The Dark Somnium - 3 Scary Stories from Reddit Nosleep | Creepypasta Stories

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

These creepypasta scary stories are from the nosleep:0:00 Campfire Stories by Mr_Outlaw 08:56 My friend's skinwalker story by br34kf4s7 12:56 The Mojave Phone Booth by darthvarda --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I was a camp counselor over the summer. Three days into the camp, we took the kids on a nighttime hiking trip into a nearby forested hill. There were five of us counselors and 15 kids, all around 12 or 14 years old. We'd only hiked for about an hour before coming across a clearing and setting up the fire. While it got dark, the forest wasn't exactly daunting. Safe to say, it was looking to be a pretty uneventful night. I should note that at one point during the hike, one of the counselors, Mike, went to go take

a piss in the trees, coming back about two minutes later. The only peculiar thing about this occurrence was that he went relatively deep into the woods, probably further than he really needed to. He probably just wanted to make sure he was absolutely out of sight beforehand. This will be important. As we started cooking up some s'mores, the counselors and campers began telling spooky stories. None of them really stood out. That was until Mike began telling his.

All right, I've got a good one, he said. So a group of counselors and campers go hiking one night at a summer camp. I rolled my eyes. He was going for that angle. But the kids seemed invested in it, so I just silently listened on. They go up a small hill. Mike continued, and then they sit down at a clearing and begin telling campfire stories. Everything seemed normal until one story was interrupted by a sound in the woods.

He paused for a second, and right on cue there was a rustle in some nearby trees. Okay, I thought. That was slightly clever. The kids seemed extremely tensed by this, but some of the other counselors were smiling, so I assumed they were in on it. So one of the counselors gets up to go check it out. He then gestured to one of the female counselors, Amy. For a second, Amy looked confused.

But Mike just gestured again. Eventually, she took the hint and got up, going towards where the sound occurred. She came back moments later, only to report that there was nothing. She still seemed confused, which caused me to question if she was really in on it or not. Mike went on. When the counselor came back, she said there was nothing there, but she was wrong. Mike smiled, although it was a weird one, something subtly frightening about it. I could sense some genuine fear creeping up on some of the kids' faces as well.

There was tension in the air. Mike went on. Everybody could feel it, but nobody could describe it. I'm not sure if it was just a mental thing, but my skin pricked when he said this. The air around us did indeed feel like it had changed, in some inexplicable way. Everyone else looked like they were experiencing something similar, all wrought with faces of discomfort. Another sound came from the woods.

This time, it was laughter, as natural as laughter could get. I nearly had a heart attack when it came from right behind me. Everybody sat still, all too afraid to look, and then they realized something. One of the kids was gone. That was the last draw for Andy, another counselor who stood up. Mike, what the hell is this? Mike didn't respond. Andy scanned the kids and went white.

Let me count him. We did as he asked, counting fourteen kids in total. Fourteen. Oh shit. Andy said. What happened? I don't know. Claire, another counselor, spoke up.

I swear we were keeping an eye on them the entire time. Andy turned to look at Mike. What the fuck is going on, Mike? Mike smiled before continuing his story. During the chaos, they heard footsteps coming from everywhere. Suddenly a cacophony of heavy stompestoms began sounding from every direction. Jesus! Claire shouted.

Mike, this is too far! Andy shouted at him. The kids had begun huddling together, fear plastered across their faces. Mike's face suddenly became serious. One of the kids was suddenly dragged into the woods, and Andy went to go chase after him. We heard a scream, and I turned around just in time to see one of the campers disappearing into the forest. I couldn't make out who or what had done it, though.

Fuck! Andy yelled before going after him. Mike let out a cold laugh. But Andy wouldn't get so lucky. Before I could do anything, Amy went after Andy as well. They were dating, leaving Claire and I alone with Mike. I got up, storming over to him and punching him square in the jaw. For some reason, I thought that if I could get him to stop talking, all the shit that

was going on would stop as well. Now, I'd say that I'm a pretty strong guy, and I put just about everything I had into that punch, but Mike barely reacted to it, even though the strike stung my own. hand like hell. Mike glanced up at me, his face still stuck in that obscure grin. The last two counselors. I turned the other way before he finished the sentence, rounding up the remaining campers and telling them to make a bee-line out of here. Claire followed suit and we began booking it out of the forest. We couldn't hear Mike, or whatever, following us, so I let myself breathe a bit. Still, I knew that this was going to be hard to explain once we got back. At some point,

we saw a figure wandering out of the wood. I stopped in my tracks, not really knowing what to do. The figure groaned as it meandered its way into the moonlight. It was Mike, the actual Mike, I guess. His clothes were torn and his head was bleeding. His chest was also exposed with what looked like some strange symbols carved into it. I don't remember exactly what it looked like. He looked up at us before asking,

