A Presence in Every Room

<v Speaker 1>And then I thought this weird thought in my head,
<v Speaker 1>that's not a good It looked right back as I
<v Speaker 1>thought it, like it looked through me.
<v Speaker 2>This is a chilling true story of a family haunting
<v Speaker 2>I unexplained forces, from eerie sleep paralysis to terrifying encounters
<v Speaker 2>in the middle of the night. My name is Edwin,
<v Speaker 2>and here's Chiara's true scary story.
<v Speaker 1>I've never really shared my experiences to anyone besides my husband,
<v Speaker 1>my family, and really close friends. I remember being around
<v Speaker 1>seven years old when everything started. We lived in an
<v Speaker 1>apartment in the Dallas Fort Worth area. We moved in
<v Speaker 1>shortly after my sister had her baby, and my mom
<v Speaker 1>watched him a lot. We baby sent him all the time.
<v Speaker 1>I remember she went to the mailbox and so she
<v Speaker 1>left him on the bed and she was like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>do me a favor. Just watch him. Make sure he
<v Speaker 1>doesn't roll off or anything, and if he cries, just
<v Speaker 1>give him a spascifier. When I just sat on the
<v Speaker 1>bed watching him, when all of a sudden, the bathroom
<v Speaker 1>was right there next to that bed, I could hear
<v Speaker 1>the faucet like the sink turn room. Then I looked
<v Speaker 1>over and I can see well into the bathroom. There
<v Speaker 1>was nobody in there. My body froze. I was terrified.
<v Speaker 1>Then all of a sudden, the shower turned on as well.
<v Speaker 1>I just sat there and I watched my nephew. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't want to look back at the bathroom, even though
<v Speaker 1>out of the corner of my eye I could see
<v Speaker 1>a steam plumbing out of that shower. And my mom
<v Speaker 1>walks in and she was like, hey, why is the
<v Speaker 1>water running in the bathroom? And I said nothing to her,
<v Speaker 1>and I just walked out. I just kind of left
<v Speaker 1>it at that. Shortly after that, I started experiencing sleep
<v Speaker 1>paralysis and nightmares all the time. I've always been a
<v Speaker 1>horror fan, so I would chalk it up to that.
<v Speaker 1>Every time I would wake up, it felt like immense
<v Speaker 1>pressure on my chest and I couldn't move. It was
<v Speaker 1>such a terrifying experience, and I remember being awake, but
<v Speaker 1>being so young, I really didn't believe that it was
<v Speaker 1>actually happening. This happened night after night after night. I
<v Speaker 1>would wake up suddenly I would be terrified, but I
<v Speaker 1>didn't know why, so my first instinct would be to
<v Speaker 1>try to get up, and I couldn't. I remember being
<v Speaker 1>able to blink my eyes open, but nothing else would move.
<v Speaker 1>I remember distinctively seeing my closet door was like right
<v Speaker 1>across the way from my bed, and I always slept
<v Speaker 1>with it open, so it was never an issue. But
<v Speaker 1>I remember distinctively seeing that shadowy figure, and I would
<v Speaker 1>close my eyes and open them to see if it
<v Speaker 1>would go away, and they would feel like maybe a
<v Speaker 1>few minutes for it to like dissipate. Then it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>until my cousin came to live with us a few
<v Speaker 1>months after that. She had just had a baby, and
<v Speaker 1>Cho I'd moved here to be with family. At that point,
<v Speaker 1>me and her were sharing a room and so we
<v Speaker 1>had two twins kind of next to each other, with
<v Speaker 1>a little bit of walk room space in the middle.
<v Speaker 1>We had a bathroom right across the hall, and so
<v Speaker 1>we slept with the door open all the time. Well,
<v Speaker 1>that particular weekend, my parents left town, so it was
<v Speaker 1>just me and my cousin and her newborn baby. If
<v Speaker 1>that door was open, and you walk to the bathroom
<v Speaker 1>and you flick the light on, obviously that light find
<v Speaker 1>directly to where my bed is. The light flicked on,
<v Speaker 1>and so it woke me up, and so I just
<v Speaker 1>kind of was trying to turn away from the light.
<v Speaker 1>I turned over to my side, to my right side
<v Speaker 1>because that's where she was sleeping, tried to get comfortable again,
<v Speaker 1>and I opened my eyes and she was laying there
<v Speaker 1>with her baby, wide awake, and I looked and I
<v Speaker 1>was so confused because there's no one supposed to be
<v Speaker 1>in this house besides me and her. When I looked
<v Speaker 1>at her, and I kind of was like trying to
<v Speaker 1>wake up and being like, wait, what's happening? And she
<v Speaker 1>looked at me and just put her finger over her
<v Speaker 1>mouth to be quiet. You could hear someone walking around
<v Speaker 1>in the bathroom, and then you could hear them me
<v Speaker 1>in the bathroom. I had like the curiosity, like I
<v Speaker 1>want to see because all I had to do is
<v Speaker 1>turn to look to see who it is. The toilet flushed,
<v Speaker 1>you could hear the steps, the light turned on, and
<v Speaker 1>there was nobody that came out of that bathroom. And
<v Speaker 1>I just stared at that empty walkway right there to
<v Speaker 1>the bathroom, and no one ever came out. I turned
<v Speaker 1>back over and me and her stayed away, staring at
<v Speaker 1>each other. The entire night after that, I would be
<v Speaker 1>in the living room by myself, watching TV and we
<v Speaker 1>had like this long, old style, shaggy carpet in this apartment.
