This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/subparadult on 2024-11-20 02:24:45+00:00.
The house I grew up in was anything but ordinary. It stood at the edge of a thick forest, and just beyond our backyard laid an old, hidden graveyard. The graveyard was overgrown with weeds and tangled trees, making it look like something straight out of a ghost story. The headstones were crooked and crumbling, their inscriptions too faded to read. Even in the heat of summer, the air back there always felt cold. Sometimes, we’d catch glimpses of shadows moving between the headstones or hear faint voices when everything else was silent. We never talked about it, but we all knew.
The house itself wasn’t any kinder. From the day we moved in, strange occurrences became part of our daily lives. Lights flickered, doors opened and closed on their own, and objects disappeared...only to reappear in strange places. My parents brushed it off at first, explaining it away as drafts or forgetfulness.
But one night changed everything.
Every evening after dinner, we’d gather in the living room for our usual TV routine—Friends, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond. It was a comforting habit, the kind that made the house feel familiar and safe. As a child, I’d often drift off to sleep curled up on the couch under a blanket. My parents would leave me there, not wanting to disturb me, and I’d stay asleep until I inevitably woke up in the dark, alone. Fear would take over, and I’d race down the hallway to their bedroom. At the foot of their bed sat my dad’s old college footlocker, which I’d use to climb up and crawl between them, where I always felt safe.
But this evening felt…different. The laughter from the sitcoms didn’t seem to reach me. The air in the room felt thick, heavy, almost suffocating. I was uneasy but still managed to drift off as usual. My parents, too, eventually went to bed, leaving me asleep on the couch.
Then came the sound that was oh so familiar...the soft "pitter patter" of little feet. My mom and dad stirred awake, groggy at first, but the sound was getting closer, and that’s when they started to pay attention. The footsteps stopped just outside their bedroom door, and the door creaked open slowly. They heard me walking around the bed, just as I always did, making my way toward the footlocker at the end of the bed.
“Hurry, Erin, get in bed,” my mom called, her voice thick with sleep. But I didn’t climb up like usual.
“Come on, Erin, stop playing around,” she said, her voice edged with irritation. She laid still for a moment, expecting me to move, but instead, she felt a slow, deliberate shift in the bed...a weight pressing down, as if I were crawling up the side of it. The feeling was wrong.. too slow, too quiet.
That’s when my dad’s patience finally snapped. His voice was louder now, laced with panic. “Erin, you have five seconds to get in this bed!”
But when they looked down toward the foot of the bed, their hearts stopped.
There, crouched low on all fours, was a shadow. It was still, frozen in place, watching them from the darkness. It looked just like me (my shape, my posture) but it wasn’t moving. The air around it felt colder, heavier, as if the room itself had stopped breathing.
My dad, now fully awake and panicked, turned on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with light. The shadow vanished in an instant. When his eyes adjusted, he saw nothing. No one was there.
They looked around in confusion, the room feeling unnaturally still. They checked under the bed, pulled open the closet, even yanked back the curtains—desperately searching, convinced I was hiding somewhere. But the room remained eerily empty.
Without another moment’s hesitation, they rushed down the hallway to the living room.
There I was, still sound asleep on the couch, exactly where they had left me.
My parents stood there for a long moment, unsure of what to make of it. The weight of what they’d just experienced hung heavily in the air. My dad was the first to speak, his voice low and shaken. “What…what just happened?”
But nothing more was said. The house felt different somehow, like it was no longer the home they knew. From that night on, they never left me alone in the living room again.