True Encounters with Ghosts and Supernatural Beings Stories

True Encounters with Ghosts and Supernatural Beings Stories

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Story #1 Growing up, I always thought old houses had their
quirks. Ours was pretty typical.
Creaky floors, drafty windows, doors that never quite shut
right. The street was quiet enough, and
the only ghost stories around were the kind old ladies told on
Halloween. So for most of my life I just
shrugged at the weird little noises at night.

(00:21):
But there's one thing that happened when I was 16, and no
matter how many times I try to explain it away, I can't.
I should start by saying my sister and I are close.
Not close, close. We fight like any siblings, but
you couldn't mistake her laugh for anyone else's.
Seriously, our friends roast herfor it.
This wild hiccuping burst that always got other people going

(00:44):
Loud, weird, one-of-a-kind. She's a year older, and I looked
up to her more than I'd admit. My room was right next to hers,
just a thin wall separating us. For most of high school, I'd
hear her on the phone late at night or up fussing with
something, but that was normal. I got used to the muffled Sound
of Music, hair dryers, her stomping around routine stuff.

(01:09):
Anyway, this happened on a Sunday night, technically early
Monday morning. I'd stayed up way too late,
gaming headphones glued to my ears.
I finally forced myself to kill the console and crash sometime
after two AMI remember checking my phone and thinking I was an
idiot for not trying to get someactual sleep for school.
Sometime later I got jolted awake by laughter.

(01:31):
It took me a moment to place, but there was no mistaking it.
It was her. My sister was laughing hard,
loud enough that it echoed through the wall and rattled my
window frame. At first I was just confused and
annoyed honestly, because what the hell was she doing up at
3:00 AM? Then I heard footfalls back and
forth like she was pacing the length of her room.

(01:53):
The sounds didn't match the layout of our rooms.
The footsteps weren't pausing, they just went back and forth in
a weird steady rhythm. I remember thinking maybe she
was on the phone or watching something funny, but there was
only her voice. No other chatter, no show or
music, just that distinct laugh over and over.

(02:14):
After a couple minutes, it got off like she laughed just a bit
too long, the sound twisting higher, the pacing getting
faster, and the laughter almost bubbling over into something
that didn't sound right. For a second, I actually got
scared, just a weird cold in my stomach, something instinctual,

(02:34):
and sat up in bed, debating whether to just bang on the wall
and tell her to shut up or go check she was all right.
But something held me back. The pacing hadn't stopped.
If anything it sounded like she was walking faster, almost
slapping her feet, her laugh rising and falling, sometimes
low, like a chuckle, sometimes sharp enough it made my scalp

(02:56):
prickle. It was rhythmic, almost like she
was circling the whole room, which didn't make sense with how
her space was laid out. I pictured her stumbling around
in the dark, phone stuck to her face, but I couldn't hear
another voice, just hers. Eventually, the laughter faded,
replaced by long stretches of silence, and then the sound of

(03:16):
her moving seemed to stop at onecorner closest to my bed, just
on the other side of the wall. I could hear her breathing, a
quiet, strained inhale, like shewas holding back another fit for
some reason. I pulled the covers up to my
chin and lay there frozen, wide awake, feeling like if I spoke

(03:37):
up something would answer that wasn't her.
It was the strangest sense of being watched I've ever felt,
even with the wall between us. After maybe 10 minutes I must
have dozed off again. When I woke up in the morning,
the house was dead silent. I got up for school and found
her door open. Her bed was made, room clean,
but she wasn't home. Not unusual for her.

(04:00):
She often stayed at a friend's when she came back the next
afternoon. I honestly tried to blow it all
off as me being overtired, but Icouldn't help myself.
I asked. So what were you doing last
night? You were up laughing like a
maniac at 3:00 AM. Sounded like you were running
laps in your room. She blinked and looked genuinely
confused. What are you talking about?

(04:22):
I wasn't even home. I crashed at Zoe's last night.
I texted mom, she'll tell you. I just froze.
I couldn't even talk for a second and she must have noticed
I was freaked out because she joked.
Guess you had your own party, huh?
Maybe you sleepwalk and laugh atyourself now.
I tried to play it off, but whenI pressed and explained, her

(04:43):
face lost all its color. To this day, she tells people my
brother swears he heard me laughing, pacing right next door
at 3:00 AM. It was my exact laugh, but I was
gone. I never figured it out.
My parents laughed it off. My friends called it a night
terror. Or that maybe I'd left a video
on, but no device was on and I was wide awake at points,

(05:07):
hearing every footstep. It's been years.
Sometimes I wake up at night andconvince myself it was a dream,
just a trick of exhaustion. But every once in a while, if
I'm up too late, I swear I hear laughter in empty rooms or
footsteps that stop outside my door and nothing on the other
side. My sister's laugh always makes

(05:28):
me shiver now, but not because it's funny.
Maybe it was stress. Maybe my brain glitched out but
I know what I heard. Someone with her exact laugh
pacing my house in the dark. And if it wasn't her, well I
hope I never find out who or what.
Thought it could wear her voice and walk those halls.

