A Letter from the Previous Homeowner

I just closed on a house this morning! After years of saving and planning, my wife and I were finally able to get the money together for the down payment and closing costs that come with buying a house.

Before I jump into my explanation of what happened to prompt me to write this, I want to make clear that nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary with the purchase of this house. The price was decent, but not surprisingly by any means. The inspection passed with only a few requirements for the seller to put a fresh coat of paint on the shed in the back and have the water heater replaced, and a few other minor things.

While my wife and I were moving boxes in that first day, I happened to open the mailbox. I'm not sure why I did it - for anyone who's ever owned a house, you may understand the strange compulsion to open all the doors and explore all the nooks and crannies, so I opened the mailbox.

Inside my new mailbox was a letter, addressed to me specifically, with no postage or return address. I've transcribed it below.

I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am for what you're about to read. If you're a family man, which I believe you are, I trust that you'll understand the gravity of my situation after reading this letter. I did what I needed to do in order to protect my family - even if that meant condemning another.

If what I've been told is true, it's just you and your wife moving in - no children of which to speak - which is the only solace I have in selling you this house.

There are certain things you must know about this house, many of which I cannot write even now, but what I can tell you is that if you do EXACTLY what I've laid out below, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

• Do not allow children on your property. I cannot stress this enough. No trick-or-treaters, no Christmas carolers, no babysitting.
• Always leave one light on in the basement.
• If you misplace anything, do not look for it.
• Always set an extra place at the dinner table.
• If you have pets, especially dogs or cats, make sure to lock them up in a secure cage at night and when you are away.
• Make sure you are in bed between the hours of 3 am and 4 am with the bedroom door closed.

Again, I am terribly sorry and I hope that you follow these directions to the letter. Please do not be angry with me - I was only trying to get my children back.

The letter was signed with the name of the previous owner.

I really want to believe this is a cruel joke, but every time I look at this letter, my stomach churns. The part that scares me the most is the first bullet point. Do not allow children on your property. He may have done his research on my wife and me, but I don't think his research was extensive enough to know that my wife is currently nine-months pregnant - she's due within the week, and the doctor said she could go into labor any day now.

I wish I could just get out of the house, but literally, everything I had went into buying it, so for now my wife and I are stuck here...

Does anyone know anything that might help?

I contacted my realtor to see what sort of laws there were to help us out with this situation. I know in some states, there are such laws that protect the new homeowners in the event that something about the house was undisclosed pertaining to its history with violent crime and such. He said that currently, there are no laws that can get us around this sort of thing because technically there hasn't been reported any sort of violent or detrimental history pertaining to the house. Nobody was murdered there, it was never used to cook meth, and so on. He said that if the police reports come back clean, the law doesn't do much. He's going to do a little more digging, but he said it doesn't look good - but he'll do what he can.

So, for the next couple of days, we did what we could. My wife has been doing her best not to think about the letter, and I've been superstitiously following the rules. Stupid, I know, but they're really simple rules to follow. I already have a kennel I keep my dog in at night, so that's already done, and I just leave a closet light on in the basement, so that's another thing off the list.

As far as the rest of it goes, I've been keeping a place at the table set that we just don't touch, and I'm always in bed by midnight at the latest, so no trouble there either.

For those of you who have ever moved in your adult life, I'm sure you understand completely when I say that it's absolutely EXHAUSTING. So I fully acknowledge that what I'm about to describe below can very well be the product of said exhaustion, but regardless, I feel the need to share this.

I've been hearing sounds from the basement. At first, I thought it was mice, so I put a few traps down, but so far I haven't caught a single thing, and evidence to the contrary has given me the idea that perhaps mice aren't my problem.

We haven't set up anything in the basement yet, but we have taken boxes down and stacked them in the rooms we plan on keeping those things. During our second night at the house, after bringing the bulk of the items from the moving van to the basement, my wife and I heard a loud BANG from the basement. I ran downstairs and found that one of the boxes had not only been knocked over but the contents therein had been scattered everywhere. It wasn't like the box had just toppled over, but it was like it had been PUSHED. The box happened to be full of old family photos, and some of those pictured were scattered across the room.

