As a child, you probably thought that accidentally leaving your wardrobe open - even just a bit - would lead to monsters sneaking out and devouring you whilst you slept.
As a fully grown adult, most would’ve forgotten about this, because that monster simply doesn’t exist. It’s just a child’s mind running wild.
I obviously haven’t cared for this ‘rule’ until what happened a few hours ago.
Me and my fiancé, Oliver, moved into a new house a few weeks ago. It had its quirks, and it was suitably within quite a remote area.
After the first week, we were already accustomed to the creaky floorboards throughout certain parts of the house. These ‘creakier’ areas would seem to occasionally change their location, one day being in the living room, and the next it being in our bedroom.
We suspected nothing of this, as we thought this was just the house settling. We tried to look this up online but we didn’t find anything on it. Before I address the ‘wardrobe incident’, I would like to just point out some of the… weirder things that have been happening.
Well into the second week, we discovered something that we weren’t quite sure if it was common with houses settling.
At first it was just a vibration. It seemed to come from the walls. Like something was in there. We ignored it at first, but these vibrations soon escalated into us being able to hear and feel movement between the thick walls.
“Well.. what should we do? It’s not like we can continue ignoring it.” Oliver scrunched his face up to signal his confusion.
“We definitely can’t call the police, they’ll think we’re crazy.”
“What if it’s a… man? Like someone was living in our walls?”
That idea dug deep into the back of my mind. I couldn’t shake the possibility that we were constantly being listened to by someone, maybe even watched.
We held off calling the police for a bit longer. I really wish we hadn’t - we could’ve caught it earlier and prevented all of this.
Let me continue the story the night before the incident. I was abruptly awoken at around 2am. For the past few days, I’ve been having trouble sleeping because of some loud creaks I’ve been hearing outside the bedroom door.
But this time, the creaks were inside my room. Or should I say, my room’s walls. The creaks normally last for a few seconds, then stopped, but this time, it lasted for around a minute.
To put it simply, I was paralysed with terror. My previous excuses of it just being common house noises were demolished. This was because the creaks were accompanied by breathing.
Sudden, shallow breathing. It sounded like a mix between a smoker of 50 years and something completely inhuman. The breaths were woven with deep wheezes, and I could feel the walls shake as it exhaled.
I was torn between two choices that I had in those eternal moments: Either, continue lying completely still until the creaks and breathing stopped, or, run out of my room in full speed downstairs to call Oliver while he was working.
I chose the second option.
“Oliver, I can hear it in my room now. And I can hear it breathe.”
The morning following that dreadful night was spent deciding on what we should do. We finally decided to call the police. We still hadn’t laid a single toe on the stairs to go upstairs.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, we lived in quite a desolate area. Our only neighbours are a few miles away at least. Because of this, and also because our situation wasn’t considered an emergency, we were told that we’d only be visited by the police the following day. We were disappointed, but relieved. We could finally get all of this over with.
Most people would’ve evacuated their house the instant they’d thought they heard breathing inside their walls. I wish we had. But we came to the conclusion that the ‘breathing’ I heard was simply the air trapped inside the walls escaping somehow. I didn’t even know if that made sense but it was the only thing that felt logical.
I made sure that if anything happened that night, it would be recorded to show the police. So, I started an audio recording on my phone before I got into bed. I wasn’t sure I was going to sleep a blink that night considering what happened the previous night. If anything did, I contemplated using the same strategy of running downstairs when it did.
Heavee. This time, it came from my wardrobe. I was ready for this: as previously predicted, I laid awake waiting for this moment. It was 2:19am.
Mentioned briefly at the beginning of my story, children tend to believe that monsters come out of their wardrobes if they leave it open at night.
Earlier in the afternoon, I remember I had to quickly grab a pair of socks out of my wardrobe, and left it open ever so slightly. I watched as the gaping hole between my two wardrobe doors slowly grow larger.
And with that, I heard the breathing get quicker, as if whatever was creating that sound was getting evermore excited to be able to finally catch its prey.
And with that, my paralysing fear ceased and I jumped out of my bed with my phone at full sprint towards the stairs, and this time, I closed my bedroom door behind me once I left, praying that whatever ended up leaving my wardrobe would be trapped in my room.
Currently, I’m typing this out quite hastily on my phone in the living room. I think I can hear it banging on my bedroom door. I also made sure to check the audio recording to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating it all or something. I’ve also called Oliver and he said he’s coming home as fast as he can.
Do any of you readers know what I can do? Tips would be greatly appreciated. I would also love some comfort as I really need it at the moment.