(05:49):
Story #2 Farm. Life's always been a little
lonesome but I used to think thesilence out here was peaceful.
We live 3 dirt roads out from the highway, surrounded by
cornfields and wind breaks, the next neighbor's yard light
barely a pinprick on the horizon.
Our place is old faded red siding, sagging porch windows

(06:10):
that rattle in every wind. Nothing much changes except the
seasons and the size of the weeds.
I never believed in ghosts. Not really sure.
There's family stories about things in the fields, lost
children, balls of light hummingthrough the barley at night.
Most of it is just small town talk blamed on weather or too

(06:30):
much booze. But last winter, right after the
big freeze in January, somethinghappened that made me question.
Even now, I'm not sure if my nerves got frayed from the dark
or if something's really wrong out here.
It started simple enough. I'd be in my room late at night,
reading or scrolling my phone, and I'd notice a humming sound.

(06:50):
At first I thought it was the old radiator, or maybe the wind
settling between the boards, Butthe more I listened, the more it
sounded like singing strange, wordless lullabies, faint but
clear, sometimes deep, like a man's voice, sometimes high,
lilting, almost like a child or a woman.
If I got up and went into the hall, or even stuck my head out

(07:12):
the window, the noise faded out or vanished.
Night seemed to drag longer the colder it got.
Most days, my chores ended by dusk, but sleep got harder.
I'd wake up somewhere between two or three sheets, twisted,
heart pounding, sure something was standing right by the
window. There would be shadows churning
against the glass, like shapes moving through mist, long and

(07:35):
thin. Once I thought I saw fingers at
the pane, just five black pointsoutlined in moonlight.
When I flicked on the lamp, there was never anything, but
the feeling of being watched stayed tangled around me like a
chill. A few nights, the sounds inside
changed. Instead of singing, it was
whispering, softer, closer, a jumble of shushing and faint

(07:57):
syllables, almost words, but notquite right.
The floorboards would creak as if someone was pacing in the
room above mine. But our house doesn't have an
upstairs. Sometimes I'd hear footsteps
crunching through the yard, slowand steady, circling the
foundation, the snow squealing under their weight.
Every time I dashed to the window.

(08:17):
The porch and yard would be empty except for drifts and
fence posts hunched under frost.One night I found the back door
wide open. It was far below 0, and the door
had been swollen shut before I went to bed.
There weren't any tracks on the porch, not even animal prints,
just a sharp, bitter smell in the air, like burnt hair or
something sickly sweet. The lock was still in place, but

(08:40):
the wood around it looks splintered, soft as punk.
I blamed it on the wind at first, or maybe the wood warping
with the cold, but the uneasy feeling in my gut wouldn't go
away. Another time, I nearly left the
house in my sleep. I woke up tugging on my boots,
half out of bed with a thick blanket thrown over my
shoulders. I'd felt certain I was supposed

(09:02):
to go outside, like someone calling my name, not loudly but
firmly urging me by the window. My brother later told me he woke
up to the sound of my voice coming from the far end of the
yard, calling to him even thoughI was still inside.
He said he heard another voice too, answering back, though the
words didn't sound right, like someone practicing my voice but

(09:23):
not quite getting it. The animals acted strange to The
cattle were restless at night, bunching up by the barn wall
closest to the house, hooves clattering nervously even on
cold mornings. The barn cat, never especially
lovey, started refusing to come inside after sunset, just
sitting in the hayloft and growling low in her throat.

(09:44):
Once she bolted up a tree behindthe house and refused to come
down until morning. I tried to explain it all away.
The wind out here can do weird things, especially with old
insulation and hollow walls. Cold makes wood move and houses
settle. Maybe I was sleepwalking,
stressed over the long winter inthe isolation.

(10:05):
Maybe my brother heard foxes or coyotes yipping, and imagine the
rest. Sometimes I'd read folks on the
Internet talking about infrasound or the effects of
carbon monoxide. But our detectors were all
working fine and the strange things always stop by sunrise.
After a while, I started throwing salt on the window
sills and carrying a pocket knife at night.

