My name is Christopher and my story takes place between the Virginia and North Carolina line, back in 2012. I worked for a furniture store delivering merchandise to our customers (living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, washers/dryers etc.) On this day at work, our morning load consisted of two deliveries and one service call. This was a pretty easy morning run for me and my co-worker Kalvin, which meant that we would be able to load up the truck, do our deliveries and get back to the store fairly early for our lunch break and get the truck loaded up for the afternoon load of deliveries.
The first delivery went great, nice and easy job. We headed off to our second stop and that is when we got a phone call from our manager that would change the rest of our day, our night, and most honestly the rest of our lives, even though we were unaware of this at that point in time.
Kalvin answered the phone as I drove the work truck towards our second stop of the day. Kalvin spoke into the phone "yes, ok, no problem, just give me an address." and then hung up the phone. I worked this job long enough to know that a phone call like that meant one thing: more work for us.
As Kalvin hung up the phone I asked him, "Where we going?" "Airport Road in Roanoke Rapids, picking up a living room set from a couple. Our manager said we need to get there right away while someone is there to let us in the residence," he said. As my brain processed the situation I said, without much thought involved, "Airport Road, isn't that a trailer park?" When he said yes, I said "You got to be kidding me. I just moved that living room set there two weeks ago from there old address in Halifax, NC." I knew the house Kalvin was talking about and as I said that he replied, "Oh yeah, I know who this is now. What the hell are we picking this living room up for?"
Working this job for a few years we learned the only two reasons people return their stuff. Either the furniture gets too torn up and they don't want to continue paying for it or that they get very far behind on their payments. And since we just moved their living room set two weeks ago for them, we both knew that they could not be overdue on their payments. So we stopped heading to the next delivery and started driving towards Airport Road in Roanoke Rapids.
After reaching the trailer on Airport Road, we noticed a white Ford F-150, and a Sheriff deputy's car parked out front. Both mine and Kalvin's heads went to the same conclusion that they wee being evicted and our boss sent us here to return the living room set before the customers were removed from the residence.
As I backed the truck into the yard, Kalvin jumped out of the truck to direct me as close to the trailer porch as I could go. As I stepped out of the truck, a tall older white man approached me and Kalvin and introduced himself as the father of the lady who lived there, thanked us for getting to the house so quickly and continued to walk us inside to retrieve the living room set.
As we walked in to the house we didn't notice anything alarming and went right to picking up the lamps, walking them out to our truck, and returning to pick up the end tables. On our third trip back inside, Kalvin tipped the couch back some so I could pull the side of the throw rug out from under the couch. I was on my hands and knees as I did this and after pulling the rug out some, I started to take the rug and roll it up to take it out of the home. By the time I got about two rolls of the rug I noticed the underside of the rug was wet and puddled up underneath it was blood soaked on the underside. I froze in shock for a minute and as I looked up I seen Kalvin looking at me and could see exactly what I seen. I stood up and excused myself as I walked out of the house and Kalvin followed me out.
I grabbed the work phone and called my manager and explained to him that the rug was covered in blood and would need to be thrown out. He stopped me and explained that the couple that lived there were murdered a few days ago and it was explained to him that the merchandise had already been cleaned before we got there, to load the stuff in the truck and get out of there to finish our next stop. Kalvin and I just looked at each other like "What the hell? This is so messed up" and headed back inside to finish getting the stuff out of the house. After rolling up the rest of the carpet and getting the couch and loveseat out of the residence, we closed up the back of the truck and headed out to our next stop.
We were both a little speechless for a few minutes on our ride to the next stop, but after about twenty minutes we started talking again and discussing what had just happened. We both where aware of the couple that lived there, we been to their homes a few times for deliveries and service calls but didn't know them personally. We did know the guy sold drugs out of the trailer, and his girl worked at a strip club in Rocky Mount, NC. As we talked we both kind of started to think of what could have happened to them and while doing so, may have said some things that were not appropriate considering two people just lost their lives a few days ago.
