The House I Grew up In

The house I grew up in was very haunted. No matter what room you where in you never felt alone. We lived in a 2 bedroom 1 bath house in Garland, Texas. I lived in the house from the time I was 4 to age 10. The house had 2 garages. One was attached to the house and used to be a carport. The other was detached and stood at the back left corner of our backyard. My parent's used the attached one for tools and storage and the back one for recreation. The front door opened into the living room and straight back was the kitchen. On the back left side was a hallway that led straight back to my bedroom. My parent's room was on the left side in the hallway across from the bathroom the was on the right side in the hallway. This may help you to better picture where things happened. Our closets were wood sliding doors, and all the shades in the house pulled down from a roller, and where solid white.

Every night I would make sure the doors of my closet were closed, and almost every night the right side would open. Some nights it would wake me and I could see a gray man standing in my closet. He looked gray like from an old B&W movie, and I couldn't distinguish any features. He never moved or said anything. He would just stand there. I wasn't scared of him. I never felt threatened by him. Most nights I would just roll over and go back to sleep.

I had 2 windows in my room. One looked out at the backyard the other at the sideyard against the neighbors house. They had no windows on this side of there house. I was terrified to open the shade of the window that looked out on the side yard. I don't know why, but I would never open it even for light during the day. Sometimes at night I could hear someone walking the length of our house in the backyard, and if there was moonlight a shadow would pass accross the shade as they walked by. I once got up the courage to look out the side of the shade and I couldn't see anyone as it passed by again.

I remember one night climbing down from the top bunk and stepping on something warm and squishy like flesh, but it was a gross kind of squishy. I felt fingers start to close around my foot, and I jumped and screamed at the same time. I turned the light on and there was nothing there. There was no one sleeping on the bottom bunk at this time. I was telling my mother about this several days ago and she said she had the same experience one night in the doorway where the kitchen met the living room.

We had a window that looked out into the garage that was attached to the house since it used to be a car port. Since there was no light to come in through here my mom always kept the shade over it closed. I remember sitting at the table and sitting as far from that window as possible, because you could feel something very evil on the other side. These were the only windows in the house that I had a problem with.

One night I woke up to the feeling someone was staring at me, and I looked towards my door. My mom was standing there looking at me, and she just turned around and walked down the hall. I thought this was really weird, so I got up to see what was wrong. I looked around my dresser down the hall and asked "Mom?" and whatever it was turned around and disappeared at the same time smiling at me.

One night around dawn I think. I woke up to the feeling again that someone was staring at me. I was lying on my side facing the wall, and I heard a deep male voice say "Don't turn around or I'll scare you to death." Needless to say I did not turn around as it was not my father's voice. He does not even have a deep voice. I felt fingers go around my throat, but I was to scared to scream or move. Luckily they didn't tighten there grip, but were slowly removed. I felt them slide along my neck. I laid like that till my mom came to wake me up for school when I started crying and told her what happened. She could clearly see finger marks on my neck, and woke my dad up. They searched the whole house and all the doors and windows were still locked from the inside. No one but us was there. My mom concluded I scratched myself in my sleep, but I was wide awake and I know what I heard and felt.

The back garage had an attic above it that could only be reached through a small hole in the ceiling. There were no stairs to it so my dad always had to use a ladder to put anything up there. Neither of my parent's liked going up there, but I didn't know that until recently. One day my best friend and I were out there playing with a big puppet house my dad was making for church. We were sitting behind it playing with our Barbies when we heard the big springs that held up the garage door start to creek. They started groaning louder to the point we thought the whole place was coming down. We peeked through the window of the puppet house and could see the ceiling start to bow down just above the spring closest to us. Where most of the weight seemed to be we could see a man's high top black boot (only one). We high tailed it out of there as fast as we could go, and never played in there again.

Years later as a teenager my step-dad owned his own mechanic shop. He built an apartment inside the shop above and beside the office. My room was above the office and I shared it with my 4 yr old brother. My parent's room was next to the office and the bathroom was on the other side of the office. Sometimes my parent's would ask me to baby sit and go out dancing. They would make sure I locked the door to the shop before they left and my dad would have already locked all the bay doors so no one could get in. Almost every time they went out and left us alone I would hear very clear very loud footsteps walk across the shop toward the stairs that led up to our bedroom. My walls didn't meet the top of the shop so if I stood on my bed I could see the entire shop. My dad usually left a few lights turned down low so they could see when they got back in, but they were plenty bright enough to be able to see each and everything in the shop. The footsteps always came up the stairs and stopped at the landing just outside of our bedroom. I could see the landing clearly as I had no bedroom door. No one ever came up here so no worries. I never saw anyone walking, I only ever heard the footsteps. I would stand on my bed trying to see who it was, but there was never anything there.

Not too long after we moved to a house in Plano, Texas and the attic there was haunted. The only entrance was through a hole in the garage ceiling. My step-dad never liked going up there and once said he saw a black form crawling towards him up there. Sometimes I could here scratching noises on the ceiling of my room, and other times I could hear a woman's voice calling my name in the middle of the night from somewhere inside my room. If my friend's stayed the night they could here it too. One night my best friend and I were home alone and we heard what I can only describe as sounding like Dixie land kind of music blaring through the house. We ran outside on the back porch and as soon as we shut the sliding glass door we couldn't hear it anymore, but if we opened it we could here it again. The glass was really thin and we should have been able to hear it through the glass, but we couldn't. When we first moved in there was a little cross made from strips of bamboo that had been stapled together taped to the back of the door of the bedroom I chose. I never told anyone about it and threw it away. I told my mom about it after we had moved and she said maybe I should have left it there.

I swear every bit if this story is true. I even have witnesses to some of the events. As I get older I don't see as much as often. I don't know if it has anything to do with being older, or where I live just isn't really all that haunted. What do you think?