Let's Not Meet Again

Horror Movies Saved My Life

When I was in 8th grade my parents separated. Basically my mom packed her and I up one night and we moved into my Grandpa's and didn't look back. We ended up living there through my high school years when he died, my parents officially got divorced, my mom remarried and we moved into the city with my stepfather. My grandpa lived on the first floor of the apartment and the owners, an elderly couple who were family to us through marriage, lived on the second floor. The property also had a small "in law cottage" out in the back where my uncle lived.

For some reason that I will never understand there was no lock to get into the actual building if you entered through the back.

The back door opened into a landing where there was a locked (and dead-bolted) door to our apartment and then two sets of stairs. One led up to the (also locked and dead-bolted) door of the second floor apartment and the other led down to the basement where there was also no lock. Our apartment could also be entered from the front of the building but in order to access the second floor apartment or the basement you had to go through this landing.

The basement was actually pretty nice and at one point they had started to convert it into its own apartment before the ultimately decided to make the in law cottage instead. So in the basement there was a full kitchen complete with an oven, sink and refrigerator. The washer and dryer which was shared by all of us was also in the basement as well as just some general storage stuff. The basement was entirely open except for a back room that was full of storage. It had one of those kind of swinging saloon type doors where you can see above and beneath them. The storage area was longer than it was deep so you couldn't really see anything much behind the doors aside from shelves, you had to walk in them and turn to really see the room.

One night when I was in high school, I think I was 15 at the time, after taking a shower I saw that the laundry bin in the bathroom was pretty full so I grabbed a ton of laundry and headed down towards the basement. It was pretty late at night but I figured I would at least get it started and move some things over in the morning. I tossed everything onto the ground and started sorting out colors when I got hit with a horrible feeling in my gut. The basement was not at all a creepy basement. It was well lit and pretty welcoming with the kitchen and everything but for reasons that I can't explain something just started to feel wrong. Anyone who has ever been hit with the feeling that they were being watched knows exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know how or why it came over me but it was something that I couldn't shake and I found myself looking over to the saloon doors and the only part of the basement that I couldn't see in its entirety.

I don't know why, maybe to just assure myself I was being a big baby, I started to walk towards the back room but stopped myself just as I reached out towards the swinging doors. I've been a horror fan for as long as I can remember and had seen more horror movies than I could count and I knew that if that was a movie I would be calling myself a dumbass and saying not to go into that back room. I quickly snapped my hand back and ran up the stairs, leaving all the clothes behind, and into our apartment where I locked the doors and immediately told my mom that I had just had the worst feeling in the basement and that I was super creeped out.

Despite me not being the type of person that scares easily she basically rolled her eyes at me and told me to go to bed. I ended up doing as I was told though it took me a bit to shake the feeling and finally fall asleep.

Later that night my bladder woke me up and I stumbled out of my room to go to the bathroom. I didn't turn any of the lights on as I started making my way towards the bathroom because it usually woke up my grandpa and I didn't want to bother him. When I got closer to the bathroom I noticed my mom standing in the doorway of her bedroom and something looked off and it took me a moment to realize that she was clutching the phone. She then noticed me and whispered to me to get against the wall which I did without hesitation. It took a few moments for the grogginess to wear off and my eyes to adjust to the darkness before I could see what she did.

My mom's bedroom was immediately off of the kitchen. The kitchen was where the back door that led to the landing and the basement was located.

The door had a tiny window up top with a small but thick curtain. It was thin enough that you could see that someone was outside of the door but thick enough to not be able to make out any of the features of the person on the other side. But there was someone on the other side of the door and every now and then the doorknob would move and you could hear this scratching sound was on the other side.

I have never been so afraid in my entire life.

I'm not sure how I managed to do what I did next, it was like someone else had taken control over me entirely. I slid down against the wall that I was clinging too and started to crawl against it in the darkness towards the kitchen. My mom looked petrified watching back and forth between me and the back door. She kept whispering for me to stop and go back but I kept moving forward, low and against the wall, towards the counter where I carefully grabbed a butcher knife. I was shaking the whole time I moved with the knife in my hand on the ground next to the fridge which was next to the door the man was trying to get into. I had this horrible feeling that I was going to be killed but if I was I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

It felt like I sat there forever in the darkness next to the door with my mom hiding in the bedroom doorway across from me... just waiting... but it was only for a few minutes. My mom had already called 911 before I had woken up and stumbled my way towards the bathroom. The lights from approaching squad cars soon filled the kitchen and from the other side of the door I could hear a sudden clamoring and commotion and the slam of the back screen bursting open as the would be assailant took off running.

It was around 3 am when this happened so it was completely dark outside and we lived right by some train tracks and very thick bushes and trees that made it easy for the man to escape the cop that pursued him.

The police came in and took statements from my mom and I. My grandpa, who was partially deaf, had managed to sleep through almost the entire thing until the police came through to search the apartment and make sure that we were okay.

The outside of the door and the doorknob were both covered in deep scratches like someone had been going at it with a knife trying to figure out how to get in but that wasn't the most horrifying part to me. That was reserved for the basement.

The clothes that I had brought down were not where I had left them and they had been thrown about and disheveled and the back room, the one with the swinging door that I had stopped myself from going in? The boxes that were out of view had also been thrown about, all opened, obviously gone through with some things missing and there were some wrappers from food on the floor. He had been down there looking for something to steal. He was down there when I went down to do laundry. I had almost walked into that room and based on what we had seen on the door he had a knife.

To this day I can't help but find myself sometimes thinking about what would have happened if I walked into that room.