#PASSAGE OF CENTURIES!!! YOULL NEVER KNOW WHICH IS WHICH!!

[lazycranberrydoodles]

english translation book 5 baby we are in the ‘people assuming kid form hua cheng is xie lian’s son’ era 🔥🔥🔥 / follow for more hualian silliness

#so the part of the book where kid hua cheng suddenly sits bolt upright #because he senses something in the room #and this 7 year old is just 👁️👁️ and radiating immense killing intent #hes so fucking funny 😭 #i love him being weird and strange and offputting #‘dianxia why does the high schooler that hangs around your house sometimes have glowing red eyes and know things he definitely shouldnt #and crush things into dust with his bare hands and seem to hate the sun an-‘ mind your own fucking business #drawing baby hc was so much fun i hope i do it again soon #the secret is that xie lian is JUST as deeply weird as his husband but in a less obvious and threatening manner. #guy who has to keep his internal monologue internal because he is thinking things like “wouldnt wanna get choked by those hands!” #out of every god character he is the one who seems to have changed the most from immortality #dying presumably hundreds of times and being alone for hundreds of years does something to your brain #“xiao hua why does your cultivator talk weird and wear the same clothes and eat the same food and-” HE IS AUTISTIC!!!! AND JADED BY THE #PASSAGE OF CENTURIES!!! YOULL NEVER KNOW WHICH IS WHICH!! #my art #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #art #tgcf meme #mxtx #天官赐福 #lmao #hob #heaven official's blessing #the people have spoken...

[standtoreason93]

Telling Parting Words: John Newton vs. Mr. Rogers

By Greg Koukl

A person’s final words are often telling.

Consider the last words spoken by John Newton—Newton, 18th-century infidel, libertine, and slave trader; later, Newton, rector of London’s St. Mary Woolnoth, mentor and political inspiration of abolitionist William Wilberforce, author of the most beloved hymn in history, “Amazing Grace.”

For all his undeniable moral greatness, John Newton’s parting words were, “I am a great sinner, but Christ is a great Savior.”

Consider another honorable soul, the much-loved Fred Rogers—Rogers, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, ordained United Presbyterian minister, gentle and loving mentor to generations of preschool children through his long-lived television series, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

In the twilight of his years, reflecting on Jesus’ judgment parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Fred Rogers asked his wife, Joanne, “Am I a sheep?”

John Newton, after a lifetime of noble accomplishment, confident only of his own badness and of Christ’s merciful goodness on his behalf. Fred Rogers, after a lifetime of loving, self-sacrificial service, certain only of his uncertainty—unsure of his own goodness, thus unsure of his own salvation.

Two lives; two virtuous legacies, yet two entirely different understandings of God’s grace.

It saddened me when I learned of the doubts of the decent, upright, conscientious Mr. Rogers. His wife, Joanne, had answered him, “Fred, if anyone is a sheep, you are.” It was not the right answer. Something vital was missing.

I want you to think of the words of this, the first Bible verse I ever learned more than 45 years ago: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). This verse—and the many like it—informs everything for me as a Christian. It always has.

I am 68 years old, and the twilight of my own life is slowly approaching—not close, I trust, but within sight. I am nowhere near as noble, as self-sacrificial, as persistently and irrevocably loving as Mr. Rogers was. No matter. That is not what counts in the final reckoning. Here is what matters:

When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4–7)

And this:

Since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus…let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (Heb. 10:19–23)

And this:

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13–14)

Do passages like these (and there are a multitude of them) instruct your heart the way they do mine? Feast on these words. Regularly. There is life in them. Relief from self-doubt. The source of great hope, the only hope, for even the worst of us—and the best of us. These are the verses Joanne Rogers should have comforted her husband with—those that focus on Christ’s magnificent merits, not our own, feeble by contrast.

I have already chosen the epitaph for my tombstone. You’ll find it in Psalm 130:3–4. It reflects not Rogers’s sad uncertainty, but Newton’s proper confidence:

If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.

