Don’t Read This If You Plan On Sleeping Tonight

For most people, casually surfing the endless pages of Reddit while on the grind is not an option. Which, right now, is a serious bummer because history is being made on its front page.

Rarely does a/r/nosleep thread make it to the front page of Reddit, but it did today. The "true" story, written by a user named natesw, features screenshots of Facebook messages he's been receiving for over a year from his dead girlfriend. It's called My dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook. I’ve got the screenshots. I don’t know what to do. and it's a fascinating/chill-inducing/can't-stop-reading/what even/how/no of a ride.

Nathan's girlfriend Emily was killed in what Nathan described as a horrifically fatal car accident in August of 2012. He grappled with the idea of getting rid of her profile, but decided to keep it for grieving purposes. A little over a year later, Nathan started receiving messages from Emily's account. He explained that no one, aside from Emily's mother who hardly checked her Facebook, had access to it. He changed the username and password multiple times, but Emily would continue to write him. Granted, the messages were regurgitations of old conversations Nathan and Emily had. Eventually, "Emily" started tagging "herself" in random pictures of Nathan. Then there's the whole update Nathan provided today that would make the toughest of (wo)men shiver.

"‘She’ would tag herself in spaces where it was plausible for her to be, or where she would usually hang out," Nathan writes. "I’ve got screenshots of two (from April and June; these are the only ones I’ve caught, so they’re a little out of the timeline I’m trying to write out)."

Whether it's true remains a mystery. Nathan hasn't said anything to lay claim to its falsehood, but a /r/nosleep threads are written under the assumption that everything discussed is true — even if it isn't, which is a great fictional exercise for burgeoning writers. And, though users aren't supposed to verify the truth behind a story, they are with this one. It's so well-conceived and executed that something has to be fake, right? Maybe. What is for sure is sleep is not an option tonight, because this is one well done ghost story. Helllo, nightmares. (Reddit)