The Hollow Beneath the Pines

It was the summer of 2012 when I visited a remote village in southern France with my cousin Adrien. The kind of place where phones lose signal, and time slows down to match the hum of crickets. At the edge of the village stood an ancient pine forest, rumored by locals to be “cursed.” They called it La Forêt Creuse—The Hollow Forest. Of course, we laughed it off. At seventeen, curses were just stories meant to keep kids indoors. But I’ve never quite laughed about it since.




The path into the forest wasn’t marked on any map. It began behind a crumbling chapel, covered in ivy and shadowed by trees that looked like they hadn’t moved in a hundred years. As soon as we stepped under the canopy, everything changed. The air turned colder—dense, almost wet. Even the sound of our footsteps became muffled, like we were walking on memory foam instead of dry leaves.




I noticed quickly that the trees leaned oddly toward each other, like they were whispering secrets above our heads. The light dimmed the further we walked, even though it was mid-afternoon. The forest was beautiful in a wild way—but it also felt… wrong. Not terrifying. Just quietly unsettling. Like the place knew we didn’t belong there.




We kept walking until we came across a wide, circular clearing. At the center stood an old well, overgrown with vines, its stone rim cracked in places. It didn’t look used in years. Around it, the grass had died in a perfect ring, like something had sucked the life out of the earth. There was no sound—not even birdsong. That silence was the first thing that truly made me uneasy.




Adrien, ever the adventurous one, leaned over the well’s edge with a smirk.
“Probably full of bones,” he joked, his voice sounding too loud.
I told him to knock it off. But then he froze.
“You hear that?” he whispered.




At first, I didn’t. Then I did. A faint knocking sound, like someone tapping wood from deep below. It was rhythmic—slow, then fast, then stopping altogether. We stood motionless. The sound returned again, sharper this time. Not an echo. Not a bird. Not wind. Something was down there.




We didn’t stick around. We walked—fast—back through the trees. Neither of us said much until we made it back to the chapel. The sun had already dipped lower in the sky, and I swear the air felt warmer the moment we left the forest behind. Adrien laughed nervously, trying to play it off, but I could see it in his eyes—he felt it too. That well wasn’t just old stone. It was watching.




Later that evening, we asked Adrien’s grandfather about the forest. He grew serious immediately.
“People used to go there,” he said quietly. “They stopped.”
We pressed him for more, but he just shook his head. “Some places are not yours to understand.”




That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that knocking sound in my head. I even had a dream—though it felt more like a memory. In it, I stood at the edge of the well, and a voice whispered from below:
“Dig deeper.”




The next morning, Adrien insisted we go back—this time with a flashlight. I refused. Something in my gut told me the forest didn’t want us a second time. He went anyway. I waited for hours, pacing along the chapel wall. When he finally returned, his face was pale. He didn’t say a word. Just handed me his flashlight.




Inside were scratch marks—long, deliberate lines gouged into the plastic handle. They hadn’t been there when we bought it.
He never told me what he saw that day.




Years later, I still think about that trip. I’ve since grown my own garden—vegetables mostly—and I often think of the way roots grow beneath the surface. Twisting through darkness, searching for something. That forest felt the same way. Like it was alive, but underground. Stretching, remembering.




I’ve learned since then that every old place has its version of La Forêt Creuse. A hollow space where history hums and waits to be uncovered. Sometimes I wonder—was it a real mystery we found that day? Or just the part of ourselves that wants to believe something strange is always watching?

Whatever it was, I never went back.

And I never will.