10 Spine-Chilling Stories That Will Make Your Skin Crawl

I told him I had no idea what he was talking about (because I didn’t) as we’d been in our living room, getting ready to watch a baseball game on TV the entire time, like right in front of the windows that face the street and the front door. We hadn’t seen or heard anything like what he had just described. Our house is small and things like door knocks are always easy to hear.

I went back in our house and told my wife what my neighbor had just said. She was just as bewildered as me, so we opened the security camera app to see if it caught anything. Lo and behold, we see a car pull up and stop suddenly in front of our house. A tall guy in black shabby clothes gets out and starts gesturing toward our house, which he soon walks up to. During this, we see our daughter leave the house and begin walking down the street to the communal mailboxes. We ask our daughter if she noticed this guy and she claimed to have not seen or heard anything when she went to check the mail… But we can see her walking right past this guy and his car. Confused even more, I walked out to the side of the house and there were indeed two rock-sized holes in our siding.

So this entire series of events unfolded but it’s like the guy was totally invisible to us, like we were in a separate reality. My wife swears something was protecting us from whoever this guy was and what he was trying to do to us.

Mary Patrick, by James Loprest 

My friends Katie and Peggy grew up in a large, tightly-knit, Irish Catholic family. They lived with their widowed mother in a sprawling old nineteenth-century farmhouse in Connecticut. Mrs. O’Brien was the clan’s no-nonsense matriarch, with an immediate family equally large as the one she created around Katie, Peggy and their siblings.

Mary Patrick was Mrs. O’Brien’s aunt; her mother’s older sister, Katie and Peggy’s great aunt. A former nun, Aunt Mary Patrick had never married, and she lived alone in a small apartment in West Hartford, about a half hour away, on a meagre pension from a librarian job from which she had retired ages earlier. Mary Patrick’s small income was supplemented by the family; in a sense, the family had inherited their Aunt Mary Patrick as a promise made to some long-lost relatives—a promise that by common unspoken consent simply must be kept. As far back as anyone could remember, Aunt Mary Patrick had not worked, visited family, or even left her apartment. Aunt Mary Patrick periodically put Mrs. O’Brien and her daughters to minor errands—a trip to the post office, a sudden realization that the milk carton was empty—which any objective observer could see were actually the product of deep loneliness.

“A bit of a trial,” was how Mrs. O’Brien described her Aunt Mary Patrick, according to Peggy. Of course they loved her, but Mary Patrick was simply not a happy woman. When the family visited, Mary Patrick invariably began with how it had been a “month of Sundays” since the family’s last visit, and how “nobody above ground” cared for her any more. Whenever they called her on the telephone, Mary Patrick would always act astonished and pretend she could not recognize the caller because “it’s been a dog’s age” since their last call, even if they had spoken earlier that day. A typical telephone call with Aunt Mary Patrick would begin with minor complaints, as she ran through a litany of aches, pains, and a thousand other natural shocks her flesh was heir to, and the call would continue on to errands that had been promised to her and neglected, and then on to errands that were presently needed. Should she discern insufficient interest on the other end of the telephone line, Mary Patrick might say something like, “Oh, I’m sorry, is an old lady boring you?” If she was in a really black mood, Mary Patrick would say, “For all anyone cares I might as well be dead.”

One late winter afternoon, Peggy was practicing piano in the next room over from the kitchen. Mrs. O’Brien was in the kitchen preparing the family dinner. Peggy heard the kitchen telephone ring and took in parts of the ensuing conversation; she heard the tiny note of resignation in her mother’s voice when she answered: “Oh, hello, Aunt Mary Patrick. Yes, this weekend? Of course, we will do our best.” And then, “It’s really no trouble at all.” And then, finally, “Please don’t say that, Aunt Mary Patrick. Nobody would be better off without you. We would all miss you greatly.” Peggy told us she went into the kitchen as the conversation came to a close. “Yes, we will all see you soon, Aunt Mary Patrick. Yes, very soon.” Mrs. O’Brien replaced the phone in its cradle and turned to Peg: “Your Aunt Mary Patrick seemed more frail than usual. Maybe it was a bad connection. Her voice was very faint. As we talked it faded in and out, as if she was moving away from the phone.”

