(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Should I even be writing this? I don't think anyone in my life can help, let alone a bunch of strangers reading ghost stories in between the funny cat gifs.

Okay, that wasn't fair. I'm sure they're really funny cat gifs. Hilarious ones. Still not an overly useful skill set in this situation. Whatever this is, whatever it's becoming, it can't be stopped by rollicking feline frolics. I have severe doubts that even success kid could help.

But for those few that read this and can help, I have to hope you exist. I don't know what to do otherwise. I can't tell anybody else. I can't make it go away. Part of me just wants to throw the damn camera in the dumpster and...

And I'm getting ahead of myself. Sorry. It's just easier not to think about it. Easier not to look at the camera at all. The camera. That's where it started. My boon or my bane. My savior or my satan. I don't know. I can't decide. Maybe you can. Maybe you can tell me what to do with it.

At the risk of sounding like the opening line of a dating service, I'm a single girl who would probably be less single if she could learn to stop being such a smart ass when a guy starts talking to me. I don't know what it is. Maybe a disease. Psychological disorder. Every time a guy talks to me for more than five minutes, I have to say something sarcastic and rude. So yeah, I'm kind of a bitch. But it's not like I try to be. Half the time I don't even think about what I'm saying. Then it's out there and, well... real life conversations do not have a backspace. That's the truth. It's not that I'm so much friendlier online than in life, it's that the internet has a delete button.

But you don't care about that. You care about the camera. And... him.
I was at a yardsale (forgive me, when you're a broke college student sleeping on a mattress, a yard sale can be a treasure trove worthy of the most studious of spleunkers) when I found the camera in a tub full of children's toys. Fishing it out from underneath a broken Speak N Spell, I held it up to examine. It was a Polaroid camera. The old fashioned kind that spits the picture out, then you shake the picture over and over until the image shows up. I'd wanted one of those so badly as a kid, you don't even know. Yet I'd never had one. And this one was right here.

I did something then that is one of the worst, absolute worst things that one can do at a yard sale. I smiled. Not only did I smile, but the middle aged woman sitting in the lawn chair next to the money box saw me smile. Well, what had probably been a five dollar toss away sale suddenly rocketed up to twenty.

Of course I argued with the woman. See previous mention of how I can't keep my mouth shut. But in the end, I really wanted that stupid old camera. So I ponied up the dough, said good bye to the idea of actually getting a dresser that didn't smell like old socks, and took a moment to make sure the camera worked. Holding it up to my eye, I scanned the crowd of browsers and pressed the button. A moment later I had the blank picture in my hand. All seemed well so I started to walk back to my little studio apartment.

After vigorously shaking the photo, I looked at it while continuing to walk. The picture faded into view. There was the business savvy lawnchair woman with my twenty bucks, there was the two kids arguing over the super soaker, and there was... a really creepy looking old guy looking at the camera. Huh. I hadn't noticed him while I was there. Which was weird, because he definitely stood out. He wasn't overly tall, barely an inch or two over me and I'm just under five and a half feet. But his long, yellow-white hair the color of nasty snow fell clear past his shoulders, and his beard was so dirty there was probably an entire colony of things living inside it. He wore a faded brown suit with a yellow shirt. Or maybe it had been white at one point and was now so dirty and filled with... I didn't even want to know that it had turned yellow.

The creepy guy was looking right into the camera from behind one of the tables that had been next to the squirt gun kids. But I'd completely missed him. Probably a good thing. If I'd seen that guy at the yard sale, I would've steered clear and missed this fun little toy.

Once I got into my apartment, I tossed my bookbag in the corner and took stock. The most photogenic part of the place was the east corner window next to the earlier mentioned sock scented dresser. By photogenic, of course, I mean that it was the corner of the apartment that I actually hadn't managed to cover entirely in the kind of debris that naturally accumulates when you're a lone college student who has much better things to do than clean.

So I tested my new camera again, just for fun. I snapped the picture of that corner, then set the resulting blank photo down on the rickety table after giving it a few shakes to go put water on the stove for some Ramen.
While I waited for that to boil, I came back over to the table and picked up the picture, shaking it a few more times. I looked back over to the stove to make sure it was on high, then down at the photo in my hand.

I think I screamed. I'm pretty damn sure I did, anyway. I screamed and looked up to that corner again.

