read my baby steps horror story that is a bit spooky but not too personal to write. itās called the midnight call.
My dumbest friends--Dave, Anika, Hari, those guys--are minorly obsessed with urban legends. Or should I say fads. They made me do the cinnamon challenge with them in Hariās back yard (since his parents donāt give a shit about anything). It sucked, it was a stupid terrible idea, but we did it together and after we finished drinking gallons of shitty lemonade it was pretty funny. This was differentā¦ they didnāt end up doing it together with me, but Iām not really sure why.
Okay, so, out of all the stupid YouTube challenges and stuff like that weāve done, the newest one was the midnight call. We saw a guy do it on his channel and it was the fun kind of spooky, you know? Incredibly easy to fake, of course. But theyāre pretty gullible, and even though I told them it was fake they said it would still be fun. And what can I say, peer pressure works.
The story is that if exactly at midnight you call your own number you can talk to yourself. Nobody agrees on whether itās your future self or your past self or an alternate dimension self or whatever, but obviously they have the same phone number as you. I still donāt honestly know if thatās true, but I sure talked to something that sounded like me. But look, the audio quality wasnāt great, and if you psych yourself out itās easy to read into stuff. I wasnāt trying to psych myself out but my dumbass friends kind of got to me, I guess, because the second I heard it I knew. Anyway, we got Hariās parents to let us sleep over at his place as long as we werenāt too loud and didnāt wake up his grandma (which we werenāt worried about cause she sleeps like a log). So at 11:58 my alarm went off and we stopped laughing at Daveās stupid joke and all entered our own numbers. There was this excited tension as Anika was opening up time.gov on her laptop so we could get the timing exactly right. And then at 00:00ā¦ we all pressed call.
I donāt know why it only worked for me. Maybe I was a tiny bit early or a tiny bit late. But their phones just kept ringing, and mine picked up on the fourth ring.
āHello?ā said the voice on the other end. Yeah, that was the moment when I was sure it was me. All it took was one word in my sleepy-annoyed voice when I was staying up late gaming. And then I thought to myself, that doesnāt make any sense. Iām right here, so who am I talking to? Who answered the phone Iām holding in my hand?
When I didnāt say anything the voice on the other end said, āIf this is some kind of prank Iām hanging up.ā
āWhatās your name?ā I asked. This was the point when everyone else realized itād actually worked for me. Anika whispered, āPut it on speakerphone!ā
Thatās why everyone heard when the voice on the other end of the line said, āUhhhm, Maddie? Look, what do you want?ā
Dave had to practically stuff his fist in his mouth to stop laughing like an idiot. I think I flipped him off. Someone asked if the person was Maddie Lewis and they said yeah, WHO IS THIS?
āThis is Maddie Lewis,ā I said. I donāt remember the conversation exactly but everyone started yelling questions and asking if the other maddie was a ghost. Eventually the other Maddie said, āYouāre all freaks, donāt call me again.ā And hung up.
After that we spent some time trying to figure out what the hell just happened, but really how could we? I still donāt know, except Iām confident it wasnāt time travel, because I didnāt say that. Youāll see later.
So Anika uploaded the video to YouTube (I think it has like 3000 views now, which isnāt bad) and we messed around for a while before getting to sleep around 3AM. Me and Anika were sleeping next to each other and I think we were the last two awake, because she started talking to me about what I really thought it was. And why it was just me. I didnāt know! But when it was just the two of us I could admit it really freaked me out. The voice sounded JUST like me--when Iām talking out loud I go āuhhhhmā a lot in this weird way no-one else does and everyone gives me shit for it--and I just didnāt know how it was possible. I made Anika promise not to tell anyone I was scared. She laughed like a total bozo but she pinky promised me not to tell.
That was the last time I felt completely safe, because I started getting these weird phone calls. Not at midnight but around midnight, usually a little bit after. And it wasnāt every day at first. I was playing Fortnite the Saturday night after the whole sleepover thing when my phone rang. I didnāt really check the number cause I was distracted wondering if I was about to get attacked and I needed to keep an eye on the screen. So I just muted myself in voice chat and answered āYeah?ā
āWho is this?ā said the voice on the other end. She sounded scared.
āShit!ā she said, and hung up. It was only when I checked the number in my calls history that I realized the number that called was mine. I unmuted myself and told Dave and Anika in voice chat what just happened. They thought it was cool and I couldnāt tell them it kind of freaked me out, so we just went on playing until my mom yelled at me to be quiet and I had to go pretend to sleep.
