My name is Elijah Miller, I am 36 years old. What I am about to share with you is something that happened when I was 15. I haven’t spoken to anyone about this but my therapist, Mr. Evans, who I have been seeing for about two years. I just recently told him about this experience and he thought that I might feel better if I tell other people about it.
My family and I lived in a house inside of a culdesac, when I was 12 until I was 16. There were six houses inside of it and we had a few neighbors. One of the neighbors there was another boy, the same age as me, named Todd.
Todd was a very adventurous kid. He always liked to go on hikes with me in the woods near our house. Even though I was hesitant most of the time at first, I would go with him and we would have a blast. Despite him being very extroverted and an adventurous kid while I was pretty introverted; we were great friends.
I forgot to mention, one of the houses between ours was an old, creepy, vacant house. I will admit it always creeped me out, but at the same time having a creepy abandoned house right next to where I lived was kind of cool to me.
Once we were hanging out in his backyard at an odd hour of the night when he got an idea. “Hey, y’know that house over there?” He pointed in the direction of the abandoned house. Despite him not pointing directly at it and only in the general direction; I immediately knew what he was talking about.
“Yeah, what about it?” I asked him.
“I’ve always wondered what’s in there…” He said with curiosity.
“I actually have, too.” I began to focus my gaze onto the house. It had always been something that piqued my curiosity.
Todd turned towards me smirking, he said, “Well, there’s only one way to find out, Y’know.” It honestly shocked me that it took him that long to suggest going into that house.
“Are you sure? What if we get seen? Someone might call the cops!” I said quietly.
“Oh, come on. We’ll be fine. No one will know.”
Are you sure? I thought to myself. Well, We never have had anything bad happen to us when I go on his little adventures. I thought about it pretty hard for a second. And then I smiled, “Alright, fine. But if the cops get called, don’t get mad at me!”
“Yes!” He exclaimed in a whisper. “But, can I tell Andrew?” He asked.
I cringed to myself. I was never very fond of Andrew but he and Todd were friends.
“Ugh… I guess. As long as you tell him to tell no one.” And after I said that we were on our merry way before I knew it. As we were walking to the house I got a feeling. A bad feeling. I started to feel an overwhelming sense of dread. I started sweating as my stomach felt like it was sinking, my muscles tensed, my mind went blank, my heart started pounding, and I started hyperventilating. I always would have anxiety when I would go on these adventures with him, but this… This was not that. I felt terrified.
“Dude, Are you okay?” I guess he had noticed that I was acting off.
“Huh? Oh! No No No, I…I’m fine!” I lied to him. He looked at me, puzzled.
“Uh, you sure as hell don’t look fine!”
“Trust me I’m fine, haha!” I kept insisting on the lie; something I regret doing to this day.
“Dude, we can do this tomorrow I-”
“It’s fine!” I cut him off.
“Ok, then…” He walked forward and I followed him. I could tell that he was uncomfortable because of how I was acting. Shortly we got to the house and all the negative feelings were gone. We were on the front porch and he turned the doorknob. It was locked.
I chuckled, “Why am I unsurprised?” I said. He looked back at me.
“I guess we’ll have to do this the fun way,” he smirked and started walking around the house into the backyard. I followed behind him. He looked up at the house towards a window and smiled smugly. I watched him looking around the ground for something.
“Aha! There!” He picked up a large rock and held it as if he were about to throw it through the window before he stopped. “Why don’t you do the honors, Eli?”
“Oh, you want me to do it?”
He nodded his head. “Yes.”
“Alright…” I took the rock from his hand and threw it at the window. The glass shattered into tiny shards that looked like crystals as the rock flew through it.
“Nice…” Todd said with satisfaction in his voice. He then proceeded to put his arm through the opening to unlock it. It made a subtle but audible click as it unlocked. Todd struggled to lift the now unlocked window but succeeded. He gazed inside for a few seconds before turning to me and grinning, “Ladies first.” I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was just trying to make me laugh but I didn’t find it very funny. I climbed through the small rectangular shaped hole and fell onto the ground as I got through.
“Ow!” I cried out to myself. “Ok, Todd. Now it’s your turn.” I said to him. He put his arms into the window and I pulled him in.
“Oh my god, Eli! You’re bleeding!” He pointed at my forearm. The underside had a small cut on it and a tiny amount of blood was seeping out.
I probably cut myself while falling onto some glass. I thought to myself, “Eh, I’ll be fine.” We began to wander around the room. As I looked around I saw an old fridge and a rusty stovetop, “This must’ve been the kitchen.” I quietly said to myself.
“Yeah, it would’ve taken a genius to find that out.” He chuckled to himself.
I giggled, “Thanks for the compliment. I know I’m a genius,” I snarkily said back to him.
“I’ll race you into that room!” He pointed towards a doorway to another room. He started running into the room and I quickly followed behind him. The walls were painted dark green. There was a couch and a fireplace. The sofa had several rips and was covered in dirt and stains. There was something on the shelf above the fireplace but it was dark so I couldn’t see very well. They looked like dolls of some sorts.
“Do you see that?” I asked Todd.
“Yeah, what are those? They look like action figures or something.” He said curiously, “Hang on, I have a crank flashlight.”
“Wait what? Then why haven’t you been using it?”
