A ghost haunting me (my spooky ghost story)

Oct 31

Oct 31 A ghost haunting me (my spooky ghost story)

The voice, all encompassing, stopped and floated right above me, screeching. I mustered the strength to scream something. It was a true yell, not a whisper, because I knew the noise needed to reach all the way upstairs. With all the courage I had, I screamed, “BETHANY BETHANY!” The scratching was so loud now, I didn’t think she’d even hear me through it. I thought, “Is this a nightmare? It feels too real. Will I be the first person to die from a haunted house?”

Nothing happened in the beginning

We moved into the house, unremarkably. Everything about my teenage home (and the town it resided in) was unremarkable. It was a white rambler style home, with a wooden porch painted red. The yard was large, with a chicken wire fence in the back, and a willow tree in the center of the lawn which expanded to the side of the house. We moved in the summer before my freshman year of high school.

The haunting itself was also unremarkable at first– with only a few strange instances happening to my parents, of which they never told us about until we were adults, notably after none of us lived there anymore. But for me specifically, no noticeable cliche haunted moments, and no suspicion of evil loomed through the halls… well– HALL, singular. The house was small, probably built in the 70s, judging by the excess carpeting, linoleum in the kitchen, and the artisanal half wall with wooden dowels separating the living room from the rest of the communal spaces. Everything of importance was on the main floor, and the basement was something clearly designed with far less care.

The basement was the only creepy spot. Entering through the kitchen where there were two doors facing each other. On the left side you’d enter the garage which my parents used as a pool table room, and the door to the right was the basement. Upon opening the door, you were met with steps and complete darkness, and the steps at the bottom were not visible. There were only probably 12 steps, so yeah, that's how dark it was. The light switch was at the top of the steps, which only slightly diminished the fear anyone felt when ascending– running obviously, to hit the light and slam the door on your way out.

When you’d turn the lights on, they’d all slowly flicker to life, since they weren’t regular light bulbs, but instead, they were fluorescent lights within a drop ceiling like the ones you’d see in a school or an office. The basement was split into two unusually long rooms, with the room you stepped down into being the finished side, and the room to the left of that wall being the unfinished laundry room.

My parents furnished the finished side, making half the space into an office, and the other half into a TV room for movie nights. To make it extra movie theater-y, they covered the windows so no light would shine in. They put two couches down there, the long one being along the wall, and the love seat sitting diagonally in front of two closets. The unfinished side was all concrete floors and cinderblock walls.

Closet door left open

It's only in hindsight that I can tell you when the haunting truly began. The house only had 3 bedrooms, and we were a family of six. I was about seventeen when I abruptly decided to move my bedroom down to the unfinished basement. I know– creepy, but all basements had a creepy vibe, right? I took my bed downstairs, hung some sheets to create the illusion of walls, and with the rolling out of an old rug, a few lamps, a vanity, and a collage of magazine pages cut out and plastered quite literally everywhere, my room was complete!

The door to my makeshift bedroom was on the left between the two couches, so I walked through the movie room to get into my room. One day at the bottom of the stairs, I noticed the closet behind the loveseat was slightly open. This wasn’t that weird to see, since it was an overflow pantry for our kitchen dry goods. Any excess cans and appliances were stored there. So I pushed the door shut, walked around the couch, and into my “room” (aka the unfinished side of the basement), and thought nothing of it.

I noticed eventually, the family could be all out of the house together, but when we got home, the closet door would be cracked open again, sometimes ajar more than usual, but usually just enough to put an arm through. The closet being open was such a common occurrence at one point, that I got afraid of looking forward at the bottom of the steps, for fear of the door being open wide, and possibly seeing something I didn’t want to see. But those were just teenage ghost fears, and they weren’t really based on any experience at the time.

The bedroom I built

My bedroom was a major accomplishment to me, since it gave me privacy and a form of self expression I was never granted before as a teen girl sharing a room with my sister. I had a small laptop, and I would scroll the internet for hours, listening to music, or watching movies. Bethany, often missing me, would ask me to move back into the room with her, but I always rejected. I think back then I would have said I loved having independence, but the me of today would say it was more of a stubborn thing. I felt like I had to prove I was right, and that the basement was awesome, and I’d never move back upstairs.

One day Bethany sat on my bed, and I sat on my vanity stool, and we talked facing one another, gossiping and gabbing about the day we had at school. I laughed at something she said, and when I met her eyes, she began screaming and pointing above me, with tears running down her face. I thought it was annoying, so I yelled at her to stop. She said a large ball of light exited from the back of my head and flew into the corner of the room through the ceiling.

