The Specter At Your Door.

Eric Renderking Fisk  - October 31st, 2010

I was saving this topic for another time, but since I was staying up late the night before Halloween – known as “Cabbage Night” here in New England – and I don’t have a good Halloween Rant this year I figure that now’s just was as good of a time to write this as any other.

A few years ago I was lying in bed and awoke for no good reason. I laid there for a while trying to remain perfectly still. I had no idea why at the time but I felt as if I was being watched. Moving my head ever so slightly I turned to face the door and slowly opened my eyes to see what looked to me to be a figure.

Whatever it was it took up the height of the door, was darker than the night. If anything, it seemed to actually repel all the other ambient light that was filtering in from the rest of the house and other sources from the rural area where we live. The more I looked at it, the more I got the sense that it was a man or creature in the shape as such, with broad shoulders and wearing a long cloak. After a while, I could make out just the faintest hint of a grin. A wicked, haunted grin as if this entity knew something I didn’t or knew all of my secrets.

I felt that it was neither good nor bad, but there was also the sense of something not being right. 

I’m not sure why but I sat up and started to scream – “Get the hell out! In the name of Jesus Christ, get the hell out of my house!” I then bolted for the light switch and turned the over-head lamp on. Then I walked around the rest of the house, saying The Lord’s Prayer and forcing myself to remain calm.

Once back upstairs my wife asked: “You saw it, too?”

The rest of the night we keep one light on.

In the weeks that came after that, I did some investigation of my own and found out that my wife and I bought a house on a piece of land that was once a parcel that was once part of a farm. The original owners were caught up in something wicked that nobody could talk about, but ended in a murder in the house on the other side of the street and an eighth of a mile down the road. Since my wife and I have lived here, nobody to our knowledge has lived in that house for very long. People move in, they fix one aspect of it like the roof or repair the porch… and then they leave. The people who live there now are those who have lived there the longest.

Once in a while the dogs will bark at the door when there’s no one there, or chase after something unseen in that direction of the other house and just stop at that corner of our property. Some nights they will just run off in the opposite direction and my wife and I will have to go and get them. Stranger still, something will lure the dogs into the field across the street. It could be an animal or something else natural, but I suspect it isn’t.

A few weeks ago, Doug Palumbo told me over the phone about a similar situation. He and his wife were in bed together and had been woken up by a similar specter standing at the window in front of their bed; just someone or something standing there, watching.

While we were on the phone together, we searched the internet searching for other stories with the keywords “Ghost at bedroom door,” “Ghost at window,” or some variation of that. We found a lot of similar stories. It’s a phenomenon that a lot of other people are familiar with; many other people have posted their version with the same questions – who or what is it? Is it a figment of our imagination with a scientific explanation, or is there truly a spirit from beyond the nether realm that watches us when we are most vulnerable? Since my wife and I saw it at the same time, I think you know my answer.