Australia’s Most Haunted Cabin

CW: Domestic abuse

The dead are expected to be entertaining.

Apparently, dying is not enough. One must also rattle chains, whisper names and occasionally throw a chair. Otherwise, the living feel they’ve wasted their weekend.

I’ve been dead for a hundred and twenty-nine years. I have standards, there will be no chair tossing.

The latest group arrived on Friday, shortly after six, carrying enough electronic equipment to contact a space station.

There were four of them. Three cameras, two spirit boxes, a thermal imaging device and a man called Kane who had mistaken his biceps for a personality.

“What’s up, guys?” he announced to his phone. “Tonight, we’re spending twelve hours in Australia’s MOST HAUNTED CABIN. No sleep. No editing. No bullshit.”

He paused.

“Unless the ghost is a little bitch.”

I watched him drag a suitcase over my threshold.

I’d have preferred the little bitch. She sounded less exhausting.

Kane was accompanied by Saffron, a pink-haired woman who appeared to be filming her own reaction to being filmed; a thin fellow called Dean, who carried a device that beeped at perfectly ordinary walls; and Mia, who had the quiet, watchful expression of someone accustomed to monitoring a man’s mood.

I knew the expression. I’d worn it myself.

Kane called Mia his girlfriend. He called Saffron his content manager. He called Dean a paranormal investigator, which seemed generous given that Dean had entered the house asking whether ghosts could interfere with Bluetooth.

I settled into the wall beside the kitchen.

I had no intention of doing anything.

I rarely did.

My policy was simple: let them arrive, let them frighten themselves, and let them leave disappointed. They would usually invent something on the way home. The living have never required much encouragement to lie.

Last week, a man had spent forty minutes pretending to be strangled by an invisible force. He’d set up a camera beneath his chin to capture the experience.

His friends later congratulated him on his acting.

I had congratulated him too, though he couldn’t hear me.

It had been the highlight of my Thursday.

⸻

By nine, the investigators had established that the cabin was cold.

This was a bold discovery, given that it was winter, raining, and heating units didn’t exist in 1897.

Dean waved his device at the fireplace.

It beeped.

“Temperature fluctuation,” he whispered.

“It’s a fireplace,” said Mia.

Dean looked at her. “I’m detecting an energy field.”

“It’s a draught.”

Kane turned towards the camera. “We’re already getting activity, guys.”

I considered producing a draught of my own, preferably strong enough to blow him into the creek.

But I was comfortable where I was.

Besides, there was a possum in the roof, and I didn’t want to disturb it.

At ten, Kane arranged everyone around the kitchen table for a spirit-box session. The machine scanned radio frequencies, spitting out fragments of voices and static. The theory was that the dead could speak through the gaps.

I’d tried one several years ago.

It had taken me twenty minutes to get a word through.

The investigator had burst into tears and claimed I’d revealed his dead grandmother’s name.

The word had been idiot.

I had been quite pleased with the result.

“Is there anybody here with us tonight?” Dean asked.

“Can you give us a sign?”

I gave him nothing.

The machine crackled. Dean sucked in a breath.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked Saffron.

“A voice.”

“That’s a radio station,” grumbled Kane, clear annoyance laced his words. Oblivious to the tone Dean sighed with relief. I cackled in the kitchens corner.

Kane reached beneath the table and pressed a button on a small remote. A child’s giggle came from the hallway.

Saffron screamed.

Dean knocked over his chair.

Mia stared at Kane.

He held up both hands. “What? What happened?”

His performance was adequate. The eyebrows were a little much.

“Guys,” he whispered to the camera, “something just laughed.”

I could have told them what had laughed. It was a Bluetooth speaker, and it was currently playing a recording of a child who had probably grown up, paid taxes and forgotten all about the money she’d earned from the sound library.

Instead, I watched Kane bask in the terror he’d purchased for forty-nine dollars.

Bored, I left the kitchen to go enjoy the moonlight in the ensuites large bathtub.

⸻

At eleven thirty, Mia dropped a mug.

It shattered on the kitchen floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Kane snapped.

“Sorry.”

“Can you do one thing without making a fucking mess?”

She crouched to collect the pieces. Kane followed, seizing her wrist.

“You’ve been doing this all night. Making me look like an idiot.”

“Kane, let go.”

His grip tightened.

The room went quiet. Even Saffron lowered her phone.

Noticing the rooms shift, Kane glanced at the cameras and smiled.

“Relax, babe. We’re filming.” shoving Mia backwards. She struck the counter hard enough to rattle the cupboards.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Kane bent to pick up the larger pieces of the mug.

“If I had a dollar for every time my Mia broke something,” he  chuckled as he faced his audience. “I’d be bloody rich.”

Mia pressed a hand to her side. Her face had gone white.

She looked at the floor.

I knew that look, too.

I’d worn it myself once, in this very house, in a different century. Back when I had a pulse and thought a locked door was a promise.

