Cassie and I decided to hold a contest in celebration of the successful completion of our Kickstarter campaign for Don't Walk in Winter Wood. We're taking inspiration from the Anything Ghost podcast and the best thread ever to appear on RPG.net.
During the month of November, we'll be accepting real life spooky stories from anyone who'd like to enter. At the end of the month, Cassie and I will choose our favorites and the winners will receive an awesome prize package.
In the meantime everyone can enjoy the creepy stories and maybe get some ideas for their next gaming session. If this goes well, we plan to make it an annual event.
How To Enter
If you're reading this, you're eligible.
Submit a real life spooky experience you've had to the comments section below. This could be anything from a ghostly encounter to a UFO sighting to something just plain weird that you have no explanation for. It doesn't even have to be something that happened to you personally. If it's spooky and it's real, we'll take it. I'll put up a new post each week so that the comments section doesn't get too long. Non-entry comments and discussions of the entries are also welcome.
How to Win
At the end of the month, Cassie and I will choose our three favorite entries as the winners. The best entries will be both highly credible and bone-chillingly spooky. We're both pretty skeptical about the paranormal (I think I'm the more skeptical of the two), but we love a good yarn that has the ring of authenticity.
The Prizes
All three winners will receive an awesome prize package that includes the following:
- Print + PDF copies of Don't Walk in Winter Wood
- Print + PDF copies of Hell 4 Leather by Joe Prince
- PDF copies of Pulp-Fu and Wyrd-Fu by Daniel Bayn
- PDF copy of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple by Daniel Solis
- PDF copy of Pickets & Blinds by Kevin Allen Jr.
- PDF copy of The Blue Wasp by Nash High
- PDF copies of Annalise and Be Ashamed, Young Prince by Nathan Paoletta
Have fun!
Okay, here's one of mine:
ReplyDeleteI'm currently working a security gig for an upscale condo in the area of Kansas City known as the Country Club Plaza (it's basically a high-end shopping district). When I started the job about a year and a half ago I had a weird thing happen.
My whole thing is that I'm super skeptical while simultaneously being utterly fascinated with all things paranormal. So, naturally, I spent a good amount of time during my first few weeks checking up on the internet about the history of the building I work at. As it turns out, it was built in the 80s. Nothing weird has happened there. Its history is not particularly interesting.
So, I was new to the job (and to security work in general). The building has about a dozen cameras, which we watch on a monitor in the lobby. It's a pretty standard set-up. Most of the time, you're looking at very small versions of all the camera feeds simultaneously.
So over the course of several days, I kept noticing something strange on the camera that faces the sidewalk in front of the main entrance of the building. On 3-4 separate occasions I thought I saw someone standing there on the sidewalk. It looked like a male Caucasian in his mid twenties wearing white shirt and a black hat. He also seemed to be standing very rigid and still (usually, when you see people on that camera they're in the act of walking down the sidewalk). Every time I would see this person, I would bring the camera feed up to full screen to get a better look and the figure would be gone. It was pretty weird, but the cameras have occasional glitches and weird delays, so I didn't think too much of it.
Meanwhile, I was continuing to do research and I found out that my boring building was actually smack dab in the middle of a Civil War battlefield. The Battle of Westport took place all throughout the area. I even discovered that there was a placard on the island in front of the building commemorating the portion of the battle that happened there.
Despite my skepticism, I got quite a chill when I found out about the battle. My mind immediately drew a connection to the disappearing figure I'd been seeing. I remember texting Cassie about it and getting her good and creeped out.
Anyway, now I was determined to get to the bottom of this. I was excited at the prospect of actually seeing something paranormal, but I was still unconvinced. I began to watch that camera intently in case the figure appeared again. Sure enough, a couple of nights later, I saw the figure again, and again it disappeared when I pulled up the fullscreen view. So, I started messing around with the camera manually to see if I could recreate the apparition. It didn't take long before I knew the truth . . .
The guy in the white shirt, was he the ghost of some mournful Civil War soldier?
Nope.
He was a potted fucking plant.
While messing with the camera, I realized that during its normal automatic pan there was a point that one of the potted plants in front of the building looked very similar to a guy standing totally still with a white shirt and a black hat (especially, if you caught it out of the corner of your eye). Of course, once you brought the feed up fullscreen, you'd see nothing there but a potted plant. I was happy to have debunked the apparition, and slightly ashamed for having gotten all worked up about it.
