The House with the Funeral Home in the Basement… - Original Short Story by Josh
THE HOUSE WITH THE FUNERAL HOME IN THE BASEMENT
I still don’t know if I found this house… or if it found me. Back then, I told myself I was being responsible — bringing my family somewhere safe, somewhere full of light. But looking back, I think the house let me believe that. It let me step willingly into its mouth.
The real estate agent hardly mentioned the basement — “unfinished,” he said, eyes drifting away as if something behind me had caught his attention. I should’ve noticed the way his voice tightened. I should’ve noticed a lot of things.
But moving day was easy. Too easy. My wife glowed with happiness, the kids shrieked with laughter, and sunlight pooled through the windows like warm honey. Everything felt staged. Like the house was performing.
But I let it.
The first sign came at our housewarming party. Guests kept drifting toward the kitchen then stopping short, rubber‑banding away from the basement door like something was tugging them back. They joked nervously, but their faces tightened in the same way the agent’s had. Every laugh seemed forced, thin, strained.
That night, after everyone left, the house exhaled — I swear I felt the floor shift beneath my feet.
I dismissed it.
Weeks passed with no real incidents, yet dread curled its slow fingers around the edges of my mind. The kitchen air felt heavy, damp, like someone breathing steadily against the back of my neck. Shadows gathered near the basement door even when the lights were on. I told myself it was stress, imagination, leftover party nonsense.
But I noticed my wife lingering in the hallway instead of entering the kitchen. I noticed the kids skirting around the basement door like it was a cliff edge.
When I finally asked my wife what she felt, she whispered, “The air is wrong.”
Not scary. Not haunted.
Wrong.
As if something was fundamentally misaligned.
Still, I brushed it off.
Then my oldest son begged for his own room. Irritation in his voice, exhaustion in his eyes. Without thinking, I offered the basement. The words slipped out like someone else had chosen them for me.
When I stepped into the basement to inspect it, the air changed immediately — colder, yes, but also still, as if it were waiting. The hallway ended at a wall that didn’t belong. I pressed my palm to it.
Hollow.
I pushed harder.
The wall gave way like skin splitting open.
Inside, time had stopped.
Metal tables with drains. Scalpel trays. Jars of murky liquid holding shapes too distorted to name. A hoist dangling like a corpse mid‑swing.
And in the far corner… markings on the floor. Scratches. Deep grooves that looked like something — or someone — had clawed their way trying to escape.
This place hadn’t just been a morgue.
It had been used.
I shut the wall. Cleaned what I could. Pretended it wasn’t real. Pretended I hadn’t heard something shift behind me before I sealed it.
But the house knew I had seen.
And it woke up.
My son changed first. He spoke to someone in the basement, always facing the same corner. His whispers slid under the floorboards at night. He said his “friend” didn’t like me. That I was getting in the way.
Then came the sounds — footsteps pacing the halls in patterns too deliberate to be settling wood. Scratching inside the walls that moved from room to room. Low, rattling breaths echoing through the ducts.
The narrow walls seemed to press closer each night.
Then I saw him.
A tall figure standing in the corner of the basement. Not a hallucination. Not a shadow. A silhouette cut from absolute darkness, topped with a tall hat like something from a century-long-forgotten funeral procession.
He did nothing.
He only watched.
And somehow, that was worse.
I called a priest. The moment he stepped inside, the air thickened. He backed out, clutching his rosary so hard the beads dug into his skin. He told us to leave. To run. That there was something “unnatural” tied to the house… and tied to us now.
We couldn’t leave. Not financially. Not realistically.
So he told us to hang crosses above the doors.
For two weeks, things were quieter. Not normal — never normal again — but quieter. Until the night my son stumbled upstairs with a bleeding arm and said his friend pushed him because he “wasn’t listening.”
While we were in urgent care, something in the house shifted unfettered.
When we returned:
Every cross hung upside down.
Every door stood wide open — to the bedrooms, the closets, the basement.
And the air tasted metallic… like a storm trapped indoors.
The silence was alive.
I took my son to the store to clear my thoughts. But while we were walking through the toy aisle, he stopped suddenly. He pointed at a Ouija board.
“Dad,” he said, voice hollow, “that’s what he wants. He told me.”
I swear his eyes weren’t his eyes.
The next weeks dissolved into screaming nights, impossible sounds, furniture moving on its own, cold spots that shifted like someone brushing past. The lights flickered every time I approached the basement. The shadows felt thicker. Hungrier.
And then—
A scream.
A crash.
A wet thud against the stairs.
I found my younger son crumpled at the bottom, limp and broken like a dropped doll. My oldest stood above him, shaking violently, pupils blown wide.
When I asked him what happened, he didn’t answer at first. His mouth trembled like someone else was trying to speak through him.
Then he whispered:
“He told me to do it. The man in the basement.
He said if I don’t, he’ll take my place.”
And I understood, finally, that the house hadn’t wanted us to move in.
It wanted to replace us.
One by one.