**CREEPY PASTA Best Tales**

Vote 1: Darkness

It all started after moving into my new house. Yeah, that’s pretty cliche. Believe me, I know, but it’s what happened. I never experienced anything supernatural before and, though interested, I never really expected anything to happen to me.

I was able to rent the house for pretty cheap. I didn’t think anything of it because it was old and not in the best of neighborhoods so I guessed I just got a good deal. After moving everything in, things were fine for a while.

I don’t remember exactly when it started because it seemed so minor at the time. I’d leave a light on in the kitchen or the bathroom and come back to find it off. Honestly, I thought I was just forgetting that I turned them off already when I came back. After a while, I began to wonder and started leaving a couple lights on on purpose. Sometimes, nothing would happen. Sometimes, I’d come back to find the lights turned off.

By now, I figured out that something was off. I wasn’t really scared, but just confused. I thought maybe something was wrong with the electronics. I started leaving lights on a bit more often (freakin’ killed my PG&E bill) because I thought I might be able to get some sign of why they would randomly shut off. That’s when it started to take another turn.

The first real time I remember something crazy happening was when I left the kitchen and living room light on while I was asleep. I woke up to a deep, rumbling growl coming from the kitchen. Now, from the bedroom, you can see down the hall to the living room and that room is connected to the kitchen. I remember waking up and thinking that there was an animal or something in my house. I looked down the hall toward the living room to see the light darker. Somebody had flicked off the light from the kitchen. Another low growl came, this time from the living room and I nearly screamed as I saw something bold across the length of the hall opening and then the living room light went out. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was though. It just seemed like a black shadow or something. It didn’t really matter. I was scared shitless. I bolted from my bed then and threw on the bedroom light, expecting something to be in this room and getting ready to come after me.

Nothing. There wasn’t anything in the room. I let out a low breath and then I slowly moved down the hall into the living room. Once I got to the end, I practically bolted to throw on the light switch there. Again, nothing. Kitchen next and, once again, nothing!

I was starting to think I dreamed all of it before I went to turn off the kitchen light and stopped. Now, I was a grown man but here I was terrified to turn off that switch. And I’ll admit it, I slept with all the lights on that night.

That was a mistake.

When I woke up the next morning, all the lights were off once again. I went to push myself out of bed and winced as my body felt sore. I pulled the sheets off to see long red marks running down along my legs and arms. It looked like something scratched me in the night. That terrified the hell out of me but not nearly so much as when I saw what happened.

Every light I left on was smashed.

Every lightbulb that was on last night was broken, every lamp knocked over and smashed in. My breath caught in my throat as I looked around. Something was fucked up as hell here. And something tried to…well do something to me. I called in for work that day and went to immediately replace all the lights.

I didn’t know what to do then. I thought about leaving but, and I know this probably sounds stupid, but this was my home. It was my first time away from my family and this was MY home. I couldn’t give it up. So…I stayed.

Even as it got worse.

Even though I was begining to become terrified of the dark, I couldn’t really sleep with the light on me at night in the bedroom. I’d leave other lights on though, like in the hall, or the living room giving myself enough to see pretty well in my darker room. And, almost every night, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear something growling and prowling around the living room and then the lights would shut off. I didn’t want to go look. I was terrified at the thought of being in the same room with whatever was in there. So I curled up in bed and prayed it never came in.