As a young child, I was abducted from the basement of my childhood home and taken somewhere that I still struggle to quantify or explain. I suppose this is my attempt to put down as honestly as possible what happened to me and hoping open-minded individuals might find this story.

This was well over twenty years ago, I was eight years old with two siblings, my older sister, Denise, was ten, and my younger brother, Howie, would have been five. We had a very conventional American Midwestern upbringing, my parents were fairly happy and we all shared a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood, riding the high of nineties consumerism.

My childhood was extremely happy up until a certain point, things changed when my sister and I created an anomaly, a "haunting" of sorts, in the closet of our playroom as children.

The dolls assembled in the closet we had designated as the Barbie theater and took their seats, the spooks and thrills we felt began to elevate as the first choreographed spooky occurrences interrupted our peaceful cinema attending dolls. My sister was the architect of this story and I followed along, absolutely terrified. Tensions grew as the story built to the crescendo, Woody from Toy Story was possessed by a demon and rose from his seat, high into the air, turning to gaze at the audience. Bedlam has been established for the crowd of Barbies and our pretend fear had become quite real. Our emotions were palpable as the Barbies began their exorcism, calling for Satan to leave Woody as he began to shake and convulse before the theater screen.

We snapped back to reality when the room suddenly went dark for a split second and the light began flashing rapidly. Denise and I turned to each other and screamed, clutching one another in desperation. Our senses came back to us quickly. Mom was unamused, standing in the doorway of the playroom switching the light on and off, informing us she'd been calling down the stairs for five minutes and we can't just get sucked into games when we have to go brush our teeth and get ready for bed.

Holding hands, Denise and I ran out in front of Mom so she would create a buffer between us and the looming unknown of the basement stairs when the lights went off. One of the most agonizing parts of my childhood was that very real fear of monsters and demons snatching at my heels every time I flew up the stairs after playtime and that night it was an especially present sensation.

Admittedly, parts of my memories have faded, I'm rusty on the exact order of things, but I remember the hole in the wall showed up closely enough after the haunted movie theater game that I connected the two events in my mind. Denise and I made a spooky story for the closet and a few days later, a spooky dark hole showed up on the wall on the other side of the closet. It just made sense to me.

Howie actually noticed the hole first. I got home from school and Mom asked me to get Howie from the basement where he was playing. Going to the stairs, I looked down and saw Howie was hunkered into the corner that was a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. He was on his hands and knees with his ear pressed to the floor, like he was looking for something underneath a shelf, except it was just the wall.

I wasn't too thrown off by this, Howie was five and a weirdo to boot, so I yelled down at him to come upstairs. My mother said from the other room to actually go get him and to not just yell. Rolling my eyes, I made my way down the stairs to Howie, who still was not acknowledging me in any way. When I got to him, I placed my hand on his back and he jolted like he was startled.

I asked him what he was looking at and he got up off of his hands, and while sitting on his knees, he pointed to a hole in the corner. It was about the size and shape as if someone had ripped the corner off a playing card and traced it out. Inside it was pitch black, somehow blacker than black. Something about it made my tummy hurt. I asked him what was in there.

He calmly told me there was a funny person in there, hiding in the wall.My tummy ache lurched and I almost vomited when he said that. I'm sure an adult would have written that off as childish imagination, but as a child with an imagination myself, I immediately took him at face value. There was someone hiding in the wall. Up until that moment, the most scared I had ever been was the other day playing in the closet with my sister; more scared than when a thunderstorm took out the power and a tree branch broke through my bedroom window, more scared than sneaking behind the couch while my parents watched Interview With A Vampire last Halloween…

The moment Howie said what he said, that became the most scared I'd ever been. Every fiber of my being was screaming to get away. I grabbed Howie by the arm, I could hear him complain, but couldn't understand him through my adrenaline. It felt animalistic. I ran up the stairs, dragging poor Howie behind me. I slammed the basement door and ran to Mom, Howie still in tow, and I began wailing to her about a man in the walls downstairs.

My poor mother was completely confused, I had been fine just a minute ago and she had been downstairs numerous times throughout the day doing laundry and had noticed nothing awry. I was finally able to calm my tears enough to explain to her what I found Howie doing and what he had said about someone in the walls. She laughed and explained that was impossible because it was a basement, an unfinished basement, to be exact. She explained to me all of the exterior walls were cement bricks with dirt on the other side, the wall to our playroom was just wood and drywall, there was only a few inches of space. Definitely not room enough for funny people to hide.

