The Hollow Floorboards

When my family moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the Fenwick Marsh, I thought the drafty halls and creaking stairs were just part of the charm. The house had been empty for years, and the previous owners had left behind a few pieces of furniture, strangely arranged as if they were waiting for someone to sit down and never leave. My parents took the master bedroom on the second floor, my brothers shared the room at the end of the hall, and I took the small room above the kitchen, which had a window overlooking the marsh.

At first, the oddities were subtle: a cold spot in the hallway, a faint smell of damp wood and old cologne, a sensation of being watched from the stairwell. I dismissed them as the quirks of an old house. But soon, more concrete things began to happen. I would see a tall, thin figure in my peripheral vision, always at the corner of the landing, always gone when I turned. I heard heavy, labored breathing at night, as if someone was standing just outside my door. Footsteps would pace the upstairs hallway when I was the only one home. And sometimes, a gust of icy air would rush past me, even with all the windows closed.

Determined to prove to myself that it was all in my head, I set up my old camcorder on a tripod at the top of the stairs, aimed down the hallway toward my room. The plan was to record the landing for a few hours and review the footage, hoping to catch nothing. I told my parents I was practicing a school project, and they believed me. My brothers, who were thirteen and ten, thought I was crazy and stayed downstairs to watch a movie.

It was around eight in the evening when I started recording. My parents had gone to the village pub for a ‘grown-ups’ night out’, and my brothers were glued to the telly in the living room. I positioned the camera on the landing, making sure the battery was full, and then I went into my brother’s room across from the stairs. I sat on the floor, back against the wall, with a book I wasn’t reading. I wanted to be ready to react if I heard anything, but I also wanted to be able to see the landing from the doorway.

An hour passed. The only sounds were the muffled explosions and laughter from the TV downstairs. The hallway was dim, lit only by the nightlight at the far end. My eyes grew heavy, and I started to nod off. But then, I felt a sudden chill, and the hair on my arms stood up. I looked toward the landing. The camera was still there, its red recording light a tiny beacon in the darkness. But something else was different. The air seemed thicker, and I could swear I heard a a low, raspy breathing, right behind me.

I spun around, expecting to see one of my brothers playing a prank. But the room was empty. The breathing stopped the moment I turned. My heart was pounding. I got up and walked into the hallway, the floorboards creaking under my weight. The camera was still recording. I replayed the footage right there on the little screen.

Most of it was boring: empty hallway, my door ajar, the nightlight flickering. But then, about forty minutes in, something caught my eye. The air on the landing seemed to ripple, like heat shimmer, and then, static filled the bottom of the frame. And from that static, a voice emerged. It was a man’s voice, low and distorted, as if coming from deep inside a well. He sounded as if he was whispering directly into the microphone, saying a word or phrase I couldn’t quite make out. I turned up the volume, leaning closer.

“…still they walk above…”

I replayed it again. “Still they walk above…” The voice was clearer now, and it sent ice through my veins. I looked up from the camera, and the landing was empty. But I felt a presence, right there, as if someone was standing inches from my face, breathing on me. And then I heard it again, not from the camera, but from the air around me, a hoarse whisper: “I see you.”

I dropped the camera. It clattered onto the floor, and the screen went black. The house was silent. My brothers were still watching TV; I could hear the faint, tinny dialogue. But in that hallway, time stood still. I backed up against the wall, my eyes darting to every shadow. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. And then, the nightlight went out.

From the darkness, a sound emerged: the slow, deliberate creak of the floorboards, as if someone was walking toward me from the far end of the hall. But there was no visible shape, just the sound of heavy footsteps, each one sending a vibration through the floor. The steps stopped right in front of me, and I felt a cold hand press against my throat. There was no pressure, just a freezing touch that made me gasp.

I slammed my eyes shut, praying for it to end. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone. The nightlight flickered back on, and I was alone in the hallway, shivering. I grabbed the camera and ran downstairs, my heart in my throat. I made up an excuse to my brothers, saying I felt sick, and went to my room, locking the door.

That night, I lay in bed, unable to sleep. I listened for the breathing, the footsteps, the whispers. But there was only silence. When my parents came home, I didn’t tell them. I didn’t want them to think I was crazy. But I knew one thing for certain: I was not alone in that house. And whoever or whatever was there, it knew I had seen it. It had spoken to me. And it was still watching.

In the days that followed, I tried to avoid the upstairs as much as possible. But the house always seemed to press in on me. I would find doors open that I had closed, and hear the floorboards creak in empty rooms. And every night, at around 8:15, I would hear that same whispering voice, coming from my closet, or under my bed, or from the hallway just outside my door. It repeated the same phrase, over and over, like a broken record: “Still they walk above.”

I finally worked up the courage to ask a neighbor about the house. The old woman next door, Mrs. Hargreaves, went pale when I mentioned the whisper. She told me that a man had lived in the house before us, a lonely widower who had been a carpenter. He had died in the house, of a heart attack, but they never found his body for a week because he had been in the crawlspace under the floorboards, working on a repair. And the week he lay there, he was supposedly heard whispering, not to himself, but to someone above, saying ‘I can hear you still walking above me.’

I never went upstairs again after that. I slept on the sofa in the living room, much to my parents’ confusion. But even there, I felt watched. And one night, about a month after I first heard the voice, as I lay on the sofa, I felt a cold draft and a whisper in my ear, so close it was almost a kiss: “I’m coming up.”

I leapt up and ran to the stairs, but the hallway was dark and empty. The floorboards creaked as if someone was walking down the stairs toward me, and I couldn’t tell if it was a sound or a feeling. And then, my mother’s voice called from the top of the stairs, ‘Girl, what are you doing down there? Come to bed.’

I should have been relieved. But I wasn’t. Because the voice wasn’t my mother’s. It was the same distorted, masculine whisper I had recorded. And it was coming from the top of the stairs.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I just stood there, staring up into the darkness, as the creaking footsteps drew closer. And then, the front door slammed open, and my real mother walked in, startled, asking what I was doing. I looked from her to the stairs, and the shadow at the top of the stairs was gone.

I don’t live in that house anymore. I’m in a small apartment now, and I refuse to buy anything with a crawlspace. But even here, sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear a faint whispering from the hallway, and it says: ‘Still they walk above…’ And I know, no matter where I go, I’ll never be able to outrun the sound of footsteps in the hollow floorboards.