The Pale Visitor

In the autumn of 2016, I was staying at my grandparents’ farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley, a sprawling Victorian with peeling blue paint and a wraparound porch that creaked like old bones. My aunt and her three kids had moved in after a rough divorce, so the house was always humming with noise — but that night, it was silent.

My room was at the end of the upstairs hallway, a narrow space with a slanted ceiling and a tiny bathroom wedged into one corner. The way the wall jutted out, there was a gap between the bathroom door and my bed, just enough to squeeze through. I’d always found that little passage creepy, but I’d never given it much thought until that night.

I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t settle. I’d turned off the lamp, but the moon through the thin curtains cast everything in a pale silver. I turned onto my side, facing the bathroom, and that’s when I saw it: a shape sticking out from the wall, about chest height, like someone was leaning around the corner. It was the head and shoulders of a figure, but it wasn’t solid — it was like a dark mist, darker than the shadows around it. And its face…

Its face was an oval of white, like a porcelain mask, but the features were wrong. There were no eyes — just two black holes, deep and empty. And the mouth was a gaping black pit, perfectly round, as if it were perpetually screaming a silent scream. I’d seen that face before, in a Japanese animated film my cousin had shown me — the ghostly creature called No-Face. But this was real, and it was staring at me.

I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. The shape didn’t move. It just hovered there, half in and half out of the wall, as if it were waiting for me to acknowledge it. I tried to convince myself it was a trick of the light, maybe a coat hung on a hook, but the outline was too distinct, and the face was unmistakable. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten, whispering a prayer under my breath. When I opened them, it was still there.

Then it moved.

Not fast — it just slid out from the wall, its body seeming to unfold from the shadows. It was tall, impossibly tall, its limbs elongated and slightly distorted, as if it were made of smoke. It took a step toward me, and the floorboards didn’t creak. It glided, like it was skating on air, and stopped at the foot of my bed. I could see it clearly now — that white oval face, the black voids of its eyes and mouth, and within those voids, I thought I saw something shifting, like tiny insects crawling inside.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was closed. The thing tilted its head, as if studying me, and then it opened its mouth wider. A sound came out — not a scream, but a low, wet whisper, like air escaping a balloon. It said my name. Not my full name, but the nickname only my grandmother used. ‘Riley.’ The voice was wrong, too deep and too hollow, as if it were coming from a deep well.

And then it reached out a hand. It was long and pale, with fingers that bent at unnatural angles. It reached toward my face, and I felt a cold breeze as it approached. I tried to flinch, but my body wouldn’t move. The fingers hovered inches from my cheek, and I could feel the cold radiating from them, like standing near an open freezer. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the touch.

But then, a voice from the hallway — my grandmother’s voice, calling out for my aunt. The sound broke the spell. The thing recoiled, its body snapping back into the wall like a rubber band, and in an instant, it was gone. I was left shaking, soaked in sweat, staring at the empty space where it had stood.

I didn’t sleep that night. I turned on every light in the room and sat huddled in the corner, my back against the wall, watching the bathroom door. When morning came, I told my grandmother what I’d seen. She looked at me with a grim expression and said, ‘You saw the Pale Visitor. It comes to those who are troubled. It feeds on fear, but it can also be a herald of misfortune.’ She told me that the farmhouse had a history of such sightings — a former owner, a woman who had gone mad after her child died, was said to wander the walls, searching for something she’d lost. When my grandmother was young, she’d seen it too, just once, standing at the foot of her bed. It didn’t harm her, but she said that within a year, her own father had passed away suddenly.

I moved out of that room the next day, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. For weeks, I’d catch glimpses of something out of the corner of my eye — a pale oval face peeking around doorways, the dark outline of a figure in my peripheral vision. My aunt began to complain that the house was ‘cold in spots,’ and her kids started having nightmares about ‘a man with holes in his face.’

I couldn’t stay. I packed my bags and went back to my parents’ apartment in Richmond, telling myself I’d never return. But as I drove away, I saw it one last time — standing in the upstairs window of the farmhouse, its white face pressed against the glass, its black eyes following me down the long gravel drive. I knew then that it wasn’t just a ghost. It was a warning, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do about it.

Years have passed, and I’ve never told anyone the full story. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake up to the feeling that something is in the room with me. I glance toward the corner, and for a split second, I see a pale oval shape, drifting in the darkness. And I hear that voice again, whispering my name — not demanding, but pleading, as if it’s still waiting for me to respond. I don’t know what it wants, but I fear that one day, I won’t be able to ignore it.

And that’s why I’m writing this down. I need to remember that it’s real, that I’m not crazy. But more than that, I need to make sure that if anything ever happens to me, someone else will know the truth about the Pale Visitor. It’s out there, still watching, still waiting. And it’s always hungry.