The Quarantine Room

I often visited my best friend growing up. We lived in southwestern Virginia, a fairly rural area of the Appalachian Mountains. Their family rented an old farmhouse. It wasn’t anything special, just an old two-story white house.

The house had a curious secret room behind the upstairs closet. It was a perfectly good room, but no one could live in it. They first tried to use the space as a bedroom, but no one could sleep in there. Eventually, the space was just used as a spare storage room with an old bed.

The bed in that room never stayed made. My friend’s mom would make the bed, but as soon as she turned around, it was unmade. Small, feminine handprints often appeared all over the bedclothes and pillows, even though they didn’t fit anyone in the house.

Every time someone tried to sleep in the room, they were kept awake by the sound of someone gasping for air. The covers would be yanked from the sleeper. Eventually, the sleeper would feel their throat and chest tighten until they began coughing uncontrollably.

We tried to sleep there once… until we began coughing.

Items in the room moved and rattled. That was enough. We ended up sleeping in the living room for the rest of the night.

Bloodstains always appeared on the covers. Once they appeared on any fabric, they couldn’t be washed away.

No one understood why the activity was limited to that room. Years later, the family learned why.

A lady had been placed in the room around a century earlier. It was a quarantine room. She had hemorrhagic smallpox, which meant her blisters also bled.

Since then, her handprints and blood always appeared on the bedcovers and pillows. It didn’t matter how many times the mattresses, frames, or bedclothes were changed.

The family lived there for years. After they finally moved, the home was struck by lightning. It burned to the ground and took the lady’s spirit, or whatever it was, along with it.