The Little Girl with the Pigtails
When I was younger, like many others, I loved to watch television. I know that’s not an experience unique to myself, but it was truly my favorite thing to do. Undoubtedly, my favorite channel in my younger years was Noggin. I would always be so excited to come home from school and turn on the TV so I could enjoy the last couple hours of my favorite shows before it switched to The N at six. I loved Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird, and I absolutely adored all of the little skits and songs they would put on in between the shows. Truthfully, I mainly watched Noggin just so I could see them. I was pretty impartial to the actual TV shows that would air on the channel. I remember how disappointed I would be when the sign-off sequence would begin just before dinnertime despite the fact that “Done Day” was a favorite song of mine. Though I was bummed that my Noggin viewing was coming to an end, I would sit in front of the TV in my living room singing along until it was time to turn it off. I was in kindergarten when my Noggin fixation was at its peak, so I wasn’t allowed to watch TV past six o’clock anyway. When I complained about this to my parents, they told me that only the “mature” shows aired past that time, and that Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird would be back the next day. When I asked them if I could watch a little bit of The N just so I could see what it was, they told me that the shows they aired were too scary for children and that it would likely give me nightmares. Being a child who was spooked easily, I decided to take their word for it and just find something else to do. My mom was a nurse, and she usually came home around six on the nights that she worked. Occasionally, she would have to pick up overtime, so there were some nights she would come home a couple hours later. My dad, however, would already be home, as he started work early in the morning and ended his days early into the evening. I remember one particular day in November of 2007, my mother happened to be working later than usual, which again was completely normal for her job. My dad also happened to have started work a bit earlier in the morning than he usually did, as he was a bricklayer whose hours could vary slightly. Because of this, he would sometimes fall asleep on the couch not long after coming home from work. This day was no exception. On this night, I remember sitting in the living room watching Noggin just as I usually had done. My dad had been sitting on the couch behind me, but I noticed just before it was time to turn the TV off that he had fallen asleep. “Silly Dad,” I thought. However, this had given me what I thought was a brilliant idea. In my house, there was a television in the basement, as well, that was connected to cable. It was what my dad used on nights when he would invite his work friends over to watch whatever big sports events were going on. Even though my parents were usually the ones to turn on the television for me, I memorized which channel number Noggin was. It’s also worth noting that despite being easy to scare, I had just celebrated my first Halloween without crying a single time while trick-or-treating, so I felt much braver than I had ever felt before. This newfound bravery inspired a new curiosity inside of me as to what The N was really about and why my parents had kept it from me all this time. My plan was that at approximately 5:45, I would switch off the TV in my living room in case my dad woke up and noticed that I had neglected to turn it off as I had always been instructed to do. This would give me enough time to head to the basement and turn on that TV so that I could avoid being caught past my allotted watch time, so that is exactly what I did. I made sure to shut the basement door behind me and tiptoe down the stairs as quietly as possible. I had to fish my little hands between the couch cushions to find the remote, but I was successfully able to turn the television on once I did. When the screen lit up, my little fingers pressed 2-5-8 on the remote. Just as I had thought, the channel switched over to Noggin, and with little time to spare. The show, “Max and Ruby,” was currently airing. Just as I had switched to the channel, I could see Max and Ruby standing side by side waving to the audience as the screen faded to black. I then heard the whistling of “Done Day” and knew that my mission would be successful. “We’re gonna say goodbye to the trees and bees,” Moose sang, as I nestled down into my couch full of anticipation. Despite the fact that I was much braver now, I still couldn’t shake the subtle feeling of anxiety that was tugging at me. “It was a fun day, but now it’s a done day.” My legs began to bounce on the floor, as I could hardly contain my excitement any longer. The screen faded to black as the final line was played, “I used my Noggin today.” I glanced over to the digital clock that was sitting right next to the screen, which read “6:00.” The screen remained black for another moment, and then another moment, until eventually the clock read, “6:01.” I thought it was odd that it would take this long for the channel to switch over, but I figured it was so the other moms and dads could have a bit of time to turn it off before their children saw anything frightening. “6:03,” the clock read, as I continued to sit in utter anticipation. I was starting to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with my TV or if my parents had somehow set up a channel blocker that set into place after Noggin ended. Just as I was growing impatient, a low humming sound started to emit from the speakers. “That’s odd,” I thought. I had never heard the television make this sound before. The humming noise continued for another thirty seconds before the screen started to fade into something I could hardly make out at an excruciatingly slow speed. Eventually, I was able to make out what the channel was playing, staticy as it still was. It was none other than Moose A. Moose once again, but as the screen continued to slowly fade into his picture, the colors became more and more saturated. The humming sound increased, but I figured that perhaps the channel was having an issue connecting. “Are you ready?” an excited voice echoed through the TV. For some reason, the opening sequence of Noggin began to play. The difference was that for some reason, the audio was extremely distorted, so much so that it hardly sounded like Moose’s voice at all. This made me feel slightly unsettled, as I knew the sign-on song didn’t play until six in the morning. The crunchy audio continued to play through my speakers while Moose and Zee expressed their excitement for the coming day. Just as the song was about to