©1 December 2025 Levite
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1.
One of the things I make a point of stating in my journals is: "I closed the case". And aside from a handful of updates, and revisits, and so on, those cases are closed in a reasonable amount of time.
This case, which was one of the historic houses I had been working on it for almost a year. Which was understandable considering the initial report said the activity was worse on weekends in the winter, when the days were shortest, than in the summer, and even then, more so on Sundays. So while I did go out a couple of times during the rest of the year, the results then were what I expected.
Nothing much of note in May, and when I went back in September, after the worst of tourist season, it was even less active.
I went back out in late January.
As the Hampton area village the house is in is as seasonal as anything on the Island, the town was all but deserted.
In fact, I already knew before I went out to make sure I had everything I needed for the investigation, including a house special, and a meat lover's pizza from a place near my apartment.
And so I pulled up in front of the house on the old highway not far from some very modern units that just had That Look of being some vice-president of marketing's holiday home. As for my place of interest, it had been built in the late nineteen twenties, just as cars were becoming popular, and this house, and several more just like it, were built to be.... holiday homes for vice presidents of banks and such.
Some of these, like this one, were stand alone, others were duplexes. And if the historical photos were to be believed, there had been one triplex in the middle of the run of almost identical houses which had been torn down in the seventies. All told, out of about two dozen places, there were five left, three were duplexes, but one of those had businesses in both sides, and two were residences. This one, while still technically a residence, was used as a guest house for official visitors to the village. It's last guest, a Medal of Honor Winner, was the guest of honor, and grand marshal, for a parade.
Fortunately for the heavily decorated old soldier and his wife, it was summer, and there was no activity to disturb them.
It was cold and windy with blowing snow when I carried my things into the house as a storm blew across the Sound and then got stuck trying to get out over the Atlantic. I had just gotten everything in when the electricity went out. But, I had my small LED lantern, and a pizza, so I simply settled in and checked my phone to see what had happened.
According to the emergency services report, a tree limb blew down onto some power lines a couple of blocks from where I was, and as the snowfall was increasing, there was no estimate as to when the power would be restored. But for what I was planning on doing tonight, besides just sitting in the dark and eating pizza that is, having the power on was more of a convenience than anything else.
My laptop was fully charged, and I had my battery backup in the car. I had several packs of spare batteries for my various devices, and my phone was... well, just over half charged, but it had enough power to last through the night, and it would charge from my battery pack as well.
The weather ap on my phone talked about snow changing to sleet, then back to snow, and then back to sleet, then bitter cold and snow flurries, and so on.
All Night.
Everything in the house had been converted to electric. But, fortunately, it was well insulated, and was warm when I got there. I decided that, with the weather, I was better off there than I was on the road trying to get home.
All of the sudden, my spare pizza became survival rations because I didn't know how long I was going to be there, so I put it in the fridge and tried to forget it was there. I had a couple of spare bottles of water in a bag in the back of my car, so I brought them in to where they might not freeze.
So I retreated into the smaller bedroom which only had one outside wall and a small window, and made sure I was good for the night.
Then I did a bit of investigation, including getting the purest set of background EMF readings I had ever seen in a house.
And it was a long, cold, dark, night.
Saturday morning the power came back on about nine AM. So I was able to fire up my laptop and review the evidence from the previous night the way I usually did.
And I found... Nothing.
But the roads were still terrible, still I had a whole pizza that I swore I wouldn't touch until Saturday afternoon. So I stayed put and decided where I'd put my cameras and recorders and all that night.
And it snowed on and off just enough to make everybody that was trying to dig out miserable.
2.
It was a long, rather dull, day, stuck in the guest house, but it was OK. And my survival ration pizza was just what I needed. But tonight my shower was hot, instead of warm, and after I spent some time in the different rooms asking questions and checking for EMF anomalies I gave up and went to bed around midnight.
It was still dark out, and I wondered why I had woke up. My watch said it was just after five AM. Then I heard one of my vibration sensors in the hallway sound off with its tone. So I got up and walked out and looked up and down the hall in the dim glow of the night light in the bathroom.
I'm not sure who was more startled. Me, or the thin older man in a dark suit with a very narrow tie.
He had been standing in the door to the larger bedroom.
I had walked out of my bedroom looking down at the vibration sensor that was going off when I realized there was something, or somebody, in my left peripheral vision. That's when I looked over and saw him. At first he was facing away from me and not moving or speaking.
But I could tell that it wasn't a real, living, physical, person because parts of him were almost translucent.
"Oh, hi." I said after I caught my breath.
He turned toward me in what would best be described as stop action movement. He turned slightly to his left, then turned more, and then finally he was turned about a quarter of the way toward me, almost looking over his shoulder at me. His lips started to move to speak, but then he was gone.
The figure of the man was there, and then it wasn't. Just like that.
"wow" I whispered to myself. Then I spent the next hour reviewing the cameras and recorders.
I had a couple of photos of something in the hallway from the camera on the dresser in the larger bedroom. Then from the same camera I had two photos of me in my nightgown looking at 'something' in the hallway. There was a form there, it was more substantial than a shadow, but less than a full figure apparition, and you could just see some of the details of his face and tie. In the second photo, you could see my left arm and leg through the edge of the figure that looked like it was wearing a suit jacket.
I had seen what I could identify as a gentleman from, perhaps, the late nineteen fifties to early sixties. In fact, he reminded me of a man who was a member of a traditionalist Quaker group that I'd see back home once in awhile back when I was teenager. The figure I saw in the hallway had that same overall look to him.
Then I saw something on the audio trace on the digital recorder that was in the larger bedroom about half an hour before the figure appeared and I woke up, so I listened to it.
".... it is time to get ready..."
Then there was silence.
