📱 Last Seen at 3:17 AM
Genre: Digital Horror | Setting: Mumbai | Theme: Hauntings via messaging apps, surveillance, and digital possession
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
“You there?”
That was the last message Zoya ever sent to her best friend Neha.
It was 3:17 AM.
Neha had gone offline — or so it seemed.
Until the next day, when Zoya saw her WhatsApp status updated with a cryptic message:
“Do not disturb the drowned. We are all swimming in borrowed time.”
And a picture of Neha — wet hair, pale skin, staring into a dark mirror.
The problem?
Neha had drowned in a hotel pool two weeks ago.
The funeral had taken place. Zoya had seen the body.
So who was using her phone?
Zoya panicked. But her phone kept receiving messages from Neha’s number.
Each one came at exactly 3:17 AM.
“I see you scrolling through my old pictures.”
“You look tired. Want to rest… permanently?”
“Why didn’t you dive in with me, Zoya?”
“Don’t leave your curtains open tonight.”
She tried blocking the number. It came back.
She deleted the chat. It restored itself.
She changed phones. The new device lit up at 3:17 AM the next night — with a message:
“Wrong number. Right soul.”
Zoya reached out to the cybercrime unit.
They traced the last login of Neha’s number to a tower that had been abandoned since the 2005 Mumbai floods.
When the technician tried to disable the number, his phone screen cracked — from the inside out — displaying a message in blood-red font:
“Some contacts are eternal.”
On the seventh day, Zoya’s family found her unconscious with her phone clutched to her chest.
WhatsApp open.
Typing…
Typing…
Typing…
They never found what she was about to send.
But her status now reads:
“Last seen at 3:17 AM.”
📵 Not all ghosts knock on your door. Some slide into your inbox.
🧟‍♀️ Stay connected with our blog for more haunting tales from modern South Asia, where the supernatural hides behind screens, elevators, apps — and silence.
🖤 Next up: “The Tenant in My Headphones” — when music becomes a medium of possession.