(10:27):
My grandma used to say you can'tbe too careful about letting
strangers walk in with the wind.Now, whenever I wake up at
night, I listen for those whispers.
Some nights it's just the bluster of the fields and the
thud of old pipes. Other times I catch a low hum
threading through the silence orthe cold breath of something
close by the window. I don't know what's worse,

(10:50):
believing something's out there or explaining it all away as
nothing but the dark. Either way, there are some
nights I sleep with the lamp on,just in case.
Story #3 I'm not a superstitiousperson, I promise.
If anything, I'm the guy who loves debunking creepy stories
around a campfire. But there's this one weekend

(11:10):
that gets under my skin every time I think about it.
Even now, years later, If someone cracks a joke about
clowns or old barns, I get this weird crawl in my shoulders.
It was early fall. Cool in that perfect way for
camping. A bunch of us were hauled out to
my friend Tyler's family property.
Acres of overgrown grass, some woods, and a bunch of weird

(11:32):
ramshackle farm buildings. The centerpiece was this huge
dingy shop that their great uncle used for something
hoarding maybe. The place had a dirt floor,
piles of rusty tools, furniture stacked to the rafters, and the
creepiest bit was the loft, which literally had three or 4
old clown paintings stashed up there.

(11:53):
Not posters, paintings, chunky framed, leering down with ivory
teeth and glossy eyes. Tyler swore he didn't know where
they came from. We set up our tents by the fire
pit, drank too much beer and swapped dumb stories well past
midnight. Eventually everyone else
crashed, but I was wired. Or maybe I just didn't want to

(12:15):
be the first in the tent with all the clown art watching from
the shadows. So I nursed my last beer, half
staring at the coals. At some point, I realized I had
to pee. The shop was maybe 30 feet away,
hulking one of those buildings that's pitch black inside even
when there's a light on. I wandered over to the far side,
out of sight of the tents, and stopped about 5 feet from the

(12:38):
grimy window. There was this harsh, flickering
fluorescent light buzzing from the inside, just that ugly
sickly color that makes every shadow look thicker.
As I was finishing up, somethingcaught my eye through the glass.
A tiny shape floating inside theshop.
At first I thought it was a mothfluttering near the fixture, but

(12:59):
it moved differently. It was white or pale, sort of a
scrap of paper maybe. What got me was how it moved.
Looping, slow, perfect figure eights, almost lazily, like
someone dangling it on a string just out of sight.
Not the kind of erratic flappingyou see with bugs.
I stood there with my hand freezing, zipper half done, just

(13:22):
watching this thing make its loops for 20, maybe 30 seconds.
The whole time I felt this weirdsense that it was aware of me,
maybe even trying to get my attention.
Suddenly, the paper or whatever it was floated straight back
into the farthest corner, a spotswallowed in shadow, right where
an old wooden chair sat facing the wall.

(13:43):
Like someone left it there aftera punishment.
My stomach dropped, the chair, the floating thing, a patch of
darkness that seemed to pulse just a bit deeper than the rest
of the room. I felt watched.
I stepped back and moved quicklyfrom the fire.
I tried to shake it off, told myself it was a moth, a draft, a

(14:04):
trick of light and my over caffeinated brain.
I flopped down by the fire, lit a smoke, finished my beer.
Nobody else was up. Eventually I played some Robot
Unicorn Attack 2 on my phone just to reset my brain.
Maybe 20 minutes later I saw Mark climb out of his tent, huff
over to take a leak by a Bush, and crawl back inside his bag

(14:27):
without a word. Guess he was sleepwalking
through it. After another half hour staring
at the dying coals, I gave in and went to bed.
I zipped up tight, tried not to think of the clown paintings,
and eventually fell out. Next morning we all gathered for
breakfast. Eggs over the fire, that sort of
thing. Mark gave me this weird look and
said, how late were you up last night, man?

(14:50):
I got up in the middle of the night and you were still at the
fire with your phone. I told him just till maybe 2:30.
Everyone else crashed. He frowned.
OK, who was still up with you? You were at the fire on your
phone. And I thought I saw two people
behind you. Or I mean, I assumed it was

(15:10):
Tyler and maybe Sam. One guy looked big, like Tyler.
I cut him off. Dude, I was alone.
Everyone else was out. Mark went pale.
Are you joking? Because I saw two people
standing behind you, watching over your shoulder as you played
your stupid Unicorn game. One looked, I don't know, taller
and really thin. I figured it was just some of

(15:32):
the guys messing around, but they just stood there, didn't
move, didn't say anything. When I came back from peeing,
you were there by yourself again.
It was like ice water down my back.
I laughed it off, but I could feel my heart pounding for the
rest of the day. The old shop seemed colder, and
I swear when I peek through the window, just for a second, I

(15:54):
could see the chair at the back a little more turn toward the
door than before. I didn't tell anyone else, but
it creeped me out enough. I haven't set foot in the shop
since we still camp out there every year.
The shops still standing, the clowns still stare from the
loft. Tyler's parents claim it's
family art now. If I have to pee in the dark, I

(16:14):
go far from those windows. And whenever it gets late, I
always make sure to go to bed when my wife decides she's
tired. There are just some things I
don't want to see again, especially shadows that float
where they shouldn't or figures that watch from the corner,
silently waiting for someone to notice.
Could have been a moth I guess, but no moth ever did figure
eights like that or stood over someone's shoulder without

(16:37):
making a sound story #4 I never thought much about ghosts or the
supernatural before I started working the graveyard hours at
the old city library. I was just a grad student who
needed extra cash. The job was dull.
Re shelved books, run inventory,vacuum the echoing marble halls
and keep an eye out for teens trying to sneak in after hours.

