The Unnameable Horror

There is a nameless thing that haunts the corridors of our minds—relentless, yet without a proper name. It only assumes the names and descriptions we give to its terror. Embedded in the deepest recesses of our subconscious, it dwells like a corridor of benightedness, evoking the chill of horripilation. It exists only in our indelible fears, and it is etched into the core of the soul.

How it originates, I cannot say with certainty. All I know of its eldritch beginnings is that it has lingered for centuries. I cannot explain why it lurks in our thoughts—only that I must be honest in admitting its presence.

What you are about to read is an account that bears witness to a malice both spectral and tangible—a veil of evil, insidious in nature, persistent in torment. This is the unnameable horror.

It began in the year 1920, in a remote New England village named Wickham, nestled on the west side of Narragansett Bay, between Providence and Newport. Quaint and traditional, the village seemed frozen in time.

The villagers were deeply superstitious and devout. Reserved and wary of outsiders, they guarded their secrets tightly. There was a mystery they refused to share with strangers. I arrived from New York, seeking peace. I had rented an old Victorian house along the riverbank, dotted with giant water lilies. Weary of the city's bustle, I needed solitude for my writing. I am Cedric Barr, a novelist of horror fiction.

The house I rented was imposing in appearance. Its hoary color, mansard roof, ornate gables, and fluted pillars were unmistakably Victorian—its entire façade exuding a dark, unsettling ambiance. In the gloom of twilight, the house seemed to glower with desolation. The curtained windows and shadowed rooms whispered of neglect and sorrow.

I stood before the house, observing its crumbling elegance. The man who rented it to me, Mr. Gillingham, claimed it had been uninhabited for decades. Once owned by a family of New England aristocrats, the house had never found another buyer. Even the bank refused interest. Whispers of an atrocious murder in 1885 hung over the property, and it was said to be haunted ever since.

As a horror writer, I was no stranger to such tales. Mr. Gillingham’s account didn’t frighten me—it intrigued me. The setting was ideal for my next novel, and I planned to stay only a few weeks. That was my intention, at least.

Inside, the floorboards groaned beneath my feet as I walked through the dim house. The walls were rubiginous with age, and the wood was worn and splintered. Grimy windows filtered in little light, and cobwebs coated every corner. Most rooms were boarded up, except for the parlor, the kitchen, and the upstairs bedrooms.

Near the exposed beams, I found a fireplace and a long-forgotten dinner table. It was eerie to witness such decline in a house that once radiated splendor. I would have preferred full access, but I accepted the conditions. Whatever secrets lay behind those closed doors, they would remain hidden—for now.

I came to Wickham to write, never suspecting that the horror I would uncover within that house would exceed any tale I could invent. That evening, I glimpsed little of the village. My nearest neighbor lived at a distance, and the town itself bore the marks of colonial antiquity. On my way in, I’d passed a lone church—one that, according to Mr. Gillingham, replaced the old Narragansett Church, built in 1707.

I was fascinated by the deep history tied to the village and region. I had once visited Providence and found Rhode Island, though small, rich with intrigue and legacy.

Nothing unusual happened the first night. It was on the second night that I was shaken from sleep by a disturbing nightmare. The details were hazy, but the sequence was vivid: I saw the murder Mr. Gillingham had described. In the dream, an old man sat in the parlor reading a newspaper when a figure struck him from behind with a pitchfork. Blood spilled like stammel silk. The man collapsed, lifeless, bearing over eighty wounds. The killer’s face came into view—a woman, enraged. I couldn’t make out any more of her features.

In the morning, shaken, I walked to the parlor and imagined the scene from the dream. The horror of it chilled me. I did not know who these people were, but the brutality alone was enough to haunt me. That the killer had been a woman disturbed me further—it was uncommon for women to be portrayed, in that era, as such violent figures.

The rest of the day I spent writing. The nightmare had inspired a premise for my novel. I began shaping characters, experimenting with plot. My readers expected excellence; I was determined not to disappoint. Success in my last novel had raised expectations, and I refused to squander my reputation on lazy storytelling.

Later that afternoon, I stepped outside for a break. Near the riverbank, I stood listening to frogs croak and the gentle current flow—sounds far more soothing than the clamor of New York.

