Snook - Scary Stories From Reddit

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

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Hey, what's up guys and welcome to scary horror stories from Reddit. And this video will just include a bunch of scary horror stories from Reddit, as the title implies. And they'll be just a bunch of stories. And this video will be long enough. So I'll just get into it and stop with the intro. But before we get into it, please subscribe. It's the channel's goal to be at 500,000 subscribers before the end of the year and just in total. So yeah, please subscribe.

That'd be awesome. And anyways, without further ado, let's get into some scary horror stories from Reddit. My roommate has been in the shower for more than four hours. So I got home at around 11 p.m. Late night at the office turned into an even later night at the bar. About four drinks deep at this point, and I'm tired, just about ready to fall asleep as I stumbled through the doorway. I lay down on the couch and reach for my bag of joints and spark one up as I pull YouTube up on my laptop. I'm in the middle of watching some luxury cruise tour, close passing out when I hear the

front door open. I sit up and turn my head slightly, just enough to see my roommate coming in. He hangs his jacket in the closet and doesn't say anything and walks slowly to his room, which is normal enough. I'd been living with him for about three months, long enough for me to pick up most of his tendencies. The guy really doesn't talk unless spoken to, which was far from a problem for me. He also generally kept things clean on his end, never causing much in the way of problems. I really couldn't complain, so I go back to watching YouTube, and about five minutes later, I hear the shower in his room turning on. Once again, nothing strange. At this point, I'm watching bare-knuckle boxing highlights with my eyes half open, maybe one or two minutes away from passing

out. I remember waking up in darkness, my head hurting, my throat dry as hell. I sat up slowly, waiting for the groginess to settle into something manageable. Once it did, I grabbed my phone, check the time around 3.30 a.m. from what I remember. I was starving, and so I got up, began walking towards the fridge, and then I noticed it. A soft but ever-present noise in the background. It took me a few seconds to really recognize what it was.

The shower. Suddenly, the events of last night began were playing in my head, drinking at the bar, Uber and home, laptop, and couch. My roommate coming in, home, the shower turned on, and I stood there for a while, trying to make sense of it. Maybe he went to bed and forgot to turn it off? I shook my head. There's no way that happened, I thought.

Maybe he slipped and fell? Realizing the implications of this, I rushed towards his room but found his bathroom door locked. I began pounding on it. Hey man, you all right? No response. I considered kicking. the door down but decided to call 911 before I did that. I took my phone out, preparing to dial when I noticed that I had an unread text. One for my roommate. Hey man, I couldn't sleep, so I went over

to my girlfriend's place, not sure when I'll be back. Sent two hours ago. I look at the bathroom door, then back down at my phone. Everything about this was wrong. First of all, my roommate barely text me and certainly never to tell me that he's going out. Second of all, I don't know. all, I know for a fact that he's single and has been for a while, and third of all, who the fuck was in the shower then? I tried calling him. No answer. Sent him some text, but no response. I walked over to his desk and saw the keys and while it were still beside his laptop. My head's starting to spin at this point, and I get out of there. Go back into the living room and turn on the lights. I'm pacing around in a circle, trying to follow the plot while also

trying to ignore the shower, a noise that I never could have imagined being so dreadful in any context. Sometime later, I hear something vibrating on the kitchen counter. I moved towards it and see that it's a phone. My roommate's phone. The panic begins sitting in and I immediately grabbed my keys and run out of the apartment. I make my way down the hall and take the stairs down to the lobby, but even that doesn't seem far enough away, and so I make my way over to the McDonald's across the street.

I sit there for a while. considering calling the cops, but for some reason feeling too nervous to do so. But even though there's hardly anybody in there, the place begins to feel suffocating, and I decided to leave, walking back out onto the empty streets. I almost immediately I get this feeling that I'm being watched, and I feel my gaze drifting up and towards the apartment. Soon I'm looking at my balcony and I see somebody standing there. A dark figure stood completely straight, stiff to the point where it nearly was.

resembles a mannequin, but it isn't one. If I look closely, I can see it just slightly swaying. I froze in place my mind hardly able to understand or accept what it was seen. It's not my roommate. It's too tall. In fact, it's too tall to be anybody I know. Its head nearly scraping the bottom of the balcony above. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make out any of its details. The darkness and distance, may have been enough to explain that away. But there was something about it that drove me towards a different conclusion, that this thing simply possessed new details that could have been observed, that the only element of its composition was that of an unadultered darkness.

Of course, my gut instinct was to get a hell away from it, but the voice in my head was telling me that if I were trying to run, this thing would end up following me. I went back into the McDonald's instead, and locking myself in the bathroom as I finally dialed 911. I told the operator that somebody had broken into my place, but that I had gotten out of there without them noticing, but that they were still in there.

It was the story that most accurately represented the situation without making me come across this bad shit. The operator told me that they would be extending somebody over for me to hang tight. I left the bathroom waiting at the table closest to the exit until I could see the red and blue light cutting through the darkness. I went outside to meet the cops, looking up at the balcony to find it empty, though the door to the living room had been left open. They pelted me with a bunch of questions that I found difficult to answer.

Is the intruder armed? Do I have an idea who it might be? What are their intentions? I told them I didn't know that I couldn't figure it out, but they just kept on asking. Soon I was practically yelling at them to go up there and check it out for themselves, and I suppose the terror in my voice was enough for them to begin taking the serious. They told me to wait by the entrance and I watched on as they entered the building. I was out there for a long time, growing increasingly anxious of the thought of what they were going to tell me when they came down.

A few minutes later, the silence was broken by a single, muffled gunshot. My heart dropped into my stomach and I continued to wait there, unsure of what to do otherwise. Twenty more minutes of silence and the officers still hadn't come down. Soon I could hear more of them approaching in the distance. Before I knew it, four more cop cars had pulled up around me, and the scene had fallen into chaos. Officers shouting over each other and into the radios, more questions being hurled my way,

none of which I was able to answer. The next few sequences were mostly a blur, but I remember the building being evacuated. The tenants frightened and confused as they were ushered outside while the officers became more and more frantic. I remember hearing more scattered gunshots, some screaming, other noises that were difficult to make sense of. There were a few lapses in my memory after that, but I recall being pushed into the back

of a police car. After being driven to the station, I was led into one of the interrogation rooms where I found two nondescript men in suits waiting for me. They didn't introduce themselves and immediately went into a series of questions each one more bizarre than the last? What company was your roommate employed by? What was the nature of his job? How many different people have been inside your apartment since your roommate moved in? Have you ever heard voices inside the apartment from the hours of midnight to 3 a.m.? Voices that did not belong to your roommate? Have you ever seen a circle of people standing outside of the apartment from

the hours of midnight till 3 a.m.? People that were exceptionally tall? In one of the more unsettling one, Have you ever seen somebody standing at the foot of your bed upon waking up between the hours of midnight to 3 a.m.? Only for them to disappear moments later? If so, do you remember what they looked like? Any distinct features? As they continued probing me, my mind became conjuring up some of the strange shit that had happened after my roommate had moved in. Shit that I had written off as figments of my imagination, simply because I had no other explanation for them. I did hear the voices, always coming from the room next to mine where my roommate slept.

I was always so tired when I heard them, but I do remember it either sounded like a young woman or a man with an extremely deep voice. I could never make out any words. It always sounded like gibberish to me. And then there was that one time where I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, still have asleep. I didn't bother turn the lights on as I entered. But as my eyes began adjusting to the dark, I could have sworn that somebody was already

sitting on the toilet, somebody extremely tall. Of course, when I turned on the lights, nothing was there. It was easy to chalk it up as a product of late-night drowsiness at the time, and I had never really thought about it since. After doing my best to give them useful information, the suit spent a good few minutes taking notes on their phones. Once they were done, they sat up quickly, told me that they'd be in touch before leaving the room. A cop came in a few minutes later and told me that since I couldn't return to the apartment, they would set me up in a nearby hotel until they, quote, were able to get this situation under control

and that I should stay put until they give me a call. What happened? I asked him. What did you guys find up there? He stared at me for a long time, not as if he were in deep thought, but as if he held deep aversion for what he was considering telling me. Eventually, he shook his head. I don't know, he said.

I mean, I really don't know. I nodded. Tried to smile, though. I'm not sure. It didn't come across very well. It's the next day now, and I'm in the hotel. Of course, I couldn't sleep. Couldn't really eat.

The officer hadn't called me yet. When I tried searching up information about the evacuation on the internet, all I can find are articles claiming that it was due to a fire. A fucking fire. Update. I fell asleep and I just woke up. It's one. am now. And I can hear the shower.

We've all been there. The watch party finally makes it out of the group chat and uh-oh, you volunteered to host. Suddenly you need snacks, drinks, dips, cups and all the other party essentials. With Instacart, you can get all those groceries delivered in as fast as 60 minutes. No extra errands for you. One quick order for everyone. That way, everything shows up right on time, making hosting easy and like you had it planned all along. Download the Instacart app today and get no markups at select retailers, fees and exclusions apply. I thought my boyfriend was the love of my life, until I discovered he was drugging me at night. Lately, I've been waking up still exhausted.

