School has ended, but I’m staying after to try and put some extra work into my project. I turn on the bandsaw and cut out the final pieces needed for the clock I’m building for woodworking class. Once I’m satisfied, I turn off the saw and put the pieces away so I can finish assembling them the next day.
I make my way out of the classroom and into the hallway. My woodworking class is in the basement of the middle school. Once school is out for the day, most of the lights are turned off, making the hallways seem like a dark empty void. I’ve never been one to be afraid of the dark, but even these old hallways make the little hair on my arms raise whenever I find myself walking through them alone after school. As I’m making my way down the hallway, I feel like I’m being stared at by someone through the little windows of the doors leading into the different classrooms. I finally reach the stairs at the end of the hallway and make my way up the stairs, then exit the school through the side doors.
I finally make it outside but I’m surprised to see that there’s no one left at school. The parking lot where hundreds of students would normally wait in line for the school buses, the streets where parents would be waiting in their cars, or the sidewalks where students would hang out with their friends for hours after school are all empty. It was as if everyone had just disappeared into thin air.
Convincing myself that maybe I lost track of time and stayed longer than I intended to, I start walking home. I notice a thick fog had settled in on the area and could barely see anything past 10 or 15 yards ahead of me. I wasn’t worried though, as I had been walking up and down these streets my entire life, and could make it to and from school with my eyes closed. It was just 2 blocks down the street, make a right, then another three blocks and I’d be home.
As I am walking down the street, it was odd that even the streets seem empty. There are no cars on the road, no middle-aged woman walking her dog, nor are there any kids playing out in their yards. There are no birds chirping, no wind, and even the trees are dead silent. It feels like I am the only person in the entire city.
Suddenly, that creepy feeling of someone staring at me comes back. I turn around to make sure there’s no one following me and of course there isn’t. If there were, I would have heard them through all of this silence. But still, my nerves are getting the better of me and I start speed walking down the street. 2 blocks down and I make a right. I still can’t shake this feeling so I sprint the remaining 3 blocks to my house. As I see my house, instead of feeling relieved, I start to panic more. The house just looks so creepy and my gut is telling me to just run past it and go anywhere else but home. I’m getting tired from running so I refocus. Just a few more steps and then I’m home. I reach the front door, turn the door knob, and then I wake up.
I have had this same nightmare dozens, maybe even hundreds of times over the last 20 years. It’s the same dream every time. It’s normal for people to have dreams of their childhood homes, but I always get the feeling that my dreams are different. That house is different.
We moved into that house during the summer before I started 4th grade in school. Before moving there, we lived in a small 2-bedroom apartment. Grandpa passed away before I was born, so grandma has lived with us for as long as I could remember. Grandma slept in one room of the apartment, and my parents and I all slept in the other room. It wasn’t ideal, but my parents made it work.
One day after school, my parents sat me down and excitedly told me that they bought a house and we would be moving once the school year was done. Even though it was in the same city, we would be moving to the north side of town, which meant switching schools. I wasn’t too fond of leaving all of my friends behind, but my mom promised me that I could finally have a room to myself. You see, having my own room had always been something that I wanted my entire life. All of my friends either had their own room, or shared with a sibling, but none of them shared a room with their parents like I did. Their rooms would be filled with toys and action figures. The walls were decorated with posters of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and various super heroes. Leaving my friends behind was a small price to pay for my own room.
I remember when my parents showed me the house for the first time. By regular standards, it was an average home in the city. But for a 9-year-old cooped up in a small apartment his entire life, it looked like a mansion. It was a 2-story home with 4 bedroom and 2 bathrooms. The front porch provided much needed shade in the summer time, and there was even a large ramp attached to the side of the porch that led all the way to the backyard where me and my friends would usually hang out for years to come. It was everything that I could have dream of and more. That was, until I took my first step into the house.
The house felt dark and uninviting. Most modern homes have an open floor plan with large windows that let in plenty of natural light. This house was built in the 1940’s. The rooms were small and every room felt secluded from the rest of the house. The house had no curtains or blinds, yet there were large portions of the home that sunlight would never hit. My fight or flight responses were telling me to run, but all those negative feelings went out the window when my mom offered to show me to my room.
