[SPEAKER_00]: Story number one, I had overdosed before, but never like that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rush had been strong at first, then suddenly gone too far.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart slowed, my body felt heavy, and I knew something was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: My limbs didn't respond when I tried to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could feel my pulse slipping away, each beat weaker than the last.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no pain, just a strange, cold, quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: People say your mind stays alive for seven seconds after your body dies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how long mind stayed awake, but I remember the moment my eyes closed and blackness swallowed everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should have ended there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere in that silence a voice called me, not loud, not urgent, just calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned toward it, but saw nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then in front of me, there was a cave.
[SPEAKER_00]: It hadn't been there a moment ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: The entrance was jagged, like broken teeth, and something in the air made my skin prickle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could hear screams echoing from inside, raw human sounds that scraped against my ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't just loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were full of pain in a way I had never heard before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like every cry was being pulled from someone's lungs against their will.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smell hit me next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acrid, damp, and rotten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like flesh left out in the sun mixed with burning hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: It coated my tongue and made me gag.
[SPEAKER_00]: My head felt heavy, my steps slow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I drifted forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bare feet scraping over grit and damp stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The darkness seemed alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pressing closer with each step until the entrance was gone behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I moved deeper, the walls seemed to pulse faintly, like they were breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Far ahead I noticed a dim glow, no brighter than a dying ember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have turned back, but I kept walking, my feet pulling me onward without thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got close enough to see I froze.
[SPEAKER_00]: The light came from pits of molten shifting liquid, red and gold like lava, but what surrounded them made my stomach turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shapes, humanoid but wrong, hunched over bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some bit into flesh and tore strips away like it was paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their jaws working with sickening crunches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others melt over still living people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their claws sinking deep into skin, peeling it back slowly while the victims ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: The molten pits hissed as other bodies were dipped into them, screams swelling and cutting off suddenly, as faces drained of all color.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their eyes glassy and mouse frozen in silent agony.
[SPEAKER_00]: my chest tightened, I vomited hard, the taste sour and metallic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nearest creature turned toward the sound, it's head twitching at an unnatural angle, eyes like dull coins reflecting the molten light.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran, the cave stretched endlessly, twisting and narrowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: My own ragged breath, the only sound I could hear besides the faint echo of my footsteps.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was behind me, matching my pace, staying just far enough that I never saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shadow shifted at the edge of my vision, and once I thought I felt fingers brush the back of my shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept moving, sometimes running, sometimes slowing when the path narrowed.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point the walls seemed to close in, pressing against my shoulders until I could barely breathe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to push forward and hurt a faint wet sound, like something sliding just ahead in the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually a faint gray light appeared in the distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first sign of anything but blackness in what felt like hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: My legs ached, but I forced them to keep going.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It smelled fresher, less heavy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could hear dripping water.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of sound you'd hear outside after rain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to believe I might be leaving whatever nightmare I had stumbled into.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mouth of the cave appeared ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as I stepped out, I took a deep breath, but it burned.
[SPEAKER_00]: My skin prickled with a strange heat, like I was standing too close to a fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vision blurred, then snapped back to harsh, fluorescent white.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on a table, my chest jolting violently.
[SPEAKER_00]: People in mass hovered over me, their faces tense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another jolt.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vision flickered again, and I caught a glimpse of the cave entrance before it was gone completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I could finally breathe on my own, I was told I'd been found on the floor, unresponsive.
[SPEAKER_00]: My roommate had called for help, and for 15 or 20 minutes, the doctors had worked on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to bring me back.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said my heart had stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said I had been dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell them what I'd seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell anyone about the heat that still lingers in my chest sometimes, or the faint smell of burning hair that comes and goes with no source.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't explain how.
[SPEAKER_00]: In quiet moments I sometimes hear a voice calling from far away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost drowned by the faint echo of screams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was just my brain misfiring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was some side effect of the drugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes in the middle of the night, I feel the air and my room grow heavy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the mouth of that cave is just a few steps away again, waiting for me to walk back in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't help but wonder if next time, I won't make it back out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last year I came closer to dying than I ever thought possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was septic shock from what started as a stubborn infection.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night in the ICU, everything dropped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blood pressure, pulse, the whole deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: They told me later that my heart actually stopped for just over a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was technically dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember the exact moment I went, but I do remember fragments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bright, sterile light, not the harsh hospital kind, more like sunlight through a thick curtain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Voices too, but they were muffled and warped, like I was underwater.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept drifting between nothingness and this strange, heavy awareness until suddenly I was just awake.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least I thought I was awake.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a hospital room, but it wasn't quite right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had that still unnatural quiet you get when power cuts out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air felt stale.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was an orange glow filtering in, like the last light of sunset, but it didn't match the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew it was night time before everything went black.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bed was there, the IV stand, a chair in the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: No people, no machines beeping, just this flat silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I called out, my voice didn't sound like mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It came out warbled and slow, like sound traveling through thick water.
