LIGHTS IN THE ATTIC

A friend and I lived in separate apartments in a very old part of Munich, Germany in the summer of 1975. Many of the buildings in that part of the city were 200 years old or more. In spite of the age of these buildings, most had been updated with modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing and electricity.My friend's apartment was about a half-hour bus ride from where I lived.

One evening, at about 9pm I received a telephone call (another available modern convenience) from my friend asking me to hurry over, and bring whatever I would need to spend the night. I asked what this was all about, but he just said to hurry and he'd explain when I got there.

After arriving - my friend, Greg, took me into the living room of the apartment and related to me the experience he had just had. Several times during the preceding two or three months Greg had been awakened by strange noises in his apartment. These noises seemed to originate from the attic which was located just above the living room we were sitting in. The noises were not scratching, swishing sounds which a rat, cat or bird might make, but rather footsteps...loud, clear and frightening. That morning Greg had decided to find out who or what was in the attic. He had gone up and made sure the light was off then locked the trap door taking the only key with him. Upon returning from work that evening he found the attic light on.

Greg brought a foot ladder into the living room and climbed up to a small trapdoor located in the living room ceiling. He unlocked the door and climbed back down. He then asked me to climb the ladder, look through the trapdoor and describe what I saw. So I did.

In the oddly shaped attic room there were no other openings of any sort, other than the trapdoor I was looking through. The room was A-shaped because Greg's apartment was on the top floor of a narrow two floor 18th century building. There were no other residents in the building. The first floor was empty.There were two or three old trunks, a dark room full of dust and a single light bulb from which dangled a pull-string for turning the light on and off. Other than that I couldn't see anything else that was noteworthy. I did notice that the dust around the trapdoor was essentially undisturbed. Greg told me to pull the string turning the light bulb off and to come down from the ladder. Then he locked the trapdoor and put the ladder away. He asked if I would mind sleeping that night directly under the trapdoor. I agreed to it. Before going to bed Greg explained that during the night the light would go on and we would probably hear footsteps which is what had happened repeatedly during the past two or three months. He had only lived in the apartment for about three or four months.

I would guess we turned the lights out at about midnight including the light I had personally turned off in the locked attic. I slept restlessly for about an hour and a half when I felt someone touch my shoulder. Greg was standing over me in the dark and asked me to remain quiet for a minute. Soon I too, could hear the footsteps in the attic, and looking up I noticed the attic light was on. There was no way Greg could have brought the ladder back in, opened the door and flipped on the light with me sleeping directly beneath the trapdoor. And what about the footsteps? We stayed awake the rest of the night...the buses had stopped running by then. We obviously turned all the other lights on as we were badly frightened. After a few minutes the footsteps seemed to fade away, but the attic light remained on.

Greg moved his belongings into my apartment for the next day or two until he could find a new place to stay. We never heard more about the apartment in Munich, but we still discuss it once in a while. We feel almost certain that this was a paranormal experience. We are both well educated and not easily spooked. Still, neither of us can explain the phenomenon, and neither can forget the horrified feeling we both shared that night.


Submitted from R Pyper, Utah, USA


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