House that had been abandoned

Growing up, my family moved into a house that had been abandoned for decades. It stood at the end of a lonely road, surrounded by towering trees that whispered in the wind. The moment we stepped inside, the air felt heavy, like something unseen was watching.

The first night, I woke to a faint knocking sound. At first, I thought it was just the old house settling, but then I heard it again—three slow, deliberate knocks on my bedroom door. I held my breath, too scared to move. When I finally gathered the courage to check, no one was there.

My younger sister, only five years old, started speaking to an imaginary friend soon after we moved in. One day, she pointed to the dark hallway and said, “She’s waiting for us to sleep.” When we asked who, she simply giggled and refused to say more.

One evening, my father was outside fixing the fence when he looked up at the second-floor window. A pale figure stood there, staring down at him. He sprinted into the house, but when he burst into the room, it was empty. The window was locked from the inside.

The nights became unbearable. Shadows moved where there shouldn’t be any. The air grew colder, even in the summer. My mother heard soft whispers behind her when she was alone in the kitchen. But the worst was the scratching—a constant, slow drag of nails against the walls.

One night, I woke up gasping, feeling something pressing on my chest. I couldn’t move. My sister was screaming in her room. When my parents rushed in, she pointed at the ceiling. “She’s up there,” she whispered.

The final straw came when we found our dining chairs stacked in a perfect tower in the middle of the living room. None of us had done it. And carved into the wooden table were the words: “GET OUT.”

We left that very day. We never spoke about it again.