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Coming home from training, I took a shower and lay down on my bed. It was around 11 PM, a quiet summer evening. The window was open. The bed was positioned so that I lay with my feet facing the window and could see the sky. The room was on the fourth floor. About five minutes later, I noticed a bright white star over the roof of the neighboring building, gradually growing in size. My first thought was that it was a satellite. The "star" grew larger and larger, taking the form of a female silhouette in a white robe that concealed her arms and legs. Soon, this figure was in my room, at the headboard, about 2-3 meters from my head. The silhouette was slender but large, with a visible head almost half a meter in diameter. I propped myself up on my elbows to get a better look. I made sure I wasn't dreaming—I was still not completely dry from the shower. The figure leaned over the headboard, examining me from a distance of 1.5 meters.  If from a distance she seemed somehow beau...

Since childhood, I've been terrified of the dark when there weren't people around. Then I grew up, read various books on psychology, and decided to overcome my fear. The exercise was simple: stay alone in a dark room without a TV, phone, or other sources of human presence, even if fictitious, and begin to imagine it as being behind you. Intensify your terror by remaining in place until it becomes habitual and the fear subsides. Usually, I'd last about five seconds of such experiments, after which I'd lose my temper, turn on the light, the TV, etc. But knowing that "patience and hard work will overcome everything," I continued these exercises for almost a year—though to no avail. Eventually, I got tired of it and stopped trying to overcome my fear. Some time passed. I got married and had children. And recently, I was alone at home on a Saturday night. The kids were visiting their grandmother in the village, and my wife had gone to spend the night with relative...

In the morning, I went to the bathroom to take a shower. We'd recently renovated, and the bathroom was brand new: white walls, white tiles, glistening in the light of three 100-watt bulbs. After finishing my shower, I, content with life and whistling cheerfully, went to the kitchen for breakfast. As I passed the mirror in the hallway, I noticed I was smiling broadly. My mood lifted even more. That evening, before bed, I took another shower and noticed something was wrong with the bulbs; they were glowing very dimly. I went to the kitchen for spare bulbs and replaced one, but it, too, was still fuzzy. I figured it was the wiring and decided to shower in the dim light for now. Standing in the bathtub, I looked at the large mirror opposite. My face in the reflection—it was smiling again! I touched my lips—no, I hadn't meant to smile at all. But the reflection's smile grew wider and wider. The dim lighting made it hard to make out the details, so I stepped out of the bathroom ...

The amazing is all around us, the amazing is all around us. After dinner with my husband, I left two of our plates and a couple of cutlery in the sink, and we went into the living room to watch a movie and drink tea. Neither of us left the room; no one else was in the apartment. When we took the dishes to the kitchen after tea and I got ready to wash everything, I found three dirty plates and an extra spoon in the sink, also dirty and seemingly licked clean. I'm certainly pleased that the brownie (or was he?) appreciated the porridge I made, but it feels a bit unsettling. It's a bit creepy.

This is happening in my boyfriend's house, and since we've been living together, in my house too. Lesha's parents bought the apartment before he was born, and the kitchen hasn't been renovated yet, despite more than twenty years having passed. The reason for this is that a "domovoi" (a brownie) lives there, although I'm more inclined to believe it's a poltergeist. As soon as I try to even repaint the pipes or re-wallpaper, the house erupts into unimaginable horror: water pours down the walls, even though the pipes aren't leaking. The whole family wakes up at night to the sound of broken glass or walls being torn apart, but there's no shards or dust anywhere. Lesha's mother says that at first it seemed like "innocent pranks"—the brownie braided Lesha's hair as a child and hid his toys. Later, it all took on more terrifying proportions.  When I started staying overnight with their family, I was often awakened by a voice that sou...

My trouble began in November. It crept into my everyday life, sneakily, just when I was ready to rest after the lengthy process of buying an apartment. The realtor immediately informed me that the previous owner of the apartment had died, but I ignored it and moved into the new place with my pet hamster, Pyzhik. A month ago, strange things started happening in the apartment. After 10:00 PM, someone was moving stools in the kitchen. At first, I thought the sound was coming from the neighbors' apartment, but later realized I was mistaken. When I'm in the room, cabinet doors start slamming in the hallway. I go out into the hallway—silence and order. And Pyzhik is sleeping peacefully or spinning his eternal wheel. This reassured me—if the animal isn't afraid, everything must be fine. I return to the computer—the slamming continues. Out of fear, I have to sleep with the light on.  One day, when I returned from work, I found ropes on the kitchen floor that I'd left over from ...

My mother told me this story. After medical school, she went to work in a morgue, was on first-name terms with the dead, and didn't believe in any afterlife. Until the incident described below. The day came, my mother's grandmother died. The body was washed, dressed, and placed in a coffin, leaving it in one of the empty rooms, after curtaining off all the mirrors and other objects. During the wake, my mother's parents sent her to sit in that room with my grandmother (I don't know if this was a custom or something else). She was chosen because she was the only relative who dealt with the dead and saw them every day. My mother entered the room and sat down on a chair next to the body. About twenty minutes passed. During this time, my mother, idly looking around the room, noticed a cabinet among the furniture. The cabinet's surface was varnished and polished, so it reflected the room well (apparently, they forgot to hang the curtains). And in the reflection, my mothe...

About a year and a half ago, we moved into a new building, but I'm talking about the apartment my family and I lived in before. First, it's worth mentioning that the apartment was built by the Germans after the war, and a lot had happened there over the years, so it's no surprise that it had become "unpleasant." My great-grandmother and grandmother had lived there, so we became tenants too. My mother told me that as a small child, I would point to corners and talk in broken childish language about "the strange man." As I grew older, I noticed strange things more and more often. When I walked down the dark hallway to my room, I sometimes thought someone was watching me, and I was never a coward or a paranoid person. I had the impression that someone was following me, about to grab me, and I hurried into the room. I periodically saw all sorts of shadows in the mirror, but I attributed them to my overactive imagination. Sometimes at night I'd hear stra...

After the last summer session, I gave up on everything, gave in, and started drinking. I started playing Lineage and World of Warcraft all day, but by the end of July, I was completely fed up with it all. I decided to stay awake—just to see how long a person could survive without sleep, more or less normally, while doing all sorts of household chores. The first two days, I was angry and gloomy. I wanted to give up and go to bed, but I was held back by the fact that I had to overcome something—I don't exercise, I don't work, I'm sitting at home and hitting punching bags, and at least I have some kind of purpose... On the third day, something interesting began. At first, I saw a very clear shadow of a person in the bathroom doorway. I got scared, but then I realized I was hallucinating. Okay, so I'm sitting down at the computer, playing a game, and suddenly I hear the phone ring (we have a Panasonic phone at home, and it plays some somber polyphonic melody by Bach or som...