The Animal House

A Serious Foreward

Now, I will be saying this right now. This is based off an actual experience of mine that I had gone through during the summer of '13. I know even though I'm classifying this as a realistic creepypasta, it still might not exactly fit since this entire pasta is essentially a re-telling of this creepy story I've personally witnessed. So, if it somehow goes against the rules of the creepypasta writing for the site, I will take it down by request. Of course, I will be redacting actual names and using different ones for privacy's sake. This might not exactly be a scary real-based pasta to read. I do hope at least, once again, people can throw their theories in on what actually happened this very unsettling night. To this day, I honestly still am conflicted with what I believed what really happened. I just thought about posting this serious foreward to tell you beforehand so you can keep that in mind as you read what I'm about to tell you. You may continue onward.

The Incident
It started on a day in late June of 2013. I was rather pleased because a friend of mine came back to visit from his new home for a few weeks while he was on vacation since after his summer vacation he'd be enrolled in college. He came to visit and we were doing more or less our standard thing; Gaming all night and talking about nerdy topics. It was a rather great time having him around again since I rarely see him anymore. I'll refer to him as James from now on. It's not his real name since I don't want to release his actual name for privacy's sake, as I will do with everybody else throughout this tale. This particular day we picked up another friend of ours, whom I'll call Mark, to hang out with for the day. It was generally a great day. I won't give you a summary of what we did since that's an unnecessary part for this story.

Then, when it was near the day's end and we were driving home in James's car, James and Mark started talking about something they were planning on doing that night. Like any other normal person would do when somebody's talking in hushed tones, I interrupted and asked what they were talking about. They let me in on what they were speaking about and they told me about this strange abandoned house they found a long while ago while randomly driving on the outback roads in the woods. It was on a long windy road that delves somewhat deep in the woods that you can find about 10 minutes outside town on the highway. They were talking about going to the house tonight and investigating the house in question. To be one who also has a desire for cheap thrills, I asked if I could also tag along. They gladly agreed to it and we agreed to go investigate the odd house at night.

We stayed at James's house for the majority of the evening, playing games and the casual fare as we waited for a decent time to decide to go. I was rather getting nervous about how late we were going to decide to go. We stayed up pretty much a large chunk of the night until the clock hit 1 AM. It was then they decided it'd be a good time to go and explore this house. Luckily, James was well prepared and found some good flashlights from his basement for each of us to use. He also gave me a fireaxe as a weapon to use, because he knows that I am always extremely cautious whenever it comes to exploring a forested area which is why I always want a weapon on hand. James took a shovel with him, as did Mark. I already came with a zipped up jacket because it can get extremely chilly in the woods at night.

I was still a little unnerved about going along with this exploration mission we impulsively decided to commit to, but I decided nothing serious would happen and it would be rather exciting. We got into James's car and drove to our destination. James's house is also a little bit far from the city limits and sits near the woods. It sits way on the other side of town from where the highway this abandoned house's road is, and his house also sits near the end of a somewhat long road of it's own. So it took a good 20-25 minute drive to get to this secluded destination. It was a rather tense atmosphere in the car as our anticipation rose with each minute that took us closer to this house that's pretty disconnected from the city limits and hidden in the woods.

We finally drove down into the house's view. First we had to hide the car, just in case anybody might drive by and suspect any vandalizing activity. Luckily, the road leading to the house, winded down and around a small hill in front of the house. So, we drove the car down the rounded road and behind this hill to hide the vehicle. We turned off the car and got our tools out from the trunk. We took a deep breath and finally initiated our exploration mission. I held the fireaxe near the neck in my hand as I kept the turned on flashlight in my other hand. James advised we kept it pointed near the ground until we got to the house just in case there's somebody, or someone, in the area that could possibly be alerted to our presence.

