The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Scary Stories Around The Campfire

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Get comfortable around the campfire, I've got some scary stories to tell you. Relax as you listen to terrifying tales, true paranormal encounters and new writings from up and coming horror writers. Scary stories with the sound of a campfire in the background, giving you the perfect ambience to fall asleep to, if you can... So dim the lights, and get comfortable for another entry into The Tape Library. You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers - https://therealtapelibrary.podbean.com/ CREDITS - If you enjoy the stories, be sure to go to these links and give the writers some love and check out the rest of their work 02:07 Something is in my tv, something alive and I don’t know what to do - https://www.reddit.com/r/scarystories... 08:51 I saw a ghost as a child and I remember it as clear as day - https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghoststories... 16:32 My friends and I made and used a paper ouija board and it worked. https://www.reddit.com/r/scarystories... 19:14 I Am A Nest - https://www.reddit.com/r/scarystories... 28:34 The Lakes in my home town are bottomless. I've checked. https://www.reddit.com/r/scarystories... 56:30 I saw a ghost at my sister’s pool party. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghoststories... I do not own the rights to the above stories, all rights are retained by the original authors and presented here with their permission. Please do not copy/repost any of these stories without prior consent from the original authors. All additional stories ©TheTapeLibrary All stock footage and additional audio courtesy of Envato Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrar... Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibr... Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True tales of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. #scarystories #nosleep #creepypasta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good evening. I'm hard at work on the next proper entry into the tape library, but I like the idea of creating some simpler story-based episodes for you. So welcome to the campfire. The idea of this series is that I'm going to tell you some scary stories to help you relax. They might be true paranormal experiences, tales from up-and-coming horror writers, classic ghost stories, creepy pastures, or legends that don't quite fit as full entries into the tape library. But what I've loved to start doing is telling some of your stories. So if you have a paranormal experience or a scary story that you would like to share,

then you can find my email address in the description. Or you can leave it as a comment below. If any of these stories are taken from elsewhere, I have included links to the original. original work in the description. So if you enjoy a story, make sure you go and give the writer some love. I'm going to read you a couple of stories tonight. At some point I'll end, but keep the sounds of the crackling campfire going for a while longer. It will help you sleep if that's what you use these videos for, although some of these tales might make that very difficult. And hopefully, the fire will keep

away those things that live out here. You know, the ones in the darkness, you've seen them haven't you? They look like shadows, but they... Anyway, it doesn't matter. Get comfortable and warm yourself by the fire. And we'll start our first story. Something was alive in this person's TV. He didn't know what to do. So we turned to the internet for help. It's It started at around 11pm. I was aimlessly looking through BBC Eye Player, contently browsing Top Gear, Sherlock, etc. Looking for something to fill the volatile silence, which consume my bedroom. I brought my TV four months ago-ish off an ad on eBay. It was cheap for a smart TV. The remote isn't the most amazing, and the TV sometimes crashes,

which, as expected, comes with an older TV. I don't think this thing has come from the previous owner. It was a quiet night. The best way I can describe it as the quiet before a thunderstorm. The gut-wrenching quiet in which you know something is coming, but you don't know when. A foreboding sensation. All of a sudden, my TV crashes. Not exactly unheard of.

I start to reboot it as usual. It all comes on as expected. However, I hear a tapping at the window, a pattern tapping, which almost makes me jump out of bed. I am the sceptical type, so my heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. I turned on the light and wait for it to go. It did after maybe 20 seconds, and I assured myself it was the rain coming. The weather did say is scattered showers, and my window was shut. along with my blackout curtains.

I shook it off and returned to my TV. Turning on BUCI Player, when all of a sudden the screen becomes distorted, the suggestions were scattered in disfiguring pattern with the words taken from the top suggestions spotted amongst the random colouration of different shows. The words, seeing is deceiving in red, moving in an unusual way,

almost as if the words were trying to escape whatever was holding them capture. As you can imagine, I was horrified and immediately tried turning off my TV. It wouldn't budge. Trying and trying again for a good minute, hearing my heartbeat course through my eardrums, until finally the TV turned off. I again trying to reassure myself and keep that part of my mind from overthinking bay, turn the TV on again, holding back my stomach from turning itself outwards. It turns on as normal, and I was happy again. I switched on an episode of Top Gear, and it played as normal. Now, I'm an

insomniac, and I really struggle to go to sleep at night. I try to drown myself with boring stuff to help me sleep as part of my routine. At this point, maybe 11.30, 1145pm, I was not tired, like, at all. Sitting bolt right up in bed, I get the urge to go to sleep, which is unfamiliar. And if this happens,

