Illustration by Katia Kasower
As a child, the eerie breathing coming from my closet would leave me wide awake at odd hours of the night.
Even after moving out of my childhood home eight years ago, I can still hear the small, heavy gasps that came from the realm beyond my closet doors.
Perhaps there was some crazy criminal who broke out of jail who had asthma and shimmied his way under my room to escape the cops. More than likely, somewhere between the worlds of dreamland and being awake my ears were tricking me.
As an adult, I can think logically about the situation. It must have been air blowing through the deck and into my closet through a vent.
Those noises however, happened randomly through the years and only occurred when I was awake.
Before you think I had a sleep-paralysis episode, which is a temporary inability to move right after sleeping or waking up and can cause hallucinations according to the sleep foundation’s webpage, my younger sister Kara heard it too.
She was the one who first brought up the ghost from her closet when she was 14 years old.
As a family of good, God-fearing Christians, my sister and I were brought up believing in the afterlife– be it heaven, hell or somewhere in between.
The idea of the soul continuing to linger after death in a great beyond has existed in every century. Ghosts are believed to be created from a gruesome, tragic and sometimes instant death.
Some believe that the cause of death creates a negative imprint for the ghost, making them repeatedly relive their trauma, according to a Nov. 15, 2019 article by Haunted Orange County, a haunt tourist attraction.
The sounds of suffering that came from my closet still sends tremors through my brain.
From the age of 8 until 19 years old, the labored breathing continued. As quickly as it began, it would stop, only to resurface again weeks or months later.
The hellish thought of forever being in a state of anguish is enough to keep anyone hiding under their covers for their entire natural lives.
Haunting is a way of making a ghost’s desires known, according to Anthropology News, the American Anthropological Association’s magazine. A ghost lingering in one place is usually tied to where they resided while they were still alive.
Signs of a ghost haunting may include items moving without being touched, lights flickering and some say they hear wails of torment and pain when residing in a place where someone tragically died.
Though I couldn’t see who was in my closet all those years ago, the feeling of being watched weighed heavy. Being watched by something you can’t physically see but feel the presence of only made it more terrifying for me to sleep.
Turning my lights on and physically ripping apart my closet never revealed anything, and as soon as the lights were turned off and I settled in bed, the breathing would continue.
The feeling of being perpetually watched brings paranoia to many.
As many as 94% of people reported they have experienced the feeling of being watched and turned around to find out someone was watching them, according to an article by Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, a science and health website
Every creek in the house, every twig that snaps outside and every bump in the night could send you into a panic when you feel you’re being watched.
Terrors sear themselves into our minds.
Now, nearing 30, I still make the assumption that ghosts don’t exist and only belong to stories being told around the campfire.
And then I remember the breathing.