There's a trapdoor... no one knows what's below (Subreddit Scary Story)

There's a trapdoor... no one knows what's below. It took my sister

When I first stumbled on the above-titled post by “ScaredinMilwaukee,”  it seemed like 99% of internet clickbait—as genuine as a Nigerian prince’s gold. I skimmed as far as a line about how *she tried filming but only got static* before I rolled my eyes and switched to porn. But the post and attached video kept popping up in my feed, reblogged with titles like, “Trapdoor to Hell,” and “Disappeared or Dead?” I finally gave in to curiosity and clicked:

>ScaredInMilwaukee 6:24pm

>*The trapdoor wasn’t there before and isn’t there now. My sis went down a bunch of times but could never remember what was down there. She tried filming but only got static. The last time she came back she had DON’T COME! scribbled on her arm in her own handwriting. She went anyway and didn’t come back so I went down a few times. The last time I came out screaming and lost my phone and ran for police. But when police got to the house they thought I was pulling a prank. But it’s real we were urban exploring and now she’s below and the trapdoor is gone! I can hear her calling for me. Abandoned house on* >!\[redacted\]!< *street. Can anyone help? Recording attached from before I lost my phone. Help pls from Milwaukee pls pls PLS! NOT A HOAX!!! PLS HELP!!!*

Nearly as convincing as *NOT A HOAX!!!* was the footage itself: the shaky camera advancing slowly toward the trapdoor opening, the screen cutting to static, the faint moans of a distorted voice pleading for help.

How cliché.

Still, low-effort as it seemed, when the phone camera shakily turned to the girl holding it, “ScaredInMilwaukee” looked so genuinely terrified that even my stone-cold skeptical heart lurched. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Tears and snot glistened on her face, lips trembling as she whispered, “Chloe? Chloe! Ohgodohgodohgod…” Quivering like an abused puppy in front of a rolled-up newspaper. If her performance wasn’t genuine, someone should give this kid an Oscar!

But a trapdoor that doesn’t exist? A trapdoor that when you go down, makes you forget what’s below? A trapdoor that leads… *where?*

It's the essential mystery of it all that finally convinces me to reach out to ScaredInMilwaukee.

The response comes fast. So fast it’s like she’s waiting by the phone for a ping:

**ScaredInMilwaukee**: Pls pls pls it’s been nine days oh god I’m so scared it’s too late… can u come now?

**ScaredInMilwaukee**: >!\[redacted address\]!< St, Milwaukee, WI, 532>!XX!<

I stare at the address, and my pulse ratchets up. Why do I feel so much like a mouse sniffing some cheese conveniently laid across a metal plate…?

\*\*\*

So, this morning I finally did my due diligence and searched for missing girls named “Chloe” in the Milwaukee area. Not a single hit. Zilch. *Nada.* No missing sister. I’m being taken for a ride. And as a former scam artist myself, I should really recognize when the prince of Nigeria is at the keyboard.

I’ll give her that Oscar though. She really had me going.

But as I’m about to block “ScaredInMilwaukee,” my conscience nags: *But what if there’s some* other *reason Chloe isn’t showing up in your searches?*

My conscience, incidentally, sounds a lot like my ex. She’s been living rent-free in my head since our breakup. Also on my screensaver, my iPhone lockscreen, my tablet, the heart-shaped locket I wear round my neck… (I’m kidding. Like any self-respecting dude gifted a cutesy heart-shaped necklace by his girl, I wear it only on our anniversary—which is *never* now that we’re separated.)

*What if,* whispers my ex’s voice, *she’s just a scared teen girl who’s been told never to give her real details to strangers on the internet? What if the police, her parents, and everyone in her life has dismissed her just like you’re doing now? Jack, what if it were* me *down there?*

… And now I’m looking at my open locket in my hand (all right *fine* I’ve been wearing it all along). Framed inside the heart-shaped gold is the dimpled face of my girl, lips curved in a coy smile, one eye winking and her thumb and forefinger making a tiny heart. I’ve literally never been able to tell this girl “no” when she really wants something. Friends used to joke about how she kept me on a leash… *Got you whipped, man*, they’d say.