What happened? In a shaky voice. Before I could respond, he passed out. I began running over to him, but stopped when I heard Claire scream. I turned around to see another camper being dragged into the woods. Fuck! I muttered to myself before yelling at the rest of them to keep going. We left Mike before bolting it the hell out of there.

There was some more commotion behind us as we ran, with the kids being dragged into the surrounding woods left and right. It couldn't have been helped. At a point, I could hear faint cackling coming from somewhere indistinct, but I knew who it coming from. When we finally made it down the hill, my lungs were about to collapse. I looked back, seeing that there was only one remaining camper, plus Claire left. Both exhausted and having the blood drained from our faces, we simply stared at each other.

And the kid began smiling. The counselors had escaped, but that wasn't the end of their story, he said in the same tone of voice that the fake Michael had been using. Upon hearing that, I lost it and began running. My body's pleased to rest. I heard Claire once again screaming from behind me, but again it couldn't be helped. When I got back to the main camp, I entered my cabin to see if my supervisor was there. He wasn't.

I was about to go looking for him, but I was so tired that I had to rest first. I made my way over to the bed and plopped down, planning on simply staying there for a few minutes. But when I woke up, there was sunlight bleeding in through the curtains. was shaking me awake. It was Blake, my supervisor. Come on, man. Get up. Time for breakfast.

Go shower, though, first. Geez. Wait! I said to him, I have to tell you something. Tell me after you shower. He said before leaving. I got up and chased him into the dining hall. What I saw there made me freeze.

All of the counselors and campers that had been on the hike, they were all there. Blake turned to face me. What did you want to talk about? And where's Mike? I quickly scanned for Mike. I hadn't noticed that he wasn't there the first time. As I began stammering for an answer, the fake campers and counselors all turned to face me simultaneously.

That left me at a complete loss for words. I ran out of there, got straight into my car and floored it. I didn't let myself breathe until I got back on the highway. I didn't want to think about the aftermath, about the implications of leaving a situation like this. I reached into my glove compartment for a pack of smokes, but I felt my hand touched something that wasn't there before. It was a tape recorder. I pulled it out, and against my better judgment, pressed play. A grainy, familiar voice began oozing out of the device. The last counselor thought that he'd gotten away, but little did he know our paths would

soon cross again. Back in college, a buddy and I were hanging out in our dorm room. smoking some weed and chilling. We got on the topic of creepy pastas and stuff, and I mentioned that I had heard some really creepy Skinwalker stories. My buddy gets really quiet out of nowhere. I saw one once. Up close and personal.

That shit is real, bro. Of course, I asked him to tell me more. He said he didn't like talking about it, but eventually opened up. So his story took place back in the summer before he left for college. and his high school friend group had planned a big last hurrah camping trip. He was from Scottsdale, Arizona, and I think he said they only drove a good hour and a half outside the city to one of their friends' parents ranching properties. There's about eight people in their group, and everyone shows up around the same time in three

separate cars. Around when they show up, it's already starting to get dark, so they set up their tents and a campfire and start drinking and smoking. There's one dude in their group, let's call him Tim, is being a little more quiet than usual. My buddy asks him what's wrong, and he says something like, I don't feel good. Just a little under the weather today. Regardless, they start making brots and are all having a good time.

Then, out of nowhere, everyone notices Tim is gone. Just totally vanished. Nobody even saw him leave, even though everyone was relatively close to the fire. The group starts calling his name, thinking he's pranking. everyone. Then they start to get worried once Tim has been gone for over an hour. So my friend and a couple others go into the hills to search for him. They walk around for a good 15 minutes, calling his name before they finally get a response. It's not Tim. Instead, they hear the familiar howl of a coyote, and it's answered by a couple of other coyotes. My buddy says he's a little

worried at this point that Tim might have gotten dragged off by wild animals. Everyone in the group was paranoid because there was no way Tim could have gone missing without anyone noticing, just no way. They hear another howl suddenly. It's longer than the others, and it's different in that it sounds off, like if someone had a recording of a coyote howling and decided to play it. My friend's blood ran cold when the howl ended in a sort of hacking laughter, and unlike the howl, the laughter sounded close, like 20 feet away close.

