Childhood home

I was about 10 years old when my family moved into this quaint, pink, English Cottage style home built in the early 1920s in north Texas. I loved this little house and felt at home as soon as we moved in. I remember the day we were moving in, I felt random drafts of cool air. My mom always said the house was old and therefore, drafty. For some reason, I never felt alone in the house. Some rooms gave me an uneasy feeling and I refused to be in certain rooms all by myself like the sun room or the basement. I could never explain why. It was just a chill in your spine sort of feeling.

The rooms in this home were all completely separated. The front door opened to the living room with a sun room to the left. You'd enter the dining room through a door that had a door to the kitchen, and a door to the main hallway. The main hallway had 3 bedrooms on one side and a bathroom on each end. Each bathroom had two doors: one to the bedroom they were next to and one on the hallway. I slept in the middle room.

Within a few days of living in this little house, my brother stopped sleeping with the lights off. He insisted on leaving all the lights in his room on because he said he'd hear someone at night. My parents brushed it off as a phase. I started sleeping with my closet door wide open and the light on. Again, my parents thought it was a phase. At night both me and my brother would hear small footsteps in the hallway and in our rooms as If someone was coming in to check on us. They'd always stop at the foot of our beds. We'd tell our parents, and my father would always say "old houses make strange noises".

My mother became extremely depressed within the first month of living in this home. She'd tell my dad she felt as if she had lost a child. She had no idea why she struggled so much to get out of bed. Soon, she started hearing the footsteps in the hallway as well. Our family dog would bark in the hallway as if there was an intruder at random times of the day and night, and nothing would ever be there. Footsteps became louder, more obvious, and occurred more often. My mother would hear them during the day while me and my brother were at school, and my father was at work. She called my father a few times afraid someone was in the house. She had called the police one time because she heard loud banging noises and footsteps while she was in the kitchen. No signs of any intruders or unexpected guests.

My friends started refusing to spend the night because they'd say my house was "creepy". I never took offense because I too, thought it was creepy. One night, my father finally heard the footsteps as he was woken up by my mother in the middle of the night. She shook my father awake- "Brad. Brad, do you hear that?? Be quiet and listen." The dog started barking like she was ready to attack. Finally he had heard the footsteps and he told my mother, "get the kids." He thought someone had broken in. He grabbed the metal baseball bat he always kept under the bed and began inspecting the house. He told me when he walked into the hallway he felt a sudden rush of air go past him like someone ran by him quickly. Nothing was there. He started hearing the footsteps again in the hallway all around him. He finally believed my mother, that the house could be haunted. Me and my brother were sound asleep so he went back to bed and he and my mother stayed up all night just listening and waiting. A few more weeks pass without any encounters or instances. But we'd notice strange things throughout the house like things going missing, electronic items not working properly, the gas stove igniting itself... we'd blame it all on "the little boy ghost that must love to play pranks". We just had a strange feeling a young boy lived with us. More time passed with more strange occurrences. The hallway light would turn off an on randomly. Not flickering, just off... then on... then off and on... off... back on... off... on... my parents assumed it was a simple electrical problem. The longer we ignored it and let it be, the more often it would happen and more severe. One night around 2am it started turning on and off again. I also had a toy doorbell I had gotten from school for selling magazines on my wall at my bedroom door. I was obsessed with monkeys at this time, so the door bell made a monkey sound (yes I was a weird little kid okay?). This doorbell started ringing (or ooh-ooh-ah-ah-ing) in the middle of the night. I sat straight up in bed and screamed, "MOM! DAD!!". My dad came running in and was just as freaked out as I was about the doorbell. No one was ringing it. The button wasn't stuck...

He took the batteries out and told me everything was fine. Well, let me tell you... 20 minutes after we all went back to bed that motherfucker rang again and again. Ooh-ooh-ah-ah! Ooh-ooh-ah-ah!! I sat straight up and screamed again and my

Dad had already reacted so quickly... he ripped that thing off the wall, wrapped it in a towel, and threw the shoved the thing in my dresser drawer. He said "we shouldn't hear again." That fucking thing ooh-ooh-ah-ah-ed again, wrapped up in my dresser drawer. We heard that thing muffled and quiet but we heard it. I've never seen my dads eyes get so wide in my life even to this day. He pulled that thing out of my dresser drawer and threw it out the window down the driveway!! My mom and little brother were in the hallway witnessing all the drama unfold.

That night, we all slept together in my parents' bedroom. The morning after, my parents knocked on the neighbor's door too see if they had heard about any strange stories about our house or anyone else's. The neighbors just responded, "yeah we've heard stories. There's a home down the street where the owners hear a piano play every day at 4pm. The owners before you moved out of the house 2 months after they bought it." We had lived there for about 9-10 months. Needless to say, my parents put the house up for sale that day. No one bought it, so they eventually put it up for rent, as it's close to a University. We still get stories, and they're all very similar to our own.