At the time, a few friends and I were taking a vacation in a small town.
We left in the morning and spent nearly the entire day sightseeing. As the afternoon wore on, we decided to visit a fairly famous tourist attraction in the area.
It wasn't too crowded.
There was a large park, several old buildings, and a small bridge that was one of the favorite spots for taking pictures.
Of course, we didn't pass up the opportunity.
After walking around for quite a while, we finally stopped near the bridge.
“Let's take a picture first.”
One of my friends pulled out a phone.
We lined up and asked another visitor to take our picture.
“Ready?”
We all smiled.
Click.
One photo.
Since we didn't think it turned out very well, we asked for another.
Click.
Then one more.
When we were done, we thanked the person who had helped take the pictures.
Then we continued on our way.
That night, after returning to our lodging, we sat together and looked through the pictures we'd taken that day.
We laughed at some of the strange results. In one, someone's eyes were closed; in another, someone was looking the other way; in another, someone's face was covered by their hair—until one of my friends suddenly stopped scrolling.
“Hey.”
“What?”
They enlarged one of the photos.
“Who is that?”
We all leaned closer. In the picture, we were standing in a row in front of the bridge, but behind us...
there was a little child.
They were standing some distance away, facing the camera.
We all fell silent.
“Whose kid is that?”
No one knew.
We tried to remember whether there had been a little kid near us when the picture was taken.
None of us remembered seeing one, but we didn't think it was a big deal. Maybe it was just another visitor.
We went back to looking at the next photo.
The child wasn't there.
The second photo showed only us.
We laughed.
“Maybe they left.”
Then we looked at the first photo again.
Something was strange.
The child was standing behind us, but their shadow...
wasn't there.
We started to feel uncomfortable. My friend tried enlarging the part of the picture showing the child. Their face wasn't clear because of the photo's resolution. In the end, we decided not to talk about it anymore.
The next day, before heading home, we passed by the tourist attraction again.
For some reason, we were curious. We stopped near the bridge and looked around. There was no little child, nothing at all. One of my friends then asked the site's caretaker.
“Sir, do kids often play around here?”
The caretaker nodded.
“It gets busy during the day.”
“What about yesterday afternoon?”
The caretaker thought for a moment.
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah. Around the afternoon.”
He then said that the previous day had actually been fairly quiet because part of the area had been closed off.
We showed him the picture. The caretaker looked at our phone screen, and his expression changed. He didn't answer right away.
“Sir?”
He handed the phone back.
“Don't keep it.”
We were all confused.
“Why?”
He only told us that a few years earlier, a child had died near that bridge.
Since then, several visitors had claimed to see the figure of a little child around the area.
We didn't know whether the story was true.
In the end, we went home.
On the way, we talked about the picture. One of my friends then opened the gallery again.
The first photo was still there.
But the second and third photos...
were gone.
Even though we'd seen them earlier. We thought they might have been accidentally deleted. Then my friend opened the trash folder.
Nothing.
We tried checking the galleries on our other friends' phones. The same pictures were there, but strangely, in every photo showing us standing in front of the bridge...
the little child was always standing behind us.
Even in the pictures we remembered being taken a few seconds before and after that one. Not a single one of us had noticed the child while we were there.
To this day, I still keep the picture.
Not because I want to remember the vacation, but because every time I look at it, I always find myself wondering the same thing.
If the child really wasn't there when we took the picture...
then who was standing behind us?