Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. How do we know that our dreams are only
dreams? And if they're more than that, how do we keep them only
in our minds? My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story.
I was surprised at how easily the door opened after being sealed for so
long, but it was just how I had imagined it happening, although time
had taken its toll on it, and you could tell the old wooden staircase
right in the middle, dirt stuck in between the crevices and spiderwebs, completely
empty by now catching only dust, no signs of life. Yet I had
walked by it many times before, as a kid running past it to catch
the ice cream truck that sped by way too fast, and then as a
teenager looking for a place to stop and think for a bit after school.
Sometimes I needed that, and then I needed it again after some time,
Having recently dropped out of college, The thought of being at the front steps
of an enormous house in the middle of a dying neighborhood offered some perspective.
I could sit there and think this house had seen families come and go,
cars changing in models, and colors, fashion trends, the fires in eighty
seven and the closing of Western High School just one block away. This house
was stuck in a town and I wanted to get away from, and was
now forced to live in again. The house never had a choice. Despite
all those decades of watching us silently empty, few people had ever seen it
from the inside. One of the inspectors hired by the family who owned the
property had been in there once the family changed their mind and decided to keep
it. The inspector left the door open that day and I stepped into the
front yard to take a peek inside along with my two best friends. Unimpressed,
but to me it seemed like the perfect spot to disappear for a bit,
and all I ever wanted to do was to go back. It took
a bit for me to get the courage to walk up to the front door
and open it, so, of course, I picked the quietest time to
do so, when no one was around, at two thirty in the morning,
when I had just gotten off my shift at the warehouse. Thankfully,
the moon was out, shining bright on the dried up gardens that surrounded it.
The large windows let the blue light shine on the inside too. There
were no locks, not even the front gate used them, but it was
kept closed. Even as a teen I needed to unlatch the gate to get
up to the front steps. The floors were strong, made out of wood,
just how you imagine a place to be in the movies. A large
ceiling lap, not quite a chandelier, but close enough. A large dining
room before you got to the kitchen on the right, and to the left
was a large living room area with a single person couch by the fireplace.
It was the only piece of furniture in the whole house, and I was
glad it was so. It was places like those that I looked for.
There was always something to think about. A busy mind, my friends used
to say. I used to have thoughts about what we were doing here and
why, and what was a point of everything, what we got to choose,
and what was just how it was supposed to be relax they would say
to me, thinking sorting things out was as close as I would get to
relaxing. And it happened in places like those, and only in my dreams.
But right now there was a chance to experience this now, after many
years, I walked up to the first steps of that staircase and looked up.
It turned to the right in a strange angle, leading straight to the
landing on the second floor. I could clearly see the next steps in the
staircase, the solid handrails not moving a fraction of a centimeter as my grip
tightened around it after every step. The staircase itself had been used. Not
sure when, since all of my life I had seen the house completely empty,
but the squeak seemed to fade the higher you would go, as if
those who had entered had given up on the climb to the second floor,
with only a few making it all the way to the top. I stopped
halfway up, myself, only turning around to admire the large windows on the
side of the house, the moonlight coming from the left wall windows beaming right
at that couch. Perhaps a bit too poetic, I know, but the
place really did seem magnificent to me. Even the smell, something I can
still remember, was pleasant, like a flower shot, but dark and cold.
I walked up a little bit more, just four more steps to reach
the top, when I thought I heard something, a sound so faint I
would have missed it had it matched the timing on my steps against the floorboard.
A froze midstep, and I remember smiling at the thought that the house
might still be alive despite it looking dead from the outside. Then I realized
I was there by myself in a large five or six bedroom home and a
piece of property so large that I had to wonder if the neighbors would be
able to hear me scream if I needed to. I set those thoughts aside
and kept climbing. The place was even more beautiful from the top. The
guardrails to stop you from falling to the bare floorboards were visible, with a
very specific area free of dust, with the markings you leave behind when you
take the dust with you on your hands, the kind of markings you leave
when you frequent a certain spot. Someone had been there, and I got
scared and booked it down to stairs and out the door, not looking back
for a single second. But in my dreams about the house, it was
a different story. I had them frequently. After my visit, I walked
to the hallway, the darkest part of the house on that second floor.
