(repost i accidentally deleted it before)
I should start by saying I do have schizophrenic paranoia, but I was sure that’s what it was until earlier. I’m writing this on my phone, I have pictures and videos of it. I **know** it happened. I can’t stop fucking shaking, holy shit.
We have to start a week ago, when I started noticing and hearing things. I’ve been medicated for a few years now but sometimes things still happen. I still hear stuff, I still freak myself out sometimes, but I was also a chronic horror junkie. I haven’t been this scared in so long.
I spent like half an hour just laying in bed, staring at my ceiling and feeling a little sorry for myself. Eventually I pulled myself together and got up, grabbing my glasses and heading downstairs. I logged in on the computer, then turned to go make some coffee in my cheap small coffee maker.
A lot of the stuff in the kitchen was second hand from family and friends, and the appliance I bought (the coffee maker, the toaster, and the waffle iron) were all cheap 10$ or less at Walmart.
So while I’m standing there waiting for my coffee I notice the basement door was slightly open and walked over to it. I pulled it all the way open, hearing the usual basement rumblings and closed the door. I picked up my phone and I texted my boyfriend.
You: Hey, did you like go into the basement before you left?
Jake: No why?
You: The door was just open
You: Just checking
You: I probably left it open last night doing laundry
You: Good luck at work
Jake: Ha ha
I scoffed a little, rolling my eyes and and stuck my phone back into my pocket, smelling the coffee and closed my eyes. Not too long after I was sat at the desk, filling out online applications from some job site and hoping to hear back from someone soon. The day went alright until I swear I could hear the basement stairs groaning.
Instead of freaking myself out over it I rationalized it was just the neighbors on the opposite side of the duplex. That night I told Jake about it, and how I never noticed it. “You really are oblivious in front of the computer, aren’t you?” Jake leaned over, kissing my cheek as I chuckled, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, hardy har.”
We were laying up in bed at around 2:30AM, settling in for the night when we heard something fall downstairs. Jake grabbed his baseball bat and I grabbed my knife and we crept downstairs, listening for the sound of some intruder. He checked the front door and I checked to make to make sure they were both locked.
When I turned around from the backdoor I noticed the basement door open just a crack. I was really confused and walked over, staring at the door. Maybe I just thought I closed it earlier, but I did open the door again, peering down into the dark basement. The longer I stared into the dark trying to see something the more nervous I was making myself. Jake leaned over me, shutting the door and touched my shoulder lightly, in a non verbal gesture to get me to follow him back upstairs for bed.
He went to sleep before me, I just found myself staring the ceiling till around 5AM. Jake was up at one like he always was, getting ready for work and going downstairs. He was gone before I woke up.
I got out of bed and headed downstairs, seeing the milk sitting on the counter. He did that sometimes when he ate cereal before leaving, but it was no big deal. I put the milk back into the fridge, shutting it and looked at the basement door. It was closed, which was good, because that meant I closed it last night.
I walked a little closed, pausing by the trashcan to listen to see if I heard anything. When I didn’t I scoffed at myself, heading over towards the desk to job hunt some more. About an hour or two later I heard something thud in the basement. I paused the music, turning to look over my shoulder for a second, listening behind me before getting up.
“What the fuck?”
The basement stairs were uncomfortable. The wood was old, and kind of warped from people going up and down them for so long. I was always worried one was going to break one day. But I’d always had that fear with old wooden stairs.
In the basement we had a bunch of boxes shoved under the stairs from when we moved in, and Jake’s old mattress and rug from his room were leaned up against one wall. I flipped the light switch at the bottom of the steps, seeing the rug had fallen over and rolled my eyes. These little things happened, don’t blow it out of proportion.
It was hard to remind myself of that sometimes, that just because something happens or falls somewhere it doesn’t mean that there’s some absurd answer. Like someone hiding in my basement. But there was nowhere to hide. There was the washer in dryer on one wall, and boxes under the stairs. So I also happened to ignore the feeling like someone was watching me.
I picked the rug up, setting it back against the wall, staring at the propped up mattress. Leaning my head down I looked behind it, I saw a spider and let out a small ‘ugh’ before turning around and going back upstairs. I’d ignored the feeling, but I should’ve looked just a little closer.
All these little things were leaving an eerie feeling over me, but you have to understand, when you’re paranoid every day anyways, you learn to accept a lot for how it’s ‘supposed to be’. I didn’t want to think someone was down there.
