Every neighborhood has a house like it. You can probably picture it: That old, decrepit
building on the very end of the street; it was there when you moved in, and it’ll still
be there when you move out. All sorts of salacious rumors spread about
houses like this - “it’s a drug lab”, “it’s a hideout for fugitives”, “it’s
haunted” - but these are all just stories...right? Some of these houses contain real nightmares,
though. Nightmares like SCP-136. There’s a grain of truth in every story,
and even lies can reveal certain facts about their tellers. That’s why the SCP Foundation takes reports
of so-called neighborhood “haunted houses” seriously, and performs regular checks on
such buildings to see if any of them are actually the real deal. Children can have wild imaginations - but
when children living on the same street, years apart, with no reason to have been in contact
with one another, all start reporting an eerily similar apparition in that creepy, old house. And when the stories go beyond just getting
freaked out, and delve into truly life-altering, traumatic, paralytic terror… then the Foundation
really can’t afford not to look into it. One otherwise-quiet morning in a sleepy American
town, a convoy of fumigation and asbestos removal trucks pulled in, surrounding that
creepy old house at the end of the street. Residents were probably thinking, “It’s
about time someone tore that old death-trap down”, as people in protective suits spilled
into the building. These were, of course, Foundation Field agents,
who would perform a routine sweep around every room, and fully catalogue the place. It looked like a pretty typical abandoned
house. Peeling wallpaper, dusty, rotten furniture,
all the trash and rubble that seems to appear in the absence of human life. The full sweep took little more than an hour,
but towards the end of the observation period, Agent Sims - a field agent posted in the former
children’s bedroom - began acting strangely. He posed a question over the team’s shared
radio frequency. “Hey, can anyone else hear that laughter?” Confused, the other people on the team responded
that no, they could not hear any laughter. A few other agents came to check on the room,
but they didn’t hear any laughter in there either. Even though Agent Sims appeared visibly uncomfortable,
there was no identifiable source for this discomfort. The other agents left him so they could continue
investigating the rest of the house. Other than one agent’s fraying nerves, there
didn’t appear to actually be anything anomalous about the house. Then Agent Sims screamed, and jumped out of
the second story window of the house, sailing down towards the ground and fracturing his
spine on impact. What could have made him do that? We’re talking about an SCP Foundation field
agent here - a highly-trained individual, hand-picked by the Foundation, to observe
and track terrifying and potentially deadly anomalies out in the field. What could he possibly have seen in that decrepit
old house that would lead him to believe leaping to his death was a preferable alternative
to facing it? This was a question that the Foundation absolutely
had to get an answer to. They intensified their search on the child’s
bedroom as the body of Agent Sims was carted away. That’s when they found the object that they
would later deem as SCP-136-1, a little rag doll made of old cloth. The kind of thing you could easily imagine
getting carted around by some ragamuffin child at the turn of the last century. This was the only object of interest in the
entire room, so it was tagged, bagged, and taken back to the nearest Foundation containment
facility for further testing. They had no idea what they were about to unleash. When the doll was first brought into its containment
chamber, one particular scientist on the research team - Dr. Meyers, a headstrong young researcher
freshly farmed from a prestigious university - took a morbid interest in the doll. Something about it, even in the absence of
readily apparent anomalous effects, made her feel oddly uncomfortable. The doll seemed to carry a vague aura of doom. Was this what made Agent Sims act the way
he had? Or was this only the beginning? A D-Class was brought in for the first wave
of testing. The unfortunate former-arsonist was forced
to simply stand around in the room with the doll and wait until something interesting
happened, and for twenty minutes, no anomalous activity was reported. Then, the D-Class began frantically looking
around the room, like a frightened animal. Dr. Meyers, who had been observing the test,
radioed in and asked what was happening. “It’s this laughter. This weird, freaky laughter, like some crazy
lady is in here. I can’t see her, though. Can any of you see her? Can any of you hear that?” They couldn’t see or hear anything. According to all their monitors, it was just
a lonely D-Class, standing around in an otherwise empty room with nothing but the ragdoll. Five minutes after the D-Class reported hearing
the eerie laughter, he collapsed to the ground, shrieking like a maniac and crawling away
from something he couldn’t see. He was emitting the desperate screams of a
man who truly believed something was about to take his life, but nothing was there. He backed into the corner of the room, gibbering
incoherently and scratching desperately at the walls until his fingernails were ripping
off, leaving bloody traces behind. In the end, a pair of guards entered the chamber
and had to drag him out. The D-Class had urinated in fear, and seemed
to have temporarily lost the use of his legs from sheer panic. He was out of commission for several hours
afterwards, breaking into on-and-off screaming fits whenever someone approached him. Upon reviewing the footage of the experiment,
Dr. Meyers noticed something strange: The moment that the D-Class had begun screaming,
the doll had disappeared from the room. It only rematerialized in its previous position
when the D-Class was finally dragged from the room. Eventually, the D-Class became lucid enough
to be properly interviewed about his experience. He said that after first hearing the laughter,
a sense of overpowering dread had begun building within him. Five minutes later, that was when the entity
- later dubbed SCP-136-2 - first appeared. The vision that appeared to him could generously
be described as human, but it was a little too tall to really qualify. The monster appeared to be female, but like
a freakish, carnival-house-of-mirrors exaggeration of what one thinks of being female - long,
flowing hair, large breasts, and a Barbie-Doll-Thin waist. She looked like the nightmarish doodle of
a hormonal teen boy come to life, with a face twisted into a rictus grin somewhere between
