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The Slamming Door

In middle school, I'd sometimes head over to my best friend's place after school. He had told me about strange things that happened there, but I never really thought about it. The last time my friend experienced something was when he was alone, and I happened to be on the phone with him.

 

He had been in the bathroom washing up, when he suddenly said he thought his parents were home and that he'd call me back. He later called to say that he'd hear a door slam shut, but went out and nobody had come home. My friend's parents usually returned home from work around 5:30.

 

My friend and I we were big music fans, and one day I had gone over to listen to music on his new stereo system. With his parents still at work, we turned the music all the way up to see how loud the speakers could go.

 

With each had one ear on either speaker and were seeing how long we could remain there at full volume, when we both heard a door violently slamming shut somewhere in the house.

 

My friend immediately turned down the volume and asked me whether I'd heard that sound. I told him I did, and we immediately went out to see if his mother or father had returned.

 

The sound of the door slamming was unique. It sounded like a very heavy door. The force of it slamming shut was so violently that I remembered hearing a whooshing sound right after.

 

The first place we checked was the heavy door leading into the garage.

 

My lived in a two-level house. Most of the house was on the ground level with a small staircase leading to a bedroom upstairs. Back by the kitchen, there was a staircase that ran down to a large room downstairs before ending in the laundry room. There was a door leading to the garage in the middle of the staircase.


Inside, the garage was dark and nobody had driven in. We tried slamming the heavy door, but it didn't sound at all like the what we had just heard. My friend then told me that this was the exact sound he'd heard when he was alone last time.

 
Thinking that someone had broken into the house, we each picked up a baseball bat and quietly made our way through the house. At one point, we scared each other to death by throwing open his mother's closet door. The force of the door opening caused the sleeves of the clothing to reach out. Both of us swung at the "arms" reaching for us.
 
This provided some much needed comic relief, but we didn't really feel safe until my friend's father returned home. Just like he always did, he drove the car into the garage, and we both heard the regular sounds of the doors opening and closing. None sounded at all like the door violently slamming.

 

In the end, we never found out what that sound was. Maybe it was just something in the house that didn't appreciate the music at full blast.

 

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