We Tried Throwing a Party at an Abandoned Cabin in the Woods

"When all the stars align."

That's one of those sayings people use when something impossibly good happens. Like every wrong turn in your life somehow bent the right way, and you ended up exactly where you were supposed to be.

That's basically what happened to us. Except the opposite.

Everybody likes going to a house party. Hosting one is a completely different animal. It's all fun until some uninvited moron shows up and starts smashing into your mom's antique vase collection, and then you're standing there doing mental math on how many years of your life you just lost.

We all wanted to party. None of us wanted to host. And crashing some stranger's party wasn't the same — you can't relax when you don't know whose couch you're sitting on. So when Jason started going on about this decent-sized cabin out in the woods that looked abandoned, we listened.

We weren't sold right away, obviously. If nobody owned it, it had to be a dump, right? And how far back in the trees was it? None of us were trying to get lost in the woods at night. But Jason talked us into at least going to look at it, and the second we saw the place, we were in. It was maybe an eight minute walk into this wooded park near town. The only sketchy part was that there wasn't really a trail — we just hacked our own path through the brush to get there, and told ourselves we'd remember the way.

Inside, it was fine. A little dusty, but nothing disgusting. And it had electricity, which should have been the first red flag. Because think about it — somebody had to be paying that bill. But Jason swore up and down that in all the times he'd stumbled across the place, he'd never seen a single person go in or out. The door was always unlocked. Just sitting there.

We didn't take his word for it. The whole thing felt off. But we were dumb teenagers, so instead of walking away, we did the smart thing and decided to stake the place out for a week to figure out if it was actually empty.

A full week went by. Nobody came near it. Not once. Which honestly made it worse, because now we had a new theory: what if somebody was living in there the whole time and just never left? The only thing working against that idea was that we'd already been inside a few times, making plenty of noise, and if someone lived there they probably would have come out swinging by then. Still, it bugged us. We argued about it until we landed on the obvious solution — one of us had to go in and check every room.

The general reaction to that plan was "hell no, I'm not trying to bump into some psycho in the dark." But we peer-pressured each other into it, and one afternoon all five of us went in together and did a full sweep.

Every room was empty. Except one. There was a door — looked like a closet — that was locked tight, so we just left it alone. Rookie mistake, I know.

The house itself had some weird quirks, though. Five things that stuck with us:

First, there was exactly one framed painting in the whole place, and it showed this dark, shadowy figure standing outside a window, like it was looking in.

Second, there was a hole in the basement floor, maybe two inches across. We tried to see down into it. Just black.

Third, upstairs in one of the bedrooms there was this heavy locked box, and sitting next to it, an old beat-up Android phone with a dead battery.

Fourth, the TV worked, but it only got one channel — some obscure thing that just showed a dim light against what looked like a wall and a bedpost. Nothing else. Just that.

Fifth, there was a rocking chair in the living room that was stuck fast to the floor. Wouldn't move at all.

Any reasonable person would have looked at all that and gotten the hell out. But like I said — dumb kids, and we had a party to throw. Nothing was stopping us.

We watched the place for a few more days, then started spreading the word. Called up everyone we knew. People were hyped. We kept the guest list around twenty — we weren't complete animals, we didn't want to burn the forest down or anything.

Party day, we got there early to set up. Setup meant music, chips, and beer. That's a party. You don't need a disco ball. Just drinks, something to smoke, and good people.

We tried hooking up an Xbox to the TV for something to do, but it wouldn't take. The screen just stayed on that same channel no matter what we tried. Looking back, I swear the little light on the screen was getting brighter, but at the time I didn't think much of it.

Everyone was supposed to show up around eight. We finished setting up by seven, so the five of us had an hour to kill. We cracked beers, rolled a couple joints, got the night rolling early.

At some point Boris pulled out what looked like a Ouija board.

"C'mon, we gotta try it," he said, all excited. Only Max was into it, so we let the two of them mess around while the rest of us kept drinking.

Maybe ten minutes later, Jason went to the bathroom, and that left me and Chris alone near the weird rocking chair.

