Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
In two thousand and seven, when I was around twelve
years old, my family went on a trip to keep Askayanne, Florida.
We were joined by some of my cousins and family friends,
which made it even more exciting at the resort. My
cousins and I loved spending time at the kids' club,
and it was like a little paradise for us kids.
(00:41):
There were always games to play like board games, crafts,
and group activities which kept us busy all day. Now,
there was a director at the kids club who was
in charge of watching us and running all the activities.
His name was Dan. He was about forty years old,
tall and skinny, and had a lot of hair missing
(01:02):
on his head. Looking back, I'm amazed at how unaware
and clueless I was about danger as a kid. I'm
sure most kids were the same, but it's still shocking
to think about. If I met this guy now, I
wouldn't even want to stand within five feet of him.
But at twelve years old, I thought he was great,
(01:26):
like he was just some fun adult who ran all
the activities. It's funny how much time and experience can
change the way you see things. Anyway, back then, it
didn't cross my mind that there was anything off about him.
We were all told that for some reason, Dan was
going to leave the hotel in a week. No one
(01:47):
explained why, and I didn't really care or think too
much about it at the time. It just felt like
a small, unimportant detail to me. On our last day
at the hotel, I lost my cell phone. It was
a bright blue chocolate phone, the kind with the spinning
wheel if anyone remembers those. I told my parents right
(02:08):
away that I couldn't find it. Since this was already
the second phone I had lost that year, my mom
got really mad. She told me that if I didn't
find it, I would be grounded. So I ran all
over the hotel trying to find my phone. I even
went to the kid's club to see if anyone had
found it. Usually the kid's club was full of kids
(02:30):
playing games and having fun, but this time it was
strangely quiet and empty. Dan was the only one there,
sitting alone on a couch. So I walked up to
him and asked, Hey, Dan, have you seen my phone
by any chance? Dan looked at me and said, oh,
so it's your phone. Yes. I found it and put
(02:53):
it in the Lost and Found in the basement. It's
a bit out of the way, but come with me
and I'll show you where it is. Now. At that moment,
I didn't really think about anything else. I just wanted
my phone back. Not thinking anything was wrong, I just
followed Dan without question as he led me to the
back of the hotel. We walked for about three minutes
(03:17):
until we reached the bottom of a staircase that led
down to the basement. We were standing at the back
of the hotel in an area where no one else
was around. The walls were plain, unpainted concrete, and it
looked more like a storage area than a place where
you'd keep a lost and found. It was dark and
gave me an uneasy feeling. Dan nodded and held the
(03:40):
door open, waving for me to go down the stairs.
For a moment, I was about to step forward, but
then something inside me suddenly woke up. Maybe it was instinct,
maybe it was fear, or maybe I just got lucky,
but I felt deep down that something wasn't right. Before
(04:01):
Dan could say or do anything, I shouted never mind,
I think I left it with my mom and ran
away from the stairs back to the hotel lobby. I
was really scared because something about that situation felt very wrong.
As a kid who always saw the good in people
and trusted every one, this feeling was a big deal
for me. I tried to calm myself down and decided
(04:25):
I needed to look into it a bit more. So
I went up to the hotel concierge and asked where
the lost and found was. The nice lady at the
front desk told me the lost and found was right
there at her desk. She then asked me what kind
of phone I lost, and when I told her it
was a blue chocolate flip phone, she smiled even more
(04:47):
and pulled it out of a box under her desk.
