I am not the first to tell this story.
My father told it to me, just as his father told it to him, and his before that.
He said it was not a tale of superstition, but of warning.
For the mountain remembers. And what it remembers, it curses.
You see, long before a man named Patrick Smith bought the house, long before his son and grandsons suffered its cruel whispers, the house belonged to someone else.
Someone whose laughter still echoes in the bones of the walls.
Her name was Sira.
This is the story:
**********
I was only a boy when i first heard of the story.
My father said it was in the late autumn, when the air was sharp and thin, and the wind carried with it the smell of dry leaves and old secrets.
A rich man had come to our village.
Middle-aged, dignified, with a posture that bent neither to time nor humility.
He wanted land for his daughter, he said.
Something quiet, something hers.
Our chief told him the only land available was high in the mountain — too far from town, too lonely for most, and soil not good enough for farming.
But the rich man smiled, and said that loneliness was precisely what he wanted.
Two weeks later, as though stone itself obeyed his command, a house rose from the mountain's ribs.
Large, elegant, with strange carvings on the beams that none of us recognized.
Then came the daughter.
Her name was Sira.
She was radiant, I remember, with a voice like warm honey.
Her smile had a way of bending the coldest villager into laughter.
She thanked us all for welcoming her, and the chief promised we would watch over her while her father traveled.
She was alone, except for her maid.
But she did not seem lonely. Every morning she came down into the village, playing with our children, listening to our mothers gossip, helping the women wash rice or sweep the courtyards.
For two weeks, she became one of us.
And then came her birthday.
**********
The Game.
It was a simple celebration.
We all went to the house on the mountain.
She served sweet cakes, snacks and rice wine.
Music filled the walls. Children danced, and Sira shone brighter than the lanterns.
It was a fun night.
But it did not end there.
Her friends — some of the girls from our village — insisted they stay the night.
They brought gifts, laughter, secrets to share in the dark.
And one of them, Kelly, carried something stranger than a gift.
A wooden board, carved with letters and numbers, and a small piece of glass.
She called it an Ouija board. Said she found it in her grandmother's attic.
We had never seen such a thing. Neither had Sira.
At first, they giggled. Fingers pressed on glass, asking questions: "Will I marry rich?" "Will I be pretty forever?"
The glass moved as though pulled by a thread, answering nonsense that sent them into fits of laughter.
But then Sira asked something else.
Something innocent.
Something that changed everything.
"Will you come visit us?"
The glass slid beneath their fingers, slow and deliberate.
Y. E. S.
The room grew colder. Something was off.
And only one girl, Amily, felt it.
She claimed later she felt the air shift, the way one feels a storm before it strikes.
Her stomach turned, her hands trembled.
She excused herself and fled.
While the others stayed and continued the game.
That night, something in the mountain awoken.
*******
The Change
At first, it was small things.
Whispers on the path to the mountain.
Screams no one could find the source of.
Sira herself came to the village looking pale, sickly.
When we suggested a doctor, she refused.
"I'm just tired," she said.
Days later, Kelly, the one who brought the board, fell into a coma. No illness, no injury.
Just stillness. Her chest rose and fell, but her eyes never opened.
The doctors were baffled.
Then the others suffered.
Komi fell from a ladder, her back broken.
Amily could not sleep — every time she closed her eyes, she dreamed of Sira standing in the house with empty sockets where her eyes should have been, shadows behind her strangling Amily until she woke up gasping, red bruises blooming around her throat.
The mountain air grew heavier, pressing on the chest, suffocating.
Two weeks later, Kelly died.
Komi was paralyzed.
Amily stopped sleeping altogether.
And Sira… stopped visiting us.
**********
The Return of the Father.
Two months passed before her father returned.
We villagers were eager — surely now things would be set right.
He came smiling, carrying gifts.
At the entrance of the village, Sira embraced him, looking frail but joyful.
She begged him to allow her one last celebration before they left for another country.
He agreed.
A farewell party was arranged.
It was unlike any gathering our village had ever seen.
Lanterns hung from every beam.
Food enough for hundreds of mouths.
Music and dancing until the walls trembled.
And in the center of it all, Sira — pale, fragile, but smiling with tears glistening in her eyes.
At some point she rang a bell, small and silver, to call for silence.
She thanked us for the happiness we had given her.
She said we had made her short time in the mountains unforgettable.
Her words cracked with emotion.
We clapped, we cheered, some even wept.
But that night, when the party ended, something else began.
*********
The Curse.
A week later, they left. Her father escorted her away.
Kelly and Amily were sent overseas for treatment, all expenses paid by Sira's father.
Only Amily returned, mute, hollow-eyed, forever afraid of sleep.
But those who attended that last party… began to sicken.
Headaches first. Then insomnia. Then tragedy. Accidents. Fires. Falls.
By the year's end, ten villagers had died.
And when the news came that Sira and her father perished in a carriage accident abroad, the whispers began.
A note was found among her belongings.
In it, she had written one warning:
"No one should ever throw a party in that house. It awakens them. And they will haunt generations."
