The Weeping Birch

I have two stories I rarely tell. One I’d rather forget, the other I keep as a sort of test. This is the one I’d rather forget.

In the autumn of 2008, when I was fourteen, my family moved into a farmhouse on the edge of a dying town in the Finnish countryside. The house was over a century old, surrounded by birch trees that bent unnaturally in the wind, their branches scraping the windows like skeletal fingers. I had never believed in anything paranormal before, but the house had a weight to it, a heaviness in the air that made breathing feel like effort.

For the first few weeks, nothing happened. I chalked up my unease to the isolation and the constant creaking of an old house. But then, one evening, I was coming up from the cellar, where I had been fetching a jar of pickled herring. The cellar stairs led to a narrow hallway that ran alongside the kitchen. As I reached the top step, I heard a sound that made my blood run cold: the soft, rhythmic thud of something heavy being dragged across the floor above me, directly above my bedroom.

I froze, listening. The sound stopped. I told myself it was the wind, or the house settling. But that night, as I lay in bed, I felt a presence in the room. Not a ghostly figure, but an intense pressure, as if the air itself was pushing down on me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. My eyes darted around the darkness, trying to find a source. Then, from the corner of the room, near the old wardrobe, I heard a voice. It was barely a whisper, but it was clear: ‘Leave this place.’

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a nightmare. Over the next few days, the presence grew stronger. I would see shadows flit past doorways, hear footsteps in empty corridors, and feel cold spots that followed me. The worst was when I looked into the mirror in my room and saw, for a split second, a woman’s face behind mine, gaunt and hollow-eyed, before it vanished.

The haunting escalated when I found an old diary in the attic, hidden behind a loose floorboard. It belonged to a woman named Aino, who had lived in the house in the 1940s. Her entries started with the mundane details of farm life, but soon turned to fear. She wrote of a ‘presence’ in the house, a malevolent force that seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. She described the same pressure in the chest, the same whispers. The last entry, dated December 1943, simply said: ‘It has taken my daughter. I have nothing left. It wants me too.’

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the presence was tied to a particular birch tree outside my window, one that was twisted and gnarled, unlike the others. It seemed to watch me. One night, I decided to confront it. I went outside, barefoot in the snow, and stood at the base of the tree. The wind died, and the world went silent. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I turned, but no one was there. When I looked back, the tree’s branches had formed a shape, a figure with outstretched arms, reaching for me.

I ran back inside, but the presence followed me, filling the house with a low hum that vibrated in my bones. My parents were oblivious, but I could see things now, things that made me wish I was blind. In the mirrors, in the windows, in the corners of my eyes, there was always her: Aino, or what was left of her. She was a translucent, weeping thing, her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyes bleeding tears of black.

The climax came on the third night of the full moon. I woke to find my bedroom door open, and a cold draft pulling me towards the hallway. I followed it, my body moving against my will. The stairs creaked under my feet, and I floated down to the front door, which swung open by itself. Outside, the birch tree was bathed in a pale light, and beneath it stood the figure, now solid. It was a woman with a child’s dress, her face hidden by long, tangled hair. She pointed a finger at me, and I felt a searing pain in my chest, as if my heart was being squeezed.

I woke up on the floor of my room, gasping. The sun was rising, and the presence was gone. But I knew it wasn’t over. That morning, I found marks on my neck, like fingers, and I realized that the diary had warned me: ‘Once it marks you, it will never let go.’ I left that house shortly after, but the marks never healed, and I still feel its eyes on me, even now.

I keep this secret as a test, a test to see who truly believes me, who understands that some things are beyond explanation. Most people think I’m crazy. But I know what I saw. And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the weeping birch, and I hear her voice, whispering my name.