Some Kind Of A Door Was Opened That Night

I moved a lot as a child, and have therefore lived in many different houses. Yet there is only one of these places that I have called 'home', where it was confirmed to me that such things as ghosts truly do exist.

My home is located in a small town in Norway named Heidal, a valley whose name directly translated into English becomes ' Godfirevalley'. Our small town has a lot of history, and quite a few old lumber houses connected to it. It's more or less like living in a museum.

In a house next to mine, on the very same land (which used to be a farm) is where my grandparents live. In my house there lived only me, my brother and my father. The last mentioned has lived there his entire life, in that same old house, and so has my grandparents.

When growing up, both of my parents as well as my grandparents always spoke openly about death. Us kids learned what dying meant from an early age. Way of life.

In a way the matter of ghosts were the same, of how the adults didn't sugar it up for us kids. It was a topic of conversation quite often, as things would keep happening every now and then. Sightings, things disappearing, voices and so forth.

Yet us kids never experienced this ourselves. We only heard what the grown-ups said. My grandmother lived in a house far more haunted than this one, when she was young, and from it she brought a few rules.

One day she told me the first rule, which I've come to live by ever since " when something scares you, always try to find a logical reason for it. A natural reason. Your imagination can be even scarier if you don't stop to question it when you're frightened. Maybe the little whisper by the window is simply the wind against the glass. "

So for the few blissful years to come where I had still not come to experience anything ghostly, but had moments where I thought I did, I would always remember that rule, and I would always go investigate to find an explanation, which I always did. Granted, if whatever it was that scared me, was too scary, I would simply go away.

But then the moment came, where that rule, who now came naturally to me before I even bothered to check whatever it was any further, was truly put to the test.

I was thirteen, and my brother had gone on a sleepover at his friends house. My father wanted to visit a friend, and after a long hour of thinking it over, he finally agreed to let me stay home, alone. The red lights at the back of his car disappeared into the dark as he drove off, and I was finally alone at home.

Personally I thought it was long overdue. I could take care of my self.

The best thing about being alone, was that I could watch whatever I wanted on tv, and stay up as late as I desired. At Least until father came home.

To explain the layout of my living room, imagine a very small hallway, and on the right of it a doorway, curved at the top, leading into the livingroom. On the left, right next to the doorway, was our oven, and on the far left of the room were three large windows. This was on the second floor.

The most important detail of this, was that on the right was a smaller portion of the livingroom where our sofa fit perfectly, and the only light in the entire livingroom, was a lamp mounted on the wall, right above my head. As it was dark outside, but darker inside, there seemed to be somewhat of a dark, blue'ish light coming in through the windows, from outside.

I was sitting there, watching Animal Planet, a show about meerkats, or suricats. The house was quiet, the doors were locked, and I was alone. I wasn't uneasy or any form of frightened, at best I had the time of my life.

Then he showed up. In the corner of my eye, I could tell that the dark, blue'ish light coming in from outside, in the middle window, was somehow blocked. Something was infront of the window.

I had yet not turned my head to look properly, because my grandmothers rule came to mind the second I noticed, and I quickly came to the conclution that the thing was merely the shadow of a jacket from the hallway. And so I continued to keep my eyes on the tv.

But yet another few seconds pass by, the shadow is still there, and I have time to think it over a little better. A shadow is not a mass thick enough to block light like that, and the curtain would've been visible.

Then there was the fact that the ceilinglight in the hallway was in the middle of the ceiling, to it's right a wall where the jackets were hung, to it's right was the doorway leading into the livingroom.

A shadow couldn't possibly stretch down from a wall with the light onto it, creep along the floor, around a corner, then stand up in mid-air an block all light. That's when I turned my eyes to take a proper look at what it was, this...thing.

It was a large shadow, yet not a shadow. It had no face, no color, just black so thick you couldn't see through it. Furthermore the edges of it was clean. So perfectly clean that I could make out a head with ears, the neck, the shoulders, the arms and the rest of the body besides the feet from the knees down.

I froze instantly. Made no sound, couldn't move. All I could, was stare at it. This figure, and it sure felt like it stared back at me.

By now, from the second I first noticed something in the corner of my eye, until the moment I froze, about a minute had passed, but it was still there, and the figure didn't move either.

More time, some ten-twenty seconds had passed, where I began wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me. At that point I decided not to look at it anymore. I still felt calm, mostly curious. Then, as I was about to turn my eyes back to the tv, it moved. In such a way I've never felt comfortable with. Short, sharp, quick movements. It tilted it's head down to the side so quick and sharp, that the sight made me instantly panic. Then it was gone and I was alone again. Just like that.

I grabbed my phone, dialed my father's number and called him. I think I wanted him to tell me that I was imagining things, but when I frantically explained to him what I had just seen, that there was a man in the living room and he just disappeared, my father never said I was wrong.

He got quiet a couple of seconds, then said very calmly," I'll come home. " As if he couldn't bring himself to tell me that I was imagining it, because he knew I hadn't. It was only then, at that precise moment when he spoke those words, that I realized I had just encountered the ghost I had heard the grown-ups talk so much about.

That was the first experience I had, but when I think about what happenings the ghost had in store for me after that night, I like to think of that moment as a door being opened.

Now I knew the ghost was real, and the ghost knew I that I knew that he was real. It is almost like he just waited for me to be alone, so that, weird as it sounds, he could 'introduce' himself without being disturbed or me running off and messing up our meeting. After all we had existed under the same roof for years, so maybe he felt like an introduction was about time.