Read part two here

I had a nightmare that night, more vivid than any dream I had experienced before.

I was standing in a courtroom of some kind. Faceless people in old timey clothing gathered on the benches as I stood before the towering judge behind the podium.

“Maggie Rose Good.’ The judge’s powerful voice filled the room as he spoke. “I hereby find you guilty of murder and sentence you to death by hanging. May God have mercy on your soul.”

“No! This isn’t fair.” I heard myself say, though I had no control over my own voice. “I didn’t kill anyone. I was only trying to help, to deliver the baby safely just like I have done for this town so many times before. I’m innocent, I swear it.”

“Silence, witch!” The Judge screamed, “You know what you did. You know what you are. Don’t you dare try to deny it. Your kind deserves to be removed from this earth like vermin. You will hang as soon as possible and that is the end of it.”

Tears were streaming down my cheeks now. “But your honor, I-”

The blank faces of the crowd were growing closer and more threatening.

“Witch, witch, witch, witch.’ They chanted like a war cry.

I was sobbing now, tears and snot gushing from my face.“I’m not a witch! I swear it! I was only trying to help.”

It was then that I awoke with a start in my own bed, covered in the sickly warmth of my own sweat.

I grabbed for my phone on my bedside table to check the time. Four in the morning. I only had two horrors left before I would have to get up and get ready for school.

Yet something was drawing me to go to the school early, even at this unreasonable hour. Something was calling me to explore the church grounds when there would be no one else around.

This call was so strong that I could not possibly ignore it, like a command from God himself.

It was a freezing cold late October morning. It was cold enough for me to need to layer a pair of wool socks over my tights and one of my school issued blazers over my uniform. Even then I could not be completely rid of the bite of the cold.

I had to sneak downstairs as quietly as possible to avoid waking my parents. My dad wouldn’t get up for his corporate office job for another hour, at least another hour. My mom would be working from home today and wouldn’t rise from her bed until ten at least. As long as I stayed quiet, there should have been no one awake to catch me sneaking out.

I grabbed my backpack from the hook by the front door, slipped on my shoes and locked the front door behind me. All went by without incident.

I had rarely been outside at this hour before, when the rest of the world was still asleep and the sun had yet to peek its head over the horizon. It was peaceful, but in an unsettling sort of way, as if I were walking through a version of the world that I wasn’t supposed to be in.

I wrapped my blazer tighter around me as I walked my usual route to the school. The air was getting colder and colder by the minute. Thick grey clouds were masking the new light casting down from the sky. It would be just my luck if we got the first snow of the season on the one day I decided to take an early morning walk to school.

The church and the school resembled ghost towns as I approached them. I knew that there were people who lived on the grounds of the church full time, but in this hour, they looked wholly and completely abandoned.

Even though I still felt the pull of being called to this place, I had no idea what I was supposed to do now that I was here. I felt like there was nothing that I could do; I awkwardly took a seat on a nearby bench and waited for something, anything at all, to happen.

That’s when I heard it, the voice whisping against my ear like the breath of the cold air.

Come to me, it whispered in my ear. Come kneel at my grave as you kneel for your Christ

The voice chilled me with fear, but it also intrigued me. Despite myself, I felt that I had no choice but to blindly follow the voice to in the graveyard.

I found Maggie Rose Good’s grave with ease, as it seemed to silently call out to me. I did as I was told, kneeling at the grave and pressing my forehead against the cool surface of the headstone.

All at once, a flurry of images flashed through my mind of fire and brimstone, of hanging nooses, of death and gut wreching pain.

But I wasn’t scared. I was in a trance that brought me a strange feeling of peace.

That was, until my trance was broken by someone roughly yanking me to my feet by my arm.

“What the hell are you doing, girl?” The elderly groundskeeper screeched in my ear, “You’re not supposed to be here! The graveyard is forbidden.”

“I- I’m sorry, sir. I just-” I stammered, dazed.

“I don’t want to hear any excuses.’ The groundskeeper looked down at me in disgust. “Just get out of here and never step foot in my graveyard again. You’re lucky I’m not alerting the school staff of this.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I hopped the low fence that surrounded the graveyard and made my retreat into the woods that surrounded the grounds of the church.

I could only stop to catch my breath when I was so deep into the forest that I could no longer see the outline of the church.

But even still. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched by something sinister

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I let out a scream that must have rang through the entire grounds of the church. Two of the nuns that taught at the school, Sister Judy and Sister Marge, came running out of the back door of the church to see what was wrong.

“Goodness, Sophie. What’s with all this screaming?” Sister Judy demanded.

With a shaking hand, I pointed down to the decomposing dog corpse that lay across Maggie Rose Good’s grave. Yet, for some strange reason, neither of the nuns seemed phased.

“Not again.” Sister Marge murmured under her breath.

“Why don’t you head on to class, Sophie?” Sister Judy said, turning her attention back towards me. “You’re already late.”

“Who would do this to a dog?” I choked the words out.

“No one did anything to the dog, sweetheart. Just look at it. It’s clearly been dead for quite a long time already,” Sister Judy said. “Someone probably just found it somewhere and threw it over the grave. That’s all.”

This did nothing to comfort me.

“B-but why?” I stammered. “Why would someone do that?”

“Class. Now ” Sister Marge snapped. “You’ve already missed first period.”

I did, indeed, miss first period. I walked into my second period class almost ten minutes late. Sister Kathryn, the nun who taught my second period Biblical studies class cast me an intimidating glare, and she tapped the end of her ruler against her desk.

I couldn’t help but stare out the window as I took my seat at my assigned desk at the very back of the class by the window.

The nun’s lecture about the saints droned on, but I wasn’t listening. I was too unglued in watching the scene that was playing out in the graveyard just outside the classroom window.

Sister Judy, Sister Marge and Father Robert were all standing over the dead dog on top of Maggie Good’s grave. I couldn’t hear them through the glass, but it was clear that they were arguing about something. The argument only ceased when Father Robert stuffed the dead dog into a garbage bag and stormed off toward the dumpsters in the back of the church.

Sister Judy seemed to be in tears, burying her face in her hands as Sister Marge rested an awkward hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.

There was something deeper going on here. Something was being kept from us. I just had no clue as to what.

We took our lunch period outside that day. I spotted Mia leaning up against the back wall ot the church wall smoking yet another cigarette. Not seeing any better place to take my lunch, I decided to sit down next to her.

“Hey Sophie,” Mia said as I took my peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of my lunch sack. “Did you hear they found a dead dog on the witch’s grave? They say a student found it.”

“I know,” I said, taking the first bite of my sandwich. “I’m the one who found it.”

Mia’s eyes widened as she put out her cigarette. “Really? Was it all gross and decayed with maggots all over it?”

I swallowed before glaring up at her. ‘Mia, please. I’m trying to eat here.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird though? That Maggie girl has been dead for almost two hundred years. There shouldn’t be anyone left alive to hold a grudge against her.” Mia said. “There has to be something really weird going on if you ask me.”

“Please stop talking about it.” I snapped. “I’m trying to put it out of my mind.”

The rest of the school day went by without incident, but before we were allowed to go home, we were called into the church for an emergency speech by Father Robert.

This was strange. Any religious teachings from Father Robert always took place in the morning. It wasn’t normal for him to keep us too long after school day ended either. Something really important must have been going on.

The girls around me chattered and whispered amongst themselves as we all took our seats in the pews. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who thought that this after school sermon was strange.

Father Robert stepped up to the podium at the front of the church and tapped at his microphone, signaling for us to quiet down.

“Girls, I called you in here for a very important announcement, though the last thing I want is to panic you.” Father Robert began. “I’m sure you all have heard about the dead dog that was found on one of the graves in the church graveyard. I know that it sounds alarming, but I want to assure you that the nuns and I have things under control. There is no need for you to worry.”

The church erupted into panicked murmurs, only for Sister Kathryn to smack her ruler across the wall.

‘Silence!” She yelled out, “Father Robert is still speaking”

“Yes, thank you, Sister Kathryn.” Father Robert said before continuing. “Even though I do not want any of you to worry yourselves about this, I do want you to be alert to any strange activity that you may see around the school or the church. If you see any strange characters hanging around, any strange items being left lying around, please do not hesitate to report to one of the nuns or I.”

Dread quickly took root in the pit of my stomach. There was no doubt in my mind that something was deeply and terribly wrong, something that we were not being told.

Father Robert cracked a forced smile that brought no comfort.

“That will be all, girls.’ He said. “You’re free to go.”

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”

I lived in a small Oregon town that most people had never heard of. It was like something out of Gilmore Girls, only the residents were far less friendly and the vibe was far less wholesome.

I went to an all girls Catholic school situated at the edge of town. My family was not religious, but heard that this Catholic school provided a much better education than the subpar public K-12 school, which was the one and only public school in town.

Thus, I was stuck wearing a plaid skirt to class every day, never hiking up past the knee and always with thick knit tights underneath for extra modesty. It was the same uniform that I’ve worn every school day since the first grade

The Catholic school was situated at the very edge of town right next to the sole Catholic church in the county. It was so close to the church that the ancient graveyard shared a plot of land with the school courtyard.

As far as anyone could tell, this graveyard hadn’t been in use since the 1930s at least, quite possibly longer. It was assumed that someone (most likely one of the elderly people who worked at the church, though no one could say for sure) had been taking care of and maintaining it and keeping it in decent shape. But even still, it could not be entirely saved from the decay of time.

Even with consistent care and maintenance, the graveyard couldn’t help but fall apart. The stone of the headstones crumbled into pebbles. The names of the dead faded. Weeds grew over the graves faster than anyone could pull them out.

Yet, strangely, there was one grave that had remained perfect and pristine for nearly one hundred and fifty years. That was the grave of Maggie Rose Good, a teenage girl who died in the 1870s.

Maggie unmasked a reputation that followed her long after death. From the reports of the time, she was a strange girl. She was quiet, isolated and preferred animals to people. As was typical for small communities at the time, rumors spread about her like wildfire. There were whispers of her being a lesbian, completely uninterested in men, having some kind of mental disorder that should have landed her in the asylum, but most interestingly of all, that she was a witch.

The witch rumor seemed to have its origins in Maggie’s deeply intense knowledge of plants and medicine. If someone in the town fell ill, Maggie was there to help with her teas and her soups. When a woman was giving birth, Maggie was there with her unconventional knowledge on how to deliver a baby. When a man had injured himself while lying down on train tracks or building houses, Maggie was there to bind the wound or snap the bone back into place.

Yet despite how crucial Maggie’s skills and services were to the community, it didn’t save her from being outcast. When one of the babies she had delivered was born as a stillborn, Maggie was blamed. Though full on witch trials had been out of fashion for over a century at that point, the town still had to find a way to punish their scapegoat.

