Wired4Wonder's Tales

  We moved into the two-family home on a quiet, tree-lined street in the fall of 2016, drawn by the low rent and the charm of an 180-year-old house with original hardwood floors and tall windows that looked out over a sleepy neighborhood. It stood like a sentinel from another century—gray clapboard, peeling paint, and a sagging porch that groaned underfoot. We rented the upper unit. Just me, my husband, and our teenage daughter, Lily. It was supposed to be a fresh start. But from the very first night, the house felt wrong. My husband hadn’t moved in yet—still packing the old apartment—so it was just Lily and me, alone in that cavernous top floor. The darkness was unlike anything I’d ever known. Not just absence of light, but a thick, swallowing blackness that pressed against the windows and pooled in the corners. I kept the hallway light on all night, and Lily slept with her door cracked and a lamp burning beside her bed. That first night, I heard voices. Faint, muffled—like peopl...