I would usually thank the Lord and try to go to sleep. But for some reason, my gut kept telling me not to. This time I listened to that, but I just couldn't help it and I shouldn't have fallen asleep but I did still completely upright in bed

I passed out I don't remember what time but God God I shouldn't have fallen asleep with a TV still playing when I woke up it was maybe 4 a.m. Still that quiet still humid darkness outside my bedroom

that I had grown familiar with I was confused and out of it and realised I was still sitting upright, which is absolutely unheard of. I never sleep upright. Not on planes, cars, chairs, anything. The glaze over my eyes started to fade and a horrible realisation came over my body. I started to tremble. My organs in my body swilling around like they were in a roller coaster.

Instead of top gear still playing. There. In my TV. was a face staring at me, a face like a best describe as human. However, the features were perverted and warped in a way a child would draw a human, not quite right, but with the intention of looking like a human. Its smile was too wide, blonde hair sprouting out like a scientist, glaring black eyes that were not level, nor the same shape, staring into mine.

I knew it was looking at me, analysing me, with the same red words bouncing around the screen. Seeing is deceiving. I leapt up and scrambled looking for the remote. Bed sheets flying through the air. Clothes going every way possible until I spotted it. underneath that window which made the tapping noise all while that thing that creature

analysing and evaluating me through the screen I grabbed the remote breathlessly and exhausted frantically turning the TV off it is now 5.30 a.m. while I ride this I haven't turned my TV back on and I want to burn it I don't know what to do that gut-curdling thing

feeling hasn't left my system. And my parents will look at me like my last brain cell has left if I try to explain to them what's just happened. But for some reason, deep down, that thing wants me. I don't know what for, but it wants me. And I feel like it's already advanced. I just don't know what into yet. I saw a ghost as a child, and I remember it as clear as day.

I grew up in a two-storied house my parents built in the middle of an apple orchard in New Zealand. Other than a few workers who lived on the orchard, there was nothing around beside my parents' business. A catering kennel was right beside the house. My parents would get up early and go to work, leaving me and my siblings in the house alone. One morning, I got up at about 7 a.m., and went to the living room downstairs. and I sat with the family dog, a very loving huge Rottweiler, on the couch. I was too tired to turn the CV on, so I was sitting there in dead silence, knowing my mum would get back from work any minute. I sat facing forward, but to my right were glass double doors that opened to a deck that wrapped from one side of the house to the other.

I watched outside because I heard the sound of my mum's gunboots on the decking from the direction of the cattery. It sounded identical to her footsteps. As I was watching and waiting for my mum to come into view, my dog woke up and started growling, before I even had time to question why she was growling. A seafrew woman walks into view, she was completely transparent. Exactly like the ghosts you see in old photos. wearing a long dress. My dog saw her too, as she growled even louder when the woman came into sight.

The woman was looking forwards at first, but turned and stared directly at me, before vanishing, into thin air. She would have been two metres away from where I sat. I remember being so scared that I physically could not move. I just stared as my whole body was paralysed with fear. Even writing about it now gives me goosebumps. I don't know why, but I didn't tell my mum about this until recently. I'm 26 now and still think about it often. My mum wasn't surprised at all when I told her,

and said she also saw things at that house, as did my siblings. As did my siblings, we moved out when I was about eight. I had other experiences in this house, but nothing else has ever compared to that. This story takes place in a photography series. studio. One night in the dark room. Click. I froze, stepping away from the desk. Was that the door? I thought to myself. I rushed over. Sure enough, the door was locked. The key in the old door could be turned from the outside. But the only other person who had a copy was John. Hey John, I'm still in here.

I shouted out. No response from the other side. John? I asked. My voice breaking slightly. He left a studio. I know he left. I saw him drive away. Why would he come back? Then I heard the buzzing. The sound of the red lights all around me. Struggling. The power in them starting to fade. Each bowl seemed to dim and then glow in a continuous cycle. until suddenly all of the lights in the room went out once the sound of small shards of glass hitting the floor was the only thing I could hear in the darkness John I screamed out

pulling at the door handle to try and open it nothing no John no opening I looked around my eyes had adjusted to the darkness slightly but not enough to be helpful I stuck for a moment. I could feel a panic attack building.

