The Last Door That Should Never Open

"They told me the house was empty. But on the very first night, I heard a child laughing behind the locked door upstairs."


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I never believed in ghosts. Horror stories were something I read online to pass time. So when my uncle asked me to stay a few nights in his old countryside house while it was up for sale, I agreed without hesitation.

The house stood at the edge of a silent forest, its wooden frame weathered, its windows covered in dust. Still, something about its silence felt… unnatural. The villagers avoided the place. When I asked why, they only whispered, “Don’t go near the last door upstairs.”

I laughed it off. Superstition, I thought.

The first night, as the cold wind whistled through the broken shutters, I explored the rooms with a flashlight. Old portraits hung crookedly, their painted eyes following me in the dim light. Then, I heard it—soft giggles. A child’s laughter.

It came from the second floor.

My heart raced. The house was supposed to be empty. I climbed the stairs, the wood creaking beneath each step. At the end of the hallway stood a door—different from the others. Its paint was darker, the handle rusted. Scratches marked the wood, as if someone had clawed from the inside.

The laughter stopped the moment I touched the handle.

It was locked.

I pressed my ear against the wood. Silence… and then a whisper, faint and chilling:
“Help me…”

I stumbled back, nearly tripping. Fear surged through me, but curiosity was stronger. I forced myself back to my room, convincing myself it was my imagination.

But I didn’t sleep that night.


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The next morning, I asked the only villager willing to talk. He told me about a girl who once lived there—eight years old. She went missing decades ago, last seen playing near that very house. Search parties found nothing, but neighbors claimed they still heard her laughter in the nights.

The police sealed the upstairs door when they couldn’t explain the noises. My uncle never dared to break it open.

I should have left right then. But something inside me needed to know the truth.

That night, I returned to the door with a lantern and a crowbar. The air around it was colder, heavy, suffocating. My hands trembled as I forced the rusty lock. The wood splintered with a crack.

The door swung open.

Inside, the room was small, almost a closet. But the walls… they were covered in drawings. Childlike scribbles, but all of them showed the same thing: a little girl standing in front of the house, her eyes dark, her mouth wide open in a scream.

And in the center of the room lay a small wooden toy, a doll missing its head.

I froze as laughter filled the room again—this time louder, right behind me.

The door slammed shut.

Darkness swallowed me.

I dropped the lantern. The glass shattered, plunging everything into shadows. I could barely breathe. Tiny hands brushed against my arm, cold and fragile. Then a voice, so close it felt like it whispered into my skull:

“You shouldn’t have opened it.”

My scream never left my throat. The air grew heavy, the walls seemed to close in, and the last thing I remember was that laughter turning into a bloodcurdling scream.


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When I woke, it was morning. The door stood wide open behind me, the room empty—no doll, no drawings, nothing. As if it had all been erased.

I left the house that day and never returned. My uncle still swears the second floor has only four doors, not five. He says I imagined it all.

But sometimes, at night, I still hear that child’s laughter.

And when I close my eyes, I feel those cold little hands pulling me back toward the door that should never have been opened.