When nightmares become reality… (What The H?)

This week's What The H is a story I heard for the first time when I read it after Middle sent it to me. It's spooky... which makes it fitting for this time of year. Or did you forget it's only 2 weeks to Halloween?

I am a person that does not scare easily. (Despite what Briane may say.)

So when I started seeing things and hearing things that did not seem real I got a little freaked out.

The story begins a little over a year ago. I was living in a house with three roommates. We were living in a four bedroom house on the east side of Madison. There were two people that slept upstairs, another roommate that slept down in the basement and I was the only one that slept on the middle floor. I was also on the floor with the bathroom, the kitchen and the front door. So that was also more of a reason for me to hear certain noises that I was not use to hearing. Like the ice maker, the toilet flushing and people walking in and out of the front door.

A couple months after I was living in the house I applied, interviewed, and started working at a nursing home. I was a cook/dietary aide at that nursing home. The first couple weeks things were working out okay. Then weird things started to happen. They didn’t just start to happen at the nursing home but they also started following me home.

If I was left alone in the kitchen I would hear things. I would be in the back of the kitchen and I would hear the door to the kitchen open and close as if someone was walking in and out. I would walk around to the front of the kitchen and no one would be there. I would also be working on a meal or getting other things ready before we would start tray line and the dishwasher would turn on. I would walk back to where the dishwasher is and there wouldn’t be anyone there. The only way that the dishwasher works is if someone physically pushes a rack full of dishes through. The weird thing would be that there wouldn’t be a rack full of dishes that would come out the other end. There would be nothing there.

That stuff was minor compared to what was happening to me at home.

I was lying in bed one night and I was just about to fall asleep. I had to work early the next morning so I was attempting to get some sleep before my shift the next day. I did fall asleep shortly after but it wasn’t for long. Roughly an hour and half before I fell asleep I was awoken abruptly by a voice.

“Taylor!”

It was as clear as day. It was an older woman’s voice as well which led me to believe that there was a spirit of a woman that had died that had attached itself to me and followed me home. I woke up and it was dead silent in my room. I had an eerie feeling that I was not alone. At first I thought that it was a dream but I got up and walked out my bedroom door and walked into the kitchen and realized that it was NOT a dream.

Over the next couple weeks things seemed to die down. But then it changed…drastically.

It was a Wednesday night and I had to wake up early to go to class the next day. I was asleep or at least trying to and I started to hear some noises coming from my dresser area. I wasn’t sure what they were at first so I laid there and listened for a little while longer. It wasn’t long before I realized that this sound was the sound of someone rifling through my dresser drawer with all of my important papers. (I kept my letters from school, my bank papers, my private student loan papers or if you want to call it…mail.) I got out of bed and turned on my lamp. As soon as I got out of bed, you see my lamp is on the other side of the room so I had to walk across the room, and when I got to the lamp the paper shuffling had stopped. I sat on my bed starring at my dresser for a while with my lamp on and didn’t see or hear anything so I decided to turn my lamp back off and go to sleep.

The lights were off for a good hour before I was awoken once again by the papers being tossed around in my dresser drawer. I turned on my fan and pretended like I wasn’t hearing anything and went to sleep. It was hard to try and fall asleep but I eventually did and when I woke up the next morning it was as if nothing had happened. I went to work as if I had a great night sleep and the day was long but when I got home I was exhausted.

I got home at about three or three-thirty in the afternoon. I had class at five-thirty so I decided that I was going to take a nap before class. I did and when I woke up I changed and got myself ready and went to class. On my way I had decided that I was going to go to the grocery store and get something to make for dinner. I had to stop back at home though because I had forgotten my wallet in my purse and I had brought my pack back to class.

I was inside for roughly twenty minutes because I received a call from my boyfriend (at the time) and we talked for a while. As I ended the call I grabbed my purse and headed back out to my car. I got into my car and started to back out of the driveway. I noticed that my car was acting a little funny. I got out into the road and I could feel that my car was veering towards the left. I parked the car back into the driveway and got out to check it out.

When I walked over to the front of the car and saw that my front left tire was flat. Not only was it flat but it was slashed. I sat on the wooden ledge of our driveway and I just sat there staring at my tire. It was not more than twenty minutes ago that my tire was perfectly fine. I was sitting there attempting to get a hold of my boyfriend (at the time) and I heard a startling voice.

“Taylor!”

That voice was the same voice of the older woman that I had heard in my room a few weeks ago. I got up and looked around and saw nothing. I had never heard such silence on my street. It was dead silent.

Some people may think that it was random group of kids that slashed my tire but all of me thinks that whoever was yelling my name and whoever was rifling through my drawer full of papers is the same person that slashed my tire.

Since that day there have been a few things here and there that I cannot explain for instance like waking up in the middle of the night to find that my bedside lamp was turned on even though the light switch was turned off. Little things like that. But nothing has been as bad as the slashing of my tire.