For my whole life, I have been well aware of the paranormal. I have had spirit encounters since before I can remember. Mostly just them playing tricks on me, but no communication. It is nothing new to occasionally hear footsteps in the house. I've seen several apparitions which were also seen by other people with me. One incident, in particular, has stayed with quite unlike any other, or shall I say, he stays with me.
When I was little, my grandmother would have me down, and I would sleep over at her house often. My own parents home was but a few hundred yards up the road, in the beautiful countryside, so I would just walk back and forth all of the time. I always loved staying with her. She was so kind to me, most of the time. After all, I am the baby of the family, her last grandson. Her house is nothing special - a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom 1,000ish square foot structure built in the traditional American style with studs, compound textured white ceilings, real pine wood paneling in the living room and den, and sheetrock in the rest of the house, covered with different types of flowery and patterned wallpaper. When you enter the house, you are greeted with a cozy carpeted living room that hasn't changed at all since the 1980's. I live here now, even though she passed on 4 years ago.
From the time I was a baby only a few months old, (yes I can remember back that far) I always had a strange feeling in my grandmothers house, day and night, when everything was quiet. The feeling was especially intense when I was alone, but I felt like I was never alone. This feeling got stronger when the house was dark, at night. So strong, in fact, that I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare directly into the kitchen, like someone was watching me. See, I always slept on the floor, and most of the time my grandmother would just let me throw down a few blankets in the living room, and sleep on the carpet, while she slept in her own bedroom.
The feeling of being watched scared me so much, that sometimes I would crawl into bed with my grandmother and hide under the covers, much to her annoyance at me for waking her at 3:00 AM. This brought me some comfort, but as soon as she would fall asleep, I would stare over her into the darkness feeling like whatever was watching me had followed me in there.
These feelings never left me when I was in her house at night. After I was 7, I started getting too big to crawl into her full size bed to hide from the darkness, so I started having to tough it out. Many a night I would wake up and need to go pee, but I felt this ice cold pressure holding me down. Sometimes I couldn't get up, and I would eventually either go back to sleep, or just wait for hours until the daylight returned, and I could get up. What was odd to me, was the times that I would wake up.
After the age of 12, I got a cellphone, and when I would wake up, I made a habit of checking the time, and not just at my grandmother's place.
When I would spend the night at her house though, it was the same routine. Go to sleep on carpet in living room, be woken up every single night by an invisible presence staring at me. I tried to explain this to my mom, but she chalked it up to a wild child's imagination.
One night, though, I checked my phone when I was woken up. 2:37 AM.
I didn't think much of it at the time, because I was scared of having to wait 4 hours until the morning light shined through the windows. But this kept on.
The next night, I woke up, checked my clock while feeling that I was being watched, and the phone said 2:37 AM.
"That's weird. Why did I wake up at the same time?" I thought to myself.
But every time I would wake up in her house during the night, the clock would read 2:37 AM. It sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it now. I don't know if it was my body adjusting to being on the carpet, or maybe the Dish Network box did something at that time that might have woken me..
but every time I would wake up after that, the clock on my phone would ALWAYS read 2:37 AM.
This kept on until I was 17 years old, when we had to put my grandmother into a retirement home. She had gotten dementia, and by this point, it was really bad. She could no longer drive. She also had sundowners, and couldn't remember conversations from 5 minutes ago. Her house sat empty for the first time in over 50 years, since she and my grandfather had built the place.
That house sat empty for 2 years, and the dust collected. By this point, me and my immediate family had moved into a neighboring city to be closer to my father's work. I would go up alone every two weeks to cut the grass in the summer, and in the winter to check the pipes and keep the heat on. Every time I would enter that house, though, I would feel like an unwelcome visitor at a strangers funeral. It was very intense, and it almost felt like something else was living there.
Fast forward another year, and my grandmother is in the beginning stages of death. Her mind is literally rotting inside of her head, and her dementia is so bad that she starts to forget people she's known all of her life.
