#theviewfromhalfwaydownadventures

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

“We’re reeling through the midnight streets.”

Lorde at Red Rocks Amphitheater, October, 14, 2025, Morrison, Colorado. Ultrasound World Tour.

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

When I was little I stayed at my grandparents house a lot. It was an old house built in the 40s.

The basement was basically a hallway. Narrow and long. Extended past the exterior walls of the house a little bit. (I have never seen or heard of a house designed like this?)

If you’re looking at it from above, you enter the basement on the bottom left side up against the left most wall.

You step down, look to your right and it’s like you’re looking down a hallway.

There were two lights. One basically right above your head when you landed at the bottom of the stairs and one on the opposite end.

The lights were dim and spaced in such a way that if the far light was turned off you couldn’t see that third of the basement.

There was a computer (again if you’re looking at it from above) facing the bottom wall right next to the stairs. If you were sitting in the computer chair and leaned over to your right you could look all the way upstairs.

The basement had always been creepy to me. Even fully lit with company. I just felt unease. Like I wasn’t supposed to be there or something.

Nothing so intense that I couldn’t overcome and stop thinking about if I was playing “backyard baseball.”

It was kind of a cosmic background radiation of discomfort. The worst part was I seemed to be the only one that spooked by it. I chalked it up to everyone else living there for decades and getting used to it.

It was the kind of creepy where if you turned off the light you wanted to sprint up the stairs really fast, or if I was really feeling spooked I went slow. Very slow. Like I wasn’t trying to attract attention.

One day my grandparents decided that it was time to let me be home alone for the first time. They’d be gone for close to 12 hours for some family obligation that apparently wasn’t relevant to me. I was around 9 at the time.

It was a safe enough neighborhood and the street we were on was busy enough that being burglarized in broad daylight with no one noticing was kind of inconceivable.

I spent an hour or so watching cartoons before getting bored and wanting to play a computer game or check out that new website called YouTube.

The problem was going down the dark stairs and flipping the light switch immediately at the bottom.

I psyched myself up and mentally prepared myself.

I descended slowly. One creaky step at a time. My body pressed against the left side of the stairway opposite from the railing so that as much light from the kitchen would reach the bottom as possible.

After what felt like an eternity I made it.

Without letting my feet leave the last step I grabbed the railing with one hand and leaned and stretched around the little corner to reach the light with the other.

Both lights went on out of sync. The closest light instantly and the far one a bit later like it was slowly waking up.

The feeling stayed, but I knew once I started whatever activity I was doing I’d forget about it.

And I did.

I was really getting into it. I was browsing YouTube and watching cartoons there. In awe of the novelty of seeing animation somewhere that wasn’t the TV or movies.

I think I saw that kiwi suicide cartoon that day. The one where the bird nails a bunch of trees to the side of the cliff and jumps down to feel like he’s flying. (I did not understand it at the time)

I was clicking around when I started to feel really cold. There was a table behind me with blankets on it for that exact reason. I threw one over myself. For the briefest moment my back was turned to the far end of the basement.

In my head I called myself a baby because that brief window without a distraction was enough to give me the low level creepy feeling I always felt.

Across from that point however, later on I actually started to feel proud of myself for dealing with it.

I was playing some themed version of monopoly or something when the far light went out.

I was so into the game that it didn’t bother me that much. Besides, I had seen it before. My grandfather refused to replace the bulb until it didn’t turn on at all. It periodically went out and then came on.

I was playing some music through those old computer speakers with the little dial on them and the atmosphere remained relatively chill.

I knew what was over there. At the far end of the basement was fishing gear and a curio cabinet with old newspapers and porcelain figurines. Classic old people stuff.

Stacks of magazines and a couch in front of another tv. (Only used for vhs as it was and old crtv) unambiguous and familiar. I’d know if something was actually out of place or wrong.

Maybe 15 minutes pass. I was just about to pass go when it got noticeably colder. It was sudden. So sudden that I was confused. I wondered if maybe the ac was kicked on by accident.

Our cat liked to climb up on boxes and rub his face on the corner of the thermostat. He had once turned on the heat before by doing that.

I turned down the volume on the speakers to zero.

My brain had just shifted gears into go investigate mode when I heard a scrape from the far unlit side of the basement.

My stomach dropped.

It was unmistakably the sound that that particular couch makes when moved.

I did not dare turn my head to look. I sat frozen staring dead ahead at my little top hat piece on boardwalk. My hands still on mouse and keyboard.

