Spookyness

Death at 423 Stockholm Street

**Credit to reddit user The_Dalek_Emperor**

I’ve told this story three times now. Once to the police. Once to a jury. And once to my psychiatrist. This will be the last time I tell it.

We’ve always lived at 423 Stockholm Street, ever since I was a baby. So, there really wasn’t ever a time when I didn’t hear it. And as far back as I can remember, I’ve always known that there was another room on the other side of my wall.

When I was a very young child, I thought He was my friend. I would knock and He would knock back, though usually more slowly. I would giggle and He would moan . But as I got older, the noises started to scare me. I slowly realized that He wasn’t friendly and the scratching, moaning and sporadic knocking started to scare me.

I told my parents about it, terrified that He would come into my room one night and kill me. My mother rolled her eyes and told me it was mice in the walls. She never listened to me. My father agreed with her that it was animals but he hugged me and told me he would protect me, because I was scared.

Whenever I’d hear the noises, mostly at night, I would scream and my father would come running through the door a few seconds later to see what was the matter. I would point at the wall and he would smile, knock on the wall with his fist and say: “Quiet down in there or else!” The noise would stop, I would smile and Dad would hug me. He was always my protector. I miss him so much.

As I matured into a teenager, I would often invite friends to sleepover. We called ourselves the Stockholm Street Ghostbusters and spent hours doing seances to try to exorcise the entity (a demon, according to our research). We figured the scratching must be the demon etching satanic sigils and drawings on my wall. We eventually turned to a ouija board, until my mother found it and threw it out.

One night, running on heightened bravado from my friends, I waited until the loud scratching started again and I pounded on the wall, just like my dad. “QUIET DOWN IN THERE - YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD. THE LIVING ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!” My friends were impressed - for a moment. But I should not have provoked Him.

There was a loud, angry banging on the other side of the wall. We all screamed and hid in the closet, yelling for my dad. When he came running, my friends begged him to take them home. I was left alone while they were gone. I could feel Him, almost see Him impatiently pacing behind the wall, back and forth, 5 inches of wood and wallpaper between He and I. I was so scared I hid under my bed. Then the scratching started again.

And that was when I knew. It was trying to carve it’s way through the wall and into my bedroom. I screamed again and the banging resumed on the walls. It didn’t stop until the headlights of my dad’s car lit up my room. I continued screaming until my dad, always the hero, came sprinting into my room and banged on the wall. “Quiet down in there or else!” Then he held me, let me cry out my fears and told me it was okay if I slept on the couch. Sometimes I thought he believed it was all in my head. All those murmurs, the groans, the knocking, the scratching. But he never let on; never made me feel crazy. I never really understood my dad, but I wish I had. I’ll never see him again.

One night, when I was 16, I was awoken by an otherworldly, ear splitting scream. It was so loud, so high and so disturbing that I screamed in return, in terror. The scream ended abruptly and a moment later my dad came running in.

"You heard it!" I cried as my body wracked with sobs. "How could you not hear it? I know you heard it."

"Oh sweetie," my dad sat at the end of my bed. Hair disheveled with a far-off exhausted look in his middle-of-the-night bloodshot eyes. "Of course I heard it, but it was just an owl, I’m sure of it. We’ve seen a few in the neighborhood recently."