Candle Maker

There was an old woman who lived in the woods...

Stories were told that she collected your bones.

She used your fat for candle wax, and set your head on stones.


Never, ever go into the woods... or you'll never come home.

Another one of my favorites. What would you do?

I didn't remember what it was like to have two hands.  It had been so long.  You just get used to it.

I could not believe it when I got the call that it was going to happen. I was going to get a new hand.  They found the perfect match.

I imagined looking normal.  No more stares.  No more whispers.

I would be beautiful.  I would blend in.

Freedom.

It went well.  It took right away.  I am only a little bloated from the medicine that keeps my body from rejecting it.

It is a little bigger than my other hand.

It has been three months.  The doctors are impressed with my progress.  I am not so sure any more.

I asked them about what has been happening, but they don't listen.

No one is listening.  No one will hear me.

It moves.  It moves by itself.  Not a twitch.  A real movement, that I am not doing.

It does things.

It left me a message.  It said "Leave".  It wrote it.  It wrote it to me.

I don't want it any more.  I want it off.



I am free.

It is in the sink.  It won't talk to me anymore.  I am going to put it in the disposal.

I will shut it up forever.

Do you see ghosts?

A child.

Innocent, but sometimes frightening.

I've been seeing a child.  She looks to be about five years old.  She has long blond hair, and wears a summer dress.


It's winter.

I live in the woods.  There's no one nearby.

She's alone.

She never speaks.  She keeps at a distance.

If I get close, she evaporates into nothing.

She wants me to do something.  She's visiting me for a reason.  Maybe I am the only one who can see her.

Three days ago,  she started coming closer.  I could see dirt on her dress and face.

She never smiles.

Yesterday, she was at the end of the driveway.

Today she's outside my window.  Looking in at me.

I went outside.  She let me follow her to the end of the road.

It ends at the forest.  She walked about ten feet in.

When I caught up with her, she slowly sat on the ground.  I sat by her side.

She looked real, she looked alive.  I knew she wasn't.

She looked at me.  Then at the ground in front of us.  Frantically, she started digging.  I found myself digging with her.  My fingers started bleeding.  My hands became numb from the cold.  But, they were out of my control.  They kept on digging.  Soon, long blond strands of hair tangled between my fingers.

I wept.  I knew what was there.

When her face was exposed, I was able to stop.  Her ghost was no longer beside me.

I never saw her again.

Beware what is behind you...

Photos.

They should make you smile.  Feel good.

But, I feel sick.  I feel crazy.

I've felt something has been next to me, against me, close to me, for the last week.  But, when I look, there's nothing there.

I didn't know what to do, so I took pictures.

I grabbed my phone, and began taking selfies.  I took one in every room of the house.



I'm not alone.



There was something behind me.  It's in every photo.  A dark shadow of a person.

I'm scared.  It's 3:00 am in the morning.  I've been up all night.  I felt the shadow behind me.  I felt it getting closer.

It's here right now.  It's breathing on my neck.  I can feel it's icy breath.  I can smell it's putrid stench.

I just took another selfie.

It's not a shadow any more.  It's a man.  His head is close to mine. He's looking at me.  I know him.  He's the man that killed my mother.

He's been dead for ten years.

What would you do?

Imagine waiting for a train after work.

It arrives and is packed full of people.  You wait for the next one.  It's packed too.

You get on.

The air is thick, and moist.  It smells.  You want to gag.

Arms and faces smash against you.  You try to find something to focus on, until you can get off.

As soon as you go underground, the lights dim.

You see a spot of calm.  It's a tiny spot with nothing moving.

It's a small, tiny woman.  She's sitting perfectly still.  She's perfectly dressed, in a navy blue suit with pearls and white gloves.

On her lap is a small square lunch box.

She opens it, and carefully picks out something to eat.  She holds it with both hands like a miniature corn on the cob.  It's red, It's dripping.

She eats it like a rat, nibbling from one end to the other.  Her mouth is now red.  It looks like blood.