My wife was the one that noticed the strange part. All the pictures that had been scattered had kids in them. Some of them were of me, others of my wife, and some with various nieces and nephews. But every single one of them that had gone more than a couple feet from the box, were of children.

We cleaned the pictures up, placed the box firmly on the ground, and left the main light on in the basement before going back upstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, my wife was asleep in bed, and I was lying next to her. About twenty minutes later, I began to drift off. But even through the haze of sleep, I can remember distinctly hearing those scraping sounds coming from the basement, and although I can't be sure, I think they were coming up the stairs.

I contacted my realtor to see what sort of laws there were to help us out with this situation. I know in some states, there are such laws that protect the new homeowners in the event that something about the house was undisclosed pertaining to its history with violent crime and such. He said that currently, there are no laws that can get us around this sort of thing because technically there hasn't been reported any sort of violent or detrimental history pertaining to the house. Nobody was murdered there, it was never used to cook meth, and so on. He said that if the police reports come back clean, the law doesn't do much. He's going to do a little more digging, but he said it doesn't look good - but he'll do what he can.

So, for the next couple of days, we did what we could. My wife has been doing her best not to think about the letter, and I've been superstitiously following the rules. Stupid, I know, but they're really simple rules to follow. I already have a kennel I keep my dog in at night, so that's already done, and I just leave a closet light on in the basement, so that's another thing off the list.

As far as the rest of it goes, I've been keeping a place at the table set that we just don't touch, and I'm always in bed by midnight at the latest, so no trouble there either.

For those of you who have ever moved in your adult life, I'm sure you understand completely when I say that it's absolutely EXHAUSTING. So I fully acknowledge that what I'm about to describe below can very well be the product of said exhaustion, but regardless, I feel the need to share this.

I've been hearing sounds from the basement. At first, I thought it was mice, so I put a few traps down, but so far I haven't caught a single thing, and evidence to the contrary has given me the idea that perhaps mice aren't my problem.

We haven't set up anything in the basement yet, but we have taken boxes down and stacked them in the rooms we plan on keeping those things. During our second night at the house, after bringing the bulk of the items from the moving van to the basement, my wife and I heard a loud BANG from the basement. I ran downstairs and found that one of the boxes had not only been knocked over but the contents therein had been scattered everywhere. It wasn't like the box had just toppled over, but it was like it had been PUSHED. The box happened to be full of old family photos, and some of those pictured were scattered across the room.

My wife was the one that noticed the strange part. All the pictures that had been scattered had kids in them. Some of them were of me, others of my wife, and some with various nieces and nephews. But every single one of them that had gone more than a couple feet from the box, were of children.

We cleaned the pictures up, placed the box firmly on the ground, and left the main light on in the basement before going back upstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, my wife was asleep in bed, and I was lying next to her. About twenty minutes later, I began to drift off. But even through the haze of sleep, I can remember distinctly hearing those scraping sounds coming from the basement, and although I can't be sure, I think they were coming up the stairs.

I apologize deeply for not following up with this story. There have been some deeply troubling events following my last post which prevented me from continuing. It's only now that I feel like I'm able to relive what happened.

I believe I left off with the night I found that the power had gone out and I'd broken two more of the rules. I hadn't realized the clock was wrong, nor had I intended for that light in the basement to go out - but something else had.

During the next few weeks, the general atmosphere in my home shifted. My wife seemed more irritable and I found myself getting furious over the smallest things. I vividly recall dropping a piece of toast on the floor and being so upset about it that I stomped it into the ground and thought about burning the whole house down.

I remember reading once - perhaps even on Reddit - about a phenomenon known as the "call of the void". Nearly every person has experienced it sometime in their life. It's that thought you get when driving into work and you think, just for a moment, that you could drive straight on into traffic. It's the feeling of standing on the top of a building and having the urge to jump for no reason. It's when you're alone with a person whom you love more than anything, like your wife or newborn child, and you have the sudden, vivid imagery of wrapping your hands around their necks and squeezing the life out of them.

It's supposed to be your brain running a sort of "systems check". Experts suggest that your brain is just affirming its survival instinct, making sure that you wouldn't actually do something that would end or severely damage your life.