<v Speaker 1>I would hear footsteps of that carpet that I would
<v Speaker 1>never see somebody, and it sounded like they were walking
<v Speaker 1>right away around me, and I could never tell what
<v Speaker 1>it was. It was like my body would realize that
<v Speaker 1>it was something not natural, Like you know, when you
<v Speaker 1>hear footsteps, you were going to assume it's a family member,
<v Speaker 1>so you would turn a look. And it never felt
<v Speaker 1>that way. It was always like I thought the feeling
<v Speaker 1>right before I would experience these things like the footsteps,
<v Speaker 1>like the hair on the back of my neck would
<v Speaker 1>stand up, I would freeze, and there was always this
<v Speaker 1>really eerie, deafening silence. I lived like that for six
<v Speaker 1>months living in that apartment. One Christmas, we were all
<v Speaker 1>making thamas and sitting around the table and just chatting
<v Speaker 1>it up. My mom starts talking about how she's been
<v Speaker 1>experiencing things around the apartment. My dad was a very
<v Speaker 1>non believer. He's a big Christian man. He never wanted
<v Speaker 1>to talk about stuff like that. He was like, what
<v Speaker 1>are you talking about? Nothing happened in this apartment, And
<v Speaker 1>she was like, oh, I woke up the other night,
<v Speaker 1>and I turned over and I saw a man standing
<v Speaker 1>by this big dresser that they used to own, wearing
<v Speaker 1>a hat. She called him the cowboy, a shadowy figure,
<v Speaker 1>and you could see like the cowboy hat right there
<v Speaker 1>right by her bed. She turned over to like wake
<v Speaker 1>my dad up. End When they both turned around, he
<v Speaker 1>was no longer there. When I remember just sitting there
<v Speaker 1>silent because as people were coming with their stories, I
<v Speaker 1>started to feel relief, But at the same time, I
<v Speaker 1>felt so much dread because I knew that it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>just my imagination that other people were experiencing this in
<v Speaker 1>the apartment. And in that moment when everyone's sitting there
<v Speaker 1>hearing their stories of what was going on, the blender
<v Speaker 1>in the kitchen turned on and just completely fell off
<v Speaker 1>the counter and it wasn't even plugged in. Whatever it was,
<v Speaker 1>whatever entity, whatever spirit it really liked to isolate us.
<v Speaker 1>But that moment that we all started sharing our experiences,
<v Speaker 1>it bot mad that it couldn't fully us individually anymore.
<v Speaker 1>That's when it started to like pamp up a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>The apartment that we lived in was on the second story,
<v Speaker 1>and so to get to our apartment you had to
<v Speaker 1>go up the stairs and cross which would be the
<v Speaker 1>master windows to the door. There's a light out there,
<v Speaker 1>so at night, when the light's on, you can see
<v Speaker 1>when somebody's gonna come and knock on the door. My
<v Speaker 1>uncle was supposed to come over that night to give
<v Speaker 1>my dad a check or something. I remember we were
<v Speaker 1>waiting for him and we're sitting in that master bedroom
<v Speaker 1>watching TV when we see the shadow of somebody coming
<v Speaker 1>to the door. My dad, you know, veudged me, and
<v Speaker 1>he's like, hey, your uncle's here, will you open the
<v Speaker 1>door real quick. I jump up as I'm running to
<v Speaker 1>the door, I'm like, side by side the shadow to
<v Speaker 1>the door, and I open it real quick before he
<v Speaker 1>can knock, and there's nobody there. After my dad experiencing
<v Speaker 1>something like that, I think it really scared him because
<v Speaker 1>shortly after he started to see things himself which hadn't
<v Speaker 1>happened yet. He would see what he believed my mother
<v Speaker 1>going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
<v Speaker 1>All of a sudden, my mom would be walking in
<v Speaker 1>from the living room, the bathroom light is on, the
<v Speaker 1>door shut, like he thought, the back of a woman
<v Speaker 1>that looked very similar to my mother go into the bathroom,
<v Speaker 1>shut the door, and there would be nobody in the bathroom.
<v Speaker 1>Things like that continuously kept happening. At that point, I
<v Speaker 1>was sleeping under bed all the time because I was terrified,
<v Speaker 1>Like I obviously knew this wasn't a dream anymore, it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't my imagination. So I would sleep between them a lot.
<v Speaker 1>And there would be times where I wake up because
<v Speaker 1>I hear somebody walking and I can hear the carpet,
<v Speaker 1>and I would get up and sit straight up and
<v Speaker 1>just kind of like follow the sound to see if
<v Speaker 1>I could see anything. I would never be able to
<v Speaker 1>see anything, and I would notice my dad's awakened, like
<v Speaker 1>maybe you hear that. He's like, just go to bed,
<v Speaker 1>Just go to bed, it's fine, So he would brush
<v Speaker 1>it off a lot to not draw attention to it.
<v Speaker 1>I guess the last instance in that apartment, my sister
<v Speaker 1>had come over to spend time with me, and my
<v Speaker 1>cousin and my mom were sitting in the living room.