Even if I went to bed early, I'd wake up feeling like I haven't slept in days. Trying to get out of bed for work was almost impossible, which was strange for me because I was always a high-energy sort of person, a few hours asleep, and I was always good to go. I was out of loss as what could have been happening. After a barrage of tests, even my doctor couldn't find anything wrong with me. The only recent change in my life was my boyfriend who had moved in, and I was sharing a bed for the first time in my life. Stephen was the first love of my life, and this was my first serious relationship.

I don't want to spoil things by making him sleep in the spare room. I like to having Stephen around. He made a real fuss over me, and he would bring me camomile tea every night before bed. The pain in my hip was sharp and pulsated up the right side of my side of my head. my body, I jumped from my bed and nearly collapsed to the floor as I struggled to get to the bathroom. Stephen, can you get in here? I cried.

A big, dark bruise covered my hip, as if I was assaulted in my sleep with a metal bar. What's wrong, Stephen said as he came rushing into the bathroom? Did I fall out of bed or something? Stephen had a weird expression on his face. I could swear he looked guilty about something. Probably, I don't know. His response was dismissive, which sent my brain spiraling with all sorts of thoughts. This is not normal, Stephen. I think there's something wrong with me.

You'd probably see a doctor then, he coldly said before quickly leaving the bathroom. My doctor was still at a loss and suggested I should see someone who could rule out anything nefarious. Stephen was still dismissive of me as we drove to the hospital. I'm sure it's nothing. You're probably just stressed from work. People don't wake up with bruises over stress, I angrily thought to myself. The doctor at the hospital took my blood and did all sorts of tests on me including a stress test. I should have been happy when the test came back clear,

but it only made me feel like I was losing my mind. Something was definitely wrong with me. I would prescribe you sedatives, but your blood work shows you were already on nitracepam, explained the doctor. I was dumbstruck. It wasn't sure when the doctor was talking about. I've never taken so much as a painkiller in my life.

The doctor's face looked how I felt. He took out his chart. and looked over them again. No, you definitely tested positive for the nitrousypam, which is a powerful sedative. Later that evening, as I sat in bed, a million different thoughts ran through my head. How was that even possible, I thought to myself? As I sat there, Stephen walked in with my chamomile tea, and just as I was about to put it to my lips, I was struck by the most unnerving thought. The realization that my boyfriend was drugging me, hit me like a ton of bricks, and filled me with a dread I had never felt before.

I emptied the contents of the cup down this thing in the bathroom before jumping back into bed. Was it hot enough for you? asked Stephen, as he jumped into bed beside me. Perfect as always. I felt as if I was lying beside a complete stranger. Had I ever really known him? I thought to myself as I lay there terrified he was doing unimaginable things to me while I slept. I must have drifted off at some stage because when I woke up,

My room was a mess, and Stephen was nowhere to be seen. My body ached all over, and it felt like I was in a fight. What the hell was he doing to me in my sleep, I thought? I had made the decision to go to the police, but I needed evidence, or it was just my word against his. I had purchased a hidden camera and set it up in the bathroom, pointed in towards the bed. I woke up exhausted as usual, which unfortunately meant you had done something to me while I slept, but I had it on camera. I opened my laptop to check the footage. For the first couple of hours of sleep, nothing happened.

For a moment, I had hoped I was imagining everything until I watched myself jolt from the bed. At first, I couldn't believe what I was doing. It felt like I was watching a horror movie as I watched myself crawl up the bedroom wall like some possessed demon. I continued to crawl up the wall under the ceiling looking down over Stephen like I was ready to pounce on him.

Stephen woke and it was a strange watching him because it was like he was prepared for what was happening and didn't seem faced by it. He took a stick out from under the bed as I pounced from the ceiling above, and he spent the next hour fighting me off. I watched as he subdued me on the bed before pulling out handcuffs and cuffing me to the bed. I looked at the marks of my wrist, which makes sense now. As soon as Stephen came home from work, I ran and threw my arms around him. Why didn't you tell me what you were going through every night?

Stephen shrugged his shoulders. I thought you knew. and usually the drugs I was giving you made things a little easier. Why are you even so with me? My last girlfriend was a jealous psychopath. You're a walk in the park compared to her. The 72-hour sleep ban. I've always associated my birthday with that depressing time of year

where a cozy autumn turns into an early winter decay, where colorful leaves die, leaving a withered brown shell behind. Still, people are expected to celebrate the birthday, birthdays. It's strange if one doesn't. I don't. My fiancé recently asked me why I never celebrate my birthday, and it's a hard one to explain. When you've been through something traumatic, everything sort of brings you back to that moment, one way or another. And while I'd love to tell her about it, I don't think I can without sounding like a maniac. I thought I'd start by telling

my story anonymously and sort of go from there. It was the year I turned 13. Since You've Been Gone, was blasting on the radio every hour of the day. My friends and I were quoting how I met your mother religiously. It was a good time to be a kid. Since my birthday was in the middle of the school week, my big birthday plans were postponed until the upcoming weekend. Still, I couldn't complain. Birthday cake on a Tuesday didn't sound all that bad.

I got home, had a small celebration with my parents, and opened a few presents. Two new games from a PlayStation 2. Score. I finished up my homework and browsed the net for a few hours ahead of my scheduled bedtime when there was a knock at the door. We rarely had visitors, so to have somebody knocking at our door at 10 p.m. was unusual, to say the least. My parents had already opened the door by the time I was halfway down the stairs. There was a man in a fancy jacket with a clipboard standing outside, along with two armed guards.

I sort of fell into the middle of the conversation. So we need you to sign the consent form and we'll get started. The clipboard man said, any questions? This can't be legal, my mom said. On what kind of authority are you? Ma'am, this is an emergency. We've been authorized to bring anyone and everyone, if need be, but I promise you, it'll be less pleasant experience than which you could achieve here in the comfort of your own home.

As the discussion continued, the armed men pushed into the armed men pushed into the moment. into the house. They sort of had a checklist they were going through, asking questions as they poked and prodded. Someone mentioned a satellite phone, which we didn't have. I hurried back upstairs. From my window, I could see them putting wheel locks on our car. They were testing some sort of electrical equipment too, and as they did, I could see the internet connection on my computer disappear. My cell phone lost all bars, and while I didn't check, I suspected they'd done something to our landline as well. They were isolating us. putting us under some sort of lockdown.

I still don't have the slightest idea of who these people were. There were no patches, badges, ranks or symbols, just a bunch of serious-looking men in windbreakers with visible gunholsters. After a few minutes, one of the men entered my room. My parents were worried, sick, but were told to wait outside. The man was about 6'4 and had the look of someone who could kill me with his bare teeth if need be. Without a word, he started to go through my things. You got any walkie-talkies, he asked?

Any radio science projects? Something like that. Nope, I said, shaking my head. I got a PlayStation 2? That can go online, right? I never got the chance to answer before my mom added. We don't let him play online game, she said. It can't do that.

As if to make sure he pulled the power cable and dropped it into a sealed bag along with various knick-knacks and keys they'd collected. They weren't taking any chances, and I wasn't playing my new games anything. time soon, it seemed. As they finished up their imprompt to house inspection, we were asked to gather downstairs. The fancy man with the clipboard clears her throat, and the room felt deathly silent. Even my dad, who was usually a very assertive man, didn't have much to add to the conversation. That's how you knew it was serious. For 72 hours, this and surrounding neighborhoods

are under lockdown, the man explained. There was a localized problem related to a recent geological event which has caused some unexplained issues. I'm sure you've noticed some minor oddities as of late. Like what? My dad added. Milk turning sour, house plants getting a strange color tint, swarms of frogs cluttering the roads. My parents said nothing but they nodded. Perhaps they'd seen something I hadn't. The man put his clipboard as he explained. Calmly. You've been exposed to something akin to a chemical. It reacts violently to the release of certain hormones which are associated with deep REM sleep. To ensure your safety, we are currently enforcing a temporary 72-hour ban of sleep. Excuse me?

My dad took a step forward, but one of the armed men responded in kind. They both stopped before it had the chance to escalate. Exposure was approximately nine hours ago, meaning you have about 63 hours left to go. That'll be approximately 1 p.m. on Friday. There is no way we can... This is non-negotiable. This is a matter of your security, sir. We have an emergency health service site, but I can promise you that it won't be pleasant. You'll be chemically induced into sleeplessness for the full duration of exposure until the event has passed. It can cause long-lasting brain damage. We are handed a folder each explaining

our responsibilities and rights. An unmarked red folder with three papers, one explaining their right to forces upon us, another explaining that we'd already signed the consent papers, and a third one was a form explaining exactly when we could go to sleep. There was also an inventory form explaining the items we were to have returned at the end of the containment. They left a box of 50 glass vials, some kind of four-hour booster shots. The man explained how underage children were not to take more than once every several hours, and that my mother, if pregnant, shouldn't take any at all. Luckily, my mom, mom wasn't pregnant. I'm an only child. We were also giving fiber bars with some kind of hormone

supplement, unmarked and unbranded, but warm. Maybe they were made recently. The packaging was sloppy at best. The fancy man was trying his best to explain, and I could see my parents were eager to listen to him, but I barely understood half of it. Instead, I looked at the armed guards. They looked exhausted. Maybe they, too, weren't allowed to sleep. One of them had his mouth open and almost drooled, blinking one eye at a time. I could have sworn he nodded off for a second, which prompted him to take a walk outside. I don't know if we can do this, my mother complained. It's a lot to ask. We've only just, if at any moment you can't do this, you need to call this number. It's the only number that works, the man said, pointing to the final line on the final paper of the folder.

