Nothing and everything is haunted.
That’s always been my truth. Haunting is not a matter of place but a matter of witness. It lives in whoever is there to feel it, to interpret it, and those brave enough to report it.
THIS IS A TRUE STORY
I was in my early thirties when I bought my second house. And it was a dream. I had moved out of my first two family home where there was barely enough room for my growing family, to a turn-of-the-century craftsman home with vaulted ceilings, dark wood molding burnished by generations of hands, and antique hardware that clicked with a sort of ghostly authority. I can still picture that first snowstorm: me standing by the fire, staring into the yard where the pine trees were covered in a hush of pure white. I’d take a sip of tea, breathe in and for a moment, it felt as if I were looking out onto an English moor. It was the house I had decided I would die in. Well enough about the morbid, and let’s move on….
At closing, in the lawyer’s office, I was told the house had once been a hunting lodge for a wealthy Manhattan family seeking refuge in the “country.” To me, it was more. And although its looming attic and time-worn bones gave it the look of a place that should be haunted, nothing unusual ever happened during the five years my husband, my children, my Labrador Pinky, and I lived there.
Or so I believed.
Perspective, and memory, have a way of changing what you think you know.
That first night unsettled me more than I admitted. My husband and I were city rats, raised on sirens, trains, and the sound of constant sidewalk chatter under bright street lights . The suburban silence felt wrong. It was as if someone had taken the world and muffled it under a heavy cloth. The darkness was worse. Real darkness. Not a single streetlamp on the block. Walking the dog felt like stepping into an abyss. The creatures in the shrubs stared back with eyes that glowed from the black.
I digress….
Well, after the closing at the lawyer’s office, we spent our first night on sleeping bags on the master bedroom floor having left the children with their grandparents in the city. We celebrated with wine and terrible local pizza that offended our New York taste buds. But we were happy as we explored the house like children, in darkness, with nothing more than a flashlight since there were no light fixtures in any of the rooms. Five bedrooms. Quiet. A ton of Space. A stark comparison to our previous house in the city that was so small you couldn’t fart without someone hearing you at the other end of the apartment.
Sleep, however, did not come easily. Not because of the hard floor under the sleeping bags, but because of the silence. I lay awake listening to it until my husband’s breathing felt intrusive.
But eventually, exhaustion won me over.
And then it happened.
A sound so sharp, so painfully real, I froze.
A cry.
A child’s cry.
Thin, though clear, echoing down the hallway. I sprung upright, my neck aching as I froze.
“Wake up. Wake up!” I whispered as if I would offend what was making the sound.
My husband rolled over, pushed up on his elbows, and rubbed his eyes. He immediately heard it too,
“What is that?” he too whispered .
I tried to see his expression, but the room was a cave of total black. I groped into the darkness for the battery-powered lantern we had brought with us.
The cry came again , near by , soft, and impossibly eerie.
I switched on the lantern. The unsteady light made the room feel smaller, as the crying continued. Sickeningly. We slowly opened the bedroom door, peering into the hall and realized it was coming from upstairs.
The “attic”, the supposed “f”Fifth bedroom” and “Auxiliary room” on the third floor, that were really two small with their slanted-ceilings to serve as a bedroom in the modern sense. But we had been assured it had once been servant’s quarters from another era. One for storage, one fashioned into a tiny bedroom long ago. Both rustic, neglected, and so small that I , at barely 5 foot 2 , could touch the ceiling without being on my tip toes.
“People were much smaller then.” the realtor had assured us.
The crying continued and it was clear that it was coming from one of the small rooms so we climbed the narrow mahogany staircase, each step creaking as we made our way. We reached the small bedroom door, the servants’ quarters. The sound was unmistakably on the other side.
I placed my hand on the engraved brass doorknob, half expecting to feel the sound.
My husband looked at me, as I turned the knob.
Light spilled into the tiny room and within that exact moment, the crying stopped.
The room was empty. Empty. We searched every corner, then the next room, then the actual attic which was a crawl space to its side through a door barely big enough for a dog to walk through. But there was no child. No animal. No source. No explanation.
That incident became our Christmas party story for years afterward. A joke. Something we embellished for fun. In my husband’s retelling, the crying child spoke, or he got a glimpsed a figure in the window. All nonsense. In truth, it had only ever been the single, haunting cry of a child…and nothing more.
Five years passed. A divorce followed, and eventually the sale of said house. In all that time, I never heard the cry again. Even after converting that attic room into my office , usable only in spring and fall because it froze in winter and baked in summer. I had never have anything else happen as vivid as that first night.
When the house officially sold, the new owners had given me a few weeks to pack my belongings. So every day after work, I brought boxes and my sons in tow and we’d slowly fill those boxes until out official date with the moving men. Packing was like tearing off a band aid from a festering wound. I loved the house and to this day still mourn the loss of it. And I beleive it was for this reason, that solid connection, the following happened…..
On one of those days, I was in the kitchen packing pots and sobbing quietly. I had sent my son’s, aged 4 and 9 upstairs to gather their toys. As I packed I could hear my younger son humming happily upstairs.
But then the humming stopped and a second later I felt a tug at my shirt. It was my four year old. I dried my eyes,
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He stared up at me with a finger in his mouth.
“A baby crying in the closet.”
I was exhausted, emotionally, physically, and shamefully impatient.
“Ignore the baby,” I snapped. “Go pack your toys or they stay here for the new kids that are gonna move in.”
I regret that moment now.
He climbed the stairs again, hesitant. I heard each careful step.
Moments later he was back.
“Mommy… the baby still crying.”
Frustration surfaced. I slammed a wooden spoon on the counter, grabbed his hand, and marched him to the staircase.
“It’s your brother trying to scare you,” I insisted, shoving him gently upward. “Go finish packing.” I could hear the crying now, clear and loud. A wail of sadness. I rolled my eyes, and projected my voice loudly up the staircase,
“ John! Stop scaring your brother! And get back to packing.”
I went back to my boxes.
But you know what they say,
The third time’s the charm.
My four year old came down again, this time trembling.
“I’m scared. The baby is still crying… and it doesn’t sound like John.”
I scooped him into my arms, anger now aimed firmly at my older son who was constantly picking on his younger brother. I approached the stairs, I heard it too.
The cry.
Clear. Echoing. Eerie.
But at that moment, through the corner of my eye, I caught sight of my car in the driveway. In the front seat sat my older son, earbuds in, head bobbing to music. Then looked up the stairs as the undeniable crying continued.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t gather the boxes.
Within minutes, we were all in the car.
I refused to set foot in that house again without an entourage, strange, considering how peaceful it had always been. Peaceful…except for the day I moved in, and the day I walked away.
It was my one and only encounter with a phantom cry, and unless you’ve heard such a thing yourself, it’s impossible to describe the fear it carries. If you’ve ever experienced it, I’d truly like to know.
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Haunted and Waiting 
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