At 4 a.m., I woke up to a singing voice on my baby monitor. It repeatedly said,
“Hush now, baby, I came for you.”
We were alone. I ran to my baby’s room, and she was asleep. I tried to calm myself, saying it was a bad dream. But as I adjusted her blanket, I noticed something strange—her stuffed rabbit, the one I’d left on the shelf the night before, was tucked under her arm.
I don’t scare easily, but something about that moment chilled me to the bone. I live in a small two-bedroom rental house on the edge of town—just me and my daughter, Mira. She’s nine months old. Her father left before she was born. No drama, no shouting—he just stopped answering my messages after our last ultrasound.
So it’s been me, solo. I’m used to weird noises—pipes groaning, wind knocking branches against the siding—but a singing voice in my baby’s room? That’s different. That night, I barely slept. I sat in the hallway outside her room, listening. Nothing.
The next morning, I checked the baby monitor app’s recording. Nothing had saved. It had glitched or stopped completely around 3:58 a.m. I told myself it was probably a weird dream that bled into reality. Sleep deprivation does stuff to your brain.
But then it happened again. Two nights later.
Same voice, same phrase. Only this time, I saw something on the monitor. Just for a split second—a figure leaning over Mira’s crib, like a shadow bent into the light. It vanished before I could blink. I sprinted to her room, heart thudding, hands shaking. She was fast asleep again. No sign of anyone.
That was the moment I called the police.
They were polite, but dismissive. No signs of forced entry. They chalked it up to a malfunctioning monitor and an overworked single mom running on no sleep. One officer even joked that I should get some rest before I scared myself into an accident.
But I knew what I saw.
So I bought a second camera—a cheap security one off Marketplace—and set it up in the corner, opposite the baby monitor. It recorded to a cloud, not just the app. I told no one about it.
A week passed. No singing, no strange shadows. I started to relax. Then I got a notification on the camera app at 3:47 a.m.—Motion detected in Nursery Cam.
The footage showed a woman.
Not a ghost. Not a shadow. A real woman. Pale skin, gray hoodie, hair tied back in a frizzy ponytail. She came in from the closet. Not the door. She crouched by Mira’s crib, whispered something I couldn’t hear, and tucked the rabbit toy under her arm. Then she vanished back into the closet like she belonged there.
I was frozen. Not just from fear, but confusion. The closet had no door to the outside. It was a standard built-in, maybe four feet wide.
I grabbed Mira and called the police again. This time, I had proof.
They came with dogs, flashlights, the whole works. The closet, upon inspection, had a loose panel behind the hanging clothes. Behind that? A narrow crawlspace that led to the attic. From there, an access point to the garage rafters.
And in that dusty attic space, they found signs of life.
Blankets. Food wrappers. A jug of water. A torn photo of a newborn baby.
They arrested her the next day. Her name was Saifa. She was twenty-two. Had once lived in the house with her parents, years before I rented it. Her family had lost the place after a foreclosure. She had mental health issues and nowhere else to go after her mom passed away last year. Apparently, she’d crawled back in through the rafters, living above us for weeks, maybe longer.
The baby—Mira—looked like her little sister who’d died when they were kids.
It turned out, the rabbit wasn’t mine. It had belonged to Saifa. She’d been sneaking in, singing lullabies, leaving that toy.
I couldn’t stop crying after I learned all this. I was angry, shaken, terrified—but also heartbroken. Saifa had never tried to hurt Mira. The footage showed her being… careful. Almost tender.
Still, she was charged with trespassing and child endangerment. I pressed charges. I didn’t want to—but I had to. I kept thinking: What if she snapped one night? What if she took Mira and disappeared?
After that, I changed the locks, installed alarms, even moved Mira into my bedroom for a while. Life went on. Sort of.
But then, about six months later, I got a letter. No return address. Just my name, and inside—a handwritten note.
“I never meant to scare you. I just wanted to keep her safe. I thought maybe… if I could hold a baby again, I could be okay. I’m sorry. I know I can’t come back.”
There was a second thing in the envelope. A small photo of Saifa as a child, holding a rabbit toy. The same one from Mira’s crib.
I sat on the kitchen floor and cried. Long, ugly, hiccuping sobs.
And here’s where things start to turn. Not dramatically, but subtly. Life shifted.
I started volunteering at a women’s shelter twice a week. Most of the women there weren’t dangerous—just lost, unsupported, out of options. I met people with stories even more heartbreaking than Saifa’s. One woman, Nahla, had fled domestic violence with her toddler. Another, Karin, had aged out of foster care and had no one to call when she got laid off.
I started bringing Mira along sometimes. The women doted on her. And something in me softened. I stopped seeing Saifa as a monster in the attic and started seeing her as a symptom—of a society that forgets people like her.
Fast forward a year. I got a steady job at a community nonprofit. Mira started walking. I started sleeping better.
And then one afternoon, I ran into Saifa again.
Not in my attic—at the library. She was sitting quietly in a corner with a counselor, part of a re-entry program run by the same nonprofit I’d ended up working with.
We locked eyes. Neither of us moved. She gave a tiny, almost invisible nod. I nodded back.
No words. Just recognition.
I went home and hugged Mira a little longer that night.
So here’s the thing.
Yes, what happened to me was terrifying. Unnerving beyond belief. But I’m also aware that not all danger comes from cruelty. Some of it comes from deep, unresolved grief.
Saifa didn’t “get away with it”—she faced the law. But she also got the help she needed. And maybe, in some strange way, Mira saved her just by existing.
Now, when I check the baby monitor (because yes, I still do), I don’t hear lullabies. Just steady breathing, soft whimpers, the occasional giggle.
But every now and then, I leave the rabbit toy in Mira’s crib.
Not because I believe in ghosts. But because I believe in grace.
And maybe, in a world that feels more chaotic by the day, that’s something worth holding on to.
If this moved you in any way, like or share it. You never know who might need the reminder that healing can come from the strangest places.