I'm sure you've heard it before. In fact, I think we all have. I'm talking about that unsettling creak in the middle of the night. That creak of a floorboard or squeak of a door, or perhaps a thumping noise that tells you that you're not alone. More often than not, it's someone else, whether a family member or friend, moving about in the dark. Or maybe it's a dog, or more likely, a cat having late-night crazies. At some point, we've all heard those noises.

What's scary though, is when you hear those noises, and there's nothing around that could possibly make them. Imagine it for a minute. You live alone, and have no pets. Or perhaps you are a child, and your parents are sound asleep. There shouldn't be anything around to make those eerie midnight noises, and yet, you hear it. That soft creak. That squeak. That shuffle. That rattle. That noise that tells you that you are not the only person awake at this hour. That's how it is in my neighborhood, and it's something that is still largely a mystery, as with most other things here. You might suggest robbers, and trust me, we thought so too. But, oddly enough, nothing was ever stolen. Nor was there ever any trace that any outside person had ever been inside.

Now, it's one thing to tell you about it, but it's another thing to give a personal account. That's what I'll be doing in these stories. I'm going to tell you about what happened to me, not just about the things living here.

When my family and I first moved in three years back, my parents told me and my siblings something strange on the very first night.

"No matter what, you must not get out of bed once your father and I go to sleep," my mother said, and I could tell from her tone that she was dead serious. "You might hear some noises, and you might be tempted to go looking for them. Even if you hear meowing, you must not get up. It's probably just the cat, and he'll be fine. The house is old though, so don't be scared if you hear some odd noises. Just remember, don't go looking for them."

Though we thought it was strange, we didn't argue, and we made sure to obey. Mother knows best, after all. For a couple weeks, during the night time, the house was dead silent, ignoring the meows from our cat, who had to spend the nights outside, that way he could hunt all he wanted and wouldn't make any messes in the house. But after roughly two weeks passed, I started hearing those creaking noises my mother had warned about.

Now, I always had trouble sleeping at night, so I usually stayed up later than everyone else, reading a book or drawing a picture until I grew tired, at which point I would turn off the lights and curl up in bed until I fell asleep. This night had been no different. As always, sleep refused to come to me, so I read a few chapters of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix before finally growing drowsy. I had just turned off the light in my room and returned to bed when I heard a creaking noise coming from upstairs. The cat had been locked outside already.

It's just mom or dad, I told myself, but I wasn't fully convinced. The creaking coming from upstairs was loud enough to keep me awake for a good amount of time. During that time, I tossed and turned as I tried to block out the noise. Eventually, I stopped and simply stared at the ceiling of my room. Why did mom so firmly insist that I not look for the noises? What harm could it really do? I was about to step out of bed when I stopped myself. No. She had her reasons for telling me what she did. I shouldn't disobey.

After that first incident, I began to hear the noises on and off for the next couple of weeks. While I simply tried to ignore them, they began to frighten my younger siblings. My parents, of course, insisted that it was just because the house was old, and that there was nothing to worry about. However, they did continue to insist that we stay in bed. Once more, we all obeyed. For a while at least.

After two months of living in the house, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to see what was making those noises. So when my parents went to bed and I began to hear the noises, I slipped out of bed, pulled on some light (and quiet) clothes, and crept out of my room. With all of the lights in the house off, I could barely see four feet feet in front of me. And with the odd shadows of household objects leering over me, I began to feel a bit nervous. But I was too curious now. No one could have stopped me from sneaking a peek.

I made my way through the darkness, trying not to scream out loud when I stepped on a Lego that my siblings left out. As I reached the stairs, I could hear the creaking noises coming from the far end of the hall above me. I sneaked up the stairs, and listened again. This time, the creaking came from the kitchen. I slipped through the living room (which was in the upstairs portion of this house) and peeked around the corner into the dining room and kitchen area. I saw nothing. Once more, the creaking had moved to another spot. This time, it moved to the guest bedroom. I moved to the bedroom door as quickly and quietly as I could, then softly opened the door. Once more, I saw nothing.

I was beginning to grow annoyed, and quite confused as well. How could the noises just move like that? I knew it wasn't natural. To tell the truth, it was starting to really scare me. But I was still too curious to give up, so I decided to try looking at it one last time. This time, the noises were coming from the end of the hallway. I was about to move to the doorway to peek, but I stopped dead when I realized something startling.
The noises were getting closer, as if whatever was moving about was coming down the hall. Thinking quickly, I crawled under the guest bed and pulled some of the boxes around me so that I wouldn't be seen. My heart skipped a beat when I heard the guest room door swing open with a soft squeak. The sound of footsteps told me that something else was in the room. It was very close now, and I held my breath. Nevertheless, my curiosity hadn't died, so I peeked between a couple of the boxes I was hiding behind. From my extremely limited view, I saw a pair of feet, right beside the bed I was hiding under. They were darkly colored, and the toes seemed to curl into claws, though that might have been the dark playing tricks on my eyes.

