A Knock on the Ceiling

My mother, stepfather, and I lived in Moscow on the fourth floor of a five-story building. One evening, while watching TV, I heard a knocking sound. It sounded like the neighbors upstairs were knocking on their floor. I didn't pay any attention to it, as they had a dog and often chopped bones for it on a small stump. However, the knocking kept happening again and again—my mother heard it too and decided to go up to the neighbors' house to stop them from knocking. When she returned, she said it wasn't their fault—they were quietly watching TV too and hadn't heard the knocking.

In the fall, we moved to Korolev (my stepfather drank, and all the money was spent on coding), to the top floor of a five-story building. Somewhere around the end of October or beginning of November, the knocking sound started again in this building. Honestly, I was really scared, as there was only the attic above us.

 It wasn't winter yet, but the snow had cleared, leaving small, crusty drifts. After the knocking, I went outside and walked around the entire building—no traces anywhere. I went into the neighboring buildings, but the attic doors were locked. After that evening, the house became a real nightmare. The knocking continued, and in addition, objects would fall over and rustle in the corners. A neighbor advised me to hang garlic in the corners, move the television from the corner to the center, and stick needles in the front door frame. It helped, but only until the next move (my mother divorced my stepfather, and we moved out of that apartment).

On December 1, 1998, we arrived in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, and after 5-7 days, the knocking resumed. After that, my mother got sick. She didn't call the doctors, and I was little and didn't know what to do, thinking she knew best. My mother soon began hallucinating. She thought we were being watched. Nothing else happened, until she died on December 19th of that year, around 7 or 8 a.m. How come I didn't hear her dying? I don't know, even though I slept in the same bed with her.

The position in which she died was very strange—she was sitting on the floor, leaning her back against the sofa, her hands held in front of her, as if protecting herself and me, her eyes wide open in terror. The paramedic later said it looked like a violent death, but the medical report listed "pneumonia."

I still fear that ominous knocking will happen again, and I hope that someday I'll find out what really happened to my mother that night.