After 5 minutes of maneuvering through a barb wire fence and walking through a wet green field we got to this eerie dark house. It stood 2 stories high with very dark wood. Parts of the wood had holes and clearly had rotted in some places. There was a section of the ceiling that had been caved in. Most of the windows were broken and there was a crutch hanging out of one of the broken windows on the second floor. You could also clearly see a section of the house that had completely fallen to debris, it was either a big pantry or a cooking area next to the kitchen. There was also a small doghouse sitting right outside the front of the house with an empty wooden feeding dish. A small storage shed also sitting next to the house that also had the roof caved in and parts of the wall as well, that seemed to have been torn down by actual force. The wood didn't really seem to have been gradually been rotted away. Either way, that made it easy to look into the shed since we could look through the openings in the walls.

After observing the exterior of the house, we finally decided to go inside. We approached the front porch and carefully stepped up onto the front steps, cautious of the very weak wood that has gradually lost its strength to the passage of time. We then carefully approached the front door and creaked it slowly open and snuck inside with our flashlights illumating most of the interior of the house. Needless to say, it was an absolute mess. You could also easily tell a few people have come here as well before for cheap thrills and a bit of vandalism. There were recently discarded fanta bottles and coke cans litering the small area of the kitchen/dining room. It was a rather small room with just a lone table and a few kitchen cabinets left open with nothing within. On the other side of the room, a mini-fridge sat near the stairway to the second floor. It was left open and there was nothing but empty cans and jars littering the inside. Also next to the mini-fridge was a large entryway into the main first floor bedroom. There were 2 suitcases that were left open and unzipped, with heaps of old and rotted clothes left inside as well as a ruined bed on a collapsed bedspring. There was also a closet to the side of the room parallel to the collapsed bed. We opened it to where we first witnessed a very unsettling sight.

There was a lone animal skull sitting on the top shelf closet, and a decaying cat laying on the closet floor. Most of the body was decomposed with most of the skeleton showing with only scraps of its skin left still remaining. Somewhat disturbed at this sudden event, we gently closed the closet and didn't make one comment about what we saw. After shaking off the our shocked reactions, we continued exploring the house. We returned to the kitchen and decided to go up to the second floor. The stairway proved a frightening challenge to traverse. A section of the staircase had collapsed in on itself and you could clearly see a 6-7 foot drop below into the empty underground foundation of the house. We were able to climb up past the hole and up the staircase as we held against the walls and climbed by at least 2-3 stair steps at a time. I had to leave my fireaxe on the first floor because I felt it was too dangerous to try and carry an axe upstairs.

When we finally got upstairs, there were only 3 bedrooms up there with one small hallway connecting them all. With 2 bedrooms facing parallel to each other once you get up the stairs with the final one behind the stairway entrance and at the end of the small hallway. We went into the first bedroom that was nearest to the stairway on the right. When we entered is when we experienced more unsettling events.

There were 2 fruit crates within the room. One in the far corner of the room while one was sitting on one of the two collapsed bedsprings. When we observed closer we realized that the top sides of the boxes have been left open for us to observe inside. There were dead dogs inside the crate that had long been dead and decayed. Only the skeletal remains were stuffed within the box and there was also a dusty jar within the box. The skeleton of this animal almost seemed wrapped around this jar. We were so distraught over realizing what was in the box we were too nervous to want to see what was in the jar. The last thing we wanted to do was mess with the remains of a dead animal. We decided to look into the other box in the far corner of the room. It was exactly what we had witnessed with the other  box moments before. A long since dead animal with its ivory bones been surrounding an old jar as it stayed held within this small box.

Having seen more than enough of this room, we exited the room and decided to enter the room on the other side of the hall. When we entered it almost seemed like only half of the room remained. This was the area of the house in which a decent part of the roof had collapsed in as I mentioned earlier. Most of the floor was in tact and almost a half of the ceiling was gone with the neighboring tree outside having a lot of its branches protruding into the room. More of these unsettling "Dogboxes" as we started calling them had appeared. Only one was in this room, but it was neatly tucked into a corner of the room that was still intact. Almost as if somebody did indeed placed it straightly into the corner. It was more of the same, skeletal remains wrapped around a dusty far inside a wooden box. We quickly left the room as it didn't have anything else of worth noting.

