Unseen Eyes

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: Oak Park, IL 
Source: Form Submission

My father works in an old (for suburban Chicago standards, anyhow) church in Oak Park, IL, as the head maintenance man. This church is fairly large, and originally was built in 1867 according to the cornerstone, but burned down in the teens, and was rebuilt anew on the original foundation in 1916. You can still see in places like the boiler room original stonework here and there that is still black from the fire.

Anyhow, when I was about 16 or so, I went along early one Saturday morning, when the place was empty still other than my father and I. He said that down in the basement, in one of the rooms there were boxes of old magazines they were going to be tossing to make room and that I could go thru and take any that looked interesting to me. I thought that was pretty cool and couldn't wait to start digging thru them.

He led me to an area right under the main entranceway to the church itself, the sanctuary, in what was originally designed as a big room with mens and ladies lounges (restrooms) on either end. The big room once had couches and paintings and mirrors sort of like a living room of the 1910s, and the restrooms each had an ante room before you went thru another door to the actual restroom.

However, since new restrooms had been built upstairs in the 60s, these had been mostly used for storage areas and the main hall had been stripped of its furnishings and was just a vacant dark room.

The boxes with the old Life, Time, National Geographics etc was in the ante room of the old men's lounge, and it was lit by a single lightbulb over head and a grime covered stained glass window near the door that led to the locked up restroom itself. I pulled up a stool, and my dad left me to myself and said he'd be down in a couple hours to let me know when we were going home. I was sitting with my back towards the open doorway that looked out towards the main room.

I don't know how long I'd been in there but I had piled up about 3 old Life magazines from the 60s on a box next to me when I felt someone watching me from behind. I figured my dad forgot to tell me something, since I knew it wasn't already time to go. Before I even turned around, I said 'Yes?' but when I looked no one was there. I could've sworn that I felt someone standing in the doorframe behind me, so I got up and walked into the barely lit main hall and called out for my dad, but no answer. I walked into the former ladies' lounge, and it was empty but for boxes and junk, and walked back to my stool, chalking it up to my imagination, though I now felt a tad uneasy.

I just had started pulling out more dusty old magazines, when I noticed the room had gotten noticeably chilly but only in the area near where I sat, by the doorway. I moved to other areas of the ante room and it wasn't nearly as cold. It was then I saw that the lightbulb was beginning to grow dimmer, until the room was almost as dark as the outside hall. I also felt, as I grabbed my stack of magazines, my heart racing in my throat, a real feeling of anxiety and unwelcomness (if that's a word) and tore up the steps into the church, until I found my dad, who of course had not been anywhere near me since he'd left me down there. I told him I was done looking, but didn't tell him what happened for fear of him thinking I was a nut.

I've been back to the church many times since, but never down to that basement area (at least not on my own-the one time I went down there briefly with my dad a couple years later, nothing strange occured). To this day, it gives me the creeps remembering that feeling of being watched by someone or something that wasn't there.