The Hollow House
At the very end of Maple Street stood an old mansion, home to a variety of local legends. It was long since abandoned, and it wore an air of decay, looming dark against the sky at twilight. The townsfolk would talk about strange noises and flickering lights, about shadows that move behind the cracked windowpanes. Some even said it was haunted by the spirits of all the people that disappeared from the area over the years. The house had always remained something of a mystery, despite any dark folklore saying otherwise—until the day Jenna decided she would learn all of its secrets.
Jenna was a young, upcoming journalist with a lot of interest in the supernatural. Determined to write her next feature on the place, Jenna went to the mansion with a flashlight, camera, and notebook. She went near the house one cold night. The environments were filled with fog and the only sound one could ever hear was that of the dead leaves as they get crushed under feet.
Jenna slowly undhooked the catch on the iron gate, and it let out a dreadful creaking noise. The way up to the door was swamped with weeds; the once-grand stairs reduced to rubble. She stopped for a second; insecurity trickled down her spine. But grim determination pushed her further: she had gone too far to turn back now.
The front door, surprisingly, was ajar. Jenna pushed it open as quietly as she could and was greeted by the musty smell of mildew and decay. The beam from her flashlight cut through the darkness to present a grand but neglected foyer. Dusty chandeliers hung like skeletal remains, and the wallpaper peeled in long strips.
She took a deep breath and stepped inside. The interior was a labyrinth of rooms, each one leading to something even more disturbing. Luxurious furniture was now enrobed with cobwebs, and the fade dragged silky faces of people from the wall into the gaze of the viewer. The air grew chill around her, and in the abode, her further progress gave her little cold clouds of breath.
As it slowly opened itself, and Jenna moved to the first left-side door, drawing near to them, she suddenly began to feel like each one of her steps was creaking loudly right beneath her weight, making a dull sound through the ultimate silent atmosphere of the hall. And finally, she stood on the second floor, stepping into a really long corridor with rows of closed doors. Most of them were blocked or locked, except one at the very end of the corridor on the left side, which was left half open.
Curiosity prevailed over fear and she went up to the door, pushed it, and entered the room. A huge bedroom, almost untouched by time, met her views. A huge four-poster bed was positioned against the far wall, and there was an ornate mirror over the fireplace. On the nightstand was a dusty book with some of the filth from the pages that Jenna tried to remove. It was a diary.
The dates of the entries in this diary spanned from the early 1900s. Shaky letters in impressive penmanship revealed their author had once drawn a happy family living in this mansion. They began happily, describing family life, before they started to get darker. It was mentioned that strange happenings took place—a continuing feeling of being watched, footsteps echoing in empty rooms, whispers in the dark.
The final entries were scattered and desperate. There, he wrote of an increasing fear, some dark twisting presence that seemed to suck from the house everything resembling life. And the last entry, a scrawled, chilling line: "They are Here. They want All of us. We can't escape.".
Jenna continued reading, and the chill in the room deepened, heavy about her, before coming as an oppressive feel against her skin. A slight flicker of the flashlight, and she could feel whispers somewhere, as if distantly heard from all directions. Her heart raced, but she forced herself to stay calm. She had to gather as much information as possible.
There was an almighty bang from further into the house. Jenna jumped, her flashlight beam jittering. In no time, she swung it toward the noise she heard: a door, apparently, snapped shut by itself at the end of the hallway. Instantly, murmurs grew louder, more insistent. Jenna felt an icy hand grip her shoulder and spun around, but there was no one there.
Jenna panicked and decided to get out. She ran along stairways, the echo of her running footfall reverberating in the walls of deserted corridors. The front foyer did seem closer now, looking back over her shoulder; shadows lurked around in the corners of her eyes. The front door looked further off than it had ever looked, and the house almost seemed as if it was conspiring to never have let her go.
The door finally burst open and she could breathe from the outside. The fog had thickened and wrapped her like a thick stifling shroud. She ran for her car with her heart in her mouth. As she wrestled with the keys she glanced back at the mansion; the former dark windows now shone with a pale, grim light. For a second she believed she saw a figure in the window, watching her.
Jenna shivered again, as if she were being followed, and the thought of that house and its shadows refused to leave her mind. The mansion dissolved into fog behind her, taking its secrets with it.
Back in her apartment, Jenna reviewed the footage and jotted down some notes from her visit. The recordings were full of static, and there were some really inexplicable weirdnesses in the photographs: blurs and distortions that almost seemed to writhe on their own. All the entries of the diary were accounted for, but now they looked ominous as never before.
Now, with the added need to get to the bottom of everything, Jenna was only more determined. Further research into its history led her to discover that the mansion had belonged to a family who vanished mysteriously. There were rumors of some dark ritual gone wrong, some curse laid upon the family—binding them to the house forever.
The more Jenna dug up about the mansion's history, the more she knew it wasn't a house of specters; it was a focus for something much worse. It is a house that reflects evil energy, giving life to fear and despair for all those who have walked through its doors.
It wasn't long before each night, Jenna started being welcomed by her nightmares of that mansion. The dreams were getting closer and closer to reality, and she would wake up in a cold sweat as if she had never left that house. She started to feel that some mysteries were better left unsolved and some places should just be left undisturbed.
The Hollow House had stood for an enigma, a black and sprawling monument to some darkness in the past. Now, with the remains of Lena unearthed, Jenna felt this evil lurking inside the now-forgotten corridors of the world the past had never buried, where dark forms ever loomed and waited with infinite patience.