This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/daveromannhorror on 2023-08-11 02:11:56.

Christmas was around the corner and I hadn't gotten a damn thing for my younger cousin, Georgina. She was only about six years old at the time and she liked stuff similar to Mickey Mouse and Doc McStuffins. I had already gotten presents for the rest of my family, but my cousin wasn’t really difficult to shop for.

She really liked a recent show that was on television called ‘Bluey’, so when I got the chance to look for a present, I thought perhaps a Bluey DVD or a plushie from the show would have been perfect for her, since my aunt had told me that she liked to watch it after she would come back from school.

I was very unfortunate because a lot of DVDS and other physical copies of movies were mostly sold out from a lot of stores, since it was the holidays, and I wasn’t going to take the chance on buying a DVD off the internet because I could not trust what condition it could be in. I was beginning to give up until one day I heard a knock at my front door.

I was at home, still scrolling on the internet for a gift. I got up and opened the door and saw a black car driving away as quickly as it could. I looked down and saw a small package on my doorstep. It was wrapped in red-wrapping paper with numerous amounts of tape all around it.

I picked it up and immediately opened it. There was something odd about what was in my hands. It was a Bluey DVD. But this wasn’t a copy I have ever seen before. It was just a plain DVD case with plain white paper within it. The cover it had was of two stick figurine sketches of dogs standing on two legs, and above them were letters that spelled out BLUEY in what looked like was made by permanent marker. On the back of the cover, there was a list of five episodes with titles:

Sticky gecko

Stumpfest

Daddy robot

Butterflies

Regret

I tried out the DVD on my DVD player and the first episode played and to my surprise, It looked like there was nothing wrong with what was in front of me. I thought I was given a miracle. The only thing that I found a bit off was the last episode’s title. “Regret”.

On the DVD menu, the titles for choosing an episode were just Episode 1. Episode 2. And so on.

The menu screen was in a gray color with white colored titles. After taking the time to make a final decision, I came to the realization that there was nothing really wrong with the DVD, I was going to give this to Georgina as a gift on Christmas. I changed the cover and found the proper art cover for the show and wrapped it up in waiting for christmas. There was really nothing I could have done to change the titles properly on their original names. But then again, there was really nothing wrong with what was in front of me.

The day after Christmas took place, and everyone had a good time at the Christmas party. The next day I gave my cousin her DVD and she was so happy with what she had received. It then later came to me that she had not used the DVD yet.

After new years, my parents and other relatives that were older than me went out for the evening, and had left me to babysit Georgina. I was paid with some takeout from my favorite fast food joint and watched my cousin until they would come back. Georgina then asked me to put the new DVD she had gotten.

I setted up the DVD player and inserted the disc. As I was in my room playing a computer game, from the living room I heard Georgina scream in terror. Immediately I got up and ran out of my room and Georgina came to me, she had tears in her eyes and hugged me. I looked up and to my surprise, on the screen, a creature of which I do not have a name for, was eating Bluey’s mother. The hideous deformed being was devouring her intestines. The next scene showed Bluey in tears, as she was hiding behind a wall of some kind. Immediately I grabbed the remote from the couch and turned off the TV. I was able to calm Georgina down, trying to convince her that what she saw wasn’t real. Not long after she fell asleep on my bed.

My conscience told me that what I saw on the screen was true, that it was no dream or from the imagination. My parents send me a text message that read

WE WILL BE OUT ALL NIGHT TAKE CARE OF YOUR COUSIN

So I took the opportunity to take a look at the DVD. I grabbed the disc and watched it on my computer but sat down in the living room. The first four episodes seemed fine, but then I reached the final episode. The episode started with a word in white letters on a black screen. It read, REGRET.

In the next scene, Chili (Bluey’s mother) and her two daughters, Bluey and Bingo were in the hallway, running. The animation looked very different from its original. The only thing that made this animation uncanny was that none of the characters had mouths. Chili's left ear was cut in half and blood was bleeding out. They ran to a room and Chili locked it behind her. Bluey ran and hid behind a dresser, and Bingo stayed with her mother. A loud roar was noticed by the three characters.

Bluey stayed behind the dresser and her sister and mom hid behind a closet door. A pale skinny looking-monster with white eyes and razor sharp teeth entered the room. It turned its head to look around the room, and immediately crawled out. Bluey took a peek from the dresser and saw her sister and her mother. Bluey had tears in her eyes. She then tried to slowly and quietly walk towards what was left of her family. The two female dogs tried waving their hands, giving her the signal for Bluey to stay where she was.

All of the sudden, the creature rushed back into the room and went into the closet. The sound of screeching came from the darkness beyond the small room. The creature then dragged Chili’s deceased body out, as it began to devour the insides of her stomach.

Bluey remained hidden behind the drawer. The camera remained on the terrified blue dog. It then got quiet. Bluey remained still when suddenly the drawer was pushed away and the creature then grabbed her and ran out the room. The sound of the beast screeching came from the darkness of the hallway.

The screen went black and the word “Regret” popped out in white letters and Immediately I turned off my computer. I sat there and tried to understand what I just saw, I searched up the episode I saw and nothing came up. Someone had made the episode. I placed the DVD in an envelope and put it near the TV. The next morning, I woke up and went into the living room. My cousin was still asleep. I looked to where I left the DVD and noticed that It was gone. I then noticed that the front door was opened. I looked outside and found a black car outside, and this time, it slowly drove away. I then looked down and found a once-folded piece of paper.

I opened it and it read:

Merry Christmas,

And I hope your cousin loved my video :)

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/NicolasCurcio on 2023-08-11 01:36:46.

There's this urban legend that gets told where I'm from, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere called Hollow Oaks.

Wanna hear it?

Okay, it goes like this...

The Grimley family owned a vast swath of farmland just outside the dusty old town of Hollow Oaks. The property was seemingly infinite and stretched over sixty acres. Ever since Grimley Farms opened its grounds to the public back in 1953, locals flocked to the property. At first, the family offered small attractions like tractor tours and strawberry picking, but by the mid-1970s, the spectacle had grown to a spectacular degree. At Christmastime, carolers would occupy moving tractors while singing songs from the comfort of their haystacks. Around Valentine’s Day, the grounds became a hotspot for marriage proposals.

