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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MindlessTurnip5160 on 2024-11-06 19:35:52+00:00.
When I was 18 and my sister was 5, I was babysitting in our family’s basement while my mom was in the shower and my stepdad was asleep. I should mention that my stepdad has the deepest, most distinct voice I’ve ever heard. Anyone who meets him comments on it, and even customers at his job, who’ve only spoken to him on the phone, request his assistance by saying, ‘The one with the deep voice!’ This will become important later.
It was my mom’s birthday, so she was taking one of those long showers, and I knew she’d be in there for a while. I’d taken out some toys and turned on the TV, which was the only noise in the house besides maybe the faint sound of the shower.
Our basement is set up so that the sofa is directly against the wall next to the stair landing. When you’re sitting on it, if you turn to the right, you can see straight up the stairs. In front of us was the rest of the room: TV, coffee table, etc.
As a dumb 18-year-old who semi-loved taunting my sibling, I switched the channel to a scary movie. My sister glanced up at it briefly and proudly declared, ‘Sissy, I’m not scared.’ Of course, this took all the fun out of the situation, so I quickly turned off the TV and sat on my phone while my sister played on the floor with her toys.
After a while, I heard a voice from the top of the stairs that sounded vaguely familiar but could have been coming from no one in the house. Again, my mom was showering (I could still hear the running water), and my stepdad was asleep. It clearly wasn’t his distinct voice.
The voice was a woman’s. My entire body ran cold, and I froze, knowing that if I looked to the right, I would see someone—or something—standing at the top of the stairs. I glanced down at my sister, who also stood frozen, tears in her eyes, staring straight at me.
I didn’t want to scare her—even though she was already petrified—so I calmly asked, ‘What’s wrong, baby?’ She whispered, as if not to be overheard by whoever was on the stairs, ‘Who was that?’
I was still trying to stay brave, so I asked, ‘Who was what?’ and she replied, ‘Who said that?’
At that point, I knew she heard it too, and I knew I wasn’t going crazy. I asked her what the voice had said, and she repeated it back to me exactly as I had heard it.
The worst part of the whole thing was what it said and how it said it. In the calmest, almost absent voice, whatever stood at the top of those stairs said, ‘Hey, Kayleigh?’ Even typing it gives me the chills. That’s my name. There was no emotion in the statement, but the small bit of inflection at the end made it clear it was a question—and it was a question for me.
There was no way I was going to look up those stairs, and as I reached for my sister, she scrambled up and sat on my lap. We both stared straight ahead while we waited for my mom to finish her shower. After we heard the door open and her footsteps coming down the hall (about 10 minutes later), I was finally able to move. I carried my sister up the stairs and asked my mom if she had called me. She obviously said no—how could she? And she was right; there was no way it could’ve been her. My stepdad was still asleep.
The voice had been a woman’s. After explaining the whole situation to my mom, it dawned on me: The voice sounded familiar because it was my own.
My mom was brought to tears just by hearing the story and seeing how affected my sister and I were. She immediately believed us.
This wasn’t the last time we heard that voice, either. My mom often calls me to let me know she’s heard my voice calling for her, but saying words I’d never use or things I wouldn’t say—things like ‘Mommy’ or ‘I need help.’ I don’t live in that house anymore, I’m rarely there, and I haven’t called my mother ‘Mommy’ since I was a child.
When I did still live there, though, I would often hear my name. Once, I even heard myself say, ‘Bless you,’ after I sneezed. Sometimes it was just whistling, or the low pitch of myself humming tunes I never knew.
And it was always in that same, distant voice.
My mom likes to joke about it now, warning any future partners or roommates that they absolutely don’t want to live with me because, in her words, I’m ‘followed’ by something. I’m starting to believe her. Things have happened to me since I was a kid, but I always brushed them off—maybe shared them with a few friends—and moved on.
I don’t think I’ve ever moved on from this encounter, though. And I don’t think I’ll ever escape the sound of my own voice.