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I would like to start by saying I am not a strong believer in the paranormal.

That being said, the reason I'm here is because I have no explanation for the story I'm about to tell you.

To set the stage, I was a senior in high school during the 2020-2021 school year, which means my last year of grade school was complicated.

Even though we were allowed in school, there were still a lot of rules and protocols added due to the virus.

Long story short, someone in one of my classes got the virus and I sat close enough to them that I got sent home to quarantine for the next two weeks.

I know, what fun.

Well, on top of that, my parents didn't want me spreading the virus to the rest of the family, so I spent days in my room, ate dinner on the other side of the kitchen, and most importantly, moved all my toiletries out of the bathroom my sister and I shared.

Luckily, our house happens to have a small bathroom with a shower on the 1st floor.

Unluckily, this meant that when I went through my nightly routine of brushing my teeth and washing my face, I was left all alone downstairs in the dark.

Like I said, I'm somewhat skeptical of the paranormal, but I'm still totally creeped out when I'm left alone in a dark house.

So as I rushed through my routine every night, I spent the whole time on edge, worrying that some terrible monster was waiting in the dark corner for me to turn out the last light until it pounced and I would never be seen again.

But in the back of my mind, I was certain that it was impossible.

In fact, despite my fear, I was absolutely certain I was the only one downstairs for those brief moments when I was the last one awake.

Until one night when I may have been proven wrong.

The last thing you need to know is that the bathroom downstairs was one of those that had two doors on either side.

1 led to the kitchen and the other led to my dad's office.

My dad's office also had two doors, one that was always closed and LED to the bathroom, and one that was always open and faced the base of the staircase.

So one night, exactly like any other that week, I was scrubbing my teeth as fast as I could while keeping an eye on the mirror to make sure there was nothing trying to sneak up behind me.

I had spit my toothpaste out and was rinsing the toothbrush off when my ears perked up over the rushing water coming from the faucet.

I thought I heard my dad Call My Name from the top of the stairs.

The sink was so loud and his voice was so quiet that I wasn't entirely certain what I had heard.

So I turned the water off and shook my toothbrush dry while I strained my ears against the uncanny vacuum of silence that filled my house.

I figured that if I had heard my dad, he'd Call My Name again to get my attention, so when I didn't hear so much as a breath for the next few seconds, I figured I was just hearing things.

I turned the faucet on again and began washing my face, and when I turned it back off, I heard my dad Call My Name again.

This time it was so clear and unmistakable.

Not only did I know it was my dad who was calling me, but I was also able to tell that he was on the landing of the staircase.

Slightly closer now.

Yeah.

I called back, feeling a little sorry that he probably thought I was ignoring him when I really had heard him Call My Name after all.

I waited for a response, tilting my head slightly toward the open doorway leading to the kitchen.

However, the response I received was not the one I was expecting.

Instead, from the closed door that separated the bathroom from the office came three distinct single knuckle knocks.

I was very confused at this point, wondering why my dad hadn't responded to me, what he needed to tell me that required him coming all the way downstairs to the bathroom, and why he decided to go to the locked door from the office instead of the open one from the kitchen.

Now, I could have just opened the door he was standing behind, but for some reason I found myself taking the unnecessarily long route out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, through the hallway, into the open door to the office.

This isn't a decision I remember making.

I just did it.

In fact, I wasn't thinking about anything, including the fact that I never actually heard my dad's footsteps approach the door or even come down the creaky staircase.

And I certainly had no idea what to think when I turned the corner to look into the office.

I stood in the open doorway and strained my eyes against the inky darkness, looking at the spot where my dad should be standing.

But he wasn't there.

Needless to say, I went straight to my room and turned on every light on the way.

It took me a long time to calm myself down and fall asleep that night.

All I could think of was staring into the darkness of that office and wondering what might have happened if I had just opened the door when I heard the knocking.

Last summer I went to a house party in the Gary Owen neighborhood of Limerick.

Here in Ireland.

We were right in the middle of lockdown restrictions and I know it was really stupid and selfish of me to go but I was just so in need of a stress release.

I'm a really social creature and I need to spend time around people.

Like I was actually going mad being stuck inside all on my own.

I do actually really regret going.

