Sometimes when I’m sitting in my room, I feel like the walls are alive. The painted handprints scattered across them look like constellations left by people who touched the stars before me. Above me, the striped ceiling folds like ribbons of night sky, and I wonder if the universe likes to decorate itself the way I do.
My purple camera rests warm in my hands. It doesn’t feel like just a camera—it feels like a gift. Every time I press the shutter, I think the stars slip a secret into the lens. I don’t just capture a picture. I hold something infinite.
I stack my books beside me—astrology, palm reading, astral travel, magic. They’re maps to invisible worlds, guides for the parts of me that want to wander beyond the ordinary. But the camera? It’s my telescope. My net for catching stardust.
Tonight, I looked at the sky again. The sunset burned pink and orange, then cooled into blue scattered with gold. It felt like the stars were practicing their art, brushing color across the horizon just for me. I raised my camera, clicked, and breathed.
Maybe the stars just want me to remember. That even on the days I feel small, the universe is close enough to fit in my hands.
And I believe it. Because when I look through my camera, I’m not only saving a moment. I’m holding the universe safe inside it, where it will never leave me.
How to Telepathically Talk to Your Sister (When She’s in the Other Room Eating Cereal)
aka: That Time We Tried to Beam Thoughts and Accidentally Dreamt the Same Weird Commercial From the Void
Dear DreamBook,
We were testing something important. Something psychic. Something sisterly. Something… telepathic.
The mission:
✨ Send a brain-message from me (Luna) ✨
✨ to my sister (aka cereal girl) ✨
✨ while she sat across the house, eating that pink sugar galaxy cereal with the little moons in it.
I sat crisscross on my bed like a mystic frog. Focused hard. Imagined my thoughts as glittery spirals. Pushed them out like:
“Come back. Bring your cereal. Now.”
…Nothing.
Except… a spoon clattered to the floor in the kitchen.
Coincidence?? Cosmic sign?? Unclear.
She tried next. Didn’t tell me what she was thinking. Five minutes later:
BOOM. Mental blast of a fake commercial.
“Galaxy O’s: The Breakfast for Indigo Kids.”
With a jingle that went: “Open your third eye wide with a crunchy supernova bite!”
I blinked. She walked in at the same time. We both stared. And said, in unison:
“Did you just dream that too?”
🌀 And then it got stranger…
She’d start a sentence: “Do you remember that show with the—” And I’d finish: “a cat wearing a tophat speaking French?”
She gasped. I said, “You were gonna say that.”
She said, “YOU were gonna say I was gonna say that.”
We pointed at each other like ✨wands✨ but it was just our one shared braincell.
We tested it:
She wrote a secret word in her room. I wrote what I felt in mine.
Her word: “blueberry.” Mine: “fuzzy blueberry sweater.”
Screaming. Pillows. Psychic chaos.
Later:
Her: “I feel like there’s a….” Me: “…ghost in the hallway who just wants to watch cartoons.”
Silence.
“…Yeah. That.”
We paused mid-laugh, tilted our heads the exact same way, and said:
“Wait. Who’s thinking this thought?”
We are. We were. We might still be.
🌙 The Dream Returns…
That night, we fell asleep holding the same pink quartz crystal (for science).
We had the same dream. Again.
This time the cereal mascots had names: Captain Crunchiverse and Yogurt Oracle.
They gave us sparkly spoon-shaped medals and said:
“You’ve passed Level 1 of Sister Synchrony.”
Level 2 apparently involves glittery waves, and sparkley crowns.
It’s me, Kay. Tonight’s the last night of 1976, and everything feels… unsettled, like the world is holding its breath, waiting for something. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m standing on the edge of something big, like a secret just waiting to be uncovered. Something that’s always been there, just beneath the surface, only now it’s starting to reveal itself.
I’ve always known I wasn’t exactly like the other girls in town. There’s something about me that’s different… beyond normal, I guess you’d say. I can’t explain it to anyone, not even to myself most of the time. But it’s there—this knowing, this awareness that there’s more to the world than what people see.