Some one turned it in here earlier, she said, handing
the phone to me. Wait, are you saying the lost
and found isn't in the basement. She looked at me
kindly and said, no, sweetie, the basement is actually under
construction right now. They are just rebuilding it. Hearing that,
(05:11):
my stomach dropped. Everything that had just happened with Dan
started to make sense, and I realized how close I
might have come to real danger. At that time, I
was sharing a hotel room with my cousin and she
was the only person I told about what happened, but
since she was only eight years old, I think I
(05:32):
really scared her with my story. Now I'm twenty six
and I still think back to that moment and wonder
what would have happened if I had gone down to
the basement with Dan Dan the animal Man. It feels
like it was one of the most important moments in
my whole life, and I'm so glad I knew to
get out of there before it was too late. My
(06:04):
parents got divorced in nineteen ninety seven when I was
around seven years old, so I was old enough to
understand that things were changing, but not quite old enough
to understand why. Even though they decided to end their marriage,
they managed to stay friends, which made it a little
easier for me and my siblings. After the divorce, my
(06:28):
mom moved out and took us with her to my
grandparents old house. Now, my grandparents had recently moved to
a new place, but they were really kind so they
let us stay in their old house. It wasn't the
house I grew up in, but at least we had
a safe place to go anyway, So we ended up
(06:50):
living in that house for about five years. It was me,
my mom, my two older sisters, and our dog. I
can't rememb remember exactly when all the things I'm going
to tell you happened, but I promise every word is true.
The house had three floors, the ground floor, the basement,
(07:11):
and the upper floor, where my sisters and I slept.
The basement, though, was a different story. It was the
most terrifying place in the whole house. I remember my
heart racing every time I had to go down there,
even if it was just to grab something for my mom.
The stairs went from the basement to the first floor,
(07:33):
then up to the second floor in a spiral shape.
A few times each week you could hear footsteps slowly
coming up from the basement, briefly stopping on the first floor,
and then continuing up to the second floor. Then the
footsteps would stop at my older sister's room, but sometimes
they would stop outside my room or my other sister's room.
(07:57):
We all heard it, and it always gave us chills.
My mom didn't like to talk about it, as if
ignoring it would make it go away, but my sisters
and I couldn't help but talk about it the next
day to confirm we weren't imagining things. Our dog never
went down to the basement. She hated it just as
(08:19):
much as we did. Lots of small, strange things happened
down there. The light would turn off by itself, things
would move, and we could often hear noises even when
no one was there. Then one evening, my sisters and
I were playing with walkie talkies, trying to find the
local police channel. It was something kids liked to do
(08:41):
in the nineties, but this time the voice on the
walkie talkie sounded different, much clearer and closer, almost like
it was in the room with us. It said all
kinds of weird things to us. But what scared us
the most was when it spoke directly to my oldest sea.
(09:01):
It said it was going to hurt her and even
said her name. We were terrified, so we turned off
the walkie talkie as quickly as we could. Then not
even a minute later, our dog ran into our room,
barking like crazy at nothing. She stared at the corner
of the room, growling and barking into the empty space.
(09:24):
Our dog was big and very protective of us kids,
but she had never acted like this before. She kept
barking and wouldn't leave our side, as if she was
guarding us from something we couldn't see. Then another time,
it was just me and my mom at home. My
sisters and our dog were away. I was playing in
(09:45):
my room on the second floor, and my mom was
doing her own thing. Then suddenly I heard really loud
footsteps coming from the basement, even though I was all
the way up in my room. The sound was so
loud it was like someone was almost running up the
stairs from the basement and then up to the second floor.
(10:07):
They sounded so heavy, and I knew it couldn't be
my mom, as she never walks like that. The footsteps
came all the way to just outside my room and
then suddenly stopped. Then, out of nowhere, my door slammed
shut really hard. It made such a loud noise that
I screamed and started crying. I was so scared. I
(10:29):
didn't understand what was happening. My mom heard me and
ran up the stairs as fast as she could. She
tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. It
was like it was locked from the inside. But I
knew that door didn't even have a lock. My mom
kept trying to force it open and I could hear
(10:50):
her calling my name, but the door just wouldn't move.
My mom shouted for me to stay calm while she
ran downstairs to get some tool to break the door open.
Then the door suddenly unlocked by itself and opened. Then
another time, my sisters and the dog were away and
(11:12):
there was a big storm. But for some reason, I
was really scared of the thunder that night. I had
never been scared of thunder before or after, but that
night I was terrified, and at the same time, strange
things started happening in the basement. We heard things being
(11:34):
thrown around in the basement and the sound of glass breaking.