Are you a great sinner? You know you are. So am I. And if God should mark our iniquities, then we are all done for—John Newton, Fred Rogers, you, me. But Christ is a great Savior. Never forget this. It is our only hope as darkness encroaches.

[writingguide003-blog]

44 Writing Hacks From Some of the Greatest Writers Who Ever Lived

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/44-writing-hacks-from-some-of-the-greatest-writers-who-ever-lived/

44 Writing Hacks From Some of the Greatest Writers Who Ever Lived

Writing looks fun, but doing it professionally is hard. Like really hard. Why on earth am I doing this?-hard.

Which is probably why so many people want to write, yet so few actually do. But there are ways to make it easier, as many writers can tell you. Tricks that have been discovered over the centuries to help with this difficult craft.

In another industry, these tricks would be considered trade secrets. But writers are generous and they love to share (often in books about writing). They explain their own strategies for how to deal with writers block to how to make sure your computer never eats your manuscript. They give away this hard-won knowledge so that other aspiring writers wont have to struggle in the same way. Over my career, Ive tried to collect these little bits of wisdom in my commonplace book (also a writers trick which I picked up from Montaigne) and am grateful for the guidance theyve provided.

Below, Ive shared a collection of writing hacks from some amazing writers like Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Anne Lamott, and Raymond Chandler. I hope its not too presumptuous but I snuck in a few of my own too (not that I think Im anywhere near as good as them).

Anyway, heres to making this tough job a tiny bit easier!

[*] When you have an idea for an article or a bookwrite it down. Dont let it float around in your head. Thats a recipe for losing it. As Beethoven is reported to have said, If I don’t write it down immediately I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook I never forget it, and I never have to look it up again.

[*] The important thing is to start. At the end of John Fantes book Dreams from Bunker Hill, the character, a writer, reminds himself that if he can write one great line, he can write two and if he can write two he can write three, and if he can write three, he can write forever. He pauses. Even that seemed insurmountable. So he types out four lines from one of his favorite poems. What the hell, he says, a man has to start someplace.

[*] In fact, a lot of writers use that last technique. In Tobias Wolffs autobiographical novel Old School, the character types the passages from his favorite books just to know what it feels like to have those words flow through his fingertips. Hunter S. Thompson often did the same thing. This is another reason why technologies like ebooks and Evernote are inferior to physical interaction. Just highlighting something and saving it to a computer? Theres no tactile memory there.

[*] The greatest part of a writers time is spent in reading; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. Samuel Johnson

[*] Tim Ferriss has said that the goal for a productive writing life is two crappy pages a day. Just enough to make progress, not too ambitious to be intimidating.

[*] They say breakfast (protein) in the morning helps brain function. But in my experience, thats a trade-off with waking up and getting started right away. Apparently Kurt Vonnegut only ate after he worked for 2 hours. Maybe he felt like after that hed earned food.

[*] Michael Malice has advised dont edit while you write. I think this is good advice.

[*] In addition to making a distinction between editing and writing, Robert Greene advises to make an equally important distinction between research and writing. Trying to find where youre going while youre doing it is begging to get horribly lost. Writing is easier when the research is done and the framework has been laid out.

[*] Nassim Taleb wrote in Antifragile that every sentence in the book was a derivation, an application or an interpretation of the short maxim he opened with. THAT is why you want to get your thesis down and perfect. It makes the whole book/essay easier.

[*] Break big projects down into small, discrete chunks. As I am writing a book, I create a separate document for each chapter, as I am writing them. Its only later when I have gotten to the end that these chapters are combined into a single file. Why? The same reason it feels easier to swim seven sets of ten laps, than to swim a mile. Breaking it up into pieces makes it seem more achievable. The other benefit in writing? It creates a sense that each piece must stand on its own.

[*] Embrace what the strategist and theorist John Boyd called the draw-down period. Take a break right before you start. To think, to reflect, to doubt.