Mom? She’s wonderful, in her own way. Always makes the house feel so warm, so full of love. But when it comes to understanding the things I’ve been noticing—well, that’s a different story. She’s brilliant, smarter than most, but she looks at the world like it’s a puzzle with neat edges. Me? I see the pieces that don’t fit. I hear the sounds no one else hears. I see things in the corners of my vision that vanish the moment I try to focus on them.
I’ve tried to tell her, Diary. I really have. But when I do, she just tilts her head, gives me this soft smile, like I’m telling some tall tale she can’t quite believe. I trust her more than anyone. I just… I wish she would believe me. Believe that there’s something out there. Something more.
It’s not just my imagination. I know it isn’t. Tonight, after dinner, I swear I saw something out of the corner of my eye—just a flicker, a shadow, moving where no shadow should be. I felt it too, like the air shifted, cooler for just a second. And the whispers… they’re always so quiet, so soft, like they’re coming from somewhere far, far away. But I hear them, Diary. I do.
It’s scary, sometimes. Not because I think they’ll hurt me, but because it’s like living in two different worlds. There’s the world Mom sees, full of logic and normalcy, and then there’s the one I’m drifting into—a world where shadows move on their own and whispers fill the silence.
I wish I could tell her. I want to. But what if she thinks I’m losing it? What if she tries to make it go away, like it’s something wrong with me?
But I know there’s nothing wrong. These things I’m experiencing—they’re real, as real as the chill I felt in the room tonight, as real as the snow falling outside. Maybe they’re part of me, part of who I’m meant to be. It’s like something is waking up inside me, something that’s been waiting, dormant, until now.
Sometimes, I catch her looking at me. Not with fear, exactly, but with a kind of wonder, like she knows there’s more to me than I let on, but she doesn’t know how to ask. I wish I could tell her. Maybe someday I will, when I understand it all a little better myself.
For now, I’ll keep it here, in these pages, where it’s safe. You’re the only one who doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t doubt, just listens.
Goodbye, 1976. Something tells me 1977 is going to be… different. Maybe even beyond normal.
The night had the kind of stillness that wrapped around you like an old blanket—a calm that was comforting and unsettling all at once. It was my last night in the house I’d grown up in. The house where pizza nights with my parents were as regular as clockwork, where sleepovers stretched into the early hours, and where the scent of childhood—old crayons, warm carpet, and a hint of vanilla from candles Mom loved—still clung to every corner. By tomorrow, this house would be just another vacant space, waiting for the next family to fill it with their own stories. Dad’s new house was almost finished, but instead of excitement, all I could feel was a strange, uneasy knot forming in my chest.
It was New Year’s Eve, 1976, and the world outside was blanketed in snow. The kind of heavy snow that made everything quiet—too quiet, except for the occasional creak of old tree branches bending under the weight. My parents had gone to some downtown party, leaving me with Evie and Tara, my two best friends who’d been part of my life since we could all barely spell our names. Our big plan for the night? Pizzas, a movie, and maybe, just maybe, digging through the collection of old toys I still hadn’t been able to part with.
The Barbies, in particular, still held a special place in our hearts, even if we didn’t admit it. Evie had unearthed them from the back of my closet, their stiff, plastic limbs and perfect smiles like relics of simpler times. We spread them out across my parents’ bed, giving the dolls ridiculous voices, reenacting the over-the-top dramas we used to create when we were younger. It was silly, I know—we were fifteen—but there was something soothing about it. A last grasp at the uncomplicated, before everything in our lives changed.
Then, the voice cut through the night.
“KAY!”
It was unmistakable—deep, masculine, and as clear as if someone were standing right there with us. It echoed from somewhere down the hallway, sending an electric jolt straight through my chest. Evie stopped mid-sentence, her plastic Barbie poised in the air, while Tara’s eyes widened, scanning the room for answers. We all froze.
