The Thing in the Attic

Name:            Harold Taylor
Email:           thor_jones@hotmail.com
Location:        Washington State
Type:            Ghost
Date:            Monday, June 12, 2000
Time:            10:03 AM

I am relating this story I was told by a friend of mine a few years ago, it scared me just hearing it and hopefully I can do the story some justice here. I have changed the names to protect those involved since they are relatives of my friend. 

The story goes like this My friend "Caroline" was told this story by her cousin "Rich" about a house they used to live in. His younger brother "Steven" slept in a corner room upstairs in which there was an access door to the attic in the ceiling over his bed.

Steven (at that time a young boy) used to have nightmares nightly, he never played in his room and when bedtime came it was always a fight. He eventually told his parents that there was somebody in the attic that would look at him as he lay there, and sometimes he would be awakened in the middle of the night by the feeling of someone sitting on his bed or walking around the room and picking up items and moving them about. 

One night at bed time, they were going through the normal fight of getting Steven to bed when they came up with a plan to help prove he had an over active "Imagination". Rich had volunteered to sleep with his younger brother. After the lights went out and the house fell silent, Rich began to doze off as he and his still nervous brother lay there. Suddenly, he felt his brother grab his wrist tightly beneath the blankets.

Startled he opened his eyes and noticed in the dim light of the moon, the access door slowly sliding back revealing the dark attic behind it. He then said that he felt his heart pound with terror as he noticed movement and glimpsed a pair of eyes looking down at them.

The boys then both felt a pressure on the mattress as if someone climbed down onto the bed. They screamed and fled out of the room. 

Meeting their startled parents in the hall they told what had happened to them, but their parents scolded Rich for trying to scare his brother. Their father went into the room and turned on the lights, he saw nothing out of place, the access door was securely closed and latched from the OUTSIDE! The could not get either of the boys back into that room that night so the both slept in Rich's room. 

A few weeks later another episode with the "Thing in the attic" happened. One night Steven was awakened by the feeling of someone being very close to him, as if whoever (or whatever) it was was hovering over him, nose to nose and staring at him. He could not move and had an unshakable urge to open his eyes. But, the terrified kid fought it off and kept them tightly shut.

After several agonizing seconds, he felt the presence lift and he ran crying from the room. 

Angry now by this endless problem, Steven's father led the boy back into the room, flipped on the lights and made him watch as he searched the whole room. He even climbed up on the boy's bed and opened up the access door and searching in the attic. After finding nothing he put Steven back in bed and told him that he would prove that no one was coming into his room. 

Despite the boy's terrified pleading, his father made him stay in his bed that night. He went down to the kitchen and returned with a bag of flour, he sprinkled it all around the boy's bed covering the whole floor. Then they left him there. The next morning they awoke to hear Steven's frantic screaming, they rushed to the room and were terrified by the sight they saw. 

From one side of the room to the other, the entire room was filled with footprints, hand prints, and even impressions where it appeared that someone had put their face in the flour!

There were several different foot prints also, some were a man's size, some were of an infant, and one set only had three toes! They also found claw marks on the wall and a single footprint of flour on the blanket under which little Steven slept!

The footprints were too far from the door to the boy's room for it to have been anyone in the house playing a prank, and there was no flour on the carpet in the hall outside the room. 

They moved out of that house two weeks later, and it was never occupied again.