When I was a teenager I used to write short horror stories. Nothing special. Just a kid with a notebook and too many late nights watching things he probably should not have watched.
Then life happened. School. Work. The endless scroll of adulthood. The notebooks gathered dust. The stories stopped.
Until Halloween 2025.
I sat down and I wrote. For the first time in over a decade I wrote something that scared me.
This is that story.
I originally wrote it in Brazilian Portuguese. You can read the original version here. What follows is an expanded English version formatted as a fictional true crime podcast transcript.
I recommend headphones. And a well lit room.
THE GUEST
Dark Cases Episode 142
You are listening to Dark Cases. I am your host.
Some cases arrive in boxes. Old diaries. Faded photographs.
This one arrived as audio files. Forty-eight recordings made over thirty-seven days.
The subject is Davi Torres. Thirty-two years old. Sound designer. São Paulo, Brazil.
His body was recovered from the internal courtyard of his apartment building on April 20th. The fall was fatal. Police ruled it a suicide.
No note was found. But Davi did leave an explanation.
Over his final five weeks, Davi recorded himself. Obsessively. He documented what he believed to be an entity inhabiting his apartment.
He called it The Guest.
What follows is a compilation of those recordings. We have preserved the original audio. Nothing has been dramatized.
I recommend headphones.
This is the documentation of a psychological collapse.
Test. Test.
Davi Torres. March 14th. It is 3:18 in the morning.
Just had one of those sleep paralysis episodes. More intense this time. About forty seconds maybe.
And there was a shape in the corner. Near the wardrobe. Denser than the darkness itself.
And a hum. A high pitched tone in my left ear. Like a CRT monitor switching on.
I will make a note of this. Probably just stress. But better to document.
The humming came back. 3:14 AM. Same time. Same time as before.
This time it came with a smell. Ozone. Burnt wire. Like the smell of my grandfather’s old television when a capacitor blew. At the farmhouse. I have not thought about that in years.
(pause)
Grandpa Pedro. He died when I was eight. Fell from the hayloft in the barn. They said he was checking something. In the middle of the night.
Why am I thinking about this now.
(pause)
The smell. It is physical. Real. It is in my right nostril.
And the shape. The shadow. It was closer to the bed. One meter maybe. Half a meter.
It was not the coat. It was not a trick of light.
(whispering)
Shit. Did you hear that?
(three seconds of silence)
I think she does not like it when I get too close.
This is the first time Davi uses a gendered pronoun. He never explains why.
She is watching me. From the hallway.
I cannot see. But I know.
The air gets heavy. Cold. Like stepping into a walk-in freezer. The pressure on my chest.
(breathes deeply)
I am going to try something.
(pause)
“Who are you?”
(whispering)
My God.
She answered.
It seems like she feeds on fear. Or attention.
When I ignore her the smell gets worse. The humming intensifies.
It is like a loop. A feedback loop.
(dry laughter)
Paranormal feedback. What a joke.
The shape. It reminded me of—
(stops abruptly)
Never mind.
When our audio team first reviewed this recording, nothing seemed unusual.
On the tenth pass, they isolated it.
Beneath his words. Barely audible. A second breath.
Out of sync with his.
I went to the neurologist today. Dr. Farias. The one my health plan covers.
He ran some tests. Asked a lot of questions. About the smell. The sounds. The paralysis.
He said. He said it is called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. TLE. He said the ozone smell is a known symptom. Olfactory hallucination. The humming too. And the shadows. All of it. Electrical misfires in the brain.
He gave me a prescription. Anticonvulsants. He said most patients respond well.
(long pause)
I should feel relieved.
(pause)
I do not.
Because if it is just my brain. Just neurons. Then why does she know things I have forgotten? Why does she feel like someone?
(paper rustling)
The pills are on my desk. I am looking at them right now.
I am not going to take them.
Not yet. I need. I need to be sure.
Recording 26 is the only time Davi directly addresses his diagnosis. He never mentions the medication again until Day 30.
I woke up with marks on my wrists.
They look like fingers. But the width is wrong. They are too thin.
And they are turned inward. As if I had grabbed myself. As if I had been holding on to something.
Or someone had been holding me back.
(pause)
I have lost four kilos this week. I am not eating less. I am eating more.
But something. Something is consuming it. Before me.
I am seeing patterns.
In the wallpaper. In the wood grain. They organize themselves. Form eyes. Open mouths.
They are always the same.
(voice breaks)
It is my father’s face.
Why. Why is it my father’s face.
She spoke. She spoke to me.
It was not a whisper. It was not noise.
It was a sentence. Clear.
“Davi. Do you remember your mother’s yellow dress at Grandpa Pedro’s funeral? She cried in the bathroom. You listened through the crack in the door.”
(breathing accelerates)
No one knows this.
NO ONE.
I was small. I never told anyone. I forgot. I forgot it myself until now.
How does she know.
(gasping)
The doctor said. The doctor said it is my brain. Misfiring. But how can a misfire know things? How can electricity remember?
