The Man Through the Window

I don't believe in ghosts and spirits as anything more than a scary tale to frighten children, or as an excuse to indulge in ludicrous amounts of popcorn while chuckling nervously in anticipation of an all-too-obvious jump scare.

And yet, I'm about to share with you a selection of ghost stories - with a twist. They're my ghost stories, and they come from very real experiences sprinkled throughout my childhood into my adolescence. If you'll entertain me with your attention, I invite you with open arms to reflect on the stories I'm gonna tell you and come to your own rationale.

It Lives in the Basement

I want to transport you back to 1996. I was 2 years old and my parents were still living together. We lived in a fairly large villa by Scandinavian standards and life was good. I think. I was too young to have any memories from that time. This story is second-hand information from my parents, who, decades after getting divorced, are still telling the same identical stories from our time in that house. My older brother of a year-and-a-half recounts two memories, the first from Christmas Eve: the living room lights suddenly began to dim and brighten. This was in 1997, well before light dimmers were normal household features. Being 4 years old he thought nothing of it, but the memory stuck with him. He also recounts waking up in his top half of our bunk bed feeling intensely scared at the sight of a plastic dinosaur toy on his bed frame - it wasn't there when he'd gone to sleep. Our dad had found it the night before and placed it there for him to play with when he woke up. My brother says that, despite the rational explanation, the plastic dinosaur toy triggered something in his 4-year-old psyche that made him accept that something was wrong and from that moment he would always feel uncomfortable in the house.

It was a house with two floors and a basement. It had two basement levels but they didn't know that until later. There was a frequently recurring event in this house late at night when we had all gone to bed: running. They would hear the footsteps when they started in the basement. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Up the staircase to the first floor. Thunk, thunk, thunk. The running grew louder as it approached the second floor, where our bedrooms were. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Silence. In the beginning, the footsteps would stop at the top of the stairs. The house didn't have a carpeted floor - whatever had been making its way upstairs was standing still. Over time, the footsteps would continue farther and farther past the top of the stairs and into the hallway on the second floor. And one night it stopped, having seemingly decided that it had gone far enough into the hallway. It scared my parents. Where had it stopped? Right in front of the door to me and my brother's bedroom. They decided the presence had become too invasive. My dad walked into the hallway. "No more! You are not allowed on this floor." And the footsteps never did go to the second floor again.

My parents had a medium come and investigate the house, towards the end of our time there, who claimed to be overwhelmed with "the energy of the house" upon entering. She would tour the house and point out areas of high activity. Oh, and the two basement levels I mentioned in the beginning? The house was previously owned by a dentist. He had hung himself on the second basement level.

The Man Through the Window

We're moving on to 1999. I was old enough to have memories, and there's a particular one I want to share. It would take me a long time to fall asleep when I was little, often leaving my 4 or 5-year-old self to ponder over important questions like: does pepper cancel out salt? (Many years and a lot of spoiled meals later, I realized that it doesn't.)

It was another one of those nights. I don't know how late or early it was, or if I had woken up or not fallen asleep at all. I only remember what happened. Or, I only remember what I think happened. My belief is reinforced by my parents recounting that I told them the following morning about the old man that had visited me in the night. They say it happened twice. I only remember it happening once. My room was at the end of a long hallway that split into a room on either side: my bedroom on the left and my parents' bedroom on the right. It was fairly small and had large windows stretched along the wall. A curtain kept the light from coming through at night, which was probably unnecessary since the house was in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors or street lights. On the far side, there were three thin and tall windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling. They were roughly 3 meters, or 15 feet, from my bed. So there I was - unable to sleep, the only person still awake in the house of a family of four. The youngest child. And then, out of the blue, I felt the most calm I've possibly ever felt. It was as if time stood still because it felt like an eternity, but I don't think the event lasted long. A man, clad in an old discolored gentleman's outfit complete with a bowler hat and cane, appeared to walk in through the window. As I recall there was an element of transparency to the man's figure. There was nothing about the situation that caused me any alarm or fright. I stayed silently gazing at the man slowly walking towards me. There was nothing audible to his presence. I don't remember any distinct facial features, or if he had a face at all. I just remember seeing him appear, walk a few meters towards me, and then disappear as swiftly as he had appeared. And I remember the calmness I had felt.

Years later, whenever my mother would recount what I told them about that night, her story stayed consistent with my memory. Was it a vivid dream that managed to convince a young child's mind? I don't know. As much as I don't believe it was a dream, I still think that's a reasonable explanation - but hold your judgment until you hear my two next stories. I think you'll agree that there's no rationale to be found in those, and they may just have you doubt yourself if you're a skeptical person. I am.

The Terrifying and the Playful Presence

We're jumping ahead over ten years. My childhood was quiet since the man walked through the window, and happily so. It's now 2011. I'm 17 years old and I'm in my second year of high school. I'm going to share a story that has two sides. On one side, I'm experiencing events that led me to sleep deprivation and failing classes. On the other I'm playing games with someone - I just can't see who.

