Uninvited Guests

These incidents occurred while I was living in Florida during 1996. I was about 13 and my mom and I had moved into my grandparents' home in a small hole-in-the-wall town the year before. Now, I've always found the ghost stories I'd heard from my relatives to be quite interesting, but I just thought that they were too superstitious and had wild imaginations. That was before the arrival of whatever kept me wide awake every night for weeks at a time.

My mom and I shared a bedroom on the opposite side of the house from where my grandparents' slept (it was a small house). In our room, we had a sliding glass door that led to the deck in the backyard, where there were heavy woods behind the fence. When we turned out the lights at night, it was much too dark in the room, so we slept with a night light on.

One night, my mom and I were both sound asleep in our own beds when, at 2AM, I awoke to what sounded like a loud clap. It was very clear and my eyes shot wide open at its loudness. I looked over at my mother to ask her why she clapped -- even though in the back of my mind I knew it couldn't have been her because it came from another part of the room. She seemed to have woken up the same moment I did. She said it wasn't her as she looked at me strangely. I was afraid of that. I felt an unusual sensation in the room and we both looked toward the corner of the room where the "clap" sound seemed to come from. It was unmistakable. Now we were both scared. Even though the light was on, something was very different about the atmosphere of the room. We stood up for about half an hour and then went back to sleep. That was only the beginning of that night. Not long after, I woke up again to see my mother looking around the dining room for a moment and quickly shutting the door to our room. When I saw her face, she was pale as a ghost and her eyes were HUGE. She said that something made her wake up to see the door to our room completely wide open as far as it could go and everyone in the house was asleep. Back to bed my mother went. A while later, my mother wakes me up by quietly calling my name and tells me to be quiet and listen carefully. I suddenly hear voices speaking in low tones outside our door, as if there were people sitting at the dining room table having intense conversation but trying not disturb us. It went on for a couple minutes until my mother opened the door and then the voices automatically stopped. Of course, there was nobody there. It kept getting worse. Around 3:30AM, I heard my grandfather up in the living room, saying "Hold on! I'm coming." It turns out that someone was ringing the doorbell and the person outside shouted, "It's me. Let me in." According to my grandfather, it sounded like our neighbor from down the street who would often visit during the week. Why would she be coming over at this hour of the night?

After everything that had been happening earlier in my room, I got a bad feeling about my grandfather answering the door and told him not to let in whoever it was, but to check from the window who was standing outside instead. Not listening to me, he opened the door -- and there was no one waiting to be let in. It sure wasn't our neighbor. I swear I had never been so scared of anything in my life.

Back to bed we went, until later when I heard noises coming from the bathroom that was in our room. The light was off in there, but the door was open. It sounded like things were being knocked over, and then I started to see strange shadows moving out through the bathroom door. I looked as if someone was playing peek-a-boo with me. It was so horrible I ran to my mother's bed and slept there for the entire night.

The next morning was the first time ever that I had been so happy to see the light of day. We moved back to New York very soon after that!