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October 13, 2025 60 mins

Cops and First Responders Scariest Paranormal Encounters Stories

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(00:00):
Story one There's a kind of quiet in the mountains at night
that doesn't feel natural. It's too still like the world's
holding its breath. That's what it felt like that
night when I got the call. I've been an EMT in rural
Arkansas for years, and most of my nights blend Car wrecks,
heart attacks, overdoses. But this one's burned into my

(00:21):
mind like a scar. Dispatch said an elderly woman
had found her husband dead at their home deep in the woods.
And it sounded routine. Until it wasn't.
The drive started easily enough,GPS worked fine and the
moonlight stretched across the road like silver threads guiding
the way. But after about 40 minutes, the

(00:42):
map froze. Then the GPS just vanished.
No Rd. no marker, no coordinates.
Like the map decided the place didn't exist.
I tried my radio but it was juststatic.
My phone had no signal either. For a moment I thought about
turning back, but I was already too far in, so I kept going.

(01:02):
The road turned narrow fast. Trees pressed so close I could
hear the bark scraping the side of the ambulance.
It felt like the forest was closing in.
The headlights barely cut through the dark and fog hung
low, thick enough to blur the trees into shadows that looked
almost human. I had to stop every few feet
just to make sure I wasn't driving off the trail.

(01:23):
Then the trail started to fade into something more like an ATV
path. My gut said turn around, but I
was worried about the woman. People panic in these
situations. I've seen folks lose it over far
less. So I backed up inch by inch for
what felt like forever until I found a wider patch of dirt to
turn around. That's when I saw it.
Something was standing in the middle of the road.

(01:45):
At first I thought it was just the headlights hitting a tree,
but the shape was too defined. It was a man, tall, thin,
dressed in all black. He didn't move, he just stood
there, facing me. My first thought was that it
might be the husband, maybe alive and trying to flag me
down. But something was off.
His stance was too still, his outline too dark, like he wasn't

(02:08):
reflecting the light at all. I froze.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I honked the horn lightly, hoping he'd wave or call out
nothing. Then, without a sound, he lifted
an arm and pointed to a narrow trail off to the right.
I hadn't even noticed that path before.
It was hidden behind a thicket now.

(02:29):
I've been in bad spots before. Rural Arkansas isn't short on
folks will rob you blind for thedrugs we carry.
My mind raced with every possible danger.
Still, something about that man's stillness.
It didn't feel human. I wanted to get this over with.
I turned the wheel and followed the trail.
My headlights cut through twisted branches and overgrown

(02:51):
weeds until the trees finally broke open into a small
clearing. There was a trailer there,
rusted metal, a weak porch light, flickering like it was
dying out. I stepped out and the night hit
me like a wall. Cold, heavy, even.
The bugs had gone quiet. The front door was open and I
called out, announcing myself, but all I heard was a faint

(03:13):
sobbing inside. An elderly woman sat on the
floor next to a man's body. He was pale, stiff, rigor mortis
already set in. I didn't even need to check,
he'd been gone for hours. I knelt beside her, asked when
she found him, but her voice shook so bad I could barely make
sense of her words. Something about waking up,

(03:34):
finding him cold, trying to callfor help.
I asked if she had any neighborsnearby.
She said there was no one for miles.
The closest house was 7 miles back, maybe more.
That's when it hit me. If the nearest house was that
far away, then who the hell had been standing in the road?
I called dispatch using her old landline, one of those clunky

(03:56):
beige phones with a spiral cord,and they were panicked.
Said they'd lost contact with meover an hour ago.
My GPS signal had completely dropped off the map.
They didn't even know where to send the sheriff until I gave
directions myself. When the deputies finally
arrived, they said they followedmy tire tracks in.
No other prints, no footprints, no sign of anyone standing on

(04:19):
the road. I told them what I saw, and one
of the officers just looked at me and said that trail didn't
show up on any of their maps either.
We loaded the body for the coroner and I helped the woman
outside. She looked at me, tears
streaking her cheeks, and said her husband had always waited
for visitors on the road whenever someone came to help.
She said he never wanted people to get lost.

(04:41):
I didn't know what to say. I just nodded and left.
Driving back through that forest, I kept glancing at the
mirrors, half expecting to see someone standing behind the
ambulance. I didn't see anything, but that
didn't stop the feeling that I wasn't alone.
Even after I made it back to thestation, I couldn't shake it.
I still run calls out there sometimes.

(05:01):
Same forest, same empty roads. Every time I lose GPS for even a
second, I start to feel it again.
That wait in the air, that sensethat something's out there
waiting. I've told myself maybe it was a
trick of the headlights, maybe it was a tree, a shadow, or a
hiker who wandered off. But the thing that gets me, the

(05:22):
one part I can't explain, is that when we check the time, the
gap between when I'd left the station and when dispatch heard
from me again was almost two hours longer than it should have
been. Two hours gone, unaccounted for.
Every time I think about that man, I see his arm lifting,
pointing toward that hidden Rd. I wonder if he was trying to

(05:43):
help me or leading me somewhere I wasn't supposed to go.
Either way, I've never taken a night call alone since Story 2.
Some nights have this way of sitting, heavy on your chest,
like the air itself knows something you don't.
That's how it felt that night. Quiet, but not peaceful.
I was doing another late shift, one of those assignments where

(06:05):
you get paired with a mental health worker to handle calls
that aren't necessarily crimes but still fall under someone
needs help. It was around 2:00 in the
morning when the radio crackled,dispatch giving us a strange
one. A woman was claiming ghosts were
stalking her from the old Funeral Home across the street.
Now, weird calls aren't rare in this line of work, especially

(06:27):
the ones tied to people struggling with mental illness.
You learn to tread carefully, listen, stay calm, don't feed
the delusions. Still, something about this one
tugged at me. Maybe it was the word Funeral
Home. That old place had been shut
down for months, sitting there like a broken tooth on the edge
of town. When I got to the apartment
complex, the woman was already waiting by the door, jittery but

(06:49):
polite. She talked fast, saying she'd
seen the ghost again, smoking outside by the back door of the
Funeral Home. She swore they watched her from
there, whispering things only she could hear.
She said they took breaks when they weren't on duty, whatever
that meant. She led me out to her balcony
and sure enough, I could see theplace across the road.

(07:10):
A2 story brick building with boarded windows and a sagging
sign that still faintly read Evelyn's Rest Funeral services,
a place you drive past without ever wanting to stop.
The wind carried that dry, hollow whistle you only hear
near abandoned buildings, like the sound was bouncing off
memories. She pointed to a spot near the
side door, saying that was wherethe ghost stood to smoke.

