It's a bit long, but I wanted to be sure I included every detail to help you to "see" the story.
I was 15 years old. On Christmas Eve, I was home alone. My parents and my cousin (who was living with us) were at my grandmother's house for a celebration and I was getting ready to be picked up by my girlfriend's stepfather to stay the night there. You know how it is, as you get older you really don't "feel like" being with your family. Mine wasn't exactly picture perfect, so getting away was wonderful for me.
Our house was a raised ranch built on a slab, so there were two floors. They were connected by a double staircase, carpeted, in the middle of the house. One flight lead from the top floor to the foyer, then another from the foyer to the downstairs where I was, ironing my brand new shirt I was dying to wear. Being home alone, I was ironing with just my skivvies on since I intended to put the shirt on then go upstairs to pick out a skirt to go with it. My vision was blocked from seeing the stairs by a set of pull drapes that my father had rigged alongside them to keep the heat downstairs (as much as possible, it had a cement floor after all!). Everything was basically upstairs except the office and the laundry, where I was, with all three bedrooms at the far end of the house at the end of a hallway, about 15' to 20' long.
Before my parents left my mother had instructed my cousin, who was only 7 at the time, to clean up all of his toys and put them in his toy box in his room. Being as strict as my mother was (part of the problem she and I had) she ensured this was completed before they left, down to the last Transformer.
Standing by the bottom of the stairs and off to the left at the ironing board, I was chatting away with my friend on the phone whose house I was heading to shortly. It was a blistery night, so her stepfather would be taking his time to get to my house. As we were talking, I heard something upstairs, but paid no mind to it as I thought it was our dog, a miniature poodle named Toby, preparing her frail little body (she was 15 years old, so those stairs were a chore for her) to come down the stairs. Then I froze.
I heard no dog tags jingling like I would had it actually been Toby. What I heard was what sounded like something making a low thudding sound from one step to another, like heavy footsteps, down towards the foyer. Then a sliding sound, as if something was being dragged along the linoleum floor on the foyer. Then more thuds, slow and deliberate, but nothing casting a shadow through the drapes like someone would have they been walking down the stairs. As I moved to look towards the sound closing on the bottom step, I saw my cousin's remote control Big Foot come down and stop "dead" on the bottom floor. I turned to my right and saw my dog, Toby, had been downstairs with me the whole time, lying on her bed, now growling at the truck.
I hadn't spoken for a few moments so my friend was asking me desperately if I was still there. I finally found my voice and I meekly said "Please tell Dan to hurry." She kept asking me what's wrong, what happened? Staring at the little remote control truck in utter disbelief, I kept telling her I would talk to her when I saw her, but "Stay on the phone with me until he gets here." When Dan arrived I was on the front porch with the cordless in hand in the middle of a snowstorm wearing a pair of old ripped jeans, an old sweater of my father's (both of which were in the dirty laundry basket) and snow boots that were left by the front door with no socks. I had left my new shirt on the ironing board, I did not care if whatever it was got it or not. I was scared to death. I opened the front door, threw the phone on the foyer floor, slammed the door shut and ran to his truck.
When I finally got to my friend's house, not saying a word in the truck to Dan, he followed me as I trudged up the stairs to my friend's apartment, barely breathing and still in shock. When I got to the top, she was standing there waiting for me, white as a sheet.
"What happened, are you alright?" she was almost shaking with her concern. I relayed what had happened and her stepfather started laughing at me.
"And that is why I didn't tell you a darn thing in the truck! Jerk." And we left him standing on their foyer, slamming the door shut and locking him out for a bit. We showed him.
I now know this was "Robert's" way of showing me that he was indeed there. We had lived in that house from the time I was 8 with no occurrences, however the land the home was built on, as well as all of the other surrounding homes, was farmland at one time. Our house, having been built in 1980, was no where near where the farmhouse used to stand, so it made no sense to me at first as to why he was there. My parents live in that house to this day and my grandmother lives in what was the original farmhouse, as she has since 1954. I have a few strange stories about her house as well...
On a side note, the farm was one of the biggest in the area, employing several hands each day. Robert was one of those hands, which is how he came to be in my house, but I will save that story for another day...
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Xxelliemayxx ❤