Speaker 1: Calaruga Shark Media, Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This is the showing episode one open house. The house
was too cheap. I knew it the moment I saw
the listing. Four bedrooms, three baths, original hardwood floors, updated kitchen,
a backyard with mature oaks, built in nineteen twenty three,
all that character and craftsmanship you don't find anymore, listed
at nearly two hundred thousand below market value. There has
to be something wrong with it. I told David Foundation issues,
black mold something. He shrugged. Only one way to find out.
That was January third, three days into the new year.
We'd made it through the holidays by sheer force of will,
smiling at family gatherings, pretending the nursery we'd painted in
October wasn't sitting empty down the hall of our apartment,
pretending we were fine. We weren't fine. We hadn't been
fine since November, since the doctor's voice on the phone,
since the silence where a heartbeat should have been. But
we were trying. Looking at houses was part of the
trying a fresh start, we told ourselves. Somewhere without memories.
The real to met us at the curb, her name
was Patricia, and she smiled too much, not a normal smile,
something fixed and desperate, like a woman trying to sell
you something before you noticed the cracks. You're going to
love it, she said, already walking toward the front door.
It's a special property, very special. The cellars are highly motivated.
Why so cheap, David asked. Patricia's smile flickered just for
a moment. The market's been slow and it's been on
the listing for a while. But that's good news for you.
Means they're ready to deal. How long is a while?
She didn't answer. She was already unlocking the front door,
pushing it open, gesturing us inside. The house was beautiful,
I'll give it that. High ceilings with crown molding, a
staircase that curved up to the second floor like something
out of old film. Windows everywhere, tall and wide, letting.
In the pale gray light of a January afternoon, the
floors gleamed, the walls were freshly painted. Everything was perfect,
too perfect, maybe like a stage set, like something designed
to be looked at rather than lived in. The previous
owners did extensive renovations, Patricia said, leading us through the
living room into the kitchen, new appliances, new countertops, new
fixtures in all the bathrooms. They really loved this place.
Why are they selling? Another flicker, another smile that didn't
quite reach her eyes. Relocated job opportunity, out of state,
very sudden. We toured the rest of the house, the
dining room with its built in china cabinet, the half
bath under the stairs, the four bedrooms on the second floor,
each one bright and empty and waiting. The last room
we saw was at the end of the upstairs hall,
smaller than the others, a single window looking out over
the backyard. This would make a perfect nursery, Patricia said,
I felt David go still beside me. Or an office,
she added, quickly reading our silence. Or a guest room,
very versatile space. I made myself walk into the room,
made myself look at the walls, the window, the closet
door standing slightly ajar. It was just a room, just
four walls and a ceiling and a floor. It didn't
have to be anything. But when I turned to leave,
I caught something at the edge of my vision, a
flicker of movement in the closet, the darkness inside shifting
just slightly, as if something had stepped back to avoid
being seen. I stopped, stared at the closet door, at
the thin slice of shadow visible through the gap. Nothing moved,
nothing was there. Emma David touched my arm. You okay, fine,
I pulled my eyes away from the closet. I'm fine.
Let's see the basement. The basement was unfinished, concrete floors,
exposed beams, the smell of old stone, and something else underneath,
something organic and faintly sweet that I couldn't identify. The
furnace hummed in the corner. Pipes ran along the ceiling
like metal veins, good bones. Patricia said, you could finish
this space, add another bedroom, a wreck room, lots of potential.
I wasn't listening. I was looking at the far wall,
where the concrete met the original foundation stones. Something about
the wall bothered me, the way the stones fit together,
the way the shadows pooled in the gaps between them,
and there near the floor, almost invisible unless you were
looking for it. Scratches, deep gouges in the stone, grouped
in clusters, like someone had been counting or clawing. What's that?
Pointed Patricia glanced at the wall, Her smile tightened. Old
House probably from when they dug the foundation. You know
how it is. I didn't know how it was, but
I didn't push. We made an offer that afternoon, full
asking price, no contingencies. Patricia called us two hours later
to say it had been accepted. That was fast, David said,
motivated sellers. Patricia replied, I told you. We moved in
on January fifteenth, a Saturday, gray and cold, the sky
heavy with clouds that couldn't decide whether to snow. Our
furniture looked wrong in the new rooms, too small, too modern,
swallowed by the high ceilings and old bones of the house.
But it was ours. That's what mattered, A place without memories,
a fresh start. The first night, we ordered pizza and
ate it. Sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by boxes.
David made jokes about christening the new place. I laughed,
or tried to. The sound echoed strangely in the empty rooms.
It's weird, right, I said, the echo like the house
is too big for us. It'll feel smaller once we unpack,
get some rugs down, hang some pictures. He squeezed my hand.
