24 February 2017 | Audible Activity, Your Stories, Your True Encounters
We had all looked forward to the family holiday for quite some time. Two weeks in a large, rented mobile home on a picturesque camping site in Brittany located right on the banks of a river and also by a quality beach. My brothers had prepared their windsurfers, and now all we needed was good weather for a brilliant vacation.
The campsite was really nice. It was set in a lush forest that sloped down to a river. The river was filled with crystal clear, greenish water at high tide, and at low tide, the wet, rippled sand and occasional rocks lay revealed in the sun, while just a small trickle of water ran through the middle of where the river had been. It was ideal for windsurfing and also for a spot of evening or morning fishing. Just a few hundred meters downstream, the river opened up into the ocean and a magnificent white sandy beach. The mobile home was well-equipped and large. My parents had the back bedroom, my brothers had another bedroom and me? Well, I used the make-up bed in the dining area.
There were lots of other teenagers on the site, and we would play ping-pong and drink cold Oranginas at night, while listening to the music on the jukebox. There was a girl there that I liked, too. All seemed set for a great vacation.
Awakening that first morning, we set about a breakfast of French baguette, ham and cheese. The sun was shining, and we were all keen to get to the beach just as soon as possible.
“Gosh, someone was walking up and down the caravan a lot last night,” said my dad. ”Who was it?”
We all looked at each other quizzically, but none of us could recall anything but sleeping. We dismissed his comment, and off we went to the beach for a day of sea, sand and surf.
That night, I was the last in and also last to bed. Being the eldest and in my late teens, I had a bit more leeway than my brothers, and I was quite keen to spend time with the girl I had just met. I entered the caravan quietly, undressed in the dark, and got into bed. Not a few moments afterwards, I heard footsteps in the caravan. I sat up expecting to see one of my brothers. There was no one. Perhaps it was something walking on the roof – a bird, maybe, I thought, as I rolled over and tried to sleep. It happened again, though—distinct footsteps running up through the caravan. I sat up and reached for the light. Again, there was no one there.
At this point, I began to feel an icy shiver run down my spine, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up on end. Could it be that whatever was in our house back home had followed us here? At home, I had been experiencing footsteps, sighs and poltergeist activity on and off for a while. I was pleased to go on vacation to escape from it. Had it followed us?
It took me a while to sleep that night. I kept hearing the distinct noise of footsteps running up and down the caravan. Or was it something on the roof? I couldn’t be sure I decided, but I knew deep down inside that I could sense something unpleasant in that caravan.
The next morning, after a disturbed sleep, I told my dad and he nodded. He thought he had heard footsteps that night, too. My brothers had, as well. Dad went out to inspect the roof. There were no tree branches or anything obvious to make any such noise. No way for anything to jump onto the roof. There was a growing, unspoken air of trepidation among us that morning.
For the next several nights, we heard nothing. However, periodically during the vacation, we all heard, quite plainly, footsteps running through the caravan. One night, we thought we also saw a dark shadow. None of us discussed the matter for fear of encouraging whatever this activity was, until we were on our way home. I had spent most nights clutching a flashlight and burrowed down in my sleeping bag. We never saw anything other than that shadow nor did we hear anything else; just those running footsteps. On the nights we heard them, they would repeat over and over again.
A haunted caravan? Perhaps. We never really did get to the bottom of the mystery, but even now, when we discuss holidays or the strange events that happened to us, the strange footsteps and dark shadow are always raised by one of us.
Submitted by G. Michael Vasey (from My Haunted Life Too)
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