Sore throat stuffy nose upset stomach and headache

Hello! I (26F) just had my first colonoscopy and endoscopy on June 7. I had the Golytely prep (hell) that started at 5PM on June 6 and ended at 4AM on June 7. Procedures started at 9:15AM. I went into the procedures with a runny nose and a very slight dry cough, which along with itchy eyes, are my most common allergy symptoms. The nurses and doctors noted this and did not think it was an issue. Post procedure and as soon as I got back home, I started having a more active cough alongside a sore throat and I think I broke a fever in my sleep (woke up sweaty). Yesterday, June 8, I woke up with an EXTREMELY active cough and a general unwell feeling. Took some NyQuil to sleep and honestly woke up feeling much better. As today has progressed, I am feeling worse again. Cough is less active, but still very much present along with the general fatigue and unwell feeling. I have set up a MinuteClinic appointment for tomorrow morning and I have also submitted a request to my PCP for an asap appointment. Not asking for med advice, more so just asking for opinions and any helpful thoughts/tips. Thank you!

Phentermine
Im on day 4 of phentermine. My doctor gave me 37.5 when i was on day two the side effects were messing me up. So far the side effects are tingling in the head, my throat feels like im something is stuck( feeling like im getting a sore throat) but by end of the night it goes away, headaches, notice that my vision starting to be blurry thru out the day, sometimes i felt like my heart is having palpitation. Started weight at 204 at the moment. I address the concern to my doctor and she wanted to see me this thursday. Did it go away the side effects?

So I was really feeling bad today was day 8 I could barely get out of bed, I’ve had muscle aches, a fever, chills, headaches nausea. I have no rash, tounge issues, sore throat, etc. I went to urgent care and they did a rapid mono test (the pricking finger blood test) and it was positive. I have been in a google hole about this because I’ve never had mono but before I was diagnosed today I was convinced I had HIV because I had unprotected sex and I guess they have similar symptoms. I’m a female- should I be concerned about HIV or could this really just be mono? Please give me your advice!!

Im on day 4 of phentermine. My doctor gave me 37.5 when i was on day two the side effects were messing me up. So far the side effects are tingling in the head, my throat feels like im something is stuck( feeling like im getting a sore throat) but by end of the night it goes away, headaches, notice that my vision starting to be blurry thru out the day, sometimes i felt like my heart is having palpitation. Started weight at 204 at the moment. I address the concern to my doctor and she wanted to see me this thursday. Did it go away the side effects?

Hi! So I was just chilling before bed for like an hour or two and then hot and cold flashes suddenly went over me. I started to notice it and then I felt like my body had started to ache. I immediately started overthinking and panicking because I'm going away for a week the day after tomorrow and I seriously want/need to be healthy and fit. I went to bed but I started losing my appetite and my skin feels like it's on fire. It's not really burning, it's just really hot even though I don't feel hot at all. I know this sounds like a fever, I'm too scared to measure my temperature BUT the thing is. the last time I was feeling like that,, I went down with the sb. My mum was the same. Random body aches, fever and then v/d* (I never v* the last time I had the sb, though I had been feeling miserable for a week and had a terrible d). If only I had a stuffy nose or sore throat so I could be sure that it's that kind of infection. I'm scared to fall asleep cuz what if I wake up like an hour from now and v?. i don't have any appetite even though I feel slightly hungry ig? I'm also super tired cuz I managed to sleep for like 4-5hours during the past two days. I,, don't know. I think I just need some support. my stomach feels hotter (??) than it usually is.

Went on 2 dives the past few days. The one yesterday went fine, but had trouble equalizing in my left ear. Had minor headache on left side of head for a bit afterwards but not for long.
Today I went diving and maxxed out at around 25ft. I still had trouble equalizing. But still did the dive...I equalized to the point where it felt mostly fine, but not completely. When ascending, I don't remember breathing out (which I was told was essential) and exhaling, I think I might've just been breathing, inhaling and/or exhaling, or not breathing--this may have been the cause.
Anyways, felt perfectly fine the entire time underwater (besides some equalization issues), and when I got to the surface, also felt fine. But at the surface I felt like I had stuff/phlegm in my throat so I spit. After spitting a few times, I noticed it was red.
For the first 30min or so there was very obviously blood mixed in with my spit. After another hour passed, it went down. Now it's been around 4 hrs and very little to no blood at all.
Other symptoms are I felt some tightness/discomfort, noticeably on the left side of my chest. I can breathe deeply, laugh, sneeze, but I feel a bit uncomfortable doing it, but this may also be mental. Feel a bit tired otherwise.
The instructor said it was a sinus issue--maybe I was blowing too hard while equalizing and blew a nose capillary. But there is no blood in my mucus whatsoever.
Any idea what happened, what I have, and what risks there are? And how to recover?

I volunteered to work at a lunch event where I’ll be serving food to around fifty elderly people in my community. The event is in two days, but my sister has come down with some sort of mild respiratory illness (cough, sneezing, sore throat though that went away a day or so ago, fatigue). I don’t think I should go anymore even though I myself feel fine and have no symptoms just in the off chance that I’m contagious. But my family really wants me to go and is upset at the idea of me quitting when I’m not even sick. Should I wait until the last second to see if I get sick? Or just cancel now? Or just go?

