The Photograph at Willow Creek Inn

It was the summer of 2009, before the wildfire. Luna stops at a small roadside inn off Highway 89 in northern California, a place called the Willow Creek Inn that smells of cedar and old dust. The woman at the front desk, Mrs. Gable, is friendly in a way that feels rehearsed. In the lobby there is a framed photograph of a little girl standing in the meadow behind the inn, dated 1977. Luna notices something odd about the girl's shadow. That night she hears someone walking in the hallway, the floorboards creaking in a pattern that sounds like counting. She opens the door and sees a child's handprint on the wallpaper, pressed inward as if from the other side. The next morning Mrs. Gable says the photograph was taken by her mother, that the girl in the picture is her sister who went missing in the woods behind the inn when she was seven. Luna looks again at the shadow and realizes it is not the girl's shadow. It is something behind her, reaching. This is a story about a place that remembers what you try to forget, and the quiet horror of a shadow that never belonged to the person standing in the light. #TheTreeline #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #WillowCreekInn #Highway89 #NorthernCalifornia #Photograph #Shadow #MissingChild #1977 #SmallTown #RoadsideInn #MrsGable #WildfireSeason #Luna #CreakingFloorboards #Handprint #AnthologyHorror Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo