(Latest update: 15.04.2022)
These aren’t your average campfire stories; they’re the scariest stories from my favorite subreddit r/nosleep.
The (already) famous subreddit is home to some of the Internet’s most haunting original stories. These aren’t tales filled with bloodied corpses or chainsaw-wielding wackos. They’re much more unsettling than that. They draw you in with deft storytelling that will keep you up late at night, rocking back and forth and staring at the end of your bed.
That’s probably what happened to Netflix executives, too. Lately they’ve been hiring a lot of writers from NoSleep for their shows + Netflix (and Amazon!) also bought the rights to a few stories & will turn them into series sometimes in the future, which is great news for aspiring screenwriters.
But that’s not all! Ryan Reynolds and Steven Spielberg are also turning two NoSleep stories into movies. I knew Jonathan Nolan and his team were big Reddit fans, but I can hardly picture Ryan Reynolds and Stephen Spielberg snooping around NoSleep. Yet… here they were!
The takeaway? Most of the stories from NoSleep are what I call “effective storytelling” — they are well-written and they tend to linger around in your mind for a long time. They draw you in surreal worlds and are pretty imaginative, so I suppose there’s no wonder of why I’m always so jealous of my hidden treasure and will always refuse to share these tiny gems with pretty much anybody.
I will make an exception for you guys, though.
So here’s a few of my favorite stories from r/nosleep:
The new fish
One day, the guards from a maximum security prison bring along a “new fish”: the new inmate is eerie, yet delicate & as beautiful as an angel, so everybody just assumes he won’t survive when he gets put in a cell with a vicious killer. But what happens that night in that cell is beyond words & soon enough the new fish’ sinister ways start to scare the shit out even of the most dangerous criminals. Why? Find out!
Something walks whistling past my house every night at 3:03
On the outskirts of a random city lies a very special place: a beautiful suburb where everybody is lucky. The people moving in are instantly blessed with good fortune, but the neighborhood has one strict rule: never try to look at who or what whistles every night at exactly 3:03 AM on the main street. What happens when someone can’t resist and looks? Find out! (I secretly hope OP will revisit his characters & write a 2nd part where he digs into the foundation of all the good things that happen to the people living there: what are they really built upon?)
It was a different time
Two kids discover that the abandoned mall in their city houses a temporal glitch that allows them to go back in time, to when the mall was at its popularity peak, in the ’80s, right before the gruesome murder of a kid had caused its closing. Soon enough they find out in the worst way that you should never ever mess with time. Why? Find out! (note: the author seems to have deleted it, but you can still find it here)
The previous tenant of my new flat left a survival guide. I’m not sure I want to live here anymore.
A girl and her boyfriend move in a new flat. On the first night she finds a list of rules left by the previous tenant — they’re pretty strange & soon enough she finds out the building has a life of its own & is inhabited by peculiar tenants. Things get even weirder when she discovers a man that won’t stop tapping at her balcony window, two super-cute, clawed kids & a subterranean building that mirrors the real one. What does it hide? Find out!
Has anyone heard of this city? No one seems to remember it and something horrific might have happened to it.
One day the police gets a strange call: someone reports finding a little girl in a boulder. They go at the scene & witness a terrifying sight: half the child is fused with the rock just as if she had been teleported right into it. In her pockets they find a weird looking flower & a letter that tells the story of a city nobody has ever heard of. How is this possible? Find out!
A shattered life
An old man sits in a chair and tells an incredible story: one day, back in his youth, he went for a walk in the woods and a strange entity attacked him. Since then he started to lose big chunks of time and fragments of his own life. He would suddenly realize the entity has “eaten” the day he met his wife, “devoured” the first three years that he’d spend with his son etc. But things aren’t always what they seem and what happened to the old man is way more tragic than being attacked by an entity. Why? Find out!
I used to work night security at a zoo
A zoo can get pretty creepy. Especially at night. Add to this ecuation a bubbling storm and you’re in for a wild ride. Why is that? Find out!
The Pocket Watch
This is the only story on Reddit that has legitimately made me cry.
‘Nuff said!
