scary stories to read at night

ominous

Thick fog enveloped the already dark road, and Jaimie slowed down so that she could see better.

In the distance, she saw what appeared to be the figure of a child. Yet as she drove closer, she noticed instead that it looked to be a young woman.

Jaimie considered stopping to see if the woman needed help, but drove right by when she noticed that the woman was just standing there, staring. Something about it was off, considering that it was nearly two in the morning.

The trees on the road were tall, thick and filled with bare, spindly branches now that winter had approached. They seemed to lean in to the road, waiting to snatch their next victim.

Jaimie was beginning to feel creeped out by the circumstances and opted to turn on the radio. She yanked her fingers away from the dials in fright when a man's booming voice began to speak. Jaimie couldn't even tell what he was talking about, he seemed to be chanting strange words.

She switched off the radio and popped in a CD instead. She was momentarily distracted while doing this, and nearly ran into the large white wolf standing in the middle of the road.

Jaimie sharply swerved to avoid the uncanny great wolf, but not before she got a look at its piercing red eyes. However, the strangest part was probably that the wolf stood nearly as tall as her car, which she knew was rare if not impossible.

She tried to brush off the ominous feeling she got driving down the lonely road and continued on. Jaimie noticed that she hadn't made any turns or even seen any new roads in quite some time, and began to wonder just how long this road was.

She was beginning to fall tired, so tired in fact that she almost missed it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could spot an entirely black figure running alongside her in the guise of the tree line. The disturbing part was how fast the thing was running, almost keeping speed with Jaimie's car. She knew almost for a fact that no human could run that fast.

Jaimie decided to test it to see if her sleepy mind was conjuring up hallucinations. She slowed down the car. Much to her horror, the figure slowed its pace as well. Jaimie decided to push it and stopped the car entirely, honking the horn.

The figure stopped and turned to face Jaimie, any features still undistinguishable. It stopped and stared for what felt like hours but was probably just seconds.

Jaimie's eyes only deterred when she heard the sound of scratching on her car. She turned to see if anyone was intentionally scratching her car, but when she turned back the figure was gone.

Jaimie felt extremely uneasy and began to drive once more.

It didn't take long for her to notice that she had passed the same "Welcome to Deadcreek, population: 0" sign twice. She figured that maybe they just put up two signs in case travelers missed the first, but why would they even need a sign for an unpopulated town?

Jaimie's skin started to crawl when she passed the same sign a third time. Fourth.

Even the trees were beginning to look the same. It was impossible that she was going in circles considering she'd been on the same road for hours.

When she passed the sign a fifth time, her blood ran cold and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

This time, the sign read, "Welcome to Deadcreek, population: 1".