“The Room at the End of the Hall”

I never believed in ghost stories until that night.

It was the autumn of 2016 when I spent a semester at an old boarding school in the countryside of Yorkshire, England. The campus was massive, with ivy-covered walls and endless echoing hallways that smelled like wet wood and secrets.

There was one hallway none of us ever went down—the East Wing.

The teachers never mentioned it. The students didn’t talk about it. But there were rumors. Some said a boy disappeared there in the 1960s. Others said his room was still locked, untouched for decades.

They called it "The Room at the End of the Hall."


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One stormy night, I got lost.

The power had gone out, and I was trying to find my way back from the library. The thunder was so loud, it felt like the ground was shaking. I took a wrong turn… and found myself standing at the mouth of the East Wing.

The hallway stretched into blackness. I should have turned around.

But I didn’t.


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The door was open. Just slightly.

Something made me push it open wider. It creaked like it hadn’t moved in years. Inside, the room was cold—freezing—and smelled like dust and wet paper. A broken bed frame, an old desk, and a foggy window were all I could make out.

Then I saw it.

A breath. On the glass. From the inside.

And then, a whisper:

“You finally came back.”


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I ran.

The next day, I tried to tell people. Nobody believed me. My roommate laughed it off. The staff said, “There is no East Wing anymore. That part was shut down 30 years ago.”

But I know what I saw.

And last week, while cleaning out my drawer, I found something that froze my blood.

An old, folded newspaper clipping from 1963.
Headline: "Student Missing – James Rowe, Age 17, Disappears from Boarding School."
There was a photo. Black and white. Faded.

It was me.


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So now I ask myself every night—

If I was the one who disappeared back then…
Who am I now?


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If you’ve ever stayed in a place with a closed-off room no one talks about… don’t open the door. Some stories are waiting to be repeated.