Late at night, I discovered a phone half-buried in the woods. The screen was cracked, the case was wet with mud… but the red light was still blinking. Curiosity made me press play, and what I saw inside that recording has haunted me ever since.
Welcome to Bleak Veil, a channel created for those who crave terrifying stories and chilling narrations. Here you’ll find:
Creepy first-person horror stories
Dark, immersive narrations that feel too real
Original creepypasta-style tales
Atmospheric storytelling designed to keep you awake at night
This story is not just about a phone… it’s about what happens after you touch it.
⚠️ Best experienced at night, with headphones on.
What would you do if you found a phone still recording in the woods? Would you press play, or leave it behind? Share your answer in the comments — I want to know.
Follow Bleak Veil for more stories that haunt the night.
#horrorstories #scarystory #creepypasta #horrornarration #scary woods #hauntedphone #3amhorror #truescarystory#BleakVeilhorror #foundphonestory
Welcome to Bleak Veil, a channel created for those who crave terrifying stories and chilling narrations. Here you’ll find:
Creepy first-person horror stories
Dark, immersive narrations that feel too real
Original creepypasta-style tales
Atmospheric storytelling designed to keep you awake at night
This story is not just about a phone… it’s about what happens after you touch it.
⚠️ Best experienced at night, with headphones on.
What would you do if you found a phone still recording in the woods? Would you press play, or leave it behind? Share your answer in the comments — I want to know.
Follow Bleak Veil for more stories that haunt the night.
#horrorstories #scarystory #creepypasta #horrornarration #scary woods #hauntedphone #3amhorror #truescarystory#BleakVeilhorror #foundphonestory
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00If I had left that phone where I found it, maybe I'd still sleep straight through until morning.
00:06Maybe the corners of my room wouldn't murmur when the clock hits three.
00:11But I didn't leave it.
00:12It was half buried in damp leaves just off the trail near my house, the one I walk when my head is a mess.
00:20The sky was bleeding out torrent, leaking into violet head.
00:24Under the canopy, it was already evening.
00:26It's the kind that smothers sound and swallows color whole.
00:30I'd gone out to quiet the noise in my life.
00:34Bill's, a boss who emails at midnight, a heart that stutters for no medical reason.
00:40The woods were supposed to be the place where things stopped touching me.
00:44At first, I thought the phone was trash, cracked, mudslick, its case gouged by rock or teeth.
00:52I nudged it with my boot, already forming the sentence I'd tell myself later, you.
00:58Didn't really see it.
01:00Then something winked in the dirt.
01:02Blink.
01:03Blink.
01:04A red dot.
01:05Recording dot phones.
01:06Don't keep recording like that.
01:08Not when they're waterlogged and abandoned and blind.
01:12The thought came with a cold, practical clarity.
01:16Walk away.
01:16But curiosity is a blade with two edges, and I've always been the idiot who tests how sharp
01:23it is.
01:25I crouched, wiped a clean stripe into the screen with my thumb, and it came awake.
01:31One file.
01:32Timestamped less than three hours earlier.
01:35If I had any sense, I would have set it back into the leaves and scuffed it deeper.
01:40Instead, I tapped play.
01:42The video opened on panic.
01:45The camera jolted.
01:46Trees smeared into gray ribs.
01:49The ground lunging up and away.
01:51Boots thrashing across wet earth.
01:54Whoever held the phone was running hard.
01:56The mic gulped air in raw animal gasps.
02:00For a time, it was only vertical in breath.
02:03Then the filmer spoke.
02:05Voice cracked and thin.
02:07If you find this, run.
02:09They tripped.
02:10The picture, pitched into a slurry of leaves, a socked foot, a gulp of sky.
02:17The frame lay on its side.
02:19The world now a crooked horizon trunk.
02:22Leaf.
02:23Darkness.
02:24Then came a sound that didn't belong to the runner-dot footsteps.
02:28Not frantic.
02:29Not light.
02:30Something heavier.
02:32Each step, deliberate.
02:33It's measured.
02:35Coming closer.
