Scary stories

it was keeping me awake

My experience started when I was about 14/15 years old. I had been having a very difficult time at school, due to exam stress and bullying, which had led to my feeling extremely low and negative. I state this because I wonder whether it was being in such a dark place that allowed the entity as I think of it in.

I have always lived in the same house all of my life and, up until then, had never had an experience within it. My mother is a very religious woman who had had the house blessed almost as soon as my parents moved in and as such she had always argued that it was impossible for the home to become haunted, though after my experience, I feel that that is wrong to say and things can change.

The occurrences always happened in my bedroom. I share my room with my two sisters. My bed is packed tightly in next to my younger sisters bed; her bed is to the left of mine, immediately to the right is a small brown tiled fireplace, some space where I had stacked my DVD and game collection along with a lot of junk, then there was a small stack of drawers and a big old wardrobe immediately after that, which makes up the whole side of that room really. There was also a full length mirror at the bottom of my bed, which I always (and to this day) hated. My older sister had bought it and refused to get rid of it. Because of the layout, to get out of my bed, I have to either crawl to the bottom or climb across my little sister's bed. My older sister's bed was set off on its own across the other side of the room. The floor is a very worn down type of linoleum, so you can hear whenever anybody, or thing, is walking across it.

I had gone to bed fairly early one night and was upstairs on my own, everyone else was downstairs, dogs and cats included. As I was lying there, trying to fall to sleep, I began to hear something walking across the floor. It had claws, because I could hear them clicking against the floor with every step it took. It had four legs I presume, because it sounded exactly how our old and now long deceased dog had sounded. Naturally a little alarmed and confused, I sat up and started looking around, following the sound with my eyes. I could distinctly hear it walking around by the other side of my little sister's bed, walking around the corner through the gap between her and my older sister's bed's corner and down to where I was now sat at the bottom of my bed, looking for it. I knew where it was, because I could hear it on the floor- but there was nothing there.

Having sat there for a while, just listening to it and trying to work out what it could be, I gave up, figuring it wasn't doing any damage and that my other family members would call it a mouse or something, though it sounded as I said, much bigger. As I lay down, I listened to it continuing to walk around the beds, usually it'd stop when it reached the bottom of mine, then turn and walk back towards the door which was on the other side of my younger sister's bed. After a while however, despite my bed being pressed right up against the wardrobe and drawers, I heard it walking up on the right side of my bed, still on the floor which was covered by the drawers and wardrobe, which is impossible- then, when it reached where the towers of CD's & DVD's were stacked, I heard the sound of them all falling, and the thing, whatever it was, running away to the other side of my sister's bed as though it had startled itself by knocking them down. But when I looked, everything was still standing, nothing knocked down though I had jumped up in reaction to the noise. There was a moments silence then, before it just started walking around again.

My sisters came up to bed soon after and I was hoping they, too, would hear the clawed thing walking around. But it stopped when they came up.

It happened every night for months after, in the same way. If I was up there alone, lights on or off, I'd hear it walking around, even hurrying over to me the moment I walked in through the door, but I couldn't see, or feel anything. It liked to keep me awake, which was only making my already dark time harder. If my sisters were already in a deep sleep by the time I went up, again it would walk around. I had tried talking to them about it at the time, but as they heard nothing, they dismissed it and I dared not broach the topic with either of my parents. My mom, as I have mentioned, is strongly religious and would have vehemently told me such could not enter the house, my dad on the other hand is the opposite, insisting ghosts and such do not exist so I did not feel I could turn to anyone about it.

I eventually caught on that if I went to bed the same time as one of my sisters, that it wouldn't come out for whatever reason, so I began to do that. It worked for the first week or so and I was finally catching up on sleep. Then it changed strategy.

It was around 3 or 4 am, and I was jolted out of sleep by the sound of the clawed feet STOMPING around the head of my bed. As soon as I sat up, it stopped stamping and went back to wandering around as it usually did. At that point I sort of gave up and just sat at the bottom of my bed cussing at it as quietly as I could. I believed I had actually gone insane which made me want to clam up even more about it, though at the same time the fact it had woken me up did make me think it had a somewhat more tangible presence than simply being in my head.

After that things seemed to be getting worse.

When you walked into our room, the moment you walked past the small gap between mine and my little sister's bed, crossing into my side of the room, the air was icy, an actual tangible feeling. I know the fireplace on my side would allow in some cold and draughts, but this felt almost like you'd just walked into cold water.

But what I felt was worse was the mirror. Me and my sisters had turned it to face the door, due to some superstition my sister had that doing so would stop spirits entering. Each night, the mirror would have turned ever so slightly, so that it was facing more towards my bed. I didn't notice it at first, but when I did I set it back to reflect the door. I'd have to move it back to that position at least once a week.

As it had woken me up, and come to make a habit of it, I gave up going to bed at the same time as my sisters and would just lie there, listening to it until I could fall asleep. Then abruptly, one night, it stopped. There were a few more nights of silence in which I genuinely believed it had gone for good.

Then one night when I had gone to bed by myself, it reached a head. I was lying there, lights off, the only light being the street lights reflecting on the curtains and the light under the door from the hallway. I had closed my eyes to attempt to sleep, when I was suddenly overcome by a sense of danger and wrongness. I don't know how to really describe it, but I felt suddenly threatened, to the point I opened my eyes and there, at the bottom of my bed, was what looked like black smoke. It was darker than the rest of the room and, while it was solid and I could see it was black in colour, I could still see the street light and mirror through it. I was too scared to move and somehow just knew it'd have chased me anyway.

So I began to recite prayers in my head as I watched it rising up and grow, like it was forming into something tall. It wasn't however until I began to recite the Guardian Angel prayer that something happened.

It was like another voice shouting in my head, cutting across the prayer, just shouting 'GET THE LIGHT ON NOW!' Near the bottom of my bed is a cord which serves as a second light switch, the other being beside the bedroom door. I honestly felt too scared to move still, but it felt almost as though something had my arm and launched me across the bed to where the cord was. The shadowy smoke mass moved in front of the cord, but my arm just went through it and suddenly my hand was on the cord and the light was on.

To this day I cannot honestly say whether it receded under the bed, or just vanished. I just sat there in shock for a while, calming down. I tried to rationalise it, even turning the light on and off again to see if it was some sort of optical illusion. A strange calm kind of settled over me though and I just knew that it was gone and somehow fell back to sleep without running down to panic my family- which is something I would have done.

It took me a few weeks to summon the courage to tell my mom about what had been going on and this time she didn't question me due to the fact I was becoming distressed again just from reciting it to the point I was shaking and crying. She handed me a pack of angel cards then to place under my pillow.

The very first night I slept with it there, I had a very strange dream. My bedroom was completely empty and bare, save for my bed upon which me and my little sister were sat. It was placed in the centre of the room. There were two monstrous bugs, one a fly, the other a beetle. They were both black, with an intense purple iridescence to them and were scuttling around the room frantically, launching themselves at the bed before falling backwards as though they had hit an invisible barrier. We were both sat on the bed, watching them, knowing that as long as we stayed there, we'd be safe, until finally the beetle like bug turned on and devoured the fly.

After that, everything strange just ended. There were no more clawed steps keeping me awake, the room all settled into one temperature and the mirror stopped turning towards my bed.

To this day I am uncertain as to what exactly that was, if it was all one entity or multiple, or what it wanted even. I am just glad it is gone and hope it never returns