Horror Stories

313 West Main Street

My first recollection of things being amiss was within the first week of our relocation to the house, in late March to early April 2001. My parents had left for the store to purchase cleaning products (the house was disgusting when we moved in) and I decided to stay behind and explore my new home. It was the largest house I had ever lived in at that point, and the only house I’ve ever lived in to feature a full attic and basement.

Being a meek 12 year old girl, I couldn’t reach the pull cord for the attic, so I turned my explorations to the basement. The finished portion of the basement was musty, if unremarkable. Behind a clear shower curtain lay the unfinished portion. Chiefly, it was a boiler room. However, on the eastern wall, there was a small area boarded up with plywood. I wrapped upon the wood and found that it was hollow behind it.

I didn’t know when to expect my parents home, and I figured that I’d need time and preparation to explore the area behind the wood. When I made my way back up the stairs to the door connecting my bedroom to the basement, I found that the door had been locked from the outside. Do note, the locks on the door were comprised of two deadbolts and one latch. After fidgeting with the door for a few moments, I resolved to simply exit through the basement door leading outside and wait for my parents to return home. I believed, at the time, that they had locked me in the basement as a practical joke. As time wore on, I wasn’t so sure.

The following weekend, I decided to wake up long before anyone else—at roughly 5:00 a. m. to explore the basement. I dressed in thick, warm clothing, boots, a hat, and a pair of heavy duty masonry gloves. The plywood was in an advanced state of dry rot, so I was able to pull it free of its moorings with relative ease. I carefully sat it aside, as to make as little noise as possible, and took out my headlamp.

Looking into the void, I saw that the “tunnel” extended quite a ways—in fact, it extended beyond the point of the house itself. I tied a handkerchief around my nose and mouth to prevent breathing as much dust as possible and began my journey. Most of the crawl was uneventful, and, as such, I returned to the start of the “tunnel” after a few hours. The tunnel was much longer than I had anticipated and I would need a lot more time to traverse it fully. As I had neglected to bring a time-piece of any kind, I had no indication of how much time had passed.

When summer break began, I conducted daily sojourns into the dreaded “Dirty Part”, as I had dubbed it. Over time, I found various things buried under the dirt. They would vary from clothing to children’s toys. I thought little of it—the house was old and had had many inhabitants prior to us—I figured that perhaps a previous tenet had stored boxes in there, the boxes had disintegrated, and the clothing and toys had simply become buried.

However, the more things I found, the more frequent there would be “happenings”. At first, they were minor things: my stereo turning itself off and on, my VCR recording random things while I slept, alarms going off, etc. I attributed this to interference from the nearby police-call station and left it at that. My father would soon join me in my explorations of the new house—but his attention was drawn to the attic.

In the living room, directly under the attic, there was a curious stain in the shape of a human pelvis and legs. The odd shape intrigued us both greatly, so we decided that the two of us would explore the attic in hopes of finding its source.

No sooner had we entered the attic, the kitchen stove’s timer “went off”, and the two of us gave up on our adventure in the attic. Worth noting is that the stove’s timer did not work and did not go off again. After that, my father decided that he would not be joining in any further explorations of our domicile.

When I returned to school, I was in seventh grade—a “Middle Schooler” at that point, and became more interested in hanging out with my friends instead of exploring a musty basement (though the basement—the finished potion, at least, had become the “hang out” of my friends and I--primarily because there was a refrigerator and half-bathroom down there, as well as a cable connection). Things were quiet for a time, and I thought no more of the previous goings-on.