“Legends say…this is where the ghost of Old Man Rutherford walks at night.”
Tommy panned his mini-DV camera across the wooded area. He tried to quiet his breaths during the thirty second shot—it was hard for him, he had ran over to this little neck of the woods from his house a few blocks away, eager to film his first episode of “Tommy, the Ghost Hunter”. He didn’t have much time before he would be called back to the house for dinner and the mood outside was perfect. It was nearing sunset on an overcast, winter day, and the cold air stung his cheeks. Tommy was sure these woods would spook his audience.
As the camera pan around the entrance to the woods finished, he settled the camera on the path directly ahead of him and began to narrate in the deepest voice he could muster. “If you go down this path after dark…you might not come back!”
The camera in his hand began to shake and you could hear a little frustration in his voice that it wasn’t going to be a perfect shot. His voice returned back to normal. “You probably would. But you never know.”
He began taking his first steps through the woods, his shoes crunching over brittle leaves, and with each step, the sounds of breaking sticks excited him. Maybe someone is following him, the audience might never know! Pausing for a second after a particularly large branch snapped, he returned to his serious tone.
“They say the ghost appears when you least expect it…”
He hit the record button on the camera to stop the filming as he preceded further into the woods. Tommy didn’t know what he’d find, but he could fake a good scare. He started to wonder if he could throw a tree branch, while still holding the camera, and it be convincing to the audience that it came from somewhere else. It became his mission to look for a stick that would be thick enough for the effect but not too big to handle.
As an avid fan of ghost stories himself, he knew the real spooks always happen off trail. He couldn’t find “the perfect stick” for his scare effect but once he saw a small, off-trail, opening he quickly preceded down that way. As he made the turn, he brought the camera back up from his side and pressed record.
“Did you hear that?” He quickened his breath to sound scared.
He quickly shook the camera back and forth, trying his hardest to make it seem like he was terrified. A few spins around with the camera will make the audience dizzy and really freaked out, he thought. He tried not to laugh as he steadied the camera once again and began walking further into the dense woods. The path was hard to follow, but that just made it better for the show.
Steading his pace, he kept the camera trained down at his feet. His breathing started to get heavier and he kept his mouth close to the microphone on the body of the camera. He wanted to be sure his quick breaths were caught on tape. When his eyes raised back up to the wooded area in front him, he finally saw it, and brought the camera back up to eye level.
At first, it was just a tree—until it wasn’t. The bark rippled and the branches curled like fingers. His feet sank into the soft ground. A cold chill slid down his back. The wind cut out—absolute silence.
All at once his body came to a halt.
His breath slowed; the world around him faded.
The tree felt alive—not supernatural, but like it was waiting.
For something. Someone.
Time seemed to stretch.
He hadn’t blinked in quite some time.
SNAP!
A large branch broke off in the distance behind him and he spun around as fast as possible to catch it. He turned so fast he accidentally dropped the camera into a pile of leaves near his feet. He took a long breath in and out and tried to calm his nerves. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing here.
Suddenly, the entire woods felt eerie. More than before. The air felt heavier but Tommy tried to act like he wasn’t bothered by it at all. He reached down for the camera and aimed it back at the open woods.
“Sorry, guys…thought I heard something.” He tried his best to mask his own fears by laying it on thick with his ghost hunter narration.
The sun was now minutes from sinking below the horizon and he knew he had to get back home soon or else his mother would be shrieking his name for the whole neighborhood to hear. He paused the camera and took a few more looks around the woods, trying to find another scene he could film as he headed home.
Nothing really stood out to him and then he had an excellent thought.
He tightened the camera strap over his hand and pressed record.
He ran back through the woods, trying to jerk the camera as much as possible, while breathing heavy and letting out a few fake screams.
“What was THAT ?!?,” he yelled. After he stopped recording, he let out a big laugh.
***
Later that night, after dinner, Tommy went straight to his bedroom to check out his footage from the woods. He grabbed the camera and jumped into his bed, pressing rewind. As the sound of the tape buzzed rapidly, his heartbeat started getting faster—making a ghost hunter show has been a passion since he saw “The Blair Witch Project.” He wasn’t supposed to watch it but his friends dad had let them see it a few weekends ago.
The tape in the camera came to a sudden halt and Tommy took a deep breath in. “Here we go.” He pressed play.
After a moment of static, the first image appeared. But it wasn’t the opening shot of Tommy on the outside of the woods like he had captured—it was just an image of a random tree.
He fast-forwarded. Ten minutes of the tree. He brought his eyes closer to the screen and suddenly remembered it. That’s the tree he saw in the middle of the woods with the strange branches. But it looked different, not exactly how he remembered framing it.
The trees shape seemed to shift, just barely. Were the branches moving? His stare continued to get deeper into the screen. His fingers tightened on the camera. His hands were sweating, but his skin felt cold as a thin gust of air swept the room.
His body halted.
Breath slowed.
The tree was alive.
Time stretched.
The world around him—the bedroom, the house, the whole neighborhood—faded. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop looking at the image on the camera’s tape. He didn’t know how long he’d been watching it. Eventually a sound emerged, ever so slightly.
A murmur beneath the static. Then: “Round and round, the branches grow…”
The words were faint, distant, like a memory.
“Tall and twisted, deep below…”
His grip continued to tighten on the camera. The tree limbs moved again.
“If you listen, you will see…”
The whisper curled in his ear, too close.
A chill spread across his body. He leaned in even closer.
“What’s inside belongs to me.”
CRASH!
His bedroom door swung open. A voice yelled his name. “I called you three times! What are you doing?,” his mother said.
The trance broke and Tommy blinked for the first time in minutes (or was it hours?). The camera screen went black and the tape stopped. The air in the room went completely still while Tommy’s mother continued to stare at him for a reaction.
He turned to look at her—but too slowly. Something was wrong. His body felt off, his mind blank.
He tried to speak but for a long second, nothing came out. “I…”
His voice didn’t sound like his and his mother looked at him even more perplexed.
He looked down at his lap, his hand still clasping the camera with a tight grip.
He didn’t even remember pressing play.
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