The Back Room

When I was a preschooler, we moved to a shadowy house surrounded by a creek. Bay trees grew close, hugging the house and making the rooms darker. The front of the house contained a main living room with a wood stove and two bedrooms that were very small. Down a small step was the kitchen. Off of that was a small hallway with a bathroom and the back bedroom. It was the largest room in the house and that is where my parents put me.

As soon as I was settled in, things began to happen. At first they were small things, an uneasiness making it difficult to play alone. I started to have nightmares that left me shaking and screaming for my dad.

As the time went by, I began to see shadows that writhed across the floor, along the baseboards, or on the ceiling along the walls. I was afraid at night.

One night I woke from a nightmare to see two perfect balls of light that danced independently from one another. They floated down by my bed and lined up on the wall like a pair of eyes, looking at me. I was so scared, I put my head under the covers. Soon I had trouble breathing from being stuck under the blankets, so I very carefully reached my hand out to create a hole in the blankets so I could breathe. Eventually, I fell asleep that way.

Another time, I woke and found a stain-like shadow on the wall that appeared to be some kind of animal face. Once again, I flung the covers over my head. The next day the mark was gone. I didn't see it again, but I did see the balls of light, over and over.

Things got worse. A sudden pounding would occur, coming from the ceiling at the corner of the room. There was an apartment over my room, locked with no-one living in it. I wonder if it came from there. Amorphous forms, white and twisted flowed down from the ceiling when it happened. I wondered why my parents never heard the noises.

The covers on my bed were thrown off, at times. I began to wind them around my body to keep them in place and I do that to this day.

I tried to tell my parents, but they never believed me.

The events happened until I was eight and I was moved into my brother's room at the front of the house. Soon, we moved away.

I visited the house years later as an adult, bringing my husband with me. It was a home daycare and newly remodeled. A little girl slept in the back room. I asked the owner if she was comfortable in the house and she said yes.

To this day I have no idea what it was that tormented me. I have seen things and experienced things I can't explain, but nothing as horrible as that time period in my life.