It's going to be good, em I can feel it.
I wanted to believe him, I really did. We went
to bed early. The master bedroom was at the front
of the house, overlooking the street. We'd set up the bed,
but nothing else, just a mattress on a frame, surrounded
by boxes we hadn't opened yet. I lay in the dark,
listening to David's breathing, slow into sleep. The house was quiet,
too quiet. No traffic noise, no neighbor's televisions, no distant sirens,
just silence, thick and heavy as a blanket. And then
underneath the silence something else, a creek, soft, deliberate, like
a footstep on old wood. I held my breath, listened.
Another creak, closer, this time coming from the hallway outside
our door. David. I whispered his name. He didn't stir.
The creaking stopped. The silence returned, but different, now, expectant,
like something was waiting just outside the door, waiting for
me to acknowledge it. I stared at the ceiling, counted
my heartbeats, told myself it was an old house. Old
houses made noises, wood contracted in the cold, pipes settled,
foundations shifted. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something
was standing in the hallway, something that wanted me to
open the door, wanted me to look. I didn't look.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed myself against David's
sleeping warmth, and I didn't look. Eventually I slept. I
woke to gray morning light and the smell of coffee.
David was already up, clattering around the kitchen, trying to
find where we'd packed the mugs. The fear of the
night felt foolish, now distant, just first night jitters in
a strange place. I got up, showered, went downstairs to
help with the unpacking. That's when I noticed the boxes.
We'd stack them in the living room before bed, three
neat rows against the wall, but now they were different, rearranged.
Some of them had been opened, their flaps standing up
like startled mouths. Did you go through these, I asked David.
He looked up from the kitchen. What the boxes? Someone
opened them? He came into the living room, looked at
the boxes, frowned. I didn't touch them. Maybe they just
came open. Tape didn't hold. I checked the nearest box.
The tape had been cut, not torn, cut cleanly with
something sharp. David, someone was in here. That's not possible.
The doors were locked, the alarm was he stopped, checked
his phone, the alarm was set all night, no alerts.
We searched the house, every room, every closet, every corner. Nothing,
no one, no sign that anyone had been inside. But
the boxes had been opened. Some one had gone through
our things. Maybe we should call the police, I said,
and tell them what that our boxes got re arranged.
David shook his head. They'll think we're crazy. I don't
care what they think. He put his hands on my shoulders,
looked into my eyes. We're stressed, we're exhausted. We just
moved into a new place. Let's not make this into
something it's not. I wanted to argue, but he was right.
We were stressed, we were exhausted, and what would I
even tell the police that I had a feeling that
the house felt wrong? So I let it go. I
told myself it was nothing. I was still telling myself
that when I found the drawing. It was in one
of the opened boxes, a box i'd packed myself full
of books from our old apartment. The drawing was tucked
between two paperbacks, folded once, like someone had hidden it there.
I unfolded it with trembling hands, A child's drawing, crayon
on paper, A family, mother, father, two small children standing
in front of a house. This house. I recognized the
curved staircase visible through an upstairs window, the big oak
tree in the yard. But that wasn't what made my
hands shake. In the drawing, there was something else, a
figure in one of the second floor windows, not part
of the family, something separate. Watching. The child had drawn
it as a dark shape, featureless except for two circles
where eyes should be. It took up almost the entire window,
like it was pressing against the glass, like it was
trying to get as close as possible. I turned the
paper over on the back, in a child's uneven handwriting
three words, it sees us. I stood there in my
new living room, surrounded by boxes and pale january light,
holding a message from someone who had lived in this
house before me, someone who had seen something, someone who
had tried to warn me. The paper shook in my hands.
I told myself to breathe told myself there was an explanation.
The previous owners had children, Children drew things, imaginary friends,
monsters under the bed. It didn't mean anything. But when
I looked up at the window, the same window from
the drawing, the one at the top of the stairs.
I could have sworn I saw something move in the glass,
a flicker, a shape there, and then gone. I didn't
tell David about the drawing. I don't know why. Maybe
because I knew what he'd say, Maybe because saying it
out loud would make it real. Instead, I folded the
paper back up and put it in my pocket, and
I tried very hard not to look at the windows
for the rest of the day. But that night, lying
in bed, I felt it again, that presence, that weight
in the darkness, something standing just out of sight, waiting
it sees us. The words echoed in my head as
I stared at the ceiling, and somewhere in the house
above me, below me, I couldn't tell. I heard a sound,
soft and rhythmic, like breathing, like something that had been
holding its breath for a very long time, finally letting
itself exhale. Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Calaroga
Shark Media. Some elements of AI may have been used
in this production, but it was written, edited, mixed, and
produced by Real Live People. Executive producers Mark Francis and
John McDermott,