My mother made the executive decision to bring her back home, to her house, and to care for her as long as it would take. My grandmother always asked my mom that if at all possible, to let her die in her own home, and not at a nursing home. My mom made this wish come true. We sat up her hospital bed in the den, put in a television, and got all of the medical equipment set up. We hired daytime caregivers to come in of the morning and clean her up, change her depends, and feed her. We couldn't afford a nighttime sitter, though, neither did I want one. I loved to be with my grandmother in her final months. I would stay down there at night and attend to her needs. If she needed to go to the bathroom, I would walk her to the toilet and close the door while she did her business, then help her back to bed.
It was like this for the last 3 months of her life. I would spend the night, and at 8:00 in the morning, her caregiver would arrive and clean her up. Eventually, she wasn't able to walk anymore. The doctor put her on hospice, and we prepared for her to pass on. She was on hospice for a month if I remember right, but it's been 4 years ago now.
I'm sorry that I'm getting a little off topic, but it does help to know the context.
During these night that I would spend with her, I would still wake up sometimes, though less often, probably because I was sleeping in the same room with her. Sometimes I would hear strange noises coming from the other half of the house. I would get up to inspect at first, but when I would find nothing, I would go back to bed and try to ignore it.
The clock always read 2:37 AM.
It seemed that the noises never woke her up for some reason. I don't know if I was the only one hearing it, or if my imagination would run wild, but sometimes I would wake up in a cold sweat feeling like I was being watched. The usual.
It was now 2 weeks before she died. I had begun sleeping in the living room again, because my grandmother would stir a bit in the night, and if I was near her, she would think that I was her dead husband and would sleep talk to me. This often woke her up in a panic, wondering where her husband was, and why I was standing where he was just a moment ago. Many times in the night, I would hear her talking to deceased family members, or to ghosts from the past.
Once I started sleeping in the living room again, the feeling of being watched came back, stronger this time. On one particular night, I was lying on the floor past midnight until I finally fell asleep.
I heard a noise, which woke me up immediately. Startled, I looked over to the kitchen, where the noise came from, to see my grandmother standing there in the shadow. Her face gave off an almost unnoticeable grayish glow, which I thought was the night light just reflecting off of her.
This frightened me, because she hadn't had the strength to walk for a month, let alone stand up on her own. I was afraid she would fall and break her hip.
"Mamaw! How are you standing!? Are you okay?" I asked her. She just stared at me. I lifted my head up a little bit more, and when I moved, I saw that she was wearing a long black cloak, and that it wasn't her face, but rather a featureless glowing gray hole that has little whitish shadows where the eyes should have been. It was approximately 7.5 feet tall. This apparition rushed over me in a split second, floating across the floor. It stopped directly over me, and, looking down directly into my eyes, vanished into thin air.
My heart was racing, and I pulled the cover over me. I didn't know what to do. It obviously wasn't an intruder that I could fight off with a gun or my fists, and it didn't seem to be interested in hurting my grandmother, just me. I heard her cough a little in the den, and then go back to sleep. I would have had to walk through the kitchen to go check on her, but I could hear her breathing, so I knew she was alright. I wasn't going to come out from under the protection of my cover and possibly face that horrible creature again.
I spent the rest of the night staring into the kitchen, knowing that whatever that thing was, was watching me. I didn't see it again that night, but now I was sure that it wasn't my imagination. It wasn't a dream.
The next morning, I was a bit lightheaded feeling, and I didn't share this experience with the caregiver for fear of her thinking that I'm some kind on lunatic. I kept this to myself for nearly a month, but every time I would think about it, I would get cold shivers running down my back.
I knew that something was hiding in the shadows of that house, watching me.
My grandmother died 2 weeks to the day after that being appeared to me. On the night that she died, the coroners came to retrieve the body. She died at 7:15 PM. It was in January, so the sky was long dark. I was in a church meeting when I got the call from my mother. I immediately left, and stopped by the store to get a small piece of cake. I was feeling a little melancholy, and hadn't quite processed it yet.