That night nothing really happened, me and Jake were both asleep before 3:30 so there wasn’t much time to just think. The basement door was closed, and I just went back to the computer for the day.
I kept getting the feeling someone was staring at me or something, but whenever I looked behind myself or in the dark parts of my screen I never saw anyone there. But I did leave my computer unlocked last night so I wouldn’t lose where I was in some story I was reading online, and a song I’d been listening to. But the tab for my music was closed.
Jake must’ve heard it playing this morning and closed the tab instead of pausing it. He did that sometimes but that’s not the point. The point is that the tab was closed, so I went to my history to find the exact link again.
Except that in my history were videos that I didn’t watch the night before. They were some videos on Youtube, and someone watching Netflix. Weird…
So I went to the streaming service site to check and see what someone was watching on my account. They were all shows I’d never even heard of, cutting off in the middle of some episodes. I decided to text Jake, pulling my phone up and sent him a text, asking if he started watching on my account.
I doubted it though, he was definitely not that kind of guy and neither was I. It just didn’t make sense, and yet I had no other proof that it was someone else. Jake texted back that he hadn’t and the basement door was open again.
I got up, heading towards the basement door and climbed down, looking around as I flipped the lights on. I looked around, staring at the boxes, then looked to the mattress. It hadn’t been moved I don’t think.
When I felt less crazy about someone being in my basement I headed upstairs again, closing the door. I would’ve locked it but the basement door locks on the side that goes down to the basement. I headed back to the desk, checking my phone again. Jake had asked me to throw a load of laundry of his in, and I sent back a thumbs up before heading back upstairs to grab it and put it in now.
When I made my way back down, leaving the door open as I tossed the load in and headed upstairs. I climbed up the stairs, shutting the door behind me. It’s shut. Okay? I stared at it for ten minutes making no noises and it didn’t magically swing open in front of me. I nodded, and sat at the computer again.
I was writing a little, listening to music and talking to some of my friends on a voice call on the computer. We were talking, and I had my headset on so they could hear me better through the mic rather than the mic on my camera.
I couldn’t hear anything while I was on the call, and it went on for a few hours. Around the time that Jake usually gets off work is when I got off the call. I was about to go start dinner when I noticed Jake texted me that he was going to be a little late and he’d pick up something for us instead of making me cook.
Since I’d already stood up I grabbed my cup and headed into the kitchen to get myself another cup of water when I noticed something weird. My grandpa’s video camera was sitting on top of the pantry cabinet we bought. It wasn’t weird I had it, my grandpa had given it to me last time I was around. It was a pretty nice one, only a few years old but he hadn’t used it in a while.
It was weird because the little screen thing was open just a little. I went over, picking it up, and opened the screen. I noticed a few videos were on it and smiled, figuring they were fun family moments.
There were five videos on it, the first one was fifteen seconds long, it was dark at first until a door opened in the middle of the screen. I froze
That was my silhouette from that night when I stared in the basement.
The next video was from inside of the pile of boxes under the stairs, showing me picking up the rug and checking behind the mattress. Then me going up the stairs.
There were two more videos of me doing the laundry but then the last video really got me. It was last night, me and Jake were both in our bed, our TV was the only light in the room, playing some show for us to fall asleep too. The camera moved slowly around the bed, getting over to my side, then it was just three minutes of me sleeping with the camera getting close near the end.
Closing the camera, I realized I needed to look at the basement door. Slowly I turned around, looking at the basement door, my body a little shaky and I felt like all the oxygen was gone in the room. The door was cracked open, and I could see someone staring at me.
I was paralyzed, as the woman slammed the door shut, and I could hear the door lock and her run down the stairs. I grabbed one of the chairs from the kitchen table, shoving the chair against the door so she couldn’t open it. I ran out the back door, calling the police and turned to look back at the house. I could see her staring at me from the windows in the basement, a wide grin on her face with big eyes.
When the police came she put up a fight as an officer guided me away from her. “I love you!” She kept yelling at me, kicking and fighting the officers the whole way out. That’s when they brought me to the station to get my statement. I told them everything, about the noises, about the camera. They took the camera out of the room to watch the videos.
After they took my statement, my parents came and picked me up and me and Jake are sleeping at their house tonight. I have no idea who that woman is, and the police probably won’t get back to me until tomorrow.