<v Speaker 1>So that bathroom that's like right across the hall from
<v Speaker 1>my bedroom, that's behind us, the kitchens a little bit
<v Speaker 1>in front of us, towards the right side, and so
<v Speaker 1>we're just sitting watching the TV, and all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 1>we hear slates breaking a ton of the three of
<v Speaker 1>us get up and look in the kitchen and I'm like, Mom,
<v Speaker 1>are you okay? Like what happened? She looked up at
<v Speaker 1>us and she's like, that wasn't me. And the bathroom
<v Speaker 1>door right across from my room shook us. Immediately after
<v Speaker 1>she says that, we walk over and we're trying to
<v Speaker 1>open the bathroom door and it won't budge. We're trying
<v Speaker 1>with all of our way, each of us take turns,
<v Speaker 1>and it just won't open. And so my mom at
<v Speaker 1>this point is really freaked out, so she calls nine
<v Speaker 1>to one one. They came out and they could not
<v Speaker 1>open the door without breaking it down. They use an
<v Speaker 1>axe to break the door down, and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>this is insane, Like what is happening? There was nothing
<v Speaker 1>in there, nothing holding the door back. Like. They couldn't
<v Speaker 1>explain like what was going on. And so as soon
<v Speaker 1>as they got through that door, they noticed that the
<v Speaker 1>mirror in the bathroom, that huge mirror, it had broken
<v Speaker 1>and shattered all over the floor. My mom was livid
<v Speaker 1>because she was saying, like, what if one of my
<v Speaker 1>kids was in there? Like they would have gotten extremely hurt.
<v Speaker 1>The apartment complex had their insurance people come out and
<v Speaker 1>look at it, and they said that the screws that
<v Speaker 1>held the mirror in place, they were screws, like actual screws,
<v Speaker 1>these plastic bits that were screwed into the wall, they
<v Speaker 1>had been turned, and so they started to blame my
<v Speaker 1>mother that she was responsible for the damages of that mirror,
<v Speaker 1>because obviously somebody had gone in there loosened those screws
<v Speaker 1>and moved the plastic pieces for it to be able
<v Speaker 1>to fall. My mom was arguing back and forth for
<v Speaker 1>like a week with the apartment complex because she was like,
<v Speaker 1>how could somebody possibly go loosen it for the knobs
<v Speaker 1>and run out before the mirror came back and broke
<v Speaker 1>on them, Like it's not physically possible. We moved out
<v Speaker 1>maybe two weeks after that. We ended up moving. It
<v Speaker 1>was in the same building, just a different apartment because
<v Speaker 1>we couldn't really afford to go anywhere else. I still
<v Speaker 1>suffered sleep paralysis pretty bad. I remember this distinctive one
<v Speaker 1>where I was watching myself sleep and all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 1>this black, shadowy figure came over me and like grabbed
<v Speaker 1>me by my wrists. I woke up in that moment
<v Speaker 1>that it grabbed me. I was almost in a star shape.
<v Speaker 1>When I woke up, I could feel the pressure of
<v Speaker 1>where it had grabbed me in the dream on my arms.
<v Speaker 1>That pressure was still there, and I remember when I
<v Speaker 1>woke up really quickly, I was covered in sweat, cold,
<v Speaker 1>cold sweat. I tried to scream because I slept with
<v Speaker 1>the door open right especially after all this had happened,
<v Speaker 1>so my parents were just down the hall. Nothing came out.
<v Speaker 1>Somehow I ended up falling back asleep. I woke up
<v Speaker 1>and I could still feel that pressure on my arms.
<v Speaker 1>Shortly after that, I think we stayed in that apartment
<v Speaker 1>complex just another six months and we moved to a
<v Speaker 1>house maybe ten minutes from there. Things just felt first.
<v Speaker 1>It was my freshman year of high school and we
<v Speaker 1>had moved into this beautiful home and it was so lovely.
<v Speaker 1>The neighborhood was brand new. We started really going to
<v Speaker 1>church a lot. My mother was Catholic. She left Catholicism
<v Speaker 1>and just strictly Christian, so we started going to this
<v Speaker 1>new church all the time. I really enjoyed the church.
<v Speaker 1>It was great. I started noticing my parents would argue
<v Speaker 1>a lot on Sundays over anything, over my mom taking
<v Speaker 1>too long, over my dad not being ready. It changed
<v Speaker 1>every weekend. There was one specific one where I remember
<v Speaker 1>them being really mad at each other, and that wasn't
<v Speaker 1>very normal for my parents. I woke up, I got
<v Speaker 1>changed for church, and I walked out of my bedroom.
<v Speaker 1>The layout was kind of weird, so you walked into
<v Speaker 1>the living room and if you rounded the bend, the
<v Speaker 1>kitchen was out of you. But I could hear them
<v Speaker 1>in the kitchen going at it straight through the living room.
<v Speaker 1>Our backyard there was like a door. I noticed this
<v Speaker 1>black cat sitting there by the door, super green eyes.
<v Speaker 1>So I was like, oh, look at the kiddie. And
<v Speaker 1>I go over to the cat and I start like
<v Speaker 1>tapping on the window, like you know, here, get a kiddy,
<v Speaker 1>And it wouldn't look at me, and I noticed that
<v Speaker 1>it was just dead staring at my parents arguing, And
<v Speaker 1>then I got this weird thought in my head. I
<v Speaker 1>remember thinking, that's not a cat. You're not a cat.
<v Speaker 1>It looked right at me as I thought it like
<v Speaker 1>it looked through me. I remember feeling so much dread
<v Speaker 1>when it looked at me, and I got almost angry
<v Speaker 1>because at that point we hadn't experienced anything in the house.
