A man shines a flashlight on a ghostly figure standing at the end of a dark, eerie hallway.

The air had grown unnaturally still. Not the calm of a quiet evening, but the kind that feels held, like the world itself was holding its breath. As Jacob stepped into the long-abandoned farmhouse, the rotten floorboards creaked beneath his boots, their groans swallowed by the suffocating silence. Dust clung to the stale air, shimmering in the narrow beam of his flashlight. The walls, once white, were now yellowed with time, streaked with handprints too high and too small to make sense. He told himself it was just the wind that made the door slam behind him—but there was no wind. There hadn’t been since he arrived. Then he saw it. At the end of the hallway stood a figure, pale and motionless. A woman in a tattered nightgown, her face turned away, her feet not quite touching the ground. His breath caught in his throat as every instinct screamed at him to run—but he couldn’t. His body betrayed him, rooted to the floor. The figure slowly turned. Her eyes were dark, bottomless pits. Not empty—hungry. Her mouth opened slightly, not to scream, not to speak, but as if in recognition. Like she remembered him. Or maybe she was waiting for him all along. And then, without warning, the light from his flashlight flickered—and went out. See more