(07:34):
I didn't want to humor her, but out of habit I scanned the area
with my flashlight. And then, yeah, there they were,
a small scatter of cigarette butts.
Right where she said That gave me pause.
The place was supposed to be sealed.
I told her I'd check it out. She looked relieved, almost
happy, as if I just promised to exercise the place.

(07:55):
I radioed in a quick report, then walked over.
The Funeral Home loomed taller than I remembered, it's windows
black as tar, the doors chained but not locked.
The air was colder near the building.
Dampen that way you only feel around old stone and rot.
I don't know why, but I got the sense that the place was
watching me back. I nudged the door and it creaked

(08:16):
open. Inside, it was pitch dark.
I called it in standard procedure and waited for backup,
but curiosity got the better of me.
I stepped in a few feet, flashlight cutting through dust
and spider webs. The air smelled like old candles
and something metallic, faint, but there.
The hallway was lined with rooms, offices, embalming areas,

(08:40):
viewing spaces. You could tell what they used to
be by the outlines of furniture left behind.
My light passed over a wall where the wallpaper had peeled
into long curling strips like dry skin.
Every sound I made echoed twice as loud.
It was the kind of quiet that makes your heartbeat sound
wrong. Then came the noises, faint at

(09:01):
first, pipes knocking somewhere deep inside, metal creaking, a
hollow rush that sounded almost like breathing.
I told myself it was just the building settling, maybe the
wind catching the vents, but thesounds kept shifting, following
me down the hallway. At one point I heard what I
swear was someone walking above me, slow steps, deliberate.

(09:23):
I froze. The ceiling tiles vibrated with
each footfall. I tried to call out, but the
radio crackle dead. For a second I thought it was
interference, but when I adjusted the channel, it came
back on with static and beneath it, something like whispering.
Just for a second I stepped back, pointing my flashlight
upward, expecting dust or rats, but there was nothing.

(09:46):
By the time backup arrived, my nerves were frayed.
Two other officers came in with me, both younger guys who
laughed it off at first. One of them flicked a light
switch near the entrance, and tomy surprise, the lights came on,
flickering fluorescence buzzing overhead, revealing that the
building wasn't as decayed as I thought.
The hum of electricity filled the air, and just like that,

(10:09):
most of the noises stopped. That should have been the end of
it. Logical explanation.
The place still had power pipes making noise, old wiring
buzzing. But as we move deeper in,
checking rooms 1 by 1, I noticedsomething that made the hairs on
my neck stand up. In one of the back offices,
there were still chairs arrangedin a circle, as if people had

(10:32):
been meeting there recently. On the table said 1/2 burned
candle and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts.
Fresh ones, not old, not weathered.
I didn't say anything. We cleared the place, found no
one, locked it up again. The woman across the street was
back on her balcony, smiling andwaving like she'd known exactly

(10:52):
what we'd find. The psychologist who'd
accompanied me said it was all coincidence, that she'd probably
gone over there herself and leftthe cigarettes, maybe even kept
the lights on somehow. It was a comforting thought, but
when I looked across the street one last time, I saw movement
near that same side door. Just a flicker, like someone

(11:12):
stepping back into the shadows. I didn't stick around to confirm
it. A few weeks later, I drove by
the area again out of curiosity.The city had boarded up the
Funeral Home completely this time.
But even from the road I could see faint burn marks on the
brick near the door, the kind that looked like someone had
been holding a lighter too long against the wall.

(11:33):
The woman's apartment was empty.She'd moved out, apparently
without warning. No forwarding address now and
then. I still pass that block on night
patrol. The building's windows are
sealed, the sign half gone, but sometimes, when it's quiet
enough and the air is cold enough, I swear I see a faint
glow near that same doorway, like the tip of a cigarette

(11:55):
burning in the dark. And maybe it's nothing, maybe
it's just some squatters or a trick of light.
But I can't shake the feeling that the woman might have been
right all along about the ghostsneeding a smoke break when they
are not working. Story 3 The night had a
stillness that clung to everything like dust on glass,
thick, unmoving and faintly choking.

(12:17):
I'd been on shift for about 8 hours, the kind of night where
even the static on the radio felt heavy.
When dispatch called in a possible overdose on the far
West side, I didn't think much of it.
That part of town was a graveyard of old factories and
collapsing houses. No one lived there unless they
had nowhere else to go. The GPS led me to a dead street

(12:39):
with no working lights, just thefaint orange glow from the
landfill burning off gas in the distance.
The air smelled faintly of something chemical, sour and
old. I parked near what must have
been the house in question. Though house was generous, it
looked like a shell someone had forgotten to finish demolishing.
Broken windows, front yard thickwith weeds, porch sagging under

(13:03):
the weight of its own rod. The front door was already open.
That's usually bad news. But there was no noise inside.
No shuffling, no coughing, no moaning.
Just air moving through a hollowspace.
I announced myself, the sound ofmy own voice bouncing back too
quickly. I stepped inside, flashlight
cutting through a thin veil of dust and darkness.

(13:26):
Right there, dead center on the wall across from the door,
someone had spray painted in jagged black letters.
Time to look behind you. My heart skipped, not because I
thought someone was behind me, but because my brain immediately
told me not to check. I froze for a second.
The only thing I heard was my own breathing.

(13:48):
Then, forcing myself to look, I turned around slowly.
Nothing, Just empty air, the shape of the front door against
the dark St. outside. I should have called for backup
right then, but I didn't. Something about the stillness
made me think I'd find a body inside, a tragic overdose, like
dispatch said. So I stepped deeper into the

(14:10):
house, sweeping the light along the walls.
That's when I noticed more writing.
Behind the door, painted in red this time, were the words.
Follow me upstairs. It looked rushed, uneven, like
whoever wrote it did it fast anddidn't care if it dripped.
I stood there for a long minute,just staring.
My radio crackled faintly on my belt, but no one spoke.

(14:33):
The silence around me seemed to swell, like the walls were
holding their breath. I aimed the flashlight at the
staircase. Half the steps were broken, but
there was a narrow path that looks stable enough to climb
against every sensible part of me.
I started up. The air grew colder the higher I
went. My boots made soft crunching

(14:54):
noises against bits of glass andplaster.
Halfway up, I caught what sounded like a footstep above
me, a slow, deliberate shift of weight on old wood.
I froze again. The sound didn't repeat, but
something else did. A low Creek, as if a door at the
top of the stairs was gently swaying open and shut.