<v Speaker 1>I opened the backyard door and shooted away and it
<v Speaker 1>went and it curked up on the fence, just staring
<v Speaker 1>at me. When it took off. I told my dad
<v Speaker 1>about the experience, and I was like, hey, I would
<v Speaker 1>really like a dog, you know, just to kind of
<v Speaker 1>keep the cats away. So we got Sadie and she
<v Speaker 1>was my first dog. Even when we got a dog,
<v Speaker 1>it never it never went away. We would catch her
<v Speaker 1>barking outside a lot in the specific part of our fence.
<v Speaker 1>Every time we'd go and check. It was always like
<v Speaker 1>two three in the morning that she would go crazy
<v Speaker 1>in the backyard. I mean like super feral at the fence.
<v Speaker 1>I always felt like it was like something demonic, that cat.
<v Speaker 1>But it was never allowed back into the fence because
<v Speaker 1>my dog would try to get it. It would try to
<v Speaker 1>get it all the time. There was one night that
<v Speaker 1>my mom said that she heard Sadie barking like crazy,
<v Speaker 1>and so she went out to check on her to
<v Speaker 1>make sure that an animal had been in the backyard.
<v Speaker 1>She turned on the floodlight that illuminated the entire backyard,
<v Speaker 1>and she saw a shadow on the fence. There was
<v Speaker 1>no way that shadow could be there because the light
<v Speaker 1>is illuminating everything. It was standing on the fence and
<v Speaker 1>then it ran off into the shadows. We understood why
<v Speaker 1>she was barking because obviously she was seeing something and
<v Speaker 1>my mom had seen it too. After that, the experiences
<v Speaker 1>in the house started when I became friends with my neighbor.
<v Speaker 1>She started going to church with me a lot. One day,
<v Speaker 1>she comes over to my house pretty frantic. She was like, well,
<v Speaker 1>I haven't been wanting to tell you, but ever since
<v Speaker 1>I started going to church with you, I feel like
<v Speaker 1>a lot of weird stuff has been happening to me.
<v Speaker 1>There was this one time that I came home from
<v Speaker 1>school with my parents and my brothers weren't back yet.
<v Speaker 1>And her layout is very similar to my layout of
<v Speaker 1>the house, where if you're standing washing dishes, you can
<v Speaker 1>have a clear view of the backyard and you know
<v Speaker 1>the door. She said she was doing dishes and she
<v Speaker 1>looked out she saw a little boy in her backyard
<v Speaker 1>playing with a ball. The way her house was positioned,
<v Speaker 1>it was at the end of the street, so her
<v Speaker 1>regular garage, and on the side there was like an
<v Speaker 1>outdoor made from wood garage, and it basically had one
<v Speaker 1>of those steaks that came into the ground, so to
<v Speaker 1>open that door you'd have to lift the metal steak
<v Speaker 1>out of the ground and push it, and it was
<v Speaker 1>a heavy door. She walked out to be like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>you can't be here. She saw that little boy run
<v Speaker 1>that way, so she followed him. That ball that he
<v Speaker 1>was holding was on the floor in the corner. A
<v Speaker 1>little boy was nowhere to be seen. A week later,
<v Speaker 1>she said that she was using her guest bathroom when
<v Speaker 1>she got up to pull her pants up. She said
<v Speaker 1>she felt a pressure on her leg, an immense pressure.
<v Speaker 1>So she looked down to look at her leg, and
<v Speaker 1>that little boy was wrapped around it, hugging her leg.
<v Speaker 1>She freaked out so bad that she was trying to
<v Speaker 1>get him off of her, but she fell backwards into
<v Speaker 1>the tub and brought the whole rod down with her.
<v Speaker 1>At that point, that's when she had come over to
<v Speaker 1>my house because she was so scared. She didn't want
<v Speaker 1>to be by herself anymore. One time we were in
<v Speaker 1>the pool, me and her. We were getting in an
<v Speaker 1>argument about something. I couldn't even tell you what it is.
<v Speaker 1>It's been so long now but she basically was like, well,
<v Speaker 1>I hope that little boy follows you home. I remember
<v Speaker 1>like being so mad, and I was like, why would
<v Speaker 1>you say that, and she was like, yeah, I hope
<v Speaker 1>he follows you home because I'm tired of this. And
<v Speaker 1>sure enough, he did follow me home. My bedroom is
<v Speaker 1>also attached to my brother's bedroom. I'm on one side.
<v Speaker 1>There's a long hallway all the way towards the back.
<v Speaker 1>His bedroom is there, and then there's a bathroom between
<v Speaker 1>her two bedrooms. I had the door open in my
<v Speaker 1>bedroom and I was watching a TV show. I was
<v Speaker 1>wanting it to cut to commercial because I had to
<v Speaker 1>go to the bathroom really bad. I had been holding
<v Speaker 1>it the whole time, but I didn't want to miss
<v Speaker 1>like a single minute of this episode. I'm sitting there
<v Speaker 1>and I'm kind of doing the pee dance when my
<v Speaker 1>door's open. All of a sudden, out of the corner
<v Speaker 1>of my eye, I can see my nephew walking towards
<v Speaker 1>the bathroom, and I'm like, dang, he beat me to it,
<v Speaker 1>you know. I run immediately to my mom's bathroom because
<v Speaker 1>I had got to go. I get there, I opened
<v Speaker 1>her bedroom door when my nephew is sitting on the bed.
