True Ghost Tales

In 2001 I was serving a Mormon mission in Guayaquil, Ecuador. As you might know, missionaries are paired up in twos and are called companionships. My particular companion at this time was a young guy from Chile. We lived in a little two level home made of cinder blocks and cement just on the outskirts of a small town near Guayaquil. We lived on the lower level. My companion had lived in this home for a couple of months before I moved in, and at this time, I had moved in 2 months prior.

As you may know, missionaries have a very strict schedule and our schedule consisted of a “companionship study" every morning from 7:00 am to 8:00 am. During this time, we studied the lessons we taught, and I, being from North America, studied Spanish with him.

One morning as we were studying, we heard what sounded like footsteps running across the floor of the second level, right above our heads. We looked at each other and instantly dismissed the idea of mice or rats because the footsteps were so loud and hard, they could not have possible been from a small rodent or animal. The footsteps ran from one end of the floor to the other. Because he had lived there longer than I had, I asked him if he knew what was on the second level. He told me that he had never even been up there and as far as he knew, we were the only ones in the house. It was an eerie experience to hear the footsteps, but we didn’t trouble ourselves anymore on the issue, and we went about our regular missionary schedule.

Roughly a month later, as we were again studying, we heard the same thing above our heads. This got us really interested in finding out what was on the second level, so we decided to investigate. We found that there were only two ways to get up to that level. One way was through our room. There was a door that sat right next to the front of my bed; however, this door had 8 or 9 locks that ran up and down the door as if someone bolted that door shut with the intention that it would never be opened again. I didn’t think much about the door until we heard the footsteps, but I remember thinking it was a bit spooky. The other way to the second level was through the kitchen. There was a large black steel door that opened up to a spiral-type staircase and led right up to the second level. It seemed as if this door had not been opened in years; we had to pry it open using our strength and a couple of tough kitchen utensils. We were able to get the black door open and ended up ascending the staircase. The only light source we had were candles, so we had a couple of lit candles to give us the necessary light. When we got to the second level, and to our astonishment, there were a lot of pictures of little children. These pictures, some actual and some drawings, were positioned in a circle around what seemed to be burnt candles. There were no drawings on the floor, just burnt candles and melted wax everywhere. We thought it was a little creepy and we had that feeling that encouraged us to leave it alone and not worry about it, so we left after looking around a little and again went back to our regular schedule.

About a week later we were just getting back from a day of service and we both decided to hit the hay a little earlier than normal. As I mentioned before, there was a wooden door next to the head of my bed with 8 or 9 locks on it. As I was laying there on the bed just relaxing and staring out my window, I heard three VERY loud and distinguishing knocks that came from the other side of the door. KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! Instinct kicked in and I threw the sheets over my head, scared out of my mind because I knew that there was only one other way to get to the staircase that led upstairs and that was in the kitchen. I yelled at my companion, who was in his bed at the other end of the room, but he was asleep and would not wake up. I was freaking out because of the knocks, so I just kept my head under the covers the rest of the night.

I dozed off to sleep because next thing, I remember waking up at exactly 3:00 am. I pulled my head out of the covers to look around and see if anything was unusual, but there was just a storm outside and a lot of lightning.

The next morning, we got up for companionship study, and I relayed the story of what happened to me that night. I told him about the knocks and waking up at 3. As I was in the middle of telling him, he looked at me strangely and asked, “What is that on your face?" I felt around my face but could not notice anything out of the ordinary. I darted to the bathroom mirror and to my horror, I had three very long scratches on the right side of my face that ran from the top of my forehead to the bottom of my chin. They were very red long distinguishable scratches. I sat there staring at them, thinking of any possible explanation as to why they were there and why three. I kept thinking about the three knocks and waking up at 3:00 am and now three scratches.

Needless to say, that was the last night we spent in that house. We got a new apartment and nothing happened after that.

I had never heard of paranormal scratches until a couple of years later when I got home from Ecuador. I was browsing online and came across a few sites that specialize in that particular phenomenon. I was in awe as I read it, and to this day, I still wonder what those three scratches were and what they represented.

Any suggestions as to what happened would be great.

Sent in by Geoff, Copyright 2010 TrueGhostTales.com