But breaking the virus restrictions aren't the reason I wish I hadn't gone, because I saw one of the worst, most horrifying things I have ever seen in my life at that party, and it's something I don't think I'll ever get out of my head.

So the party is going swimmingly for a few hours and I'm occupied being the little social butterfly that I am.

But then I walk into the kitchen to get another drink and this big argument is unfolding between this couple that seems to be based around allegations of infidelity.

It was super intense and awkward being in there with them, so I just quietly grab my bottle of wine from the fridge and then head back to where I was gabbing away with some new friends.

I didn't really think much of it.

House parties can be weird like that.

After all.

One room people are passed out, another one had people dancing around.

While some rooms post little arguments between couples that usually don't turn into something hideous, Only this one did.

The guy in the argument storms out of the party and then for a few hours everything is good vibes again.

But then at some point later in the night the guy comes back to the party.

People know his face by this point so they don't really have any reason not to let him in, and I'm guessing he didn't give them any clues as to what he was about to do, otherwise they would have never let him back into the house.

The guy then searches the house to find the girl he had been arguing with.

I'm not actually sure if they were a couple, I just heard them arguing about sleeping around.

When he finds her, he confronts her, starts screaming at her, then reaches into his jacket, takes out a bottle and then appears to douse her with the contents.

People thought he was just being a jerk and throwing vodka on her.

The outrage partly stemming from the wasted alcohol as well as the undue aggression.

He then legs it from the room while she's screaming.

From the people I've spoken to about it, the ones that were in the room when it happened, they first thought her screaming was her being a bit melodramatic about having some drink chucked on her face, but then she took her hands away from her face and it's covered in what looks like burns.

It wasn't alcohol he had thrown onto her face that night, it was acid.

Luckily someone there was a chemistry graduate.

They realized what was happening almost straight away and then grabbed something from under the kitchen sink that would neutralize the acid.

I don't know what it was exactly, but it was some other chemical that probably didn't do her much good either, but it definitely stopped the damage from being any worse than it was.

I heard the poor girl had to have a skin graft from her leg though.

Like even with the help she got her injuries were absolutely horrific.

The guy who did it went on the run for a bit too.

Like the gardai, what we call the police in Ireland didn't manage to get cuffs on him for like a month and we were all so relieved when they finally did.

I can't imagine what kind of monster does something like that after an argument.

To use actual acid to try to permanently disfigure someone's face.

That takes a really special kind of evil, don't you think?

To all outside observers, it appeared that Doctor John Hamilton and his wife Susan had the perfect, loving marriage.

In their 14 years of blissful union, John's passionate love for his spouse had led him to lavish her with expensive gifts and luxurious vacations, a brand new Porsche on their wedding day being just the beginning of a long list of romantically motivated purchases.

But John wasn't just generous with his money, he was apparently generous of hearts too, and spent a great deal of time reminding Susan just how much he loved her in a variety of heart warming ways.

When Susan professed A yearning for employment for a purpose outside of being a housewife, John gave her a job at his highly esteemed obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Oklahoma City.

He was there for her in every way, and by all accounts, they were a textbook case of romantic longevity.

But that's what makes it all the more horrifying that on Valentine's Day of 2001, Doctor Hamilton's arrival at the family home kicked off a chain of events that would turn their perfect little world into a living nightmare.

As you can imagine, in a marriage as loving as John and Susan's, Valentine's Day was held in high esteem.

Every single year they were married, they exchanged gifts and cards, often having planned some kind of romantic rendezvous, be at dinner and a movie or a walk around a local park.

But on Valentine's Day of 2001, John was needed in the operating room of his clinic fairly early in the morning, too.

Any exchange of gifts would have to wait until his lunch break.

But just as he promised, John ducked out of the clinic as soon as he was able and drove home to spend a romantic half hour with his wife, after which he would have to return for another surgery.

He called her name as he walked through the front door, but she didn't answer.

John suspected that his wife might have some kind of surprise in store for him, and he felt a ripple of excitement to run through him as he walked up the stairs towards the master bedroom.

He called his wife's name again, but still there was no answer, and it was then that something caught John's eye.

Lying on the floor of the second floor bathroom, it was Susan.

She was in a crumpled, lifeless heap with blood pooling underneath her.

