Putting Up A Good Fright
The Silver Man - Part 2
The Silver Man followed me home and became a frequent visitor.
My memories of his visitations aren’t as vivid as the first time I saw him, which left an indelible impression on me. Seeing him ceased to terrify me because all he seemed to want to do was look at me. I would see him at night, after being put to bed. He’d peek around the corner, through my bedroom door, and look in at me as I lay in bed. Or sometimes he’d peer out at me from the closet, if I left the closet door open.
He looked the same as before, with shimmering features that reminded me of the reflections of moonlight on ripples of water. But now I could see how tall he was. He was well over six feet tall, and very thin. And when he appeared, he just looked at me. Watched me.
I always yelled for my mom when I saw him, though it became less out of fright and more out of a desire for her to see him too. But when I called her, he always quickly retreated into whatever dark folds of space or time he’d come out of. She never saw him.
When my mom became pregnant with my little brother, my bedroom was moved to the basement of our house. My old room became my brother’s nursery. And as he got older, he kept it as his bedroom. We never talked about the Silver Man, and had all but forgotten him until one day at the dinner table my little brother, who was six or seven years old by now, said something that gave us chills.
My mom was dishing out the mashed potatoes when out of the blue my brother said, “Every night when I go to bed, I have to get up and shut the closet door because there’s a shiny man in there looking at me.”
My mom dropped the spoon into the bowl of potatoes. I looked at her, and she was looking at me. I had goosebumps. I said, “Do you remember…?”
“Yes,” she replied quickly, and that was it. We didn’t say anything more about it. I don’t know if we didn’t want to scare my little brother, who didn’t seem too freaked out by it, but we just didn’t say anything more beyond that.
Just a week or two later, a neighbor girl knocked on our door asking if my brother could come out and play. I hollered at my brother, and while we stood waiting she asked, “Who is that man in your garage?”
“What man?”
“There’s a tall white man standing on a ladder in your garage, reaching up into the attic.”
“Show me,” I told her, and we walked around the front of the house to the garage. The garage door was open. In the middle of the floor was a ladder, directly beneath a hole in the ceiling that led into the attic. Through the hole, several boxes were visible. These boxes held items we’d salvaged from my great-grandfather’s farmhouse in Cameron when he died.
There was nobody around. “He was standing there on the ladder,” she said.
I asked her what he looked like, and she described a tall, thin man with white hair and a beard, wearing bib overalls. I showed her a photograph my dad had taken of my great grandfather and she immediately said, “Yes, that’s him!” She had no way of knowing he had died several years earlier.
From that day, the shimmering watcher - who may or may not have been the ghost of my great-grandfather - disappeared from our lives and faded into memory. I don’t know what became of the Silver Man. Perhaps he finally moved on. Or maybe he returned to Cameron, and continues to watch from the woods on the banks of Prairie Creek.
Haunted San Francisco
San Francisco is said to be full of ghosts. Given its history, this isn't surprising. But for as long as I've lived here (nearly ten years), I haven't had any unexplainable experiences. Well, actually, there was one.
I live in a rail flat, which is an apartment floorplan very common in San Francisco. It was built in the early years after the 1906 earthquake, before electricity. Added later, all the electrical wiring is on the outside of the walls. The rooms are laid end to end like boxcars on a train, with a bay window in each room. A long hallway runs all along the entire right side of my flat, the "rail" connecting all the rooms. My hallway is half a city block long.
My front room is the living room, and there's a "pocket" door that opens up into the second room, which I use as my music studio and office. Being an old building with no insulation, you can usually hear traffic going by, people in the stairwell, and the noisy neighbors upstairs who seem to enjoy dropping bocce balls onto the wood floors. But one night I was standing in the studio and it was unusually quiet for a change.
I heard a voice say, "Hi!" followed by a chuckle. It wasn't out in the stairwell, or upstairs. It was right next to my ear. I even thought I felt breath on my neck. I turned my head, but of course there was nothing there. I was standing alone, and everything fell silent once again.
I looked down at Sherman, the cat who lives with me. He was sitting in the doorway between the two rooms, looking up, with his eyes wide open and his ears perked. But he wasn't looking up at me, he was looking just a foot to the right of my head, gazing at the exact spot where I'd just heard the voice. I don't know if he could see anything there, but he definitely had heard the same thing I had - coming from the same source. It was weird - and he obviously thought so too!
Haunted Places
Here are some web sites with details of haunted places in Nebraska and San Francisco.
Haunted Nebraska
Shadowland's Haunted Places Index: Nebraska
Ghost Towns of Nebraska
San Francisco's Most Haunted
Bay Area Haunts from Haunted Bay.
The next time you're in the City by the Bay, consider a haunted walking tour! San Francisco Ghost Hunt!
