The Ghosts of Hallows Road

Disclaimer: For privacy reasons, the names of the people, road and property have been altered. All I will say is this true story occurred somewhere in Australia. The events described all happened, and the history associated with the property is also authentic. I have taken minimal creative license, in addition to changing the names, including speeding up the timeline slightly and having Annie discover the history of the property, rather than me. It's possible you will be able to track down the identity of the people involved through the details shared. Please don't - let's respect their desire for anonymity.

I have used AI to create the images for this blog, as I was unable to use photos of the original property or newspaper articles for privacy reasons. Normally, I advocate to use real artists. However, for a blog post, I'm letting AI have its day in the sun.

~~~

Annie slammed the door of her beaten-up car, cursing it loudly. It had spluttered and whined as she'd put it into park, the engine cutting out, and she hoped it would burst to life again at the end of the day. She took a deep, calming breath, running her hands over imaginary creases on her blouse. Her first day at work, in an office, ever. She felt a tremor wobble down her spine and land in her stomach. "Don't be sick on the first day..." she whispered to herself. Some pep talk that was!

Annie walked to the building on the corner of the road slowly, kicking at the yellow leaves which had dropped from the trees lining its edges. She'd arrived early, like normal, determined to make a good first impression. She took a moment to observe the office. It was squatter than she'd expected, the roof height low. It had obviously been a residence at some point before being turned into a commercial office. It was old, but with fresh touches, the deep blue stone walls holding up a freshly painted tin roof. The front door stuck out like a sore thumb though - black. A stark and somewhat creepy juxtaposition to the rest of the building.

First impressions aside, heart thumping, Annie gripped the small, cold metal handle and pushed her way inside. "Hello?" she called, stepping over the threshold. It was no warmer in here than it was in the chill Autumn air outside. "Hello?" The entry had a hideous reception's desk tucked in the left-hand corner. Its white corrugated tin front did not match the obviously fake and shiny 'wood' benchtop. There was also barely any natural light to be seen, making the whole place gloomy. And what is that smell? 

"Hi!" a male's voice called from the other room, making her jump. "Is that Annie? Come on in!"

"Ben?" Annie called as she walked towards his voice through one of two doorways. She caught glimpses of another long corridor leading away through the other entrance. She turned a corner, glancing into empty offices as she sought out Ben. This was definitely an old house, and perhaps one that had been expanded over the years. She would get lost in here for sure. It already felt like a warren.

"Hi Annie," Ben - the office manager - said as she finally found him, stepping back from an Ikea desk, rubbing his hands together to clear the dust before reaching to her for a handshake. "Nice to see you again, thanks for coming in! I'm just hooking up your office!" Annie took a brief moment to look around. Perhaps this room had once been a sitting room, or a living room. The carpets were dull and dark, the walls bowed in places and were more off-white than white. But it had a nice little fireplace, and a window looking out over the garden. Well... looking out over the cracked concrete slab where a garden might have been. In the opposite corner was another, identical desk - its occupant's chair empty.

"That's where Rod sits," Ben explained, catching her staring at it. "He handles our website and digital marketing. Seeing as you'll be pulling together our content, I figured what better office buddy!" Annie smiled, awkwardly rubbing at her blouse again. At this rate, it would be her own clammy hands making creases. "The others all drift in at different times of the day, depending on their family situation. You're single right?"

"That's me!" Annie smiled. Freshly divorced, actually, she thought to herself. Finally free and making a new start in more ways than one.

"So, you'll probably end up being the first one here each day. I'll pop in early just for this week, teach you the ropes, and then you can start opening up from next Monday. Sound good?" Annie nodded, desperate to do nothing more than sit in her chair, open her laptop, and hide her increasingly pale face. Her anxious stomach took that moment to growl loudly. They both ignored it.

After ten minutes or so of Ben 'showing her the ropes', ensuring she was on the team email and chat and had access to the website, Annie had her wish. As soon as Ben had left, she let her face fall into her hands. She sighed loudly, her stomach gurgling along with her. "Shut it, stomach," Annie chastised, trying to focus on her work rather than replaying the conversation with Ben over-and-over in her head. Did I say anything dumb?

Just as her stomach let out another loud rumble, she heard someone enter the office behind her. "Ben?" she asked, swiveling in her chair and clasping her stomach. "You forget something?" There was no-one there. Annie stood and walked to the door, poking her head out to check for Ben and finding the hallway empty too. She crossed to the doorway in the opposite corner and again it was empty.

That's strange... Annie thought to herself. I could have sworn I heard someone come in... didn't I? She started to question whether she'd heard anything at all, or just felt the air in the room stir. She shuddered and returned to her desk, ignoring the moment as she launched into her work.

