It was a dark and stormy night. Isn’t that how ghost stories are supposed to begin? Actually, it wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was a beautiful, bright, and sunny day during summer vacation. I was home alone as my mom was at work, and my best frenemy had just left to spend the week at her dad’s house.
We lived in an apartment adjacent to an HVAC company outside of town. With no one to ride bikes with me, I was spending this glorious summer day in my room and bored out of my mind. Being that our apartment was haunted, I was rather unnerved to be home alone. At least it wasn’t nighttime!
You see, although the apartment shared a building with an HVAC company, there was something otherworldly about the space. Through the night, when all the workers had gone home, it was quite normal to hear knocking throughout the empty building, and on more than a few occasions, shadow figures were glimpsed by both family and friends gliding through our home.
One night, a neighbor lady came over because her car battery was dead. She and my mom both went outside to deal with the issue successfully, I might add. As we stood outside in the parking lot chatting, the headlights of her car turned on. She went to the car to turn them off only to find that the switch was already off! She had to turn it to the on position and then back to the off position. This was the only time such an event had happened to her car.
But back to my story. It was a bright and sunny day. I was home alone and bored hanging out in my bedroom. I decided to play a board game against myself and laid everything out on my bedroom floor in front of the closet. My closet had sliding doors with slats at the top so the closet light could shine out. Naturally, although it was broad daylight, I had my closet light turned on. How else is a kid expected to keep the monsters away?
I was well into my game when the orbs began to fly. I often saw them shooting out of the closet while I lay awake in bed at night. They would zip straight through my bedroom and disappear through the opposite wall. My mom’s bedroom was on the other side of the wall, but she never ever saw any orbs. They looked like small balls of white light, except on this day, because I was sitting directly in the path of the orbs, I saw that wasn’t the case.
They began to zip inches before my eyes on their normal trajectory, and I saw their true color. They were not white but a swirling vortex of grey, blue, and pearlescent shine. Really, they were beautiful! Since I was so used to them already, I simply marveled at their beauty. But then, the knocking began.
The workers had all gone off to lunch, and I was well and truly alone in the building. Who could be knocking? The rapping came from the other side of the wall where the orbs had disappeared! My heart began to race. The knocking wouldn’t stop. Was there a killer in the house? I gathered my courage and creeped out of my bedroom. Hugging the wall, I slowly inched my way toward my mom’s bedroom. My heart was hammering in my ears, and I prayed I wouldn’t pass out.
Coming to the door of my mother’s room, I took a deep breath and placed myself fully in the doorway. There, hovering in the air, not five feet away from me, was a head! I suppose it was where a head should rest, except it didn’t have a body, and I could see through the head! It was the head of a man with dark hair parted in the middle and slicked down. He looked at me and smiled. The floating head smiled at me!
I gasped and ran out the front door into the bright sunlight. I ran halfway down the street toward the home of my frenemy before I remembered that no one was home. I stood there in the sunshine and warmth, thinking of what to do. I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually, I realized that back home with the floating head was the only place I could go.
Resolved to hide in my bedroom for the rest of the day, I slowly returned home. I tip-toed inside cautiously, listening as I made my way to my mom’s room.
Peeking inside, I was relieved to see that the head was gone. I quickly searched the room just to be sure I hadn’t been the victim of a trick. Satisfied that the head was gone and no one had been playing tricks, I returned to my room, closing my mom’s bedroom door behind me as I left.
I never saw that head again, although I did experience the other usual paranormal events while living in that apartment. It was something that I never could forget, though, and all these years later, the floating head still haunts me. I do have to wonder how it knocked as it didn’t have a body. Maybe his body just hadn’t been visible?
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