If someone falls asleep and can't be awakened within a few minutes, they're in terrible danger. If that happens, try to keep them awake by any means until we can get here to pick them up. And then they'll be taken to our site in Macanto, where they'll be chemically induced to stay awake. So what exactly happens if someone doesn't make it? My mom asked, if we all just fall asleep. The man shook his head, tapping the clipboard with his pen. They will probably die. Others might too.

While they went into the kitchen to explain some details, the angry-looking guard approached me with this sealed bag, handing me back my PlayStation 2 power cable. He gave me a pat on the shoulder. I checked with the tech team, he said. You're good to go. And happy birthday. I'd almost forgotten that it was my birthday. I appreciated the gesture, but I just couldn't bring myself a smile.

I had too many questions bubbling in the back of my head and I was too afraid to speak. They probably talked for another 20 minutes or so before the men left, leaving my parents and I alone in the kitchen. My mother was smoking under the kitchen fan. I'd only seen her smoke two times, once when she lost her job, and another time when my father got sick. Smoking in the kitchen was a surefire way to tell something was wrong. Dad was sitting with his arms crossed, looking at the box of booster shots. This is no joke, my dad finally said. This is very serious.

We're all going to need to help each other to get through this. Mom said nothing, but I could see her hands trembling. She'd been crying. She was shaking so much that the ash from her cigarette didn't reach the ashtray. It just plopped down on the stove. We can't be alone, Dad continued. We're going to do our best to keep busy. You can play as many games as you want, but you can't fall asleep.

It gave me back my power cable, I said. Does that mean it's okay for me to use the PlayStation? It's okay, my mom coughed. It's okay, honey. Play your games. For those first few hours, I didn't understand what the big deal was. No more school for the rest of the week, no bedtime, and unlimited screen time? That didn't sound too bad to me.

I gained late into the night. Sly 2 and Ratched and Clank were on the menu, and I had a blast. I got some snacks along with one of those fiber bars. They tasted like twigs and raisins, but it made my brain calm. Not tired, but it made it easier to focus. made it harder to shut my eyes, making my eyelids itch. All lights in the house were kept on all throughout the night. Mom and Dad kept playing music on the downstairs stereo and they desperately tried to keep me engaged.

I was engaged enough just playing games, so I think it was more of their benefit rather than mine. At 5 a.m., Dad took his first booster shot. I could hear it all the way from upstairs. He was cussing pretty hard. Apparently those things tasted like a mix of stale rice and death. Mom took her first boost about half an hour later, but she mixed it with orange juice. Apparently that helped. By 7 a.m. even I was feeling it. I'd never been up all night playing games like that on a school day before.

Sure, I'd polled all-nighters with my friends, but it was usually something we'd prepared for, so by early morning I could feel myself nodding off. My parents were checking in on me every now and then and decided to act. We were having family breakfast, pretending as if we'd already slept. You're always cranking, the morning mom said. Try to imagine this is just that, another cranky morning. I knew for a fact that they'd slipped one of those boosters into my cereal. I saw three empty vials on the counter,

and I knew none of them had taken a second one yet. Still I had little choices but to try. We weren't even halfway through the containment yet. As we finished our breakfast, we could hear commotion outside. I was upstairs brushing my teeth, watching through the hallway window. It was our neighbors, Larry Peterson, the 55-year-old man who worked the fishing supplies at the local mini-mall, crawled out his front door. He was throwing up something black and blue onto the pavement. I'd never seen this man do anything more physically straining than trying to start a lawnmower,

and now he was crawling on all fours like his life depended on it. I could hear his wife calling out from inside. She was screaming at him, but I couldn't hear what. Larry got up and almost leapt into the back of his pickup truck and a show of assleticism. him had never seen from him before. It wasn't until his wife got out of the house that I could hear what she was saying. Larry, she cried. Larry, wake up. I saw Larry Peterson grab a wrench, get out of the truck, and grab his wife by the hair. Suddenly, a hand covered my eyes. As my father dragged me away from the window, I could hear a scream turned into a gargle, followed by a hearty laugh.

One I'd heard a thousand times before. The same kind of laugh Larry Peterson. would chuckle up whenever my dad tried to pull off a bad pun. My mind painted me a picture of what happened and it wasn't pretty. My dad spun me around and stared at my eyes. I could tell he wasn't himself. There were lines across his face that I hadn't seen before. Stay with me and mommy said, Don't look outside.

People are getting sick. Are we getting sick, Dad? I asked, a yawn escaping me. He shook me a little, as if to make sure I was paying attention. We'll be fine, he said. It's just a matter of time, but I don't want you to see people getting hurt. Larry isn't feeling well. There was a knock on the front door.

Dad took point as Mom hit in the bedroom. I remember standing on the top of the stairs, looking over the railing to the floor below. There was a violent, angry pounding on the door. Larry Peterson's soft chuckle coming from the other side. He didn't say anything. He just pounded on the door with his wrench, laughing as he tried to get in. He went around the house rattling our windows. He didn't get far before we could hear a car roll up.

There was a popping sound, but not like a gunshot. I think they tased him. By the time I could hear Larry Peterson get dragged off, my mom had come upstairs with a smile taped to her face, asking me to show her how far I'd gotten in my new fancy video games. She was clearly trying to keep me distracted, but I didn't mind. At that point, I wanted desperately to be distracted. I could imagine Larry Peterson on the other side

the front door his white t-shirt stained with a strange black and blue goo he'd thrown up it's something else here now something new from exclusively on paramount plus it's the series stephen king calls scary as hell everything here is impossible but it's also real sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now we're running out of time and we still don't know the rules don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch saving those children is how we all Home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Weielding that wrench with a manic grip.

The thing was at large in my arms, in solid metal. I never considered it a weapon, but thinking about it, made my blood run cold. Had he really killed Mrs. Peterson? Why? Mom and I spent the next few hours playing video games. We also made a plan. We went through our old DVDs and decided on my watching schedule. She'd originally planned a walk, but now we weren't to leave the house.

She didn't want to say why, but I had the feeling that there was something outside the Peterson's house as she didn't want me to see. Bloodstains, maybe. I was too afraid to find out. My parents tried their best to keep the mood up, but I could tell it was getting to them. My dad was mostly just standing there, leaning against the door, staring straight ahead like in a trance. Mom tried to occupy herself by playing games and watching DVDs with me, but she was just, was counting the minutes until she'd could get her next booster shot. I wasn't eager to take one.

They made my stomach all queasy. We made it all the way until noon. Dad was having trouble staying up and kept washing his head with cold water. He tried to keep busy doing housework that he'd keep for a rainy day. But there was like constant distractions. We could hear sirens in the distance and at one point there was someone spraying our front door in windows with a high-pressure water hose, probably to wash away the last traces of Larry Peterson. There were dog patrols going up and down the streets along with the occasional phone call, the one number that still worked,

where someone called to make sure we are all awake and accounted for. By dinner time, mom was having stomach troubles, her shaking had gotten worse, and she was having trouble with sudden change of smells. Dad kept rubbing his eyes and checking his watch, getting up every 10 minutes or so just to move around. We decided that we were going to play board games after dinner, but mom was having trouble keeping herself from throwing up.

We ended up just reheating a lasagna from a few days back. I didn't mind. Mom made amazing lasagna, but my appetite was quickly lost when I saw my mother barely keeping it together. She kept drooling and making this weird chugging sound. She was blinking slower and slower. Dad tried to get her to eat one of those fiber bars, but she just ran out of the kitchen, locking herself in the bathroom.

It was touch and go for a while. while. I could feel my heart racing as dad tried to convince her to unhunk the door, but she just couldn't do it. After a while, she stopped responding. Dad had to break the handle with a hammer, but it was too late. She was already sleeping. I could hear it through the front door. As the door burst open, mom had only been asleep for a couple seconds, a minute at most. But she was sitting on the toilet, her head leaning back and something was coming out of her mouth, black and blue fingertips, poking out over the edge of her lips. Her throat euthelated. The moment dad grabbed her, she tipped her head forward, coughing. Dad washed her face in the sink while yelling at me to wait

in the other room. For a few minutes, I was just sitting there, ready to run or hide. Must have been too late, I figured. She could have already been affected, like Larry Peterson. I could hear them arguing in the other room, and as their voices went from angry to desperate to sad, I didn't know what to do. When they finally returned, they sat me down to explain that we were going to be fine, that we were almost halfway through, and that we were in the home stretch. They were so kind, warm and careful in the way they explained it. But my mind was a thousand miles away. I had trouble focusing. And all I could think about was that strange noise I kept hearing in the background. Something outside. Dad was halfway through explaining how we weren't going to

lock our bathroom doors anymore when something in me screamed at me to react. It was just a slight click, but it was clear as day. Maybe it was those booster shots, but I kept hyper-focusing on little details rather than big-picture stuff, like an actual conversation taking place in front of me. I closed my eyes, and no less than a second later, there was a loud bang. Someone was shooting at us. It was only a couple of shots, but we dropped to the ground. One shot got lodged in the front door, while the other cracked the kitchen window. There were loud voices outside laughing hysterically. They were talking but barely making any sense.

