The 68th Street House

Residential Home on 68th Street North in Seattle, WA

The house was occupied by between five and seven college students during the 1995/1996 school year, but what they hadn't realized is that there was an uninvited guest sharing their home.

The house on 68th Street, near Greenlake in Seattle, was the ideal party house for its residents during their 1995/96 school year at the University of Washington.  The "official" residents of the house numbered between five and seven during the year, but nearly every weekend, that population increased to between 30 and 40 hard-core partiers.  Even during the week, with girlfriends, friends, and significant others visiting, the occupancy of the house varied from five to ten.  Or should that actually read six to eleven?

One night after watching a movie, some friends who lived in the University District were getting ready to leave the house.  The usual casual conversations started, and every time they began to leave, a new thread in the conversation would start, and they'd stop there in the living room.  A couple of the house's residents, having early classes the next day, were beginning to get a little frustrated, but felt that proper etiquette meant giving their friends a proper goodbye (not to mention ensuring that the front door was locked behind them).  After the ninth or tenth "goodbye" exchanged between the visitors and the residents, the deadbolt lock on the front door switched itself, and the doorknob began to turn.  Not sure who was coming in at this moment, since the only resident not there was supposed to be out of town, the residents of the house watched as the door swung open slightly to reveal . . . absolutely nothing.  Everyone took one look at the door, breathed in heavily, and laughed it off as a coincidence -- maybe the door wasn't locked (it wasn't unusual for someone to forget to lock it), maybe the wind caught the door just right (the door was known to be blown open by the wind on occasion).  The visitors said their last goodbye and headed out the door, which I ensured was closed securely and locked behind them.

What may be written off as the wind or common forgetfulness once, however, takes on a more serious tone when it occurs again.  This time, I was the one to witness what struck me as clearly the manipulations of something otherworldly.  Again, it was after a night of watching movies with friends, and again many goodbyes were shared before anyone actually headed for the door.  This time, however, I watched the door as the latch on the deadbolt turned from right to left, and the doorknob itself turned counter-clockwise.  The door then slowly opened, not partially as before, but all the way this time.  I turned to one of my roommates and asked if he'd seen what I saw -- he said that he had watched the doorknob turn.  We both looked at each other, then the door, then our friends, and hurried them out the door, unsure of what exactly we were dealing with.

Later that week, we had a meeting of most of the residents of the house.  During that meeting, one of the residents told us that when she had been occupying one of the upstairs bedrooms, it was common for her door to be opened in the middle of the night, whether it was locked or not.  She continued, telling us that she had been afraid of telling us this because she thought we'd think she was playing games or something.  Now, though, she felt comfortable telling us, both because she wasn't living in that room anymore, and someone else had experienced our extra houseguest.

Source: Clifton Gilley