(Well yeah—she knows all my kinks!)

Anyway, no sense arguing with myself when my locket has already decided.

So I pack up my gear: high-powered lights, cameras (digital and analog), crowbar and toolkit, bear spray, bear traps, bearclaw (the bear stuff is for dangerous cryptids—except for the bearclaw, which is my snack). Flashlights, headlamp, portable generator, extra cell phone, extra batteries, extra underwear in case things get super scary (what?).

Decked out and ready to die, I arrange to meet ScaredInMilwaukee.

\*\*\*

The interior of the house looks *exactly* as in the video, all dusty floorboards and a single armchair in the otherwise dim and derelict living room, the windows boarded except for a single window on which the board is broken, letting in a thin ray of wan light in which the dust motes dance. Beyond that, my flashlight barely illuminates the dingy interior as I poke my head through the door. The only difference from the video? No evidence of a trapdoor. No sign there ever was one.

ScaredInMilwaukee, incidentally, is actually a fourteen-year-old girl named Sophie, and she is TERRIFIED of me when we meet—unsurprising given my hollow eyes, stubbled jaw and tattoos, and the joint dangling from my lips. The perfect visualization of “stranger danger.” Her terror evaporates, though, after I take one look in that creepy place and nope out. Gawking, she asks if I’m not even going in?

“Um, no! You can practically hear the strains of scary violins. Too spooky!” I declare, then ask, “… what?” as she stares at me. When it slowly dawns on her that I am dead serious, her estimation of me visibly drops from, “I pick the bear” to “is this dude for real?” and finally to that old cliché about men and mice.

Well, *squeak squeak,* baby! I’m not walking into a place so pitch black it’s just asking for something to grab my ankle and drag me down screaming. Why would I? No, I very sensibly grab a crowbar and spend some time tearing off those boarded windows. Once it’s looking more like a sunroom, I escort us into the warm interior dripping with golden light. “*Much* better!” I say—too soon, because the second I cross the threshold, all the hairs on my arms stand on end.

“Huh.” I look at the hairs. “Guess this is what happens to your house when you don’t pay the exorcist… it gets repossessed.”

Sophie doesn’t appreciate how hilarious I am. “Can you stop wasting time and find the door?”

“Sure. But first—” I turn to her. “Why isn’t your sister’s disappearance in the news? I looked up her name. No missing Chloe. What’s *really* down below, Sophie?”

Her cheeks flush. Her gaze drops from mine. *Gotcha*, I think, smiling. But when she finally admits the truth, it’s not what I’m expecting.

“S-she—she’s not in the news because her real name’s Timothy. She’s only out to me. Can you just find the fucking door, *please*??”

“Oh,” I say.

Here I’d thought she was pulling some shitty teen prank—trying to trap me down here for likes or clicks or whatever. Maybe use the investigation to go viral. A quick search of her sister’s deadname proves she’s correct, and that I’m an asshole. *Told you,* whispers the girl in my locket, *Chloe needs your help!* And honestly, if anyone should’ve considered the possibility of a deadname mucking up my search results? Should’ve been me. I apologize to Sophie and drop to my knees. Close my eyes and cock my head like a coyote scenting the air, and run my hands over the wooden floorboards.

I’m not a medium, but I *am* marked by the paranormal and have acquired a certain sensitivity to the uncanny. Like how some people have sensitivity to odors. If what I’ve felt since entering this house were a smell, it would be the waft of something rotten drifting to my nostrils. A tingle like electricity passes along my fingers. Dust and dirt cling to my palms. To the naked eye, it’s just bare wood, but I ignore what my eyes have been telling me since I entered, and here where the tingling is strongest, I sweep my hands back and forth along the dirty floor. My fingers find a seam. I trace the edge, at last grabbing the handle.

Sophie gasps and drops down beside me. “Oh my God… Oh my God you found it!”

“It’s warded,” I say. Running along the seam are symbols etched into the floorboards, invisible until the door is found. Deciphering them would require pretty esoteric research. The girl in my locket would know—she was always smarter with that stuff. All I know is that the warding conceals the door. “Probably also keeps whatever is down there sealed off,” I tell Sophie. “Whoever set this up doesn’t want what’s down there being found, and doesn’t want anyone who *does* go down to remember what it is… Chloe must’ve stumbled on the handle in the dark by touch. That’s really the only way to find it.”

