Mr White

My neighbor, Mr. White, is usually a quiet old man, spending his days in a rocking chair on his porch, watching the city and his life pass by. However, to say that he’s odd would be an understatement. He dresses from head to toe in solid black clothes, the few times I’ve talked to him he’s seemed like a nice guy ( a little standoffish perhaps), nothing to indicate why he dresses in all the flamboyant colors of a chimney sweep.

It was the first day in August when the screaming began. 1:00 am sharp in the morning a horrible scream pierces the thin wall between our flats. As suddenly as it started, it stops, leaving my heart hammering and my mind awake. This continues for the rest of the week, but each time I make up my mind to confront him about it, the screaming stops and I lose the nerve to knock on his door. The next day he’s out on the front porch again, dressed in his usual black attire, from black shoes, up to black socks, pants, jacket, shirt, glasses, and finally hat. “Good morning.” he mumbles as I pass. I almost stop and ask him about the past few nights, but the way he rocks back and forth on his chair, his head pointed straight ahead of him, I’m still too weirded out to talk to him about it.

I get back that evening to see him take off in an airport shuttle. Now, I haven’t seen Mr. White leave his house in the two years I’ve lived next to him, but I figure his sudden departure simply means it’ll be that much easier for me to get some sleep. Unfortunately, as soon as I get settled down into bed, I hear a new noise, a noise I hadn’t noticed earlier. My bed lies against our adjoining wall, so I can hear water running in the pipes whenever he has the faucet on. As I lie there, I can hear water rushing. Two hours and no sleep later, I realize that the noise from the pipes is even more disruptive than the screaming. I figure I’ll do us both a service and shut the running faucet off. So I dress, grab a few supplies, and head over to his door. I’ve lost my keys enough times to figure out how to jimmy a lock, so I shove a couple paper clips into the doorknob and wiggle ‘em around a bit. Soon enough I hear that soft ‘click’ and enter his flat.

The place is in shambles. Like somebody had been running around knocking everything over. Books and magazines litter the floor and half the furniture has been knocked over and shoved against a wall. I head toward the sound of running water and enter Mr. White’s bathroom. Blood Everywhere. The walls are covered in blood, the bathtub has blood running down into it, and the edges of the sink have bits of bloody hair and flesh around the edges.

I turn off the faucet and then turn myself to get the fuck out of there. And that’s when the fucking lights go out. “Pop” goes the bulbs in the bathroom. I flip out and bolt out of there. That’s when I make the mistake of looking behind me. From the gloom of the bathroom I see that there’s something watching me, its eyes reflecting some unknown light.

I don’t really remember the next minute, but the next thing I know I’m standing in my own bathroom, in my own apartment, with my pants heavy with my own piss. Shit. Some fucking shiny thing in the bathroom looks like eyeballs and I piss myself. I take a shower and go back to my bedroom to grab some new pants. But as I’m putting them on I look out the window. It’s fucking watching me, its eyes a glow in the darkness outside. I scream and almost ruin my second pair. But a moment later they’re gone. I call myself a dumbass for falling victim to my own imagination and go to the living room. Sleep’s out of the question, but maybe I can kill my fear with some horrible late-night television.

Everything’s cool for the first hour and half, then a commercial comes on where the background is black. You know how you can see your reflection in the TV when the screen is dark? Well I see me. I also see the fucking eyes glowing at me from the darkness behind my couch.

Frozen to my chair I watch them watch me. Never moving, never blinking, the beast in the shadows has me steady in its gaze. I snap out of it suddenly, doing a half-flip half-barrel roll away from the couch and onto the floor. Of course, when I look again, they’re gone. This shit’s too crazy for me, my last bastion of defense lies in my copious alcohol collection. Practically sprinting to the kitchen, I grab a bottle of something strong and fill the glass. Glug glug glug, raising the glass over my lips and above my head until it’s empty. But there’s something else in the bottom of the glass, I see those fucking eyes again. I slam the glass down and catch a glimmer of light as the beast takes off down my dark hallway. Shit. Shitshitshitshit.

Five minutes later, all the lights in the house are on and I’m decked out in a flashlight and a kitchen knife. Well, I should say all the lights are on but one. The hallway light died as I flipped it on, giving a soft ‘pufft’ of bulby death. At the end of the dark hallway lie two doors, a closet and the door out of my apartment. It’s time to get there or die trying. I creep down into the increasingly dark corridor, my flashlight and knife a foot in front of me. The goddamn closet door is open.

I think I see the beast’s eyes again as I near the closet, but it’s just the latch on the door. I reach the closet door. Breathless, I pull the knife back and get ready to strike.

