When I was 13 I moved into a beautiful two story house with my dad and sister on the West Side. Initially when we first went to see the house, I felt a strange heaviness I couldn’t explain. My dad was so in love with the house I didn’t want to say anything to dampen the mood, so I just moved past it. I thought I might’ve just been overwhelmed with the thought of moving.
Once we moved in, I quickly realized something was not quite right. Every night going to bed I would feel an energy hovering over my head and body. You know that feeling in your body when you feel someone is looking at you, or is at least in the same room as you? It was that feeling.
A month or two later I started to hear an audible ‘thump thump thump thump’ going up the stairs, my bedroom was the first room at the top of the staircase. I always slept with my door closed so initially I thought it was my dad heading up to his room.
One night when I knew everyone had gone to sleep, I heard the thumping up the stairs – this time they were heavier than usual, louder. I told my dad the next morning at breakfast, and he brushed it off that it was ‘the creak of the house’. It is an old house, after all, so I once again brushed it off. Growing up I went back and forth from my mom and dads house every two weeks so I hadn’t been in the house again until a couple weeks later.
When I was back at my dads house, things had changed a bit. I noticed the energy I felt above me would be present after the thumping up the stairs. It was terrifying. I would call to my dad in fear to check the upstairs and around the house that no one had broken in. He would do a perimeter check with a baseball bat each time – there was never a sign of entry or a person we saw.
One night as I was falling asleep, I heard the thumping come up the stairs, it was so clear and detectible it woke me up completely. The handle on the door started to actually move down until the latch on the door opened. The door slowly started to open, creaking loudly, until it opened about a foot. This was the first time in my life my body was paralyzed from fear. I can’t say how much time went by before I could move again, it could’ve been anywhere between 5-20 minutes. When I could at least move one arm again, I reached back behind my head for my phone on the desk and quickly pulled it in close. I called my sister who was just down the hall from me. She answered and before she could say anything I said, “please come to my room” where she replied, “Stephen it’s 3am I’m sleeping”. I started hysterically crying and said “PLEASE come to my room I need you!” She rushed into my room and met me at the bed. She asked what was wrong and I told her what had happened. She asked if I could get up and I said no, so she went to wake up my dad who the did another perimeter check with the baseball bat. Nothing. No one there.
Soon after, I was showering before school. I felt the same energy as I would in bed, that someone/thing was there. I made it one of the quickest showers I’ve had, then rushed to my room from the bathroom – I needed to get awaay from there. I dressed in the closet, it’s a very small walk in closet. Facing the built in dresser my back nearly touched the wall. I was about to start dressing when I felt an abrasive sensation on my back. It was painful and out of nowhere, it hurt and scared me so much that I screamed. My dad rushed into my room and asked what was wrong. I turned to show him my back and asked what he could see. He told me there were 3 scratches going down my back and pointed at it. I started freaking out given that every morning at breakfast I would complain about the energy hovering over me the nights before. He told me I must’ve done it myself while washing my hair or when I went to get dressed. I put my hand behind my back to show him I could not reach that spot of my back even with my greatest efforts.
My breaking point was when I was home alone and was hearing the thumping up the stairs, the first time I heard it in the middle of the day. I felt more confident with the sun up for whatever reason. I sat in my room where the windows were shut, the door closed. I said out loud, “I know there’s something here – I acknowledge you because I can feel you. Are you really here?” Immediately the ceiling fan slowly started to spin. I looked back at the windows, still closed. I got a little nervous but the daylight held my bravery. I then heard the footsteps on the stairs again so I opened my door and sat at the top of the staircase. It was colder than the rest of the house on the stairs. I said, “okay I got your sign that you are here, but where are you now?” A couple seconds later the TV downstairs turned on blasting the news at a super high volume. I didn’t know spirits could do that… It scared me so much that I ran downstairs, out the front door, and called my mom to pick me up. I refused to live in the house until it was cleared of the energy that lived inside of it.
Shortly after I left, my sister started telling me she was feeling an energy at the foot of her bed at night, then next to her. She was starting to get scared too and would tell my dad, but since nothing was happening to him it was hard for him to believe.
Once my dad realized I was serious about not coming back, he called a shaman to come in. I came back to do the ceremony all together. She came in with a wing of Eagle feathers she used to waft sage around the house. She started by saying prayers in multiple different languages, sageing the downstairs. We never told her the specifics about the stairs or that I had been experiencing the energy in my room. Once she got to the bottom of the stairs she stopped and said, “wow, do you feel the energy here? The temperature even changed here, it’s much colder.” She slowly made her way up the stairs with the sage, at the top of the stairs all the bedroom doors were closed. She turned to my door and said that this was the room we would focus on, this is the room where the energy resides. For good measure she went to the other rooms but declared they weren’t the ones to focus on. We went into my room where she walked around with the burning sage and into the closet too. She told us this spirit was trapped here on this plane and needed help crossing over. Out of her bag she pulled out a quartz crystal bigger than my forearm and pointed it to the corner of the room, towards the window. She started saying prayer again, a different one this time, but still in multiple different languages. All the sudden, a physical feeling of heaviness lifted off our shoulders all at once, accompanied with an undeniable feeling of sadness that overcame us all. My dad looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “did you feel that? I can’t believe it, I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I felt it, I really felt that”.
We stood in the room with teary eyes and shared what we all had felt, it was unanimous, undeniable. And now it was gone.