They found just enough of my best friend's body to mark him down as dead, not missing. The rest of his family wasn't as lucky. They found pieces of Wyatt, Emily, and Alice Forrester—teeth strewn across the parents' bed, strands of the girl's hair caught in the latch of her bedroom window—but there supposedly wasn't enough evidence to determine whether the rest of the family was dead or alive.
After the discovery, my town entered an unofficial, unspoken lockdown. Any peace of mind gained from Fred's arrest was shattered by the realization that, even if he was guilty of grave robbing and killing animals, there were far worse criminals operating in our community. I talked a big game in my last post, saying that I'd put down whatever entity I'd unleashed like some kind of wannabe ghostbuster. In reality, all I did for days was sit in my room, imagining the terror and pain Liam must have felt in his final moments. I submitted an application to visit Fred through the county jail's website, but it took a while to get approved.
Just over a week ago, I received an unexpected visit from Liam's girlfriend, Eleanor. When I answered her knock at my door, she instantly pulled me into a hug and burst into tears, so I figured, despite the two of us not being close, she'd come to commiserate over our shared loss. Not sure what else to do, I invited her inside.
In some ways, it was nice to have someone else who felt the same pain that I did, but in others, seeing her cry just made me feel guilty. She'd come all this way to confide in me, not knowing the role I played in her boyfriend's death. At one point my grandma came in from her garden and made Eleanor some tea, which helped calm her down a little.
It occurred to me that if I was supposed to be investigating the thing that killed Liam, Eleanor might be a good place to start. As gently as I could, I asked her if she'd noticed anything strange about Liam before the discovery.
She shook her head and told me: "He was the same as ever. I just can't see Liam or the rest of his family having any enemies. His parents owned a bakery—that's like the most innocuous job ever. And Alice, I mean, she was only twelve. The only person I might've suspected was your creepy boss. But he was already in jail by that night."
After a minute of silence, she sighed, saying, "That asshole is real bad news. I practically begged Liam not to take that job. We hardly ever disagreed on anything, but we fought about that stupid job all the time." Eleanor started tearing up, so I refrained from asking any follow-up questions. When she composed herself again, she set the teacup down and excused herself, so I walked her out to her car.
I didn't think much about it at the time, but when Eleanor talked about Fred, she seemed really upset. A lot of people in my town have long been wary of Fred, but Eleanor seemed particularly bitter, like there was a painful history between them. Who knows, maybe I'm not the only one who witnessed him messing with dead bodies. I'll have to ask her more the next time I see her.
Before I made it back inside the house, my grandparents appeared on the porch, dressed for an outing. My granddad let me know they were going to The Home Depot for a new raccoon trap, since apparently there was an issue with our current one. He said, "Every morning I find food everywhere and an open trap door. Either the thing's broken or the coyotes have grown opposable thumbs."
After that, they left me alone with the unpleasant notion that something other than coyotes had gotten into the trap. I walked to the edge of our front yard to investigate, and sure enough, the trap door was open and the dog food we used as bait was scattered all over the grass. It looked like someone had reached an arm inside just to knock over the dog food bowl, and yet when I looked closely, I saw a small clump of fur caught in a bottom corner. At some point, there had been an animal in that trap, but something else had opened the door for it. Whether they had done so out of compassion or because they wanted the trapped animal for themselves, I didn't know. I did know that after a week of doing nothing, I finally had a plan.
I spent most of last Saturday gathering supplies, hitting up most of the hunting and camping stores in our small town. My itinerary included four traps in total: two for raccoons; one for mice and other, smaller animals; and one bear trap. I also bought dog food and peanut butter to bait the raccoon and mice traps accordingly. Finally, I bought a pack of four trail cameras. All together, I spent so much that I practically blew through all the money I'd earned at Sundae Central, but I was hoping that it would be worth it.
On Sunday, I set up the traps. My grandparent's house, like all the others on this side of our street, borders a canyon. We've got a nice plot—a huge fenceless yard, at the edge of which sits a greenhouse that my granddad built for my grandma's 50th birthday. Beyond the flat portion of the backyard is a long, gradual decline to the arroyo below, not quite sheer enough to be called a cliff, but too steep and full of trees and boulders to do anything with.
I set up the first trail camera to point to the newly-replaced raccoon trap in the front yard, dedicating the area as Site A. Next, I placed the mouse trap next to the greenhouse, propped up the second trail camera against one of the greenhouse's shelves, and designated it as Site B. I set up the remaining raccoon traps at sites C and D, which lay right at the bottom of the hill and at the very edge of our property respectively. The bear trap, for the time being, I kept in reserve.
Nothing happened on Monday night. I stayed up late, watching the trail cams on my laptop, until I got bored and fell asleep. The following morning, I watched the sped-up recordings, and was both relieved and disappointed to see that nothing had paid the traps a visit.
Site B caught a mouse on Tuesday night. It crawled into the trap near the greenhouse at around 3 AM, but nothing else came to investigate. I released it into the woods the next day. The Site D camera caught something moving in the distance just before dawn, but the trail cam's night vision quality is so bad that I have no idea what it was. From the way the brush swayed in its wake, though, it was something big.
Wednesday night was when things started to get weird. At around midnight, I was sitting at my desk. I've been asked to speak at Liam's funeral, so I was fruitlessly attempting to draft a speech when I looked up at my computer screen to check the cameras. Clicking through the four feeds, I saw that the trap at Site C had caught an opossum. I full-screened the Site C feed and watched the animal scurry around inside the trap for a while. I sat there for a long time. When an hour passed and nothing else happened, I was ready to throw in the towel on the whole stupid operation and just go to bed.
And then, all of a sudden, the trap door slid open.
The opossum was still huddled in the back corner of the cage; the door seemed to have opened all on its own. Cautiously, the creature approached the exit, slowly making its way out of the metal cage. It took a few steps out into the night, and then it stilled. Its head turned to the side, its glowing eyes fixed on something that I couldn't see. I squinted at the video feed. For a moment, I thought I saw depressions in the grass, like something was walking next to the trap.
I blinked, and the opossum disappeared.
I've played back that footage so many times now, and I just can't make sense of what I saw. One second, the creature was standing there in the grass, and the next, it was simply gone. The next morning, when I investigated the area, I saw no trace of the opossum or any other animal. For reasons I still can't comprehend, the thing that's been taking our local wildlife isn't showing up on my cameras.
I focused my efforts on Site C. On Thursday evening, just before dusk, I swapped the dog food in the raccoon trap in favor of a slab of bloody, raw meat I'd bought from the butcher. I also hauled the bear trap down the hill and set it up in front of the raccoon trap, chaining it to a large tree and disguising it as best I could with leaves and dirt. Finally, I sprayed some bear and raccoon repellant around the surrounding area. I've never used a steel-jawed trap on an animal before—I've only ever used humane, catch-and-release-style traps for pest control and I'd like to keep it that way. It was my hope that the repellant would deter the animals from getting too close.