<v Speaker 1>I remember looking at him and I was like, did
<v Speaker 1>you use the bathroom that fast? And he's like, I
<v Speaker 1>didn't go to the bathroom. And then I went into
<v Speaker 1>her bathroom, and my mom's in the bathroom, so it
<v Speaker 1>was just the three of us at home. I remember
<v Speaker 1>thinking about that instance a lot and just kind of
<v Speaker 1>letting it go because I really didn't want it to
<v Speaker 1>be true. I didn't want to think that he actually
<v Speaker 1>followed me home. I could be doing anything, watching TV
<v Speaker 1>in the living room, and I would see out of
<v Speaker 1>like the peripheral of my eye, the shape of a
<v Speaker 1>little boy walking by. My brother. He's older. I believe
<v Speaker 1>he was going into the Marines when he was home
<v Speaker 1>from basic training and I was home alone again, and
<v Speaker 1>so he was like, Hey, do you want to do
<v Speaker 1>it like a movie night? And I was like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>let's do it. So he stayed up all night watching
<v Speaker 1>horror movies and he fell asleep in the living room.
<v Speaker 1>The next morning, I get up, he still passed out
<v Speaker 1>on the couch, and so I go and start making pancakes.
<v Speaker 1>He starts waking up and he goes, I didn't know
<v Speaker 1>my nephew. I didn't know he stayed. I saw him
<v Speaker 1>in the middle of the night. He was standing right
<v Speaker 1>there in the hallway by your bedroom, and I was like, no,
<v Speaker 1>he wasn't because he's not here. My nephew did not
<v Speaker 1>stay the night, and he was like, yes, he did.
<v Speaker 1>I woke up in the morning and I looked over
<v Speaker 1>and he was standing there, and I told him go
<v Speaker 1>to bed, it's late, and he turned around and went
<v Speaker 1>into your bedroom. I didn't tell my brother about anything
<v Speaker 1>that happened. My brother is very He does not believe
<v Speaker 1>in that at all, and at the time he was
<v Speaker 1>an atheist. He just did not believe in any of it.
<v Speaker 1>So I just kind of kept thinking to myself. I
<v Speaker 1>had a best friend at the time in high school.
<v Speaker 1>She came and spent the night with me and my
<v Speaker 1>mom because my dad was away for the weekend. We
<v Speaker 1>were trying to open this bag of chicken nuggets and
<v Speaker 1>it was like a really thick wag. So I was like,
<v Speaker 1>will you go to my desk and just grab the
<v Speaker 1>parisis ands that are on it? And she goes ow
<v Speaker 1>be right back. She goes to my bedroom and she
<v Speaker 1>comes back. She is like white as a ghost. She
<v Speaker 1>was gripping the scissors really hard. She's like, there's a
<v Speaker 1>little boy standing in the hallway. She was completely freaked
<v Speaker 1>out because she had never in her life experienced anything
<v Speaker 1>like that. That made her turn to God because she
<v Speaker 1>was just like, it was a gliss you know, something
<v Speaker 1>exists out there, and so that was a pretty bad
<v Speaker 1>experience for her. She didn't want to spend the night,
<v Speaker 1>so we all ended up spending the night in the
<v Speaker 1>living room for all of us to stay together. One time,
<v Speaker 1>we had a few of our church members come and
<v Speaker 1>we read the Bible, we prayed. I think it was
<v Speaker 1>like in the middle of worship that we heard the
<v Speaker 1>phone go off. It sounded like, you know, a pop song,
<v Speaker 1>like a woman singing. My dad glared at me and
<v Speaker 1>he's like, I told you to turn your cellphone off.
<v Speaker 1>Sure enough, my phone was off, but that singing was
<v Speaker 1>coming from like behind where the group was, towards the chimney.
<v Speaker 1>I remember everyone in that your group burning and looking
<v Speaker 1>from where the singing was going on. Behind the wall
<v Speaker 1>of the chimney is the yard, so it's like right
<v Speaker 1>against that wall. And so my dad and you know,
<v Speaker 1>a couple of the guys got up and went to
<v Speaker 1>the backyard and nothing. We didn't know where the sound
<v Speaker 1>came from. Me and my dad loved to prank each other,
<v Speaker 1>especially back then. We did it all the time. One day,
<v Speaker 1>he goes to my uncle's house. Me and my mom
<v Speaker 1>were sitting in her room watching TV, and all of
<v Speaker 1>a sudden, you hear like a man whistling. Her door
<v Speaker 1>is open, so the living room is completely pitch black.
<v Speaker 1>My mom nudges me and she goes, it's your dad
<v Speaker 1>trying to scare us again. Yep, sure is, And I'm like, haha, Dad,
<v Speaker 1>very funny, you got us and we heard nothing. So
<v Speaker 1>I pull out my cell phone and my dad always
<v Speaker 1>has his phone on loud, so I call him and
<v Speaker 1>it starts ringing, and then he picks up and he's like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>i'll be home in ten minutes. I'm almost done here.
<v Speaker 1>And he hangs up. And my mom heard the phone call.
<v Speaker 1>She was like, then, what is no one? And I
<v Speaker 1>remember getting up and I shut the door and I
<v Speaker 1>locked it and we stayed there until my dad came home.
<v Speaker 1>It was just stuff like that that happened all the time,
<v Speaker 1>and we just kind of like learned to live with it.
