Ariana Alvarez was 7-years-old the first time she tried to talk back to the threat. The unusual, familiar figure, standing always at the corner of her bedroom, was making its usual, chilling whispers, a sound like static mixed with distant voices. “Stop it,” she remembered snapping, pulling the blanket up to her nose. The figure didn’t move. It didn’t stop. Now, 8 years later, 15-year-old Ariana lives in the same house, with the same indistinct and creeping figures who have haunted her since she was young, and the only thing that has changed is her response. 

Alvarez’s world was marked by these silent shadowy spectators whose hushed tones were just beyond comprehension. Where most would’ve found paralyzing fear, Alvarez had found a strange sense of acceptance. Her grandmother had once dealt with the same phenomenon and Ariana navigated her teenage years with what she had learned to treat it as a constant, blurry presence that she no longer feared. 

After years of trying to make the figures disappear, Alverez registered that they were simply a fixture of her environment, which prompted her to shift her strategy from defense and observation. 

“I used to be frightened, but then they were just…there, like my furniture that sometimes whispered,” said Ariana Alvarez, 10. 

Initially, her attempts to understand the murmurs were intense, driven by a curiosity to decipher the static laced susurration of the spirits whose faces she could never quite make out. She even utilized a ghost app in an attempt to bridge the gap between worlds.

“When I was younger I actually downloaded a ghost app, those ones that were supposed to catch EVPs [electronic voice phenomenons] to see if I could finally hear what they were saying, it was mostly just garbled noise, and I still couldn’t figure out what they looked like, but I needed to try, I needed to know what they wanted from me,” said Alvarez. 

In the last few years the activity had decreased and the figures hadn’t been around as frequently, leading Alvarez to believe that the spirits might have moved on, or perhaps her own newfound indifference had lessened their need to make themselves known. 

While she no longer actively sought communication, she told her family and friends that she simply had learned to live with them and accepted the strange reality of her home rather than fighting it, said Alvarez. 

“They weren’t scary anymore, this was just my normal, honestly, the scariest thing in my life back then was the algebra test next week,” said Alvarez.