Strange Rooms

When I was younger I lived with my mom and grandmother in a fairly old house in the city. I was an only child and had my own room in the front of the house. Next to my room was a tiny little room my grandmother kept her sewing machine in.
My story involves these two rooms.

In my room I had a huge bookshelf which housed several dozen porcelain dolls, the kind that stand with the help of the little metal stands that clip around their waist. I will remember the things that happened with these dolls forever.

Many nights I would go to sleep with all the dolls facing forward, only to wake up in the morning to find that my only little boy doll's hat was off and his head turned completely around. The girl dolls would often be out of their stands and lying on the shelf or the floor. The stands were always in their proper spots on the shelf. I never heard anything while I was asleep, but I always knew when I woke up that my dolls had been messed around with.

There were two windows in my room facing the street. Now, the street was very bright at night with lights from the neighbors and passing cars, but sometimes they would go entirely black and even if I pressed my nose up against them I couldn't see anything. When I lay in bed some nights I would see, in that out of the corner of your eye way, a man standing right outside of the window. My room was on the second floor and no one was going to scale the brick front of my house. This man was very creepy, and at the time, I thought he might have lived in my basement. If that sounds odd, I'll tell you why.

I only ever saw him during the summer, when we put up the awning that shaded the front of our house. In the winter the awning parts, metal poles and the cloth, were stored in the basement. The top of the awning was right below my window.

A woman lived in my grandmother's sewing room. She liked to take things, but would always return them in obvious places eight days later. Little things would go missing, like my yo-yo, and eight days later it would turn up on top of the washer in the laundry room. Neither my mother or grandmother had put it there. My mother also had things go missing on her. She had 5 baby turtles and was playing with them in the kitchen when she couldn't find one. She searched the whole kitchen, which was pretty tiny, several times, but couldn't find it. Eight days later it was walking around on the kitchen table perfectly fine.

The woman would appear sometimes, to my grandmother the most. She would just pass right in front of her. The woman was so solid that my grandmother mistook her for my mother, who wasn't home at the time. I know that my mother tried several times to get in touch with the woman, leaving out pencil and paper in quiet places and outright asking questions when she was around.

I don't live in that house anymore, but now that I'm older I'd like to go back to see if they're both still there.