Halloween Suspense Stories- The Last Picture

Post date: October 29, 2025

By Heather Henderson

Kaci had always been fascinated with photography, not the images, but the hidden stories they seemed to hold. One dusky evening, as the sunlight bled across the sky, she took her usual long walk home from work. That’s when she noticed it, a small garage sale tucked between the two houses. The air smelled of rain that lingered. And that’s when she saw him. Among the cluttered tables and old trinkets, a pale older man was standing perfectly still, with his eyes fixed on Kaci as if he had been waiting for her all along. 

“You like cameras,” he asked after noticing her curious gaze. 

Before she could respond, he handed her a worn dusty camera. 

“Take it,” he said. “I haven’t been able to get this old thing to work since the first day I found it.”

Kaci hesitated, but grabbed the camera and thanked him.

“Good luck,” the man said with a faint smile before turning away. 

Intrigued, Kaci continued her walk home, the camera swinging gently by its cracked leather strap. When she finally arrived home, she slipped inside, set her things aside, and began rummaging through her drawers, looking for old film. As she opened the last drawer in her room, she felt it, an old, dusty canister. The label was half missing and faded. It hadn’t been touched for years. Trembling with excitement, Kaci loaded the brittle film into the back of the camera. She turned to her window, eager to capture the world through its lens, and pressed the shutter. The camera spat out a photo that slowly came to life in Kaci’s Hhand. But as the image cleared, her smile vanished from her face. Outside her window stood a tall silver pole and two garbage cans, but in the image it showed a pole bent at an impossible angle, and instead of the garbage cans she saw a red car smushed like paper, its windshield cracked and its headlights still faintly on.  

“That's weird,” Kaci said, confused. 

But she brushed it off, assuming that it was an old picture that was left on the film roll. Kaci went outside to see what other moments she could capture. She walked the loud streets and came across a man waiting for a cab. Click. She walked around as the picture developed in her hand. Her stomach turned as the picture finally became crisp. The man, who was just waiting for the cab, was sprawled across the pavement, lying in a pool of his own blood. Kaci stared at the print, trembling. The exposure was flawless and hauntingly real. 

Kaci immediately put the camera down on the table the moment she got home. She tried to laugh it off, convincing herself she was imagining it. But sleep offered no comfort. She woke up the next morning and made herself a pot of coffee, trying to stick to her normal routine. The news channel played in the background until a familiar scene popped up. A shooting had happened late last night, and the victim was a middle-aged man. Kaci immediately ran over to her camera and flipped over the picture she took yesterday. She held the photo next to the television, studying the news broadcast and image very closely, and it was the same exact scene. Kaci couldn’t believe it. 

Heart pounding, Kaci ran out the door. She walked until the city's noise blurred around her. When she stopped, she was standing before a pawn shop. Without hesitation, she pushed open the door. Whatever the camera was,  it wasn’t hers to keep. 

“Take it for free, I don't need any money,” Kaci said uneasily. 

“Why are you selling such a great camera?” the man asked.

“I just don’t want it anymore,” she said as she turned to leave. 

Kaci went to work that day with a knot in her stomach, trying to shake off the unease. She forced herself through her regular schedule, but the thought of those pictures kept circling her mind like vultures.

“ I'm going crazy,” she whispered, trying to convince herself. 

By the time she got home, exhaustion had calmed her nerves until she saw it. Sitting on the kitchen counter was the camera she had pawned less than seven hours ago. Beside it lay a single picture, facedown. Her pulse quickened. She hesitated, every instinct screaming not to look, yet her curiosity got the best of her. She flipped the picture over. This time, it wasn’t a stranger staring back.

It was her.