Originally posted by: End of Worlds
I'm relaying a story from my grandmother, who told it to me exactly once, years ago, and refuses to speak of it ever again.
My great grandmother was a Polish immigrant who came to this country around 1915. She married shortly after, and my grandmother was born in 1922. This story takes place when my grandmother was nine years old and my great uncle was an infant.. They lived in Brooklyn. The rest of this story is transcribed from what she told me.
"It was a cooler summer day, and Babchia (Polish for "grandmother," pronounced Bop-chee; it's what we all called her) and I were taking your great uncle to the park a few blocks away. It was a weekday and folks were at work, so there weren't many people out on the street. We were about a block away from the park on one street with no one else out when we saw a little girl walking towards us. She looked about my age, maybe a little older, with black hair. We couldn't see her face because she was looking down at the sidewalk as she walked towards us. The first thing I noticed was that Bapchia straightened up a bit and frowned, like there was something wrong. I started to ask her what was wrong, but a moment or so later I picked up on it too.
There was something weird about the girl. I didn't like looking at her; I got this watery feeling in my eyes and I felt afraid. She kept walking directly towards us. When she was around thirty feet away Bapchia pushed the stroller at me and told me quietly to cross the street and hurry to the end of the block, and most of all don't look back.
I was very afraid by now, so I did what she said. I waited at the end of the block, nervous as a wreck, waiting for her to come back. Finally she did, and she was pale as a ghost, and scared looking. She was holding onto the crucifix at her neck. I thought she'd been running. She wouldn't tell me what had happened, only that we had to leave.
It took me years to get her to tell me what she'd seen that day after I left. She never wanted to talk about it, and would yell at me if I brought it up. Finally one day she did, and she still looked scared to tell it.
She told me that after I had crossed the street, the little girl kept walking until she was just a few feet away, and then she stopped. Bapchia stopped too, looking at her. The girl slowly looked up from the ground to stare at Bapchia, who said her face and eyes were "like the dead," though she would never explain what that meant.
Then the little girl opened her mouth. Wide. Much, much wider than a human mouth could go. And she kept opening it. It stretched down to her chest, while her eyes stayed locked on Bapchia's. That was when Bapchia broke and ran, crossing the street to my side and hurrying towards me without looking back."
After she finished I wrote it down in its entirety as best I could. My great grandmother was extremely religious and, according to my grandmother, swore until her dying day that this story was true. My grandmother, though she did not witness the whole thing, was visibly unsettled by the memory. I haven't embellished or altered a thing here, everything I posted is exactly what she told me.
søndag 2. januar 2011
The Woman in White
Originally posted by: Khazar-Khum
I posted this one in the earlier thread, but it still creeps me out. To her dying day my mother was scared of what we saw.
We decided to go visit my sister, who lived in Texas at the time. Since we lived in Norco, CA, it was going to be a long drive. My Dad is one of those people who believes in getting up at 5 to go anywhere, and driving as fast as you can until you either reach your destination or are forced to stop.
So we loaded up the car and dutifully left at 5 AM. To reach the freeway the easiest route was something of a backway into Riverside, then down La Sierra to I 15. The road skirted the tallest hills. On the right was the cemetery, while on the left the land turned into rolling hills that dropped down to the Santa Ana river. At the time there were no houses of any kind for several miles.
As we drove up the road, we saw a flash of white to the left. There were no streetlights, so it couldn't have been something like an owl. Suddenly a woman in a long white gown ran out onto the road. She had long, dark hair, no shoes, no purse, nothing but her and the gown. She ran into our lane and lay down, facing us.
We guessed she was in her 40s, maybe 50s. Her eyes were wide open, staring right at us.
My mom had no idea what to do. There were no phones anywhere and this was before cellphones. We could see another car coming from the other direction. I thought we should wait until the other car got there, and then leave.
The other car was a pickup. They stopped, and started honking. Right then my mom remembered the shoulder of the road. We drove up the dirt, hitting some oleanders as we left. As we drove off I could see her still lying there, not moving, while the pickup honked.
And where, exactly, did this happen?
Right next to the cemetery.
I posted this one in the earlier thread, but it still creeps me out. To her dying day my mother was scared of what we saw.
We decided to go visit my sister, who lived in Texas at the time. Since we lived in Norco, CA, it was going to be a long drive. My Dad is one of those people who believes in getting up at 5 to go anywhere, and driving as fast as you can until you either reach your destination or are forced to stop.
So we loaded up the car and dutifully left at 5 AM. To reach the freeway the easiest route was something of a backway into Riverside, then down La Sierra to I 15. The road skirted the tallest hills. On the right was the cemetery, while on the left the land turned into rolling hills that dropped down to the Santa Ana river. At the time there were no houses of any kind for several miles.
As we drove up the road, we saw a flash of white to the left. There were no streetlights, so it couldn't have been something like an owl. Suddenly a woman in a long white gown ran out onto the road. She had long, dark hair, no shoes, no purse, nothing but her and the gown. She ran into our lane and lay down, facing us.
We guessed she was in her 40s, maybe 50s. Her eyes were wide open, staring right at us.
My mom had no idea what to do. There were no phones anywhere and this was before cellphones. We could see another car coming from the other direction. I thought we should wait until the other car got there, and then leave.
The other car was a pickup. They stopped, and started honking. Right then my mom remembered the shoulder of the road. We drove up the dirt, hitting some oleanders as we left. As we drove off I could see her still lying there, not moving, while the pickup honked.
And where, exactly, did this happen?
Right next to the cemetery.
lørdag 1. januar 2011
Wireman
Posted by: Unknown
Last night, I was derailed from seeing a movie by a pal of mine 'J,' who needed a ride to a barbeque, with an invite as barter. Damn right I could see the movie another time!
We arrive at Lindsey's house, where her roommates were all running about, organizing the contents of 11 empty grocery bags; meat here, condiments there, booze here, etc...
I'd noted to Lindsey that I liked her new home, it's much bigger, roomier, and safer than her previous one, to which she looked a little puzzled.
"You... you must be referring to the house on 'Nashville St,' because you never saw..."
"...the other one," Lindsey's roommate Emily finished.
"So... you don't know the story of the place in between the place you knew us to live in and this one, right?" Lindsey asked.
I just stood there, curious of all of the wide-eyed, uneasy looks, making myself wordlessly obvious that I'd not a clue. They called in the third roommate, Brianne, followed by J.
They took turns adding in their 'two-cents,' confirming little details, adding others, to which they all agreed upon as the story progressed. Rather than make this a back-and-forth story of four people interjecting, I'll tell it to you third-person.
On Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Lindsey had parted with her previous roommate, and got together with two girls from school she didn't know so well, Brianne and Emily, and got a decent place. The place in question was rather roomy, in a good location, and, above all, a hell of a bargain. This house, like most in the neighborhood, is nearly one hundred years old.
When Emily and Lindsey arrived to move their belongings in, they saw a note on the door of the furthest room from the front door, there was a note by Brianne, saying that she'd already claimed it, which annoyed the other two girls.
A blessing in disguise.
Brianne's Mad Dash
Within the first week or two, Brianne and the girls were all in the house together, Lindsey and Emily supposedly asleep, and Brianne up all night, determined to finish the book she was reading. At somewhere between 2-4am, she reached the last page of her text, closing the book, and settling into bed to see if she was tired enough to sleep, just yet. Note that the book was NOT a mystery/horror book, and that she had an elated feeling about what she'd just read.
She was replacing the book back on the shelf, and general before-bed tidying up, when the light above her started flickering, then went out. Brianne then turned off all of the lamps around the room, leaving the one near her desk on.
She soon found out she couldn’t sleep, so she sat up again, and turned on the television, putting in a cartoon DVD, in the hope it'd tire her out before the sun came up.
She heard a rapping on the wall, and stood, not knowing if it came from her door or her wall. Brianne lowered the volume on the TV, fearing it woke up a roommate, and approached the corner of the room where the noise was coming from. It wasn't the door, it wasn't the wall, it was coming from the closet.
What Brianne didn't know at the time was that her deep closet shared a wall with Emily's equally deep closet, not Emily's wall.
Brianne assumed it was Emily who was knocking, and crept back to bed, in silence. Again, the rapping coursed through the room, so Brianne got up, exited the room, only to find Emily fast asleep in her own room, her body splayed nowhere near the wall in question. She checked on Lindsey, who was also fully asunder, her room too far for her to have knocked on the wall, to do so loud enough to gain Brianne's attention would have woken up the whole house!
Confused, and a little weirded-out, Brianne returned to her room, closed the door, and turned off the TV and remaining lamps, and reached for the desk lamp, which turned off before she could hit the switch. She retreated her hand in surprise, and the light flickered on; she then reached forward again, and she successfully managed to turn it off, the desk lamp having given up on a life of its own.
Suddenly, light flooded the room, the overhead light blasted into life; perhaps it wasn't the bulb that broke, but simply a loose socket?
Brianne, in the few seconds it took for her to turn around, and head towards the light switch, became uneasy. Sure, it was scary, and the visual impact of the overhead light flickering like crazy was intimidating enough, but it wasn't without the realm of reason that this old house had loose bulbs, sockets, even wiring, to which she'd have a chat with the landlord about investigating before a inner-wall fire could occur.
Brianne consoled herself with such thoughts, as she approached the light switch in the strobed room, to finally turn it off, and put an end to this ordeal for the night. However, she began to believe the strobing effect of the light flickering on and off maniacally was making her see things... or not, for once she got to the light switch...
The light switch was been frantically flipping up and down on its own.
She jumped back in panic, as the strobing continued for a full few seconds, then suddenly stopped. Following a few moments later, in the darkness, was the knocking making a re-appearance, but much, much louder than before.
Brianne grabbed what she could, and got the fuck out of there around 5am, not only not looking back, but too scared to even inform the other girls of what went on.
The Wireman
It took a long time for Brianne to be coaxed back into the house, since no strange events had occurred since, yet Brianne wasn't going anywhere NEAR that room, so, she slept elsewhere in the house. It was suggested that Brianne sleep on the second floor, since the weather was good, and the only reason it wasn't used was that the landlord had yet to repair the AC/Heating units up there. Brianne refused. As tall-tale hauntings go, Brianne reasoned, she was going to stay away from an attic as far as possible, despite the fact that all of the happenings occurred in the back bedroom that she once claimed.
Weeks passed, and Emily had some visitors come over on one occasion, and Lindsey had some of her own on another; neither group of visitors slept more than one night in that house, citing that they had 'strange dreams' that they refused to discuss, and they had an unnatural apprehension from going down the hall past Emily's room.
Lindsey decided to investigate a bit, and entered Brianne's room during the day, finding nothing out of order. However, upon inspecting the closet where Brianne heard pounding noises, she discovered that not only did the back of the closet share a wall with the back of Emily's closet, there was a sizable hole cut out of it, enough for a child to pass back and forth. Upon even closer inspection, the wall was shared, yes, but was hollowed, there was three feet or more difference between the two panels in the back of the two closets. Lindsey shined a light on the little space, and found a large spool of 'industrial' wire. She turned the light upward, toward the ceiling, and discovered this little 'hollow' went straight through the second floor, and into the attic, she could see a large beam stretching across, far above.
Lindsey kept this discovery to herself for a few days.
A night or two later, Emily was looking rather haggard, and explained that it was due to lack of sleep, since recurring nightmares kept jolting her out of slumber. The other two girls pressed on the contents of the dreams, the reslut of which much to their shock.
All three girls (and one overnight guest) had the same dream, as did the two previous guests, when contacted and insisted upon the details:
A very old, bald man was suspended above them, from wires somehow attached to his back, reaching up into the blackness; his arms were slung down, locked at the elbow, as to reach as far down as he possibly could; his arms began as skin, muscle, and sinew, but gradually terminated into a cluster of wires. The Wireman dangled above the dreamer, waving/scissoring his arms back and forth at locked length, as if trying to wipe past the faces of the startled dreamer. Finally, the man would buckle, as if a few inches of slack was granted from above, and the Wireman would immediately and eagerly grasp the sleeper’s throats with its wire-hands, and choke them vigrously. They could hear him smiling. The dreamer would suffer and die in the dreams, before awaking.
The vast majority of these factors were shared with the dreamers, without deviance.
Call in The Calvary
The profusely apologetic Landlord didn't question the girls' fright (obviously there's something he knew they didn't,) and offered to send in an exorcist. Apparently, Exorcists are few and far between, so the girls popped down to some of the (very few) reputable psychics that were marvelously expensive; she got three to come on half-pay, half-favor. Remember, this is New Orleans, even I know of 1000 'Psychics,' but I only believe 3 or 4 of them.
It should be noted that Lindsey was smart about this, she didn't mention anything about the room, dreams, or actual location of the house, and should the psychics wish to investigate before they come to the site. Lindsey convinced them to accept the job with as very little info as possible, and all of the girls were there when the Psychics showed up, offering them nothing, but listening to everything.
The Psychics entered the house and all of its rooms, feeling nothing, until they got to the last room of the hall, where all three of them looked at each other in discomfort. One began crying. They backed out of the room. Lindsey took them into Emily's room, and showed them the 'little room' between the closets (obviously from the 'safe' side,) and directed their attention upward. Soon after, the band of explorers would find themselves in the dreaded attic, and had found the crossbeam in question.
It had a deeply-etched groove of wear from a once-taut wire, and was indeed centered directly above that little hole.
The Psychics soon joined the girls in the living room, and discussed what they felt.
Apparently, a long time ago, a woman had run off from her husband, and little boy. The husband refused to let the child go outside, thinking that he'd run off, and the only way the mother would return was if the child was there, she'd surely not come back if it were just the father.
One day, tired of the wait, the father locked his son in his bedroom, and hung himself (with wire, we're not 100% certain, in the little room? Not 100% certain) until, of course, he died, assuming that the mother would soon come for the son. She didn't. The little boy died of dehydration in his room.
While this didn't explain a good half of what went on, the Psychic went on to say...
"Well, there was some sort of torture... perhaps self-torture, but I don't know if the preceded the man and his boy, or if it involved the man and his boy... we threw down many tarot cards, and, despite the meaning of 'The Hanged Man' that we all accept, it came up every damn hand... we use 108 cards, it came up EVERY three cards after a thorough re-shuffle. I think it's demanding a new meaning, perhaps an obvious one? We don't know, we don't normally do this, but certain impressions are undeniable."
Fallout
The Landlord offered a second property, bigger, better, and cheaper, to which the girls took, and presently live.
The girls, when they think of it, did a little investigating, and here's what they came up with:
(1) Neighbors had seen six sets of tennants come and go in the last two years alone.
(2) Their pal, Brian, who had several nervous breakdowns (including crying in class, and walking around bug-eyed,) in the year previous turned out having lived in that very house, in that very room for six months. Brian was mortified when the girls admitted they stayed there. He even recalled the 'Wireman' dream with eerie clarity and description. Apparently his state has improved in the time he's been out of that house.
(3) The house is currently unoccupied.
======
It was our senior prom Friday, and afterwards we hung out at Denny's, because my friends are dorks. During a lull in our conversation, we started talking about ghosts, and I told them about the Wireman They got freaked, and 2 days later we went to Gettysburg (45 minutes away) for some ghost hunting.
We go to Gettysburg a lot and look for ghosts, but this was the one night we found anything. The party consisted of me with a flashlight, Barb the chauffeur, and Shannon with a digital camcorder. When we got there it was still light, but after it turned dark we left the battlefield for Sachs Bridge, where there were some other people. I had read earlier that the first path connected to the parking spaces was the most haunted, so we went down there first. We walked down a good distance, and stopped next to a puddle. I was just shining my light around and someone, either Shannon or Barb, said, "Hey, look at your breath!" So I shined my flashlight on them.
The temperature hadn't changed, it was probably around 65 degrees, but our breath was completely fluid white. We stood still for a few seconds, letting out a deliberate long breath, then they ran the fuck back to the bridge, and I followed. We checked out the rest of the area, including going back down there, but nothing else happened.
Then we went to the Gettysburg college and checked out the Stevens Dorm, where the Blue Boy is. Apparently, some girls were taking care of an orphan boy, but had to have him stand outside in a snowstorm while an RA checked their room, and he vanished. Shannon recorded and took more pics there, and on the front left side of the building she and I both felt unsual. Then we all headed back to Denny's for a bit.
Later we spent the night at Shannon's house so we could watch the video, and we all huddled around the small screen a few hours later. Nothing new was in it, and it was jumpy during the breath scare. But, right around there, Shannon had taken a picture, and there was a weird noise right after it. It sounded like a Polaroid picture or a power window, her camcorder can't make that noise, and there was no one else around. None of us heard it while it was recording.
So then she uploaded it all to her computer, and slowed down the noise. At half speed, it was a soldiers marching/horse noise. Barb brought a video over, one that she had shown me before, and during the Sachs Bridge part, it mentioned that soldiers had marched over the bridge to battle. Also, rather recently, a woman had gone down the path and was standing very close to where we had been standing, and her husband recorded a horse and soldiers moving deeper in the woods.
Then we looked at the dorm pictures.... In almost every one, there was a weird blue light, and in 2 of them the light was next to second story windows. After a while I got bored and did something else, until Shannon screamed, and pointed out that one of the blue blobs looked like a little boy. We looked, and it seemed like a little boy standing on the windowsill, his arms folded (like he was trying to get warm?).
We went back Monday even though it was crowded because of Memorial Day, but nothing else happened. Shannon still has to send me the pictures and video, otherwise I'd post them now. We might go back tonight, there's nothing else to do around here...
Last night, I was derailed from seeing a movie by a pal of mine 'J,' who needed a ride to a barbeque, with an invite as barter. Damn right I could see the movie another time!
We arrive at Lindsey's house, where her roommates were all running about, organizing the contents of 11 empty grocery bags; meat here, condiments there, booze here, etc...
I'd noted to Lindsey that I liked her new home, it's much bigger, roomier, and safer than her previous one, to which she looked a little puzzled.
"You... you must be referring to the house on 'Nashville St,' because you never saw..."
"...the other one," Lindsey's roommate Emily finished.
"So... you don't know the story of the place in between the place you knew us to live in and this one, right?" Lindsey asked.
I just stood there, curious of all of the wide-eyed, uneasy looks, making myself wordlessly obvious that I'd not a clue. They called in the third roommate, Brianne, followed by J.
They took turns adding in their 'two-cents,' confirming little details, adding others, to which they all agreed upon as the story progressed. Rather than make this a back-and-forth story of four people interjecting, I'll tell it to you third-person.
On Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Lindsey had parted with her previous roommate, and got together with two girls from school she didn't know so well, Brianne and Emily, and got a decent place. The place in question was rather roomy, in a good location, and, above all, a hell of a bargain. This house, like most in the neighborhood, is nearly one hundred years old.
When Emily and Lindsey arrived to move their belongings in, they saw a note on the door of the furthest room from the front door, there was a note by Brianne, saying that she'd already claimed it, which annoyed the other two girls.
A blessing in disguise.