02:36Please, the voice whispered.
02:38Off chimera.
02:39Small and scraped.
02:41Please, don't.
02:42Static.
02:43Chewed the frame to bone.
02:45I replayed the last seconds.
02:47Leaning closer.
02:48As if proximity could pull detail out of the blur.
02:52The footsteps seemed wrong on the video too close to present.
02:57When I pulled off my earbud, the sound didn't stop.
03:01Was standing where the video had ended.
03:03The same scalloped roots.
03:06The same elk print in the mud.
03:08The same deadfall with bark peeled like a scab.
03:13The realization slid into my stomach like a cold key turning in the wrong lock.
03:18I should have left.
03:19Instead, I scanned the direction the runner had fled and stepped.
03:24Into it.
03:25The woods felt recently disturbed.
03:28Little branches had snapped low.
03:30Not the way deer browse, but like elbows had smashed through.
03:34The mud wore a confusion of prints.
03:37A small boot treading over itself.
03:39Sliding.
03:41Something broader that didn't.
03:43Sink as deep.
03:45Every sound I made sounded borrowed.
03:47Like it belonged to someone else in front of me.
03:50And I was only echoing them.
03:52Then everything stopped.
03:53The wind.
03:54The midges.
03:55Even the small click of my jaw when I swallow.
03:59Silence pressed at me.
04:01The kind that builds pressure in your ears until you hear your own bloodstream.
04:07Something metallic hung in the air of faint temps.
04:10Like wires stressed to a hum.
04:13A head.
04:14A sleeve snagged on a thorn.
04:16The cuff torn and damp.
04:19A little farther.
04:20A backpack canted on its side.
04:22One strap snapped.
04:24Zipper teeth full of mud.
04:26I crouched and pawed gently through it.
04:28Papers smeared.
04:30A flashlight that pulsed once and died.
04:34A gum wrapper folded around nothing.
04:37Not staged.
04:38Dropped my phone buzzed in my pocket.
04:41I don't get service out there.
04:43No one does.
04:45The screen lit anyway.
04:46Unknown number.
04:48Keep going.
04:48The words sat very calmly where words belong.
04:52Black on white.
04:53Like they were rational.
04:55The rational thing would have been laughing a glitch.
04:58A delayed text.
04:59A pocket send from earlier.
05:01But my hand shook and the text waited like it had always been there.
05:06Like it had always been meant for me.
05:08I locked the screen and told myself a collection of friendly lies.
05:13I kept walking.
05:13The first claw marks appeared on a birch.
05:17Three deep cuts.
05:18Perfectly parallel.
05:20Not ragged.
05:21Not the errant art of an animal.
05:24They were too straight, deliberate as tally marks.
05:27The sap ran clear and sticky.
05:31When my knuckle brushed it, a sweet scent rose like bruised grass and sugar rotting.
05:36I wiped my hand against my jeans and it left a tacky trail that caught the light like a smear of stars.
05:45The quality of the dark changed.
05:47It became textured, full of pockets that watched.
05:51Lot of kinds of black you don't see in city shadows.
05:54Dense.
05:55Purposeful.
05:56I lifted my cheap flashlight.
05:58The beam jittering.
06:00Between the trunks, I saw the suggestion of angles that didn't.
06:04Belong in forests.
06:05A corner.
06:07The line too straight to be made by time.
06:10A laugh rippled through the trees.
06:13Not loud.
06:14Not even playful.
06:15Little test laugh.
06:17Like someone had wondered whether the sound would carry.
06:21The found phone in my other hand.
06:23Vibrated.
06:24Without me touching anything, a new video began to play.
06:28The filmer's breath shredded the soundscape.
06:31Words hitching.
06:32He's behind me.
06:33God.
06:34He won't stop.
06:36The camera whipped around.
06:38For a fraction.
06:39The beam caught something in its edge.
06:41A figure.
06:42Too tall.
06:43Ked cocked to a painful angle.
06:45As if listening for something underground.
06:49Limbs.
06:49Not where limbs should end.
06:51Then the scream ripped the air high with surprise and furious with effort and static.
