The Third Floor Window

I’ve lived with the strange and unexplainable for as long as I can remember, but nothing prepared me for the summer of 2011, when I was sixteen, and the following year, when I was seventeen. My name is Alex, and these are the events that happened in the old house my family rented on the edge of a small town in upstate New York. The house was a three-story Victorian with a creaky staircase and a musty attic that no one dared to enter. My bedroom was on the top floor, a converted attic space with slanted ceilings and a single window that overlooked the overgrown backyard and the dark woods beyond.

It was a humid night in late July, the kind where the air is so thick you can almost taste it. I had gone to bed around eleven, but sleep was elusive, my mind racing with the usual teenage anxieties. Around midnight, I felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to get up, a feeling so strong it was like a command. I threw off the sheets and walked to the bathroom at the end of the hall, my bare feet padding on the worn carpet. The bathroom mirror was old, with tarnished edges, and as I stood before it, I stared at my reflection. I didn’t recognize myself for a moment. My face seemed different, older, and my eyes were wide with a fear I didn’t feel. I stood there for a full minute, my heart pounding, before the feeling passed and I could retreat back to my room.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what had just happened. I was wide awake now, my mind churning. Then, I heard it: tapping on my window. It was a soft, rhythmic tap, like a finger or a twig hitting the glass. I froze, my blood turning cold. I lived on the third floor; there was no tree near that window, and the sheer drop below made it impossible for anyone to reach. The tapping continued, steady and insistent, and I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t bring myself to look, afraid of what I might see. I lay there, listening to the tap, tap, tap, and then it stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, but then it started again, more urgent this time, and then it ceased for good.

As the tapping stopped, I heard other sounds: faint voices, muffled and indistinct, coming from outside the window. I couldn’t make out the words, but the voices were plaintive, almost desperate. Then they faded away, and silence returned. I stayed in my bed, shaking, until I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a tree branch or a bird. I knew better, but I couldn’t convince them. Over the next few weeks, the phenomenon continued. I would wake up at the same time, around 12:30, and feel an irresistible pull to the bathroom mirror. And every time, sometime later, I would hear the tapping, followed by the voices. I began to keep a journal, noting the times and what I heard. I also noticed that the tapping came from the same spot on the window, and I saw scratches on the outside pane, deep grooves that looked like they were made by fingernails.

The summer of 2012 brought a new twist. I was a year older, but the fear was the same. One night, as I was about to open the bathroom door, I felt a cold presence behind me. I turned, and for a split second, I saw a shadowy figure at the end of the hall, just out of the corner of my eye. It vanished when I looked directly at it. That same night, after the tapping, I heard a new sound: a low, guttural breathing, right outside my window, as if something was hovering in the air.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to fight curiosity, and one night, I forced myself to look out the window during the tapping. It was a moonlit night, and the light glinted off the glass, but I could see the reflection of my own room, and behind me, the reflection of a figure—tall, gaunt, with long, thin arms and a pale face. I spun around, but there was no one there. When I looked back at the window, the figure was gone, but the tapping resumed, more frantic, and the voices were clearer now. They were whispering my name: ‘Alex… Alex… let us in.’

The voices became a nightly occurrence, and I started losing sleep. My parents thought I was going through a phase, but I knew something was wrong. I found old newspaper articles in the attic about a family who died in the house in the 1890s. They had a young daughter, Margaret, who had fallen from the third-floor window, and her parents died of grief. The articles mentioned that Margaret’s spirit was said to haunt the house, trying to enter through that very window.

With this knowledge, I felt a strange sympathy. Maybe the tapping was her trying to get back in, but when I looked at the scratches, I realized they were on the outside, as if something had been clawing to get in. Perhaps it wasn’t Margaret knocking; perhaps it was something else, something that had taken her voice.

On the last night of summer, just before I left for a new school, the tapping was louder than ever. I steeled myself and looked out. This time, I didn’t see a figure; I saw a pair of bloodshot eyes staring at me from the darkness, just inches from the glass. They belonged to a gaunt, emaciated face that seemed to stare into my soul. A voice, not Margaret’s, but a deep, male voice, whispered: ‘You can’t leave, Alex. You promised.’ I slammed the window shut and ran to my parents, but they found nothing.

I never slept in that room again. I left for school the next day, and I never returned to that house. I still hear the tapping sometimes, in my dreams, and I see those eyes. I hope it stays there, in that old window, but part of me knows that some things follow you no matter where you go.