We decided to check out the final room on the second  floor. The lone room sitting in the back of the small hallroom. We kept our flashlights shining forward as this room was the darkest of them all, as there weren't any windows in this room which would normally help illuminate the room with the faint moonlight from outside. As we shined our lights across the room to help understand the structure of the room, it was rather ominous.

There were three boxes in this room, each one laying against three of the walls. One directly to the left of the room against the wall, one to the right, and the final one in the center of the far end of the room. We looked into each of the side boxes and we found it wasn't quite as decorated as the other boxes. There weren't any jars in the left and right boxes and only one lone bone laying at the bottom of both boxes. All of our attention was locked on the center box that was laying at the far back of the room, almost beckoning to be observed. As we walked over this one was the creepiest of them all.

It was another of the Dogboxes. But the skeletal remains were slightly larger as the large ribcage was easy to point out and the bones were dried a dark brown. I touched it for only a second to see if it was just painted with something. It didn't feel like it was a liquid of anykind, but it had a flaky texture to it. It was hard to tell if it was truly the oldest remains of them all as the bones were a composed brown, or if somebody had come here recently and painted the bones as some form of a sick joke. There was a part of me though that was always to assume the worst case and believe there was some nutjob who occasionally comes here to commit unusual rituals. For what purpose? I honestly wouldn't want to know. This easily could've just been me having an overblown reaction to these odd colored remains.

Everybody left the room after seeing the final box in the room, as they approached the stairway to descend back down to the first floor I impulsively decided to run back to the dark room. Mark and James looked at me with a shocked expression demanding to know what I was doing. I just ran back into my room with my flashlight in hand, and pulled out my phone to take quick picture of these decayed remains. I felt that if I at least took one picture somebody who has more knowledge of how an animal skeleton properly decomposes and how bones age over time I could get a better answer for the odd remains. After yelling at me for a few more seconds out of worry, I came back to the stairway and explained I just wanted to take a picture for later. Just in case I could somehow get an explanation.

We stepped back down the stairway to the first floor. While we were descending however, is where probably the most dangerous aspect of this story happened. Climbing back down the stairs was a taller challenge for me, and with me being the heavier of the group I had to slowly and gently hold onto the stairs as I put each leg over pass the stair gap and on the board. This was a moment that was rather frightening because I was scared I was most likely fall through the stairs and get stuck in the gap and they'd have to go outside for a signal and call for a medical emergency. I was rather lucky however, as the only thing that happened was the lone board I used to regain my balance on the stairs gave a loud creak as it tried to stand my weight.

After that short but intense situation, we finally came back downstairs where I regained my fireaxe from where I had left it. We tried to look into the cooking area, but we couldn't enter since the doorway for it was blocked by fallen debris but we could easily observe what was in there from outside since most of the wall structure had fallen down. We decided to finally leave the house and explore around the premises. As we left and returned to the front porch we forgot about the front door and left it open. Keep this in mind for later.

Anyway, we walked around the house and approached the storage shed, we just peered through the large gaps in the wood to see what was inside. Nothing exactly interesting, mostly rusted pots and a few farming tools that looked very breakable from how rusted and unused they looked. We then saw there was a secondary entrance to the cooking area through a thick brush that was inbetween the shed and the side of the house. We each snuck through the thick brush as to not get scratched by the thorny bushes as we snuck through a small alcove into the destroyed cooking area. There was nothing too much to note. There were rusted pans and a stone cold stove that hasn't been used in ages. I quickly looked inside the furnace for anything interesting. Nothing was in there, it was filled with blackened ash most likely from long since used coal that was used to heat up the stove for a decent meal. I did reflect for a minute on how advanced technology has become to the point that heating up a stove has become so quick and convinient without the need for coal or any kind of timber.

