The Haunted Grove

This house was abandoned for a reason. Now I know Why!

• Little Red Ghost Studios • Episode 15

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Too Good To Be True...

Twelve thousand dollars. That's what the listing said, and that's what I paid. A whole house sitting on three acres with no neighbors for miles. This is the kind of isolation most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid.




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Speaker 1:

$12,000. That's what the listing said and that's what I paid. A whole house sitting on three acres with no neighbors for miles. This is the kind of isolation most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid. But I'd been working 60-hour weeks and coming home to my apartment in the city that was the size of a walk-in closet. My life had become a loop Alarm goes off at 6, subway, then fluorescent lights, then meetings about meetings and takeout dinners, eaten standing over the kitchen sink. The same conversations, the same faces, the same gray sky visible through the same grimy office windows.

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When the listing appeared on my screen at 2am on a Tuesday, it felt like the universe had finally thrown me a bone. The photos didn't show much, just a small house with weathered clapboard siding and a wraparound porch tucked deep in the forest. The description claimed things like perfect off-grid potential and a motivated seller. There were no photos of the interior, but foreclosures rarely bothered with staging. I submitted an offer that same morning. Cash, no inspection, as is. The realtor called back within an hour. You sure about this? She asked. It's been on the market for eight months. No one's even scheduled a viewing, I'm sure I said with more confidence than I had shown in a while. It's exactly what I'm looking for. Two weeks later and the keys arrived in a manila envelope with no return address. Just two brass keys on a ring worn smooth by decades of fingers. I'd never know.

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The drive took longer than expected. The highway gave way to state roads, which gave way to a gravel route that seemed to forget its own name. The pine trees pressed in closer with each mile, their branches, creating a canopy so thick that it made noon feel like dusk. My phone lost signal somewhere past a rusted mailbox and a handmade sign advertising fresh eggs, though I don't think I ever saw any chickens. The dirt road to the house stretched for three miles through forests that grew denser and more silent with each turn. There was a noticeable absence of forest noises, no birds and not even any rustling leaves. Even with the windows down, the only sound was my tires crunching over gravel and the occasional mystery sound coming from the engine. I'm sure it was fine. The driveway appeared without warning, two tire tracks cutting through tall grass towards a house that looked exactly like the photos, except smaller, much smaller, the kind of small that makes you wonder if the camera had been lying or if the forest had somehow compressed everything within its boundaries.

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I sat in the car for several minutes studying my new home. The porch sagged slightly on the left side, the paint peeled from the window frames in long, uneven strips, the old brick chimney listed away from the roofline as if the house were slowly shrugging it off, and the front door was hanging open not wide just enough to reveal a rectangle of darkness beyond. It moved slightly in what must have been a breeze, though. The air felt still and heavy and I realized I was holding my breath. I told myself it was normal.

Speaker 1:

Foreclosures often had security issues. The previous owner probably left in a hurry and forgot to secure things properly. The bank wouldn't have sent me keys to a house that wasn't safe, would they? The silence followed me from my car to the porch. My footsteps sounded like gunshots on the old wood, the door's hinges squeaked as I pushed it fully open, and that sound seemed to travel deep into the house before fading.

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The inside smelled like dust and something else, something mineral and cold, like the air in caves. The floor was made of wide planks, warped in places where water had gotten in. The wallpaper hung in ribbons, revealing patches of hand-painted plaster underneath Roses and vines mostly, though in some of the dimmer corners the pattern looked less like flowers and more like reaching fingers. Creepy. The living room felt larger than it should, considering how small the house looked from the outside. A stone fireplace dominated one wall, its hearth dark with decades of soot. The mantle held nothing but a thin layer of dust and something that might have been water stains, but looked in the right light like handprints.

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I spent the first hour walking through and inspecting the rooms. My footsteps was the only sound. The kitchen with a hand pump, well, the two bedrooms, one barely large enough for a twin bed and a bathroom with fixtures that belonged in a museum. But everything was functional. It had just been sitting there a while. That first night I slept on an air mattress in the living room, my sleeping bag pulled up to my chin. Despite the warm September air the house settled in around me. Creaks and sighs that old wood makes as the temperature changes Normal sounds, comforting even. Even. I woke once sometime after midnight, certain I'd heard footsteps in the kitchen, but when I listened there was only silence and the distant sound of wind whistling through the tree branches.

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The next morning, sunlight streaming through the bare windows made everything seem ordinary, I unpacked my car and began the process of making the place livable. I swept the floors, wiped down the surfaces and tested the hand pump in the kitchen, which produced clear cold water that tasted faintly of minerals. I had read that well water was an acquired taste. The kitchen chair sat at an angle to the table, pulled out as if someone had just stood up from breakfast. I pushed it back in, noting absently that the floor around the table legs was cleaner than the rest, as if someone had been sweeping recently.

