WWII Shipyard Worker?

For ten years I rented a tiny home in a neighborhood built to house workers of industrial shipyards. These houses pretty much all look alike. From my living room a double window looks out exactly over the cement porch steps. At some point I became aware, in certain afternoon light, of someone "coming home" up to the steps. It was like catching a couple frames out of place when you screen a reel of film, and the out-of-place frames showed "someone" coming up, or up to, the empty daylight steps. With no sound to draw my gaze, I would look up to the window just in time to see the slight passing profile of someone arriving. At first, I would hop up to go look, but I did not after a while. I saw this a few times a year. My dogs never reacted even a blink or snork to these "sightings" of mine. What I saw was not frightening to me, just confusing.

I did ask my landlady if she had seen anything like that. She said no, but did not discount my question, or have any further explanation. My landlady's father had inherited her the house, she lived there when attending college. My few housemates were mostly too emotionally unstable to ask about this type of thing, as I did not want to scare them and their rent away. Maybe that is how the landlady felt about me-HA!

Even if I was staring straight out the window, whenever I saw this "person" arrive it was like seeing peripherally. Like a slant of light in a reflection, but with form and purpose. That sounds a bit odd. Oh well, I am just trying to best describe what I saw. I "saw" this head/shoulders in fleeting profile, as a brief glimpse, from different angles and distances. Usually when sitting, most often in summer. I felt it was someone "coming home" because their posture had that feeling of routine labour. When I'd look up, it almost felt like I was expecting them. I cannot say that I saw anyone or anything specific, but after a while I knew it seemed masculine and maybe wore a hat of some sort. None of the dogs ever once alerted to what I saw, or acted as if a person were there at all. This may have been the strangest part of what happened, and why I was quick to search for whoever had managed to sneak up, at first.

I believe YGS is the best place to mention this experience, as you readers are so helpful to compare and analyze even mundane occurrences such as this. My questions about these events are for those who have "seen" a spirit before, and of the actual optical function of their sighting: was the spirit A) present before their eyes or B) seen in their mind but "projected" in the space? Does it ever look like a reflection or angle of light, but where none can be? Could "seeing" one spirit happen different ways, differently in seasonal light changes? I felt, more than saw, that it was a man coming home after work, but I know I saw somebody coming up when no one was "really there" to physically see.

I get why people lose their minds trying to reason this stuff out. How can one find explanations for something so difficult to describe? Why did my brain notice these repeated incidents? I do not feel that I can say I have seen a ghost, because it was more like seeing a reflection or feeling- repeatedly triggered by catching a certain movement in my field of sight. Maybe my curiosity also sounds odd.

Prior to the WWII era development, that land and woods had been taken as property by an Officer (Harney?) from nearby Fort Vancouver. I am unsure where any of that officer's buildings stood. A massive white Oak in the backyard adjoining mine would have been eighty or so at the time. The house and lot where I lived got sold to the bank, so who knows if any of it still stands.

I lived alone mostly. My two big dogs kept me safe. Boxers have a deep serious tone to their bark which let's me know immediately if there is a stranger. They would jump up with their front paws on that front window sill, and make great sport of those cheeky enough to visit our quiet street. If anyone stopped by, the neighbors' poodle would help with the game, yipping from behind a fence while my dogs waited until the person was right outside. Boxers live for games like this, and never missed an opportunity to bark and claw at a visitor's head through the window.