I wasn’t allowed to tell this story for the longest time while the investigations were ongoing. But now, finally, I can. Once you get old enough, you forget things. Things like your childhood fears. But sometimes you can’t forget them, and it’s often even harder if you know it wasn’t your imagination. Many of you still may be young, but almost everyone will encounter a similar situation. You will grow up; you will move out with flying colors only to miss your childhood home, to remember those fond memories and also those deep fears. These fears created by your wild imagination of monsters hiding under your bed, shadows moving outside the window, scratching sounds coming from your wardrobe, and the noises coming from the room you know should be empty. For me that room was always the attic. My room was on the top floor with two doors. One door led to the downward spiraling staircase while the other led to an attic hatch with pull-down stairs.

Our attic was barely used. My family put a few things in there when we moved in, but besides that the attic was maybe visited once every two to three years. These visits usually resulted in us putting more things in the attic, rather than retrieving them. Needless to say, I was rather scared of the doorway that led to the attic hatch. Few things are scarier to a young child than a room right above your head from which you can hear odd noises that resemble footsteps, shuffling, and sometimes even weak voices. Of course, there was also only one way to get into the attic - through my room. However, to my consolation, there was also no way for these things to get out of my attic. There was nothing that could get out, and nothing that could do anything to me.

This attic and its strange noises kept me from sleeping many times. I imagined murderers, ghosts, satanic cults, and other devilish things abided up there. My overactive imagination conjured ideas of how they would perform strange rituals or threaten to murder me. The most traumatic sound was always the sound of the rattling hatch; this always reminded me of their constant presence and desire to take me.

These fears of being abducted were most intense during my preteen years. During this time I would lie awake for hours, horrified by the sounds of movements, voices, and the rattling chains right above my head. Whenever I went to seek out consolation from my parents they simply shrugged me off and told me to grow up. They did not have the slightest understanding of my fear. Some people regarded their rooms as fortresses when they were younger; that no monsters could penetrate the safety of your blanket and your pillow would protect your dreams from your fears. My room was a cage that I was thrown into every night, filled with wild, unimaginable things that would paw at my dreams. Eventually, the noises that haunted my dreams faded away. I was unsure as to whether it was because they had stopped, or I had unlocked the cage and left those fears inside. All I know for certain is that something changed.

Years passed and I had gotten over my fears of the attic. My parents had grown older and I had moved on to college. Whenever I came home I would take up responsibilities and jobs around the house, specifically cleaning. Eventually my parents had instilled on me the horrifying task of cleaning the attic. It took a lot of courage, but I eventually convinced myself that it was a good idea to accept this task. This was the solution to solving my unresolved childhood fears; I would finally be able to prove to myself that my fears were childish. I was wrong.

I arrived at home on a Thursday night. My parents gave me a short welcome home conversation and I headed up the stairs to fall asleep. The moment I laid my head on the pillow I remembered all of my fears. All the memories of the sounds of monsters and cults rushed from underneath the pillow right back into my head. But there was something different about this experience. It wasn’t the fact that I was older, stronger, taller, or smarter. It was the fact that there was dust falling from the ceiling. My childhood had been filled with all these imaginary, but still realistic, sounds, but now there was physical evidence to my fears. This immediately confused me; I was in an untouched room with no real movement, and yet there was a disturbance causing clouds of dust to fall out from between the wooden ceiling planks. Regular, steady dust would be understandable. But that’s not what it was. There were sudden bursts of dust, aligning coincidentally with the thudding noises. Despite this odd occurrence I forced myself into a restless sleep. Memories of chains rattling, rhythmic thumps, and muffled conversations and screams dominated my dreams that my first night home.

