What Was Watching Me

I never believed in the supernatural. I was always skeptical of ghost stories. I chalked them up to just pure imagination. People can make their own monsters after all. In fact there are countless studies on the subject which only further serves to validate my beliefs. My skeptical point of view was met with open criticism from my friends who were very superstitious. They would tell scary stories at sleep overs and would succeed in terrifying each other. When they became flustered they would look like a flock of pigeons all riled up and afraid of their own shadows. To the best of their ability they would try to frighten me, but being the skeptic that I was it took a lot to scare me. So after what felt like agonizing hours I would finally relent and play along with them. Years past and my skepticism managed to stick with me.

I thought that anything paranormal could just be explained. Until the night I saw this thing that watched me at night. Before the incident my boyfriend and me had moved to a new house in the country. It was a nice house painted white with a red roof. We stepped out of the car and headed inside for a better look at the interior. The insides looked cozy and the movers had placed the majority of our stuff in the middle of the spacious living room which led to the adjacent kitchen. A set of stairs led upstairs to a hallway lined with three doors with the furthest one being the bathroom.

We decided to make the bedroom closest to the bathroom the master bedroom and the other room could be for when our first child would be born. Until then it would just be a guest room. I’m sure our friends would love to see our house and some of them liked to party hard so the chances of them staying the night were high. I’d like to think we were a frugal couple. We had managed to save up enough money for this house after all. According to the agent this house had been on the market for the longest time. It had built up a reputation in the local community for being haunted.

Neither of us cared about that. He could get the occasional chill from a good ghost story every now and again but for the most part had never experienced anything paranormal. With me being a skeptic and my boyfriend a little hard to frighten the house was an easy sell. We had an easy time settling in, but it would still take me time to get used to the new place. I’ve always had trouble adjusting to a change in scenery.

The day passed uneventfully. In fact the crickets came out early and filled the air with their annoying song. At night however, it became dead quiet. The crickets stopped, and there was a strange stillness outside. As I was in the kitchen finishing the dishes from our supper I noticed these unusual eyes looking at the house when I looked out the kitchen window. Of course you can see all kinds of animals in the country. We had seen a group of deer on our way to the house that had jumped out in front of us and nearly caused our car to crash. All I saw was the eyes of the deer in that instance. Those eyes scared the hell out of me. The eyes in the woods near our house though seemed different. I thought it was a coyote or something and thought nothing of it.

That night was strange though. The already still night felt like it came to a complete halt. I laid awake staring at the ceiling unable to rest well for the first night in an unfamiliar place. I tossed and turned but to the best of my ability I couldn’t manage to sleep. Finally, I turned back to the ceiling hoping that I could eventually get some rest if I lay still long enough. The silence felt unusual and it was obvious that something was off about the room. I couldn’t describe it really. It was just this feeling that something unnatural was happening. It was only a slight feeling and so I rationalized that it was part of moving to a new place. I had lived in the city for most of my life so this new home would obviously take some time to adjust.

After a while I felt sleep coming on. It was more exhaustion than anything. My eyes had just begun to feel the sweet oncoming waves of sleep and my eyes closed shut. That strange feeling felt so distant now. Just as I began to drift off into a deep sleep I was roused by a subtle creak coming from the closet door. I sprung upright at the abrupt sound and looked at the closet door. To my surprise there was nothing there and the noise had stopped. I chalked it up to my lack of sleep or maybe just some quirk about the house I hadn’t gotten used to yet and laid back down.

After a few moments however, I was startled again by the sounds of the closet door opening. This time the noise was louder. Although it was not enough to wake my boyfriend and it was still fairly quiet. He was a heavy sleeper on top of all of that so he lay there as I looked on with my heart racing by the sudden turn of events. I felt fatigue kicking in now and my eyes grew heavy. Despite this I fought against the oncoming sleep to see what was causing the noise.

What I saw filled me with dread. I don’t know if I was just tired, or had some sort of delirium. The closet door slowly began to move. It was being pulled by a gnarled shadowy human hand, reaching out from the closet door and pulling it aside. I quickly panicked and lay back down hoping whatever it was would leave me alone. I failed to sleep at all that night, but I never saw anything but that hand. The night passed without any further occurrences. I went about the next day shaky but otherwise fine. After my nerves died down I came to the conclusion that it was all part of my sleep addled brain. That night however, the creaking continued and I once again seen the hand.

This time there could be no mistake. This was real. It had to be, I wasn’t crazy and I didn’t want to see the owner of that strange disembodied hand. I couldn’t look away either. I noticed as I watched the hand slowly pulling the closet door open that it seemed to fade away in the shadows and almost crawl out of the darkness. There was no way it belonged to a human being. The way the fingers moved would have broken bones. The fingers scuttled like a fluid spider through the cracks of the closet door, its shadowy mass seemed to float away from whatever it was attached to, but then reappear.

