This is long, so I apologize for that.

I've never had to tell this story with enough detail to actually explain it all the way,

but it is true, and it happened when I was about 6 years old.

In a quiet room, if you press your ear against a pillow, you can hear your heartbeat.

As a kid, the muffled, rhythmic beat sounded like soft footsteps on a carpeted floor.

Most every night, just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I would hear these footsteps,

and I would be ripped back to consciousness, terrified.

For my entire childhood, I lived with my mother in a fairly nice neighborhood that was

in a transitional phase.

People of lower economic means were gradually moving in, and my mother and I were two of

these people.

We lived in the kind of house you see being transported in two pieces on the interstate,

but my mom took good care of it.

There were a lot of woods surrounding the neighborhood that I would play in and explore

during the day, but at night, as things often do to a kid, they took on a more sinister

feeling.

This, coupled with the fact that, due to the nature of our house, and there was a fairly

large crawl space underneath, filled my mind with imaginary monsters and inescapable scenarios,

which would consume my thoughts when I was awoken by the footsteps.

I told my mom about the footsteps, and she said that I was just imagining things.

I persisted enough that she blasted my ears with water from a turkey-based or once, just

to placate me, since I thought that would help.

...