These five short horrors are real reports and local legends submitted by readers and listeners of Ghostly Activities. They may sound like creepypastas, but the roots come from life. Get the scoop after the jump.

Backseat

Rodrigo had been driving his rideshare for hours when his phone pinged for a pickup outside a hospital. This would be his last fare for the night. It was just after midnight when he pulled up to the hospital’s main entrance. A woman, about 40 years old and wearing a light blue coat, slid into the back seat without a word, her pale face turned toward the backseat window.

“Thanks for this,” she murmured. “I just needed to get home one more time.”

The address was deep in a middle-class suburb, miles from the hospital. For most of the ride, the only sounds were the hum of the tires and her slow, steady and raspy breathing.

Then came the smell. Antiseptic first, medicinal second. Then something metallic and sweet … and rancid. Rodrigo’s stomach turned.

He glanced into the rearview to ask if she was okay but the seat was empty. A dark, wet patch spread across the upholstery. His GPS still tracked the destination.

And the next morning, his driver’s app showed a completed trip … with a five-star review.

Submitted by Rodrigo from Atlanta

One Last Smile

Kyle had been flipping storage units for years, but this one was different. He lifted the door with a groan. It felt stuck, like something held it down. Kyle had just bid and won the rights to unknown contents inside. But this lot seemed weird. No one had bid on it … ever.

As the door slid up, the mid-day light struck the shapes. They looked like … people. Maybe it was dolls? As Kyle squinted the shapes came into focus. Dummies. Ventriloquist dummies. About 50 of them sat in orderly rows on two tables. They all sat facing a concrete wall without a window. Their heads seemed twisted in an odd way, their clothes frayed, and some were losing their hair.

Kyle tried to laugh it off. Creepy, sure, but these could be collectibles and might fetch a nice price on eBay. That night, the dummies sat in neat rows in his garage. At 2 a.m., his dog began a low growl and scratched the garage entrance in the kitchen.

Kyle flicked on the light.

Every dummy had turned to face the door.

Kyle thought it had to be a prank from his younger brother, who lived with him. Maybe it was one of his friends. The next night, he set up a Wifi camera in the garage. The footage showed no movement, no jump cuts. Just … the dummies shifting positions between frames. Moving closer. And closer. And closer.

Over the next month, he sold most of them. Kyle took the last five, sold them at a flea market and swore them off for good. Two days later, Kyle woke to find four of them in his living room, watching the flicker and static of his television. That same morning, police found the collector’s car at the bottom of a ravine. The fifth smiling dummy survived the wreck. The collector did not.

Submitted by Kyle from San Luis Obispo, CA

Apartment 3B

Maya loved her new apartment. It had shiny, new appliances, air conditioning and hot, like really hot, water with good pressure to boot. To her, the location and price were the best part. The rent was low, the building old but charming. The first week was perfect … until the clock hit 11 p.m.

That’s when the static began.

It started soft, like a radio struggling to find a station. Then voices bled through. They sounded like old war speeches you’d watch in history class or jazz singers from old time radio or old commercials for laundry detergent from the 50s. On the third night, she froze. The voice coming through the wall wasn’t from the past. It was hers. A conversation she’d had earlier that afternoon her best friend, Carla.

Maya send a recording to a friend, Marc, in sound design. “Does someone in the building have speakers on their walls?,” he said. “It’s resonating through the structure itself. Like the walls are playing it. But … how would they record your call earlier today?”

Maya stopped by the apartment manager and asked about her unit and the sounds in it. The manager mentioned, almost casually, that no one had lived in 3B since the fire in ’72.

That night, right at 11 PM as the static started, a crack formed in her kitchen wall. By morning, it had widened, wide enough to see between the support beams. Inside, she saw blackened wood splintered apart, revealing a charred radio nestled between them … still hissing and playing a news report about the fire.

Submitted by Maya from Buffalo, NY

Tree Line

Three best friends from Philadelphia had packed up a Jeep and headed for the Pine Barrens, about a 25 miles way.

Dave, Mark and Josh had spent their summers at a camp in the Pines. They heard it might close soon, so they planned a weekend camping trip (with adult beverages) to relive some of their youth. Now in their late 20s, the finance bros thought it would be fun to act like kids again.

The first night in the dark, silent woods went without event, besides drinking more beer that they probably should have.

On the second night, the guys found a strange tower, a crude stack of black stones eight feet high. Deep claw marks ran down its side. Dave grinned and started to climb it.

As he swung around the side, he vanished. He never made a sound. One second he was there, hands on the stone. The next … gone.

Mark and Josh searched the nearby tree line, yelling, until their voices went hoarse. The called 911 to report a missing person the next morning, and also went to the park rangers. When the rangers reviewed the wildlife cam, the footage showed the three of them walking toward the tower. Then, in the tree line shadows, something skinny and tall shifted between the trees. Skin stretched thin over bone. Two glowing yellow eyes.

The next frame showed only Mark and Josh, running. Later, their 911 call caught one final sound. It was Dave’s voice, hushed like a whisper.

“Don’t come back. It sees you now.”

Submitted by Josh from Philadelphia

The Stall In The Girls Bathroom

Everyone at McKinley High knew about the middle stall in the old gym bathroom. No one used it. Rumors said a ghost girl stared back at you from the mirror, or whispered from the next stall over. Sometimes, she even reached under and grabbed your ankle.

The school’s janitor, Don Palmer, thought it was nonsense. He’d been cleaning all the bathrooms in that school since the 1980s, and never had he even noticed anything scarier than some turds not flushing down.

One night, after a basketball game in the 2010, he went in to clean up after one the rowdiest crowds in years. The hallway security cameras caught him setting up the yellow “No Entrance – Cleaning In Progress” sign and walking inside. The door swung shut.

He never came out.

The next morning, the staff found the stall door locked from the inside. A couple of people pounded on the door, asking if Palmer needed help. They yanked on the door but it wouldn’t budge. The principal had an extra key, and he still had to force it open. The staff thought Palmer slipped and hit his head or had a heart attack or something like a bad accident happened. When the door opened …

Empty. No mop, no bucket, no Palmer. Just shiny clean tiles and the faint smell of bleach.

The next summer, the school renovated the old gym including the Girls bathroom. When workers tore down the bathroom wall, they found a crawlspace. It was dark, dusty, filled with cobwebs, and something that looked like a bundle of clothes. Inside the bundle, the work crew found bones wrapped in a uniform. The name tag was still pinned to the fabric, Palmer.

Submitted by Janet from Ohio

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