and just like that I’ve lost my best friend, the only person who knows me inside and out, the only person who keeps me calm. what the fuck do I do now.
tldr; I moved into what we found out was an extremely haunted house 6 years ago with friends, and it ended in shattered friendships and I’m pretty sure what was a possession and to this day we rarely ever talk about what happened because it was so traumatic to all of us. I still have a hard time believing that this was 6 months of my life.
Alright. So. For a while before graduation I had a friend who lived by herself (B) in a duplex until myself and one other person could move in. She didn’t like living by herself so we used to skype every night until she went to bed. The computer was always set up in the dining room right across from the hallway, and at the end of the hallway was the bathroom. Almost every single time we skyped I’d see a shadow move across the door but because I hadn’t actually seen the place yet I never mentioned it, and she never said anything beyond “this place gives me the creeps sometimes” but I figured it was just because she didn’t like being alone. Our roommate (L) graduated a few weeks before I did so she moved in, and then I would Skype with both of them every night. I’d still see the same shadow, but sometimes the bathroom door would move. Again, didn’t think anything of it because I hadn’t seen the place and assumed there was an open window somewhere because it was getting warm. They’d tell me about weird little noises they’d heard but we all chalked it up to the house settling.
I moved in, everything seemed fine. I was gone during the week for my job and home on the weekends and everything seemed fine other than my roommates seeming a little tense. I asked what was going on and it turns out B had started a fight with L because L wouldn’t stop stomping in her room while B was trying to sleep. B went to confront her and found no one. This was when it all came out and they both admitted that they’d been experiencing things beyond house settling sounds. Footstep like sounds on the basement stairs, knocks on door, open cupboards, stomping at all hours of the night.
Eventually my job ended so I was home by myself during the week while looking for work, and I started to experience what they did. I would hear sounds in the kitchen when I was the only one home, something was always shuffling around in the basement, doors were open even though I remembered closing them. And the house just felt… dark. The air felt heavy when you walked through the door, like an instant drop in pressure. No matter how many blinds were open the light was always grey.
My boyfriend (J) at the time moved in mid-summer and it seemed like things got worse. At this point we 100% knew something was in the house with us but we did our best to ignore whatever it was. Doors would slam constantly. The shuffling from the basement turned into stomping, and it moved upstairs and I’d hear it stomp up and down the hallway and slam the bathroom door repeatedly. It was like it was on a loop - every two hours it would start. We knew when it was going to happen because we’d all feel super anxious for no reason. Around this time we found a massive earwig, wasp, and spider infestation in the basement behind a door that WAS locked when we moved in. The landlord didn’t have the key and no one wanted to know what was behind it. We lived jumpy and terrified for weeks.
Everything peaked the second to last day in July. I will never forget that day, or the day that we came home. Just the thought alone makes my heart skip beats and I feel like crying. My roommate, B, cane into my room crying. I asked what happened and she pulled her shorts down and her shirt up and her body was covered in large, odd shaped bruises. All over her legs and torso. With the size they were there is 0% chance it was self inflicted. She said she had a dream that she was being attacked and woke up in pain and that’s when she discovered the bruises. We all decided to leave for a few days to my aunt’s in Detroit to get out of the house. We packed bags while listening to the sound of shuffling in the basement. B, L, and myself sat together in the living room waiting for J to get home. L and I on the couch, B across the room in a chair. We were talking loudly to drown out the sounds in the basement when I heard a whisper in my ear. We all looked at each other and that’s when I knew they’d heard it to. I looked at B, who started to say something, and then her entire chair lifted off of the floor a foot and slammed back down. B is so short her legs couldn’t reach the floor, there is absolutely no way she could have done that. We grabbed our shit and ran out of the house and waited outside for J to get home.
While we were gone we got a text from our landlord telling us that the person who lived in the other side of the duplex made a complaint about our noise level that weekend. We told him we weren’t home and had been gone overnight and never heard anything back from him.
When we got home every single window and door was open. All of our dishes were on the floor, most broken, our bedding ripped off, clothes thrown around the house. We called the police and there were no signs of a break in. L moved out four days later.
J, B, and I stayed for a bit longer to try to get into someplace else. One night J sat straight up in bed and started yelling at someone to get off our bed. I got up and turned on the light and asked who he was talking about. He turned to me so slowly and just looked at me and for a second he didn’t look like himself. Then, I swear he didn’t even touch the floor, he just came at me and put his hand around my throat and started screaming at me. After about 10 seconds he threw our door open and stormed off. I went after him and he was gone. All doors and windows were locked, he was just gone. I woke up B and we went looking for him for hours. We gave up and went home and sat outside. He came back as the sun was coming up covered in deep scratches. He walked past us into the house and went to bed and had no memory of what happened at all when he woke up. J moved out the next day.
B got a job being a live in nanny so then it was just me. I let my cousin (Ch) and her boyfriend stay with me for a bit until they could get into their own place and they stayed two weeks before deciding they’d had enough. The deciding factor for them was when a fishbowl on top of the fridge slid a foot forward off the fridge and shattered when she was cooking, a piece of it somehow slicing Ch’s achilles tendon.
Then it was just me. While I was trying to get into my own space things lightened up as far as sounds, but I started to hear voices and feel someone touching me. My mental health took a serious decline and I broke up with J and cut off my relationship with B, Ch, and L. I didn’t leave the house for two weeks and didn’t check in with anyone. I barely remember my time alone in that house. One day my mom came and she packed up my stuff and forced me to move home. I asked her if she experienced anything while she was packing and she said she didn’t want to talk about it, just that neither of us were ever setting foot in that house again.
I told my aunt about all of this when I was better and able to talk about it. She was familiar with the area so I mentioned the street name and I saw the color drain from her face. She then gave me the address of the house, and the exact layout. She said when she was younger she had a friend who lived there and their family experienced so much they left after five months, only a slightly shorter time than my time in that house. She wouldn’t talk about what happened in that house, only told me that her and her friend dabbled in the occult and had tried to communicate with whatever was there. I know that sounds unbelievable. I didn’t believe her when she said she knew what house I had lived in. I vomited twice when she was done talking because I couldn’t process what I’d just heard. I still have problems processing it all when I remember it.
My current partner’s family lives around the corner from that house and I have to close my eyes when we pass because I can’t bring myself to look at it. I’m always so afraid that I’m going to see something, or feel something, or that something is going to see me.
