"Whispers Beneath the Floorboards"

The house had been in Claire’s family for generations, sitting on a lonely patch of land surrounded by dense forest. It wasn’t grand—just a two-story structure with peeling wallpaper and creaking floorboards—but it had a history, and Claire had always been fascinated by history. When her grandmother passed and left it to her, she packed her life into boxes and left the city without a second thought.

Her friends warned her.

"That house is ancient."

"It’s probably falling apart."

"It’s isolated—are you sure you’ll be okay alone?"

Claire wasn’t just okay with it—she needed the isolation. A fresh start. She’d been running on empty for months, haunted by a failed engagement and the crushing pressure of city life. The house, in all its crumbling charm, was peace. Or so she thought.

The first night passed quietly enough. The wind rustled through the trees. The floor creaked with age. Claire chalked it up to the usual old house sounds.

But on the second night, just as sleep began to pull her under, she heard it.

Whispers.

Faint. Muffled. Like someone murmuring secrets through cupped hands pressed against the wood. She sat up, listening. Silence.

The whispers didn’t come from the walls, or the attic, or outside. They came from beneath the floor.

She laughed nervously. Mice, maybe. Or the wind. She’d been stressed—hearing things wasn’t a new phenomenon. She rolled over, pulled the blanket tight, and willed herself to sleep.

The next morning, Claire decided to investigate. She pulled up the rug in the living room and stared at the floorboards. Nothing unusual. But when she knelt down and pressed her ear to the wood, her breath caught.

“Claire...”

A whisper. Deliberate. Measured. Her name.

She scrambled backward and sat against the wall, heart pounding. It had said her name. That wasn’t just the house settling. That was something else.

She tried to rationalize it again—maybe an echo, or her own mind playing tricks—but deep down, she knew better.

Over the next few days, the whispers grew bolder. They didn’t just call her name. They spoke in broken sentences, fragmented memories.

“He said he’d be back… but he never came.”

“So cold down here. So dark.”

“Don’t you remember what happened?”

Claire stopped sleeping. She scoured old documents in the attic, looking for answers. There were gaps in the house’s history—especially during her great-grandmother’s time. Faded photographs. Unlabeled boxes. She found one newspaper clipping from 1932:

“Local Man Disappears in Woods. Foul Play Suspected.”

The article named him: Thomas Alden. A carpenter who had been working on the house. Disappeared without a trace.

She felt something shift under her feet as she read it. A groan from the floorboards. A whisper so soft it sounded like a breath against her ear.

“He never left.”

Claire’s hands trembled.

That night, she tore up a section of the floor in the corner of the living room. The wood splintered easily, like it had been waiting. Dust choked the air as she pried open a gap wide enough to see into the dark crawlspace beneath.

At first, there was nothing but shadows.

Then her flashlight caught something. A scrap of cloth. A rusted belt buckle. And something else—something more solid.

Bone.

She froze.

Human remains. Buried beneath her feet, inches from where she’d been sleeping. The whispers weren’t just hallucinations. They were memories. Echoes of a soul trapped beneath the floorboards.

Claire reported it to the authorities. They exhumed the remains and confirmed what she already knew: male, early 30s, likely there for nearly a century. They couldn’t determine the cause of death—too much time had passed—but the bones had been bound. Hands tied behind the back.

Murder.

She thought that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Even after the body was removed, the whispers didn’t stop. In fact, they grew louder.

“You shouldn’t have opened it.”

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“This house remembers everything.”

The floorboards pulsed with energy, like a heartbeat. Shadows moved in places where there was no light. Claire saw faces in the mirrors that weren’t her own. At night, the sound of scratching echoed through the halls—as if something still clawed to get out.

Desperate, she returned to the attic and ripped open every box, every drawer. She found an old journal tucked into a suitcase beneath the eaves.

It belonged to her great-grandmother.

The entries were erratic. Frantic.

“He found out about the others.”

“The walls speak when I’m alone.”

“I buried the truth beneath the boards.”

Page after page detailed voices. Confessions. And something she called the house’s hunger.

Claire realized the truth then: it wasn’t just Thomas. Others had vanished. Over the decades. Always buried. Always beneath the wood. And her family had known.

She was part of this house’s legacy now.

The whispers no longer waited for nightfall. They followed her from room to room, bleeding into her thoughts.

“Join us.”

“Feed the house.”

“It’s your turn.”

On the final night, Claire stood in the living room, staring down at the exposed crawlspace. Her eyes were vacant. Her hands raw from tearing through the floor. She didn’t scream when she slipped down into the darkness. She didn’t cry.

The house was quiet after that.

Until the next whisper.

END

Let me know if you want this expanded into a longer piece or even turned into a short film script. I’m down.