She tried to reassure me by going down, but as soon as she walked towards the basement door, I began to wail again. Seeing that wasn't going to help, she made me a snack and had me sit and watch cartoons with Howie and Denise. I was beginning to relax by the time my dad came home. We had supper and Mom told Dad about the hole in the wall downstairs, Dad was a contractor, so he felt quite confident doing the repair. He used a moisture meter to ensure a leak hadn't caused the hole, when a water source had been eliminated as the culprit, he figured one of us had kicked a hole in the wall and did not want to fess up, so he patched the drywall, good as new.

With a reassuring kiss on the head, he later told me he had it covered and that he checked and there was no one in there.

I slept peacefully that night and over the next few days, the discomfort I felt while in the basement waned slightly. I still refused to be down there by myself, but Denise and I almost always played together so it was rarely an issue, until Denise had to go to the bathroom one day. I wanted to go up with her, but we were in the middle of creating an Easy Bake Oven confection and she wanted me to stay to watch and make sure it didn't burn. I felt great apprehension and told her we could unplug the oven and then plug it back in when we got back.

Denise called me the B word. Baby. My pride was devastated and my fate was sealed.

I committed to my Easy Bake vigil and Denise was up the stairs, leaving a very heavy silence in the playroom. I tried to keep my mind occupied, reading the directions on the box for the cake mix and then fussing around with a random Barbie.

A feeling like I was being watched appeared suddenly in my consciousness. I dutifully tried to ignore it as I felt my heart beat faster and my discomfort rapidly grew. I threw myself harder into my Barbie fussing, dragging that useless plastic brush over her tangled locks, wondering what was taking Denise so long.

Behind me, I heard a noise, like a light click or a tap. I froze over the Easy Bake, my eyes wide. I had definitely not heard my sister come back down the stairs and Howie wasn't even in the house. I heard the sound again.

It was coming from the closet.

A brief description of the closet: unfinished, lined with particle board. It was maybe six feet wide and three feet deep. It had no doors. We had play clothes and some winter clothes hung up for storage. Underneath that were some boxes stacked up and the other half of the closet was a jumbled pile of toys and stuffed animals. It had only been maybe a week since we cleared it out for the doll theater, but it was packed full again.

I was absolutely petrified and I wanted to run away, but the closet and the door were in the same wall, so I would have to run closer to the closet to leave, which freaked me out. The sound continued from behind me and as if I was under the Pied Piper's spell, I felt my head turn, leading my eyes to see what was producing the noise.

When the closet came into my view, it took me a moment to see through the visual noise of the clutter and find the source of the tapping. My mind processed what I was seeing and I began to scream uncontrollably. Feet and legs were underneath me before I even was aware I was moving, fleeing, FLYING up the stairs. Screaming. I couldn't stop screaming.

When I had turned around and looked behind me in the playroom, sticking out from under the hanging clothes and jackets, was a black and skeletal hand, almost like a mummy, pinching a Barbie high heel between its fingers and "walking" the shoe across the boxes.

Howie was right. There was someone in the walls.

Dad and Denise went down to investigate for me and they were unable to find anyone. Later that night, though, Denise came into my room with her hands behind her back and tears in her eyes.

I asked what was wrong and without saying a word, she produced her left hand and opened it, a mint green Barbie heel lay in her palm. I immediately felt very uncomfortable and I asked her if that was the one from her jewelry chest. She shook her head and brought out her other hand and revealed an identical mint shoe.

Denise explained the second one was the one from her bedroom, the first one she had found on the boxes in the basement closet.

We were both incredibly scared. Despite having a lavish doll and wardrobe situation, we only had one pair of mint green heels, one of which we both knew I had lost during a road trip at a McDonald's in Georgia last year. It had caused a huge fight between us because those heels went perfectly with Denise's favorite doll dress and she had melodramatically stored the other shoe in her jewelry box as a sign of reverence.

Yet here we sat with, what to us felt like, extremely convincing evidence of supernatural occurrences we could not begin to rationalize. We didn't even discuss it, Denise stayed in my bed with me that night and I honestly think we hardly slept. We were so afraid.

After that, we avoided the basement at all costs. It had always been a little spooky down there, but it had quickly surpassed the creepy tolerances of little girls that wanted to play with dolls and host story time for their stuffed animals.

We'd plan recon missions ahead of time for toys we wanted, begging our parents to come down with us while we snatched the toys we needed that day and fled back to the safety of the upstairs. My mother is a neat freak and didn't appreciate our messy and toy cluttered bedrooms, so that coddling did not last long. We were allowed to keep a streamlined collection of toys upstairs, but the rest had to be returned to the playroom. Denise and I were still so scared of the basement that we chose to stop playing with the majority of our toys. We pursued other endeavors, reading together or practicing gymnastic tumbles in the yard or watching cartoons.

