The Chair That Walked to the Door

In the autumn of 2019, I was a junior at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. My on-campus apartment was a cramped studio, but it was enough for me and my two roommates, Mara and Jules. We were film buffs, and every Friday night we’d huddle around my laptop, binge-watching obscure horror movies. That particular night, we were watching a cheesy 80s slasher, the kind with terrible special effects and predictable jump scares.

As the killer crept through the woods, I felt a draft. I looked up from the screen, and my eyes landed on the wooden stool by the door. It was a simple, three-legged stool we’d picked up at a thrift store, painted a faded mustard yellow. I blinked, certain I’d seen it shift a few inches to the left, but I dismissed it as a trick of the light.

But then Mara gasped. ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered, her eyes wide. Jules paused the movie, and we all stared at the stool. It was perfectly still, but the tension was thick. We convinced ourselves it was the old building’s settling, or maybe a rat. We tried to laugh it off and resumed the movie, but our attention was split.

Minutes later, as the final girl was running up the stairs, the stool moved again. This time, there was no mistaking it. It scraped across the linoleum, a harsh sound, and slid a good foot toward the door. We all screamed and scrambled to the opposite wall, huddling together. The stool stopped, as if waiting.

‘We need to get out of here,’ Jules whispered, her voice shaking. But the door was on the other side of the room, past the stool. And outside, the hallway was dimly lit and eerily quiet. We were on the third floor, and the stairwell was at the end of the corridor. It was after midnight, and the campus was dead.

I fumbled for my phone to call for help, but the signal was dead. Mara started crying, and Jules began muttering a prayer under her breath. The stool remained still, but I felt a presence in the room, something ancient and malevolent. It was as if the stool was a vessel, and whatever was inside had been sleeping until now.

Suddenly, the lights flickered. The stool gave a violent shudder, then began to move again, faster this time, sliding towards the door with a determined scrape. It reached the door and stopped, as if blocking our exit. The door handle rattled, then turned, slowly. I could see the handle twisting even though no one was near it. The door swung open, and in the doorway stood a figure—a tall, gaunt woman in a tattered nightgown, her face obscured by stringy hair. She extended a long, bony finger, pointing at the stool, then at us.

We didn’t wait to see what she wanted. We bolted for the door, but it slammed shut in our faces. The stool began to hop, like a possessed thing, moving towards us. We backed into the corner, screaming. The figure glided forward, her form flickering like a faulty bulb. She opened her mouth, and a sound like a thousand whispers filled the room, but we couldn’t understand a word.

Jules threw the DVD player at her, but it passed right through. Mara grabbed the stool, trying to hold it still, but it writhed in her grip. I lunged for the door, and this time, it opened. We spilled into the hallway, not looking back. We ran down the stairs, through the lobby, and out onto the cold lawn. We didn’t stop until we reached the all-night diner across town.

We never returned to that apartment. We stayed in a motel for the rest of the semester, and the college let us break our lease. But I still don’t understand what happened. Was it a ghost? A demon? Or something tied to the stool itself? I think about it often, especially when I’m alone at night. And sometimes, I swear I can hear a faint scraping sound, like wood on linoleum, coming from the corner of the room. When I look, nothing is there. But I always feel it. Waiting.

—

I have a theory now. I researched the history of the apartment building, and I found out that a woman died there in the 1970s. She was a tenant who painted furniture, and one of her pieces was that mustard-yellow stool. She was found dead in the stairwell, her neck broken, and the stool was found at the top of the stairs, as if it had been the cause of her fall. Or, maybe something else had pushed it. I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, the stool is still there, waiting for the next person to sit on it, to become its next victim. And I wonder if, by escaping, we left something unfinished. A door left open. A presence that followed us home.

Since that night, I’ve had recurring nightmares. In them, I’m back in that apartment, sitting on the stool. The woman appears at the door, and she’s holding a chisel. She tells me, ‘You broke the covenant.’ And I wake up screaming. I’ve tried to move on, but I know that someday, I’ll have to go back. I’ll have to face the stool and the woman. And I’ll have to finish it, one way or another. Until then, I keep a distance from thrift store furniture. And I never, ever turn my back on an empty chair.