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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Necessary_Walrus1703 on 2024-11-08 14:11:22+00:00.

I don’t remember hearing it right away. I think, at first, I convinced myself it was nothing more than the natural sounds of an old house.

 Houses make noise, that a given—creaks, groans, the wind lashing against the windows, the floorboards

settling. That’s what I told myself when I first heard the dripping. 

But now, standing here in the basement, the sound dominated my senses. The steady drip of water hitting a

surface filled my head, growing louder with each passing moment.

I’ve followed it, searched for it, but no matter where I went, it remained just out of reach.

My eyes scan the aged stone walls of the basement, meticulously searching for the elusive source of the

disturbance.

But it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when this place felt like home—quaint and charming, a bit

rough around the edges sure, but full of potential.

Sarah and I had fallen in love with the house at first sight.

The realtor had given us a brief tour, and when we reached the basement, he quickly brushed past it,

barely mentioning the fact that it existed at all.

It seemed odd at the time, but we didn’t think much of it. Old basements are creepy; everyone knows that. 

Now I wish we had listened to our instincts. And I wish we had never set foot down here.

The dripping had started about two weeks after we had moved in. I remember Sarah complaining about it while we were eating breakfast one morning. 

“Adam, do you hear that?” she’d asked, her brow furrowed the way it always does when she’s

frustrated. “It’s driving me insane.” 

I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out. And that’s when I heard it for the first time.

A faint, rhythmic drip was coming from somewhere beneath us. I dismissed it—probably a leaky pipe, I

thought. It’s an old house; these things happen, I reasoned.

That very night however, the sound, it seemed to get louder. As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I

could hear it clearly this time.

 drip… drip… drip… drip

It sounded close, too close.

I tried to block it out, but the more I focused on it, the louder it became.

Sarah turned over next to me, restless, and I knew she was hearing it too. I could sense the tension in the

air as she was trying her very best to ignore and sleep through it.

“Can you check it out tomorrow?” she finally whispered to me, her voice barely audible over the

steady drip. 

“Yeah, I’ll look into it,” I replied, though I was already dreading the idea of going down into

the basement. Something about it felt off—like a cold weight settling over my

chest.

The next day, I made my way down the narrow stairs to the basement.

Boxes were still piled up against the walls, remnants from the move we hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. The

air smelled musty, like old earth and damp concrete. 

The dripping echoed all around me, but I couldn’t pinpoint its source.

The pipes along the ceiling looked fine—no signs of leaks or condensation. I checked the corners, the

floor, the walls.

Nothing.

I even crouched down near the floor drains, but they were bone dry. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. 

Frustrated, I climbed back upstairs and told Sarah I couldn’t find anything. She looked disappointed.

She somehow hoped I would come up with some sort of magic fix.

“You didn’t look hard enough,” she said, her eyes dark with concern. "That sound is getting

louder."

And she wasn’t wrong.

Over the next few days, the dripping grew more insistent. It followed us from room to room, a constant,

maddening noise we couldn’t escape.

In a peculiar way, the dripping reminded me of those Chinese torture experiments I’d heard about on TV as a kid—where a person is secured in a fixed position, and water slowly drips onto the same spot on their forehead. Over time, the rhythmic dripping becomes psychologically distressing and physically uncomfortable, leading to anxiety, irritation, and even psychological breakdown, though this felt like a milder version.

And it wasn’t just the sound. The smell started shortly after—faint at first, like damp wood, but soon it became overpowering, rancid.

It clung to everything, seeping into the walls, the floors, our clothes. It chased us around like a shadow. The

whole thing was driving Sarah mad with rage.

I finally called a plumber, thinking it had to be a hidden leak, maybe a burst pipe we couldn’t see. 

But something strange thing happened when the plumber arrived at our doorstep.

 The dripping, it stopped the moment he set foot in the house.

He came, checked the entire house top to bottom, and found nothing. Not a single drop of water where it wasn’t supposed to be.

