supernatural
The hidden world of all things supernatural; a look inside witchcraft, spells, vexes, black magic and other spine-tingling supernatural phenomena.
The Hollow Beneath the Pines. AI-Generated.
It was the summer of 2012 when I visited a remote village in southern France with my cousin Adrien. The kind of place where phones lose signal, and time slows down to match the hum of crickets. At the edge of the village stood an ancient pine forest, rumored by locals to be “cursed.” They called it La Forêt Creuse—The Hollow Forest. Of course, we laughed it off. At seventeen, curses were just stories meant to keep kids indoors. But I’ve never quite laughed about it since. The path into the forest wasn’t marked on any map. It began behind a crumbling chapel, covered in ivy and shadowed by trees that looked like they hadn’t moved in a hundred years. As soon as we stepped under the canopy, everything changed. The air turned colder—dense, almost wet. Even the sound of our footsteps became muffled, like we were walking on memory foam instead of dry leaves. I noticed quickly that the trees leaned oddly toward each other, like they were whispering secrets above our heads. The light dimmed the further we walked, even though it was mid-afternoon. The forest was beautiful in a wild way—but it also felt… wrong. Not terrifying. Just quietly unsettling. Like the place knew we didn’t belong there. We kept walking until we came across a wide, circular clearing. At the center stood an old well, overgrown with vines, its stone rim cracked in places. It didn’t look used in years. Around it, the grass had died in a perfect ring, like something had sucked the life out of the earth. There was no sound—not even birdsong. That silence was the first thing that truly made me uneasy. Adrien, ever the adventurous one, leaned over the well’s edge with a smirk. “Probably full of bones,” he joked, his voice sounding too loud. I told him to knock it off. But then he froze. “You hear that?” he whispered. At first, I didn’t. Then I did. A faint knocking sound, like someone tapping wood from deep below. It was rhythmic—slow, then fast, then stopping altogether. We stood motionless. The sound returned again, sharper this time. Not an echo. Not a bird. Not wind. Something was down there. We didn’t stick around. We walked—fast—back through the trees. Neither of us said much until we made it back to the chapel. The sun had already dipped lower in the sky, and I swear the air felt warmer the moment we left the forest behind. Adrien laughed nervously, trying to play it off, but I could see it in his eyes—he felt it too. That well wasn’t just old stone. It was watching. Later that evening, we asked Adrien’s grandfather about the forest. He grew serious immediately. “People used to go there,” he said quietly. “They stopped.” We pressed him for more, but he just shook his head. “Some places are not yours to understand.” That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that knocking sound in my head. I even had a dream—though it felt more like a memory. In it, I stood at the edge of the well, and a voice whispered from below: “Dig deeper.” The next morning, Adrien insisted we go back—this time with a flashlight. I refused. Something in my gut told me the forest didn’t want us a second time. He went anyway. I waited for hours, pacing along the chapel wall. When he finally returned, his face was pale. He didn’t say a word. Just handed me his flashlight. Inside were scratch marks—long, deliberate lines gouged into the plastic handle. They hadn’t been there when we bought it. He never told me what he saw that day. Years later, I still think about that trip. I’ve since grown my own garden—vegetables mostly—and I often think of the way roots grow beneath the surface. Twisting through darkness, searching for something. That forest felt the same way. Like it was alive, but underground. Stretching, remembering. I’ve learned since then that every old place has its version of La Forêt Creuse. A hollow space where history hums and waits to be uncovered. Sometimes I wonder—was it a real mystery we found that day? Or just the part of ourselves that wants to believe something strange is always watching? Whatever it was, I never went back. And I never will.
