I am Emily and I study in the seventh grade. Although I am very good in studies, these days I have been distracted because of our garden. My neighbours are always talking about how beautiful our garden is, as though they don’t have any other stuff to do. Actually, they say that they hear some spooky noises coming from the barn. They consider the garden haunted.

Do people really believe in these things in this day and age? This is the reason my friends don’t come for sleepovers anymore. Everyone is scared to pass by our house. My best friend Ann is the only one who is pretty brave and still comes for sleepovers at my house.

When I heard another friend of mine saying that she had heard a really terrible and disturbing noise at midnight, I was not scared. Instead, I asked Ann to spend a night at my house. I told her about my plan to discover the mysterious happenings that everyone was talking about.

She seemed to be really curious, so we waited till midnight and when the time came, we both stood up and gathered some courage. We both had walkie-talkies and decided to go in opposite directions.

When we reached the door towards the garden, we realised it was already open. A question popped into our minds that who would go out into the garden at this time. I shivered for a couple of seconds, but tried to calm down. Ann pushed the door and we walked outside. She walked towards the left while I faced the right side. We both approached the barn and looked at it for several minutes.

At once we both heard a spine-chilling scream which seemed to be a woman’s voice. We both argued in soft voices about who would open the door. My heart was telling me to runaway, but my brain pushed me to proceed. With trembling hands, we pushed the door open.

And we could not believe what our eyes saw. There was my little sister with a bag of candy in her hands and she was enjoying herself. We both asked her what she was doing there so late and how did she get those sweets. She replied that an aunt gave her.

Ann was frightened and asked which aunt was she talking about as there was nobody in the house except us three. She slowly pointed towards a tall, black lady with bloody red eyes.

I did not remember what happened afterwards, but I lay next to Ann, after I had woken up. I was told by my mother that she saw us lying in the barn and then we were carried to the hospital two blocks away from our house. Nobody knew what happened afterwards so an idea came to my mind and we asked my sister about what she was doing at midnight and she said that she was sleeping.

We both realised that some mysteries are not supposed to be solved, ever.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 4th, 2020