I’m first going to start off by saying I never believed in the paranormal or ghosts. I’m not really atheist or whatever, but I’m not religious either. My sister on the other hand is very into the paranormal stuff. You could say she’s a big believer in ghosts. I was a total skeptic. However, what happened on the night I’m about to tell you forever changed my beliefs.
To begin, I need to tell you I was desperate for cash. Like every teenager who’s about to turn 16, I was stashing away every dollar I could to save up for a halfway decent car. My family isn’t exactly what you call wealthy. My parents worked really hard to provide for me and my sister. They both worked for our newly elected mayor Brayden Palmer who won by a landslide. However, my father isn’t too hyped on him. He says the man isn’t all that trustworthy and may have bought himself into the office. Apparently, he inherited lots of money or something.
Anyway, at that point in time, I decided to put an ad on Craigslist to babysit for a fee. That was my first mistake. I only put my email down because I hate talking on the phone to strangers and I really didn’t even feel comfortable giving my phone out to people I didn’t know. Especially on Craigslist.
Now after a few days, I just so happened to be reading through a bit of history about our town, I’m a total history nerd, same with my sister. That’s something we had in common. The article was about the disappearance of a prominent family. I ended up sending her the article. Anyway, as I read I got the notification that I received an email. It was from a couple who lived out in the fringes of town. They were offering to pay me a lot of money to watch their baby boy. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
My sister drove me out to their house and dropped me off the night they needed me. The driveway was long and wove through the woods. With the overgrowth of trees, it made it almost feel like we drove through a tunnel. As we reached the house, it was beautiful. It had one of those wrap-around front porches with white siding. It was two stories. I walked up to the front door while my sister waited in the driveway. I knocked on the door and after a few minutes, I was greeted by a beautiful middle-aged woman. She had steel blue eyes and long wavy hair. She welcomed me in with a great big smile and introduced herself along with her husband as Health and Viviana Palmer. The names sounded vaguely familiar. Her husband was a man about the same age with dark black hair and a salesmen-like perfect smile.
I heard my sister drive off as they showed me to the baby’s room. The baby was fast asleep in his bed with a teddy bear in his arms. Mrs. Palmer gave me the rundown on the baby. It was the typical stuff, to check up on him every so often but for the most part, he should sleep through the night.
Anyway, after a few last-minute notes, they got ready and took off. One thing that I found odd was I never heard them drive away. I brushed it off and went downstairs to watch a little TV. I have to admit this house is very clean and immaculate. They had a fireplace with the mantle decorated in little figurines. One, in particular, caught my eye, it was an owl. There wasn’t a speck of dust or a scratch on any surface. As I grabbed the remote and hit the power button, the tv wouldn’t turn on. After pressing it several times, I got up and tried turning it on through the button on the TV itself. It still wouldn’t turn on. Figures. I even checked to see if it was plugged in, which it was.
I resigned to sit down and listen to an audiobook. Something really bugged me. I couldn’t stop thinking about where I heard their names before. I knew they sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
As I pondered their names, I heard a loud crash in the kitchen which nearly caused me to piss myself. I quickly got up to look at what the cause was and my heart sank into my stomach. Sitting on the floor with a bunch of knives was the baby. It was holding a really sharp knife and was about to cut himself when I bolted to him with only seconds to spare. The baby threw a hissy fit when I took the knife away from him. I tried to calm it but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to stop crying. I took him back up to his bedroom and placed him in his bed, hoping he would cry himself to sleep. I went back downstairs and cleaned up the knives in the kitchen. Just the thought of what could’ve happened if I was a second too slow left me in chills.
The baby cried for over an hour. When it finally stopped I felt a small sense of relief. However, I decided to check up on it to make sure everything was okay. I’ll admit, the baby was kind of ugly. It was very wrinkly and looked almost sickly. As I crept into his room, I froze in my tracks. The baby was gone. All that was in his bed was a teddy bear. I felt my heartbeat quickening.
This couldn’t be happening. If something happened to that baby, I would never forgive myself. I searched everywhere for that baby. As I searched, I started to notice something very odd. The house that was very immaculate when I arrived started to seem rather dirty. What was very odd was that dents and scratches started to appear on the walls and furniture where they previously weren’t. Things became very dusty.
My phone vibrated. My sister sent me a text, asking me what the names of the people who hired me were. I sent her a text telling her their names. I didn’t really understand why she was so interested. I continued my search as I started to panic. I tore through the entire house which was starting to look even more shabby the more I searched. I heard a sudden creek downstairs. I rushed down there and found the door to the basement was open. That was the last place I wanted to go to.
I reluctantly made my way down to my own dismay. Of course, the lights wouldn’t work. I pulled out my phone and turned the flashlight on. The basement was covered in cobwebs and dust. I received another text from my sister that made my skin crawl. She said I needed to get out of that house right now and she was on her way to come to get me. I asked her why. She sent me back the article I sent her a few days ago about the prominent family that went missing. Their names were Heath and Viviana Palmer and they had a baby named Dustin. They disappeared nearly 2 years ago for no apparent reason. They just vanished. I looked at the picture of the family and immediately recognized them as the same family that hired me. This couldn’t be real.