The group starts frantically looking around, convinced Tim is out there and fucking with them. He isn't. They don't see anyone. They returned to the fire, a little shaken up. Everyone is really starting to get worried at this point. The group starts considering calling the police when suddenly a truck pulls up to the campsite. It's Tim's truck. Tim steps out of it and is wondering why everyone was freaking out.

Tim says he's sorry. He got off work two hours late and hurried out to the ranch as fast. as he could. This is when the group realizes that Tim didn't carpool there with anyone. As if on cue, they hear another long, drawn-out howl, just like the other one. At that point, the group noped the fuck out of there. They ended up paying to camp in a designated campground, and the night went on as normal. My friend still says he thinks about when he asked Tim if he was all right.

He claims that at the time he could definitely tell something was off about Tim, but didn't think anything of it. But now he's 100% convinced that Tim was some sort of Skinwalker entity impersonating his friend for shits and giggles. How the creature knew what Tim looked and sounded like, well, he has no explanation for that. Maybe it just got inside their heads. Sometime in the 1960s, a lone phone booth was erected in the middle of the Mojave Desert, what's now known as the Mojave National Preserve.

Its location was uncanny, centered at the junction of two remote dirt roads, nearly ten miles from the closest paved one. The booth lived well into the 90s when it gained immense popularity from the internet in 1997. I guess you could say it was one of the first instances of going viral. It didn't live long past the millennium though, and was demolished without warning in the early 2000s. As for the reason it was built out in the actual middle of nowhere in the first place, well, Well, some say the booth was a replacement for an old hand crank one set up in the late

40s near the Seema Cinder Mine for use by the miners who lived in its vicinity. Others say it was used for more nefarious reasons, to serve secret people doing secret things in secret places, and that when it got popular in the 90s, they had to shut it down for fear of someone finding out its true purpose. Me? Well, I'm not so sure what to believe, but I do have a story to tell. Before I begin, though, here's a picture of the booth. It was taken some time in the 2000s, I think, before it was demolished for good.

So picture this. It's 1987, and I'm an unlucky college kid stuck in the middle of the desert. My janky-ass 83 Honda Prelude had broken down, again, and at the worst time, too. The sun was starting to set, painting the desolate landscape around me in thick swaths of color. me, the stars were popping out, staring down at me like so many eyes. There was no moon on account of it being new, so it was just me, the desert, and the stars. Sure, it was beautiful, but it did nothing to stem my growing worry. See, I'm half Navajo on my mother's side and grew up hearing lots of lore, untold to

outsiders about the desert from Shemassani, my grandmother, about the things that lived there, that only come out at night, things that are bad. Being out there in the desert at night was damn terrifying to me, and as the sun set I could feel fear bubbling up in my gut, clouding my thoughts, making me paranoid, panicked. So there I was, broken down, hungry, hot, scared, and walking. Where too? I didn't know, and I just knew I couldn't stay where I was, that the chances of someone driving by at this time of day were few and far between.

I didn't want to stay in my car until morning. I wanted to get back to Arizona, back home, and in case you've forgotten, there were no smartphones or even stupid cell phones in the 80s. I had to find a phone, or someone who would take me to one. I had an old flashlight buried deep under the piles of trash and old clothes in the backseat of my prelude, so I dug it out, locked my car, and began walking. I walked for an hour or so before I started to hear something else walking too. It sounded small.

My flashlight only cut a thin beam of light into the darkness, but I spotted what was making that noise. It was a coyote. It looked hungry. No starving. I flashed my light onto its little body, making its eyes glow, and tried shewing it away, flapping my arms around me like some idiot bird. I was terrified, and when the coyote didn't move, I decided to keep going, turning my back

to it. This was a bad, bad idea. When a coyote crosses your path, it's best to stop your journey right there, turn back, hide, waited out until the sun returns. As I walked, trying to maintain my composure, I could hear the coyote following me. Suddenly there was a whistle like someone or something trying to get my attention. I chanced to glance back and what I saw almost made me piss myself. The coyote, it was standing on its hind legs.

