Three Creepy Spooky Stories About Monsters and The Strange

She awoke abruptly to a spinning world of darkness.

With all the grace and poise installed into her at a young age by a fretful mother, she leaned over the arm of her threadbare couch and divulged the entirety of her stomach contents upon a long-suffering carpet. The pungent scent caused her stomach to roil, but there was nothing further to bring up. Slowly, her head pounding with the righteous cacophony of a high school marching band, the woman swept her muddy eyes across the train wreck of her apartment and attempted to take stock of the damage.

The slightly crumpled hulls of five…no, six beer cans meet her gaze, silently mocking her condition. Blue Ribbon; cheap shit, tasted like rat piss and pond water, but it got the job done. With a low groan of discomfort, she rolled herself onto her back and stared up at a yellowed ceiling fan that, to her knowledge, had not been in functional order since the days of Reagan. She became vaguely aware of the fact that she reeked of old sweat and worse. Well, who gave a shit? No reason to leave the apartment, except to pick up more booze at the corner store, and she sure as hell wasn’t the type to…how did the high class fucks put it? “Entertain guests?”. The building’s pipes were shit anyway, producing a liquid that was more rust than water and invariably colder than the Arctic sea. It was hell on her leg.

Ah yes, her leg. One grimy hand instinctively dropped down to the wounded appendage and began to rub the twisted flesh hidden beneath her threadbare jeans. It was a gift from one driver who couldn’t keep the bottle out of his mouth for five minutes. When running the morning commute the last thing most people worry about is a drunk weaving across the center divider and ramming into the side of their sensible commuter car like a rogue elephant. But that was that great bitch of Life for you, always throwing out delightful little surprises when you least expect them. She was put on disability after that and the rest was, as they say, history.

The irony that she herself become a drunk after the incident was not lost on her. But she was nothing like the asshole who had taken out her limb and livelihood, dammit. She needed the alcohol for the pain in her leg; the pills her cheapskate insurance provided were nowhere near powerful enough to cover the almost constant dull throb that spiked with every movement the injured joints attempted. And once she took that first sip of Blue Ribbon or Miller or whoever else was kind enough to ease her in a hazy half world that particular day, the car keys were off limits.

Except that one time. But it was an emergency, really.

Resigned to the fact that no further sleep would come that night, the woman carefully shifted herself into a sitting position and prepared to fetch a pinch of the dog that bit her from the fridge. She found it was the only thing that really quieted the monster in her head once it started roaring.

It was then that she noticed the TV was on.

The set in question, a pathetic old thing that was pathetic even in these squalid conditions, had given out about a month ago during a particularity juicy episode of Jerry Springer. Too lazy to drag it down two flights of stairs to the trash and too cheap to get it fixed, the woman had allowed the device to sit there silently collecting dust and beer cans, destined to waste away to quiet oblivion beneath an ever encroaching pile of trash.

Until now.

“The ‘ell?” She half muttered, half slurred. The world still wobbled and rocked beneath her, like a ship docked upon gentle wave, and thus she did not trust herself to brave the few inches of carpet between the couch and TV. The screen displayed nothing more than slowly flickering lines of static, but the last time she’d had it on it refused to show even that. Hell, hadn’t she even pulled the plug out of the wall in case it somehow continued to leech off her electricity? The memory was hazy, but she had grown used to peering through the thick lenses of alcohol over the years and discerning fact from fiction with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Before the woman could perform a thorough evaluation of that particular section of her brain, however, the lines on the screen became a solid image to the tune of a rather loud popping sound that caused the skin on her arms to stand on end.

She squinted, more out of disbelief than an inability to see; though slightly fuzzy and unfocused the scene before her was still perfectly identifiable. It was a table, draped with a simple cloth and set before a wall covered in a horrendous floral pattern. The picture flickered with film lines and was accompanied by the soft static purr of an older microphone met with no audio input. Everything was colored in dull shades of white, gray and black.

With a pace befitting a small gastropod, a man’s head began to rise up from behind the line of the table. First came his hair, neatly combed and gelled into a conservative style hailing from a bygone age. Next, the eyes, set with a cold gleam, and a sharp jutting nose. As the woman watched, her brain numb, an impossible grin slid into view. It has admittedly been quite some time since she had laid eyes upon another human face, but she did not recall the average man’s lips being able to draw that far back. Neither did he, to the best of her knowledge, possess quite that many teeth. Her consciousness drifted slightly.

