I Am the One

I’ve thought about telling this story for quite a while now, and first and foremost I want to inform you from the very beginning that everything I am about to write is true. I will not be adding anything for the sake of the story, nor will I be using stupid stereotypical buzz words to make this seem more terrifying. All I’ll be doing is telling the truth, that’s all I want to do.

So, I’ll start from the beginning and give a little background. When I was a kid, I began realizing I had a little insight on what was going to happen before it did. Now, by that I mean I sometimes knew what some kid in the class would say next whilst bothering the teacher, or I knew when the phone was going to ring. That sort of thing. I didn’t think much of it as a sweet ten or eleven year old, I just saw it as pretty cool I guess. Then came on the feelings of “I’ve been here before” whenever I went new places, I could never remember when though. I began getting deja vu regularly, which would last maybe ten or fifteen minutes. I’d usually sit back in awe and quietly mouth everything everyone was saying. As I got older, I began referring to it as a ‘sensitivity’ I had. It wasn’t until I was about fourteen I realized I also had this ‘sensitivity’ to spirits.

I live in Ireland, so during the famous Celtic Tiger my parents went all out on a beautiful 250 year old house. I mean knocking down sections, rebuilding, re-roofing, repainting, everything! We got to pick our own rooms. I chose the attic. It was terrifying at first, but once we rebuilt it a bit, painted it, re-floored it and all that good stuff it looked pretty fantastic. The only part of the room that still bothered me was the small hatch in the ceiling up into a small boiler room. Just looking at gave me a bad feeling from the beginning, so I had placed my wardrobe under it and put stuffed animals on top to cover it up so I wouldn’t have to see it. The first night in that room was quite intense, all through the night I heard scratches and banging coming from the boiler room. I put it down to being ‘new house noises’. Until I heard footsteps run across the ceiling. Over and over again. This happened every night. I remember mentioning it to my father, he laughed and said ‘unless there’s a 4ft tall person living up there you’re not hearing anything’ followed by the famous ‘you’re probably just dreaming’. I knew I wasn’t. This did freak me out a lot, but surprisingly I just got used to it and ignored it.

I began noticing strange things happening in my room, little things. My wardrobe doors would be open, I’d close them and go downstairs, come back up and they’d be open again. ‘Probably just a slant in the floor’ my father concluded. Ornaments around my room would be in different positions, that sort of thing. Then came the feeling of being watched, watched very carefully. For every second I spent in that room I could feel someone or somethings eyes burning into me. It was uncomfortable to say the least, but I tried to get on with things. It wasn’t long until I began getting night terrors. I saw horrible things, things I would not like to ever see again. However the fact they were dreams made it less traumatizing, albeit slightly disturbing. My mother told me she would hear wails in the middle of the night, she’d get out of bed to find me standing outside my door, screeching and crying, she’d ask me what’s wrong but I’d simply shake my head and lower my chin to my chest. I don’t remember any of the crying. When I was told I was doing this I was pretty freaked out, something like that had never ever happened to me before. I began feeling a bit down being in that house, specifically my bedroom. Each night I’d find myself thinking about how sad I was, which again, was odd for me because I had never had any problems, I was always a happy kid. However it was to get worse. I’ll never forget the night it all went downhill.

It was just a regular night I guess, and I had gone to bed and fallen asleep. I woke suddenly in the middle of the night, within a second of waking up I was overcome with terror and dread. I felt something watching me again, only this time, I saw it. I slowly turned my head to the left of me and there I saw it, a dark black figure staring at me. It’s head was cocked forward from it’s body looking down at me. I thought I was dreaming so I sat up, blinked and rubbed my eyes. No such luck. It was still there, only it looked as shocked as I was. It jolted back (perhaps when it realized I could see it?) and slithered down the side of my bed, across the bottom of my bed, as disappeared into the darkness. I couldn’t do anything, only sit there in terror and weep quietly. I had never been so scared. I stayed on the couch for a few days after that, and avoided my bedroom completely. I changed after that night, I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything, I was just a terrified mess. It wasn’t long before I decided enough was enough and braved the room once again. Due to sheer exhaustion, I managed to fall asleep on my bed for what felt like five minutes before waking abruptly. It was there again, only this time it’s ‘face’ was directly opposite mine. This time though it was in broad daylight, as I had only managed sleep at about six am. I think it’s fair to say I shat my pants.

