Saturday, October 2, 2010

Written below are the journal entries of Christopher Young, brother of Daryl Young, found saved as individual files on his personal computer, with file names Prologue.doc, Ch1.doc, Ch2.doc, etc. Apart from being compiled into one document, they have not been altered in any way.

Prologue
Two weeks later, there was a sound. There was a humming. It came from that place on the carpet, the spot near the corner. His spot.
Ch 1
I’m getting concerned. I guess I was a bit distracted before, but my mind is clear now. They’re gone, and I am frankly growing more concerned by the minute.
A chalk-white amorphous thing. A hideous, absolutely hideous thing. I saw it. I saw it on the rug, and it scared me. It looked at me, grinning with half-formed white eyes filmed over. It writhed towards me. A heat, some sort of sickening heat radiated from it, and it saw my disgust and thrived upon it.
I had hoped it would live in one of the closets, but it was content to ooze about my home, leaving trails as it went. I am quite sure that if I had not put the towel under the bathroom door it would have tried to come in and join me while I bathed myself.
Ch 2
Today it has appendages. I am not sure if they existed before, but now they most certainly do. It has two, with one on either side, and it crawls haphazardly along like some sort of horrid lopsided insect. It tried to follow me out through the door, but I kicked it and it did not try any longer.
It thumps around as I try to sleep, dragging its body everywhere and leaving residue all over the house.
I took my cat to Daryl’s. The thing didn’t follow me. I’m glad. It may get me, but it will not get my cat.
Ch 3
It now has four appendages and is beginning to form a skull-like dome under its pulsing skin. It has a mouth, a crooked little mouth, and I am afraid it will begin to make sounds at me. Three of the appendages are longer than the fourth, so it mostly wobbles around in crooked little circles. It is getting bigger, and it never stops changing. I was hoping it would stay and become some sort of indiscernible monster, but now I am sure that it is becoming a person, or at the very least something similar. I would like to kill it. I wonder if I could.
Ch 4
The appendages are even now. It’s disgusting, with abhorrent little limbs forming perfectly. They’re currently flippers and nubs, cartilage and bright blue veins under translucent white skin. It sits and stares at me as the cat did, but instead of curiosity it looks on with a hunger and a disquieting energy. Just as the cat’s did, however, its eyes reflect the slightest light in the darkness. They’re omnipresent and wide and green and yellow as I try to sleep. The eyes are not (yet?) the same size, which only serves to make the thing more unnerving.
Ch 5
It sits at the top of the stairs, waiting for me, smiling down at me with crooked reflective eyes and a small mouth full of small black teeth. My bedroom is upstairs. I am afraid to go up.
It also has hands and feet now; the nubs gave way to small, slender fingers and toes. It is beginning to walk and climb about, and there are small white hand prints smudged on all of the doorknobs. I think at this point towels will do me no good.
Ch 6
It can open doors. I’m sure of it now. It’s androgynous in anatomy, but for him I think it male. It still smiles at me and stares, but says nothing. A small mercy.
Ch 7
Last night I picked up a favorite old anthology and decided to read it while resting in the rocking chair next to my bedroom window. In response, the accursed thing stood in my doorway, leering at me, intent to ruin any escape. It succeeded. Frustration and fear gave way to rage, and I pushed up the window, ripped a hole in the screen, and flung the book outside into the night.
The thing ventured down the stairs, in and out the front door, and brought the book back- an arm snaking against and over the arm of my chair, depositing the small book in my lap, complete with bony hand print. That was the closest it had ever gotten to me. I became frightened.
I stared at the thing and then tossed the old book to the carpet. To think; to only have to deal with a beating beneath the floorboards! This thing mocked me and tormented me and lived and breathed and watched. It looked at the book for a moment, then curled up in the corner and stared at me, large uneven eyes with skin pulled back around. It stared at me and smiled with its little teeth.
