I’ve always been drawn to strange stories. The kind that keep you awake at night. I spent more nights than I could count scrolling through forums and Reddit threads, reading about haunted places, mysterious disappearances, and unexplained events.
True or not, those stories always grabbed my attention. That’s why, when I saw the job posting for the Creepypasta Grocery Store, I couldn’t believe my luck. It wasn’t a typical ad.
It had no flashy graphics, no professional formatting—just a plain text line that read: “Night shift available. For those curious about the unusual. ” It wasn’t just my love of strange stories that made me apply so quickly.
I needed the money. College wasn’t cheap, and my parents were already stretched thin trying to support me. Between tuition, rent, and textbooks, I had to pull my weight.
Taking a night shift seemed perfect. It would give me time during the day for my other part-time jobs and classes, and maybe leave me a little extra for the next semester. I didn’t really expect to get the job.
The process was almost nonexistent—just a quick phone call and a promise that I could start right away. No interview, no paperwork, no questions. At the time, I thought it was a lucky break.
I didn’t know then that the stories I loved reading would feel a lot less fun when they weren’t just words on a screen. My first night shift at the Creepypasta Grocery Store didn’t start like I expected. The place was smaller than I’d thought it would be, with cramped aisles and a flickering "Open 24/7" sign outside.
When I walked in, the air inside was stale, like it hadn’t been aired out in years. It smelled faintly of old cardboard and something metallic. When I stepped inside, the store was empty, save for the steady hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.
There were no customers, and, oddly, no other employees. The register sat unattended, and the shelves were stocked neatly, like no one had touched them in weeks. The break room was tucked in the back, past a hallway lined with storage lockers and a cracked mirror.
Inside was as depressing as the rest of the store—peeling wallpaper, a stained couch, and a coffee pot that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in decades. On the small table in the center of the room, I noticed a VHS tape, its label scratched but still legible: “Training: Watch Immediately. ” I wasn’t expecting much, but I found an old TV set sitting on a shelf in the corner.
The VHS player below it had dust on the buttons. I slid the tape in, the machine whining as it pulled the tape into place. The screen came to life with a hiss of static before an image appeared.
The person on the tape looked off. Their face was frozen in an exaggerated smile, and their eyes didn’t quite blink at the same time. Their movements were jerky, almost like a puppet on strings.
The rules were listed in rapid succession, the text appearing on the screen in bold letters while the unnaturally cheerful voice explained them. 1. Do not acknowledge the black-eyed children.
Ignore them, no matter how much they beg to enter the store. 2. Avoid aisle 4 completely.
If a cleanup is announced there, do not investigate. 3. Never look at the faceless man near the backrooms.
Keep your eyes down if you must pass by. 4. Serve the man with melting skin his cigarettes.
Do so silently and wait for him to leave. 5. Always make a cup of coffee for Joe before your shift ends.
Leave it in the breakroom. Skipping this step is not an option. The tape ended abruptly after the final rule, the screen returning to static.
The machine ejected the tape with a loud click, as though it was eager to be rid of it. I sat for a moment, staring at the blank TV. I told myself it was a joke.
But deep down, the uneasiness in my gut told me it wasn’t. Eventually, I stood up, brushing the dust from my pants. I decided to do a quick walkthrough of the store.
Maybe seeing the shelves and aisles up close would make everything feel normal again. It wasn’t a big place; I could cover the whole thing in ten minutes. As I walked past the aisles, I counted them.
Aisle 1. Aisle 2. Aisle 3.
My pace slowed as I approached the middle of the store, where aisle 4 should have been. But there was nothing—just a blank wall between aisles 3 and 5. I stopped, staring at the empty space.
The wall was bare except for a faint outline of what might have been a doorway, long since plastered over. The rules had said to avoid aisle 4, but there wasn’t anything to avoid. Not anymore.
Patrolling the aisles was a way to distract myself, but the growing tension in my chest refused to ease. The store was quiet, except for the buzzing lights overhead and the sound of my shoes on the tile floor. I tried to focus on anything normal: the inventory on the shelves, the displays, but I couldn't shake the feeling that time was moving slower than it should.