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By the third day I had settled into a routine Coffee at sunrise, made on a camp stove. Morning chores cleaning, organizing, familiarizing myself with the house's quirks. Afternoon spent exploring the property, finding the old well house, the collapsed chicken coop and the stone boundary markers that suggested the land had been farmed once. Evenings were for reading by the oil lamp and listening to the forest settle into the night. No television, no internet and no constant ping of notifications, just the sound of my own breathing and the house breathing back.

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But that's when I first noticed something was off. 3.17am glowed in large red numbers from the digital travel clock beside my air mattress. I'm not sure what woke me up, but I found myself just lying there staring into the darkness. At first I blamed adjustment. It was a new environment and different sounds and the stress of such a major life change. But there was something else a feeling like in those moments between sleep and waking that someone is standing there in the dark watching you.

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On the fourth night I again woke up suddenly at 3.17 am to find the kitchen chair pulled away from the table again. I'd pushed it in before bed, I was certain of that, but it sat there, angled towards the living room, as if someone had been sitting there watching me sleep. I checked the doors they were all still locked and the window still latched. From the inside. There were no signs of entry, no footprints in the dust and no disturbances anywhere else that I could see. In the morning I moved the chair to the bedroom. If some weirdo was getting in, then they could sit somewhere else.

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The bathroom faucet started dripping that day, a steady rhythm like a heartbeat. I checked the handles and both were turned tight. The drip came from somewhere deeper in the mechanism, something I couldn't fix without tools. I didn't have. The sound followed me throughout the house, echoing off the walls with perfect timing Drip, pause, drip, pause, drip. By evening it had stopped, thank God, with nothing else to distract me, it was all I could hear.

Speaker 1:

The attic ladder hung from a square opening in the hallway ceiling, held by a simple rope and pulley system. I'd noticed it the first day, but hadn't felt brave enough to explore it. The house had enough oddities at ground level, but on the fifth night, lying in the darkness waiting for 3.17, I found myself staring up at that square of deeper black. Something about it seemed expectant, as if it had been waiting for me to pay attention. The latter groaned under my weight, each rung protesting like the sounds of bones reaching their breaking points. At the top, cooler air drifted down surrounding my face with the smell of copper, pennies and old paper.

Speaker 1:

The attic stretched the full length of the house. The peaked ceiling disappeared into shadows that my flashlight couldn't penetrate. It was empty, except for a single cardboard box in the far corner, positioned perfectly in the center of a dusty rectangle where something larger had once sat many years before. The box contained photographs, old ones, printed on thick paper with that distinctive sepia tone of decades past. All of them showed this house, but across different eras different families on the porch, different cars in the driveway, different seasons captured in the background trees.

Speaker 1:

The earliest photos showed a young family, mother and father and two children, all smiling beside a garden where vegetables grew in neat rows, and two children all smiling beside a garden where vegetables grew in neat rows. The house looked brand new, fresh paint, the porch is solid and the windows bright, reflecting the light in the sky. Later photos showed fewer people, an elderly couple and then just a woman, and then no one at all. The house gradually graying, the paint peeling and the porch sagging, but still maintained, still cared for, as if someone continued living there, even though no one appeared in the pictures. But someone had to be taking the pictures right. The most recent photographs showed no people at all, just the house, slightly more weathered each time, the windows growing darker until they became perfect black rectangles that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. In the final photo, one upstairs window held a shadow that didn't match anything. Inside that I could place Something tall and thin that didn't belong to the furniture, and it wasn't a trick of the light. It wasn't an architectural feature either. It was something that was watching. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a wave of panic rolled right through me, although I didn't know why. I flipped back through the stack of photos and there it was I hadn't even noticed it before that same black shadow in the upstairs window. It wasn't in the earliest photos, but it started at the photo with the elderly couple, and it showed itself in every photo until the last. I threw the photos back in the box and got out of the attic as fast as I could, and I didn't go back.

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The old man appeared on the seventh day, driving a pickup that looked older than the house. He slowed when he saw me splitting firewood behind the shed, engine idling, while he studied me through his passenger window. You bought this place, he called. I nodded, setting the axe down. He didn't smile and he didn't get out of the truck. How long are you planning to stay? As long as it takes, I said, though I wasn't sure what I meant by that. You planning to stay as long as it takes? I said, though I wasn't sure what I meant by that Won't be long. He put the truck in gear and then turned back to me.

Speaker 1:

No one ever stays here for long, not after what that crazy old lady did to her husband. What's that supposed to mean? I said, slightly annoyed, that this man I didn't know was insinuating something that I didn't understand. Rumors said she was a witch. Some people said that he wasn't treating her right so she cursed him. Others she was a witch. Some people said that he wasn't treating her right so she cursed him. Others say the only reason she married him and brought him out here was to sacrifice him to whatever that thing is. I just stood there not knowing how to respond and finally the words just spilled out of my mouth like a burst dam Are you serious? Do you really think that trying to scare me with some cabin in the woods horror story is gonna work? Dude, it is 2025. Go get a hobby or something. I was shocked at how irritated I was, but he was already driving away, a dust cloud trailing behind him like smoke. Good lord, people are so strange. I chuckled, trying to convince myself that everything was totally normal as I glanced at the upstairs window, hoping I didn't see something staring back at me.

