Me and my family moved to Phoenix, Arizona from Tucson last year. We were used to living in tightly compacted neighborhoods with community pools and that whole lot. You know the deal; little to no backyard, every house has the same floorplan, etc. Then one day my parents decided they had enough of cramped city life and decided they wanted to live on a horse property up north in Phoenix. Closer to family and more job opportunities among plenty more reasons, I'm not sure quite exactly what the main motivation was though.
The property they bought was pretty much built to house horses, sheep, etc. I wouldn't call it a farm, but it felt a lot like one. It was three acres of huge shade trees, dirt, and the occassional grass patch. It was pressed right up on South Mountain, high up enough so that at night you could see the Phoenix citylights. The house itself was luxurious enough; two stories, Spanish hacienda style, kind of old-looking. I don't know much about the house's history other than that the previous owners were a flamboyant retired couple who decided Arizona heat wasn't their cup of tea anymore. Upon moving in on the first night we encountered a pack of coyotes sniffing around the property line and a scorpion on the kitchen counter, so I don't quite blame them.
I liked the house, I guess. It felt a bit barren and lonely at first, but a few months in we had four hourses, plenty of goats, and even a friendly chicken named Helena. The property was bustling, to say the least. I liked my school, home life wasn't boring, and our family was okay. I settled in quickly.
The only thing that may have hinted towards a bit of oddness was six months after we moved in. My dad worked as a truck driver for some time and had to go up into Ohio for a few weeks. He returned with a female Belgian Tervuren dog. The dog was already a little old, about eight years old, and acquired right off of a Amish community but that was good because it meant she was already experienced with animals. We named her Zasha (you know, after the dog in the book Saving Zasha) and found she settled in quickly. She was pretty strange; she was very hasty about coming inside the first few nights. We assumed it was because she wasn't allowed to where she came from but even as she got comfortable slipping in and out of the house she preffered sleeping on the back porch despite how hot it got in the summer.
Though she adored running around the property and around the central parts of the house where most of the commotion would happen (kitchen, living room) she had a horrid fear of my bedroom. She was already reluctant about going upstairs in general, yet sometimes followed anyway. However, my bedroom was hell for her. We even one day tried to shove her in and she promptly dug her claws in the floor and scrambled away.
One night when we were hosting a small get together with the family, we noticed Zasha was missing. The arcadia door was wide open the whole time though, so we just presumed she was out mingling with the animals to hide away from all the people. We ignored the situation and continued on chatting and eating until all of a sudden there was a loud bang, followed by a symphony of vicious barking and growling. I've heard Zasha bark and growl plenty of times; warning signs to strangers, protecting her food from insistent goats, even at coyotes, and all had sounded downright intimidating at the time, but this took the cake. She sounded absolutely ready to kill. It made everyone promptly freak the fuck out and rush upstairs only to find Zasha was directing her attack at something in my doorway. We turn the corner, expecting to find a snake or maybe even an intruder, but instead we find... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thin air. We didn't know what to attribute the loud bang to, but my family preferred to just ignore that and call Zasha old and delusional. We had to rip her away from the doorway and shove her outside and even then she clawed urgently at the door as if she felt the need to defend us from something. It scared me, but I avoided speaking up about it under the fear that my family laugh at me and call me paranoid.
Flash forward to now. I'd just gotten home from school. The house was relatively empty as both parents were working and my siblings had sports practice. Zasha was sprawled out in the dirt under a tree, eyeing up the goats and wagging her tail when a baby goat sniffed her warily. I knocked on the screen door to grab her attention, not quite wanting to be alone in the house when I had a dog. Obediently, she sprinted towards the door and leaped through before making herself cozy on the cool tile in the kitchen. I'd already grabbed a Sprite from the refrigerator and was ready to throw myself down on the couch and turn on the TV when suddenly, there was a loud bang.
Zasha immediately jumped up and began growling, pointing her body like an arrow at the staircase as if it were prey. I immediately felt chills run through my whole body. Forgive me if I sound a little too paranoid, but I'm a 110 llb 5'3 female who has little to no chance of surviving an attacker. Naturally, I bounded over to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife I could find, convinced that if I was armed I could maybe overpower the obvious intruder. Zasha beat me to investigating the situation as she promptly ran straight up the stairs and left me in the dust. Fearing the worst for the slightly too confident dog, I ran up after her.
To my utter shock, she bounded right into my room, heart set on once and for all devouring whatever it was she was so scared of. My room is quite large and has a walk in closet with no doors, so you quite literally just have to walk in. Therefore it surprised me when she dove straight into the backend of my closet and began sniffing and snorting insistently on the wall behind my rack of clothes, even scratching.