But Halloween on the Grimley farm was something else entirely. This was when the family really shined, not to mention made more money than every other season combined.

The haunted corn maze took brave patrons through over a dozen acres of scares, while the pumpkin patch offered a more child-friendly experience. Patrons would scurry around, obsessively poking and picking at pumpkins, as if finding exactly the “right” one was a scavenger hunt of the utmost importance. And the selection was quite miraculous – big, brilliant, balls of orange that you had to see to believe.

In the Fall of 1978, Mr. Grimley was struck with inspiration. The idea had hit him suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, almost like a form of divine intervention. His son, Peter Grimley, who was fifteen and a half at the time, was seated at the breakfast table, wearing his smudged, crooked glasses and denim jacket with the torn sleeve. Peter’s face and figure were narrow and bony, so much so that his mother had always endearingly referred to him as her “skeleton son,” though Peter never found humor in this nickname the way she did.

“I’ve got it!” Mr. Grimley shouted. He excitedly hit the table with a tight, closed fist. Peter then watched as his father jumped up out of his seat and ran outside, ranting and raving about some new idea he had for the farm’s latest Fall attraction. At the time, Peter thought nothing of it. He simply poked at his mushy oatmeal, which was now a cold, shriveled blob that resembled a human brain. He finally scooped a bite into his mouth, which he decided would be his last.

By the time Peter returned from school that day, he arrived home to find his father working outside on a large, wooden contraption. Mr. Grimley was dripping sweat while he ran around the device with a hammer, smashing it down here and there, as if he was making important, final touches. He finally looked up to find his son Peter staring at the device, a puzzled look on his face.

“So? What do you think?” Mr. Grimley asked.

“What is it?” Peter responded.

The skinny boy tilted his head as if he thought he might have been looking at it from the wrong angle. From his perspective, it almost appeared to be some medieval torture device that you might find in some Renaissance fair or museum.

“Come on over and find out,” Mr. Grimley said.

Peter cautiously stepped towards the machine, while his father grabbed a nearby pumpkin and loaded it into a rounded, circular bucket that was held into place by a thick rope.

“Oh. It’s a—"  Peter didn’t even get to say the word before his father cut him off.

“That’s right,” Mr. Grimley confirmed. “Now pull this lever right here and take cover.”

Peter did as his father told him. He reached down, pulled the lever and the catapult sprang to life. Peter jolted back as the wooden arm launched the pumpkin a hundred feet across the field before the orange ball finally exploded into a million tiny pieces.

“It’s great, right?” said Mr. Grimley, smiling wider than he’d ever smiled before. “We can charge a quarter a pop. The line will go on for miles.”

Peter nodded, considering the plan. He was inexplicably terrified of the device, though he didn’t even know why. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “It’s something.”

That weekend, when Mr. Grimley’s new invention was finally released to the public, patrons gathered in droves and each patiently waited their turn. One by one, they’d come up and hand Mr. Grimley a quarter, as well as their pumpkin of choice.

“Wonderful. Now just load that sucker in right there,” Mr. Grimley said. After each spectacular launch, as well as its respective explosion, everyone in line cheered. Peter did not understand how such a simple and repetitive act garnered such a wonderous response. He also couldn’t explain why the chain reaction bothered him on such a deep, emotional level.

Perhaps it was simply the fact that he was a good boy – and he didn’t like watching pumpkins explode into fleshy, orange globs while the locals cheered on their demise.

***

Each day, Peter walked to and from Hollow Oaks High by himself. From the Grimley farm, it was exactly a forty-two-minute walk each way. Peter knew this because he routinely timed out the expedition on his stopwatch. It never failed to amaze him how steady his walking pace was, almost down to the second.

So often in Peter’s life, he felt as if his brain didn’t work properly. For instance, he could never find the right words to express his thoughts to his peers or his parents or his teachers, and was always frightened or disturbed by things he knew he shouldn’t be – like his father’s latest invention. That’s why each day, it satisfied him to find that his walk was once again, forty-two minutes each way.

At least my legs work, he thought.

Peter Grimley roamed the halls of the school alone and largely kept to himself. He knew that he was different from his classmates. No one had ever really tried to make friends with him and he was fine with that. Yet still, this notion rather confused him, mostly due to the fact that everyone in town seemed to love his family, as well as the Grimley farm. Peter would even see his own classmates visiting the grounds on the weekends, but it was a rare occurrence that they would say anything to him, let alone acknowledge his existence.  

Each day at lunch, Peter sat alone in the cafeteria and removed a foil-wrapped sandwich from a crumpled paper bag. During the Fall season, Mrs. Grimley tended to pack Peter a pumpkin and honey sandwich, since she had such a plethora of fruit on the farm. Sometimes, she’d even send along pumpkin pie or pumpkin cookies as dessert. When Peter was a small child, he loved pumpkin season, but over the years, he now dreaded every mushy bite that he had to force down his throat. Peter stared at his sandwich with disgust, just a group of his classmates were passing by, on their way to another table.

“What’s on the menu today, Peter?” Todd Bennett would ask, a football player with mean green eyes and muscles that looked too big for his body. He was standing there with his best friend, Mark Shansky, and their respective girlfriends, Lucille Paterson and Rhonda Lynch, who trailed behind.

“Pumpkin and honey,” Peter told Todd. “The same as yesterday.”

Peter knew that in reality, Todd didn’t really care about what type of sandwich he was eating. He simply loved to use the opportunity to chant his favorite nickname to poor old Peter.

“Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater!” Todd laughed.

“It’s not that funny,” Rhonda groaned.

“I think it is,” Mark added.

“Then maybe you two should be dating,” Lucille said.

