One late afternoon during the rainy season, a gentle breeze carried the oppressive scent of damp earth and humidity through the air. Tิว, a documentary photographer, had arrived in Ban Nong Hong to create a photographic documentary about the community’s way of life along the forest’s edge. Since he was from out of town, the village headman arranged temporary lodging for him in an old traditional Thai twin house at the edge of the village, located “beside the Ancient Graveyard.”
“This house was built a long time ago. No one lives here, but I guarantee it’s still sturdy...” the village headman said evenly, pointing toward the line of trees that looked dark and gloomy even though the sun had not yet set. “But tonight, if you hear anything outside, don’t answer. And whatever you do, don’t open the door.”
Tิว gave a dry laugh, assuming it was just a local trick for scaring strangers, the sort of thing villagers did.
In the Dead of Night (1:00 a.m.)
Rain hissed against the corrugated-metal roof—hiss... hiss...—drowning out every sound of the nighttime insects. Tิว tossed and turned on the old mattress. The silence was so complete that he could hear his own heartbeat.
Then, all at once... amid the sound of the rain, another noise emerged.
Thud... thud... thud...
It sounded as if something hard and heavy was striking the ground at steady intervals. The sound drifted from the graveyard’s old brick wall beside the house. Tิว frowned, sat up, and strained to listen.
Thud... thud... thud...
The sound began moving closer to the house. It wasn’t just pounding—there was also the rough sound of something dragging across the wet grass. Tิว thought of the village headman’s warning. His heart began to race, and he told himself it might be nothing more than a wild animal or someone who had gotten lost.
But then the sound stopped directly beneath the house, right below where he was lying.
A Voice in the Dark
Thud!
The entire wooden house trembled faintly, as if something had struck one of the house posts. Then the pounding changed into the sound of dry, brittle fingers tapping on the wooden floorboards beside his mattress.
Knock... knock... knock...
“Tิว... Tิว...”
The raspy voice sounded icy and drawn out, floating up through the gaps between the floorboards beneath him. Tิว’s entire body broke out in goose bumps, and his breath caught. He remembered clearly that he had not told anyone in the village his name except the village headman!
“Open the door... It’s cold out here...”
Tิว clamped a hand over his mouth. His chest rose and fell with fear. Gathering his courage, he bent down and peered through the gaps between the floorboards, where a tiny opening had appeared. And there... moonlight filtering through the space beneath the house revealed a pair of wide, milky-white eyes staring straight up at him from beneath the floor, directly below the joint between the boards!
“You see me now, don’t you...”
The Truth Beside the Graveyard
A frantic scratching erupted along the house posts. Tิว screamed and ran for the front door, hoping to escape, but the door was bizarrely locked from the outside. The windows and doors around the house shook under a barrage of blows, as if dozens of people were trying to pound the entire house to pieces.
Desperate, Tิว grabbed his trusted camera, set it to the highest flash setting, and turned toward the window, whose glass had shattered everywhere.
For only a split second, the flash revealed the body of an old woman in an advanced state of decay, her mangled lower body dragging along the floor behind her. In her right hand, she held a round stone—the same stone she had used to pound the ground and announce her approach all along. She was the unclaimed corpse who had once been left in this graveyard, dying with the resentment born from no one ever coming to care for her.
Flash!
The burst of light made the ghost convulse and release a scream of pain. Tิว didn’t hesitate. He raised the camera and fired again and again.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Blinding light spread throughout the room. The evil spirit shrieked as though recoiling from the imitation sunlight before retreating into the space beneath the house.
Aftermath
When dawn arrived the next morning, every sound finally fell silent.
The village headman and a group of villagers rushed up into the house, their faces filled with alarm. They found Tิว unconscious in the middle of the room—but still alive. The village headman let out a long sigh and bent down to examine the dried bloodstains and the long scratch marks carved around the house posts.
Tิว was taken to a hospital in the city. After regaining consciousness, he looked through the photos on his camera. The final image captured that night showed nothing but darkness, with a pair of wide, milky-white eyes and a thin, rigid hand reaching toward the camera lens...
After that, Tิว never traveled to photograph another community bordering a graveyard. And the wooden house beside the graveyard was burned down by the villagers the following evening, so “Noise Beside the Graveyard” could never haunt anyone again.