My room was upstairs and it was smaller than the room I shared with my parents in the apartment. It didn’t matter though, as it would all be mine and I was more excited than ever. The unnerving feeling I had earlier still lingered, but I chalked it up to being in a new place and that it would eventually go away. It never did, but the intensity of the feeling died down for a while.
The first few years in the new house were great. We got settled in, I set up my room just the way I wanted, and even made some new friends at school. After a few years, the house was starting to show signs of wear and tear. There were stains on the carpet, some of the wall papers were starting to peel, and the house just felt cluttered. My mom made the executive decision to take away one of my weekends with friends to help her with spring cleaning. It was during this spring-cleaning session that I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I was in charge of cleaning the stairs that connected the first floor to the second floor of the house. The stairs were wooden with no carpet on them, so cleaning them shouldn’t be too hard. My mom’s instructions were to sweep the stairs, then spray them with a floor cleaner and wipe them down. I started at the bottom and worked my way up the stairs. About half way up the stairs, I noticed that there was something carved into one of the steps. A.H. was carved into the step with a heart around it. I figured it was someone’s initials.
12-year-old me thought it was the dumbest thing in the world, so I went to grab my pocket knife and crossed out the initials. Immediately, something felt off. It felt as if someone was staring at me from the dark corners of the house. The same dreadful feeling reminiscent of the first time I stepped foot into the house came back in full swing. I looked around trying to see if either my mom or dad were somewhere keeping an eye on me to make sure that I was cleaning the stairs. But no one was there. I could hear both my mom and dad cleaning downstairs. I halfheartedly sped through the remaining stairs and went to go help my parents with whatever else they needed help with. I never told anyone about what I did that day.
A few days after spring cleaning, the first incident happened. It wasn’t anything big or dangerous, just weird. My dad worked in the evening. His shift started at 3 PM and he didn’t get off until midnight. My mom would have me in bed by 9 PM, which meant my mom would be alone downstairs in her room for a few hours before my dad got home.
My mom was in bed when she heard a noise coming from the hallway outside her door. It sounded like someone was dropping a bead on the hardwood floor. “Tik… tik… tik.. tik. tik tiktiktiktiktik.” A few moments later, the same thing, “tik… tik… tik.. tik. tik tiktiktiktiktik.” My mom got up, opened the lights in her room and the lights in the hallway. She stood there and listened to try and see where the sound was coming from. There was nothing but silence. After a few minutes of nothing, she goes back to bed. Then, “tik… tik… tik.. tik. tik tiktiktiktiktik.”
My mom makes her way upstairs and wakes me up. I could see from her face that she was scared. I asked her what was wrong and she told me about what she had been hearing. I follow her downstairs, and we listen. Everything was silent. I suggested we close the lights and see if the sound comes back, and again, everything was silent. My mom eventually calmed down and said I could go back to sleep. I make my way back to my room and try to go back to sleep. A few minutes later, I hear my mom running up the stairs. She opens my door and tells me that she heard it again. I had never seen my mom so terrified before in my life. After that incident, my mom had always stayed up with the lights on until my dad came home from work.
For the remainder of our time living in that house, we would constantly hear weird noises and that feeling of always being watched never went away. When I was at school, my parents would often hear noises upstairs, as if someone was moving around. It felt like the longer we lived there, the more we heard things, and the more we felt like we needed to get out of the house.
Eventually, hearing things turned into seeing things. My parents were out one day and it was just me and grandma home that day. I was hungry, so I went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. I see someone move past the kitchen and down the hallway to bathroom. I assumed it was grandma. I hear the door close, and even heard the little clicking sound that the door makes when you lock it. I finish my sandwich and make my way to the living room. To my horror, grandma was sitting there in her chair reading her book. I asked her if she had just gone to the bathroom and she said she hadn’t gotten out of her chair all day.
