Haunting (Poll)

[Roger]

I wrote this to explain my vote as the haunting being the scariest thing that ever happened.

It was in Universal City, Texas, 34 years ago. We were doing a rehab in October and there was no electricity to the house, the cheapskate I worked for back then didn't want to buy a portable generator, so all the night work inside the structure was done by flashlight. One evening my helper and I were the last ones there, it was about 7 pm and it was cloudy so there was very little moon light. We were rushing to finish what we had to do so we could go home, when we heard a unusual noise.

It sounded like a person walking, tight above us. It was unusual because there was supposed to be no one there but us. Also, even if a person had snuck in, we were on the second floor, right by the only staircase, so how could they've snuck by without my helper or I seeing them. As the footfalls continued we broke off what we were doing and headed up the to the 3rd floor, and we checked every room, closing each room's door as we finished searching it.

We found nothing, we saw no one on the third floor, interestingly the sound of footsteps stopped when we began our search.

As we finished checking the last of the 6 rooms, we heard the footsteps begin again, right above our heads. From the attic!

Neither one of us had been in the attic before, there was no reason to go there normally. As we stood in the short hallway at the end of the 3rd floor corridor, we debated going up there, since we would be ascending a tight narrow stairway to access the attic and if something of a human nature was waiting for us, escape would have been difficult for us. Finally we decided to head up, me leading. Naturally.

We had a some trouble opening the attic access door as it was stuck, like it hadn't been used in some time, like decades. By the beam of the flashlight I could tell it had been painted shut more than once. With the umpteenth mighty shove the door finally sprang open. I shone the flashlight beam around, where we had disturbed the dust, there was thin cloud of it floating about us. The attic was basically bare with only a few small scattered items here and there. Again, there was no one in the attic.

As we began to descend, with my helper going first- naturally, we heard the scattering of tools. Our tools. Then a ominous silence fell. For a brief span of time we held our selves in a mental stasis, then we burst forward, stomping to the stairs, we ran down as fast as we could, and it was but a mere handful of seconds before were in the area where we'd been working. Our tools had been scattered, and we quickly gathered them and decided that prudence was the better part of valor and we left. As we went to the outside door we kept a careful eye out for...Anything. And as we left, I thought I heard a low rumble of a chuckle, almost malevolent in it's amusement, right before the front door closed and we locked it behind us. Neither my helper or myself ever mentioned the episode to anyone, but the next day, he quit, because we were heading back to the house.