The Shadows in Our Photographs

The Story

The Shadows in Our PhotographsIt started with a picture.

“Our photos were supposed to capture memories — but they revealed something that wanted to erase us instead.”

Four of us had gone hiking up to Ridgepoint, a jagged overlook above the valley where the river glitters like a silver vein. The sun had just dipped, bleeding the sky with purples and gold. We asked another hiker to take our photo: me, Ashley, Ryan, and Mara, all pressed together, sweaty and smiling.

When Ashley posted it later that night, Ryan was the first to notice.

“Uh… who’s that?” he messaged in the group chat.

At first, I thought he was joking. But when I zoomed in, I saw it: behind us, near the treeline, stood a shape. A figure. Black as pitch, with no face, no detail, just a silhouette darker than the shadows around it.

None of us had seen anyone there.

“Probably a trick of the light,” Mara said. She was always the practical one. “Or some hiker in dark clothes.”

But the next day, Ashley posted another picture — this time from our night at the diner. And there it was again. In the booth behind us, though we swore the booth was empty when the photo was taken.

The figure was closer this time.

We started combing through our phones. Every picture from the past week — the arcade, the park, even selfies — carried the same intrusion. Always the same black silhouette. Always closer.

By the weekend, the jokes stopped.

Mara vanished first.

She didn’t show up for our usual Saturday movie night. Calls went unanswered. When we drove to her apartment, the landlord swore the place had been empty for months.

We still had her in our group chat. We still had her clothes at our place. But when I checked the photo from Ridgepoint, she was gone. Only three of us remained, smiling at the overlook.

And behind us — the silhouette, darker, sharper, almost brushing Ryan’s shoulder.

Ashley stopped sleeping. She would text at 3 a.m., panicked: I can feel it. I see it in my mirror. It’s following me.

Then one morning, she didn’t answer at all. Her room looked abandoned, bed made, phone dead on the nightstand. In every photo where Ashley had once been — including the diner booth, the park, the arcade — she was erased. Just Ryan and me, two smiling idiots, with that shadow stretching longer, looming larger.

Ryan refused to look at the pictures after that. “Delete them,” he begged me. “If we don’t look, maybe it stops.”

But I couldn’t. Something in me needed to know.

Last night, I sat alone in my room, scrolling through our memories. Ridgepoint. The diner. The arcade. Ashley’s smile, Mara’s laugh, Ryan’s crooked grin. My chest ached with the loss of them, even as their images blurred, faded, vanished entirely.

Until there was only one picture left.

The most recent one. Taken at my desk, just yesterday. I don’t even remember snapping it.

But there it was: a photo of me. Just me, sitting under the warm glow of my lamp.

And behind me, pressed against the wall, closer than ever — a figure so dark it seemed to bleed into the frame.

When I blinked, I realized something horrifying.

The silhouette wasn’t just a shadow. It was a shape that matched mine exactly.

Not behind me. Not near me.

It was me.

And I think, when I wake tomorrow, the photographs will tell a new truth.

I’ll be gone.

Only the shadows will remain.

The End