As I stood there, something floated toward me in the water: a locket. Inside it, a small photo of a woman—but no name. When I looked closer, I recognized her. She was the woman from my nightmare. I did not know her name, nor why her locket drifted in the river. Who had placed it there? How long had it been submerged?

Back inside, I resumed my writing. Then, I heard the front door creak open. I descended the stairs, but found no one. The door stood ajar, though there was no wind. Puzzled, I shut it and returned to my desk. Not long after, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I froze. Again, I investigated. Again, no one.

First, the door. Then the footsteps. I began to suspect what Mr. Gillingham had suggested: the house was haunted.

Driven by curiosity, I decided to investigate further. I needed to know who had lived here—and who the woman in the locket was. I spent the next day at the village library, combing through local archives, determined to uncover the secrets of Wickham and the horror that lingered in that forgotten house.

It was only a small fraction of the truth that I was missing in its totality. For such a small village, the presence of a library was remarkable. What I had learned about the woman and her immediate family was this: her name was Elizabeth Hampton, and she was the daughter of Elijah Hampton.

He was a well-known merchant who had built a business distributing wine to the upper class throughout the New England region. His wife, Emma Hampton, had died under mysterious circumstances in 1880. Her death was recorded as "accidental." I found that suspicious, but it belonged to another era—one when access to autopsies was limited and less meticulously conducted. Elijah Hampton died in 1885. His death, unlike hers, was recorded as a murder.

As for Elizabeth Hampton, there was no mention of her death—only her birth, in 1858. Why was her death not recorded in the family annals? I read that she had been committed to an insane asylum. Either she was still alive, or her death had been deliberately omitted.

I left the library and walked through the village’s central square, where I could see galleries, antique shops, passing ships in the harbor, enchanting waterfront streets, and beautiful colonial homes. The villagers were reclusive toward me; they clearly knew I was an outsider.

Not all of them were unfriendly, but I sensed that the older townspeople—those bound to the arcane history of the village—were the most indifferent in their demeanor. Were they hiding deep inner secrets known only to them?

The village with its peculiar charm sat exotically near a port. To outsiders, it was just another coastal town, but to its locals, it was something far more enigmatic. I returned to the house I had begun calling the Hampton House, where I was staying. Everything I’d learned about its former occupants convinced me that the Hamptons were a prominent family in the village.

But what did the locals really think of them? And what had transpired in that house so long ago? I managed to speak briefly with an old man. He was bizarre in both gesture and manner. When I mentioned the Hamptons, he said they were known to the community.

It was what he said afterward that disturbed me. He claimed the old Victorian house was haunted by an evil presence—what he called “the Devil’s work.” I wasn't sure what he meant or what he wanted me to understand.

The notion of an evil presence didn’t seem entirely far-fetched, considering the house’s history. I later discovered, during further research at the library, that the house had been built over an old Puritan cemetery. The area’s original inhabitants were the Narragansett people, but the cemetery had been constructed in the 17th century by one of the early settler families, the Radfords—specifically, a man named Cornelius Radford.

So, the cemetery had nothing to do with the indigenous people. Knowing this, I began to wonder—was it possible that the haunting presence had played a role in Elizabeth Hampton’s descent into madness?

The idea that the house was built atop a Puritan cemetery was fascinating, but also deeply unsettling. Who would ever willingly concede to such a grim possibility—that history had been smeared with blood-curdling tragedy?

Throughout New England, it’s not uncommon to find buildings erected over former cemeteries—whether of settlers or Native tribes. The thought intrigued me. Who were these people, really? How much of their history was interwoven with that of the village? And what of witchcraft?

I knew the topic was more famously tied to Salem, but the shadow of those horrors stretched across the eastern seaboard. I had read about the Salem trials, the unfounded accusations, the executions. The tragedy of it was immense. Still, it seemed that the evil lingering in the Hampton House was somehow linked to this abominable past.

Though I was curious to learn more about the ancient cemetery beneath the house, I knew I had to bide my time. The suspense was growing. While I sat upstairs in my room writing, I once again heard footsteps—this time from an adjacent room. I rose to investigate and found wet footprints on the floor. I followed them down the stairs to the front door.

When I reached the door, I saw, in the distance, a woman in Victorian clothing walking toward the river. I followed her, but as I reached the riverbank, she vanished. Had I just encountered a preternatural spirit of inexplicable nature?