Some time passed, and I’m not sure how thinking back on it, but I did manage to brush all this off, and I did continue to stay in that room. It was quiet for a while, but before long I began waking with cuts on my body, slices in my skin, mostly on my back and shoulder blades. Each night as I tried to sleep I felt some invisible force clasp my neck, it got harder to breathe each night. I became very depressed, finding myself sitting awake at all hours, knowing I was being watched and contemplating just ending my life. That bedroom became a pit of despair.

My father was and still is to this day very skeptical of me and my stories, my mother not so much. She got frightened by what had been happening, and insisted we call the parish priest [typically Irish I know.] Although I’m not religious in any way, I sort reached the stage of ‘Fuck it, I’ll try anything’ so I went ahead with it. The priest called over, he read whatever it is they read in situations like these, splashed holy water everywhere and stuck a cross he got from the Vatican in Rome up in the room. That wasn’t enough for me, since I wasn’t religious I felt it was hypocritical of me to believe that would work, so I just moved rooms. I’m still terrified of that attic, and have only been in there for brief moments when I’ve had to be since. I just assumed the attic was haunted, and left it at that.

The new room was fine, I was more or less fine for about a year (still slightly traumatized might I add) and I thought that was it, until I moved into a new house for college, and it all started again...

I moved towns for college, and found a perfect house with some of my very good friends. I had hoped to put everything that happened in my home town to rest, I was very optimistic about my fresh start. I moved to a really historic city, and the house I live in now is about 150 years old. The first night myself and my house mates stayed there we were unsettled by scratching noises coming from the walls. We put it down to ‘new house noises’ (I should have known better right?) and brushed it off. We ignored the nightly banging and scratching. One day I decided to bring it up due to something that I thought was a bit strange. I explained that I was in bed one night, trying to sleep when I felt my body jerking slightly, as if something was pulling on my quilt. I expected them to laugh, but one of my housemates sat up and explained the strange experience he had only nights before. He said he was in his room, trying to go asleep and he had had his feet hanging over the end of the bed. He said he was just asleep when something grabbed onto his foot. He said he pulled his legs up to his chest and lay there for a while, pretty shaken. We all went a bit quiet then, and just gazed around the house, getting more and more creeped out.

It wasn’t long before shit hit the fan in the house. At six am every morning I heard a light wailing coming from one corner in my bedroom and every morning I put my head to the wall to listen. Every time I called my housemates to hear it, it stopped. Typically. I think they started to think I was going crazy. It took a long time before they heard it as well. I was pretty relived when they said the words ‘yeah I hear it too’ because I was beginning to question my sanity. There was then daily banging from the kitchen, switches flicking on and off and the likes. We kind of just laughed it off all the time. I knew something was up though when I saw a black figure again. I had been sitting on the couch and could see into the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I happened to catch a glimpse of it, staring in at me. I looked over quickly, it was gone. I ignored it and decided not to say anything. I didn’t get too freaked out [since I was kind of used to it at that point I guess] but I lost it slightly when one of my housemates let something slip. We were all at a party and one of my housemates turned to me and said something along the lines of can you believe what our other housemate saw the other night. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I confronted the other guy. He sighed and explained how he didn’t want me to be scared and wasn’t going to say anything, but went on to tell me how he saw a black figure in the bathroom. I wondered if it was the same black figure I saw. We were all very wary in the house from then on.

Then came the night it all went downhill (again). It was only me and my housemate who had seen the black figure, the other had returned home for the weekend. We were both in the living room working on college stuff when we heard a bang. We both stopped and looked at each other with that ‘aw shit’ look. We knew it was starting again. Only this time it was much more intense. There was banging coming from all sides of the house. It was like someone was quickly moving around the entire house banging the walls and stomping on the floor. This went on for a few minutes as we sat there in terror. Then it stopped and the banging continued from just one area of the house, my room. We were kind of in that stage of nervously laughing and looking around. I had been sitting on the couch, and my housemate was sitting opposite me on a bean bag. He was saying something to me when his face dropped, he went completely white and just stared beyond my shoulder. I asked him what was wrong. All he said was we needed to get out of that room now, and that I wasn’t to sleep in my room tonight since the banging was still coming from there. I calmly asked him what did he see. He ignored me, just gathered our stuff and began going into the other room. I stopped him and calmly asked again, what did you see. He was looking past me again, and explained how he saw a black figure, sliding across the wall directly behind me. We both left that room and locked ourselves into his. We just sat there for a while in silence.

I began thinking about all the freaky shit that has gone on in my short life span, I began thinking about the significance of these black figures, and began wondering if there was multiple black figures or if it was all the same one. The same black figure I woke up to that night years ago.

That was when it dawned on me for the first time, maybe I am the one who is haunted.