The Digital Séance | A Chilling Lockdown Tale of Technology and the Supernatural

The Digital Séance | A Chilling Lockdown Tale of Technology and the Supernatural

The Isolation Experiment

It began in the early months of lockdown — that strange, suspended time when days bled together and the world felt smaller than ever. Cut off from their usual routines, a group of friends tried to stay connected through late-night video calls. Most nights were filled with jokes, drinks, and boredom. Until Sarah found something online.

It was a website advertising a “Safe Digital Séance.”

At first, they laughed. It sounded like clickbait. But the page was too well-designed — black background, gold lettering, and an invitation that read:
“Connect beyond the screen. Speak to the unseen.”

It even came with instructions: dim the lights, light a candle, and open a shared video room at midnight. It promised “a guided metaphysical experience” through a program that would “align digital frequencies with spiritual resonance.”

Half science, half nonsense. The perfect pandemic distraction.

The Séance Begins

When midnight came, five webcams flickered to life — Sarah, Mark, Ellie, David, and Louise. Candles burned beside each laptop, tiny orange halos glowing against darkened rooms. The connection lagged, voices overlapping in bursts of static.

“Feels weird, right?” David joked. “Like we’re about to hack a ghost.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and began reading the script from the website. “We open the gate between networks and worlds. If a spirit hears us, make your presence known.”

The silence that followed stretched too long. Just as Mark began to speak, his screen froze. The others laughed — until his voice distorted through the speakers, dragging syllables out like a tape caught in rewind.

“Make… your… preeeesence… known.”

The lights flickered. Then all five screens glitched at once — faces pixelating into shapes that didn’t quite belong to any of them.

The Entity Joins the Call

At first, they thought it was a lag. A network hiccup. But then a sixth window appeared on the video call — unnamed, no camera, no icon, just a black square.

“Who’s that?” Ellie asked.

Nobody had invited anyone else.

A faint sound came through the empty window. It wasn’t feedback. It was breathing.

Louise reached for her laptop, intending to end the call, but her mouse froze on the screen. One by one, their microphones clicked on automatically. Something whispered through the static — words too quiet to understand, but all of them heard their own names.

Then came the tapping. A rhythmic knock through each of their speakers.

Mark, terrified, pulled the plug from his laptop. The sound didn’t stop.

The Haunting Spreads

By the next day, they’d all agreed to delete the recording and forget it ever happened. But that night, each of them reported the same thing — their devices turning on by themselves. Phones lighting up in the dark. Unread messages appearing on blank chat threads that read:

“Still here.”

Sarah swore she saw someone behind her in her webcam reflection. David said his smart speaker started talking at 3:00 a.m. — saying his own voice back to him.

The fear grew. When they tried another call to discuss what was happening, the black square reappeared before anyone joined. And this time, it turned its camera on.

What they saw was impossible — a flickering room that looked like all of theirs combined, as if the entity was broadcasting from between their worlds. And at the center of the frame, a face began to form — warped, shifting, the color of burnt pixels.

It smiled.

The Digital Footprint

They stopped talking after that night. Deleted their accounts. Changed numbers.

But Sarah’s new phone still glitched every time she tried a video call. Sometimes, she said, she’d see the same sixth window flash into existence for just a second before disappearing again.

Mark went offline completely. His friends say he lives off-grid now, refusing to use anything with a screen.

David wasn’t so lucky. His laptop was found still on weeks later — microphone active, camera light blinking. The file saved on his desktop was titled: “FINAL_CALL.MP4.”

No one’s been able to open it.

Written by Whispers in Nightmares