Whispers: A Ghost Story For Christmas

The greatest ghost stories are ones of suspense and mystery. You may not physically see the spirit in question, but its mere presence can be terrifying enough.

This is true for the story of “The Whispers”, whereby the voices of the darkness are enough to terrify a child for life.

The Whispers

Think yourself lucky, or perhaps unlucky, to hear this story as it has not been told to many out of pure fear to repeat it. There is no reasonable explanation for the events that occur in this story, believe me, I have endlessly searched for one, it is the unknown that makes it truly one of the most spooky stories I have ever told.

Throughout my childhood, my biggest fear was the dark. This is a common fear for many children, however, my fear was not of the dark itself but of what happened during the night. I would hear voices in the darkness, the voices were not saying anything harmful, but they were not familiar to me at all. This would happen most nights and I would lay there terrified to the core. My mother believed that these were general night terrors, and I was simply going through a phase of restless nights. I tried to stress to her that these voices were unusual, unfamiliar and could not go unnoticed. I refer to these voices as “whispers”, as this is what I described them as to my mother. The whispers became so terrifying that I had to sleep in my mother’s bed in order to get any sleep at all.

My mother’s room was positioned on the second floor of our house. Not surprisingly, I took a lot of bathroom trips during the night. The bathroom was conveniently right outside of her room in the hallway, although when leaving the room you were faced with a view of the staircase to the downstairs living room.

It was one December’s night, I got up for approximately my third toilet trip of the night and went out into the hallway. Suddenly I heard a voice commanding “Look here!”, without hesitation, I looked to where the voice had come from. A bright red light was glaring on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, I could not bring myself to look away. As a young and naive child, my first and only thought was – SANTA. It was nearly Christmas, and so I assumed he must have been coming to check that I had been behaving nicely that year.

I had to see Santa for myself, I followed the red light and eagerly made my way down the stairs. I was not even halfway down when I lost sight of the red glare and was greeted by darkness. An unfamiliar voice then emerged from the dark, an aggressive male voice commanded “STOP! Turn around right there.”, which I did instantly without looking back. I jumped back into the comfort of my mother’s bed, before hearing a deafening bang come from downstairs. I had no urge to investigate this noise, nothing would bring me to get back out of that bed.

The morning after this traumatic night was no better. We went downstairs to find the Christmas lights had been torn from the handrail and lay broken on the floor. Even more strangely, a cabinet had become detached from the wall. These findings were even more traumatising as there was no sign of a break-in, no one’s possessions had been stolen either.

No one in the family could put together the pieces until I saw it. I didn’t voice what I had seen, likely because I was in disbelief and I wanted to be sure of what I was seeing. The cabinet that faced the ground had markings on its corner, they were indents that clearly showed the cabinet had been grabbed and pulled off the wall.

That one night fuelled my fears for the rest of my childhood, although I never did hear the whispers again. I often think of alternative scenarios that could have played out that night, what if I had not listened to the whispers? The one thing I know is whatever it was, it was capable of inflicting force on objects.

I was quite disappointed when the whispers stopped, I believe they had good intentions, particularly the male whisper that warned me that night. One thing that does remain is my fear of the dark, it is one fear I sadly don’t think I will grow out of anytime soon.