Shadow Lurker by nerdsearch[]
Art by Ben Duff.
(The Shadow Lurker/ Unwanted House Guest was created by Ben Duff. P.S. This creepypasta has been mildly edited to improve the reading experience. If you want, you can read the original unedited version, click here.])
My ghost story began a few years back, when I moved to a new house in my quiet town. The house was your typical suburban home. It was close to the schools, restaurants, pretty much everything. My family was pretty excited to move there. Before moving, my family had never had any problems with anything paranormal. In fact, it was something we never discussed.
We finally finished moving in and we had to decide who would room with who. Our basement needed to be redone, and my oldest brother would move down there once it was complete. So, my brother and I shared a room, leaving my youngest brother having a room closest to my parents and my sister having her own as well. Everything seemed normal, until my little brother began noticing things.
We would all be sleeping, when my little brother would wake up in a panic. My parents would open his door and turn on his lights (which he always preferred) and hold him until he would settle down. He never liked that room, so my parents thought he just needed someone in there with him. Soon my oldest brother, who we'll call Martin, switched rooms with the youngest brother, who we'll call Greg. But it didn't stop. Soon, Greg would wake up at three in the morning, and run down to my parent's room and the end of the hall. When they asked him what's wrong, he said the "man" chased him down the hallway. When they asked him what man, he would have two fingers move on the palm on his other hand and then say, "That man...". This happened every night.
Greg later said that he didn't like the man in my parents' room. My mom would say "How come you don't like Daddy?", and he would say "Not him..." and leave it like that. Soon, it wasn't just Greg noticing things. My dog didn't want to stay in the house. It would be in the negatives outside in the winter (we live in Canada, so it got pretty cold) and he would prefer being outside at night. My parents would come down and see that my dog had become sick in the night and had run through the living room, kitchen, and dining room, almost like he had been chased. My sister, who we'll call Haley, had always loved that dog and would stay home and look after him when we went out. Haley was still pretty young, and my parents had just decided to let her stay home by herself. She was watching TV when the dog started barking, and she went to see what was up. She then saw a shadowy figure with a hideous, grinning face, run through the kitchen and up the stairs. Scared, they both ran outside to the yard and waited for my parents to return. My parents realized that something wasn't right at that house...
We had lived there for almost a year now, and stuff was still happening. I had only experienced a few things. Mostly just hearing footsteps up on the second floor, and the occasional whisper. But I never thought much of it. When we bought the house, it needed to be worked on, and the entity never really liked when we renovated it. We had just had the kitchen and the den done, and soon we were working on the basement. One day I woke up with the stomach flu and I stayed home from school. Both my parents were out, so I sat on the computer for most of the morning. Then, all of a sudden... CRASH! I had never been so scared on my life. I checked the house and figured that it had happened in the basement. I crept down quietly, now knowing what to expect. Down there we had a giant room that was supposed to be Martin's room. There was also a small window that we needed to be replaced, which had already been done, but the old window was still lying flat on an old dresser. But the old window wasn't where it was supposed to be. It was laying on the middle of the floor, shattered. I was so scared I ran up and called my mom to come home right away (she was running errands). This was when I become frightened of that house.
My entire family had been experiencing these things now. My parents now had dozens of orbs floating around their room, and every night they woke up at three in the morning. My mom woke up one night with someone pushing against her chest, to the point where she couldn't breathe or call out to my dad. It soon stopped, but she was never the same after that there. My dad never really believed in anything paranormal, and we'd tell him all about it, but he took it as our imaginations. There was one night where everyone in my family was out for the night and my dad stayed there alone. He was scared but never admitted it. He slept on the couch and again, he woke up at three in the morning to the sound of a typewriter.
We've never owned a typewriter.
There was no more sleep for that night. My parents never really talked about what happened, not really wanting to scare us.
It got worse. Way worse. Martin woke up with scratches covering his back and they were in places where he couldn't even reach. Haley would hear footsteps walking around her bed all night while she tried to sleep and soon, she listened to music all night. She had a battery-operated clock in her room that she didn't really use. The hands of this clock would spin at night, and she would watch in a panic. There would be no batteries in it. Greg woke up every night at the same time. But this "Shadow Lurker" (as my siblings began calling him) never really bothered me all that much. Sometimes I would watch the tops of my curtains twirl a bit, but that was it. Except for one time...
I had went to the beach with my next-door neighbors for the day. We had become very close friends when they moved next to our house. Anyways, after the day at the beach we had made it back, and everyone in my house was at soccer (it seemed to like me when no one was home). I had thrown my beach bag into a corner and went to the computer to check my Facebook. That's when I saw it. They sunlight was passing through the blinds, so I could tell what was there: laying on the couch we had beside our computer, was the cloaked form of the Shadow Lurker looking right at me with his glowing, sunken-in eyes, baring his disgusting teeth in that seemingly never-ending grin of his. I raced out of the room to my neighbors' house as fast as I possibly could. I never told them what happened. That was the last thing to happen to me.
Soon we had moved again to a house on the other side of town. Before we left, my mom had told it to leave us alone, it had gotten what it wanted. We sold the house. Mom and Dad never really told me anything about their experiences until I was in high school, and they told me that they knew the name of one of the spirits inside the house. It had called itself Tommy, and my parents had seen him before. Unlike the Shadow Lurker, he was an old man. They believed that the Shadow Lurker and him were clashing in the house, trying to make it theirs. Tommy wasn't a bad entity like the Shadow Lurker. In fact, they believed he tried to protect us. We have been happy in our new house and have experienced no problems at all. The people that bought our house, however, only lasted eight months, unlike our three and a half years.
My little brother still doesn't sleep well at night. He believes the Shadow Lurker will get him, like he tried to at that house all those years ago...