My Aunt Recorded People's Last Moments, and I Have No Idea Why

My aunt was a strange person in many normal ways. She wasn't eccentric per se, but had specific ways of living her life that obtained a unique focus. Diana lived her whole life alone in the well-kept home, isolated in the woods, from which she drove exactly 21 and a half miles to an elder care home where she worked. She was also completely and utterly obsessed with death.

I know it's normal to think about death, for most of my early adulthood, I had a near-obsessive fixation on it myself. I would often lie at night, trying to fall asleep when the idea of my eventual oblivion struck me, startling me back to an existential terror that would put off rest for another hour, until my mind could calm down and settle back into rest. I would visit graveyards, some where I had no relatives or friends, just to passively experience that rest so that I could accept it more easily. It never helped.

But my aunt's fixation was more extreme in proximity and reaction. My episodes could be calmed down, my mind distracted, but Diana lived around death. According to my family, her father died while she was still in our grandma's womb, and then she grew up around several failed pregnancies before my mother was born, which made our grandmother even more stressed and unstable. Diana was 15 by the time my Mother entered the picture, which, according to Mom, further isolated them.

When my mother was only 2, grandma had a heart attack in front of her and her sister. Diana stood stiff as a board, unable to do a thing. My grandmother grew paler and paler, writhing on the ground as if she were a deer struck by a truck. Diana stood there, frozen in a motionless, tear-streaked panic until her shock faded and 911 was finally called, but it was far too late for the doctors to do anything. My mother only really remembers staring up at Diana, shaking slightly, her eyes bloodshot in terror.

By the time my Mom had memories, her sister had gone off to college, then medical school, then finally into elder care, to only be seen again on holidays and funerals, more consistently appearing at the latter. The main time my mother ever saw Diana was when she was crying profusely at the funeral of every single friend or loved one in our small town.

Without failure, Diana would show up, well dressed and outwardly grieving, and be allowed to enter and sob profusely throughout the whole funeral, leaving just before the final prayers were done, never to be seen or talked to until the next one. According to those who saw her driving away, her eyes were still waterfalls coursing down her pale face. The families would often only know her by association with my father or mother, and she would have rarely even met the person to whom she was pouring her grief out. My mother guessed Diana was so afraid of death that she attempted a harsh form of exposure therapy, and my father, who had only met her at a single Christmas party, guessed she loved the attention and environment of grief.

It was this strange, transitory relationship that I had with my aunt, made up of vague memories at Thanksgivings, Christmases, and those dreadful days where we all had to dress in black. She always stood at the edge of whatever gathering we were at, so odd that even we kids noticed it. My cousins joked that she was scared of everything, couldn't stand to even look people in the eye. I tell you all of this to try to give context to what happened last week.

My Aunt Diana had passed away, apparently from some sort of heart condition, and left her home and everything within to me. Someone who's spoken to her, perhaps twice. I was so taken aback, as was my mom, dad, and sisters. My sisters joked she left her home to me because I was the one she hated the least, due to them pranking her with a whoopee cushion one Christmas, but I was strangely unnerved. I don't know how to explain it, but I felt like a fly taking a first step on a spider's web rather than a simple notary.

I wasn't able to head out to my aunt's place until last Monday due to my work (pediatrics is hard to get covered). She moved away from our hometown and into the mountains, to a cluster of isolated communities in the Appalachians, to pursue her dream of being an elder care specialist. Her own home was part of a rural sort of neighborhood, houses separated by patches of woods, but still close enough to be within walking distance of other houses. I was surprised by how grey it was, how plain. I briefly wondered if it would be worth it just to hire someone to go through my aunt's stuff, but my paycheck disagreed. I would have to catalogue what was left of my aunt's life myself.

Getting inside, the interior matched the exterior in drearyness. The living room only had a couch, a glass table in front of it, and an old analog TV sitting on a shelf. But on the walls, there were a myriad of paintings. Some were those old medieval depictions of the Black Death, others were depictions of hell, and others were just strange depictions of skulls, skeletons, and angels descending upon dying men as saviors. And by on the walls, I mean they were covered head to toe in these paintings. A screen door broke up the paintings, leading into the backyard and further beyond the woods. Creeped out, I moved on to a hallway leading out to the left, which led to all of the other rooms of the home.