Except, they're not supposed to happen every day, let alone several times a day, like I've seemed to have them.

These thoughts just slip into my head for no reason at all.

I could burn the house down.

I could kill my family.

I could slice my wrists open and watch the blood slip down my fingertips until the world goes black forever.

Just as quickly as they came, the thoughts were gone. This went on for several weeks before I finally brought it up to my wife. I told her I kept having these dark thoughts slipping into my head without any reason.

She told me she'd been having that happen too, especially when she was alone.

We promised each other to try hard to get those thoughts out of our heads and that if we couldn't stop having such dark impulses, we'd go see a therapist.

That night I awoke to the cries of my baby. With bleary eyes, I got up and walked over to the bassinet in the corner where he slept. I bent over to pick him up, my hands found nothing but blankets wadded in the corner - my son wasn't in his bed.

Suddenly awake now, I realized the crying wasn't coming from the room at all, but from somewhere else in the house. I left the bedroom and followed the cries immediately, knowing already where I'd find my baby but not wanting to believe it.

As soon as I opened the door to the basement, the wails grew louder and more aggressive. I flew down the stairs, nearly stumbling on the last step, and the crying suddenly stopped.

The basement was completely empty. I searched for my son in every corner but found nothing but silence and emptiness.

It probably took about a minute, maybe less, to determine that the basement was empty, but it felt much longer. I was about to give up when I heard the basement door slam and the light bulb pop.

I was plunged into darkness in the basement and my mind suddenly flashed to the letter. I saw it with such vividness in my mind that it was like I had it in front of me.

2. Always leave one light on in the basement.

3. If you misplace anything, do not look for it.

I groped around in the dark for the wall and followed it to the staircase. My eyes were adjusted slightly then, but still not well enough. I crawled up the staircase on shaky limbs until I felt the door with my knuckles.

I reached up and twisted the knob, but it wouldn't budge. I stood up and twisted harder, feeling it give a little and remembering that this door didn't actually have a lock on it, which meant that the only way the knob wouldn't twist would be if someone on the other side was holding it closed.

I twisted harder and pushed at the door with my shoulder, feeling it give a little more, but not nearly enough to give me hope. I felt the darkness on my skin, as if it were somehow alive, and my flesh crawled as it tightened into goosebumps.

I pushed harder, yelling desperately as I heard the bottom step creak.

I froze. The next step up creaked.

Then the next.

I pounded at the door pleading for my wife to hear and I listened to the creaks of each step draw nearer.

There was a single step between where I stood and the sound I'd been hearing, and I was just about to turn around when suddenly the door opened and I fell out.

All at once, the light in the basement popped on and I stared up at the face of my wife.

"What's going on?" she asked. I saw her eyes were red and bloodshot and the baby in her arms was crying.

I scrambled to my feet and asked where she'd found him.

She looked perplexed. "He was in his bassinet. I woke up cause I heard you banging on the door. What's going on?"

I didn't want to scare her, so I told her I thought I'd been sleepwalking.

I didn't sleep at all for the rest of the night but lay in bed staring at the time on the alarm clock.

When I got back to bed, it was 3:57.

In the days that followed, things got worse.

My wife started having night terrors. She started talking and crying and even screaming in her sleep. I can wake her up sometimes, but about half the time I just have to ride it out with her. Nights like those are the worst. She screams and kicks and cries and no matter how hard I try, she won't wake up.

At first, I could understand what she was saying, but now it's all gibberish. She used to say stuff like, "No. No. He's our SON. NO!" or "Please. Don't. Please."

But now, she says half-words and stuff that sounds like nonsense. Most commonly, she would say "A-SE-TER" but other times it was stuff like "PII ORS ORS ORS". She would just repeat these things over and over in her sleep as she cried and kicked and screamed and I was left to helplessly watch and try to soothe the baby.

Every morning she woke up without any memory of the night before. She didn't remember having any bad dreams or anything. Even on the nights where I COULD wake her up, she still didn't remember anything. She would just look up at me with wide eyes in the darkness and ask why I was shaking her.