The next call was Wednesday night. I was actually doing homework because fuck history papers. This time when my phone rang I checked, and yeah it was my number. I think that was the time I didnāt answer it at all. I kind of wanted to see if sheād leave a message. She didnāt, though. But every couple days after that Iād get a call. Depending on how much energy I had Iād usually answer it. But it was some creepy shit. One time the other Maddie told me something like āI donāt know why this is happening, but STOP CALLING ME. Itās so creepy!ā One time she said, āI just want you to answer a couple questions. Please donāt hang up, PLEASE donāt hang up, this is really important.ā But all the questions were weird bullshit about animals Iāve never heard of and the whole thing was like a shitty bio exam. The thing is, it was hard to hang out because she sounded so scared. She was halfway through asking me a question about a long-necked bukbuk or something and she just started crying, just sobbing and I couldnāt understand anything she said. One time she tried to just have a totally normal conversation with me like we were friends who happened to have the same name and she wanted to catch up. It was so random I really donāt think it could possibly be the same person every time unless they were working from a script written specifically to be as weird as possible.
I started to get them more often, like every other night. This was maybe two weeks in, and it was really affecting my sleep cause Iād lie awake after the call trying to figure it out and feeling my skin crawl like the other Maddie was going to actually find me. My grades got worse cause I wasnāt sleeping and my mom banned me from Fortnite but that meant that after I finished my homework (or got too frustrated to keep going) the only thing I had to do was stare at my phone waiting for it to ring. I started rejecting more calls but theyād call back until I picked up and listened to them. I straight up turned my phone off--no good! It would ring anyway! I tried leaving it downstairs but from 11:30 until 1AM I would lie in my bed anyway imagining I could hear my ringtone until it really did start. I hate that ringtone now. 90% of the calls Iāve gotten in the last month were from the other Maddie so even when itās my mom or Anika my heart starts pounding and I get so afraid.
Recently the calls have been even creepier. Sometimes itās just sobbing. Sometimesā¦ really bad threats that give me nightmares. On Tuesday she read out the essay I was writing, which I thought was the scariest thing she could possibly do until the very next day--I had to keep looking over my shoulder to make sure she wasnāt in the room, and I even flailed around to see if she was there but invisible. On Wednesday I begged my mom to let me stay over at Anikaāsā¦ and the other Maddie called Anika instead. I canāt do that any more. Even if she believes me now about how creepy it is.
But yesterdayā¦ it wouldnāt have been that bad, really. It was just like a normal prank call, and I thought maybe I wouldnāt get nightmares from this one. Until she asked me my name and I heard Anikaās voice saying āPut it on speakerphone!ā
āNo,ā I said. āNo, no no no, weāre not doing this.ā I wanted to hang up, I seriously did, but I couldnāt move. It felt like how people describe sleep paralysis, only I was sitting up so it wasnāt like there could be a goblin sitting on my chest.
āAre you Maddie Lewis?ā said Hariās voice. I could hear the way he always suppresses his excitement like heās right on the edge of laughing but he never quite does.
āNo. Iām Gracie Sinclair.ā
āThen why are you on Maddieās phone! Donāt lie!ā
And they started asking me questions. It was probably the same questions they asked that night a month ago. I donāt know. They were just normal questions like was I a ghost, was I from the future. I snapped and screamed at them, āYEAH IāM FROM THE FUTURE. STOP CALLING ME.ā
The other Maddieās voice got really quiet, like she didnāt want everyone else to hear. āYou really want me to stop calling? Iāve never called you before.ā
I called bullshit, and then the call went--like the crazy audio distortion in those weird techno-metal or whatever songs my cousin Allen likes. It hurt my ears but I still couldnāt really move to hang up. Then: click. And my phone immediately started ringing again.
I didnāt even answer it, I swear I didnāt answer it. I couldnāt have moved to swipe the accept call button if I wanted to. But the other Maddie was right there anyway. āTomorrow night will be the last call,ā she said. It sounded like she was trying to apologize or reassure me. āI promise itāll be the last one. Uhhhm, Iāll talk to you then, okay?ā
Listen. I donāt know what she means by the last call. But thereās no way itās anything good. Iām sick of being scared all the time. I guess one way or another itās going to end.