I heard a cabinet open, then shut shortly after. Next, the closet door slid open, then shut. I barely held in a cry of alarm as the sheets were torn right off the bed. Then, I heard a scratching on one of the boxes that concealed me, followed by a soft hiss. To tell you the truth, it sounded like whatever was out there was just as annoyed as I had been a few minutes earlier. And like me, it wasn't giving up. It stopped scratching the boxes, but continued to walk around the room for a while longer, checking the cabinet and closet a few more times, and even tampering with the bookshelf and dresser drawers. After a few more minutes of patrolling, it gave up and left the room, closing the door with a soft click. I saw my chance, and silently slid out from under the bed and made my way to the door. I made sure that the noises were coming from the kitchen when I softly opened the door and slipped out, making my way down the hall and towards the stairs. It noticed me.

I could hear it moving through the kitchen and living room, trying to cut me off from the stairs. I heard it, and quickly turned and moved into the kitchen. I could hear it coming down the hall and into the kitchen behind me, so I started to run. I now longer cared about being quiet; it was already aware of my presence. As I started to move faster, it did too. The creaks turned into rapid thumps, and I could hear a growing hiss coming from whatever that thing was. I was too scared to take the time to look behind me. I scrambled to my room, that thing close behind. I could hear the sound of scraping as I ran, and I think it was clawing the walls as it chased me. Once I reached my room, I threw the door open and slammed it behind me before locking it tight and pressing my body against it for extra insurance.

The rattling handle told me that it was trying to open the door. Eventually, it gave up and resorted to pounding and slashing at the door, hissing and screeching the whole time. The pounding and slashing intensified, as I began to cry and scream. My screams were drowned by the noise, which for some reason, didn't seem to reach the ears of my sleeping family. You'd think my door would break right off the wall, judging by how hard the slamming was. I simply sat there, rivers of tears flooding down my face as the banging carried on. After a while, whatever was making that noise began to become discouraged, and the slamming and clawing noises slowed and softened until they had vanished entirely. The creature gave on final hiss of frustration before walking away, which I knew from the sound of footsteps climbing up the stairs.

Even after it left, I didn't go back to bed. I simply curled up beside the door, making sure to keep my body pressed against it for fear that it would return. I lay there the remainder of the night, sobbing quietly until I finally cried myself to sleep.

The following morning, my mother commented that I looked absolutely terrible. I never told her what happened, rather, I told her that I had a lot of nightmares that night. I technically wasn't lying. She seemed to buy it, and acted as any loving mother would: with lots of hugs and comfort.

Over the course of the following several weeks, I slept worse than ever before. Not that I had a hard time falling asleep; my problem was that I couldn't stay asleep. Every time I drifted off, I was back under the bed, hiding from that thing, or I was scrambling down the hallway with my visitor close behind. On the worst nights, I would awake to see him looming over me; a shadowy figure seven feet tall with a body so dark that I could barely make out any body structures aside from two glistening red eyes. And just when I began to scream, I would wake up again and find him gone. This happened a lot, and soon, I couldn't tell what was a dream, and what was not. Was he really looming over me at night, or was it simply my traumatized mind playing tricks on me? To this day, I don't have an answer to that.

I'm not the only person to encounter him though. My sister comments now and then that even though she shuts her door at night, it's open in the morning. The entirety of my family swears that it wasn't us. Moreover, a man that used to live in the neighborhood once told me that he was going to go looking for that thing. He was always good to me, and would talk to me about nearly anything. But on that night that he went looking, he simply vanished. The next day, he was gone. There was no sign of him leaving, nor was there any evidence of foul play. He is now considered to be a missing person.

The noises around the house continue to this day, and I sleep with my door locked now. It took a while, but the nightmares did go away, and I no longer saw that thing looming over me. I'm not even sure if that was it's true form, or simply how my mind pictured it.

Though the nightmares left, that thing never did. I still hear it sometimes as I stare up at the ceiling in the dark, bathing in my own insomnia. It sometimes tries to enter my room, which I know because I sometimes hear my door handle rattle. It's not my parents, I know that. If it were a family member, they would knock, or call for me. But this thing, whom I have come to call the Visitor, never does. It simply comes and goes as it pleases. It's one of the few abnormalities here that you can encounter at any time. It's definitely the most prominent. No, we don't know what it wants. No, we don't even truly know what it looks like, Heaven help the person that does. All we really know is that it's there.

It's frightening, but you get used to it after a while. We here in Sinaloe have, just like with all the other strange things around. After a while, it becomes nothing more than a minor irritation. At least, for the most part. There's always that silently-lurking fear though; that little voice at night that tells you that you ought to be scared. That at any time, it could find and kill you. It contradicts the evidence and the few things we know, but that fear is always there. It stays with you forever, even after you leave the neighborhood.

It may be frightening, but hey: it certainly makes sleepovers a lot more interesting...