The next morning we found broken glass and things scattered everywhere,
just like we heard. Many other small strange things happened
over the years, but these are the ones that I
remember the most clearly. It always seemed worse when our
dog wasn't there, like whatever it was knew, we felt
(11:58):
less protected. We lived in that house from around nineteen
ninety seven to two thousand and two. Even though it
was years ago, I still think about it sometimes. The
memories are so vivid, and I wonder if there was
something about that house that we will never understand. I
(12:27):
lived in a pretty big house for about ten years.
The house had a lot of space and one of
the largest parts was the basement, but my dad always
told me not to go down there at night. Even
during the day, someone always went with me if I
had to go down. The basement was dark, even with
(12:47):
the lights on. My dad was always the bravest person
I knew, and he never seemed scared of anything. But
I noticed that whenever he went down to the basement
he always took our dog Max with him. It was
around twenty twelve and I had a friend staying over
for a sleepover. My friend came up with a plan
(13:09):
for us to go down to the basement, even though
my dad had said no one was allowed to go there.
We waited until my dad and my sisters fell asleep,
and then we started going down to the basement. There
were about twelve steps leading down, and when we got
to the bottom, the floor was cold and hard. We
(13:30):
brought flashlights with us so that if my dad woke
up and went to the kitchen he wouldn't see any
lights on. In the basement, there were about three bedrooms,
a bathroom, and our laundry room, plus a big open
area right when you entered. My dad always told me
not to go into two of the rooms down there.
When I asked why, he just said it was because
(13:52):
there was glass inside. But I decided to ignore that
and went into those rooms. My friend and I went
into the first bedroom, but it was full of boxes
and storage stuff. It was pretty boring for us, so
we decided to check out the next room, and that's
when things started to get a little strange. So as
(14:14):
soon as we entered, we heard some weird noises. We
thought it might be my dad, so we stopped and
waited for the noises to go away. The noises stopped,
so we left the room and went to the laundry room,
which led to the bathroom if you kept walking straight.
I went into the bathroom and the mirror opened up.
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I wasn't thinking much about it and just closed it.
Then suddenly my friend pulled on my shirt and said
he thought he heard my dad coming down the stairs.
I got ready to get in trouble for breaking the
rules and called out Dad, but no one was there.
I thought my friend might be playing a trick on me,
(14:58):
but then we heard more noise coming from the same
second room we had gone into. I went back in
to see if it was my dad, but instead I
saw that the door to the heater was open. I
went to close the door, but my friend said he
had a weird feeling, so he stayed by the door
to the room. After I closed the door, I turned
(15:20):
around and saw my friend's face turn pale. He was
pointing behind me. I turned around and saw a dark figure.
We both screamed as loud as we could and ran
to the stairs. My friend ran first and I followed
right behind him. We could hear the figure running up
the stairs after us. When we got to the top,
(15:43):
we slammed the door shut. All the noise woke up
my dad and we told him what had happened. He
said he had asked a friend to come over and
hide in the basement to see if I would break
the rules. But five years later, my dad told me
that it wasn't his friend after all. He said the
house was haunted, but he didn't want to tell me
(16:06):
back then because he didn't want to scare me so
much that I wouldn't want to live there anymore. When
I was in graduate school, I worked weekends for a
junk removal company. Our job was to clear out old furniture,
(16:29):
broken appliances, and any other junk people wanted to get
rid of. We mostly worked in neighborhoods filled with families
and young professionals who live in nice houses. And because
of this, even though we had to go into strangers'
homes all the time, I never felt uneasy or worried
about my safety. That was true until one afternoon when
(16:53):
we got a job that felt like the beginning of
a bad horror movie. We drove down a long driveway
to the house and once we got out, my coworker
and I started filling out some paperwork. This was the
estimate we would leave with the customer once we were done.
