Answering The Phone
“When we were both really young, my parents once left me and my brother at home while they went out. The two of us were all the way down in our basement, playing video games. We had the home phone in between us, just in case one of our parents called. About an hour goes by, and the phone starts to ring. We look down and the caller ID shows it’s our uncle calling.
We decide to just let it ring. Now, this phone usually rang four times when someone called, but I noticed that it stopped in the middle of the third ring. I couldn’t understand why this would have happened, unless someone else in the house had picked up one of the other phones. But no one else was in the house with us, right?
I got really suspicious and my paranoia got the better of me. I took my brother upstairs. We see that the phone is still there, but there is still a phone on the third floor in my parents’ room. So we walk towards the stairs. What we saw next chilled us to the bone. A man in his late 40s was standing by the door of our parents’ room and staring back at us.
The second we saw him, we both screamed, ran out of the house, and went straight to our neighbors’ house. We tell them what happened and they proceed to call the authorities and then our parents. They come fast and I don’t know what was wrong with the man, but he never left the house. He just stood there and let the officers take him away. I later heard he was taken to a mental hospital.
I shudder to imagine what could have happened to my brother and me if my uncle hadn’t decided to call at that exact moment.”