got ready to catch up on a few years of nosleep, sorted by top, literally none of these are scary, nor are they even well written. i stopped reading them in probably 2016-2017 when all the hottest stories started boiling down to "bigotry was the real monster all along" "big bad evil guy does a heckin wholesome" or just weird, impotent revenge fantasies you can tell are written about the author's bully
the top post of the last few years is https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wqnymn which is just a stupid shallow reddit bait about a cheater but even sillier than usual 
main character's wife when her husband gets drunk and chips part of his brain out in front of her 
are there any the past few years that don't suck butt? i used to stay up all night scared shitless over these, the bar is low, i can't believe nosleep has somehow gotten so bad they can't even scare me
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I stepped into the room and heard crunching coming from under my feet. I looked down and see skeletons of all sorts of stuff. I'm not a doctor or archaeologist or any of that, but they looked like cat/rat/rabbit skeletons. This spooked me a little bit. Off on the other side of the room near the right tunnel was a decaying cat. Good times, good times. I could only assume there was another way into this system of tunnels, if animals were getting in.
I walked over the skeletons, and went through the right tunnel. It's a winding bastard too. Every few feet, I would have to turn one way or the other. I walked a bit further, and felt breeze on my sweaty face. I must have found that opening I was thinking about. Sure enough, there was a chunk about the size of couple shoe boxes missing out of the ceiling. I shone my light upwards and saw rounded concrete. I must be under a culvert or something. I walked onward, and am soon met with a collapsed section. "Well that's encouraging." I remark to nobody in particular. I turned around and started to head back to the bone room, but I felt vibrations. I shone the light around and see some rocks tumbling from around the collapsed section. A roaring noise then echoes through the tunnel. I recognized that sound. It was a tractor. He must be driving on the road, near the culvert. I found it strange that this thing is so shallow where I am.
I hadn't even noticed that I was slowly moving upwards when I was going down the right tunnel. I walked back to the bone room at that point.
I looked down to make sure I didn't step on that decaying cat, but it was gone. Did I miss something? I shone the light around the little room, and it's nowhere to be seen. After that, I did the only logical thing. I stepped into the other tunnel branching off from the room. Now, this one was really small. I had to literally crawl through it on my hands and knees.
So, I left my lantern in the room and started crawling. This wasn't fun at all. There were all sorts of sharp little rocks that my hands and knees were going over, and I was wearing shorts.
I crawled about 30 feet in this tunnel, and stopped to take a breather. I was able to sit down, hunched over. A minute later, my ears picked up a sound. It was a crunching noise. I stop breathing so I can listen better. The sound is coming from the direction I was heading. I turn the flashlight on and shine it down the tunnel. A pair of orange eyes about 20 feet away greet me. This thing...it looks like a hairless, skeletal, monkey. I let out a hearty "What the gently caress?" The beast whips up, sees the light, and disappears in a flash.
I had seen enough. I quickly shuffled around, and was met face to face with this... thing. It lets out this horrible... what I can only describe as a bark at me. I jumped up and slammed my head into the ceiling above me.
I writhed in pain, and felt blood pouring out a cut in my head. I must have hit a sharp rock. I started crawling as fast as I could towards the bone room. I get to the little room, and shone the light back into the darkness. About 10 feet away is that loving thing. It's licking the ground where my blood had trailed. It keeps licking away, but eyeballs me and growls. Oh isn't this just dandy! This thing likes blood. I'm getting the gently caress out of this place. I tried to run through the bone room, but tripped and scrambled to stand up in all these dead animals. I run to the tunnel and duck so I can head right into it. I didn't duck well enough. Pow, my forehead smacks into the wall. That knocks me on my rear end. Now my head is in some serious pain. I can't tell if I'm bleeding from my forehead, because my face is already covered in blood from a minute earlier.
I ignored the pain as best as I could and made haste down the tunnel. I was breathing extremely hard. This was too much for me.
I burst out of the tunnel and into the basement of the theater. I started flinging wooden boxes in front of the tunnel, in a vain attempt to block whatever was in there. I get a bunch piled in front and start hustling for the stairs. It's never that easy though. I get there and the stairs are gone. Just a wall. What in the name of God is going on! As it turns out, I had just ran to the wrong wall.
A quick sprint to another wall revealed the staircase. I started to run up it, but hear boxes smashing behind me. I hauled rear end up the stairs because right after the smashing boxes came the sound of loud pattering, like a dogs paws on concrete. I got into that office I was in and slammed the door. I kicked and kicked at it, 'till the warping did its natural locking effect.
Not even a second later the door started thumping as if something was banging into it. Then a clawing noise started happening. I ran over and shoved the desk in front of the door. I did all this while holding my poor mag light. If I had brought some plastic piece of poo poo, it would have been dark by the time I scrambled out of that tunnel. I stepped back and watched the door and desk shudder as something kept pounding at it. The pounding stopped as soon as it started. Then there was just silence.
The silence didn't last too long, however. I heard a clicking noise off in the distance. It sounded mechanical. I walked out into the lobby, and the noise grew. What the heck is that noise? It was coming from the screen room. My curiosity got the best of me, even after all of that. I walked to the hallway and saw the glow of light from the screen room. "Is someone in there?" I asked myself.
The second I enter the room I saw a huge light square where the movie screen would be. It's coming from a nonexistent projector. The light just started from midair, and cast itself onto the brick wall where the screen would be. I stood in amazement, watching this unbelievable thing.
Soon I could hear the sound of crying all around me. I snapped out of the hypnosis the light seemed to have over me, and glanced around. There was no one there, but the crying was still happening. It wasn't distant, or weird. It just sounded like people all around you were tearing up.
I started to walk backwards to the hall. As soon as I reached the door leading out of the screen room, I hear something different. The cries had quit, and erupted into screaming. The light from the nonexistent projector turned blood red, and coated the entire room. That was enough. I ran back into the lobby and towards the way out. I glanced over at the office as I ran past it, and see the door fly open, and desk go skidding across the room. poo poo, that thing had gotten out at a bad time. I ran down the steps to the exit. Behind me I could hear a sound that was a mix between a snarl and a gurgle. The thing was chasing me. I soon was running up to the door leading outside. I sprinted up the steps and flew through the door into the outside world. I look back in time to see the thing leaping towards the door at me. It disappeared as soon as it hit the doorway.
I fell down to my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath. My kneeling turned into laying on the sidewalk. My head was pounding, and my face was sticky from blood. My hands and knees were covered in cuts and scrapes from my rapid exit out of the tunnel. I stood up and shut the door to the theater. Nothing was going to get me to go back in there. I walked back to my vehicle, and remembered that I had left my lantern in the bone room. Oh well, it was a 30 dollar Coleman, easily replaceable. I then drove home and nursed my wounds.
About a year later, the town council decided to demolish a building that was 2 down from the theater. After destroying the foundation, they found a branch to the system of tunnels I was in. It was quite the big discovery, and hit the newspaper soon after it was found. The newspapers said that the tunnels were not even known about by any current living resident of the town. They were old and decrepit. The part of the article that caught my eye though, was their speculation on why there was a modern day lantern in the tunnel. I just chuckled at that. The branch they discovered must have been the one I was heading down when I saw the creature.
The tunnels are still there. The town council decided to leave them be, since they presented no danger to the buildings around them. However, they are now watched over very well, since they don't want any meddling kids getting into them. That doesn't matter to me though. I'm not going back in them.
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Wow, you must be a JP fan.
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