[SPEAKER_00]: It freaked me out enough to get up and try to find someone, but when I turned toward the door, the whole layout of the room had changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bed was suddenly against a different wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: The chair was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The door looked farther away than before, like the room had stretched.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought maybe I was delirious or having some ICU hallucination, so I just kept walking toward the door, but halfway across I glanced back, and now the bed was behind me again, the window right beside it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The view outside wasn't the parking lot or city skyline anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a wall, featureless, gray, close enough to touch if the glass wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when I saw her.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, I thought it was a nurse, white uniform, cap, the whole retro thing, but her face was all wrong, too long stretched like it didn't quite fit her skull, skin pale and shiny in the orange light, eyes glassy and unblinking, reflecting like they were wet, and the smile, too wide, too fixed, like someone had drawn it on.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was standing on the other side of the window, even though that wall was right behind her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't move, didn't breathe.
[SPEAKER_00]: My chest went tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't make my body move.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she lifted one hand and tapped the glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: Slow, deliberate, three taps like she counted.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound wasn't sharp, like real glass tapping.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was dull, like it came from inside my own head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how long I stood there frozen, but it felt like hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: The light outside dimmed almost imperceptibly until I blinked, and she was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The window was just a window again, looking out onto a blank gray.
[SPEAKER_00]: My knees gave out, and I sat on the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silence pressed in heavier than before, and then like a switch flipping, I was in the real hospital room.
[SPEAKER_00]: White walls, steady beeping, my nurse leaning over me, adjusting something on my IV.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was drenched in sweat, my heart racing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked her about the room about the figure.
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked confused, said I'd been unconscious the whole time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I chalked it up, maybe the sudden shock from the cardiac arrest, but there's something unexplainable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since that night, every single evening when things get quiet, I hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: same slow, steady tapping, always in a pair of three, always from the direction of the nearest window, no matter where I am, at home, in my office.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in the car once, when I was parked at dusk, nobody else hears it, not my family, not my co-workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It never happens when there's a lot of noise around, only when it's still, like the world is holding its breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I think it's just my brain replaying a weird neurological echo from nearly dying, but sometimes especially when the light starts to shift toward that same orange glow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I catch myself staring too long at windows, half expecting to see your standing there again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never stayed in a hospital room at sunset since, and I don't plan to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number three, I did something stupid in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was over petty drama, the kind that feels life-ending at that age.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills and waited for everything to stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents found me before it was too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors said my heart stopped for two, maybe three minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, I didn't remember much, at least not until a month later.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when the dream started.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, she was just a blur in the background of my sleep, and old woman and tattered black robes, her eyes a milky glazed white-like cataracts had eaten them away.
[SPEAKER_00]: She never looked at me directly, but I always knew she saw me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would sway, slow, and rhythmic, as if keeping time with some silent metronome.
[SPEAKER_00]: It stayed like that for a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then one night, I woke up with my skin cold and clammy.
[SPEAKER_00]: My eyes adjusted to the dark, and in the corner of my room, she was standing there, swaying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her head tilted slightly her mouth moving in a faint, breathy murmur I couldn't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't move.
[SPEAKER_00]: My chest felt crushed under some invisible weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: My jaw wouldn't open to scream.
[SPEAKER_00]: My breath was shallow and fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air thick like something was pressing down on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her swaying grew slower.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she leaned forward, her neck bending at an angle that didn't look right, and she crawled up the wall, hands and feet flat against it like a spider.
[SPEAKER_00]: She moved soundlessly, her robes dragging against the paint until she disappeared into the ceiling above me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I could finally move again, I lay there for hours, staring at the spot she vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: By morning I convinced myself it was sleep paralysis, but when I looked up at my ceiling, there were faint scratch marks near one of the nails in the plaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nail itself had popped out halfway, bent slightly to one side, as if something had tried to pull it through from the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, I tried not to think about it, but she started showing up when I was awake.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was never direct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the shadow of her swaying in a dark hallway when I walked past, the faint smell of damp cloth and something like rotting flowers when I opened a closet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would catch white glazed eyes watching me from a reflection in a window.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I turned, there would be nothing there but the empty glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I was brushing my teeth when I noticed my bathroom mirror had fogged over slightly, though the air was cool and dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wiped it with my hand, and in the cleared patch I saw her, not behind me, but directly in the glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her head pressed against it like she was leaning in from somewhere else entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her lips moved, and though I couldn't hear her, I felt the vibration of her whisper in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I slammed the light off and backed out.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I came back later, the mirror was clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks later, I woke to the sound of scratching in my walls.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was slow, deliberate, and came from the ceiling above my bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stayed still, telling myself it was a mouse or a bird trapped in the attic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound stopped, then came a faint thump, as if something heavy had dropped onto the plaster from above.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night I dreamed I was lying in my bed, but there was something wrong with my room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman was at the foot of my bed, but she wasn't swaying.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was leaning toward me, her face almost leveled with mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her mouth hung slightly open, and there was something moving inside, shifting like fingers pressed together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up gasping, my jaw aching, my pillow was damp near my mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more I tried to ignore her, the more she slipped into my daily life.
