She heard footsteps below her in the basement.
Lying in her bed, she was frozen in fear and unable to move.
For some people, paranormal experiences are horrible and life altering. Luckily, for junior Chloe Murphy and her family, the spirits in her home meant no harm. “The spirits that lived there were nice ones, and didn’t try to harm us,” Murphy said.
Living in Chicago, Illinois in her one story, brown bricked house, Murphy still remembers things that happened when she was only two years old. “I was just a baby, but I remember footsteps,” Murphy said.
In desperate need of a house just to be close to some family, they moved into the old, brick house to settle down for a while.
“My brother had a toy grill that would say ‘fire me up’ and sometimes in the middle of the night it would go off for no reason,” Murphy said. “Other toys that were motion detected would go off too.”
Since a previous family lived there and died of old age, Murphy’s family of four experienced some creepy sightings.
“One day my mom saw a man standing at the end of her bed,” Murphy said. “He had a hat on and was wearing old-fashion clothing.”
Hearing footsteps at night, and always feeling a presence nearby, Murphy’s family often felt like they were being watched.
“One night my mom saw the same man walk across the hall into my brother’s room, which really frightened her,” Murphy said. “This was the scariest thing that happened.”
These skin-crawling events usually happened during the night. Considering all the horror films Mu has watched, this was no surprise.
“Our sliding glass screen door randomly shattered one night, so we had to get a new one,” Murphy said. “A few days after we got a new one there was an unexplainable tear in the screen.”
The Murphy family also had strange encounters with their elderly next-door neighbors.
“Once they came by and asked us if anything strange ever happened in our house,” Murphy said. “They acted like they knew what was going on, but were very weird and standoffish about it.”
The family would often wake up to noises in the basement in the middle of the night, which is usually something most people would hate to endeavor.
“My cat Milo is pretty fearless, but sometimes he would randomly get spooked,” Murphy said. “It often happened in the middle of the night, and he would just meow at an empty hallway.”
In 2006, the family moved out of their creepy, sketchy home into a lovely two story house that they lived in for eight years.
Feeling more protected with their new dog Max, a fun-loving pitbull, they lived happily in their new home, and never had to encounter another ghost again. A few summers ago, during her freshman year, Chloe drove by the old house when on a trip to Chicago. She learned that no one has lived in it since them, and that fact sent chills down her spine.