White Death by Overshia on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

(From "The Telltale Lilac Bush and other West Virginia ghost stories" by Ruth AnnMusick)

Esther, my father's younger sister, was in bed recovering from the chickenpox. She had been in bed for three days, but was rapidly improving.

While she was sick, strange cries could be heard during the night from far off in the distance, but in the morning they would stop. Her parents thought the noise was the sound of a stray wolf and paid no further attention to it. Then for three days in a row, a large white dog appeared outside of Esther's window.

On the fourth day Esther's mother was in the room feeding her a bowl of soup. The big white dog suddenly jumped through the open window, licked Esther's hand, and then disappeared. Five minutes later Esther was dead. It was strange, because only that morning the doctor had said she could get out of bed in another day or so.