About three and a half years ago, when I was 15, my mother and I moved into a townhouse in a small, rich, suburban neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. There were two previous owners, the one before us was a husband, wife and their baby boy, and before them was a single man - no one knew much about him.
Shortly after moving in, we decided to get the basement finished so that I could have my bedroom down there. It took months for the guy to finish it. He refused to work alone and would always come up with lame excuses why he couldn't come to work on it.
When he was finally done nearly a year after us moving in and I had settled into my room, that's when things started happening. At first there were just simple things. I'd hear creaking or tapping or papers would fall off my desk randomly. I have a large fan in my room that's on at all times so I would just blame most things on that. Then when I was 16, it started to get real. It was a weekend afternoon, and I was waiting for my boyfriend (now ex) to come over. I was lying in bed when I heard him coming down the stairs so I pretended to be asleep for whatever reason. I was lying on my side, facing the wall, and I felt him come into the bed with me. He was a big guy, so the mattress jiggled pretty drastically and the bed creaked loudly. I felt him snuggle up to me and breathe on my neck. I lied there for a minute and then decided to roll over to look at him. When I did, there was no one in the bed with me. There was no one in the room at all. My heart dropped and this unbelievable cold swept over me. I ran upstairs and didn't go back into my room alone for days.
A couple of months later I was lying in bed. A loud noise woke me up and I was home alone. I lied in my bed and just didn't move because I was so scared. I closed my eyes tight and tried to go back to sleep. Then I felt someone standing beside my bed. I could hear and feel them breathing right next to my face. I opened my eyes and no one was there.
Little things happened after that, although I can't recall details. I tried not to think about it and kept my dog in the room with me so I had her to blame for whatever noises I heard.
Then about a year later, I was dreaming that I was lying in bed with my boyfriend (now my fiancé). In the dream, we were just laughing and talking and whatnot and then we heard my mom coming down the stairs. He wasn't supposed to be there so I told him to go hide in the closet. In the dream I pretended to be asleep when my mom came in. Then all of a sudden, I felt something holding my wrists and pinning me down. I remember trying to scream and fight against it but I couldn't. It was strong and no noise was coming out. Then I woke up and was still pinned and still couldn't make noise. After a few moments, it was over. I figured it was just a crazy nightmare. Nonetheless, I was terrified and called my boyfriend over to keep me company. The next morning when we woke up, I had four bruises on my left wrist. They looked like finger marks. My boyfriend said I probably just did it to myself in my sleep but I really don't think I'm capable of squeezing myself so hard to leave dark bruises. But I forced myself to believe it and carried on.
About two months later, my mom went on vacation so I had my boyfriend stay with me. I hate having people sleep in bed with me, so I slept in my room in the basement and he stayed in the guest room on the second floor. I had just fallen asleep when I heard someone walking in my room. Then I saw a light shining on me. I bolted up only to find my boyfriend standing there. He asked me if I was alright and I asked why. He said he heard really loud banging coming from the basement - he thought I was being attacked or something. I hadn't heard anything but the fact that he was scared was enough to scare me. So we went upstairs, grabbed a knife, and sat on the couch in the living room. We were sitting there silently and could banging coming from all around the house. We didn't know what to do. We obviously weren't going to call the police because we knew there wasn't anyone in the house - at least not anyone living. Eventually we just went up into a bedroom upstairs and locked the door and stayed in bed. The noises had stopped but we ended up staying awake all night because we were terrified.
Shortly after that incident, I was in my walk-in closet in my bedroom trying on clothes. In the closet, there's a door that goes into a room where our sub-pump is. We never go in there. We have some folded up boxes in there and I used to hide my empty liquor bottles in there. But I think it had been at least a year since that door had been opened. For some reason, I felt like trying to open the door. When I tried, the door handle wouldn't budge. It was like it was locked from the inside. I didn't feel like pressing the matter, so I backed away. As I was about to get out of the closet, something pushed on the door from the inside. Since I was home alone, I was so terrified that I had to leave the house immediately. When I got home later, I told my mom what happened. We went down to investigate and we easily opened the door and saw that there was nothing in there except for boxes and empty liquor bottles. My mom wasn't impressed but I could tell she was just as scared as me.