The cruel teenagers continued past Pater’s table, but Rhonda lingered for a moment and shared a passing stare with the skeleton boy. Though he had never really spoken to her, he had always thought Rhonda was very pretty – she at least seemed to be the nicest one in the group.

“Sorry about them,” Rhonda said to Peter before she finally walked off and sat down at Todd’s table. 

“It’s okay,” Peter replied, but he was talking to no one – she was already gone.

A few days later, as Peter was walking home from school (he was making perfect pace to hit his goal), he passed by the bus stop to find Todd and Rhonda making out on a bench. Peter kept his head down and scurried past the lovebirds, but he eventually heard Todd’s grating voice shout: “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater! Come over here!”

Peter considered the fact that stopping would disrupt his perfectly timed walk, but then, he thought of Rhonda. He wouldn’t mind seeing her face. So, he turned around.

“For God’s sake. Just leave him alone,” Rhonda told Todd.  

“One sec, babe,” Todd said back, before locking in on Peter with his green eyes. “Come over here, bud.” Peter reluctantly shuffled back over and stood before Todd and Rhonda. “Just answer this question, Pete: on a scale from one to ten, how much do you love eating pumpkins?”

Peter considered the question, then simply shrugged. “I dunno. Six?”

Todd laughed. “Yeah? What about Rhonda’s pumpkin? Would you eat that?”

“Todd, oh my God!” Rhonda said, laughing. Todd then whispered something in her ear, which made her giggle even more. They kissed again and soon enough had forgotten all about poor old Peter, standing there, just like he was told to. He pulled his backpack up, turned back and around, and continued walking back home. The interaction made him precisely one minute and twenty seconds late.

His day was ruined.

***

On October 31, 1978, Peter gathered a dozen or so pumpkins from outside the Grimley's farmhouse and brought them into his bedroom. That night, while most of his peers were out in the world, drinking beers and b...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15ns8tk/worst_halloween_ever/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SquadPoopy on 2023-08-10 22:54:31.

Hey guys, I’m not sure if this is the right place to talk about this, but I found something interesting I figured would be up all your alleys.

So I live in the middle of nowhere, not like a desert or anything but just there’s nothing interesting around for quite a while. The town I live in only has about 1,500 residents and the nearest city is about 50 minutes away. If I want to, for instance, go see the latest Marvel movie in theaters it’s a drive of about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Yeah, THAT kind of middle of nowhere. It’s not completely empty of course, there’s other small towns peppered everywhere, we live in a valley surrounded by some small to medium sized hills and there’s a nice creek running through the middle of main street. There’s farms and woods and just a whole bunch of stuff. I don’t want anyone to get the impression that this is some “empty fields on all sides” middle of nowhere.

I want to leave, I NEED to leave. I don’t want to spend my entire life with no amenities, I don’t want to live in a place where the only restaurants are 2 pizza places that serve basically the same pizza but people still get tribal about who they prefer. I graduated high school a couple months ago and applied to go to a nice state college about 4 hours away. I was accepted but due to a bunch of (excuse my language) shit the office of financial aid pulled I owed a balance of $1,300 that would need to be paid before I could start. So I got a job, and luckily it’s a nice one at our local library. My aunt runs the place so she got me started on a 6 hour per day shift and it’s been nice. I have the money for college, and now I’m just waiting for mid August when I’ll drive to my dorm to get settled in. But I found something at the Library that was very odd and like I said you guys here might enjoy.

So the Library is made up of 2 main rooms, the Library itself and the employee room. The employee room is basically a large living room of sorts with a couch, a small TV, a couple card tables (for the weekly poker night) and boxes filled with unused books. Because it’s a tiny town, the library isn’t used much so I spend most of my day on the couch watching TV or whatever and I’ll go into the Library when the door chime goes off, which means someone opened the door. And when I say there’s boxes of books, I mean DOZENS of boxes, maybe 50 or 60. This is where things begin really. My aunt planned on setting up a booth at a flea market a couple towns over, and she wanted to sell the unused and overstocked books on hand, so she gave me the job of going through the boxes and taking out any books in which we had an overstock on or hadn’t been rotated onto the shelves in a while. I might not explain it well but it was a simple task. It was pretty tedious but also pretty fast, especially when I had boxes full of 15 copies of The Hunger Games my aunt bought during the peak of their popularity. I got to the last few boxes, which were covered in dust and had that timeless smell of old paper. I’d estimate the last 4 or 5 boxes hadn’t been touched, let alone sorted through, in at least 10 years. They contained an assortment of things like “The Guiness Book of World Records 2007”, some Roald Dahl classics, Gary Paulsen books, and a ton of western dime novels from the 60s and 50s. But it was the 2nd to last box I looked through when I found it.

At the bottom of the box was a hardcover book called “Local Tales and Wisdom” by an author named Peter Robinson. I flipped it open to look for the library checkout stamp but couldn’t find it, instead on the inside of the cover was a stamp that said “Not for resale”. And that was it. There was no publisher information, no copyright date, nothing. I read the prelude on the first page and surprisingly enough the book is about my town. So it is my assumption that this was the original copy of a self published book that was intended to be formally published (hence the Not for Resale stamp) but for whatever reason just wasn’t, I think the author also lends credence to my theory because it very obviously sounds like a pen name. The book is quite old, I can tell just by how it looks, and if I was to guess when it was made I would say sometime in the 70s or 60s but I could be wrong. The book is just what the title says, and I wanted to transcribe it for you guys since I read it and found it a bit bizarre and interesting. Now I will note that I am apparently not the first person to read it, as there are some markings that have been done by what I would assume is the person who read it before me, but if my theory that this was the original copy meant for distribution, the markups could also be made by the author.

Quick disclosure before we begin, I will italicize my words from now on, so if you see anything in Italics, that is me and not the original text, I may chime in to point out markups or just to interject some thoughts about certain aspects of the book, I’m also going to censor out location details for obvious reasons. I’ll go ahead and segment stuff just like it is in the book.

Prelude

For Kaitlin.

