A Love Letter from a Haunted House

They called me haunted.

Whispered warnings to each other as they passed by. Children dared each other to touch my crumbling porch, teenagers threw rocks at my attic window, and parents crossed the street with their little ones when walking past my iron gate.

But once, I was loved.

I remember it clearly, though time has thinned the edges of my memory like fog slipping through my broken windows.

They were a family of four. The husband had strong hands and a gentle laugh. The wife wore sunlight like perfume and spoke to me when no one was listening. And the children—oh, the children—ran through my halls with a joy that made my walls hum with warmth.

The boy would slide down the banister I still hold onto, even though one spindle has long rotted away. The girl would sit on the windowsill in the west bedroom, where the late afternoon light was always kind, and read stories aloud to my silence.

They were my heartbeat.

They painted me blue once—sky blue. I remember how proud I felt wearing that color. I stood tall for them through storms and summers, through arguments and reconciliations, through spilled milk and birthday cakes. I knew the sound of each footstep, each laugh, each sigh that echoed between my walls. I was their shelter, their keeper of secrets, their silent witness to their love and lives.

And then… they left.

It was not sudden. I felt it coming like a slow rot in the foundation. The laughter grew quieter. The conversations more strained. The boy stopped sliding down the banister. The girl stopped reading at the window. The wife cried in the kitchen when no one else was home, and the husband spent longer and longer hours away.

The night they packed was the worst of my life.

Boxes were stacked in my parlor. Photographs were pulled from my walls. Furniture scraped across my floors. Their footsteps were hurried, their voices tired. I creaked and groaned and rattled, trying to make them stop, to make them remember.

But I was just a house. Just wood and nails and old memories loosening like broken promises.

They drove away without looking back.

I waited for them. A week. A month. A year. Leaves piled up against my door. My paint peeled. My windows clouded. Spiders made homes where once there were bedtime stories and candlelight dinners.

And then the others came.

Not to stay, no. To explore. To mock. Paranormal thrill-seekers with their cameras and cheap EMF detectors. They wanted me to perform. They wanted cold spots and floating orbs. They wanted screams in the dark.

So I gave them what they wanted. I creaked louder. Slammed a door or two. Let the wind sing through the pipes in a way that chilled their bones. It was all I had left—my sorrow, twisted into spectacle.

One girl came in once, alone. She didn’t bring a camera. She didn’t laugh. She just sat in the center of my living room and whispered, “Do you remember them?”

Yes. Yes, I do.

The little boy carved his name into the wood under the dining table. The mother planted rosemary in the garden because it meant remembrance. They danced once, all four of them, when the power went out and candlelight flickered on the walls.

She looked up, tears in her eyes.

“I grew up here,” she said.

And suddenly, I knew her.

The window reader. The daydreamer. The one who buried her goldfish beneath the lilac bush.

She brushed the banister. “You feel sad,” she said. “Like you’re lonely.”

I wanted to wrap her in every sunbeam that ever kissed my floors. I wanted to tell her how proud I was. How much I missed her.

But all I could offer was a soft sigh through the vents, a rustle of curtains in a still room.

She smiled, somehow understanding. “Me too.”

She walked my halls again. Her fingers traced forgotten memories. She found an old drawing behind a radiator—a stick figure family under a crooked blue roof.

Me.

Before she left, she said, “Thank you.”

Thank you, I wanted to shout. For remembering. For coming back.

Now, I am no longer just haunted.

I am mourning.

I am waiting.

And I am writing this letter in silence. In cracked beams and dust motes. In the groan of an aching board.

A love letter from a haunted house.

They say ghosts haunt the living.

But sometimes, it is the house that is haunted by those who have lived and left.

Come home.

Even just for a while.

I still remember how to keep you warm.