By the time I got home, my mom had called two women over that treats recently deceased corpses and cleans up the bodily fluids and such, and disposing of the soiled sheets. I don't know who these women were, but they probably worked for the funeral home. They changed her sheets and laid her back on the bed, so peacefully. They were just packing up to leave when I walked in the house. My mother asked me if I wanted to see my grandmother one last time, so I walked into the den where she lay, and looked at her face growing cold. I never saw her like this. I want to say that she was beautiful, because she always was, but I just can't. Her wrinkled relaxed, and the blood was gone from her face leaving her looking pale and gray. It was the same fave I saw in the shadows on that being, two weeks prior. I recognized it.
About 1.5 hours passed until the coroners arrived to take her corpse away. My family was in the living room chatting for a bit while we waited, but I was mostly quiet
just thinking about it all, about her face, and about how this was going to be the last time I would ever see her.
The coroners knocked on the door, and brought in a stretched with a white sheet. They put her stiffening corpse onto the stretched with such great care, all while I watched. I got one last look into her beautiful face when they covered it over with that sheet. I held the back door open as they wheeled her out, and loaded her into the van.
I am so sorry i just cant finish this right now because i cant see through the tears. i will be back shortly. dear god i miss her so much' ]
Okay sorry about that. I had to go into the kitchen and toss some pizza dought to clear my mind. I haven't thought about all of this detail in such a long time, and the emotions are hitting me like a ton of bricks. I also got some flour in my eye so maybe that'll keep it dry for a minute.
Back to the stretcher:
They loaded her into the back of the van that they use to pick up corpses, and took her away. I never saw her again. My family decided to go home a few minutes after she left. We turned off the light, and I wished goodnight to a beautiful house that had lost its occupants yet again. The house always had such charm, but now it felt completely empty.
Over the next few months, the house got piled up with stuff that my mother hoarded. At this point, I began to crawl out of my own bedroom and to seek a little independence. With my mother's permission, I began carving into the clutter at my grandmother's house, and spent the night there. It didn't feel so empty with all of the stuff in the way, but I still heard the same old noises that I just thought were the wind. Eventually, I got the living room cleaned back out, and condensed all of the clutter into a single bedroom. I slept in the living room again. By this point, my grandmother had been dead for maybe 3 months. We still had all of her furniture in the house, which I made some limited use of. There was this one particular wardrobe in the bedroom that belonged to my great-great grandmother back in the late 1800's. It was passed down the family to us. My mom decided to gift this wardrobe to my cousin as a keepsake, so I pulled it out of the bedroom and into the living room, where they were to pick it up in a few day's time. Two nights before they got it, I was sleeping soundly on the couch, in a quiet house. All of a sudden, I awoke again, startled, and heard a scratching noise somewhere in the room with me. I popped my head up, and heard it coming from within the wardrobe.
The scratching went silent for a moment, and I thought I was just imagining something. Then all of a sudden, I heard my grandmother gasping for air, and it sounded like she was choking.
Do you know what's called the "death rattle"? It's the sound that people with dementia start making from their lungs, when they don't have the energy to cough anymore. The fluid fills up in the lungs, and the death rattle is heard usually a day before they pass. They literally drown in their own mucous. That's what happened to my grandmother, and what physiologically killed her.
This was the exact noise that she made on the night that she died, literal minutes before death. I yelled out "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!!! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
But the noise continued. I kicked the side of the wardrobe from under the cover while laying on the couch, but the noise continued for about 5 minutes. I knew that it would do no good to fight it, so I just laid there. It finally went silent, and in that silence, I felt the eyes on me like I had never before. I immediately called my mom at 2:40ish AM, and she answered groggily "Hello?"
"Mom, this is important. Do you know how I always told you like I was feeling watched when I would sleep down here? How I would hear strange noises, and about the bad dreams?"
"Yes, I know. What about them?"
"Mom this I just woke up and something was scratching inside this wardrobe. It started coughing and rattling like mamaw did when she was dying. It wouldn't shut up!"
