ponywithafez:

I think it’s time I told the story of the Star Tours ghost.

[don’t read if you don’t want to be creeped out]

[also it’s pretty long]

 Stories varied from CM to CM on what the ghost looked like and where it was located, but most of its activity was centered around Cabin 4. 

On nights when we were pretty empty, we’d usually go down to maybe 2 or 3 cabins and stop using Cabin 4. The cabins need to be cycled about every half hour to an hour though, otherwise they would automatically switch to maintenance mode. This meant that a CM would have to go over to the empty cabin and launch it as if it was full of guests. 

Cabin 4 was at the far end of the flight deck and unnaturally cold compared to the other cabins. The CMs who’d been working at Star Tours for a while refused to cycle Cabin 4, since that was the “haunted” cabin. Supposedly you could hear strange voices in the exit hallway outside of Cabin 4 when it was empty of guests (I heard laughter once, scared the heck out of me). In addition, the ghost would tap you on your back, whisper, and do all manner of annoyingly creepy things to Star Tours CMs. 

Since I was new, I usually ended up being the one to cycle the cabin when we were empty. And let me tell you,  I would try to cycle it as quickly as possible and almost run out of the cabin due to the extreme sense of unease I got being in there. 

As far as spotting a ghost, the only one I can think of was in Cabin 2. In Tower, there were infrared monitors to keep track of each cabin. A few years ago (I want to say 2008 or 2009), a clear outline of a small child showed up on the monitor for Cabin 2 in the front row, closest to the monitor, with its head tilted up and looking towards the camera.

Now, custodial wipes the cameras down nightly and the monitors are routinely cleaned as well, so this was not a smudge. It would still be there, burned into the monitor screen even when guests weren’t in the cabin: the only passenger on the screen would be the ghost of Cabin 2. 

I found a photo of it floating around online that some CM who will remain nameless posted to a Disney message board, so here’s the ghost of Cabin 2:

I have no idea if the attraction was actually haunted, or if it was just 23 years of tall tales making everyone paranoid. I do know that two people died on the Peoplemover track (which snakes through the Star Tours building), so who knows. All I know is that even with Star Tours 2, I still get goosebumps in and around Cabin 4.

“Thanks so much for this, Rachael,” her Aunt Carol said, slipping in her left earring as they stood in the hallway of her Upper East Side apartment.

“No problem,” Rachael answered. “Really. I had the night off work anyhow.”

“Still–” Carol looked at her niece. “It’s a help. You’ve no idea how long since I’ve been on a date. Single parenting. Not overly recommended.”

“It’ll be fun, Aunt Carol.”

Carol eyed her again, grabbing her coat from the hook and pulling it on.

“Well,” she said, “he’s not got much energy tonight; that’s one bonus. I think he might be coming down with something, but he shouldn’t be much of a handful.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” Rachael assured her. “Just you concentrate on your date.”

Carol smiled.

“I’ll try. Thanks again. You’re a lifesaver. See you later.”

The two women hugged and Carol opened up the apartment door, leaving quickly, and then closing it behind her.

The apartment was deadly still after Carol was gone, and the kid, Rachael’s cousin, was making no sound at all in the other room. Weird, she remembered thinking. Aren’t five-year-olds supposed to make noise?

Rachael walked into the open plan living room and found the child.

He was sitting cross-legged on the large curved sofa staring at the blank TV screen, as though intent on his own reflection in the dark glass. Carol hadn’t been kidding when she said the kid was sick. His skin looked pale and his eyes were slightly sunken. Must’ve been a bad dose of childhood flu.

“Hey, sport,” she said. “You okay?”

The child didn’t answer. He just stared ahead into blank space.

“You know, you should say hey when people are talking to you. Makes them like you better.”

Rachael sat down. The kid didn’t move. The room temperature had plummeted.

“Hey, kid.” She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

The kid lunged at her, causing her heart to skip a beat as he desperately threw his arms around her waist, holding her tight and pressing his cold, little face into her chest.

“What’s the matter?”

The child was shaking and whimpering.

“I don’t want it to be like this anymore.” His voice was a throaty croak.

“Like what?” Rachael put her hand protectively on the boy’s back. “You mean being sick?”

The child stopped making noise; his body went rigid, and then he pulled back, slow and deliberate. His eyes fixed themselves on Rachael’s. Deep, black, unhealthy eyes.

“Are you scared?” he said.

