Hello Reddit.

Backstory: I grew up Chicago, IL- specifically in an area that the locals refer to as the, “Wild 100’s.” I’m sure by the nickname alone- you can make your own assumptions about the quality of the neighborhood. It’s worth noting that while my neighborhood is within the Chicago city limits, and obviously in the state of Illinois- we are quite literally positioned three blocks from the Indiana border. Hammond, Indiana borders us. And Gary, Indiana is less than ten miles away.

My childhood was typical of those growing up on the far south side of Chicago. A lot of violent crime- but we’re used to that. I worked my ass off to escape this environment- attending college in another Midwest state, and relocated to the west coast following college.

However- there was one very odd experience that I encountered while growing up- and we were never able to answer what had actually occurred.

This event took place in February of 1992. Everything prior to the event was normal, at least to us- was normal. My mother put me to bed around 8:00 PM. Around 3:30 AM- she was abruptly woken up to the sounds of me screaming. My father and her burst into my bedroom- and found me trapped in my bedroom closet, unable to escape. The door handle would not open the closet, and it took them a decent amount of time to get me out of it.

It is worth noting that I am not, nor have ever been a sleep walker. And this type of situation had not occurred prior to, or since that event.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a detective for the Chicago police department- so she of course called him immediately to investigate. We had roughly 2-3 inches of snow on the ground at the time- yet there were zero footprints, nor any other sign of forced entry. It was bizarre to say the least- and my parents were shook.

Time moved on- and we all eventually forgot about the event.

As I mentioned above- I worked my ass off to escape this environment- and literally hadn’t retuned since the age of 18. I am now 39. Well- that was until earlier this year when I was laid off. I returned home (the same house) in an attempt to alleviate the financial issues that come with being laid off. My mother has since passed- and it’s now only my father.

Upon returning home- the elderly cat that my father had recently acquired took a liking to me. He thought it was odd as the cat literally doesn’t want anything to do with anyone else. I didn’t think twice about it.

As the days passed- the cat and I became somewhat attached. She can barely see, nor hear- but she is our girl. My father and I are generally dog people- but this is the calmest of calm cats- who just wants to be loved, and relax. I’m talking doesn’t make a sound other than when she’s eating- and is napping the rest of the time.

My second week back home- the cat begins insisting that she sleeps in my bedroom. My father who doesn’t comment on anything- even stated that this was bizarre. Each night she’d scratch at the door around 2:00 AM- and was relentless for the following 2-3 hours. My father has to be to work at 5:00 AM- and it was keeping him up. I liked the cat, and it was bothering my dad- so I of course started letting her in.

The second night of this- the said cat is laying near my feet. I’m almost asleep- and I feel the blanket move, and bed shift abruptly. I tell her to relax- and look up, to see her still at my feet. In that moment- she lets out the most aggressive hiss I have ever heard from a cat. She is now on all fours with her back arched staring directly at the closet- hissing and roaring the way cats do when they’re about to fight. This continues and escalates. This hissing and roaring was so loud it almost sounded like it was on surround sound. That’s the only way I can describe it. Again, this is coming from an elderly cat that hadn’t made a single sound in the prior two weeks. And according to my dad- ever.

She then, leaps off the bed- runs to the bedroom door, and claws at it like her life depended on it. I have quite literally never seen anything like it in my life. Even the carpet below the door was shredded to pieces. At this point- chills are running down my spine. And I exited the room along with her.

She now follows me everywhere I go. Like clockwork. Will not leave my side. I went outside last week for a phone interview- and she somehow made it on to a very high counter and made eye contact with me the entire duration I was outside.

There is something very dark about this place- and region. I am far from a conspiracy theorist, and generally don’t believe in paranormal shit- but both these events combined have been so bizarre that I can’t just write them off.

From the far south side of Chicago- to Gary, Indiana. You can literally feel it. A lot of people mocked the family in Gary, IN regarding the demonic house situation. But I promise you- there’s merit to it.

I started working the night shift at a storage facility two months ago.

There was only one rule.

Never open Unit 209.

Even if someone inside screamed for help.

I know how that sounds. I know anyone reading this is already thinking the same thing I thought when my manager said it.

That’s illegal. That’s ridiculous. That’s obviously a joke.

But he didn’t smile when he told me.

His name was Carl, and he looked exactly like the kind of man who had been working night shifts for too long. Gray skin, yellow teeth, eyes that seemed permanently tired. He gave me the tour on my first evening while the sun was still setting behind the rows of metal storage units.

“Office is there,” he said, pointing with his coffee cup. “Bathroom’s behind it. Cameras are on a thirty-second delay. Gate locks at ten. You don’t leave the property until six unless I call you.”

“Unless you call me?” I asked.

He ignored that.

We walked past rows of orange metal doors. Most had normal things in front of them. Old couches. Boxes. A broken exercise bike. One unit had three plastic reindeer stacked sideways like a crime scene from Christmas.

Then we reached the second building.

The air changed there.

Not dramatically. Not like in a movie. But enough that I noticed. It was colder between those units, and quieter. The humming from the security lights seemed thinner.

Carl stopped in front of Unit 209.

It looked like all the others, except for the lock.

Every other unit had a normal padlock.

Unit 209 had three.

One standard lock. One heavy black combination lock. And one thick steel chain wrapped around the handle and bolted directly into the concrete on both sides.

There was also a handwritten sign taped to the door.

DO NOT OPEN
DO NOT RESPOND
DO NOT RECORD AUDIO

I laughed a little because I thought I was supposed to.

Carl didn’t.

“Rule one,” he said. “Never open 209.”

“Got it.”

“Rule two. Don’t talk to 209.”

I turned to him.

“To?”

“Not about. To.”

He took a sip of coffee.

“If you hear knocking, ignore it. If you hear crying, ignore it. If you hear someone asking for help, ignore it. If it uses your name, call me.”

I stared at him.

He finally looked at me then.

“I’m not messing with you.”

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

Then I asked the obvious question.

“What’s inside?”

Carl looked at the metal door.

“Storage.”

That was all he said.

The job itself was easy. Almost stupidly easy. I sat in the office from ten at night until six in the morning, watched the security monitors, did a walk around the property every hour, and made sure no one broke in.

The place was called West Vale Storage, just off the county road, behind a closed-down car wash and across from a field that nobody seemed to use. During the day, people came and went. At night, it felt like the whole facility had been cut out of the world.

My first week was normal.

Boring, even.

I watched shows on my phone. Drank terrible coffee. Did my hourly walks. Heard raccoons fighting behind the dumpsters. Once, a guy showed up at 2 a.m. claiming he needed to get his fishing gear, but his access code didn’t work, so I sent him away.

Nothing screamed.

Nothing knocked.

Unit 209 stayed silent.

By the second week, I started wondering if Carl had made the whole thing up to mess with new hires. Maybe it was some workplace hazing thing. Maybe there were expensive items inside and he wanted to scare me away from snooping.

That made more sense than a storage unit that cried.

On my ninth shift, curiosity got the better of me.

During my 1 a.m. walk, I stopped in front of 209.

The building was quiet. Rain tapped softly on the metal roof. The security light above the unit flickered every few seconds, making the sign flash in and out of view.

DO NOT OPEN
DO NOT RESPOND
DO NOT RECORD AUDIO

I stepped closer.

There was nothing strange about the door. No smell. No scratches. No blood. No horror-movie nonsense.

I almost felt disappointed.

Then, from inside the unit, someone coughed.

Not a monster sound.

Not a growl.

A small, human cough.

I froze.

It happened again.

Then a voice whispered, “Hello?”

I stopped breathing.

The voice sounded like a young woman. Maybe early twenties. Scared. Weak.

“Please,” she whispered. “Is somebody there?”

I backed away so fast I almost slipped on the wet concrete.

My radio crackled.

Carl’s voice came through.

“Office. Now.”

I looked around, heart hammering.

There were no cars in the lot. No one by the gate. No one anywhere.

I ran back to the office and grabbed the phone.

Carl answered before it finished ringing.

“Did you answer it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

“There’s someone in there,” I said.

“No, there isn’t.”

“I heard her.”

“You heard it.”

“Carl, if someone is locked inside—”

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said. “No one is locked inside Unit 209.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it has been empty since 1998.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Carl sighed.

“You’re going to want to quit. I understand. Most people do after the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Go home at six. Don’t go near 209 again tonight.”

He hung up.

I didn’t quit.

I should have.

But rent was due. My car needed repairs. And part of me still thought there had to be a rational explanation. A speaker hidden inside. Some prank by Carl. A homeless person who had found a way in.

The next few nights, I avoided Building B completely except during required patrols. When I passed 209, I kept my eyes forward and walked fast.

Nothing happened.

Then, on Thursday, it knocked.

Three slow taps.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I was in the office watching the cameras when I heard it through the walls.

That was impossible.

Building B was almost a hundred yards away.

I looked at the monitor showing Unit 209.

The hallway outside it was empty.

Then the door moved.

Not opened. Just flexed inward slightly, like something on the other side had leaned its weight against it.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown Number.

I answered without thinking.

At first, there was only static.

Then the same young woman whispered, “Why won’t you help me?”

I threw the phone onto the desk.

It kept playing her voice on speaker.

“I know you can hear me.”

The office lights flickered.

“I know your name, Daniel.”

My name is Daniel.

I unplugged the office phone. My cell phone was still on the desk, screen black.

The whisper continued from somewhere inside the room.

“Daniel.”

I grabbed my keys and ran outside.

The cold hit me hard. I stood under the security light, shaking, staring toward Building B.

Unit 209 was visible from there.

The door was still closed.

The locks were still in place.

Then the sign fell off.

It landed face-up on the wet concrete.

And from inside the unit, something began to laugh.

Not loud.

Not evil.

Worse.

It sounded relieved.

Like it had finally gotten my attention.

I called Carl again.

He didn’t answer.

I spent the rest of the shift in my car with the doors locked and the engine running.

At 5:58 a.m., Carl pulled up.

He didn’t ask what happened. He just looked at my face and said, “It used your name.”

I nodded.

“Did you answer the phone?”

I didn’t say anything.

Carl closed his eyes.

“Damn it.”

He walked to Building B with a duffel bag in one hand. I followed from a distance because fear and curiosity are apparently the same disease.

He stopped in front of 209.

The sign was still on the ground.

Carl didn’t touch it.

He unzipped the bag and pulled out a small tape recorder. Old-fashioned. The kind with buttons you physically press down.

He set it on the ground in front of the unit.

Then he pressed play.

A voice came from the recorder.

My voice.

“Please. Is somebody there?”

My stomach dropped.

It was not a recording of me speaking from earlier.

I had never said those words.

The tape continued.

My voice again, shaking and breathless.

“Don’t leave me in here.”

Carl pressed stop.

“What is that?” I whispered.

“That’s why we don’t record audio,” he said.

He picked up the sign and taped it back onto the door with shaking hands.