I stayed up the entirety of Thursday night for nothing. No animals graced the trail cam feed, nor did any monsters.
Friday night was similarly slow. I spent so many lonely hours struggling to write my speech and staring at grainy trail cam footage. Maybe I was going a little crazy from my self-imposed isolation, but I kept thinking I saw something moving in the background of Site D.
Last night was when everything went to hell. The slab of meat had been so thoroughly ravaged by flies that I swapped it out for a new one on Saturday evening. Then, I returned to my room to wait. At 3 in the morning, long after my grandparents had gone to sleep, something in the Site C camera caught my eye. Movement in the brush. Depressions in the grass, so slight I never would've seen them if I wasn't looking for them. I held my breath …
And then the bear trap snapped shut.
I stood up from my desk, ecstatic that I'd finally caught my prey and terrified that I'd finally have to confront it. With shaking hands, I quickly tied my shoes and fitted a headlamp over my forehead. As I prepared to leave, the bear trap thrashed around on my screen, presumably as whatever entity it held fought for escape. The last thing I grabbed before I jogged into the night was my granddad's rifle from his gun safe.
Once outside, I made my way towards the bottom of the hill. The weight of the gun in my hand gave me some reassurance as I descended, but I was still more scared than I'd like to admit. Eventually, I drew close enough to the trap to hear the clink of the metal chain. I clicked on my headlamp to see what I'd caught.
There was a woman sitting on the ground, her back towards me. Her hair was blonde, her frame was thin, and she wore a black dress similar to the one I'd seen on the woman outside of Sundae Central. The sight of that dress made my heart sink—instantly, I knew that I was dealing with more than one enemy.
The woman turned around to look at the source of the light, and as she did so, she released her leg. She'd been holding her trapped foot up to her mouth with both hands, and from the look of the gaping wound below her calf, she'd been trying to bite through her leg to free herself. The sight of all that gore made me sick to my stomach. When she saw me, she rose to her feet, though how she could possibly stand in such a state I couldn't fathom.
I pointed the rifle at her. Her lips and chin were completely stained with blood, but I could get a good look at the rest of her face—at her reddish-brown eyes and straight nose, at her freckles and pale skin. Unlike the dark haired woman I'd seen before Liam's death, this woman seemed more corporeal. There was none of the dizzying, distorted effect I'd gotten from looking at the other woman for too long. This woman also seemed younger. She shouldn't possibly have been older than 25.
"What are you?" I asked. She didn't respond, nor did she move at all. Blood dripped off of her chin and pooled on the forest floor beneath her.
"What are you doing in my town?" No response but an unblinking stare and an apathetic expression. I asked her a few more questions, though what exactly I said I can't remember, before finally asking her about Liam.
"My best friend was murdered two weeks ago, for no reason at all. Did you kill him? Did your friend?"
At that, the woman lowered her gaze. Her lips parted, revealing two sets of teeth—a row of normal, human teeth in front, and a row of jagged, shark-like teeth behind them.
"I didn't kill him, but I'm sorry he had to die." Her voice was surprisingly soft, but her words were difficult to make out. It seemed difficult, almost painful, to talk around so many teeth.
"What do you mean 'had to die'?"
"He interfered. He saw too much. And now so have you." Her tone carried no malice and her expression looked almost remorseful. I kept the rifle trained on her, but I took a few steps forward, studying her face. I noticed that she had two beauty marks, one under her left eye and one above her left eyebrow. The weird thing is, I'm pretty sure I've seen a girl with those exact birthmarks before. In fact, the longer I looked at her the more familiar she seemed, but I couldn't for the life of me put my finger on where I'd seen her before.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" I asked her, and she looked surprised.
"I don't …" She started, and then trailed off. She turned away from me, peering intently into the dark woods. I heard something faint, like boughs snapping in the distance, and a familiar feeling settled in my gut. I felt like I was back in the car outside Sundae Central, face to face with the thing that would eventually kill my best friend. Whatever I'd seen that night, I got the sense that it was approaching.
The blonde woman looked back towards me. "You should go," she said, and I didn't have to be told twice. I took one last look at her, trying to take in every detail of her face, and then I turned around and ran for my house.
By the time I was halfway up the hill, I was certain that I was being followed. I could feel a presence behind me, yet I heard no one: no heavy breathing, no snapping of twigs underfoot. Figuring that I couldn't hear my pursuer because they were too far behind me, I risked a glance backwards and failed to stop the scream that escaped me.
Less than five feet behind me was the dark haired woman I'd seen outside the ice cream shop. I have no idea how she got so close behind me without making a sound. Though I only caught the briefest glimpse of her face, I saw that her lips were torn at the corners, allowing her to open her mouth unnaturally wide. Like the blonde girl I'd spoken to, this woman's mouth was cluttered with a double-row of jagged teeth. Figuring I could run faster without my rifle, I threw my it at the woman and put everything I could into that final sprint towards my house.
I didn't stop or look behind me until I was inside with the door shut and locked. I couldn't believe I'd made it in one piece. Hurrying to the back window, I looked out across the backyard and saw, at the very edge of the property, the faint shape of the dark-haired woman. She was perfectly still, staring in the direction of the greenhouse, though at what exactly I'm still not sure. After a few minutes, she turned around and disappeared past the treeline. Her long, black dress swayed around her ankles and made her look like she was floating instead of walking on two feet.
The recording from Site C ended abruptly after I left the scene. When I returned to the scene in the daylight this morning, I found the camera in pieces at the base of the tree it was once hanging on. I also found that the bear trap itself was nowhere in sight. The chain I had used to tie it to a nearby tree was now connected to nothing, leaving me to wonder if the dark-haired woman bit clean through the metal links in order to free her friend.
It's Sunday now, and while I'm in desperate need of some sleep, I wanted to make sure I wrote everything down before I forgot all the details. Though I've learned a lot from my experiment, every new revelation has resulted in more questions. I know that I'm dealing with more than one creature, but I don't know what they are or what they want. I know that Liam was killed for "interfering", but with what exactly I have no clue. The blonde woman's face is still fresh in my mind; maybe I should draw a sketch or something before I go to sleep. She seems so very familiar, and I feel like if I figure out where I've seen her before, I might be one step closer to unraveling this whole fucked-up mystery. I also finally got cleared to visit Fred this week, so hopefully he'll shed some light on what we're dealing with.
Until then, I just have to pray that no sharp-toothed women kill me in my sleep for "seeing too much." I hate that they know where I live now, and that I have no clue how many of them there are. Whatever the case, I'm going to do my best to get to the bottom of it, and try to keep you all updated as I do.
Wish me luck.