~~~

It had taken Annie less than a week to retrain herself not to greet just anyone walking into her office. Especially the unseen visitor, who frequented the former living room every day. Rod and Ben, and her other colleagues, had already given her enough side-eyes. She didn't want to get a reputation for being 'the crazy one'. By the third day at work, she was waiting to actually see a colleague - or for them to call her name - before talking. Now, back to Monday again (and her first day opening up), she felt she was starting to become familiar with this presence.

It had a distinct energy to it, disturbing the air the same way every time it entered the room. It was a man, this she was pretty certain of. And he did not like being ignored. She took a deep breath as she felt the air stir behind her again. It was only just past 8am, so there wouldn't be anyone else in the office yet. Focus on your work. There's no-one there. Annie jumped, letting out a small scream, as the notebook on the corner of her desk thumped to the floor. She spun in her chair to look at the empty room, giving the entity exactly what it wanted. Attention.

She jumped to her feet, collecting her notebook from the floor, and dashing for the door. Time for a cuppa... she thought to herself. Even her inner-narrator sounded high-pitched and terrified. I'm just getting a cup of tea!

A few minutes later, her hot cup of Tetley clutched in her hands, Annie poked her head around the door to look into her office. There was no-one else - and nothing else - there. Her notebook was on the edge of the desk where she'd left it before her hasty exit. She settled back into her chair, placing her cup of tea carefully in the middle of the desk, far from the edge. A notebook was one thing, a hot cup of tea flung on the floor would be quite another!
Instead of returning to her work, Annie opened a web browser, typing the address of her boss' business. '84 Hallows Road'. The first half dozen search results were real estate pages. Her employer's website was several lines down, hidden between an old architect's office and a marketing firm, both of which listed the same business address. Obviously this place had changed hands several times.

Annie clicked on the first real estate page, bringing up a history of known sales. Sure enough, in the last ten years or so, it had changed hands five times. Not to mention how many leases each of the investors would have cycled through. She found herself wondering why it had sold so many times in recent years. Maybe Annie wasn't the only one with spooky visitors...
According to every real estate listing she opened, the house had been built in 1910. This surprised her. It seemed much older. The first record of it being sold following its initial construction was 2001. If true, it meant it hadn't changed hands for over 90 years after it was built.

"You're hard at work already," Rod said as he loudly threw his satchel down beside his desk. Annie jumped. She let out a little squeak and then turned to wave good morning. "Sorry!" Though his chuckle implied he wasn't sorry at all. "Didn't mean to startle you. Normally you hear me coming a mile away."

"Just engrossed in work today!" She reached behind her to tilt the lid of her laptop slightly so Rod wouldn't be able to spy the open real estate pages. She made a show of turning grandly back to her desk on her spinning office chair. As she spun, her own handbag caught her eye. It was under her desk, where she always left it, just to the left of where she placed her feet.

Rummaging through its contents, without a care in the world, was a young child. A boy, his sandy hair flopped over his forehead. He was crouched, his 3/4 length trousers hanging loose around his calves. Long white socks stretched down his legs to proper, cobbled boots. Suspenders held his pants up, a stiff white - but unbuttoned - shirt neatly tucked inside.

Annie squeaked again as she jumped to her feet, taking a large step back. She rubbed at her eyes vigorously, willing the apparition to disappear. He stubbornly remained, exploring the contents of her purse. "Bit jumpy today," Rod teased. "You okay?"

