Nighttime Sounds on the Second Floor of a Country House

Just chilling. When I was a schoolkid, I usually spent summer holidays at the dacha with my grandma and dead. Our house is decrepit — a classic little izba with a mezzanine. The plot is just as neglected, usually littered with rotten boards and basins. Not many neighbors, especially toward the end of summer. We usually sleep all three of us in one room with the stove.

One time, toward the end of August, dead got a sudden urge to go to DS, and me and grandma stayed alone for a couple of days. On the day dead left (it was evening), that's when it happened. Around 10 p.m. we came back from the station and started getting ready for bed, I asked grandma to read me a book before sleep. We turned off the lights in the house and only grandma's nightlight was left. There were no familiar neighbors that day, just me and grandma alone. Those two facts really scared me. And what scared me even more was being alone with grandma — I was afraid of her and fantasized a lot (e.g., that she was a witch).

So, we're lying in the room with grandma. She's reading aloud "Ascanio" by Dumas, and I'm listening to what's going on outside and in the house. Nothing special was happening, but at some point on the second floor it was like some small weight fell. Grandma didn't hear it, but my heart started pounding wildly from terror and I interrupted the reading, asked grandma to listen. Grandma went quiet and we lay in dead silence for about 5 seconds. There were no sounds and grandma laughed, like, "you must have dreamed it." I lay there with my ass clenched for about 20 minutes, then started falling asleep, but after a while I heard that sound of a falling little weight again. It felt like in the DS apartment when something falls at the neighbors' upstairs, but the whole horror was that this was a dacha house. Grandma didn't hear it again, and I again had wild chills and heart palpitations. I asked grandma to listen again. She went quiet and... that sound repeated again, only this time it was more like the sound of heavy furniture moving. Now grandma heard it too, and sat up in bed. She said "oh, what's that," took the flashlight and went to the door to the entryway, opened it a crack and started listening. At that moment I had a strange state — some feeling of derealization, like all this is happening in a movie, but not to me. I didn't know what to do, different scenarios were in my head: 1) they're about to kill grandma, I need to hide somewhere so they don't notice me; 2) I need to open the window and urgently run away; 3) I need to take the poker and wait for this something to kill it. I had never been so scared in my life, I was literally losing consciousness from fear and crying.

In the end grandma stood there for a minute and closed the door, silently went to the bed and lay down. I felt that she was also very scared. Then she said in a puzzled voice "probably crows" and continued reading. The rest of the night I didn't sleep, kept listening, wrapped in the blanket up to my head. But nothing like that happened again until morning. Then when my parents came to visit, I asked to go to DS, away from this shitshow.