Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...
--from 'Antigonish' by Hughes Mearns
While visiting an historic Ohio River city on a Victorian Society architectural tour, I visited an art historian who worked for a museum there. She told me this story that she heard from the night security guard at the mansion, who related it to the administrators as it unfolded.
A daytime visitor to the 1840's Greek Revival house would probably find nothing spooky about it--a sunny, spacious house with broad hallways and open staircases. The night watchman, however, knows a different house. His story begins several weeks after he started working there.
The museum, which houses artifacts and objets d'art worth millions of dollars, is guarded by an electronic alarm system. In addition, sensitive microphones are placed in every room to pick up sounds of an intruder during the hours that the museum is closed. From a room in the basement, the night guard listens to the sounds received by the microphones. During training he was given instructions that if he heard anything suspicious, he was not to investigate on his own, but immediately to call the police.
For a while the nights passed uneventfully for the guard. Then, one night he heard the sound of footsteps from the microphones in the second floor hallway. He listened carefully. Yes, someone definitely was walking around up there. Had someone broken into the building, somehow bypassing the alarm system? The watchman pressed the red button that automatically summoned the police.
In a matter of minutes, spotlights flooded the building and grounds; squad cars drove up and screeched to a halt outside the building. Weapons in hand, the police charged into the house. . . and found no one. The guard was flabbergasted. He had heard footsteps; he was certain.
He took the police officers to the guard station and played back that night's recording of the sounds the microphones had picked up. Sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps, clear and distinct, from the hallway. The police were as nonplussed as the guard.. They conducted a second search of the museum complex and grounds, but found no trace of an intruder. The police unit drove off, leaving the embarrassed guard to puzzle over the mysterious sound of footfalls.
Several more weeks passed uneventfully. This time, sensors picked up a sound in a third floor storage area, the sound of a baby crying. The watchman couldn't believe his ears. How could a baby get up there? Why would a baby be up there?
Since the crying was coming from a part of the house where no valuable objects were kept, the guard decided to check it out for himself. He went up to the third floor and stealthily approached the door to the storage area. Gun drawn, the guard carefully unlocked the door, threw it open, and switched on the lights. Nothing. Silence. Dead still. He searched the area, but found nothing--no baby, no animal, no living thing.
A few weeks later, another incident occurred. Again, the sound of someone walking in the second floor hallway came from the microphones. This time the guard chose not to call the police. No exterior alarm had sounded, and the guard did not want to turn in another false alarm.
Quietly, he made his way from the basement, into the house, and up the main staircase to the hallway where he had heard footsteps. Holding his breath, he stopped at the top of the staircase and listened. All was quiet. He turned and began creeping slowly down the long, pitch-black hallway. He had gotten halfway down the hallway when he suddenly heard footsteps coming towards him. He froze. At that instant, to his horror, he felt someone brush past him, gently rubbing against his right arm. Whipping out his gun with one hand and turning on his flashlight with the other, he whirled around to face the intruder. But the beam of light fell on a deserted hallway. He was stunned, knowing it would have been impossible for someone to have gotten all the way to the staircase in the instant it took him to switch on the flashlight.
Heart pounding, the guard hastily turned on the lights and searched the area. All was in order. Shaken, but nevertheless glad that he did not call the police that time, the guard reluctantly concluded that he was dealing with something paranormal.
After that incident, the guard heard the baby crying several times, and sometimes even the sounds of children playing in that attic room, which, he learned, had been a playroom for the family that built the house many decades before.
The ghostly footsteps have not sounded again. The young guard was left with the dilemma of trying to decide which is more terrifying to him alone all night in the dark, silent mansion--an intruder that is there or an intruder that isn't.
Note: It's been many years since the guard had these experiences in the house. The woman who related these stories swore me to secrecy regarding the exact location of the house, for an obvious reason: The story offers an opportunity for a real, live thief to get in and make off with some priceless work of art.
But today, the house has a sophisticated security system that monitors not only sounds, but includes a video IP system, touch detection, and intrusion alarms. Night guards don't have to physically check out parts of the house in order to know what's going on.
The fascinating part of this story is the unseen person making physical contact with the guard. Many people have heard ghostly footsteps, as I have myself, but very few have actually bumped into a ghost walking down a dark hallway.
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