My ex-husband always used to jumpscare me. It was one of the things I hated the most about him. Well, he’s doing it again. The most frustrating part is that he’s been dead for five years.

At first I was just slightly put off by it. It was in the earliest days of dating him. If he’d be at my apartment and maybe I excused myself to use the bathroom, he’d be waiting in some doorway or shadow to jump out and scare the shit out of me. It was even worse at his house. He lived way out in the middle of freaking nowhere and I was pretty much always low level freaked out there. But then he’d leap out from around a corner and I’d be so scared and pissed off, I’d be ready to break up with him then and there.

In retrospect, that’s obviously what I should’ve done. But, I guess we all ignore our own inner voices sometimes, don’t we? Well, obviously, or there wouldn’t be so many people posting on NoSleep trying to get other people to help them with some dire problem they created by doing something stupid.

And yet, here we are.

I don’t know why I let it slide, honestly. And that was only one of the many things about him that were… Terrible. Nonetheless, I repeatedly told him to cut that shit out, and I repeatedly did nothing when he failed to cut that shit out. Eventually, I even married him.

He had two kids from a former marriage who stayed with us a lot, and then when they were there, there were also nieces and nephews staying over too. I always liked when there was a house full of kids. It made the old drafty falling down farmhouse we lived in slightly less terrifying. But, count on my ex husband to fuck up a good thing. We were in the living room with all the kids, it was late at night. The kids were all still rowdy and playing around, he and I were on the couch. There was a scary movie playing which nobody was really paying attention to.

But, Eric, my ex, got this funny look on his face and said quietly to me, “Watch this.” Then he put his finger to his lips to express that I should keep quiet. I instantly knew he was probably thinking of orchestrating some huge jumpscare on all these kids. Even though he had actually given me warning at least, I just didn’t want him to do it. The youngest child there was only four. I knew it would immediately kill the good vibes. I tried to protest, but he shushed me again and then scurried off to some other part of the house, unnoticed by any of the kids.

I sighed angrily. I even tried to warn the kids, but they were all hyper and not listening. Seconds later, Eric showed up outside the screen door and revved his chainsaw.

The kids LOST it. One of his daughters actually blasted backwards and got airborne in her desperation to get away from the door. The four year old (of course) burst into hysterical tears, and soon they were all crying.

Now, some of you reading this are probably laughing and thinking, that’s actually epic. But, the thing was it was just so damn OLD. He did this dumb shit ALL THE TIME. Plus, the world can really be boiled down into precisely two types of people. People who think it’s funny to scare four year olds so they cry, and people who don’t. So, readers, I suppose you’ve sorted yourselves into teams at this point.

Fast Forward a few years from the dumbass chainsaw incident, and Eric and I had our own son. The thing about our son was that he had major, and I mean MAJOR, heart problems at birth. He had to have open heart surgery and also had a whole shitload of other complications. Now, that’s not the point of the story, but just know that the first eight months of his life were VERY touch and go. Then he was finally doing better, stronger, able to do more.

He was nine months old and sitting on my lap, facing me. We were just playing and chattering at each other, when Eric lunged up behind him, grabbed him, and shouted.

My little son did that thing little kids do where for one full second you don’t know if they’re going to burst into hysterical tears or burst into laughter. In the end, my son burst into laughter. And so did Eric. I, on the other hand, was livid. Who jumpscares an infant, first of all? And secondly, who the hell jumpscares and infant HEART PATIENT?

That was probably the rudest I’d ever been to Eric about the jumpscare thing, but he just kept laughing. Laughed the whole thing off, like he always did.

Anyway, that wasn’t why I divorced him, but we were divorced by the time our son was three. The shared custody arrangement of our son went about how you’d expect things to go with a douchebag. But, life plodded along.

When our son was about 10, he went through this phase where he started getting insanely jumpy. I mean, he just seemed incredibly paranoid. If I walked close to him, or made any sudden movements, he would flinch. Almost like he thought I was going to hit him. At first it actually sort of hurt my feelings because I had never hit my son, I didn’t understand why he was being so jumpy with me.

Then it started to scare me because I wondered if someone else was hitting him. Maybe he was being bullied at school. He didn’t go to his father’s all that much, and I didn’t imagine Eric would ever hit him, but what if?

But then I remembered the jumpscaring. I finally thought to ask my son about it. He immediately revealed that yes, his dad jumpscared him all the time.

“It’s kind of annoying, Mom,” he told me.

Well yeah, no shit, I thought. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it. I was so mad. He only spent limited time with our son. Why was Eric spending it jumpscaring him so much that it was making him nervous and anxious ALL the time? What a shit heel.

The problem was that Eric was the sort of “co parent” that if I asked him for help with anything, or to back me up on anything, he would do the exact opposite, just to be spiteful. Asking nicely never worked with him. So if it wasn’t something a court would force him to stop, I really didn’t even bother asking, because I knew he would just get worse. And let’s face it, no family court is going to give a shit about jumpscaring. I was mad as hell, but there wasn’t much I could really do about it.

Fortunately, he took the liberty of dying, and that took care of that.

I don’t mean to sound callous. Obviously my son struggled with the death of his father. But the jumpiness subsided basically instantly after he found out his dad was dead. Now, if your child’s mental health IMPROVES because you died, it’s possible you were a shitty parent. I’m just saying.

Anyhow, another five years went by and then I wrecked my car because a cat jumped out in front of me.

I sat there in shock, gripping the steering wheel of my wrecked car. As I tried to catch my breath and make sense of what had just happened, I noticed something strange. The air around me had grown cold, and a chill ran down my spine. I looked around, but no one was there. I tried to shake it off and focus on getting out of the car, but then I heard it.

A low, guttural laugh echoed around me, and I froze. It sounded like my ex-husband's laugh. The man who had tormented me for years, emotionally and physically. I felt a surge of anger and fear wash over me, and I knew I needed to get out of there.

I managed to escape the car and run to my house, but the eerie feeling never left me.

Over the next few days, strange things started to happen. I would hear footsteps in the hallway, even though no one was there. Objects would move on their own, and the temperature would drop suddenly. As I walked by the window glass of a shop on a sunny day, my own reflection seemed to lunge at me and scared the life out of me.

A drinking glass exploded on the counter.

Doors slammed at night.

Books fell from the shelves landing with a thunk in a plume of dust.

As the days passed, I realized that it wasn't just any spirit haunting me. It was my ex-husband, and he was using his ghostly powers to jump scare me from beyond the grave. The realization left me terrified. If he could do all of this, what else was he capable of?

I tried to find help, but no one believed me. They thought I was just imagining things or suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Sleep deprived and desperate, I found myself in a police station explaining the whole thing to a frazzled cop. He glared at me tersely and I felt like an idiot.

A gunshot rang out even as I told my story. The entire precinct jumped at what ended up being a gun going off by accident. Even so, the cop didn’t believe me (of course) and sent me out into the rainy night, terrified of my own shadow.

I was alone, trapped in a nightmare that I couldn't escape from.

Now, as I sit here in my dark and silent house, I can feel his presence all around me. I was awoken moments ago when my bedroom door cracked violently into the wall.

I know that at any moment, he could jump scare me again. And this time, I fear it won't just be a harmless prank.

I’m sitting here curled in a ball, shaking as I type this. I’m just trying to get it out. Trying to leave behind my story because I know it’s only a matter of time… Until he scares me to death.