When Hazel arrived the new neighbourhood, she was looking for a fresh start, away from all the heartaches of the past. A new teaching job in Southampton would offer her that peace of mind that she needed and perhaps a little bit of adventure too.
So when she saw House No.13, an enchanting but slightly dilapidated old house, surrounded by a wonderful garden, going for a very low price. No hesitations at all. It was just what she wanted for a while—isolation from the past.
The locals raised their brows.
“That house?” said the grocer at the beginning of the Lane. “Strange things happen there. People don’t stay long.”
"But why? Because they believe it's haunted?" Hazel chuckled. She brushed off their fear, saying that she never believed in such things but would love a good mystery, if the house had any.
For a while after she moved in, it seemed oddly quiet; but soon, strange things began to happen: the floorboards creaked at night, always in the same pattern as if someone was pacing up and down from the front door to the attic; she found her keys had been moved from where she left them. Books that she'd arranged on the shelves suddenly found themselves shuffled overnight—but there was never any sign of a visitor.
This is... odd. She whispered one morning while searching for the book she had left beside her bed. She found it in the kitchen without knowing how it got there.
"Could this really be a haunted house?..... No no!..... There has to be some other explanation for this!" She wasn't the type who would be scared off by some old wives' tales.
Intrigued, Hazel began digging into the house's past. She found articles in the local archives, newspaper clippings from the 1970s:
"Fire Destroys Home, Five Children Missing. Mother Committed to the Asylum."
The house had been rebuilt and sold multiple times—yet no one ever stayed for long.
But Hazel kept digging, seeking for explanations as to what was happening in her house.
Very early one morning, while sweeping the living room, she discovered an old, dust-covered and half-burnt journal, tucked behind a loose brick in the fireplace. From what she could make of it, it belonged to Elizabeth, the woman in the news article. The entries were haunting, sorrowful. She had lost her husband in a tragic car crash. Grieving and mentally unstable, she had this fear that someone was after her children.
"'I built a secret room beneath the house to "keep them safe." The last entry read:
"They said I'm mad. But I hear the whispers. I will protect my babies, from every harm."
Hazel's chest tightened with pain, tears blinding her eyes. Elizabeth had been taken to the asylum on the presumption that she had set the house on fire. But from what she had scribbled in her journal, she was not a killer—but a mother undone by grief.
Desperate to uncover the truth, Hazel contacted the authorities to reopen investigations on the case, and weeks into it, the truth emerged: Elizabeth’s sister had taken the children away during the fire. They were quietly adopted and raised elsewhere to protect them from the scandal. Elizabeth never knew. She died in the asylum, still waiting to be reunited with her children.
The creaking floor, the shifting keys and books was the gentle presence of Elizabeth’s longing and restlessness. Not a malicious ghost—just traces of a mother whose love for her children remained in the home long after she was gone. Her spirit wasn't at peace because the truth was buried, and she needed someone to uncover it.
Word of Hazel's discovery spread.
A woman named Emelda came forward, now in her 50s, she was one of the children. They had received threats from her father's business associate after his death, her mother was in possession of some business documents belonging to her late husband and had refused to hand it over. It was not Elizabeth that set the house on fire.
She walked through the house slowly, trembling, pausing at the base of the stairs. “This was home,” she whispered. “Before everything changed.”
Hazel embraced her, tears streaming down both their faces.
In time, Emelda rebuilt the house. Planted flowers in the garden and opened its doors to orphaned children, turning it into a safe haven filled with laughter and light and dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Arden, her mother.
The house bloomed with life again.
The floors no longer creaked in the night, the keys and the books no longer moved from place to place, the house no longer had to whisper.
The story had finally been told, the ghosts laid to rest.
Thank you for reading.
Your story is wonderfully constructed and makes for an exciting read. It's a good thing Hazel put fear aside and moved into the house, otherwise she might not have unraveled the age-old secret of Elizabeth and her kids. I imagine the horror Elizabeth may have been through when she stayed in the asylum, never seeing her children till she died. But justice, if you can call it that, prevailed in the end.
Thanks for this nice story.
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I just came across your wonderful tale after writing about a house too. Your tale is full of intrigue and mystery. I like the narrative voice, it fits the moody ghostly atmosphere.
I enjoyed the introspective psychological nature of this story in which characters' lives are intertwined with the history of the house, described in crisp prose.