Whispers Beneath the Floorboards

When Ellie and her father moved into the crumbling old house on Ashford Lane, it was supposed to be a fresh start. The house was all they could afford after the accident that had taken her mother, the hospital bills, and the silent grief that lingered like smoke. Ellie didn’t complain. She was used to things being broken.

The house had a tilted porch, missing shingles, and wallpaper that peeled like sunburnt skin. It smelled of damp wood and something older—muskier. The real estate agent had called it "rustic" and "charming." Ellie called it creepy.

The first whisper came on their third night.

She was lying in bed, listening to the wind skitter through the trees outside, when she heard it: a soft murmur, rising faintly from beneath the floorboards.

"Ellie... help... please."

She sat up straight, heart pounding. The room was still. Her father had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs, snoring faintly. She leaned down, pressing her ear to the wooden planks.

Nothing. Just silence.

Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe it was the wind.

But the whisper came again the next night. And the next.

Each time, it grew clearer.

"Trapped... so long... can't breathe..."

She tried telling her dad, but he was always too tired to listen. "It’s just an old house, El. Old houses make weird sounds. Pipes, maybe. Dreams."

But Ellie wasn’t dreaming. The whispers weren’t random. They always called her by name.

So she started investigating.

During the day, she explored the house inch by inch. She knocked on walls, tapped floorboards, looked for loose panels. In the upstairs hallway, near the attic door, she noticed one board that echoed hollow when stepped on. She pried it loose with a screwdriver from the kitchen.

Beneath it was a crawlspace, shallow and dark, filled with dust and the smell of old, wet earth. Something glinted faintly in the beam of her flashlight—a small, rusted pendant on a broken chain.

When she touched it, the whispering stopped.

For the first time in a week, the house was silent that night.

But the next morning, things changed.

Ellie woke to find the pendant on her pillow. She was sure she’d left it in her desk drawer. The chain had been polished, the rust gone. When she held it in her hand, it felt warm.

That day, she heard laughter in the walls.

Children. Whispering, giggling. Sometimes crying.

She followed the sounds to the attic.

The attic door had always been stuck, but that morning it opened with a creak like a sigh. Inside, dust floated in sunbeams like golden snow. Old toys lay scattered around: a wooden rocking horse, a dollhouse missing its front wall, a stack of yellowed picture books.

And there, painted on the far wall, was a name: Sarah. Beneath it, dozens of chalk drawings—stick figures holding hands, smiling suns, a crooked house.

"Sarah?" Ellie whispered.

The air turned cold.

A shape appeared in the corner of the attic—not fully visible, but there, like fog catching form. A child, maybe six or seven, with long hair and eyes too big for her face.

"You found it," the voice said, not with sound, but inside Ellie’s head.

"What happened to you?" Ellie asked.

"They locked me in," the voice said. "Long ago. I was bad. I made noise. I wanted to go outside. They said I ruined everything."

Ellie felt a chill crawl up her spine. "Who locked you in?"

"My parents. They left. Forgot me. I couldn’t leave."

Ellie stepped back. "Why are you here? Why talk to me?"

"You listened. You hear."

Sarah moved toward her. The floorboards creaked under Ellie’s feet, but not under Sarah’s. The pendant around Ellie’s neck grew hot.

"Can you help me leave?" Sarah asked. "Please. I'm so tired."

That night, Ellie did research. In the library archives, she found a single newspaper clipping from 1957: Local Girl Missing - Presumed Runaway. Sarah Banning, age 7. Lived at 213 Ashford Lane.

Her parents had left town shortly after. No trace of Sarah had ever been found.

Ellie knew what she had to do.

She went back to the attic, pendant in hand. "Sarah, I found your name. I found your story. You don't have to be trapped here anymore."

The air shimmered. Sarah appeared again, clearer now. Sadder.

"They never looked for me," she said.

"But I did," Ellie said. "You're not forgotten."

She placed the pendant in the center of the attic floor. A soft wind stirred the dust. Light pooled from the pendant like golden threads, wrapping around Sarah.

She smiled.

"Thank you," she whispered.

And then she was gone.

The attic grew warm again. The house felt lighter, as though a weight had lifted from its bones.

From that night on, the house no longer creaked and whispered. Ellie slept soundly. Her father smiled more. They painted the hallway, fixed the shingles, planted sunflowers by the porch.

But sometimes, on quiet mornings, Ellie could still hear the faint sound of a child laughing in the attic—not sad anymore, but free.