They say the forest doesn't forget.
That’s what the old man told me the night before I went into Black Hollow. He was the kind of man who smelled like smoke and pine, the kind whose warnings you should take seriously. But I didn’t. I laughed it off. Ghost stories are always just stories—until they aren’t.
Black Hollow is a stretch of dense woodland on the edge of Willow Creek, a town that barely exists on most maps. I went there as part of a field research project, documenting local legends and superstitions. The Ghost Woman was one of them. Every year, someone would claim they heard her scream—always at midnight, always near the heart of the woods. The sound was said to be inhuman. A cry that didn’t just echo—it tore through you.
Locals said she was a woman burned alive for witchcraft in the 1800s. Others believed she was a mother who lost her children in the woods and now wanders, calling their names until her voice breaks into that terrible scream. Whatever the origin, no one ventured into Black Hollow after dark.
Except me.
I set up camp a few miles in. The forest was unnervingly silent. No owls. No wind. Just the sound of my breath and the crackle of the fire. Midnight was approaching. I had a recorder, a camera, and enough skepticism to drown out fear.
At 11:53 PM, the temperature dropped sharply. My breath came out in clouds, even though it had been nearly seventy degrees all day. My recorder picked up nothing. No static. No wind. Then the fire flickered.
Then I heard it.
Not a scream at first—but a whisper. My name. Barely audible. As if it came from behind the trees. I froze. Told myself it was the wind.
Then came the scream.
It didn’t sound human. It was layered—high-pitched, guttural, raw. It shook the trees. It shook me. I dropped the recorder.
When I picked it up, it was still running. But all I could hear on playback was static and something else: weeping.
I packed up and ran. I didn’t look back. Not once. I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her—just out of focus. Pale. Mouth wide. Screaming without sound.
Back in town, I tried to forget it. Until a week later, when I reviewed the footage.
At exactly 12:00:17 AM, the camera caught something. A figure in white, gliding between trees, long hair hanging like curtains. She moved without sound. Without motion. One frame—just one—captured her looking straight into the lens.
Her eyes were gone.
I showed no one. I deleted the file.
But every night since, I wake at midnight. And I hear it again. That scream.
They say the forest doesn’t forget.
And now, I know—it doesn’t forgive either.