That night, I lay awake, wondering what was truly happening in the house. I began incorporating the haunting elements into my novel. The irony was almost too much to fathom.

My main character was a ghost I named Elizabeth—after Elizabeth Hampton. I even used the storyline of her father's murder, only changing the surnames. One night, while seated by the parlor fireplace, I heard whistling whispers. At first faint, they swelled to an eerie crescendo. I couldn’t make out the words, only that the voice sounded female.

When I looked around, I saw no one. It was a deeply unsettling moment. That night, the nightmare returned—only this time, I saw more of the killer’s guise. What I saw shocked me awake, chilled and drenched in sweat. I saw Elizabeth Hampton’s face—she was holding a pitchfork.

There was something else: another figure in the room. But I couldn’t make out the face. The nightmare was vivid and overwhelming, forcing me to medicate myself with pills I’d brought from New York.

The insomnia returned with the same persistence as the nightmare. I feared I was falling into delusions and soporific stupor. Each morning, I awoke more obsessed with the house and its mysteries. There had to be a logical explanation—but I couldn’t find one.

Thunder growled in the distance, and the wind howled with a voice not unlike a scream. Armed with a lantern, I descended into the darkled cellar, its air already stifling and wet, like the breath of something slumbering.

I searched along the stone walls for any hint of the hidden room. At first, I found nothing—only empty wine racks and rotted crates. But then I noticed a patch of wall where the mortar was cracked in a perfect arch. It was faint but unmistakably shaped like a doorway.

I pressed against it, and after several shoves and a low groan of stone grinding on stone, the wall gave way to reveal a narrow stairwell that plunged into blackness.

The air that came from below smelled of damp earth and rust. Holding my breath, I began to descend.

The stairs twisted in unnatural angles, far deeper than the cellar should have allowed. The walls were damp and close. Roots pushed through the earth in claw-like tangles, and strange symbols—identical to those in the study—were carved into the stone. The light from my lantern flickered violently, and I could swear I heard distant whispers again—muffled, like voices under water.

At last, I reached the bottom. The stairwell opened into a vast subterranean chamber, the likes of which I had never imagined. It was circular, lined with decaying wooden supports, and at its center stood an ancient stone slab—an altar of sorts. It was covered in dried, blackened stains. Bones littered the edges of the room, some animal…some human.

But it was the thing behind the altar that arrested my attention—a great, gaping fissure in the earth, like a wound. And from it came a noise I cannot forget.

It was a heartbeat.

Slow, rhythmic, pulsing through the chamber like a drumbeat from some ancient god. The walls throbbed in time with it. The ground trembled beneath my feet.

As I stood, frozen with horror, a low voice rumbled from the depths of the fissure. It spoke no language I knew, but I understood it in my soul. It was offering me something. It wanted me to listen.

And I did.

I cannot say for how long I stood there—minutes, hours, days. It whispered to me of truths hidden beneath all things. It promised power, vision, even immortality. But it came with a cost. My sanity. My soul. My self.

Something moved in the darkness then—something immense. A shadow slithered at the edge of the fissure, huge and shapeless, but alive. Watching.

Suddenly, I felt hands on my shoulders. Cold. Thin. Feminine.

Elizabeth.

She whispered into my ear—not with malice, but with mournful clarity: "You must go. Now."

I turned, and she was gone. So was the heartbeat. The fissure no longer bled darkness—it was just a crack in stone. Empty.

I ran. I don’t remember how I climbed the stairs, or how I escaped the cellar. I only remember collapsing outside in the mud, gasping for air under the open sky.

Only within the pages of my novel could I maintain control. That, and the pills, brought me some comfort. I didn’t want to rely on them, but I knew I couldn’t endure more sleepless nights.

Perhaps I should have left the house and finished the novel in New York. Still, something compelled me to stay. Was it stubbornness—or the creeping onset of madness? Whatever it was, it would become my greatest foe.

That day, I had a visitor—but not an ordinary one. I wasn’t expecting anyone and was upstairs writing when I heard a knock on the door. When I opened it, no one was there. Had I imagined it? Or was someone toying with me?

Another possibility—which no longer seemed absurd—was that the spirit had returned. But what did she want?

As I stood there, dumbfounded, I heard tapping at the parlor window. I went to it and found it open—I was certain I had closed it the night before. Who had opened it?

