The Orb of November

In the autumn of 2005, my wife and I moved into a farmhouse on the outskirts of a small town in Ohio. The house had stood since 1887, its timber frame creaking with age. We loved it, despite the drafts and the musty smell in the cellar. Our living room opened into a dining room where we’d set up a small TV for football games, though it was usually off.

One evening in late October, as we sat watching a movie, a brilliant blue flash erupted from the dining room. It was so intense it cast our shadows against the wall. We stared, bewildered. Then it happened again, a few seconds later. My wife, Claire, got up and walked to the doorway. I followed. The small TV was on, though we hadn’t touched it, showing static. But my eyes were drawn to something else. Hovering near the ceiling, about five feet from us, was a sphere of glowing blue light, the size of a volleyball. It pulsed with an internal energy, perfectly still, yet humming with a silent vibration.

Claire stepped closer, and the orb drifted toward the far corner, then vanished. The TV clicked off. We searched the room, found nothing. That night, we chalked it up to an electrical fault, but in the following weeks, the flashes grew more frequent. Sometimes the orb would appear in the hallway, or in our bedroom doorway. It never moved when we looked directly at it, but would retreat if we approached. We began to feel watched, as if the house itself had a presence.

Then came the night of November 15th. A deep chill had settled over the fields. We were in bed, reading, when a flash brighter than any before lit up the entire upstairs. We rushed to the landing and saw the orb hovering above the stairwell, now crackling with filaments of blue lightning. It began to pulse in a rhythm, and a low hum filled our ears. Claire grabbed my arm, her face pale. ‘It’s showing us something,’ she whispered. The orb slowly descended, and as it touched the floor, the floorboards beneath it turned translucent, revealing a dark, earthen pit below.

In that pit, we saw a wooden crate, bound with iron straps. The orb hovered over it, and the crate’s lid creaked open. Inside was a bundle of yellowed papers and a small, rusted key. The orb then lifted, and the vision faded, the floor solid again. But the key was left on the floor where the orb had been. I picked it up; it was cold and heavy. We found a corresponding lock on a trapdoor in the kitchen pantry. When we opened it, a stairway descended into the root cellar.

We climbed down, our flashlights cutting through the darkness. The cellar was larger than we’d thought, with brick walls that glistened with damp. At the far end, we found a heavy oak door. The key fit. Inside was a small room, lit by a flickering oil lamp that we hadn’t lit. On a table lay an old diary, its pages brittle. As we read, we discovered the house’s history: a previous owner, a farmer named Edgar, had in 1898 conducted experiments in electrical communication with the spirit world. He claimed a ‘blue light’ visited him, and he recorded its messages in the diary.

The diary’s last entry, dated November 15, 1898, exactly 107 years to the day, read: ‘The light knows. It has seen the future. On this night, it will take a new form.’ We looked up, and the orb was there, floating in the doorway. But now it had grown, and within its glow, we could see a silhouette—a man, reaching out. Claire screamed as the orb enveloped us, and the lamp went out. When we came to, we were in our bed, morning light streaming through the windows. We thought it was a dream, until we found the diary on our nightstand, and the key in the drawer.

We never saw the orb again, but sometimes, on cold November nights, we hear a low hum in the walls, and the TV in the dining room turns on by itself, showing static. And in the static, sometimes, we see a face—Edgar’s—staring back, his lips moving as if to speak. The orb was a conduit, a bridge between worlds. And now, we are part of its story.