+++ Muñecas +++

-No creo que deberías hacer eso –le dijo su mejor amiga, Esther, mientras desmembraba una vieja muñeca.-Quiero demostrarte que es sólo una estúpida muñeca, todo este museo es una estupidez. ¡Muñecas poseídas! ¿Y qué va a hacerme además de mirarme con esos horribles ojos de canica? –pronunció Nancy mientras buscaba a su nueva víctima. 

Tomó a una muñeca de trapo y le quemó el rostro con un encendedor, un chillido la asustó y por un milisegundo se creyó el asunto de las muñecas malditas hasta que notó que lo que había producido el ruido era su amiga al ver una rata-. Te lo dije, todo es una farsa, ahora vámonos de aquí antes de que aparezca el vigilante. Salieron del museo tan fácilmente como habían entrado, debido al miedo que les inspiraba a las personas “El museo de muñecas malditas”, la seguridad no era un asunto de importancia.

Nancy volvió a su casa y se quedó dormida en cuanto su cabeza tocó su almohada. Se despertó al escuchar pasos en su habitación, pero al intentar levantarse para investigar notó que no podía moverse, abrió los ojos y lo que vio le dio escalofríos, estaba completamente rodeada por las horrendas muñecas del museo.

-¡Muy graciosa, Esther! Poner estos vejestorios en mi cama no me convencerá de nada.

Sin embargo nadie le respondió, volvió a intentar moverse y se dio cuenta de que estaba atada,para su horror, aquellas muñecas comenzaron a moverse sin que hubiera una explicación lógica para ello. Retiraron las cobijas que la cubrían, mostrando que efectivamente estaba amarrada y que ahora portaba un largo vestido victoriano como el de la muñeca a la que le había arrancado las piernas.

Como si la hubiera invocado, ésta apareció sosteniendo unas largas pestañas postizas entre sus manos de porcelana, se arrastró hasta el rostro de Nancy y colocó sobre sus ojos las pestañas, otra de las muñecas las engrapó en sus párpados haciéndola gritar.

Las muñecas se miraron entre sí y movieron sus cabezas en un gesto de negación, dos de ellas aparecieron con tijeras que lucían gigantes en sus manos y las clavaron frenéticamente en los globos oculares de Nancy, una y otra vez mientras ella no paraba de maldecir y retorcerse. Cuando los hubieron destrozado por completo introdujeron en las cavidades unos hermosos ojos de muñeca y se miraron satisfechas.

Nancy despertó nuevamente, esta vez de verdad, el horrible sueño la había dejado helada, pero jamás lo admitiría frente a Esther, después de todo, la pesadilla no probaba nada. Esas muñecas no tenían poder alguno. Intentó levantarse de su cama pero tal como en su sueño no podía hacerlo…sin embargo esta vez era diferente, no sentía ataduras, no sentía absolutamente nada, era como si su cuerpo estuviera entumido.

Lo que apareció en la habitación no fueron muñecas, sino algo peor, un sujeto velludo y gordo que se acercaba a ella con un gesto lujurioso. Se colocó sobre ella y tocó sus pechos bruscamente paraluego lamer sus pezones como un perro sediento, a pesar de la inmovilidad podía sentirlo todo ytan sólo quería huir de ahí. El desagradable hombre se desnudó y se sentó sobre sus hombros mostrándole una visión en primer plano de su escroto y acercando a su rostro un falo negruzco y flácido.

Nancy trató con todas sus fuerzas de huir de aquél sitio, de quitarse al obeso de encima, pero lo único que consiguió fue evadir aquella visión y mirar hacia el techo, ahí se encontraba un espejo y pudo mirar con horror que se había convertido en una muñeca, una de las que más odiaba, una muñeca inflable

ellie

Ellie:
We started at Midnight Obviously but then I had to split up with Shineay, she went to the attic and I went to the basement, I  hadn't met the man yet and wasn't eager to either. Shineay and I met up about 10 minutes later having not been spooked by our candles going out or by the man, so we decided to walk around together for a bit. We were in an abandoned building and it was really dark and haughty so we relinquished the experience more, Shineay had decided we should bring snacks so we walked and ate our crisps and sandwiches and talked about hat we should do if we get caught and we are separated, we decided we would scream anyway so we wouldn't scream where we were.