After we finished the paperwork, we looked up and saw
(17:13):
our customer standing right outside the driver's side window, staring
into our truck. He hadn't said anything, and we hadn't
even noticed him walk up. He was about six feet
tall with a broad build, but he also wore glasses,
had pale skin, gray hair, and was slightly hunched over.
(17:34):
He kept his hands behind his back the whole time,
and when he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet,
almost like a whisper. He didn't seem threatening, but the
way he just stood there silently felt strange, and it
made the whole situation feel a little weird. To this day,
(17:55):
I'm not really sure why he felt so unsettling. Maybe
it was his blame expression or the way he stared
at us without blinking. There was just something strange about him,
and going into his house only made things feel even worse.
The house had the same creepy feeling as its owner.
(18:16):
It was dark inside with only a little light, and
completely silent, and it was obvious he lived alone. Everything
in the house, the decors, furniture, and fixtures looked like
it was from the nineteen seventies, and it seemed like
he had no interest in updating anything. I think he
(18:37):
mentioned that he inherited the house from his mother. Now
the strangest part was an empty indoor pool in the
middle of the house. To make things worse, the item
he wanted us to take away was all the way
in the far corner of his basement. We explained how
to book an appointment if he wanted to go ahead,
(18:58):
gave him the written est and got out of that
basement as fast as we could. Once we got back
to the truck, I turned to my coworker right away
and said that I wouldn't be coming back to this
guy's house if he decided to book the job. My
co worker agreed with me, which made me feel better
because it meant I wasn't just imagining things. He also
(19:21):
thought there was definitely something strange about the guy and
felt uneasy the whole time we were there. We decided
we should call our boss and let him know about it.
We didn't want anyone else to feel the same weirdness
we felt. It was the way he stood, the way
he looked at us, and how quiet everything was that
(19:41):
made it unsettling. There was just this uneasy feeling like
something wasn't right, and we both felt it even though
nothing happened. I think if I were older and more careful,
I wouldn't have followed him into his house. I believe
we all have a natural instinct to keep ourselves safe,
(20:05):
and that day I probably should have listened more to
my own instincts. On August sixth, I was in my
mom's basement doing laundry. My boyfriend was out of town
for work, so we were on FaceTime to stay connected.
(20:29):
I had propped my phone up on a bottle of
laundry detergent so he could see me while I sorted
the clothes. As I was bending down, he saw something
behind me and told me to move out of the way.
Then he took a screenshot of what he saw and
waited until I went back upstairs before he sent it
to me. I guess he didn't want to scare me
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too much, But when he sent the picture, I swear
there was a face in the background. He said he
didn't edit the picture, and I believe him, as he
couldn't have done all that in just a few minutes anyway.
Then a few days later, I was at my boyfriend's house.
We're both sick and I sleep better when i'm with him,
(21:13):
so I spent a few hours there sleeping. But when
I woke up, I felt really uneasy, like someone was
watching us. So I told my boyfriend about it. He
brushed it off and then dropped me off at home
since he had to go to work. Then in my home,
I was lying in bed talking to my little sister.
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I just happened to look up and I saw a
cross on my ceiling. No big deal, right, It's just
a cross. Well from where I was lying the cross
was upside down. Seeing the upside down cross made my
stomach drop. It was like all my fears were suddenly real.
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I couldn't shake off the feeling that whatever was in
my house was trying to tell me something, something dark.
So I immediately called my boyfriend to tell him what
I saw. He tried to calm me down, but I
could hear the worry in his voice too. I decided
I wasn't going to sleep alone. I stayed in my
(22:18):
sister's room, hoping it would help me feel safer, but
the feeling of being watched never really left me. I
knew I had to do something to protect myself, whether
that meant getting my home blessed or finding some other
way to fight this presence. It was the first time
I truly felt like I was up against something I
didn't understand, something that seemed determined to scare me. I
(22:43):
still wear my cross necklace every night, hoping it will
keep me safe whatever happens next. I know I can't
let this fear control me.