The following day, I spent the entire morning pushing back the inevitable task of cleaning the attic until my mother gently reminded me what I had promised to do. I had no choice but to respect my agreement with my mother. Reluctantly, I gathered my supplies and forced myself in front of the hatch. It was a solid black piece of wood, seemingly untouched and intact, attached to the wall back rusty iron hinges that were just strong enough to protect me from my fears. It took me a few minutes, which felt like a few hours, to muster up the courage to unlatch the hatch. I opened the latch and pulled as hard as I could, as if I opening the floodgates and inviting the unknown behind the gate to face me. Alongside a loud creaking sound there was a metallic clank. The hatch was stuck, great.
I continued to pull even harder, refusing to let the amount of time and effort I put into preparing for this experience go to waste. Every time I pulled there was that same loud metallic sound. Where was it coming from? Were the pull down stairs jammed? There wasn’t a light near the hatch so I decided to push my hand deeper behind the handle and feel around. I felt the touch of cold metal to my hand, contrasting to the warm, guarding material of the door. It was a chain.
It is true that it had been a long time since I had last been to the attic, however I do not have the faintest memory of my parents putting chains up there. It should have appeared as a warning sign to me, but I was still caught up in the adrenaline from overcoming my fear. Still feeling committed to the job, as well being high off the adrenaline from overcoming my fear, I sprinted downstairs to retrieve a bolt cutter. It made quick work of the chain, cutting it in multiple places to be sure that I would not go through the same anticlimactic moment again.
Now I tried to pull again, with even more force. There was a large metallic clank again, but this time it was from the chain hitting the floor. It had worked! I bent down to scrutinize the chain. It didn’t seem like something that my parents would put up near the attic. That was the second warning sign. As I stood up and looked into the attic I noticed an extremely pungent smell of stale, dusty air alongside an almost rotting smell. This should have been the third warning.
My parents never intended to use the attic much, so the lighting was fairly improvised. You had to put your hands up, fumble for a cable and follow it with your hand and plug it in. I remember that my parents used to place the cable on the pull down stairs, so that they would fall out when you opened the hatch itself. For some reason, the cable remained trapped within the attic, forcing me to reach up and grope around for the cable.
I pulled the stairs down all the way, stepped on the first few steps – careful not to get my head too far into the opening as the smell made me gag – and felt around with my hand to find the cable. I nearly had my whole arm inside before I felt something old, dry, and leathery. I assumed it must have been Dad’s old clothes and continued to reach around for the cable. Still determined to let the attic air out a bit before I enter it fully, but also gripped by my determination to get this light to work – and eliminate some of the fears of my youth – I retrieved my father’s large emergency flashlight. Before I shined the light into the abyss I felt a rush as the idea of the monsters from my sleepless, childhood nights snuck back up to me.
I don’t remember how well the light illuminated the room. I don’t remember how disorganized the attic was. I don’t remember how scared I was when I flipped the switch on. All I remember was the mummified body of the young girl hanging right in front of my face. I think it was her eyes that really caught my gaze. I can forget the image of the chains that were around her necks and arms. I can forget the look of fear in her mouth. I can forget her broken teeth. What I can’t forget is the look in those open eyes that seemed to be staring right at me. The fear and pain in those eyes will be captured forever in my memory. That stare haunts me throughout my waking day and my sleepless nights. She always comes back to me with the same stare of intense guilt and pain, but also at the same time hope. I don’t remember how long I stood staring, or how long I have spent thinking, about those eyes.
I can barely remember how long the police took to arrive. My parents assure me that they came right away, but it felt like forever. They said she was chained down, the body at least a decade old. Her countless bruises indicated she was a victim of abuse. The case is closed; I can talk about it now. The investigation went on for the past months, and just ended today. It was inconclusive; they never figured out who did it.
But I still see her, nearly every day, with her eyes full of fear and pain and blame. She must have known that I lived right below where she was trapped. I discovered that I wasn’t just a paranoid fourteen year old. I didn’t know back then. I thought it was a cult or ghosts or spirits that made the rattling noises, tapped the messages into the wood, rattled the hatch or tried to talk to me. But what I heard was her, living and suffering up there, for four or five months.