Scary – Anthology of the Unknown

The Wilcox Apartments were old, their paint peeling and windows warped with age. Tenants had long whispered about creaks in the night, but recently, something more sinister had begun. Around midnight, phones rang. Those who answered heard a trembling, terrified voice: “Help me… he’s here.” The first few dismissals called it a prank, but the calls persisted, each more desperate than the last. Residents began marking the time, noting that the voice always came from the same number—Apartment 9B. Only problem was 9B had been sealed for decades after a gruesome murder that left the entire building unsettled.

Those who dared investigate the source of the calls reported strange phenomena. Footsteps echoed down empty halls. Doors creaked open on their own. Some claimed the faint smell of decay lingered in the air. Shadows darted in the corners of their eyes, always gone when looked at directly. One tenant swore she saw a faint silhouette in the window of 9B, though lights had long been removed. Police were called, but even officers felt uneasy. They examined the apartment—boarded, dust-laden, untouched—but no one could explain the origin of the voice. The apartment seemed frozen in time, yet alive with malice.

Rumors circulated among tenants. They spoke of a woman, young and beautiful, who had once lived in 9B. Her name was never officially recorded, and official records seemed to vanish from city archives. Stories told of a jealous lover, a man who had cornered her one rainy night. Neighbors recounted screams muffled by walls, banging that echoed through the corridors. No evidence ever linked anyone to her disappearance, yet her presence lingered. The apartment’s doors were bolted shut, windows nailed, yet the cries persisted. Late-night wanderers claimed they could feel her desperation, her terror, as though the walls themselves were pleading for help.

The phone calls became more specific over time. “He’s here… don’t let him take me!” one whisper shrieked. Another tenant reported the voice describing exact positions in the apartment: a chair overturned, a lamp dangling from its cord, a shadow in the corner. Police questioned each caller, trying to determine if someone had rigged a sophisticated prank, but the stories always matched—down to the most minute details. No technology explained it. Electronic traces led nowhere. Apartment 9B existed as an empty tomb, yet the cries carried through the lines as if the apartment itself were speaking, begging someone, anyone, to intervene.

One night, a curious tenant, Mark, decided to trace the origin. Armed with a flashlight and courage fueled by skepticism, he crept toward 9B. The hallway stretched, warped under the flickering lights. Each step seemed heavier than the last. Reaching the door, he pressed an ear to the wood. Footsteps sounded behind him, slow, dragging, though the corridor remained empty. Cold seeped into his bones. He nearly dropped his flashlight when a voice hissed through the door: “Don’t come in… he’ll know.” Trembling, Mark stumbled back, heart hammering. Somehow, he knew the warnings were genuine. The apartment wanted to stay undisturbed.

Despite warnings, others became obsessed with 9B. Teenagers dared each other to peek through the cracks, expecting a thrill. They found only dust, broken furniture, and the faint smell of decay, yet at night, the phones rang, each call repeating the same plea. Authorities tried to install a lock system, thinking the building’s old wiring caused the anomalies. But the locks failed mysteriously. CCTV cameras captured fleeting shadows and sudden blackouts. One frame showed a fleeting figure in a white dress, her face turned toward the camera for a moment, but when enhanced, the details were gone—smudged as if erased by fear itself.

A retired police officer revealed he had visited 9B years prior. He remembered the smell first—a cloying stench of rot that made him gag. Then the sounds began: muffled crying, faint whispers pleading for mercy. He swore the air grew heavier as if the apartment inhaled him. He left, shaking, and never returned. Yet the phone calls persisted. His account gave the tenants chills, validating their fears. The legend grew, whispers of a ghostly presence that haunted the building. People began avoiding 9B, speaking of it only in hushed tones. Curiosity became danger, the past reaching into the present.

Police eventually discovered hidden recordings inside 9B. Among the dust and debris, a small, outdated tape recorder whirred faintly, as if waiting. Officers played the tapes and froze. Screams pierced the speakers, muffled threats, and the unmistakable voice of a woman begging for her life. The recordings were old, grainy, yet unbearably real. Experts attempted to date them, but their analysis yielded no conclusive timeline. It was as if the apartment itself had recorded the trauma, preserving it endlessly. The realization struck everyone present: something unnatural was keeping the horrors alive, refusing to let the woman’s story fade into silence.

Some tenants tried reasoning with the phenomenon, leaving notes under the door, whispering into the phone, even praying. Each attempt resulted in a more desperate response. The calls intensified. “He’s coming back… don’t let him!” The apartment seemed to anticipate interference, responding as if it had memory. Investigators speculated about residual energy, a psychic imprint left from the murder. But the experience was visceral, tangible—the hair standing on their arms, the air thickening, the lights flickering with invisible fingers. No rational explanation sufficed. Residents began moving out, fearing that mere contact with 9B could invite the horrors into their own lives.