I stared at him.

“Carl.”

He didn’t look at me.

“Why is my voice on that tape?”

He swallowed.

“Because it’s learning you.”

That should have been the moment I left and never came back.

Instead, I asked him everything.

Carl told me the facility opened in 1987. Unit 209 had originally belonged to a man named Everett Long, a retired sound engineer. He stored old recording equipment there. Reel-to-reel machines, microphones, tapes, studio gear.

In 1998, Everett disappeared.

His rent kept getting paid automatically for almost a year. When the account finally dried up, management cut the lock and opened the unit.

Inside, they found nothing except shelves of labeled tapes.

Thousands of them.

Each tape had a name.

Some were employees.

Some were customers.

Some were people who had never visited the facility.

One tape was labeled with the name of the manager who opened the unit.

According to Carl, the manager played it.

On the tape, he heard himself begging not to be left inside.

Three days later, he vanished during the night shift.

The cameras showed him walking to Unit 209 at 2:13 a.m.

The door opened.

He stepped inside.

The door closed.

No one ever came out.

When police cut through the locks the next morning, the unit was empty.

No manager.

No shelves.

No tapes.

Nothing.

They sealed it after that.

Every few years, someone new ignored the rules.

Some heard loved ones. Some heard children. Some heard themselves. One employee opened the door because his dead wife was crying behind it.

All of them disappeared.

“Why not tear it down?” I asked.

Carl gave me a tired look.

“They tried.”

“What happened?”

He pointed at the concrete beneath our feet.

“Building B used to end over there.”

I looked where he pointed.

About twenty feet away.

“After they demolished it, Unit 209 was still standing. Not the building. Just the unit. Same door. Same locks. Same concrete. So they rebuilt around it.”

I wanted to laugh.

I wanted him to be insane.

But then something knocked softly from inside 209.

Carl went silent.

A voice whispered through the metal.

“Carl?”

His face changed.

I had never seen someone become that afraid that quickly.

The voice was older. Female.

“Carl, honey, I’m cold.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“Walk,” he said.

“But—”

“Walk.”

As we left Building B, the voice behind us began to cry.

“Carl, please. I don’t like it in here.”

He didn’t turn around.

But I saw tears running down his face.

After that, I quit.

At least, I tried to.

I told Carl I wasn’t coming back. He didn’t argue. He just asked for my keys and said he understood.

For two weeks, nothing happened.

I got a job unloading trucks at a grocery warehouse. It paid less, but nobody whispered my name from inside locked metal doors, so I considered it a promotion.

Then the dreams started.

In the first dream, I was standing inside a dark room.

I couldn’t see the walls, but I knew they were close.

There was a thin line of light at my feet.

Under a door.

I heard footsteps outside.

I started pounding.

“Please!” I screamed. “I’m in here!”

The footsteps stopped.

Someone breathed on the other side.

Then my own voice whispered back, “I know.”

I woke up sweating.

The next night, the dream continued.

Same room.

Same line of light.

But this time, there were shelves around me.

On the shelves were tapes.

Thousands of them.

Each one labeled with a name.

I found Carl’s.

I found mine.

Then I found one labeled:

DANIEL — FINAL SHIFT

I woke up before I could play it.

The next morning, my phone had one new voicemail.

No missed call.

Just a voicemail.

I knew before I played it.

Static.

Then my voice.

“Please. Is somebody there?”

I deleted it.

It came back.

I changed numbers.

It followed.

I threw the phone away.

The next day, a package arrived at my apartment.

No return address.

Inside was a cassette tape.

On the label:

DANIEL — FINAL SHIFT

I drove to Carl’s house that night.

His wife answered the door.

At least, I think it was his wife. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept in days.

When I asked for Carl, her mouth tightened.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“When?”

“Three nights ago.”

My blood went cold.

She told me Carl had been retired for almost six months.

That didn’t make sense.

I had seen him. Worked with him. Spoken to him.

“He went back there,” she said quietly. “He always said he wouldn’t, but he did.”

“Back to the storage facility?”

She looked at me strangely.

“West Vale closed last year.”

I drove there immediately.

The car wash was still there.

The county road was still there.

The empty field was still there.

But West Vale Storage was gone.

Not abandoned.

Gone.

The lot was flat dirt surrounded by chain-link fence. No office. No gate. No rows of units.

No Building B.

No Unit 209.

I sat in my car staring at the empty lot until sunrise.

Then I noticed something hanging on the fence.

A handwritten sign.

DO NOT OPEN
DO NOT RESPOND
DO NOT RECORD AUDIO

Behind the fence, in the middle of the dirt lot, stood one orange metal storage door.

Just a door.

No walls around it.

No building.

No unit.

Three locks hung from the handle.

And from behind it, Carl’s voice whispered, “Daniel, don’t listen to me.”

I drove away.

That was three days ago.

Since then, I haven’t slept more than twenty minutes at a time. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back inside that room. Every dream lasts longer than the one before.

Tonight, I found something worse.

I checked my old work schedule from West Vale. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted proof that I wasn’t losing my mind.

There was one final shift listed under my name.

Tonight.

10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

I never agreed to it.

I never entered it.

But there it was.

And at 9:41 p.m., someone knocked on my apartment door.

Three times.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I looked through the peephole.

Nobody was there.

Then my phone buzzed.

Unknown Number.

I didn’t answer.

It went to voicemail.

I’m looking at it right now.

The transcription says:

“Daniel, this is Carl. You need to come back. You’re already inside.”

I don’t know what that means.

But I can hear someone crying in my closet.

And it sounds exactly like me.

The Tenant

I moved into apartment 8C six months ago.

The building was old, cheap, and quiet enough that I could ignore the constant smell of mildew in the stairwell.

The landlord only gave me one warning before handing over the keys.

>“Don’t bother the people in 8D.”

At the time, I didn’t think much of it.

But the strange thing was, apartment 8D was supposed to be empty.

The mailbox had no name.

No lights ever came on.

No packages showed up outside the door.

And according to another tenant, nobody had lived there since a man disappeared inside it three years ago.

The Window

The first time I saw him was during a thunderstorm.

I was making coffee around 2 in the morning when lightning lit up the courtyard outside my kitchen window.

That’s when I noticed a figure standing inside apartment 8D.

Perfectly still.

Watching me from across the courtyard.

I nearly dropped the mug.

The apartment had no electricity.

I knew that because every single window inside was dark except for the pale blue glow coming from somewhere deeper in the room.

The figure slowly raised one arm.

Then waved.

Three small motions.

Back and forth.

I stared for several seconds before forcing myself to wave back out of pure awkward instinct.

The figure immediately disappeared.

Not walked away.

Not stepped back.

Gone.

The Hallway

The next morning, I asked the landlord about it.

The second I mentioned apartment 8D, his expression changed.

“You saw someone in there?”

“Yeah. Tall guy. Thin. Maybe middle-aged.”

The landlord looked genuinely unsettled.

Then he asked me something strange.

>“Did he wave at you first?”

I nodded.

He muttered something under his breath and unlocked his office drawer.

From inside, he pulled out a faded photograph.

The picture showed four people standing in the lobby of the building sometime in the late 90s.

One of them was the man I saw in the window.

Tall.

Thin.

Long gray coat.

The landlord pointed at him with a shaking finger.

>“That’s Elias.”

“What happened to him?”

“He lived in 8D alone for fifteen years,” the landlord said quietly. “One night the neighbors heard screaming from his apartment.”

He swallowed hard before continuing.

“When the police forced the door open, the apartment was empty.”

“No blood. No signs of struggle. Nothing.”

Then he looked directly at me.

>“Except for the handprints on the inside of the windows.”

The Pattern

After that, I tried to ignore the apartment completely.

But every night at exactly 2:14 AM, the figure appeared again.

Always standing at the same window.

Always waving three times.

And every single time I looked away for even a second, he vanished.

I started sleeping with the blinds closed.

That only made things worse.

Because then the knocking started.

Three slow knocks against my front door every night at 2:14.

The first night it happened, I looked through the peephole.

Nobody was there.

But apartment 8D’s door across the hall was slightly open.

Just enough for darkness to spill into the hallway.

The Call

Two nights ago, I woke up to my phone ringing.

Unknown number.

I answered half asleep.

At first, there was only static.

Then a voice whispered:

>“Don’t wave back tonight.”

The call ended immediately after.

I checked the time.

2:13 AM.

One minute later, the knocking started.

Three slow knocks.

I stayed frozen in bed.

Another three knocks followed.

Then silence.

Against my better judgment, I walked to the peephole.

The hallway was empty again.

Except apartment 8D’s door was now wide open.

Inside, I could see pale blue light flickering from somewhere deep in the apartment.

And standing in the doorway was Elias.

Smiling at me.

Slowly raising his hand.

Waiting.

The Apartment

I should have stayed inside.

Instead, I opened my door.

The hallway instantly became freezing cold.

Elias backed into apartment 8D without taking his eyes off me.

The blue light pulsed softly from inside.

I stepped closer and looked past him.

The apartment was impossibly large.

Far larger than mine.

The hallway inside stretched much deeper than the building itself should allow.

And lining both walls were windows.

Hundreds of them.

Every single window had someone behind it.

Men.

Women.

Children.

All pale.

All silent.

All pressing their hands against the glass from the inside.

Then I realized something horrifying.

Some of them were waving at me too.

Three small motions.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Elias leaned close enough for me to smell damp earth on his clothes.

Then he whispered:

>“Now they know you can see them.”

The apartment door slammed shut behind me.

I started noticing the switch up with him around two months ago. To give a really short background I (27F) and my boyfriend (28M) have been dating for almost two years now. The relationship has been nothing short of great so far, and we've talked about proposing and getting married soon, as well as having kids.

But about two months ago, something changed. It started when we decided to go camping in New Mexico to do some stargazing and wilderness hiking.

I was initially against this idea, as I wasn't confident in my navigational and survival skills, and I was afraid that something bad might happen. My boyfriend was kind of a jerk and told me it was just my anxiety talking and I shouldn't give in to “womanly hysterics” (whatever the hell that meant), and that he was sure “we would have a great time”.

So the trip date comes around, and I begrudgingly make preparations to go. As we took the long drive out there, I actually became more excited about it, and my nerves faded away as I began to take in the surrounding desert scenery with curiosity.

We used a light pollution map tracker to find the most remote location we could and found a path off a set of dirt tracks to get to a general location we liked. Of course, we did NOT book anything or make reservations at any official camping sites, but my boyfriend insisted this would save us money and hassle, and most of the official campgrounds are full of people and noise and we wouldn't get the “maximum nighttime experience” as he had put it.

I found this a little strange, but this was my boyfriend so I trusted him nonetheless. Our car is not an offroader or jeep, but a typical sedan he fitted with offroad tires, so we had to be extra careful to not get stuck or lost anywhere, as we had no cell reception. The little care he seemed to have during all this was honestly off putting, but I had no reason to suspect anything unusual.

