I sat through the persistent knocking, curled under my duvet and when i was sure the knocking has stopped for the night I went to the door. My plan was to wait the knocking out and go check whether there were any footsteps left in the snow. It was winter and the path to our porch was covered in snow.

I made a plan that was supposed to work out perfectly. The next night at my grandma's i was mentally ready. I decided i have to check it out, just to put my mind at ease. As a child i didn't have much to worry about, so creepy fever dreams were big enough of a problem for me to be constantly on my mind. I would make sure the porch door is locked and hide under my duvet, awaiting the knocks. Since then my nights at grandma's would always look the same. I hid under my duvet, shaking in fear until i fell asleep. At that moment i felt quite relieved, thinking the whole thing was just a weird dream. The following morning i asked my grandma if she'd heard anything, but she denied. I figured it couldn't have been anyone in need of help. So, as silently as i could, i went back to bed, listening closely to the knocks. My immediate thought was that someone might've been in a desperate need of help, but the door had no peephole and there was no way in hell I'd open the door in the middle of the night without knowing what's on the other side. I went to open the porch door, but when i went onto the porch my dog was right there, sleeping soundly. Dogs and cats slept on the porch, but were never let into the house. We've got door leading to the porch and then another, to the house itself. The first time I've heard it i thought it was granny's dog trying to get in. To this day I'm not sure if I've dreamt it, but I hope that was the case. And there was one more sound keeping me awake at night. Martens and mice running through the attic, dogs barking, boars and deer rummaging through her vegetable garden. Every smallest sound would make me jerk awake. I loved visiting my grandma, but spending nights at her house was a completely different story. Her house is so old even she doesn't know its history. My grandma lives in a small wooden house, just a few hundred feet away from the forest. However as a child raised in Cracov (second biggest city in Poland) i surely felt like it was pretty isolated. Not necessarily cut off from the outside world as there's a town five or six miles away. So I live in Poland and as a child I used to visit my grandma a lot. They might not be very scary in a paranormal sense, as they all have logical explanations, but as a child what was happening was sending shivers down my spine These are real stories from my childhood/ early teens.

Scappo sleepless nights