(15:15):
I told myself it could have beenthe wind.
There were plenty of holes in the roof.
Air could have been moving through the structure.
That's what I kept repeating in my head as I reached the top.
The hallway was narrow, wallpaper peeling off like
sunburned skin. My light landed on three doors,
all closed except 1, slightly ajar.

(15:35):
That was where the sound had come from.
I could see part of the floor inside and on it.
More writing, It said. You're too late.
I didn't go inside. Something about that message
made my gut twist. I radioed back to dispatch, told
them the place seemed abandoned and there was no sign of any
victim. They said another unit was on

(15:56):
the way. When they got there, we went
through the entire building together.
No one, no fresh footprints but mine, no sign of anyone recently
living there. The upstairs room, the one with
the message, was completely empty except for a broken chair
and an old mattress with springspoking through the writing on
the floor gone. I didn't tell the others about

(16:19):
that part. Maybe I imagined it.
Maybe my flashlight caught some shadows, weirdly.
I don't know. What gets me is that when I
check the call logs later, the emergency call had come from a
disconnected number. The line didn't exist anymore.
According to the system, the last time it was active was
three years ago, registered to ahouse on that same St. the same

(16:42):
address. The owner's death report listed
the causes overdose. I tell myself it's all
coincidence, but sometimes when I think about that house, I
remember how the air felt when Ifirst stepped in, like something
was waiting for me to see it, like I was exactly where I was
supposed to be, even if I didn'twant to be there.
And every time I drive through that part of town now, I swear I

(17:04):
see faint letters on the boardedup houses, catching the
moonlight just enough to read Look Behind You Story 4.
Some nights feel heavier than others.
The air presses down like a wet blanket, thick and slow, and you
can almost hear the silence breathing.
That was one of those nights around 2:00 in the morning, the
kind where the world feels hollow.

(17:26):
I was alone in the ambulance patrolling down one of the back
roads in Garden City, GA. It's not the safest area.
Half the buildings look abandoned and the other half
might as well be. Most nights it's quiet, too
quiet, but you can feel the weight of the place, like it's
holding its breath for somethingto happen.
I had just passed an old gas station, boarded up for years,

(17:49):
when my headlights caught something pale in the middle of
the road. It looked like a body, naked,
lying face down, arms bent weirdly, legs twisted like it
had fallen hard. My stomach dropped.
There's this moment, just one second when you can't think,
can't even breathe. Training kicks in after, but
that first second feels like theworld's gone still.

(18:12):
I pulled the ambulance over and grabbed my flashlight.
The street was empty. No traffic, no sound but the
faint buzz of power lines. The body didn't move.
It was small, maybe female, but I couldn't tell from where I
was. I kept thinking how it got
there. No car around, no drag marks,
nothing. Just a naked body in the middle

(18:33):
of a deserted Rd. at 2. AMI radioed it in, said I'd
found what looked like an unresponsive person on Dean
Forest Rd. Dispatch confirmed backup was on
the way, but it'd take a few minutes, so it was just me
alone. The wind shifted then, and I
swear I heard something. A whisper, soft, like air

(18:55):
escaping through teeth. It came from somewhere near the
ditch. I shined my light that way,
nothing but weeds moving. My heart was beating so hard I
could feel it in my ears. I turned back to the body and
started walking closer. The closer I got, the stranger
it looked. The limbs weren't quite right,
too stiff, too shiny. But adrenaline messes with your

(19:17):
eyes, so I kept going, thinking maybe the road grime or blood
was making it look off. I was maybe 6 feet away when I
noticed the smell, or the lack of one.
There was no coppery scent, no rot, no human smell at all.
Just cold, damp asphalt. I took another step and my boot
nudged the edge of its foot. That's when the whole thing

(19:39):
shifted. Too light, too hollow.
My brain didn't catch up. At first I thought maybe rigor
mortis made it stiff, but when Iaim the flashlight straight down
I saw plastic. The body was a damn blow up
doll, torn, dirty and deflated in the middle, but somehow
positioned perfectly like a person who just collapsed mid

(20:00):
run. I just stood there staring,
trying to let my nerves calm down.
My hands were still shaking so bad I almost dropped the
flashlight. I laughed a little, but it came
out cracked and high pitched. The fear doesn't leave your body
instantly. It hangs around even after your
brain figures it out. When backup arrived, I waved
them off before they even got close.

(20:22):
Told them it was a false alarm, some prank or sick joke.
But here's the part that still gets me.
When I bent down to move the thing off the road, there were
fresh footprints leading up to it.
Bare footprints, small ones likea woman's, but there weren't any
leading away. I checked the shoulders of the
road, the ditches, even under the guardrail.

(20:45):
Nothing. No movement, no sound.
The ground was damp enough to keep prints clear, so if someone
had come back for it or walked away, I'd have seen it.
The guys at the station thought it was hilarious, said maybe
someone tossed it from a truck as a prank, but Garden City
doesn't have traffic at that hour.
No one saw a thing on the cams either.

(21:06):
The feed showed my ambulance stopping, headlights shining on
the road, but before that just an empty stretch of pavement.
I still think about that night sometimes, the way it looked so
human in that light, the way whisper came just before I
reached it. I tried to tell myself it was
the wind or maybe the power lines humming, but deep down I

(21:28):
can't shake the thought that whatever put that thing there
wasn't doing it for a laugh. Sometimes when I pass that
stretch again, I slow down without realizing it.
There's still a faint mark wherethe doll had lane darker than
the rest of the road. It's been months and it hasn't
faded. The other night, driving by, I
could have sworn I saw somethingpale on the shoulder again, just

(21:49):
for a second. I didn't stop this time.
Story 5. They say every building
remembers what it used to be. I never believed that until I
started working nights alone in what used to be a Ford
dealership from the 1920s. It had been converted into our
EMS base years before I joined, but the place never really
stopped feeling like a showroom for ghosts instead of cars.

(22:10):
The old brick walls creaked as if they still carried the weight
of all those years, and the air inside always smelled faintly of
dust and machine oil, no matter how many times they cleaned it.
I was pulling an overnight dispatch shift one Saturday.
Nothing unusual. The quiet hours between 2:00 and
4:00 AM were the worst. Calls would go silent, the radio

(22:31):
static seemed louder than breathing, and I'd find myself
listening for anything that wasn't there.
I remember that night vividly because it was one of those
still heavy nights where even the hum of the fluorescence
seemed tired. At some point around 3, AMI
heard it. A cough.
Not just any sound, it was a very human, throaty cough that

(22:53):
came from the call taking room directly behind me.
I froze for a second, waiting tohear the door, footsteps, or
some sign of someone moving around, but there was nothing.
I called out, thinking maybe oneof the other dispatchers had
stopped by early. Silence.
I checked the security cameras. Every single one.

