by Kimmy
At the time this story takes place, I lived in Northern Indiana.
In 1999, I was a high school freshman. It was a busy year for me; school, friends and parties took most of my time. By the end of the school year, I was used to all kinds of things my mother gave me grief over: 10-15 people sleeping over on Friday and Saturday nights, cars parked in the yard, and friends and relatives knocking on my window to let them in at all hours of the night.
I had been aware of ghostly activity in my house long before that summer. We had heard what sounded like hammering on walls, knocking on ceiling and floors, and footsteps up and down our basement stairs, but I had never had so close an encounter as I did the summer of '99.
It was, for me, an ordinary Friday night. I had a few friends over, shared some drinks and went to bed in the early morning hours. I slept in my bed in my room, the only bedroom on the main floor. My bed sat between a wall and a window, and the room was next to the front door to the house.
At about 4:00am, I heard tapping on my window. Assuming it was just my cousin, John, wanting me to unlock the front door, (like he did most Friday and Saturday nights), I rolled over and continued to sleep. I heard the tapping a while later, but again chose to sleep. Not long after the tapping, I heard a weird creaking nose coming from outside, a little below me. Moments later, I heard a dragging, pulling sound from my basement.
In my sleepy stupor, I figured my cousin John had somehow opened a basement window, and was now moving storage boxes out of his way. I heard footsteps come up the stairs, the basement door open and close, and then all was quiet. I fell asleep until late the next morning.
When I woke up I asked my friends and brothers where John had ended up sleeping the last night, and why he had come over so late. No one knew what I was talking about. No one had seen him, and no one knew anything about the basement window. I kind of brushed it off, and went about my day. Later, I learned that John had been out of town that night, two states away in fact, and no one had shown up after I had gone to bed.
When my mom came home from work that evening, I told her what had gone on, afraid someone might have broken in. We checked, and nothing in our basement had been moved, and no windows tampered with. I took her to my room and showed her , by tapping on my window, the noises I heard. As I was knocking on the glass, looking outside, I realized that the week before we had new screens installed on our windows. It was impossible for someone to tap on the glass outside my room, the screens prevented it. If someone were to make the type of knocking I heard, you would have to be on the inside of my room. Someone, some thing had been in my room, knocking on my windows...not even six inches from my head.
To this day, we have no explanation beyond that the spirits in our house wanted to play a rather creepy joke on me.