I hesitantly ran to where the bathroom was and the door was closed. I didn’t open the door in fear of what I would see in there. I placed my ear on the door to see if I could hear anything. It was dead silent. I took a deep breath and placed my hand on the door knob. And then I heard it. A faint sound of a young girl crying on the other side of the door. I could barely hear it, but it was definitely there. It was so quiet that the sound could have possibly been coming from outside the house through the bathroom window. I finally mustered the courage to open the door and the sound disappeared.
I spoke to grandma about the sound and she would tell me that she’s recently started seeing a young girl in the house. The girl would appear randomly and never say anything. She would just sit there and stare at grandma from time to time. I wondered if the crying I heard had anything to do with the girl that grandma was seeing.
During my senior year in high school, things went from bad to worse. That feeling of someone staring at me from time to time materialized into a shadow figure. In the dark areas of the house, I could see a definite shape of someone sitting there, just staring at me. My parents never saw the shadow figure, but grandma would tell me that was the young girl she’s been seeing.
The poltergeist activities, at least that’s what I called them, were also getting worse. One day, grandma fell down the stairs and broke her right leg. She said she felt someone push her down the stairs. Another time, the bookshelf in my room was pushed over and nearly fell on me. Then there was the incident that made my parents finally decide to put the house back on the market.
My dad was in the garage doing an oil change on his car. He had the car up on jack stands and was loosening the oil drain plug. He heard the door to the garage open and then close and thought it was either me or my mom entering into the garage, which we both later confirmed that it was neither of us. As soon as he got out from under the car, the car collapsed onto the floor. He nearly escaped being crushed to death. Upon inspection of the jack stands, they were still in working condition. It looked like someone simply tipped them over, causing the car to fall. That seemed almost impossible though, considering the amount of strength one would need to pull off such a feat. After that, my parents couldn’t handle it anymore and told me they were selling the house after I graduated.
I would never forget the day we moved out of the house. It took most of summer to finally sell the house, but we eventually found a buyer. My parents would be moving to a neighboring state while I stayed with my best friend for a few weeks before we moved together to our apartment 3 hours away to attend college. As I loaded the last box into the U-Haul, my neighbor asked me if we were finally moving.
He was a few years older than I was, so we never hung out or spoke much. He asked me if I had ever seen “her”. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I told him that I’ve never actually seen her, but I’ve seen a shadow figure that I assumed was a young girl. He finally told me the history of the house. Before we moved in, the Hendersons lived in the house. They had a young daughter named Abby who was always sick and in a wheelchair. My neighbor didn’t know what kind of sickness she had, but he just knew that she spent most of her time in the house.
A year before we moved in, Abby passed away in the house. There were rumors that the Hendersons were going crazy after losing their daughter. They claimed that they can hear her moving about the house and that they can still even see her sometimes. My neighbor always avoided us because sometimes, if he looks up to the window of Abby’s room, he can see her staring down at him. That was the room that my parents had given me.
Now I know why the house had a ramp. It was the same ramp that my friends and I had so many memories hanging out on. The young girl that grandma saw, the shadow figure, and the presence of someone always staring at me were all probably Abby. But something didn’t make sense. Even if Abby was still somehow attached to the home, why did it seem like she was trying to hurt us? Why did she push grandma, tip over my book shelf, or try to kill my dad? I thought about it for a moment, then it hit me like a freight train.
A.H. Abby Henderson. Those were the initials that I had crossed out years ago during spring cleaning. Even though the house was always a little creepy, nothing bad happened until after I crossed those initials out. Maybe she was angry that I crossed out her initials. My neighbor must have seen the terror in my face and asked me if I was ok. I told him I was fine but I didn’t tell him what I had done. In fact, I never told anyone. Not even my parents.
Before we drove off for the last time, I looked up to the window of my room. I didn’t see anything, but the hair on my arms raised, as if to tell me that there was someone there. I was just glad that I no longer had to step foot into that home ever again.
It’s been 20 years and I have not gone back to visit the town I grew up in, let alone to the home that had haunted me all these years. I finished college, got a decent career, married a nice girl I met in college, and I have a little girl that I love more than anything else in the world. After I got married, I moved my family closer to where my parents are living.
