Echoes in the Crawlspace

When Claire and Nathan Rivers moved into their fixer-upper in the sleepy town of Windmere, they thought they’d hit a jackpot—a four-bedroom craftsman with a wraparound porch, surrounded by pine and fog, all for half the price of similar homes in the city. “We’ll flip it,” Nathan had said, optimistic. “A year tops.”

That was six months ago. The house didn’t flip.

It shifted.

It creaked differently at night.

It breathed.

Claire, a freelance illustrator, began working from home full-time after the move. She initially loved the quiet. No neighbors, no traffic. Just the sound of pencils scratching paper, wind through trees, and the occasional crackling from the old radiators.

But then she began hearing something else.

It started subtly—soft scuttling noises beneath the living room floorboards, like a raccoon or some small animal had gotten into the crawlspace. She brought it up with Nathan.

“I’ll check it out this weekend,” he said without looking up from his laptop.

But the weekend came and went.

And the sounds changed.

The soft scrapes turned into short thuds. Then… words.

Claire was sketching at her desk late one evening when she heard it for the first time. A whisper. From under her feet.

“Claire…”

She froze. Looked around.

Silence.

Maybe the house was playing tricks. She chalked it up to wind through the vents, or maybe a subconscious echo of her own thoughts.

But the next night, it came again.

“Claire… help me.”

It was Nathan’s voice.

Only—Nathan was out of town. A last-minute construction job two hours away. She had spoken to him on video chat just twenty minutes earlier.

This time, the whisper came with a sound—something sliding, slow and deliberate, under the floorboards.

Claire backed away from the desk and tiptoed toward the hallway. Every light was on in the house now. She grabbed her phone and opened the voice recorder app.

“Say something,” she whispered.

Silence.

“Hello?” she asked aloud, heart pounding.

And the voice came again.

“I’m stuck,” it said. “It’s Nathan. Please. I need you.”

But the voice wasn’t quite right.

It was trying to be Nathan. Same tone. Same rhythm. But like a stranger wearing his face, or a puppet reading from a script it didn’t understand.

Claire dropped the phone.

She didn’t sleep that night. She sat in the hallway with every lamp turned on, staring at the thin seam where the wooden floorboards met the trim. Nothing moved.

But in the silence of 3 a.m., she heard it again.

Breathing.

Right under her.

The next morning, she called a local contractor. “There’s something in the crawlspace,” she told him. “I need it checked.”

The man came that afternoon. Grey-haired, with muddy boots and a strong jawline. He didn’t talk much. Just nodded, took a flashlight, and slid beneath the house through the access hatch behind the porch.

Ten minutes passed.

Fifteen.

Claire stood outside, biting her lip.

Then came a low thud.

The man screamed.

It wasn’t a loud scream—it was cut short. Like it had been yanked from his throat.

She crouched down by the crawlspace entrance. “Are you okay?” she shouted.

A moment later, the man’s voice answered.

“Yeah,” it said. “Sorry. Just a possum. Startled me.”

But something was wrong.

The voice was dull. Flat. Like a recording.

He emerged a moment later, brushing dirt from his jeans. But he avoided eye contact.

“I didn’t see anything down there,” he muttered. “No animals. Just rats, probably. Nothing to worry about.”

He left in a hurry.

Claire watched from the window as he sped off, his truck tires squealing on the gravel. He never charged her for the visit.

When Nathan returned two days later, she told him everything. The voices. The breathing. The contractor. He laughed nervously.

“It’s an old house, Claire. Things creak. You’ve been cooped up too long.”

She didn’t argue. Just handed him the phone with the voice recording she made. He pressed play.

“Claire… help me… It’s Nathan…”

He frowned.

“I never said that,” he muttered.

“That’s the point.”

“I mean—I never said that. Not in that voice.”

He dropped the phone.

That night, they both heard it.

They were brushing their teeth when a sharp knock echoed from beneath the bathroom floor.

Then came the voice.

“Let me out,” it whispered.

This time, it was Claire’s voice.

“Claire?” Nathan called down.

The voice responded. “Yes?”

But Claire was standing right beside him.

“I’m cold,” the voice said. “Please.”

They didn’t sleep that night either.

Over the next week, the voices changed.

Sometimes they spoke in tandem—two, sometimes three voices layered atop each other, echoing from beneath the boards.

Sometimes, they repeated things Claire and Nathan had said earlier in the day—perfectly mimicked, but lifeless.

Sometimes… they cried.

The worst was the night they heard a child.

“Mommy?” it asked, soft and trembling.

Claire locked herself in the bedroom for hours.

Desperate, they contacted the county records office and found something chilling: the house had been abandoned for over twenty years before the last owner flipped it. The original family? Never officially moved out. The father had reported “something living under the house.” Said it learned from them.

Then the reports stopped.

No official police records. No missing persons.

Just silence.

Claire wanted to leave.

Nathan wanted to burn it down.

The final night in the house, they were packing when the lights flickered. Every bulb in the house dimmed to a deep amber hue, like the glow of a dying candle.

Then—all at once—every voice they’d ever heard came back.

A symphony of echoes. Their own words. Laughter. Pleas for help. Apologies. Screams.

From every wall. Every vent. Every inch of the house.

Then… footsteps.

Upstairs.

But they had already packed up the attic.

“Nathan,” Claire whispered.

He held her hand tightly, staring up toward the ceiling.

The footsteps grew louder. Deliberate. Pacing.

Then, down the hall.

Toward the bedroom.

They slammed the door and braced it with a chair. Claire fumbled with her phone, but it wouldn’t turn on. Dead.

The doorknob twisted.

Something knocked.

Once. Twice.

Then—

“Claire?” It was Nathan’s voice.

But Nathan was beside her.

She stared at him.

And he stared back—wide-eyed, mouth open in horror.

Because Claire had spoken too.

“Did you just—?” he asked.

She shook her head.

The voice spoke again.

“Let me in. I’m you.”

They left that night with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

The house remains vacant now. Still listed for sale.

Sometimes, late at night, the lights flicker on.

And if you stand close enough to the walls, you’ll hear voices.

They say it’s just the wind.

But others say the house is learning again.

And soon… it will know how to get out.