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Too Scared To Look

 

I've been on this site for several years and finally decided to post this story.

Short background first.

I'm from Scandinavia, but I attended university in a Canadian city where this story takes place.

I am the very definition of a sceptic, always have been (although I love a good ghost story).

Today I am a middle aged scientist who spends my days looking at cells through a phase contrast microscope in the lab.

I have masters degrees in both biochemistry and engineering physics.

In short, definitely not a believer in the paranormal, rather the jerk who always try to poke holes in great stories by looking for possible explanations.

This is why this story shook me to my very core.

I was about 21 years old, living with my girlfriend and her roommate in a 2 bedroom apartment in a not-so-great part of town.

We all went to university and worked part time as well. We spent quite a bit of time at the bars on the weekends.

One day I was home alone and the phone rang.

I picked up and was told that our roommate's mother had been in a severe car accident.

Both my girlfriend and this roommate came from a small town about two ours away, which is where this accident had taken place.

I managed to get a hold of my roommate who was devastate of course.

She and my girlfriend got in her car and immediately headed for their hometown.

This meant that I was left to my own devices in the apartment.

Later that night (at about midnight) I was watching tv on the couch in the living room.

The phone in the kitchen rang, it was the roommate bawling her eyes out.

Her mother had just died form her injuries a few minutes earlier.

The call only lasted about a minute, she was too upset to talk.

This is when things start to happen.

The SECOND I hang up the phone, BOOM the power goes out.

A huge storm appears out of nowhere. Wind speeds like I've never seen before knocking over metal garbage bins in the alley outside.

I started to feel a little uneasy, but hey power outage in a storm makes sense. Probably a tree falling over a power line.

I was standing in the kitchen (where the phone was). The kitchen was visible from the living room, you had to cross it to get to the living room.

The kitchen floor would always creak when you walked across it.

Three very distinct, unmistakable creaks. Always three creaks.

At this point I am standing in the pitch black kitchen when suddenly the light comes on in our roommate's room.

The door is closed, but I see the brightest light I've ever seen emerge from the cracks under and above the door.

The light was absolutely blinding, it was as if the sun itself was trapped inside her room.

Here I started to physically shake and get very frightened. I didn't dare to open the door nor even approach it.

The door was facing a back alley so it couldn't have been headlights from a car or something along those lines.

Instead I moved over to the couch and lied down face down with the blanket over my head.

Imagine that.

I was a 6'6" 230lbs student athlete scared out of my wits, shaking like a leaf...

That's when I heard it.

The floor in the kitchen.

- One creak

My heart stopped in anticipation of that second creak, hoping it would never come.

- Two creaks

I have never felt fear like this before nor since. Someone was in my kitchen, moving across the floor towards the living room where I was quivering on the couch.

- Three creaks

At this point I knew that there was someone/something in the kitchen about 15 feet from me.

I knew that if I were to turn to look my life would be forever changed and everything I believed in would be completely and utterly turned upside down.

I already knew, but I didn't want to confirm it by actually laying eyes on it.

Two decades later as a scientist I realize that makes me just about the biggest hypocrite one could possibly imagine.

Excluding uncomfortable facts and truths that don't fit your hypothesis is hardly the hallmark of that scientific method I hold higher than anything else.

All I remember from that moment is that gut wrenching fear. Not only of what was actually there, but fear of having all my beliefs thrown out the window by seeing... Something that simply cannot be. This fear I believe to many is just as, or even harder to deal with than facing something paranormal.

Until this day this experience haunts me.

Even so, I have never second guessed myself.

There is no explanation for that light, believe me I looked into every possible explanation to try and make sense of it. I wanted to disprove it.

Looking into wiring issues, substations, angles for potential reflection of headlights and such (being an engineering student). As much as I tried, there was no logical explanation.

The creaking floor. You better believe I ran all kinds of tests and experiments on that after, trying to recreate the situation without anyone physically moving across the floor. It couldn't be done.

I hunkered down face down until I heard birds chirping and sunlight filled the room.

When I got up I found no trace of anything, and the power was back on.

I told my girlfriend what had happened, but I never could tell the roommate. Even years after I find it extremely difficult and I don't want to open old wounds.

Well that is pretty much it. It feels good to put this into words after all these years.

What do you guys think this was? Have you been through or heard of anything similar?

Curious as I may be, to this very day I am so glad I didn't look.

For some reason I have never ever regretted my decision not to peek.

I have not experienced anything else out of the ordinary in the 20 some years after this happened. Still, I cannot deny what happened even as the years go by.

It has left me at least somewhat more open minded. Still a sceptic, I no longer outright dismiss these things as nonsense. Progress I guess?

Thank you for reading!

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Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, Tabbs, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

t_bev (3 stories) (32 posts)
 
4 years ago (2020-09-01)
Tabbs - If the actual experience was only half as scary as your telling of it... I wouldn't have looked either.
VeronicaMarie (5 stories) (106 posts)
+2
4 years ago (2020-06-21)
Bergraff38, I really enjoyed reading your comment.

"Time slows gradually to eternity..." Something very beautiful about your wording there.
Lorenzo (3 stories) (21 posts)
+1
4 years ago (2020-06-21)
Maybe the bright light was the kasaarvin. 😊 😊
Doctor who reference for anyone who doesn't know.
Alina5 (3 stories) (136 posts)
+5
4 years ago (2020-06-21)
Hello Tabbs,

Of all the stories I have came across this site or even any other web forum, I had a sparking curiousity regarding these encounters of people witnessing a "bright light" or "white light" without any proper explanation. These encounters are occasionally categorised on the basis of their location and suprisingly are the most scariest of all (atleast for me). I never even found any proper "paranormal explanation" of these encounters wheather it is caused due to any entity or is a different existence.