In two thousand and seven, when I was around twelve
years old, my family went on a trip to keep Askayanne, Florida.
We were joined by some of my cousins and family friends,
which made it even more exciting at the resort. My
cousins and I loved spending time at the kids' club,
and it was like a little paradise for us kids.
(00:41):
There were always games to play like board games, crafts,
and group activities which kept us busy all day. Now,
there was a director at the kids club who was
in charge of watching us and running all the activities.
His name was Dan. He was about forty years old,
tall and skinny, and had a lot of hair missing
(01:02):
on his head. Looking back, I'm amazed at how unaware
and clueless I was about danger as a kid. I'm
sure most kids were the same, but it's still shocking
to think about. If I met this guy now, I
wouldn't even want to stand within five feet of him.
But at twelve years old, I thought he was great,
(01:26):
like he was just some fun adult who ran all
the activities. It's funny how much time and experience can
change the way you see things. Anyway, back then, it
didn't cross my mind that there was anything off about him.
We were all told that for some reason, Dan was
going to leave the hotel in a week. No one
(01:47):
explained why, and I didn't really care or think too
much about it at the time. It just felt like
a small, unimportant detail to me. On our last day
at the hotel, I lost my cell phone. It was
a bright blue chocolate phone, the kind with the spinning
wheel if anyone remembers those. I told my parents right
(02:08):
away that I couldn't find it. Since this was already
the second phone I had lost that year, my mom
got really mad. She told me that if I didn't
find it, I would be grounded. So I ran all
over the hotel trying to find my phone. I even
went to the kid's club to see if anyone had
found it. Usually the kid's club was full of kids
(02:30):
playing games and having fun, but this time it was
strangely quiet and empty. Dan was the only one there,
sitting alone on a couch. So I walked up to
him and asked, Hey, Dan, have you seen my phone
by any chance? Dan looked at me and said, oh,
so it's your phone. Yes. I found it and put
(02:53):
it in the Lost and Found in the basement. It's
a bit out of the way, but come with me
and I'll show you where it is. Now. At that moment,
I didn't really think about anything else. I just wanted
my phone back. Not thinking anything was wrong, I just
followed Dan without question as he led me to the
back of the hotel. We walked for about three minutes
(03:17):
until we reached the bottom of a staircase that led
down to the basement. We were standing at the back
of the hotel in an area where no one else
was around. The walls were plain, unpainted concrete, and it
looked more like a storage area than a place where
you'd keep a lost and found. It was dark and
gave me an uneasy feeling. Dan nodded and held the
(03:40):
door open, waving for me to go down the stairs.
For a moment, I was about to step forward, but
then something inside me suddenly woke up. Maybe it was instinct,
maybe it was fear, or maybe I just got lucky,
but I felt deep down that something wasn't right. Before
(04:01):
Dan could say or do anything, I shouted never mind,
I think I left it with my mom and ran
away from the stairs back to the hotel lobby. I
was really scared because something about that situation felt very wrong.
As a kid who always saw the good in people
and trusted every one, this feeling was a big deal
for me. I tried to calm myself down and decided
(04:25):
I needed to look into it a bit more. So
I went up to the hotel concierge and asked where
the lost and found was. The nice lady at the
front desk told me the lost and found was right
there at her desk. She then asked me what kind
of phone I lost, and when I told her it
was a blue chocolate flip phone, she smiled even more
(04:47):
and pulled it out of a box under her desk.