Ch 8
The thing has started polluting my food or hiding it or both, and I found that shampoo burns my scalp and razors jut from the pages of my books. No longer content to mull around and lurk in corners, it is now actively making my life miserable.
Ch 9
Eventually, I had no choice but to venture out to the local supermarket and replace my now useless toiletries and food. I had become accustomed to it staying at my home, content to violate my private space, but I always held a suspicion it would begin to follow me. My fear was confirmed.
I drove to the store, did my shopping, and checked out. Nothing unusual happened. I walked outside. Nothing! I approached my car and believed to have seen it, but had not. I then glanced up and saw it.
It was far away. I do not know if it was making an attempt to hide, but it was there; it was there, looking at me, half-hidden behind a tree. Our eyes met, and I shivered. It appeared pleased, then it crawled its thin body back behind the tree, paused, and stuck its head out to continue watching me. The eyes were even, but they seemed to be getting larger, and darker, and more vacant; even from the distance between the two of us they stood out much against the bleached skin that surrounded them.
It smiled, but showed no teeth. I suppose it did not want to show them in public. I wondered what it had planned for me. I blinked and it was gone.
I paused for a moment, worried it would appear somewhere closer, but nothing happened. I then packed up the groceries and returned home. I stopped, retrieved my mail, pulled up, parked, got out, glanced up, and a light happened to catch my eye; I saw a foreign light my bedroom window. Faintly silhouetted against my window was the thing, staring intently down at me, shuddering against the glass, violating my room. I’m sure it had been watching the entire time, waiting for me to notice. In silhouette it looked so much like a person now, though was really little more than a lumpy childlike skeleton with enormous dark eyes.
If I killed it, would the authorities come back and blame me for killing a person, I wondered? I wondered. I wondered if it would try to snake a hand through the hole in the screen and reach for me.
Ch 11
Last night I sat on the couch flipping channels, desperate for any distraction or escape. The phone was next to me, but I was too afraid to call anyone for help, lest what happened before be found out. It must be said, though, that the pressure was becoming unbearable.
It sat in his corner again, sat in a sphinx-like position despite looking so human now, and just as I hit the one channel with static for the umpteenth time the thing in the corner began to whisper. I ignored it and changed the channel, hoping it would shut up. Its whispering merely grew in speed and intensity, and while it did not move, its eyes reflected the television screen and widened and its small chest heaved as it rattled off. I turned up the volume and began flipping rapidly, infomercial then sports channel then a cartoon, then suddenly his face was on the screen, tongue lolling out and blue face gasping for air and mercy and the thing was in front of me and in front of the television, facing me, gibbering and staring and I screamed over it and the television and the room went dark
Ch 12
This is too much, and I understand now the extent of blind terror the idea of certain death instinctively brings about in people. I have known the thrill of killing and the fear of being caught, but neither the idea of retribution nor of my life itself ending were ever real to me.
The mere thought of this thing, however, drives a black and bleak and cold and nearly unbearable fear to my core, let alone the feeling that I get when I feel it mulling about my room at night or when I awake to find small bruises, cuts, and white chalky smudges on my person.
I want to kill it, but I don’t know what would happen if I tried. I don’t know what to do.
Ch 13
I’ll say it here. Maybe it will help. It has been a while, but
I killed him.
It’s all clean, but I did it. He looked at me and looked at me and looked at me and would not stop. I should have known he would never stop. I knocked him down and strangled him until his throat collapsed under my thumbs and I dumped the body somewhere far away.
At first I had nightmares about him screaming then wheezing then his eyes and skin bursting like blood and confetti. I had them every night.