So, after a notoriously botched trial, Maggie Rose Good was hanged for murder. She was only nineteen years old. The only person who mourned her was her heartbroken mother, who wouldn’t rest until her daughter was given a proper burial

Given the nature of her legacy and the fact that her grave hadn’t deteriorated a bit in over a century, the girls at the school liked to make up urban legends to scare each other with. They said the grave would curse anyone who so much as walked by it. They said that Maggie was still waiting underground to snag an unsuspecting victim. But most importantly, there were rumors that Maggie’s vengeful ghosts still haunted the school grounds.

But I didn’t believe in all that. I was a person of logic and reason.

It was a normal school day in mid October when it happened. I had showered, brushed out my nearly untamable curly red hair, put on my uniform and walked to school just as I usually would.

I could see Mia Harding leaning against the fence of the graveyard smoking a cigarette (or at least I hoped it was just a cigarette) as I approached the school.

Mia was the resident problem child of the school. She smoked, drank, bleached her hair, hiked her uniform skirt halfway up her thighs, all things that were strictly forbidden by the teachers at our school. She could frequently be seen skipping school to get into the cars of her revolving door of older boyfriends or offering to give other girls stick and poke tattoos in the school bathrooms in exchange for twenty dollars.

Teachers hated her. Students gossiped about her. I thought that she was kind of cool once you got to know her.

“Hey, Sophie,” Mia greeted me after blowing out a plume of smoke. “Did you hear the news?”

I shook my head in confusion. “No. What news?”

“There have been sightings of some weird pedophile dude lurking around the school at night,” Mia said matter of factly. ‘They don’t want us to hang around the outside school grounds for too long. They think he’s dangerous.”

“Then what are you doing here, Mia?” I asked.

Mia gave a nonchalant shrug. “I needed a cigarette. And I’m not scared of some stupid pedo.”

“I don’t have time for this Mia,” I said. “I’m late for my first class.”

Though we were forbidden from so much as entering the graveyard, I took a shortcut to class by cutting through it. Most everyone else was already in the school. No one would know.

As I walked through the maze of crumbling headstones, I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but I was drawn to it with morbid curiosity. I had to see what it was.

As I approached Maggie Rose Good’s grave, I let out a scream when I realized what was on it.

Lying across her grave was a badly decomposed, worm ridded dog corpse.

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My family did not understand why I had fallen ill, why I was stuck in my bed, unable to recover. But I knew full well why I was feeling this way.

For the past few weeks, the illness that fell over me had only gotten worse. It had gotten to the point where I could barely sit up in my own bed, let alone get up and function as normal. My diet consisted of little cups of Jell-O and warm chicken broth. That was all that I could stomach.

The estate I lived in seemed impossibly large. I had yet to explore all of it yet. The rooms and hallways seemed to stretch on endlessly. And yet the room I was given was scarcely bigger than a closet.

I tried to make the most of my little space. I would pin my sketches of wolves and mountains to the walls, only to have my parents tear them down and throw them in the trash. “Tacky,” they called them, “unfit for a respectable home.”

So the cream colored walls of my bedroom remained bare and devoid of personality, giving me nothing to look at from my sick bed

The woman who called herself my mother was sympathetic at first, bringing me food in bed and pressing a cool compress to my forehead every few hours whether I wanted it or not.

But I could tell that her patience was wearing thin after the first week or so of this. She started to see me as a manipulator, as a burden.

“For God’s sake, Clara. You can’t stay in bed forever,” the woman who called herself my mom said as she ripped open the curtains over my window and flooded the room with thick grey smog that did nothing but make me nauseous. “You know, I’m starting to grow suspicious that you’re faking all this for attention.”

“No, Mom. I’m not faking. I swear.” I said, lifting a hand to shield my eyes from the sunlight. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just not getting better. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re moping around and wallowing in self pity all day.” The woman who called herself my mother said. “You need to go outside and get some fresh air. I bet that would cure you right up.”

“But mom. I don’t want to go outside.” I said. “There’s too much smog out there. It will only make me cough more.”

“That was not an offer. It was an order.” The woman who called herself my mother said. “You are going outside. You don’t have a choice.”

So that was how I found myself sitting on a bench on the edge of the estate, drowning in the smog that was in the air with a book in hand.

I’ve heard about a factory being built across the river from the estate. The man who called himself my father raved with passion about how great this new factory would be for the local economy, and how many new jobs it would create. But I’ve seen what the factories were doing to the air and to the river, how many animals were falling sick and dying. Though I would never speak this opinion out loud, I wasn’t sure that this factory was such a good thing.

There was a patch of woods that rimmed the estate’s outdoor garden. It was so thick that I could barely see the other side of it from my bench. The woman who called herself my mother told me never to venture into these woods, issuing the command in a spiky layer of threats. But still. I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of being drawn towards it by a force I couldn’t understand. Even though I had never dared to set foot in it, these woods seemed more like home to me than the estate ever had.

That particular morning, as I was sitting in the smog trying and failing to read my book through my coughs, I could hear a wolf howling from somewhere in these woods.

Most people would be terrified to hear a sound like that so close to them, but I would know that howl anywhere. A warm sense of comfort washed over.

Somehow, some way, maybe my true mama had found me.

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My dad contracted cancer about four years ago. By the time he finally passed, his treatment had eaten up every bit of my parents’ savings. Even after we buried him, my mother, an ER nurse, was absolutely drowning in medical debt and daily expenses. She had no choice but to leave me alone with my older sister Helen, who was only twelve, while she picked up more shifts at the hospital.

So, imagine my surprise when my mother told me that we were going to do something fun for my seventh birthday. I didn’t think we could afford anything.

“We’re going to a circus for your birthday, baby!” My mom said as she got home from work one day, picking me up and swinging me around in joy. “Aren’t you excited?”

“Circus?” Helan asked skeptically. “Where did you get the money for a circus?”

Just for a moment, a strange nervousness crossed my mom’s face, as if she had almost been caught doing something wrong.

“This circus happens to be free.” She said finally. “We don’t have to pay for anything except snacks. It will be wonderful. We’re going to have so much fun.”

Helen and I exchanged looks. Without having to speak, we both knew that there was something off about our mother’s behavior. But we also knew that there was not much we could do but go along with this.

As soon as we arrived at the entrance of the circus, something about the appearance of it made my stomach turn.

Instead of the deep red tones that you would expect from a typical circus, the colors of this circus were all cold and blue. We seemed to be the only people here. Even the food vendor booths were empty.

“Come on, girls.” Our mom said, taking us both by the hand. “We’re going to be late for the show.”

The inside of the circus tent was much smaller than it looked from the outside. The canopy ceilings were low enough for us to have to duck our heads down to enter through the opening. The interior was simple. It consisted of only a small row of wooden benches and a bare bones stage at the center.

Even now, as the lights were being turned down and the show was about to start, we seemed to be the only people in the tent.

Lights of white and blue flashed across the stage as a thing in a ringmaster’s costume that was definitely not human appeared on the stage with a whip and a flaming hoop in hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls!” The ringmaster announced in a booming, slightly accented voice. “We have a wonderful show for you tonight. But first things first, we need a volunteer from the audience.”

Helen and I looked at each other in fear, unsure of what to do.

“No volunteers? That’s alright. I’ll just have to pick someone at random. How about you, young lady?” The ringmaster said, pointing directly at Helen.

‘Oh, no thank you. I mean, I really can’t.’ Helen stammered, clearly flustered.

“Come on, Helen. It will be fun.” Our mom whispered to her. “Don’t spoil your sister’s birthday.”

Reluctantly, Helen stepped up onto the stage, already looking miserable.

“Alright, alright. We have a participant for our first trick. How lovely.” The ringmaster said. “We have something very special to kick off the show with. Are you ready?”

My mom was the only one who cheered, but that did nothing to discourage the ringmaster.

The ringmaster spun the flaming hoop around his arm while somehow avoiding getting burned entirely. He grabbed the hoop by the edge and expanded it to about the size of a doorway.

“Now, my dear. All you need to do is walk through the flaming entryway,, he told Helen. “Then I will do the rest.”

“I-I don’t want to,” Helen said meekly. “I’m afraid I’ll get burned.”

“Come on, Helen!” My mom called out from the benches. Don’t be a killjoy!”

The ringmaster smiled kindly at Helen.

“Worry not, darling.” He said. “I’ve done this many times. I haven’t had a deadly incident yet.”

Reluctantly, Helen slowly stepped through the burning hoop. She let out a scream as her whole body seemed to disappear entirely.

“Helen!” I cried out, panic tears forming in my eyes. “What did you do to her?”

But everyone else in the room ignored me completely. The ringmaster stepped down from the stage and handed my mom a thick wad of cash. It was only then that I realized what was happening.

Mom..” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Why would you do something like that?”

My mom simply shrugged coldly. “We needed the money. You will understand someday.”

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Now that you’ve gotten an idea of the context and the first encounter I had with this drunken ghost in my fiance’s Soviet era apartment, I can get into the more miscellaneous encounters that I had with him.

There’s no real solid connection or coherent timeline to these encounters. I’m just writing about them as they come to mind in a stream of consciousness kind of format. It may be a bit less structured than how I usually write these essays, but I hope you all enjoy it.

At a certain point during my bout of illness in Lithuania, my fiancé bought me a bed off of whatever the Lithuanian version of Craigslist is because I was not getting the quality rest I needed to recover by sharing a bed with him. It was a child size bed that somebody’s teenage son had outgrown, but because I am short, it suited me fine.

Originally, my fiancé set this bed up in his apartment hallway so I would be closer to the bathroom for when I needed to throw up, though he did eventually move it into the bedroom.

The problem with this arrangement was that the hallway in his apartment is quite creepy. There was something wrong with the lighting fixture so that the lights were either flickering or not working at all. The whole apartment building had issues with very old, low quality pipes and the hallways were the area in the apartment where you could hear them the loudest. The marks on the wall where the previous owner had stabbed it with a knife were in my direct line of vision as well.

But I tried to make the best of it and sleep off the sickness in that hallway, hoping to return to normal soon so I wouldn’t have to fly back home early

But then, when my fiancé was asleep or when I was left alone in the apartment for an hour or two, I could feel a sinister presence. I could feel something watching me.

One night, when my fiancé was asleep in the next room and I was drifting off by myself. I felt someone breathe in my ear; I felt chillingly cold and bitter.

I sat up with a start, looking around with a sleepy haze. But there was no one there.

During a different trip that I took to Lithuania, my fiancé decided to take me on a date to the cat cafe.

This is a bit of a side tangent but the cat cafe in Vilnius is the best cat cafe I have ever been to. They serve good food and cat themed coffee, the cats are very patient and friendly with a wide variety of toys and ways of interacting with them and they have fun features like a maid cafe style album containing names, photos, and bios of all of the cats. I recommend checking it out if you are in the area.

