My childhood home was haunted and no one believed me.

I’d like to start this off with some context, this wasn’t a house that had existed for a hundred years, or anything like that. The house was actually contracted by my parents when we had moved out to the Midwest. There was SOME debate amongst the neighbors that it had been a Native American encampment back in the day, but we never had proof. Regardless, things happened in that house that no one in my family would believe me about, mainly due to it being a “religious” household.

It started when my dad got sick out of nowhere. One day he was fine, the next day, he started getting angry, and I mean extremely angry. My dad wasn’t a violent man, and my entire childhood he never laid a hand on me. Even when my mom started to encourage spanking my brothers and I with a belt, he’d take me into my room, and stage it. I mean he’d swat the bed and I’d have to pretend I was yelling from getting hit, that’s how much he avoided doing anything to us. However, one day when I was 12, he barged into my room irate that I hadn’t taken out the trash. I was busy working on a project, and casually told him I’d take care of it as soon as I could save my work. The next thing I know, he’s gripping me by the throat, and throwing me onto my bed trying to strangle me. I managed to fight him off, and barricaded my door as soon as he left. Long story short, a week later we find out he has two types of cancer, both stage four. Considering what had happened, I was actually somewhat happy about it, a feeling I still regret to this day.

About a month later, he was gone. My mom described the moment as something surreal; he was lying in the hospital bed, looked toward the door with a surprised look on his face, and immediately flatlined. I thought it was weird, but didn’t think much of it (hell, I was having to pretend to be upset to family members at the time). Shortly after, the vibe of the entire house started to change. It always felt like someone’s eyes were on me, but no matter how much I checked, I was always alone. I should add here, we lived in a remote part of the Midwest at the time, remote enough that hillbillies roaming our property at night was an issue (bless the 2nd Amendment). Despite feeling off, I chalked it up to that, and would go about my day. Then, it started to get even worse.

I began to feel that if I turned around, something would be behind me, and it was making me feel paranoid. I stopped leaving my room at night, as it started to become terrifying to walk around my own house at night. I even stocked up on snacks and water before the sun set at some point. My mom blamed it on my watching “scary movies”, which I would like to specify, were horrible B movies my friends and I would have a laugh at over Skype. One night though, I realized I could see light under my door, and when I checked, the kitchen light was on. I suddenly felt pretty brave, and even decided hell, I’ll go make myself some nachos. I’m standing in the kitchen, nachos are done, and I get the worst idea. I stand there, and say it out loud:

“If anything’s here, prove it.”

Immediately, I hear something fall over in the living room. I’ve never moved so fast in my life as when I ran back to my room. I even locked the door, because that’ll totally help against ghosts. I was convinced at that point, something evil was in the house, and what made it worse was no one else believed me. Then we get to that final day.

Again, no cliches here, no stormy night, no power outage. It was broad daylight, roughly around 2:00 P.M., and I had the house to myself. We lived so far out in the country, a trip to Walmart was about three hours, and when I was asked if I wanted to go of course I said no. Three hours was plenty of time for me to sneak Watchmen on the TV in the living room without getting caught. About an hour into the movie, I’m chillin, bright sunny day outside, and suddenly my brother starts losing his absolute shit laughing about something. He and I had the same sense of humor, and would laugh at the same stuff, so I get up to see what’s so funny when it hits me like a brick wall.

I was home alone.

I start slowly walking towards his room, and the entire time he’s just laughing like he’s found the funniest thing in his life. I get to the doorway, and the room is empty, yet I can hear the laughing coming from the middle of the room. I step one foot into the room, and the sound cuts out. Not just laughing, it felt like there was no sound at all, except the blood pumping in my brain. I’ve never been so unsettled in my life, and I immediately shut his door, and went back to the movie to try and finish it. Eventually, my family came home, but I didn’t tell them about it at this point. I knew they would dismiss it.

That night was what you could call the “finale” of it all. I’m lying in bed, and I hear my other brother walking down the hallway. I should note, my youngest brother is special needs, and it was a frequent problem of him just wandering around the house, kind of babbling to himself. I get up and open the door to get him back to bed, when I realize there’s no one in the hallway. At the same time, I can still hear footsteps, which suddenly rush past me into my room, and begin to patter around quickly. I was so scared, I jumped into bed, and pulled the covers around my face so I could only focus on the ceiling. That’s when I saw it.

The shape of it is difficult to describe, but it looks like when you look at a lightbulb, and then look away to have that sort of burned image of the light in your eyes for a few seconds. The eyes, however, were bright yellow, and looked like cat eyes. The teeth looked like thousands of toothpicks, crooked and going everywhere, and it was just up on the ceiling smiling at me. As soon as I registered what I was looking at, it rushed me and disappeared. Lights on, computer and music on, sleep was officially a dead concept that night. From that point on, I never slept while the sun was down again.

You would think it’s over now, considering I said it was the finale, but we aren’t done yet.

I started gaming on a nightly basis to stay awake, eventually meeting some new friends, and having cozy CSS and Minecraft nights with them. I also had found my first part time job by this point, so things were actually going pretty okay for me. The only problem was the house had walls of paper, and my mom started complaining constantly that I was too loud. She even complained at some point that my membrane keyboard could be heard across the house, and at that point, I stopped taking her seriously.

One day, I had managed to get a double shift, and after 14 hours of work, I was so exhausted I had collapsed into my bed in my work clothes, shoes on and everything. After a few hours, I get woken up by my phone buzzing. Annoying, sure, but I still decided to check it. It was a text message from my mom:

“I can hear you laughing, shut up and go to sleep.”