The Rake

The Rake is a creepypasta story about a creature that watches you while you sleep and kills you when you wake. Nobody really knows if the creature exists, whether it is an urban legend or a ghost story.

The Rake

During the summer of 2003, events in the northeastern United States involving a strange, humanlike creature sparked brief local media interest before an apparent blackout was enacted. Little or no information was left intact, as most online and written accounts of the creature were mysteriously destroyed.

Witnesses told stories of their disturbing enounters with a creature of unkown origin. Emotions ranged from extreme fright and discomfort to an almost childlike sense of playfulness and curiosity. While their published versions are no longer on record, the memories remained powerful. Several of the people involved began looking for answers.

By 2006, nearly two dozen documents had been collected, dating from the 12th century to the present day and spanning four continents. In all cases, the stories were almost identical. What follows are brief excerpts from the documents.

(A Suicide Note, 1964)

As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence and once I awoke and saw his form. Once again, I awoke and heard his voice and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear of what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye.

Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope.

‘Dearest Linnie, I have prayed for you. He spoke your name.’

(A Journal Entry translated from Spanish, 1880)

I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. I hear his voice.

(A Mariner’s Log, 1691)

He came to me in my sleep. From the foot of my bed I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the Rake.

(A Witness Statement, 2006)

Three years ago, I had just returned from a trip to Niagara Falls with my family for the 4th of July. We were all very exhausted after a long day of driving, so my husband and I put the kids to bed and called it a night.

At about 4 AM, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I apologized and told him I thought he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly that his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. The position of its body was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him.

My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before his eyes returned to the creature.

In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband’s face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds, just staring at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids’ rooms.

I screamed and ran for the lightswitch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara.

The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life.

“He is the Rake,” she whispered.

that night, while rushing our daughter to the hospital, my husband drove his car into a lake. He did not survive.

Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published and the local television news never followed up either.

For several months, my son and I stayed in a hotel near my parents’ house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake.

It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history or follow up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first 3 pages, and never mentioned it again. A ship’s log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the Rake. That was the last entry in the log.

There were, however, many instances where the creature’s visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led us to wonder if the Rake had visited any of us before our last encounter.

Every night, for two weeks, I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night. Each morning, when I woke up, I would scan through the sounds of me tossing and turning in my bed. By the end of the second week, I going through the recording when I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake.
I can’t listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven’t let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I’ve heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don’t remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment.

The thoughts that must have gone through my daughter’s head make me very upset.

I have not seen the Rake since he ruined my life, but I know that he has been in my room while I slept. I know and fear that one night I’ll wake up to see him staring at me.