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The noises started about a week ago. I used to think it was just an animal, but now I’m getting a bit more concerned. For some backup information, I live alone out in the countryside in Mississippi where I have an average-sized, cozy cabin that I stay in during the winter when I want to get away from the city. My nearest neighbor, Bill, lives two miles away from my cabin, leaving lots of untouched land in my favor. I am a stay-at-home book editor so I don’t usually need to leave my cabin unless it's to get groceries or occasionally visit friends and family. I live a rather quiet life out here, and I have limited human contact other than through my work laptop and my phone, although the Wifi out here is rather spotty and a bit hard to use.

Ever since a week ago, I have been having trouble sleeping. My bedroom is the largest room in the cabin, and the comfiest. The walls are made of dark brown creaky oak wood and the floor is composed of worn down carpet. My desk sits right by a huge window that overlooks the forest and gives me a pretty good view of the front of my house. My bed is placed right beside my desk and a small bathroom and closet face opposite to it. Usually, I would keep the curtains open when I went to bed because I enjoyed the feeling of waking up with the sun shining on me and the birds chirping. Now I am more hesitant about doing that.

The night it started, everything was seemingly normal. I had just finished reading over a client’s manuscript at about 12:30 AM, and was shutting my laptop. I stood up, stretching as I had been sitting there for hours on end. I walked over to my nightstand by my bed and placed my phone down and began to head towards the bathroom. It was a small room, barely enough to fit four people, and my hygienic items were all cluttered messily on the bathroom counter beside my sink. Just as I had been reaching for my toothbrush, a small thump echoed throughout my cabin. Raising an eyebrow, I looked around. The following seconds consisted of silence excluding the soft rumble of wind on the cabin windows. I shrugged, putting it off and deciding it must’ve been the old bedroom walls as I was used to a lot of random noises coming from them. I turned on the sink to wash my toothbrush, frowning at the murky tap water.

The man I bought the cabin from had repeatedly insisted that the water was safe to drink, it just looked odd and that was what all water looked like out here. It still had been quite hard to get used to, as I had always been a bit of a germaphobe. Oddly enough, when I first bought the cabin, the man had also handed me survival gear and a motion sensing camera claiming that it was “just in case”, which had weirded me out quite a lot when I came here for the first time, although I never really thought about it. When I finished brushing my teeth and washing my face, I turned out the bathroom light and headed back towards my bed. The bedroom light had already been turned off so the only source of light was from the bright white crescent moon that was peeking out at me from behind the pine trees. Slipping into bed and pulling my blanket over me, it didn’t take long for me to drift to sleep.

A few hours later, I awoke suddenly to that same thumping noise. I wiped my eyes groggily and rolled over to face my nightstand. Still half asleep I turned on my phone to check what time it was. The bright light illuminated my room and shined directly into my eyes, making them water. Thump. The noise began again, I hadn’t even realized it had stopped. It was a quite odd pattern, every now and then the sound would begin for a few seconds and then stop for a minute or two. I made out the time on my phone to be 2:47 AM. I sat up in bed, placing my phone back down.

I looked sideways to glance out of the window, and was greeted by almost pitch darkness. I could just barely make out the tall figures of the trees. As the thumping noise came to a halt again, I came to the conclusion that it was probably some animal rummaging around the sides of my house. There have been a lot of black bear problems out here since campers have been feeding them and making them more hostile, and we also do have quite a bit of raccoons and deer. Hoping it wasn’t a bear, I rolled back over and placed my pillow on top of my head in an attempt to block out the noise.

I believe a few minutes passed again before the sound began again. Yet, this time it seemed to be much louder.. or closer. I sighed and tried to dismiss the noise, annoyed. As the thumping noise continued it seemed to break off from its previous pattern. It would pause for a few seconds and then start again instead of waiting a few minutes. I tried to ignore the sound, wanting to sleep. As a few more minutes went by the sound quieted down and I ended up falling into a restless sleep. That was the first time the noises started.

Ever since then, the same thing has happened every single night. I will wake up near 2:30 AM and the noises will get louder and louder until they stop completely. Last night, when I woke up to the noises I began to get a little nervous. Instead of a thumping noise it had been tapping on the window. Whatever it was must’ve been looking in at me. Chills crawled down my spine as I imagined a bear by the window, trying to get in.

I had woken up that next morning with a terrible headache which I assumed was from my now constant lack of sleep. Late in the afternoon I had been planning on how to get rid of the noise, I had decided to close the curtains and leave my porch light on.

Determined to figure out the source of the sound, I rummaged through the package the cabin’s former owner had given me and fished out the motion sensing camera.