Anyways, we got to a nice, open spot in the desert, there were a few butte formations in the distance and some mountains on the horizon. The soil was mostly sandy and rocky, with scraggly knee-high bushes and weeds surrounding us. We pitched a tent and he went about setting up his telescope equipment while I prepared us something to eat.

The trip itself lasted 2 days and 2 nights, and nothing out of the ordinary happened until on the second and final night. After we finished stargazing around 1AM, we went to sleep in our tent. Sometime later I awoke to what I thought was a yowl or scream. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but then it happened again and this time I was fully conscious.

I went to wake my boyfriend up but he was already gone. I sat up terrified, thinking maybe something happened to him. All of the sudden the tent zipper began to slowly open from top to bottom. I froze, afraid to move. Then, quickly my boyfriend's head came in, then the rest of his body.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I asked him where the hell he went. He said he went to “take a leak”, and I asked about the scream. He shrugged and said it was probably a bobcat or something.

Then I saw the blood on his leg. As I got closer to take a look with the lantern I caught a whiff of him. He smelled horrible. Like a mix of iron and piss with something else I couldn't identify.

“What? Oh that, I must have cut myself on a thorny bush.” He said nonchalantly.

“Is that why you screamed?” I asked.

He gave me a puzzled look and said he didn't know what I was talking about, and I should just get some rest. The way his eyes shifted when he said this…it was almost like they were glassy, the way the light reflected off of them. It gave me the creeps. I asked if it was OK if I could sleep in the car for the rest of the night. He looked annoyed for some reason but didn't protest.

I woke up to the sun already out. My sleep curled up in the back of the sedan was uncomfortable to say the least, but at least I felt safer with the doors locked than outside in a tent.

My boyfriend was already sitting out on a lawn chair drinking a beer, and despite it being early morning, he had sunglasses over his eyes. I questioned why he wasn't packing our things, and he just gave me a dull look until I asked him if we still planned on leaving today. At which point he made some sort of exclamation and tossed his half drunk beer can into the brush.

I stood there with my mouth agape. My boyfriend never litters. Like, ever. As a matter of fact he occasionally talks about how much he hates people who litter, and that they are the worst people. I shockingly asked him if he seriously planned on leaving that there, and how I thought he hated littering. He just went “right” and picked it up and moved on like it was nothing.

When we left, it was like my boyfriend was behind the wheel for the first time. He was swerving and jerking the pedals for a while before we got a stable course and got out onto the highway. I asked him what he was doing and he said something about “the road being rough” or whatnot.

On the highway our car hit a huge coyote. Our car's exterior and front were badly damaged, and we both were banged up a bit, but I was mostly ok. I said we should call the hospital but my boyfriend gave me a wide-eyed look of terror like I’ve never seen him have, and firmly insisted that he was OK to drive and begged me not to call any authorities. He promised to get checked up at home if he was still hurting. I was still dazed from the situation so I just agreed and brushed it off. I wish, I wish, I wish, I had done something then, maybe something could’ve turned out differently…

At home he claimed to have gone to the urgent care, where they diagnosed him with some bruised and a cracked rib, and gave him some painkillers. The weird thing is that I didn't see any paperwork, invoices come in the mail or any receipt in our bank account for any medical expenses or evaluations, which I found really suspicious. I asked him about this and he just tried to shrug it off, and said not to worry about it, and that he threw away the doctor's reports. How convenient.

These weird occurrences kept on happening all throughout the week. It would honestly be too much to list them all. Many of them were so subtle that honestly, someone who hadn't known him very well would barely even notice these changes. But I did.

For example, my boyfriend NEVER stayed up late, but now it seems like he's barely sleeping at night. At times I wake up and just see him sitting on his side of the bed, staring at seemingly nothing. Other times I've woken up to him staring at me. Not like, looking or admiring, but in a pondering or examining sort of way, like a predator does with its prey.

One time I walked into the bathroom to see my boyfriend pulling at his skin on his neck. He looked pale and I could see his neck vertebrae shifting under his skin in an… almost unnatural way.

Speaking of the bathroom, my boyfriend's hygiene seems to be getting worse and worse. He always smells and his skin always seems slimey or oily or something. And like there's globlets of dead, dark grey skin on his neck, shoulders, back, etc. Like the kind you get if you don’t scrub your skin for a while and the dead skin builds up a layer that then scratches into a clump if you scrape your fingernails over it. I confronted him about all this, hoping he would clean himself up more, and he just gave excuses like “he works at a construction job, and the summer heat is making him sweat more” and yada yada.

I tried brushing it off that he's been stressed lately and hasn't had energy to get the grime off, but it just keeps getting worse. At this point I've started telling him to sleep on the couch because I'm starting to get scared. His hair seems to be falling out more rapidly and it has never looked worse and more unkempt, like a wild dogs’.

He's stopped being so kind and gentle, it’s like he’s forgotten the cute words we used for referring to each other, almost like he was replaced by someone who didn't have any memories of our past relations. In general he's becoming more and more antisocial, I never see him go out with his friends anymore. In turn I've tried to get out of the apartment more as I'm honestly nervous to be alone with him.

He talks very little, mostly with grunts and almost choppy English, like a parrot or a crow trying to speak.

This might be the worst one, it pains me to even write this. He forgot about our anniversary. Our two year anniversary. I was expecting him to propose to me, as he had been hinting at that the months prior and this was the most likely date he would choose. But he just…didn't remember. Like at all. I was waiting for the surprise all evening and when he said he was going to sleep.

I burst into tears and asked him if he had forgotten, to which he replied “what?”, confirming he DID in fact forget. I left to stay with a friend the rest of the night. I took off work the next day as a sickday, as I just felt awful. All of this has been so stressful on me and it’s taken a toll.

In the evening he came with tulips and a gift card. He knows I'm allergic to tulips. At that moment I felt so terrified. Who the hell was this in my house? This couldn't be my boyfriend, I just knew something was very, very wrong with him. If that’s the case, where is my REAL boyfriend?

This is where I began to suspect there was something more going on than just relationship problems. I searched up couples counseling online, and listed off a few of the things I've experienced with my boyfriend in Google.

After scrolling for a while I came across a reddit story talking about “skinwalkers”. The name piqued my interest and I began to dig, reading stories and comments for hours about their behavior, nature, etc.

With every post and new piece of information the puzzle began to click in my mind, and I began to grow increasingly sick.

The next few days I scoured the internet for information on skinwalkers and similar doppelganger entities. Surely they couldn't be real however? I really, really wanted to believe it was all just in my head, but I just couldn't keep disregarding the increasingly bizarre behavior

I started keeping tabs on his daily routine, his habit changes, incidents, the things he said, into a diary. Down to the littlest things. Like how I caught him writing with his right hand. Before he was sort of ambidextrous, but always preferred to write with his left hand.

That's when the dead animals began to show up. At first it was the carcass of a dead squirrel outside the door. It looked mangled and bloody. I thought maybe the neighbor's cat dragged it up and had my boyfriend clean it up, who did so reluctantly.

I found a dead rat in the kitchen trashcan. Also mangled like the squirrel, but it looked to be partially consumed. I didn't even bother asking my boyfriend for an explanation, I was just afraid I might trigger him to attack me before I could defend myself.

Then a few days later another rat on the porch. I went to the duplex neighbor to complain in case it was their cat, and they apologized and said they'll keep an eye on their cat more closely. But I couldn't help but suspect my boyfriend at this point.

Then it was the cat. The neighbor's cat was lying in front of our porch when I got up to check the mail one morning. It appeared to be gutted and all its entrails were scattered about the concrete steps. A few crows were pecking at its flesh, meaning it had been there all night. My boyfriend had left the bed early in the night to “take a leak” as he said plainly, but was gone for at least 20 minutes.

I gagged and ran back inside crying. What kind of sick person does that? I just knew it had to be my boyfriend. No, not my boyfriend, whatever the hell was wearing my boyfriend's skin.

The neighbors called the cops, who told her it was a known group of “troubled kids” down the block pulling a prank, and asked if they would like to press charges. I don't even think the cops believed themselves to be honest…

My neighbor was also suspicious. She asked why her cat would be gutted in front of my half of the porch, and how it's “not the first time a dead animal has shown up on the porch”. The cops did question us, but they couldn't prove anything, and I couldn't tell them I suspected my boyfriend of being a skinwalker, what would they think? They would think I'm the crazy person and assume I've been the one killing animals and leaving them out on my own porch.

After the police incident, the dead animals stopped showing up on my porch.

My friends began to get concerned over me. They said I looked like a mess, and asked what was going on. I just told them relationship problems and that I wasn't interested in talking about it. I think I've barely slept in days, I'm constantly crying and stressed out, wondering where my loving boyfriend went and what the hell this thing wearing his skin was.

Sometimes at night, I hear what I think is a rapping or scratching at the window. I'm too terrified to look. I'm terrified that a skinwalker is going to kill me and take my identity. I'm terrified my boyfriend is going to kill me.

This all came to a head last night. The evening was the same as the previous few. I got home from work, ate a snack, and he got home from his job. I went to the bedroom to cower and scroll social media, and he went to the living room to do who knows what?

I feel exhausted, emotionally and physically and around 11PM I turn the light off to cry myself to sleep. Maybe 30 minutes later I'm jolted awake as the door slowly creaks open and he enters my room. He hasn't done this in over a month. I know tonight's the night.

But I am not prepared for what happens next. It's totally naked, almost hunched over, climbs into bed on top of me.

I freeze from panic, not sure what to do, just trying to hold my breath and hope he doesn't do anything. That's when it grabs me by the shoulder and I scream. I punch it in the throat and throw it off me.

It falls onto the floor and makes a sickening wheezing sound like that of an angry elk. I quickly use the moment to pull the knife out of my desk drawer I have kept for this moment and aim it at it.

It stood up and its face went pale. The skinwalkers' shifty, beady eyes look at me in fright now, like a cornered animal with nowhere to go.

I don't remember exactly what was exchanged next, it all happened so fast.

I remember it pleading with me. Begging me to remember, saying it was my “boyfriend”. That it wasn't trying to kill me, it just wanted to have intimacy with me. It said I was crazy, and that I was making a big mistake.

But it was too late. It had already blown its cover and there was nothing it could do to convince me otherwise. My boyfriend was gone, and this thing was going to pay for what it did to him.

I lunged. Stabbed. I don't remember how many times. There was so much blood. It squirmed and fought back. It was strong, but eventually it gave out. I remember gutting it like it had done to the neighbor's cat. It would pay for what it did.

I remember cutting its skin off in a flap.

I remember cutting its skin off…in a flap…off its body…attached to the muscles underneath...

I dug around in his organs and under his skin, expecting to see something underneath. But there was nothing. There was…just him. It was just his normal body.

