It was the winter of 2007, around the end of December.
My family would go to my parents’ relatives’ house on weekends to help them out on the farm, so on weekends it was always just me and my younger sibling holding down the house.
In the early hours of Saturday turning into Sunday. Since the next day was Sunday, I had stayed up late on the computer, but because I had plans during the day, I was about to shut it down and go to bed. I checked that the front door was locked. Since it was a detached house, if the front door wasn’t locked, the outside was exposed right away, so I was especially careful on weekends.
The time was probably just past 2, maybe around 2:30 a.m. After checking that the front door was locked and I was about to go into my room, I saw the front entrance light turn on.
It was normally a sensor light that turned on when someone got close, but recently it had been a little broken, so even when people came close the light often wouldn’t turn on. I thought nothing of it and was about to go into my room, when,
clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk. clunk.
The front door was rattling as if it were about to open at any moment. I could keep hearing the sound of someone pulling on the front doorknob as if trying to open the locked door.
Since there had been a case before where a thief almost got in, I was a little scared, but I said, “Who is it?” Maybe my voice carried outside, because the rattling stopped for a moment. But soon it started again.
I thought maybe it was a robber, so I checked to make sure the windows were locked properly and shouted toward the front door, “Leave before I call the police.”
After I asked who it was, that rattling sound came a few more times, then stopped, as if whoever it was gave up because the door wouldn’t open, and I didn’t hear it anymore.
I wondered if I should call the police, but just not hearing the sound made me feel a little relieved, so I didn’t report it. I also thought maybe the next-door neighbor had gotten drunk and come to the wrong house by mistake.
So after calming down, I lay down in my room, and then suddenly remembered something and got scared.
The fact that I had not heard even once the sound of gravel in front of the entrance.
Because there had once been an attempted burglary at our house, we had laid gravel from the gate to the front door. Thanks to that, whenever someone walked from the gate to the front door, we could tell someone was coming from the sound of the gravel.
Even the sound of a dog or cat passing by was audible, but I had not heard it even once before the front door rattled, nor after it stopped and everything went quiet.
Then suddenly my sleepiness vanished and I was wide awake. I think I spent the rest of the time in the living room staring at the front door until dawn and only fell asleep around sunrise. When I woke up, thankfully nothing had happened.
The next day I met a friend and came home in the evening, and when I heard what my parents were talking about, I got chills.
They said the old man next door had died at home early that morning the day before. Apparently the old man, who lived alone, had died suddenly. Since there were no signs of intrusion or assault on the old man, it was said to be a mysterious case.
Even though he lived alone, he had no chronic illness and was healthy, so it was even more inexplicable. But because it seemed connected to the incident where my front door rattled yesterday, I still can’t sleep when I think about that night......
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