The Girl in the Floorboards: A True Urban Nightmare

I moved into the house on Pine Ridge Lane because it was cheap—too cheap for a three-bedroom in upstate New York. It was old, sure, and smelled like mildew when I walked in, but I’d been through worse. After a messy divorce and a failed business, this place was my fresh start.

The first night was quiet. Too quiet. No city sounds, no neighbors shouting, not even the creak of trees outside. Just silence. I chalked it up to rural life. But then the scratching started.

At first, I thought it was rats. The sound came from beneath the floorboards in the hallway—thin, clawing sounds, like something trapped. I pounded the floor with my fist, shouted, even set out traps. Nothing.

It wasn’t until the third night that I realized it wasn’t rats.

I’d just stepped out of the shower when I heard it again—scratch, scratch, tap. I froze, listening. The pattern was deliberate. Almost... rhythmic.

Then I heard a whisper.

“Michael...”

I turned so fast I slipped on the tile. I lay there for a second, dripping and stunned. My name. I heard my name.

I convinced myself it was in my head. Stress. Exhaustion. But the next night, it came again—only this time, I wasn’t alone.

My daughter Emily, six years old, had come for the weekend. She woke me up in the middle of the night, eyes wide.

“Daddy,” she whispered, “the girl in the floor said she wants to come out now.”

My blood went cold.

“What girl?”

“She said she’s stuck. She wants me to help her.”

I brought her into my bed, heart racing. I didn’t sleep at all. The scratching was louder that night. Angry. Insistent.

The next morning, I tore up the hallway floorboards.

I expected to find broken pipes, maybe a dead animal. Instead, I found something else.

A small wooden door.

It couldn’t have been more than two feet tall, sealed shut with rusty nails. No hinges, no handle. Just a door where there shouldn’t have been one.

Emily stood behind me, watching silently.

“She said not to open it,” she whispered.

I ignored her. Got my crowbar. It took everything I had to pull that door open.

And inside… was a void. No dirt, no foundation. Just a black, empty space that stretched downward far beyond what should’ve been possible.

Then I saw her eyes.

Two pale, glassy orbs blinked up at me from the dark. A face slowly emerged—grey, expressionless, cracked like porcelain.

“Thank you,” she said in a voice that wasn’t hers. It sounded like every voice—men, women, children—layered into one.

I slammed the door shut and nailed it back, faster than I thought humanly possible.

We left the house the next morning. I didn’t pack. I didn’t sell. I never went back.

The house still sits on Pine Ridge Lane. Sometimes, when the wind is right, neighbors say they can hear scratching.

And sometimes… they hear a voice calling out.

Asking for you by name.