I tried to summon a demon to possess me when I was 13. (part 1)
CW: Mentions of Suicide, Descriptions of SA, Body Horror (list can be updated)
Author Note: [Just to let y'all know this is my first horror story and is based on real events that happened in my life. Hope y'all enjoy]
The first time I tried to kill myself I was 8 years old. I remember I wrote a note on the lid of the box I was trying to kill myself in. I can’t remember the exact words but it was something like “If I’m not wanted here, then I’ll leave forever.” The only reason I stopped was because I knew I needed to protect my brother. The next two times I was still 8 and my brother kept me here. The 4th time was because of my brother. It sounds harsh to blame someone but that was the truth. I have tried so many times over the years but I always stop myself. I researched how to die a painless death and found some effective ways but was always too scared to go through with it.
But I can tell you the stupidest way I tried to kill myself without actually killing myself.
I was raised in the church and have always had a fascination with angels, demons, spirits, and magic. I was convinced they were real because of the strange things that had happened to me throughout my short life. The earliest encounter with something I could never explain, I was about 5 or 6.
I was asleep in my bed. I have no idea what time it was. I don’t know what woke me up but I did with my eyes still closed. I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t. It felt like my eyelashes were glued together. I could feel my eyelids move slightly but my lashes were intertwined so tightly nothing I did would untangle them. I started to freak out and tried to rub my eyes but I couldn’t move. Nothing moved but my eyelids, straining against the vines that tangled themselves shut. I tried to call out for my mom. It came out as a slight whimper. It felt like my lips were removed and a patch of skin covered where it used to be. I kept trying to scream for help but only muted cries that even I could barely hear came from my throat.
Finally after what seemed like 30 minutes I was able to rip apart my lips to let out a slightly louder cry. I started to call out for my mom. It started as a very weak noise and grew louder and louder the more I cried. I heard footsteps walking to my door. I can’t remember why but I thought that my door was open. The footsteps stopped at the threshold. I called for my mom again thinking it was her at my door. There was no answer. I then called out my brother's name. I told him I couldn’t open my eyes and to go get mom. Again there was no answer. I called out my brother's name to no response. I can’t remember if whatever was in my doorway walked away. I can’t remember if my mom came and woke me up or if I just fell back asleep. I have no closure on what happened to me that night. It’s never happened again.
I could chalk this up to sleep paralysis, but those footsteps. I felt a presence. I know something was there. I could feel it staring at me. It didn’t feel evil or good. It just was. I’ve learned that some things that “just are” are the only comforting presence I feel now.
I have had many different weird events in my life. I’m used to them now and I don’t get scared that often. Most things that happen to me now are just seeing those that are just passing by, (which has gone up significantly since getting a job that is next to a national cemetery) or my grandparents and guardians checking in. But it wasn’t always so, mundane.
When I was in middle school I thought it was the worst time of my life, little did I know it was only the second worst time of my life. I was so tired of living. I had a few more attempts and also started to self harm. I was at my limit. So I did the dumbest thing I think that I have ever done in my entire life, even dumber than trying to be the “I’m so random” manic pixie dream girl. Yes I wore the fake wide rim black 3D glasses with the lens popped out. I am so glad there are no pictures of that era of my life.
In my state of “life is not worth living and the pain will only end with death”, I started looking into the occult. I was looking for some way to die without dying. I looked into astral projection thinking that maybe I could at least get away from this world for a few hours a day. Never got to do it but I felt that I have come pretty close. I still try it to this day. After the continuous failing I was trying to find a way to get my soul out of my body. My self harm was getting worse and I needed answers fast. I couldn’t take the abuse I was getting at home and the constant bullying at school.
It seemed like everything I found that “might” work was just failing. Like someone or something was trying to stop me from going through with my plan. I assumed it was God, and I was most likely right. So I hated God and I let him know. I screamed at him at night for letting all the bad things happening to me keep happening and not letting me get away from it. There were so many long nights yelling at God which soon turned into me yelling at the Devil as well. I thought he might have something to do with it as well since my suffering was entertaining to both of them. I still call myself “God’s Favorite Mistake.” With all this anger, pain, sadness, and depression I tried my last resort.
