''Whispers Beneath the Floorboards''

The first thing Ellie noticed when she stepped into the old farmhouse was the silence. Not the comforting quiet of an empty home, but something thicker—like the house itself was holding its breath.

She had inherited the place from her estranged grandmother, a woman she barely remembered. It stood in a forgotten part of Maine, far from cell towers and city noise. Ellie, freshly divorced and exhausted by city life, thought the isolation might be a blessing.

At first, it was.

The air smelled of pine and dust. The fields behind the house stretched endlessly into the horizon. She spent the first few days cleaning, fixing the leaky roof, and unpacking boxes that hadn't been touched in years.

But on the fourth night, she heard it.

A faint voice. No louder than a whisper.

Coming from beneath the floorboards in the hallway outside her bedroom.

At first, she thought it was the wind. The house creaked and groaned like all old houses do. But this sound was… different. Intentional. Human.

A child’s voice. It said her name.

“Ellie…”

She froze. The whisper lasted only a second. She stood in the dark hallway for ten minutes, heart pounding, ears straining.

Nothing.

She told herself it was her imagination.

But the next night, it happened again. And the next.

The whispers grew louder. Closer. Sometimes multiple voices. They didn’t say much—just her name. Sometimes they cried. Sometimes they laughed, softly and brokenly.

She searched the floor for answers. Beneath a hallway rug, she found warped wooden boards. One of them was loose. She pried it open, half-expecting to find mice or water damage.

What she found was a small wooden box, wrapped in black cloth.

Inside were three things:

A cracked porcelain doll, its eyes missing.

A bundle of human hair, tied with a red ribbon.

A child's drawing, faded and water-stained. It showed a stick figure family… with one figure crossed out in angry red crayon.

Suddenly, the air turned ice-cold. Ellie dropped the box. The whispers returned, loud and furious this time.

“She buried us…”

“She knew…”

“Tell the truth!”

She ran out of the house, didn’t stop until she reached the old general store fifteen miles down the road. The clerk, an elderly man named Harris, took one look at her and said, “You must be Margaret’s granddaughter.”

She nodded, still trembling.

He sighed. “I wondered if someone would come for that house.”

Ellie asked him what he meant.

He hesitated, then said, “Your grandmother was a midwife. Years ago. But something happened. Some of the babies… they didn’t make it. People started whispering. Said she wasn’t just helping mothers—she was punishing them. Especially the unwed ones.”

Ellie’s mouth went dry.

“Of course,” Harris added quickly, “there was never any proof. Just stories. But one night, a woman came to her for help. Young girl. She was never seen again. Cops came, but found nothing. Margaret said the girl ran off to Boston. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t.”

Ellie left without saying goodbye.

The House Awakens

Back at the farmhouse, the air was thick and oppressive. Every step she took on the wooden floor echoed like a scream. That night, she placed the strange box back where she’d found it and nailed the board shut.

But it was too late.

The whispers no longer waited for night. They came in the daylight, in her dreams, in her mind.

She began seeing things—a flicker in the mirror, a shadow crawling across the ceiling. The doll from the box appeared in different places around the house, even though Ellie had locked it in a drawer.

One morning, she awoke with dirt under her fingernails and bruises she couldn’t explain. Her hands shook. Her voice trembled. The house wasn’t just haunted—it was remembering.

And it wanted her to remember too.

Driven to desperation, Ellie tore up the hallway floorboards. Beneath them was not just the box—but a second compartment, deeper, darker.

Inside, she found a bundle of bones wrapped in cloth. Small bones. Child-sized.

That night, the house screamed.

Walls shook. Doors slammed. The whispers became screams.

“You left us!”

“You let her do it!”

“You were supposed to protect us!”

Ellie fell to her knees, sobbing. She remembered nothing from her childhood—but suddenly she saw a woman in white, her grandmother, holding a crying baby. Then… silence. A shovel. Cold earth.

Ellie’s mother had died when she was young. No one ever told her how.

Now, she knew.

The Truth Beneath

Ellie called the police the next morning. The remains were taken for analysis. The house was declared a crime scene. Investigators uncovered four more sets of remains, each buried beneath a different room.

The farmhouse was sealed off. A quiet memorial was erected in town. No charges could be filed—Margaret had died two years ago—but the town remembered now.

And the voices stopped.

For a while.

Ellie moved back to the city, tried to rebuild her life. But sometimes, when she walks across old wooden floors in apartment buildings or museums, she hears it again.

A faint creak. A whisper.

“Ellie…”

And she wonders if the house was just the beginning.