During a slow part of my shift, I decided to tidy up the breakroom. The room was small and bare—an old couch, a coffee pot, and a row of lockers. Most were empty, but one caught my attention.
Its door was locked, the rusted padlock hanging loosely. Curious, I tested the lock. It wasn’t sturdy, and with a bit of force, I managed to pop it open.
Inside was a uniform similar to mine, though much older. The fabric was faded and torn in places, and the nametag attached to it had been scratched out, leaving behind faint marks where the name used to be. Behind the uniform, I found a book.
The cover was stained and warped, probably from an old coffee spill. The title was barely readable, but it seemed to be about local monsters or legends. I picked it up carefully and opened it.
The pages were brittle, and many were missing. The ones that were still intact had strange details written on them. The descriptions matched some of the things I’d heard in the rules.
Some entries were redacted, with names and places scribbled out or smeared with ink. One section described creatures that wore human faces but didn’t move naturally. Another described something tall and faceless, saying: "It doesn’t move while you’re watching.
It waits. " Whoever owned the book had been keeping notes. Words were circled, underlined, and scribbled in the margins, as if they’d been trying to figure something out.
I placed the book back in the locker and shut the door. Then I heard it—a faint knock on the glass storefront. I stopped mid-step.
The sound was soft but loud enough to grab my attention. Slowly, I stepped out of the breakroom and walked back to the entrance, where the sliding doors were. Two figures stood outside the glass.
They were children, maybe seven or eight years old. A boy and a girl. Their clothing looked simple and oddly out of place, like it belonged to another era.
They stood still, staring straight at me, their faces emotionless. Their eyes were pitch black. There were no whites or pupils, just empty voids that seemed to swallow the light around them.
The boy raised a hand and knocked again, this time more insistent. The girl’s lips moved next, forming words I couldn’t hear clearly but didn’t need to. Their expressions didn’t change, but their intent was unmistakable.
They were begging to be let inside. I remembered the first rule on the tape: Do not acknowledge the black-eyed children. The boy pressed his hands flat against the glass, holding his empty stare as if he knew I could see him.
For the next hour, they stayed. They didn’t leave, didn’t look away, didn’t blink. They alternated between moments of begging and complete silence, their presence feeling heavier with each passing second.
When the clock on the wall struck 2:00 a. m. , they stopped.
Without a sound, they turned and walked away into the darkness beyond the parking lot. I didn’t move until I was certain they were gone. I forced myself to leave the front of the store.
The darkened glass and the empty parking lot beyond felt too exposed, as if standing there too long might bring them back. My legs were unsteady, but I needed something to do, anything to keep my mind from circling back to the image of those black eyes. The restocking cart was by the center aisle, left half-filled with canned goods.
It was a boring task, something repetitive and grounding. I grabbed a can of tomato soup and turned to the shelf, counting the rows to find the right spot. My hands weren’t steady.
The metal edges of the can pressed hard into my fingers as I placed it on the shelf. “I hope someone’s looking out for them—whatever they are. ” I said.
It wasn’t the right thing to think. The rules had been clear, and I’d followed them, but the thought lingered anyway. They had looked human, as wrong as they were.
I’d heard stories before. They were scattered across the internet, buried in forums and the stranger corners of social media. They always followed the same pattern—places open late, employees working overnight shifts, and children at the door with eyes that weren’t right.
Fast food workers described seeing them standing at the drive-thru window, hands pressed against the glass. Some gas station attendants reported faint tapping on the locked doors, always after midnight. There were other patterns, too.
The children never forced their way in. They never reacted to being ignored or refused. They stayed until something unseen decided they were done.
Theories about them were endless—urban legends, paranormal entities, or something worse that no one had a name for. But for every theory, there was someone who swore it happened to them. I thought about the black-eyed children I’d seen outside the store.
They fit the accounts perfectly. It wasn’t just me. I wondered how many people had ignored the rules and what might have happened to them.
The thought didn’t sit well. After restocking the shelves, I pushed the empty cart back toward the rear of the store. The area was quieter, with only the low hum of the cooler units breaking the silence.
