QuietDread 
Growing up in West Virginia, I heard a lot of Appalachian mountain scary stories. Lights on the ridge, voices that call your name, things you don’t whistle at after dark. I never believed any of them. Then I went mushroom hunting alone in the Monongahela National Forest, and somebody marked my trail behind me with … Read more
I’ve driven a truck for twenty-six years, and I’ve heard a lot of trucker scary stories at a lot of truck stop counters. Most of them are made up. This one isn’t. Somebody on my CB radio counted down the mile markers to where he was waiting for me. Most scary stories from truck drivers … Read more
This small town crime story was never in any newspaper. It’s about a diner on a bus route in western Nebraska, three passengers who got off for pie and never got back on, and the man our town blamed for it. My mother waitressed at that diner for eleven years. She told me the rest … Read more
Most scary apartment stories are about noises through the wall. Mine is about my robot vacuum, and the obstacle it kept bumping into in the middle of my empty living room while I was at work. I know most scary stories to read online are made up, so I’m going to tell this one exactly … Read more
My Facebook Marketplace horror story started with a lamp. A nice man bought it for twenty dollars, carried it to his truck himself, and asked me which room it had been in. Over the next six weeks, he bought something from every room in my house. It reads like one of those creepy short stories … Read more
This 911 dispatcher horror story is about one call. It came in three nights in a row at 3:02 a.m., always the same whisper, always from inside the building I was sitting in. Dispatchers collect terrifying tales to tell at night. This is the one I don’t tell new hires. I was a 911 dispatcher … Read more
Most ghost hunting stories you see online are fake. I know because I used to make them. My friend Corey and I ran a small ghost hunting channel for two years, and we were not above a little creative editing. But the night we spent at an old county poor farm in Indiana, our recorder … Read more
People always ask wilderness rangers for scary park ranger stories. I usually tell them about the bear that took a whole cooler or the guy who tried to hike out in flip-flops. I don’t tell this one. This is the empty tent that moved closer to my cabin every night. Other rangers trade park ranger … Read more
I didn’t know payphones still rang until the one at a rest area in southern Oregon rang right as I walked past it. That’s how my rest stop horror story starts. A man’s voice on the other end said, “You’re the white Civic. Don’t go back to your car yet.” It sounds like a scary … Read more
Every fisherman on Kell Lake has heard the small town ghost story about the lights under the water. On calm nights in late fall, people say you can see a yellow window glowing far down below the boat, right where the town of Fenwick used to be. I volunteer at the county archive, and I’m … Read more