Lakehouse Basement

A Hurtville Horror Story by Scott Farmer

There’s a lakehouse on the edge of Table Rock.
Pretty from the outside—cedar shake siding, big windows, and a perfect view of the water where the White River used to run. It gets rented out to tourists every summer. They never ask about the foundation. They never wonder why it’s always just a little too cold downstairs.

But locals know. They remember what stood there before the water came.

Hurtville's last house. The one with the basement that shouldn't have survived.

It belonged to the Larsons, a family that refused to leave when the dam went up. They lived in the shadow of Hurtville, close to the banks. Their youngest son, Caleb, had been acting strange. Drawing circles in the dirt. Talking to corners. Screaming when it rained. They said he was “touched,” but the Larsons didn’t believe in asylums. Not even the one just upriver.

Then came the flood.

The Larsons vanished with it—every one of them. But the basement? It stayed. Somehow untouched, preserved beneath the water and time. When the new lakehouse was built on the site in the 1990s, the contractors were puzzled to find concrete walls and rusted stairs already sunk into the earth. But rather than tear it out, they built around it. Poured fresh slab. Framed it up. Said it’d make a great wine cellar.

It didn’t.

Every owner since has said the same thing: “The basement is wrong.”

It’s always cold, no matter the season. The lightbulbs pop if you stay down there too long. One renter claimed the walls were breathing. Another swore he heard a child whispering from the drain in the floor. A couple from Kansas said they found wet footprints on the ceiling when they woke up after a storm.

And always… the smell. Like wet stone and old blood.

Local lore says Caleb never drowned. That when the flood came, he went down instead—down into the basement where he’d carved symbols no one could read, whispered to things no one else could hear. The river came, but Caleb was already claimed by something deeper.

Now, they say, the lakehouse is his.

Guests report waking up with muddy water in their shoes. One boy said he saw a handprint pressed against the inside of the basement door—from the other side.

And sometimes, late at night, those who dare to step into the basement hear it: a voice from beneath the floorboards, raspy and thin--
​
“You found me…”

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is what they see when they try to leave:
The basement stairs are suddenly wet.
The walls are covered in handprints.
And at the top of the stairs, standing in the doorway, is Caleb—but not as a boy.

A long-limbed thing with empty eyes. Stretching toward the light. Whispering your name.

Because if you’ve gone down there once…
He’ll always know where to find you.

The lake buried a town.
But the basement stayed dry.
And what's down there... never stopped waiting.