Szomorú Vasárnap, or Gloomy Sunday in English, is a hit song written in 1933 by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress. It’s more commonly known as the Hungarian Suicide song because of hundreds (if not thousands) of suicides that had been inspired by listening to it. The song itself has been has been covered several times, most famously by Billie Holiday, and for the most part is considered an urban legend and a brilliant marketing campaign.

The version that reached radio waves, however, is not the version that was originally written. Rezső Seress originally wrote the song in order to woo his girlfriend, who had recently left him. The song succeeded in bringing them back together for a short time, before she jumped from his apartment window. Rezső had been out at the time. His girlfriend left a note for him—”Szomorú Vasárnap.” The song was changed before release. Rezső Seress himself committed suicide in 1969, jumping out of his window in very much the same manner his girlfriend did.

For a brief period in 1971, a New Jersey based company sold novelty “X-ray” glasses through the mail via advertisements in the Marvel line of comic books. People who viewed their televisions while wearing these glasses reported seeing images that were “hellish” or “like hell”. It should be noted that this phenomena occurred whether the televisions in question were turned on or not. The company quickly went out of business and investigations reveal that the company’s address leads to a graveyard founded over 150 years earlier.

Somewhere in West Philadelphia, you will find an old basketball court with a single ball lying in the middle. Pick it up and start shooting hoops. After a while, a small group of hooligans will approach you and challenge you to a fight, which you must accept.

After the fight, you must go home and relay the events to your mother. She will then inform you that you have an aunt and uncle living in one of the districts of Los Angeles, and out of fear, she will send you to live there for an indefinite period of time.

With your bags packed, go to the street corner, and whistle for a cab. The cab that will pull up will bear the word FRESH on the license plate, and upon closer inspection, novelty fuzzy dice will hang in the mirror. Although you will suddenly realize that cabs like these are extremely hard to find, do not bear any thought to it. At this point you MUST point out in front of the car and say ‘Yo homes to Bel Air’. You will stop in front of a mansion, and it will be sometime between 7 and 8 o’clock, even though it will feel like you’ve been traveling mere seconds. Get your luggage out and say ‘Yo homes, smell ya later!’, but do NOT turn back to face the cabby. Walk up to the door, look over your shoulder once, and then knock on the door three times.

If you follow these instructions, your life will get flip-turned upside-down.

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Scariest pasta ever, y/y?

It’s 3AM and you’ve been up all night on a horror binge. You’ve watched your favorite horrors movies, read your favorite scary stories, and even attempted the old “Bloody Mary” trick in your mirror. You stretch and yawn, deciding now is about the time to hit the hay, so you move into your bedroom and lay down to sleep.

After awhile, however, you realize that you can’t get the images of some of the fictional creatures you saw on your TV out of your head. “Meh… I’m going to hate myself for this tomorrow,” You say aloud as you flick on your bedroom lamp, knowing that having a nightlight used to help get rid of your nightmares as a little kid. Within minutes you’re close to sleep, snuggled up comfortably under the blankets with your eyes closed and more pleasant thoughts on your mind.

…That is, until you detect something moving in front of the light, casting a shadow over you. You blink, beginning to turn towards the lamp before a rotting hand grabs hold of your shoulder. “Thanks for turning on the light; I wouldn’t have been able to find you in that darkness.”

Normally you sleep soundly, but the thunderstorm raging outside is stirring you from your sleep. You begin to doze, then another crash jolts you awake. The cycle lasts most of the night. So you lay there, eyes open and outward, looking at your room stretching out before you in oblong shadows. Your eyes move from nameless object, to object, until you reach your mirror, sitting adjacent to you across the room.

Suddenly a flash of lighting, and the mirror flickers in illumination. For a scant second the mirror revels to you dozens of faces, silhouettes within its frame, mouths open and eyes blackened. They stare out at you, their black pupils fixed upon your face.

Then it is done. Are you sure of what you have seen? Unsettled, you don’t sleep for the rest of the evening. The next morning you remove the mirror from your wall and toss it in the trash. It didn’t matter if the vision you had seen was of truth or falsehood, you wanted to be rid of that mirror. In fact, you scrap every mirror in your house.

Weeks pass and the event of that night falls into passive memory. You are spending the day at a friend’s house and it’s time to use the bathroom. While you are in there the faucet starts to run without you prompting it. Taken aback by this, you do not yet act, trying to reason with your paranoia in your mind. The water starts to steam and a skin of moisture covers the mirror up above. You’re watching intently as words form: “Please return the mirrors. We miss watching you sleep at night.”

Ever wandered alone on the streets at the dead of night? Well, if you encounter a wizened figure in tattered robes and a hood, and you just can’t seem to make out his face no matter which way you look at it, pay your respects. This man is infact Death himself. He only appears to sole travelers at the stroke of 3:33am, so most go their entire lives without ever seeing him “in the flesh”, so to speak.

