CLOSE CALL

On the night of March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. She was seven months pregnant and had her 10-month-old daughter beside her. While heading west on Highway 132 near Modesto, a car behind her began honking its horn and flashing its headlights. She pulled off the road and stopped. The man in the car parked behind her, approached her car, stated that he observed that her right rear wheel was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lug nuts. After finishing his work, the man drove off; yet when Johns pulled forward to re-enter the highway the wheel almost immediately came off the car. The man returned, offering to drive her to the nearest gas station for help. She and her daughter climbed into his car. During the ride the car passed several service stations but the man did not stop. For about 90 minutes he drove back and forth around the backroads near Tracy. When Johns asked why he was not stopping, he would change the subject. When the driver finally stopped at an intersection, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a field. The driver searched for her using his flashlight telling her that he would not hurt her, before eventually giving up. Unable to find her, he got back into the car and drove off. Johns hitched a ride to the police station in Patterson.

When Johns gave her statement to the sergeant on duty, she noticed the police composite sketch of Paul Stine's killer and recognized him as the man who abducted her and her child. Fearing he might come back and kill them all, the sergeant had Johns wait, in the dark, at the nearby Mil's Restaurant. When her car was found, it had been gutted and torched.

Most accounts claim he threatened to kill her and her daughter while driving them around, but at least one police report disputes that. Johns' account to Paul Avery of the Chronicle indicates her abductor left his car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight; however, in one report she made to the police, she stated he did not leave the vehicle

 

Wiki.

A MADHOUSE?

"What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing, and the tears, and those cruel eyes studying you? My mother...there?"

If we don't, remember me.

LEVITY

OLD MAN

I live alone with my dad, and he works long hours of the day, so I stay home by myself a lot. We’ve lived in this house for 12 years and nothing paranormal has occurred, at least that I know of, but recently some weird things have been happening to me while he’s gone or asleep. This morning around 4am, I decided to go to sleep and turned off my laptop.

My bed is next to a window facing a wall, but there’s currently nothing behind it because we’re rebuilding the headboard/desk that was back there. When I turned off my laptop, I thought I saw the frame of what appeared to be an elderly man standing behind me in the reflection from my lamp. I turned around but didn’t see anything, and chocked it up to sleep deprivation. I went to sleep, but had a strange dream where I killed a huge group of kids with what looked like two knives carved out of wood.

Today, I received a text from my dad a few minutes after I woke up saying that it was nice to see me up early for a change, and that he hoped I had a good day. I asked him what he meant by this; I had gotten up late in the afternoon. He said I had walked downstairs and had breakfast with him, and we had a conversation about not knowing when you’re going to die or where you’re going to go afterwards. This was kind’ve weird to me, both because I’ve read about doppelgangers on this site and because I’ve never walked in my sleep and have a good memory, but I ignored the feeling and told him to have a good day too.

A couple hours later, I was upstairs in the bathroom putting on some makeup when I saw something out’ve the corner of my eye in the mirror. My room was across the hallway, and when I looked in the doorway I saw what looked like a charred black arm. It was twisted and just sort’ve hung there. I screamed and ran downstairs, and immediately began talking to some friends about it online. After a few minutes of convincing, they got me to go back into the room to see if someone had broken in.

Once in the room, I searched it all over and found nothing. I sat in my bed and started messing with my phone, when I felt something sit down next to me. There was a big depression in the bed, and I felt something touch my leg. I felt nauseous suddenly and it felt hard to breathe, and once I was able to move again I bolted out’ve there. Not so sure I’m going to sleep in my room tonight, but I’m really curious about the dream and the possible(?) fire and if they relate at all to the old man.

Story source.

CAT'S EYES

I had a rather strange experience when I was around 15 years old.

My room was in the basement of my parents' house. Picture a typical half finished basement: concrete floors, a few rooms, small windows scattered around, old furnace, you know the drill.

We lived in a heavily wooded area out in the country; many of our childhood days were spent playing in the woods.

My room was being finished and it only had a partial wall at the time. While lying in my bed, I could see across part of the basement to the further wall. Against the wall was a washer and dryer, and above that was a small egress window.

I remember waking from my sleep one night with a strange feeling, almost like something was in the room with me. I slowly opened my eyes, straining to adjust to the darkness. My eyes were affixed on the window across the basement. There was something floating in the air. Something strange and yellow.

