Creepypasta Collection Book 1

Just Another Midnight

"I couldn't exist in a world devoid of marvels...even if they frighten me to consider them." - Catlin R. Kiernan

12:09 a.m.

There's got to be something wrong with me. Seriously, I'm twenty-two years old and still afraid of the dark. I'm not a little kid anymore, but I can't work up the courage to just turn off the lights and go to sleep. Okay, let me explain how I came to this. One minute I was enjoying myself, writing a paper on Paleolithic cave paintings for my art history class, and then without warning I imagined that there was something spooky waiting for me in the hallway of my apartment, effectively trapping myself in my own bedroom. You see, I did more than just creep myself out, because with me, fear has a tendency to spiral out of control into levels of mind boggling stupidity.

At first I just ignored it, going on with my work in the hopes that the feeling of being stalked would go away on its own. It didn't, and I was starting to worry that some shrieking terror was about to burst through the door, so I had to double check to make sure that it was securely locked. After that I couldn't concentrate on getting my paper written, as every other minute I'd have to look away from my monitor to see if the door was still closed. "This is getting retarded," I said out loud to no one in particular, "it's just my imagination fucking with me." Which is honestly the truth here. I know that if I were to open that door and look into the hall, nothing would happen. One single action and "poof," sanity becomes restored. The problem of course is the actual opening part. That's always when the anxiety reaches its high point.

This bullshit started about thirty minutes ago, just before midnight, and it doesn't look like it's about to let up anytime soon. So yeah, I'm stuck in my bedroom for what seems like the hundredth time, alone with my computer and thoughts of strange boogeymen. Actually, this whole thing got me wondering where these irrational, paranoid delusions first started. That's an interesting story actually, and it happened long before anyone could call me crazy.

There's Something in the Basement.

This story happened in the spring of 1998 in the old house on Erie Street that my parents were renting (Erie as in "Lake Erie," but yeah, weird coincidence right?) I was six-years-old at the time, so I was at a point in my life where sleeping with a nightlight was still considered normal. I think that we had only been living there for a few weeks, it's kind of hard to remember for sure exactly, but I do remember the first time my dad took my brother me to check out the basement. Now the house itself was well over a hundred years old, and in a previous lifetime it served as a train station. The basement, as it turned out, was used as a temporary jail cell where the town sheriff would keep the criminals he caught trying to ride out of Chicago, and in the time between then and when my family moved in, no one had thought to update the basement.

Basically, it was a dungeon. The walls were made out of carved rocks or something, with certain areas bricked over from where groundwater had been leaking through. Also the whole place was coated in layers of spider webs and dead insects. That's not even the creepiest part. On the way back around a narrow corner was a heavy door labeled, "Milker Room," whatever that meant. In any case my dad couldn't get it open, even with a crowbar. The hinges were so rusted and caked in calcium that nothing short of a jackhammer was going to get through it.

During the daylight hours, I didn't worry about the basement or the cryptic Milker Room; I just avoided going down there. But at night I couldn't help thinking about it, and invariably I'd end up hiding under my sheets until I could eventually fall asleep. Of course, I wasn't always able to fall asleep. Sometimes the voices would keep me wide eyed and alert. And when I say "voices," I mean what I thought constituted the sound of a man's muffled speech coming from the cellar. To me it sounded like someone under the floorboards was mumbling incoherently. The reality here, of course, was that sounds were bouncing around the air vents in such a way as to trick my little kid brain into thinking that there really was someone down there, trapped behind that huge immovable door, trying to get out in order to...I'm not sure exactly. Perhaps I thought he wanted to eat me I guess. Who knows, I was six remember? It doesn't matter what I thought this made up man wanted, all I knew at the time was that it was bad. And it got worse when my older brother, Joshua, kept telling me that he knew what was really in the basement. He was a sadistic asshole, and he thought it was just so damn funny to tell me that a monster with a woman's face and a body covered in tufts of fur was trying to escape from the Milker Room. Let me repeat that: A woman's face, and a body covered in tufts of fur. It was weeks before I could sleep a full night without yelling for my parents to rush to my room.