What A Scary Night Indeed

So, this starts off as a terrifying ghost story and ends will a small amount of freaked out hilarity.

I was playing the role of house sitter for my then girlfriend's family and had invited a friend over to stay the night because I'm a bit of a scaredy cat at the best of times.

So at around 11pm, I decided it was time for me to head off to bed and said good night to Josh, who had settled comfortably into the couch watching something on the comedy channel. I was out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow. At around 1am I awoke to hear the sound of Josh literally screaming out my name, "JAKE, JAKE, JAKE!" So I jumped out of bed, ran into the next room and turned on the lights, only to see Josh cowering and panting in the corner of the bed with the look of absolute terror on his face. "What's up mate?" I said, enquiring as to why he was so freaked out, he didn't answer me, didn't even look at me, just lifted his arm slowly and pointed at the doorway to the bedroom, where I had just entered. At the entrance to the room, stood the apparition of an elderly man and a young boy whose body was emanating a vibrant red colour.

As I slowly backed onto the bed, the sound that a mobile phone makes when you place it next to stereo speakers (kind of sounds like Morse code) was emanating from the stereo which was cycling through radio stations in quick succession. After a few seconds of the radio cycling, it stopped on static. Then the volume increased substantially to the point where it was almost deafening, I didn't know which to be more scared of, the two glowing apparitions in the doorway or the deafening sound of static radio. I decided that I would reach over and unplug the stereo when suddenly a croaky, whispering voice came through the speakers: "Why are you here?" it enquired as the young boy's apparition left the doorway and appeared in front of the wardrobe, just to the left of the entry.

Although I was scared beyond all belief, I said, "This is my girlfriend's house, we're watching it while her fa..." The voice stopped mid sentence and croaked "This is not your house, get out."

Although I really didn't need any other motivation I grabbed Josh by the scruff of his neck and sprinted out of the room, down the hallway and out the front door, only stopping to grab my car keys on the kitchen counter. After fumbling with the deadlock (always hated that name), we got outside, turned to close the door only to have it slammed in our faces.
As I got to my car? thankfully it started first time, I revved twice, took one last look at the house and happened to spy a curtain lift to the side and the face of the young boy, appearing now grey-blue in colour, pressed against the pane. After dropping the clutch and throwing up some gravel, we shot off down the driveway to the main road.

When we had established that we were never going back there again and the panting had subsided, we decided that we would go and stay at Josh's house for the rest of the night? even though it was likely we weren't going to sleep. So we got there, walked up the stairs to his room and chatted for a while? by the way his room was a complete mess, paper and crud everywhere. We were both getting tired and decided it was time to sleep, he took the top bunk, I took the bottom, he switched off the lights and he was notably snoring within minutes. I however, was not. After around an hour, my eyes got heavy enough to justify closing them, besides, my super hearing radar was on. After a while though, I started hearing footsteps stepping on the paper littered across his floor.

"Josh," I said quietly and waited for a response. "JOSH! JOSH! JOSH!" when I got to the stage where I was screaming, something had approached the bed and jumped on me, "AAAAHHHH" I screamed in fear as Josh's parents stormed into the room and turned on the lights allowing the scared cat that had jumped on me (as I was sleeping in his usual bed), to bolt from the room.

Weeks later when my girlfriend and her family returned, they produced a photo of the boy of the family who had previously owned the house. The young boy had been playing in the back dam on the property and had slipped and drowned in the mud. It was that young boy that we had seen that night. The house has since had a Shaman visit with the family of the little boy in attendance; the mother and father were able to speak to the child through the Shaman and said their piece.

I have since had no problem in the house, though I'll never sleep there alone again. I still have no idea who the old bearded man was and don't think I'll ever investigate it either.