The Static Throne

The basement of the old farmhouse in Millbrook, Vermont, smelled of damp earth and rusted iron. Our team, the Green Hollow Paranormal Society, had been hired by a woman named Edith who claimed the house was ‘breathing’ at night. It was our second visit, and the first had turned up nothing but cold spots and a flickering light in the pantry. This time, we came prepared with the Hollow Case, a battered aluminum trunk filled with our equipment: EMF readers, digital recorders, a thermal camera, and an old analog radio that our tech, Miles, swore was ‘sensitive to the unseen’.

I was kneeling beside the case, sorting through the tangle of wires, when a voice crackled directly into my ear, as if someone had pressed a whisper against my cochlea. It was not a sound from the room—the others were upstairs, mapping the layout. The voice was low, like gravel grinding under a door, and it said, ‘You are sitting on my throne.’ I spun, but the basement was empty. The only furniture was a child’s rocking chair, its paint peeling, and a wooden crate overflowing with rusty tools. I told myself it was the radio, but the radio was off.

When I relayed the incident to the team, our lead, Miranda, exchanged a glance with our psychic, Dale. Dale was a thin man with eyes the color of spoiled milk; he claimed to ‘see’ residual energy. ‘There’s a presence,’ he said, ‘but it’s not the woman. It’s something older, something that was here before the farmhouse was built. It doesn’t like the metal.’ He pointed at the Hollow Case. ‘The trunk, the wires, the batteries—they hurt it.’

We set up in the parlor, a dim room with floral wallpaper that looked like it was rotting from the inside. Edith joined us, wringing her hands. She told us that at night, she would hear a sound like a heavy object dragged across the floorboards above her bedroom, even though the attic was sealed. ‘Last week,’ she whispered, ‘I found my grandmother’s rocking chair in the middle of the kitchen, rocking on its own, and there was a dark stain on the seat, like molasses, but it smelled like copper.’

We began our session with the digital recorder, asking questions. Mostly static. But on the thermal camera, we saw something impossible: a cold spot in the shape of a person sitting in the rocking chair, which we had brought to the parlor for the investigation. The cold spot had mass, and it seemed to be staring at us. Dale spoke to it: ‘What do you want?’ The room temperature dropped sharply, and from the radio, which we had turned on for background noise, a voice bled through, not from any station, but as a raw transmission that cut through the static: ‘I want my kingdom back.’

Then the lights flickered, and Edith screamed. On the wall, in the thick, dark stain like the one on the chair, words were materializing, creeping out of the grain of the wallpaper: ‘THE THRONE IS MINE.’ We tried to leave, but the door to the parlor flung open, and we heard a crash from the basement. When we went to investigate, we found the Hollow Case pried open, its contents strewn across the floor, and the EMF readers all pegged to max. And there, sitting in the center of the basement, was the rocking chair, now covered in that same dark stain, and it was slowly rocking itself.

Miles picked up the analog radio, which was now emitting a low hum. He turned the dial, but the hum grew louder, and from the speaker, we heard a sound like a thousand small bones grinding. Then the voice, clear as day: ‘You have brought me offerings. Now sit.’ The rocking chair stopped, and for a moment, the basement was dead silent. We backed up, stumbling over each other, and fled the house. We didn’t stop until we reached the van, and only then did we realize that Miles was missing. Looking back at the farmhouse, we saw a figure in the basement window, sitting in the chair, and it waved at us.

The police later found no sign of Miles. The farmhouse was empty, the rocking chair gone. But weeks later, I received a package with no return address. Inside was a small, hand-carved wooden book—a diary, its pages filled with an ink that smelt of copper. It was written in a spidery hand, and it told the story of a farmer who, in the 1800s, believed he was a king of this land, and who made a pact with something to ensure his reign never ended. The last page had a single sentence: ‘He sits on his throne, and he waits for company.’