Peggy said Katie then came into the kitchen. She said she and Katie lent their mother a hand cutting up vegetables, and that went on for maybe 20 minutes. They talked about soap operas, they talked about the weather. And then the telephone rang again. Again, Mrs. O’Brien answered it. Her mother immediately shushed her and her sister, and listened intently to the caller on the other end of the line; all Peggy and Katie could discern was a muffled, masculine-sounding voice. As the caller spoke, Mrs. O’Brien grew pale. She retrieved pen and paper from a drawer and took some notes. When she hung up, she looked out into the middle distance and said, without expression, “Girls, I suddenly have a terrible headache,” and she abruptly left the kitchen.

Peggy said Katie pursued their mother out of the kitchen. A few minutes later, Katie returned and told Peggy that it was the state police on the telephone. Katie told her the reason for their mother’s discomfort was that their old aunt, Mary Patrick, had just died. “They called us because we were her emergency contact. Apparently, a neighbor found Mary Patrick in her bed in her apartment. Poor thing. Police told Mom she had been dead for at least three days.”

The Void, by Shadowfire

My parents were on one of their weekend vacations and left their dog with me, who’s terrified of car rides. This is the only circumstance under which I go outside at night: to let a dog pee. There are a few street lamps on my road, but between those it’s pitch dark.

So we were walking down the road for pee-time and entering one of these dark patches, when he stops and starts growling, and I saw something standing in the middle of the road, darker than the pitchiest blackness. I got out my flashlight and saw… something. I got as close as wrangling an aggressive dog would allow and walked all around a thing that cast no shadow, didn’t move with the wind, and could neither be seen through nor into because it absorbed light like a black hole.

It was just… a knee-high void of nothingness, roughly mound-ish in shape.

By that time the dog acted like he wanted to murder the thing, and I was like, “we ain’t touchin’ that,” and dragged him back to my property, making the decision that he would be peeing in the backyard the rest of the night, that was for sure. We went back inside and I started playing video games while he wandered off to sleep somewhere—I presumed at first.

I eventually realized there was a grumbling noise coming from the kitchen, so I went in there, turning on the light, and found him at the top of the stairs leading to the basement, staring down into the darkness.

I stood next to him, wondering what his problem was, when I noticed, in between the ever louder growls, that I could hear… something, moving slowly, softly, in the basement. A little shuffle here, something on a shelf rustling there. At the base of stairs is a bathroom with a door that opens towards the stairs, so I keep it firmly closed at all times… and I heard it gently creak open. Whoever it was, was only seven steps away from us, but I couldn’t see anyone, and realized I couldn’t see the door either: just a pitchiest blackness.

And I was like, “fuck it.” Fortunately the stairs have a door that locks, so I pulled the extremely tense dog away and locked the door, then carried the still growling dog into the living room and put on a loud movie, and we both eventually relaxed and got some sleep. The next day nothing was amiss in the basement; the bathroom door was still firmly closed, and on the road there was nothing to suggest a void had ever been there. It was like a hole in space had stopped by say hello.

Too Much for the Catholics, by Ten

I’ve always experienced ghostly phenomena, and—thankfully—it’s become a lot less terrifying as I’ve gotten older. As a kid, I more-than-once wet the bed instead of dealing with whatever was in the hallway.

It’s usually situations where I spot something out of the corner of my eye, need to help someone pass on to the next side, or am asked to give a loved one messages. It’s taken a long time, but I consider this gift as a blessing.

If there’s something I’m not interested in dealing with, however, it’s non-human entities.

About 10 years ago, I moved into an apartment with a Sicilian brother and sister duo. I needed that place after escaping a roommate with BPD and a cocaine addiction, so I didn’t think about the Italians sharing two twin beds in the same room. It was built 20 years before, was beautifully furnished, and had an enormous living room (that we strangely never ever went in).