I took a step back as the adrenaline wore off and I vomited. I had just killed my boyfriend. It… it was just my hysterics all along. There was no skinwalker, he didn't get replaced. It was him. My boyfriend the whole time.

I actually killed my boyfriend.

I thought my boyfriend was a skinwalker.

I have been a social worker for nearly two decades, so I of all people, know that when most people think about my profession, they usually imagine mountains of administrative paperwork, organizing food assistance programs, or navigating the incredibly complex foster care system. While those duties certainly make up a large portion of my daily routine, there is another side to the job that rarely gets discussed outside of our office walls. We are often the last remaining line of defense for the forgotten members of society, so as you can see, are the individuals dispatched to knock on doors when someone stops opening their mail, stops answering their telephone, and simply fades away from the public eye.

Over the years, I have seen things behind closed doors that entirely shattered my understanding of the world. I have kept quiet about these specific cases for a long time, primarily because I feared losing my professional license or being forced into a mandatory psychiatric evaluation by my supervisors. But I am getting older now, and the memories are starting to weigh significantly on my conscience, so I decided it is finally time to document and share the stories of the weird cases I dealt with during my career. And that what brings me here, as I want to start with an assignment from many years ago involving a routine welfare check on an elderly woman.

The assignment originated on a Tuesday morning. My supervisor handed me a manila folder containing a very thin case file. The file belonged to an eighty-two-year-old woman who lived alone. On paper, everything about her situation appeared completely normal. Her utility bills were paid on time through an automated bank system, her pension was actively deposited, and her property taxes were entirely up to date. The only red flag, and the reason the file landed on my desk, was that no one had actually seen her in a very long time.

She had ignored the previous routine wellness checks from our department, she did not answer the door when the previous workers knocked, and her telephone simply rang endlessly when we tried to call, so as you can see, my job was simple in theory: drive to her property, make contact, assess her living conditions, and determine if she needed to be moved into a state-assisted living facility.

Her property was located in the middle of a very affluent, highly manicured neighborhood on the edge of the city. The area was famous among city workers for one specific characteristic. It was a neighborhood where absolute apathy was the community standard. The residents there valued their privacy to a fault, cultivating a culture where nobody ever looked over their fences, and of course nobody cared what happened to the people living right next door. You could collapse on your front lawn in this neighborhood, and the passing cars would simply drive around you to avoid getting involved.

I parked my car along the curb. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon. The street was lined with massive oak trees and perfectly trimmed hedges. I walked up the driveway toward the elderly woman's house. The property stood out immediately, because it felt entirely lifeless. The lawn had grown completely out of control, the bushes were overgrown and tangled, and a massive pile of circulars and junk mail covered the front porch.

Before approaching the door, I noticed a man washing his expensive car in the driveway right next door. I walked over to the property line, holding my identification badge clearly in my hand.

"Excuse me, sir,"

I called out, keeping my tone polite and professional.

"I am a social worker with the county. I am trying to check on your neighbor. Have you seen the elderly woman who lives in this house recently?"

The man did not bother to turn off his hose. He barely glanced in my direction, keeping his eyes focused on the soapy water running down his windshield.

"I mind my own business,"

he replied dismissively.

"I have not seen anyone come out of that house since last autumn. "

"Has anyone come to visit her?"

I pressed, trying to gather any useful context.

"Family members, grocery deliveries, anything at all?"

"I said I mind my own business,"

the man repeated, turning his back to me entirely.

"If she is dead in there, call the police. Do not bother me with it."

I thanked him for his time, realizing I would get no help from the surrounding community. I walked back over to the property and stepped onto the front porch.

As I stood on the porch, I noticed something deeply unsettling about the house. The large picture window facing the street was completely opaque. I stepped closer to examine the glass. Every single pane of the window had been meticulously covered from the inside with thick layers of newspaper and dark construction paper. Someone had used thick strips of duct tape to seal the edges of the paper directly against the window frame, ensuring that not a single sliver of sunlight could penetrate the glass. I stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house, checking the secondary windows. They were all identical. Every window on the ground floor was aggressively sealed against the outside world.

I returned to the front door, feeling a distinct sense of unease settling into my stomach, then I noticed that the glass panels on the front door were also blacked out with taped paper. I raised my fist and knocked loudly on the solid wood frame.

"County social services,"

I announced.

"I am here to conduct a mandatory wellness check. Please come to the door."

I waited for a full minute, listening intently to the silence of the neighborhood. I knocked again, much harder this time.

"If anyone is inside, you need to answer the door,"

I stated firmly.

"If I cannot verify the safety of the resident, I am legally obligated to contact law enforcement to force entry into the premises."

A few seconds later, I heard the faint sound of footsteps moving softly across the hardwood floor inside. The footsteps stopped right behind the front door, then I heard the metallic click of a deadbolt sliding back, followed by the rattle of a brass security chain engaging. The door opened just a few inches, stopped by the tension of the chain.

The interior of the house was entirely pitch black. I could not see anything through the narrow gap, but a wave of stagnant, freezing air drifted out onto the porch.

"Who are you?"

a voice asked from the darkness.

The voice did not belong to an eighty-two-year-old woman. It was the voice of a very young woman. The tone was smooth, and calm.

"I am a county social worker,"

I explained, holding my badge up to the narrow gap so she could see it.

"I have been assigned to check on the elderly resident of this address. The county has not been able to reach her for several months. Can you tell me who you are?"

"I am her granddaughter,"

the young woman replied smoothly from the shadows. "You do not need to worry about her. I moved in a few months ago to take care of her full-time. She is perfectly fine. You can close the case and go back to your office."

"I appreciate that you are caring for her, but I cannot just leave,"

I said, maintaining a calm but authoritative stance. "Agency protocol dictates that I must make visual contact with the primary resident to confirm her living conditions and her cognitive state. I need you to unchain the door and allow me inside for five minutes."

"I cannot do that,"

the young woman answered immediately.

"My grandmother is resting right now. She had a difficult night, and she finally fell asleep. I am not going to wake her up for a government inspection."

"I do not need to wake her up or interview her,"

I countered, leaning slightly closer to the gap.

"I simply need to step inside, see her breathing in her bed, and verify that she has access to food, running water, and proper medication. If you refuse to let me verify her safety, I will have to sit on this porch and call the police. They will break the door off its hinges, and that will be incredibly distressing for your grandmother."

There was a long, tense pause from the other side of the door. I could hear her breathing softly in the dark.

"I cannot open the door entirely,"

she finally said, her voice dropping to a lower, more cautious register.

"I suffer from a severe medical condition. It is an extreme allergy to ultraviolet light. If the sunlight hits my skin, I will experience severe blistering and respiratory distress. That is why the windows are covered. If you want to come inside, you must promise to slip through the gap quickly and close the door immediately behind you so the sun does not touch me."

"I understand,"

I assured her, despite finding the explanation highly unusual.

"I will be very quick. Just undo the chain."

The door closed for a fraction of a second, the metal chain rattled as it was unhooked, and then the door swung open just enough for me to pass through. I stepped over the threshold into the freezing darkness of the house. True to my word, I reached back and pushed the front door shut until the deadbolt clicked into place.

The moment the door closed, the darkness became absolute. My eyes struggled to adjust after being in the bright afternoon sun. The ambient temperature inside the house was easily twenty degrees colder than the weather outside.

"Thank you for being careful,"

the young woman said. She was standing a few feet away from me in the entryway. As my eyes slowly adapted to the gloom, I could make out her silhouette. She was wearing a long, dark dress that covered her entirely from her neck down to her ankles. Her face was obscured by the shadows, but I could tell she was standing perfectly still, her posture unnervingly rigid.

"Thank you for cooperating,"

I replied, pulling a small flashlight from my jacket pocket. I clicked it on, aiming the beam at the floor to avoid blinding her, but allowing the ambient light to illuminate the space.

The house was in a state of profound neglect. The walls were covered in faded, peeling wallpaper. The furniture in the living room was draped with old, dusty plastic sheets. Stacks of hoarded newspapers and cardboard boxes lined the hallways, creating narrow, claustrophobic pathways through the home.

"Where is your grandmother resting?"

I asked, keeping my flashlight pointed downward as I navigated the clutter.

"She is in the back bedroom,"

the young woman answered, her voice echoing slightly in the empty living room. She stepped into my path, attempting to block the hallway.

"But like I said, she is sleeping. Perhaps we could sit in the kitchen first? I can make you a cup of tea, and we can discuss her medical paperwork. I have all her prescriptions organized in a binder."

"I am not here to review paperwork right now,"

I stated firmly, recognizing the classic stalling tactics people use when they are hiding something from social services.

"The visual confirmation is my only priority. Please step aside and lead me to the bedroom. This will only take a moment."

She hesitated, her silhouette shifting uncomfortably in the dark hallway.

"She really does not like strangers in her personal space,"

the young woman insisted.

"She gets very confused and agitated."

"I deal with agitated clients every single day,"

I said, stepping around her and walking deliberately down the dark corridor.

"Which room is it?"

"The last door on the left,"

she muttered, following closely behind me. I could hear her bare feet moving silently across the hardwood floor.

I aimed my flashlight into the bedroom. The room was meticulously organized, but it was completely empty. The bed was unmade, the heavy quilts tangled and pushed to one side, but there was absolutely no sign of an eighty-two-year-old woman resting. I shined my beam across the nightstand. It was entirely bare—no pill bottles, no water glass, no reading glasses, none of the basic medical necessities you would expect for a senior citizen requiring full-time care. I stepped over to the mattress and placed my bare hand firmly against the exposed sheets. The fabric was freezing cold. It was immediately obvious that nobody had been sleeping in that bed recently.

I turned around to face the young woman. She was standing in the doorway, her face still cloaked in the shadows of the hall.

"Your grandmother is not in her bed,"

I said, dropping my professional courtesy and adopting a much more stern, demanding tone.

"Where is she? If you lie to me again, I am calling the authorities immediately."

"She must have gotten up while I was talking to you at the front door,"

the young woman replied calmly, completely unfazed by my threat.

"She wanders around the house sometimes. Let us check the kitchen."

I did not trust a single word she was saying. I gripped my flashlight tightly and pushed past her, walking toward the back of the house where the kitchen and utility rooms were located.

I entered the kitchen. The refrigerator was unplugged, its door hanging open, completely empty except for a thick layer of black mold. I walked past the kitchen island and noticed a partially open door leading into what looked like a laundry room.

I pushed the laundry room door open and stepped inside, sweeping my flashlight beam across the floor.

My breath caught in my throat, and my stomach aggressively churned at the sight before me. Piled haphazardly in the corner of the room, between a rusted washing machine and a utility sink, were the bodies of dozens of animals. There were stray cats, several small dogs, and a few raccoons.

The animals looked entirely desiccated. Their bodies were flattened, completely drained of all fluids, resembling dry, hollow husks covered in fur. I stepped closer, shining the intense beam of light directly onto the closest carcass. There were distinct, brutal puncture wounds on the animal's neck, but there was no blood pooled on the floor around the bodies.

