He liked to volunteer in the psych ward of his local hospital. His real job was as a stockbroker, but the stresses got to him sometimes and he needed an outlet. In the past he’d turned to booze to relieve the pressure, but that had taken him to places he hoped never to revisit.

He didn’t know why it helped him so much to be in the hospital. He didn’t particularly like the crazies they made him work with; in fact he thought most of them were beyond help. He supposed it was really Anna that kept him coming back. Anna was just a little girl, maybe ten or twelve at the most. She shouldn’t really have been in the ward with the adults, but his small town wasn’t wealthy enough to have separate housing for minors. He felt sorry for all the kids who had to bunk with these terminal wackjobs. Or he would, if Anna weren’t the only one there under 35. That just made it sadder, he supposed. He felt a need to protect this little girl from the frightening company she kept, so he had promised himself never to leave as long as she was there.

Anna was probably the least screwed up person in that hospital. She had terrible anxiety any time she left the building. They said if she left she’d probably die from the shock of it. The only thing that seemed to make her feel better was talking, so he’d talk to her for hours on end about even the most inane topics. He felt a need to know everything about her; a need that transcended what should probably have been suitable for their relationship. But Anna seemed so happy when he talked to her that he could never bear to leave her for long. The only subject they avoided was her reasons for being in the ward. He felt that if there was a reason, she would tell him in her own time, and that if he pushed her he might break the connection they had to each other.

Their bond had been growing stronger every day. They were almost close enough to be brother and sister, so close that he no longer pretended to be working with the hospital. He quit his volunteering gig and came in every day, just to be with her. He seemed to even be helping with her anxiety, until one day he found her curled up into a ball on her bunk, sobbing quietly to herself. When he asked her what was wrong, she finally told him why she was in the hospital. She and her mother had been in a car accident with a drunk driver. Her mother had died as a result, and she had had to be hospitalized. She hadn’t talked for months after that. In fact, she had only started talking around the time he had started at the hospital.

Touched by the idea that he might have had some part in Anna’s healing, he felt brave enough to ask her if they’d caught the killer. She told him that they hadn’t, that that was why she couldn’t leave, she was so scared he’d come after her. He tried to comfort her, tell her that a drunk driver wouldn’t even remember her, but nothing helped. Finally, in desperation, he promised to kill the driver if he ever managed to get close to her. That got Anna’s attention, and though she was shocked at the statement’s brutality, it at least got her to stop crying. The rest of the day went normally, but he decided that he would talk to Anna’s doctor before he left.

He hadn’t talked to the doctor before, but everyone at the ward knew him, so he felt no qualms about introducing himself. When he asked about Anna, the doctor seemed extremely keen to hear what she’d said. Apparently no one knew why she was in the ward in the first place, they’d just found her wandering, bloody by the side of the road. Surprised, he told the doctor Anna’s story. At the end, the doctor leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Richard, what you’re telling me is very serious. There isn’t anyone named Anna in this ward. You had a nervous breakdown recently, and have been coming to the hospital for psychiatric sessions. However, you’ve been getting worse, not better. For the last month you haven’t left the ward. Tell me, Richard, do you remember the lat time you were at work?”

It was a stupid question. Or course he…no, he’d taken some vacation time off to spend with Anna. How had he forgotten that? But the doctor shook his head. “You were forced to take psychiatric leave. We believe you had some sort of traumatic event, one that triggered your breakdown, and subsequent hallucinations. From what you just told me, I’m inclined to believe you were responsible for an accident while drunk driving.”

He sat their, frozen in shock. This was impossible. He’d quit drinking… right about when he’d started at the ward. No. No. He couldn’t have… but it was rushing back, the erratic light from the headlights as he swerved, the screech of rubber as he saw them, the one, frozen second where he saw a 10-year-old girl screaming from the back seat. When he looked back, the doctor wasn’t there. Anna was sitting in the doctor’s place, saying nothing, just staring at him. He stared back for a second, and then had to look down. He felt so guilty. So, so guilty. And he had made a promise.