[SPEAKER_00]: One afternoon I was home alone, scrolling on my phone when the house suddenly went quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't noticed the background noise, the hum of the fridge, the ticking clock, until it was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked up and saw the shadow in the far corner of the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was swaying again, her outline darker than the rest of the shadows, her head tilted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I blinked and she was gone, but the quiet lingered for a long time until the fridge finally clicked back on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought about telling someone, but I didn't want to sound insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept replying the fact that I had technically been dead, even if only for a few minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it had done something to my brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I was carrying damage no scan had picked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, every so often, something happens that's hard to file away as imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number four, I never thought I'd be the kind of person to say something like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not into paranormal stuff, and I usually roll my eyes at ghost stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: But over the past year, my life's been filled with small, unsettling things that I can entirely explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't technically my near-death experience, it was my wife's.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last summer, we were out on a friend's small motorboat.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was supposed to be a lazy day on the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: The weather was good, no strong currents, nothing that screamed danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: At some point, she slipped over the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see it happen, just heard the splash and turned around to see her flailing.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I pulled her up, she was limp and unresponsive.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Coast Guard was nearby, thank God, and they managed to get her breathing again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've replayed those minutes in my head a hundred times.
[SPEAKER_00]: She lived, but it feels like something didn't come back with her, or maybe something new did.
[SPEAKER_00]: About two weeks after that day, the fire alarms in our house went off in the middle of the night, not just one, every single one, blaring at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a wiring issue so we replaced all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: New batteries, new units, everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every three weeks, almost to the day, they all go off again, usually in the early hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: No smoke, no heat, no reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always the same deafening, disorienting whale, as if the whole house is warning us about something invisible.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night, the alarms went off at exactly 2017 AM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got up, groggy and irritated, and that's when I saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Water in the hallway, not a puddle, actual pooling, like someone had just spilled a bucket.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was trickling down from the direction of our bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our bathroom was dry, no leaky pipes, no dripping taps.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I grabbed a towel the water was gone, my wife doesn't like to talk about any of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, she'd act confused when I mentioned the alarms, like she hadn't heard them at all, even though they're loud enough to rattle the picture frames.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she started ignoring them completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll just stay in bed, eyes closed, while the house screams.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I finally pressed her about what happened on the boat, what she saw, what she remembered, she broke down.
[SPEAKER_00]: She told me that when she was gone, she didn't see a bright light or her life flashing before her eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, she remembered sinking deeper and deeper into a cold, dark place.
[SPEAKER_00]: The deeper she went, the quieter the world got, until she heard something calling her name.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said it didn't sound human, but it promised her safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said she felt like it was wrapping around her, pulling her in, then she was back, choking on air, with strangers leaning over her.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that conversation, the smaller weird things started piling up.
[SPEAKER_00]: She began scratching at her arms and her sleep, hard enough to leave red wells.
[SPEAKER_00]: She told me it felt like phantom hands grabbing her and pulling her downward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes she'd wake up gasping and soaked in sweat, staring at the ceiling like she was still under water.
[SPEAKER_00]: There have been other moments, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once I came home early from work and found our bathroom mirror fogged up, like someone had taken a hot shower.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wasn't home, and the shower was bone dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the center of the glass, there were faint streaks, four vertical lines like finger marks dragged down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time the TV turned itself on at 2.17 AM.
[SPEAKER_00]: The screen was just static, but I could hear something faint under the hiss, slow, muffled knocking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time the TV turned itself on at 2.17am.
[SPEAKER_00]: The screen was just static, but I could hear something faint under the hiss.
