The Porch Swing

 When I was really little, my parents would let me stay up late on weekends to watch TV until I fell asleep. I loved those nights, and I always tried to stay up later than everyone else just because I could.

One night, I was half-asleep on the couch when I heard a noise coming from our front porch. It was the creaking sound of our old wooden porch swing moving back and forth. At first, I tried to ignore it, but curiosity got the better of me. I slowly crept toward the bay windows and peeked outside.

Sitting on our porch swing was an older woman, maybe in her 50s, wearing nothing but a nightgown—covered in blood—and holding a large kitchen knife.

I completely lost it. I ran screaming to my parents’ bedroom, but I was so terrified that I couldn’t form actual words. They could see I was scared, but when I finally managed to tell them what I saw, my dad got irritated and insisted it was just a nightmare. I refused to go back to the living room and kept crying hysterically. Eventually, he had enough—he grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the front door to “prove” nothing was there.

I kicked and screamed the whole way, begging him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. He unlocked the front door, yanked it open and said, “See? There’s nothing th—”

He froze.

I will never forget the look of fear on his face when he saw the woman turn her head toward us and slowly stand up with the knife still in her hand.

My dad instantly slammed the door shut and yelled for my mom to call the police. He ran to get his gun, a 12-gauge shotgun. He came back, cracked the door open just enough to stick the barrel through, and shouted, asking what she wanted.

In a shaky, eerily calm voice, she said:
“Somebody killed my husband, but it wasn’t me.”

My dad told her the police were on their way. She panicked, clutched the knife tightly, and walked off into the dark.

The police found her 15 minutes later, attempting to break into a neighbor’s house.

I never slept in the living room again.

Extra: After she left, my dad called my uncle next door to warn him. My uncle, who was… let’s just say prepared for emergencies, was already sitting on his porch with his shotgun. When she walked past his house, he simply raised it and said:
“Keep moving, lady.”
(Slightly more polite than the original version—but you get the idea.)

Later Update: According to my mom, the police never gave us the full story, but neighbors said the woman was mentally unstable and off her medication. She had gotten into a fight with her husband and tried to attack him with the knife—not badly, but enough to scare him. He got her out of the house, and she then cut herself, either to harm herself or to make it look like he had attacked her. That’s all we ever heard about it.