Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and felt like someone was watching you?

I have.

My brother is… strange, to say the least. But before I give you details about his creepy habits, you should know two things.

1) My bedroom is directly across the hall from his and,

2) The access to the attic is in his room.

Now, I’ve learned that sometimes if my brother wakes up in the middle of the night, whether it’s because he used the bathroom or had a nightmare, he decides to stand next to my parents’ bed and just watch them sleep. And, on occasion, I have awoken to him standing over me.

When this happens, after the mini heart attack I have, I always ask, “What’s wrong?” And every single time, he responds “I just wanted to say hi.” He never wakes me up though; I just kind of jolt awake from the sensation of someone watching me. I never know how long he was there before I woke up and I have no idea if there have been instances where I just haven’t caught him.

I’ve heard him talk in his sleep, and I don’t mean quiet mumbling about food, I mean full out talking about slightly gruesome things that are borderline terrifying. One night I was babysitting him and while working on homework in my room, I heard “They are coming. It happens tonight. Sacrifice happens tonight.”

So as any reasonable person would do, I locked my door, grabbed the baseball bat from under my bed and pressed my back against the wall opposite my door. At that point, I was 100 percent certain that my brother, whose room is across the hall from mine, was possessed and evil. I heard footsteps in the hallway, but there wasn’t any other noise.

After about 30 minutes, I convinced myself he was just messing with me and that I had to check in on him. Bat in hand, I unlocked my door and looked around. He wasn’t in sight. In fact, he was tucked in bed, exactly how I left him: with a stuffed animal in his arms and classical music playing from his radio. And he had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him the next morning.

So whose footsteps did I hear?