This whole story is probably going to sound a little weird from start to finish, but I swear I'm not creative enough to make this up. Don't expect a super-exciting climax... this is just the true account of something weird that happened to me. Reality doesn't always give you all the answers or reach a conclusion.
I have an uncle who lives in D.C. I call him my crazy uncle (affectionately). He's a former-hippie who has rambled around the country making friends, sampling substances, and becoming a repository of 1970's knowledge and stories. He's over 60 now and doesn't get out so much anymore, but he still tells wacky stories and smokes his Mary Jane. He also tends to attract weird and fascinating friends.
Among these is Jim and Leann. They're around my uncle's age and as quirky as can be. They are also some of the most shockingly generous and open people I have ever met in my life. When they heard that my sister and I were coming into the area to visit my uncle (who lives in a tiny apartment with little space for guests) they offered to let us stay in their house. They were going to be out of town after our first night, so they insisted it would be no trouble for us to take up some space. They had never even met either of us before so at first I felt a little uneasy about staying with total strangers. However, after meeting them, my suspicions were gone. Rarely have I met such genuine and kind-hearted people, and I still feel that way about them, despite the weird stuff that happened next.
Jim and Leann are patrons of the arts. Their entire house and yard is like a modern art gallery. The front lawn is decorated with garishly colored criss-crossing poles, a ladder leading straight up to no-where, and a car-sized sculpture of a box of cereal. Inside the house is even weirder. You're greeted at the door by a human-sized mannequin of Bert from Sesame Street wearing a deep-sea divers suit. And that's just the start. Every room in the house is filled with strange art installments, from a giant balloon sculpture, to a wall covered with shooting-range targets, to a stack of empty dog bowls, to an enormous pile of some sort of bright pink pills coated in lacquer. My favorite was a table with maybe 70 tiny, crudely-formed wire figurines acting out some sort of combat scene. Some were dead, many were fighting, and a few were clinging to the edge as though they'd been knocked off of their little table-world in the fray.
But there was one local artist that the couple had taken a particular shine to. Apparently they had decided to sponsor this guy both with money and by giving him a room to live in down in their basement. His craft was making life-sized sculptures of people out of newspaper and masking tape. He would dress his creations fully in human clothes and wigs and pose them throughout the house. Most of them were just standing in corners, arms dangling at their sides. One was lying face-down on the floor in the hallway and anther was just a pair of legs sticking out of the living room wall. Every inch of their bodies, when fully clothed, looked eerily life-like. The only give-away was that their faces were just wads of newspaper and tape.
The artist was out of town during our stay. After the first night with a wonderful dinner and chat with Jim and Leann, my sister and I were quite alone in the house. We had plenty to do during the day and we came back to the house after dark. You can probably imagine that this peculiar house gave me a serious case of the heeby-jeebies. When the lights are dim, the whole place just looks so surreal and eerie that you can't help but feel your skin crawl a little (especially with Bert lurking by the door in his diving suit). I was kind of enjoying spooking myself out a little, honestly. It didn't last for long, though. My sister and I were tired and we soon shut ourselves in the guest room and fell asleep.
I woke up in the night having to pee. That's pretty unusual for me since I generally have a bladder of steel, but we had been drinking beer that evening, so I finally grudgingly got out of the comfy bed and wandered out into the hall.
Instantly, I felt a crawling fear sensation, similar to what I get when I hear the whine of a swarm of bees or wasps nearby (I am terrified of wasps). I was looking straight down the hall, past the face-down man on the floor into Jim's office. There was a bright blue light on his computer tower that was illuminating the room well enough for me to see pretty clearly the sculpture standing in there: a woman with her back to me, wearing jeans and a hoodie and a little bit of blonde hair showing around the hood. She was just standing on the far side of the room, facing the wall, leaned slightly forward as if she'd been frozen in motion. I stood dead still for a second or two, having to remind myself that she wasn't a real person because, without being able to see her face, she looked so damn real! She didn't move at all. Beginning to enjoy the thrill of fear, I crept forward into the office and peered around her hood to see her face.
Just paper and tape in the blue light. Like expected.
The crawling fear didn't abate though. I realized why she had taken me so entirely by surprise; I hadn't seen her before. Yesterday and earlier this morning, Jim's office door had been closed. I was almost certain it had been closed when my sister and I went to bed as well, but I wasn't 100% sure if I would have noticed. I backed out of the room and stared long and hard at her some more, just to reassure myself that she wasn't going to move. Nature was calling though, and all of this tension certainly wasn't helping. I headed to the bathroom and relaxed a little in the bright light and lack of creepy mannequins.
