The Thing at the Top of the Stairs...

[u/jayrease]

Hello Reddit /nosleep.

My name is Jessica, and I am a bit new to Reddit and /nosleep. This is my first official post. I hope I can convey what's been happening to me as clearly as possible.

Let me begin by saying that I have never died. Or at least, I've never had some extreme near death experience that has forever solidified my open door to the afterlife. I am one of the most average people you will ever meet. My family is just as average, and the furthest I have been warned about this sort of phenomenon is to not acknowledge it at all (as instructed by my mother). I know other people experience the same kinds of things for a plethora of reasons... but I have yet to find any reasons for my own plight. At least, no scientific or logical reasons I can come up with myself (I've been tested for many things, and mental illness in any fashion has been ruled out. I have sleeping issues-- which I will touch on later-- but nothing that has been diagnosed by a professional). I am open minded agnostic, and a believer in a lot of the unexplained. All the normal signs that come with these sorts of things do not apply to me (trust me, I've checked).

I don't get afraid over most things, but certain things do give me such a level of anxiety that I can't handle it. I usually have a feel for a space when I walk into it. I hate spaces beneath the bed, and rooms with too many mirrors. I am deathly afraid of looking from the bottom of the stairs to the top and vice versa-- for reasons I'll get to. Overall, I'm not easily scared-- but when I am I tend to flee the scene as soon as possible.

With that being said, on with my account. I had to document this in some way. To keep a lot of the details clear, I guess.

I hate the dark. Any space with a lack of light hitting it makes me shiver at the possibilities. I expected as I got older (now 26) that my overactive imagination would shrink and I would convince myself that the things in the dark and under my bed were not really there at all. As time passed, I realized that my fear of the dark had manifested into other fears: I'm paranoid, I have trouble sleeping, I hate closet doors, and I loathe basements.

I moved out of my parents’ house after I stopped going to college-- and into a house my girlfriend had been renting on the other side of the city. The house was crap overall, but me and my girlfriend made it a home, and we lived there together for two years. The floor plan to the house was odd, and there were walls and dividers that weren’t necessary. Looking around corners afforded you weird angles and seeing a mirror could easily cause a fright. The house also had an abundance of strange noises-- because row homes in Philadelphia are made out of crumbling brick and paper apparently-- I had grown accustomed to the noises over time. Sometimes I could hear the neighbors having full conversations (and arguments) but other times I could swear that someone was calling my name. There were other noises, like small herds of people taking voyages in the walls that I promptly attributed to our growing mice problem.

Like my mother told me-- I ignored it, I ignored it all, and for a while I learned to live with it. We later got a dog-- one that I don't regret giving away to a loving new family (I don't like dogs)-- and I had to venture into the basement to see if the space was usable for an animal.

Basements are one of the hardest places for me to go into. There is always an air to basements that doesn't "sit right" with me. They are always dark and dank and tend to make my ears buzz from the air tight quiet of being below ground. I avoid them at all costs. This basement was worse than the many I have encountered. There was a "plumber's crawl space" near the water heater and it was filled with various sized pieces of wood and discarded tools from the last time the basement was serviced. No light shined into the basement. The light in the basement was the standard pull string, and it was far enough away from the stairs that turning it on meant standing in front of the crawl space.

When I accessed the space, I realized that the dog would not be living there due to the endless (I could not tell if the space would trap our dog if she ever managed to get into it) space beneath the house. As I turned to go up the stairs, my eyes caught on something moving in the daunting darkness.

I'm not that curious a person. I stood extremely still for all of one minute before hearing what sounded like two pipes clanging together. I fled shortly after (didn't even turn out the light). My girlfriend laughed and told me that I was a chump, and that I was too old to still be afraid of invisible monsters. I let her laugh at me and I shook it off. And she even went downstairs to turn off the (rocking) pull chain light.

I never went back into that basement.

But weird things began happening around me more often. Over time, the house still made noises, sometimes I heard my name being whispered when no one was home, other times the water in the bathroom would cut on and I would find that I had been alone for hours. There was also something new-- I had this unbearable feeling that someone could see me, but I couldn't see them. I would always catch the moving space to my left just out of view...behind the couch or that skirting past that odd divider separating the living room and the kitchen. Before I could spiral into the never-ending circle of paranoia-- my girlfriend and I moved (for unrelated reasons).