Only a single window was at the end of it. It was like a
mission. I needed to walk to the end and begin from there. I
looked behind me. Something had moved again. If I waited just a few
more seconds at that very moment, I would have given up and ran down
the stairs. But I don't know what would get into me that I would
simply look at the window and follow along with the sound of my shoes against
the floor, completely ignoring the wide open doors next to me. I would
get a chance to walk back and peek inside, just not then. I
needed to see what was beyond the hallway. Besides, what if I saw
something I didn't want to see just yet. I passed the first door on
my left. It must have been a bathroom. I kept walking with the
feeling that the walls were closing in on me, although when I think back
on it, it all made sense. A feeling of being watched is sometimes
very similar a certain lack of privacy that you feel the play is about to
squeeze you in something you can't control. I walked passing by a door on
the right, someone breathing, sleeping. I thought I just kept walking.
Then I heard whispers. I was walking so fast. At this point everything
became a blur as I rushed by five more doors, finally ending at a
smaller one at the end. This one was shut and right next to the
window. It had no door knob, but instead a handle to pull it
open. I simply grabbed onto it and it opened almost by itself. In
my dreams, I would look back down the hallway and freeze as I saw
a figures at the end of it. I don't know what would get into
me right then, but I managed to push myself in deeper into the house.
As I went into the dark room, I had no windows, no
more doors, but two steps in I felt a step in front of me.
There were no handrails, just a wall to guide me up to a
small beam of blue light at the top another window. I would step one,
two, three steps up and it became clear there was another floor.
I would keep climbing until I saw boxes, then two chairs and a mattress
by one of the windows. The space was much smaller up there. The
ceiling was closing into the walls on opposite sides. I knew right then that
I was in the attic. My heart was still pounding when I thought of
the reason why I was up there, and how I would have to go
back after who or what I had just seen. Despite my fascination with the
howls, I was still coherent. I could think part of me. Knew
it was unsafe, knew that perhaps it wouldn't kill me. But being up
there alone was something I was only able to do on a whim, not
something I could repeat or plan out. But then I heard the footsteps that
were coming up to the attic. No matter how much I think about it,
I can't change it. But I know what I should have done in
these dreams. I needed to look for something to protect myself with, or
run to a window and scream. But instead I would just wait. The
footsteps would get closer and closer, and soon I would see the shape coming
up the staircase, a man walking up to me, stopping as soon as
the top part of his body became visible, and I would be frozen in
place. I used to wake up at this point every single time, this
man walking up the stairs, standing there looking at me. I can go
as far as to say that I would see his chest puff up as he
got ready to speak, and that's where the dream would end. Part two
of the dream House is coming up right after this stay with me. For
years, I kept dreaming of this house I used to walk by when I
was a kid, and whenever I would bring it up to anyone, if
the conversation got into talking about dreams, they would say that, yes,
it was weird, but to not make it such a big deal. I
kept thinking that the dream had to mean something, that this man that climbed
up to the attic was trying to tell me something, or that the house
had a secret that I needed to find out. It was tough not to
think about it so much. This whole thing had been going on for years,
and the dream came almost consistently once per week. Then just out of
curiosity. In a late night Internet search, This was much later. By
this time I had already gotten married and had a kid, I stumbled upon
a video that talked about dream journals and logs. The video was trying to
sell a template to keep track of your dreams, accompanied by some app but
I figured I could just do it myself, so I grabbed one of my
notebooks and got to work. The task was easy. All I needed to
do was to write down, scribble or voice record as fast as I could
what my dream was as soon as I would wake up. No detail spared
unless I forgot it. Of course that was fine, but it would be
something that I would have to improve on as I started to jot down my
idea as much faster speed was the name of the game. Here. Every
three to five dreams I was to read through them, expand on them if
I had any recollection about the dreams themselves, and then write down any connection.