The first night in my new bed, something felt off very suddenly. Around 3 a.m. unseen hands pushed themselves up my legs over the blankets. Parts of the room were freezing. I felt like I was being watched by something that hated me.

Heading into the third night of sleeplessness, the ragazzo and I were sitting down to dinner. His eyes were wide when he asked me if I’d experienced sudden shifts in temperatures, too.

“You mean the cold air next to us right now?”

“Si. My sister and I are sharing a room because we don’t want to stay here. We are Catholics but praying doesn’t help.”

The next day, I went to church and asked a priest to bless me. When asking him for advice, he simply told me to move out. Undaunted (and desperate for a non-awful living situation), I felt the energy enter my room and brought out various Bible verses. The tension in the room rose and pulsated to a point that my string lights, lamp, and phone died simultaneously.

My friend let me crash on her sofa for a few days. After hurriedly finding a new place, I had to go back and pack up my things. The bedroom energy seemed slightly less hostile, but walking into the kitchen, my blood went cold: All of the cupboard doors were wide open. It was a demand to leave, not a request.

Most of the time, I can determine who I’m dealing with. This was pure darkness. I threw my keys on the kitchen table and never asked for my deposit back.

The Camping Trip, by Nope

I volunteered to chaperone my daughter’s camping trip because I’m dumb as fuck. I don’t enjoy camping but it’s all about the kids and cultivating community, blah blah. Let’s say we were in a Midwest river valley town; rural but not remote.

I’ll set the scene… Four tweens plus me in my four-person tent, one of whom is particularly scared of the dark. All of us are city dwellers and not used to the sound of wind, bugs, or critters. All sugar-crashing from the ‘smores binge and crabby from the lack of space.

It’s shortly after midnight, the girls are trying to wind down but every once in a while, one will fart or whisper, and then the scolding and giggling resumes. We’re almost asleep when we hear a coyote. It sounds more bird-like (think a high-pitched “kaaaaaaaaaaw-op”), but a know-it-all tween corrects me and explains it’s a young, single coyote. This goes on for a bit, it’s fine. And suddenly things go quiet. Even the cicadas cease. We sense some movement outside of the tent. The tweens stir and then tense. I explain/lie that it’s just raccoons poking around to see what we’re up to. Or maybe another in our group from a different tent on their way to pee. There is a thick sense of unease in the air and I hear how unconvincing I sound.

I lift my head to check on the girls and lock eyes with the particularly scared girl. Her face completely startles me; she is absolutely frozen in terror. Her eyes are wide, and her mouth is agape. She is crying and appears to be struggling to speak. I about to flip into Mom-mode and reassure her when we hear a new noise that sounds like a goat (think “eh -eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh”). Relieved, I say, “oh girls, it’s OK, it’s just a sweet little goat!” But as the noise continues, I realize the goat noise sounds more like a tween pretending to be a goat. I now officially flip into mom/Karen mode with the intention of telling the goat/tween to go the fuck to sleep because she’s terrifying her friends.

I carefully scramble over the children, unzip the tent, and stick my head out in time to see someone dash behind another tent. I step out of my tent holding my flashlight like a cop and follow them around the back of the neighboring tent. There, I encounter not a goat, but an emaciated teenage boy. I am surprised, but have not yet digested what I’m seeing enough to be as scared as I eventually will be. I say to him, inexplicably and idiotically, “oh hey.” He looks me dead in the eye, calmly opens and closes his mouth, and quickly scampers away. On all fours. Barefoot.

That Particular Tree, by Wellington Overlord

I live in Europe, where houses are old and things that don’t appear in your science textbook basically live all over the place. My family belongs to a culture that has preserved quite a lot of pagan traditions and things either in parallel with Christianity or by merging the two. We’re on speaking terms with the local nature spirits and we invite decreased family members to join us at dinner during particular holidays.

