My aunt used to babysit for a couple. They lived a few doors down and asked her to watch their baby a handful of times. Every time she arrived, they’d always say the baby was already asleep and not to disturb him. She never heard a sound—not a cry, not a shuffle. Just silence.
She thought it was odd, but they paid well, and she didn’t ask questions. Years later, she told me the story again and said it still bothered her. How could a baby sleep for hours, every time, without a single noise?
Recently, she ran into a neighbor who remembered them. What she said froze me to the bones. Turns out, they had lost a baby years earlier—and had replaced him with a realistic doll. My aunt had been babysitting a toy the whole time.
