I used to laugh when people talked about haunted houses in Roma, Mexico City. You know the kind of stories neighbors pass around like gossip—especially the whispers about that legendary “witches’ house” near Río de Janeiro Park. Creepy? Sure. But I never thought our home, the one we’d lived in since the 90s, could be part of that same shadowy map.

For a long time, our house was just… home. Peaceful. Safe. The place we crawled back to after moving through rougher parts of the city. If anything strange ever happened, it was the kind of “strange” you can explain away with stress, aging pipes, or an overactive imagination.

Then my mother finally told us the truth.

She wasn’t the type to invent ghosts. She had psychiatric struggles, yes, but nothing tied to hallucinations. And yet she kept seeing them—two figures that became the private horror of her daily life: a tall man who walked the hallway like he owned it, and a woman who cried in the bathroom like she was trapped in an endless loop of grief.

When she gathered us and confessed what she’d been seeing for years, I didn’t feel fear first. I felt heartbreak. The kind that hits your chest like a blunt object. My mother had been suffering in silence while we lived under the same roof, laughing, arguing, eating dinner, pretending everything was normal.

We started protecting her like a fragile flame. We took turns staying close. We made sure she was never alone. And for a while, it helped—until one night she woke my father screaming that the tall man had opened her bedroom door and crawled under the bed.

My dad tried to calm her… but the door was actually open.

He searched the room. The closet. The living room. The kitchen. Nothing. Still, he stayed up to guard her sleep. He promised she was safe.

But her dreams turned darker. She said the tall man wouldn’t let the crying woman leave. That his “mission” was to keep her trapped forever as punishment for whatever she did in life. My mother started looking exhausted in a way sleep couldn’t fix. Her body seemed to carry the weight of something invisible and relentless.

Then we came home from school and found her in bed.

She looked like she was sleeping. But she had taken the pills—those same pills that sometimes helped her calm down. She chose to leave. Not because she didn’t love us, but because she couldn’t survive the pain and terror anymore.

And after that, I broke.

Grief doesn’t always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like obsession. I became desperate to hear her voice one last time, to know she was okay, to feel forgiven. And when you’re drowning in that kind of desperation, you’ll reach for anything that looks like a rope.

That’s how I became the easiest target in the world.

A friend of a friend introduced me to people who promised a “custom” Ouija board—one prepared specifically for me through a ritual. I paid with no receipt. No real proof. Just blind faith fueled by grief. They told me I’d meet the messenger at night near Panteones Metro. He’d be carrying a black bag.

I still remember the platform. Empty. Cold. My stomach tight with fear.

The man who approached me looked exactly like someone who sells you a secret you’ll regret. He gave me instructions, showed me the board briefly, then tucked it away and left as fast as he arrived. I clutched that bag like it contained oxygen.

They told me to wait until Day of the Dead.

So I did.

When the planchette finally moved, I felt my entire world tilt. I asked if it was my mother. It said yes. It answered personal questions. Childhood details. Things no stranger should know. Warmth filled the room. For one night, I believed my mother had found her way back to me.

Even my father had a moment of joy. He told me he felt her presence when he walked in. He rushed out to buy things for an ofrenda, cooked her favorite meal, and for a brief, fragile moment, our grief softened.

Then the house changed.

My father saw the crying woman in the shower—the same one my mother had described. My sister started seeing the tall man in darkness. And when I tried the board again, the “voice” grew strange. It asked for things I refused to do. When I demanded the truth, it admitted it wasn’t my mother.

It claimed there were more presences in our house. And something worse—something hungry—that I had “let out.”

I wanted to dismiss it as fear… until my sister was slapped.

Not a metaphor. Not a dream. A real, physical blow so hard her handprint showed like a cruel signature.

That was the moment I stopped asking whether this was grief talking.

Our friends stopped visiting. Our family avoided the house. Even when we traveled to Veracruz for a brief escape, the tall man appeared at the window during dinner—as if to remind us we weren’t leaving alone.

We tried to pretend we were imagining it.

But deep down, we knew the truth.

If you were in my place, what would you believe? That grief made us delusional… or that love made me reckless enough to open a door I didn’t know how to close? 😔