[SPEAKER_00]: slow, muffled knocking, like someone tapping on glass from far away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two months ago, the alarms went off while we were both downstairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was already irritated, ready to grab the step stool and yank the batteries.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I saw something at the top of the staircase, it was the shape of my wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same hair, same build, same night shirt she was wearing at that exact moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was dripping wet, water pooling at her bare feet, her head tilted slightly to one side.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't move, just stood there, looking down at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I glanced toward the couch where my wife was sitting, and she was still there, eyes wide, glued to the TV.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look back at the stairs, it was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: No water, no footprints.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't sleep for two nights after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last thing that's really gotten under my skin happened just last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up around 215, the alarm still silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lay there waiting, half expecting them to go off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I heard a slow, rhythmic dripping.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got up thinking maybe the kitchen tap was leaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound led me to our bedroom window.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was closed, locked, dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I looked out, there was a figure standing in the middle of our yard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't moving, but its head was tilted back as if staring up at our window.
[SPEAKER_00]: The moonlight caught on what looked like long dripping hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: The grass around it looked darker, wetter, like water was spilling from wherever it stood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I blinked and it was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The alarms went off two minutes later.
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife has never spoken about what she saw in the yard.
[SPEAKER_00]: She won't even look toward that window at night anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next three weeks mark is coming up in two days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what I'll do if it all happens again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number five, I've been in the electrician for almost 15 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been shocked before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little jolts, the kind that make you curse and shake your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: But never anything like what happened six months ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working alone in a cramped basement, rewiring an old breaker panel.
[SPEAKER_00]: The insulation on one of the cables had rotted away, and when my wrench slipped, I took the full hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like in movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no dramatic scream.
[SPEAKER_00]: My jaw locked.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vision went white.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could feel every nerve in my body vibrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was being shaken apart from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there was silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember my body hitting the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember standing in a place that didn't feel like anywhere I'd ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air was gray, like fog, but I could still see a man, or something like a man standing ahead of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: His limbs were too long, joints bending just slightly wrong, like his arms had been dislocated a dozen times and never set right.
[SPEAKER_00]: His skin looked loose, stretched thin over bones that were trying to push their way out, and his face, if you could call it that.
[SPEAKER_00]: was a sunken mess, cheeks hollow, lips cracked and peeling, black eyes lock straight on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He grinned and it wasn't just his mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: The skin around his eyes wrinkled like the smile was stretching up through his whole face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next thing I knew, I was on the edge of a cliff.
[SPEAKER_00]: When roared in my ears, carrying the smell of wet earth, and something metallic, like rust.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see him move, but I felt a push.
[SPEAKER_00]: My feet left the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: My scream didn't sound right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like someone had thrown a blanket over my voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hit the ground with a force I can't describe, and my body came apart, not blood and flesh, pieces, like glass shattering.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see my own arm break into shards, see my face break into dozens of fragments, and then I was watching myself from above, my own body scattering across the dirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I was in a hospital bed, gasping like I'd been buried under the ground for hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors told me I'd been dead for four minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They called it a miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't feel like a miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nightmares started immediately, always him, standing just close enough that I could see his teeth, and always me dying in ways I didn't think my brain could invent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Falling into machinery, drowning in black water, being crushed between concrete slabs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wake up gasping every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first real-world thing happened about three weeks later.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was driving home late, rain-blaring the windshield, when a truck pulled out from a side street.
[SPEAKER_00]: No lights, no horn, just there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swirved hard enough that I ended up half on the sidewalk, tires screeching, the truck never stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see the driver's face, but for a split second in the reflection off the wet road, I swore I saw that grin again.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that little thing started happening, tools I'd set down on the job would be somewhere else when I turned back, not just a few inches away, sometimes across the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I woke up freezing cold, my breath was clouding in the dark, I keep my windows locked, but I could feel air moving, like something was breathing out against my skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: My phone was on the nightstand, but when I grabbed it, the screen was already on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The camera app was open, front facing, and I was staring at my own face.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a moment, I thought I saw the same man staring back at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't sleep the rest of that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: A month later I was working a job in an old warehouse, replacing light fixtures.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on the ladder halfway through when the entire row of lights ahead of me started flickering, one after another, like something was moving down the aisle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound that came with it was faint, almost like static, but I could feel it crawling in my teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it reached me, the bulb above my head popped, showering glass onto my shoulders.
[SPEAKER_00]: I climbed down, and for the first time in years on the job, I packed up without finishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just at work.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my own apartment, I've started catching glimpses and reflections.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The black screen of my TV, the dark surface of the microwave door, always behind me tall and thin, leaning in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I can almost feel the weight of his chin on my shoulder, like he's trying to see what I'm looking at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two weeks ago, I woke to find my front door standing wide open.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live on the fourth floor in a building with a security door, so there's no reason for it to be unlocked, much less wide open.
