I love hearing other people’s ghost stories, so I thought I’d share one of my own. I understand not everyone believes in ghosts or the supernatural. That’s fine. You don’t have to. I do because of things I’ve experienced, but I realize it’s hard to believe in something you, yourself, haven’t experienced. Anyway, all that to say: I hope you enjoy my story, even if you don’t believe it. But it did happen.
I’ve had my fair share of creepy, unexplainable experiences throughout my life but the creepiest one by far was the most recent. It was the creepiest because it wasn’t one incident, but a series of related paranormal incidents.
I have a scientific fascination with the paranormal. It doesn’t really scare me, or if it does, my curiosity and wonder outmatch my fear. I figure there’s more we don’t know about the world than what we do know. Possible until proven otherwise is my philosophy.
At the risk of sounding condescending, I view the non-divine supernatural (meaning everything except God) the same way I view wild animals: they’re amazing and they aren’t usually evil, but they can be dangerous and unpredictable.
I don’t want them in my house: that’s the big thing. I don’t care if they’re outside, but I want my house to be a safe-zone.
This whole incident actually began with my sister. For several months, every night at 2:30 AM, my sister heard a rhythmic tapping in the wall by her bed. The way she described it was that it sounded like it was coming from outside but the tapping was somehow inside the wall. She thought about tapping back once or twice, but she was afraid that if she respond, whatever was tapping would realize it had made contact, which would cause the activity to increase, which she didn’t want.
My sister’s tapping story was the first thing I had ever heard that had happened in our house. Our house had always been pretty clean, as far as being free of ghosts, entities, demons, and scary areas. You know how some houses just have places you don’t want to go at night? Our house was never like that. It’s probably because our parents are hardcore pray-ers, which probably cleansed the house or something. Anyway, for whatever reason, it was well-accepted by my entire family that our house was safe.
Last summer, however, certain places started darkening: “darkening” is the best word I can think of to describe it. Places that didn’t used to feel creepy now felt creepy. The back door in the far hallway felt creepy, as well as the entryway by the front door. The front door started to feel weird, as though something was standing over there, just observing. The feeling got heavier at night to the point that I didn’t like to look in its direction whenever I got out of bed to use the bathroom. I didn’t want to see anything.
Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like a demon. Growing up, I didn’t believe in any supernatural beings except angels, demons, and God, himself. I had had some run-ins with creepy things and I assumed that anything that wasn’t God or an angel was either some non-spiritual natural phenomenon, or a demon. These days I have a broader view but I’ll leave that for now. Back to the story. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem bad, so I decided to ignore it. That didn’t go well.
One night, I was awoken by a loud crash in my closet, as though something had fallen off the shelf and hit the inside of my closet door. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. I turned on the light and got up to investigate. When I went to my closet, I realized that my rolling closet door had been completely knocked off its track. I carefully moved it aside so that whatever had hit the door wouldn’t fall on me or break when I removed the door.
But nothing had fallen. Nothing was leaning against the door, there was nothing on the floor, and nothing looked like it had been sliding off the shelf. There was nothing that could have made such a loud sound or hit the door hard enough to knock it off its rolling track. I put the door back on its rollers and went to bed.
In the morning, I checked again. Still, there was nothing that had fallen. The only thing I noticed was a long scrape on the inside of the door. Maybe an old scratch, maybe not.
A couple days later, my sister told me about an experience she had late at night when she was watching internet videos on her laptop. She was lying in bed, watching along, when she felt someone prop themself up on her bed as though they were trying to watch what she was watching. She said it felt like a hand pressed into the covers. She shifted and it lifted up, as someone would do if they realized they were sitting on someone’s scarf or something like that.
Things only got worse from there. One night, my sister and I had stayed up late talking in the living room (as usual), and we were going to bed. My sister went on ahead while I turned out the lights and took Gus, our scottie dog, outside for one last “business trip.”
I had just finished turning out the lights and had Gus following me down the hall to my room, when he suddenly looked back into the living room, stiffened up like he had seen something, and then took off running and barking into the darkness. He was barking at one particular spot. Any guesses where? Yes. It was the spot by the door.
I just about had a heart attack. Having your dog suddenly on high alert is scary enough, but when it’s because of an invisible something that you already have misgivings about, it’s too much.
I managed to get Gus to give it up and come to bed. I closed my bedroom door while Gus jumped onto the bed (he likes to sleep there next to me). As I set my computer down and got ready for bed, Gus stiffened again, this time staring at the corner where my bedroom door meets the other wall.
