A House in Peshawar

The old house on Kohat Road had been abandoned for decades. Its wooden shutters hung loose, its stone walls bore cracks wide enough for the wind to whistle through, and the locals swore that after dusk, a dim light flickered in its upper window. Children dared each other to throw stones at its broken gate, but no one had ever stepped inside and returned with a smile. The place had a reputation: cursed, haunted, and dangerous.

When Rahim, a young university student from Karachi, moved to Peshawar for his studies, he dismissed these stories as folklore. Ghost tales, he thought, were only a way for elders to keep children indoors at night. But Rahim was also curious, and curiosity has a way of turning disbelief into obsession.

The Dare

One night, after tea with his friends in a roadside chai khana, Rahim laughed off their warnings.

“Ghosts? Really? It’s just an old house,” he said, his voice louder than he intended. “I’ll prove it to you all. Tomorrow night, I’ll go inside. Alone.”

His friends protested at first, then smirked and leaned into the challenge. One of them, Saeed, pulled out his phone.

“Fine. But record it. Otherwise, we’ll say you chickened out.”

Rahim agreed.

The First Night

The following evening, Rahim walked down the dimly lit road, his phone in hand, recording every step. The house loomed larger than he had expected. Its door creaked open as though it had been waiting for him. The air smelled of dust, rot, and something metallic, like dried blood.

Inside, the floorboards groaned. His flashlight beam caught shapes: a chair missing one leg, a shelf covered in cobwebs, and a cracked mirror hanging crooked on the wall.

That’s when he heard it—whispering. At first faint, like the rustle of leaves, then clearer, as if someone were breathing directly behind him. He spun around. The hall was empty.

“Probably the wind,” he muttered, though his voice shook.

Rahim continued up the staircase, each step bending dangerously under his weight. The whispers followed him, rising and falling, always just out of comprehension. He reached the second floor, where the famous window stood. The frame rattled though the night was still.

When he leaned closer, his flashlight flickered and died.

In the sudden dark, a shape moved in the corner. Small, hunched, and shifting as if made of smoke. A child’s laugh echoed, sharp and cold.

Rahim bolted, stumbling down the stairs, scraping his arm against the wall. He didn’t stop running until he reached his hostel.

The next morning, his friends gathered around the phone, eager to see the footage. But the recording cut off the moment Rahim stepped inside. The last frame showed only the half-open door.

The Obsession

Rahim couldn’t sleep that night. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the whispers. They were clearer now, almost words, though he couldn’t understand their language. He tried to drown them out with music, but nothing worked.

On the third night, his friends begged him not to return. But Rahim was already slipping into obsession. He told himself it was for proof, for logic, for reason. Yet deep inside, it was the whispers calling him back.

The Return

This time, he brought candles.

He lit them in the hallway, their flames dancing against the cracked walls. The mirror caught his reflection, but his face looked paler, older. He touched his cheek in confusion—the reflection smiled back a fraction too late.

He smashed the glass. Behind it was a cavity in the wall, stuffed with yellowed pages of old newspapers. Headlines screamed of a family murdered in their sleep. A father, a mother, two children—all gone, never solved. The date was nearly forty years ago.

The whispers grew louder, circling him. They weren’t just in the house anymore—they were inside his head.

“You shouldn’t have come,” they hissed.

Rahim stumbled backward, knocking over a candle. Shadows stretched unnaturally along the wall, forming figures: a tall man with a knife, a woman clutching her throat, two children with hollow eyes.

He screamed, running for the door. But when he reached it, the house had changed. The hallway stretched longer than before, the door shrinking further into the distance with every step. Behind him, footsteps pounded, closer and closer.

The last thing he remembered was cold hands grabbing his shoulders.

The Disappearance

In the morning, Saeed and the others waited for Rahim at the hostel. He never came back. Police searched the house but found nothing—no body, no phone, no sign he had ever entered.

Yet some nights, passersby swear they see a figure at the broken window. A young man with hollow eyes, whispering words that no one can quite understand.

And when the wind is still, the whispers spill out into the street, luring the curious, the stubborn, and the foolish.

No one who has followed them inside has return