Not now, I thought. Please, not now. I started to focus on my breath, to try and keep myself calm. And that was when the first flash happened. That was when I first heard the familiar sound of the mechanisms inside an old film camera moving. Camera bulb flashed again.

Each time was an intense feeling as my eyes struggled to adjust to the drastic changes in the light. Again it appeared. I could tell, even in my confused state, that it was moving towards me. Again it came. But this time I saw something. Someone was there, just a few feet away from me. Standing behind the flashes, it was a man.

Closer still. His eyes pressed up against the camera. Taking photos of me petrified in the dark, I pressed my back into the wall. He was close enough that he could reach out to me now, but he didn't. One final time he took the photo, right on top of me. I could make out what seemed to be a stained brown suit. The broken bulbs in the room suddenly came to life, but instead of the familiar red of the dark room, they flash bright, like half a half a

dozen camera bulbs flashing white around me. This gave me my first clear look at the man. The bulbs flashed an intense strobe as the man, who was now less than a meter in front of me, began to lower his camera. The first thing I noticed was his hair. Just a few strands of stringy, long brown messy hair falling over his pale forehead. The camera moved down enough to reveal his eyes. His black, soulless eyes, I would never get a clear look at the suit he was wearing, or the shape of his body, because once I saw his mouth, I was frozen, the mouth I will never forget. Stretching out to an impossibly wide smile, his teeth almost uniformly sized, and straight, stretching out across the entire width of his head, up to his temples,

He dropped the camera and in the next few strobes of light started moving forward. Once again, we love creepy sleepover games here at the tape library. Here's an example of how inventive you can be when it comes to summoning spirits. I don't recommend you try this at home. When I was about 13 years old, I was invited to a sleepover to friends that I barely spoke to. I ended up going because my best friend was going to be there so I thought it would be great fun it was me, my best friend

the friend I barely knew and their girlfriend after we settled in and the night grew closer we all got bored so we decided to make a Ouija board we spent hours cutting cardboard and painting all the numbers and letters on including the yes no and goodbye we also made the planchette

and used plastic as glass for the eye. When we first used it, the planchette kept getting caught on the ridges of the cardboard, and the paint kept chipping off, so we threw it away and made a makeshift paper one. My friend and their girlfriend got too scared to play. So they watched us, my best friend and I, continued the game.

We thought it was a good idea to play the Ouija in the room when my friend's dad died, so I wasn't fully prepared for an answer. We circled the planchette around the paper. board a couple of times and asked the basic questions. Is anyone there? How old are you? What is your name? How did you die? After getting a response, we lit my friend's dead father's candle and put it next to the board and then asked, is my friend's dad here? Can we speak to him? The light in the room flickered and the candle went out. before we heard a loud banging on the window.

We screamed and ran out of the room, sitting in the living room for a while. We went to sleep that night in the living room, scared out of our minds. When we woke up, we had realised that we had forgotten to end the game. So we went back to the Ouija board and ended the game, burning the paper board and the planchette in my friend's fireplace.

This story is the. dark, you have been warned. It is simply called, I am a nest, and I hope you don't have the same fear of wasps that I do. Nobody ever listens to me, which is weird considering I work in a call centre, spending my days on the phone, doing nothing else than talking to people. My new friends listen, and they care. They never leave me. They go wherever I go. I saw them for the first time on a chilly autumn morning, smoking my breakfast cigarette, sitting on the window seal of my apartment. They were dancing under the lantern light.

They moved in circles around the lamp, hanging on a wire across the street. They circled the light, disappeared shortly in the darkness that surrounded it, swung back hastily, as if they were trying to sun. soak in its warmth like a coven of small witches flying on broomsticks around the moon. What would happen to them if they stayed away from the lamplight for too long? Probably they would freeze to death, fall on the concrete ground underneath, and rot away. I felt sympathy for those little creatures. One morning I decided to turn on the lights in my apartment and open the windows. I think they understood my intention.

