This is a crosspost from cybrpunk.com.

I remember one time when I was eight years old and my parents took me to a county fair. It wasn’t our county as ours didn’t have fairs worth mentioning but the next nearest one to us. They always had the best fairs with ponies, demolition derbies, funnel cakes, lemonade and my personal favorite: a magician.

Since as long as I could remember at that point, I was fascinated with magicians. My Dad always harrumphed and said it was all fake, but at least Mom encouraged my fantasies as a child. When I went to a see a magician, I’d hang on their every word and their every motion. I’d gasp at the appropriate times and clap like a lunatic at the end of the show. To me, magic was real and I knew that when I grew up, I would be a great magician too. That is, until the county fair.

You see, up till that point I had always been a spectator. Spectators are safe in their seats and safe in the knowledge that it’s just a show, no matter what their beliefs. That day however, the magician asked for a volunteer. As fascinated as I was with magic, for some reason I didn’t want to be a volunteer. Something about this man on stage sent my skin crawling up and down my spine when he looked at me. I did not raise my hand and tried to make myself as small as possible as the other children frantically waved their arms in the arms in the air while simultaneously making sounds like constipated monkeys. I would have crawled in my Mother’s pocket at that point if I could have. I watched the magician cover his eyes with one hand and make a grand gesture of pointing out at the audience and sweeping his hand back and forth across the crowd. And when his finger stopped while it was pointing in my direction I knew that it must have been one of the other children with their arms in the air that he meant. He uncovered his eyes and his eyes immediately locked with mine.

“Come on up, boy!” called the man from the stage. He grinned at me and the assembly of kids exhaled in a single disappointed sigh.

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The only light in the kitchen came from the refrigerator as he opened the door. Looking around for something to eat, Tony Scatturo hummed to himself as the cool air fell across the kitchen floor. He was restless tonight. Tomorrow there was his first day on the job, and he didn’t want to mess this one up. Tony had just moved out to this wilderness reservation when he received the news that he had been hired on as the new help in a nearby shelter.

Finally settling on some leftover pizza, he closed the door, plunging the kitchen into total darkness. He slowly made his way out into the living room, where the TV awaited. He fumbled around, a slice of pizza hanging out of his mouth, looking for the remote control. That’s when he heard it.

He froze in place, and waited to see if he was just hearing things or if he would hear it again. After a short time, he gave up trying. Blaming his imagination, he continued to look for the remote control.

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From the Trentonian:

There have been sightings in the Lebanon State Forest of strange creatures moving through the trees. Many eyewitness accounts speak of a large group of what could only be described as “monsters” moving throughout the various forested areas of central New Jersey.

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I remember the stories that I had once forgotten. When we were little, our parents and relatives and neighbors and friends would tell us gruesome tales of witches and ghosts; goblins and haints. The stories usually had some moral to them to try and scare us into not doing things they didn’t want us to do. Don’t stay up all night and read comics by flashlight because the boogeyman will come out of your closet and eat you. Don’t wander in the woods alone or the trees will come alive and snatch you away. Don’t leave the refrigerator door open or a witch will cook you and eat you. Don’t drink directly out of the milk carton or… well you get the idea. When we were little these things scared us and haunted our days and nights.

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From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

An anonymous 911 call to the police led them to a scene that is perhaps reserved only for the movies. When arriving at a St. Charles home, police found the remains of four, possibly five people in what can only be described as a violent death. The names of the victims have not been released, mainly because they are still trying to find out who they are.

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From the Olympian:

An individual has been raising eyebrows in the community recently, claiming the supernatural exists, and there are such things as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. It is widely being dismissed as delusional. However, there would seem to be some credibility to these reports.

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