Then the police left, and I was left to read in my warm bed with my cat sleeping alongside me or pawing at the pages. The investigation ceased, the nightmares ceased, and I was at peace. Then the humming started.
The humming and the warmth all over and I can see its reflection in my computer monitor
Ch 14
My home, my bed, my person, and now my dreams. I’m having nightmares again, but they’re much, much worse. In my dreams it’s there. It has no eyes, but it stands tall and with its wide mouth and talks to me and laughs at me and screams and looks ready to devour me. Sometimes I understand its words and sometimes they’re incomprehensible, but whenever I wake up I cannot remember their precise nature. The dreams feel dark and hot and cramped and I wonder if anything worse could possibly happen to me if I die.
I wonder if it would depend on if it killed me or if someone else did.
Ch 15
Maybe I will do it. I have a pistol in a box in my bedroom closet, and if I were to fling the thing from its watching place down the stairs it would give me enough time to run and grab the gun.
I just wouldn’t be sure who to use it on.
I have worried about the thing reading these entries and figuring out my intentions, but I have not seen any evidence of it examining the keyboard or monitor. I comfort myself in regards to this matter by believing that its form of comprehension is much too primal and hunger-driven to allow for much complex thought.
Maybe I’m a fool.
Maybe it knows everything.
Regardless, it’s in my dreams and my brain and every waking moment and I am determined to end it.
Ch 16
I found my solution. I purchased a shotgun. If we’re both within range when I pull the trigger, it should do the trick. Wish me luck.
Ch 17
Why didn’t I die
Why didn’t it die
Ch 18
I don’t understand
I cleaned the carpet after before but now it’s soaked with blood
I
wonder if with the way my head is, looking at it is like a mirror because
I bled like a person and the thing bled black and it’s all everywhere and I haven’t looked in the mirror but I blasted half of its skull off and there’re bits of red and blue flesh everywhere and it’s still looking at me leering at me smiling at me spurting and bleeding at me
the keyboard is covered in my blood and I don’t know how long I can keep this up
I only have one idea left
I think I am going to go
far away.
—-
Written above are the journal entries of Christopher Young, found dead in a rock quarry next to the mutilated, partially decomposed, and recently moved remains of Shaun Dawes, his young neighbor and (former) friend. Dawes’s death was one of head trauma followed by strangulation, but Young’s cause of death is as of yet undetermined, though he was malnourished and his hygienic state was in vast disrepair. In fact, thanks to his physical and mental state leading up to his death, it is uncertain how he managed to drive the relatively great length from his home to the quarry in which he ended up.
It is also worth mentioning that neither fresh blood nor any of the firearms Young mentions in his writing were found in his home; all our forensics team found were older traces on the carpet and mantle corner that likely belonged to Dawes. We’re currently probing autopsy reports for any information they can provide on Young’s mental health from Dawes’s death onward and requesting further investigation by every department involved. All we have to go on in regards to Young apart from his cadaver’s physical state and these entries is virtually nil; as of my writing this, we haven’t come up with a single witness or piece of evidence outside of what I mentioned above, apart from an interview with “Daryl”, Christopher’s brother.
To be frank with you, even said interview with was fruitless; he was distraught at the death of his younger brother, but said that Young seemed perfectly content and had claimed he was going on a vacation and that his cat would only need to be taken care of for about a week minimum. The two bodies were found five days later in the quarry, meaning that if the older of the Young brothers is being truthful (and isn’t afflicted with his brother’s psychosis), Young’s physical and mental deterioration happened much more quickly than we had first assumed, and much more quickly than should have been possible.
I’ll keep you updated as we learn more, of course. It’s all very strange.
Thanks for the help.
Yours Truly, —– —–
—— Police Department

