The Turn of the Wicker Chair

I’ve always been a rational person. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that nonsense. But what happened to me over the past few months has shaken that belief to its core. I’m writing this down not to convince anyone, but to get it out of my head, because if I keep it bottled up, I’m afraid it will drive me mad.

It started in early spring, after my sister, Elena, had to leave for a six-week work assignment in another country. I missed her terribly. Our house is an old Victorian that we inherited from our grandmother, and it has always felt cozy, not creepy. But with Elena gone, the silence felt heavy. One night, I decided to sleep in her room, just to feel closer to her. Her room was exactly as she left it: a small desk by the window, a bookshelf, and an old wicker chair in the corner across from her bed. I fell asleep reading one of her novels.

Around 3 a.m., I woke with a start. The room was bathed in pale moonlight. The first thing I noticed was that the wicker chair, which had been in the corner, was now right beside the bed, almost touching the mattress. I froze. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the chair was slowly turning, as if someone was sitting in it and rotating to face me. But no one was there. The chair stopped with its back to the bed, then turned again, this time facing me directly. I could feel a cold draft emanating from it, and the faint smell of old dust and dried flowers. I pulled the covers over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, whispering prayers I hadn’t said since childhood. I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion, because when I woke in the morning, the chair was back in its corner, looking harmless.

I told no one about this, convincing myself it was a lucid dream. But then, in June, my aunt fell ill, and I had to go stay with my grandparents in their rural farmhouse to help care for her. My grandfather had passed away years ago, so it was just my grandmother, my aunt, and me. The farmhouse was over a hundred years old, with creaky floorboards and a cellar that always smelled of damp earth. I slept in my grandmother’s bedroom on the ground floor, while she slept downstairs in a makeshift bed in the living room to be close to the fireplace.

On the second night, I had trouble falling asleep, so I left the lights on and read a magazine. Around 2 a.m., I heard a slow creaking sound from the hallway, like someone walking with a limp. The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar, and I saw a shadow move past the gap. I called out, ‘Grandma?’ No answer. The creaking stopped right outside the door. Then, the door slowly pushed open, and standing in the doorway was the silhouette of a hunched figure, but it was too tall to be my grandmother. It just stood there, breathing heavily. I screamed, and the figure vanished. My grandmother came running up the stairs, asking what was wrong. Of course, there was nothing there.

I couldn’t sleep after that, so I stayed up the rest of the night, sitting in the kitchen with my grandmother, who told me old stories about the farmhouse. She mentioned that a previous owner had died in the cellar, and that sometimes the house ‘remembers.’ I asked her if she had ever seen anything, and she smiled sadly, saying, ‘Only when the moon is full.’ I didn’t sleep for days after that.

But the worst was yet to come. In August, after my aunt recovered, I returned to my own house. I was relieved to be back, but the memory of the chair weighed on me. I avoided Elena’s room, but one afternoon, I had to go in to fetch a book. The wicker chair was in its corner, but as I walked past, I noticed something on the seat: a small, folded piece of paper. I hadn’t put it there. I unfolded it, and written in an old, spidery handwriting were the words: ‘You should not have sat in my chair.’ A chill ran down my spine. I crumpled the paper and threw it away, but that night, I heard the chair creaking in the hallway.

I crept out of my bedroom and peered down the hall. The chair was slowly moving, as if being pushed by an invisible force, its legs scraping the wooden floor. It stopped outside my door, turned, and faced me. I slammed the door and locked it. The creaking continued for hours, sometimes right outside my door, sometimes moving down the stairs. I didn’t sleep a wink.

The next morning, I found the chair in the kitchen, overturned. On the floor in front of it, there was a small pile of dust and a single white rose. I knew then that something was trying to communicate, and it wasn’t friendly. I decided to research the history of the house. I found old records in the attic: a deed from the 1920s, listing a previous owner, a woman named Margaret Whitmore. She had lived alone and was found dead in her bedroom, sitting in a wicker chair, her body not discovered for weeks. I shuddered. I had been sleeping in her room without knowing it.

I tried to cleanse the house, burning sage and reading comforting prayers, but the presence only grew stronger. One night, I was sitting in the living room, trying to read, when the wicker chair rolled in from the kitchen, across the hardwood floor, and stopped right in front of me. The air grew cold, and I saw, for a split second, a faint image in the chair: a gaunt woman with hollow eyes, wearing a tattered nightgown. She mouthed something I couldn’t understand, then the chair tilted forward, as if it were trying to stand up. I ran out of the house and drove to a motel, where I wrote this account.

I’m writing this from a motel room, miles away, but it doesn’t help. The chair is still in my house, waiting. I don’t know what it wants, but I know I can’t go back. If you ever see an old wicker chair in an antique shop, don’t sit in it. And if you do, don’t fall asleep nearby. Because it might just turn to face you.