The Shadow in the Old House

In the late autumn of 1992, I shared a large apartment in a northern city with three friends. We had signed the lease for the spacious, creaky place because the rent was cheap and it had enough rooms for all of us.

The building was very old, a brick structure that had survived a great fire that swept through the neighborhood nearly a century before. Its high ceilings and drafty windows gave it a certain charm, and we were happy to have found it.

One night, not long after we had settled in, a loud cry from our friend Clara woke everyone. We rushed from our beds to find her sitting up, her face pale in the moonlight. She said she had opened her eyes to see a tall, thin shadow standing silently in the corner of her room, a shape that faded away as she watched.