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The Not-So-Empty Bed
I was born in Brooklyn, and from the age of two to twenty, was raised in the little suburb of Pompton Plains, New Jersey, a section of Pequannock Township, right at the center border line of Pompton Plains and Pequannock (anyone who lives there will understand whereabouts, when I say I lived a couple of blocks from the Boulevard and Jacksonville Road).
My father was a stock investor and until the market fell apart in the mid to late 1970s, we lived in a very nice home on a little "landlocked" street called White Birch.
I say "landlocked" in that it didn't connect with any major traffic; one could have kids in very little danger of cars as only those who lived on the street ever needed to use it.
Now also, the house my parents bought was one of a set of track houses: all identical.
We were the house's very first owners.
As Dad was financially successful for many years, the relatively snug house clearly was too small for a pair of two growing boys.
So Dad had the one-car garage torn down and replaced with a two-car garage, and a second floor above and to the back as Our Room.
He also had the entire back of the house expanded out into the yard, and our house became that Gravitational Center to which friends congregated.
Y'know those commercials where an entire neighbourhood's kids invade a single home?
That was Our House in our neighbourhood.
The fact a large, heated, built-in swimming pool was added didn't hurt our "popularity"...
As indicated, our family were the first people to live in the house: no one before us, no one had died there, et al.
But in the early 1970s, something Very Unexpected happened.
One evening during these high school years, my brother had our friend Brian C. over in a slumber-party type fashion, and the two "camped out" in sleeping bags down in the large rec-room that was the cellar.
Brian was my age, but I had had a very sickly infancy (and was barely expected to live), and as I was a bit behind in my early years, my year and a half younger brother pretty much assumed the role of "older" brother.
This means (during our childhood and teen years), he tended to treat me as though I were some sort of an annoying little brother.
This has all since passed, but at the time, generally in front of others, he didn't exactly treat me with a lot of respect.
He was the alpha between us and he didn't mind who knew it.
I had, on occasion, slept alone in our room before, and never had any problem, before or since.
The room never existed prior to our family; as I've said, my father had it built from where no aspect of the room had previously existed.
As I worked at getting to sleep, I began to hear a very distinct rustling... in my brother's bed.
This made no sense to me.
My brother was downstairs, our room's door was closed and our first dog Snooper wasn't even allowed upstairs.
There was no one in the room but me.
Technically.
But there was something... in my brother's bed.
The sound was obviously Someone
(something),
settling in all comfy.
Letting my imagination go, I scooted downstairs, unwilling to be alone in the room, when obviously I wasn't being alone in the room.
I should have predicted my brother's skeptical reaction, believing I wanted to "horn in" on His Sleepover with Brian (despite Brian actually being in my class...).
He came up and, lights on, we checked the not surprisingly vacant room.
But after a few moments alone again, and with the lights out, the bed rustling began again, so I was still wide awake for it.
Too scared to get up to check it out myself (and goose-flesh rises again on my legs as I type up this story), I called out rather stupidly, "Is anyone there...?"
The rustling stopped.
For a moment.
Then the sound was that of a body, in the bed, facing the wall, turning over to face me to hear me better...!
Even without my having with me a sleeping bag, no amount of jeering or heckling got me out of sharing the cellar with my brother and Brian that night.
Had it been years later, in my 30s or up, when I'd begun doing actual paranormal investigations...
I've have gone right to the bedroom light to see what was making the sound in the bed.
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