The town of ______ is a small community nestled into the hills of the _____ River Valley, quaint in its appearance, yet rich in history. I spent the first forty years of my life living just outside town, and I intend to spend the remaining years, however many or few, I have raising my children with the same values I was instilled with. As any town, ______ has it’s own culture and history, mixed with urban folklore and stories, and without documentation, these histories fade. What you are reading is a compilation of what I have learned, what I have heard, and what I know. Wisdom about the town and the valley, and tales spread from person to person, from parents to child, and from generation to generation. These have been collected over years, and put onto paper for you to read. Thank you.

The dedication at the top has been crossed out with a pen, I can only barely make out the name as whoever crossed it out did so quite violently it seems.

Wisdom: Superstitions

It is oft said that the _____ Woods just south of town are haunted by a headless spirit. While not a man of religious nature myself, the superstitious may avoid the hiking trails running through the area.

I guess this is one of those generational things passed down, as a child everyone knew to avoid those woods because a headless ghost would get you if you were alone. Weird to see that legend was around even this far back.

The Miss and the Spirit

There was once a young Miss of no more than twelve. Every day she would sit by the creek and toss stones into the water, dreaming about her future. Her father, the town doctor, would call for her at sunset and she would come running into the house for supper. She would sit at the table and talk about her dreams to live in the big city, a notion her parents found most amusing. One day she did not come at sunset when called, bringing worry to her father. He searched up and down the creek where she usually was but found no sign of the child, for little did he know she had wandered into the woods chasing a frog. She only realized where she was once the frog had disappeared into the thick grass. Afraid, she began to run in the direction she believed she came from, only to find more trees, she ran and ran until her ankle caught itself between a rock and branch and she fell. Her ankle hurt very much, and she could no longer stand on it. The child began to cry as she was alone, surrounded by the darkening forest, until she saw a hole in the side of a hill. She crawled towards it, finding a cave that lead down into darkness. “Hello child”, came a voice from the darkness, “Have you found yourself astray?” The child looked and saw a spirit walking towards her, glowing with light and holding out their hand. “I hurt my ankle and can’t find my way home”, the Child said. The spirit knelt down and put his hand on her ankle before saying, “Do not be frightened, for the way home is always lit.” The child closed her eyes and when they were opened again she found herself on the edge of the woods, her home in the distance and a crowd of townsfolk approaching her. None would believe her story and others thought she had played a cruel joke on her parents.

Many years later, the young Miss had become a woman living in the big city just as she had dreamt. On holiday she decided to return home to be with her parents, but she was bearing terrible news. She had discovered that she would be unable to carry children, causing her fiance to leave her. Despite the sadness, her holiday was still quite joyful as she spent the days and nights living and laughing with her parents. One night, she was out on her horse riding along the creek she used to play at when her horse was spooked. She was thrown from the saddle and into the creek, her head clashed against a stone and she was still. A passerby noticed and helped, but the Miss would not reopen her eyes. Her father examined her and rushed her to every doctor in every town he knew, but none could wake her up. After many days, her parents had lost hope until a thought occurred to her father. He picked up his daughter and walked into the woods, and he kept walking until he came upon a hole in the side of a hill. And in the cave he found the spirit, and at the spirit’s feet he placed his daughter and begged for help. The Spirit considered the father’s pleading, and to...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15no43g/local_tales_and_wisdom/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/D3monNextDoor on 2023-08-10 22:43:13.

I lived in a small town.

At the centre of it is the community garden.

Lately, I’ve been getting a bad feeling when I visit my plot.

I’m not the only one either.

It came to a head the other day when the man diagonal from me dug up a finger.

This of course sparked a lot of questions and a little bit of panic.

Whose finger is that?

What the hell did that guy do?

How long has that been there?

Are we going to end up digging up a body?

Well, we got the answers to that last one.

After digging up the rest of the plots, we had most of a body.

Only thing missing was a head.

Nobody could identify the body. Everyone who lived in that town was accounted for.

Rumours and theories started flying about who this may be and why they were buried in the community garden.

The local police were pretty sparse on releasing details to the public and the garden was closed to the public while the investigation was going on.

This did not help lessen anyone’s fears. Over the course of a week, the atmosphere in the town changed.

Whereas before it was a small tight knit community with almost no crime, now people were all suspicious of each other and looking over their shoulders.

This got worse when the body went missing.

Accusations flew. Everyone had someone they suspected of taking the body but there was no main suspect. A few people were even attacked on the street over this.

The body turned up a week later. Stood up in the middle of the community garden.

That’s when I said NOPE and went to stay with an aunt who lived 2 towns over.

I never considered myself superstitious or paranoid but I didn’t feel like sticking around to find out what happened next.

Clearly I was not the only one. A friend asked they could stay with us a week after I left.

I kept up with what was going on through another friend who stayed to see how this played out.

Apparently after the police took the body back to the coroner’s, it appeared again. In the same spot as before.

If this was a prank, it was a really fucked up prank. Though I think even back then, I knew this wasn’t a prank.

That’s also when the dreams started.

I kept having the same dream.

I start out at home. I wander through the empty town until I get to the garden. The body waits for me. It beckons me. It tells me despite not having a head, never mind a mouth that it needs a head.

I guess I’m not the only one who’s had that dream.

The next time it turned up, some psycho gave it a head all right.

An elk skull.

Nobody admitted to doing it. Just like nobody wanted to admit they were relieved.

The relief didn’t last long. Soon I started having a different dream.

I’m wandering through the abandoned town again. Nothing is out of place but the atmosphere feels suffocating. I end up at the community garden as always but the body isn’t there. This does not bring me any comfort. I continue to wander through the garden, then out around the rest of town. The weird atmosphere doesn’t let up. Nothing happens but I feel like something will at any second.

I always wake up exhausted.

The body stopped appearing at the community garden.

This brought exactly no comfort as it was still missing from the coroners office.

I was super glad I had moved in with my aunt.

That is until last night.

I was driving back to my aunts place after picking up some of my stuff from my old place when saw the body with the elk skull standing on the side of the highway.

