It was the night of October 31st, not late enough for midnight spirits, but late enough for the city to feel abandoned—around 10:45 PM. I was waiting for the subway on the uptown platform. The station was nearly deserted, just the screech of the occasional phantom train in the tunnels and the hiss of the old fluorescent lights.
A few yards down the platform, a man sat on one of the benches. He wasn't dressed up; he wore a plain, dark overcoat, and he was staring intently at the tracks. Nothing odd about that, except for one detail that immediately made the hairs on my neck prickle: he was wearing massive, over-the-ear headphones, but the music coming from them was clearly audible.
It wasn't rock or pop; it was a recording of a crowd screaming.
It was a full, panicked, throbbing sound—hundreds of voices, raw with terror. It faded in and out with the rhythm of some internal loop, but it was impossible to ignore in the silence of the station.
I pulled out my phone, pretending to be busy, but my eyes kept flicking back to him. He was completely still, his hands resting on his knees, just listening to the terror in his ears. He wasn't swaying, tapping his foot, or reacting in any way. He was simply absorbing the sound.
When the train finally rumbled into the station, the doors opened right in front of him. I decided to walk to the next car down, just to keep distance.
As I walked past, his train car opened, and I instinctively glanced at the seat where he was about to sit. That's when I saw something horrifyingly small and disturbing on the seat, which the man, still staring blankly ahead, didn't seem to notice.
It was a child’s sock—a bright red one with a small, embroidered smiling pumpkin face. It was completely pristine, not a speck of subway grime on it, as if it had just been placed there.
The man stepped onto the train, still immersed in his headphones and the dreadful, screaming loop. He sat down directly over the red sock without a second look.
I quickly entered the next car. My heart was pounding, and the image of the silent man, the loud, panicked screams, and that tiny, unsettling sock fused into a perfect moment of raw dread.
Who was he? Why was he listening to that? And why was that sock there?
I glanced through the window separating the cars. The man remained exactly as he was, staring forward, the faint, sickening sound of the screaming still barely audible even over the train noise.
And then, as the train pulled away from the station and into the black tunnel, the man slowly reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a second sock—identical to the first. He slowly, deliberately, and with an entirely blank expression, slipped it onto his right hand like a grotesque puppet and rested his hand back on his knee.
He never looked up. He never looked at me. He just sat there, facing forward, one tiny red pumpkin sock puppet on his hand, listening to the screams.
I got off at the very next stop and hailed an expensive cab home, choosing to wait out the rest of the night on a well-lit corner. The horror wasn't the supernatural, but the cold, inexplicable feeling that I had just witnessed a moment of pure, private madness that had been quietly dropped into the middle of my everyday life.
Happy Halloween 👻 👻 👻 👻 🎃 🎃
Stake id: vembo
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