Introduction

The area where I grew up as a child was covered with arrowheads and apparently some kind of a fight between Indian tribes took place around there. I didn’t realize this until probably 20 years later but I verified that I wasn’t just being terrified as a child by the constructs of my own mind after having a conversation with my stepsister.

We began talking and somehow got on the topic of life at the old house where we grew up as children. My stepsister began to tell me stories of things she used to see at the house that used to freak her out. She began telling me about seeing the figure of a large feline looking head that used to peer at her from the large shrub tree outside the windows around the house. It was at this point that I knew something was strange because I had never told anyone but I saw the same thing.

I told her times where I would see shadow figures walking around the house at night and see piercing red eyes coming from figures that would be outside her bedroom window at night. I didn’t know this but she had seen the same things. Let me go into detail about some of the things I’ve seen at that old house and a few things I’ve seen at the house where my parents currently reside.

Shadow People

From the age of 4, I had lived just shy of the Union Co. / Anson Co. border in North Carolina. The house I grew up in until the age of 11 or 12 was an old brick ranch-style house. It’s a creepy place even if it wasn’t “haunted”.

Where the bedrooms are in the house the floors are made of hardwood and were prone to creaking. I’m typically a heavy sleeper but I do have moments where it is very easy to rouse me from sleep. I can vividly recall points in the middle of the night where I would wake up and hear people walking around the house. Usually, there was only myself, my younger brother, and my parents in in the house since my stepsister didn’t stay with us very often. Occasionally, I would see these shadow people either walking around the house or just outside the windows.

There was a lighted pole outside my stepsister (and eventually my younger brother’s room) and it was outside the bedroom window that I recall seeing a figure walking across the side lawn. Normally, people never walk on that side of the house because that’s where the septic line ran it was always soggy and gross. However, I recall seeing this figure do this kind of awkward walk across the lighted part of the lawn into the soybean field that was near the house. It was like the person had arachnid legs and was moving in a jerky motion. If I animated a stick figure then that is what it would look like.

Then I would see shadow people outside of the bushes where the bathroom windows were in the house on multiple occasions. There were also the rare times where I would see these shadow figures inside the house.

If you were to enter this house via the door in the carport you could see down the hallway through the kitchen and see where the foyer is that leads to the bedrooms. I remember as a child when I was alone seeing people in the house and trying to see who was there obviously finding no one. Sometimes, I would hear the floors in the bedroom hallway creak as if people were walking on them only to find that nobody was up at the time. Now, a house settles and can cause the floor to creak but I know the sounds of footsteps in a house and these were very distinct. When I would look into the hallway I saw shadow people passing through closed doors to the various bedrooms across the hall.

This happened for several years and happened right up to the point until my family moved into the house my stepfather built across the street. I remember watching a Child’s Play marathon on the USA network while my stepdad and family were over at the new house. Now, I admit I have a very active imagination but I’ve never been guilty of seeing mirages or hallucinating. I know I heard noises in the house while I was watching those movies which freaked me out. To calm down I was watching Dragonball Z or some type of cartoon on TV when I decided to get up and get something to eat. When I did I noticed across the hallway from the living room past the kitchen was a shadow man walking back toward the bedrooms. It’s one thing to see these things at night but this was around 4:00 in the afternoon and I saw this thing walk through the foyer and hang a left towards the bedroom hallway. Needless to say I was thinking, “end of this” and bolted over to where the new house was. I was old enough now to know that I was sick of seeing things in that house and it was time to get out. I don’t recall spending another night in that old house again and hopefully I never will.

Now, I don’t ever recall feeling anything malicious in that house except for a few off-hand sighting of the next creature my stepsister said she saw in that house.

The Piercing Red Eyes

For some reason most of what I saw happen in this house was associated with my stepsister’s bedroom or around that part of the house. Seeing as how she was rarely there it was usually just a vacant room. I would go in there occasionally and play on the TV in there because I had a game console hooked up to it. I remember one winter I was in there by myself playing games when I decided to take a break.

I stood up and looked out the window. When I looked out the window I could see a black face with two burning red eyes looking back at me. I thought it was a red light on a radio tower but there were two of these red lights and they were moving closer. Afraid, I started to leave the room but when I turned my back to leave I could feel someone standing behind me and staring at me.

The Cat Head

I’ve only seen this thing twice but the one time I recall seeing it clearly was when I was in my stepdad’s bathroom. He had taken a shower not too terribly long because I remember the condensation still being on the bathroom windows and mirror. While I was taking a piss I looked out the window. Outside the windows on the back of the house you could see shrub trees where my brother and stepsister used to play as kids. It was in the shrub tree I saw this oversized feline head with what appeared to be shark teeth. It’s those goofy looking shark teeth you would see in a One Piece comic. It had sickly yellow eyes, narrow pupils like a snake or cat and had pointy ears.