One of them sounded like she was trying to talk with food in her mouth. Mom and dad kept quiet as two more shots popped off. One of them hitting the kitchen light. When an electric spark it gave out, blocking out most of the kitchen. I could hear someone running and laughing as it continued down the street. In the distance there were more gunfire. maybe someone responding in kind. We can't stay here, Mom whispered.

We got to call them. You want to go to where they put Larry, Dad answered? To be put in a hospital full of these people? They're shooting at us. We can't just... Mom quieted down and looked at me. She and Dad excused themselves to talk in private while I was asked to move upstairs.

I was to stay away from windows and I couldn't sit or lie down. It'd be up to check on me in a bit. But of course I was too curious, while still hearing them argue downstairs, I checked an upstairs window. I could see pretty far down the street, and in the distance I could make out a car stalling on the side of the road. The headlights were still on, but it was surrounded by at least six people. Two of them were dressed like the armed guards we'd seen earlier. It took me a while to realize there was an old man sitting in the car.

I'd seen him around a couple of times, but I didn't know his name. The surrounding people were trying to crack the car windows with various weapons, tire irons, bricks, hammers, lead pipes, whatever they could get their hands on. It didn't take them long to break through. They reached in to pull the man out, who was far too off for me to hear the screams, but I could vaguely see what they were doing. They held him down and covered his face with their hands, his eyes, his mouth, his ears, leaving only his nose to breathe through.

Then they just sat there. It took me a minute and realized what they were doing. They were forcing him to sleep. After a few minutes, they let go of him. The old man slowly stood up. leaning against his car and started to dry heave. After a while, the same blue and black goo that I'd seen from Larry Peterson started pouring out of his mouth, stopping only as he coughed up some kind of clot that could barely fit in his mouth,

a clot that moved. As he straightened his back, he looked at this strange group, and they walked down the street together. Some jogged, some sprinted. One of them crawled, but it looked like he held onto something with his teeth. either to that or something was coming out of his mouth, something long. As they hurried down the street, I could hear more gunfire. In the distance, coming from another way. I could see another group of people, at least a dozen, but heading in another direction.

Roaming gangs of sleep-deprived sick people, God knows how this thing affected them long term. When my parents were done discussing, they sat me down to explain that we were going to stay indoors and keep away from the windows just in case. We were locking all doors and windows, closing all curtains, and not playing anything louder than necessary. We were to draw as little attention as possible. Of course, I agreed. What choice did I have? That night I could tell things were deteriorating. Dad almost took a double dose of booster shots as he forgot he'd taken the first one, but Mom stopped him.

There were no phone calls coming in. They'd stopped checking in on us. Mom even tried calling, but the line had been disconnected. The gunfire outside was further away, but more frequent. We could hear cars honking, but no sirens. Then there were fires, at least two, somewhere downtown. We could see the smokestacks from afar. Mom wasn't doing well.

She couldn't eat, and at times she could barely stay on her feet. She kept talking out loud even if no one is in the room with her. She had to lean against things to stay upright. She couldn't keep the fiber bars down, and she walked around with her head bobbing back and forth. Dad tried his best to keep her active, but he was having trouble as well. No matter how many cold splashes he took to the face, he just couldn't stay attentive. I wasn't doing well either, but nowhere near as bad.

I still had my appetite, and I took my booster shots, but I could feel the side effects. My hands kept shaking, and I had a nasty headache. There were these pinches down my neck like someone was shocking me with a wet battery. I'd imagine things moving just outside my vision. I kept turning around to look at the windows as I'd start to hallucinate that there were screens. By morning there was a new problem. Both the power and the water had been cut. There was a small lake, a short walk from the house, and we had no choice to be to try and get some water by hand. We had some drinking water stocked in the kitchen, but we needed some for the bathroom.

Mom volunteered to go, but that was out of the question. She could barely stand or make a coherent sentence. There was no discussion. Dad had to do it. We watched him from one of the upstairs windows. The sun had just risen, bathing the withering landscape in long, sharp shadows, and a sickly bright glow. Mom was just staring blankly ahead as if trying to remember what was so important. Isn't it your birthday soon, she said out loud? That was Tuesday, I responded.

Did you wish for you to get older? She asked. I wish I wish for that I want you to be be able to get older She looked at me and laughed manically She blinked one eye at a time her left eye lingering a little longer than her right Her eyes were sunken and dark

She kept giving me cross eyes I think she meant well but that look she gave me was nothing short of terrifying It was like she'd been reduced to her most basic self My mom was still in there somewhere but most of it was just just gone. After about an hour, I spotted dad coming back. Mom and I were both relieved, but it didn't last long. I noticed he wasn't carrying any water. Moments later, I could see he wasn't alone. There were about two dozen more people coming with him. Mom didn't seem to react. She just looked out the window and nodded to herself. For a moment, she was almost fallen asleep standing up,

her mouth moving up and down on its own, like a bass out of water. I could see something moving in her throat. I shook her, and in a moment of clarity, she looked out the window again. As I heard something, pounded against the door downstairs, mom pushed me into the closet. She ran downstairs to get the remaining booster shots and dropped it all on me, along with a rich watch and a couple of fiber bars. Someone, someone will get you, she said. Just wait. Just wait and stay awake. I'll try to think of something. I didn't have the time to protest. before she slammed the closet shut. I could hear a key slide into the lock down stairs.

Dad may have forgotten something about who he was, but he hadn't forgotten how to use the house keys. I just sat there in the dark listening. I curled up into a ball, but I didn't want to get too comfortable. I could hear furniture being turned over, unfamiliar voices yelling obscenities or incoherent nonsense. A fight broke out,

and I could hear someone throwing something. Another person ran up the stairs and into the bathroom. repeatedly kicking the bathtub. A woman screamed, then a man. There was a gunshot, followed by windows being broken. I could hear a muffled scream as if someone was held down, maybe like they did with the old man outside the night before. I must have sat there for hours. In the dark, it was hard to tell if my eyes were open or not. I couldn't tell if I was really hearing something outside or if I was just imagining it. I could hear voices and whispers, but they didn't seem to make sense. Sometimes I imagined them standing just outside my door, asking me for

the cheat codes for the games I'd played. All I had to keep my waning sanity company was my mom's wristwatch, and I could barely make it out. Time passed so strangely I could be wrapped and I thought for what felt like hours, but only minutes passed. Then I would catch myself staring straight ahead and two hours could disappear. I kept repeating the next scheduled hour for the booster shot like a mantra, but things were getting stranger. The clock would go backwards. I'd imagine someone sitting across from me, a pair of white eyes staring back at me from the dark. There were little voices telling me to go to sleep, and I found myself nodding off. I could feel something moving in me, like a hand trying to fit into a glove. I finally gave up and got out of the closet. I could barely

stand as I dragged the booster shots and fiber bars along in a plastic bag. I didn't care if there was anyone downstairs I needed to see something. I needed light or some kind of stimuli. The whole house was trashed. Every piece of furniture broken. Every light smashed. There was blood splatter on the walls and the front door was hanging on a single hinge. Every window was smashed and our picture frames had been thrown across the room like ninja stars, but the strangest thing was was an awkward smell coming from the kitchen. At first I didn't understand what it was. It looked like a person. But there was something wrong with the limbs. After a few seconds of adjustment and trying to force myself to clarity, I realized it was a dead body. A young man with a knife sticking out

of his chest, splayed out on the kitchen floor. His jaw was extended and broken on one side. There was a black and blue arm reaching out of his throat, reaching upwards to grab his own head. Something in me stirred. Something in me didn't like what I was looking at. And I was I wasn't sure if it was me or something else. I tried to push it down with a fiber bar, which strangely worked. I made my way outside in a day's. I didn't know what to do. Part of me wanted to find my parents, and another part of me wanted to just get out of town.

