Stories

I’m trying to be as respectful as possible in sharing this story with you, but I need to tell the world about it or I will go insane. For those of you who don’t know, Airbnb is a service that allows homeowners to rent out their houses for a few nights or for longer stays to visitors, essentially turning your place into a hotel. I’ve stayed at a few of them, and though some were better than others, none come close to what I experienced one late night in the desert region of the United States.

My plane arrived late, as expected, and there was some strike going on with Uber and the prices for a ride to my Airbnb were through the roof, but I had no choice but to pay $80 for a 15 minute ride to the address that the host had sent me while my phone was still on airplane mode. 5667 was the code to get into the gate, he said. There were very detailed instructions on how to to get into the house –almost too detailed. Park downhill from the house, don’t disturb the neighbors. Enter the keycode exactly as listed followed by the # key. Follow the path of red bricks toward the back of the house. Key will be on the door and ready for you. Do not disturb the neighbors. Yes, he said it twice. This was a self-service type of stay, I guess nobody would be there to greet me and let me in. That’s fine, I thought. I actually preferred not having to make small talk with anybody and going straight to sleep.

The wind was blowing but the night sky was clear. I had never seen so many stars in my life. The Uber left before I entered the key code into the box, which was frustrating because I couldn’t seem to make the door click open and there was nobody in sight outside. Made sense. Who would be out at 1am?

Just as I was about to call the owner of the house, the door clicked open after I pressed the # key. Thank goodness.

The bricks wobbled as I followed the path to the back of the house, but when I finally got to the glass door, I saw the key. It had a keychain in the shape of a license plate, an Arizona one. I turned the key, opened the door, and found a normal room with a large bed, and two doors, one to the closet and one to the bathroom.

I opened the door to the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat only to find bloodied up toilet paper in the bowl. The person who cleaned must have forgotten to flush. I didn’t even want to open the lid of the trash can, but I couldn’t help myself and pushed the button with my foot to get the lid to pop open, but it had a clean white bag, to my relief. These things happen sometimes, and I’m not known to leave complaints on the review sections of anything, so I flushed the toilet, took care of my business, and went to the sink to wash my hands. When I looked up at the mirror, I saw crusty brown stains on the edges of the frame. I saw them on the corners of the faucet and the knobs. Dried blood.

The place smelled nice though, like fabric softener.

I opened the door to the bathroom, grabbed my backpack from the floor and propped it onto the foldable table that I guess was supposed to be my desk for the weekend. I grabbed my shorts I would be sleeping in, took off my shoes, and changed to get ready for bed. I was so tired that I forgot to brush my teeth.

At 5am, my alarm went off, as always, and I sat up on the bed in silence. It was still dark outside, but I had to go to my meeting with a potential buyer. Mines are a dying business, but generally older people like to purchase them and contract workers to dig for residual metals, and where’s there’s a buyer, there’s a sales agent. And that’s me. I turned on the light to the bathroom, opened the faucet to the shower only to see brown water choke its way out and then get replaced by steaming hot, clean-looking water. Something was off about this place from the start, and I should’ve caught the signs sooner.

I was daydreaming in the shower when I heard a scream from the wall next door. Now, the house was obviously shared because my room had been sectioned off to serve as the Airbnb part of the house, so I had no idea of who was next door, but the scream was nothing normal so I grabbed my towel and ran outside to my room and stood there, dripping, waiting for something else to happen. But nothing happened. The morning was still, no crickets, no dogs, no roosters. Just dead silence. I went back to the bathroom and dried off, changed, shaved while making sure I didn’t touch too much of the sink, and got my phone to wait for another Uber.

Now, the houses weren’t directly next to each other in this area, it was a weird combination of a suburban neighborhood mixed with rural fields in between, and all of the houses looked old and had big yards all around them. I was walking toward the road just as the sun was rising when I heard a voice, from an older man, talking and laughing all by himself as he sat on an old white plastic lawn chair by his porch.

Good morning, I said.

