They say everything happens in Greene County Pennsylvania. Everything paranormal anyway. I guess I never knew what that meant exactly until I found myself thrust right into the middle of it all.
The story began with the situation that led me to move in the dreaded old house in the first place. My divorce ten years earlier had left me with nothing. I lost my job while looking for an apartment to rent which left her with all my stuff and left me homeless. Looking for apartments and jobs at the same time is a challenge. I ended up taking a line cook job as my field was experiencing a slowdown at the time and hiring had been frozen across the industry.
Two car repairs, lost health insurance, and a dental emergency later I was hanging on by a thread. The restaurant I was working at closed and I couldn’t make my rent and thus got booted out into the cold. I kept trying to find work while sleeping in my car and showering at my health club. This worked for a while until my prepaid contract was up at the health club and over the course of two weeks time I ended up with no money at all and no gas in the car. I sold the car just so I could eat and then took my place alongside the drug addicts and drunks on skid row.
I scavenged and begged to survive, which went on for two full years until one fateful day when I came upon a slip of paper lying on the sidewalk next to a trash can. I was going to put it in the can to prove to myself that I was still a valuable member of society when I noticed it was a lottery ticket. I checked the date and it was current, so just for the hell of it I took it inside the convenience store and had the clerk check it to see if it was a winner. It was.
It wasn’t a million dollar winner but after taxes it was just enough for me to buy a used car and a small house. I wanted to get something I owned outright so that in case another series of unfortunate events transpired, I’d have no payment to make and I wouldn’t have to sleep in my car or on the streets again.
This led me to asking a real estate agent if they had anything that was cheap but priced right for its size and condition. I didn’t mind a fixer upper. After looking at a few nice places which were still just out of reach for me I swallowed my pride and admitted to the agent my situation and told him I don’t care how bad a shape the place was in. I just needed to get off the streets fast.
That’s how I ended up in this rickety old house situated on the outskirts of Greene County. This thing was old. It was built in the late 1800’s and had two floors, an attic, and a small basement. There were two bedrooms upstairs, one bath, a tiny kitchen, a living room, a small dining room, and a “den”. There was a washer and dryer in the basement but the pipes banged when you turned the water on. The floor creaked whenever you walked across the room or took the stairs. The exterior used to be painted I suppose but now the boards were showing the wood underneath giving the house the appearance of an abandoned property.
I had enough money left to buy some cheap used furniture at a secondhand store as well as groceries and gas for a few months. Beyond that I’d have to have some money coming in or things would start moving the other direction again.
I started to plan my return to the professional world while also looking for lower level jobs to work at temporarily just get some cash flow going. In the meantime I found some tools and a bunch of wood and home improvement supplies in the basement that had been left there by a previous owner. Someone had prepared to do some much needed work on the house but abandoned the effort for some reason. The materials were still in good condition so I decided to put them to use. I’d noticed a few boards that needed replaced on the inside of the home as well as the exterior so I set about making the repairs. That’s when things started to go sideways.
The first thing I did was replace three old floorboards in the den. The original wood had gotten weak and brittle. They were located under a window so I presumed that someone had been in the habit of leaving the window open and water had gotten in and rotted the boards. I piled the old boards in the den near the window. I’d take them out later. I was happy enough for the night to get the new ones installed. The sense of accomplishment was very satisfying.
The next morning I walked into the den to examine my work from the night before while sipping on a hot cup of coffee. However, when I saw the spot I was astounded to find that the old boards were back in place and the new ones were stacked right there to the side where I had left the old ones. Could I have somehow put the old boards back in by mistake after having removed them? The lighting wasn’t great in there but I found it hard to imagine such a scenario.
I knelt down to take a closer look and discovered that the new nails I had used were sitting on the floor next to the new boards. The old nails were still right there holding the old boards in place as if I had never removed them to begin with. That’s not possible. Nails bend when you remove them. You usually can’t just pop them right back into place. The wood showed no signs of having been disturbed at all in fact. No marks around the nail heads where I had pried the nails out. Nothing.
I checked the house for an intruder and the doors and windows for any sign that someone had broken in, although I can’t imagine why someone would break in to do this nor could I fathom myself sleeping through the loud banging that would accompany such a task. No one else was in the house of course and there was no sign of forced entry.
