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Ooh-Err... Nasty House

Wow nf that’s quite a list of events that has happened to you.
What did the apparition look like and it occurred outside.
 
Another incident.

So I get to work for my night shift and talk to the departing shift.

I was running late and still in my cycling gear so once my colleague had left I went down to the toilet area to change, freshen up and get ready for work.

I've described incidents here before.

Recap: small building, I'm on my own, no one else is allowed in.

Essentially the area is a small corridor that on one side has a storeroom/domestics room, (the door which used to open, Inexplicably on its own), and further up a sink and a dead end. On the other side of this tiny corridor are 3 toilet stalls.

These aren't really stalls they are small rooms each has a door and are inclosed. Each has its own light. The one I use is the end one as it has more space and has a shower.

The corridor has its light on. I have this light on every night, it would have been very obvious if it was off - it wasn't.

So I head down to the biggest cubicle.

I get undressed, have a good scrub, get dressed, and as I open the stall/room door I turn off the stall light only to find the entire corridor and this end of the building in darkness - I'm in utter blackness.

Something had turned the light off in that corridor

During the 5 minutes when I was changing something turned the hall light off.

It was startling. Because I'd shut the door I couldn't see what was happening in the corridor and so I never saw the light go out.
 
Is there any chance they've installed a timer on the corridor lights' circuit - e.g., as an energy-saving measure?

(I'm assuming you've worked there long enough to have noticed it by now if it had always been so.)
 
Rehashing my suggestion in post 207 re taping light switches in position..
 
Is there any chance they've installed a timer on the corridor lights' circuit - e.g., as an energy-saving measure?

(I'm assuming you've worked there long enough to have noticed it by now if it had always been so.)

No. I would have been told if there was any work done in the building, there would be an electronic paper trail.

Also the next few nights the light remained on, as usual. Fittings are the same - nothing has changed.
 
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Rehashing my suggestion in post 207 re taping light switches in position..

It's just so random and rare though.

Also when I'm not there my colleagues don't use that part of the building, they lock the middle door and just use the office and snooze room. If they want the toilet they use the one in the building nearby that is inhabited during nights by other staff, same if they want a cup of tea. They don't go down there.

If I start conducting experiments, I'd be summoned for a meeting, pretty sharpish.

Also, I have to keep this pretty quiet I don't want my colleagues getting freaked out.
 
@Naughty_Felid

I find myself in something of a moral quandary with you posts on this thread: I very much look forward to new instalments - and miss them when there's a gap. But I also realise that the experiences involved might mean that some of your night shifts are maybe not the most comfortable of experiences.

I think the secret is (counter to suggestions from others) not to use recording devices of any type, and thereby avoid the whole found footage scenario; those buggers clearly love larging it up for the camera.
 
@Naughty_Felid

I find myself in something of a moral quandary with you posts on this thread: I very much look forward to new instalments - and miss them when there's a gap. But I also realise that the experiences involved might mean that some of your night shifts are maybe not the most comfortable of experiences.

I think the secret is (counter to suggestions from others) not to use recording devices of any type, and thereby avoid the whole found footage scenario; those buggers clearly love larging it up for the camera.

When I tell people about the occurrences at our gaff they sometimes suggest setting up cameras etc. Seems pointless to me.
 
Naughty_Felid
I find myself in something of a moral quandary with you posts on this thread: I very much look forward to new instalments - and miss them when there's a gap. But I also realise that the experiences involved might mean that some of your night shifts are maybe not the most comfortable of experiences.
Ditto. I feel a little guilty in wanting more posts from you, NaughtyFelid, since these experiences sound uncomfortable, and also because you have to be very discreet as to not reveal where they take place, which takes extra care and thought in writing them up.
 
Ditto. I feel a little guilty in wanting more posts from you, NaughtyFelid, since these experiences sound uncomfortable, and also because you have to be very discreet as to not reveal where they take place, which takes extra care and thought in writing them up.

Thanks, guys I'm actually not that bothered by it now. I think as with many people you just get used to the activity.
 
A new type of incident - it's obviously bored with switching off the lights.

