The Tape Recorder (1)

This is a true story that happened to me when I was 11 years old and it still haunts me to this day.

When I was little I had a totally crazy family that I never really understood much and my dad grew up with not the greatest lifestyle. It was an abusive childhood for him and I think that everything that went on in that house happened because of the way they lived.

My uncle Bob has a lot of problems, and when I was little he always told us that he could talk to the devil and that the devil told him what to do and he could see him. So my parents never let me go around him unless they were present.

When my dad was little he told me, not in great detail, that he always new there was something in his house, and that he can remember always seeing things, and something weird was always happening. Hearing this always made me too scared to go to my grandparents house but nothing ever happened until later.

My parents were going on a cruise for their anniversary and were trying to find a place to send me, my brother Jim, and my sister Julie, to watch us for three days. When they could not find anyone my grandparents (my dads parents) were their last resort.

They dropped us off in the afternoon on the first day and my cousin Amy was there and told us that she was going to stay there to keep us company and stay with us. Amy was my Uncle Bobs daughter, the one who claims to talk to the devil. But I didn't think anything of it which I should have now that I think about it.

Everything was going fine, we played and stayed up all night just like kids. The next day my Grandparents had to go to work for about two hours and told us they would be right back and left me and Amy in charge. So they left and me and Amy, went to the toy closet and found this old tape recorder in it. We got the greatest idea to record all this stuff on it. So we went into the kitchen and got a blank tape out of one of the cupboards and stuck it in the recorder. So all of us including my brother and sister started to goof of with it. A very important thing to remember is that my Grandparents had a little Chihuahua dog named scruffy, and they had her for six years and never since the day they had brought her home had she ever been able to jump on anything. She would always try to jump on a bed or a couch until she couldn't no more, then one of us would have to pick her up, and she has never made it up on anything in all those six years they had her.

So we were recording and singing stuff into this recorder, then my cousin looked at me with this smile and said, "lets record ghost noises and other scary sounds and scare Grandma and Grandpa with it." So I agreed hesitantly because I'm such a chicken and anything could scare me then.

We were recording for not that long when I looked up at my cousin and she was just standing there literally as white as a ghost staring down the hallway at my dads old bedroom (then my Grandpas workroom). Then she brought one hand up to her face and covered her right eye then she took it down and covered her left eye. We were all just standing there watching her, scared and not knowing what she was seeing. Then Scruffy started to run and bark at the room my cousin was staring into and when she got to the doorway she started to whine and whimper, then she came bolting back towards us so fast and jumped right on the couch in one jump!

I was frozen with terror and the whole time this was happening me, Jim, And Julie could not see what Amy or the dog did, but we could feel it, whatever it was there with us, and it was so strong it was making us sick. Then we started to hear this unseen force run down the hall towards us and we just started to scream and cry, and we all jumped on the couch and got together crying and praying. This thing would run down the hall and get to where we were sitting then it would start again right were it started and it never even ran back up the hall and it would repeat this over and over. As it would get to where we were we could feel it going past us and we could feel how evil it was. As it went on the house started to make a heart beat sound that was getting louder and louder.

Our neighbor next door heard us and tried to call my Grandparents, and when he could not get a hold of them he came over. He was a priest of the church that was down the road and so when he got to the door and touched it whatever it was disappeared and it all stopped.

Me and my siblings stayed at their neighbors for the remaining time and Amy was sent home. Luckily my Grandparents don't live in that house anymore but I never did go sleep over there again, and as for the tape recorder.... Its long gone for good.