I wanted to look for a bike or just start walking or catch a bus. Of course, there were no buses to catch, but my sleep-deprived mind couldn't separate fact from fiction anymore. entire night was one long living nightmare. I kept imagining things coming out of the dark. I could hear voices telling me to turn around, to stop, to run all at once, and none at all. I could barely keep my balance and stopping even for a moment would send me straight to sleep. I had to keep going. I even took an extra booster shot, which just gave me this sharp joint pain and made me sweat. I could tell I'd done something stupid. I took a shortcut through the park. I could see faces coming out of

the trees. I saw a man lying face down on a gravel path, being pulled forward by an arm coming out of his mouth. I saw a man out by the lake, repeatedly slapping his arms against the cold water surface, like a manic child trying to get as high a splash as possible. Some of it was real. Some of it wasn't. I couldn't tell which was which. Not anymore. When I finally reached downtown, I saw at least a two dozen people gathered outside a burning building, all of them with black and blue arms reaching out of their mouths, stretching towards the flames as if slowly wafting air towards them like human kelp, moving against an invisible current. They leaned back and forth in unison, praising whatever chaos they had caused without a word, or sound. And yet I could hear them,

welcoming me, beckoning me, all voices unique carried to me by an unfelt wind. Come closer, it begged. You belong here. I turned away in the voice. voices grew louder, desperate, screeching, demanding my attention, my devotion, some of them coming from outside, some of them coming from the rumble of my stomach. It's already here I laughed. It'll never go away. It'll never sleep. It'll never stop. Hands reached for me, a face in every window, voices reaching from beneath the concrete, gunfire, broken windows, glass cracking under my rubber boots as I shuffled past burnt-out cars. It was dark, then bright, and dark again. And at some point I succumbed. I felt concrete against my cheek, but I couldn't bring myself to get up.

My legs wouldn't move. My eyes wouldn't open. Yes, the voices laughed. Come, come to us, come burn with us. And then, darkness. I don't know how long I was out, hours, maybe half a day. I woke up to see a man running towards me, asking me if I was okay. A car had pulled over, bathing me in warm light. By the side of the road, a colony of frogs looked at me. In the distance, my eyes landed on a discolored sunflower. It turned blue. Strange how you don't notice, the most obvious changes until they stare at you in the face.

Turns out, exposure had happened at least six hours earlier than the man with a clipboard had predicted. And I'd been awake long enough for most of the effect to pass through my system. I was found unconscious by the slide of the highway, about nine miles from my house. While I did have an uncomfortable, dreamless sleep, the effects it had on me were nowhere near as bad as what happened to most of the neighborhood. I'm sure you've heard of it. Riots, they called it. Just another mess up in a low-income area. I don't even think it reached national news. Some of the people who succumbed to it early had permanent brain damage. Larry Peterson was never the same, but it was hard to tell. if it was because of the emotional trauma or the sleep thing.

Either way, he had to have a nurse come look after him for a few weeks for the rest of his life. Mom and dad weren't completely unharmed either. Mom developed some kind of narcolepsy after that night, spontaneously nodding off at the most inopportune times. Dad lost his sense of taste and smell. To this day, they're having a hard time explaining what exactly they experienced. To them, it was just like going to sleep and having the most horrible nightmare, only to wake up in a hospital bed.

Sometimes I wonder if I did fall asleep. Some of the things I saw were so strange that there was no way to tell me if they're real or not. I vividly remember that scene of hands waving back and forth outside that burning building downtown. It had to be real. That building did burn. As you might imagine, I have a hard time looking back at this, thinking too much about it gives me this icy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like a small part of me believes that this was all just a big nightmare, that I'm just still like clocks tick away from waking up in that closet with someone standing just outside waiting for me. Or maybe it's something inside of me still waiting to grab the reins.

Maybe it's just a night away. My daughter had been prying at the door handle every night. It's gone from adorable to disturbing. I remember the first time I heard it. Click. Click. Honey, what's that? I asked my wife, Carmen.

After waking up in the middle of the night to a strange sound. What's what she replied in a groggy state, frustrated that I had woken her so late. But the sound had stopped. The next night I heard it again. Click. Click. What could that possibly be?

I wondered as I woke my wife again. This time she heard it. It sounds like the doorknob. But by the time we walked over to it, the sound had stopped. Luckily for me, back when I lived in the city, I'd always gotten into the habit of locking my bedroom door. And that tradition continued well into moving into my wife's apartment and even our current home in the suburbs. The following night, we didn't hear the sound. Perhaps we were both in too deep of the sleep.

Or maybe it didn't happen that night. But either way, we thought the strange occurrence was behind us. Until the next night, when we heard it again. Click. Click. Is that what I think it is? Carmen asked. It most certainly is, I replied, a chill going down my spine. As the recurring sound was beginning to genuinely terrify me. This time I tiptoed over to the door careful not to alert whoever was turning it

and opened it quickly, only to find my eight-year-old daughter. Just standing there, staring at me. Christy, I asked. Yes, Dad, she replied. What are you doing, dear? She nearly scared me to death. I missed you and mommy. It was so adorable that I nearly forgot how creepy the sounds of the previous nights had been.

That's all? But then she simply turned and walked away. Good night, Daddy. I climbed back into bed and let out a sigh of relief, relieved that my daughter was the source of the sound. But the next day, I started to think about it more, about the number of times it had happened, and how, after claiming to miss us, she simply walked away. So when it happened again the next night, I didn't open the door.

Instead, I simply tiptoed over to it and listened. Click. Click. I heard my daughter tugging at the door handle, twisting and turning it, and knew a clear attempt to pry it open while we were sleeping. Or at least she must have assumed. That's when the whole thing began to actually terrify me. If she was trying to open the door and get into the bedroom,

while my wife and I were asleep, what did she intend to do? I became obsessed with that thought to the point where I couldn't fall back to sleep that night and had to stay planned to get to the bottom of it. So the next night, I did what any rational parent would do when their child was uncharacteristically twisting at the bedroom door every night and left the door unlocked. And so after pretending to fall asleep, I lay in bed, waiting. Passing the time on my cell phone,

as to not fall asleep. Until a few hours later, when in the middle of the night, I heard a new sound. Not that of the door handle twisting and turning back and forth, no. This time I simply heard the sound of the door handle turning, followed by the squeaky door opening. Click. Screech. I immediately turned off my cell phone and shut my eyes just far enough so that I could see

through them and pretend to sleep. What happened next still haunts me. Lying there in the dark, my eyes squinting, I saw the blurred shape of my daughter open the door, closed it behind her, and slowly walk over to my wife's side of the bed. She must miss her mother, after all, I thought to myself, giving her the benefit of the doubt, until I carefully turned my head just slowly enough so that my daughter didn't realize I was looking and saw my eight-year-old daughter reach behind her and removed from her pajamas a kitchen knife. She held it up above her head and swung it towards my sleeping wife.

Not before I'm able to reach my arm out and catch the blade in my hand, letting out a large scream. Ah, Christy, what are you doing? But she didn't reply. She simply let out a loud hiss and seemingly slithered away out of our bedroom door through the hallway and back into her bedroom while we heard her own bedroom door slam. We locked Christy in her bedroom that night. Before my wife drove me to the hospital as I relayed the night's events,

my impaled hand more than enough evidence to convince her of what had happened. I would like to say that after we got back, my daughter returned to normal, the sound of the door handle stopped, and we went back to being a family, living out our lives happily ever after. But when we got home early that morning, Christy had broken through her bedroom door and escaped from the house, never to be seen from again. Still to this day, I wonder where my daughter might be,

still locking my door each night. I can only hope that others do the same. I moved in with my girlfriend recently. I don't feel safe anymore. I met my girlfriend, Victoria, seven months ago in a bar. We felt an instant connection and started dating three days later. She brought nothing but happiness, the perfect definition of a soulmate. So when I graduated from university, we both agreed to move in together.

She's two years older than me and I was already working, so I moved into her house. However, after moving in, everything went downhill. The first incident happened on the first night of moving in. Victoria works night shifts, so she was getting ready to head out. Babe, I'm off to work now, just to tell you again, the neighbors next door get a little cranky at night, so just ignore them, she said sweetly. Yeah, yeah, I get it, I responded. I gave her a kiss goodbye, and she left, leaving me alone in her house. I sat down on the kitchen table and got to work.

for context, I work remotely as a character designer for a video game company. It was peaceful for a few hours until the clock hit 2am. The cranky neighbors began screaming profusely. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but sounded like an intense argument. I tried ignoring it for a while, but eventually the sound became unbearable. Banging was heard on the walls, glass shattering on the roof, followed by more screaming and arguing. So much so, it sounded like a multiple voices overlapping each other. I tried blasting music in my headphones, but that didn't even help. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore, so I called it a night and stopped working. The next day passed in by in a flash. I chose not to tell Victoria about the neighbors since it was apparently normal, and I didn't want her to

think that it bothered me so much. It was her house after all. Nighttime came and I was watching TV in the sofa when the arguments from the neighbors came again. Thumping, glass shattering, furniture being thrown around, you'd think their house is a WWE ring. Jesus Christ, I muttered to myself. Suddenly I started hearing banging on the door, followed by a blood-curdling scream. What the fuck I said while pausing the movie I was watching. The neighbor was trying to break into the house. That's it. That was the last straw.

I got up and went to the back door where the banging and screaming was being heard from. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen table in case the man would break the door. Thank God it was locked. Just in case I leaned against it, each punch crushing my back. My heart was racing, my hands were shaking, I didn't know what to do, for all I knew, the man could seriously hurt me. It felt like an eternity before what I'm assuming is a man stopped banging on the door. Concurrently, the screaming stopped and it was silent. The fuck I muttered him under my breath?