"Oh my God honey, you're sure it wasn't a dream?"
"Mom, this is as real as I'm talking to you. I watched it wide awake."
"We're getting rid of that tomorrow. I don't care if we have to burn it. Can you stay down there for the night, or is it hurting you?"
"I think I'll be fine. I'm just going to put on a movie or something. I love you, try to get back to sleep if you can. I'm sorry I bothered you."
Waiting for the end of this one. Thanks for taking the time to type it out
Good luck
My mom called my cousin the next morning, and told her to come get it that day. My cousin obliged, and got it in a pickup truck. I don't think mom told them about the things I experienced with it, because they didn't mention anything about it. If she didn't, I really wish she would have. I wouldn't want my little nephews to go through what I did, but I didn't know to say anything at the time. As far as I know, they still have it.
On the very night that we got that old wardrobe out of the house, I had another dream, a different one this time. I dreamed that I was looking out my door, while the demonic being that I saw above me before my grandmother died, was floating gently towards the cemetery down the road from my house. I can see the cemetery from my porch. I called out "Get out of my house and go, go to that cemetery! You belong there." The being did not acknowledge me, but he went on and began hovering over the cemetery. He stopped to look back at me once he was among the grave stones, and the disappeared into the air.
After this, I immediately woke up in a daze, and checked my phone clock. 2:37 AM on the money.
But something was different this time. Even though I was still drowsy, I didn't feel afraid. I didn't feel like I was being watched. I felt... alone. For the first time in my life, I looked up to the kitchen, and didn't feel any presence. My "Imagination" wasn't working, or something.
Over the next few months, the house was quiet. I heard no footsteps, no banging from the attic, no anything. I felt truly alone for the first time in my life, and it was liberating. I still live in this house, four years later, and nothing has changed. Whatever that thing was has been banished, and I haven't heard from it since.
I do have a later experience to relate, though. After about a year of living in this house, I got a little ballsy feeling, and decided that I was going to show that being that I wasn't afraid of it anymore.
Continue plz. Read all posts. Thanks for the story!
Congratulations/Condolences
I decided to go outside at 2:30 AM, and to walk through the cemetery, right where I saw that thing standing in my last dream of it. I was going to show him that I wasn't afraid, and that he had no right making fun of my grandmother by echoing her death rattles, and scratching like she was trapped in a coffin. I was going to show that horrible being that I had had enough of him, and was glad that he was out of my house.
I began my walk feeling confident, knowing that I was the biggest predator outside right then. When I came out, the woods were quiet. No coyotes howled, and the squaller wasn't around at this time of the year. I walked with my chest puffed out, right up that hill to the old cemetery, and when I got to the place where I saw the being in my dream, I stopped, put my fist in the air, and screamed at the top of my lungs:
"YOU SEE THIS, ASSHOLE? YOU'RE NOT GONNA TERRORIZE MY FAMILY ANYMORE! YOU COULDN'T COME BACK IN MY HOUSE EVEN IF YOU TRIED, BECAUSE YOU'RE A SAD, LONELY, PATHETIC BULLY WHO PICKS ON THE WEAK AND YOUNG. MY DOOR IS CLOSED TO YOU, AND YOUR PRECIOUS LITTLE WARDROBE BOX IS GONE. I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU ANYMORE. I HOPE YOU ROT IN THIS HELL THAT YOU'VE MADE FOR YOURSELF, AND I HOPE THAT THESE EMPTY COFFINS KEEP YOU COMPANY FOR ALL OF ETERNITY, JACKASS!"
I felt really good at this point. I finally showed that bully how I really felt about him, picking on me for all of those years, and for making my nights into a nightmare. After giving a quick middle finger to the position, I turned my back and walked out of that cemetery. Right as I was leaving among that last gravestones, though, I felt a cold chill and fell to my knees, like the wind had been knocked out of me. I felt deathly sick at that moment, instantly, and had to rest for a minute. I eventually regained a little strength, and walked back to my house. I don't know if that was just a coincidence of maybe being tired, and going for a walk in the night,
Anymore stories? You're a good story teller my fren.
or if maybe it was trying to tell me something, to let me know who was boss. At this point, I don't even know if that being was real, or if I just imagined everything. I just don't care anymore. I don't go for walks through the cemetery at night anymore. I figure that if it is real, and that it does live there now, I'm gonna leave him and his house alone, and maybe he'll leave me alone.
