Thursday, January 18, 1924, 8:34 PM

Dear Diary, this is my latest entry to update you on my simply thrilling adventures of the past few days as I continue settling into my new home. Finally, something actually kind of exciting happened in this place. I decided to explore the woods behind the house, and found this old wooden mansion a ways in. I don’t think anyone lives there anymore, but Mother said I shouldn’t go near it when I told her. Something about the floors being unstable I think. I’m pretty sure it was just one of those excuses grownups make up though, so I'm not worried about it. Anyway, I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow. I think I’m going to explore the inside after school if I can get away without Mother noticing. -Rose 

Allan examined the diary. The leather bound book was falling apart, the pages slightly yellowed with age. He carefully leafed through the delicate pages, noting the sloppy handwriting of the young girl who’d left it here all those years ago. He wondered briefly why she’d abandoned it here in this strange place. The place that was a source of hushed whispers in the town, that the teenagers told ghost stories about to scare their friends at sleepovers. 

Allan didn’t believe the stories. He’d always been very skeptical about things like that; about the tales of ghosts and haunted houses. It was all just foolish kids' stories, he thought. That’s why he was here in the first place. He wanted to stop all those annoying rumors: “Once you go in there, you’ll never come out,” and all that rubbish. His plan was simple: he would spend the night in this old dusty mansion, survive, and then go back to town in the morning and prove to everyone how ridiculous all those old stories really were. The hardest part would probably be the boredom to be honest. Allan looked at the next entry in the diary, not having much else to do.

Friday, January 19, 1924, 5:27 PM

Dear Diary, so the exploring thing didn’t go quite as I planned. I managed to sneak away before Mother came and told me to do my chores or something like that, but there’s a slight problem. I got into the mansion a few hours ago but now I’m not really sure how to get out. It’s already getting dark and kind of hard to see, and it’s snowing really hard outside. I tried to open the front door but couldn’t because of all the snow outside. There’s barely been any snow this week at all! Just my luck that I decided to go exploring at the exact moment we get a huge snowstorm. -Rose

He finished reading the entry. Foolish of the girl not to bring some sort of light source, he thought. He glanced out the window. There’d been a sort of warm spell this winter, not much snow at all surprisingly. But when he looked out, he saw a light dusting of snow on the once green ground. Snowflakes fell lazily from the sky. Odd, he thought, there’d been no snow on the weather forecast until next week. But then, nobody ever guessed the weather right. He turned the page of the yellowing diary, curious about what happened to Rose, or whatever her name was.

Friday, January 19, 1924, 6:04 PM

Dear Diary, the snow has only continued falling and it’s not letting up at all. It’s almost completely dark outside now but luckily I found some candles in an old cupboard so I’ve got some light. This is kind of fun honestly, it’s like living in a castle! Tomorrow morning I’m going to try to find a way to get out of here, maybe I’ll climb out the window or something, but for now I’ve found a cozy spot on the second floor. -Rose

So, there were candles somewhere around here. Those would be useful if his flashlight ran out of batteries, Allan thought. He decided to get up and explore, hoping to find something useful. 

He stopped in his tracks when he caught a glimpse out the window. What had been a slight dusting of snow only minutes before was now at least a foot deep! The air was filled with flurries of snowflakes so thick that Allan could barely make out the gnarled trees of the forest outside. This was crazy, the storm had appeared completely out of nowhere! In fact, as he thought about it he realized that this was the same thing that happened in the diary to Rose. He shrugged it off as an odd coincidence but there was something unsettling about it.

Allan walked up the wooden stairs to the second floor of the house. The noise of his feet on the creaking steps sounded strange, as everything else was eerily silent. The snow outside almost felt like a blanket, engulfing the whole building, suffocating it and stifling all the noise. Only the groans of the old wooden floorboards and the quiet howl of the wind outside could be heard. 

The second floor of the building was noticeably colder than the first for some reason. Allan noticed it as soon as he reached the top step. He searched the drawers and cabinets in the many rooms that branched off from all the long hallways, but didn’t find anything of much interest. He did realize during his exploration that the house was much bigger than he had thought. It was easy to see how it would seem like a palace to the imagination of a child, as Rose had mentioned in her diary.

Suddenly, while searching one of the rooms, he stopped. He thought he’d seen something out of the corner of his eye; a dark shadowy shape. He looked out the door and down the hallway. Nothing. Probably just paranoia, Allan told himself. Silly of him, he thought. But all the same, he decided to go back downstairs and away from those long eerie hallways.

