My story starts off at my friend's house, in her basement. Her basement was not like your typical damp and dingy cellar. Her mom had actually fixed it up to look like an apartment; it had a full living room, bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom. The bedroom was pretty basic: couches, a TV, dresser, and bed. I remember sitting in there watching TV, waiting for my friend to come downstairs with some midnight snacks. Something caught my eye. It was in the wall: the shadowy figure of a man in a hat. Although this figure was alarming to me, I didn't feel threatened. He didn't seem to move quickly; in fact, he barley moved at all. At first, I thought that the image might be a shadow from something behind me, but to my astonishment, there seemed to be nothing. I began to look frantically throughout her room, looking for anything that might be casting such a strange thing, but everywhere I looked, I found nothing. I realized that the only light source was coming from the TV, but it wasn't even pointing in a direction that would cast a shadow. Once I realized that I might actually be seeing a ghost, I started getting scared. It was about that time that my friend returned with the snacks. I immediately wanted to scream, but something told me to keep my eye on this strange phenomenon. As I waited for my friend to enter the room, I watched its every move. When my friend opened the door, the figure ran across the wall toward the door and vanished. The trash lid began to flip rapidly, even though neither of us had touched it. A few days later, another strange incident occurred. We were upstairs, in the living room, when her mother came in with a ghastly look on her face. She said that she had been at the neighbors, and they told her of an encounter in their bedroom with a man in a hat. Her mother saw the look that passed between my friend and I and forced us to spill the beans. We tried to explain our encounter as best we could, but to this day, I still cannot fully understand what we saw.

Jenn, OH