Annie's eyes widened as she stared at Rod, realising he couldn't see the young boy. "Mmhmm," she replied in a pitch much too high - and much unlike her. "Just getting a cup of tea!" she said too chirpily, picking up her half-full mug and bolting for the kitchen.

~~~

Months had passed, and Annie was getting a solid reputation not only as 'the crazy lady' of the office - as she'd feared - but as an avid tea drinker. Any time something remotely weird occurred, she would rush to the kitchen, catching her breath while making a fresh cuppa. Annie was personally responsible for the office's tea budget doubling.

Papers continued to fly from her desk every now-and-then, despite the absence of a breeze. This was more prone to occur when she ignored the entity. It only ever happened when she was alone. She continued to feel its presence, though she tried her hardest to pretend she didn't. Sometimes it got too much, and she just couldn't help it, turning slowly to look over her shoulder at the empty office. The most unsettling sight she'd seen while doing this had been Rod's empty office chair, slowly swiveling around to face her. She'd made several cups of tea that day.

The young boy who had taken an interest in her handbag never materialised again, though she sometimes imagined he was close by. Annie was now certain it wasn't just the boy and the dark male presence haunting 84 Hallows Road. The day Rod's chair had swiveled, a panicked female voice had whispered in her ear, 'GET OUT!' She could still remember the prickling sensation that had spread through every nerve of her body. Her ear had turned to ice, refusing to warm up again until she'd left the office later that night.

Today, Annie knew, would be another big tea drinking day. The presence had followed her into her office as soon as she'd arrived, brushing papers off her desk, pacing the floor behind her. She ignored him. She ignored all of it. This was her first office job, and she was not going to blow it.
Annie tapped at her keyboard furiously. She'd finished her project early and was now researching relentlessly for more clues. Since the little boy's appearance, she'd learnt this place was heritage listed, and had been since the 1980s. It was also older than 1910, just as she'd thought, which explained the boy's distinctly Victorian clothing. Annie had found the heritage report for Hallows Road - including number 84. In recommending number 84 for preservation the report had said it was 'a unique example of a late 1800s corner store and residence'. The report estimated it had been built in the 1870s, when the population had started booming. She was pleased to discover she was right, and interested to know the building had always served some commercial function.

The report did not list who the original owners were, however. Whoever they were, the same family had owned this place for over 130 years. Annie had even spent some of her hard-earnt money on titles and deeds from the archives, trying to track them down. The original deed for this building was nowhere to be found. She was still no closer to finding their name. That information - along with the exact date the property had been constructed - seemed lost forever to the passage of time.
Today, Annie was determined to find something about the building's early history. She'd created a researcher's account and was trawling through the historical archives for anything related to 84 Hallows Road. Footsteps thudded behind her, but she didn't turn. The entity wanted attention and she was determined not to give it to him.

The first record Annie found was a births notification from the local newspaper, from 1925. A son, born September 8th, at this address, to a Mr and Mrs Brighton. "Ah ha!" Annie said to herself, deeply chuffed. "Found you after all!" Her moment of triumph was interrupted by her pen swirling in vicious circles on the table before flying violently to collide with the wall. Not today Satan! she thought to herself, immediately regretting her internal choice of words.

Just as Annie was about to start searching for the Brighton Family, another highlighted entry from the same newspaper caught her eye. 'WATTS, October 29th 1925.' Another child, this one a daughter, but born to an entirely different family. She squinted as she zoomed into the scanned image. There was no mistaking it... Two children, born to two different families, at the same house, only days apart. Maybe two families lived here together? she thought to herself, confused.

Returning to her original search results, she saw dozens and dozens of listings for births. All of them at this property, and all from the 1920s. "What the fuck...?" Annie muttered to herself, even more engrossed in her hunt. She ignored the loud bang that sounded right behind her chair. There were literally hundreds of babies born at this address over the early 1900s, each to a different family. Finally, one article didn't just list the address, but a business name: 'Nursing Home'.

"Nursing home?!" Annie tapped furiously at her keyboard, determined not to end the day more confused than she'd started. What did a retirement home have to do with babies? Finally, she found it in another article, from the 1950s. An answer. As she kept reading, she felt a new sensation. A hot, burning, fetid breath on the back of her neck. The entity was breathing on her. She caught herself before she could flinch, using all her willpower not to engage and give the entity what it wanted. 'Community midwives increasingly unpopular,' the article on her screen read. '...as more and more women opt for the safety of hospital births over nursing homes and stations'.

This was it... this place hadn't just been a corner store, a home, a doctor's office, an architect's office, a marketing firm, and now a tech start-up. (And who knows what else.) This place had once been somewhere women came to give birth, before hospitals were large enough to cater to demand. How many women had passed away here in childbirth before the 'safety' of the hospitals? How many babies?

Finally over being ignored, the entity behind her did something else it never had before. It screamed. But not a normal scream. This was something else. Something from the pits of hell. A sound that grated and pounded her ear drums, building like some horrid machine. Something inhuman.

Annie jumped from her seat, taking several large steps back from her desk. Her heart was racing, her palms and underarms sweating. It was time for another cup of tea!

