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Caution: If you are faint of heart, turn back now. This collection of stories will not bring you comfort or pleasant dreams. It will not soothe your mind or leave you content. Those happy thoughts are best left to other books. This is a much different anthology, one that peddles terror, panic, and dark truths. The accounts of real experiences you are about to read will make you question what lurks in the shadows. Did you lock your door? Are you sure you’re really alone? Was that noise you heard really the wind, or was it something more?
Folklore stories change from one area to the next. They morph depending on the cultures that tell them and the people who are brave enough to share what they have seen. The whispered details conjure up images of everything from shapeshifters and demonic beasts to things that are felt but not seen. Sometimes the encounters are a whispered voice, a smell that seems out of place, or leftover shredded remains. It is human nature to try and rationalize strange experiences, to comfort ourselves with rational explanations, but what happens when the explanation falls short?
There are things that even the most skeptical people can’t rationalize away: that foreboding feeling when something unseen is watching you from the shadows, the clenched knot in your gut when you know danger is near, the indescribable animal instinct that urges you to run. Perhaps those sensations are left over from a time when humanity was all too aware that the dark was indeed something to be feared. The Survival instinct isn’t something easily forgotten. Sometimes, that intuition is the only thing keeping you alive, whether you know it or not.
If you want to remain in the dark, stop now. If your gut is telling you that what you will read will change the way you look at the world, perhaps you should listen. The terror captured in these pages is not for everyone. A flicker from the corner of your eye will never again be just a figment of your imagination. The shadows in the corner of your room will never be truly empty. Every temperature change, every strange smell, and every bizarre encounter with a creature—some that seem human and some that do not—will make you question your safety and maybe even your sanity. The brave people written about in the following stories do not share these occurrences lightly. They have experienced what goes bump in the night—and most of them were lucky enough to live to talk about it.
Most of the people involved in these recounted events were never the same after their ordeals. Some have resisted telling others about their experiences out of fear or the worry of not being believed. For others, telling their stories is the only way to warn others about what is out there. You see, these cautionary tales are not just a compilation of fireside ghost stories and eerie folktales. They are a warning. It is up to you to decide if you will heed them or not.
If you insist on reading further, you will not only be opening this book but also your mind. The words you read may haunt you, and after you read them, there is no going back. Afterall, even the most incredible stories contain a grain of truth—or as in the case of these stories, sometimes more. The folktales you are about to read will challenge your definition of impossible, and in the famous words of Albert Einstein, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