In March of 2011, I found out I was pregnant. This is when things really started to escalate and become more frequent. I would be sitting in the living room and would hear footsteps upstairs. Doors would close when no windows were open and large items would fall over on their own.
Then in August, I saw the ghost for the first time. I was in my room one evening and came upstairs to grab something to eat. All the lights were off because my sister was visiting and watching a movie. I saw someone walking towards the back door and said "Mom, what are you doing?" figuring she was going out to the hot tub or something. She responded with "just watching the movie," and I looked beside me to see her sitting right beside me on the couch. I looked back and the figure was still there for a moment and then I turned on the lights and it was gone. I was so unbelievably scared, I couldn't stop shaking. My mom and sister hadn't seen in but they weren't looking. They didn't believe in ghosts at the time, but I think they were slightly terrified after seeing how scared I was.
The next morning, my mom looked awful. She looked so tired and miserable. I asked what was wrong and she told me she hadn't gotten much sleep because she was kind of scared. I asked why and she said the past two nights while she was lying in bed, she felt someone come into her bed and put their hand on the back of her neck. She thought nothing of it and just assumed she was dreaming the first night. But after what I saw the previous night and after it happening a second time, she knew there was something in the house.
Then something happened the next night. We weren't sure if this was the ghost or a person. I had moved my room upstairs to the top floor by this time, and around 2:30 am my mom and I awoke to my dog barking hysterically. We went downstairs to see what she was barking at and she was sitting at the back door, which is a glass sliding door. The back door leads to our long, narrow backyard which backs on to a large field. All the lights were off in the house so we went to the back door to see what was there. We saw a shadow go across the fence and then our neighbor's motion-detecting light turned on. We could see through the cracks of the fence an object moving extremely fast towards the back field. It wasn't an animal, it was too tall. We ran upstairs to look into the backyards but nothing was there, and nothing was in the field.
Things slowed down a bit after that. We'd still hear noises and whatnot but nothing drastic. My son was born on October 30th and things have started to pick up again. About a month ago, I was sitting on the couch with my baby, changing his diaper, and my fiancé was in the kitchen getting a drink. All of a sudden, my son's baby swing started to swing. It was turned off, all the windows were closed, and we were nowhere near it.
A couple of nights later I was lying in bed when I heard something on the baby monitor. It sounded like someone was in my baby's room. I tried to get up to go check but I couldn't move. I was completely paralyzed. I looked over towards my bedroom door and through the crack at the bottom I could see movement. It was extremely fast, almost like flickering from a fire. A few minutes later I could move again and I ran out to my baby's room. There was no one there; my baby was safe and sound asleep in his crib.
Then two weeks ago, the most disturbing thing yet happened. My son was lying on his back on the couch, just cooing and kicking his feet. I was sitting beside him, cooing back at him and texting his dad. Then he stopped and moving and making noises abruptly and when I looked up at him, his arms and legs stretched out and stiffened, and his whole body started to shake. It was like someone was trying to pick him up and shake him. Then he started screaming like I've never heard before. He was crying and inconsolable for a few minutes. The next day it happened again. I've never been quite so terrified. I never leave my baby alone. I had him start sleeping in my room again, and I take him in the washroom with me. During the day, he naps in my arms.
Over the past week, I've been spending a lot of time at my fiancé's house because I can't stand to be here. The one night I slept over and my mom texted me around 11:00 pm. She asked what I was doing. I told her I was watching a movie with Derek (my fiancé). Her response was ":S I thought you were home! There's really loud banging downstairs. It sounds like there's a bunch of people here!" She went down and no one was there. Nothing had moved. The next night I was just about to go to sleep when someone started frantically banging on my door. I asked who was there and no one answered. I texted my mom and asked if it was her, since she was the only one home. My text had woken her up, she was in bed.
It has been a few days without incident. But I'm terrified. I don't know what to do. If ghosts want to mess with me, that's fine. But when my baby is involved, something needs to be done. What should I do?