For a little backstory, I (17fm) been living in this house for a little over five years now, with my parents, sister (14) brother (11) and dog.
For the first couple years it was fine. After the second year, things started to get a little weird. Things in my bedroom wouldn’t be where I left them, I’d find things I thought I put away back on the counters, stuff that I could just chalk up to my siblings wanting to get on my nerves. Remember I was 12-13 at the time, so I found it pretty childish and a little stupid.
During the third year, I was left home alone. My parents and siblings had gone out and I decided I didn’t want to go, so I stayed behind to take care of the dog. I was in the living room, chilling on the couch, scrolling through social media. The dog was cuddled up next to me, so it came as quite a scare when a loud bang echoed from the kitchen. I didn’t think much of it, which, may I add, was pretty stupid of me, so I continued to sit there. After a while, I turned on the tv and started watching shows that my parents weren’t necessarily encouraging me to watch.
When another bang came from the kitchen, I paused my show and got up to check it out. Only when I got there did I realize what the noises had been. The back door was thrown open, along with the screen door. I shut it as quickly as possible and locked it. I was pretty scared at this point, and was three seconds from calling my mom and telling her to come home. I decided I’d be fine, and that I didn’t want to ruin my chances of being left alone in the future, so I went back to the living room and unpaused my show. I hadn’t even been watching for another minute, when another bang came from the kitchen. This time, I armed myself with a book from the shelf and crept towards the kitchen once again.
The fridge door was open. I lowered the book slowly and shut the fridge. I pressed my back against it, trying to calm my breathing. One of the dogs toy balls rolled across the floor and hit me in the side of the foot. I crouched down to pick it up, but froze as my eyes had landed on the partly open bathroom door. The room was dark, but I could make out the unmistakable figure of a human. It was kneeling, almost mirroring my position. I stared at it for about another minute, not even able to scream, until my fight or flight response kicked in. I chucked the book at the thing, ran as fast as I could to the front door and sprinted down the street. My dog chased after me, as though he thought I was playing some sort of game. My heart was thumping loudly and my breathing came out in sharp bursts.
I ran until my legs went numb to the point where I was about to collapse. I dropped down on the curb and tried desperately to catch my breath or slow down my heart but the only thing I could thing about was the figure. I couldn’t have been seeing things. I could have sworn I saw the outline of a human. The back door was open. Someone could have gotten in. Even then… it seemed unlikely. Our neighbourhood hardly had any crime, and when it did, it was something small, like stealing a couple snacks from a cooler, or stealing a little bit of bait for fishing, and the person had always come forward and confessed to it. I refused to go back to that house. I didn’t care that I had left my phone inside. I don’t care that my mom would probably ground me. All I cared about was never going back there.
It was about 45 minutes later, when I heard my mom calling my name. I ran towards her and she engulfed me in a tight hug. She inevitably brought me back to the house and my stepdad searched the entire place for the creature I had seen. I was grounded, like how I had predicted, but nothing really happened after that, until now.
My mom had sent me to the basement to get my brothers ice cream cake from the freezer, and I had gone down, not really expecting anything to happen, but was instantly proven wrong. A human figure stood in the dark at the bottom of the stairs, and I almost had a mini heart attack when it took a step towards me. I bolted out of the basement to tell my mom, but when she looked, there was nothing there. She got mad at me for lying, but I know what I saw. It was the same thing I had seen two years back, the thing that had scared me out of the house for 45 minutes.
I haven’t seen it since, but I’m scared to have any of the lights off, even at night when I’m supposed to be asleep. Sometimes, I’ll peek down the basement stairs, but it’ll never be there. I feel like it’s trying to make me think I’m going insane. I guess I’ll never know it’s intentions, but I’m moving out of this house as soon as I get the chance.