Then he got up, grumbling, turned his back to me, and walked into his house. He stood there for a while, but then he slammed the door so hard that I heard his windows rattle. I didn’t think much of it, but was definitely weirded out. The notification came through my phone that the Uber driver was two minutes away, but I saw the headlights in front of me, so I waved him down, I got in, said hello, and went to the buyer’s office in the downtown area.

It was getting dark when I got back, I took an actual taxi this time. 5667 #. The door clicked open, I followed the wobbly bricks, when I heard the door, my door, slide shut. I walked faster to my door, and I could see the curtains of the window moving around. The cleaning service, maybe? I felt uneasy but I opened the door, stepped in and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place… except for the closet door. It was right on the edge of closing shut or swinging open. As I stepped toward it, the vibrations of my footsteps on the wood floors must have triggered the door to open because the knob clicked and moved two centimeters open.

Weird.

But I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to see. I swung the door open and tried to look inside. I stretched my arm out to grab the chain to the light bulb, but instead of a dangling chain or string, I felt a leather strap. A belt. I moved it around and heard the soft clinking of metal –the chain. I tugged on it and the light flickered on.

On the wooden bar where you normally would put clothes hangers, there was a belt in the shape of a… noose. It had been cut at the loop. A clump of long dark hair caught at the knot. Someone had been hung here. Then the belt was cut to release.. her.

I felt the urge to vomit so I ran to the bathroom, only to see bloody toilet paper in the toilet again. Frantically, I grabbed my backpack, stuffed by clothes back in, my towel, my charger, and looked around to see if I had forgotten anything when the lights went off.

I heard a scream. And then I screamed.

I slid the door open, and ran toward the gate. I grabbed my phone and requested an Uber. 8 minutes away. I walked toward the road again when I heard laughter once again. It was the same neighbor, but now the laughter also came from the house across the street. The neighbors looked at me and laughed. Their wrinkled faces and yellow teeth could still be seen thanks to to the orange street lights. All they did was laugh.

I walked faster, but their laughs grew louder. I got the alert. The Uber was nearby. I got in and the woman in the driver’s seat noticed the laughing and my panicked face. What’s going on here? She asked, with a smile.

I don’t know. Please, just drive. Her facial expression changed. We didn’t say a word. And I never found out about the place. I didn’t leave a review. I didn’t even look up the address on Google for news about that area.

All I know is that I am never staying in other people’s houses again.

I don’t like looking outside. My room when I was growing up had those irritating horizontal white blinds on my windows. You know the type, the ones that come up easily but take some special maneuvering to come back down. My room faced the west side of the house, so I got to see the sunsets. The beautiful ones, as well as the sinister ones that cast long shadows all over the tree-covered area of the empty lot next door.

It was occupied at one point, or so the kids at my school had told me. But the trees were so dense and the grass was so overgrown, that you couldn’t see anything inside. Every once in a while, though, I could see a dim light from inside of the mini forest turn on and off. The area itself had a short fence all around it, but as far as I could see from my window, there weren’t any gates or ways to get in aside from jumping over the cheap metal fencing.

One evening, while I was getting ready for bed, a small candle, a flickering light type of thing caught my attention just as I turned off the lights of my room. I tugged on the string to lift up my blinds, but the string wouldn’t work, so I stuck my finger in between the blinds and pried open a small gap between them to have a look. Yes, there they were. Two flickering orange lights in the darkness. I will always remember that night, I remember how cold it was, and exactly what I was wearing. That’s when everything started.

I woke up around 2am to the sound of tapping at my window. There were no branches or anything, like in the movies. My room was on the second floor and there was no balcony and no roof area by the window. If you were to drop something, it would fall straight down to the dirt next to the living room window and miss the area where my dad kept the trash cans. I tried ignoring the sound and going back to sleep, but I heard it again a little later. The green numbers of the radio alarm clock said 3:20am, with the two flashing dots between the number 3 and the twenty. I had fallen asleep to the tapping.. or the tapping had come back. I turned on my lamp only to notice that there was a space between two blinds, like someone was holding them open to look outside. Perhaps I had left them like that when I looked out toward the lights, but then I noticed something. The gap between the blinds was slowly closing, and then they became fully closed. I don’t know if I was still half asleep and had imagined the whole thing, but I tried to forget about it.