I made my own ouija board. I sat on the floor in front of my bed. I made it in my art book that I had for years. I still remember the cover of the book. It was green and blue striped but extremely yellowed with age. The pages inside were lined with folders every so often separating them into chunks. I think it used to be my uncle's old notebook. Now it was filled with shit anime drawings and a poorly made ouija board.
I didn’t make any ritual or anything special for my first time using a ouija board. Just me, on the floor, with something in the shape of a triangle for the planchet (I don’t remember what it was). I put my hands on it and asked if anything or anyone was there. I sat there for a long time not moving. I thought that there was nothing there. That this was all fake. But I still waited. It wasn’t a sudden jerk, but just a slow, and I mean slow, movement of the makeshift planchet. To be honest, I have no memory of what it landed on. I am assuming it was yes because I remember feeling excited. Then I asked the second dumbest question. “Are you a Demon?” Again I don’t remember the answer. It’s like I can only remember a snapshot of what happened. Like how your brain only needs a tenth of a second to recognize what something is. I just have a feeling and brief flashes of what happened.
Then I asked the Dumbest question you could ever ask in any sort of spiritual setting. “Can you possess me?”
I know y’all might be thinking. “This is the part where the dumb white person goes down into the haunted basement and says ‘Hello’ to the demon” But here was my plan: Get a demon to possess my body so I wouldn’t be piloting it and I could take a break from life. I didn’t care if it killed me or forced me to watch whatever it chose to do. I just wanted a break. And I was going to try to get it anyway I could.
I didn’t get an answer from the board. I don’t know what happened after but I know I never got possessed. Nothing happened for so long I forgot about it. Years had passed and I was now in high school. I was not having a good time in high school on account of being in high school. I was also heavily bullied, sexually assaulted by friends, and pressured too much on being the “good child” in the family. I was exhausted.
I did my morning routine of going to the school’s library to meet my friends. At the time this was our place of solace. We were all friends with the librarian, who was an old white man just a few years from retirement. He would play music over the PA system and he took requests. He would even put on dance songs like the Cupid Shuffle or Cha Cha Slide.
We hung out in the back right corner with most of the round table and chairs. The gamers hung out in the middle of the library on the long table of computers playing whatever they could get through the school’s firewall. On the left side there was the pit, which was a square area with tables and chairs facing a projector screen that sometimes played music videos. There were times we hung out in the pit where the music was the loudest but we mostly kept to our corner.
My friends and I talked about supernatural stuff all the time. Surprisingly, a good amount of us knew someone who was a psychic or medium, with some of us claiming to also be psychic. It was just some dumb and fun things we could pretend about since our boring lives consisted of school, homework, and parents who were either divorced or should be divorced.
It was a Friday and we had been talking about who could see spirits. Of course I said I did, which I still believe I do, and two of my other friends said they could. My best friend and a girl named Victoria. I believed my best friend not just because she was my best friend but because the two of us had already been through some intense shit that taught us the spirit world isn’t something to be messed with for shits and giggles. My other friend I didn’t really believe because I always thought that she was an attention seeker. Turns out I was right about that but that is a whole other story.
I don’t remember anything else about the day. I guess it was pretty uneventful but I still remember that morning. It was the last normal morning I would have for a while. Saturday was boring as well but it felt off. Like that feeling you get when you’re outside right before lightning strikes and the rain starts pouring down like a waterfall on you. It wasn’t the calm before the storm, more like the inhale before a scream.
Then it was Sunday.
