The Baby Monitor That Heard My Dead Sister's Voice

I was never the kind to believe in ghosts.

Growing up, my sister Emily was the one who stayed up reading horror novels under the covers, watching ghost hunting shows with wide eyes, and insisting the attic door sometimes opened on its own. I was the older, grounded one. Practical. Skeptical. The kind who turned off the lights and said, "There’s no such thing," while she begged to keep the hallway light on.

Emily was killed in a car crash three weeks after her 25th birthday.

It was the kind of accident they said no one could survive. A drunk driver blew through a red light, struck her side of the car, and flipped her Honda Civic three times before it came to rest on its roof. She died instantly. At least, that’s what the coroner said.

I took the news like a hammer to the chest.

I hadn’t talked to her in two weeks. We had a fight about something stupid. I don't even remember what now. She called, I didn't answer. She texted, "Can we talk?" I put the phone down. I'd reply later.

Later never came.

We buried her on a gray, wet Tuesday. My mother collapsed at the grave. My father didn’t speak the whole time, just stood there clutching the folded piece of paper that held the eulogy he never got through. I delivered mine through tears and a shaking voice.

After the funeral, I moved back into my childhood home to help my parents. They were crumbling in a way I didn’t know how to fix. My mother had become silent, withdrawn. My father drank quietly in the garage until he thought no one noticed.

It was a week after I moved back that we started hearing her voice.

Not in the haunted house sort of way. Not echoes through the walls or whispering from the closet.

It came from the baby monitor.

The monitor had been tucked away in storage for years. I found it while organizing the attic, still in its dusty box. Emily had bought it at a garage sale when she was seventeen. "For when I babysit," she said. But mostly, she used it to spy on me or pretend to investigate paranormal activity in the house.

On a whim, I brought it downstairs and plugged it in. There was something comforting about the quiet static. The way it hummed softly in the background.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. It was past 2 AM when I heard it.

The static shifted. Then, softly, a voice.

"Maddy?"

My body froze.

I stared at the monitor. The green light flickered faintly. The sound was unmistakable.

"Maddy, are you there?"

It was Emily.

The first time, I told myself it was a recording. Maybe she'd played with it years ago and recorded her voice. Maybe the old device had picked up a baby monitor from a nearby house. Rational explanations. Plausible ones.

But then it happened again.

And again.

"Why didn’t you call me back?"

"It wasn't your fault."

"They lied, Maddy."

"You have to find the key."

I began recording the monitor every night. Her voice never came at the same time, but it always said something new. Always directed at me. And always, always her.

I tested the monitor during the day, walked around with it, tried to recreate the sound, see if it picked up anything from nearby devices.

Nothing. It was dead air unless it was night.

Unless I was alone.

My mother walked in on me playing back one of the recordings. I expected her to dismiss it, call it grief. Hallucination. But she didn’t.

She sat down slowly beside me and listened.

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

"I’ve heard her too," she whispered. "I thought I was going crazy."

She confessed to hearing Emily call her name in the middle of the night. To waking up to the sound of the piano playing softly downstairs—the same song Emily had practiced endlessly as a teen.

"Maybe she's not at peace," my mother said. "Maybe she needs something."

That's when we started digging.

Emily’s room hadn’t been touched since the day she died. I opened her drawers, checked notebooks, scanned her laptop. Nothing unusual.

Until I found the journal.

It was under a loose floorboard. Hidden. The entries were recent. The last one was dated two days before her death.

"I think someone is following me again. He was at the coffee shop. Same jacket, same stare. I told Maddy once but she said I was imagining things. Maybe I am. But why does he know my name?"

I read the entire journal in one night. She mentioned strange encounters, a car that showed up everywhere she went, even a voice on her phone that wasn’t hers. She said she was scared. That someone knew things about her.

I called the police the next morning.

They dismissed it. No signs of foul play in the crash. A drunk driver. Tragic, but straightforward.

But my gut told me otherwise.

Then I remembered the voicemail.

A week before she died, Emily left me a voicemail. I had never listened to it. I couldn’t. I think I was afraid of what she’d say. That she was angry. Or hurt. Or forgiving.

I played it.

"Maddy, hey... um. Something weird's been happening. I don’t know if it’s in my head. I just... I need to talk. Please call me. I love you."

That was it. But her voice—she sounded scared.

The final message from the monitor came three nights later.

"Maddy, it wasn't an accident."

Static.

"Check the dashcam."

I didn’t even know Emily had a dashcam. But my dad did. He remembered she had one installed after someone rear-ended her last year.

We found it in the wreckage. The police had missed it. Probably thought it was just part of the car’s electronics.

The SD card was still intact.

We plugged it in.

The footage showed everything.

Emily at a stoplight. Music playing softly. She looked nervous. Glancing in the rearview.

Then a car pulled up beside her. Not behind. Beside. The driver’s face turned.

I froze.

It was the man from her journal. Older. Bald. A deep scar along his cheek. He smiled directly at her.

She reached for her phone. Her mouth moved. Then she turned.

The light changed.

She pulled into the intersection.

And his car swerved deliberately into hers.

Not a drunk driver.

A hit.

We took the footage to the police.

Everything changed.

They launched a full investigation. Found the man. He had a history of stalking women. Multiple restraining orders. Somehow, he'd slipped through the cracks. Until Emily.

Her case was reopened. Her death reclassified.

We had the truth.

Because she told us.

The monitor never spoke again.

I still keep it by my bed.

Not because I expect her voice to return. But because I like the sound of the static. It reminds me of her laugh. Of ghost stories whispered in the dark. Of the nights she swore the attic door moved.

I don’t know where Emily is now.

But I know this:

She never stopped protecting me.

And I’ll never stop listening.