It goes bump in the night

*yes, this is a true story.  Yes, this is typical of us.  Once we thought there was a mouse in the garage and we reacted the same way basically. ;)*

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It was a Monday night, and after the kids went to bed later than I’d like thanks to our new spring baseball schedule, both my husband and I decided that it was worth crashing early ourselves.  He was finishing up bedtime with our eldest while I worked on getting a few emails sent before I called it a night.

As I sat at the laptop on the main floor, I heard what could best be described as crinkling plastic.  As though somewhere in the house, someone was unwrapping a new medicine bottle and was removing the plastic part that covered the lid.  It would crinkle, then stop, the sound just loud enough for me to hear.

When My husband came downstairs to say goodnight, I asked him if he heard it too. He didn’t.  Thinking I was losing my mind, I wandered around the house for a few minutes.  Realizing the baseball game was on upstairs, I told myself that I was hearing sounds from the television.  He kissed me goodnight and went to bed.

I sat back at the computer, in the near-dark, finishing up my work.  The crinkling began again. The house was so quiet by this point – no children talking, no television in the back ground – only the sounds of my typing could be heard.  I paused, and listened again.  The sound was coming from our entry bathroom right by the door.

I was tired and it had been a long, busy day.  My years of reading and watching fictional mysteries and dramas was catching up on me. The crinkling sound soon became the sound of what my mind would tell me was the crunching of bones. My heart raced.  As I slowly paced to the front of the house, lights still off, I could hear it grow louder.  Something was making the sound in my entry way bathroom.

I couldn’t go to bed with my mind telling me there was an evil, red-eyed creature, gnawing on the bones of an unsuspecting animal in my front bathroom – and then eventually me.  I ran upstairs and woke Andy up.

“I found the sound. It’s in the front bathroom.  I think it’s a thing.” I said in a winded voice.

“What?” He was confused, having been on the verge of sleep himself.

“I think there’s something in the front bathroom.” I repeated.

He got up and we both went down the stairs.  At the top of our front entry stairs we paused and listened for the sound.  Sure enough, it was there, and my husband could here it too.  We looked at each other and I said in a whisper “what is it?”.

He shook his head “I don’t know.”

The moment seemed to last forever, both of us worried with indecision about what to do next.

“We have to find out.” I said.  He flipped the front hall light on and we stood back, waiting for something to scurry from the bathroom.  Nothing moved.  We waited another few seconds and the sound began again.  It would crunch and crinkle and then pause.  Then start again.

“What do we do?” I said.  We both knew we had to go look.

“Could it be in the walls?” He said.  Both of us thinking that something living in the walls wouldn’t be as much of a nightmare as an evil creature out to kill us.  Okay, maybe I was the only one thinking that way.

“Or the grate.” I said.  Finally, we decided we needed to go look in the bathroom.  I went down the steps slowly, with as much agility and silence as I could.  I handed him a hockey stick that was leaning against the wall near the front door.  I wasn’t sure if I expected him to swat the thing or if I would be quick enough to open the front door and kick whatever the creature was out but I felt better with one of us being armed.

I needed to shut the door to prevent whatever was in the room from getting out.  Andy said something to me, I think it was “do you see anything?” but all I could hear was the beating of my own heart.  My chest felt tight and my breathing quickened.  I don’t know what I was expecting but my imagination told me it would be horrible.

My intention to close the door in a smooth movement didn’t go as planned.  I needed to take another small step closer to the door knob and nearly tripped on a shoe. If I was in a horror movie, that moment of hesitation would probably mean I would have been pulled into the room with the creature, but fortunately, real life meant that I was fine.  I pulled the door shut with great force and leaned against the door, letting out the breath that I had been holding.

I pressed my ear against the door and heard nothing.  Then I heard the crinkling again.

“We need to turn on the light.” I said to Andy who was still holding the hockey stick.  “We need to look inside.”

I think about 20 minutes had passed by now.  We were both still alive, so that was good, and no furry creature had escaped to wreak havoc in our house just yet.  He moved around some items in the foyer, I suspect to avoid my tripping again, and to block the top of the front stairs a bit more.

I opened the door just enough to reach my hand across the wall and flicked on the light.

Nothing happened.

I was breathing heavily again but determination to find out what the Hell was going on fueled me.  I kept the bathroom door open to peak into the newly well lit room. Luckily the mirror was easy to spot so I used it to scope out the room.  It appeared empty.

“Do you see anything?” Andy said.  I shook my head.  “I have to open the door all the way, don’t I?” He handed me the hockey stick.  I think I whispered something to the effect “I hate you”, mostly joking.  I was a woman on a mission now.  Protecting her family from whatever was hanging out in my small bathroom.  Armed with a hockey stick, my courage swelled and I opened the door, moving the entire upper half of my body around it to look around.

Nothing.

I got braver and walked fully into the bathroom.

Nothing.

I used the hockey stick to poke the toilet paper basket.

It took me another second to realize I was hearing the sound again.  I looked around and saw the source of the noise.  The reality of the source was far different than the description my mind had painted for me.

The white plastic garbage bag that had been rolled over the top of our short garbage pail was slowly, and eerily, unrolling itself. The right combination of gravity of timing meant that an evil, beady-eyed demon creature wasn’t in fact trying to take over our house – it was simply the bag.

Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the more we didn’t see, the more we feared.  Our imagination and worry escalated our entire approach to the situation and paralyzed us from doing what most normal people would do in the situation – just walk into the bathroom 30 minutes sooner.

I pulled the bag from the garbage can and unceremoniously walked out of the bathroom, dropping it on our front entry floor.

“Is something in there?” Andy asked, still unsure what I had found.

“Nothing. It was the damn plastic bag!”.

Andy went in the bathroom and looked around.  He checked the walls and we both stood, waiting and listening.  No noise.

“I want that evil ghost bag out of this house.” I said finally.  We tied it up and threw it in the garage.

Relieved, we called it a night for good this time.

I couldn’t sleep for a while thanks to the adrenaline in my body.  I probably shouldn’t have opened up my book again, but getting lost in fictional mysteries is far more exciting than real life ones.  I think.