<v Speaker 1>My sister ended up moving in to that house for
<v Speaker 1>a while, and there was one weekend where her kids
<v Speaker 1>were with their dad and I was home alone, so
<v Speaker 1>it's just me and her for that weekend. She had
<v Speaker 1>come home from the club around two am and she
<v Speaker 1>had gotten a ride from a friend. She was pretty toasted.
<v Speaker 1>She comes into my bedroom and starts telling me about
<v Speaker 1>her night. And she's talking to me, I start hearing
<v Speaker 1>this tea kettle sound like when you're boiling water in
<v Speaker 1>a kettle, and it starts to like whistle, and I
<v Speaker 1>could faintly start hearing that. I catch her looking towards
<v Speaker 1>the door, and she's like, are you making tea? And
<v Speaker 1>I was like, we don't have a tea kettle and
<v Speaker 1>it stops and she's like, hm, must be the TV.
<v Speaker 1>She kept on going on about her night, and all
<v Speaker 1>of a sudden, I hear these heavy footsteps. It sounded
<v Speaker 1>like starched pants walking. As she's talking to me, I'm
<v Speaker 1>like listening to these things. When she looks over back
<v Speaker 1>at the door and she's like, what is that When
<v Speaker 1>the footsteps start to get faster, like it's running to
<v Speaker 1>the room, and out of instinct, I got up and
<v Speaker 1>I shut the door and locked it, and the footsteps stopped.
<v Speaker 1>She was screaming her head off. She was so scared,
<v Speaker 1>and that wasn't helping me because I'm like in fight
<v Speaker 1>or flight mode at this point. She was like, we
<v Speaker 1>have to call the cops. We have to call the cops.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, and say what, the doors were locked.
<v Speaker 1>There's nobody in here. And I was like, okay, listen,
<v Speaker 1>in two minutes, we're going to run out the door,
<v Speaker 1>like run out of my bedroom and run out the
<v Speaker 1>front door and just book it to the gas station,
<v Speaker 1>which was like maybe a two minute walk from where
<v Speaker 1>we were at. So I opened the door. She takes
<v Speaker 1>off running before I do, and then I follow her.
<v Speaker 1>As I'm running, I see that the back door is
<v Speaker 1>wide open, the TV is at max volume, and all
<v Speaker 1>of the lights are on, like in the entire house,
<v Speaker 1>all the lights have been turned on. I start running
<v Speaker 1>behind her. When we get to the end of our
<v Speaker 1>street wise stop and I'm like, king on. I remember
<v Speaker 1>standing there and trying to collect my thoughts of what
<v Speaker 1>to do. All of a sudden, you could hear those
<v Speaker 1>same footsteps running towards us in the darkness. We took
<v Speaker 1>off running to the gas station. Once we got there,
<v Speaker 1>we ended up calling some friends and they ended up
<v Speaker 1>coming when we found the house just as had found it.
<v Speaker 1>When we ran out of that room, all the lights
<v Speaker 1>were on, the TV was at max volume. There was
<v Speaker 1>no do there. I remember that the most terrifying experience
<v Speaker 1>that I had had there because I had never really
<v Speaker 1>been aggressive since the apartment, but whatever that was, the
<v Speaker 1>presence was heavy, dense. It was awful when my sister
<v Speaker 1>has never forgotten that experience, like she still talks about
<v Speaker 1>it till this day. There was a one specific time
<v Speaker 1>that I had this stream we were in that house.
<v Speaker 1>I remember watching myself interact with my parents and bring
<v Speaker 1>me asked my dad if he could go to a concert,
<v Speaker 1>and my dad said, no, you can't go to the concert.
<v Speaker 1>You're going to stay home tonight. The person in my
<v Speaker 1>dream that's me literally grabs a bat and hit my
<v Speaker 1>dad over the back of the head with it, and
<v Speaker 1>my dad fell face first on the table. I remember
<v Speaker 1>thinking watching this happen, like what are you doing? Like
<v Speaker 1>you can't do that, Go to jail. That's a soul,
<v Speaker 1>like that's my dad, you know. It slowly starts to
<v Speaker 1>transform into something else because it doesn't any longer look
<v Speaker 1>like me. It looks almost twisted, like it was so distorted.
<v Speaker 1>It was weird. When then she turned to look at
<v Speaker 1>me with like this horrific smile, and in that moment,
<v Speaker 1>I knew wasn't me anymore that I was looking at
<v Speaker 1>when it stood there and it smiled at me, when
<v Speaker 1>I was so terrified that I just remember praying in
<v Speaker 1>that moment and I kept rebuking it in the name
<v Speaker 1>of Jesus, and the smile dropped from its face immediately.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that was the first time I saw it
<v Speaker 1>almost be scared. I woke up, and that was like
<v Speaker 1>my turning point of like, it really doesn't have power
<v Speaker 1>over me. You give stuff Moor, but things like that
<v Speaker 1>fed off your fear, and so let's start being scared.
<v Speaker 1>Halfway through high school, I was just tired this stuff
<v Speaker 1>would happen daily, and it was just so draining to
<v Speaker 1>be scared that I honestly was annoyed when it happened.
<v Speaker 1>All I feel something in the room, like a heavy presence.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, you don't belong here, and you're not allowed
<v Speaker 1>to be here, and you would go away like I
<v Speaker 1>would know longer feel a heavy presence or read or fear. Finally,
<v Speaker 1>we moved out to West Texas staking a break from college.
