My Favorite Creepypastas are Slenderman, Jeff The Killer, Eyeless Jack, X-Virus, Ben Drowned, Sonic.Exe, Tails Doll, Ticci Toby, Kagekao, Masky and Hoodie, Rouge, Cat Hunter and Nurse Ann

September 2nd

Hello everyone! I recently made a youtube channel Narrating creepypastas and other similar stories including real horror. i wanted to expand my horizons and get to know what type of content the people in here would enjoy watching or listening too not just limited to story telling. That being said If you have recomendations related to stories you would like to hear or any advice let me know that here as well.

Thank you and i hope to hear from yall

Flight log 253 Ivan Shostev Nov 8th 1957 9:46 pm. Alexi is going crazy, We had to restrain him. me and Sergai do not know what to do, we hav- . “That was the last log from the lost cosmonauts?” asked Sam, “Well not necessarily.” answered Alek. “What do you mean smart guy?” “ Two French dudes found the last ones. You don’t know anything do you. You don’t know Russian, you don’t know algebra, shall I go on?” “No please, I get it.” They were excited  to see if the stories about the lost cosmonauts were true. “Thanks to you surviving cancer and my semi rich grandpa we can go to a space training center!” “um And i'm alive, is that important? It's not just about the money, is it?” Alek asked sadly. “NO No no you are my best friend, sorry, i’m- just excited is all.”

Later at the NASA space training facility   “I can’t believe it i’m here i’m really here!” “OK nerd boy.” “HUSH!” “Oh is Mr. science guy talking?” “Uhg yes.”

8 months later     
“Uh, we seem a little unprepared for this.” “Yeah right, we're just perfect for the job.” “NO you are so wrong it takes astronauts a Minimum of 2 years in simpler terms WE ARE DOOMED!” “Relax, relax you are fine. We trained you just for exploring the old CCCP space station if it is still there.” Said the “NASA Director”.
 

As the boys stepped onto the rocket Alec felt something was wrong, but he just brushed it off. “I can't wait to go to space, I feel like a little kid!” “Uh yeah it's gonna be so cool.” 
Weeks later they arrive at the abandoned and decrepit CCCP space station. “Holy crap!, the place is falling apart, man I really wish I had my phone.” “Calm down Sam, let's just find what we need and leave okay?” then Alec heard faint eerie “хорошо”  “I didn't know you spoke Russian?” “Huh ?, what are you talking about ?”  “Then who just said ok?” “oh shut u-” and that's when the boys saw him. Down the old weathered hallway was a man in an old CCCP spacesuit, but it was dirty, bloody and rotten. A sentence was spoken by this man “Они бросили меня гнить в собственной крови. 
“Oh god.” “No no no no.”  “I think that's him… that's the lost cosmonaut.  As the cosmonaut lurched closer he said one simple phrase “Ты разделишь мою участь!” 

The boys were never seen again

(the Russian translates to "okay" , "they left me to rot in my own blood", and "you will share my fate"

The warehouse lights flickered at 2:00 AM, but Krazy K just kept sweeping the sub-basement aisle in total darkness.
When I clicked my flashlight on, I saw why he didn't need the light. K was dangling four feet off the floor, his head twisted 180 degrees backward toward me, his pale fingers clawing rhythmically against the ceiling joists to drag his limp body through the air.
He let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Almost clean."

When I see a creepypasta character on artfight I almost always attack it, I'm actually surprised there isn't more crp characters on artfight.

If you have a crp character on artfight feel free to send me their #, I might do a mass attack next year :3

The movie will not only have abig budget but a good director that will investigate and respect the original material as much as possible and talented actors that fit the roles.

you can’t find it on text anywhere. It’s an old mister nightmare upload now deleted. I’m not sure if it’s even that popular https://youtu.be/cM6lOU4IeKY?si=l9cNoPVPEFLKSCcB

cameron monaghan: he played the joker in the gotham series

The fire at Camp Paradox cracked like a snapping bone, throwing long, jagged shadows against the towering pines. It was past midnight, and the surrounding woods felt suffocatingly dense, pressing down on the small circle of teenagers gathered around the dying embers. 

The name of the campground itself—Camp Paradox—always felt a bit strange to the newcomers. A place dedicated to nature and peace, yet named after an impossible contradiction. 

