Sometimes, the scariest thing isn’t what’s hiding under the bed. It’s what you carry in your chest when the room goes quiet.

Not all hauntings come with footsteps or flickering lights. Some arrive in the form of a sentence you can’t forget. A conversation you wish went differently. A person you miss but can’t reach. A feeling that keeps knocking, just to make sure you’re still there.

Lately, I’ve come to realize that the deepest hauntings aren’t the ones I’ve written about. They’re the ones I’ve lived through.

There’s one I’ve been noticing lately. It doesn’t slam doors or scream my name. It just sits beside me, quietly, when someone I care about is hurting. It whispers things like: ‘Are you enough? Should you be doing more? Are you just background noise in someone else’s story?’

It’s not a ghost with a name, but it has a presence. And lately, it’s been hovering as I navigate the emotions stirred by someone I care deeply for—someone walking through uncertainty and emotional fog. He calls when he needs advice, when the weight feels too much, when he doesn’t know how to process what he’s feeling. And I listen, I guide, I show up. But sometimes, afterward, that little haunting slips in, wondering if I’m truly helping or if I’m just someone he turns to when no one else answers.

And there are echoes, too. Ones that belong to someone from my past, someone who used silence like a weapon and made me question whether my honesty was ever truly welcome. That old ghost still knocks now and then, especially when I see glimpses of that same pattern in someone new. It doesn’t mean they’re the same—but my heart, having been burned before, remembers the heat.

But even in the haunting, I see something new. I see growth.

I see that I haven’t run from the echoes. I’ve faced them. I’ve opened my door to them, let them sit with me, and in doing so, I’ve discovered I am far stronger and more resilient than I once believed.

I am not a supporting character in someone else’s drama. I am my own main character, with empathy that doesn’t weaken me. It defines me. It reflects others back to themselves. It offers warmth, wisdom, and a safe place to land. And when I feel haunted by doubts or tangled emotions, I don’t push them away like I used to. I learn from them.

That’s the thing about real hauntings—they don’t just chill your spine. They shape your spirit.

So here I am, scribbling by candlelight, not to banish my ghosts but to understand them. To see them as markers of how far I’ve come. And maybe, just maybe, to remind someone reading this that they’re not alone in their own quiet hauntings.

What has haunted you lately, dear reader? And what might it be trying to teach you?