Knocking At Night

I don't really know if the rest of my family believes in ghosts. Years ago, my sister and I did have a talk and were convinced that something was up with our bedroom.

At the time, I was in early elementary school and my sister was either in late elementary school or early middle school. We shared a bunk bed. Randomly though, my sister decided she did not want the top bunk, so I ended up with it.

One night, I was in bed with the lights off. My sister was supposed to be in the bathroom. Suddenly, I heard a knocking coming from the lower bunk. It sounded like someone was knocking on the wall. I thought that my sister had managed to sneak back into the room unnoticed and was trying to frighten me. I decided to just pretend to be asleep, and it would stop. But the knocking only increased.

After a few minutes, I was pretty annoyed with my sister. I wanted to catch her in the act. I always kept a flashlight by my pillow (due to there being bad storms that caused for a large number of power outages recently. In the off chance that ever happened, I wanted to have some form of light near me as I was still little and a bit terrified of the dark) so I grabbed it as quietly as I could. I slowly sat up, got the flashlight ready in my hand, and prepared to lean over the bunk bed.

My plan was to simultaneously turn on the flashlight as I swung my head over. I figured that by doing this, I would be able to illuminate my sister, catching her in the act (and maybe even scare her as a bit of revenge). I leaned over, turned on the flashlight and said "Ha! I cau-"

I was completely taken back. There was nothing in my sister's bed. The knocking stopped the second I leaned over. Still leaning over, I shone the flashlight around the general area of the bed, expecting to see my sister. No one was there.

My sister walked in on my shining the flashlight and leaning over the bed. She was pretty confused and clearly didn't believe my story. She gave me a huge lecture about how I shouldn't be trying to scare her with a made up story and how I should already be asleep.

I was perplexed, but managed to fall asleep. I was woken up in the middle of the night though, to my sister yelling my name and sobbing. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she completely believed me now. Apparently, she had been woken up during the night to knocking coming from the closet. She thought I was still set on scaring her and had snuck into the closet during the night, so she told me to shut up and get back in bed. The knocking only got louder. She told me she got out from under the bottom bunk to open the closet and drag me out herself, when she saw my outline in the bed (my sister grew very fast and was around 5'6, 5'7 at this point. If she stood up straight, her head was right by the top bunk. I usually slept right up against the edge of the bed, pushed up against the wooden frame, so my sister always saw me out of her peripheral vision when she got out of the bed.) At this point, my sister started crying, threw herself back into her bed, threw a blanket over her head and started yelling for me to wake up. She said that the knocking stopped as soon as she started yelling for me.

I do recall us randomly hearing knocking while sharing that room. Neither of us were ever awake at the same time (which was odd, as I was and have always been a very light sleeper. Yet, if my sister heard it, I would sleep through it completely.) But, it always stopped whenever we turned on a light or tried to wake the other one up. I honestly can't tell you if it would wake us up at the same time during the night. We were both morning people and woke up well before school started, so we didn't have an alarm clock or clock in our bedroom.

We both told our parents, but they didn't really seem to believe us. They kept saying it was probably a tree outside our window. But, the sound definitely did not come from outside. There also wasn't a tree anywhere near our window. My sister and I never talked about it to our parents again. Since our parents didn't believe us, neither of us said anything to our older brother either. I can't say for sure if anything ever got moved around in our room. Sometimes things weren't where we remembered placing them, but we either blamed the other for moving it or assumed we moved it and forgot.

I'm not entirely sure if this is related to what my sister and I heard, but a year or two after this happened, I remember waking up hearing my brother yelling for my parents. I went into his room and asked him what was wrong, but he just started crying and asked me to get our dad. I did this and went back to bed. I was later told that my brother heard knocking outside his window and voices, although he could not make out what they said. He said everything stopped as soon as he heard me get up. My parents said he probably heard people outside on the street. But I've never fully bought that. It wouldn't explain the knocking - our rooms are all on the second floor. And I didn't hear any voices outside when I woke up. Not to mention, our street is never busy and we've never had people making noise on our street past eleven. It seems pretty unlikely anyone would be out there making noise. My brother has refused to talk about the incident since it happened, so I have no idea what he thinks or feels about it.

We would eventually renovate our house. I sleep in the same room, but without my sister. The layout of the room has completely changed though (my closet is now where the bunk bed used to be, and I have a whiteboard where the closet used to be). I haven't heard the knocking since the renovations though. There's been other things that have happened in that room since the renovations though. For instance, my whiteboard always ends up crooked, no matter how many times we fix it. If I have any papers on it, they often flap as if my bedroom fan is on, even if it isn't. I also have to check the closet every night before I go to bed now, as I often feel a negative energy coming from the closet.