His Little Girl Kept Waking Up In The Middle Of The Night, Screaming And Repeating Words Like “No, It Hurts, Help Me”. The Father Decided To Investigate The Cause Behind The Nightmares And Was Horrified To Discover…
When 7-year-old Emily began waking up every night screaming, her father, Daniel Cooper, thought it was just nightmares. But when she started crying, “No, it hurts, help me,” he knew something was terribly wrong. What he discovered hidden in her room would shatter his heart and change their lives forever. Read till the end.
Daniel Cooper, a 38-year-old single father from Seattle, had always been close to his daughter, Emily. Since her mother’s passing two years ago, they had clung to each other for comfort. Life wasn’t easy, but Daniel was doing his best — cooking her favorite mac and cheese, tucking her in every night, and reading bedtime stories.
Everything seemed normal until a few weeks ago when Emily started waking up in the middle of the night. At first, Daniel thought it was just bad dreams — a side effect of losing her mom. But soon, her screams grew more intense. “No! It hurts! Help me!” she would cry, trembling and drenched in sweat.
Daniel tried everything: nightlights, soft music, even therapy. Nothing worked. The nightmares kept returning — always around 2:30 a.m. He began sleeping in the hallway, outside her room, desperate to be close if she woke up.
One night, after another scream, Daniel rushed in. Emily sat upright, terrified. “He was here again,” she whispered, “the man.” Daniel’s heart dropped. “What man, sweetheart?” But Emily just shook her head and buried her face in his chest.
The next morning, Daniel checked every lock, every window, every camera. Nothing seemed out of place. Still, something didn’t sit right. So he installed a small hidden camera in Emily’s room, just to make sure she was safe.
The following night, he stayed up watching the live feed. At first, everything was quiet — Emily sleeping peacefully under her blanket. Then, around 2:30 a.m., she stirred and began to whimper. Daniel leaned closer to the screen… and froze.
A shadow moved in the corner of her room.
Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. The dark figure appeared near Emily’s bed, just barely visible in the dim light. It wasn’t a ghost or a trick of the eye — it was human. Someone was in his house.
Heart racing, he grabbed the baseball bat from under his bed and burst into Emily’s room. The figure was gone. Emily woke up screaming again, terrified. Daniel searched the entire house — the closets, basement, backyard — but found nothing.
He called the police. They checked for signs of forced entry but found no fingerprints, no footprints, no evidence. “Could be stress,” one officer said sympathetically. “Kids have vivid dreams.” But Daniel knew what he saw.
Determined to catch the intruder, he reviewed the footage frame by frame. What he saw next chilled him to his core — the “man” wasn’t entering through the door or window. He was already in the house.
The figure appeared from the direction of the closet — where Daniel kept an old vent leading to the crawl space beneath the home. He felt his stomach twist.
The next day, Daniel contacted a home inspector. Together, they opened the crawl space. The air was cold and damp. Flashlight in hand, Daniel crawled inside — and nearly vomited when he saw a blanket, empty food cans, and a small flashlight. Someone had been living there.
Further in, they found a phone — and on it, videos. Footage of Emily sleeping. Videos clearly taken from inside her room.
Daniel’s knees gave out. Someone had been sneaking into his daughter’s room at night, watching her, maybe touching her — while he slept just a few feet away.
He called the police again, shaking. Within hours, they arrested a man who had once worked as a repair technician for Daniel’s home. He had kept a hidden access route through the crawl space.
The days that followed were a blur of fear, guilt, and disbelief. Daniel couldn’t stop thinking about how close he had come to losing Emily — not to death, but to something far worse. The police confirmed that the intruder, 29-year-old Kevin Harris, had been secretly living under the house for almost three months.
He had lost his job and found refuge in the crawl space after realizing no one checked it. During his stay, he watched the family, waiting for the right moment to approach Emily. He had already installed a tiny hole through the vent where he could observe her room.
The nightmares had been Emily’s desperate mind trying to make sense of the terrifying presence she could feel but couldn’t fully understand. Her screams of “No, it hurts, help me” weren’t dreams — they were memories from moments when she woke to see a shadow watching her.
Daniel couldn’t forgive himself. “I was right there,” he kept repeating to the detectives. “I should’ve protected her.” But one officer placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “You did. You believed her when others might not have. That’s what saved her.”
Emily began therapy again, this time with trauma specialists. Daniel quit his job temporarily, determined to rebuild her sense of safety. He sold the house within a month — he couldn’t bear to stay there another night.
Months later, as Emily slept peacefully in their new home, Daniel stood at her door watching her breathe. No more nightmares. No more screams. Just the quiet rhythm of a child finally at peace.
He learned a painful lesson that night — sometimes the real monsters aren’t in our dreams. They hide in plain sight, in the dark corners of our homes, waiting for us to ignore what our children are trying to tell us.
As he turned off the light, Daniel whispered to himself, “Never again.”
If you were Daniel, what would you have done differently? Would you have believed the nightmares were real? Share your thoughts — someone out there might need to read your advice tonight.
