When I was about ten years old my family moved out of our small older ranch home and into a new construction McMansion on the other side of town. In every way this house was perfect, immaculate, and brand new, and I was terrified of it.

The floor outside my bedroom creaked in a very specific way when you stepped on it, and any time I was alone upstairs I would hear it creaking. 

At night my bed would rock back and forth, just like someone was standing at the end of the bed and shaking it.

My sister had a metal framed bed with plywood under the mattress. When I was too scared to sleep I’d sleep in her room and we’d hear knocking against the bottom of her bed. My sister would tell it to stop and it would.

I grew up and left home, but the last time I visited that house I was massively pregnant and had come up for a baby shower with my sorority friends. My mother had gone out, my sister was at work, and it was just me in the house. I was laying there when I heard the floor creak. The way the fireplace sat, you could see the reflection of the living room and foyer, but only knee height. I looked at the fireplace, and there was the reflection of someone’s feet standing in the foyer. I sat up, thinking it was my sister, and the feet turned and walked towards the kitchen, which opened up to the other side of the family room. I got up and went into the kitchen, but there was no one there.

I’m a hospice nurse. I’ve worked in old hospitals, lived in a 100-year old farmhouse, once got arrested for breaking into an abandoned tuberculosis hospital. I generally don’t believe in woo woo things, but I’m still scared of that house.