spooky tales, let me be annoyingly picky about them.

April 11, 2013 1:32 PM

Off-topic ghost story threads on various internet forums? They are delicious. Load me with links, please.

A link to a long-running thread on allnurses.com has been going around for years - the discussion topic is 'What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?' What follows is dozens of pages of accounts of call buttons going off in recently-deceased patients' rooms, etc. I love reading first-person spooky or weird stuff like that. I want more.

Fortean Times' 'It Happened To Me!' message board is great, but I've read it all. Ditto for paranormal.about.com. I've read a few such threads on the Straight Dope message boards over the years. I've given Reddit a go, but it seems to be all creative writing efforts over there. Paranormal sites seem to be either true-believer new agey hooey, or ghost-hunter gadget nerdery, and I don't really enjoy either one. There are of course ample Haunted Lighthouse tourist attraction sort of ghost stories, but those don't quite scratch the itch either. The best read, in my opinion, is just when people get onto the topic, and recount some weird thing that happened to them once. So, got any links?

posted by Lou Stuells to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I know you already said Reddit, but it took me a while to figure out that r/nosleep houses all the attempts at creative writing, and that r/thetruthishere is the part where the vast majority of posters are at least protesting that these events are true. So maybe there?

Also I know you said read, but the hilarious, wacky podcast Mysterious Universe almost always has good tales of this sort, including listener-submitted ones at the end. That may not be creepy enough for you though-- I am very easily creeped out and one of the things I love about MU is that the two cackling Australians kinda break up the creepiness very well.

Also, if you don't mind making an account, there is a very good, very long "Tales of the Weird" thread on bpal.org (which is a forum created for fans of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumes). I can't link you to it because it's user-protected, but if you make an account and search you should be able to find it. Perhaps because of the type of clientele the company attracts, the BPAL forums seem to have a higher number than usual of really good stories.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:48 PM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

If you're willing to poke at length through the AskReddit subreddit, you can find threads about eerie stuff, including one of my favorites that asked parents about the creepy things their kids do.
posted by telophase at 2:04 PM on April 11, 2013 [3 favorites]

I always enjoy the annual Fark.com Halloween scary story threads (although there is a bit of nonsense and in-joking mixed in with the genuinely interesting stories).

2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
posted by erst at 2:53 PM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Here's an AskMe one from 2011.
posted by limeonaire at 4:23 PM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

/x/ on 4chan is very inconsistent, and impossible to tell whether people are just making nonsense up; but the diversity makes it interesting.
posted by solarion at 4:32 PM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

The ONTD Creepy LiveJournal community is full of this, and features a regular "personal experiences" thread. You do need to be a member to read the posts, though. (Like the rest of LJ, the community seems to be dying out, but it has a ton of backlog.)
posted by jeudi at 5:46 PM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, I know this isn't exactly what you were asking for, but in case it's interesting to you, here's the ghost story I've been kicking myself for forgetting to add to that AskMe thread two years ago. Right after I graduated from college, I picked up a part-time job at an ice-cream shop, located where there had previously been a hardware store from 1946 to 2000. Almost immediately, I started to experience strange things—and I don't just mean the time some kids who lived at the other end of my alley threw rocks at me from their fire escape 'cause I'd told them to quit begging for samples.

One morning, as I was opening the store, I set a clear plastic box of the previous day's waffle cones on the back counter, and while I was at the opposite end of the room, the box's lid came off on its own and flipped over the side counter onto the floor. We also had a hell of a time keeping the racks of waffle cones on the back counter upright—granted, waffle cones aren't the most structurally sound stacking material, but these would often wobble or tip over entirely when no one was anywhere near them.

In the back room, entire cardboard boxes full of straws or lids would often come crashing down from the high-up storage shelves when no one was back there—and anyone who was back there would've had to get on a stepladder to reach them. Sometimes we'd go back there after a busy stretch and a box would just be on the floor again, like someone had thrown it down. Even creepier, in the middle of the back room, the automatic hands-free sink on the wall would frequently turn on by itself, without anyone nearby.

When I mentioned some of this to a couple of the girls who'd worked there the longest, they weren't surprised. Apparently "Fred" had been doing stuff like that for years.

For various reasons, I only ended up working there about a month, so I experienced all of those things pretty close together. I was happy to be shut of the place!
posted by limeonaire at 5:59 PM on April 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Are you sure "Fred" wasn't a rat who lived in the ice cream shop? (See also: a-r-i-t-h-m-e-t-i-c.)
posted by heyho at 10:28 PM on April 11, 2013

Response by poster: You guys are the best, my under-the-covers late-night reading is assured for weeks to come! I worried that soliciting stories here would be too chat-filtery, but I'd certainly enjoy reading them. (I haven't got any of my own. I've had comforting dreams after losing loved ones, but it's so easy to explain those as self-soothing, there's not much story.)

Thanks for the links and many happy hours of reading!
posted by Lou Stuells at 8:08 AM on April 12, 2013

I wouldn't usually suggest it, but it fits the bill pretty well, Reddit (of course) has a subreddit for this... no sleep
posted by AnneShirley at 12:46 PM on April 12, 2013