Dr. Harper Therapy is a r/nosleep series written by the user u/Dr_Harper. The first file of the series was published on Reddit in December 2018. A total of eighteen files have been written, with six in each volume. Three volumes have been written and posted online. You can find the stories on his subreddit, r/Dr_Harper, and this post
. The volumes have also been published in print, ebook, and audiobook format.
The story follows Dr. Harper, a determined therapist who works with the most dangerous patients with his assistant, Noah. The problem is, Dr. Harper’s patients have a “habit” of dying.
This series relies heavily on Psychological Horror, with a tiny bit of Existential Horror and Nothing Is Scarier.
His patients he written about are as follows:
Volume 1: Shooter Files (I'm a Therapist, and My Patient Is Going to Be the Next School Shooter)
- A boy who planned on becoming the next School shooter
- A patient with OCD whose loved ones really did suffer every time his missed a ritual
- The choir boy who claimed he was being molested — not by a priest — but by God Himself
- A patient with PTSD who gave me nightmares
- A husband and wife who accused each other of abuse, and only one of them was telling the truth
- Patient #220
Volume 2: Prison Files (I'm a Therapist, and My Patient Is in Love with a Pedophile)
- A young inmate who fell in love with a pedophile
- A man who intentionally infected strangers with HIV
- A patient with an extremely unusual addiction
- A sociopath who wanted to have a conscience
- A conspiracy theorist who harassed survivors of a terrorist attack
- A boy sold into sex slavery
Volume 3: Influencer Files (I'm a Therapist, and My Patient Is a Vegan Terrorist)
- A vegan vigilante who treated humans like factory farm animals
- A germaphobe who warned of the next major plague
- Zach
- A rapist who got canceled online - and in real life
- A psychic medium with a disturbing prediction
- The patient who asked me to take them off life support
The official website is here. A prequel volume, The Disturbing Incidents at Lonesome Woods Boarding School, was published in 2021. A fifth volume is in the works, with a preview available on the website.
Dr. Harper Therapy contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: We have names like Elliot, Noah, and Zach... And then we have names like Linus, Donahue, and Dr. Zhang.
- Axes at School: Dr. Harper’s patient is planning on shooting up his school, any parent and teacher’s worst nightmare. Not only that, but Alex gets shot and killed in the end by Emma.
- Ambiguous Gender: Subverted. In the first two files of the Shooter Files, Dr. Harper’s gender isn’t stated. In the Choir Boy story, Dr. Harper is revealed as male.
- And I Must Scream:
- Starting with the OCD file, Phil lives in constant fear of his loved ones getting hurt, and having to do a ritual every five minutes to prevent that. He has a horrible sleep schedule because of that, and he can’t tell the cops. He also stays at home 24/7.
- The Glade Farm Boys. Holy shit. Those poor kids are stuck in cages with their own feces and urine, they get burned if they try to say no, and they get tortured every fucking day that they are in there. Not only that, they can’t go to the police because the police are in on it.
- Kierra gets burned by acid, giving her severe burns everywhere. She’s in constant pain, and she can’t do anything about it other than beg for someone to kill her.
- Artistic License – Law: Dr. Harper states that he got life without parole in exchange for taking death penalty off the table. In the US, only murder, treason, espionage, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide is punishable by death. Other than attempted murder, none of those things were even remotely related to Dr. Harper’s case.
- Artistic License – Medicine: In real life, Kierra definitely wouldn’t have survived her injuries from the acid. According to her, she got second and third degree burns all over her body. Someone with 98 percent burnt skin would’ve passed away from their injuries. As Kierra puts it: she would’ve died looking like Freddy Kruger’s asshole.
- Ascended Extra: Dr. Harper’s friend Zach started out as a childhood friend that was in one of the Shooter Files. In the Prison Files, he is in charge of finding Noah, and he’s the one who wrote the article clearing Dr. Harper’s name. In the Influencer Files, he’s on the island with everyone.
- As the Good Book Says...: Father Michael quotes a bible verse about forgiveness after getting falsely accused of being a pedophile.
- Asshole Victim: Played for Horror. One story has a terrorist stream his torture of someone with a history of making bigoted and otherwise offensive comments online. While some of the comments about the videos hope the victim will be saved, others believe her past awful behavior means she deserves it. Some people outright express pleasure that she's suffering, one calling it the best stream of the year and another asking if anyone else was getting a boner. Dr. Harper notes that he feels no need to join that particular website now.
- Attack the Mouth: In the Vegan Terrorist story, the titular terrorist cuts off Maggie’s lips in the livestream.
- Babies Ever After: Downplayed. Noah and Dr. Harper adopt James at the end of the Influencer Files after his mom passes away.
