My Son's Story - House

In the fall of 2001, my three children and myself moved into a recently finished basement apartment. When I had gone to view it, I wanted it right away, simply because it's location: around the corner from the school my two oldest kids attended, a few blocks from the college I was attending and the on-site daycare my youngest son attended.

The apartment had three bedrooms, a split living/dining room, kitchen and bathroom. All the bedrooms and bathroom were off the living/dining area. My daughter Mary, who was seven, had her own room, while my two sons Ty, who was five and Adam, who was three, shared one. My bedroom was beside the bathroom at the far end of the living room, while the kids' rooms were at the opposite end, with the kitchen between their rooms. Anyway, we moved in a few days before Halloween and loved the place. It wasn't until about three months later when things began to happen.

One day, the kids and I went shopping at this huge mall the next city over from ours. We spent the whole day out, and got home just before dinner. When we got home, we were all exhausted. Adam was totally pooped and fussy. He wanted a snack, but I said that dinner would be shortly and to go and play until then. He refused, and began to whine and cry. I pretended I didn't hear him and put some groceries away, while he stood just outside the kitchen, at the table, and screamed. I walked back to him, pulled out a chair and sat down so I could be level with him, when he burst out laughing. His face was red, tears were all over his face, but he was laughing and pointing. I turned to look at what he was laughing at, and a cupboard in the kitchen was swinging open and shut, open and shut, open then slowly shut with a quiet tap. He stared for a minute, then turned and went into his room, as if asked to. I still to this day cannot believe I saw that with my own eyes. After that, it seemed as if all hell broke loose.

A few days after that, I began to wake in the middle of the night to what sounded like someone shaking the shower curtain. The bathroom was right outside my door, but I hadn't seen anyone go in. When I got up to check, I found the shower curtain on the ground in front of the tub. I put it back up and went back to bed. This happened EVERY night for the next couple of nights, and only at night. I thought that maybe seeing as everything was new in the house that the shower rod didn't have enough spring in it to keep it up, I went out and bought a new one.

This bathroom, when you walked into it, had the tub along the right side, the sink and counters along the left, with the toilet tucked into a cubby-type space at the head of the tub for privacy. I put up the new shower rod and thought I had fixed it. That night I went to bed and again was awakened. This time, I was so scared I didn't want to get up. When I did, I found the shower rod, with curtain, standing on one end behind the toilet. I returned to my room, closed the door and sat with the lights on until morning.

During the day, when my kids were at school, I would sometimes go home to do school work as I found the college too noisy. I would be typing away, with earphones on, and suddenly I would get so scared I would throw my laptop onto the couch and run outside like an idiot. There, I would stand at the side of the house, sometimes for over an hour.

Just as I was beginning to think I was losing my mind, something happened with my son Adam, and this is my reason for thinking that whatever this was attached to him and followed us to two other houses after this house.

I awoke one night at 2 a.m. I could hear Adam talking. Our bedrooms shared a wall, so I could hear him talking and figured that he and Ty were up playing. I snuck to their door and pushed it open. Ty was sound asleep on the top bunk, dead to the world. Adam sat on his bed, a pile of dinosaurs in his lap and another at the end of the bed. He looked angry, and when I asked him what was wrong he said, "Mom, I don't want to play with dinosaurs anymore. Can you tell the boy no more? And can you tell his mom to stop staring at me? She never smiles." He was pointing behind me at this corner but there was nothing there. I asked him what boy, and he said the boy he can't pronounce his name, cause it's a weird name. Scared half to death, I said out loud, "No more dinosaurs!" and pretty much ran from the room. I was so scared that night that I cried from fear.

The next day I decided to ask Adam more questions. He told me that the boy and his mom came into his room, and that the boy never had toys and that was why he liked his stuff so much. He said that he didn't like the boy's mom, cause she just stared at him and never spoke, just stared. He said that a long time ago their house got burned, and that the boy and his family were scared of the wolves that came near their house. Adam was a couple of months over three years at this time. The things he was saying blew my mind. He said that the boy bugged him to play all the time, and bugged him to always put on a specific Disney movie about dinosaurs. He said that the boy woke him up all the time to play, but he didn't always get up to play. A few weeks later, we moved when a classmate of mine was looking for someone to share her house with. I thought that would be the end of it. Well, I did for the first few weeks.

There was another time, when a good friend of mine was visiting from out of town. We stood in the kitchen while I cooked dinner, and I decided to tell her what had been happening. The kitchen was tiny, and with me at the stove she stood right behind me but to the right a bit, leaning on the counter. I didn't look at her while I spoke, but stirred dinner. She told me that she believed me and understood having had an experience herself as a child. When we turned to leave the kitchen, two cupboards stood open, as if blocking us into the kitchen. Sure, I was scared, but did my friend ever go pale. The weekend visit was cut short, and she left that night.

A friend of mine from college who came to visit one night mentioned that the garage and the cold cellar creeped him out. I found that interesting as I hadn't mentioned anything to him about the apartment. This same friend, while spending the weekend at my house to care for our cat while we vacationed, told me that the one night, while asleep in my bed, he had awakened feeling scared. In the darkness of the room, he said it felt as though something was hovering right above him, but he was so scared he didn't dare open his eyes and look. He also suggested I mention the light in the cold room, which he said flicked on several times, to the owner of the house, but I didn't. Our house also came down with a bad infestation of mice, even though I had a cat who loved to hunt.

The next story will be about the second and third houses this thing followed my son to, with the fourth house story to follow, where we live in presently and have for four years. The house we live in now is a story in itself.