TL:DR - My daughter and I were driving together on a well-known route, somehow traveled 2.5 miles in the blink of an eye, and lost 11 minutes.
I'm still wrapping my head around this, and I'm not even sure how to describe what happened to us, but I need to write this down in detail so that I can remind myself later that I didn't imagine it. Or maybe to remind myself that I'm not crazy and that it actually happened? I need to write this out because if I just keep going over and over it in my head, I'm going to wear myself out. This happened today, just about seven hours ago, and I'm still not sure how to process it. I hope that by writing this out I can stop torturing myself with questions.
I'm a woman in my mid-40s, I am mentally healthy, and while I believe that there are things humans can't explain, I don't experience things like this ever. (Like, if you tell me you saw a ghost, I'd believe that you are telling me your truth, but I don't experience a lot of weird shit myself, you know?) If I had been driving alone this morning and this happened, I honestly would have just been all, "Nope, that didn't happen," and I probably would just convince myself that nothing weird happened at all. All this to say that I don't normally have this kind of thing happen, and I have also been sober for over a decade. My daughter is 16 and is young and healthy. We weren't drunk, high, impaired, or otherwise experiencing non-reality.
This was around 6:30 a.m., and neither one of us was mentally altered, we were both a little bit tired from waking up early. My daughter has a job at a children's summer camp about an hour from our house, and she was home this weekend to do laundry and relax. She was supposed to be back at camp on Sunday (today) at 7 a.m. to get ready for campers arriving in the afternoon.
She told me she wanted to be there a little earlier than 7, so I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m., and in total I got about 4.5 hours of sleep. I woke her up at 5:00 a.m. and she took a shower and finished packing her bags. We left our house around 5:40, and when we were about 10 minutes away, we had to turn around because she had forgotten something important. No biggie, I turned around, she got her stuff, we headed to go get coffee. My coffee receipt says 5:58 a.m. The GPS estimated that we would get from the coffee shop to camp at 6:44, totally normal for this early in the morning. If it was afternoon and there was traffic it could possibly take an hour or an hour-ten.
The route to camp is very straightforward, and I have driven this route six times already just this summer (to drop her off or pick her up, and also because I work for the organization that runs the camp, so I have also had to go out there twice to do paperwork). Not to mention the dozens of times I've made this trip in previous years, either for work or to take my daughter to camp when she was little.
From our neighborhood, you can take two different routes for about the first 6 miles of the trip, but the next 26 miles are always the same. There is only one route to this camp, and I know my way there and back like the back of my hand. (I use the GPS because I like knowing how much time is left on my drive. Like if I need to stop and use the restroom or can I make it the final 15 minutes or whatever, you know?)
So basically, take route A or route B the first 6 miles, take a right turn onto State Highway and head west, drive another 19 miles, turn right onto Rural Road and head north (there's a huge convenience store and a stoplight at that intersection, you can't miss it), and then about 7 miles later you're at camp.
We started an album on Spotify by a band that we both enjoy, and while I was tired, I wasn't "fall asleep at the wheel and drive off the road tired" - I was sipping my coffee, we were both kind of just listening to the music and not talking much. It was dark when we left, but by the time we got to the 2/3 point of the drive, the sky was lightening up a bit.
The last song of the band's album came on, then when it ended another song by the same band started. I hadn't heard it before, I didn't like it very much, and I assumed that Spotify had just finished the album and then started up a different album by the same band. But when I looked at my car's dashboard screen, it showed that the song was part of the album I had chosen. I hadn't heard this song at the end of the album the other twenty times I've listened to it, so that's weird, but maybe it's an extended edition album or something on Spotify. No biggie. I asked my daughter to take my phone and go ahead and put on what she wanted to listen to next.
She chose a lady singer who had opened for the first band at their concert we saw earlier this year in January, and she queued up four songs she liked. She put my phone back on the dashboard phone mount, and the first song started to play. We were both still just kind of bobbing our heads and waking up, and we turned around a bend of the highway. The first song by the lady ends and the second song starts.
At this point we're just about 1.5 miles to the final turn, where we turn right from the State Highway onto Rural Road. We had just passed a restaurant/landmark that I always know means we're about to make that final turn, so I'm glad that my drive is almost over. I'm eager to stop at camp and pee, drop my daughter and her luggage off, chat with some folks I know from work, and then go home. I sipped my coffee, and there was about an inch of coffee left in the paper cup. The upcoming last leg of the drive, from turning onto Rural Road to the camp gates should take about 12 minutes.
We come around the final little curve of the highway before the intersection, and I'm keeping an eye out for the convenience store that marks the turn onto Rural Road. We're pretty much the only car on the four-lane State Highway going our direction. I'm in the left lane, and there's a dark-color little station wagon/mini-SUV in the right lane just about 4-5 car lengths ahead of me. That car puts on its breaks, not hard like there's an emergency, but a little bit sudden, and then pulls over onto the shoulder of the highway.
It doesn't look like they're in trouble, the little navy blue Subaru isn't smoking or busted a tire or anything, so I don't think much of it. As we pass it my daughter turns her head to look out her window at the car, and I proceed west toward the final little bend in the highway before we get to the stoplight to turn onto Rural Road.
Suddenly there are big orange construction barrels lining the highway. They've got the 4-lane highway down to just two lanes, one in each direction. I knew they had been doing construction, but the last time I drove to camp on Friday evening to pick up my daughter, the construction had been farther down the highway, on the west side of the intersection at Rural Road where the State Highway continues going West. Guess the construction is now extending up this far, okay, no problem.
The sky is even lighter, and then I see a big stone/brick sign on the right hand side of the road marking the entrance to a subdivision I've never seen before. That's weird.
I glance at the GPS to see it telling me to turn right onto a little road I've never seen before, and I remark to my daughter, "Is it taking me to a shortcut? I've literally never seen this road before." At this point, the convenience store should be in sight just ahead. I have no idea what this road is.
