The following is a true story.
It was a Sunday evening way back when your Overlord and Saviour's voice still hadn't broken. My mum and dad had rightly ordered my sister and me to bed for school the next day, but little did they know, I had come to dread bedtime.
Not because I had to get up at 7AM the following morning, a routine I dreaded — especially during winter.
Rather, I had gorged on The Blair Witch Project at my friend’s house on that Friday. For reasons I still can’t explain, it scared the bejesus out of Young Watson. There was something about the stickmen dangling from gnarled branches, the static VHS recorder, and the creepy cabin that kept me up into the wee hours and studying every dark corner of my room.
So much so that I had to sleep with the door ajar just to let some of the hallway light in.
Oh yes, your Overlord and Saviour was more like an Underlord and Coward back then.
Back to that Sunday night:
I was lying in bed, staring at the reflection on my glass shelves, which gave me a perfect view of the hallway and all of its comings and goings. Whilst drifting off to a Snow Patrol song, that’s when I saw it.
A slender, female apparition.
I am NOT jesting.
It left my sister’s room and walked straight past mine, as if heading towards my folks’ bedroom. While the sight couldn’t have lasted more than a second, I knew with near certainty it wasn’t my sister or mother.
With waves of goosebumps lapping across my skin, I yanked the duvet over my head and stayed there.
Seconds turned into minutes until the hot air became too unbearable to breathe.
So I peeled off the sheet centimetre by centimetre, braced for a Ring-like figure to greet me…
Only, there wasn’t one.
I studied the silhouette of my desk, wardrobe, and then, finally, the glass shelves.
Nothing.
I waited a few minutes and then bolted to my sister’s room, where, to my horror and confirmed fear, I found her asleep with her headphones humming whatever girl band music was popular at the time.
I shook her. “Lauren, did you leave your room? Just now?”
She groggily pulled off her headphones and shook her head.
When I explained what I had seen, she got quite annoyed. Not because I had interrupted her sleep, but rather she WOULDN’T be able to sleep. Unlike our folks, she has also had her “own” experiences in that house.
Both of us always felt something was a little off there.
Even our dogs acted strangely on occasion, gazing at nothing in particular.
That said, while I’m certainly not clairvoyant or have any connection with the other world beyond once writing about them…
I can only assume, in my limited knowledge, that the spirit was merely passing through.
A “good one,” if you will.
Anyway:
The experience definitely shook me, but it also deepened my love (and fear) of horror, especially for ghost stories. So much so that — inspired by the movie that kept me up for countless weeks (The Blair Witch Project) — I found myself writing The Curse of Abbey Ruins a decade later (among other unpublished works).
Like the movie, this duology takes place in a creepy woodland that locals don’t like talking much about.
Why?
Well, you’ll have to find out yourself.
Go here to learn more, if you dare:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/COAR
DJJW
P.S. What's the creepiest thing you’ve encountered?