No Smoking

This is a short, true, scary story that occurred during my younger years when I moved from Colorado to Nebraska for a short period of time. I was probably around 15 or 16 years old and I had gotten into a bit of trouble in Colorado. As a punishment, or whatever the hell you want to call it, I was sent to live with my father in Kearney, Nebraska. He was at work a lot and I went to school during the day but for the most part there was always someone home when I was home.

One afternoon after a short day in school I came home early, I rode my bike everywhere at the time and it took me about 20-30 minutes to get home from school. After the long ride home, I pulled up into my driveway and threw my bike on the porch where it usually sits and went inside. It was probably around 2:30 p.m. and I was hungry so I went in and made a sandwich real quick and grabbed a soda and went into my room. Note the way my room was set up was kind of weird because it was originally 2 rooms that had the walls knocked down to make one big room.

To give you a little bit of a visualization about what kind of place we lived in, it wasn’t anything special. It was a double wide trailer that was left to my dad’s girlfriend after her parents passed away. When you walk in the trailer there was a living room in front of you and the kitchen was on the left hand side of the living room. You get past the kitchen and there was a hallway that led down to the rooms, the first 2 doors on the left were mine that led into my giant room. Keep walking down the hallway and there was a bathroom and my dad’s room at the end.

Going back to when I made my sandwich and got home, I walk into my room, throw my backpack on the floor, kick my shoes off, and threw my keys on my coffee table. After I got done eating my sandwich I clicked on the TV and lit a cigarette (I know smoking at 16 horrible right?) anyways I’m sitting there watching ridiculousness and I heard someone walking down the hallway. I didn’t know anyone was home or so I thought but I didn’t think anything of it really until they knocked on my door.

Now the weird thing is they knocked on my door that was covered by a dresser and my dad and his girlfriend knew that I didn’t use that door. The way my room was set up was you come through the first door in the hall but the door swings open to the right and you can’t tell what’s going on in my room until you get past the door because it blocks the view. My bed was in the middle of the room up against the wall on the side where my doors were. It was in the middle of both doors and on the left side of my bed I had the dresser covering the other door.

Well after the knock, I totally thought it was my dad trying to mess with me. I just yelled, “Stop messing around!” and kept watching TV. Yeah that was a mistake I think I just made it worse at that point without even realizing it so I had what was coming to me. I’m lying there and my door opened really slowly and the doorknob was turned the whole time almost like someone opened it and kept their grip on it. Well me not knowing what the hell was going on yet when it opened I said, “What do you want dad?” I paused my show and got off my bed because he didn’t come in my room and I couldn’t see him.

Boy was I surprised, when I looked on the other side of my door the handle released and my door creaked open a little more on its own. I thought to myself, “Damn, my dad had to of bolted quick like a ninja for me to not see him or hear him at all.” That’s when I got the chills like I was in Antarctica in my birthday suit and it was the middle of summer but it got really cold in my room all the sudden and the hair on my arms stood up.

I didn’t really know what was going on so thinking it was my dad still I thought to myself, “I’m going to go see why he was messing with me.” I went into the living room because I thought that’s where he had went towards but there was nobody home. I made sure to check the whole house like 3 times before I went back into my room. As you could imagine, a little 16 year old kid stressed out because I had no idea what just happened sitting there overthinking, I lit up another cigarette.

Remember earlier when I told you that I had threw my keys on my coffee table when I got home? Yeah well I heard them start jingling like someone grabbed them. This happened 3 feet away from me. I kid you not, my keys were jumping across the coffee table, little by little almost like a set of frog keys. All jokes aside, it wasn’t very funny at the time but when they got to the end of the coffee table, they flew off the table into the middle of my room.

I’m sitting there frozen asking myself what just happened, seriously trying to comprehend it all of the sudden out of the corner of my eye I seen my TV turn off. I thought I was sitting on my remote but I wasn’t and at that point I was scared out of my mind but I wanted to know exactly what in the hell was going on. This whole time I still had a lit cigarette in my hand that was just burning away and something told me to ask whatever it was, what the hell it wanted from me. I did and it wasn’t a voice that responded no, it was more like a fair warning, or a sign, I mean you can call it whatever you’d like but I felt someone rub a finger across my wrist.

It was the same hand I had my cigarette in and this feeling came over me. I wasn’t scared as much anymore. I more felt like someone just yelled at me. I felt like I should have been sorry for something and that’s when it clicked. I don’t know why I did it but I put my cigarette out halfway and literally 5 seconds later, my TV turned back on by itself. It’s almost like I could feel exactly where it was in my room when it walked from my TV stand to my door and closed it on its way out.

I was pretty dumbfounded about what just happened. I mean in a way I knew I had just communicated with a dead person and got touched but I didn’t know who it was until later that night. I told my dad’s girlfriend when she got home because she was the first one to get off work. Surprisingly she just kind of laughed and smiled in a weird way. She told me her father had passed away from a heart attack in the hallway, specifically on the other side of the wall where my room was. To explain the whole thing simply Mr. Rasmussen hated smoking, let alone in his house and he didn’t take to kindly to me smoking in my room. I guess he just waited until he had me alone to prove a point.

As a result I respected his wishes and I went outside to smoke from there on out and I never heard or seen anything again in that house. I moved back to Colorado the following month, my dad and his girlfriend eventually sold the trailer and moved to Colorado as well not too long after. Sometimes I wonder if whoever purchased the trailer has had a run in with the old man like I did all those years ago, just a little word of advice to them if so. NO SMOKING!