The Photograph in the Attic

September 30, 2026

by Shaina

3 min read

Story Premise 3 min read (481 words)

"When I was eight, I spent a weekend at my best friend’s house, a sprawling Victorian with creaky floorboards and a musty attic that no one ever visited. I woke up at six in the morning, the summer sun already bleeding through the lace curtains. I wasn’t sure why I was awake, but as my […]"

When I was eight, I spent a weekend at my best friend’s house, a sprawling Victorian with creaky floorboards and a musty attic that no one ever visited. I woke up at six in the morning, the summer sun already bleeding through the lace curtains. I wasn’t sure why I was awake, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw something in the corner of the room. It was a girl, maybe my age, wearing a long, old-fashioned nightgown, the kind you’d see in a sepia photograph. She drifted through the wall, her feet not quite touching the floor. Slowly, eerily, she turned her head to face me, and I saw her eyes were white, like pearls, and her hair was in a single, thick braid that hung down her back. I was frozen, my heart hammering. Then, as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.

I shook my friend, Lily, awake. She rubbed her eyes and groaned. ‘What?’ she mumbled. I told her what I’d seen, my voice trembling. She just rolled over and said, ‘You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.’ I couldn’t convince her, and soon I began to doubt myself. Maybe it was a dream. But I couldn’t shake the image of that girl.

Four years later, we were at my house, looking through old photo albums with my brother’s friend, Maya. I was twelve, and Maya was thirteen. She stopped at a picture of Lily’s backyard barbeque, the one my family had attended before we moved to Chile for six months. I remember that day: the smell of burgers, the laughter, the sun. But in the background, near the fence, there was a faint, transparent figure. Maya pointed at it, her finger trembling. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

I squinted. It was a girl in a long nightgown, with a braid. My blood ran cold. ‘Oh my God,’ I whispered. I ran to the balcony where my mom was reading. ‘Mom, look at this,’ I said, thrusting the photo at her. She looked at it, and her face went pale. ‘I’ve seen her before,’ she said quietly. ‘When you were little, I saw her in your bedroom one night. I thought it was a dream.’

We never learned who she was. But later, we discovered that Lily’s house was built on the site of an old orphanage, and there were records of a girl who had died there in the 1920s, drowned in the well that was now sealed under the backyard. They said she had been trying to find her best friend, who had been adopted and taken away. Maybe she was still looking. I still have that photo, tucked away in a drawer. But I can’t look at it for too long. Sometimes, I swear I see her in the corner of my eye, waiting. Waiting to be found.

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