If you’re brave enough to speak to him, he may take out an hourglass from his robe. The hourglass represents how much longer you have left to live. If there is plenty of sand in the upper glass, it means you still have a long time left to go before inevitability claims you. But if he takes out an hourglass that contains black flowing sand, then run as fast and as far as you can to the one you love before he finds you. And he will find you.

There is a village somewhere in England that has not been inhabited for over 20 years. It has long since been forgotten off of most maps, and only has one road in and out of it. If you manage to find it, it will seem a peaceable enough place, the derelict buildings being overgrown and nature taking back the land for herself. However somewhere within the village is a vending machine which still has power. it will still have it’s original look and sell ordinary brands of drink (though with 20 year old packaging) however the one at the very bottom will be marked “E”. Pay only in 10p pieces to buy this drink.

Before drinking the mysterious beverage, peer inside the can to check it’s colour (do not try to pour some out. it will refuse to leave the can despite any vigorous shaking you may attempt). If it is green in color, drink heartily, as it will give you an unnaturally long lifespan and good luck in everything you do. If it is red, however, drinking it will spread a horrific pestilence over you, claiming one of your senses every 10 years after the date that you first imbibed.

A young girl walking home from school found a small pile of Polaroid photos lying in the gutter. There were twenty in all, neatly wrapped in a rubber band. She picked them up, and as she walked she started to browse. The first photo was that of a ghostly white man on a black background, standing just far enough away from the camera that she couldn’t make out his features. The girl slid the photo to the back of the stack and looked at the next one. The photo was of the same man now standing a bit closer. The girl flipped through the next several photos quickly. With each one the man in the picture came a bit closer and his features were a bit clearer. Turning the last corner to her house, the girl noticed that the man in the photos seems to be looking at her even when she moved the stack from side to side. It frightened her, but she kept flipping them over, one by one. By the nineteenth picture, the man was so close his face completely filled the frame. His expression was the most horrifying the girl had ever seen. Walking up the driveway, she turned to the last photo. This time, instead of an image, there were two words: “Close enough.” Hearing a scream, the girl’s brother rushed to the door and opened it. All he saw was a pile of photographs lying on the doorstep. The top one looked like an extremely pale version of his sister, but she was standing too far back for him to be sure.

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Credited to Peter L.

In the hills surrounding the town of Bodega Bay in California, there is a tree, sitting right in the crook of two hills. Scattered 10 paces around it are 7 different fresh-water springs. It is said that one of them cures any disease, another grants immortal life, 4 will kill you instantly and cause your body to dissolve into powder. But the last spring is special. If you bottle water from this one and take it to a small cave hidden in the hills north of the tree, you will find a single large stone at the back of the cave. If you then splash the water on the stone, it will dissolve, leaving you a baseball-sized red stone. As long as you have this stone in your possession, you will always be in the right place at the right time. If you pour water from any of the other 6 springs on the rock, the cave will seal up, and you will be lost forever under the earth.

There’s a movie theater in downtown Phoenix, Arizona that only plays movies from 1987. If you pay for 3 tickets and buy a large popcorn, they will play a film that shows you your future. If you watch the entire film completely, you will have sleeping problems for the rest of your life.

If you are the type who eats out regularly, one day a stranger might join you at the table. This stranger will always appear to be of your age and sex, and he (if it is a he) will only appear if you are alone. No matter what style of restaurant it is, he will always be carrying his own plate of food.

After a few seconds, he will look directly at you and say, “You seem like an interesting person. May I know you better?” Say yes, and he will begin to ask you questions about yourself in between bites. These questions will be innocuous enough at first: what your name is, what you do for a living, and so forth, but should you open your mouth to answer, you will be forced to tell the truth, even if you do not consciously know what the truth is. Remain silent, and the stranger will scowl at you, pick up his plate, and leave. You will never see him again. If you do indulge his questions, however, they will grow darker and darker as the food leaves his plate, and it will become harder and harder to resist answering. Do not attempt to leave the table before he does under any circumstances.

When his plate is clean, he will stand up to leave, but not before asking you one last, irresistible question: “What would drive you to take your own life?” You will instantly be aware that you will be able to lie in response to this one question, and I suggest you do, for whatever you describe will come to pass within the week. Those who are canny may use this chat to gain whatever they desire, but know that if the happenstance you name does not drive you to suicide, the stranger will start guessing as to what will. And consider how much he now knows about you.

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Credited to Peter L.

You wake up one morning to find a note taped to your mirror: “Don’t worry, I took care of everything.” Your clothes have been freshly laundered, the bathroom is spotless, and your garage has been organized. Even your faithful old toolbox has been replaced.

Later that week, there’s another note on your mirror: “GET OUT OF TOWN.” Paper-clipped to this message are several grainy photos of police in a taped-off section of a field. One of them is carrying your old toolbox in his latex-gloved hand.

