When she was in third grade, junior Julia Ryan was home alone with her older sister while their mother was at the grocery store. The day was relatively normal, and she was going about her business when the phone rang and Julia answered. There was a man on the other line whose voice Julia did not recognize. He asked to speak to her mother.

Julia responded by saying that her mother was in the shower and could not make it to the phone at the moment. The man said that he knew her mother wasn’t home. Frightened, Julia said that her mother was indeed in the  shower and that she would have her mother call him back. Julia hung up the phone without waiting for a reply from the man.

“Chills went down my spine, my stomach twisted in a ball, and I felt like was going to throw up,” Julia said.

After the strange call, Julia quickly grabbed the phone again and called her mother to tell her what had happened. Her mother reassured her and told her not to worry, because it was probably a prank call. Shortly thereafter, the phone rang yet again. This time, Julia’s older sister Lauren Ryan answered the phone. The man asked yet again if he could speak to their mother, again Lauren told the man that their mother was in the shower.

“And he said I know you’re alone, I see you,” Julia said.

Lauren hung up the phone and didn’t tell Julia what had happened so that she wouldn’t get scared. Once again, the man called Julia’s house phone, and her sister picked up again. This time when she tried to deny that they were home alone, the man said that he could see Lauren and proceeded to tell Julia’s sister exactly where she was standing in the house. Lauren hung up the phone and told Julia to go the basement, where they called their mother again.

After hearing what had happened, Julia’s mother said she was on her way home and to make sure that everything in the house was locked. The phone kept ringing so as an added precaution Julia and her sister hid away in the back room, where there were no windows.

“He called and my sister answered, he said we needed to find a better hiding spot, ‘I see you in your backroom,” Julia said. “I started balling.”

Julia’s mother returned shortly afterward. She tried to call the man back, but each time she tried he wouldn’t answer. The man never called back after that.

“I didn’t sleep [that night],” she said. “Afterwards, I slept in my mom’s room for like a month. I had nightmares. I was afraid that I was going to be taken away.”