I had other work I wanted to do on the house so I decided to just set that job aside and do something else while I pondered what the hell had happened. I opened up the windows to get ventilation in case there was some fume or other in the house causing hallucinations or delirium. Then I set about tearing up some old carpeting that was rotting away in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
I paused for a few minutes after getting a good portion of the carpet pulled up and just as I was taking a swig of my nice cold Sprite soft drink, I heard someone coming up the stairs. With each step the wood creaked. The steps made a sound unique from the floorboards when they are walked upon. It was definitely coming from the stairs. It wasn’t one pop or creak either, which might be explained by the house “settling,” it was one step after another getting closer and closer to the top of the stairs. Someone was definitely ascending the stairwell.
I stood up with my razor knife in hand, the only weapon I had at my disposal, and stood behind the door, ready to defend myself should whoever it was enter the room I was in. I turned the light off so as not to give away which room I was in. It was an overcast day so even though there was enough light to see in the room from the window, the room was still dimly lit with a gloomy bluish hue.
It was quiet then as the footfalls reached the top of the stairs. My heart rate sped up and tension stiffened inside by body like a steel wireframe skeleton. I didn’t move a muscle or shift my stance lest whoever it was become aware of my location. The clump of a thick boot on hardwood flooring began again at the top of the stairs. I could hear each step as it pushed forward slowly towards the two bedroom doors which were situated across from each other about fifteen feet from the head of the stairs.
Closer and closer they came. One foot after the other. They came to a stop right in front of the door. I glared at the doorknob praying that I didn’t see it start to turn. Then, breaking the silence like shattering glass, the distinctive creak of the hinges on the other bedroom door began to screech. Again the footsteps thumped down on the wooden planks as the visitor entered the room across from the one I was in.
I carefully leaned down and peered through the old fashioned keyhole these doors were still equipped with and saw the open door. I saw no one and the sound of someone walking stopped. I decided the best plan of action for me was to take advantage of the fact that whoever it was, was inside the room, which would give me a nice head start if I suddenly ran out of the room and down the stairs, out to my car - where I then realized I had left my cell phone.
I did just that. Skipping steps I bounded down the stairs, raced out the front door, jumped in my car, started it up, and pulled out into the road. I put my car into drive and held my foot on the brake, all the while watching the door to my house in case the fiend came running out. At the same time I dialed 911.
I was still sitting there in my car watching the front door when the police showed up. They searched the house and assured me no one was inside. They were kind enough to accompany me in a walkthrough as I checked for myself before they departed.
Officer Riley told me they might have run out the back even though the rear door was still closed. He also informed me that they used to get frequent calls to this same house from the previous owners going back as long as he had been on the job which was about ten years. He said this spanned at least three owners of the property as best he could recall. He also said that I might consider checking out the real estate laws regarding haunted houses. Supposedly in Pennsylvania at that time they were supposed to inform any new owners if the house had been reported as haunted by previous owners and if there had ever been a death or murder in the home at any time in the past.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Haunted? What?
I turned all the lights on and locked all the doors and then headed to the Library to check up on these laws and real estate regulations. Sure enough, it was required that your agent disclose those things to you before you close the deal. However, the owner must prove the agent knew about these things themselves and also that the resulting disturbance was severe enough to keep me from staying in the house in order to reverse the sale and get my money back. The courts had ruled that from the moment any steps were taken by the owner in this process, the owner could not continue to reside in the home or else they are demonstrating that the disturbance isn’t severe enough to prevent them from living there and thus doesn’t warrant a situation in which the sale can be reversed. That means if I wanted my money back, I’d have to go back to sleeping in my car.
I wasn’t willing to do that. I’d come so far and been through so much. I just couldn’t go backwards again. Anyway, I wasn’t completely convinced that someone hadn’t actually been breaking in so on the way home I stopped by Handy Man’s and picked up some new door locks and security equipment. I spent the rest of the evening installing all this stuff.
That night I went to bed feeling very assured that no one could get in and if they did I’d catch them on camera and at the very least I’d know what I was dealing with. I even bought nitelights for each room so that I’d never be in complete darkness. I felt safe and drifted off to sleep listening to some ASMR video on you tube.
