My Terrifying 'Paranormal Activity' Experience

Hello everyone.

After an abrupt return to ATS after a 4 year hiatus, I figured providing you all with another story of a personal experience may be a good way to re-integrate into this great community.

The following events all took place during mid 2011, and I stress that the following is all true, with no embellishment, exaggeration or selective memory. I made a point of taking notes during the whole process at the time, and am thankful for that now. For those of you that remember me when I was originally on ATS, I believe I built quite a reputation for honest, informative and interesting posting, and I hope that this can be the beginning of rebuilding this status!

So, in 2011, I decided to make the big move away from my sleepy home town, and try out an entirely different style of living. I, along with my cousin, found a small unit to rent in a leafy suburb of south Brisbane, Australia. The unit was one of five in the one structure, a large, old 'Queenslander'-style house that had been renovated to be split into these five small dwellings.


A Queenslander-style house, very similar in style and layout to where I had moved in to.

Nothing untoward occurred at all during the early weeks and months of this new adventure. We settled in, slowly furnished the place, and began to grind into a routine. Bumps in the night were commonplace, with very distinct sounds being heard frequently night after night (such as bush turkeys walking on the iron roof, the clicking of geckos on the ceiling, the general groans of an old home). It is important to note that with the wooden floors, wooden cupboards, doors, windowframes etc, the sounds of shifting and general wood strain was almost constant during a still night, but you learn to filter it out. Noises that are different, or out of place, become easily noticeable among the cacophony.

Something changed, however. Several months later, my girlfriend had all but moved in with us, and it was around this time that something changed. I remember the first night I realized something was wrong, so clearly. Everyone had not long gone to bed, and my girlfriend and I were laying in bed watching a movie on my computer. The bedroom door was closed. We heard clear, distinct, heavy footsteps out in the living room, directly outside the bedroom door. I assumed it was my cousin, who must have gotten back up out of bed, and thought little of it. The footsteps, however, appeared to enter a pattern of pacing back and forth, and were so heavy that bare feet could not have caused them. More like boots. They sounded as if they approached my door, stopped, and then went quiet. I got out of bed, called out and opened my bedroom door to a house in darkness, my cousin still in bed sleeping soundly. I was pretty unnerved, but played it down as not to scare my girlfriend, and returned to bed.

The following weeks had this pattern repeated maybe 4 or 5 times, 2 of which my cousin wasn't even home to have somehow caused the footsteps. As I made note of earlier, by this time I knew the sounds of the house really well, the sounds that filtered through from the neighbours, the animal life and the structure itself. These sounds were clear, distinct and footstep-made, with no discernible source. Around the 5th or 6th occurrence, things took an unsettling turn when the footsteps, as they did, approached the bedroom door after minutes of pacing. This time, when they stopped, what sounded like hyperventilating, or heavy breathing, could be heard from the other side of the door. By this stage, my girlfriend was terrified to even go to bed at night, no longer listening to my 'it's probably nothing' consoling. This breathing sound lasted for perhaps 15 - 20 seconds before the bedroom door was shaken at it's hinges by an incredibly loud bang, as if a boot or fist were slammed against it. That ended the events for that night, but we, as you can guess, did not find any rest.

The next major piece of this tale took place a few days later. I was at work, and my girlfriend was at the unit alone. I received a panicked phone call from her at work, in which she relayed the following. She had been sitting on the side of the bed, with some of her university work spread out around her, just passing the hours and (at least pretending to!) study. The bedroom door was open, and with the aforementioned living area directly outside, it is possible to see straight through that area and into the kitchen on the other side. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and looked over to the kitchen to see the cutlery drawer extend out of the bench, all the way, and fall entirely out onto the floor. Almost the instant this happened, the bedroom door had slammed shut. When she called me, she was outside on the side of the road, having pushed out the flyscreen from the bedroom window and climbed out, too afraid to re-open the bedroom door. When I arrived home from work several hours later, this is where I still found her. She was that terrified that she had not re-entered the house. This was the first of several daytime events that led to the conclusion of this chapter.

The night-time events continued, with the breathing sounds and bedroom door knocks becoming something of a regularity alongside the stomping feet. I had actually recorded audio of all of this one evening, but the phone that this file was recorded on is long since gone, and as far as I can tell, I didn't have the foresight to make a backup.

The 'grand finale' was about a month after all of this started. I was having a shower, and our bathroom, like many in these older Australian homes, had a door with a 'window', which was made of fogged glass. You could see vague shapes and colours through it, but nothing significant. I was home alone, and after getting out out of the shower I turned to leave and saw a clear outline of a head and shoulders on the other side of this fogged glass. The figure appeared to be entirely black, with muted features. The only thing I can compare it to is a person in a morph-suit. The figure spoke, saying something in a very whispered / muffled sounding voice. To sound horribly cliche, it did appear to me at the time to be a threat or a warning, along the lines of 'get out' or 'get it'. The figure then looked like it turned away from the window but instead of being seen to walk away it simply vanished as it turned, as if it was only visible from the front, and as it turned it just ceased to exist.

