The Hidden Genre: Epistolary Horror in the Dark Fields
(Journal entries, letters, logs — Transcribed after Farmer Joaqlen’s disappearance)
Entry 01 — Day 1: The Door Beneath the Barn
These scary stories to tell in the dark were never meant to be found by a farmer like me.
While digging a new foundation post in the far barn, my shovel hit metal—an elevator door buried under soil that had never been disturbed. No mechanism above, no shaft walls—just a single panel, rusted like it crawled here from a dead factory.
One button.
No label.
When I pressed it, the world tilted sideways, like the fields folded around me. Suddenly, I stood inside a cold hallway beneath my own land.
No maps. No instructions—except for a metal sign:
TRANSCRIBE EVERYTHING.
OBSERVE NOTHING.
Whatever that means.
The corridor smells like old iron and breath that never warmed lungs. Doors line both sides, marked in symbols that look carved by shaking hands.
I’m alone here.
At least, I pray I am.
Entry 02 — Day 3: The Dark Anthologies
They gave me a role:
Sublevel E-0 Archivist – Farmer Joaqlen
Curator of Forbidden & Lost Narratives
I should be minding crops, not manuscripts.
Every book here has a title similar to scary stories to tell in the dark—translated into dozens of painful-looking alphabets. Some pages flutter when I walk past—like they hear me.
Tonight something appeared burned into my desk:
“By documenting them, you feed them.”
The wood was still warm.
Entry 03 — Day 4: They Watch Without Eyes
Found a surveillance camera dripping from the ceiling—its melted lens shaped like a weeping blister. No wires. No power. Yet I feel watched.
Cataloguing a volume titled Creepy Stories to Tell in the Dark, the letters rearranged into:
DON’T LOOK AWAY WHEN YOU WRITE. LOOK AT US.
I tried to laugh it off.
It echoed wrong.
My fear tasted like metal.
Memo — Day 5: Protocol
TO: Farmer Joaqlen
FROM: REDACTED
Continue documentation.
If auditory hallucinations occur, submit report in writing only.
Maintain silence in Room 7.
They wrote “when,” not “if.”
Entry 04 — Day 6: Room 7
I stood at Room 7’s threshold today.
A tapestry of whispers brushed my mind—dozens of voices pretending to breathe words. The plaque reads:
DON’T READ US
Impossible instructions feel like traps.
Entry 05 — Day 8: Pages That Think
Shelves creak like bones stretching.
Margins now contain sentences I never wrote:
“These horror stories to tell in the dark crave an audience.
And you are listening.”
Transcribing is nourishment.
But who is eating?
Entry 06 — Day 11: Living Literature
Fresh fingerprints pressed into ancient ink—
Not mine.
Each time I finish cataloguing, a new book waits on my chair.
Still damp.
Still breathing.
Pages recoil from my touch—like skin afraid of cold.
Not everything in this archive is dead.
Entry 07 — Day 13: The Stairwell that Loops
Blackout at my desk. Woke in a spiraling stairwell that cannot exist—steps twisting into a knot geometry wouldn’t forgive. Chalk on the wall:
THE EXIT IS WHERE THE STORY ENDS.
FINISH IT.
But every step returned me to the same landing.
Silence is the rule.
Fear must be quiet.
Unscheduled Transmission — Day 14
Intercom crackled, voice like splintered wood:
“Stop writing us wrong.”
The mic isn’t connected.
Something else wants to be heard.
Something inside the pages.
Entry 08 — Day 15: Room 7’s Hunger
New directive:
Summarize Room 7’s contents.
Do not speak.
Inside, manuscripts suspended in glass tubes.
Their pages shimmer like smoke trapped behind glass.
Every page turned at my presence—synchronized—
as if they were reading me.
I fled without letting the door hinge make a sound.
Silence is survival here.
Entry 09 — Day 16: Temptation Parasite
Nightmares leak into daylight.
One spine cracked open and exhaled warm air across my wrist. It whispered:
“Let us out and we’ll make you unforgettable.”
Their promise bites through reason.
Entry 10 — Day 17: Mirrors Lie
3:00 AM.
All clocks froze.
Their hands crawled back into place like metal spiders when knocked off the walls.
My reflection blinked after me.
Mirrors are pretending to be windows.
Internal Security Report — Day 19
Incident: Unauthorized Speech Detected
Action: Sublevel E-0 Lockdown Initiated
Status: One employee unaccounted for
Note: If Farmer Joaqlen speaks again, containment will fail.
Stamped with tomorrow’s date.
I haven’t walked into tomorrow yet.
Entry 11 — Day 20: Sound to Ink
Shelves vibrate like they’re choking on screams.
The pages devour sound.
Voice becomes ink.
Speech becomes script.
To speak is to surrender your story to them.
I clench my jaw harder each hour.
Entry 12 — Day 21: Ghost Writes
A new book… appeared. Blank.
One sentence on Page 1:
ONE MORE STORY AND THE DOOR OPENS.
Are these scary ghost stories to tell in the dark
or ghosts demanding I tell theirs?
I no longer know which side of the page I am on.
Entry 13 — Day 22: Downward into Fiction
Maintenance hatch behind a collapsing shelf.
Stairs descending.
Impossible depth.
Audio recovered (Recorder melted):
“The stairs… writing me down—
I see my name repeating—
Joaqlen
Joaqlen
Stop—
STOP WRITING ME—”
Then a sound of tearing wet pages.
Then silence.
The kind that swallows.
Entry 14 — ???
Woke at my desk.
Pen fused into my palm.
Blood turned into perfect handwriting across the page:
THE FINAL PAGE IS COMING
The shelves whisper one word over and over:
end
end
end
My blood feeds them.
Entry 15 — Day 23: The Door Made of Stories
A door now stands in my office.
Frame stitched from pages pressed into wood grain.
Above it:
ONLY THE STORYTELLER LEAVES
The handle bears my fingerprint.
A reward.
Or a beautifully printed trap.
Entry 16 — Day 24: The Corridor That Writes
Dark passage.
Walls lined with my journal entries — nailed like leather to concrete.
Worse: blank spaces await what I have not yet written.
Every step I take, new lines carve themselves in shadow beneath me.
The story is writing itself forward using my fear as ink.
The wall forms a sentence:
THE FARMER MUST BE HARVESTED
Entry 17 — Final
If I stop writing, the corridor stops expanding.
If it stops expanding, the darkness overtakes me.
It is right behind me.
Breathing.
Hungry.
These scary stories to tell in the dark have starved since confinement.
Now they have a narrator.
Now they have an exit.
The last thing the wall writes:
TO BE READ IS TO BE RELEASED
Whoever opened this file—
Whoever reads this—
You just unlocked the door.
The page behind you is turning—
(ink smear)
(page torn)
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