The sun hung low as Emily wandered through the rows of tables at the neighborhood garage sale. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular—just a way to distract herself from the monotony of the weekend. Trinkets, books, and faded antiques crowded every surface, and the air buzzed with chatter.
Her attention was drawn to a peculiar booth set up at the edge of the sale, draped in dark fabric. Unlike the other tables, this one seemed oddly curated: an assortment of vintage keys, rusted locks, and old photographs with handwritten dates on the back.
Emily picked up a sepia-toned photograph of a family standing in front of a Victorian house. Something about it felt unsettling. The house in the photo looked eerily familiar, as though she’d seen it before.
As she squinted at the image, a shadow loomed beside her. “You shouldn’t be here,” a voice hissed, barely above a whisper. Startled, Emily turned to see an older man with piercing eyes and a lined face. He was dressed in a tweed jacket, out of place for the casual neighborhood vibe.
“Excuse me?” she asked, clutching the photograph.
The man didn’t respond. Instead, he grabbed her wrist with surprising strength and pried the photograph from her hand. Without another word, he slipped behind the booth and disappeared into a thicket of trees at the edge of the property.
Emily’s heart raced. She considered telling someone but decided against it; the encounter felt too surreal to explain. Yet, she couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity. She decided to investigate.
Later that afternoon, after returning home, she pulled out her laptop and searched for Victorian homes in the area. Hours of scrolling yielded nothing. Just as she was about to give up, she stumbled upon a local history forum with a thread titled “The Vanished House of Gray Hollow.” A shiver ran down her spine as she clicked.
The post detailed a grand Victorian mansion that had stood on the outskirts of town a century ago. According to local lore, the house had mysteriously burned down in 1923, taking the lives of the Gray family. The accompanying photograph matched the one Emily had seen at the garage sale. Her stomach tightened as she read further:
“The tragedy was followed by strange sightings of the family—particularly a man in tweed—lurking near where the house once stood.”
Emily’s curiosity overcame her fear. The next morning, she returned to the garage sale location. The peculiar booth was gone, replaced by an empty patch of grass. Determined, she ventured into the woods where the stranger had disappeared. After a short walk, she stumbled upon the stone foundation of an old house, overgrown with moss and weeds. In the center of the ruin was a single photograph, the same one she’d held the day before.
As she picked it up, a voice whispered behind her, “You shouldn’t be here.” She spun around, but no one was there. The photograph in her hands felt cold, almost icy. On the back, new handwriting had appeared:
“Leave, or join us.”
Emily dropped the photograph and ran, her pulse pounding in her ears. When she glanced back, the ruins were gone, replaced by dense trees. She’d never heard of the Gray family or their tragic end before that day, but their story stayed with her. And every so often, on quiet evenings, she swore she could feel someone watching from the shadows.