Some one turned it in here earlier, she said, handing
the phone to me. Wait, are you saying the lost
and found isn't in the basement. She looked at me
kindly and said, no, sweetie, the basement is actually under
construction right now. They are just rebuilding it. Hearing that,
(05:11):
my stomach dropped. Everything that had just happened with Dan
started to make sense, and I realized how close I
might have come to real danger. At that time, I
was sharing a hotel room with my cousin and she
was the only person I told about what happened, but
since she was only eight years old, I think I
(05:32):
really scared her with my story. Now I'm twenty six
and I still think back to that moment and wonder
what would have happened if I had gone down to
the basement with Dan Dan the animal Man. It feels
like it was one of the most important moments in
my whole life, and I'm so glad I knew to
get out of there before it was too late. My
(06:04):
parents got divorced in nineteen ninety seven when I was
around seven years old, so I was old enough to
understand that things were changing, but not quite old enough
to understand why. Even though they decided to end their marriage,
they managed to stay friends, which made it a little
easier for me and my siblings. After the divorce, my
(06:28):
mom moved out and took us with her to my
grandparents old house. Now, my grandparents had recently moved to
a new place, but they were really kind so they
let us stay in their old house. It wasn't the
house I grew up in, but at least we had
a safe place to go anyway, So we ended up
(06:50):
living in that house for about five years. It was me,
my mom, my two older sisters, and our dog. I
can't rememb remember exactly when all the things I'm going
to tell you happened, but I promise every word is true.
The house had three floors, the ground floor, the basement,
(07:11):
and the upper floor, where my sisters and I slept.
The basement, though, was a different story. It was the
most terrifying place in the whole house. I remember my
heart racing every time I had to go down there,
even if it was just to grab something for my mom.
The stairs went from the basement to the first floor,
(07:33):
then up to the second floor in a spiral shape.
A few times each week you could hear footsteps slowly
coming up from the basement, briefly stopping on the first floor,
and then continuing up to the second floor. Then the
footsteps would stop at my older sister's room, but sometimes
they would stop outside my room or my other sister's room.
(07:57):
We all heard it, and it always gave us chills.
My mom didn't like to talk about it, as if
ignoring it would make it go away, but my sisters
and I couldn't help but talk about it the next
day to confirm we weren't imagining things. Our dog never
went down to the basement. She hated it just as
(08:19):
much as we did. Lots of small, strange things happened
down there. The light would turn off by itself, things
would move, and we could often hear noises even when
no one was there. Then one evening, my sisters and
I were playing with walkie talkies, trying to find the
local police channel. It was something kids liked to do
(08:41):
in the nineties, but this time the voice on the
walkie talkie sounded different, much clearer and closer, almost like
it was in the room with us. It said all
kinds of weird things to us. But what scared us
the most was when it spoke directly to my oldest sea.
(09:01):
It said it was going to hurt her and even
said her name. We were terrified, so we turned off
the walkie talkie as quickly as we could. Then not
even a minute later, our dog ran into our room,
barking like crazy at nothing. She stared at the corner
of the room, growling and barking into the empty space.
(09:24):
Our dog was big and very protective of us kids,
but she had never acted like this before. She kept
barking and wouldn't leave our side, as if she was
guarding us from something we couldn't see. Then another time,
it was just me and my mom at home. My
sisters and our dog were away. I was playing in
(09:45):
my room on the second floor, and my mom was
doing her own thing. Then suddenly I heard really loud
footsteps coming from the basement, even though I was all
the way up in my room. The sound was so
loud it was like someone was almost running up the
stairs from the basement and then up to the second floor.
(10:07):
They sounded so heavy, and I knew it couldn't be
my mom, as she never walks like that. The footsteps
came all the way to just outside my room and
then suddenly stopped. Then, out of nowhere, my door slammed
shut really hard. It made such a loud noise that
I screamed and started crying. I was so scared. I
(10:29):
didn't understand what was happening. My mom heard me and
ran up the stairs as fast as she could. She
tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. It
was like it was locked from the inside. But I
knew that door didn't even have a lock. My mom
kept trying to force it open and I could hear
(10:50):
her calling my name, but the door just wouldn't move.
My mom shouted for me to stay calm while she
ran downstairs to get some tool to break the door open.
Then the door suddenly unlocked by itself and opened. Then
another time, my sisters and the dog were away and
(11:12):
there was a big storm. But for some reason, I
was really scared of the thunder that night. I had
never been scared of thunder before or after, but that
night I was terrified, and at the same time, strange
things started happening in the basement. We heard things being
(11:34):
thrown around in the basement and the sound of glass breaking.
