B.O.M.E. aka, "Basement of Monstruous Entities"

You've heard of C.H.U.D., right? A middling '80's horror film regarding "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers?" Now do you remember it? The late John Heard and Daniel Stern? No? Doesn't matter. (Come to think of it, I believe I worked with several C.H.U.D. at my last job.)

Anyway, welcome to "B.O.M.E.," the Midwestern cousins of the C.H.U.D. Maybe not the entire Midwest, but my basement, for sure.

I first became aware of these terrifying nocturnal monsters when my wife decided we had to clean up the basement. Until that point, I had used the basement for a repository for all of the crap I thought I might find useful later down the road. You know, I'm talking large Styrofoam packaging pieces, broken chairs and lamps, ages old and mildewed children's toys, you name it. Far from a hoarder (but probably straddling the hoarder border), I never met an empty box I didn't like.

Anyway, the clean-up process was vast, requiring a rented dumpster. We filled that big boy up with at least 10,000 moldy videotapes, my empire of dirt. That was tough as I unloaded box after box of my lifetime savings into the dumpster. Hell, who woulda thought videotapes could get moldy?

Then the process of cleaning down the old, lumpy stone walls came next. You see, this ain't no yuppie finished basement we're talking here. It's a perfect place for a haunting. Built during one of the wars, the basement is a mess of bad wiring and plumbing, crumbling stone walls, the site of many a flood, webs of gargantuan arachnids, inexplicable leaves, and...yes, monsters.

"Honey," I called out to my wife, "you gotta come see this." I stood before a crevice in the wall, fingering an orange gelatinous goo (for you see, apparently I've not learned anything from watching '50's horror and science fiction movies).

She joined my side. "What?"

"Look...you ever seen anything like it?"

Clearly frustrated, she said, "No, get back to work."

But I knew. Yes, I knew the truth. B.O.M.E.

I had forgotten about them for several years. But they existed, I knew this in the darkest recesses of my haunted mind. One insomniac night as I lay in bed, I heard proof of them.

Thump...tump...timp...timp...thump...

I sat up, terrified. And listened to make certain it wasn't part of a half-lucid dream.

TUMP! Timp...timp...timp...

I lay in bed wide awake until the sun rose, listening to the horrific, foul creatures of the underworld using the network of our heating ducts for their transportation highway. Taunting me because I slept right next to a main vent. 

THUMP!

 I imagined all sorts of nightmarish creatures: there were man rats with huge, bulging eyes and teeth a bunny would be envious of; slithery, goo-dropping, albino slugs with large glaring eyeballs that waved on antenna stalks; and little orange-colored, bad-haired, narcissistic monster men taking over the basement.

My wife awoke shortly after the calamity had stopped. I told her of the monsters in the basement. She responded with a "yes, dear" and patted my poor, lil' over-worked head. 

I searched the basement (in the daylight, mind you) for physical proof of their existence. I found more orange goo. And strange pyramids of sticks, cracked acorns...and were those...bones?

I questioned my sanity until one fateful night when my wife heard them, too.

They're down there. Oh, yes, they are. And your basement may be next!

While on the topic of my spooky basement, it did inspire one of the creepiest hauntings I've committed to paper in one of my earliest books, Neighborhood Watch. Read it with the lights one. And don't say I didn't warn you. Like all of my books, it's 100% true!