THE MAN IN THE DOORWAY

On September 2, 2015, I packed my clothes, my books, and my cats into my car and moved to Kernersville, North Carolina to begin a new life. 

I had reunited with my high school boyfriend, ten years after the fact, and had made the impulsive decision to move in with him, ten hours south of home. 

The relationship would eventually, spectacularly implode, but that is very much not the point of this blog post. It was the day after my 26th birthday, I was young, dumb, and happy. 

A few days passed. I spent them scouring Indeed, and poking around the confines of my new home. It was a tiny ranch on a dead end street. It had hideous floors and equally hideous paneling on the walls. But it was our private corner of the world, and I took it all in with joy. 

Then it happened one night.

I struggled to sleep, a fairly common problem for me since childhood. Our mattress lay pushed up against the back door of the house, and moonlight pooled in from the square window in the door, flooding us in its glare. My boyfriend lay beside me, snoring slightly. 

I readjusted my pillow for what felt like the 80th time that night when something moved in the corner of my eye. 

I jerked my head to see a figure, standing in the open doorway of our bedroom. 

The figure was tall and felt distinctly male. It was too dark for me to discern any features, save for broad shoulders, and the shape of his head. I’m grateful for that now, looking back. 

I sat upright. The figure remained in the doorway, arms resting at his sides. I peered at the man, but he never looked my way. Something nagging at the back of my mind told me that this man could not see me. The space between us was something more than four feet of ugly tile. He existed at another point in time entirely. 

After no more than thirty seconds, the man took a step into the room and turned toward the left. He moved at an easy, comfortable pace down the hall, clearly familiar with the layout. As if this were his home. 

The man took one last step and faded into nothing but air as he turned into our bathroom. 

I blinked several times and considered getting up. But I knew the bathroom would be empty. I knew the man was gone. 

Seeing a ghostly stranger in my house was unnerving, but not as much as it should have been. I knew what it was like to see something supernatural and be terrified. The black mass had proven that well enough. But the man in the doorway had been something else.  A semi - ethereal experience I can only theorize about. 

I didn’t mince words the following morning. I waited for my boyfriend to get up, handed him a cup of coffee, and informed him that I had seen a ghost in our bedroom the night before. 

He didn’t laugh at me. He didn’t even look surprised. 

“Yeah, that’s happened to me a few times,” he said. “Always standing right there,” he pointed to the doorway. 

I gaped at him. I tried to recover. “Well, he stood there and then he turned down the hall, towards the bathroom,” I stammered.

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. But other times, he just stands in the doorway,” my boyfriend replied calmly and sipped at his coffee. 

I spent the next few nights incessantly staring at the door frame, patiently waiting for the ghost to appear. He did, a few weeks later. My boyfriend and I often took turns seeing him – always in the doorway, always in the middle of the night. 

Eventually we moved to a slightly bigger house just one street over. I could stand at the back corner of our laundry room and peer at the house from the windows. A part of me missed the ghost.

New cars appeared in the driveway a few weeks after we moved. I found myself wondering about the tenants, if they had seen the house ghost yet. Whether or not they were frightened. I hope they made a new friend.