The Face in the Photograph

March 23, 2026

by Will

1 min read

Story Premise 1 min read (194 words)

"My cousin and I were testing the camera on my new computer. I wanted a good picture for my profile, so I posed while she clicked the button over and over. We must have taken forty pictures in just a few minutes. After we finished, we looked through the photos to pick the best one. […]"

My cousin and I were testing the camera on my new computer. I wanted a good picture for my profile, so I posed while she clicked the button over and over. We must have taken forty pictures in just a few minutes.

After we finished, we looked through the photos to pick the best one. We were laughing at some of the silly faces I had made. Suddenly, my cousin grabbed my wrist. “Wait,” she said, her voice quiet. “Go back to the last one.”

I clicked back to the previous image. My smile was frozen on the screen. But behind me, in the corner of the room we thought was empty, was a pale shape. It looked like a person, but blurred and faint. You could make out the dark spots for eyes and a silent, open mouth.

We both stared, not speaking. I was sure we were alone. The background was just my plain closet door and a stack of books. Nothing was there when we took the picture. I took a dozen more photos right after, but the shape never appeared again. The ordinary room stayed ordinary in every other shot.

Related Horror Movies to Watch

The Mortuary Collection

2019

Love & Horror (Super Cut Edit)

2024

The Love Witch

2016

Zombie A-Hole

2012

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

The Clockwork Map

I was nine when I learned that some truths are too heavy for the living. My family had just moved to the old Beaumont house, a crooked Victorian at the edge of a town that didn’t appear on most maps. The previous owner, a reclusive cartographer, had died under odd circumstances, and the house came […]

The Last Roadside Altar

The pine trees along Route 9 had begun to blur into a single dark wall when Marcus first saw the figure. It was just past the mile marker with the faded blue sign, the one that promised a diner and gas station that had been boarded up for years. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and […]

The Weeping Ash

In the salt-bitten town of Port Orford, Oregon, where the Pacific gnawed at cliffs and the rains fell like gray curtains, I grew up in a house that sagged on a hillside, its eaves dripping with moss and its windows like old, tired eyes. The house was called the Ashford House, a two-story structure of […]

The Static Guest

The summer of 2014 found me in a rented bungalow on the outskirts of a dried-up lake town in Nevada, where the heat shimmered off the cracked asphalt like a mirage. I was housesitting for a friend who’d gone to Europe, and the place was filled with the sort of clutter that made you feel […]

The Rusted Gate

I was nine when we moved into the house behind the rusted gate. It wasn’t a gate that closed anything in, just a broken chain-link fence that leaned toward the house like a tired drunk. Mama said it was cheap, and that’s all that mattered. She had a new man again, Dale, with a grin […]

The Static-Faced Woman

We were in my friend Mira’s basement, huddled in a fort of old quilts and couch cushions. The summer heat above us was a weight, but down here it was just a thick, damp breath. Mira’s little sister, Lena, was trying to scare us with a story about a girl who drowned in the crick […]

The Knocking

This was my first real experience with the paranormal, although as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with it, and read every book on the subject that I could find. When I was younger, I used to spend every summer with my Grandparents (or Nanna and Pappa as my family referred to […]

The Morning Line

The morning sun spilled over the ridge line like honey, catching the dew on the wild grass and turning the entire meadow into a field of scattered diamonds. I had come to the old farmhouse to clear out my aunt’s things after she passed, but the moment I stepped out onto the back porch, I […]

The Scent of Wood and Smoke

It has been six weeks since I published my last notes on the presence. The dreams have stopped, and the whispers have faded into silence. I no longer wake with the taste of copper in my mouth or the feeling of being watched from the darkest corner of my apartment. But the movement persists. A […]

The Porch Light

The umber dusk of August 3rd settled over the pine woods of southern Alabama like a wet blanket. I sat on the porch swing of the house my wife and I had built from scratch, a year of our sweat and savings baked into every beam. The air was thick, cicadas sawing their endless tune, […]

The Long Drive to Nowhere

It was late July, and the heat had settled over the desert like a blanket that wouldn’t lift. Our family was driving to my aunt’s place, a small house on the outskirts of a town called Dry Springs, about two hours from the city. The road was long and empty, just a strip of blacktop […]

The Cold Corner of the Cellar

I was nine that winter, not ten, but the years have blurred the exact number. We lived in a house that had once been a funeral parlor, and my bedroom was in the old preparation room, deep in the cellar. The walls were thick stone, and the floor was cracked concrete, but my mother had […]