One after another they swarmed away from the lantern, out in the cold, and into my warm apartment. Their deep, sonorous buzzing filled my room, and soon my ceiling was dotted with those insects. They looked like wasps. They were black, though, shimmering in a metallic glance, and bigger. I have never seen this kind around here before. They flew around my head and observed me through their big red eyes, hanged in the air in front of my face, as if they were trying to greet this big hairy creature

that let them in so willingly. I left one single window open and went to work. When I got home, they were usually gone. From then on, and every morning that followed, I opened my windows wide open. and let the black wasps in. They knew me after a few days. Sometimes they tapped with their bulky heads against the window panes

when they knew the hour had come when I normally was waking up. And so every morning I opened the windows and they swarmed in. Then I started talking to them. Nothing spectacular. Asked them how their day was while I smoked my cigarette. Their answer was the deep buzz. buzzing all around my head and ears. I felt as if they understood, or listened at least, and answered in the only way they could. Winter was on its way. The mornings got colder. A light

blanket of frost was visible on the car roofs in my street. My wasps chose to stay inside my apartment for the whole day. I left them fruits and old meat. on the table. And when I came home, the food was gone. But they were there, waiting for me. I asked them how their day had been and told them all about mine. They listened to my stories and jokes. Their buzzing made me fall asleep. It became hard to leave without them in the mornings. I missed them during my shifts. Their buzzing echoed in my ears. I just wanted to be near them, listening to them, and them listening to me. So I started to put them under my shirt before I left the house. I felt their countless legs scuttling over my stomach and my back.

Their chitin armor bodies pressed against mine when I moved. I kept them warm and they accompanied me. People gave me strange looks. They thought I was the one buzzing. But it was them. One evening, standing in front of my bathroom mirror, I discovered dry blood on my back. I stepped closer to the mirror, turning my head as far as I could to see the reflection of my back. My wasps had begun to dig little holes with their mandibles. The holes were all over my back. Sometimes I saw the familiar bulky head, with the antenna and the big red eyes, peeping out of one of them. from time to time when I lay awake in my bed.

I look at her pictures on my phone. Even after all those mumps, I miss her. Oh, I know, I only miss the illusion of her. She never listened nor cared. I should delete the pictures. Probably. But I can't make myself do it. I check her social media regularly.

She blocked me everywhere. Those pictures, the only thing left of her. Nothing new to see. No new wrinkle to discover in her smile. No words spoken out of her mouth that I did not already hear. Nothing left to wait for in anticipation. I need to eat much more now. Drink a lot.

To make up for the blood I lose. The wasps are comfortable in those holes. Itaches terribly on some day. but they are beginning to heal. The edges build fine crusts of dry blood and dead yellow tissue. The wasps crawl in and out. Countless holes, countless homes, all over my back. They feel safe in there.

And I bring them with me wherever I go. They listen to me. Every evening I lie on my stomach, and I talk to them about God and the world. and what bothers me and what not. Their heads all turn to mine, the antenna pointing in my direction, peering out of their holes, they are content. I feel it. I am their nest now. I am happy. She looked out into the darkness that covered the sea. She couldn't remember how many years she'd been doing this for now. Six, seven, seven.

Time didn't seem to matter anymore. The filling of longing had long passed. It was just a habit more than anything. To begin with, she thought one day he'd come back. Their small fishing boat would appear on the horizon, moving towards her. Life would return to normal. But it hadn't. For the longest time, this felt like punishment.

But for what you couldn't be sure. It wasn't until she had given up all hope that it finally happened. The ship, it could have been any ship, but somehow she knew it was his. She ran to the shoreline. The boat washed up in front of her. Empty. She turned, tears in her eyes. It was only then she felt his hand on her shoulder, but it didn't feel like her husband.

His hand was cold She shuddered And she felt the icy touch on her skin When she turned around Someone was there But she didn't see her husband Only the decay Of what he had become

This is one of my favourite stories I've come across in some time Did you know the lakes in your hometown Are actually bottomless while this person decided to check out if that is in fact true. Did you know the lakes in your hometown are bottomless? I mean, sure, there's probably a nice beachy area where people swim, and it's all pretty and safe and well known.