The first door I opened nearly made me scream, as when I did, with what little light bled in from the living room, I saw what seemed to be a dog, sitting up in the middle of the room. My panicked hand searched the wall and flicked on the light switch, revealing a golden retriever sitting frozen in place, its eyes trained on the door with its mouth hanging open. My heartbeat began to slow as I thought the dog must be some sort of statue, but looking at the rest of the room, I realized it was taxidermy. Ducks, owls, deer heads, raccoons, armadillos; all manner of creatures sit posed on shelves or on trophy racks. There was even a bear head above the window that showed the nearby woods.

Bending down to look at the platform the golden was sitting on, there was a small plaque that read, "Benny, beloved companion. Even while gone, you bring smiles." Surrounding the plague were a series of polaroids, of a young Diana freshly moved into her house, which appeared far less dreary in the idealic filter. Sat beside her was a yellow ball of fluff with two black pinprick eyes. The rest of the photos showed them around the house, Benny slowly getting older and older until he appeared as he did now, only the slightest hint of greying around his otherwise bright, sunny muzzle. Close to Benny, I could almost sense the slightest heat coming off his perfect fur.

Feeling creeped out by Benny and the deer statue, both of which I felt like were staring at me, I backed out of the room and closed the door. The next room seemed to be a sort of library, which, at a brief glance, seemed to cover a variety of topics: apocalypse, afterlives, underworlds, deals with death, definitions of life and soul. Like the paintings, the walls were covered head to toe in these books that dealt with every religion, philosophy, and esoteric thought. Some real old-looking ones were stored in individual glass cases, with a box of gloves next to them. Most of them were unmarked with no title on the front, except one. It seemed far older than the others, grey, nearly crumpled pages making up its insides. A plaque beneath it read: "Copy of the Voynich Manuscript, recreated beautifully by Dr. Svald."

Leaving the library, I felt less creeped out than when I left the taxidermy room. The next room down the hall had a strange doorframe, bending 3/4ths up each side, and made out of some wood rather than the grey walls that surrounded the rest of the house. I laughed, joking to myself that she had a whole coffin put in her home. Opening the door, I was surprised to see I was correct.

It was a wooden coffin, plain, bare planks inside. The only thing of note was the shelves installed in the coffin, containing around 30 VHS tapes, with the other shelves containing DVDs and a camera seemingly capable of making recordings on VHS.

Immediately, my interest was piqued, but I decided to clear the rest of the house. The next room down the hallway was the bedroom, which itself was mostly plain, besides a heart monitor and a fluid system like you would see at a hospital, next to the bed. On the nightstands, there were old family photos of Diana and her mom, a couple of her and her home smiling at the camera. It was like I was staring at half-remembered ghosts, these people who resemble nothing of what they are now. There was also a bathroom, only available through the bedroom.

The final room down that hall was the creepiest. The first thing I noticed was an angled roof, as if it were supposed to mimic a cellar. Little flowers, ceramic angels, and stars dotted the ceiling. On the floor, there were various blankets, making the floor uneven. In the corner, with a little mobile hanging right above it, was a crib. A single baby doll sat in it, a pillow over its face. I barely got a step into that room before I backed out.

The only other rooms of note were the kitchen and the laundry room, their openings sitting opposite the hallway that led to the rest of the house; however, no weird stuff in those rooms. But it was remarkably clean, no dishes left to clean or put up. The whole house felt so strangely neat and undisturbed, with only a tiny layer of dust on everything. The emptiness felt fresh.

I had decided to stay at the house for a few days to go through her stuff, see about getting something done with her home, and finally go to a funeral which had, apparently, already been arranged. I decided to start with those VHS tapes in the coffin closet. Only two of them were marked, wrapped with a single red tape. I decided to go top to bottom and just get to those odd tapes when I got to them.

I put it into the old VCR in the living room and plopped on the couch, eating some of the fast food I had picked up on the way over. My body was aching from moving my stuff in, and I mainly wanted to see if these were maybe work-related or yet another strange hobby of hers. The tape begins winding inside the machine, the screen coming to life, only to open up to more darkness. In the ambient buzz of the recording, I heard what I thought was strange, almost hiccuping breathing. But after getting a little closer to the TV, I realized it was sobbing. I had heard it a couple of times before, from the corners of churches and funeral homes.

