The Cold Room

It was late autumn when we moved into the old farmhouse on Redwood Lane. My sister Ingrid and I, along with our two-year-old sons, had just settled into the sprawling colonial. I was seven months pregnant with my daughter, Elin. The house had a certain charm, with its creaking floorboards and the smell of old wood, but it also had a history. The previous owners, an elderly couple, had both passed away within a year of each other. The realtor assured us it was a ‘good energy’ place, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

For the first six months, nothing remarkable happened. We decorated, unpacked, and got into a routine. The boys, Liam and Noah, loved the wide staircases and the secret nooks. But then, the small irregularities started. Cabinet doors in the kitchen would be open in the morning, even though we had closed them the night before. The hallway light on the second floor refused to work, no matter how many times we replaced the bulb or fiddled with the wiring. We even had an electrician come out, and he scratched his head, saying, ‘There’s no reason this light shouldn’t work.’ Ingrid and I would just roll our eyes and joke about ghosts.

But a few months later, the experiences turned darker. The boys’ bedroom, which sat at the end of the hall, became perpetually cold. We tried turning up the heat, but the room stayed freezing, like a meat locker. The boys would wake up shivering, their breath visible in the air. We bought space heaters, but they did nothing. One night, I went to check on Liam and Noah after they’d fallen asleep. The room was so cold that my skin prickled. As I stood in the doorway, I saw a frost pattern on the window in the shape of a hand, as if something had pressed its palm against the glass from the outside. But we were on the second floor, and the window overlooked a drop of twenty feet.

Things escalated. Objects would move on their own. A dining chair would be found in the middle of the hallway. The boys would talk to someone we couldn’t see, calling them ‘the lady in the grey dress.’ At first, we thought it was imaginary play. But then, they would say things like, ‘The lady says we should leave.’ One afternoon, I was in the kitchen doing dishes, and I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, as if someone was standing right behind me. I spun around, but nothing was there. A chills ran down my spine.

Our sons started having nightmares. They’d wake up screaming, saying that the cold lady was trying to take them. We tried everything: salt lines, smudging with sage, even consulting a medium. The medium, a frail woman with intense eyes, said she sensed a presence, likely a woman who had lost a child in this house. She said the lady was not malevolent, but desperate. She wanted a child. Our children. That terrified us even more.

One night, I woke up to a strange silence. The house was usually filled with the old wooden creaks and the sound of the wind, but it was dead quiet. I got out of bed to check on the boys. As I walked down the hall, the light that never worked flickered, then dimmed. The door to the boys’ room was ajar. I pushed it open. The room was freezing, so cold I could see my breath. Liam and Noah were standing by the window, both staring out blankly. Their hands were pressed against the frosted glass. The frost had formed patterns that looked like fingers reaching in. I rushed forward, pulling them away, and the cold seemed to recede. I felt a presence, a womanly figure in the corner of my eye, but when I turned, it was gone.

We decided to leave. It wasn’t worth the fear. We told the landlord we had to move out, citing personal reasons. But as we were packing, I found an old photo album in the attic. Among the dust-covered pages, there was a picture of a woman in a grey dress, holding a toddler. The caption read: ‘Evelyn and her son, Jeffrey, 1932.’ On the back, someone had written: ‘Evelyn’s heart broke when Jeffrey died of pneumonia in the upstairs bedroom.’ That was the same room where our sons slept. My blood ran cold. We left that house the same day, leaving most of our belongings behind.

Years have passed. My daughter Elin is now seven, and the boys are nine. But sometimes, at night, I wake up to a cold draft and see frost on the window, even in the summer. And I hear a faint whisper, a woman’s voice saying, ‘I only wanted to hold him one more time.’