Don’t Respond if You Hear Your Name While Alone: Never Answer
I’ve responded too many times. Please don’t make the same mistake.
My name is Gareth, two syllables with sharp edges. Ga-reth. I mention it only so you understand the absurdity of what I’m about to tell you. Because this doesn’t happen to me anywhere else. Only there. Only on the land I grew up on, just outside a small town in northern Wisconsin.
I’ve spent years trying to forget what I heard. But the thing about a mimic is, it doesn’t care if you forget. Once you respond, it remembers you. It never forgets.
Our family’s house and land have been passed down from generation to generation. It straddled a long stretch of forest and conservation marsh. Thick, second-growth timber packed tight against the back fields. As kids, it felt like having our own world, not far from town, but still ours. We would go camping out there, hunting, and exploring. The trees never felt threatening. Just… old.
My cousin Kevin, who was a few years older than me, never liked the woods. Said he’d “already seen everything there was to see back there.” At the time, I thought he just didn’t like me and didn’t really get along with me and my friends. But the look in his eyes whenever he talked about it… It was something else. I think he must have heard the voice too, before I did.
The house itself is nothing much. Most of the windows looked out into the trees. The woods came right up to the back porch. In the summer, on Saturdays, our whole extended family would come over: aunts, uncles, cousins. The older kids would play board games, throw a football around, and go exploring in the woods, while the younger kids ran around the property near the house.
We would have a family dinner, with the adults sitting around the table afterwards, having a few drinks, and talking for hours. Those were good memories. Mostly. But, even the best memories can spoil. It’s unfair how one sound—one voice—can unravel everything. Unravel what should have been a perfect childhood.
After high school, I left my old family home for years. I went to college, met my wife, and started a family of my own. I forgot about all that had happened. But my father recently passed away, and I’ve just learned that I’ve inherited my childhood home. My wife and kids are eager to move there, excited for the new adventure, to see where Dad grew up, but I’m afraid, and I don’t know how to tell them why I never went back.
The first time I heard it was the night of my thirteenth birthday. A group of us went camping near the southern tree line. It was humid, bug-ridden, and pitch black. But we were wired, full of cake and candy. The idea was to see if we could stay awake all night, a challenge to our young selves, a rite of passage, and something we thought would be a cool thing to talk about at school the next week.
While the others unpacked and finished setting up their tents. I offered to go gather firewood. It was almost dark, but you could still make out a little in the deep blue. I was maybe a hundred feet from the tent, crouched near an old fallen limb, when I heard it. “Gaaaaarreth…”
It was soft. Drawn out. Like someone trying to be gentle, but not quite getting it right. I froze. It sounded like my mother, but wrong. Slightly off. Like her voice had been pulled through a screen and put back together.
I stood up, looked around. “Yeah, Mom?” I called out. My voice cracked a little. No answer.
Just the trees swaying. A slow hush of wind. I waited. Nothing. I shook it off and went back with the wood I had gathered. That was the first time I answered. That’s when it chose me.
Back at camp, we worked to get the fire started. Cracking jokes and carrying on. That’s when I heard it again.
“Gaaaarreth…” Louder this time. Clearer. A couple of the boys turned toward the sound. “Hey,” one of them said, “I think your mom’s calling you.” My father had sent us out with a walkie-talkie so that we could get in touch easily in case something happened or we needed something. I radioed in to my father and asked if everything there was alright.
He answered that they were fine, said my mother wasn’t calling for me, and asked how it was going. But the voice came again. And again. Sometimes it sounded like a man. Other times, like a woman. Sometimes familiar. Sometimes not.
Always my name. Drawn out. Slightly off. I blamed it on my cousin Kevin. He was sixteen at the time, and it was precisely the sort of thing that he would do. If my cousin wanted to spend the entire night trying to scare us, that was his choice. I would have assumed he had better things to do, but apparently I was wrong. At that point, we made a rule. We would all just ignore it.
