Submitted by: Anonymous teenage girl
Age at the time: 16
I have never told this story publicly because my parents still refuse to discuss that night.
I was sixteen when my older brother, Simon, disappeared.
He was nineteen and had gone out with two friends to drive around the countryside after a party. Their car slid into a ditch near a forest road. His friends stayed with the vehicle, but Simon decided to walk toward a nearby village to find help.
He never reached it.
By the time the police began searching, snow was falling heavily.
My parents joined the volunteers, but they made me stay home with our grandmother. She fell asleep on the sofa around midnight.
At 1:17 a.m., someone knocked on the back door.
Three slow knocks.
Then I heard Simon say my name.
I ran into the kitchen.
Through the frosted glass, I could see the outline of a person standing outside.
“Let me in,” Simon said.
I reached for the lock, but something stopped me.
He always used the front door. Everyone in our family did. The back entrance opened into a small utility room and was normally blocked by boots and recycling bins.
“Simon?” I asked.
“It’s cold.”
His voice sounded right, but the way he spoke did not. Simon never sounded calm when he was upset. He talked quickly and swore constantly.
The figure knocked again.
“Let me in.”
I asked where Mum and Dad were.
He did not answer.
Instead, he said, “You have to open it yourself.”
I woke my grandmother. The moment she heard the voice, she grabbed my arm so hard that her nails cut my skin.
She did not approach the door.
She switched off the kitchen light and pulled me into the hallway.
The knocking continued.
Sometimes it came from the back door. Sometimes from the kitchen window. Once, it came from the wall beside us.
Simon’s voice kept asking to be let in.
My grandmother whispered that I must not answer again.
For nearly ten minutes, we stood in darkness while something walked around the house.
We heard footsteps crunching through the snow beneath each window.
Then the voice changed.
It began repeating things Simon had said earlier that week.
“Don’t touch my headphones.”
“Tell Mum I’ll be home later.”
“You’re so annoying.”
The sentences were perfectly spoken, but there was no emotion behind them. It sounded like recordings being played in the wrong order.
Finally, the footsteps stopped outside the living-room window.
My grandmother covered my mouth.
A hand pressed against the glass.
It was pale and bare despite the freezing weather.
The fingers were too long.
Then the electricity went out.
We remained in the hallway until the police arrived at 2:06 a.m.
They found footprints around the house. The tracks began at the back door, circled the building several times and ended beneath my bedroom window.
There were no tracks leading onto the property.
Simon was found shortly after sunrise, unconscious beside a fallen tree nearly nine kilometres away. He had a broken ankle and severe hypothermia.
At the hospital, I asked whether he had come home during the night.
He looked confused.
He had been lying in the forest since before eleven.
Years later, I finally told him what had happened.
He became very quiet.
Then he said something I wish he had kept to himself.
While he was lying under the tree, he heard our mother calling his name from deeper inside the forest.
He knew she was searching miles away, but the voice sounded so convincing that he almost crawled toward it.
What frightened him most was that after several minutes, the voice stopped sounding like our mother.
It started sounding like me.
Editorial note: This is an original fictional horror story presented in a realistic user-submission style. It is not a verified eyewitness account.