The camera peeked around the corner, revealing a bedroom you'd see in an elderly home. Cheap bed, nightstand with flowers, and a foldable feeding table attached to the bed. An old woman lay on her back, her mouth agape. There are these awful gasping sounds, like she was using her whole chest to squeeze her lungs, just to get any oxygen in her. The sobbing got closer to the microphone, and I realized that whoever was recording this must be in the closet of the old woman's room, a coat rack becoming visible in the moonlight as the camera pushed the closet door open more.

The old woman continued to make those awful gasping noises for another thirty or so seconds, at which point I had dropped my food and was pressed against the back of the couch, trying to get away from the screen. Then, she stopped. The sobbing intensified for another minute, until I heard a high-pitched electronic whine.

The old woman's chest, which had seemingly decompressed and become empty, filled again. She took no breath in, but her mouth began to move with an alien, puppet-like movement.

"It is so dark and wet. I pull my hand away from the walls, and it feels like stone snakeskin. I hear a great rumble through the depths, like a snake digging in the dirt."

The old woman's chest collapses and then fills up once more. I can hear the rough crackling of bone as her ribs reform into place.

"I claw at the end of a tunnel, knee deep in liquid. I hear It, from the way I came. It wants me to dig. I am so afraid. Can anyone hear me?"

The corpse's chest collapses for the last time. The person holding the camera gasps quietly, pauses for a moment, and then begins sobbing again, this time far more violently. This went on for another ten or twenty seconds, and then the tape ended.

The words burned into my mind like a tattoo, horrid scars on my mind. I was shocked into terror then, and I am still shaken. Was this some near-death experience? The words were so clear, so awfully clear as they rasped out of her dead throat.

I had to simply sit there for maybe ten minutes, trying to collect myself and bring my heartbeat back down. The house now felt both far more empty and far less so, the woods outside painted in moonlit black beyond the living room's lights becoming far more oppressive. I could almost twist the branches into crooked figures, lingering, watching my terror.

I nervously retrieved the tape and returned it to the coffin closet, the plastic feeling cold under the skin. I couldn't help but feel the hairs on my neck stand up as I went past Benny's room. I decided against further exploring my aunt's haunting and potentially criminal videos and decided to sleep, making sure to lock all the doors and try to cover as many windows with curtains or even blankets.

Thankfully, her bathroom is actually quite nice. The warm, consistent current kept the thoughts of death away for at least a little bit. Wrapped in that soft embrace of water, I closed my eyes for a second and was struck with a sudden, explosive sensation.

Someone was in the bathroom with me. At least, I felt it. I peeked around the curtain, seeing nothing in the steamy room. Yet the feeling persisted; I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. My spine was electric with the sensation. I tried to finish bathing, but I rushed through and got out quickly.

Standing in front of the sink, brushing my teeth as quickly as I could. The damp rug underneath me felt like millions of tiny centipede legs under my feet. I kept looking around, trying to dispel whatever paranoia had taken me. Then, I smelled the briefest scent of mud and decomposition; that miasma of meat beginning to rot. I had a mental image of my aunt freshly clawed out of his own grave, floating invisibly in the bathroom, her chest rising and collapsing like the old woman.

When I turned around suddenly, trying to grasp an invisible presence, I happened to look down at the mat I stood on. There were two impressions, slightly caked in mud, right behind my feet.

I've been shaking in bed since that moment. Tried to look at hotels nearby, but there aren't any, and I have no friends nearby either. For now, I am simply trying to get some logic into what I've seen and what's happened. Maybe I tracked mud in, moved, and scared myself into thinking there was a ghost.

Maybe the tapes were some sort of weird film my aunt was making, or some near-death lucidity, or maybe my aunt edited these. I don't know, but despite how fearful I am, I want to find out. There is something my aunt left behind to be solved, and my strange connection with her pushes me onwards. I know it's weird, but I feel like I have a connection to her, and what may have happened.

I'll update in the morning if anything else happens.

K.