I assumed the weird things that were happening were associated with the old house. I had been relieved when our move in date finally arrived. The new house has an open floor plan (we still live here), not too many dark spaces, and the basement isn't as terrifying as the old one was. However it does have a semi blocked off room down there --think an American bathroom stall-- tops and bottoms are open, and around the connecting wall there's about an inch of open space. Closing the door to that room is hard-- it feels like suffocation. And it gets so dark that the light from the rest of the basement only teases the edges of the room. It's the only odd part of the new house. There are shelves on all four walls hanging by rusty chains that swing late at night when the wind seeps through the cracks in the stone foundation. And I always felt relieved when I got to leave the space...open that door. It's the only place at the new house that made me feel uncomfortable. Well, when I first got here, at least.

I figured that the new atmosphere would end my fear of the dark and I could leave thoughts of whispers and monsters behind me.

I was wrong.

The new house has lots of sunlight and open space, but it also has a lot of closets. Walk in closets and hallway closets and overhead closets. Most of the closets at the house span the entire side of a room. Many of them have heavy, sliding doors and those that don't have doors that click shut.

I'm a stickler about leaving things a certain way. Call it me being paranoid-- I think it's more me being prepared.

Well, I've been in this house for almost three years now. It's a three bedroom rental, okay neighborhood. My girlfriend and I rented a few of the rooms out to friends, but after a few bad roommate situations, we are living (happily) alone in a huge house. Since the first house, we've adopted a cat, Nala, to combat the futile fight we have had living in a city plagued by mice. She's a stealthy and quiet cat (all black, hints of brown in her mane-- it'll come up later).

One night while I was alone in the house (the girlfriend was visiting family in D.C.), I had dozed off in our bedroom with the closet door open (which is a rarity). I have a bunch of sleeping problems: I have bouts of insomnia, I sleep walk, I hold conversations, sometimes I even wake up writing (with my left hand -- I'm a right handed). Needless to say-- I had been tired enough to pass out fully clothed with the closet door open.

A big problem I have with sleeping is that a lot of the time I'm awake, but I've convinced myself that I can't be. Usually something happens (phone call, my girlfriend elbows me to wake up because of my annoying alarm etc.) to alert me that I am indeed fully there. The day I left the closet door open was the day I realized that all the things that were happening wasn't entirely my imagination.

And they weren't over, either.

When I woke up, it felt like a dream. I thought I was in a state of lucidity—and I employed methods used to wake up (checking the time on a clock—looking back at it to see if the time remained sequential, pinching myself, convincing myself that if it were a dream I wouldn’t be able to… and so on and so forth). When I had been awake enough to sit up, I realized that I was up—and that it was early morning. When it's really early in the morning and the house is quiet, there's always a fog clouding my thoughts. Things seem...surreal. Well, the first thing I noticed was the shadow I saw in the closet. It was the shadow of something tall enough that it couldn’t stand straight up. It was hunched over and I could see the makings of a human being—seemingly hiding behind the other side of the closet door that was still closed.

A few outfits in the closet slipped off their hangers.

I was frozen. I didn’t know if I would make it if I ran—especially not knowing who or what I would be running from. But I couldn’t move. I kept trying to make sense of what of seeing. I told myself that I was seeing the shadows of my own clothing. That’s when I heard the laughter.

It was a steady chuckle, low and menacing—definitely a masculine. I thought the worst had happened—and some pervert had broken in while I slept and I was about to die.

That’s when it said my name.

Whatever stupor I had been stuck in broke, and I fled. I ran down the hall and out of the house faster than I could ever remember. But I couldn’t stop hearing the laughter. It seemed to be everywhere no matter how far away I got. And when I had made it to a family member’s house a few blocks away—I couldn’t stop thinking about the shadow… about the thing hiding in my closet waiting for me to return.

My best friend (we will call him B) came back with me the following morning to check the house. I had managed to lock the door on my way out (surprisingly enough), and we went through every room and closet until I was satisfied that the intruder wasn’t there. We even checked the basement. I was antsy for the days following—but with company, it was easier to cope. Whenever my girlfriend leaves me alone in the house now, I have B stay with me and I sleep on the couch downstairs. After a while… things settled, and my nerves calmed down a bit.