He started freaking out, barking and darting around without getting off the bed (he does this when he wants to act tough but he’s a little frightened. He does that with cows, sheep, llamas, horses, you name it).
Only one thought was going through my mind: “Oh no. The thing by the front door has followed me to my room.” I probably prayed then, but I don’t remember.
That same night, I woke up in the middle of the night and glanced toward my dresser; sometimes I half-wake up in the middle of the night and when I do, I just look around for a few moments, maybe check the time, and go right back to sleep. That night, though, when I looked over at my dresser, I saw this creature crouching there: kind of like a 2-3 foot tall hedgehog mole thing. It surprised me enough that I jolted up in bed and turned on the light. With the light on, there was nothing there.
It was probably just the tail-end of a dream I didn’t know I was having, but it surprised me enough to wake me up and to make me check to make sure that it wasn’t real. Plus, it had been the third weird thing to happen that night. So I prayed. I asked God to make whatever was in our house leave. I said that I didn’t care if it was on our property, but it was harassing my sisters and me so I didn’t want it in the house.
Things calmed down for about a week after that and the spot by the door didn’t feel weird anymore. After that week, though, is when the weird stuff started happening, as if it hadn’t been weird enough already.
I had a dream that scared me to death. It wasn’t a nightmare and it wasn’t one of those mega-surreal ones, but it disturbed me. Now, I’m very skeptical when it comes to claiming dreams are paranormal, but my dream fit so well with what had been happening in the house that I’m willing to say it could have been paranormal. Either that or my brain is really good at connecting unrelated occurrences.
In my dream, there was a nice-looking, friendly, young guy with reddish curly hair. He smiled a lot and was very interested in my sisters and me. My mom was teaching a piano lesson at the time and the guy was on our doorstep. I was standing in the doorway talking to him, trying to be polite but also trying to end our conversation because we were disturbing the piano lesson.
He kept asking if he could come in. I kept making excuses because I really didn’t want to let him inside, but I also didn’t want to flat out refuse him because I was afraid of what might happen if he got angry. He tried to sidestep me and I was doing all I could to physically keep him out of the house.
Like a disobedient little kid, he was giggling and happy the whole time, as though me refusing was just a game. I was scared. By that time, I had made it clear that I didn’t want him in the house, but he was ignoring me. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep him out forever.
That dream made everything slot into place: all the things that had been happening, why the presence by the door had felt heavy but not threatening. For lack of better words, he was basically a stalker except without meaning any harm. He just wanted to watch us and be with us and have our attention all the time, and he wouldn’t be deterred.
That scared me, especially since I had already asked God to banish him from the house. It was like the entity was lurking outside like an overbearingly friendly dog, looking for a way inside.
The next morning, I asked God to banish everything from our entire property. I didn’t want Mr. Stalker Ghost hanging around.
It seemed to work.
It wasn’t until December that something else happened. I was taking Gus out for another business trip in the front yard. In our yard, we have three weeping willows close together with a birdhouse made out of a gourd hanging on one of the branches.
I looked up at the trees and I saw the birdhouse swinging. There was no breeze and the birdhouse didn’t slow down. Even if something had knocked against the birdhouse or was climbing around inside, it would lose momentum eventually. But it didn’t. In fact, whenever it seemed to be slowing down, it suddenly sped up, as though it were pushed again.
I stared at the birdhouse for a long time before bringing my other sister out to see. It was still swinging. It swung for at least 10 minutes, and whenever I looked out the window to see if it was still going, it was.
As soon as we came inside, I realized what it was: it was probably the same entity from the doorway, from my dream, from my sister’s wall, the one we had kicked out. It was pouting and hanging out between the weeping willows, trying to get our attention. I had given it exactly what it wanted.
I never pointed out the birdhouse again, even though it swung like that without wind once in a while over the next couple weeks. Whenever I looked out a window to see if the birdhouse was swinging, and whenever it was, I always felt like the entity was staring at my bedroom window as it pushed it, hoping I was watching.
The birdhouse moved less and less often and it hasn’t moved like that for about a month now. I think Mr. Stalker Ghost finally took the hint and gave up.
A/N: Don’t stalk people. Even if you’re a ghost. Not cool.
If you like this kind of supernatural topic, you might enjoy my secondary blog, God, The Universe, and Everything. I was keeping it separate and using it for a sort of social experiment, but I’ve gotten all I can from the experiment, so I don’t see a reason to keep it secret anymore. On GTUAE, I write about metaphysical, paranormal, and spiritual stuff. (This post wasn’t just a way to plug my second blog, honest.)
Protagonized. 
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