The House that Broke Us

THE STORY:

When I was 11 we moved into a new house in North Portland Oregon, I loved it… until we began to add a new addition to it and opened it up to the existing house. I would watch TV in my parents room. I would be watching the Munsters or, yes, the Brady Bunch lol. Their back wall, where their closet used to be, was was ripped down and the only the only thing that kept their room from being exposed to the big open new addition was a translucent matted trap. As I watched my shows, the TV would turn off… in the beginning i thought nothing of it, but it kept happening. They had an old TV where u had to push the button to turn it on or off, so the only way for it to turn off was to press the big rectangle metal button. 

One night, it happened several times and I instantly felt scared… like someone was watching me. It was ominous. I ran out of the room and I never watched TV in their room again. That was hard, their room was my place… everywhere I lived, I loved to snuggle under their blankets and watch TV, it was my safe haven. I lost that. 

Later, when I was 13, the house was still a work in progress. The walls were up but the hallway was open to the addition, which was still unfinished and the crawl space was exposed to that end of the house. I began to hate my room, which was at the end, close to the new addition. I hated the hallway even more. At night it seemed like I was looking into the abyss, as if the darkness never ended. It scared me to go to my room. I never understood why. From the moment we opened that new addition to the house, something just didn’t feel right, 

I was home alone one evening; my mom at school and my dad working late. I was in the living room watching TV when I heard banging sounds coming from the addition. I just dismissed it as some construction workers across the street building a house. (Sounds for me can be misplaced because I’m hearing impaired). 

About an hour later, I hear it again. I thought to myself… it’s too late for the workers to still be at it, so I walked to my window and sure enough they were gone. Again, I just dismissed it thinking it was the neighbors. Then about 30 mins later I hear the banging again. When I say banging, I mean, it sounded like someone was hitting a hollow box with a sick. So when I heard it again, I became even more scared because it was coming from the back of the house, the addition. What scared me most, was that it sounded like a box was being hit, and we used that addition for storage.. we had tons of boxes back there. 

Creeped out, I decided to go to my neighbor’s house, and as I did, my neighbor was just getting into her car to leave. I stopped her and I made up an excuse, “I cant find my cat, can u help me?” I just needed to get someone else inside the house… almost like, to scare the energy way kind of thing. After she, the neighbor, left I felt better… Then about 30 mins later it was dark out and I was watching the Simpson’s and I heard it again.. only, louder this time.. and that’s when I realized that each time it happened it was in 3’s, “THUMP, THUMP, THUMP”. 

I began to grow increasingly frightened when I realized the bangs were uniform. I stood up and I stared down that dark hallway.. It happened again.. 15 mins later.. and louder. I grabbed the phone and called my friend in hope’s to be distracted…hoping this was all in my head. 10 mins into the phone call it happened, “THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!” I screamed and ran out of the house. I was crying in the middle of the road still holding the phone. This was 1998, I had one of those dinosaur phones with a big antenna, so I was losing reception. Finally able to hear my friends voice between the crackling static on the other end and, all I hear was, “what the fuck was that loud banking! Can u hear me! Hello?” After I was able to breath again, I gasped and said, “can u hear me?” My friend said, “what was that?” I was shocked, and asked, ” you heard that?” She said, “yes! That was really loud!” I fell on the grass in my front lawn and cried. 

I called my dad at work, and he had to come home early. I sat in the front yard for an hour, late in the evening until he arrived. He was not happy. He told me that he will hire a damn babysitter next time.