Anyway, my fiancé and I had to ride in the tiny elevator down to the lobby of the apartment. The elevator was scarcely big enough to fit two people, but there were sometimes as many as four or five people squeezed inside. Luckily, this time it was just me and my fiance

At the time, the lobby had a broken overhead light that would flicker on and off. It would switch between full lighting and pitch black darkness, which was kind of creepy in of itself.

As we were getting about to leave the lobby to catch the bus to the Cat Cafe, the lights flashed. I could see a tall, sinister-feeling male figure when the light flashed, only for him to disappear again once the lights turned off again, faster than I could blink.

I didn’t point it out to my fiancé, thinking that I was being silly and that I was overrating a sick trick of the light. My fiancé was already prone to worrying about my health and my mental state. I didn’t want to give him another reason to be anxious

Yet that feeling of being watched had been following me around since I got there still loomed.

I last visited the Soviet apartment back in May of this year. This would be the last time I would set foot in it. The next time I travel to Lithuania, it will be permanent; the Soviet apartment will have been sold and we will have a shiny new home to start our life together in.

Even though I’ve had both pleasant and not so pleasant memories of that apartment, I’m going to miss it. It was the place where my fiancé and I first got to know each other in person. It was the place where we have taken care of each other in some of our darkest moments. It’s the place where we learned to trust and bond with each other in a way that isn’t possible through a screen. It’s the place where we discussed our hopes and dreams for our future together.

Even if it is haunted by the ghost of an aggressive drunk, it is a place we filled with love and it will always hold a special place in my heart

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As a child, six or seven years old if I had to guess, though I couldn’t be sure, my husband brought her home after finding her in a wolf’s den while on one of his hunting trips. The girl was naked and covered with dirt and fleas. Her hair that hung down her back was matted in such terrible knots that it nearly needed to be chopped off entirely (though it was nothing that a little love and care couldn’t fix)

She crawled on all fours like an animal and bit at the hands of anyone who got too close to her. She didn’t speak a word of English, or any other language created by man. She communicated solely in grunts, growls and howls, not unlike some kind of wild dog.

And yet, even with her unpleasant, unbecoming appearance and behavior, my husband still took pity on her. He killed the sleeping wolves in their dens to take their belts and gathered the girl up to take her home with him to raise as his own. She kicked and growled and gnashed her teeth at him the whole way back home.

My husband took the girl back to our estate in North Carolina. It was a big, beautiful house set on a wide property full of gorgeous rose gardens and well manicured grass. In fact, it was one of the most expensive estates in the neighborhood and a point of pride for our family. We had hired help for everything: maids, cooks, nannies, landscapers. Though I would identify myself as a housewife if it came up in conversation, I haven’t had to touch a single household chore in years. I had two wonderful sons already who were itching for a new playmate.

Call me crazy, but this kind of life seems much more pleasant and comfortable than living in some dirty wolf den in the woods.

As soon as she entered my home and my care, I worked my ass off day in and day out to tame this girl and turn her into the respectable young woman that I knew that she had the potential to be. I brushed out her tangled rat’s nest of hair and plaited it into two neat braids that hung down her back. I dressed her in the most beautiful dresses that I found in the cute little boutiques around town, all pink frills and pretty lace.

I taught her to be a human being. I taught her to speak. I taught her proper manners. I taught her to read. But most importantly, I gave her a name, a luxury that she had never been afforded before. I named her Clara, a name that I had already picked out should I ever give birth to a daughter.

Clara was a teenager now, almost a woman. And yet she still had the maturity of a bratty child. She wasn’t grateful for anything we had done for her. She rather sneaks outside and tries to run off back into the woods every chance she gets.

When Clara went missing that one late summer night, I was about to start calling out to all of the other members of the family to form a search party to chase her through the border of the woods and drag her back into the house as they had done countless times before.

But Clara did not try to escape to the woods, at least not this time. Instead I found her sitting under the wide sky and stars, looking up longingly at the moon with the skirt of the nightgown stretched out and tucked under her feet.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to do that to your nightgowns?”I told her as I approached. “You’re going to ruin them.”

Clara untucked the nightgown from under her feet, but didn’t speak or so much as turn her head to look at me. It took that as the sign of disrespect that it was.

“Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you. Have some manners.” I snapped at her. “What are you doing out here at this hour of the night? Are you planning to run away again?”

Clara shook her head with a sadness that deeply irritated me.

“No, nothing like that,” she said. “I just came out here to look at the moon. That’s all”

This was a manipulation tactic. I wasn’t buying it.

“What’s so special about the moon?” I asked her. “It’s in the same places every night. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

Clara shrugged, “It reminds me of home.”

Now I was getting angry.

“This is your home, Clara.: I said through gritted teeth. “We’ve taken care of and educated you for eight long years. We’ve provided you with your every need and you’re homesick? For what, the wolf den where you could have been left to starve or freeze to death come winter? A little gratitude goes a long way, you know.’

Clara shrugged once again in response.

“I just..I don’t belong here.” She said, “I never have.”

“Maybe if you tried harder to fit in and be more like the other children your age, you wouldn’t be such a social outcast.” I shot back.

“You know, I do miss the wolf den sometimes.” Clara said softly, “At least there I was loved for who I am and wasn’t expected to follow all these stupid rules.”

That was when I had finally had it. I slapped Clara across the face. Clara, who was no stranger to my physical discipline, hardly even flinched.

“You awful brat!” I screamed. “After all we’ve done for you to provide you with a nice life and you would rather live with a bunch of dirty animals? How dare you.”

That’s when I heard it, the wolves howling in the distance, growing closer and closer. Clara cracked a smile.

“That’s where you’re wrong. They aren’t animals. They’re my family,” she said. And they’re coming back for me whether you like it or not.

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1877

My family and I had been through hell to get this far. We had dragged our little covered wagon through deep rivers, through temperamental river water, through snow, thunderstorms and sleet, through hunger and disease.

And yet, there was no scarier place we would have to cross through to get to our new settlement in Colorado than the thick stretch of wood that ran across the Rocky Mountains. I heard whispers of a disturbing creature that had exchanged its humanity for eating flesh.

I shut my book as I sat in the back of our covered wagon as we began to make the trek up the mountains. I was trying to distract myself from the growing feeling of dread that was blooming in my stomach, but the precious sunlight that cast overhead was growing too scarce for me to see the words anymore.

“What’s got you so jumpy, Anna?” My older sister, Elizabeth, asked me with a mocking tone in her voice. “You’re not still afraid of that stupid monster legend, are you?”

I held my head up high in defense.

“It’s a cannibalistic monster who willingly gave up its humanity for the sake of eating human flesh,” I said. “Who wouldn’t be afraid of something like that?”

Elizabeth let out a cruel, mocking laugh at this.

“Oh, Anna. You’re still such a silly child.” She said, ‘You’re twelve years old now. Don’t you think you’re a little old to believe in such fairytales?”

“Girls, you better stop fighting right now.’ My dad called out from the front of the wagon. “You’ll be sleeping side by side soon, like sardines in a can. You better start learning how to get along or the next few days are not going to be pleasant for you.”

Elizabeth and I sat in silence as the wagon for the rest of the journey to where we would set up camp for the night. By the time we found a decent place to set up camp for the night, it was so dark outside that none of us could see our own hands in front of our faces. We had to open up our stores of candles and matches just to get ready for sleep.

My mother and father stopped the wagon, tied up the horses and climbed over into the body of the wagon and settled with their thick wool blankets next to Elizabeth and me to sleep for the night.

We were each given one last strip of salt preserved meat before the candles were blown out and we tried to sleep.

Yet I couldn’t sleep, not even when the rest of my family was steadily snoring next to me. How could I shut my eyes when there was a monster out there, lurking somewhere in the dark,

I supposed that I had nothing else to do but lay there in the wagon with my eyes open, waiting for sunrise.

But much to my surprise, after what felt like hours of suffering like this, sleep was finally starting to fall over me. I found my eyelids drooping and my body feeling heavy, as if I was sinking into the wood.

That was, until I heard the whisper of a voice on my earth.

Bored out here, are you? The voice said, almost mocking. Why don’t you follow me into my home in the trees? I can show you a good time.

My breath was caught in my throat with terror, but I was not confused. This voice belonged to the monster. It had to.

“G-go away.’ I whispered, trying to be quiet enough as to not to wake my family. “You are not welcome here.”

The monster let out a sinister laugh that shook the trees.

Not welcome? In my own home? How bold of you. It said You are the guest here, not me. You would do well to remember that.

“What do you want from me?” I whispered.

You already know what I want. I already told you. The monster said I want you to come out and have fun with me

“And what if I don’t want to do that?” I said. “What if I refuse?”

Then I will make your family suffer for it. Your actions have consequences.

A sharp chill ran up my spine. “You wouldn’t”

The creature made strange purring sounds, not unlike a housecat.

With all due respect, my dear, you have no idea what I’m capable of. I can see your family now. I’m still deciding which part to eat first.

I felt like I was drowning. My hands were tied. I knew I had no other choice but to give in to the monster’s demands. I had to protect my family at all costs.

Careful as to not rock the wagon hard enough to wake any of my family, I climbed down from the wagon and let my feet hit the ground.

Now that the early hours of the morning were eeking in, there was a slight bit of sunlight casting down from the sky, but it was not nearly enough for me to see my way clearly.

“I’m here now. I did what you wanted.” I called out into the woods. “Where are you? Why don’t you show yourself?”

Come closer The monster said Surrender to the embrace of the woods.

I hesitated for a moment before walking blindly into the woods, unsure of where I was going or what was about to become of me.

I walked and walked and walked until I could no longer see the rough silhouette of the wagon in the distance. I was in the thick of it now, all alone where no one could hear me scream.

Even still, I could not see any sign of the monster. There were no more whispers to guide me.

The sun was beginning to rise, illuminating the world around me with soft orange light. I was about to turn back and take my chances with finding my way back to the wagon. I saw something in the distance, something that looked almost human but not quite. It seemed to be crouched over some kind of carcass, devouring it from its stomach.

Stupidly, I approached the figure, thinking that if it was at least someone human, like it could be reasoned with like a human.

The closer I got to it. The more apparent it became that the carcass that the figure was eating from was human, a large man at least half the size of the bison we’d passed on the trail. His stomach was torn to bloody shreds and his entrails were spread out all over the roots of the nearby trees.

I froze in fear like a rabbit in the sights of a wolf. I had seen my fair share of dead bodies. In my hometown, it was common for people to die of disease, and I could see their corpses being carried away from my bedroom window. But I had never seen a corpse be torn apart like this. It made me want to vomit.

The humanoid creature approached me from behind while I was distracted; its footsteps swift and silent. It made that same cat like purring noise I heard from the monster that lured me from the wagon, but this time it was right in my ear.

So kind of you to join us for breakfast, Anna.

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The thing was, with the original few installments of this series, I was trying to keep a certain theme. That theme was things that happened in my childhood that I kind of just have hazy memories of. That is the kind of vibe that I had always pictured real life paranormal encounters to have.