(23:13):
The feed showed no movement anywhere in the building.
The doors were locked, the bays were empty, and I was alone.
I did a full sweep of the place anyway, walking through each
hallway with my flashlight. I even checked the old garage
area, where the cracked tiles still reflected bits of my
light. Nothing.
Just that hollow feeling of being watched.

(23:35):
For the next few weeks, small things started to happen, subtle
enough to make me second guess myself.
A pen rolling off the desk without cause, a chair that
seemed to have shifted slightly when I came back from the
restroom, or that faint sound ofmovement just out of sight.
I told myself it was just the building settling, or the old
ventilation system playing tricks.

(23:56):
Then came that Sunday morning. I was having breakfast in the
office, coffee in hand, toast ona napkin, when the air in the
room seemed to change. It's hard to describe, like the
atmosphere thickens somehow. The sound of the old clock on
the wall faded into the background.
That's when the door to the calltaking room, the same one from
before, began to move. It didn't slam or creak

(24:20):
suddenly. Instead it closed slowly,
steadily, as if someone were pushing it with deliberate care.
I sat there half frozen, watching it click shut with a
soft thud. There was no draft, the AC
hadn't kicked in, no vibration, no movement.
I could blame it on just that slow silent motion of something

(24:42):
unseen. Deciding it was time to close
the door. After that night, I never sat
with my back to the call taking room again.
Every Creek, every low hum from the walls felt loaded.
Sometimes I'd feel a faint breeze brush past, like someone
walking by just out of sight. Once I even caught a faint
reflection in the glass, just a blur of movement that vanished

(25:04):
the second I turned. I left that job a year later,
but I still think about that place sometimes.
I wonder if whoever or whatever was there just didn't like being
forgotten. Maybe it was one of the
mechanics who never left when the dealership closed, or maybe
it was just the building breathing, remembering the sound
of people who used to fill it. I'll never know.

(25:25):
All I know is that for a long time after that, every time I
heard a door slowly close on itsown, I felt that same cold twist
in my gut, the kind that makes you realize you might not be as
alone as you think. Story 6.
Some fires feel different the moment you step off the truck.
You can smell the wrongness before you even see it, the air
thicker, the smoke darker, like the world itself is holding its

(25:49):
breath. That night was one of those
fires. I remember thinking it felt
almost alive, like the heat wasn't just burning wood and
drywall, but something deeper, something that didn't want to
let go. It was late, past midnight, and
the call came in as a two-story residential fire on the east
side of town. I was the first on a scene,

(26:10):
smoke already pushing out the windows like angry ghosts trying
to escape. The whole structure glowed
orange from the inside, roaring and snapping in the dark.
We set up fast, got water going,and started trying to knock it
down before it spread to the neighboring houses.
Standard procedure. Except nothing about that night
felt standard. The fire didn't behave the way

(26:32):
it should have normally. Flames move with logic.
They follow fuel, climb walls, eat through ceilings.
But this one seemed to twist in on itself, burning hot in some
areas while leaving others untouched for no reason I could
figure out. It was patchy in a way I hadn't
seen before. Still, we got it under control.
After about 40 minutes, though, the house was gutted.

(26:54):
Once the flames were down to embers, I went in with my
flashlight to check for hot spots.
Inside. It was chaos.
Every step crunched over blackened debris and ash, the
smell of burned plastic and wet wood mixed into something thick
enough to taste. The living room was gone, just
charred furniture and collapsed beams.
The kitchen looked like the inside of a furnace.

(27:16):
Even the hallway was warped, thefloor soft under my boots.
I remember shining my light ahead and seeing the remnants of
door frames, trying to make sense of the layout.
Then I found it. At the end of the hallway was a
doorway, burned halfway through,literally split down the middle.
The right side of the frame was black, bubbled and peeling from
heat, but the left looked almostclean.

(27:39):
I thought it was strange, figured maybe there was a draft
or the flames ran out of oxygen there.
I ducked through, expecting to find more of the same ruin.
Instead, it was like stepping into another world.
The room beyond was untouched, completely untouched.
Cushions on the floor, small rugs, a few candles along the
walls, everything perfectly in place.

(28:01):
No soot, no smoke, not even dampfrom the hoses.
I stood there for a full minute,just staring, my brain refusing
to make sense of it. The walls on the outside of that
room were burned halfway through, but the inside was
pristine. The air even smelled different,
clean, faintly like sandalwood, almost peaceful.

(28:23):
A robe hung neatly on the back of the half burned door,
untouched by fire. It didn't make sense.
The other side of that door was blistered black, but this fabric
was flawless. I waved my flashlight over it,
expecting to see at least scorchmarks or damp spots, but there
was nothing. The robe swayed slightly, like
from a draft, but I didn't feel any air moving.

(28:45):
I called it in over the radio. Ask the guys to come take a
look. My voice must have sounded weird
because dispatch asked me to repeat myself.
When the rest of the crew came in, none of them wanted to step
inside. You could see it on their faces.
They were fine standing at the threshold, but the room made
them uneasy. One of the guys muttered that it
felt like walking into a church,only heavier somehow, like the

(29:10):
air itself was watching you. We took photos for the report,
and when the fire Marshall arrived, he looked just as
confused as the rest of us. He kept checking the ceiling in
corners, muttering that it was impossible.
The heat patterns on the walls made no sense.
Everything should have gone up together, he said.
Maybe there was some kind of fireproof coating or moisture

(29:31):
barrier, but that didn't explainthe candles.
None of them had melted, not even a drip of wax.
Eventually everyone cleared out except me.
I stayed behind to double check for flare ups, mostly because I
didn't want to leave without understanding.
I walked around the room again, shining my light at every inch.
That's when I noticed something I hadn't before.

(29:52):
The cushions on the floor were arranged in a perfect circle,
and in the center was a small bronze Buddha statue.
It's surface was cool to the touch, no soot on it at all.
The base underneath was scorchedthough, like the fire had burned
right up to the edge and stoppedthere.
For a second I thought I saw something, a shimmer like heat
waves, but the air wasn't hot anymore.

