Mysterious Break-Ins Happened Every Night – And the Man I Found Asked, ‘Did She Come Back?’

I’m 23 and work night shifts as a security guard in a dying mall. Most nights are boring — until, at 2:13 a.m., an alarm from the kids’ store went off. The camera glitched, but I caught a tall figure moving between the racks before the feed cut out. When I checked the store, it was wrecked and empty… except for the feeling that someone was still there. Down the hall, a shadow stood watching me, then vanished.

For the next week, alarms went off nightly in different stores. Everything was trashed, but I never found anyone. Then, at the toy store, I finally saw him — a soaked, pale man sitting among broken dolls. When I approached, he whispered, “Did she come back?” and ran into a corridor with broken cameras.

After that, the toy store got creepier: dolls moved, music boxes played, mannequins shifted. I kept hearing his question. On my last night, the alarm went off again. He was kneeling on the floor, clutching a little pink jacket — the same one from a missing-girl poster.

“She’s under there,” he said, pointing to a warped floorboard.

I looked. She was.

He was arrested, I quit the next day, and I’m training to be a detective now. But sometimes, in the dark, I still hear him whisper:

“Did she come back?”