[*] On being a writer: All the days of his life he should be reading as faithfully as his partaking of food; reading, watching, listening. John Fante

[*] Dont get caught up with pesky details. When I am writing a draft, I try not to be concerned with exact dates, facts or figures. If I remember that a study conducted by INSERT UNIVERSITY found that XX% of businesses fail in the first FIVE/SIX? months, thats what I write (exactly like that). If I am writing that on June XX, 19XX Ronald Reagan gave his famous Tear Down This Wall speech in Berlin in front of XX,XXX people, thats how its going to look. Momentum is the most important thing in writing, so Ill fill the details in later. I just need to get the sentences down first. “Get through a draft as quickly as possible.” is how Joshua Wolf Shenk put it.

[*] Raymond Chandler had a trick of using small pieces of paper so he would never be afraid to start over. Also with only 12-15 lines per page, it forced economy of thought and actionwhich is why his stuff is so readable.

[*] In The Artists Way, Julia Cameron reminds us that our morning pages and our journaling dont count as writing. Just as walking doesnt count as exercise, this is just priming the pumpits a meditative experience. Make sure you treat it as such.

[*] Steven Pressfield said that he used to save each one of his manuscripts on a disk that hed keep in the glovebox of his car. Robert Greene told me he sometimes puts a copy of his manuscript in the trunk of his car just in case. I bought a fireproof gun safe and keep my stuff in therejust in case.

[*] My editor Niki Papadopoulos at Penguin: Its not what a book is. Its what a book does.

[*] While you are writing, read things totally unrelated to what youre writing. Youll be amazed at the totally unexpected connections youll make or strange things youll discover. As Shelby Foote put it in an interview with The Paris Review: I cant begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.

[*] Writing requires what Cal Newport calls deep workperiods of long, uninterrupted focus and creativity. If you dont give yourself enough of this time, your work suffers. He recommends recording your deep work time each dayso you actually know if youre budgeting properly.

[*] Software does not make you a better writer. Fuck Evernote. Fuck Scrivner. You dont need to get fancy. If classics were created with quill and ink, youll probably be fine with a Word Document. Or a blank piece of paper. Dont let technology distract you. As Joyce Carol Oates put it in an interview, Every writer has written by hand until relatively recent times. Writing is a consequence of thinking, planning, dreaming this is the process that results in writing, rather than the way in which the writing is recorded.

[*] Talk about the ideas in the work everywhere. Talk about the work itself nowhere. Dont be the person who tweets Im working on my novel. Be too busy writing for that. Helen Simpson has Faire et se taire from Flaubert on a Post-it near her desk, which she translates as Shut up and get on with it.

[*] Why cant you talk about the work? Its not because someone might steal it. Its because the validation you get on social media has a perverse effect. Youll less likely to put in the hard work to complete something that youve already been patted (or patted yourself) on the back for.

[*] When you find yourself stuck with writers block, pick up the phone and call someone smart and talk to them about whatever the specific area youre stuck with is. Not that youre stuck, but about the topic. By the time you put your phone down, youll have plenty to write. (As Seth Godin put it, nobody gets talkers block.)

[*] Keep a commonplace book with anecdotes, stories and quotes you can always usefrom inspiration to directly using in your writing. And these can be anything. H.L. Mencken for example, would methodically fill a notebook with incidents, recording scraps of dialogue and slang, columns from the New York Sun.

[*] As you write down quotes and observations in your commonplace book, make sure to do it by hand. As Raymond Chandler wrote, when you have to use your energy to put words down, you are more apt to make them count.

[*] Elizabeth Gilbert has a good trick for cutting: As you go along, Ask yourself if this sentence, paragraph, or chapter truly furthers the narrative. If not, chuck it. And as Stephen King famously put it, kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribblers heart, kill your darlings.

[*] Strenuous exercise everyday. For me, and for a lot of other writers, its running. Novelist Don DeLillo told The Paris Review how after writing for four hours, he goes running to shake off one world and enter another. Joyce Carol Oates, in her ode to running, said that the twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.