She looks up.

She stops moving.  The woman stares right into your eyes, and smiles.  Her mouth is bloody.

You see what she has in her hands is the lower piece of a human jaw... and what looked like corn is human teeth...

What would you do?

Go away...

There's a lost spirit.

He follows me.

Every day.

No one else can see him.

I can't help him.  I don't want to help him.  I don't do that any more.

Do you see him?  By the tree?

I need him... I need him to...

Go away.

I am so alone.

Dead silence.

No sounds.  None.

It woke me.

I looked out.  Thick fog fills the sky, and covers the ground.  No one is there.  No movement.  Nothing.

My gut hurts.  It feels like a warning.

What happened?  What is happening?

I go out.  I stand in the middle of the street.  I try to figure it out.

The ground... I see it on the ground.  The houses have long thick dark drag marks coming from the front door, ending at the curb.  It looks like blood.

It smells like blood.  There are bits of flesh.

My gut hurts again.  It is telling me to run.

I vomit.

On my knees, my eye catches something in the fallen leaves of scarlet and brown.

It's a finger.  A small finger.  I put it in my pocket.   I can't leave it.  It can't be alone.


I don't want to be alone.


My body is moving further away from the safety of my home.

I can't stop it.

A story a day until Halloween. Another favorite. Enjoy...

I take the train eight times, every week.  It goes through a long underground tunnel.

A massive graveyard covers the hilltop above.

When it rains real hard, I wonder if water that passes over rotting bodies drips down over the train.

I don't want the water to touch me.  No offense to the dead, I just don't want their juices on me.

The last two weeks, as soon as the train enters the tunnel, I hear a child crying.  No one else seems to hear her.

After the first week, I figured she was dead.  

Sometimes... I hear the dead.

Sometimes... I see them.

She told me, she was looking for her hand.  She needed to be whole.  She had gathered all the other parts the man had cut off, but she couldn't find her hand.  There was no blood, but I could then see how the different parts of her where not put together as well as they could be.

I don't want this task, I don't want it at all.  My mother always said, "You can't help the gifts you were born with."

Tomorrow, I am going to see if I can find her hand.

People behind masks. Sometimes, they are bad people.

Clowns.

They scare me.

What's behind the makeup?  What's behind the mask?

Traveling carnivals.  I don't like them.  That's where some live.

My mother made me go.  She forced me.

That's the first time I saw him.  He tried to make me laugh.  I wanted nothing to do with him.  I think that is why he follows me now.

He leaves me presents.  Dead things he kills.

Every night I peak out my window.  He stands there, smiling up at me from the ground below.

Jake went missing three days ago, but I know where he is.  I saw the clown drag him.  He dragged him away.

He watched me... as I watched him.  I wanted to save him.  I didn't know how.

No one has found him.  No one believes me.

The clown stays closer now.  He taps on my window.

He wants to get in.

A Favorite Scary Friday Story from the past.

They're not suppose to move.

They're not suppose to be alive.

This one is.

I bought an old busted up mannequin from a thrift shop.  I wanted to scare my roommate on our camping trip.  I got here a couple days before her, so I could set it up.

It's alive.  I know this is crazy, but it's true.

Last night I found it whispering in my ear.  It was inside my tent.  I pushed it away from me.

I ran to my car, but it won't start.  It did something to it.  I know it.

Running away, I fell down a hill.

My leg is busted.  I see bone.

It's dark out here now.  I hear it coming.

It walks like a spider.  I see it getting closer in the moonlight.


I don't want to die.

Be still.

It's there beside me.  It's there... in the dark.

I must not move.

Darkness

It was sunny.

It was bright.

I was happy.


It happened in a flash.  I felt like I couldn't move.  I could barely think.  The light was so bright.


Now, the world is dark.


I made myself...  I made myself slide back.  Back into the bushes behind me.

There were no sounds.  Nothing.


But..  Something is coming...  It's getting loud.

Can you feel it? It's waiting for you...