Ohio Ghost Story - A Shady Character

August, 1991. I'm staying with Dave, Buddi, and Dave's mother at their home in Avon Lake, a little town about twelve miles east of Lorain. I'd been evicted from 1444 Broadway for nonpayment, which I didn't pay because the new owner wanted to (A) raise the rent, (B) tack on utilities, but (C) didn't want to fix anything; by this point, I had no running water.

I had a job coming up in Cleveland, a live-in position, which started on the eighth of September-until it opened up, I'd stay with my friends. Dave and I had wound up on each other's doorsteps in the past, so this was nothing new.

We thought we'd left the weirdness behind us in Lorain, until we started noticing things coming up missing, small items, which would turn up in plain sight later. The three of us slept in the rec area of the basement, and were awakened a couple of times by the tv coming on by itself. Dave's dog and cat would often act as if trying to get the attention of an unseen fourth person; Dave's mother rarely came down there, we thought because of the stairs.

One Sunday morning, I was awakened by the scent of coffee brewing. Looking over at the bed from the couch where I slept, I could see that Dave was already up, and probably in the kitchen, and Buddi was stirring.

I'd just put on my glasses when I heard Buddi scream. I whirled in her direction, and I could see she was pointing at the foot of the stairs. There, directly below the brightly lit ceiling fixture, was the form of a man, looking as if made of darkness itself. It was three-dimensional, and opaque, standing upright, facing her. I yelled, and it turned toward me, and-FLIPPED- sideways, like that woman in the Star Trek episode, so that I could barely see it on edge. Then it vanished.

As it disappeared, the dryer, which was in the next room, came on by itself.

Dave came charging down the stairs (all this was a few seconds) to comfort his wife, as we both described to him what we'd seen-he said he'd sometimes seen "something moving" in that spot, that wouldn't be there when he'd turn his full gaze upon it.

We tried to tell his mother about it, but she refused to discuss it, saying we were making it up to scare her.

Still, she wouldn't go down in the basement by herself.