There was no way I was going to live in these conditions. I decided that I was going to confront Victoria about it when she got home. With that in mind, I made sure all the doors were locked, windows shut, and went to bed. A few hours later at 6 a.m., my girlfriend got home and laid down in bed next to me. She hugged me from behind and gave me a kiss on the nape, waking me up. How's everything, she asked softly? Were the neighbors loud? I grunted and turned my head to face or rubbing my eyes.

What? Victoria giggled. How did it go with the neighbors? I found it strange that she asked me today, but not yesterday. maybe it was me being tired. The husband tried breaking in, I said. He banged on the door for at least two minutes screaming. I thought this was the end for me.

Seriously, Victoria, I don't think this house is safe for us to live in. As long as the door is locked, you'll be fine. She smiled, sweetly. I gave Victoria a serious look. Listen, I can't live under these conditions. I've tried to say it as nicely as possible. I didn't even feel safe in this house last night. you're telling me this is going to happen every single night.

Victoria looked down her eyelids drooping down in discomfort. I felt sorry blaming her for something that wasn't her fault, but we obviously needed to do something about it. I can't fear for my life every night. I'll call the wife tonight and see if anything had been done. She hugged me tightly. Okay? I smiled and kissed her forehead.

Thank you, baby. I know it's not your fault, but it's impossible. to live in fear in your own house every night. On the following evening, Victoria left for her night shift. Once again, I was left alone in the house. She texted me around 15 minutes later, telling me that the problem was solved and that it should be better tonight. I thanked her and laid down on the sofa to wind down.

I ended up falling asleep while watching a movie. I woke up a few hours later at 4 a.m. to screaming from the psychotic neighbors once again. Furious, I got out of bed and prepared myself for confrontation. I was ready to finally get to the bottom of this. However, as I walked closer to the door, something fell off. I noticed the voice isn't banging a little closer than usual, as if they were in the same house. It was the first time I ever really paid attention to where the sound was truly coming from, but it was still unexpected.

Settle, but unexpected. Following the traces of the sound, the screams didn't take me to the front entrance or to the house next door. It took me to the basement door. the only part of the house I hadn't gotten into yet. My heart began racing. This has to be my hallucinations. The sounds can't be coming from my girlfriend's basement, right? With my legs trembling, I tried to push the basement door open, but it was locked.

It only resulted in even louder screams coming from downstairs. They sounded like a cry for help. What the fuck is down there, I muttered. The thought alone sent shivers down my spine. Thankfully, or unthankfully, my uncle taught me lockpicking when I was younger in case I was in a dangerous situation when I needed it. Thanks, Uncle Will. So if there has ever been an opportunity to use the skill, it would be now. I took two paper clips and started fidgeting them inside of the lock.

In just a few minutes, the door unlocked, but it still wouldn't open. I looked around the house for anything I could use until I found a crowbar. Using all my might, I pushed the door open, looking back I wish I had. hadn't. Instantly I heard loud, blood-curdling screams piercing my ears, screams that you'd only hear in horror movies. Covering my ears, I forced my way downstairs. What I saw was horrific. Dead bodies of dozens of guys were organized and aligned on the floor across the basement. Worst of all, every guy there looked to be around my age, many looking like the exes Victoria had talked about in passing. Above them was a jar. Inside,

it looked to be their faces with a large glow surrounding them. They were screaming in absolute agonizing pain. From what I saw it looked to be their souls. The sealed, trapped souls of innocent men facing endless pain in their afterlife. The stench was unbearable. The bodies were bled out, as if everything inside of these men were sucked out to leave only their pure skin. Despite that, their faces were somewhat recognizable. Every body neatly placed to keep its original shape. Their names written in blood in front of each body. Jack, Noah, Michael, etc. Their screams sounded more like loud gasps from up close.

The room was so loud I was getting dizzy, the screams only got louder. It sounded loud enough to screech into my brain. My mind went blank. My body's shaking of the thought that this was my girlfriend's creation. It got even worse when I got to the end. Another name written in blood, with nobody behind. with nobody behind it, as if it was still prepared. Dylan.

That was my name. I then got a notification on my phone, a message from Victoria. My heart stopped just by reading it. Hey, babe, on my way home. Sorry about yesterday. Let's have some fun tonight. I listened to a true crime podcast about myself. Every night on my walk home from work,

I listen to True Crime Podcast, even though my favorite podcast already released their episode for this week, the app said there was a new one. Excited, I hit play. It was a small town, the kind that still has mom-and-pop shops lining the street, the kind where everyone knows your name. But little did the residents know that they would soon be rocked by a horrible crime. I stopped out of the traffic light.

The red glowed in the darkness glinting off the wet street, a black SUV sloshed by. across from me, eerie blue refrigerator lights glowed from inside a corner deli, the chairs all up on their tables, feet in the air, the signal turned to walk. That chilly September evening was no different for the young student. She left her shift at the local store and walked back home, except she never made it home. Young student, local store. Damn, this was soon close to home. I was a part-time student at Franklin Community College and worked at the local convenience store.

And of course I was walking home. I glanced behind me, looking at the alleyway behind Alessandro's pizza, which was dark except for the neon light spilling from the sign. Her boyfriend reported her missing the next day. The town conducted a volunteer-led search, and after two days they found something. Dread formed in my stomach, anticipating a body, but what he said next was so, so much worse. Washed up on the shore of Warrington Lake, they found a pair of size. I stopped and looked down at my red converse sneakers, damp from the rain.

What the hell? My heart began to pound. The shoes were sent to a forensic analysis, who would compare its wear patterns to another pair of her shoes to try and determine if they belong to the victim. A rumbling sound made me jump. I turned to see a dark SUV turning left at the intersection. Didn't I see that car a few minutes ago? Maybe it's following me, and the car passed me and disappeared into the darkness.

Come on, Sarah, get a grip. Converse are popular sneakers, a little out of fashion, but still, nine is a common woman's shoe size, and what college student doesn't have some sort of job? What? You think you're listening to some kind of prophecy of your own death? Yeah, right. After a few weeks, the results came back. The analyst was certain. The shoes belong to none other. than Sarah Campbell. The blood drained from my face. Sarah Campbell.

My name. What the fuck how? I didn't have time to think. I forced myself to move. I broke into a run. The small shops turned into a colorful blur. Searching the lake came up empty. Without a body, a crime is hard to solve,

but police didn't give up. And finally, a witness came forward. Someone had seen a car parked at the lake that night, around 2 a.m. A black SUV with darkened windows. No, no, no, what the hell is going on? I whipped around the street was empty. No people, no cars, no witnesses, said the little voice in the back of my mind.

The one that's watched way too many crime shows. My eyes scanned the shops. All closed. There were six black SUVs matching the witness's description in the Franklin area, but one of them, in particular, caught Detective Nolan's eye. It belonged to John Kelly. A registered S-offender. Vroom!

The sound was so soft I almost didn't hear it over the voice of the podcast. I whipped around and there it was. Two blaring white headlights behind me coming from a black SUV. I forced my legs to pump faster. The car didn't speed up. It crawled along, slowly taking its time, like the driver knew he could catch me, no matter what. I glanced back trying to make him out behind the darkened window,

shield but the headlights were too bright to see anything. Kelly wasn't just a registered ex-offender. He'd been convicted of assaulting a woman he worked with, who had multiple piercings and short dark hair, just like Sarah. The car crawled down the road, stalking me like a lioness stalks or prey. I veered left onto our dark residential street, just a few more steps. Headlights flashed across me, illuminated my running shadow on the pavement. I didn't look back, I just ran, as fast as I possibly could. The little brown house with the yellow shutters came into view. I sprinted across the grass, grabbing my keys from my pocket.

Click. I threw the door open and slammed it shut behind me. Then I turned the deadbolt, collapsed against the door and began crying. I heard the rush of the car passing our house, continuing down the road. But I wasn't safe. Gabe wasn't home yet. I was alone. In a dark house, with someone driving down the street who knew.

knew exactly where I lived. Still sobbing, I checked all the locks. Then I called Gabe, who assured me he was five minutes away. I made my way down the dark hallway and headed into the bathroom. Then I set my phone on the counter, grabbed a clump of tissues, and began to blow my nose. Click. I jumped, whipped around, but it wasn't coming from outside the door. My phone screen lit up.

The podcast was still playing. I must have hit it when I put the phone down. it had skipped several minutes forward according to the play indicator. What do you think have it that Sarah? The baritone voice asked. I reached for it to turn it off. Well, she told me she wanted to run away before. I stopped dead.

It was Gabe's voice clear as day coming from the speakers. She did. Why, the voice asked. She wasn't happy with her grades, her job, her parents. She told me sometimes she'd dream of just, moving to some random state and leaving all behind. I froze, staring at the mirror. I never said that. Never.

Gabe was lying? I mean, that was hurtful to me as her boyfriend, you know. I thought we were going to get married someday, but apparently she didn't feel the same way. My heart pounded in my ears. So you think she just skipped town and is happily living her life out somewhere else? Rather than being abducted or murdered?

A pause. Yes. That's exactly what I think. That's all for now. Thank you to our listeners. The outro played. I stared at my reflection. Everything coming down all at once.

My mind trying to race and catch up what it met. The front door creaked open. Footsteps sounded outside. Sarah, I'm back. I backed away from the door. Sarah? My eyes fell on the window. I ran over to it.

