Once upon a time, in a quiet little town surrounded by thick woods, there lived a man named Uncle Alister. He wasn’t like other uncles. He had a strange set of rules for anyone who came to visit his old, creaky house. His rules weren’t just odd—they were terrifying.
The first rule? Never, under any circumstances, enter the basement.
It didn’t matter what you heard down there—the scratching, the faint voices, the sounds of footsteps shuffling just below the floorboards. Uncle Alister would say, “The basement is off-limits. If you go down there, you might never come back up.”
The second rule? Always knock on the attic door before midnight. No one was ever allowed inside, but every night at exactly 11:59 PM, visitors were required to knock three times. When asked why, Uncle Alister would only smile grimly and say, “We must pay respect to the one who lives above.”
The third and most unsettling rule? Leave one window open at night, no matter how cold it gets. It didn’t matter if the wind howled or the snow piled up outside. The window had to remain open, even just a crack. “They need a way in,” Uncle Alister would say in a hushed tone, his eyes flicking nervously to the shadows. When asked who ‘they’ were, he would simply shrug, “The ones who watch, the ones who wait.”
One evening, I found myself staying at Uncle Alister’s house. Despite my better judgment, curiosity got the better of me. I decided to test the rules.
At midnight, I didn’t knock on the attic door.
That night, I heard soft footsteps from above, pacing back and forth, and then… they stopped right above my room. A faint tapping echoed from the ceiling. The longer I ignored it, the louder the tapping became. I covered my ears, trying to drown out the sound, but it was no use. Something was up there, waiting for me to acknowledge it.
I ran downstairs, determined to break another rule. I flung open the basement door, hoping to find a normal, dusty room. Instead, I was met with a cold, dark void. The air down there was thick, and I could hear faint whispers, but I couldn’t understand them. As I descended the stairs, the temperature dropped drastically, and I felt something brush against my arm. I turned, but nothing was there—nothing but the suffocating darkness.
Terrified, I bolted back upstairs and slammed the door shut. But the moment I did, I realized I had forgotten the third rule. The windows were closed. All of them.
Suddenly, the house creaked as though something heavy was moving within the walls. I heard soft scratching, like fingernails raking across the wood. Whatever ‘they’ were, they couldn’t get in. Not this time.
But they would wait.
From that night on, Uncle Alister’s rules were never broken again. And I, for one, never stayed overnight at his house ever again.