Real horror stories: BASED ON TRUE INCIDENTS. (on hold till 2018)

Hands behind the sofa

This was my first and as yet only experience with the paranormal. Throughout my life I have revisited this incident, wondering if perhaps it was simply a child's fancy, a leap of imagination. Yet no matter the years that pass, I always fall back to the nagging feeling that it was real, that it really did happen.

I was five years old, or around that age. Surrounded by my toys I played in the living room alone as I often did. On this day I remember it was raining and grey and I was playing with my game of toy fishing instead of the garden which was my usual haunt. It was a simple toy which included a circular dish which would be filled with plastic fish, and tiny fishing rods with magnets attached to the end. The aim was simply catch a fish with the magnet on the rod. It was meant for two people or more but often I played it by myself.

As I caught more and more fish I placed them on the carpet beside me, stacking them neatly as I angled for the last few remaining fish. This was when I saw it, a hand, a human hand which darted from behind the sofa and snatched up one of my plastic fish from my pile. It happened so quickly that it took me a while to react. Yet as quick as it had happened, I knew what I had seen as I also knew that I was completely alone in that room.

It took my mother entering the room before I drew up the courage to follow my fish, but as I peered around the back of the sofa I knew it would not be there, and it wasn't.  It had gone and after searching and searching I never found it again, even though I always kept an eye out for that small plastic fish.

I never told my mother, I have never told anyone this incident, I'm not sure why, as I often thought of it over the years.