(16:58):
The place was a relic. Creaking oak shelves, vaulted
ceilings whispered Into Darknessand dust that never seemed to
settle. Some colleagues joked about it
being haunted, but I always shrugged.
Old buildings make noise, that'sall.
My shift started at 10:00 PM andended just before sunrise.
The regular staff always left a little before my hours began,

(17:20):
leaving the place dead quiet. Most nights I would go through
the motions, caffeinated and bored.
But the strange things began a few months after I'd started,
during an icy March night, the kind where wind rattles every
window. The first thing that made me
pause was the sound of pages fluttering.
I was in the main reading room, a vast space with sealing high

(17:42):
shelves and battered velvet chairs sunk into shadow.
It came from a back corner whereno draft should reach, like a
book being fanned quickly. When I checked, there were three
books on the reading table, all closed.
The sound stopped as soon as I entered.
I was used to mice in old buildings, so I told myself it
was probably just them nesting somewhere, moving paper.

(18:05):
The real unease started later. I'd be shelving books, lost in
the soft hush of my own footsteps, and catch glimpses of
movement in the farthest aisles.Sometimes it was just the glint
of the antique brass lamps catching on polished wood, but
other times it looked like long dark shadows shifting where
there shouldn't be any. Around 2:30 every night, near

(18:27):
the history section, I'd get theoverpowering scent of old
perfume, something floral and suffocating, like lilies gone
rotten. It would hang in the air for
just a minute before fading. There were never fresh flowers
in the library, and the old heating system barely worked, so
scent didn't travel. After a few weeks, I realized

(18:47):
the perfume always showed up along with that whispering
sound, like a woman murmuring inanother room, just out of
earshot. I'd freeze, holding my breath,
but I could never catch a full word.
One night I had to mop up a spill near the back staircase, A
twisting old thing that led to the mezzanine no one used.
While I worked, I heard the steady tap, tap, tap of

(19:09):
footsteps overhead, circling above me.
Never hurrying, I flicked my flashlight up the banister.
Nothing. All doors to the mezzanine were
padlocked. I checked them every shift.
Maybe the pipes, I told myself, or the old building settling.
The oddest incident happened around 4.
AMI was cataloguing behind the main desk when the library phone

(19:31):
rang. The line for internal staff, not
the public. 1. The sound startled me so badly
that my pen rolled off and clattered to the floor.
I picked up, but there was only static in the faintest sound of
breathing on the other end. Suddenly, the call ended.
No number showed up on the display.
I checked the logs later. No incoming calls that night,

(19:52):
according to the phone record. Some nights I got the feeling I
was being watched. I'd walk past the glass cases
displaying antique maps, and in the reflection I'd see a blurred
figure behind me, tall, dressed in Gray, standing as still as
stone. Every time I turn, the aisle
would be empty, but my skin would prickle.

(20:12):
I tried to convince myself it was just the tricks of sleepy
eyes and weird lighting. The fear built slowly.
I'd find books stacked on chairsI hadn't touched, all from the
same call number series. Children's books would migrate
to the philosophy section and vice versa.
Sometimes the old grandfather clock in the corner would chime
a single note when it wasn't even close to the hour.

(20:34):
I once found an old library cardleft on the desk, name faded,
stamped, deceased in red ink. Nobody could explain where it
had come from. I told my supervisor some of
these stories. He laughed, said I was just
tired. Told me the furnace sometimes
make strange noises and the electrical lines can cross and
cause the phones to act up. I tried to believe him.

(20:56):
Maybe my mind was running wild with fatigue, sitting alone all
night in a silent place. The brain makes ghosts out of
shadows. Still, every time the perfume
hovered in that narrow history aisle or the pages seem to
flutter on their own, I got the same crawling feeling up my back
it got. So I started rushing through my
duties, leaving whole sections untouched.

