Speaker 1: Twice we caught her eating out of the refrigerator in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. Dad had gotten up and
Speaker 1: walked down the hallway to see what the rucks was
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, but then the whispers soon turned into laughter,
Speaker 1: and then the search for the mob started to clean
Speaker 1: up some spilt spaghetti sauce on the floor before Mom
Speaker 1: got up. That was the first time. The second time, well,
Speaker 1: that's the one I want to talk about, because even
Speaker 1: though I was in the house and now a teenager,
Speaker 1: this is the one that sticks with me. I spin
Speaker 1: it around in my head over and over again. I
Speaker 1: replayed the sounds and the screams, and yet my parents
Speaker 1: refuse to talk about it. On my own. I kind
Speaker 1: of call it the refrigerator incident. My name is Edwin,
Speaker 1: and here's a scary story. We lived in northern California
Speaker 1: and around that time we had some problems with the
Speaker 1: Electra company. They would schedule these blackouts do to the
Speaker 1: nearby fires, or there would be something going on that
Speaker 1: would cut out the Internet. My parents would often tell
Speaker 1: us not to open the refrigerator too much because things
Speaker 1: would get warmed up. It was annoying, of course, but
Speaker 1: we got used to it pretty quickly. Our computer and
Speaker 1: some other stuff got these devices plugged into them so
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't blow up when the power would come back. Well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this night a Wednesday, because we still had school the
Speaker 1: next day, my sister and I had gone to bed
Speaker 1: at around ten thirty and stayed up a little bit
Speaker 1: longer with the TV on, waiting for some show to
Speaker 1: come on, something that she wanted to see. She got
Speaker 1: tired first, so I turned off the TV and also
Speaker 1: went to sleep. And they don't know around what time
Speaker 1: this happened, but suddenly everything got even more quiet. It's
Speaker 1: like when things are already silent, then they go still,
Speaker 1: unsettling and completely muted. It's what happened when the power
Speaker 1: would go out. Most of the time I never noticed,
Speaker 1: but when the natural hum of the house goes away
Speaker 1: at night, it was usually that. So I waited for
Speaker 1: something to happen for a few seconds before something broke
Speaker 1: the silence and I heard a thing outside was down
Speaker 1: the hallway. A light was shining through the kitchen doorway
Speaker 1: that led to the living room. I could see it
Speaker 1: from the bedroom door. For him, we used to keep
Speaker 1: the door partially open at night at least in our bedrooms.
Speaker 1: But I could tell that this light, it wasn't coming
Speaker 1: from the moon. It wasn't dim enough. This one was
Speaker 1: bright and cast these long shadows. I went all the
Speaker 1: way down the hall. I whispered to my sister, loud
Speaker 1: enough to wake her up that I heard something out there,
Speaker 1: asking her if she heard it too. And I just
Speaker 1: saw the blanket wiggle and heard it grunt. I figured
Speaker 1: that if I just peeked out over the kitchen, I
Speaker 1: would be able to see the source of the light. Amy,
Speaker 1: I said, did you hear that? She didn't move this time.
Speaker 1: I took the first two cold steps toward the door,
Speaker 1: the boards waking under me, but then I froze. I
Speaker 1: heard the door open, Mom saying something to my dad
Speaker 1: quietly from the bedroom. I know, I know. I heard
Speaker 1: Dan say as he walked from the far end of
Speaker 1: the hallway and then over the kitchen. I heard him
Speaker 1: walk normally past our bedroom. He got to the kitchen
Speaker 1: and stared at something. Amy. He whispered, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: I felt the blood rush away from my face right then.
Speaker 1: If my sister was out there in the kitchen, who
Speaker 1: was in the bed next to mine, I didn't think
Speaker 1: twice at that moment, and I flicked on the light
Speaker 1: switch to our bedroom. My sister turned around and covered
Speaker 1: her eyes with her forearm, grunting and trying to sit up.
Speaker 1: Amy was right there. Amy was asleep. I stepped out
Speaker 1: of the room and looked over the kitchen right as
Speaker 1: Dad was taking a few steps back. His face would
Speaker 1: say it all. He called for my mom, shouting down
Speaker 1: the hall and opening the front door. He came back
Speaker 1: with the broom and watch as a woman crawled along
Speaker 1: the floor and rushed over the front door, stopping to
Speaker 1: stare at my dad. Amy was wide awake by that point,
Speaker 1: and she was crying, begging to get out of the room,
Speaker 1: but I kept hushing her and pushing her back. Susan
Speaker 1: called the police that yelled for Mom. I was standing
Speaker 1: out of the hallway as Mom stepped out and screamed.