“Hello friends!” the stranger stated in a gentle monotone. Though his words were slightly muffled, the audio itself carried an unpleasant edge to it. The static persisted beneath all. “Today I’m here to talk to you about the latest product to come from the brilliant minds of true blooded American scientist!” As he spoke, the top half of a collared shirt came into view. The woman found herself furiously mashing the inside of her cheek between her teeth. Odd. That was a tic she hadn’t had since grade school. With some force of will, she managed to still her working jaws. A faint taste of copper began the mingle with her saliva.

The man on the screen came to a rest with the table bisecting his body just above the midsection. Slowly, he raised his right hand from beneath the obstruction. In it held an old-fashioned glass soda bottle. The mouth was jammed with a wine cork.

“The Baby Jar!”

She blinked, leaning forward despite the cry of protest from her sense of balance. There was no way she heard that correctly.

“Yes, the Baby Jar! The latest and greatest way of expanding your family! Tired of having the missus lag behind on her kitchen and cleaning duties due to the bouncing baby boy in her belly? No longer!” The man’s smile, if possible, grew wider. He set the bottle down with a dull thunk and drew a small rectangular box from an unseen pants pocket. The camera cut to a close-up with such speed the woman felt as if she had received a case of mental whiplash. The words ‘Baby Jar Special Formula-Male’ filled the screen in bold stylized letters arced above the grinning face of a young boy. “Simply drop one of our pre-approved tablets into the Jar, and watch the magic happen!”

The shot widened again with the unpleasant jerk to the first cut as the host of the program did just that. The dark, oblong tablet slid through the bottle’s narrow opening with ease and clattered upon its thick bottom with a sound that strongly reminded the woman of the jumping beans the local gas station kept by the counter. For a second, all was still, and the omnipresent static seemed to consume all.

The tablet wobbled. It twitched. And then, as the woman’s teeth once again set themselves against her unprotected flesh, it expanded, lengthening at each end and turning in upon itself like a bean. That unpleasant zoom once again reared its ugly head but she didn’t care, couldn’t care, for the scene taking place before her was far too transfixing to spare a second for such frivolous things as shoddy editing.

As she was watching in a mixture of horror and amazement, small buds began to form at on end of the bean, lengthening and splitting at the ends to form a perfect set of limbs. Arms and legs, coated in a glistening black shell like a cockroach’s, carefully segmented at each joint. The top half of the object bloated, distorted, and became the scrunched-up visage of a newborn. It opened its mouth to cry and the lower jaw split in half vertically, both halves swinging out to opposite sides. The cry was a heavy wasp’s buzz.

It expanded, grew and soon its chitinous sides pressed hard against the glass walls of its artificial uterus, the cold body of its uncaring parent. The glass cracked, broke, and the abomination spilled out onto the tablecloth, still increasing in size. Its eyes opened to reveal twin pulsating orbs, constructed from countless human irises, pupil-less and pulsating in a nauseous display.

Cut to full screen-a necessity, as the creature now extended beyond the frame-and the woman noticed with her first true pang of horror that the host was still smiling. Indeed, he gazed down at the Baby jar’s offspring with a look of raw pleasure, a salesman who has just seen his product make it big on the open market.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” He cooed, reaching a hand down to stroke the creature’s bald head. The joyful applause of a studio audience could be heard after the man’s words. The buzzing subsided somewhat as it leaned into the human contact, eyelids sliding partially shut in pleasure. The man turned his attention back to the viewer. “And he can be yours for only five easy payments of $19.95.” A number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The baby squirmed slightly, glass crunching beneath its hard skin. “Call now, and we’ll double your order. After all, who could be satisfied with only one of these sweet little angels?”

The edges of her vision darkening, the woman discovered that she did indeed have more in her stomach to purge.

I am the definition of a crazy cat person. Everything I do in life is based around Fluffles, my little white cat. The only reason I have a job is to feed her. I have transformed my entire basement into cat paradise, or as I like to call it, Caturday Island. It’s full of scratching posts, cat trees, catwalks, anything. The only downside for me is the fact that my washing machine is on the other side of the room from the stairs. Apart from that, though, I don’t mind. I just learned to bob and weave.

The other night, I was sitting on the couch watching TV and browsing 4chan on my computer, my usual evening routine, when I heard Fluffles meowing from the basement. Now, this is a normal routine for her. It usually means she wants me to come down and pay her some attention, but I had just eaten a ton of pizza, so I wasn’t in the mood to try the stairs. Instead, I patted my lap and jingled a toy to try to coax her up. It doesn’t usually work, but I figured it would be worth a shot.

