Behind The Door

Story told by:
Sara de Souza
---------------

This happened on the 12th of January 2009, early morning at about 4am. I know the date because at that time I was talking to Nick on MSN and we both had our webcams on. I had to refer to chat logs to remember exactly what happened.

I was lying down on my bed in my room while using the laptop. We started talking about general stuff when suddenly I heard a tapping outside my door. Thinking maybe it was one of my cats, I continued talking to him normally. But it happened too many times that after a while I got scared. I got up to my door to listen to what's outside, and I heard it again. I got scared because I felt something funny, not a cat or any of my family members, was outside the door. I stepped away from the door and got back into my bed, pulling the covers over me. I told Nick about what I heard.

After a few minutes, I heard a heaving sound. Then I heard a bone creak moments after that, similar to when someone gets up from sitting, sometimes you can hear a bone creak. Just like that. Then I heard shuffling of paper and plastic. Then it sounded like someone is breathing very heavily and deep, like a man maybe?

The thing is, I was sure that it was not a robber because we have a balcony on that floor, but if someone was to break in, he had to slide the grill door and open the sliding door. These two make extremely loud noises and yet I did not hear any of them.

And the "robber" could have not come from downstairs because my room is next to the staircase, I would be able to hear footsteps. Yet I heard nothing that indicated that someone or something went up to my floor.

So, it led me to think that whatever it was, it wasn't living.

Throughout this whole time I was talking to Nick on MSN and he was talking to me about ghosts to try to reassure me that nothing bad will happen. He told me that from his research, "they" just want to catch my attention or something like that. It helped a lot because then I decided to just stay put and ride it all out.

Then suddenly I heard a loud creak outside my bathroom window. Fear hit me because I normally keep my bathroom window closed because bugs were getting in all the time. But recently at that time I had my bathroom fixed because a pipe was leaking. So the contractors left it wide, wide open. And the grills are big, enough for a small person to slip in. So now I got even more confused and scared, not sure what it was now, but something definitely was in my bathroom.

A few minutes later I heard heavy breathing in my bathroom, which is just three steps away from where I was. The door was closed, thank god, and I felt like if I stared hard at the door, I feared that it would just fling open and whatever it was decided to reveal itself. This whole time I kept my eyes glued to the computer monitor and tried to keep calm. The breathing was on and off for about 10-15 minutes. But it was definitely noticeable. I heard bone creaks as well, similar to the one I heard outside previously. By now nothing was making noises outside my room, but the sounds in my bathroom were continuing.

Suddenly Nick noticed my webcam was getting darker. And it was.

And after 10 minutes, while the noises was still going on in the bathroom, Nick's webcam suddenly turned pitch-black even though he did not touch anything. And my webcam was getting darker and darker.

I almost had enough and by now I had pulled the covers over my head, praying that it will stop. I tried to keep myself busy by changing the topic away from ghosts to something less scary.

Eventually the noises stopped. The whole ordeal lasted an hour. But his webcam remained black even until we both decided to sign out of MSN and get some sleep.

I slept at sunrise that morning.

The next morning, I told my mom about what I heard. She and my dad were genuinely scared, and asked me to move downstairs into the guest room. (I live on the 3rd floor, we have a 2 and a half-storey house)

But the thing is, I am scared of the guest room because of an experience that happened a few months before that.

But I will leave that for another entry on another day.