The Static in the Floorboards

I moved into the Maplehurst Flats in late August, three weeks before my junior year at Northgate University. The building was a squat, two-story brick relic from the seventies, with peeling paint and radiators that clanked like restless bones. My three roommates were already there: Marcus, a film major who hoarded vintage cameras; Priya, a biology grad student who kept a terrarium of moths; and Lena, a quiet art history nerd who, like me, was new to the flat. Marcus and Priya had lived there the previous year and swore the place was normal, just drafty and prone to flickering lights. The landlord, Mr. Hollis, was a chain-smoking old man who lived in the basement unit and only emerged to fix leaks or collect rent.

Our first week was unremarkable. We painted the living room a muted sage, hung fairy lights over the window, and argued about whose turn it was to buy toilet paper. Then the television started acting up. One Tuesday evening, we were sprawled on the secondhand couch, watching a documentary about deep-sea creatures. The volume was low, barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator. ‘Can someone turn it up?’ I asked, not moving. Marcus grunted. Priya was half-asleep. Lena shrugged.

The remote lay on the floor under the TV stand, face down, its back cover popped off. I’d removed the batteries the day before because they’d leaked and corroded the contacts. I’d meant to throw it away but forgot. So we all saw it clearly: no batteries, just empty metal springs.

Then the volume bar on the screen ticked upward. One notch, then two, then paused at a level that was actually comfortable. We all stared at the screen, then at each other. ‘Did one of you get up?’ Marcus asked. No one had. We laughed nervously, blamed a faulty signal, and went back to watching.

That was the beginning. A week later, the radio in the kitchen turned on by itself at 3 AM, tuned to a station playing nothing but static. I stumbled out to find Priya already there, her face pale under the fluorescent light. ‘It just started,’ she said. We unplugged it. The static continued, but only in that corner of the room, like an insect buzzing directly into our ears. Marcus joked that the building was built on an old burial ground. Priya’s laugh was thin.

Lena, though, grew strangely fixated. She began sketching the patterns in the carpet, the way the stains seemed to form circles. She spent hours in her room, listening to the walls. ‘There’s a rhythm,’ she told me once, eyes wide. ‘Like a heartbeat, but off.’ I didn’t know what to say. She was always the quiet one, but now she seemed haunted.

Then the keys disappeared. My house keys, then Marcus’s, then Priya’s lab keys. We searched everywhere, turning the apartment upside down. A week later, they reappeared in the fruit bowl, arranged in a neat row, each key shiny and new-looking. But they didn’t unlock anything. The cuts were wrong, the teeth filed smooth. We had to get new locks.

Marcus tried to film the phenomena. He set up his old VHS camcorder on a tripod in the living room, recording the TV as we watched a horror movie. The next morning, we played it back. For most of the tape, we saw ourselves laughing, popcorn flying. But at a certain point, the image flickered, and a figure appeared behind the couch. It was a woman in a long dress, her face obscured by static. She stood for a moment, then slowly faded. Marcus rewound it, played it again, but the figure was gone, replaced by a weird blur that he swore wasn’t there before. He stopped sleeping.

Priya started doing research. She dug through old newspaper archives at the library, looking for anything about Maplehurst Flats. She found a mention from 1988: a fire in the basement that killed a tenant, a retired seamstress named Evelyn Marsh. The report said she’d died of smoke inhalation, but her body was never found. The landlord at the time was a different man, a Mr. Aldous. Priya also found a photo of Evelyn standing in front of the building, her face surprisingly clear. She had a gentle smile and wore a floral dress.

One night, I couldn’t sleep. I got up for water and found Lena sitting in the dark living room, staring at the blank TV. ‘It’s better when they’re off,’ she whispered. ‘They can’t see me.’ I asked who ‘they’ were. She pointed to the floor. ‘The static people. They live in the floorboards now. They want to come out.’

I tried to laugh it off, but my throat was dry. I helped Lena back to her room. As I passed the door that led to the basement, I noticed the door was slightly ajar. Mr. Hollis always kept it locked. I pushed it open, and a musty smell hit me. The stairs descended into darkness. I called out, but there was no answer. The static from the kitchen grew louder, almost like it was coming from the stairs. I took a step down, my foot landing on something soft. I looked down and saw a pair of eyeglasses, wire-framed and smudged. I picked them up, and a voice, clear as a bell, said, ‘You found them.’

I spun around. Mr. Hollis stood at the foot of the stairs, his face lit by a dim bulb. ‘Evelyn’s,’ he said, taking the glasses from my trembling hand. ‘She was my sister.’

His eyes were hollow. He told me the truth: Evelyn hadn’t died in the fire. She’d been murdered, buried beneath the concrete floor in the basement. Aldous, the old landlord, had done it, and then sold the building to Hollis, who was too afraid to report it. ‘She’s been waiting,’ he said. ‘For someone to find her bones.’

The next day, I called a number from Priya’s research, a former detective. He and his partner arrived with shovels and a warrant. They broke apart the basement floor and found a skeleton under the soil. The medical examiner confirmed it was Evelyn. We stood in the yard, watching the police tape go up. Marcus had his camera, filming everything. Priya was crying. Lena looked relieved.

We moved out a week later. The static never followed us. I still have those eyeglasses in my drawer, as a reminder. But sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint hum in my room, like a radio between stations. And I swear, on the blank wall, I can see a woman’s shape begin to form, as if she’s about to step through.