When I turned back to look, it was still there but further back in the tree line.

This morning, the local mall was cordoned off. When I asked someone in the crowd what happened, they said someone found a human finger in one of the planters.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Verastahl on 2023-08-10 23:06:30.

Having your house broken into is bad on a lot of levels. Even when you aren’t home at the time, there’s always that thought of what if you had been home? Would they still have come in, and if so, what would you have done? What would they have done?

Then there’s the inconvenience of the cops and the clean-up, and if they take or damage too much, weeks of dealing with the insurance company too. A bunch of bullshit hassle when all you wanted to do is come home to your life away from the world and find it the way you left it.

But the worst part is the sense of wrongness. Of invasion. And it’s not just that someone entered space that was supposed to be safe and just for you. It’s that it reminds you of the fact that it can happen anywhere, at any time. That no space is truly safe.

When I was twenty-three, somebody broke into my apartment. I was pretty broke at the time too, so they didn’t get much, but the feeling they left behind stuck. I invested in better locks and door stop sticks. And when I got my own house, my first big purchase was an alarm system and a set of cameras.

Where I live is off the beaten path a little bit—I’m in a neighborhood of sorts, but at the tail end where it looks like the woods behind the development might eat my house and the ones down the street before too long. Someone has to work to find me, in other words, and my little piece of quiet really is full of peace and quiet.

And then last week, my phone buzzed.

Your Backyard Camera has seen something.

I frowned down at the notification. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen a similar notification from my phone, but other that me, my sister when she visited, or the occasional delivery person, it was rare. I usually went out to meet friends, the mail was delivered down at the street, and the cameras were all set to not go off at the sight of a passing bug or squirrel.

Even rarer was the backyard camera going off. It was fenced in and it was a rarity that anyone went back there but me. The one time I remembered getting a notification from that camera that wasn’t me it had been a fat possum waddling along the top of the back chainlink fence last summer. But this wasn’t that.

It was a person.

Not that I saw them in the footage when I noticed the alert the next morning. No, they kept themselves clearly out of view when lifting the piece of cardboard to the camera. The black marker words printed across the paper swam in and out of focus as the camera adjusted, but I managed to pause it well enough to read them after a couple of tries.

WE CAN NEVER MEET. SO THIS WAY. U R NOT SAFE. HE WILL COME. FOR YOU. GET GUN. KILL HIM FIRST.

I felt my mouth go dry as I scrubbed the video back and watched it over again. There was no sound, but I could see some flicker of movement as the sign was pulled away again. I had a sense that whoever had held it up had run back to the rear gate and left that way in a hurry. Heart pounding, I went to the back door and looked out.

There was no sign of anything misplaced or left behind or…no, wait. The back gate on the fence wasn’t latched. It had swung back closed, but not hard enough to latch it.

Going out into the yard to pull it closed, I felt the familiar feelings of violation and fear begin crawling up my sides, each hooked nail digging into my ribs as they scuttled up and coiled into my brain. What was this? Some kind of prank or neighborhood kids? I felt a flair of anger at the thought, but some relief too. If it could be explained away as stupid kids, at least it wasn’t really anything to worry about.

That afternoon I called the police, and when they sent around a cop an hour later, I had the video already downloaded on a USB stick and had written down the timestamps and everything I saw. The officer was nice enough, but I could tell he wasn’t overly concerned, and when I threw out the idea of pranking kids, he happily jumped on the idea with an enthusiastic nod. I thanked him for his time and then went around to all the cameras, making sure they were all adjusted to be at the best angles for any future visitors.

Then I went inside, locked all the doors, and waited.

I was starting to doze just after two in the morning when I heard my phone chime and jolted awake. Picking it up, I saw the notification.

Your Backyard Camera has seen something.

Blood pounding in my ears, I tapped on the notification as I got off the sofa and headed to the back side of the house. The screen lit up with a live feed of the back yard’s camera, and I stopped in the middle of the hallway as I realized what I was seeing.

It was a smaller person, probably a woman, running away from the camera toward the backyard fence. Following her was a large man wearing a dark blue or black set of coveralls. He covered the ground quickly with each long stride, and he managed to grab her hair as she started over the fence. I let out a gasp as I watched him ball up his other hand and strike her once, twice, three times in the side of the head before letting her fall bonelessly off the other side of the fence. He clambered over after her, and they both sank into the green grey murk at the edge of the camera’s night vision.

I called 911 immediately, and to their credit, they were out there quickly looking for any sign of my intruders. They could tell I was legitimately freaked out, and they spent nearly an hour combing the area for any sign of where the man and woman could have gone. Meanwhile, I had rewound the video to before the notification and watched it again to see what I’d missed starting from the middle.

Like the first video days earlier, for some time it’s just the boring back yard at night. Then, without warning, a piece of cardboard slips into view from below. The writing is worse this time, but I can still read it when I pause the video just right.

GUN DIDN’T WORK. FIND ANOTHER WAY OR RUN. DO NOT SHOW THEM THIS VIDEO OR WE ARE LOST.

The sign is held up for about ten seconds before a woman comes running into view being followed by the large man chasing her. It is a woman, I can tell that now. She looks familiar even, though I can’t say I’ve ever…

“Ma’am?”

I jumped slightly at the Deputy’s presence. “Shit! You startled me. Um, sorry, what was it you needed?”

He smiled. “Sorry, ma’am. Just…well, you mentioned having a video again. Do you still have that?”

I felt myself hesitate. Why? Why did I want to listen to some strange invader over this guy who seemed nice and willing to help? Yet I already heard myself lying to the deputy, telling him that it didn’t backup the video this time.

He frowned. “Well, that’s a shame. I…it’s not that I think it didn’t happen. I do. But having proof like that could help us figure out what happened out here and why.”

I nodded and then gave a start as a thought occurred to me. “Did you find a sign?”

“A sign? What kind of sign?”

I blushed a little, nervous I was going to give away too much. “Um, well, you know, like the first time they held up a sign to the camera, so I wondered if they had something like that…you know, this time.”