War Noises & Screaming

Outside my bedroom window at that old house there is a covered porch with a brick patio. I used to climb outside my window and sit on the porch sometimes. Usually though the windows were covered by white shutters that required the window to be opened so that the shutters could be pulled shut. Maybe it’s a coincidence but I recall a lot of these experiences happening around winter time. The only reason I can remember this is because the fields were cut. Regardless, I recall one night hearing noises outside my bedroom window. The shutters were closed, so I couldn’t really see what was going on outside. Then I started hearing something like screaming. It was faint and wasn’t the yowling of a bobcat. I know what those things sound like and they sound terrifying. This was different. It also sounded like things were being dragged across the lawn which is strange considering it would be hard to hear something like that through shut windows.

The noises were like this for about half an hour with inconsistent frequency. My brother slept on the opposite side of the room so I tried throwing this plush Mickey Mouse toy at him whom he and I lovingly referred to as Stinky Mouse to try and get him up. He wouldn’t wake up. If you knew my brother you would know that trying to wake him up from sleeping is damn near impossible and when he does wake up he’s always pissed. I gave up trying to wake him up so I tried opening the windows and pushing open the shutters to see what was going on. When I finally got them open I saw nothing. It was pitch black outside that only comes during a winter night. We had a golden retriever when I was a kid named Old Yeller. Original, I know but he was an awesome dog. Normally, when he was called he came running right up. For some reason, I called for the dog but he never came. The dog usually stayed in the back yard but if I called he would come around to the front. I don’t know why but the dog wouldn’t come around to the front of the house. That dog used to love to run through the side yard outside my stepsister’s bedroom and come right up to my bedroom window all covered in nasty sewage but that night he wouldn’t come to me. I had forgotten I had even called the dog that night but writing about this is helping me remember what I honestly didn’t want to remember.

The Telephone

Speaking of things I don’t want to remember, I can recall hearing rustling noises in the house and having the feeling something was stalking me. In the hallway that connects the bedrooms is hardwood and the main A/C vent is right up above. Now the house is notorious for having that damn A/C unit turn on at some pretty awful times to scare the shit out of people but this happened while things were absolutely quiet.

In that hallway was a wicker table/desk that had an old telephone on it that I never recall working. I mean this thing collected dust because what I believe happened was that the phone jack in that hallway went bad for some reason. Whatever the case, the phone never made noises or rang. Well, one night while I’m up going to take a piss I see a blinking red light.

Normally, the only blinking red light I would ever see was the radio tower off in the distance and I knew where that thing was because I always liked to watch it. This was coming from within the hallway. Once I got oriented to the dark I could tell it was coming from that wicker desk.

The telephone was blinking. Why, I have no idea and I had never seen it blink since. I just recall putting my thumb over the red light and trying to figure out why it wouldn’t turn off. I didn’t want to mess with the phone too much because it was dusty and it was on the wicker desk and as an elementary school kid I probably wasn’t too tall to really mess around with it a whole lot. Then, I noticed that the books underneath the desk started making noises like they were being shifted and pages were flipping. The A/C wasn’t putting out any air from the floor vents at the time because I was standing by it.

The phone stopped blinking and I decided to go pee. I stepped off the hardwood floor onto the linoleum floor that leads to my stepdad’s bathroom to go pee. I heard a really loud creaking of the floorboards and got this feeling someone was standing nearby. I didn’t want to look so I just went and pissed but when I came back there was nobody there and the door to my parents room was shut like it always used to be at night. If they open that door I could always tell because those door handles were shitty and they made a loud noise when a door was opened.

To conclude, I never would have even thought to write all this down if it wasn’t for Sweet Eikon and the conversation I had roughly 3 years ago with my stepsister. After figuring out that we had seen similar or same things in that old house was quite a creepy experience. It was cathartic in the sense that she and I had no reason to make this up. Unbeknownst to me she had spoken with my brother about seeing things in that old house at some point and he never saw anything. I would tell her things that I never told anyone else in my family that I saw and she verified her experiences with me and vice versa. To be honest, I don’t like thinking about it because it creeps me out and I’d rather just forget about it. I’ve read up on the “science” behind paranormal experiences and I’ve tried to use it to explain away some of my paranoia but those experiences are some that I cannot shake.

I could get into a completely different tangent about how I used to levitate when I slept but that’s for another time. This was seen by my childhood friend Houston and my stepsister but I can’t confirm it other than the fact that I hit my head on the headboard when I supposedly fell back down on the bed after my stepsister tried to push me awake.