<v Speaker 1>But I moved here and my parents were renting out
<v Speaker 1>this old home. When I first moved in, we got
<v Speaker 1>another dog because our dog had tragically passed. I got
<v Speaker 1>him during October, and it's really cold out in West Texas,
<v Speaker 1>like if you get towards desert, like the cold is cold.
<v Speaker 1>That house was so old that the windows weren't properbly
<v Speaker 1>sealed anymore. But my parents weren't going to be the
<v Speaker 1>ceiling because they rented on this home, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>they didn't want to be the ones paying for it.
<v Speaker 1>So we would sleep with all these heavy Mexican blankets
<v Speaker 1>as it got colder in the like fall and winter.
<v Speaker 1>He was in my puppy shiner. He would sleep in
<v Speaker 1>the house. There was one night that he was sleeping
<v Speaker 1>on the bed just on the outside of the curvers.
<v Speaker 1>I felt him like adjust and then he kept adjusting,
<v Speaker 1>but he started like, instead of being on the side
<v Speaker 1>of me, he started adjusting on me. He wasn't super small,
<v Speaker 1>he was a German shepherd puppy, but they get pig
<v Speaker 1>pretty fast, and so I was like trying to move
<v Speaker 1>him while these blankets are on top of my head,
<v Speaker 1>like because it's super cold. I'm literally trying to adjust
<v Speaker 1>him and move him to the side, and he just
<v Speaker 1>keeps coming back up as I'm pushing him down. He
<v Speaker 1>settles for a little bit, and then he's trying to
<v Speaker 1>adjust on top of me, and at one point he
<v Speaker 1>is like directly on top of my face. And I
<v Speaker 1>got really tired of adjusting him. So I was like,
<v Speaker 1>all right, you're going You're going to go and sleep
<v Speaker 1>down in the floor, and so I go to take
<v Speaker 1>off my blankets. But as I'm doing that, I'm also
<v Speaker 1>pushing him down. He ended up falling and I heard
<v Speaker 1>him with the ground pretty hard, and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>I think I just heard him. I didn't mean to
<v Speaker 1>like fling him off of me. So I get up
<v Speaker 1>and I'm trying to like beckon him with my hand,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, obviously he went under the bed, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because I can't see him immediately on on the floor,
<v Speaker 1>and so I was like, I'm shiner, I'm sorry, you
<v Speaker 1>can sleep on the bed. Like I didn't even to
<v Speaker 1>sling you off that hard. She wouldn't come. I get up,
<v Speaker 1>turn on the light, and get on my hands and
<v Speaker 1>knees and look under the bed to be like, come on, puppy,
<v Speaker 1>and he was not there. In my bedroom door is shut.
<v Speaker 1>Where is this dog? Like? Get up, open the door,
<v Speaker 1>walk to my parents' bedroom, and he is sleeping on
<v Speaker 1>the foot of my parents' bed. I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>it's followed us or it's just I always like to
<v Speaker 1>believe that I was just always sensitive. My mother's always
<v Speaker 1>been sensitive to things like this. I've been sensitive my
<v Speaker 1>main babysitter when I was over. Every time my mom
<v Speaker 1>would go pick her up, she's like, have you taken
<v Speaker 1>her to get baptized? Because she says stuff that scares me.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes grabbed my husband's stomach the other day and said
<v Speaker 1>that he was gonna die, and it made us really uncomfortable.
<v Speaker 1>Granted I'm three years old at this point, and my
<v Speaker 1>mom's like, I'm so sorry, Like, yes, I'll take her
<v Speaker 1>to church. Her husband died of step cancer three years later.
<v Speaker 1>She used to tell me like that she believed in reincarnation.
<v Speaker 1>Like she used to tell me, like, I really think
<v Speaker 1>that you were born with a gift. A bonne in
<v Speaker 1>our culture is what they called it. There was one
<v Speaker 1>day that she asked me, I'm two years old, and
<v Speaker 1>she walks up and she asked me, who are you?
<v Speaker 1>Not what's my name? But if you went up to
<v Speaker 1>a kid and been like, who are you, the kid
<v Speaker 1>would respond, I'm Kiara, I'm two years old, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like a normal answer. And I looked at her and
<v Speaker 1>I said, you know who I am. She believed that
<v Speaker 1>it was her younger brother who had died of leukemia
<v Speaker 1>when he was really young. She said that I had
<v Speaker 1>like that same look in my eye, like it didn't
<v Speaker 1>look like a kid, like it was really weird. And
<v Speaker 1>I mean, obviously don't remember any of this stuff. My
<v Speaker 1>mom said that I used to walk around with like
<v Speaker 1>a deck of cards when I was younger, like three
<v Speaker 1>four around there. And at the time, my sister and
<v Speaker 1>my cousin who I've talked about previously, they are both
<v Speaker 1>the same age, and so they were with their future
<v Speaker 1>baby daddies when I was younger. They were with them
<v Speaker 1>for a long time. They were already kind of dating.
<v Speaker 1>Then when I was this age and my thing comes
<v Speaker 1>up to me and she's like, well, why don't you
<v Speaker 1>tell me my future? And I literally looked at her
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, your boyfriend's never going to stay
<v Speaker 1>with you and did it like they had babies and everything,
<v Speaker 1>but he did not stay with her when she would
<v Speaker 1>always call me a witch. She did not like to
<v Speaker 1>be around me at all. I feel like a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people were scared of me when I was really young.
