Since®1996

    This story was told to me by my mother many years after it occurred, as I was too young at the time to remember.  I have no personal memory of these events.

        This strange series of events took place when I was very young- too young to be in pre-school, as I was home in the daytime with my mother, and prior to my younger sister being born. So, I would have been about 2 years old (1977).  We lived in a basic 3 bedroom home in a brand new suburban housing tract in Northern California.  My mother was not working at the time and stayed at home to take care of me.  My father worked a graveyard shift and slept during the day.  In the mornings, my mom and I would watch cartoons in the den, while my dad slept.  In our house, the den was connected to the dining room and from the dining room there was a hallway leading back to the bedrooms, with the master bedroom being the last door off the hallway.

        It was a Monday morning.  My father would get home from work around 7 a.m. and go straight to bed.  As per the usual, my mom was taking care of me in the den while we watched cartoons.  At this point, my father had been asleep for a couple hours.

        As my mother tells it, she distinctly heard the sound of the bedroom doorknob turn, the door open, and footsteps walk down the hallway and then abruptly stop right before entering the dining room.  My mother turned around, expecting to see my father, but there was nobody there.  She got up, walked down the hallway, opened the bedroom door and there was my dad, in bed, fast asleep.  Strange, but my mom figured she was just hearing things.  According to her, I had not noticed the sounds at all.

        The next morning, around the same time, the same thing happened again.  My mother and I were in the den watching cartoons, my dad was asleep in the bedroom.  Again, she heard the bedroom doorknob turn, the door open and footsteps walk down the hall to the dining room and then stop.  Again, there was nobody there.  As before, my mother went to check on my dad and again, there he was, fast asleep in bed.  I apparently did not hear any of this.

        At this point, my mom started to become unnerved, but didn't mention any of this to my father.  The next morning, the sounds repeated again.  As my mother and I were in the den watching cartoons, she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, the door opening and footsteps walk down the hallway and stop at the entrance to the dining room.  Nobody was there.  Upon inspection, my dad was fast asleep in bed.  My mother decided to wake him this time and ask if he had gotten out of bed, to which he groggily replied "No."  Clearly he had been asleep the whole time.  After 3 days of these unexplained sounds, my mother began to feel like she was losing her mind.

        Thursday morning was no different.  Around the same time, while my mom and I were in the den watching television, again came the sound of the bedroom doorknob turning, the door opening and footsteps proceeding down the hallway, only to stop before entering the dining room.  Again, nobody was there and my dad was in bed, sleeping.  Now my mother was becoming really upset, convinced that she was going crazy, but didn't say anything to my father, fearing that he would make a joke about it.

        Friday morning came and again, my mother and I were in the den watching cartoons.  My mother was nervous, anticipating a repeat of the same unexplained sounds.  Sure enough, again she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, the door opening and footsteps walking down the hallway.  This time however, I responded to the sounds, exclaiming, "Daddy's up!"  Of course, daddy was not up, daddy was fast asleep in bed, just as he had been every morning that week.

        After that Friday morning, the sounds never occurred again.  Although the sounds remained unexplained, my mother found relief in the fact that I had also heard the same sounds, reassuring her that she was not going crazy.

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