Morning Guests

It was a cold, dark winter morning in Bremerton, WA in the year 2002. I wake up to my alarm at 6:00am and begin getting ready for school. I was in the 7th grade and it had been 8 years since my last encounter.

The house I lived in was built in the 70s with floral wallpaper, orange carpet and a weird way to enter the house. The front door was between the 1st and 2nd floors. From the driveway you would have to walk up the wooden stairs to the balcony where the front door was. Our basement was located at ground level and from the opposite side of the driveway you could see its large windows. It was a nice basement with carpeting, a guest bed, TV, couch, PlayStation and toys and a sliding back door that lead to the back yard.

After eating my cereal and watching some morning cartoons I go to the basement where the half bath, half utility room was located to get some socks. I sit in front of the unmatched newly cleaned socks in the basket in front of the sink and start digging through to find a pair to wear. While I'm digging through I hear two knocks that sounded as if they wear coming from inside the cupboard beneath the sink next to me. I look over and wait but hear no sound. I stay still, look at my knee and the basket to see if maybe I bumped it but I'm not touching it. I keep my eyes on my knee and basket and go through the socks as I had been doing and even shake the basket and move my leg a bit more to see if I can touch the cupboard but I'm too far. Nothing else is near the sink that could've hit it. Out of curiosity I lean over and tap the back of my middle knuckle twice on the cupboard door. As I pull away, just moments later, it taps twice again. I get up quickly with a handful of socks and begin walking up the stares from the basement back to the main floor. I get this eerie feeling of something walking to the base of the stares from the basement as if it were following me and stand there as it watched me walk up the steps. I feel its presence swiftly move up the stairs closer and closer behind me but I try not to panic. Panicking only makes things worse. Instead, I let it be and let it pass through me as I feel it continue up the stairs ahead of me.

To this day I believe that there was a possibility that maybe the sink did one of those mechanical adjustments with the water and pipes that made the sounds and it was just coincidental timing but then I remember the sound and it tells me that it didn't sound like metal. It sounded like wood as when you close a cabinet door. The feeling I got walking up the stairs I believe could've also just been my imagination seeing as how many people get that feeling walking up stairs from a basement anyway. This next thing though is what I can't figure out.

After getting dressed into my clothes for the day I sit on the toilet with the top down to use as a seat since the bathroom is always the warmest room in the house. I lean over and begin tying my shoes. This bathroom was a long bathroom with a double sink, the toilet at the end of it and the bathtub perpendicular to the length of the room at the opposite end of the doorway. As I tie my last shoe I hear a disturbance in the air. As if a mass passing through the wind. Almost as soon as I hear it, I feel a gentle breeze touch lightly on my right cheek. I look up quickly and in the doorway I catch a glimpse of a black figure pass on the left side of the wall. The door sways a little and I am fully convinced that someone is out there. It couldn't have been my dad because I heard him leave a while before I had to wake up for school and it was too tall to be my little 5 year old sister. I get up and look around the left corner down the hall that led to all the bedrooms in the house. All the doors were closed except for mine and I didn't remember hearing one shut. I go to the end of the hall and slowly open the door to look into my parent's room and find my mom lying in bed asleep.

"Are you awake, mom?" I ask.

No answer. I quietly shut the door, grab my backpack and go to school.