We’d heard it.
But it wasn’t possible. The doors were locked. I knew because I’d checked them—twice. No one else was in the house, and we hadn’t heard a car pull up or footsteps crunching through the thick snow outside.
Tara was the first to break the silence, her voice barely more than a whisper. “That wasn’t one of you messing with us, right?”
“Of course not,” I said, though the words came out shakier than I’d intended. I glanced at Evie, who had already straightened up, eyes sharp.
“I definitely heard that,” Evie muttered, her usual bravado edging into something more serious as she grabbed the nearest object—a hairbrush—and held it up like she was preparing for battle.
The hallway stretched in front of us, dark and endless, leading down to the staircase. The kind of dark where you half expect something to leap out at you, where shadows seem to move even when you’re standing still. My heart thudded against my ribs, but I wasn’t about to let fear make me look foolish. After all, Nancy Drew wouldn’t stand frozen in place, would she?
“We should check,” I said, taking a small step forward, my voice firmer now. “Maybe it’s just something outside. The wind or…” I trailed off, knowing full well that wasn’t the wind. And it wasn’t any normal house noise either.
Evie, ever the adventurer, didn’t need more convincing. “Let’s go,” she said, leading the way with her hairbrush still clutched in hand like a sword. Tara followed close behind, though she looked far less enthusiastic about investigating.
We tiptoed down the hallway, the soft carpet muffling our footsteps. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting to see some shadowy figure lurking just behind us. But there was nothing. Just the dark and the sound of our shallow breathing.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, and I flicked on the light in the entryway. The front door stood firmly shut. No footprints disturbed the thick layer of snow outside the window, and the lock was still in place, untouched.
“Maybe it came from upstairs,” Evie suggested, her voice low. Her eyes darted to the landing above us, where the shadows seemed thicker, deeper.
Tara shook her head. “If it was upstairs, we’d have heard footsteps coming down, wouldn’t we?”
I nodded, biting my lip. She was right. That voice had been loud—too loud for it to be coming from upstairs or muffled by walls. It was as if the sound had cut right through the air, ignoring all barriers. But how could that be?
“Hello?” I called out into the stillness, my voice sounding much braver than I felt. “Is anyone here?”
No answer.
We waited, the three of us standing in the doorway, listening so hard we could almost hear our own heartbeats. But the only response was the quiet creak of the house settling around us and the soft whine of the wind outside.
“Okay,” I finally said, trying to sound calm. “It was probably just… I don’t know, maybe someone playing a prank.”
“Who would do that in this weather?” Tara pointed out, her voice shaking slightly. “No one could get up here in all this snow without us seeing.”
She wasn’t wrong. I glanced back at the undisturbed snow outside, a perfect blanket of white with no footprints leading up to the door. Not a soul had been near the house since my parents left.
Evie crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Then maybe it wasn’t someone outside.”
I shivered involuntarily, the chill seeping through more than just my skin. Something about the way she said it made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone now,” I said, trying to regain some control of the situation. “Let’s just… go back upstairs. Maybe it was nothing.”
But as we turned back toward the staircase, a single, undeniable thought crept into my mind—a thought I didn’t want to acknowledge, even to myself.
This wasn’t nothing.
Something had happened, and it wasn’t finished with us yet
That morning felt like any other, except for the cloud. It wasn’t like a normal cloud, though. It was… weird. I couldn’t stop staring at it. I remember pointing it out to Dad as he drove me to school, “Do you see that cloud?”
He glanced out the window and said, “Yeah, what about it?” like it was no big deal.
But it was a big deal. I told him, “It looks funny,” and he just shrugged, shaking his head like I was making something out of nothing. I tried to let it go, but that cloud stuck with me. The way it hovered in the sky—it felt off, like a warning or something.
