Blanket Pulled Under The Bed

My father is a practical businessman who has admitted to believing in spirits. These are a couple of stories he has told me.

My grandfather left his family when my father was very young. My grandmother remarried and her new husband was very kind and protective of her and her children. He was run over by a car and tragically killed a few years later.

Afterward, my father says that at night when he and his sister would be lying in bed at night they would hear ,unmistakably, the familiar pattern of their dead step-father's footsteps make the round of the house going from room to room. My father has said that no one in the family feared the presence since they all knew who it was and that it was only checking to be sure the house was secure before retiring for the night.

This next story is unrelated to the last. My father returned home to San Antonio after serving in the army in the mid 50's. He rented a one-room, upstairs apartment from an older man who lived in the apartment directly below. It was a very small apartment with the kitchen, dining, and bedrooms essentially making up one large room. Not long after moving in the landlord began to complain of the constant walking and other noises heard at all hours of the night coming from my father's apartment upstairs. My father would on most nights go to bed very early and rarely had visitors at all much less at night. He told this to the landlord who over time became more impatient with the increasing disturbances and my father's bewildered denials.

During this time my father says that he would wake up most mornings curled in a ball and freezing. The large heavy quilt he used to cover himself would be lying on the floor beside the bed. Taking this evidence along with the landlord's complaints my father began to suspect that he had begun to walk about at night in his sleep.

One night my father was lying awake much later than usual. The only light in the room came from the fires lit on the gas stove for warmth. As my father began to drift off to sleep he felt the quilt he was covered with begin to slip off the side of the bed. Half asleep he pulled at the blanket and immediately felt a firm and insistent tugging at the other end. At the same time he felt, very close to his face, an incredible rage from something that was obviously bothered by my father's attempt to hold onto the blanket. My father quickly released his grip and the blanket slid quickly off the bed. He turned on all the lights and climbed off the bed noticing that the blanket lay half under it and could not have been pulled under there by it's own weight. I have asked my father several times over the years whether he was sorry that he didn't look under the bed that night and he always says "No,".