The Crying in the Woods

I was eleven when my best friend Maya turned twelve, and her parents let her have a three-day sleepover at their new house on the edge of Crescent Lake. The house was old, with creaky floorboards and a musty smell, but Maya’s mom had tried to make it cozy for us. It was just me, Maya, our friend Zoe, and Maya’s little sister, Lily, who was eight. Maya’s baby brother was there too, but he was just a lump in a crib.

The first night, after we’d eaten pizza and watched a scary movie, we heard it—a sound like a child crying, soft and hiccupy, coming from the hallway. We all froze. It sounded like it was right outside the guest room door. Maya whispered that it was probably Lily having a nightmare, so we crept out to check on her. But Lily was fast asleep in her bed, her face peaceful, no tears on her cheeks. We asked her the next morning if she’d been crying, and she shook her head, saying she hadn’t, but she admitted, ‘I heard crying too. It woke me up, but I was too scared to move.’ That was the first strange thing.

That afternoon, we decided to go to the playground near the lake. It was a small park with swings and a slide, surrounded by dense woods on one side and the dark water on the other. We were swinging and talking, when we heard the same crying—this time coming from the trees. It was clearer now, a girl’s voice, sobbing as if her heart was broken. Zoe laughed nervously and said it was probably a cat or a bird, but even she didn’t sound convinced. We all looked toward the woods, but the trees were too thick to see anything. The crying faded as quickly as it had started.

That night, we decided to investigate. We snuck out of the house after Maya’s parents were asleep, flashlight in hand, and walked to the edge of the woods. The crying was there again, deeper in, seeming to come from a specific spot. We followed it, our hearts pounding, until we found an old, half-collapsed well, covered with boards. The crying was coming from inside it. Our blood went cold. Lily had stayed behind, so it couldn’t be her. We called out, ‘Hello? Is someone down there?’ The crying stopped. Then a girl’s voice, small and muffled, said, ‘Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.’ We pried off the boards and shone the light down. The well was dry, full of leaves and dirt, but no one was there. The voice spoke again, right behind us: ‘You let me out. I’m sorry.’ We spun around. Nothing.

We ran back to the house, slammed the door, and locked it. We didn’t sleep that night, staying huddled in the living room with the lights on. But the crying followed us. It came from the walls, from the ceiling, from under the floorboards. We could hear a girl’s voice whispering, ‘Why didn’t you save me?’ In the morning, when Maya’s parents came down, we tried to tell them, but they just shook their heads and said we’d watched too many horror movies. Lily, though, was pale and wouldn’t look at any of us. She whispered to me, ‘I saw her. She was in my room last night. She had long hair and wet clothes.’

We tried to leave, but Maya’s parents insisted we stay for the rest of the sleepover. That’s when things got worse. The crying became constant, sobbing that filled the entire house. We saw her—a girl, maybe our age, with dripping wet hair down to her waist. She would appear at the end of the hallway, or in the corner of the room, always just for a second before vanishing. She kept repeating the same thing: ‘The lake. Why didn’t you save me?’ We learned from a neighbor that a girl had drowned in Crescent Lake years ago, and her body was never found. She was last seen near the woods, near that old well.

The last night, we heard a huge crash from the basement. We went down and found a trapdoor we hadn’t noticed before. It led into a crawl space. We crawled in with a flashlight and found an old suitcase, filled with a girl’s dresses, toys, and a faded photograph of a smiling girl. Underneath, there was a birth certificate for someone named Emily. The crying grew louder, almost deafening, and we felt a cold presence behind us. We bolted upstairs and locked ourselves in the bedroom. Then we heard Lily scream from her room. We ran in and found her pointing at the window. Outside, in the yard, a girl with wet hair and a pale blue dress stood under the oak tree, looking up at us, her mouth open in a silent sob. She pointed to the lake, then back to the well.

We and Lily stayed up until dawn, huddled together, praying. When the sun rose, the crying stopped. We told Maya’s parents everything, and they finally believed us. They called the police, who searched the well and the lake, and found the remains of a young girl buried in the woods. They identified her as Emily, who’d gone missing twenty years ago. After that, we left, and we never spoke about it again. But sometimes, on quiet nights, I swear I can still hear it—a faint, distant crying, coming from nowhere at all.