It didn’t work. I heard her scratching at the bottom step, trying to get me to come down. “Alright, alright. Hold on,” I muttered, heaving myself out of my blanket nest and starting the walk down the hall to the basement door. I flipped on the light switch just inside the doorway and the basement was illuminated, but the cat was nowhere in sight. Of course, from the top of the stairs, my view was pretty limited, so I began the walk down the stairs.

There are a few catwalks along the ceiling for her to run on, since I knew that cats enjoyed high places. There are also a few alcoves in the walls filled with toys and things I roped my boyfriend into helping me build. The end result was, like I said before, cat paradise. So I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, scanning the cat trees for Fluffles, when a flicker of motion on one of the catwalks caught my eye. “There you are!” I said under my breath.

I walked over to the alcove I had seen her run into and stared into the shadows. I couldn’t really see anything inside because the light next to it had burnt out a few days before. I made a mental note to replace it. I was about to reach up to grab her when I heard her meow from behind be. She was sitting in a cat tree I couldn’t see into from the stairs. “But what…? Never mind,” I said, dismissing what I had seen as an optical illusion, brought about by my tired brain. I went over to Fluffles, scooped her up in my arms, and headed back up the stairs, turning out the light and shutting the door for the evening.

The next morning was Saturday, so I didn’t have to go to work. I woke up, and opened my bedroom door to let Fluffles out (she slept in my bed). She ran out and wandered around the house for a few minutes, before heading over to the basement door as I knew she would. I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth at the time, so she would have to wait a moment before I could open the door.

Then I could hear her start scratching on the door. I wasn’t unduly troubled; she likes to scratch things. That’s why there’s so many scratching posts in the basement. I finished up with my teeth and went out into the hallway to let her downstairs. I could still hear her scratching. I turned the corner, and there she was, sitting in front of the door patiently. She mewed at me when she saw me. But I could still hear the scratching. It was coming from the other side of the basement door.

Not gonna lie, I was kind of freaked out. After all, who wouldn’t be freaked out by an unknown scratching on a door? The door to the basement, of all places! But, stupidly, I went over and picked up Fluffles. Then I reached out… and opened the door. Nothing. The scratching instantly stopped, and there was nothing to be seen. Just to be safe, I turned on the lights and peered down the stairs. Nothing. I kept the lights on and closed the door. I looked at Fluffles and said to her, “You can’t go down there today. There’s something weird down there.” I don’t know if she understood me or what, but she stayed away from the door until about one in the afternoon.

Then the scratching started again.

I knew the source of the sound, I didn’t have to look. Fluffles jumped off of the couch next to me when the sound started and trotted leisurely down the hall to the basement door, where she sat down comfortably and began licking her paws. I didn’t know what to do, but I sure as Hell wasn’t opening that door again. I called my boyfriend, Chad, and asked him what it could be, but he was stumped for an answer. So I asked him to come over and stay the night with me because I was starting to get seriously scared at this point. He agreed, but I think he might have been worried more for my sanity than the possibility I was actually hearing something.

He showed up at my place at around 2:30. The scratching had stopped at about quarter to two. He wanted to take a look in the basement, but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t want him getting hurt down there, and I didn’t want to risk whatever was down here getting up here. Like I said, he was concerned about my mental health over the possibility of there being something in the basement, so he didn’t go downstairs. We slept in my bed, but we didn’t do anything but sleep.

It was about three in the morning. I woke up and really had to use the bathroom, so I went out into the hallway and two doors down to the bathroom and sat down. Then, about a minute later, I heard it again: the scratching at the basement door. I was pretty sure Chad was still asleep, so I finished up and hurried back to my room to wake him up. He sat up and was pretty groggy, but he woke up pretty quickly once he heard the scratching. He immediately jumped up and reached into his pants pocket, pulling out a knife that I’m pretty sure was too long to be legal. Then he quickly walked out into the hallway and turned on as many lights as possible.

He approached the basement door cautiously, but the scratching wouldn’t stop. He reached out slowly, grabbed the doorknob, and yanked the door open. Just like before, nothing. He flipped the light switch and we were bathed in the glow of the lightbulb at the top of the stairs as the rest of the basement was subsequently lit up. He charged down the stairs, to my dismay. At the bottom, he started waving his knife around threateningly, while Fluffles darted down after him, a white flash, and went to play in the cat trees, startling him and making him jump.

“Damn cat…” he growled. “There’s nothing down here.”