06:56Eight.
06:57It whole.
06:58I lowered the phone.
07:00The hollow eyes stood in the dip of mud.
07:02The halo of fallen leaves.
07:04The two stones like asleep animals was the hollow.
07:08On the screen.
07:08The path behind me looked dimmer.
07:11Like the trees had closed the ribs of themselves over it.
07:15The path ahead narrowed to the idea of a path.
07:19My phone buzzed again.
07:20Calm.
07:21Patient.
07:22Unknown number.
07:23Keep watching.
07:24I moved because standing.
07:26Felt like volunteering.
07:28A jacket lay further on.
07:30Mud soaked and heavy.
07:32Broken glasses slumped in the dirt.
07:34One arm bent hard.
07:36Back like a wing.
07:38No blood.
07:39No body.
07:40I told myself the person had escaped.
07:43People drop things when they don't want to die.
07:46Touched the lens.
07:48Gentle.
07:49It cracked like thin ice.
07:51A little line racing.
07:53K.
07:53And there went the promise I'd made three seconds earlier not to touch anything else.
07:59Another video launched on its own.
08:02The filmer sobbed between prayers.
08:04The name of someone's god.
08:06Rated with ugly breath.
08:08Stand a voice that wasn't theirs.
08:11Slid through the speakers.
08:13A low conversational tone you use when you don't want to wake someone.
08:17You shouldn't.
08:19Be here.
08:20I dropped the phone.
08:21Thumped into leaves and rolled to show me my own shin.
08:25My boot.
08:26The white of my fingers.
08:27The same sentence breathed into the air behind my ear at the exact same time.
08:33I felt it graze the delicate hairs there.
08:36As if sound had weight.
08:38As if words had lips.
08:40My phone buzzed.
08:41Unknown number.
08:43Look up.
08:43I lifted my light to the nearest tree.
08:45The bark had been worked by a sharp thing.
08:49Not a knife.
08:50Something that didn't.
08:52Mind tearing a little.
08:54My name was there.
08:55Letters furrowed deep.
08:57Not old.
08:59Fresh enough that sap was glassing in the grooves.
09:01You never feel how long your name is until it's carved into something that can't love you back.
09:07On the found phone.
09:08New folder.
09:09Blinked into being.
09:11After it shouldn't have been there a second.
09:13Ago.
09:14But it sat like it always had.
09:16Quietly confident.
09:18Inside were clips with time stamps.
09:21A few minutes ahead of now three.
09:23Seven.
09:24Twelve minutes into my future.
09:26My throat made a sound it usually doesn't.
09:28A kind of dry click that didn't feel like it came from a human throat.
09:33I opened the first clip.
09:35The angle was impossible.
09:37It showed Mimi standing under that carved tree.
09:40Fingers tracing fresh.
09:42Grooves that wept sap.
09:44My breath fogged in little ghosts.
09:47My mouth moved.
09:48Saying something I couldn't hear.
09:50The me in the video looked up and pivoted.
09:53Like glancing off the wet bark.
09:55And I saw the exact way my shoulder lifts.
09:58When I'm about to do something reckless.
10:01The clip ended on my hand.
10:03Fingers trembling.
10:05I watched my own tremor.
10:07The second.
10:08File loaded itself.
10:10I ran in it.
10:11Branch whips stinging my face.
10:13Flashlight ripping spastic circles on trunks.
10:17My voice came out high and breathless.
10:19An ugly sound I didn't recognize.
10:22As mine.
10:22Because I'd never heard it in a throat before.
10:25Don't pick it up.
10:27I begged.
10:28Begged myself.
10:29Don't.
10:30The picture died between syllables.
10:32The third.
10:33Clip began without asking me.
10:36I watched my hand my hand.
10:38But wearing the jacket I threw out months ago for smelling like bonfire and damps at the phone.
10:43Carefully into the leaves.
10:45Gentle.
10:46Intentional.
10:47It adjusted the angle as if composing.
10:50Something.
10:51Then the frame held steady on the path.
10:54A few seconds later.