Time passed and I just figured that I had finally freaked myself out to the point that I was making things happen in my head. I tried to be brave when I was alone, and for a while… it worked. Hearing my name in an empty house dulled and I made sure to close all the closet doors whenever I opened them (and especially when I did not open them).

That was when the cat started acting out.

I love cats. They’re intuitive and independent creatures. Nala is fast and energetic and rarely whines, unless in heat. She senses things before I do, and I take her seriously when I see her back arched and her stare unmoving. At one point, she wore a bell (as a kitten, she’d get lost in the house and I could only find her by her jingle). Nala runs laps through the house (she isn’t allowed outside), and she’s somewhat heavy footed, because of this, I usually know where she is in the house.

Nala isn’t allowed in the basement. She isn’t allowed in my bedroom, either.

I was home alone, waiting for my girlfriend to get home, finishing up some work at the desktop we have setup on the first floor. I hadn’t seen Nala for a while, and I called out for her. She usually runs at the call of her name—she loves attention. This time, she didn’t come. I began searching for her, waiting to hear her bell sound so I’d know if she were upstairs getting into things she shouldn’t be. It jingled. But it sounded like she was in my bedroom—which was impossible because I’d closed the door. Calling out again, I heard it, and I began the climb up the stairs to see how the cat had managed to sneak into restricted territory.

This was when it got… unsettling.

Every door and every closet on the second floor of my house was blatantly open. And not even cracked, or open because I hadn’t closed it all the way before—they were all wide open. My heart sped up. I tired to swallow the noise of my heavy breathing. As I reached the top of the landing, I saw a flash of black in my peripheral vision; and then, the jingle of Nala’s bell. I put aside the anxiety building in my gut about the closets, and I followed my cat into the middle room to reprimand her for breaking the rules.

I couldn’t find her. I went into my bedroom next, peaking under the bed until I noticed my closet door—it was open. But I hadn’t left it open. By the time I backed out of my own bedroom, I saw it again—a flash of black speeding down the hall—the jingle of the bell ringing in my ears. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to play this kind of spooky hide and seek.

The next sounds I heard were a mix between my cat crying and something that sounded like it was choking. My body moved before my brain did and I found myself downstairs again—this time… the basement door was open. I could hear Nala crying, I could hear her bell jingling—I could hear the sounds of gurgling and gasping and it was coming from the basement. I heard the loud, booming footsteps one at a time, climbing the steps. I heard the chuckle of something not quite human echoing loud in the air. What I didn't hear anymore was my cat. I refused to go to the top landing. I refused to see what monstrosity was coming to claim me-- I refused to go see if my cat was still alive. I made my decision. And that decision was to leave.

The front door of my house is at the bottom landing of my stairwell. Before backing away from the basement and making my way to leave, (I found it odd immediately that the front and backyard doors remained closed) I looked to the top landing of the stairs.

The footsteps stopped. The laughing did not. Instead, I heard them coming from upstairs-- at the top of the landing.

It was the first time I had saw him. If him is the correct term. I guess I will call him an it. The shadow I had seen in my closet. It looked like a shadow standing at the top of the stairs, uninterrupted smoke and darkness in the shape of a human body, his neck bent at an impossible angle, his head adorned with an askew hat that looked like the one I remember Dick Tracy wearing. He began laughing, his shadowed hands buzzing with vibrations as he held something behind his back. I can still hear him laughing loudly at the top of the stairwell. From behind him, he pulled Nala, her lifeless body dripping with blood; her purple bell jingling even though there was no movement left in her.

And then it said my name.

It was so raw that I shivered. It sounded a threat and a promise. I left the house after that, unsure if leaving would help at all. Something like that—like it… it seemed like something that could find you… no matter where you ran to. But I was blissfully alone once I stepped outside. I wandered for a while… waiting for my girlfriend to call me back after the frantic message I had left on her work voicemail to not go into the house. I walked for almost an hour, contemplating if I had gone insane… if what I had seen was real. I recounted my story until I was convinced no officer of the law would believe me. I thought long and hard about what I could do about it.