This was the last straw for me. I didn't tell my girlfriend the details of the encounter, but simply started the process of moving. She was attending university at another city and had been staying with me while doing as much as possible via distance. I relocated within a week of this event to the city in which she was studying and moved into a place with her, leaving much of my furniture behind and at a great financial loss. But I couldn't live there any longer.

I'll add a few FAQ here at the end, as the handful of people I've spoken to about this all appear to ask the same questions.

Why didn't you take a video or audio of this?
As I mentioned above, I did have an audio recording, which I've since lost. I didn't own anything that could take passable video (my phone was an older model with one of those old, nasty first wave cameras). Plus at the time, I didn't care about having to prove anything to anyone. I was living it. I didn't think ahead to any time, like now, where I would 'fondly' tell the story and feel the need to have to support it with any evidence.

Did you do any research on the house?
I honestly have not done any research on the property for any historical clues. I actually have my own theory about the entity, which is not related to the house itself.

What do you think it was?
I believe whatever it was was actually attached to my partner, and not to the place. My girlfriend at the time was a mysterious individual in terms of the paranormal, with personal experiences of her own and several 'abilities', for lack of a better term, that appeared to defy normalcy. The events only started when she began frequenting the place. They didn't follow us to our new home, however, so I've wondered if perhaps the entity itself was bound to the place, but perhaps had a particular problem with my partner, or with females in general. I'm not sure.

How do I know you aren't making all this up? It seems like something stolen from a movie script!
You don't, to put it simply. However, I have nothing to gain from this story. If I were to make a ghost story up, I'd make it far more elaborate, and climactic than this one. You can take my word for the above, and log it into your memory as another persons personal testimony of the paranormal, or you can cast it aside as a tall tale. Either works for me, I'm just relaying my own experiences in the hope that someone else gains something from reading them.

Have you had any other strange experiences?
I have. The most significant by far was my crossing of paths with a Yowie, the thread about which is linked in my signature. I, like most people, have also seen some pretty strange moving lights in the sky at one time or another, but the above events, alongside the Yowie encounter, are the two most solid scary experiences.

several 'abilities', for lack of a better term, that appeared to defy normalcy.

a reply to: Answer

One of those people that don't necessarily deem themselves 'psychic', but certainly have a far above-average rate of strangeness. She was from a pretty alternative family who, it appeared, fostered and encouraged her to cultivate these 'gifts', rather than punishing her for it.

She was very hesitant to talk about much of it, but I remember several prediction or mind-reading moments that left me feeling pretty overwhelmed. If she was, in fact, 'in tune' to some degree with that otherworldly element of things that appear to intersect with our world, I still speculate that it may have been why this entity was drawn.

Welcome back!

Interesting story. If you have shorter experiences you can share you could do it on www.abovetopsecret.com... so we can learn from it.

You know, on the sides of the eyes many people can see things they can't with the front. Besides movements and beings I can also see the moonlight clearly through the normally pitch black clouds with the side.

Also, invisible beings are usually very fast, which is also why they're so barely visible. You only see some while they stand still for a long time in their life. Very dark black beings aren't rare to be heard of.

In winter beings are being slowed down, becoming more visible to you if you are not colder. Also there might be higher temperature changes in materials which make materials move and bend. Fear; adrenaline increases your speed and makes you see things easier. If you are not permanently distracted by noise and haste like most of the humans there is no avoidance to experience the "paranormal" which the mass has forgotten in the box of slavery.

These things come from my own understanding of the world. To me everything seems simple. Feel free to ask for details.

And this is the top of the hour story on ATS ...
some ape got an 'Paranormal Activity' Experience" ..

a reply to: kloejen

Thank you for your deep insight and contribution.

Also, I prefer 'human', to 'ape', just for future reference. Ape could be easily misconstrued as a derogatory term intended to offend.

a reply to: fooffstarr

Nothing against you buddy. It was just the top of the hour the Pakistani Hostage crisis, and then your post took over. I just wondered at that. Guess its just the inner workings of ATS.

Sorry Homo Sapiens!

a reply to: fooffstarr

Could there have been any chance that entity was protecting you and your cousin? Or warning perhaps?

s&f well written.

Not to inject a different sort of creepy to your story, but I once knew someone who had an untreated mental patient living under their house for a few weeks without them knowing.
Possible non-spiritual explanation?

Not that you need one; stories like this have been going on as long as humans have lived in homes.
Thanks for the tale, very interesting.

a reply to: kloejen

Fair enough. Yeah, this isn't news and isn't important in the least, I do agree. We've had so many big bad news events the last few days, unfortunately, which I don't want to, or intended to, take space away from! ATS inner workings will replace this with something actually timely and newsworthy soon enough I'm sure!

a reply to: EA006

I dunno, possibly. This thing did give the impression of being negative though. At least to us, it seemed to be slowly growing in strength and wasn't being overly friendly.

