Two days ago in the 'No Sleep' subreddit, Reddit user Nathan wrote a post claiming his dead girlfriend, Emily, is sending him messages on Facebook.
Emily died on the 7th of August, 2012 in a car collision. Nathan says he left her account activated so he could send her messages and go through her photo albums." He also states that he 'shares' access to her account with her mother, Susan.
On September 4th 2013, he received the first of what was to be many messages from his dead girlfriend.
He asked Susan, her mother, whether she had logged into Emily's Facebook. She says she hadn't. He then suspected it was one of her friends playing a prank on him.
Then, in Febraury 2014, Emily started tagging herself in his photos. Some friends of his believed it could be a bug — others removed him from their Facebook friends list.
He then says that he wished he'd deleted his Facebook page, but explains: " I was already socially reclusive when Em was alive; her death turned me into something pretty close to a hermit, and Facebook and MMOs were (are) my only real social outlets."
On March 15th, he decided to send a message to the person he assumed was a hacker.
Ten days later, he received a reply.
Nathan noticed that she was recycling his own words from old messages. He then went on to stress that he changed the password and security information for emily's account numerous times.
He contacted Facebook, and they told him that the locations her Facebook page had been accessed from since her death were locations that she had been before, such as his home and her mum's house.
On the 29th of April he received another message.
A week later, he received a message from her that "gave him nightmares."
He says that this message made him "keep dreaming that she’s in an ice cold car, frozen blue and grey, and I’m standing outside in the warmth screaming at her to open the door."
Then on the 24th of May, he sent her a message saying he was drunk. He explains that he wasn't, but that he said he was because "she was more comfortable with it when I was boozed up."
He explains that her reply was "pasted from an old conversation where I was trying to convince her to let me drive her home from a friend’s." When she died, the car collision severed her leg off.
Then, on the 1st of July, he received a final message that was the final straw.
The reason that message frightened him so much is because it was the exact message he sent to her the last time he thought she was alive.
At that point, he decided to memorlialize her page. He says: "Until today, she’d been quiet; she wasn’t even tagging herself in my photos."
His latest post on Reddit is an update saying that he received an alert on Facebook while compiling his Reddit post.
The Facebook alert was of photos on Facebook that 'she' had posted of his door and computer from the outside of his house.
Reddit users suspected Nathan was doing this himself and questioned his mental health, suggesting he has PTSD or a dissociative disorder. Others believe it was Emily's mother, Susan, who was sending the messages in a grief stricken state.
Others online noted that it's worth remembering the subreddit r/nosleep allows realistic fiction.
Jezebel noted that the remarkable thing about this story is how commenters have come together to try and help Nathan, saying: "perhaps Nathan's experience is activating all of our secret desire to communicate with a loved one that's passed on."
Either way, this is how the internet feels right now about this story.