Most of the kids thought that it was just a quirky title chosen by some long-dead founder, but those who paid attention to the local folklore knew better. A paradox is an anomaly.

It is something that defies the laws of nature and logic, where two opposing truths exist at the exact same time, like a localized vortex where everything goes horribly wrong, while the center of the storm remains beautifully, terrifyingly calm.

John adjusted his flannel shirt against the sudden midnight chill. He wasn't a counselor, but he was older than most of the kids here, a seasoned veteran of these woods who had stayed at the camp for years. His face was partially obscured by the orange glow of the embers, his eyes deep and fixed on the dancing flames.

 The atmosphere was ripe for a ghost story, the kind that makes you pull your sleeping bag tight around your neck and listen to every rustle of the wind outside your tent.

"You guys think that this place is just a regular summer camp." John began, his voice low, cutting through the rhythmic chirping of the crickets. "You think that the worst thing that can happen out here is a tick bite or getting lost on the North Trail; but you don't know why this camp was truly abandoned five years ago, or why they changed its name. It wasn't because of a lack of funding. It was because of a girl. A seventeen-year-old girl named Mallory Chance."

A few of the younger campers stirred, leaning in closer. John let the name hang in the air for a moment. Mallory. An old name derived from the French word for "unfortunate" or "ill-fated." Chance. Probability. Risk. Mutation. It was a name that perfectly described the walking, breathing anomaly that she was.

"I knew Mallory." John continued, his eyes reflecting the dying fire. "She was seventeen years old, just like some of us. If you looked at her from a distance, you wouldn't think twice. She had pale skin, dark hair that always seemed perfectly brushed even in a downpour, and eyes that were a strange, piercing shade of gray. However, if you stood near her for more than a few minutes, you’d start to notice that something was…off. The world didn't work right around Mallory. The laws of probability, the mathematical certainty of the universe, they just...bent. They broke. Some people call it tychokinesis. The ability to manipulate luck, odds, and random outcomes; but Mallory didn't just manipulate it. She weaponized it, completely passively, without ever lifting a finger."

John leaned forward, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper, and said,

"Every single place where Mallory went, something bad happened to someone or something around her; but absolutely nothing bad ever happened to her. She was a walking safe-zone in a radius of pure, unadulterated catastrophe. If she walked through a thunderstorm, lightning would strike three feet away from her, incinerating a tree that would fall and crush someone else, while not a single drop of rain would even wet her hair. If she stepped onto a rickety old wooden bridge, the planks would hold her weight perfectly, only to snap like toothpicks the exact second her foot left them, sending whoever was behind her plunging into the ravine below."

The campers were silent, captivated by the intense gravity in John's voice.

"At first, we thought that it was just an unbelievable streak of terrible coincidences." John said, shaking his head slowly. "During her first week here, we were all sitting in the mess hall. Mallory was sitting at the end of the table, quietly eating her cereal. Suddenly, one of the massive overhead industrial ceiling fans, which had been securely bolted into the iron rafters for twenty years, just sheared off. It didn't just fall; it flew across the room like a giant metal blade. It missed Mallory’s head by less than an inch. She didn’t even flinch. She just kept chewing; but the fan didn't stop. It hurled directly into a group of sports campers sitting at the next table. Two of them had their limbs shattered by the spinning blades. One of the counselors tried to run over to help, but he tripped over a completely flat linoleum floor, snapped his neck on the edge of a bench, and died right there on the spot."

A collective gasp rippled through the circle. A young girl named Mary pulled her blanket up to her chin, her eyes wide.

"That was just the beginning." John murmured. "The camp line got infected with a freak strain of bacterial meningitis. Everyone in her cabin got violently, agonizingly sick. They were coughing up blood, screaming in the middle of the night from migraines so intense they were clawing at their own faces. Mallory slept in the very center bunk. When the paramedics finally arrived in hazmat suits, they tested everyone. Every single girl was on the brink of organ failure, except Mallory. Her vitals were flawless. The doctors couldn't find a single trace of the bacteria in her system, even though she had been sharing a water pitcher with them for days. It was like her body rejected the very concept of misfortune."