The deputy stared at me a moment before shaking his head. “No, no sign.” Glancing back over the yard, he turned back to give me an awkward smile. “Sorry I’m not more help, but we will keep looking into this, and we’ll be back in touch. And if anything else strange happens, just give us a call, okay?”

Three nights later, my camera alerted me again.

There was no sign this time. Just a small shape running across the back yard near the fence, barely in view. They…she…was looking behind her, but suddenly the large figure appeared out of the murk in front of her and grabbed her by the neck. Her feet were kicking a foot of the ground, and after a few seconds of struggle, she went limp. The large man dropped her to the grass casually before turning toward me…I mean the camera…and walking close enough for me to see their face.

It was the hardened and cruel face of an older man—sloped and jutting forehead over two small eyes and a hook nose that pointed down to a twisted, smirking mouth. A large scar, clearly years old even in the poor clarity of the camera footage, ran like a lightning bolt down from between his eyes to the bottom edge of his cheek.

He stared into the camera, mouthing words that I could not hear but that I still felt in my heart. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like I knew what he was saying and that it was meant for me.

Be seeing you.

I had taken a sleeping pill the night before, and so I didn’t see the video until after nine the next morning. I called 911 yet again, and this time it wasn’t the nice deputy from before that came to my door.

It was him.

Twenty years younger and without a scar, but it was that towering man from the videos, staring down at me with what felt like contempt as I gasped for air and pushed the door closed to a crack. He asked to come in and take my statement, but I told him no thank you, I’d changed my mind. Puffing out a long, irritated breath, he finally wished me a nice day and left.

I could hardly breathe or think after I pushed the door shut and locked it. It had been him, right? Much younger and unscarred, but I remembered that face. But he hadn’t seemed to recognize me, unless he was a really good actor.

I thought about calling 911 again, but what could I tell them? I didn’t know what to believe or think, and I was even starting to doubt myself the more I tried ...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15nofp9/your_backyard_camera_has_seen_something/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/mcb983 on 2023-08-10 22:42:57.

Previous Part

So, I feel like last story I posted didn’t really fit the title I’ve decided to give to my series: “I live in a town of eldritch beings”. Tommy was the only apocalyptic eldritch nightmare in that one, and he didn’t really do much. And the scope of Tommy’s abilities is fairly unknown, even to the team of scientists assigned to researching him, so despite an insanely high kill count and the ability to harm even other special residents, I don’t really have a whole lot to tell you about him, except you guys really don’t have to feel bad that he’s stuck in a cell. I would estimate half the graves in the town cemetery owe their existence to him, and that is me being conservative.

So I’ve decided to tell you guys about an incident that happened a couple months ago, regarding one of my least favorite special residents, both because he’s icky and because I was failing his class in high school. I hold grudges, okay? My old trigonometry teacher, Mr. Swanson, an evil, reprehensible, despicable being, even before he got transformed.

Martha had knocked on my door that February morning with an unusual request.

“I need you to come with me to the morgue,” she said, “They’re conducting an autopsy, and I think we’re gonna need you to sit in on it.”

I stared at her. She stared at me back, buff arms crossed over her chest. It crossed my mind, as it had several times before, that I should ask her about her workout routine. But I had more pressing concerns at the moment. Usually Martha shows up to tell me I have to wrangle something back, or track something down, or anything presumably more dangerous than observe an autopsy.

“An autopsy?” I asked incredulously, “That’s it?”

“It’s a facility security guard,” she said, “He went nuts yesterday and shot up the gas station. Cops shot him seven times, but he wouldn’t go down. Sam had to take care of him. Something’s clearly up, and we need to find out what.”

That got my attention. Sam, the gas station clerk, hates using his abilities for stuff like this. It’s the only reason he’s not locked up with the rest of them. And the facility guards are all no-nonsense, combat-trained dudes chosen from the Armed Forces for their prowess. Something was definitely wrong.

“Okay, yeah, let’s go,” I said

And we drove off in Martha’s minivan to the morgue. The two of us, along with the pathologist, donned airtight Hazmat suits—you can’t be too careful when dealing with the unknown—and the procedure began. It only took the pathologist’s first incision for me to realize exactly what had happened.

No sooner had the doctor began to slice open the guard’s chest than it erupted in a squirming, crawling mass. We all shrieked and jumped back.

Centipedes.

Martha and I shared a look. Thank God for the Hazmat suits.

The corpse had to be burned and the room sterilized completely, and then Martha and I drove off to the facility. We knew who was responsible. We just didn’t know how. And we had no idea what he was planning on doing next.

Martha led me to the hallway where his room was and gestured for me to go forward.

“You’re not coming with me?” I asked, not thrilled about being left alone with him.

“This is your job, Jack,” she said, patting me on the back before turning to leave, “Update me on what you find out.”

I sighed. Fuck. I stared down at the hallway, and it felt like it was staring back at me. I found myself tip-toeing as I made my way to his cell.

“Mr. Swanson?” I asked hesitantly. My voice cracked, and I cringed.

“You’re an adult now, Jack. You can call me Rick.”

It always feels a little illegal to call your old teachers by their first name, even if they’re not horrific demonic beings. I swallowed desperately.

“Rick,” I croaked out.

“Come closer,” he said, “I can’t hear you all the way over there.”

A shiver of fear slid its way up my spine. My feet felt glued to the floor, but I forced them to move, step by step, until I was right in front of his cell.

“Come on now, Jack. Don’t look at the floor. For God’s sake, it’s been decades, and still, nobody’s taught you how to respect your betters.”

My heart pounded in my ribcage. I slid my eyes up to meet his face, and my eyelids strained with the effort of not shutting them, not blocking out the sight in front of me. Mr. Swanson smiled down at me, centipedes crawling in and out of his teeth, over his face, over his eyes and under his eyelids. Wherever they crawled, they left a viscous fluid in their trace, leaking out of Mr. Swanson’s eyes and mouth like tears and spit.

“There you go.”