Friday, September 24, 2010

Sleep Paralysis

The first time I can recall this happening to me was when I was very young and I had a terrifying nightmare. I “woke up” but I noticed I couldn’t open my eyes. I knew I was awake and aware of my body lying in my bed but I was also aware of a dream happening simultaneously in my mind where I was being chased by this enormous demon. I knew that if I could just open my eyes the dream would end and this creature would go away, but it was like something was holding my eyelids shut and I couldn’t move any other part of my body. Just like the Stanford article says, I could make only little whimpering noises and only if I really *really* struggled to get one out. This goes on until my mom who is one room over finally hears me and enters the room.
She says that she tried to wake me for quite a while without me responding and that I was acknowledging her questions and such with little whimpers but I couldn’t do much else. Eventually she successfully woke me. This is making more and more sense as I write this actually because I recall always asking her to sleep on the floor of my room at night because I was terrified of having a nightmare. (Never monsters or robbers or anything, just nightmares.) Anyway, this happened to me in different ways later on in life the most common one I recall was whenever I was sick with a high fever. I would have my eyes open unable to do anything but stare at the wall in front of me and groan and listen to these voices arguing. I never knew what they were arguing about since it was always muffled, but I always knew they were yelling about me. I know it didn’t take place in reality because I’ve always lived with just my mom and she never had visitors over. It was also several voices I heard and they sounded very close by almost just out of my field of vision. This was usually broken by having my mom enter the room or just simply falling back to sleep.
As long as I can remember I was always *very* reluctant to go to sleep like any kid, but I usually had difficulty sleeping and it took me a long while to be able to fall asleep without anybody in the room with me. I always had very intense dreams and very intense nightmares and later in life I developed a bit of insomnia.
My teenage years involved me trying to stay awake as long as possible until finally passing out after a night without sleep after school at home from exhaustion. I was diagnosed with depression a couple of times and was on and off antidepressants as I struggled with my sleep.
Eventually I discovered that having some type of noise as I slept (when I was younger it came in the form of lullaby tapes played by my mom) kept me from having the nightmares and what I now know as sleep paralysis. This worked for quite awhile until I got older and began to wonder about what had happened to me when I was younger.
I talked to a psychiatrist about it and was actually diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually a severe Panic Disorder. I didn’t believe I had schizophrenia and never really have believed it. I resent that diagnosis since it made my life difficult as hell and actually ruined several relationships in my life.
Eventually I said screw the medication and screw the shrinks and just threw it all out and I have been in perfect health since then.
But… I still sleep with a fan running every night, and I can’t CAN’T sleep without it. I tried it once recently and I awoke with a nightmare rather quickly after falling asleep…
Tonight I’ll probably still sleep with a fan on, but now that I’ve shared my story… Has this ever happened to anybody else? The Wikipedia page on this condition shows that it’s prevalent all over the world and almost every culture has some type of folklore attached to it.
I find it strange that noises generally prevent me from dreaming at all and probably prevent the sleep paralysis right along with it. Also, many scientists use this condition to explain things such as alien abductions and reports of demonic possession and the like. Is it science explaining the paranormal or the paranormal explaining science?
From what I’ve read there isn’t a general consensus on why this happens other than stress and disrupted sleep patterns. But in my case it felt as though it was the sleep paralysis that caused the stress and disrupted sleep patterns. It also seems linked with panic disorders. (That I’m convinced was a correct diagnosis amidst the butchery.)
The constant hallucinations associated with this for me still concern me however, despite that they were likely dream induced. Their consistency worries me and the paranormal folklore that surrounds them disturbs me.
Am I crazy? Is this paranormal? Or just a plain and simple another psychological phenomenon that is unexplainable?


http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Its there

Go to any mirror and put your hand against the glass. Don’t worry, nothing will grab you. Wait. Sometimes it takes half a day, sometimes it takes a moment. But you’ll yank your hand away when you feel it.
Worms or centipedes, who knows? All pressed in tight like there’s no more room on that side, wriggling against your skin. When you pull back, the glass is the same and you’ll be unharmed.
But now you know it’s there.