Brianne's Mad Dash
Within the first week or two, Brianne and the girls were all in the house together, Lindsey and Emily supposedly asleep, and Brianne up all night, determined to finish the book she was reading. At somewhere between 2-4am, she reached the last page of her text, closing the book, and settling into bed to see if she was tired enough to sleep, just yet. Note that the book was NOT a mystery/horror book, and that she had an elated feeling about what she'd just read.
She was replacing the book back on the shelf, and general before-bed tidying up, when the light above her started flickering, then went out. Brianne then turned off all of the lamps around the room, leaving the one near her desk on.
She soon found out she couldn’t sleep, so she sat up again, and turned on the television, putting in a cartoon DVD, in the hope it'd tire her out before the sun came up.
She heard a rapping on the wall, and stood, not knowing if it came from her door or her wall. Brianne lowered the volume on the TV, fearing it woke up a roommate, and approached the corner of the room where the noise was coming from. It wasn't the door, it wasn't the wall, it was coming from the closet.
What Brianne didn't know at the time was that her deep closet shared a wall with Emily's equally deep closet, not Emily's wall.
Brianne assumed it was Emily who was knocking, and crept back to bed, in silence. Again, the rapping coursed through the room, so Brianne got up, exited the room, only to find Emily fast asleep in her own room, her body splayed nowhere near the wall in question. She checked on Lindsey, who was also fully asunder, her room too far for her to have knocked on the wall, to do so loud enough to gain Brianne's attention would have woken up the whole house!
Confused, and a little weirded-out, Brianne returned to her room, closed the door, and turned off the TV and remaining lamps, and reached for the desk lamp, which turned off before she could hit the switch. She retreated her hand in surprise, and the light flickered on; she then reached forward again, and she successfully managed to turn it off, the desk lamp having given up on a life of its own.
Suddenly, light flooded the room, the overhead light blasted into life; perhaps it wasn't the bulb that broke, but simply a loose socket?
Brianne, in the few seconds it took for her to turn around, and head towards the light switch, became uneasy. Sure, it was scary, and the visual impact of the overhead light flickering like crazy was intimidating enough, but it wasn't without the realm of reason that this old house had loose bulbs, sockets, even wiring, to which she'd have a chat with the landlord about investigating before a inner-wall fire could occur.
Brianne consoled herself with such thoughts, as she approached the light switch in the strobed room, to finally turn it off, and put an end to this ordeal for the night. However, she began to believe the strobing effect of the light flickering on and off maniacally was making her see things... or not, for once she got to the light switch...
The light switch was been frantically flipping up and down on its own.
She jumped back in panic, as the strobing continued for a full few seconds, then suddenly stopped. Following a few moments later, in the darkness, was the knocking making a re-appearance, but much, much louder than before.
Brianne grabbed what she could, and got the fuck out of there around 5am, not only not looking back, but too scared to even inform the other girls of what went on.
The Wireman
It took a long time for Brianne to be coaxed back into the house, since no strange events had occurred since, yet Brianne wasn't going anywhere NEAR that room, so, she slept elsewhere in the house. It was suggested that Brianne sleep on the second floor, since the weather was good, and the only reason it wasn't used was that the landlord had yet to repair the AC/Heating units up there. Brianne refused. As tall-tale hauntings go, Brianne reasoned, she was going to stay away from an attic as far as possible, despite the fact that all of the happenings occurred in the back bedroom that she once claimed.
Weeks passed, and Emily had some visitors come over on one occasion, and Lindsey had some of her own on another; neither group of visitors slept more than one night in that house, citing that they had 'strange dreams' that they refused to discuss, and they had an unnatural apprehension from going down the hall past Emily's room.
Lindsey decided to investigate a bit, and entered Brianne's room during the day, finding nothing out of order. However, upon inspecting the closet where Brianne heard pounding noises, she discovered that not only did the back of the closet share a wall with the back of Emily's closet, there was a sizable hole cut out of it, enough for a child to pass back and forth. Upon even closer inspection, the wall was shared, yes, but was hollowed, there was three feet or more difference between the two panels in the back of the two closets. Lindsey shined a light on the little space, and found a large spool of 'industrial' wire. She turned the light upward, toward the ceiling, and discovered this little 'hollow' went straight through the second floor, and into the attic, she could see a large beam stretching across, far above.
Lindsey kept this discovery to herself for a few days.
A night or two later, Emily was looking rather haggard, and explained that it was due to lack of sleep, since recurring nightmares kept jolting her out of slumber. The other two girls pressed on the contents of the dreams, the reslut of which much to their shock.
All three girls (and one overnight guest) had the same dream, as did the two previous guests, when contacted and insisted upon the details:
A very old, bald man was suspended above them, from wires somehow attached to his back, reaching up into the blackness; his arms were slung down, locked at the elbow, as to reach as far down as he possibly could; his arms began as skin, muscle, and sinew, but gradually terminated into a cluster of wires. The Wireman dangled above the dreamer, waving/scissoring his arms back and forth at locked length, as if trying to wipe past the faces of the startled dreamer. Finally, the man would buckle, as if a few inches of slack was granted from above, and the Wireman would immediately and eagerly grasp the sleeper’s throats with its wire-hands, and choke them vigrously. They could hear him smiling. The dreamer would suffer and die in the dreams, before awaking.
The vast majority of these factors were shared with the dreamers, without deviance.
Call in The Calvary
The profusely apologetic Landlord didn't question the girls' fright (obviously there's something he knew they didn't,) and offered to send in an exorcist. Apparently, Exorcists are few and far between, so the girls popped down to some of the (very few) reputable psychics that were marvelously expensive; she got three to come on half-pay, half-favor. Remember, this is New Orleans, even I know of 1000 'Psychics,' but I only believe 3 or 4 of them.
It should be noted that Lindsey was smart about this, she didn't mention anything about the room, dreams, or actual location of the house, and should the psychics wish to investigate before they come to the site. Lindsey convinced them to accept the job with as very little info as possible, and all of the girls were there when the Psychics showed up, offering them nothing, but listening to everything.
The Psychics entered the house and all of its rooms, feeling nothing, until they got to the last room of the hall, where all three of them looked at each other in discomfort. One began crying. They backed out of the room. Lindsey took them into Emily's room, and showed them the 'little room' between the closets (obviously from the 'safe' side,) and directed their attention upward. Soon after, the band of explorers would find themselves in the dreaded attic, and had found the crossbeam in question.
It had a deeply-etched groove of wear from a once-taut wire, and was indeed centered directly above that little hole.
The Psychics soon joined the girls in the living room, and discussed what they felt.
Apparently, a long time ago, a woman had run off from her husband, and little boy. The husband refused to let the child go outside, thinking that he'd run off, and the only way the mother would return was if the child was there, she'd surely not come back if it were just the father.
One day, tired of the wait, the father locked his son in his bedroom, and hung himself (with wire, we're not 100% certain, in the little room? Not 100% certain) until, of course, he died, assuming that the mother would soon come for the son. She didn't. The little boy died of dehydration in his room.
While this didn't explain a good half of what went on, the Psychic went on to say...
"Well, there was some sort of torture... perhaps self-torture, but I don't know if the preceded the man and his boy, or if it involved the man and his boy... we threw down many tarot cards, and, despite the meaning of 'The Hanged Man' that we all accept, it came up every damn hand... we use 108 cards, it came up EVERY three cards after a thorough re-shuffle. I think it's demanding a new meaning, perhaps an obvious one? We don't know, we don't normally do this, but certain impressions are undeniable."
Fallout
The Landlord offered a second property, bigger, better, and cheaper, to which the girls took, and presently live.
The girls, when they think of it, did a little investigating, and here's what they came up with:
(1) Neighbors had seen six sets of tennants come and go in the last two years alone.
(2) Their pal, Brian, who had several nervous breakdowns (including crying in class, and walking around bug-eyed,) in the year previous turned out having lived in that very house, in that very room for six months. Brian was mortified when the girls admitted they stayed there. He even recalled the 'Wireman' dream with eerie clarity and description. Apparently his state has improved in the time he's been out of that house.
(3) The house is currently unoccupied.
======
It was our senior prom Friday, and afterwards we hung out at Denny's, because my friends are dorks. During a lull in our conversation, we started talking about ghosts, and I told them about the Wireman They got freaked, and 2 days later we went to Gettysburg (45 minutes away) for some ghost hunting.
We go to Gettysburg a lot and look for ghosts, but this was the one night we found anything. The party consisted of me with a flashlight, Barb the chauffeur, and Shannon with a digital camcorder. When we got there it was still light, but after it turned dark we left the battlefield for Sachs Bridge, where there were some other people. I had read earlier that the first path connected to the parking spaces was the most haunted, so we went down there first. We walked down a good distance, and stopped next to a puddle. I was just shining my light around and someone, either Shannon or Barb, said, "Hey, look at your breath!" So I shined my flashlight on them.
The temperature hadn't changed, it was probably around 65 degrees, but our breath was completely fluid white. We stood still for a few seconds, letting out a deliberate long breath, then they ran the fuck back to the bridge, and I followed. We checked out the rest of the area, including going back down there, but nothing else happened.
Then we went to the Gettysburg college and checked out the Stevens Dorm, where the Blue Boy is. Apparently, some girls were taking care of an orphan boy, but had to have him stand outside in a snowstorm while an RA checked their room, and he vanished. Shannon recorded and took more pics there, and on the front left side of the building she and I both felt unsual. Then we all headed back to Denny's for a bit.
Later we spent the night at Shannon's house so we could watch the video, and we all huddled around the small screen a few hours later. Nothing new was in it, and it was jumpy during the breath scare. But, right around there, Shannon had taken a picture, and there was a weird noise right after it. It sounded like a Polaroid picture or a power window, her camcorder can't make that noise, and there was no one else around. None of us heard it while it was recording.
So then she uploaded it all to her computer, and slowed down the noise. At half speed, it was a soldiers marching/horse noise. Barb brought a video over, one that she had shown me before, and during the Sachs Bridge part, it mentioned that soldiers had marched over the bridge to battle. Also, rather recently, a woman had gone down the path and was standing very close to where we had been standing, and her husband recorded a horse and soldiers moving deeper in the woods.
Then we looked at the dorm pictures.... In almost every one, there was a weird blue light, and in 2 of them the light was next to second story windows. After a while I got bored and did something else, until Shannon screamed, and pointed out that one of the blue blobs looked like a little boy. We looked, and it seemed like a little boy standing on the windowsill, his arms folded (like he was trying to get warm?).
We went back Monday even though it was crowded because of Memorial Day, but nothing else happened. Shannon still has to send me the pictures and video, otherwise I'd post them now. We might go back tonight, there's nothing else to do around here...
My House
Posted by: Unknown
Story 1. The People
This is a quick one. In October one year at 2 AM, I awoke to sounds. I looked outside my window and saw a group of white clothed and hooded (not kkk) people with torches standing at the end of our property (3 acres) on the gravel road. They were just standing there. I awoke my parents, they saw them, and they ordered us to lock all the doors and get upstairs and lock the door. We watched them for an hour, then they just turned around and walked into the woods. FUCKED UP? YES!
Story 2. The Faces
Upstairs in our house all the walls and ceilings are covered in swirl spackle designs. Most have been covered up with paneling and tile over the years. In the earlier days, I would wake up in cold sweats after having dreams of demons attacking me. I would open my eyes and look around the room in the moonlight. My eyes would focus on the swirling patterns. Now, I had a great imagination, but I know what's real. I'm always a skeptic. I would often see the patterns changing forming faces and watching me, their mouths gaping open and closed like screams. I would scream for my mom but nothing came out. My mom would finally hear me and comfort me. Also, my brother would sleepwalk a lot and sit and the top of the stairs. I would sometimes catch him and ask, "Why are you out here?" His response: "The faces" He attests he remembers nothing of these occasions.
Story 3. The Gateway
This one gets more fucked up every time I visit home, and I will explain why. For years as a kid and especially my high school years I would see a greenish vapor like form come between my room and my parents room. It would come thru the wall, hover, then vanish. This happened at least twice a month. As years went by and especially now when I go home, I look at the wall. The spackling is beginning to settle with age and an actual DOORWAY is coming thru the wall. It looks like it was covered up years ago. Definitely over 25 years ago, since we moved there.
Story 4. Fred
My dad is a light sleeper. If you wake him up, he stays awake. Well, my dad has many stories (my mom backs up) of him waking up and someone walking up and down the stairs. Loudly. It wakes my dad up. Also, sometimes during the morning, my mom sees a black shape of a man standing in front of her and then he disappears. My mom calls him Frank. My mom spoke to the former owners about this (we are good friends) and they say, "Oh Fred! Yeh, we've seen him many times"
Story 5. The Tombstone
There is a small, 1800's to early 1900's graveyard down the road. It's in a woods by a marsh. I would sometimes wander around it. Well, when I had my paper route for three years, I would ride by every day. There is a particular stone in the back corner that sort of resembles the Empire State Building. It is broken off at the base and lays 2 feet away. Every day, for three years, I would pick up that stone and set it on it's base. Every day for 3 years I would repeat. It always was laying 2 feet away in the same position.
Story 6. The Scariest Shit I've Ever Experienced.
Last year I visited home with my girlfriend. She stayed the night, we had a little fun, and she left the next day. The following night, as I'm sleeping, I wake up. There is an OLD child's rocking chair in my room with stuffed animals on it. The thing starts ROCKING. I'm freaking out and freeze with fear. I really wish that was it. Next, the stuffed animals start falling out of the chair one at a time. I'm freaking out and stiff as a board paralyzed with fear. So I'm laying there freaking out and I pull the covers up higher and turn on my side. The chair stops. I start calling for my mom. I couldn't produce words. Remember, I'm 24 years old! So I give up and lay on my side. Suddenly cold breezes start blowing on my ears. I'm REALLY freaking. SO I turn on my side and tense completely up. What happened next I will NEVER forget. I'm laying there and SUDDENLY a voice whispers in my FUCKING EAR. It was unintelligible, but imagine someone talking by breathing in and speaking backwards. I SCREAM AND BOLT OUT OF MY ROOM and jump into my parents' bed! I'm freaking out! My dad is pissed. My mom is trying to calm me down. She assures me it's ok. Finally she says "Oh that was probably Frank, we haven't seen him for about 6 months and we don't know why." That did NOT help. So I ended up going back into my room and turned on my light and managed to fall asleep about an hour later.
The next day I was talking to my girlfriend and she reminded me she was on her period. She also informed me that hormonal women are sometimes attributed to waking up sleeping spirits. Um.... She also informed me she's never sleeping over there again. She broke up with me last January, so that's not a problem.
There have been many other small things that have happened. Corner of the eye apparitions, things moving from where they were, etc. We also have an old dirt cellar with steps leading down. Let me tell you, I'm 25 now and I still cant go down there without thinking some fucking zombie is going to reach thru the steps and grab my legs. We have holes in the side of our basement walls that lead into small rooms. We've explored in there as a kid and found all sorts of animal bones. Goddamn, my house was fucked up.
Story 1. The People
This is a quick one. In October one year at 2 AM, I awoke to sounds. I looked outside my window and saw a group of white clothed and hooded (not kkk) people with torches standing at the end of our property (3 acres) on the gravel road. They were just standing there. I awoke my parents, they saw them, and they ordered us to lock all the doors and get upstairs and lock the door. We watched them for an hour, then they just turned around and walked into the woods. FUCKED UP? YES!
Story 2. The Faces
Upstairs in our house all the walls and ceilings are covered in swirl spackle designs. Most have been covered up with paneling and tile over the years. In the earlier days, I would wake up in cold sweats after having dreams of demons attacking me. I would open my eyes and look around the room in the moonlight. My eyes would focus on the swirling patterns. Now, I had a great imagination, but I know what's real. I'm always a skeptic. I would often see the patterns changing forming faces and watching me, their mouths gaping open and closed like screams. I would scream for my mom but nothing came out. My mom would finally hear me and comfort me. Also, my brother would sleepwalk a lot and sit and the top of the stairs. I would sometimes catch him and ask, "Why are you out here?" His response: "The faces" He attests he remembers nothing of these occasions.
Story 3. The Gateway
This one gets more fucked up every time I visit home, and I will explain why. For years as a kid and especially my high school years I would see a greenish vapor like form come between my room and my parents room. It would come thru the wall, hover, then vanish. This happened at least twice a month. As years went by and especially now when I go home, I look at the wall. The spackling is beginning to settle with age and an actual DOORWAY is coming thru the wall. It looks like it was covered up years ago. Definitely over 25 years ago, since we moved there.
Story 4. Fred
My dad is a light sleeper. If you wake him up, he stays awake. Well, my dad has many stories (my mom backs up) of him waking up and someone walking up and down the stairs. Loudly. It wakes my dad up. Also, sometimes during the morning, my mom sees a black shape of a man standing in front of her and then he disappears. My mom calls him Frank. My mom spoke to the former owners about this (we are good friends) and they say, "Oh Fred! Yeh, we've seen him many times"
Story 5. The Tombstone
There is a small, 1800's to early 1900's graveyard down the road. It's in a woods by a marsh. I would sometimes wander around it. Well, when I had my paper route for three years, I would ride by every day. There is a particular stone in the back corner that sort of resembles the Empire State Building. It is broken off at the base and lays 2 feet away. Every day, for three years, I would pick up that stone and set it on it's base. Every day for 3 years I would repeat. It always was laying 2 feet away in the same position.
Story 6. The Scariest Shit I've Ever Experienced.
Last year I visited home with my girlfriend. She stayed the night, we had a little fun, and she left the next day. The following night, as I'm sleeping, I wake up. There is an OLD child's rocking chair in my room with stuffed animals on it. The thing starts ROCKING. I'm freaking out and freeze with fear. I really wish that was it. Next, the stuffed animals start falling out of the chair one at a time. I'm freaking out and stiff as a board paralyzed with fear. So I'm laying there freaking out and I pull the covers up higher and turn on my side. The chair stops. I start calling for my mom. I couldn't produce words. Remember, I'm 24 years old! So I give up and lay on my side. Suddenly cold breezes start blowing on my ears. I'm REALLY freaking. SO I turn on my side and tense completely up. What happened next I will NEVER forget. I'm laying there and SUDDENLY a voice whispers in my FUCKING EAR. It was unintelligible, but imagine someone talking by breathing in and speaking backwards. I SCREAM AND BOLT OUT OF MY ROOM and jump into my parents' bed! I'm freaking out! My dad is pissed. My mom is trying to calm me down. She assures me it's ok. Finally she says "Oh that was probably Frank, we haven't seen him for about 6 months and we don't know why." That did NOT help. So I ended up going back into my room and turned on my light and managed to fall asleep about an hour later.
The next day I was talking to my girlfriend and she reminded me she was on her period. She also informed me that hormonal women are sometimes attributed to waking up sleeping spirits. Um.... She also informed me she's never sleeping over there again. She broke up with me last January, so that's not a problem.
