Ghost Hype

Right after I graduated from college in 1992, I moved in with a buddy into a modern apartment building in a Chicago suburb, which was nine stories tall, and our apartment was on the fifth floor. It had a balcony with a terrific view, and was one of the features we liked best about the otherwise run-of-the-mill four room apartment. 

One morning, not long after my buddy had left for work, I was in the bathroom getting ready myself for work, and had just gotten out of the shower and was drying off when I noticed a movement on the balcony through the blinds from the reflection in the mirror (I kept the door of the bathroom half open so it didn’t steam up too much). Thinking it must’ve been a pigeon, since we got a lot of them, I didn’t really think anything of it and continued to get ready. A couple moments later, I distinctly saw a large shadow move across the blinds from on the balcony, and my heart began to race rapidly. I had the radio in the bathroom playing fairly loudly, and turned it off, as well as the light in the bathroom, wrapped the towel around my waist and quietly made my way into the living room, which was light, but not overly light since the sun was still rising. 

I crouched behind the couch, which was directly across the room from the glass doors of the balcony, and nervously peered out from behind the couch. My heart almost jumped out of my mouth when I saw the shape of a tall man (or I assumed it was male) standing between our two deck chairs on the balcony, just inches from the door. I crawled over to the computer desk and grabbed the phone. I was about to call the police when the figure made a quick movement, causing me to gasp aloud in surprise. I suddenly couldn’t see where the person went. Gathering all my courage, and setting the phone down and exchanging it with a metal letter opener from the desk, I tip-toed over to the sliding door, praying we’d locked it when we came in from grilling the previous evening, and quietly and ever so slightly parted a couple of the blinds and peeked out. 

To my shock, as far as I could see, there was no one on the balcony. I walked to the other side of the window, and peeked out and again - nothing. I opened up the blinds, unlocked the door and walked out on to the balcony, standing where a few moments ago the figure stood. I was alone, and it appeared nothing had been disturbed. A beer bottle cap still sat on the edge of the balcony rail where I left it the night before, and a small pile of ashes that dumped out of the grill hadn’t been stepped in. I still felt very uncomfortable, and quickly went back inside, locked the door, got ready for work and left. 

I know what I saw, and the shape of the shadow was most definitely human and I felt it was male. How it got on that balcony, where it went and why it was there, I never found out. And nothing like it ever happened again in the year or so I lived there, but I was very much not at ease being alone there for a while after that incident.

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