A Ghost Tried to Drown Me

This is the first time that I will have written down these events from when I was a child.

I should have recorded them sooner, but I’ll do my best to recount them for you.

In the 1980s my parents had finally come into some money and we were able to move into a nice quiet suburban area in Sacramento.

Two story house with pool

Photo credit: flickr/johnhealey

Updated 2/9/2020 – I was about eight or nine at the time, and my parents had just had their second child, my sister.

The neighborhood was nice and the house was beautiful, but the best part about the move was the in-ground pool in the backyard.

As you can imagine as a kid, I was very excited to have my own pool to swim in.

A few months went by, and everything seemed normal.

One day I had come home from school and my parents weren’t home from work yet.

I made myself a snack and started watching TV in the living room.

All of a sudden I heard a loud splash come from the pool.

I put my sandwich down and opened the screen door.

When I looked at the pool I expected to see some ripples in it from whatever hit the water, but it was completely still.

I went back inside and convinced myself the splash must have come from somewhere else.

The next day I had come home from school again and was watching TV, when I started to hear footsteps coming from outside.

The footsteps sounded wet, like someone was walking around with a bunch of water in their shoes.

Paranoid and frightened, I slowly walked to my room and closed the door.

I curled up near my bed and could still hear the footsteps, this time from inside the house, creeping closer to my room.

I could hear the splashes on the carpet, the water dripping onto the floor.

After a while, the noises stopped.

Boy drowning in pool

Photo credit: flickr/yvettedepaepe

I opened my door and looked on the floor, sure I would find some sort of wet footprints, but the carpet was completely dry.

I went back to the pool, only to find it eerily motionless once more.

I didn’t tell anybody about the footsteps, although looking back I probably should have.

The following week my parents invited my aunt, uncle, and their children over for a barbeque.

My dad had set up a table to eat at outside near the pool.

The family was all sitting down, getting ready to eat.

I don’t know how it happened; what I can tell you is that something was drawing me near the pool.

There were no voices, just a force pushing me to the edge of the water.

My parents said that I slipped, but I honestly don’t remember falling.

All I remember is that I suddenly was submerged in water, and I couldn’t breathe.

I was unable to move, like there was an invisible force keeping me pinned down to the floor of the pool.

My uncle was the first one to notice, and he was able to jump in and drag me out from the bottom.

Since that day I never used the pool again; we moved again about a year after.

My parents kept telling me that it was an accident, that I merely tripped but I knew it was something more than that.

Some sort of force guided me into that pool, and I never touched it again.

I knew that if I went into that pool after that, whatever was trying to drown me, it would have.