More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Army Post In Texas

We laughed about it a lot!

The monitor only did that one other time that I can recall, and it was much shorter in duration.

Another thing that happens is footsteps on the stairs. I'll be sitting in the living room, watching TV or reading, when I hear someone coming down the stairs. Judging by the sound, it sounds to be a child - the steps are uncertain somehow, and fairly light - definitely not the steps of an adult. The first time I heard it was when my kids were upstairs asleep at nap time. I thought it was my oldest, Emily, coming down when she was supposed to be taking a nap. At first, I almost just yelled up, "Emily! Get in bed, young lady!" or something to that effect... but instead decided to surprise her and sneak up on her. Then I'd put her back in bed myself, rather than just make her get back in bed herself. I waited, crouching on the lower two stairs (there are ten wooden stairs, then a landing that turns a corner, then two more steps to the bottom), waiting to scare her! The footsteps stopped, so I turned the corner - but the "Boo!" froze in my throat. The stairs were empty. There was no one there. It would have been impossible, in any length of time, for a 3 1/2 year old child to sneak back up the stairs silently, let alone in the 1 1/2 seconds it took me to turn that corner. I just froze there, unbelieving of my own eyes. Then I quietly went up the stairs, only to find both girls sound asleep in their beds. Emily was never on those steps. But someone was, I distinctly heard footsteps, there was no mistaking it - I was right there! The sounds weren't muffled or "unearthly" sounding... it sounded like a kid clomping down the stairs.

When I was pregnant with our youngest child, I was on a lot of bed rest, an inpatient numerous times, etc... a very rough pregnancy. At one point, my sister-in-law came to stay for a little while, just to help out. We hadn't mentioned anything about the house to anyone, we felt kind of silly I guess - I've always been interested in the paranormal, but I don't think I ever took any of it seriously. Eventually, we started talking about this and that, Michael was at work. The kids were asleep upstairs, and we were just passing the time - getting to know each other better and talking about whatever came to mind. She was talking about something of a paranormal nature, something we were watching on television perhaps reminded her of something a friend said happened to them once - that kind of vague, "it happened to someone else" kind of discussion. Interesting, but very safe! For some reason, I started to tell her about the baby monitor story, and the footsteps. She said, "Like that, perhaps?!" as a joke - it sounded as though Emily had woken up and was coming down to see us. Anna was younger, and her footsteps would have been less steady. It was definitely Emily. We were laughing, and I almost felt silly... the whole thing seemed ridiculous until the footsteps rounded the corner. But not the child. We both distinctly heard the footsteps continue past the landing and onto the first of the bottom two steps. Then they stopped. Except that there was no one there. It was the middle of the day, bright and sunny in the living room, and although we had to turn our heads to see the stairs, we both had an unobstructed view of the stairway landing. We both stared at that landing, not believing our eyes, for what seemed like five minutes, but was more likely only around ten seconds. I turned to my sister-in-law and said, "Yea, about like that, but it's the first time he turned the corner." We both laughed, but it was a nervous laughter. I had goose bumps all over my body.

Why "he"?, I'm not sure. I had been thinking of it as a little boy of around three or four years old, judging from the weight it sounded to have on the stairs, and the level of coordination... not perfectly coordinated like an adult would be, but much more coordinated than say a toddler would be. The gender is a mystery, but it "felt right". It felt as if it was a little boy, but I can't explain why.

Later that week, I was kept overnight in the hospital, and my sister-in-law was watching the kids. She later told me that while I was gone, she had put the kids down for their nap. She was sitting on the couch reading, when she heard someone upstairs, walking around the kids room, moving toys around. Concerned that Emily would wake Anna up, she tiptoed up the stairs to bring her down to play where she wouldn't disturb her sleeping sister. When she got upstairs, both girls were fast asleep in their beds. The sounds had stopped when she got about halfway up the stairs, but there is no way one of them could've fallen back asleep by the time she got up there. It wasn't one of the girls that had made the noises. She ran back downstairs, panicked. Stood in the middle of the living room, then said to herself, "Oh, my god! I can't leave the girls up there!", so she went back up the stairs. But it's silly to wake them, so she sat in their room for about thirty minutes, reading, and then felt better about it and went back downstairs. I'm not so sure she was terribly unhappy to be sleeping downstairs on the couch. Things don't seem to happen down there!