I backed out of the laundry room quickly, my mind racing to process the horrific scene. I bumped into the wall of the hallway and turned instinctively into the adjacent room, which happened to be the primary bathroom. I tried to flick the light switch on the wall, but the power was dead. I raised my flashlight to illuminate the space, intending to check behind the shower curtain, but the beam caught the reflection of the large vanity mirror above the sink.

I froze completely.

Written across the dusty surface of the bathroom mirror, in thick, dark, dried blood, was a deeply disturbing message.

“I am no longer sick. I am finally young again.”

I stood in the dark bathroom, reading the bloody words over and over again. My brain frantically attempted to connect the pieces of the puzzle. The grandmother who had not been seen in months. The young woman claiming to be the granddaughter. The completely empty, dusty bed. The drained, bloodless animals piled in the utility room. The desperate message written on the glass.

But the timeline did not make any sense. If the granddaughter had moved in months ago to care for the old woman, why was the house completely dead? Why was there no food, no electricity, and no sign of anyone other than the young woman herself?

"I told you she was resting,"

a voice whispered from the doorway behind me.

I spun around rapidly, aiming the beam of my flashlight directly at the bathroom door.

The young woman was standing there, blocking the only exit. But her demeanor had entirely changed. The smooth, calm cadence of her voice was gone. When she spoke now, her voice carried the exhausted, raspy, resentful tone of someone who had suffered through decades of immense pain.

"I was trapped in this house for years,"

she said, taking a slow step into the bathroom.

"My joints were failing. My lungs were filling with fluid. Every single morning was an exercise in agony. I could not walk to the mailbox, or even cook for myself. I screamed for help, but nobody in this miserable neighborhood ever cared. The people next door ignored me. The state ignored me. You social workers never came when I actually needed you. You left me here to rot in the dark."

"Where is the old woman?"

I demanded, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to remain steady. I kept the light pointed at her torso, slowly reaching into my pocket for my phone.

"I just told you,"

she hissed, taking another step forward. She stepped fully into the ambient glow of the flashlight bouncing off the bathroom tiles.

I finally saw her face clearly.

She looked like a woman in her early twenties, but her skin was flawlessly pale, looking almost like polished marble. However, it was her eyes that made my blood run entirely cold. Her eyes were completely inhuman. The sclera was a sickly, vibrant yellow, reflecting the light exactly like a nocturnal predator.

"Someone finally visited me,"

the woman continued, her yellow eyes locked onto my face. A deeply menacing, manic smile stretched across her pale cheeks.

"A shadow came through the basement window during the coldest night of the winter. He found me dying in my bed. He saw how abandoned I was, how pathetic my existence had become. And he offered me a trade. He gave me the ultimate grace."

She raised her hands, displaying long, sharpened fingernails that looked more like dark, hardened claws.

"He took away the sickness,"

she whispered, her voice vibrating with an unnatural resonance.

"He took away the weakness. He made me finally young again. All I have to do to keep the pain away is drink. The stray animals were enough at first, to sustain the youth. But the thirst is getting worse. I am so terribly hungry today."

She lunged at me with a speed that was impossible for a human to achieve.

She crossed the distance of the bathroom in a fraction of a second. I barely had time to react. I swung flashlight in my hand as hard as I could, aiming directly for her face.

The solid casing collided violently with her jaw. The impact produced a sickening crack that echoed in the small room. The force of the blow derailed her momentum, sending her crashing into the bathtub and tearing the shower curtain down with her.

I bolted out of the bathroom, sprinting down the pitch-black hallway toward the front of the house. I could hear her scrambling out of the bathtub behind me, her claws tearing frantically against the floor. She was recovering far too quickly.

I pushed through the hoarded stacks of cardboard boxes in the living room, my legs burning with adrenaline. I could hear her snarling, a guttural, animalistic sound that reverberated through the dark house. I reached the entryway and threw my hands against the front door, frantically grasping for the brass deadbolt in the darkness.

Before I could turn the lock, I felt her fingers clamp onto the fabric of my jacket.

Her grip possessed an overwhelming force. She yanked me backward violently, throwing me onto the floor under a window. I scrambled onto my back, kicking out wildly with my boots. She crawled over my legs, pinning me down, her yellow eyes glowing in the dark, her jaw hanging at a strange, broken angle from where I had struck her. She opened her mouth, revealing rows of elongated, razor-sharp teeth, and lunged toward my throat.

In a moment of desperate clarity, I remembered the excuse she had given me at the door.

I stopped trying to push her away. Instead, I reached my arm entirely over my head, stretching my hand toward the window above us. My fingers found the edge of the thick duct tape holding the dark paper in place.

I grabbed the paper and ripped it downward with every ounce of strength I had left.

The layers tore away from the glass. The intense, brilliant light of the afternoon sun blasted through the window, flooding the dark entryway with direct sunlight.

The beam of sunlight struck the woman directly across her back and the side of her face.

The reaction was instantaneous and horrific. The moment the light touched her pale skin, she released a deafening, piercing shriek of pure agony. Her skin began to rapidly blister, turning a sickening shade of charred black while thick, foul-smelling smoke poured from her flesh. It sounded like raw meat being thrown onto a scorching iron grill.

She released my jacket immediately, scrambling backward off my body and throwing her arms over her burning face. She threw herself into the shadows of the living room, retreating away from the lethal sunlight, screaming and thrashing against the hoarded boxes.

I did not hesitate for a single second. I ran to the front door, twisted the deadbolt, pulled the front door open, and threw myself out onto the sunlit porch. I slammed the door shut behind me, ran down the driveway, and threw myself into my county vehicle. I locked the car doors, jammed the key into the ignition, and sped away from the affluent neighborhood as fast as the engine would allow.

I drove for several miles before I pulled over into a shopping center parking lot to catch my breath and attempt to process what had just occurred.

I did not call the police, or even report the attack to my agency. If I told my supervisors that an eighty-two-year-old woman had been transformed into a vampire creature, my career would have been terminated immediately, and I would have been institutionalized. Instead, I returned to the office, filed the paperwork, and officially reported the house as abandoned. I stated that the resident had likely moved out of state without notifying the county, and the case was quietly closed and filed away into the archives.

I officially closed the case, but exactly one month later, I could not stop myself from driving back to that neighborhood. I parked across the street and looked at the property. The house was completely abandoned. The dark paper had been ripped away from the windows, the overgrown bushes were dying, and the driveway was entirely empty. I do not know where she went. I have no idea what new city or neighborhood she vanished into. But as I sat in my car staring at the vacant home, a deep, cold certainty settled into my stomach. I felt it in my bones. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will meet her again someday.

There are some friends who go out to travel to a small, remote town. They have fun there and joke about ghosts. At night, they leave the town. On the way, they stop on a bridge for a while to enjoy the weather. Then they get back into the car. At that time, there are seven people in the car. Their names are Shiv, Rohit, Dristhi, Muskan, Priyanka, Naval, and Yash.

After they start driving, Priyanka notices something strange. She remembers that when they came to the town in the morning and were having fun, they were only six people. They were never seven.

She tells everyone about it. Then everyone starts thinking and realizes that she is right. They had actually come as only six friends, but now there are seven people in the car.

They all look at each other. They know that they came as six people, but they don't know who the seventh member is.

The most terrifying part is that whoever they look at, it feels like that person came with them in the morning and has always been their friend.

No one looks like a stranger.

No one feels out of place.

So now... how will they find out who the seventh member really is?

Yes, that does sound very cliche but I don’t care. It’s true.

I’ve been on the job for about 12 years. I’ve been patrolling this town for about 3 of those years. I’m not going to say where the town is because I do not want to face any backlash from the higher ups. The department has “opinions” on what gets talked about. Just know that this town is a place where everyone knows everyone. If anything interesting happens expect everyone to have heard about it in 20 or so minutes.

When I first started working in this town, I treated it like every other place I’ve worked at. I was friendly but stern when I needed to be. I wanted to make everyone feel safe and like they could reach out to me if they needed. That would have been fine if this place was normal and as you could have guessed, it’s not. Things happen here that if they were to happen anywhere else it would be all over the news and internet. Everything here is kept in house, for the most part. Occasionally we do get help from a nearby church and psychic but those are stories for another day when I have A LOT more time. For now I’ll just touch on a few of the weird happenings that occur here.

I guess I’ll start from when I first got transferred here. Oh yeah, coming here was not my decision. It was kind of a “voluntold” situation. It was strongly suggested that I come here because of how I handled chaotic situations in the past. I was under the impression this was a step in the right direction for my career. A way to get in the bosses good graces. That was my first of many wrong assumptions when it came to this town.

Wanna hear about my first day? Of course you do, you wouldn’t have gotten this far otherwise. I was excited about the change in scenery. It was a fresh start for me, so when I strolled into the precinct that first night, I had my head high and a smile plastered across my face. The first thing I noticed was how oddly quiet it was. There was no desk officer sitting behind the desk and the Sergeant’s office door was closed. I awkwardly made my way to the locker room to put on my freshly pressed uniform. It was there that I had my first interaction with someone who works here. For story purposes we shall call him Officer Brad. Actually no. Steve. We will call him Steve.

Steve was an older cop, he was what we like to call “A salty vet”. He would get bothered real easily over nonsense. He had just finished putting on his gun belt as I was walking in. Trying to make a good impression I went up to introduce myself.

“Hey, how’s it going? I’m Chris just uh, just transferred in. It’s my first shift”

Steve looked at me with zero expression on his face. I’m talking not even an eyebrow raise. After what felt like 30 seconds he finally responded.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Well off to a great start, I thought.

“Ha, yeah. How is it here? Anything I should be aware of?”

“Yes, lots of things you should familiarize yourself with.”

I was waiting for the second half of that sentence. Hoping he would tell me what to get familiar with exactly. Instead he just kind of brushed past me and walked out.

I figured he was just counting down the days to retirement and chalked up him being an asshole to that.

After finding my locker and putting on my uniform I headed back toward the desk to try and locate my patrol car keys. To my surprise there was still no one seated behind the desk. Everyplace that I’ve worked at, it was mandatory to always have someone behind the desk. You needed someone to dispatch, receive calls, or handle walk-ins. But here I was standing alone at the desk. I figured I would try and find the Sergeant. As I approached the office I noticed something that wasn’t there before. There was a note taped to the door.

“Keys in visor, car parked out back.”

“Alright…” I said to myself.

I headed toward the back door expecting to run into some more cops at the very least but it was like no one else was in the building. When I reached the patrol car I was let down to say the least. The car was in horrible shape. Dents on the body and scratches on the window. Guess that’s what you get when you work in a small town. I thought. I opened the door and sure as shit the keys were in the visor. I put the keys in the ignition and the engine coughed to life. I turned on the car radio and pulled out to the road to start my first shift.

