I’ve been inside a haunted house.
Once, when I was in undergrad, other students told the story of a teenager who murdered his parents and burned down the house. I didn’t believe it might be true until one of them told me where to find the house remains. I got chills.
That conversation always stuck in the back of my mind, until one weekend I went searching.
And I found it.
The house was burnt down to the basement, the blackened jagged pieces of board reaching into the sky as if in pain. There were deteriorated stairs that led down, but at the top I hesitated.
A bad feeling was worming its way down my spine.
I took a few steps. Light was quenched by the darkness that lay beneath, with those charred walls and cooked debris. Dread washed over me, and I had to stop. A twinge said to go no farther, to not take another step into this abyss—something bad was going to happen.
Now, I have traveled by myself to all sorts of locations: walking on sand dunes out in the middle of nowhere; hiking through wilderness until twilight; even stepping foot in some shady locations.
But until that point in time, I had never felt legitimate fear for my life.
I retreated back to my car and was able to boast to my friends I had found the house and could confirm it was burnt to the ground.
But I never went back.
Have you ever had a terrifying encounter?