Kids, I'm Home!

From: Phyreglow (Phyreglow@yahoo.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Tucson, AZ
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sat Jul  3 14:37:39 2010

When I was 12 years old (back in 1986) my younger sister and I were home alone one summer afternoon while our parents went shopping. We sat on the living room floor watching M TV to pass the time. From where we sat we could clearly see the gate to our little patio through a window next to the front door, so when our parents came home we could quickly change the channel, as we were forbidden to watch M TV. We were scared to get caught because our step-father was abusive, and any little thing could set him off.

As we watched we suddenly heard the clank of the gate handle and the squeak of the hinges. I scrambled to change the channel on the remote, but when I looked up the gate was still closed and no one was walking up to our door. I thought maybe I had heard a neighbors gate, and moved to put the channel back to M TV. Then we heard what sounded like keys jingling outside the door and then fitting into the lock. We stared in disbelief as the deadbolt turned itself to the unlocked position. Then nothing. It was quiet, and no one entered. I got up off the floor and peeked out the window to see who was at the front door, and nobody was there. I relocked it.

My sister was trembling, and asked if I had seen and heard what she just had and I nodded. We spent the rest of the afternoon in our room, until our parents arrived home 2 hours later. I asked them if they had come home and then left for any reason, and they said "no".

We had other small occurrences in that condo, (which was built on a previously undeveloped lot and we were the first owners) like things going missing when you had just set them down, and I would see a dark shadow moving in my closet some nights, but this was the only time I saw something move by itself while I lived there.

23 years later, after my step-father committed suicide in the master bedroom, something else did happen. I will tell that story another time.