by Lisa Thompson
Before we got married, my husband and I lived together in a two-story townhouse.
Our wedding was just a few weeks away and we were preparing for our families to come for the wedding.
We needed an extra bed for our guest room, and my soon-to-be sister-in law offered an antique bed that she was storing for a friend who was in the military and sent on deployment.
The bed was beautiful (antique sleigh bed with in-laid rosewood); we happily accepted her offer.
We lived in this townhouse for several months prior to this happening — all was good.
I just remember all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, I was afraid to be in the house by myself.
I had this creepy feeling I was never alone — felt like someone was watching me, or in the same room with me.
This feeling kept getting stronger and stronger over the next couple of weeks.
I remember being in the bathroom washing my face before bed and getting such a strong, creepy feeling that someone was behind me and I would stand bolt-upright in the middle of washing up just to look to see who or what was there.
As more time passed, the feeling got very intense.
I thought I was losing my mind, but never said anything to my fiance.
I wasn’t sure how he would take this or what he would think.
One day, my fiance had to go on a trip (can’t recall now if it was business or family-related) but he was gone for a week.
I remember being a little panicky over the thought of being alone for an entire week.
One night, I was sitting on our couch folding laundry and watching TV when this strange thing happened.
The set-up of the floor plan is important to understand here…I was in the living room, downstairs, the stairway to the 2nd floor was on the left side of me, and the kitchen was to the right.
The couch was up against the wall, so anything, or anyone, going from the kitchen to the stairs had to pass right in front of my face (between me and the TV on the opposite wall).
It was summer time and I had the windows open — the window in our bedroom (2nd floor directly above where I was on the couch) had a fan beside it.
Now, this is important to note:
My fiance and I always disagreed on what best cooled down the house — the fan blowing out or the fan blowing in(I preferred the fan blowing in and he always said that it should blow out to pull air all the way through the house from the other windows.)
Since he was gone, I of course left the fan blowing in.
In our kitchen was a flower arrangement someone had sent us with one of those Mylar balloons (helium-inflated balloons usually made with foil and polyester materials).
It was a couple of weeks old, so the balloon had lost quite a bit of helium and was just kind of floating about midway (not quite 6 ft. up in the air) but I kept it anyway.
After folding laundry and watching TV, I decided to go to bed.
I walked up the stairs toward the bedroom and when I rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, the helium balloon was floating right in the middle of the guest bedroom doorway.
I immediately froze and had the worst feeling come over me.
I was so scared!
I immediately started thinking how the balloon got up there.
It must have floated — I tried to think — but that was impossible.
I was right there — it would have had to float across the room right in front of my face when I was downstairs.
Even if I looked down at the laundry for a few seconds — there is no way that balloon could have ‘floated’ that fast to cross the entire room and all up the stairs without me seeing it.
I tried to calm myself down with all sorts of possible reasons this could have happened, but it didn’t help much.
I got ready for bed (still totally freaked out).
I crawled into bed and kept the lights on (seriously…I was 28 years old and was so scared that I kept the lights on!)
I pulled the covers over my head and tried my best to fall asleep.
As I was lying there, trying to calm down enough to sleep, I heard a man’s voice whisper “Hello” to my ears.
I heard him clear as day right in my ear — like someone was two inches away from my head!
All through that night, I didn’t sleep at all.
I just laid there with the covers over my head, scared to death.
The next day, I called my fiance and finally told him about how I was feeling and what had happened the night before.
As far as the balloon trip up the stairs, he said it probably got ‘sucked’ through the house because of the fan in the window…(here’s where that detail is important).
I said no, that it was not possible because I had the fan blowing in and not out.
When he returned home, we took down the bed my sister-in-law gave us and stored it in a shed.
Nothing ever happened after that and I never had those weird feelings of being watched again.
Everything stopped after the bed was removed from the house.
