Lizzi Noelliz wrote:Paramore Lover wrote:“It’s the apocalypse, Pete!” yelled Jacob as an explosion lit the skies. Downtown, which was close to Jacob, was suddenly and violently filled with screams and bright explosions. Already having flashbacks to World War II, Jacob began to panic even more when he saw people shambling about, going to and from the location of the explosions.
Pete, his loyal old dog, growled feebly at the people passing by. They appeared to be walking corpses, and this became clear to Jacob after another bright explosion lit the area enough for his old eyes to see clear enough.
Jacob turned for his door and yanked Pete’s collar. The old hound went tumbling in with Jacob as he slammed the door shut and went about setting the various locks in his house.
After securely locking down his house and setting in place his window bars, he got up the nerve to take a peek outside. Out there, the sky flashed with explosions that rocked his house. Suddenly, a face popped up right in front of him. Startled, he fell backwards and onto his coffee table.
“I know you’re in there old man,” the person outside groaned. From the lighting inside his house, he could see the burn marks and missing flesh on the person’s face.
Shouting wildly he hit the lights and ran to his bedroom, which was upstairs. Pete was right behind him.
The man outside banged on his door. “Come out and join the party!” he groaned in a dead voice. After a few breathless minutes, the banging stopped and Jacob figured the man would bring a whole horde of his undead friends back to get him.
He reached into his dresser drawer and moved away his socks, retrieving a pistol. “They’ve been saying the zombie apocalypse was coming, ol’ Pete. I read it on them sites. Now it’s true. I’m sorry old boy,” he said, aiming the gun at his lifelong companion, curled up on a pile of that week’s newspapers.
The dog died with only a quiet whimper. Next, Jacob turned the gun on himself.
“I planned for this day so carefully, but now they know I’m in here. Damn it, Sally, I’m coming to see you,” he said as he pulled the trigger.
That was not his last though, however. The very last thing that went through his mind in the last few moments while he was still alive was a headline on one of the newspapers under Pete.
“Zombie Costume Party Downtown Halloween Night.”
I confess I thought it was scary until the last sentence. Good twist, but it's ashame the dog had to die (I watched I Am Legend and the sadest bit I found was when the dog died. I'm wierd like that.).
I definetly agree with Lizzi Noelliz, everything was downright scary until the last sentence. It had my heart beating so fast!
TheHangingTree wrote:[color=#BF4000][size=85]I found some pretty scary ones:
Dancing with the Devil
A Texas Ghost Story
retold by
S. E. Schlosser
The girl hurried through her schoolwork as fast as she could. It was the night of the high school dance, along about 70 years ago in the town of Kingsville, Texas. The girl was so excited about the dance. She had bought a brand new, sparkly red dress for the dance. She knew she looked smashing in it. It was going to be the best evening of her life.
Then her mother came in the house, looking pale and determined.
"You are not going to that dance," her mother said.
"But why?" the girl asked her mother.
"I've just been talking to the preacher. He says the dance is going to be for the devil. You are absolutely forbidden to go," her mother said.
The girl nodded as if she accepted her mother's words. But she was determined to go to the dance. As soon as her mother was busy, she put on her brand new red dress and ran down to the K.C. Hall where the dance was being held.
As soon as she walked into the room, all the guys turned to look at her. She was startled by all the attention. Normally, no one noticed her. Her mother sometimes accused her of being too awkward to get a boyfriend. But she was not awkward that night. The boys in her class were fighting with each other to dance with her.
Later, she broke away from the crowd and went to the table to get some punch to drink. She heard a sudden hush. The music stopped. When she turned, she saw a handsome man with jet black hair and clothes standing next to her.
"Dance with me," he said.
She managed to stammer a "yes", completely stunned by this gorgeous man. He led her out on the dance floor. The music sprang up at once. She found herself dancing better than she had ever danced before. They were the center of attention.
Then the man spun her around and around. She gasped for breath, trying to step out of the spin. But he spun her faster and faster. Her feet felt hot. The floor seemed to melt under her. He spun her even faster. She was spinning so fast that a cloud of dust flew up around them both so that they were hidden from the crowd.
When the dust settled, the girl was gone. The man in black bowed once to the crowd and disappeared. The devil had come to his party and he had spun the girl all the way to hell.