Paramedics were called to the scene, but Susan couldn't be revived.

Those in attendance noted that she appeared to have been strangled with two of her husband's expensive silk neckties, but the blood on the bathroom floor was undoubtedly from the series of bloody head wounds she had due to repeated blunt force trauma, The wounds being so severe that parts of her brain were exposed while her face was completely unrecognizable.

To his absolute horror, Doctor Jon Hamilton was the number one suspect in his wife's murder from the very beginning.

Police have since publicly stated that there were many factors which led them to such a conclusion.

The first being that there was no sign of forced entry to the home.

Whoever killed Susan had keys to the residence.

It was also a crime in which nothing of value was stolen, and one which there were no bloody fingerprints left in a bathroom which had blood almost everywhere.

This meant that there was a distinct chance that whoever killed Susan was either extremely professional, incredibly lucky, or had the time and privacy to scrub the scene of incriminating evidence before the body was found.

On top of that, while searching the home, police got their hands on a Valentine's Day card that Susan had written to John, presumably that year, and in the message inside wasn't nearly as loving and cheerful as you might imagine.

I bought this two weeks ago, so I guess maybe it doesn't seem as appropriate, but I do love you.

Have a great day, Susan.

The contents of the card raised a lot of questions concerning the state of Hamilton's marriage.

Evidently, it suggests that there had been some kind of incident or argument, one that had caused a degree of turmoil and somewhat soured that Valentine's feeling.

As it later turned out, this incident involved Susan catching John making phone calls to a woman employed as a topless dancer.

Police actually found hundreds of calls to this person on John's cell phone during their investigation, and heard from close friends of Susan that she had confessed to considering a divorce.

To the cops, the explanation seemed simple.

John had murdered his wife to prevent her from running off with half of his money.

But at his trial, much of the local community came out in support of Doctor Hamilton and refused to believe that the man was capable of such a horrific crime, especially given that the victim was his own beloved wife.

But when the paramedics who attended the 911 call John Maid were questioned in court, the jury began to notice some disturbing inconsistencies in his story.

Hamilton testified in court that after he contacted emergency services, he had gotten to work trying to perform CPR on his wife's bloody corpse.

And this appeared to be true, as the paramedics confirmed that when they had arrived, John had been performing chest compressions.

But as people who performed CPR on an almost daily basis, the paramedics noticed something peculiar about John's technique.

It was incredibly ineffective.

From a regular person with no first aid training, that could be understandable, but John's was so bad that it almost looked like he wasn't actually trying to revive Susan at all, which for a medical professional is very suspicious.

John also claimed that he had tried performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on his wife, but the paramedics claimed that John had no blood on his mouth or face.

When they arrived, there was so much blood around the victim's head that there's no way John could have performed mouth to mouth and not gotten any on him.

Some of Susan's blood was also found on the steering wheel of Doctor Hamilton's car, and despite his claim in court that he had simply moved to the vehicle to make room for emergency vehicles, a prosecutor was able to make use of the overall suspicion to claim that this was evidence that John had been considering an escape attempt.

At one point during the trial, the prosecution's case against Doctor Hamilton appeared to be floundering.

Hamilton's defense attorney had brought a number of key character witnesses to testify in court, and all had built a picture of John as nothing but a loving husband.

And he believed that the nail in the prosecution's coffin would be the testimony of a crime scene investigator named Tom Bevel, an expert on blood splatter at crime scenes.

Bevel was essentially brought in to confirm that the blood splatter on Doctor Hamilton's shirt, the same 1 he was wearing during his attempt at CPR, was consistent with a man simply trying to revive his murdered wife while in a state of extreme panic and grief.

At first, Tom Bevel did indeed testify that much of the blood splatter could have well been from the doctor's attempts at CPR.

But as it turned out, Bevel had noticed something that other investigators had overlooked.

He had made a note of the few small flecks of blood that could be found on the inside of Hamilton's right sleeve, a pattern he had seen many times before on the clothing of people who have killed someone with a blunt object.

In the seconds that followed, the courtroom was deathly silent.

An expert defense witness had testified against the person they were supposed to be defending, and in just a few words, Tom Bevel had condemned Dr.

Hamilton to prison.