I could hear my heart thumping wildly in my chest as I read this. I nearly tripped over something. I looked down on the floor and saw two decayed, rotting corpses. I screamed as loud as I could. I recognized them immediately Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. And that’s when I finally found the baby…
He was dead on the floor next to them, just a rotting corpse. I could feel myself getting sick as I raced back up the stairs. Before I could get there, the door slammed shut, leaving me in the dark. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I started crying uncontrollably.
“Don’t leave!” I heard the voice of Mr. Palmer as a light to the basement flickered on. I thought to myself, this is how I’m going to die… By ghosts, I don’t even believe in.
“Please, we need your help,” Mrs. Palmer said.
I stumbled down the stairs, my feet felt like they were moving of their own accord. Standing there in the middle of the Basement were Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. Viviana Palmer was holding her baby. I looked on the floor to see their dead bodies lying behind them.
“You’re not going to kill me are you?” I asked.
“No, we need your help,” she says.
“We were murdered,” Mr. Palmer said. I can’t believe I’m having a conversation with dead people.
“Please, just let me go, I’ll do whatever you want,” I pleaded with them.
“Help us. Please help us,” the woman said. She pleaded with me.
“I don’t know how,” I said, as tears fell from my eyes.
“You can help us. Please. Find the bear and the owl. They have the truth,” Mr. Palmer pleaded. Then the light flickered off again and the door to the basement opened. Their ghosts were gone. I ran upstairs to find the house in shambles. Everything seemed to be broken. The wood was rotting. Dust and cobwebs covered everything.
I saw headlights outside and my sister texted me she was here. I was about to run out and leave this place forever, but I couldn’t get the look of their faces out of my head. They were so sad. What did they mean by look for the bear and the owl? I looked around and nearly screamed at the sight of dried blood on the dirty carpet. That’s when it clicked. The owl. I looked over to the mantle and found the owl figurine. Surely this is what he meant. I rushed over to grab it and sure enough, it was a hidden camera. I popped out the SD card in the back. Now the bear. I knew exactly what he meant. Where else would you put a hidden camera if not for the baby’s room? I rushed upstairs to find the teddy bear and sure enough, it too was a camera. I took it with me as I ran out of the house and got into my sister’s car.
“I was so fucking worried you were dead when I pulled up to find this beaten-down house in shambles. It was in mint condition when I dropped you off. What the hell is going on?” she asked.
“Do you have something that can read an SD card at home?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Why? And what’s with the dusty teddy bear? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Just drive! I’ll explain it on the way home,” I said.
I told her all about the Palmers and every little weird thing that happened to me in that house as we drove back home. Once we arrived home, we rushed into my sister’s room and I handed her the SD card that was in the owl. She put it in her computer and it was filled with videos. We pulled up the first one and it was of Mr. Palmer.
“I’ve decided to put this hidden camera in here because I do not trust our babysitter. I think she’s stealing from us but my wife thinks she’s an angel,” he said to the camera. “This will prove everything. I also need to figure out how Dustin is getting out. No matter what we do, he manages to somehow escape his crib.”
We watched through the videos and sure enough, their babysitter was stealing from them, but I don’t think that’s what we were meant to find. We continued watching. Then we saw it. Both of our jaws dropped. I felt my stomach get tied up in knots. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer was with another man. I recognized him.
“That’s… That’s dad’s boss. The Mayor. Brayden Palmer,” my sister said as he pulled out a gun and shot them. He killed them in cold blood.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Aren’t they brothers?” she asked. I shrugged. “I know they are. Didn’t you read that article you sent me? It said that Heath and Brayden were supposed to inherit a lot of money, but when Heath disappeared it all went to his brother Brayden. He killed them to get the entire fortune.”
“It all makes sense now,” I said. We watched Brayden drag their bodies out of the living room and most likely downstairs where I found them.
Then we plugged in the other SD card and what we saw was downright sickening. He killed their baby. He suffocated him. That’s truly terrible. I couldn’t hold it. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet.
My sister and I showed my parents everything. I couldn’t exactly explain to them how I got the SD cards. No one would believe me if I told them I was hired by ghosts to watch their dead baby, so we told them a lie about finding the old house and exploring it. They bought it because that’s totally something my sister would do. They took the SD cards to the police the next day Mayor Palmer was arrested and it was all over the news that Brayden Palmer had been charged with the murder of Heath, Viviana, and Dustin Palmer.
I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Eliza and I drove back out to that house a few weeks later and we both saw them. They were standing on the porch. Viviana was holding baby Dustin with Heath by their side. They were smiling as they watched their baby boy. They looked up at us and waved. Then they were gone. I’d like to think they found some semblance of peace together.
I still have a hard time bringing myself to believe what had actually happened, but I will never forget it. Ghosts do exist.
The End.
Remember, you’re never safe in the dark…
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