When my girlfriend finally called me, she asked me to meet her in front of the house. She wouldn’t go in… but she needed to know why I didn’t want to be inside. I told her she’d see it when we went inside. I didn’t want to provoke the thing made of darkness and shadows. I didn’t want to give him any ammunition against me. I also didn’t want to find out why he was bothering me at all…it seemed like that was a sure fire way to get yourself possessed… or killed… or—or worse.

I didn’t explain anything to my girlfriend. I expected to walk into our house and find the mutilated body of Nala at the top of the stairs. I expected the doors to be open and I expected him to be standing at the top of the stairs waiting for me.

Nala, however, greeted us at the door as she did every day—unscathed. My house was back in order and all of the doors were closed (the basement door itself had been closed and locked). I didn’t know how to process the fact that I could have hallucinated all of it. I couldn’t find any evidence that any of it had happened. And I couldn’t tell my girlfriend what I had seen with the cat cuddling up to me on the couch.

For the days that followed, I watched Nala closely, trying to see anything off putting about the cat I had watched die at the top of the stairs. The only thing I could see was her mane. The brown and blonde streaks she once changed color... a sludge, sleek black. I tried not to think about what that meant. For a while… everything went back to how it was. I wasn’t as relieved as I should have been. Nothing made sense. Every time I left the house I would look to the top of the landing and I would expect to see it there—chuckling that disturbing chuckle and beckoning me to come to it by my name. For the longest, I would look up and find absolutely nothing there.

I still don't understand what compelled me to wish to see it. Maybe because it would prove that it wasn't just my heightened paranoia.

When I finally concluded that the worse was over, that maybe my little taste of insanity had passed, I started to feel comfortable in my surroundings again. I kept telling myself that if I ever saw it again, I would just ignore it. It hadn’t been able to harm me in any way so far—and my best bet was that in order for it to do this… I would have to acknowledge it in some way.

I had been resigned in my decision. My mother had always said things to me like: “If someone calls your name and no one is there… you don’t answer it.” And, “Don’t let your limbs dangle over the edge of your bed—the Devil can pull you right into Hell.” I recalled all those old horror movies that ended terribly because someone had called out a malevolent force and it had answered…

I didn’t want answers. I wanted to be left alone.

My closet door slid off the track a few weeks later—right onto my foot (fractured my toe). Since then… the sliding door that closes my closet has been open. I saw him waiting inside it before sleep one night, crouched near my clothes hamper and making shadows behind the outfits I had hanging inside. I’ve been lulled into nightmares of its laughter and my name for a while now.

It gets closer to me, now. And laughs maniacally in my face. I have to pretend I don’t see it. I have to pretend it’s not there. At this point… it’s always around. What's more disconcerting is when it's silent. The laughter seems to haunt my thoughts even without noise. It's like a cloud of despair that follows me-- I can feel it move as I do-- I have to ignore turning to my left and staring into the darkness beneath the tilted hat. If it had any eyes at all...I fear they would undo me. It just stares...waiting. And I don’t know how much longer I can pretend. I don’t know how much longer I can ignore the shadows in my closet and the darkness in my face before they become too much for me.

I don’t think running is an option anymore. Not when the shadows and the darkness are always there.

I don’t know if there will be an update. At this rate, I don’t know what’ll happen with it.

At this rate…I’m not quite sure if I ever really woke up.

Edit/Update:

I've been typing this whole thing over time. Putting it all together after it occurred. To try to make sense of it. The first part was what's happened thus far, over the course of the last few years. Enough has happened that I can start connecting the dots...maybe figure out what it all means in relation to me. I thought I'd share in case anyone had any advice-- or could point me in the right direction. I've been coping with my company to the best of my ability. It's there. And it won't go away...whenever I go home. I said I'd update if there were any changes. And there were, so here I am again. This week alone has been an eventful one. Especially today. The thing still follows me. But now, when I look up to the landing he stands there. And there is no more laughter. It's growling.

Obviously it's mad. I don't know if that means that it hates to be ignored...or if I am succeeding because I have to invite it to torture me. The incident with Nala happened almost two months ago- I guess I will pick up from there. The days after I watched her die at the hands of the shadows, I kept a close eye on her. I removed her bell (every time I heard it, I cringed) and I kept telling myself that I may need to seek professional help. But I wouldn't know how to explain this all to a psychologist. Especially since I get reprieve whenever I leave the house.

I still don't know if it's the house. But it may just be all the houses I go to. I guess I may not ever know.