When later asked why he made the decision to essentially act as a witness for the prosecution, Bevel claimed.

He just had to tell the truth.

He said he had sworn an oath, something that overrode any allegiance he may have had to his client.

After that, it only took two hours for a jury of his peers to find Jon Hamilton guilty on the charge of first degree murder, where after a judge sentenced him to life in prison.

Those that followed the case were highly disturbed by the sudden turn of events.

John had and still does maintain his innocence even to this day, but more and more evidence points to the idea that he killed his wife in cold blood.

His defense team even floated the idea that he must have been innocent because the guilty timeline would mean that John went to work and performed flawless surgeries right after murdering the love of his life.

This might well be true, but in light of the guilty verdict, it's all the more damning because it suggests that Doctor Jon Hamilton was able to beat his wife's skull in on Valentine's Day, then remain calm and collected enough to go and perform complicated medical surgeries.

And if it's true, then maybe a more fitting name for Doctor Hamilton is Doctor Death.

I was 22 and lived in my parents house while they had left South Africa to work abroad.

My grandmother moved in with me to help out as I was a single mother while still studying in university.

In the end we helped each other because she was also on oxygen due to chronic lung disease.

Growing up in South Africa, we are taught from a very young age that it's important to make sure all doors are locked and windows are closed at night.

Being a very private person, I would always have my curtains closed.

People can be extremely nosy here.

Well one night after a long day of studies and simply being a mom, we locked all the doors and shut the windows, pulling all the curtains closed to settle in for the night.

Now my son was not a great sleeper and would often wake up throughout the night after dozing off.

Later that evening he woke me up asking for his bottle and I decided to check the time.

Slightly blinded by the T VS light, I sat up rubbing my eyes.

10:00 PM.

Something wasn't right.

I felt like we weren't alone.

As I peered through the doorway into the passage, I could have sworn I saw a dark shadow almost crawling across the tiled floor.

I'm imagining things.

I must be shrugging it off.

I pass my son his bottle still.

I swear I'm hearing sounds like someone coming up the stairs this time, but that's in the opposite direction.

The railing creaks and I'm about to get out of my bed to check when a face peeks around the corner of my bedroom door.

Quran is that you?

Expecting her to be needing help with something?

So I reached for my phone to create light as I had already switched the TV off again.

A man storms into my room and grabs my phone before I can hide it.

I'm in so much shock yet I know exactly what is going on at that moment.

Take whatever you want, please just don't hurt us.

I say calmly.

He puts his index finger to his lips.

He's just standing there as though he is waiting and watching guard.

Then suddenly three other men rush in and asked question after question.

Where's the safe?

Where's the weapons?

Where's this and that?

They were all armed and I had no idea what they had planned for us.

I just couldn't keep up trying to answer all their questions.

Why would IA single mother in a house with her child and grandmother have a weapon?

In all honesty I've never even owned one.

They took everything and then insisted on taking my car keys.

I tried telling them I couldn't remember where I'd put them but they stuck a weapon in my 2 year old son's face and asked again, where are the keys?

So I told them where I thought I'd left them after going through all my things, taking what they wanted, and were then ready to leave.

I'm presuming they were throwing everything into my car for the getaway.

The one guy chose to stick around in my room a little longer.

Give me a kiss, he whispered.

Oh no, I was shouting in my mind, still trying to stay composed.

He put out his hand and took mine, then the others called for him and as he pulled away I dug my nails into his hand and scratched.

If I was going to do anything, I was going to get DNA off one of them.

If no one could see what was going on in my home, I would find a way to get justice.

Don't scream, they said and ran down the stairs.

I ran down after them and screamed as loud as I could for help from the neighbors as they speed off in my car, standing outside in the pitch black calling for anyone to help us.

And yet no one heard.

It felt like hours had passed.

No phones, no laptops, no means of contact.

They took everything and I couldn't even call my parents.

To this day these men have never been caught and I wonder if I had my curtains open, perhaps someone might have seen people were still awake.

I am now 35 and since that night I refused to go to sleep without my curtains open and at least one light on.

This happened in 2004.

I was a new college graduate starting my career in healthcare at a hospital 2 hours away from where I grew up.