Richard picked up the scissors.

Credit To: Hypodroid

Let me start by saying that this is a very true story from my childhood, and if you visit the big library in the Nottingham City Centre, and check out their newspaper records, you will actually find information about the events detailed here.

This story takes place around 15 or 16 years ago. I was just 7 years old, and my cousin Dale, was around 9, maybe 10. He was staying with me while his mother was away looking after a sick relative. Since I was an only child, I didn’t have many toys, and my Sega Genesis was busted, and so we didn’t have much things to do that were entertaining.

Our days consisted of watching cartoons on our cable television, followed by Dale teling me scary ghost stories at it turned night-time. My mother, sympathysing with us, and wanting us to do something more active decided to purchase a pair of walkie talkies for us to play with. We had fun with them, journeying to a neighbouring Strelley Village, and hiding far apart in the woods, while the other person would try and find them by using the walkie talkie. Since we were quite young however, we weren’t allowed out of the house for very long, and so we had to be home by 5pm. We returned home later (about 6) and had our dinner. By this time it was around 7pm. We decided we would call it a night, and packed all of our toys away and got ready for bed.

However, we didn’t pack the walkie talkies away. Dale was staying in the spare room, and I had my own room, and so we planned to talk to each other through the walkie talkies until we fell asleep. That’s when we heard the thing that would change us forever. It was about 11 at night, and we had been telling ghost stories over the walkie talkies for hours. All of a sudden, whilst Dale was telling me a story about a monster that supposedly haunts the same woods we had been at earlier in the day, his voice was cut off, and replaced with the usual static noise the walkie talkies produced when the talker had accidently let go of the button used to speak. I waited for a few seconds for Dale to carry on speaking, when I heard a faint mumble coming from the small speaker. “That’s odd.” I thought. The speaker was still emitting static, but I could definately hear some kind of movement and speech. All of a sudden, the sound of crying could be heard through the static. This was very creepy to me, and so I dived out of my bed, and rushed to the room Dale was staying in. He was sat bolt upright in bed, also listening to his walkie talkie, which was emitting the same sounds, if not a second or so behind mine. The crying grew louder. “What is that?” Dale asked. “I thought you were playing a prank.” When I told him I wasn’t, his face dropped. He switched his off. The sound still emitted from the walkie talkie I was holding in my hand, making it impossible for my walkie talkie to be picking up sound from his. “This is creepy” said Dale. The crying and mumbles through the static seemed to get slightly clearer, and louder. I switched mine off too and went back to bed.

All kinds of ideas were flowing through my head. Perhaps I was picking up the sounds of the afterlife? Perhaps my walkie talkie were simply broken and producing weird sounds that just sounded like crying and mumbling? I tried not to think anything of it, and went to sleep.

I was awoken the next day by a massive bang which seemed to be coming from downstairs. It was around 6 in the morning, and I rushed downstairs to find my mother and cousin Dale looking out of the living room window at our neighbours house next door. A large police van had pulled up outside, and our neighbour Jessie was being led outside by several officers. She was screaming profanities and insults, and even tried to run from the officers at one point before being pushed into the back of the van and handcuffed. We were shocked by what had happened, and generally confused. Jessie had been a new neighbour, recently moving into the house next door with her baby after our old neighbour had died of old age. She had kept herself to herself, and as far as we had known she was very quiet, and didn’t seem like the type of person that would be arrested for any reason.

It wasn’t until the next day when we recieved our daily newspaper that we found out what had happened. Jessie had murdered her baby after apparently seeing horrible apparitions of an elderly person in her house that had tormented her for weeks and she had finally snapped and turned loopy. This wasn’t the disturbing part though. The disturbing part was that fact that the baby monitor in the room the murder took place had been switched on during the murder.

My cousin and I had heard everything.

Credit To: Elmarco

(Source: reddit.com)