3 CHILLING Halloween Horror Stories Animated

She said my name through a closed door she had never been behind. Flat. Too calm. Becca. Keep the light on. A stranger from the street, and she already knew me. My tea had gone cold at seven-oh-eight. I remember the exact time because I checked my phone right before the knock came. Two slow strikes.

📖 Free book of Kettleby Archive files: https://louloubooks.com/horror/free?ref=podcast

Chapters:
0:00 Rosa Sweet She Left
2:28 Rosa Sweet She Left
4:42 Rosa Sweet She Left
6:20 Rosa Woman in the Corridor
8:21 Hand on the Stairwell Door
10:30 Back at the Gate
12:38 What Police Found
14:49 Rosa Sitting Room Door

Written and narrated by Alice Kettleby.
Original fiction — names, places and events are invented.

Read the story

She said my name through a closed door she had never been behind. Flat. Too calm. Becca. Keep the light on. A stranger from the street, and she already knew me. My tea had gone cold at seven-oh-eight. I remember the exact time because I checked my phone right before the knock came.

Two slow strikes. A pause. Then one more. My housemate Rosa wasn't due back until midnight. Nothing about that knock was a child. Which part of keep the light on was I supposed to ignore? Here is what I know changed everything: that morning I had found the hall light already on, I had switched it off the night before.

I stood in the doorway trying to remember. Then, at seven twenty-nine, a low tuneless hum threaded in under the front door from the street below. Not a passing car. Not the pipes. It moved. Slowly. Closer. She was not dressed up. That was the first thing. A woman, perhaps sixty, perfectly still in the middle of the path, not on the step.

Pale grey mac, fastened to the throat. She held a single red-wrapped sweet between two fingers, extending it toward me. Not collecting. Giving. The street beyond the gate was empty. She placed the sweet in my palm, glanced up at the porch light, and said barely above a breath: 'Do not let the light go out before I come back.

' Eight forty-two exactly, I checked the timestamp on my text, and she was back. Same coat, same posture, same single sweet extended between two fingers. I set the second toffee beside the first on the hall table. Two identical red wrappers, slightly soft, like they had been in a pocket a long time.

I typed again to Rosa: second one now, same woman. This time she replied: don't open the door again. So why had the gate not made a sound? At nine ten the porch light flickered. I looked through the frosted glass. She was already at the gate. I had not heard it open. At nine fifteen she knocked a third time.

Her coat was damp, but the street was bone dry. She held out the sweet and said softly, 'You should eat one. For the cold.' I should have shut the door. Then from somewhere behind her, close, came that low tuneless hum. I retreated to the kitchen. Phone at twelve per cent, I watched it drop to nine while I stood there.

I tried to film the front garden through the hall window. Timestamp on the clip read 21:34. Thirty-one seconds of footage, just my own face in the glass. No garden. No gate. No woman. The hum started again outside. I turned the porch light back on. It stopped immediately. My phone screen showed eighty-three seconds of footage I had shot through the hall window at nine thirty-four.

Just my own pale reflection. No garden, no gate, no woman. But there was a voicemail I had not noticed, no caller ID, recorded at nine forty-one. Twelve seconds of that hum, then silence, then one word in a flat tone: Becca. Rosa, my next-door neighbour, would not be home for another ninety minutes.

The deadbolt was not thrown. At ten nineteen the front door opened. I called down. One word. No answer. I shoved the chair under the bedroom door handle. At ten twenty-three the handle turned, slowly, steadily, like someone testing it with patience rather than force. A shadow filled the gap under the door.

Breath. Someone breathing on the other side. She said it through the wood, flat and too calm: 'Becca. Keep the light on. ' I hammered the wall until Rosa's light came on next door. Rosa's sounds on the landing stopped. She came around, found the front door open, hall empty. Police arrived at ten fifty-five.

They searched everywhere. Nothing. One officer said the latch was probably faulty. Polite. Unconvinced. My phone was at four per cent, I remember watching the number because it felt like the last thing I could measure. At the hall table I looked down. The three red toffees were gone.

Outside, something hummed. That was the last normal night I worked alone. I was a security guard doing a solo overnight lock-up at a big civic hall, and when she appeared at the glass doors I nearly waved her past without a second thought. Navy cardigan, flat shoes, a silver watch on her left wrist, she looked like half the admin staff.

The duty manager was on voicemail. She smelled wrong the moment I buzzed her in, and I noticed it, and I let her through anyway. She came out of that back room two minutes later with no bag and smoothed down her cardigan. I told myself: confused cleaner, long shift. Then I checked the back fire exit.

Bolted. But the door to the basement stairwell was open four inches. Cold air rose from below like the room had been breathing for hours. I locked it, turned back toward the desk, and the desk lamp clicked off. I had left it on. I was still three metres away. At 21:40 I heard footsteps in the corridor, slow and even, stopping at exactly the same point each time, directly outside my door.

I counted six passes in fifteen minutes. Then silence. At 21:55 I opened the desk room door. The corridor was empty, all six doors still shut. But the nearest one was warm to the touch, and from beneath it came the faint, sweet smell of something burning. She smelled of bleach and something else.

Cold and damp, like a room left shut for months. Her pass card was the right colour but she held it face-down. I tried the duty manager on my radio. Voicemail. The digital clock on the desk said 21:56. I had been in the building exactly four hours and eleven minutes. The card looked right.

My hand was already reaching for the door release. I let her through. She walked straight to the fire exit. I called after her. She stopped, turned. 'Wrong door. Sorry. ' Smiled once. At 22:10 I checked the back room. Locked, dark, except the smell was still there, settled into the air like she had never left.