And then I pause. Dread curdles in my belly. I ask Sophie, “How long has it been since you heard Chloe calling out? How many days?”

“U-um…” Sophie’s eyes widen. “Seven?”

A week. Did she have any water with her? Anything to sustain her?

We haven’t heard any crying, any shouts, any sounds at all from below.

“Ok.” I grip the handle. “Go outside.”

She shakes her head. Her lips tremble, and her fingers ball into fists.

“Sophie, go outsi—”

“I’m staying.”

She won’t budge. I tell her to back up.

Then I haul open the door.

The stench hits in a wave.

Both of us stagger back and gag. Sophie dry heaves. My stomach bucks, and I raise an arm to cover my nose and mouth. I know this stench. Have smelled it before. But for Sophie it is new.

“Oh God, it smells so bad… what is that smell?” she gasps. “What is that smell??” When I don’t answer, she sobs and leans over the trapdoor, screaming, “Chloe!!! Chloe!!!”

I shine my flashlight down the narrow wooden steps into the pitch below, but illuminate only dirt and debris at the bottom of the stairs.

\*\*\*

Sophie has been sobbing for the past half hour while I hook up floodlights and cameras. I’ve lowered one of the lights into the basement, and it works, but when I lower a camera and try to monitor its feed on my laptop, the laptop registers the camera as disconnected the moment it’s below. The phone can’t receive a signal down there, either. The same warding that keeps the door hidden interferes with footage and communications.

“It’s all my fault,” whispers Sophie, lifting her tear-streaked face from her arms. “If I… if I hadn’t closed the trapdoor when I ran out, maybe the cops would’ve—"

“Hey,” I say, “You didn’t ward this door. This is not on you. And we don’t know what happened to Chloe yet.” I look down the stairs. Based on what Sophie has told me, I’ll forget as soon as I descend.

I grab pens and a notebook.

“Listen, we won’t know until we find her,” I tell Sophie. “Others could’ve found that door before her. She could be hiding. That smell could be from an entity. We literally do not know. So write down everything I shout up at you. We start small. I go to the bottom of the stairs.”

I train the cameras on the trapdoor from all directions, including directly above so I can see myself descending the ladder.

The first few descents I follow simple rules: stay in camera shot. Do not stray. Down. Up. Check the footage.

It’s exactly like Sophie said. I’m cognizant of descending the stairs, but when I trot back up, I can recall nothing from below. I come up each time with an elevated heart rate—just the kind of heightened pulse you’d expect from going down into a dark, scary room. My notes are a useless catalog of what’s visible from the bottom of the stairs—*dirty floor, discarded wrappers, dusty shelving, old canned goods.* There’s really not much in this first room. The basement opens up past a blackened hallway, which my notes describe as *\~SPOOKY\~*. Extra underlines. Both digital and polaroid pics from below show only blackness, and my video recordings only static. The cameras filming from above are only a little better, since everything below the door is still warped by distortions.

And now, it’s finally time for me to go down for real. Investigate this time. Search for Chloe. Enter the pitch-dark hallway and find out what’s beyond. I’ll do it in stages, bringing the portable floodlights. As I’m taking a sip of water and psyching myself up for the *real* descent, I notice Sophie’s eyes on my throat. “Who’s in the locket?” She asks.

I take it off and hand it to her.

“… she’s beautiful,” she says. “Your girlfriend?”

“[*Ex*-girlfriend](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1czp6lp/i_met_this_guy_im_really_into_but_i_think_he/).” I shrug as she hands it back. “She told me our relationship felt like a horror movie, so let’s split up.”

