3

It was ridiculous, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end anyway.

My fingers tightened around the handle of my equipment case, and I shook off the unease creeping up my spine.

“This place is no different,” I muttered to myself, slamming the van door shut. “Just another job.”

The crunch of gravel beneath my boots echoed through the night as I made my way toward the entrance.

My flashlight barely cut through the thick mist, casting long, eerie shadows that danced along the cracked walls.

I kept telling myself I didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something about this place—something that made my skin crawl.

I could hear it now, the whispers.

The same kind of whispers I’d heard in every other so-called haunted site I’d investigated.

Wind, the creaks of an old building settling, nothing more.

And yet, my heart pounded in my chest, each step feeling heavier than the last.

I reached the entrance, and the door groaned as I pushed it open.

The sound echoed through the decaying hallways, making it feel as if the building itself had just let out a long, slow breath.

The inside was worse than the outside—walls peeling, graffiti covering the cracked tiles, old furniture left to rot in corners.

The smell of mildew and decay filled the air, thick and musty.

My flashlight beam bounced off the ruined floor and up the walls, casting strange, twisted shapes along the ceilings.

I couldn’t help but imagine all the things this place had seen.

The people who had been here.

The lives that had been forgotten.

Shaking my head, I set down my equipment case and began unpacking, trying to focus on the task at hand.

A digital recorder, a camera, an EMF meter—tools of the trade, things I’d used countless times before.

I started setting up, placing the recorder on a dusty old desk near the entrance and positioning the camera to face the hallway where most of the activity had reportedly been seen.

The air in here was even colder than it had been outside, and I rubbed my hands together, feeling the chill settle into my bones.

As I worked, the silence pressed in on me, the kind of silence that isn’t empty but full—full of things unseen, things you can almost hear if you listen closely enough.

I tried not to listen.

The stories about this place were bullshit, I reminded myself.

Just legends.

This asylum had shut down in the 1970s after a string of malpractice accusations.

Cruel, inhumane experiments on the patients.

A doctor with no morals, no ethics, who used the patients like lab rats.

Torture disguised as treatment.

I didn’t buy into any of it.

People love to exaggerate the past, to make monsters out of men.

But standing here now, in this forgotten, decaying tomb, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe... just maybe... there was a grain of truth buried in the stories.

I didn’t like admitting that, even to myself.

I finished setting up the equipment and took a deep breath, trying to shake off the unease crawling under my skin.

My EMF meter blinked softly, its lights green, steady, not a hint of movement.

No surprises there.

“Nothing here,” I muttered under my breath.

Still, I couldn’t ignore the way the air seemed to hang heavy around me, thick with something unseen.

My skin prickled with the cold, but it wasn’t just the temperature that made me uncomfortable.

It was the feeling of being watched.

Like there were eyes in the walls, in the dark corners, watching, waiting.

I scanned the hallway, the beam of my flashlight flickering against the peeling paint, but saw nothing.

It was just my imagination.

It had to be.

I walked deeper into the asylum, my footsteps echoing down the empty corridor.

The walls seemed to close in the farther I went, the shadows darker, more oppressive.

There were old, rusted gurneys pushed against the walls, cracked tiles scattered across the floor.

The place was a ruin, yet... there was a strange energy to it.

Something almost alive.

I passed what had once been an office.

Inside, papers were scattered across the floor, yellowed with age, the furniture broken and overturned.