09/20/2026
“Unwanted Seclusion”
In 2014, I purchased an abandoned farmhouse just outside the small town where my grandfather had grown up.
As a child, I had always loved hearing Grandpa talk about his hometown. He had countless memories and stories, although I noticed Grandma never seemed comfortable whenever he brought the place up.
When I was older, I finally asked her why Grandpa talked about it so much. She told me that he had left when he was eighteen and had never gone back. She didn’t know the reason.
Eventually, I asked Grandpa myself.
The cheerful expression he usually wore disappeared instantly. His face became filled with an old, deeply buried pain.
After a long silence, he finally told me what happened.
“When I was twelve, an elderly woman came to live with us. Our farm was about a mile outside town. I was the youngest child, and only my sixteen-year-old sister was still living at home.
Upstairs were two bedrooms—one for the boys and one for the girls. But there were also two additional rooms that nobody ever used.
Whenever we asked about them, our parents would become angry and strictly forbid us from talking about them.
The windows and doors to those rooms had been boarded shut. Sometimes, late at night, we could hear strange noises coming from behind them. It terrified us.
After my parents died in a terrible car accident, my father's sister and her husband moved in to run the farm and look after us.
They told my sister and me that an extremely old relative was coming to stay with us. We were instructed to leave her alone.
Naturally, I had questions.
Eventually, my aunt explained that the woman had actually grown up in that very house many decades earlier. One night, she had disappeared and never returned. Everyone eventually assumed she had died.
But after my parents' death, a letter arrived from her. She wanted to come home and spend her final years with her family.
My aunt and uncle agreed.
She was apparently my great-grandfather's sister, making her my great-great-great-aunt.
When she arrived, she was indeed incredibly old. Yet there was something unsettling about her eyes. They were sharp and strangely alert. I could barely hold her gaze.
A week before she arrived, my uncle removed the boards covering the two unused rooms. My aunt cleaned them and prepared them.
I desperately wanted to see inside, but both rooms remained locked.
For the first several weeks, the old woman rarely left her bedroom. My aunt delivered her meals.
Her room was directly beside mine.
Late at night, I would sometimes hear her whispering strange, unintelligible words. Then there would be silence, followed by a soft tapping against the wall.
Eventually, I would hear her bedroom door slowly open. Then the door of the unused room across the hall would creak open and close.
After that, everything would become silent.
It happened night after night.
Then, one afternoon, I noticed her bedroom door was slightly open. It was normally kept shut.
Before I could enter my own room, she quietly called my name.
'Come in. Talk with me for a while.'
I was frightened, but curiosity won.
When I entered, I immediately noticed something horrifying about her hands. Each one had only a thumb and middle finger.
That afternoon, she told me something I have never repeated to another living person.
The story was beyond comprehension—disturbing, vile and horrifying.
I never entered her room again.
Still, every night she would speak to me through the wall. I refused to listen.
Then, four days before my eighteenth birthday, everything changed.
After the old woman arrived, my sister had gradually become a completely different person. She had once been outgoing, beautiful, popular and full of life.
Then her grades began falling. She stopped going out and spent nearly all her time alone. Her hair began to fall out, and her face seemed to age dramatically. Her eyes became empty, almost as if something inside her had disappeared.
Meanwhile, the old woman seemed to become healthier.
One morning, my aunt entered my sister's room and screamed so loudly that I thought the entire town must have heard her.
I rushed inside.
My sister was sitting motionless in a chair. Her hair was completely gone, and her face showed unbearable pain. Three fingers were missing from each hand, and scissors had been driven into both of her eye sockets.
Blood was still slowly dripping onto the floor.
I stumbled into the hallway, trying to catch my breath.
Then the old woman's bedroom door opened slightly.
A single finger curled around the edge of the door.
But it wasn't the finger of an elderly woman.
It looked young.
Then I saw a youthful eye staring directly at me.
A quiet, almost playful giggle followed.
The door slammed shut.
The day of my sister's funeral, I left that town.
I never returned.
---
2014
I was twenty-eight years old when I bought the farmhouse.
I'd purchased it without ever seeing it in person. Restoring an old house, getting married and starting a family had always been my dream.
The property was so cheap that I couldn't resist.
My girlfriend wasn't nearly as enthusiastic. Moving from Portland, Oregon, to a tiny town in Western Pennsylvania didn't exactly excite her.
When we arrived, I immediately noticed something strange.
The house looked different from the photographs.
There were four boarded-up windows at the back.
The moment I stepped inside, I felt compelled to go upstairs.
I couldn't explain the feeling, but something about the house seemed strangely familiar.
A powerful sense of déjà vu washed over me.
At the end of the hallway were two open bedroom doors.
Farther down were two more entrances, completely covered with wooden boards.
I slowly approached one of them.
Then I heard an ancient, gravelly voice whisper:
'Finally… you've come home.'
Then it spoke my grandfather's name.
At that instant, everything came rushing back.
I remembered Grandpa's story.
And I realized I'd made a terrible mistake.
The boards covering the doorways suddenly began shaking violently.
Then I felt something standing behind me.
I froze.
Something placed a hand over my face.
Slowly, it pulled away.
But I didn't feel a normal hand.
I felt only two fingers.
My final thought was that I had wanted a quiet, secluded life.
But this was something else entirely.
This was… UNWANTED.
TO BE CONTINUED…