end, however, something unusual was shown. Just as Moose sang, “I’m using my noggin today,” the screen seemed to freeze and the final chord of the ukulele started to repeat in a glitchy fashion. As it repeated, the colors of the screen gradually became even more saturated than before with even more of a pixelated appearance. Moose’s face became so obstructed that I couldn’t even make out what was on the screen any longer. After what seemed like an eternity of witnessing this disturbing distortion, the audio stopped playing altogether. In place of Moose’s eyes, a pair of bloodshot, humanistic eyes appeared on the screen and slowly blinked. When they reopened, the white of the eyes had turned completely red. After this, the screen quickly cut to black, the humming sound yet continuing. I was frozen on the couch in fear. Though I had never seen anything truly horrific in my life, I was smart enough to realize that this was far from normal. The darkness of the screen persisted even further until it once again cut to something different. The image depicted was much more clear than what had been previously shown, except I almost wished it hadn’t been. Sitting on the hardwood floor of somebody’s kitchen was a little girl who couldn’t have been much older than three. She had bright blue eyes and little blonde pigtails tied up with baby pink scrunchies. She wore a pink gingham dress that reached halfway down her calves and frilly white socks that looked almost whimsical. In her hands was a little doll adorned in the exact same outfit as she. It had the same beautiful blue eyes and bouncy pigtails, as well. The little girl hugged the doll close to her chest as she hummed what sounded like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to it while rocking it back and forth. This scene played out for much longer than what felt comfortable, as if comfort was something I was even capable of reaching at this point. All of a sudden, the girl puts the doll down and stares directly into the camera. Unblinking, the girl stares and stares until suddenly, her pupils begin expanding. They expanded past her irises and into the whites of her eyes until eventually, her eyes were all black. A goopy, black liquid began to slowly pour out from the cabinets behind her. The humming sound that previously played returned, but this time it was even louder than before. As the liquid began to reach the motionless little girl and pool around her legs, her lips slowly parted to allow her to whisper to the audience, “We all die one day.” The screen cut to black once more after this, but this time the humming disappeared with it. I was still frozen to my couch in absolute shock. As much as I wanted to run up the stairs and jump into my dad’s arms, I couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle. I didn’t understand what was going on. Why was the TV showing such morbid depictions? I knew that The N was for older kids, but what I had just witnessed couldn’t possibly be appropriate for even them. Suddenly, the screen turned blue as the emergency alert system siren began to blare through the speakers. I jumped as the distinctive beeping rang throughout the basement. Words began to appear on the screen, but I was unable to make most of them out, as I was a bit behind the average child my age when it came to reading. I could, however, just barely make out the biggest word at the bottom of the screen. In all capital letters it read, “HELP.” Just as soon as I figured out what it said, the screen yet again went to black. This did not last for long, however, as the same bloodshot eyes that were earlier depicted on Moose A. Moose slowly reappeared on the screen. The eyes stared directly into mine so intensely that I felt as though they were staring right through me. A song that seemed to have been reversed began to quietly play, growing louder with each passing second. As the audio grew louder, I noticed that the cable box had begun vibrating on the TV stand. A chemically smell filled the air as a light smoke began to rise up out of the box. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, as I had never seen this happen before. Even if I had, I was far too terrified to even blink let alone do something about it. The sound continued to grow and the smoke began to thicken until suddenly I heard a loud pop and the TV went black. The cable box had stopped vibrating, but smoke still emitted from the top. An error message flashed across the screen indicating that there was an issue connecting to the channel. I sat still for a moment simply trying to process what had just happened. Who was the little girl, and why did she say what she did? How was she even old enough to be able to grasp the concept of death? Once I had composed myself, I hopped off of the couch and ran up the stairs to tell my dad what happened. I didn’t want him to know that I had watched TV past six o’clock, so I just told him that there was a funny smell coming from the cable box. Maybe it was because I had woken him up from what seemed to be a deep sleep, but he did not seem to notice the sheer panic that I did my very best to hide. He didn’t even question it when I asked him if I could sleep on his bedroom floor that night. The next morning, my mom woke me up to get ready for school. She sat me on the couch with my bowl of Applejacks while she searched for the TV remote to put on Noggin. As afraid as I was to bear witness to what I had seen the night before yet again, I was even more afraid to let on that I had tried to watch The N. To my surprise, everything was back to normal. An episode of “Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends” was playing with no distortions or anything. I was still hesitant to continue watching, but I had finished my breakfast and was ushered out the door to catch the school bus before I could think too much about it. When I got home that afternoon, I decided that I did not want to watch TV. Understandably, I was still a bit spooked by what I had seen. Even more than that, I was simply terrified to go into the basement. I decided to color instead. I couldn’t find any blank sheets of paper, so I decided to scribble on the morning newspaper that was still sitting open on the kitchen table. During my drawing, something peculiar had caught my eye. There in the column featuring missing children was an all too familiar picture of a little girl sitting on her kitchen floor. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a pink dress that perfectly matched the one that the doll she was cradling was wearing. I couldn’t make out much of what the title of her article said, but there was one word that I did recognize. “HELP.” Credit: Monika Sterling Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.