On this website this is probably a second encounter publicly posted after the curious discussion on the comment thread of a previous story "I saw it too".

I believe these incidents should be researched and discussed upon more.

Peace
Melda (10 stories) (1363 posts)
+3
4 years ago (2020-06-21)
Tabbs - Now that was a really frightening experience.

I have to admit to feeling just a tiny bit of satisfaction when a dyed in the wool, no nonsense scientist encounters the paranormal, as do most people who have lived with supernatural events for most of their lives.

Having said that, most of the members of this forum do in fact look for logical explanations before shouting "ghost".

I'm assuming you accept the storm as having been a natural occurrence and probably responsible for the loss of electricity. I don't need to tell you that electrical storms build up a huge amount of energy. This could be a reason for a supernatural entity to have built up enough energy to put in an appearance.

More than likely what you encountered was not your roommate's mother. Did you know this lady and if so, was there a mutual dislike? She would have had no reason to scare you like that if you had a cordial relationship.

Did either your girlfriend or your roommate ever mention any unusual happenings in the apartment which were simply blown off as imagination or would as a matter of course, in your minds, have had some form of logical explanation?

Sadness and negativity could also have set up the stage for what you experienced. What was your state of mind that night? Obviously before your rather terrifying experience.

I'm no expert on the paranormal - these are simply a few thoughts which cross my mind.

Thanks for share a very interesting experience (especially for a scientist 😨)!

Regards, Meld
Berggraf38 (3 stories) (25 posts)
+5
4 years ago (2020-06-21)
Hi Tabbs,

I'm an environmental microbiologist and I've had several paranormal experiences, ranging from terrifying to comforting. I find them fascinating and I think scientific explanations are possible, but not really necessary. The human mind is limited, so any explanation is kind of an empty but fun speculation.
It possibly is something to do with the mind of a person reaching out during the death process through energy channels in the material world and connecting, intentionally or not to other minds, still living, or doing things that we can see. Our brains are biochemical computers that release brain waves and extreme experiences show us that time dilates. I had a striking time dilation experience during a mountain bike accident. As I flew off my bike toward the ground at full sprint speed, 25 mph or more, Time slowed to the point that I felt comfortable and calm as I saw every detail of the ground I was about to hit and my mind was able to figure out exactly how to move my body to minimize injury. What was probably 1 second or so felt more than 10 times that long. I can only imagine what we are capable of when we are actually dying and time slows gradually to eternity.
MrsRamsay (guest)
+2
4 years ago (2020-06-20)
Hello Tabbs, thanks for a good story (from a credible source, you!)
The bright light caught my attention the most. After my mom's death a few years ago, I would be the one to go to her house to clean things out, most often alone. I would get there and make certain to turn off the porch light or any other lights that had been left on. We would rotate which lights were left on because there was an empty house with lots of nice things inside and no one there. A number of times at the beginning, I found lights on that I didn't think we had left on. I wasn't really keeping track at first, but then I started to be more aware that something was off about the lights. Always in the back of my mind is that Mom used to leave her "can lights" on as much as possible after Dad died, just because she was alone. One day I KNOW for certain I'd turned off the front porch lights the minute I walked in the door. After cleaning the fridge, I had to get home (about a 30 minute drive), so I locked up and got in my car. It was a very sunny spring day, and as I backed out of her driveway I looked up and saw both front porch lights, shining brighter than they would or could EVER shine on their own. I wasn't looking for it or expecting it, so it was like I had backed out of the driveway before it even registered that something was...unusual. Like you, by the time it registered in my head that I had turned OFF the lights when I got there, and definitely had not turned them on again, I was way too afraid to turn around and look. Goosebumps all over my body. I drove home, but have never forgotten that time. And after that, I was a little nervous being there alone. Even though I felt like it could be Mom, it's like I really didn't want to know for sure. It's just too weird.
VeronicaMarie (5 stories) (106 posts)
+3
4 years ago (2020-06-20)
Whoa...Incredibly well-written, Tabbs. Edge-of-your-seat stuff. One would of course logically assume this was to do with the spirit of your roommate's mom, but I can't figure out why she'd hang out at her daughter's apartment, when her daughter wasn't there. Maybe the fact that you were a skeptic had something to do with her presence there (if it *was* her presence), like she knew the strange events would be more believable to her daughter, coming from you. And there's something about the roommate calling you herself, so soon after her mom dying, that seems odd to me. Did it seem odd to you at the time, like you would have thought it much more likely that your girlfriend would have passed the news on to you?

Well, this is incredibly mystifying and intriguing, and so well-written that I want a sequel right now!
Lorenzo (3 stories) (21 posts)
+3
4 years ago (2020-06-20)
I would've been scared out of my wits.
The only thing I can think of is your imagination.
It can make you hear weird things.
Lealeigh (5 stories) (512 posts)
+4
4 years ago (2020-06-20)
Hello Tabbs and welcome to YGS,

That's a very scary and emotionally charged experience! I think you have done an excellent job of telling us this story because I could imagine myself in your place.

There was a time, about twenty years ago for me also, where I had heard definite footsteps on the floorboards while I was trying to sleep on a couch at my great-aunt's house. I decided to look, while I could still hear the footsteps; but there was nothing visible where the sound was coming from. I don't know if it would have been better for me to see it - it scared me to not know what it was doing or looking for.

- Maria

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