arousal and agony, showing way too many teeth. The creature was nude, and posed provocatively,
but it was anything but appealing. The D-Class reported that just seeing it was
the most frightening experience of his life… and then it started moving. It was slowly floating through the air towards
him like a vengeful ghost, that painful smile getting wider as it drew closer to him. The D-Class could only describe the whole
experience as feeling like death itself was coming towards him. When the creature was finally looming over
him as he cowered in the corner, it opened its tooth-lined jaws and let out a long, piercing
shriek, before disappearing. In the following weeks, the D-Class was kept
for testing. He experienced severe night terrors every
single night afterwards - all of them related to SCP-136. Further tests looked into the doll itself,
but there didn’t seem to be anything anomalous about its construction. It appeared to be made from the kind of plain,
non-anomalous materials you’d expect from any doll of this variety. Though occasionally, the exact materials would
change, even between observers. In addition to the most common “cloth”
variety, witnesses have reported the doll being made of clay, wood, and metal, with
10% viewing the doll as male, with the rest all agreeing that the doll is female. The Foundation conducted a battery of tests
on the doll, just to make sure that the results were largely consistent across all subjects. Over 25 different subjects were tested on
SCP-136, all reporting roughly the same results: Laughter after twenty minutes of observation,
a few minutes of silence, and then - according to subject testimonials - the appearance of
the same grinning, naked apparition, inducing a state of truly primal terror in its victims. Interestingly, not all of the subjects were
D-Classes: Some were volunteering scientists who were aware of the potential effects, but
let their morbid curiosity get the better of them, thinking they would be prepared to
face whatever terrifying vision would manifest from the doll. But in every case, they were reduced to the
same screaming, traumatized wrecks. But when a Foundation researcher named Dr.
Simon, the 25th subject of the SCP-136 experiments, volunteered for testing, things took an even
more horrifying turn. During the testing period, Dr. Simon had the
unusual experience of not actually seeing the SCP-136-2 entity. After being told how terrifying it was by
coworkers, he was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to share their fears. Later that day he went to get himself a warm
cup of coffee from the site’s employee break room. His coworkers became concerned when his coffee
mug dropped to the ground and shattered, as Dr. Simon pointed into a nearby empty hallway
and began screaming. He claimed that he could see her floating
down the hallway towards him, her face twisted into that menacing grin. As none of the other scientists could see
what Simon was seeing, they surrounded him and attempted to calm him, assuming that he
was perhaps the victim of some kind of sudden, psychotic break. But minutes later, every scientist in the
break room collapsed and fell unconscious. Not long after, they all began to wake back
up...Except Dr. Simon. He had fallen into a coma, and died while
still on life support three days later. It was the first report of SCP-136 causing
a death since Agent Sims’ unfortunate fall. Dr. Meyers immediately requested that SCP-136
be reclassified from Euclid to Keter Class so more resources could be allocated for its
containment. Administration denied any changes to the containment
procedures of SCP-136, frustrating Dr. Meyers, but little did she know that it was because
site administration had ulterior motives for SCP-136. No matter who they were, whether they were
the hardened killers of D-Class, the trained soldiers of the Foundation field agent corps,
or jaded scientists who see any number of horrors each week as part of their normal
jobs, SCP-136 had the unique ability to reduce its victims to terrified wrecks. In a move that feels decidedly more in line
with the Chaos Insurgency, site administration had started using SCP-136 to assist in enhanced
interrogation with detained people of interest. Even the toughest nuts to crack soon became
very talkative after the appearance of SCP-136-2 traumatized them for life. Essentially, the administrators were making
a kind of deal with the devil: Allowing SCP-136 more free reign, in exchange for them gathering
valuable intel from these victims. But as always, the problem with making deals
with the devil is that the devil is always going to collect his due in the end. Dr. Meyers’ warnings would continue to fall
upon deaf ears though, even as the creature’s power seemed to grow. Tests on D-Classes continued, with the entity
traumatizing a whole group at once during one of these experiments. However, when Dr. Meyers herself, along with
a few agents, entered the testing chamber to drag out their twitching bodies, they all
fell unconscious. When Dr. Meyers woke back up, three of the
D-Classes had fallen into comas like Dr. Simon, and died shortly after. Dr. Meyers pleaded with the administration
to terminate the doll, but her requests were denied. It was proving to be too valuable in its various
interrogations. And besides, nobody was sure if the doll even
could be terminated. Whenever it was damaged, it simply disappeared
and reappeared within a one meter radius. The only thing that hadn’t been tried was
full vaporization, which Dr. Meyers’ superiors refused to sign off on. SCP-136 was here to stay. Unfortunately, the same could not be said
for Dr. Meyers herself. After one more unfortunate testing incident
where a D-Class disappeared entirely in what seemed to be clear evidence of SCP-136’s
growing power, Dr. Meyers implored site administration to reclassify the anomaly and slate it for
termination. It was getting more powerful, more unstable,
and more dangerous. But rather than terminate the anomalous ragdoll,
in the end all they did was remove Dr. Meyers from the SCP-136 case. With her gone, there was one less thing for
them to worry about as they gave more and more victims to SCP-136, using its dark powers
to torture detained people of interest into telling them everything they wanted to know. But with the entity seeming to grow more powerful
with every victim, it seems very likely that Dr. Meyers’ worst fears will come true,
and one day those controlling the terrifying anomaly will find that they’re the ones
hearing a strange, evil laughter coming from nowhere at all. Now check out “SCP-610 - The Flesh That
Hates” and “SCP-1337 - The Hitchhiker” for more SCPs that’ll chill you to the core!