[*] Ask yourself these four questions from George Orwell: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? Then finish with these final two questions: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

[*] As a writer you need to make use of everything that happens around you and use it as material. Make use of Seinfelds question: Im never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, Can I do something with that?

[*] Airplanes with no wifi are a great place to write and even better for editing. Because there is nowhere to go and nothing else to do.

[*] Print and put a couple of important quotes up on the wall to help guide you (either generally, or for a specific project). Heres a quote from a scholar describing why Ciceros speeches were so effective which I put on my wall while I was writing my first book. At his best [Cicero] offered a sustained interest, a constant variety, a consummate blend of humour and pathos, of narrative and argument, of description and declamation; while every part is subordinated to the purpose of the whole, and combines, despite its intricacy of detail, to form a dramatic and coherent unit. (emphasis mine)

[*] Focus on what youre saying, worry less about how. As William March wrote in The Bad Seed, A great novelist with something to say has no concern with style or oddity of presentation.

[*] A little trick I came up with. After every day of work, I save my manuscript as a new file (for example: EgoIsTheEnemy2-26.docx) which is saved on my computer and in Dropbox (before Dropbox, I just emailed it to myself). This way I keep a running record of the evolution of book. It comforts me that I can always go back if I mess something up or if I have to turn back around.

[*] Famous ad-man David Ogilvy put it bluntly: Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

[*] Envision who you are writing this for. Like really picture them. Dont go off in a cave and do this solely for yourself. As Kurt Vonnegut put it in his interview with The Paris Review: …every successful creative person creates with an audience of one in mind. Thats the secret of artistic unity. Anybody can achieve it, if he or she will make something with only one person in mind.

[*] Do not chase exotic locations to do some writing. Budd Schulbergs novel The Disenchanted about his time with F. Scott Fitzgerald expresses the dangers well: It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. I have a perfectly marvelous house for you to write in, theyd say. Of course no one needs marvelous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

[*] True enough, though John Fante said that when you get stuck writing, hit the road.

[*] Commitments (at the micro-level) are important too. An article a week? An article a month? A book a year? A script every six weeks? Pick something, but commit to itpublicly or contractually. Quantity produces quality, as Ray Bradbury put it.

[*] Dont ever write anything you dont like yourself and if you do like it, dont take anyones advice about changing it. They just dont know. Raymond Chandler

[*] Neil Strauss and Tucker Max gave me another helpful iteration of that idea (which I later learned is from Neil Gaiman): When someone tells you something is wrong with your writing, theyre usually right. When they tell you how to fix it, theyre almost always wrong.

[*] Ogilvy had another good rule: Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

[*] Print out the work and edit it by hand as often as possible. It gives you the readers point of view.

[*] Hemingway advised fellow writer Thomas Wolfe to break off work when you ‘are going good.’Then you can rest easily and on the next day easily resume. Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Billions) has referred to this as stopping on wet edge. It staves off the despair the next day.

[*] Keep the momentum: Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether. Jeanette Winterson

That taps me out for now. But every time I read I compile a few more notecards. Ill update you when Ive got another round to share.

In the meantime, stop reading stuff on the internet and get back to writing!

But if you have a second…share your own tips below.

Read more: http://thoughtcatalog.com/

[princeyogurt]