Shortly after, I heard my name again, “Gaaaarreth…” and at that moment, my father walkie-talkied to us. “Have you fallen asleep yet?”
“Absolutely not,” I answered. “When you see Kevin, tell him he’s not funny.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin’s sitting right here. Instantly, we all looked at each other. If it hadn’t been my cousin in the woods, then who had been calling my name?
The mood changed significantly then, and with perfect timing, we heard it again. It came from the same place, about fifty feet out from the fire’s edge. Once more, my name was drawn out, and this time it sounded like a woman again.
My friend and I jumped to our feet and ran toward where the name-calling had come from, hoping to catch whoever had been driving us mad all night. We made it right where the sound had come from. It was so cold, it felt like a wall of ice. It pushed the breath out of my lungs, like when you jump into cold water on a hot day.
My friend stopped at the same place I did. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He felt it too, and was looking around rapidly. He was afraid, and so was I. “There’s nobody here,” he said softly. His voice shaking. Then we quickly returned to the fire. Needless to say, we managed to easily stay awake all night then. However, that was the last time that any of my friends came over to my house.
Unfortunately, though, for me, that was just the beginning.
After that night, I started hearing it again. Not all the time, but often enough that I stopped feeling safe whenever I was alone. That’s when it always happened, when I was alone.
There were two moments that scared me more than the rest.
The first was a few months later. I was home alone after school. My mother and father were both working late that evening. I was lying on the living room sofa, watching TV. I remember the hum of the TV and the smell of the heat kicking on.
Then I heard it, right behind me. Close. “Gaaaaarreth… come look…”
I jumped up. The living room was empty. But the back door, the one that faced the woods, was half open.
I slammed the door shut, locked it, and locked every other door in the house.
The second was a year later. I was in the upstairs bathroom brushing my teeth before bed. The window over the sink faced towards the woods.
It was dark out, and my reflection floated over the glass.
Then the voice came again. Not from inside, but from right outside the window.
“Gareth…” I dropped my toothbrush into the sink and backed away, heart hammering. The light flickered. Just once. The room turned cold. I said, “Please just stop”. Then it repeated back to me, “Please just stop”. In my own voice.
Those were just two nights. But there were dozens more. Sometimes I’d hear it from the treeline when playing with my dog. Sometimes I’d be with my family on the porch and hear it, and no one else would even look up.
When I moved away for college, it stopped. Like it was tied to the land. It was like stepping out from under a shadow I didn’t know I’d been living in. I could breathe again. I could think without constantly checking windows and locking doors. Without flinching every time someone said my name too slowly. For the first time in years, I felt like a normal person, like myself, not something being hunted.
But every time I visited back home, just for a weekend, a holiday, or a quick stopover to see my parents. It was waiting. Same voice. Same tone. Same wrongness wrapped in something familiar. Still pulling at me. Still asking me to come back into the trees. It never said anything else. Just my name, or just an invitation. And every time, it was harder to ignore.
That’s why I stopped visiting. That’s why I built a life far away. Because I know what happens if I follow it. I know what it wants. I’ve felt the cold breath of it on the back of my neck.
Now my father’s gone. And I’ve inherited the house.
The woods. The voice.
My wife is excited. The kids think it’ll be an adventure, land to explore, a new room to call their own. They don’t understand why I’ve hesitated. Why I haven’t packed. Why I flinch every time they say, “It’ll be good to go back.”
I can’t go back.
Because I know it’s still out there. It remembers me. And it’s waiting.
If you ever hear your name called when you’re alone, from somewhere you can’t see, don’t answer.
Not even once.
Because if you do, it’ll never stop calling. And one day, it might sound exactly like someone you love, and lead you to your grave.
This has been Pale Lantern Media.
If the trees ever fall silent just before someone calls your name…
If a voice sounds close, but no one is near…
If the voice speaks too softly, or sounds just a little too much like you
Don’t answer.
Because it only needs you to reply once.
Like the video, share it, and subscribe for more stories that call to you from the woods.
And we’ll keep the lantern lit, for as long as we can.