Something at the Bedroom Door

Early one morning, Alicia heard a baby cry. Her fiancé, John, had already left for work, her eight-year-old daughter was not yet awake, and the baby … well, Alicia was feeding the baby.

Alicia and her family moved into a two-story, 70-year-old house in Belton, Mo., recently and were surprised to find they weren’t alone.

“I have heard a young child several times and it is usually very early in the morning when I am feeding my son or getting ready for work,” she said. “I know that sometimes I hear the child and it sounds like it is coming from my son’s room.”

Or, even more disturbing, she’s often heard the child crying out from a passageway that connects the baby’s room to the master bedroom. Whenever she opens the door to the passageway, it’s empty.

But the baby’s room is home to more than the sound of a crying child.

“He has a deck off of his room that has long sliding blinds and it has sounded before that someone has ran their hands across the blinds to have them clank together,” she said. “There is no venting close by that would even cause that.”

The noises escalated … then things got physical. While downstairs one morning, a loud bang brought Alicia to the staircase.

“There was a crash down the stairs and there was a (curtain) rod at the bottom of the stairs,” she said. It was a curtain rod from the baby’s room. “It sounded like someone had chucked it down the stairs.”

And Alicia has seen something in her house. While sitting in the living room, she often sees movement on the stairs.

“A lot of times out of the corner of my eye I will see something,” she said. “To me it looks black and I am expecting something to come down the stairs and when I turn to look there is nothing. There is light all the way up the stairs so it’s something that blocks the light.”

During the April 5 weekend, the activity in Alicia’s home escalated to the point of terror.

“Over the weekend my fiancé and I were asleep in bed and we both heard someone or something coming up the stairs and our bedroom door knob jiggled,” she said. “I sat straight up because it sounded like someone was in our house about to walk into our bedroom.”

That night, Alicia said, was the only time she has been afraid of her house.

“I was never scared until I heard those footsteps in the dark and the door knob jiggled,” she said. “I was OK with it when I was hearing the child, but now at night when I hear the footsteps I don’t get the same feeling.”

Doors Alicia knows were closed, are later found open, lights she knows were turned off are also found on. And, Alicia knows she’s not the only one experiencing these things. Her fiancé, her daughter, and her two dogs have all reacted to something heard, but not seen.

“My fiancé is never home in the mornings because he leaves so early for work, but this Monday he was home with our son and had put our son down for his morning nap and was very startled when he heard movement upstairs,” she said. “When he went up there to check on our son, he didn’t see anything out of norm.”

Cries in the night, footsteps, a black blob on the stairs, and a jiggled door handle have all made Alicia question her sanity, but not like the morning something spoke to her as she put her son in his car seat.

“My daughter is notorious for dragging her feet in the morning and I was stressing about being late because of that,” Alicia said.

As she buckled the baby in, her back turned to the open front door of the house, she heard a voice – and it wasn’t her daughter’s.

“I heard what I thought was her holler ‘Mom’ and it sounded like it was coming from the doorway in the house,” Alicia said. “I started to holler back because I thought she couldn’t find her shoes or coat and I was getting cranky because we were running behind and I hollered back ‘what?’”

Alicia was surprised to find her daughter standing next to her asking who she was speaking to. Alicia was also surprised to see the front door shut.

“I am still trying to decide if it’s my mind playing tricks on me or if I am really hearing and seeing something,” she said. “I try debunking things as they happen but I am running out of explanations.”

Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

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