Strange to say, I actually like these as a slideshow. I don’t like having to scroll through every single story on the same page

Oh my goodness I feel so validated, thank you for picking my story (The Knocking). I showed this to my mom, who said, “I still think you’re full of shit.” hashtagfamily

This is gonna get buried in the greys since I’m submitting it at the end of the month but I’ve been reading and loving these collections each year for a while and am finally putting in my story because 20 years later I still don’t know what to make of it - but it’s the absolute truth.

This is a story about a blanket. It’s not scary — or I, at least, wasn’t scared — but it sure was bewildering. So if someone has an explanation for me, I’d love to have one after all these years.

I live in a big open loft apartment. There’s nothing creepy about it or the building that houses it and 30 other identical…

Creaky Visitor

In 2021 when the country started to open up, I got a job offer and a nice moving package and so I ended up living in an AirBnb for four months while my husband stayed back to sell our house. The rental was a townhome built in 1784, so old and sparsely remodeled that you could still see the outline of a bricked up…

The summer I turned 15, my dad moved the family to Alaska to satisfy his craving for solitude and unspoiled nature. Our rental house was in a pretty spot on top of a hill, but was really isolated. We’re talking a 30+ minute drive from town, steep dirt road most of the way, with no neighbors around for a couple miles.…

Can’t remember if I submitted this one previously.

I’d be willing to bet this person works this type of #NotAllMen diatribe into almost every conversation, no matter how relevant or appropriate.

In 1996, when I was 13, I went to my cousin Sarah’s house in a North London suburb called Kingsbury. We were both only children and have overbearing, insane mothers who would never let us out by ourselves, so when we got together would become hyper, boisterous, pests. While we would have every detail of our life…

definitely not. and the edit really ties the room together, no?

Was this post really necessary?

It was a 2019 submission -- https://jezebel.com/1838875774

When I was 19 and trying to make some money for college, I worked part-time as a personal assistant for an interior designer whose office was located in an old Victorian style house in the downtown district of my hometown.

Back in the summer of 2013, my now husband and I went on our first camping trip together. We had started dating in the fall of 2012 and spent all winter planning all of the fun spring and summer activities we would do once it got warm out. I grew up going camping with my family every year, but it had been a while…

You confused me a bit by saying WWII and then telling a story from 1916. Typo?

I don’t know exactly how I came to submitting anything for this contest, but my daughter is a huge fan and reads every year, and I’ve developed an unfortunate habit of going down Internet rabbit holes since I retired.

I spent the first few months of this year living in a small residential treatment center for eating disorders. I’m grateful for the experience; I was suicidal at the time and going there quite literally saved my life. The treatment center was in an old Victorian house in a small mountain town. The kitchen, dining…

It was around three a.m. in our old apartment, which had two bedrooms on one floor, a bathroom at the landing, and the rest of the apartment on the other floor.

Every now and then I need to travel for work, and because of the nature of my work, it’s usually to places in the middle of nowhere. I fly out of the capital city I call home, at the crack of dawn, and two flights later, I’m driving out to the countryside towards my destination - a small town with a population of…