Fear Files

Home Sweet Home

Normally I am not one to be easily scared. Rather, I prefer to play practical jokes on others, scaring them senseless used to be a great pass time but unfortunately one single experience has drastically changed my point of view, now days, I tend to avoid anything to do with the paranormal.

My family moved to New Zealand from Fiji when I was thirteen. For the first year we stayed with my aunt as we could not afford the rent on a house of our own. However nearly eleven months later, my dad finally secured a steady job and we moved into a little two bedroom house not far from our aunt's house.

Mum was happy to finally have a place of our own, at that time she couldn't work as my little sister was barely two years old, as child care was expensive, and she opted to look after my sister until situations got easier. In the morning dad and I would leave for work and school, mum and my sister would stay home.

The house we rented was old, moldy and not in very good repair but it was all we could afford, in the winter months we nearly froze as the temperature dropped below 0 and the house was insufficient for heating. There were also unexplainable cold spots often in the oddest of areas, like when a patch of sunlight in the living room would feel like an ice box when it should have been warm, or when the gas stove was on but the heat was non existent despite the flames that was clearly visible. Then, a few weeks later, things became really odd. Things would disappear and often never turn up. Mum was not superstitious but being in the house all the time she was beginning to get spooked. Dad was hardly home as he worked two jobs so dismissed our fears as paranoia.

For a while we believed him, Dad was the most logical person we knew so we simply tried to come up with sensible explanations for everything. However it only got worst, I had an assignment due at school and as usual, didn't start on it until the last minute, everyone was asleep, I could hear my dad and mum snoring and my little sister was sleeping on my bed. It was nearing one am when I heard voices in the living room, a heated conversation was taking place between a man and a woman, it was so clear and loud that I thought my parents were talking and got up to check. My room opened directly into the living room, so when I opened my door, imagine my shock when all I saw was the dark room empty and completely silent. Thinking it was the neighbors talking I checked from the living room windows but no one was about. Spooked, I returned to my room.

The next night, my little sister needed her bottle so I decided to make it for her instead of waking mum; I walked through the living room into the kitchen turning the lights on. As I made her bottle, I heard footsteps behind me, thinking it was mum I turned to tell her I was making the bottle and nearly dropped the milk in shock. A dark shadowy form loomed near the kitchen entrance, a person's silhouette; the room was freezing despite it being in the middle of summer and me wearing only a night shirt. My family is quite religious and I began reciting verses even though I was scared, eventually the thing went away and I ran back into my room. I never told my parents knowing they would scoff at me but I was not prepared for what my dad asked me the next day.

At breakfast, my dad asked if I had come into their room last night, I shook my head but he insisted I had, he had seen a shadowy figure at the foot of the bed around two am. I realized that it was around the time that I had shooed the thing away from the kitchen.

The hair on my head prickled and the house seemed to become more depressing, my sister, normally a sweet tempered kid, began to get irritable, crying at odd hours, my parents became moody. Now the entity was making no effort to hide itself and we all were constantly startled at finding shadowy figures moving, people arguing in the living room and now the sound of children crying.

Often at night, I would hear thudding sounds on the roof like someone walking slowly and deliberately on the steel roof. It didn't sound like cats; they were quicker and for some reason avoided our house. Even the neighbor's dog, who was often friendly when we went over, would growl at us in our yard. Finally, one day seven months after we moved in, my mum asked my dad to find a new house. She had been in the bathroom sometime during the day after putting my sister to sleep and thought she heard a little child crying before hearing sounds of a little child running into the bathroom behind her. Thinking my sister had woken up, mum turned to comfort her when she realized that no one was there. Spooked, she checked on my sister who was still asleep, but mum had had enough and eight months later we moved out.

I don't know who or what was in that house with us, but when we left immediately my sister stopped being irritable, my parents no longer fought and I was no longer depressed. Thankfully, the house has since been demolished, deemed unfit to live in. But I always wonder what exactly was in the house.