Things That Go Bump in the Night

How do I explain this? If I tell you, will you please believe me? I hope you will. Call me crazy, call me sane, call me a believer, call me an attention seeker, call me whatever you please. But I beg of you to listen to what I tell you, because they’re real. They’re very real. As real as my shaking hands as I write this. The things that go bump in the night, the monsters under your bed, the thing in your closet, the creature with the red eyes watching you as you sleep, the things that haunted your childhood, the things that may still haunt you now. They are all real, and I’m about to tell you how I know, so please listen and take my advice: they feed off of negative emotions, fear, jealousy, anger, hatred, envy, sadness, loneliness, anything negative, they love it. Don’t let them know you’re scared it only makes them stronger. They’re all like that, but there’s one in particular that’s the worst about it. And this creature that I’m about to tell you about is one of them, one of the worst things you can imagine. And they’re real. Now listen closely as I tell you how I know.

It runs in my family. A sixth sense that some call ‘a psychic ability’. It comes in different forms; seeing the future, seeing the past, knowing the good, knowing the bad, sensing danger when it’s close by, lifting things without touching them, even being able to control thoughts and actions. Some are far more powerful than others, but not everybody has one of these abilities. There is one final form it takes, the ability to sense, see, and communicate with the dead. That is what runs in my family. Ever since I as little, I could walk into a house and tell you if someone died there or not, and tell you how they died, who they were, when they died, how old they were, what they looked like, if they were good or bad, anything. Of course only my mother believed me. She could tell too. My great aunt would have believed me too, if she were still alive. That’s how my mother and I knew it ran in the family, my great aunt had it. She would help the police find people and places and things when they had no more leads. She could bring them right to the spot they needed. She could see the past and the future, but only if it was bad. For example, she warned my grandparents not to move into this certain white house they were looking to buy. Well, they bought it, and my mother was attacked by the neighbor. She told them not to buy a certain red car. What did they do? They bought that red car. And what happened? It blew up the moment they stepped out of it, they were all alive, but burned and bloody. Nobody wanted to believe her, just like nobody wanted to believe my mother and I when we knew something was wrong. They called us crazy, but we aren’t and I can prove it.

I didn’t know I had this ability until I was about six, when we moved in with my step-grandparents. My mother didn’t like the house, neither did I. The room I got used to be my step uncle’s room. It was an old house, and there were two old crawl-spaces for storage in the room. They were fascinating to me. They were like little caves that I could crawl into and play in. My mother wouldn’t let me in them, though, she said it’s because there was lead paint in them, and she didn’t want me getting some on my hands and accidentally swallowing some. I listened, knowing it was possible because I always had, (and still do) bitten my fingernails. If I was playing and some got on my hands and I didn’t notice and bit my fingernails, my mom said I would have to go to the hospital. So I always listened. I was a good little girl and listened to my mother, always.

Of course, I know now that the lead paint wasn’t what my mother didn’t like about the crawl spaces. I never knew that she could feel it too. Feel that strange presence coming from them. The feelings of sadness and fear. It was almost overwhelming, but it was so knew, that it drew me near them.

Anyways, when we moved in, my boxes of old toys were put in the crawl spaces, and I usually just played on the floor. The crawl spaces were never what really scared me in that house. No. What really scared me was the closet. I wouldn’t go near it. I wouldn’t play with my back turned to it. I wouldn’t even sleep facing away from it. I hated it. Even in the daylight, it scared me. Why did it scare me so much? It was because at night, it would slide open, by itself, slowly, creaking on its old hinges as it did so. I would cower under my blankets, petrified. I would hear raspy breathing coming from it, like there was some ill, injured person trying to crawl out. Trying to be a brave little girl, I would jump out of bed, dash over to it, and slam it shut, then I would jump back into my bed and watch the door. Slowly, it would slide open again. I couldn’t sleep sometimes for nights on end.