By Sherooz khanabout a year ago in Horror
Zombies everywhere
Demi Moss ran for her life, the undead were rising all over England. Crawling out of the mud, like horrible little bugs. Gravestones were turning over, cemeteries had become danger zones, as zombie hordes gathered where people once mourned lost loved ones. It was like something out of a classic horror movie, as crippled men and women, with skin running off their bones, came shambling towards the living who fled from them in frantic terror! Whole cities were overrun with these monsters. Demi was in London when a horde of them burst from a diesel train in the underground. She was waiting in the subway to go home, but immediately fled back towards the city as hundreds of undead raced out of the metal carriages, their eyes burned red with a fiery rage unlike anything Demi had ever seen before. It terrified her, she and a hundred others joined a stampede racing upstairs, breaking through the barriers to resurface in Piccadilly Circus, the heart of the city. It was chaos, Demi didn't know where to look, at every turn; there were people killing people and it was almost impossible to tell who was infected or not. If that's what this was, Demi didn't know what was causing the zombie outbreak. It was a strange virus (if it was one) as the undead laughed and grinned, some even chanted; "the return of Lucien at last!" Or "our dark lord has resurrected!" Over and over again. No, this couldn't be a viral infection, it had to be something far darker than even that. She had heard about the return of Big Foot, Moth Man, Loch Ness Monster and then dinosaurs in America. Now there were zombies in England, something foul and menacing was a foot. Demi couldn't think about it at all, she just ran and ran, away from the horror, screaming in frantic terror! There had to be a way out of London, there just had to be. She searched for it endlessly, climbing high above the walking dead, jumping on top of stationary vehicles that had crashed in the outbreak. Smoke rose over the city, buildings were set on fire. Riot police were already storming the streets and alleyways, Demi looked high above the skyline, she saw army planes and helicopters, paratroopers were gliding in to save the day. There were panic bells, it was red alert! "There's something here from somewhere else!" A soldier yelled, as war machines sprung to life, shooting madly, "call the troops out in a hurry! This is it, boys, this is war!" He cried, as a hundred red and bloody zombies ran by. Demi hid from the gunfire, as these camouflaged superheroes stormed in to shoot the undead down, they weren't just from the sky, but crashing in with battle tanks, squashing the walking corpses like pesky insects. Demi didn't know what she was afraid of more, the marching men with high tech weaponry or the beasts from beyond the grave. She was hiding inside an abandoned building, with other survivors gathering close by, they became a gang of desperate people, eager to escape this living hell. It seemed impossible, so they all hid upstairs, watching from the windows high above, the war on land was neverending. The building collapsed before their feet, a missile crashed into the second floor, it made the walls around them crumble and shake violently. Demi and the others all tried to run back down to ground, but the stairs cracked and split wide open. Demi lost her footing, falling to her death. The last thing she heard was the others screaming, before the back of her head smashed the ground.
By Joseph Roy Wrightabout a year ago in Horror
Haunting Effects of the Full Moon
Being a police officer, I see all kinds of strange and eerie events, especially during the night. You know that old saying about the full moon and how it alters people's behavior, let me tell you...It's true. I never believed it, until I started paying attention.
By Sully Larkinabout a year ago in Horror
Curse of the Crow
The sun had not yet cleared the mountain when it began again. Sam heard the crow. It was perched on the post out by the well. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before that. It was black and ugly and silent when it looked at him, and loud when it turned away. Always cawing. Never gone.
By Mario Paezabout a year ago in Horror
The Door Wasn’t Supposed to Be Open
I remember that evening like a bloodstain that never fades. The sun had dipped behind the trees, casting eerie orange shadows across our quiet street. The kind of light that makes even the safest neighborhoods look… haunted. I had just put Maya, my 8-year-old daughter, to bed. She asked for her nightlight—“The purple one, Daddy, not the blue.” It was our little routine. A small act of comfort in a world I could never fully protect her from.
By Emma Walkerabout a year ago in Horror
Pathogen: Ch. 16. Content Warning.
This was bad. This was very, very, very bad. Alarms screamed all around Marnie as she barreled down the hall, racing for the elevator as fast as her high heels could carry her. General Hackett or one of his scientists must have flipped a switch, because the lights went out around her within a second of her taking off. All she had to see by were the hazard lights, slowly flashing red to the tempo of the alarm.
By Natalie Grayabout a year ago in Horror
That One Night
I should have taken the bus. That thought kept repeating in my head as I walked down Elmwood Avenue, the shortcut I always promised myself I'd never take again. But after pulling a double shift at the diner for the third night this week, my feet ached and my eyelids felt like sandpaper. All I wanted was to collapse onto my mattress and sleep for twelve hours straight. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still hung heavy with moisture, smelling like wet concrete and something else—something coppery that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
By Emma Walkerabout a year ago in Horror
