Blast from the Past

Lynn, a Minneapolis real estate agent, related this story about a friend who works in a local hospital. One day when she was visiting the hospital, she saw her friend Paul sitting in the cafeteria with three co-workers, his left arm in a cast and sling. When she joined them, she inquired about his injury. He explained that he'd slipped and broken his arm. The conversation then turned to other topics.

Ten minutes later, however, after the other people had left the table, Paul brought up the subject of his broken arm. "Lynn," he said in a low voice, "I didn't slip on the floor. But what did happen is so bizarre, I can hardly believe it myself. You're an open-minded person, unlike some of my medical colleagues--and I've got to tell you how I really broke my arm."

Paul went on to say that the month before, he and his wife had bought a business from the estate of an eccentric old antiquarian. For a couple of weeks he had gone over to the shop, trying to complete inventory and sort through the former owner's papers. These papers, however, were in such a state of disarray that he decided to pack them into an old wooden box and bring them to his house, where he could go through them at his leisure. He brought the heavy box home and lugged it up to his study on the second floor.

He lived in a spacious bungalow with his wife and two teen-aged children. The kids slept on the second floor, and the parents slept in the master bedroom at the back of the ground floor in a hallway off the dining room--a layout common to Craftsman bungalows.

The night that he had carried the box home, Paul and his wife were asleep in their downstairs bedroom when they were awakened by the sound of someone stirring overhead in the study. Their first thought was that one of the kids had gotten up to go to the bathroom, but no, they heard the sound of footsteps coming down the upstairs hallway from the study. The tread was heavy and decisive, like that of a man's boots.

As the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, Paul and his wife sat up in bed, staring wide-eyed at each other, then toward the sound. Down the stairs the boots came, deliberately and (they felt) menacingly. No burglar could be stomping like that, Paul thought. The footfalls sounded angry.

To their horror, the steps kept coming toward their bedroom--through the dining room and down the short hallway. The couple sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the covers in terror. The footsteps reached the closed door. In the dim glow of a nightlight, they saw the doorknob turning. 

 

Then, wham! the door flew open, banging against the wall. A flood of frigid air burst into the room. At the same time, husband and wife both leaped out of bed, he to the left, she to the right. As Paul sprang up, however, he lost his balance and fell heavily against a chest of drawers.

At this point the teenagers came racing downstairs, for they, too, had heard the footsteps. To the family's relief, after the burst of cold air, all went quiet. Paul's wife drove him to the emergency room to treat his broken arm. Not eager to face skepticism and possible ridicule from his colleagues, he decided to make up the story about slipping on the floor.

In the morning Paul and his wife dragged the box with the old man's papers back to the shop. And thereafter they slept in peace.