Rachael didn’t like the way the kid was looking at her, and the question was more than terrifying in the empty apartment.

“No,” she lied, though the kink in her voice said differently.

“You will be.” The little boy’s voice was sad and hopeless. “Everyone is when they find out.”

Rachael was weak with fright by the time Carol arrived back home. So much so that she could barely ask how the date went, let alone wait to hear that it had sucked big time.

All the route back on the subway Rachael couldn’t help but think about the child: his stark, haunting eyes; his spidery fingers tight on her skin.

When she reached the door of her own apartment the phone inside was ringing violently.

She quickly opened up and came inside, flicking on the light to banish the boy-shaped shadows that hunkered down in every corner.

She answered the call.

“Rachael!”

It was Aunt Carol.

“Hi,” she said, disconcerted as ever. “Everything okay?”

“Listen, Rachael,” Carol said. “Tonight really scared Sammy and I’m a little worried…”

“I know,” Rachael said. “He was really frightened all night. I tried to talk to him, but…”

“No, Rachael, you don’t understand.” Carol sounded adamant. “Sammy was in his bedroom. He said when you came into the apartment you sat down on the sofa and…he said he heard you talking to another kid…a kid that wasn’t even in the room.”

(submitted by lovetpom)

“Get well soon,” my granddaughter says as she’s ushered out of my hospital room by my daughter-in-law.

I won’t be getting better soon, but nobody has the heart to tell her. I am dying of brain cancer. I haven’t been out of my bed in three months. The doctor won’t give me any direct information, but I know what my outlook is if they’ve placed me in Hospice. That’s where you go to die comfortably.

The IV in my arm is running low. A nurse should be here soon to replenish it. It’s one of the few things I have left to look forward to. My family barely visits anymore; the hospital is a two-hour drive from home.

I understand though. It’s hard to watch your father die slowly of something no one can control. I’m not scared though, I have my next life to look forward to.

The constant beeping of my heart rate monitor is slowly driving me crazy. Sometimes, I wish it would just end already, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to die just yet. I’ve been in and out of this hospital for a long time now.

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January 19, 2003 —
Indian officials ventured into a deep jungle, investigating several missing persons reports from a nearby city. What they found was a “Tower of Silence,” or dakhma. Zoroastrians use these sites to dispose of bodies in the open air.

While sites like these are not uncommon in certain parts of india, several peculiarities hint at something more unusual…

1. None of the bodies depicted in the photograph were identified. Villagers from nearby, though initially surprised at the sheer number of corpses in the dakhma, proved unable to recognize the bodies. The corpses also do not match the descriptions of the missing people.
2. There were no animals around except for maggots and flies. Zoroastrians rely on birds (i.e. buzzards) to dispose of the bodies, in the belief they are contributing back to the Earth. Officials found the corpses relatively untouched by any sort of animal.
3. There is no official count of the bodies. In fact, little work was actually accomplished at the site and, perhaps, this is why only one photograph has emerged. Officials avoided the spot - not only because they felt uneasy looking at it, but for the following, as well:
4. The deep pit in the center of the photograph was filled with several feet of festering blood - far more than the bodies on the outside could ever supply. The stench was so unbearable that many of the officials began to get nauseous when they first approached the dakhma.
5. The expedition was ended when a villager accidentally kicked a small bone into the pit, penetrating the coagulated surface of the pool. A massive burst of gas from the decomposing blood erupted from the pit, splashing those looking into it, along with the photographer.

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Everyone knows that if you surf the web long enough, you’ll see some sick shit. This is especially true if you intentionally dwell into the dark underbelly of the Internet. I’ve seen quite a few things I don’t care to admit to, but the one thing I’ll always remember is a site called “normalpornfornormalpeople.com.”

The first thing about the site was that I didn’t find it by actually looking for it. It was emailed to me by someone I didn’t know. The email was as follows:

hi there

found this site is very nice thought u might like

normalpornfornormalpeople.com

pass it on for the good of mankind

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Mario has been a gaming icon for decades and has been in more games than can be counted. Although no year in recent memory has gone past without some type of Mario game being released, series fans will remember the nearly decade long drought of original Mario platformers.

From 1997-2005, there was only one new Mario platformer released: Super Mario Sunshine. During the second part of this drought (after Sunshine’s release), the mysterious Super Mario 128 was the main focus of the fanbase.