Speaker 1:

That night the knocking started. It was soft at first three taps from somewhere inside the walls, a pause and then three taps again. I checked the pipes, thinking it might be thermal expansion, but the sound came from different locations each time the living room wall, the kitchen, the bedroom. Always three taps and always the same rhythm. By the second week the knocking had moved closer. It was no longer inside the walls but behind the doors the closet door, the bathroom door, even the bedroom door where I now slept on the floor, having given up on the living room when the sounds became too frequent.

Speaker 1:

On the fourteenth night I lay in the darkness listening to those three soft taps. On the other side of my bedroom door the sound came from about head height, as if someone stood in the hallway patiently requesting entry. I didn't answer, I didn't move, I barely breathed as I stared at the bottom of the door watching the shadow of two feet stand there. The knocking stopped and the shadow slowly moved away from the bottom of the door. I could hear footsteps moving down the hallway, floorboards creaking in a pattern. I recognized Someone walking with purpose, not hurrying and not hiding, just walking.

Speaker 1:

In the morning I found the kitchen chair in the living room, again positioned facing the bedroom door. I moved my sleeping bag to the couch that night, dragged it as far from the bedroom as possible. The living room felt safer somehow, with windows on two sides and the front door nearby, multiple exits. I woke up standing in the kitchen 3.17 am according to the clock on the window sill. My hand rested on the back door, latch Fingers curled around the metal as if I had been about to turn it. It was the door that led to the woods. The kitchen chair sat neatly positioned facing the door, as if someone was watching, waiting for me to open it. I had no memory of getting up, no memory of moving the chair, no memory of walking across the house in perfect darkness without tripping over anything, and no memory of unlocking the door. The latch felt warm under my fingers as if someone else had been holding it. Moments before I backed away from the door and spent the rest of the night sitting in the living room with every light burning, watching both the kitchen and the bedroom doorway, waiting for something to move in the spaces between, but nothing did. The house felt awake around me, attentive, in a way that had nothing to do with settling wood or changing temperature.

Speaker 1:

The morning brought the first frost of the season. It covered everything the grass, the car, the porch, railing and delicate crystals that caught the sunrise like scattered diamonds. The footprint started at the treeline Bare feet, adult, human size, pressed deep into the frost, as if whoever had made them had been walking. Slowly and deliberately. They crossed the yard and circled the house once, and then approached the front porch. They crossed the yard and circled the house once, and then approached the front porch. They ended at my front door. The porch board showed no prints. Wood doesn't hold frost the same way grass does. But I could see where the walker had stood Two clear impressions from wet feet, positioned as if someone had spent time there waiting, watching and looking in. I checked my own feet, but the prints outside were larger than mine. They were narrower, with toes that seemed to grip the earth.

Speaker 1:

I packed in the darkness of the early morning, throwing clothes and essentials into a bag without even bothering to fold anything. I left the furniture, the camp stove, the oil lamps. I left everything that would slow me down. The house felt different as I moved through it one final time, expectant as if it had been waiting for this moment for me to make this decision and get the hell out. The air seemed thicker and more resistant, like trying to walk through water.

Speaker 1:

My car started on the first try, headlights cutting through the pre-dawn darkness to illuminate the forest road ahead. I didn't want to look back at the house. I didn't want to see what might be standing on the porch watching me leave. But at the first bend of the driveway I glanced in the rearview mirror. A tall shadow stood framed in the front doorway, motionless against the darker interior. It was not waving, not moving at all, just watching as if marking my departure for some unseen record. I drove until my hand stopped shaking and my phone showed signal bars, pulled over at a gas station and called the realtor from the parking lot sitting under fluorescent lights. That felt like salvation. I need to list the property, I said Already. But you just bought it. Ten thousand, I need it gone. Are you sure you could probably get more with some improvements? Ten thousand, no improvements.

Speaker 1:

The listing went live the next day. The photos looked exactly the same as when I'd first seen them Same weathered porch, same dark windows, the same promise of off-grid potential, hidden in the woods but with an irresistible price tag. It sold in two days. The buyer's name was Jennifer, recently divorced. The realtor mentioned looking for a fresh start, somewhere quiet, somewhere where she could think. Did she ask any questions about the property. I asked Just about the water and septic. Oh, and she loved that it was so isolated. She's a writer, said she's looking for a place where she could let her imagination run wild and where she wouldn't be bothered by neighbors. The realtor paused. She's planning on moving in next week. Is there anything I should mention to her? Anything about the house that she needs to know? I watched the listing photos rotate on her website. The same porch where something had stood watching me drive away. The same window that held the shadow that didn't belong to the furniture or the walls. No, I said it's exactly what she's looking for.