In the small town of Stull, Kansas, there once stood an old one room chapel on top of a hill, surrounded by graves. Beside the church was a cellar that was very difficult to find, as its doors had grass grown upon them. In front of it church was great tree that was always bare. None of the towns members could recall ever having seen a leaf upon its branches.

In the towns earliest years, well before the civil war, there were several farming families that lived there. The minister’s daughter had fallen madly in love with a boy from nearby, but had her heart broken when that young man was discovered to have impregnated a certain flirtatious townsgirl. The two were married, and all the while the reverend’s daughter saw them, happy together, and her hatred brewed until after 9 months of painful endurance, that despise boiled over. Shortly after the young couples child was born the minister’s daughter went to their house.

They greeted her cheerfully but noticed, all too late, how she eyed the child blood-thirstily. She slit the throats of those two who’d made her life so miserable and then dragged their bodies, along with the newborn child, up the hill to the church. She put the bodies in the cellar and left the baby there, between their bodies, to starve to death. She locked the cellar shut and hung herself on the tree in front of the church. The bodies in the cellar were not found for three weeks.

From that day on leaves never grew on that tree. If you walk the graveyard late at night you can just hear the sound of a baby’s chilling cry. The towns people burnt down the tree many years ago, in the hopes of putting the ministers daughter’s spirit to rest. And more recently the church collapsed onto itself, burying the already difficult to find cellar.

Many have looked for its doors, but the few who have found them and ventured beneath its depths have seldom returned, with the exception of a few who came back to the sunlight after 3 weeks beneath- starved nearly to death and covered in blood that was not their own.

If you visit France’s Cote d’Azur in your lifetime, do everything you can to avoid a small town called “Blanche”. I was in the country once with my parents, around 8 years ago (I was 12 at that time; we were on a family vacation), and we found ourselves looking for a place to get some rest and enjoy some of the local color. We were getting really hungry on the road, so it was with some luck that a town, unmarked on our map, rose unexpectedly on the horizon. This was the town of Blanche.

Immediately after we entered Blanche, we noticed that the colors of the houses were darker than anything I had seen in my entire life - it’s not like they were black or grey, they were normal colors for walls - they just look… not right. It’s hard to explain; almost like it was a color that we don’t even have a word for because it’s so dark and strange.
A few minutes after driving around the town, we all began to notice the fishy stench - like a Friday market, except for the fact that no fish were being sold. The people in the town also had a really weird skin tone, almost frostbitten and tinged a deep blue - if I recall correctly, my father said something like “These guys sure look like the sea.” We had originally planned to stay in the town for a while, but my mother and my sister were so disturbed by the creepy atmosphere and the town’s denizens that they insisted that we keep driving and find a different town to stay the night.

When we arrived in the next town, it was like we all gave a gigantic sigh of relief at once - we felt that we were back in normal civilization. However, the people who ran the inn that we stayed at in the second town did tell us some very freaky stories about Blanche - stories that made us really glad that we didn’t stay there…

This is the tale of an incident that occurred to me a few years ago, when I was a younger man, and convinced that the world was exactly as I saw it, and worked exactly as I was told it worked.

I had just finished my undergraduate degree at a college I shall not name, in the middle of Wales. Though my degree was interesting enough, I really wanted to leave behind the books and the academia, and immerse myself in the study and practical research of the paranormal. Though my funds were slight, at best, and my student loan needed repaying, on returning to London, I placed an advertisement in my local gazette, asking for anyone who had experienced paranormal phenomena, and didn’t mind talking about it to give me a call. I couldn’t offer anything in the way of a reward for their troubles, but I did promise to buy them a drink or two while we talked over what they had experienced.

It didn’t take long for me to receive my first and only caller, and to be honest, I was quite surprised that my ad had this much success. But I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The call came while my mobile was turned off, but a number had been left on voicemail, and a few days later, I called back. I didn’t want to respond immediately, though I don’t know why. Perhaps I wanted to seem more professional. Like I had a hundred people on a waiting list or something.

Anyway, I called the next evening, and was greeted by the voice of a young man, who identified himself as Theo Twining. I asked if we could meet, but he declined, with a dry and solemn chuckle. I told him that it didn’t matter, and that we could conduct the conversation just as easily by telephone. Perhaps he was shy, I told myself. His situation was this:

Since about two weeks ago, he (and he paused for a good minute or two before recanting his tale, repeatedly telling me that I would think him stupid) had started to see worms, regular earthworms, across his path. I at first thought him a little bit paranoid before I heard the particulars of the tale. Not just outside, not just crossing his path, but in all manner of places. If he made a cup of coffee, there would be an earthworm, dried and boiled at the bottom of the cup. When he woke, he woke to find himself covered with five or six of them, and when he sat at his desk, they would crawl toward him from beneath the monitor screen, and from under his keyboard. He told me of how he lived in a neat-ish studio apartment on the third floor, and how this only happened very recently.

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