This isn’t my normal blog, so forgive any typos or grammatical errors. I don’t have time to edit. This is just a place to tell you a quick little story. A ghost story. A real ghost story.

I had to share this one with you. This true story was just too weird to keep to myself.

We live in a beautiful, historic house and I love it. Love it! It’s got character and more than a few strange quirks…like doors that don’t stay shut, blinds that flutter for no reason and lights that come on downstairs after we go to bed knowing we turned off all the lights. Yeah, we have said it is probably old wiring, uneven hinges on doors and drafts. Yep. That explains it. Uh huh.

Gerald, the boys and I are night owls. Last night we stayed up until about 1:00 am watching a movie together. It’s not unusual for all of us to go to bed at this hour. Although we stay up late, usually when our heads hit the pillows we are out. It’s always been like that. Even when the kids were little and I’d put them to bed, they’d conk out at the drop of a hat.

Although I don’t require a lot of sleep, I usually fall asleep very fast myself.

We’d been in bed about two hours when Gerald (who sleeps like a log and God help us if ever there is an intruder as he’d probably sleep through the whole thing) bolted upright in bed and woke me from a dead-sleep. Now, I’m a very light sleeper. If the kids get up to use the bathroom, it wakes me up. If the dog starts chewing a bone in her crate, it wakes me up. If Gerald gets up to get a drink of water, it wakes me up. Trust me. I hear everything. When something wakes me up, I am completely and immediately awake and alert.

So, anyway, last night Gerald suddenly bolts upright and says, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” I immediately think one of the kids must’ve come into the room and I instantly go into mommy-mode. I think, “Someone must be ill.” So, now I am completely wide awake. But, before I can move, Gerald says even more emphatically, “Who’s there?!” At this point, I realize our bedroom door is still closed and locked. It’s definitely not one of the kids. It’s dark except for the clock on my iPod player. Before I can question him, hubby very loudly says, “What the hell?!?”

“Gerald! What’s wrong?”

“Someone was here.”

“No one was here.”

“Yes, there was! Didn’t you hear that?”

“No. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

“I am not dreaming. Someone was just…walking around in here. Walked in front of the bed a couple of times. You didn’t hear footsteps?”

“What? No. You’re dreaming. I would’ve heard footsteps. I hear everything.”

“I was not dreaming. Someone was here. Someone walked back and forth in front of the bed. Maybe one of the kids?”

He turns on the light and looks over at the door–which is still locked. About now he realizes how weird everything just became. “Umm…I…guess…maybe I was dreaming.”

At this point, I’m freaked out, but I convince myself if there was any noise whatsoever, I would’ve heard it. He had to have been dreaming.

Eventually we went back to sleep.

An hour later, it’s my turn. I jump up; a jolt of adrenaline shocking my system like lightning. “What the hell was that?”

Gerald sits up next to me. I’m not sure he’s all the way awake. He groggily says, “What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t you hear that? Something just shattered.”

He switches on the light again and we look around the room. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing had moved or fallen. Door is still closed and locked.

“I didn’t hear anything, Kristine. Now you were dreaming.”

“How could you not hear that? Something shattered in this room.”

My poor hubby realizes I’m not going to go back to sleep until he checks things out and looks in on the boys. (Yes, I realize they are 18 and 21, but that mother instinct never goes away.)

Afterward, he comes back and climbs into bed. “Everything is fine, Kristine. You’re just scaring yourself.”

“No, I’m not. I heard it. I swear. It was real.”

“You had to be dreaming. Let’s just go back to sleep.”

“Okay. Fine.” He’s half-convinced me that I dreamt the noise. Shoot, I sometimes sleepwalk, so hearing phantom noises isn’t too far-fetched.

Except—

This morning after my shower, I sat down at the vanity in my bedroom to put on my make-up. The one-inch-thick custom-made glass that covers the antique vanity table has been broken. Not just cracked —half of it has been shattered into several pieces. If any of you have had those glass protectors made for your furniture, you know they are extremely thick and durable. This thing has made it through four moves without a scratch. Gerald had already left to work when I discovered this and I needed to hurry out the door myself, so I didn’t have time to call and tell him.

After he got home from work this evening, I asked him, “So…still think you heard someone walking in front of our bed?”

My amazing, fearless warrior, super-confident, brave, not-afraid-of-that-kind-of-thing, doesn’t-believe-in-any-of-that-stuff, husband mumbles, “Well…I heard something.”

“Yeah? Like what? Still think it sounded like someone walking in our room?”

He won’t even make eye contact with me. He just shakes his head indicating he doesn’t want to talk about it. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. So, naturally, I keep talking about it.

“Well, take a look at the vanity.”

He stares at it, wrinkling his brow, scratching his head.

I smile smugly. “I told you I heard something shatter.”

All he can mutter is, “Wow.” And then he says, “Is it under the vent or something? Got too cold? Too hot?”

“Yeah, right. A mighty blast of a heater set at 69 degrees can do that kind of damage. Admit it. That’s some scary stuff right there.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “Probably had a chip in it we didn’t notice. House settled…”

“You know as well as I do, there was no chip in that glass yesterday.”

We still do not have any explanation for the events that transpired last night.

So, now it’s 11:00 and my he-man says, “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. You ready for bed?”

I had been editing a long overdue manuscript, so I said, “Let me finish this chapter and I’ll be right up.”

“Umm, you sure you don’t want to go now? Aren’t you tired?”

He never likes to go to sleep alone, but I got the impression that he wasn’t all that keen on going to bed by himself tonight.

Below is a picture of the vanity top. If you can explain how this happened in the middle of the night, I’d like to hear it. I’m sure he’d like to hear it, too. Right now, I hear the TV on upstairs. Guess he’s still waiting for me to go to bed. Or he’s afraid of that killer vent.