- Your roommate puts up a Vallejo-style poster. It shows a muscular and well endowed woman, chained to a rock as an apparent sacrifice, looking up in terror as the shadow of some beast falls over her. On the third night after the poster is hung, a scream rings out with no apparent source. The next morning, the poster shows only broken chains and a bloodstained rock. On the floor beneath the poster is a single bloody footprint of something with three toes and long claws.
- You come into possession of an old box. Inside are several glass vials filled with dirt, dust
and tiny bits of gravel or cement. The vials are labeled with places and dates such as "Port
Chicago 7/17/1944", "Halifax 7/6/17" and "Guernica 7/17/36". A trip to the library confirms that all are dates of massive loss of life in explosions. A few days later a package arrives with no return address. Inside is an empty vial labeled with your home town and next week's date.
- You wake after a wild night of partying to find that while you were wasted, for some reason
you had a crude smiley face tattooed on your foot. You write it off as a lesson to never drink that much again. The next time you wake, however, you discover the face is now on your ankle, and it's not as crudely drawn. The day after that, it's on your lower leg, and it's starting to look more like a drawing of a real face. As it continues to move up and become more realistic looking, you wonder what happens when it reaches your own face.
- You stumble across a small cavern and decide to explore. Inside are crude shelves bearing glass jars. Each contains the severed and mummified head of a small child, and is sealed with wax bearing ritualistic looking runes. Cards attached to each the jars give a date of September 9 and a year, with a fifteen year gap between jars. Although the oldest of the jars is dated over a hundred years ago, all seem to be written in the same handwriting. The next September 9 in the sequence is just a few days away.
- You look out the window and take note of the birds sitting on the telephone lines. First three birds sitting spaced apart, then three clusters of three birds each, then another three birds spaced apart. You suddenly realize this spells out SOS in Morse Code.
- Clearing junk out of your attic, you look out the window and notice a large crowd has gathered on both sides of the street. A parade of black cars moves slowly down the street as the crowd silently bow their heads. When you go outside to see what's going on, the sidewalks are empty and there are no cars in the street.
- You are spending the night in a motel after a long day of driving. Looking at the tacky wood paneling, it seems that the knot in the wood looks a little like a face. Now that you think about it, it looks a lot like a face. A face distorted in a scream. The longer you look, the more distinctly you can see it. And there are dozens upon dozens of knots in the paneling, each one a face twisted by agony and torment.
- A body is found and the only sign of injury is a crack in the victim's glass eye. Close examination of the eye reveals it is hollow. Inside is a tiny bed, table, desk...
- walking your dog at night you notice strange little flickers, green colored, along the ground, out of the corner of your eye. They aren't there when you turn and look, however. Not at first
Then, day by day, they grow in frequency during that same nighttime walk. First in the distance, then forming a line of small candle flames leading down the street and past you...each one about a foot from the last, sick and green and guttering.
Researching the phenomenon, you discover an old superstition about corpse lights, flickering lights that show the path of an impending funeral procession or coroner's vehicle. You also discover they invade your house and lead to where your pregnant wife is sleeping.
- You wake up to an unknown sound. You look over to the alarm clock on your night-stand; it's 3:38am, good, you can still get a few more hours of sleep before work. But what's that sound? As you roll over onto your pillow you become aware of a rythmic thumping sound, like something beating on a sheet of metal. It sounds like it's coming from downstairs somewhere. Maybe it's the laundry machine? You roll over and stuff the pillow over your ears in an attemt to ignore the sound, but you can still hear it. You sigh as you realize you'll have to investigate, and you lean foward in your bed. You throw the comforter off of you as you step out onto the cold, hardwood floor, and you step your way to the bedroom door. The sound seems louder now. You open the door, and step out into the hallway. The sound is louder still. You walk your way to the stairway; the sound now fills the room, you can no longer hear the creaking in the floorboards you've become so accustomed to. You walk your way down to the bottom of the stairs, cupping your hands over your ears to ward off the sound. The sound is too loud, you can't go any further. You lean yourself against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and slide down into a crouch. The relentless banging is coming from everywhere around you. What's going on? You push the back of your head up against the wall and let out a scream, futily trying to battle the sound with your own.
...
You abruptly awake from your nightmare, jumping foward in your bed. You look over at your alarm clock, it's 3:38am. Good, you still have a few more hours to sleep before you have to go to work.
But what's that banging coming from downstairs?
- Late at night you're reading an Internet bulletin board of creepy scenes. You e-mail one of them to a friend.
You later learn that your friend died that morning in the manner described in the story.
- You've met someone absolutely wonderful online. You chat with them on IRC every night for two weeks, and over the course of the conversations you talk about where you both live. The other person's driven by your house plenty of times and knows exactly where it is. The two of you talk about meeting in person. You invite them over and they log off to head over to your place. A moment later, you look down and notice that your computer's power cord and modem are unplugged and the cables tied together in a complex knot.
- You're in a nasty car wreck with a friend and black out. You wake up in the hospital, and for some reason everyone keeps calling you by your friend's name. You're the only survivor of the wreck.
- You get back to your place from giving your best friend a ride home from work and turn on your favorite TV channel. You don't recognize the specific series that's on or any of the actors, but it's a cop/detective show. You know the sort. They're investigating a particularly gruesome murder and are completely stumped as to who the culprit is. As you sit down to watch, they stumble onto that one single clue that allows them to conclusively identify the murderer. One of the stars takes a couple of police offers off to arrest the suspect, promising to "give that son of a jerk what's coming to him." Then you recognize the crime scene; it's your best friend's bedroom. A moment later, the police are banging on your front door, asking to talk to you.
