True Story: THEY WANT TO EAT YOU.

Have you noticed that NewPLUG engagement has been dropping over the years? It’s only a slight downward slope. Almost imperceptible. It’s not that Redditors have been engaging any less frequently with the subreddit. It’s simply that there are fewer members alive. And I just found out why.

The moderators have been eating them.

I don’t know how many of you will have a chance to read this post. A few hundred. A few thousand. Likeliest scenario, the mods denounce me as a liar and swiftly delete this evidence.

They wouldn’t stop there. I can already picture hungering eyes poring over every word I’ve typed. In fact, I think what scares me most is that the moderators probably won’t delete this. Nobody can stop them. They’ll maliciously grin at the screen, preparing for their next meal.

I already know that they’re coming for me.

On Friday evening, I received a horrifying document from my friend on Reddit. Let’s call him Joe. He said that he’d received the document from a once-prolific poster on this subreddit. I won’t name the user. I’ve messaged the aforementioned user repeatedly, but there’s been no response.

The document included a list of Reddit usernames, and there was a message at the top:

The moderators aren’t human. Your time has come when you receive the purple notification.

I snapped my neck around to face the open bedroom door behind me.

I live alone, and my hauntingly-hollow house often plays tricks on me, but I know what I saw. In the reflection of a pitch-black segment on my screen, I caught a ghastly glimpse of a twig-like man on the unlit landing. He had been standing in my doorway and watching me. His form flitted from view before I had the chance to look directly at him.

Ping.

On my desktop monitor, there was a new Reddit notification. The message came from the r/nosleep moderators, but the username wasn’t green. It was purple. As if that weren’t horrifying enough, the message read:

Nosleep fear tastes so sweet.

Your haunted brain is what I’ll eat.

A melodic humming sound echoed around the vast nothingness of my grand, cavernous home. The twisted tune of whatever was watching me.

Body twitching, I tried to suppress my fear and compose myself. I wanted to believe Joe had orchestrated the masterful prank, even though I knew he was far too serious a fellow for anything like that. I messaged him, seeking reassurance that nothing untoward had occurred. He replied:

Are you shitting me? Come over to my place. I just received the same message. I don’t know whether we’ve been hacked by someone, but it’s given me the heebie-jeebies.

The last thing I wanted to do was venture to my friend’s house at a quarter to midnight, but I was far too frightened to stay in my house of horrors. Besides, Joe only lived a few minutes away on foot. Not that a pitch-black walk really appealed to me, either.

Shadows danced along the walls of every alleyway I passed. Anyone else, in an ordinary circumstance, would have chalked that up to trickery of the light. But I know it was the same insidious, inhuman figure that I saw on the upstairs landing of my house. It was following me.

I hurried to Joe’s apartment building and frantically hammered the buzzer. He didn’t respond. After ringing desperately for several minutes, somebody finally appeared in the lobby and opened the door for me.

“Hi, Paul. Are you here to see Joe?” Mrs Callander asked.

I hurriedly nodded my head and slid past her, sprinting up the stairs to Apartment 11. Joe hadn’t answered his buzzer or my numerous phone calls, so I was fully prepared to kick down his door.

No need. It was ajar.

Lightly pushing it open, I gazed into my friend’s dark, eerily-still flat. As I tiptoed inside, I breathlessly observed my surroundings. I didn’t want to announce my presence. Joe wasn’t a prankster, and if he were, he still wouldn’t have done something so elaborate. I knew it wasn’t a game.

Then, I heard a looping hum. That same melodic medley from my house. A foreboding arpeggio.

There was a squelching sound from within the kitchen. My head told me to run, but my legs were guided by some external force. I was unable to resist the siren song.

What I witnessed in that room fundamentally broke me as a person.

Joe lay on the kitchen table, sprawled out like a slaughtered starfish, and he had been scalped with maliciously-meticulous precision. Above him, a shapeless shadow munched merrily on the grey matter sitting in his fractured skull. The inhuman Reddit moderator was devouring his haunted brain, as it had promised.

Horrifyingly, Joe was still alive. His teary eyes locked onto mine whilst his limbs were seizing.

“Flesh in the grape tower,” He stuttered, losing his brain function. “Yes, eleven times.”

The shadow had no discernible form, but I know its shadowy head turned to face me. It developed an opening that vaguely resembled a crooked smile. I wailed internally, too stunned to speak, and fled the kitchen.

The thing pursued me. I didn’t have to turn around to verify that. I bounded upstairs and barricaded myself in the upstairs bathroom.

That’s where I’ve been hiding for the past day. I can’t stop thinking about Joe. I’m plagued by the horrific sight of him lying there, losing his brain piece by piece.

How does it feel to lose one’s brain so slowly? I don’t want to imagine. Perhaps I’ll die of thirst before the shadow breaks inside. I hope so.

Just heed my warning and leave this subreddit before it’s too late