Rebecca Nurse agonized over it for a night. There were several times when she thought she made her final choice before backtracking hours, minutes, or seconds later to come to a different decision. She started and stopped writing a new script with the real story five separate times.
But ultimately, she didn't want her next video to have hundreds of views. She wanted it to have millions of views.
Rebecca knew her audience, and the video she uploaded performed extremely well. She gained views, likes, and new subscribers. Plus, she had gotten a new sponsorship.
She told the story people wanted to hear. She described a woman burning in a witch trial and returning to exact her revenge centuries later.
No one would ever know it was false. That was truly why she had called the Pullman Company. To learn how much of the history had already been erased by greedier men and women than Rebecca.
And so, her video and story spread as fast as the initial rumors after Ann died in Grover. It caught fire online.
No one would ever know it was false except the crying woman in a park. No one except Ann Hibbins' real ghost.
Rebecca felt guilt and shame at her deeds. What she had felt with her previous videos didn't come close to what she felt now. She felt like the monster people believed Bishop to be.
But the old woman's story had taught her one thing: Sometimes it's easier to believe in monsters.
And it was always more lucrative for a storyteller to act like one.
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Witch of Embers
Short StoryRebecca Nurse is a video blogger who has earned her Internet fame tracking down the origin stories of urban legends. She heads into a town, scares up its folk-tale monsters, and documents their stories for her YouTube channel. Then she moves on to t...
