Ghost Story Time

I was in 2nd grade. My older brother and I shared a room and the same bed. One night I couldn’t sleep for shit, I look over at him and he’s knocked the fuck out in dreamland. Our house at that time is located on a bend, so when a car goes down our street, the lights would shine in our room and project on our wall.

Yellow box: Our window (there used to be short bushes in front of our window)

A few cars go down our street. As I was watching the lights projecting on our wall I was staring at the shadows it created. I could see the shadows of the bushes and the blinds. The last car follows through, it was a little slower than the first. I was waiting to see the same image from the light but instead I was shocked. As the car slowly cruised around the bend, the shadow I saw on the wall was two arms and hands pulling a chain. The same motion a person would make to open a gate to a drawbridge in a castle.

(The only good photo I could find to explain the motion lol)

I fucking froze. I felt electricity flowing through my whole body, I wanted to move but couldn’t. Though I was frozen in shock, I was able to move my eyes. Still staring at the wall I look over by our door which was always left open, and I see a dark outline. I finally turn my head and there stood a tall dark mass against the wall at the edge of our door, as if it was staring at me. It was so tall it looked like its “head” was touching the ceiling and had to hunch over to peer into our room. I started screaming and woke up everyone in my house. I was hiding under the blanket and I remember my brother punching me for abruptly waking him.

Black box – Our room
Brown box – Our bed
Grey line – Me
Green line – My brother
White box – Window
Red line – Door
Yellow line – Light projection
Purple line – Shadows on wall
Blue line: Tall dark figure

Months go by and some pipes burst under our house, flooding it. We had to rip out all the carpet and dry everything we had that was on the floor by using the fire place in our living room. My mother slept in the living room by herself on the couch. She wakes up in the middle of the night because she felt a presence. She looks at the fire place and there she sees a tall figure standing next to it. She closes her eyes and starts praying. When she opens her eyes again, it’s gone. Prior to all of these events my mother always told us that she felt some kind of presence in the house. Days go by, our landlord was taking too long to replace the pipes and carpet so we decided to move. On the day we were moving our landlord decides to stop by to say farewell. My mother and the landlord were conversing for a while and when she finally left my mother pulled all of us aside and says “The landlord told me the person who used to live in this house before us was a tall elderly man. He died in this house.”

I remember that night vividly. I can still picture the hands and the links in the chain in my head. The way the tall figure had to bend his neck to the side and hunched over to look into our room still gives me chills just talking about it. I can only imagine the tall figure I saw was the old man who died in the house (I hope). But what puzzles me is what were the arms and chains I saw? What did it represent? Was that even him?