Out of fear I remembered what I did last night and hid under my covers trying to ignore whatever that thing was. It must have worked because the creaking stopped soon after and I lay there awake in fear for the rest of the night. This was going to drive me insane. What was it that terrorized me every night? I remembered how the locals called the place haunted but this couldn’t be a ghost. After two night with no sleep I had enough. That morning I decided to call the cops. My boyfriend asked me what was going on and I told him. I could tell he didn’t believe me, but he went along with me and called the cops to set my mind at ease. He tried comforting me as I broke down in tears. He must have thought I was crazy.

When the police arrived I told them that something was in my closet. The officers searched our room. After a good, long and thorough sweep of our home they found no sign of intrusion. The police searching the closet had found it entirely undisturbed. In fact it looked exactly as we had left it the very night before. The police reassured me they couldn’t find anything and my boyfriend calmed me down. He promised to stay up to see the creature with me.

That night my boyfriend and I stayed up, but nothing had happened. At around five in the morning my boyfriend had given up and decided to go to sleep. The sun would be out soon and he had to work in the morning. His job was a stressful one and required him to use heavy machinery so I agreed to let him sleep. My mind became calm knowing that whatever lurked in the shadows of the closet would not be haunting me tonight. Yet, this strange uneasy feeling made my stomach lurch. I couldn’t figure out why though. My boyfriend and I had waited all night with no incident and this line of thinking was enough to calm my fears. Whatever crawled out of that darkness did not show itself and my eyes grew heavy.

I had thought that whatever that thing was it had left, or at least wouldn’t disturb my rest tonight. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I lay there for I don’t know how long. This would be the third night of little to no sleep. Could I even trust my eyes at this point? Maybe the move had gotten to me and I was just imagining the whole thing. Just as I thought this I heard the sinister sound of the closet door creaking open. I had enough of the creature terrorizing me every night. This time would be different though. This time I would at least get a glimpse of what had crawled out of closet every night. I nudged at my boyfriend to wake him up. I was beginning to become frantic now as the door was almost open. It was no use he was out cold. I wanted to try to get rid of this thing that disturbed my nightly rest. I wanted some way to defend myself and my unborn child from this otherworldly invader, but as I frantically tried to rouse my boyfriend without making noise I felt my blood run cold. With no other option I let out a soft whimper as tears fell down my cheeks.

The dark hand wriggled free and slowly pulled the rest of the door aside. What stepped out of the dark closet paralyzed me with fear. Out from the closet came a shadow of roughly human shape, but it lacked all human features. Except for these strange, glowing eyes. I quickly recognized them as the ones from the woods a few days earlier. They glowed brightly, but gave only a dim, reflective light. I felt my hairs stand on ends. Every part of me screamed that I was in danger. With nothing to defend myself and the gripping terror that held me in place I managed to slowly lay back down perfectly still, hoping the creature didn’t notice my movements. I lay on my side still looking at the black, inky mass. It flowed out of the closet and moved towards the foot of my bed. It had no legs, only a formless, smoky bottom that continued to billow out of the closet. It stopped and stared at me and my sleeping boyfriend. It just sat there staring. I quickly closed my eyes pretending to be asleep. I mouthed a quiet prayer and tried to hide the sounds of my sobbing.

Moments passed and I hadn’t heard anything except the strange chill of my own distress. I was alone. I had lain there on my side for what felt like an eternity. My mind raced as I began to think about what the creature was doing, or what it was. After a while I figured the sun had come up by now and that the creature had retreated back to wherever it went. I had hoped it was gone for the night and was done terrorizing me. I opened my eyes and let out a gasp, my heart felt like it stopped. Staring me directly in the eye was the thing that watched me for three nights. It was so close that I could feel the chill of its body and the strange feel of its breath, despite it having no mouth.

I looked into the strange light of the creatures eyes and saw nothing but empty white voids. I struggled to breathe as the fright constricted my chest. I couldn’t move and my whole body went weak. It felt like I had no control over my own body. Like this strange otherworldly invader had an eerie and suffocating aura of fear. It just waited, staring at me intently and expressionless. It didn’t blink or move it only stared at me with those soulless eyes while I struggled to regain control of my own body. The fear eventually subsided when I blinked for a moment and the creature was gone. I caught my breath and seen the sun glinting through the window above the bed.

I lay awake all that night. It had been three days since I had gotten a good night’s rest. To this day I still don’t know what that thing was, but I felt so frightened by it that the next day my boyfriend and I decided to move away. He still dismisses it as a ghost story. It was strange though. On the last day before we left that place for good he said he saw a shadowy figure walking through the house as we were getting our things out. He told me he could have sworn something was watching him through the upstairs window.