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The Choking Room
I wasn’t a big believer in the paranormal until that night. Until then, I assumed it was all just smoke and mirrors. My best friend, Hannah, moved closer to me. I was overjoyed. In the rural Appalachian Mountains, homes are often still miles apart. My closest school growing up was around 10 minutes from my house. Hannah’s family bought an old farmhouse within walking distance. It was actually over a mile away, but that was just a good walk back then.
There was an odd extra room behind the kitchen. It was too big for a closet, too small for a bedroom, and lacked any plumbing to be a bathroom or laundry room. They decided to just make it a guest bedroom. The first night I stayed with them, Hannah and I decided we’d break in the new guest room.
The house wasn’t particularly fancy or lavish. It was functional and practical, as most farmhouses were. I stayed with them one Friday that fall. The mountains were colorful and the air had grown crisp. We stayed up late and watched television. There was no sign or indication of anything amiss in the house.
We shared the full-sized bed and drifted off to sleep. I was awakened by the sound of coughing and choking. I asked Hannah if she was okay. There was no response, but it calmed. I assumed she was just sleeping and went back to sleep myself.
It felt like as soon as I dozed off, the noise came again. This time it was worse. I asked her again if she was okay. She coughed longer this time. The choking started to sound serious. I started to sit up and reached for the light, but the bedcovers were yanked from me. They were pulled off the bed, but there wasn’t anyone in the room. We slept with the door open, so the nightlight from the living room offered slight illumination. I could see the quilt on the floor, but no person was in the room.
Hannah wasn’t in the room, either.
I started to stand to retrieve the covers, but was stopped. Suddenly, I felt tiny hands on my throat. They pressed in, but there was nothing there for me to grab. I couldn’t touch anything to pull it away from my neck. The fingers felt like a toddler’s hands, but they were as strong as iron.
My choking became loud. I couldn’t get air in or out to call for Hannah. I fell back on the bed and tried to find some way to separate the hands from my throat. I couldn’t. Hannah must’ve heard the commotion. She ran back through the kitchen, repeating my name over and over. I couldn’t do anything. I had to get the little hands away from my throat.
The world was going black.
She threw the light on. The thing that strangled me seemed to flee from the light. I gasped and coughed. I was so grateful that someone came. I had bruises on my throat for a week from very tiny hands.
Hannah hadn’t been in the room for some time. She’d been helping her mother find some of her father’s work clothes in a stack of boxes in the living room.
We spent the night in her bedroom. No one in the family was able to sleep in that room. Even her mom and dad tried. It became a storage room. Fortunately, there was never any activity in the rest of the house.
Later on, the family discovered a toddler had been accidentally smothered in that room over a century earlier. The house had been regarded as haunted for decades. I haven’t been to that area in some time. I don’t know if the house is still standing, or if it’s lost, but I know that night changed my life forever.