“Haaahhhh!!!” is my battle-cry as I turn the corner. Nothing. No beast and no beasty eyes. I close the closet and continue to the front door, resolute in my escape. That’s when I notice another thing wrong; the outside light usually seeps in through the crack under my door. Fuck! So close and more shit happens. Playing it safe I edge up to the door and peer out the eyepiece. Two glowing eyes look back at me. I scream for the third time that night and go running back up the hallway to the light of the living room, leaving the knife and my only flashlight lying by the front door.

There’s no escape. I get ready to barricade myself in a corner. I grab the TV cabinet and began to push it toward the center of the room. It’s watching me. The space between the wall and the cabinet. Three fucking inches wide. The beast’s eyes glare at me. Its gaze is neither malevolent or friendly. Just two, perfectly round, shining orbs.

That’s it, I’m done. I collapse backwards onto the floor and back away to the wall, watching the eyes. Watching the eyes watching me. Watching the eyes watching me watching it. I sit there, staring. They don’t move. Nor do I. the night creeps by second after second, me caught in this horribly twisted staring contest. I just wish I knew what they wanted. If the beast attacked me, if it revealed itself, I could know what I’m up against. I might even figure out how I’ll die before it kills me. No. It stays in the crack between my wall and my TV and watches with infinite patience.

The darkness outside dissolves into a gray morning, and the eyes begin to lose their glimmer. As the sun lights my living room, the beast retreats, gone into the shadow it came from. To where I have no fucking idea.

I pack my things. I’m going away, fuck knows where, but I’m getting at least a thousand miles between me and here before night falls again. Two shots of bourbon wish me on my way as I grab my suitcase and set off for the front door.

“Knock, knock” someone get there first. I jump, dropping my stuff and getting ready to bolt back to the nearest corner, “knock, knock”. But reason grabs me by the heels, whispering in my ear that the fucking night monster wouldn’t be courteous enough to knock before killing me. Slowly I open it. Mr. White is standing there, resplendent in his black hat, sunglasses, shirt, jacket, pants, socks, and shoes. “Good morning, Steven.” says he.

“Hi.” says I.

“Say Steven, did anyone go into my apartment while I was gone? There are footprints leading from my bathroom to my door. Notice he neglects to mention what the footprints are formed of. “Uh, no Mr. White, I’ve been in my apartment all night and I didn’t hear anything.” (If you think I’m about to admit to a man that has blood all over his bathroom and a monster living in his house that I broke into his house, then you are very mistaken). “That’s good Steven, I have many fragile belongings that could easily be destroyed or stolen by a malicious soul. You have a good day.”

“You too, man.”

He turns to leave and then turns back to me smiling, “Oh and Steven,” he says, “I couldn’t help but notice bloody footprints leading from my door to yours.” His smile gets even wider. He leans in, bringing our face right next to each other. He removes his sunglasses. . Revealing two empty pits in his face… . . “I’ll be keeping my eyes on you.”

This Time

A young couple had a baby, but as they were poor and could not afford to keep it, they decided to kill it… They went to a lake in the dead of night and having rowed a boat to the middle of it, dropped the baby into the water, while the mother kept murmuring; “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” over and over again.

Some years passed and the couple decided to marry. Between them they had a new baby girl and the family was living happily together. When the little girl became four years-old, she suddenly started pestering her parents to take her to the lake. The parents were reluctant to go, but finally gave in because the girl was so persistent. As soon as they arrived at the lake the girl said, “Daddy, I want to be on that!” pointing at a boat. Again reluctantly the couple gave in to her entreaty. They were in the middle of the lake when the girl said; “Daddy, I want a wee-wee.” The father, not knowing what else to do, lifted her up above the water so that she could do it, checking first that no one was around. And it was that very moment, when the father’s hands were wrapped underneath the girl’s knees, and both were facing the water, the daughter looked back at her father over the shoulder and said; “Please don’t drop me this time.”

An Incident on a Snowy Mountain

A photographer went to a snowy mountain with his assistant, commisioned to take pictures for a magazine article.
They stayed at a log cabin, and a few days had passed when the assistant had an accident and injured himself.
At that point their work was still unfinished and they felt they could not go home unless they finished it first. So they decided to stay on in the mountain.
However the injury got worse and worse, until the assistant suddenly died from it a couple of days later.
But even so the photographer would not go home. He was very committed to his job and to leave the work unfinished was unimaginable to him. He decided to bury the assistant by the cabin and continued to work on his own.
The following morning when the photographer awoke, the assistant’s dead body was lying beside him.
“I’m sure I buried him…” He was deeply puzzled. He went and buried the body again before going off to take pictures.
But the same thing happened again the following morning, and the morning after that. On his final day he decided to set the camera to automatic mode and place it by his sleeping bag, so he could see what went on during the night. The next morning, the dead body was there beside him as he had expected. He buried it again and then climbed down the mountain.
When he got home he developed the pictures he had taken the previous night.
And there in the pictures he saw someone get up, go out of the cabin, carry the dead body back on the shoulder and lay it down beside his sleeping bag – and that someone was no other than the photographer himself.