Then, I heard those unmistakable footsteps again—this time from the upstairs room I had previously entered. I was nervous, but also eager to finally catch a glimpse of whatever haunted the house.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

Once inside the room, I heard faint, moribund gasps. A glass mirror stood on my right. I gradually approached it, overcome by an eerie sensation that something dramatic was about to unfold. What happened next marked the turning point of my stay in the house—an encounter that would become the most horrifying of all.

As I gazed into the mirror, expecting only to see my own reflection, I instead saw the somber face of Elizabeth Hampton. She stared at me with a plaintive expression, as if attempting to warn me of something evil.

Startled and shaken, I no longer knew what to expect. The experience left me wondering whether there was a greater evil lurking in the house, its presence hidden from my awareness. I couldn’t confirm this suspicion, nor could I determine whether Elizabeth’s appearance was indeed a warning. I began to question the mystery of the boarded-up rooms—might they contain vital clues that had gone unnoticed?

Despite not having permission to enter them, I decided to open one of the rooms downstairs. Though I had been reluctant to believe in the supernatural, that would change suddenly. I used a hammer to pry the nails from the wood. What I discovered was nothing more than an old, abandoned room filled with viscous cobwebs, floating dust, and a heavy, sooty darkness. There was no furniture.

I didn’t know whose room it had been, but something remained on the floor—torn pages from a diary. It belonged to Elizabeth Hampton. Although only three pages were legible, they were enough to convey the essence of her story. In them, she described her terrible relationship with her father, Elijah Hampton, portraying him as a cold and cruel man.

I couldn’t determine just how much the father-daughter relationship had deteriorated, but it was clear from her words that it had been volatile. Was this the root of Elijah’s murder?

Countless thoughts swirled in my mind as I pondered the unsettling possibilities. What connection did all of this have to the house and the old cemetery it stood upon? I returned to the library to uncover more facts about the Hamptons. There, I discovered that Elizabeth had died ten years after her alleged murder in Boston in 1895.

She had been released from the asylum but ultimately succumbed to cancer. With nothing else of significance left to uncover, I noticed how the villagers had begun to stare at me with growing curiosity—or suspicion. Had they grown weary of my presence?

Wickham felt like a strange and unwelcoming place to an outsider. Was I imagining things, or was there truly something off about it? I recalled the old villager who had once warned me that the haunting in the house was the "Devil’s work." Was he right? This revelation would fuel my writing, making me more fervent—yet increasingly unnerved.

The medication I took pacified my nerves, but it couldn’t eliminate the mystery or the creeping anxiety. What I did gain, however, was the foundation for a story with a gruesome twist. The idea that something demonic might reside not only in the house, but in the minds of the villagers, was deeply troubling. My contact with them—especially the elders—remained minimal.

They were an odd, archaic people, bound to ancient beliefs about witchcraft and evil. To outsiders, their superstitions would seem absurd. Yet I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was surrounded by descendants of Wickham’s original settlers.

The more time I spent there, the more that notion was reinforced. It seemed impossible to convince them otherwise. Upon returning to the Hampton house, I began plotting the novel's ending. I never imagined how ironic that ending would become when compared to the real one—the one I was about to live. I had already written countless chapters at a swift pace.

The story was compelling, as was the haunting house. I included the lurid details of the murder and portrayed the villagers as believers in ancient pagan rites. Little did I know just how accurate that depiction would prove to be. The evening felt ominous, but it would pale in comparison to what happened that unforgettable night. I was upstairs writing when, suddenly, the ghost of Elizabeth Hampton appeared beside me.

She startled me. I wasn’t prepared to see her standing there like a restless specter. Once again, through her gestures, she attempted to warn me. I tried to speak, but before I could say anything, she vanished—just as she had before. I didn’t even have the chance to ask her questions.

All I could do was watch her disappear. Where did she go? The question haunted me. How could someone believed to be a murderess seem so desperate, so pleading? Was it guilt that had broken her?

The more she appeared, the more I began to believe she had been a pawn in the house’s horrific past—or perhaps she had simply gone mad. It was conceivable she had been influenced by a dark presence, something sinister and ineffable. I felt I had enough material for my novel, with Elizabeth Hampton as the central figure.

