Ghost Stories

My dad's small North Texas home is weird. Since he got the house, strange things have been happening in every room. When he first moved in, you could hear footsteps in the hallway, right around 8 p.m. sharp. In my room, I could feel and hear ghostly things roaming past me and into the house. I got so scared of that room -- it seemed to be the focal point for all the supernatural activity -- that I started sleeping in the living room with the TV on. Still, my dad would hear the front door open and someone walking around the living room, continuing until whoever or whatever it was reached his room.

Generally, I tried to ignore it all and get some shuteye.

One night, I was attempting to sleep in the living room, this time without the TV on. A noise made me jump; it sounded like an animal walking around in the kitchen. The only animal we allowed in the house was curled up at my feet. I frowned.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange shape lurking in the hallway. My peripheral vision gave me the rough shape of a man, but when I turned to face it, my breath coming in shallow gasps, there was nothing there.

That was the first I'd actually seen something.

In the morning, my dad told me about a night a few weeks back, when he'd awoken to see two children creeping into his room. "Is he alive?" one voice had asked, and the other had answered, "I think so..." My dad said he'd sat up and reached for the light, and the two children had fled.

We discussed it over some oatmeal. It was time to get nasty right back, if these spirits were going to make our lives miserable.

The weird stuff stopped after that conference of war.

But several years later, when we'd forgotten our vow to stay vigilant, it all started up again. During the summer, my dad was at work, and I was browsing the Internet until my eyes were blurry. I heard a woman's voice, suddenly, but couldn't make out what it was. I shrugged and returned to my surfing.

Now the noises had returned, however. The animal noise from the kitchen showed up every night, and any time someone was taking a shower, something banged inside the bathroom cabinet. The windows are scratched, the halls are haunted, and there are shadows crawling around my dad's room.

My dad's bed vibrates and bumps as something crawls around beneath it, but despite lengthy searches, we can't find whatever it may be. He even woke up one morning with a huge bruise on his leg that he couldn't remember getting.

The closest we've gotten to pinning down what it could be is when I managed to snap a photo of some ghostly presence with my camera phone -- it's a vague set of two faces on one body.

I wish I could find the source of all of this, and just get rid of it. And I wish I could be more clear.

But frankly, all I can say is that there are way too many ghosts and way too little space.