Speaker 1: This woman that thing in the kitchen was opening her
Speaker 1: eyes wide. She stopped and looked at me as Dad
Speaker 1: was approaching her, but she didn't care. She smiled at
Speaker 1: me with those dark teeth, cold mac and cheese stuck
Speaker 1: to the sides of her face, and black hair. She
Speaker 1: remained low to the ground like she was about to sprint.
Speaker 1: Dad got angry then and rushed at her, but she
Speaker 1: was faster. She sprinted toward me like a spider, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know in which direction she was going to go.
Speaker 1: After I stepped right into the room and I heard
Speaker 1: the door to the water boiler thing shut. It was
Speaker 1: this small door that we had in the hallway. It
Speaker 1: was four repairs and all that. Mom managed to close
Speaker 1: her door too. I could hear her muffled screams from
Speaker 1: the other side, but then she opened it again and
Speaker 1: started banging at our door. We opened it, and with
Speaker 1: one large sweep, she grabbed us and ushered us to
Speaker 1: the front of the house, passed this mess on the
Speaker 1: floor by the refrigerator, door had been left wide open.
Speaker 1: We stayed out in the porch until the police came
Speaker 1: in search. Dad was able to describe her as a
Speaker 1: small old woman, dark hair, with something not human about her,
Speaker 1: but that would be the one and only time that
Speaker 1: he ever talked about her. I remember Dad walking with
Speaker 1: the police officers into the house and around the backyard.
Speaker 1: They never found her. The space by the boiler was
Speaker 1: too small for anyone to fit in there, but they
Speaker 1: checked anyway, and was completely empty. Mom tried to almost
Speaker 1: down for a couple of weeks after that, telling us
Speaker 1: who she could have been and what she wanted. But
Speaker 1: from then on Mom only referred to her as some
Speaker 1: crazy woman who came in the house. But that always
Speaker 1: stayed quiet. It's almost as if you knew something else.
Speaker 1: Eventually we stopped asking questions, But every once in a while,
Speaker 1: I hear sounds in the house, and I'm unsure of
Speaker 1: what is scarier now, the uncomfortable silence of a power
Speaker 1: outage or noises from the kitchen. Sometimes I lay awake
Speaker 1: wondering who she could have been or what she wanted.
Speaker 1: Dad and I planned on making a trip to a
Speaker 1: lake where we used to go fishing when Grandpa was alive.
Speaker 1: It hadn't been there in years, so it was a
Speaker 1: whole month project fixing up the fishing tackle and even
Speaker 1: the small boat that we would take out there. But
Speaker 1: the day finally came, I was pretty stoked. One of
Speaker 1: my cousins decided to tag along, so of course we
Speaker 1: made him help out with the repairs too. I had
Speaker 1: finally made it a little later than usual because we
Speaker 1: kept stopping along the way. It was a Thursday night,
Speaker 1: we set up our tent and Dad wanted to sleep
Speaker 1: in the camper out of the truck, so it was
Speaker 1: only my cousin Joe, and myself in the tent. The
Speaker 1: place where we go, I can't really say the name
Speaker 1: because we know who runs It has two main lake areas,
Speaker 1: one of them with a dock and the other is
Speaker 1: more for experienced campers because it's right on the edge
Speaker 1: of this wooded area. In order to get the boat
Speaker 1: out there, we have to carry it down this steep
Speaker 1: hill of rocks and crossover fallen logs. We had gotten
Speaker 1: as clothes as possible to the edge of the water
Speaker 1: with a truck, but also had a tough time figuring
Speaker 1: out exactly where we were. So my dad told us
Speaker 1: not to wander off because the moon wasn't out that
Speaker 1: night and we could fall into the lake or get lost. Still, us,
Speaker 1: being pretty young at the time, thought it would be
Speaker 1: cool to use what we called our bathroom break to
Speaker 1: go out just to peek at the water at night.
Speaker 1: But that would be all just to step out come
Speaker 1: right back. So we grabbed our flashlights, put on our boots,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about some show we were both watching,
Speaker 1: in part because Neither of us wanted to admit that
Speaker 1: we were pretty freaked out, so when Dad said that
Speaker 1: it was going to be dark, he meant it. He
Speaker 1: couldn't even see our shoes out there without the flashlights.
Speaker 1: Plus the beam on those things were blinding whenever they
Speaker 1: hit a nearby tree trunk, so we mostly had the
Speaker 1: maim straight down. We had just made it to the
Speaker 1: edge of the tree line when my cousin suddenly stopped,
Speaker 1: stretching out his arms. One more step and we both
Speaker 1: would have been rolling down sharp rocks. We both let
Speaker 1: it out a sigh of relief, but still we stopped
Speaker 1: and almost simultaneously turned off the flashlights. And if I
Speaker 1: had to pinpoint it to something, I would say that
Speaker 1: this is where things got straight. For a while, we
Speaker 1: were staring out into nothing. When it's that dark, you
Speaker 1: don't know what's right in front of you or what's
Speaker 1: far ahead. So we simply assumed that the field, the
Speaker 1: dark one right in front of us was the lake.
