Horror stories

Micah Sloat

Micah Sloat appeared on Celebrity Ghost Stories in 2012 and told a story about his horrifying confrontation with the paranormal when he was a teenager and he and his sister saw a ghostly old woman in the attic of their house. Micah Sloat is best known as an actor in the Paranormal Activity movies.

Because I worked on the Paranormal Activity movies, people always ask me, "Are you a believer or are you a skeptic?" I always say the same thing. I used to be a skeptic like my dad, but when I was 16, something happened and now I'm a believer.

It was 1997 and I was 16 years old. My dad's business had become pretty successful and we moved into this big old mansion. It was built in the early 1900s and it was the kind of house you could get lost in. It was so big and there were so many rooms.

My sister Ariana is two years younger than me and when we first moved into the house, we would go exploring. We explored all over the house, including the 3rd floor.

No one lived on the 3rd floor. The 3rd floor was used for storage. There was something strange about the 3rd floor that we didn't fully appreciate at the time. There was a coldness that was palpabale. It kind of chilled you to your bones.

There were a lot of books that were often out of place, pictures that would be flipped around, ashtrays that would be turned over. There would be odd configurations of things balanced on other things, that didn't make any sense. One time, there was a box of tissues and all of the tissues were on the floor. It looked like someone had been crying, but no one ever went up there, so it didn't make any sense.

The 3rd floor was something else.

It was early December and a huge storm had set in. It was kind of fun at first, but all of a sudden, the power went out. My sister decided that it would be a great idea to go exploring all over the house. So we grabbed our flashlights and ran around exploring in the dark. Then, my sister thought it would be a great idea to explore the 3rd floor of our house.

"I'm not doing this," I told her. "This is messed up... The lights are out... It's scary..."

"Don't be a baby," she said.

I had to do it because I was the older brother and I wasn't going to let her do it alone. Reluctantly, I followed her up the stairs. It got pretty weird after that.

I was staying back, not out of fear entirely, although I will admit I was a little scared, but mostly because it felt like there was something wrong. We weren't supposed to be up there. We were intruding.

She wandered down the hall, opening all the doors, looking in all the rooms.

"Let's get out of here," I said. "This is not fun anymore!"

She didn't listen to me, as little sisters seldom do.

She got to the end of the hallway and there was a heavy, thick door that was different from all of the others doors in the hallway. I had never even gone that far into the house and I had never even noticed the door at the end of the hall. She opened it and she walked inside and she disappeared into the darkness.

I was standing there at the top of the stairs, just waiting for her to come out, but she didn't. I had a sense that something bad was about to happen and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.

Then, the door just closed by itself. It was a very unnatural motion. I don't know how a door could move like that unless someone was pushing it. I was pretty freaked out.

"Ariana!" I said. "What's going on?"

She didn't answer.

Then, all of a sudden I heard her scream.

I ran to the end of the hall and threw open the door.

She was gone. She wasn't in the room

I kept screaming, "Ariana! Where are you?"

I kept calling out her name, but she wouldn't respond.

At the back of the room, in the corner, there was a jagged hole cut out of the wood and as I stuck my head through the hole, I could see a hidden room. I saw a ratty old mattress... I saw a rocking chair... and then I saw my sister. She was standing there, looking as white as a ghost.
I took my flashlight and I shined it through the hole. I could see something that looked like a human form... Something that looked like a human face... and I could see two eyes staring back at me. The one thing I remember most of all is the burning intensity of those eyes.

I grabbed my sister and I dragged her out of the hole. We ran out of the room, down the stairs and straight into my parents' bedroom. We woke them up and told them there was something going on up there on the third floor.

My mother believed me but my father didn't. He thought we were just being crazy kids and he went back to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I stayed up all night too scared to close my eyes.

We waited until the next morning when it was light to go back up there. My dad saw the hole and he wanted to know what was in there. It was an area of the house no one had ever been to before. Nobody even knew it existed.

The mattress was still there on the floor and the rocking chair was there too. They were covered in dust. It looked like they had been there for decades. Near the opening there was a piece of chocolate layered cake. It was dessicated and moldy, like a piece of birthday cake that had been aged 40 years.

We had to take all of the furniture out and then it was boarded up, but even after we removed everything, it didn't change the strange feeling you got whenever you went up there.

I found out later that the house had a history. My father bought from a man who had owned the house for many many years but was afraid to live in it because it was haunted. Of course, my dad thought it was a great real estate investment.

Back in the 1940s, the house was owned by a very wealthy family. Their daughter, a single woman, lived there alone for nearly 20 years. She had a mental disorder and the family abandoned her and left her there alone, with nobody, not even a caretaker. She ended up dying in that room of mysterious causes.

I have no idea how she died or what her life was like, but that seems like a pretty miserable end and it seems like there's something unfinished about that story.

To this day, Ariana won't speak about it. For the rest of the time she lived in the house, I don't think my sister ever set foot on the 3rd floor again. It was a very traumatic experience.

My mother brought in all kinds of people to cleanse the house, but none of it worked. My parents still live in the house to this day and whenever my father hears noises, he thinks it's just the pipes and the wind, but my mother doesn't go near the 3rd floor and neither do I.