On my walk back across the living room in the dark, I tripped over a paintbrush on the floor. I'm not kidding: one of the art installments was a streak of paint running across the wall and floor ending in a paintbrush that had been sculpted and glued to stand straight upright on the wood floor. I'd already tripped on it twice that morning. The crack of the paintbrush flexing and my hissed curse sounded loud in the quiet house. But a second later, it was dwarfed by the loud SLAM of the office door closing. I stood bolt upright and stared into the hall where the blue computer light and been shining just a moment ago. It was now almost pitch black, except for the faint glow under the crack of the door. I felt myself get a little shaky as I slowly moved forward, keeping as much distance from the office as possible. I slunk past the face-down man, and into the guest bedroom. I closed and locked the door. My sister barely moved as I got back into the bed. The slam must not have woken her.
I'm not sure how I managed to get back to sleep, but I guess after a long span of silence and uneventfulness, my heart rate eventually returned to normal. The next day, everything looked significantly less creepy in the cheerful light. The office door was closed still, just as it had been when I first arrived. I reminded myself that the AC kicking on might have drawn air through the hallway, causing the door to close. I tested the door handle gently and found it was locked. This was a bit of a relief; there's no way the door could get blown back open the following night. No more spooks in the office.
Sure enough, I woke up having to pee again the next night. I'm not a coward, but I'm also not completely fearless, so you can believe I was pretty hesitant to open the bedroom door after my scare last night. I cracked it open just a bit to peek down the hall. The office door was still closed. Breathing a sigh of relief, I left the bedroom and headed off to do my business. On the way back through the living room I took care to avoid the paintbrush. I was squinting in the dark to see it when I heard a sound that made my heart freeze. A click, and then a very slight creak of a door being opened. Blue light flooded into the hallway from the computer tower. I stood stock still, heart pounding, adrenaline coursing, feet rooted to the spot. It was probably several minutes before I coaxed myself a few steps forward to where I could angle myself to see into the office.
She was there. But she was no longer facing the wall. Her body and paper-tape face were turned towards me now, arms still dangling by her sides. What I felt at that moment was a primal jolt of panic. I back-pedaled straight back to the bathroom (tripping over the paintbrush again), shut myself inside, locked the door, and turned on the lights. I sat down on the toilet and tried to quiet my breathing enough to listen for any sound outside. Everything seemed quiet except for a click and hum of the refrigerator running. I was still scared shitless. No one else was here! Who had opened the door? Who had moved the paper-tape woman to face the hallway?
I hadn't brought my cellphone with me so I couldn't check the time but I stayed in the bathroom for quite a while until I began to worry about my sister. I had left the bedroom door wide open. There was nothing between her and the paper-tape woman. I finally opened the bathroom door and peeked out, leaving the light on. I half expected to see her standing right outside of my door, but there was nothing there (besides a large neon-green dog sculpture with orange triangles painted on him). I made my way across the house again, turning on lights as I went. I peeked into the hallway and saw the office door was closed once more. I was spooked, but at least I felt like there was a barrier between her and me. I went quickly into the bedroom to check on my sister. She was asleep and seemed untouched. I left the bedroom again only to flick off the living room light and then dash back inside. Before I closed the door, I looked once more down the hall.
Blue light was still shining under the door, but I could see two dark shadows where I knew her feet must be standing. They were right behind the door.
I shut and locked the bedroom. I did not sleep. I sat up and played games on my phone to keep me awake while I strained to hear noises outside. Everything was quiet. I finally crawled back into bed once the sky had turned dawn-grey and passed out for an hour or so.
The next day we were leaving. My sister got up before me, so I didn't have to endure the agony of unlocking and opening the bedroom door. I guess nothing was unusual because she was calm, just eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen next to the wall of targets. The office door was still closed.
"Did you not sleep?" she asked me when I walked out.
I admitted I hadn't slept well, but didn't elaborate. I was still both scared and a bit embarrassed about how scared I was.
"Your eyes are super blood-shot," she said.
I think I said something dismissive and made myself a bowl of cereal. When I went to brush my teeth and collect my toiletries from the bathroom I checked myself in the mirror. My eyes were as red as raw meat. I'd never seen them look so red and nasty. I felt a little nauseated. Was it just the lack of sleep or something else? I still don't know.
I never have spent the night at Jim and Leann's place again. I've been invited a couple of times, but never was able to make it. Even if I could make it, I think I'd come up with an excuse. I know my sister has gone down to stay there again, but we had a falling out a while ago and don't really talk anymore, so I have no idea if she ever saw anything.
My eyes went back to looking normal after a couple of days. I have no idea what happened or if anything happened. I'm a pretty skeptical person, so I've tried to consider things that might explain it naturally: the artist came back, snuck in secretly, and was messing around with his creations seems like the most reasonable explanation. It doesn't explain the door opening and closing with no one there, or how I could not have heard someone else walking around the house. Still, if it wasn't that, I'd have to consider other options. Was the paper woman moving? Would she have tried to hurt anyone or was she harmless? I don't know.
If anyone knows anything about this stuff, please tell all.
Submitted September 14, 2015 at 08:31AM by feverhead_coldhands http://ift.tt/1NqSF5v nosleep
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