But I also have at least one paranormal experience that is much more recent, and that is what I plan to share with you today.

So as you may or may not know, I am engaged to a Lithuanian man. We met online in 2019, have met in person once or twice a year except for the years impacted by COVID, and I plan to move to Lithuania with him in 2027.

When I first met my fiancé, he was living between his college dorm and his mom’s apartment. Once he graduated with his master’s degree, he bought his first apartment. (In Lithuania, the only people who live in houses are either wealthy or live in more rural areas. Non-wealthy people and people who live in cities live in apartments. They will often buy these apartments with a mortgage in the same way that someone in the States would buy a house)

To be clear, this apartment is not our final living space. It is an okay place for one guy to live alone, but it is not a great place to settle down and build a life and eventually a family. It is quite small and is missing basic amenities like a full kitchen. My fiancé has recently bought a new apartment that is so new that it is still in the process of being built and will not be ready to live in until late 2027. This is the main reason why it’s taking me so long to finally move out there.

But aside from when we were staying in hotels on vacation in surrounding European countries, every time I have visited Lithuania I have stayed in my fiancé’s current apartment.

For background, my fiancé’s current apartment is a Soviet commie block that was built in the 1980s and looks exactly how you would expect a commie block built in the 1980s to look. The lobby has a broken light that flickers on and off all the time, a very tiny elevator, and a bunch of old Soviet books that line the shelves above the mailboxes (Of which I took one and brought it back to America with me. Fiancé said that those books have been sitting there for literal decades and now one would miss one or two if I took them)

The previous owner of the apartment was an aggressive middle aged drunk who did things like stab the wall with a knife (of which the marks are still there to this day) and permanently damage a bunch of the plumbing in the bathroom.

The previous owner actually died in the apartment from what was most likely alcohol poisoning. His family had kept the apartment in their possession completely empty for at least a decade before selling it to my fiancé.

And this previous owner’s ghost is who I believe haunts the apartment. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My first encounter with this ghost was when I became so horrifically, violently ill that I almost needed to go to the hospital in a foreign country.

From what we can tell, this was a very bad reaction to the Plan B pill. I had never taken a Plan B pill before, so I don’t know if it was the specific type of Plan B or if I’m just intolerant to emergency contraception in general. But the effect on my health was horrible. I was throwing up every single thing I tried to consume, even water. I was too dizzy to even sit up a lot of the time. I was having horrible cramps in my ribs. I was dealing with headache symptoms that were making it painful for me to speak or have lights on. It was very, very bad. I was extremely worried that I may have been pregnant. Even though I was very much an adult, my parents would have killed me if I came home pregnant.

I was in good hands. My fiancé was very attentive and took good care of me. But sometimes he would have to leave me for a while to get me things that I could possibly try to eat or over the counter medicine to help me feel better and I would have to be stuck in bed in the apartment alone for a while.

That was when I started seeing it, the figure.

It was just a shadow out of the corner of my eye at first, something I could just dismiss as some kind of migraine eye thing or trick of the light. But then it started looming over me, becoming this tall, distinctly male, distinctly threatening figure that was only visible as a silhouette.

Just as I was about to start screaming, my fiancé came back through the front door with a shopping bag full of clear soda and Tylenol.

I looked for the figure, but it was completely gone. There was no sign of it.

This was not my only experience with this particular entity but this post is running pretty long. I’ll have to continue the story in a part two ^.^

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TW: State violence and brief mention of domestic abuse)

I heard footsteps approach as I sat in the basement of the abandoned library on the edge of town, flipping through the thin, dusty pages of a decades old copy of The Hunger Games.

A feeling of dread shot up my spine as I hastily slammed the book shut. I thought that this was finally it, that I had been caught by the secret police and was about to be dragged off to The School where I would never be seen or heard from again.

But instead of a cyborg in riot gear or even an adult figure, the being who stood before me was nothing but a child, genderless in appearance, dressed in the drab grey jumpsuit of the school uniform issued to all of the middle schoolers in the country with styleless close cropped brown hair and a stony expression on their face.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Last time I checked, the Idea Machine was not employing children to be spies or moles. Even in this heavily controlled society we were living in, child spies would be far harder to govern than adult spies. It seemed to be far too inefficient a practice. The Idea machine was nothing if not efficient.

“Hello.” I greeted the child with a forced smile as I set my book to the side. “What are you doing here? This is a restricted area, you know. You could get in massive trouble just for being here. We wouldn’t want that.”

Instead of answering my question, the child simply pointed at the book in the group next to me.

“What is that?” They asked. “What is that paper thing next to you?”

“You answer my question first,” I said sternly.

The child simply shrugged.

“I dunno why I’m here, to be honest with you.” They said, “I felt something snap in my back as I was walking home, something that hurt me real bad. I don’t know why, but ever since that happened I’ve been getting these sorts of compulsions. One of those compulsions was to come here, even though I had no idea what I would find here.”

This was interesting. The device in the child’s spine must have snapped on its own somehow. I had never heard of that happening before.

“What are you doing walking around at this hour of night anyway?” I asked the child. “You know that’s not safe, right?”

The child let out a sad, weighted sigh that carried a poignant sadness to it that I couldn’t help but feel myself.

“Dad was screaming at Mom again. It was too loud and it made my head hurt. I had to get away.” They said, “Dad and Mom both work for more than half the day, but there’s still never enough money. It makes them hate each other.”

I was at a loss for words, but I knew the feeling. My home life was very similar. The lack of affordable living can really bring out the worst in people.

That’s when I noticed it, the slight wavering in the child’s appearance that was almost like a glitch in a computer screen. It was quick enough for me to just barely notice and just barely dismiss it as a trick of the light.

“I’m sorry. It’s terrible that your parents have to fight like that.” I told the child. “I know what that’s like.”

“It’s okay. I’m used to it by now.” The child said carelessly. “Now you answer my question. We had a deal.”

Read more

I was raised just like any other American. As soon as I was born, I was fitted with a shock device that would send a painful jolt up my spine every time it sensed that I was getting a creative thought, a device that would never come off. I went to school for just long enough to learn how to type words into a chatbot before being fitted with a bland grey uniform and being assigned to work in a factory to make cars for the wealthy to sell back to us at three times the price it cost to make it, like a good class slave/

But I had a secret. Years ago, while working with the big steel clippers at the car, I figured out how to clip the wire that the Idea Machine installed into my spinal cord at birth, the one that would deliver painful shocks every time it sensed that I was having a creative or critical thought.

It was wonderful. I could read the books that were collecting dust at the old abandoned library at the edge of town, something no one had done in over thirty years. I could create art. I could write stories. I could think about philosophy, politics, the humanities without fear of a painful shock.

I just had to make sure to do all of this under the cover of darkness and maintain my job at the car factory like nothing was amiss. I never knew where the Idea Machine’s secret police were lurking, waiting to drag me to the unspeakable prison only known as The School from which no one had ever returned alive

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They were known simply as the Lane family, with over ten million followers and subscribers across all platforms. They had thirteen kids in total between two and nineteen years old, religious homeschool types not unlike the infamous Duggar family but hopefully without the molestation. There was no nurturing mother figure in sight, however. Only a firm but loving father who runs a tight ship and tolerates no bullshit. I’ll admit to watching a few videos during my train ride up the mountain.

“Why must we interview them?” I complained to my boss at the newspaper, who happened to be an old school friend of mine that I was comfortable talking out of turn with. “They’re just a stupid family vlog channel. Those are a dime a dozen these days. What’s so interesting about them that they deserve a whole exposure?”

“Because of the rumors about them, Freddy.” My boss said calmly, “Because of the theories that are going around.”

“Abuse allegations? Molestation allegations?” I demanded, “With all due respect, boss, I don’t think it’s our place to touch stuff like that.”

My boss shook his head.. “No, nothing like that. I mean theories of paranormal occurrences, of supernatural powers, of children being a little more than human. That’s where the gold is. Just don’t let Dad catch on that that’s what you’re there for, a little undercover journalism for you.”

So that’s how I found myself sitting on this God forsaken train headed up this God forsaken mountain to the middle of nowhere, headed to this compound to find out if this nutbag’s kids were really superhuman under the guise of interviewing him about his farmwork.

What kind of situation had I allowed myself to be sucked into this time?

As soon as I arrived at the gates at the compound, I was greeted by a vicious group of barking German Shepherds barely held back by a single chain link fence.

Just as I was about to turn and retreat in fear, a small man in a military style jacket and vintage glasses emerged to yank the dogs back by their leashes

“Down, boys, down!” The man snapped at the dogs. “Go on! Leave the poor man alone. He’s just here to do his job, not to hurt you.”

The dogs retreated to their big plastic kennels and the man flashed me a friendly smile, opening the fence and offering me a hand to shake.

“Arch Lane. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.’ He said. “You’re with the newspaper? Here to interview us about our self sustaining farmwork? Though I suppose it’s less of a newspaper and more of an online publication now. Everything is on the internet nowadays. I suppose I, of all people, should know that considering how I make my money.”

Arch laughed. I felt I had no choice but to laugh along with him.

“Fred Hanson,” I said, shaking Arch’s hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you as well.”

Arch used a remote control to open the double doors to his compound and ushered me inside.

Despite its hostile exterior, the inside of the compound was surprisingly homey. The living room floors were lined with spotless, plush white carpet with expensive looking leather couches at every corner. The first sign I saw of something odd was a big shiny flat screen TV and two or three of what appeared to be the latest gaming consoles locked behind glass as if they were some kind of valuable contraband. I thought it was strange but I wasn’t alarmed, not yet anyway.

“Let me find one of the boys to give you the grand tour while I brew us some coffee,” Arch said. “You like dark roast? Black?”

I smiled. “ Yes. That sounds great.”

Arch smiled and nodded before turning his head and yelling down into the hallway.

“Josiah! Stop whatever you’re doing and give our guest a tour!”

A tall, dark haired boy who looked to be in his late teens and dressed as if he belonged in another century appeared in the doorway with a camcorder clutched in his hand.

“Turn that damn thing off, Josiah.” Arch snapped. “Our guest does not want to be a feature on our YouTube channel.”

Josiah looked at me as he switched the camcorder off and set it on a nearby ledge.

“I’m sorry about that, sir.” He said. “Why don’t you follow me and I’ll give you the grand tour?”

Josiah let me through a few winding corridors that seemed to contain a few normal looking shared children’s bedrooms, complete with toys and stuffed animals on the floor and scribbled drawings pinned to the walls. But I took note of the fact that there were no actual children to be found anyway

But the longer we walked further down the halls, the less the compound resembled a home and the more it resembled a much smaller version of a military base.

“Man, you guys really lock it down over here,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. “Are you trying to keep something out or keep something in?”

Josiah turned to look at me with a stone serious expression that made me swallow my words.

“I’m joking,” I said. “I’m just joking.”

“The farm is right down here,” Josiah said as he led me to the end of the hallway.

