I Didn’t Think She Was Real

I remember being told stupid scary stories by my grandma when I was seven, and they were all the cheesy stories about black cats and people wearing white sheets and popping out of closets to scare their friends. Of course, at that age, I thought they were pretty freaky, but I soon grew out of those stories.

One night, at the age of 9, I asked my grandma to tell me a really scary story, the scariest one she knew.

She looked at me, face completely straight. “Are you sure you want to hear it?” she asked. I nodded my head enthusiastically, thinking it couldn’t be that bad.

She sighed, looked out the window, and closed the curtains. She walked over to the closet door and closed it. I was practically jumping on the bed with excitement, not knowing the horror in the story she was about to tell me.

All I remember about the story was that there was a little girl who was killed by her drunk father, and she looms in certain people’s houses, wanting revenge. Being the young age of nine, I refused to sleep alone that night, and whenever I looked back on it, I just laughed. It was just a story, I had thought.

Until now.

A few weeks after my thirteenth birthday, my family and I had moved into a beautiful Victorian style home in a quiet area. It was a three story home, with an attic and a cellar. I had chosen the tower room, in the far front corner of the house, which had access to the attic.

It was a rainy Thursday summer afternoon, and I was bored silly. I had already explored the house eleven times, and there was nothing else to do. Out of curiosity, I asked my mother if I could go into the attic. We don’t use it for storage, so I figured I couldn’t break anything.

My mother looked up at me from her laptop, a serious expression on her face.

“Never, under an circumstances, are you allowed up there.”

I walked away, confused, and it was until a few days later I understood why.

My parents were out of town at a relative’s, so I invited a few girlfriends over for a sleepover. I showed them the house, all the while they oooed and awed over the design. When we finished the tour in my room, we put our PJs on and popped in a horror movie.

When the movie had finished and we didn’t know what to do, my friend suggested we explore the attic.

Even though my mother had forbidden me to go up there, I didn’t want to seem like a chicken, so I pulled down the door and ladder, and we made our way up.

The attic was mostly empty, except for a chest in the middle of it. “The last people must have forgotten it here when they moved,” I suggested. We opened it up and looked at the contents.

I nearly fainted. Inside, were newspaper articles, all explaining the murder of a young girl, who was killed by her drunk father.

  Share your story with ParaSci