You already know the rules. Sleep with your feet towards the door.

Wonderful story, thank you for the heads up. Hopefully Tasty Eyes is native to your area and doesn't get around too much.

We had one big one that my friends and I adhered to - if you hear wind whistling through a hollowed out tree, never under any circumstances did we look inside it, and never whistle while walking the train tracks.

We called him Whistlestop Willie. It's rather uninspired but it gets the point across. There were about two miles of tracks that we hung out around as children. Most of it was surrounded by woods but a rather busy 4 lane street intersected it on one end and a similarly busy two lane Street on the other.

Those two miles of tracks belonged to Willie. Out of an abundance of caution we didn't whistle if we strayed past our part of the tracks as well. If you were to whistle, you'd simply end up missing. For a while. The amount of time varied wildly, but eventually you would be found. And no matter the amount of time that passed between, the discovery always followed the same pattern. Stuffed into a hollowed out tree, bones broken and contorted to fit completely into the trunk. Every time, the only visible body part is the greyed face, skin sagging and sunken but never decomposed, staring out. Sometimes it would be a day or two. One time it was a full two years.

So you can imagine why we never looked into the trees. The person who did not only chanced seeing the face that would haunt their dreams for the foreseeable future, but also risked what would come.

Anyone and everyone who has looked into a tree to find the body has lost someone close to them. The first known case was the only outlier. An otherwise healthy tree fell and crushed a child's dog 20 years ago, 3 days after discovering a body. After that, Willie lost his interest in animals. 5 years ago, a volunteer discovered a body during a search of the area. Her husband was hit by a wrong way driver in a tunnel and ended up with the engine through his chest. Just 6 months ago, a father found his youngest son in a tree. He had four boys, ranging from 11 to 19 years of age. His oldest had just gotten a job at a distribution warehouse. As he was directing a trailer to the loading bay, he was startled by the lunch whistle and fell between the trailer and the bay, getting split in half.

It's always good to know the local rules. You'll live longer and keep those close to you safe as well.

/r/nosleep Thread