The Seventh-Floor Visitor

I never believed in ghosts until the autumn I moved into the old Meridian Apartments on the city’s east side. The building was a relic from the 1920s, with creaking pipes and radiators that hissed like trapped serpents. My sister, Alina, and I shared a cramped two-bedroom on the seventh floor. She was a night owl, often sketching until dawn, while I worked the night shift at a diner. Our lives were mundane, until Tuesday night.

I woke to Alina’s scream, a raw, piercing sound that cut through the thin walls. I rushed into her room, my heart pounding. She was huddled in her bed, pointing at the window. ‘There was a man—a tall, thin man in a dark coat, standing on the fire escape, staring at me,’ she stammered. I looked out the window, but the fire escape was empty, the streetlights casting long shadows. I tried to calm her, saying it was probably a trick of the light. But she insisted she saw him, his face pale and featureless except for two dark hollows for eyes. I slept on her floor that night.

Two nights later, at 11:47 PM, the scream came again. This time, I saw it. The fire escape creaked, and a figure in a tattered coat pressed its face against the glass, its mouth open in a silent howl. I froze, and in that instant, it vanished. The window was sealed shut—it hadn’t been opened for years—and we were on the seventh floor. There was no fire escape outside our floor; it ended at the sixth. I was cold, terrified, and ashamed for dismissing Alina.

We tried to rationalize it. Alina said the figure whispered a name: ‘Elias.’ The name felt familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I found an old tenant registry in the building’s basement. Among the faded entries for the early 1900s, I saw ‘Elias Voss, Tenant, Unit 7C.’ That was our apartment. I dug deeper, finding newspaper clippings about a man who leapt from the seventh-floor window in 1925, leaving behind a wife and child. The article mentioned he was a writer who suffered from hallucinations and believed the building was haunted by a shadow creature. The fire escape was added in 1940, long after his death.

We decided to stay, thinking it was just a coincidence. But the visits became more frequent. The figure would appear every night, always at 11:47, always with that silent scream. Alina began sleepwalking, found standing at the kitchen window, muttering. One night, I saw her reach for the latch, and I grabbed her. She woke with a gasp, her eyes bloodshot. ‘He wants us to let him in,’ she said. ‘But he’s not real.’ The next morning, I found scratch marks on the inside of our window frames, as if something had clawed to get in.

I visited a neighbor, Mrs. Padgett, who had lived there for decades. She told me in hushed tones that Elias Voss wasn’t the only one. ‘He was the first, but others followed. The building was built on a burial ground—old Native American land. They disturb the spirits, and they come back as window watchers.’ She warned me not to open any window, not even a crack. That night, as I lay in bed, I heard Alina scream, but this time it was different—muffled, as if she were under water. I ran to her room, but she was gone. The window was wide open, and the fire escape was there, rusted but real. I saw her standing on the platform, looking down. I pulled her back inside, sobbing. She turned to me, her face pale, and said, ‘He showed me the way down. He wants company.’

We decided to move, to leave the apartment. But as we packed, the figure appeared in broad daylight, in our living room. It stood by the radiator, its form shimmering. It raised a hand, and the window behind it shattered. Glass flew, and I shielded Alina. When I looked up, the figure was gone, but there was a slip of paper on the floor: a faded photograph of Elias Voss and his wife, with a note: ‘I was not insane. They come through mirrors and windows. Do not open them. But you already have.’ I realized then that the building itself was a vessel, and we had become part of its story. The last night we spent there, we heard a child laughing in the walls, and the windows all glowed with a dim, spectral light. We moved out with what we had, but sometimes, on quiet nights, I still see his face pressed against my new bedroom window, seven floors up, with no fire escape in sight.