But I bet you, there's a part beyond that. Usually just out beyond where a person can touch bottom, where you can see the start of the creeping muck the slime that accumulates in the bottom of all lakes did you ever think about where all that goes do you know anyone who's ever checked the centre of your little local swimming hole what happens to all the stuff that falls in every year all the nature stuff leaves and pine needles and sticks

I bet you never stop to think about it and if you did, you might assume it biodegrades. You might think it all flushes out, year by year, rolling down a river or something to empty into the sea, and some small portion of it does. But most of it stays down there. I'm a scuba instructor. I've checked, and after a few experiments that still make me shudder, I'll never dive in a lake again. The lakes in my hometown are old and deep. They were cut by glaciers,

not just the last ones which were old by 18,000 years ago, but by the repeated ice ages a period so far back we don't even have names for them. Glaciers old enough to have scored mountains that don't exist anymore, started our lakes, started gouging furrows in the bedrock that were widened and deepened by each new march of ice. The lakes here are old and deep. Three lakes nearest where I sit and write this are nearly 300 feet down in the centre.

And there are some deeper than that. There's thousands of lakes in the US and Canada that run deeper than a thousand feet. Your local pond might not reach down to shuddering, shrieking depths, but it doesn't have to. My experience has been that nightmares start around 30 feet down. The one I dove in bottomed out just under 70. And even that was entirely too much for me.

I'll never do that again. In the shallows, lakes are lovely. There's all the usual bustle of life. Water skimmers dart along the surface. Tap holes and little fish play among the pebbles and fall in the pebbles and fall in sticks. There might be ducks, a frog, a sunfish. Things are delightful there, where the sun shines and birds sing. But you leave all that behind pretty quickly. By 10 feet down, you're in another world. The first thing you notice when you scuba dive in a lake is the otherworldly stillness. Like you're swimming for a painting, browned with age.

In the ocean everything moves. There's waves and currents and living things everywhere. Down deeper there's marines though. Particles falling and dancing in the water. And even at surprising depths you'll find seaweed billowing gently, soothingly in the slow motion wind of a passing continental current. current, but in your local pond, everything is perfectly, horrifically, supernaturally, still.

As though the world were paused, as though the universe had frozen and were building towards a jump scare, and your brain keeps telling you how wrong it is, that nothing can be this quiet, that you are being too loud, that you are making too much. noise while you swim, that your bubbles are screaming when you exhale, that the blood rushing through your ears is an offence to this silent place. That movement is not welcome here. You feel as if anything you touch might shatter somehow, or that the frozen moment through which you swim might suddenly freeze again with you trapped inside it, unable to be able to be. Unable to blink, unable to look over your shoulder, unable to figure out why you have the creepy feeling

of not being alone, even though nothing ever moves, except that it does, explosively, horrifically. The way things move unseen and flashing at the edges of your dreams. There are fish here, and maybe a few hideous snake-like eels that all lies. in ambush for their prey, unmoving and still as death. Until they explode into motion as you approach, you never actually see them. You're swimming along, trespassing this unalterable world, and there's a perfectly silent flash of darkness, a foot away. A tiny plume of smoky debris marks the event. The rest of the world unchanged and still unmoving. You expect a thing so violent, so jarring to make a noise.

But it doesn't. It doesn't make a sound. And your mind rails at the wrongness of it. Everything is silent. Why is it so silent? Have you been stricken death? Not even the sound of your Why can't you hear your bubbles? You have stopped breathing. You take a shuddering breath. You didn't realise you've been holding it. Holding a breath can kill a scuba diver. It's the first thing they tell you.

The first rule of scuba, never hold your breath. You know that. You never do that. And yet, you just did. What was that anyways? A fish, probably but you never did actually see it how big was it where did it go will it come back does it bite you also can't see around you it's hard to explain it's not really like walking through fog

the edges of your vision are cloudy almost like having tunnel vision and even when you look straight to head, the world fades to a gloomy brown black, a few feet in any direction. Almost like you're standing under an old yellowing streetlight, looking out into the night, there is no colour. In the shallows there were tans and greens, maybe a lily pad with a splash of pink flower on top, but not here. As soon as you left the swim beach behind, so too you departed the world of Everything is either black or shades of muddy unearthed brown. And with every foot you go down, more of those browns surrender to shades of grey and darker black. Did you know they train scuba divers? Not to panic.

That's the second rule of scuba. Don't panic. And so you try to focus on what you're doing. You set a little mission for yourself. You have a dive plan. You have a dive plan. You have something to accomplish, depth to reach, or a distance to swim, or a thing to find. But in the oppressive, terrifying stillness of a lake, your mind starts to wander. Why is it so damn quiet? You keep swimming through the sepia-toned twilight, passing into water more closely the colour of strong dark tea. There's a creepy forest here

A tangled nest of other worldly vegetation That looks more like hairy worms Thin and long With puffy coats Of what looks to be dandelion fluff Only mattered With the pond scum of the previous decade It looks like it wants to rive

Like it had been moving When the moment froze And burns with the need to move again you cannot see the bottom anymore. It hazes out of your vision, even though it's only three feet away. You keep swimming, raflike, gliding over the reaching wormy binds. Too thin to be tentacles. Too thick to be hair.

Too fur to be grass. Was that another flash of movement? Was it bigger this time? You swim on. can't really see anymore. The alien worm grass is gone now. The bottom has dropped away. The lake bottom is a hill,

steep enough to be called a cliff if it were on shore. Though it's not quite vertical, you can't see, but somehow you feel like it's not dark enough to turn on your light. There's simply nothing to see around you. You cannot see the surface, though there is a hay. indistinct luminosity above you.

You are distinctly uncomfortable, but you came to explore, and so you decided to go down, farther into the gloom, trying to deny the bulking dread, trying to master the fear of your inner child, and failing. You take a breath,

you press the button, a hiss of bubbles. You feel yourself sinking, and you look up and watch as the gauzy distant penubra of the surface fades away to paler, darker brown. And then breathe again as the last of the light is lost to you. You close your eyes to gather yourself. You can feel yourself sliding deeper. Feel the water flowing around you, swallowing you, pulling you deeper. You feel the pressure building on your ear. as you clear them again and again.

Deeper and deeper and deeper, trying to marshal yourself to open your eyes. But somehow you don't want to see. Somehow, it will be worse to see. A shiver runs down your spine. You will look in a second. You will make yourself look and it will be okay. But not yet.

You are still sinking. This is too much You mustn't go too deep Divers have limits But you know this lake bottoms out at 66 feet or so It should be perfectly safe You should be on bottom by now Why are you not on bottom

You reach for the button again Somewhat more desperately than you intended And halt your descent You kick a bit Directly below you to halt your downward progress and feel the slightest touch, the merest vibration in your fins. That must be the bottom then. You exhale, letting yourself settle a little more in the water, and feel with your fins. Stretching down, you move your legs slowly,

reaching with the extended extreme tiptoe of your fin, and feel it brush. Something, feather soft, in a yawning nothing below. Your experience as a diver tells you now is the time to look, before you stir up the bottom, before you ruin the visibility with a cloud of sediment. You exhale, you open your eyes, except that nothing happens. Your eyes are still closed.

You think? Or, wait, you blink. Can't blink with closed eyes. They must be open. But you can't tell. There's just nothing. No light. No reflection. Nothing. Nothing is this dark. Your eyes must be closed.

You blink again. Aren't you feel if your own eyes are open? What does it feel like when your eyes are open? when your eyes are open on the surface. You float limply, trying to figure out if your eyes are open or not. You focus on the sound of your bubbles. It is the only sound other than your heart.

Beating faster than it should. You grope around your body for your flashlight, tethered to a fire pocket. You turn it on. Nothing happens. Scuba divers do not panic. Do not panic. You turn the switch again.

Nothing happens. Again. Your eyes must be open now, right? Must be. You gulp, swallowing the lump in your fruit as dry as sandpaper. Scuba air is always too damn dry. You exhale. The bubbles wail.

You reach for the backup light on your other fire. The switch clicks. Nothing happens. You exhale slowly into the gathering chill in your spine. This is not hell. You are not already in the belly of a monster. A scuba diver does not panic. Two lights can't break at the same time, right? You try to check your gauges.

They are supposed to glow, but they are invisible. You blink more to assure yourself. your eyes are open. You bring the light up in front of your face. Click. Click. Click. No change.

The darkness is becoming a living thing. It is the darkness of a cave. It is the darkness of the grave. Click. It is the darkness of death itself. And a scuba diver does not panic. Click. Click.