-----
I later told all of this to my mother, and she confessed that she always felt a cold presence watching her in that house. My grandparents built it when my mom was 8 or so, and then they moved into it. She always imagined the being as a little old man living inside of the wardrobe that would like to rattle the door late at night, waking her and and scaring her. I can only imagine what my grandmother thought about it, if it even made itself known to her. She was a very reserved woman, though, and would never tell anyone stuff like that if she did experience it. I may never know from her side of the story.
As far as I know, my cousin still has the wardrobe, and has never mentioned having any issues with it.
Today, as I write this, I still feel alone in the house, and that's a good thing. I am getting ready to eat some pizza that I just made in the same kitchen I felt watched from, and I still walk through the same living room that I slept in when I was a baby.
The house seems so foreign to me though, ever since my grandmother passed. All of her love and memories have slowly faded from the windows, and now a new life is inside, my own, and it feels like home now.
A QUICK P.S.
I forgot to add one detail at the beginning of my experience. When I was 5 years old, my mom and sister were down at my grandmother's house. I was with them. Being a tired little boy, I fell asleep on the couch. They were cleaning up around the house past midnight, with all of the lights on. My sister did laundry, while my mother was in the kitchen cleaning. Mamaw was away on a trip to Mexico I think, and I don't remember why we were cleaning the place that late at night. (maybe to get rid of some of her clutter? idk)
But past midnight, with the lights on, I woke up screaming like a banshee. My mother and sister rushed in, and I couldn't do anything but cry and point to the bedroom door in the corner, while my mother held me asking "What's wrong, sweety?"
I finally calmed down enough to say "Mamaw's in the room!"
Mom said, "No honey, she's down in Mexico. What do you mean?"
I realized that it was a bad dream at this point, and, with tears still in my eyes, I described my dream of sitting up on the couch, just like I was IRL, and hearing my grandmother calling out to me "Anon, Anon! Help me!" followed by a rattling gargle sound. I dreamed that she was dead, and speaking to me from beyond the grave in her room, where I sit typing this now. My mother tried to assure me that it was just a bad dream, and that Mamaw was still alive, but that memory always stuck with me. I later realized that the noise I heard in that dream at 5 years old was the same one that I heard from the wardrobe the night before it was banished. I heard that noise 13 years before she had died.
I only pray that I never have to hear that noise again. The only dreams I have of my grandmother nowadays are good ones. My most recent dream was about 2 weeks ago. I dreamed of sitting beside her in on a bench among tall old oak trees, watching a golden field of wheat blowing in the breeze below the mountains. We talked for what seemed like half an hour,
before I did that thing in lucid dreams where you can feel yourself occupying two different bodies at the same time, and my physical body had natures call to wake up and go piss, so I quickly told my grandmother "I've got to go wake up now. I love you so much and I miss you!" and she said the same in return. I hugged her tightly as I slowly drifted into consciousness.
MMH! Those types of dreams really hit me in the feelers. I wish I could lucid dream like that more often, but I am undisciplined in such sciences.
That is all for now, /x/. Thank you for letting me express these troubling memories. If any of you know about the hooded man, or are curious about anything else, please feel free to ask me questions.
Anon Pepe, I don't really have any stories on command, but if I ever remember anything interesting enough to tell, I'll be sure to post it around these parts.
This is my first time using LULZ, so I'm new to how it all works. Thank you for the compliment!
oh sheet bro, i seen that hooded man b4! tall, a glowing grayish body in a black cloak sorta, and he floats.
>DAYUM
thanks for the comfy ghost story, anon