Same toilet. I use it around 3:00 am and wash my hands, dry my hands, check everything and lock the door to that side of the building. I then chill out until about 5:30 am think "I'll just use the loo". (I'm trying to drink more water for health reasons).

I go through the locked door and can hear the sound of a tap running, not just running like full-on. I go to the toilet basin and there is the mixer tap blasting water in the sink.

This is a proper industrial mixer tap that you move from side to side to get the desired hot and cold. It takes a fair bit of pressure to turn it on and off and to move it to hot and cold. You could slap it and it wouldn't move it. Even with the full pressure, it did not move the tap in any way. I just can't see it being moved by water pressure.

I play with it and cannot see how a pressure build-up would have resulted in it switching itself on. In 20 years working there I've never heard of one of these taps turning itself on.

I also don't remember positioning it to the middle of the sink. I'd set it to hot and not neutral. Also, I'd just set it to a low pressure otherwise I would have been soaked.

If I'd left it on, (I don't, I'm quite anal about water), the sound of it would have been obvious as the building echos, when I was leaving.

After shrugging my shoulders I did turn it off and have a pee though. Ghosts are something my bladder is another.
 
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They sound too solicitous. Get yourself a water bottle and bring it with you to work. :ghunt:
 
Now I can't be sure but the following night - it was actually morning at 6:30am. I was writing my report and I'd opened up the locked middle door as I always do and I was sitting in my office. I heard the main building door open and close and the door relocked. Very distinctive sounds. There are two doors the main one, (which I heard), and my office that opens to the outside, (I've spoken about this door before and hearing something outside).

I paid no attention to it as I assumed it was a guy called "Robert" who comes in to use the exercise bike that is in one of the rooms before work and he is always there at 6:30. The noise registered and I thought nothing of it.

He normally leaves after 20 minutes. (yes I know what benefit he gets from 20 mins on a crappy exercise bike is anyone's guess particularly as he spends half that time turning it on, turning lights on, etc).

I use this time to check in with other staff around the campus to see if I need to do anything as the boss on site. I hate sitting around whilst on the phone. So at this point, as I usually do, I wander down the corridor, mobile at my ear, fully expecting to see the light on in the room with the exercise bike. Everything is locked up, lights off. Just as it had been all night. It was literally 5 minutes after I heard the door unlock.

I thought WTF so I called the place "Robert" works and he wasn't working that day...

So essentially someone or no one as I checked seemed to unlock the door, close the door and then lock it.
 
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that wasn't the only thing that night...

An hour earlier I heard a rattle of the external door handle of my office. I just assumed it was a night staff guy called "Jim" who does a security check at 5:30ish. He has a sort of way of scratching the door and rattling the handle. He doesn't have a key to my office so I normally open the door and have a chat.

As I'm quite isolated in this building he often checks in with me when he works nights. He does his thing I ask him how's he doing, etc. We talk about gardening, it's reassuring, he's got my back.

I was on the phone so I shouted "Hang on Jim, give me a sec" and said to the person on the phone "all good, I'll see you tonight" I finished the call, opened my external door and nobody was there.

He was working that night, I didn't have a chance to see if he checked in due to a clusterfuck/shitstorm that kept me at work for ages., but will do when I next see him.

Jim wouldn't just walk off and I opened the door and no one was there. He's a guy in his late 60's.
 
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Hi NF how many members of staff have died over the years I wonder and can’t leave the old place of work alone!!
 
Weirdly, I thought I'd posted the following story in this thread (hence the opening sentence) - but when I came back to check, it wasn't there.

Instead, it had appeared in one of the IHTM threads on Unhappy Houses & Odd Happenings - but I'm going to chalk that one up to my own general inattentiveness, rather than anything spooky.


I've come across a few places with bad atmospheres, but only one really nasty house. I think it must have been late 2001, October or November maybe. I had a day off work, and I’d arranged to visit a friend in his new home on the outskirts of North Belfast.

It was a new-ish maisonette apartment, situated on the upper floor of the building, built maybe ten years previously. My friend had moved in with his partner and their baby daughter a few months before, and it looked like a good starter home, with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen-diner and bathroom.

The main drawback was the staircase – a steep, narrow flight of stairs leading from the front door at street level up to the apartment, with a 180-degree return a third of the way up, and then opening out onto a small landing beside the kitchen door. Not great for getting a pram up and down, anyway.

