Send us Fan Mail

Something is outside Ava’s window.

Watching.

Waiting.

Fortunately, the first figure crashing into her bedroom is only Noah, making his usual unnecessarily dramatic entrance through the sycamore tree. His arrival adds another complication to Ava’s increasingly chaotic night: Madison has feelings for Noah, Olivia thinks Noah has feelings for her, and Noah appears completely unaware that he has wandered into a teenage telenovela.

Then Olivia tells them about the WillowBend Glitch.

Long before new homes covered the wetlands and abandoned farms, residents reported unexplained disruptions in reality. Mirrors lagged. Reflections moved independently. People claimed they saw exact copies of themselves walking through town.

Then the stories disappeared.

The forums went silent. The newspaper reports vanished. Even the people who had witnessed the phenomena seemed to forget they had ever happened.

Later, Ava, Madison, and Olivia awaken without remembering when—or why—they fell asleep.

A closet door opens on its own.

Something passes the window.

A shape glides across the lawn without walking, moving too smoothly and silently to be human or animal.

The girls rush downstairs to investigate, but the same unnatural screech follows them into the darkness.

This time, it’s closer.

And when something cracks behind them, Ava realizes the warning signs are no longer stories from a forgotten message board.

The WillowBend Glitch is awake.

Episode Credits

• Written by Rudy Stankowitz
• Read by Tessa
• Narrated from the perspective of Ava Perez
• From the novel The WillowBend Glitch

Content Advisory

This episode contains strong language, supernatural activity, frightening sounds, memory loss, unsettling reflections, stalking imagery, and scenes of intense fear.

Introduced in This Chapter

• Noah — Ava’s confident, tree-climbing friend who considers windows an acceptable form of entry
• The WillowBend Glitch — a collection of forgotten reports involving distorted reality, independent reflections, doubles, and unexplained memory loss
• The figure outside — something that moves without walking and may have entered when Ava opened her window

Featured Themes

Reality distortion, doppelgängers, haunted mirrors, unreliable memory, forgotten history, paranormal folklore, wetlands, shadow figures, teenage relationships, missing records, and the danger of noticing something that does not want to be seen.

Episode Quote

“I think some things aren’t meant to be noticed. And when they are...”

Keywords

The WillowBend Glitch, Rudy Stankowitz, Tessa, Ava Perez, It’s Awake, YA horror, supernatural thriller, speculative fiction, paranormal fiction, reality glitch, doppelgänger, haunted mirror, moving reflection, shadow figure, memory loss, creepypasta, serialized audiobook, fiction podcast