When I was younger, around the start of summer break. My mom would send me to my grandmother’s house for about a week or two. She lived somewhat far away, and the drive was usually around two hours or so, depending on the traffic. As a young kid, these seemingly long never-ending road trips always made me dread going to her house, but despite disliking the trip up there, I always enjoyed all of the visits that I had with her, mainly because I was able to get an escape from the suburban lifestyle and enjoy a bit of nature.
My Grandmother had a rather large house, It was made of bricks and had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. The decor of the house vaguely resembled a cottage, and she had floral accents littered in just about every part of the house, even the rugs that she had were ever so detailed with small embroidered roses. The old brick house was not only striking on the inside but also on the outside. The house was surrounded by nothing but trees as far as the horizon stretched. She had a wide open backyard, complete with two tiny sheds, a garden, and a lake that went deep into the woods. so, it’s no surprise that where she lived had quite a bit of wildlife. Geese, rabbits, deer, raccoons, as well as the occasional foxes and coyotes.
Me and my grandmother would often spend our time outdoors feeding the geese bread, trying carefully not to scare them away. She would also leave out any leftover food that we didn’t finish from dinner, which meant that I saw a lot of different little critters around the nighttime. However, one animal would always stick out to me the most, and it was the deer. Seeing them was a rarity, they would usually come out around dusk, and would often linger out around the river before suddenly disappearing back into the woods. I remember how excited I was when I was able to capture a quick shot of a lone deer on the small camera that my mom had given me for my birthday that year. I loved my grandmother’s house and all of the woodland animals that inhabited it. However, as time had started to pass, these visits started to slow down, and by the time middle school came around, I no longer visited her house.
It wasn’t until recently when I was going through various storage boxes in my basement that I found the old camera that I had seemingly forgotten about. I turned it on and viewed the various blurry pictures I had taken. Seeing all of my old pictures sent a flood of nostalgia through me and before I knew it, the idea of visiting her again had already consumed my thoughts. I had ultimately decided that maybe it would be a fun idea, it’s not like I had a lot planned out for winter break anyway.My mom had agreed to allow me to stay at her house and I was thrilled to be able to relive one of my most cherished childhood memories.
I arrived at her house today around 6, and my grandmother gave me a warm welcome and showed me the guest room that I was going to be staying in. She cooked both of us a quick meal, which included homemade stew and small bread rolls. We both conversed with each other about the new events in our lives, how high school was going, if I liked all of my classes and what teachers I liked and disliked. Afterward, she took me to one of the bedrooms that she had now converted into a sewing room and we sat quietly attempting to sew small pillows. After a couple minutes of Silence, she mentioned something that I thought was rather odd. She had said that the deer were beginning to come around more frequently. At first, I waited for her to continue speaking, but when she didn’t, I looked up and saw that she had a rather worried and almost scared face. She then repeated something along the lines of her ‘’not liking how the deer acted’’ I was starting to grow more confused at what she was talking about and I pressed for more details about what she was referring to. And that’s when things really started to become weird.
According to her, it started off as small one-off occurrences. The deer would start to appear around the lake as usual, but eventually, they started wandering around her house. She wasn’t initially bothered by this, but soon she started noticing that they would gather in groups around her house and stay there in the same exact position for hours. This strange event understandably freaked my grandmother out a lot, but that’s not even the weirdest part yet.
One night, my grandmother had gone into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Well, it’s at this point when she suddenly notices that there’s a figure at the window near the sink. She can barely make out what is on the other side of it, so she goes closer and is terrified to see a deer, the side of its face pressed up against the window. She then lightly hits the glass and starts to feel uneasy when the animal doesn’t even flinch. Not one bit, she hits the window harder, and it still doesn’t react. She then covered the window with the blinds and tried her hardest to go back to sleep.In the following weeks, the same thing happens every single day. The herd of deer would wander around a bit, and then at night, they stood idly against her house.
Then after a while, less and less deer started to appear, first it was 10, then 7, then 4, and then eventually only 2. At first, she is relieved that they start appearing less, but this relief is rather short-lived because a few days later, that’s when she starts noticing the dead deer.The first one that she found was around the back of her shed, she didn’t think too much of it at first, because well, she’s used to seeing all kinds of dead animals around her property. But soon, every single day, a new dead deer would appear near her house. She tried to be logical about it, chalking it up to hunters, but after finding the 4th corpse, she could no longer contain her curiosity and examined the dead animal.There was nothing, no large cuts, animal bites, or any gunshot wounds. Not a single scratch on the damn thing. Now, thoroughly creeped out and done with everything, she decides to visit her nearest neighbor, Bruce. He was a rough man, around his late 40s who lived alone. The pair enjoyed some lunch that my grandmother made and brought over to him. However, once they had finished their food, she started to have second thoughts about even mentioning the whole situation, but fortunately for her, she didn’t have to because he had started to question her about the amount of dead deer that was suddenly appearing in the area. They both remarked about how unusual the whole thing was, and Bruce had tried to come up with an explanation, something about how it was probably some weird parasite or sickness, almost like Chronic Wasting Disease. My grandmother, unsure of what to say, agreed and quickly changed the topic and soon left his house.She had slipped back into quietness and looked up at me waiting to see my reaction. But, I was dumbfounded. I had zero clue on what to even say or suggest, I simply asked her what she thought it could possibly be. And she shakes her head and continues working on piecing together the fabric.The rest of the night goes on like usual, we finish our project and I help her vacuum the living room and wash the dishes, but I find myself avoiding looking in the direction of the kitchen window and I try my hardest to forget about the whole thing. But I can’t. It’s now very late in the night, and I don’t think I’ll get much sleep, so I decided to write about the whole thing here hopefully, someone can give me some advice on what may be happening. I’ve searched the internet and I can’t find anything that would explain any of this. I have so many questions, and I’ll try to update you guys on any new events that may occur during my stay. Again, please feel free to ask any questions or give any advice about the whole thing. I could really use some help in trying to figure this whole thing out.