(30:14):
It flickered just above the statue, faint and quick.
Gone. Before I could focus on it, my
stomach dropped. I told myself it was leftover
smoke or exhaustion. Still, I backed out of the room,
slow and careful, not taking my eyes off that doorway.
By the time the investigation wrapped up, nobody had an
explanation. The official report listed it as

(30:37):
localized fire irregularity, which is firefighter speak, for
we have no damn clue. The homeowner had been out of
town during the fire. When we reached him later, he
said the room had been his wife's meditation space.
She passed away three years earlier.
He said he hadn't gone in since,not once claimed she told him it
was a place for peace and he wanted to leave it that way.

(31:00):
For a while. I tried to rationalize it.
Maybe the fire spread weirdly, maybe there was a structural
barrier that stopped it. But that didn't explain the air,
how it felt different in there. Calm, still, almost sacred.
I've been in burned out churches, mosques, even temples
before and none of them felt like that.

(31:22):
This was something else. A few nights after I had a dream
about the room. In it I was standing just
outside the doorway, same as before, but this time the robe
was gone and someone was sittingcross legged on the cushion.
I couldn't see a face, only a faint glow where the figures
hands rested. The sound was the strangest
part. It was quiet.

(31:44):
But underneath that silence, there was a low hum, like a deep
vibration that I could feel in my chest.
When I woke up, my heart was pounding, like I just run up a
flight of stairs. I don't tell that part to people
on the job. You start talking about dreams
or energy and they look at you sideways.
But every firefighter I know hasat least one story like this.

(32:06):
One moment where the logic we depend on just stops working.
You tell yourself it's a coincidence, you move on, but it
sticks with you. Sometimes I drive past the lot
where that house used to be. The owners tore it down, saying
they couldn't stand the smell ofsmoke lingering, the foundation
still there, cracked and overgrown with weeds.

(32:28):
Nothing's been built on it since.
Every time I look, I get that same feeling in my gut, like the
air is holding its breath again,waiting for something I can't
see. I never went back inside that
room, and I never want to, but part of me can't shake the
thought that whatever was in there didn't survive the fire.
It stopped it, and for reasons I'll never understand, it, let

(32:51):
the rest burn. Story 7 nights in Dispatch have
a strange rhythm. The room hums like a sleeping
machine, steady and slow until something unexpected wakes it.
Most nights are just background noise, static, distant sirens,
and the occasional drunk caller who thinks 911 can solve
loneliness. I'd grown used to that monotony.

(33:14):
It's the kind of quiet that settles into your bones, heavy
and still. But that night broke it.
It started like any other shift.Coffee gone cold on the console,
a stack of call logs waiting forreview, and that faint flicker
from the fluorescent light over my desk that always seemed one
storm away from dying. I was halfway through a report

(33:35):
when the next call came in. The voice on the other end was a
woman's calm, a little shaky butnot panicked.
She said she thought she was having a heart attack.
The first thing we do is confirmthe address.
And she gave it clearly, like she'd rehearsed it.
I pulled up her location, an older part of town, small homes,

(33:55):
wide yards. Nothing unusual as I went
through the usual questions. Pain level, symptoms, history.
Something about her tone stood out.
She didn't sound like someone indistress.
There was this strange steadiness in her voice, as
though she was holding a conversation she'd already
accepted the end of. I tried not to read too much

(34:17):
into it. People handle emergencies
differently. When I asked if she could stay
on the line until help arrived, she said she felt comfortable
hanging up. That's not unusual either.
Some people prefer it that way. So I ended the call, logged the
information, and dispatched EMS immediately.
From the time she called to the time the ambulance reached her

(34:39):
address, only 17 minutes had passed.
I'd handled hundreds of similar calls before, but this one
stayed on my mind. There was something faintly off
about how ordinary it had felt. 2 minutes after the paramedics
arrived, my radio crackled with urgency.
One of the medics requested a deputy.
The way they phrased it made my stomach tighten.

(35:01):
They asked where the reporting party was, saying the patient
was deceased and appeared to have been for quite some time.
That didn't make sense. I had just spoken with her.
She had been coherent, responsive, alive.
I double checked the address. Same name, same house.
There was no mistake. I contacted the deputy on route

(35:21):
and told him what the medics said, that the patient was
deceased, but I talked to her less than 20 minutes ago.
He paused for a long second, then said he'd update me when he
got there. Those next few minutes felt
longer than the entire shift. The call room seemed to shrink
around me. I stared at the time stamp on
the log, half expecting it to change, as though maybe I'd

(35:42):
misread it. I even replayed the recorded
audio, trying to hear something,anything that might explain it.
The woman's voice came through, clear and steady.
She described her symptoms, gaveher address, thanked me before
hanging up. Nothing strange in the
recording. No distortion, no background

(36:03):
noise that could have hinted at another person being there.
When the deputy arrived, he confirmed it.
The woman was gone. Not recently gone either.
Based on lividity and body temperature, he estimated she
had been dead for hours, maybe even since before my shift
began. That's when everything inside me
went cold. The house was locked from the

(36:24):
inside. No signs of entry or
disturbance. The medics said she was found in
her bed as though she had simplygone to sleep and never woken
up. Her phone was on the night
stand, screen dark. No recent outgoing calls in her
history. I asked the deputy to double
check that detail because I had the call logged right there.
Time stamped, audio recorded andtagged with her number.

(36:47):
Her phone never dialed out. There's no easy way to explain
that the call existed in our system.
It had come through the dispatchline, registered as active, and
disconnected normally. I even checked the tower logs
the next day out of curiosity. It pinged from her registered
number, from her registered address, exactly as any live
call would. But her phone had not moved.

(37:09):
Her SIM card hadn't transmitted.It was as if the signal had come
from nowhere, and yet everywhereat once.
For the rest of that night, every time the phone rang, I
flinched. The sound had never bothered me
before, but now it carried weight.
The kind of weight that comes from realizing that the system
you rely on, the technology you trust, can't account for

(37:32):
everything. I went over the possibilities.
Maybe someone had found her, called in, pretending to be her,
then panicked and left. But there were no signs of
anyone else in the house. The doors were bolted, windows
locked, no footprints in the dewoutside, no evidence of
visitors. The skeptic in me wanted to find
a reason. Maybe a glitch, maybe a relay

(37:54):
issue that cloned a number, maybe some bizarre overlap in
timing. Technology does strange things
sometimes, but deep down, I knewwhat I'd heard.
Sometimes, when the lines go quiet, I replay that recording
in my head. I can still hear her thanking me
before she hung up, her tone soft, almost grateful.
There's a theory that the brain releases one final burst of

(38:17):
energy at the moment of death, aspark that might linger for a
moment before fading. Maybe in some way we don't
understand. That spark found a path through
the phone line. Maybe her last thought was to
reach out for help and somehow it reached me.
Or maybe, just maybe, she didn'twant to be found alone.
I've taken thousands of calls since then, but every time the

(38:40):
phone rings after midnight, I hesitate just a second before
answering, because I know, no matter how rational I try to be,
that sometimes the dead have things they still need to say.
Story 8. Some towns are so quiet at night
that the silence itself starts to feel alive.
Amherst, Colorado is one of those places.

