The Shadow in Blackwood House

The Shadow in Blackwood House

Jake Carter never believed in ghosts. Horror movies were just fiction, and haunted house stories were mere campfire tales. But Blackwood House—an ancient, ivy-covered mansion that loomed over the woods
changed all of that. It didn’t whisper fear. It breathed it.

It started with the whispers.

Jake and his three friends Emily, Ryan, and Lisa—had ventured into Blackwood House on a dare. Local legends called it cursed. Children vanished, voices echoed when no one was there, and every Halloween, someone tried to stay the night. None ever lasted until morning. “Nobody stays the night in Blackwood,” the townspeople warned, eyes dark with something deeper than fear.

They laughed it off.

The first night, the house seemed quiet—too quiet. That stillness that presses against your ears like cotton. Jake lay awake in his sleeping bag in the upstairs bedroom, surrounded by peeling wallpaper and shattered picture frames. Then, just past 2:00 a.m., he heard them: footsteps in the hallway. Not the kind made by settling wood—but heavy, deliberate, pacing footsteps. He sat up, heart racing, and pointed his flashlight toward the door.

Something moved. Quick. Too quick. A flicker just beyond the beam's reach.

Then came the giggling. Soft. High-pitched. A child’s laugh, distant yet close, drifting down from the attic like a lullaby dipped in dread.

Emily didn’t sleep at all. She sat upright, her face pale. “I saw her,” she whispered. “At the end of the hallway. A girl in a white dress.”

Jake frowned. “A girl?”

“She was just standing there… Her eyes
they were black. All black.”

By the second night, the house had come alive. Doors slammed on their own. Cold spots moved through the rooms, like something unseen brushing past. Ryan, ever the skeptic, recorded everything. But when they reviewed the footage, his hands trembled. Behind him, in one frame, stood a tall shadow. No face. No eyes. Just a shape. Ryan swore no one had been there.

That same night, messages started to appear. Scratched deep into the bedroom walls: LEAVE. Written in the fog on the bathroom mirror after Lisa’s shower:
YOU’RE NEXT.

On the third night, the power died.

Their flashlights flickered like dying stars. Shadows stretched unnaturally long, clinging to corners, bending in ways that defied logic. Then something moved. It stepped from the hallway into their circle of light tall, thin, limbs bent like broken branches, its movements jerky, unnatural.

Lisa screamed first. Then the lights went out entirely.

Morning came.

They found Lisa curled inside a closet, her fingernails torn from desperate scratching. She couldn’t speak. Her mouth moved, but only one word came out, soundless: “Attic.”

Jake didn’t hesitate. He climbed the rotting stairs alone. The attic door creaked open, already ajar. Inside, the air was thick and cold. Dust danced like ash in the pale morning light. A rope hung from a wooden beam, swaying slightly as if someone had just stepped off.

The walls were covered in handprints. Small. Child-sized. Hundreds of them, overlapping, reaching, clawing.

Jake turned as a whisper brushed his ear.

"You stayed too long."

When the police arrived that afternoon, they found four bodies. Jake was in the attic, hanging from the noose, his face frozen in wide-eyed terror. Emily and Ryan lay in the hallway, their mouths open, locked in silent screams. Lisa was still in the closet, her hands pressed flat against the door as if she were still trying to claw her way out.

And on the attic wall, freshly scratched in jagged letters, was one final message:

“THEY NEVER LEFT.”

Now, when the wind howls and the moon casts its silver gaze over the shattered windows, locals say you can still hear the giggling echoing from within. Some say the shadows move behind the curtains. Some say the house calls out with whispers:

"Come inside..."

But those who do?

They never leave.

Thank you very much for reading!❤️