In full Halloween spirit, I love to exchange scary stories. As a kid, I remember stories of a man in the woods with a golden arm that haunted anyone who dared enter the woods or ones about the terror that giant creatures would bring if you ever encountered them (“Slenderman” anybody?). Those stories, although fake, always spooked me. But what about a real spooky story? Take a seat, grab a cup of apple cider, and read about my personal “scary” story (this is all in good fun, it isn’t that scary I promise).
It was the last month of our senior year of high school. My best friend was about to move out of her childhood home. We decided to have one last group hangout at my friend’s house to celebrate and say goodbye to senior year and the house that we loved so much. On last “hurrah” if you will. The night started off normal as people trickled in and we were just chatting in the living room. We probably played our personalized game of Guess Who, which was just like the normal game except we had put pictures of people we knew on the board. Around midnight, we collectively decided to take a trip to Taco Bell before it closed. 8 of us crammed into my friend’s 5 seat car and we drove to get our midnight snack. My friend and I had offered to sit in the trunk as we went through the drive-thru. We thought that was going to be the craziest part of the night, but we had no idea what was to come.
We got back to my friend’s house and headed down to the basement to have our food. At the left of the stairs were a few couches and chairs facing a TV mounted on the wall. On the right was a mini kitchen/bar set-up and a pool table that I don’t think had been touched in years. The far wall of the basement was covered in windows, almost floor to ceiling, including the double glass doors that led to the backyard. The backyard was a small barrier between the house and the thick woods that lie just a few yards from the basement doors. We sit down at the couches and dig into our Taco Bell. In the midst of our eating, chatting, gossiping, someone suggested we put on a movie. Someone (probably me) then suggested it be a scary movie. We scrolled through Netflix for a few minutes before finding a scary movie that looked just scary enough to get us spooked, but dumb enough that we could make fun of it to lighten the mood. We turn off the lights, press play, and the movie begins.
Thirty minutes later, all of our eyes are glued to the TV. The dim glow of the screen emitted just enough light to make out the silhouettes of my friends. The protagonists of the film had just moved into a new house and were suspicious of the strange noises they were hearing. Just as they are about to enter the bedroom and investigate the sounds, a loud THUNK comes from the windows on our right. All of us jump and one of us screams. We pause the movie and look at eachother.
“Did you guys hear that?”
“What was that?”
“Guys this isn’t funny.”
“It was probably just a bird that flew into the window.” And with that comment, we settled back into our seats and hit play on the remote. No more than two minutes later, THUNK. Again, my head shoots towards the windows and I see a hand against the glass. It stays put for a split second before it drags down the window pane. It’s my turn to scream. I lunge toward the remote to pause the movie and stand up in the middle of all my friends.
“Please tell me I am not the only one who just saw that?!” I plea.
“See what?”
“You saw something?!” say the rest of my friends. Turns out, only me and one other friend saw the hand. After describing the chilling image we both witnessed, everyone is standing up (with the exception of our one friend who had somehow fallen asleep during the drama). We then rush over to the windows trying to see if anything or anyone is out there. The darkness makes it impossible to make out anything outside. We nominate one of the guys to go look outside in the backyard to see if anyone is there. One of us suggests that this was probably just one of our friends pulling a prank on us. But with a majority of our friends being at the house already, none of us could think of who we knew that would do this. The friend returns from a quick look outside reporting that he didn’t see anyone. We determine it must have been a neighbor kid just trying to be funny. I lock the doors just in case.
All of us on edge, we tentatively sit back down and turn on the movie. Not ten seconds later, THUNK. SCREEEEECH. The hand slammed against the same window and dragged down the glass with an awful screeching noise. In a second, the lights were on and we were fully freaked out. The details of the next few minutes are fuzzy because we all moved so frantically. We had made our way upstairs to the living room by the front door. In the midst of debating what to do next, we realized our friend was still asleep downstairs. We go back downstairs to wake her up and tell her the situation. She is unfazed and goes upstairs to the bedroom where she remained asleep for the rest of the night.
Reconvening with the group and our plan of action, we look outside the front door. The house being at the end of a cul de sac gave us a clear vision of the houses that lined the street. We notice there is someone standing at the end of the driveway two houses down. With the boys leading, we make our way outside towards the person at the driveway. As we get closer, I notice this guy’s face is a bit beat up. He has some minor but noticeable scars and bruises across his face and bandages around one of his hands.
“Hey man. What’s up!” one of my friends says.
“Are you the kids who were playing some sort of prank? Because it’s not funny. It’s 2am and you woke my whole family up” the man responds. All at once, our voices erupt in defense and exclaim that the same thing happened to us. After a minute of discourse, we again come to the conclusion that it is some neighborhood kid playing a not-so-funny prank. Letting my curiosity get the best of me, I ask the man what happened to his face. He had fallen off his bike, not as dramatic as I had hoped for this story’s purposes.
My group decides that we should go back inside and try and get some sleep, sure that the prankster had his share of fun. Just as we are turning around to head back to the house, a figure on a bike darts out of one side of the woods, across the street, then disappears into the other side of the woods. One of my friends starts running in the direction of the woods, yelling. I look around at my friends, not knowing what to do. A second later, the figure darts out of the woods again, this time, biking down the street. My friend returns from the woods and runs to his car. He hops in along with 2 of my other friends. They try to chase the culprit in the car, but the biker weaves in and out of backyards. At a loss, my friends return and park the car. We all regroup in the driveway of the house, when the figure returns. He emerges into the road, facing us directly maybe 300 feet away. With just the flickering lights of the two street lights, I could make out that the biker was likely a teenage-boy. Before I could take in any more details, the boy came racing towards us on his bike. Half of us run towards the front door, retreating from any potential threat this kid may carry. Before he got to the end of the cul de sac, he turned around, racing away down the street. The final moments of this story replay in my head like a film tape; the figure riding off down the dimly lit street, us feeling a possible sense of relief, but then, a blood-curdling shriek ruptures out of the boy. It left us all silent, too afraid to even move. Then, the figure stops again, in the middle of the pavement. He turns around to look at us, lets out a chilling laugh, and dashes back into the woods. And that was the last we saw of him, but the shriek and laugh still haunt my dreams.