MOMMY HORROR STORY

There’s something wrong with my mom. I know that sounds like something a teenager would say after getting grounded, but I’m not joking. It’s not the usual “she’s acting weird” type of thing. I mean something is deeply, unnaturally wrong with her. It started last Thursday, and since then, I’ve been too scared to sleep.

It all began after Mom came back from her night shift at the hospital. She’s a nurse and works odd hours, so late nights weren’t unusual. But when she came through the front door that night, something about her felt… wrong. Not tired or stressed. Just wrong. She stood in the doorway longer than normal, staring at me with her eyes wide open, her lips slightly parted like she forgot how to breathe.

I asked her if she was okay, but she didn’t answer. She walked right past me, her movements stiff like her joints didn’t bend properly. The sound of her footsteps was off too—like something heavier was moving inside her body. I stood in the living room, frozen, watching her disappear into the hallway without turning on a single light.

The next morning, she was in the kitchen making breakfast like nothing happened. But it wasn’t normal. The eggs were raw in the middle, the toast was burnt, and she kept humming a tune I’d never heard before. A slow, warbling hum like it was from an old nursery rhyme. When I asked her what song it was, she stopped humming mid-note and stared at me.

“I didn’t hum anything, sweetheart,” she said, smiling too widely.

I decided not to press her on it. But something else was different—her eyes. My mom has brown eyes. She always did. But now, they looked darker. Almost black. I convinced myself it was just the lighting, but deep down, I knew better.

That night, I woke up to the sound of whispering. At first, I thought it was the TV, but when I listened closely, I realized it was coming from inside the house. Faint, female whispers, repeating the same word: “Mommy… Mommy…” over and over again.

I got up and crept down the hallway, my phone flashlight shaking in my hand. The whispers led me to the bathroom. The door was shut, but the light was on underneath. I placed my ear against the door—and the whispering stopped instantly.

When I slowly opened it, the bathroom was empty. The mirror was fogged up even though no one had used the shower. Written in the condensation were the words: “Mommy’s not Mommy anymore.”

I ran back to my room and locked the door. The next morning, my mom acted like nothing was wrong. She packed my lunch, kissed my forehead, and even called me by a nickname she hadn’t used in years—”pumpkin seed.” But her smile never reached her eyes. Those empty, black eyes.

I told my best friend Danielle everything. She laughed at first, until I showed her a picture I took of my mom that morning. The photo showed her standing in the kitchen, but her face was blurred—smeared and stretched like something from a broken camera feed. Everything else was clear, just not her.

“Dude… that’s messed up,” Danielle whispered. “You need to tell someone.”

I tried. I called my aunt. She was close with my mom, and I thought maybe she’d know if something weird had happened recently. But when she answered, she was panicked. Her voice was shaky.

“She’s not supposed to be alive,” my aunt said.

I asked her what she meant, and she told me my mom had been in a terrible accident on the way home from work last Thursday. The hospital said she died on impact. But… she came home that same night. My mom, or something that looked like her, had come home.

I dropped the phone. My whole body went cold. That explained the weird behavior, the eyes, the voice, the humming. Whatever was in my house—it wasn’t my mother.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I barricaded my door and sat on the floor with a kitchen knife clutched in my hand. At 3:08 a.m., I heard the hallway creak. Then… a soft knock.

“Sweetheart? Let Mommy in.”

The voice was so sweet. Too sweet. Like someone pretending to sound like her. It was wrong in every way—too calm, too smooth, too practiced.

“Open the door, pumpkin seed. I made you your favorite… banana pancakes…”

I didn’t respond.

The door handle jiggled gently. “You’re making Mommy sad.”

Then, silence.

I thought she left. But when I looked under the door, I saw her fingers—long, thin, and grayish—resting against the floor. Just resting. As if she was waiting.

I didn’t sleep that night. When morning came, I opened the door slowly. The hallway was empty. But all along the wall, there were scratch marks. Deep, angry gashes in the wood.

I decided to go stay with Danielle for a few days. I couldn’t be in that house. Not with her. I packed a small bag and told my mom—I mean, the thing wearing her skin—that I was going to a school retreat. She smiled and said, “Of course, baby. Just be back before dark. I worry.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. Not emotionally—literally cracked. Like a record skipping.

At Danielle’s house, I tried to sleep. But that night, around 2 a.m., her dog started barking at the back door. When Danielle’s dad checked, no one was there. But in the backyard, we found muddy footprints. Bare feet. Leading in circles. Over and over and over.

That morning, I got a text from my home phone.

“Come home, pumpkin seed. Mommy’s getting lonely.”

I dropped the phone again. The message was followed by a picture. It was my room—but not how I left it. Everything had been moved around. On the bed was a doll. It looked like me.

I blocked the number.

The police didn’t believe me. Of course they didn’t. My aunt tried to explain, but they said the death records were sealed. The hospital claimed there had been no crash. They even produced security footage of my mom leaving work unharmed. But when I asked for the timestamp—it said 3:33 a.m. That made no sense. My mom’s shift ends at midnight.

No one wanted to listen. Not until Danielle disappeared.

She went missing two nights later. The last message she sent me was a voice note. I still have it. It was her whispering, “She’s at my window. She has your voice. She’s calling me ‘pumpkin seed’…”

After that—silence.

They found her house empty. No signs of struggle. But scratched into the walls were the same words from my bathroom mirror: “Mommy’s not Mommy anymore.”

I couldn’t run anymore. I had to go back.

When I returned home, the house was dark. Cold. The walls were covered in that humming sound, echoing as if the house itself was singing it.

I walked down the hallway. The smell of something rotting filled the air. And then I saw her.

Sitting at the kitchen table.

Not even trying to pretend anymore.

Her skin was stretched too tight across her face. Her eyes were fully black. Her mouth was wide open, as if unhinged. A long, gray tongue slid from between her teeth. She looked up.

“Where’ve you been, pumpkin seed? Mommy missed you…”

I froze.

She stood up, her body cracking with each step like old wood. And then she said something that will haunt me forever.

“You came out of me. You’ll go back into me.”

She lunged.

I ran.

I don’t remember much after that. Just screaming, blood, and running until I passed out in the neighbor’s yard. They found me the next morning, shaking and barefoot. I never went back to that house.

They said it was all trauma. That I imagined it. That Danielle ran away. That my mom was “just tired.” But I know what I saw. I know what I lived.

And sometimes—at 3:33 a.m.—I get a text.

From my home number.

“Open the door, sweetheart. Mommy’s waiting.”