Real Ghosts

Ghost stories seem to follow me wherever I go. I've heard a lot of them and I've been through a couple myself. Whenever I am getting ready to tell a few to a new listener I usually start with something I read in a book by Glen Grant. This is the jist of it... Why do we get chicken skin when we hear ghost stories? You tell a funny story, nothing. You talk about the traffic, nope. Perhaps you get a tickle here and there but never the same chill down your spine that you get from something scary. There is a good reason for this. It is said that whenever you tell a ghost story, nearby spirits will gather around to listen. The chill you feel is from their presence. As for many things when dealing with supernatural tales, you'll have to just take my word for the fact that I've had 'experiences'. But spend some time allowing me to explain how I was able to convince myself that these things actually happened and maybe you'll believe in my ghosts too: Friend: http://www.blumhouse.com/2017/03/20/this-footage-of-a-morgue-door-slamming-by-itself-is-the-creepiest-thing-youll-see-today/ I mean, chances are it's not real. But it's pretty rad. Me: Right around 1:08 the flashlight goes right over a fishing wire looking string in the hinge of the door. Otherwise, it's a cool story. If I had created this gag, the door and lights would have been less repetitive and more randomized. Also, I would have given them one good jump scare right when they got up close to it. Gotta bring it a little harder. Nice effort though. I am the last person that wants to discredit a good scare, but this one was rather obvious. I'd be happy to share a video that I believe to be genuine ghost footage if that sort of thing interests you... Friend: Yes pleassssse Me: https://youtu.be/g428ZB1KrgE It doesn't seem like much... but I have my reasons. Friend: Do tell Me: This is a clip from Syfy's 'Destination Truth'. I watched this show religiously. Not because it was any good. Let's just say it was on my queue. (I watched all the ghost shows.) I actually found the host to be a real jerk to people in other countries and seemed to be blatantly acting (poorly, at that) when reacting to "events". Total fake show, but a good time waster none the less. This episode (Season 2, episode 11) in Aokigahara Forest was different however. Aokigahara is a Japanese forest famous for people commiting suicide... a 'haunted forest' from the description. You've probably heard about it. If not, Vice did a good documentary on it. There is manga and movies related to the subject as well. Located under the shadow of Mt. Fuji, It is a well known and troubling fact that it is the second most popular location in the world to commit suicide. The first being The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. People go there, camp out for a few days and find a place to end their life. It is believed that the forest became morbidly romanticized as a suicide spot in a popular novel called 'Kuroi Jukai' (roughly translated: Black Sea of Trees) where two lovers commit joint suicide together. The forest is also infamous for being very easy to get lost in as the trees grow thick and twisted on an uneven landscape and it is a massive area. This is a genuinely creepy place. Here is a very informative article on the subject for your purusal... http://lifeforaforest.com/tag/kuroi-jukai/ Anyways, back to that ghost show. There is a scene where the host told the camera guy to stop filming just in case something too inappropriate for t.v. was found and he proceeded to go further into the area. Just prior to this moment, they had found an abandoned campsite containing some personal belongings including a wallet and some other effects. This is typically a bad sign because that means the occupant may have come there to die and had since left the area to do so. It also suggests that the caretakers of the forest haven't been to this spot to clean up the area. So at the time of filming, the crew were probably the first to discover this campsite. The host seemed to suspect these things but proceeded anyway. When he returned to the cameraman, the look of fear on his face was troubling. Sickly and ashen... totally at a loss for words. They didnt say what happened, or perhaps didn't have the heart to, but it seems to me that he saw the dead body of a recent suicide. This was the first time watching this show where I saw the host showing a genuine emotion. Besides further discrediting every other episode he ever did, it was very revealing and intriguing at the same time. They headed back immediately to their base camp seemingly ready to just be done filming for the night. The act was over. They were way out of their element. While all this was going on, one guy was left alone back at base camp. He had set up a ring of cameras in a clearing to get a view from all sides of himself in the center. I think this was in part because they knew they weren't alone in the forest, having encountered some college students with headlamps that were on an exploration to find dead people... for fun. So having cameras pointed in all directions while being by yourself must have given some comfort in a somewhat hazardous situation. He was already dead silent and bug-eyed with anxious attentiveness staring into his screens looking for any sign of movement... when he saw the