As we approached our next stop of the day, which was a service call on a refrigerator, we got back into professional mode and went into the house, fixed the fridge and were headed out to leave after about twenty minutes. As I got into the truck to leave, I put the key in the ignition and turned the key to start the truck, but nothing happened. The lights flickered and a clicking sound came from the ignition but nothing else. I pulled the key out and tried again, nothing happened. All them years of driving this truck and going everywhere in this truck, nothing like this ever happened before. After about 10 minutes of playing around trying to get the truck to start, it finally started. Me and Kalvin where speechless. We both said that we hoped this had nothing to do with the living room set that was in the back of the truck. That kind of freaked me and Kalvin out to the point where we didn't talk about that delivery the rest of the trip and headed back to the store to go to lunch. The rest of the day went by fine with no real problems. We unloaded the living room set before doing our afternoon deliveries, finished off the day and went home.
That night at my house, I told my wife about what happened that day at work. She thought it was wrong of my employer to send Kalvin and I to go pick up the living room set that a few days earlier was the scene of a homicide and believed I was just over-reacting to our work truck malfunctioning.
As we were in bed asleep that night, I found myself awoken by a noise. I opened my eyes but stayed in place trying to listen to the quite environment around me to try and understand what just woke me up. As I layed on my side with my back to the hallway and my back to our open bedroom door, I heard loud heavy footsteps start walking down our hallway. I did not think intruder or burglar. I thought instantly it was our little boy Damon. It was not uncommon for Damon to wake in the middle of the night crying and coming into our bedroom to wake us. Damon was about five at the time.
As the footsteps came to stop at the end of the hallway, which had hardwood floors to the entrance of our bedroom that had carpet, I notice the light shining on our bedroom wall. The hallway light suddenly got blocked out by the sold outline of a human shadow. A man standing at our door looking into our bedroom at my wife and I sleeping. My mind was still under the impression that it's our son Damon coming into our bedroom to see if me or his mom was awake. As I layed on my side, eyes wide on this figure that is blocking the light on my wall, my only thought was do not move. If Damon sees I am up he will not go back to sleep tonight, he will want to stay in our room.
After what felt like three to four minutes the figure turned and walked out of our doorway and down the hall. That is when the footsteps snapped me out of my thinking. Those foot steps are the footsteps of a heavy, full-grown male with work boots, not the footsteps of a 55 pound, 5 year old boy in socks. I froze in horror as my mind raced, thinking there was an intruder in our home. As the footsteps made it down the hall into our carpeted living room, I heard the door open and close. I didn't know what to do.
After a few minutes in bed, I jumped up and ran down the hall, past our kitchen into the living room to our front door where I noticed that, not only was the front door closed, but the dead bolt was locked. Something no one could do unless they had a key to the deadbolt on the outside of the door, which only me and my wife have. I checked on Damon who was fast asleep and our little girl Kelsey who was 9 at the time and asleep too, and went back to our room and layed down, unable to sleep for a while later.
The next morning as I woke, the first thing I did was go out to the front door and double check again to make sure what happened last night was real. I walked to the front door when Kelsey came out of her room and I asked her if she experienced anything strange last night. She said "No, but I was up when you went outside last night to let the dog out." I asked her what time she said around 3:30am. I told her I didn't let the dog out and she said she saw a man walk out the house with a dog and assumed it was me taking the dog out. I was floored, not knowing what to make of that.
When I went to work the next day, I told Kalvin about the things that happened to me the night before, and Kalvin was quick to tell me he heard his door open and close that night too and could have sworn he heard a man in his kitchen. After talking to him I realized the customer who was murdered was a big black man in his 30's who weighed about 300 pounds and always wore Timberland boots. I am convinced that it was the man who was murdered coming to me and Kalvin that night to let us know that it is not okay to talk the way we did about him and his wife or the situation of what happened to them.
Our family moved from that house a little over a year later but never had any other thing happen except one other night which I will write about in another story soon, as I am not completely convinced it was the same spirit as that night was. This was not the spookiest thing to ever happen to me but by far a very unsettling one. I never spoke or made light of what has happened to that couple the night they were murdered again, and I believe that was the only message he meant for me to realize.
I wish every time I think back to that night that I just turned my head to look at what was in the door of our bedroom that night, but I'm not sure how I would have seen the man. Would he look normal like when he was alive? Would he look as he did after the crime scene? Would he look even more scary on purpose to get a reaction out of me? I have no idea. It might be for the best that I didn't move and look as it happened, as it may have been a sight I would never forget. I believe I'm better off that I never looked over my shoulder at the man in the doorway.
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