This trail cam horror story begins with a missing wool jacket at a campsite in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and an animal I was sure had dragged it away. Then I got home and looked at what my camera caught at 2:13 in the morning. I lost my dad’s jacket on a camping trip in September … Read more
This creepy geocaching story starts with an old ammo can on a ridge in western North Carolina and a paper log that should have been ordinary. Every name in that log was different, but every line was written by the same hand, and the last one was written for me. I’ve been geocaching for six … Read more
I paid four dollars for a dead sexton’s diary, and it turned into the strangest small town mystery story I’ve ever pieced together from paper. In 1974 the church bell in Elmfors rang by itself at 3 a.m. on three nights, and the next day the pastor’s grown daughter was gone. I paid four dollars … Read more
My grandmother’s deathbed confession is the only small town horror story I know that comes with time stamps. Every fire in our town started on a Tuesday, and the fire chief everybody loved always called it in before anyone else saw smoke. My grandmother told me the worst thing she ever did eleven days before … Read more
This neighborhood watch horror story starts with a pecan pie and a friendly question about what time my truck left in the morning. By fall I had seen the captain’s notebook, and I knew why the families who “moved away” never came back for their things. The first thing our neighborhood watch captain ever asked … Read more
I never once suspected someone living in my attic, because the house binder told me there was nothing up there. The note was friendly, neat and helpful, and it was written by the one person who needed me to believe it. When you take a six-month job in a city where you don’t know a … Read more
This home intruder story starts with a bowl of candy I left on my porch on Halloween night. By morning somebody had filled it back up, and my doorbell camera swore nobody had walked up to my door. I work twelve-hour nights as a respiratory therapist, which means I miss most holidays, and Halloween is … Read more
This trunk or treat horror story happened on Halloween night on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere. I pulled into a church lot to ask for directions, and every car there was ready for kids, except there were no people at all. It was Halloween, around ten at night. I was driving back … Read more
This scary halloween story starts with a flyer in my mailbox and a house that went all out for trick-or-treaters. I filled out the raffle sheet like everybody else, and on November first, the prize came to my door. I don’t usually do Halloween. I live alone in a duplex, I work early, and I’m … Read more
This haunted hayride story comes from the fall I spent jumping out of the dark for twelve dollars an hour. We had nine actors on the roster that night, and on the last run I counted ten. I worked one season at a haunted hayride outside of Lancaster. It was a farm that did pumpkins … Read more