[SPEAKER_00]: My keys were still on the hook, and nothing was missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing out of place was a small pile of dirt on the floor just inside the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last night was the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd fallen asleep on the couch with the TV still on.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a while, when I opened my eyes, he was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The TV was switched off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the screen, for a brief second, I saw his reflection.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was there, crouch behind the couch.
[SPEAKER_00]: His head level with mine, grinning.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I spun around, the space behind me was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't told anyone about any of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I tried, they'd probably say it's brain damage from the electrocution.
[SPEAKER_00]: but there's one thing I can't explain away.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the hospital after I woke up from those four minutes, the nurse had handed me my personal effects, my phone, my wallet, my work ID.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said they'd been sitting in a plastic bag by my bed the whole time.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I turned on my phone, the camera roll had one new picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a shot of me lying on the hospital bed, eyes closed, tubes in my arms.
[SPEAKER_00]: The angle was from above, like someone had been standing over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the corner of the frame, just barely in focus, was a hand, long pale fingers, nails cracked and blackened, reaching down toward my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: I deleted it, but every so often when I opened my gallery, I see it flash for a split second before the screen updates, like it's still there, waiting for me to look at it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm starting to think whatever I saw in those four minutes isn't done with me, and I'm not sure it ever will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number six, I had read about hit and run cases all my life, blurred headlines, grainy CCTV stills, people left broken on the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never imagined I'd end up as one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happened so fast I barely had time to register the headlights.
[SPEAKER_00]: One second I was crossing the street, the next there was the crunch of metal, the snap of bone, and the world folding into itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being lifted, arms under my back.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rattle of wheels beneath me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The faint antiseptic smell, the dim hum of fluorescent lights, the distant wine of an ambulance siren fading in and out.
[SPEAKER_00]: My body felt too heavy, my chest too still.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone shouted something urgent, and then nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't even the kind of nothing you get when you close your eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like being pulled into the deepest part of the ocean where sound, light, and even the thought of yourself just vanish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a flicker.
[SPEAKER_00]: A woman standing far ahead in an empty gray place.
[SPEAKER_00]: She waved at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Slow, deliberate.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of wave you give when you're certain the other person will come closer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought maybe this was my brain's way of processing trauma, a dream, a hallucination, but then her arms dropped to her sides and something about her posture shifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerky, inhuman.
[SPEAKER_00]: She sank onto all fours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her spine stretched too long, her joints bent the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her eyes rolled white except for pinprint black pupils that darted straight to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She smiled, or at least I think it was a smile.
[SPEAKER_00]: The skin on her cheeks cracked when she did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took a step back without meaning to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she began moving toward me first slow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then faster.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound of her limbs on the ground was wrong, like knuckles wrapping against wood but wet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know where I was going, but every step echoed in the nothingness.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I looked up she was there, standing ahead of me, not running, not breathing hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her eyes were glowing now, soft, unnatural green light, like algae under black water.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pounce came fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her claws, because they were claws now, slashed toward my face, close enough to feel the air shift against my skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: something deep inside me braced for pain, and then I heard it, a faint siren, far away like through layers of walls, white light.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in the ambulance again, hands pressed on my chest, someone shouting for me to breathe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was breathing, but it felt like something else was breathing with me, or through me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how long it was before the hospital discharged me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They called it a lucky recovery.
[SPEAKER_00]: My ribs ached, my head still rang.
[SPEAKER_00]: The day I got home it was sunny, birds were loud, too normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when the knot came.
[SPEAKER_00]: I opened the door and froze.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked human now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Completely human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ordinary scrubs, hair tied back, clipboard in hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: She introduced herself as the nurse assigned by the hospital for my recovery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smiling, friendly, nothing wrong with her face.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew her, the shape of her eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The slow way she tilted her head when she looked at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she was measuring the space between us.
[SPEAKER_00]: She came in, unpacked supplies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Told me she'd be visiting daily.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first week, I tried to convince myself I was wrong, that my brain had mashed the image of a stranger with some hallucination from when my heart stopped, but little things kept happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I woke to find her standing at the foot of my bed, not moving, just staring.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said she'd heard me having trouble breathing and came to check.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time I caught her reflection in the kitchen window.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her mouth was moving like she was whispering, but she wasn't making a sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started locking my bedroom door at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: That didn't stop the scratching.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like nails on wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was deeper, like something trying to carve through.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd turn on the light and it would stop instantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw her scratch.