(39:00):
It's barely a dot on the map, more fields than houses, more
dust than pavement. When you work nights as an EMT,
like I did back then, you start to memorize the rhythm of that
silence. Every distant bark, every Creek
from an old signpost swinging inthe wind.
It all becomes part of the soundtrack you learn to ignore.
But that night, the silence broken away.

(39:21):
I'll never forget. It was around 3:00 in the
morning. My shift had been slow and I
decided to drive through Amherstbefore heading home.
There's not much to see there. A church that looks more like a
farmhouse, a few houses that barely have their lights on, and
a small park sitting under a half dead street light.
The kind of place kids grow up wishing they could leave.

(39:43):
I remember thinking how the townalmost looked frozen in time, as
if the world had moved on and forgotten it.
The air that night felt heavier than usual, the kind that clings
to your clothes even though the temperature's dropping.
I rolled down my window for someair as I drove past the park.
At first I thought I saw a movement out of the corner of my
eye, something faint, like someone shifting in the dark.

(40:06):
I slowed down, thinking maybe one of the local teens had snuck
out. It wasn't unusual.
Sometimes they'd hang out at thepark, smoking or drinking where
no one would catch them. But the shape I saw wasn't
moving, like someone trying to hide.
It was small, too small and still.
When I stopped the truck and leaned forward, my headlights

(40:27):
caught the outline of the swing set.
One of the swings was moving slightly, just swaying back and
forth like someone had stepped off a second ago.
The air was dead calm, no wind at all.
That movement shouldn't have been there.
I remember sitting there watching it, feeling that slow
crawl of unease that starts in your stomach and works its way

(40:47):
up. I grabbed my flashlight and
stepped out. The gravel crunched loud under
my boots, way louder than it should have in all that quiet.
My light cut through the dark, shaking a little because my
hands were colder than I realized.
Then the beam landed on something that made me stop.
There was a girl sitting on one of the swings.
She had her back to me, head tilted down, long hair covering

(41:10):
her face. The first thing that struck me
was how still she was. Kids don't sit that way.
Completely motionless, hands hanging at their sides.
Her clothes looked old fashioned, like something from a
few decades back. A pale dress, maybe white once,
but Gray from dust. For a second I thought she might
be hurt, maybe sleepwalking or worse.

(41:32):
I called out to her, my voice cracking.
The silence. No response, not even a twitch.
I said it again, louder, tellingher I was with the local
emergency services, trying to sound calm.
She still didn't move. That's when I noticed the swing
next to her was swaying slightlyagain, though there was no wind
and nothing that could have caused it.

(41:54):
My stomach dropped. I told myself there had to be a
reason. A breeze I couldn't feel, maybe
the vibration of my truck enginestill humming behind me.
I wanted to believe that. I took a few steps closer,
shining my flashlight higher, and the beam washed over her
hair, her shoulders, and then nothing.
The swing was empty. It wasn't like she ran off.

(42:17):
I didn't even blink long enough for that to happen.
One second she was there, the next she wasn't.
I spun the light across the park, sweeping over the slides,
the benches, the tree line, nothing.
Not even footprints in the sand.Under the swing.
The air felt different now, thicker, heavier, and the kind
of quiet that presses on your ears until you hear your own

(42:40):
pulse. Every instinct in me scream to
get back in the truck, but I couldn't move.
Part of me still clung to reason.
Maybe I'd imagined it. Maybe it was a trick of the
light fatigue playing games withme after too many long shifts.
I forced myself to walk over to the swing set.
The metal chains rattled softly,as if someone had just brushed

(43:00):
past them. The seat she'd been sitting on
was gently rocking, but when I put my hand on it, it was
freezing cold, like it had been sitting outside in the dead of
winter. The air around it felt even
colder. I could see my breath when I
exhaled, but nowhere else in thepark did the air look that way.
That's when I realized I was standing right in front of the

(43:21):
same swing I played on as a kid.Amherst was my hometown before I
left for EMT training. That park was where we used to
hang out after school, back whenit was still painted bright
yellow and blue instead of the dull, rusted mess it had become.
A memory flashed in my head, someone mentioning a girl who'd
gone missing years ago, before Imoved away.
They said she'd been last seen at the same park sometime after

(43:44):
dark. I never paid much attention
then, but the thought crawled into my mind now and wouldn't
leave. I backed away, trying not to
turn my back completely because something deep down told me not
to. The park suddenly felt wrong,
like the air itself was watching.
I walked fast to my truck, everystep feeling heavier.

(44:05):
When I finally got in and slammed the door, the headlights
flickered for half a second before studying again.
The swing was still moving. I didn't wait to see if it
stopped. I didn't drive straight home
either. I parked by the old grain tower
on the edge of town, trying to steady my breathing, convincing
myself it was just exhaustion. My pulse wouldn't slow.

(44:25):
I look back toward the park, a faint glow from the single light
flickering there. For a second, just one second, I
thought I saw that same figure standing near the slide.
Her head turned toward me. I blinked, and she was gone.
The next morning, I went back when the sun was up.
It all looks so normal in daylight that I almost laughed
at myself. The swing sat still, the sand

(44:49):
undisturbed, but when I look closer there were faint marks in
the dirt. Two parallel lines, thin and
uneven, like the kind made by dragging the tips of your shoes.
They led halfway toward the swings and just stopped.
I didn't tell anyone about it for a while, not because I
thought they'd laugh, but because I couldn't explain what
I saw without sounding like I'd lost it.

