I was babysitting, half-watching a true crime rerun while she sat on her little training toilet like a queen. She was humming—soft, repetitive—some tune I didn’t recognize.

“Catchy,” I said. “What is it?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “I don’t know. I heard it from the floor vent. It comes when I sit here.”

I froze. “Heard it… when?”

She looked up at me, serious now. “When it’s dark. The man sings it real slow. He says it’s my turn next time.”

I didn’t know what to say. Our floor vent’s just for AC—there’s nothing underneath but crawlspace.

I brushed it off as toddler imagination. Until I went to wipe and noticed something scratched into the underside of the seat. Faint, but there:

“JENNY WUZ HERE 1984 – HE SINGS BEFORE HE COMES.”

At first, I laughed nervously. It was probably a joke someone carved into the plastic years ago, maybe before we even moved in. But our house was built in 1991. That toilet seat wasn’t old, we bought it last year when my sister moved in with her daughter. The date didn’t make sense.

That night, after I put my niece to bed and made sure every light was on in the hallway, I went back into the bathroom with a flashlight. I knelt next to the potty, flipped it upside down again, and examined the carving. It wasn’t done with a key or coin. It looked like someone had dug it in with a nail—each letter rough, shaky.

I tried to laugh it off again, but something about it kept scratching at the back of my mind.

The next morning, while my sister was packing for her business trip, I asked her if she’d ever heard the song our niece was singing. She shook her head, sipping coffee with one hand and zipping her suitcase with the other.

“I don’t think so. She sings all kinds of stuff. Half of it’s gibberish. Why?”

“No reason,” I said.

She left around noon, leaving me with three days of cartoons, macaroni dinners, and bedtime stories. But in the back of my mind, I kept hearing that strange little song. It had a weird, looping rhythm, like a lullaby with one too many notes.

That night, I decided to test something.

I waited until my niece fell asleep, then turned off all the lights in the house. I sat on the floor of the hallway, just outside the bathroom, and left the door slightly ajar. I was tired, sure, but I wanted to prove it to myself—nothing was down there. No weird songs. No whispers. Just plumbing and dust.

Around 2 AM, I heard it.

Soft. Low. Almost like someone humming with their mouth closed.

I leaned toward the bathroom, my heart thudding.

The vent under the training potty gave a tiny rattle, like metal shifting in a slow breeze. Then the humming got clearer.

The same tune. Exactly as my niece had sung it.

I stood up, grabbed my phone, and turned on the flashlight. I yanked open the bathroom door.

Nothing. Just the faint metallic hum of the AC unit.

But the vent was open.

I hadn’t opened it.

In fact, it had been sealed shut last time I cleaned.

I leaned down, shining the light into the dark grate. Cold air brushed my face. My skin prickled.

I saw something flicker at the bottom. Not a person. Not movement exactly—just a glint. Like a reflection off glass.

Or an eye.

I slammed the vent shut and screwed it back in with shaking hands. I couldn’t sleep. I checked on my niece three times before dawn.

The next morning, she was chipper as always. She picked out her cereal, babbled about cartoons, and sat on the couch with her juice box.

I tried not to act strange, but I kept glancing toward the hallway bathroom.

Then she said, “He didn’t sing last night. I think you scared him.”

My blood went cold. “What did you say?”

She nodded with her straw still in her mouth. “He doesn’t like grown-ups. He hides when you’re awake.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

I texted my friend Mia, who works for a small construction company. I told her I needed someone to check under the house—just to be sure. She said she’d send someone over that afternoon.

When the guy came, I explained it quickly and awkwardly. “We’ve been hearing noises from the vent,” I said. “Could be a raccoon or… something else.”

He gave me a look like he knew I wasn’t being totally honest but didn’t care. Money’s money.

He disappeared through the crawlspace door outside. I waited inside, listening through the floor.

About ten minutes later, I heard him yell.

I ran outside. He crawled out backward, pale and sweaty, shaking his head.

“There’s something weird under there,” he said. “You got some old dolls… and a bunch of kids’ stuff. Blankets. Old toys. All packed into a corner.”

I frowned. “Like what kind of stuff?”

He hesitated. “Vintage. Like… eighties kind of stuff.”

He pulled something from his tool bag. A dirty, yellowed cassette tape.

“Found this down there.”

My heart sank.

It was labeled in childish handwriting: “JENNY – 1984.”

I took it from him, barely breathing.

That night, after my niece went to sleep, I found my old Walkman in the attic and popped in the tape.

Static. Then a soft voice.

A girl’s voice.

She was singing the same song.

The exact same one.

She sounded scared, but she kept singing. Over and over. Each time slower. Until, near the end, she whispered, “He makes me sing it. He likes it when I sing it.”

Then silence.

I sat there, unable to move. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Call the police? Tell them my niece learned a ghost song from the AC vent?

The next day, I took my niece out to the park. We needed space. Air. Noise.

While she played, I sat on the bench and Googled every combination of “Jenny missing 1984,” “disappearance 1980s,” “girl sings before abduction.”

It took hours.

But I found something.

A missing persons poster, scanned and archived on a local forum. Jenny Collins. Age 6. Disappeared from her home in 1984. Parents said they heard music the night she vanished. Police thought she wandered out and got lost. She was never found.

The address?

Our block.

Same street. Just four houses down.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I dug deeper. Local newspaper archives. Obscure crime forums. One blog from 2006 mentioned a “house with whispers” on our street—linked to three different families complaining of strange vents, dreams, and “songs in the floor.”

Each time, the family moved out within a year.

I needed answers.

So I contacted Jenny’s brother. Took me two days to track him down. He lived three towns over, ran a mechanic shop.

I told him I had information about his sister. He didn’t believe me at first—who would? But I described the song. The voice. The cassette.

He went quiet.

“Dad made that tape,” he said. “Right before she disappeared. We thought she ran off with it. How did you find it?”

I told him everything.

He came the next day.

He looked around the crawlspace, hands shaking, eyes wet. “She was always scared of the vent,” he said. “Said someone called her name from it. My parents thought it was her imagination.”

He left me with one request. “Please… help her if you can.”

I didn’t know how.

So I played the tape again, one last time, near the vent. I left it there, on repeat. I told my niece she’d be using the upstairs bathroom for now.

That night, nothing happened.

No singing. No whispers.

The next day, I checked the tape.

It was missing.

I never saw it again.

A week later, my niece asked me something.

“Is Jenny gone now?”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“She told me she was ready. She said thank you.”

I stared at her.

“She said the song was stuck here. But now it’s not.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I just hugged her.

A month later, I called a contractor and sealed the entire crawlspace. Filled the vents with foam, replaced the grates, installed new flooring. My sister never asked why—I told her it was just old wiring.

We never heard the song again.

Years passed.

My niece is older now. She doesn’t remember the song. Or Jenny. Or the things she said.

But I do.

Last year, they finally identified human remains found in a sealed well three blocks away during a construction project. Dental records confirmed it was Jenny Collins.

The local paper called it a “sad but long-overdue closure.”

They didn’t know the whole story.

They didn’t know she’d been waiting.

Stuck in a song.

Waiting for someone to hear.

Sometimes, I still wonder—how many others are out there, stuck in their last words, their last sounds? How many songs float through vents, lost and lonely?

We walk past mysteries every day.

Sometimes all it takes is a child to notice.

Or someone willing to listen.

If there’s a lesson in all this, it’s that no voice deserves to be forgotten. Even the smallest song can carry the weight of a soul.

And sometimes, giving that voice a chance to be heard is enough to set someone free.

If this story moved you, please like and share it. You never know who might be listening.