She shrugs, we turn right and drive north onto the little paved road where the GPS told us to turn, but we're both really confused. There isn't any "shortcut" to camp, it's only Rural Road. There's only one way in or out of camp. We frown and start saying, "This is weird."
There's not much on this little paved road, we've been driving for about a minute, maybe minute-and-a-half. On our right we pass a small brick sign marking an events hall, like the kind of place you could rent out for a wedding or something. Then I see a power substation ahead on the left, so I gesture to the grassy fields on both sides of the road, and I joke, "Oh look, the GPS is taking us on a shortcut with a very scenic view of the power station, check out these beautiful views." LOL, I'm a riot.
I slow down on the little 2-lane paved road, there's no cars behind us that would care, and I tap my phone screen and zoom the GPS map out, to get a bigger view of where I'm supposed to be going. About a mile ahead is a Y-intersection/fork in the road, and the GPS is telling me to make a U-turn at the fork, head back south, and then turn left to drive eastward on State Highway, then turn left/north onto Rural Road. WTF? This isn't right. It's very much... wrong. This is wrong.
So instead of going another half-mile to the fork in the road, I decide to just U-turn in the gravel driveway of the power substation. So I pull into the power substation, U-turn, and go back up the little road, frowning at the GPS and looking at my daughter all, "What the fuck? Where are we? What is going on?" I can't concentrate with the music playing (the third song she had queued up), so I turn the volume all the way down.
We drive another minute or so to get back to the top of the little paved road where it T-intersects with State Highway and wait for a green light so we can turn left, and the whole time we're freaking out. Where are we, why are we here? And my daughter is so nervous/upset that she's laughing, like uncontrollable nervous laughter. Suddenly she goes, "What the fuck?" and points to the GPS, and now our estimated time of arrival at camp is no longer 6:44, it's 6:55 a.m.... WTF WTF WTF. We "lost" 11 minutes? How?
She's still laughing, putting her hand on my shoulder, like, "Mom, what just happened? What the fuck? We lost time?"
I'm trying to figure out what the fuck just happened, we're now going east on State Highway back toward the intersection to Rural Road, and I'm just... I don't know what's happening.
We come back to the big sign for the subdivision (passing it on our left), and then we go over a bridge that we don't remember going over at all the first time. We never drove over this bridge while we were heading west. We were less than a mile from the turn onto Rural Road, and we blinked, and suddenly we were passing the construction barrels and the subdivision sign.
We approach the intersection to turn left onto Rural Road, and we realize that the construction barrels do NOT go past that intersection. There are zero orange barrels on the east side of the convenience store. There are zero construction barrels where we saw the other car pull over.
We turn onto Rural Road and start trying to piece this together. What the fuck just happened? We were both on the lookout for the convenience store that we know so well, that we've stopped at dozens of times on our way to camp, that we KNOW marks the north/east corner of the intersection to turn right onto Rural Road, but it's like we both blinked and suddenly we were on the west side of the intersection.
She's still laughing, unsettled as all hell, we still have another ten minutes to drive down Rural Road to the camp gates, we're both talking over each other, and piecing it together. And it's like, no. This is not possible, it's not right. Something happened. Because from where we last remember (being on the east side of that intersection and seeing that car put its brakes on and pull over) to where we saw the subdivision sign and where the GPS told us to turn onto the little paved road, is just 2.5 miles, it would only take 2 minutes to drive. Where did a full 9 more minutes go? How did this happen? What the fuck happened?
I'm all, "That was fucked up."
"No, Mom, that was more than fucked up."
"Well, I don't have a word for 'more than fucked up,' so give me a little credit here. I don't know what the fuck just happened."
She's like, "How do we explain this to anyone?"
"You don't. You can't talk to anyone about this, they'll think you're crazy. I'm tempted to say it didn't happen and we both imagined it and we should never talk about it again."
She goes, "You know, when the GPS told us to turn onto that little road it felt wrong."
"I know, like something was wrong? That's not the way to camp?"
"No, Mom. Like wrong wrong. I just felt wrong. Everything in my body was screaming that it was wrong."
"I know, I know... I felt weird, too. But I don't know what happened."
"Okay, but..." She starts talking, and I pick up my coffee cup to find it's empty. There had been a good sip or two left just before the convenience store, and now it's gone. That freaks me out. My daughter is still going back over what happened, talking about the last "normal" part of the drive while we were heading west and looking for the convenience store turnoff.
"We were driving toward the turnoff to camp, and the second song came on, and I remember seeing that gray Tesla brake hard and pull over, and I was like-"
"Wait, a gray Tesla? No, it was a blue Suburban. I remember thinking it was a Mom car."
She's like, "Noooo, it was a gray Tesla. I swear it was a gray Tesla."
"But it was kind of light outside by that time. How did we both see a different car?"
She's still laughing really nervously, "Okaaay, so... Did this just happen? We were driving to the intersection, the second song came on, we lost 11 minutes, we both saw a different car, we have never missed the turn to camp, we've never driven past that subdivision before... what the fuck?"
"Yeah, the second song ended, the third song came on, and what song is it on now?" (Because I'm thinking we can estimate how long the four songs should have taken.)
She picks up my phone, and it's playing the second song she queued up. I shivered, and she's like, "Nope nope nope. Not happening, this is not happening."
We just... we can't wrap our heads around this. We pulled up at camp, and I checked my Google Maps history but I don't have it turned on. I can't think of any other way to try to see what happened during those 11 minutes/2.5 miles. I'm stumped.
If you read this far, congratulations, you have earned my respect. I can barely understand it myself. If you know why or how or what the fuck is going on, I'd appreciate it.
Neither of us felt... damaged, you know? We didn't feel physically harmed, we didn't feel like we had crashed or been probed or anything. In fact, halfway through my drive home I realized my sore throat from seasonal allergies was completely gone, and my sinuses were clear instead of clogged. Did we get abducted by aliens and they healed my sore throat? Did we crash and quantum leap into a different universe? Did we drive through a wormhole that transported us 2.5 miles to the west for some reason? Was the gray Tesla/blue Suburban an alien vehicle and my daughter wasn't supposed to look directly at it?
I want to know what happened, but just reading through everything I've written makes my eyes water with fear. I kind of want to ignore it, chalk it up to us both being tired, and then never talk about it again.