I KNEW. Something was over there. I could feel it. More than I’ve ever felt anything. My heart was pounding and every hair on my body was stiff.

My mind was blank. My instincts, something deep in my spine was telling me

“Do NOT look.”

I knew something was there. I knew it. I could FEEL it looking at me.

Worse than that I felt its desire for me to look.

It’s something that feels impossible to explain to someone but it felt it as strongly as you can smell or physically touch something. It was a sense. I was feeling a presence, and it was bad.

I wasn’t feeling unease anymore I felt terror. Mind shattering visceral physical terror. Like being chased by a big dog except I was frozen.

The feeling got stronger.

The longer I stared ahead the more intense the feeling got. I felt it nearing me. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt every step it took.

I felt it so strongly that I knew it was walking like a person.

Slowly.

I knew how big the steps were. Exactly how far away it was. How tall it was.

I could feel it looking at me. It was tall. Impossibly tall. So tall that it had to contort itself. It’s shoulder blades scraping the ceiling as its long arms dangled to let its fingers brush the floor. It was hunched over. Staring at me. Getting closer.

I couldn’t picture it. It was just a shadow in my head. A silhouette. No details to see, just a form I could viscerally feel.

It was silent. It was so utterly silent I could hear my pulse but it was so intense that I was about to cry.

It suddenly stopped. At the edge of the darkness where the light above me couldn’t reach.

The feeling remained.

I never turned my head but I knew what was happening next.

It began to reach for me. Its arms stretching across the border of darkness towards me. I could feel what it felt. It was cold. It wasn’t projecting malice. It was more primal.

It felt hungry.

And just like how your body would respond to seeing a large predator in the wild, I was doing that in my chair. My senses heightened. My blood flow increased.

However Instead of making me want to fight or flight my body seemed adamant about not looking at it. Something would happen if I did.

I know something would happen if I did.

There was much adrenaline in my body that I began to feel like a coiled spring threatening to explode.

Its arms stretched and stretched towards me, extending well past what I felt like its initial proportions were.

I was going to die. Something bad was going to happen to me.

I needed to do something. It was just a couple feet away but I was paralyzed. My mind was racing. Its pace was slow but unceasing.

It inched closer.

And closer.

And when just it was mere inches away from my left shoulder, the light above me turned off.

The nanosecond that it happened I EXPLODED out of my chair kicking it towards whatever was chasing me. I smacked against the wall of the stairway and FLEW up the stairs.

I scrambled frantically through the connector that led to the kitchen and literally broke the frame around the kitchen door that lead outside.

I threw myself over the porch railing and landed in mud and rhubarb. I sprang back onto my feet and sprinted for the alleyway at the end of our backyard. I finally allowed myself to turn and look at the house.

Nothing. Just a swinging door still animated by the energy I threw into it.

I sat on the gravel of the alley staring at the house crying. I stayed outside until my grandparents got home 7 hours later. Just as the sky began to dim. I ran around the house to the driveway to greet them.

I didn’t tell them anything as they stepped out of the car and made their way to the front door.

In the time I was waiting I had time to think.

Really, all that happened, all that I could physically attest to was that noise I heard.

Was I really in mortal danger just because I thought I heard a couch move what couldn’t have been more than an inch?

I calmed down quickly after their arrival. I watched MASH with my grandfather. I helped my grandmother cook stroganoff.

I began to put it out of my head.

Just as we were gunna go to bed my grandma asked me to make sure I turned the computer off and to put the chair back where it goes.

They were home and I had convinced myself I was actually just being insane so I didn’t hesitate to make my way to the stairs.

I could tell the light was on because I could see it splashing on the stairway. The lights were a million years old and intermittently went out. I was ready to climb down and check.

I made my way through the kitchen and towards the connector at the top of the stairs and looked down.

That is when I saw it.

The chair I was sitting on, the one I kicked towards the far end of the basement was there at the foot of the stairs facing me.

I cried.

I made my grandmother turn off the lights and put the chair back.

I never entered the basement again without someone being in the house with me. It was a month before I tried again.

To this day, I swear if I focus on it I can feel it looking at me. Across hundreds of miles of land, across nearly two decades of time I can feel it in that basement looking at me.

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

God killed everyone on earth for sins lesser than this.

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

At the theater about to see TADC I’ll let you guys know. In line for beer (:

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

Lorde at Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, Colorado. October, 14th, 2025.

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

I don’t like yung blud tbh.

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

GUYS IM SO CLOSE MY DRIVER IS GOATED

[theviewfromhalfwaydown]

Holy shit guys I’m going to hear ribs live