Creepypasta stories

The Ragman

He's waiting, he's watching. He's biding his time.
He stares as your sleeping, it's just after nine.
You're holding your blanket, In comfortable heaven.
He's sneaking towards you, the clock says eleven.

You dream about candy, and chocolate and fun.
He's nearly beside you, it's just turning one.
You don't see him coming, there's no time to flee.
You wake up, you scream. It's his time. It's three."

Old children's tale, The Ragman.

I've always had a keen interest in horror. Ever since I was a young boy and my friend Richard and I used to sneak into his living room at night when I'd stay over. We'd stick on whatever scary film we could find on VHS or we'd turn on his TV and watch one that we'd spotted in the TV guide.
I remember watching the movie 'Halloween' when I was roughly twelve. It terrified me, sent chills up my spine and made me peek over my shoulder for the next week but it intrigued me. I kept lapping up all the ghost stories and horror tales that I could get my hands on. I watched the Exorcist when I was fourteen and it freaked the hell out of me. I didn't sleep for about a month I'd say.
That was also roughly around the time that I discovered the delights of Stephen King and James Herbert novels. Nerve shredding chills on every page and there was just so many of them that I could barely have the time to read them all. No matter how old I got, no matter how mature I became, I never lost that spirit. That need to be frightened by a horror story or movie. That desire to feel terrified. That's probably why I turned to writing horror myself. I just wanted to give someone else that thrill that I'd been seeking all throughout my adolescence.
In time I unfortunately grew desensitized to scary movies and books. It's part of growing up. The feeling of fear when watching a terrifying movie alone with the lights off began to get diluted as I became older and I began looking for bigger and better scares.
Searching for ghost stories or other tales of dread that people had told me were real became the next big thing. Not the stories that you might see on the TV screen and then switch off and simply try to forget. Not the tale in the pages of a book that's escaped from by shutting it. I went from town to town and all over the web hearing all the ramblings of the paranoid and the true believers and after years of searching I found something. That experience with the truly macabre that came with the chill up my spine. The peeking over my shoulder. The difficulty of sleeping simply by knowing it. The most disturbing and heart retching, fear inducing tale of menace that I had ever heard. Well, to be honest, I am a little bias and I will tell you why. It's simple, it happened to me. Here is my account with the entity known as 'The Ragman'.

In my home you could find all sorts of horror paraphernalia. Old books, haunted dolls, crucifixes used during real life exorcisms and just about every scary movie you could mention. Give me a thunderstorm and a camera and I could give you a truly terrifying scene by simply filming any part of my house. Still, everybody has their vices. Mine was something I was proud of. It had become difficult to meet women though. Most of them couldn't stay in my house too long and it's no wonder why. There just simply isn't enough cushions in the world to block your sight from that much frightening imagery. That is just the way that I am however, and say what you want about me. I don't change to suit someone else, a trait that I find to be a rare quality.
Let me start the tale of 'The Ragman' by giving you a little history lesson in folklore. While you may not be aware of it, the story has been around for centuries. Supposedly it was taken up by the Grimms brothers at some stage and became a fairytale of sorts. This of course was back in a time that all fairytales were darker and more chilling. Back in the day when Disney didn't own the rights to them. When they had a more sinister effect on the imagination. Eventually it was forgotten as its details were known to be too grim (excuse the pun) for a child's bedtime story. Parents refused to tell the story to their kids and it was lost over time. If you ask me, they were right to. I had never heard of the story, in all my years of researching tales of terror but that changed on the evening of November 12th. The date I received a painting.