(21:19):
I never saw anything directly, just hints, odd patterns, sounds
that had no clear source. By the time dawn touched the
high stain windows, all signs were gone.
I quit the library eventually, telling myself I was just
overworked and needed to change.But sometimes when I walk past
those tall dark windows at night, I feel a cool breath at

(21:41):
my neck and I wonder if the building wasn't as empty as I
always told myself it was. Story #5 Night shift at an all
night coffee shop isn't glamorous, but it's peaceful
enough if you can ignore the loneliness.
Some people say the mind plays tricks on you when you're tired,
and especially after midnight. At first, that's what I told
myself. My little coffee shop sits right

(22:04):
off the highway wedge between a gas station and a closed down
diner. The owners put a wall of cheap
mirrored panels behind the counter, meant to make the place
look bigger for customers, but mostly it just reflected the
fluorescent glare and made me feel like I was being watched.
On slow nights, time crawled, the inky blackness outside

(22:24):
pressed against the windows, sometimes broken by the
headlights of a passing truck. I'd Polish the espresso machine,
arrange the pastries, wipe the sticky tables, all standard
stuff. But after a few weeks on the
job, I started noticing odd things happening at the edge of
my vision. Subtle, nothing I could pin
down. When I glanced straight at the

(22:46):
mirror, shadows seem to melt away.
Always blamed it on the strange lighting.
The first unmistakable oddity came one Tuesday between 3:00
and 4:00 in the morning. The cafe was completely empty.
I was restocking stir sticks, looking at my hands in the
mirror, when something about my reflection caught my eye.
My face looked sort of off, likethe features were slightly wrong

(23:09):
or maybe too sharp in the mirrors harsh light.
I stared for a second, thinking maybe the angle was just weird.
Then I look closer. It seemed like the reflections
expression was a split second ahead of my real 1.
The tiniest shift of a frown, the blink of my eyes happening
just a heartbeat faster on screen.
I jerked my head away and told myself I was imagining things.

(23:32):
Later, cleaning the back counter, something fell with a
crash. One of the mugs had slid off by
itself and shattered. Was it vibrations from the
counter or a wobble? The night after, 2 sugar packets
flew off the display without anyone touching them.
Maybe the shelf was uneven or anair vent kicked on.
Still, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
The shop felt colder, draftier than usual.

(23:55):
The next week, while making a cappuccino for a late customer,
I noticed movement behind me in the mirrored wall.
At first I assumed someone had walked in, but the bell never
chimed. When I turned, the shop was
empty. The only movement was the slow
swing of the ceiling fan in the reflection, though I could have
sworn a tall, pale figure lingered behind the counter

(24:17):
where no one stood. I chalked it up to a passing car
throwing a shadow even though the parking lot was deserted.
A few shifts later, I started hearing sounds.
Soft whispering, just out of range, like the muted hiss of
steam, but laced with syllables.Sometimes it was behind me,
sometimes in front, but it always faded away when I tried

(24:40):
to pinpoint it. The refrigerator or espresso
machine could be making noise, Ireasoned.
Yet the whispers had a pattern, a sort of cadence, almost like a
distant imitation of my own voice.
One night, after cleaning the cappuccino machine, I noticed
faint, greasy handprints smearedon the mirror, higher up than I
could reach. Even if I stood on tiptoe, they

(25:00):
looked fresh, oily in the overhead lights.
I cleaned the whole panel spotless, but the next shift the
prints were back, fingers long and thin, each print ending in a
sharp point instead of rounded fingertips.
Maybe a weird streak from the cleaner, maybe leftover residue
catching the light differently. Scrubbing harder seemed to help,

(25:22):
but the marks always returned. The strangest moment happened
when I was locking the supply closet late one night.
Everything had the empty hush of4:00 AM.
I glanced up at the mirror, expecting to see myself across
the room. Instead, the reflection showed
something standing behind the espresso machine where I'd just
been, a dim outline with A2 widegrin.

(25:45):
When I turned, the space was empty, but the sight in the
mirror lingered for a moment longer before fading.
By now, I was feeling stretched thin.
My manager shrugged off my questions, said mirrors can warp
your perception when you're tired, especially under harsh
lights. And with all the caffeine in my
system, he said the motion sensors sometimes trigger in the

(26:06):
night, could be rodents or the AC kicking on, making things
shift or fall. But after a while, little things
escalated. Espresso cups just barely
catching the edge of counters and toppling.
Syrup bottles ending up in the wrong place.
Chili drafts brushing against myarms even when the doors were
locked tight. There was one shift where for a

(26:27):
full minute my reflection seemedto mouth words I wasn't saying,
then corrected itself looking totally normal.
That unnerved me enough that I started covering up the mirror
with a big whiteboard during overnight hours.
Things calm down after that. Or maybe I just stopped looking
for trouble. I sometimes wonder if being
alone with only your reflection can play with your sense of

(26:49):
what's real. Maybe there's a scientific
explanation. Stress, lack of sleep, weird
lighting, a trick of the mind. But even now, long after I quit
the coffee shop, whenever I catch my own face in a mirror
late at night, I pause, half expecting to see something else,
looking back just a fraction toosoon.

