Who's That Creeping through my Window?

 In the early months of ghost story collecting, I was having lunch with friends at Tuthill's on Hennepin Avenue in the Wedge. I told a couple of the stories I'd heard recently, then said facetiously, "Of course, there's no such thing as ghosts." 

To my surprise, I heard someone at the table behind me say, "But there are!" I turned to see Larry, the local mailman, eating alone on his lunch break. I asked him how he knew. "Because of my experiences at my new house," he said somewhat defensively.

As is common with ghost story tellers, he started with some background to show that he was indeed a reliable witness: He was a Minneapolis native, a member of the choir at a Lutheran Church, and he had served the community as a letter carrier for over a decade. About a year previous, he had bought a small one-story 1950's house in an inner ring suburb. 

When he moved in, Larry decided to place his bed right up against the window in his bedroom. That night, shortly after midnight, he was awakened by the sensation of something pressing down on his chest. Terrified, he opened his eyes, but saw only a dark mist hovering over him. The pressure increased. He was immobilized, struggling to breathe. As he felt he was about to pass out, the weight suddenly lifted. Gasping for air, Larry tumbled out of bed. 

He turned on the lights. Nobody was in the room. It was summer, and the window was open, with the screen intact. He went back to bed and slept the rest of the night undisturbed. However, the next night the same thing occurred. Larry was very puzzled, but decided that the easiest fix was to move the bed, which he pushed around against the opposite wall. That night he stayed up, lying in bed, waiting to see what would happen. Then, around midnight, Larry saw a dark, filmy shape climb through the window, start across to the door, and then vanish.

As long as the shadow man didn't bother him, Larry decided he could live with him climbing through the window. And so it went for some weeks. But when Larry told the story to his cousin, the cousin scoffed. He declared he was going to push the bed up against the window and prove that Larry was imagining this nocturnal visitor. 

But instead, the cousin had the same experience as Larry: He felt a huge weight on his chest, he couldn't breathe, and he saw a dark mist on top of him. As before, the weight lifted after several moments. 

The cousin became a reluctant believer. He pushed the bed back into place against the inside wall, and Larry had been sleeping in it undisturbed ever since then. Larry had no idea who the nightly visitor was or why he was climbing into that window. But he was certain that ghosts do exist.