[SPEAKER_00]: But every morning there'd be faint grooves along the door frame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once while I was half asleep on the couch, I felt something brushed my hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: light almost affectionate.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I opened my eyes, she was sitting on the floor beside me, head resting on the armrest, her eyes unfocused.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said she was monitoring my breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were times I thought maybe I was overreacting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she was just overly dedicated to her job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I was paranoid from trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to cling to that until the night I woke up choking.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like a panic attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was as if hands were pressing against my windpipe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But from the inside, my chest convulsed, my throat burned, I couldn't move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she was there leaning over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her eyes glowed again, green.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just for a second, the next thing I knew I was coughing, able to breathe, and she was telling me I must have been having a nightmare.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've thought about firing her, but every time I start to say it, I get this creeping sensation that she already knows, that she's waiting for me to try.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two days ago, I woke to find my bedroom door wide open.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I locked it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yesterday, I noticed something new in the bathroom mirror, a faint handprint on my neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't there the night before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm letting my imagination run wild because of what I saw when I was out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of the lack of oxygen in my brain, the stress, the pain meds.
[SPEAKER_00]: But last night I had the same dream again, the great place, the woman on all fours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only this time when she waved at me, I didn't run.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: My legs wouldn't move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And behind her there were others, all waving.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how many more days I have with her as my nurse, but sometimes when I catch her looking at me, I get the sinking feeling she's not waiting for me to get better.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's waiting for me to stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number seven, I never believed in anything beyond what I could see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still don't, at least not fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: But ever since my allergic reaction, things haven't been right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happened six months ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: One minute I was eating at home, the next I was on the kitchen floor,
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up in the hospital, the doctor saying I'd been minutes away from not waking up at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: My head was foggy, my chest sore, but the strangest thing started after that, pain in my right leg.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never broken a bone or injured it badly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now every few days it would feel like someone was driving a blade into my calf, slow, and deliberate, like they wanted me to feel every second of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pain would last for hours then vanish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors ran every scan they could think of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing was wrong, no clot, no nerve damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time I woke up feeling someone tugging at my legs, I thought it was a dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: My blanket slid down to my knees, my heart racing, but it happened again the following week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard enough to pull me half an inch down the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I laughed it off, told myself it was muscle twitching, or my imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the temperature drops started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be reading on the couch, heater humming, when the air would suddenly bite at my skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a normal draft.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd check the thermostat, it would read 23 degrees, but my breath would fog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I'd have to wrap myself in two blankets just to stop shivering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then just as quickly, it would be warm again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until the morning with the footprints that things shifted from weird to wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up to a cold, so deep it felt like I'd fallen asleep outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sheets were damp with condensation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swung my legs out of bed and froze.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bear muddy footprints led from the side of my bed to the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bedroom is on the second floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The window was locked from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't my prince.
[SPEAKER_00]: I scrubbed the floor that day, thinking maybe some dirt from my own shoes had caused it, even though I knew that did make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: But later I noticed them again, in the hallway, then in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd appear overnight, sometimes leading right up to where I'd been sitting the evening before.
[SPEAKER_00]: I installed cameras in every room except the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: They never caught anything unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one coming in or out.
[SPEAKER_00]: No alarm triggers, no animals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just me and an empty house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started sleeping less.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every creek made me tense.
[SPEAKER_00]: The leg pain became more frequent, waking me up in the middle of the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd lie there sweating, trying not to think about the slow, slicing sensation, like someone working through bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I woke up and could see my breath in the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air felt heavy, like it was pressing me into the mattress.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't move my legs at first, then came the tug, slow and firm, pulling me toward the foot of the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: My nails dug into the sheets, my throat tightening, then just as suddenly the pressure was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: My legs throbbed, I didn't sleep again that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning the footprints were back, but this time they circled my bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't just muddy, they looked wet, like the water was still fresh.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had the locks changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept my phone by my pillow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I even considered staying with friends, but the idea of leaving the house made me uneasy in a different way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like whatever this was would just follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: A week later I woke to a sharp metallic smell, almost like blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: My leg was in agony, pulsing with heat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pulled back the blanket expecting to see a cut or bruise, but the skin was unmarked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat up every nerve on edge and saw a movement in the corner of my eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: just a shadow sinking back into the hallway.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cameras showed nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some nights the footprints would appear in new patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once they went from my bed to the bathroom, and the sink was dripping when I got up, even though I hadn't used it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time, they led to the dining table, where my chair was pulled slightly out, like someone had been sitting there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heater still worked fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: The service guy checked it twice and said nothing was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave me a strange look when I mentioned the freezing rooms, so I stopped bringing it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst was two nights ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up to the sound of water running, not dripping, running.
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed it to the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tap was on full splashing into the sink, and there on the wet floor were the footprints again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bear soaked, leading to the back door.
