The Caroler at the End of the Hall - a Christmas Ghost Story

The first snowfall came late that year, whispering against the windows of Hawthorne House like a cautious hand testing the glass. Inside, the old place smelled of pine needles and dust. Evelyn had hung the wreath herself—evergreen braided with red ribbon—on the front door, though she couldn’t say why. No one came anymore. Still, it was Christmas Eve, and traditions have a way of insisting on themselves.

Hawthorne House had been a boarding school once, then a convalescent home, then nothing at all. The town said it was condemned. Evelyn said it was quiet. She preferred quiet.

At dusk she lit the candles along the main hallway, each flame shivering as if it sensed the cold pressed close behind the walls. The hallway stretched longer than it should have, a trick of architecture or memory, she never knew which. At the far end stood a door that had been painted over so many times its panels were soft and swollen, the brass handle dulled to the color of old bone.

Evelyn did not go to that door.

She set a record spinning in the parlor—old carols, the kind with choirs that sounded like they were singing through snow—and poured herself a cup of mulled wine. The record crackled, and for a moment she thought she heard another sound beneath it: a thin, reedy melody, off-key.

She turned the volume up. The sound vanished.

Night fell hard. Snow thickened, swallowing the road, the trees, the world beyond the iron gate. Hawthorne House became an island, floating in white silence. Evelyn carried her wine into the kitchen and began to prepare a small meal, humming along with the carols despite herself.

That was when the singing began.

It came from the hallway.

A single voice, distant but clear, singing God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen in a child’s register. It was slow, the words stretched and misremembered, as if the singer had learned them long ago and only now was trying to recall the shape of them.

Evelyn froze, knife hovering above the cutting board.

“No,” she said softly, to no one at all.

The singing stopped.

She waited. Her breath fogged in the cold kitchen. Somewhere, a pipe ticked. After a long minute, she set the knife down and told herself what she always told herself: old houses make sounds. Wind in the walls. Mice. Memory.

She carried her plate to the parlor and sat by the fire, forcing herself to eat. The record ended with a hiss and clicked off. In the sudden quiet, the house seemed to lean closer.

A knock sounded at the front door.

Three soft raps, polite as a knuckle against wood in a church pew.

Evelyn’s heart began to pound. No one could have walked up the drive in that snow. No one knew she was here. She had made sure of that.

Another knock. Louder this time.

“Carolers,” she whispered, absurdly.

She stood, her legs unsteady, and crossed the parlor. The wreath on the door shivered as if brushed by a hand. Through the frosted glass she could make out a shape—small, hunched against the cold.

“I’m not… open,” she called.

A child’s voice answered, muffled by the door. “We’ve come to sing.”

“We?” Evelyn asked.

There was a pause. “Me and the others.”

The words were spoken with a carefulness that made her skin crawl.

“No,” Evelyn said. “Go home.”

Silence.

Then the singing resumed, right outside the door. Not a cheerful chorus, but a thin, lonely melody that slid under the door frame and curled around her ankles. The wreath rattled. Snow sifted down from the lintel.

Evelyn backed away, heart racing. “Stop,” she said. “Please.”

The singing did not stop.

She fled into the hallway, the candles guttering as she passed. The sound followed her, echoing strangely, as if the house itself were joining in. Halfway down the hall, the door at the end creaked.

It was opening.

Evelyn had never seen what lay beyond it. She had boarded it up years ago, after the first winter, after the first voice. Now the boards bent and split as if pushed from the other side by patient hands.

The singing changed, harmonies blooming where there had been only one voice. Children’s voices, a dozen of them, layered and wrong. Off-key. Too slow.

“Stop it!” Evelyn screamed.

The door burst inward.

Cold air rushed out, carrying the smell of damp wool and earth. Beyond the doorway was a room she remembered all too well: the old dormitory, rows of narrow beds, each with a name carved into the frame. She had slept there once. They all had.

Figures stood between the beds, pale and thin, their eyes dark hollows. Children, just as they had been on that night. Their mouths opened and closed in time with the song, frost blooming on their lips.

At the front of them stood a girl with long hair and a ribbon at her throat. Her eyes found Evelyn’s and did not look away.

“You didn’t wake us,” the girl said, her voice layered with others. “You said you would.”

“I tried,” Evelyn sobbed. “I tried to get help.”

“You locked the door,” the girl said. “You went home.”

Snow began to fall inside the hallway, drifting down from nowhere, settling on the carpet, the candles, Evelyn’s shoulders. The carol swelled, filling every corner of the house.

“We were cold,” the children sang. “We were so cold.”

Evelyn sank to her knees. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

The girl stepped forward. Her feet did not touch the floor.

“It’s Christmas,” she said. “Time to sing together.”

The children reached out.

When morning came, the snow lay smooth and unbroken around Hawthorne House. Smoke curled from the chimney. Inside, the candles burned low, their wax pooled like tears along the hallway.

From the parlor, if you listened closely, you could hear singing—soft and steady, a woman’s voice weaving through a chorus of children’s, all of them perfectly in time at last.