Once there was an
Irish family named Leery that had some strange experiences. One afternoon,
Mrs. Leery was standing in the kitchen when she heard and felt an explosion. She
found nothing that could explain the blast. A few days later, she learned that
the wife of her favorite uncle had died at the exact time of the mysterious
explosion. Was the explosion a message from a ghost of the dying? Or was it
merely an odd coincidence? Mrs. Leery wasn't interested in finding out.
Not long afterwards,
the whole family began to hear knocking sounds at different times during the
day: rapping on the doors, the windows, the walls. 
Sometimes the raps were
"like a sledge-hammer, loud and dying away, and sometimes quick and sharp,
two or three or five in succession."
One night, around
four o'clock, Mrs. Leery was disturbed by a loud knock on her bedroom door. At
first, she thought it must be the maid, so she said, "Come in."
The knocking
continued so loudly and persistently that her husband also woke up.
"See what it
is," Mrs. Leery told him. He got up from bed and went quietly to the door.
He jerked the door open, but the hallway was empty. Then he searched the entire
house from attic to basement, but found nothing.
Later that morning,
a telegram arrived announcing the death of Mrs. Leery's favorite uncle. He had
died around the time of the mysterious knocking. Mrs. Leery began to wonder what
was happening to her. Was the knocking another coincidence? Or could her dying
uncle have been trying to communicate news of his death to the family? And what
about the explosion she had heard? Maybe it hadn't been her imagination after
all. . . .
Deeply disturbed by
these events, Mrs. Leery became ill. To help her feel better, the family moved
to a new house. While Mrs. Leery regained her health, a young male friend named
Richard had come from England to live with the family and help with the chores.
One night Rachel,
the middle daughter, woke up and glanced at the window by her bed. There she saw
a person's face peering in at her. Am I dreaming? she asked herself.
She blinked her eyes
a few times and decided that she must be awake. Then she took a closer look at
the face and realized that it was so muffled in cloth, except for the eyes, that
it resembled a mummy. Then the figure disappeared, and Rachel went back to
sleep. The next morning Rachel told her family about her strange experience. She
didn't argue when everyone said that she'd had a dream.
A few nights later,
she awoke to see the same face, still draped in cloth. The mummy's face was
pressed against the window pane and seemed more menacing. Before she could
scream, the face disappeared. In the morning, no one believed again.
Finally, another
night soon after, she relived the same experience. This time, the mummy's face
seemed to move through the glass toward the bed . . . toward her. She closed her
eyes, but felt the mummy's presence as it bent over her body. Then, she opened
her eyes.
Inches away from her
was the mummy's face, its eyes staring at hers. She screamed, and the mummy
disappeared.
The next morning, a
telegram arrived for Richard. It said that his mother, who lived in
England, had had an unfortunate accident the night before and had died; he
left immediately for the funeral.
After her mother's
experiences with the explosion and knocking, Rachel knew that the mummy's face
and the telegram were somehow related. Soon she found out that Richard's
mother had died from injuries received in a fire while she slept. Her face was
so badly burned that it had been wrapped in cloth.
Only her eyes had
remained uncovered . . . .
ŠJames M. Deem.
Originally published as Chapter 3 in Ghost
Hunters (Avon Books, 1992). All rights reserved.