The next morning we found broken glass and things scattered everywhere,
just like we heard. Many other small strange things happened
over the years, but these are the ones that I
remember the most clearly. It always seemed worse when our
dog wasn't there, like whatever it was knew, we felt
(11:58):
less protected. We lived in that house from around nineteen
ninety seven to two thousand and two. Even though it
was years ago, I still think about it sometimes. The
memories are so vivid, and I wonder if there was
something about that house that we will never understand. I
(12:27):
lived in a pretty big house for about ten years.
The house had a lot of space and one of
the largest parts was the basement, but my dad always
told me not to go down there at night. Even
during the day, someone always went with me if I
had to go down. The basement was dark, even with
(12:47):
the lights on. My dad was always the bravest person
I knew, and he never seemed scared of anything. But
I noticed that whenever he went down to the basement
he always took our dog Max with him. It was
around twenty twelve and I had a friend staying over
for a sleepover. My friend came up with a plan
(13:09):
for us to go down to the basement, even though
my dad had said no one was allowed to go there.
We waited until my dad and my sisters fell asleep,
and then we started going down to the basement. There
were about twelve steps leading down, and when we got
to the bottom, the floor was cold and hard. We
(13:30):
brought flashlights with us so that if my dad woke
up and went to the kitchen he wouldn't see any
lights on. In the basement, there were about three bedrooms,
a bathroom, and our laundry room, plus a big open
area right when you entered. My dad always told me
not to go into two of the rooms down there.
When I asked why, he just said it was because
(13:52):
there was glass inside. But I decided to ignore that
and went into those rooms. My friend and I went
into the first bedroom, but it was full of boxes
and storage stuff. It was pretty boring for us, so
we decided to check out the next room, and that's
when things started to get a little strange. So as
(14:14):
soon as we entered, we heard some weird noises. We
thought it might be my dad, so we stopped and
waited for the noises to go away. The noises stopped,
so we left the room and went to the laundry room,
which led to the bathroom if you kept walking straight.
I went into the bathroom and the mirror opened up.
(14:36):
I wasn't thinking much about it and just closed it.
Then suddenly my friend pulled on my shirt and said
he thought he heard my dad coming down the stairs.
I got ready to get in trouble for breaking the
rules and called out Dad, but no one was there.
I thought my friend might be playing a trick on me,
(14:58):
but then we heard more noise coming from the same
second room we had gone into. I went back in
to see if it was my dad, but instead I
saw that the door to the heater was open. I
went to close the door, but my friend said he
had a weird feeling, so he stayed by the door
to the room. After I closed the door, I turned
(15:20):
around and saw my friend's face turn pale. He was
pointing behind me. I turned around and saw a dark figure.
We both screamed as loud as we could and ran
to the stairs. My friend ran first and I followed
right behind him. We could hear the figure running up
the stairs after us. When we got to the top,
(15:43):
we slammed the door shut. All the noise woke up
my dad and we told him what had happened. He
said he had asked a friend to come over and
hide in the basement to see if I would break
the rules. But five years later, my dad told me
that it wasn't his friend after all. He said the
house was haunted, but he didn't want to tell me
(16:06):
back then because he didn't want to scare me so
much that I wouldn't want to live there anymore. When
I was in graduate school, I worked weekends for a
junk removal company. Our job was to clear out old furniture,
(16:29):
broken appliances, and any other junk people wanted to get
rid of. We mostly worked in neighborhoods filled with families
and young professionals who live in nice houses. And because
of this, even though we had to go into strangers'
homes all the time, I never felt uneasy or worried
about my safety. That was true until one afternoon when
(16:53):
we got a job that felt like the beginning of
a bad horror movie. We drove down a long driveway
to the house and once we got out, my coworker
and I started filling out some paperwork. This was the
estimate we would leave with the customer once we were done.