Burnt Church
Retold by S.E. Schlosser
She was sophisticated, poised, and cultured. In retrospect, this should have made them suspicious. A teacher like her should be presiding over a girl’s school in London or New York, not seeking a position in a small town in Georgia. But at the time, they were too delighted by her application to ask any questions.
“It will be good for our daughter to learn some culture,” the attorney’s wife told the pastor’s wife.
“And our boy may find some table manners at last,” the pastor’s wife responded with a smile.
School was called into session in the local church shortly after the arrival of the teacher. And soon, the children were bringing glowing reports home. “Teacher” was special. Teacher taught them manners and diction as well as reading, writing and arithmetic. All the children loved teacher.
The parents were delighted by the progress their children were making at school. Teacher had been a real find. A God-send, said the preacher’s wife.
But not everyone in town was so satisfied. The local ne-er-do well – called Smith – had more sinister stories to tell.
“That woman ain’t natural,” he told the blacksmith, waving a bottle of whisky for emphasis. “I seen her out in the woods after dark, dancing around a campfire and chanting in a strange language.”
“Nonsense,” the blacksmith retorted, calmly hammering a headed iron bar on his anvil.
“They say she’s got an altar in her room and it ain’t an altar to the Almighty,” Smith insisted, leaning forward and blowing his boozy breath into the blacksmith’s face.
“You’re drunk,” said the blacksmith, lifting the hot iron so it barred the man from coming any closer. “Go home and sleep it off.”
Smith left the smithy, but he continued to talk wild about the Teacher in the weeks that followed. During those weeks, a change gradually came over the school children. The typical high-jinks and pranks that all children played lessened. Their laughter died away. And when they did misbehave, it was on a much more ominous scale than before. Items began to disappear from houses and farms. Expensive items like jewelry, farm tools, and money. When children talked back to their parents, there was a hard-edge to their voices, and they did not apologize for their rudeness, even when punished.
“And my daughter lied to me the other day,” the attorney’s wife said to the pastor’s wife in distress. “I saw her punch her younger brother and steal an apple from him, and she denied it to my face. She practically called me a liar!”
“The games the children play back in the woods frighten me,” the pastor’s wife confessed. “They chant in a strange language, and they move in such a strange manner. Almost like a ritual dance.”
“Could it be something they are learning at school?” asked the attorney’s wife.
“Surely not! Teacher is such a sweet, sophisticated lady,” said the pastor’s wife.
But they exchanged uneasy glances.
Smith, on the other hand, was sure. “That teacher is turning the young’uns to the Devil, that’s what she’s doing,” he proclaimed up and down the streets of the town.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the preacher told him when they passed in front of the mercantile.
“I ain’t ridiculous. You are blind,” Smith told him. “That teacher ought to be burned at the stake, like they burned the witches in Salem.”
The pastor, pale with wrath, ordered Smith out of his sight. But the ne’er-do-well’s words rang in his mind and would not be pushed away. And the children continued to behave oddly. Almost like they were possessed. He would, the preacher decided reluctantly, have to look into it someday soon.
That day came sooner than he thought. The very next Monday, his little boy came down with a cold, and his mother kept him home from school. When the pastor returned from his duties for a late lunch, his wife came running up to him as soon as he entered the door. She was pale with fright.
“I heard him chanting something over and over again in his bedroom,” she gasped. “So I crept to the door to listen. He was saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards!”
The pastor gasped and clutched his Bible to his chest, as goose bumps erupted over his body. This was positively satanic. And there was nowhere the boy could have learned such a thing in this town, unless he learned it…at school.
At that moment, the attorney’s wife came bursting in the door behind him.
“Quick pastor, quick,” she cried. “Smith is running through town with a torch, talking about burning down the school. The children are still in class!”
The pastor raced out of the house with the two woman at his heels. They and the other townsfolk who followed them were met by a huge cloud of smoke coming from the direction of the church, where the school children had their lessons. The building was already ablaze as frantic parents beat at the flames with wet sacks, or threw buckets of water from the pump into the inferno. Smith could be heard cackling unrepentantly from the far side of the building, which was full of the screams of the trapped students and their teacher.
The fire blazed with a supernatural kind of force, and the pastor thought he heard the sound of the Teacher laughing from within the building when it became apparent that no one could be saved.