Sophie doesn’t smile. A shame. My ex would’ve laughed (and told me I’m an idiot). The girl just shakes her head. Then she says, “It should be me going down. She’s *my* sister—”

“Absolutely not. It’s brave of you to want to go, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the paranormal, it’s that bravery is *terrible* for your longevity. Trust me. The last thing you need is a hero.” That’s also why we’re not calling the cops. I’ve tried that in the past and it did not go well. “No,” I tell her, “what you need is someone with a shameless sense of self-preservation, a coward…” A clever coward to unravel the puzzle of *why* you forget, *what* you forget, and *who* is really down there, lurking in the dark…? I’ve written these questions on my notepad, and will answer them while searching for Chloe. I smile at Sophie. “Lucky for you, my special skill is running from spooky stuff!” 

She searches my face, like she’s trying to decipher a foreign language. “Thanks, um… you’re not what I expected you’d be.”

I assume she means I do not fit the profile of a paranormal investigator. “What, like you were expecting Han Solo but got Jar Jar Binks?”

The tiniest crack of a smile. Finally! Then she looks shyly again at my locket. “Um, if something happens to you—should I give her a message? The girl in the locket?”

“Sure—tell her I’m sorry for ghosting her, but that I’ll always be her Boo! Be sure to include a ghost emoji.” Sophie just shakes her head, still completely failing to appreciate my jokes. Or, let’s be real, the comedic content of r/dadjokes, where I get my material. Maybe she’s right that I should treat death like a grave subject. But hey, life’s a joke and then you die—might as well go out on a punchline.

\*\*\*

I burst up from below, heart slamming my ribcage, adrenaline tearing through my limbs, a scream ripping from my throat. My face is wet with tears. Tears? My vocal cords hoarse. Head ringing, shoulder sore.

“Shit!” I gasp. “Shit! Oh Christ…” Run a hand through my sweaty hair, then call, “Sophie, did you catch that?”

Silence.

“Sophie?” Blinking, I look around. *What the…*

And now, my escalating pulse has nothing to do with whatever sent me dashing out of that deep darkness below. *Dark? What happened to my lights? Where is Sophie?* I whirl, looking all around the room. “Sophie??” I call again. And then dash to the cameras. Still rolling. I leave them running but go to my laptop to review the footage from the one with the broadest view of the room.

In the video, there I am, yammering as I descend the staircase, my voice garbled as soon as I’m below. I decipher the garble using Sophie’s transcription: “I’ll be right back, promise! Cross my heart and hope to… nevermind.” I continue babbling as I set up my lights. “Isn’t that what they say in horror movies? ‘I’ll be right back,’ ‘let’s split up,’ ‘I’ve got a funny feeling’… pretty sure we’ve hit all three clichés, but not to worry! I’ll find your sister if it’s the *last* thing I… also nevermind.” Stupid stuff, running my stupid mouth until—“Hey, I think that’s your phone!” From this angle the me on the video isn’t visible, but I can see Sophie looking down the trapdoor. She calls down (her voice clear, unlike mine): “You’re moving outside the camera view!”

“I’m just gonna grab it—oh, shit.” This is the last bit of garbled dialogue I can decipher, because it’s the last part of Sophie’s transcription.

On video, Sophie stops scribbling and calls, “Jack?”

A long silence. And then, my voice, totally unintelligible: “Cchhhee? Csshhhesachoo?” Then my voice again: “Ssssoff… offfeoo!” (“Sophie, NO”?)

But Sophie is quickly descending in response to whatever I said. “CHLOEEeeggh!” she screams, her voice distorting as she disappears below.

“SSOFFF…ETBAAACHK UP EEEERRR!” I roar.

Then a loud, piercing shriek. A clanking sound. One of the lights? More screams. The girl’s voice. Mine. I make out what I think is a garbled OHMYGOD and WHATISTHAT and the tinkle of the second light and then just incoherent shrieking that cuts off, leaving only my voice shouting, “SOFHHHEEE! SOOOFHEEEE!” Then more sounds of distress, this time my own, and finally swearing, snarling, cursing in terror or rage—and there I am, bursting up from that narrow staircase, eyes wide and blank unable to remember any of what happened and I look around. My voice is crystal clear now as I say, “Shit! Shit! Oh Christ… Sophie, did you catch that?”

*Fuck*, I whisper. *Fuck fuck oh fuck me shit fuck FUCK!*

I’ve lost the girl. 

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