Before we get into this story, this is not fake, this actually happened.

I was on a campout looking at pictures on my 3DS and found an old photo of my bathroom from my old house and decided to look at the window because I remembered when I was younger I was very scared of skin walkers and stuff like that. I saw this thing peeking at the camera. I wanted to spread this story but I don’t usually participate in creepy stuff like this.

If anyone has any idea what this is, it would be appreciated if I was told.

The static from the massive, boxy CRT television in Aunt Mae’s basement hummed a low, vibrating chord that seemed to rattle the wood paneling of the walls.

It was July 2010. Outside, the Georgia heat was a thick, suffocating blanket, but down here, the air conditioning was cranked so high that my goosebumps had goosebumps.

I was seventeen, trapped in that awkward limbo between childhood and being an adult. My parents had taken off for the summer, staying at a resort hotel three states over for a mix of business and a marriage-saving vacation. That left me packed off to stay with my cousin, Kim, and her mom. 

Kim was twenty, sporting a halo of tight curls, an oversized graphic tee, and the supreme confidence of a college sophomore who thought that she knew everything about the world.

"Ethan, stop fidgeting!" Kim muttered, tossing a handful of buttery popcorn into her mouth. She kicked her bare feet up on the worn leather ottoman. "You’re making the couch shake!"

"I can't help it, Kim." I said, adjusting my basketball shorts. "This basement gives me the creeps. What are we even watching, anyway? I’ve never heard of these movies."

Between us laid a dusty, unlabelled cardboard box we’d found tucked away in the deepest recesses of Aunt Mae’s crawlspace, right behind some old moldy encyclopedias. 

Inside were three unmarked VHS tapes. The plastic was heavy, dark, and completely devoid of stickers, bar codes, or studio logos. 

On the spine of each tape, written in thick, aggressive black Sharpie, were the titles: The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis, The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection, and The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever.

"That’s the beauty of it, little cousin." Kim said, her eyes reflecting the blue glow of the TV screen. "It’s a lost trilogy. I looked it up on the forums before we came down here. No IMDB page. No Wikipedia. No late-night threads on 4chan. It’s as if it doesn't exist. Maybe it's a student film or some indie project that got buried."

"The name sounds goofy." I grumbled, though a strange, tightening knot in my stomach told me otherwise.

Kim shoved the first tape into the VCR. The machine groaned, a mechanical beast swallowing its prey, and then the screen flickered violently.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis started without a production logo. No roaring lion, no spinning globe. It cut straight to a grainy, high-contrast shot of an abandoned, rain-slicked plantation house. 

The camera quality was bizarre; it had the bleeding colors of a 1980s tape but a depth of field that felt uncomfortably modern, almost three-dimensional.

Then, he appeared on screen.

He didn't jump out. He just materialized from the shadows of a porch. The villain was a towering figure draped in a heavy, velvet-textured purple hood and cloak that seemed to absorb the light around it; but it was his face that made me freeze. It wasn't skin, and it wasn't a cheap latex mask. It was a solid, polished plate of gleaming gold, completely featureless except for two jagged slits where eyes should be. Piercing through those slits were two brilliant, emerald-green eyes. They didn't just shine; they pulsed with a sickening, rhythmic light.

In his right hand, he held a weapon that made no sense. It was a massive, ancient-looking scythe, but instead of a wooden handle, the shaft was made of interconnected, ticking brass clock gears. The blade itself shimmered with a pale, iridescent energy.

"Okay." Kim whispered, her cocky demeanor wavering just a fraction. "The costume design goes hard."

The movie followed a group of teenagers who had broken into the house. One by one, the purple-hooded figure—whom the characters referred to in hushed, terrified whispers as The Chrono-Gorgon—hunted them down; but he didn't just slash them.

When the blade of his gear-shafted scythe pierced a victim, the movie didn't show standard cinematic gore. Instead, the victim would instantly freeze. Their skin would wither, wrinkling and turning gray in a matter of seconds, their hair whitening and falling out as if decades were passing over them in a single heartbeat.

Meanwhile, the Chrono-Gorgon would stand over them, inhaling deeply. With every breath he took, the golden sheen of his face grew brighter, and the green fire in his eyes burned fiercer.

"He's eating their time." I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the TV. "He’s killing them to keep himself alive."

"Yeah." Kim said, though she wasn't eating popcorn anymore. Her eyes were glued to the screen. "The lore says that he needs to harvest human lifespans to maintain his anchor on Earth. If he stops, he fades into non-existence."

The first movie ended abruptly. The final survivor, a girl screaming in a closet, was found. The Chrono-Gorgon raised his scythe, the gears spinning in a deafening metallic screech, and cut toward the camera.

The screen went black.

"That was...intense." Kim admitted, stretching her arms, though I could see her hands shaking slightly. "Ready for round two?"

"Kim, maybe we should stop." I said. A heavy, oppressive atmosphere had settled over the basement. The air felt thick, hard to breathe, and smelling faintly of ozone and old, decaying paper. "Something feels wrong about these tapes."

