Midnight Narrative - Episode "10 - "Drawn into the Dark"

Midnight Narrative - Episode "10 - "Drawn into the Dark"

Episode 10: Drawn into the Dark
00:00 - Intro
00:19 - I accidentally became the "ghost" haunting my own apartment building
02:39 - My daughter’s imaginary friend isn’t imaginary. He’s teaching her how to draw, and I think he’s finishing his masterpiece.
12:10 - If You Are In The Woods and Find a Tree With Red Paint, Run Away Immediately

Tonight on Midnight Narrative, we explore the terrifying distortions of reality, where the lines between the mundane, the supernatural, and the deeply malicious completely blur. We begin with a lighthearted twist on urban legends, following a night-shift worker whose late-night grocery trips and flickering hallway lights inadvertently turn him into a legendary apartment ghost that his neighbors refuse to stop believing in.  Then, the atmosphere turns suffocatingly dark as we enter a Victorian fixer-upper where a young girl’s "imaginary friend," Mr. Tall, teaches her a horrific new form of art—one that drafts the anatomy of the house and bleeds its residents into the very fibers of the page. Finally, we trek into the dense wilderness of Baxter State Park, where a shifting landmark painted in a warning shade of crimson leaves a trail of vanished campers and an unnatural, crushing silence in the trees.  

Stories featured in this episode:
I accidentally became the "ghost" haunting my own apartment building (u/unknown_user_9801) https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghoststories/comments/1ud9yfr/i_accidentally_became_the_ghost_haunting_my_own/

My daughter’s imaginary friend isn’t imaginary (u/shamelessdetective)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1uu5cox/my_daughters_imaginary_friend_isnt_imaginary_hes/

 If You Are In The Woods and Find a Tree With Red Paint, Run Away Immediately (u/Discocheese69)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1tt2f5s/if_you_are_in_the_woods_and_find_a_tree_with_red/