(45:11):
There's a rational part of me that still tries to find an
answer. Maybe I was tired.
Maybe the light distorted something.
Maybe there was actually a girl who ran off quietly before I
realized it. But even now, when I think about
that night, I can still picture how still she sat, how cold that
swing felt, and how something deep inside me knew that no

(45:32):
living person could vanish that quickly.
I've worked plenty of night shifts since then, and I've seen
my share of strange things, accidents that didn't make
sense, houses where people sworethe dead still walked.
But nothing ever shook me like that park in Amherst.
Sometimes when I'm driving late through small towns and see a
park or a swing set under a flickering light, I find myself

(45:54):
slowing down, half expecting to see her there again.
And I always hope I don't. Story 9.
Some nights feel heavier than others, like the air itself is
holding its breath. That's the kind of night it was
when the call came in. The dispatch tone was flat and
routine disturbance possible. Prowler.

(46:14):
I didn't think much of it. Most of those calls turn out to
be raccoons, wind, or a half drunk neighbor trying the wrong
door. But something about the voice of
the woman on the radio, the tremor under her words, made me
note it down differently. The GPS took me about 12 miles
off the main road, down a narrowgravel path swallowed by trees

(46:35):
on both sides. I could barely see the sky
through the canopy. The further I drove, the quieter
it got. No frogs, no crickets, nothing.
Even the hum of the cruiser sounded muted.
It was close to 1:00 in the morning, and everything in that
stretch of woods looked like it hadn't seen another soul in
years. When I finally reached the
house, I thought for a second myheadlights were catching fog,

(46:58):
but it was just dust from the road hanging in the air.
The place was small, more like an old farmhouse than a regular
home, with 1 yellow porch light flickering over the front steps,
a garage set to the right, and behind the house I could make
out the faint outline of a largeshed through the trees.
The windows were dark except fora single glow from inside.

(47:19):
The woman met me at the door. She was in her 70s, small and
pale, wrapped in a robe like shehadn't been planning to sleep
anyway. Her hands trembled when she
gripped the frame. She said someone had been
banging on her doors, both the front and the garage, for the
past half hour. Every time she turned on the
light, the noise stopped. Every time she turned it off, it

(47:40):
started again. I didn't see any footprints in
the gravel or the dirt around the house, which wasn't
surprising given the ground was hard and dry.
Still, something about how isolated that property was made
my skin itch. You get used to being alone in
this job, but out there alone had a different meaning.
It felt like the woods were listening.

(48:00):
I checked the garage first. Nothing out of the ordinary, no
signs of forced entry. Then she told me the sound had
moved toward the back shed. I asked her to stay inside while
I went to check it out. She looked relieved but also
hesitant, like she wanted to saysomething and thought better of
it. The path to the shed was narrow,

(48:21):
the kind of overgrown trail you'd miss if you weren't
looking for it. My flashlight beam caught small
shapes between the trees, old wind chimes, empty birdhouses,
and what looked like a line of rusted garden tools nailed to a
fence. The shed came into view about 50
yards back. It was larger than I expected,
maybe the size of a small garagewith a corrugated metal roof and

(48:43):
a single padlocked door that hung slightly crooked.
I remember how loud my footstepssounded on the dead leaves.
Every crunch seemed to echo too far.
When I reached the shed, I noticed something that stopped
me cold for a second. The padlock was hanging open.
The latch had been twisted like it had been forced, but not
broken, just undone. I radioed in that I was checking

(49:07):
the outbuilding, then pulled thedoor open.
The hinges grown like they hadn't moved in years.
I shine my flashlight inside andfroze.
Every inch of that shed was filled with dolls.
They weren't the kind you buy from a store.
These were homemade rough cloth,plastic faces glued on yarn

(49:27):
hair. Some had mismatched button eyes,
others had faces painted on, andmost were about two or three
feet tall. They set up right on old crates,
stacked shelves, even the floor,all of them facing the door.
For a second my brain just refused to process it.
I thought maybe it was some kindof hobby, a collection,

(49:47):
something explainable. But then I noticed they weren't
covered in dust like everything else they looked tended to,
arranged as if someone had been moving them around recently.
I backed out a little, shining my light around the ground
outside to see if there were anysigns of someone else being
there. The soil was disturbed in
places, but not enough to tell what by when I turned back

(50:11):
toward the shed. I swear, and I still can't
explain this, a few of the dollsseem to have shifted.
It could have been my imagination, or the angle of the
light, I told myself that hard, but I could have sworn the ones
closest to the door were leaninga little closer than before.
Then came the sound. A dull thud from inside the

(50:31):
shed, like something falling over.
I moved the flashlight quickly, scanning every corner.
Nothing was moving, but the sound had been real.
It wasn't just the building settling.
It was deliberate, solid. I waited for a minute, maybe 2,
before stepping back inside to be sure nothing living was in
there. Every instinct screamed at me to

(50:53):
stay out, But duty wins over instinct when you wear the
badge. The air inside was heavy with
the smell of old fabric and something faintly metallic.
I scanned every shelf again, checking behind boxes, under
tables. No one there.
But when I turned toward the door to leave, I felt that
unmistakable sense of being watched.

(51:13):
The light caught a row of dolls near the exit, and one of them
had its head turned just slightly off from the rest.
Its face was blank, painted white with no features except
for a pair of black dots where Ishould have been.
I hadn't noticed it before. The shed door slammed shut
behind me so hard the flashlightalmost dropped from my hand.

(51:33):
I yanked it open again, and it didn't stick or catch.
It just swung wide like nothing had happened.
The wind wasn't blowing, not even a breeze.
I didn't bother looking back at the dolls after that.
I just radioed that the area wasclear and told the woman I
didn't see anyone. She asked if I checked the shed,
and I said yes, nothing unusual.It felt wrong to tell her what

(51:56):
was really in there, not becauseit was against protocol, but
because I couldn't even explain it to myself.
Driving back to the station, I kept glancing in the rearview
mirror, half expecting to see something sitting in the back
seat. I know that sounds stupid, but
it didn't feel like I'd left that place completely.
I went back out there two days later during daylight to follow

(52:18):
up. The lady wasn't home and the
property looked quiet. I walked down to the shed again,
figuring maybe I'd imagine half of it in the dark.
The door was closed this time and locked tight when I peered
through a small crack in the boards.
The shed was empty. Every single doll was gone.
There weren't any tire marks or footprints, no sign anyone had

(52:40):
moved them out. Just a bare floor, dust already
settling where the dolls had been.
I filed my report as a false alarm, no evidence of a crime.
But every so often I think aboutthat blank faced doll near the
door, the one that seemed to move.
And sometimes, on slow nights, when the radio is quiet and the
trees outside sway just a littletoo much, I catch myself