A mixture of confusion and fear gripped me. What was across the basement? As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was another pair of eyes looking back at me. Our gaze was locked for what felt like an eternity. No movement, nothing.

After a while, there was some movement in the window; the eyes bobbed from side to side. I was truly terrified at this point. As I slunk deeper into my covers, I started to see the outline of a creature. It turns out it was a black cat, staring at me while I slept. It ran off and I didn't see it again for many years. It wasn't our cat - we didn't even own a cat. I never saw it before or after...well, so I thought at the time...

Fast forward to my mid-twenties. I was dating a girl who loved cats. It just so happened that she had a large black cat (which reminded me of the incident from my childhood). She is a nurse and often works overnights. I would go over her place in the evening and go to bed. She would come home very late and snuggle in with me.

One night, I was lying in her bed, half asleep. I rolled to my side and had a strange feeling...something was watching me. I slowly opened my eyes to see a pair of yellow orbs staring back at me. Initially, I thought it was her cat (as she often let them outside). I began to feel some relief. That's when I heard her cat next to me in bed, hissing at the cat outside, hair on edge.

Being more freaked out than ever, I quickly turned to face the other direction. I slowly rolled back over and the cat was no longer outside the window.

I now live in a house with small windows in the basement. I'm waiting for the day where I fall asleep on the couch downstairs, closed eyes facing towards the window...

Story source.

MACABRE ART: 1000 SHADOWS

Brazilian street artist Herbert Baglione has somehow managed to make an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Parma, Italy even creepier with his paintings of shadows.

The way Baglione’s shadows creep out from disused wheelchairs and lurk ominously on the walls makes it easy to imagine that they belonged to the tortured souls that used to inhabit the place.

The work is part of Baglione’s "1000 Shadows" project, where he paints silhouettes on floors and walls.

Herbert Baglione.

READ: THE LAST POLICEMAN

If you were a homicide detective who got the call on a dead body, which, when investigated, had all the makings of a suicide and very little of a murder, would you investigate it, anyway? Would you ignore all the obvious makings of someone having taken their life and investigate it as if the deceased were murdered?

And, if the world was doomed to end courtesy of Maia, the asteroid, which was scheduled to hit the planet in a matter of months, would you still investigate? 

That's the big question at work in Ben H. Winter's The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy involving Detective Henry Palace, a detective with the Concorde, NH, police department.

Falling within the genres of soft science fiction and mystery, though described as an "existential detective novel" by its author, The Last Policeman is an entertaining and enigmatic police procedural, and while these are always fun, it has the added effect of playing out against the apocalypse, which forces several of our characters to confront the big question: why bother? If the world is doomed to end in six months, why bother going to work, eating healthy, walking the dog, solving that murder? What's it all going to mean in the long-run?

The character of Detective Henry Palace easily fits the mold of what has become the typical investigator. He's hard-boiled, haunted by his past, cynical (though not to the point of indifference), and mostly, just trying to do his job that he's being paid to do: a man has apparently taken his life (not an uncommon occurrence in the months leading up to complete devastation), and Detective Palace dutifully investigates the scene. The "victim," Peter Zell, is found in the bathroom stall of a local McDonald's, his belt tied around his neck, strangled to death. Everyone around Palace seems ready to write it off as a suicide and move onto the next thing, but the scene bothers Palace too much - to the extent that he's willing to become a pain in the ass to his superiors and dismissive of the rules and conduct of a New Hampshire police officer. As is demanded by the mystery/noir genre, nothing is what it seems, and Detective Palace peels back layer by layer of what everyone has labeled a standard suicide, revealing something far more surprising beneath. 

The Last Policeman is thrilling, funny (in that sardonic kind of way), introspective, certainly existential, and haunting. The reader will root for Detective Palace from the start, because even though his task to investigate a suicide as a murder seems like a fool's errand in the face of Maia the asteroid and humanity's growing apathy, it's more comforting to believe that there is someone out there who cares enough to embark on such a quest on which most people have already given up. (Plus he's a kind of a generous tipper, throwing down thousands of dollars for his $15 breakfast.)

The Last Policeman is followed by Countdown City, and the final part, World of Touble, is a brand new release from the author; all three are available from Quirk Books (publisher of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.)