I grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge and started back towards my room when I noticed my little sister staring intently at her phone – like, more intently than she usually does. I stared at her for several minutes. That usually drives her nuts, but today she didn’t even notice.

“What gives, Squirrel?”

Without looking up or putting any emotion into the words, she replied, “I’m not a squirrel.”

I waited a moment longer and when she didn’t follow it up I stood behind the couch to see what she was looking at so intensely. “Reddit? I didn’t even know you knew what Reddit was.”

That got her. She tore her eyes away from the screen of her phone long enough to roll them and sigh dramatically. “Of course I know what Reddit is. Duh.”

“Okay,” I said, “What’re you looking at? Tips on doing cat’s eye makeup that mom won’t let you go out with,” I love needling her.

She gave me her best tween scowl. “For your information, I’m reading about this new TikTok filter.”

I chuckled to myself, “Yeah, really deep stuff, Squirrel.”

She threw a pillow at me. “I’m not a squirrel!” she exclaimed, but then followed with, “This is serious, Annie – there’s, like, this whole paranormal conspiracy and stuff around it.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “Paranormal conspiracy, Squirrel?”

She sighed dramatically again – I swear she’s been practicing that in a mirror. “Come here – this is super weird.”

My natural tendency was to brush her off and go back to my room – she was my little sister. Honestly, I don’t think she’s ever had anything interesting to share. But, I don’t know… maybe it was how serious she was… I moved around and took a seat next to her on the couch. “Alright, Squirrel, what’s up?”

“Okay,” she said, switching to the TikTok app on her phone and checking her liked videos, “watch this…” I looked at the screen.

A girl my age looks into the screen as eerie music plays in the background. “This filter is supposed to show ghosts around you…” she explains and then the image stills while a colored circle with the word “TikTok” fills indicating a filter is being applied. When it reached 100%, the image starts moving again, and behind the girl a ghoulish figure stares at the screen. The girl screams and the video goes wonky as the girl presumably dropped her phone.

“Cute,” I said. What am I supposed to be seeing?” I said with a trace of impatience in my voice.

“Look,” she said as if it were self-evident (spoiler: it wasn’t). She scrolled back the video to just after the filter was applied and the ghoulish face appeared and she paused it. “See that face?”

“The ‘ghost’?” I made air quotes.

“Yeah. Now check this out…” she swiped the screen back to Reddit. “This is in the r/Paranormal group.” She pulled up a post that had side-by-side images – one was the ghoulish face from the TikTok video and the other was a crying boy, maybe five years old. “See?”

“Okay, yeah, the faces look similar, but little kids crying always look ghoulish.”

“That kid is the TikTok poster’s brother. He died a year before when he fell into their pool.”

“Jesus, that’s dark, Squirrel.”

“There’s more. This whole thread is filled with examples from people using that filter and getting ghosts showing up behind them that bear an uncanny resemblance to someone dead that they knew.” She started scrolling through the thread and the side-by-side photos certainly seemed uncanny if nothing else.

“I mean, okay, that’s weird… I’ll give you that.”

She turned to me suddenly. “I tried it.”

“Madelaine Elizabeth Williams,” I exclaimed her full name, shocked into using what I’m sure would eventually be my mom voice, “Why did you think that was a good idea?”

But she ignored me and flipped the apps on her phone back to TikTok and opened up the videos she created – it looked like a lot of makeup attempts (called it!).

“Mom is going to kill you, Squirrel!”

She ignored me. “Look at this,” she chose the one non-makeup-related video. It was my little sister staring into the camera – from the background it looked like it in the living room where we were sitting. I wondered how long ago she made the video. Before I could ask, the colored circle indicating the filter being applied started rapidly counting up to 100%. When the image started moving again, a ghostly figure gaped from behind my sister whose eyes tracked its movement in the screen. She paused the video. “Do you see it?”

“It looks like that Troll from that 80’s horror movie we weren’t supposed to see,” I said.

“Really, that’s what you see?” she said with more incredulity than I think I’d ever heard from her.

“Yeah. What am I supposed to see?”

She flipped to another app and showed me her own side-by-side with the troll ghoul on one side… and our Dad’s dad on the other side.

“Gramp Gramp?”

“It’s crazy, right?”

“What? That Gramp Gramp looked like a troll? I mean, he was like a hundred and fifty when he died… everyone looks like a troll at that age…” I joked because… she was right. There was a resemblance I couldn’t deny. I think she could see I knew she was right. We were both quiet for a long time.

“You do it,” she said finally.

“Wait, what? I mean, no. Why would I…” I stammered. But, honestly, I was a little scared.

“Are you scared?” She smirked at me. Damnit, I wasn’t going to let my little sister think I was scared.

“Fine,” I said cooly and reached for her phone. “How do I do this stupid thing?”

She switched to the TikTok app and held the phone in front of me pressed the “Record” button. I stared at my own face and tried to ignore the zit starting to form right above my nose…

“Alright…” I said, “now what?”

She pressed another button and the filter percentage circle started counting up. Finally, it reached 100% and a ghost appeared over my shoulder. My mouth dropped open. The ghoulish ghost figure behind me was… my own face.