Kane told Mia to go upstairs.

She went.

Dean found something fascinating on the table. Saffron began adjusting the camera.

Kane congratulated himself on handling the situation.

I had spent a hundred and twenty-nine years learning to tolerate the living. Their noise, their greed, their endless appetite for proof that the world was exactly as small as they believed it to be.

I had tolerated men like Kane before.

I had even tolerated men worse than Kane.

But something about his smile, the casual little flourish with which he returned to the camera, made the old house seem suddenly very small.

I changed my mind about doing nothing.

⸻

At 12:17, the temperature dropped six degrees.

At 12:19, the lights flickered.

At 12:21, the spirit box switched itself on.

Dean went rigid.

Kane sat forward, delighted. “Now we’re talking.”

The machine spat a burst of static.

Then I spoke “Kane”

Nobody laughed.

“Did you hear that?” Dean whispered.

“Probably interference,” Kane said.

His voice was a little higher than before.

The machine crackled again.

“Kane.”

Kane looked towards the stairs.

Then he looked at the camera.

“Oh, this is gold.”

There he was. My brave little king. Presented with the possibility of an actual haunting, and his first concern was whether it would perform well online.

He leaned towards the spirit box.

“Who are you?”

I considered telling him my name.

Eleanor Vale. It had once been carved into a headstone beyond the trees. The lettering had weathered away, and nobody had visited the grave in decades.

I could have told him how I died. The living adore a backstory. They like their dead properly labelled, preferably with a tragic childhood and an unresolved grievance. 

Instead, I said again but louder, “Kane.”

His smile vanished.

Dean stood up so abruptly that his knees struck the table.

“How did it know your name?”

“It’s probably picking it up from the conversation,” Kane said.

“We haven’t said your name for ages.”

“Dean.”

“I’m just saying.”

Kane switched off the spirit box.

I switched it back on.

He stared at it.

“Very funny.”

I was pleased he thought so.

Then I turned the lights out. Flooding the room in inky blackness. Then, I touched the back of his neck.

He screamed, then immediately tried to turn the scream into a laugh.

“Cold spot,” he said breathlessly. “Massive cold spot. Did you get that?”

Saffron was still, a slight tremor to camera hand. Dean was whispering a prayer, though I doubted he’d attended church since his christening.

Kane was looking at the camera.

He still thought this was his show.

I decided to correct him.

⸻

The giggling stopped.

The sudden silence was more effective than the sound had ever been. The cabin settled around them, old timber creaking in the walls.

Kane searched beneath the sofa and found his speaker. For a moment, he looked embarrassed. Then he kicked the speaker across the room.

“Whoever’s doing this shit, knock it off.”

I had not made the giggling. I had merely allowed it to continue. There is a difference, although I doubt Kane would have appreciated the distinction.

Mia came downstairs wearing a jumper. She held one arm close to her ribs.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

Kane turned, “What are you on about?”

“I’m done.”

“For fucks sake babe, don’t start this again.”

“I’m going home.”

He crossed the room in three long strides and seized her arm.

She tried to pull away.

“Kane, Let me g...”

He slapped her.

The sound was terribly ordinary.

That was the thing about violence. People imagined it would announce itself with thunder, or a crash of breaking glass, or some other suitably dramatic noise.

Usually, it was just a hand striking a face.

Mia stumbled against the wall.

Saffron stood. “Woah, Kane, maybe we should all take a minute.”

Kane rounded on her. “Stay out of it Saff.”

Dean had his phone in his hand. He wasn’t recording. He was staring at the screen, as though it might offer instructions on how to dissolve the situation.

Kane turned back to Mia.

“Look what you’ve made me do.”

And there it was.

Not anger. Not madness. Not even the satisfaction of cruelty. Just entitlement. He believed the world had inconvenienced him by having consequences.

I knew then what I was going to do.

I would frighten him.

Not for justice. Justice is a word the living use when they want their appetites to sound respectable.

I would frighten him, truly frighten him. Piss his pants and vomit type frighten. The type he’d need to seek professional help for, not that his ego would allow him too. And not because his actions had sparked a flame but, because I’ve also been bored for a hundred and twenty-nine years, and he had finally given me something worth my attention.

That was the truth of it.

I have never claimed to be a good woman.

⸻

I appeared at the end of the hall.

No thunder. No shrieking. No dramatic burst of light.

I simply stood there.

I wore the dress I’d died in. It was white once, though that had been a long time ago. My hair hung over my face. The shadows had taken my eyes, and the darkness beneath my jaw was rather more pronounced than I remembered.

I made sure Kane alone would be the only one to see me. 

His mouth gaped, no sound came out.

I tilted my head.

He took a step backwards.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I took a step forwards.

He stumbled against the table.

Behind him, Dean whimpered “bro, who are you talking to”.

I found this unnecessarily dramatic. Dean had spent the evening waving a machine at the plumbing. He ought to have been better prepared for disappointment.