Kimo-Dameshi

A group of eight high school students, four girls and four boys, met in a house to tell one another ghost stories. The night came and they decided to go and do kimo-dameshi. But the main reason for doing that wasn’t to test their courage, but it was that they could play the game in boy-and-girl pairs. It didn’t really matter where they went so they just chose to go to their high school.

Their high school building was very old; it was nearly a hundred years since it was built. In the dark, the building looked more formidable than it did during the day.
The group duly split up in four pairs. They could not get inside the building so all they would do was to walk around the school grounds once which would take about twenty minutes in all.
The group’s spirit was high and there were a lot of loud teasings as the first pair set off.

Twenty minute passed, and then thirty minutes gone… But the pair didn’t show up. “Wonder what kind of things they’re doing all by themselves?” the second pair said jokingly as they set off into the dark. But they too did not come back.

By then the ones who were left behind were starting to feel uneasy.

The third pair left, assuring the remaining two that as soon as they 'd finished the game they would come back on the double and that if possible, bring all the others back with them too. However, this was not to be, since the third pair also disappeared.

It had already been more than two hours since the first group set off. The girl of the last pair got scared and broke down in tears. Her partner said to her; “don’t worry. I’m going out there alone to find out what’s happening. If I don’t return in thirty minutes, go straight to the police. Don’t wait for me, OK?” Then the boy ran off.

He did not come back either; even so the girl, crying, waited for an hour before going to the police. The police accompanied her back to the school but at first they could not tell where all the boys and girls were gone. It was when the sky was beginning to get lighter when they reached an old, disused gymanasium.

The police went in there and saw that the door to the lavatry was open; when they stepped inside the room they found the missing seven, all hanging by the neck from the ceiling. All of them were dead. From what the surviving girl testified those seven had no reason to commit suicide at all. But they could not find any evidence of murder, so in the end the incident was dismissed as a case of mass hysteria. The curious thing is, the school was not known for any ghostly stories.

The Decapitated Head

Jumping in front of a train is one of the most gruesome ways of dying because the damage that is inflicted on the body is enormous.

One man killed himself by this very method, flinging himself from the platform into the rail when the train was just passing the station. His limbs were torn to pieces and as for his decapitated head it flew and landed on the platform. Many people were there to witness this ghastly incident, and they were watching it with sheer shock and horror, when suddenly the decapitated head opened its eyes and shouted, "This is not a show!"

To My Regret

There was once a girl who had been diagnosed as having only three months to live.
When her friends came to visit her in hospital, the girl’s mother, hoping to make the best out of the occasion, got the idea of taking a picture of them together while the girl was still relatively well. So she took a picture with the sick girl in the middle sitting up on the bed and her two friends on either side of her.

Only a week later after the picture was taken the girl’s illness took a turn for the worse and within less than three months she passed away.
A funeral was held and the girl’s mother was just beginning to come to terms with her loss when she remembered about the picture she took in hospital. She went to a shop to have it developed, but when she had the pictures back she couldn't find that particular picture. When she asked the shop owner about it he just said, “I’m sorry… I made a mess of it.” The mother however got suspicious and asked him again what became of the picture. She said it was the last picture of her daughter she took before the girl died and begged him to give it to her. “I really think you shouldn't see it,” said the shop owner. “You just stay calm, ma’am, OK?” He said before cautiously taking out the picture in question.

And there it was, the picture of the three girls - but one thing was different; the body of her daughter (who sat in the middle) looked as though it was mummified.

The mother was very upset but she took the picture home nevertheless, telling the shop owner that she wanted to have it purified by a shaman.
When she was at a shaman’s the mother asked her what implications the sinister picture had; and there again the mother was met with a wall of silence. But as before, the mother would not give up and begged the shaman to tell her the truth. The shaman in the end gave in to the mother's persistent entreaties and opened her mouth. She said;

“To my regret, your daughter has fallen into hell.”

The Tent

This is a true story.
We were staying at a campsite inside a permanent tent. Each tent accommodated eight of us and there were seven tents in total, lined up in a row.
My tent was the seventh and it was positioned at the end of the row.
During one night I got out of the tent to go to bathroom.
When I came back and opened the entrance I looked inside and found no one was there. But I was sure everyone else was fast asleep.
I thought; “what?” and went out again to make sure I was in the right place. But the sign on the tent said, “No.8.”

What was I thinking, I’m in No.7! I thought to myself as I went back to the one standing next to it.
- Yes, of course I knew that “No.8” didn’t exist but I was so scared I convinced myself it was a mistake and went to sleep.

By the next morning, the eighth tent had disappeared.