As I neared the backrooms, something caught my eye. A faint movement in the dim light at the far end of the hallway. Standing outside the doorway to the backrooms was a tall figure, its outline stark against the glow of a broken bulb overhead.
It didn’t move, and the longer I stared, the clearer its features—or lack thereof—became. He had no face, no eyes, no nose, and no mouth, as though someone had erased its identity completely. I remembered the rule: Never look at the faceless man near the backrooms.
I forced my eyes away, fixing them on the floor. I turned the cart sharply, redirecting myself toward the middle aisles. The rule was clear—don’t acknowledge it, don’t interact.
Even as I walked away, I could feel him watching me. The stories about the faceless man had always been harder to believe, but the details were as consistent as the accounts of the children. I’d read about him before—old reports from workers, old forum posts, and the occasional police file that didn’t lead anywhere.
A figure, always described as extremely tall, dressed in a plain black suit, and seen standing near backrooms or open doorways. People who talked to the faceless man alone often disappeared. Their belongings would be left behind—phones, wallets, keys—but never a trace of the person themselves.
The police didn’t have much to go on, and the cases were usually filed under missing persons without any further investigation. The stories stayed in the dark corners of the internet, where they blended with urban legends and conspiracy theories. Theories about him varied.
Some said he was an omen, appearing before something terrible happened. Others thought he was a predator, choosing victims at random. There were claims he could appear in multiple places at once, as though he wasn’t tied to a single location.
The intercom crackled to life suddenly, shattering the stillness of the store. “Cleanup on aisle 4. ” The voice was distorted, mechanical, like it was barely making it through the worn-out speakers overhead.
The thing was, Aisle 4 didn’t exist. I stayed where I was, standing motionless near the register. The training tape had been clear about this rule: ignore any announcement about aisle 4.
I forced myself to ignore it. Instead, I turned to the coffee maker behind the register. My hands were steady as I grabbed a mug and scooped coffee grounds into the machine.
The intercom continued, the same words looping over and over. I focused on the sound of the coffee dripping into the pot, the soft hiss of steam, the only thing keeping me grounded. When the pot finished, I poured myself a cup and leaned against the counter, holding the warm mug in both hands.
The announcement stopped suddenly, leaving the store in complete silence. I stayed where I was, sipping the coffee slowly. I didn’t look toward the aisles.
I didn’t move. The quiet felt heavy, but I waited it out. I thought about why I’d taken this job in the first place.
College was bleeding me dry, and with my parents already stretched thin, I needed every paycheck I could get. A summer job at a grocery store seemed harmless enough when I applied. I wondered how many other people had worked this shift before me.
Did they feel the same crawling tension in their chest? Did they manage to block it out, or did it eat at them, little by little? I looked down at the mug in my hands, realizing I’d been gripping it too tightly.
The rules were clear, and following them was the only way to get through the night. Still, the unease in my gut wasn’t going anywhere. The sound of footsteps pulled me out of my thoughts.
Slow and wet, they slapped against the tile floor, growing louder as they approached the counter. I looked up and froze. A man stood there.
His skin hung loosely from his frame, sagging like it was too heavy for his body to hold. The training tape came back to me, the rule as clear as the first time I’d heard it: Serve the man with melting skin his cigarettes. Do not speak.
I reached behind me, hand trembling as I searched blindly for the shelf of cigarette packs. My fingers brushed against one, and I grabbed it, not daring to take my eyes off him. I placed the pack on the counter, careful to move slowly.
He didn’t move at first. Then, with a sickening gurgling sound, he raised a hand. His fingers were long and bent out of shape, and they left streaks of something dark on the counter as they slid over the cigarettes.
The smell hit me as he turned to leave, thick and sour. I held my breath, waiting for him to disappear into the shadows beyond the store. The door didn’t open.
There was no sound of it sliding on its tracks. When I looked up, the man was gone. I stayed rooted in place, the lingering smell making it hard to breathe.
The pack I had handed him was gone, but the faint smear on the counter was proof he’d been there. There was something familiar about the man. His presence had sparked a memory, a connection to stories I’d read late at night—accounts of creatures that weren’t human but wanted to be.