I was bored so I decided to check out the nursery and the library (it was an old Victorian house which was abandoned in the middle of nowhere so we were screwed if the man got us) and I saw the cutest nursery EVER! It had a faded blue cot with about 4 inches of dust smothering it and all blue furniture, I looked around and saw a rocking horse, similar to one I had as a kid. Suddenly it began to Rock back and forth and my candle blew out, I lit it really quick and saw a dark shadow moving out of the room. I called Shineay on our walkie talkie system and told her I had spotted him, and she was in fits of terror. Apparently she had been in the basement and her candle went out but she couldn't light it, so she had to draw a ring of salt around herself and was now trapped there until 3:33. I immediately ran to the basement and saw Shineay in the ring of salt, eyes filled with terror but no tears, (unlike me, Shineay is really brave and I'm a scared pussy) and I tried to stay with her until 3:33 but I knew I had to leave. (It was about 2:30 in the morning by now)

I explored more, finding old passageways and rooms with huge 4 poster beds in, then I found a rather interesting thing, a locked door. And where there is a locked door there is a secret. I tried opening the door, finding all the eroded points in the wooden door and somehow, I managed to open the door. I saw the worst ting :) ever, it was disgusting. I saw a man, not a Victorian man but a newly dead man, hanging from the open ceiling on a piece of rope attached to his neck. I approached and found a police badge on his chest and turned back to the door to leave. A sudden pressure on my shoulder told me her had touched me, a dead man had touched me. I turned to face the body and saw black, bottomless eyes boring into mine, and I screamed.

As I screamed my candle went out, but I had dropped my matchbox when the man touched me. So I had to draw a ring of salt around me, with that man grabbing my shoulder and glaring into my eyes. I have never felt so scared.

Eventually 3:33 came and I legged it out of that room and found Shineay. I never, ever want to go back to that place unless the police are with me.

Shineay:
I started with Ellie at midnight and quickly tried to find the attic, trying not to run away and abandon my friend. The attic was REALLY dusty and I started to cough heavily (neither of us have asthma). I found some strange Occultic items in the attic and found a flashlight, full with half used batteries. I went back downstairs and my candle flickered. The temperature dropped and I lit the candle in super quick time I was really scared and I saw a shadow shape walk towards me. I ran into the nearest room and saw beautiful furniture. A huge mahogany 4 poster bed and mahogany nightstands, an Oak dresser and wardrobe piece and  curious locked chest. I used my elbow to hit away the rotting wood and saw a mangled bloody man, locked in the chest, skin ripped by what seemed to be talons or claws. I ran out of the room with teary eyes, trying to contact Elie on the walkie talkie. I fell down some stairs and found myself in a wine cellar. My candle flickered out and my matches were no-where! I drew the ring of salt and blacked out around 2:30.

Venganza telefónica

Un día como cualquier otro, mis tíos salieron de compras, me quedé solo en casa.

Me puse a ver la televisión, cuando de repente escucho que suben las escaleras, escuché que sonaron pisadas sobre tres peldaños, no podía ser, lo tenía todo cerrado, me morí del miedo, fue una experiencia tremenda, no me atreví a moverme y me quedé en silencio, mirando un punto fijo, para pasar el miedo me imaginaba cosas chistosas, pero no se me pasaba, el miedo era increíble, después de más o menos unos 30 minutos, se me empezó a quitar un poco el terror que tenía dentro de todo mi cuerpo.

Después de que se me quitara un poco el miedo, seguí viendo la televisión, pero seguía con la curiosidad de lo que había escuchado en las escaleras, después pensé que a lo mejor era un ladrón que había entrado, y que después subió las escaleras sin hacer ruido, yo había dejado la puerta cerrada, pero sin pestillo, ese fue mi error.

