Where the Floorboards Creak

I hadn’t seen my father’s house since I was thirteen. After he died, I told myself I’d never go back. But then came the letter—handwritten, smudged with something that looked like ash. It read:

> “You need to come. The house still remembers you.”


No signature. No return address.

I should have ignored it. I didn’t.

The house sat at the end of a cracked road in western Pennsylvania, tucked into the woods like it was hiding. Even in daylight, it looked dark. The windows were smeared with dust, like the house had cried and no one had cleaned up.

I stepped onto the porch. The key still worked.

It smelled like time. Mold, paper, and something sweet rotting. Nothing had changed. The ugly wallpaper. The crooked cross above the door. The spot on the stairs where the wood always creaked—even when no one was walking.

I wasn’t alone in the house. I felt that the moment I walked in.

But it wasn’t someone. It was the house itself. Watching. Waiting.

I walked the rooms in silence. My old bedroom was untouched, right down to the stuffed bear with one missing eye. I could still hear my father’s voice in this room, sharp as broken glass. “Silence is respect,” he used to say. “No crying in this house. It invites things.”

Back then, I believed him.

In the hallway, a new picture hung on the wall. A family photo I didn’t remember taking. It showed me, my father, and someone else—a girl. Pale. Smiling just enough to be wrong.

The date written on the frame: July 14th, 2009.

But that was the day I ran away.

I tried to take the photo down, but it wouldn’t budge. The frame was stuck to the wall like it had grown there.

That night, I slept in the guest room with the door locked. The house creaked constantly. Not just random noises—rhythmic. Almost like breathing.

At 3:12 a.m., the hallway light turned on by itself.

At 3:13, the floorboards outside my door creaked.

I held my breath.

At 3:14, someone whispered my name.

It was a girl’s voice.


The next morning, I went down to the basement. I don't know why. Maybe because that was the only place I was never allowed as a kid. Maybe because part of me already knew what I’d find.

The air was damp. It stank of rust and mildew.

There was a trunk in the corner, half-buried under moldy blankets. Inside: children’s clothes. Drawings in crayon. Hair ribbons. A small shoe with dried blood on the sole.

I dropped the lid and backed away.

And that’s when I saw the writing on the basement wall. Dozens of names, scratched into the stone with something sharp. I found mine. Right under it—another name: Eliza.

She wasn’t family. She was never in that house while I lived there.

Unless I forgot.

Or was made to forget.


I left the next morning. Drove until the trees stopped looking like shadows.

The letter was right. The house remembered me. But what it remembered wasn’t just mine.

I don’t know what my father did. Or who Eliza was. I only know this:

The floor still creaks, even when no one walks.
And sometimes, I still hear her whisper.

“Come back.”

Author’s Note:
This fictional story explores the unsettling layers of memory, trauma, and what we leave behind when we flee the past. It draws inspiration from real psychological phenomena like repressed memories, generational trauma, and inherited fear. While entirely imagined, it aims to evoke the eerie familiarity of family secrets and the lingering presence of places we wish we’d forgotten. Sometimes, the most terrifying ghosts aren’t supernatural—they're the truths buried in silence, waiting for someone brave enough to listen.
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