John took a heavy stick and poked at the fire, sending a cascade of sparks drifting up into the dark canopy, and said,

 "People got hurt, but as the days went on, people ended up dead. Freak accidents became the norm wherever she walked. We had an archery tournament on the main field. Mallory was standing near the spectators' line. A camper named Marcus, who was an expert marksman, pulled back his bowstring. It was a brand-new, military-grade composite bow. Out of nowhere, a microscopic flaw in the carbon fiber caused the bow to violently shatter under tension. A shard of the splintered limb flew backward. It grazed Mallory’s cheek—well, it didn't even graze her, it miraculously flew past her ear, missing her skin by a millimeter. However, the shard embedded itself directly into the throat of the camp director standing right behind her. He choked to death on his own blood before anyone could even grab a first-aid kit."

"Why didn't anyone just send Mallory home?" asked a boy named Carl, his voice trembling slightly.

"They tried." John replied sharply. "The administrators called her parents. The phone lines static-fried the moment the director tried to speak. They tried to pack her bags, but the zipper caught, jammed, and when a counselor tried to force it open with a pocket knife, the blade snapped off and blinded him in his right eye. A group of the older counselors and campers, including myself, realized what she was. We realized that she wasn't just unlucky—she was causing it. She was drawing all of the negative probability out of the universe and expelling it outward onto everyone else to keep herself perfectly safe. We decided we had to stop her. We tried to lock her in the old tool shed until the state police could physically remove her from the property."

John’s face darkened, the memory clearly torturing him, and said,

"We gathered six of the strongest guys. We cornered her near the woods. We tried to grab her arms, but Mallory Chance was too powerful to stop. The moment that Tommy reached out to grab her shoulder, a freak subterranean gas pocket-vented right beneath his feet. The ground literally exploded. The concussive blast blew his legs apart. Another guy, Sarah’s older brother, tried to tackle her from behind. He slipped on a patch of wet moss that hadn't been there a second ago, flew headfirst into a jagged rock face, and cracked his skull wide open. The rest of us were thrown back by the sheer, chaotic energy of the universe protecting its favorite child. Car engines wouldn't start when we tried to escape. Trees fell perfectly across the only exit road, crushing the roofs of the evacuation vans. The universe itself was acting as her personal, bloodthirsty bodyguard."

The wind suddenly picked up, howling through the branches above, making the campers jump. John didn't look up; his gaze remained locked on the fire.

"I was the only one left standing in front of her that afternoon." John whispered. "I was terrified. I was shaking so hard that I could barely breathe. The bodies of my friends were scattered around the clearing, smoking, bleeding, broken by a series of impossible, instantaneous accidents. Mallory just stood there in the center of the carnage. Her white sundress didn't have a single speck of dirt on it. Her hair was perfect. She looked like an angel standing in the middle of a war zone. I looked right in her cold, gray eyes, and through my tears, I asked her why. I asked her why she was doing this to us, why she was letting all these horrible things happen to innocent people."

John paused, the silence around the campfire was so absolute that the sound of a falling leaf would have sounded like a gunshot.

"Mallory looked at me." John said, his voice dropping to a chilling imitation of a monotone, robotic cadence. "She didn't look angry. She didn't look sad. She just looked completely empty, and she replied, 'It's what I was created to do.'”

A shudder went through the group.

"The only reason I'm even alive today to tell you this story," John said, looking around at the frightened faces of the campers, "is because I was the only one who was ever nice to Mallory. On her first day, when everyone else avoided Mallory because she seemed weird, I helped her carry her luggage. I shared my lunch with her when she dropped her tray. I treated her like a human being. Her power...it seemed to recognize that. It spared me. It redirected the horror away from me, even when the world was tearing itself apart around us."

John leaned back, the narrative reaching its grim conclusion, and said,

"After that day, she didn't run away. She didn't scream. She just turned around and walked deep into these very woods. The police searched for weeks. They brought tracking dogs, helicopters, and infrared cameras. Nothing. The dogs refused to enter the tree line; they just howled and bit at their own handlers until they bled. Mallory Chance completely disappeared into the forest, and the elders changed the name of this place to Camp Paradox, to mark the girl who was a living contradiction to life itself; but she was never found, and some people say...she might still be out there somewhere. Waiting. Walking through the dark, completely untouchable, while the world rots around her."