Seguía viendo la TV, pero estaba atento a todo lo que ocurría a mi alrededor, se escuchó la sirena de una ambulancia, mi corazón latia increíblemente rápido, después de un rato sonó el teléfono, fui a contestar:

- ¿Aló?, dijo una voz.

- Hola, ¿con quien hablo?. Le dije yo.

La voz no contestó durante unos segundos y seguidamente respondió:

- ¡¡Estoy en tu casa por culpa de tus tíos!! Seguidamente se cortó la comunicación.

No supe como reaccionar, pero el miedo me invadió por completo.

Al cabo de unos momentos volvieron a llamar, tomé el teléfono muy asustado, eran mis tíos, me dijeron que iban a llegar tarde porque habían tenido un pequeño problema de última hora, pero a mi me sentó mal y les dije que se apuraran.

Llegaron a las 12:00 de la noche, llorando:

- ¿Por qué llegáis tan tarde? su contestación me dejó helado.

- Cuando nos dirigíamos a casa atropellamos a una persona sin querer, reaccionamos lo más rápidamente posible y la llevamos al hospital, pero lamentablemente no lo pudo superar y murió.

Seguidamente les comenté lo que ocurrió cuando estaba solo en la casa, el ruido en los escalones, la misteriosa llamada telefónica, todo lo que ocurrió en su ausencia. Extrañados todos subimos al segundo piso y encima de la carta encontramos una carta que decía:

“No debieron atropellarme, se arrepentirán”.

Después de todo lo ocurrido, mis tíos vendieron la casa y nos fuimos a otra, ya en la nueva vivienda y después de varios meses sin olvidar, salimos todos juntos de compras, de vuelta a casa llegamos sin ninguna novedad y tranquilos. Nada más entrar en casa, sonó el teléfono, mi tío contestó y después de una corta conversación cortó. Mi tío nos contó lo que le habían dicho:

Los días, las semanas, y los meses pueden pasar, pero han pasado exactamente 240 días contados y todavía no olvido lo ocurrido. Mi tío quedó paralizado y dijo: 

- ¿Cuando acabará todo esto?...

En ese momento, intuitivamente miré el calendario y le reste los 240 días, me di cuenta de que el día del atropello era justo Martes 13, no lo podía creer.

Desde esa segunda llamada ninguno de nosotros hemos olvidado lo sucedido, aunque no estoy involucrado en el accidente, se que todos los días el espíritu de aquel hombre atropellado vaga por nuestra casa y llama por teléfono amenazando de muerte a mis tíos, sabemos que en cualquier momento inesperado los matará.

La verdad es que nunca me había pasado algo así... pero esto me da una valiosa lección, cuando crezca tengo que tener cuidado al manejar, y ustedes también, conduzcan con cuidado.

Ojalá que esto no le pase a nadie en el mundo, porque los penarán el resto de su vida, pero hay que tener mucho cuidado con los fantasmas porque se dice que son espíritus buenos, pero si haces algo malo pueden llegar a hacer cualquier cosa que uno nunca se imagina...

The N.Y. Subway Deaths

One of my friends is a paramedic in New York. Don’t ask me why, but it was always his dream to become one, and New York being the big and wild city that it is, he has of course seen some crazy things. He doesn’t talk about his experiences much since they are always very personal and often disturbing, but I know that he has encountered his fair share of gruesome stabbings and gun shots. For example, he told us how one time some kids were playing with a shotgun, and one of them got his jaw blown off. The boy was still alive as my friend rushed him to the ER and eventually lived, but he is horribly disfigured now and has to eat through a tube for the rest of his life. There were other, stranger things. He told us once how he responded to a call where an elderly woman managed to decapitate herself at home alone. They found her body sitting in a chair in front of the TV, which was still on, and her head was laying on its side in the middle of the floor beside a puddle of blood. Her door was locked and all the windows were closed. All they know is that her neighbors heard a loud thud in her apartment and called the police when she didn’t answer her door, but no one has figured out exactly how it happened.