"What's the point of gluing this thing to the floor?" Chris said. He crouched down and looked underneath. "Is this glue or what? Can't even tell." He poked at it for a while, then — I don't know why — he climbed into the chair and started rocking. "Man, I haven't sat in one of these in forever." Then his face just fell. We both figured it out at the exact same second. He got up, and the chair stopped dead. He tried to shove it while standing next to it. It wouldn't budge a millimeter.

"What the—" he started.

"Oh, c'mon!" Max cut him off, holding up the Ouija board. "What kind of board is this? It's not even in English!" I looked at it myself. He was right. At first glance the characters looked like the alphabet, but every letter was slightly wrong. The A had two lines through it, stuff like that.

"I swear it was normal when I bought it," Boris said, staring at it.

"Where'd you buy it?" Max asked.

"Some lady's moving sale. Three bucks."

"Guys," I said, checking my phone. "It's eight forty. Where is everybody?"

Everyone pulled out their phones. "Alright," Max said, "I'm calling Erin, see where she's at." He dialed and wandered into the kitchen while the rest of us just stood there with this vague dread hanging over us. I glanced at the rocking chair, totally still, and shivered. Weed and beer don't make you hallucinate. I knew that much.

Jason came back holding a book. "Check this out," he said, flipping it open. It was like one of those little kids' pop-up books, with these crudely drawn animals and trees popping up off the pages.

"So what?" Chris said.

"Look," Jason said, pointing at a gap between two trees. I squinted. There was a big grey hand drawn in there, reaching out of the dark woods and grabbing a branch.

"Dude, what the hell?" Chris said, staring at it.

"Alright, this makes no sense," Max said, storming back in. "Erin says she got here twenty minutes ago. And then she did this weird laugh thing and hung up."

Before we could even process that, Boris spoke up, voice shaking.

"Uh... guys? I can't move my hand." His hand was planted flat on the Ouija board.

"Quit messing around," Max said, getting annoyed.

"I'm serious, man." Boris was starting to panic.

"I can't deal with this right now," Chris said, pacing. I felt the same way. Too much was happening at once. My brain couldn't keep up.

And then I looked at the TV, which had been on this whole time. The light had gotten brighter, and now I could see what it actually was — a candle. But that wasn't all. There was a hand dangling over the side of a bed.

"Jesus—" I started, but Boris was yelling about the board again. We looked over and watched his finger sliding across the letters by itself.

"Fucking hell!" Max shouted and tried to smack the board out from under Boris's hand. Tried. Because just like the rocking chair, Boris's hand was stuck fast.

Max stumbled back. "This can't be happening," he whispered.

Then his phone rang. He answered it fast. "Hello?" We could hear faint chattering on the other end. The longer he listened, the whiter his face got. He lowered the phone. "It was Erin. She said everyone's up in the attic. She said we should come join them."

"Does this place even have a damn attic?" Chris yelled.

"Oh thank God," Boris breathed — he'd finally gotten his hand unstuck. "That was so weird."

"Did it spell anything?" I asked. "The board — what did it say?"

"Yeah, I don't know, man. I was too busy freaking out to read it."

"This is getting weird," Jason muttered, still staring at the pop-up book.

Probably just some bad weed, I told myself, even though I felt completely sober. In hindsight, that was just my brain desperately making excuses.

"Where'd Max go?" Boris asked suddenly.

We looked around. He was gone. Just gone. Nobody had seen him leave. We were all about two seconds from losing it completely.

"Alright," Chris said. "You've heard the stories, right? Carbon monoxide makes you see things, makes you loopy. If that's what's happening, we need to get out of here right now."

"What?" I said. "How does that explain—"

He didn't let me finish. He bolted past me and straight out the front door. I ran after him, screaming at him to get back here. He sprinted all the way to the tree line before he stopped.

"Look, man, if it was gas we'd be dead already!" I shouted at him. And that's when I saw it — between two of the trees. A huge grey hand, reaching out of the dark woods. I opened my mouth to scream at Chris to run, but the hand grabbed him before I could make a sound.

"Oh shit!" I yelled, and sprinted back inside and locked the door behind me. Though honestly, I wasn't feeling too great about being inside, either.

