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!