Some years ago (maybe 12-15?), one of my best friends from high school was looking to buy her first house. She had been living with her parents since we graduated from college, and she was finally ready to be out and on her own. She was a single woman at the time, so she would usually take her mom or her sister with her to get some input from others when she was out looking at houses.
One house, however, was a bit different from the "typical" houses she had been looking at. This one was vacant (almost to the point of "abandoned"), and it wasn't in a suburban neighborhood. It was in a much more rural area away from the actual "town." One weekend she asked me if I would be willing to drive with her to take a look at this house. It would be about a 45 minute drive through some country roads. I said sure - happy to help my old friend. And I was curious about where the house was and what it looked like. To be honest, I cannot remember why were were going out there alone, and why we did not have a real estate agent with us. I can only speculate at this point that we figured it was an empty, old house and would do a "drive-by" and if it looked OK she would go back later with the agent.
Finding the driveway to the house was a challenge in itself. The country road was overgrown on both sides, and we must have turned around 3 times looking for the driveway. (This was before GPS, so we had to rely on that old-fashioned thing called a "map.") When we finally found the turnoff, the actual driveway itself was little more than a dirt path with some handfuls of gravel thrown on top. We cautiously and slowly made our way down the drive and eventually popped out into a large open field with a house standing right in the middle of it.
We were surprised to see another car there already, and three people mulling around. We got out of the car, and one of the people approached us. Turns out she was actually a real estate agent who was there showing the house to the other two who were with her. She asked if we were interested in seeing the inside. We said yes, but that we didn't have an agent with us. She said since the house was empty, she would leave the door unlocked and that we could feel free to look around ourselves. She just asked that we be sure to lock the door as we left and told us where to leave the key (under the mat or some such thing).
So the other group left and we went on in to the house. It was very old, but rather cute for the condition it was in. It had an old-fashioned farmhouse kitchen with built-in cabinets, a dining room, and a large family room area. We walked around and decided to head upstairs. I remember the old bathroom near the stairs had a claw foot tub that I thought was the cutest thing. It was when we started looking around in the bedrooms that I felt like someone was watching us. I tried to push the thought out of my mind thinking that it was just the fact that we were in an old house, but the feeling got worse and worse. I finally had enough and forcefully told my friend that it was time to leave. I was hovering around the top of the stairs waiting for her when the hairs on my neck stood on end, and I just knew that if I didn't run down the stairs immediately something else was going to help me along and push me down. I finally yelled "we have to get out of here - NOW!" and I took off down the stairs. My yelling must have startled my friend, because she was instantly right behind me, and we sprinted all the way down the stairs, through the house, and out the front door. The door slammed behind us as we caught our breath in the yard.
My friend asked me what happened, and all I could tell her was that I had an insane sense of dread at the top of the stairs, and something was going to push me down if I didn't leave. After that, she admitted that once we got upstairs she started feeling a bit uneasy as well, but she didn't want to freak me out. I wanted to leave the entire area as quickly as possible, and my friend reminded me that we had told the real estate agent that we would lock the door behind us when we left. I told her I wasn't going anywhere near that house again, so she begrudgingly said she would do it. When she went to lock the door, she discovered it had already been locked.
Thankfully, my friend didn't ever go back to that house. If she had ended up buying that one, I probably would never be visiting her again!
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