Thankfully, we were to be moving out soon.

About a week before we moved out, the night time activity in my closet got worse. The door would open faster, and more violently. It knew I would be leaving soon. The day before we left, I went outside and got a large rock. I painted it with a little pony and a field and flowers and sunshine. It was something that made me, a six year old little girl who loved horses, a little less afraid. I put it in front of my closet door that night, confident that the heavy stone would stop it from opening. I could not have been more wrong.
At about three in the morning that night, I awoke to the loud sound of stone scraping wood, and instinctively looked towards my closet. The large rock that I had put in front of the closet door was doing nothing to stop it from opening. A single bloody hand came around the corner of the door, and I screamed and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and down into the basement and jumped into bed with my mother and step father. I told them I’d had a nightmare. They fell back asleep before I did, and the TV switched on and off all night. I didn’t sleep. We moved out the next day.

I was eight by the time we moved into the next house. My brother Ethan had just been born, my step father had just gotten home from his service in Iraq, and my mother was about to live her dream of owning an old colonial house.

Considering it was over two hundred years old, there was surprisingly little paranormal activity in the house. I liked that house. It was creaky and drafty and damp, but it was big and peaceful out in the country side. There were certainly spirits there, but they were nice. They’d died in the barn fire that happened there over a hundred years ago. They meant us no harm though, they were nice company. There was the mother, father, and their little girl, Molly. She had dark curly hair, and blue eyes, and pale skin and freckles. She was about my age. She wore a simple cream color dress with little blue ribbons in her hair. I always thought she was pretty. I would sit on the floor of my room and play with her with my dolls and ponies. I was sad to leave that house. But when spring came, the roof leaked, and my step dad lost his job. We couldn’t afford to keep up with the house anymore, so we had to move again. Had I known what awaited me in the next house, though, I would have gladly gone back to live with my step grandparents and would have willingly slept IN that closet with the thing in it.

I was ten by the time we got to the next house. By then I had two little brothers, Ethan, and Caleb. The moment I stepped in that house, I wanted to turn and run right back out. You should know that I’ve always had nightmares, terrible, awful, vivid dreams, but the first night in that house, they just got soooo much worse. I would have nightmares of being raped before I even knew what rape was. Twisted images of my brothers being hacked up and my family burning. Thoughts of someone coming into the house and stabbing us all in our sleep. My brothers, being only babies, crying that heart-wrenching cry babies have as they suffered. Terrible, awful dreams. I also began to develop severe irrational anxiety at that age. I still have it now. I have to take pills for it, or I sometimes can’t leave the house I currently live in.

The nightmares and anxiety were just an added bonus of that house. I was afraid to be in most of the rooms there. I hated going in the bathroom, dining room, or anywhere in the basement. That left only the kitchen, my parent’s room, and my room as safe havens. I would lie in bed and hear footsteps in the hall, I would see shadows out of the corners of my eyes, my two and one year old brothers would cry and point at nothing, though something had clearly terrified them. Doors would open and slam shut by themselves. Lights would flicker. Things would fall to the floor and shatter. Objects would float and fly across the room. Healthy pets would drop like flies. Sometimes even the smoke detectors would go off. We’d try to shut them off, but they kept going. We’d rip them out of the walls and ceilings, but they would keep going, we would even pull out the batteries and hide them under the sink, but they would keep beeping for hours. No firemen ever came. They would just beep endlessly. After about a year of living there, we moved again. We finally moved into the house I’m currently in, and we’ve lived here for six years now. In that time, I’ve gotten two more siblings. My sisters, Lilly and Mary, fraternal twins, three years old. That almost brings you up to date in my story.

