The Plugged-In Static

The old farmhouse my family rented that autumn had a peculiar smell—damp wood, dust, and something faintly electrical, like ozone after a storm. I was a night owl then, twenty years old, house-sitting while my parents traveled and my younger sister was away at college. The only living thing besides me was our deaf cat, Barnaby, who slept unbothered through any noise.

It started on a Tuesday, around one in the morning. I’d been binge-watching a sitcom on the ancient TV in the living room, its bulky frame and faint hiss a relic of the decade. I dozed off on the couch, lulled by canned laughter, and woke with a start to the screen glowing blue in the dark. The volume was louder than I’d set it. I marked it up to a dying capacitor, shut it off, and shuffled to bed.

At 3:25, the faint murmur of voices woke me. I stumbled back to the living room, and there it was: the TV on, showing static but with a smooth, humanoid shape faintly visible in the noise. I pressed the power button. Nothing. I yanked the plug from the socket. The screen went black, and I felt a chill crawl up my spine.

I told myself it was a wiring issue, but the laughter I heard as I walked away—a low, guttural chuckle that seemed to come from inside the wall—made my heart hammer. I checked the locks twice before bed. The cat was still asleep.

At 4:12, I was jolted awake by a burst of sitcom music. I flew to the living room. The TV was on, the static replaced by a show that didn’t exist. And there, on the couch, a pillow was floating at eye level. Before I could react, it launched at my face, striking my nose. A voice, distorted like a radio between stations, shouted, ‘GOTCH YAA!’

I sprinted back to my bedroom, slammed the door, and dragged a chair against it. My hands shook as I dialed the power company, but they found nothing wrong. I called my dad, who laughed and said, ‘Old house, big imagination. Unplug it and go back to sleep.’

But no matter how many times I unplugged that TV, every morning it was plugged back in, the screen warm. And my iPod, which I always left on the bedside table, vanished. I searched everywhere. Then, a week later, I found it in the crisper drawer of the fridge, covered in something sticky. At the same moment, I heard a giggle from the living room, where the TV was on again, showing a pattern of shifting colors.

I tried to leave, but the front door resisted. The lock wouldn’t turn. The back door, too. The windows—latched from the outside. I was trapped. The TV flickered, and the laughter grew into a chorus. I saw, reflected in the screen, a hunched figure behind me, but when I turned, nothing.

That’s when I noticed the hum. The entire house buzzed with electricity. The lights flickered in rhythm with the static on the TV, which now showed a single word: ‘STAY.’

I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, the locked door my last bastion. At dawn, the humming stopped. The front door swung open on its own. I grabbed my keys and drove to a motel, leaving most of my belongings behind. When I returned with a friend to retrieve the rest, everything was normal. The TV was unplugged, the pillow on the couch. But my iPod was back on the nightstand, dried grape juice staining it.

I never lived there again. That fall, the family who rented the farmhouse after us didn’t stay long. The landlord told me they complained about ‘electrical issues.’ I didn’t tell him about the laughter, or the way the TV always seemed to be on, even when it wasn’t.