On top of that, I’m somewhat involved with researching our town’s history; it’s understood that if there’s a local legend to be known about a place, I know it. I pride myself in being able to tell you the particular stories associated with pretty much any structure older than 50 years, and the legends and myths tied to the nature landmarks. Which is at least in part why That Particular Tree is bothering me so.

About 50 yards from my grandparents’ house, a slightly larger street going uphill is crossed by a smaller street running around the hill. Where it meets the larger street, it sort of fans open like it’s trying to imitate an estuary, and in that wider part, somewhat centered so that you can drive a car past on either side, stood a tree. It’d been there since before I was born; it was tall, it was gnarly, and it was the scariest thing I knew. If I’d had to put it into words, I would have said: “That tree has faces.” I do not mean knots or bark patterns looking like faces. It felt like there was literally something looking out from that tree—and it wasn’t something you wanted to encounter.

There was a playground just a little bit down the hill from it that we went to play at as kids, but we would always go around the long way, basically rounding the entire block of buildings to get there, and then the same, long way back around to get home. Though we never talked about it, none of us seemed inclined to walk past that tree on our own, or maybe everyone just followed my lead (I was the oldest kid in my generation).  

The thing is: No one ever talked about that tree. And we are not the sort of family that doesn’t talk about such things or that would have you worried about being laughed at. I can’t even say I felt in any way that talking about it would be a bad idea. I just didn’t.

Fast forward, years later. I’m studying in a different state, and coming home for grandma’s birthday. There’s a work crew out in the street, and I see they’re cutting down that tree.

That night, we sit at dinner with the entire family, and I bring up the tree being cut down (it was judged sick and a safety hazard, apparently). My aunt looks up from her plate and says: “Oh, thank god. That f—ing thing had faces.” That night I learned that we all felt about the same way about That Particular Tree, and none of us, adults or kids alike, had ever had any sort of inclination to talk about it.

Once the tree was gone, that ceased to be an issue. We’d walk past and bring up how we didn’t used to do that, and why. We compared notes on the tree with the faces.

They planted a new tree there. The tree grew up nicely. But then around the time my nephew started exploring and going to that playground (the sort of rural Europe we live in, kids can be out on their own easily enough), the long way around had started to look attractive again. The new tree was starting to grow faces.

My parents live a little farther up the hill from my grandparents. My mom has her study facing east, which is the side where you’d drive past the tree to approach the house from that end. If there’s light on in her study, she’s still awake and we are welcome to come in. One night, I’ve just returned from a gig abroad, I want to check if I can still drop by, so I drive up the hill past That Particular Tree; I don’t usually mind it from inside the car. Now, on the uphill street, you are supposed to be able to drive straight up; the tree is in the street crossing it… Except that night, I very nearly drove right into that thing. I could have sworn I was straight on the proper street, but it was dark, I had just returned from an intercontinental flight. I was a bit shaken but also figured for the moment I must be more exhausted than I thought and probably should not be driving. Already somewhat resolved to leave my car at parents’ and walk home to my own place after checking in, I let myself in, only to be greeted by my mom asking which way I drove up.

“Around the back,” I say.

She gives me a look and goes: “Where was it this time?”

We’re still using that street up back with our cars, but we’ve all learned to drive with particular care around there, because more often than not, you can’t just drive up straight anymore. We joke about there being a spatial distortion that causes the street to curve weirdly, but we don’t usually mention the tree. It doesn’t cross my mind until after the fact, and I guess it’s similar for everyone else.

The thing that really bothers me, though, is that there is nothing on that place or that tree. No legends, no myths, not even a hint of a story. I know the ghosts that haunt the other street up the hill, I know the spirits living in the fields a little farther up, I know the old pagan landmarks at the very foot of our hill, you name it, I can tell you about it. In our small 3,000-soul “town,” I can give you a talk about pretty much every bit of growth or structure that has the least bit of spooky attached to it.