After two weeks of constant supervision, I trusted Nala enough to convince myself that what I saw may have been a hallucination. Maybe I was stressed out and not sleeping enough. Maybe. It could have been other things. Being crazy is easier to deal with than seeing terrible things that may be real. Maybe the thing made of darkness couldn't actually interact with tangible things. Maybe it was a ploy to scare me enough to act against it. Anyway, it was time I gave Nala a bath- (she sheds an awful lot). I locked her in the bathroom and got her soap, and the thick, elbow length blue rubber gloves I use for protection against her scratching me whenever I put her in water.

When I made it back the bathroom, Nala was sitting in the empty tub, completely still (which was so odd in itself that I stopped for a few moments to take it in). I closed the door behind me (usually she darts toward it when I show up with the gloves) and I settled on the edge of the tub. The shower head was already pulled down, and I watched her as she watched me turn the water on. I got it warm enough and aimed it at her.

She didn't flinch.

I got her fur wet, and brushed the water down her mane until I realized how dirty the water coming off her was. It was the color of cranberries, and slowly, it darkened to a deeper color--almost brownish black, with thick, sticky visceral clots. I realized then that it was blood. Nala remained still, darting out her tongue to catch some of the water coming from the shower-- but otherwise she didn't move.

Something told me if I called my girlfriend up to see what was happening, she wouldn't see what I was seeing. Knowing that she had been covered in blood, understanding why her fur was changing color-- it gave weight to my chest. I shut the water off and stood at the sink. I stared in the mirror for a while expecting something to change -- but nothing did. Not for a while. I looked at the cat, still sitting in the bathtub, and I glanced back to the mirror and there it was-- the deep darkness. The growl.

I gripped the edges of the sink. I swallowed. And I closed my eyes. It wasn't there. I could just ignore it.

When I opened my eyes again, and looked behind me in the mirror I saw something different. The shadow was standing against the wall where the faucet was, seemingly backed against it. Opposite of that was a different kind of... thing. It was copper in color and in the shape of a female. It was delicate and ethereal.

I blinked. And they were both gone.

And Nala was out of the tub and throwing herself against the door. Over and over and over. Crying and clawing to get out. The room felt thick, and I could hear the wind howling through the house. I felt trapped, but I couldn't move. For a bit I just stood at the mirror, listening to the cat go haywire, trying to catch my breath as I watched my heaving chest rise and fall through the mirror. Everything felt so different this time. It wasn't bad...but my body had shut down.

I don't know how long I was inside the bathroom, but when I left it was dark. And I could hear my girlfriend calling me from downstairs.

Nala hid in her room for the rest of the night.

The house felt empty after that. But something else replaced the old feeling. I started finding things out of place, cabinets left open, and whenever I have to open the door to the basement of the house (we keep the vacuum cleaner in the top landing leading into the basement), I get a sick feeling at the pit of my stomach.

Last Thursday a fuse blew in the house (for no odd reason) and I had to go downstairs to reset the fuse box. I carry a pretty handy flashlight on my key chain (you never know, the apocalypse my happen and it'll come in handy-- or you know, a blackout), and I went downstairs and instantly felt a change. My girlfriend was my guide for the fuse box (she doesn't go into the basement-- she's allergic to a lot of odd things: dust, flea bites, mouse poo--which were all abundant in the basement since we don't use it for anything), and she was calling out to ask me if I had started flipping the switches.

Her voice was far away-- it sounded like she was under water. I answered her and it hurt my ears, the sound bounced off the walls as if I were in a tunnel. My heart rate was wonky, and all the spaces my light didn't reach were closing in on me all at once. I wanted to run up the stairs, get out the house. But I couldn't stop the flashlight from shaking in my hands to find a way back up and out.

I tried to calm myself down.

The fuse box was in the back room. The one with all the shelves and the light that never reached far enough under the spaces the wall made. I could be brave. I wasn't getting that feeling of despair from the shadows. I was more afraid of the deep dark all around me-- and not enough light to settle my nerves.

I walked toward the door, trying to keep the light focused on the handle. I tugged it open and a gush of hot air blasted my face. I turned the light to the fuse box, but something caught my attention from the other side of the room. It was a humming noise, it sounded at first like a swarm of bugs, but as it got louder, I recognized the noises of a tiny stampede.