Remember how I said that all of these creatures feed off of negativity, but one kind is worse than the rest? Well, in this house, there is one of those things. They’re called shades. Or shadow creatures, evil shadows, shadow people, evil entities, ghosts. Some call them demons. One of them lives here with us. There is also a little girl dressed in blue named Sally. She has blonde hair and green eyes and looks much like I did at her age. She was seven when she died. She got really sick one winter, but no one believed her until it was too late. Her big brother died in a car crash, so he is not in the house, but she is. They are the reason the previous owners moved out. They couldn’t handle the sad thoughts of two of their four children no longer living with them in this house where they grew up. I like Sally. She’s a sweet little girl. I treat her like my own sisters. When she wants to play, she’ll turn on the Wii game system in my room and start the music box up. I’ll ask her what she wants to play with and she usually wants to play with dolls or on the Wii. I’ve tried to get her to cross over, but she couldn’t at first. Something was holding her back. Something was keeping her here. Something was hiding itself from all of us. She wouldn’t tell me who it was or what it looked like. She would only tell me that a mean man told her not to go.

To see if this was true, I tired cleansing the house, just in case, by burning sage and going from room to room. It was only after I was done that I began to feel the malevolent presence. I knew then that little Sally wasn’t lying at all. There was something else here, and the cleansing only made it angry. I tried hard to ignore the bad feeling in my gut. That night, I talked to Sally. She said I shouldn’t have done what I did. She said he was very angry now, and that he would come to me that night. I told her I wasn’t worried, if I focused hard enough, he couldn’t hurt me. I was very wrong.

I went to sleep that night. In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of scratching on my door. We own six cats, and one of them usually wants to come in my room at night. I don’t let them in because I have glass and breakable things in my room. Many of which are little glass skulls and dragons, strange things like that. So I ignored the scratching and went back to sleep. I wish I’d stayed awake. I dreamt of searing pain like someone was raking fire down my back. I didn’t wake up. My body and brain were accustomed to it since I have such frequent, realistic nightmares. However, when I woke up the next morning and got dressed for school, I felt something warm and sticky running down my back. I looked in the mirror and saw three deep, long, thick, bleeding scratches in between my shoulder blades. The edges of them were blistered and raised, and the skin was obviously burned. I ran down stairs and told my mom. I showed her, and she freaked out. She didn’t know what had happened, and neither had I. We couldn’t find an explanation, so we just dressed the wounds and didn’t mention it again.

About a week later, I was lying awake, unable to sleep when a cold draft hit my face. I shivered and pulled the blankets around me. It felt like someone with icy breath was breathing down my neck. Wanting to know the source, I turned and looked. Nothing was there, but I felt a cold hand touch my arm. I tried to scream, but another hand covered my mouth. I heard someone whisper “Shhhhhh.” And I felt my shirt lift and hot finger nails claw at my stomach. I thrashed and writhed and tried to scream, but a hand closed around my neck and I passed out. I woke up hours later, covered in cuts and bruises and burns. Everything hurt, and I was bathed in my own blood. No one else was in the house, so I screamed at the top of my lungs for whatever it was to show itself. It clearly wasn’t afraid of the light. A shadowy apparition appeared before me. It had the form of a tall person, but its arms were too long for its body, its legs were skinny and unstable looking. It was tall and thin and lithe. Its image became clearer, and I could see it in detail. Its eyes were bright red, its flesh was rotting away. The skin that still clung to the bones was gray and dis-colored. It basically looked like an awkward zombie. It smiled at me, but it had few teeth. The teeth it did have were sharp and bloody. It stepped towards me. It spoke my name. I stood my ground, I knew it fed off of fear. I remained as calm as I could, but on the inside, I was petrified. I asked it what it wanted. It just kept repeating my name, over and over and over. It advance towards me and was in front of me faster than I could blink. It touched my face, the only part of me that it left un-cut. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I screamed and bolted out of my room.

My friend lives across the street. I ran to her house as fast as I could. Since she was a believer in ghosts, I knew she would listen. I pounded on her door, crying hysterically until she opened up the door. I pushed inside the house, and clung to her for dear life, sobbing heavily. She hushed me the best she could and asked me what was wrong when my tears finally slowed. I explained to her what happened, and she told me not to go into the house. I waited with her at her house until my mom got home.

