There was this one weekend that my aunt, uncle, and cousins went away upstate, and instead of taking their dog with them to a kennel, they asked me to watch her for the weekend at their house. I was excited to do so because not only would they pay me, but they are loaded, and their house is full of fun stuff to do. They had the Havanese, which is a tiny dog; her name is Luna.
I didn't mind watching Luna because she was such a calm, low-maintenance dog. I just fed her twice a day and let her out back a couple of times a day. She always followed me wherever I was in the house, so if I was in the giant living room watching TV, she'd be laying on the floor in the center of the room.
If I went downstairs to the basement to play video games, she followed and would lay down there while I was playing. One time, while playing video games in the basement, Luna suddenly lifted her head from the ground and stared in the direction of the boiler room. I had a dog before, and I knew this was something dogs did to any slight sound, but it was still enough of a reason for me to pause the game and feel a little unsettled.
I looked in the direction of the boiler room as well; it was silent and dark in there, and there was no chance of me going in there. So, I unpaused the game and continued playing, albeit a bit uncomfortable. I guess my childish fears were getting the better of me.
She put her head back down for a minute, but then, again, she lifted it up and looked towards the boiler room. Deep down, I knew it was probably nothing, but I was still a bit too freaked out to continue playing video games comfortably, so I turned everything off and ran up the stairs, shutting the door once Luna came hopping up. They also had another big gaming room on the main floor; it was kind of disconnected from the rest of the house in that you had to go through a narrow hallway to get there.
Luna plopped herself down in front of my feet in this little game room. I played more video games for a while until it got late; then I went down the hall to the room I'd be sleeping in—a guest bedroom that was nicer than my bedroom back at home. I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a white undershirt for pajamas and jumped under the covers, not going to sleep without watching a little TV first.
Luna was obviously by the bedside; she was really growing on me with how affectionate yet calm she was. I eventually turned off the TV and went to sleep. My sleep was disturbed by a growling sound.
I turned on the bedside lamp and saw Luna laying still on the floor, head down, yet growling at something. I said her name a few times, but she didn't look at me. Then she lifted her head, finally looking at the closet door.
Her growling grew more intense as she stood up, still looking at the closet. She didn't bark, though; in fact, I never heard her bark once. I looked at the closet—a sliding wooden door closet that was open about three inches from the left side.
Of course, I couldn't really see anything from the inside. I got up from the bed really sneakily and tiptoed closer to the closet. I don't know what I was planning on doing, really.
I guess I just wanted to look through the crack or see if I could hear something. When I got about five feet away from the closet door, something that I couldn't see from my bed came into view through the crack of the door. I couldn't see any face or anything; it was too dark, but I knew what I was looking at in that closet was a person's eye, perfectly tucked between the wall and the edge of the door, looking into the room—or now at me.
I screamed, but it didn't do much good since I was alone. I took Luna and ran for the front door, grabbing the emergency cell phone on the counter to call 911. During my run away from the house, it was 1:00 in the morning, so I didn't bother calling my aunt and uncle.
The cops did a thorough sweep and found someone in the pantry closet downstairs. I never saw him, though, because another officer was preoccupying me with conversation to calm me down. I was just relieved to go back inside, knowing I was the only one in the house, besides Luna of course, who just might have saved my life that night.
It was a cold December in a Vermont countryside home, alone for the night watching my friend's dog Chester, doing him a favor. Even though it was unbearably cold outside, I couldn't let his dog out in the yard; we don't have fences up here, so he could easily run into the woods and get lost. That meant, unfortunately, I had to take him for a walk in the cold.
My friend gave me an old, dirty blue tearing leash to use. Chester seemed excited when I hooked the leash ring onto his collar ring, and he instantly pulled me towards the front door. I could already tell he'd be a pain in the ass to walk.
Stepping out into the cold was a major shock to my body; I just wanted to get through this walk as soon as possible. I ran a little bit with Chester just to warm myself up. He stopped us to sniff one of the countless trees on the side of the dirt road.
I thought for sure he'd do his business, but then he perked. . .
up and stared off into the woods. Then his deep, loud bark started echoing through the woods as he tugged and tried to pull me into the woods. I tried my hardest to hold him back, but the leash snapped at a weak point, and off Chester went into the woods, disappearing in seconds.
His barking faded away into the woods until I couldn't hear it anymore. I chased after him, screaming his name. He probably ran off chasing a deer or a small animal or something, but with only the light of my phone, I knew I wouldn't be able to find him.
He would have to come back to me on his own. After a while, I stood in place and continuously called Chester's name. I heard footsteps nearby and got excited that Chester must have been coming back; but as the footsteps got louder, I realized they were much too loud, slow, and heavy to be a dog's foot.
