In the Highlands,Scotland where the fog hangs low like a whisper too ashamed to speak, there's a stretch of land the locals won't claim.
Black Hollow Hill.
No one farms there. No one hunts there. And God help you if you try to build a home.
But someone always tries.
---
In 2023, American academic Charlotte Granger bought the abandoned estate for a "writer's retreat." A two-story stone manor with gnarled ivy, gothic windows, and a history of sudden vacancies.
"Perfect," she told her fiancé over Zoom. "No distractions. Just me, my typewriter, and the ghosts of British colonialism."
She meant it as a joke.
The house didn't laugh.
---
The first night, she heard pacing in the attic.
The second night, she found muddy footprints circling her bed.
The third night, the walls bled names.
Names of people who had never existed. Until she Googled them.
Every single one had lived in the house.
And vanished.
---
Charlotte called a local historian. He refused to enter the house but offered this:
"It's not haunted. Not the way you think. It remembers. Every regret, every betrayal, every wrong done inside it — it replays it. Over and over. Until it finds someone who fits the pattern."
"Pattern of what?" she asked.
He looked at her through the screen. Then ended the call.
---
She tried to leave. Her car wouldn't start. The road back to the village had vanished, replaced by endless moor.
She wrote pages she didn't remember writing.
Found bruises she didn't remember getting.
She stopped recognizing her own reflection.
---
One morning, she found a letter addressed to her in handwriting that wasn't hers.
It read:
"Welcome to Black Hollow. You belong here now."
Below the signature was her name.
Signed in 1874.
---
The villagers heard screaming the next night. But by the time someone gathered the courage to hike up the hill, the house was empty.
Except for a typewriter.
On it, a single sheet:
"Every story has an ending. But not every soul does."
And a final line, typed in blood:
"Yours, Charlotte Granger."