Before I continue with details from my first shift I want you to understand how strange this all was. Normally when you start your shift there is a roll call. Think of it as attendance in school. Basically a way to make sure you are there. There is also post assignments that are supposed to be given out. None of this happened. Not only did none of that happen but when I say no one else was in the building, I mean no one. Not just desk officers or supervisors. I’m talking no other cops besides Salty Steve, not even a cleaning crew. Once I had my keys I really just wanted to leave that building.

Night one was pretty quiet for the first half. Not a single call. I actually thought my radio was off or broken with how quiet it was. I even tried keying up the radio just to make sure it worked and it gave an audible beep which let me know it was in fact working.

I was about 3 hours into my shift when I heard the radio go off.

“Unit 1 on the air?”

I didn’t answer because I had no idea what my post designation was. I thought maybe it might be somebody else.

“Unit 1, come up on the air.”

Radio silence.

“Chris…”

I wasn’t expecting that. No one has ever dispatched me by my first name it was always Officer (insert last name) or my post. I fumbled the microphone and responded.

“Go for unit 1?”

“Yeah, thats you. Got a job for ya.”

“Copy, go with it.”

“Head over about 2 blocks. You’ll see a blue house with its porch light on. A man will be waiting outside for you. He called 911 stating his wife isn’t feeling well. EMS is about 5 minutes out. Check and advise once you’re on scene.”

“Roger, show me responding.”

I arrived on scene 5 minutes after dispatch sent me. There was a man standing outside of a blue house flagging me down. I put the car in park and walked over to the house.

“Evening, Officers. Thank you for your timely response.”

“Sure thing, what’s going on?”

“It’s my wife she’s sick. It started out as a cold but it’s gotten a bit worse.”

Oh great let me be her hero and grab her a tissue box.

“I see, is there anything else? Is she throwing up? Anything that requires immediate attention?”

“Nope, just that Officers. Just not feeling well but I would really appreciate if you could go and check on her.”

Alright the first time I brushed it off. Why was he saying “Officers.” It was only me, no one else was on scene.

“She’s right inside, bedroom is the first door on the right.”

The lights in the house were on, but dim. Before i stepped inside I radioed over to dispatch.

“Unit 1 to dispatch, I’m on scene. Gentleman is stating his wife isn’t feeling well. I’m gonna step inside and make sure she’s okay while I wait for EMS.”

No response from dispatch.

I took a cautious step inside and headed for the bedroom. As I approached the door I felt the husband walking slowly behind me. I stepped to the side.

“Why don’t you lead the way, you know your house better than me.”

“Surely!”

He stepped in front of me and reached for the door handle.

“Fair warning, she’s a bit tired. She hasn’t been able to get much sleep with this damn cold.”

“Got it…” I responded.

As the door opened I could see the bed was disheveled. The blankets were thrown about and the pillows were on the floor. With that being said I didn’t see this sick woman. All I saw was an empty bed. As I stepped into the room I was immediately working up a sweat. The bedroom was so unbelievably hot. It was like stepping into a sauna. I asked him where his wife was and before he could answer I heard someone behind the door.

“I’m right here silly…”

I jumped out of my skin not expecting a “sickly” woman to be on her feet hiding behind a door.

“Jesus! What the hell are you doing?!”

She frowned “I can’t sleep!” She responded in a child like voice.

“Okay ma’am, I’m going to need you to sit down on the bed. EMS is coming to evaluate you and help you out.”

“Oh let’s play a game! Up for some hide and seek?!”

What the hell was going on? This woman who was supposed to be sick was not only standing up but pacing around her room. All while her husband stood idly by just smiling.

“I’ll hide first and you have to find me!” The woman said. Her eyes were open as wide as I have ever seen.

“Oh, she’s really good at this game! She always picks the best spots, you guys could never find her!”

What the fuck was happening. This had to be some sort of new guy hazing. It had to be. Either that or these people were out of their fucking minds.

The woman sprinted out of her room giggling and screaming “You’ll never find me!!!”

“Go on Officers, find her…before she finds you. she HATES when you don’t play the game right.”

Yup, nope, I got the fuck out of there. I 100% ran back to my car and radioed dispatch to send another unit. Just as I had finished my transmission EMS pulled up.

“Do not go in there! This woman is batshit crazy!”

EMS just stared at me.

“You’re new here huh?”

“What? Yes, well no. New here, not new to the job. It doesn’t matter I know fucking crazy when I see it.”

“Nah they do this. We will give her a tranq and this won’t happen for another week or two.”

And with that EMS entered the house and I sat there in shock. Sure enough a few minutes later they were back outside and heading back into their truck.

“You’ll get used to it. A lot of weird shit happens around here just understand that this was a tame incident.”

“Uh, uh, yeah yeah got it, thanks”

“See ya Chris.”

That was the first night of my time here. As you could imagine I definitely have some more stories. If you’re interested I’d be happy to share some more.

I work security for a pharmaceutical warehouse on the outskirts of the city. It’s one of those brutalist, windowless concrete boxes that feels like a tomb during the day and a nightmare at night.

The pay is ridiculous, which should have been my first red flag. When they hired me, the head of security, a guy who looked like he hadn't slept since the nineties, gave me a single, non-negotiable instruction:

The CCTV system is old and flickers. If you see movement in the aisles on the monitors, ignore it. If you hear a thud in the warehouse, lock your office door and put your noise-canceling headphones on. Do not under any circumstances look directly at the screen when the image distorts.

I laughed it off. I’m a rational guy. I figured it was just to keep us from staring at shadows and hallucinating because of the isolation.

For three months, it was boring. Just me, a lukewarm thermos of coffee, and the hum of the servers. Until last Tuesday.

It was 3:14 AM. I was reading a book when the monitor wall flickered. It wasn't the usual static; it was a rhythmic, high-pitched screeching that made my teeth ache. I instinctively looked up.

The main aisle, Aisle 4, was displayed on the center screen. The camera feed had inverted colors, like a negative film. In the middle of the empty, sterile concrete floor, there was a man. But he wasn't standing. He was folded. Like, physically impossible origami-style, his limbs bent at joints that don't exist. He was twitching in perfect time with the screeching sound.

I should have looked away. I should have put my headphones on. But I was paralyzed.

Then, the man on the screen stopped twitching. Slowly, painfully slowly, his head rotated 180 degrees. He wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking at the camera's lens.

On the screen, his mouth opened. It didn't open like a human mouth; it unhinged, stretching wider than his own face, revealing a black, wet abyss. And then, he pointed a long, grey finger directly at the glass of my monitor.

My office door handle rattled.

It wasn't a "someone is checking the door" rattle. It was violent, rhythmic, and heavy. Bang. Bang. Bang. Exactly the same rhythm as the twitching.

I realized then that I wasn't just watching a video feed. I was watching a live broadcast of what was happening right outside my door.

I threw my headphones on, but I could still feel the vibrations through the floorboards. I huddled under my desk, eyes squeezed shut, praying for the sun to come up. I stayed there for four hours.

When the morning crew arrived, they found me curled in a ball. The office was empty. The door was locked from the inside, exactly how I’d left it.

I quit on the spot. I didn't even ask for my final paycheck. But that’s not why I’m posting this.

I’m sitting in my apartment now, three days later. I’m trying to move on. But last night, I heard a sound coming from my own hallway. It was the same high-pitched screeching sound from the warehouse, coming through the vent.

And when I walked past my darkened TV screen to go to the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection. For a split second, my reflection wasn't moving. It was standing there, staring at me, with its jaw hanging wide open.

I’m not turning on the lights tonight. I don't think it matters if I do.

What is the one rule you've been told at a job that you definitely shouldn't have broken?

I was halfway through boarding my flight when every phone in the terminal buzzed at the exact same moment.

Not one or two phones.

Every. Single. Phone.

The announcement wasn't from the airline.

It wasn't from airport security.

It was just one sentence.

"Remain inside the terminal. Do NOT board any aircraft."

Everyone looked around, confused.

Some people laughed, assuming it was a technical glitch.

Then every departure screen went black.

For five long seconds.

When they came back on, every destination had disappeared.

Only one message remained.

🔐ALL GATES LOCKED🔐

A murmur spread across the terminal.

Parents pulled their children closer.

Business travelers argued with airline staff.

Airport employees looked just as terrified as the passengers.

One gate agent tried opening the boarding door.

It wouldn't move.

Another employee swiped her access card.

❌ ACCESS DENIED ❌

That was impossible.

Even she looked shocked.

Moments later, a pilot walked into the terminal.

His face had gone completely pale.

Someone shouted, "What's happening?"

He ignored the question.

Instead, he grabbed the nearest airport phone and yelled,

"Lock every emergency exit. Right now!"

Those words changed everything.

Within seconds, heavy steel security doors slammed shut throughout the airport.

The sound echoed through the terminal like thunder.

People began screaming.

Some rushed toward the exits.

They were already sealed.

No one could leave.

No one could enter.

The airport had become a prison.

Then the first ambulance arrived.

But it didn't stop outside the terminal.

It drove straight onto the runway.

Behind it came military trucks.

Then armored vehicles.

None of them came toward us.

They surrounded one aircraft parked far from the terminal.

It had landed only fifteen minutes earlier.

No passengers had been allowed to disembark.

Everyone pressed against the windows, trying to see.

The aircraft door finally opened.

No one stepped out.

For nearly a minute, nothing happened.

Then...

A flight attendant stumbled onto the stairs.

Her uniform was covered in blood.

She wasn't running.

She wasn't asking for help.

She simply stood there, staring toward the terminal.

Completely motionless.

A soldier raised a loudspeaker.

"Ma'am... stay where you are."

She didn't respond.

Then she slowly turned her head.

Not toward the soldiers.

Toward us.

Even from hundreds of feet away, something felt horribly wrong.

She smiled.

It wasn't relief.

It wasn't happiness.

It was... empty.

Then dozens of passengers suddenly rushed out of the aircraft behind her.

Not running.

Not screaming.

Charging.

The soldiers opened fire.

The terminal erupted into panic.

People dropped to the floor.

Children cried.

Suitcases rolled across the polished floor as crowds stampeded in every direction, only to discover every exit was still locked.

Someone pounded on the glass doors.

Another tried breaking a window with a fire extinguisher.

Nothing worked.

Over the loudspeakers came one final announcement.

This time, the voice was shaking.

"Attention all passengers... the airport has been placed under full biological containment. The gates are locked to protect the outside population."

Silence swept through the terminal.

We weren't trapped to keep something out.

We were trapped...

...to keep something in.

Then a man beside me began coughing.

At first it sounded harmless.

Just a dry cough.

People stepped away anyway.

He wiped his mouth.

His hand came back covered in blood.

He looked at it for a second.

Then he slowly looked up.

His eyes weren't the same anymore.

And that's when the people closest to him started screaming.

I never made it onto my flight.

Sometimes I still wonder what would have happened if those gates had opened.

Would I have escaped?

Or would I have carried whatever was inside that airport...

