Maddie I'm Scared

Oct 26, 2026

Something bad is going to happen I can just tell

Oct 23, 2026

Halloween in a week. I’ve loved Halloween ever since I was a little kid. But I’m not into it this year. I feel weepy and strange. I am going on long walks again. In the middle of the day and in the middle of the night. No one is out at night, there is no one to see me and I can walk for miles.

Oct 20, 2026

I haven’t been sleeping well. I keep having horrible dreams about Maddie. We’re in a field and it’s foggy morning. She’s standing ahead of me by the wood’s edge. I go to her but as I get closer I’m full of such deep, deep dread. As I get closer the dread takes over my body, makes my limbs seize up, makes my heart feel like it will stop in my chest. Maddie looks at me and starts to walk backwards into the woods, holding my gaze. And as she goes, her face enter the darkness, and it starts to transform into this - mask, this stretched wide smile and eyes all red -

Oct 12, 2026

I’ve seen the signs other places around my neighborhood!

“Maddie I’m scared” scratched into asphalt, dusted with orange powder

“Maddie I’m scared” and “Will you help me?” written together on a red-painted curb, sneakers at the bottom of the frame

“maddie I’m scared” spray-painted in black on a white stairwell wall

And I got a few emails as well. I wish when people emailed me they would tell me about themselves, where they’re from etc. Not that I’m ungrateful for the photos.

“Will you help me?” on a dark sidewalk at night, traced in red

“Maddie I’m scared” on a dark sidewalk at night, traced in red

“maddie I’m scared” spray-painted in big red cursive across a city sidewalk

“Maddie I’m scared” on the sidewalk outside a shop door at night

“Maddie I’m scared” on a busy sidewalk at night, people and a bus in the background

Sept 26, 2026

There’s something that I’ve never told anyone.

A few days after Maddie disappeared, I went to the woods in City Park, to our favorite old tree. Maddie and I hadn’t hung out there since we were kids, but I wanted to find a place to feel her presence that was just mine.

Tucked into the trunk of the tree, there was a faded note in her handwriting. It said:

Drown your sickness and hide the remains, do this and you’ll find Maddie again.

It seemed like a random old scrap of poetry, just like a lot of things she would write. I didn’t think much of it. But I’m thinking of it now.

current mood: hmmmm · current music: MCR alwaysss

Sept 25, 2026

I want to start this by saying that Maddie was my best friend. People thought of us as opposites but that’s because they didn’t know us at all. They just saw us through their tiny little slits of eyes and imagined they saw the whole universe.

Maddie could always see beyond appearances. When she trained her eyes on you (wide-open, icy blue), it felt like she was seeing through you to some distant dimension. She was warm and loving to people she cared about, and polite but firm to people she didn’t. She knew what she wanted and she trusted her powers of perception absolutely.

That’s why when she went missing, I didn’t believe what anyone else said about it. I was sure Maddie had gone somewhere she meant to go. If she didn’t care to tell us - if she didn’t care to tell me - then she had a good reason.

That was in October 2016, before our sophomore year of college, almost 10 years ago. Well yesterday, while walking around my neighborhood, I saw this:

Handwriting on a sidewalk that reads “Maddie I’m scared”

And then a little further down the street:

More handwriting further down the sidewalk that reads “Will you help me?”

Ok, no big deal, just some random graffiti. But there’s a part of me that’s hoping it’s Maddie, planning some big dramatic reveal on the 10 year anniversary of her disappearance. So I set up this website. If you’re reading this, and you’ve seen any of these signs, please send a photo to maddieimscared@gmail.com with a description of where you found it, or anything else you’ve seen.

current mood: sad · current music: nothing