The Legend of Sleepy Daddy
With Halloween quickly approaching it seems fitting to share a ghost story from the realm of parenting -- and beyond! Just kidding, it’s just from the realm of parenting.
One chilly autumn night, under the light of a full moon I was startled from slumber by a strange sound. Still bewitched by sleep, I wasn’t immediately aware of what had wakened me. But I knew something sinister stirred in the witching hour.
Then I heard it again: thump, thump. The percussive sound echoed through the house. In my sleep deprived disorientation, I struggled to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. One of the front windows? The attic? The back door? It could have been anywhere.
I crept down the hall, hair on end, ears straining for clues to the location of whatever unwelcomed spook was prowling about the house. My heart pounded in my ears, disrupting my typically batlike sense of hearing.
Not one week earlier, the house alarm went off in the middle of the night. It appeared to have been from a loose sensor, but in the shadowy hours of the night I was questioning whether we had explained away an inexplicable event too easily.
I made it to the front room and glanced around. Nothing. No signs of anyone or anything. I moved the blinds and peered out the front window into the dimly lit street. To my absolute horror, on the sidewalk in front of my house there stood a person in full clown get-up holding a red balloon.
Not really. But now you understand just how creepy this night was.
As I looked out the window, my imagination taunting my reason, it suddenly sounded again: thump, thump, thump. And this time, there was no uncertainty, the sound was coming from inside the house.
I moved quickly, rushing toward the back of the house in the approximate direction of the sound. As I passed our bedroom I snapped, “did you just knock on something?” to my wife. She said no. She seemed completely unaware our house was playing host to a poltergeist or that I was in the midst of the impossible task of trying to track it down.
I froze and listened again. Nothing.
And then...THUMP,THUMP, THUMP followed by an animal-like moan. And it was coming from the older boys’ room.
I took off like a winged demon myself and burst into their room prepared to confront whatever specter of the night was haunting our home. Inside their room, I discovered the decidedly nonparanormal progenitor of the noise: my son.
Moaning, and in the throes of a hellish childhood fever, he was intermittently knocking on the wall next to his bed trying to get his mom’s attention.
In hindsight, perchance, much like Ichabod Crane, my imagination got the better of me. Then again, to a semi-germaphobic father, encountering a sick child in the middle of the night is quite the frightening proposition.
Next time, I hope it’s just a ghoul.
Happy Halloween!
One chilly autumn night, under the light of a full moon I was startled from slumber by a strange sound. Still bewitched by sleep, I wasn’t immediately aware of what had wakened me. But I knew something sinister stirred in the witching hour.
Then I heard it again: thump, thump. The percussive sound echoed through the house. In my sleep deprived disorientation, I struggled to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. One of the front windows? The attic? The back door? It could have been anywhere.
I crept down the hall, hair on end, ears straining for clues to the location of whatever unwelcomed spook was prowling about the house. My heart pounded in my ears, disrupting my typically batlike sense of hearing.
Not one week earlier, the house alarm went off in the middle of the night. It appeared to have been from a loose sensor, but in the shadowy hours of the night I was questioning whether we had explained away an inexplicable event too easily.
I made it to the front room and glanced around. Nothing. No signs of anyone or anything. I moved the blinds and peered out the front window into the dimly lit street. To my absolute horror, on the sidewalk in front of my house there stood a person in full clown get-up holding a red balloon.
Not really. But now you understand just how creepy this night was.
As I looked out the window, my imagination taunting my reason, it suddenly sounded again: thump, thump, thump. And this time, there was no uncertainty, the sound was coming from inside the house.
I moved quickly, rushing toward the back of the house in the approximate direction of the sound. As I passed our bedroom I snapped, “did you just knock on something?” to my wife. She said no. She seemed completely unaware our house was playing host to a poltergeist or that I was in the midst of the impossible task of trying to track it down.
I froze and listened again. Nothing.
And then...THUMP,THUMP, THUMP followed by an animal-like moan. And it was coming from the older boys’ room.
I took off like a winged demon myself and burst into their room prepared to confront whatever specter of the night was haunting our home. Inside their room, I discovered the decidedly nonparanormal progenitor of the noise: my son.
Moaning, and in the throes of a hellish childhood fever, he was intermittently knocking on the wall next to his bed trying to get his mom’s attention.
In hindsight, perchance, much like Ichabod Crane, my imagination got the better of me. Then again, to a semi-germaphobic father, encountering a sick child in the middle of the night is quite the frightening proposition.
Next time, I hope it’s just a ghoul.
Happy Halloween!