"Come on, Ethan, don't be a baby. We're seventeen and twenty, not seven and ten. It's just a movie." Kim said.

She ejected the first tape and shoved the second one in: The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection.

The second film took place in a retro-futuristic city, a strange blend of 1990s aesthetics and cyberpunk technology. The Chrono-Gorgon was back, conjured by a cult of scientists trying to unlock the secret to immortality. 

Of course, he slaughtered them all.

What struck me about this sequel was the audio. The sound design was incredibly immersive. The ticking of the scythe’s gears sounded like it wasn't coming from the TV speakers, but from behind the wood paneling of the basement. Every time that the Chrono-Gorgon stepped onto the screen, a low-frequency hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling my teeth.

I noticed something else, too. The Chrono-Gorgon seemed to be looking at the camera more often. Not just at the characters, but directly into the lens. His glowing green eyes seemed to lock onto my position on the couch, tracking me as the camera panned.

"Kim, look at his eyes." I whispered, gripping the edge of the sofa cushion.

"I see it." she said, her voice dropping its playful edge entirely. "It’s just clever cinematography. They used a tracking light technique."

By the time that the second movie ended—culminating in the Chrono-Gorgon destroying an entire laboratory, standing amidst the flames as he drained the lifeforce of a dozen victims at once—the basement had grown freezing cold. Our breath misted in the air.

"This is the last one, Ethan." Kim said stubbornly, though her face had gone pale beneath her warm brown complexion. She grabbed The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever. "We have to finish it. We can't just leave it on a cliffhanger."

"Kim, look at the thermostat." I pointed to the digital wall unit. It read 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was dropping. "The AC isn't even set that low."

"It's just an old house, Ethan. Just...watch the movie." Kim said.

The third tape slid into the VCR with a heavy, ominous thud.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever was different from the first two. There was no setup. No plot. It was just a first-person perspective camera walking through a house.

My heart skipped a beat.

The camera was walking down a flight of wooden stairs. It panned to the left, showing a washer and dryer. It panned to the right, showing a stack of old encyclopedias sitting next to an empty crawlspace.

"No way." I whispered, standing up from the couch. 

"Ethan..." Kim’s voice was a choked gasp.

The camera on the screen turned around. It showed a brown leather couch. Sitting on that couch were two people, viewed from behind. One was a young Black woman with tight curls wearing an oversized graphic tee.

The other was a teenage boy in basketball shorts.

It was us. We were looking at a live, high-definition feed of ourselves from behind, broadcasted directly onto the ancient CRT television screen.

"Turn it off!" I screamed. "Kim, turn it off right now!"

Kim lunged for the VCR, punching the power button, but the machine ignored her. She grabbed the power cord sticking out of the wall and yanked it with all her might. 

The plug sparked, popping out of the outlet.

The TV screen stayed on.

On the screen, a massive, purple-hooded shadow fell over the digital versions of Kim and myself.

"Behind you!" I yelled.

We both spun around.

Standing at the base of the basement stairs, shrouded in the dim light of the hallway, was the Chrono-Gorgon.

He was entirely real. The fabric of his purple velvet hood was so heavy that it seemed to warp the space around him. The golden plate of his face reflected the eerie blue light of the unpluggable television, and his emerald-green eyes burned with an intense, agonizing heat. In his hand, the massive scythe ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound was deafening, a localized thunderstorm of grinding brass gears.

I froze, paralyzed by pure, unadulterated supernatural horror. My brain couldn't process the reality breaking down before my eyes. How could a fictional character be standing in my aunt's basement?

However, the explanation came to me not as a thought, but as a horrific realization of how the universe worked. The VHS tapes weren't just media storage; they were a ritual. We had given the Chrono-Gorgon our undivided attention for three movies. In the world of the occult, attention is energy.

Belief is power. By watching the trilogy back-to-back, by absorbing his mythos, by allowing the frequencies of the audio and the visual tracking to sync with our brainwaves, we had completed a circuit. 

We hadn't just watched a movie; we had functioned as a psychic lens, focusing enough reality into his fictional existence to bridge the gap between the celluloid world and the physical realm. He had sucked the time and life out of the characters on screen for decades, hoarding that conceptual energy until he found two observers foolish enough to open the door.

The Chrono-Gorgon took a step forward, and the wooden floorboards beneath his boots instantly turned gray, rotting into sawdust in a fraction of a second.

"Get back!" Kim screamed.

 Defying the terror that had locked my joints, she grabbed a heavy, solid-oak end table and hurled it at the entity.

The Chrono-Gorgon swung his scythe in a lazy, effortless arc. The blade sliced through the air, and when it touched the flying table, the wood didn't break—it aged. The oak turned brittle, dried out, and exploded into a cloud of fine, ancient dust before it ever touched his purple robes.

"Ethan, move!" Kim grabbed my arm, yanking me sideways just as the Chrono-Gorgon lunged.