We left the cooking area after a minute of looking. We snuck back through the thick bushes where I did retain a very minor scratch from one of the thorns. As we got out my friend decided to sneak around the back of the house for anything of value. As we walked around the back of the house we did see something we didn't see before. There was a large outside storage cellar inside the hill behind the house. The unfortunate part being the cellar had long since collapsed in on itself. The hill now a mound of dirt as the ceiling had fallen in. James and Mark decided to put the shovels they brought with them to good use and decided to dig to find anything of value.

They dug for a good five to seven minutes as they were a little excited at the prospect of finding anything good enough to take home with them. Their anticipation was wasted however, as they decided that nothing could have still been here. As they decided to stop however, was the moment we witnessed another unsettling event. At least, a moment that we still to this day can't find a way to explain. We saw a faint light illuminate behind us as it made us cast tall shadows over the dirt. Out of reflex, we instantly turned around with our flashlights held directly in front of us.

There was a faint source of light coming from the center of the cooking area. It didn't look like something was being reflected, but it truly looked like a ball of faint light was just sitting there, almost observing our actions. After a quick 3 seconds though, the light faded away into nothingness and the cooking area was dark and abandoned once more. We stood there frozen. Both out of fear and out of shock as we tried to piece together some form of understand about what exactly just happened. We tried to rationalize that all our flashlights were reflecting off of something in the cooking area that caused the collected reflection of light to make the illusion that there was an orb of light shining at us. To this day I'm still spooked about the event. Especially since there two things wrong with our theory about the light.

Firstly, if it truly was our flashlights just creating a reflection, why did the light start before we shined our lights over to the house? Second, if it was just an object that was shining our lights back at us, what object in that area could have possibly created a reflected light of that magnitude? It may have been faint yes, but there wasn't any single object we found that could have caused that. The only objects that could have caused that were ones that were made out of metal material or an object that's created for the sole purpose of reflection, such as a mirror. There was not a single metallic object we found that could have had the potential to do that. Especially considering the fact that what little objects there were in the house that were metal, they were heavily affected by rust. So what exactly did happen for those 3 seconds?

After standing there for almost a minute, we finally came back to our senses and decided to make sense of it later. For the most part, our little exploration mission had been complete and we decided we needed to go home. As we walked back around the house and around the storage shed, my foot got caught on something. As I was walking it turned out there was an entire bed spring that was completely on the ground and hidden in the grass. As I tripped and fell, James rushed over to try and help me up. The second that happened, another unsettling event occured.

We heard the faint barking of a dog as James bent over to assist me. We stopped moving for a good ten seconds as we heard the animal's bark. James then helped me back up on my feet. We were both obviously getting very spooked by this point which made getting out of here an even higher priority. We asked Mark if he heard what we heard, and to this day he denies having ever heard a dog's bark, as he was still a bit behind us when this happened. He was still behind the storage shed trying to walk around to get to us.

It wasn't until after the ordeal that James and I tried to explain what had happened with the dog's bark. At first, we tried to rationalize that it was the wind and it had somehow caused a howl as it blew through the spotted wood of the house. We instantly discarded that theory because there would have to be a decently strong wind in the first place, and we both remember the weather being relatively calm that night. We then decided it happened to have been a stray dog in the woods who was barking. James still tries to believe in this theory, but I'm one to still be unsure. If it really was a dog barking out in the woods, wouldn't the bark have echoed? I clearly remember the bark we both heard didn't have any echo to it and it only sent a sound once. As I sit here retelling you these events, I'm still trying to think of an explanation myself.

As I got up we continued to leave the premises, but apparently whatever was happening still wasn't done wanting to leave a fearful impact on us. Remember earlier when I told you we left the front door open? Well, it's about to play its part soon. Mark then saw there was a small frontal gate in front of the house leading to something. Mark, being the more adventurous spirit wanted just one final thing to investigate. Despite me and James being hesitant, we complied to his requests. We walked under this front gate as it was drooping at an angle, and we found a spot completely buried under boards of wood. We decided to uncover whatever was being hidden by these planks and after a minute of removing these rather long and sturdy pieces of wood, it unearthed a giant hole in the ground.