She is not a ghost. She is not. She is not outside.
She is. She is inside. She is inside me.
Our forensic audio team analyzed the voice in that playback.
The timbre. The cadence. The breathing patterns.
They were identical to Davi’s.
She is showing me things now. Flashbacks.
But they are not mine. They cannot be mine.
I see a house I have never been to. A kitchen with blue tiles. A woman hanging sheets in the sun. She is singing.
The song is in a language I do not speak.
But I understand every word.
(long pause)
The barn. I keep seeing the barn. Grandpa Pedro’s barn. The hayloft. The way the wood creaked.
Why would she show me that.
(pause)
How can. How can a memory have memories.
It feels like. Years. Or minutes. Time does not. Does not work anymore.
(long pause, sound of pills rattling)
The medication is still on my desk. Unopened. Dr. Farias called twice. I did not answer.
What if. What if I take them and she. And she goes away. And I never know. Never know what she wanted. What she is.
(dry laughter, then coughing)
What if I take them. And she does not go away.
(pause)
She is quiet now. Quieter than ever.
Like she is. Waiting.
I tried to leave today. To go to the pharmacy. To. To refill the prescription.
I did not go.
I could not. Could not leave the apartment.
The door was unlocked. I checked. Twice. Three times.
But my body. My body was not. Was not mine.
(whispering)
She turned off the fan. Without. Without touching the switch.
I felt. I felt the intention. Like a muscle. A muscle I do not have. Moving.
She is showing me. She can.
(slurred voice)
I have stopped. Stopped fighting. Exhaustion is. Is greater than. Than fear.
It is like. Sinking. Into a dark. Warm. Sea.
Her voice in my head is not. Not a whisper anymore. It is. It is a ready made thought.
“Tired” she thinks. With my voice.
“Rest.”
(long pause, labored breathing)
The Guest is not. Is not leaving.
She is. She is the owner. Of the house.
And the house. The house is. Is me.
(voice suddenly clear, almost calm)
The time has come. I understand now.
The fusion. It is not her consuming me. It is her becoming. Becoming the place.
And the place. This body. This mind. Needs to be. Vacated.
So she can. Move on.
(deep breath)
Grandpa Pedro. He understood too. At the end. In the barn.
(pause)
If you are listening. Do not. Do not feel sorry.
It is logical.
The host. Will end. The parasite.
It is the only way. To be sure.
Recording 47 is the last coherent audio before the final entry.
(calm breathing)
It is done.
Everything. Quiet. She is. Quiet.
For the first time. She is. Satisfied.
She knows. What is going to happen.
(deep sigh)
The Guest. Will not need. Doors anymore.
Or windows.
(certain voice, no hesitation)
The house falls with you.
Davi Torres did not leave a suicide note.
But the police investigation recovered medical records.
NEUROLOGICAL EVALUATION REPORT
Patient: Davi Torres, 32 years old, male
Date of Consultation: March 30
Presenting Symptoms:
The “ozone smell” frequently described by patient corresponds to olfactory hallucination, commonly associated with temporal lobe activity.
The “electronic whispers” are consistent with complex auditory hallucinations.
The “shadow” phenomenon aligns with sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucination.
Diagnosis: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Prognosis: Treatable with standard anticonvulsant medication.
Clinical Notes: Patient stated he understood the diagnosis but refused medication treatment. He remained absolutely convinced of the non-medical nature of his symptoms.
Davi saw a neurologist thirteen days before his death. He received a diagnosis. He was offered treatment.
He refused.
The condition was treatable. His belief in The Guest was not.
That should have been the end of this episode. A medical explanation. A closed case.
Then our researcher found something in the São Paulo state archives.
ARCHIVE RETRIEVAL | SÃO PAULO STATE POLICE | CASE #1987-4421
Deceased: Pedro Torres, 63 years old
Cause of Death: Fall from hayloft. Approximately 8 meters. Ruled accidental.
Location: Family farmhouse, interior of São Paulo. Tobacco barn.
Time of Death: Estimated between 3:00 and 4:00 AM.
Evidence: One portable tape recorder recovered near open loft door. Tape classified as blank.
2024 UPDATE: Audio enhancement performed on original tape. 47 seconds of recorded material detected.
Contents: Low frequency hum. High pitched tone. Final 8 seconds contain female voice. Language unidentified. Melody matches description provided by Davi Torres in Recording 038.
Pedro Torres. Davi’s grandfather. Died in 1987 at sixty-three years old. Fall from the hayloft of his tobacco barn.
No note. No signs of depression.
A recorder was found near the open loft door. The tape was classified as blank.
Modern audio enhancement recovered forty-seven seconds of sound.
A hum. A high-pitched tone.
And at the end, a woman’s voice. Singing in a language that has not been identified.
The same melody Davi described in his flashbacks. The flashbacks he said were not his.
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is not hereditary.
(pause)
But pattern recognition in families is.
(pause)
For now.
If you enjoyed this story feel free to share it, I don’t care. And if you hear humming at 3:14 AM it is probably nothing.
Probably.