No, it was walking on its hind legs like a human would, and it was smiling. As I watched, it pursed its lips and whistled at me, but that wasn't what scared me most. Its eyes, it had human eyes, and they were looking right at me. I took off running as fast as I could towards nowhere in particular. Behind me I could hear the coyote running too. I saw something in the distance, something rectangular and large, and ran towards it. Next to me sprinting on two legs was the coyote. It was laughing.

The coyote was laughing like a human. Now I'm not going to say what I think the thing was, but it scared me to my very core, and I was sincerely afraid I was going to die that night. still have nightmares about it. I realized I was running towards a phone booth and scrambled inside. Instead of picking up the black receiver, I hunkered down, crying, afraid of what might happen next, thinking of things I had heard as a child, of things I don't dare repeat. Not now, not ever.

The coyote stopped a few feet from where I was and sat back on its haunches, its head cocked to the side, listening. A flash of light, headlights, and the coyote was gone. A single streak of laughter rang out in the night. A black sedan drove up, slow. In it was a middle-aged man with wood-colored hair. He flashed his lights again and slowed to a stop. I wondered how I must have looked, crouched low in the booth, face covered with snot and

tears, scared dumb. The man was climbing out of the car. He killed the engine, but left the high beams on, pointed directly at the bow. booth. Despite the heat, he was wearing a primely pressed black suit, complete with a black tie and shiny black shoes. He cut an odd figure under stars against the desert. Break down? He asked, checking his wristwatch. I stood up and opened my mouth to reply, but before I could, the phone behind me rang. And it rang loud, and it scared the ever-living shit out of me. The man seemed to chuckle at this as he ran over.

Sorry, it's for me. He said, pushing. passing past me into the little booth so fast I nearly fell out. Hello? He looked over his shoulder at me, checking if I was listening. I was. He didn't seem to mind. Hello? Speaking.

No, no problems. I'm on its trail. Yes, sir, I can contain it. When? He checked his watch again. Now? Really? All right.

Uh-huh. Nope. No one else here. Just me. He met my guest. gaze and winked. Go for lunch in three, two, one. The ground beneath me started to shake.

It was subtle at first, nothing more than a slight tremor. The tremor crescendoed into what I can only call a small earthquake. It lasted no more than a minute until finally there was a booming noise, then it was gone, like it had never happened in the first place. The man hung up the phone, sighed, and turned back to me. "'Seen anything spooky tonight?' he asked. "'And from the way he said it, I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "'I decided not to say anything.

"'The man considered me for a minute, then said, "'Come on, I'll give you a ride.' "'He walked over to his car and slid inside, started it, and then yelled out the window. "'Well, you come in or what?' "'I walked over and popped the passenger-side door open. "'He was listening to opera music. "'It was bad, man. But, I guess, to each his own.

He had to move a pair of muddy cowboy boots and clothes off the front seat so I could slide in. I noticed he had this enormous belt buckle, a wolf howling up to the moon. It was kind of cool, I guess. He pulled out onto the dirt road, turned the god-awful music down, and asked where I was from, what I was doing, and where I was going. I told him all while giving him directions to my janky-ass car. He jumped my engine when we got there, then followed me all the way to the nearest gas station in his sedan on the off chance I broke down again.

I watched him leave. He headed back towards the direction we had come from, back towards the desert. He was a good guy, sure, but I never saw him again. Still, I wonder what he was doing out there to this day. Wonder if he had any kids or wife, what his job was, if he's even still alive, all that. So it goes, I guess. Well, there it is. My story.

And like I said, I don't really know what to believe. I'm hesitant to say anything more about the coyote. Maybe it was just a waking dream, or maybe it was something more sinister. Something I don't want to speak of. I don't know. I don't want to know. The location of the phone booth is also pretty strange. It really was out in the middle of nowhere.

I didn't see any houses or other structures nearby. I have no earthly idea where the man came from or how he knew someone would call him or why he would want someone to call him out there, or what that tremor was, or that boom. And I guess I'll never know, especially now that the booth is gone forever. All I know is I'm never driving through the goddamn desert ever again, at least not at night or even close to it. As my grandmother always said, Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.