ghost. As he captured that footage he looked paralyzed. He just gawked. Once again, genuine emotion... fear. The video clip I posted above begins when the host and crew are returning to the base camp. The host says it was freaky out there and the guy at base camp says he caught something weird on the camera. They all watch and watch it again. It is a white misty figure, as the video description says, that seems to rise up out of the ground and sit back down until it dissappears. I believe the cast were all genuinely shocked during this filming and that the footage is also genuine. I say this not because I am easily convinced of this sort of thing, because I am not, but because I have seen this same phenomenon with my own eyes. I usually would have simply brushed this off as a camera trick or fx... but watching this ghost on film reminded me of a personal experience. Upon my first viewing of this episode, I was just as terrified as the people on the show. It validated something I had partially written off as an over-active imagination. Something broke inside my head and made me say to myself, "It was real." Having this knowledge thrust upon myself was troubling. I will explain why this had me so shaken up and why anyone reading this should be wary, especially if you've had an experience similar to mine. (The video isn't the best quality so I highly recommend watching this from a dvd or a good stream, you can judge for yourself after you see it more clearly. But for now, hear me out.) Long before I watched this episode, I was working at a little coffee shop at 225 Bush St. in San Francisco. Since I worked there the location has gone through many different companies. However, there is still a coffee shop there in case you're in the area and wanting to see it for yourself. It was a very tall, beautiful, art deco style building which is a common thing in S.F. Besides having to walk through the empty foggy streets during the small hours of morning to open shop... the store itself wasn't that weird. The basement, however, was a bit ominous. This may not seem relevant, but I want to explain a little about the San Francisco underground as I have some random first-hand encounters with it. As far as I know, I have never met anyone really knowledgeable about the underground passages beneath the streets and old buildings. Having lived and worked there my whole life, you'd think someone would have broached the subject once or twice. Maybe the lack of knowledge is because a lot of buildings built after the big earthquake just walled up the entrances and the new tenants just never saw them. It's kind of an enigma to me and it makes me believe my experiences may be somewhat unique. My late cousin was always getting involved in these weird tech start-ups in the 90's when the internet was still experimental. These companies would buy out large historic warehouses, get them up to code, and set up shop for a few years. His endeavors were always way over my head, but getting to walk around these dingy time-capsules before construction had started was interesting. This one building in particular had a large lower level that stretched underneath the sidewalk. You could see people's feet passing overhead in the ceiling where these little glass circles were laid into the street above. Another level down was the basement. This is where it got strange. It looked like a normal creepy warehouse basement. Dusty, dead rats, poor lighting... etc. While I was fascinated by each illegible scrap of century old paper, my cousin didn't seem very interested in the museum of debris. He wanted to show me something the rest of the crew hadn't seen yet. We walked around a few dark corners and he flicked a lightswitch on inside an old storage closet. Behind some mildewy boxes was a hidden door that led into some weird underground tunnels. He said he hadn't gone inside but said it had been locked up for a long time and he was the only one with the key. Not knowing much about it, he had held off exploring it, at least until he had some good flashlights. You could tell he had thought a lot about it already. The entrance was covered by a ratty piece of wood with rusty hardware and was slanted at an odd angle. It had tiny, uneven steps leading downward. The inside was dark and the clay-like cement seemed like it was shaped by hand. I saw a path that just disappeared into nothing. As I pondered into the gloom, the worst feeling came over me. Where the rest of the building was just a bit old and dirty, this room was just menacing. I couldn't explain the bad feeling... it was an overwhelming dread. Eventually my cousin asked if I was interested in checking it out with him when he got more equipment. He seemed uncomfortable asking his co-workers and was anxious about going inside alone. I said it wasn't an ideal afternoon getaway and refused. He locked it back up and we went to lunch. I forgot all about that day until a decade or so later when I was on a date in the city. I was shopping with my lady for Christmas decorations at a fancy ornament store. A friend had told me about a nice cheese shop nearby and we walked over to check it out. It had been a long day of exploring the city, and we anticipated a bit of traffic on the ride home so I decided to ask about a restroom before going back to the car. An employee pointed me in the