Not really scary, but a sweet family anecdote that concerns a “ghost.”

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.

Not sure if I’m submitting too late, but I just stumbled upon this contest, and I have a story to share that has stayed with me since childhood.

It has a lot of uses. I’m planning on buying one on the work account as a security multitool: Penetration testing, NFC-based asset tagging, creating and reading security badges, regaining control of systems that have been locked down by malicious actors, and more. All of that can apply in a tech-savvy home environment.

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…

Hello! I recently read a news story about a pilot who took hallucinogenic mushrooms and tried to kill a plane full of people. It reminded me of something terrifying I experienced in my early twenties.

My mom and I have what she refers to as “the Sight.”

This is part actual crime- part something else, so trigger warning for domestic violence; and if you’re thinking about getting out of a bad relationship for any reason, let this be the sign that you need to get out ASAP.

I already submitted a scary story from childhood at the beginning of the month. This creepy incident happened last night.

Creaky Visitor

Two short stories - both told to me by the folks it happened to in NYC, and for some reason I found super creepy.

1 - My friend “Mickey” had some time to kill one afternoon so he went into a well known midtown Irish pub for a pint of Guinness (or 2 or 3). As he is leaving the bar, he notices a disheveled older guy…

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…

[I heard this story multiple times, directly from the source--I don’t even remember everything about it, but the part I do remains one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever heard, and I will still think of it from time to time and get a little freaked out]

I am walking around my old school, which went from Pre-K through 12th grade. I hadn’t been there in years. I turn around and about ten feet away there’s a little white girl who wasn’t there before, with her head tilted to the side staring at me intently and completely silent. I stop abruptly and look around and…

The most Gizmodo thing is that you have to scroll down past all the “um, actually cordless phones in the 90's...” to find the speculation about what the 3 seashells were. The internet was a mistake.

This got me thinking a bit about the weird one offs in films that aren’t plotholes or main plot points (I see you Inception) but never get explained and have fascinated people ever since, like the no-punchline-but-ceiling-collapse joke in Breakfast Club.

Back in the early aughts, I had been dating my now-husband for a few months. We drove out to my parents’ house, where my sister and her three children were also visiting for the day. My sister’s youngest daughter was probably about 3 at the time. My boyfriend went outside to have a cigarette, and the kids were playing…

The Little Boy with the Brown Coat

My mom had a pretty aggressive disease, however, she looked like she was making a recovery and for the most part seemed healthier than she did since diagnosed. Within 24 hours she went from alert and feeling good to in a coma and ultimately passing away. It was absrupt and shocking. Still doesn’t feel real.

About 25 years ago I worked for a couple of years in a very old office building located in the center of a large city in Texas. Built in 1907, the original part of the building was a former home for confederate women (widows of confederate soldiers). After all the widows died and the building sat empty for several…