If The Figure I Saw In My Kitchen Wasn’t My Aunt, Then Who Was It?

What I’m about to tell you is the most boring ghost story of all time. It’s boring because it’s true. Every word of it. I will lay on my death bed and swear to it, unlike Kyle Massey and his faux-cancery ass spouting lies on Celebrity Ghost Stories. Shame on you, Kyle Massey. Shame.

It was the summer of 2000. Richard Hatch was fighting his way to the final two on Survivor, Bush and Gore were campaigning, and people were just getting around to renting The Sixth Sense on VHS because DVDs were too expensive.

I was 9 years old. My mother, at the time, was working nights and because of that I was permitted an extended curfew. Most kids that were around my age were allowed out until seven or eight at night. I, however, was allowed out until 10:00PM — but only if I stayed within the general vicinity of my back yard.

I was usually accompanied by my 8-year-old neighbor, Antonio. We were watched after by my aunt Jen, who would play babysitter until my mother arrived home from work. These nights were typically spent playing with toys, swimming in my pool, or frightening my poor friend with tales of Pennywise the Clown.

On one particular night we were hanging out near my tent, playing with action figures and engaging in a heated debate.

“You’re a Gaylord,” Antonio would say.

“No, you’re a Gaylord,” I’d rebut.

This carried on until my bladder decided that it was time to urinate. Being the courteous host I was, I asked Antonio, “Do you want me to grab you anything to drink while I’m inside?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take a Pepsi.”

My plan was to grab two cans of Pepsi from the fridge, take a leak, and return to my back yard where Antonio and my aunt would be waiting. Jen was sitting at the patio table, talking to my one of my other aunts on the cordless phone about something that wasn’t particularly memorable. I bypassed her, walked toward the back steps of my house, and in I went.

In order to get to the bathroom from the back door, one must pass through the living room and then the kitchen. Across from the fridge, and located diagonally to the left of the bathroom, was my front door.

The house was dark. Silent. Completely and utterly empty aside from the six cats that I had. I made a pit stop at the fridge, grabbed two cans of Pepsi, and took to the bathroom. Don’t ask me why I grabbed the Pepsis before urinating, I just did.

I entered the bathroom and placed both cans atop the radiator behind me. From there, I whipped out my little boy penis and proceeded to piss all over the toilet seat due to poor aim. After swabbing the seat down with a thin piece of toilet paper, I flushed and then opened the bathroom door.

That’s when I was struck off guard. Somebody was standing in my kitchen. A figure. A woman with her back turned to me, facing the living room. Though the details of her clothing were undistinguishable, I could make out that she had long hair and a lanky frame.

There are moments in your life where your eyes will deceive you, tell you that there’s nothing wrong with the picture you’re seeing. But your body will know better. Something inside of you will be triggered. For me, it was my stomach. It went cold at the sight of her. I could just feel, deep down, that something was off.

But unlike most 9-year-olds, I attempted to rationalize it. Because you know who else had long hair and a skinny body? My aunt. And although I didn’t hear the back door open, which I would have, I assumed that it was her.

So, I did as any rational person would do, and said, “Hey, Aunty Jen.”

Except she didn’t respond. She just stood there, still as a board.

I repeated myself, “Jen.”

No response.

“Jen.”

Nothing.

Yet there she stood. Acting like I hadn’t called out three times.

I knew that something was wrong. This was not my aunt Jen.

At last, she moved. Silently, the figure walked from the kitchen to the dark abyss of my living room, out of my line of sight.

Now this is the point where you, the reader, would jump to the next logical conclusion that I would – which is, ‘hey, that’s not a ghost—it was probably just a creepy, crazy home intruder.’ You’d be wrong to assume that. The front door had been locked. Bolted.

I grabbed the two Pepsis off of the radiator and sprinted to the door. I unlocked it, and ran my ass around to the side of the house—where I could see both Jen and Antonio doing what they’d been up to before I even entered the building. Aunt Jen was on the phone, yammering away. Antonio was sitting cross-legged on the grass, playing with a Spider-Man action figure.

Before doing anything else, I made my aunt pull the phone away from her ear — just for a minute—to ask if she’d been in the house. She said she hadn’t been. Antonio joined us, and it was at that point that I told them about the woman I saw in the kitchen. Jen assumed that I was making up another story, trying to scare my younger neighbor. But after throwing what was, essentially, a justified temper tantrum, I convinced her that I wasn’t lying. She then went inside to investigate.
Nobody had been found. Nothing had been taken. Everything was as it was before.

And there you have it: a genuine ghost story. No creepy voices. No broken mirrors. No Kevin Pollock claiming that his girlfriend was possessed. Just a dark figure standing idle in an empty house.