RED-EYED DEMON
hid in my wardrobe
Iwas just drifting off to sleep when I stiffened, suddenly wide awake. A loud scratching noise, like fingernails clawing on wood was coming from inside my wardrobe.
I was only eight and, like lots of kids my age, I’d sneakily watched the video for Michael Jackson’s single Thriller on MTV. I’d been scared half to death by its terrifying scenes of the undead rising from the grave.
Now images of the Thriller zombies leapt into my head.
Jumping out of bed, I shot downstairs to get my mum, Shirley. ‘There’s something in my wardrobe,’ I gasped.
‘One of the cats has probably got stuck in there,’ Mum said, leading me back upstairs.
She turned on my bedroom light and pulled open the wardrobe doors. But when she checked among my clothes there was no sign of either of our cats, Salt and Pepper.
‘You must have been imagining it,’ Mum shrugged.
But the following night when I was about to nod off, again I was jerked awake by scratching coming from the old-fashioned, dark wood wardrobe in the corner of my room. Petrified, I dived under my blankets, praying for the noise to stop.
Soon, the noise was coming from my wardrobe most nights. And I started hearing something else at night, too. Heavy footsteps would tramp up the stairs of our three-bed council house in a village near Luton, Bedfordshire.
Whenever I heard them, I’d pull the sheets up over my head, clamping my eyes shut so I couldn’t see. Until one night, I plucked up the courage to peek through the fabric of my sheets…
There in my doorway, was a black, solid male figure.
‘You’ve been watching Thriller again, haven’t you?’ Mum tutted when I told her. ‘You’re having nightmares. That’s what happens when you watch scary films!’
But I knew I was awake when the spooky things happened. And anyway, that didn’t explain the menacing, creepy atmosphere in the house, as if someone was watching my every move.
Then one day I was in my bedroom when I heard our dog, Misty, barking at the bottom of the stairs. I went out onto the landing. ‘Come here, Misty,’ I called.
But she just stood there like a statue with her hackles up, shaking like a leaf and whining. After that, she flatly refused to go upstairs.
And it wasn’t just Misty. Salt and Pepper had always loved coming for a cuddle on my bed. But now they avoided going upstairs, too.
There was something lurking in the house, something unnatural... And everyone but Mum knew it.
A few nights later, I was in bed when I heard the usual stomping up the staircase.
The creepy man was back… Heart racing, I dived under my blankets to hide. As I lay there, I began to feel boiling hot so I stuck my leg out from under my bed clothes and pressed it against the cool stone wall.
I gave a muffled shriek as icy fingers grabbed my ankle. Yanking my leg back under the covers, I lay there rigid with terror.
‘Please, just leave me alone,’ I begged.
A few nights later, I was in my bedroom when I finally got my first good look at him. There, on the landing was a dark, shadowy hand on the bannister. With long, claw-like fingernails, it was human shaped but huge, much larger than a man’s.
Yet Mum still thought I was having nightmares – until one night when she was on the landing and heard for herself the scratching coming from my wardrobe.
Turning on my bedroom light, she marched across to it.
The scratching noise had been freaking me out so much, I’d begged Mum to move my clothes elsewhere. Knowing there was nothing inside the wardrobe, Mum must have thought the noise was coming from behind it because she heaved it away from the wall and examined the back.
‘Oh my God,’ she croaked. I followed the direction of her horrified gaze. There on the outside of the wardrobe’s back panel were several long gouges – as if someone had scratched at the wood. But the wardrobe had been standing tight up against the wall.
After that, Mum stopped telling me I was having nightmares. Finally, she believed me.
I shrieked as fingers grabbed my ankle
But things went from bad to worse.
One night, I was woken by something compelling me to get out of bed. In a trance-like state, I obeyed. It was as if I was sleepwalking, but I was awake, aware I was walking across my bedroom onto the landing.
I got to the top of the stairs. Powerless to stop myself, I jumped from the top step, landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom.
The shock of hitting the floor brought me out of my trance. I picked myself up and crawled back to bed, thankful I wasn’t hurt. But I couldn’t help but think the nasty entity had taken me over and forced me to leap down the stairs.
Not wanting to worry Mum any more, I kept what had happened to myself.
Soon afterwards, though, we were sitting in the dining room when one of the chairs suddenly jerked out from its place tucked under the table and shot across the carpet. It came to a halt several feet across the room.
‘Oh Christ,’ Mum shuddered, turning pale.
‘When we go to church this week, I’ll speak to a priest,’ she told me. ‘We need to get the house blessed.’
Mum arranged for a priest to come round. He arrived a few days later and walked around the place, going into every room.
When he came back downstairs, Mum shooed me up to my bedroom. But listening at the gap in the door, I could hear him and Mum talking.
‘There’s an evil spirit in your home,’ he told Mum. ‘It seems to be targeting Caroline. I could sense it lurking in her wardrobe.’
Mum stifled a cry. I knew it. We listened in horror as the priest explained that it had probably attached itself to one of us and followed us into the house where it had set up camp in the wardrobe.
The priest arranged to come back a few days later to bless the house. Just before he turned up, a couple of our neighbours came round.
‘We’re going to take the wardrobe into the garden and burn it,’ Mum told me. ‘You stay inside.’
I watched as the men helped Mum heave the wardrobe out onto the landing. A cold chill snaked down my back as something peeked through the crack in between the wardrobe doors.
Glowing, red, evil eyes…
The eyes stayed locked on me as they carried the wardrobe out into the garden while I stayed upstairs watching from the window.
Moments later, the priest arrived and started chanting prayers over the wardrobe.
‘Move away from the window,’ Mum mouthed, glancing up and seeing me watching them.
Although I didn’t see them set fire to the wardrobe, I could smell the wood burning.
After a while, Mum and the priest came back into the house. He went in every room, cleansing and blessing it. Then he said prayers over me and handed me a silver St Christopher’s medallion.
‘This is for you,’ he told me. ‘It will keep you safe.’
By the time he left, the atmosphere in the house felt lighter. But for the next few nights I barely slept, terrified the evil entity was still there, hiding somewhere out of sight.
It was only when Salt,
Pepper and Misty started to come back upstairs that Mum and I heaved a sigh of relief, finally believing the nasty presence was really gone.
Sadly Mum died nine years ago and, even now, I don’t know what the entity was or why it targeted me. But all these years later what happened is still stuck in my memory.
I know the dark side exists because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And you don’t need to watch scary movies when you’ve lived through a real-life horror film.
‘An evil spirit is targeting Caroline’