On his way down the old rickety staircase, he thought he heard the creaking of floorboards above him, but again dismissed it as his mind playing tricks on him. He sat down in a chair near the doorway and decided to read some more of the old diary to keep his mind from conjuring up things to scare him.

Friday, January 19, 1924, 8:41 PM

Dear Diary, I’ve moved back down to the first floor. I don’t know why, but the second floor was so much creepier. It kind of felt like something else was up there. I thought I saw some sort of shadowy thing but I think I just imagined it. It was way colder up there too for no reason. 

That was weird. Rose’s experience was just like Allan’s. The prickling feeling on the back of his neck like there was something watching him, the glimpse of some unknown thing that might not have been there in the first place, and the unnatural cold. If this was all a coincidence, it would be a very unlikely one. He kept on reading.

I don’t know why, but even down here it feels like something is watching me. I keep looking behind me and there’s nothing there, but I just keep getting this weird feeling. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fall asleep. -Rose

Allan felt unsettled. The parallels between his story and this young girl’s were uncanny. He was starting to feel very uncomfortable about the idea of spending the whole night here in this dark, creepy, and cold house. He glanced at his watch, it read 9:35 PM. He still had so long to go until he could leave, and there was no way he was falling asleep anytime soon. He flipped the yellowing pages and continued to read.

Friday, January 19, 1924, 9:35 PM

Wait a minute. 9:35? Allan checked his watch again. Sure enough, the glowing face read 9:35. Very unsettling, Allan thought, then continued reading.

Dear Diary, I feel sure there’s something upstairs. I heard the floor creaking and I think I might have heard footsteps? I don’t know, but I really want to get out of here. I’d honestly even be willing to risk going into the forest in the dark. Something just doesn’t seem right about this place. -Rose

Just then, Allan heard a sound like he’d heard earlier when he was walking down the stairs- the creaking. That was the final straw for Allan. This was all too weird! The sudden snow, the strange diary that seemed to match his own experiences uncannily, and now sounds coming from upstairs? No, that was just too much. He decided to get out of there and face his friends’ teasing in the morning. 

He gathered his things and tried to open the door, but he couldn’t. The snow outside was piled too high, it wouldn’t budge. He shook the door in desperation, then turned to the window. He stood on a chair and tried to open the window, but somehow it seemed as if it had been crusted over with a thick ice- he was trapped. He started panicking. He flipped through the diary, trying to find out what happened next in the story, as it seemed like it matched up with his own.

Friday, January 19, 1924, 9:47 PM

Dear Diary, the windows have ice grown over them. I don’t know what’s happening but I’m starting to really freak out. It seems like there’s absolutely no way out of here now. It’s almost like something’s trying to keep me in. -Rose

Friday, January 19, 1924, 9:56 PM

Dear Diary, I still feel something watching me. I feel like there’s something at the top of the stairs, but it’s dark and I can’t see anything. And there’s no way I’m getting out of this chair to go look. -Rose

And then, hastily scribbled in sloppy handwriting, was one final entry:

It’s coming downstairs

Allan reread it. He looked on the next page and it was blank. Wait- that was it?! That couldn’t be it. What happened to Rose? Had something really been at the top of the stairs? He flipped frantically through the delicate pages of the old book, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. He froze when he heard a creak from upstairs. 

No. No, this couldn’t be happening. Ghosts weren’t real. Those rumors weren’t real. But it felt real, and now the words of his friends were ringing in his ears, “Once you go in there, you’ll never come out”. It all seemed so much more terrifying now, in the dark, by himself, with a mind filled with new fears and doubts. He heard creaking again from the top of the stairs and hastily fished through his backpack for a pen. He found one and opened the diary one last time.

Friday, January 19, 2024, 9:55 PM

It’s real. -Allan

That was all he wrote before he looked at his watch, seeing the time turn from 9:55 to 9:56. He heard footsteps on the stairs. Something was coming down. He thought about Rose and how she’d started out believing it all to be a thrilling adventure. Little did she know, her palace would soon become her prison. 

They both met the same fate that day, a century apart. It turns out the rumors were true. Nobody would remember them really, their lives would become the tales told at sleepovers. The ones meant to scare your friends late at night, that people never actually took all that seriously. 

But regardless, the stories of Allan and Rose both came to an end:

Within the confines of the dark mansion, his cries still rung throughout the eerie halls. As he sat facing the stairs, he finally realized that he should have heeded the whispered warnings, but by that point it was too late.

  Within the icy and immense palace, her cries still echoed, yet no one knew her true identity and appearance. Only the black phantom appearing on the balcony at midnight and the eerie diary from a century ago warned people that this was not a place one should approach.

The End