“Well, I figured we didn’t need it! We can see pretty well in the dark.” He said, “Just not whatever these are.” He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and cranked it. The light it provided was dim but it gave off enough that we could see what the things on the shelf were. I gasped as I realized that they were all taxidermied squirrels, “Oh my god. Well, maybe the person who lived here had a hobby?” He said while questioning his own statement.
“Yeah, l-let’s just leave it at that.” I replied back to him. I have never thought that taxidermy was inherently creepy, but those stuffed squirrels freaked me out and still do when I think about them, “Maybe we should leave.”
“I mean, it’s kind of strange but it’s not really dangerous though.” He was right. I started looking around again and found a door. The door was white and matched with the wall’s paint. I put my hand on the brass doorknob and turned it. As soon as the door opened I was hit with a smell. A rotting stench. I nearly gagged from the smell but kept looking around the room. It was a small bathroom with chipping grey paint on the walls and cracked marble tiles. But what terrified me was what was in the bathtub. The bathtub was full of dozens of squirrel carcasses. There were several brown splotches of old blood scattered on the tub. I’m no expert on the decomposition of small animals but the squirrels did not look like they had been there for that long at all. I gasped loudly at the sight and felt like throwing up.
“T-Todd, there’s a bunch of dead squirrels!”
I heard his voice call back to me from another room, “Where on Earth did you find that?”
“J-Just come here, y-you idiot!”
His voice got closer as he walked in my direction, “I don’t believe y-” He covered his mouth with his hands in shock.
I turned to him and shouted, “Do you believe me now?!”
“I wish I didn’t.” His voice was shaky, “We need to get out of here, now!”
“On it, boss!” I replied back. I grabbed Todd’s hand and started running towards the kitchen. He stumbled but also started running with me. I got to the window but noticed something. There was someone in the backyard. I couldn’t make out any details but he was really tall. He looked like he was around 6’5”. I immediately froze. What if it’s a cop? I thought to myself before realizing that it was not. He was dragging something. I couldn’t tell what it was but I was sure that it was a large carcass of some sort. That’s the guy who stuffed those squirrels! I made a disturbing realization as I noticed this, “Todd, we gotta hide!” I whispered to him
“Ok.” he whispered back. We quietly ran up the stairs and into a room. The walls were yellow and there was a bed with red sheets. But to the right of the bed there was a workbench covered in several tools, unlit wax candles, Squirrel carcasses, a squirrel anatomy book, and the most disturbing of all, a human anatomy book. I realized that whoever this was must’ve been planning to stuff a person. My heart dropped. The thing he was dragging was a human being! I thought to myself. Todd shuddered while looking at the workbench.
“Hide!” Todd whispered as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. We ran into a closet with pinewood shutter doors. We quietly shut them. We sat next to each other and waited in the closet for what felt like twenty minutes but was probably only twenty seconds as the footsteps creeped closer and closer. Then they stopped in front of the door to the room we were in.
Please don’t come in! Please don’t come in! But right as those thoughts passed through my mind, the door creaked open. I could barely see through the shutter but the same tall figure that I saw in the backyard entered into the room dragging the corpse behind him. The body scraped against the ground as he slowly walked into the room towards the workbench. He reached the table and let go of the body’s leg. Its foot made a thud against the ground. He proceeded to light the candles providing enough light for me to be able to see. The body he was dragging was a woman. A woman who I recognized but wasn’t sure where from. Her mouth hung open lifelessly and she had a small head wound which looked like she was hit with a blunt object that was seeping out blood. The man who was dragging her had long disheveled brown hair, a ripped plain white tee, and loose, dirty khaki pants. The demented man looked to be in his late thirties to early forties. He picked up the woman’s corpse and laid her out on the workbench. I almost hurled when I realized what he was about to do. I felt sick to my stomach and started gagging. I guess I was being too loud because as soon as I did he turned towards the closet that we were in. He started slowly walking towards us while smiling like a maniac and cackling. I started sobbing and reflecting on my entire life feeling so certain that I was going to die there.
“Lord, please save us.” Todd whispered. I had never heard Todd pray in my life and I know that he was an atheist. As the man inched closer he put his hand on the door to the closet and slid it open. He stared at us for at least a second before I went into fight or flight mode. I immediately chose flight, crawling past him before getting up and running faster than I even knew I could. I reached the open window and squeezed through it, caught myself as I hit the ground and immediately got back on my feet. I ran and ran faster than any Olympic champion and never looked back. I swear I heard rapid footsteps behind me. I prayed to God that it was Todd behind me but I wasn’t sure. I reached my house and that was when I finally turned around and… There was no one behind me. There weren’t even footsteps in the grass. There was no trace of Todd following me or that man chasing me. But that didn’t stop me from going inside my house as fast as I could so I could get to the house phone to call 911. I called the cops and immediately told them everything that happened but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t even try to listen to me. They just told me not to prank call the police and hung up. I felt like crying and throwing up at the same time. I felt like I left Todd for dead but that I was lucky I had survived at the same time.
To this day I still haven’t seen Todd since the incident and know that he must’ve become part of that man’s sick collection. This wasn’t just someone with an innocent taxidermy hobby, this was a dangerously sick and deranged person. That man might still be out there claiming more victims and stuffing them for his own liking. To this day I still blame myself. The feeling I had outside the house makes sense and I know I should have trusted it. I still feel like it’s my fault that Todd is gone and that I abandoned him.
So, yeah… That was my experience with The House in the Culdesac.