A journalist, eager for a sensational story, spent a night recording in the building. He set up cameras, audio devices, and an extra line. Midnight arrived. The phones rang simultaneously, the voice shrieking, “He’s here… he won’t stop!” The journalist captured everything—the shadow moving across the hallway, the faint glow from a window, the floorboards creaking though empty. Later, playback revealed impossible details: reflections of a figure in glass that no camera could have caught, whispers continuing even after the phone line was cut. He left the next morning pale, muttering that 9B had eyes, ears, and memory.

New tenants ignored the warnings, dismissing the story as folklore. Within weeks, they reported the same haunting experiences: phones ringing at midnight, doors creaking, and shadows flickering. One tenant awoke to a cold hand on their shoulder, no one there. Lights in 9B pulsed in rhythm with the ringing phones. Calls grew frantic, describing the exact location of every furniture item in the room, even broken remnants from decades ago. The apartment seemed to communicate through terror itself, luring anyone curious enough to investigate. Word spread that answering the phone was dangerous—yet fascination drew people back, night after night.

Historians later dug into city archives, uncovering the story of a woman who vanished from 9B in the 1970s. A man with a violent history had been suspected, but insufficient evidence left the case unresolved. The apartment was sealed, condemned, yet its legacy endured. People claimed to feel her presence lingering in the hallways—a sorrowful weight that pressed against their chests. Phone calls, shadows, and faint sounds became the modern echoes of her terror. The story spread beyond Wilcox Apartments, a cautionary tale of unresolved violence and restless spirits, a reminder that some pasts refuse to remain buried.

Visitors reported hallucinations, though doctors attributed them to stress and sleep deprivation. Yet the patterns were too consistent: voices repeating identical phrases, shadows moving with impossible timing. Even technology failed to explain the phenomenon. Phones rang when unplugged, cameras captured fleeting figures invisible to the human eye. Locals began leaving protective charms by the hallway entrance, but the apartment seemed to shrug them off, persisting in its haunting. Curiosity, it seemed, was the only true threat. Apartment 9B had a memory, a will, a consciousness shaped by decades of fear. The past was active, and the building’s walls whispered, warning all who dared to listen.

One brave historian spent nights documenting every call and shadow, piecing together a timeline. Each midnight call corresponded to a significant moment from the night of the murder: screams, doors slamming, footsteps across the floor. Patterns emerged—calls increasing on anniversaries, lights flickering in sync with long-dead clocks. Attempts to remove the apartment’s wiring or phones were futile; the phenomenon persisted. Eventually, even the historian fled, haunted by the experience. Locals whispered that the apartment had trapped the woman’s essence and her fear, preserving it eternally, ensuring that anyone who entered—or answered the phone—would bear witness to a horror that refused to die.

The legend of 9B became infamous. Police avoided answering calls after midnight, tenants moved away in waves, and the building became infamous among ghost hunters. Some skeptics tried to rationalize, citing wiring anomalies, psychological contagion, or hallucinations. But even they admitted an unsettling truth: something was wrong in Apartment 9B. Lights flickered at random, shadows appeared on recording devices, and the voice continued to call, whispering warnings, reciting pleas, recounting her terror. The apartment was more than haunted—it was sentient, aware, waiting for those foolish enough to listen. Many feared that the moment you picked up the phone, it might never let you go.

Today, the Wilcox Apartments remain partially abandoned. Some tenants report seeing a figure at the end of the hall, a woman in tattered white, silently staring from 9B. Phones sometimes ring at midnight, though the number is unlisted. Neighbors swear the flickering lights are her heartbeat, the cries her breath. Urban explorers speak of the cold, of the weight pressing against their chest, of the whispered, desperate “help me” that chills the soul. The legend is clear: answer the phone, and the past reaches out. Apartment 9B does not forgive. Apartment 9B does not forget. It waits. And it remembers.

There is a sealed room in a haunted hospital basement where shadows move without bodies. WWII experiments, restless spirits, and paranormal activity keep this dark mystery alive.

At the lowest level of **St. Augustine Memorial Hospital**, behind a rusted boiler and a row of empty storage lockers, sits a welded steel door. No plaque, no handle, no hinges on the outside. Just a seam in the wall, reinforced by thick rivets, as though something inside was never meant to be opened again. Staff whisper about it in break rooms, calling it *The Shadow Ward*. Most claim not to know what’s behind it, dismissing it as “just storage.” But the weld marks are uneven, hurried—as if made under duress. What unnerves people most isn’t the door itself, but the air around it. **Ghost hunters**, paranormal investigators, and even thrill-seekers report flashlights flickering, EMF meters spiking, and shadows twisting against the concrete walls. Few linger long.

