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What's in the Attic?

A Supernatural Encounter

By Varden FriasPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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Spirits are real.

You may have been told otherwise as a kid by your disbelieving parents or by society but you can't doubt the clamor of the poltergeist or the chill of their astral bodies as they try to merge back into the physical plane. Some people see, feel or hear them. Others don't. Since I was younger, I have always had brushes with the fantastic. Whether it was in the form of the rare cryptid sighting or a spirit, there was always some way or another these things found a means to communicate with me.

Unlike most stories I've heard, the spirits that have visited me were of a benevolent sort. They never attacked me or tried to hurt me in any way. Perhaps I will tell those stories in another post. Most of the spirits of my childhood often seemed in desperate need of my help, actually. Either that or they wanted to commune with me. The spirit of today's story (well, one of them anyway) was not as kind or beseeching.

The house I was living in at the time was an older one. Probably built in the 1970s because the insulation was terrible and made the house colder than it should have been. At the time there were three other roommates: two brothers and an older woman. The homeowner was rarely there and thus never noticed what was going on with the house. However, I did.

It was around March 2017, I believe when I started to notice things were weird. I think I was alone in the house and started noticing that things were a bit off. There was as a feeling that I was being watched when I was in the bathroom. A freaky, visceral sort of feeling. I was showering at the time and thought it was just a bad day or my paranoia getting to me so I brushed it off.

When I got out of the shower, I felt it again and this time I heard something. Breathing. Faint breathes came from the vent above me, or so I thought and I looked up into the vent. After looking for a few long seconds I couldn't see anything but then as I gazed longer I thought I saw what looked like a pale yellow eye just lazily gazing back at me.

It was one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. Quickly, I looked away, got my clothes on and got out of there. For some time I didn't tell my roommates. One, I was too embarrassed with the circumstances and two, I wasn't sure what it was that I saw. At the time, I was under the suspicion that maybe the house had a squatter. Again, I wasn't sure as to what it was. I was only certain of how afraid of it I was becoming.

Some time passed with no incident. It wasn't until I was with the two brothers that things started getting strange again. We were hanging out in the kitchen. One of them was cleaning while the other and I were talking. Suddenly, I felt this skin-crawling sensation of creepiness overcome me. It hit me, then it reminded me of the "squatter" in the attic. I told the roommate that I was talking to and we discussed the possibilities. We concluded that it was either a squatter, some sort of small animal like a raccoon, or it was a spirit of some kind.

Later, we decided to inspect the attic. In the garage was a trap door that led into the attic. One of the roommates checked up there to see if there was a squatter but didn't see anything. We decided that it was my imagination growing crazy and let it alone for the time being.

Soon, the presence up above became stronger as the days passed. There were times I heard thumping and shuffling, like heavy footsteps. When the roommate's younger brother came to visit he agreed that he felt a presence in the attic as well. He stayed a week and we often spoke of the “thing in the attic.” Every time I went to the bathroom I heard the soft breathing and every time I was alone I didn’t quite feel like that was the case.

Something was wrong.

One day, the landlord came back. It was a usual occurance. Once a month he would return to check up on us and take the opportunity to spend time with his son who lived down the road. The homeowner worked on the road and didn’t have much time for his son. When he came to visit us, I brought up the attic problem. He brushed it off, saying that it was probably a family of rodents, and climbed into the attic. What he found was nothing more than a family of birds, which was disappointing but I was grateful that it wasn’t a squatter. Annoyed with making him climb into the attic, he left and soon after things started getting back to normal.

At least that’s what I assumed.

Again, each trip to the bathroom I felt watched and the breathing continued. The breaths were slightly labored, as if someone was hovering over that vent and watching me like a creep. When I went to bed each night, I started to notice other strange things. In particular, when I slept I saw a pair of glowing blue eyes in the adjacent wall across from my bed. My first assumption was that I had left on a couple of lights that I shouldn’t have but I got up one night to look, waved my hand in front of the “lights” but found that they remained.

This presence in the room, because I certainly felt a presence, was nowhere near as malevolent as the presence in the attic. However, I believe that both were spiritual entities. In June 2017, I moved out of that house but it was never resolved what watched me. The entity never attacked me. Maybe it just wanted to frighten me, in which case it certainly accomplished the task. Whatever it was, I’m certain that it wasn’t an animal or a squatter.

supernatural
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About the Creator

Varden Frias

Aspiring author of gothic horror, dark fantasy and occasional LGBT coming of age story. I will read pretty much anything: fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, etc. If it's a cool story with cool characters, I will probably give it a read.

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