Everything was going great until last week. My company was hosting a week-long convention that I needed to attend. The convention was held in a city about 30 mins away from my home town. It was only a 4-hour drive, so I decided to drive instead of fly. We finished early on Thursday so I figured I’d go visit my old stomping grounds.
The small town hadn’t changed much in the last 20 years. It’s expanded a little and some of the stores that I remember are either no longer in business or have been replaced by other stores, but it’s almost exactly as I remember it. After exploring the town for a bit, I finally drove up to the house that I grew up in.
Same as the town, the house was exactly as I remembered it. The ramp was still there. The house still felt dark and creepy. In front of the house was a for sale sign which listed the real estate agent’s information. Next to it was another sign that read, “Open House - Friday - 3 PM to 5 PM”. I left and scoffed at the sign thinking to myself that no one would want to enter that house after taking one look at it.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The bed in the hotel was nice and comfortable, but that damn house kept popping up in my head. It was normal for that house to pop back into my mind from time to time, but it has never kept me up at night. I don’t want to go back into that house, but why does that open house sign intrigue me so much? It was as if there was something, or someone, drawing me back into that house. I didn’t get any sleep that night.
We wrapped up the convention the next day and I was on my way home. The house had been on my mind the entire day. I would be passing my home town on the drive home. As I was getting closer and closer to my home town, every exit that passed me by, I would tell myself that it was nothing. After every mile marker, I would say that it was a stupid idea for me to visit that stupid house. But when the time came for me to either keep driving or exit off to my home town, I took the exit.
My curiosity got the better of me. I needed to figure out why I keep having these nightmares. Why do I keep seeing the same house in my dreams? Why do I wake up after opening the door? Why am I so scared of that house? Maybe I can find some answers in that house and maybe, I can finally stop having these nightmares.
By the time I got to the house, it was 4:30. I had 30 minutes left to decide if I really wanted to do this or not. I got out of the car and stood in front of the house. It felt like I was 9 years old all over again. My fight or flight responses were telling me to run, just as it did all those years ago. The hairs on my arms were all raised and my heart rate was going through the roof. I took a deep breath and made my way towards the house.
The front door was opened and I took a step in. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. The inside of the home was welcoming. There were a few people inside. The real estate agent was showing a young couple around. She welcomed me in and said I can look around and if I had any questions, I can ask her. I was expecting the house to look the same as it had 20 years ago, but there were a lot of changes. The carpets were new, and instead of wall papers, there was a fresh coat of paint on the walls. New light fixtures put in, which made the house a lot brighter than when I lived there.
I went into my room, Abby’s room, and I didn’t feel any dread or uneasiness. I whispered out to Abby and asked her to show herself to me. If she had any issues with me, she could come out and we can talk about it. I also apologized for crossing off her initials when I was child. I didn’t see nor hear anything.
I walked around for 15 mins reminiscing about my childhood when the real estate agent asked me if I had any questions. I didn’t tell her I used to live there, but I asked if she knew the history of the home. She didn’t know much, but she did tell me that there was a time when the house had 7 or 8 different owners over the span of over a decade. The current home owner has owned it for a few years but they don’t live in the house. They bought it, renovated it, and have been trying to sell it for quite some time. I thanked the agent and left the house.
On the drive home, I felt relieved. I laughed to myself thinking that I was silly for having nightmares over a stupid house. I had finally faced my fears and gone back into that house. I was hopeful that I can finally put that house behind me.
It’s been a week since I’ve gone back into that house, and since then, strange things have been happening. My house seems darker than usual. My wife has been hearing things around the house. My daughter now has an imaginary friend and won’t tell me what their name is. The feeling that someone is always staring at me has come back. All of these things concern me, but what scares me the most was the dream that I had last night. I had that same recurring nightmare again. Except this time, I didn’t wake up after opening the door. Once I reached the house and opened the door, I see a young girl sitting in a wheelchair. She’s no older than 12 or 13, her skin is pale, and she looks like she hadn’t eaten in days. She has a large grin on her face as she happily proclaims, “After all these years I’ve finally found you!!!”