Crazy House

Before I begin I want to thank you for hearing my story—or reading it, I guess. The past few months have been … very intense. Maybe getting this out will help me get over it, or help me accept that it never happened, according to the doctors and my therapist. They are saying that it is simply the way my brain processed being turned off for 11 minutes. As for myself … I am not sure what to believe anymore. Maybe they are right. This long introduction is probably not helping my case either. But if what I heard about you is true, you have probable heard significantly more insane things anyway, so I will just get into it.

I work—worked as a private investigator. My job was mostly to investigate matters that would be better out of the hands of the police, or that the police would have no interest in. In reality, this mostly means helping nosy spouses find out about their partners' … extra activities.

This case, however, was different. A rich woman was concerned about her husband who had been missing for almost a full week at that point. The police was not being helpful enough, so she hired me to speed up the process. To start the process, I started looking into other places the man could have been staying. These people usually owned a few properties that were mostly sitting empty, or maybe even a yacht to show off to their rich friends. The houses I could find in their official documents were either empty or being rented. But I learned some things in my years of working as a PI, like that sometimes spouses might want to keep some money—or in this case a property … safe from being involved in an eventual divorce. So I went to check that he wasn't just having some time to himself and forgot to make an excuse for his wife.

Saying that the mansion has seen better days was an understatement. It was an old run-down building with vegetation blending in with the cracks in the walls. I was starting to think already about my long drive back. There was no way that the missing husband—or anyone—has been anywhere around here in many years. This house was sitting on a forested hill looking over the southern German town of Hurenburg, two countries away from my home. I thought that I might as well go inside and have a look if I've come this far. Exploring abandoned places has always interested me ever since I was a teenager.

The inside looked a lot like the outside. Vines were crawling over the cracked marble stairs and on top of statues of different hellish creatures that have started to turn green with age. I decided to start exploring upstairs, where fewer plants reached their tendrils. It was dark upstairs. Darker than it should have been in a mansion with such big windows even on an overcast day. I could barely see the walls on either side of the wide hallway. Then, I see a faint cold light at the end of the hallway that makes me freeze in place. A door on my right creeks quietly. I try to carefully back up to the stairs only to walk into a cold wall. I turn around confused and when I turn back around I see a room that is very clearly not the hallway I was just in. It's dimly lit and furnished with elegant armchairs around a fireplace, which seems to be the only light source.

A presence makes its way into the room. I don't see anything — at least not at first — but I can feel the room getting filled steadily, so I back up and feel a door through the darkness. It leads into a room that looks more like an office. I close and lock the door behind me, but that does nothing to stop it. It's like the walls are not even there. I start to see now in the light coming through a tall window. Not a person, or even a creature. Instead, the house itself seemed to bend towards me into faint shapes, lines, spirals, like a chaotic but geometric haze. And it was slowly getting closer. At that point I started running through whichever door I was able to find in each new room. They were all decorated in similar styles and looked like they belonged in the same house, except for the fact that they were wrong. They should not have been able to exist. The shapes did not make any sense. I am sure that I was running in big circles. And I ran for more than an hour … passing through similar but all different rooms, opening doors, looking behind me only to see it just a few centimeters closer every time. I could feel my body begin to give up, my vision becoming blurry, and the taste of blood in my mouth. I knew that I could not keep running for much longer and it only kept getting closer. In my moment of desperation, I decided that if I had to die anyway I would not go this easily. When I got to the door to the next room, I stopped for a moment, closed my eyes, and ran in the opposite direction, straight into the presence that was following me.

After a few seconds of running … nothing happened. If anything, the wall should have stopped me by now. I opened my eyes. In front of me was the mansion's hallway and the staircase. Just one last sprint and I was out of there. I almost got to the stairs when out of nowhere the wall on my left starts to move and an explosion of shapes rushes towards me. Startled, I jump back away and fall onto the rusty railing which creaks before giving way under my weight. The fall feels like it takes longer than it should have.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed with a nurse looking at me like they've seen a ghost and running out of the room. Then the tests and questions started, but I will not bore you with that. They told me that I was found at the side of the road, unconscious, then rushed to the hospital. Where I died for a few minutes before coming back out of nowhere and nearly scaring the nurse to death.

Thank you for listening to me. Whether you choose to believe me or not. I would not blame you … I am not sure if I believe it myself.