Make Sure You Are Alone When You Look at It
There are warnings people tell each other that sound more like dares. “Don’t open it at midnight.” “Don’t look in the mirror after three.” But the one that stayed with me was whispered in a trembling voice by my coworker, Ellen:
“Whatever you do, if you find that file—make sure you’re alone when you look at it.”
I thought she was joking.
At the small marketing firm where we worked, strange stories floated around the office like dust. A haunted breakroom. A “cursed” email that crashed your computer. Harmless rumors meant to pass the time. But Ellen wasn’t the joking type. She was quiet, dependable, and always the last to leave. The night she told me that, she looked terrified.
It started with a client project—routine, nothing unusual. A family-owned photography studio wanted a new digital archive of their old work. Hundreds of pictures from the 1950s through the 1980s, all scanned and labeled. The studio had gone out of business years ago, but the owner’s granddaughter was paying us to preserve her grandfather’s legacy.
We were splitting the work: I handled the files, Ellen handled descriptions. She was meticulous, naming each photo with dates and locations. Then, one afternoon, I heard her gasp. She leaned close to her monitor, staring at something.
“You see that?” she whispered.
On her screen was a black-and-white photo of a wedding. The bride and groom stood smiling, surrounded by guests. But in the far background, between the rows of people, stood a man—not blurry, not faint—just wrong. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were fixed directly on the camera, unlike everyone else.
At first, I assumed it was a coincidence. Maybe he’d wandered into the shot. But when Ellen zoomed in, I noticed something else: his face was sharp—too sharp, as if taken with a modern lens, not one from the 1960s.
“Maybe it’s been edited?” I suggested.
She shook her head. “These are scanned negatives. They haven’t been touched.”
We laughed it off and moved on, but that night, Ellen didn’t go home. When I returned the next morning, her desk was empty except for a sticky note:
“File 19-67C. Don’t open it unless you’re alone.”
I didn’t know what to think. HR said she’d called in sick. I told myself she just needed a break. But curiosity can be a dangerous thing.
That night, after everyone left, I stayed behind. The office was dark except for my screen’s glow. I found the file on the shared drive—19-67C.jpg—and opened it.
The image loaded slowly, pixel by pixel. It was another wedding scene, but this time there was no crowd, no smiling faces. Just a single person—the same man. He was standing in an empty church aisle, hands clasped, staring straight at the camera. The air in the room seemed to tighten around me.
I blinked, leaned forward, and the lights flickered.
When they came back on, my computer had frozen. The man’s face was larger now, closer, as if he’d taken a step forward. The cursor wouldn’t move. My heart pounded. Then, from the hallway, I heard footsteps.
“Ellen?” I called.
No answer.
The steps grew louder, slow and deliberate. I grabbed my phone, using its flashlight to peer around the cubicles. No one was there.
I turned back to my monitor. The photo had changed again. The man was now standing halfway down the church aisle—closer. His mouth had formed a faint smile.
The warning echoed in my mind: make sure you’re alone when you look at it.
I slammed the laptop shut.
The next morning, I told my boss the computer had crashed and left it at that. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ellen still hadn’t returned. No one had heard from her. I decided to visit the photography studio’s old address, just to clear my head.
The building was half-collapsed, overgrown with weeds. Inside, dust floated in sunlight streaming through broken windows. There were boxes of old negatives, faded prints, and a few photos tacked to a corkboard.
And there he was again.
The same man. The same eyes. Different decades—different events—but always in the background, always looking toward the camera.
I backed away, shaking. Then, behind me, a voice said softly:
“You shouldn’t have looked.”
I turned. Ellen stood there. Her skin was pale, eyes hollow. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept in days.
“Ellen—where have you been?”
She didn’t answer. She only stared at the photos pinned to the wall.
“He follows whoever opens it,” she whispered. “That’s why you have to be alone. If someone else is there, he takes them instead.”
My mind raced. “What are you talking about?”
She pointed to the photos. “He’s been in every generation. He doesn’t age. He’s not part of the picture—he’s what’s taking it.”
Before I could respond, a draft swept through the room, scattering papers. A single photograph slid across the floor and landed face-up by my feet.
It was of the office—our office—taken from the corner near Ellen’s desk. And there, in the reflection of the computer screen, stood the man again.
I froze.
When I looked up, Ellen was gone.
The building was silent except for the creak of wood and the distant hum of wind through the broken windows. I stumbled outside, clutching the photo.
That night, I deleted every copy of the files I could find. I formatted hard drives, burned disks, even smashed one of the old servers. But somehow, the image kept coming back. It appeared as a thumbnail on my phone, as a screensaver on my TV, once even flickering for a second during a video call.
I moved cities, changed jobs, but the presence followed. Always in reflections, faintly visible behind me.
Sometimes, late at night, I’ll catch my monitor flicker, and I’ll hear footsteps again—measured, patient, waiting.
I’ve learned to live with it. I don’t show the photo to anyone, and I never, ever look at it when someone else is around. Because if what Ellen said is true, that’s the only thing keeping them safe.
Every few months, I get an email with no subject line, no sender—just one sentence:
“You weren’t alone.”
And when that happens, I know someone else has opened it.
So if you ever come across a file named 19-67C.jpg, don’t open it out of curiosity. Don’t zoom in. Don’t try to prove it’s a hoax.
Just delete it.
And if you can’t resist…
Make sure you’re alone when you look at it.
