It started with nostalgia. I hadn't read horror in years, not the internet kind at least.

No sleep, creepy bastard, that whole era. I was deep into it in my late teens.

Something about the stripped down storytelling, the way people wrote with urgency instead of polish, hit different back then.

They felt human, like a friend telling you about this strange week.

I used to read them in bed, earbuds in, lights off.

Not because I wanted to be scared, but because it felt good.

Like being unsettled was part of some weird ritual before sleep. A few weeks ago, I decided to chase that feeling again.

It was late, I was bored and feeling nostalgic, so I figured it would be harmless to revisit some of the old classics.

There was something oddly comforting about it.

The stories had aged, sure, but enough time had passed that most of them felt new again.

I remember just enough to feel familiar, but not enough to spoil anything.

I tore through the big hitters.

Ben drowned, the Russian sleep experiment, pen pal.

I even found old screenshots from defunct forums of some of the classics,

pasted into blog spot pages by digital hoarders.

Stories before the time of named authors when people

posted anonymously to create an air of authenticity. That comfort didn't last long. Once I ran

out of the old stuff, I dipped back into R slash noash-no-sleep to see what people were writing now.

I wish I hadn't.

Everything felt off.

The tone was too smooth, too neat.

You could tell half the stories were written to hit a certain word count, or hit trending, or just a watered-down version of a popular horror movie.

...