(Part 3) Top products from r/nosleep

There are excellent books out there that explain this phenomena. Unfortunately, I have no titles to give you, but I've definitely read a few. I think that Sagan's Demon Haunted World is one of them.

IIRC from when I read them, the scientists point out that, before aliens, people often reported seeing religious figures/demons/angels. In other cultures, they report seeing the 'commonly viewed' figures of those cultures, from religious figures, to elves, to fairies, etc. At the turn of the century and before, many respectable adults reported seeing fairies, which was why that faked fairy photograph was so widely believed.

Our brains aren't perfect machines which accurately record the world and notice every detail. We actually interpret everything we see, adding things in and ignoring things deemed inconsequential. Since we, as a culture, share similar ideas, it makes sense that we would interpret odd shapes and things have glimpsed through the cultural lenses of what we would expect to be there when something is there that's not supposed to be. Before 'little green men' were aliens, they were goblins and other creatures. From wikipedia These examples illustrate that use of little green men was already deeply engrained in English vernacular long before the flying saucer era, used for a variety of supernatural, imaginary, or mythical beings.

Also, as an Evolutionary Anthropologist, I find it very telling about the human psyche that the physiology of these supposed advanced aliens is so strikingly similar to our own, with the changes in shapes like an overdeveloped human. The first time I saw a Homo sapiens skeleton placed next to a Neanderthal skeleton, I was struck by how we must have looked like aliens to them. It's very interesting that our 'enemy' is a more advanced version of ourselves.

This sounds like a cross between Fritz Leiber's Smoke Ghost and M. John Harrison's The Great God Pan, available in this collection.

Not a criticism at all, as those are 2 of the greatest haunting short stories ever written.

You have quite the appropriate username. I must warn you that if you're looking for "scary", you might be disappointed. However, because you asked, these are the titles that I can wholeheartedly recommend:

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs

Sanatorium under the sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz

Oyasumi Punpun by Inio Asano (translation: "Goodnight Punpun." This one is actually a manga series. If you've never read manga before, check this one out. You won't be disappointed.)

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (I have a bit of a personal attachment to this one for reasons that may seem obvious)

Memoirs of my Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber (This one was recommended by one of my readers, and I'm very glad I added it to the rotation)

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

We are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor (a bit of science fiction fantasy that really makes you question the concept of identity)

The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg

Tales of 1,001 Nights, author(s) unknown

A few other authors and stories I would recommend:
Philip K. Dick;
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler;
Patricia Highsmith;
James Lee Burke;
Jorge Luis Borges;
William Gibson;
Dashiell Hammett;
Haruki Murakami;
Charles Baudelaire;
Ambros Bierce;
Nikolai Gogol;
Alberty Camus;
Nathaniel Hawthorne;
M R James;
H G Wells;
J G Ballard;
Thomas Ligotti;

That's about all I can think of right now, but I think it's a pretty good place to start.

This reminded me of Tales For The Midnight Hour, or one of its equally enjoyable sequels. I got the set when I was little and read through them again and again. They're no Stephen King, but they are thoroughly enjoyable scare stories that aren't afraid of getting bloody. I can see a story like yours fitting in nicely with a compendium of shorts like this.

I see you mastered the art of falling and missing the ground.

At least you got that going for you.

Read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to cheer you up, love. [I suggest the leather bound complete set.](More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide: Complete & Unabridged https://www.amazon.com/dp/0681403225/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_E44ZBb4RC1VFN)

Wow, maybe this car was made in the same plant as Christine... you should definitely cut your losses and have it scrapped, as /u/jefferey1313 suggests.

You should check out this book, maybe some spells from it will help. Also there are other books on the same page that have cat spells in them.
http://www.amazon.com/Cat-Spells-Claire-Nahmad/dp/0517161257

You can pre-order it Here Looks like it's available 10/31

Why in the world would you want to make a mandragora? Lol

I believe this was the book, but I had a couple and my studies were years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0738703184

I look up a lot of random bullshit on a whim, I got interested in this after an old episode of Ripley's Believe it or Not. There was this book I read called Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers I read a long time ago, I remember a lot from that.

Just look it up the author was a Mary Roach. Here is a link to her book's Amazon and a PDF if you don't have the cash to buy it.

It reminds me of the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn

Check out Ann Rice's Memnoch the Devil.

The shadow people remind me of the ones from John Dies at the End. I consider myself a skeptic but I've seen a shadow man too. He would stand waiting for me to go into my room. He had a dog too...

Here is a list of steps which will solve your problem;

1. Throw away the codex.
   
   
2. Order this book
   
   
3. Transfer to a secular university and pick a different major.

The book is titled Satan's Silence (Ritual Abuse and the making of a modern American witch hunt) by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker. Here's the link to it.

Awesome! I thought I knew most of Ogden Nash's more famous poems but I've never heard of this one. Since Nash wrote in the 1930's I wasn't familiar with all of the names and thought others might appreciate reference links. We like to think that sensationalistic murder cases are something of a recent phenomenon. This proves otherwise. Basically, this reads as a "who's who" of US murderers during the first parts of the twentieth century.

terms:

Crinoline on wikipedia.

Walpurgis Night on wikipedia

Cases:

Dr. Waite (see THE WAITE CASE further down the page). Convicted of double homicide and executed. Married the daughter of a wealthy couple then set up an expensive practice in a very posh section of New York. Mother-in-law dies and is transferred back to Michigan for burial. Father-in-law asked to stay until he overcomes his bereavement. He dies suddenly as well. Suspicion is aroused and both bodies exhumed. Both were found to contain large does of arsenic.

Ruth and Judd may reference the murder trial of Winnie Ruth Judd who killed, then dismembered a former roommate in an apparent love triangle.

Nan, the floradorra girl and Cesar Young She was acquitted of charges of shooting to death her married lover while riding in a handsome cab in broad daylight in New York in 1905.

Mad Dog Coll earned the name after a failed kidnapping of an opposing mob boss's underling caused him to kill several children.

Becker and Rosenthal Corrupt cop who paid to have illegal casino owner hit after he went to the press discussing how Becker's extortion payments were hurting his business.

Legs and Dutch are Legs Diamond and Dutch Schultz, also mob related people.

The "Double Damned" are those with unsolved murder cases:

Dorothy "Dot" King murder - found cholorformed to death in her apartment.

Elwell Murder Case - textbook "locked room" murder mystery.

Arnold Rothstein's murder. He was widely considered the organizer behind the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal; paying off players to throw the World Series so he and his crew could win on fixed bets. He was conscious for days after he was shot but refused to give up the name of his assailant to the police.

Starr Faithful's murder scandal and her relationship to Andrew Peters.

Edit: Added all names.

Edit edit: Nash doesn't name any names but I'm inclined to believe this is the hotel referenced in the poem.