Turn the lock. Push. I popped the screen out, and I swung a leg over, pulled myself through the window, and ran as fast as I could. I found a 4,600-year-old document describing a humanoid species named Sigel. I've been researching Mesopotamia my whole life. I remember being fascinated by that civilization ever since I was a preteen. Unlike my friends and schoolmates, I spent my time daydreaming of Samarian kings in the Euphrates River. I then grew up, went to college, it became a summer researcher.

I'm not a particularly prominent historian, but I'm one of the very best when it comes to translating Sumero- Acadian cuniform writing, especially from around 2,800 to 2,500 BC. I wasn't expecting a lot when I was invited to translate some newfound tablets. I mean, I was personally excited, but was sure the contents would be mundane enough. My employer was a little private museum in Istanbul and specialized in artifacts from the Gilgamesh dynasty and prided itself from having snatched these new items from the British Museum. I was welcomed at the airport by the owner's second assistant, a flamboyant and clever Arabic man who spoke English with almost no accent. I've been assigned to your company you during your stay, madam.

Please inform me of your every need. Iman was a pleasant man around my age, the Turkish version of an English butler. He gave me space to work, but politely reminded me of making at least two meals a day when I was too deep in my work. His presence helped me so much with my productivity. Still, no matter how great an experience it was, I'm terrified of my findings. The following is my translation of one of the tablets. We humans are being killed daily. The sigil are an inferior species in every way, but they have something we lack, something that should be a curse and yet somehow is their biggest strength.

They don't know when to give up. They surprised us with their resistance, and they are so numerous. The sigil took a habit of procreating like the rats or ants, and now they are as numerous as the stars in the sky. They always had plenty of children, but most of them would die of disease. or being attacked by the predators on their precarious houses. That way, their numbers were always around the same, unless they were on war between themselves, which happened constantly for simple resources like water.

But now some of the sigils, merely through observation and the trial and error method, learned of our medicine and architecture, and they started to flourish and prosper. Too much. After invading and overpowering their fellow sigil from other tribes, a group reached our empires and slaughtered us. We hit them back, with our better horses, better weapons, better built men, and we slayed them,

but despite that, they never, never stopped. They are indefatigable. I wish I could understand why. We're taller, stronger, and dotted with brains they would think only a god could possess, and still they fight. Just because they learned how to walk on two legs a while ago, they think they can rule the world, despite the fact that their reasoning is puny and their sciences are non-existent. They don't even know how vast the world is. That's laughable. Like their ancestors,

even inferior hominids, their life is only worth after procreation. So their children dead before mating age are useless and forgettable. This primitiveness is what enrages me about them the most. The sigil wants all our secrets, our king. They want to be us. Tired of seen my sisters and daughters die, I am utterly ashamed to admit that I was scared and reached out to the king. I advised him to strike a deal with his sigil. At first he refused, but after a lot of our blood was shed,

and only around a few hundreds of us remained, our king, Gilgamesh, finally decided to surrender to the inferior species so the rest of us could be safe. We would retreat to our underground city and live safely for generations, to come. The king would stay with them on the surface to rule them and develop their society and stay with them for precisely 4,560 years before we fiercely take our world back. Of course they

agree. They don't even understand how much time that is, but it's not a lot for us. We never die. We are simply reborn on a new body on a new generation. Every time wiser, stronger, purer. We are moving to our fortress deep inside the earth by the ending of the forthcoming Arah Abdur Arqu month. We'll make no mistake this time. We'll keep the sigil under constant surveillance and learn all their secrets. Next time, we won't have any weaknesses, just like they almost did it to us. We'll destroy them all mercilessly. I was shocked to realize that we are the sigil. There's a way more advanced civilization living underground on this planet as you read this.

By chemical testing, the museum expert was able to determine the age of this tablet with incredible precision. The Sumerian calendar is very alike to the Gregorian calendar we use nowadays. It has 12 months, alternating between 29 and 30 days, following the moon cycles, which have 29 and a half days. There's a 13th month with 33 days called Ara, Adaru, Arku, that only happens every three years. It was added to compensate for the discrepancy. It wasn't hard for me to convert 4,560 years for them to our Gregorian calendar, using the tablet's age as the year zero. And I found out that

the real humans, with their superior brains and hatred for us across millennia, are coming back to reclaim their land soon? How soon? According to my calculations, the 4,560th Sumerian year is next year. There's no such thing as Area 51. For several years, I've been an avid reader of no sleep, but because of my profession, I was never permitted to submit content to it or to anywhere. Occasionally, an Area 51 story pops up. I used to work at Area 51, or I snuck into Area 51, etc. These stories always made me want to so badly to finally jump in here, but I always held my tongue until now. Using a series of proxies and all kinds of networking jibber-jabber, I think I'm in the clear making this post. I won't bore you with the details. I came here to no sleep after years of

lurking to correct a lot of the misapprehensions and legends about the most infamous military installation in the world. I'm doing this now because even if I get caught, I have a really useful insurance policy. I'm seriously ill and not likely to recover, and I'm seriously ill. And I I've got no family that I'm in contact with that could be retaliated against. There's nothing anybody can do. Uh, I think. There's no such thing as Area 51. Sorry, and the fact that it's the golden egg of conspiracy theories worldwide is exactly what

the U.S. government wants. I'm writing this in a bit of a rush, and I don't have any of my thoughts organized, so I'm just going to break it down as follows. Groom Lake. Paradise Ranch. Edwards A.F. Extension. Restricted training facility, U.X.104. These are a few names of the place you may know as Air 51. I don't know much about its history, but essentially it was intended by the U.S. Air Force to be a secret weapons testing facility during the Cold War. He had a few on-site extensions, one of them for developing experimental rocket and jet engines. One was for training,

contingence of troops for nuclear warfare and post-apocalyptic survival, etc. But much like the third Star Wars movie, the Sight-Anth purpose got out around the time of the Roswell incident and a media frenzy popularized the base. The government tried at first to quell speculation about it but then adopted another strategy, feed into the hype, and simply moved the base a few dozen miles away. Today, Groom Lake or Area 51 is a small but functional military airport. and base. It's got a bunch of bunkers, mostly housing low security servers, and some munitions tests are performed there. Staff are regularly moved in and out, mostly folks who are low on the

totem pole and trying to climb up the ladder to the real facility. There are some very outdated nuclear fallout shelters that are still maintained and used for storage. The facility consumes an enormous amount of power, and everything possible is done to make it look like a well-guarded military base that is engaged in some huge secret operations. The employees really do fly there every day from Las Vegas on conspicuously inconspicuous jets marked as Janet sometimes referred to as just another non-existent terminal. And they want you to notice and wonder. They want you to wonder where those jets are going.

And they never want you to spend one second thinking about where they came from. The real Area 51 This is the most exciting part because as far as I can tell in my very limited and glanstein researching, nobody has ever divulged the real secret before. It's pretty highly guarded and they straight up murder people who are stupid enough to share it. Murder isn't even the right word. They erase people from existence, sometimes entire families. That's why the government freaks out when they find out that,

one of their employees is terminal and has nothing left to lose. It's why if you're an employee there, you only see their doctors so that they know about your health before you even know about it. They want you to die real quick of a sudden heart attack so that you never have a moment to think about how you might do a public service and air their dirty laundry. And sometimes they induce those heart attacks when they determine you to be a HMT or health-motivated threat. But I didn't need a doctor to know that I am suffering from the some malignant tumor that killed my father. Glyloblastoma multiforma. Every three months we get a health evaluation and every six months we get a cat scan.

I simply didn't report the very damning symptoms this past avow. And I'll probably be gone before they scan me next. I really wanted to do this instead. Maybe just to be the first, I guess. The only other thing I've ever done with my life is, fixed computers, the real security military base in Makaran International Airport in Las Vegas. The history of the airport was always bound up in military involvement before and during World War II.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force were building storing, training, and doing all sorts of things there. Basically, the government, and its corporate benefactors in the military industrial complex, of course, acquired full ownership of the airport around the time Area 51 slash Groom Lake exploded in the public eye. It was a rushed job and a simple solution. For all intents and purposes, Mikkaran is an airport. It moves civilians in and out all over the world just like any other airport on Earth. But its subterranean operations are really something else entirely. First of all, you have to understand the structure of this military base because it serves, ostendably, as a business of

public transportation. Every single aspect of the base has dual functions. This is called masking, and it is deployed with remarkable effectiveness at Micaharan. To name a few examples, the constant takeoffs and landings of airplanes provide sound camouflage for cutting-edge engine tests. The public completely ignores these sounds and dismiss them as the standard cacophony of airports. Some of the jets themselves are even equipped with technology under test, while others are used to transport hundreds of government employees dressed as vacationing civilians. At any given time in Micron, up there six of the gates, corrected by reader, I initially said terminals, are filled with employees of the highest echelons of the U.S.