There have been many other small things that have happened. Corner of the eye apparitions, things moving from where they were, etc. We also have an old dirt cellar with steps leading down. Let me tell you, I'm 25 now and I still cant go down there without thinking some fucking zombie is going to reach thru the steps and grab my legs. We have holes in the side of our basement walls that lead into small rooms. We've explored in there as a kid and found all sorts of animal bones. Goddamn, my house was fucked up.
The Impostor
Posted by: Vienta
A few months ago the lease I shared with my boyfriend “Sean” ran out and we decided to find another place to stay. We had previously been sharing a townhouse with a few other people, and were looking forward to getting a little lovenest of our own, made complete with the addition of our new cat. If you’re already gagging, take comfort in the fact that everything cute about this story was already summed up above. What remains of this tale recounts the most terrifying and viscerally disturbing and utterly wrong experience I’ve ever had. I’ll take it slow.
The apartment we settled on was one on the edge of town. It had recently been remodeled after being in disuse for a period of time. It smelled like someone had picked it out of a rack at K-Mart and looked like it was hecho’d en Mexico. Sean and I reasoned that the cheap remodeling probably accounted for the low rent that matched more dated local complexes.
Since we had a few days left on our lease when our move-in date rolled around, we took our time moving our possessions, and kept sleeping/bathing/eating at the old place. Finally the time came to make the big switch, and we piled all of our big stuff and our kitten into a truck and made the move final.
That night we both had trouble sleeping. It was pretty uncharacteristic for either one of us to feel uncomfortable in the dark, but after a bit of hesitation Sean couldn’t help but turn on the lamp beside our bed and comment that he was feeling a little weird. We discussed the bad juju feeling for a bit, and I remember remarking that the place somehow felt naked, as if we weren’t really in an apartment at all, but somewhere under the stars, open to the elements. I chalked this up to getting used to the new place. Still, long after Sean fell asleep I stared at the ceiling in the lamp light, hearing creaks and groans in the floor and expecting at any moment to find myself in a nightmare.
The next day I worked during the day and Sean worked the night shift. We didn’t get a chance to see each other between our shifts and I felt even more isolated in the apartment once I got home. Our cat, Jazz, made me feel a little better with her excitement and curiosity about our new place. With her around, it felt almost like home. Feeling a bit braver, I decided to shower.
Normally showers are not all that interesting. Most people just think of them as something they lose time to every day. Before that apartment I felt the same way. Didn’t ever think about it, just turned the water on scalding and stepped inside. Now just typing the word gives me the creeps.
That night when I took a shower I tried not to think about the uncomfortable feeling that place exuded I tried to focus on some happy thoughts. But I kept hearing things. A distant creak in the living room, a cupboard door closing, and then a strange thump on the floor just in front of the bathroom—it was starting to get to me. Soon, I noticed that my skin was covered in goose bumps. Thinking I was letting my imagination get away with me, I called to Jazz, hoping she would reply and raise my spirits.
From the bathroom doorway I heard a “Meow.” Something in my intestines lurched, and I felt a shock of adrenaline enter my blood. Was the water muffling Jazz in some strange way? The response from the doorway didn’t sound like my cat at all. Trying to control myself, I mewed gently, something I’d taken to doing when Jazz was still a kitten. The reply came again. Again, the sound was something odd. A different timbre. A different tone. A tiny crack in the vocalization. It came again, and it was wrong. All wrong, like something with twenty times the bodily resonation of my cat trying to impersonate her, trying to use her voice to plead for me to come out of the shower and into the open.
And it was closer than before.
I had a barrage of possibilities flooding my mind— the Meower, a meth head who had broken in and was now having a bit of fun before he raped and killed me. The Meower, a crazy creature from out of a “Spawn” comic. I could practically see it, a disgusting huddled mass at the threshold grinning insanely. And I was trapped.
Something inside of me, some hysterical thing from beneath my skin and struggling through my constricted vocal cords made my hand go to the shower curtain. Was it my imagination or my hand on fabric making the shuffling sound just outside of the shower? With a sickening succession of clacks shower curtain rings rushed to one side of the rod and I stood wet and completely vulnerable in the face of…
Nothing.
Before you start celebrating, I should point out that by “Nothing,” I mean exactly that. To my horror, I realized I had let Jazz outside before my shower. She hadn’t been in the apartment at all.
(Alright, I’m taking a break from this story for now. Even though I’m not in that apartment anymore it’s freaking me the hell out and I need to wait until daylight tomorrow to finish.)
As time went on, my fear—and somehow, memory– of this event dulled. It didn’t make any sense at all, and since Sean and I had similar shifts on most days I didn’t have to shower alone all the time. Within a week I had convinced myself that I had heard Jazz or some other cat through a window, and the distance had distorted the sound. Or something.
It sounded good enough to me at the time.
Then I began to notice the whispering. It would happen when I ran the tap. At first I thought it was “just pipes.” One evening I put my ear close to the wall where I knew the plumbing ran through and realized the whispering was coming from elsewhere. I left the tap on and tried to follow the sound.
I ended up in the middle room just off of the kitchen, at a closet that was built onto a wall. Desperately hoping that somehow the pipes snaked through the apartment and behind the closet, I opened the doors leading inside. Barely registering that the whispering had stopped, I choked back a wave of nausea caused by the rancid stench of rotting meat wafting out of the compartment. After I closed the doors, it took a moment to compose myself. I knew I hadn’t seen any meat in that closet. It was completely bare. Not to mention, when I closed the doors it seemed to completely disappear. To make matters worse, I could once again hear a low whispering from the closet. Preparing for the worst, I opened the doors again.
Nothing.
The smell was gone. Truly wondering if I was crazy at that point, I woke Sean up from a nap. I took him over to the closet and had him listen. By that time, the tap water running in the kitchen sink had gone from hot to tepid. Confused and bleary-eyed, Sean walked with me to the closet. Only now the whispering was gone.
Before I could even open my mouth to explain, Jazz darted past us from the bedroom where Sean had been sleeping and cowered in a corner, her huge pupils fixed on a window by our bed. Looking where her gaze was directed, I froze and felt again that shower-terror I had a week ago.
A human silhouette crouched on our balcony. Its outline was barely discernible against the black of trees and night, but what was terrifying, truly terrifying, more than the fact that someone had spooked our cat, more than the fact that someone was looking through our bedroom window, more than the fact that some large thing the color of the very void itself was on our balcony, were the eyes. The tapeta lucidum eyes that glowed like a cat’s as our bright kitchen shone on them. The eyes that gazed inward at us without emotion or apology. They were dead eyes, but impossibly alive with light at the same time. I was transfixed, completely. In that moment Sean and my cat might have been on different planets. Fear had begun to flex its muscles, and every muscle in me seemed to stop. Those fucking eyes.
And then it was gone. The shape slid away into darkness. I heard no sounds of running, only a tiny whisper of what might have been fabric or breathing as the shadow disappeared. Its eyes were on mine even as it swayed out of sight.
I turned to Sean, every hair on my body standing on end. I wasn’t trying to speak, but words came out anyway.
“Did you see that?” I felt like I was in a dream.
Sean turned to me, from where he was examining the closet. He could see I was upset and looked to the bedroom, where my finger was pointing, again, nearly without my knowledge of it. “See what?”
It seemed impossible, but Jazz and I were the only two witnesses to the thing in the window. To this day, Sean still claims that he was only looking in the closet for two seconds after the cat ran into the room with us and before I asked him if he had seen what I’d seen. For me, it had seemed like minutes.
A few months ago the lease I shared with my boyfriend “Sean” ran out and we decided to find another place to stay. We had previously been sharing a townhouse with a few other people, and were looking forward to getting a little lovenest of our own, made complete with the addition of our new cat. If you’re already gagging, take comfort in the fact that everything cute about this story was already summed up above. What remains of this tale recounts the most terrifying and viscerally disturbing and utterly wrong experience I’ve ever had. I’ll take it slow.
The apartment we settled on was one on the edge of town. It had recently been remodeled after being in disuse for a period of time. It smelled like someone had picked it out of a rack at K-Mart and looked like it was hecho’d en Mexico. Sean and I reasoned that the cheap remodeling probably accounted for the low rent that matched more dated local complexes.
Since we had a few days left on our lease when our move-in date rolled around, we took our time moving our possessions, and kept sleeping/bathing/eating at the old place. Finally the time came to make the big switch, and we piled all of our big stuff and our kitten into a truck and made the move final.
That night we both had trouble sleeping. It was pretty uncharacteristic for either one of us to feel uncomfortable in the dark, but after a bit of hesitation Sean couldn’t help but turn on the lamp beside our bed and comment that he was feeling a little weird. We discussed the bad juju feeling for a bit, and I remember remarking that the place somehow felt naked, as if we weren’t really in an apartment at all, but somewhere under the stars, open to the elements. I chalked this up to getting used to the new place. Still, long after Sean fell asleep I stared at the ceiling in the lamp light, hearing creaks and groans in the floor and expecting at any moment to find myself in a nightmare.
The next day I worked during the day and Sean worked the night shift. We didn’t get a chance to see each other between our shifts and I felt even more isolated in the apartment once I got home. Our cat, Jazz, made me feel a little better with her excitement and curiosity about our new place. With her around, it felt almost like home. Feeling a bit braver, I decided to shower.
Normally showers are not all that interesting. Most people just think of them as something they lose time to every day. Before that apartment I felt the same way. Didn’t ever think about it, just turned the water on scalding and stepped inside. Now just typing the word gives me the creeps.
That night when I took a shower I tried not to think about the uncomfortable feeling that place exuded I tried to focus on some happy thoughts. But I kept hearing things. A distant creak in the living room, a cupboard door closing, and then a strange thump on the floor just in front of the bathroom—it was starting to get to me. Soon, I noticed that my skin was covered in goose bumps. Thinking I was letting my imagination get away with me, I called to Jazz, hoping she would reply and raise my spirits.
From the bathroom doorway I heard a “Meow.” Something in my intestines lurched, and I felt a shock of adrenaline enter my blood. Was the water muffling Jazz in some strange way? The response from the doorway didn’t sound like my cat at all. Trying to control myself, I mewed gently, something I’d taken to doing when Jazz was still a kitten. The reply came again. Again, the sound was something odd. A different timbre. A different tone. A tiny crack in the vocalization. It came again, and it was wrong. All wrong, like something with twenty times the bodily resonation of my cat trying to impersonate her, trying to use her voice to plead for me to come out of the shower and into the open.
And it was closer than before.
I had a barrage of possibilities flooding my mind— the Meower, a meth head who had broken in and was now having a bit of fun before he raped and killed me. The Meower, a crazy creature from out of a “Spawn” comic. I could practically see it, a disgusting huddled mass at the threshold grinning insanely. And I was trapped.
Something inside of me, some hysterical thing from beneath my skin and struggling through my constricted vocal cords made my hand go to the shower curtain. Was it my imagination or my hand on fabric making the shuffling sound just outside of the shower? With a sickening succession of clacks shower curtain rings rushed to one side of the rod and I stood wet and completely vulnerable in the face of…
Nothing.
Before you start celebrating, I should point out that by “Nothing,” I mean exactly that. To my horror, I realized I had let Jazz outside before my shower. She hadn’t been in the apartment at all.
(Alright, I’m taking a break from this story for now. Even though I’m not in that apartment anymore it’s freaking me the hell out and I need to wait until daylight tomorrow to finish.)
As time went on, my fear—and somehow, memory– of this event dulled. It didn’t make any sense at all, and since Sean and I had similar shifts on most days I didn’t have to shower alone all the time. Within a week I had convinced myself that I had heard Jazz or some other cat through a window, and the distance had distorted the sound. Or something.
It sounded good enough to me at the time.
Then I began to notice the whispering. It would happen when I ran the tap. At first I thought it was “just pipes.” One evening I put my ear close to the wall where I knew the plumbing ran through and realized the whispering was coming from elsewhere. I left the tap on and tried to follow the sound.
I ended up in the middle room just off of the kitchen, at a closet that was built onto a wall. Desperately hoping that somehow the pipes snaked through the apartment and behind the closet, I opened the doors leading inside. Barely registering that the whispering had stopped, I choked back a wave of nausea caused by the rancid stench of rotting meat wafting out of the compartment. After I closed the doors, it took a moment to compose myself. I knew I hadn’t seen any meat in that closet. It was completely bare. Not to mention, when I closed the doors it seemed to completely disappear. To make matters worse, I could once again hear a low whispering from the closet. Preparing for the worst, I opened the doors again.
Nothing.
The smell was gone. Truly wondering if I was crazy at that point, I woke Sean up from a nap. I took him over to the closet and had him listen. By that time, the tap water running in the kitchen sink had gone from hot to tepid. Confused and bleary-eyed, Sean walked with me to the closet. Only now the whispering was gone.
Before I could even open my mouth to explain, Jazz darted past us from the bedroom where Sean had been sleeping and cowered in a corner, her huge pupils fixed on a window by our bed. Looking where her gaze was directed, I froze and felt again that shower-terror I had a week ago.
A human silhouette crouched on our balcony. Its outline was barely discernible against the black of trees and night, but what was terrifying, truly terrifying, more than the fact that someone had spooked our cat, more than the fact that someone was looking through our bedroom window, more than the fact that some large thing the color of the very void itself was on our balcony, were the eyes. The tapeta lucidum eyes that glowed like a cat’s as our bright kitchen shone on them. The eyes that gazed inward at us without emotion or apology. They were dead eyes, but impossibly alive with light at the same time. I was transfixed, completely. In that moment Sean and my cat might have been on different planets. Fear had begun to flex its muscles, and every muscle in me seemed to stop. Those fucking eyes.
And then it was gone. The shape slid away into darkness. I heard no sounds of running, only a tiny whisper of what might have been fabric or breathing as the shadow disappeared. Its eyes were on mine even as it swayed out of sight.
I turned to Sean, every hair on my body standing on end. I wasn’t trying to speak, but words came out anyway.
“Did you see that?” I felt like I was in a dream.
Sean turned to me, from where he was examining the closet. He could see I was upset and looked to the bedroom, where my finger was pointing, again, nearly without my knowledge of it. “See what?”
It seemed impossible, but Jazz and I were the only two witnesses to the thing in the window. To this day, Sean still claims that he was only looking in the closet for two seconds after the cat ran into the room with us and before I asked him if he had seen what I’d seen. For me, it had seemed like minutes.
The Intruder
Posted by: (Original Poster under Investigation)
Reposted by: Rhandhali
The Intruder is a silhouette and similar in shape to a
Siamese cat. When sitting, it is about 7.5 feet tall.
It has two overly large, slanted eyes, which glow a
bright fluorescent green, and have no pupils. It
blinks these eyes occasionally. Other than the eyes,
it has no other discernable facial or body features.
Whenever you enter your home after dark, The Intruder
is always watching. It sits about 10 feet away from
you in plain view. It remains immobile and does not
even try to conceal its presence. While outside, it
can only be seen by one person at a time. If it were
to be within the sight range of two people then the
first person who sees The Intruder would remain being
able to see it while it would remain completely
invisible to others.
It emits no noises of its own. The only time it can be
heard is when it is stretching its claws on a tree or
your house siding. If you approach it then it will run
away very quickly and violently, kicking up dirt and
rocks. The sounds of the wind from The Intruder’s
movements and flying debris from under The Intruder’s
feet can be heard. If you were to throw an object
toward it or discharge a firearm at it you would get
the same effect. Once you turn back to the door to
insert your key you will find that The Intruder has
noiselessly returned to its previous position where it
continues to watch you.
Some say that The Intruder listens to your key hit the
lock. They say that The Intruder can eventually
ascertain the shape of your key simply by hearing the
pins of your lock moving. It is unknown how many times
The Intruder must hear you unlock your door before it
can determine the exact shape of your key.
You see, The Intruder wants to kill you, that is, if
this creature is even capable of wanting anything.
Perhaps it is better to say that it intends to kill
you. However, The Intruder can only kill you inside
your house, and may not force its way in. Furthermore,
it cannot enter an empty house. You must already be at
home in order for it to enter. If you were to run
outside of your house once The Intruder enters, The
Intruder will pursue you, drag you back inside, and
then kill you.
If you ever hear a key hitting your door in the dead
of night then it may be The Intruder trying out its
key that it has made. The Intruder only tries to use
its keys when it is close to perfecting them, so if
you do hear it trying to unlock your door then you can
be certain that it will have a proper working key
within a few nights. If you enter your house through
another means, for example a garage or screen door,
then you may suddenly find it them inoperable from the
outside, through both remote or attempted physical
operation of the door. If you attempt to leave your
door unlocked in order to prevent The Intruder from
hearing the shape of your key, then you may be
disappointed to find that the door has been locked by
the time you arrive at home.
If you hear a key hit your lock it is advised that you
turn off all of your lights and attempt to push on the
door to try and prevent The Intruder from entering,
although it likely outweighs you. Once The Intruder
enters your house all light sources above that of a
candle become blinding to all inhabitants other that
The Intruder. If you have time to light a candle then
it is suggested, as this will still allow you to see
the silhouette without becoming blinded. A very small
advantage that you may have is that, once inside a
home, all inhabitants are able to see The Intruder
simultaneously.
The Intruder will kill every human inside of the
house. It will only attack pets if the animal chooses
to engage The Intruder. Most animals choose not to
engage The Intruder. The only time that the Intruder
will make any noise of its own is during a kill
strike. The Intruder will make a quick hissing sound
during this strike, and will not make this noise again
until it claims its next victim. The Intruder has
never been known to kill anyone without hissing during
the kill strike. It will usually try to completely
disable its prey to the point where it cannot move
before it makes the kill strike. It is thought that
The Intruder prefers to disable its prey before a kill
strike because the act of hissing may be the only time
that it is vulnerable to damage. This is purely
speculation however.
Siamese cat. When sitting, it is about 7.5 feet tall.
It has two overly large, slanted eyes, which glow a
bright fluorescent green, and have no pupils. It
blinks these eyes occasionally. Other than the eyes,
it has no other discernable facial or body features.
Whenever you enter your home after dark, The Intruder
is always watching. It sits about 10 feet away from
you in plain view. It remains immobile and does not
even try to conceal its presence. While outside, it
can only be seen by one person at a time. If it were
to be within the sight range of two people then the
first person who sees The Intruder would remain being
able to see it while it would remain completely
invisible to others.
It emits no noises of its own. The only time it can be
heard is when it is stretching its claws on a tree or
your house siding. If you approach it then it will run
away very quickly and violently, kicking up dirt and
rocks. The sounds of the wind from The Intruder’s
movements and flying debris from under The Intruder’s
feet can be heard. If you were to throw an object
toward it or discharge a firearm at it you would get
the same effect. Once you turn back to the door to
insert your key you will find that The Intruder has
noiselessly returned to its previous position where it
continues to watch you.
Some say that The Intruder listens to your key hit the
lock. They say that The Intruder can eventually
ascertain the shape of your key simply by hearing the
pins of your lock moving. It is unknown how many times
The Intruder must hear you unlock your door before it
can determine the exact shape of your key.
