Figure on the Porch

Back in the early 1980s my aunt lived in a house that was literally located in the middle of nowhere. It used to really creep my younger brother and me out, but we loved to go there because my aunt had four children.

The house was very old, and it had all wooden floors. There was always an uneasy feeling when you were inside. For the most part not much happened that was out of the ordinary when we were there. There were a lot of noises during the night, though. On several occasions I heard floorboards creaking, as if someone were walking around. Most of this seemed to be coming from upstairs, and sometimes in the hallway downstairs that connects the front of the house to the back rooms. Sometimes I also heard a thumping sound from upstairs at night. The thing is, no one stayed upstairs ever. There was just a spare room, a bathroom and some small storage spaces up there.

My aunt's room was downstairs, and we all stayed in a room down the hall from hers. I told myself that the sounds were caused by the wind, or the fact that the house was so old, and really never thought twice about it. I refused to ever go upstairs though. The thought that the place could be haunted never really crossed my mind. I just thought it was a creepy old house. That is, until one night in particular.

Bedtime had come a long time ago, but us being kids we stayed awake and goofed around for a while. Eventually we all fell asleep. This night I seemed to have a lot of trouble staying asleep though. I kept waking up periodically for no apparent reason. On about the fourth time waking up, I thought I felt a poke on the heel of my foot, which is what woke me. I rolled over and looked around the room, but nothing was out of the ordinary. I lay back down and tried to go back to sleep. After I had laid there for about 5 minutes, I started to hear a tapping sound. I listened for a minute, and that was when I realized that the sound was coming from underneath my bed! I was too afraid to look under it, so I just tried to ignore it and go to sleep. After it did it for almost 10 minutes, the tapping suddenly stopped. What happened next I will never forget for as long as I live.

There was a lone window in the room, and that night the curtains were pulled back. I was facing the window, and just moments after the tapping stopped, a white transparent figure slowly moved past the window from right to left. It seemed to be walking on the front porch, which covered the entire front of the house. The figure appeared to have a glow to it, kind of like the moon has. Needless to say, I was horrified. I froze in terror, with my eyes fixed on the window. Fortunately I didn't see it again. I tried to rationalize what I had just seen, but I couldn't. We were in the middle of nowhere! There were no roads, no cars, no nothing, just a long dirt road and a bunch of trees. Everyone else was asleep, so I was the only one who saw this. I was too scared to sleep after that, so I just lay there for the rest of the night. The next morning I was thinking about what I had seen, and I remembered that sometimes my aunt would hang clothes out to dry on the front porch. This must have been what I had seen, right? Maybe it was a sheet or something. I asked her at breakfast if she had left any clothes out on the porch last night. She said she didn't dry anything at all yesterday! There was no other explanation for what I had seen. Honestly, I really didn't think a sheet could have looked like that, anyway. This thing's movement was too animated to be a sheet. I guess I just wanted to think that.

After this incident I didn't want to stay there anymore, but luckily they moved not long after that anyway. To this day I believe that this was something paranormal. Because there just is no other explanation, and I was definitely awake.