They sounded more like a human's noise, not for legs. I turned out my light, now convinced I was hearing the footsteps of a person. The footsteps seemed to be circling me.
My fear was whether it was intentional or not, and if I had been seen or not. I tried my best to tiptoe back to the road. I was covering decent distance, and then the sound of the footsteps just stopped or faded away; I don't remember noticing which one.
Because of this, I was more lax with my footsteps and walked a little faster. Little did I realize that the black object I was walking towards was a person's back. I stopped as it felt like my heart did too.
I was covering my mouth, trying not to make a sound, but it was obviously too late; the person definitely heard my footsteps. At this point, I took a chance and asked if they had by any chance seen my dog, but they didn't even turn around. They had their hood on, so I couldn't even gauge what they looked like.
I took another chance and put my hand on their shoulder, and once again felt like my heart stopped. The shoulder felt hard and wooden. I walked in front of the body, facing the tree and so on—nothing inside of the hood; nothing but a long stick holding it up.
It was some kind of fake dummy. Then, whatever was making those footsteps was still nearby. I didn't care about the noise anymore; I just ran back to the road and then up the hill and back to the house.
I never went back for Chester, and he never came back to the house. Telling my friend was the worst part. He hated me afterward, and I expected he would, given we weren't exactly the closest friends to begin with.
Already that night, though, I had a nightmare that I was in my room and I heard Chester's barks out in the woods—like scared, whimpering bark. I woke up and looked out the window to the dark woods, hoping the barks were real and I just heard them in my dream, but they weren't. It was silent.
I don't know what happened to Chester; I don't know what the dummy was doing in the woods; and I don't know who was making those footsteps that night. Quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know the answer to any of it. [Music] I was watching my neighbor's dog for a little extra money one night.
She was a creepy neighbor, though not intentionally; she was kind of old and had an antisocial vibe to her. She was obsessed with her dog, so when she was apparently visiting family or something across the state and couldn't bring the dog, she practically begged me to watch her. But when I agreed for the right price, she literally scolded me about what to do and not to do as far as taking care of her.
The dog's name was Hazel. There was a lot of pressure put on me for watching this dog. She insisted I stay at her place instead of taking the dog next door to our place.
She had a spare bedroom with a single twin-sized bed and a desk in the corner; that was all that was in the room. The dog was small, white, and puffy. I don't exactly know what kind—maybe a Bichon Frise.
It was loud, yappy, and annoying, and I hated it. I started watching it around 5:00 and just played on my phone for hours, only feeding the dog once that night. Thankfully, I'd only be doing this for one night.
I brought over my Xbox to play games on her TV, but then I realized the TV was so archaic it didn't even have an HDMI port, so I couldn't even hook it up. So I spent most of the day playing games on my phone and listening to Hazel's yapping at every little thing I did. I did a little snooping around, of course; I looked into the woman's bedroom since the door was left open, even though she told me not to go in there.
The furniture was all archaic in there as well, and there was a big rectangular rug in the middle of the room with Indian-looking patterns. When night came, I went to bed as early as possible, like 9 o'clock. I'm sure Hazel was sleeping in the woman's room; I didn't really care.
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Hazel's constant barking. I screamed, "Shut up! " but the barking seemed kind of muffled and sounded like it was coming from a basement or something.
I wasn't aware of a basement in the house. I walked to where I heard the barking coming from, and I was confused to realize it was coming from the… In the woman's bedroom, I walked inside and saw the rug in the middle of the room had been rolled up to the corner, exposing a door in the ground. It was pitch-black down there, but Hazel's barking was definitely coming from down there.
I was scared shitless. Obviously, Hazel didn't open the door, and she was barking at something down there. I didn't want to shine a light down there for fear of what I was going to see.
I was about to leave the house and run home, but I couldn't just leave Hazel down there. I whispered her name, and then the barking stopped. I was hoping to see her running up the stairs from the dark abyss any moment, but she didn't.
Something did come out of the darkness, though—it was a hand grabbing onto the side of the opening. The hand of a man. I was faced with a fight-or-flight scenario, and being the little 15-year-old I was, I chose to run for it.
I woke my parents and screamed at them about what just happened. My dad called the police and reported a break-in next door. The police checked the woman's bedroom, and as I described, the rug was apparently back in place and the door was shut.
They still went to check it out and apparently found a big crawlspace-type area with a bunch of weird things lying around—no sign of a person or Hazel. When the neighbor returned home the next day, my dad confronted her for me. Apparently, she threw a huge tantrum and mentioned something about the demons making noises below her at night.
Then she exploded into tears over her dog. Ever since that day, we haven't spoken a single word to her. We hardly ever see her anyway; she never leaves her house.
I'm okay with that. Still, it terrifies me to think of that night, though.
