The Man in the Attic

Witness: Dan
Location: Circleville, Ohio
Date of Encounter: 1981

My father died of cancer when I was 12 years old. We lived on the 200 block of Union Street in Circleville, Ohio. On the night of his funeral service I had stayed home by myself while my mother went to my older sister's house with my younger brother. I was staying up late (about 12:30 A.M.) watching a Godzilla movie on TV, when the TV shut of for no apparent reason. At this exact moment, I also heard two noises that I knew well. One was the squeak of my father's wheelchair and the other was him coughing. Now being 12 years old, this naturally scared the bejesus out of me. I ran out of that house as fast as I could, and down the street to a teacher's house who lived about 3 houses down. He came up to my house and searched it from top to bottom. He found nothing. The wheelchair was still on the back porch were it had been put when my father was admitted to the hospital. That teacher stayed with me until my sister could come and get me at 1:30 A.M. He was able to calm me down and explained that if my father really was in the house, he was not there to harm me. But I was still scared all the same.

Other strange occurrences happened at this house also after my dad's death. My nephew was the apple of my fathers eye because he was his first grandchild. The little boy would often tell us about the "man upstairs" who came out of the attic to play with him. This also freaked me out because there was only one room upstairs at the Union Street house and it happened to be my bedroom. One day my mom needed to run to the store and both my brother and I were going with her. My nephew, who was about 4 at the time, refused to go with us. My mom told him we were leaving and walked out the front door. The front door had a deadbolt which was about 4 1/2 feet off the floor. It automatically locked as we left. We walked out to the car acting like we were going to leave my nephew, when he appeared on the front porch. When my mom asked him how he got out of the house. He told us the man from upstairs came out of the attic, came downstairs, and unlocked the door! I was really freaked out about this and refused to go back in the house for quite a long time.

My mom said my dad told her that he knew he was going to die. He told her he would sit on the mantle over the fireplace and watch over us. I haven't had any more experiences like this since I was 12/13 years old, although I have had the occasional "dream" where my father visits me just to talk. I am now 38 years old and still get a little emotional thinking about these happenings.