Tl;dr: The title pretty much sums it up. An unfortunate series of events, the PEP is making me very sick, poor leadership and now I’m resigning.
I’m an RN circulator in the cath lab. About 45 minutes into an open procedure, the doctor’s eye glasses fell off of his very sweaty face and into the sterile field (we were putting in a pacemaker) The doctor freaked out, yelled at and rushed us to scramble for supplies to make the situation right. He made us feel as if it was our fault because the room was too hot. We had turned it down to 60°. We also had a traveler training a traveler (the monitor person) and the scrub tech was training a brand newbie to the cath lab on her 2nd day.
As I was dropping new towels to the field I got hit in the eyes with the blood as my scrubber was flushing the used sheath with saline. This came out at very high pressure and it had copious amounts of blood in it. The scrub tech got it in his eyes too. He was wearing goggles I was not. It was a dumb move on his part but he’s in the same boat as me, it wasn’t malicious and I don’t blame him.
I went and rinsed my eyes in the eyewash station for 5 minutes at the direction of my ANM. My ANM was great and helped me through the whole process of calling the BBP hotline, etc. However, we are shortstaffed, so I was expected to go back into the room and finish circulating the case (and several others before they finally had to send me home because I had to hunt down the post exposure prophylaxis “PEP” medicines at some obscure pharmacy.)
I didn’t find out until after that the patient was HIV+, as it was not disclosed in the H&P, or the one previous, but 3 H&P’s ago! This was an outpatient and those H&P’s were from his previous hospital stay. Outpatients are coming from the cardiology office and 1 H&P is all we have to go on!
I could tell the doctor felt bad when I returned, but nervous because he knew he dropped the ball. The doctor told me that the patient stated (while under sedation during the case, mind you) that they do not have a detectable viral load. After the case, the doctor gave me a big hug and told me his own sob story about how he got cut by a scalpel when he had a hepatitis C positive patient (but he “didn’t worry about PEP for myself”) but then proceeded to make sure that I take the PEP, told me it might make my stomach “a little upset, but it may be a good idea to just take a PPI.”
My boss (manager not my ANM) made me cry in our storeroom when I told him that we were rushed and spread thin and bad mistakes like this happen under these conditions. He argued with me and reprimanded me for not wearing “proper PPE” …all of this in front of the poor blood-borne pathogens nurse who was just there to draw my blood (yeah, in a storeroom…I couldn’t be too far because I needed to get back into my cases!). She even apologized on his behalf when he left.
Now here I am, after having taken 3 days of post exposure prophylaxis, and I’m incredibly sick. Nauseous, vomiting food that I ate 12+ hours prior, fatigued and having constant splitting headache. I’m a chronically ill person to begin with, with a millions symptoms with what looks like Lupus on multiple different autoimmune reflex tests. My BP has been so low before this that my cardiologist has been ordering IV fluids on my lunch brakes and started me on midodrine. I have 3 little kids and I’m 8 months away from taking my FNP boards. To say I was struggling even BEFORE this shitshow was an understatement and now I just can’t handle it…
I’ve put in my resignation for 5 weeks from now, but I’m feeling too sick to work now on these awful medicines. And I have to take them for 28 days! I’m so lost, scared and never EVER thought nursing would be like this.