<v Speaker 1>But the younger thing, I can't explain it, like why
<v Speaker 1>don't I remember this stuff unless there was somebody else's
<v Speaker 1>spirit there. I think it is God given. I don't
<v Speaker 1>say just anyone has it, but it is pretty terrifying
<v Speaker 1>having it as a kid, because you feel really cursed.
<v Speaker 1>You feel scared all the time. And I remember feeling
<v Speaker 1>terrified a lot of my childhood, and then when I
<v Speaker 1>got older, it just, I don't know, it kind of
<v Speaker 1>became like this normal, and I don't fear it anymore.
<v Speaker 1>I believe in God, and I believe that there's another side,
<v Speaker 1>but I don't believe in religion per se. That it
<v Speaker 1>is a bone. I don't know what else it could be.
<v Speaker 1>There are still times where so weird that I can
<v Speaker 1>feel sleep proassis come on, I want to see. A
<v Speaker 1>couple of months ago, it was the first time in
<v Speaker 1>years since I've experienced that, and I was falling asleep
<v Speaker 1>and all of a sudden, I could hear a woman laughing,
<v Speaker 1>but I was in that in between of almost asleep
<v Speaker 1>but not quite there, and I could hear her laughing
<v Speaker 1>in my ear. So I woke up real quick and
<v Speaker 1>I felt my legs. They were super super heavy, and
<v Speaker 1>I was like, oh, no, you don't not in this house.
<v Speaker 1>I've been living in my apartment with my husband for
<v Speaker 1>one on five years. That's the first time that that's
<v Speaker 1>happened to me in years, and so I was so
<v Speaker 1>upset that this was happening now because I haven't had
<v Speaker 1>anything paranormal really here in my home, which I it
<v Speaker 1>is my safe space. I make sure I pray all
<v Speaker 1>the time, and I'm like, hey, like this is a
<v Speaker 1>house of God. Like nothing negative I do not accept.
<v Speaker 1>Like I have one of those evil eye hanging above
<v Speaker 1>my doorway, my front door, I'd like make sure to
<v Speaker 1>keep bad vibes out of my house, Like I just
<v Speaker 1>don't like taking that stuff home, Like I know what
<v Speaker 1>it is to live with that kind of stuff. So
<v Speaker 1>I'm really particular about things like that. But I was
<v Speaker 1>so mad when that happened to me a couple of
<v Speaker 1>months ago that I forced myself to like sit up
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, get out of my house, like
<v Speaker 1>whatever you are, you are not welcome here, and it
<v Speaker 1>cletely went away. I'm really quick to shut it down
<v Speaker 1>because I don't like, like it's almost like you don't
<v Speaker 1>have a choice whether to be scared when you're in
<v Speaker 1>a full sleep paralysis, Like it's fear off the bat,
<v Speaker 1>and that is such a horrible feeling. I always know
<v Speaker 1>that it's something paranormal about to happen to me because
<v Speaker 1>my body reacts before my mind does. The hair on
<v Speaker 1>the back of my neck stands up, my body freezes,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean, Like a fear like but
<v Speaker 1>the deafening silence that when that happens to it. It
<v Speaker 1>didn't happen a whole lot, but I remember the handful
<v Speaker 1>of times where it's so silent, the stones was loud,
<v Speaker 1>like it was deafening. It's it's that's like the worst.
<v Speaker 1>I hate that. I don't know why that happens, but
<v Speaker 1>I hate the feeling. The feeling's awful. When I've talked
<v Speaker 1>to really close friends about their experiences, I can feel
<v Speaker 1>their fear like it's palpable. And maybe that's because I'm
<v Speaker 1>sensitive or something, but I'm like Okay, stop right there.
<v Speaker 1>You were Okay, you're safe, but you got to lose
<v Speaker 1>that because like here is contagious. I don't really think
<v Speaker 1>anything could hurt you unless you let it, Like you
<v Speaker 1>have to give it consent. There are some stuff that
<v Speaker 1>we can't control. But when I was younger, I got
<v Speaker 1>into like demonology and loved like learning as much as
<v Speaker 1>I could because I didn't want to be spared anymore.
<v Speaker 1>Let me tell you, looking into that stuff get scary
<v Speaker 1>for Catholicism, Like I've done my research in that and
<v Speaker 1>apparently demonic possession. They are not allowed to possess you
<v Speaker 1>unless you get the permission, And a lot of the
<v Speaker 1>time it's not so straightforward as in, you know, I
<v Speaker 1>give you permission to possess me. It comes out of
<v Speaker 1>fear of you, feeling unworthy of you, feeling guilt. Same
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of people believe that that's why people
<v Speaker 1>get possessed, because they did something so horrible in their
<v Speaker 1>life that they don't deserve to be loved by God.
<v Speaker 1>And it's almost like inviting it.
<v Speaker 2>In Thank you Kiara for sharing your experience with us.
<v Speaker 2>If you have a true scary story that you want
<v Speaker 2>to tell, please go to true scarystory dot com and
<v Speaker 2>fill out the form. As always, you can support the
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<v Speaker 2>nine a month after that. Cancel whenever you want. Scheduling
<v Speaker 2>for this episode was by Bianca Chavez. Editing and sound
<v Speaker 2>designed by Sarah Vorhez Wendel from VW Sound. An additional
<v Speaker 2>production by me Edwin Karrubias and the Scary FM team.
<v Speaker 2>If you're subscribed, we'll be back next week with another story.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone,
<v Speaker 2>see us sooner