- You're in the military, and while on maneuvers in a peaceful area you and some of the other folks in your unit-- including your superior officer-- go for a bit of a walk in the middle of the night. You're out on a hill, pointing at stars, and then all of a sudden there's a bright flash of light. All of you are standing in different positions now and everyone else but you and your superior officer looks terribly confused. As one, the others silently turn and start walking back towards the camp in perfect step. Your superior tells you nothing happened and to come along.
- There's a man on the high security ward who whispers nonsense. One day, you have the joy of trying to interview him. You realize in the transcribing that the 'gibberish' are words backwards, phonetically pronounced. The words are names and dates.
You google the names-- all are victims of horrible mishaps: cablecar crashes, house fires, electrical short circuits.
The next day, the man says your name--and tomorrow's date.
- Walking along the canal at night you head to the steps up to the road and see bloodstains. Investigating you see shapes in the patch of trees commiting an act of violence. Upon investigation the shapes vanish, and you are knocked over by a heavy gust of wind heading down to by the canal.
- Same steps later that week. They have been replaced by the council as being old. The blood stains start to reappear as you watch.
- In bed in a local inn (in reality now a pub but I digress) you see a figure in Victorian dress injecting you with something and then vanishing. You start too feel faint and find help. In hospital they tell you it was arsenic poisoning. A newspaper in hospital reads "Anneversary of Rugeley Poisoners Execution."
- Moving some things about your shop you go upstairs to the store room. As you approach you hear a box slide along the floor. When you open the door to see if anyones in there as your supposed to be alone the door is jammed fast and wont open. Then the box slides across the room and you enter. To see a man in a coffin laid out in state. This fades out of view. But the electric calender/ clock reads 1890 for the year before reverting to normal when the apparition vanishes
- You wake up one day on January the 1st. You do not notice anything wrong until you go to the lavatory. When you cup your hands to splash water against your face to wake you up you notice words carved on your arms.
They are two short lists of names going down your right and left wrists.
The list fades by the next day.
Bizarely they all turn out to be the names of the people you sleep with that year. Each time you sleep with one of them the next morning their name appears crossed out on your arm.
This happens the next year and the next. Occasionaly you try and rebel but anytime you sleep with anyone they later tell you their names were not what they first told you and match the ones you found sliced into your arm at the start of the year.
Six years after this all started you find only two names carved into your arms:
Left arm: Lucifer.
Right arm:Fishes.
- Your phone rings. No one on the other end. An hour later, it rings. No one again. Eventually, you notice that whenever you're out, a phone nearby always rings, each hour at the same minute. The person who answers always hangs up and mutters "Dead air." This goes on for days. Then, when you're dining out on evening, the maitre'd comes up. "Sir? There's a phone call for you..."
- Your dog howls and barks at night. There's nothing there. Soon though, as you listen, you realize that the dog is howling in a particular way. In fact, it sounds vaguely musical. You try to puzzle out the melody. Then, as your walking down the street, you hear someone whistling the exact song...and then, they start to sing the words...
- Listening to a record (an actual record), you doze off. As the record ends, the needle does the static drag and then pop as it bumps the inner rim of the record...almost sounding like a person dragging a foot or something else. Dragging yourself to your feet, you stumble over and remove the needle from the record. In the sudden silence, you hear a loud drag and step from behind you/upstairs IN PERFECT TIME to the record.
-Cars.
Millions of them. Saturating the world. You just happen to be in one. Or rather, you were in one. How long ago that was, you're not sure. There's a bright light in your face. You can hear voices. You realize you are lying down.
"How's his pulse?"
"Fine."
"Stabilized?"
"The drugs seem to be working. He's out."
You're not out. You can hear them, but you can't move. Your body is frozen, and air is being forced into your lungs with a tube. Now you remember the car crash. You take stock of what you can feel. You can feel everything. In fact, you don't hurt at all. But you can't move, not even wiggle your fingers.
"It's pretty bad. We're going to have to amputate."
No! you try to scream. I'm fine! Just look at me! LOOK AT ME! I'm okay!
But they can't hear you. You hear the whir of metal.
"Check again, you sure he's out?"
"Sleeping like a baby, sir."
You're not asleep. You can feel the air move from how close the blade is to your arm. But you're not even injured. You're not bleeding. Why? Why!?
"Alright. Let's do this."
- Walking up a series of stairs in an old building. You hear footfalls coming up behind you. Nobody there. Maybe they're just your own steps, echoing through the old stairways. But why are they getting faster?
- The knot was perfect, you thought. A simple motion, the chair drops, and then the snap. Why does it still hurt so much? Why won't those people help you? They MUST see you, swinging right in front of them. Why won't they cut you down?
- You work late in the morgue, performing the usual autopsy procedure. Checking organ weights, blood levels, etc. You write the numbers on the chart. The body has been dead for awhile, so you are happy to be called away by the telephone. When you get back, the chart has been moved from where you put it down. The weight for the heart has been corrected.
- A corner of the room never gets light. You don't really think about it, but it sometimes draws your attention. Forces apparently act to keep it dark there, no matter how much light is cast in its direction. The wall there is ice cold
