The Silent Guest House…Horror Story

Lucas Granger had always believed that success was just one viral video away. At 28, the American travel vlogger had built a modest online following documenting abandoned places and their dark histories. But now he needed something big, something chilling enough to explode on YouTube. So, when he heard about an old guesthouse buried in the misty hills of Uttarakhand, India, whispered about in hushed tones and online forums, he booked the next flight out.

Locals in the nearby village of Bhrantpur warned him not to go.

“They say she still wanders the halls,” the elderly grocer muttered, refusing to meet Lucas’s eyes. “The mother who lost her child. The guesthouse was never the same after that storm.”

Lucas smiled politely and brushed it off. Superstition is always made for good content.

Two days later, he stood before the decaying façade of the Silvat Lodge—a colonial-era guesthouse long abandoned, swallowed by creeping vines and surrounded by pine forests that whispered with every breeze. It was perfect.

Inside, the walls were damp and cracked. The air was thick with the scent of mold and something else—old grief, perhaps. Lucas set up his gear: night-vision cameras in the main hall, voice recorders in the upstairs hallway, and his GoPro strapped to his chest. He spoke into his mic with practiced enthusiasm:

“Here I am, alone inside Silvat Lodge, said to be haunted by a grieving mother and the cries of a child who vanished in the storm of ’87. Let’s find out what’s real.”

The first few hours were uneventful. Dust, silence, creaking wood. Then came the whispers.

At first, Lucas thought it was the wind. Then he heard a child’s giggle—soft, playful, but impossibly close. When he turned around, no one was there. His camera battery drained inexplicably. A hallway mirror cracked without warning.

Still, he pushed forward.

Around midnight, he found the old nursery. The toys lay scattered, covered in dust. A wooden cradle creaked gently though there was no breeze. Lucas approached it cautiously. As he leaned closer, he heard soft sobbing, a woman’s broken voice humming a lullaby.

His blood ran cold.

Turning on his heel, he stumbled backward into the hallway—and there she stood.

A woman, soaked as if caught in a storm, hair tangled, her dress trailing water on the wooden floor. Her eyes were hollow, empty, yet locked onto his with desperate yearning. She whispered something he couldn’t understand and pointed toward the stairs.

The GoPro footage went black.

Lucas woke up at dawn in the middle of the forest, blood dried on his forehead, and a camera cracked beside him. Disoriented and shivering, he limped back to the village, where a young woman named Elena Meier, a Swiss anthropology student living there for field research, offered to help.

“You look like you saw her,” she said quietly after hearing his story.

Lucas nodded slowly. “She pointed at something… up the stairs.”

Elena led him to the village elders, who revealed the tale.

Decades ago, a British Indian woman named Catherine Elridge and her five-year-old son Julian had stayed at Silvat Lodge during monsoon season. One night, a landslide cut off all roads. Julian went missing in the storm, and Catherine, frantic, searched for him in the forest for days—refusing to eat or sleep. They found her body near a cliff’s edge, soaked and broken. Julian was never found.

Since then, those who dared to stay overnight at the guesthouse reported hearing lullabies, cries, or seeing a drenched woman. Some were never seen again. Most who returned had no memory of what happened inside.

Lucas checked his footage. Hours of static. A brief glimpse of the nursery. Then darkness. But in one frame, caught between two static flickers, was a child’s face—half in shadow, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

He never posted the video.

Lucas left Uttarakhand the next day. But sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he hears the lullaby. Soft. Nearby. And if he listens too long, he swears he hears the gentle creak of a cradle.