I steeled myself. I came here for answers, and I needed to get them and get the hell out of here.

“Mr. Swanson—“

“Jack, I just told you to call me Rick,” he sighed, shutting his eyes in exasperation, severing several of the centipedes that had been crawling over his pupils in half and spraying slime over the glass in front of him, “You’ve got no brains up there, I’ve always said it. That’s why you’re still here, in the same town you grew up in, doing nothing with your life—“

“Okay, you’re fucking terrifying, so I can’t think!” I snapped, my teenage self who hated the guy resurfacing.

THUD.

I screamed and stumbled backwards. Mr. Swanson’s face was pressed against the glass. Dozens of centipedes banged their little heads against it, as if they were trying to get out. I knew, logically, the glass wouldn’t break, but I still crawled further backwards, trying subconsciously to get away from their wriggling little legs.

“Language,” he said, his long neck retracting back onto his shoulders, carrying his head with it.

“Now, I know why you’re here, of course,” he said, “You got my message.”

“M-message?” I stammered.

“The security guard. Sam Henrick killed him, you were there for the autopsy, now you’re here.”

His voice was becoming more animated, and the centipedes were multiplying at an alarming rate. As he spoke, he bit some of them in half, spraying thick liquid over his lips. I nodded shakily. I didn’t trust myself not to start screaming if I opened my mouth again.

“I know exactly what you came to ask me,” his smile stretched furiously, the skin at the edges of his mouth ripping. More centipedes rushed out of the wounds.

“How many people did I manage to get my eggs into?”

Yes. The dreaded question.

I remember clear as day the morning Mr. Swanson walked into our trigonometry class, no longer himself, one of the first to turn. I had been wondering why Jolene was absent, when he walked in, something no longer human. Before any of us could do anything, even react to the horror of his new appearance, he’d grabbed Suzanne Waters, pried her mouth open with his . . . arms? Appendages? And vomited something directly down her throat. I had screamed, everyone had screamed. People attempted to flee, but he caught all of them and vomited that same substance into their mouths.

And I had sat there, paralyzed in horror, unable to do anything but watch.

Once he was done, Mr. Swanson turned to me and said, “You’d better get out of here.”

And I didn’t need any more prompting. I ran.

A day after this occurred, all 25 of my trig classmates went on a killing rampage. Bullets did nothing to them, and the newly-hatched centipedes inside of them infected more and more and more people. I should’ve been one of those people. I never figured out why he spared me.

Back to the present, I found my voice again. Maybe 16 year old me was really furious at the fact that I was now scared of the guy.

“Actually, I was gonna ask how you got any of your gross fucking eggs out of your cell on the first place,” I spat, “It’s a weird fucking kink you have.”

I immediately regretted my words. Mr. Swanson’s lips pressed into a thin line, but before he could ream me out, I heard an alarm upstairs and a crash. Like a switch, his eyes filled with glee again.

“You should tell your friends my cell isn’t so well secured,” he said, “And you should go see what all the commotion’s about, don’t you think?”

He started laughing, loud and raucous. Tiny chittering noises erupted from his skin, as if the centipedes were laughing too as they burst through his flesh, tearing it to shreds.

I hightailed it out of there.

I sprinted up the stairs and nearly ran face first into a security guard. His skin stretched and wriggled as if something was alive underneath, and his eyes bulged out of his skull until one exploded into a mess of viscera and crawling centipedes. I shrieked, leaping backwards before any of them could land on me. The man’s jaw unhinged with a sick cracking noise.

“This one makes two,” Mr. Swanson’s disembodied voice echoed out of his throat, “How high can you count, Jack?”

I sprinted away from him. The only saving grace when it comes to Mr. Swanson’s centipedes is that while they inhabit and control a body, they are also actively feeding on it, drastically slowing down the body’s ability to move and respond. So it didn’t take much for me to run away from it.

“MARTHA!” I screamed as I ran, alarms blaring around me, “WHERE ARE YOU?”

“HERE!” She called back to me, and I turned the corner to see her sprinting out of an arms room with a flamethrower.

“Take this,” she said, handing it to me, “Torch any you see. We’ve got guards on every floor doing the same, and I’m locking down the building.”

I nodded and turned to run in ...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15nntgq/i_live_in_a_town_of_eldritch_beings_its_kind_of/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/doomedgeek on 2023-08-10 19:53:16.

It was a Wednesday morning, and I was exhausted.

I had been up late the night before.

I’d been looking for work and had got as far as downloading the application pack for a job. There were so many details needed, though. It was painful. So, for a bit of a break before I got stuck in, I went onto my favourite news site.

It was trash central and I spent a while trawling through the seedy gossip and the very unflattering pictures before following a link which took me to a forum discussing who was the worst actor of all time.

Then I kept clicking and scrolling and before I knew it, it was 3am and I was too bug-eyed to go back to the job application. I crawled into bed and woke up just after eleven.

I yawned and stretched and felt something click in my back. I winced and, trying to rub the middle of my back and failing, because no one’s arms are that bendy, I went to make coffee.

Only, I was all out of filter coffee. There was still some instant coffee left at the bottom of a jar. I tried scraping the dried granules out with a spoon but the dark lumps I got were not enough.

This was not a great way to start the week.

It was already a week I was dreading. If I didn’t find the money from somewhere to pay my rent by Friday, my landlord was going to evict me.

Thinking about this made me feel sick and I was holding my stomach and trying to calm breathe when my mobile rang.

I recognized the number. It was the credit card company. I’d stopped answering their calls last month but knew from the voicemails, texts and emails that they were about to hand my account over to a collection agency.

The call ended and a couple of seconds later I saw I had the icon for a new voicemail.

I put my head in my hands. This was so stressful.

If only I could find a job and quickly, I could get them all off my back.

But I was too stressed now to even think about filling out a job application, and I needed coffee.

Desperately.

I put my mobile in my pocket and left the apartment. The clock was ticking on how long I’d be able to use my phone as well. The monthly payment was due in seven days and there already wasn’t enough money in my checking account to cover it.