military and government. They sit around on their iPhones, dressed as college kids in their pajamas, or wary businessmen, and they're paid to look the part. The entire base is heavily guarded by plain-closed soldiers, military police, tactical specialists, counterterrorism forests, and all kinds of soldiers scurry around the airport dressed like cops, airport security, and desk attendants. Their weapons are usually concealed sidearms. The real firepower is packed by the boys waiting around underground. Assault rifles and armor-piercing weaponry is stored around the airport's public spaces in

various places. It's not hard to do because nobody's looking for it. And of course, they hire a good number of civilians to work the TSA in other positions. This is called mixing, and it's necessary. What kind of airport would never post any job listings? Have you ever watched the mechanics ducking in and out of the planes outside? Or seen your luggage loaded onto the plane as you board? Well, all that cargo transport actively acts as a cover for the mass movement of special forces,

lab equipment, military hardware, exotic building materials, etc. It's not hard to do. They drive one of those rigs by, with all the luggage spilling out of it. And then you instinctively don't question what's on the other. other four rigs behind it. We even have mix-ups and spills occasionally and nobody bats an eye. You're always exposed to some kind of radiation while flying and McCarran by the way is why the standard of safe exposure is set where it's at. But excess radiation from weapons testing is vented into the earth and out of the nearby desert. Having an airport to explain the radiation

is an effective means of ridding the base of nosy folks with Geiger counters. But the true genius of this top secret military installation is at the large, larger scale. The base was built under an airport because of the enormity of its power consumption. But it consumes a lot more power than a regular airport. So it's built in a city that consumes a tremendous amount of power, Las Vegas. So the base is hidden from view, even on the electric power grid. Area 51? Not so much. And that's on purpose. Inside the base. So if Area 51 is the distraction, what do we call the real one?

It has many names, but it's usually referred to as the nexus. That's an acronym, but not many know people know what it means, not even me. Everything about the nexus, from its operations to its structure, is compartmentalize. That means everything is need to know, and virtually nobody knows anything more than their specific task. You could work in an office of the nexus doing something like accounting and never have one single clue what the woman next is. sue does or the guy down the hall they say not even the president knows exactly what's going on there just a few generals and some dudes in the CIA the business culture here is insane it's like north korea everyone is smiling everyone is fine and everyone is happy to say just a few phrases about what they do

when we're allowed to socialize which is not much every line is bugged every room has a camera in it and nobody knows who's watching or listening or when so that makes you think nobody Nobody here is telling the truth about anything, not even the guy I share an office with. I wonder if any of us know why we are even here. People you've worked with for a long time will suddenly get reassigned or have a medical emergency and you'll never see them again. And nobody will remember that person, no matter how many people you ask. I actually got hired to do some programming for the Navy when I was in my early 20s

out of college, and then got sent to groomleg to do server tests. They liked my IT-slash-networking skills, so after a series of strange psychological tests and mountains of non-disclosure agreements and background searches, I got offered a job at a facility near Las Vegas proper. Here are a few stipulations of that job. By the way, it's a $1.5 million after tax lump sum plus a $220,000 a year stipend, housing, car medical paid for, but psychological breakdowns, anxiety attacks, grave health conditions, and family issues void the contract. I also signed approximately two new non-disclosure agreements per week, most of which read under penalty of death somewhere.

Employees aren't allowed to leave the grounds for five years, and we all live underground. Terms of service is five years, then four in debriefing, wherein we get to live in Las Vegas, but report to another facility four days a week. We are discharged and observed for the rest of our lives. Our passports are permanently void. We cannot ever leave the continental U.S. I heard a statistic. that 20% of former employees commit S-word. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, I bet it's actually, quote, S-word.

The base is underground. It's a network of large structures called hives, which form what is called the colony or the nexus. We make lots of Resident Evil jokes, by the way. Except, unlike in the movie, the government doesn't try to make its employees feel comfortable with fake forests and windows overlooking digital cityscapes. It is dark. Dreary.

Soviet-style labyrinth of hal. and bunkers replete with all sorts of submarine-like features, water and airtight hatches, trap doors, reinforced blast doors, etc. The only exception are the office buildings inside where chair moisteners like me work. They look just like the office he working, except the men with gun standing guard 24-7 everywhere looking over your shoulder. Oh, in the beautiful, almost surreal glow of the cutting-edge laboratories that pock the lower levels of each building. I've never been in them, but I've passed by a few times. There are four hives to my knowledge, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were more.

I work in Hive 1. I run some of the servers with a few other guys on one particular floor. There are 16 floors in our hive, but we monitor and maintain all of the servers in Hive 1, so we move around a bit. I've gone to skim some of the data that passes through, and from what I can tell, or the most boring hive. I've compiled the following list based on the things I've intercepted on our network and also from hearsay from other coworkers.

The nexus has multiple networks and they're all decentralized, but there are some ways in which they communicate, and it is via those lines of communication that I am privy to some sensitive information. Here's what I know. Hive 1 is finance accounting operations slash organization divisions, troop training slash housing, and some scale, weapons testing. Hive 2 is chemical engineering, some nanotech research, and advanced psychological fitness, whatever that means, for elite military forces, probably black ops stuff and how to survive

30 years of solitary confinement at a Siberian prison. I also have reason to believe this is the hive where the big wigs meet and live. Hive 3 is the upper levels, bio-weapon and disease research testing. If the government has zombies, they've got to be here. I've wanted to make so many fucking zombie jokes over the years, but I never know which of my coworkers is a rat. Lower levels equals advanced space travel and space warfare technologies. Particle engines and gravitational beams and the like, guessing no real evidence science fiction stuff. And what's on email with all sorts of coded language marked A, B, which is widely believed to refer to astrobiology. That's alien life.

Maybe just some single-celled organisms or fossilized plants from some meat. Or maybe it's something much more advanced. Whatever it is, there must be some reason it's not on the upper levels with all the biologists. High 4. Total informational blackout. There are encryptions and firewalls and network security features protecting this hive that I've never seen before, not even on top secret Navy projects I worked in the past. I'm being very nonspecific in the language I use to describe our server clusters and networks because I don't want to tell them exactly who I am. They'll eventually find out anyway. But there's a widely whispered rumor about high four. Allegedly, the most terrifying thing in the world is in that structure on floor 15. There are a few unusual things about high four.

First of all, none of the top brass has clearance to get in there. They access it remotely via video feed in their conference rooms and materials are often transported from four to two for physical review. I don't know why our big wigs won't go into four, but maybe it's because it's too dangerous. There was one guy who worked in four a few years ago when I first started, and he caused the first nexus-wide lockdown I've ever seen. He was being escorted through one thumpers, what we call the squads of black-booted soldiers that grant access to different hives, and he started shrieking about IDAs. I didn't hear screams, but I heard the gunshot while I was eating lunch. They put a bullet in the back of his head before he could finish his sentence. IDAs, by the way, are interdimensional anomalies.

I have no further information on what those are. Another thing I've read minimally about are the twins. I don't know who or what these are, but they're the above top secret gem of high four. It is a treasonous to even correspond about them on our secure networks unless you were clear to do so, and only four employees are. I've only seen a few things about them. One was a medical record, no vitals, unusual vocalizations that manifest hallucinations and psychosis in nearby employees. and skin that produces violent nausea when touched. The document was basically speculation about the skin functions,

much like the Australian stinging tree or a jellyfish. I read documents about people who worked with them as well. In four, a woman was reprimanded to the psychological ward after being in the same room with them and a soldier who stood outside of the laboratory where they are kept basically committed S-word. Specifically, he peeked inside during a routine access then began bashing his own brains out with the butt of a pistol while singing an Irish folk song.

The woman who was reprimanded to the psych was even weirder. During breakfast with her colleague, she grabbed a fork, stood up, walked out of the mess hall, stripped all of her clothes off, blinded herself in both eyes, then somehow managed to make her all the way up to floor one where the access corridor to hive three is located. How she managed to operate the dozens of key card readers, passcode boxes, and retinal scanners is still under review. Last email regarding her was sent in 2012 and how she sits in the dark of solitary on floor 11 psych ward with a permanent and blissful grin on her face. One of my colleagues whom I trust told me that he saw the twins once through hacked access to a video feed.

He said they are womanlike, about twice as tall as a full-grown man, with unidentifiable black growths dangling from their heads, like hair but thicker. And they basically float a few inches off the ground and drag their toes lightly as they move. They're utterly pale. He never saw the faces, but he claims that they appeared to distort reality, or at least the video feed, in such a way that space looks bent around them. Perhaps these are the IDAs that earlier dude was screaming about. This is all I have for now, but hopefully the world knows the truth someday about what goes on down here. We are all basically prisoners.

We have very limited and supervised access to the internet, so if you don't hear from me again, assume they figured me out. And all right, guys, thank you so much. much for watching this video. I mean, this is one of the longer Reddit story videos I've filmed. So let me know if you'd like to see more long videos in the future or short videos or somewhere in between. But let me know what topics you'd like to also see me cover it in the future. And thank you so much for watching to the end. It means the world and subscribe and like the video. Please, it would just be awesome and it'd help the channel out a lot. And you guys seem to enjoy this

video enough. So yeah, consider joining the community. And yeah, feel free to watch another write story video if you want and if you don't that's cool too thank you for watching the whole video i love you so much thank you for watching and until next time see ya