The Dead Grandmother

An American family are off on holiday; they're driving across the country: the mother, the father, the kids and the grandma. However, not long after they set off, the grandma succumbs to a heart attack and dies. She was pretty old, and they've been expecting it for a long time, so none of them are particularly shocked. It is inconvenient, however, as they're away from home, and don't know how to go about getting her buried in the state where they are. Instead, they decide to take her back home in the car, and bury her there.

The problem is, rigor mortis has already set in, and as such they can't fit her inside the vehicle with the rest of them. To get around this, they wrap her in a sheet and tie her to the top of the vehicle. Stuck up there, she looks like just another bundle, and they're satisfied that she won't be a problem. They all pile into the car and set off home.

A few hours later they stop at a service station and go inside to get some food. When they emerge, their car is gone. They search the car park, but it's nowhere to be found. They contact the service station security guard, and he lets them review the CCTV footage. They gather around and watch as a couple of guys in hooded tops saunter up to their car, slip the lock, clamber inside and drive off, without even realising that the corpse of the dead grandma is strapped to the roof.

The Abandoned Hospital

A small group of workmen have been assigned to clear out an empty hospital in the bad part of town. They're working in small groups, one in each part of the building. The men in the ward building are breaking down old pieces of furniture and carting out piles of trash. The hospital's been shut down for years, and the inside's pretty disgusting. There's dirt and dust and needles everywhere, not to mention rats the size of dogs.

About midday, the men break for lunch--all but one of them. His co-workers can't find him; he must have wandered off. They break for lunch anyway, call his mobile a couple of times (with no success), and decide to wait for him to turn up.

Towards the end of the lunch break, he does. He's behaving strangely though. His hard hat is pulled down over his face, his coat collar turned up. He doesn't stop to talk to his colleagues, but keeps his head down and heads quickly for the gate. His friends try to stop, to find out what might have happened inside the hospital, but he pushes past them and is gone.

It's puzzling, but they have a job to do. The workmen head back into the building and carry on with the clearing out. A few hours go by, and they've almost forgotten about their workmates strange behaviour. Then it happens. The foreman is checking ahead through the empty wards. Shining his torch into a dusty corner, he comes across a dead body. It's the man who they all saw leave the site earlier that day. Or the man who they all THOUGHT they saw leave.

The body is lying there on the floor. He's been stabbed, and his clothes have been taken. Whoever it was who went running away from the hospital earlier that day, it clearly wasn't him. 

The Halloween Hangman

It's Halloween, and some teenagers are out trick-or-treating. All in costume, they're hitting a couple of neighbourhoods, driving in between in a borrowed car. As they're heading down the highway, they pass by a lonely-looking farm. Strung up from the sign at the intersection leading to the farmhouse there's something that looks like a scarecrow. It's some kind of Halloween decoration: a hanged man. The teenagers stop in the road to take a few pictures with their mobile phones, then speed on towards their next target neighbourhood.

But a few weeks later, as they happen to be passing the junction again on a night out, they notice that the hangman decoration is still there. There're even a couple of crows perched on its shoulders, picking away. They stop and climb out of the car. One of the boys goes to take a closer look. He doesn't have to get too close to see that it's no decoration, but instead a real, rotting corpse, stung up from the sign like the victim of a lynch mob. The stench is terrible.

It turns out that the man had killed himself on the week of Halloween. He'd lived alone in the farmhouse, and so nobody had missed him when he went. Just like the kids in their car, everybody who passed him by thought that he was a Halloween decoration, and so he hung there, quietly decomposing for weeks and weeks and weeks.

The Roommate

A couple of girls are rooming together in the dorms at university. One night the quieter of the two girls decides to stay in and study, while the other heads out clubbing with her friends. They part ways, and the louder girl heads off with her friends into the town.

A long night later, after a good few drinks and a lot of dancing, the girl stumbles back to the dorms. It's long past bedtime, and the window of their shared room is dark. Her roommate must be sleeping. The girl's hand hovers over the light switch, but she decides she's not so drunk she can't find her way across the room in the dark. Doing her best to stay quiet the girl picks her way over to her bed. She falls into bed and in a few moments is sound asleep.

She doesn't regain consciousness until late next morning. She's got a rough hangover, and it takes her a while to pry herself out of bed. She sits there for a while, clutching her aching head, then grits her teeth and throws open the curtains. She looks over to her friend's side of the room, and sobers up cold.

Her roommate lies tangled in bloody sheets, clearly dead. Blood smears the walls, and written there on the wall are the words: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" The killer, it seems, was there in the room when the girl returned from her night out on the town. It was only her drunken state and the darkness of the room that saved her from her friend's untimely fate.

The Stinky Shoes

An old guy has owned the same pair of shoes for ten years now. They're good solid walking boots, and pretty reliable in his opinion. He looks after them too, keeping them clean and waterproofing them whenever they need it. He even took one of them to be repaired when it got damaged. As far as he cares, there're no finer shoes in the world.

The only problem is that, lately, they've started to stink. He's tried everything; washing them, drying them, spraying them with a special deodorant. He even replaced the insoles in case they were the problem. Nevertheless, his shoes continue to smell terrible.

The old guy lives alone, and he isn't so mobile as once he was. The stinky shoes aren't a huge problem for him, but they still leave him puzzled. That is until one day, when he's in the bath. For the first time in a couple of weeks he takes a look at his feet.