Yet by far the strangest, creepiest story that he ever told us is the one about the mysterious subway deaths that happened several years ago. A few of my other friends and I were hanging out at his apartment one time, drinking and listening to music, when the topic of ghosts came up. We started by talking playfully about “ghost” experiences we had as children – just shadows in the corner of the eye, feelings of being watched, and stuff like that – but then my friend spoke up and said in a very serious voice that he wanted to tell us a story that he swore to God actually happened and freaked him out so much that it sometimes kept him awake and, when he rode the subway late at night, almost gave him panic attacks. We all became serious as he told us the following story, which I will now tell you.

So, my friend said a couple of years ago that the ambulance crews started getting calls about once every week about people found dead on the subway. The deaths always happened between a few particular stations (he said the names, but I can’t recall them exactly, the N.Y. subway system is huge) and always happened late at night when the cars were almost deserted. In fact, the victims were always found alone in the subway cars sitting or lying on the benches, and there were never any witnesses. Another detail is that all the victims were males and died of heart attacks, sometimes even when they were unusually young.

After the calls had been coming in steady for a couple of months, the story started to get some minor attention. The police checked footage from the cameras in the stations, but never saw anyone get on or off the trains regularly that made them think that a particular person was causing the heart attacks with drugs or a stun gun or by some other means. There was no explanation. It seemed that some unlucky guy would be riding a subway car, everyone else would happen to get off, and then sometime when he was alone in the car between stations he would simply have a massive heart attack and die. The newspaper even ran a small insert about the case in the back reaches of the police blotter (perhaps you even saw it) asking for information, yet nothing came of it. But eventually my friend was lucky, or unlucky, enough to get a clue about what might have been going on.

He was on duty one night when his crew responded to a call about one of the heart attacks, but this time the person managed to survive. They picked him up from the platform of one of the stations, where he was lying on the ground with a jacket from a good Samaritan who called 911 under his head. The person who placed the call was still there and said that when he entered the car he saw the man sitting slumped over on one of the benches and gasping for breath, then called 911 when the man indicated that he needed help. My friend assisted in strapping the guy, who was about 40 or so, into a stretcher and was with him in the back of the ambulance as they went to the emergency room. The man was well enough to talk, and my friend listened to him while he did whatever medical things one does in such a situation. Soon he realized that something abnormal was going on in the subway, something that still disturbs him to this day.

The man said that he was on his way home from an exhausting shift at work late at night as usual. There were just a few people in the car when he boarded, and he was very tired and started nodding off as he sat in the car. He said he remembered at one point in between naps that the car became deserted except for him. Then he suddenly awoke to find himself paralyzed. He could see in front of him what was going on, but couldn’t move anything, not even blink. He tried to yell, to moan, to do something, but the only result of his inward efforts was silence. He said that he had experienced sleep paralysis before, usually at home, but it was what happened next that almost killed him.

As he was sitting there paralyzed, the train rolling between stations, he saw a little girl walking towards him. She was neither happy nor sad, he said, just an average little girl like you would see walking down the street, but she was transparent, as if he were watching a reflection in a window. He began to feel extremely anxious as she came nearer but still couldn’t move. She did not look at his eyes, but he said that she looked at him as if she knew him. She acted like it as well. She climbed up into his lap and curled herself into a ball as if to sleep, just the way you often see little girls do with their parents when they are tired. At that moment, he said his heart attack started. The little girl was cold and motionless as she sat in his lap, and he said the cold from her crept over his whole body until it began to feel like someone was squeezing the middle of his chest. He started to lose his breath, but there was nothing he could do – the little girl just sat there in his lap, filling him up with cold. Suddenly the subway arrived at the next station and the little girl “dissolved” (the man’s words) from his lap just before he heard the door open. That’s when the good Samaritan who made the call came up to him, he said.