“Hm?” I asked

“The farm,” Josiah said, clearly sizing me up. “That’s what you’re here to see, right?

“Yes, of course,” I said quickly.

A sharp pain shot through my head that nearly knocked me off of my feet.

Help us, sir, help us. A young girl’s voice rang out from inside my head Don’t leave us here. We fear he will kill us

I was immediately taken off gaurd by this. The pain was excruciating. But I knew better than to let that show on my face.

“You okay?” Josiah asked me as he grasped the key to open the door to the farm

“Yeah, I’m just peachy,” I said, as cheerily as I could manage. “Let’s see this farm I heard so much about.”

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TW: kidnapping, realistic violence and non-graphic mentions of SA)

1975

It was Janie’s favorite time of year. The Candy Apple festival.

She dressed in the costume that she had been working on for weeks, the thrift store men’s cowboy costume that she had been slowly and carefully altering into a cowgirl costume for a young girl of her size. She had been struggling to put the final touches on this cowgirl for days now and she had finally made it perfect.

The morning of the Candy Apple Festival, Janie dressed in her prized homemade cowgirl costume and called out to her mom to let her know that she was leaving the house.

“Mom, I’m going out to the Candy Apple Festival!” Janie called out to her mother, who was on the phone with her aunt, her mom’s younger sister, in the bedroom. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Oh, no no no, Jane.” Her mom called back to her. “You’re still too young to be going out by yourself. They still haven’t caught that man who killed those girls after all. Go with your sister or don’t go at all.”

Janie stifled a groan. Her older sister Sally, with her bad attempt at Farrah Fawcett hair and her red drugstore nail polish, was her only hope at going to the Candy Apple Festival. Her chances were looking worse by the second.

“Sally?” Janie asked meekly as she stood in her older sister’s bedroom doorway. “Will you take me to the Candy Apple Festival?”

Sally turned down the pop music station on her radio for just long enough to sneer at Janie.

“Get lost, brat.” She said. “I’m a little busy here.”

“Sally! Take your sister to her festival or I’m not giving you your allowance this week!” Their mother called from her bedroom.

Janie smirked. Sally clearly didn’t expect their mother to be close enough for their mother to hear them.

“Fine,” Sally grumbled, prying herself from her bed. “Get your shoes on. Let’s get this over with.”

Janie nearly shook with excitement as she and Sally approached the Candy Apple festival. It was bustling with people, activities and autumn themed decorations. There was apple bobbing, dart throwing, and carnival games with big stuffed animals as prizes.

“This is wonderful, Sally.” Janie marveled. “What should we do first?”

But when Janie turned around, her sister was nowhere to be found.

With Sally gone, Janie tried to put it out of her mind and enjoy the festival regardless. She spent all her pocket money on food and games. She bobbed for apples, ate funnel cakes, and attempted and failed to win the big stuffed polar bear she wanted in a game of darts. But when the sun started to make its descent under the skyline and there was still no sign of Sally, Janie was beginning to grow wary.

Janie didn’t know what else to do but pace back and forth across the borders of the festival as the sun went down. There was still no sign of Sally in sight and thus no way to go home.

A man approached Janie with a sympathetic look in his eyes. He was a small, almost fatherly looking middle aged man with big thick rimmed glasses and a kindly smile.

“Hey there, sweetie.” The man said to Janie in a soft voice. ‘Are you lost?”

Janie was not forgetful of the stranger danger talks she had been given at school but something about the man’s demeanor made Janie feel like she could let her guard down, that she could trust him.

“Yeah, my sister left me here,” Janie said, fighting back tears. “I don’t have a way to get home.”

“Aw, that’s quite the terrible conundrum, my darling.” The man said. “Why don’t you let me help you? I can give you a ride home; does that sound good?”

Unsure what else to do, Janie nodded.

The man drove a nice car, the kind of car that her mom always said she would get if only she had married a man with a better job and more money.

Janie pointed in the direction that she knew her house was in, but the man drove right past it. Janie was confused.

“Excuse me, sir,” Janie said. “But my house is back that way.”

“Oh, we’re not going to your house, not just yet at least.” The man said cheerily. “I’m taking you somewhere special first.”

This was the first time that Janie started to feel uneasy, the first inkling that she got that something was wrong.

The man drove them into a remote dirt path in front of a dark, vast corn field. He got out of the car, opened the passenger side door and motioned for Janie to get out.

Janie shook her head rapidly.

“I don’t want to.” She said. “I want to go home. You said you would take me home.”

“I don’t care what you want.” The man said. The cheery tone in his voice started to take on a new sinister tone. “We do what I want now.”

The man grabbed Janie by her hair and dragged her into the dark expanse of the corn field where she knew no one could hear her scream.

As the man started to bind Janie’s wrists with ropes, it became so dark that she could barely see an inch in front of her face.

“Now if you’re a good girl and you stay still, I’ll make sure this doesn’t hurt as bad.” The man said as he began to slip his hands under her cow print skirt.

Just as she was bracing for the worst, Janie heard the crack of bone and the man cry out in pain. Janie could have sworn that she could see the flash of glowing red eyes in the distance.

But the man’s cry of pain quickly devolved into manic laughter.

“Laurie? Is that you? After all these years, you’re still stuck in this shitty corn field ?” The man called out into the empty field. “You better not interfere. I’ll put you right back in that same dark place that I stuck you in twenty years ago. Don’t think I won’t”

An enraged scream ripped through the corn field. The man let out a scream as the sound of him being dragged through the dirt ripped through the darkness, followed by the sound of flesh ripping and bones cracking,

That was when all the emotions that were building up in Janie’s chest cavity began to spill over. She began to sob uncontrollably, not even caring about the tears and snot screaming down her face.

Janie felt a small hand the same size as her own clasp around hers.

“Follow me.” A young girl’s voice said. “I’ll keep you safe. I’ll get you out of here.”

Janie wiped her tears and followed the girl, holding her hand to the edge of the field.

Janie was confronted with blinding police lights and her mother running up to scoop her up in her arms.

“Jane! My baby! We’ve been looking everywhere for you. I thought I lost you.” Her mom cried out, covering her face with kisses. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Janie looked out at the field as her mom carried her away in her arms, though it seemed to be empty of all human life

“Thank you.” She whispered

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TW: Non graphic mentions of SA)

After the divorce, my mother and I moved back into the small midwestern town that my mother grew up in to make life more affordable. There was already a house there waiting for us after my grandfather passed, though I had never actually met him. It was a good deal. We had a house already waiting for us after my abusive stepdad ran my mother and me dry with drawn out court dates and lawyer fees. All we would have to pay for was food and utilities.

You would think I would be unhappy to leave my home and my school in the city, but you would be very much wrong. I hated my life in the city. I had no friends, no real social life. I was being harassed at school every day for my social awkwardness and my general weird demeanor. I tried to “fix” myself so many times, tried to make myself normal. But the harder I tried, the more it fell apart around me.

But even still, I still had hope for this new school in this new little town. It would be a fresh start with a new batch of peers who didn’t know anything about me yet. I was deeply excited to see what this new school would bring me.

My mom, on the other hand, was deeply troubled about this move. She seemed to be highly on edge and paranoid during the days leading up to the move, looking over her shoulder as if she were afraid that someone was lurking just behind her waiting to strike.

It didn’t take long after the move for my mom to stop leaving the house altogether. She took up a remote job and got all of our groceries delivered. There were times when my mom went an entire week without so much as leaving her room.

I knew that my mom had always had struggles with her mental health, but since we moved, it has been on a whole other level.

Not only was my mom refusing to leave the house herself, but she did her best to keep me stuck in the house as well. She would cry and yell and grab at my sleeve whenever I so much as tried to leave the house to walk to the library down the street. If I wanted to go somewhere, I would have to sneak out. Luckily, the fact that my mom was locked up in her room for the vast majority of the day made this tremendously easy.

It was a sunny mid September morning when I decided to walk down the street to the library to cure my boredom. As far as I could tell, my mom was still fast asleep in the dark air conditioned hole of her room. I would be stupid to miss this opportunity.

The town’s local library was a stout red brick building just a one block walk from my mom and I’s new home. The book selection was much more sparse than one at the big city library I was used to, but I was sure I could find something worth reading among the short shelves.

“Excuse me?” I asked the old man behind the front desk, whose face was half hidden behind an old newspaper. “Can you help me get a library card, please?”

The old man put his newspaper down and regarded me with cold, observant eyes.

“You’re Megan’s daughter, aren’t you?” He asked me.

I was taken aback by this. “How did you know that?”

“You look just like her. I would know that tangled mop of hair anywhere.” The man said, settling his newspaper down on the desk in front of him. “I’ll get you your library card, of course I will. But I’d advise you to look over those newspaper cartridges over there. Now that you’re here, she’ll be coming for you. It’s best you prepare yourself.”

I blinked in surprise at this as my stomach began to drop. ‘What do you mean? Who is coming for me?”

The man behind the counter gestured over to the newspaper reader in the corner of the room. ‘Figure out how to use one of those and all will be explained”

Unsure of what else to do, I sat myself down in front of the newspaper machine and began to flip through the slides, unsure of what I was even meant to be looking for.

Once I figured out how to use the newspaper machine and got into the rhythm of it, it didn’t take long for me to figure out what exactly the man behind the counter was referring to.

There seemed to be a local urban legend in this town, the kind that I was more than familiar with from the internet Creepypastas going around my prior school. This one was a bit different, however. It was older and much more based in reality.

In 1954, a still uncaught and unidentified serial killer known only as the Beast of the Corn set up shop in this little town. His calling card was stalking, kidnapping, raping, mutilating, and ultimately murdering a confirmed total of fourteen girls under the age of sixteen between the years of 1952 and 1975.

One such victim, or alleged victim, as from what I could tell her body was never actually found, was ten year old Laurie Lee Wise, who had been the subject of a slew of rumors and urban legends since she was reported missing in the fifties.

They say that the Beast of the Corn lured her into his car with a friendly smile and a promise of toys and trinkets before tying her with ropes and gagging her and bringing her into the center of the corn field to rape her for hours before stitching her mouth shut and stringing her tired, broken body up onto a pole inside of a scarecrow to leave her to die.

As the urban legend goes, Laurie’s vengeful spirit still lurked in the bounds of the corn field at the edge of town, still dressed in the rags of a scarecrow with her mouth still stitched shut, searching for any unassuming victim to unleash her rage and sorrow onto.

I remembered my mom mentioned something about that cornfield on the drive over here. I remember her telling me that it was dangerous and that I was not to go around it under any circumstances. Though she didn’t say, I know this was the reason why; I knew that she had encountered something in that cornfield as a kid.

And yet it was not fear that consumed me at the revelation. It was sorrow. It was empathy. I had to see this cornfield for myself.