(27:10):
Story number six. I never believed hospitals could
be haunted working night shift. As a nurse on the psych floor,
you see a lot of things. Confusion, hallucinations,
stories that sound impossible. Most of the time you write it
off as exhaustion or mental illness and try to keep your
head clear. I always figured that would be

(27:31):
enough. Until last February when we
started having issues with the census.
It seems small at first. Our patient board white marker
on smudge plastic showed 10 names at the start of my shift,
but we gave out 11 medication cups.
I figured one of the day nurses had made a mistake, so I double
checked. There was a tray for a patient

(27:52):
listed as E Gray, assigned to room 213.
That room was supposed to be empty.
It had been sealed off with a padlock for renovations since a
leak last fall. But the medicine was neatly
prepped and the log showed signatures from earlier shifts,
all for E Gray. I went to the Med room computer
and scanned the census. E Gray wasn't listed.

(28:13):
There was a stack of sign in sheets, though, and in the
middle E Gray written in spiky penmanship.
No assigned Dr. no diagnosis, just the name.
I erased it and reordered the Med trays, thinking some new
admit paperwork had gotten mixedup.
The second time was stranger. I was updating patient charts at
the end of the dim hallway around 3:00 AM when a cold gust

(28:36):
of air ran by. Not the usual stale draft, but
sharp and icy like the wind on aJanuary morning.
The break room window rattled even though it doesn't open.
The hall clock shuttered on the wall.
A clanging sound echoed from thedirection of the locked 213.
The door vibrated, and somethingheavy, maybe a shoe, slapped

(28:56):
against it from inside. When I peeked under the door,
all I saw was a slice of darkness.
The light sensor panel above theroom, dusty and unused,
flickered as if it were registering movement.
I checked with maintenance, who swore nobody had touched the
wiring for weeks. Over the next week, little
things piled up night after night.

(29:16):
An extra food tray was deliveredright outside 213.
Even though I'd stop requesting it, someone always carried it
away before I made my rounds. Once, when I was restocking
linens, I walked by the room andcould swear I heard whispering,
a shuddery mumble like an old woman's voice reciting the same
words over and over. But when I asked the other

(29:37):
nurses, no one else had noticed.Only the new tech mentioned
waking up in the nap room to thesound of feet shuffling down the
South hallway, which ends at 2:13.
One night, one of the older patients stopped in front of the
locked door and gently tapped the handle, whimpering.
He later told the day nurse thatthe small woman in Gray had come

(29:58):
from her room looking for food. Another patient scribbled small
shaky drawings on his notepad, astick figure woman with wide
eyes and hair like a hood, always pictured inside a blank
rectangle. Signs of the extra patient kept
popping up. Blanket carts sometimes ended
short. 1 missing every morning. A wristband torn in half was

(30:19):
left on my Med cart 1 midnight with E Gray written faintly and
faded ink. I asked staff who'd written the
pre prep label, but nobody admitted to it.
Even housekeeping reported seeing someone in a hospital
gown wandering the hall, only for her to disappear as they
turn to look. I tried to reason it away.
Hospitals are big, old and always under construction.

(30:42):
Records can get garbled, paperwork misplaced, especially
during renovations, and staff turnover the psych ward.
Patients by nature can't always be trusted about what they see
or hear, and nurses run on caffeine and little sleep.
It's easy for a room to feel occupied if you're already
thinking about it too much. One night, I'd had enough and

(31:04):
decided to boot up the security cameras to review the hallway.
Room 213's feed was fuzzy Gray with static and random white
streaks, even though the camerasfor the rest of the wing were
clear. At 2:37 AM, the time stamp
showed the locked door inching open, though the physical lock
was still in place. The shadow of a small figure

(31:25):
slipped across the frame, flickering for a second before
the camera glitched and the image blanked out.
I kept working, but avoided thatend of the hall.
Still, some things never settled.
The padlock appeared loose one morning, even though nobody on
staff admitted to touching it. My own badge, kept clipped to my
scrubs, went missing for three entire shifts and was found

(31:47):
hooked around the door knob of 213 once when rotating night
checks. The lights inside 213 flickered
to life for a single second as Ipassed.
They weren't connected to the main power anymore.
Eventually, the room was renovated and reopened for
patients. I still wondered sometimes if
we'd find something odd in the old ceiling tiles or behind the

(32:08):
walls. I never worked that hallway
alone again. Now, months later, I'll pass
quiet sealed off rooms and otherhospitals and catch myself
glancing inside, half expecting to see a figure in Gray sitting
quietly on her bed, waiting for her medication and breakfast.
I don't know if it was just nerves and exhaustion or

(32:29):
something else caught in the gaps between patients and
paperwork. All I know is that I never see
an extra patient on my floor anymore, at least not when I'm
looking. Story #7 I guess if you ask most
folks around here, they'd say the woods behind my job are
just, well, woods. But working late shifts out at
the warehouse, you start to notice things.