My friend related that the man survived the incident and recovered fully. The calls about heart attacks continued to come in for another month or so, then mysteriously stopped just as quickly as they had started. No conventional explanation was ever found that could fully explain the incident. My friend offered a couple theories of his own as to what might have happened. First, he said that sleep paralysis is fairly common and often is accompanied by vivid dreams and hallucinations, which could explain what the man saw. Yet it does not explain the wave of heart attacks, all occurring to males alone on the subway, all between roughly the same stations. Unfortunately for the sake of finding the truth, the lucky man was, at least to my friend’s knowledge, the only one to survive, and consequently there are no other stories to corroborate his. The other theory is that there really was a ghost of a little girl who caused the heart attacks on the subway. Like any big city, New York has a lot of domestic crime and many broken families. My friend speculated that she was a girl who was perhaps killed by one of her parents or who maybe died when she somehow wandered into the subway tunnels after running away from home and spent the time after her death searching for her father. Of course, no one knows for sure.

After my friend finished speaking, we all sat there silently, staring at the ground. Some upbeat song played in the background from the stereo, but the mood was dead by now and stayed that way until my friends and I went home. When we did, I don’t think a single one of us took the subway that evening

Environment's Devil

I am a really hot devil; I'm hot, so unbearable for your feet. You're going to have tears, you're going to undress until you're almost naked, just so you can bear my ultimate heat.

You're going to fight to get away from me: fighting through heat and your own tears, naked. You're going to beg for mercy, or find someone kind enough to try to take you home as much as that other person wants to.

Never mind the consequences, you're going to find no food, but bare uneatable plants and dry meat.. The water has been replaced with oil, a natural trait God has given you to learn how to survive the hard environment. And if you do find water, you might be thinking of staying there. Until the very day you are able to survive me.

Your running is useless. You can't run even if your muscles can make you run in the terrain I reside in. No, your muscles will break from that waste of energy. You are not walking on a sidewalk to the park, but through Hell, and trying to walk out of this Hell to your home.

My heat is unbearable as Hell's flames and evils, even though I'm more merciful than Hell will ever be.

Or should I say I'm your hallucination of your own version of Hell. I try to make you think there is water, only to waste time and see nothing as your survival mission gets more complicated, harder, and more tiring. I make you think you are in a very serious situation, you are STARVING to death, you and whoever other close friend that happened to be with you at the time.

Worst of all, I'm infinite. Your phobia of infinity will be so great you won't be able to survive my almost deadly terrain. You may die out of your irrational phobia of infinity. You took infinity in your mathematics, and solved lots of arguments involving it, yet you can't come over your fear, and you're yelling in terror because of instances of infinity. Yet I am not infinite, it’s your HALLUCINATION that causes this.

I am clearly a hallucination of yours, yet you fear me like if I were your greatest fears, your greatest enemy, an enemy you must escape or else you're going to die.

And God knows what evils lurk near me at the dark night. Like running into actual infinity, or disappearing forever from the world you grew up with, learned from, and prepared for your life, but you get sent near me, and you now know that all those years of growing up and learning wasn't worth spending your time on if you wanted to confront me, without the tools of your survival.

If you are going to meet Hell when you die for some reason, I am what you can call Hell, right before you can even die. If you are going to paradise, you can call me Hell too, even have an idea on what Hell is, also right before you die.

If you are lucky enough to survive me, then you are also lucky enough to tell my experience to the world. Not lots of people dared to cross the icky Hell that is me without technology, to tell this story to you, my friend.

I am a desert. A really hot desert. A sandy desert.

Umibozu

En un país compuesto por casi 7000 islas – entendiendo isla como superficie de tierra con más de 100 metros cuadrados- es lógico que los mitos y leyendas relacionados con el mar cobren especial importancia.

Japón no es una excepción, ni mucho menos, océanos y mares de todo el planeta han maravillado y aterrorizado a diferentes culturas a lo largo de la historia de la humanidad.

Quizás, una de las figuras más curiosas e impactantes – si tienes la mala fortuna de encontrarte con una de ellas- es el umibozu.

Los monjes del mar, si traducimos del japonés de forma literal, no tienen mucho que ver con los religiosos, más que con el aspecto de sus cabezas redondeadas que recuerdan a la cabeza afeitada de un monje budista.