- Big Damn Heroes: In the Abusive Couple story, Dr. Harper follows Lucas, sees Kierra tied up, and chases Lucas with an axe.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The Influencer Files has a chicken torturing a woman on a livestream and Kierra and Noah both get burned by acid.
- Breather Episode:
- In the Shooter Files, the Choir Boy story has only one part, and Dr. Cole didn’t take as much as a drastic measure to help as Dr. Harper usually does.
- The Addiction story in the Prison Files also has only one part, and Dr. Harper was stuck in solitary confinement, leaving him unable to do much to help his patient.
- In the Influencer Files, the Zach story is about Dr. Harper’s childhood and relationship with his parents.
- Bring My Brown Pants: In the Abusive Couple Story, Kierra claims Lucas feeds her pies that make her soil herself. Later on, Kierra soils herself from fear when Lucas ties her up and carries around a knife. Subverted, as Kierra was eating sugarless Haribo gummy bears to make herself shit her pants.
- Butt-Monkey: To some extent, Dr. Harper in the Prison Files. Let’s unpack this shit case. It all started at the end of the Shooter Files. He got arrested and got life without parole in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. For something he didn’t even do! He then got infected with HIV by one of his patients, got his medication stolen from him by the copycat, got his ear bitten off, and is now on the run from the police after murdering Dr. Zhang. Let’s not forget in the Influencer Files, he got tricked into eating a woman along with half of the customers in the restaurant he and the Dream Team were eating at. Luckily, the human meat incident was a hoax.
- Cannot Self Terminate: Kierra asks Dr. Harper to take her off life support, saying that the pain from the burns are unbearable.
- Character Development:
- In the Prison and Influencer Files, Dr. Harper starts getting more softer.
- In the Influencer Files, Noah learns to stand up for himself more.
- Comically Missing the Point: Downplayed. In Part 3 of the Vegan Terrorist story, Dr. Harper joins the dozens of guests in throwing up into the ocean. He then noticed that Kierra didn’t join them, despite eating the whole burger. He storms up to her, and asks angrily why she’s so calm. Kierra then starts talking about how the burger was cooked well-done, ignoring the fact that she pretty much ate a person. At least, it’s presumed that she and the guests did until the end of the prison files, where it’s revealed that it was a hoax. So either Kierra knew all along that it was a hoax, or she was perfectly fine with eating a person.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Tony’s conspiracies about the pedophile ring and the faked terrorist attack turned out to be right.
- Costume Copycat: In the Prison Files, one of Dr. Harper’s patients pretends to be him.
- Crazy Survivalist: Linus. He is a huge germaphobe, speaks about human extinction, and is Crazy-Prepared for this unknown illness.
- Creepy Child: James in the Prison Files. He was literally first introduced wearing a shirt that said “No See. No Talk. No Police.” on it while covering his ears and closing his eyes.
- Young Elliot also counts to some extent. Though, both examples here are downplayed.
- Darker and Edgier: In the Prison Files, Dr. Harper is in prison with a bunch of dangerous criminals, a prison psychologist who despises him, and the prison is running a pedophile ring. If you think it can’t possibly get any worse... You must be new here.
- The Influencer Files. Holy shit. The Influencer Files make both the Shooter Files and Prison Files look like actual Sesame Street in comparison. From mass plagues to straight up torture porn, these files can give anyone nightmares for days.
- Deadly Prank: In the Viral Germaphobe file, the virus turned out to be a “prank” by a prankster couple. The boyfriend apparently put ACE inhibitors and Ambien in the water supply to prank his girlfriend and everyone into thinking there’s an unknown virus going around. Luckily, no one died from this harmful prank. At least, none that we know of. But people could’ve gotten seriously sick from the water. All for a prank...
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Dr. Harper can be sarcastic at times.
- In the Influencer Files, Kierra cracks a joke every chance she gets.
- The Determinator: Dr. Harper tales drastic measures to help out his patients. Including, but not limited to: writing fake posts, kidnapping, and indirect murder.
- Disappeared Dad:
- Alex’s dad abandoned his family.
- In the Zach story in the Influencer files, we learn that Elliot (Dr.Harper)’s dad is presumed to have left his family after a huge fight with Elliot’s mother.
- Domestic Abuse: In the Shooter Files, one of the files was about a couple accusing each other of abuse. One of them wasn’t lying.
- Everyone Has Standards: In the last file ending, Kierra tells Dr. Harper that even though she is a sociopath, even she understands relationships take effort.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In the Influencer Files’s real ending, Dr. Harper had to reject Zach’s idea of going to the abandoned mental facility. Basically, to get his happy ending with Noah and James, he had to get over his obsession with helping people and let the police do their job.
- Plus, literally everything that happened in the series.
- For the Evulz: It’s never explained why Dr. Zhang decided to run a pedophile ring and use her psychology degree to manipulate her patients into killing people.
