I was half asleep on the couch in the basement. The room I was in shares a wall with an unfinished storage room no one ever goes in, which has no windows. It's maybe 2am, I had been in the house alone for hours.

It is dead silent when all of a sudden this noise starts coming from the storage room. It sounded like someone banging as loud as they could on the connecting wall.

I immediately froze, but then took off, I have never been so scared or run so fast in my life, I was amazed I made it upstairs alive.

I listened for it again but the sound never came back. My mom then came home, I told her what happened and we went downstairs together. There was no one there. I checked every room, anywhere someone could hide. Basement windows all closed and locked from the inside. No evidence that there was an animal anywhere in the basement either.

The next day I figured it out. The cap had fallen off the furnace exhaust pipe, which comes down into the basement right on the other side of that connecting wall. A bat had flown in there momentarily and started banging its way down the pipe, then found its way back out.