The interviewer’s comments are denoted through initials GM, while the interviewee’s responses are denoted by a CB.
GM: Has anything happened to you or your family that you can tell me about regarding a weird text or something cyber-related that you couldn’t explain – like an anomaly?
CB: I was 12 years old and I was at my friend’s house playing flag football in his front yard. After a little while, I needed to use the computer so I went inside to my friend Joseph’s house. Joseph’s house is a large Southern style estate with very high ceilings and wood paneled offices. The computer I used was inside one of wood paneled offices. I spent almost an hour on the computer, and when I was about to shut down I saw someone on the screen. Not an image or screensaver, but a very real person on the screen. Naturally, I freaked out for a second and took a double take, but suddenly no one was on it.
When something of this nature happened, I obviously ran away from the computer and yelled out to my friend’s mother: “Sherry, Sherry!!”. I found her in the kitchen and told her I saw something. She said, “what did you see?” and I said “I was on your computer and I saw something on the screen for a split second”. She said “You saw something? Did you see a little girl in the mirror about your age (10 or so) with pigtails?” In the moment, my heart skipped a beat because she had described to me exactly what I just saw on the screen before I even yelled her name out. She went on to explain that I’m not the first person see someone on the computer, and that her husband and her husband’s father had both seen the little girl in different computers throughout the house. As far as they knew, no little girl had entered the house in years. From that day forward, going back to her house always terrified me because I thought I would see her again – but I never did.
Conclusion, written by the interviewer:
This story, although experienced by a 10-year-old, shows the incredibly real feeling that cyber ghosts can provide. His friend’s mother’s knowledge of the ghost and acceptance of its recurrence shows that in the modern day, this is how people believe ghosts must appear in our lives. Instead of a dead ancestor lying on the couch or a young girl in a cemetery, most ghosts can now show up on texts or on your local screen. The ghost on the screen was described as very realistic, but haunting and momentary – both elements that have persisted since old ghost stories, but simply in a new format for the 21st century.