The main bedroom was beside the kitchen, looking out the back of the building, and a short corridor then led towards the smaller bedroom at the front, with doors to the bathroom and the living room branching off on opposite sides.

On arrival, my overwhelming impression of the apartment was that of darkness. Not just because it was late in the year and overcast outside; there seemed to be almost a darkening filter over everything in the place. I've seen a few other references here to 'brown light', and that's what it seemed like. The apartment was clean and neatly decorated, but I still didn’t feel comfortable at all.

His partner was at work and the baby was being minded by her grandparents, so we had the place to ourselves. We chatted for a while in the living room, just catching up, with me trying to shake offthe feelings of unease, and then we went into the front bedroom where he kept all his music stuff – records, guitars and the like. It was eventually going to become a proper bedroom for his daughter, but for the time being she was still sleeping in a cot in the main bedroom.

My friend left me to my own devices while he went off to the kitchen to make us both some lunch, so I amused myself by flicking through his LPs and messing around with his guitars. These were exactly the kind of activities I enjoyed – yet the longer I stayed in that room by myself, the more uncomfortable I became. My surroundings seemed to be getting even darker still, and I felt somehow watched – by something that was actively hostile to my presence.

Eventually I had to set the guitar down and hurry out of the room, as the hostility was building to the point that I felt like I was being pushed out.

Slightly shaken, I went down the corridor and leaned against the kitchen doorway, talking to my friend while he was busy at the stove. I didn’t mention anything about what I was feeling.

As I was standing there, trying to act normal, I glanced back down the hallway – and caught my breath as I saw what looked like a tall, dark shadow standing just behind the doorway of the front bedroom.

It was shaped roughly like a human, and it was tall – very tall. Where the head should have been seemed to extend above the height of the doorframe, and I couldn’t see any features, or limbs, or any detail. Just a long, vertical shadow, thicker and darker around the middle section. But it hadn’t been there before, and it definitely wasn’t a trick of the light.

I felt like the figure was watching me, and the sense of hostility only grew. With a rising sense of panic, I looked round to see if my friend had also noticed it, but he was busy chopping something. I turned and looked back down the hall again – but the figure was no longer there, although the sense of being watched persisted.

I felt quite upset, and that something was badly wrong in the apartment – but didn’t know how I could even begin to broach the subject with my friend, who I knew from previous conversations to be a bit of a skeptic about such things. I didn’t want to come across as a crank, and I didn’t know what could even be done about this shadowy figure. So I tried to push it down, forget it, and make an attempt to enjoy the rest of my visit. But I didn’t go back into that front bedroom.

My friend and his family didn’t stay in the apartment for very long; they suffered a number of mishaps, including my friend being hospitalised following a motorcycle accident. A few months later, they moved out and into another house nearby.

He never really talked about exactly why they moved – but he did tell me that they didn’t feel the house was safe, after the pram suddenly fell down the stairs from the landing one day. His daughter was still in the pram at the time. She was unharmed, but no explanation was proffered about exactly how or why the accident happened – and from his expression of unease, I didn’t feel it appropriate to enquire any further.

I was vastly relieved to hear they’d moved out, but still felt horribly guilty that I hadn’t mustered the courage to tell him that afternoon about what I saw and felt.
 
I don't care which thread you post them in, I love reading about your experiences!

True that.

...On arrival, my overwhelming impression of the apartment was that of darkness. Not just because it was late in the year and overcast outside; there seemed to be almost a darkening filter over everything in the place. I've seen a few other references here to 'brown light', and that's what it seemed like. The apartment was clean and neatly decorated, but I still didn’t feel comfortable at all...

I'd never heard the phrase 'brown light' before this, but it perfectly describes my own experiences of a certain type of man made environment.

I spent the first few years of my life in a two hundred year old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere - and the rest of my youth in a rambling Victorian house that might have pushed spooky buttons for other people, but which felt nothing like that to me. When I first took possession of it the place I'm in now was a semi derelict pile of rubble full of dark red and brown wallpaper (and one room painted entirely black - with odd stuff written on the walls in luminous paint) - but it didn't actually feel at all eerie to me. The usual tropes that accompany that idea of spookiness when attached to buildings don't really do much for me.

