Chilling Images: the Sequel

[Sikla Alkis]

Back on the old forums, there was a thread called "Chilling Images", which was full of mini-Creepypastas and story/chronicle hooks for players to use. Some of these were collected into a PDF (http://tagsessions.blogspot.co.uk/20...-nwod-and.html), and I can't find a repost or revival thread of the concept on the forum, so I decided to try posting a new one.

I'll start:

1) Local legend speaks of an enormous hound, shaggy with matted hair and black as midnight, that stalks the graveyard of the smallest church in the area. It is fiercely territorial, driving off people who try to walk through the cemetery at night, among other things; a number of amateur "ghost-hunters" have been sent to hospital with deep, gouging bites. The priests insist it be left alone, and the congregation is encouraged to speak little of its presence. One night, whether from a fed-up resident or a sicko with a shotgun, the animal's skull is blown open by several rounds; it is left to bleed against a gravestone.

The body is gone by morning, and only a faint stain remains on the stone's surface. The next night, the dog roams again, albeit with a hideous scar over a portion of its head. One of the congregation goes missing the same evening.


2) They say that, on the eve of the Midwinter Solstice, if you lock yourself for an entire day in a dark room without food, water or light, you will emerge into the world of the spirits. You will gain a vision of the future, but only if you walk to the nearest church, circling around it in a particular pattern on your arrival. Those who don't come back from this journey are often unsolved missing persons cases; a common excuse by those who know better is "they were walking to a friend's house".


3) If you see a light bouncing through the swamplands at night, and don't hear footsteps following it, do not. Get. Closer. If you start seeing the faces of dead friends and family in the water, run away as fast as you can towards the nearest settlement. If you are chasing a farm animal or pet through the swamps, coming across these sights as you follow it, the animal was never yours in the first place.

[The Kings Raven]

4) You'd be surprised how many children's rhyming games are based on weapons crafted by the faeries. No they're not rhymes about the weapons, the rhymes were the weapons. If you see kids playing listen because that shit could save your life someday, but be careful when you practice so you don't bewitch someone by accident. The ones where you make rhymes about the other players are the dangerous ones.


(This is based on an idea I had for an Autumn Court Wyrd Sorcery duel. The dualists collaboratively create a nasty spell via the opening verse then sequentially add verses saying who the target is. If you screw up your verse the spell activates and you're the target. I got the idea from the Madoka cake song, only it would end with someone actually turning into cake and the others eat the looser).

[Sikla Alkis]

5) If a pair of magpies roosts in your garden or rafters, leave offerings for them. Yes, I said offerings — seed, bread, water, fruit, hay and twigs for the nests. Things like that, things to make them happy and healthy. So long as the magpies are treated well by those of the house, you will be protected by the Others, and from the Others that would seek to do you harm. If one of the magpies dies on your property, though, then the Others will be offended.

You don't want to know what happens when both of them die, or God forbid, you kill a magpie.

[Ben Quo]

6. Your flatmate? She's into some pretty kinky stuff, and she gets a partner a week - a night, when her school is on vacation. There's this one she has over often, though, and you only think this girl is one of your flatmate's lovers because, while you shower, you catch her in the mirror watching you. It's annoying, and a little creepy, and when you ask your flatmate about it she denies it. Is it someone sneaking in from across the hall? One night, sick of it, you get a friend (he is in love with you, and a complete geek, the poor dear) to set up a camera while your flatmate is out, so you can record where this lady comes from.
You shower in the morning, then eagerly watch the tape.
She crawls out of your room on hands and feet, creeping over to the bathroom door to crouch and stare in at you - good thing your friend set up the camera where he did, because in the recording?
She's only in the mirror.

[ChewyGranola]

7. Your friend has been kidnapped. It's been over a month, and the police aren't doing a damn thing. Odd, then, that you and your friends are so easily able to put the clues together and discover their friend's location. Once you get there they find their friend, trussed up in front of an altar to...something. Something eldrich and alien, something that defies traditional geometry. You rescue your friend uneventfully, but later problems arise. You and your friends are each having the same dream: the altar, bathed in the dark of the void, opening and letting something through into our world that shouldn't be here. And the friend has been acting strangely too, more sociable and aggressive. And who are those people following you, the ones with the strange marks on their faces...

[Sikla Alkis]

8) If you see a pair of ravens flying together, do not look at them for too long. This is especially true during a long, unforgiving winter; they are the servants of beings from long, long ago. If one of the ravens stares at you, unflinching in its eye contact, take care if its eyes are blue. It's likely one of two things will happen to you in the seconds afterwards — you will either lose your mind and start babbling incoherently, or you will lose your memory of the past six years.

[Sikla Alkis]

9) Your skin crawls every time you walk past the woods near work. No one else seems to feel it, or if they do, they're not admitting it. One night, when overtime has walking past in the dark — you've missed the bus, and you have no money for a cab — you notice a pair of white dots in the trees. They glow faintly, and are joined by another. And another. And another.

