I lived in a rental house with my mom, my brother and my dog for a year while my dad stayed a couple hours away in our home closer to work because they wanted to send me to private school. This only lasted for the 7th grade because I hated the school and it put a strain on our family being split up. I always include the back story when telling this because I try to use the stress of the situation as a justification for our experiences.

At the time I was 12 and my brother was about 4. The first strange thing we noticed was my brother having conversations in his room with the door closed. He would never tell us who he was talking to and it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. Kids have imaginary friends and talk to themselves all the time. This only seems out of place now in hindsight.

The first major occurrence happened a few months after moving in. Our living room's TV was positioned on a wall with a hallway to the left that led to the bedrooms. I fell asleep on the couch and awoke suddenly in the middle of the night. The TV was muted and the AC was off. The house was eerily silent. As I tried to go back to sleep I started to hear the sound of bare feet on the tile floor in the hallway. I sat back up and stared down at the dark opening of the hallway entrance. The TV only lit up the far wall partially. The foot prints made it's way down the hall slowly until it sounded like it was a few feet from the end and they stopped. It was silent again for a few moments and then a shadow in the shape of a tall lanky person cast on the part of the wall illuminated by the TV. I scrambled for the lamp behind me and ran down the hallway checking the bedrooms. My mom and brother were still asleep and my dog was asleep in the floor of the living room. I went back to the couch and watched TV with all the lights on until the sun came up. I told my mom and she didn't believe me of course.

About a week later my mom claims the same thing happened to her. I didn't believe her.

Over the course of that year I would continue to get bruises and scratches on my body for no reason. I slipped on the tile and hit my head and was brought to the Dr for concussion tests. The fall was just due to my clumsiness, nothing supernatural. The marks on my chest and back were so bad that the Dr was asking me questions about my home life and child protective services almost got involved.

Other small things happened that we would explain away like doors locking and lights being on when we returned home from somewhere but three things stand out in addition to the previous events I mentioned. The first is my dog would stare down the hallway with his hair raised, teeth snarled and growl. He would crouch real low and walk forward toward hall and then jump back like he was reacting to something. This would go on for hours sometimes. The other was when my great grandpa came to visit. He was an extremely religious person. Probably not vital to the story but anyway, he stayed at the house alone while my mom went to the store. My brother and I were at school. When she came back he was sitting outside on the porch and when she asked why he was sitting outside he wouldn't tell her. He never visited again while we lived there.

Finally, the thing that was really weird was my mom lost her wedding ring down the bathroom drain. She hid it from my dad and was nervous to tell him for some reason. A few days later she reached up on the shelf in the laundry room to grab the clothes iron and the ring fell off the shelf onto the ground.

Damn this got long. Anyway, we moved and I've never had anything close to that happen to me since. I consider myself a skeptic now that I'm older and I've tried my best to explain away most it. Regardless, it was a strange year no doubt.