Eight years ago, during the week before Halloween, some friends and I decided to tell spooky stories around the campfire. We had always wanted to make a fire outside and hang out at night, but we were too young to go by ourselves, especially after midnight. That year things were different. ‘We were no longer children,’ we thought, so we somehow convinced our parents to let us stay out late (we didn’t tell them about the fire, obviously).

Once we all gathered in front of my house, we only had to think of a good place to hang out, so that our parents wouldn’t find out about the fire. We ended up making the fire near a small dirt road out by the forest, leading straight to the riverside. The set up was great: a creepy forest, the sound of the river flowing, crickets chirping, and the scary sight of an abandoned stone house in the background.

It was a rather warm night for that time of the year, and the moon was shining over the forest, casting strangely shaped shadows on the walls of the abandoned house. It was quite unsettling when you caught a glimpse of a moving shadow out of the corner of your eye.

By the time we had finished making the fire, the moon had moved slightly, and the shadows were gone, a thing which brought us a bit of relief. We found a slab of stone next to the river, and we used it as a makeshift stage in front of the fire for the storytellers to stand on while narrating their creepy tales. We took our flashlights out of our backpacks and started.

A few stories in, it was finally my turn, so I grabbed my flashlight and headed towards the stage. I had just started my scary story when, all of a sudden, it was freezing cold. The flashlight turned itself off, and the wind started blowing violently, putting out the fire. I panicked, and I kept slapping my flashlight in the hope of it turning back on. Assuming it was a joke of mine, but still unsettled by the whistling of the wind, everybody instinctively reached for their flashlights, but none of them worked.

Overwhelmed by fear, I slowly headed back towards the group. The light of the moon was no longer visible either. It was like something just filled the area with darkness or, rather sucked all the light out of it (if that makes any sense). As I was walking without being able to see anything, I tripped on a rock and fell on the ground. The flashlight fell right next to my face. As my friends approached me, the flashlight suddenly turned back on, illuminating the front of the abandoned house. That’s when we saw it!

A little fair-headed doll, its pigtails adorned with red dotted ribbons, all covered in what looked like blood, was standing on the window ledge. We all freaked out, and the girls started screaming when the doll simply fell out the window for no reason whatsoever, followed by a weird metallic screech as it hit the ground. We had no choice but to grab our backpacks and run home.

After a few days, a couple of older friends of ours came with us to investigate the house. They were clearly amused by our silly ghost story and didn’t take us seriously. We’ve searched for hours, yet we found nothing there. However, when we were walking down the path leading to our abandoned campsite, we saw a trail of dried blood drops leading just off the main path into the thicket. The droplets grew farther and farther apart, and we eventually lost track of them. Shortly after that, a wolf howled at the moon, and judging by its loudness, it seemed to be quite close. As we were rushing back to the path, one of our older friends tripped over something and fell face-first into the dirt. We saw a red dotted ribbon next to his face, quite similar to the ones the doll had.

As we dug through the hard gravel, we came across a hand, a little girl’s hand, covered in dry blood.