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 people talking through a wall, but not our walls. Conversations in low tones, rising and falling, though the lower unit was vacant. I told myself it was the wind, or old pipes, or my imagination frayed by moving stress. But the voices didn’t sound like either. They sounded present. Deliberate.
Then, at exactly 3:00 a.m., a knock.
Three slow, solid raps on the front door.
I froze. Lily was asleep down the hall. I waited, heart hammering. No footsteps on the porch. No car in the driveway. No one called out. I crept to the window and peered through the curtain. Nothing. Just the empty street, slick with autumn rain.
The knocks came again a week later. Same time. Same rhythm. I didn’t answer. I didn’t sleep.
Then the bats came.
First, scratching in the walls—like tiny claws on wood. Then one fluttered out of a vent in the bathroom, panicked, wings beating the air like a trapped heartbeat. Lily screamed. I caught it with a towel and released it into the cold night, my hands shaking.
A month later, another in her bedroom. Then another. The landlord shrugged when we told him. “Old house,” he said. “Bats come with the territory.”
But it wasn’t just the bats.
Lily began having nightmares—vivid, wrenching things she couldn’t shake in the morning. She’d wake up gasping, whispering about shadows standing over her bed. I’d rush in, turn on the light, hold her. One night, I was half-asleep on the couch when I heard her—clear as day—calling my name. Not a scream. A soft, pained “Mom…”
I bolted to her room, flung open the door, ready for fever or injury.
She was asleep. Breathing deeply. Peaceful.
I stood there, chilled. “Lily?” I whispered.
She didn’t stir.
I asked her the next morning. “Did you call me last night?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “No. I was asleep the whole time.”
Then there was the cross.
It hung above her bed—a small wooden crucifix I’d brought from my mother’s house, a comfort, a symbol of protection. One morning, I found it on the floor, face down, the nail still in the wall. No explanation. No draft. No bump. Just… fallen.
We never felt comfortable. Not for a single day.
The house didn’t welcome us. It watched. It waited. The air was heavy, like it was holding its breath, listening.
When we finally moved out—three years later, after my husband endured sleepless nights and constant unease—we told the landlord we were leaving.
He didn’t seem surprised.
“Y’all lasted longer than most,” he said, almost admiringly. “We’ve had people out in weeks. One couple left in the middle of the night. Left their furniture.”
He didn’t ask why we were leaving. He didn’t need to.
As we drove away, I looked back at the old house. The upper windows were dark. But for just a second, I thought I saw a shape in the glass—watching us go.
We never looked back after that.
But sometimes, in the quietest part of the night, I still hear that knock.
Three slow raps.
And I wonder who—or what—is still living in the silence of that old house.
This story is based on real experiences in an 180-year-old home. Names and identifying details have been changed, but the events—the voices, the knocks, the bats, the falling cross, and the landlord’s telling reaction—are all true.
Comments
Post a Comment