That Room up the Stairs

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You can bump off this story like everyone else seems to do, but there is much more truth than you will probably realise. The events that happened in that room will never leave me.

Everyone probably has a place they see frequently that just gives them the creeps. For me it was the room up the stairs in my Grandmas house. My Grandma lived to be 80 years old, and had come over to England from Poland after the second world war after all her family had been killed by Nazi’s. She never went into details but she told stories of how she escaped numerous concentration camps and escaped the Nazi’s grip by luck.

The room up the stairs scared me like hell as a child, the only toilet in my Grandmas house is opposite the stairs so I had no choice but to walk past it. I would look up and get a feeling of dread like I have never felt before. The only thing I knew about the room was that it was empty other than a single light bulb.

Fast-forward a few years and I’m 18. I had walked down to where my Grandma lived (a good hour walk) and we were just having a chat. My grandma had lived in numerous houses before this one and I asked why this was. Her English is very basic and my Polish is a million times worse. She only said to me that it was because HE would not leave him alone no matter what. She then pointed to the main door to the house and I could make out three letters. According to my Grandma they were the names of the three wise men that gave gifts to Jesus. I don’t believe in anything like that so presumed that she was speaking about her dead husband (my granddad of course) and in respect I changed the conversation.

A few months later she had passed away. I was devastated. I loved my Grandma like no-one else and her death had been a shock to me. Although she had no history of heart failure she had died of a mysterious heart attack. In her death my dad did work on the house hoping to be able to sell it for a bit of money. A week later after the funeral my dad asked me if would stay over at the house for a night, apparently the lock had been broken but nothing was stolen. He presumed it was kids finding some place to drink and because the house looked uninhabited they took their chance. I was more than happy to stay a night, thinking I would be close to my Grandma. To this day that is the worst decision I have made in my whole life.

There is no internet in my Grandma’s place but I brought my laptop which had plenty of games that I could play, as well as a few films I had downloaded. The TV had been taken home so I had to make do with what I brought. Thinking I may have some opposition from the kids that had broken in and not being a strong guy I brought a baseball bat so I could threaten the kids and make them leave. I turned the lights on at the front and back of the house, hoping to make the house look more inhabited. I was playing on a generic shooter when I heard the crash. It made me jump out of my skin. I thought it was kids breaking in so I grabbed the bat and ran into the kitchen.

As the light flickered on in the kitchen I could see nothing wrong, there was nobody about and everything seemed fine. Then I heard another crash, coming from upstairs. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. The door to “that” room was open. Nobody could have been up there; I had been in the house all day and would have surely heard something. I slowly made my way upstairs and peered into the room. The light bulb was flickering on and off and was flashing wildly, then I saw the old man in the corner.

He was completely naked and was hunched up in a ball. I presumed he was a crazy old man who lived nearby and had managed to break in. I asked him if he was okay but I got no response. As I stepped further he stood up slowly and turned his head. His face still haunts me in my dreams to this day. His eyes were completely grey and I could not make out any pupils. He was completely bald and had deep, dark wrinkles all over his face. He shouted at me in a language I didn’t understand. In a very weak voice I asked him if he understood English. In a very thick accent he asked what my bloodline was. Thinking this was a strange thing to say I moved forward to help him out of the house. What happened next felt like a blur.

From being stood in the corner he was now in my face in a matter of a second, his rotten breath almost made me faint. I felt a tingle in my chest and when I looked down at it there was a knife buried to the hilt. My vision began to swim and I fell like a sack of bricks. That bat flew to the ground. I managed to drag my self down the stairs and to the door. As I pulled at the handle I looked up the where the three names of the wise men had been, but they had disappeared. The door had been replaced and the names scratched out by my Dad thinking it nonsense.

The last think I remember was lying on my back while a man in full Nazi SS uniform stared down at me from the doorway with a smile from cheek to cheek. When I woke up I was in hospital surrounded by a weeping mum, a distraught father and a worried girlfriend. According to them a kid had broken in and found this old knife upstairs and proceeded to test it on me. I tried explaining to everyone what actually happened but they never believed me, I was even put into psychological tests for a while until I could prove I was sane.

When I was well enough I went back to the house during the day. The house felt strangely empty and the room no longer had the strange feeling about it. Here is the strange part. As I walked into the living room to say a final goodbye there was something amiss. All the pictures in the house were untouched, other than one. It was a picture of my Grandma and I. Both our faces have been scratched out by a knife. It was then I walked out of that house and after all these years I have never gone anywhere near that place.