I’d read about them before, too. One report stood out in my mind. A convenience store clerk in Nevada had talked about a man who came in every night around the same time.
He looked normal at first, but as the days went on, the clerk noticed his skin didn’t look real. The man never bought anything. He just stood by the counter, staring.
One night, the clerk disappeared. Atleast, that was how the story went. But as for what actually happened to the clerk?
Anyone's guess was as good as mine. The shift was nearly over when I heard someone enter through the front doors. My muscles tensed out of habit, but the figure that stepped inside wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Maggie, my manager, walked in with the kind of calm confidence that didn’t match the unsettling air of the store. She waved briefly and made her way toward me. Her presence felt jarring after hours of silence, but it was a relief to see someone normal for once.
Maggie dropped her bag behind the counter and leaned on the edge, brushing back her short, dark hair. After asking how my shift had gone, she listened as I described the events of the night. Her reaction was measured, almost sympathetic, as if she had expected it.
For a moment, she said nothing more, then began speaking quietly, her tone serious. Maggie explained that the building hadn’t always been a grocery store. Years before the grocery store stood on this ground, the building was a theater.
Its final night was marked by an event that no one could explain and that few dared to speak about afterward. It was a midnight showing, one of the last-ditch efforts by Mr Larkin to draw an audience to his struggling business. The feature was a film titled The Smiling Ones, a low-budget production that never appeared in any official listings.
The showing attracted only a handful of people—local horror enthusiasts and some of the theater’s regular staff. As the reels turned, something went wrong. A fire broke out near the back of the auditorium, the flames spreading faster than should have been possible.
Investigators later found no evidence of faulty wiring or flammable materials where the blaze began. The fire spread quickly, consuming the room in minutes. The exits became impassable.
Witnesses outside said they heard muffled laughter mixed with screams, the two sounds blending together. Those inside had no chance of escape. The fire department arrived quickly, but their equipment failed.
The flames burned cold, a phenomenon the firefighters couldn’t explain. Water sprayed toward the building never made contact—it evaporated mid-air. The team could only watch as the theater collapsed in on itself, leaving nothing but scorched debris behind.
By morning, the fire had burned itself out, leaving the building’s outer walls mostly intact. No bodies were ever recovered. The patrons and staff were simply gone, as if they had been erased along with the rest of the theater.
The tragedy was quickly hushed up. No memorials were held, no official inquiries followed. The property remained abandoned for years, until it was quietly sold and repurposed into the grocery store.
Those who had witnessed the fire—or claimed to have seen The Smiling Ones—moved away or disappeared soon after. Years after the fire, the remains of the old theater were sold to a company no one had ever heard of. There were no public records of the sale, and the name on the paperwork didn’t match any real businesses.
People thought the lot would stay empty like it had for years, but one day the grocery store was just there. Nobody saw any construction crews or equipment, and no one remembered seeing the building being worked on. It was as if the store had appeared overnight, fully built, stocked, and ready for customers.
Things got even stranger when people who had moved out of town came back. They didn’t remember the grocery store at all. It wasn’t on old maps, and they said they never saw it when they used to live in the area.
But for the locals, it had always been part of the town, like it had always been there. Nobody talked about the store openly. People shopped there, but they didn’t ask questions.
It was treated as another place to buy food, but everyone seemed to know something wasn’t quite right. Most employees didn’t last long. Some quit after only a few days, and others just stopped showing up.
Their lockers and time cards were left behind, like they had vanished. The workers who stayed never explained much about the job. They followed the rules, kept quiet, and didn’t talk about what happened during their shifts.
The store looked normal to anyone passing by, but it was clear that whatever happened in the old theater hadn’t stayed buried. Whether the grocery store was meant to keep it hidden or feed it, nobody knew. And nobody wanted to find out.
Decades ago, long before the current set of rules was printed and laminated, a handwritten sheet of paper was found in the breakroom. The edges were frayed, and the ink had faded in spots, but it was still legible. The note was pinned to the wall with a rusty nail, as if it had been meant to stay there forever.
