Six Friends Took a Happy Photo — Zoom In on the Picture and You’ll See Why They Can’t Sleep (2 of 3)
She didn’t say anything at first, just held her phone closer, her thumb hovering over the screen. “Uh… guys,” she said finally, her voice strange and tight. “Look at this. Between us.”
We all leaned in. At first, I thought she meant some stranger had photobombed us, but the park had been empty. Then I saw it—nestled in the narrow gap between Mia’s shoulder and Lisa’s, a face.
Not just any face.
It wasn’t blurred like someone passing by. It wasn’t distorted by shadow or motion. It was… clear. Pale skin, dark eyes, lips pressed into a thin, almost knowing smile. The features didn’t belong to anyone we knew. Worse, they seemed impossibly close, as if whoever it was had been kneeling right behind them.
“That’s… creepy,” Lisa whispered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.
We all started offering explanations—maybe it was a trick of the light, maybe a reflection, maybe one of us had shifted weirdly. But the more we zoomed in, the more undeniable it became. There was detail in that face—too much detail for it to be a glitch. Even the strands of hair, slick and damp-looking, stood out against the warm blur of the rest of the photo.
And there was something else.
It wasn’t just the face itself—it was the way it was looking at us. Not at the camera. At us.
We searched through the rest of the pictures from that night, half-expecting to see the same face lurking in the background. It was only in that one shot. The park had been quiet, the benches empty, the paths lit only by a few flickering streetlamps. None of us remembered seeing anyone nearby.
Eventually, we put the phones down, trying to laugh it off. But the mood had shifted. The room felt colder, the shadows heavier. I caught Mia glancing at the window more than once.
That night, I left earlier than planned. Walking home, I kept thinking about the space between them in the photo—a space that shouldn’t have been filled. And the more I replayed it in my mind, the more I realized something that made my stomach twist.
