There’s a reason people fear the forest at night.
It’s not just the darkness, or the way trees stretch like skeletal fingers against the moonlit sky. It’s not the rustle of unseen animals or the distant crack of a branch underfoot. No—what you should fear are the whispers.
The voices that call your name when no one’s around. The soft laughter that seems to come from every direction at once. The suggestions—barely audible—that slip into your mind like a dream you never asked for.
I know because I answered them.
It started in late September. I was staying at a remote cabin in the Adirondacks, a writing retreat I’d booked for two weeks of solitude. No phone service. No internet. Just trees, paper, and silence.
The first night was peaceful. I fell asleep to the sound of crickets and the wind brushing pine needles against the roof. But on the second night, I heard it.
A voice.
It sounded like my sister. Calling from the woods.
"Ellie... come here."
I sat up in bed, disoriented. My sister lived three states away. It couldn’t be her. But the voice was so familiar. Warm. Urgent.
I looked outside. Nothing but trees.
I told myself it was a dream.
But the next night, it happened again.
Different voice. A friend who’d passed away years earlier.
"Remember the river, Ellie? Remember what you did?"
That time I didn’t sleep.
By the fourth night, they weren’t familiar anymore. They were strangers. But they knew things. Secrets I’d never told anyone. Mistakes I’d buried. Names I hadn’t spoken in years.
They whispered all night long. From just beyond the tree line.
I made the mistake of speaking back.
"What do you want?" I asked.
Silence.
Then laughter. Low. Dry. Like leaves crunching underfoot.
And then they started moving closer.
I would find footprints outside the cabin each morning. Bare feet. Small. Dozens of them. Sometimes I’d wake to find the door slightly ajar, though I always locked it.
Once, I found a note on the table. I hadn’t written it.
“Let us in, Ellie.”
I began seeing things during the day. Glimpses of people between trees—too tall, too thin, their movements twitchy and unnatural. I tried to pack up and leave, but my car wouldn’t start. The battery had been drained. The tires slashed. No animals nearby. No tracks.
Just more whispers.
I boarded the windows. Nailed the door shut. I didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. I waited.
On the ninth night, they knocked.
Not on the door. On the walls. On the roof. On the floor beneath my feet.
They whispered from every direction.
And one voice—clearer than all the others—said:
"Answer us."
I screamed.
They stopped.
For a moment.
Then came the laughter. Joyless. Endless.
That night, they came inside.
I never saw them. But I felt them. Crawling over me. Into me. Filling my lungs, my ears, my mind.
I woke up three days later in a hospital 40 miles from the cabin. Hikers found me barefoot, covered in dirt and scratches, muttering nonsense in a language they didn’t recognize.
The cabin was empty. No signs of damage. No footprints. No voices.
But I still hear them.
In my apartment. In the shower. In my dreams.
Whispers in a hundred voices.
Sometimes they sound like me.
Sometimes they ask me to go back.
And sometimes... they don’t ask at all.
They command.
If you ever hear whispers in the woods—no matter how familiar, no matter how kind—they are not your friends.
Do not answer them.
Do not follow them.
Because once you do, they will never stop talking.
And you may never come back whole.
