The Yellow Wallpaper of 23B

I never believed in haunted houses until I moved into unit 23B of the Maplewood Apartments. The building was old, built in the 1920s, and my landlord boasted about its historical charm. But the charm wore thin by the third week, when I started to feel a persistent unease, like a cold draft that followed me from room to room. I’d wake up at 3 AM to the sound of scratching inside the walls, a rhythmic scrape that stopped the moment I turned on the light. I told myself it was mice, but the sound was too deliberate, too patient.

As weeks passed, the atmosphere of the apartment seeped into my bones. I found myself snapping at coworkers, crying for no reason, and feeling a hot, irrational anger at the smallest inconvenience. I was always a calm, cheerful person—my friends called me the ‘energy booster’—but here, I was becoming a stranger. The feelings intensified on days when I stayed home longer. I dreaded coming back, but I had nowhere else to go. I started to suspect the apartment was doing something to me, but I couldn’t prove it.

One evening, after a particularly bad bout of despair, I called my friend Nina, who was a psychic back in Oregon. I told her about the noises and my mood swings. She listened quietly, then asked if she could do a remote reading of the apartment. I gave her the address and description. She called me back an hour later with a shaky voice, saying, ‘There’s something old in that building. It’s not malevolent, but it’s needy. It feeds on strong emotion—your sadness, your anger—and it draws it out to sustain itself. It’s anchored to a spot in your bedroom, under the floor.’

She told me to look for a loose floorboard. I found it near the radiator, a section that felt springy. With a crowbar, I pried it up and uncovered a small tin box. Inside was a yellowed diary, its pages brittle, the handwriting cramped and frantic. It belonged to a woman named Elsie who had lived there in the 1930s. She wrote about her deteriorating mind, her husband’s dismissals, and a ‘presence’ that whispered to her from the walls. The last entry read: ‘I have become it. I am the air. I am the mood that shifts. Pass me on.’

I slammed the book shut, heart racing. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I felt the air thicken, and in the mirror, I saw my reflection smile when I wasn’t smiling. I realized I could not stay here. I moved out the next day, leaving the diary behind. But as I settled into a new place, I caught myself humming a tune from the 1930s, and I remembered writing a letter to a friend that I never signed. In the reflection of my laptop screen, I saw a faint face—Elsie’s—shining through mine. I think I brought her with me.

Now, in my new home, the scratching has started again, and my moods grow wilder each day. I’ve begun to write this diary, hoping someone will find it and understand. I don’t know how long I can fight her. But I know one thing: if you ever feel a sudden, unexplained sadness in your apartment, check the floorboards. And if you find a yellowed diary, burn it. For your own sake.