You see, The Intruder wants to kill you, that is, if
this creature is even capable of wanting anything.
Perhaps it is better to say that it intends to kill
you. However, The Intruder can only kill you inside
your house, and may not force its way in. Furthermore,
it cannot enter an empty house. You must already be at
home in order for it to enter. If you were to run
outside of your house once The Intruder enters, The
Intruder will pursue you, drag you back inside, and
then kill you.
If you ever hear a key hitting your door in the dead
of night then it may be The Intruder trying out its
key that it has made. The Intruder only tries to use
its keys when it is close to perfecting them, so if
you do hear it trying to unlock your door then you can
be certain that it will have a proper working key
within a few nights. If you enter your house through
another means, for example a garage or screen door,
then you may suddenly find it them inoperable from the
outside, through both remote or attempted physical
operation of the door. If you attempt to leave your
door unlocked in order to prevent The Intruder from
hearing the shape of your key, then you may be
disappointed to find that the door has been locked by
the time you arrive at home.
If you hear a key hit your lock it is advised that you
turn off all of your lights and attempt to push on the
door to try and prevent The Intruder from entering,
although it likely outweighs you. Once The Intruder
enters your house all light sources above that of a
candle become blinding to all inhabitants other that
The Intruder. If you have time to light a candle then
it is suggested, as this will still allow you to see
the silhouette without becoming blinded. A very small
advantage that you may have is that, once inside a
home, all inhabitants are able to see The Intruder
simultaneously.
The Intruder will kill every human inside of the
house. It will only attack pets if the animal chooses
to engage The Intruder. Most animals choose not to
engage The Intruder. The only time that the Intruder
will make any noise of its own is during a kill
strike. The Intruder will make a quick hissing sound
during this strike, and will not make this noise again
until it claims its next victim. The Intruder has
never been known to kill anyone without hissing during
the kill strike. It will usually try to completely
disable its prey to the point where it cannot move
before it makes the kill strike. It is thought that
The Intruder prefers to disable its prey before a kill
strike because the act of hissing may be the only time
that it is vulnerable to damage. This is purely
speculation however.
Voodoo Dolls
Posted by: The Jabberwock
Becka was a little batshit. I had originally met her my freshman year of high school, and she was two years ahead of me. The only reason I ever knew her was because I became fairly close friends with her younger brother Andrew, who was in my class. This was in my junior year, 2003, when I had gone over for a weekend of hardcore D&D and gaming until our kidneys burst with mountain dew. Becka had gone off to college, and her old room had been turned into a guest room. So of course, it was a logical place for me to stay when I was over.
Now I never once had a negative perception or emotion connected to anything in that house. I was pretty iffy on the idea of supernatural entities, but I knew when a building or a room creeped me out. I got no such vibe from this place.
So needless to say, when I suddenly felt faint walking into the guest room, I tried to figure out what might be the cause of this. I sat down for a moment, collected my thoughts, and waited for the light-headedness to subside. I looked around the room for a while, and after a bit, my head cleared. Now my eyes were drawn to something, or rather, things, I had never seen here before in previous visits.
Becka collected dolls. That's right. Dolls. Now I never had an aversion to anything doll like in my life, but she collected them in large quantities. This wouldn't have been a huge problem, if it weren't for the pair of the most eerie, cold black dolls I had ever seen in my life. I called Andy in and asked him about them. I could tell from his expression that he could see I wasn't feeling well, and when he saw the dolls I was pointing at, I could see the color drain from his face. "What happened..?" he asked me. That's a confusing thing to say after I had just asked him where they came from.
"I was just feeling sick for a second...dude..what the fuck are those?"
He was keeping his eyes off them intentionally, and that made me more nervous.
"My sister went on a road trip to New Orleans over spring break...she picked those up there. Fuck if I know why.."
Becka had bought herself a pair of real, authentic, Louisiana Voodoo Dolls.
Why? She thought they were unique. Unique doesn't begin to cover it. Both of them had twisted black hair, not like doll hair, and it seemed like it had to be lightly greased to keep it together like it was. I currently had no desire to intentionally come within arms reach of these things, but one of them looked like it might've been made out of leather. It had that sort of soft, worked shine to it. The other was a duller gray/black. They had white, glassy eyes, and by far, the worst feature between them, were the nails. These dolls, probably only 7 inches long, had nails made of smoked glass, 3 inches long. They were so intricate, 1 glass talon to a finger.
"..dude I am not fucking sleeping in the same room as those things. I'll sleep on the couch or something"
Andy shrugged a little. "..We can put em in the dresser or something if they really bother you. They're creepy but they're not goin anywhere. Chill out dude.."
Hey he was right. They were just dolls. Fucking creepy Creole Voodoo Dolls. Put em in the dresser. Won't bother me. Plus, who wants to act like a pussy and be afraid of dolls when you're a big bad junior? Andy went ahead and took them off the shelf they had been sitting on, and stuck them in the top drawer of the dresser.
So the videogames commenced. We shot the shit and played into the wee hours as we usually did. Eventually we retired and I slept. I don't recall much of the first night. I just remember having all sorts of trouble getting to sleep, and chalked it up to the copious amounts of sugar coursing through my 16 year old body.
The next night, we had done a similar routine. Andy's mom had made the bed for me, which was of course, pretty normal in high school. So I shouldn't have thought too much of the fact that the two dolls were back out on their shelf where Andy had taken them from.
"Andy's mom probably went in and got them. I guess the spot on the shelf was pretty bare. TOO FUCKING BAD YOU'RE GOING BACK IN YOUR DRAWER."
I picked them up and sure enough, the darker one was made out of supple leather. The lighter one might've been suede or some other soft fabric. Despite the fact that I was trying to play tough guy and recover a man point or two from my initial shock, I remember my arms shuddering as I held them, and I very, very hastily stuck those puppies in the top drawer of the dresser. I thought for a moment, then decided that trying to wedge the drawer shut would negate any of those mystical man points I might have gained back....but of course I did it anyways. I crammed a pair of pencils into the bottom corners of the drawer, so that I thought that they would wedge it fairly securely, certainly securely to negate any doll strength.
So I went to bed. It was probably 3am when I did, so I must not have been out for very long before I woke up. It was still dark, and the room was tinted that very slight blue of well past midnight. This was no drowsy awakening. I was totally awake. Wide awake. It was like I had never closed my eyes, and I felt sick to my stomach in the instant that my eyes were open. I looked around, and my eyes were drawn to the empty white spot on the shelf where the row of dolls sat across from the bed, and as I shifted to sit up further, I felt my foot bump something through the sheets. Sitting at the foot of the bed, to the outside of my right foot, was that dull, black leather doll. I remember how badly my eyes watered the moment I saw it. It was just sitting there facing me and I remember my eyes wet and tears steaming down my cheeks even though I wasn't crying or making a sound. I didn't move and I felt the wave of ill paralysis intensify. I managed to tear my eyes away from it, and saw the black figure sitting on the flat white pillowcase to the left of where my head had been lying. I thought I was screaming when I threw the pillow across the room, tossing it with everything I had and kicked the sheets off like they had caught fire. I remember my feet hitting the ground and I was outside, on the back porch, and I didn't have a clue what the fuck had happened.
Apparently, I hadn't made any noise beside my running out of the house. No lights came on, and after a minute, Andy's mom came out in her nightgown looking sleepy and confused.
"Michael, what on earth are you doing out here?" she asked me with a bewildered expression.
I shook my head. I'm sure she couldn't see how wet my cheeks were in the dark, and she fumbled for the patio light while I told her "...I can't sleep in your house tonight.." Eventually, she coaxed me into sleeping on the couch. I didn't sleep. I just stayed up for the night with the lights on, paying attention to every flitting shadow and corner.
The next day, Andy talked to me about how 'freaked out' his mom had thought I was. He asked me about the dolls, and I told him what had happened. Of course, he now takes the time to tell me the things he had kept from me on Friday. Since his sister had brought the dolls home, no one had slept in her room, but occasionally, their mom used it as a sewing room, and watched television in it. Twice, Andy had been walking down the hall, and thought he heard voices coming from his sisters room. He assumed it was the TV, but the second time, his Mom wasn't home. When he checked, the room, the TV was off. Nobody else home, and the whispering just stopped as he came to her door.
I haven't stayed a night at that house since, granted it's been like 6-7 years now. I *HAVE* considered the possibility that Andy was just fucking with me, snuck in that night and placed the dolls to scare the ever living fuck out of me. Problem number 1) I am an extremely light sleeper. The door wasn't locked or anything, but I ALMOST always wake up when anyone enters/exits the room I'm sleeping in. This rule does not apply to Stealth, Glass-clawed voodoo dolls. 2) Andy was never the type to pull a prank like that. Andy told me more things about what they would do sometimes. They moved the other dolls around, and pushed them off the shelves. My freshman year in college, he told me how he wanted to do something to destroy them before he moved out. He didn't want to leave them in the house with his Mom and Dad. We ended up putting them in a small, wooden packaging crate. Covered them in an inch or two of charcoal, and a hefty dose of lighter fluid and enough wood to keep a fire going for a few hours. We wanted the glass all melted and unrecognizable. We burned them, and never even looked through the ashes to be sure. I didn't want anything to do with them after that. I feel unbelievably ill after having written all this.
Now I never once had a negative perception or emotion connected to anything in that house. I was pretty iffy on the idea of supernatural entities, but I knew when a building or a room creeped me out. I got no such vibe from this place.
So needless to say, when I suddenly felt faint walking into the guest room, I tried to figure out what might be the cause of this. I sat down for a moment, collected my thoughts, and waited for the light-headedness to subside. I looked around the room for a while, and after a bit, my head cleared. Now my eyes were drawn to something, or rather, things, I had never seen here before in previous visits.
Becka collected dolls. That's right. Dolls. Now I never had an aversion to anything doll like in my life, but she collected them in large quantities. This wouldn't have been a huge problem, if it weren't for the pair of the most eerie, cold black dolls I had ever seen in my life. I called Andy in and asked him about them. I could tell from his expression that he could see I wasn't feeling well, and when he saw the dolls I was pointing at, I could see the color drain from his face. "What happened..?" he asked me. That's a confusing thing to say after I had just asked him where they came from.
"I was just feeling sick for a second...dude..what the fuck are those?"
He was keeping his eyes off them intentionally, and that made me more nervous.
"My sister went on a road trip to New Orleans over spring break...she picked those up there. Fuck if I know why.."
Becka had bought herself a pair of real, authentic, Louisiana Voodoo Dolls.
Why? She thought they were unique. Unique doesn't begin to cover it. Both of them had twisted black hair, not like doll hair, and it seemed like it had to be lightly greased to keep it together like it was. I currently had no desire to intentionally come within arms reach of these things, but one of them looked like it might've been made out of leather. It had that sort of soft, worked shine to it. The other was a duller gray/black. They had white, glassy eyes, and by far, the worst feature between them, were the nails. These dolls, probably only 7 inches long, had nails made of smoked glass, 3 inches long. They were so intricate, 1 glass talon to a finger.
"..dude I am not fucking sleeping in the same room as those things. I'll sleep on the couch or something"
Andy shrugged a little. "..We can put em in the dresser or something if they really bother you. They're creepy but they're not goin anywhere. Chill out dude.."
Hey he was right. They were just dolls. Fucking creepy Creole Voodoo Dolls. Put em in the dresser. Won't bother me. Plus, who wants to act like a pussy and be afraid of dolls when you're a big bad junior? Andy went ahead and took them off the shelf they had been sitting on, and stuck them in the top drawer of the dresser.
So the videogames commenced. We shot the shit and played into the wee hours as we usually did. Eventually we retired and I slept. I don't recall much of the first night. I just remember having all sorts of trouble getting to sleep, and chalked it up to the copious amounts of sugar coursing through my 16 year old body.
The next night, we had done a similar routine. Andy's mom had made the bed for me, which was of course, pretty normal in high school. So I shouldn't have thought too much of the fact that the two dolls were back out on their shelf where Andy had taken them from.
"Andy's mom probably went in and got them. I guess the spot on the shelf was pretty bare. TOO FUCKING BAD YOU'RE GOING BACK IN YOUR DRAWER."
I picked them up and sure enough, the darker one was made out of supple leather. The lighter one might've been suede or some other soft fabric. Despite the fact that I was trying to play tough guy and recover a man point or two from my initial shock, I remember my arms shuddering as I held them, and I very, very hastily stuck those puppies in the top drawer of the dresser. I thought for a moment, then decided that trying to wedge the drawer shut would negate any of those mystical man points I might have gained back....but of course I did it anyways. I crammed a pair of pencils into the bottom corners of the drawer, so that I thought that they would wedge it fairly securely, certainly securely to negate any doll strength.
So I went to bed. It was probably 3am when I did, so I must not have been out for very long before I woke up. It was still dark, and the room was tinted that very slight blue of well past midnight. This was no drowsy awakening. I was totally awake. Wide awake. It was like I had never closed my eyes, and I felt sick to my stomach in the instant that my eyes were open. I looked around, and my eyes were drawn to the empty white spot on the shelf where the row of dolls sat across from the bed, and as I shifted to sit up further, I felt my foot bump something through the sheets. Sitting at the foot of the bed, to the outside of my right foot, was that dull, black leather doll. I remember how badly my eyes watered the moment I saw it. It was just sitting there facing me and I remember my eyes wet and tears steaming down my cheeks even though I wasn't crying or making a sound. I didn't move and I felt the wave of ill paralysis intensify. I managed to tear my eyes away from it, and saw the black figure sitting on the flat white pillowcase to the left of where my head had been lying. I thought I was screaming when I threw the pillow across the room, tossing it with everything I had and kicked the sheets off like they had caught fire. I remember my feet hitting the ground and I was outside, on the back porch, and I didn't have a clue what the fuck had happened.
Apparently, I hadn't made any noise beside my running out of the house. No lights came on, and after a minute, Andy's mom came out in her nightgown looking sleepy and confused.
"Michael, what on earth are you doing out here?" she asked me with a bewildered expression.
I shook my head. I'm sure she couldn't see how wet my cheeks were in the dark, and she fumbled for the patio light while I told her "...I can't sleep in your house tonight.." Eventually, she coaxed me into sleeping on the couch. I didn't sleep. I just stayed up for the night with the lights on, paying attention to every flitting shadow and corner.
The next day, Andy talked to me about how 'freaked out' his mom had thought I was. He asked me about the dolls, and I told him what had happened. Of course, he now takes the time to tell me the things he had kept from me on Friday. Since his sister had brought the dolls home, no one had slept in her room, but occasionally, their mom used it as a sewing room, and watched television in it. Twice, Andy had been walking down the hall, and thought he heard voices coming from his sisters room. He assumed it was the TV, but the second time, his Mom wasn't home. When he checked, the room, the TV was off. Nobody else home, and the whispering just stopped as he came to her door.
I haven't stayed a night at that house since, granted it's been like 6-7 years now. I *HAVE* considered the possibility that Andy was just fucking with me, snuck in that night and placed the dolls to scare the ever living fuck out of me. Problem number 1) I am an extremely light sleeper. The door wasn't locked or anything, but I ALMOST always wake up when anyone enters/exits the room I'm sleeping in. This rule does not apply to Stealth, Glass-clawed voodoo dolls. 2) Andy was never the type to pull a prank like that. Andy told me more things about what they would do sometimes. They moved the other dolls around, and pushed them off the shelves. My freshman year in college, he told me how he wanted to do something to destroy them before he moved out. He didn't want to leave them in the house with his Mom and Dad. We ended up putting them in a small, wooden packaging crate. Covered them in an inch or two of charcoal, and a hefty dose of lighter fluid and enough wood to keep a fire going for a few hours. We wanted the glass all melted and unrecognizable. We burned them, and never even looked through the ashes to be sure. I didn't want anything to do with them after that. I feel unbelievably ill after having written all this.
Super Locrian's Tales of Many
Posted by: Super Locrian
I live in a townhouse with my girlfriend and two of my best friends. I've lived here for about two years, without incident. We're in kind of a bad neighborhood outside of Washington D.C., but the most crime we've ever experienced was the theft of an unlocked bike from our backyard.
A lot of stuff began to happen a few weeks ago, on a Wednesday. We had several friends over to watch the Rose Bowl and talk shit about Matt Leinart. We ended up being up pretty late, and two of my buddies, Andy and Ryan, crashed on the living room couches. At about 4:00 am, Andy and Ryan burst into the room that I share with my girlfriend. They were freaked out because they thought they heard someone break in to the house. I didn't buy it; it'd be all but impossible to break in here, short of breaking a window. We went downstairs and a did brief check which of course turned up nothing. I called them pussies and went back to bed, and forgot the event by the morning.
A few nights ago, Erica (the girlfriend) woke me up in the middle of the night because she thinks heard someone downstairs. Just to appease her, I went downstairs to "check"; of course no one was there. I came back upstairs and was denied the sexual compensation that I felt was deserved of such a bold foray. I fell back asleep and once again forgot about the phantom intruder.
I spent this weekend in the house alone. The male roommates went to Pennsylvania for some god awful concert, and Erica went to spend some time with her mother; needless to say, I was very excited at the rare opportunity to indulge myself in loud porn for a few hours a day. Unfortunately, my plans were damned never to come to fruition.
I woke up early on Saturday morning so that I could get to the library to meet with my math discussion group. Somewhere around the shampoo phase of my shower routine, I heard Erica's voice.
"Nick? Hey Nick!"
"I'm in the shower, baby." I replied.
"Nick! NICK!" she continued to yell.
"Erica! I'm in the shower!"
I finished, toweled off, and shaved. I left the bathroom expecting to find Erica home early from her mother's place; much to my confusion, no one was in the house. Once I got dressed I called her cell phone. She was, in fact, still at her mother's. I ignored the eerie feeling that was brewing in my stomach and went about my morning routine, writing the incident off as my imagination. I gathered my books and went downstairs to grab some breakfast. I walked into the kitchen, where I found that the floor was COVERED IN PAPER TOWELS. The empty roll was sitting on the counter top. Someone was IN THE HOUSE.
At this point I panicked. I ran outside, jumped in my car, and went to my meeting. By the afternoon, I had calmed down enough to convince myself that there was a rational explanation for what had happened. Despite this, I am and always have been a huge pussy; I spent the night at my friend's apartment in Northwest.
I finally came home around 7 o'clock last night. The male roommates were home, but not Erica. I walked into the house, ready to tell them my story and have them laugh at my expense. When I walked in the door, however, they both looked at me, perplexed.
"When the hell did you go out there?" Ian asked.
"I went to some bars in Adam's Morgan last night, and spent the night at Matt's." I replied.
"What? I JUST saw you, upstairs, not ten minutes ago."
Both roommates swear up and down that they saw AND heard me moving around upstairs.
So now here I am, a grown man, terrified in his own home. I have always been a total skeptic of the supernatural, and I still am; however, I'm absolutely terrified. Are all of these weird occurrences coincidences? Is some crazy hobo living in our house, spreading paper towels and bumping around while we sleep? Is there really a ghost in our house, like Erica has joked? Of course not, I'm embarrassed to publicly say that I've even entertained that thought for a second.
