Source
r/nosleep•
AwkwardSegue

Sleeping in the basement.

How many horror movies/novels/stories have you seen/read/heard that involve a basement? We've heard it all multiple times before: a character goes into a darkened basement...but they're not alone. Quite frankly, there's something downright creepy about most basements. I'm sure all of us, on at least one occaison, have sprinted out of a basement as fast as we could after turning out the lights. Most kids would balk at the idea of sleeping in a basement.

Not me. Not because I was trying to be super hardcore or anything like that; rather, it was because my basement isn't all that creepy to begin with. Actually, it's pretty cool. My parents renovated it when I was 6 or so, so it looks much more like a normal room than the traditional "creepy basement". It has everything a budding movie nerd such as myself could ask for: a fairly large TV with ~400 channels, a DVD player, and a sizable stack of DVDs from the weekly library run. Naturally, during last summer, when there was no school to worry about, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching TV and movies and browsing Reddit. My cat and rabbit kept me company.

One night, at around 3 AM, while sleepily watching The Daily Show, I suddenly heard a noise from around 30 feet away.

crunchcrunchCRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCH

I momentarily froze in panic. Then, I realized it was just the sound of my cat crunching its dry food. Still somewhat shaken, I resumed watching TV. The program cut to a commercial several seconds later, as luck would have it. I picked up the remote to change the channel, only to drop it on the ground. As I bent over to pick it up, I noticed that my cat was on the floor next to the couch. The implications of this observation didn't quite sink in until the sound of cat food being crunch resumed.

My fight-or-flight response kicked in almost immediately. I ran upstairs to my room, slamming the basement door in the process. Even though no more suspicious sounds were heard for the rest of the night, I could not fall asleep until the sun rose, flooding my room with light.

I don't sleep in the basement anymore.

Posted Jan 3, 2011, 5:35 AM UTC

2311
Pigsareit•

I'm still pretty young, so even though I have a room in my parent's basement, I don't find it weird. Anyway, my basement is also pretty creepy, and as you say, really any basement can be creepy. The only thing that has happened and that was creepy was this: About 2 months ago, I was putting some videos on my PSP to watch in bed later on. It was already pretty late, and by the time I was finished converting the videos, it was pitch black in my basement. So I grabbed my PSP, and shuffled along the floor to my room. Now, the door to my room is honestly terrible. Since my door size is smaller than normal, my uncle made a custom one for me. (and it unfortunately sucks). So I get in my room, somehow manage to close my door, and shuffle over to my bed. Took me a while to get setup but just as I was about to hit play on the video, a loud BANG hit my door. Immediately I thought the darn thing fell over again. So I turned on the light, only to see it was exactly as I left it. At this point I was pretty freaked out, but I continued to watch the video. At around 4am, I woke up. I really needed to use the washroom, so I climbed out of bed, and turned on a light. After I left the bathroom, I noticed that I never had opened my door to leave my room. It was already open somehow. I closed it, and went to sleep. When I awoke, it was open again. Quickly I put some jeans on and ran upstairs. Nothing has really happened since, but now I hold in my pee if I have to go in the middle of the night.

6
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
Theopeo1•

Maybe your rabbit was eating cat food?

6
Deathmau•

I had something similar happen quite a few years back.

We lived in a mountain town and it was a hot summer night. I was on the phone talking to my dad, pacing back and forth between bedroom and living room, and my husband was in the living room playing a video game.

We had three cats at the time, two kittens and an adult tom who all shared a food dish in the kitchen. I noticed as I was talking to my father that the cats were crunching their food in an obnoxiously loud manner. Louder than really seemed normal for them.

I chalked it up to the food being extra dry or the cat being extra hungry.. I don't know, either way it was immediately shrugged off as unimportant. I made my way back to the bedroom, did a loop and came back out. As I did, I noticed my husband on the far side of the living room cringing and gesturing wildly toward the kitchen entrance.

Huh, that's weird... I wondered out loud to my dad on the line as my husband continued to gesture and mouth panicky words at me.

By now I was directly in front of the entry to the kitchen, my husband was on the far side of the living room directly opposite, a couch between us, and on the other side of the entry (no door) was where the cat dish was kept.

Where the loud crunching was continuing. Curious about why my husband was freaking out, I turned to peer into the kitchen and what I saw had me yelping and leaping over the couch to join my husband on the other side in moments flat.

Since it had been a hot night we had left the kitchen door and the front door open to get some air flow (no screen doors.. we lived in an old miner's shack for crying out loud!) and a skunk had wandered into the kitchen from its hidey hole under the neighbor's house and decided to help itself to the cat food.

It was kinda scary because these neighborhood skunks were prone to acting weird anyhow (but that's a whole different story).

tl;dr: Don't leave your door open when you live in a mountain town, you never know what might wander in.

3
[deleted]•

good story! I used to live in a mountain town, too. We got lots of critters too.

Your story reminds me of the time I was just getting my breakfast on in the kitchen, looking out our pretty big 6'x4' window into the driveway, and out of nowhere a huge fucking peacock just slams into the window. It startled me, but I didn't really process it fully, maybe just thought it was a regular bird for a little bit. Then as I was walking into the living room, I fully wrapped my mind around the fact that a gigantic bird just slammed into my window and had a good laugh at that

2
Deathmau•

Heheh Thanks. I guess it wasn't so much scary as it was silly, though these particular skunks in our neighborhood used to circle around out house come up to the windows and put their little paws up on the windows and peer in in a very creepy unskunk-like way.

We also used to have drunk tourists and woodsies stumble into our home at all hours of the night (partially because we lived a block away from a popular bar and partially because we lived in a resort town; so animals weren't our only concern).

Are peacocks a common thing where you lived? The sounds they make creep me out to no end. I don't think I have ever seen wild peacocks though.

I gotta admit it would be pretty hilarious to see a bird that big slam into a window though.

2
[deleted]•

Those skunks sound pretty scary, actually. I can just imagine getting up to go to the bathroom at night and having a skunk staring at you with his paws on the window. I think drunk people are far scarier than peacocks or skunks, though.

And no , peacocks aren't native there, I don't think. I later found out it was a pet of my neighbor. I dunno how legal it is to keep a peacock as a pet, but we kept stickers on that window after that incident

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[deleted]

1
asancho•

Haha! This reminds me of a time I visited upstate new York. I'm from Los Angeles and am not too experienced with wildlife. I'm in my friends house and hear a shrill Shrieking noise from outside in the middle of the day. Of course I freak out. "What the hell is that?!?" And then see it. Or should I say, them?

There's 3 fat wild turkeys just chillin on his front lawn. I mean these things were HUGE and apparently it was mating season. Lesson learned!

1
Spacepirate1015•

I hate to impinge on your creepy story, but my guess is it was just a mouse. I've heard mice chewing stuff at night and it's way louder than you'd think a mouse could be.

5
RebelTactics•

I think since most basements are underground and in the earth's crust all sorts gas's, seismic activities and electromagnetic energies explain most of the paranormal encounters in basements.

However that is not always the case. Science does not explain all the happenings which occur in underground places. I'm sure statistics would show that more "freaky shit" happens in basements then in above ground spaces by a whopping margin. Science or psychology has never been able to speculate why "freaky shit" occurs. That being the definition of paranormal supernatural then does exist.

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[deleted]•

Used to live in a basement, and I miss the experience. Very quiet (except when the water would go through the pipes.), comfortable, and generally a good hang out spot with friends.

2