The man. The man from the yard sale. He was in my apartment. He was in my picture. He was there, standing in the corner right as I had taken that photo. He was there. He was in my apartment.

But he wasn't. There was no one in the corner. No one there. My apartment is tiny. The only place he could possibly have gone to be out of my sight (excusing the fact that I would have seen him as I took the picture to begin with) was the bathroom, and I could see straight into there.
No one was here but me.

But the picture... Gathering myself, I reached a shaking hand out to pick up the photograph that I had dropped in my terror.

It hadn't changed. The man was still in the picture. Still looking at me.
I looked at the corner. There was still no one there. I looked at the camera. It continued to be a camera.

The noise that came from me as I picked up the camera again was probably vastly more whimper than growl, for I am far closer related to mouse than lion. But I picked the camera up and, with my back to the apartment wall, slowly raised it to take another picture.

The seconds I spent then, shaking that photograph out while staring at the corner were some of the longest of my life. I shook, and shook some more. Partly afraid of what I'd see. But finally, eventually, I grudgingly lowered my gaze to the exposed photograph.

The man wasn't in the corner.

He was sitting right in front of me, barely a foot from the camera.
That time, I know I screamed. I screamed and screamed and hurled myself away from that spot. I wasn't screaming anymore, but there were tears in my eyes. Was I crying? Sobbing with fear, confusion, and more emotions I couldn't begin to understand or define, I slammed into the table in my rush to escape that spot.

Barely retaining the sense of mind to turn the stove burner off, I bolted for the door. I don't think I even closed it behind me. But I did grab the camera on my way out. Or my hand did anyway, I'm not sure my conscious brain had time in between its own hysterical screaming to have any say in the matter.

I'm at my college library now. The camera is on empty chair across from me, as I type this on one of their computers.

Please. I'm afraid to take another picture. I'm afraid to know if the man's there. I don't want to.
But I'm even more afraid not to.

Sell it on ebay.

I see you mirin' the cat gifs.
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But on a serious note, I really liked the story, it was intriguing. :y:

I'll buy the camera. I'll go as high as 1,300,001 vbux.

---------- Post added at 08:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 PM ----------

Also, out of curiosity, did you write this or c/p from creepypasta?

This is a C/P from Reddit but I do write scary stories, here is a short story i wrote on a thread on ngu "Well, a couple of years ago (2 years) I was in the woods alone because I was walking from one of my friends and it was faster to go home by walking in the woods, It was about 2:30 am and As I started to go through the woods it started to get colder and colder and for some reason it was getting darker as it went like a dark tunnel, i thought i had something with my eyes but then, I saw footsteps in the mud while I was going to my house and said "Let's see where these footsteps end up." So I followed them like a investigator and I made sure I wasn't stepping on the person's footstep and when I kept checking behind me I heard screaming and cries of pain, Then at one point the footsteps just stopped and the boots of the person we're there on the ground with a note saying "You have followed my footsteps, You shall finally find me." I read this and I heard a psycho-like laugh from a distant and I got scared to death! I ran to my house as fast as possible, locked the doors closed the curtains and didn't sleep the whole night, the whole night I would hear taps on windows..."

I actually enjoyed reading that. Too bad it was a copypasta or I would have been mighty impressed.

Here is a story I actually wrote myself, tell me what you think.

Well, a couple of years ago (2 years) I was in the woods alone because I was walking from one of my friends and it was faster to go home by walking in the woods, It was about 2:30 am and As I started to go through the woods it started to get colder and colder and for some reason it was getting darker as it went like a dark tunnel, i thought i had something with my eyes but then, I saw footsteps in the mud while I was going to my house and said "Let's see where these footsteps end up." So I followed them like a investigator and I made sure I wasn't stepping on the person's footstep and when I kept checking behind me I heard screaming and cries of pain, Then at one point the footsteps just stopped and the boots of the person we're there on the ground with a note saying "You have followed my footsteps, You shall finally find me." I read this and I heard a psycho-like laugh from a distant and I got scared to death! I ran to my house as fast as possible, locked the doors closed the curtains and didn't sleep the whole night, the whole night I would hear taps on windows...

Needs more character development, and more filler. Pretty good though. :y:

Obviously, this wasn't so supposed to be written as a story, a personal experience :p.

Sell on Ebay will be a simple solution