Curiosamente, se manifiestan en aguas calmadas, e invierten el dicho de “tras una tempestad siempre viene la calma”. Son muchos los signos que presagian la llegada de uno de estos yokai y los marinos más veteranos, una vez detectados estos presagios,se negarán a izar velas hasta que el mar vuelva a su normalidad.

De la misma forma que las sirenas u otras criaturas marinas, las formas que pueden adoptar los umibozu varían según los testimonios. La más habitual, es la que se representa de forma genial en la ilustración superior, del siempre genial Shigeru Mizuki:

Grandes cabezas negras, redondeadas con ojos amenazantes que emergen de las profundidades del mar y causan estragos a incautas embarcaciones, pero los testimonios hablan de monstruos peludos que recuerdan a los cachalotes, insinuantes figuras femeninas – tradición de la prefectura de Miyaki-, e incluso una versión en miniatura que queda atrapada en las redes de los pescadores.

Su poder reside en el agua, capaz de crear grandes remolinos que engullen a cualquiera que pase por su lado. Sus apariciones, como comentaba antes, están ligadas a fenómenos atmosféricos como tormentas o tifones, por lo que si tienes la desdicha de estar en el momento y hora justa ya puedes empezar a rezar, porque todo está en tu contra.

Algunas historias hablan de que estos monstruos no sólo son cabezas, sino que bajo el mar, sumergidos, residen grandes brazos que pueden utilizar para destruir embarcaciones de un sólo golpe. Otras, hablan de umibozu de tamaño medio que se aventuran en tierra firme, adoptando formas humanoides y conviviendo con nosotros durante unos días.

Existen figuras similares alrededor del globo, en China tienen al Kikokutan, en Mongolia, el Mokuri Kokuri y en Europa tenemos dos variantes, el monje del mar y el obispo del mar- curioso “sireno” que parece sacado de un episodio de Futurama.

Los más escépticos asocian a estas criaturas con fenómenos naturales como las cumulonimbus, nubes de desarrollo vertical formadas por una columna de aire cálido y húmedo que les permite adoptar formas caprichosas que pueden recordar a las de una gran cabeza humana.

No pensaban igual en Japón hasta hace cuatro días, ya que a finales del siglo XIX, en 1888, en el vigésimo primer año de la era Meiji, el periódico Miyaku Shinbun, informó del avistamiento de una de estas criaturas, describiéndola como un monstruo de 2.4 metros de largo, 263 kilos, de color marrón claro, de grandes ojos con boca de lagarto, una gran cola con forma de gamba y voz de vaca. Bizarro es poco…

También en 1971, el periódico Mainichi Shinbun habló del encuentro de unos pescadores japoneses con una extraña criatura marina. Se encontraban pescando en Nueva Zelanda, cuando una gran cabeza emergió a la superficie. De color marrón, piel arrugada, ojos de 15 centímetros de diametro y sin boca visible. Uno de los pescadores implicados informó a los medios que la parte que apareció ante ellos medía ya más de un metro y medio de largo.

Mapa de Piri Reis

El mapa de Piri Reis es una carta náutica elaborada supuestamente por el almirante otomano Piri Reis en 1513 y publicada en 1523 como parte de su obra El libro de las materias marinas. Aunque Piri Reis vivió en un tiempo anterior, se suele decir que dibujó los mapas posteriormente al “descubrimiento de America” …aunque bien es cierto que la fecha de su creación fue en el mismo siglo de los viajes de Colón, Piri Reis se basó en mapas con antigüedad de 1500 años, de la era de Alejandro.

Colón y su tripulación bien pudieron haber navegado sabiendo perfectamente hacia qué lugar se dirigían utilizando los mapas del otomano, ya que hay ciertos hechos que vinculan a Cristobal Colón con Piri Reis. Por contener aparentes representaciones de tierras entonces desconocidas y a raíz de los propios escritos de Reis indicando que sus fuentes habían sido “los antiguos reyes del mar”, ha suscitado gran interés como enigma y se le suele considerar un oopart. El original se conserva en el Museo Topkapi Sarayi de Estambul pero no suele estar expuesto al público.