The rancid smell we had grown accustomed to, seemed to vanish in his presence too.

As we watched him go through every room, running his checks, we could hardly believe our senses. Sarah and I looked at each other perplexed.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally, scratching his head. "Everything looks fine to

me. Are you sure it’s not just in your head?"

I wish it had been in our heads.

That night, the smell grew worse. Sarah was coughing, gagging from the stench, and I wasn’t doing much

better.

We couldn’t sleep, not with

that goddamn dripping and the rotten odor.

Desperate, I grabbed a flashlight and headed back down to the basement in the middle of the night,

determined to find the source. 

This time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

In the farthest corner, behind a stack of old furniture the previous owners had left behind, there was something odd—a patch of the wall that looked different. The wood was older, splintering, almost as if it didn’t belong to

the rest of the foundation. That’s when I realized it was a fake wall. The dripping sound seemed to be coming from behind it.

I cleared away the furniture, my heart pounding. As I removed the last piece, I saw it—behind the wall was a sealed well, hidden away, as if someone had wanted it forgotten.

It was small, barely large enough to fit a person, with a rusted metal cover and bricks haphazardly piled around it as if someone had tried to seal it off quickly.

My stomach turned as the rancid smell hit me full force. I gagged, pulling my shirt over my nose, but I

couldn’t tear my eyes away. 

The dripping had stopped.

I called Sarah down to see it for herself, and her reaction was much like mine—horror and disgust. We debated

what to do, but the smell had become unbearable. We needed to open the well,

air it out, get rid of whatever was causing the stench. 

The moment I pried the cover off, a wave of cold air rushed out, thick and stale, like something had been

trapped down there for decades.

I peered inside, shining the flashlight into the well, but there was no water. It was dry—bone dry. 

That’s when I saw it.

Wet, slick footprints trailed up the stone walls from the bottom of the well. My heart skipped a beat. There

were only footprints and nothing else.

“What the hell is this?” Sarah whispered, her voice trembling.

“I don’t know,” I replied, stepping back, my legs weak. “We need to seal it.”

We hastily put the cover back on, but it was too late. The damage was done.

That night, the dripping returned—louder, more insistent. And this time it was followed by footprints as

well.

At first, they were subtle—small, damp marks near the basement stairs, as if someone had walked

through water.

But as the days passed, the footprints grew more frequent, larger, appearing where they shouldn’t: on the

walls, the ceiling, even in our bedroom. They materialized without warning and

slowly faded away, leaving us frozen in terror.

It felt like something invisible was living in our midst, casually keeping an eye on us at will.

I suggested to Sarah that maybe we should leave, but she refused. We had sunk all our life savings into this

place. Walking away was unthinkable.

“This is our home, Adam,” she said, her voice firm. "We can figure this out. Give it a

few more days. We’ll get to the bottom of it."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to think we could fix whatever was wrong. But all I could hear was

drip… drip… drip.

But what truly made me paranoid were the whispers.

It started during dinner. At first, faint—barely audible, like an echo.

 But soon, they grew louder, more distinct, as though voices were calling out from the depths of my

mind.

“Adam… whhhhherrree  arre  youuuuuuu…?,” a raspy voice echoed in my head.

“Come down the stairs…… to the basement,”

“Open the lid and set me free Adam.”

“I am waiting……”

I tried to brush it off, telling myself it was just stress.

But then I saw Sarah’s face go pale, her eyes darting away as panic consumed her. I knew at that instant that she heard it too.

Finally, I put my foot down and told her we were moving out. If it meant spending a few nights in a cheap

motel, so be it—we were leaving first thing in the morning. I didn’t care about the money anymore; I was ready to sell the place or even tear the house down to the ground if that’s what it took.

To my surprise, she didn’t fight me this time.

As I watched her lay down for bed that night, relief washed over me, and I fell into a fitful sleep.

But when I woke up in the middle of the night, she was gone. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. My heart

raced as I passed the kitchen and saw the baseme…

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