I assumed she was pranking me, but she seemed so serious. Aggressively sobbing, she kept yelling, “You didn’t FEEL THAT? You REALLY didn’t FEEL THAT?” I tried to convince her it was a reflection or light bouncing off my laptop, because I was scared of her honest reaction, but we had nothing that could recreate what she saw. I felt nothing strange when it occurred, though her look of terror unsettled me.

Paralysis in the night

A month or so later, I went to bed early one night. I lay trying to shake off the spooky basement vibes, my thoughts lingering on the light flying out of my head not so long ago.. I was near sleep, but I was stricken with fear. I decided to get up and leave the room to sleep on the couch in the living room with the tv on instead, but when I tried getting up, I couldn't move. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest.

My eyes were open, and I tried to jerk myself to get up, but I could only wiggle. I closed my eyes, afraid to look around the room, scared of what I might see. My body had no control, I was beholden to whatever monsters hid in the room. Then as I gave up on my fight against my own bed, My sister entered the basement to do her laundry. When Bethany opened the door, I shot up instantly gasping and crying. She made some rude comment about me being dramatic, thinking I sat up gasping in fear from hearing her enter.

On my laptop the next day, I sat at my vanity desk googling the phenomenon, and after numerous searches, I had my answer, and it was an uneasy relief… Sleep paralysis, a phenomenon where your body thinks you’re asleep, but your brain’s consciousness is awake, which ultimately causes a paralysis state. Many people experience visual or auditory hallucinations while in sleep paralysis. Some see shadow people, or things like the hat man. Others see a hag creeping closer and closer. Some wake to the hag above them, or sitting on their chest. I experienced only the dense feeling of trying to move my unconscious body, but I saw no hag and I saw no shadows.

I felt much safer knowing it wasn’t anything truly paranormal, and with that wikipedia research, I decided it was safe to go back to my room. I continued to have sprinklings of sleep paralysis for months, eventually leaving me depleted and low energy. I tried my best to stay up to the point of exhaustion most nights so I could sleep deeply, unstirred, with less chance of waking in the middle of the night. In hindsight, the research results and the exhaustion thing made everything far worse.

The screeching dark

My sister and I spent a lot of afternoons and evenings in the movie room in the basement, watching music videos and movies like Juno and Mean Girls. It was a space where we’d often hang out with our friends after school and on the weekends.

On that day, we went down to the basement after school, while our parents were out grocery shopping. As the big sister, I had dibs on the bigger couch, naturally, forcing my little sister to lay on the small couch (even though she was only 2 years younger and ironically 3 inches taller than me), but on this day, she ran downstairs and sprawled out on the big couch so happily, that I allowed her dibs, begrudgingly, and I plopped onto the small love seat by the closet.

I must’ve dozed off, because next thing I knew, I woke up in the basement movie room on my back, lights out and TV shut off. There I lay in the dark thinking, “Great, so I fell asleep and Beth went upstairs, leaving me in the dark!” but something felt off... I couldn’t remember falling asleep, I only remembered waking up… Before I finished my thought, I heard something, or… someone.

A slight scratching started right above me as if someone was ripping a piece of paper 2 feet above my head, then, simultaneously to my left, a faint low croaking voice slowly began whispering in my ear. The croaking voice got louder, traveling above my head, the scratching and ripping sounds now surrounded the atmosphere. Paralyzed with fear, I tried to call out, but only let out a whisper, “... Bethany, Bethany… ” If this was sleep paralysis, my attempt to break free wasn’t working.

“What?” Bethany said in the dark, only a few feet away from me. Within seconds of her speaking, the voice and scratching suddenly slowed to a dead silence.

We couldn’t see each other, but I was glad to hear her voice. She was there with me in the dark, likely confused by my yelling, and I felt comforted knowing I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t think of anything else to say in the pitch black darkness except angrily, “Wait– you’re DOWN here?” and she replied, “Yeah?” I sat up shocked, no longer afraid, until she said, “Uh, what was that noise?” Chilled to the bone instantly, I yelled for her to run upstairs and hit the lights. When the lights flickered on, I was afraid, but I knew before I turned my head what I would see– The closet door was wide open. I turned to her accusingly and yelled, “you HEARD THAT?!” and she yelled back “YES?”

That really happened… and someone else experienced it, too. So was it still sleep paralysis, or something else? We looked at the time, and it had only been 30 minutes since we went downstairs. Our brothers were playing Wii in the actual living room above us, and were completely unbothered by our presence when we ascended the stairs into the main living space. We asked them if they turned off the lights, and they said no, not even looking up from their screens. The TV in the basement, though on a timer to shut itself off, would only shut off after 3 hours of uninterrupted play. If we didn’t shut off the lights and the TV, then who did?