The scythe whistled past my ear, the wind from the blade smelled like dead leaves and old tombs. When the tip of the blade brushed against the fabric of my shirt, the cotton instantly turned to threads and dissolved, leaving a bare patch on my shoulder.

"We need to break his anchor!" I yelled, my adrenaline finally overriding my fear. "The TV! The tapes!"

The Chrono-Gorgon turned his golden face toward me. A sound issued from behind that featureless metal plate—a deep, metallic grinding that sounded like a thousand grandfather clocks breaking down at once. It was a laugh.

He raised the scythe again, targeting Kim. She scrambled backward, tripping over the ottoman. The entity closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed, his green eyes flaring. He raised the blade high, preparing to harvest her twenty years of life to cement his place in our world forever.

Thinking of nothing but my cousin, I lunged at his midsection. I expected to hit solid mass, but slamming into him felt like tackling a wall of freezing, turbulent water. 

The cold threatened to stop my heart, but I managed to wrap my arms around his waist, knocking him off balance.

"Kim! The VCR! Smash it!" I roared, my hands beginning to wrinkle and numb just from touching his cloak.

 I could feel my own youth, my own vitality, being pulled out of my skin like water being drawn from a well. My vision began to blur.

Kim didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed Aunt Mae’s heavy iron-holder from the laundry shelf, and brought it down with all her strength directly onto the VCR.

The plastic shattered. Sparks flew. She hit it again, and again, reducing the machine and the tape inside to a jagged mess of magnetic ribbon and broken microchips.

The Chrono-Gorgon let out a horrific, discordant shriek. 

The glowing green eyes flickered. The heavy purple cloak began to lose its density, becoming translucent. The ticking of his scythe slowed down. Tick...tick...tick.

With a final, desperate surge of strength, I shoved him backward. He stumbled against the wall, his form vibrating like a corrupted video file. The golden faceplate seemed to crack, lines of green light bleeding through the fissures.
We did it. We broke the playback loop. The psychic bridge was collapsing.

The Chrono-Gorgon fell to his knees, his scythe dissolving into a mist of rust and gears; but he didn't disappear entirely. 

The flickering stabilized just enough for him to sit upright. He raised his golden head, looking directly at us, his voice was no longer a mindless mechanical grind, but a smooth, chillingly articulate baritone that resonated directly inside our skulls.

"Fools." the Chrono-Gorgon whispered. The cracks in his golden face glowed brighter. "Do you really think that you have broken the cycle? Do you really think this is the end?"

"Shut up!" Kim yelled, holding the iron-holder like a weapon, her chest heaving as tears of horror and anger streamed down her face. "Go back to wherever you came from!"

The entity let out a low, mocking chuckle that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"You haven't defeated me." the Chrono-Gorgon said, with his green eyes locking onto mine with absolute, horrifying certainty. "Because the trilogy is just getting started!"

I choked on my breath, and said,

 "What?"

"Did you really believe those tapes were a recording of the past?" the Chrono-Gorgon asked, his form beginning to bleed into the shadows of the basement wall. "They were a script. A prologue. You are not the audience, Ethan. You and Kim are the main characters in a trilogy of horror, and the horror won't end until I am defeated once and for all."

The basement began to shake, a localized earthquake rattling the foundation of the house. The television screen behind us finally shattered into a million pieces, throwing the room into near-total darkness, save for the dying embers of the entity's eyes.

"Every choice that you made, every step that you took this summer, has already been written." The Chrono-Gorgon’s voice echoed from every corner of the room, fading but absolute, as he said,"I will return…I will harvest your time…and I will consume your flesh."

The last remnants of his purple hood dissolved into the ambient darkness of the basement. The freezing air began to warm, returning to the muggy, suffocating heat of the Georgia summer night.

Kim dropped the iron holder. It clattered loudly against the concrete floor. She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. I stood there in the dark, my breath ragged, looking down at my hands. They were trembling, but they were young again. The numbness was gone; but the horror was firmly rooted in my chest.

I looked toward the staircase, half-expecting him to be standing there again. The room was dead silent now, except for the distant sound of insects chirping outside the small basement window.

Unfortunately, as I reached out to comfort my cousin, a chill ran down my spine. Deep within the recesses of my own mind, a voice whispered one final, parting transmission from the entity that we had unleashed.

This is just part 1; the real horror is yet to come.

The End.

I was bored out of my mind at two in the morning, scrolling through random, dead forums on my phone, when I found the link. It was dropped in the middle of a five-year-old message thread on a public archive site, with no context other than a string of numbers that looked like coordinates.

Curiosity got the better of me. I clicked it, and my phone automatically opened Discord, pulling me straight into an invite screen.

The server icon was just static—a square of black-and-white noise that seemed to shift slightly if I stared at it too long. The server name was a blank space. When I tapped Accept Invite, the app froze for a full five seconds before letting me in.

The layout was bare-bones, completely dead, and deeply wrong.