Kane raised his phone and pointed the camera at me.

“Guys,” he whispered. “Guys, we’ve got—”

I smiled.

The camera screen went black. Kane tapped it wildly. A vein in his forehead now prominent with his furrowed brows.

I smiled wider.

The screen cracked.

Kane dropped the phone.

“Fuck!”

A perfectly reasonable response. I appreciated that he had finally contributed something authentic.

He ran for the front door.

It opened onto the kitchen.

He stopped, confused, and tried again.

Kitchen.

Again.

Kitchen.

The cabin was not particularly large. It was an old building with three rooms downstairs, two upstairs, and a bathroom. I had never understood why the living were so fond of pretending that it contained endless corridors.

Still, I had to admit the effect was satisfying.

Kane turned around to find me standing behind him.

He screamed.

This time, he didn’t look at the camera.

He looked at me. And a giggle came from the room.

“Stop it,” he whispered.

I had never been able to make a convincing childlike sound, but I had learned, over the years, to borrow things from the living.

The giggle came again.

This time, it came from inside his mouth. He clapped a hand over it. His eyes widened. The sound continued beneath his palm, high and bright and delighted.

I watched him try to swallow it.

I watched him claw at his own throat.

I watched him discover that there were things inside him he could not control. I leaned towards him and whispered into his ear.

“You wanted something real.”

Then I let him see my face.

Not the face I’d worn in life, but the face I’d worn when I died. The broken skin. The dark hollows where my eyes had been. The mouth that had opened to scream and never quite closed again.

Kane made a small, wet sound. His knees buckled. A dark patch filling the groin area of his overly to tight pants.

Oh goody, here I thought I might have lost my touch. I withdrew my hand.

He slid down the wall, shaking.

For the first time all night, he was not performing.

I found it rather moving.

⸻

I could have left him there.

Perhaps I should have.

But then I remembered Mia standing against the kitchen wall, trying to make herself smaller. I remembered the look on her face. I remembered my own face, a century ago, and the long years that followed it.

I remembered the things I’d done in this house before I died, and the things I’d been unable to do.

So I stayed.

Kane crawled towards the front door, this time I let him reach it. He pulled the handle, it opened.

Beyond it lay the verandah, silver with rain. He looked behind him, saw that I stood in the hall watching his every movement. For a moment time stilled, beginning to become bored I took a step towards Kane.

Without hesitation, Kane took off. The door slammed behind him.

For several seconds, the cabin was silent.

Then the giggling began again. Not from the speaker. Not from the spirit box.

From the woods.

Kane’s footsteps stopped outside.

I heard him whisper something.

Then he began to laugh.

It was a strange sound. High and breathless, like someone trying to imitate a child.

He laughed until he choked.

Then he ran into the trees.

I did not follow.

I had made my point.

⸻

They found the cabin empty at dawn.

Saffron and Dean were on the verandah. Mia sat in the back of the car, wrapped in a blanket, her face turned towards the trees.

Kane was missing.

His phone lay broken in the kitchen. His shoes were beside the back door. A trail of footprints led into the forest and ended at the creek.

There was no blood. No body. No sign of a struggle.

Just a small yellow button in the mud.

The police asked whether Kane had been drinking. Whether he’d taken drugs. Whether he’d ever suffered from mental illness.

Nobody knew what to say.

The footage appeared online three weeks later.

It was eleven minutes long. For the first nine, the group laughed, joked and pretended to be frightened by a Bluetooth speaker.

Then the temperature dropped.

The lights flickered.

A woman’s voice came through the spirit box.

Kane.

After that, the footage became difficult to watch.

The camera showed a woman at the end of the hall. It showed Kane trying to escape through a door that would not take him outside. It showed him crawling along the floor, whispering apologies to someone who wasn’t there.

In the final thirty seconds, Kane stood in the kitchen, facing the camera.

His eyes were red. His face was wet.

He was looking directly into the lens. His mouth moved, however his whispers were unable to be deciphered.

Then he smiled.

The footage ended.

Millions watched it. Some called it a hoax. Others said Kane had suffered a psychotic break. A few claimed to have seen a woman in white standing behind the camera operator.

The cabin was closed for six months For investigations.

⸻

The next group arrived on a Friday.

Naturally.

They brought cameras, night-vision goggles and a spirit box that looked considerably more expensive than the last one.

The host stood on my verandah and grinned into his phone.

“What’s up, guys? Tonight, we’re spending the entire night in Australia’s MOST HAUNTED CABIN.”

I settled into my favourite chair.

I was bored again.

The living are so very predictable.

At nine o’clock, the host switched on the spirit box.

“Is anybody here with us?”

I listened to the static. I watched their eager faces. I waited until they were all leaning close, until their little machines were humming and their cameras were recording.

I smiled.

And somewhere, deep in the forest, a man began to laugh.

He had been laughing for six months now.

I was beginning to find it annoying.