10:55Present tense me walked into the shot.
10:58I stared at my own back.
10:59I tilted a little to the right as I walked.
11:02Same as I always do because my left knee sticks sometimes.
11:05The clip ended with a whisper half mind.
11:08Half not.
11:09He always looks.
11:11It wasn't hunting me.
11:13It was keeping time.
11:14The idea arrived whole.
11:16Like a bell rung inside bone.
11:19The tally marks.
11:20The text messages that already knew when to arrive.
11:24The folder.
11:25Named for what comes next.
11:26The red blink keeping pace with my pulse.
11:30A metronome that didn't count music.
11:33Something cold and utterly patient stood behind me.
11:37Or above me.
11:38Or inside the idea of me.
11:41I didn't turn.
11:43I felt fingers too many.
11:44Or too few.
11:45Or arranged wrong set themselves on my shoulder the way.
11:49You'd pause a friend to tell them a joke.
11:52Every muscle in my face smiled without me.
11:54I don't know how I got home.
11:57That's not a figure of speech.
11:59I mean there are frames missing from the film of that evening.
12:03A smear where minutes should be.
12:06I have flashes.
12:07The taste of sap on my tongue.
12:10Mud shocked cold between my fingers.
12:13The sensation that my legs were moving and I had been uninvited.
12:17From the decision.
12:18Then I was at my desk.
12:20My lamp made a lemon shaped puddle of light.
12:23The found phone lay in that circle like a small animal pretending to be asleep.
12:29Blank.
12:30Empty.
12:31No files.
12:32No folders.
12:33Its cracked screen reflected the lamp like a coin at the bottom of a shallow well.
12:38In the middle of the black.
12:39A red dot.
12:40Blinked.
12:41It.
12:42Blinked.
12:43And blinked.
12:44And blinked.
12:44I slept poorly and woke at 3 a.m.
12:47To the soft sound of recording.
12:49Not my phone's company chime.
12:51Not a glitch.
12:52Sound like breath on glass.
12:55I unlocked it and there were no notifications.
12:59But when I set it on the nightstand and turned off the lamp, the red light winked twice and
13:04held as if it had finally made eye contact.
13:08The next night.
13:09The same.
13:103 o'clock.
13:11Precisely.
13:12Red.
13:13Red.
13:14Red.
13:14Red.
13:15Sometimes it plays by itself.
13:17I'll be brushing my teeth and my bedroom will make the small, dry cough of a video beginning.
13:23I'll run in and find the phone lying belly up on my blanket.
13:27Blank screen.
13:28Patient.
13:29Dot.
13:30My name will breathe from the dark as if someone in the house has a mouth full of it.
13:35The text continued.
13:36No number.
13:37No thread history.
13:39Always at the edge of service.
13:41A bar that comes and goes like a cat.
13:44They arrive like a hand placed calmly on the back of my neck.
13:48Unknown number.
13:49Don't be late.
13:51Unknown number.
13:52We start at 3.
13:53Unknown number.
13:54He always looks.
13:56One night I made the mistake of answering.
13:59Who are you?
14:00I typed with my thumb arched so I could throw the phone if it bit me.
14:04The bubble turned blue.
14:07The dots came quick.
14:08Unknown number.
14:09We are what happens after.
14:12I shut the phone off.
14:13It turned itself back on.
14:15I took the same out.
14:17The texts kept arriving.
14:19Got to think in the freezer because that's a folk trick people tell each other in.
14:24The break room when they run out of real advice.
14:27It beeped after midnight.
14:29Muffled by frozen peas.
14:31Perhaps this sounds like a subtle haunting.
14:33A low boil that could be ignored if you were busy or mean or brave.
14:39I was not brave.
14:41It.
14:42I was precise.
14:44I began to log things.
14:45Because that's the religion of people who can't stop anything but want to pretend they can.
14:50On Tuesday, the dot blinked in a pattern.
14:54Long.
14:54Short.
14:55Short.
14:56On Wednesday, the after folder came back for ten minutes.