The hospital I worked at was huge, a level 1 trauma center.

I work in a highly specialized area.

There were only two other people at the hospital with my licensure.

That's important because we spent a lot of time working alone in our department and had to stagger our shifts for coverage.

I had the early shift.

I arrived at 5:45 in the morning.

Staff parking was several city blocks away from the hospital and they sent a shuttle to pick employees up.

The lot was surrounded by an urban forest.

The city tried to leave as much green space and trees as possible.

There was nothing else near the parking lot at the time.

Since I arrived so early, the shuttle service had to be called.

When I arrived.

The call button was located at the shuttle stop, meaning you had to leave your car to communicate with the dispatch.

I was always creeped out because even though there were parked cars, there were never any employees in the lot at the time I came in.

The overnight shift didn't change until 7 AMA few weeks after I started working there.

I'd settled into the shuttle routine and gotten more comfortable.

At this time, cell phone service was spotty at best, and I didn't own a smartphone so it wasn't very reliable.

One afternoon when I returned to my car, I found a note left on my windshield.

It read Hot and Sweet You are.

I glanced around and didn't see anyone.

I was perplexed, but not really frightened.

Another week passed.

I forgot about the note until one afternoon I returned to my car and found a flower in the windshield wiper and another note.

This one read.

I really love your dimples.

I could make you smile.

What the heck?

I had just moved to this town and didn't have any friends beyond the other two people in my department.

I didn't know anyone else.

I did feel creeped out this time and began feeling like I was being watched or something.

Early in the mornings I would park as close to the shuttle stop as possible, buzzed the dispatch and then wait in my car with the doors locked.

I often imagined I heard shuffling noises like shoes scraping through the gravel and I couldn't see all the way to the dark corners of the lot.

When I returned to my car in the afternoons, I carried my pepper spray just in case.

I told my Co workers about the notes and they told me I should tell security.

I felt a little silly, but I made a report.

Security said they would keep an eye out, whatever that meant.

I stopped parking in that lot, opting instead to find parking on the street nearer to the hospital where there were other people around.

Things went fine for the next few weeks, until one day I got another note.

This time it was on my car one morning outside my apartment building in the same scribbly handwriting.

It's simply read.

Don't be shy.

I was so confused.

What did this person want?

Obviously they were following me and now they knew where I lived and probably knew I lived alone.

I contacted the police.

There wasn't much they could do, but they did make some safety recommendations and said they would patrol the neighborhood more often.

I took a self-defense class and was hyper aware of my surroundings.

It was worse not knowing who I was dealing with.

A few weeks later a woman was found assaulted and murdered in the trees behind the employee parking lots.

They caught the guy a couple days later.

I recognized him.

He was a contract painter who had been working in my area.

The hospital had been remodeling our department and this painter

would come in early around 6:30.

AMI made coffee every morning in the break room and he would come in to get a cup.

We made small talk a few times, but never any red flags.

Then it came back to me.

Sometimes he would call me Dimples.

I shivered.

Good morning Dimples.

I was shocked that he had literally been right under my nose for weeks.

I've been totally alone with him on many occasions and I never suspected anything.

I don't know for certain that he was the one leaving the notes, but they stopped after he was arrested.

Anyway.

Stay safe out there guys and gals.

I live in Belgium and I'm currently 21 years old.

These events took place when I was around 8 to 12 years old.

My grandparents used to live in an older home in the countryside not too far from the city.

At first glance, this house was amazing.

It had a yard surrounding the entirety of the property and me and my cousins used to play there a lot.

It had a fishing pond with koi fish in the back, a huge walnut tree on the side, and lots of space to play around in.

Lots of our family parties took place in this house and we visited with my parents every Wednesday for lunch to eat my grandmother's amazing pancakes.

It was an older home and we used to sleep over there quite frequently.

I don't remember much of my nights there, but there were some things that always creeped me out about this house.

To paint a picture, the house had two entrances, one in the front, which I never witnessed anyone using, and the door in the back that came into the kitchen.

In the kitchen you had an open doorway going into the living room, right in front of the back door entrance, and on the right a long hallway.

All the way at the end of the hallway was the play room, a room full of toys and games where we used to spend most of the time during family parties when we weren't playing in the yard.