I woke up and something was extremely off. Everything felt heavy. It felt like I was trying to walk with cement feet. My neck was hurting and I thought that I had just slept wrong. I was getting ready to go to church, which I dreaded, when I thought I heard someone call my name. I shouted to my mom thinking it was her but didn’t get a response back. I just rolled my eyes cause it wouldn’t be the first or last time she's called my name and then not responded when I said yes. I went outside my room with whatever ugly dress my mom thought was cute and of appropriate length, and found my family downstairs. Everyone was doing their own thing and I went to the garage to get into the van. I liked being in there before anyone else was. It was peaceful and quiet. There wasn’t tension so thick you couldn’t breathe because there was yet again another fight between my parents and my brother about nothing. I didn’t have a phone at the time, or an ipod. I had a shitter mp3 player that had whatever was on my dads iTunes account except for a few songs I begged him to buy. It also had access to the radio so I would always put on the more edgy pop station because I wanted to be cool and know all the “bad” songs that didn’t play on the family friendly station.
Of course this peace wasn’t there for long as the rest of my family piled in. I shrank back into my seat with my earbuds in listening to whatever was on the station that day. I stared out the window as we drove. I of course wasn’t allowed to bring my mp3 in because I needed to listen to the word of God. I scoffed quiet enough so my dad wouldn’t hear. I hated going to church because nothing good ever happened there. And if you think it’s the pastor, it's not. It was a few of the guys in the youth group. When I was in the pews I tried to shrink myself even more, so I could retreat back into my mind. I was really good at dissociation. Still am. But when I went back in my mind it was dark. Darker than it had ever been. I don’t know what I was seeing or if I was seeing anything but I came out almost immediately. I kept shifting in my seat, never getting comfortable. There was always some small thing keeping me from getting settled. It was like that all day. Something was always off. I couldn't get settled down to read, the shower was either too hot or too cold, the sun was too bright, I kept tripping over nothing. I was getting more and more frustrated. Then night came.
My room was on the second floor and only had one window. It faced the east so the morning sun would always wake me up on the weekends. Our house was built on a corner and on the other side of the road was a lone street lamp. I often would stare out my window at the street lamp imagining creepy beings standing under it staring up at my window. I was a weird kid. I think if I created the monster coming after me it helped me to feel more in control or something. My room was pretty small, only fitting my bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. My walls and ceiling were covered in stuff. Posters, art, random shit I found, gifts friends gave me, photos, a set of plastic utensils, a ladle I got from a white elephant thing, literally anything could have been on there. By the time I was 16 I started covering my doors because I didn’t have enough room on my walls or ceiling.
My room was dark. I had a Tinkerbell lamp on my nightstand. It had a couple of different settings but I made sure every single day that her wings were lit up. I don’t know why I felt the need to do that, I was always scared that if they went off bad things would happen. Like really bad things. It was the only thing lighting my room. It was a dim blue glow normally but this night it seemed as if it wasn’t even on. I checked multiple times to make sure it was on but the room was still so dark.
When I finally fell asleep my dreams were dark as well. I could barely see in them. It was night time and I was in a forest. It was silent. And that was it. I woke up. It was silent. And dark. I wasn’t sure I was awake. I was in my room. I could feel my sheets and pillows. I had to be awake. I sat up in bed and put my feet on the carpet. I could feel the carpet, feel myself taking steps. I had to be awake. I opened that door and was out in the loft. It was silent. It was dark. I thought I heard my family moving downstairs. I looked over the banister. It was just a void. I couldn’t see. I called out to my dad. I heard more shuffling. It was now underneath me. In the void. I started screaming for my dad over and over. It was silent. It was dark. The shuffling stopped. No sound came from me anymore. I felt my hands on the banister, my feet on the carpet, the hair on my neck. I had to be awake.
My dad knocked on my door. My eyes shot open. I was sweating. I looked around my room. It was the same as before. I felt my sheets and my pillows. My dad came into my room. I could see all the details of his face, hair, and clothes.
“It’s time to get ready for school.”
Start of Day 1.
His voice was normal. Same cadence and tone. Am I awake now? I started to get ready to go to school, but everything felt like static. Like just before lightning strikes. I was on edge all day. When I went to the library in the morning I went straight to my best friend.