A lot of stuff began to happen a few weeks ago, on a Wednesday. We had several friends over to watch the Rose Bowl and talk shit about Matt Leinart. We ended up being up pretty late, and two of my buddies, Andy and Ryan, crashed on the living room couches. At about 4:00 am, Andy and Ryan burst into the room that I share with my girlfriend. They were freaked out because they thought they heard someone break in to the house. I didn't buy it; it'd be all but impossible to break in here, short of breaking a window. We went downstairs and a did brief check which of course turned up nothing. I called them pussies and went back to bed, and forgot the event by the morning.
A few nights ago, Erica (the girlfriend) woke me up in the middle of the night because she thinks heard someone downstairs. Just to appease her, I went downstairs to "check"; of course no one was there. I came back upstairs and was denied the sexual compensation that I felt was deserved of such a bold foray. I fell back asleep and once again forgot about the phantom intruder.
I spent this weekend in the house alone. The male roommates went to Pennsylvania for some god awful concert, and Erica went to spend some time with her mother; needless to say, I was very excited at the rare opportunity to indulge myself in loud porn for a few hours a day. Unfortunately, my plans were damned never to come to fruition.
I woke up early on Saturday morning so that I could get to the library to meet with my math discussion group. Somewhere around the shampoo phase of my shower routine, I heard Erica's voice.
"Nick? Hey Nick!"
"I'm in the shower, baby." I replied.
"Nick! NICK!" she continued to yell.
"Erica! I'm in the shower!"
I finished, toweled off, and shaved. I left the bathroom expecting to find Erica home early from her mother's place; much to my confusion, no one was in the house. Once I got dressed I called her cell phone. She was, in fact, still at her mother's. I ignored the eerie feeling that was brewing in my stomach and went about my morning routine, writing the incident off as my imagination. I gathered my books and went downstairs to grab some breakfast. I walked into the kitchen, where I found that the floor was COVERED IN PAPER TOWELS. The empty roll was sitting on the counter top. Someone was IN THE HOUSE.
At this point I panicked. I ran outside, jumped in my car, and went to my meeting. By the afternoon, I had calmed down enough to convince myself that there was a rational explanation for what had happened. Despite this, I am and always have been a huge pussy; I spent the night at my friend's apartment in Northwest.
I finally came home around 7 o'clock last night. The male roommates were home, but not Erica. I walked into the house, ready to tell them my story and have them laugh at my expense. When I walked in the door, however, they both looked at me, perplexed.
"When the hell did you go out there?" Ian asked.
"I went to some bars in Adam's Morgan last night, and spent the night at Matt's." I replied.
"What? I JUST saw you, upstairs, not ten minutes ago."
Both roommates swear up and down that they saw AND heard me moving around upstairs.
So now here I am, a grown man, terrified in his own home. I have always been a total skeptic of the supernatural, and I still am; however, I'm absolutely terrified. Are all of these weird occurrences coincidences? Is some crazy hobo living in our house, spreading paper towels and bumping around while we sleep? Is there really a ghost in our house, like Erica has joked? Of course not, I'm embarrassed to publicly say that I've even entertained that thought for a second.
Why I don't want to go to LSU
This is my brother's account of a house he lived in when he first went away to LSU. Ben is two years older than I am, but he has always had quite an imagination and a propensity to exaggerate.
His story started in that summer when that serial killer was loose in Baton Rouge. I'm sure any female goons from LSU remember that! Anyway, Ben transfered from a community college in Maryland to LSU when he was about 20. He rented a room in a house near University Lakes, if anyone knows where that is (I don't). He described the house as older and incredibly charming. Ben talked about the house with such reverence that at times he would refer to it almost as a conscious being. When he first moved in, he started saying things like
"It's such a great house. It's always cool enough, and it's visibly welcoming."
"You really have to respect a house with so much history."
"This house has been here for so long it would be a shame to uproot the trees in the yard to make land for more homes."
As time went on, however, his remarks began to actually personify the house, which I always found pretty creepy.
"There's air in the house is really disturbed when the roommates are fighting."
"The house doesn't like it when there are too many people over!"
I always took these statements in stride, albeit with a raised eyebrow. Like I said before, Ben has always been eccentric and overly imaginative.
At the end of his first semester at LSU, things began to get out of hand. Ben called home one Sunday morning, obviously disturbed. He and his friends had thrown a huge party to celebrate the passing of the semester and, as always with LSU, celebrate football. They had close to 70 guests whose appetite for debauchery was fed by multiple kegs and most likely copious amounts of marijuana. Sometime around 1:00 AM, the party got really swinging. The music was loud, the people were loud, and the energy was very high. Without warning, the air in the house suddenly become choked and stagnant. It become unnaturally cold. With a loud *POP*, the lights in the house flickered twice and then went out. All of the guests became instantly terrified. The lights came back on in a few seconds, but people began streaming out of the house. The situation was probably best described in an e-mail Ben sent me later that Sunday:
"it was totally bizarre. it was like house was just completely pissed off that that many of us were in there making all that noise. the air in the house was palpably BELIGERENT. if it was just a passing feeling that i had, i would have written it off. but EVERYONE at the party became instantly uncomfortable and the house emptied out. like the house had had enough and was telling us that wed gone too far."
Ben moved out in the spring semester to live with some new friends he had made. He's all but forgotten the house incident, but I certainly haven't. For whatever reason, this story has stuck with me for a long time.
This is my brother's account of a house he lived in when he first went away to LSU. Ben is two years older than I am, but he has always had quite an imagination and a propensity to exaggerate.
His story started in that summer when that serial killer was loose in Baton Rouge. I'm sure any female goons from LSU remember that! Anyway, Ben transfered from a community college in Maryland to LSU when he was about 20. He rented a room in a house near University Lakes, if anyone knows where that is (I don't). He described the house as older and incredibly charming. Ben talked about the house with such reverence that at times he would refer to it almost as a conscious being. When he first moved in, he started saying things like
"It's such a great house. It's always cool enough, and it's visibly welcoming."
"You really have to respect a house with so much history."
"This house has been here for so long it would be a shame to uproot the trees in the yard to make land for more homes."
As time went on, however, his remarks began to actually personify the house, which I always found pretty creepy.
"There's air in the house is really disturbed when the roommates are fighting."
"The house doesn't like it when there are too many people over!"
I always took these statements in stride, albeit with a raised eyebrow. Like I said before, Ben has always been eccentric and overly imaginative.
At the end of his first semester at LSU, things began to get out of hand. Ben called home one Sunday morning, obviously disturbed. He and his friends had thrown a huge party to celebrate the passing of the semester and, as always with LSU, celebrate football. They had close to 70 guests whose appetite for debauchery was fed by multiple kegs and most likely copious amounts of marijuana. Sometime around 1:00 AM, the party got really swinging. The music was loud, the people were loud, and the energy was very high. Without warning, the air in the house suddenly become choked and stagnant. It become unnaturally cold. With a loud *POP*, the lights in the house flickered twice and then went out. All of the guests became instantly terrified. The lights came back on in a few seconds, but people began streaming out of the house. The situation was probably best described in an e-mail Ben sent me later that Sunday:
"it was totally bizarre. it was like house was just completely pissed off that that many of us were in there making all that noise. the air in the house was palpably BELIGERENT. if it was just a passing feeling that i had, i would have written it off. but EVERYONE at the party became instantly uncomfortable and the house emptied out. like the house had had enough and was telling us that wed gone too far."
Ben moved out in the spring semester to live with some new friends he had made. He's all but forgotten the house incident, but I certainly haven't. For whatever reason, this story has stuck with me for a long time.
Why my visits home have been infrequent
I grew up with my older brother and my grandfather in western Maryland. We live in a very small town on property that my grandfather (Pop) farmed with his father way back in the day. Pop served in WWII, and during his time in Europe his father died. When pop came home, he bought the small grocery store in town, which is way more lucrative than dairy farming ever was. Now our 50 acre property consists of old fields that run into a beautiful wooded area. All in all it was an awesome place to be a kid.
My brother and I played all over our property, but we were always a little creeped out by a wooded patch at the extreme northeast of the land. This patch of woods has a really cool history:
Pop was incredibly peaceful by nature, but like many people from that generation, he was obligated to fight in the war. In France somewhere, he shot a German soldier during some skirmish or something. The kill traumatized him for years after the war. In 68, he went to Germany and somehow tracked down the family of the soldier. The family responded warmly; Pop returned the typewriter he had taken from the soldier (it was valuable or something, I don't know), and the family gave him a pin that had belonged to the soldier. Both families still exchange letters. I have always been incredibly proud of this.
Well apparently, Pop still felt guilty. A few years after the Germany trip, he still didn't feel like he had closure. He decided he would bury the soldier's pin on the most beautiful part of our land to give the soldier the perfect resting place. A billion years later, my brother and I knew this “most beautiful resting place” as the creepy woods.
My brother swears that when he was 7, he ran into an old man in the creepy woods who pinched his arm to the point of bruising. Although he had the bruise to back it up, I'd always figured the old man story was fabricated to save face after being bullied or something. We had always known about the buried pin, so it was pretty likely that he would try to make up an accommodating ghost story. I hadn't thought about the incident in about fifteen years, and the memory was pushed way back in my brain.
Well you can imagine my surprise when, at the end of last summer, the neighbor's six-year-old boy came running home in tears, complaining of an old man that had pinched him in the woods. I tried to calm him down, but the coincidence resonated with me, so I went inside and told Pop. I was expecting him to say something to the effect of “Shut up boy, go mow the grass!” But instead, he said the words that I now recognize as a signal that his mental condition was decaying:
“Stay here.”
I watched in disbilief as pop went to the shed, obtained a SHOVEL, and trudged off in the direction of the woods.
Sadly, pop is now at Pinebrook, an assisted living community. His last actions as a completely independent man, on that day with the shovel, are what convinced my stepmother that he no longer has the mental stability to live on his own.
Pop was convinved that the “pinching old man” was the ghost of the soldier that he killed. So at a critically low point in his mental condition, he went back to the woods, dug up the pin, and melted it in the woodstove.
When he was done, he came to my stepmother and I, and said:
“If he bothers anyone, I'll kill him again.”
I suppose this is more of a sad story about an old man being driven slowly insane with guilt, and a weird side story of kids getting pinched. I hated seeing the man who was a father to me slip away to old age. At the time, it was admittedly quite scary, but now the memory is mostly just really sad.
Regardless, I still find the old woods creepy, and I never go back there.
Smile and Wave
Posted by: Uberbr00m
Back in the day, my mother ran an apartment complex. The seat of power was a two floor cabana in the middle of the place from which you could look out over most of the units. Now across from the break room where the staff would gather each morning to bs and work out who got stuck doing what each day, was the apartment of this middle aged, obese single dude who made a habit of smiling and waving at everyone as they'd congregate each day.
For around four years this would be the daily routine. Everyone would stumble tiredly in each morning, wave to the guy, pour some coffee and get on with their job. Now one day they all notice the guy for once isn't in the window, a little odd but no one thinks twice about it. Next day, still no guy. Same with the next, and the next.
Now people start wondering what the hell is going on, but before they can go investigate they get a call from the neighbor downstairs. They say theres a terrible stink coming from smileyguy's apartment and it's literally choking the shit out of them. The staff immedietly suspected the worst, and as they approached Smiley's door the unmistakeable odor of rotting flesh confirmed their fears. They slowly enter and as they get to the living room over half of them immedietly vomit and have to rush out.
The poor guy had apparently had a heart attack and died underneath that infamous window. The foul kicker was this happened during the middle of the summer, and being as the shades were never drawn the sun had been beating down on the guy for days. To put it bluntly, he cooked and then he popped. All those fun human juices had soaked through the carpeting, the pad and into the building itself and it was an unholy job cleaning the place out.
So after weeks and weeks of third party purifying, it was finally deemed livable again and it was time to move someone in. So my mother goes to work that day, lays her stuff down and heads into the break room as usual. She walks in, looks out the window, grins and waves at Smileyguy and pours her coffee. Shes about half done when she realizes what just occured, drops the pot and races back to the cabana window. Guy isn't there now, but she knows damn well what she saw. She decides to keep her mouth shut and gets her leasing agent to show the apartment to the prospective renters that day instead of her. No one rents it.
Over the next week the security guard, and two maintenence men both individually come to her and report they've seen Smiley waving at them on multiple occasions since the apartment was emptied, and she admits the same. The next morning they bring it up to the rest of the staff and most of the ten or so people all say they've seen him in that window, smiling and waving too. A couple skeptics blow this off and say they're just fucking with 'em and go on with their business. Couple days later everyone is going over reports in the morning and the cleaning lady's eyes suddenly go wide and she points out the cabana. Everyone looks out and clear as day theres the guy in the window, smiling and waving. So what does the staff do? Well they smile and wave back. Guy turns around, and simply walks back into his apartment. The skeptics apologize and over the next month everyone sees him at least a couple times. The story doesn't end there though.
Now still no one will rent this apartment. Couple people admit it gives them a creepy feeling, but most just say its not for them and settle in in a different building. The staff of course sure as hell aren't gonna tell the renters what happened. Someone finally says yes, and without drama moves in fine. No one sees Smiley anymore. Around a month later the renter storms in, furious. Shes yelling about how someone on the staff is coming into her apartment while shes at work and moving her collection of ceramic whatsits around, and now that she found some of them shattered against the wall she's threatening to press charges. So my mother and the security guard explain the situation. The woman of course doesn't believe them, rants more and thumps off. Weeks go by and no lawyers are called. Eventually the woman(notably more humble this time) comes back in and apologizes. She claims after seeing objects being pulled across counters and similar fun enough lately that she knows no one on staff is fucking with her. Supposedly after moving her bureau of ceramics away from next to the window, theres been no problems.
I was only 11 or so at the time and since I had a big mouth no one informed me, but a handful of years later she told me the tale and doubting her I spoke with some of her staff that had moved jobs with her from back then, and they all basically told the same story. Interesting stuff.
For around four years this would be the daily routine. Everyone would stumble tiredly in each morning, wave to the guy, pour some coffee and get on with their job. Now one day they all notice the guy for once isn't in the window, a little odd but no one thinks twice about it. Next day, still no guy. Same with the next, and the next.
Now people start wondering what the hell is going on, but before they can go investigate they get a call from the neighbor downstairs. They say theres a terrible stink coming from smileyguy's apartment and it's literally choking the shit out of them. The staff immedietly suspected the worst, and as they approached Smiley's door the unmistakeable odor of rotting flesh confirmed their fears. They slowly enter and as they get to the living room over half of them immedietly vomit and have to rush out.
The poor guy had apparently had a heart attack and died underneath that infamous window. The foul kicker was this happened during the middle of the summer, and being as the shades were never drawn the sun had been beating down on the guy for days. To put it bluntly, he cooked and then he popped. All those fun human juices had soaked through the carpeting, the pad and into the building itself and it was an unholy job cleaning the place out.
So after weeks and weeks of third party purifying, it was finally deemed livable again and it was time to move someone in. So my mother goes to work that day, lays her stuff down and heads into the break room as usual. She walks in, looks out the window, grins and waves at Smileyguy and pours her coffee. Shes about half done when she realizes what just occured, drops the pot and races back to the cabana window. Guy isn't there now, but she knows damn well what she saw. She decides to keep her mouth shut and gets her leasing agent to show the apartment to the prospective renters that day instead of her. No one rents it.
Over the next week the security guard, and two maintenence men both individually come to her and report they've seen Smiley waving at them on multiple occasions since the apartment was emptied, and she admits the same. The next morning they bring it up to the rest of the staff and most of the ten or so people all say they've seen him in that window, smiling and waving too. A couple skeptics blow this off and say they're just fucking with 'em and go on with their business. Couple days later everyone is going over reports in the morning and the cleaning lady's eyes suddenly go wide and she points out the cabana. Everyone looks out and clear as day theres the guy in the window, smiling and waving. So what does the staff do? Well they smile and wave back. Guy turns around, and simply walks back into his apartment. The skeptics apologize and over the next month everyone sees him at least a couple times. The story doesn't end there though.
Now still no one will rent this apartment. Couple people admit it gives them a creepy feeling, but most just say its not for them and settle in in a different building. The staff of course sure as hell aren't gonna tell the renters what happened. Someone finally says yes, and without drama moves in fine. No one sees Smiley anymore. Around a month later the renter storms in, furious. Shes yelling about how someone on the staff is coming into her apartment while shes at work and moving her collection of ceramic whatsits around, and now that she found some of them shattered against the wall she's threatening to press charges. So my mother and the security guard explain the situation. The woman of course doesn't believe them, rants more and thumps off. Weeks go by and no lawyers are called. Eventually the woman(notably more humble this time) comes back in and apologizes. She claims after seeing objects being pulled across counters and similar fun enough lately that she knows no one on staff is fucking with her. Supposedly after moving her bureau of ceramics away from next to the window, theres been no problems.
I was only 11 or so at the time and since I had a big mouth no one informed me, but a handful of years later she told me the tale and doubting her I spoke with some of her staff that had moved jobs with her from back then, and they all basically told the same story. Interesting stuff.
Rotting Meat
Posted by: Jip_Bip_Jo
The following events occured during a two week vacation stay at a rented house in Cape Cod. I was not particularly old; I believe I was 9 and my sister was 4. My mother, however, was in her 30s, so I can't chalk up her experiences to an overactive imagination.
For the first few days, things were fine. We learned the layout pretty quickly; there was a basement with a washer, dryer and a tv in a seperate room. On the main floor was the kitchen, a proper living room and bathroom. And on the second floor were the bedrooms - three in total.
One day it was particularly stormy, so there would be no trips to the beach or nature walks. My parents, really eager for as much private time as they could get, sent my sister down to the basement to watch what little tv we could recieve. My sister and I managed to get a decent version of PBS, which meant the static wasn't too bad at all (antennae only at this place). We continued to watch, I absentmindedly playing my Gameboy, my sister more enthralled by some show.
And then it all stopped. My gameboy shut off. The lightbulb popped. The tv did not go off; instead it showed nothing but static.
And then the smell.
From the other room, the one with the washer and dryer, there was a smell that is not even partially described by the word rank. Imagine a bag of rotting meat kept in the summer sun for days at end, and you can begin to imagine it. "Let's go, please" my sister whimpered. I took her hand and we walked back up.
My parents were not terribly pleased. They listened to our story, sighing as we spoke. Finally Mom smiled and said "Alright, if I go down and check, and it's all ok, will you go back down?" We agreed, knowing if anyone could make it all better, she could.
She disappeared into the black basement, flashlight in hand, replacement lightbulb box held in the other. We expected her to return quickly. She didn't. After ten minutes that stretched into eternity, she finally came back up. "Ok kids, you can can stay up here. In fact, I don't want you going down there again."
We didn't know what that meant, but accepted it gladly. Mom never went down in the room either; she insisted on doing laundry at laundromats in town. I would not ask her what happened for years.