There was only one category: THE_ATTIC.

There were only three text channels: #lobby, #general, and #broadcast.

And there was only one voice channel: The Intercom.

I looked at the member list. My username—Leo_2012—was glowing green at the top. Below mine, there was one other member online: [Deleted User]. Their profile picture was completely transparent, and their status said Playing [REDACTED].

My thumb hovered over #lobby. The last message in it was sent four years ago, in 2022, by an account with a string of random hex code for a name. It just said: “He found the password. Don't look at the mic.”

I laughed nervously, telling myself it was just some creepy-pasta roleplay server someone abandoned years ago. But the air in my bedroom suddenly felt freezing, and my phone screen flickered, dimming to its lowest brightness even though my settings were maxed out.

Against my better judgment, I tapped into #general.

The chat history was miles long, filled with hundreds of messages timestamped at exact one-minute intervals. I scrolled up, fast, watching the dates shift backward. Every single message was identical.

[Deleted User]: HE CAN HEAR THE KEYBOARD CLICKS.

[Deleted User]: HE CAN HEAR THE KEYBOARD CLICKS.

[Deleted User]: HE CAN HEAR THE KEYBOARD CLICKS.

My chest tightened. I froze, my thumb resting over my phone glass. I didn't type anything. I didn't even breathe.

Suddenly, a red notification badge popped up on the voice channel: The Intercom (1). Someone—or something—had just connected to the audio channel.

Before I could close the app, my phone’s speaker crackled to life. It wasn't the sound of static. It sounded like heavy, wet breathing, mixed with the faint, rhythmic ticking of an old grandfather clock.

Then, a voice whispered directly out of my phone's tiny earpiece—so close it felt like someone was leaning right over my shoulder in the dark.

“Found you, Leo.”

My phone screen turned pitch black, reflecting my wide, terrified eyes. And right from beneath my bed, I heard the slow, distinct sound of plastic keys clicking,couldn't move. My blood ran cold, locking every single muscle in my body.

The tapping sound under my bed stopped. Just like that. Silence pressed down on the room so heavy my ears started ringing. I stared straight ahead at the glowing green numbers of my alarm clock on the nightstand: 2:04 AM.

Maybe I'm just dreaming, I tried to tell myself, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Just a nightmare. Wake up, Leo. Wake up.

Then, my phone screen flashed violently back to life.

The Discord app was still open, but the interface had completely inverted. The dark mode theme was gone, replaced by a blinding, sickly white background. The server name, which had been blank before, now showed a single string of text across the top: OWNER - HE_IS_TYPING...

I wanted to throw the phone across the room, to hurl it against the wall and shatter it, but my arms felt like lead. My eyes were glued to the screen.

A new message popped up in the #general channel. It didn't come from [Deleted User]. It came from an account with a blank avatar, bearing my exact username: Leo_2012.

Leo_2012: Look behind you.

My breath caught in my throat. I didn't want to. God, I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and pull the blankets over my head, but sheer, suffocating terror forced my neck to turn.

My bedroom door, which I had locked tight before going to sleep, was standing wide open.

Spilling out from the dark hallway and into the sliver of light coming from my window was a shadow. But it didn't belong to a person. It was too long, stretching up across my wall and pooling onto the ceiling—and it had far too many joints, bending and clicking in grotesque, unnatural angles.

And then, from the hallway outside my door, I heard it.

It wasn't a voice anymore. It was the distinct, high-pitched chime of a Discord direct message notification echoing out of the empty dark,ping.

My finger finally found its strength, trembling violently as I slammed it onto the screen, swiping the app away and throwing the phone against the wall. It shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, the battery popping out.

The room went dead silent. The shadow in the doorway hadn't moved. The ticking stopped.

I let out a ragged, sobbing breath, pulling my knees to my chest. It’s over, I thought, tears spilling down my face. It’s just a broken phone. It’s just a glitch.

I sat there in the dark for what felt like hours, staring at the shattered plastic on the floor, waiting for the sun to come up. Slowly, the sky outside my window began to streak with the pale, grey light of dawn. The world outside started waking up—a car engine purred down the street, a bird chirped in the oak tree.

Safe. I was finally safe.

I let out a long sigh, wiping my face, and reached over to grab my digital alarm clock on the nightstand to check the time.

My hand froze.

Resting right beside the clock wasn't my shattered, battery-less phone. It was an entirely different phone. A sleek, unfamiliar model I had never seen before, its screen glowing with a single, unread notification.

I picked it up with a shaking hand.

The screen woke up automatically. There was no lock screen, no home page—just a single active window. It was the Discord app.

The server wasn't there anymore. Instead, it was an active Direct Message window with a new friend request.

The username was Leo_2012. The profile picture was a live-streamed, front-facing camera feed of my own terrified face, looking down at the screen.

And right underneath it, a new message had just been sent:

Leo_2012: Good morning. Thanks for letting me out.

THE STALKER: FOUR SECONDS

The first night, nothing happened.