I used the GPS on my phone to locate the corn field on the edge of the town and stood at the edge, the wind wisping through the stalks as the cooler mid afternoon weather took hold

“Laurie?” I called out into the field. ‘Laurie, if you can hear me, I want you to know I don’t think you’re a monster like everyone makes you out to be. You’ve just been hurt very badly, and you’re stuck here without rest for decades. I want to know that I’m sorry about what happened to you and I understand why you want to hurt other people. You have every right to be angry. I’m sorry that they made you the villain instead of the man who did this to you. You were a human being, not just a ghost story. Your memory deserves so much better. You deserve so much better ”

There was no response from the corn field. Of course there wasn’t. I shook my head and began my walk home, feeling stupid.

That night, after a very bland dinner of canned soup with my mother, who thankfully spent the day sleeping and didn’t suspect a thing, I turned to go to bed in my new closet sized bedroom.

As I was drifting off to sleep, I saw the stitched up face of a young girl staring at me through my window. Yet I didn’t feel even an inkling of fear.

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Snow White struggled to keep up with the white doe as it led her deeper and deeper into the woods, deeper than she had ever ventured before.

Though Snow White had always enjoyed her time spent in nature and with her animal friends, she had never been brave enough to go this far into the woods. Not only did she fear the punishment that the queen would dish out onto her if she caught her wandering away from her chores for too long, but Snow White also had clear memories of the stories she had heard as a child about the horrors and the monsters that lurked in the deep woods.

Every child in the kingdom, from the villages to the palace, had been warned about the horrible creatures that lived in the deep woods.

She heard of murderous red hats, long fanged vampires lurking in the shadows of the trees or even more earthly threats like wolves or bears. There was no telling what kind of horrible creatures were waiting in the dark to reach out and strike. Snow White was fully aware of how vulnerable of a target I was as a small, helpless young girl walking unprotected through the dark of the woods

But Snow White trusted the white doe. She knew that she would never lead me into harm. So she felt she had no choice but to follow the white doe deeper and deeper into the dark expanse, the woods, the gravel path that led to the village and the palace and the rest of society. Yet Snow White knew if something were to happen to me out here, no one would ever find me again. The thought of it never once left her mind.

The white doe led Snow White to a little cottage in the deepest core of the woods. It was homemade looking, made of hastily constructed wood and stone that seemed badly weathered by years of rain and snow. It looked to me to be abandoned, like not a living soul had been living there for months, maybe even years.

Snow White turned to the white doe in confusion as she stood expectantly at the thin wooden door that was barely hanging on by hinges against the doorway.

“I don’t understand.” Snow White told her. “Why lead me here?”

All at once, the white doe’s legs gave out from under her, causing her to collapse painfully to the ground. Snow White rushed to her side as she convulsed violently.

Snow White let out a scream as I rushed to her side, forgetting about all the unsavory creatures lurking in the dark that may be able to hear her

All at once, the white doe’s skin fell away as if it were nothing but a pelt, revealing a tall, willowy woman in a regal crown and a transparent white veil that obscured her face entirely.

The fear that Snow White felt towards this woman faded away instantly once she realized who she really was. Snow White would know that feeling anywhere.

Mother,

Snow White’s mother crouched down to stroke her cheek as the tears streamed down the sides of Snow White’s face.

“Mother,” Snow White whispered. “Mother, I missed you so.”

“I missed you too, darling.” Snow White’s mother said. Her voice was uncanny and distorted, but Snow White would still know it anywhere. “But it’s time now for you to be brave. Listen carefully. The new queen has sent a huntsman to cut out your heart, to steal your youth and beauty for her own. I have some old friends living in this cottage. They are kind beings and they will protect you. Keep your head up, my darling. We will meet again soon.”

“Wait, mother! Don’t leave me.” Snow White called after her mother as she faded off into the night sky. “Wherever you’re going, I want to go with you!”

“Someday, dear Snow White.” Snow White’s mother called from the distant dark. “But not today, not soon. You still have a purpose here on this earth.”

“Mother! Mother! Don’t leave me!’ Snow White cried out as she ran after her mom’s fading form. “I’ll do anything, I’ll die for you!”

But no matter how hard Snow White ran after her mother’s form, she still faded into the distance until there was nothing left of her. Snow White found herself all alone in the dark, dangerous woods.

Snow White’s first instinct was to find something to kill herself with, to end her life on her own terms before the huntsman or the elements or the monsters in the woods could do it for her. She looked for any sign of a knife or a rope or anything that could be used as a tool for suicide.

Snow White began to feel defeated as the exhaustion started to come over her full force. She knew she didn’t have it in her to go on for much longer without rest, even to search for a way to end her life. She needed sleep so she would be rested to figure out what to do in the morning.

Reluctantly, Snow White entered through the door of the little cottage, letting the door close behind her.

The inside of the cottage was much larger than it looked from the outside, containing three or four rooms with a kitchen, a bathroom a storage room and a single bathroom with seven tiny beds lining the walls.

Snow White was a fairly small girl, barely standing above five feet. But judging by the size of the beds, whatever creatures that resided in this home would have to be several inches shorter than even Snow White herself. Snow White briefly wondered if she had stumbled across some kind of abandoned nursery.

But Snow White was too tired to wonder for long. Whatever may come tomorrow, she needed rest if she was going to survive it.

Snow White kicked off her shoes, climbed under the dust covered blankets of the bed closest to the door and fell asleep almost instantly

She dreamed of her mother

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But there is an upside to this. I’ve saved the scariest story for last. This is the story of the first encounter I’ve had with an entity that was unambiguously dark and evil. Buckle up for this one.

I have always been a very avid user of the public library. Even now, that is where I get the majority of my reading material. When I was a kid, however, my love for the library was on a whole other level.

I was very lonely during my middle school years. I was getting pretty bad in school and I was struggling socially in general. So, these youth programs were often all that I had in terms of social interaction.

When I found out that my local library was putting together a “paranormal investigation event” for eleven to fourteen year olds, I knew that I had to go.

This library was within walking distance from the house that I was living in at the time, though I hardly actually walked there on my own. It had been an active library since the early 1900s, which made it over a hundred years old at the time this store was taking place. I am not super knowledgeable about the history of this library, but I’ve heard of a few tragic incidents resulting in death that had taken place there.

The paranormal investigation event took place at around nine or ten at night, long after the library had closed. I was one of the last ones to arrive and I was greeted with two slightly younger girls whom I had never met before and a boy I went to school with named Ryan.

Because I seemed to be the person in the group most knowledgeable about paranormal investigation (aka I watched the most ghost hunting shows) I was kind of the de facto leader of the investigation.

The librarians were not super involved in this activity. They provided snacks, an iPad with a free ghost hunting app installed on it, and very general supervision. For all intents and purposes, we were free to roam the library as we pleased.

Things were uneventful at first. The app picked up some odd energy fields but nothing too obviously paranormal.

That was until we brought the iPad over to the narrow staircase that led up to the library’s boiler room.

“This is crazy,” Ryan said, holding the iPad over the door of the boiler room. “I think we finally found something. Someone is going to have to go in there and see what it is.”

“I’m not going in there. No way in Hell.” One of the younger girls said, shaking her blonde head. “That place gives me the creeps “

“I second that. No way in hell I’m going in there,” The other girls said.

Ryan looked to me as if I was the only one who could save him. “Grace?”

‘I’ve got the camera.” I said, pointing to the disposable camera in my hand. “My only job is to take pictures. It looks like it’s going to have to be you.”

Taking in a deep breath, Ryan opened the door to the boiler room. Almost instantly, the iPad began to flash and buzz like crazy, and Ryan went tumbling down the stairs.

“It pushed me!” Ryan cried out hysterically, sprawled out on the floor. “That thing pushed me!”

Hearing the commotion, the librarians rushed to Ryan’s side with an ice pack and a call home. That was the end of it. Our little ghost hunting group had disbanded.

When I returned to the library about a week later, the photos I took with the disposable camera during the paranormal investigation event had been developed and pinned to the wall.

In the far off corner of the photo I took of the boiler room, barely visible was a pure white face with blacked out eyes and a wide open mouth.

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I couldn’t believe it. Ari Finch, the coolest girl in the ninth grade, had invited me to her yearly Halloween slumber party.

Ari Finch may not have been cool in the eyes of the “normal” kids at our small town middle school. The popular kids mocked her homemade gothic outfits, her heavy dark eye makeup and her macabre interests, but I only looked at her in awe.

There were many unfavorable rumors going around the school about Ari. My classmates were saying that she was a slut who had done kinky stuff with every metalhead boy in the school, that she had escaped the local asylum for the criminally insane at the edge of town and had assumed a new identity in order to lure in more victims, that she was doing some kind of crazy drugs in the school bathroom between classes.

I never cared about any of these rumors personally. It’s always the most boring people imaginable to have something too negative to say about someone who dares to go outside the norm. But there was once a rumor in particular about Ari that I couldn’t quite get out of my head: the rumor that Ari was a witch

Of all the rumors about her, Ari seemed to lean into the witch one the most. She came to school with pentagrams drawn on the backs of her heads and necklaces with occult symbols hanging around her neck. Ari would stare at whoever had displeased her with her haunting grey eyes, murmuring fake Latin spells under her breath to make them squirm.

Ari seemed to love the idea of being seen as a witch so much that she made it a core part of her identity. The biggest example of this was the Halloween slumber part that Ari threw every year.

Every October, Ari would print out formal invitations for a slumber party at the big haunted Victorian mansion where she lived. Instead of inviting a few close friends (which Ari didn’t seem to have) she would pick three girls, seemingly at random, and plop an invitation down on the table in front of them with a smile and a wink.

Most girls who received one of these invitations would scrunch their nose up in disgust and dump their unopened envelope in the trash. But when I received mine I couldn’t help but smile for the rest of the day.

“What did you get there, Zoey?” My best friend Britt asked me as she snatched the invitation from my hand. “A letter from a boy? Do you have a secret admirer or something?

“Give it back, Britt.” I snapped at her as I tried and failed to grab the letter back.

But it was too late. Britt was already reading it with a frown growing across her face.

“Ew, that freak invited you to her slumber party?” Britt said. “You poor thing.”

“Britt, I’m serious,” I said. “Give me back my invitation.”

“Wait, you’re not actually planning to go to this thing, are you?” Britt said, eyes widening. “That would be social suicide, you know that, right?”

I stood up a little straighter. “And what if it was?”

Britt shook her head adamantly. “No way. I wouldn’t let you do something like that to yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Britt,t but you can’t do anything to stop me. I’m going whether you like it or not. Wouldn’t you be just a little curious if you were in my shoes?”

Britt let out a hefty sigh, as if she were dealing with a particularly stubborn child.

“Fine, you’re right. I can’t stop you.” She said, “But at least let me go with you. As your best friend, it is my responsibility to keep you and your reputation safe.”

Per the instructions on the invitation, Britt and I showed up at Ari’s house at midnight sharp. Ari lived in what appeared to be a once beautiful Victorian mansion that had long since fallen into a horrible state of disrepair. It didn’t look like it was fit for anyone to live in.

