This happened years ago, when I was about 16-17 years of age.

The house my family and I lived in was a two-storey house, with bedrooms upstairs and other rooms downstairs. One weekend, my parents invited family friends over. The guests were four people; a middle-aged couple and their two daughters. I was upstairs in my room when my dad called me downstairs for dinner. As I walked down the stairs, I saw an Asian man standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was middle-aged and wore a buttoned up shirt and some non-descript long pants. His expression was blank, calm, pretty unemotive actually. What was unusual was that he had a large camera hanging from a strap around his neck. It was an old-fashioned, black, bulky camera.

He was just standing there and didn’t say a word, and moved out of my way as I continued down the stairs. I had just thought he was another guest of my parents that I hadn’t met. When I arrived in the dining room, I saw that everyone was seated including the family we had invited. I asked my dad whether we were waiting for anyone else, and he said no. I asked him whether he was sure, but he said (rather impatiently) that everyone who was supposed to be here is already seated and that I should hurry up and do the same. After dinner I walked around my house but that camera man was no where in sight. I never saw him again.

I’d like to point out it couldn’t have been just some random person who walked into the house. Both our front and back doors were self-locking, that is, if the doors were closed then they locks themselves until you turn the knobs from inside the house to reopen them (or if you have the keys you can open it from outside). I was positive that the front door was closed because the stairs stopped right near the front door and I definitely noted it was closed as I was coming downstairs. The back door was too, and even if it weren’t, any stranger walking in from it would have to bypass all the people in the house who were downstairs at the time. The windows have fly screens on them and were generally closed too.

Until this day I get creeped out thinking about what had happened. When I walk around the house late at night (something I loathe to do), I worry that I might turn around and suddenly see this silent, staring camera man once again.

This is one of the reasons why I hate the dark.