DNG-9907 - The Ghost in the Typewriter
Last modified: April 28, 2025
This device seems to know its user intimately, almost too intimately. When the carriage starts moving on its own, it doesn’t type mundane sentences or cryptic riddles—it types out your deepest secrets, the ones you’ve told no one.
Key Details
- Item: A manual typewriter.
- Physical Description and Condition:
It’s an old manual typewriter, the kind that makes satisfying clacks as the keys strike the page. The brand and model are worn off, the paint chipped from years of use.
Discovery
The typewriter was discovered in a dusty attic of an estate in South ████████ being liquidated after the death of its owner, a reclusive writer named ██████ Holloway. ██████ was known for her brilliant, soul-baring essays, but after her death, strange rumors surfaced about how she wrote. Neighbors claimed she would lock herself in her study for days, yet the rhythmic clacking of the typewriter continued even when she was away.
A collector of vintage writing equipment found the typewriter among her belongings and brought it to our attention after a harrowing experience.
Reported Anomalies
The typewriter operates perfectly as a manual machine—until it doesn’t. Here are the anomalies reported:
- Unprompted Typing: Even when no one touches the keys, the typewriter starts typing coherent sentences.
- Personal Knowledge: The words it types often reveal deeply personal details about whoever is nearby, even things they’ve never written or spoken aloud.
- Unchanging Ribbon: The ink ribbon never seems to run dry, no matter how many pages are typed.
Personal Testimonies
A Team Member’s Testimony
██████, first noticed something odd while cleaning the typewriter. They were testing the keys when the machine began typing a sentence on its own:
"You regret the letter you didn’t send her."
They froze. Only they knew about the letter—a confession of love they never sent to a woman who had since married someone else. As they watched in stunned silence, the typewriter continued:
"But she still thinks about you."
A Chilling Office Encounter
Another member brought the typewriter to their workspace for testing. During a lunch break, their colleagues returned to find a fresh sheet of paper in the carriage that read:
"You’ve been stealing office supplies since your first week here."
The guilty party confessed later, too shaken by the message to deny it.
Investigative Experiments
After acquiring the typewriter, we conducted several controlled tests:
- Personal Proximity: The typewriter only activates when someone is nearby.
- Subject-Specific Text: Each session produced text that was unique to the person closest to the machine, often revealing private thoughts or memories.
- Attempts to Destroy: In one experiment, we replaced the ink ribbon and damaged several keys, but the typewriter continued to function normally, as though nothing had changed.
Theories
We’ve ruled out any mechanical explanation for its behavior. Some theorize that the typewriter is a conduit for unresolved thoughts or suppressed emotions, acting as a bridge between the subconscious mind and the physical world. Others believe it might be connected to ██████ Holloway’s spirit, still yearning to expose truths in the only way she knew how.
Interestingly, every typed message seems to be a mix of painful honesty and eerie reassurance, almost as if it’s compelling its users to confront their inner demons.
Current Status
The typewriter now sits in our store’s restricted section, away from prying hands. We don’t encourage visitors to interact with it, but its presence alone seems to have an uncanny effect on the atmosphere.
Even silent, the Ghost in the Typewriter feels alive, waiting for its next victim—or perhaps its next confession.