In Faithful Skepticism

by Brea Shay
(Germany)

I'm not normally a complete wimp. I've never really been into superstitions, and I'm still not. Everybody jumps sometimes at something random falling in the dark and the ridiculous things one sees in shadows at night, right? Anyway, I'm also not normally one to tell other people my problems, especially because this one in particular sounds just about psychotic, but here goes:

It was about 10 am when I woke up. I sat up and just kind of looked around lazily like every disoriented morning. My room, as it just so happens, is on the top floor, underneath the decrepit attic, of an old house. My bed's headboard is positioned against the far wall of the space and fits just snugly where the wall meets the sloping ceiling. Now, on this small piece of wall on which the top half of my bed lies against, there are these two doors that lead into a shared crawl space; one on the left of the bed, one on the right.

As I sat, wiping away the night's drool induced by my retainer, I heard a tapping noise. The taps were slow in pace and were directly over my head, coming from somewhere inside the wood-plated ceiling. Freaked a bit by this, I was on my hands and knees staring bug-eyed up at the ceiling. The tapping was steady, but still slow. It began to move towards the right crawl space door. I was very much relieved that it was shut and therefore not an entrance for this tapper. Of course though, the left sliding door was open, and the bastard slowly inched its way towards it. Now, my eyes are watering at this point, I'm about ready to piss myself, and the suspense is damn torture.

As I watch the open door with wide eyes, hearing the tapping get closer, it stops, just as soon as it should have emerged from the dark space. And of fucking course, there's a terrifyingly loud thump directly above me. I got the fuck out of there, and was no where near ashamed of my foolish cowardice.
I DON'T get scared, but Jesus, that was some unholy, fearsome, creature.

I know a lot of that got really fancy-sounding, but I can't not write a story properly.

Anywho, believe what you want. I've tried to talk myself out of what I heard many times, but that incident really disturbed me and I don't think I could fool myself with something like that. In fact, it remains the only thing I've ever encountered in my life so far that has actually had me petrified and in tears.

Hell, maybe it's all those stories about people being haunted by asshole spirits with sticks up their ectoplasmic butts. I don't know. But I do know this: The second occurrence of the tapping, I hollered at the source to, "fuck off," and I haven't heard a peep out of it since.