The Whispers Beneath the Floor

1. The Move-In

When Arif and his younger sister Sana moved into the old colonial house on the edge of Abbottabad, they were just looking for a fresh start. Their father had passed away six months earlier, and the city’s noise was too much for them.

The house was large, cheap, and surrounded by towering pine trees. The locals said it had been empty for decades. “Strange sounds at night,” one old man warned Arif at the grocery shop. “And the floor… it talks sometimes.”

Arif laughed it off. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Sana, however, felt uneasy from day one.

2. The Whispers Begin

The first night passed quietly, but on the second, Sana woke to a faint sound — like someone whispering directly beneath her bed.
At first, she thought it was the wind slipping through the cracks of the wooden floor. But the words grew clearer.

“Let me out… please…”

Sana froze. The voice was thin, hoarse, almost desperate. She held her breath, staring at the floor. Then silence.

In the morning, she told Arif, but he brushed it off. “You’re just nervous. These old houses make all kinds of noises.”

That evening, though, while reading in the living room, Arif felt a vibration under his feet. It wasn’t an earthquake — it felt like someone knocking from below.

3. The Unearthing

Curiosity turned to fear when they discovered a small loose board under the carpet in Sana’s room.
Arif pried it open, revealing a dark, narrow crawlspace. A foul smell drifted upward — damp wood and something rotten.

He shone his flashlight inside. The beam caught something — a set of old fingernail scratches on the wooden beams, deep and chaotic. As if someone had clawed at the wood for dear life.

Then, as he leaned closer, something breathed out of the hole.
Not air — a sigh. A human sigh.

They both jumped back. The board slammed shut on its own.

That night, they couldn’t sleep. The whispers came back, now from every corner of the house.
“You opened it… you shouldn’t have opened it.”

4. The Journal

The next morning, Arif searched the attic, determined to find out who had lived there before. Beneath old boxes, he found a dusty leather-bound journal. The name on the cover was “Dr. Kamal Hussain – 1952.”

Inside were notes about psychological experiments — and entries about “voices in the floor” and “human consciousness trapped by trauma.”

One passage chilled Arif to the bone:

> “Subject 9 remains buried under the living quarters. The treatment failed. The body may still speak. The whispers never end.”


Sana wanted to leave immediately, but a storm had rolled in, cutting the power and blocking the road out of town.

5. The Night of Screams

As darkness swallowed the house, the air grew thick. Every light bulb flickered before dying completely. The siblings lit a single candle and stayed in the living room, back to back.

Then came the sound — heavy footsteps moving under the floorboards, slow and dragging.

The whisper turned into a moan.
“You let me out… now let me in.”

The candle flame twisted sideways, though there was no wind. The boards beneath Sana’s chair began to bulge — as if something was pushing up from below.

Arif grabbed her hand, but before they could run, the floor split open with a loud crack.
A blackened hand shot up, its nails jagged, its skin torn. The stench was unbearable.

They screamed. Arif smashed the hand with a metal rod, but it kept coming — an entire figure crawling out, its face twisted, eyes white and wet.

“He buried me here,” it hissed. “Now it’s your turn.”

6. The Escape

Arif yanked Sana toward the door, kicking the rotten boards aside. The storm outside howled as they ran through the rain. Behind them, the house shook violently. Windows shattered, and a chorus of whispers rose into the night like screams from the underworld.

When they finally looked back, the house was on fire — not from lightning, but from within, glowing with a deep red light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
7. The Ending

A month later, the police investigated. They found no bodies, but the crawlspace under Sana’s room was empty — except for a journal page burned around the edges.

It read:

> “The subject is no longer contained. The voices have found new hosts.”


Sana still wakes up at night, hearing faint whispers beneath her bed — no matter where she sleeps.

And sometimes, when Arif stands alone in silence…
he swears he hears knocking.
From below.

Author’s Note

Some houses don’t keep memories — they feed on them.
And sometimes, when you listen closely enough, the floor beneath you might be listening back.