Graphic by Abigail Potter / Graphic Design Editor
You hear something go bump in the night, and you panic; fear begins to creep into your mind.
“Did I lock the door?” you ask yourself, afraid that an unwelcome intruder found his or her way into your home. Then a more sinister thought invades: what if the unwelcome guest can’t be seen and has no earthly origin?
For one Middle Tennessee State University student, she claims that was the case in her home.
“A couple months ago, I used to live in this house in East Nashville,” said Rachael Horn, MTSU senior. “Sometimes when I was by myself late at night, it sounded like there was a radio underneath the floorboards that would turn on randomly, but you couldn’t really make out the noise.”
And that’s how it started.
Sitting alone on a hill not surrounded by neighbors, the house continued to progress in weirdness, according to Horn.
The harmless radio noise quickly turned into finding cabinets left open in her kitchen that she knew were closed when she had left her home earlier, accompanied by strange noises that would make her question if she was really alone in her old house after all.
“The one time it got really bad was when I had come home from work pretty late at night,” Horn said. “My bedroom door was closed, and I never close my bedroom door. So I tried to open it — it was not locked — but really stuck. I called my roommate and asked if he was home and playing a prank on me, but he was in Georgia. I started to freak out a bit, so I went outside to check the windows to make sure no one had broken in. I knocked the door in and somehow my gigantic box of records were pressed up against the door from the inside. There’s no way that’s possible.”
Horn details how her large collection of records comfortably resided in a giant box on the other side of her room next to her bed. How the box made its way across the room and barricaded her outside of it is still a mystery.
Concerned by the apparent haunting of her home, Horn reached out to her roommate whom she described as “new-age” and kept Tarot cards in the house. She was worried he may have used a Ouija board, but he never gave her a clear answer. Maybe they should contact a professional Psychic Advisor to help them get to the bottom of this issue.
Horn also told of dreams she would have — out-of-body dreams where she would be gazing into her room and observe a dark figure watching her sleep. When she would wake up, she would feel the presence of someone — or something — in her room.
“It was terrifying,” Horn said.
It’s been several months since Horn has left her East Nashville home and has found peace in her new residence. The dreams have stopped, as have the weird occurrences.
For now.
This story originally ran in MTSU Sidelines’ September 2017 print edition. For more information, contact Editor-in-Chief Brinley Hineman at [email protected]
