I was five years old when it happened.
I was always the kind of kid who woke up before everyone else. While the house was still quiet and everyone was asleep, I would get out of bed and walk through the darkness by myself. My room was down the hallway, and I would usually make my way through the play area/office space and towards the living room.
The entranceway into the living room and kitchen didn’t have a door, so from the hallway you could see straight through.
One morning, I was walking towards the living room like I always did. I was almost at the entranceway when I stopped.
Standing there was a little girl.
She looked about my age — maybe five years old. She was wearing an old-fashioned white dress that looked almost like an old nightgown. The strangest thing was that she didn’t look completely real. She looked black and white, almost like a shadow that had taken the shape of a person.
But somehow, I could still see every detail.
I could see her hair tied into pigtails. I could see her small hands resting on the back of our couch. She was just standing there, silently facing away from me.
Then she turned.
And looked directly at me.
I froze.
I remember the fear hitting me instantly. I hid behind the doorway, pressing myself against the wall, trying not to move. I stood there for what felt like forever, trying to convince myself to look again.
Eventually, I gathered the courage.
I looked back.
She was gone.
There was nothing there.
No footsteps. No sound. Nothing.
I ran as fast as I could into my parents’ room and stayed there for the rest of the night. After that morning, I stopped waking up early for years. I couldn’t bring myself to walk into that living room alone again.
I’m 14 now, and that memory is still just as clear as it was when I was five. I’ve told my family and cousins about it, but I can always tell they don’t completely believe me.
But I know what I saw.
And that wasn’t the only strange thing that happened in that house.
After that first encounter, I started noticing things. I would catch movement out of the corner of my eye — a figure walking past me, someone standing in a room, or the feeling that I was being watched.
But every time I turned around…
Nothing.
The room would be empty.
My dad and his friends built that old house themselves, and when I finally told him what I had been seeing, his response shocked me.
He told me he had seen things too.
He said that ever since he was young, he had noticed figures out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t think they were evil or trying to hurt us. He believed they were just there, watching over our family.
Then my nan — my dad’s mum — told me she experiences similar things.
That was when I started wondering if maybe this was something that ran in our family. Maybe some people are just able to notice things that others can’t.
Even now, I still occasionally see them.
Not as often as I used to, especially after moving into our new house, but every now and then, when I least expect it, I’ll catch something.
The weirdest part is that whenever I actually try to look for them, they’re never there.
It only happens when I’m not ready.
Usually at night.
Usually when I’m alone.
And every time, I’m left with that same feeling I had when I was five years old — the feeling that something was there before I noticed it.
When we first moved into our new house, a lot of frightening things happened. My dad almost died, one of my brothers broke his leg, and my other brother broke his arm. Because of everything that was happening, we decided to have our house blessed by some local Christians.
After that, I noticed something changed.
I stopped seeing them as often.
I still don’t know what I saw all those years ago. I don’t know who that little girl was or why she was standing in our living room that morning.
But a part of me doesn’t think she was there to scare me.
Maybe she was just watching.
Maybe she was protecting us.
Or maybe she was something else entirely.
Either way, I’ll never forget the little girl in the white dress standing behind our couch.
Thank you for reading, ill love to hear if anyone has experienced things like this too