right direction... behind a curtain at the back of the store, down some stairs to the only door on the right. As I headed down, I was about to turn the knob into the bathroom when a dark sensation washed over me. All of a sudden it felt like someone had turned a furnace on full blast. There was no vents anywhere which meant it was just my nerves. Wondering what was causing me to have such a fearful reaction, my eyes became fixated on the path in front of me. The stairs kept going down at an odd angle past the bathroom door. I followed them out of pure curiosity about my fear. It was uncanny... the odd shaped doorway, the tiny stairs. It was an entrance to the underground. It had to be. Seeing this freaked me out badly for some reason. Everything was painted nicely and they probably just modified it to have a cold cellar for wine or whatever. But, hell... I couldn't wait to get out of there. It was a very, very freaky feeling. I left the store on wobbly legs. My lady was perplexed by my behavior but I couldn't shake off the anxiety until I was well away from the store. Once we were in the car I explained what I had seen and how it reminded me of the basement in my cousin's building. We both agreed it was a little strange but we both ultimately shrugged it off and headed home. In the past, I had been prone to panic attacks and would occasionally get an eerie feeling that someone was watching me when I was all alone. I had gotten very used to these events and had adapted myself to gain control of my emotions. I would also see shadows that looked like people. These would appear in places like inside windows and dark, cluttered areas, mainly just out of sight. A part of myself had learned to just ignore it and attributed them to day dreaming and anxieties. Just don't focus on it, I'd say to myself. I would not let my emotions overcome logical sense. It was normal. But, no matter how good I became at being able to just go about my day without paying attention to these things, they still persisted. If any of this seems like something you've also experienced... please pay attention. So, at the coffee shop on Bush st. I was the opening manager. While the barista prepared coffee and pastries, I did the inventory and grabbed supplies for the rest of the day. This place was small, no office, no equipment room. Therefore, all the supplies were stored in the basement. The only way to access the basement was with the freight elevator. I'd have to ask the security guard to buzz me down and he would just silently regard me with a curt, brooding nod... and off I went. For some awful reason, every damn time, the elevator had to first go up one floor and then proceed two floors down in order to get to the basement. To this day I still think it was just the security guard having a bit of fun at my expense. Pressing an extra button out of boredom, sending me to the 2nd floor... what a goof. But then again, maybe the elevator was just wired funny. Perhaps he always pressed the right button, but it just did what it wanted to. That explanation makes me think that his somber nod was more out of concern than out of complacency. Remember, this was usually around 5am, the world was still dark and the 2nd floor was darker. Every time the elevator door opened onto that stagnant, unoccupied hallway, it felt like an infinity before the door would close again. My panic sense always perked up in those moments. In my head, over and over again, I imagined a pale corpse-like hand catching open the door at the last second, bringing me face to face with unknown horrors. Trapped and insane with fright, the unnaturally elongated arm approached... This obviously never happened, but you see how an overactive imagination works now? Happy thoughts, right? When finally proceeding to the basement, I was usually laughing at myself. The basement, which was very clean and well furnished if not a little plain, opened up to a small U-shaped room that attached to an open hallway. From there it split off for about 100 ft. in both directions. It was dimly lit only from the glowing exit signs near the elevator. This left deep stationary shadows at either end of the long halls. In order to get to the storage area I had to walk about 25 ft. into the dark hallway and turn left into an unlit room which served as an employee area: large kitchen area, locker room and some storage closets. Once I flicked on the light in that room, the gloom dissipated and I could finally see where I was going. At some point in the future, I would love to tell you how that manual light switch would randomly fail as I took a few steps into the employee lounge, thrusting me once again into complete darkness. And about the little black figure with long hair that poked it's head out from the locker room doorway and stared at me while trying to unlock the storage room. But, so many stories... so little time. What really bothered me was that first long hallway I had to walk down. Whenever I walked into that hallway I felt that someone was there with me. A real 'eyes on your back' tingling feeling. Absolutely no one was in the building at this hour, but nonetheless, I had a vivid, lurking presence of eyes watching me intently. Having a little experience with this sort of feeling and trying to stay rational, I surmised that I could have easily just been freaking