But, 'brown light' - most definitely.

The occasion that gave me most of a jolt was when I accompanied my then partner to a place she was going to stay when working for a couple of weeks in Sheffield - on entering the building I almost immediately felt something was very wrong about the place. If I had to put it into words I would say that my overriding impression was that the corners of the rooms were actively sucking the light out of the house; in fact, I think I later described it to my ex as a 'house that eats light'. (She only lasted one night there, and my comments were after the fact - I immediately hated the place, but didn't want to put the wind up at the time.)

There is a darkness which is simply the result of an absence of light - and then there is a darkness which appears to be an active destroyer of light. In real terms there may be no difference - in emotional, psychological terms, I've often felt the difference, real or not.
 
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...on entering the building I almost immediately felt something was very wrong about the place. If I had to put it into words I would say that my overriding impression was that the corners of the rooms were actively sucking the light out of the house; in fact, I think I later described it to my ex as a 'house that eats light'...

There is a darkness which is simply the result of an absence of light - and then there is a darkness which appears to be an active destroyer of light. In real terms there may be no difference - in emotional, psychological terms, I've often felt the difference, real or not.

Yes, that seems to be an excellent way of describing it - the difference between a physical space appearing dark to human eyes due to low levels of incoming light, and it appearing dark as if light energy is somehow being removed from the enclosed area.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I'd be genuinely interested in a site survey of properties where such sensations are reported - not using assorted ghosthunting paraphernalia, but simply with light meters, the sort a photographer might use.

This might determine whether a specific ambient light level may generate this feeling of unease - neither light enough for the average human eye to register as 'light', nor dark enough to register as 'dark'; a very literal twilight zone, if you will - or if it does seem to be tied to some sort of human perception of the room/structure, with no relation to how much light is physically present.

I know that MrsQ has a certain evening low-light level that she just can't tolerate, and once it hits that level she'll need to switch lights on and pull the curtains. I must ask her, in a non-leading way, what she's feeling when she suddenly jumps up and flicks on lamps. Maybe I'll dig out my old light meter and see what the measurement reads at the point when she decides she can't bear it any more.

I've sometimes wondered, thinking back on this particular experience, whether it was just because the maisonette apartment had small-ish windows and it was overcast outside - but then I recall that the same friend's previous home was a three-storey Victorian terrace on a very narrow inner-city street, overlooked on all sides, and it was really very dark indeed inside. But I never had any particular misgivings about that house.

This new place had a large living room window overlooking a large expanse of grass, and was also located on high ground. Very airy, yet as soon as I was through the door and making my way up the stairs, I felt like something was very wrong, somehow. Unless the environmental cues are such that I expected his Victorian terrace to be a bit dingy inside, so reality matched expectations - whereas I expected the new place to be bright and airy due to its positioning, but the size of the windows meant that it wasn't so, and subconsciously registering this disparity is what put me on edge. I really don't know.

I'd mused over in the wrongly-posted-in thread that there may well have been infrasound effects happening too, causing me to develop feelings of dread, apprehension, hostility etc, and later hallucinate the strange, abnormally tall shadowy figure standing in the front bedroom. The property was located about half a mile from a motorway, close to a large petrol station (with underground tanks containing thousands of litres of fuel) and near to a builder's yard which dealt in bulk aggregates and cement involving large hoppers to load up lorries. It's possible that low-frequency rumbling below the threshold of human hearing, arising from gravel being loaded and fuel sloshing around in huge metal tanks, might be responsible for raising my signals to 'danger'. So, looking for non-paranormal explanations for my experience, I'd need to factor all that in too.


Funnily enough, a few years later I was visiting another friend in his new place in Keynsham, just outside Bristol. We'd met up in town, before I drove him home in the early evening. As we came in through the door, he flicked the lights on - and I was really creeped out by the strange, dirty-looking glow cast by the overhead lamps. The same glow permeated the whole house, and everything looked 'wrong' - just really dark, brooding and repellent, and I felt like I wanted to get out. However, after about ten minutes, the sensation lifted, and suddenly everything looked bright and normal again.