"What the hell is he doing?" Boris asked.

I didn't answer. I just sat down and tried to make sense of anything. I couldn't. Everything was broken.

"Wait," Jason said. "You hear that?"

We all went quiet. There was a mumbling sound coming from under us. From the basement.

"That's gotta be Max," Jason said.

Under normal circumstances, sure. But nothing about this night was normal, so the three of us went down to check, half expecting the worst.

Max was down there, on his knees, staring into that little hole in the floor, mumbling to himself. I got close enough to hear him.

"Yeah... yeah, okay. I'll kill them, I will. Yeah. They're right behind me. I'll do it now."

Oh, shit, I thought. Of all of us, the one who gets possessed had to be the guy who did kickboxing.

Max turned around and I flinched — his eyes were rolled all the way back, nothing but white. I tried to run back upstairs, but he charged me and swept my legs out. "What the hell are you doing?!" Boris screamed at him. Max didn't hear him. He rushed Boris and landed a brutal kick to his ribs.

"Oh shit," Jason stammered, squaring up like he was going to fight him. Bad idea. Max dropped him with a single punch. I looked past them at the hole in the floor, and there was an eyeball on a stalk rising out of it, swaying.

That kicked my survival instinct into overdrive. While Max was focused on the others, I kicked the back of his legs and he stumbled. I hauled myself up and ran for the stairs, Jason and Boris right behind me. We got up and shoved the couch in front of the basement door. Max started tearing at it from the other side almost immediately, and we decided we'd had enough.

"Let's get the fuck out of this place," I said.

Nobody argued. We grabbed what we could and headed for the front door.

But it wasn't going to be that easy. As I was about to start running, I caught sight of that painting again — the shadowy figure at the window. Oh, please don't, I thought. My eyes drifted to the living room's only window. And there it was. The shadow man. A dark body with two bright white eyes, staring straight at me.

"What are you doing, man? Let's go!" Jason said, holding his nose, which was pouring blood. I just pointed at the window.

"Fuck."

Then Max's arm punched straight through the basement door.

"Well, I'll take my chances out there," Boris said, pushing past me and going for the front door. About a second and a half later he let out this horrible scream that got cut off mid-throat. Then this deep, guttural chuckling. I lunged for the door and locked it again, and turned around just in time to see Max's head burst through the basement door like Jack Torrance in The Shining.

He said something like: "THERE WILL BE NOTHING WHEN THE OLD ONES DESCEND UPON THIS CURSED EARTH." Coming from Max, it was hard to take seriously, which somehow made it worse.

Jason and I just looked at each other. We were screwed if we didn't move fast. Max was slowly breaking through, so we had some time, but not much. Then I noticed Max had left his phone behind, and it was getting blown up with texts from Erin. Most of them said the same thing: "If you don't come to us, then we'll come to you."

We didn't want to go upstairs. But then Jason pointed at something that changed our minds.

"Dude... the door's open."

He meant the closet door. The one that had been locked every time we tried it. It was standing open now. And the TV — I looked over, and the screen was showing us. Jason and me, looking terrified, filmed from behind a door that was cracked open just a little. We turned toward the actual door and watched a hand wrapped in barbed wire slither out through the gap. Behind us, Max's whole upper body was through the basement door.

Upstairs was no longer optional. We sprinted up, locked the bedroom door, and shoved the bed against it. Our thinking was: if a couch couldn't stop Max, maybe a bed could. Made sense at the time. At least there wasn't another demon waiting for us up there.

But we were in the bedroom with the dead phone and the locked box.

And that's where we've been ever since. I think we got lucky, honestly. It sounded like Max and whatever came out of that locked room found each other downstairs and got... distracted with each other.

I called the cops before I started typing this. It's been quiet for a while now. But there is no way I'm going downstairs. Doesn't look like Jason wants to, either.

I guess we'll just sit here for now.

UPDATE:

The shadow figure is outside our window now, and we can hear stomping and laughing coming from the floor above us, even though I'm pretty sure there is no floor above us.

This is going to be a long fucking night.