A few years ago, I rented a house in a rural area. My neighbors were a married couple named Lisa and Michael. They had two young children, a boy and a girl. They were a nice, quiet family and largely kept to themselves.
One night, I woke up to a blood-curdling scream. It seemed as if it was coming from the house next door. I got up from the bed, threw on my dressing gown and ran downstairs.
When I reached my front gate, two small figures came flying towards me and almost knocked the ground off my feet. I realized that these were children who lived in the neighborhood, but I was stunned by their appearance. The boy was in his pajamas and the girl was in her nightie. Their faces were extremely pale and they looked at me with frightened eyes.
Both the children held me and started crying. His mother came running towards us and I saw that she too was scared.
"What happened?" I asked "I heard screams."
"There's someone in our house!" Lisa gasped, her voice shaking with fear. "I... I heard someone in the kitchen... I was too scared to investigate... Then I heard someone coming up the stairs and I heard my kids' bedroom door open... then "I heard my daughter screaming. It was horrible! I immediately brought the kids and we ran outside."
"Did you see who it was?" I asked
"No," he replied. "The kids ran out of the bedroom... I didn't dare go check it out... please help us... we need to call the police."
I looked at the children, they were still trembling with fear.
"Where's his father?" I asked
"He's working the night shift," Lisa said.
I told them to go to my house and call the police. She thanked me, held her children's hands and ran towards my house.
I decided to check out his house. The front door was open. It was dark and silent. Suddenly, I felt a cold chill down my spine. I had the strangest feeling that someone was watching me.
In the back of my mind, a little voice kept telling me, "It's a trap!"
I don't know what happened to me, but I was very scared at that moment. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of what might be hiding inside a dark house.
"Pull yourself together," I muttered. "You're not a kid anymore."
I started walking down the garden path, but then I saw something that stopped me in my place.
Click! Suddenly there was light in one of the upstairs windows.
The house should have been vacant. I looked towards the lighted window, but I saw nothing, only the curtains blowing in the wind.
"There's something up there," a little voice in my head whispered. "And it is not afraid of being found. In fact, it wants you to find it."
I tried to convince myself that I was just being silly. How foolish it was for a grown man to be afraid of going into a house because he was afraid of ghosts!
"If he is a thief," I thought to myself, "then why did he leave the lights on?"
Click! The lights went off.
"what rubbish?" I thought and took a few steps back.
I still couldn't see anything in the darkness, but I could feel goosebumps rising on my skin.
Click! The lights came back on.
When I looked towards the window my heart started beating loudly. A black figure was standing there. It was a woman. His skin was dry and shriveled and his hair was long and unkempt. She looked like a corpse. She just looked at me with her hollow, vacant eyes and smiled a dead smile.
Click! the light went out.
I turned and ran back to my house. When I got to my front door, I knocked on it until the neighbor woman let me in. He looked at me with a mixture of fear and concern. My face had turned pale and my eyes were so frightened that the children started crying again.
"Water," I gasped. "I need water."
Lisa picked up a glass, filled it with water and handed it to me. I drank it in one gulp. My heart was beating fast and I was breaking out in cold sweat. I was afraid I was having a heart attack.
"Did you call the police?" I asked, trying to control myself.
"They're on their way," she said. "Did you check the house?"
"Umm... let's wait for the police," I replied.
After a few minutes the police finally arrived. They searched the house from top to bottom, but did not find any thief. There was no one there.
Police questioned the neighbours, but no one saw or heard anything. When they interrogated me, I didn't tell them what I had seen. What could I say to them? That I had seen a dead woman smiling supernaturally in the window? Nobody will believe me.
The police finally finished their work and left to take care of more important things. The woman's husband came home at around 7 in the morning. The children were happy to see him and the family returned to their home together. I tried not to look at their house, especially at the upstairs window.
After that crazy night, I started having trouble sleeping. As soon as I closed my eyes, I would see the face of the dead woman.
Then, life started returning to normal. The neighbors gradually forgot all about the incident, no one shouted during the night and I saw no bodies standing in the windows. Everything seemed to be back on track and life was good!
But one evening, about a month later, I heard someone knocking at my front door. The knocking was loud and strong. They kept banging and banging as if they were going to break down my door. I peeked and saw that it was the neighbor lady Lisa.
I opened the door and found her standing there, smiling at me.
"What happened?" I asked
She did not respond. She just smiled and walked straight past me. She went into my house and went into the living room on the left. He left me standing at the door, stunned. That fixed smile on his face made me uneasy. It was so scary... almost inhuman... it made me tremble from head to toe.
It was dark outside and no birds were singing. I was about to follow him inside, when I heard voices from the adjacent house. When I looked over the fence I saw the neighbor children playing in the front yard.
Then, I became numb. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Lisa was there! She was standing in the courtyard in front of her and playing with the children.
I couldn't move. It felt as if my entire body was numb with fear. The little voice in my head was asking only one question: "If Lisa is there, who is in my living room?"
I didn't stop to check. I immediately ran to the adjacent house and asked my neighbors to call the police. Two officers came and searched my house from top to bottom, but they did not find any living soul. How could they? The only person in my house was a dead woman.
The next morning, I left the house and did not return.
Now I live in a city where there are more living people and less dead. I heard that my former neighbors, Michael and Lisa, moved in soon after I moved in. I asked around and one of my friends said they left because the mother and father of the family went crazy.
"They're so stupid," my friend laughed. "They thought their house was haunted!"
I tried to laugh with him, but I couldn't even smile.
