whispering something under her breath.

I slowly stepped behind her.

My shadow fell across her body. The sound of my breathing echoed through the silent graveyard.

But my mother…

It was as if she no longer belonged to this world.

The pupils of her eyes had rolled upward.

I had never seen anything like it before.

I panicked and ran all the way back to my room.

Sleep never came to me that night.

After that night, everything changed.

My mother began digging up graves almost every month. She performed exorcisms, hoping that one day she would finally get answers.

I knew it was madness.

But I had already lost my father. I couldn’t lose my mother too.

If I reported her, if I called her insane, they would take her away from me. So I stayed beside her. And every day I kept asking myself the same question:

Was she truly losing her mind…

or was she seeing something the rest of us simply couldn’t?

I never told her that I knew what she did at night. I was afraid that if she found out, things would become even worse.

And honestly…

her madness terrified me too.

Our house stood at the edge of town. A few miles away was a church where her friends and relatives gathered every Sunday. I didn’t want her to disappear completely into darkness. I wanted to pull her back toward the light.

But she never spoke to anyone there.

She would simply stand behind the church for hours, staring at the graves.

Eventually, even our relatives distanced themselves from her.

And then I stopped taking her there at all.

Slowly, the thing I feared most finally happened.

At school, people whispered that I was the daughter of a mad woman.

I decided I would stop going to school.

But my mother didn’t seem to care anymore. She was lost inside her own world.

And then things became worse.

Rumors spread through the town that someone was digging up graves at night. During the day, graves were found destroyed. Corpses were left exposed. People became terrified.

No one knew who was responsible.

Eventually, the entire town agreed that every grave would remain locked until the culprit was found.

That only made my mother’s obsession worse.

The dreams never stopped. But now she could no longer reach the graves.

One night, she went out again.

That night, I didn’t follow her.

I thought the graves were locked, so she would return home after a few hours.

But she never came back.

Two days passed.

I called the police. They began searching for her.

And then something strange happened.

Deep in the Arizona wilderness, they found another camp.

My mother Catherine’s camp.

Her name was added to the missing persons list.

Just like my father… she was gone.

I was left alone.

Both my parents had disappeared from my life.

Soon after, I was sent to an orphanage, where I began living with several other girls.

Eventually, I made friends there. I started laughing again. Playing again. For a while, I believed my childhood had finally returned.

But I was wrong.

The storm I thought had passed was coming back.

The same dreams that had consumed my mother began coming to me.

The madness started pulling me toward it too.

I began feeling the urge to dig up graves. Sometimes I would sit beside them for hours, staring silently.

But I told no one.

I refused to let people believe I was losing my mind too.

But then…

one day, something happened that changed everything.

Working on a feature-length psychological thriller. This is the opening 10 pages — a serial killer voluntarily walks into a police station to confess 42 murders.

Looking for honest feedback on:

— Does the opening hook you?

— Is Kellerman believable as a character?

— Pacing issues?

Don't sugarcoat. I want real notes.