But one crucial piece remained missing—the ending. And this time, I wouldn’t have to invent anything. Could I solve the mystery before it drove me to flee the house, or worse, before it destroyed me?

That was the most terrifying thought of all. I was in immediate danger, and I knew it. I paused my writing and went downstairs to pace the parlor, trying to devise a conclusion that would be utterly captivating. Unknowingly, I had already become a central figure in the real-life horror unfolding around me.

As the days wore on, I began to feel an increasing sense of unease about the house, a sense that went beyond the events I had already witnessed. It wasn't just the apparitions, the chilling specters of the dead who seemed to float in and out of existence at will. It was something deeper, something that clung to the walls themselves.

I decided to venture deeper into the house the following evening, after the sun had set. I wanted to see if I could uncover more about its history, to make sense of the horrors that had transpired. The light from the single lantern I carried cast long, trembling shadows across the wooden floors as I made my way down the narrow hallways. The house seemed to shift around me, its creaking timbers groaning in protest with every step I took.

When I reached the parlor again, I stood there for a moment, staring at the spot where Elizabeth Hampton had murdered her father. It was as if the very floorboards had absorbed the violence of that night, their grain forever stained by the bloodshed. I could almost feel the air growing colder, as though the house itself was alive, watching me.

Suddenly, I heard something—a low whispering sound, like the rustling of wind through leaves. I turned, but there was no open window, no breeze to account for it. I stepped cautiously forward, my heart pounding in my chest. The whispering grew louder, more distinct, though I couldn't make out the words. I reached out a trembling hand to touch the wall, but before my fingers could make contact, a sudden coldness surged through me. My breath caught in my throat as I recoiled, instinctively stumbling back.

That was when I noticed something new: a door I hadn't seen before. It was set into the far wall of the parlor, partially concealed by the drapes that had fallen in front of it. It was old, the wood darkened with age, its edges chipped and warped. A thin line of light escaped through the crack at the bottom, casting a sickly glow that seemed to pulse rhythmically. I approached it, my breath shallow, and hesitated for a moment before slowly pushing the door open.

Inside, the room was unlike any I had encountered in the house thus far. It was small and cramped, with high shelves packed to the brim with dusty, yellowed books. The air was thick with the scent of mildew and decay, and the only sound was the soft rustling of pages, as though the books were whispering to each other. There was something about this room that felt… forbidden, as though I was trespassing on something ancient and sacred.

As I stepped further inside, I noticed a peculiar symbol etched into the stone floor—a complex geometric design, so intricate it seemed to shift before my eyes. The air grew heavier, thicker, as if the room itself was alive, suffocating me with its weight. I couldn't explain it, but I felt a powerful compulsion to kneel before the symbol, to trace its edges with my fingers. I resisted, knowing instinctively that to do so would be a mistake.

I turned to leave, but before I could, a soft voice—faint but unmistakable—whispered my name. I spun around, but the room was empty. My heart thudded in my chest as I slowly backed toward the door, the voice echoing in my ears.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang from behind me. I whirled around, but the room was still empty. My mind raced. Was I hearing things? Was the house playing tricks on me? My instincts screamed for me to leave, to escape whatever malevolent force lingered here.

I turned and fled, bursting through the door and into the parlor. My heart was racing, and my mind was reeling. But as I reached the stairs, I heard a sound that stopped me in my tracks. A soft, mournful cry, as though someone—or something—was calling out for help. The sound came from upstairs, from the very room where Elizabeth had died.

I knew I shouldn't go up there. I knew that every step I took closer to that room would only bring me deeper into the web of madness that seemed to trap everyone who entered the house. But I couldn't resist. The cry echoed through the house, pulling me toward it like a moth to a flame.

I ascended the stairs slowly, each step creaking beneath my weight. The air grew colder the higher I went, the temperature dropping so quickly that I could see my breath clouding in the air. By the time I reached the landing, the cry had stopped, leaving only a heavy silence in its wake. I stood there for a long moment, my heart pounding in my ears, before I finally gathered the courage to move forward.

The room was just as I had left it, the door cracked open slightly, as though inviting me in. I pushed it open, stepping into the room where Elizabeth Hampton had spent her final, tormented days. The room was eerily still, but there was something different this time. The air felt charged, thick with an oppressive energy that seemed to press against my chest. I could feel the walls closing in around me.

