"Creepy Babysitting Experience"
By Keri L. @ about.com/your true tales 2012
I decided to call a friend, since I was feeling uneasy about being up alone in Kathy's house (the nearest neighbor was quite a way across a field) and it was so quiet after the kids were asleep. I was talking on the phone to my friend. It made me forget about the uneasy feeling I had earlier. I decided to go outside for a cigarette.
I sat on the back door steps, still on the phone. I told my friend to wait until I was done, because I wasn't too scared when I talking on the phone. I finished my cigarette and let my friend go. I wanted to do some things around the house. As I was walking inside, I noticed the front door across the living room was wide open. No one ever uses the front door. It was even taped shut -- summer in the country, in Manitoba, is the worst for mosquitoes.
I walked fast to go close it. I even put a small table in front of it so it wouldn't open again. I checked the kids quickly; they were all sound asleep. Feeling very creeped out, I proceeded to go to the computer room to get my mind off what happened. As I was sitting there, I heard a knock at the window. There were blinds on it, so I couldn't see out. I got up and walked to the living room, pretending I didn't hear it.
Suddenly, I heard knocking at the front window, then the kitchen window, then all the windows at the same time. It got louder and louder. I flipped! I know this part is really cliché but, I grabbed a knife and the phone and ran and sat with my back against the back door, where there were no windows. Then I heard a scratch that started at the top of the door all the way to the bottom.
As it got to the back of my head, I started to cry. I quickly called my friend back and told him everything. His only advice was to tell me to call someone to pick me up, which was not a possibility, since I didn't know anyone in Lil Sask (as we call it) and that there were six kids sleeping in the bedroom. I calmed down enough to get off the phone, and made a bed in the living room with the lights on and I fell asleep.
In the morning, I took a walk outside to look around. There was no evidence of any being here, no footprints, nothing. I didn't tell Kathy what happened. I just wanted to go home and get away from there. I told my mom a few days later; she then told Kathy, of course. Kathy admitted that before when her sister was sleeping over on the couch, that she awoke to a little girl -- with no face! -- standing in front of her. After that, no amount of money would make me babysit for Kathy overnight again!"
"The Phantom Fire"
(By Mike @ your true tales)
"When I was 21, I was going to college in Baton Rouge and had just moved into a new apartment. It was literally new – newly built, new carpets, paint, appliances, everything. I found this a bit strange because all the other buildings in the apartment complex were obviously older, and the monthly rent in my building was significantly less than that of the older buildings in the complex. However, I never said anything or asked any questions because I was happy to be getting what I thought was a good deal on an all new apartment.
It wasn't long before I noticed that something was wrong, though.
The first night I stayed in my new apartment, I awoke in the middle of the night – around 3:45 a.m. – in an absolute panic. I flew out of bed, frantically slapping at my body with my hands. I felt like I was engulfed in flame, burning all over. After a few seconds, I regained some composure, realized I was not on fire and told myself it had just been a dream. But I could not deny how real the feeling had been. Just a few seconds ago I had been completely sure that I was about to die, burned to death. I never was able to go back to sleep that night.
In the following months that I lived in this apartment, this scene was repeated dozens of times. I would awake in a flash, flying out of bed and beating at the phantom flames that surrounded me. Occasionally, I would have friends or girls stay over, and they were invariably quite unnerved to see me leap out of bed in such a panic. Strangely, when this happened, it was always at around 3:45 a.m.
Besides the fiery wake-ups, other unexplained things happened in my apartment. Dishes would come out of the cabinets on their own and shatter on the floor when I was in the other room. Anytime I set a cup on floor and left the room, I would come back to find it spilled. Within a few weeks, the new carpet was a rainbow of multicolored stains. Once I ejected a tape from the VCR and it flew – literally – 10 feet across the room. Posters and pictures would fall off the walls. The toilet would flush on its own and the TV and radio would come on without my touching them. Fire alarms would go off all over the building.