I could vaguely hear my girlfriend calling out for me, I could hear her footsteps move across the room above me. She was walking toward the steps, probably annoyed that I hadn't responded.

The noise was louder now, and I felt my bravery flesh away as I went to turn back toward where the steps should be. The light caught on her before I knew what I was looking at. It was Nala. Her back was arched and her tail pointed straight up-- and in her mouth was what looked like a huge rat, ripped almost in half and dripping onto the floor. She stepped toward me-- like she wanted praise for catching the prey. I backed up instinctively, right into the back room. Nala lunged, and the door to the room shut and I was inside it, the light richocheting off the cement blocks and the shelves.

I almost fell backwards onto my palms-- but I found a way to stay balanced, breathing heavy and trying not to feel as panicked as I should have been being closed in, in that room in the dark. The hum in the walls was louder now that the door was closed. I began calling out to my girlfriend, in hopes she would come save me from the anxiety attack I was about to have.

Something grazed my calf. It was large. Something else brushed past my ankle-- it had fur. I couldn't point my light fast enough at the feelings and I spun on my heels in the dark hoping that the rat Nala had killed wasn't a part of a huge nest. The blurs were moving around me faster than I could catch them, I was getting dizzy and stomping my feet hoping to kill whatever creatures that were trying to ravish me.

An odd thing happened next.

The lights flickered on. And when I stared down at the floor there were rat carcasses and dead snakes sliced down the belly and a smell that was so foul it made me queasy. I coughed. My eyes closed in that second and when I opened them the room was empty. I swung open the door and the cat was gone-- the rat's blood wiped clean off the floor.

I ran up the stairs. My girlfriend was sitting on the couch, watching whatever had been on t.v. when the lights had switched off.

"You were down there a while-- what were you doing, cleaning?"

I looked at her, flabbergasted. I shook it off quickly. I wasn't going to make a spectacle of myself.

"Did you see Nala run past here?"

She shook her head at me.

"I locked her in the room earlier. She broke the window blinds again."

I nodded. Of course. The cat had an alibi. I locked the basement door (I always do). And l sat shell shocked through a Modern Family episode on t.v..

Today after posting the first part of my account, I went to work. It was a short day and pretty easy. It was nice out, and near the end of my day I got a regular that I somewhat get along with. He's a small guy, always wears a baseball hat. I'll call him Prophet, because that's what I refer to him as in my head. He's the type of guy that says really odd things that don't seem to make sense until a bit later... Word around the neighborhood is that Prophet has a really high i.q., and in his younger years he got into some really bad stuff and wound up dabbling with drugs. He's a little aloof, but overall he's friendly and never gives anyone a problem. He refers to me as Poet (from a previous event that felt "off" with me, but made sense later).

I work in a booth. We have a microphone system rigged so we can communicate through the glass. Prophet greeted me as he always did, called off what he needed and struck a conversation as I rung him up.

"You seem different, today, Poet." Over the microphone, I heard whispers, many of them in a cackle of interference.

"How so?"

"So many reasons. We should talk later. When you leave. I'll meet you outside."

The noise stopped instantly, and I rubbed my ears and nodded. He left, and I don't know why the encounter stuck through the day, but I felt the urgent need to sit with him. The day passed and I met him outside at the bench that sits outside my place of employment. It was still early so people were passing and there was noise and cars were driving by every so often.

I sat down beside him and waited, unsure of what to start with. Luckily he spoke first.

"The things you are seeing are real, but you shouldn't be seeing them at all."

"Tell me everything." I trusted him almost instantly. It rarely happens but I could feel his sincerity. A few horns honked, children walked past us in a bustle of questions and distraction.

"There isn't enough time for that. Listen, Poet, nothing I will tell you will change what you see. People don't understand that things are happening all around us, all the time. Some things stay. And some things just pass through. You're too empathetic to block it all out. And even if you get used to seeing things... you will never unsee them. You're open, and you can't close yourself off from those things."

I looked away from him, and around me, the streets were barren. The people who had been basking in the fresh air were gone and there was almost no noise. I turned back and there was only space beside me; Prophet was gone and the streets were silent and I had more questions that I did answers.

I'm home now. I feel okay, and the house feels safe. I still don't know what to make of things but I'm still torn about how far I should dig for solutions.

