Now that I’m an adult, I understand the energy behind poltergeist activity and going through puberty, but back then it sometimes felt like a war zone.
I’ll admit, like any teenager I was often a pain in the butt, although ghost stories couldn’t have been further from my mind when I crossed over the threshold of adulthood.
Updated 2/9/2020 – Being a late bloomer at fourteen years of age, I finally got my period two weeks after my birthday, which was when the strange events began.
I’ll never forget the first night.
I got up and went to the bathroom – scared, but soon elated, that I was becoming a woman.
As I walked back to bed, I felt like something was in the family room behind me.
When I backtracked my way to the family room, I realized that the Grandfather clock in the hallway had stopped ticking.
I noticed that it slowly started up again when I got a few feet away from it.
Intrigued as well as creeped out, I stepped backwards and nearly jumped out of my skin when it stopped once again.
Back and forth, I kept testing it and every time – it stopped and started, depending on how close or how far away I was.
If that wasn’t enough, I was soon distracted when the T.V. suddenly switched itself on.
I froze on the spot and craned my neck to see.
The static was loud and I could hear a voice, but it was scratchy and hard to make out.
When my father came out in a temper, all the activity subsided.
That was only the beginning of a period where I was blamed for all the malfunctioning equipment and appliances in the house.
My parents thought I was crying out for attention, but all I wanted was for them to leave me alone.
I couldn’t convince them that I wasn’t to blame for all the strange and sometimes frightening activity.
It was worse when I was alone in the house.
One afternoon I got home from school and was relieved to be alone – at first.
I put some music on the stereo and sat on my bed to get my homework out of the way.
Then I heard a squeaky, grinding noise coming from the door.
When I looked up, I saw the handle slowly being pushed down!
I stopped breathing as I stared intently at the handle turning 90 degrees, finally stopping like someone was holding the handle down – pointing to the floor.
It was excruciating – waiting to see what would happen next.
I wondered if it was my brother playing tricks on me so I jumped off the bed and raced over to the door.
I hesitated, as all the terrifying possibilities played across my mind.
Staring at the handle, I slowly reached out and prepared to yank the door open – telling myself that if it was my brother – I’d give him a royal butt-kicking.
Before I had a chance, the handle suddenly sprang upwards and back into place.
I jumped but then felt a surge of anger, so I grabbed the handle and opened the door.
No one was there.
I began to storm through the house, screaming my brother’s name and feeling the tears welling up.
Not one member of my family was home.
I even checked for my cat, even though it was impossible for her to have played with the handle.
She was outside on the fence.
Then my door slammed shut all by itself.
I screamed and ran to the hallway.
I stood at the end of the hallway and stared at my door.
There were no windows open and for a minute I wondered if there was a burglar in the house.
Thankfully, my parents pulled into the driveway and I raced out to tell them what happened.
My Dad is quite a bruiser so he made us stay outside while he stormed into the house.
It was only a few minutes later when he came back outside, wielding the baseball bat and shaking his head – very annoyed.
He grumpily told us that no one was in the house and that I had to “get a grip” on myself.
I burst into tears and stomped into the house, even though I was becoming quite afraid of the whole property.
There were so many things that happened to me for that first year that I could easily fill a book.
Ornaments would fall off the bookcase along with the occasional book falling out for no reason.
One time, when I went out to the back yard to sunbathe, one particular wind-chime went ballistic while the others stayed still.
The hot faucet in the kitchen sink often turned itself on if I was in the room and even the toilet flushed when I walked past the bathroom.
The strange thing was, during that whole year, the events only happened in our home, not at school or out and about at friend’s homes.
Then the activity completely stopped on my fifteenth birthday.
Now that I’m thirty eight and have children of my own, I worry about them going through puberty and I hope against hope that they don’t go through what I did.
I’ll never know if it was just my own intense energy but I can definitely say with certainty that I felt like I was under constant, psychic attack.