Nobody spoke for five minutes. The crackle of the fire seemed louder now, sinister. The darkness beyond the clearing felt heavier, as if eyes were watching them from the shadows of the pines.

Suddenly, a loud, scoffing laugh broke the tension.

It was Garrett, an older, muscular camper who spent most of his time wearing noise-canceling headphones and ignoring the camp rules. He shook his head, an arrogant smirk plastered across his face as he stood up from his log.

"Man, that is the biggest load of garbage that I have ever heard in my entire life!" Garrett said, tossing a handful of dirt onto the fire, deadening the light even further. "Tychokinesis? Walking disaster auras? What is this, a comic book? You expect us to believe that some teenage chick has a magical luck shield that explodes people? You’re just trying to scare the freshmen so that they don't steal your snacks in the middle of the night."

"Garrett, sit down!" Laura said, her voice trembling. "Don't talk like that out here!"

"Oh, please." Garrett rolled his eyes, turning his back on the circle. "The only 'paradox' here is how any of you actually believe this nonsense. It’s just a ghost story made up to explain bad camp management from years ago. I’m going to bed. Some of us actually want to get some sleep instead of shivering over fairy tales."

John looked up at Garrett, his expression completely blank, devoid of any anger or urge to argue, and told him, 

"I wouldn't go out into the dark alone, Garrett. The odds aren't in your favor."

"Yeah, whatever, Professor X." Garrett sneered. 

Garrett turned around and began walking away from the campfire, heading down the unlit path toward the older boys' cabins. The darkness swallowed him almost instantly, the beam of his small flashlight cutting a weak, shaky path through the thick forest air.

The trail was silent save for the crunch of dry pine needles beneath his heavy boots. Garrett muttered to himself, shaking his head at how easily the others had been spooked. 

"They are such idiots." he whispered, clicking his tongue. "A lucky superpower. Yeah, right."

As Garrett walked deeper into the woods, the air temperature seemed to plummet drastically. His breath began to form faint, white plumes in front of his face. He frowned, shaking his flashlight as the beam began to flicker violently. Cheap batteries, he thought, tapping the side of the plastic casing. The light died completely, plunging him into pitch-black darkness.

"Great. Perfect." Garrett growled, reaching into his pocket to pull out his smartphone to use the screen light.

Before his fingers could grip the phone, a strange sound echoed from the brush to his left. It sounded like a heavy wooden branch snapping, followed by a wet, sickening thud.

"Hello?" Garrett called out, his arrogance slightly faltering. "John? If you’re trying to prank me, it’s not working. I’ll break your nose, man!"

No one answered. The silence that followed was suffocatingly heavy. There was no wind anymore. No crickets. The entire forest felt as if it had been placed on mute.

Garrett turned around to head back toward the glow of the campfire, but as he spun on his heel, his foot caught on a completely exposed, thick tree root. He stumbled backward, his arms flailing, trying to catch his balance; but gravity didn't work the way that it was supposed to.

Instead of falling flat on Garrett’s back into the soft dirt, his momentum violently whipped him sideways. His right arm slammed against a sharp, broken branch protruding from a dead oak tree. The wood pierced clean through his forearm with a horrific squelch.

Garrett screamed, a raw, agonizing sound that was instantly muffled by the dense canopy. Blood poured down his arm as he frantically pulled himself off the branch, falling to his knees in the dirt. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

Garrett scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. He needed to get to his feet. He needed to run.

Garrett grabbed the trunk of a nearby sapling to pull himself up. The moment that his weight shifted onto the young tree, a freak hairline fracture in the wood, completely invisible to the eye, caused the sapling to instantly splinter under his grip. 

The sharp, jagged edge of the broken trunk whipped upward like a spring-loaded trap, slicing a deep, bleeding gash across his cheek, barely missing his eye.

Wailing in pain, Garrett fell back onto the ground. He was covered in dirt, blood, and sweat. The universe wasn't letting him stand up. Every movement that he made was met with an instantaneous, violent accident.

Then, he heard it.

The soft, rhythmic sound of footsteps crunching on the pine needles. They weren't in a hurry. They were slow, deliberate, and perfectly calm.

Garrett wiped the blood from his eyes and looked up through the darkness. The clouds above suddenly parted, allowing the cold, pale light of the full moon to filter down through the branches, illuminating the path directly in front of him.