I had done a very successful job skirting around the basement and had not gone down there alone since the night I saw the hand, I had hardly been down there at all, even with a chaperone. That changed one cold and bitter November morning. Mom was very busy, as both Denise and Howie had gotten really sick. She had been running around all night taking care of them and that morning she had Howie in a cool bath trying to get his fever down. She was on the phone with the doctor in the bathroom, I could hear the gratitude and relief in her voice when they could get Howie in soon to see the doctor.

Calling me into the bathroom, she explained that she knew I was scared of the closet downstairs, but she had to watch Howie and needed me to go into the basement and get their coats out of the closet. My initial reaction was to balk and protest, perhaps too vehemently.

Mom called me the B word. Brave. My fate was decided.

Steeling myself at the top of the stairs, I tried to cling to the bravery instilled inside me by my mother, but with each step down, I felt it evaporate. Halfway down the stairs I noticed the hole was back in the corner. Fighting every instinct in my body, I made myself go down the stairs. It was daylight out, but overcast, so the entire basement had a gloomy light about it from the small windows around the ceiling. I didn't like the way it made the shadows look inky and mysterious.

I pressed my back to the handrail as hard as I could when I got to the end of the stairs, giving myself as much space as possible from the hole while sidestepping to the playroom door. Taking a deep breath, I walked into the room, resolute. I knew what I had to do, I knew exactly where their coats were, I needed only to reach out and snatch them off their hangers and then run like hell.

Except, when I got myself in front of the closet, I couldn't see anyone's coats. I froze, unsure what to do. I knew they were in there, nestled behind the play clothes and snow pants were our winter coats, but I absolutely did not want to put my hands in there to find them. My plan had depended on visibility and accessibility. Weighing my options, I decided the worst outcome was disappointing Mom. I gingerly reached out and tugged on the hem of an old bridesmaid dress, guiding it out of the way. Feeling slightly more emboldened after not seeing the hand appear, I very cautiously grabbed the leg of my snow pants and saw with relief the sleeve of my mother's coat underneath.

Reaching out to her coat, I felt time slow as I saw the hand suddenly burst out through the clothes, snatching my wrist with surprising strength and firmness. Despite the papery and dusty appearance of the hand, it was quite solid. Barely enough time to whimper, I was yanked into the clothes, I felt my legs scrape over the boxes and I was suddenly in a place in between, not between the closet and the wall, but I think a place between dimensions.

Discomfort was my physical baseline there, I don't believe my form was intended to be in that plane. Every inch of my body had what felt like a cold gelatinous layer over it. Breathing felt like static.

Despite my physical discomfort, my fear quickly dissipated, my emotions were muted, placidity dominated. I could only feel the faintest flutter of curiosity about where I had found myself, any worry or anxiety felt like it was floating ten feet below me under water. Keeping any train of thought became challenging.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness of this place and pinpricks of light appeared throughout the neverending darkness, like stars in the sky. The closest light to me looked like a hole in the wall. With dreamy bemusement, I realized it was the hole in our basement wall. The light was enough to illuminate the figure that had dragged me here, and that's exactly all it was, just a figure. Humanoid, completely black, featureless, not even eyes. It looked more like a silhouette than a solid being in this realm, compared to its charcoal appearance outside.

I then became aware I wasn't beholden to gravity and I let myself drift away, the figure drifted with me, although I didn't mind Them as much here, They didn't seem as scary now. Dreamily, I headed towards the nearest light above me and looked through the hole, gazing suddenly into a scene somewhere in Asia. It looked like a sweatshop, rows of women hunched over whirring sewing machines, a man roamed around and screamed at them. Instantaneously, as soon as my eyes laid sight on this scene, I could feel every person's emotions in that room more vividly than I have even felt my own; the strength, the fear, the misery, the resolution, the defeat, the hope. Everything washed over me at once and it felt amazing. Pure, unadulterated human emotion, even the bad, was intoxicating when experienced this way.

After a while, I let myself float onward to the next light. This hole opened into a hospital room somewhere in the world, the people looked white, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. I didn't need to know the language as the scene was universal. A very pregnant woman was in the process of giving birth, the father by her side and the doctor and nurses surrounding her at the bottom. I watched and felt everything in the room as that new life was brought into their world. The exhaustion and pain from the mother, wrapped in an unbridled joy. The acute stress and self assuredness of the staff as they rushed to monitor the baby and mom. The relief from the father that his family was safe. The sheer love of the parents as they looked down on their newborn. The confusion and pain of the infant that couldn't understand his shockingly cold and bright surroundings.

