While at my book reading yesterday at A Readers Corner Bookstore, a discussion broke out about real life scares. Spooky kind of stuff. And I have such a story.

I was a teenager at the time, but don’t remember my age. It was at night and the rest of my family were gone. It was just me at home. I’d finished my chore of vacuuming the basement and wanted to chill for a bit, so i got the book I was currently reading, The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. For the record, this book scared the hell out of me.

I did the reading down in the basement, in the corner chair, with every other light off but the reading lamp over my shoulder. I used the vacuum cleaner for a footrest and got started. I picked up the story in the chapter where the father is making a fire and out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees a ceramic statue of a lion, move. He stares at it for a bit, then goes back to the fire, when once again, he thinks he sees the lion move in his peripheral vision. But when he looks at it, it’s not. And how could it? it’s ceramic.

It was then that the light in my bedroom turned on. I froze. The only way to get to my bedroom would be to come down the stairs to my right, pass in front of me, then go into my room. Which meant, the person would have to have been in my room the entire time.

Every hair on my body stood on end. I didn’t get goosebumps, but goosemountains. I set the book down on the table next to me and slowly made my way to my room. I yelled out, “Hello” several times, but no answer. When I finally got the nerve to look into the room, it was empty. I looked at the light switch and saw it was stuck perfectly in the middle between on and off. Laughing to myself, I flipped the switch off and then went upstairs to the kitchen to get milk and cookies, laughing at the scare.

I took the snacks back to my chair in the basement, set the plate of cookies on the table, took up my book and the milk and began to read again, still laughing to myself. A few sentences later later, the father gets up to leave the room and trips and falls, as he feels something bite his leg. Looking down he sees the ceramic lion and bite marks on his ankle.

It was at this very moment, when the vacuum cleaner turned on. The perfect silence was interrupted by the howl of the machine. I threw both the book and glass of milk into the air, as I jumped from my chair, my heart roaring like jet engine. When I could calm down enough to check out the machine, once again, the switch was perfectly in the middle of on and off. A huge coincidence.

I got a towel and cleaned up my mess, closed the book, got the cookies and went upstairs to watch TV. With the lights on. All of them.

What’s your scary, spooky story?