My grandparents bedrooms were on the ground floor right next to the wooden stairs.

The first floor had two guest rooms, one right to the left of the stairs with one regular bed and a bunk bed, and 1 all the way to the right of the stairs with a king sized bed.

You also had a bathroom diagonally of the stairs and in the guest room to the left you had a door that led into a small room.

To start off this story, we'll talk about the small room in the back of the guest room.

This door was always locked.

My grandfather used to tell us this room should not under any circumstance be entered without his permission and I've only seen the inside once when he went to grab some old things from my father.

When I was still a child, me and my sister used to sleep in this guest room whenever we would sleep over and most nights were uneventful.

Though for a reason I can't seem to explain, this house always gave me the creeps.

At first I thought it was because it's such an old home and I've always been a person with a vivid imagination.

However, after a while it became apparent my intuition wasn't as far off as I thought it was.

Many things took place in this house and I will try to keep it as chronological as possible.

And I will try to keep it as chronological as possible.

The first thing I remember being relatively freaked out by was when my grandparents cat Tom died after a long relaxing life.

I was laying on the couch with him and petting him as I used to do so many times during my stays.

He was a cuddly and fat cat, truly a beauty, but at this point he was as old, if not older than I was.

As I was petting him, I put my hand on his stomach while watching TV and subconsciously matched my breathing to his.

This is when I noticed I was getting light headed, trying to keep up with his breathing.

It was as if he was hyperventilating.

Concerned, I told my grandmother something was wrong with Tom.

I explained what I noticed and she assured me she would take him to the vet.

I slept over that night and woke up early in the morning.

When I came downstairs, I walked through the long hallway going into the kitchen for breakfast as my grandparents always made sure we had something to eat when we woke up.

As I was walking, I saw both my grandparents to the bathroom to my left, right before the door to the kitchen.

They were squatting down and I went in to see what was happening.

To my surprise they looked at me concerned and I glanced over at what they were doing.

It was Tom.

He was in a basket, not moving.

My first thought would have been that he was sleeping like he always did, but judging by the look on my grandparents faces I figured out quickly what had happened.

Tom had died during the night.

Of course I realized this could be a freaky coincidence, but looking back I don't know if it was.

The reason I say this is because this is when the scary things started to happen.

Not long after I started to see a woman in a white dress in the corner of my eyes walking into the bathroom Tom died in when I would be passing the hallway.

I was a scared child so I never had the guts to walk in after her to see if I just imagined it.

I would just run to someone as fast as I could in order to feel safe and I knew no one would believe me.

I never mentioned it to anyone, not even my sister who used to sleep over with me and is only two years older.

I didn't want to seem paranoid or like I've been crying for attention or something.

I started running down this hallway as fast as I could whenever no one was around to see me as I was scared of it by now.

I slept over less because I no longer felt comfortable in this house and made sure to always have someone around when I was there.

However, there would be times when we'd have no choice but to sleep over or when I would forget for a split second how scared I was and agreed to sleep over.

My grandparents are amazing people and I love them with all my heart.

If they asked me to sleep over, saying no would be close to impossible for me.

My sister and I slept in the guest room with the locked door.

We would often sleep in the bunk beds together.

I didn't feel very scared with her, I've always felt like she was protecting me as a child and even now as a young adult.

On a few occasions as my sister would be fast asleep, I would hear sounds coming from the room behind the locked door.

I remember once I thought someone tried opening it from the other side and it scared the bejesus out of me.

I just went under the covers as I always did in order to feel safe.

I think everyone has at some point.

Often I would fall asleep afterward with no more sounds or scares.

Some time had passed between my nightly stays at my grandparents, and for the first time in a few weeks, I decided to sleep over again.

My sister wasn't with me this time.

I was going to be spending the night alone, which in hindsight creeped me out.

Reminding myself of what had happened in the past, I thought I would sleep in the other guest room that night.

My grandparents, though surprised, happily readied the big bed for me to sleep in.

Night came around and I was relaxed in bed trying to fall asleep.

As I was drifting to sleep, I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I heard tapping on the window behind the closed blinds.

This room was on the side of the big tree in the yard, so I shook it off, thinking it was a branch hitting the window, and closed my eyes again.

However, the tapping continued.