I woke up at 5:10am once again, the tapping had come back. I grabbed my blankets and pulled them over my head, but the tapping grew louder. Frustrated, I kicked my blankets away, ready to turn on my light again when suddenly the tapping stopped. Something was outside. Since the window was right across from my bed, I had a clear view of the two dimly lit lights between dried trees next door, even through the little gaps between my blinds. I’m not sure how I managed to walk over the window, but with every creaking step I thought twice about what I was about to do. It was growing colder as I got closer, and when I was finally by the window, I put my finger between two of the blinds to have a closer look, when I felt a cold hand grab my finger, and then another ice cold hand grab my wrist. I tried to yell, I tried to scream as loud as I could, but no sound would come out. I punched the blinds with my other hand and managed to see a broad smile with many teeth, a pair of dark eyes and a pale face.

The thing whispered in many voices, but to this day I don’t know how to describe it.

And just like that, it let me go and I fell straight to my knees trying to catch my breath. I stood back up to run to my door. I had knocked down some of the blinds and I had a clear view to the outside. I didn’t want to look, but as I backed away toward the door, I saw the creature, the thing, a pale.. abnormally tall creature, moving toward the pair of lights from the lot next door.

I never told my family about it, and even though I don’t live in the same place, I still hear tapping at my windows every once in a while. I use curtains now. I make sure to shut my windows at night.

You never know what may be looking in through the darkness outside your window.

I was at a concert for the new freshmen at my college in California. I had met a girl during orientation that seemed to be into me. At the time, I was only looking to make friends, since none of my friends from high school had transferred over to my new university. But I’m a social person, so it didn’t take too long before we had a little group going.

My roommate was nice and he kept to himself most of the time, though later on in the year we became good friends and still talk from time to time.

Well, on this particular Friday, everyone stayed out late hanging out at the fields of the campus, a few students had brought out guitars and we all had a good time after the concert, until campus police told us to start heading back to our dorms or drive back home because the event was over.

I walked with Mary, the girl I had met, over to her dorm, and we hugged goodnight, exchanged phone numbers, and I went on my way. Both of our buildings were on extreme ends of the campus, so the walk back was long. I didn’t know the area very well, but I couldn’t get over how silent the whole area had become.

I got back to my dorm, quietly opened the door, and changed into my pajamas in the dark. I could see my roommate’s sleeping silhouette, oddly curled into a ball near the foot of his bed, but didn’t give it much thought. I climbed into my bed directly across from his, and covered myself up in the blankets. I went to sleep almost immediately.

Sometime in the middle of the night, though, I began to hear my roommate humming a song in his sleep. Then I heard him cough in a deep voice, wiggle around in his bed. I heard several footsteps, followed by the door opening, and the door slamming. I don’t remember what time it was, but my roommate didn’t come back, his bed was empty and already made in the morning. He had mentioned that he would be going home for the weekends.

The next day, a Saturday, we had a few events going on at school, and I got to meet up with the same girl for lunch and dinner. We walked around the trails nearby, and overall had a perfect Saturday. We both headed back to my room to watch a movie on DVD she had brought from home, but around 15 minutes into the movie, she fell asleep. It was only 10pm, but hey, some people are like that, right?

After the movie was over, I moved her over a little bit on my bed, and I brought one of my blankets to the floor, and fell asleep. It was amazing to me how easily I could fall asleep in that room. It was just so quiet. But that didn’t always mean that I slept well.

In the middle of the night again, I heard something moving on my roommate’s side of the room. Then, someone humming. Then came the coughing sound. I almost knew what would happen next. Then, I heard the girl say, “Hey, why’d you move?”

“Sorry, those–” and she didn’t let me finish before she screamed. I got up and stumbled toward the light switch, flicked it on, and asked what was wrong.

With the faint light from the exterior street lamps, she was able to see a figure sitting on my roommate’s bed. She thought that it was me, and I startled her when I replied from right underneath her, on the floor.

I asked her if she heard the humming, and she said yes. She asked if it had been me, but she had somehow already assumed that it wasn’t. We didn’t really know what to say to each other, when we heard a light tapping on the door.

