February 20, 2008

Knocks at 2 AM

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] [Name Withheld Upon Request], Naples, New York, 2001 - present

I know this sounds crazy, but I swear every word is true. My family owns a hunting camp that was built in the early 1900s. It has been in the family since the 60s. It was my grandfather's favorite place, he spent every weekend there. For as long as I can remember, he would tell me about strange things happening there, such as: knocking on the front door, always at 2 AM, and there never being anybody there, rolls of toilet paper rolling out of the upstairs bathroom and into the bedroom, and just plain chilling feelings in the house, even though it was warm. My mother also spoke of the strange knocking.

I always regarded their stories as attempts to scare a kid, but now I'm not so sure. It started for me in 2001. I was down at the camp with a friend of mine for a weekend of squirrel hunting. We slept on the couches in the living room, by the front door. My buddy passed out cold, he sleeps like a rock. Around 2:00, I was awakened by a knocking at the door, nothing startling, just a gentle series of knocks. I went to the door and opened it, there was no one there so I went back to my couch thinking nothing of it. (You know that stupid daze you get in when you wake up in the middle of the night? Sometimes stuff that should get you thinking just doesn't process through your head.) I quickly fell asleep again, only to be woken soon again by the same knocking. This time when I went to the door and found nothing, I drew the conclusion that it must just be a tree branch blown into the door by the wind. Once again I went back to bed. Soon after, I heard the knocking again and didn't even bother getting up. I had just fallen back to sleep when there was a huge bang on the door that seemed to shake the house. I still didn't make the connection, and fell back to sleep. The rest of the evening was silent. In the morning, however, I started thinking.

There were no trees that could touch the house, much less the door, and there had been no wind (the snow was still hanging on trees and power lines). Also, there were no footsteps or any kind of disturbance in the snow. My buddy had heard nothing, but he could sleep through a gunfight. That was my first experience. The next significant thing was in 2003.

It was summertime and my family was spending a weekend at the camp. Once again I crashed on the couch, while everyone else slept upstairs. I stayed up late watching the Hunting Channel. Around 2:00 AM, I heard someone stirring upstairs. I heard them come down the stairs behind me and go into the kitchen. I then distinctly heard them going through the cupboards and opening up the drawers. After a little while, I got curious as to who was up and why they weren't going back to bed. I got up and went into the kitchen and there were no lights on, no cupboards/drawers open, and nothing disturbed. When I asked my family the next day who had gotten up, none of them had. That was the last time anything that big has happened to me, but, sometimes I still hear knocking or just get a sudden unexpected chill, always at night and always around 2 AM. This might not sound like much to you ghost hunters, but it's true, and I know sometimes that I am not alone there. It's not a foreboding feeling, just a feeling that someone is close to you. I have no idea who it might be knocking on the door, or why, but it is an interesting thing that has come to be part of what that place means to me.