This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/pentyworth223 on 2025-10-24 18:54:40+00:00.
They always warn you not to go alone.
Not just the YouTubers or urbex Discord mods with over-engineered usernames. Even the serious threads—the ones buried deep under forum lock, in dark archive mirrors and archived Wayback pages—start with that same exhausted refrain:
“Never go solo if there’s even a whisper of the Skinned Man.”
But I did.
Not because I thought I was invincible. I’m not one of those guys who thinks a flashlight and a GoPro make them immortal. I just didn’t think he was real.
Not really.
The forums always blur the line between fact and fantasy. You’ll see a missing persons report linked next to a post claiming a stairwell appeared overnight in a field. You learn to filter. To squint at the screen and separate the dead pixels from the ones that still blink.
So when I found a thread titled “BUCKTHORN, PA – Do Not Investigate,” I didn’t panic. I bookmarked it.
And I kept reading.
The original post was dated October 2008. No replies. Just a block of text, strange formatting, all lowercase like the author didn’t want to leave a signature.
“they deleted it from the map. not just signs—grid layers. whole topographic bands gone. but it’s still there. old roads. old houses. silos in the distance like teeth.
that’s where i saw him.
he walked out of the corn naked and red and the air died.
don’t go. he lives in places that time rots inward.
don’t go.”
It didn’t say “Skinned Man.”
But it didn’t have to.
I’ve been obsessed with the legend for years—ever since I read about the Wisconsin farmhouse where all the doors were nailed shut from the inside. Or the family in Missouri whose porch camera stopped working exactly three minutes before they disappeared.
There’s always a pattern.
The skinless figure. The erased town. The silence so thick it presses on your lungs.
I’ve collected every clue, every broken link. Half of them lead nowhere. The other half don’t make sense. But they all point toward places that don’t like to be found.
And that thread? That thread felt different.
Not performative. Not dressed up in spooky language.
Just raw fear.
I decided to go.
I know how it sounds.
But I didn’t go in blind.
I found GPS coordinates buried in the site metadata—left behind when the thread got archived. I cross-checked with historical imagery from the late ’90s. There really was a Buckthorn. A tight cluster of buildings. Main road, church, silos.
Then—nothing.
No mention in modern databases. No postal code. Just a dead zone between two stretches of old forestry road in Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes outside Harrisburg.
I told people. I’m not stupid.
I left a copy of the map and the coordinates with my brother.
“If I don’t check in by Sunday, call someone,” I said.
I even texted the group chat: “If I vanish chasing ghosts, you can say ‘I told you so.’”
Nobody responded.
I reached the trailhead just before 2:00 p.m. on Saturday.
It was colder than it should’ve been. Mid-October, but I swear it felt like November had already moved in and unpacked its things.
The path started wide—overgrown but manageable. But the deeper I hiked, the less it felt like a path and more like something letting me pass.
My boots stopped making sound after a while. No birds. No wind.
At one point, I heard something crunch behind me.
When I turned around, there was a deer standing half in the brush.
Its skin was intact, but the eyes—
They weren’t right.
Too dark. Too… knowing.
It didn’t run.
I walked faster.
It took about forty minutes to reach what used to be Buckthorn.
I didn’t notice the transition at first. One step I was on dirt. The next, I was standing on cracked pavement, moss-grown and half-eaten, but unmistakably manmade.
And then the town unfolded around me like a peeled scab.
Rotten buildings. Broken porches. Shutters hanging by a single rusted hinge.
No graffiti. No animals. Just stillness so thick it felt like gravity had changed.
I filmed everything. Shot some establishing B-roll for a video I knew I’d never actually upload. Narrated out loud just to break the silence.
“October 21st, 4:12 PM. Buckthorn, Pennsylvania. Confirmed real. Abandoned sometime in the early 2000s. Possibly tied to urban legend sightings of—”
I stopped talking.
Because something moved inside the church.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a flicker in the broken doorway. A shadow peeling back into shadow. I didn’t get a good look. I told myself it was an animal, but part of me already knew better.