One tap, 2-3, silence.

A few seconds passed.

One tap, 2-3, silence.

I started to get skeptical.

Why would a branch hit the window with a set pattern?

It didn't make sense.

If it was the wind that caused the branch to move, wouldn't it be random?

I stood up, pushed aside the curtain to look outside, and saw nothing.

At first.

For a second I felt relieved nothing was on the other side.

But then I realized the tree.

It's a few meters or a few feet from the window.

There is no branch that would be able to hit it, even with a good amount of wind.

I couldn't make sense of it, so I looked around for anything that would cause this noise.

Nothing would be able to hit this window so high up, not to mention the intervals of the taps.

It was too regular.

It had to be done on purpose.

I got scared.

I ran back to my bed and hid under the covers again, but not even a minute later the tapping started again.

At this point I was crying.

The more taps I heard, the louder I became until I started yelling stop as loud as I could.

My grandparents ran upstairs and came into the room super concerned the tapping had stopped.

They saw how upset I was, hugging me and asking me what happened.

I said something was outside my window, but to no one's surprise there was nothing there.

My grandfather decided it would be better if I slept with him tonight, and my grandmother decided to sleep in this room.

After calming down, I slept peacefully.

In the morning they tried asking me again what had happened.

I told them something scared me by tapping on the window, and as I initially figured they said it must have been the tree outside.

Too.

Ashamed of myself, I just agreed with them, ready to forget it ever happened.

Fast forward a few months, I hadn't slept over at the house for quite a while and it was time for me and my sister to spend another night there.

At this point I kind of forgot how scary it could be and to no surprise that seemed to be my downfall.

As a side note, I've always been an insomniac, spending hours falling asleep sometimes.

Never once in my stays have I heard my grandparents bedroom door at the bottom of the stairs open after they went to bed in the middle of the night.

It must have been around one AMI woke up to the sound of footsteps coming up the wooden creaking stairs that stopped at the top.

The open door to the bedroom was immediately to the left of these stairs, so whoever was walking up had to take one more step towards the doorway to be visible from where I was laying.

My sister snoring in the top bunk didn't seem to be bothered by this, but I was scared out of my mind.

My grandparents would at least show themselves to us, to look in, to check in on us, but there was no one in the doorway, no more sounds.

We always kept the light on in the hallway, so anyone that would even try to peek in would be obvious, but there was no such thing.

It felt like an eternity, but after a few minutes I started to calm down, blaming my vivid imagination, and decided to go back to sleep.

A few hours afterward I woke up again, this time with a full bladder.

Being half asleep, I forgot what transpired earlier and gladly stood up to go to the bathroom.

I did my thing, washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom.

As I was walking towards the room, I noticed from the corner of my eyes my sister in the mirror above the sink looking back at me from the reflection.

I remember thinking I just hadn't seen her pass me as I was washing my hands or something and went back to my room.

To my horror I saw my sister on the top bunk sleeping like a baby.

Then it hit me what had transpired earlier.

My heart sank.

I threw the door shut and locked the door, terrified like a deer that had just seen a tiger in the distance.

I just stood there, not knowing whether I should wake someone, scream, whatever I had to do to get rid of this pit I had in my stomach.

I couldn't fathom what had happened on this night.

I just sat at the door for what felt like hours trying to make sense of it.

Once the sun started coming up I felt less scared.

I was so tired I just decided to lay in my bed.

I couldn't sleep though, and in the early morning I heard my grandparents door open and decided to go downstairs.

I needed company, conscious company.

At least I didn't tell anyone again, not until a few years later.

I never slept there again.

I didn't feel safe there anymore and to me sleeping there was like having a nightmare.

I found excuse after excuse not to stay until my grandparents finally moved out.

The house was getting too expensive for them and it was too much to keep it clean and in a good state.

So they moved to a small house not too far from my uncle to be able to spend more time with their children and grandchildren.

They are happy there and live quite comfortably.

I slept over there once, luckily without any problems, but deep down I am always on edge being alone in the home of my grandparents and never feel truly comfortable there.

I loved that old house, our family made a lot of memories there and it was super fun to play in and around the home with my cousins.

But never in my life would I want to spend another night in that God forsaken place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.