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A father is anxiously waiting for his son, returning after a long time. Reading time: 6 minutes. "OKTOBERFEST HAS ARRIVED, and XTales.net is starting a new tradition, a way for our regular readers to get featured on XTales.net. You can also promote your work/art/blog/vlog/podcast etc. ‘ Readers of the Month ’! Click here   to know more. Now," The Waiting A father was anxiously pacing in his living room. He was waiting for his son, very dear to him. A calm afternoon spread across the town. The father had missed his afternoon nap just to greet his son, who was returning from abroad after a very long time. He looked at the clock. It was almost time. “Oh, what’s taking him so long ?” he muttered. He started worrying as his thoughts wandered across all the possibilities. His weak heart panicked by the thought something unfortunate might have happened. ‘What if an accident...?’ he thought and immediately shook it away, the uneasy feeling. He prayed, ‘God, keep him safe.’ As if s

A family moves into a new house, and the horrors follow. Reading time: 4 minutes. Cliché “Honey, did you hear?” she asked, whispering. “About what?” he inquired with his mouth full of toast. They were sitting at the table in the kitchen having breakfast. “The kid of the new couple across the street went missing. Poor guys. They’d just moved into their new house.” He couldn’t understand her need to whisper. “I’m sure they’ll find the kid,” he said rather coldly. “Do you know if the police said anything?” he asked. “Same old bullshit! ‘We are doing our best' blah blah—” He finished his breakfast and grabbed his case. “I should head out. See you in the evening, hon.” They kissed each other and walked towards the door. “Do you think I should go see them?” she asked. “Yeah, sure,” he quickly replied without even thinking. “Okay, bye.” It almost seemed to her as if he didn’t care. She shrugged her shoulders and went in. Later that afternoon, she went to see the couple across the stree

True accounts of encounters with an unknown creature that lived in a well in my father's village. Reading time: 12 minutes. Ciao, XTales.net has always been about horror fiction, until now. With today's tale, we are stepping into the world of true events. All the stories based on true events will be tagged as so. You can find them in the sidebar menu under 'Categories'. Keep reading. Arrivederci. It Lived in the Well W hen I started writing my blog, it was just horror fiction. I never wrote anything from my real-life experiences. The main reason was that I never had any real-life experiences involving the mysterious or the unknown, never encountered anything unnatural. Since I had to go with my imagination, I was always looking for inspiration. Recently, I started asking all the people I know if they ever had any such experiences. Following are the events my father narrated to me. It includes his and others' accounts of encounters with an unknown creature. It liv

A woman can perceive the dead and that is still not the darkest part of her existence. Reading time: 7 minutes. The Broken Pendant S he moved around the dark living room, trying to get to the hall without bumping into anything and surprisingly, she did. It was as if she had moved through the furniture. The clouds rumbled over her head in the sky although the rain had stopped. She put the dish in the sink and went back to the living room ignoring the young woman who stood in the hallway, with her torn up dress and her face hidden behind her messy hair, both covered in dirt and blood. She sat on the couch, in complete darkness and dead silence. The only thing that could be heard was the remnants of the storm that had now calmed down. She moved her head towards the window and looked outside. Another woman stood just outside the window, old, this one but with somewhat the same appearance—clothes, dirty, torn-up, and bloodied; face, hidden behind her bushy hair also covered in dirt an

A forest guard's account of the final case of his life that made him retire from his job. Reading time: 23 minutes. The Forest Never Forgets 1 The year was 1993. I listened to the downpour on the shed of the local administration office of my district's forest department as I waited for the Forest Officer who, like usual, was late and going to be later because of the heavy rain. Everything looked grey and discoloured. A gloom covered the village. There was no sound except for the rain on the shed. I sat thinking, in a dark hallway with no lights because of the power cut due to the rain. I remembered my last few weeks as the newly appointed Forest Guard here and it gave me a strange feeling. I had been a forest guard for three decades. All my colleagues got promoted, one even got retired and I was still doing this job. In those thirty years, I had seen some unsettling things that kept me awake at night, or I should say days because that’s when I used to sleep. Maybe that was

A man, after being in a plane crash, finds himself in hell. Reading time: 11 minutes. A little announcement, or maybe two. We achieved two milestones in the last week. First of all, XTales.net has been featured in the list of world’s top 80 horror blogs by Feedspot. Make sure to check out their list. https://blog.feedspot.com/horror_blogs/ And second, the previous story, ‘The Letter to My Other Self’ was published on world’s most popular horror-fiction platform creepypasta.com. Head over there to read it and vote. https://www.creepypasta.com/the-letter-to-my-other-self/ And now… My Plane Crashed and I Went to Hell D o you know about fear when you are walking down a lonely road all by yourself in the middle of the night? You are scared as hell but when you are with friends walking down the same road, it’s not that scary. Everything changes when you are not alone. So maybe it’s not the darkness you are afraid of. Maybe it’s the loneliness. I just thought of that because I was walking