The Breathing Hollow

My cousin Lena and I have a habit of wandering the outskirts of our town after midnight, when the streetlights buzz and the houses huddle like sleeping beasts. Our favorite loop takes us past the old chapel on the hill—St. Agatha’s, they call it, though no one’s set foot inside for decades. The place is a squat, stone thing with a sagging roof and a cemetery that’s more weed than gravestone. We’ve always felt a pull toward it, the kind of magnetic dread you can’t explain.

It started about three months ago. We were cutting through the back lot, where the chapel’s rear wall faces a tangle of blackberry bushes and an abandoned well, when we heard it: a low, wet, whistling sound, like someone breathing through a blocked nose. But it was huge—a deep, rhythmic pulse that seemed to vibrate in the ground itself. It would pause for a few seconds, then resume, slow and steady, like a giant asleep. We froze, grabbed each other’s arms, and listened. The sound seemed to come from directly behind the chapel. We crept closer, but as we approached, the noise got softer, as if it were retreating. We backed off, and it grew louder again. We never got close enough to pinpoint it, and after a while, it just stopped. We convinced ourselves it was wind, or maybe a faulty pipe, but we both knew it wasn’t.

We came back almost every night for a week, and each time we heard it, sometimes faint, sometimes loud, but always from the chapel. During the day, we’d walk past, and there was nothing—just silence, birdsong, the smell of dry grass. There were no fresh footprints, no tire tracks, no signs that any person could be responsible. The windows were boarded, the doors padlocked, and the only entrance was a rusted gate that hadn’t been moved in years.

After a month, curiosity outweighed fear. One clear, moonless night, we decided to investigate properly. We brought flashlights, though we barely used them—we wanted to keep our night vision. We crept around the side of the chapel, following the sound. It was coming from somewhere near the back wall, but when we reached the spot, the noise seemed to come from above us, from the patch of sky between the chapel’s roof and the trees. We looked up, saw nothing. We moved to the west corner, and the sound shifted to the ground. It was like a ventriloquist’s trick, impossible to locate. We spent an hour circling, our nerves fraying, until Lena whispered, ‘It’s like it’s inside the wall.’ We pressed our ears to the cold stone. Nothing. But when we stepped back, there it was again, a thick, wet breathing, as if the chapel itself were alive and slowly inhaling.

Last night, we went at 10:30 sharp. The moon was a sliver, and the air was still. As we approached, the sound was louder than I’d ever heard it—a deep, guttural rhythm that seemed to shake my chest. It was coming from the ground, we were sure. We walked around to the back, and I knelt, putting my ear to the earth. The breathing was unmistakable now, and it was directly beneath me. But then, as I pressed down, it started to rise. The sound moved up through the soil, up the wall, and into the air above the chapel. I looked at Lena, and her face was pale, her eyes wide. ‘It’s moving,’ she said. We backed away, and the sound followed us, not like an echo, but like something tracking our steps. It stopped when we stopped, started when we walked. We ran. We didn’t stop until we were gasping in my kitchen, the door locked behind us.

We haven’t spoken about it since, but last night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that breathing in my head. And this morning, I went to the chapel alone, in broad daylight, to prove to myself it was nothing. I walked to the back, where the sound had been. The ground was undisturbed, the wall solid. But as I turned to leave, I noticed something I’d never seen before: a small, dark opening at the base of the chapel, half-hidden by weeds. It wasn’t there before. I knelt down, and from inside, I heard it—the same slow, rhythmic breathing, now clear as day. And I realized it wasn’t coming from the chapel. It was coming from the ground. The chapel was just a conduit. And as I stared into that hole, I felt the air move past my face, like the breath of something vast and buried, waiting for the right moment to rise.