Scary Stories: Hide and Seek

A high school freshman and two friends decide to explore a notoriously haunted house in their neighborhood—the one where no tenant ever stays longer than six months, where the previous owner buried all his dead pets in the back garden. They set boundaries: play hide and seek in the yard, but the house itself is off limits. The narrator counts, finds Carol almost immediately, and the two of them go looking for Erin. Then they hear movement inside the house. They shout at Erin to come out. She emerges from behind the bushes, not from the house. They turn toward the large windows overlooking the garden. Inside the pitch-black house, the narrator sees a girl, maybe eleven or twelve, wearing a dark dress with a high collar and two braids—something from a history book. Behind her, a tall man with pure hatred on his face reaches out to choke her. Then they vanish.

This is the first of four stories in this episode, each linked by a single premise: hide and seek becomes the occasion for something inexplicable. The game's structure—counting, hiding, seeking, the moment of discovery—creates a natural opening for encounters that the storytellers cannot explain but also cannot dismiss.

The Doppelgänger at the Playground