~~~

The scream had been the last straw. Annie had begged Ben to let her move offices, no longer caring how crazy it made her seem. He'd finally acquiesced. Sure, her new office was a small janitor-closet-sized space with no windows. But she didn't care. It immediately felt safer, and the entity never visited her here. A different presence had made this room its home. Whatever it was, it liked to stay in the narrow space between the cupboards and the wall. And it liked to knock. That, and play games. Still, it was better than the darker entity.

Annie had arrived early at the office that morning, as she always did, fumbling in her bag for her keys to open up. She'd started with the back security shutters, like normal. A strange noise had been coming from inside the building - almost like rushing wind. Before she could think too hard about what it might be, someone else arrived. Thankfully, someone very much alive. A short, slightly plump, middle-aged woman.
"Hello there!" she called. "I'm Merrin, the landlady. I'm here to see Ben - is he around?"

"Hi." Annie walked out from behind the back of the building. "Nice to meet you. Uh... Ben's not here right now, but I'm just opening up. You could wait for him inside?"
"Sounds great." Merrin was certainly chipper. As they made their way to the front shutter, the noise Annie had heard before got louder. It was a definite whooshing. Annie side-eyed Merrin surreptitiously, trying to determine if she could hear the noises as well or if it was just her. "What is that...?" Merrin answered Annie's question with her own.

The shutter slid up and Annie and Merrin got their answer. The entire building was flooded, water already calf-deep. "Oh my God..." Merrin said, stepping over the threshold. As she did, she froze. Her eyes practically bulging from her head.

A couple of days later, the carpet (what was left of it) still smelt damp. Like wet dog. It would take weeks to fix all of the water damage. Annie tapped her pen on her bottom lip as she remembered what the plumber had told them that day. 'I've never seen anything like it...' he'd said. A pipe had burst, which wasn't that unheard of. Normally when a pipe burst it burst outwards from pressure. '... but something ripped this one up from the inside. I don't even know how that's possible...'

Knocking at her office door made her jump, bringing her out of her musings. Just as she was readying herself to ignore it, she heard Ben's voice. "Annie?! You in there? Team meeting!" Annie sighed as she shut her laptop, thinking again how inconvenient these spirits were. At least she couldn't be too insane if she was ready to dismiss a real human's knocking for a long-dead one's. She headed out to the lounge, her colleagues all sitting waiting for her, and Merrin standing in the middle of the room.
"Hello Annie," Merrin waved chirpily. "That's everyone then? Good. I won't take much of your time. I just need to know if anyone has experienced anything weird here." Only silence answered her, people tilting their heads. "By weird, I mean supernatural." A few of her colleagues stared at Annie, some more obviously than others. Merrin noticed. She looked at Annie as she finished her speech. "That day, when the pipes burst, something happened to me. As soon as I stepped over the threshold I felt like someone was choking me."

Annie's eyes bulged in her own head. She'd put Merrin's bug-eyes that day down to her shock at the flooding, not to any supernatural force. She sheepishly raised her hand, now that everyone's eyes were on her. "Yeah... yeah, I guess..."

"Okay then folks!" Ben clapped his hands. "Thanks Annie, you and Merrin go have a chat over a cup of tea." He winked at her as he said this. "The rest of you back to work!" Merrin walked over to Annie with a huge smile across her face. The others dispersed quickly.

"I should have known it would be you," she sat on a couch nearby, patting the cushion as an invitation for Annie to join her. "Tell me what's happened." After recounting her story, with Merrin taking long-drawn gasps at predictable intervals, Annie was shivering and nauseous. Her stomach gurgling. She'd never told anyone this, and in such detail. "I don't know how you stay!"
"Cups of tea..." Annie whispered, to which Merrin laughed.

"Look, I don't want to impose, but a friend of mine is a psychic. He's one of the best. He's offered to come by tonight to check the place out, see if he can figure out what's happening here and why." Annie gulped, her stomach rumbling. "Maybe it'll help you too?"