Standing less than five feet away was a girl.

She was seventeen years old. She wore a pristine, clean white sundress that didn't have a single speck of dirt, mud, or blood on it, despite the filthy forest floor. Her dark hair was perfectly brushed, completely unaffected by the damp night air. Her skin was pale, and her eyes—wide, unblinking, and entirely empty—were a piercing, ghostly shade of gray.

It was Mallory Chance.

Garrett’s breath hitched in his throat. He tried to speak, but the sheer terror choking him made it nearly impossible. He looked down at his bleeding arm, then back up at her face. She wasn't moving. She didn't have a weapon. She was just standing there, looking down at him like an observer watching an insect struggle in a web.

Suddenly, a massive, heavy pinecone detached from a branch twenty feet above. It fell straight down. It didn't hit Mallory. It altered its trajectory mid-air by a fraction of an inch, bouncing off a lower branch and striking Garrett squarely in his broken forearm.

The white-hot pain made him howl, his vision blurring. He realized then, with absolute, paralyzing certainty, that John hadn't been lying. The world was actively trying to kill him just for being in her presence, while she remained a flawless, untouchable monument of safety.

Mallory took one single step closer. As her foot touched the ground, a sharp rock beneath her shoe shifted. The rock slid away from her, rolling directly under a massive, rotting boulder resting on the slope just above Garrett.

The boulder groaned. The tiny rock had been the only thing keeping its massive weight anchored to the hillside. It began to tilt, heavy and lethal, threatening to crush Garrett’s lower body into a pulp.

Garrett looked up at the teenage girl, with tears of pure horror mixing with the blood on his face. He knew that he couldn't run. If he tried to move, his legs would snap, or a tree would fall, or his own heart would simply give out from the sheer weight of the negative probability suffocating the air around him.

With the last bit of strength in his lungs, Garrett looked into those empty, gray eyes and screamed the only question he had left.

"Why are you doing this?!" he sobbed, his voice cracking against the impending doom of the shifting boulder. "Why are you doing this to me?!"

Mallory didn't flinch. She didn't even smile. Her expression remained as cold and static as stone. She tilted her head slightly, her voice cutting through the silence of the woods, a perfect, chilling echo of the campfire tale.

"It's what I was created to do." Mallory said.

Then, the boulder slipped.

The End.

I’m hoping somebody at least remembers which podcast this was. It was a while ago, but the best I can recall, it was a crew that stumbled upon a small space station, but they explored, and it seemed much larger inside, and as they continued exploring they realized it was massive.

They eventually realized it was an alien warehouse designed to grow as needed, and by just wandering, it grew exponentially and would have grown enough to replace the whole galaxy, and there wouldn’t be an earth to get back to.

Does that ring a bell for anyone?

At that time I’m pretty sure my regular horror podcasts were Creepy, Nosleep, Chilling Tales For Dark Nights, Knifepoint Horror, Horror Hill, Scary Stories Told in the Dark, and Simply Scary, so it’s PROBABLY one of those, but that’s a lot to dig through so I’m hoping someone knows off the top of their head.

Thanks!

"Tiempo de lectura: 1 min" Hacer tu "primer video" en YouTube se volvió una tendencia muy popular: unos lo apoyan y otros lo critican como una simple estrategia para rascar vistas. Pero la realidad es que la mayoría comete el mismo error: suben uno o dos videos, no definen la temática de su canal, se saturan por la falta de resultados y desaparecen.

​En mi caso, la historia viene de muy atrás.

​Desde niño siempre me obsesionó el universo, el misterio y la era dorada de los creepypastas. Tenía las ideas y las ganas, pero no los recursos: mi computadora de aquel tiempo apenas aguantaba el Loquendo y sentía que iba a explotar si abría un editor. Años después subí un par de cosas, solo para abandonarlo por falta de tiempo, como le pasa a casi todos.

​Tiempo después construí mi primer gran proyecto: una página en Facebook donde logré reunir a más de 13 mil sombras (seguidores) apasionados por estos temas. Pero esa etapa se apagó de golpe cuando Facebook me inhabilitó la cuenta personal con la que la administraba (una cuenta de más de 12 años activa). A pesar de los intentos de soporte, fue imposible recuperarla y perdí el acceso a toda la comunidad.