...to the rest of the world?

Would you have tried to break out... or stayed locked inside? Let me know in the comment section

Michael hadn't left his apartment in days. He didn't eat. He didn't sleep. He just sat in the corner, watching the door.

The door wouldn't open. The window wouldn't budge. He was trapped.

That night, he heard breathing — right behind him.

He turned. No one was there. But the mirror had changed.

His reflection was gone. In its place stood a figure — still, silent, watching.

It was his own face.

The reflection smiled.

"You're not real," Michael whispered.

"Neither are you."

Before he could react, the reflection reached through the glass and pulled him inside.

He fell into darkness.

When he opened his eyes, he was trapped in the mirror.

On the other side, the reflection was sitting in his chair — living his life.

Michael pounded on the glass. No one heard.

The reflection turned and smiled.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of everything."

---

THE END

Michael lived a quiet life.

A 9-to-5 job, a rented apartment, and a silence that followed him everywhere. His parents died when he was six. His uncle raised him — and died two years ago. His last relationship ended badly. His office colleagues barely noticed him. He had one friend left — a childhood friend named Alex — and even that connection felt fragile.

At night, the silence in his apartment was the loudest thing he'd ever heard.

And then, one night, he heard something else. A soft knock. Not at the door. At the window.

He lived on the third floor.

He stood up, walked toward the curtain, and pulled it back.

No one was there. But the glass was smeared — like someone had pressed their hand against it. From the outside.

He didn't sleep that night.

The next morning, he found a note slipped under his door. No name. No address. Just a message:

"I've been watching you."

He threw it away. But the next morning, it was back — tucked under his door again. Same message. Same handwriting.

He checked his phone. No missed calls. No texts. No one knew where he lived.

He told himself it was a prank.

Then he opened his camera roll. There was a photo he didn't remember taking. It was a picture of him — sleeping in his own bed — taken from the corner of the room.

He was alone in the apartment.

But the photo was taken at 3:17 AM.

And he had been asleep.

He called Alex. No answer.

He called the police. They said they'd check the apartment.

They never showed up.

That night, he locked every door, every window, checked every corner.

After some days, at 3:17 AM, he heard a whisper from the other side of his bedroom door.

"I've been inside longer than you."
Chapter 2 coming tomorrow ✌🏻

Michael hadn't slept in days. Not really. Just short bursts of nothing that left him more tired than before.

He stopped going to work. Stopped picking up calls. Sat in his apartment, staring at the walls, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did.

But the silence felt heavier. The shadows seemed longer. He kept looking over his shoulder.

He called Alex. No answer. He left a message — short, quiet.

"I think I'm losing it."

He checked the door. Locked. The windows. Locked. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror. The handprint was still there — smeared and dry.

He didn't try to wipe it.

He didn't leave the apartment.

He sat in the corner of his room, phone in hand, staring at the dark.

Hours passed. His eyes hurt. His mind felt foggy.

He wasn't sure if he was awake anymore.

Then a notification lit up his screen.

Photo message. Unknown number.

He opened it.

It was a picture of him — sitting in that same corner, looking at the camera.

The timestamp was from two minutes ago.

He had been alone.

He looked up.

The bathroom door was open.

He hadn't opened it.

He stood up slowly. Walked toward the bathroom. Pushed the door open.

The mirror was clean — no handprint, no fog.

His reflection stared back at him.

And then it smiled.

Before he could react, his phone buzzed again.

Another message.

"You're not the only one here."
Chapter 3 coming soon

Arthur lived with his daughter, Claire, and her husband, Daniel. He was old, tired, and lonely. Every day, he repeated the same words: "I want to go to an old age home."

At first, Claire ignored it. Then she got irritated. Finally, she gave in.

"If that's what you want, we'll take you," she said.

Daniel was the one who drove him there. He didn't look back.

The home was clean. Quiet. Too quiet.

Weeks passed. Then one night, a young nurse named Emma collapsed in the hallway. She was dead before anyone could help her.

The police arrived the next morning.

They showed Claire a CCTV footage. Arthur was standing in the kitchen corner, pouring white powder into Emma's coffee.

"That's not coffee," the officer said. "That's poison."

Claire watched her father's calm face on the screen as Emma drank it and smiled at him.

His eyes said something she had never seen before. Not sadness. Not kindness. Satisfaction.

The camera caught the last moments before Emma fell. She looked at Arthur with fear in her eyes.

He didn't move. He just stood there, watching.

The officer handed Claire a note found in Arthur's room.

"I never wanted the home. I wanted the silence."

The house they grew up in never felt the same again.

And every night, Claire woke up to the sound of her father's spoon stirring a cup of coffee.

Even though he was locked in a cell.

---

Chapter 2 coming soon

We heard the knock again. Coming from the basement.

Arjun was the first to move. He took the knife, unlocked the basement door, and walked down the stairs. The light flickered. His footsteps stopped.

Then silence.

Maya called his name. No answer.

We heard footsteps coming back up.

Arjun stood at the top of the stairs. His hands were clean. His face was calm.

"Someone is down there," he said. "But they're not coming up."

He sat down by the fire, the knife still in his hand. He didn't say anything else.

We wanted to run. But the basement door was still open.

Then I heard a sound. Not from the basement. From behind me.

I turned around.

Ria was standing at the front door. It was wide open. Snow was falling inside.

She was holding Vikram's phone — the one he was holding when he died.

"He called me," she said softly. "Before he died. He said — it's one of us."

We all turned to look at each other.

Maya stepped back. Arjun froze. Ria didn't move.

Then she smiled.

"It's always been me."

"I just wanted to see how long it would take you to figure it out."

She moved fast — faster than we could react. Maya fell first. Arjun tried to fight, but he was too slow.

I ran. I didn't look back.

When I reached the forest edge, I stopped and turned around.

Ria was standing at the cabin door, watching me leave.

She didn't chase me.

She just smiled.

And raised her hand to wave.

---

THE END

This story came from one of my favorite interactions I've had with readers.

It all started with a simple two-sentence horror idea: a hunter sees a deer standing upright after being shot, its body torn open, yet somehow still alive. I posted it expecting a few comments, but what followed was a chain of hilarious and horrifying replies that genuinely made me laugh. One reader wrote, "Yeah, no shit, Billy. RUN!" and from that moment, Bobby and Billy were born.

I wanted to write a creature feature that balanced dread with dark humor, the kind of campfire tale where you laugh one moment and feel uneasy the next. Because sometimes that's how fear works. We joke about it. We laugh at it. But every now and then, beneath the laughter, there's something staring back from the woods.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And maybe, just maybe...

Don't trust a deer that stands on two legs.

- David Hallow

--- --- ---

People love scary stories.

Maybe it's because most of us know, deep down, that they're just stories. Figment of imagination, compiled to spike our anxiety.

Ghosts around campfires. Monsters lurking beneath beds. Things with glowing eyes waiting in the woods. We tell them, laugh a little awkwardly, and sleep knowing none of it was ever real.

Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

The truth is, most scary stories are either fiction, exaggeration, or a memory that's grown teeth over the years.

But every now and then, you come across one that isn't.

A story somebody wishes was made up.

A story that follows them long after the telling is done.

The kind of story that hangs on a wall in a faded photograph.

The kind of story that leaves an empty seat at the dinner table.

The kind of story that makes an old man stare into the woods a little longer than he should.

I know because I have one.

It started with a picture hanging crooked on the wall.

It wasn't anything special at first glance. Just an old picture faded by time. Two young men stood shoulder to shoulder beside a pickup truck. One held a rifle. The other grinned at the camera with the kind of confidence only young men seem capable of possessing.

"What happened to him?"

I pointed at the man on the left.

My grandfather, a disheveled old man with a beard that even Gandalf would envy, looked up from his rocking chair.

For a moment, the old man didn't answer. The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside, snow drifted past the cabin windows.

"That's Billy." His voice was always such a low, deep tone. Years of the maiden named liquor he would court on every given night. This time, there was a sense of inconsolable remembrance.

"Uncle Billy?" I asked.

Grandpa Bobby nodded.

"Yep."

"What happened to him?"

The old man stared at the photograph for a long moment before letting out a regretful sigh.

"Son, you ever heard the phrase curiosity killed the cat?"

I nodded.

"Well," Bobby said, "in Billy's case, stupidity finished the job."

I chuckled awkwardly. Grandfather didn't.

That prepared me for a serious ride.

The old man leaned back in his chair.

"Let me tell you about the last hunting trip we ever took together."

Bobby:

Billy was older than me by exactly eleven minutes. He never let me forget it. According to Billy, those eleven minutes made him wiser, tougher, and hell... better looking.

The only thing they actually made him was louder.

The two of us had been hunting since we were kids. I held my first rifle at the age of seven with pops. Deer season was practically a holiday in our family.

That morning started like every other.

Cold air.

Hot coffee.

Billy complaining about something.

"I swear deer are getting smarter."

I rolled my eyes.

"They're deer." I mockingly stated.

"Exactly. That's what they want you to think."

That was Billy.

A man capable of turning breakfast into a whole conspiracy theory.

Around noon we spotted tracks deeper into the woods than we'd ever gone before.

Big tracks.

The kind that make hunters start imagining trophy mounts hanging over fireplaces. The size that makes the ladies skirts in a bundle.

Billy practically vibrated with excitement from the thought of bringing such game town. To gloat and be honored.

We followed those dreaded markings for nearly an hour. Eventually we reached a clearing.

And there it was.

The biggest buck I'd ever seen.

Massive antlers.

Huge body.

Standing perfectly still between the trees.

Billy nearly dropped his rifle.

"Oh great Lord Heavens above."

I couldn't disagree.

The thing was enormous. Definitely nature was kind to it and blessed it since the day it drew breath.

Billy slowly raised his rifle.

"Don't miss."

"I never miss."

Now boy... retelling this still raises the hair in the back of my scalp. The years have not done me kindly with age, but I sure am haunted by that damn Buck.

The rifle cracked.

The deer dropped instantly.

It was a perfect shot. Right through the chest. You could tell the bullet went clean through.

Billy threw his hands into the air.

"Still got it!"

We were mid cheer when the sudden screech of a banshee erupted. We turned to face what I could only describe as a satanic miracle.

Neither of us let out a word or breathe.

The deer... It stood back up. But what was so alarming wasn't just its stomach had split open from the impact, ropes of entrails dangling from the wound. Blood soaked its hide. Yet somehow it was standing.

Not on four legs.

Two.

I felt every hair on my body stand up.

The thing swayed slightly. Its dead eyes locked onto us.

Then Billy whispered:

"I don't think deer are supposed to stand like that."

I looked at him.

"Yeah, no shit, Billy. RUN!"

Instead of running, he frowned.

"But what about the deer?"

I slapped him.

Hard.

The crack echoed through the clearing.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Well yeah!"

He pointed.

"Look! It's running at us!"

I turned.