Have a slight cough, slight chills (but no fever), scratchy sore throat, bad body aches and a stuffed nose
I’m petrified it’ll make me tu, my sister had had pneumonia recently and I’m scared I caught it (I haven’t see her). But I also haven’t seen anyone who had a cold
I was hungry and ate dinner but now I’m regretting it incase I’m sick

F23, Height: 5”0, Weight: 126, PMH: Mild Cerebral Palsy(spastic), strep, scarlet fever, GERD, anxiety, depression, nystagmus, strabismus, high cholesterol, sinus tachycardia, hydrocephalus
Meds: topamax(getting off), effexor, pravastatin, depo,(getting off), metoprolol, Lamictal, flonase, omeprazole, excedrin, miralax,, sumatriptan
Well, I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and I have a VP shunt since I was 11 days old and there are no complications as of April 21st 2024 in the ER. I’ve been getting dull headaches at different places from my forehead, temples, top of my head, and base of my head for 6 months around Christmas when I got strep and scarlet fever which had been progressively getting worse. Over time I developed a stiff neck, tonsil stones, post nasal drip, burning eyes, and ear pain. I was thinking Depo was the cause since I had my first shot on August 23. However, the PA said it was not likely but we can see what happens.
Anyways, my shunt was checked at the beginning of April by my PCP and nothing was found. She was going to follow up with me in 4 weeks to discuss our plan. However, I could not wait any longer and decided to go to the ER. Unexpectedly, during triage the nurse took my temperature and I had a fever of 100.4F. I freaked the fuck out understandably because I knew what that meant, meningitis. However, when they mentioned a spinal tap I refused because I was scared and I heard another resident said through my charts that meningitis was not likely. However, they gave me antibiotics including Vancomycin, Rocephin, and a steroid called Dexamethasone.
FYI, I had an allergic reaction called Red Man Syndrome which apparently is rare and is caused by vancomycin… who would have knew? That nurse is God. The plan was to reduce the rate and complete the vancomycin. However, when they gave me Benadryl via IV I started coughing and gagging. I was screaming bloody murder and crying. I couldn’t even explain it to them at all because I was coughing so much, but let me tell you I felt a rush of tingling in my throat. My airways were not closing at all and I was able to breathe. I felt so sick to my stomach and did not like the Benadryl. It was so bad, the doctor was called in to the room and he just stood there and watched with no reaction. eyeroll SHOW SOME EMPATHY. The nurse gave a crap and did the right thing and called the doctor because she bought I was not breathing. Anyways… no oxygen was needed. I was admitted to Family Medicine.
Later on, they gave me topamax I hate it honestly. It makes me suicidal and angry. I melted down a few weeks ago and it was not very pretty. I was so pissed because my neurologist appointment was canceled for the 4th time and I screamed and cried at my PCPs office and wanted to kill myself. Yeah, I was sent to the ER but I eventually called down within 5 minutes but I sat in the ER for an hour to think about it. However, they discharged me when I calmed down. So yay. I am so glad I am going off the topamax soon as directed by my PCP and I hope I will see my neurologist next week. If they don’t cancel the appointment again. It’s likely the will which is very common.
The question is, the resident thought my spastic CP is causing my headaches but I don’t feel spasms in my head. I think it is Depo. Has this happened before?

