When the TV Woke at Midnight:

The first time it happened, I thought it was a glitch.

The television in our living room flickered to life at exactly midnight, its screen glowing against the heavy silence of the house. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and the sudden burst of light startled me awake. The channels began to flip rapidly, as though invisible fingers were pressing the remote.

I searched for the remote, convinced it had slipped between the cushions and gotten stuck. But it wasn’t there. The remote lay untouched on the table, batteries neatly inside. My heart thudded as the channels kept changing, faster and faster, until the screen froze on a static-filled news broadcast. The anchor’s lips moved, but the sound was distorted, warped into whispers I couldn’t understand.

I turned the TV off. The silence returned. I told myself it was nothing.

The second night, it happened again. Midnight. Darkness. The screen lit up. This time, I was ready. I sat upright, watching as the channels flipped on their own. My breath caught when the screen stopped on a children’s cartoon — one I hadn’t seen since childhood. The characters laughed, their voices echoing strangely in the empty room.

I felt a chill. That cartoon had aired decades ago, long before streaming or reruns. How could it appear now?

I unplugged the television. The screen went black. I went to bed, unsettled but determined to forget.

By the third night, forgetting was impossible.

The TV turned on even though it wasn’t plugged in. The glow spread across the room, casting shadows that seemed to move. The channels flipped again, but slower this time, deliberate, as though someone unseen was searching for something specific.

It stopped on a channel showing a family dinner. My family. My parents, my younger self, sitting at the table years ago. I froze, staring at the impossible scene. My mother’s voice rang clear: “Eat before it gets cold.”

Tears burned my eyes. My mother had passed away five years earlier. I tried to tell myself it was a dream, a hallucination born of grief. But the next night, the TV returned. Midnight. Darkness. The glow. The channels.

This time, the broadcast showed my father, sitting alone in his chair, coughing. He looked frail, weaker than I remembered. I whispered his name, but the image didn’t respond. The screen flickered, then went black.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t explain it.

The nights stretched on, each one bringing new visions. Sometimes the television showed strangers — faces I didn’t recognize, speaking in languages I couldn’t understand. Other times, it showed moments from my own life, memories I had forgotten, arguments I wished I could erase. The most terrifying night was when the television showed me.

Not my past self, but me, sitting on the couch, staring at the screen. The broadcast mirrored my movements exactly, like a reflection. Then, in the broadcast, I saw myself turn my head — but in reality, I hadn’t moved.

I bolted upright, heart pounding. The version of me on the screen smiled.

I stopped sleeping in the living room. I locked the door, avoided the television, tried to convince myself it was all in my head. But every night, at midnight, I heard the faint hum through the walls. The TV was waking again, searching, whispering.

One night, I gathered the courage to face it. I sat in front of the screen as it flickered to life. The channels flipped, then stopped on a blank, black screen. Slowly, words appeared:

“We are not done with you.”

I haven’t turned the TV on since.

But every night, at midnight, I hear it humming in the dark.A low, constant reminder that silence is never whole.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s grief that powers the screen, or memory refusing to fade. Perhaps the voices are not ghosts at all, but echoes of the past demanding to be heard. And so I live with the hum, with the flicker I dare not face. Because some stories are not meant to be switched off. They wait — patient and relentless — in the shadows, until the night you finally listen.