The fourth ring light camera showed a fourth person in the room.
At 6:02pm we were in an empty house on Adelabu street, somewhere in Lagos, that has been there since 2003, with peeling paint, electricity wires disconnected and mosquitoes having their daily headquarters meeting. A perfect location for our content.
I am Princess, the director of the content creation team, a third-class theatre arts graduate and I was in the hope of having a one viral video that would pay off my due rent. I had Tunde, the cameraman with me and Precious, our actress for the day, already wearing a torn wrapper to look poor for our so-called content.
The plan was a simple one and that is to fake a charity outreach just to get people's sympathy, engagements and viral that I have always wanted. We drop 20,000, she cries small but so emotionally and start praying. We post the video by 8pm and we cash out soonest.
"Action!" I whispered and then Precious knelt beside the broken bed with a loaf of bread in her shaking hands like it was a gold. Unfortunately, she overdid her acting and kept shouting:
"Thank you ma, thank you so much! God bless you ma!" She cried too loudly just like the Nollywood level of loudness even without giving her the 20,000 yet.
Then I snorted. "You're doing it too much" and that was when the cameraman froze, staring more at the camera. "Princess! I'm seeing an old woman on the bed!"
My blood dropped within me like as if a live wire fell off its pole. The broken bed we had thought was empty was actually having an old woman, with a tied wrapper on her body and her hair strands white like snow. She was only visible from the camera but the bed remained empty looking out of the camera.
I kept checking the camera, seeing the old woman but looking out only gives me the sight of mere dust and a dead cockroach.
Precious, the actress who was sitting close to the bed frame was already getting scared but still trying to be brave. "Director, it's the light that caused it right?" She asked with her voice shaking.
"No" was my blunt answer and I asked Tunde to check again. Tunde turned the camera to the corner of the room and behold it was empty but turning it back to the bed, she was right there again, on the screen only.
My mouth started running dry and immediately I gave the command calling out to Tunde "let's pack off and leave here right now".
Surprisingly Tunde shouted, "Ah Princess why now! This is really a real ghost o so if we are able to record her then this video will go viral and get 1 million views in few minutes.
I had always known greed is a stinky act and greed has no cure drug and now I can agree to it but nevertheless, Tunde was right and we really needed this ghost viral video which came at the right time.
"Madam, goo-goo-good evening ma," I kept saying to an empty bed with my voice cracking. "We have come to help you you you...." was all I could say like words are failing me.
Precious who was trying to be brave tried to stretch the bread towards the empty bed space at the point where the old woman was appearing on screen. Unfortunately, the bread was collected. Not by the wind but by the only visible old wrinkled fingers, closed around the bread from the thin air. Seeing this, Precious screamed and ran off to our side.
You guys are finally here" she said in her soft voice while still holding the bread so firm in her hands. "I've been waiting since my children left me here in 2003. They asked me to wait here and help will come."
The ring lights began flickering in one, two, three and four. "Madame, we ar-are n-nnn-not...." was coming out of my mouth like fill in the gap exam question.
You even brought lights," she said looking at our four ring lights while we watched her through the camera. "So many lights. For me? No one has ever brought light for me before now and darkness has been in this house for long," she said while looking back at the lens of our camera.
"My children asked me to wait here that government helps old people. So I waited and I wasn't able to go anywhere because my legs turned weak and could not move anywhere," she continued but with tears now. "Then I died here while waiting in bed. But still, I waited because if I leave the bed, who will see me when help finally comes?"
Precious was crying for real now and not acting while Tunde was on his knees, forgetting his camera existed somewhere and all he could utter was "sor-sorry ma..."
The problem wasn't that she wanted to kill us but because she wanted what we were pretending to offer. She wanted help. For 23 years, every real charity and foundations walked past her street without stopping by but fake charity, with ring lights finally found her.
So I did something stupid. I knelt like a man who was just got rejected by his girlfriend and was listening to the whys for him to be rejected. I removed the gold chain from my neck, which was my last and only valuable thing I had at that point in my life, and placed it on the bed where she sat.
"Ma'am, this is not about the video but take, so that you can rest now. Help has come". I wasn't acting but I really meant it.
She touched the chain and this time she smiled differently and said, "thank you my children. Now I can sleep in peace."
Then the four ring lights went off at once. Pop Pop Pop Pop. We managed to turn on our phone torch lights while trembling and just then, we saw the bread on the floor, moldy, as if it had been there for more than 20 years but my chain was not there. We checked the camera and the bed was empty.
We ran out so fast as our legs could carry us and didn't stop until we got to the main road, where everyone else was running their businesses with no idea of the hell we just went through. Only after we got outside did we got to remember that we came out empty-handed with none of our ring lights and the camera.
That night, I deleted all the fake charity videos on my page and decided to really help people genuinely henceforth. I called the government free toll number, gave them the details of the house and the woman in there and they promised to be there.
A week later, Tunde called me and said "Princess, you remember that house and old woman? The government finally went there o. They said they found something under the bed."
"What?" I asked.
"A small skeleton with a gold chain in her hand."
Some help definitely complete some journeys.
Thanks for reading through 🤗
All images are generated using AI
