BY: PHANAT XIONG
This story took place in Minnesota in a small town called Walnut Grove.
One summer, a couple of years back, my brother and I decided to travel to Minnesota to visit my cousins. We stayed for about two weeks before making the drive back to California. The day before the long drive back home, my cousins threw us a little party at my uncle’s house.
Everyone got pretty drunk, besides my younger brother, who doesn’t drink. I remember we were up pretty late, and my aunt would come down from upstairs to tell us to be quiet and go to sleep.
My uncle’s house has two living rooms, one of which my cousins and brother slept in, and I somehow ended up sleeping on the couch in the other by myself.
As I lay awake on the couch, I noticed that it was almost morning as the room was dimly lit by natural light. In the room next to me, I could hear breathing and snoring coming from my cousins, but aside from that, the house was pretty quiet.
I tried to go back to sleep, but my brain was wide awake. Unable to sleep, I quietly lay on the couch with my eyes closed as I waited for someone to wake up.
Suddenly, I thought I heard footsteps. This sound startled me, so I tuned in to hear where it originated.
As I listened, I quickly determined that it was the sound of footsteps, and it was coming from the basement.
Upon realizing this, my heart began to race, and a sense of fear ignited in me. I thought to myself, “Who would be walking out of the basement this early in the morning, and why would anyone be in the basement?”
Whoever it was, it was strolling up the stairs, and I could hear what sounded like heavy boots getting louder and louder. When it got to the first floor, it walked into the kitchen close to where I was.
At this point, I was terrified and paranoid because I knew that something was off. I understood that whatever came out of the basement wasn’t human just by how it walked. The footsteps were slow and sounded like it was dragging its foot on the floor.
Finally, it entered my room, and my body was frozen in fear. The footsteps were so loud that I was surprised the whole house didn’t wake up. It was headed in my direction and got so close to me that the thought of it touching me almost gave me a heart attack.
All I could do to comfort myself was squeeze my eyes shut and pretend to be asleep, hoping it would just pass me by.
I felt a sense of relief as I noticed that it had walked past me and was now heading towards the other room where everyone was sleeping.
As the footsteps moved away from me, I suddenly heard the loud sound of continuous scratching on the wall. This automatically made me think of Freddy Krueger because whoever did this seemed to have either claws or long nails.
At this point, I was really shocked that these sounds weren’t waking anyone up since I could still hear snoring and breathing coming from the other room.
The loud sounds continued into the next living room before it went back into the hallway and then back down to the basement, where it first emerged.
As it returned down the basement stairs, the sound slowly faded away. Not before long, the house was utterly silence again, aside from the snoring and breathing.
As I lay on the couch contemplating the situation, I heard movements in the other room, which was a significant relief as I knew that I probably wasn’t the only one awake anymore. I turned my head back and slightly opened my eyes to check. I saw my cousin lying on the floor, touching his phone.
By this time, the sun was rising, and light rays were starting to illuminate the rooms. I finally found the courage to get up from the couch and headed into the other room.
Fast forward to around noon, when I was packed and ready to return home, I decided to tell my aunt and cousins about what had happened earlier. I told them about the footsteps from the basement and the loud, continuous scratching and asked if anyone heard it, too.
To my surprise, no one heard anything. My aunt suggested that because we were drinking last night, maybe I was just drunk and dreamed about it.
I thought about what she said and concluded that maybe she was right and it was just a dream. That wasn’t until my younger brother, sitting nearby, decided to speak up and said, “You weren’t dreaming about it because I was up, and I heard it too.”
He told his version of what happened, and it was exactly like mine. He had woken up and couldn’t go back to sleep. As he was lying down, he heard footsteps coming out of the basement and thought it was weird that someone would be down there so early in the morning. He also says that whoever came out of the basement was probably wearing boots because their footsteps were very heavy and loud. He also confirmed that he heard the scratching on the wall too.
Unlike me though, he had his eyes open, and he was looking around to see who it was. He stated that it came from the basement, went into the kitchen, into the room I was in, and then to the room he was in before heading into the hallway and back down into the basement. He didn’t observe anyone but could hear the footsteps and scratching as it passed by.
Surprisingly, he told us he wasn’t scared and was glad to know he wasn’t the only one who heard it.
After hearing this, my aunt told us that we probably experienced this because we were too loud last night, which upset one of the previous owners who had died in the house. She informed us that the deceased owner’s favorite place was in the basement.
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