The old guy's eyesight is pretty bad, so at first all he sees is a greyish blur around his toes. He gets out of the bath and fetches his glasses, and props his foot up on the bath to take a closer look. What he sees is a blackening of the flesh around his toes. His feet, long untended, have started slowly to rot away, hints of bone peeking through the decayed flesh. 

The Backseat Killer

A young woman is driving home one night, alone. It's been a long day at work, and she's tired. She needs to stop for petrol, and so she pulls into a filling station not far from her home. It's already pretty dark, and she hurries to fill up her car. As she is doing so the attendant wanders out from the shop and offers to help her. She thanks him but says she doesn't need any help.

At this she expects him to go back into the shop, but he doesn't. He stands around, looking distracted. He walks around her can, inspecting it. He looks at her tyres and shakes his head.

"Those tyres," he tells her. "The tread's all worn down. Looks like trouble to me."

Again she assured him that she'll be okay, but he doesn't seem to want to let her leave. She's already anxious at being alone on the road at night, and so when he starts insisting that she come into the shop with him so he can "show her something", she starts to get nervous. She goes to get back in the car, but at that point the attendant grabs her and, with one hand over her mouth, drags her back into shop.

She's struggling like mad to get away, but as soon as they're inside the guy releases her. He stands in front of the door.

"Listen," he says, "just after you pulled up I saw a man come running out of the shadows and climb into the back of your car. I didn't want to let him know I'd seen. I've already called the police; they'll be here any minute."

At first she doesn't believe him, but then, sure enough, she hears the wail of approaching sirens. The cops come screaming up, surround her car, and drag a man out of the back seat. Even from the shop the woman sees and hears the knife he was carrying clatter to the ground.

The Babysitter

A teenage girl is trying to make some extra money babysitting for a rich couple. She's already put the little boy to bed, and now she's downstairs watching TV and waiting for the couple to return.

Faintly, she thinks she hears a scratching sound coming from upstairs. She mutes the TV and listens hard, but it doesn't come again, and so she writes it off and goes back to her film. An hour passes and she's almost asleep before she hears it again, this time louder than before.

She mutes the TV again and listens. Maybe the little kid has gotten out of bed and is up to something. She decides to go up and check on him. She heads upstairs, but pauses at the entrance to the boy's room. Just in case he is still asleep, she doesn't want to wake him, so she goes in without turning on the light. She creeps over to his bed, and reaches down, expecting to feel his head on the pillow. What she feels instead is something wet and sticky. Some kind of mush. Gasping, she flicks on the bedside lamp.

The boy is still in bed, but where his head used to be there's now nothing but a bloody mess of brains and bone. It's as if his whole face has been torn away. The girl screams, and in panic turns to run towards the door. But she freezes before she's gone two steps. Standing behind the door is a man in a grey trench coat. His front is stained with blood, and where his left hand should be is a dripping metal hook.

The Hairy Old Woman

A young woman is out shopping at her local mall one day. It's getting late when she finally completes her purchases and heads back to her car, which is parked in the multi-storey just outside the mall. To her surprise, when she arrives she finds that an old lady is sitting there in the back seat. Puzzled, the woman taps on the window, then opens up the door.

The old lady seems to be a bit confused. After some questioning from the woman she explains that her son drives a car of the same make and colour as the woman's. She had been shopping with her son, but started to feel unwell, and so returned to the car to wait for him.

"I suppose I must have got the two mixed up," says the old lady.

"Oh dear," says the woman. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

The old lady thinks for a minute, then asks if maybe the woman can drive her around the car park until she sees her son's car. Not wanting to leave such an elderly lady stranded, the woman agrees. However, as soon as she climbs into the driver's seat, she senses that something is wrong. At first she cannot put her finger on it; it's just a vague, uneasy feeling. But when she looks closely in the rear-view mirror, she sees it. The old lady is not a lady at all, but a man. Once she realises this, the woman can see clearly that the lady's white hair is nothing more than a wig, and there's the tell-tale hint of stubble along his chin.

Terrified, the woman grips the steering wheel. Her mind races. Trying to stay calm she politely asks the "old lady" if she could get out and help her to reverse from the space. She watches as the man climbs out, acting all the while like a doddery old age pensioner. As soon as he's out, the woman locks all the doors and speeds away, back towards the mall.

She reports what happened to mall security. There's a thorough search of the car park, but there's no trace of the strange man. The police are informed; a report is filed.

Weeks later the woman is cleaning out her car. Looking under the seat where the man had been sitting, she finds a plastic bag. The bag is bloodstained. Wrapped up inside are a knife and a coil of rope.

The Hotel Bed

A couple check into a cheap hotel one night. They're given a room on the fifth floor, but when they arrive, the man notices a horrible odour permeating the room. They leave their stuff and return to the front desk to complain. Unfortunately, the hotel is booked solid, and so they can't be moved. Instead the hotel owner offers to give them a free meal in the hotel restaurant while their room is cleaned again. The couple accept.

While they enjoy their free meal, the cleaning staff change all the sheets in their room, vacuum, polish and run bleach down the drains. The couple return to their room late that night, after several drinks from the bar. To the man's annoyance, the terrible smell is still present. Now, however, he's too tired to care. They decide they will complain again in the morning, and the two of them go to bed.

By the next morning the smell is worse than ever. Annoyed, the man decides to track down the source of it himself. He pokes into every nook and cranny of the room, checking under the sink, around the window, under the loose carpet in the closet. Nothing. 

It's only when he lifts up the bed that he discovers the source of the smell. There's a slit there in the side of the box-spring mattress, from which the stench seems to emanate. The man pries it open and peers inside. There, wedged in between the springs is a dried and decaying corpse.