“B, Something crazy happened last night.”
“What’s going on?”
“I had a really bad nightmare. Like really bad. And I thought I woke up but I wasn’t, But it felt like I was awake. And it was dark. And-”
“Woah, woah, slow down. Take a deep breath. What are you wanting to tell me?” She was holding my hands and staring into my eyes. She knew that when I got like this I was going to spiral into the worst case scenario.That’s what happens when you have an undiagnosed panic disorder.
“It was dark. Really dark. I was in a forest and then in my house. I think I was calling for my dad but I couldn’t hear anything. It was silent.”
“How is that crazy? You’ve had way crazier shit happen to you.” Well she wasn’t wrong. But this felt different. I couldn’t explain it, but it was like I was standing on the edge of an endless void and the edge was crumbling.
“I-I don’t know. Something just feels off about it.”
“Weird. Well, what do you wanna do about it?” I had no idea. I mean it was just a weird dream, not even the scariest dream I’ve ever had. I just shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. The day went on like normal but everything startled me. A loud noise, someone tapping me, the closing of a locker, any and everything set me off. I was exhausted by the time I got home. I immediately got in trouble.
“How many times do I have to tell you-” My mom was yelling at me about something. Either doing the dishes wrong, not picking my towel up off the bathroom floor, or not keeping my room clean. But I couldn’t focus on what she was saying. Because she was saying it twice? Or maybe there was an echo in the house. But it didn’t sound like her. Maybe it was the tv? She was quoting the tv? No. That didn’t make any sense.
“I swear, you are so stupid!” My head snapped up from looking at the floor. My mom wasn’t the best mom but she wouldn’t call me stupid in anger. Sure she’d call me ungrateful, disrespectful, rude, but never stupid.
“What?” I mumbled to her
“I said I need you to clean up your mess.” she growled at me. The second voice was gone. I thoughtlessly went to my room. It was a mess like normal but it felt, off. Suffocating. I started to pick up my dirty clothes from the floor to see if that would help but I couldn’t stop replaying what I thought my mom had said. I knew that my parents thought that I was stupid. Even with A’s and B’s in my classes it wasn’t good enough. I was supposed to be a carbon copy of my dad, because my brother wasn’t. I had to be the perfect child in the family but when I would speak everyone would know I wasn’t up to the standard I should have been.
There is a story that my family still tells to this day that they laugh about every time. I was about 9 or 10 at the time and it was the 4th of July. We were able to watch the town's fireworks from our house as they went high enough to clear the treeline. I love fireworks. The pounding in your chest when they explode, the colors the sparkle, and even the smell afterward. I wanted to explain to my family that the fireworks looked so cool they almost looked like they were exploding into a sphere instead of a flat circle. I didn’t know that they were exploding in the shape of a sphere but I was 9ish and hadn’t seen a ”Mythbusters” or a “How It's Made” episode about it so give me some credit. Instead of explaining this like above I instead said, “It looks so real, it’s like it's 3D.” Everyone was laughing. I didn’t get why, but they just kept laughing. I was so damn confused and no one was explaining it. They just kept repeating it when I would ask. I left my family and went up to the guest room where I could still see the fireworks but cry by myself. I knew my family thought I was stupid.
I don’t know how long I was standing in the middle of my room holding a t-shirt staring at my wall. Tears were falling down my face but I made no sound. No heavy or sporadic breathing, just tears. I don’t know if the whispers were in my mind or coming from where the corners of my walls meet the ceiling. My vision started to fade. My room was bright as it was the middle of the afternoon and my ceiling fan light was on but the longer I stared at my wall the darker everything became. I know that I am stupid. I know that I am not worth the time. I am not the child I am supposed to be.
I let out a scream when someone knocked on my door. My brother opened the door and looked at me weird.