The last night in the room

Yes, yes, like an idiot, I went back to my room, even after the screeching incident. I was starting to wonder like… am I getting mold poisoning or something? But the basement never flooded or anything, and if anything, it was dry with the air barely flowing. I was descending into a little bit of madness, because I was like, “Okay, I must be going crazy.” I was sleep deprived and unrested, but I refused to react to the “bad energy” more than I already did, in fear of making everything worse. It was strangely calm after the incident, and things went completely back to normal for the most part, except I was still not getting a proper sleep, with no paralysis for so long that I felt safe again.

The last night in my room was months after the closet incident. Trying to tire myself out, I stayed up until 1:40am, knowing my bus would be outside my house early, like 6am early. I could feel my eyes drooping and my head nodding at my desk when I decided to call it a night, rolling onto my bed. I grabbed my pillow and lay opposite from the headboard, with my head laying where my feet normally rested. I figured with my head closer to the alarm sounds, I wouldn’t wake up late. Also, my feeble teenage logic had me convinced that the paralysis only happened when I lay facing the rest of the basement, so I thought if I lay with my feet closer to the wall, I’d be safe. The last thing I looked at was the time on my old faux wood alarm clock, 1:14am, and then I dozed into a heavy-eyed sleep.

I opened my eyes, well rested, and wide awake. I actually thought I woke up late, because I felt a little too well-rested, but it was still dark out. At that point too, I always slept on my side, because I read somewhere that sleep paralysis mainly occurred in back sleepers. I checked the time– 3:04 am. There was no way I could feel rested after only 2 hours, so I figured I should just roll over and go back to bed.

As I rolled onto my back to switch sides, facing the window right above the headboard of my bed, I felt compelled to open my eyes and take a glance in front of me. Thats when I saw it. Right outside my window, a figure facing me, crouched down, staring in at me with one hand on my window. It was completely shadowed, so I couldn’t see any of their facial features. I was so exhausted by my haunted basement at that point, I was unbothered. I knew I wasn’t in sleep paralysis because I could move, so I just shrugged and said, “... it’s just a basketball or a toy in my window” and I turned to my other side and went to bed peacefully.

I woke the next morning to the sounds of my siblings getting ready upstairs, feet pattering above with some mumbled yells, and I jolted into consciousness remembering what I saw last before closing my eyes. In an instant, my head shot up at the window, perplexed. I thought for sure I would see a basketball or a tonka truck or something blocking my window, but there was nothing within view of the window.

Unsatisfied by what I saw, or– I guess, rather by what I didn’t see– I ran upstairs, freaked out, still in my pajamas. I ran outside and around the house thinking maybe my brother played outside before I woke up, which would have been completely unusual for them. but if that were the case, there would be toys strewn about the yard. I went to the side of the house, and the yard was completely devoid of toys. I walked to my window with unease, thinking I would see footprints or the plants next to my window crunched down, as if I was some wild game hunter tracking down a beast, but nothing was bent out of place.

We didn’t live in a neighborhood, but instead, we were on a long country road outside of town, with a cornfield across the road, and woods behind us. The closest neighbors being a 10 minute walk through the woods behind our yard. It seemed odd that there was no obvious breakage on the plants, but I think in a way, it was the sleep paralysis demon trying to scare me one last time. It was the last scary moment I had in my room, and I was so over it by that point.

My cat Mudd. This photo is perfect, because it shows the basement window, AND it shows how common it was to find a ball rolling NEAR MY WINDOW.

The final whispers

(This blog post is well into the 3,000 word count territory, so allow me to wrap it up, okay?)

My last scare in the house was random, and about half a year later, in the spring when there was still snow on the ground. I was 18 at that point, sitting in the dining room about to go on my computer. My laptop always logged me into AIM, MSN, and SKYPE instantly as I turned it on. I put my headphones in my ears, but the cord dangled into my lap because I hadn’t plugged them in yet. I saw that I received a message from my ex, and I rolled my eyes and said “UGH.”

Right when I decided what I’d type back, I heard a whisper directly in my right ear of utter gibberish spoken so quickly, I couldn’t understand it. It sounded like the real life version of a keyboard smash like, kalsjdf;alksjd;flksd. My entire right side of my body ran ice cold, and I stood up screaming, and knocking my chair over in the process. That was it, I was absolutely done. I ran to my mom’s room crying, and she got upset with me, because she thought after all the scary instances I had, that I must have done witchcraft or something because what else would cause all these random scary moments?

We’re Ojibwe, and our people smudge to keep the bad spirits and negative energy out. I begged her to smudge the house with sage. She agreed to do it, but was mad that it had to come to that. She said burning sage is a sacred thing and we weren’t just supposed to do a smudge as a joke. She went throughout the house, hitting all the rooms with a good waft of smoke. She went to the basement and wafted the smoke into the basement, and she kind of gave me a look when she came back up like, “There, happy?” which didn’t comfort me in the slightest. I asked if she smudged the bedroom extra and she said she barely did the bedroom, which was all I had to hear to know I was never sleeping in the basement again.

