This is my first posting to this newgroup (or any newsgroup) and I've really enjoyed all the great stories. The story you are about to read is 100% true and still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck when I tell it. It happened about eight years ago. I hope it doesn't seem silly. If you have any thoughts about the story please email me: hubbardc@pcmail.cbil.vcu.edu

It was the summer before I left for college and I was up one night reading a novel in my bedroom. My family lived in a two story house in the suburbs of northern Virginia. My parents bedroom was on the groundfloor and my 12 year old brother and I had bedrooms on the second floor. Also on the second floor, at the opposite end of the house, down a long hallway and around a corner was the kitchen/dining room area.

I think it was shortly after midnight that I decided to take a break from my reading and make a quick trip to the bathroom which was halfway down the hall between the bedrooms and the kitchen. Everyone else in the house had gone to bed hours before and the light on my nightstand and the light of the moon coming through the windows were the only lights in the house. I could hear my little brother snoring rather loudly as I opened the door and slightly chuckled to myself about that as I stepped into the hallway. All of the sudden a wave of paralytic fear washed over me like nothing I had ever experienced before. Instantly, I became certain that down that hallway and around the corner, something unspeakably evil and dangerous was lurking in the darkness. Tears began to run down my face as I stood there beginning to shake all over, awaiting the emergence of the Devil himself from around that corner.

I couldn't even move, it was like a nightmare, but I knew that I was fully awake. After what seemed like minutes, but was probably seconds, I began to try and think my way out of the fear. I kept saying to myself that I was an adult and that I was being ridiculous and crazy to think that something was down there. Slowly, I moved one foot and then the next towards the bathroom and down the hallway. It took every once of my courage to do so. I stepped into the bathroom and just as suddenly as the feeling had come, it was gone again.

I nervously laughed at myself for being such a baby, did my business and splashed some water on my face to wash away the tears that were beginning to dry on my cheeks. I clicked out the lights in the bathroom and stepped into the hallway once again. Slam! That wave of terror hit me once again. I staggered backwards towards my room and away from the kitchen, afraid to turn my back in that direction. I knew something was down there this time, there was no doubt in my mind and my body was screaming at me to run. I jumped into my bedroom and quickly shut the door and locked it with a twist and shove of the knob. I sat down on my bed and realized that I was shaking again. I kept looking at the doorknob, waiting for it to move, thinking that I wouldn't go to sleep that night, that I might not go to sleep ever again. I began to slowly rock back and forth, trying to comfort myself as my mother had when I had nightmares as a child when all of the sudden I heard my little brother begin to scream.

"Carlos! Carlos! There's something in the kitchen! Oh, my God, there's something in the kitchen!", he screamed from his room.

Call it altruism, or call it whatever, before I knew what I was doing, I had leapt off the bed and began to unlock the door. Whatever the hell was out there I wasn't going to let it get my little brother. I tore the door open and jumped into the hall, my senses being overloaded with adrenaline, my eyes searching the darkness for the unknown. My brother came flying out of his bedroom towards me and grabbed hold of me by the tail of my t-shirt. I could see he was terrified. His eyes were wide with fear. He kept screaming that something was in the kitchen and I had to shake him to calm him for a second.

"Did you see it? Did you see it?", I asked him as I grasped his small shoulders.

"NO, but there's something in the kitchen!", he insisted.

With my brother clinging to my back, I began to move towards the kitchen.

I could hear my father downstairs start yelling, "What the Hell's goin' on up there?!". I yelled for him to come upstairs as I kept marching towards the kitchen. Thinking back, its hard to figure out why I suddenly wanted to confront this thing. I think maybe I was mad. I wanted to kill this thing that was threatening my family. I wanted to grab it by its neck or horn or whatever and beat it to death for coming after my little brother.

My father crested the staircase just as I wheeled around the corner to face the darkness. The moonlight illuminated the room in an ethereal glow. I fumbled for the light switch and the overhead light flared to life. There was no one in the room. My father was huffing and puffing and I turned to see that what-in-the-world-is-wrong-with- you-kids look on his face. We told him that both of believed that someone was in the house. The three of us then began to make a systematic check of the entire house. We checked every door and window - all were locked. We looked under every bed and in every closet - nothing.

My father angrily told us to go back to bed by 2 a.m. My brother refused to sleep in his room alone, so I let him sleep in my bed while I sat up the rest of the night listening to the night sounds of the house. I was never more happy to see sunrise than I was that morning. Nothing like that ever happened again that summer, and I went off to college in the fall with no event. My family soon moved to a new city, but I really don't think it was the house. I have often thought back on that night and searched for some explanation. It wasn't the first strange thing to happen in my life, and there are other strange stories of things that have happened to our relatives over the years (weird family). Maybe it was that teenage poltergeist, crazy energy thing that I've read about before. Maybe I had an anxiety attack and believed so hard that something was in the kitchen that my little brother picked up on it in his sleep via telepathy or pheromone, etc. I really don't know. Maybe, just maybe, something was down there.