The Glass Bird on the Shelf

April 17, 2026

by Jena

1 min read

Story Premise 1 min read (176 words)

"This occurred just last Tuesday. I was resting on my sofa, looking through a magazine. After a few minutes, a small glass bird that I keep on a high shelf fell down. I saw it drop from the side of my vision. It landed on the soft rug without shattering. I got up to put […]"

This occurred just last Tuesday. I was resting on my sofa, looking through a magazine. After a few minutes, a small glass bird that I keep on a high shelf fell down. I saw it drop from the side of my vision. It landed on the soft rug without shattering.

I got up to put it back. I remembered then that this was the bird my late aunt had given me for my tenth birthday. It has a rounded bottom, so I usually place it inside a little felt ring to keep it steady.

I thought it was odd but placed the bird back in its ring and returned to my reading. Moments later, a sudden chill ran through me. I felt completely alone, yet also felt another presence in the room. This was not like when you startle yourself thinking someone is there. This feeling was heavy and real.

I froze in place, not daring to look up. From the edge of my sight, I saw the glass bird begin to slowly tilt forward again.

Related Horror Movies to Watch

Sapi

2013

Purani Kabar

1990

Maison close pour couples très… particuliers

1980

Rapsodia satanica

1960

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

The Cradle of Stone

The house sat at the end of a gravel road in the high desert of New Mexico, a crumbling adobe hacienda that had once been a way station for travelers on the Camino Real. When I first walked through its heavy wooden doors, the air was cool and still, smelling of earth and aged timber. […]

The Basement of December 21st

My name is Elias Thorne, and at nineteen, I took a night-shift position at the old Meridian Hotel, a sprawling Victorian relic perched on the edge of the town of Whitmore. My mother ran the kitchen during the day, and I was to take over after sundown, preparing breakfast for the next morning’s guests. The […]

The Clockwork Visitor

The summer I turned twelve, my family moved to a small town in the Midwest, a place of endless cornfields and quiet roads. My only friend was a girl named Clara, who lived in a sprawling Victorian house at the edge of town. For her twelfth birthday, she invited me and two other girls, Mia […]

The Locked Window

Mara had been familiar with the tethered darkness of sleep paralysis since childhood. The familiar weight on her chest, the suffocating stillness, and the creeping certainty that something watched from the corner—these were old companions. Over time, she had learned to navigate this liminal state, to break free from the invisible bonds and wander her […]

The Scent of Rotting Lavender

In the autumn of 2018, I was house-sitting for my aunt’s family in the remote village of Kestrel Hollow, while they vacationed in Greece. The house, a creaking Victorian relic perched on the edge of a pine forest, had been in their family for generations. My aunt, a stern woman named Elspeth, had passed in […]

The Blueprint’s Recess

It began as a rumor, then a murmur, then a certainty: our firm’s new wing was built over the old Garrison plot, where three Victorian houses had stood until the ’70s. The contractors found nothing but rusted pipes and a child’s doll, buried like a time capsule. Still, the receptionist swore she heard a skipping […]

The Table’s Hollow

The first time Daria and her friends summoned the writer, it was a lark. They were sixteen, bored, and Daria had just moved into her older sister’s apartment on the second floor of a crumbling building in the old part of town. The floorboards creaked, the radiators clanged, and the wallpaper peeled in strips like […]

The Inheritance of Silence

At sixteen, I announced to my grandmother that at eighteen, I would legally change my name. Amelia and Ruth, the names she and my great-aunt had given me, felt like relics of a past I didn’t want. I wanted something sleek, modern—Kate or Lauren. I didn’t see the hurt in her eyes, the way her […]

The Tenant of Larkspur House

I didn’t choose Larkspur House; it chose me. After my roommate’s church made it clear that my presence was an affront to their delicate sensibilities, I packed my bags and fled the sterile suburbs of East Memphis for the bohemian sprawl of Midtown. I found a listing for a top-floor apartment in a crumbling Victorian […]

The Lantern Keeper

In the autumn of 1997, I was living in a small coastal town in Maine, working as a night auditor at a rundown motel called The Gull’s Rest. The motel sat on a lonely stretch of beach, far from the tourist spots, and most nights I had only the sound of the waves and the […]

The Weight of Watching

When I was nine, I learned that the walls of our new house in the dusty town of Redwood Falls could hold their breath. We had moved there after my brother’s funeral, to a place my mother called ‘a fresh start’, but the house we rented was old and leaning, with windows that stared like […]

The Pine-Scented Wrath

The morning my father passed, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the early March frost clinging to the windowpanes. My name is Eleanor, and I had returned to the family homestead—a sprawling, timber-framed house my grandfather built from the redwoods he felled himself—to be at his bedside. He was a stern […]