Found Documents
Stories told through documents: diaries, letters, logbooks, email threads, inspection reports, meeting minutes, classified ads. Dracula and Frankenstein were both told this way, and the form still works in a forum thread, because a document never knows how it is going to end.
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The Tide Tables
My grandfather left me his cottage, his boat, and forty years of tide tables written in his own hand. They are accurate to the minute. They also have a third column.
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The Call of Cthulhu Classic
Sorting his late great-uncle's papers, a man finds a clay sculpture of a winged, tentacled being, and notes about artists who all dreamed of it on the same nights.
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The Yellow Wallpaper Classic
Ordered to rest in a rented country house, a young wife starts to study the patterns in her bedroom's ugly yellow wallpaper.
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Home Inspection Report, 18 Tamarack Lane
A pre-purchase home inspection report for a 1962 Cape in coastal Maine, shared by the buyer who commissioned it. The roof needs work. The water heater is near the end of its life. The basement stairs have fourteen steps going down and thirteen coming up.
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Amour Dure Classic
A young Polish historian in a sleepy Italian town becomes infatuated with a Renaissance duchess whose lovers all met violent ends.
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Smoke Report
Letters from a seasonal fire lookout to her sister, written from a tower on a remote peak. She has been reporting a column of smoke in the valley below every evening. It doesn't drift with the wind.
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The Horla Classic
A man living in a house by the Seine records in his diary a growing sense that something invisible is sharing his home, and drinking his water.
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The Train Horn at 4:44
A thread from a small town's community forum. A few residents have started hearing a freight train's horn at 4:44 every morning. The town's rail line was torn up in 1979.
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Carmilla Classic
In a lonely Styrian castle, a young woman welcomes a mysterious and beautiful guest whose arrival coincides with a wave of strange deaths.
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The Hymn Board
A letter left in the sacristy of a small country church for the incoming pastor, by the man who has kept the building for forty-one years. He would like to explain about the numbers.
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The Sand-Man Classic
A student is haunted by the memory of the sinister lawyer he believed, as a child, was the Sandman who steals children's eyes.
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You Have Four Saved Messages
My grandmother moved into memory care in the spring. She calls me most nights and leaves long, wandering voicemails. Lately she's been talking about a nice young man who visits her after lights-out, and how much he knows about my apartment.
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Lost & Found
Selected listings from the Lost & Found column of a small-town weekly paper, collected by a reader who spent a summer going through its back issues on microfilm. Most of it is dogs and car keys.
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The Statement of Randolph Carter Classic
Questioned by the police, Randolph Carter recalls the night he waited by a telephone at the edge of an ancient cemetery while his friend descended into a tomb.
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RE: Updated Seating Chart (4th Floor)
An email thread forwarded to us by a reader who used to work in claims processing. It begins with the most boring message ever sent in an office, and a desk nobody can account for.
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Soundings
Extracts from the survey log of a small research vessel mapping the floor of a remote northern sound. The seabed there is supposed to be flat, and sixty meters down.
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Minutes, Regular Meeting
Excerpts from a year of homeowners' association minutes in an Arizona subdivision. The main items are pool hours, a dispute about a basketball hoop, and the house at the end of Mesquite Court, which is not on the plat.
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The Horror of the Heights Classic
A pilot's bloodstained notebook, found in a Sussex field, records his attempts to fly higher than anyone ever had.
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Notes for the Subletter
I sublet a fourth-floor walk-up for the summer. The tenant left me a typed page of notes about the apartment, taped inside the kitchen cabinet. Most of them are about the radiator.
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MS. Found in a Bottle Classic
A storm leaves one survivor adrift on a doomed ship, and then something far stranger comes out of the dark water to meet him.
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The Listener Classic
A struggling writer finds unusually cheap rooms in London, then begins to sense that someone is always on the other side of the wall.
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Phenology
For thirty years I have kept a record of my backyard's seasons, the first crocus, the first robin, the first frost. This spring there is a circle of lawn under the old apple tree where it is still last October.
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Where Are Your Parents
When I was eleven in Tacoma, every kid on our street knew a phone number you could call to find out exactly where your parents were right now. It was always right. I collected what other people remember about it.
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The White People Classic
A conversation about the nature of true evil leads to a green notebook, the secret diary of a girl who learned strange things from her nurse.
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Occultation
Pages from the observing log of an amateur astronomer in the high desert of eastern Oregon. He was timing stars as they blinked out behind the Moon. Then they started blinking out where the Moon wasn't.
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Estate Inventory, Lots 1–64
An estate liquidator's working inventory for a farmhouse in Vermont, sent to us by the heir. Everything in the house came in pairs, one for the man who lived there and one for someone else. Lot 64 is not for sale.
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You Are Here
I took the overnight custodial job at a rest area in the Columbia River Gorge. The man before me left a page of notes in the supply closet. Most are about the toilets. One is about the map.