Since it’s Halloween I thought I’d share a true scary tale. What I am about to share with you is a true story.
One evening my friend and I were watching the Miss America pageant on TV while we were babysitting my siblings. We were probably twelve at the time.
Our television was in the basement. The basement had just one set of stairs that we could use an escape route if needed. At the top of the stairs was an entrance that led to the kitchen, and a door that led to the garage.
That door always frightened us kids because it had a glass window. When it was dark in the garage we were sure someone could be out there watching us. Yet, we couldn’t see him because he hid behind a shield of darkness while we were bathed in light.
About half way through the pageant I heard the door leading from the garage, slowly open. My friend and I glanced at each other with looks that said, “Did you just hear that?” Then my little brother said, “Leisa, someone’s up stairs.”
We froze and listened as we heard foot steps walk through the kitchen, to the living room, and then down the hall to the bedrooms. We heard the dresser drawers sliding open and closed as the intruder went through them.
Here we were, five kids, all alone in a house with a frightening stranger!
We contemplated creeping up the stairs, and out through the garage. But what if the intruder wasn’t alone? We thought about hiding under the stairs and waiting until my parents came home.
Ultimately decided to call for help. Luckily there was a phone in my dad’s basement office. Now this was before they had the 911 system so we weren’t sure exactly who to call. We didn’t know the phone number for the police, and weren’t thinking straight enough to call my friends dad (a now obvious choice). I remembered my neighbors phone number because the last few numbers were all the same so we decided we would call them.
We quietly crept into my dads office where we huddled around the phone. I picked up the receiver and what I heard on the other end caused me to go as white as a ghost and get even weaker in the knees. I could hear the person upstairs - breathing. He had picked up the phone and now knew that he was not alone. We prayed that he would think it was my father that had picked-up the phone and that he wouldn’t discover that it was just a bunch of kids at home.
I hung up, but then quickly realized that it was even more important than ever to make that phone call. So I picked up the receiver. This time all I heard was a dial tone. I dialed my neighbors phone number. After what seemed like an eternity they answered. We told them the situation and waited for them to arrive.
A few minutes later we heard a knock at the front door. We were terrified to go answer it because we didn’t know if the intruder was still up stairs. But that was our only path to safety. So I grabbed a metal hole punch, the rest of the kids grabbed my dad’s antique bottles that were lining the shelf and we slowly crept up the stairs, and opened the front door.
Our neighbors called the police who came and found no one. I’m sure that they thought we were a bunch of scared kids whose imagination got away with us. But we weren’t. We were a bunch of kids who were scared because we had just found ourselves hostage in our own home.
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oh, my! That gave me chills just reading it and here I am, a mom, grandma and almost 55 years old!