Every bit, that is, except for That Particular Tree and the stretch of street just around that crossroad, which does not exist in any variation of local legend.

The House on Henry Road, by LucyLucia

I was college age in 1998, and was looking forward to a fun summer at home, hanging with my friends, saving up money for school and reading books that weren’t assigned to me as homework. Shortly after coming home, my friend Julia gave me a call and let me know that she had a bunch of house-sitting gigs lined up that summer and would I be willing to stay with her so she wouldn’t be alone? I thought her request was absolutely brilliant, as that meant total freedom from my parents, whose supervision was starting to chafe a bit after a school year free from their input.

So began our summer of living in rich people’s homes and helping ourselves to their food. I would work my summer job and then come home to wherever Julia was house-sitting and watch movies, invite friends over, and just hang out like young people did before social media. It was truly a fantastic summer full of long conversations, swimming in backyard pools, and flirting with boys.

Our last house was located in the historic section of our town. Julia told me that her mom’s church friend needed someone to watch her home for a week while she was out of town and we were happy to volunteer. This home was more modest than the others we stayed in. Relatively small, it was one of those ubiquitous 1960s ranch homes with an attached garage. The exterior was totally unremarkable, being painted in varying shades of tan and brown, with a long but narrow front porch. Double doors marked the entrance, and the interior had last been updated some time in the early 1980s. We were to stay in the guest room, a tidy but spartan space, with a small nightstand between two twin beds.

Things started happening that very first night. Julia and I were both in our twin beds, ready for sleep, but were keeping ourselves awake having some earnest, sweet conversation. As we’re talking, items on the shelf located above Julia’s bed started falling onto her. She would startle and then grab the item (think Precious Moments figurines) and place it back on the shelf. Then a few minutes later, another object would land on her bed. We were perplexed and assumed the shelf wasn’t installed very well and it must be tilting forward. Then the poster above Julia’s bed unstuck itself from the wallpaper and drifted down over Julia’s head. Again, we thought it was strange, but the tape must be old. We kept on with our talk until we drifted off to sleep and were not disturbed for the rest of the evening.

The next few days were filled with these subtle incidents. Lights would turn themselves on and off. But we always supplied ourselves with an explanation. (“She has the lights on a timer”—although not once did we ever see a timer plugged in to a wall.) The TV would turn off if we were watching it and on if we weren’t. I said I thought it must be a malfunctioning remote control, and shrugged.

We spent most of our time during the week at our respective summer jobs, only returning in the evenings, so it wasn’t until four days later, when we spent the entire day at the home, that I began to suspect something else was going on. It was a sweltering day, one of Julia’s duties was to water the owner’s large gardens in the front and back yard, so we were on the back patio chatting as I smoked and watched my friend water the plants. What happened next is hard to describe, since I believe it that what I experienced is more related to our distant past as hunter and hunted than it was with our modern lives. I slowly became aware of being observed. Not the idle glance of a next-door neighbor, but a direct, unwavering observation that set all the hairs on my neck and arms upright. I was absolutely sure that there was a stranger standing at the kitchen window overlooking the patio. When I turned to look, nothing was there—but the feeling at the base of my neck was sending me all the warning signals that we were being watched.

I explained to Julia what I was feeling, that I was sure we were being observed and we walked inside and started doing a thorough search of the house. We found nothing on the main floor, everything was completely as we had left it. Julia pointed out that we had never gone down to the basement and maybe someone was hiding down there. I agreed it would be a good idea to look.

The basement was unlike any I had ever seen before. The large, unfinished space was segmented in to several, large cell-like spaces. The walls were thin and not meant to be permanent and didn’t reach all the way to the ceiling, but there were doors leading in to the rooms, at least six of them, and each room had a small army cot, bedding, and a nightstand. We stared at each other completely creeped out, at a loss to why a single, church-going old lady would have a bunch of temporary rooms set up all over her basement floor. A quick phone call to Julia’s mom let us know that the owner often opened her home to the unhoused and people who had fallen on hard times. These rooms were used as accommodation while somewhere safer and more permanent was found. OK. There was a totally kind reason for the creepy rooms provided, we felt that we had searched the home and no one was in there with us.