I walked up to open it, and found the hall’s resident assistant, in his pajamas, asking if everything was okay in the room, that someone had called him to tell him that they heard a scream coming from my dorm. I said that everything was fine, but Mary interrupted and basically told him the whole story, while I just stood there, trying not to make a fool of myself on my first weekend on campus.

The RA stood there, half smiling, and asked us to look up the history of my room, number 338 on the forums online. He said he was glad we were okay, and asked us to keep it down, whatever we were doing. It got a little awkward, but he calmly left, and I shut my door.

It took Mary literally two minutes to find the story on her laptop, which talked about a student in the 80s who had fallen down a window of my building and broken his neck in the middle of the night. He had some sleep problems and would be known to sleep walk. He was taken to the hospital but died later during the early hours of the morning. Supposedly, past students have reported sounds of someone in pain from room 338 ever since. Even when the room was kept empty. Mary seemed excited about the whole thing because, of course, it wasn’t her room. I started questioning everything, including reality, which brought up a weird sick feeling in my stomach.

What bothered me the most happened on Sunday night when my roommate came back and upon hearing the story of what had happened, he looked at me dead in the eye and told me that he had left early the day of the concert. He had missed the whole thing. It hadn’t been him the person that I saw curled up at the base of his bed.

I had been in the room hearing his hums of pain by myself in the room. I was there when the the presence sleepwalked away and didn’t come back. Needless to say, I started going home for the weekends too.

There’s an abandoned building in my town, it used to be an old grocery store. It has been abandoned for as long as I can remember. It was abandoned even before my mom brought us here.

Back in junior high, me and a couple of friends bullied a kid into going into the building by himself one day after school. He went inside nervously as we heard him knock over a few things, and then soon asked to be let out. We didn’t say anything. Then he started banging against the window and screaming at the top of his lungs. Begging us to let him out. We pushed against the board that was leaning against the window even harder as we tried to hold in our laughter. He eventually stopped screaming and started crying.

Then, silence.

We let go of the board and peeked inside, when I saw a shadow through the aisles of the old store, moving unnaturally fast toward the east wall of the building.

We looked down, and saw the poor kid passed out on the floor. Out of the three of us, I was the most normal. I don’t know what I did hanging out with them two.

In order to get him out, one of us would have to step in and lift him up to the window. I remember being scared that the kid might’ve died, that we might’ve killed him out of fear. I hesitated as I put my left leg up on the window sill, and then again when I put the right one.

I jumped inside. Grabbed him under his arms and did my best to lift him, but I weighed around 100 pounds at the time and really struggled.

C’mon, man. Just drag him! Someone’s coming. Hurry up, I heard one of my friends say.

I’m trying, I snapped back.

Suddenly, the kid moved his legs and drowsily stared at me. Then he screamed again. I told him to shut up and help himself up. He turned toward the window as the late afternoon sunlight highlighted his sweaty neck and drool coming from his mouth.

He put his elbows up and then rolled out, where my friends yelled once more for me to hurry up, that a car had pulled up and someone was watching them.

I rolled up onto the window sill when I heard laughter coming from inside the old store. I was too scared to look back, I kept expecting the thing to grip me by the ankles and pull me back in as I was trying to get out.

I landed on a pile of wooden boxes we had used to get the kid there, I tried to get myself up but fell again on my hands; they dirtied up with the old black asphalt, little pebbles stinging the skin of my hands.

“Hey!” someone yelled. It was a man stepping out of his car, parked on the side alleyway right next to us.

I hadn’t noticed, but my two friends had already taken off, and the kid and I ended up running through the old parking lot and under the wire fencing of the side of the property.

We all got in trouble and were forced to apologize to the kid, but we never saw him again at school and never got the chance to do so. I really did feel sorry about what I did.

Rumors around the school said that he had gone crazy and had to be hospitalized. Some even said that he died. It didn’t stop kids from starting new stories about Billy’s, the abandoned grocery store.

The store is still abandoned. I always look in that direction when I walk by on my way to pick up my kids at school. There’s something about it that makes me uneasy to this day.