Onward, I moved from that vignette, towards a new light, this one was much dimmer. It was a fairly dark bedroom, but you could tell it was daylight outside from the light around the window. A woman was laying in bed, I could hear her crying. More impactful, I could feel her sadness, and this was an old sadness. Despair and pain hung like incense in the room. That one I didn't understand at the time and I floated on, my silent companion following close by.

So on and so forth, I journeyed through this Space In Between, witnessing and feeling an unbelievable range of the human experience. I saw the mundane and the glorious. I saw crimes and acts of violence that would bring the most grizzled homicide detective to their knees, yet none of it seemed to disturb me. It all washed over me like dreams. The power and clarity of the emotions while viewing was juxtaposed sharply to the dullness of my current reality, yet it never felt voyeuristic; it simply was.

I'm not sure how long I drifted through, occasionally other figures like my companion would pass by, that was the only time They held my wrist to stop my travels, waiting until the stranger passed, although the others also felt benign to me. The holes sometimes opened up into cracks or openings in walls or ceilings, sometimes it was through an item. Looking around one room, I could see in the reflection of a mirror that I was gazing in through the eyes of a porcelain doll.

After a while, I became aware of a distinct melancholy I felt while gliding in the void space when I wasn't distracted by other people's lives. I raised my hands to my face and saw in the dim light my fingers were beginning to turn black, like my companion, whom I was starting to think of as a friend. We shared a sort of understanding despite never saying a word to each other, there was an intuitive logic to how this place worked, similar to the way you simply understand what is true in a dream. What I understood is that I was becoming one of the shadow forms. If I stayed much longer, I would lose my own humanity as I sustained myself emotionally on the sweet nectar of other's feelings and my physical form metamorphized into a shadow.

I understood on some level I didn't want to transform. Through the fog, I remembered my family and I felt a yearning of my own for the first time in this place. My companion simply nodded their head and gently took my hand and guided me towards a particular hole in the darkness.

I gazed in and I recognized this space, it was the bottom of our basement stairs! It felt like an eternity since I had seen it. As if on command, I saw Howie walk down into view, crouching down as I'd seen him do so long ago. Pressing his face to the hole, I could hear him call my name, saying he missed me and was sorry the man in the wall got me. Feeling his unadulterated sadness wash over me, I tried to call out to him, but I couldn't speak in the void.

Looking to my companion, we nodded sagely to one another and I reached a trembling hand towards my brother. I broke through as easily as I had been dragged in. I could briefly feel Howie's elation at seeing my hand as he helped drag me through. Despite that the opening was no larger than a mousehole, I easily fit through and found myself sprawled out on top of Howie.

He was screaming and laughing so loud, I hugged him and I began to cry as the emotional sedation of the Place In Between wore off and I felt very much like a little kid who was lost and scared in a crowd and had just been found by their mother.

We bounded up the stairs, through the kitchen, flying past police officers and extended family, into the main room and straight into my parent's arms. That hug with my mom and dad and Denise and Howie was the greatest thing I have ever experienced. Looking up, I noticed a skeletal finger reaching out and wiggling at me through a small hole near our fireplace, I let out a little smile. I knew my companion could sense my gratitude for reuniting me with my family.

The next few days were a blur. I was dehydrated and borderline hypothermic when I was taken to the hospital. I lost the big toes on both feet and the tip of both my middle fingers to what the doctors diagnosed as frostbite. Otherwise, I was fine and the police questioned me for hours about where I had gone. I lied through my teeth and told them I didn't know and couldn't remember, all I could remember was being cold and that it was dark and then suddenly I was back downstairs.

Police completely demolished our basement looking for evidence of a hidden prison my parents had kept me in or a pipe or abandoned well I could have fallen in. At the end of the day, they were more puzzled than anything and the official report on my disappearance and discovery basically dictated I got lost and came home on my own a few days later. I could tell it really bothered some of the police, they were worried there was a child abductor on the loose and that I was too scared to say anything, but even at my age, I had the sense to realize they would never believe the truth. Everyone believed Howie was still sick and fever dreamed of me crawling out of the hole. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he claimed he remembered it as a dream he had.

Denise is the only person I have ever told my story to, up until writing this story. While I don't doubt that she believed me, I think my story disturbed her more than whatever she had imagined happening to me while I was gone. She couldn't understand how I could be okay after witnessing murders and tragedies? How could I process that emotionally after feeling those extremes? I tried to explain to Denise the goodness I had felt in there, too; about the baby being born or feeling a toddler's joy while dancing through a sprinkler or the old couple holding hands in a hospital room feeling such love and warmth towards one another it blazed like the sun. Eventually, I figured she probably would never understand. If it hadn't happened to myself, I'd struggle to understand.

