The Most Haunted Street: My Year in a Cursed Cottage

I was twenty-six, freshly assigned to a new base, when everything went sideways. Within a week of arriving, I was deployed overseas, having barely unpacked or met a soul. A bad fall tore something in my hip, and I was sent home early on crutches, unable to walk. I returned to a city where I knew no one, all my belongings still in storage, and no place to live. I was staying temporarily with someone I'd thought was a friend, but he turned out to be deeply unsettling, so I was desperate to leave.

I found a listing for an old cottage with charm to spare. I've always loved old things, so I jumped at it. The rental agent looked strangely shocked when I said I wanted to see the place, though she seemed relieved someone finally would. That should have been my first warning.

The neighborhood was silent in an eerie way. I never once saw a neighbor, though a car always sat outside the identical twin house next door. Church bells rang, but no one entered the church. Cats roamed everywhere. Inside, the house had creaky floors, crooked walls, and doors that wouldn't fully shut.

Then the footsteps started, above me, in a crawl space where maintenance insisted no person could stand. My gentle dogs would suddenly growl and stare into empty corners. A locked latch on a crawl space opened by itself when no one else had been inside. The house made every negative emotion crushingly heavy, lifting only when I left.

One night at exactly the same minute, a blood-curdling scream came from the front of the house. It happened again the next night, at the identical time. Nobody outside. We eventually looked up the address and learned it sat on what locals called the most haunted street in the region.

The worst came near the end, alone, when I heard something tearing through my trash, cabinets slamming open and shut. My dogs were gone, staying with family. By morning, everything looked untouched except one open cabinet. I moved out days later and never looked back. No one, as far as I ever saw, moved in after me.