In the age of social media, a new kind of ghost story has emerged. It's not told around a campfire or whispered in a shadowy room, but broadcast to millions in real-time, one character at a time. The saga of "Dear David" is a terrifying example of this new medium. What began as a web cartoonist's unsettling dreams quickly became a viral phenomenon that left millions of followers questioning the line between digital folklore and genuine paranormal terror.
The Nightmare Begins
The story started with a simple, chilling tweet: "My apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he's trying to kill me." The author, Adam Ellis, a cartoonist, described waking up in a state of sleep paralysis, a grotesque figure of a child with a dented head sitting in a green rocking chair at the foot of his bed. Soon, a girl appeared in a dream to give him the "rules": you may ask the dead child two questions, but never a third.
Driven by morbid curiosity, Adam broke the rule in a dream, asking the ghost who pushed a shelf on him. He woke up in a state of terror. But the haunting didn't stay in his mind for long.
The Haunting Escalates
The "Dear David" phenomenon moved from the dream world to the physical. Adam’s cats began a strange ritual of gathering at his apartment door at midnight, as if something was on the other side. A sleep talk app he installed recorded unnerving sounds—a snap, a footstep, and a chilling groan.
The most unnerving escalation, however, came from the physical realm. After a terrifying dream where the shrunken figure dragged him to an old warehouse, Adam woke up with a large, unexplained bruise on his arm. Days later, he found himself inexplicably drawn to an abandoned warehouse, where the only object he found inside was a single green rocking chair.
The Evidence
The story exploded when Adam began to present photo and video evidence. A pet camera caught his own rocking chair moving on its own, but that was just the beginning.
While visiting his hometown in Montana, he discovered tiny, child-like footprints in the snow outside his garage. Back in his apartment, he set his phone to take photos every minute as he slept. The results were horrifying. The photos showed a blurry figure appearing on a chair, then moving to his bed, and in the final image, the figure was inches from his face. The eerie images and videos brought a visceral sense of dread to the story, leading many to believe it was all real.
The End of the Story... Or a Creepypasta?
The "Dear David" narrative concluded ambiguously. Adam's social media followers began seeing a strange, "glitched" image on his Instagram, which some interpreted as the ghost possessing him. The story then simply fizzled out, with Adam tweeting that things were "quiet." This anticlimactic ending led many to question whether the entire saga was a work of fiction—a "creepypasta," or viral horror story.
Wyrd News Beyond the Haunting
The episode also explored bizarre stories from the real world. We discussed the strange case of a woman who was mistakenly declared dead by a government agency, leading to her health insurance being canceled and her having to prove she was, in fact, alive.
We also delved into a compelling conspiracy theory: that the "Gifted and Talented" education program for children in the 1980s was actually a front for a CIA training program. Former students recall learning Russian and Morse code, and participating in strange "sound meditation" tests, leaving many to wonder if they were unknowingly being trained to be spies.
In the end, whether it's a ghost haunting a Twitter feed or a government agency mistakenly declaring you dead, the line between the weird and the real is thinner than ever before.