The church burnt for several hours, and when it was finally extinguished, there was nothing left. Mourning parents tried to find something of their children to bury, and Smith wisely disappeared from town, his mission against the works of Satan completed.
The teacher’s burnt body was buried deep in the ground and covered with brick tomb. The children’s smaller bodies were interred beneath wooden crosses. Of all the student’s in the school that fall, only the pastor’s small son survived.
To this day, voices can be heard in the graveyard of at Burnt Church, chanting unintelligible words, as the school children and the teacher once chanted in the woods outside town. Sometimes apparitions are seen, and dark walkers who roam the graveyard at night. And they say that a brick taken from the grave of the evil teacher can set fire to objects on which they are placed.
Dispatched
Spooky South CarolinaA South Carolina Ghost Story
retold by
S.E. Schlosser
There was something odd in the tone of the dispatcher’s voice when he called to tell me a person needed picking up at Bramlett Road late one summer night in 1947. I shuddered when I heard the name of the street. I did not want to go anywhere near that area, especially at midnight. But I drove a Yellow Cab, and it was my job to pick up a call when it came. So I swallowed and headed toward Bramlett Road and the slaughter yards.
I’d been out of town when “the incident” happened. I call it an incident, but it was murder, plain and not so simple. A fellow name of Brown who drove a cab with our company was robbed and stabbed to death in his cab. Next day a man named Willie Earle was picked up by the police the very next day and put in jail for the crime, though he denied doing it.
Then a bunch of hotheads who drove cabs for our company gathered together, passed around a bottle of whiskey and talking about “getting” the fellow who’d stabbed Brown. One of the men went out and borrowed a shotgun, and the mob drove to the jail, grabbed Earle and threw him in the back of one of the cabs. The hotheads took him to the slaughter yards and they dragged Earle forcibly from the cab and started beating him. A man pulled a knife and waded into the mob with it, and Earle shouted: “Lord, you’ve killed me!” That’s when the fellow with the shotgun put a bullet in his head, reloaded, and shot him twice more.
When the mob was sure he was dead, they climbed back into their separate cabs and fanned out, each heading back to the city by a different route. Eventually word got out and thirty-one fellows were arrested for the crime. But they were all acquitted by a jury of their peers.
After the incident, the slaughterhouse section of Bramlett Road got a bad reputation. No one in the cab company much liked driving there, especially at night. Folks claimed it was haunted by the ghost of Willie Earle.
I shivered as I pulled onto Bramlett Road and slowed down to look for my passenger. No one was there. I parked the cab and got out to have a quick smoke while I waited.
All at once, the temperature around me plummeted. I froze in place, suddenly terrified, as someone moaned in terror from the other side of the road. The sound scraped my nerves raw. I could hear the unmistakable thud of hammering fists and the darkness was filled with swirling black silhouettes pounding on something...or someone. I fumbled for the icy-cold door handle as a man shouted agony: “Lord, you’ve killed me!” I threw myself inside the cab as a gun exploded, cutting off the man’s cries. The shot was swiftly followed by two more.
I squealed the tires as I spun the cab around. A tall, battered figure that glowed just enough for me to see its lolling head, the blood-stained, dead features, the knife-torn clothes blocked the road in front of me. I gasped, floored the gas pedal and swerved around it, heart hammering so hard it hurt my ribs.
I was still trembling when slammed into the office a few minutes later and told the dispatcher I was quitting. Then I grabbed my things and headed for home lickety split. There was no way I was going to Bramlett Road ever again. And I never did.
Death Waltz
A New Mexico Ghost Story
retold by
S. E. Schlosser
Within an hour of my arrival at Fort Union, my new post, my best friend Johnny came to the barracks with a broad grin and a friendly clout on the shoulder. He'd hurried over as soon as he heard I had come, and we talked 'til sunset and beyond.
As soon as Johnny mentioned Celia's name, I knew he had it bad for her. To hear him talk, Celia was the most amazing woman who had ever graced God's green earth. She was the sister-in-law of the captain, and all the young men on the base were infatuated with her. Celia was the prettiest of the eligible ladies that graced Fort Union society. She liked the spice of adventure to be found so near the wilds.
Johnny alternated between elation when Celia talked with him and despair when she flirted with another man. I watched their courtship from afar and was troubled. There was something about Celia that I didn't like. I never mentioned it to Johnny, but I thought she was too much of a flirt. I wished Johnny had fallen for a nicer woman.
