I live with my Granddad in Central London. He went on holiday and left me in the house alone for two weeks.
The house is over 200 years old; he has owned it since 1982. Nothing unusual had ever happened there, until Monday night.
I was just about to go to sleep around midnight. The house is creaky, but what happened next was not normal. I thought it might be my imagination at first, but I soon realized it wasn't.
All the houses in the Mews are connected. As I was drifting off, I heard a loud banging noise. I told myself it was just the neighbors. Then I heard a man shouting, seemingly from the basement directly beneath my bedroom. After a few minutes of quiet, it started again, louder, like someone was kicking the locked basement door. This continued for about three minutes.
I lay in bed, too scared to move. The shouting resumed, filled with anger. The banging started again, this time shaking the wall of my room. The windows and wardrobe rattled as if in an earthquake for about thirty seconds. Then I heard a woman's voice, whimpering and pleading. The shaking wall was directly above the basement door.
There's a locked street door leading to the basement corridor (I don't have the key). I knew the noise wasn't from my neighbors, as the shaking part of the house isn't connected to theirs. After the shaking stopped, I heard the kitchen door open—the access point from the basement—and something come up the stairs towards my bedroom. Paralyzed with fear, I heard pacing outside my door, expecting it to open at any moment. I thought it was a burglar and that I'd wake to a ransacked house.
After about ten minutes of silence, I heard the 'thing' go back downstairs. Exhausted from a 14-hour work shift, I eventually fell asleep around 4 a.m.
I got up at 7 a.m., dreading to find the house robbed. I waited for daylight before checking. All doors to the basement were still locked. I unlocked them carefully, expecting damage, but found nothing. This made me even more uneasy because I knew I had heard someone in the house.
My granddad returned the next day. I told him everything, expecting him to dismiss it. Instead, he showed me a large crack in the wall above the basement door. I was terrified—it proved the events were real. A surveyor came but couldn't explain the crack. He asked if anyone had tried to force the door. I didn't tell him my story.
Last night, my granddad left me alone again for the first time since the incident. I decided to sleep on the sofa bed in the front room. Exhausted, I went to bed at 9 p.m.
I was woken by loud banging around 2:15 a.m. I sat bolt upright and saw a tall, dark figure standing at the foot of my bed. I couldn't discern its gender or face. I stared for about thirty seconds, trying to calm down and see clearly, until another loud bang sounded downstairs. I turned towards the noise, and when I looked back, the figure was gone.
I jumped up, turned on the light, dressed, ran out of the house, and took a cab to my boyfriend's. I told my granddad I was moving out immediately.
Whatever is in that house, it doesn't like me. My granddad has lived there for 24 years with no issues. I can't explain it, and I never want to experience anything like that again.