Then from the basement stairwell: one slow tap. Low. Deliberate. Not pipes. Pipes knock in clusters. This was patient. It came again. Exactly thirty seconds later. The duty manager called back at 22:30. No cleaners were booked for tonight. None. The tapping had reached the second landing, I could hear it rising.

I checked seven rooms in four minutes. The eighth was unlocked, door ajar, light already on. The bag was on the floor. Inside it: a key set on a civic hall lanyard and a folded notebook page. My name was written on it. My full name. I backed into the corridor. At 22:53 the lights dropped to emergency low.

I filmed one pass with my torch. At the far end, a hand curled around the stairwell door and pulled it open from inside, slow and deliberate. I stopped recording. What I did not film, what I wish I had, was the second hand, already braced against the wall beside me. I had not heard her climb the stairs at all.

I ran to the main entrance and got outside. Cold October air. Thirty seconds of quiet. At 23:07 the main entrance door opened from inside, slowly. The woman was standing in the lobby, hands at her sides, the bag gone. She looked at me and said quietly, 'You left the light on in the back room.

' At 23:09 I turned and ran. I called the duty manager, described her, said I could see her through the glass. A light came on across the road. She stepped back into the shadow. She set something down just inside the glass doors before she disappeared. Police arrived at 23:21. In the basement: a sleeping bag, a gas lamp, food tins, an empty staff pass with no photo.

The last thing I had was four per cent battery. I used it to photograph the lobby floor before I lost the light entirely. The folded notebook page. Below my name, in the same neat hand: two words. 'Still here.' At seven twenty-two, before any child had knocked, I heard a single low whistle from the gate.

A man stood there, no costume, no bag, just watching the upstairs window. He asked if the family were in. I said they were away. He nodded and said, very evenly, 'Tell them Nadia called. ' Then he turned and whistled once more, short and low. The upstairs window swung open on its own.

Children came. Took sweets. Left. While I smiled and dropped chocolate into their bags, Fraser's reply arrived: 'Ignore anyone asking for the family. ' I read it twice. Then I realised the upstairs window, the one I had not checked, the one that had swung open, had gone quiet. No breeze.

No curtain moving. At seven forty-seven he was back at the gate, not looking at me. Looking at that window. Was something looking back? At eight nineteen the hall phone rang. A recorded voice read out this street number, then said, 'Someone is already inside. ' I checked every downstairs room.

Doors closed. Lights on. Nothing moved. But here is the thing, I had left my coat on the kitchen chair. When I came back, it was on the hook by the front door. Neatly hung. I had not put it there. Then the hall lights dimmed. I did not answer. At eight thirty-one I heard slow footsteps cross the room directly above me.

Then weight on the top stair. I unlocked the back door, Fraser's key, the one he said was the only copy, and stood in the cold doorway. The footsteps stopped at the bottom of the stairs. One breath. Then silence. The kind you have to listen through. The kitchen light went out. At eight forty-four a figure filled the kitchen doorway.

Face in shadow. A mustard yellow sleeve at the edge of the light. He said, flat and slow, 'Greta. You can come back in. ' I had not told anyone at that house my name. Not once. I held up my phone and said loudly, 'I am on with police right now. I am in the back garden and I can see you.

' He stepped back. I heard the front door open and close. Then one short low whistle from the street. Police arrived at eight fifty-nine. The front door was open. The house was empty. On the kitchen floor they found the third key from Fraser's ring, the one he had told me I would not need.

Upstairs, the store room was unlocked and open. Inside: a camp bed, a battery lantern, several food tins, and a notebook open on a page of names and dates. My name was at the bottom. Tonight's date beside it. The officer read the notebook for a long time, then said, quietly, that the earliest entry was from eight months ago.

I tried Fraser all night. Voicemail. The next morning a detective called. The back door key had been copied, the family were never told. Fraser had flagged a missing key two weeks before Halloween and done nothing. She said one more thing: the notebook had a second author. A different hand.

Older ink. Did you know someone was keeping a record of you? The detective told me three more things. Fraser had received a message from someone calling themselves Nadia four days before Halloween, asking if the house would be occupied. The notebook upstairs used initials beside most names, but mine was written out in full.

Third, she paused: beneath the first notebook was an older one, different handwriting. She opened it to a page. My old address. The one I moved from eight months ago. Fraser came to my door two days later, dark circles, hands in his pockets. He said he had not told anyone my name.

I believed him. He said the family held large gatherings at that house every Halloween, always kept the store room locked, never explained why. This was the first year they had gone away instead. I asked who Nadia was. He opened his mouth, and I noticed a third key on his ring I had never seen before.

I kept thinking about the sitting room. I had pulled the door shut behind me that night, certain it was empty. But I had not looked behind the door. I went back to return the keys. The family were home. I asked, as steadily as I could, how long the armchair had been facing the window.

The woman said it always faced the fireplace. Always. She looked at me the way you look at someone who already knows too much. I went back to return Fraser's keys. The family were home. I asked, steadily as I could, about the armchair. The woman said it always faced the fireplace.

Always. Then she said something else: the store room had been locked for three years. They had lost the key. I thought of the camp bed, the lantern, the food tins. The room that had been locked. Someone had their own key the whole time, and nobody knew. I still take on design work from home.

I still do small favours for neighbours. But not after dark, and never in someone else's house. I do not know if they found him. What I know is this: that second notebook held my old address, my previous employer, and one more thing the detective would not read aloud. She just closed it, slowly, and said, 'This goes back further than Halloween.

' I hear that every time the wind drops low.