Speaker 1: You'd hear the water splashing softly at the edge, with
Speaker 1: the occasional splash in the distance of a fish catching mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: But it was then when we heard it a clear
Speaker 1: hey was coming from out there. I could feel Joe's
Speaker 1: breath in the side of my face. When he asked
Speaker 1: if I heard that, I nodded my head and then,
Speaker 1: slightly more freaked out, Joe asked me again, did you
Speaker 1: hear that? And it took me a second to realize
Speaker 1: that he couldn't see me. No, yes, I whispered, there
Speaker 1: it is again. It both stood still. We were holding
Speaker 1: our breads out there at the edge of what appeared
Speaker 1: to be a whole new dimension, one that waited and
Speaker 1: spoke hey. We stayed completely still. I can see you,
Speaker 1: the boy said. It was a woman, a raspy, young voice.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of Virginia, this neighbor that had died
Speaker 1: a few years before that trip. She was in cheer
Speaker 1: in high school, and always wanted her to stop talking
Speaker 1: because it sounded like she struggled with it. We turned
Speaker 1: back to where to where we had come from, walked
Speaker 1: a few steps, but up ahead in the distance we
Speaker 1: could see some lights on the ground. That was the
Speaker 1: start of the other lake where the other people were camping.
Speaker 1: Had we walked the wrong way? Did we somehow miss
Speaker 1: those lights? When we were making our way toward the
Speaker 1: edge of the lake. Hey, you both heard, I can
Speaker 1: still see you, Joe screamed. He started running with no direction.
Speaker 1: He ended up hitting a branch at the top of
Speaker 1: his forehead fall the sounds he was making until I
Speaker 1: nearly kicked him, but we had nowhere to go. He
Speaker 1: both ended up sitting there, our flashlights moving around in
Speaker 1: the trees, waiting for something to pop out from the
Speaker 1: side of the trunk. But nothing happened. We started laughing
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I made fun of him for
Speaker 1: screaming the way he did and then running into a tree.
Speaker 1: He let out a chuckle and told me to shut
Speaker 1: up forgetting for a moment that we still had to
Speaker 1: find our way back. And then he reminded me of
Speaker 1: those sounds we heard out there. Hey, we heard it
Speaker 1: sounded just as close as ever. Our flashlights pointed at
Speaker 1: the exact same spot at the same time. Joe's bean
Speaker 1: started climbing up the tree first, as if he knew
Speaker 1: something was there. And yeah, my eyes followed it up
Speaker 1: there there was what I can only describe as a face.
Speaker 1: It was peeking out of one of the branches. It
Speaker 1: was pale, It's definitely human, with a wide smile shining
Speaker 1: bright against the beam of Joe's flashlight. It didn't move,
Speaker 1: It just smiled for a few seconds before it turned
Speaker 1: to the right, causing this branch to break, and upon
Speaker 1: realizing the noise they had made, it turned toward us
Speaker 1: and froze still. The smile faded, its dark eyes relaxed,
Speaker 1: and then focused right on us. We could see it
Speaker 1: climbing on the tree at an unnatural speed, even faster
Speaker 1: than just falling. We lost it with the flashlights and
Speaker 1: Joe screamed again, but I managed to grab onto his
Speaker 1: shirt as he pulled me along the forest. He got
Speaker 1: hit by branches and nearly tripped on roots and other
Speaker 1: things until we got to the clearing of the trees
Speaker 1: just on the other side. The whole time, I kept
Speaker 1: praying to myself that we wouldn't end up on the
Speaker 1: cliffs by the water. But I finally made it to
Speaker 1: the edge of the tree line. I could see some
Speaker 1: campfires and lights in the distance. All we would have
Speaker 1: to do is go around it, and eventually you would
Speaker 1: find the trail we used to bring the truck inside.
Speaker 1: Took us about half an hour to make it back
Speaker 1: to the trailhead. If we made it still, I couldn't
Speaker 1: sleep at all that night. He told that about it
Speaker 1: the next morning, after he asked why we were so
Speaker 1: tired mimics in the trees. He said that there are
Speaker 1: stories of back when he was a kid, that they
Speaker 1: would hear people out there, people that they knew, voices
Speaker 1: that came from the trees. I asked him if they
Speaker 1: had ever seen anything or what was making those voices,
Speaker 1: and he shook his head. Joey and I still talk
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. We told a bunch of our friends,
Speaker 1: and up until now, nobody, absolutely no one can explain
Speaker 1: what we saw that night. Sho