There’s a subreddit named NoSleep. Authors write short scary stories and people read with a suspension of disbelief. So what’s written is fiction, but people who comment pretend it’s real to add to some of the horror element.

Recently I discovered one story in which my hometown of Mineral Wells, TX is not only the setting but is actually a character. The protagonist is a Mineral Wells police officer that writes from the first person and cites several real locations and includes pictures. I’ll be honest, when I first stumbled upon this I had no idea the stories were fiction and commenters were playing along – For a while, I thought I actually knew some of the characters.

Here’s the short story which broken up into five parts. Below are some samples of the story, and you’ll run across a handful of swear words. The author is no Stephen King, but it was still an entertaining read, at least for me.

• Mineral Wells is a small town in Texas where I’ve been working for 5 years as a police officer. It’s located somewhere north of interesting and south of scary as shit, where the citizens are strange, the events are stranger, and the past is never past.
• There was also the curious case of Brad Delaney, city council president and member of the First United Methodist Church, who one night took the .45 he had hidden under the mattress and killed his wife in cold blood while she slept. One shot, right to the temple. Brad “confessed”, saying it must have been him that shot her, seeing as how it was his gun and no one else had been in the house, but he didn’t remember doing it. They had found him that morning, still asleep next to his murdered wife, the mattress stained in crimson red.
• I walked back to the bedroom and opened the door, and for a split second, I thought I saw a face in the window across from the bedroom door. The next moment, it was gone. I searched the room, the closet, and the bathroom, but no one was there. Aside from a slightly strange smell, which I attributed to the age of the house and its contents, nothing was amiss. I checked outside – no one to be found. The place was empty except for the owner and there was no sign than anyone had been inside the home. The craziest thing? The face I saw – I swear, I will go to the grave with this memory – it was the exact same face I’ve seen a thousand times, standing in front of that damn mineral well. It was my great-grandmother’s…”
• In the middle of the room, standing perfectly still, was a group of children. I was paralyzed, not by any external force, but by the grip of unadulterated fear. They looked back at me, eyes blinking almost in unison, with gleeful smiles.

Part 1: I’m a police officer in a small town in Texas and I have some strange stories to tell.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6