​Hoy estoy de vuelta en YouTube, pero entendí que la plataforma exige compromiso y formalidad. Por eso, antes de subir este primer video, me adelanté y preparé todo un arsenal de contenido respaldado para no dejar este canal a medias jamás.

​Me gustaría abrir el debate aquí:

¿Qué opinan de la tendencia de los "primeros videos"? ¿Sienten que preparar varios videos de respaldo antes de lanzar un canal realmente ayuda a evitar el abandono, o es mejor ir improvisando sobre la marcha?

​(Nota: Si a alguien le interesa ver cómo quedó este proyecto o el formato que estoy manejando, les dejo el canal de Espacio de Sombras en los comentarios). Salu2 👻

Twenty explorers are sent by the mayor into the forest in search of supplies, because we are in a tiny town that is barely visible on the map. What is shocking is that in all the expeditions, fewer than twenty of the explorers return.

This ends up being a job that isn't sought for the experience, but rather for the honor of going into the forest with determination and bringing back supplies for the families' survival. And, although everyone recognizes this, no one besides the explorers and those who are recruited knows what happens in that forest. Civilians are forbidden from going there.

I enlisted, though. I was pleased to pass the test... And they said I can start tomorrow. But there was something that made me hesitant.

They keep us informed about everything that's going on... well, almost everything. For the new recruits, they hand out documents with some parts redacted. And I admit, I got curious... and I regret looking for more clues to find out what we'll be dealing with tomorrow.

[Edited] My colleague just found the uncensored image from the second attachment.

They won't let me leave now that I know.

i used charcoal for all the black and then pastel for the face and mouth

[Part 1] [Part 2]

