From the first night, odd things happened to us.
My now ex-wife, Jane, had a great grandmother who passed away; Hilda was her name, and she was an extremely devout Christian. Perhaps that’s why this creature never seemed to have bothered her. If anyone had the power of Christ on their side, well, it would’ve been a woman so devout people regularly called her “Holy Hilda”.
Upon her passing, my ex-wife inherited Holy Hilda’s home. It was a nice little home for us to raise our family in; Jane had a child before we met, and was a few months pregnant (with a second child) when I met her.
Jane and I weren’t people of organized religion. We each held our beliefs, but they weren’t Christian. The very first night we stayed, the children were actually due for a visit to their father’s home. In their absence, we decided to have a little fun, the kind that involved a third party and zero clothing.
We’re having our fun, when suddenly, in the next room over, the radio starts up. The room in question had been Hilda’s quilting room. It was very odd. We believed in the supernatural, both of us having our own prior experiences with it. We thought it was Hilda, objecting to our debauchery, simply because of who she was.
Looking back, I think she knew what was in that home, and that our lifestyle would make us easy prey for it. The radio wasn’t an objection; it was a warning.
Odd things started happening, and the oddity increased the longer we were there. First, it was the microwave; it would turn itself on. Now, like I said, we believed in the supernatural, but we typically looked for rational explanations first (the radio was the exception; we were certain that was supernatural the moment it happened). So we moved it to a different outlet, thinking, “Oh, old house, busted outlets”.
It kept turning itself on.
We finally got a new microwave, thinking the problem was the microwave itself, a control board issue.
It, too, turned itself on.
It was like this thing knew about the world, what might be first mistaken for a reasonable occurrence, and it was toying with us with that kind of thing before it brought out the big guns.
It felt like a safety hazard to have a microwave that ran on its own will, so we resorted to leaving it unplugged when not in use.
The other thing was the telephone.
Hilda was old-fashioned, and had a working landline up until the day she died. We promptly disconnected the landline, both being proud owners of cellular devices.
The phone rang anyways. It rang during the day, it rang at night. It rang, and rang, and rang. It would not stop ringing unless someone went and took it off the hook. I lasted ten minutes once, I had been extremely busy with childcare and didn’t have time to go pick it up. Sometimes, you’d go and take it off, put it back on, turn around, and it would ring again. I picked it up a few times, and put it to my ear, thinking/hoping maybe we were catching interference from another landline, perhaps a nearby business, but I never heard anything.
The phone eventually stopped all of its nonsense. We were relieved. Until the tapping came.
Jane was a chronic insomniac, and thus, she would be up until very late hours. After the phone stopped, Jane told me one morning something new had happened.
She described being up late, around 3 AM. She was just playing a game, when suddenly, she started to hear a tapping sound on our windows.
Tap, tap, tap on the front window of the house, facing the street
Tap, tap, tap on the side window of the house, facing our driveway/another street (corner house).
Tap, tap, tap on the back window of the house, facing our carport.
And, finally…
Tap, tap, tap, on the opposite side of the home, facing our yard, on the window Jane sat next to in our bed.
It didn’t happen every night. Not even most. But from then on, about once a week, Jane would tell me “the tapping” happened again. It was always in that order, going around the house like that, always three taps, always saving our window for last.
I almost didn’t believe her, until one night, Jane woke me from a nightmare (I’ve always been prone to them, for separate reasons, and I had asked her to wake me if I were to the point of crying in my sleep, which happened that night). I stayed up with her a bit.
We were talking, when suddenly, Jane said “Shhhh… listen.”
I shhh, listened. I heard it immediately. Tap, tap, tap on the windows. It was exactly how she’d described it. Three taps, rotating around the home. They moved too quickly moving to be a human just fucking with us, and there were fences in between the locations. Houses settle, but it doesn’t sound like tapping on the window.
My blood ran cold. I could only sit there in horror, knowing from her description what would happen; it would land on our window, and it did. I could barely force my lungs to work. I had tears in my eyes. Jane was fine, she’d experienced this far more times than me at this point. I, on the other hand, had just woken up from a nightmare, to a nightmare. I believe it knew that, and, bored with Jane’s non-reactions, thought I would give it the healthy dose of fear it sought. And I certainly did.
And then Annie came.
We didn’t know about Annie, at first. All we knew was sometimes, the baby would be crying at night, and suddenly, stop, and start giggling. Extremely creepy, but as the baby couldn’t talk, we couldn’t exactly ask why.
But then, one day, Jane heard her older child in the other room, speaking to thin air, what could even be called playing with thin air.
Jane went into the room, asking “Hey baby, who are you playing with?”
“I play with Annie.”
I’m sorry, who?
Annie was a little girl, or at least, showed herself as one. Annie was their “friend”. We knew any “leave Annie alone” speeches would be futile.
It was, believe it or not, easy enough to pawn this off on an imaginary friend; maybe I didn’t really believe that, but I forced myself to. Until I saw it.
One day, I exited the kitchen. The kitchen was attached to the living room thru an archway, and you could then go down the hall attached to the living room (lining the same wall as the kitchen, just on the opposite side) to access the three bedrooms and one bathroom.
I exited the kitchen, turned, and prepared to go down the hallway (don’t quite remember why). I saw Jane’s older child, at the end of the hallway, looking as if they were heading to the bathroom. This was odd, because despite being the older one, they were not yet potty trained due to developmental issues, and did not go to the bathroom alone, if at all. I started walking towards the bathroom (technically I was already walking in that direction, but the bathroom wasnt my original objective). I wanted to offer my assistance in case needed, and give praises if it weren’t.
As I was walking down the hallway, I heard Jane’s older child laugh… From the living room, behind me. I had turned the corner so fast I didn’t see the real child, sitting on the couch watching television. All I saw was the false child, presumably this “Annie” appearing unto me as if it were Jane’s child, reaching an important milestone.
I stopped in my tracks. What the fuck did I just see walking into my bathroom? I decided not to find out.
Finally, the structure remnants in the yard.
One day, Jane and I were playing with the children in the yard. The younger one suddenly, mid run, tripped and fell. We went over to check, and found what the little one had tripped over; it was a board, mostly still under the earth, but a bit was sticking up, enough to trip tiny running feet.
I asked Jane if there had ever been any other buildings on the property, as Hilda had lived her most of her life, and all of Jane’s. She said no, but asked her father, Hilda’s son, who had grown up there. The house had been new when his parents bought it, the land undeveloped before there was a home there (I actually checked the city’s records because it was driving me up a wall). If there’d ever been a building, he would have known.
He said no, he had no idea why that board was there.
We searched around, and found more pieces sticking up in the surrounding area. It seemed like a storm or something had washed just enough soil away for us to see them; I’d mowed that lawn many times and never come across any boards. It was clear from their placement something had been there, but we had no idea what. It looked pretty old, but I’m no expert on wood dating. If it were a structure from a time before records were kept, it would’ve had to have been pretty old.
The freakiest part is that all of the boards were outside of our bedroom window- where the tapping always ended.
Like I said earlier, Jane is now my ex-wife, and the children were my step-children. Jane and I split up about a year ago, for reasons unrelated to these. So, I haven’t been to the home in a long time, nor spoken to Jane directly, nor the children. So I don’t have a resolution for you all. Sorry to “no-sleep bait”. But I’ve been pretty down lately, been reading no sleep as a distraction, and figured I’d post my ghost/demon/whatever the hell that thing was stories.
If anyone has any idea what on Earth was going on, feel free to share your perspective with me. I’ve never been able to make sense if it all together, not with rational explanations or with supernatural ones. It was a very odd time to live through.