Bloody Laundry

Bloody Laundry is a scary story about three girls who encounter a ghost from Scottish folklore called the Bean Nighe. They say that anyone who sees her is doomed to die. It is based on a story submitted by toddyone23 and an old ghost story by Dorothy K. Haynes titled “The Bean Nighe”.

There were three girls named Taylor, Susan and Jamie. One cold Winter evening, they were walking home from school together when they decided to take a shortcut through the woods. It was raining and the girls huddled together under an umbrella.

The path they took followed a crooked stream that ran through the woods. The light was quickly fading and a fine mist settled over everything. The woods were eerily silent and, in the gloom, the branches of the trees looked like gnarled claws reaching out to grab them.

All of a sudden, the girls spotted something that made them stop in their tracks. Up ahead, they saw a figure crouched at the edge of the stream. When they went closer, they realized it was a woman. She was bending over and washing her clothes in the water.

The woman was creepy-looking. She wore a ragged grey shawl and her long black hair hung down over her face. The clothes she was washing were stained with blood and the water in the stream was running red.

The girls gasped in horror at the shocking sight and they ran off, stumbling over roots and branches and tree stumps, until they finally reached Jamie’s house. The terrified girls told Jamie’s mother what they had seen.

“That sounds like the Bean Nighe,” Jamie’s mother said. “My grandparents told me about her when I was just a child. They say she washes the funeral shrouds of those who are about to die. It’s an omen of death…”

“What?” cried Jamie. “If you see her does it mean you’re going to die?”

“I don’t know,” her mother replied. “All I know is that it’s bad luck to set eyes on her.”

The three girls flew into a panic and Jamie’s mother tried to calm them down.

“The Bean Nighe is just an old ghost story,” she said. “She’s not real. It’s nothing but an old superstition. Years ago, people used to believe in it, but not nowadays. I’m sure what you saw was just some poor old woman who can’t afford a washing machine.”

Despite what Jamie’s mother said, the girls were still nervous. Taylor decided to go home and Susan decided to spend the night at Jamie’s house to keep her company.

That night, the wind rose up and a heavy snow began to fall. All night long, the house was rocked by the breeze and Susan and Jamie barely got a wink of sleep.

When they woke up the next morning and looked out the window, everything was covered in a blanket of snow. School was cancelled but Jamie’s parents still had to go to work. The two girls were left at home on their own.

Shortly after breakfast, they tried to give Taylor a call and invite her over, but when they called her mobile, there was no answer. Susan and Jamie were worried, so they went over to Taylor’s house and knocked on the door. Taylor’s mother answered the door. Her eyes were red and her face was streaked with tears.

“Taylor didn’t come home last night,” she sobbed. “The police searched the woods this morning and they found her… or what was left of her. She had been chopped up into pieces and her body parts were floating in the stream.”

Taylor’s mother was too upset to say anything more and she slammed the door. Susan and Jamie were scared out of their wits. It seemed as if the legend about the Bean Nighe was coming true. They raced back to Jamie’s house and they were afraid to go outside for the rest of the day. They sat together in Jamie’s bedroom, talking about Taylor and trying to convince themselves it was just a coincidence.

All of a sudden, the power went out and the girls were plunged into darkness. Susan and Jamie clung to each other, shaking with fear. They waited and waited, but nothing happened. Eventually, they both let out a sigh of relief.

“I was sure that was the Bean Nighe coming to kill us,” Jamie laughed.

“Me too,” Susan chuckled.

The girls were hungry so they decided to go downstairs to the kitchen and fix themselves a snack. Jamie lit some candles and placed them on the table to give them some light. It was pitch black outside and her parents wouldn’t be home for hours.

The girls raided the cupboards and made themselves some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As they were eating, Susan suddenly began to make a gagging sound. Her eyes grew wide and her hands clawed at her throat. She was choking.

Jamie flew into a panic as she tried to help her friend. Susan was coughing and spluttering and her face was turning bright red. She fell to the ground and stopped breathing. Jamie didn’t know what to do. She screamed and pounded on Susan’s chest, but it was no good. The girl was dead.

Jamie just sat there on the floor, covering her face with her hands and crying uncontrollably. She looked down at her friend. Susan’s face was purple and twisted in a grotesque grimace. Her lips were blue and her tongue was thrust out. It was a disgusting sight. Jamie couldn’t bear to look at her any longer, so she got a blanket and draped it over her friend’s corpse.

She ran to the phone and tried to call her parents, but there was no dial tone. The lines must be down, she thought. She took out her mobile, but there was no reception. In desperation, Jamie ran out of the house and went to try and get help.

It was freezing cold ouside and the night was as black as pitch. She trudged through the snow, shivering and shaking, but she got disoriented and didn’t know where she was going. Her teeth were chattering and she felt like she was going to freeze to death.

Eventually, she was forced to turn back. She managed to make it back to her house and when she got back inside safe and sound, she breathed a sigh of relief. She set about warming herself up, rubbing her arms and legs to get the circulation going again.

Jamie was afraid she would get sick, so she went searching for some medicine. She stumbled down the darkened hallway and made her way to the bathroom. Rummaging through the shelves in the dim light, she found a bottle, opened it and gulped down the contents.

All of a sudden, she began coughing and spluttering. A horrible pain shot through her whole body. She felt like her throat was burning. Her stomach felt like it was being torn apart from the inside. The room began to spin and she fell to the ground, writhing around in excrutiating pain.

Just then, the lights came back on. Jamie looked down at the bottle she was holding in her hand. Through her blurred vision, she could just about make out the label. To her horror, she realized that what she drank wasn’t cough syrup at all.

It was bleach.