32 here, have had some issues getting up. Tried it for the third time today and really like bluechew. No headache or stuffy nose, just some facial flushing.
I was given 45mg and so far so good. Only using it once a week so far.

27F, 190lbs, taking Wellbutrin 300mg, and ibuprofen as needed. 10 days postpartum. About three days ago I started to feel ill, body aches, joint pain, muscle stiffness. Two days ago along with all those symptoms I woke up with a mild sore throat and a fever of 101.7, I called the nurse line offered by my insurance and they told me to go to urgent care, today I went to urgent care with a fever of 101.9, body aches, muscle pain, lower back pain, a mild headache, lack of appetite, and light headed, the throat pain is still mildly there accompanied by a slight cough. Urgent care did a strep test (negative), a Covid, and a flu test that I don’t have results for yet and sent me off. I called the nurse line back and they refuse to schedule me with my OBGYN saying it can be managed at home with ibuprofen and sounds like it’s just the flu. My husband doesn’t have the flu and we haven’t gone anywhere or seen anyone since I gave birth. I’m afraid it could be endometriosis or some sort of vaginal infection and they aren’t taking it seriously. I haven’t experienced any foul smelling discharge, I do have more tenderness in my abdomen than before but idk what’s normal and what’s not since this is my first birth. It doesn’t burn when I pee, and the only smells I’ve noticed is a smell of ammonia or bleach like smell coming from down there, bleeding has not been excessive and I haven’t had any blood clots. Am I freaking out over nothing? Most posts that mention postpartum fevers on here suggest that the mom rush to a hospital and be seen but my insurance providers/nurses/urgent care doctor don’t even seem to be worried

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

33M 179cm 90kg No previous medical issues, no medications, don't drink, smoke or do drugs.
Roughly 2 months ago while asleep i woke up because of a terrible headache, since then i had frequent headaches, felt pressure in my head particularly the sides, blurry side vision, worse coordination, tunnel minded and mushy feeling in head, trouble with short term memory and focus. It's been 2 months now and the blurry vision has gone away and the headaches too but i still feel "sore" at the sides of my head and I still have a lack of focus, worse coordination and a clouded or mushy feeling in my head. What happened??? I did eat a undercooked burger 2-3 weeks before this happened and I thought about the possibility about parasites but I didn't have any stomach issues. Thanks.

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

I didn't do anything but since a moment, my throat is warm when I swallow my saliva and it's weird, also I was sick 2days ago (headaches, sore throat and I had a really running nose, might be related).
I don't think it happened to me before, does anyone has an idea of what it is?
Sorry for my bad english btw

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the sumer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...