I wish it had warned me, because that relationship didn't end so well! Haha.

originally posted by: EA006
a reply to: fooffstarr

Could there have been any chance that entity was protecting you and your cousin? Or warning perhaps?

s&f well written.

I've often wondered if the "scary" things that these entities do is actually the only way they can manipulate our reality.

Maybe they're trying to communicate with us or be helpful and it comes across as frightening/aggressive. It would explain why "they" always seem to be slamming doors, knocking objects off of shelves, knocking on walls, etc. but don't actually try to attack anyone.

a reply to: Answer

Light could be harming to them as radiation is to us, so they have to keep away.

EDIT: Removed information to protect the invisible from the dark machine

a reply to: Answer

It's an interesting theory, as plausible as any other. We simply don't know enough about these phenomena. According to science, we know nothing.

My general beliefs about the supernatural are so vague. I'm on the fence about intelligent action or 'broken record' imprints of those passed, about an afterlife, about ghosts vs demons vs logical explanations.

I can only go on this one sequence of events, in which a pattern was clearly seen in what happened over and over again, and yet, the daytime occurrences appeared to be far more deliberate and threatening.

originally posted by: fooffstarr
a reply to: kloejen

Fair enough. Yeah, this isn't news and isn't important in the least, I do agree. We've had so many big bad news events the last few days, unfortunately, which I don't want to, or intended to, take space away from! ATS inner workings will replace this with something actually timely and newsworthy soon enough I'm sure!

a reply to: EA006

I dunno, possibly. This thing did give the impression of being negative though. At least to us, it seemed to be slowly growing in strength and wasn't being overly friendly.

I wish it had warned me, because that relationship didn't end so well! Haha.

Ya know even when watching the paranormal films i often got the impression that the demons, weren't really demons but other invisible/cloaked beings. IDK, seems weird to think our world isn't our own........

a reply to: fooffstarr

I believe you, I've had lots of this same kind of thing happen to me years ago. Especially the footsteps and also things moving around on their own. This was almost 40 years ago and didn't culminate in any great climactic ending like the movies, it just stopped. I'd never have thought to record anything either, like you say, I was just living it. For all I knew, it would never stop or I'd lose my mind or worse. It was really terrifying though.

Very interest and well articulated. Im unwillingly skeptical about the paranormal as having events like this happen to me the web is filled with fakery and people looking to entertain themselves. The question that too many people ask is why didnt you video it. If you have been in a situation like this a sense of fear or panic can quickly overcome you which the only thing you can think about is what is this and when is it going to end. At no point in a situation like this do you consciously think about reaching for you phone, going to the camera and start recording. Your senses are heightened so much you can pretty much hear the sh*t running down your legs, slight exaggeration.

I think no matter what story one tells about an experience a person will not truly believe or begin to understand the paranormal and what its like to first experience it.

s&f

a reply to: fooffstarr

Yah, I spent some time with a girl a few years ago. A mystical syncretic I would call her. Artist. Some rather interesting "personalities." Spending much of her time in solitude after a rather terrible childhood. Only, I came to believe she wasn't so "alone" after all. I just thought lovely-but-goofy new ager going in, and I came away personally knowing that whatever the "paranormal" is, it's more--in some instances--than "misperception." Some really weird stuff happened when we were intimate and I'm not talking in the kinky department. Something tangible, intense, and separate from us was present. Very experiential though, we have to admit, and ultimately hard to qualify these sort of things. I ONLY posted this, because I feel ya, OP.

Before you even got to your suspicion, I had already wondered about your girl because of my own experience.

a reply to: fooffstarr

I believe your story. I had a similar experience in the house we live in now. Except, it wasn't anything threatening. It was a little boy entity. We no longer sense his presence...I think he moved on.

The basic things we experienced was him running down outside our bedroom early in the morning. We thought it was our son, but when I got out of bed and checked, I didn't see him and than looked into his bedroom where i found him sound asleep. I even woke him up and asked him if he had just ran down the hallway, but he was so groggy from sleeping, he just said no and quickly fell back to sleep.

My wife yelled for me one night while I was downstairs watching TV. I ran upstairs thinking she was in distress and immediately thought something was wrong with my son or daughter. When I got to our bedroom, my wife was shaking and as white as a sheet. She said she was lying in bed and felt a little hand tugging the covers off her. She thought it was my son who would sometime come into our bedroom and want to climb into bed with us. She said she even turned and called out his name, but was terrified when she realized nobody was there.

What's wierd, is my wife also has a gift of being able to sense things around her. Many people have told her she has an ability, but she refuses to open the door and learn how to use it. I told her if it were me, I would jump right in, lol. She's afraid of negative entities so that's why she's not willing to develop it.

Here's the crazy part, we later found out through some older neighbors that our house was built on an apple orchard and a little boy fell and died while playing in one of the trees.

Very interesting! thankyou for sharing! I would have been out of there as soon as i heard the footsteps on the first night but i am a wimp! That all sounds terrifying indeed.