Ghost of Venetian Palacio

This happened in March of 1995. My husband, oldest daughter Julie, and I were spending a couple of days in Venice. We had a room in an old palacio. This room had a window which overlooked the canal. There were wooden shutters which opened to the inside of the room. They closed using a metal bar on one window which fit into a u-shaped depression on the other side of the latch. The outside frames held glass panes. These frames could be opened up completely. They opened out. They had the same kind of latch as the wooden shutters. It was lovely to open up both sets and lean out to look up and down the canal. The latches were sturdy, but not difficult.

The first couple of evenings, we would shut both sets (the glass and the wooden ones) in order to have privacy. My daughter and I would hear footsteps start about in the middle of the rooms, and go directly over to the window. Then the wooden shutters would burst open inward! The frames with the glass panes would remain securely closed. We both examined the windows carefully. The window coverings seemed too heavy to be merely blown open. And if it was a gust, why didn't it open the outside glass frames? Or why didn't we feel it?

My husband doesn't believe in things like this. He denied ever hearing footsteps, but he couldn't deny the window popping open like that. But even he couldn't come up with a logical explanation for why this was happening.

The last night we were there, we experienced a different incident. The room had two double beds. My husband and I shared one, and Julie had the other. The beds had a narrow walkway between them, and Julie and I would sometimes hold hands just to say goodnight. The point here is that the beds were very close together. Anyway, on this last night, we had only a dim lamp on, in case someone needed to find the bath room. I was about to go to sleep, when I heard the footsteps come up between the beds. They stopped just between where Julie and my heads were. I could hear breathing. It was like whatever it was was just looking down at us. I did the usual thing one does when surprised by a ghost while in bed -- pretend to be asleep.

The next morning, we compared notes. Julie had heard the same phenomenon. Both of us would have liked to reach out to the other, but not through a ghost! We were glad to be checking out of that place, but it certainly made it a trip to remember!