10 Scary Stories (#Wattys2017)

5 - Read The Sign

One night, an 8-year old girl was sitting at home, watching television with her mother. Suddenly, the screen began flickering and the image of a ghostly woman in red inexplicably appeared on the TV. She was holding a small sign that was covered with words scrawled in red ink.

It read: "This is a special announcement. Parents, please send your children to bed immediately".

The mother was worried and told her daughter to go to bed. The young girl protested, but the mother remained firm. She grabbed her daughter by the arm and led her into the hallway. The girl meekly walked up the stairs to her bedroom and the mother returned to the living room. When she looked at the TV again, the woman on the screen was holding a new message.

It read: "Please wait".

The mother sat patiently on the sofa, waiting for the special announcement. After five minutes passed and nothing happened, she began to get bored.

Just then, the woman on the screen displayed a new message. The writing was tiny and very difficult to read. The mother inched closer to the TV, trying to make out the words.

The sign read: "Thank you. Your children are now dead".

The mother was horrified. She ran upstairs and burst into her daughter's bedroom. She found the young girl lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her neck and breathed a sigh of relief.

As she watched her daughter sleeping, the mother noticed that something was wrong. The blankets on the bed were not moving. Her daughter wasn't breathing. Slowly, she walked over to the girl's bedside and pulled the covers. She recoiled in horror and began screaming.

On the pillow, lay her daughter's severed head. Her body was nowhere to be found.

More than 500 children died that night. The police couldn't trace the strange television broadcast and the woman holding the sign was never identified.