Click. Click. You hear the bubbles, but you cannot see them. How much air do you have left? How will you know if you cannot see your gauges? Cannot see your watch? You should abandon this dive. This is not a place for humans.

But you are here. You must explore. It's why you came. It's what you do. A diver does not panic. You feel your eyes close. You breathe. A diver does not panic.

panic. You cannot have killed two lights. You press the flashlight bezel to your mask, glass to glass. You try the switch again and your skull explodes with the brightest light you've ever seen. You yank the light away and are immediately cast in darkness again, with the afterglow of retinal burns flashing before you, like throbbing auroras. You hold the light away and try again. You see nothing. You aim the light. the light towards your face again and see nothing. You bring the light slowly closer, a full bent elbow, and you see nothing. You bring it closer, as if it were a microphone, and you were about to sing and see nothing. It's eight inches from your mask and invisible. Seven, six, five, and

it's as dark as the void between the stars. Four. Three. Two inches. And you can see the barest, faintest gloaming of light. But even that is black somehow. And suddenly you understand,

it's not just dark here. It's not that you are so far from the sun. It's that you are swimming in ink. The water itself here is as black as a coffin nail. A scuba diver does not panic. You hold the light against your gauges to recharge the glowing needles

and then press the gauges to your mask. You have plenty of air. You have plenty of time. You are at 63 feet. The bottom should be at 66 or 68ical into the chart. You have come this far. You feel a strange compulsion to know

what the bottom is. That is why you came right, to see this lake floor, to tell your students about it. If you can't see it, perhaps you'll touch it instead. You lay horizontal in the water as you normally do while diving. You reach for your button again, which hangs from a hose on your left shoulder. Another squall of bubbles and you descend slowly. slowly you can't feel the fall this time

you don't want to crash into anything you don't want a face plant you put a hand down below you groping a gloved hand full of bottom you exhale sinking ever so slightly from the loss of air and continue to settle

you feel a sussarous on your glove a whisper of a touch something floated by A plant A leaf A feather It's gone now Did it move

You shiver at the foot A scuba diver Does not panic You realise your eyes are closed again Without your knowing You reach Focusing on your hand You feel more now

Fingertips brushing Something Another touch on your wrist. More worm plants? You reaching down through vegetation? It's getting more crowded. Is that the word?

Around your fingers. The touch has come more often. You begin to fill them on your forearm. There's still no bottom. Maybe this is a bad idea. What the fuck are you touching? What if something bites you? What if there's fish hooks and you get tangled in a long lost fishing line and trapped here to drown?

A diver does not panic. But divers also don't do stupid shit like this. What the fuck am I touching? It feels like you are reaching through leaves. They're getting slightly more dense but they're all still floating. No bottom. You're in up to your elbow now and feel a touch on your face

This happens a lot when you're stirring shit up on the bottom Just a leaf or something Or maybe it was a leech You feel a twig In your hand and grasp it between thumb and forefinger It snaps Was that a bone You continue settling into the weirdness

You feel contact on your knee through your wetsuit It yields You fill it on your bicep as you reach down And a few more on your hip Laying on your right side There is no fucking bottom Realising this you begin to grasp The nightmare horror

The lake is bottomless The lake is slime The lake is swallowing your entire body you are half down now. No, no you must not sink any further. You arch your back and kick, feeling your fins meet the jello of the slime knee-deep and flail for your button.

You try to wreck your arm out sideways and feel the mass of God-know-what resisting. The makings of a scream are tightening in your chest when you hear an explosive whoosh from behind you. You kick, thinning into the blind. madness trying to go anywhere but into that fucking godless muck the air puffs into your buoyancy device and you shudder your whole body trembling shaking out of breath not too fast you must not go too fast this is the most dangerous part a scuba diver must not panic you are up you are away

You let the air out of your BCD to prevent a runaway ascent. To rise too fast is death. To sink below is death too. In that fucking nightmare goo, you kick upwards, slowly. Your eyes are closed. Your breaths are ragged. You must kick. To rise too fast is the bends.

You kick. To rise too fast is popped lungs. You kick. more, pressing the button again to bleed off extra air and slow yourself down. To rise too fast is embolisms and gas bubbles in the blood. You kick. There is a world above of light and life and sound. Ye gods there will be sound again, you kick.