The Face

There used to be a dream catcher on my bedroom window that is visible from the front of the house. It was something we brought over from the old house. Maybe I should have mentioned this but my stepsister normally resided in Hendersonville/Chimney Rock so there used to be dream catchers on a lot of the windows of our house(s). Anyway, I recall one night going back to bed after going to take a piss. I was probably 13 or 14 at this point but I remember going back to bed. I would leave the bathroom light on because it was hard to see how to get to my bed in the dark and I used to knock my shoulder on the doorframe or door constantly.

I had closed the door so that only a crack of light was shining. I could see it reflected on the window when I got back in bed. While I was looking at the window I got this sensation that I was being shifted forward. It’s a hard sensation to describe. It’s like reality is zooming in on a particular point in the room or like that light speed effect of how things stretch/zoom toward or away from something. So, I had this feeling but I was just sitting in my bed but when this feeling happened I could see something coming from the window making its way towards me in bed. My bed is on the opposite side of that window and at this point my bed was facing that I could look directly out that window from my bed. This thing, this head shaped apparition was lunging towards me. It was all black but had no facial features. It was just shaped like an oversized head. It got right up to my face and then went away.

I was shaken up to the point where I needed to open the door more to let some more light in so I could sleep.

The Embarrassment

There are many nights when an adolescent male in his late teens may decide to “choke” himself. Well, this particular night was probably a little different than what you’re thinking. The only way I can describe this night is that I was overcome with fear and it’s embarrassing. What happened was simple. I fell asleep on my arm and it went numb. Now, before you let your mind wander too much let me finish (see what I did there?). I had woken up in the middle of the night. It was pitch black in my room because at this point I was well into my high school years and preferred to sleep with it as dark as possible.

I had woken up and noticed that my right arm was completely numb. It was so numb that it didn’t even tingle. It was as if I was never born with my right arm. I don’t know why but for some reason I was awake but when I noticed I couldn’t move my right arm I was wondering what was going on. I’m sitting there trying to exert the willpower to command my arm to move. Well, it’s not doing anything…at first. My arm is sitting on my chest at this point and it starts to move. My hand opens up and bit and my forearm starts moving towards me. My hand, which I have no control over nor can I even feel the sensation of it moving, is making its way towards my throat. By the time my hand start to makes its way around my throat I get terrified and I attempt to scream but it’s so muffled and choked out that it makes a humorous noise because of how unmanly it sounds. At this point, I quickly start trying to use my left forearm to push my hand away from my throat. Every time I push my hand away it floats back up and keeps coming at me. This happens for a good 10 to 15 seconds before I finally grab my right forearm and shake my hand/arm until it regains feeling.

This has only happened once in my life but I’ll never forget it. For me, I think it’s an embarrassing story but I must admit it was one of the most genuinely scary moments of my life. I’m not much of a sweater but I sweat my ass off in that small amount of time.

The only other thing I can say about my parents’ current residence is that the guest bedroom used to scare the ever loving shit out of me. Not only did it have this ungodly creepy porcelain doll but that room just generated awful vibes for me. I couldn’t walk by it at night without feeling wigged out. No other room in the house had that effect on me.

My bedroom and walk-in closet doors would open and shut randomly in the middle of the night but that didn’t bother me as much as that guest bedroom. It’s the room where my stepsister would sleep when she would spend the night and the few times I slept in there before it was remodeled gave me the worst nightmares I have had in the past decade. That room has a folding closet door and the window in the house that catches moonlight the best. The moonlight used to catch the face of that doll in the rocking chair and it was just something that was made for horror movies.

Oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot to include this but my first year or so in the house I somehow made it from my bed into the closet at night. I have no history of sleep walking but one night I went to bed and the next morning I woke up in the closet with a fire truck that I’ve had since I was a small boy in my hand. The strange thing is that in order for the fire truck to get in my hands I would have had to turn the closet light on and take it from the top shelf and place it on the floor. Otherwise, it would just come apart or make a whole lot of noise if I tried to move it in the dark. It didn’t just fall down because it was on the back end of the shelf up against the closet wall.

I’m not sure why it happened and it’s not particularly scary but it was certainly bizarre. If you’ve been to my parents’ house and been in my old bedroom you would know the layout of my room how it leads into the closet and then the attic. It’s really creepy looking at night and no rational person would want to go in there let alone sleep in there but apparently I did for a night. I just…don’t know what to say.

There are other minor things that have happened, like seeing a random mound of dead snakes that weren’t killed my any family members or wild animals as far as I can tell, but for the most part this should be more than enough to put you to sleep.

If you’re looking for creepy stuff I should co-write the experiences I’ve had with Ouija with my buddy Layton. He in particular has seen some truly disturbing things.