LadySmylee Thread

True story.

My grandmother once lived in an old, three story house. It was set in the woods and slightly run down. It needed new paint, some of the floorboards would creak and the doorways were no longer straight from where the house had settled over the years.

The house itself always gave me a slightly uneasy feeling. However, I have an over-active imagination and at the time of this event I was heavily into my Stephen King horror phase (I was about ten).

The third floor of the house contained three bedrooms. One bedroom belonged to my aunt Beth, who was eight years older than me and wanted very little to do with my brother or myself. Since we stayed at Granny's during the day while Mom and Dad worked, I think it was a jealousy thing. Beth was my Mom's youngest sister and the baby of the family, while I was the first grandchild.

About three months after they moved into this house, Beth started complaining about noises coming from the walls in her room that kept her up at night. Granny and Papaw dismissed her complaints, but when my other aunt who lived there began to echo her concerns, they decided to investigate.

I was there when Granny took Beth upstairs and began searching her room, just to prove there was nothing there. The rat traps they'd sat hadn't worked and they owned three cats, so mice were not likely the culprit. Anyway, while moving a big dresser away from the wall, they discovered a piece of plywood nailed to the wall. It wasn't even painted. (I should mention the dresser had come with the house, as had a lot of the furniture). Granny, being Granny, immediately took a hammer and crow bar and tore off the plywood.

Behind it was a small door.

I'm not kidding when I say small. It was about three feet high and narrow. An adult man would have to really squeeze to get in there. The door was locked but Granny got it open anyhow.

Inside was a little hallway, very dusty, that opened into a tiny room. I could walk in the hallway if I hunkered over. An adult would have to crawl, and could only sit in the little room.

There was a small chair, doll sized, in that room. Nothing else. The walls had been covered in wallpaper that was now very yellowed with age. Dust and cobwebs everywhere, I sneezed for days after this little adventure.

What we finally noticed, and what still haunts me to this day, was the fresh looking scratches on the walls of the tiny room and the little hallway. Nt scratches, really...more like gouges in the wall. These gouges were in groups of three, as if whatever clawed hand responsible had only three fingers.

There was no dust in the gouges. They looked fresh.

We backtracked out of that little room, not saying a word. Granny nailed the plywood back in place and moved the dresser back against the wall. And that was that.

Two night later Beth moved into her sister's room and they kept that room locked until they moved out a year later.

The house was eventually abandoned. I went back with a group of my friends in high school to show them the little room, but the stairs were in really bad shape and rotten. The house was torn down not long after.