Back in the day, TikToker Rylie (@ryliebrii) used to babysit for a family who lived in an extremely haunted house. She helped watch two girls named Luna and Aura. One year, the mom asked Rylie to hide the elf for their Elf on a Shelf Christmas tradition after the kids went to bed.
Rylie agreed, even though she hated the elf they used because it was super scary. The mom had this idea to make little footprints in cinnamon powder on the kitchen counter next to the coffee machine and position the elf holding onto an empty cup of coffee.
On this particular night, things were going smoothly. There were no signs of Pete, the older daughter Luna’s creepy imaginary friend, who, in fact, was very real.
After the girls had fallen asleep on the couch, Rylie prepared the elf in the kitchen, where she still had a clear view of the girls.
Suddenly, she was overcome with a horrible, uneasy feeling that someone was watching her. When she tried to set up the elf’s hand to lean against the coffee cup, it kept falling back down.
Yes, it was a flimsy doll, but this seemed as if someone was deliberately pushing the elf’s hand down. Then, she heard the sound of scratching coming from the parents’ room.
“I was a little bit numb to it at this point, like stuff happened every time I came over to this house, so I’m ignoring it; I’m not even going to pay any mind to it,” Rylie said. “And then I lay down, and I don’t even go investigate.”
She snuggled up on the couch across from the girls, plugged her phone in to charge, and went to sleep. She woke up in the middle of the night to find her phone unplugged from the charger. It was dead, so she had no idea what time it was. She knew something ghostly was behind this.
She looked over and saw Luna sitting up, which gave her quite a scare. Luna told her that the poor elf was never able to do what he wanted. Confused, Riley stared in the direction of the kitchen. It was dark, and she couldn’t see much, so she turned on the lights.
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“The cinnamon that I had literally put away and shut was knocked over on the kitchen floor, and it was everywhere,” Riley said.
“There is a mark dragged through the cinnamon, through the little tracks that I had made, and I don’t know where the elf went.”
She resolved to deal with the situation in the morning, and she and Luna both fell back asleep with the kitchen light on. A couple of hours later, the dad returned home and woke Riley up to relieve her of her babysitting duties.
When he asked where the elf was, she explained that she did what the mom told her to, but when she woke up, the elf had disappeared.
She ended up finding the elf a few days later under Luna’s bed. She knew Luna hadn’t done this because Luna always admitted to the stuff she did. Also, the little girl was scared of the elf.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