If you would like me to narrate your story, please submit to: midnightnarrative666@gmail.com
Art Credit: Instagram @unexpectedspecter
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I accidentally became the ghost haunting my own apartment building. A few months ago, people in my apartment building started talking about a ghost. It started with small things. Someone would hear footsteps in the hallway at three AM. Another person claimed they saw a shadow standing near the stairwell before it disappeared. One neighbor swore they heard someone whispering hello when nobody was there. The rumor spread fast. The funny part is that I knew exactly what was happening. I work night shifts and I usually get home around three AM to avoid waking my roommates and quietly take the stairs instead of the elevator. I also have a habit of talking to myself when I'm tired. One night, while carrying groceries, I dropped a bag. An elderly neighbor opened her door. Just as I bent down to pick everything up, the hallway light flickered at that exact moment. She screamed. I panicked and sprinted up the stairs. The next morning the building's WhatsApp group exploded. Apparently she had seen a dark figure crouching in the hallway that vanished when the lights flickered. The ghost stories got crazier every week. Someone posted blurry CCTV screenshots. Another person claimed the ghost only appeared after midnight. A third person said it was probably the spirit of a former tenant. I stayed quiet because honestly, it was hilarious. Then management announced they were installing extra security cameras because residents felt unsafe. At that point I felt guilty and admitted everything. Nobody believed me. Even after I explained the late night shifts, the stairs, the dropped groceries, and the flickering lights, several neighbors insisted I was covering up the existence of the ghost. One guy actually said that's exactly what a ghost would want us to think. To this day, people still talk about the building ghost, and apparently I'm not the ghost. I'm just the guy who lives on the third floor. My daughter's imaginary friend is an imaginary. He's teaching her how to draw, and I think he's finishing his masterpiece. I am not holding a pen. I don't even have fingers anymore, just smudges of charcoal where my hands used to be. I am writing this by becoming the ink. The sketchbook has pinned me to the desk, and it is pulling the remaining fragments of my consciousness out of my fading body. I am bleeding my final thoughts into the fibers of this paper, staining the page with my own terror. If you find this post, please listen to me. Don't look for this house. If you see the listing, keep scrolling. You don't want to know what it feels like to be drawn. I've always believed that houses have memories. I thought it was just a poetic way to describe creaky floorboards and drafty hallways. I was wrong. Houses don't just have memories, they have appetites, and the one we bought, the sprawling, Victorian skeleton of a fixer upper, was absolutely starving. When we moved here, Lily was seven. She was everything to me. After the divorce, it was just us against the world. She was bright, loud, and full of that chaotic, unfiltered energy that made me feel like I was doing something finally right as a mother. She used to squeeze my hand so tight when she was scared of the dark, and her laugh, God her laugh was like a light switch in a dim room. Within two weeks of moving in, that light began to flicker. She became quiet, not just reserved, but hollowed out. She stopped playing with her dolls, she stopped asking for bedroom stories. She started spending hours in her room, hunched over her desk, working on a massive, leather bound sketchbook she found in the attic. When I asked her what she was doing, she'd just point to the corner of the room. Mr. Tull is helping me, she'd whisper, her voice devoid of any childhead lilt. He says the house is unfinished. He's teaching me how to draw the veins. I brushed it off. Every parent encounters an imaginary friend phase, but Mr. Tall wasn't like the harmless invisible pals of her friends. He didn't encourage her to play tea party, he encouraged her to draft. For weeks she'd wake up with dark circles under her eyes, her skin pale and waxy. I grew desperate to understand what was taking her focus. One afternoon I saw her scribbling with frantic, jagged movements. I moved towards the desk, reaching for the sketchbook, hoping to see a picture of a flower or house. Lily slammed the book shut with a strength that shouldn't have been possible for a seven year old. Her eyes weren't just wide, they were terrified, darting to the empty corner behind me. No, mom, she snapped, pressing her thin body against the desk. You can't see it yet. Mr Tall said no, it's a surprise. I froze. The room felt suddenly impossibly cold. I stared at the empty space she was looking at. There was nothing there, just a patch of peeling wallpaper, yet I felt an intense, suffocating pressure, as if someone were standing inches away, glaring at me with immense silent disapproval. The air grew stagnant, tasting faintly of cedar dust and wet graphite. I didn't see him, I didn't hear a word, but the sheer weight of a presence made the hair on my arm stand up. I retreated, leaving her to her surprise. That night, after I finally got Lily to bed, after she fell into that heavy, motionless sleep that looked more like a coma than a rest, I crept into her room. The sketchbook was waiting, splayed open on her desk. The charcoal smudged from hours of fervent, obsessive work. I flipped it open. My stomach dropped through the floor. It wasn't a child's drawing, it was a technical schematic of our living room. It was drafted with the precision of a master architect. Every light switch, every baseboard, every structural beam was plotted with chilling mathematical accuracy. I turned the page, the kitchen, the plumbing, the wiring behind the drywall, the precise location of a rotting joist I hadn't yet discovered. It was as if the book were an X-ray of the house, showing what lay beneath the plaster. I flipped to the back. There, rendered an impressive dark ink, was the floor plan of the upstairs hallway, and in the center of the drawing, a large jagged X marked the spot. I looked down. I was standing in that exact spot, right outside her door. Then the air in the room shattered. It wasn't a sound, it was the feeling of the temperature plunging into the negatives. I looked back at the paper. The ink didn't just bubble, it began to assemble. A figure began to sketch itself into existence on the page. Tall, spindly with limbs that defied human geometry. As the ink dried, the figure didn't just stay on the page, it bled upward, unfolding into the three dimensional space of the hallway. I felt a cold, jagged shadow fall over me. I couldn't move. I turned my eyes, just my eyes and saw him. He was standing directly behind me, towering toward the ceiling, his long, grey fingers twitching. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. He just stared at the doorway of Lily's room with an intensity that felt like a physical blow. The door creaked open. Lily stood there. She wasn't tired, she was smiling. It was a wide, unnatural grin that looked painful on her small face. When she saw me, she didn't show concern, she laughed, a bright, tinkling sound that should have been sweet, but felt like glass shattering in my ears. She walked past me, ignoring my silent, paralyzed plea. She went straight to the desk. Mr Tall leaned down, his elongated charcoal smudged hand resting heavily on her shoulder. He didn't look at me. He stared at the blank page, his chest vibrating with a silent jagged excitement. He pointed to the pencil. Lily picked it up, she looked at me, her eyes devoid of anything resembling the daughter I knew, and she started to draw. She was drawing me. Every stroke she made on the paper, I felt it in my own body. She drew a line across the page where my waist was, and I felt my spine snap. My torso flattening against the wall. She laughed again, a breathless, excited giggle, and shaded the area where my eyes were. My vision went dark, narrowing down to two small, pigment filled dots. She was so willing, she was so precise. Mr. Tall leaned over her, his face inches from hers, watching every movement of the pencil with a hunger that made the walls of the house groan in unison. He was finally getting what he wanted, a new masterpiece. I am not holding a pen, I don't even have fingers anymore, just smudges of charcoal where my hands used to be. The sketchbook has pinned me to the desk, and it is pulling the remaining fragments of my consciousness out of my fading body. I am bleeding my final thoughts into the fibers of this paper, staining the page with my own terror. The book is forcing me to document my own erasure. It requires a witness to the transition. Lily is still drawing, her movements fast and joyous. She's shading the parts of me that aren't finished yet. I can feel the lead tip pressing into my skin, carving the lines of my face into the white expanse. I'm almost entirely two dimensional now. My arms are just lines on a page. My eyes are just dots of pigment. Mr Tall is standing over us, his chest vibrating with that silent, jagged excitement. He isn't saying a word, but his presence is a scream in my mind. He's watching Lily's hand, and every time she lifts the pencil, I feel a piece of my reality tear away. He is reaching out to close the book. When he does, I won't be in the hallway anymore. I'll be on the wall, trapped in the sketch, waiting for the next owner to peel back the paper and find me. Please, don't look. If you see the marks, run. You don't want to know what it feels like to be drawn. The pencil is lifting, she's shading my mouth. The darkness is spreading. If you are camping in Baxter State Park and you see trees marked with red paint, please pack your bags and leave before it's too late. Let me preface this by saying that I'm not one who believes in cryptids or supernatural stuff. I want to believe that there is a logical explanation for what happened to me and my friend. But for the life of me, I can't find a rational answer. I've been camping since I was a kid, but now I can't find the courage to go back into the wilderness ever again. I'm a pretty experienced camper. I love traveling to different parks and staying out there for four to five nights at a time. My friend Aaron and I have planned on staying five nights in Baxter State Park in Maine. Aaron is also very experienced and has gone with me on countless previous trips. He knows these particular woods better than I do, so when he picked a spot pretty far off from any trails, I didn't question his decision. We chose a spot near a tree that was marked with red spray paint. We planned to leave the site every day to go hiking, so the paint made it an easy landmark that would help us locate our campsite. The campsite was in a small, open field about thirty yards north of the tree with red paint. The first night was completely fine. We hiked out to a nice fishing spot and then headed back to the camp when the sun was setting. I distinctly remember passing the painted tree on the way back. Unfortunately, this was the last normal experience I'd have in that forest. Later that night, I woke up to the sound of what seemed like a tree about to fall. I could hear the cracking of branches followed by loud creaking noises. The odd part was that there was no thud. It's as if the tree never hit the ground. What made it weirder was that the forest still seemed to be rustling. Although now more faint, I could still hear the cracking of branches and lots of commotion. I was still half asleep, so I chalked it up to there just being a large animal making noise. In the morning we went out on another hike. As we left camp, I glanced around for any recently fallen trees just to be sure. There was nothing. We continued with our day as usual, until deciding to cut it short and head back in order to prepare for dinner. On the way back, we couldn't spot the tree with red paint. It was odd, but we still managed to make our way back to camp based on memory. Aaron was more confused by the absence of the tree than I was. He kept going on about how he was certain the path he had us on would have taken us right by the tree. To confirm, he walked back over to the location of the tree, but it was nowhere to be seen. When he told me this, I thought he must have missed it, so I also investigated. Sure enough, the tree wasn't anywhere to be seen. I trust our spatial awareness, and I wholeheartedly believe we were in the exact spot where the tree should have been. I remembered the sound from the previous night having come from the direction of the tree, so I thought that maybe it was the wand that had fallen over. However, after scanning the area, there was no sign of a fallen tree. It's as if the tree had just completely vanished. Although we were confused, we didn't keep looking for much longer and returned to the campsite and went to bed. Later, in the middle of the night, I was once again awoken by the same sounds. It sounded like the forest was moving. The sound of trees breaking and snapping was unnaturally loud. It was much louder than small branches snapping. It was like a whole trunk was being broken in two. I still told myself that it was just a large animal, most likely a bear. I should have investigated it to be sure, but it sounded distant, and I didn't want to risk an encounter with an animal. That morning, we went hiking to another fishing spot nearby. This is when things got really strange. On our hike back, we took the main trail and walked past an older couple who were also out camping. They saw our fishing gear and asked if we caught anything. We started having a pretty casual conversation, but the whole tone shifted when the husband brought up hearing trees fall in the night. It was their first night camping, and I told him that we had been hearing loud noises in the night for multiple days now. I asked him if he was able to find the fallen trees, but he said they couldn't find anything. Then I asked him what direction he heard it from. It was right over there, near that tree with red paint on it, he said as he pointed off toward the distant tree line. Aaron and I looked at each other with confusion and an uneasy feeling. It's very possible that multiple trees had been marked with paint in these woods. Maybe there was logging scheduled soon. Despite all logical conclusions, both of us were put on edge by the mention of a tree with red paint. All four of us walked over to look for a fallen tree, but I was more interested in finding this tree with red paint. When we got closer, I asked the man where the tree with the red paint was. In a confused tone he said, It should be right here. That's strange. Maybe I'm mistaken. His wife chimed in. No, it was definitely here. It was pretty easy to spot because of the bright red. Now things felt really off. What are the chances that two different groups spot a tree with red paint? And then both trees seemed to vanish into thin air. We continued on our hike to the fishing spot. On the way, all we could talk about was the tree with the red paint. It was such a strange coincidence, and we couldn't figure out a logical explanation. Despite this, we tried to forget about it and focus on fishing and the beautiful scenery. We didn't want these strange events to ruin the vibe of the trip. The day came to an end, and I was once again awoken by loud rustling in the forest. I ignored it and went back to bed. When morning arrived, Aaron and I decided to take a break from hiking and spend the day at camp. While eating lunch, Aaron got up to take a piss. He walked over to the tree line, which was close by. It was maybe twenty yards away at most. One thing I feel I need to stress was that he had walked in the opposite direction of where we had initially spotted the tree with red paint. I didn't think anything of it, and continued eating with my back facing the direction where Aaron was peeing. In a shocked voice, Aaron shouted to me, I found the tree with red paint. It's over here. Immediately after he said this, the forest began to rumble again. It was the same sounds I had been hearing every night. I could hear loud snaps of branches and a deafening creaking noise. The kind you hear from large trees swaying in heavy winds. I couldn't see Aaron anymore, and I became concerned, so I started calling out his name. My guess was that the tree couldn't have been far from the tree line, so if he walked into the woods to investigate it, he only would have walked a few feet. He was definitely close by, given the fact that I could hear him. However, as I called out his name, I didn't get a response. I began to panic. I thought maybe a bear or something had attacked him in the woods, and that's what caused the loud noises coming from the forest. But I didn't hear any screaming or cries for help. It's like he vanished. I ran over to where he was, and I couldn't find him anywhere. By now the loud crashing of branches had reduced to a distant rustling of leaves. I continued calling out his name, but there was nothing. It didn't make sense. How could he go from within earshot to completely gone in less than thirty seconds? My heart was racing. I didn't know what was happening, but I knew something was terribly wrong. I began to sprint through the forest, following the sound of distant commotion in the trees. Unfortunately, the dense wood slowed me down, and eventually the forest returned to silence. I ran back to camp, all while still screaming, out for Aaron. I went to investigate the spot where I last heard him. I thought if something happened, maybe I could track him by tracing his steps. I walked back to the tree line and found his canteen, which he had laid next to him on the ground. I even found the puddle of pee where he had been doing his business, but that's about it. His footprints went only a couple more feet before coming to an abrupt stop. What made it stranger was that I couldn't even find the tree with red paint. It's a very bright red, and it's easy to spot, so if he spotted it while peeing, it must be extremely close by. I circled the area multiple times but found nothing, no tree, no Erin. In all the confusion, my heart was racing, but I tried to stay calm and called 911. I didn't sleep for the next seventy two hours. A search and rescue operation started just thirty minutes after I dialed 911. I tried to help as much as I could. I gave a description of Erin and described where I last saw him and what had occurred just moments before his disappearance. I felt crazy for doing it, but I even brought up the tree and tried to stress that I believed it had something to do with his disappearance. As I expected, the police disregarded the whole tree thing. Under normal circumstances, I would have as well, but something felt deeply wrong in my soul. I don't know what it was, but I know that tree had something to do with Aaron's disappearance. To make matters even worse, the couple we had spoken to was also reported missing. Apparently, police estimate that they disappeared just a few hours before Aaron did. They were only reported missing after they didn't show up to a guided hiking session they had scheduled that day. How fucking strange is that? The couple also vanished without a trace. As far as I know, they were the only other people who had a strange encounter with a tree with red paint. And now they are missing as well. After multiple nights, I had to get some sleep. I was at the point of exhaustion. I packed mine and Aaron's things and decided to get a motel room. I wanted to be nearby the forest as the search continued. As of riding this, it's been just over a month since he went missing. So far, all the rescue team has found is one of Aaron's shoes. It was discovered about fifteen miles from where he had vanished. Nothing has been recovered from the older couple. I'm still at the motel. I can't find it in me to leave Aaron in those woods. I feel so distraught and angry. I honestly just want an answer as to what happened. None of it makes sense. I can't find any logical explanation as to how or why he vanished. But all I know is that there is something dark in that forest. I know that somehow that tree is connected to all of this. It tears me up inside, knowing that Aaron may never come back, and I'll have no rational explanation as to why this happened to him. All I can do now is warn others from experiencing the same fate. If you're out in the woods and you find a tree with red paint, please, for the love of God, turn around and go home.