Hospital archives tell only fragments of the story. During **World War II**, St. Augustine was partly requisitioned by the military for classified medical research. Declassified papers reference *“cognitive endurance trials”*—an attempt to engineer soldiers who could fight without sleep for days. Test subjects, mostly psychiatric patients, were kept in sealed chambers with stimulants, sensory manipulation, and continuous exposure to harsh light. Witnesses described their deterioration: bloodshot eyes, trembling limbs, minds slipping into delirium. But when death finally came, something unexpected remained. Attendants swore the patients’ **shadows lingered**, stretching and moving on their own across the sterile walls. The bodies were cremated, yet their silhouettes never dissolved. What was left behind couldn’t be explained by science—or by any known paranormal phenomenon.

Decades later, retired hospital staff still speak in hushed tones of the **haunted basement**. An orderly named Paul Granger recalled escorting meals down to the “sealed floor.” *“You could hear them scratching,”* he said in a 1973 interview. *“But the patients were already gone. I carried trays to an empty room, but the shadows would crawl across the walls, hunched like animals.”* Another nurse, now in her 90s, described hearing soft moans in the ventilation system, followed by the rattling of gurney wheels—though no one was there. After several breakdowns among staff, administrators welded the ward shut in 1949. The public story claimed it was “unsafe infrastructure.” The truth, according to insiders, was that the shadows had grown restless.

Local thrill-seekers often try to find the welded door. Most turn back quickly. Those who press their ears against the steel report sounds that should be impossible: labored breathing, a wet dragging shuffle, or the faint drip of unseen water. One group of college students recorded audio near the door in the late 1980s. When played back, the tape carried a low voice repeating a single word: *“Stay.”* Paranormal investigators brought **infrared cameras** and EVP recorders, only to capture moving silhouettes flickering across the basement walls—though the room beyond remained sealed. The most disturbing accounts involve knocks: three sharp raps against the steel, always in response to someone knocking first, as if something on the other side was listening.

Hospital administrators insist there is no such place. When questioned, they describe it as a “boiler access corridor” or “outdated storage.” Blueprints of the basement are conspicuously missing entire sections, lines of ink blacked out or replaced with handwritten corrections. When pressed further, staff are warned not to indulge “baseless ghost stories.” Yet rumors persist that contractors brought in for renovations were told never to touch the welded door, no matter what. Security cameras conveniently fail in that section of the basement, feeds dissolving into static whenever aimed toward the sealed ward. Skeptics call it superstition. Believers insist the denial is deliberate—that opening the door would unleash what the welds were meant to contain.

Strangest of all are the reports from outside the hospital. Neighbors claim that on certain nights—particularly stormy ones—figures can be seen in the **basement windows of the haunted hospital**. Dark, elongated shapes pacing back and forth, though no lights are on inside. Others describe shadows stretching across the lawn under the full moon, long and bent, yet cast by no visible body. One man swore he saw a silhouette climb the hospital wall and pause at his window, staring in, before vanishing into the night. Paranormal groups flock to St. Augustine Memorial for these reasons, though most leave with nothing more than unease. But every so often, one returns pale and silent, refusing to speak of what they saw—or heard.

Over the years, a handful of people have tried to break open The Shadow Ward. In 1964, two men with acetylene torches attempted to cut through the welds. Their equipment failed—both flames extinguished simultaneously, as though smothered by invisible hands. More recently, a group of ghost hunters tried to pry open the seams with crowbars. They reported the steel turning ice-cold, frost forming on their tools despite the summer heat. One swore the metal began to bend inward, as if the door was breathing. The group fled before completing their task. Rumors claim anyone who stays too long near the ward begins to see their own **shadow detach**, writhing unnaturally, trying to crawl toward the door.

Today, the Shadow Ward remains sealed, hidden behind warning signs and boiler-room clutter. The hospital has modernized, but no renovation dares touch the lowest level. Locals whisper that the welds are weakening—that the knocks are louder now than they used to be. Some even claim that faint, shifting silhouettes can be seen creeping out beneath the seam, pooling like ink across the basement floor. Whether the ward truly holds the remnants of **WWII experiments**, restless spirits, or something older entirely, no one knows. But every story agrees on one point: the darkness inside is patient. It doesn’t rush. It waits. And those who dare approach feel it, pressing against the steel, eager for the moment the door finally opens.

Tag: Scary

The Caller From Apartment 9B

The Shadow Ward