Nothing to do with evil entities being chased away - the whole house had been fitted with quite primitive energy-saving lightbulbs by the previous owner, and they took about ten minutes to warm up to full strength. My friend agreed that the light produced was awful-looking until they'd warmed up, but they did make the money on the electricity card last a lot longer...
 
...The same glow permeated the whole house, and everything looked 'wrong' - just really dark, brooding and repellent, and I felt like I wanted to get out. However, after about ten minutes, the sensation lifted, and suddenly everything looked bright and normal again.

Nothing to do with evil entities being chased away - the whole house had been fitted with quite primitive energy-saving lightbulbs by the previous owner, and they took about ten minutes to warm up to full strength. My friend agreed that the light produced was awful-looking until they'd warmed up, but they did make the money on the electricity card last a lot longer...

Badly placed and/or low wattage central lighting can make a room look incredibly bleak. As far as I'm concerned the big light is strictly for utility. I couldn't bear to sit under one all evening. I'd rather sit in the dark - I'd find that much less spooky.
 
Weirdly, I thought I'd posted the following story in this thread (hence the opening sentence) - but when I came back to check, it wasn't there.

Instead, it had appeared in one of the IHTM threads on Unhappy Houses & Odd Happenings - but I'm going to chalk that one up to my own general inattentiveness, rather than anything spooky.


I've come across a few places with bad atmospheres, but only one really nasty house. I think it must have been late 2001, October or November maybe. I had a day off work, and I’d arranged to visit a friend in his new home on the outskirts of North Belfast.

It was a new-ish maisonette apartment, situated on the upper floor of the building, built maybe ten years previously. My friend had moved in with his partner and their baby daughter a few months before, and it looked like a good starter home, with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen-diner and bathroom.

The main drawback was the staircase – a steep, narrow flight of stairs leading from the front door at street level up to the apartment, with a 180-degree return a third of the way up, and then opening out onto a small landing beside the kitchen door. Not great for getting a pram up and down, anyway.

The main bedroom was beside the kitchen, looking out the back of the building, and a short corridor then led towards the smaller bedroom at the front, with doors to the bathroom and the living room branching off on opposite sides.

On arrival, my overwhelming impression of the apartment was that of darkness. Not just because it was late in the year and overcast outside; there seemed to be almost a darkening filter over everything in the place. I've seen a few other references here to 'brown light', and that's what it seemed like. The apartment was clean and neatly decorated, but I still didn’t feel comfortable at all.

His partner was at work and the baby was being minded by her grandparents, so we had the place to ourselves. We chatted for a while in the living room, just catching up, with me trying to shake offthe feelings of unease, and then we went into the front bedroom where he kept all his music stuff – records, guitars and the like. It was eventually going to become a proper bedroom for his daughter, but for the time being she was still sleeping in a cot in the main bedroom.

My friend left me to my own devices while he went off to the kitchen to make us both some lunch, so I amused myself by flicking through his LPs and messing around with his guitars. These were exactly the kind of activities I enjoyed – yet the longer I stayed in that room by myself, the more uncomfortable I became. My surroundings seemed to be getting even darker still, and I felt somehow watched – by something that was actively hostile to my presence.

Eventually I had to set the guitar down and hurry out of the room, as the hostility was building to the point that I felt like I was being pushed out.

Slightly shaken, I went down the corridor and leaned against the kitchen doorway, talking to my friend while he was busy at the stove. I didn’t mention anything about what I was feeling.

As I was standing there, trying to act normal, I glanced back down the hallway – and caught my breath as I saw what looked like a tall, dark shadow standing just behind the doorway of the front bedroom.

It was shaped roughly like a human, and it was tall – very tall. Where the head should have been seemed to extend above the height of the doorframe, and I couldn’t see any features, or limbs, or any detail. Just a long, vertical shadow, thicker and darker around the middle section. But it hadn’t been there before, and it definitely wasn’t a trick of the light.

I felt like the figure was watching me, and the sense of hostility only grew. With a rising sense of panic, I looked round to see if my friend had also noticed it, but he was busy chopping something. I turned and looked back down the hall again – but the figure was no longer there, although the sense of being watched persisted.