I've looked over my shoulder periodically for the last 10 minutes while writing this, which is beyond silly - I live on a different continent, in a safe neighborhood in a high rise building and I live with my partner. I think it speaks volumes that recounting these events makes me feel some degree of insecurity. I won't tell you I saw proof of any kind of presence - not in this story - but I will tell you I experienced something supernatural.

Supernatural, adjective: Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.

In 2010, I moved away from the city to live with my dad while I attended high school. It was a nice remote house in a small town, with my room on the second floor and a bedroom for my dad and stepmom on the first floor. It had a large garage that was converted into a livable building that also housed an annex for guests with its own bathroom. This is important, because after so many late nights of me watching Champions League football and celebrating a little too loudly when my team scored - do I need to say that my dad and stepmom went to bed early - they moved out of the main building and into the annex as their main bedroom. This generally left me with the house to myself late at night.

For a period of four months, I was experiencing events with increasing frequency. They were associated with two presences I could feel so precisely that I can describe them to you in detail. Height, age, gender, ballpark appearance, and intentions. The two presences were different: terrifyingly different. Perhaps most terrifying of all is the fact that they were always around at the same periods, like a pair. Together. One was, ominously and stereotypically, present at night time. The other during bright hours.

Picture a rectangular room with a bed in one side and a PC desk in the other. I would spend the bulk of my time at my PC, seated in a large IKEA office chair that I had to rotate around in to look behind. This is the story of the playful presence that would continue to visit me over these few months. I would sit at my PC and entertain myself with whatever - games, learning, chatting - and suddenly become engrossed with a feeling that I was being watched. It was an intense and specific sensation. I knew how I was being watched, from where, and why. And while I wouldn't claim that I could hear sound from what was watching me - I could feel sound. I realize that doesn't make any sense at all but it's the closest way I can describe it. I knew when it was looking over my right shoulder, or past my left side, or grabbing the chair with both hands (without anything physically grabbing my chair) to peek around it. And I could feel playful giggling. It was obvious to me that I was being watched by someone with a child's curiosity, and someone who enjoyed teasing me. Whenever I turned around it would cease for a moment, and it only ever occurred when I was sitting in my chair while being alone on the house's second floor. The most important detail is that I always felt completely at ease when it was happening. My hair stood up and my senses called alarm every time but I felt calm. Eventually I became so familiar with the feeling of this presence that I would greet it in my thoughts. "Welcome back, nice to see you again," I would think. Some days it didn't happen at all, but on the days it did happen it would appear multiple times in the span of a few hours. I said I could recount detail about the presences: it was a little girl, shorter in height than the back of my chair. Or at least a presence with a similar stature and playful curiosity as one. And it liked to play with me.

Bed time. This is where the story takes a dark turn. The second presence was the polar opposite of the first. It felt unnaturally tall, slim, and grossly ominous - and it only appeared after I had gone to bed and when I was completely alone in the house. On the good nights, when it didn't show up, I would sleep carefree and happily from dusk till dawn. On the bad nights it always followed the same pattern. I preferred to sleep facing the wall, which means I would have my back to the door which I would close to try and prevent mosquitoes from entering, since we kept windows open around the house. It would start anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour after going to bed. In a split-second, I would transition from a state of sleepiness to a state of terror I had never felt before and have never since felt again. My eyes shot open, staring into the wall. I'm frozen. I know I'm being watched, I know where I'm being watched from, and I know it doesn't have good intentions. It felt like it was communicating with me through my senses. I steeled my mind and forced myself to turn around in one quick motion, and now I'm lying in my bed, terrified to death, staring directly at it. Except I'm alone in the room and there was no physical evidence of anything else being there with me. Yet I know without the any doubt that I'm staring into its eyes - I can feel its stature, and I feel where it is, and I can feel that it's staring at me. It was standing perfectly still just inside the door. The events would last anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour and it drove me to sleep deprivation. I said it always followed the same pattern, but one night was different. It was the only night that made me think I was in any real danger. I didn't have a bedside table but I did have a TV bench beside my bed with necessary wires to plug everything in. That night started like all the others: my eyes shot open and I'm terrified. I turn around. I think I was staring at it for half an hour, when suddenly everything I thought I could rely on to keep myself sane ceased to matter. The cords under the TV bench rustled. I darted out of the room after arriving at the conclusion that I might not be safe anymore. There was no time to process it: it was fight or flight.

Unfortunately, there's a more sinister side to the story of the terrifying night presence. On three or four counts I would look in the mirror after showering in the morning and notice large scratches down my back, deep enough to tear through the surface of the skin, as if three sharp nails had dug in towards the base of my neck and ran down to my lower back. I tried running my own hands over them, wondering if I had somehow scratched myself in my sleep. I could never reach the scratches fully, let alone understand how I could get my arm into such an awkward position while sleeping. In hindsight I think this should've frightened me more than it did. It's hard to process events where you can't find rational explanations, and the lack of basic rationale doesn't make it any easier to commit to calling it evidence of the supernatural. Was it related to the presence? Was there ever a presence? Did I scratch myself in my sleep? I have to live with the fact that I'll never understand what happened to me.