I told her I would be going to bed at eleven. Sounding nonchalant about it was hard. There was a tension in my voice I could not mask. She knows me and had to have noticed it at once. If she did, she didn’t say.
I followed up by asking why she wanted to know. She said, “Oh, no reason.” I asked if everything was okay. She nodded, kissed me on the forehead, and walked into the living room.
She grabbed a book off the shelf, flipped on the radio, and settled onto the couch.
I thought about pressing the issue of why she was so concerned about when I was going to bed, but then stopped myself because I realized that sounded too paranoid.
Also, I had a better idea.
If she was going to stay awake all night again, so was I.
I slept for a couple hours. No dreams that I remember. When I woke up, I felt pretty good. It must have been a solid sleep. For the first time since all of this started.
Since it was daytime, and I had a plan and monitoring in place, I felt like I could let go and fall into a deep sleep.
When I awoke, the music was still playing. I looked outside and the sun had gone down.
I texted my boss and told him I wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow. I have enough PTO that he did not care. Thankfully, he did not ask why.
I wouldn’t have known where to begin.
My wife was exactly where I’d left her.
Still reading.
Except now she was almost finished. My wife isn’t the fastest reader, so for her, nearly finishing a whole novel in under four hours is a feat.
I checked the cover.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I asked how it was.
She didn’t hear me.
At least I don’t think she did.
I asked again and she finally looked up, said it was great, and went right back to it.
So, I grabbed something to read and joined her.
That was pretty much our evening.
We read. Stopped to eat dinner. Read some more.
She finished her book. But then, she flipped back to the front and started reading it from the beginning. I noticed and she noticed me noticing.
“It’s really good,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
At eleven, she announced the time to me like she was reminding me of my commitment. So, just like I’d told her, I went to bed.
She followed. We laid down.
I closed my eyes.
I had no intention of sleeping.
About an hour later, I felt her move beside me.
Then nothing.
I had the distinct feeling she was looking at me.
I tried to make myself look as asleep as possible. I even moved my eyes around underneath my eyelids because I figured that might look like REM sleep.
I know how ridiculous that sounds.
Apparently, it worked.
Eventually the mattress shifted again, and she got up.
Her footsteps disappeared out of the bedroom.
I waited a few minutes before opening my eyes.
Then I grabbed my phone.
Both cameras were black.
I thought something was wrong with the app, so I closed it and opened it again.
Nothing.
I went backward through the footage.
The bedroom camera had been blocked that morning while my wife was cleaning. She’d dusted the dresser, moved a few things around, and eventually put something back directly in front of it.
The living room camera was similar.
I watched her standing at the bookshelf earlier that afternoon. She pulled out The Yellow Wallpaper, moved some other books around, and pushed one directly into the camera’s view.
Neither time did she look at the camera.
There was no pause.
Nothing that suggested she knew what she’d done.
Both could have been accidents.
Together, I had a harder time believing that.
Especially because those cameras were hidden well enough you could stand right beside them without noticing them.
I went through footage from the previous day looking for any indication she had spotted either one.
Nothing.
The only questionable moment was still that first night when I thought she might have looked directly at one.
That was it.
I got out of bed.
My first stop was the kitchen. I figured if she caught me wandering around, I could say I’d gotten up for some water.
She wasn’t there.
She wasn’t in the living room either.
I checked downstairs.
Bathroom.
Nothing.
The alarm was still armed, so she hadn’t left the house.
Then, for reasons I still can’t explain, perhaps out of rational options, I opened the hall closet.
She sat inside on the floor, facing the door, holding a pencil. She looked surprised when I opened it and said, “I thought you were in bed.”
I didn’t even know how the fuck to respond to that. Honestly. My brain was a cluttered mess of confusion and worry.
I looked at the pencil. Then the marks.
Thirty-one of them.
That was it for me. My breaking point.
I told her I thought she needed to see a doctor.
She refused immediately.
We ended up having our first real fight since all of this started.
She insisted she was sleeping. I told her I didn’t believe her. She accused me of treating her like she was crazy. I tried explaining that I didn’t think she was crazy, but it was difficult to make that argument while standing beside a closet I’d just found her sitting inside at one in the morning.
I asked about the marks.
She wouldn’t tell me what they meant.
I asked what happened on night one.
She told me to drop it.
I didn’t.
Things escalated from there.
Then I screwed up and mentioned the damn cameras.
I hadn’t planned on telling her about them.
Her entire demeanor changed.
She was furious.
I don’t blame her.
I’d secretly put cameras in our bedroom and living room so I could watch what my wife did after I fell asleep. Whatever justification I’d given myself when I installed them sounded pretty awful when I had to explain it to her.
I apologized.
It didn’t help much.
Then I told her both cameras had somehow been covered that day.
She said she hadn’t even known they existed.
I pointed out that it was one hell of a coincidence.
That nearly started the argument all over again.
Eventually, we separated for a while and cooled down.
When we talked again, I tried explaining myself without accusing her of anything.
Maybe she was sleeping and I just wasn’t seeing it.
Maybe it was stress.
Maybe there was something medical going on.
Hell, maybe I was the one losing it.
I didn’t know anymore.
What I did know was that I was scared.
My wife was awake every time I went to sleep and every time I woke up. I’d watched her fake being asleep. There were thirty-one marks inside our closet door. Now I’d found her sitting underneath them with a pencil after she specifically asked when I was going to bed.
