The Blue-Hooded Visitor

My name is Laura, and I’ve had a few encounters with the other side that I can’t explain away. The first time happened in the autumn of 2018, when my best friend, Jake, and I were messing around with a Ouija board in his basement. We were just bored teenagers looking for a thrill. The planchette spelled out ‘GRACE’, and then moved to ‘CEMETERY’. We laughed it off, but then the board said ‘GO’. We felt a sudden chill, and the lights flickered. Jake’s mom called down that dinner was ready, but we ignored her. We decided to take the board seriously and drove to the old St. Michael’s cemetery on the edge of town. It was moonless, and the only light came from our car headlights. As we walked among the tombstones, I felt a presence, and then I saw her: a little girl in a white dress with a blue hood, sitting on the steps of the old chapel. She was crying, her shoulders shaking. I grabbed Jake’s arm and whispered, ‘Look, there’s a little girl crying on the church steps.’ Jake squinted and said, ‘I don’t see anything.’ I pointed, but when I looked back, she was gone. That night, Jake called me, his voice shaking. He said he saw the same girl in his kitchen, just standing there, still crying. He believed me after that.

The second time I crossed paths with a ghost was in 2021. I had moved in with my boyfriend, Mark, and his mother, Carol, in their old farmhouse outside of a small town called Blackwood. From the first night, I felt uneasy, like someone was watching me from the corner of my eye. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with a heavy weight on my chest. I told Carol, ‘I think there’s a ghost here.’ She asked, ‘Is it the cat ghosts? We’ve had those before.’ I shook my head. ‘No, this is a man.’ Carol’s face went pale. ‘A man? What does he look like?’ I described him: tall, wearing an old work coat, and a face that seemed half melted. After that conversation, things turned eerie. Objects moved on their own. Doors slammed. Once, I saw a shadowy figure standing at the end of the hallway, and it pointed at me. Around the same time, Jake, who was still my best friend, lost two friends in a tragic car accident. He was devastated. Carol, being a bit of a spiritual type, decided to hold a small séance to help him connect with them. She invited a medium she knew, Mrs. Whitfield. During the séance, the candle flames flickered wildly, and the table rattled. Mrs. Whitfield suddenly gasped, ‘There’s a man here. He’s not from the other side. He’s trapped in this house. He’s angry.’ Then she looked at me and said, ‘He wants you to leave. He says you’re in his chair.’ That night, I dreamt of the man from my description. He was standing over me, whispering, ‘Get out.’ I woke up screaming. Mark and Carol rushed in. I told them about the dream, and Carol admitted, ‘The house was built on land where a man was murdered in the 1800s. His name was Elias. He was a recluse. No one knows the full story.’

Over the next few days, the haunting intensified. I felt cold spots, heard footsteps, and once, I saw a hand print on the mirror in the bathroom. Jake came to stay for a while, trying to escape his grief. One evening, he confessed, ‘I saw the girl again. Not in my kitchen, but here, in this house. She was standing by the window, pointing at the woods.’ I shivered. That night, we decided to investigate the woods. We found an old well, covered in vines. When we peeked inside, we saw bones at the bottom. The police were called, and they discovered the remains of a young woman, missing since the 1950s. During the investigation, we learned from an old diary found in the attic that Elias had killed his wife and daughter, and hidden them in the well. He had then taken his own life. The girl in the blue hood was his daughter. The man I had seen was Elias, but he wasn’t just a ghost; he was a malevolent spirit, bound to the land. The séance had stirred him, and now he was determined to drive us away. The last night we spent there, I woke up to see Elias standing at the foot of my bed. He pointed at me and said, ‘You opened the door. Now you must pay.’ He lunged, and I screamed. The lights exploded, and Mark ran in. He saw me trembling. ‘He’s here,’ I cried. The room went ice cold, and a low growl emanated from the corner. We grabbed our things and fled to a motel. The next day, we called a priest to bless the house. He performed an exorcism, and the priest told us that Elias was a vengeful spirit, but the girl, Grace, was a lost soul, still crying for her mother. He managed to guide her to the light, but Elias fought back. The house was deemed unsellable, and we moved away. To this day, I still see the blue-hooded girl from time to time, but now she’s not crying. She just smiles and points to a path, as if guiding me. I think she’s trying to show me the way out of my own darkness, just as she found hers.