Submitted by: Liam, 17
Last autumn, my friends created a private group chat for our class. There were only six of us in it.
One Friday night, a seventh account joined.
The profile name was Maja B.
Her picture showed a girl with blonde hair standing beside a lake.
None of us recognised her.
We assumed someone had invited her by mistake. My friend Oliver asked who she was.
Maja replied:
I used to sit behind you.
Oliver wrote that she had the wrong class.
She answered with his home address.
We thought it was a prank.
Then she began sending details about all of us. She knew what music I was listening to, what colour shirt my friend Sara was wearing and what Oliver’s parents were arguing about downstairs.
Sara removed her from the chat.
Maja rejoined immediately.
This time, she sent a photograph.
It showed our school corridor at night. A figure stood outside our classroom with its back to the camera.
Another photograph arrived.
It was closer.
Then another.
The figure was now facing the camera, but its face was blurred.
Oliver called the police because he believed someone had broken into the school.
While he was speaking to them, Maja posted:
They will not find me there.
At 1:06 a.m. she sent me a private message.
Why didn’t you answer when I knocked?
I heard three taps against my bedroom window.
My room was on the second floor.
I pulled the curtains shut and called my father.
Before he reached my room, Maja sent another picture.
It had been taken from inside my wardrobe.
I could see myself standing beside the window.
My father searched the room. Nobody was there.
The police later examined our phones. They could not identify the account. The number connected to it had been inactive for more than a year.
The next day, our teacher saw the profile picture.
She recognised the girl.
Maja had attended our school two years earlier. She had drowned during a class trip after falling through thin ice.
The lake in the profile photograph was where she died.
Our teacher showed us an old class picture.
Maja had been sitting behind Oliver.
None of us had known her because we joined the school the following year.
The account disappeared on Sunday morning.
Before leaving the chat, Maja posted one final message:
There should have been seven of you.
On Monday, one of the desks at the back of our classroom was wet.
A puddle had formed beneath it.
Scratched into the wooden surface were the names of everyone in our group chat.
My name was last.
Beside it was tomorrow’s date.
I did not go to school the next day.
At 1:06 that morning, someone sent my father a photograph of my empty bed.
Editorial note: This is an original fictional horror story presented in a realistic user-submission style. It is not a verified eyewitness account.