Many individuals have experienced mystery at some point in their lives. An event that took place where you didn’t understand the cause. Something where you plainly wondered ‘how?’ Whether solved or unsolved, I believe that we all have one and they deserve to be brought to the light for people to read, learn, and wonder. That being said, here’s mine.
My story took place less than a year ago. It was the beginning of the second semester of the 2019-2020 school year before the pandemic was ever a concern. The Friday where this whole debacle took place was a PA day for me, but only me. At the time my brother was in another school board so he would have the day off on the following Monday. Hence, I was home alone.
This didn’t bother me much. It wasn’t the first time calendars aligned this way. If anything, I looked forward to it. A chance to be productive and catch up on schoolwork. If I only I knew what would follow.
It was nine in the morning on that Friday, and my dad had just left for work making me the only one at home. I was still in bed, taking the opportunity to sleep in a bit and go on my phone. The door between the corridor and my room was open as I laid there scrolling. Earlier that week we had bought a mattress, but we didn’t place it in any bed yet, so it was lying on the wall of the corridor. I could see part of it from my room, through the open door. Considering how this was a new item, it still had a loose plastic covering around it.
Suddenly, I heard something. It sounded like someone was stepping on the plastic of the mattress right outside of my bedroom. I tried to dismiss it, thinking it could somehow be the air pressure inside of the house. But then I saw the plastics tighten around the mattress as if someone was pulling on it. At this point, I became paralyzed with horror. One of my greatest fears is home invasion, but it couldn’t possibly be happening now! I realized that if I stayed in bed and someone really was in the hallway, then they would see me in a few short seconds. What would they do with me then? I didn’t have any desire to answer that question, so I ran into my bathroom.
At this point, I was standing in the middle of my bathroom listening attentively. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t hear anything anymore, so I called my dad. Through whispers, I told him, “I think there is someone in the house. Can you check, please?” He then checked the security camera footage from his phone. I now realize how hard this must have been for him. When he received my phone call he was on a train. With a person in the house, what could he do from there? He checked the cameras and found no evidence of another individual in the house. This was a relief to both of us, but still left me wondering what I had just seen and heard.
I decided to check that part of the house myself with my dad still on the line. As a precaution, I filled a large water bottle with water in case I needed to knock someone out with it. With the water and phone in hand, I approached the part of the house I had heard and seen suspicious activity in and….nothing. I found no signs of a person ever being there. Just the same plastic around the mattress. I dismissed it and continued with my day.
The rest of my day went by and nothing else of alarming nature took place. The evening came, and I was no longer home alone when my brother returned from school, followed by my mother from work. By the time it was five o’clock, my brother was in the basement playing on his Xbox and my mother was on the upper floor with me. At some point, she came to my room and asked me to wake her up from her nap in about an hour.
During this time, I studied in my room with my door open. I remember being very absorbed in the material I was examining, but my concentration broke when I heard someone go through the corridor and down the stairs. I thought nothing of it, as it must have been my mom. But when I went to her room, I found her fast asleep.
I know it wasn’t my brother because I could hear him in the basement, and my mom was clearly still asleep. My dad was not even home. So, who was down there?
To this day, I still don’t know the answer. It remains an unsolved mystery that I still wonder about now and then. Maybe there was never a person to begin with. Perhaps it was my mind playing tricks on me, at least that’s what I like to tell myself! Since that day, I have never heard or seen anything else that made me fear that there was an unknown person in my house, though a part of me can’t deny what I saw and heard that day.