An unremarkable evening passed, when Julia remembered that she had forgotten to water the plants near the front porch. Julia walked out the front door to get the watering hose, while I walked to the back of the house to grab my pack of ciggies from the bedroom. As I was making my way to the front door, I heard Julia pounding on the door. Once I unlocked the deadbolt, she angrily accused me of locking her outside to scare her. I swore to her that I never went near the door on my way to the bedroom, but she didn’t believe it, since the only lock on the door was a deadbolt that had to turned from the inside. As she did not have the house keys with her, there would have been no way for her to lock herself out. I had no explanation to give her so we made sure we had the keys and went back outside to finish the watering. Once we were done, I dramatically closed the door and pronounced “See? NOW I locked it!” We laughed and moved to the back of the house to change in to our PJs.

Having finished changing, we were ready for a movie and walked out to the living room. Our first indication that something was off, was the sound of the crickets. They were so loud, which made no sense, since the house was locked up tight. Or it had been. We both stopped and turned our heads almost in unison and there, right in front of us were the two large white doors fully open to the dark night outside. There was no wind, no storm—no reason that could explain how both doors were wide open. We either had an intruder in the house or there was a ghost.

We looked at each other, screamed and were out of the house, pulling away from the driveway in under 3 minutes. That was where our story ended; Julia refused to go back to the house by herself, her father had to accompany her to water the plants, but there was no chance we would ever set foot in the house again. We would sometimes debate if it was a ghost or maybe someone hiding the basement, but even if we didn’t know what it was exactly, we knew it was not good.

About five or six years later I get a call from Julia.

“Do you remember the creepy house we stayed at?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, the owner just talked to my mom at church and listen to this… She volunteered to put up a couple of visiting seminary students. They stayed in the twin room, and stuff started falling all over one of the seminary students from the walls, and then the bed started moving and FLOATED UP IN TO THE AIR. Apparently, they both ran screaming from the house!”

As she was speaking all the hair on my body stood up. We were both silent on the phone and then I spoke up.

“Well, we know it was a ghost now, right?”

The Shadow Man, by La_femme_gela 

My boyfriend and I had been together for around two years. He lived in an old loft downtown and I lived in another less than a mile away. Easy for me to spend weekends with him and get back to my own place Monday mornings before work.

One morning he told me in the middle of the night I sat up in bed, pointed to the corner of the room and said, “There is a man in that corner,” then laid back down and slept. We laughed about how weird it was and that was it. I don’t know if I dreamt it into being, or it was always there, but after that, I began to see something when I would stay over.

At first it was just like a shadow darting across a doorway, or around the corner. I’d see if most often after my boyfriend would leave for work on Monday mornings. It looked like a black figure and would peek around the bedroom door at me, always darting away when you would try to look at it. My boyfriend called him the shadow man and teased me about it. I feel like acknowledging it only made it bolder, or more real or something crazy like that.

My boyfriend often snored, and when he did, I would go sleep on the couch. On the couch, instead of just seeing a shadow shape run across the open door, it was out in the living room with me. It would feel like someone was standing over the back of the couch staring at me. When I pulled my eye-mask back I could just catch a shadow duck behind the couch. If I left my mask on out of fear, I would feel a presence over my face. Like a heavy, stagnant air, like someone breathing right over you.

Then came the touching. I would feel as if someone put their hand on my feet, arm or back, which I chalked up to sleep brain. One night after telling myself it’s not real, my foot was grabbed and yanked, hard. Another night I was slapped on my back so hard it hurt and startled me off the couch. I became so scared I would not sleep when I was on the couch, instead keeping awake with a little light on. I never saw this same figure at my own place.

