16. This gave me chills
At the risk of sounding cliche, I consider myself to be mostly a skeptic. I believe in the possibility of paranormal things, especially considering some of the things I have experienced. But, I also believe that a lot of stories you hear or read are probably either fabrications, or something that the teller has worked themselves into believing. I say this not to be judgemental, but to emphasize the fact that I still can’t explain what happened to me, other than to say that it still absolutely terrifies me to even think of it. I believe that either something truly paranormal was going on, or that some outside influence or severe night terrors/sleep paralysis was effecting me.
However, these events only happened in one house. A weird house.
The house I lived in when I was 5 till about 12 was a pretty weird one. It was originally a fairly old small building, with a loft bedroom above the main area. At some point a group of hippies added on to the building. The additions were not very well built or insulated, and were full of these big crazy glass windows and stained glass panels. There was a floating interior balcony area above the kitchen, and a tiny loft room we called, “the hole in the wall” which was just off the kitchen up a ladder. There was no plumbing in the house other than an old hand pump at the sink. The house was weird but I don’t really know if it had much to do with what happened there. I almost think it was more something to do with the land it was on. My mother still firmly believes in Ley lines, and that the property was on a bad one, a really bad one. Many other people who have lived on the property (including the lady who lives there now, who is a family friend), has admitted having weird experiences there. However I am here to tell my story. (I might be able to scan some pictures of the house if I can find them.)
My childhood bedroom in this house was in the older part of the building, it was up a really steep staircase which was kind of weird in itself, it was part bookshelf, and part window. There were two windows in the stairs, one between two of the steps, and one along the side of the stairwell. These windows came out of a workshop/washing room which was directly below my room. My room wasn’t terribly weird other than being a very narrow attic room with a kind of slanted A shape to it, and a weird stained glass window over the main window (which was also the fire exit, via a rope and long drop). The room below it though I never liked, and the woman who lives there now keeps both my old room, and that workroom padlocked. No small feat as my room didn’t actually have a door. She has it boarded up now. I was actually relieved when I saw that because I wasn’t sure she’d believe my story. I never told her all of it, but I did tell her to please not use those rooms. She told me to not worry, that she doesn’t for her own reasons. They scare her too. Anyways, the workroom was creepy by itself. It was full of old woodworker’s tools. I’m talking 18th century stuff. There was this enormous old drill press, and tons of these thin little sawblades hanging all over the walls. The smaller side room in there had these huge rusty white ceramic sinks… I am realizing typing this that this house really is pretty damn creepy. I never liked it but in retrospect I am amazed I never really thought of it this way. So yeah, very creepy all around.
A lot of the details here, I had been keeping buried really deep. About 8 years ago, something I was talking to my mother about in her new home triggered a flood of memories about this time of my life. I went white (according to my mother), fell to my knees off of the couch, and started crying and wailing. I am not prone to hysterics. I was covering my eyes and freaking out, saying, “No, no, oh god… how did I forget this?” or something to that effect. I scared the hell out of my mother.
This is what I remembered.
When things really started getting weird, I was about 7 years old. I’ve always had trouble sleeping. I wake up really easily. A housefly can wake me. I never had an imaginary friend, but I had something that would visit me just as I was falling asleep.
It started fairly gently. Just a weird voice telling me to, “Go to sleep.” I will never forget the sound of the voice though. It sounded neither male or female, and like it was really far away, but right in my ear at the same time. Like a radio station with white noise and static, but a clear quiet voice that you could clearly understand.
I remember not really liking the voice, and wondering why it was bothering me. But I didn’t fear it at first. I didn’t trust it either though. I don’t remember how long this went on, but I remember the voice getting more interested in me, it would tell me to close my eyes, to just listen to it, and every night, to just trust it. “You can trust me. I’m your friend.” I never spoke to it, but I did think to it, I know I was always thinking, “No.” or at least negative. It got progressively insistent, wanting me to trust it. Never, ever angry though. It seemed to want to convince me that it was my friend. It was this that ultimately made me the most afraid of it. I remember thinking at it, “Who are you?” and it’s reply was, “You can call me Nurse.” I guess it thought that would be a name I would trust. But I remember it scaring the crap out of me. I don’t remember the details but sometime after this, when I knew for sure I did not like this voice talking to me* at all*, it started to get angry. I would be wide awake but unable to move. My eyes would be, or at least feel open but I couldn’t see. I would want to scream for my parents (which I sometimes did when I had a bad nightmare) but I couldn’t. The worst part was, the next morning. I wouldn’t remember a thing. I would only remember just as I was falling asleep. Then the fear would come, and the voice.
During this time I also had some of the most vivid nightmares of my life. Things no 7 year old girl should ever, ever, even know about. They were often the same nightmare over and over on different nights too. One I remember very clearly was this hardpan desert area that was covered in glass phonebooths. Every 10 or so feet, a phonebooth. In every one would be the same man in a business suit, and he was always horribly mutilated and massacred in different ways in each booth.
Another weird event that happened in that time, but I am not sure if it is related was, waking up in the middle of the night and sitting bolt upright. I don’t know if it was sleepwalking but I vaguely remember. Mostly I have the details second hand from my mother, who got a pretty big scare. Anyways, I went downstairs and into that workroom I mentioned earler. Below the staircase was a storage area underneath a drafting desk that was built into the underside of the stairs. There were several random boxes of my parent’s stuff, like records etc. stored there. I pulled the boxes out and started digging through them in the dark. I grabbed an item, took it downstairs into the kitchen, and promptly began screaming my head off. I was yelling, “BURN IT!” over and over at the top of my lungs. My parents flew downstairs and understandably wanted to know what the heck was going on. The item I had pulled out was a Ouija board. I didn’t even know what they were, or that my mother owned one.
The previous family who lived in the house had two teenage daughters who had played with Ouija boards in the house, and had some pretty bad things happen to them. The girls are technically the owners of the property now (and they’re in their 40s now I think?), as far as I know they won’t step foot there. So, that’s my rather long winded story. This is the first time I have ever written it down. I am shaking and terribly uncomfortable. I submit this in good faith, hoping that even if people don’t believe me, that they won’t think I’m nuts either. I truly believe every bit of this, but I do also believe it is possible that I was having night terrors, or just a hard mental stage in my childhood. But, I have more belief that something very frightening happened to me in that house.
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