When she did get home, I ran to her before she could go in the house. I told her not to, I told her it was a bad idea to go anywhere near it. She saw what I looked like, saw my bandages and tear-stained face, and new that I couldn’t be faking. She could tell I was truly scared. I then told her what happened. I knew she believed me from the look of fear in her eyes. When everyone else got home, we waited outside. Most of the family didn’t believe my mother and I, but we wouldn’t let them inside. My step father used his cell phone to search for and contact a psychic medium to come and cleanse the house for us, to get rid of the evil. When she was on the phone, I told her in vivid detail what had happened since I first burned the sage in the house. She said she could be over in two days.

For those two days and nights, I stayed with my friend, my brothers stayed with theirs, and my mom and step dad stayed with my grandparents and brought my sisters with them. Those two nights were long and filled with fear. I was covered with burns and cuts that I feared would leave huge ugly scars all over my body.

When the medium arrived at noon two days later, she did a tour of the perimeter of the house, blessing it as she went so nothing evil could escape. I then again told her my experiences and showed her the cuts and bruises and burns on my body. Her face showed no fear, but her eyes showed pure and utter terror. She made the whole family wait outside as she entered the house, but of course, I had to come with her. She said that since I was the one it was attacking, I had to be there for the process.

She walked from room to room with her eyes half-closed, touching everything, taking many minutes in each room. When she climbed the stairs and put her hand on the door to my bedroom, she winced back, almost as if in pain. She slowly opened that door. She froze. For a moment, she couldn’t even enter my room. She said she could see it, staring at me, of course, she didn’t have to tell me, I could see it too. It sat on my bed, smiling at me. Before she entered the room, she pulled a small leather pouch out of her pocket which she had earlier said contained salt, a small rosary, sage leaves, and tiny pieces of silver. Those items were said to have special powers, she had told me earlier. She opened the pouch and pulled out the rosary and began to pray. The creature on my bed just laughed. It laughed with a deep, maniacal, loud, blurred voice. It was the most terrible sound I’ve ever heard. She prayed louder, and took out a pinch of salt. She walked towards the creature, and threw it at it. The salt made contact, and the flesh on that thing began to his, like it was burning. It let out a small yell. She threw more salt, and pressed the juice out of a sage leaf, rubbed it on a piece of silver, and put salt on it, and threw that at the beats as well. It let out a terrible screech of agony and it began to smoke. She grabbed the rosary again and began praying once more. Furious, it leapt towards her and did it’s best to scare her away. It wouldn’t touch her since she had the rosary in her hand. It instead, turned its attention to me. It lunged at me and wrapped its large hand around my throat. It laughed and laughed. It laughed demonically, it laughed like a mad man. All it did was laugh. The medium pressed the rosary crucifix to the back of its head and it released me, screaming like a wild animal in agony. Screams so savage, I’ll never forget that shrill screech of sheer pain. The medium pressed the rosary crucifix to its forehead, screaming out words of prayer, banishing it, sending it back to Hell, commanding it to leave forever. With one final roar, the thing began to fade until it was gone completely. I could immediately feel peace settle over the house, something I hadn’t felt in weeks since I first awakened the foul thing from Hell. We looked at each other and breathed an immense sigh of relief.

We exited the house, and my family was allowed back in. We gave her money, and thanked her profusely. She said if it ever returned to give her a call immediately. And that brings you up to date with my story. That was about a year ago. Please, head my advice; if something is there, don’t let it know you’re scared it’ll only make it stronger. Act as soon as you know it’s there and you’ll be fine. Don’t try to handle it on your own. Thank you for listening. I just hope it never returns. I doubt that it ever will because-

Hang on. I just heard scratching on my door. It’s late at night. I’ll bet one of the cats wants in.