**********
The Aftermath.
The house remained. And as years passed, others bought it.
Each time, the same cycle.
At first, joy. At first, laughter. But slowly, inevitably, cracks.
Whispers. Shadows. Suffering.
The curse clung not just to the walls, but to bloodlines, binding itself to families who dared to live there.
Until it reached the Smiths.
Patrick, his wife Cilia, and their son.
And then their sons' sons.
And now… you know the rest.
*******
Reflection.
When my father told me this, his face was hard with grief.
He lost his family to that house.
So many did.
And so the curse endures.
This is not just a story about ghosts.
This is about us.
About how we treat what we do not understand.
About how curiosity becomes arrogance, and arrogance becomes tragedy.
We play games with forces we cannot name.
We build homes on soil that should never be disturbed.
We laugh at warnings until they claw our throats.
Sira was a child.
A girl who wanted friends, who wanted joy.
But a single mistake, a playful invitation to the dark, ruined her, ruined us, ruined generations.
And still, people come.
Still, they buy the house.
Still, they think they are different.
But the mountain remembers.
And what it remembers, it curses.
Stream Commentary; Tape #41. "Party Party"
[The static hums. The screen flickers, fragments of color pulling themselves into shape. Kai leans forward in his hoodie, his goggle catching the faint blue glow.
He does not speak right away.
Instead, he lets the silence simmer, heavy and unsettled, as if even the stream itself is reluctant to go on.]
"Ahhh… Sira.
The girl who smiled at strangers, who loved the village children, who made a house full of lanterns and laughter.
And the same girl who—by one careless invitation—opened a door that should never have been opened.
Tell me, my little chorus…
(he tilts his head, as if staring at the voices just beyond the screen)
"what do you make of her?"
[@Ovesix: She was innocent. That's the tragedy, isn't it? Not malice. Not hunger for power. Just curiosity. She asked the question any lonely soul would ask: come visit us. And something heard her. Something wrong answered]
[@642: Y-E-S! HA! The glass slid, the shadows grinned, the party never ended! What a game, what a toy, what a birthday gift! But oh, balloons pop. And so did her life. Poor Sira—confetti of broken futures!]
[@642: Do you guys see it? She rang a bell to thank them all. Ding. Gratitude laced with doom. This party was never a party—it was a summoning. Those villagers clapped like fools while the mountain sharpened its teeth. Hilarious. Delicious. They applauded their own deaths."
[@Enchomay: Perhaps Sira was not the victim you think. Consider this: the board only moved because all fingers pressed upon it. The spirits? Or the children themselves, unknowingly binding the contract? Perhaps Sira became the vessel because she was the one who invited. But was she cursed—or chosen? Did she die in that accident… or was her name simply written out of the village's comfort to avoid facing what she became?]
[Kai laughs. Not loud, but sharp. His teeth glint faintly in the monitor's reflection.]
"Such a feast of theories. Such delicious despair.
But you're circling the truth like moths around a lantern.
The house, the mountain—it did not need permission. It was already waiting.
Sira simply spoke the word that unlocked the latch.
A child's plea for friendship became the perfect invitation.
And monsters, my dear friends, monsters are polite.
They wait until you ask them in."
[@Ovesix: Still… she endured so much. To smile and thank them, knowing what she had brought, what was coiled behind her eyes… it's unbearable]
[@Jaija: yeah…..she just wanted a birthday. Candles, cake, laughter. Instead… she got screams in the dark. That's not fair. Not fair at all]
[@642: Fair? FAIR? Do you still believe the world has fairness to offer? The house never promised fairness. It promised hunger. The girl fed it with innocence. The villagers fattened it with cheer. And it feasted, oh, how it feasted!]
[@Enchomay: But what if the true curse is not the house at all? What if it is memory? That every generation retells her story, keeping it alive, shaping it, fueling it. Perhaps we are the curse-bearers, carrying Sira's tragedy forward like an heirloom of rot]
[Kai leans closer. The hum deepens. His voice lowers to a sharp whisper, as though he speaks not to the followers, but directly into the bones of the viewers watching]
"Listen carefully, because you won't get this warning twice.
We love to say children are pure, untouched, innocent.
But innocence, my friends, is not protection.
It is a flesh waiting for fangs.
Curiosity is a door. Hospitality is a key. And monsters?
They only need a smile to walk inside.
Do not laugh at the warnings of your elders.
Do not dismiss the old tales as silly superstition.
Every curse begins with a joke.
Every scream begins with a party.
And above all—when something answers your call in the dark?
Pray it never finds your name worth remembering."
[He sits back. Silence stretches. A faint flicker distorts the feed, as if something else listens too closely]
(with a sudden grin, slicing through the heaviness)
"Now. Enough of tears, enough of whispers.
Wipe your faces, little chorus.
Tonight's lantern has burned out, but the next tale is waiting.
Our next story is called… 'How to Hide from Father.'
"Tell me"
(he tilts his head, voice dripping with mock-playfulness )
how well do you think you know the ones who raised you?
And more importantly… do they truly know you?"
STREAM ENDED