The story began on one windy winter night. Around midnight, I was
sitting in front of the computer reading my emails and listening to Jazz
music through the earphone.
I was the only one awake in the room; my roommate was sleeping soundly.
The first piece of email was a funny one from a friend who is very
outgoing and naughty and always enjoys playing tricks on others. I
noticed that there was an attachment file included. My friend said in
the email that it was a certain kind of program that could help me work
faster on computers, and that when I opened the attachment, there would
be some weird numbers on the screen, then they would disappear. Out of
curiosity, I opened the attachment. As the speed was a bit slow, I went
on to read the next email, which was an article written by a mother for
her son. She told him how much she loved him and that she was dying but
she wished that he would bravely go on with his life. The narration was
so touching that tears welled up in my eyes.
Suddenly, a harsh scream came to my ears--a prolonged, crying scream
from a woman. I was scared to death, for there on the computer screen
was the pale face of a dead woman with long messy hair. What was worse,
she was staring at me with her eyes wide-open, full of grudge and
hatred. The terrible sight stayed on the screen for about 1 minute,
then it went off.
I was scared to death and could not make a sound; I had lost the ability
to react. My body was shaking all over from head to toe; even my hair
felt as if it were standing straight up. The only thing I could think
of was that just a week ago, my roommate had seen a vague shadow of
something at midnight when everybody in the room was sleeping, and she
claimed that it was something like a phantom. Could this be the
phantom, appearing this time to me instead? Then I remembered that a few
days ago, both my roommate and I woke to find scratches and bruises on
our shoulders and our bellies without any good reason. As my
imagination ran wild, the thought of such mysterious happenings only
scared me more.
It was dark inside the room with only a small lamp on and me shivering
in front of the monitor. I was too scared to move. Then the scream and
the face of the ghost showed up on the screen again. I was freaking
crazy. In one second, I turned off the computer and rushed to my bed,
covering my head with a quilt to hide from whatever fearful phantoms
that might come my way. I don』t remember when I finally calmed down and
fell asleep.
I woke up early the next morning, and I told my other roommates what had
happened the night before in the room. They comforted me and tried to
figure out what really happened. They turned on the computer and
reopened the attachment that I opened the night before, and the same
scary face appeared again. Then I realized that it was only a joke
played on me by my friend. There was really nothing to it. I was
really relieved and went back to my usual way of life. As to the
phantom and the scratches and bruises, nobody can tell me what the truth
is and what had caused them. Something mysterious still resides in our
room……