Unsolved Phenomena Writing Prompts

You start working in a nursing home, you have a resident diagnosed with late stage dementia. They ramble about their life experiences, from building pyramids to seeing Jesus crucified to watching fights at the Roman Colosseum. 20 years pass, you are now chief nurse, and they haven't aged a bit.

A seemingly bottomless pit was found, for which the depth can't be determined. Over time, scores of people began using it to illegally dump trash. Many have jumped in to die, while others jumped believing that they'll find life's answers within it. Today, we learn the truth about the hole.

You are on trial for attempting to assassinate the King. Unknown to anyone but you and His Majesty, you were actually trying to stop him from killing himself. When you request a trial by combat, he ceremoniously accepts. Your opponent? The King himself.

Every year, the Mars Curiosoty Rover sings itself happy birthday. You are a NASA technician that typically monitors its system. Today, you heard a small, quiet voice singing along with it.

It's 3 AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says "DO NOT LOOK AT THE WALRUS". You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful walrus. Look."

It's been years since the last moon landing. After several decades of silence, humans proudly set foot on it again. Up there, the astronauts found mummified human corpses inside torn open space suits. The tags were still legible, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin... the astronauts from decades ago.

Ever since a horrific traffic accident years ago you have had a reoccurring song going around in your head. Although heavily researched, this song doesn't exist and there is no reference to it at all. Your at a bar, washing your hands in the toilets when a man walks in faintly singing a tune.

A street vendor sells you a painting that they say depicts whatever the heart truly desires. You bought it because you saw something nice and pretty. Your spouse asks why you bought a painting of something much more disturbing.

Your spouse has the annoying habit of unexpectedly licking you. When you ask them why they do it, they always reply "just so you know it's really me." You think it's nothing but a cute joke. One day, feeling something is off, you realise your spouse hasn't done it in over three weeks.

You wake up from a coma. You were in a car crash caused by a drunk billionaire. In an effort to save his reputation, he hurriedly and secretly ordered the best doctors to restore your burned face using the photo on the driver's license they found in your car—a car which you've stolen.

Your father died when you were a child. Before he passed, he wrote you letters, one for each birthday, until your eighteen. Over the years they’ve become more and more eerily specific - addressing things he couldn’t have known would occur.

You've been cursed so that whenever you pick up a tool you will lose consciousness but wake up after finishing a project related to that tool, you just picked up a bow hoping to get some hunting done, when you wake up, you're sitting on a throne.

It's been ten years since 'The Gap' when everyone on the planet just lost an entire year of their lives. Completely unable to recall anything that happened during that time-frame. We know life went on, but no one can recall anything. Then, you find one half-burned book and know why we forgot.

You've been convicted of 1st degree murder, and (as is customary in society) are sentenced to "death by black-hole." You expect death as your capsule approaches the event horizon. After crossing, everything goes silent, until you hear someone say "Sir, I've found another one."

You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.

You woke up in a bathtub full of ice with fresh stitches on your back and abdomen. The emergency room reveals that several organs are missing, replaced with something unknown. They want to cut you open, but you're feeling awesome, stronger and healthier than you've ever felt in your life.

You filmed your girlfriend playing the “What The Fluff” Challenge on your Beagle. The sheet dropped, she was gone, and you got great footage of your dog’s response. That was three days ago. She hasn’t reappeared and the police are asking questions. Now, you and your dog have a mystery to solve.

In the post-apocalypse, you have a radio station, and regularly talked with a person at another radio station who you believe was the only other survivor. One day, that person stopped responding. Years later, your radio crackles to life and you hear: “Sorry for not responding, but I’m back.”

You nail the interview and get hired on the spot, but as your new boss shakes your hand he says "It's great to have you back." Likewise, your new coworkers seem to already know you, and act as if you've worked there in the past. They keep apologizing for 'what happened.' You have no idea why.

You are a SpaceX astronaut on Mars. The earth as you knew it was lost to a nuclear war between NATO and China/Russia. Luckily your mission was to construct the colony and you have enough supplies to survive indefinitely. It’s been 25 years since loss of contact. You hear a knock on the door.

The more dangerous a job is, the more it pays. You just took a job offer to stand in an empty room and do nothing for $100k an hour.

When you were a child, a mysterious voice whispered "follow the woman in the red dress with the gold polka dots". All your life, you never saw her. Now, lying in the hospital, 98 years old, you see a woman in a red dress and gold polka dots walk past your room.

You are extremely famous. Everyone knows who you are. The only thing is, you don't know why you're so famous. You don't come from a rich family and you're unemployed. You don't even remember how you got a mansion or a Lamborghini. Even stranger, everybody looks so scared when you bring it up.

The barista looks at you oddly. “Sorry, mate, no play money, only cash.” She reads the twenty in her hand...”America? Where’s that?” You see a world map among the cafe decor, and between Canada and Mexico is a wide stretch of water marked “Gulf of Atlantis”. You stumble out of the cafe...

You are a successful artist who has a condition where you randomly black out. When you wake up, you see that you have created beautiful masterpeices that you don't remember painting. Lately, all of your paintings have been more and more disturbing.

You wake up 7 minutes before your alarm, as you head down the hallway you notice everything is a low rendered wireframe version of your house interior. You hear scurrying and a voice whisper “commence quick launch simulation world 63,239,430 we have an unscheduled early rise here”

You are a police officer who has just arrested a scam artist for selling "elixirs of immortality". However, you discovered that his criminal records states that he was also arrested for the same crime in 1862.

You stare at the pills in your hand. The doctor taps his foot impatiently. "These will really cure me of hearing that voice?" you ask. The doctor rolls his eyes. "Yes, you'll never hear her again." You level your gaze on the doctor. "I never told anyone the voice was female..."

You are on a flight from Beijing to Seoul. Its should be a short two-hour flight, but five hours have passed and the plane has still not landed. There is nothing outside but dense cloud cover. There is no food left on the plane.The staff are confused. People are starting to panic.

You are a fresh junior researcher at NASA. While out for drinks with your new boss, you jokingly ask her why NASA hasn't explored the ocean with its resources. She turns pale and leans in close, then whispers, "We have. Why do you think we want to leave the planet so badly?"