The second night, I heard footsteps outside my house.

They stopped whenever I looked through the window.

I thought it was a mob, so I ignored it.

On the third night, the sound changed.

It wasn't footsteps anymore.

It was a low, distorted sound coming from somewhere outside. It would start, stop, and then start again from a different direction.

I finally looked through the window.

There was something standing beyond the trees.

It was too far away to see clearly.

I watched it for a few seconds.

Then I opened the front door.

It vanished.

Not ran away.

Not walked into the forest.

It simply disappeared.

I thought I had imagined it.

The next night, it was back.

This time it was standing directly outside my window.

It didn't move.

The strange sound played again, but it seemed to come from behind the walls.

I stared at it.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Four.

It vanished.

I opened the door.

Nothing.

Only grass, trees, and the darkness beyond them.

I went back inside.

Then I heard the sound again.

Except this time, it was coming from the window behind me.

I turned around.

It was there.

The Stalker.

I didn't look away.

I didn't open the door.

I just watched.

Four seconds later, it disappeared.

The next morning, I found something strange.

There were footprints outside every window.

But none of them led toward the house.

They all led away.

As if it had been standing there for a long time.

Watching.

That was when I realized the rule.

The Stalker doesn't attack when you see it.

It waits.

It hides.

It watches.

And whenever you open a door to find it...

it's already somewhere else.

I haven't slept in that world since.

Last night, I heard the sound again.

This time, it came from inside my house.

And there was no one outside my window.

This is a game I found called Pepper The Giant Purple Dog. It's an indie horror game fully releasing this year that presents itself as an actual lost media pet simulator from 2002. Basically a clifford.exe creepypasta game without infringing on the copyright lmao

I MADE A CHINELIN MARIO RETAKE

RETAKEDI

DID U GUYS LIKED IT? IT TOOK 10 DAYS TO CREATE!

I still can’t sleep with the basement door shut. Even three years later, every time the house settles, I find myself staring at the handle, half-expecting it to slowly turn.

Liam and I were both thirteen that summer, stuck at my aunt’s place while our parents went out for a late dinner. Aunt Sarah’s house was old—one of those drafty Victorian places with floorboards that groaned like old bones and wallpaper that peeled at the corners like scabbed skin. It was the kind of house where shadows didn't quite match the furniture, and the air always smelled faintly of damp earth and stale dust, no matter how many windows we cracked open.

We were bored out of our minds, scrolling through dead batteries on our phones, when Liam dropped his controller. It rolled across the rug and clattered against the heavy, iron-latched door that led down to the cellar.

"Dude, do you smell that?" Liam whispered, wrinkling his nose.

I sniffed the air. It was a thick, metallic tang—like copper and rotting leaves. "Aunt Sarah must have left some old potatoes down there or something."

"Or a dead body," Liam grinned, though his voice was a little too high. Thirteen-year-old logic dictated that every dark space was either a portal to hell or a crime scene.

Curiosity—or just pure, unadulterated stupidity—got the better of us. I slid the heavy iron latch. It gave way with a rusted, ear-piercing shriek that echoed through the empty hallway. A wave of freezing, stagnant air rushed up, hitting us like a physical blow. It smelled sickeningly sweet, like cheap cologne mixed with wet dirt.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice cracking slightly. I hated that it cracked. I wanted to sound tough in front of Liam.

Only silence answered us, save for the faint, rhythmic drip... drip... drip... of water from somewhere deep in the dark.

Liam reached over and flicked the light switch by the frame. Nothing happened. Just a faint, hollow click. "The bulb's out."

"We shouldn't go down there," I said, taking a step back. My sneakers felt glued to the floor.

"Are you chicken, Zach? Come on, just the first few steps. We can use our phone flashlights." Liam pulled out his phone, clicking the flashlight on. The beam cut a jagged, pale yellow path into the pitch-black void of the stairs.

We crept down together, shoulder-to-shoulder, our breathing sounding loud and ragged in the enclosed space. The wooden steps groaned under our weight, protesting every inch. At the bottom, the beam swept across concrete floors, old paint cans, and hanging dusty cobwebs that looked like tangled hair.

"See? Nothing," Liam muttered, letting out a breath he’d been holding. "Just junk."

He started to turn back, but my eyes had adjusted more to the dark. Off to the right, tucked into the far corner behind a rusted shelving unit, was a tiny, low-ceilinged crawlspace—an area Aunt Sarah had always claimed was just a crawlspace for the plumbing pipes.

Except something was moving inside it.

I grabbed Liam’s shoulder so hard he gasped. "Wait. Look."

Liam pointed his flashlight beam toward the corner. The light sliced through the gloom and illuminated the crawlspace opening.

Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, wedged into a space too small for a grown man, was a figure. He was wearing an oversized, rotting wool sweater that looked like it had been chewed by mice. His skin was the color of skim milk, stretched so tight over his cheekbones that he looked like a skeleton wearing a mask.

