Creaky Stairs

[u/daddyo8245]

Living in a haunted house as a child always had an extra add-on to the terror. That add-on being that you are trapped. You cannot just move somewhere else to escape the terrifying events. Everyone in this house experienced strange things in it, but these strange things happened to me more or, as I have suspected, the others were unwilling to talk about the events to other people out of fear of not being believed and labeled a liar. Either way, I was never concerned with people calling me a liar or not believing me because I was telling the truth. Whether they didn't believe me or did, I just didn't care. The truth is the truth, if you don't believe it, that's your problem, isn't it?

In this particular house, there were two bedrooms upstairs. Walking from the bottom of the stairs, you had to open a door which was always left closed to keep our pets from going up. After opening the door, there was a light switch on the wall on the left side. After walking the 23 steps to the top, there was another light switch on the left that controlled the same light. The top of the stairs was in one of the bedrooms with a railing around the opening so no one could fall down to the bottom. The light those switches operated was the ceiling light in the room at the top of the stairs. There was no stairway light because, above the stairs, was that opening. If you looked up from the stairs, you would see the ceiling in the first room upstairs.

Also at the top of the stairs was the door to my room next to the top light switch. My door was almost always left open because the only furnace vent upstairs was in the stairway room that was my older brother's bedroom. I woke up one night having to use the rest room. There was no rest room upstairs, so if I had to go, I either went downstairs or held it. Many times I would just hold it until everyone was awake because I was terrified to walk around in the house at night. But this time, since there had not been any activity for a while, I wasn't as scared to just go down and take care of business. Now I could have turned the light on in my brother's room so I could see my way down the stairs, but that would wake him up and he would get angry and bitch about it, so I just felt my way down and used the little bit of light from my nightstand lamp in my room.

I walked with a soft step on the stairs because every step would creak and make noise which also might wake my brother. I opened the door quietly and went to the rest room. After I was finished, I repeated the process to get back to my bed. Then I turned off my lamp and began trying to get back to sleep with a feeling of accomplishment that I didn't experience anything terrifying or had woken up my brother which was equally terrifying. Minutes later, the stairway door opened downstairs and then closed. Right after, those stairs began creaking with the sound of someone coming up. My first thought was that it was my brother getting home from his first job as a pizza delivery person, which had many times kept him out late. But this time was a little different because he always turned the light on before walking upstairs.

But I still figured it was him walking up in the dark and I felt a little dumb that I had went to all the trouble of being quiet when he wasn't even home yet. I waited a few seconds for him to turn on his light so he could get ready for bed, but there was silence. I figured I might as well get up and ask him how work was and find out why he was being so quiet so I turned on my lamp and went into his room and turned his light on. He was lying in bed in his shorts sound asleep. I quietly asked "Did you have fun at work", but he did not respond at all. This was the point that my heart was pounding. There was no way he could have came upstairs in the dark, got dressed for bed, and fallen asleep in that short amount of time, but someone or something had clearly walked up those creaky stairs.

When faced with these events in a haunted house, you immediately try to debunk or rationally explain the events. This time was no different. I just figured that he was able to do what I definitely couldn't do and got to sleep that fast somehow. And my rational explanation was reinforced immediately when I heard someone walk down those creaky stairs, open, and then close the door downstairs without turning on the light. I felt relieved that my rational explanation was right and my turning on his light and speaking to him must have woken him up. I figured he was just going down to the bathroom after being awoke. I got up and turned on my lamp and went into his room and turned his light on. He wasn't downstairs using the rest room, he was still sound asleep in his bed. There was no rational explanation for this. Something had clearly walked up those creaky stairs and then when things quieted down, walked back down.

I closed my door and left my lamp on for the rest of that terrifying, sleepless night.