The Terrifying Ghost that came at Night

by Martha Jette
(Hamilton, Ontario)

This story comes from 32-year-old Jennifer Hudock. Jennifer shares a terrifying experience that happened in an apartment she and her husband shared about 7 years ago.

Jennifer Hudock and her husband did not expect late-night visitors to their apartment in Hughesville, Pennsylvania and they especially did not expect a visitor from the other side.
“We lived in a single unit apartment over a garage, what some people might consider a carriage house,” Jennifer explained. “The only way into the apartment was up a set of wooden steps that ran right beside our bedroom and onto a covered porch. There was the doorway that opened up into the kitchen.”
About 3 a.m., her husband woke her up and asked her to listen.
”He was terrified and shaking, and then before I could even register what had happened, he bolted up out of bed and ran out into the hallway. He turned on the bathroom light and then the dining room and went straight into our daughter's bedroom. He came back and I finally got to ask him what happened.”
”You didn’t hear that”? he asked.
“Hear what?” she responded.
"The footsteps coming up the back stairs?"
Jennifer explained that he’d heard “incredibly heavy footsteps walk up the back stairs, come into the house and walk slowly through the kitchen. It sounded like boots, and as he sat up in the bed to listen he saw a shadow form lingering in our bedroom doorway. He said he felt frozen then. He wanted to get up, but he was paralyzed with fear. The figure turned away and walked back into the kitchen. Next he heard a drawer open and then the footsteps started back down the hallway and into the dining room. That was when he woke me.”
“Needless to say, I was terrified! We got out of bed together and searched the entire apartment to make sure it wasn't a break in. As we entered into the kitchen, chills raced up my spine as I noticed that the silverware drawer was opened about six inches - something that would have never been left open by one of us.”
Jennifer said it took them “forever” to get back to sleep and the following day they were still very shaken by the experience. However, it wouldn’t be their last.
”The next weird thing to happen took place about three weeks later. Just around 3 a.m., I was awakened by a stinging, cramping pain and discovered myself struggling. Something had a hold on my leg and was dragging me out of bed. I started screaming, at which point my husband woke up and turned on the lights. There was nothing there. The strange part about this (well, one strange part anyway...) was that I went back to sleep after about 40 minutes of freaking out and didn't even think about it again until he came home the next day from work.”
That day, she called her sister to tell her what happened.
"Wouldn't that be weird if you had like marks or something from it?" her sister said.
“I checked the back of my leg and there were three long claw-mark like scratches, but they looked like they were under the skin. I had the scars from it for about two years, but today they are barely visible at all.”
She decided it was time to take action.
“Needless to say, I smudged the apartment with sage that same day.”
When recalling this incident, Jennifer said, “The whole thing felt insane! It was nothing like a haunting, but more like some strange psychic attack.”
She wondered if perhaps she’d somehow invited the entity into their home.
“We had lived in our apartment for about three years with the only strange paranormal incident being the occasional glimpse of a black shadow that reminded us both of a cat. After we got a cat of our own, the shadow cat all but disappeared and we never saw it again.”
However, it is more likely that the ghost was a former resident of the carriage house who thought he still lived there and did everything he could to get the people he thought were intruders out of there.
Just two nights after the attack, Jennifer awoke about 4:30 a.m. “because the back door had blown open. It brought in a strange, clean smell and that was what woke me up.”
That was the last incident and appears to have signified an end to the terrifying haunting. As for Jennifer, she said, “I hope I never come face to face with whatever it was again… It is ranked high on my list of most terrifying experiences of my life.”