The handwriting was uneven, rushed, like it had been written under stress. The rules listed were nearly identical to those followed by employees today, but there were small, cryptic annotations alongside some of them. “They love attention.
Don’t give it to them. ” “Coffee keeps them calm. ” “Aisle 4 is not for us.
Stay away. ” The name “Joe” was scrawled at the bottom of the sheet, as if it were both a signature and a warning. No one knows exactly who Joe was, but the story passed down among employees suggested he might have been the store’s first worker—or maybe someone connected to the building’s dark past.
Some claimed Joe was one of the theater patrons who had died in the fire. Others believed he was a drifter who had been hired when the store first opened. Whoever he was, the rules he left behind became the only barrier between employees and the strange forces tied to the building.
The store’s lingering presence seemed to respect the rules, even if no one understood why. Over time, employees began to suspect that Joe never truly left. The ritual of making coffee at the end of every shift became more than a rule—it felt like a gesture of gratitude to someone unseen.
Those who followed the rule said their shifts passed without incident. Those who didn’t often vanished before anyone could ask what went wrong. The rule about aisle 4 is the one employees follow the most carefully.
Those who break it, even by accident, don’t always come back. The ones who do are never the same. They don’t explain much, and they act like they’re somewhere else.
Rumors say aisle 4 lines up with the theater’s old screening room, the place where The Smiling Ones played its final show. Even though the aisle isn’t real, some workers say they’ve ended up there anyway. The shelves disappear, and the space turns into a dark hallway that stretches on forever.
Black-and-white images flash on the walls, like an old movie playing on a projector. The images are strange and unsettling—people with no faces moving in stiff, awkward ways, children with huge smiles that don’t look natural, and dark shapes floating in the background. The movie never stops.
It plays over and over, the images getting more warped and messed up each time. In the background, you can hear laughter and screams, but the sounds are broken and scratchy, like they’ve been played too many times. People who end up in aisle 4 say it feels like something is watching them.
The longer they stay, the stronger the feeling gets, like eyes are on them from every direction. Most say they feel an overwhelming need to look behind them. The few who give in say the shadows from the film come off the walls, reaching for them.
No one explains how they get out, and most refuse to come back to the store after it happens. For them, the rule about aisle 4 isn’t just a warning—it’s the only thing keeping them safe. Whatever is there doesn’t follow the same rules as the rest of the store, and it doesn’t forget anyone who steps into its space.
As I tried to process what I’d learned about aisle 4, Maggie began to speak again. She leaned against the counter, her expression unreadable as she looked toward the rows of aisles. She explained what some employees had come to believe over the years.
The store wasn’t just a place to work. It was something else entirely, something that didn’t follow the rules of the world outside. One theory was that the store was a trap, a place designed to catch wandering souls.
Whatever caused the fire in the theater may have left behind more than flames—it might have created a pocket of reality where lost things gathered. People who stepped inside were drawn into its rules and became part of its system, unable to leave until it allowed them to. Whatever the store was, it didn’t just trap people.
It changed them. The thought gnawed at me as Maggie’s words lingered She’d said that Some think the store’s an experiment. Others believe it’s a prison… or worse, a feeding ground.
” Her cryptic warning had felt abstract until I started noticing the subtle changes around me. My shifts stretched longer than they should, even though the clock didn’t reflect it. And Joe—the invisible presence I left coffee for nightly—became harder to dismiss as just another quirky rule.
That night, the intercom blared as soon as Maggie left me alone. “Cleanup on aisle 4. ” This time, the lights flickered, and the air grew colder.
I gripped the counter for balance, my mind racing. The voice continued: “Cleanup on aisle 4. You know where to go.
” Except there was no aisle 4. Everyone knew that. I glanced toward the middle of the store, and for the first time, I saw it: the faint outline of an aisle that shouldn’t exist.
A shadowy gap between aisle 3 and aisle 5 shimmered unnaturally, the edges flickering like static on an old TV. I didn’t move at first. The rules were clear: don’t acknowledge aisle 4.