Another night I was woken by a horrid scream from my sisters room. My Dad burst from his room and slammed her door open, picked her up and took her downstairs. It took over an hour to calm her down and a couple smores, but she finally agreed to tell us what was wrong.
She had seen the entire room soaked in blood. Top to bottom. Handprints in blood, streaks, dripping splatters. We wrote it off as a dream, but she refused to go back up for the rest of the night. Mom took a look in the room, and I caught her whisper to Dad: "That smell is there."
Finally, my encounter with whatever it was. My parents had taken my sister into town, planning on doing some shopping with her. I voiced my dismay and they said I could stay at the rented home if I wished. I whiled away some time watching Disney videos, and eventually started to read a book.
Eventually I had had enough reading. I put down the book - and my eyes shot open in surprise. Near the ceiling, slowly circling about as if it were some ethereal shark, cruised an orb, fire red and yet translucent. I didn't move as I watched it, hoping not to scare it away. Part of me was fascinated by it, as if it were as ordinary as a bird on the porch.
Then I heard the car door slam. My parents had arrived, and the orb, a trailing tail following, raced towards the wall, vanishing. "Hi Scott!" called Dad as he walked in, cooler in hand. "Anything good on TV?"
As for what happened to my Mom in the basement - when I finally did ask her years and years later, she suddenly became very still, and quietly spoke. She had intended to simply change the lightbulb downstairs, figuring the bulb had simply died and I had turned off my Gameboy in surprise and that one of us had nudged the antenna out of clear reception. So, she had taken out the old bulb and put a new one in. It didn't work. She tried a new one. It also didn't work. As she tried the remaining two bulbs, she began to smell something too, but this time it had an oily stench to it.
She figured that one of the machines in the washing room had broken, or perhaps a breaker went off or something. She put down the bulbs, and walked into the room. She shone her flashlight on the machines - nothing. Then she looked at the other end of the room - only to see it.
"It" was a short man, crouched over, a piece of maggot covered meat held in its hand. It looked at my Mom, smiled with sharp teeth and black eyes, and whispered "Hello, Laurie".
Then it sank into the floor.
Mom left in a god damn hurry after that.
My family seems to have had a history with ghosts/the unexplained, some good and some bad, but none as extreme as that. If anyone wants, I could post more.
For the first few days, things were fine. We learned the layout pretty quickly; there was a basement with a washer, dryer and a tv in a seperate room. On the main floor was the kitchen, a proper living room and bathroom. And on the second floor were the bedrooms - three in total.
One day it was particularly stormy, so there would be no trips to the beach or nature walks. My parents, really eager for as much private time as they could get, sent my sister down to the basement to watch what little tv we could recieve. My sister and I managed to get a decent version of PBS, which meant the static wasn't too bad at all (antennae only at this place). We continued to watch, I absentmindedly playing my Gameboy, my sister more enthralled by some show.
And then it all stopped. My gameboy shut off. The lightbulb popped. The tv did not go off; instead it showed nothing but static.
And then the smell.
From the other room, the one with the washer and dryer, there was a smell that is not even partially described by the word rank. Imagine a bag of rotting meat kept in the summer sun for days at end, and you can begin to imagine it. "Let's go, please" my sister whimpered. I took her hand and we walked back up.
My parents were not terribly pleased. They listened to our story, sighing as we spoke. Finally Mom smiled and said "Alright, if I go down and check, and it's all ok, will you go back down?" We agreed, knowing if anyone could make it all better, she could.
She disappeared into the black basement, flashlight in hand, replacement lightbulb box held in the other. We expected her to return quickly. She didn't. After ten minutes that stretched into eternity, she finally came back up. "Ok kids, you can can stay up here. In fact, I don't want you going down there again."
We didn't know what that meant, but accepted it gladly. Mom never went down in the room either; she insisted on doing laundry at laundromats in town. I would not ask her what happened for years.
Another night I was woken by a horrid scream from my sisters room. My Dad burst from his room and slammed her door open, picked her up and took her downstairs. It took over an hour to calm her down and a couple smores, but she finally agreed to tell us what was wrong.
She had seen the entire room soaked in blood. Top to bottom. Handprints in blood, streaks, dripping splatters. We wrote it off as a dream, but she refused to go back up for the rest of the night. Mom took a look in the room, and I caught her whisper to Dad: "That smell is there."
Finally, my encounter with whatever it was. My parents had taken my sister into town, planning on doing some shopping with her. I voiced my dismay and they said I could stay at the rented home if I wished. I whiled away some time watching Disney videos, and eventually started to read a book.
Eventually I had had enough reading. I put down the book - and my eyes shot open in surprise. Near the ceiling, slowly circling about as if it were some ethereal shark, cruised an orb, fire red and yet translucent. I didn't move as I watched it, hoping not to scare it away. Part of me was fascinated by it, as if it were as ordinary as a bird on the porch.
Then I heard the car door slam. My parents had arrived, and the orb, a trailing tail following, raced towards the wall, vanishing. "Hi Scott!" called Dad as he walked in, cooler in hand. "Anything good on TV?"
As for what happened to my Mom in the basement - when I finally did ask her years and years later, she suddenly became very still, and quietly spoke. She had intended to simply change the lightbulb downstairs, figuring the bulb had simply died and I had turned off my Gameboy in surprise and that one of us had nudged the antenna out of clear reception. So, she had taken out the old bulb and put a new one in. It didn't work. She tried a new one. It also didn't work. As she tried the remaining two bulbs, she began to smell something too, but this time it had an oily stench to it.
She figured that one of the machines in the washing room had broken, or perhaps a breaker went off or something. She put down the bulbs, and walked into the room. She shone her flashlight on the machines - nothing. Then she looked at the other end of the room - only to see it.
"It" was a short man, crouched over, a piece of maggot covered meat held in its hand. It looked at my Mom, smiled with sharp teeth and black eyes, and whispered "Hello, Laurie".
Then it sank into the floor.
Mom left in a god damn hurry after that.
My family seems to have had a history with ghosts/the unexplained, some good and some bad, but none as extreme as that. If anyone wants, I could post more.
ADDITION:
This post will be somewhat lighter in nature, but first I do have an addition to the story. Let me explain: my sister lurks, and upon discovering I had posted the story, told me there was a part of her dream I had not remember - apparently she also saw a person in her dream, but this was a tall man, with a lanky, emaciated body, long tongue and a knife in one hand. He pointed at her, and that was when she screamed.
Pentology
Posted by: The Blue L-Block
Story one - Mother
This happened twice in early and late May 2004. I was home from school one day, absolutely demolished by my allergies. I did what any other kid home from school would do - drink soup and play video games. I chose XIII, and continued to play. After a while, my soup, sitting on the sofa arm, forgotten, is very cold, so I pause the game and heat it up. After the microwave beeps, I get up from my spot at the kitchen table, and in the entryway, I hear the distinct click of shoes on tile and hear "Mama? Mama, where are you?"
Second time it happened on the 30th, I believed. I was watching The Matrix, and decided to pause it to get some water. Again, I hear that voice asking for "Mama?" again.
Story two - Pain and Suffering
This one takes place in an abandoned building.
These were the offices of the Hercules Powder Company. We used to be a dynamite town. Of course, with this line of work comethe horrible industrial accidents. Not many survived. The closest place to put the mangled bodies?
The HPC Offices, of course .
The basement was often turned into a makeshift hospital as they expired quickly, and every attempt was made to save them.
The windows on the basement are boarded, creating a lightless area. The floodlight and generator, temporarily set up in the front hall lit only the front hallway, the light leaving harsh angles through the doorways. I ventured into the basement, sans flashlight as the equipment (I was there for SWAT training) had not arrived. I'm the only one down there. Gently I work my through it, waiting to crash over a zombie or trip into a desk. The concrete reverberates under my feet. I stop in one room, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
That was when I felt footsteps, right on the other side, advancing. If you've ever seen the part of Session 9 where Mullethead is running through the dark steam tunnels, that's exactly how I felt. Was my puny little level I vest going to help? I ran through the darkness, hitting a deskchair, panting. I ran up the dark stairs, nearly pulling out the newell post. I tripped up the stairs, covered in dust.
Story three -
I can't remember when this was, probably some time in Winter 2003. I was listening to music through some headphones, very relaxed. I'm wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, typical sleepwear. I have my hands under my head, and no blankets.
A sudden touch shocks me back - cats? no. No one else is in here. It continues up the side of my chest, and at this moment, I spring across the damned room. So yes, I was inappropriately touched by something.
Story four - Jesus Christ I Think I'm in a John Bellairs Book
We have a beautiful antique clock sitting on an antique cabinet downstairs. Parents bought it at an estate sale, and I was smitten. It was still working, chiming on the quarter hour and on the hour. It stopped one day, and no one bothered to wind it. Recently, it was merrily ticking away again, and I thought, Huh, dad must have wound it. When he came home, I asked him, and he said no, he hadn't wound it since we brought it home. It ran for an hour, and then stopped. A few days later, it started up again, running for another hour, and stopping again.
Story five - Phantom Movers
Stuff never really stops sliding around in the house. A pedastal with a plant on it slid to the stairwell (good two or three feet, and this thing's not light) one morning. The organ stool (from 1880) skidded across the floor one day as I watched. The organ itself (from 1880 and incredibly fucking heavy) pulled at least six inches away from the wall one day.
Story six - Specters teach Stenography
February 4th, 2005 - I'd just gotten my ass kicked for the millionth time in RE4. Frustrated, I clomp upstairs to email a friend. Midway through the typing, the phone rings. I leave the computer with the sentence complaining about the lack of sound on the tv. I come back, and I see "Sound doesn't work.as Long Ranked" on it.
This happened twice in early and late May 2004. I was home from school one day, absolutely demolished by my allergies. I did what any other kid home from school would do - drink soup and play video games. I chose XIII, and continued to play. After a while, my soup, sitting on the sofa arm, forgotten, is very cold, so I pause the game and heat it up. After the microwave beeps, I get up from my spot at the kitchen table, and in the entryway, I hear the distinct click of shoes on tile and hear "Mama? Mama, where are you?"
Second time it happened on the 30th, I believed. I was watching The Matrix, and decided to pause it to get some water. Again, I hear that voice asking for "Mama?" again.
Story two - Pain and Suffering
This one takes place in an abandoned building.
These were the offices of the Hercules Powder Company. We used to be a dynamite town. Of course, with this line of work comethe horrible industrial accidents. Not many survived. The closest place to put the mangled bodies?
The HPC Offices, of course .
The basement was often turned into a makeshift hospital as they expired quickly, and every attempt was made to save them.
The windows on the basement are boarded, creating a lightless area. The floodlight and generator, temporarily set up in the front hall lit only the front hallway, the light leaving harsh angles through the doorways. I ventured into the basement, sans flashlight as the equipment (I was there for SWAT training) had not arrived. I'm the only one down there. Gently I work my through it, waiting to crash over a zombie or trip into a desk. The concrete reverberates under my feet. I stop in one room, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
That was when I felt footsteps, right on the other side, advancing. If you've ever seen the part of Session 9 where Mullethead is running through the dark steam tunnels, that's exactly how I felt. Was my puny little level I vest going to help? I ran through the darkness, hitting a deskchair, panting. I ran up the dark stairs, nearly pulling out the newell post. I tripped up the stairs, covered in dust.
Story three -
I can't remember when this was, probably some time in Winter 2003. I was listening to music through some headphones, very relaxed. I'm wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, typical sleepwear. I have my hands under my head, and no blankets.
A sudden touch shocks me back - cats? no. No one else is in here. It continues up the side of my chest, and at this moment, I spring across the damned room. So yes, I was inappropriately touched by something.
Story four - Jesus Christ I Think I'm in a John Bellairs Book
We have a beautiful antique clock sitting on an antique cabinet downstairs. Parents bought it at an estate sale, and I was smitten. It was still working, chiming on the quarter hour and on the hour. It stopped one day, and no one bothered to wind it. Recently, it was merrily ticking away again, and I thought, Huh, dad must have wound it. When he came home, I asked him, and he said no, he hadn't wound it since we brought it home. It ran for an hour, and then stopped. A few days later, it started up again, running for another hour, and stopping again.
Story five - Phantom Movers
Stuff never really stops sliding around in the house. A pedastal with a plant on it slid to the stairwell (good two or three feet, and this thing's not light) one morning. The organ stool (from 1880) skidded across the floor one day as I watched. The organ itself (from 1880 and incredibly fucking heavy) pulled at least six inches away from the wall one day.
Story six - Specters teach Stenography
February 4th, 2005 - I'd just gotten my ass kicked for the millionth time in RE4. Frustrated, I clomp upstairs to email a friend. Midway through the typing, the phone rings. I leave the computer with the sentence complaining about the lack of sound on the tv. I come back, and I see "Sound doesn't work.as Long Ranked" on it.
Mother?
Posted by: Nonder
Oh man, I've had so many weird occurances happen to me and my family, I could write a book...
This is pretty scary and I swear its %100 true.
When I was 19 or 20 I moved back in with my mom for a year. She had just moved into a new house in a new town, so I pretty much just let her and my sisters do what they wanted and ended up taking a small bedroom at the dead end of the hall, right next to the attic door.
Well, weird shit started happening immediately. It most frequently came in the form of "conversations". I would be in the shower, or, say, come home late one night and be in the garage smoking and hear clear as day people talking in the house or in another room, only to realize upon entering that noone is there, or everyone in the house is asleep. This also had happen to friends of mine and everyone in my family and happened on a very regular basis. Now, I know thats not that creepy, but heres where it starts to get weird.
I ended up having a discussion about it with my mom (who I should mention is very superstitious and all into occult shit and spiritual stuff), when she tells me that the guy who she bought the house from was found dead in the attic the day after the house was signed over. He was a young guy, too, apparently the death was a complete mystery. Now, I don't really know what I believe about spirits or the afterlife, but that was still pretty damn creepy.
Well, life goes on and we dealt with our little oddities, brushing it off as our "ghost". Weirder things would occur from time to time, my tv changing channels or turning off itself, waking up to find my closet door open with the light on. There was also a week or so where my littlest sister refused to sleep in her room because she was scared of the "man in the shadow", to this day she still won't elaborate on it. But the scariest thing yet happened right before I moved out.
I suppose a diagram would be helpful in telling this story, so here. This is the second floor of my mom's house, the green is the hallway:
As you can see that looking out of the door of my room, all I could see is a blank wall. Well, it was late one night and I had just about drifted to sleep, when I hear my mom outside my door whisper my name "Nik...Nik" groggily I replied. No response, so I forgot about it, then I hear her again, further down the hall, saying my name as if she needed me for something, "Nik...Nicholas!" Her calling me like this was not usual as my mom always checks on my little sisters before she goes to bed and sometimes one of might get themselves in an odd position or something and mom will need help tucking them in.
Anway, I'm wondering what shes doing in the hallway with the light off at this time of the night, so, again, I shout back "Whats up? What do you need?" ...nothing. At this point I'm kind of annoyed, so I get up, open my door and head out to see what she needs. Not its dark in the house, but theres just enough light from a moonwindow to get my bearings. As soon as i turn left around the first corner of my room, I see my mom clear as day at the end of the hallway walking swiftly from her room to my sisters room, out of view. My mom always wears a long white nightgown, and while it was too dark to really see her face, I saw the nightgown. The whole time I'm whispering loudly out at her "Mom, what did you need?" and I'm still wondering what shes doing walking around in the dark.
I walk down the hallway and turn the corner at the end to my left, expecting to see my sisters' door open and her end there but ? the door was closed. I look in their room, my sisters asleep, noone else in there...I look in the bathroom, no one in there...I'm getting weirded out now so I rush down the stairs and make a quick run around, thinking maybe she went downstairs...nada. Finally, I peek in my mom's room, and shes fucking asleep in bed.
That was definately a wtc moment.....many other weird and scary things have happened to me and my family in that house and others. This one shocks me the most, though, because as sure as I'm sitting here I heard both my moms voice and saw her plain as day, there was no speculating whatsoever that I did. It's also creepy thinking about why something would want me to follow it like that...ehh, creepy shit
This is pretty scary and I swear its %100 true.
When I was 19 or 20 I moved back in with my mom for a year. She had just moved into a new house in a new town, so I pretty much just let her and my sisters do what they wanted and ended up taking a small bedroom at the dead end of the hall, right next to the attic door.
Well, weird shit started happening immediately. It most frequently came in the form of "conversations". I would be in the shower, or, say, come home late one night and be in the garage smoking and hear clear as day people talking in the house or in another room, only to realize upon entering that noone is there, or everyone in the house is asleep. This also had happen to friends of mine and everyone in my family and happened on a very regular basis. Now, I know thats not that creepy, but heres where it starts to get weird.
I ended up having a discussion about it with my mom (who I should mention is very superstitious and all into occult shit and spiritual stuff), when she tells me that the guy who she bought the house from was found dead in the attic the day after the house was signed over. He was a young guy, too, apparently the death was a complete mystery. Now, I don't really know what I believe about spirits or the afterlife, but that was still pretty damn creepy.
Well, life goes on and we dealt with our little oddities, brushing it off as our "ghost". Weirder things would occur from time to time, my tv changing channels or turning off itself, waking up to find my closet door open with the light on. There was also a week or so where my littlest sister refused to sleep in her room because she was scared of the "man in the shadow", to this day she still won't elaborate on it. But the scariest thing yet happened right before I moved out.
I suppose a diagram would be helpful in telling this story, so here. This is the second floor of my mom's house, the green is the hallway:
As you can see that looking out of the door of my room, all I could see is a blank wall. Well, it was late one night and I had just about drifted to sleep, when I hear my mom outside my door whisper my name "Nik...Nik" groggily I replied. No response, so I forgot about it, then I hear her again, further down the hall, saying my name as if she needed me for something, "Nik...Nicholas!" Her calling me like this was not usual as my mom always checks on my little sisters before she goes to bed and sometimes one of might get themselves in an odd position or something and mom will need help tucking them in.
Anway, I'm wondering what shes doing in the hallway with the light off at this time of the night, so, again, I shout back "Whats up? What do you need?" ...nothing. At this point I'm kind of annoyed, so I get up, open my door and head out to see what she needs. Not its dark in the house, but theres just enough light from a moonwindow to get my bearings. As soon as i turn left around the first corner of my room, I see my mom clear as day at the end of the hallway walking swiftly from her room to my sisters room, out of view. My mom always wears a long white nightgown, and while it was too dark to really see her face, I saw the nightgown. The whole time I'm whispering loudly out at her "Mom, what did you need?" and I'm still wondering what shes doing walking around in the dark.
I walk down the hallway and turn the corner at the end to my left, expecting to see my sisters' door open and her end there but ? the door was closed. I look in their room, my sisters asleep, noone else in there...I look in the bathroom, no one in there...I'm getting weirded out now so I rush down the stairs and make a quick run around, thinking maybe she went downstairs...nada. Finally, I peek in my mom's room, and shes fucking asleep in bed.