It was intense, and soon I happened to find a forum online where
people talked about their dream world, the places they would visit, and their
dreams. For some they were commonplaces or entire cities, schools, places where
they worked. For others, like one of the users that I ended up
talking to the most, it was about an RV very specific place where she
used to live along with her mom. Others would dream of places they had
never visited or could not possibly exist in real life, But anyway, I
wrote down everything. The very same reason why I can go into so much
detail about my dreams now is because of the journal entries I completed. Back
then. It would be the same house I would go in. It would
be unlocked, and then I would walk around the place, climb up the
stairs and then down the hallway. I would work my way up to the
attic, and then I could see someone coming up there. Every single time
I would freeze, and no matter how hard I try to pay attention to
the man who would climb up the stairs, I was still end up waking
up right before he started to speak. And it got to the point where
I would wake up tired and still try to write down the exact same dream,
sometimes attempting to draw out the layout of the house, the silhouette of
the man, or even just how the dark hallway appeared in my dream.
One time, while talking with my wife's about this dream, she knew and
understood very well. By this point, she asked why I hadn't just gone
to visit the house already. Maybe there was something for me there, after
all, the actual house was only a couple of cities over. It wasn't
fear that I was feeling, not quite nervous or anxious either, but this
strange sense of curiosity when I thought about visiting the house in real life.
Yes I liked the house, and yes I thought about it a lot growing
up. Sometimes dreams to me were better where they were in my mind and
nowhere else. My mistake had been writing them down, making them real.
I enjoyed my time away, getting lost in thoughts. It was like I
could shut off the world and go into one I made up completely. I
thought that by going into the actual house I would get rid of that.
But one Friday night, well Saturday morning, technically, I found myself there,
walking up to the house in the middle of the night. In a
mix of dejauvus and real memories. I was ready to finally figure this out.
As I pushed open the door to get into this house, it was
unlocked after all those years, the same chair in the living room, the
empty dining room to the right. I walked up the stairs, following what
I thought where my own footsteps in the dust from all those years ago.
Until I reached the second floor. I looked at the guardrails and then down
the dark hallway, the same morning I had dreamed about for years. I
didn't want to give much thought to what I was about to do, and
instead chose to walk down the hallway all the way to the window. My
heart started pounding once I saw the small door without the door knob right at
the end. This thing had only been there in my dreams up until that
point. I held my breath as I turned back toward the start of the
hallway, but felt the sense of relief when I saw no one there.
The doors along the hallway were wide open, with the dim light of the
moon shining into them, offering tiny streaks of bluish white light against the bare
wooden floors, six stripes in total. Still, I wasn't going to risk
it, as I started rushing back toward the staircase, passing by every door
without looking, wondering if any of the answers I wanted were in there.
I got to the top of the stairs and made my way down, rushing
toward the front door, before stopping to take one last look at that couch,
the one for a single person in the living room, the place that
was supposed to be mine, for me to think and let my mind wander.
That's when I heard the footsteps. I wasn't going to be in there
for one more second, and instead rushed past the door and shut it behind
me. I ran to the car, locked it and waited for the figure
or anything to show up through the windows on the side of the house.
For the two hours I was there, my eyes fixed on it, the
same house I had seen for many years in my dreams there was no movement.
So this day I still have those dreams of the attic, the figure
walking up the steps, but I kept the questions in my mind, the
answers of which still roam in the house. And maybe one day, when
I want the dreams gone, I'll visit again. Scary Story Podcast is written
and produced by me Edwin Kovarujaz. To listen without ads, try out scary
Plus over on scaryplus dot com. It's linked in the description of this episode.
If you have questions about the stories, including this one, find me
on TikTok and Instagram. I'm at Edwin Cove. That's E d w I
nco V. But I'll also lead to everything in the description of this episode,
so if you're on YouTube, follow the show. The link is just
YouTube dot com slash Scary Story Podcast, again linked in the description. Give
me a follow to help us grow on there anyway. Thank you very much
for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.