After we finished the paperwork, we looked up and saw
(17:13):
our customer standing right outside the driver's side window, staring
into our truck. He hadn't said anything, and we hadn't
even noticed him walk up. He was about six feet
tall with a broad build, but he also wore glasses,
had pale skin, gray hair, and was slightly hunched over.
(17:34):
He kept his hands behind his back the whole time,
and when he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet,
almost like a whisper. He didn't seem threatening, but the
way he just stood there silently felt strange, and it
made the whole situation feel a little weird. To this day,
(17:55):
I'm not really sure why he felt so unsettling. Maybe
it was his blame expression or the way he stared
at us without blinking. There was just something strange about him,
and going into his house only made things feel even worse.
The house had the same creepy feeling as its owner.
(18:16):
It was dark inside with only a little light, and
completely silent, and it was obvious he lived alone. Everything
in the house, the decors, furniture, and fixtures looked like
it was from the nineteen seventies, and it seemed like
he had no interest in updating anything. I think he
(18:37):
mentioned that he inherited the house from his mother. Now
the strangest part was an empty indoor pool in the
middle of the house. To make things worse, the item
he wanted us to take away was all the way
in the far corner of his basement. We explained how
to book an appointment if he wanted to go ahead,
(18:58):
gave him the written est and got out of that
basement as fast as we could. Once we got back
to the truck, I turned to my coworker right away
and said that I wouldn't be coming back to this
guy's house if he decided to book the job. My
co worker agreed with me, which made me feel better
because it meant I wasn't just imagining things. He also
(19:21):
thought there was definitely something strange about the guy and
felt uneasy the whole time we were there. We decided
we should call our boss and let him know about it.
We didn't want anyone else to feel the same weirdness
we felt. It was the way he stood, the way
he looked at us, and how quiet everything was that
(19:41):
made it unsettling. There was just this uneasy feeling like
something wasn't right, and we both felt it even though
nothing happened. I think if I were older and more careful,
I wouldn't have followed him into his house. I believe
we all have a natural instinct to keep ourselves safe,
(20:05):
and that day I probably should have listened more to
my own instincts. On August sixth, I was in my
mom's basement doing laundry. My boyfriend was out of town
for work, so we were on FaceTime to stay connected.
(20:29):
I had propped my phone up on a bottle of
laundry detergent so he could see me while I sorted
the clothes. As I was bending down, he saw something
behind me and told me to move out of the way.
Then he took a screenshot of what he saw and
waited until I went back upstairs before he sent it
to me. I guess he didn't want to scare me
(20:50):
too much, But when he sent the picture, I swear
there was a face in the background. He said he
didn't edit the picture, and I believe him, as he
couldn't have done all that in just a few minutes anyway.
Then a few days later, I was at my boyfriend's house.
We're both sick and I sleep better when i'm with him,
(21:13):
so I spent a few hours there sleeping. But when
I woke up, I felt really uneasy, like someone was
watching us. So I told my boyfriend about it. He
brushed it off and then dropped me off at home
since he had to go to work. Then in my home,
I was lying in bed talking to my little sister.
(21:35):
I just happened to look up and I saw a
cross on my ceiling. No big deal, right, It's just
a cross. Well from where I was lying the cross
was upside down. Seeing the upside down cross made my
stomach drop. It was like all my fears were suddenly real.
(21:57):
I couldn't shake off the feeling that whatever was in
my house was trying to tell me something, something dark.
So I immediately called my boyfriend to tell him what
I saw. He tried to calm me down, but I
could hear the worry in his voice too. I decided
I wasn't going to sleep alone. I stayed in my
(22:18):
sister's room, hoping it would help me feel safer, but
the feeling of being watched never really left me. I
knew I had to do something to protect myself, whether
that meant getting my home blessed or finding some other
way to fight this presence. It was the first time
I truly felt like I was up against something I
didn't understand, something that seemed determined to scare me. I
(22:43):
still wear my cross necklace every night, hoping it will
keep me safe whatever happens next. I know I can't
let this fear control me.
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