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A message from a scientist who worked on the nuclear tests of 1998 warning us about something his team discovered at the test site. Reading time: 5 minutes. A Certain Doom I am a scientist, and I worked on the nuclear tests in 1998. The Pokhran-II tests were a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army's Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was the second instance of nuclear testing conducted by India; the first test, code-named Smiling Buddha, was run in May 1974. The tests achieved their centre objective of giving India the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields up to 200 kilotons. Pokhran-II consisted of five detonations. The first was a fusion bomb, and the remaining four were fission bombs. The tests were initiated on May 11, 1998, under the assigned code name Operation Shakti, with the detonation of one fusion and two fission bombs. On May 13, 1998, two additional fission devices were detonated. The Indian

The first chapter of a featured historical series Exodus: The Untold Chronicles. A story of a man driven to madness by a ghost town. Reading time: 5 minutes. The pages of history are often drenched in the blood of innocents. The injustice and tyranny of cruel rulers still echo through the dark and unlit corridors of time. One of them was Deewan (Minister) Salem Singh of my hometown Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India. Deewan Salem Singh is still infamous for his cruelty and his unquenchable lust. He used to be the army commander and the minister to king Moolraj of Jaisalmer. It was back in the early 19th Century. The king had retired, and Salem Singh had taken over the responsibilities. Instead of crowing the prince, Salem Singh tricked the king into making him the official or acting ruler of Jaisalmer. He had conspired against the prince and gotten him exiled. That was the time when his atrocities began. There used to be a haweli (Villa) about eight to ten kilometres away from t

A woman suspects that someone is stalking her, and it might not be a human. Reading time: 5 minutes. A Piece of Darkness It all started when I was assigned to the graveyard shift at this mall, where I worked as a janitor. I would be the last person to leave the mall. By the time I would reach my one room and one kitchen flat, it would easily be three in the morning. Since the mall wasn’t very far, I used to walk from my home and back. My neighbourhood is a decent area. Everyone is helpful to each other. I found myself in trouble a couple of times, but there was always someone to help. My neighbour fixed my plumbing for free and saved me a few hundred, maybe more. Sometimes, another one of my neighbours dropped me off at work. It was all pleasant and easy until one night. I was coming back from work. It was a quiet night, just like all the others. I am not a fearful person, yet something made me uneasy that night. I was crossing this rather lonely road when I felt another set

I had a dream a long time ago about an alien invasion that almost felt like a premonition. Reading time: 5 minutes. Just a Nightmare? It was a calm night of late September back in 2016. I was in my third year of Engineering. My roommate hardly ever stayed in the college dormitory for two consecutive weeks. He often visited his girlfriend back in his hometown, a couple of hours away. The point is that I was alone in our room more often, and so was the case that night too. I had dinner and went to bed early. It was way later than midnight when I woke up thirsty. After gulping down a litre of water, I went back to bed. But sleep was far away from my eyes, so I continued reading the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay. I can't remember which book out of the series it was. After half an hour, I felt sleepy again. I put down my phone (I was reading an ebook) and went to sleep. Maybe that was it. My hyperactive mind couldn’t go back to sleep just yet. My body might have been resting,

A story of an alien that has been living among us for quite a while. Reading time: 5 minutes. Happy New Year, folks! XTales.net is back! I wish you all a good year, which you remember for the rest of your life and smile every time you talk about it. An Alien Tear He finished office early that day, so he arrived at this small diner a little earlier than his usual time, where he ate every night. The only server boy there, who was not more than fifteen, brought his usual. It was the least expensive meal on the menu; he had to manage his budget. It wasn’t like he was getting paid a juicy check every month. He began to eat, but there was something different that day. Usually, he would enjoy his not-so-delicious dinner in silence with three or four other people. But that evening, he was distracted by two faces looking at him. He looked across the open diner where two kids about nine and eleven years were peeking at him with hungry eyes from behind the wall. He ignored them at firs

A father is anxiously waiting for his son, returning after a long time. Reading time: 6 minutes. 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 someone was listening to him, the doorbell chimed. Its echoes hadn’t even died before the father raced and pulled the door open. “Hahaha! Hehe! My son!” “Hey, dad. How’ve you been?” "Oh, come here, you little rascal! What took you so long?" The fath

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