Though to rise too fast will be a twisting, crooked agony of wrapped joints and skin that crackles full of gas bubbles. You rise in the water column, feeling the pressure come off your ears, blowing bubbles to empty your lungs. Your breath shudders out of you. You will not die in the howling dark doomed to silence. You take another breath and open your eyes. There is light.

Still a long way off, but it is light, and you tremble at the sight of it. You must do a safety stop. You must not rise too fast. And then you must get out of this fucking lake and never return. This is not a place for men. You reach the surface and swim back to where the tourists play, splashing in the shallows. You feel the dread ebb slowly from your blood, which warms at the sight of colours and the joy of sound returning.

You stare over the dark water, while you lay on your back and kill. kicked towards the shore. It's been 18,000 years since the last glacier, scraped the bottom here. 18,000 springs have filled the lake with pollen and insects. And 18,000 autumns have dropped leaves and sticks and acorns and pine cones into that lake. 18,000 years of fish bones and turtle shells and rot and death and God knows what else has fallen slowly towards the centre. And most of the of it is still there. It's piled down there. Who knows how deep.

Waiting to swallow a diver. Waiting to entangle a swimmer. It swallows light in the tannis leached slowly from the 18,000 years of leaves. And it swallows sanity and calm and reason. Don't ever go there. My local lakes are fucking bottomless. And I bet you'll be it. are too. I saw a ghost at my sister's pool party. First off, I didn't see it in the pool. It was

afterwards. After my sister accidentally kicked my eye in the pool, I decided to pull a prank on her and pretend she gave me a bruised eye. So I grabbed my mother's makeup palette and did the best I could to fake a black eye. And it seemed believable. I walked up to our upstairs loft where my sister and her friends were hanging out, and I showed her my eye, and she obviously freaked out. I made her apologise before she wiped my eye and realised it was makeup. She punched me and we had a laugh. I went downstairs to the bathroom to wash it off. As I was bent over to wash my eye in the preferable of my vision, I saw a small frail boy, wearing a striped shirt and boarding shorts. He had a bowl cut and was glaring at me with distorted facial features.

Knowing there were no children as young as he looked at this party, I immediately stood up straight and looked towards him. He was gone. I backed up into the corner of the bathroom and looked around the room. My heart coming out of my ass. I ran out the room and told my sister, as she helped get the rest off my eye. After a few months had passed,

I had completely forgotten about the event and served my sister. One evening I went into my parents' room to collect the shirts I had left in there from the previous night. My parents' room and bathroom are connected by a pair of double doors with frosted glass, just like most of the doors in our house. I found my shirt and was on my way out when I noticed two small handprints and one of the frosted glass panes. I stopped myself to have a better look at it. Each handprint was as small as the palms of my hands. I felt shocked, and then I got shivers on every inch of my body,

as I remembered what happened after the pool party, not too long ago. My heart sank and I ran to the kitchen, grabbing some cleaning supplies, and desperately tried wiping it off. But because it was frosty glass, it didn't come off at all, and somewhat made it clearer. I decided to ignore it and it's currently still there. It creeps me out whenever I go into my parents' room, or especially the bathroom. Moving forward into the area of light and facing the window, it showed for the first time what manner of thing it was.

The beams of light trailed in through the dusty old attic window. It slowly turned to face me. I held my candle higher, almost as an act of defence, more than to illuminate the creature further. But it didn't move. Not in a way I'd expect a living being to move anyway. It was shaped like a man, in the vaguest of terms. You could make out what could be shoulders, an abdomen. The arm seemed to be almost sewn into its sides.

unable to move. Its head pointed into a sharp spike at the very top. As I stood there frozen to the spot, I began to notice what the movement I had noticed was. It was vibrating, pulsing in all different directions, like it was made up of a whole series of different creatures, a colony of small individual white wisps. The movement, and what I assumed was its blank featureless face grew greater. Suddenly, some of the wisps began to move inwards. Hllowing out sockets where its eyes should sit, they crept in deeper, leaving dark shadows where its eyes should be. Then the same began to happen, from side to side. A line appeared. A long, inhumane smile stretched across the top part of it. The mouth began to open. And that's the way.

when it began to move towards me. That's all for tonight. Be sure to return to the campfire soon, and I hope you have pleasant dreams.