When I was around the age of 3 or 4, my mother and I moved into a two-story house in a tiny town named Chilhowe.
It was a truly beautiful looking house, with large glass French doors, hardwood flooring, and a large, ornate window that was located in my bedroom at the time.
My mother, being the paranoid woman she was and is, put thick opaque curtains up over my window as she feared that some peeping tom would try to watch me in my slumber.
I was fine sleeping in there for the first month or so, but then I descended into a full year of nightly night terrors, from which I woke crying and screaming every time.
During this entire time, I remember the cause of the terrors with pristine clarity in my mind.
Every night, just before I fell asleep, my eyes would snap open and I was forced by something unseen to look at the window and the curtains that hung over it. There was a flash of light and then the curtains would fly up and twist and turn until it was a face staring back at me, grinning maniacally and waving in non-exist ant wind.
After the last nightmare, I finally told my mother about it. She was skeptical, of course. I was 5 years of age and could hardly find the words to tell her, so I understand her disbelief.
We made a deal, she would spend the night with me in my room one night and in return I would never tell her of these nightmares or the curtains ever again.
The night she attempted to sleep in there with me, the curtain phenomenon didn't occur, instead, she swears up and down that as she was holding me she felt a cold presence pass through her body. From that night forward, I never slept in that room again. Instead we slept side by side on our fold out couch in the living room. But; that is not the only thing that happened in this black hole of a house.
During the entire time we lived there, my Mother was constantly sick. She almost died twice during our residence there, the second time she would have, had it not been for one of our family friends. Also, my cousin Wendy moved in with us and was only there for a week, because one day while I was at daycare and my Mother was at work she heard stomping outside the French doors that connected the hallway and the livingroom. After it stopped, she rose and opened the doors and saw her favorite pair of boots sitting upright, alone, and directly in front of the doors. She left that day.
Later, when I was older, my Mother told me the reasons that we were disturbed so while we lived there.
The previous owner, who also made the house by himself, committed suicide in the garage. On the slab of concrete where he took his life, they have never, ever been able to lift the bloodstain even after ripping it up and pouring new concrete. Also, the house was built on the grounds where two Native American tribes fought some battle which resulted in the death of many Natives. As I have previously said, I was 3,4, and 5 when this all happened. I am 13 now, and still I remember it all and not a day goes by that I don't think about it, and those awful, awful curtains.