I hate sleeping alone in the Red Room

There is a room in my childhood home that we believe is haunted.

It’s poor circulation lends a bitter chill and unfriendly clanking of pipes from the adjacent bathroom echo against the four walls. It’s directly above the crawl space of our basement, which God only knows what is buried in those rocks - perhaps a portal to hell. And often times there is an ominous, shadowed figure looming in the corner at night.

Full transparency, there is a coat hook on the back of the door that, when dark and suspending a coat, appears to be an entity staring at you while you sleep, waiting to dig its claws in you. We’ve all seen something of the like, and I bet every person reading this has reacted poorly to this visual. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that this room is eerie; a hair-raising mystery we call the Red Room.

Are you surprised at all to find out this was my bedroom.

That’s right. The Red Room was my domain from the age 13 to 18. Before that, it was my older brother Michael’s room for 16 years until he left for college. I’ve experienced all sorts of phenomenons while occupying the Red Room: puberty, teenage angst, terrifying sleep paralysis, etc. In a way, I think this room had witnessed the coming of age in both me and my brother. And I bet for any spirit would be excruciatingly daunting.

At that time we didn’t have any suspicions the bedroom was haunted; although, there were signs.

For example, the door always seemed to jam, CDs skipped in our boomboxes, and when my older sister Alyssa was 5-years-old she woke up in the middle of the night in the Red Room and saw a little girl kneeling on the floor, staring up at her.

“There’s a ghost in the room”. Mom still remembers this as the creepiest way she’s ever been woken up, all the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Who was this little girl? I was just an infant at the time, and Michael hadn’t gotten into wigs yet. To this day, my sister still has a clear memory of the little girl’s face; a full-bodied apparition.

It wasn’t until the last decade that we’ve noticed the hauntings of the Red Room. Were we traumatized by the room? Or was the room traumatized by us?

Don’t answer that.

We call it the Red Room because that’s the mystery room in the gothic horror show The Haunting of Hill House; the menacing room that wears many faces so the Crain family would be still and quiet while it digested their souls, unbeknownst to them.

Our Red Room has worn many skins, too: a soft blue, a bright pink, a dark beige. Reflections of the person occupying the room at the time. In Michael’s era the walls were covered in planet stickers, Bush and Green Day posters, and Playboy calendars. The moment the packed car pulled out of the driveway to drop him off at the University of Iowa, the walls were painted a magenta pink, carefully placed star constellations displayed across the ceiling, and Jonas Brothers posters were slapped up on the walls.

I bet that had the Red Room rolling its eyes: great, a teeny bopper.

Imagine the horror of colorful lightbulbs, scarves over lamps, and stains on the walls from using hairspray to kill spiders from a far. That room had a lot of spiders.

It wasn’t a particularly obvious demonic presence. In fact, we started to consider the diabolical attributes of the Red Room about a decade later, when Marco moved into it. Mom chose the paint color, a dark beige, otherwise in typical last-born fashion Marco kept the room exactly how I had it. Perhaps it was his developing age, but he followed suit to become quite moody. The static energy of the Red Room slowly digesting Marco, just as it had Michael and me.

During this time, my sister Alyssa and I were sifting through a box of old photos my mom had unearthed from the basement storage closet. The photos were of my Great Grandmother Grace, one being a photo from her childhood in the early 1920s; you know the kind that’s black-and-white, grainy, and the children are usually staring blankly while wearing white nightgowns. Upon first glance of the photo of 5 or 6 year old GG Grace, Alyssa backed away in horror. “That’s her. That’s the little girl.”

There’s a slight chance my sister and I perked up all too excited, enchantment glossing our eyes as we realized, could it be? A room in our home is haunted? What else could explain the extreme mood shifts and dark sunken eyes of our family members who lived in the Red Room? Certainly not hormonal changes and too much late night TV. It’s the room. It’s haunted.

. . .

My siblings and I were always a bit spooked by our basement, for no actual reason other than watching too much unsupervised television. Growing up in a ranch-style home, our basement was expansive; laminated yellow tiled flooring, dark wood-paneled walls, thick support beams. It was a rather unattractive space, which warded off the adults, but it was the ultimate kid sanctuary. Shelves of toys, video games galore, desks, chalkboards and lockers so we could play school, a mini-kitchen so we could play house. Barbies, dollhouses, sports games, foosball, ping pong, mega cardboard bricks we’d drive into with my kid-sized pink Corvette. Dad “lost the battery” to pretty much all our destructive toys, but we made do using Marco as our mule.

Despite our basement being known as the coolest place on Earth for any kid under 14, we were never down there alone.

The aforementioned crawl space was literally the scariest place in the world; an extremely dark pit of rocks with no end in sight using any sort of flashlight. Simply peeking into the passage would send chills up your spine as the clammy air and sheer silence portrayed a befitting hell. No dare was worth exploring it, so we didn’t bother. We kept it a secret from our friends, and it was the unspoken rule that we do not speak about the crawl space. But like I said, we don’t know what came first: it haunting us, or us haunting it. Did we make this all up?

We would scare each other any chance we had. We’d move Mom’s creepy childhood “Kissy” doll to different positions on the shelf, write we’re watching you with red lipstick on a mirror, race up the stairs and shut the lights off on whoever was left down there.

We had one light switch for the entire basement. And it was at the top of the stairs.

We had an overflow refrigerator downstairs, and whoever drew the short straw would have to be Mom’s errand bitch and go collect ingredients for dinner. You better believe that person (usually Marco) would practically hurl themself down the 16 steps, sprint to the fridge, grab whatever, then fly back up the stairs. And they had to do it before whichever jackass would flip the lights off and slam the door shut.

Besides the basement, not much spooked me as a child. I was made fearless beyond belief, which only frightened my parents. Nothing scared me the way the sub-level of my childhood home scared me. I love Halloween and roller coasters, and strangers are my favorite people. I grew up tough, resilient, vigilant, and curious.

I think that’s what I enjoy most about the show The Haunting of Hill House, and the origin of the Red Room, the story of a family growing up in a haunted home and how it shaped their lives forever. For a kid, everything can be scary or nothing at all. Your mind plays tricks on you, you’re susceptible to seeing, believing, and swirling in an ectoplasm. And then you grow up.

Much like in Hill House, the Red Room became a sanctuary for each person to feel safe while the house consumed them. A happy place. It molded and contorted to their needs: a treehouse, a game room, a dance studio. The same way it did for us. Blue, Pink, Beige.

My happy place is the middle of water. When I picture it, I believe it to be Lake Michigan, but I see large mountains in the distance where the city of Chicago should be. I'm floating, perhaps drifting, my legs dangle into the water; my toes pet the surface. I'm on a boat. A beautiful 42-foot Sabre waterbird swiftly sailing 1 knot/hour into the abyss. Nothing but me, the strong sun, a gentle breeze, and the sound of soft waves.

That is my Red Room.