Try This

Perhaps you have heard the legend of the supposed “holy hour” that occurs on certain days of the year: Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, November 1, and the first of both February and August, each day between 7 and 8 am (not including Daylight Savings Time, mind you, because it is a human invention and supernatural entities do not observe it). When you were a kid, this was the hour in which you probably opened Christmas presents and started tearing apart your Easter basket after dragging your parents out of bed, and much to your parents’ chagrin refused to eat anything but leftover Halloween candy from the day before for breakfast; however, more than likely you had never gone into a darkened room in preparation for this ritual. However, perhaps you’ve heard others speak of it.
Go into a room with a mirror, preferably one without windows, between 7 and 8 am on any one of the dates listed above. You do not have to perform this ritual alone; if you have any friends, you may in fact want them to come in with you to help you perform specific tasks outlined that are difficult to do in the dark. (Important: The only light in this ritual must come from either a candle or a lighter - some tiny, flickering flame. Save for this light, you must be in total darkness - otherwise there is a strong possibility that you won’t see anything, hence the suggestion that you perform this in a room without windows. However, it all depends on your own sensitivity to the paranormal; when my friend performed this ritual last November 1, we had to shut all the doors in the hallway first because the light from the doorcrack kept distracting him.) Make sure that you perform this ritual in comfortable clothing - you want to avoid any unnecessary
discomfort.
Once inside this room, close the door and light your candles and/or your lighter. This/these flame(s) must remain lit until the end of the ritual, although I know of people who have chickened out and blown the flames out which instantly ends it and generally leaves them wallowing in their own cowardice for days on end afterwards. You may have your friend(s) hold or light the candles or lighter if desired, as long as the flame is reflected in the mirror. Now begin chanting some Christian prayer - any one will do, even the “Sinner’s Prayer” on the back of those Chick Tracts, as long as it mentions God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost at least once - as you stare into the mirror. It must be the same prayer and, again, the number of times you need to chant this prayer varies depending on your own sensitivty to the paranormal, but generally twenty times is more than enough. (My friend chose Our Father, and he needed to chant it fifteen or sixteen times.)
When you have chanted for long enough, one of your flames will flare and then change color. (Ours turned red, but I’ve heard of flames turning blue, white, and even green and lavender before.) A few seconds later, an image will appear in the mirror of the archangel Michael - he looks a lot like the usual images of Christian angels, only he has this really nasty burn mark on the left side of his face. Also, he has really deep-set eyes.
Bow to Michael; again, it is important to make sure you don’t accidentally put out your flame(s) unless you wish to end the ritual. After you bow to him, Michael will ask you if you are entirely certain that you want to perform this ritual. I can’t really describe the voice, but it’s not the sort of voice you’d expect an archangel to have: it’s kind of scratchy and overall not very pleasant to listen to, and he has a faint accent of indeterminable origin.
After you answer yes, Michael will explain the conditions of the ritual: he will ask you seven questions, and if you answer at least four of them right, he will either allow or a conversation with a deceased loved one or give a living one immortality; however, if you answer three or fewer of them correctly, he will slit your throat and you will die right then and there. (I’ll admit that I actually do not remember any of the seven riddles from when my friend did this, but I do remember that they were rather arcane - i.e., not the type of riddles you would find in a riddle book - and he seemed to be fully aware of this. Also, if I remember correctly, each one consisted of seven words.) My friend never did well at riddles, so you can imagine that he didn’t get any right, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Michael, as by the end of the ritual he had this big, terrifying Joker-like smile on his face.
After you are finished answering the riddles (you only get one try at each, but he lets you think), Michael gives you the score. Again, if you answer three or fewer right, he smites you. While he smites you, he says something in the angel language - Enochian, I believe it’s called - and you’re left writhing on the floor in agony. My friend was screaming his head off when the ritual was over, and he started speaking in tongues; it was horrible and I’m currently in therapy for this. Really fucking horrifying.
But I digress. Anyway, the candles all went out, and the lighter he had me hold died at the exact same time. I left the room feeling dizzy, and passed out on my bed in my own vomit. Strange thing is I woke up eight hours later and went into the bathroom I performed the ritual in, and found no trace of my dead friend in there. Strange, I live alone and all my doors and windows were locked, there was no sign of anyone having broken into my apartment, the landlady was on vacation, and no matter how hard I looked in the bathroom I could not find a single trace of my friend’s blood anywhere.
A few days later, I got a call from his roommate, asking about my friend. According to his roommate, my friend disappeared on Halloween night and hadn’t been seen at all since. He had called all around, asking my friend’s parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, people like the guy at the convenient store where my friend bought his cigarettes, and even his old teachers from grade school if they knew anything about his whereabouts, only to get a resounding “no.” He decided to call me because apparently I was the only person out of the people both he and my friend knew that he hadn’t called yet. So I told him exactly what happened, down to my friend’s body mysteriously disappearing. He didn’t believe me, and reported me to the police, but, when the police came to investigate, they did not find any trace of my friend either, not even his DNA. It’s almost like he never came over my house and instead chose to fall off the face of the earth and leave his friends
behind.
On a side note, I’ve heard that someone in fact, by some miracle, did get all of the riddles right, and they wished for the immortality of whoever. However, the next day their loved one was not alive. They, much like my friend, were mysteriously spirited away, only this time on the wall of their room there was a message in some mysterious language, written in blood. Perhaps only God and the archangel Michael know what has become of the two of them.
//
Credited to M. Collins.

Mummy Dolls