SUPERNATURAL STORIES

My college roommate and I started noticing things missing. First food. Then other things. Then one night I woke up and something was leaning over my bed in the dark.

My grandmother's mirror has been in the family for four generations. Everyone who inherits it is warned: don't look at it after midnight. The reflection is not always yours.

Rap Rat was a 1992 VHS board game that came with a cassette tape featuring a rapping rat. Children who played it reported nightmares about the rat visiting them at night.

Before Jeff, I was ordinary. Jane Richardson. High GPA, one good friend, parents who were present. Jeff came to our neighborhood and I stopped being ordinary.

I began hearing a low hum in my house at night. My neighbors heard it too. We brought in acoustical engineers. The hum had no source. Then the hum began to change.

My best friend Tom sent me a CD in the mail with a note that said "DO NOT PLAY THIS." Tom disappeared two days later. I played the disc.

My city had an abandoned theatre that everyone knew not to enter. Not because of structural danger. Because of what had been performed there. Because of what was still performing.

My grandmother kept a portrait in her spare bedroom that faced the wall. She said it had always faced the wall. She said to leave it that way.

My neighbor smiles too much. Not socially — compulsively. His mouth is always open, always stretched, always showing teeth. He says he can't stop. He says it started after he looked at something he shouldn't have.

The Midnight Game is a pagan ritual used to punish those who disobeyed the gods. You invite the Midnight Man into your home. You spend the night not letting him catch you.

I don't have a name for what I see at the bottom of my stairs every night. It stands there from midnight to about 3 AM. It hasn't moved toward me yet. I keep the lights on now.

I check on my daughter every night before I go to sleep. Last night I tucked her in, kissed her head, and was halfway down the hall when I heard her voice behind me asking who had been in her room.