“Fine,” I replied. “Come back up here, and bring Fluffles, please.” So Chad went over to get Fluffles, and, as usual, she went limp in his arms when he picked her up. He brought her back upstairs and closed the door. But we left the lights on.

Then, the next day, we got out of bed, not that we got any sleep after that, and life seemed to go on as usual. Nothing happened that day, or for several days after. I was calmed down enough to let Fluffles play in the basement again, and I could go down there myself without being overly scared. I was putting a pile of underwear into the washing machine when I noticed Fluffles crossing a catwalk and going into an alcove. I poured some bleach into the washer and walked over to what I knew was her favourite toy, a couple of feathers tied to a string. I picked it up and walked over to the alcove, and started flicking it into the alcove trying to coax her out. She grabbed it, I could feel her tugging on it. She let go and I flicked it back out.

When I tossed it back up, a paw reached out and caught it. A black paw. A paw way too big to belong to any housecat. A low growl emanated from the darkness of the alcove, and suddenly a pair of bright red eyes became visible. I dropped the toy and sprinted for the stairs, noticing Fluffles and grabbing her on the way. As I ran up the stairs three at a time, I heard a thump behind me as whatever it was jumped out of the alcove. I slammed the door. Seconds later, a massive thump made the floor shake as that creature slammed into the door.

I ran into my room and grabbed my cell phone, dialing Chad’s number before I realized it. He invited me to his house, and I gladly accepted. I didn’t pack anything, just grabbed Fluffles and jumped in the car. When I got to his house, he immediately called animal control to go to my house and capture whatever was living in my basement. I don’t know what it was, but I don’t think anything with paws that big could fit in that little alcove. But Chad insisted.

Police report:

Two animal control technicians were found dead on 06/21 in the home of Elizabeth Revelle. Cause of death: apparent mauling by a large animal. Bloody feline pawprints found on scene, size of dinner plates. Ended at wall of basement. No culprit found. Bodies appear partially eaten.

Up in British Columbia in the country of Canada, there was a general hospital in a small town called New Denver. It was a small town that serviced only about two hundred people at most. It was near a municipal park that had many forest animals and tons of forest for people to explore.

The hospital was opened in 1934, a little before the second World War began. Once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States, Japanese Canadians were considered “enemy aliens” and were forced out of their own homes. Some of the Japanese were sent to New Denver and were forced to live in small shacks that barely sustained large families.

New Denver was a small town, and the people reacted negatively to the Japanese arriving in their town. The Japanese Canadians, some of them who lived in Canada their entire life, were suddenly treated like animals. They were called names, pushed around and sometimes denied service from certain stores.

One day, there was a riot in the middle of town, with the Japanese fighting the Canadian citizens. Many sustained injuries, some of them broke bones and in an instance of madness, one person was fatally shot.

The New Denver hospital received patients immediately, and they worked night and day. The patients eventually fully recovered and were restored to full health.

However, something odd happened as the patients left the hospital. The patients started to show odd behaviour such as talking to themselves in an empty room, refusing to eat (thus becoming weak), and repeatedly talking about their experience in the hospital, even though it was after their recovery.

Eventually, it came to a point where many previous patients were starting to hurt themselves purposely. No patient would give a reason why, only mumbling incoherent sentences.

The hospital was investigated as the rise of people hurting themselves reached a peak. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and the investigation ended with no results. But the patients became worse in their mental state, as they started to yell and scream in the middle of the night in their hospital beds.

Then, out of nowhere, there was an incident in the hospital. One of the patients exited his hospital room and jumped out of a window, ending his life. There was no instance of suicidal tendencies before, and he was generally considered to be a happy man.

Soon, others started to follow the pattern. People were jumping out of the hospital in large numbers and the investigative team returned with no results.

Finally, a detective named John Norwitz stayed in the hospital for one night, to see if anything was out of the usual. He slept in one of the hospital beds until the crack of dawn. Suddenly, he was not the same person that he was before.

He showed the same symptoms of the other patients, only in a much more schizophrenic matter. He mumbled and screamed at the top of his lungs for many nights. He disappeared suddenly, supposedly in the nearby forest.

One night, an incident occurred. The building caught fire for an unexplainable reason, and the building collapsed in flames. The nurses and doctors inside perished, along with some patients who were suffering from the symptoms.

Nobody knew why the building caught fire, or why it was so. All there was at the scene was a mention of a dark figure that stood outside the night of the fire. The case was dropped, and a new building was built a couple years later.