My great-grandmother made me promise to never go in the basement, and I kept that promise for 23 years. Until last week, when I found out why.
Our family has owned this house since 1943. My great-grandmother Rose bought it after her husband died in the war, raised four kids here, and lived to be 97. The whole time, she had one rule that she made everyone follow: nobody goes in the basement. Ever.
When I was little, I'd ask her why. She'd get this distant look in her eyes and say, "Some doors are meant to stay closed, sweetheart. Promise me you'll remember that." I promised because I loved her, but I always thought it was just old lady superstition.
After she died, my family inherited the house. My parents wanted to renovate and turn it into rental units, but when they called contractors to look at the basement, every single one of them refused to go down there. They'd take one look at the basement door and make excuses to leave. It was weird, but we figured maybe there was asbestos or something.
For two decades, we just avoided that part of the house. The basement door was in the kitchen, painted shut with about ten layers of white paint. You could see where someone had hammered nails all around the frame, like they really didn't want it opening. We used the house for family gatherings, and everyone knew the basement was off-limits. It became a running joke. "Don't go in grandma Rose's forbidden basement."
But last week, my cousin Jake came to help me clean out the attic before we finally sold the house. He found a metal box hidden behind some old Christmas decorations. Inside were my great-grandmother's journals from the 1940s, and what I read made my blood run cold.
The entries started normal. Rose writing about her new house, her kids, rationing during the war. But then, in October 1943, everything changed. "The sounds started again last night," she wrote. "Just like in the old country. I thought leaving Poland would make it stop, but it followed us here."
She wrote about hearing scratching and whimpering coming from under the floorboards. At first, she thought it was rats or maybe pipes settling. But the sounds got louder, more desperate. And they only happened at night, between 2 and 4 AM.
"I went down to check the basement today," she wrote in November. "I found scratch marks on the walls, deep gouges like something was trying to claw its way out. But there's nothing down there. Nothing that should be making those sounds."
The entries got more frantic. She wrote about her youngest daughter, my grandmother Anna, sleepwalking to the basement door and scratching at it until her fingernails bled. About neighbors asking why someone was crying in their house every night. About calling the priest, who took one look at the basement and blessed the entire house twice.
Then I found the entry that made everything click. December 15th, 1943: "I finally understand. It's not trying to get out. It's trying to get people to come in. Last night, Anna almost got the door open. I had to nail it shut and paint over it. Some things should stay buried, even if they're not dead."
The final entry was from 1944: "I made a deal with it. As long as nobody goes down there, it stays quiet. As long as the door stays closed, it can't reach anyone upstairs. My children think I'm going crazy, but they don't understand. This thing, whatever it is, it's patient. It can wait generations if it has to."
I showed Jake the journals, and we both agreed we needed to know the truth. We found a crowbar and started prying at the basement door. The paint cracked and peeled, and I could feel how many nails had been hammered into that frame over the years. But we got it open.
The basement was pitch black and smelled like dirt and something else, something sweet and rotten. We used our phone flashlights and went down the wooden steps. At first, it looked like any old basement. Stone walls, dirt floor, a few boxes covered in dust.
But then we saw the scratches. Deep gouges in the stone walls, starting about three feet up and going all the way to the ceiling. Like something had been clawing frantically, trying to climb out. And in the far corner, there was a section of the dirt floor that looked different. Darker. Disturbed.
Jake started digging with his hands, and about two feet down, he hit something hard. We both started digging faster, and what we found made us both scream and run back upstairs.
It was a wooden box, about the size of a coffin, but smaller. Like it was made for a child. And it was empty. But the inside was covered in scratch marks, deep grooves in the wood like something had been trying to claw its way out for decades.
That night, the sounds started again. Scratching, whimpering, and something else. Footsteps. Not coming from the basement, but from upstairs in the house. Walking around, opening doors, moving furniture. Like something had finally been set free.
I'm writing this from a hotel room because I can't go back to that house. But I keep getting calls from neighbors asking why someone is screaming in the empty house every night between 2 and 4 AM. And yesterday, my little nephew asked my sister why the nice lady in great-grandmother's house keeps waving at him from the upstairs window.
The house has been empty for a week now. But something is still living there.