Guy in My Bedroom (Columbus, OH)

1988 - My husband & I had rented an old townhouse in German Village, a historic part of town. One night, while sleeping on my side facing 'out', I woke up to find a man stooping down and looking at me. He was bent down with his hands on his knees looking at my face from about a foot away. He had a large round face, deep set eyes, a sparse hair like he was balding but still had it cut short like a crew cut on the sides. I screamed & jumped up & told my now-awake husband that a man was hiding in the closet next to my bed (he had disappeared). When we opened the closet door, no one was in there. We looked all over the house, even down in the coal cellar. No one. My husband said I was dreaming, but it felt real.

I never saw him again but sometimes when you were in the bathroom, the faucets would turn on by themselves. One time they turned on when I was in the shower - I said, "Do you mind? I'm in the shower - get out!" I felt he was there. We lived there about a year until we moved out of town for a job transfer.

Now the weird (or totally cool, however you want to see it) part . . .

15 years later I moved back to Columbus. I went to see a psychic & mentioned in passing that I had seen a ghost once in the area. He asked what address, and when I told him he said, "oh yeah, that guy, about 6', round head, deep set eyes, balding, bitter, used to hang out in that one closet, etc..." Wow,the psychic described in detail exactly what I remembered except I didn't know how tall (he was bending over) or what closet he was talking about. Then the psychic, Chris, asked if I had seen the 'kid', too.

No, I never did. Chris asked if I'd ever found balls & jacks around the house. After thinking for a moment, I did remember finding them on the floor. I remembered because I found them in my baby daughter's room on the wood floor next to her crib & tried to figure out how to play with them. At the time I thought my mother-in-law had gone all nostalgic and bought the game for my daughter. Chris said the 'kid' left them around. He said the ghost guy was a bitter old guy that had knocked the kid down the stairs & killed him. Chris indicated he helped them both 'move on'.

It was cool to have validated what I always felt was real.

By: NATaylor@Columbus.gov