But the air shifted, and I felt it—something pulling me. The tug wasn’t physical, but it was relentless, like gravity itself wanted me to step forward and I knew something terrible was about to happen. I glanced at the breakroom door.
Joe’s coffee. I somehow knew it was my only hope. I bolted for the back, every step feeling like I was running through quicksand.
Behind me, the distorted intercom voice shifted to something worse: laughter. Deep, broken laughter that echoed like static in my ears. When I reached the breakroom, the coffee pot was cold.
I hadn’t made the coffee yet. The laughter grew louder, followed by footsteps—wet, dragging, and impossibly slow. The faceless man.
I grabbed the coffee pot with trembling hands, fumbling to fill it. The rules demanded precision, but my heart pounded in my ears. I hit the brew button and turned to face the breakroom table, waiting for the pot to finish dripping.
But the dragging footsteps stopped just outside the breakroom door. A shadow stretched beneath the crack. It didn’t move.
I clenched my fists, my back pressed against the counter, willing the coffee machine to hurry. “Joe…” I whispered, barely audible. “Whoever you are… I need help.
” The shadow shifted, and the breakroom door creaked open. The faceless man stood there, impossibly tall, his suit soaked with some dark fluid. The space around him warped, bending reality itself.
I couldn’t look at him—the rules said not to. My eyes dropped to the floor as I focused on the soft gurgle of the coffee pot. “Don’t… look…” I muttered to myself, repeating it like a mantra.
Then I heard the chair scrape against the floor. Not the door—the chair. My eyes flicked toward the breakroom table, and I froze.
The chair had shifted, like someone invisible was sitting down. I felt it then: a cold, still presence behind me. The machine beeped.
The coffee was done. I poured it carefully into the chipped mug, my hands shaking so violently I almost spilled it. Setting the mug on the table, I forced my voice to steady.
“It’s ready,” I whispered. The faceless man didn’t move. The presence behind me didn’t disappear.
I turned to leave the breakroom, my legs weak and trembling. As I crossed the threshold, the laughter on the intercom stopped. The dragging footsteps faded.
I thought it was over. But when I stepped back into the main store, the shimmering gap between aisles 3 and 5 had grown. The space beyond it was no longer a blank wall—it was an endless hallway, dark and twisting, with faint shapes flickering along the edges.
My heart sank. Something was coming through. I backed away and The gap widened, the floor cracking beneath it.
I ran to the register, slamming my hand on the emergency alarm button. Nothing happened. The store ignored it, as if it was laughing at my attempt to fight back.
Figures moved closer. They didn’t run, but they didn’t need to. Their presence pulled at me, the same gravitational force from before.
I stumbled, nearly falling. And then I heard it: the faint creak of a chair. Behind me, back in the breakroom.
I didn’t have time to think. I bolted toward the sound, slamming the door behind me. The coffee mug was empty, but the chair was pushed neatly back under the table.
Steam still barely rose from the cup, as if whoever—or whatever—Joe was had just finished drinking. I heard a voice then. It echoed in the room around me.
“Good. Coffee. ” The air in the breakroom shifted.
Something cold brushed past me, unseen, moving toward the door. The dragging footsteps resumed, but this time, they weren’t coming for me. Through the narrow breakroom window, I saw the shadows stop in their tracks.
The faceless man turned, his featureless head tilting toward the empty air as if acknowledging something greater. One by one, the figures ran back into the endless hallway. The gap between the aisles flickered, then vanished, leaving only a blank wall.
The store fell silent. Maggie arrived as usual at the end of my shift. .
She glanced at the breakroom table, saw the empty mug, and gave a small nod of approval. “You survived huh. Joe must like you” she said.
She told me that as long as I kept making that coffee the way I was and kept being respectful to Joe, he’d protect me. He’d keep me safe. Anyway I’ve been here a while now I can’t say it’s all that bad.
Joe and I play games sometimes. Checkers, chess. He never says anything, but I get the feeling he enjoys the company.
I do too. Though we’ve never had an official conversation, I can’t help but feel like we’re friends. And I know this sounds crazy… but I think I might stay.