This one was submitted by Junius Stone:
ReplyDeleteAlright, here we go. I normally don't share this with people until I know them better, but you all seem like the open minded sort...
I'm a soldier in the US Army. My specialty is broadcasting (Good Morning, Vietnam). While in Europe, I began experimenting with Lucid Dreaming (where you are aware you are dreaming and have full control over the environment and everything else). I had no success (until much later, different story), but read in related literature that Lucid Dreams are also often used by mystics as a launch platform for Out of Body Experiences, or OBEs. So...considering I hadn't had much luck with LDs, I decided to try something different.
I worked through a few different exercises, and none really seemed to produce any results, except for one, which involved drawing energy in from the universe and clearing your chakras. Now, that exercise itself is not intended to enable you to OBE, it's just a preparation. But one night...
...as I was doing this (I had been doing it for awhile, as it was the only exercise I had attempted to date where I could tell I was having success), I felt a vibration in my body. One of the tell tale signs that you are approaching an OBE is this vibration, like energy, electricity, is coursing through your body. It got stronger...stronger...STRONGER...to where it felt like I was shaking apart. But I wasn't, and I wasn't in pain, just this supremely intense sensation of energy bristling through me. I became frightened and the sensation fled.
I told myself, lying there in my bed, that if it happened again the following evening, I would just let it work it's will.
It came again the following evening. I just surrendered to it. And there I was, standing in the bathroom between my room and my suitmate across the way in the barracks. I looked at myself in the mirror, then began touching myself, then surfaces around me, the mirror, the sink, the radiator and windowsill behind...it all felt like it was supposed to. I then looked at the door to my room...
...and I was back in my bed, staring at my ceiling.
Make of that what you will.
PS. I don't drink (to excess) and I don't do drugs (the Army tends to frown on that).
Let me begin by telling you that I have always been a lucid dreamer. Maybe some part of my psyche refuses to give up control even when the subconscious is doing its thing. Maybe my ego is far more powerful then my id. Whatever the case when I do have memorable dreams I’ve always been in the drivers seat.
ReplyDeleteWith one rare exception.
I love my car, it’s my locus of control. Its safe, its home base. So its no wonder that my car would appear in my dreams. I have a recurring dream where I’m driving down a dark isolated country road, not a rare occurrence in its own right I do this fairly frequently, just looking out at the passing twilight lit world.
I look in my rearview mirror. Nothing. Moments later I glance again and “He” is sitting there.
“He”, I know, is an amalgamation of the my ideal self; you know that heroic or anti-heroic image we have of ourselves when we fantasize about “what could be”, and The Devil.
Or at least the characterization of The Devil as I have built him up in my head.
Pale skin, sharp yet handsome facial features, exotic bone structure and shape, Mediterranean or Arabic perhaps. He has yellow eyes, my grandfathers eyes, my lips nose and eyebrows. His hear is slicked back, and he carries himself with an air of arrogant aristocracy. He is dressed in an elegant fitted suite, silver cuff links, silver rings, and silver earrings dotted with turquoise. A silver spider pin on his lapel, my silver spider pin.
“He” never says anything but he is always expressive. He will look at my with questioning eyebrows, or smile reassuringly. On one occasion he even clicked his tongue, winked, and did a little gun point with his left hand.
I’ve never been afraid of him, at least not in my dreams. He has a female counterpart that occasionally appears in his stead, “She”, who frightens me to my very core. But “She” is a story for another time.
I graduated recently, with a degree in Marketing. Friends, family, everyone I cared about and wanted to see came out.
As well as “He”
I had just received my diploma and took the required photos with the Dean and school President and was on my way back to my seat when I looked out at the crowd hoping to see my parents.
And there “He” was.
He was under standing under a tree, leaning against it. Just smiling.
That perfectly white smile.
My friend who was in line behind me put her arm on my shoulder and I turned startled. A moment later I turned back. And as you may have expected he was gone.
But the image of him lingers with me.
The sun filtering through the shade of that tree surrounding him, his suit black as night, him just leaning nonchalantly against that tree, one hand casually toying with his pinky ring, And that smile, that eerie, knowing smile.
My smile.