I suggested she go to a therapist after about a week of this. She agreed with the condition that I went with her, which I was more than happy to oblige.

We found a sleep specialist downtown and scheduled an appointment for that weekend. We went together with the baby and sat in the stuffy waiting room while rocks grew in my stomach. For some reason I couldn't understand, I was nervous.

We told the therapist what was going on and that she'd been speaking nonsense in her sleep. He was a thin man with long bony fingers which he pressed against his lips as we told our story. When we were finished, he calmly told us his assessment.

"I don't think you need a professional to tell you that this has something to do with your subconscious. Something in your mind is not being expressed outwardly, so when you sleep, it's able to come out in the form of these night terrors."

He suggested hypnotism. I laughed out loud at this - there's a lot I can believe in, but hypnotism is a stretch even for my belief system. I looked up at my wife, whom I expected to have the same expression of bewildered doubt, but instead, her expression was wooden.

She agreed.

The therapist asked for absolute silence. He said that if the baby starts to fuss, I would have to take him out. He said this only MAY work if the conditions are perfect.

I expected him to pull out a pocket watch like they do on television, or maybe a ball-point pen to swing back and forth, but instead he told her to sit up on the couch with her hands on her knees and her palms facing upward, and close her eyes.

He talked to her in a low, focused voice and began to paint pictures of a meadow, then an ocean, and so on. It took about fifteen minutes before I realized that my wife was completely relaxed. Her chin rested against her chest and her shoulders hung on her like wet laundry.

He asked her to say her name. She did.

He asked her to tell him where she was.

She said the attic.

He asked which attic.

She said in our house.

I frowned. She'd never been up in the attic and I wasn't honestly sure where the entrance WAS.

He asked why she was there.

She said that's where the stairs were.

He asked what stairs.

She said the ones in the ceiling in the hallway.

He asked her what she was doing.

She said she was hiding.

Hiding from what?

Hiding from Manada.

Who is Manada?

It was at this point that my wife began to scream.

The car ride home was unusually quiet. She didn't remember anything she said, and I was too afraid to dive into questions.

I stayed up late that night after she went to bed. I sat on the couch, sipping from a glass of Jim Beam whiskey and staring at the space between me and the television. My mind was racing and no matter how many glasses of whiskey I drank, I couldn't help the feeling that I needed to check something out.

I needed to find the attic - or at least, I needed to make sure there were no stairs in the hallway.

I've done my own fair amount of home improvement projects, and I knew that although it was unlikely, it was possible to cover up an attic entrance with a fair amount of plaster and paint.

With the top of the broom handle, I started at the end of the hallway where the baby's room was and began to thump against the ceiling.

I thumped hard against the ceiling, listening to the hollow sound on the other end, and was about to give up and put the broom away and laugh at myself for being so silly, when at the other end of the hallway, I heard a solid THUMP. I hit again around the sound and found a space about 3 feet wide and 3 feet long where there was no hollow sound.

I pushed against this square and saw, very faintly, that as I pushed, the square flexed against the paint.

I don't know that I would have done so if I were sober, but I retrieved a chair from the kitchen and put it up where the hollow sound was. I groped around for the seam, then with my pocket knife, I began to slit the paint apart.

As I cut the last bit of paint and plaster with my knife, I saw wood begin to sag. I slipped my fingers onto the lip I'd made and pulled the wood down. With little effort on my part, the entrance to the attic plopped down, knocking me off my chair and revealing a set of stairs leading to the attic.

I sat up, ignoring the pain in my head and elbow, perplexed with what I'd just discovered.

I pulled my phone out and flicked on the flashlight and stepped up onto the first step. The wood creaked but seemed like it would hold.

I stepped up, not planning on crawling into the attic, but just intending to look. It was dusty and covered in insulation, but at the end, just beyond my reach, was a large cardboard box.

I stepped up further, placing my knee on the floor of the attic, and extended my hand until I could get the box.

It was surprisingly heavy, and as I pulled the box close, it caught a corner and tipped over, spilling its contents across the attic floor.

My mouth went dry as I saw what was in the box, and I was filled with a sudden, overwhelming sense of unease. The box was filled to the brim with old Polaroid photos of infant children.