When TikToker TaLeah (@teebmariee) was 23 years old, she lived on an Air Force base in Dover, Delaware. She lived in military housing that was really old.
The house was drafty and had creaky wooden floors. It was also a little creepy because she and her family would often hear the subtle sound of something shifting stuff around.
Sometimes, they saw a shadow man, but he didn’t bother her, so they just pretended like he wasn’t there. One night, she was at home alone because her husband used to work the night shift.
It was 8 p.m., and her six-month-old baby was fast asleep. So, she clicked through the TV channels, trying to find something to watch.
She settled on a Criminal Minds marathon. She spread out her blanket and went into the kitchen to make herself some peanut butter crackers.
When she was done, she put the knife down at the edge of the sink because she was still going to use it later. She then returned to the living room to watch her show.
“So, I watched two episodes, and all of a sudden, I started hearing something on the wall behind me,” TaLeah said.
“Now, these houses were like townhouses, so we shared one wall, so I’m thinking, you know, it’s a weekend night, so it’s probably a party.”
But the sound grew more intense, and it was right behind her head. She grabbed her baby monitor and went next door to tell the neighbors to keep the noise down because her baby was sleeping. The neighbor was confused because she was also at home alone and was just relaxing.
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TaLeah went back home and noticed that the bathroom light was on, even though she hadn’t been to the bathroom in all that time.
She told herself that she must’ve just forgotten to turn the light off. She headed back to the kitchen to make more peanut butter crackers and resumed her evening.
A few moments later, she heard pounding on the wall. The peanut butter knife clattered to the ground. About 12 seconds later, the back door flew open.
She convinced herself that it was just the wind. She got up from the couch to pick up the knife and close the back door. When she came back, the bathroom light was on again.
“I go in there, I turn the light out; I come back, I sit down, I hear the bathroom light click back on,” she recalled.
“The switch is going up every time, and the light’s back on. So now, I’m terrified. I can’t talk myself out of this. So, right after I hear the click, my baby starts screaming.”
She ran up the stairs to her baby’s room and saw bright, white lights dancing all over the ceiling. By the time she reached the room, her baby was no longer crying.
He was sitting up and clapping at the lights. She had no idea where these blinking, twirling lights were coming from because he didn’t have any baby toys that lit up.
Their house was also located at the edge of a field, so it was pitch black outside. She grabbed her baby and ran downstairs. The refrigerator door was wide open, the knife was on the floor again, the back door was open, the bathroom light was on, and her blanket was on the floor in the living room.
She grabbed the baby bag and a baby bottle and jumped into the car. She called her husband, saying that something was in the house.
Luckily, he worked on the base, so he was only a few minutes away. He tried to calm her down as she told the story of what had happened.
Finally, he convinced her to go back to the house. When they arrived, everything was back in its place. It looked like she had stood up in the middle of watching TV and walked out.
“We lived there for another year or more,” she said. “Nothing else to that level of creep happened the entire time that we stayed there. I still do not understand what that was. I don’t know, but it was scary.”
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