The afterward

My family reminisces about that house sometimes. We recall the Project X style drinking party I threw for my 18th birthday that somehow the cops never busted, the days with our old pets, and the nights where we’d all hang out playing guitar hero, or watching movies in the basement.

Sometimes my parents tell us stories they were too afraid to talk about while we lived there, like the time they heard a horse-drawn carriage circle our house multiple times, from their corner bedroom, or how they walked into the backyard from the garage door, and the motion light would turn on, and there’d be a shadowy figure wearing a hat in the tree line. My mom once walked in from the garage where she just freshly racked a pool game by herself only abstaining from playing because our cat was sleeping on the table. She walked into the house and heard the balls breaking, but when she ran back out to see who broke, there was no one out there, except our cat, still sleeping, but with the balls rolling past him.

When my family moved, my brother actually knew the kid who moved there next. Nothing strange ever happened to him, and my brother once asked him if they felt like it was haunted, and he said no, but it was a family with only boy children, no daughters. The house was completely remodeled after we moved out, BY THE WAY. I only mention that because we hated the landlord, and he never wanted to fix a single thing the entire time, hence we were living in a 70s time capsule. The basement now has a finished bedroom where I had a bedroom. It actually has five bedrooms, compared to our measly three.

Then my sister told me three years ago while staying at my apartment for a week, that a girl had messaged her on facebook out of the blue maybe three or four years after we all moved. This girl was the younger sister of someone from her grade, and she had another older sister who was my age and in my grade, too, who I never spoke to in school. The girl lived in the house at the time of messaging, probably around 2015. She was a teenager in her senior year of school, desperate for some answers. In the messages, she said she asked around town about who used to live in the house and someone told her about us. She asked my sister some simple questions, but my sister answered her, kurt and uninterested.

She asked… “Did anything ever… happen… in the house?” and my sister said no, but asked her to clarify what “things” she was talking about. The girl replied swiftly, saying “Well, I guess did you experience anything strange or unexplainable… like paranormal experiences or ghosts?” My sister told her that nothing personally happened to her, but many things happened to me while living in the house. The girl explained how she had a room in the newly remodeled basement, and how she’d experienced strange noises and she also saw a shadow standing in her room. My sister can be blunt, so I think she was thinking “um, okay???”

She actually was so unbothered by the girl’s story, that she didn’t tell me until we recalled the night of the screeching. My sister’s story is more unsettling than I remember, because she said she remembers being suddenly very sleepy and then waking up to just hearing me scream her name over and over again, and in the background, all she heard was the sound of, “rakes scraping the walls all around us.” to which I shuddered.

What I think it was…

For the blog post, I tried to look for any scientific explanation of the phenomenon. We didn’t have mice or rats or anything like that. We actually had 2 cats and 2 dogs, so a lot of critters were killed by my cat, Mudd outside. Upon a quick google of “hearing scratching” or “hearing voices” when waking, you come across logical things like, “exploding head syndrome” and “hypnopompic hallucinations.”

If you describe it as paranormal there is one thing that crops up over and over again– poltergeist. The word poltergeist stems from the German language, and it translates in english to “noise ghost.” They are mischievous ghosts that move things, knock things over, and making noises. They are said to mainly be attracted to people in stress, and more specifically, they are often attracted to teenage girls, with many famous poltergeist cases having accusations that the teen girl would “fake” haunted experiences for attention…

SO, there you have it! My POLTERGEIST experience. Or at least that’s what I’m comfortable calling it now. It definitely happened, like I would never put myself out there on the internet– aka: a place where everything you say exists forever– if I were lying about it. I sleep with my blankets over my ears, to this day, so that I don’t hear a whisper. So even if it wasn’t real, it FELT real, and I am ~traumatized, heh.

I have told so many people this story over the years and I never knew anything about poltergeists, so I just called it my “sleep paralysis demon” to be funny about it. A friend recently asked me why I jump to ghosts as my reason, and I said it just felt like a ghost. He said, “But my mind hears you say you heard the rake sound, and the waking but not knowing you fell asleep, and I think aliens.” and I think “NO.” like I am not willing to imagine a world where I was abducted, because that's far scarier than a ghost in my eyes.

THANKS FOR READING!!!!!

Thanks again for reading my story! This was a very long-winded thing that I’ve been meaning to scribe for like five years. I figured halloween is the perfect time for the spooky vibes! If you have experienced a ghost, an alien, or even… a poltergeist… I would love to hear your story!! Please please please!!! I am desperately seeking people who have a ghost story crazier than mine, so that I can feel less scared.

Also, the thumbnail photo is actually my dog from my teen years, she passed long ago, but shout out to my favorite puppy, BRANDY.