Sick After Unusual Events

The humidity had been pretty high, and my room was uncomfortable even at night. Aleshanee, my cat, wasn't having a great time with it either. She kept rolling around and moving from place to place, trying to find somewhere comfortable.

I live with my friend Aya, but she wasn't home at the time. She had gone back to her hometown early for the Obon holiday, so it was just me and Aleshanee in the house.

One night, I heard footsteps coming from the second floor.

They were quite distinct. It sounded like someone wearing hard boots was walking around the room upstairs, almost as if they were wandering around up there.

Aleshanee noticed the sounds too. She looked toward where they were coming from, but she wasn't particularly jumpy about it. Honestly, her reaction seemed closer to, "Oh, there it goes again."

I wasn't immediately thinking about ghosts or anything like that.

My first thought was that maybe Aya had come home without contacting me. My second thought was that someone might have gotten into the house. So I went upstairs to check.

There was nobody there.

While I was looking around, though, I noticed several shadows. I couldn't really tell you what they were. I've mentioned before that I've seen something resembling smoke or some kind of strange figure, and I've always considered the possibility that what I saw was simply a hallucination or my eyes playing tricks on me. So I mostly ignored the shadows.

At some point, I also heard what sounded like someone moaning.

Strangely enough, I wasn't that frightened by any of this. Odd things have happened around this house before, so both Aleshanee and I were probably less reactive than we should have been.

Nothing else happened that night.

Around that same time, however, I started noticing a tingling sensation in my throat. Before long, I developed a cough.

I know some of you will probably think it was just a bad cold or the flu. That's entirely possible. The weather had been hot and humid, and getting sick isn't exactly unusual.

I tried some medicine, but it didn't seem to help.

Eventually, I went to a doctor. He prescribed some medication and told me to rest, so that's what I did.

The cough didn't go away. It's been around a month now, and I'm still coughing.

I'm not trying to say that I became sick because of whatever happened in the house that night. I don't know if the footsteps, the shadows, the moaning, and my getting sick had anything to do with one another.

They may have been completely unrelated.

I just find the timing strange, and since I've been stuck dealing with this cough for a while, that night has been on my mind again.

Maybe there is an ordinary explanation for all of it.

As usual, I don't really know.