The Screams Beneath the Floorboards

Old houses make noise.

They creak, groan, and sigh as if remembering things they were never meant to keep. That’s what I told myself when I first heard it—a faint sound beneath my feet, barely louder than the wind slipping through cracked windows.

I had just moved into the house three weeks ago.

And it had already learned my name.

The first scream came at night.

I was half-asleep on the couch when I heard it—muffled, distant, and wrong. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.

It was desperate.

I sat up, heart pounding, listening as the sound faded into the silence. For a moment, I convinced myself it was a dream. Old pipes. Animals in the walls.

But pipes don’t scream.

And animals don’t sound like they’re begging.

The house was built in the 1940s, the kind of place with narrow hallways and thick wooden floors that swallowed sound. The floorboards in the living room were warped and uneven, their nails rusted with age.

That’s where the screams came from.

Always beneath that spot.

I pressed my ear to the floor one afternoon, feeling foolish—and then the wood vibrated.

A low moan echoed upward, distorted by layers of timber and time.

“Please,” a voice whispered.

I fell back, breath caught in my throat.

It wasn’t a memory.

It wasn’t an echo.

It was happening now.

I called the landlord.

He laughed politely and told me every tenant heard strange things at first. “The house settles,” he said. “It remembers winter.”

That night, the screaming returned—louder this time.

Angrier.

More voices joined in.

Men. Women. Children.

All muffled. All trapped.

All directly beneath my feet.

Sleep became impossible.

Every time I closed my eyes, the floor seemed to pulse beneath me, the wood stretching and contracting like a chest struggling to breathe. I could feel vibrations through my bones, hear fingernails scraping against the underside of the planks.

Trying to get out.

Trying to be heard.

One voice stood out among the others.

Clearer.

Closer.

“You hear us,” it said.

“Yes,” I whispered, shaking.

“Good,” it replied. “That means it’s almost time.”

I tore up one floorboard the next morning.

The wood split easily, as if it had been waiting.

Beneath it was darkness—far deeper than the crawl space should have been. The beam of my flashlight didn’t reach the bottom. The air rising from it was cold and wet, carrying the smell of rot and old blood.

Faces emerged from the darkness.

Not bodies.

Just faces.

Pressed upward, mouths open mid-scream, eyes wide and unblinking.

Their skin was gray and cracked like the wood above them.

They weren’t buried.

They were stored.

“They put us here,” the voices said together. “Layer by layer. Year after year.”

The floor groaned behind me.

New boards creaked.

Fresh nails screamed as they twisted themselves free.

“They walked on us,” one voice sobbed. “Lived on us. Danced on us.”

The house shifted.

I realized then the truth I had been avoiding.

The house wasn’t haunted.

It was hungry.

The floorboards began to lift on their own.

Hands—thin, splintered, and wrong—pushed through the cracks. Fingers hooked around the edges, pulling, dragging the weight of unseen bodies upward.

I ran.

But the house followed.

Walls groaned. Doors slammed shut. The floor buckled beneath me, boards snapping like bones.

“Someone has to take our place,” the voices screamed.

I tripped.

The floor opened.

I woke up on the living room floor.

Morning light streamed through the windows. Everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

The hole was gone.

The boards were smooth, newly polished.

A faint stain marked the spot where I had fallen.

Dark.

Fresh.

When I tried to stand, pain exploded through my legs.

I couldn’t move.

The floor was warm beneath me.

Soft.

Breathing.

From somewhere deep below, I heard a scream.

My scream.