- Or why Shawn made a Twitter account dedicated to posting offensive things and starting flame wars with everyone. Or why he chose to live-stream Maggie getting tortured to death and tricking everyone into thinking they ate Maggie for lunch.
- Freudian Excuse: Dr. Harper acts the way he does because his dad abandoned him and his mother with BPD, leaving him to take care of her.
- Hope Spot:
- In the School Shooter file, Dr. Harper manages to get Emma to fully convince Alex to save the school by shooting Ian... And then right after, Emma shoots Alex.
- The Prison Files is rife with this.
- In the Pedophile file Dr. Zhang give Dr. Harper Sam’s medicine and grounding words that help calm Sam. Though when Dr. Harper actually tries the medication and words on Sam, the words turn out to be trigger words and the medication turned out to be Chantix, known for agitating the mind and having an insanely high rate of violent and suicidal reactions.
- In the HIV file, Dr. Harper gets stabbed with a needle by Don, the titular HIV patient. Doc manages to get his hands on PEP, but soon after Dr. Zhang gets it and throws Dr. Harper into solitary confinement.
- In the Addiction file, the “Copycat” Dr. Harper tells Dr. Zhang where the polaroids of the Glade Farm Boys are, but luckily, the “real” one end up getting the PEP... Only for it to be revealed that the whole file was from the Copycat’s perspective, which means that the one who told Dr. Zhang where he hid the photos was the real Dr. Harper, and that the Copycat got the PEP instead of Dr. Harper. Which means that Dr. Harper told Dr. Zhang where the photos were for nothing.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Throughout the files, all the patients’ problems were caused by other people.
- I'm a Humanitarian:
- Chase. Though not by choice.
- In the Vegan Terrorist story, the terrorist tricked everyone into eating Maggie, his first victim. Including Dr. Harper. Subverted, as the livestream was pre-recorded and the human meat incident was a hoax.
- Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Played for Horror in the Influencer Files. The Chicken live-streams himself torturing Maggie in the most painful and humiliating way possible.
- I Should Write a Book About This: Dr. Harper retires in the real ending and becomes a horror writer. He writes about his patient files, changing the names.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While Dr. Harper is usually a Jerkass, he has a few Pet the Dog moments. (Most of them in the Prison and Influencer Files).
- murder.com: In the Vegan Terrorist Story, Maggie is tortured and killed on a livestream. Except she isn’t.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dr. Harper and Noah both find James on the beach alone and call the police (despite his “No See. No Talk. No Police.” shirt). He later finds out that the police were also part of the pedophile ring, and that they basically returned him to his abusers.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Kierra tells Dr. Harper this in the Shooter Files, saying that they both like to take control.
- Only Sane Man: Either Zach or Noah. Granted, they also have their own set of quirks, but out of all the characters, Noah and Zach seem the most normal.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the Assisted Suicide Story, Noah yells at Dr. Harper for choosing to go to the abandoned mental facility instead of staying with him and taking care of James. Thankfully, Dr. Harper’s chooses Noah and James in the real ending.
- Patient of the Week: Zigzagged. Some of Dr. Harper’s patients are in their respective files once, and never heard from again, while other patients are mentioned/show up at least once after their file.
- Pedophile Priest: Averted. Father Michael gets accused of being this, but the accusation is proven to be false. It was actually Elliot who was burning himself.
- Perspective Flip: The dates before each file in the Influencer Files are from Noah’s point of view.
- In the Shooter Files Choir Boy Story, the whole story was told through the perspective of Dr. Harper’s childhood therapist, Dr. Cole.
- In the Addiction Story, the whole story was told from the Copycat’s point of view.
- Police Are Useless: Worse than useless, one of them is part of the Happy Family Cult.
- Also, the guards in the Prison Files don’t do anything about the stuff going on in the prison. It doesn’t help that the guards are probably running the pedophile ring with Dr. Zhang.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Noah and Dr. Harper. Noah is the more cheerful and optimistic of the duo, while Dr. Harper is the more grumpy and rude one.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: In trailers 1 (https://youtu.be/uVGBAf4qFLw), 2 (https://youtu.be/q2y7mxRi_50), and 3 (https://youtu.be/QBNki1VBrWk), pop and calming music plays while it introduces the patient files and gory scenes show up on screen.
- Thrill Seeker: Dr. Harper. Oh gosh, Dr. Harper. To the point where he almost chose to go to an abandoned facility over staying with Noah and James! Luckily, he comes to his senses and choose Noah and James in the end.
- Trigger Phrase: Sam has a few trigger words. Dr. Zhang uses this to her advantage by convincing Dr. Harper that his trigger words were grounding words for Sam. It doesn’t end well for Sam.
- For Chase, it’s “Bulk up, skinny faggot” while pointing to someone, which causes him to eat the person they’re pointing to.
