My name is Jem and this is the story on how being a horror movie buff at a young age saved my life.
To start off, I should tell you that I lived in a very old, broke town in North Carolina from age 10 to 16. I lived on the same street as a graveyard full of confederate soldiers, and it was just generally not the safest town you could imagine. I believe the town is very haunted, because this isn’t my only story. This is just one of the ones I happen to have experienced with other witnesses to the event.
Our town was surrounded by deep woods, and I played there all the time. During the day. Only. During the day. At night it was terrifying, and I always felt like I was being watched, so I avoided them after the sun went down.
One day during the summer when I was around 13, all 4 of my brothers went to have a boys night at their friend’s house while I had all my girlfriends stay at my house. It was a blast, we watched movies, ate junk food, danced around the house to music, all the fun sleepover stuff you’d expect out of teenage girls.
The area we lived in didn’t have light pollution so we could see the stars. That night was a clear night so we went out onto the lawn to star gaze. So my 5 friends and I all laid out in the grass and were there for probably about an hour until we noticed that there was noise coming from the graveyard. We all shut up so that we could listen to whatever it was. (There had previously been sacrifices at the graveyard, but that’s a whole different story. We just wanted to make sure we weren’t about to be murdered by a bunch of asshole kids trying to summon a demon. Again.). After listening for a moment and not hearing anything, we laughed it off. That is, until we heard someone call out and then we went silent again.
Someone was screaming from inside the graveyard. Someone was screaming for me. Someone who sounded exactly like my oldest brother.
I should explain that my brother was overprotective of me, and always had been. Any time there was danger he would tell me to run as fast as I could until I got home. He also always made a point to tell me that if something bad were to happen to him, that I should just run and not look back. So, hearing my brother scream my name was extremely off putting and out of character. Still, I could hear him screaming. “JEM! HELP! COME HELP ME!”
My friends and I all jumped up off of the ground together, but they started down the street. I, however, am now, and always have been, a horror movie fanatic. I told them to stop because something was very much not right. I pulled out my flip phone and called my brother’s cell.
“Hello?” he answered, sounded annoyed as any older brother would to have his kid sister calling him while he was over at his friend’s place.
“Jack, why are you screaming my name from the graveyard? You know we aren’t supposed to go there after dark.” I said angrily, because first of all, he was breaking the rules, and second of all, this prank was not funny. Not at all.
Then I paused as I heard the sound of pokemon being played on the Nintendo 64 in the background. “Jem, I’m not in the graveyard… I’m at Corey’s house.”
I looked back up and down the road at the graveyard. There was a figure under the light, and it screamed my name again. This time, though, along with my brother’s voice, was some sort of distorted sound underneath.
“Jem, get in the house right now,” I heard my brother say suddenly. There was an edge of panic in his voice. “Go inside, and lock the doors. That’s not me.”
I yelled at my friends to get inside immediately. We ran inside and locked the doors, as well as going around to make sure the windows were locked too. We all huddled in the living room after closing the blinds. Two of my friends were crying and wanted to go home but my mom wasn’t back home from work yet. There was no way any of us were going back outside.
We could hear something outside, so I took everyone upstairs and told them all to stay there and to ignore anything else they heard.
I had a baseball bat. Not that I could have done anything at 4’2”, weighing 70lbs, but I was ready to at least try in the case that something actually happened.
Eventually we fell asleep and by morning the thing was gone. But to my absolute horror, there were tracks outside the house that looked like something had been dragging its foot behind it as it walked. I encountered the mimic a few more times before I moved away, but I always ignored it because, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Thank god I watched horror movies and knew better than to make the classic mistake of investigating the weird noises in the graveyard.
But last night.. I heard my brother call my name outside my window. He’s thousands of miles away from me.