This incident occurred in 2004, two days before Christmas. My daughter (aged 12) came to visit and noticed that I still had not delivered my Christmas cards. She was laughing and joking stating that my neighbours would give me wrong for leaving it so late and I was saying, "Only if they catch us delivering them!"
It was a cold miserable night and the melting snow was making conditions very slippery so we walked slowly and carefully, which gave my daughter the impression that we were sneaking into peoples' yards (much to her hilarity).
At yard number 3, I could see my neighbour through his living room window, sitting in his chair. My daughter was struggling to keep her laugh in as we crept down his yard. I lifted his letterbox flap without making a sound as my daughter rested her chin on the windowsill, watching in hope that he would discover us. We didn't even turn around to exit the yard, just walked backwards whilst watching intently in case we got discovered.
We had completed most of our deliveries when I bumped into a friend and she asked what we were doing out so late. She said not to deliver a card to number 3 because JW (name withheld) had died last night. Both my daughter and I informed my friend that we had just seen the gentleman in question so her information was wrong. To our horror, another neighbour confirmed that the gentleman had indeed died and this put doubts into what we saw earlier that evening.
My daughter was not frightened, but was desperate to return to the gentleman's house for another look. When we got there later that evening, the light was still on in the living room, but the chair and house were deserted. My daughter and I questioned each other over the night's events but, as we both had known the gentleman for many years, we satisfied ourselves that it was him that we had seen.
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