Some monsters don’t stalk you quietly. They don’t lurk in shadows or slip through cracks. They arrive screaming. The Banshee is one of them — a creature of noise, panic, and psychic rupture.
They don’t whisper warnings; they detonate them. Their presence is a shockwave, a shriek that rips through the air and lands directly in your nervous system. You don’t meet a Banshee. You survive them.
The Banshee is not defined by violence or malice. They are defined by volume — emotional, psychological, existential. The Banshee erupts into your space with the force of a psychic explosion, dragging you into their crisis whether you consent or not.
Their power is not physical; it is atmospheric. They destabilise the environment around you and turn ordinary moments into emergencies. The Banshee transforms strangers into unwilling participants in their personal apocalypse.
But the Banshee’s true danger lies not in the scream — it lies in the mask. The mask of the Emotional Parasite. The Emotional Parasite does not present as threatening. They present as fragile. Vulnerability is their camouflage. Helplessness is their lure.
I met my Banshee earlier this year, in the hallway of my apartment tower. I was finishing the first draft of my manuscript, blissfully unaware that my evening was about to be hijacked by a woman whose emotional frequency could shatter glass. She didn’t knock. She didn’t call. She arrived screaming. The first scream came without warning.
A guttural, panicked shriek tore through the hallway — the kind of sound that makes your stomach drop and your body freeze. I stood inside my apartment, listening through the door, trying to decipher whether I was hearing a murder, a domestic dispute, or some kind of supernatural event. It was primal. It was raw. It was the sound of someone being psychologically torn apart.
Eventually I opened the door, bracing myself for blood. Instead, I found a woman in head‑to‑toe activewear convulsing in the hallway, shaking like she’d been electrocuted. Her hair was wild, her breathing erratic, her entire body vibrating with panic. She looked like she had been dropped into my building from another dimension — one where hysteria was the native language.
Her crisis? She had accidentally thrown her phone down the garbage chute. But even that wasn’t the full story. She did have a phone on her — a sad, battered thing she clutched like a dying pet. The screen was shattered, the LCD flooded with liquid damage, the whole thing looking like a dead iPhone carcass. It wasn’t capable of doing anything. It was a prop at best, a symbol of her chaos. Within seconds she was trauma‑dumping her entire life story onto me — domestic violence, custody battles, a wealthy ex‑husband, fleeing to the building for safety. All delivered at a pitch that suggested she’d just escaped a cult compound. I stood there like a deer in headlights, absorbing a stranger’s apocalypse. That was the first scream.
The second came a week later. I’d had a shitty day at work and just wanted to go for my 10K jog. I cracked my front door open and there she was again — dishevelled hair, broken burgundy nails, several missing entirely. She cornered me hysterically before I could step out. She asked to use my phone. And now I understood why. She had her own phone — but it was the same dead, liquid‑damaged iPhone from the garbage chute incident. It wasn’t capable of calling anyone.
She had locked herself out, and her daughter — the annoying little blonde girl — had thrown the house keys down a stormwater drain. I tried not to laugh. It was absurd. Who gives their house keys to a child?
She cried, yelled, and spiralled while calling Brisbane City Council on my phone, unloading more of her life story in between sobs. I stood there rigid, listening, waiting for an opening to escape. Eventually I said, “I’m really sorry, but I need to go,” and fled to the lift. I’ve never pressed a button so fast.
The third encounter was brief but telling. I was waiting for a bus to get my hair coloured. She appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and tried to pull me into another emotional cyclone. I disengaged, boarded the bus, and waved politely as the doors closed. She looked offended, as if my refusal to participate in her chaos was a personal betrayal.
There was technically a fourth encounter — in Chemist Warehouse — but I bolted before she could reach me. Later, the building manager told me she was an Airbnb guest, of course she was.
The Banshee is the monster of emotional noise. She doesn’t just scream — she drags you into her scream. She doesn’t just panic — she makes her panic your responsibility. She doesn’t just suffer — she performs suffering at full volume.
Her mask — the Emotional Parasite — is her weapon. It disarms you. It softens you. It tricks you into stepping closer. But underneath it is a creature that feeds on attention, rescue, and emotional labour. Some monster's bite. Some monster's stalk. Some monsters manipulate. The thing about Banshees is that they never suffer alone. Somehow, before long, everyone around them is suffering too. Most importantly the only way to survive her is to run.
Disclaimer: Names and identifying details have been changed to protect all parties, because some people don’t stay behind their masks once the cracks begin to show.