myself out. I am a decent skeptic. The qualities of a good skeptic when dealing with the unknown require that they will always question and seek out the truth, while never, ever discounting the possibility of something actually being paranormal. In other words, stay open-minded but don't blindly believe either. If you maintain this mentality, the truth has a way of letting itself be known to you. As I had trained myself to do over the years, I made a conscious decision to not look directly at the spot where the feeling was coming from. I did this for weeks. Until one day... curiosity got the best of me. I couldn't shake the possibility that something ghostly was actually staring at me from the end of the shadowy hallway. It was an instinctual feeling... a survival mechanism. Every morning when I passed it to grab supplies, it nagged at me. This particular morning, I was feeling a bit brave. I just casually decided to poke at the unknown and see what I would see. So... I paused. Standing dead still, I slowly craned my head upward and looked into that shadowy corner... ...and it looked back at me. Huddled in that corner was just a simple shadow. A shadow I had seen dozens of times. I knew it's shape and it's hue. But as I stared, something primal clicked inside of me, I felt it acknowledge me. Then it moved. I stood perplexed as the huddled mass rose into a small, vaguely human figure... then a tall dark figure... then a dark figure towering all the way up to the ceiling. Fear. Just fear. I don't remember walking to the elevator doors, I only remember mashing the buttons and praying that door would close as fast as possible. My ears rang and my heart struggled to keep up with my breathing. I imagined that the door would open to the same floor over and over again. I felt the shadowy thing growing larger and larger as it came down the hall. It was beyond terrifying. The elevator worked optimally, at least my body pressed the right buttons at the right time whether or not I remembered pressing anything at the time. I emerged out of the ghastly vacuous unknown and back into the real world. Once back in the store I told my co-worker that we didn't need any cups today, but if he wanted to go get some then he was on his own. I gave him my key. I got over the incident rather quickly. Like I said before, I wasn't wholly convinced I had actually seen anything until watching that episode. The white figure in Aokigahara Forest could have been a carbon copy of my ghost. That is why I knew it was a real ghost. I tried to avoid the storage room until there were people around and the lights were turned on. I never looked into that corner again though. Months later the store got shut down for district-wide downsizing. On the last day my manager (now my close friend) told me the store was haunted. I had never told him of the wierd things that I had seen prior to that point. I almost slapped him for not telling me sooner but he explained that he didn't want to scare me, having lost employees in the past due to strange events. I got him to tell me everything. Before I started working there, his now girlfriend and another girl were closing the store. After setting the alarm, they stepped out in front of the large store windows to chat. When they glanced inside the store, a man was standing behind the cash register smiling at them. They were rightfully creeped out and called the cops. With police escort they re-entered the store. The alarm was still engaged and there was no one inside. The cameras didn't show anything either. They found nothing. The girlfriend changed stores soon after that and the other girl quit the next day. There was also the guy who's position I took over. He was eating his lunch in the employee lounge when a soda can rolled to his feet from the locker room when he was eating lunch. He figured it just rolled off of a shelf back there and he dutifully put it back on the shelf and returned to his meal. A few minutes later, the can quietly rolled back to his foot. He ended his lunch early and eventually ended his employment. My boss said that he had a similar thing happen to him in the break room. He was sensitive to spiritual things but didn't want to be, which is one of the main reasons I believe him. He also had had the lights turn off on him randomly. At that point I told him about my experiences. We became fast friends after that. This experience opened my eyes and taught me to trust my instincts. The subconscious is a powerful tool that helps you decide things without you realizing it. It can save your life. I have since recounted all of the times I had been brushed by the supernatural and found validity over and over again. I cannot with certainty convince myself otherwise anymore. This is just one story of mine. I can only imagine what awful thing lived in the tunnels my cousin found. He never spoke of it again to me. But I know he must have gone down there... This is my warning to you... Believe or don't believe, but if you have no intention on coming face to face with the unknown... please do not look outside of your peripheral vision. Do not focus in on the spot that the feeling is coming from. But if you do... if curiosity overcomes you... perhaps you'll have your own ghost story to tell. And I'll be waiting to listen to them. Be safe out there in the unknown good friends.