“Are you sure we have the right place?” Britt turned to whisper to me right as the door opened.

Ari greeted me with a sharp, toothy smile. This was the most warmth I had seen her give anyone.

“Zoey! I’m so glad you could make it.” Ari said, her smile drooping ever so slightly as her gaze traveled over to Britt. “And you brought a friend.”

“Yeah, this is Britt. I’ve brought her as kind of a plus one,” I said. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Sure, I guess that’s fine,” Ari said, seeming less than enthusiastic. ‘It seems that it will just be the three of us tonight anyway. Why don’t you come in? I’ve just gotten out the hard stuff, if you know what I mean.”

The inside of the mansion looked to be in even worse condition than its exterior. The big staircase in the center of the living room was falling apart in chunks. The few pieces of furniture that littered the sitting room were covered in dust and spiderwebs. It didn’t look like a place in which someone lived.

“What do you guys want to drink?” Ari asked us. “I got whisky, vodka, and beer. I may even have the stuff to mix some cocktails if you guys are feeling fancy.”

My head spun at how cool Ari was. What other teenager would know how to mix cocktails?

“No thank you, we’re fine-” I cut Britt off before she could finish refusing.

“Yes, we will take two cocktails, please,” I said.

“Underage drinking is a crime.” Britt leaned over to hiss in my ear.

‘Don’t embarrass me.” I hissed back.

Ari continued to smile, as if she didn’t overhear anything.

“Great, I’ll get those started.” She said, “In the meantime, why don’t you both head upstairs so we can get started with the festivities?”

Britt and I found ourselves sitting on the attic floor, trying not to wince at the taste of alcohol in our homemade cocktails as we waited for Ari to come back with the supplies for the game she was planning.

There was a massive occult symbol painted on the center of the attic floor, which seemed to worry Britt greatly.

“She’s a satanist, I’m telling you. That demonic symbol on the floor proves it.” Britt said. “We’re about to be sacrificed to the devil.”

“Would you relax?” I snapped at her. “All this witch stuff is just for show. It’s a running gag for shock value. We have nothing to worry about.”

Before Britt could form a response, Ari came up the ladder with a bag of supplies in hand.

“Alright, guys.” She said, “Have you ever played light as a feather as stiff as a board?”

Ari instructed Britt to lie flat on her back in the very center of the occult circle, which Britt only reluctantly agreed to.

“Okay, Zoey,” Ari said. “We both need to put two fingers underneath Britt’s body. We should be able to get her to levitate off the ground at least a few inches.”

Though I doubted that levitation was even possible, I was still desperate to please Ari, so I did as I was told.

Much to my surprise, Britt’s body did lift off of the ground, if just a little bit. As Ari began to chant a melody in Latin, Britt’s unconscious body began to float further and further up to the ceiling.

As Britt’s body began to twitch and convulse up in the air, I began to panic.

“Stop! You’re hurting her.” I cried out as I grabbed Ari by the arm. “This isn’t fun anymore. Let her down!”

If Ari heard me, she showed no sign of it. Her eyes went milky white as she continued her chant.

All at once, Britt’s body slammed from the ceiling back down from the ceiling to the floor. She landed hard enough to get severely injured, but her body was cold and limp, as if she were already dead.

“Britt!” I cried out helplessly

Ari took a long ritual dagger from her bag and plunged it into Britt’s chest cavity, causing gurgling blood to come pouring from her mouth.

“Great lord Panam, please accept this offering of flesh and blood,” Ari said, all at once abandoning the Latin, “Remove the curse of my mortal form from me and make me in your image.”

Ari cried out in pain, her body beginning to twist and morph into something that barely resembled a human being anymore. I supposed this was what she wanted all along.”

I was powerless to do anything but cower in the corner and hope I wouldn’t meet a similar fate to my poor best friend.

I should have listened to her. I should have never gone to this slumber party

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She hated her life of living in squalor, dressing in rags and spending all of her days scrubbing the walls and floors of the castle from top to bottom. It had gotten so bad that Snow White often wish she would fall asleep one night and never wake again

Snow White could not remember a time when she was truly happy, even when her parents were still alive. She had spent her childhood thinking that the king and the queen were perfect, just people. It was only when she grew old enough to read through the palace documents that she realized how cruel and unjust they really were. Brutal executions, torture, forced starvation as a punishment for peasents who’s crops had failed. Snow White’s parents were monsters. She knew that what they were doing was wrong even as a young child.

She felt wrong for it, yet somehow she still missed them

Snow White’s new queen and guardian, a noble from a neighboring kingdom, took the throne after the king and king had both been murdered two and a half years ago. (Somehow the mystery of who had slipped poison into their food remained unsolved). Since Snow White was barely fourteen at the time, the new queen was appointed as her guardian until it came time for her to marry

The queen hated Snow White. It wasn’t just because she was jealous of Snow White’s beauty, as the rumors spread around the palace would suggest It was true that the queen deeply envied her porcelain pale skin that would never darken in the sun, her graceful slender frame, her thick black hair, her big dewy eyes and most of all her youth. But that was only part of the story.

About twenty years ago, Snow White’s parents sent their army to lay siege to the kingdom in which the queen was still a young princess. Their armies slaughtered everyone in their path, men, women, children, nobles and servants alike. The teenage queen only survived by hiding away in a wardrobe, having to fight back screams as she watched her pregnant mother be murdered in front of her.

Snow White wasn’t exactly sure how this came to be. As she was a girl and not a male heir meant to lead armies one day. Her brief period of education hardly included anything about legality and kingdom relations. But not long after her parents’ death, the new queen came into possession of the kingdom and therefore in possession of Snow White.

From day one, the new queen deeply resented Snow White, both for her youth and beauty and for what her parents had done to her. She took it upon herself to humiliate Snow White in the worst way her privileged mind could think of. To a noble, there was nothing more humiliating than living in poverty or being a lowly servant.

As Snow White was scrubbing away at the edges of the deep dark well that stood outside of the palace, three of her bird friends urgently flew up to her to alert her of something.

The birds were typically happy, carefree creatures, so seeing them in such a state of distress made it clear that something was very wrong.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” Snow asked in alarm as the birds motioned her to follow her into the woods.

The birds led Snow White to a steel trap in the center of the woods. She could see the failing of orange fur and the strangled yipping sound coming from the little creature’s mouth.

“Oh, my goddess. You poor thing!!” Snow White gasped, “ Here, let me help you”

Snow White knelt down to help the fox out of the trap, gritting her teeth as she struggled to remove the bolts and the wires.

The fox yipped its gratitude once it was freed, rubbing up against Snow White’s ankles before running back off into the woods.

“You’re welcome, my love.” Snow White whispered after the fox. “I’m always happy to help”

A footstep snapped a twig from somewhere unseen behind Snow White, startling her.

“For the love of God, princess,” The prince said with a frown. “Why must you always release my kills?”

Snow White had only known the prince for a month at most, but they were set to be wed in less than a year. She was already wary of him.

He had tried to pin her to a tree and force his hand up her skirt during their first meeting, as he had mistaken her for a servant girl. He only backed down and apologized when he realized her princess status. Snow White knew that it wasn’t uncommon for royal men to use servant girls in this way. But it still felt deeply wrong to her no matter how hard the prince tried to convince her that she was overreacting.

“I was simply saving a poor, helpless creature.” Snow White said flatly. “I couldn’t just leave him to die. My heart couldn’t take it.”

“Such is the emotional nature of women, I suppose. That compassion would be best used on our children. We should have them as soon as possible. It’s wasted on these beasts,” The prince said with a sigh. “And besides, wouldn’t you like a nice fur coat? So many ladies would kill for a nice fox pelt coat.”

“I prefer the fur to stay on the animal.” Snow White said. “And I prefer the animal to stay alive.”

“You sure are a strange one, fair Snow White.” The Prince said. “It’s a good thing you’re beautiful.”

Just as Snow White was about to turn around to get back to the palace and finish her chores, the prince grabbed her by the arm and pulled her backward

“Let go of me!” Snow White snapped, yanking her arm from her grip

“Just one moment, princess, I need you to listen to me. It’s important.” The prince leaned in close to speak to her, as if her was afraid someone would hear him. “I’ve hear whispered that the queen is planning to kill you.”

“What?” Snow White gasped.

“Everyone has been whispering about it in the palace halls. They said that she’s planning to cut your heart out and eat it to absorb your youth and beauty. Apparently there’s some kind of black magic ritual for that.” The prince continued. “But in any case, it could just be a rumor. You know how disliked the queen is in my kingdom. People all kinds of horrible things about her there, I just thought you should know.”

Snow White had no idea what to make of this, but she forced a smile anyway.

“Thank you for telling me. That was very kind of you.” She told the prince before he went on his way.

It was late into the evening when Snow White finally completed her chores. She was happy to return to her shack.

Once the queen came to power, she refused to allow Snow White back into her old bedroom and forced her to sleep in a run down shack on the outskirts of the palace grounds. It was freezing cold in the winter months and nearly unbearably hot in the summer, but in when the weather was mild, Snow White didn’t mind so much. She was just grateful to have a space to call her own.

As Snow White lay on her back on her straw bed in her shack, thinking of the warning that The Prince had given her.

Snow White would not put it past the queen to do something of that nature. Anyone could see how deeply envious the queen was of her beauty.

Snow White knew that most girls would die to look like her. She knew that she should have been grateful for her natural beauty. But Snow White hated being beautiful. It had brought her nothing but suffering. If it were possible, she would take her beauty and gift it to the Queen of her own free will

The more Snow White thought about the rumor, the more she thought that she should just surrender and offer her heart to the queen.

Snow White had been thinking about death from the second the queen came into power. She started to see death as an escape, a way out of the cruelty of the world. If she gave the queen her heart, the queen would have Snow White’s youth and beauty for herself and Snow White would have the comfort of death. It was at least worth considering.

Just as Snow White was about to drift off into sleep, a beautiful white doe appeared at the open door of the shack, causing Snow White to shoot up from her bed.

Snow White had seen this white doe before, once the night of her parents’ death and once when she was nearly died from a mystery illness when she was four years old. Whenever this doe appeared, Snow White knew that something deeply important was about to happen.

“Kind Snow White.” The doe said in a soft. steady voice. “Follow me. The creatures of the forest need you.”

Snow White lifted her aching, tired body out of her bed and followed the doe into the woods.

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Now I need to lay down some context.

I grew up in the Wash Park area of Denver (I no longer live there, so I’m not doxxing myself), which is a somewhat wealthy residential area. There was an elementary and a high school that most all of the kids living in the area attended, as they were close by and already had an ingrained community built in. For the purposes of this essay. I will be talking about elementary school.

The building the elementary school was set in was built sometime in the late 1800s. It had gone through some renovations over the years, but the age of the school was very apparent. The lack of centralized air conditioning was one of the most obvious ones.

