When I was little, probably about three or four, my brother locked me in our attic. I had been looking for my dad and gotten told he was up there fixing something. After I banged on the door for a few minutes, I decided to make the best of it and spent about three hours locked up there playing with some old toys. The first hour was uneventful, but starting around hour two was when things got weird. I heard creaking sounds from the other end of the attic, but didn't pay them much attention at first. That was until they started to get even louder and drew my attention to a peculiar piece of furniture.

There was an old armoire up there had been there since we moved in and had always given me the heebie-jeebies. As I was playing, I could have sworn that the damn thing starting openly very slowly. Just enough to be noticeable, but not fast enough to make any noise. I just sat there for a few minutes watching the door move just getting more and more freaked out. And that's when I saw the hand.

It was a god-damned, honest to goodness human hand just stretching out from inside the armoire.

I freaked out, bolted down the small staircase and started slamming into the door with every bit of strength I could muster. I heard footsteps on the creaky attic floor above me, heading towards the staircase behind me. The sounds were nearly to the top of the stairs when the door finally swung open.

It was my dad, who had just finished yelling at my brother for locking me in the attic. He saw how freaked out I was and asked me what had happened. I told him all about the hand coming out of the armoire and the footsteps. He went up into the attic and, aside from the toys I was playing with, everything was fine.

At the time, I thought it was the Cucuy (which is a bogeyman that Latinx cultures love to fuck their kids up with), but I have gotten older, I chalk it more up to a mixture of nerves and maybe a stray raccoon. Either way, just about the scariest thing to ever happen to me.