Then within seconds of the time stamp on the camera when the figure appeared in the hallway, "... we're leaving... for service..."
There was one last sound that wasn't me saying 'hi' to the figure.
"... who..."
Then I could hear my own voice softly saying 'wow'.
It had been the lead item on this house.
In the winter, an old man would shout at people in the larger bedroom about how it was time to get up and go to church.
It usually happened early on Sunday mornings, but there were reports that sometimes the man would think that some other day of the week was Sunday.
And here I had him, maybe not live, but most certainly in person, at four in the morning on a Sunday, coming to tell somebody that it was time to get ready for church. The odd thing was that there was nobody in the big bedroom, and from what I could tell from the other camera and recorders, he never checked the smaller bedroom. And it was only because the vibration sensors in the hallway went off that I knew he was there.
It was still dark out, but I was wide awake, and eating a slice of cold pizza with a hot cup of instant coffee, and trying to tease details out of the photos of the gentleman. The best photo I had of him was when he first started to turn toward me.
You could see hints and outlines of features like his face and that narrow tie, but nothing definitive.
The snow and wind had finally let up, but the reports I saw were that the side roads in the Hamptons were still lousy. That, and about every twenty minutes I saw the report of traffic accident in the emergency dispatch tracker. So I did a pizza inventory and decided that I had just enough to get me through the night, and I'd take my chances getting out of here and either go to my apartment or to the office early Monday morning.
3.
I covered the hallway with all three cameras. If my friend showed up again I wanted a record of it on camera.
He didn't appear. Maybe he knew it was Monday. So I told myself that before winter ended I'd be back for another weekend.
I've been driving on Long Island for more years than I want to talk about. And winters can be rough out here. With water on both sides sometimes the wind seems to carry in just enough moisture to make things slick. There are weather experts that say that that isn't an issue, and maybe it isn't... until you find a really slick spot where the wind has been blowing in off the bay.
Fortunately my car has four wheel drive and instant traction control, so while the car in front of me slid sideways, I was able to slow down and go on with no problem.
I stopped to assist an accident scene until the local police were able to get there.
As I was able to get into my apartment's parking lot without any problem I ran in and freshened up, then went on to the office. On the way I stopped and got some more survival rations because I didn't expect to be able to get out for lunch.
And I didn't.
Our office manager admin was stuck on the mainland waiting on the ferry to resume running, or the roads to clear enough that she could make the long drive around through the city. Others made it in as they could, and I did what I could in the office to help out, including my turn answering the telephone.
It was three weeks later, the middle of February, a holiday weekend no less, when I went back out to the guest house, with an extra bag of food, to investigate one more time.
Friday night was as dark and still, as I expected. There was a bit of snow outside, but not like last time, and the power stayed on.
I tried to recreate what I had done in January this time, with full spectrum and video cameras in the big bedroom aimed at the door on motion activated. And a few more vibration sensors, and an extra recorder in the hallway sitting, rather precariously, on the bathroom door frame.
If the gentleman made his wake up call in the morning, I should catch it.
Somehow, I slept through it.
I woke up just after six on Sunday morning.
At first I thought that maybe nothing had happened, so I went to the kitchen and put the old tea kettle on to make a cup of coffee. Then I went and picked up the cameras and recorders.
Just out of habit I checked the screen on the full spectrum camera.
It had taken several photos during the night.
And there he was.
At about five-thirty, over half an hour before I woke up, he had walked into the larger bedroom, and I had several reasonably good photos of him.
The motion activated video camera had recorded over a minute of video that, like the still camera had last time, showed a shade and outline of somebody in the door, but without the detail I could see on the full spectrum's images. But the video camera had recorded some audio as well, it just wasn't as clear as the digital recorder sitting just above where he had been standing.
" ... it is time ... for church ... get moving..."
"The old boy is serious about getting somebody up to go to church," I said to Manager Marjorie a few days later. Then I replayed it and showed her the best photo.
She nodded at the image of the man who was wearing the same outfit I remembered from January, and said more or less the same thing then. "But who is he?" she asked.
"I've been going through the history of the house, but there isn't a lot there. From the way he's dressed, I'd guess he was there in maybe the fifties or sixties, maybe even a little later, but there's nothing about who was there then." I brought up the somewhat thin property record of the house, "It was a rental owned by an investment house since the war. I tried to get more information, but that company has been bought and sold and merged about six times since then, and a lot of the older records are simply gone."
"How about the village, do they have anything?"
"I thought of that, but their information, including some newspapers from the fifties, don't mention who's living in what they called 'the row of cottages on the highway'." I closed the file of what information I had. "But, this proves that he is entirely residual. Even down to the time of year that he is active. And whether anybody is in that bedroom or not."
"In the winter," she said, "did you really get snowed in in there last month?"
I nodded, "It wasn't bad, I had plenty of pizza, but I had to take a lukewarm shower before bed Friday night."
She chuckled and looked back at the photo I'd printed out, "It's a shame we can't identify him."
"I'm going to keep looking. I've had a friend of mine tell me how old he thinks he is, and he said that this gentleman is probably in his sixties. So I've narrowed the search down to somebody with a more traditional church who was a senior citizen in the fifties and sixties, and probably a good distance from here because he needed more time to travel to it in the winter, which is why he's getting them up that early. There's a lot of group photos from that time. It's just going to take awhile to find the right one."
She nodded, "well, good luck. At least we know that if somebody uses the place over the weekend in the winter we can warn them that they may get an unexpected wake up call on Sunday."
"Yes, ma'am."
While the case wasn't closed, and still isn't while I'm looking for the old man with the thin tie, it was a lot further along than it was.
Maybe there will be an update that closes it.... before next winter.
- end 29 -
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, and one of those is very seasonal areas along the coast, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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