15:00When I tapped, it opened two files named with dates that haven't come yet.
15:05On Thursday, I woke with dirt under my nails and a smear of sap on my wrist.
15:10Sweet as fruit.
15:11Gone sour.
15:12On Friday, 2.59 a.m., the red light turned steady and held.
15:19It held for a full minute without blinking.
15:22When the minute turned, the dot resumed.
15:25Its polite beat.
15:26The exactness felt like a demonstration.
15:30A lesson a teacher shows you once, so you know there's a test.
15:34I told myself stories.
15:35It's an elaborate prank.
15:37A glitch.
15:38A sleep disorder.
15:39A grief.
15:40I don't have the language to admit.
15:42Then, the phone began to show me places I hadn't gone yet.
15:46I was washing dishes when a thumbnail appeared and slid aside on its own.
15:50No hands on the glass.
15:52Just a new thing acting like it had always been there.
15:56The file was named with my address.
15:59In eight digits, side my living room from the angle of the ceiling corner.
16:03Me, asleep on the couch, jaw slack.
16:07One hand flung out, looking ugly and human.
16:10The time stamp was three hours in the future.
16:13I sat at the table and waited with the lights on.
16:16When the time arrived, I fell asleep on the couch, in the shape of the man in the clip.
16:22It wasn't dramatic.
16:24No whisper commanded me.
16:26No feeling crept.
16:28Tired, touched me, and I slept.
16:30A few minutes later, the video on my phone played without my finger.
16:35It matched perfectly.
16:36The glass showed me from the ceiling corner.
16:39My mouth did what my mouth had done.
16:41Later, in the shower, the part of the day, we forgive ourselves for thinking we have the comforting thought that our habits make us safe.
16:51The phone disabused me of that.
16:53It made me a habit.
16:55It broke me down into prediction.
16:58It kept time the way a butcher keeps weight.
17:01I tried to give it away.
17:03I left it on a bus bench, red eye peering up at the guttered afternoon.
17:08I watched from, across the street, from behind an ad for mattresses, as a teenager lifted it, smirked, pocketed it.
17:18Relief hit like sugar.
17:20Then my own pocket buzzed.
17:22The phone was where my wallet should have been.
17:25The bench lay empty.
17:27Across the street, a boy stared at his empty hand, like he'd dreamed a thing, and woke mid-dash grasp.
17:34I tried to smash it.
17:35I rolled a towel around it and hit it with a hammer so my downstairs neighbor wouldn't be scared.
17:41The towel split.
17:43The screen, spider-webbed.
17:45The dot blinked.
17:46When I unrolled the towel, the cracks were gone.
17:50There were no scratches on the glass.
17:52There was a wet leaf stuck in the charging port, as if it had spent the day sleeping in damp earth.
17:58I asked the question people, eventually asked when they've tried everything that pretends to be an answer.
18:05What do you want?
18:07The phone did not respond with text.
18:09Responded with timing.
18:112.57 a.m.
18:13A long buzz.
18:152.58 a.m.
18:162.
18:172.59 a.m.
18:183.
18:193 a.m.
18:20The red dot held steady, bright as a small wound.
18:25The room pressed in.
18:26The air took on the weight of a waiting thing.
18:29I thought of the woods, the carved birch, the sap that glittered like a street scene through rain.
18:36I did not want to go back.
18:38Want did not enter into it.
18:40My front door, latched and deadbolted, opened with the sound of a tongue pulling free of a tooth.
18:46The hall beyond was dark in the way a place is dark when it's been dark a long time.
18:52My phone lit and pipped a little.
18:55Notification beep.
18:57No text appeared.
18:58The found phone's camera app opened by itself.
19:02The screen showed my hallway and a sliver of streetlight on the floor.
19:06The phone twisted in my palm the way a small animal finds its comfortable position in your hand.
19:12It began to record.
19:13I know how this sounds as if I'm bending my own fear into mythology because it's easier to share a story than a diagnosis.
19:23Believe what helps you sleep and you'll be right for you.
19:27I only have the thing that looks like a truth in the morning light.
