The Thing In The Back Bedroom

Apologies for the long read and if it gets scrambled it's because I'm still get scared.

I've always known something was weird about the back bedroom at my dad's house, I lived there from being a month old until I was in my 20s, It was for the most part me, my dad and my two brothers as my mum and dad split up when I was in year 4. That's when things got bad I guess.

So, a little about the house, I'm not exactly sure how old it is but there are the remains of air raid shelters buried under some of the neighbour's gardens (just to give a suggestion of how old it could be).

Inside the house the stairs are in the middle of the house splitting up the living room and dining room. From the landing you turn right to get into my dad's bedroom, turn left to get into my brothers' bedroom and go through my brothers' room to get to the back bedroom, which was my bedroom, it was small, dropped down a level and the roof was slanted.

Growing up I always felt, watched? Uneasy? Just generally not comfortable in the back bedroom, I'd tell my dad but he is a very stern, no nonsense kind of man so just dismissed it.

Then I started getting cuts all over my chest and arms in the night, I cut my nails really short and it still happened every night. They stung really bad too. I questioned my brothers, just in case and obviously they asked me why they would bother doing something so odd.

One day there was a butterfly in my bedroom, just to understand why this was a problem, the windows in our house didn't open, and the journey from the back or front door to the back bedroom would have been nearly impossible, on top of that, I am absolutely terrified of butterflies, have been my whole life, it's like whatever lived in there knew and was taunting me. In the end I refused to sleep in the back bedroom anymore. I stayed in my dad's bedroom and he moved into the living room.

Even when I moved out of the room I felt like it was watching me when I was on the landing going into the front bedroom. I closed the back bedroom door and it died down, nothing happened again for years.

Fast forward to my 20s I became a mother and after I got my own place we visit my dad at the house all the time. We're all close.

My dad started doing odd jobs on the house after I moved to my own place to keep busy. One of the jobs involved making a corridor from the landing to the back bedroom. During this process the back bedroom was used as a storage room and the door was jammed open, that's when I instantly felt watched whenever I went up the stairs again but, with the new corridor it felt like whatever it was could get closer.

I tried bringing it up with my dad again and again he dismissed it.

One night I was taking the youngest (around 2 years old at the time) upstairs to sleep in the front bedroom and when she got to the landing she looked down the corridor and pointed and started crying while saying "monster" this happened a few times, sometimes she would point to the top of the stairs and cry, like it was like it was waiting for us. Makes me shudder just thinking about it now.

My dad's next project was turning my brothers' old bedroom into a proper guestroom for my daughters, so they didn't kick him out of his room when they went for sleepovers. Before the bunk beds got put up the girls wanted to "camp out" in the middle bedroom, so we blew up air beds and I was settling them for the night, the doorway for this room was right next to the back bedroom door, back bedroom door still wedged open and the door for the new room wasn't in yet. I just knew it was watching me but I kept my cool for the sake of the girls who seemingly didn't notice (they were 4 and 6 now) As I'm crouched down kissing my youngest on the forehead goodnight, I felt something grab my top and yank me to the ground, I was so scared. The girls asked me if I was okay and I reassured them that I'd just lost my balance this happened around July 20.

I haven't really been to my dad's since because of the pandemic and lockdowns so haven't experienced anything since then.

Although my dad doesn't believe it, I finally mentioned the incidents to my mum who lived in the house for a number of years and she confirmed she always felt scared of the back bedroom.

Side Story.

A different experience I had at my dad's, I don't think it was related to the back bedroom because it was when the back bedroom door was still closed. I was pregnant with my eldest and I was still living at my dad's. Me and my partner had a row and I was upset, I decided to go downstairs and was curled up on the sofa in the front room and at some point around 11 I'd fallen asleep, my dad left me on the sofa, turned off the tv, lights etc. At around 2am I was woken up by someone shouting really loud in my ear, to the point my eardrum was ringing. It was a male voice definitely not my dad or partner and I don't know what was said, if anything was said at all. I listened out thinking it was probably a drunk walking past the house mainly to try and calm myself down but my ear hurt so much. It was angry, but didn't cause as much fear as any of the back bedroom incidents.