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I Heard a Noise Under My Bed… What I Found Still Haunts Me

It started the second I turned off the bedside lamp. The silence wasn’t peaceful—it was heavy, like something pressing down on the room. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, eyes fluttering closed, when I heard it. A faint sound—like fabric scraping softly along the floor. Then it stopped. Then it came again. Slower. Closer. My breath hitched as I strained to listen, every part of me frozen. It wasn’t the house settling. It wasn’t the wind. It sounded like someone was down there, just beneath me, trying not to be heard…

Since I was little, the underside of my bed has always held a strange kind of power over me. Not in a magical way—more like the kind that makes your skin prickle and your imagination spiral. One creak of the floorboards, one flutter of the curtain from a breeze I hadn’t noticed before, and I’d be frozen, convinced that something—or someone—was lurking just inches beneath me.

As I got older, I chalked it up to childhood nerves. We all grow out of those, right? You tell yourself that the boogeyman isn’t real, that the shadows in the corner aren’t watching you. You learn to laugh it off. At least, I thought I had.

But last night, something changed.

It started the moment I turned off my bedside lamp. The room dipped into silence, that thick kind that blankets everything. I pulled the comforter to my chin, ready to drift off, when I heard it. A soft, dragging sound—like fabric brushing against something. Then a pause. Then again. Just barely audible, like someone trying not to be heard.