I felt quite upset, and that something was badly wrong in the apartment – but didn’t know how I could even begin to broach the subject with my friend, who I knew from previous conversations to be a bit of a skeptic about such things. I didn’t want to come across as a crank, and I didn’t know what could even be done about this shadowy figure. So I tried to push it down, forget it, and make an attempt to enjoy the rest of my visit. But I didn’t go back into that front bedroom.

My friend and his family didn’t stay in the apartment for very long; they suffered a number of mishaps, including my friend being hospitalised following a motorcycle accident. A few months later, they moved out and into another house nearby.

He never really talked about exactly why they moved – but he did tell me that they didn’t feel the house was safe, after the pram suddenly fell down the stairs from the landing one day. His daughter was still in the pram at the time. She was unharmed, but no explanation was proffered about exactly how or why the accident happened – and from his expression of unease, I didn’t feel it appropriate to enquire any further.

I was vastly relieved to hear they’d moved out, but still felt horribly guilty that I hadn’t mustered the courage to tell him that afternoon about what I saw and felt.
Well now, here's a interesting development which you may wish to hear about regarding this tale.

As luck would have it, I met up with the same old chum from school last weekend, for a socially distanced trek over some nearby hills. I haven't seen him properly for a couple of years now, so it was good to have a bit of a catch up.

On the return leg we happened to pass by a house he used to live in, and we lightly reminisced about the damp problems etc therein.

I hadn't planned to raise it as a topic, but as the opportunity presented itself I blithely mentioned the previous house he'd occupied, and how they weren't there for very long.

This was, of course, the house where I'd had my 'experience'.

His face fell.

"No, no we weren't there for long."

I mentioned that I'd only been there the once.

"No, and I won't forget that day in a hurry."

My ears pricked up further. Had there been further developments after I left?

"X was absolutely dying in bed with kidney stones, and every time I went in to check on her she hissed, 'Tell Quercus to go home!'"

'X' being his then-partner, now-wife, with whom I get on very well - but I can appreciate that a bout of kidney stones can be trying for even the most polished of hostesses.

A dim memory swam back... that's right... she was supposed to be in work that day, but was off sick. She was in the back bedroom; I offered to leave but was assured she was sleeping. So I stayed for an hour or so, got scared, had lunch, then left.

Well now. So I remember feeling this hostile atmosphere, trying to push me out... and all the while there was someone in a great deal of pain, willing me to leave.

Now that begs all sorts of questions...
 
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Well now, here's a interesting development which you may wish to hear about regarding this tale.

As luck would have it, I met up with the same old chum from school last weekend, for a socially distanced trek over some nearby hills. I haven't seen him properly for a couple of years now, so it was good to have a bit of a catch up.

On the return leg we happened to pass by a house he used to live in, and we lightly reminisced about the damp problems etc therein.

I hadn't planned to raise it as a topic, but as the opportunity presented itself I blithely mentioned the previous house he'd occupied, and how they weren't there for very long.

This was, of course, the house where I'd had my 'experience'.

His face fell.

"No, no we weren't there for long."

I mentioned that I'd only been there the once.

"No, and I won't forget that day in a hurry."

My ears pricked up further. Had there been further developments after I left?

"X was absolutely dying in bed with kidney stones, and every time I went in to check on her she hissed, 'Tell Quercus to go home!'"

'X' being his then-partner, now-wife, with whom I get on very well - but I can appreciate that a bout of kidney stones can be trying for even the most polished of hostesses.

A dim memory swam back... that's right... she was supposed to be in work that day, but was off sick. She was in the back bedroom; I offered to leave but was assured she was sleeping. So I stayed for an hour or so, got scared, had lunch, then left.

Well now. So I remember feeling this hostile atmosphere, trying to push me out... and all the while there was someone in a great deal of pain, willing me to leave.

Now that begs all sorts of questions...
Maybe 'X' has 'powers'?
Edit: Is 'X' a mutant?
 
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If I die and come back as a ghost, I'm not spending one more day at the office!
I occasionally wonder if being a ghost might sometimes be like some monotonous repetitive dream that you just can't wake out of... Wandering into work for more drudgery, loop, repeat, ad infinitum... More horror for the haunter than the haunted...
 
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