Annie highly doubted that, but being in her people-pleasing phase, she agreed in the hopes it would make Merrin feel better. And, she admitted to herself, make Merrin go away. Maybe then the office could stop whispering about her behind her back. "What time?"

~~~

Annie had been at the office early in the morning, and late some nights. But there'd always been some semblance of natural light, either from the dusk or dawn. Tonight, it was just black and foreboding. Her stomach gargled as she twisted the hem of her t-shirt. "It'll be okay," a deep male voice said beside her. Her friend, Mac, had agreed to come at late notice. Not only was he tall, broad and fit - he oozed positivity. He was also a staunch Christian, and if horror movies had taught her anything, it was that it was always good to have Christianity on your side when facing evil. Annie wasn't a Christian herself, but any protection at all made her feel better. "I've been praying since before we got here."
Merrin and her psychic friend - Daniel - were already waiting for them, the shutters up and the black front door open and waiting for them. It looked more like a portal in the night than an ordinary door. "Here we go," Merrin was grinning from ear to ear. Annie clutched to Mac as they made their way through the old house, nursing home, shop and business. The psychic had kept the lights low to amplify the mood.

"I prayed it wouldn't be able to get into the building," Mac whispered in Annie's ear.

"I think it's worked," she whispered back. "I don't feel it around." The final room they entered was Annie's old office. She held onto Mac so tightly she left red fingerprints on his forearm. The room was empty, aside from shadows dancing on the walls. Annie's eyes were drawn to the window and she gasped, jumping behind Mac. There it was - watching them. This was the first time she'd ever seen the entity appear, and it was just as terrifying as she'd imagined. Tall, thin, and blacker than the night around it. Black everywhere, that was, except for its face. Its eyes gleamed in their sockets. And its teeth shone brightly in its abnormally wide grin.

"Are you okay?" Mac asked, drawing the attention of the others.

"It's outside..." Annie whimpered, regretting her decision to join them that night. Fuck people pleasing, she thought angrily to herself.

"I can't sense anything," Daniel said, frustrated. "This place is empty."

"It's outside!" Annie said louder. The more they talked about it, the larger the creature's grin grew. Like the little boy, it seemed Annie was the only one able to see it. A thought struck her as she cowered behind Mac. Nothing had ever happened when someone else was in the office with her. Not until Merrin. Her male dominated office. "Oh God..." Annie said, turning to the others. "I think I figured something out. It doesn't like men. It's never appeared around a man before!"

"Is that so?" Daniel harumphed. He threw his arms wide. "Are you afraid of men?! Too chicken to do anything but taunt women!" Annie sank further behind Mac, feeling like she'd been sucked into an awful B-grade horror film. "Come on, you coward! Show us your power!" With each of his words, the creature's smile grew wider, until it was splitting its face near in two.

"Please..." Annie whispered. "Please stop. It likes what you're doing! It likes attention!" Daniel turned his own attention to Annie, stopping briefly, and in that moment, the creature disappeared. "It's gone..." she panted, feeling fear starting to build. "Where'd it go?!" The four of them swiveled around the room, looking into every corner.

"Annie..." Mac's voice cut through the silence, calm but firm and deadly serious. She held her breath, more terrified by the concern in his voice than by the disappearance of the creature. "Annie!"
She tried to whisper 'what', but no words got through. As she tried to speak, she started gagging, feeling as if hands had wrapped themself around her windpipe and were squeezing.

"There's red handprints on her throat!" Mac yelled at the other two. "Do something!" By this point, Annie couldn't draw any breath. She gasped pointlessly, the pressure making her feel as though her voice box might pop. She turned and tried to flee.

"Wait!" Merrin grabbed her arm. "Something is actually happening! Stay!" Annie ripped herself free, fleeing as fast as she could without breath.

Mac had his arms around Annie as she sat in the open boot of her car, crying, cradling her arms around her knees. "I can't believe it..." Mac whispered, stroking Annie's hair.

"That was fantastic!" Daniel yelled as he came to join them. "Did you see that shadow figure on the wall, chasing her out?" Annie's stomach tightened and gurgled loudly. She hadn't known that. "You must have some latent psychic ability," he said eagerly to Annie. "That's amazing. You have to let me train you!"

"You know what?" Annie found confidence from a deep rage inside her, her people pleasing era now done. "Fuck no!"

~~~

In real life, Annie didn't say 'fuck no', but she did quickly find a new job. The building has since changed hands again, and it's unknown if the entities still actively haunt the place or not.

We may never know who those spirits were. Was the child an original resident, from the late 1800s? Was the woman someone who died during childbirth, or a nurse who used to work at the nursing station? Certainly, there is a record of a matron who used to work at that nursing home passing away on that road.

The darker entity remains an even deeper mystery. What I managed to find through my archive searches was that there were dozens of car accidents on this road in the early 1900s. Many were attributed to the tram line that used to run through the area, but there were less benign stories too. In the early 1920s, a man caused a fatal accident, killing a young man and his teenage son. The perpetrator hanged himself in a shed on the road, rather than face justice. Is he the one taunting women? We'll probably never know.