I laughed to myself, finding it quite amusing that I had found a use for it after all. I made my way to my front door and headed towards my bedroom window. I hoisted the camera up and attached it to the bottom of the cabin roof and made it so that I had a perfect view of my window and most of my front yard. I headed back into my room and grabbed my phone so I could set it up there so when there was motion I would be alerted. I smiled to myself, glad I had found a way to figure out what had been making the noise.

For the rest of the day, I worked at my desk with great ease, feeling like a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Soon, the sun began to set and the sky was painted beautifully with red, orange and yellow.

I made myself a cup of hot tea and sat down in my living room with a book in order to pass the time. I finally felt at peace knowing that I would figure out what this sound is soon and I would stop it and go back to my normal cabin life.

The comforting sound of birds singing faded slowly after about 30 minutes of reading and I sat up, bookmarking my page and placing it back on the dresser it sat on. I made sure I left the porch light on and headed towards my bedroom where I got ready for bed and then made my way under my blankets, double checking that my curtains were closed before I went to sleep.

Ding. I was suddenly shaken awake by a loud notification from my phone. I sat up quickly, reaching for my phone wearily. My eyes adjusted to the sudden bright light after a few seconds and the time, of course, read 2:28 AM and I had one unread notification from the motion camera app I had downloaded earlier before.

I hesitantly entered my phone passcode and then began to open the app. As it opened, a faint thumping noise began once again. When the app did open I hurriedly opened the camera, desperate to see what the reason behind my suffering was. I didn’t have much of a reaction at first.

Thanks to the porch light, I could make out a figure huddled near the bottom of the cabin, making weird back and forth motions which caused the thumping noise, its small frame resembling a somewhat distorted raccoon. I chuckled quietly, I found it comical that this entire time it had been a mere raccoon tapping on my window.

Though I regretted that in an instant. The thing I thought was a raccoon suddenly shot up at what I believe to be my laugh. It definitely wasn’t a raccoon. I gasped and my hand shot to my mouth. A large human-like figure stood by the window. Its entire body looked to be stretched and I could make out the outlines of its bones just by looking closely. Its bones looked to be cramped inside its build, almost as if they were screaming to get out of it. It had matted long hair falling from the back of its head and it was staring intently at my window. My entire body was trembling as it reached up one of what I think were its hands and started tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap.

I let out a screech and glued my eyes to the camera.

I felt as if I looked away for a split second it would get away. Its eyes suddenly darted towards the camera and I stifled a sob of terror when I saw its face. It looked human-like, though its eyes were terribly small and looked like black beads. Its arms looked like they were backwards and every movement it made seemed painful or forced, I couldn’t really make it out.

Its lips were twisted in an awful, gut-wrenching smile that seemed to go from one side of its face to the other. It just smiled at me. And smiled. Its expression didn’t change though whatever it was seemed to be twitching. I didn’t know what to do. I was completely frozen in place and my heart hammered in my throat. I was convinced whatever the thing was outside of my window could hear my heartbeat it was so loud. The silence was deafening as it seemed to be staring back at me through the camera. My hands were cold and clammy as I finally let the camera go, trying to calm myself down and deciding that this can’t be real.

Almost as soon as I looked away from the camera, the tapping began again. I was sick with fear and tired of just sitting there.

“LEAVE!” I shouted as loud as I could, raw panic filling my voice.

I was met with silence and I quickly grabbed the camera once again and checked, holding my breath. It was staring intently at the camera still, though its expression looked sad. What I thought were its eyebrows were furrowed down against each other and its grin had turned into a very long frown. Fear throbbed inside me. Again, I shouted at it. Its head lashed to face the window instead of the camera. It shriveled backwards and began to stand on all fours.

A strange hissing sound came from my window. It hastily slid off into the forest, its limbs bending and crumpling out of shape in a way that made me feel sick. I could see its head bobbing as it gained more distance and eventually it disappeared from sight. My heart was still pounding and I was sweating like crazy and I checked the time once again. 3:58 AM. The time had gone by so quickly and I hadn’t even realized.

I sighed in relief, knowing it wasn’t near my window anymore.

Carefully, I slid out of bed and turned my lights on knowing I wasn’t going to sleep again. I opened my laptop and began typing this on an empty sheet because writing about traumatic events had always helped me calm down in the past. But no matter how much I wrote on here, I still felt terrible. Like I’d never recover. I’ve been writing this for about an hour now, and the sun is going to come up pretty soon but it is still very dark out.

I really do hope the sun rises soon, though.

I haven’t checked the camera once since I saw that thing, and now I’m regretting that decision. Because now I hear something trying to open my front door.

And I just remembered I left it unlocked.