I moved on pretty quickly, yet I kept the experience close to my heart, using what I had learned to be a kinder and more empathetic person. Ever since then, every once in a while, I will catch a glimpse of a charcoal hand sliding out of a hole in the wall or crack in the floor and They wave at me or wiggle some fingers. I smile and wave back, letting my love radiate to my friend that had shared so much with me.

I let Them know life is good.

So recently my friend moved out of his parent’s place and moved into a small apartment in town. We're from a small town, but the rent is still outrageous currently, when he found this place, it was a steel. $300 a month and the landlord lived out of state so they wouldn't be a bother to him.

It was a small place made up of 2 rooms mainly with the bedroom/living room as one in the dining room/kitchen in the other and a small bathroom that was connected to the kitchen.

For the sake of the story, we'll call my friend Josh, my other friend Grant, and myself, Dylan. [not our real names for legal reasons]

So, it all started last week. I got off work and Grant was there to pick me up. And he wanted to show me Josh's new place. We rushed over and Josh was excited to show us all around. He showed us the kitchen and the small pantry. The bathroom and then the “dining” room that was only separated from the kitchen by a bar where he had placed a couple of bar stools from Walmart.

Then he made his way into the bedroom area where we saw his mattress on the ground and a dresser that was pushed up against the closet door.

I thought this was weird because he was blocking the door, but hell, it's not my place to tell him how to decorate his apartment, even if it did look like shit.

We decided to go out and get dinner to celebrate this new “adult” purchase. When we got back and Josh opened the front door the lights were out, which was weird because he had left them on. He assumed that maybe they were on some sort of timer or were motion activated. We grabbed some popcorn while we were out and settled in to watch a movie. But when we went into the bedroom area where he had his tv set up we noticed the dresser had moved. It was slightly jutting out from one corner. Josh’s demeanor instantly shifted. He was acting nervous and quickly asked us to leave.

We said goodnight and then left.

The next day was a Saturday, and we didn’t have any plans, so we decided to go back over to see how Josh was doing. We knocked on the door and he didn’t answer at first, but we knew he was home because his jeep was in the driveway. After like 20 mins of knocking, he finally opened the door but was a wreak, his hair was a mess he was sweaty and looked like he hadn’t slept.

Grant and I just thought maybe he invited a guy over from grindr after we left, and they had a long night. We came inside and Josh stepped into the bedroom to change his sweat covered shirt and when he took it off, I could have sworn he had what looked like bruises and cuts on his back.

We sat around and played Mario kart. Josh apologized for kicking us out the night before. I told him it was fine and that he could have just said he had a guy coming over. He was confused by this.

“What do you mean, I didn’t?” he said.

I just joked back at him, “well how else did you get those bruises?” and then he paused the game. He was confused and acted like he had no idea what I was talking about. Even going so far as to lift his shirt and then show the bruises and cuts. He was shocked. He had no idea where they had come from.

We were all a little spooked by this and I mentioned that maybe he fell out of bed or something in his sleep and he just didn’t remember. But Josh wouldn’t take his eyes off the closet door.

Finally, he stood up and told us he wanted to show us something that had been creeping him out since he moved in.

He pushed the dresser to the side and opened the closet doors and inside he had his clothes and then he pushed them aside and there was a door.

It had been painted over to match the color of the wall and there was a red cable that was tied around the doorknob that Josh had put there just for his piece of mind. It had four screws at the top where someone had something drilled through on the other side. On the other side of the closet on the floor was an old vintage safe. Grant instantly was planning on trying to crack into the safe, but Josh was still focused on the door.

Josh told us he thought someone was living in there, on the other side of the door. he thought maybe they had been coming into his apartment when he was gone or asleep, which is crazy, but he mentioned how he had come home a few times now and his stuff had been moved.

He was misplacing things and he swore that some of his food had gone missing. I told him maybe he just lost somethings in the move, but he didn’t want to hear it.

So, what do three gay boys in the south decide to do… we are going to open that door.

We aren’t sure how because we think that the screws are connected to a lock of some sort, but it can’t be that hard to open it.

We are planning on getting some tools to get into it. I took a bunch of videos and pictures but I’m not sure how or if I can post it on here. If someone could explain how I could link them I’d appreciate it. I’ll updated in a few days when we get the tools… for now take care and I’ll talk to yall soon.