The scary house

by Ajay
(singh)

These are Swifts

Years ago, Mom,Dad and I moved into an old house. The house was bigger than we needed so we used the extra room for storage.

It was late fall of that year. We had just moved in about a week before the weather turned cold and rainy. We went to bed one night and at about one a.m. I had just about fallen asleep, but then I heard a strange knocking: thump, thump, thump.

My dad got up and went to the door and turned on the light, but nobody was there! He turned off the lights and went to back to bed.

About ten minutes later, I heard it again. Thump, thump, thump. This time, I went with dad to see what all the commotion was about. As we turned on the lights, the strange thumping stopped. We checked and we checked and neither of us could find where it was coming from. We lay back down again and finally went to sleep. Some time later that night I was awakened by mom's cries of fear.

Finally, she told us it was coming from the wall beside her bed. Dad and I just remembered that we didn't check the extra bedroom that was used for storage. When the lights went on the thumping stopped. Dad opened the door to the extra room, reached for the light switch, but he couldn't get it to turn on. Dad told me to get a flashlight. He shined it all around the room but all we could see were boxes we had stored. Mom was so terrified she insisted we stay together. By now it was two a.m and dad was upset because we didn't have a phone installed yet so we couldn't call for help.

Every time the lights went out the knocking would start again. So we stayed in one room together and no one got any sleep. When dad got ready for work, Mom said we were going to grandma's house so we could get some sleep. As we walked out the door -THUD!- something had hit the window of the extra bedroom. Dad peeked through the window, then turned around and bellowed with laughter. 'I know what kept us up all night' he exclaimed. 'It's not scary at all. It's about four or five chimney swifts that have came up into the fireplace for warmth!' Boy, were we relieved that the house wasn't haunted, but we sure enjoy telling the story over and over again.