The church was only 100 feet away. Two stories, steeple collapsed inward like something had fallen straight through it. The roof had mostly caved in, exposing rotten pews and mold-covered hymnals warped by water damage.
I stepped inside.
The silence deepened.
You know that feeling when you walk into a room and forget why?
This was that. But it never went away.
I walked the aisle, pausing to film. I almost didn’t see the hatch at the base of the altar. Square. Metal. Slightly ajar.
And marked with chalk.
“SOME DOORS OPEN THEMSELVES.”
I didn’t touch it.
I won’t pretend I did. I’m not brave. I took three steps back and kept the camera on it while my chest buzzed with adrenaline.
The air smelled wrong again.
Rot and salt.
The hairs on my arms stood up.
I told myself to leave. To back out slowly, get back to the car, and come back in the morning with someone else. But something made me pause.
Movement.
Outside.
Something ran past the front of the church.
Not away from me.
Toward the silos.
I followed.
I know. I know.
But if you’d seen it—if you’d caught even a glimpse—you would’ve followed too.
It wasn’t a person.
It moved too fast. Too fluid. Like muscle without bone.
The sun was dipping now, throwing the world into that sickly, amber light where shadows lose their direction.
And then I saw them.
The silos.
Three of them. Side by side. Towering, whitewashed structures with metal ladders spiraling like spinal cords.
The middle one had a door.
It wasn’t ajar.
It was open.
I stepped closer. Camera rolling.
The inside was pitch black. My flashlight caught the curve of the interior—lined in something that looked like metal but had the wrong texture. Fibrous. Red-stained.
There was something on the far wall.
A shape.
No—a person.
Standing upright.
No skin.
Just meat.
Their head slowly tilted.
I ran.
That moment—
That’s the one I keep reliving.
Not the chase. Not the thing that followed. Not the guttural, wet sound of movement behind me as I scrambled through brush and downed logs.
But the tilt.
The way its head moved.
Like it was confused. Like it didn’t expect me to see it.
Or maybe… like it wanted me to.
I got turned around trying to flee.
I ended up in a part of the town I hadn’t seen before. The houses were newer. Less decay. But there were no doors.
None.
Just open frames, gaping blackness inside.
One of the windows had fingernail marks dug into the sill.
Another had something hanging from the rafters. Rope? No. Tendon.
Every step I took made me feel like the streets were folding in on themselves.
I passed the same streetlamp three times. Same broken bulb. Same rust stain down the post like a tear.
And then I heard the breathing.
Not my own.
Low. Close. Too close.
I turned and saw—
It didn’t move like a person.
It was a person, in the roughest sense. Humanoid. Hairless. No eyes, just pale, stretched tissue over where they should’ve been.
The worst part was its mouth.
Not because it was too big.
But because it was stitched shut.
And it was still trying to scream.
Muffled, raspy gasps. Like someone suffocating through gauze.
It took a step forward and I bolted. Cut through a thicket. Ripped my arm open on barbed wire I hadn’t seen until it was too late.
Ran until the trees changed.
Ran until my feet hit gravel.
Ran until I saw my Jeep and the sky broke open with the sound of wind again.
I didn’t sleep that night.
I drove until sunrise. Checked into a roadside motel and showered for nearly an hour, but the smell wouldn’t leave me.
That copper tang.
That raw smell.
I burned my clothes in a pit behind the motel. Told the clerk it was an accident.
I haven’t gone home.
I check in every few hours, keep moving.
And here’s the part I don’t know how to say—
Something’s under my skin.
I can feel it.
Like a tightness. A pull. As if something small and unseen is working loose the seams of me.
I see shadows that move when I don’t. My reflection lags. When I blink, I sometimes hear it.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Like fingernails on muscle.
I haven’t opened my mouth in hours.
Because I’m scared I’ll find stitches there.
I told you I wouldn’t use the “he remembers you” trope.
But I think Buckthorn does something worse.
I think it undoes you.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Like peeling away a scab to see if the wound still weeps.
So if you’re reading this—
Don’t go looking.
Not for me.
Not for Buckthorn.
Not for the Skinned Man.
Because it’s not about what you find out there.
It’s about what comes back with you.