Until now, my scariest memory as a child was walking through the woods and finding something following me. Not someone, something. It was in the middle of winter, and I was ten years old, and I was taking a shortcut home from school, like I had hundreds of times before. This time I heard footsteps trudging through the woods behind me. It could’ve been anyone, but every time I looked back I saw nothing. So, thinking I was being clever, I ducked behind a large tree and waited. The crunching noises grew closer, and then footprints came around into view.
Nothing was there. They just appeared, one after the other, like an invisible person was making them. They stopped a few feet from me. Scared out of my mind, I ran home and cried to my mom. She didn’t know what to make of it, but probably assumed it was my overactive imagination. I didn’t take the woods home the next day.
But the footsteps didn’t go away. I heard them in the hallway behind me in school when I was alone, or on the sidewalk walking home. I never saw anyone following me, and nothing bad ever happened, so I stopped being spooked by it. If something had wanted to hurt me it sure had plenty of chances.
I also began hearing pacing outside my bedroom door every night when I went to bed. If I opened the door to check, nothing would be there, and the pacing stopped. But when I closed the door the footsteps returned. It creeped me out and I got little sleep for the next week or so. But again, nothing ever happened, and whatever was doing it never came into my room. I eventually got used to them. In fact, I got so used to it that when I went to college they had carpeted hallways in the dormitories and I couldn’t hear the pacing outside my door. I found it hard to sleep without their comforting sound.
As I grew older I realized this thing was protecting me, like a guardian angel – not that I believed in such things. It stopped me from crossing the street once when a car was running a red light. Just a tug on my collar, enough to make me look back to see who’d done it, only to find no one there. Another time a stranger had tried to mug me. I was walking home one night and I heard footsteps following me. I casually glanced behind, checking on my angel, but saw a hooded figure instead. I shrugged it off until I heard the footsteps speed up. The stranger was running at me. I turned around at the last second to see him trip and crash into a garbage can. A knife flew from his hands. I ran and didn’t look back.
Strangely enough no one else ever heard the footsteps, and I never told anyone about them either, figuring people would think me crazy. But now I have to tell someone before it’s too late. I believe this thing is, or at least was a guardian angel, and I’ve made it very angry. I think it’s trying to kill me.
I just got out of the hospital yesterday after being in a car accident. I was driving along normally when I felt something take control of the steering wheel and head straight into oncoming traffic. I don’t remember anything else about the accident – I don’t even want to call it that, because it was no accident. Something was out to get me.
It was a far cry from a couple years ago, when I’d been drinking and driving. I left my friend’s house after a couple beers but thought I was fine; I didn’t even feel a buzz. On my way home I hit a pretty bad pothole and veered into the across the street toward a parked car. I know my reaction wasn’t fast enough to avoid the crash, but I did. At the last possible second I felt something take the steering wheel and turn it away. At the time I thought it was a miracle.
Well things have changed.
A week before the car accident I fell down a flight of stairs. I didn’t slip; I was pushed. I distinctly felt a shove from behind, but no one behind me. Thankfully I wasn’t hurt too bad, but I was certainly spooked. I felt another shove when I was walking along the sidewalk to my car. It might have looked like I slipped and almost fell into the street as a bus was driving by, grabbing the streetlight at the last second, but I didn’t.
So why the sudden change in my angel’s attitude? Well a couple months back me and a few friends were playing with a Ouija board. I didn’t believe any of that supernatural stuff – in fact I didn’t even believe in angels until after mine turned on me. My friend, who owned the board, had used it before and she knew what she was doing, but couldn’t get it to work properly. The pointer kept going to the letter A over and over again. It wouldn’t go anywhere else, no matter what we asked it. She was about to put it away when I asked what “A” meant. Then it started to spell something: ALL ANGELS ANGRY.
None of us knew what that meant, but we still thought the game wasn’t working, so we put it away. That was when things changed for me. That was when I had to start watching my back. I had considered going back to the Ouija board, asking it to forgive me. But what if using the board was what angered the angel in the first place? I’ve heard about how Ouija boards mess with the spirit world, and I don’t want to make things even worse for me. It’s bad enough that I’m afraid to go anywhere by myself. I’m afraid to be alone.
So that’s why I’m writing this; in case something bad happens to me. I’m not depressed or suicidal. I’m being hunted. The scariest part is that I don’t hear the footsteps anymore. I can’t hear it coming.
Once, when I was little and still in school, I was being beaten up by a couple kids in the next grade. One of them was on top of me, punching, when he was suddenly flung off. I had my arms up to cover my face, so I didn’t see what happened. I turned to see the kids staring behind me, horrified. Then they ran. I never knew what they saw, but I’m terrified now to think I will see it for myself very soon.
The Chris Effect 