READERS TALES
Scared
Witless
(NOTE: The following is
the first of four tales sent in by latoya. the other 3 are titled
Babysitting Spooks, The
Graveyard
House, and
Strange Feelings...)
I suppose my story began
sometime in the year of 1985. My mother, my
brother and myself resided in a two-bedroom
apartment in Paulsboro, South
(New) Jersey. I was seven years old
that year, my brother only two. That year, I
started having nightmares about unseen monsters
chasing me and harassing me. These dreams were
frequent, and while dreaming I would often try to call
out for my mom, but she never heard me. My voice was
probably never more than a whisper.
I can remember one dream specifically. I had fallen
asleep on the couch that night, under a yellow
blanket that sported a few holes. In my nightmare,
I could hear something coming from my mother’s
upstairs bedroom, and coming down the steps. I
could never see it, but I
knew it was there. I peeked out into the living
room through one of the holes. This thing was
always out of my view, or invisible. I would feel it
trying to remove the blanket or poking at me
or yelling. I could hear it breathing and hear it
walking around.
As I got older, there were two places in the apartment
I always felt most uncomfortable. My mom’s bedroom,
and the basement. Many of my nightmares took place in
the basement, again with unseen forces trying
to get me. At the time, I didn’t realize that my
apartment could possibly be haunted. But in
my early teen years, my mom told me about two nights
when I was younger. She said the bathroom door
upstairs kept slamming shut. She would go open it,
and before she could get half way down the steps, it
would slam again. She was freaked out, but didn’t
tell me for fear of scaring me. It scared me
anyway, even years later.
There were always unexplained noises in the apartment
also. I always convinced myself it was one of our
cats, or just something from next door. Now I know
better.
When I was about eleven or twelve, while playing over
my neighbor’s with other neighborhood kids, a
scary thing happened. We were upstairs in a bedroom
playing. One of the younger kids opened the
door to leave the room and let out a blood-curdling
scream. The living room coffee table was
upstairs, in the hall, just floating in the air. We
all screamed, and the table dropped. My neighbor
ran upstairs and screamed herself. She
had many supernatural things happen in her
home before this. Only a wall separated our
apartments, so I later believed the two apartments
shared these supernatural happenings.
After my mom passed away, and I was married with a
baby, my husband and I had to stay with my old
neighbor for a couple of months. My nightmares began
again. My neighbor and her children went on
a vacation, leaving my new family in the apartment.
My husband had to be at
work at five thirty a.m., so I was normally still
sleeping when he left. One morning, I was alone, as
my sister in law had our baby overnight. I awoke to
footsteps coming up the stairs.
At first I thought it was my husband returning home
for some reason, but when the footsteps immediately
began up the stairs again, I grew nervous that maybe
there were burglars in the apartment.
However, on the third round, I knew that I was being
haunted. The footsteps were loud, as if someone was
wearing boots. They then started to come
from the basement first. I could hear them
coming up the concrete steps, through the
kitchen, through the living room and up the
stairs. This continued for approximately two or
three hours. I cowered under my blanket, terrified
and crying. When my husband came home, I refused to
be left alone in the apartment again. My neighbor
later asked me if maybe I
thought it was my mother. I said, “No, my
mother wouldn’t want to scare me.”
I should also include the fact that my son, only an
infant at the time, would cry ceaselessly while we
were living in this apartment. If we left the
apartment for any reason, he would stop crying.
Apparently, he was seeing much more than the rest of
us.
What finally made us leave the apartment and move into
our house prematurely, was the fact that my husband,
who isn’t afraid of anything, could no longer stand to
be in the apartment. HE was scared. He kept
seeing shadows and getting goose bumps. We packed
up and left two days after Christmas.
Even to this day, 17 years after my nightmares began,
when I have nightmares, they take place in my old
apartment. I don’t have them frequently, however. I
am very sensitive to supernatural presences now. I
can walk into anyone’s home and know I don’t want to
be there.
I did have other run-ins with the supernatural, and I
did end up living in a haunted house that belonged to
my husband’s family, but that’s another story…
-latoya.