[SPEAKER_00]: The door was locked, but the metal was cold enough to frost over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if someone's somehow getting in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm losing my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've read about people having strange symptoms after near-death experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I tell myself when I'm awake at three in the morning, listening to the slow creek of floorboards in the hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the footprints were there again this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Starting from my bed, stopping right beside where I was standing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number eight, I had a cardiac arrest during what was supposed to be a routine checkup.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of those sudden moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: One second, I was listening to the doctor explaining something about my blood pressure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next, everything faded into a thin gray mist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was told later that I was gone for about 30 seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: No heartbeat, no breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They brought me back, but part of me wonders if they brought back the right version.
[SPEAKER_00]: They decided to keep me under observation for a few days.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when it began.
[SPEAKER_00]: It started small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I'd be lying in bed, and the constant background noise of the ward, machines humming, footsteps in the hall, muffled conversations, would just cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't gradual, like sounds fading.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like someone yanked to plug out of reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even my own breathing sounded wrong, like it was trapped inside my skull.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then after a few seconds, everything would rush back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told myself it was my brain adjusting after the heart episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time it happened in front of me, it didn't feel like something I could explain away.
[SPEAKER_00]: A nurse was adjusting my IV.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had her hand just above mine holding the tubing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mid-sentence, she froze.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her hand-state hovering, her eyes locked in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tiny muscles in her face didn't move at all, not even the blink of an eyelid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spoke her name, wave my hand in front of her face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her skin was warm when I touched her, but there was no reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it all snapped back.
[SPEAKER_00]: She blinked, finished adjusting the tube, and kept talking as if no time had passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It kept happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes to people around me, sometimes to things.
[SPEAKER_00]: One time, the curtain between my bed and the next swayed in the air, and then just stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mid-sway, not slowed, stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stared at it for maybe 10 seconds before it started moving again.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I got discharged, I was starting to dread being alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: At home, it didn't stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be making coffee, and suddenly the drip from the machine would freeze mid-air.
[SPEAKER_00]: The clock on the microwave would stop blinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the faint hum of my refrigerator would cut out completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silence was so deep, it felt physical, like pressure building inside my ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then came the hallway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was walking from my bedroom to the kitchen one afternoon, carrying laundry.
[SPEAKER_00]: My body just locked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't move, not even my eyes at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I finally managed to shift them, I saw him.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man in a black hood, his face shadowed, holding an axe that glinted under the hallway light.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smell hit me a second later, thick, rotten, sweet, like flowers left in a closed room
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: He walked around me slowly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The edge of the axe brushing the wall, leaving a faint scratch.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could feel the vibration of the metal against the dry wall through my frozen body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then as suddenly as it started, my muscles unlocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stumbled forward almost dropping the laundry.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scratch on the wall was still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started sleeping with the lights on after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The events didn't stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just got weirder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once, while brushing my teeth, the water coming out of the faucet froze in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the pipes, just the stream itself, hanging there in a curved arc.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another time, I was in my living room and everything went silent again.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I turned my head, I saw someone sitting on my couch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same clothes I was wearing, same tired face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The double looked at me with this flat empty stair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then just before everything snapped back, it tilted its head in a way I know I can't physically do without breaking my neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then vanished, like it never existed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stopped telling people, the few times I hinted at it, they either laughed it off or started giving me that look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Half concerned, half, you're not right in the head.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smell started showing up even without the man in the hood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be at the grocery store, and suddenly that same decaying flower stench would hit me, so thick it coated the back of my throat.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people around me would be normal, shopping, talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd stand there gripping the cart until the world started again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once I woke up at night to find my bedroom filled with faint shadows, not solid figures, more like smudges of darkness where the air should have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: They moved, but not like people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They pulsed, swelling, and shrinking like they were breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I blinked, they were gone, but my bedsheets were damp with sweat, and the smell of rot lingered for hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I thought it couldn't get worse, something else happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to notice the frozen moments lasting longer, at first it was seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now sometimes it's minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: In those stretches I can walk around, move freely, but everything else is locked, and I've realized there's something else moving during those pauses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just me.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few nights ago, the silence hit while I was in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started walking toward the living room, and there he was again, the hooded man.
[SPEAKER_00]: this time he wasn't holding the axe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was holding something smaller.
[SPEAKER_00]: My watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one I'd been wearing during the cardiac arrest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't move toward me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just set it down on the coffee table, tapped it once with his finger, and the second hand jumped forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything came back.
