I’ve had a few creepy experiences since childhood. When I lived in my first house, I would fall asleep hearing footsteps on the empty staircase in front of my bedroom. I found out later that my sister heard them too.
In the same house, when the whole family was upstairs watching T.V., we heard the washing machine door being slammed. My mother went to check and found nothing there.
When I was older, from my grandparents’ backyard I glanced at the shed next door. It’s always closed, and the door is painted bright red. This time the door was open, and an elderly woman with a black polka-dotted dress stood there in the middle of winter. I looked away and back again. In the span of a few seconds she was gone and the door was shut as normal.
I was certain I am not the only one who’s experienced odd and creepy things, so I asked people to share their eeriest experiences in the spirit of Halloween.
“My roommate, Liz, and I lived in the same apartment building for three years straight. I’m not entirely sure what woke me up one night, but I woke up and saw a young girl standing at the foot of my bed. I blinked she moved to the other side of the room. She was sitting, curled up in a ball, rocking by my dresser. I freaked out, turned to grab my phone for a light, and when I looked back she was gone.
The following year we ended up moving downstairs into the basement where something happened again. I woke up because I heard a noise and there was just this dark figure reaching toward me over my bed. My first thought was that a man had broken into our apartment so I started screaming, but he was gone right after I started.”
—Kim, Bradford, Ontario
[When I was a child] I was sleeping on the floor in my family room. I woke up and felt like someone was watching me. I looked up and there was a tall man sitting in the chair with a brown suit and a bow tie. There was also a string hanging from the ceiling. I hurried up and closed my eyes. I opened them up again and he was gone. I didn’t tell anyone. A couple of weeks later, my sister described the same man to my dad.”
—Michelle, Washington, Michigan
“My father lived in an old house in the mountains. It was one of those places that dates back to the late 1800s. I was staying over for the holidays, and I slept in his office. I was making my bed in the dark room, with only a small shaft of light shining through from the kitchen. Suddenly, the door closed shut, something it had never done before. And in my ear, I heard a rough, aggressive whisper. The language was unearthly. Telling myself it was my father, I called out for him tentatively. But I was entirely alone. Thinking back on it, I distinctly remember a warm, wet breath brush against my ear. The most terrifying part of it all? For weeks, I felt watched. No matter where I was, even in places where I felt entirely safe in the past. There was always a heavy, daunting presence looming nearby.”
—Sarah, Montreal, Quebec
“I was about eight when it happened. I was coming out of the shower before going to bed and was in my room looking for clothes. I turned around because I noticed I left my blinds open. When I looked at the window, there was this figure that made me freeze. I was so scared and confused because it wasn’t a normal figure like a person. A person would’ve made more sense. But instead there was a boar’s head, with the body of a human. I swear it was demonic, but I’m really not sure what it was.”
—Brigitte, Repentigny, Quebec
“The craziest thing that happened was when my brother was staying at my parents’ house when they were gone for four months. I’ve had creepy experiences in that house all my life, especially in the middle room which was my old room. Someone died there many years before we moved in.
My brother was eating supper at my place, and afterwards I drove him back to our parent’s place. I came in the house for a bit to talk. We passed the middle room where the door was opened. Inside, the mirror attached to the bureau was now neatly leaning on the bed. We concluded that it must have fallen. The next night, after driving my brother back to the house, we passed the middle room again. I looked inside and saw the mirror in its place. ‘So you fixed it,’ I mentioned. But my brother had no idea how it got back up since he hadn’t touched it. We tested the mirror by trying to detach it from the board, but it was firmly glued on. We still have no idea how it got on the floor or back in its place.”
—Danny, Montreal, Quebec
“You can kind of call them premonitions in that I’ll be reminded of something entirely out of the blue and then usually an hour or a few hours later it happens. I was cooking breakfast one day before my sister was going to drive me into town to visit an art museum. As I was cooking, I randomly thought of a car accident I was in three years ago. I hadn’t thought of this car accident for so long it might as well have never happened to me. Anyways, I continued to make breakfast and thought nothing of it. About 30-minutes later, my sister got into an accident almost exactly like mine.”
—Elizabeth, Petawawa, Ontario