3 Spooky Stories to Keep you up at Night

Story #1

When I was 26, I was up late playing video games with friends one night. We played for more than a few hours, and it was starting to get pretty late. As people started getting off, I heard a loud banging noise. It startled me, and I immediately asked if that had come from someone's mic or if that had come from another room in my house. Since one of my friends had a cat that liked to push items onto the floor, I chalked it up as that and left the voice call. While it was pretty late, I wasn't overly tired. I was enjoying the warm summer breeze coming through my window, so I decided to grab something to eat and watch a little tv before bed. I rent a house with another couple that I didn't know very well but have never had any problems within the 8 or so months I have been living here. Sadly, one of the couple's close relatives had died, so they would be gone for a few days while dealing with the funeral and whatnot. I lived in the basement portion of the house, and the couple got the upstairs. The basement was reasonably sized and consisted of a wet bar area, one bathroom, my bedroom, and a large storage area that rarely got used. My bedroom shared a wall to the storage room, and the bathroom and wet bar area were on the other side of the storage room. After leaving my bedroom to go see what I could grab for a snack, I heard the banging noise again, although this time much quieter. The house I lived in was made in the late '80s and tended to be pretty creaky at night, so while I hadn't heard that particular noise before, I made a note of it and moved on to find a snack.

Hours later, after having eaten and passing out on my bed watching tv, I awoke to the sound of another bang. Since I had been asleep, I couldn't tell if the noise had come from the tv or simply echoed through a dream. Still, I figured, since I had heard it a few times that night already, that maybe I needed to do a check of the house as it had kind of sounded like a pipe shaking or even bursting. I reluctantly got out of bed, and while searching for a flashlight so that I could check the storage room, I noticed what sounded like light tapping on the other side of my bedroom wall. I stopped what I was doing to see if I could identify the noise, and the second I did, the noise got louder. It now sounded like someone was in the storage room trying to knock the wall down and physically break into my room. My heart started racing as I frantically tried to figure out what could be making the noise. As soon as it started though, it stopped.

I sat in the darkroom for a while, trying to collect myself and see if I could think of anything that would cause such a noise, but after 5 minutes, I couldn't think of anything other than maybe my roommates pulling a prank on me. Surely it couldn't have been them though since I had seen them leave a few nights before. Suddenly, I felt the need to leave the house as the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. I could either risk running to the basement steps past the storage room or exit through my window. While exiting through my window didn't sound fun, something in my gut told me I should. After standing for what felt like hours but was probably only a few seconds, I decided to leave through the window. I grabbed the keys to the house and my car to get back in the front door, and pulled the screen to my window back so I could crawl out. As I was about halfway out of the window, I heard the old door to the storage room quickly slam open. This was enough encouragement to practically throw myself the rest of the way out the window onto the cold dark ground outside my window. As I was frantically climbing my way out of the window well, I heard the soft squeak of my bedroom door as it slowly opened. While I was catching my breath, I glanced back into the still open window, and while I couldn't see much, I could see the tall outline of what I would assume to be a scraggly-looking man. I didn't stop to find out though and started sprinting as far away as I could. I finally stopped in the driveway of the house, seriously regretting not grabbing my phone as I frantically left my room.

Not wanting to go back into the house though, I decided to sit in my car since I had remembered to at least grab the keys. After sitting in my car all night, not getting even a wink of sleep, I drove to a friend's house to see if he would help me check my house. After going through every nook and cranny throughout the entire house, we finally discovered a dog bed, tons of food wrappers, and what smelled like rotting animals behind the furnace in the storage room. It looked like whoever it was had been living behind the furnace for months. We never saw the person, though, so we could only assume they had left through the window sometime in the night. I told my roommates and the house owner what had happened, but not much could be done since the person wasn't there anymore. After a few months of trying to put the incident out of my mind, I moved out, but not knowing what would have happened if I had chosen the steps that night still haunts me.