“Dinner is ready.” He slowly closed the door and walked away. I looked at my clock and somehow hours had passed. My eyes were dry and hurt every time I blinked and rubbed them. I looked over to my lamp. The wings were still lit. I was supposed to still be safe. I left my room and walked into the bathroom. I looked like a wreck. My eyes were puffy and the dark circles under my eyes seemed to be even more purple. I was so damn exhausted, I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to be near my family. I didn’t want them to ask me questions about my face. I didn’t want to get into the 4 hour long conversation of how I can’t be depressed because so many other people have it worse than me and that they can take me to DC to look at the homeless people so I can see what a bad life actually looks like, etc.
I went halfway down the stairs and saw my dad sitting in his usual place in the living room. At this point he was in his last year in the military but he was still acting like he could go to war at any second. I was hoping that the distance would help obscure my messed up face.
“Hey dad, I’m not feeling good. I’m just going to go to bed.” He looked at me with a disappointed look on his face.
“Your mother spent her time and energy making dinner, you know.” She didn’t, it was stouffer's lasagna.
“Sorry. I just don’t feel good.” I was hoping he would just let me go without a lecture. The news on the tv made a loud alert noise and he turned his head. I took my opportunity and slowly started to make my way back up the stairs. He didn’t say anything else or turn his head back to me so when I knew that he couldn’t see me anymore I ran the last couple steps and sprinted to my room. I quickly closed my door but made sure not to slam it. I didn’t need my dad to make his way up here to my safe room. I turned off all of my lights except my ceiling fan light. My bed was only 3 steps from the light switch or only one jump. As soon as the light went off I leaped to my bed. I had gotten really good at jumping but landing on my bed softly.
I laid down on my bed on my sheets and stared at my ceiling. There was the faint blue glow from my tinkerbell lamp. I had the feeling I wanted to cry but no tears came. I think I had used them all up. I tried to fall asleep. My stomach hurt. I knew that it was going to take a while to override my hunger pains to get to sleep. I started to sweat and kept tossing and turning. I couldn't take it anymore and got out of bed.
I opened my door and the house was dark. Everyone had gone to bed which was perfect for me to sneak down to the kitchen to get food. My go to was eating shredded cheese out of the bag but if I can get the pantry open I could grab some crackers. As I came to the top of the stairs I knew I had to stand about a foot back from it. The last step always creaked so I would do my best to skip it. I had to do what I’m sure looked like some weird dance as I walked down the stairs making sure to skip the parts of the stairs that squeaked or groaned. I was able to make it all the way down the stairs without my parents waking up. I stumbled through the dark through the living room to the kitchen and to the fridge. I opened it up to see if there was anything I could eat as a snack.
I heard creaking come from above me. I stopped. The way that my house was set up, each room on the first floor had an equal room above. My brother’s room is above my dad’s office, the guest room is above the garage, my parents room is above the living room, and my room is above the kitchen. And yet there was creaking coming from above me. I looked up at the ceiling illuminated by the fridge. I was trying so hard to trace where in my room it was coming from. It was coming from behind me to my right. It would have been by the window. I was trying to think what could have been making the noise. Maybe something fell or shifted. Maybe a stuffed animal fell off my bed and next to the window.
But the creaking moved. It slowly shifted like someone walking with cement feet. Now it's to the right side of my bed. At the foot of my bed. Then in between the foot of my bed and my dresser. I stopped looking at the ceiling. I closed the doors of the fridge as quickly and quietly as I could. I was swallowed back into the pitch black. I didn’t move. I stared at the fridge. I got that feeling of someone staring at me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I know whatever it was couldn’t see me because there was a floor between us. But it did know exactly where I was because where it stood in my room was directly above where I was currently standing.
I waited.
I held my breath.
I didn’t move.
I heard the creaking again. Left side of the foot of the bed. My bedroom door. It stood there for a while. Then moved back to the foot of my bed. It was above where the kitchen island was. In relation to my room, it was now either on top or more likely under my bed. It didn’t move again the rest of the night.
I slept on the couch in the living room.
Start of Day 2.