Devilry

I didn't pay any attention to superstitions and stories about the supernatural until it happened to me, but first with my girlfriend. We were living together in a rented apartment at the time, and I was working nights. My schedule was "2 on, 2 off"—I usually came home in the morning, around seven.

One day, when I came home from work, I noticed the lights were on in all the rooms. I thought, who knows? Maybe my girlfriend likes it that way. I didn't dwell on it, especially since she hadn't complained about anything. I decided to talk to her about it after, for two weeks before returning home, I'd see the same lights on in all the rooms, and often the TVs in the living room and kitchen were on too. I understood everything: it was night, I was at work, she was home alone, it was scary... I wanted to reassure her, talk a little, but what she told me shocked and confused me a bit, since I'd never noticed her being superstitious. I'll quote her story from memory:

"I'm terrified to be home alone at night! When you're home, everything is fine, but when I'm alone, someone is walking around the rooms, moving things. And I lie under the covers in this horror, shaking all night with fear. And one day, I went to bed and fell asleep... Suddenly, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw someone tall standing at my feet, seemingly advancing on me. I didn't even try to see—I jumped up screaming, turned on all the lights, and sat there until I fell asleep in the morning."

As she told me, such things always happened when I wasn't home. Often, she would go spend the night at a friend's house and return in the morning before I got home from work.

I didn't know what to make of such comments and said that maybe she was just overexcited or something. We even had a fight then.

 I was later able to verify for myself that her stories were true.

It was an ordinary evening, my day off. My girlfriend had fallen asleep, and I was up late watching TV. It all started when, while I was watching TV, I thought I saw something darting under the TV stand. I thought I was imagining things—the TV was blinding my eyes in the dark, you never know what you might see. Without paying any attention, I went to bed half an hour later (around 1:00 AM). What happened next changed my worldview.

I woke up, probably an hour later, for no apparent reason. There was a slight whistling sound in my ears. Then I saw a real devil jump out from behind the same TV stand! A little less than a meter tall, furry, with horns and a tail—everything as expected. I couldn't make out anything else in the darkness (it looked very much like the devil from the film adaptation of Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"). This creature, with its front arms or paws twisted, was slowly hopping around our bedroom toward our bed, making strange sounds somewhat reminiscent of a goat's bleating. My girlfriend was sleeping next to me; I tried to wake her, but I couldn't. Then I passed out.

I woke up in the morning and told her everything. A couple of days later, we quickly moved out.