I sighed. Okay, maybe a mouse in the wall or something is that I presumed. (I know, doesn't explain the loud bang, but I was ready to try and rationalize anything) Still curious, though, I walked up to where Zasha was snorting around and hesitantly pulled back the rack of clothes.
There was a square cut into the wallpaper. It was doorshaped and could fit an average person, but was short enough that said person would have to crawl to enter. I at first did not realize it was a door - it doesn't really look like one, rather just a perfectly aligned tear in the wallpaper, but upon running my fingers along it and force shoving one in, I found it flopped forward and fell to the floor with a heavy clap. A cut out of my wall. Alright.
There was a light source from somewhere inside this... crawlspace, I guess. I am the biggest scaredy cat and would probably always live in a scary movie because of how I absolutely 'nope' out of any potentially dangerous situation, which is exactly what I did. I got a peek of what looked like a room and bolted. I raced down the stairs and out the back door so quickly my thigh actually cramped because I moved so quickly. The first thing I did was race to the safety of the animals (yeah, they can't help, but other living things are comforting) and grabbed my phone out of my pocket. Zasha followed me, a little more slowly and peering behind her shoulder every few seconds as if she knew exactly what was happening and was more fed up than frightened. I dialed my mom immediately, but she answered with a choppy "I'm at work, sweetheart, you know not to call me here. I get off in fifteen minutes, I'll call you back, love you bye." I was then hung up on.
I tried next to call my brother and my sister, but both phones were turned off. I felt like ripping out my hair. I contemplated dialing 911, but what for? I needed emergency assistance because I found a crawlspace in my house? What if there was absolutely nothing in it? In the broad daylight and with horses staring at me curiously like nothing happened, it felt ridiculous to freak out so much over something as simple as that. I finally worked up the courage to at least check what was in there after five minutes or so.
When I went back up (flanked by Zasha, who no longer looked angry but rather curious) I found everything to be exactly the same, the cut out of my wall still sitting neatly on my floor and the bright illuminated hole still standing patiently. Slowly, I crouched down and peered through.
Boxes. There was loads of them. This seemed pretty tame, and it seemed to be the only thing in there from my view. I would have never gone in there myself, but Zasha zipped right through when she realized I wasn't running away from it and began sniffing around in there. I tried calling her out but she just looked at me over her shoulder like a dissaproving mother in law and continued her quest for interesting scents. Feeling like she was never going to get out, I was faced with the reality that I'd have to crawl in and get her out myself.
So I did. The room was so small that even at my short height I felt the ceiling brush my head every time I took a step. A few steps in as I observed the stacks of cardboard boxes I came across something.
A blue sleeping bag.
At first, I froze, absolutely positive some psycho was right behind me and was going to clamp the hole shut and lock me in for all of eternity because I discovered their secret. But then I rationalized that maybe it was just more junk that happened to be spread out neatly on the floor coincidentally. So, I worked up the courage to approach the sleeping bag. As more of it came into view, I noticed a small camera positioned neatly on top. Next to it was a jar of salted peanuts.
I would have frozen up again, and I did, but much more briefly this time as I'd already given myself enough scares for it to get old. I crouched down and picked up the video camera. It was an old style one, the one that had a little flip-out viewing screen. It turned on and had a nearly full battery percentage. Just then, I heard the front door slam, and immediately bolted out of the room, camera in hand.
It turned out it was just my mom, returning from work as promised. I immediately ran down to explain what happened desperately. She at first was skeptic, rolling her eyes and throwing around the word 'really' a few times, before finally becoming convinced and following me up the stairs. She poked around in the room as well. We found the boxes to be full of normal attic junk - old toys, figurines, blankets and kitchen tupperware. The sleeping bag and snacks were still there. When I presented to her the camera, my mom (always the better thinker) quickly said we had to view what was on it. Grabbing a Fire something cord (I have little to no education on stuff like this) and some other things, she hooked it up to our TV.
The first tape was of the mountain. South Mountain, to be precise. The cameraman was zoomed in on the mountain, recording the rows of red blinkling lights on the antennas at the top of the mountain before zooming out and giving a view of the street. Our street. He walks for a bit before stopping and turning to zoom in on our neighbors' house. He views them for a while before continuing to walk. At one point the cameraman even points the camera downwards and zooms in on his own feet, which are covered in brown boots. The guy turns, and finally his camera rests on our house. There's a sigh from the cameraman, and then the clip ends.