And immediately began sprinting.

Yes, I could've drawn my rifle and shot it dead... but that was the day I learned. There comes a day, son, when you will face this forsaken truth. Fear will consume you. And when it does, will you run or fight?

I chose to run.

The thing moved impossibly fast.

That was no damn deer. Not like any animal.

Its legs bent wrong. Its joints jerked and snapped.

Its organs dragged through the feild behind it.

And God help me, I think it was smiling.

"Bobby!" Billy shouted behind me.

"Shoot it!"

"IT DOESN'T HAVE A HEART ANYMORE!"

"Then shoot the head!"

"THE HEAD IS LOOKING AT ME SIDEWAYS, BILLY!"

The distance between us and that abomination vanished frighteningly fast.

Branches exploded around us. Snow kicked into the air.

I risked a glance over my shoulder.

Worst mistake of my life.

The thing wasn't running anymore.

It was hopping.

Almost playfully.

Its front legs hung uselessly while it bounded forward on its back legs.

Like a child pretending to be a deer.

Then Billy footsteps stopped.

I heard him behind me.

"Go!"

I turned.

For one brief moment he actually looked heroic.

Rifle raised.

Standing his ground.

Then he ruined it.

"Tell my wife I left the smoker on!"

The creature hit him before I could answer.

Its antlers punchered through his chest same as the bullet. The force lifted him off the ground.

I heard bones snap.

He screamed.

God, he screamed.

I ran. he coward I am...

I wish I could tell you I stayed.

I wish I could tell you I fought.

But I ran.

And behind me I heard things no human being should ever hear.

The sound of your brother taking his last breath..

Bones breaking.

The sound of feeding on a living carcass.

And beneath it all... I swear I heard laughter.

It was human. It sounded oh so familiar. I recognize that jolly hick up for it annoyed me for thirty so years. It was Billy's.

I didn't stop running until I reached my truck...

The cabin had gone quiet. The fire continued to crackle.

I stared at my grandfather who's eyes were sheilded by the darkness of the cabin.

"What happened after that?"

Bobby took a slow sip from his coffee.

"Well... the Sheriff and I, we found pieces."

I swallowed.

"Pieces?"

The old man nodded.

"J-just enough for a proper burial."

Silence settled between us. The flames from the fireplace danced as time seemed to daunt on the night.

Finally, I asked the question.

"D-did they ever find whatever k-killed him?"

For the first time all evening, Bobby smiled.

It wasn't a pleasant smile.

"No."

He stared toward the dark forest beyond the cabin window.

"Though three days later, a hunter reported seeing someone standing at the edge of the tree line."

Max felt a chill crawl down his spine.

"S-someone?"

Bobby nodded.

"Looked just like Billy."

The room suddenly felt colder.

"Was it him?"

The old man looked back toward the crooked photograph on the wall.

"Hell no."

His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"It was standing on two legs."

Ok!! I’m sorry in advance that it’s on the longer side lmao

Blackridge National Forest

When Elizabeth Stafford disappeared, the entire town stopped breathing.

It happened on an ordinary Tuesday in late October.

She left her little white house just after sunrise, waving to her elderly neighbor as she always did. She smiled, slung her worn leather backpack over her shoulder, and told him she'd be back before dinner.

She never was.

The search lasted eighteen days.

Volunteers combed every trail in the Woods. Visitors called it Blackridge National Forrest.. but to the people who had lived here in Blackridge all their lives, to them it was simply “the woods” Nothing good ever came saying anything else about that forsaken place. Search dogs followed her scent until it simply... ended. Drones flew overhead for hours, divers searched the creeks, and every abandoned cabin was checked more than once.

The only thing anyone found was her backpack.

It sat perfectly upright beneath the roots of an ancient oak tree, untouched by the rain.

Inside was her flashlight, a compass, food that had never been opened, dozens of newspaper clippings...

...and her notebook, with every single page torn out.

After months with no answers, the investigation slowly faded away.

People moved on.

Blackridge had seen disappearances before.

The townspeople almost expected them.

The woods stood just outside town for longer than anyone could remember. The oldest maps marked the forest with no name at all, as if even the cartographers wanted nothing to do with it. Hunters avoided it. Animals rarely wandered inside. Even on the hottest summer days, a cold breeze drifted through the trees.

There were stories.

Some said the woods were alive.

Some believed they were cursed.

Others claimed they were something much worse—a place that didn't belong in the world at all.

Every generation added another warning.

Never whistle after sunset.

Never count the trees.

If you hear footsteps… Don’t stop walking.

If you see someone you know.. Make sure they didn’t see you first. It’s not them.

Never follow a voice calling your name.

Never stray from the path.

And lastly, but most importantly.

If the forest suddenly goes quiet...

Run.

Of course, every child in Blackridge grew up hearing those stories.

Some of them were scared, and most of them laughed.

Elizabeth however. She never could.

When she was nine years old, her father, James Stafford disappeared inside those same woods.

He was an experienced park ranger. If anyone knew those trails, it was him. He left early one morning after reports of strange lights deep in the forest. He kissed Elizabeth on the forehead, promised they'd go fishing that weekend, and walked out the front door.

That was the last time anyone saw him.

The search lasted almost a month.

Hundreds of people looked.

Nothing.

No footprints.

No torn clothing.

Not even his ranger's radio.

The only thing ever recovered was his old compass.

When rescuers opened it, the needle spun wildly, refusing to point north.

Some said it was broken.

Others refused to touch it.

Elizabeth kept it anyway.

While the rest of the town accepted that her father was gone, Elizabeth never stopped believing there had to be an explanation.

She spent years collecting old newspaper articles, faded photographs, and handwritten journals from families whose loved ones had disappeared. She interviewed elderly residents who still remembered stories passed down from their grandparents.

The deeper she looked, the stranger it became.

People had been vanishing in the woods for centuries.

A hunter in 1821.

Three children in 1894.

An entire family during a snowstorm in 1938.

A group of campers in 1976.

The stories were always different.

The ending never was.

No bodies.

No answers.

Just another missing person.

One story appeared again and again, no matter how old the records were.

A traveler wandering through impossibly quiet woods.

An old leather-bound journal with no title.

Pages that seemed to know things they shouldn't.

Elizabeth dismissed it as folklore.

Every legend grows bigger with time.

Besides, she wasn't looking for ghost stories.

She was looking for her father.

For years she searched the woods whenever she had the chance, mapping trails no one else would walk and marking strange places no one else seemed to notice. Sometimes she swore the forest looked different than it had the day before. Trees she'd marked would disappear. Familiar paths ended where they never had before.

She blamed exhaustion.

Until the day the woods answered back.

That's the day she disappeared.

People searched for Elizabeth for years.

Some believed she'd finally found her father.

Others believed the Hollow Woods had simply claimed another soul.

The oldest people in Blackridge never seemed surprised.

They only shook their heads and quietly added another story to the long list of names the forest had taken.

Funny thing about stories...

People think they end when the last page is written.

They don't.

Stories grow.

They change.

They wait.

Sometimes they're passed from one generation to the next.

Sometimes they're whispered around campfires.

And every once in a while...

Someone who lived the story decides to tell it themselves. —— For years I searched the woods whenever I had the chance. I mapped trails no one else would walk and marked trees no one else seemed to notice. Sometimes I'd come back a week later and the marks would be gone. Trails I'd walked dozens of times suddenly ended where they never had before. I told myself I was tired. That I was imagining things.

I wasn't.

I remember that day better than I remember my own birthday.

The woods went completely silent.

Not quiet.

Silent.

No birds. No insects. No wind. Even my own footsteps sounded wrong, almost like someone else was walking just behind me.

Then I heard my name.

"Elizabeth."

It wasn't a whisper.

It wasn't a scream.

It sounded like my dad.

I should have turned around.

Instead, I followed his voice deeper into the woods.

The farther I walked, the older everything looked. The trees were massive, their roots twisting over the ground like they were reaching for something. My compass spun in circles, except for my dad's old ranger compass. Somehow, it pointed straight ahead.

It led me to a clearing I know wasn't there before.

In the middle stood the biggest tree I'd ever seen. Its branches disappeared into the clouds, and its trunk was covered in names.

Hundreds.

Maybe thousands.

Some looked fresh.

Others had almost been swallowed by the bark.

I started reading them.

People I'd seen in old newspaper clippings.

People whose missing posters still hung in the diner.

People no one had talked about in decades.

Then I saw his.

James Stafford.

My dad.

My hands were shaking so badly I almost couldn't reach out and touch his name.

The bark was warm.

Not warm from the sun.

Warm... like a hand.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned around.

It was him.

He looked exactly the way I remembered him. Same green ranger jacket. Same boots. Same crooked smile. Twenty years had passed, but he hadn't changed at all.

I wanted to hug him.

God, I wanted to.

But something wasn't right.

He never blinked.

Not once.

"You finally found me," he said.

His voice sounded just like I remembered.

But it didn't feel like him.

Then more people stepped out from the trees.

Some wore clothes I'd only ever seen in history books.

Some looked like they'd disappeared yesterday.

Children.

Parents.

Old men.

Teenagers.

Every missing person the woods had ever taken.

None of them looked scared.

None of them looked trapped.

They just... watched me.

Smiling.

The exact same smile.

I finally understood why nobody is ever found.

The woods don't bury people.

They keep them.

I don't know how long I've been here now.

My watch stopped working days ago... or maybe years ago. I haven't been hungry. I haven't been tired. The sun never seems to move, but it somehow still becomes night.

Sometimes I hear search parties calling my name.

I try to answer.

I swear I do.

But every time I open my mouth...

Nothing comes out.

If someone finds this journal, please don't come looking for me.

Don't listen if someone you love calls your name.

And whatever you do...

Don't step off the trail. —— I suppose I should've introduced myself sooner.

My name is Elizabeth Stafford.

——

I would love any feedback. This is my first time posting a short story!😬🫶

Written by: Faith L Decheubel

We found the second body at dawn. Vikram was still holding his phone — the screen cracked, but the call was still connected. On the other end, silence. And then a whisper: "You're next."

We moved him to the basement. No one spoke. Snow kept falling.

The fire had died down. We were just sitting in the dark.

I looked at Maya. She was still staring at the floor, like she was counting something in her head. Arjun had his back to the wall, holding that knife. Ria hadn't spoken — not a word since we found Vikram.

No one was crying. We were too tired for that.

Then I saw it. A photograph, lying on the table. Face down.

I picked it up.

It was all of us — inside the chalet, laughing, eating. The photo was taken from outside, through the window.

But we hadn't been here when it was taken.

We had just arrived.

No one had taken that photo.

I looked around the room. Maya was watching me. Arjun's grip tightened. Ria had her eyes closed.

And then I heard it. A knock. From downstairs.

The basement door was still locked.

But something was in there.

Knocking. Waiting. And I knew — the thing in the basement wasn't one of us.
Part 3 coming out at 8:10 today