No concrete information was given on the game and, eventually, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto claimed it had simply been a series of test concepts that were never intended to be an actual game.

The mystery faded from memory as the Mario drought finally ended and most people forgot about the game that had once been the center of every Mario fan’s imagination.

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On the outskirts of a town called Pottsboro, there is a place called the Shady Grove. The only people that remember anything notable about it are all in their 70s or 80s and almost all of them refuse to speak of it.

There are a few, however, that will break their vow of silence and tell of the horrendous events that happened there. They spoke to me bout how they had seen what hell truly looked like and how soon they would pay for what they’ve done.

During the 1960s, a cult had formed in the town. They had taken to sacrificing people to summon their “master,” who their leader had claimed would banish the filth from the Earth and begin a time of true peace.

The only catch was that they had to sacrifice only female children, but only if they were deemed impure after a night with the leader. After he had collected about ten little girls, he told them the day of judgment was upon them and to prepare the circle about five miles outside of town.

That night, at 3:00 AM, they began to ritual by covering the girls in the blood of pigs and cutting the children’s arms and legs about one to two inches apart from each previous cut.

The next part was the cover their bodies in oil and light it. After this step, their bodies burst into blue flames and from the flame came a woman with eyes as black as coal and skin as white as snow.

The woman walked straight at the leader while saying something in an unintelligible language and he instantly burst into flames. After that, the group I was interviewing told me they all blacked out, only to find themselves in their beds with a ticket in their hands that had the word “HELL” stamped on it.

The group told me that if anyone attempted to enter the circle where the ritual took place, that would wake up instantly, have an intense vision of themselves burning alive, and then pass out and wake up in their beds holding the ticket to HELL.

My story starts out rather normally. I guess it’s because I grew up normally at first. I guess some would call me sheltered in my earlier years, but that’s no crime. I had my friends, I went to a somewhat small school in a predominantly rich white neighborhood. We weren’t snooty or anything, but just… sheltered. I didn’t care. I came home one day to see my mother in tears. I instantly thought the worst, but I was wrong. I guess I got that from her, always thinking the worst had happened. It didn’t seem so bad. We were moving, I was told. I didn’t know anything about “good” or “bad” areas. Like I said, I was sheltered. Apparently, there were things they were not telling me, though. In a week, I went from my cozy, friendly upscale neighborhood with the small school where everybody knows each other… to a number school that had bars on the windows and guards at the doors.

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I awoke one night, lying face down in my bed, unable to move.
This had happened to me before many times. I was told by a doctor that it was sleep paralysis, and that it could be triggered by changes in sleeping pattern, stress, falling asleep in a certain position, eating certain things before going to bed, alcohol consumption, etc. Sometimes, I saw things. They varied from innocent kittens at my door to terrifying demons clawing at my flesh. These were called hypnagogic hallucinations, and were normal, I was told. Just a disturbance in the REM cycle, nothing to be afraid of…

This particular night, and the events that followed, were different.
The window beside me was open, a cold breeze blew the curtains above me. I hadn’t gone to bed with my window open. I felt as if I was being watched. Through my periphereal vision, I saw a little girl standing in my window. She had soft looking black hair, fair skin, and wore a white dress. Smiling widely, she pressed her finger to her lips.

“Shhh!!!”

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My parents were the first to fall violently ill from the sickness we now know as XoRax, I can vividly recall my father lying on his bed while his muscles spasmed and he chocked on his own vomit. I stood as his side, frozen in place and refusing to leave as I held back sobs, his pupils dilating until his entire eye was like an inky blackness. He tried to speak, turning his head toward me but opening his mouth only brought forth another torrent of vomit.

I remember saying something, but that detail is lost on me now. I remember staring into his glazed eyes as his shuddering became less pronounced and he was suddenly very still. I let out a wail and ran into my room, unprepared and unwilling to face the truth. My mother was the first to pass, then my older brother who had just turned 17, and finally my father.

I had not considered that I could have caught the disease myself – if it were in fact contagious – I just thought myself lucky, though tragically lucky at that. I fell asleep in the corner, huddled in the blanket that previously kept my mother warm, her perfume made the putrid aroma somewhat tolerable, perhaps just enough so that I could drift off.

I remember a persistent banging next, a series of muffled inquiries from the opposite side of my locked door. They were shouting for survivors, looking fervently for anyone who was still alive despite the breakout. I rushed to the door and unlocked it to face what I would come to identify as the Day-Crew.

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