Scaredy Cat in the Basement…
My childhood encounters with the paranormal extended well beyond Native American lands, like my previous stories about the Road and a Ghostly Singer. Today, let me tell you about a ghostly feline encounter in a very messed up house.
Like my other spooky stories from you childhood, this is taken from my original Twitter thread.
When I was around nine or ten years old, we moved to the town of Newton, Iowa. The house we lived in there was….wrong. Wrong to the point that even over 20 years later (well into my 30s) and I still occasionally have nightmares about it.
There was always a sense of unease and I could tell a ridiculous amount of stories about strange happenings in this house, despite only living in it a couple years. I’ll limit it to just this one, notable as my first creepy encounter in this place.
It was an older house, not OLD, but wasn’t a recent build. Hell it was probably the nicest place we lived at the time. We grew up with very little, so this two story house, with a basement felt massive (though looking at pictures now I see that it was fairly small).
It was big enough that my brother and I had our own rooms. Mine was on the second floor and his was down in the furnished part of the basement. The coolest thing about this house, with it’s older style vents, was that my brother and I could communicate through the floor vents.
Despite having the whole house between us, we could talk (loudly) to one another. It was like having a personal intercom. It seems a bit dumb/silly now, but as kids it was cool as fuck!
Anyway, once I was 10 I got to that glorious point in childhood where my parents were willing to leave me at the house without a babysitter!
On one such evening with my parents out and brother at a friends house it was just me, my 13-inch TV, and my hand me down NES. I’m sitting there, eating my Planter’s Cheese balls and playing Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, when I start to hear something from the vent. When I paused the game, I clearly heard a cat meowing.
We had a cat at the time (one who managed to live until I was out of college and had a kid!) so I assumed she had gotten herself locked in the basement — which happened frequently enough. As I got up to head downstairs to let her out, however, I was puzzled to notice my cat sleeping soundly on my bed.
Despite seeing my cat sleeping away within arms reach, the meowing from the basement continued. I shrugged it off; figuring a stray cat had managed to get into the basement via the dugout fire escape (which we all know my teenage brother used to sneak out of the house).
I went downstairs to open the basement door and let it out, and even pre-opened the front door to ensure it could run straight outside. I swung open the door to the basement stairs — standard old, uncarpeted, wooden ones — and flipped on the light. The meowing was still clear and ongoing.
I started calling for the cat, trying to coax it towards the stairway. I remember hearing the meowing grow louder, as if it were coming closer. So I patted my leg and made the “pspspsp” sound to encourage it to finally round the corner. Then, the meowing stopped.
I was frustrated. I was in the middle of beating Bald Bull in the game and wanted to get back to it before my parents came home and made me shower. So I kept calling for it, but didn’t hear the meowing anymore
In my child mind I’d been waiting/trying FOREVER so I said, “Fine stay down there.” It would come out when it wanted to. As I began swinging the door closed, it meowed again, so I stopped and waited.
The stairs then CREAKED.
Creaked as if something had taken a step on the wooden steps. The lights were on, it was a fully illuminated staircase, but it was clearly empty of anything. Distinctly I heard another meow, one close enough to reverberate softly off the enclosed walls of the staircase, an indication it should have been in front of me.
What followed next was the clear and distinct “thump thump thump” sound of a cat softly padding up the stairs. Any animal owner can tell you they know the sound of a pet moving across floors. It sounded just like the times I’d let my own cat out of the basement!
There was NOTHING there. Just the sound of a cat climbing the stairs towards me because I’d stupidly called it up! I slammed the door and ran my ass back upstairs, without even bothering to close the front door again.
I turned up the volume on my TV and flipped to a random channel, ensuring I wouldn’t hear anything else from the vent until my parents got home. There I remained with my STILL SLEEPING cat next to me.
It was not the last time I encountered this “ghost cat” and I know of times my actual cat seemed to as well (hissing at nothing, coming to a doorway and stopping cold, refusing to go into a room and even swatting at us if we tried to force her).
Easily the most benign of experiences in this house, though notable as this is the first thing I recall happening. Years later my parents conceded they had experienced some SHIT in the house as well, but downplayed my stories to keep me from panicking.
Hell, my Dad (a youth pastor in school for his full ordination) even had someone from the church come over to BLESS THE HOUSE at one point it got so bad. Again I didn’t find this out until much later…
