Whispers of Elderglen

Elderglen was a long-forgotten village tucked away in the woods, surrounded by unknown hills. No one remembered when it was built, or who had lived there. The majority of people in the towns nearby said that it had always been abandoned—just a collection of crooked cottages, sagging barns, and a crumbling, ivy-covered church tower. But there were whispers.

The kind of whispers people only spoke in low voices after dark. Stories of lights flickering between the trees, of laughter echoing through the empty village, and of travelers who entered Elderglen… but never returned.

Mira, then seventeen, had grown up hearing those tales. Her grandmother, with her cloudy eyes and trembling hands, would shudder every time the village was mentioned. “That place is cursed,” she’d mutter. “No birds sing there. No flowers bloom. It remembers.”

Mira didn’t believe in curses.

So one autumn morning, armed with a camera and her curious mind, she set out to find Elderglen. She told her friends it was for a school project, but in truth, she just wanted to prove everyone wrong.

It wasn’t easy to find. The forest grew denser the farther she walked, the light dimming under twisted branches. Her phone lost signal hours ago. But finally, just as the sun dipped low, she reached the edge of the village.

Elderglen was real.

The houses looked frozen in time—doors hanging open, curtains fluttering through broken windows. The wind was silent. Not even the crunch of leaves beneath her feet made a sound. She stepped into the main road, and instantly, the air felt heavier.

Mira raised her camera to snap a picture—but the screen stayed black. Confused, she checked the lens, the battery. Everything worked fine, but the camera refused to capture anything. She ignored it and continued walking. The further she went, the stranger it felt. Despite the fact that nothing cast them, shadows moved against the buildings. The sky had gone gray, but no clouds had come. And then she heard it.

Laughter.

Children’s laughter, faint and distant.

She turned.

A little girl stood by the well in the center of the village. She wore a white dress stained with dirt and something darker. Her eyes were too wide. Her smile, too still.

“Are you lost?” Mira asked.

The girl didn’t answer. She simply pointed—toward the church.

Mira hesitated. The church loomed like a broken tooth, the cross at the top cracked in half. But something pulled her feet forward, step by step, past the well, past the girl, toward the door that creaked open by itself.

Inside, the church was dark and cold. Pews lay overturned. Candles melted down to stubs. At the far end, where the altar once stood, there was only a hole in the floor—round and black, like a mouth.

Whispers rose from it.

Mira…

She returned stumbling. The door slammed shut behind her.

From the shadows, they emerged—villagers with hollow faces, sunken eyes, and mouths stitched closed. They floated, not walked, surrounding her in silence. And then the girl appeared again, now beside the altar, her smile gone.

“This is where they brought us,” she said, her voice like a broken music box. “They promised to protect us. But they gave us to it instead.”

“To what?” Mira whispered, her voice trembling.

The girl pointed to the hole.

“The hunger.”

Something moved in the pit. Mira could hear it breathing—wet, slow, and waiting.

The villagers began to chant—not with words, but with their minds. She could feel it in her skull, pressing, twisting.

Stay. Stay. Feed the hunger. One of us. One of us.

Mira screamed and ran, crashing through a side door and into the woods. Branches tore at her skin, roots tried to trip her, but she didn’t stop running until she saw sunlight.

She never told anyone what happened. Not the full story.

Only that she’d gotten lost. That the village was just old ruins. That she didn’t find anything.

But she was aware that Elderglen had located her. She now hears laughter outside her window at night when there is a gust of wind. The shadows in her room move when they shouldn’t. And sometimes, just before she falls asleep, she hears a voice whisper from the darkness—

Mira… we remember…