It seemed like the whole house shook as we heard the large crash. It came in the middle of the night and startled us awake. My sister and I lay still in our beds. With our eyes locked on one another’s, we held our breaths to hear whatever we could. First came the footsteps, loud and fast. They trampled down the hallway past our bedroom door. Then, came the crying. My heart began to race as I sucked in another breath.
It was our sister, Jenn!
Kate and I sat straight up in our beds still staring at one another. We heard the muffled voices of our mom and dad. They were comforting her. She would be okay. But, the ideas of what could have disturbed the quiet night swirled around the room. I knew Kate was thinking the same things as me, but neither one of us could muster a word. We were frozen in fear trying to make sense of the sounds we had heard.
Soon our bedroom door creaked open and our dad stood strong in the doorway. “It’s okay, girls. Something fell over in the bathroom. Your mother is getting it all cleaned up,” he said. We both let go of the breaths we had been keeping. He quickly came around and tucked us into our beds and told us that we’d be having pancakes for breakfast the next morning. Almost every weekend, when we were little, our dad would make us big, fluffy, pancakes. He must have known with that happy thought, we’d be able to fall right back to sleep.
…
The next morning at the breakfast table, I had almost forgotten about the loud crashing noise from the night before. It wasn’t until I saw my older sister, Jenn, sitting quietly at the table. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all and I could tell she was sad about something.
“What happened last night?” I asked while looking across the table at my younger sister, Kate. We eagerly sat waiting for a reply.
“Nothing to worry about,” our mom chimed in as she filled our plates with towers of pancakes. “Your sister accidentally knocked over the mirror in the bathroom when she got up to use the potty last night.” I looked at Kate. Our eyes widened.
“Isn’t that bad luck?” I asked.
My sister, Jenn, shot me a nasty look.
“Now that’s enough. It was just an accident. There is no bad luck,” our dad said as he wiped down the kitchen counters. I looked at Kate and I could see the smile in her eyes.
Truth was, this mirror had ALWAYS given us the creeps. It was a large, full length, mirror that had leaned against the far wall of the bathroom upstairs. It had been there ever since we could remember. The mirror was old and had stood without a frame. It had a small floral design etched along the top with three letters laced throughout the art work, H. E. R.
We had asked my mom what the letters had stood for, a while back, but she said she wasn’t sure. She had found the mirror in the back of the attic when they first moved in and she just cleaned it up and put it in the upstairs bath.
Over the years, H.E.R. became “HER,” the name Kate and I would use to describe the “girl” we would see. At different times we both thought we had seen HER standing behind us when we looked into the creepy mirror. For that reason, I knew Kate was happy that it was the crashing of the mirror we had heard last night. Maybe now, we’d be able to use the upstairs bathroom again. And although our older sister never seemed to want to hear about HER, she did us a favor by accidentally knocking it over.
It wasn’t until much later in the day, when our parents were out back doing yard work, that our older sister came to us. She looked tired and scared, like she was holding onto something she didn’t understand.
“Are you okay?” Kate asked pausing our Nintendo game. We both stared at her as she lowered herself onto the couch beside us.
“It wasn’t me. I swear!” She blurted out. She told us that she hadn’t even made it down the hall to the bathroom yet when she had heard the large crash. She was so scared, she stood frozen in the middle of the hall, until my parents ran out and scooped her up.
“They just thought it was me,” she said looking down at her hands. “I tried to tell them that I hadn’t gone into the bathroom, yet.” She looked up at us. “They didn’t believe me.”
The room was silent and Kate and I locked eyes.
“What? What is it? Was it one of you?” Jenn asked, her eyes frantic.
A chill hit the room.
Kate and I whispered in unison, “It was HER…”
…
I’ve created this page to share the spooky stories that made me— the haunted me—
Do you have a SPOOKY STORY to share? Email me at growinguphaunted@gmail.com — you know I want to hear it & maybe our readers will, too! – Abbie Richey Butler
(c) Abbie Richey Butler 2018
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the haunted me 
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