That was definately a wtc moment.....many other weird and scary things have happened to me and my family in that house and others. This one shocks me the most, though, because as sure as I'm sitting here I heard both my moms voice and saw her plain as day, there was no speculating whatsoever that I did. It's also creepy thinking about why something would want me to follow it like that...ehh, creepy shit
The Lady in Blue
Posted by: SV27
Im not too good with writing, but i'll try to make this coherent...
Ive long since moved out of my old townhouse, the house i grew up in. It never agreed with most friends and family that decided to visit, nothing "looked" strange, just always gave off a creepy, nervous kind of feeling to most. I could always see it on people, fidgeting around, glancing over their shoulders while playing PS2 or whatnot, while i wouldnt tell them anything about it at first, i didnt want to be labelled a crackpot. Lights would shut off randomly, Breathing in the vents, the pitter-patter of little feet when the youngest in the house, my sister, was 13 and the cat doesnt weight any more then 2 pounds.
My girlfriend at the time was always fascinated with the house, which i think helped me coap with it through most of the eeriness. She was into witchcraft (I can guess the majority of people reading this just rolled their eyes, heh), and tryed to communicate with whatever she claimed to be in the house. She was never successful. Now, a little background, when i was younger i had this reoccuring dream of a blond lady in a blue dress with a suzy homemaker style apron lifting me up onto a kitchen countertop, viewed from the first person, when i was a toddler (in the dream). Now, this wasnt my mother, nor was it anyone i can remember knowing. One of the dreams i remember looking outside the kitchen window and seeing a war, something like the civil war with cannons and muskets and shit. Anyways, the older i got, the younger this blond motherly figure got. I stopped having the dreams when i reached 17/18. One time i skipped school to pick my GF after class, she went to a different school then i did. She was exhausted and passed out on the couch in my basement, so i quietly surfed around the internet, played a little CS. I kept hearing her muttering things under her breath. I wasnt sure at first so i got a little closer to listen. It was mostly broken speech, and thought it was probably nothing, though i was still a little concerned. I went back to the computer. 5 minutes later she wakes up just screaming her head off, which sent me flying out of the computer chair. She was hysterical, rambling on and on about a blue dress. At this point my heart sank, i told her about the dream before, but the way this happened could not have been acted, i went over it in my head enough times. She explained that a little girl in a blue dressed was trying to push her off "her" (as in the little girl's) couch and that there was no room for her (my gf) in the house. We went for a long walk outside and sat on a hill near her highschool, which is 5 minutes from my house. She returned many times afterwards, and aside from being a little skiddish, she never let it bother her. I still havent had the dream in a long time. Well like i said, ive moved out since then, and my new house is pretty normal. Ive done my ghost hunting here, and everything checks out to be phantom free. Kind of miss it in a sense, its exhilerating.
So yeah, thats one of my stories.
Ive long since moved out of my old townhouse, the house i grew up in. It never agreed with most friends and family that decided to visit, nothing "looked" strange, just always gave off a creepy, nervous kind of feeling to most. I could always see it on people, fidgeting around, glancing over their shoulders while playing PS2 or whatnot, while i wouldnt tell them anything about it at first, i didnt want to be labelled a crackpot. Lights would shut off randomly, Breathing in the vents, the pitter-patter of little feet when the youngest in the house, my sister, was 13 and the cat doesnt weight any more then 2 pounds.
My girlfriend at the time was always fascinated with the house, which i think helped me coap with it through most of the eeriness. She was into witchcraft (I can guess the majority of people reading this just rolled their eyes, heh), and tryed to communicate with whatever she claimed to be in the house. She was never successful. Now, a little background, when i was younger i had this reoccuring dream of a blond lady in a blue dress with a suzy homemaker style apron lifting me up onto a kitchen countertop, viewed from the first person, when i was a toddler (in the dream). Now, this wasnt my mother, nor was it anyone i can remember knowing. One of the dreams i remember looking outside the kitchen window and seeing a war, something like the civil war with cannons and muskets and shit. Anyways, the older i got, the younger this blond motherly figure got. I stopped having the dreams when i reached 17/18. One time i skipped school to pick my GF after class, she went to a different school then i did. She was exhausted and passed out on the couch in my basement, so i quietly surfed around the internet, played a little CS. I kept hearing her muttering things under her breath. I wasnt sure at first so i got a little closer to listen. It was mostly broken speech, and thought it was probably nothing, though i was still a little concerned. I went back to the computer. 5 minutes later she wakes up just screaming her head off, which sent me flying out of the computer chair. She was hysterical, rambling on and on about a blue dress. At this point my heart sank, i told her about the dream before, but the way this happened could not have been acted, i went over it in my head enough times. She explained that a little girl in a blue dressed was trying to push her off "her" (as in the little girl's) couch and that there was no room for her (my gf) in the house. We went for a long walk outside and sat on a hill near her highschool, which is 5 minutes from my house. She returned many times afterwards, and aside from being a little skiddish, she never let it bother her. I still havent had the dream in a long time. Well like i said, ive moved out since then, and my new house is pretty normal. Ive done my ghost hunting here, and everything checks out to be phantom free. Kind of miss it in a sense, its exhilerating.
So yeah, thats one of my stories.
Witch in the Woods
Posted by: MasterOfUnlocking
The first part of this story comes from some secondhand experience, while I was present for the second part, although I wish I wasn't.
I used to live in Washington State right in the foothills of the west side of the Cascade Mountains. This was around three years ago, June or July after my senior year in highschool. That spring, my highschool jazz band went down to Disneyland to play a concert and one day, the guitar player was telling his brother and me about this weird house that he and his friends had gone up to a couple times on Cougar Mountain. He said that the minute you get close at all, this horrible screaming would start. The first time he went up there it scared him off. The second, he was able to ignore it and take a walk around the house to get a better look at it. The house was little more than a shack, he said, with boarded up doors and windows. The only look he got at any inhabitants was this old lady that peered over one of the wood planks. He said the screaming never stopped, but when he saw her face, it was clearly not she who was making the noise. He told us that she was a witch.
I didn't believe him.
That summer, I was working at a party supply store when the phone rang. It was a friend of mine, Tom, who had heard the story. He told me that after I was done working, he and I would go up to the house and see ourselves. I wasn't doing anything else that night, so I agreed. After I closed up the store, I saw him in his truck waiting for me. I got in and we headed up towards the mountain. At first there wasn't much to mention, just a zoo, a school, and housing developments. After a while though, things seemed a little less normal. Most striking was that we hit a point after the housing that all the plant life died. We looked around and we could not see any green in the forest on either side of the road. A little creepy, especially for summer. We kept on heading up the mountain and eventually came to a dead end. After a little looking around, we found a gravel road, barely wide enough to fit his truck.
After turning into the road, we could see the end of it, and we could see that it went nowhere. All around the road were dead trees and plants. It took us a few seconds of looking until we saw a pallet laying on the ground inside the woods direcly outside the driver's side. I turned on a flashlight that we had brought along and saw a little wooden sign, pounded into the ground that said, "Leave Parcels Here. Don't Come Into Woods." To the left of the pallet and sign I saw signs of a makeshift path into the woods. I told Tom to roll his window down and I shined the flashlight down the path as far as it would go. The light revealed a shack, probably not 20 feet from us. The windows and doors were boarded up. In front of the house was an old car. It was covered in rust and it looked like it had no tires, from what I could tell. The passenger side window was shattered and it looked like some kind of cans were poaring out from the interior. I turned off the flashlight and Tom suggested that we get out of the car and look around.
Then we heard the scream. It was more horrible then it was ever described to me. It sounded like two women, and did not stop for over a minute although it was completely unchanging in volume or pitch.
I immediately turned my light back on and looked around the car. Slightly in the woods in front of us was an old lady dressed in an extremely dirty white dress just standing. I yelled at Tom to get us out of there, and he tried to find his keys. The lady just stood there amidst the screams, although her mouth was shut tight in a scowl. Tom finally found his keys and started the car. When the headlights went on, the old lady began to walk towards us, slowly. With every step, her left hand rose slightly, seemingly to reach out for the car, or us. I couldn't take my eyes off her as Tom backed up, and out of the gravel road. As soon as we were back on the road, speeding away from that house in the woods, I saw the woman appear at the gravel enterance, only to turn back, finally ending the screams.
Neither of us ever went back.
I used to live in Washington State right in the foothills of the west side of the Cascade Mountains. This was around three years ago, June or July after my senior year in highschool. That spring, my highschool jazz band went down to Disneyland to play a concert and one day, the guitar player was telling his brother and me about this weird house that he and his friends had gone up to a couple times on Cougar Mountain. He said that the minute you get close at all, this horrible screaming would start. The first time he went up there it scared him off. The second, he was able to ignore it and take a walk around the house to get a better look at it. The house was little more than a shack, he said, with boarded up doors and windows. The only look he got at any inhabitants was this old lady that peered over one of the wood planks. He said the screaming never stopped, but when he saw her face, it was clearly not she who was making the noise. He told us that she was a witch.
I didn't believe him.
That summer, I was working at a party supply store when the phone rang. It was a friend of mine, Tom, who had heard the story. He told me that after I was done working, he and I would go up to the house and see ourselves. I wasn't doing anything else that night, so I agreed. After I closed up the store, I saw him in his truck waiting for me. I got in and we headed up towards the mountain. At first there wasn't much to mention, just a zoo, a school, and housing developments. After a while though, things seemed a little less normal. Most striking was that we hit a point after the housing that all the plant life died. We looked around and we could not see any green in the forest on either side of the road. A little creepy, especially for summer. We kept on heading up the mountain and eventually came to a dead end. After a little looking around, we found a gravel road, barely wide enough to fit his truck.
After turning into the road, we could see the end of it, and we could see that it went nowhere. All around the road were dead trees and plants. It took us a few seconds of looking until we saw a pallet laying on the ground inside the woods direcly outside the driver's side. I turned on a flashlight that we had brought along and saw a little wooden sign, pounded into the ground that said, "Leave Parcels Here. Don't Come Into Woods." To the left of the pallet and sign I saw signs of a makeshift path into the woods. I told Tom to roll his window down and I shined the flashlight down the path as far as it would go. The light revealed a shack, probably not 20 feet from us. The windows and doors were boarded up. In front of the house was an old car. It was covered in rust and it looked like it had no tires, from what I could tell. The passenger side window was shattered and it looked like some kind of cans were poaring out from the interior. I turned off the flashlight and Tom suggested that we get out of the car and look around.
Then we heard the scream. It was more horrible then it was ever described to me. It sounded like two women, and did not stop for over a minute although it was completely unchanging in volume or pitch.
I immediately turned my light back on and looked around the car. Slightly in the woods in front of us was an old lady dressed in an extremely dirty white dress just standing. I yelled at Tom to get us out of there, and he tried to find his keys. The lady just stood there amidst the screams, although her mouth was shut tight in a scowl. Tom finally found his keys and started the car. When the headlights went on, the old lady began to walk towards us, slowly. With every step, her left hand rose slightly, seemingly to reach out for the car, or us. I couldn't take my eyes off her as Tom backed up, and out of the gravel road. As soon as we were back on the road, speeding away from that house in the woods, I saw the woman appear at the gravel enterance, only to turn back, finally ending the screams.
Neither of us ever went back.
Drainlady
Posted by: Kendrik
My father was a military man. Retired back in '95 from the Navy after 20 years of proud service to our country. But before that, we moved often... every 3-4 years or thereabouts we'd pack up and get shipped somewhere new. Early 1989, a wonderful opportunity arose and dad took it. A 16 hour flight later, and we were stationed at N.A.S Sigonella, Sicily. I guess I was about, ohhh 10 or 11 at the time. Those years were blurred save those pinpricks of memory that still haunt me. That still plague my dreams from time to time.
Our first home there was an apartment in a complex called "Bellavista" far from the Naval base. There was a waiting list to move into Base Housing that generally ran for about a year and a half's wait. Until your time to move, you had to live amongst the locals wherever you could. Bellavista was a beautiful place... we lived on the upper floor of the complex and had a wonderful view of the countryside off our back balcony. At night, one could look up at the night sky and see a thin trail of fiery red lava slowly ebbing from still active Mt. Etna. And in the morning, everything left out in the open was often found to be blanketed ever so slightly in volcanic ash, almost like a light dusting of snow.
But naturally, as perfectly nice as Bellavista was, it wasn't meant for us for long. The lnadlord's daughter was pregnant, engaged... and homeless. Guess who got the boot? So we moved, with the landlord's assistance, into another home. Motta S. Anastasia, a little cobblestone-streeted town near Catania, and much closer to the Navy base. The day we drove up to the new place, I felt ill. Of course, nothing was thought of this at the time, but I'd swear in retrospect I was being told something. The place was a 3 story house with an apartment on each floor. I really don't remember the neighbors, but both were similarly Navy families. And I can imagine I pissed them off a lot with the screaming.
Dad unlocked the door and proceeded into the small entryway. The cobblestone street gave way to a marbled floor entrance and a matching set of marble stairs up to the second floor, which was our new home. The place was stunningly beautiful. Marble floors... glass french doors into the living room area... balconies attached to nearly every room, save the one that was to be mine. Claw foot bathtub...bidet... all the modern conveniences expected of a home in Europe.
I walked into the room that was going to be mine. Small, simple, square and quite cold. To the left, at the end of the wall was a door covered with a "persiana." Basically, a form of window blinds made from heavy horizontal flaps that was operated via a cloth strap attached to the wall. I pulled it up to see that the door was mostly glass and beyond it was a very small "room" lined with brick along the floor and walls. I opened the door and stepped into the room and looked up to discover the room extended all the way up through the third floor and up to a hole in the roof. There was no covering on the hole either... it went straight into open air. The shaft allowed a fair amount of light to shine into the only room in the house without a window in it, which I thought was pretty damn cool initially.
The chill seemed to come from the room, despite the glaring sun nearly directly overhead. It was then I heard the first whispers. Like... if you were to take a wire brush and softly rub the stiff bristles against your jeans. At the time, I attributed it to echoes off the brick... but I couldn't help but feel weird about it. It wasn't coming from any discernable direction or source... but it surrounded me like a blanket, as if sound could be tangible and touchable. It pressed in gently on my ears like pressure on an aircraft ascending or descending. I turned to leave and I noticed a glinting drain in the middle of the floor. It was obviously for rainwater to drain away but my nausea increased when I saw it. My stomach gnawed at itself as I ran out of there and I swear I saw the drain cover jiggle a bit on my way out. I lowered the persiana quickly and rejoined the family in the living room, shaking and sick as a dog.
Now granted... a little brick room was far from the norm for paranormal ghosty stuff. But try telling that to whatever was in there. Christ. For weeks and weeks, I'd get up the nerve to open the persiana in broad daylight and risk a peek... only to stumble back from the door sick as all hell to my stomach and trembling. I tried telling my parents of course... but an 11 year old's ramblings about a scary brick room generally get chalked up to too many "Freddy" and "Jason" movies. The whisperings rarely stopped at night. They were persistent from the time I laid down until I finally forced myself into slumber. Often, I'd wake up in the middle of the night to silence, and then the whisperings would start up again, as if it was waiting to make sure I was awake.
There was never any real words to the whispering... just a hollow "ksssh sshhhaww hissssshhhhh haaahhh ooooshhhh aaashhhhh" that seemed to repeat, but never in the same cadence. There was no emotion behind it either that I can remember. It wasn't angry, it wasn't sad nor happy. Just there. Always fucking there.
One night, after about 2 months of this, I was awoken by a particularly horrifying dream. I seemed to start having those dreams after we moved in... I had never had constant nightmares prior. But I awoke from the dream with the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Immediately my eyes darted to the door... and saw that the persiana was up. Now, European goons with experience, back me up... Persianas are about the noisiest damn things to have in a house. They're generally metal slats hooked in with metal hooks that grind and squeak loudly in protest as they're pulled open. There was no way in hell that the persiana, which was always closed, could have been opened without waking up everyone in the house. But sure enough, it was open about 3/4 of the way up the damned door. A bit of moonlight reflected off the bricks in the shaft and into my room with a dull bluish tone. I lay there for hours, paralyzed in my bed, but unable to look away from the door, lest there be something there when I looked back. Eventually, I just conked out...
The next morning crept up finally and I was freed from my paralysis. I ran to the door amidst a wave of nausea and pulled the persiana shut as fast as I could. There was a light dusting of volcanic ash on the brick floor and I'd swear I could make out footprints or scuffing in it. Mom, still asleep at the time, yelled at me from across the hall after hearing the noise, but I couldn't care less.
Over the course of the next 3 months, it was the same routine. The whisperings never faltered. The persiana would be found at least 2 to 3 times a week opened, and the blackness of the room would stare out at me in my bed. Then one night, it was different. I still have nightmares of this incident and it makes me cringe and want to curl up in a ball still whenever I conjure it up. I had awoken again in the midst of a terrible nightmare. And sure enough, the persiana was up, but this time it was all the way up. The moonlight was barely filtering in that night, but I'd swear I could make out something there in the room. It felt like I was at just the right angle for me to see whatever it was, and if I were to move the slightest bit, I'd lose sight of it. It was a small sphere that shimmered like a soap bubble does. But it was so faint I could barely make it out. I watched as it hovered there for the longest time. It began to shrink like some TVs used to do when you turned them off... shrink into a tiny dot of light.
But before it winked out, it flashed and expanded. It did so at an alarmingly fast rate and solidified into the form of a woman. She looked to be in her early to mid thirties, dark curly hair... definitely a local Sicilian. When she became "whole" and a solid image, she began shrieking and pounding on the glass doors with both fists. Her head swiveled wrong on her neck, shaking back and forth like if you put a teakettle on a stick and shook the stick around. Her eyes were completely black and full of anger and hatred... The skin around her mouth flapped loosely, giving me glimpses of her teeth and tongue and her hair was tossing around violently. Some sort of liquid oozed in small spurts from the corners of her mouth and flecks of whatever it was flew as she shrieked. Her screaming was horrific and nonsensical, and all I could do was scream back. My dad charged into the room to my bed, thinking I was having a nightmare. She shrank back from the door and... ugh. She slithered down the drain somehow. She twisted and distorted and I'd swear I could hear her bones splintering and cracking as she wound herself down into it. It was awful and to this day, dad says he's never heard anyone scream so inhumanly before. I often ask him jokingly if he meant from me or her.
My father was a military man. Retired back in '95 from the Navy after 20 years of proud service to our country. But before that, we moved often... every 3-4 years or thereabouts we'd pack up and get shipped somewhere new. Early 1989, a wonderful opportunity arose and dad took it. A 16 hour flight later, and we were stationed at N.A.S Sigonella, Sicily. I guess I was about, ohhh 10 or 11 at the time. Those years were blurred save those pinpricks of memory that still haunt me. That still plague my dreams from time to time.
