The Piano in the Parlour

It started with the piano. I’m not a musician, and neither was anyone else in that house, so the old upright in the parlour was just furniture, a relic from the previous owner who’d passed away. When we moved in, everything was dusty and smelled of mothballs, but the piano was the worst. I remember running my finger along the keys, expecting a sound, but the felt dampers had rotted, and only a dull thud came out. We all laughed about it, said it was haunted by a tone-deaf ghost, and then we went about our business.

I’ve never been one for belief in the supernatural. I’m the sort of person who needs evidence, who thinks séances are for the gullible and ouija boards are just a way to scare yourself silly. So when the piano started playing at night, I didn’t jump to conclusions. I figured one of the lads had gotten a keyboard and was messing about, or maybe the old place had a faulty heating system that made pipes groan in a musical way. But the sound wasn’t a groan; it was a clear, if imperfect, melody. It was a simple tune, something you might hum in the shower, but it was unmistakably deliberate.

The first time I heard it, I was in my room, trying to read. The notes drifted up from the parlour, and I thought, ‘Right, that’s either Bill or Tom, having a laugh.’ But when I went downstairs, the parlour was empty, and the piano was closed. I checked the other rooms. Everyone was asleep. I stood there in the dark, listening to the silence, and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draught. I told myself it was my imagination, that I’d fallen asleep and dreamed it, but I knew I hadn’t.

It became a nightly occurrence. The same melody, over and over, starting at around 2 AM and stopping at 3. It was maddening, not just because it kept me awake, but because I couldn’t explain it. I tried to record it on my phone, but the recording came out muffled, like it was underwater, and the melody was slightly off-key, with notes that didn’t exist on a normal scale. I started to obsess. I read about the previous owner, a reclusive old woman named Agnes, who had apparently been a concert pianist in her youth but had given it up after a tragedy. No one knew what happened, just that she’d moved to the countryside and never touched the instrument again.

One night, I decided to confront the phenomenon. I camped out in the parlour with a torch and a tape recorder, determined to catch the ghost in the act, so to speak. The room was cold, colder than it should have been in September, and the air was thick with dust. I sat on the floor, watching the piano, waiting. At 2 AM, the keys began to depress on their own. It wasn’t a violent, horror-movie style banging; it was gentle, as if an invisible person with delicate fingers was playing a lullaby. I shone my torch at the piano, and for a split second, I saw a shape sitting on the stool. It was a woman, mid-twenties, with long dark hair and a white dress. She looked sad, not menacing. She turned her head and looked at me, and I swear I saw tears on her cheeks. Then she faded, and the piano stopped.

I didn’t tell anyone about the vision for days. I thought I was losing my mind. But then I found an old photograph in the attic, tucked behind a beam. It was of the previous owner, Agnes, when she was young. She was standing beside a piano, smiling. And she had a small mole on her cheek, just like the woman I’d seen. It was her, I was sure of it. But why was she haunting a house she’d lived in and died in peacefully? Unless her death wasn’t peaceful. I started digging, and I found an old newspaper clipping in the local library. It was a brief obituary: ‘Agnes Whitlock, aged 34, passed away after a short illness.’ That was it. No cause of death, no funeral details. It was as if she’d been erased.

One night, I decided to play the piano myself. I’m no pianist, but I knew the melody she played, and I tried to replicate it. My fingers were clumsy, and the notes were all wrong. But as I played, I heard a voice, soft and faint, like a breath in my ear. It said, ‘I’m sorry.’ That was all. I turned around, but there was no one. I asked the air, ‘For what?’ And then I heard a crash from the kitchen.

I ran to the kitchen and found all the cutlery on the floor, scattered as if thrown. On the table, there was a sheet of paper, blank except for a single sentence: ‘I didn’t burn them.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I still don’t. But that night, the piano played a different tune, a discordant, angry one, and the temperature in the house dropped so low I could see my breath. My housemates were scared, and two of them left the next day. I stayed, determined to understand.

I tried to contact the family, but no one would talk to me. I found a local historian who told me that Agnes had been engaged to a man named Harold, but he jilted her at the altar. After that, she never played again, and she died of a broken heart, they said. But that didn’t explain the apologies or the music. I began to wonder if the haunting was a cry for help, not a malicious spirit. Maybe she was stuck, replaying the moment of her trauma, and she needed someone to listen.

One evening, I sat in the parlour and spoke to her. I told her I was sorry for her loss, that I didn’t know what had happened, but I was there to listen. The piano didn’t play that night. Instead, I felt a warmth envelope me, and the faint scent of lavender, her perfume, I guessed. I felt a pressure on my hand, as if someone was holding it. I smiled and whispered, ‘It’s okay.’

But then, the lights flickered, and a picture frame fell from the wall, shattering. The piano began to play the same tune again, but this time it was frantic, and the keys were hitting so hard I thought they’d break. I shouted, ‘What do you want from me?’ And the music stopped. In the silence, I heard a woman’s voice, clear as day, say, ‘He’s coming.’

I’ll never forget those words. The next morning, I found the front door wide open, and the piano in the parlour was untouched, but on the wall above it, someone had scratched the name ‘Harold’ into the plaster. I went to the police, but they dismissed it as a prank. I reported it to the local paranormal society, but they were a bunch of kids with EMF meters.

I moved out a week later. I couldn’t take it anymore. But even now, years later, I still hear that melody at night, in the quiet moments before sleep. And sometimes, I hear that voice again, saying, ‘He’s coming.’ I don’t know what it means, but I know I can’t go back to that house. Some doors, once opened, can never be shut.