About a month after I arrived at Fort Union, a birthday dance was given for one of the officers. To Johnny's elation, Celia agreed to be his partner at the dance. Johnny was dancing on cloud nine all night, until a messenger came gasping into the room to report an Apache raid. With a small scream of terror, Celia clung shamelessly to Johnny and begged him not to go even though he was the lieutenant put in charge of the mission. Well sir, Johnny proposed to her right then and there and Celia accepted. Furthermore, Celia told Johnny that she would wait for him, and that if he didn't come back she would never marry. I doubted Celia's sincerity, but Johnny just ate it up.
I was assigned to Johnny's troop, so I had to leave too. We started out the next morning, and had a rough week tracking down and fighting the Apaches. Johnny split up the troop; taking command of the first group and giving me command of the second. My men reached the rendezvous point with no casualties, but only half of the other group arrived, and Johnny was not among them. They'd been ambushed by the Apaches. I had to take command of the troop. We searched for survivors, but never found Johnny's body. As soon as I could, I ordered the men to turn for home.
Celia made a terrible, heart-rending scene when she found out Johnny was missing. She flung herself into my arms when I gave her the news and sobbed becomingly. The display turned my stomach, it was so obviously insincere. I excused myself hastily and left her to the ministrations of the other soldiers. From that time on, I was careful to stay away from Celia, who mourned less than a week for my friend before resuming her flirtatious ways.
About a month later, a rich handsome lieutenant arrived at Fort Union. He was from the East, and Celia took a real shine to him. Johnny was completely forgotten and so was her promise to him. It wasn't long before Celia and the lieutenant were engaged and started planning a big wedding. Nothing but the very best would suit Celia, and her bridegroom had the money to indulge her.
Everyone in Fort Union was invited to the ceremony, and the weather was perfect on the day of the wedding. Everyone turned out in their best clothes and the wedding was a social success. After the ceremony, all the guests were invited to a celebratory ball.
We were waltzing around the ballroom when the door flew open with a loud bang. A gust of cold air blew in, dimming the candles. A heart-wrenching wail echoed through the room. The music stopped abruptly and everyone turned to look at the door. Standing there was the swollen, dead body of a soldier. It was dressed in an officer's uniform. The eyes were burning with a terrible fire. The temple had a huge gash from a hatchet-blow. There was no scalp. It was Johnny.
The whole crowd stood silent, as if in a trance. No one moved, no one murmured. I wanted to cry out when I recognized Johnny, but I was struck dumb like the rest of the wedding guests.
Johnny walked across the room and took Celia out of her bridegroom's arms. She was frozen in horror and could not resist. Johnny looked at the musicians. Still in a trance, they began to play a horrible, demonic sounding waltz. Johnny and Celia began to dance. They swept around and around the room, doing an intricate waltz. Johnny held the white-clad bride tight against his dead body while a deathly pallor crept over her face. Her steps slowed but still Johnny held her tight and moved them around in a grisly parody of a waltz. Celia's eyes bulged. She turned as white as her gown and her mouth sagged open. She gave one small gasp, and died in his arms.
Johnny dropped Celia's body on the floor and stood over her, wringing his blood-stained hands. He threw back his head and gave another unearthly wail that echoed around the room. Then he vanished through the door.
Released from the trance, the crowd gasped and exclaimed. The bridegroom ran to Celia and knelt beside her, wringing his hands in the same manner as Johnny. His cries were all too human.
Unable to bear the sight of the stricken bridegroom, I took my captain aside and asked permission to take a small detail back to the place where our troop had been attacked by the Apaches to search once more for my dead friend. He sent a dozen men with me. We combed the area, and finally found Johnny's body hidden in a crevice. It looked exactly the same as it had appeared on the night of Celia's wedding.
We brought Johnny back to the fort with us and the captain buried him beside Celia. Celia's bridegroom went back East shortly after we buried Johnny, and I resigned my commission a few days later and went home, never wanting to see that cursed place again.
I heard later that Celia's ghost was often seen at dusk, weeping over Johnny's grave, but I never went back to Fort Union to see it for myself.
I find these stories VERY fun to read and I hope to memorize them so I can easily freak out my friends..... >:D The last one is my favorite....
And I also was a little spooked out with Death Waltz.[/color][/size]