The Silver Man followed me home and became a frequent visitor.
My memories of his visitations aren’t as vivid as the first time I saw him, which left an indelible impression on me. Seeing him ceased to terrify me because all he seemed to want to do was look at me. I would see him at night, after being put to bed. He’d peek around the corner, through my bedroom door, and look in at me as I lay in bed. Or sometimes he’d peer out at me from the closet, if I left the closet door open.
He looked the same as before, with shimmering features that reminded me of the reflections of moonlight on ripples of water. But now I could see how tall he was. He was well over six feet tall, and very thin. And when he appeared, he just looked at me. Watched me.
I always yelled for my mom when I saw him, though it became less out of fright and more out of a desire for her to see him too. But when I called her, he always quickly retreated into whatever dark folds of space or time he’d come out of. She never saw him.
When my mom became pregnant with my little brother, my bedroom was moved to the basement of our house. My old room became my brother’s nursery. And as he got older, he kept it as his bedroom. We never talked about the Silver Man, and had all but forgotten him until one day at the dinner table my little brother, who was six or seven years old by now, said something that gave us chills.
My mom was dishing out the mashed potatoes when out of the blue my brother said, “Every night when I go to bed, I have to get up and shut the closet door because there’s a shiny man in there looking at me.”
My mom dropped the spoon into the bowl of potatoes. I looked at her, and she was looking at me. I had goosebumps. I said, “Do you remember…?”
“Yes,” she replied quickly, and that was it. We didn’t say anything more about it. I don’t know if we didn’t want to scare my little brother, who didn’t seem too freaked out by it, but we just didn’t say anything more beyond that.
Just a week or two later, a neighbor girl knocked on our door asking if my brother could come out and play. I hollered at my brother, and while we stood waiting she asked, “Who is that man in your garage?”
“What man?”
“There’s a tall white man standing on a ladder in your garage, reaching up into the attic.”
“Show me,” I told her, and we walked around the front of the house to the garage. The garage door was open. In the middle of the floor was a ladder, directly beneath a hole in the ceiling that led into the attic. Through the hole, several boxes were visible. These boxes held items we’d salvaged from my great-grandfather’s farmhouse in Cameron when he died.
There was nobody around. “He was standing there on the ladder,” she said.
I asked her what he looked like, and she described a tall, thin man with white hair and a beard, wearing bib overalls. I showed her a photograph my dad had taken of my great grandfather and she immediately said, “Yes, that’s him!” She had no way of knowing he had died several years earlier.
From that day, the shimmering watcher - who may or may not have been the ghost of my great-grandfather - disappeared from our lives and faded into memory. I don’t know what became of the Silver Man. Perhaps he finally moved on. Or maybe he returned to Cameron, and continues to watch from the woods on the banks of Prairie Creek.
Haunted San Francisco
San Francisco is said to be full of ghosts. Given its history, this isn't surprising. But for as long as I've lived here (nearly ten years), I haven't had any unexplainable experiences. Well, actually, there was one.
I live in a rail flat, which is an apartment floorplan very common in San Francisco. It was built in the early years after the 1906 earthquake, before electricity. Added later, all the electrical wiring is on the outside of the walls. The rooms are laid end to end like boxcars on a train, with a bay window in each room. A long hallway runs all along the entire right side of my flat, the "rail" connecting all the rooms. My hallway is half a city block long.
My front room is the living room, and there's a "pocket" door that opens up into the second room, which I use as my music studio and office. Being an old building with no insulation, you can usually hear traffic going by, people in the stairwell, and the noisy neighbors upstairs who seem to enjoy dropping bocce balls onto the wood floors. But one night I was standing in the studio and it was unusually quiet for a change.
I heard a voice say, "Hi!" followed by a chuckle. It wasn't out in the stairwell, or upstairs. It was right next to my ear. I even thought I felt breath on my neck. I turned my head, but of course there was nothing there. I was standing alone, and everything fell silent once again.
I looked down at Sherman, the cat who lives with me. He was sitting in the doorway between the two rooms, looking up, with his eyes wide open and his ears perked. But he wasn't looking up at me, he was looking just a foot to the right of my head, gazing at the exact spot where I'd just heard the voice. I don't know if he could see anything there, but he definitely had heard the same thing I had - coming from the same source. It was weird - and he obviously thought so too!
Haunted Places
Here are some web sites with details of haunted places in Nebraska and San Francisco.
Haunted Nebraska
Shadowland's Haunted Places Index: Nebraska
Ghost Towns of Nebraska
San Francisco's Most Haunted
Bay Area Haunts from Haunted Bay.
The next time you're in the City by the Bay, consider a haunted walking tour! San Francisco Ghost Hunt!
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