The Tapping Incident Research Paper

The Tapping Incident by Kelsi Harris

Listen, I’m not saying that this was some type of ghost or supernatural thing. I’m just going to say that this is an experience that legitimately freaked me out and continues to terrify me every time I try to sleep in my own bed at my father’s house. The whole ‘being freaked out’ at my dad’s house didn’t really start until a few weeks prior to the tapping incident, I had experienced latched doors opening and closing themselves, garage door opening and closing when the opener was right beside me, and my dogs just barking at nothing. All of these things I’ve brushed off as breezes, flukes of electricity, and my dogs just being crazy dogs. I’ve never had an experience that freaked me out quite as much as the ‘Tapping Incident’ The week prior to
this particular incident, I would always wake up around 2 or 3ish in the morning, I just linked it to going to bed too early. During these restless periods, I would get out my phone and watch YouTube until I got tired enough to go back to sleep, this wasn’t the case on Thursday of that week… It started when I turned over in my bed to face my closet doors, I slowly drifted into consciousness and heard a light tapping on the bottom of my brass bed frame, I assumed it was the bottom because of the high-pitched ringing that I knew the bottom produced. At first, I thought that it was just my bed adjusting, but then the tapping started to get more vigorous, causing a louder sound. In my mind, the tapping seemed to be coming in quick threes… 1..2..3.. 1.2.3..123… and so on. It started to get louder and harder. At this point, my mind produced a grotesque image of what could have been producing the sound: a gray, shriveled up hand with long wrinkly fingers on the end of which had long, pointed black talons that were tapping vigorously with the intent of terrifying me. With this mind melting image in my mind, I didn’t dare open my eyes, for fear that the being would be staring intently at me with it’s claws, ready to rip my face apart. Slowly but surely, I gathered the courage to move to the opposite side of my bed. The tapping immediately stopped, I thought this odd, but was glad for it to be gone. I eventually went back to sleep, in my unconsciousness, I could sometimes hear very faint tapping every time my sleeping head faced my closet, I would quickly turn back each time throughout the night. At 6:25am, my alarm went off, I quickly dashed to my door to flip the light switch.
I turned around to face my bed, I saw my earbuds dangling from the side of my mattress, I walked over to investigate. I lightly tapped the plastic back of my ear buds to my metal bed frame, what I heard perfectly mimicked the sound of the tapping that I had heard that night. I figured that when my head had been facing the closet, it moved my earbuds, which made the tapping sound, but I could figure out what had made them tap so violently. But no matter how I tapped it, I could never let go of it and have it continue to tap as vigorously as it had during the night. I concluded that someone or something had to have been holding the earbuds and tapping them vigorously the entire duration of when it was tapping against my Bed frame. After telling my story many times at school, I eventually told my dad when he came to bring me home. “It was probably just mice or something,” he had told me. I forced myself to believe him in order to sleep that night, but even so, I slept with the lights on. To this night I still am terrified to face my closet at night, in fear that the thing that taps will strike
again.