03 November 2020 | Your True Encounters
When we were kids up through our middle teens, my best friend Zeke and I were inseparable. We went to school together, came home together and spent pretty much every day together. We met because our parents were friends and having two boys of the same age, us spending time together was pretty much a given. Overnights, joining each other on vacations, we did everything together.
Zeke would pick up a little extra money by doing babysitting jobs for other friends of his parents and on occasion, I was allowed to come with him. It was usually a good time, we played with the kids, usually infants to toddlers in age. We would play games, watch movies, tell or read stories and when they went to bed, we would just hang out and continue watching tv or movies until the parents came home. It was overall a good time and we only really ran across any issues if a kid didn’t want to go to bed, which was rare because we were pretty good at tiring them out.
One weekend in the winter, Zeke’s parents were going out to some holiday event with some of their friends and he was asked to babysit for them. It was anticipated to be a later night and they had two children, one was 5 years old and the other was a 1 year old, both boys. Par for the course, Zeke asked if I could come along. With their blessing, I was allowed to come.
The house was BEAUTIFUL. Several bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a pool with hot tub and big screen TV. The kids were actually really well-behaved and we hung out with them, played games, watched tv, etc. Dinner was made for all of us already so we feasted on that and it was just a really smooth, easy job. Later in the evening, however, is when things got a little weird.
Around 8pm, we put Brett, the 1 year old to bed. He had his own room so we put him in his crib and tucked him in. He fell asleep almost immediately. We turned down the light and left the door cracked so we could hear if he woke up crying. We went back to the living room to put on a movie with Sam, the 5 year old. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, we heard crying coming from Brett’s room so I went in to check on him. I walked into the room to find him, wrapped up in his blankie, laying on the floor next to the crib. I immediately picked him up and he stopped crying. I turned on the light, calling for Zeke to come to the room and set Brett down on the changing table to start looking him over. The only way he could have ended up there, I figured, was if he had gotten over the crib bars which would have meant a drop of about 3-4 feet to the floor. Granted, the floor was carpeted, but a fall like that for a baby could have been disastrous. Upon inspection, however, he seemed to be fine, no injury and acted like nothing was wrong. He was even smiling. Zeke checked him over as well and saw nothing wrong so we figured maybe it was just a fluke. We set him back down in his crib, turned down the lights and again went back to the living room. I asked Sam if Brett had ever done that before and he couldn’t really remember anything like that.
About an hour later, again crying came from Brett’s room. We both jumped up and ran to the room and sure enough, once again, there he was on the floor next to the crib. We once again checked him out and once again, he was fine. At this point, the parents were still about an hour out from coming home and I did not want to take the chance of it happening again so we moved the crib out to the living room and put him back in it, where he stayed the rest of the night until the parents got home.
Well they came home and obviously were curious as to our little sleeping arrangement for the baby. Zeke and I were quite nervous, feeling like we had done something wrong so we gave a completely detailed description of how the evening went from the moment they had left to when they got home. When we started telling them about Brett, both of their faces went completely blank. As we told the story, they would look at each other and I couldn’t really be sure but I thought I saw, not just concern, but a little bit of fear in their faces. We finished the recounting of the night and looked at them, hoping they would not be upset with us. They just kind of stared into space for what seemed like forever but was probably only about a minute before finally speaking. The mom then proceeded to tell us a story.
Before Sam, the 5 year old, was born, they had another son, Peter. Peter was also about 5 when Sam was born and Peter’s bedroom was the one Brett had now. Because of its proximity to the parent’s bedroom, they moved Peter to a different bedroom so they could be closer to the baby in case they needed to get up. Peter did not like that very much, and he not only was upset with the parents but also with Sam for taking over his bedroom. Peter would throw fits and direct a lot of his anger at the intruder now in his old bedroom. One of the things that he used to do, the mom told us, was to sneak into Sam’s room and take him out of the crib, leaving him on the floor. He never hurt him, he was not that vicious, but he would do that fairly regularly. The mom would get frustrated at this little act of defiance but he continued to do this despite punishment (time outs, losing toys, that sort of thing. When I asked where Peter was now she just looked at her husband briefly before telling us that Peter had passed away about a year after Sam was born. It had been an accident, he had fallen into the pool and hit his head on the side and drowned before they could get to him.
We stared at them in shock, and they stared right back at us with the same look we had. Now, we knew that Sam had been with us the entire time so there was no way he could have taken up his older brother’s habits. Besides that, Sam loved Brett and never showed any sign of contempt. Even when they gave Brett Sam’s room, they told us, he did so happily. The only possible conclusion was that someway, somehow, Peter was still not happy about a baby in his old room.
Needless to say, Zeke and I never went back to that house. I do not know what, if anything, they decided to do. I would imagine they moved but I would not know. Personally, I never babysat again, even with someone else with me. I still think about that night to this day, some 35 years later, and wonder if we had missed something but every time, all I know is that no one was in that room with Brett and yet that baby ended up on the floor, twice, with no injury, as though he had been placed there.
I guess I will never know.
Submitted by Drew Richardson to Weird Darkness and My Haunted Life Too
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