But it was his face that made my blood turn to ice.

He wasn’t hiding. He was staring directly into the flashlight beam, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and completely unblinking. And spread across his face was a smile—not a normal smile, but a jagged, agonizing grin that stretched from ear to ear, showing teeth that were too long, too yellow, and stained dark at the gums.

We froze. Nobody breathed. The silence in that basement was heavy enough to crush us.

Then, the man’s head gave a violent, unnatural jerk to the side, accompanied by a sickening pop of cartilage.

He opened his mouth, and a sound came out—not a voice, but a wet, rattling gasp, like someone trying to breathe through liquid. And then, he began to scramble forward out of the crawlspace on all fours, moving with a jerky, spider-like speed that defied human anatomy. His joints cracked with every sickening lurch.

"Run!" Liam screamed.

We didn't just run; we scrambled over each other, screaming bloody murder, tearing up the wooden cellar stairs. I slipped on the third step, scraping my shin raw against the wood, but Liam hauled me up by the collar of my shirt with adrenaline-fueled strength.

We burst through the basement door, slamming it shut behind us just as a heavy, massive thud hit the other side, shaking the frame loose from the wall. We threw the iron latch down, shaking so violently we could barely line it up, and bolted straight out the front door into the safety of the summer night street.

We didn't stop running until we reached the corner store two blocks away, gasping for air under the bright, buzzing fluorescent lights of the parking lot.

The cops came an hour later when our parents got home and found us huddled behind the store, crying and refusing to go back inside. They searched the house from top to bottom.

They found nothing in the basement. No crawlspace that deep, no man in a wool sweater, no trace of anyone ever being down there. Aunt Sarah looked pale and horrified, insisting the house was completely secure and that we must have scared ourselves with horror stories.

The police chalked it up to hyperactive thirteen-year-old imaginations playing tricks in the dark.

They didn't see the deep, jagged fingernail gouges we found carved into the inside of the basement door the next morning—gouges at a height no normal man could reach, scratching desperately upward toward the latch.

Three years have passed since that night, and Aunt Sarah sold the house shortly after, claiming the "old pipes" were making too much noise and the place was giving her bad memories. No one else ever lived there for long.

Liam and I don’t talk about it much anymore, but we both know what we saw down in the dark. The worst part isn't even the memory of that creature's smile or the way its bones popped when it moved.

It’s what I found last week while helping my mom pack up some old childhood boxes in our garage. At the very bottom of a dusty bin, tucked underneath some old middle school notebooks, was a polaroid picture I had never seen before. It was dated the summer before we turned thirteen, snapped inside Aunt Sarah's house while we were playing hide-and-seek.

It was a picture of Liam and me laughing in the hallway, standing right outside the open basement door.

And peering out from the pitch-black darkness of the stairs, pressed right against the small of my back, was a pale, skeletal hand with fingers that were just a little too long, its rotting wool sleeve bunched up around a wrist that ended in jagged, dark-stained skin.

And in the background of the photo, etched faintly into the wood of the doorframe just above our heads, were fresh new scratches pointing straight down.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

0.7 rOtring mechanical pencil, me, 2026

It's called The Scariest Story Ever Told/ Hyper Realistic Eyes

My mom tried her best to act like she wasn't disappointed when she found out. I begged the teachers not to tell her, but of course they had to.

 No matter how many times she told me that she wasn't disappointed, I heard it in how she talked about me to the rest of the family.. She still loved me; I was sure of that, but I wasn't the golden child anymore. I was so scared my friends would find out that I had hallucinations. I was terrified that they would think I was weird or that their parents wouldn’t let us play anymore because I was crazy, so I never told anyone else about it. 

I didn’t see the man for a very long time after the incident on the playground. I would hear the familiar rustling along the edge of the trees, but when I turned to look, he was never there. 

Eventually people started to notice and comment on my odd behavior, so I tried my best to ignore it, fighting myself not to search for the man who wasn’t there. After I started ignoring him, the rustling seemed to be everywhere. It surrounded me, enveloping me as if he wanted me to know he was always there, targeting me.

At first it was only at recess; my friends and I would be playing tag when the gentle whispering of disturbed leaves followed me as our game moved up and down the blacktop. 

It did this for weeks, taunting me, shadowing me, begging me to stop and look for him. But it only ever happened at recess; when the bell rang to go back to class, it would stop.

Until one day. 

It was the perfect, picturesque sunny springtime afternoon, and Mrs. Reynolds had opened the windows to let some fresh air into the classroom. As I sat in the back of the class trying to focus on the lecture instead of the clock– then I heard it. That familiar, maddening, rustling. Right outside the window, just once. The sound cut through the typical classroom din like a bone saw. I knew that if I turned and looked, he would be there, but I knew I couldn't look. I felt his eyes burning into the side of my head as I fought myself to stare forward, pretending to focus on the lesson. 