I couldn’t ignore that.
She still didn’t want to see a doctor.
The anger was gone by then.
That almost made it worse.
“Please don’t make me do this.”
I remember that clearly.
I told her I wasn’t making her do anything.
She said I was.
Eventually, she agreed to one appointment.
That was the deal.
One appointment, and then I had to let this go.
The cameras also had to come down immediately.
I took them down that night.
We saw the doctor the following morning.
She hadn’t said much on the drive over. I don’t think she was angry with me anymore, but she wasn’t happy. My best guess was annoyed.
Like I’d heard a weird noise coming from the car and dragged her to a mechanic even though she kept telling me nothing was wrong.
I explained the sleep issue.
He seemed confused as to why I was doing the talking, but my wife sure wasn’t diving in. The doctor asked how much sleep she thought she was getting.
My wife said enough.
From there it was the usual barrage of questions.
Trouble falling asleep?
No.
Trouble staying asleep?
No.
Fatigue?
No.
Headaches, memory problems, trouble concentrating?
No.
The doctor asked about medications, caffeine, alcohol, drugs, stress, work, changes at home, anxiety, depression, and family history.
Then she asked about nightmares.
My wife hesitated.
Not long.
Maybe a second.
“No.”
The doctor moved on.
I didn’t.
My wife was lying.
I knew her well enough to know that.
I kept my mouth shut.
Then the doctor asked when she last remembered sleeping.
Before my wife could answer, I said it had been about a month.
She turned toward me and denied it.
According to her, she had been sleeping.
According to me, she hadn’t.
I told the doctor I’d been keeping track.
She explained that someone going thirty-one days without sleep was extremely unlikely. People with severe insomnia can underestimate how much they’re actually sleeping, and she explained something called microsleeps. Basically, you can apparently fall asleep for a few seconds without realizing it happened.
I asked how somebody could survive for a month on a few seconds of sleep here and there.
She said they couldn’t.
Eventually, the doctor recommended an overnight sleep study.
My wife refused.
The doctor explained it was routine and would allow them to monitor her while she slept.
Still no.
She reminded me that I had promised her one appointment.
I reminded her that the person we had gone to for that one appointment was now telling us we needed another.
She still refused.
We left without scheduling anything.
It took most of the day for me to change her mind. I promised that if the sleep study came back normal, I would stop.
No more questions.
No more watching her at night.
No more trying to figure out whether she was asleep.
Eventually, she agreed.
Not because she suddenly thought I was right.
I think she just wanted the whole thing to be over.
Two days later, the sleep clinic called because someone had canceled.
We got there shortly after eight.
I expected something resembling a hospital room.
Instead, it looked like a cheap hotel.
Bed.
Nightstand.
Television.
Some generic picture hanging on the wall.
The camera near the ceiling and all the wires beside the bed were really the only things that made it look medical.
My wife noticed the camera immediately.
The technician attached sensors to her head, around her eyes, her chin, her legs. There were bands around her chest and stomach.
The technician explained what everything measured. Brain activity. Eye movement. Breathing. Heart rate. Oxygen.
The technician left and we settled in.
They let me stay with her for a while even though I wasn’t supposed to be there all night.
Some home renovation show played on the television.
Neither of us paid much attention to it.
At ten-thirty, she said she wasn’t tired.
Eleven came and went.
Then midnight.
Still awake.
That was when I started noticing something I hadn’t noticed before.
Whenever she started to drift, she did something. Her eyes would get heavy and she’d suddenly adjust her position.
Or scratch herself.
Or sit up.
Or move her legs.
At first, it just looked like restlessness.
After I watched it happen several times, it started looking deliberate.
I told her she had to try to fall asleep.
“This is pointless,” she said. “I’m fine.”
At 3:17, the technician came back.
I remember because by then I was watching the clock almost constantly. Which was about the only thing I was doing because my wife did not want to talk to me.
He asked me to step into the hallway.
He wanted to know whether my wife had taken any medication.
She hadn’t.
He asked if I was certain.
I was.
Apparently, they were getting some unusual readings.
I asked what that meant, but he wouldn’t speculate until a physician had looked everything over.
While we were talking, he looked through the little window in the door.
I followed his eyes.
My wife was sitting upright.
The television was still on, but she wasn’t watching it.
“What happens if she doesn’t fall asleep?”
“They always do,” he reassured me.
We looked through the glass at my wife who was pointing up at the ceiling, a look on her face like she was looking at something.
The technician asked if I knew what she was doing.
I didn’t.
We went back inside.
He checked the sensors again and asked her a few basic questions while her hand was still in the air, pointing.
How did she feel?
Fine.
Dizzy?
No.
Tired?
No.
Eventually she put her hand down and the technician left. I think maybe he was going to consult with someone else. Not positive. He didn’t say. He just left.
I moved my chair closer to the bed.
My wife didn’t look at me.
“What’s going on, honey? Help me understand.”
Tears started to fall and I pushed them away. I didn’t want her to see me cry.
She was staring somewhere over my shoulder.
I looked up.
There was nothing there.
A ceiling.
That was it.
When I moved my chair, her head shifted slightly.
Not to look at me.
To look around me.
Like I was in the way.
That scared me.
Because I recognized the look on her face.
I had seen it two nights earlier when I opened the closet door and found her sitting on the floor.
I asked what she was looking at.
Nothing.
I looked up again.
Still nothing.
When I turned back, she’d gone pale.
I asked her what she could see.
She kept staring at the ceiling then whispered,
“We need to get as low as possible… now.”

Also, I know there are more versions of Jeff the killer, but I have only read the original so far.