Must have been about 3 AM when I was awakened by the sound of my desk in the den downstairs being scooted along the floor. I didn’t have a lot of furniture and the sound was unmistakable. Heavy wooden furniture legs dragging across a wood floor. Nothing else sounds like that. There was carpet in the dining room so it couldn’t have been that tiny round dinner table I bought. It was my desk.
I had to do something. Whoever it was had gotten past my new locks but I should have caught them on the security cameras. I had a canister of pepper spray and a mag flashlight so I headed downstairs cautiously to investigate the noise. Maybe it was racoons, I said to myself, they have ways to get into homes and make trouble.
The house was dead silent as I descended the stairs. I didn’t want to blind myself and leave whoever it was able to see me so I didn’t turn on any lights on the way. Instead, I lit what was in front of me with the flashlight so they would be the ones blinded while I could see them. My pepper spray was designed to shoot a stream about twenty feet so I could hit em from a distance once I get em in the light. Each room also had a small nitelight on which filled in some details on either side of the circle of light cast by my flashlight.
This time I was the one making the stairs creak. Between steps I paused and listened. Total quiet. The house had an odd calmness to it. A tone of tranquility that almost tempted me to deny what I’d heard before. Like it wanted me to dismiss the sound. Still, I had heard it and had to check to see, at least if the desk had indeed been moved.
I slowly walked across the living room, quickly scanning any dark pockets of black with the light to ensure that no one was crouched down behind the recliner or ducked behind the sofa. The room was clear of any flesh other than my own.
As I approached the open door to the den, a swell of goosebumps rose across my arms. The flashlight shone a bright white circle of revelation onto everything it touched. Nothing there, good, Nothing in that corner, excellent.
The half open door to the den creaked as I pushed it the rest of the way with my foot. One arm held the light while my other stretched out straight forward with the pepper spray ready to go. The door let the white beam scan the back wall as it opened. Nothing to see there.
I reached the threshold to the room and angled the light to my right where to my utter horror the desk had in fact been moved. There were even scratch marks coming off each leg, etched into the hardwood flooring tracing it’s path. The light revealed that no one was in the room however I noticed that the closet door in there was slightly ajar. I also knew I had closed it completely.
I wasn’t going to let them get way this time. I didn’t want to have to keep calling the cops and have them finding nothing lest I fall into the ‘boy who cried wolf’ category and they stop responding when I need them the most. Next time I call them I’m at least going to have some video proof that someone had been here. That’s why before bed I had put a small sports camera on a chain around my neck. First thing I did when I woke up was turn it on. I’m getting this guy on video.
I slowly reached for the doorknob on the closet door, fingers visibly trembling. A high pitched tone rang out in my ears interrupted by equally spaced thumps of my heartbeat. The room was still silent but that silence was broken by the faint sound of my fingers slightly tugging on the doorknob while they still clutched the pepper spray.
The door began to move towards me as I pulled it ever so slowly. The flashlight was a spotlight focused along with my vision solely on the knob. My attention was so hyper focused that for a moment I forgot why I was doing what I was. A tiny creak squeaked out as the door moved and then I stopped cold in response to a low pitched growl coming from inside the closet. I froze in absolute terror.
It sounded like a dog but not. It was too deep. It was guttural and wet. Almost a gurgling sound like it was bubbling past a throat full of mucus. I wanted to run but I could not move. I wanted to scream but could not draw a breath.
I just stood there still and quiet. The growl stopped and silence flooded the room again. It was so quiet for so many seconds that I started to doubt that I had heard it. I started to doubt that there was anything in the closet at all.
I decided that I should open the door as fast as I could, shine the light in there, and then run out the front door to my car. If there was something in there I’d see it on the video playback. If anything, I was expecting some kind of big dog based on the growl.
So in one moment of insane bravery that I’d hyped myself into I flung the door wide open and shone the flashlight right back in there while simultaneously squirting the pepper spray at whatever would be in the center of the light. It took a moment or two for my eyes to see and brain to register what was in there. Confusion set in hard for a brief moment while my brain pieced together what I was seeing. It was no dog.
It stood upright like a human. It was about my same height. It’s body was dark with black, red, and some white somewhere on it. I don’t know because my attention was fixated on it’s grotesque and horrible face.