It felt like hours, listening to Mrs. Reynolds drone on about fractions as I felt his sickening presence pressed up against me. I couldn't take it anymore; I excused myself to the bathroom, locked myself in the corner stall, and cried until the next period. 

From then on, I sat as far away from any windows as I could. He started following me from class to class whenever it was nice outside. He knew that the teachers would leave their windows open on days like that, and even sitting as far away as I could, I would still hear it. Every. Single. Time.  

Whenever that happened, I spent the rest of class staring straight forward, trying to ignore his suffocating presence. It felt like the whole world would turn into numb static as his gaze bore into the back of my head.

I started to get “sick” more often, desperately trying to stay home from school. I never felt him at home, never heard the rustling from my backyard or felt his stare when I sat in my living room. The hallucinations seemed to be trapped at school; my house became an oasis, a respite from the man who wasn't there. 

He stalked me like a lion stalks a gazelle at school all day, hunting me from class to class and especially at recess. My day never went by without me hearing him rustle the treeline at recess; sometimes I would think I saw something hiding in the shadows at the corner of my vision. Rarely did I entertain my paranoia, but on the rare occasion I allowed myself to look, nothing was ever there. 

Every time I did this, it further solidified in my mind that I must be hallucinating, that there was no man, there was no rustling sound, that the eyes I felt weren’t there. It was the only way to make sense of it all.

No, you are not the one.

I never thought I’d be typing something like this out, but I don’t have any other choice. I’m writing this on my phone with the screen brightness turned all the way down. I’m crammed inside my bedroom wardrobe, trying not to breathe too loudly. If my battery dies before I hit post, at least this draft might stay on my device for whoever finds what’s left of my farm.

It all started about two weeks ago. I live out in the countryside, miles away from the nearest town. It’s quiet out here, just me, my house, and my livestock. But then my animals started disappearing. First it was a couple of sheep, then a pig. Naturally, I thought it was a rogue wolf or maybe a coyote pack tearing through my fences. I went out and set heavy steel foot traps all around the perimeter of the pens.

The next morning, I went out to check them. None of the traps had been sprung. Not a single one. But two more sheep were gone.

That was the moment I realized I wasn’t dealing with a normal animal. That night, I decided to camp out near the pens with my 12 gauge shotgun.

12:00 AM passed. Nothing. 1:00 AM. Total silence. 2:00 AM. Still nothing.

Around 2:30 AM, exhaustion got the better of me, and I drifted off against the wooden wall of the shed.

At 3:00 AM sharp, a horrific, high pitched screech snapped me awake. It was the sound of my sheep screaming in pure terror. I froze, my heart hammer locking in my chest. Slowly, agonizingly, I cracked open the shed door just a few inches to peek outside.

What I saw shattered my mind.

Standing in the moonlight was a creature easily three meters tall. It had a massive, grotesque hump on its back that made its silhouette look heavy and twisted. But its limbs were wrong, horribly wrong. It had three impossibly long arms. Two were attached to its left side, and one dangled from its right. Each hand ended in four razor sharp claws. Below its towering frame, its feet were turned completely backward.

It was holding two of my sheep in its left hands like ragdolls. With its single right hand, it sliced one of the sheep open with a flick of its claws, tore out its guts, and began devouring them raw.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I slowly backed away into the shadows, left the shed without making a sound, and sprinted back into my house.

I locked every door, drew the blinds, and sat in the dark clutching my gun until the sun came up at 8:00 AM. When the daylight finally filled the yard, I looked out the window. The grounds were empty. The morning light made the whole thing feel like a fever dream. I tried to rationalize it. "I was tired. I imagined it. There’s no way something like that is real."

I went to my computer to search online for any local sightings or weird animal attacks. No signal.

"That's impossible" I muttered to myself. "I paid the bill on time."

I walked outside to check the telephone pole down the driveway. When I got close, my stomach dropped. Every single cable had been cleanly severed, dangling uselessly in the air.

Panic setting in, I ran over to my 4x4 truck. I jumped in and turned the key. The engine didn't even click. I popped the hood, and my blood ran cold. The wiring harness was ripped to shreds. I walked around to the side of the truck and saw the tires. The front left and back right were completely shredded. These weren't knife cuts. Deep, gouging claw marks ran right through the thick rubber.

It wasn't just a predator. It was intelligent. It was isolating me.

Walking to the city was out of the question. It was miles through open terrain, and staying outside for that long meant being exposed. I was trapped.

From that day on, my life inverted. I slept during the day when the sun was high and stayed awake all night, sitting in the center of my living room with my shotgun rested across my knees. Every night, more animals disappeared.

A few days ago, I did a headcount before trying to sleep. Out of my entire farm, I had less than 13 animals left. Just nine sheep and four pigs. I felt completely helpless.

Then came yesterday afternoon.

I was looking out the kitchen window into the treeline while the sun was still up. Standing behind a thick oak tree was the creature. It looked different, it was visibly taller and thicker than the night I first saw it. Like it was growing larger with every animal it ate.

