Irvine, California. The city I grew up in. After what I experienced I wish I had stayed there, but before I get to that, let me tell you the story from the beginning. My name is Cameron Wilkinson. I moved my wife, Sharon, and two sons; Daniel, aged 6, and Hunter, aged 12, to Houston from an affluent neighborhood.
The reason?
I'm a manager for a real estate company and I got moved to a building in Houston, and I wanted to move my family closer to my job. Unfortunately, the only place that was convenient for me was the Alief area southwest of downtown. If you don't know, Alief has a horrible reputation of crime and gangs.
However, I trusted my kids to not be influenced by all that because my wife and I raised them well. After spending a week at a local hotel near downtown, I finally found a house in Alief that I was interested in.
The house, if I could say so my self, was really inexpensive. When I asked the seller of the house why the house was so cheap, she told me back in 1996, the house was a site of the brutal murder of an entire family and the case remained unsolved. Now, normally that would sway potential buyers from purchasing the house, but I myself wasn't bothered. The way I see it, that was the past. Why should I let that keep me from such a good deal? I purchased the house and I never told my family the house's secret, so they wouldn't be afraid.
After some time was spent unpacking and arranging the house, we were greeted by the neighbors. Now, despite what I expected, the people in our neighborhood were really friendly and gave us homemade Mexican food, which our family enjoyed. I enrolled the kids to school and enjoyed the 7 minute drive to work. However, I was cautious of certain neighborhoods that I was told had gang and drug problems. After everything was settled and done, I figured we would enjoy living here. However, I soon learned that I was wrong...
My wife told me, after maybe two weeks of living here, that she was extremely uncomfortable being alone in the house, while I was at work and the kids were at school. She told me she had felt like someone was watching her and would hear children laughing in certain parts of the house; Daniel's room in particular. She said she would hear muffled screaming and see shadowy figures from the corner of her eye. It would freak her out so much that she would just leave the house for a few hours.
Since I never really been home alone, I never really heard or seen anything. However, the only thing out of the ordinary that I noticed was that Daniel was always locked away in his room, but Hunter told me he never noticed anything odd with the house. I told Sharon that maybe it's just her imagination, since she hasn't slept much due to her sleeping problem. After some time, she reluctantly agreed it was that and made a doctor's appointment to up the dosage on her sleeping pills. After that we just cuddled up in bed and watched the television.
Daniel woke me up at 3 in the morning and asked me if his new friend can sleep over. Puzzled at the time, I asked him who his friend was and he said his friend Luis. Convinced that Luis was just an imaginary friend, I told him yes. Daniel then casually walked to his room and I went back to sleep. Before I even feel asleep, I heard through the thin walls Daniel talking, as if carrying a conversation.
Then, to my surprise, I heard another child's voice. I got up, went to Daniel's room, and asked where Luis was. When he told me Luis was right next to him, I got irritated, but I just assumed Daniel made up another voice for his imaginary friend. I told him to go to sleep and I walked back to my room and put my head back on the pillow. I heard Daniel laughing, followed by another child's laughter. However, it was strange. It echoed throughout my room, but Sharon didn't seem to hear it as her sleep went undisturbed. I convinced myself it was just Daniel and I drifted off to sleep. The dream I had afterwards was really creepy...
