The unsettling chill wasn't the draft; it was something far more sinister. A creeping dread, a palpable sense of unease had settled over the Blackwood residence for the past week. Initially dismissed as the product of an overactive imagination, the escalating occurrences had transformed into a full-blown siege of the supernatural.

It began subtly: flickering lights, unexplained whispers in the dead of night, the faint scent of decaying earth clinging to the air. Then came the disturbances; objects shifting inexplicably, doors creaking open on their own accord. Eleanor Blackwood, a woman of considerable intellect and...