[SPEAKER_00]: The watch is still on my table.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember taking it out of the drawer where I shoved it after the hospital.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've thought about throwing it away, but I'm scared of what might happen if I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what's happening to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe something that is rational and makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what a sane person would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the smells are real, the scratches on the wall are real, and sometimes late at night when the world goes silent, I feel a hand on my shoulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've stopped turning around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm scared of what I'll see if I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number nine, it started completely normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had gone to visit some friends in the afternoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked, had tea, caught up on random things.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I came back home, it was already past nine PM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember eating a light dinner, scrolling on my phone for a while, and then falling asleep around 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: About an hour later, I woke up suddenly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the slow, groggy kind of waking up.
[SPEAKER_00]: More like my body was yanked into consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: My skin felt like it was boiling from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just fever warm, but an almost unbearable heat that pulse through my chest and arms, then down to my legs.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart was pounding in my ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was dark, but my eyes caught this strange flickering orange glow through my half-close curtains.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took me a second to realize it wasn't from a street light or a passing car.
[SPEAKER_00]: My house was on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air felt heavier and hotter than more I tried to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heat was suffocating.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind that burns your lungs when you breathe in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stumbled out of bed, my legs weak like they couldn't fully obey me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vision kept swimming in and out of focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I reached the front door, it was like my muscles just stopped taking orders.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next thing I knew, I was face down on the front porch tiles, staring at a thin crack in the ground while my vision blacked out.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I opened my eyes again, it wasn't to the sound of flames or sirens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cold, a sterile cold that felt too clean, too white.
[SPEAKER_00]: My view was tilted down at my own body, lying on a table, chest open, surgical lights glaring down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see the doctors in mass working quickly, murmuring to each other, and I could feel it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part I can't get out of my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt every single cut.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pressure of the scalpel, the movement inside my chest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my body didn't move, my mouth didn't scream.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just trapped inside this frozen lock shell.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like being forced to watch my own body from somewhere above and inside at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: My field of vision kept shifting between a bird's eye view and being back in my own eyes, staring blankly at the bright lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I noticed the monitor, the beeping slowed, the green line flattened into silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors froze for a second, then exchanged glances.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone turned off a machine, the heart monitor was unplugged.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the nurses quietly placed a white sheet over my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sound of fabric brushing against my skin is still burned into my memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a moment, everything was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sound, no light, no pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a strange, floating awareness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then out of nowhere, a single sharp beep cut through the silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: The flat line broke into jagged green peaks again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly I was slammed back into my own body, chest heaving, a heavy weight pressing on my ribs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lights were too bright, the air too cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't tell if I had been gone for seconds or hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the doctors muttered something about divine grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nurse took the sheet off me and avoided my eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell them that I had seen myself lying there watching them work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell them I had felt everything, even after I had supposedly died.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just think I was delirious from shock.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kept me in the hospital for observation that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I drifted in and out of sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I saw flashes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not memories exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: More like fragments of something I couldn't explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bedroom, but the curtains were gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire was still there, except the flames weren't moving naturally.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were still almost frozen in place, bending toward me instead of upward.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point I opened my eyes in the hospital bed and thought I saw someone standing at the foot of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No face just the vague outline of a person, darker than the rest of the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: I blinked and it was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning, one of the nurses casually mentioned something that made my stomach twist.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said that when they brought me in, my clothes and hair smelled like smoke.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were no burn marks.
[SPEAKER_00]: No damage to my skin at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was finally discharged, I went back home to find the house perfectly fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sign of fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing burned, not even a scorch mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: I even checked the stove, the wiring, the outlets, nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: My neighbor said she never saw any smoke or flames at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the next few weeks, little things started happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moments, just small enough to make me question myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Waking up at night to that same faint orange glow outside my window.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I check, there'd be nothing there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hearing what sounded like a faint crackle of fire from somewhere in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it would stop the second I tried to track it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once while making tea, I glanced at the metal kettle and swore I saw my reflection lying on that same operating table instead of standing in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was only for a split second, but it left me gripping the counter until my knuckles went white.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dreams haven't stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: I keep dreaming about that white sheet sliding over my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes in the dream, it doesn't stop at my forehead.
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps pulling until everything is dark again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I wake up for a few seconds, I can't move my body at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm back in that frozen state on the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've tried to explain it to myself logically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I hallucinated because of oxygen deprivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my brain was firing off random images in the process of shutting down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the fire was just a vivid nightmare brought on by whatever medical event put me in the hospital in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's one thing that doesn't fit into any explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night in the hospital when I first woke up after the surgery, I noticed a smell.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was faint but distinct.
[SPEAKER_00]: A hot dry scent like burning wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I assumed it was some lingering scent from my clothes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But weeks later I still smell it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always at night, always in my bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never strong, just enough for me to notice it's there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every time it happens, I catch myself glancing at the curtains, half expecting to see that frozen, unnatural flame waiting for me again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for watching.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, have a horrific nightmare, my dear.