My wife has been peeking at me from around the house. It’s gone from weird to terrifying
This story has gone from 0 upvotes to 36K in just a couple of days. This is how good it really is!
The Bloodworth Saga
These stories are so wonderfully interconnected, but at the same time… well, let’s just say I’m just going to give y’all a heads up and tell you it’s one of the most disturbing series I’ve read on NoSleep.
Beacon House
The fusion of science, artistic nature, and other planes of existence in this story is amazing and expertly twisted into reality. Original, well-written and positively Lovecraftian.
We found a town where it’s always November
A town where it’s always November can be fun. Except when people stuck in this bubble keep forgetting something. But what? Find out!
Kitten
Finding a stray kitten can be the best thing in the whole world. Except this kitten is not what you’d expect it to be. Why? Find out!
I think my grandfather might be a SK
Most grandfathers enjoy gardening, spending time with their grandkids and once a week they will usually go to bingo at the senior citizens’ club. Not the case with the grandfather from this story. His nephew suspects he might be a SK, but the truth ends up being even weirder than that. Why? Find out!
Rocking Horse Creek
This story (just like ‘Pocket Watch’) is by the gal who wrote “Borrasca”.
In 2017 her writing skills have caught the attention of Netflix executives, who have invited her to write for ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, which debuted on Netflix on October 12, 2018 and received universal acclaim.
The smiling man
One night a guy goes out for a walk to clear his head. While enjoying the warm night, he sees in the distance a strange guy that’s coming in his direction dancing. He looks away, but when he looks back again, the guy is now closer, grinning & taking big tip toed steps, as if he was a cartoon character that’s sneaking up on someone. What’s next? Find out! (this is actually the classic that got me intrigued in NoSleep in the 1st place)
My brother died when I was a child. He kept talking. I think people should know what he said.
A boy’s twin dies, but for some reason he keeps talking for a few hours after he’s pronounced dead & is able to describe what he sees in what is supposed to be “the afterlife”. This one is a little disturbing, but the way everything works out makes it a worthy read. What the little boy describes are the stuff your worst nightmares are made of. Why is that? Find out!
He didn’t want to hurt anyone
Milo & Danny are twins and their sister describes Milo as always being “the dark to Danny’s light”. The brothers are very different, and in spite of Milo loving his brother and sister a whole lotta lot & not being essentially a bad person, he’s got a really dark beast in him that screams to be let out. There is good in evil, evil in good and Milo is the living proof that not everything is black & white. Why? Find out!
Fuck oranges
When the friends he’s been having orange drinks with at the nearby bar for the past years are suddenly starting to hate oranges and even trying to harm people that take a like in oranges, this college guy starts to doubt his own sanity. I mean what the fuck, right? It all starts with this absurdly funny detail and it gradually pulls you in. How is this possible? Find out!
The same hitchhiker was waiting at every stop for the last 100 miles
This could be a story about a girl who’s holding onto the memories of another guy while she is with her fiancé and because she wouldn’t let go of him, they never reach their destination — a happy life together. Or it could be a story about a couple that goes on a trip & makes a chilling discovery: there is a spooky hitchhiker that is waiting at every stop & each time he looks more and more dreadful. How is this even possible? Find out!
Bonus: a non-NoSleep series that I absolutely loved
This series was absolutely fantastic. It’s horror mixed with SF and I was so hooked that I was literally checking out Creepypasta every day for updates. If you’re into apocalyptic and dystopian horror… trust me, you’re going to love this!
Here’s part 1. Part 2. And part 3.
******
Note: I tried to avoid mentioning stories that have achieved rockstar status because you’ve probably already know them: Footsteps/Penpal, Borrasca, When The Stars Go Out, The Spire In The Woods, The Left/Right Game, Correspondence, The Pancake Family, The Story Of Her Holding An Orange (oranges seem to have a really disquieting side to them, lol), Feed the Pig, Third Parent, Balloons etc.
I have a few more stories to add to my list, but I don’t really have the time to do that right now, so I will have to get back here soon and drop an update.
Until then… remember, guys, you can close the tab, but you can’t escape the nightmares. BOO!
