The Cold Aisle of Aubrey House

In the autumn of 2016, I moved into a sprawling Victorian house in the hills of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to catalog the estate of a reclusive collector. The house, named Aubrey House after its original owner, was a labyrinth of oak-paneled rooms and narrow corridors that seemed to breathe with the creak of old timbers. I was there for the library, a two-story chamber lined with rare books and curiosities, but the house itself had a personality that unsettled me from the first night.

My bedroom was on the second floor, at the end of a long hallway that branched off the main staircase. To reach it, I had to pass through the library, cross a small sitting room, and turn left into a narrow passage. One evening, as I was walking from the library back to my room, I stepped into a pocket of cold so sharp it stole my breath. The house was warm, the radiators hissing with steam, yet this spot was like walking into a walk-in freezer. My skin prickled, and the fine hairs on my arms stood on end. I stopped, looked up at the ceiling for a vent or a draft, but found nothing. I stepped back, and the warmth returned. I stepped forward again, and the cold enveloped me, accompanied by a faint scent of mothballs and dust. I laughed it off, attributing it to an old house’s quirks, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had passed through me.

The strange occurrences began to multiply as the weeks wore on. In March, my friend Lena came to visit, and we were sitting in the parlor, a room with two loveseats facing each other across a marble fireplace. I was on the loveseat against the wall, and Lena was on the one near the window. She was telling me about a dream she’d had the night before, something about a woman in a white dress roaming the halls. As she spoke, I felt the floor tilt slightly, as if the whole house had shifted on its foundation. I grabbed the armrest, but Lena continued, oblivious. When she finished, I asked if she’d felt anything. She shook her head, but then she pointed at a small framed photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Was that there before?’ she asked. I walked over and looked. It was a sepia portrait of a stern-faced woman in mourning clothes, standing in front of a door that looked exactly like the one to the library. I had never seen it before, and I had spent hours in that room.

From that night on, the house seemed to wake up. Lena left after a few days, but I stayed, my research deepening. I found a diary hidden in a hollowed-out book in the library, written by a woman named Margaret Aubrey, the collector’s wife, who had died in 1923. The diary described her fear of the house, of a presence that watched her from the shadows. She wrote of a ‘cold aisle’ in the upstairs hall, where she would sometimes feel a hand on her shoulder, only to turn and find no one. She described the same shift in the room, the subtle tilting that made her dizzy. The last entry was dated February 14, 1923, and simply said, ‘I have seen the woman in white. She comes for me tonight.’

I began to experience more than just chills and shifts. One night, I was working in the library when I heard a faint sobbing from the direction of the cold aisle. I walked there, my heart thumping, and found the air so frigid my breath frosted. The sobbing grew louder, and then I felt a cold hand grip my elbow. I spun around, but no one was there. The hand left, and the sobbing faded, replaced by a soft whisper that seemed to come from the walls: ‘Not yet, not yet.’ I ran to my room and locked the door, but I lay awake all night, listening to the floorboards creak outside.

As the days passed, the occurrences intensified. I would find objects moved—a book on a different shelf, a chair turned to face the wall. The photograph of the woman in white multiplied, appearing in every room, always watching. The temperature in the house began to drop overall, even as the spring warmed outside. I started seeing a figure out of the corner of my eye—a tall woman in a flowing white dress, with dark hair covering her face. She would stand in doorways, but when I turned, she was gone.

I delved deeper into Margaret’s diary, desperate for answers. She wrote of a hidden door in the library, behind a section of shelves, that led to a secret room. I searched for hours, feeling along the oak panels, until my fingers caught a seam. I pressed, and a section of bookshelf swung inward, revealing a narrow staircase descending into blackness. The air wafting up was cold and musty. I grabbed a flashlight and descended. The stairs led to a cellar unlike the rest of the house—stone walls, dirt floor, and in the center, a wooden chair with leather straps. On the chair was a tattered wedding dress, stained with something dark. On a small table beside it lay a rusted pair of scissors.

I picked up the scissors, and as my fingers closed around them, the temperature plummeted. The flashlight flickered, and in the darkness, I heard a voice, clear and anguished: ‘Why did you leave me?’ I looked up and saw a figure emerge from the shadows—a woman with the face of the photograph, but her eyes were hollow, and her mouth was open in a silent scream. I dropped the scissors and ran, slamming the hidden door behind me. But as I reached the top of the stairs, I felt the cold aisle again, and this time, it moved with me. The entire house was now icy, and I could see my breath. The woman in white appeared at the end of the hall, and she started walking toward me, her bare feet silent on the wood.

I backed into the parlor, but she followed, her form flickering like a candle. I tripped over a rug and fell, and she stood over me, her hair parting to reveal a gaunt, pale face. She reached out a hand, and I felt a cold compress on my chest. ‘You found my scissors,’ she said, her voice like the wind. ‘Now you will stay.’ I tried to scream, but no sound came out. And then, everything went black.

I woke up on the floor of the parlor, the morning sun filtering through the curtains. The cold was gone, and the house felt still, almost peaceful. But I knew I hadn’t dreamed it. The scissors lay on the floor beside me, still stained. I got up, trembling, and left the house that day, abandoning my research. I never went back.

But sometimes, in the quiet of my apartment, I feel a chill pass through me, and I smell mothballs. And I hear a woman’s voice, barely a whisper, saying, ‘Not yet, not yet.’