CreepyPasta's

She Keeps Knocking

I don’t even know where to start—as cliché as that sounds, I really don’t. To understand any of this, I need to tell you about my grandfather’s house.

He lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees for nearly a mile in any direction. It always seemed impossible to get there without knowing where you were going, and that’s why I loved it. I loved going to visit as a child- the forest made for endless adventures and games for my siblings, my cousins, and me. The house itself wasn’t anything spectacular. It was big enough, 1.5 bathrooms which made showering a hassle when the whole family was visiting, but the den. The den was huge. It took up the entire basement floor with half the wall in glass, leading out to the backyard. The children would always hunker down here for the night while the adults took the few beds and couches upstairs.

I’m the youngest in the family, so being able to sleep downstairs with the big kids was almost literally the highlight of my life. That is, until this one particular night.

It was a Saturday in summer. I must have been only seven or eight at the time. It was late, even for the older kids. I was already basically passed out on the end of the sofa when my cousin kicked me off since he had already ‘called’ it for the night. I grabbed a sleeping bag from the pile in the closet and made my way to my bed for the night: a small sliver of floor space right up against the glass door. I was the youngest, so I always got last pick unless I could get my mom involved. But tonight, I wasn’t so lucky.

I settled in for the night and fell asleep almost instantly, as the other kids were still fighting over spots and who got which pillow and whatnot. I’m usually a very heavy sleeper but this night, I kept waking up. It was normal things that awoke me at first- my cousin getting up to pee, my sister yelling at our other sister for hogging the blankets, normal things. Things you would expect to hear when you have seven children sleeping in the same room.

But then, the other noises started. I thought it must have been just a dream- someone knocking on the glass of the sliding door. I groaned and rolled over, but there was no one outside. It must have been a dream, I told myself and closed my eyes. A few minutes would past and the knocking would start again. I kept looking over to where the noise had to have been coming from, but all I saw was the endless forest.

I tried to ignore the knocking that night, but the more ignored it, the louder it got. Finally, I poke my big sister in the shoulder, enough times for her to grumble awake.

“What the—go back to bed!”

“There’s someone at the door. The knocking is keeping me up.” This immediately got her attention for the whole three seconds it took her to bolt up and see that there was no one outside.

“Go back to bed!” She fell back to sleep almost immediately, but I couldn’t. The knocking continued and turned into pounding after an hour. Then between the poundings came the scratching. Each time I looked at the glass, the noises would stop but only for a few minutes- not nearly enough time to fall back asleep.

I sat crossed-legged in my sleeping bag and just stared at the glass. Every time I kept my eyes closed for a little bit, the noises would start back up again. Around 5 am, I was forcing my eyes to stay open and that’s when I saw her. It. Whatever. I don’t even know how to describe her—it’s just a shadow, a silhouette of some humanoid creature, but I knew as soon as I saw it, that it was a woman.

And ever since that night, I see her in all floor-to-ceiling windows, and in all glass doors. I don’t let her get close. It’s been over a decade and I still avoid glass doors and floor-to-ceiling windows, especially at night. All she does is knock and pound and scratch. If I see her too often, she becomes more real. She’s no longer just a shadow, but she takes one a more human look the more often I see her. I try to avoid these times.

There was a close call three summers ago- I was sleeping in my friend’s basement bedroom. It’s separated from the basement den, which has a glass door leading outside. I woke up in the middle of the night to the screeching and the pounding. It was far enough away that I could ignore it until sunrise, but I can’t ignore it this time.

I’m only writing about this now because—well, let me explain. I go to college out of state. I haven’t had an incident in a couple years, and I honestly had forgotten about it- or probably more I had convinced myself it had never happened. I’m a sophomore and while picking which dorm to live in this year, my friends all agreed on one and I had no second thoughts in mind.

The building is completely glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows in each room, the hallways are glass, everything is glass.

The first couple weeks were fine. I was still adjusting to being back at school and dealing with the workload of an art student, so I didn’t sleep much anyways and when I did, I usually ended up passed out on the couch in the windowless and therefore glass-less, living room.

But then I got on top of things and started sleeping normally, in my own room. In my room with the giant floor-to-ceiling window. The knocking started up first. I would ignore it at first, or just think it was one of my roommates who had forgotten their keys. It took me a couple days to remember the story from my childhood.

My back is to the window now. I can she her reflection on my computer screen and I am scared. She has never been this—this real before. She’s no longer just a shadow but she is real and she is present and I. Am. Scared.