From a young age I’ve always been interested in the paranormal and ghosts. This interest led me to horror movies and in particular, those that are based on paranormal activities. But I never thought that my guilty pleasure would be something that I’d actually experience.

I was ten years old when I had my first encounter. My parents forbade me and my sister from watching horror movies at night because they knew it would lead to us not being able to sleep in our rooms out of fear. This never stopped me however, I would sneakily crawl into the television room, hide behind the couch and watch from there.

The night it went down, I went to bed at half past eight, that was the time our parents had set for us. Deep in my sleep something woke me, I had a feeling of anxiousness but I couldn’t find anything while looking around my room. I tried going back to sleep, but as I closed my eyes, I heard footsteps just outside my window. Outside my window are steps and a veranda that leads into the living room.

At this point my eyes were wide open and my body was stiff as a corpse. The stomps continued then stopped. I thought to myself that maybe this person can’t come through the door, that is why he stopped. Boy was I wrong. Silently I listened to each footstep continue again to cause the wooden floor to cry out until they reached my room.

The room was pitch black and I was numb, the room was silent after the footsteps had stopped again; I could hear a pin drop. My phone was on charge. Then suddenly I heard the sound of the keypad typing and the screen lit up. My ‘fight or flight’ instincts kicked in and I jumped out of bed and ran straight for my sisters’ room, but instead of sleeping there, I asked her to come and sleep by me.

We walked back to my room sheepishly but for some reason we could not fall asleep. “Yini ndaba ungalele?” I asked her.

“Angazi, kodwa sengathi ngiyasaba.”

I understood exactly how she felt because something in the room was making the air around us heavy so we decided to say the “Our Father” prayer until we fell asleep.

The morning after, I told my parents about what had happened, and my dad’s first response was that it’s all in my head and that I must have been dreaming. I went along with what he was saying because I knew he didn’t want my sister and I think too deeply about the situation. But I knew exactly what had happened, a ghost in boots had visited.