There seemed to be white plastic at it seemed, that acted as the walls of the hole. We theorized it was most likely a well. A rather old fashioned one it seems, especially since there isn't a stone wall surrounding it. I understood why you'd wanted to cover this well since it is pretty easy and dangerous to fall in and not have a way out. We got on our knees and looked over the well. We shined our flashlights into the black abyss of this well, but the hole was so deep our flashlights didn't touch the bottom. A chill shot through our spines as we instantly decided to recover the hole again, not wanting some other unfortunate soul in the near future to somehow stumble into this deathtrap.

As the well area was surrounded by a fence, we had to go under the front gate again and finally walk around to get to our way out of here. As we started to walk around and passed the vacant doghouse, this is where the final and unnerving event happened. The front door was left open by us earlier was we left. The second the James stepped past the doghouse, since he was in front of us both, the front door to the house slammed itself shut with a rather strong force, it almost seemed to have shook the house as the door was forced close with this powerful impact.

Having finally had enough, our entire group decided to get the hell out of Dodge as we looped around the fence and jogged across the front field to our ticket out of here. We put our shovels and axe in the trunk as I jumped into the backseat as James and Mark quickly rushed in as we were more than eager to leave. The tension was getting a little greater as James had to spend a good 2 minutes turning the car around in the small area behind the hill so he wouldn't have to back up the hill road in reverse. We finally let out small sighs of relief as we finally got on the road and quickly made our way off the forested road and back onto the highway home.

Nobody spoke throughout the 20 minute drive back to James's house. Even as we finally got back and exited the car to return back to the warm comfort of James's home, we still didn't really speak a word of what happened. We were, understandably, shoken up over what had happened. We merely just grabbed some heavy blankets from James's storeroom, as we were all chilled to the bone since the weather that night was rather cold. We finally calmed down and basked in the warmth and comfort of the blankets and fell asleep as this night came to an end. Surprisingly enough, we didn't have that much trouble sleeping. In fact, we fell asleep rather quickly. I guess we were more concerned with our condition rather than the events we just witnessed.

The next morning, we merely just packed up what little belongings we had and James drove us both back to our respected houses and we never really spoke a word of the event after that. I guess after all these months we just decided it would be for the best that we just forgot the incident and went on with our lives accordingly. I did the same as well, but for some reason, only a few days ago I started thinking about the house again. I don't know if something triggered my memory of it or it just happened out of coincidence, but I felt it best to write it down and post it here. I feel a little more comfortable knowing that people have read about my very eerie experience and hopefully understand my reactions to what happened.

As for the picture I took, I only really showed a few people and deleted it a couple days after the incident. The believer in me didn't want such an eerie picture kept on my phone. I was afraid that, somehow, I might have captured something inside the photo and I didn't want to risk somehow taking something home with me. It's been a good 8 months since this entire situation occurred. I'm happy to report nothing weird has happened ever since. I just thought writing down my entire report of what happened to you readers would give you great entertainment in reading about the only legitimately creepy experience I've ever had. I can understand it doesn't sound as scary or bone-chilling like other stories you've probably read out there, but it's always good to give people a story of personal experience in case other people can theorize what happened as well.

I haven't visited or even gone near the house since that night. Call me a coward, but I'm still too unnerved from what I experienced on my first visit to ever want another chance to go back inside that house again. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to post for you people, and to an extent I do regret not keeping that picture since I never though I'd have a good opportunity to show people that I wasn't just talking nonsense. The skeptic in me still tries to voice reason and tell me I was just experiencing natural occurrences, but something keeps nagging at me and saying I was experiencing something beyond my understanding.

Whether it possibly have been supernatural occurrences or self-created illusions out of fear and paranoia, is anybody's guess. This is one of those things that is up to interpretation. I'll tell you something though, whenever I hear a door gently shut on its own or a gentle draft as I'm sitting in my room, I get nervous. I guess you could say the experience has still left its mark on my mind even though I know it's just a natural thing in the environment.

If there's one thing I learned from searching the "Animal House", I guess there are some things you'll experience in the world that you won't be able to explain.