I would be left totally cut off from the world.

Which was appalling.

How was I meant to turn my life around if I could not go online?

The handful of dollars I still had in the bank was hopefully enough for a take-away coffee and a few more days’ food.

If it wasn’t, I did not know what I was going to do.

Starting to feel a panicky as well as sick, I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

It was busy with people in suits looking like they had somewhere important to be, couples holding hands and looking pleased with themselves, and people just strolling along acting cool.

No one paid any attention to me. One man who was engrossed in a conversation on his phone would have walked straight into me if I hadn’t moved out of the way.

Jerk! I thought. It was like I wasn’t even there.

I was used to being ignored. And alone. It had been a long time since I had been on a date, and my only sort of friends were people with strange usernames that I chatted to online now and then. I’d also fallen out with my family years ago. I was left-handed as well, which shouldn’t have bothered me, but sometimes, when I felt like the definition of a loser, it did.

This was one of those moments.

Thankfully the coffee shop was just across the road. I crossed – narrowly avoiding a cyclist – and went inside.

There was a queue at the counter of people who had no idea what they wanted and took an age deciding, so I was pretty wound up by the time it was my turn to order.

Everything looked expensive so I asked for the most basic coffee they had, then put my card on the contactless reader. The payment failed, so I put the card in and entered my pin.

Two of the most horrible words in the English language flashed up: Card Declined.

The person behind the counter asked me if I had another card.

I was too deflated and embarrassed to reply. I turned around and walked out.

The procession of passers-by continued. Everyone had somewhere to be but me. Everyone had interesting messages and calls and reminders but me.

My mobile pinged.

I hesitated to look at it.

It would just be the credit card company again. Or my landlord. Or maybe my bank telling me they needed to speak to me urgently.

But the need to check my phone got the better of me and I took it out.

There was a message on the screen. It said:

You have been selected to win a cash prize in an exclusive competition.

And below this:

Click the link to enter.

I actually laughed out loud.

I was a total loser but I wasn’t completely brain dead.

At least if you’re going to try and scam me, make an effort to be subtle, I thought and began to put my phone back in my pocket.

Then it pinged again.

I hesitated, but once again the urge to check was too much, so I glanced at the screen. There was a new message below the first:

The competition begins in one minute. Click the link to opt-out.

“No way,” I said.

This was the last thing I needed.

If I clicked on the first link to opt-in to the competition, likely my phone would be infected with a virus.

If I clicked on the second link to opt-out, it was equally likely my phone would be infected.

The only intelligent thing to do was to do nothing.

But there was a countdown timer on the screen on my phone now as well.

It showed I had thirty seconds left to click on the link to opt-out.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty-eight.

I swore under my breath and stared at the screen.

Sweat beaded on my forehead.

This was horrible.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Click the first link.

Click the second link.

Do nothing.

What option should I choose?

Five.

Four.

Three.

My hand twitched and I pressed the screen. Opting out.

I stood there as my heart pounded inside my chest.

But nothing was happening on the screen. Which was good, right?

Only then I started to feel cold, because I realized I had accidently clicked to enter the competition.

The cold feeling trickled through to my bones as my screen went completely blank for a moment, and then a new screen appeared.

There was one word in the centre in vivid red letters:

Welcome.

As I stared at the screen, Welcome disappeared to be replaced by:

You can win 100,000 dollars in cash today by following these simple instructions.

I shook my head. This was a complete scam, and I could only assume my phone was wrecked.

I tapped the screen to try and get to a menu where I could reset the phone. But the screen remained the same. I tried turning the phone off using the button at the side. But again, nothing happened.

Apart from new words appearing on the screen. They seemed to be a list of rules.

Do not tell anyone you are in the competition.

Do everything we say.

If you do, then the winner you will be.

Rules, clearly written by someone who spent as much time indoors on their own as I did.

And there was no way I was playing along. The only thing I wanted was my phone to be working properly again.

The words went and new text appeared.

It said:

Smile at a stranger.

Seriously! I thought.

I sighed and tried to think clearly.

Smiling at a stranger was a very random thing to do but there was no harm in it that I could see. And if it meant there was the slightest chance I could get control of my phone back…

What the hey, I thought and looked up from my phone.

Finding a stranger to smile at would not be a problem. Every single one of the people on the street were strangers to me.

There was a woman right in front of me. She was about my age. And pretty.

I hesitated.

I couldn’t smile at an attractive woman in the street.

It was too weird, and I was too shy anyway.

Besides… she’d walked right past me now.

There was a businessman to my left. He looked successful and confident. I hated successful confident people. There was no way I was going to smile at him.

Then I saw the perfect candidate. He was at my twelve o’ clock about ten feet away, walking slowly along the sidewalk carrying a grocery bag. He looked to be about seventy and was wearing a crumpled shirt with a bowtie.

I could smile at a pleasant old man. No problem.

He came nearer.

I got ready to smile.

Another couple of steps.

I smiled. Gave him a full beam, teeth showing grin.

He stopped, looked up at me, his face wrinkled in disgust, then he kept on walking.

I must admit, I felt pretty stupid, but that was fine. I had smiled at a stranger, now perhaps I could get on with my life.

I checked the screen. It said Complete and below this there was now a box with $1,000 displayed in it.

I felt a flush of excitement. Did that mean I had won 1,000 dollars?

That amount of money would solve my immediate problems and give me time to find a job.

Then I reminded myself that this was a scam.

There was no pot of gold at the end of the digital rainbow.

Still, it would have been nice. I was thinking this ruefully, when the words on the screen changed again.

They now said:

Tell someone you love them.

I swore out loud when I read this.

No way ever I was going to do that.

It had been bad enough just smiling at someone. Telling someone I loved them… I felt queasy just at the prospect.

Meanwhile, though, my phone was still in the grip of the blasted hackers or whoever they were.

Hang on, I thought. How had whoever was running t...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15njcou/id_been_a_loser_all_my_life_could_i_win_at_any/