Tapping At My Door

I’ve lived in this house for close to eight years, and for as long as I can remember there have been things going on that no one could explain.

The house is sort of an old one, about 60 years or so, built by one of my ex- boyfriend’s grandfather. I was eleven when my mother, my older brother Dennis, and I moved in with Bob (my step- father) and Bryan (my step-brother).

Bryan had a dog, whose name was Ariel. Sometimes Ariel would sit in the living room facing the door and barking. She would also do this in Bryan’s room and also in the playroom. We never really paid much attention to her behavior. Bob’s mother died in our living room, she always loved dogs, so we always assumed it to be her spirit playing with the dog. We even have a habit of calling her Betty, thanking her when missing things show up, and lecturing her when things mysteriously disappear.

One night, a few years ago in December, I had a few friends over. Keri and I were in my room, talking. She was also smoking out my window, making my room very cold. I also had two other friends over, John and Ken. They were out in my dining room playing on the computer. So when the tapping started on my door, neither Keri nor I were afraid. I called out "What?" and got no answer, the tapping continued. This happened a lot when someone wanted to be particularly annoying, as its never easy to walk through my messy room to my door. So I got up from sitting on my bed, wrapped in a blanket and asked "what do you want!?" and yanked open my door expecting John to be standing there. I was very surprised to find no one standing in my doorway. So I closed my door, shrugged my shoulders at Keri’s questioning look. "Its probably just the boys knocking on my door and running around the corner when I open up."

We hadn't been sitting for more than a minute before the tapping started again, I looked at Keri making a sign to be quiet, and crept up to my door, and threw it open. No one could have run away fast enough, yet there was no one there. Then the next logical explanation came to mind, and I told Keri to put out her cigarette and close the window, thinking that maybe there was a draft causing something to hit against my door. However once the window was closed the tapping became louder, almost frantic. That was too much for us, and we opened the door and ran into the dining room where the boys were. We asked them if they had been knocking on my door, or if they had heard any tapping. They denied both.

We hadn't been out of my room long when a police officer came to my front door. Of course I panicked, both my parents were out, and I was very worried that something had happened to them. When I answered the door and he asked if my parents were home I felt better, knowing that obviously if something had happened to them, he wouldn't be asking for them. However, when he refused to tell me why he was there, I began to worry again. I sent him to the upstairs apartment where my older brother lives, as he was the only adult home. As a worried posse, everyone went up stairs after the cop left to ask what had happened. Dennis gave me a very serious look and said "Ariel got hit by a car, she’s dead." At the time, the tapping was put out of my mind by the very sad news of our dog dying. But looking back on it a few months later it occurred to me, Betty had been trying to warn us and maybe save Ariel.

Betty seems to have made friends with our new dog though. Buca is now very much in the habit of hanging out in the playroom when no one is around, and bringing her ball the to living room, dropping it, barking and wagging her tail like she’s expecting someone to play with her.