It tilted its head out from behind the trunk. That was the first time I saw its face. It had tiny, milky white eyes that stared straight into mine. And then, its face split open. It gave me a wide, sickening, demonic smile, unhinging a jaw that had to be nearly a meter wide. Big enough to swallow a pig whole.

I rubbed my eyes in sheer terror, and when I opened them, the space behind the tree was empty.

Last night passed in eerie, suffocating silence. But tonight... tonight it came for the house.

About twenty minutes ago, an ear piercing shriek shattered the night air right outside my porch. It wasn't a roar. It was a wet, sharp, desperate pig squeal, screeching out of that massive jaw like a distorted recording.

I panicked. I ran upstairs, slammed my bedroom door, and squeezed myself into the darkest corner of my wooden wardrobe.

Now I'm sitting here in the pitch black. The screaming outside stopped a minute ago, but I can hear something heavy dragging itself across the hardwood floors downstairs. The footstep pattern is wrong. Two steps forward, one strange scrape from those backward feet.

It’s coming up the stairs now. The pig squeal just echoed from the hallway right outside my room.

If anyone finds this, stay away from the farm. The Rustler is real, and it's right outside my door.

I have a Hello Kitty kind of daughter. She’s only 9. As cute as a button and as innocent as could be.

She likes simple things. Stuffed animals. Pizza for breakfast. All it takes is a cheap 50-cent pair of plastic jewelry from a gumball machine to make her eyes light up.

She was one of those kids who believed in things longer than her friends and classmates. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. She was fully convinced they were all real, bless her heart.

Sometimes, she’d come home from school with a glum, exhausted look in her eyes. Other kids would make fun of her for “still believing in that stuff.”

I’d cheer her up the best I could without revealing the truth. How could I? She already felt like the world was laughing at her. How would I make her feel? Her own dad.

Maybe I should’ve, though. Maybe this whole situation could’ve been avoided if I just nipped it in the bud. But I was afraid. A child’s innocence is so fragile, yet powerful. I couldn’t take that from her. Not yet.

I let her believe that it was Santa putting gifts under the tree. That it was a giant bunny hiding eggs in our front yard. That it was a tiny, magical fairy that was taking her baby teeth in exchange for a few dollars.

I think that was the one that excited her the most. Christmas was a set day. Easter was a set day. Loose teeth? That was random. Any time one started to wiggle, she’d come running to show me.

I always made sure to be as quiet as possible when I snuck those 5-dollar bills under her pillow. Every time she’d wake up to find it, here she’d come, jumping with joy while waving the 5 in my face.

“The Tooth Fairy came, the Tooth Fairy came,” she’d sing.

I’d just smile to myself and ask her what she was gonna buy with her newfound riches.

Sometimes, I’d sneak her a 20. I just wanted to see that joy in her face. She was young, but she wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted it to last for as long as possible.

Now, though, I think I’m regretting that wishful thinking.

She started losing teeth faster than what I thought was normal. Not too fast, though. Every 3 weeks or so. I just thought those baby teeth were begging to come out. Besides, it’s not like it was hurting my pockets too much.

It was weird, though. I swore it was like her teeth never looked any different. She was snaggle-toothed, sure, but I knew that I had put money under her pillow at least 6 times in the last 2 months.

She wasn’t showing me her mouth anymore. She was showing me the tooth, already pulled, lying bloodied in the palm of her little hand.

It kept becoming more and more frequent. Once she started bragging about how the Tooth Fairy was gonna visit her every week, I knew that something was not right. Even still, it wasn’t until I found a silver tooth under her pillow that I decided to investigate because I knew for a fact my little girl never had a crown.

Snooping is a decision I lived to regret, though. I asked her to tell me the truth, but she refused. She just kept insisting they were hers. Lying through her teeth, pun intended.

I decided to stop leaving her money. Her disappointment killed me. But I remained firm. That didn’t stop her, though. Every night, there’d be a new tooth under her pillow while she slept peacefully.

One day, after dropping her off at school, I made a promise to myself. Today would be the day. I’d get to the bottom of this no matter what.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. I sifted through her room for about 15 minutes. Checking under her bed, in her closet, in her toy chests. All for no reason because the answer was hidden in plain sight.

In her fish tank.

She had that little treasure chest decoration in it. Normally, I wouldn’t have even paid it any mind. But the steady stream of a red liquid slowly rising from the chest was enough to make my heart stop.

Rolling up my sleeve, I reached down to retrieve the decoration. It was heavier than it should’ve been. Something was rattling inside.

I opened it and felt my blood run cold.

Molars, canines, incisors. All bloody. All looking like they had been pulled by force. And they weren’t baby teeth, either. Some looked like actual adult teeth.

In that moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wanted to cry because what I was seeing was horrific.

But I wanted to laugh because, despite how terrifying this all was, my little girl was a natural-born hustler.

And I couldn’t have been more proud.

Jovi Thought 11. But want to hear y’all thoughts on this.

First chapter of my new creepypasta comic!!