“She heard guitar music coming from the basement downstairs”

I’ve received your emails for a couple of years now, and I never would have believed I’d be writing to you with my own “out-of-the-ordinary” experience.

It happened a couple of weeks ago when I arrived home from a business trip back east.  The first thing that seemed to be “different” was my dog, Henry, who just sat there instead of jumping up and down and doing his best to bowl me over.

I usually leave him with Jane who stays in my house when I’m away.  It costs about the same as boarding, and this way Henry is not cooped up.  I also feel confident that my house isn’t sitting in the dark each night, making an inviting target for some thief.

For some reason, when Henry first spotted me, he didn’t even bother to get up.  He merely raised his head while remaining lying on his side.  I thought perhaps he was sick but Jane assured me he was fine but a bit scared.

“Scared,” I asked?  “What does he have to be scared about?”  It was such a strange comment.  But not at all strange when Jane told me what had transpired a few days after I had left.

She said that in the middle of the night she had heard guitar music coming from the basement downstairs.  She said she was scared out of her mind, started to call the police, but thought better of it and went downstairs to check it out.

“I took Henry with me for protection,” she said, although she and I both know that Henry runs for cover at the first sign of trouble.

Jane went on to tell me what she saw.  “As I was walking down the stairs leading to the basement, I saw the figure of a young man out of the corner of my eye.  Normally, I would have run back upstairs and out the house, but I didn’t feel the least bit threatened.  It was as if he wanted to say something to me.

“Then when I walked down the final step, I saw that he was holding a guitar, and although he was moving his hand up and down as if he were playing it, I heard no sound.

“And then he vanished right in front of my eyes.  I glanced down at Henry whose tail was between his legs.  He was slowly creeping behind my legs, the brave protector dog that he is.”

When I asked Jane what the young man looked like, I knew at once he was the son of the people who rent out the house to me.  I met him once, just weeks before he passed away from a long-term illness a year ago on Christmas day.

Georgina Lassiter
Montreal, Canada