Night Noises

In 1980, when I was almost thirteen, my parents moved us from Iowa to Utah. They soon divided the basement of our 1920’s-built home into smaller bedrooms to accommodate four of us older siblings and a teenage cousin. 

In a corner of that basement, I finally had my own tiny room with a squeezed-in twin bed, an upright dresser, and a small shelf. My closet and my light switch were in a walkway that eventually became a bedroom for one of my little sisters. My older sister’s room was through a make-shift tunnel right next to my room. If we talked loudly enough, we could hear each other through the walls.

One night a year or two later, I woke up to my sister’s frantic scream.

“Jenni, what is it?” I asked her through the wall.

“Shh, be quiet!” she said. Then I heard a rustling noise outside her room.

We had mice in the basement of our house in Iowa, and rats in the large backyard of this house, so it was easy to assume she’d seen a mouse or a rat. I thought it was strange she was telling me to be quiet, but I was too tired to get up and ask why. I obediently stayed quiet, and eventually fell back to sleep.

Because I thought my sister had seen a rodent, in the morning, while I was still in pajamas, I cautiously came out of my room wearing very high dress-up heels. It felt silly, but I wanted to be as far up and away from the assumed mouse or rat as possible.

After I wobble-walked upstairs into the kitchen, I found out why my sister really screamed:

In the night, a red-bearded man broke into our house through a downstairs bathroom window. He’d put a pair of jeans that was hanging on a nearby clothesline into the door of our big freezer to keep it open. By the freezer's light, he found his way through the maze of our basement, passed through the laundry room, opened a door into the dark bathroom, and went to my sister’s bedroom door. She woke up when he entered. She turned on her night light. He leaned over her while she was still in bed, showed her he was holding a knife and said, “Don’t make a sound.”

So, she screamed.

Maybe it was her scream, or maybe the intruder heard my dad who had gotten up to rock my baby brother in a rocking chair; but whatever the reason, thankfully, he quickly left the way he broke into the house. I found out my sister stayed awake all night in her bed, terrified the man would come back or hurt her family. She’d told me to be quiet because she was worried he’d come after me next. My parents called the police, but the man was long gone and, as far as we know, never prosecuted.

After I heard what really happened, I shook and cried with fear. I kicked off the silly heels.

My dad ended up rigging a security system through our bedrooms, with wires and panic buttons, for all of us girls in the basement. We each had a doorbell-like button by our beds that we could press to set off the alarm. I think it was accidentally triggered enough times that my parents disconnected that system pretty quickly.

After that, I always locked my bedroom door at night. It was easier to imagine scary things could happen to me and my family. For years afterward, I was often frightened by night-time noises. It wasn’t unusual for me to lie awake and afraid for hours. I carried those fears into adulthood. They influenced another situation that I will write about soon.