Horror Stories

Why He Wet the Bed

My brother joined the military when he was still in his senior year of high school and that's when he really began to buckle-down and started taking life more seriously. He's married now, with two step-daughters of his own and he's doing well. I suppose it's how well he's doing and how serious he has become that makes his story all the more disturbing.

We lived with our grandparents and the house never seemed right, it still doesn't seem right. When you walk in during the day it feels so warm, happy and comforting – but something happens when the lights go off and you're left alone. The house changes.

The feeling could be so intense that I was sometimes too scared to even walk down the hall to go to the bathroom. I always felt like something was watching me or worse, following me. I can't count the number of times that I would be walking down that hall, even when people were still awake and up, and I would get the sudden urge to run. There were a few times I would run, sprinting into the nearest room with another person in it – laughing my behavior off as just being silly. Sometimes I would talk to my grandparents about the feeling but they would just brush off my concerns but I could tell that even they were sometimes frightened. When I was about sixteen I was a huge fan of the movie Scream – so much so that I had the mask hanging on my door.

One morning I woke up to find that the mask had been taken down and when I asked why, my grandpa snapped that there were too many weird things that happened in the house as it was –he didn't like that the mask would look at him at night. I could tell that he was embarrassed but not enough to just let it go. He was and still is a very tough old man and I could hear in his voice how much he disliked admitting that the mask scared him. I can't blame him though.

I amazes me that they still live in that house. They say that I will inherit it when they pass because I'm the one that's closest to them but I don't think I'll ever take up residency there. For a small amount of time I did consider it though – it's a nice house and large property. I was even willing to write off all my unusual experiences there... till my brother came it visit.

It was just him, his wife and daughters didn't join him and he decided to stay with my grandparents. At the time my Uncle was also living there, staying in my brother's old room – the middle room. One night, at the end of my brother's stay, he came to my house and asked if it would be okay if he stayed there with me that night. He said that it was because he didn't feel like we had spent enough time together but I knew there was something else there, something he wasn't telling me. We've always been close with absolutely no secrets between us, so I thought it was weird that he wouldn't just tell me what was on his mind.

It wasn't until we were about to go to bed that he finally broke and told me the real reason for his stay. Now, keep in mind that he is military – I won't say what branch or what he does but it's not a basic position. He was a little high strung when he was younger and he's still goofy but there is a seriousness to him now.

That night, after we said goodnight, he paused and sat down on the couch. I didn't know what to think so I sat down next to him. I expected to hear that he was having family issues or maybe that he had gotten into a fight with my uncle but that wasn't it at all.

He said, "Do you remember when I was little – how I would sometimes wet the bed?"

I wasn't even sure what to say or why he was bringing it up but I did remember so I nodded. My brother had wet the bed until he was nearly twelve and even after that he would occasionally have accidents. My grandparents had been dumbfounded by the behavior; they had even taken him to the doctor to make sure nothing was wrong with his bladder. The only thing that they found was that it was a little weak – from habitually holding urine in for long periods of time.