19:31The phone is less a device than a habit you can hold.
19:34It counts.
19:36It makes copies.
19:37Keeps time like a shepherd keeps a flock.
19:40Nudging.
19:40Bounding.
19:41Peering at the edge of vision to convince the sheep they chose the meadow.
19:45I stood in my doorway and felt that polite hand again.
19:49Stopping me as if to tell a joke.
19:51I smiled with my teeth.
19:54The hallway smelled like wet leaves and the electric smell of something about to fail.
19:58It was around then that I realized the tally marks on the birch weren't just marks.
20:04Three lines.
20:063 a.m.
20:07Teaching me.
20:08To be on time.
20:10What does it want?
20:11It wants the thing after you.
20:13The version of you that fits the metronome.
20:16The one that always looks.
20:18Weeks have gone by and I have learned some small rules that behave like safety until they aren't.
20:24If I pretend not to hear the video start, a tea plays softer.
20:29If I set my own phone face down at night, the red light reflects in the wood like it prefers to watch something.
20:35If I talk to it like it's an old friend passing through town, nothing heavy.
20:40Just weather and work the techs come later.
20:43And I get an extra hour of the kind of sleep that doesn't bruise you.
20:47Last night though, it changed.
20:50The after.
20:51Folder opened at 2.56 a.m.
20:54Inside, one file.
20:56No name.
20:56Just a single period.
20:59The thumbnail was black.
21:01Pressed it.
21:01Because, of course I did.
21:03The video was my bedroom in the present.
21:06No jump ahead.
21:07No gift of prophecy.
21:09No grace, period.
21:10The camera pointed at me.
21:13I lay on my side.
21:14Phone glowing in my hand.
21:16Watching myself.
21:17Watch myself.
21:18Okay.
21:19I raised my hand in the video a fraction of a second.
21:23Before I raised it in bed.
21:25Delay collapsed.
21:27The metronome had stopped counting ahead.
21:30Tia began to count.
21:31With.
21:32If you've never watched your own present tense be predicted, you don't know the shape of that terror.
21:38It's small.
21:39It fits in your teeth.
21:40It makes you careful with even the smallest movements, like lifting your own eyelids.
21:46And I'm telling.
21:47You all this because it feels like the last thing I get to decide.
21:50If you ever find a phone in the woods, especially if it's cracked and wet and blinking, leave it where it lies.
21:58Don't pick it up.
21:59Don't press play.
22:01It isn't a person asking for help.
22:04It's the idea of you learning your rhythm, measuring until you fit.
22:09The second your finger touches that glass, knows your name in the way a clock knows noon.
22:15There are people who will say they'd be smarter than me.
22:17That they'd turn and walk and never look back.
22:21Maybe you would.
22:22Shh.
22:22Maybe you won't hear your name.
22:25Breathe like a gift in the dark.
22:27Or feel a hand on your shoulder that asks for nothing and takes time.
22:31Maybe you'll be the one who doesn't look dot.
22:34So tell me honestly, what would you have done?
22:37Would you have left it in the leaves?
22:39Or would you have watched the video?
22:41Tell me, what would you have done?
22:43Drop your answer in the comments.
22:45And if you want more horror stories every week, subscribe to Bleak Vale.
22:50Until next time, check your phone.
22:53You never know who's holding the camera.
22:55You never know who's holding the camera.
22:55You never know who's holding the camera.
22:56You never know who's holding the camera.
22:56You never know who's holding the camera.
22:57You never know who's holding the camera.
22:58You never know who's holding the camera.
22:59You never know who's holding the camera.
23:00You never know who's holding the camera.
23:01You never know who's holding the camera.
23:02You never know who's holding the camera.
23:03You never know who's holding the camera.
23:04You never know who's holding the camera.
23:05You never know who's holding the camera.
23:06You never know who's holding the camera.
23:07You never know who's holding the camera.
23:08You never know who's holding the camera.
23:09You never know who's holding the camera.
23:10You never know who's holding the camera.
23:11You never know who's holding the camera.
23:12You never know who's holding the camera.
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