A Voice Calling from the Garage: A Family Tradition of Not Answering

I had a friend when I was around 8 that I would always hang out with. She drove me up the wall because if we were in different rooms and I called out to her, she'd never answer. She would just walk into the room and then respond. I hated it because it would scare me when she'd silently pop up out of nowhere when I called out. Her whole family was like this too. I thought it was just a politeness thing because one of my aunts would always yell at me for shouting "what!?" if she called me from another room. But my aunt was only angry that I never said "yes?" So yeah, I thought my friend and her family were just weird.

I asked my friend why she could never just simply answer me when I yelled for her. She'd always just shrug and say there's no real reason and that's just how she rolls. I pointed out that her parents and siblings were the same and she said they roll like that too. OK fine.

Well, one day I was over there and her dad was at work and her stay at home mom went to take one of her brothers to hockey practice and the younger one to the doctor's office or something. She left us home because she didn't feel like carting around a bunch of kids and she knew we wouldn't tear the house apart like the boys would. An hour after she left, my friend and I were upstairs together doing craft shit when I heard someone downstairs call her name. It happened twice and she didn't notice. I told her what I heard and we listened. After a while we heard the voice faintly call to her. It sounded like it was coming from the garage. I was like, "oh your mom is back. Ask her what she wants." My friend just quietly got up and walked alllllll the way downstairs instead of yelling back. I followed her but was pissed. Like why are we walking all this way when simply yelling back would get us all the answers we need.

We go in the garage and there's no one there. We check the entire first floor and nothing. Doors and windows were all closed and locked still. I'm a bit weirded out and my friend nonchalantly grabs some icecream from the fridge and we go and sit outside on the doorstep to eat it. I ask her wtf was that about and she's like "yeah so you asked me why we don't answer anyone calling from other rooms or outside and this is why." She explained that in her culture they believed that demons use the voices of your loved ones to try to lure you to hell or something. She said you're safe if you don't answer them, which is why her family would always come into the room to verify the person calling them was actually a person. Now I'm freaked out and don't want to go back inside at all until her mom would return. My friend was pretty unaffected by it all and said she's used to it. In my panic, I asked if the demons ever shape-shifted so that even if you see your loved one who called you, it really wasn't them. She got quiet and thought about that. Then got scared and started crying. She said she never thought of that before. We both ran to our other friend's house down the road and stayed there.

EDIT: Just to not end on a creepy note — We ended up at our other friend's house and promptly scared the shit out of her and her siblings with our story. Her poor mom had a house of like 6 crying children and did her best to calm us all down. She told us it wasn't real and that it was the wind or whatever. My spooky friend's mom eventually showed up when she got home and couldn't find us. All us kids were in the yard and our friend's mom was explaining what happened to her and said that we probably watched too many scary movies and imagined the voice. Spooky friend's mom whipped around to us and in a panicked tone yelled "OH NO YOU ANSWER???!" ...You can probably imagine that that ruined any progress the other mom made in alleviating our fears lmao.