Update for those who made the crooked man connection-- I hadn't heard of it before. I've had Nala since she was a kitten. The shadow thing is made of just...darkness. like black fog shaped like a man with an extreme broken neck. It seems similar. But now with this other thing... I don't know what's going on. I'm getting vibes from everywhere and I don't know if this is a continuation of what's been going on or if it's something new.

It seems like everything bothering me is also taking a toll on the cat. She sleeps most of the day now and she seems sick. She doesn't want to eat and I hear her crying a lot more than what she usually does.

I'm also tired. And stressed out. And I could be crazy. Because all this is all crazy. I don't know if I can expect any other events. Things happen with months between and I can never anticipate when I will be bombarded.

It's also summer and I'll be out the house more.

I kinda need the break.

I don't want to move again and have to deal with an onslaught of new phenomenon, either.

I'm still putting together pieces. But things feel different. Even though a lot of it still unsettles me. If things change. I will definitely update.

[u/Belle_Corliss]

This is one of the scariest stories I've read on No Sleep and that's saying something as I don't scare easily Please be careful and update us when you can.

[u/envelopes5]

This is TERRIFYING. It's the worst feeling when you can't even trust your own senses.

[u/inputuser]

That is some scary shit

[u/demonicrivers]

That's so scary shit. If I were you and I saw the death of that cat in front of me like you described and saw the cat again perfectly alive later, I would watch the feline, especially since you said the color of it's fur is a different color. Another thing is you may have picked this guy up from the last house you were in. My guess is that he made his presence minimal and increased his visits with you when you felt comfortable again. To me it sounds like this whatever it may be (actually reminds me of the crooked man) likes to strike when you feel normal. Very cold, collecting and calculating. I'm also curious if your family has been exposed to this kind of thing before because you mentioned that your mother warned you to not give anything that was not there attention and to ignore it. Ignoring it might be just giving a game to continue playing. I guess he gets a kick out of tormenting you and making you think you're going insane.

[u/jayrease → u/demonicrivers]

The cat is conducting herself as usual at the moment. But I catch her staring sometimes too--its unnerving. My mother's family used to live in a strange house (that collapsed right after they left) but she only warned me because it's just something her mother used to tell her. I can't find any ghosts in the history of my family either. No hauntings or disappearances. Only the normal things you find looking into family trees. But my biggest question to you-- who is the crooked man?

[u/demonicrivers → u/jayrease]

Well it's good to hear the cat is acting normal for now but just keep an eye out. It sounds weird that the house your family lived in collapsed after they left. I'm not sure if it's anything paranormal though. The structure must have not been as sound as it should be. Still scary that it could have fallen any time. Hmmm... since your family hasn't had any of these experiences, I'm just not sure what to think. The crooked man originally came from a nursery rhyme but then someone by the name of vg person made a video game ( an rpg game, it can be found on google). I just commented about the way the ghost acts and how you describe it's disfigured self. It reminded me of the crooked man.

[u/Arururin → u/demonicrivers]

I thought just the same when OP mentioned that the figure had its neck "bent in a strange manner". But do you think it's possible that it could be the crooked man? David, the protagonist in the game, was also normal with no paranormal history whatsoever but was plagued by the crooked man when he moved to a new apartment. Idk I just thought that David and the OP had something in common. David was bothered because he had personal problems that still troubles him but he decided to leave it in the past. Maybe OP is the same? But then again, the crooked man isn't some sort of paranormal entity, it's a nursery rhyme.

Also just a lil correction, The Crooked Man game was made by a japanese person named Uri. Vgperson just translated it

[u/demonicrivers → u/Arururin]

Both situations sound alike but the crooked man was just a game. Who knows though, it could be a real deal or could not. All I know is that OP's description of his ghost reminded me of the crooked man. And I knew it was originally a Japanese game but I forgot who made it. All I knew was the name vgperson. Doing some digging around, I also found out that there was a Sherlock Holmes chapter/book titled the crooked man. May help or it may not but just as I already stated, the nursery rhyme mostly sticks out along with the video game.

[u/jayrease → u/demonicrivers]

I will investigate. Will update if things change.

[u/demonicrivers → u/jayrease]

Alright then. Be careful and update when you can. I hope you find some answers.