The Irrefutable Evidence of Something

And here we are, at the end. The last story. Well done for curbing your desire to brush off my stories as lunacy for this long. As promised, I will finish with a story that will make you question everything you think you know, as it has made me in the decade since I experienced the last three events. These events happened, they left physical evidence, and there's no rational explanation behind them. They were supernatural events - I don't like the connotations of the word paranormal - that occurred around me, and only me, and there is no scientific basis which can help me move on and leave it in the past. I'm stuck with a story I don't share with anyone out of a fear of being labeled crazy. Until now, I've only ever told my nearest family: my dad, my mom, my brother and my partner.

Supernatural, adjective: Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.

I'm still in high school and I still live in that house, but the two presences haven't shown themselves in a long time. In one occasion I had the house to myself for a weekend, and on the Friday night I was shocked by a loud bang from the living room. A picture frame fell off the wall - a picture with me in it. Okay, it's weird, but it's far from inexplicable. I texted my dad, who knew I had been experienced strange events.

"A picture frame just fell from the wall. It's intact, but it spooked me."

"That picture always does that," he replied.

I didn't tell him which picture frame had fallen, and it had never happened before in the two years I had stayed in the house - but thanks, Dad, I appreciate it. Now you're wondering if this is one of my three so-called irrefutable events; consider it a prologue.

It's 3pm and I've just come home from school. In this period it was almost random if me or my dad would come home first. I did, and I'm alone in the house. I climbed up on the attic - a small triangular space accessible via wooden wall climbing bars you'd often find in a school gym - to look for something. This was directly outside my room, and we stored everything that couldn't be out for winter in this attic space. I was searching through bags and boxes with my legs dangling over the edge when I heard a noise inside my room. I paused and looked between my legs towards the door. Thunk. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. I was hearing footsteps on the wooden floor. They started inside my room, exited the door, walked directly underneath my legs to the base of the staircase, and down. The first floor had tiles, so the sound disappear when the footsteps left the foot of the stairs. I took a moment to process what I had just witnessed, the audible experience so precise I could follow it with my eyes. I was filled with a feeling of anger, maybe because the abnormal events were starting again. I was furious. I climbed down from the attic, stampeded downstairs in a way that would make my anger obvious to anyone, and called out for it to show itself. I wouldn't have it. Enough was enough. This was my house and my personal space, and it had crossed a line with me. I searched in every room of the house, frustratedly gesturing and calling for it to reveal itself. It wanted my attention, and it had it.

A small week later, I come home from school to find myself alone in the house again. I grabbed a snack and something to drink and made my way upstairs to my room. Oops, I have math homework. I make my way downstairs again. This was in December, and in Denmark we have a traditional December/Christmas food that's a rice porridge topped with melted butter and cinnamon sugar. I love it and I had had it the day before, which means there was still a cup of cinnamon sugar on the kitchen counter. It was a small cup, wider than it was tall and with a flat base with a diameter of 4cm or 1.5in. I walk past the kitchen, enter the front entrance and rummage through my backpack for my math cheatsheet when I hear a loud bang. Instinctively I throw everything and look towards the kitchen - there's nothing. I grab my cheatsheet and enter the kitchen to investigate the noise, and my legs almost give out at the sight of cinnamon sugar strewn across the kitchen counter. The cup has somehow travelled half a meter, toppled onto its side, and strewn its contents almost perfectly over the counter. I picked up the cup that was now completely empty and tried to recreate the motion. It made no sense. How could there be a perfect trail of cinnamon sugar from the base of the cup and nearly 2 meters across the table? Any attempt at throwing the cup would leave a gap between the base of the cup and beginning of the sugar, as it fell onto the table. Never mind that, how did a flat cup topple itself? I cleaned the counter, restored the cup to an upright position and went back upstairs.

The last event was on a Saturday. I had physical education class on Fridays and I frequently came home with some kind of smaller injury. This time I spent my weekend with the middle and ring fingers on my left hand wrapped in bandage. I had two guitars, an acoustic and an electric, and I had just found a new song I wanted to learn on my electric guitar. I complained aimlessly and several times that Saturday that all I wanted to do was play my guitar. I hadn't used it for most of the week and it had stayed in the same place in that time. It was leaning against my dresser, which was close to my desk. At around 11pm, my dad and stepmom went to bed and left me with the house to myself. "Eurgh, I just want to play my guitar," I kept thinking to myself as I walked downstairs to grab a glass of water. This was the first time I had left my room since I got the house to myself that night. I opened the refrigerator to grab a pitcher when I was startled by the loud commotion coming from my room. When I came back upstairs I found my guitar lying on the floor - in front of my bed in the opposite side of the room. I put it back where it had been all week, and I tried to make it fall on its own. I jumped next to it, walked with heavy footsteps, nudged it to see if it would fall easily. It never did fall on its own.

Since moving out of that house, and later out of the country, I haven't had any esoteric experiences. Have I escaped something that followed me? Has it chosen to leave me alone? Or will it - or they - come back to haunt me later in life? I don't know.

What do you think?