[Sikla Alkis]

10) You wake up one morning with a strange stinging sensation in your feet. Upon pulling back the sheets, you find your toes are translucent, and the effect is spreading up your feet and legs.

[Daydreamer]

11) Ever hear of "shadow people?" When you haven't slept in a long time, eventually you see dark, humanoid shapes in your peripheral vision. Just for shits and giggles, during a period of a couple of weeks when you have nothing but time on your hands, you decide to go without sleep so that you can experience this hallucination for yourself. It's really trippy when you finally see them, but nothing really to write home about. You go back to a regular sleep schedule.

The shadow people won't go away. You still see them, lurking on the edge of your sight. Try to look directly at them, and you can swear they move like they're trying to run and hide. When it's dark, you can hear them whispering to you. At first it was just gibberish, but they're starting to make sense now.

[Geckopirateship]

12. You were cleaning out an overstuffed wallet when you came across a battered old coupon for a pizza place you'd never heard of. A crude black and white drawing of a smirking boy with pointed ears hovered next to the words "Bring this coupon to Orgoglio's Pizzeria for a free Peter Personal Pan Pizza! It'll make you FLY!". You tracked the place down- turns out it was just out of the way off the street you walk down every day- and turned it in. A grim-faced diminutive cashier took it without a word and turned back to the kitchen, opening the door, silently nodding to a woman built like a bulldozer in a dirty apron. You caught a glimpse inside- you saw a pile of fresh-looking fruits and vegetables on a cloth, only you couldn't quite identify them. You could swear that a few of them moved.

[Araknee]

13. You just read a story to your child. He looks at you with a worried look. "Dad, there's a monster under my bed". You reassure him and check under the bed "There's nothing". His eyes are looking behind you "No, he's behind you now."

14. The children school used to be ruled by nuns during the last century. You know that school, it has been your own school when you were child. The kids are playing in the court, between the old and the new buildings. The old one is used for administration and storage. A little girl throw her ball behind the old building. She says "can you send me back the ball, Mister?" You know that corner. That was the corner of your first "kiss". There's nothing there except a wall and an entrance to some condemned cellar. You ask : "Who are you speaking to ?" and the girl answers "Nobody". "We cannot speak about him", says a little boy near you. "The nuns have forbids us to talk about him". There's no nuns here since the last century.

[espritdecalmar]

15. Your new apartment is fine, cheaper than your last place, though it's kind of old, so has a couple of minor problems. Take the deadbolt, for instance: It's one of those inside-locking chain pieces like you see in motels, and every once in a while it'll get jammed and it takes a good minute or two to get it unstuck. It doesn't happen often, but enough to be frustrating. Once a deliveryman came to your door saying he had a package for you, and the lock jammed, and by the time you got it open he was gone. Another time at two in the morning there was a banging at your door, a woman's voice begging for your help, and again by the time you got the lock working she had vanished. You wouldn't dream of getting rid of the lock though; you heard there was a robbery the other week in an apartment upstairs, and then there was the murder next door. . .

[amechra]

16. Here's something fun to do on your morning commute: first, count all the cars to your left. Then, count the number of drivers on your left.

17. There's this weird brownish-red stain over the front door of your shitty apartment - it's a bit crusty, and the flakes you've scraped off smell a bit like iron. You'd complain to the landlord, but the last time you brought it up with her she just shrugged and ignored it. Still, you've been lucky - in the three years you've been here, yours has been the only apartment in the building that hasn't been broken into.

18. You picked up this cute hitchhiker a couple of weeks ago - you know, the whole hippie look, the "going anywhere" sign, the duffel-bag, the works. You dropped her off a couple towns over, and forgot about it. Well, you did until you kept running into her, waiting on the side of the road... the creepy thing, though, is that you went through the pictures on your phone a few days ago, and there were a ton of photos of the two of you. You could deal with that, except that just yesterday you saw a photo of you and her, framed and sitting on your dresser...

19. "Everyone around here knows that North Street is closed from 3am to 5am on Thursdays. People from out of town think it's strange, but it's just a fact of life around here. It's a shame that that's where the hospital is, but so far we've had the good luck of not having any medical emergencies on Thursday mornings. What's that? Oh, yes, the street has been closing at that time for the last hundred years. Strange how well out luck has held, isn't it?"

[Araknee]

20. You were arrested. The two cops leads you to the police station to ask for your version. The police station is totally empty. There's dust on the floor. He leads you towards his office, and speaks with invisible colleagues. One is going to its office, chatting alone, mabye flirting with some girl at the desk. The second one puts you in the interrogation room. Then leave on a corner. Everything seems to be forgotten for years. But he's talking with his boss. He leaves. Thus the door shuts by itself.

[Geckopirateship]

21. If you see a word you don't recognize, you google it. It's just what you do, right? You might want to think twice about it. You know how the government knows what you've typed? Don't asked shocked, you know it does. Well, sometimes you'll stumble upon a word you're not supposed to know. And then you look it up, one thing leads to another, and you're blindfolded in an unmarked airplane flying you to a blacksite in Romania.