I only saw it for a brief moment with my own eyes before I instinctively ran as fast as I could towards the front door. Its eyes were solid black with a thin white band around them, as if its pupils took up most of the surface. But on the surface of the eyes was a slight sheen of what looked like mild cataracts. A kind of light bluish haze. I didn’t see any eyelids or lashes or hair on its head. The main body of its face was a dark pine green in color and it seemed to have large ears that swept back close to its head. Its mouth was large and it had thick light purple lips with two thick canine teeth jutting out of them along with a fat dark purplish-red tongue which was hanging out of its closed lips and flopped downward over its chin. Its nose was like that of a human skull, meaning just a couple of holes with a kind of sculpted pointy ridge at the top only it had flesh covering it and mucus draining out of the nostrils. The overall expression and appearance of the face reminded me of some of the more horrific depictions of the goddess Kali and of some pre-columbian South American face masks and carvings I’d seen somewhere.
It growled again and my adrenaline level shot up trough the roof. I could feel it. I just stopped thinking and ran as fast as I could. As I did I realized that I had chained the door shut from the inside using multiple chains and bolts that I had just installed. If the thing had begun to chase me I’d not have the time to unlock these and make it to my car before I’d be caught.
There was however, an empty built in chest sitting right in front of the door. I think people used to put their wet or muddy boots them or something. It was spacious enough for me to fit inside. And it had a small handle on the inside of the lid which I could use to hold the thing shut.
When I reached the door I saw that these chains and locks were still in place. Whatever this thing was it didn’t come in through the front door. I jumped into the chest and closed the lid behind me as quickly as I could. I remained perfectly still and kept my breathing shallow so it would not hear me and so that I could hear it better. I held the lid down tight with that handle and prayed in my mind it would not find me. Please, please, please don’t let it find me.
Just then I heard its footsteps coming across the living room. It stomped as it drew nearer and nearer to the door. Soon it was between me and the front door where it stopped walking. Then just as I was hoping it would walk back in the other direction it started to lightly scratch on the outside of the chest as if knowing I was inside and taunting me.
My head was up against the side of the inside of the chest and it lowered its head down on the outside so that it was right on the other side of the wood from my head. As if it knew where my ear was it growled again right on the other side of the wood from my ear. Then it tried to pull the lid open but since I was holding the handle from the inside it only opened up about an inch and then it slammed back shut. It did this several times while growling. I just pulled down on that handle as hard as I could.
It seemed to sit down on the top of the chest, I wasn’t sure so I tested it and pushed up just a little. Feeling the resistance of the creatures body I knew I had been right, but as I was reversing my push to a pull, the thing jumped up and flung the lid open before I could get a strong pull on it. I pulled my arm back down to my side and played dead. I just kept my breathing shallow and eyes tightly shut.
I felt its breath on my face as it lowered its head into the chest and right up to my face. It had to know I was alive and awake. I thought it was going to kill me but just growled right in my ear while it’s snot dripped onto my cheek. It kept this up for about ten minutes transforming my internal fear into an agonizing mental torture.
Eventually, it removed its head from the chest and I no longer heard it. But I didn’t hear it walk away either. I thought it was trying to trick me into thinking it had left and if I opened my eyes or sat up it would be right there, so I just layed there playing dead.
When I started to hear birds chirping outside I knew the sun was coming up soon. I peeked through my squinting eyelids and eyelashes to see if I could tell if it was still there or not. I came to the conclusion that if it were still nearby it would have to be just next to the chest on the side where my head was. I could see everywhere else good enough to tell it wasn’t anywhere else around me.
I saw the chains and bolts on the door and practiced in my mind jumping out and how best to quickly unbolt and unchain the door so I could make my escape as fast as possible. Once I could tell it was bright outside and I heard the mailman walk onto the porch outside I knew that would be the best time to make my move.
I did so. The beast was nowhere in sight as I exited the house, giving the mailman a moment of fright.
I’ve not gone back inside the house since then but I did begin to rent the place out to various paranormal investigation groups throughout the country. The video only had a few frames where you could see anything but most people are dismissing the image as photoshop.
I got ahold of an old coworker of mine who was working for a firm in New York City and he recommended me for a position. I never disclosed to him or the firm my two year stint as a homeless man nor my run in with whatever it was in the house. I’m back in a new place with a new career just like nothing ever happened. It’s strange how life can take you up and then down and then right back up again. I was down and now I’m up. This time I’ll make sure to stay there. X