But the most troubling thing was the noise that came from upstairs. I had lived on the bottom floor of my previous apartment and was accustomed to hearing noise from the neighbors above me. For this reason, in my new apartment, I never took much notice of the sounds that came from upstairs. But sometimes it would get really loud, with things crashing around, heavy footsteps and stomping, even occasional screams. I just figured that the people upstairs were a bit wild, but didn't think much more of it.
One night I was studying and the noise was particularly bothersome, with heavy thudding and crashes. I was tired from a long night of studying and finally got pretty angry with my unruly neighbors. I decided to go up and say something to them. My apartment was on the second floor, and with a realization that hit me like a ton of bricks, I remembered that THERE WAS NO THIRD FLOOR IN MY BUILDING. All the other buildings in the complex were three stories, but mine was only two!
That night I left and stayed with friends. At the end of the month, I cancelled my lease and paid nearly $1,000 for breaching the contract, but I could not stay there anymore.
A few months later, I ran into an old friend who I had not seen in a while, and who had lived in the same apartment complex years before. As we talked and caught up, I told her about my experiences in the apartment and that I had moved out. As I told the story, I expected her to nod politely, with a touch of patronization and disbelief, as most people did when I told my tale. Her face, however, turned to stone as I told about waking up "on fire," things breaking and the third floor neighbors that weren't there.
When I had finished, she looked at me sincerely, without a trace of deception, and said, "When I lived there a few years ago, that building burned down early one morning. Two people on the third floor were killed – burned as they slept. You really didn't know?"
Even now, thinking back on her words, I am completely covered in goose bumps. I've never even gone near that building since."
"The Phantom Tenants"
(By Thirstytears @ your true tales)
The apartment was on the second floor and, for some reason, we could hear everything that was going on in the rest of the building through the vents. For the longest time, the apartment above me remained vacant until one day my friend and I heard raised voices above us. It clearly sounded like a man and a woman having an argument. This lasted all day and eventually stopped at night. A few days later, we heard footsteps above us and what sounded like furniture being moved across the floor, so we assumed we had new neighbors. The only concern I had was that they seemed to argue a lot and I didn't want to have to be the neighbor that calls the cops whenever there was a domestic dispute, but I needed my sleep, too. I had work to do!
One day, my friend and I were taking a nap in my room when there was an extremely loud BOOM! directly above us. It shook the entire house! We both sat up, wide awake and looked at each other, waiting for any kind of sound through the vents. About five minutes went by and the most terrifying scream I have ever heard rang out through the vents. Scared that someone had gotten hurt, I quickly ran up the steps and tried to enter through the door, but it was locked. So I pounded on the door, but nobody answered. At this moment, my friend downstairs was already dialing 911.
When the cops arrived, I directed them upstairs. They got the door open and went inside. A cop stayed downstairs with my friend and me and asked us questions. I remember telling him we had never met the new neighbors, but they often would get into fights and we were often awakened at night. After about five minutes, the first cop returned downstairs looking extremely confused. He asked if I was absolutely sure that's where the noises were coming from. Of course I was sure; I had heard these noises and voices day in and day out for almost two weeks now. My friend confirmed my story.
The cop said, "Well, I think you need to see something" and motioned for me and my friend to follow him. When we got up the stairs and into the apartment, we stopped dead. There was nothing and nobody in the room! In fact, there was nothing in the entire apartment! My friend and I sputtered out the rest of our stories about what we had previously heard, but it didn't matter. There was clearly nobody there.
Confused and dismayed, we thanked and apologized to the cops for their wasted effort, and sat in my little TV room trying to figure out what had happened. I ended up calling my landlord and asking him if there had been any new tenants upstairs, and he assured me that I and the Chinese family downstairs were the only ones in the building. I soon moved out. About a year ago, I traveled down that same road, only to see that the house was gone and a gas station had been put on that exact same spot. I still wonder why they tore it down.... Did the next tenants experience the same things I had?"
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