About two months ago, I decided to spend a little time at my older sister's house because being at mine almost threw me into a depression plus I just couldn’t bear being alone as it had begun to feel dangerous to my mind. This made me choose noise instead because having children running around, voices calling my name every minute and life happening loudly helped heal me in ways I didn’t know I needed.
One night, after I had tucked my nieces and nephew in bed, I sat scrolling through TikTok, half-listening as they excitedly narrated their day at school. Then a video came on my FYP asking people to share experiences they had which they hundred percent knew were real but were never believed when told. The comment section was a graveyard of chilling stories. I must have gone quiet, because my nieces noticed. So they leaned over, peering into my phone, curious about whatever had stolen my attention.
That was when the second-born said, very calmly,
“Aunty, I have one.”
I looked up immediately. “Okay,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Let’s hear it.”
She told me it happened the night she turned nine. The weather was cold and she jolted awake to find she had wet the bed. Afraid of being punished in the morning, she decided to clean it herself. Quietly, she slipped out of her room and headed to the basement to get a rag.
And there, by the curtain, she said, stood a man she didn’t recognize. A complete stranger.
She said her body went cold instantly as fear washed over her, but not enough to send her running back to her room. In her words, her mother’s anger felt scarier than the stranger. So she walked into the basement anyway, shut the door and said nothing. Neither did she want to look nowhere in his direction. Her heart raced as she searched for the rag, refusing to turn around.
But when she finally did, he was gone. My niece swore it wasn’t her imagination. Swore she saw him clearly. As she finished, her siblings nodded. They said she told them the next morning, though she never told their parents.
The eldest added that she believed it. Their voices were low now. Asserting that when their parents got the house, it had been abandoned and empty for years. I literally just sat there in silence, unsure what unsettled me more, the story itself or the way it was told without drama or exaggeration. Just a child recounting something she had witnessed and carried alone.
I keep asking myself, can an eleven-year-old make up something like that, unprovoked, and keep it consistent for years?
As for me, I’ve always believed in ghosts. Not in the romanticized, floating-sheet sense but in the idea that some things are summoned. That humans, through rituals and black magic, open doors they cannot close. Haiti and history comes to mind though. The things people do when they want power over the unseen.
Right now, I now avoid that basement like a plague. I mean I dread it. I go down only when absolutely necessary, and even then, I don’t linger. Belief doesn’t always come from seeing, it also comes from listening and realizing your fear arrived long before your doubt.
