The Silent Man in the Dark

I was around seven when it happened. It was early morning, just as the sunlight crept through the window. I remember waking up slowly, blinking against the light.

And then I saw him.

A tall man stood near the foot of my bed. He was wearing a dark coat and an old-fashioned hat, the kind you only see in old photos. His clothes looked normal, like something a regular man would wear, but his face—his face wasn’t there. It was just… missing.

I wanted to scream, to call for my mother, but I couldn’t move. I just lay there, frozen, staring at him. He wasn’t doing anything, just standing there. Watching.

Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

I jolted up, looking around the room. My little brother was asleep in his bed across from me. The house was silent. Nothing had moved. But I knew what I had seen.

At breakfast, I told my mom. She gave me a strange look but didn’t say much, just muttered something about bad dreams. But it wasn’t a dream. I was awake. I know I was.

That was the first time.

It happened again a few months later. This time, I wasn’t alone. My cousin was staying over, sleeping on the floor beside my bed. I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling cold, and there he was again—the same tall man, the same dark coat, the same empty face.

Only this time, he was closer.

He stood right beside my bed, leaning down just slightly, as if he was trying to get a better look at me. My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to reach out and shake my cousin awake, but I couldn’t move.

And then, he faded. Not like someone walking away. He just… disappeared, like he had never been there at all.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

Years passed, but I never forgot. My family moved out of that house when I was twelve. I never told my cousin what I saw that night. But one day, years later, we were talking about ghosts, and he got quiet.

“I used to feel weird in that house,” he said. “Like something was there. And one night, I swear I heard footsteps. Right next to me.”

I never saw the man again. But even now, I can’t shake the feeling that, sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night… someone is watching.