The school was not named for a big politician or historical figure like a lot of schools are in America. Instead, it was named for a 19th century lawyer who fought for the state of Colorado to have a designated juvenile justice department so that minors who committed petty crime would not be tried the same as adults and would have their own designated facilities, or so the story goes. The implication was that minors were being thrown in prison with adults before this lawyer came along, whether that was the whole truth or not

There was a massive black and white portrait of this lawyer in his later years hung above the main staircase of the school. My classmates and I often joked about the eyes of the portrait following us around as we walked up and down the stairs, but they weren’t really jokes.

Now on to the spooky stuff.

There were two bathrooms on each floor of the school, one boys’ and one girls’. The upstairs girls bathroom in particular was quite creepy. There were old pipes everywhere that made weird noises, the floor was made of exposed concrete that looked kind of industrial, the mirrors were always foggy and it just had a general creepy vibe to it.

It wasn’t much of a surprise that there was a widespread rumor going around the school that this bathroom was haunted. But by what no one could say.

As you guys probably know, I’ve been into horror and the paranormal and spooky things like that for basically my whole life/ So of course I found this whole haunting rumor deeply fascinating.

The first real incident happened in the fourth grade. The teacher gave us an hour of free time to do whatever activities we wanted, as she did every Friday as a reward for completing our weekly homework. I was weaving friendship bracelets with two of my friends from my class when I got an idea.

‘Hey, do you guys want to go to the bathroom and play Bloody Mary in the mirror with me?” I asked them.

Both girls adamantly shook their heads.

‘No, we’re too scared.’ They said, “We don’t want to get in trouble.’

I just shrugged this off and went to play Bloody Mary in the bathroom by myself. I wasn’t a scaredy cat like my friends. I wasn’t afraid to do it all on my own.

I knew that the Bloody Mary ritual usually required complete darkness and some kind of small light source like a flashlight or a candle. Since it was the middle of the school day, I did not have any of those things available to me. But I decided I would make do anyway.

I stared at my face in the foggy bathroom mirror for a good thirty seconds, doing the standard Bloody Mary chant, doing my best to stay on rhythm. But nothing seemed to be happening.

Just as I was about to admit defeat and return disappointed to my friends, the lights in the bathroom cut out, only leaving a brief strip of sunlight in the window. I could just barely make out a face in the bathroom mirror, but I knew full well it wasn’t mine.

I screamed and ran out of the bathroom, not as immune to the scares as I thought that I was. My friends in the hallway stared at me wide eyed as I explained what happened. I don’t think that they could ever fully believe me,

Fast forward to the second half of my fifth grade year. I have developed an extremely intense interest in ghost hunting and paranormal investigation. For one of my birthday gifts that year, i had been given an old vintage tape recorder to try to capture EVPs with.

I was not allowed to bring this tape recorder to school. My parents had made that extremely clear to me. But I snuck it to school in my backpack anyway, with the long standing rumor that the school was haunted in mind.

The outdoor area of the school consisted of three newly remodeled playgrounds, each one made to be appropriate for a different age group. Between two of these playgrounds was a soccer field with a walking track around it. In each corner of the soccer field, there was a bit of empty space filled with wild plants and the occasional squirrel or bunny.

We were warned clearly not to go into these empty spaces during recess, but I felt i was picking up an EVP signal in that area, and I had to investigate.

The static of the tape recorder grew louder as I approached the very back fence. I could just barely make out the voice coming through that static, a young voice of a girl that couldn’t have been older than myself

‘Hello,’ the voice said simply

‘Hello,’ i whispered back.

It was then that I was quickly pulled backwards by the back of my shirt. I had been caught by the recess attendant.

‘I told you not to go back there,’ The recess attendant scolded me. ‘Don’t make me call your parents.”

My parents were, in fact, called and i had my tape recorder taken away from me for a few days as a punishment. But I never forgot the sound of that voice.

From the third grade to the fifth grade, my class would be taken to the school library at least twice a week to read and check out books. Being the lifelong reader that I am. This was one of the class activities that I looked forward to the most.

Yet this time I felt a deep sense of anxiety at the thought of going to the library for reasons I couldn’t quite explain. The student teacher was the only one to take notice of this.

‘What’s wrong, Grace?’ She asked me. ‘You usually love the library.’

‘I don’t know, Miss,’ i responded. “I just feel like something bad is going to happen.’

The student teacher offered me a kind smile and rested a hand on my shoulder. The school staff was well aware that I had issues with anxiety years before I was formally diagnosed with GAD at the age of thirteen.

“Nothing bad is going to happen, Sweetheart.’ She said. “There’s no reason to be anxious. It will be alright.”

I sat down on the little bench in by the library shelves with my stack of R.L Stine books in hand, trying to get the anxiety out of my head.

Then I felt a wave of cool breath against my ear; a disembodied voice whispered a single word to me

Fire

My eyes snapped up from my book to see a large plume of smoke seeping out from one of the vents. I screamed to alert the rest of my class.

The fire alarm rang out and the whole school evacuated in single file lines. No one was hurt, but a small electrical fire had started due to old, faulty wiring that long needed to be replaced

Who knows how much worse it would have been if I wasn’t warned.

By the time I moved on to middle school, I had so many deep core memories of not only the fun and the friends that I made there but the strange, unexplainable happenings I had experienced there.

Even when I pass that school nowadays, I can’t help but feel like it remembers me, that whatever beings lurked in the bathrooms and hallways remember me.

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I was new to the tiny Midwest town of Good Oaks, so maybe there was something I was missing. But I could not even begin to understand why all the local kids were so terrified of that cornfield.

I had just started up at my new high school after moving to Good Oaks with my recently divorced father. My mother was a tough parent, to put it in nicer terms than she probably deserved. It seemed that every single moment I was around her, she was screaming at me and reminding me what a failure I was in her eyes. So of course, when the divorce was finalized, I chose to live with my dad and never looked back

The downside was, without the added security of a dual income from my mom’s cushy healthcare job and the added cost of lawyers and legal fees, my dad could no longer afford the house or the lifestyle that we were accustomed to living.

So my Dad and I packed up all of our belongings that we could fit in our minivan and traveled back to my Dad’s hometown of Good Pines to move in with my grandparents while we sorted out our financial situation.

A lot of time had passed since my dad and I moved into Good Oaks. Summer had passed little by little and the school year would soon be upon us. I knew my dad was hoping to be back on our feet by this point, but he had no choice but to enroll me in the local high school come the end of August.

Good Oaks High School was much smaller compared to the city schools that I was used to. There were less than a hundred students in the entire high school.

But, despite the small student body at this new high school, I managed to make a place for myself there fairly quickly, even making a cloud of friends, John and Katie.

One chilly October morning, it was a Saturday. If I remember correctly, I woke up to a text from John asking me to meet up with them in some random corn maze in the outskirts of town.

I’ll admit that I found this a bit strange. An old run down corn maze in the middle of nowhere would not be anywhere near my first choice of hangout spot. But I knew that small towns often had a different culture than the big city I was used to. Maybe this was something that was normal here.

I dressed in my warmest hoodie and jeans, took a moment to let my dad know where I was going and headed out to the corn maze per Katie’s directions. After about twenty minutes of walking, I found the corn maze relatively easily. However, I seemed to have arrived a few minutes earlier than my friends. I would have to find a place to sit and wait for them.

I sat down on an old wooden bench across the gravel road from the corn maze. It was only now that I could see it in all its glory.

The stalks of corn that made up the corn maze were some of the tallest that I had ever seen, creating a network of walls as thick as concrete. It was much bigger than I had expected. With the way it was set below the skyline, it looked like it could go on forever. I’ve never seen a field that I couldn’t see the other side of before.

“Hey there, Megan.” John appeared first, clamping a hand on my shoulder and startling me. “Are you ready to have our little corn maze adventure?”

“Uh yeah..I guess.” I replied with hesitation.”Where’s Kate? Didn’t she come with you?”

“She’s in the maze already. I guess she wanted a head start,” John said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll catch up to her real quick once we get into the thick of it.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I followed John into the corn maze. We walked for several minutes in awkward silence before John finally spoke up.

“You know there’s an urban legend about this place.” He said. “We used to use it to scare each other when we were kids.”

I felt silly for feeling this way, but the very mention of this urban legend brought me a sense of unease.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, maintaining a calm demeanor. ‘What kind of urban legend?”

“Well, it goes like this,” John said. “Sometime in the 1950s, there was this little girl who was being stalked by a gross old pedophile. She begged and begged for help, from her teachers, from the police, from her teachers. But no one believed her. No one came to help her. It all came to a head when she was walking to school one day, on the trail just outside of this very corn maze. The pedophile caught her and dragged her into the middle of the corn maze, where no one could hear her scream. After doing unspeakable things to her for hours, the pedophile killed her and stuffed her dead body into a shell of a scarecrow and strung her up to rot. Now the scarecrow girl’s angry ghost stalks the corn maze, looking for victims to take her place.”

I was taken aback at how deeply disturbing this story was. We didn’t have such dark urban legends back in my old school in the city. I don’t remember my school having any urban legends at all.

“That’s horrible.’ I said with a look of horror on my face. “Is that story true? Not the scarecrow ghost part, but the story about what happened to that girl?”

“Hell if I know. It’s not like I was around in the 1950s.” John said, “But I wouldn’t be quick to assume that the legend of the Scarecrow Ghost isn’t true either.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

But when I turned around, John had disappeared into thin air. I appeared to be completely alone in the middle of this corn maze with no way back out in sight.

I tried to remain calm, taking a few deep breaths to ground myself. There had to be an easy way to get out of here. I just had to go back the way I came.

Trying my best to retrace my steps, I walked backwards in the direction that I had thought I had come from. But it was no use. All the stalks of corn looked the same and there was no opening to exit through in sight.

Before I could even fully process the situation that I was in, I heard someone call out for help. It took me a moment to recognize the voice as Katie’s.

“Katie? Where the hell are you?” I called out into the void of corn.

“I’m over here, Megan.” Katie’s voice called from my left. “Help me, quick!”

I bolted in the general direction in which Katie’s voice was coming. I ran and ran until I hit a dead end. The sight I stumbled across was enough to knock the air out of my lungs.

John’s dead body was strung up on a massive wooden stake. His mouth was stitched shut and his stomach had been slit open and stuffed with straw. His blank, dead eyes stared directly at the ground, lifeless.

Katie was sprawled out on the ground, screaming in pain as a small, rag doll looking creature shoved a knife into her belly. The Scarecrow Girl, it had to be.

Katie’s eyes flicked up at me as she screamed out frantically.“Megan, help me, please.”

Before the Scarecrow Girl could turn her attention to me, I turned on my heel and ran. I ran and I ran as Katie’s screams faded into the distance.

Once I ran for long enough, I managed to find the exit to the corn maze. I made it back to the gravel path and into safety.

Never would I doubt an urban legend again

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