(32:50):
The place sits alone at the edgeof town in old metal building,
surrounded on three sides by thick tangled forest that goes
on for acres. There's no development out that
way yet, just trees and silence.Most shifts end after 10, but
every once in a while I'd stay late for inventory.
When it gets dark out there, it gets really dark.

(33:11):
The lot is lit by these tall sodium lights, buzzing and
spitting out sickly orange Halos.
Beyond that circle, there's onlyblackness and the sound of
crickets or the odd coyote. Sometimes you'd hear something
heavier on the brush, a deer maybe, or a raccoon.
But some nights the quiet feels different, heavy in a way that
prickles your skin. One night last fall, I was

(33:34):
leaving after a late shift, justme and one other guy.
We walked out together to our cars and stopped frozen in the
middle of the gravel lot. I saw a person standing right at
the tree line, tall, too tall, head cocked to the side, just
standing and watching us under the orange glow.
He looked impossibly thin with long arms hanging down lower

(33:56):
than they should. My heart thumped painfully
against my ribs. My Co worker whispered something
but we both wound up laughing itoff, saying it had to be a
hunter or some local who'd takena shortcut.
After that, I made a habit of leaving work with someone else
when I could. Still, even when I was alone, I
sometimes had the feeling of being watched from the shadows

(34:17):
of those trees. There's a path at the edge of
the parking lot that used to be an old service Rd. but nobody
uses it anymore. Some mornings I'd find muddy
footprints right at the end of the path, big ones spaced far
apart, leading in a zigzag out of the woods and into the lot,
then simply vanishing. Once I found a bundle of twigs

(34:38):
tied together with red string, set right in the middle of my
parking space, perfectly centered, like someone left it
for me to find. Another time, a circle of small
stones was arranged under my bumper, each one said exactly 2
fingers apart. Probably a teenager with too
much time. Simple vandalism, that's what I
kept telling myself. Winter came and the sun went

(35:01):
down before 5. The woods stood black and
silent, heavy with snow. It was colder in the lot than
anywhere else. I'd leave my engine running just
to feel safe, the heater blasting.
But some nights the light poles would flicker and buzz, or I'd
catch a glimpse of a pale shape standing too long between the
trees, not moving, just waiting.On those nights, the wind would

(35:24):
carry whispers, bits of voice I couldn't make out, mixed in with
the sound of branches scraping together.
My keys would feel slippery, as if someone had coated them in
sweat or oil. My car tires showed long streaky
smears, like something had run its fingers through the dirt.
I tried to reason it all the way.
Bad wiring made the lamps flicker.

(35:47):
Local kids messing around, maybeeven wild animals leaving prints
and marks everywhere. I told myself I was tired or
imagining things after too many back-to-back shifts.
Other guys at the warehouse joked about the woods being
haunted, but I never really talked about it much.
Anybody could explain A shadow as a trick of the light, A shape

(36:07):
as just a deer or a lost hiker. There was one night I'll never
shake. It was almost midnight, the moon
hidden behind clouds. As I reached my car, I heard the
unmistakable sound of footsteps crunching steadily on frozen
grass. I spun, phone in my hand.
Light sweeping back and forth atthe edge of the woods was the

(36:27):
same shape from before, too tall, so thin it's limbs look
jointless with a face washed blank and pale by the parking
lot glow. It's head slowly tilted as I
watched, eyes catching and holding the light in a way that
made my stomach twist. It didn't move or react, just
stared. Every instinct screamed at me to

(36:47):
run and I fumble my keys before getting inside and slamming the
door. The headlights hit the woods,
but the shape was gone. I slept with my curtains closed
for a week after. After that, little things
started to happen. Once I found a pile of black
feathers on the hood of my car, still damp as if left moments
before. Another time, all four tires had

(37:09):
little cuts in them, like they've been scored by a blade.
Nobody on staff admitted to seeing anyone out there, and the
security cameras, of course, only showed static past the edge
of the lot. Spring came and the feeling
faded a bit, replaced by the usual routine.
Sometimes I still park under thelight, keeping my eyes away from

(37:30):
the tree line, ears tuned for any odd sound.
On certain cloudy nights I get the sensation of being watched
again, and I wonder if somethingin those woods has learned to
watch and wait for us, just at the edge of what can be
explained. Maybe it's nothing but animals
and tricks of the eye. Or maybe some things just live
out there between the rows of black trees, waiting for someone