Our first home there was an apartment in a complex called "Bellavista" far from the Naval base. There was a waiting list to move into Base Housing that generally ran for about a year and a half's wait. Until your time to move, you had to live amongst the locals wherever you could. Bellavista was a beautiful place... we lived on the upper floor of the complex and had a wonderful view of the countryside off our back balcony. At night, one could look up at the night sky and see a thin trail of fiery red lava slowly ebbing from still active Mt. Etna. And in the morning, everything left out in the open was often found to be blanketed ever so slightly in volcanic ash, almost like a light dusting of snow.
But naturally, as perfectly nice as Bellavista was, it wasn't meant for us for long. The lnadlord's daughter was pregnant, engaged... and homeless. Guess who got the boot? So we moved, with the landlord's assistance, into another home. Motta S. Anastasia, a little cobblestone-streeted town near Catania, and much closer to the Navy base. The day we drove up to the new place, I felt ill. Of course, nothing was thought of this at the time, but I'd swear in retrospect I was being told something. The place was a 3 story house with an apartment on each floor. I really don't remember the neighbors, but both were similarly Navy families. And I can imagine I pissed them off a lot with the screaming.
Dad unlocked the door and proceeded into the small entryway. The cobblestone street gave way to a marbled floor entrance and a matching set of marble stairs up to the second floor, which was our new home. The place was stunningly beautiful. Marble floors... glass french doors into the living room area... balconies attached to nearly every room, save the one that was to be mine. Claw foot bathtub...bidet... all the modern conveniences expected of a home in Europe.
I walked into the room that was going to be mine. Small, simple, square and quite cold. To the left, at the end of the wall was a door covered with a "persiana." Basically, a form of window blinds made from heavy horizontal flaps that was operated via a cloth strap attached to the wall. I pulled it up to see that the door was mostly glass and beyond it was a very small "room" lined with brick along the floor and walls. I opened the door and stepped into the room and looked up to discover the room extended all the way up through the third floor and up to a hole in the roof. There was no covering on the hole either... it went straight into open air. The shaft allowed a fair amount of light to shine into the only room in the house without a window in it, which I thought was pretty damn cool initially.
The chill seemed to come from the room, despite the glaring sun nearly directly overhead. It was then I heard the first whispers. Like... if you were to take a wire brush and softly rub the stiff bristles against your jeans. At the time, I attributed it to echoes off the brick... but I couldn't help but feel weird about it. It wasn't coming from any discernable direction or source... but it surrounded me like a blanket, as if sound could be tangible and touchable. It pressed in gently on my ears like pressure on an aircraft ascending or descending. I turned to leave and I noticed a glinting drain in the middle of the floor. It was obviously for rainwater to drain away but my nausea increased when I saw it. My stomach gnawed at itself as I ran out of there and I swear I saw the drain cover jiggle a bit on my way out. I lowered the persiana quickly and rejoined the family in the living room, shaking and sick as a dog.
Now granted... a little brick room was far from the norm for paranormal ghosty stuff. But try telling that to whatever was in there. Christ. For weeks and weeks, I'd get up the nerve to open the persiana in broad daylight and risk a peek... only to stumble back from the door sick as all hell to my stomach and trembling. I tried telling my parents of course... but an 11 year old's ramblings about a scary brick room generally get chalked up to too many "Freddy" and "Jason" movies. The whisperings rarely stopped at night. They were persistent from the time I laid down until I finally forced myself into slumber. Often, I'd wake up in the middle of the night to silence, and then the whisperings would start up again, as if it was waiting to make sure I was awake.
There was never any real words to the whispering... just a hollow "ksssh sshhhaww hissssshhhhh haaahhh ooooshhhh aaashhhhh" that seemed to repeat, but never in the same cadence. There was no emotion behind it either that I can remember. It wasn't angry, it wasn't sad nor happy. Just there. Always fucking there.
One night, after about 2 months of this, I was awoken by a particularly horrifying dream. I seemed to start having those dreams after we moved in... I had never had constant nightmares prior. But I awoke from the dream with the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Immediately my eyes darted to the door... and saw that the persiana was up. Now, European goons with experience, back me up... Persianas are about the noisiest damn things to have in a house. They're generally metal slats hooked in with metal hooks that grind and squeak loudly in protest as they're pulled open. There was no way in hell that the persiana, which was always closed, could have been opened without waking up everyone in the house. But sure enough, it was open about 3/4 of the way up the damned door. A bit of moonlight reflected off the bricks in the shaft and into my room with a dull bluish tone. I lay there for hours, paralyzed in my bed, but unable to look away from the door, lest there be something there when I looked back. Eventually, I just conked out...
The next morning crept up finally and I was freed from my paralysis. I ran to the door amidst a wave of nausea and pulled the persiana shut as fast as I could. There was a light dusting of volcanic ash on the brick floor and I'd swear I could make out footprints or scuffing in it. Mom, still asleep at the time, yelled at me from across the hall after hearing the noise, but I couldn't care less.
Over the course of the next 3 months, it was the same routine. The whisperings never faltered. The persiana would be found at least 2 to 3 times a week opened, and the blackness of the room would stare out at me in my bed. Then one night, it was different. I still have nightmares of this incident and it makes me cringe and want to curl up in a ball still whenever I conjure it up. I had awoken again in the midst of a terrible nightmare. And sure enough, the persiana was up, but this time it was all the way up. The moonlight was barely filtering in that night, but I'd swear I could make out something there in the room. It felt like I was at just the right angle for me to see whatever it was, and if I were to move the slightest bit, I'd lose sight of it. It was a small sphere that shimmered like a soap bubble does. But it was so faint I could barely make it out. I watched as it hovered there for the longest time. It began to shrink like some TVs used to do when you turned them off... shrink into a tiny dot of light.
But before it winked out, it flashed and expanded. It did so at an alarmingly fast rate and solidified into the form of a woman. She looked to be in her early to mid thirties, dark curly hair... definitely a local Sicilian. When she became "whole" and a solid image, she began shrieking and pounding on the glass doors with both fists. Her head swiveled wrong on her neck, shaking back and forth like if you put a teakettle on a stick and shook the stick around. Her eyes were completely black and full of anger and hatred... The skin around her mouth flapped loosely, giving me glimpses of her teeth and tongue and her hair was tossing around violently. Some sort of liquid oozed in small spurts from the corners of her mouth and flecks of whatever it was flew as she shrieked. Her screaming was horrific and nonsensical, and all I could do was scream back. My dad charged into the room to my bed, thinking I was having a nightmare. She shrank back from the door and... ugh. She slithered down the drain somehow. She twisted and distorted and I'd swear I could hear her bones splintering and cracking as she wound herself down into it. It was awful and to this day, dad says he's never heard anyone scream so inhumanly before. I often ask him jokingly if he meant from me or her.
Ghosts, Guns, and You
Posted by: ChuckMaster
I don't like telling this one to people I know, since it either makes them afraid for my safety or sanity, but the goons here might find it interesting.
I live in a duplex with a hard wood floor. It's not a very old house but it creaks all the freakin time. It's two floors, with a basement/garage and an attic too low to stand up in. The weird thing about the attic is that you can only get to it from the closet and through an access panel.
Last year I woke up to a loud noise. Now granted, in my neighborhood people come home at 3 am, party, and to make things worse I can hear my neighbor walking around since the house creaks. So it's usually a loud car door, a door slam, and sometimes the domestic fight. The year before that the other side was broken into, so I was on my guard.
Now normally, I have learned to tune myself out, since often I would get scared, search the house with a weapon, and then feel stupid and paranoid afterwards. Nevertheless, I keep a 45 inside the bed's two small sliding drawers, one side keeping the gun and the other keeping the ammo (I don't load a gun unless I'm using it.)
Well, so I'm wide awake in my bed, and I heard another bang. I turn on my reading light, and then I walk over and turn on my bedroom and hall light on. I peer over the stairs and I just listen. I hear it again, but I'm having trouble pin pointing it. And it's loud enough to cause me concern. So I walk downstairs in my boxers, check the living room door, check the kitchen door, and everything is fine.
I have the dishwasher in front of my kitchen door which blocks it from opening. Rather than pulling that away I flicker the basement light on a few times, figuring that would freak out an intruder. I hear nothing. So as I walk back up stairs I hear it again, but I attribute to my neighbor walking around again.
So as I turn off all but my reading light I hear it loud and clear. It's above me. I then hear slow footsteps moving about, and some small shuffling. I wait for a moment while listening to it, making sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.
I grab my 45 from the head of the bed and push the clip in. I turn on the light again and I open up the closet door and turn it on. The noise continues, but seems startled now since the pacing of the footsteps increase.
I push my clothes aside that are handing and I proceed to tear away the empty boxes I placed in front of the access door (I was meaning to put these in the attic but I got lazy.) My heart is racing, I'm half terrified and half hoping to catch the intruder before he gets away.
I pull open the attic door and reach for the chain light. The light comes on, and I hear footsteps and stumbling on the other side of the attic, opposite of the small staircase.
Now, there still isn't a lot of light in the attic with the naked bulb, so I reach outside the closet and grab a flashlight I had on a small dresser. I crawl onto the shelf that the boxes were on and shine the flashlight in the direction of the noises, while keeping me safely hidden in the staircase. The noises continue as I blindly shine it on the far side of the attic. So I slowly crawl on the first step and rise to poke my head above the attic floor.
My flashlight is shining on a white figure. It's skinny and lanky and it’s hunched over like an ape. At first I'm thinking it some crack head that crawled on my roof and somehow found a way in my tiny attic but couldn't figure out how to get out. So I yell at the guy, asking him how he got in here. He just stares at me with these black eyes. I didn't know if he was naked or just wearing underwear, and at this point I'm just pissed and disgusted. I put the flash light down, figuring the light in his face may be scaring him more than I need to. After that he still isn't moving or talking. So I yell at him again, telling him he needs to get the fuck out of here.
Well, the white figure stands up, as much as he could in that little space, and strikes a pose that reminds me of a bull about to charge. I can hear the joists creak as he shifts his weight.
I chamber the gun and point it just below his feet. I'm doing my best to breathe slowly to keep myself calm. I tell him he needs to sit down and tell me how he got in or how he plans on getting the hell out of here. I tell him I have a loaded 45 on him and he'd better sit down.
He starts making slow strides towards me. He takes about two steps, each one creaking the floor boards, exaggerating each sound. I start to squeeze the trigger and I am damning the slow trigger pull on this cheap browning knock-off. He takes a third step, he's halfway across the attic, and I'm aiming at his legs. The gun finally goes off.
Now there is a loud band, the shell ejects and bounces off my face, slightly burning me, and the attic fills with dust. My hearing goes away for a moment and I can smell the gun powder.
A moment later the dust starts to clear, but there's now a white cloud where the figure was, and that clears away as well. At first I think I'm seeing things or going crazy, but I'm alone in the attic and I just fired a gun in a residential neighborhood. I uncock the gun and set it down. I pick up the flashlight and check every corner of the attic. I don't see a damn thing. I check the small window above me, but it's intact. There seems to be no way in or out other than the stairwell I'm standing in which I had to clear crap out of my closet to get to.
I walk over to where the white figure was standing. I look down and I see black footprints on the joists. I trace the prints and see that they seemed to have moved back and forth the attic several times. There were even prints on the stairs.
I peer down at one and poke it. They're made of some soft, black mud and the smell like shit. I look down at myself and I seemed to have kneeled in it when I was on the stairs and didn't notice until now.
So leave the attic and head to the bathroom to clean up, I'm still in disbelief of everything that had just happened. Then the front door starts pounding.
It's the police and they're pissed. My neighbor called them when she heard the shot. I let them in, and there are three of them. I tell them I saw an intruder, shot at him, and tell them where the gun is and how many rounds are still left.
So they sit me down on the couch and two go to check upstairs. This takes them maybe ten minutes. I can hear them muttering amongst themselves and they don't sound happy. They come back down and start drilling me to go over my story several times. I mention the foot prints, and they said they say them, but if someone was in the attic they're gone now. Then they start asking if I've been drinking or on drugs or medication. I tell them no, and that I'm drug tested at work.
So they have a pow-wow outside with one babysitting me inside. I can see a few neighbors trying to peak into the open front door from across the street. I'm tired, pissed and embarrassed as all hell. I'm in my damn underwear with a tiny burn on my face and shit smeared on my legs that's half washed off.
So one sergeant comes in, gives me a speech about gun safety and how I could have hurt someone, and tells me they're going to call me to come to court and issue a citation. They don't leave until I give them a trigger lock to put on the gun and close it in its case.
So I'm awake the rest of the night. In the morning I check out the attic again. The foot prints are still there but the wood has absorbed most of it. I look at the window again and wonder if there was any possible way anyone could have got through it.
I take one last look and I notice something in the corner. There is the skeleton of a rat or other small rodent. Its head is crushed and its back legs are torn off. There are some tiny bits of rotted fur or flesh around it.
I reluctantly clean it up.
So a year later, the cops never called me back, and I'm moving out of that place.
I don't like telling this one to people I know, since it either makes them afraid for my safety or sanity, but the goons here might find it interesting.
I live in a duplex with a hard wood floor. It's not a very old house but it creaks all the freakin time. It's two floors, with a basement/garage and an attic too low to stand up in. The weird thing about the attic is that you can only get to it from the closet and through an access panel.
Last year I woke up to a loud noise. Now granted, in my neighborhood people come home at 3 am, party, and to make things worse I can hear my neighbor walking around since the house creaks. So it's usually a loud car door, a door slam, and sometimes the domestic fight. The year before that the other side was broken into, so I was on my guard.
Now normally, I have learned to tune myself out, since often I would get scared, search the house with a weapon, and then feel stupid and paranoid afterwards. Nevertheless, I keep a 45 inside the bed's two small sliding drawers, one side keeping the gun and the other keeping the ammo (I don't load a gun unless I'm using it.)
Well, so I'm wide awake in my bed, and I heard another bang. I turn on my reading light, and then I walk over and turn on my bedroom and hall light on. I peer over the stairs and I just listen. I hear it again, but I'm having trouble pin pointing it. And it's loud enough to cause me concern. So I walk downstairs in my boxers, check the living room door, check the kitchen door, and everything is fine.
I have the dishwasher in front of my kitchen door which blocks it from opening. Rather than pulling that away I flicker the basement light on a few times, figuring that would freak out an intruder. I hear nothing. So as I walk back up stairs I hear it again, but I attribute to my neighbor walking around again.
So as I turn off all but my reading light I hear it loud and clear. It's above me. I then hear slow footsteps moving about, and some small shuffling. I wait for a moment while listening to it, making sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.
I grab my 45 from the head of the bed and push the clip in. I turn on the light again and I open up the closet door and turn it on. The noise continues, but seems startled now since the pacing of the footsteps increase.
I push my clothes aside that are handing and I proceed to tear away the empty boxes I placed in front of the access door (I was meaning to put these in the attic but I got lazy.) My heart is racing, I'm half terrified and half hoping to catch the intruder before he gets away.
I pull open the attic door and reach for the chain light. The light comes on, and I hear footsteps and stumbling on the other side of the attic, opposite of the small staircase.
Now, there still isn't a lot of light in the attic with the naked bulb, so I reach outside the closet and grab a flashlight I had on a small dresser. I crawl onto the shelf that the boxes were on and shine the flashlight in the direction of the noises, while keeping me safely hidden in the staircase. The noises continue as I blindly shine it on the far side of the attic. So I slowly crawl on the first step and rise to poke my head above the attic floor.
My flashlight is shining on a white figure. It's skinny and lanky and it’s hunched over like an ape. At first I'm thinking it some crack head that crawled on my roof and somehow found a way in my tiny attic but couldn't figure out how to get out. So I yell at the guy, asking him how he got in here. He just stares at me with these black eyes. I didn't know if he was naked or just wearing underwear, and at this point I'm just pissed and disgusted. I put the flash light down, figuring the light in his face may be scaring him more than I need to. After that he still isn't moving or talking. So I yell at him again, telling him he needs to get the fuck out of here.
Well, the white figure stands up, as much as he could in that little space, and strikes a pose that reminds me of a bull about to charge. I can hear the joists creak as he shifts his weight.
I chamber the gun and point it just below his feet. I'm doing my best to breathe slowly to keep myself calm. I tell him he needs to sit down and tell me how he got in or how he plans on getting the hell out of here. I tell him I have a loaded 45 on him and he'd better sit down.
He starts making slow strides towards me. He takes about two steps, each one creaking the floor boards, exaggerating each sound. I start to squeeze the trigger and I am damning the slow trigger pull on this cheap browning knock-off. He takes a third step, he's halfway across the attic, and I'm aiming at his legs. The gun finally goes off.
Now there is a loud band, the shell ejects and bounces off my face, slightly burning me, and the attic fills with dust. My hearing goes away for a moment and I can smell the gun powder.
A moment later the dust starts to clear, but there's now a white cloud where the figure was, and that clears away as well. At first I think I'm seeing things or going crazy, but I'm alone in the attic and I just fired a gun in a residential neighborhood. I uncock the gun and set it down. I pick up the flashlight and check every corner of the attic. I don't see a damn thing. I check the small window above me, but it's intact. There seems to be no way in or out other than the stairwell I'm standing in which I had to clear crap out of my closet to get to.
I walk over to where the white figure was standing. I look down and I see black footprints on the joists. I trace the prints and see that they seemed to have moved back and forth the attic several times. There were even prints on the stairs.
I peer down at one and poke it. They're made of some soft, black mud and the smell like shit. I look down at myself and I seemed to have kneeled in it when I was on the stairs and didn't notice until now.
So leave the attic and head to the bathroom to clean up, I'm still in disbelief of everything that had just happened. Then the front door starts pounding.
It's the police and they're pissed. My neighbor called them when she heard the shot. I let them in, and there are three of them. I tell them I saw an intruder, shot at him, and tell them where the gun is and how many rounds are still left.
So they sit me down on the couch and two go to check upstairs. This takes them maybe ten minutes. I can hear them muttering amongst themselves and they don't sound happy. They come back down and start drilling me to go over my story several times. I mention the foot prints, and they said they say them, but if someone was in the attic they're gone now. Then they start asking if I've been drinking or on drugs or medication. I tell them no, and that I'm drug tested at work.
So they have a pow-wow outside with one babysitting me inside. I can see a few neighbors trying to peak into the open front door from across the street. I'm tired, pissed and embarrassed as all hell. I'm in my damn underwear with a tiny burn on my face and shit smeared on my legs that's half washed off.
So one sergeant comes in, gives me a speech about gun safety and how I could have hurt someone, and tells me they're going to call me to come to court and issue a citation. They don't leave until I give them a trigger lock to put on the gun and close it in its case.
So I'm awake the rest of the night. In the morning I check out the attic again. The foot prints are still there but the wood has absorbed most of it. I look at the window again and wonder if there was any possible way anyone could have got through it.
I take one last look and I notice something in the corner. There is the skeleton of a rat or other small rodent. Its head is crushed and its back legs are torn off. There are some tiny bits of rotted fur or flesh around it.
I reluctantly clean it up.
So a year later, the cops never called me back, and I'm moving out of that place.
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