I looked toward the bed, where Elizabeth had died. The sheets were in disarray, as though someone had recently disturbed them. A faint odor, like the scent of decaying flesh, hung in the air. But it was the shape at the foot of the bed that made my blood run cold.

A figure stood with its back toward me. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the dim glow of the lantern in my hand. But as I stepped closer, I realized that it was no trick. It was a woman—her face obscured by long, tangled hair, her body trembling as though wracked by sobs.

I froze, rooted to the spot. This was no ordinary apparition. I knew instantly that this was Elizabeth Hampton, or rather, the remnants of her. She was no longer a ghost, no longer a mere spirit of the past. She was something else, something far more terrifying.

Her shoulders shook as if she were crying, but no sound came from her lips. The silence was maddening, oppressive, as though the very house had swallowed her voice. I could feel the weight of her sorrow, the depth of her torment, pressing against me. And then, without warning, she turned toward me.

Her eyes—those eyes that had once been filled with hope and innocence—were now empty, black voids. No soul remained in them. Just the hollow emptiness of a mind shattered by its own horrors. And her mouth—her mouth, once so beautiful—was a jagged, gaping wound, as though it had been torn apart.

She opened her mouth wide, her jaw creaking as if made of wood, and the room seemed to pulse with her agony. I stepped back, horrified, my legs trembling beneath me. But before I could flee, she whispered my name, her voice like a thousand broken echoes.

"Help me…"

I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t move. The house had claimed her, just as it would claim me, if I allowed it.

Once more, I read the torn diary pages, searching for clues about Elizabeth’s fraught relationship with her authoritarian father. There was nothing new to be found. My thoughts turned again to the house’s foundation—the old 17th-century cemetery it was built upon.

The notion was disturbing enough. But more disturbing was the possibility of a buried evil resting beneath that forsaken ground. Why did the villagers seem to despise the Hamptons? Was it more than just the murder? Had some deep-rooted hostility existed for generations?

Whatever it was, it was enough for the villagers to speak no kind word of them. Was their grudge justified? The Hamptons were far from virtuous, but they had been wealthy—unlike the working-class villagers. Was this simple envy disguised as morality?

That, I could only ponder.

I was about to resume my writing when I heard the sound of weeping coming from one of the rooms adjacent to mine upstairs. I intuited that it was perhaps Elizabeth Hampton reappearing. When I entered the room, I saw the ghostly image of her seated in a corner, her elbows resting upon her knees. I did not know what to do, nor why she was weeping there alone.

Slowly, I walked toward her to offer comfort and called her name, but she did not respond. Was I foolish to believe she would? When I tapped her on the shoulder, she turned around with a ghastly expression. Her eyes were fully dilated, but the most horrifying detail was that she had no tongue—she had sliced it off. The image discomposed me, but I managed to regain my composure and react.

It was too late. She vanished, as she always did. I would later learn that she had mutilated her tongue during her time in the asylum, before her eventual release. Her final years had been a dreadful sequence of unrelenting horror. Her plangent wailing had been the plea of a soul burdened by its own piacularity. I had two recent encounters with the spectral image of Elizabeth Hampton.

That night brought forth the kind of nightmare I had never wished to relive. I was upstairs, finishing my novel, when I heard a sudden commotion from the parlor below. I rose and headed toward the source of the noise. When I descended the staircase, I saw Elizabeth Hampton standing there, clutching a pitchfork in her hands.

A man—who appeared to be her father—was resting on a couch when she struck him violently in the head, stabbing him repeatedly. It was all too surreal, a perfect mirror of the dream I had, and of the real event that had occurred on that tragic night. Behind her stood the old man I had spoken to before. I was speechless and paralyzed for several minutes.

I had just witnessed the macabre reenactment of Mr. Hampton’s untimely death. In my dream, I had never seen the stranger’s face clearly. The windows and mirrors of the house shattered into shards by a force of unprecedented magnitude—malevolent and deliberate. The terror was enough to drive a person insane. I screamed at the old man, demanding to know who he truly was.

Soon he was joined by the old villagers—silent witnesses and participants in the pagan rituals of long ago. They appeared without warning, emerging like specters into the parlor. What they wanted, I did not know. They spoke little, only to instruct me to leave the house and never return. It was a warning to be heeded.