Something feels strange…
A couple days later, I was helping Mom clean Grandma’s house. I was lifting a bucket off a chair when I saw something strange. The watermarks on the newspaper underneath had formed the shape of a man standing in a tunnel. I pointed it out to Mom, but she barely reacted. She just glanced at it and walked away, acting like it was nothing.
But I knew why. Mom doesn’t talk about anything like this—paranormal stuff, I guess. She’s always said people in this town don’t speak about things like that, especially not back when she was younger. If you did, people thought you were crazy. Her aunt ended up in a psychiatric hospital for most of her life because of things like this, and I guess Mom’s scared I’ll end up the same way. No one ever talks about it, and there’s no one I can go to. No shows or books or anyone who gets it. It’s just… silence.
Then, exactly one week later, I was jolted awake by my mom throwing open my bedroom door. She was panicked, her voice sharp as she yelled, “Get up!”
I shot out of bed, confused and half-asleep. “What’s going on?” I asked, my heart racing.
Her face was pale, and her voice was shaky when she said, “Your sister’s husband was killed in the coal mines last night.”
My whole body went numb. I couldn’t even process it. Mom just stood there, staring at me, and said, “That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew someone was going to die.”
Her words hit me like a punch in the gut. She knew something was going to happen, and that’s why she wouldn’t talk about it. It made me sick to think about. The way she brushed it off, how we both knew, but neither of us could say it out loud.
I felt so lost after that. There was no one to talk to. No one who’d believe me, or even understand what was happening. I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
Then, a few nights later, something else happened. I came home from a friend’s house, and as I walked down the hallway to my bedroom, I noticed the little red dot on the smoke alarm. It looked… wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was just off. I shook my head, told myself I was imagining things, and kept walking. But deep down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever was happening wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
“How Do I Explain Feeling the Presence of the Dead? No One Would Understand”
I don’t even know where to start. Today, something happened that I can’t explain. I feel like I’m losing control, like there’s something inside me that I can’t shut off.
We went to Salem today—some tour thing with the Rebecca Lodge, my mom has sent me on. Everyone was so excited to visit the House of Seven Gables, but the moment we got off the bus, I felt it. That chill. It was warm out, but the air around me felt heavy and cold, like something was waiting for me. I thought I was just being paranoid, but as we got closer to the house, it felt like it was alive.
I didn’t say anything to anyone. How could I? Everyone was laughing, taking pictures, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was wrong. The house was dark and old, like it had absorbed every horrible thing that had ever happened inside. It made me nervous. More than nervous. I felt like I was being pulled toward it, like the house knew I was coming.
Inside, it was worse. The ceilings were so low, and everything felt so close. I could hardly breathe. The tour guide was talking, telling us all about the history, but I couldn’t focus. Her voice was strange, almost hollow. It reminded me of those whispers I keep hearing at home—soft at first, then louder, insistent. I felt like something was watching me, following me through every room.
Then we went into that room. The one where women accused of witchcraft hid. I don’t know what happened, but the second I stepped inside, it was like I could feel them. The women. The fear. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like I could hear them—whispering, pleading, trying to tell me something. My chest felt tight, and the air was freezing cold. No one else seemed to notice. No one ever notices.
The walls felt like they were closing in, like the whole house was wrapping itself around me. The whispers got louder, faster, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew it wasn’t good. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. My feet wouldn’t move.
Then, somehow, I forced myself to leave. I ran out of the house, gasping for air the second I stepped outside. I don’t know how long I stood there, but I couldn’t go back in. I just couldn’t. The others kept going, laughing like nothing was wrong, but I knew. I knew something in there wasn’t right. It was like the house was alive, and it wanted something from me.
The voices stopped when I left, but the feeling didn’t. It’s like the house is still with me somehow, lingering in my mind, waiting for the right moment to whisper again.
I didn’t tell anyone. What could I say? That I felt the presence of women who were dead for hundreds of years? That the house was calling me? They already think I’m weird. They wouldn’t understand. No one ever does.
But I know what I felt. I know I’m not imagining it.
