Greetings, dear friends and family! If there's one occasion that sums up the chills and thrills of the changing season, it's Halloween, and one of my favorite holidays of the year (next to Easter and American Thanksgiving)! Being a time of tricks, treats, and the sharing of scary stories under fire or flash light, there's a sort of spooky, but fun atmosphere that one cannot experience any other time of the year expect this month! Most, if not all of us, have a story or two of experiencing the supernatural, or what we thought was the supernatural, leaving us scared, but also intrigued in the mysteries of the night. I happened to encounter such a thing when I was but a tiny lad of six. Therefore, as a Halloween treat, I'll be sharing a real-life scary story for you all to enjoy! Cosey up under your warmest blanket, grab a hot drink, lock the doors and windows, and enjoy!
Back in the early 90's, my parents had bought a humble, but pleasant house in my hometown of Lakeside, California. The house itself was tiny, with only two bedrooms, but it came with a beautiful rose garden complete with a tall pecan tree, a fern forest, and even a large New Guinea bush, big enough to include a tree house and the best rope swing a boy could have! I still remember fondly of hopping on my swing after school, and using it's kinetic motion to imagine up countless stories of space battles, nasty villains, and valiant heroes on noble quests! It truly was a magical time and place to be a kid... For the most part.
As wonderful as our house was, it had a dark and sad history. The previous owner, Alice, who had planted all the roses and plants with care, tragically died when a speeding car hit her as she was getting her mail out of her mailbox. Knowing this now brings a somewhat somber mood to my nostalgia of playing in the rows of roses or hiding among the ferns in a game of hide and seek. Not to mention the house also came with a not-so-pleasant feature: an old dank basement. Imagine every cliques of creepy basements and ours would fit the bill. It was a breeding ground for fat rats, it smelled musky all the time, and my parents kept their creepy record player and old illegible books in there as well... Not a place I wanted to stay in for long. Unfortunately, as I came to know later, I may not have had a choice in the matter. For as much as we try to avoid unpleasant things in the dark places, sometimes the things crawl from their places up to us unknowingly...
Since our house was so small, my older sister, Mary, and I had to share the same bedroom, for better or worse. Me, being the hyperactive rambunctious little dude that I was (and still am), liked to stay up and chat about the finer things of life, such as loud space ship noises. My sister, not being a morning or even an evening person, didn't care much for late night ramblings, often ending the evening with threats of violence or destruction of property. Not the chillest roommate. We also shared a big closet packed with our old toys, clothes, stuffed animals, etc. But something was always a little eerie about it. I couldn't explain it, but I didn't spend much time in it or even near it as much as I could. But it didn't matter in the end...
One night, when I was six years old, I got up around midnight to get a drink of water from the kitchen. It was, of course, completely dark in the still house, with my parents fast asleep in the bedroom down the hall from my own. My sister wasn't too happy with me that particular day (can't imagine why), and was just trying to sleep. I finished my drink, walked up to my bedroom door, and carefully opened it, as to not disturb my sister even more. The room was almost pitch black, the only light source being a window to the far right, next to the closet. As I slowly tip-toed to my bed, I happened to glance at the open doorway of the closet...
I stopped. I froze. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. For inside the darkness of my closet, standing at least six feet above, were two glowing eyes, staring right at me. They looked just like this:
This is the most accurate picture I could find of what I saw. No joke. There was no visible body outline in the darkness. No muttering. No breathing. Nothing, except two orbs staring down at me, unblinking. Worse of all, they followed me as I tried to fearfully move to my bed, ceaselessly staring down at my quivering form. Shakily, I spoke up:
"S-sis? T-there's something in the closest!"
Without getting up or even turning over in her bed, she responded in a most sensitive and caring way:
"Good. Then I'll have the room to myself tomorrow."
Ah, yes. The joys of older siblings. To be fair, I somewhat had it coming, being an annoying little brother who wouldn't shut up at bedtime. Nevertheless, at the time, it was nothing short of being left for dead... Or worse.
Thankfully, I had gotten to my bed safely and nothing else happened that night or any night for the rest of the time we lived there. To this day, I still have no idea what that thing was. It could have been a toy, or a stuffed animal of some kind, or perhaps even the product of an overly-imaginative little boy. Nevertheless, those cartoonish eyes still freak me out, and any movie involving eyes peering in the dark gives me the chills.
But do you know what the true horror of the encounter was? Years later, when my dad was cleaning out our closet, he made an unexpected discovery: a hidden panel on the floor of the closet, with hinges on the side. Where did it open up to?
The basement ceiling...
Thank you all for reading my little spooky story! This was fun to write, and if you're all interested, I could also write little life stories on the side, in-between my mission updates. Have you ever encountered something spooky or weird like that? I'd love to know!
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support and have a wonderful- Wait. Hang on. What's that sound coming from? It's like it's under the floor...
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