I stood there, stunned by what was unfolding. It took minutes before I could react instinctively. Then, from beneath the wooden floor of the parlor, the dauntless souls of the dead rose—the original settlers, long buried in the cemetery, who had once worshipped a pagan god.

The sight rattled me deeply, and I told the villagers I would indeed leave. But before I did, I needed to know: Who were they? What was this horror haunting the house? The old man, bold in his demeanor, replied simply, “It has no name.”

When I asked him to clarify, he said the evil in the house could not be described in words. It was beyond human comprehension. I asked about the murder, and he revealed that it was this very evil that had influenced Elizabeth Hampton to kill her estranged father. She had not acted on her own volition—the madness of the house had consumed her.

That explanation, as terrifying as it was, seemed logical. But then why did Elizabeth’s ghost appear to me, as if in warning? The old man—tall and lanky in his physiognomy—explained that Elizabeth’s soul, wracked with guilt, had returned to warn me of the irrepressible evil dwelling in the house.

She could not escape its madness, but she hoped to prevent me from suffering the same fate. I did not find this impossible to believe. Within minutes, the villagers vanished as suddenly as they had arrived. I never saw them leave, but they were gone. Presumably, they had returned to their homes.

They were, as I discovered, the true keepers of the house—descendants of the original settlers of Wickham and practitioners of an ancient paganism. And Mr. Gillingham? I would later learn he too was a loyal member of their hidden cult—one I had no idea still existed, let alone in New England.

The villagers had contained the evil within the house, preventing it from spreading to the village. That was their version of events—and the one I was compelled to accept. As for my novel, I now had the perfect ending. One I had not expected to unfold so dramatically.

I left the house the next morning, as instructed. By then, I had begun to feel the early effects of its madness. Had I stayed longer, I would have succumbed to the same fate as poor Elizabeth Hampton.

The medication I had taken offered a brief respite, a fragile shield against the house’s influence. Mr. Gillingham arrived to collect the key. He said little—only asked if I had enjoyed my time there. I admitted, candidly, that I had, in some peculiar way. He smiled, a sarcastic grin that acknowledged I had seen too much.

He then asked about my novel. I told him I had yet to finish it but was deeply inspired. He requested a copy once it was edited. I promised I would send him one. The events in that house would forever remain etched in our minds.

The last thing I remembered before leaving was staring into the depths of the house—particularly at the haunting staircase that had lured me into its madness. I shook Mr. Gillingham’s hand and said goodbye. Then I entered my vehicle and left the village of Wickham. Along the way, I saw the old villagers watching me from afar, their faces inscrutable.

Weeks passed. I left the estate behind and took residence in a quiet seaside town. But sleep never returned. Not truly. Every night, I dream of the fissure, of the whispering void and the truth it offered me. I still hear its voice sometimes, faint but present. I am not sure whether I brought something back with me, or whether part of me never left.

But one thing is certain.

That house has a haunted past.

The estate was purchased last month by a new owner—an investor, they say, who plans to renovate it. Turn it into a museum. They know nothing of its past. Nothing of what waits beneath the foundation. Nothing of him.

I still don’t fully understand what happened in that house. At best, I can only speculate based on the facts uncovered later. My time there was brief, but it was enough to make me never wish to experience such horrors again.

In quiet moments, when the noise of the world subsides and the dusk seeps through my window, I find myself thinking back to that house—not just as a place of torment, but as a mirror of all that festers within the human soul when left unattended. What happened there, I now understand, was not merely a haunting of walls and rooms, but of memories, guilt, forgotten oaths, and unspeakable inheritances. Elizabeth Hampton’s sorrow, the villagers’ secrecy, the murder, and the malevolent force that fed on silence—all were threads woven into a tapestry of suffering that time could not erase. I was merely the last to bear witness. Though I escaped its grip, something of it lingers within me still: not fear, but a quiet reverence for what I do not fully understand. For some truths, like the house itself, are meant only to be endured—not solved.

I eventually completed the novel and its edits in time for publication. It became the greatest novel I would ever write—the only one I had truly lived. As for the title, I named it after the evil that haunted that place. Choosing a name was not difficult, because, as the old man had told me, the horror had no name.

It was indistinguishable. It was purely unnatural.

And I confess to you, dear reader: the thing I confronted in that house… was indeed, an unnameable horror.

Recommend Write a ReviewReport