(53:03):
glancing toward the edge of the parking lot, half expecting to
see something sitting there, waiting just out of the light.
Story 10 Some places breathe differently when no one's left
inside. You can almost feel the air
hesitate, like it's waiting for something to stir again.
That's how it felt the night I was sent to inspect the old

(53:24):
South wing of the state mental hospital.
I'd worked as a fire safety officer for 20 years by then,
seen enough abandoned buildings to know that silence can play
tricks on your mind. Still, that wing had a
reputation. Everyone called it The Block,
the section where they used to keep the worst of the criminally
insane. Most of it had been shuttered
since the 70s, sealed up behind rusted doors and warning signs

(53:47):
that nobody bothered to clean anymore.
The job was supposed to be straightforward.
OSHA was due for inspection the next morning, and my task was to
make sure all the old alarm boxes were accessible.
I went alone, not because I had to, but because nobody else
wanted to go. I told myself it was
superstition, that the others were just spooked by stories,

(54:10):
but deep down I think I wanted to see for myself why that wing
was still avoided like the plague.
It was around 8:00 PM when I reached the South Corridor.
The main power in that section was cut off decades ago, so I
only had a heavy flashlight in aring of keys.
The second I opened the steel door separating the main
building from the old block, theair changed.

(54:32):
Stale, thick. The smell of dust and mildew hit
like a wall. My flashlight beam cut through
the dark in narrow slices, and everywhere I pointed it, flakes
of old paint drifted down like snow.
The first few alarm boxes were easy enough to find, mounted
along the walls near the stairwell.
I checked each one, logged it, then move deeper down the hall.

(54:56):
The silence was suffocating. My boots echoed louder than they
should have, and each time I stopped walking the sound kept
going a split second too long, like the place didn't want to
stop repeating me. I brushed it off as bad
acoustics. The wing was built in a
horseshoe shape with lots of corners, and sound had a way of
bouncing around in there. By the time I reached the old

(55:17):
solitary ward, the temperature dropped.
Not just cooler, cold. My breath started fogging.
That made no sense. It was late spring and even with
no power, the building never gotthis cold.
I shined the light at the ceiling, half expecting to see a
broken vent or open window. Nothing, just cracked tiles and

(55:38):
shadows. I kept moving, more annoyed than
scared, but the deeper I went, the more I started noticing
little things. Faint scuff marks on the floor
that looked fresh. A cell door, slightly ajar.
Even though I was certain it hadbeen locked for decades, I
convinced myself maintenance crews must have checked it
recently. I had to, because the

(56:00):
alternative, that someone else was down there, wasn't something
I wanted to consider. When I reached the far end of
the hallway, my radio hissed softly, picking up faint
interference. Static, then silence, then
static again. I adjusted the dial, but no one
was responding. The building's thick walls often

(56:20):
killed reception, so I figured I'd log the rest manually and
check in later. But then, from behind one of the
closed doors, I heard it. A shuffle.
Just one, Like a single step on the concrete floor.
I froze, pointing my flashlight at the door.
It was one of the older isolation rooms, sealed with a
sliding hatch. I called out, asking if anyone

(56:43):
was in there, though my voice came out thin and weak.
No answer. I waited, listened.
After a few seconds there was another sound, this time softer,
like someone dragging a hand along the wall.
Every instinct told me to leave,but the rational part of me, the
train part, said it could be an animal, maybe a raccoon, had

(57:05):
found its way inside. I took a few careful steps
forward and pushed the Hatch open just enough to shine the
light through. The room was empty, completely
bare. No cot, no sink, no vent.
Just an empty concrete box with C12 stenciled above the door.
I closed the Hatch and started walking back toward the
stairwell. That's when I heard voices.

(57:28):
Not clear words, but murmurs, low and overlapping, like a
dozen people whispering through walls.
The kind of sound you can't pinpoint.
My stomach nodded. There was no electricity, no
speakers, and no reason for there to be anyone else here.
I stood there for what felt likea full minute, flashlight

(57:48):
shaking slightly in my hand until the noise faded out as
quickly as it began. I told myself I was tired, that
maybe my brain was catching the echoes of my own footsteps.
But as I turned the corner toward the last fire alarm box,
I caught movement at the far endof the hall.
It looked like a shadow, but notcast by my light.

(58:08):
It was too solid, human shaped, but it didn't move right.
The upper half, head, shoulders,torso was clear enough to make
out, but below the waist it justfaded into nothing.
No legs. At first I thought maybe the
beam was playing tricks on dust or the reflection from my light,
but the shadow turned slowly until it was facing me.

(58:31):
And that's when I saw them. Two hollow circles where the
eyes should be. Not glowing, not bright, just
emptiness. I froze.
My mouth went dry. I wanted to say something,
anything, but the air around me felt heavier with every breath.
My hand was slick on the flashlight, and I remember

(58:51):
thinking, absurdly, that if I dropped it, I'd never find it
again in the dark. The figure didn't move toward
me. It just stayed there, watching.
Or maybe not watching. Maybe it couldn't.
Then the light flickered, just once, and when it steadied
again, the thing was gone. The hallway was empty.
The air, however, was not. It felt charged, like static

(59:15):
before a storm. I backed up slowly, never taking
my eyes off the space where it had stood.
When I finally reached the door that led to the main building, I
didn't even bother locking it. I slammed it shut, ran the
length of the quarter, and didn't stop until I was outside
in the open night air. For a long time, I stood by my
truck, trying to steady my breathing.

(59:36):
Every part of me wanted to rationalize what I'd seen.
Maybe it was fatigue, the way the beam caught the dust, or
some kind of visual hallucination caused by low
oxygen levels. But even now, years later, I can
still remember that feeling, like something down there was
waiting for me to notice it. The next day, I went back with
two other guys for the final check.

(59:58):
Opened every door, inspected every room.
Nothing was out of place. The floor was covered in
undisturbed dust. No footprints, no signs anyone
or anything had been there. They laughed it off when I
mentioned the cold spots in the voices, said old buildings make
sounds, Said I probably scared myself.

(01:00:18):
Maybe they're right. Maybe the mine fills in blanks
when it's surrounded by too muchdark and too much silence.
But there's one thing that stilldoesn't sit right.
When we got to the far end of the hall, the same place I'd
seen that shape, I noticed something faint on the wall.
Two small round impressions, side by side, almost perfectly
level, as if someone had pressedthe ends of their thumbs into

(01:00:41):
the concrete. They were just deep enough to
catch a shadow when my light hitthem.
Two holes, right where eyes would have been.
I never went back after that.
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