The final instance happened one morning while I was still in bed. My boyfriend got up early to watch TV and I stayed to sleep in and relax. I was lying on my side when it felt like someone sat on the end of the bed. I know this is a common falling asleep brain trick, so I mentally reminded myself to not be scared, it was normal, and I didn’t need to sit up and look. I remember noticing the sunlight though the sides of my eye-mask when it suddenly felt like something quickly ran on all fours from the corner of the bed and jumped on top of me. I tried to push my body up from my arms, which were out next to me, but I physically could not move. It felt like a pole had been stabbed directly through my shoulders and pinned me to the bed. I could only make doggie-paddling motions with my hands and feet. As soon as I tried to yell for help something grabbed my throat and started choking me. The sunshine I could previously see started to fade and I distinctly remember feeling like I was drifting down into the ocean. Everything went black and then suddenly, whatever was on top of me was gone. I pushed myself up and when I got my breath back, yelled to my boyfriend for help.

After that day I never saw the shadow man again. It was like it just decided to leave. I have wanted to send this in for the past five or six years but I always had a fear in the back of my head that by writing this out it may cause the thing to somehow come back.

My boyfriend and I have moved into our own place since then and fingers crossed the shadow man will never return.

Uncle K, by Sofar

There was one really rough year in my family where four of my relatives died almost back-to-back. The only funeral I missed was my Uncle K’s. Just a couple months after he died, my aunt died, and I made it to hers.

The funeral was at a church attached to the elementary school that my dad and his seven siblings all attended.

There were like 500 people at the funeral, and of course I had to pee right before, and of course there was a line of people at the too-small bathroom. My dad told me I should just use a bathroom in the school, which was attached to the church through a passageway in the basement of the church.

I went to the basement, which was a social area where some ladies were setting up meat and cheese platters for after the funeral and set off down the tunnel. Dark, creepy. The school was also dark and creepy. I found the girls’ bathroom. When I was done, I tried to push open the stall door and it wouldn’t budge. And it wasn’t like the lock was stuck or anything. The resistance was like someone was pushing from the outside. I pushed as hard as I could then threw my shoulder into it, and the door flew open and I stumbled out. I washed my hands feeling super creeped out and ran down the hallway back to the tunnel.

I saw the warm light of the basement rec room at the end of the tunnel and then, as I grew closer, I saw someone’s kid was standing right at the entrance where the tunnel met the basement area. I noticed how the kid was dressed: peacoat, felt-looking hat with ear flaps, and knit mittens attached to strings hanging through the sleeves. Weird old-time-y dress, I thought; most kids would be wearing puffer coats. But maybe someone tried to dress their kid a bit more formally for the funeral.

All the ladies who had been setting up the food platters had gone upstairs, so it was just me and the kid. I rushed into the rec room and as I passed him, I was like, “Uh hi!” He smirked at me but didn’t say anything. I ran up the stairs and found my seat by my parents just as the funeral started.

I kept thinking, “Who is this kid?” He looked related to me. My (huge) family on my dad’s side all either resemble my grandfather or my grandmother. The kid had my grandma’s features. I knew all my cousins’ kids but figured maybe he was a more distant cousin and just had the same features as my grandma’s side. I kept an eye out but didn’t see him again.

Days later, I was helping one of my aunts sort through all the old photos that various family had contributed to the memory photo boards displayed throughout the church, and I saw a photo of my dad and his siblings. They were on the steps of their house, it was winter, and one kid had a peacoat, mittens, and a hat with flaps. Spitting image of my grandmother—and of the kid in the basement.

“Which one of you was that?” I asked my aunt. “That was K,” she said. “Wow, he looks like a damn Polish orphan, we were all such ragamuffins.” 

A few days later, the family was sharing old stories, and how K was a trouble maker at school. One of his pranks was sneaking into the girls’ bathroom and pounding on the stalls and holding them closed. He eventually became kind of a bully, but at the time everyone thought this was harmless hijinks. I told everyone my story and they were like, “Yeah K wasn’t going to let you just miss his funeral and not mess with you.”

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.