I Woke Up

I woke to the feeling of weight. Not the kind that comes from blankets, but something colder, heavier—pressing directly against my chest. My breath caught, shallow and panicked, as if the air itself had thickened and was forcing its way out of me.

I tried to move, but the pressure held me in place. The room was silent, but I wasn’t alone. I could feel it—the undeniable sense of something leaning over me, inches from my face. The skin along my arms prickled as if icy breath was drifting across me.

A whisper of movement brushed past my ear. I snapped upright with a violent jerk, my lungs heaving, and slammed my hand against the lamp switch. The bulb flared to life.

The presence was gone, but the air still vibrated with it—like it hadn’t retreated, just pulled back into the shadows, watching. My pulse thudded in my ears. I couldn’t stay in that room another second.

I stumbled into the living space, my voice trembling as I called out, “Hey—are you awake?”

Silence.

The barracks room seemed to hold its breath. Every second without a response stretched tighter and tighter, until the shadows at the edges of the light felt alive, bending closer. I called again, louder this time, desperate, because the thought struck me—what if the thing that had been hovering over me had already reached them first?

It turned out that weekend my roommate was away for the weekend on Military leave.

Midnight

Midnight

No one in the development of Indian Mountain Lakes keeps cats anymore—not after what happened to my family.

It began one October, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones. One morning, we found a cat on our doorstep: pitch-black fur, yellow eyes that glowed like candlelight, and a collar with no name. It meowed, walked inside as though it belonged, and curled up by the fire. I named it Midnight.

That’s when things started. Lights flickered. Footsteps echoed through empty rooms. Scratches appeared high on the walls, far above where a cat could ever reach. At first, we laughed it off as strange coincidences. But then Midnight died.

I found him myself—lying on the porch, body still warm, neck twisted unnaturally. We buried him under the rose bush in the garden. I cried for days. But the next morning, Midnight was back. Whole. Alive. Sitting at the window, watching us eat breakfast. No one said a word. I opened the door, and he walked in like nothing had ever happened.

We pretended not to question it. Maybe we buried the wrong cat. Maybe we had imagined it. But then it happened again. This time, I found him under my bed, chest crushed as if something had stomped on him. We buried him again, deeper this time, behind the shed. And again, he returned.

It never stopped. He would die—burned, drowned, sliced open—and each time, he came back the next morning. Perfectly whole. Always watching. Always waiting.

By the sixth time, Father had stopped sleeping. Mother muttered prayers constantly. I wouldn’t go near Midnight anymore. Because by then, he had started whispering to me when no one else could hear.

"Only three left," he purred.

That night, Father tried to end it. He tied a stone to Midnight and threw him into the river. But in the morning, the cat was waiting at the door, wet footprints trailing all the way to my room.

"Only two left," he whispered.

Our neighbors noticed how wrong my family looked. Pale, hollow-eyed, distant. One day, the house burned down. People said it was an accident.

But I was the only one who survived. They found me barefoot in the road, my hands bloodied, clutching the black cat. I was humming a lullaby, and Midnight purred in my arms.

Her Side of the Bed

Her Side of the Bed

Every night, Nathan heard the same sound just before he fell asleep—three faint taps against the wall behind his headboard. He lived with two roommates, so he told himself it was just the townhouse settling, or maybe his roommates making noise.

The townhouse was new. Too new. When he rented one of the rooms, the landlord had avoided answering questions about why the other rooms had sat empty for nearly two years. “Some roommates just don’t stay long,” he had said with a forced smile.

One night, after the usual tapping, Nathan awoke to a strange coldness pressing against his side. Half-asleep, he rolled over—expecting maybe a draft from the cracked window. Instead, he felt the unmistakable weight of someone else lying in the bed.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and that’s when he saw her.

A woman. Pale, sunken skin stretched across a face that had clearly been rotting for decades. Her hair was matted and damp as though she had crawled up from the grave. Her cloudy eyes stared straight through him, wide and unblinking, and her mouth hung open in a silent scream.

Nathan couldn’t move. Every muscle locked as her bony fingers crept over the blanket, inching toward his chest. Her breath was cold, rancid, brushing against his ear as she whispered,

“Don’t push me out of my bed again.”

In a rush of terror, he realized the truth: this had been her bedroom before she died. She hadn’t left—she had just been waiting for someone foolish enough to take her place.

The next morning, the neighbors heard him screaming, but when they rushed inside, the bed was empty. The only trace left was the heavy impression of two bodies still pressed into the mattress.

The House in Valleyview

The House in Valleyview

On the edge of a quiet town, there was a house everyone avoided. It sat beneath a twisted sycamore tree, its windows black and hollow, as if the house itself were watching.

Long ago, a family lived there—the Morrows. Neighbors said they were happy, but one winter night in 1983, the entire household vanished. The breakfast table was still set. The fireplace still burned. Their beds were empty, but the sheets were warm, as though the family had only just slipped out.

No one ever found them.

Years passed. Teenagers dared each other to spend a night inside. Few lasted more than an hour. They spoke of whispers curling through the halls, and footsteps following them up the stairs—though no one was there.

One boy swore he saw a woman in the kitchen window. She wore a white dress, her hair long and dripping wet. When he blinked, she was gone, but the window glass was smeared with condensation from the inside, as if someone had pressed their face against it.

Another visitor claimed that upstairs, the air grew heavy—so thick it hurt to breathe. He found a child’s toy rocking horse, swaying gently on its own. Then he heard laughter, sharp and brittle, echoing in the dark. He ran, leaving the door wide open behind him.

To this day, no one stays past midnight. The locals say if you do, you’ll hear the Morrows calling your name—softly at first, then closer, closer, until you feel a cold hand brush against your shoulder in the dark.

And if you turn around… you’ll never come back out.