(37:52):
to pay attention. I try not to look too hard at
the woods anymore, but every once in a while I spot those
same muddy prints at the edge ofthe lot, and I wonder if
something's watching me head home, knowing it will follow
back into the dark. Story #8 I took the fire watcher
gig mostly for the quiet. Sitting up in a lonely tower
with nothing but endless Appalachian ridges and a radio

(38:15):
for company sounded like the perfect escape.
After my last job went S, the rules were simple.
Log what you see, watch for smoke and transmit a check in
every morning and evening. A few hikers now and then,
plenty of raccoons, and deep velvet silence after sunset.
Those first weeks were uneventful, and that was exactly

(38:36):
how I wanted them. The trouble started with the
radio. Before each shift I tested the
local line. Just static and fuzz as usual.
But sometimes after midnight, I'd swear I heard singing
through the crackle, old songs in a language I couldn't name.
At first it was gentle humming, almost like a lullaby, drifting
through when I turn the dial or when the wind picked up.

(38:59):
Some nights words slipped through alongside the hum, but
always just out of reach, melting back to static the
second I focused. The forest at night has its own
noises. Owls, coyotes, rain pattering on
the metal roof. But this was different.
There were moments when the woods would go absolutely
horribly still no frogs, no leaves stirring.

(39:20):
Then, out of nowhere, there'd bethe brush of footsteps circling
the base of the tower, or a sharp knock against one of the
foundation logs. I'd hit the floodlights, but all
I'd see was swirling mist and the rough outlines of tree
trunks pressed close. Once, in early autumn, I woke up
from a nap at my desk to the sound of the old crank winch

(39:41):
spinning on its own out on the platform.
My pack, which I always hung on the hook, was missing.
I found it later, down at the bottom of the stairs, all my
things neatly laid out in a line, zippered open as though
someone had studied each item. The ground around the base was
muddy, but no prints, not even boot tracks, just the pattern of

(40:02):
something wide being dragged in looping circles around the
tower, like someone sweeping with a broom made of sticks.
Stock rotation meant the Ranger service occasionally left boxes
of canned food at the foot of the tower for me to haul up.
Lately some of those boxes showed up already half emptied,
replaced with rusted ration tinsthat look like leftovers from

(40:22):
the 40s. Labels faded but always set with
their typefaces facing forward as if arranged by hand.
I chalked it up to someone trying to mess with the new guy,
but the only other Ranger on rotation swore it wasn't him.
And besides, none of us ever hadaccess to that sort of old
surplus. Some mornings I'd find my

(40:43):
logbook had entries I didn't remember writing.
My cramped cursive was there, but nestled between my reports
were half page fragments in smoky grey pencil descriptions
of distant glows, moving shadows, or warnings dated
decades in the past. These passages matched neither
my style nor that of the seasonal staff who rotated

(41:03):
through. Sometimes an entry would mention
a specific storm or accident, always a day in advance.
Once it said I'd spill my coffeeat noon and I laughed until I
did exactly that. Though it could have been pure
coincidence, there were times I'd swear I was being watched.
I'd step outside at dusk and hear the lightest sound from the

(41:24):
brush, twigs breaking, breath fogging from something just out
of sight. The stillness would press
against my shoulders, making it hard to move or call out.
I never saw anything outright, just quick slips of movement in
the periphery or a brief flickerof a phosphorescent outline
vanishing behind an oak. As days shortened, I'd peek down

(41:46):
the spiral stairs and notice oldsooty handprints on the rails,
small as if from a child but spaced much too wide.
The wind sometimes carried the soft rising whisper of words
echoing the songs from the radio, even with the window shut
tight. When fog crept in, the whole
tower fell adrift, floating above the clouds, the only sound

(42:07):
the faint rhythmic tap of fingers, or maybe rain against
the thin fire glass. I tried to rationalize all of
it. Old radios can pick up voices
and music from miles away, especially at altitude.
Animals scavenge, and the mountains are full of stories
about pranksters and leftover war relics.
Isolation and lack of sleep do strange things to your mind,

(42:30):
bringing old tales and shadows to life.
But every new shift at the tower, I would feel that same
prickle of unease under my skin,a sense of trespassing in some
place that never quite belong topeople.
When it came time to leave at season's end, I almost felt
relief climbing down those long steps.
Still, sometimes when I'm walking forest paths back home,

(42:52):
I'll hear the same thin songs drifting through the trees, or
find little grey handprints pressed against wet rocks at the
stream crossing. I tell myself it's just a trick
of the wind, a product of old stories in the lonely dark.
Still, I don't sleep as easily on nights when the woods go
silent.