In the next one, it's daytime. The cameraman is in a parking lot. He walks confidently (god, normally) into a supermarket and begins browsing some watermelons towards the entrance silently. It's pretty boring, stretching out for a good four minutes or so, until suddenly he aims his camera up and zooms in on a cluster of people. It's unclear what he's focusing on until an elderly couple come into view. I recognize them immediately; they're the couple that lived on the property before we moved in. The cameraman keeps his camera aimed on them for the rest of the video. He moves with them, keeping a safe distance but he never loses sight of them. He follows them through the whole store and peeks over aisles to get shots of them. Abruptly, the camera turns around to a store employee who taps the cameraman's shoulder angrily and inquires on what exactly he is filming. The clip ends.
The next is the first absolutely alarming tape - it starts out with the camera pointed downwards, shaking as the man walks. It's nighttime and it's very obviously the side of our house. The cameraman stops as he reaches the kitchen window and aims his camera right through the window pane, where the couple are playing music loudly and sipping wine happily. They begin to playfully dance with each other as the old man talks about moving up towards Canada (they went through with this). The rest of the clip is merely watching them.
For the next five clips it's just the cameraman spying on them. In dental appointments, from their backyard, and at one point the cameraman slips through the door when it's left unlocked and he begins poking around their items.
At one clip, the first thing seen is the front of the house, the man waiting with a ragged breath in presumably a bush. It's night time (again) and he's very obviously excited for something. For the first time, we hear him talk, as he whispers "C'mon..." urgently. It's unclear what exactly he's waiting for until the old couple come outside to their lawn. The cameraman jumps up from a crouching position then, but then the couple is joined by three other people (a couple and their child). They're all carrying drinks and settle themselves in lawn chairs, clearly planning on spending the rest of the night lounging about outside. The cameraman practically slumps and sits down again. He watches them for ten minutes until his camera points downwards. He has a gun laying neatly in his lap.
The last clip the cameraman has of the couple is when they're moving. The final moving trucks come to get the last of their furniture and the clip pretty much consists of the couple standing around outside complaining about how hot it is and barking orders at movers.
The next clip is of a real estate agent. I recognize her immediately too; she is the one who sold us the property. She's walking around confidently, surveying the stables and the exterior of the house. She opens her cell phone and makes a call to somebody about how dingy the place is and how she'll never sell the dump without some major flipping, and looks pleased when it seems she wins an argument. She then leaves and the clip ends.
The next clip is of me. This time, it's positioned from inside the room. The cutout door is obviously taken away and the camerman pokes his camera lens through my rack of clothes discreetly to film me. I'm walking around angrily, arguing on the phone with my dad about how he never comes straight home when he gets back in town. I remember that day clearly. I finally hang up on my dad and throw the phone on my bed before walking out. The clip ends.
The next clip is of that day that Zasha freaked out. The camerman is positioned at the top of the stairs, lying down and trying his best to discreetly film us through the railing. Zasha is lying down on the floor boredly. The cameraman zooms in on her, then back out on the rest of the family. He seems to zoom in on everything; the food, each of our faces, and even at one point on my mom's ass. This goes on for an agonizingly long time before he suddenly accidentally drops his camera on the next step, creating the loud bang we heard. Even dropped, the camera still records Zasha jumping up and racing up to the noise. The cameraman scurries to collect his camera and all about throws himself through my closet and into the room. Zasha follows him straight in, barking and growling angrily. He tries to wave her away, but she merely snarls at him and tries to snap at his hand. With no choice left, he turns and grabs a small elephant figurine lying in a box and throws it at her. It hits her forehead and is enough to scare her into backing out of the room, but she still barks insistently at the doorway. The figurine slides under my dresser and when the cameraman hears us clammering up the stairs, he plugs the hole with the cutout and waits with a ragged breath. Our muffled voices, concerned and confused, are heard in the room. The cameraman listens until we shrug and drag her back down the stairs. The clip then ends.
It's not the last clip - there's tons more with plenty of recent dates, but we don't bother to watch them. My mom called the police a while ago and a bunch of cop cars came. I've been frozen in the corner for hours as the cops questioned everyone. My siblings came home and were pretty angry at the sight of police and accused me and my mom of overreacting (they just vaguely heard snippets of us discovering a crawlspace) but I hardly care if they understand. I'm still trying to process everything myself.
I'm just trying to understand what caused the bang that made me find the room in the first place.
Submitted April 01, 2015 at 01:38PM by kar_yme http://ift.tt/19IeNb9 nosleep
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