The Lantern’s Gaze

My obsession with the beyond began innocently enough, through a podcast about residual hauntings. My friend Mira, always eager for a thrill, suggested we visit a place I’d never heard of: the old Bellweather Cemetery, closure for decades but still maintained by a local historical society. She said she knew someone there, a groundskeeper she’d befriended during her late-night walks. I was skeptical, but the idea of capturing something on camera was irresistible.

We arrived just as dusk was swallowing the horizon. The cemetery was a sprawl of crooked headstones, some leaning like tired old men, others swallowed by ivy. Mira led me past the modern section to a cluster of graves from the 1800s. ‘Marcus is here,’ she said, pointing to a weathered stone. ‘He was a railroad engineer. Died in a crash in 1887. He’s friendly.’ She knelt, speaking softly to the stone as if catching up with an old friend. Then she asked, ‘Can we take some photos?’ The air stilled. A chill traced my spine despite the summer heat.

We started shooting. The camera flashed, illuminating the chipped angels and faded dates. As we moved deeper, Mira paused by a small, unmarked grave, its surface overgrown with moss. ‘This one’s a baby,’ she said, her voice dropping. ‘Drowned in the creek over there, back in ’83. The mother did it. They found his little bottle tangled in the reeds.’ She looked at me, her eyes wide. ‘Do you think he’d want his picture taken?’ Before I could answer, she turned to the grave. ‘We’re sorry if we catch anyone who doesn’t want to be photographed.’ I echoed the apology, feeling foolish yet uneasy.

The next afternoon, curiosity gnawed at us. We returned, this time in the stark light of day. The cemetery looked less menacing, more like a forgotten park. We took a wide shot of the whole place, then a close-up of the baby’s grave. That’s when we noticed it in the crop: a pale, indistinct face, not human, but something wrong. The features were too round, the eyes too dark. It seemed to be staring back at us from the shadows of the old oak tree, even though nothing was there when we snapped the photo.

We didn’t speak much on the way home. I kept glancing at the image on my camera, the face seeming to shift just out of focus. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I felt a presence, a weight on the end of my bed. I turned on the lamp and saw the lantern from my car’s trunk standing on my nightstand, though I’d left it in the garage. Its glass was warm, as if recently lit. I reached for it, and the face from the photo flickered in the glass, its mouth opening in a silent cry.

I tried to call Mira, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I drove to her apartment, but she wasn’t there. A note on her door, in handwriting that wasn’t hers, read: ‘He wanted his picture taken. Now he knows where you live.’ I never saw Mira again. But sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I catch a small, dripping figure holding a bottle, and the lantern on my nightstand glows with a dim, hungry light.